While health inequalities among older people have long been a research focus and are now high on policy agendas in developed societies, they have often been neglected in less developed ones, despite them experiencing rapid population ageing since the turn of the century. Using data from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) cohort study (N = 63,578), this paper measures the health status of older people using the Quality of Well-Being scale, and estimates time trends in health inequality with concentration indices, followed by an investigation of their social determinants. Its specific focus is health care accessibility (HA) in the period 2005–2018, when China experienced an unprecedented advance in health-related social policy reform. The analysis reveals pro-rich inequalities in health among older people, but also shows that these have narrowed gradually over the past two decades, which is largely attributable to greater equity in access to health care. Within this general trend of inequality reduction, however, the role of HA has declined and social determinants such as education now have an increasing influence on health inequalities. These findings suggest that social policies targeting not only health improvements among older people but also health inequalities earlier in the life course are required if policy makers want to promote health equity in later life.

Recent fossil discoveries from New Zealand have revealed a remarkably diverse assemblage of Paleocene stem group penguins. Here, we add to this growing record by describing nine new penguin specimens from the late Paleocene (upper Teurian local stage; 55.5–59.5 Ma) Moeraki Formation of the South Island, New Zealand. The largest specimen is assigned to a new species, Kumimanu fordycei n. sp., which may have been the largest penguin ever to have lived. Allometric regressions based on humerus length and humerus proximal width of extant penguins yield mean estimates of a live body mass in the range of 148.0 kg (95% CI: 132.5 kg–165.3 kg) and 159.7 kg (95% CI: 142.6 kg–178.8 kg), respectively, for Kumimanu fordycei. A second new species, Petradyptes stonehousei n. gen. n. sp., is represented by five specimens and was slightly larger than the extant emperor penguin Aptenodytes forsteri. Two small humeri represent an additional smaller unnamed penguin species. Parsimony and Bayesian phylogenetic analyses recover Kumimanu and Petradyptes crownward of the early Paleocene mainland NZ taxa Waimanu and Muriwaimanu, but stemward of the Chatham Island taxon Kupoupou. These analyses differ, however, in the placement of these two taxa relative to Sequiwaimanu, Crossvallia, and Kaiika. The massive size and placement of Kumimanu fordycei close to the root of the penguin tree provide additional support for a scenario in which penguins reached the upper limit of sphenisciform body size very early in their evolutionary history, while still retaining numerous plesiomorphic features of the flipper.

UUID: https://zoobank.org/15b1d5b2-a5a0-4aa5-ba0a-8ef3b8461730

The human large intestinal microbiota thrives on dietary carbohydrates that are converted to a range of fermentation products. Short-chain fatty acids (acetate, propionate and butyrate) are the dominant fermentation acids that accumulate to high concentrations in the colon and they have health-promoting effects on the host. Although many gut microbes can also produce lactate, it usually does not accumulate in the healthy gut lumen. This appears largely to be due to the presence of a relatively small number of gut microbes that can utilise lactate and convert it to propionate, butyrate or acetate. There is increasing evidence that these microbes play important roles in maintaining a healthy gut environment. In this review, we will provide an overview of the different microbes involved in lactate metabolism within the gut microbiota, including biochemical pathways utilised and their underlying energetics, as well as regulation of the corresponding genes. We will further discuss the potential consequences of perturbation of the microbiota leading to lactate accumulation in the gut and associated disease states and how lactate-utilising bacteria may be employed to treat such diseases.

Metabolites produced by microbial fermentation in the human intestine, especially short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), are known to play important roles in colonic and systemic health. Our aim here was to advance our understanding of how and why their concentrations and proportions vary between individuals. We have analysed faecal concentrations of microbial fermentation acids from 10 human volunteer studies, involving 163 subjects, conducted at the Rowett Institute, Aberdeen, UK over a 7-year period. In baseline samples, the % butyrate was significantly higher, whilst % iso-butyrate and % iso-valerate were significantly lower, with increasing total SCFA concentration. The decreasing proportions of iso-butyrate and iso-valerate, derived from amino acid fermentation, suggest that fibre intake was mainly responsible for increased SCFA concentrations. We propose that the increase in % butyrate among faecal SCFA is largely driven by a decrease in colonic pH resulting from higher SCFA concentrations. Consistent with this, both total SCFA and % butyrate increased significantly with decreasing pH across five studies for which faecal pH measurements were available. Colonic pH influences butyrate production through altering the stoichiometry of butyrate formation by butyrate-producing species, resulting in increased acetate uptake and butyrate formation, and facilitating increased relative abundance of butyrate-producing species (notably Roseburia and Eubacterium rectale).

The aim of this review is to provide an overview of the complex interactions between dietary fibre and the resident microbial community in the human gut. The microbiota influences both health maintenance and disease development. In the large intestine, the microbiota plays a crucial role in the degradation of dietary carbohydrates that remain undigested in the upper gut (non-digestible carbohydrates or fibre). Dietary fibre contains a variety of different types of carbohydrates, and its breakdown is facilitated by many different microbial enzymes. Some microbes, termed generalists, are able to degrade a range of different carbohydrates, whereas others are more specialised. Furthermore, the physicochemical characteristics of dietary fibre, such as whether it enters the gut in soluble or insoluble form, also likely influence which microbes can degrade it. A complex nutritional network therefore exists comprising primary degraders able to attack complex fibre and cross feeders that benefit from fibre breakdown intermediates or fermentation products. This leads predominately to the generation of the short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) acetate, propionate and butyrate, which exert various effects on host physiology, including the supply of energy, influencing glucose and lipid metabolism and anti-carcinogenic and anti-inflammatory actions. In order to effectively modulate the gut microbiota through diet, there is a need to better understand the complex competitive and cooperative interactions between gut microbes in dietary fibre breakdown, as well as how gut environmental factors and the physicochemical state of fibre originating from different types of diets influence microbial metabolism and ecology in the gut.

Stable isotopes of mammoths and mastodons have the potential to illuminate ecological changes in late Pleistocene landscapes and megafaunal populations as these species approached extinction. The ecological factors at play in this extinction remain unresolved, but isotopes of bone collagen (δ13C, δ15N) and tooth enamel (δ13C, δ18O, 87Sr/86Sr) from midwestern North America are leveraged to examine ecological and behavioral changes that occurred during the last interglacial-glacial cycle. Both species had significant C3 contributions to their diets and experienced increasing levels of niche overlap as they approached extinction. A subset of mastodons after the last glacial maximum exhibit low δ15N values that may represent expansion into a novel ecological niche, perhaps densely occupied by other herbivores. Stable isotopes from serial and microsampled enamel show increasing seasonality and decreasing temperatures as mammoths transitioned from Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5e to glacial conditions (MIS 4, MIS 3, MIS 2). Isotopic variability in enamel suggests mobility patterns and life histories have potentially large impacts on the interpretation of their stable isotope ecology. This study further refines the ecology of midwestern mammoths and mastodons demonstrating increasing seasonality and niche overlap as they responded to landscape changes in the final millennia before extinction.

The narrow referendum decision for British exit from the European Union (Brexit), and its explosive political consequences, has become a lens through which decades-long tensions in European society can be viewed. The result, which was expected to be a clear Remain victory, has been interpreted as various combinations of: the unleashing of xenophobic and racist anti-immigrant sentiment; a kick back against disinterested elites by ‘left behind’ people; the fermenting of nationalist populism by political and media actors; a clash of cultural values; a rejection of ‘market is all’ globalisation in favour of national borders; or as a reaction against austerity, inequality and insecurity (Corbett, 2016; Goodwin and Heath, 2016; Hobolt, 2016; Inglehart and Norris, 2016; Kaufmann, 2016; Pettifor, 2016; Room, 2016; Seidler, 2018; Taylor-Gooby, 2017). This British-made shock has parallels in and consequences for wider European society. In the Referendum, the EU became an emblematic representation of the distrusted, remote, technocratic elites, who are said to be responsible for an unbelievably large number of societal ills. Meanwhile across Europe there are varieties of Eurosceptic populism and distrust of elites on both the right and left (Ivaldi et al., 2017).

Twenty years ago, at a public ceremony in Amsterdam, a group of European academics made a solemn declaration on the future of the European Union (EU). Eventually over 1000 scholars and policy makers signed the Amsterdam Declaration on the Social Quality of Europe and it was translated into sixteen languages. The main intention behind the declaration was to remind policy makers and citizens about the unique nature of the western European model of development, comprising aspirations for economic growth, competitiveness and social justice. The risk being warned against was that, in the process of Economic and Monetary Union, the politics of integration would neglect what was then labelled the ‘social dimension’ and, among other far-reaching consequences, this would lead to a loss of legitimacy for the whole European project. As the Comité des Sages put it, bluntly, in 1996, ‘Europe will be a Europe for everyone, for all its citizens, or it will be nothing’.

This article investigates the idea of ‘the social’ in Europe after the UK's EU Referendum vote, with reference to the ‘European social model’. It is argued that the key drivers of the vote outcome did not feature in the referendum campaign but are features of longer running and deeper fractures in both British and wider European society. Especially, the lack of response to societal problems, the downplaying of individual participation, and a crisis in democracy created by an increasingly neoliberal direction within an EU concerned with austerity and social control, contrary to the values of the ‘European social model’ (Walker, 2005). In the absence of action for better ‘social quality’, this overall neoliberal direction has also weakened the progressive and integrative potential of social policy. The result is the regressive nationalist populist backlash against neoliberal technocracy. Instead, we argue that answers to contemporary European challenges must focus on improving social quality and democracy.