The illegal killing and taking of wild birds remains a major threat on a global scale. However, there are few quantitative data on the species affected and countries involved. We quantified the scale and scope of this issue in Northern and Central Europe and the Caucasus, using a diverse range of data sources and incorporating expert knowledge. The issue was reported to be widespread across the region and affects almost all countries/territories assessed. We estimated that 0.4–2.1 million birds per year may be killed/taken illegally in the region. The highest estimate of illegal killing in the region was for Azerbaijan (0.2-1.0 million birds per year). Out of the 20 worst locations identified, 13 were located in the Caucasus. Birds were reported to be illegally killed/taken primarily for sport and food in the Caucasus and for sport and predator/pest control in both Northern and Central Europe. All of the 28 countries assessed are parties to the Bern Convention and 19 are also European Union Member States. There are specific initiatives under both these policy instruments to tackle this threat, yet our data showed that illegal killing and taking is still occurring and is not restricted to Mediterranean European countries. Markedly increased effort is required to ensure that existing legislation is adequately implemented and complied with/enforced on the ground. Our study also highlighted the paucity of data on illegal killing and taking of birds in the region. It is a priority, identified by relevant initiatives under the Bern Convention and the European Union, to implement systematic monitoring of illegal killing and taking and to collate robust data, allowing stakeholders to set priorities, track trends and monitor the effectiveness of responses.

Objectives: Careful characterization of how functional decline co-evolves with cognitive decline in older adults has yet to be well described. Most models of neurodegenerative disease postulate that cognitive decline predates and potentially leads to declines in everyday functional abilities; however, there is mounting evidence that subtle decline in instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) may be detectable in older individuals who are still cognitively normal. Methods: The present study examines how the relationship between change in cognition and change in IADLs are best characterized among older adults who participated in the ACTIVE trial. Neuropsychological and IADL data were analyzed for 2802 older adults who were cognitively normal at study baseline and followed for up to 10 years. Results: Findings demonstrate that subtle, self-perceived difficulties in performing IADLs preceded and predicted subsequent declines on cognitive tests of memory, reasoning, and speed of processing. Conclusions: Findings are consistent with a growing body of literature suggesting that subjective changes in everyday abilities can be associated with more precipitous decline on objective cognitive measures and the development of mild cognitive impairment and dementia. (JINS, 2018, 24, 104–112)

We use the structure lattice, introduced in Part I, to undertake a systematic study of the class $\mathscr{S}$ consisting of compactly generated, topologically simple, totally disconnected locally compact groups that are nondiscrete. Given $G\in \mathscr{S}$ , we show that compact open subgroups of $G$ involve finitely many isomorphism types of composition factors, and do not have any soluble normal subgroup other than the trivial one. By results of Part I, this implies that the centralizer lattice and local decomposition lattice of $G$ are Boolean algebras. We show that the $G$ -action on the Stone space of those Boolean algebras is minimal, strongly proximal, and microsupported. Building upon those results, we obtain partial answers to the following key problems: Are all groups in $\mathscr{S}$ abstractly simple? Can a group in $\mathscr{S}$ be amenable? Can a group in $\mathscr{S}$ be such that the contraction groups of all of its elements are trivial?

Let $G$ be a totally disconnected, locally compact group. A closed subgroup of $G$ is locally normal if its normalizer is open in $G$ . We begin an investigation of the structure of the family of closed locally normal subgroups of $G$ . Modulo commensurability, this family forms a modular lattice ${\mathcal{L}}{\mathcal{N}}(G)$ , called the structure lattice of $G$ . We show that $G$ admits a canonical maximal quotient $H$ for which the quasicentre and the abelian locally normal subgroups are trivial. In this situation ${\mathcal{L}}{\mathcal{N}}(H)$ has a canonical subset called the centralizer lattice, forming a Boolean algebra whose elements correspond to centralizers of locally normal subgroups. If $H$ is second-countable and acts faithfully on its centralizer lattice, we show that the topology of $H$ is determined by its algebraic structure (and thus invariant by every abstract group automorphism), and also that the action on the Stone space of the centralizer lattice is universal for a class of actions on profinite spaces. Most of the material is developed in the more general framework of Hecke pairs.

Sharp jumps in climate punctuate the records from borings in the Greenland ice cap during the time interval 60,000 to about 20,000 yr ago. Rapid fluctuations are also seen in foraminifera records for cores from the northern Atlantic and in a pollen record from a core from a bog in the Vosges Mountains in France. In this paper we present a new radiocarbon chronology for northern Atlantic deep-sea core V23-81 which permits comparison with the radiocarbon-dated Vosges Mountains pollen record. Because of the lack of a 14C chronology for the Greenland ice record and of distortions peculiar to each of the three records, it is not yet possible to say whether or not the events are genetically related.

Multiple stratigraphies of subtropical South Atlantic cores reveal significant stratigraphic discrepancies between the nannofossil and the foraminiferal carbonates. Variations in the stratigraphic signals carried in the nannofossil-dominated <38 μm fraction and foraminifera-dominated >38 μm fraction were measured with detailed stratigraphies of δ18O, δ13C, 14C, grain size, percentage carbonate, percentage aragonite, and taxonomic composition across the last deglaciation in INMD box core 111 No. 9. Three other cores (INMD box cores 113 and 115, and V 22–174), also from the shallow flanks of the mid-Atlantic ridge in the South Atlantic (10°–17° S), contain similar stratigraphies indicating that these cores represent regional patterns. The onset of the deglacial δ18O shift in foraminiferal carbonate occurs 6 to 20 cm deeper than the δ18O shift in the nannofossil fraction. Nineteen accelerator mass spectrometer 14C dates of various fractions (<38 μm, 38–62 μm, 62–150 μm, 150–250 μm, >355 μm, and G. ruber) from INMD Box 111 show that the components within an individual core slice may differ by up to 4900 14C years. Twelve traditional 14C dates (determined by beta counting) of the >38 and <38 μm fractions from six levels in INMD Box 111 No. 6 confirm the large offsets. The observed isotopic offsets are not explained by an individual process, and suggest that multiple causes have left a lumpy stratigraphic record. However, the variability in the data illustrates the difficulty in accurately measuring the chronology of deglaciation, reopens the question of which components of pelagic sediment best monitor surface water conditions, and complicates the direct interpretation of benthic-planktonic age differences in terms of ocean ventilation changes.

Effects of once-daily extended-release quetiapine fumarate (quetiapine XR) monotherapy on sleep quality and disturbance in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) were evaluated. Pooled data from four 6- or 8-wk placebo-controlled quetiapine XR (50–300 mg/d) monotherapy studies (D1448C00001; D1448C00002; D1448C00003; D1448C00004) were analysed. Primary efficacy end-point was change from randomization in Montgomery Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) score. Post hoc analyses of secondary end-points were conducted for change from randomization in: MADRS item 4 (reduced sleep); Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAMD) items 4 (insomnia-early), 5 (insomnia-middle), 6 (insomnia-late) and sleep disturbance factor (items 4 + 5+6) scores; Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) global scores. MADRS total score change was also evaluated in patients experiencing high and low baseline sleep disturbance (HAMD sleep disturbance factor scores ⩾4 and < 4, respectively). In total, 1808 patients were randomized to quetiapine XR or placebo across four studies. At last assessment, quetiapine XR reduced MADRS item 4, HAMD items 4, 5 and 6, HAMD sleep disturbance factor score and PSQI global scores from baseline vs. placebo (p < 0.001). For those experiencing high sleep disturbance (n = 865, quetiapine XR; n = 514, placebo), quetiapine XR improved MADRS total score vs. placebo at all visits (p < 0.001). For those with low sleep disturbance (n = 252, quetiapine XR; n = 121, placebo), quetiapine XR improved MADRS total score vs. placebo at weeks 2 (p < 0.001), 4 and 6 (both p < 0.05). In conclusion, quetiapine XR (50–300 mg/d) monotherapy improved symptoms of sleep disturbance vs. placebo in patients with MDD, including those with either high or low baseline sleep disturbance levels.

The apparent mobilizing power of ethnic sentiment in recent African history has been the subject of vigorous debate. Studies that emphasize the centrality of colonialism and the instrumental use of ethnicity have been criticized by a scholarship arguing that the affective power of ethnicity is culturally rooted through longstanding experience and practice, and that both manipulation and invention are constrained by this. This paper contributes to that debate through a discussion of the history of the Mijikenda, one of the “super-tribes” of modern Kenyan politics. It suggests that there were indeed “limits to invention,” but that there was nonetheless substantial entrepreneurship and creativity in the politics of Mijikenda identity. This drew heavily on the productive, discursive tension between tradition and modernity that lay at the heart of colonialism and was drawn into vigorous debates over legitimacy and representation in the “critical juncture” of the final years of colonial rule.

To any automorphism, $\alpha $, of a totally disconnected, locally compact group, $G$, there is associated a compact, $\alpha $-stable subgroup of $G$, here called the nub of $\alpha $, on which the action of $\alpha $ is ergodic. Ergodic actions of automorphisms of compact groups have been studied extensively in topological dynamics and results obtained transfer, via the nub, to the study of automorphisms of general locally compact groups. A new proof that the contraction group of $\alpha $ is dense in the nub is given, but it is seen that the two-sided contraction group need not be dense. It is also shown that each pair $(G, \alpha )$, with $G$ compact and $\alpha $ ergodic, is an inverse limit of pairs that have ‘finite depth’ and that analogues of the Schreier refinement and Jordan–Hölder theorems hold for pairs with finite depth.

Cognitive training improves mental abilities in older adults, but the trainability of persons with memory impairment is unclear. We conducted a subgroup analysis of subjects in the Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) trial to examine this issue. ACTIVE enrolled 2802 non-demented, community-dwelling adults aged 65 years and older and randomly assigned them to one of four groups: Memory training, reasoning training, speed-of-processing training, or no-contact control. For this study, participants were defined as memory-impaired if baseline Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT) sum recall score was 1.5 SD or more below predicted AVLT sum recall score from a regression-derived formula using age, education, ethnicity, and vocabulary from all subjects at baseline. Assessments were taken at baseline (BL), post-test, first annual (A1), and second annual (A2) follow-up. One hundred and ninety-three subjects were defined as memory-impaired and 2580 were memory-normal. Training gain as a function memory status (impaired vs. normal) was compared in a mixed effects model. Results indicated that memory-impaired participants failed to benefit from Memory training but did show normal training gains after reasoning and speed training. Memory function appears to mediate response to structured cognitive interventions in older adults. (JINS, 2007, 13, 953–960.)

We consider locally compact groups $G$ admitting a topologically transitive $\mathbb{Z}^d$-action by automorphisms. It is shown that such a group $G$ has a compact normal subgroup $K$ of $G$, invariant under the action, such that $G/K$ is a product of (finitely many) locally compact fields of characteristic zero; moreover, the totally disconnected fields in the decomposition can be chosen to be invariant under the $\mathbb{Z}^d$-action and such that the $\mathbb{Z}^d$-action is via scalar multiplication by non-zero elements of the field. Under the additional conditions that $G$ be finite dimensional and ‘locally finitely generated’ we conclude that $K$ as above is connected and contained in the center of $G$. We describe some examples to point out the significance of the conditions involved.