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Objectives/Goals: Arterial stiffness is a determinant of vascular health. Older Black females exhibit greater arterial stiffness than White females. Exercise minimizes negative health effects of prolonged exposure to adverse social determinants of health (SDoH). Here, we will assess the role of exercise on race differences in arterial stiffness and SDoH in females. Methods/Study Population: We will recruit 96 postmenopausal females (48 Black, 48 White) from the Birmingham, AL area. Graded exercise tests will be used to define training status (“trained”: VO2max ≥60th percentile, “untrained”: ≤35th percentile). We will assess arterial stiffness via pulse wave velocity (SphygmoCor XCEL). SDoH will include income, education, neighborhood deprivation, racial discrimination, food insecurity, and healthcare access, all measured via corresponding surveys. We will then perform a two-way analysis of variance (race × training status) to assess the differences in arterial stiffness between groups. Through linear regression, we will evaluate the statistical relations between arterial stiffness and race, training status, and SDoH. Results/Anticipated Results: Our central hypothesis is that Black females will have greater arterial stiffness, by way of greater exposure to adverse SDoH, than White females, but that habitual aerobic exercise will attenuate this race difference. Ultimately, we aim to inform future clinical trials related to understanding female-specific cardiovascular disease progression. Discussion/Significance of Impact: Black females face significant exposure to adverse SDoH and have the highest rates of cardiovascular disease in the United States. However, females are still widely underrepresented in relevant research. This will be the first study to examine the roles of aerobic exercise, race, and SDoH in cardiovascular disease risk among females.
This chapter places Marx’s well-known critique of individual rights in On the Jewish Question (1843) in the context of a more widespread indifference to rights languages in the early socialist movements of Britain, France, and Prussia. For all their differences, early socialists agreed that genuine human flourishing would require transcending what Marx was to call the “narrow horizon of bourgeois right.” The chapter charts the swinging pendulum of rights discourse in the early nineteenth century. While the century began in both Britain and France in reaction against revolutionary rights language, the years from 1815 through the early 1830s saw a revival of rights claims among British radicals, culminating in the Chartists’ embrace of natural rights, and in France, where radical republicans demanded manhood suffrage in the name of the Rights of Man. Proudhon’s What Is Property?, written in reaction to the 1830 Revolution, signaled and also helped to shape a decisive turn against rights among incipient socialist movements: in its explicit critique of individual property rights as failing to recognize the socialized character of production, but also in its more general lack of interest in rights discourse. French socialists, in the splintering Saint-Simonian movement, embraced democracy rather than rights as the language of emancipation, while in Germany the socialists emerging out of the fragmenting Young Hegelian movement likewise saw rights, especially property rights, as impediments to true, human, emancipation. Yet because rights were not central to their adversaries’ program, socialists including Marx largely ignored them. Finally, after 1860, rights claims saw something of a resurgence among socialists, with social democratic textbooks asserting rights demands as appropriate in the early stages of socialism.
Historians credit the interwar period with the demise of the great agricultural estates but many survived, reduced in area and refocussed on new priorities. Three estates lying in close proximity in north Hampshire and south Berkshire had very divergent interests, but there were similarities, and significant differences, in the manner in which they survived the interwar period. One invested in a programme of renewal of houses and farm buildings, and another adopted a more commercial approach to managing its diverse interests and the third retrenched, cutting investment but maintaining the status quo as an agricultural and shooting estate. All three survived, relatively intact and financially stable, and remain in operation today. An examination of estate financial performance before and after the Great War provides the context to the strategies pursued by the owners and their Land Agents, and their place in the broader rural landscape of the 1920s and 1930s.
With human influences driving populations of apex predators into decline, more information is required on how factors affect species at national and global scales. However, camera-trap studies are seldom executed at a broad spatial scale. We demonstrate how uniting fine-scale studies and utilizing camera-trap data of non-target species is an effective approach for broadscale assessments through a case study of the brown hyaena Parahyaena brunnea. We collated camera-trap data from 25 protected and unprotected sites across South Africa into the largest detection/non-detection dataset collected on the brown hyaena, and investigated the influence of biological and anthropogenic factors on brown hyaena occupancy. Spatial autocorrelation had a significant effect on the data, and was corrected using a Bayesian Gibbs sampler. We show that brown hyaena occupancy is driven by specific co-occurring apex predator species and human disturbance. The relative abundance of spotted hyaenas Crocuta crocuta and people on foot had a negative effect on brown hyaena occupancy, whereas the relative abundance of leopards Panthera pardus and vehicles had a positive influence. We estimated that brown hyaenas occur across 66% of the surveyed camera-trap station sites. Occupancy varied geographically, with lower estimates in eastern and southern South Africa. Our findings suggest that brown hyaena conservation is dependent upon a multi-species approach focussed on implementing conservation policies that better facilitate coexistence between people and hyaenas. We also validate the conservation value of pooling fine-scale datasets and utilizing bycatch data to examine species trends at broad spatial scales.
Recruitment of participants and their retention in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) is key for research efficiency. However, for many trials, recruiting and retaining participants meeting the eligible criteria is extremely challenging. Digital tools are increasingly being used to identify, recruit and retain participants. While these tools are being used, there is a lack of quality evidence to determine their value in trial recruitment.
Methods
The aim of the main study was to identify the benefits and characteristics of innovative digital recruitment and retention tools for more efficient conduct of RCTs. Here we report on the qualitative data collected on the characteristics of digital tools required by trialists, research participants, primary care staff, research funders and Clinical Trials Units (CTUs) to judge them useful. A purposive sampling strategy was used to identify 16 participants from five stakeholder groups. A theoretical framework was informed from results of a survey with UKCRC registered CTUs. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed using an inductive approach. A content and thematic analysis was used to explore the stakeholder's viewpoint and the value of digital tools.
Results
The content analysis revealed that ‘barriers / challenges ‘ and ‘awareness of evidence’ were the most commonly discussed areas. Three key emergent themes were present across all groups: ‘security and legitimacy of information’, ‘inclusivity’, and ‘availability of human interaction’. Other themes focused on the engagement of stakeholders in their use and adoption of digital technology to enhance the recruitment/retention process. We also noted some interesting similarities and differences between practitioner and participant groups.
Conclusions
The key emergent themes clearly demonstrate the use of digital technology in the recruitment and retention of participants in trials. The challenge, however, is using these existing tools without sufficient evidence to support the usefulness compared to traditional techniques. This raises important questions around the potential value for future research.
Recruitment of participants to, and their retention in, Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) is a key determinant of research efficiency, but is challenging. Digital tools and media are increasingly used to reduce costs, waste and delays in the conduct and delivery of research. The aim of this UK Clinical Trials Unit (CTU) survey was to identify which digital recruitment and retention tools are being used to support RCTs, their benefits and success characteristics.
Methods
A survey was sent to all UK Clinical Research Collaboration (UKCRC)-registered CTUs with a webinar to help increase completion. A logic model and definitions of a “digital tool” were developed by iterative refinement by project team members, the Advisory Board (NIHR Research Design service, NHS Trust, NIHR Clinical Research Networks and patient input) and CTUs.
Results
A total of 24/52 (46%) CTUs responded, 6 (25%) of which stated no prior use. Database screening tools (e.g. CPRD, EMIS) were the tool most widely used (45%) for recruitment and were considered very effective (67%). The most mentioned success criteria were saving GP time and reaching more patients. Social media was second (27%), but estimated effectiveness varied considerably, with only 17% stating very effective. Fewer retention tools were used, with SMS / email reminders reported most (10/15 67%), but certainty about effectiveness varied. A detailed definition on what constitutes a digital tool with examples and a logic model showing relationships between the resources, activities, outputs and outcomes for digital tools was developed.
Conclusions
Database screening tools are the most commonly used digital tool for recruitment, with clear success criteria and certainty about effectiveness. Our detailed definition of what constitutes a digital tool, with examples, will inform the NIHR research community about choices and help them identify potential tools to support recruitment and retention.
What came to be called ‘socialism’ was a product of the turbulent years of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. The word entered political language in the 1830s and was universally associated with the work of three founding ‘prophets’: Henri de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier in France, and Robert Owen in Britain. Adolphe Blanqui, originally in 1837, described Fourier and Owen as “utopian economists,” while Lorenz von Stein in 1842 defined socialism as that “theory which made work the sole basis of society and the state.”
The past century has seen massive improvements in the study of galaxy kinematics. While early work focused on single nearby galaxies, current studies with modern IFUs and interferometers (e.g., SINFONI, ALMA) allow for extension of this field to high redshift. However, the sample of galaxy observations at z > 4 that feature the sensitivity and resolution required for resolved dynamical characterization has been small. The ALMA Large Program to INvestigate CII at Early times (ALPINE) targeted 118 star-forming galaxies at z = 4–6, representing a vast increase in the sample size of potentially dynamically-characterizable sources. Using a set of diagnostic plots, we are able to characterize roughly half the sample, revealing a vast kinematic diversity and high merger rate. For the nine targets that show rotational signatures, initial tilted ring fitting with 3DBarolo shows promise. With further observations (e.g., ALMA, NOEMA, MUSE), the true nature of each source will be revealed in unprecedented detail.
This article examines radical and socialist responses to Malthus's Essay on population, beginning with the response of William Godwin, Malthus's main object of attack, but focusing particularly upon the position adopted by his most important admirer, Robert Owen. The anti-Malthus position was promoted and sustained both by Owen and the subsequent Owenite movement. Owenites stressed both the extent of uncultivated land and the capacity of science to raise the productivity of the soil. The Owenite case, preached weekly in Owenite Halls of Science, and argued by its leading lecturer, John Watts, made a strong impact upon the young Frederick Engels working in Manchester in 1843–4. His denunciation of political economy in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, heavily dependent upon the Owenite position, was what first encouraged Marx to engage with political economy. Marx initially reiterated the position of Engels and the Owenites in maintaining that population increase pressured means of employment rather than means of subsistence, and that competition rather than overpopulation caused economic crises. But in his later work, his main criticism of the Malthusian theory was its false conflation of history and nature.
The endemic Mauritian flying fox Pteropus niger is perceived to be a major fruit pest. Lobbying of the Government of Mauritius by fruit growers to control the flying fox population resulted in national culls in 2015 and 2016, with a further cull scheduled for 2018. A loss of c. 38,318 individuals has been reported and the species is now categorized as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. However, until now there were no robust data available on damage to orchards caused by bats. During October 2015–February 2016 we monitored four major lychee Litchi chinensis and one mango (Mangifera spp.) orchard, and also assessed 10 individual longan Dimocarpus longan trees. Bats and introduced birds caused major damage to fruit, with 7–76% fruit loss (including natural fall and losses from fungal damage) per tree. Bats caused more damage to taller lychee trees (> 6 m high) than to smaller ones, whereas bird damage was independent of tree height. Bats damaged more fruit than birds in tall lychee trees, although this trend was reversed in small trees. Use of nets on fruiting trees can result in as much as a 23-fold reduction in the damage caused by bats if nets are applied correctly. There is still a need to monitor orchards over several seasons and to test non-lethal bat deterrence methods more widely.
The revolutions that swept across Europe in 1848 marked a turning-point in the history of political and social thought. They raised questions of democracy, nationhood, freedom and social cohesion that have remained among the key issues of modern politics, and still help to define the major ideological currents - liberalism, socialism, republicanism, anarchism, conservatism - in which these questions continue to be debated today. This collection of essays by internationally prominent historians of political thought examines the 1848 Revolutions in a pan-European perspective, and offers research on questions of state power, nationality, religion, the economy, poverty, labour, and freedom. Even where the revolutionary movements failed to achieve their explicit objectives of transforming the state and social relations, they set the agenda for subsequent regimes, and contributed to the shaping of modern European thought and institutions.