We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Elected officials can often successfully increase voter support in their district by “bringing home the bacon,” yet theory suggests that the electoral effects of such efforts may depend on the legislator’s gender and whether the legislator delivered benefits in a stereotypically feminine (e.g., healthcare) or masculine (e.g., agriculture) issue area. Using both observational and experimental data in the United States, we find weak, limited evidence that issue area conditions the electoral impact of credit claiming for legislators of either gender. In addition, we show that men and women are rewarded comparably when they secure benefits for their district, regardless of issue area. Our findings suggest that women legislators — typically more effective than men at securing these benefits — can use distributive politics and credit claiming as an effective electoral strategy without concern that issue-based gender biases in the electorate will get in the way.
We evaluated diagnostic test and antibiotic utilization among 252 patients from 11 US hospitals who were evaluated for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia during the severe acute respiratory coronavirus virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) omicron variant pandemic wave. In our cohort, antibiotic use remained high (62%) among SARS-CoV-2–positive patients and even higher among those who underwent procalcitonin testing (68%).
Rapid urbanization and development in Southeast Asia have impacted its high biodiversity and unique ecosystems, directly through the use of forest lands for infrastructure building, and indirectly through increasing ecological footprints. In Greater Bandung, Indonesia and Greater Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, rapid urbanization over the last thirty years has resulted in an increase in built infrastructure of approximately two and three times respectively. A Nature-Based Solutions approach can potentially underpin urban design and planning strategies in Greater Bandung and Greater Kuala Lumpur, as well as other cities in Southeast Asia, to address biodiversity conservation and also global environmental challenges such as climate change adaption and mitigation, while supporting well-being. Mainstreaming Nature-Based Solutions in Southeast Asia will require knowledge gaps to be addressed, greater awareness, increasing the evidence base, metrics for measuring success, support from institutions and stakeholders, and new and innovative financing. The urgency of global socio-ecological challenges, in particular the biodiversity and climate crisis, means transformational change is needed in Southeast Asia, for urban, ecological, technical, economic, and social systems, while still supporting sustainable development.
More people are living in cities than ever before with around 55 per cent of the world’s population in cities as of 2018, and this is expected to grow to 68 per cent by 2050 (UN DESA 2018). Much of this rapid urbanization is concentrated in the Global South, such as in low- and middle-income countries, which have all experienced significant increases in population and rural to urban migration (Hajer et al. 2020; UN DESA 2018). By 2050, there is expected to be another 2.5 billion people living in urban areas with approximately 90 per cent of this increase taking place in Asia and Africa (UN DESA 2018). Of the urban infrastructure required in 2050, around 40 per cent has yet to be built (Hajer et al. 2020). In the coming decades, Southeast Asia is expected to experience one of the greatest increases in population and urbanization in the world.
Countries in Southeast Asia are rapidly urbanizing from their historically rural population base, with each country at different points in their urbanization development pathway, from Singapore with 100 per cent urbanization to Cambodia with 24.7 per cent urbanization in 2021 (UN DESA 2018). Around 66 per cent of the population of Southeast Asia is expected to reside in urban areas in 2050, compared to an estimated 51 per cent in 2021 and 16 per cent in 1950 (Figure 1a). Of the Southeast Asian nations, Malaysia is one of the most urbanized of the low- and middle-income countries (Lechner et al. 2020a), with an estimated 78 per cent of its population in cities (Figure 1a). Meanwhile, Indonesia, which is a lower-middle-income country (World Bank 2021), has the largest population in Southeast Asia at 271 million (BPS 2021), with an estimated 57 per cent of its population in cities (Figure 1a). Indonesia is also home to the megacity (i.e., city with over 10 million) of Jakarta with a population in Daerah Khusus Ibukota (Capital Special Region) of 11 million (BPS 2021) and upwards of 30 million in the Jakarta metropolitan area (Jabodetabekjur) (BPS 2021). The growth of megacities such as Bangkok and Manila, and major cities approaching megacity size, such as Greater Kuala Lumpur and Ho Chi Minh, is triggering a ripple effect, promoting growth in nearby cities and thereby concentrating urbanization in selected regions (Suzuki 2019).
The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.
The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.
• Rapid urbanization and development in Southeast Asia have impacted its high biodiversity and unique ecosystems, directly through the use of forest lands for infrastructure building, and indirectly through increasing ecological footprints.
• In Greater Bandung, Indonesia and Greater Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, rapid urbanization over the last thirty years has resulted in an increase in built infrastructure of approximately two and three times respectively.
• A Nature-Based Solutions approach can potentially underpin urban design and planning strategies in Greater Bandung and Greater Kuala Lumpur, as well as other cities in Southeast Asia, to address biodiversity conservation and also global environmental challenges such as climate change adaption and mitigation, while supporting well-being.
• Mainstreaming Nature-Based Solutions in Southeast Asia will require knowledge gaps to be addressed, greater awareness, increasing the evidence base, metrics for measuring success, support from institutions and stakeholders, and new and innovative financing.
• The urgency of global socio-ecological challenges, in particular the biodiversity and climate crisis, means transformational change is needed in Southeast Asia, for urban, ecological, technical, economic, and social systems, while still supporting sustainable development.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has required healthcare systems and hospitals to rapidly modify standard practice, including antimicrobial stewardship services. Our study examines the impact of COVID-19 on the antimicrobial stewardship pharmacist.
Design:
A survey was distributed nationally to all healthcare improvement company members.
Participants:
Pharmacist participants were mostly leaders of antimicrobial stewardship programs distributed evenly across the United States and representing urban, suburban, and rural health-system practice sites.
Results:
Participants reported relative increases in time spent completing tasks related to medication access and preauthorization (300%; P = .018) and administrative meeting time (34%; P = .067) during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to before the pandemic. Time spent rounding, making interventions, performing pharmacokinetic services, and medication reconciliation decreased.
Conclusion:
A shift away from clinical activities may negatively affect the utilization of antimicrobials.
Previous studies have shown a negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated sanitary measures on mental health, especially among adolescents and young adults. Such a context may raise many concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic long-term psychological effects. An analysis of administrative databases could be an alternative and complementary approach to medical interview-based epidemiological surveys to monitor the mental health of the population. We conducted a nationwide study to describe the consumption of anxiolytics, antidepressants and hypnotics during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to the five previous years.
Methods
A historic cohort study was conducted by extracting and analysing data from the French health insurance database between 1 January 2015 and 28 February 2021. Individuals were classified into five age-based classes. Linear regression models were performed to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic period on the number of drug consumers, in introducing an interaction term between time and COVID-19 period.
Results
Since March 2020, in all five age groups and all three drug categories studied, the number of patients reimbursed weekly has increased compared to the period from January 2015 to February 2020. The youngest the patients, the more pronounced the magnitude.
Conclusions
Monitoring the consumption of psychiatric medications could be of great interest as reliable indicators are essential for planning public health strategies. A post-crisis policy including reliable monitoring of mental health must be anticipated.
Swimming propagules (embryos and larvae) are a critical component of the life histories of benthic marine animals. Larvae that feed (planktotrophic) have been assumed to swim faster, disperse farther and have more complex behavioural patterns than non-feeding (lecithotrophic) larvae. However, a number of recent studies challenge these early assumptions, suggesting a need to revisit them more formally. The current review presents a quantitative analysis of swimming speed and body size in planktotrophic and lecithotrophic propagules across five major marine phyla (Porifera, Cnidaria, Annelida, Mollusca and Echinodermata). Results of the comparative study showed that swimming speed differences among ciliated propagules can be driven by taxonomy, adult mobility (motile vs sessile) and/or larval nutritional mode. On a phylogenetic level, distinct patterns emerge across phyla and life stages, whereby planktotrophic propagules swim faster in some of them, and lecithotrophic propagules swim faster in others. Interestingly, adults with sessile and sedentary lifestyles produce propagules that swam faster than the propagules produced by motile adults. Understanding similarities and differences among marine propagules associated with different reproductive strategies and adult lifestyles are significant from ecological, evolutionary and applied perspectives. Patterns of swimming can directly impact the dispersal/recruitment potential with incidence on the design of larval rearing methods and marine protected areas.
A new two-volume edition of the sources and major analogues of all the Canterbury Tales prepared by members of the New Chaucer Society. This collection, the first to appear in over half a century, features such additions as a fresh interpretation of Chaucer's sources for the frame of the work, chapters on the sources of the General Prologue and Retractions, and modern English translations of all foreign language texts. Chapters on the individual tales contain an updated survey of the present state of scholarship on their source materials. Several sources and analogues discovered during the past fifty years are found here together for the first time, and some other familiar sources are re-edited from manuscripts closer to Chaucer's copies. Volume I includes chapters on the Frame and the tales of the Reeve, Cook, Friar, Clerk, Squire, Franklin, Pardoner, Melibee, Monk, Nun's Priest, Second Nun and Parson. Chapters on the other tales, together with the General Prologue and Retractions will appear in Volume Two. ROBERT M. CORREALE teaches at Wright State University, Ohio; MARY HAMEL teaches at Mount St Mary College, Maryland.
Salmonella is a leading cause of bacterial foodborne illness. We report the collaborative investigative efforts of US and Canadian public health officials during the 2013–2014 international outbreak of multiple Salmonella serotype infections linked to sprouted chia seed powder. The investigation included open-ended interviews of ill persons, traceback, product testing, facility inspections, and trace forward. Ninety-four persons infected with outbreak strains from 16 states and four provinces were identified; 21% were hospitalized and none died. Fifty-four (96%) of 56 persons who consumed chia seed powder, reported 13 different brands that traced back to a single Canadian firm, distributed by four US and eight Canadian companies. Laboratory testing yielded outbreak strains from leftover and intact product. Contaminated product was recalled. Although chia seed powder is a novel outbreak vehicle, sprouted seeds are recognized as an important cause of foodborne illness; firms should follow available guidance to reduce the risk of bacterial contamination during sprouting.
Recent studies point to overlap between neuropsychiatric disorders in symptomatology and genetic aetiology.
Aims
To systematically investigate genomics overlap between childhood and adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and major depressive disorder (MDD).
Method
Analysis of whole-genome blood gene expression and genetic risk scores of 318 individuals. Participants included individuals affected with adult ADHD (n = 93), childhood ADHD (n = 17), MDD (n = 63), ASD (n = 51), childhood dual diagnosis of ADHD–ASD (n = 16) and healthy controls (n = 78).
Results
Weighted gene co-expression analysis results reveal disorder-specific signatures for childhood ADHD and MDD, and also highlight two immune-related gene co-expression modules correlating inversely with MDD and adult ADHD disease status. We find no significant relationship between polygenic risk scores and gene expression signatures.
Conclusions
Our results reveal disorder overlap and specificity at the genetic and gene expression level. They suggest new pathways contributing to distinct pathophysiology in psychiatric disorders and shed light on potential shared genomic risk factors.
Specimens of the deep-sea scale worm Neopolynoe acanellae (Verrill, 1881) (Polychaeta, Polynoidae) were collected at depths between 466 and 1405 m in Canadian waters while still attached to their host, the pennatulacean coral (sea pen) Pennatula grandis Ehrenberg, 1834. The present records extend the northern latitude of occurrence of N. acanellae in North America by 17o (~2000 km) to include the northern continental shelf of Newfoundland and Labrador and the lower Arctic, off the southern coast of Baffin Island (Canada). Analysis of the worm's intestinal content confirmed the presence of sea pen soft tissues and sclerites, suggesting that this species feeds on its host and is therefore parasitic.
Five controlled-release granular formulations were developed that eluted 3-methyl-2-cyclohexen-1-one (MCH) in the laboratory at a rate ≥ 0.5µg/h for 60 days. Elution rate was determined by trapping gaseous radioactive MCH followed by scintillation counting. The inert components of these formulations consisted either of a wax-coated molecular sieve, polyethylene emulsion-coated ground corncob, or dimer acid polyamide beads. These formulations and a liquid standard were applied 9 May just prior to Douglas-fir beetle (Dendroctonus pseudotsugae Hopk.) flight to plots containing single, freshly felled Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. glauca) trees. Three months later, infestation by Douglas-fir beetle and other insects was evaluated. All treatments except coated corncobs and certain applications of the molecular sieve significantly reduced Douglas-fir beetle attacks. Douglas-fir beetle brood in three treatments was significantly less than in controls. Abundance of entomophagous insects was proportional to density of host beetle attacks. Douglas-fir beetle attack density was negatively correlated with degree of infestation by the scolytid Pseudohylesinus nebulosus (Lee).
Research conducted on biomass for Ulcos (“Ultra-Low CO2 Steelmaking” European Integrated Project)has progressively focused on charcoal supply fromtropical eucalyptus plantations. The sustainability of suchplantations is being investigated from the viewpoint oftheir carbon, water and nutrient budgets: they must allbe neutral or positive. Field research is producing resultsat the tree or stand level in several sites of Congo andBrazil, while a spatial model is developed to identifythe conditions of biomass neutrality at the scale of theforest ecosystem. The productivity of biomass has beenanalyzed through the description of practices along theAbstracts of technical articlesvarious supply-schemes that competitively feed the steelindustry in Brazil and the identification of bottlenecks forfurther expansion.