Effect of strategies to reduce exposure of infants to environmental tobacco smoke in the home : cross sectional survey

Objective To examine parents' reported knowledge and use of harm reduction strategies to protect their infants from exposure to tobacco smoke in the home, and the relation between reported use of strategies and urinary cotinine to creatinine ratios in the infants. Design Cross sectional survey. Settings Coventry and Birmingham. Main outcome measures Parents’ reported knowledge and use of harm reduction strategies and urinary cotinine to creatinine ratios in their infants. Participants 314 smoking households with infants. Results 86% of parents (264/307) believed that environmental tobacco smoke is harmful, 90% (281/314) believed that infants can be protected from it in the home, and 10% (32/314) were either unaware of measures or reported using none. 65% of parents (205/314) reported using two or more measures, but only 18% (58/314) reported not allowing smoking in the home. No difference was found in mean log e transformed urinary cotinine to creatinine ratio in infants from households that used no measures compared with households that used less strict measures. Mean log cotinine to creatinine ratios were significantly different in households banning smoking in the home compared with those using less strict or no measures. Banning smoking in the home was independently associated with a significant reduction in urinary cotinine to creatinine ratio by a factor of 2.6 (1.6 to 4.2) after adjustment for average household cigarette consumption, tenure, and overcrowding. Conclusions Less than a fifth of parents in smoking households ban smoking in the home. Banning smoking was associated with a small but significant reduction in urinary cotinine to creatinine ratio in infants, whereas less strict measures compared with no measures had no effect on the infants’ exposure to environmental tobacco smoke

Improving students’ understanding of algebra and multiplicative reasoning: did the ICCAMS intervention work?

In this paper we report on the intervention phase of an ESRC-funded project, Increasing Competence and Confidence in Algebra and Multiplicative Structures (ICCAMS). The intervention was designed to enable teachers to use formative assessment in mathematics classrooms by evaluating what students already knew, then adapting their teaching to students’ learning needs. A key feature was the use of models and representations, such as the Cartesian graph, both to help students better understand mathematical ideas and to help teachers appreciate students’ difficulties. Twenty-two teachers and their Year 8 classes from 11 schools took part in the intervention during 2010/11. Pre! and post-tests in algebra, decimals and ratio were administered to the students of these classes, and compared to a control group of students matched from the ICCAMS national longitudinal survey (using propensity score matching). The students in the intervention group made greater progress than the matched control

Improving students’ understanding of algebra and multiplicative reasoning: did the ICCAMS intervention work?

In this paper we report on the intervention phase of an ESRC-funded project, Increasing Competence and Confidence in Algebra and Multiplicative Structures (ICCAMS). The intervention was designed to enable teachers to use formative assessment in mathematics classrooms by evaluating what students already knew, then adapting their teaching to students’ learning needs. A key feature was the use of models and representations, such as the Cartesian graph, both to help students better understand mathematical ideas and to help teachers appreciate students’ difficulties. Twenty-two teachers and their Year 8 classes from 11 schools took part in the intervention during 2010/11. Pre! and post-tests in algebra, decimals and ratio were administered to the students of these classes, and compared to a control group of students matched from the ICCAMS national longitudinal survey (using propensity score matching). The students in the intervention group made greater progress than the matched control

Intrinsic and extrinsic factors influencing large African herbivore movements

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Jan A. Venter, Herbert H. T. Prins, Alla Mashanova, Willem F. de Boer, and Rob Slotow, 'Intrinsic and extrinsic factors influencing large African herbivore movements', Ecological Informatics, Vol. 30: 257-262, November 2015, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2015.05.006. This manuscript version is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.Understanding environmental as well as anthropogenic factors that influence large herbivore ecological patterns and processes should underpin their conservation and management. We assessed the influence of intrinsic, extrinsic environmental and extrinsic anthropogenic factors on movement behaviour of eight African large herbivore species. A cumulative odds ordinal logistic regression was used to determine the effect of season, feeding niche, number of vegetation types, home range size, and fences on the number of exponential distributions observed. When animals faced the trade-off between forage quality and quantity during the dry season, they moved further between forage areas and water sources in order to get to better forage, which added to the number of movement scales observed. Elephants had a lower number of movement scales, compared to all the other feeding types, which could be attributed to them being able to switch between browse and graze. The number of movement scales increased in more heterogeneous areas. Animals with larger home ranges, which are also larger species, and animals more restricted by fences, had fewer movement scales. In order for managers to effectively manage protected areas and associated biodiversity they need take cognisance of the different scales animals operate under, and the different factors that may be important for different species.Peer reviewe

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

Recent investigations of the 0-5 geomagnetic field recorded by lava flows

Sherpa Romeo green journal (pre or post print only)We present a synthesis of paleomagnetic directional data collected from 873 lava flows at 17 different locations under the collaborative Time Averaged geomagnetic Field Initiative (TAFI). The data range from 05 Ma in age, and provide new high quality data with improved spatial coverage. Data quality at each site is measured using k, the best estimate of the Fisherian precision parameter, and its influence on inclination anomaly and VGP dispersion is evaluated by systematically excluding data with successively higher values of k. When combined with regional compilations from NW USA, SW USA, Japan, New Zealand, Hawaii, Mexico, S. Pacific and the Indian Ocean, a data set of 2283 pairs of declination and inclination data, with k>100, and VGP latitudes greater than 45 is obtained. This is a more than 7fold increase over similar quality data in the existing Global Paleomagnetic Database (GPMDB). The new data set spans 78 S to 53 N, and has sufficient temporal and spatial sampling to allow characterization of latitudinal variations in the timeaveraged field (TAF) and paleosecular variation (PSV) for the Brunhes and Matuyama epochs, and for the 0–5 Myr interval combined. PSV, as measured by dispersion of virtual geomagnetic poles, shows less latitudinal variation than predicted by current statistical PSV models. Variation of inclination anomaly with latitude is assessed using 2parameter zonal TAF models – these have axial quadrupole contributions of 2% – 4% of the axial dipole term, and axial octupole contributions of 3% – 5%. Approximately 2% of the octupole signature is likely the result of bias incurred by averaging unit vectors. The new data set provides significant improvement over previous compilations, and can contribute to a new generation of global paleomagnetic field models.Ye

The Science Performance of JWST as Characterized in Commissioning

This paper characterizes the actual science performance of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as determined from the six month commissioning period. We summarize the performance of the spacecraft, telescope, science instruments, and ground system, with an emphasis on differences from pre-launch expectations. Commissioning has made clear that JWST is fully capable of achieving the discoveries for which it was built. Moreover, almost across the board, the science performance of JWST is better than expected; in most cases, JWST will go deeper faster than expected. The telescope and instrument suite have demonstrated the sensitivity, stability, image quality, and spectral range that are necessary to transform our understanding of the cosmos through observations spanning from near-earth asteroids to the most distant galaxies.Comment: 5th version as accepted to PASP; 31 pages, 18 figures; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/acb29