National Government Responses to Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Fisheries Certification: Insights from Atlantic Canada

Over the last decade, the proliferation of social and environmental certification programmes has attracted the attention of a growing number of political scientists interested in new forms of ‘private’ transnational governance. However, we still lack analyses on the nature and extent of different state responses to and involvement in new private transnational governance arrangements in particular sectors and in different jurisdictions. This paper advances our understanding of the interactions between nation-state and private transnational modes of governance by analysing the role of national government authorities in Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) fisheries certification in Atlantic Canada, known more for the disastrous collapse of Northern cod stocks than good marine stewardship. Focusing on the 2008 certification of Northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) fisheries off the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, the analysis finds that the implementation and maintenance of MSC certification in this case depended on significant support from government authorities. The delicate legitimacy of both authorities face a period of uncertainty in this case since some certified shrimp stocks appear to be in decline and perhaps also migrating northward off Newfoundland and Labrador

Smoking status and common carotid artery intima-medial thickness among middle-aged men and women based on ultrasound measurement: a cohort study

BACKGROUND: Cigarette smoking is an established causal factor for atherosclerosis. However, the smoking effect on different echogenic components of carotid arterial wall measured by ultrasound is not well elucidated. METHODS: Middle-aged men and women who had IMT measurement ≥ 0.7 mm at baseline and follow-up were included (N = 413, age 40–60 years at baseline in 1995). Intima-media thickness of common carotid artery (CCA-IMT) and its components (echogenic and echolucent layers) were measured at baseline and in the follow-up examination 3 years later. IMT and its components were compared across current, former and never smokers. Individual growth models were used to examine how smoking status was related to the baseline and progression of overall IMT and IMT components. RESULTS: For both men and women, current smoking was associated with thicker echogenic layer than never smokers; former smokers exhibited thinner echogenic layer than current smokers after adjustment for cigarette pack-years. Among women, current smoking was also associated with a thinned echolucent layer that resulted in a non-significant overall association of current smoking with IMT for women. CONCLUSION: Cigarette smoking is associated with carotid artery morphological changes and the association is sex-dependent. The atherogenic effect of smoking appears to be partly reversible among former smokers. IMT measurement alone may not be adequate to detect carotid atherosclerosis associated with cigarette smoking among middle-age women

Recommendations for the introduction of metagenomic high-throughput sequencing in clinical virology, part I:Wet lab procedure

Metagenomic high-throughput sequencing (mHTS) is a hypothesis-free, universal pathogen detection technique for determination of the DNA/RNA sequences in a variety of sample types and infectious syndromes. mHTS is still in its early stages of translating into clinical application. To support the development, implementation and standardization of mHTS procedures for virus diagnostics, the European Society for Clinical Virology (ESCV) Network on Next-Generation Sequencing (ENNGS) has been established. The aim of ENNGS is to bring together professionals involved in mHTS for viral diagnostics to share methodologies and experiences, and to develop application recommendations. This manuscript aims to provide practical recommendations for the wet lab procedures necessary for implementation of mHTS for virus diagnostics and to give recommendations for development and validation of laboratory methods, including mHTS quality assurance, control and quality assessment protocols

IMPACT-Global Hip Fracture Audit: Nosocomial infection, risk prediction and prognostication, minimum reporting standards and global collaborative audit. Lessons from an international multicentre study of 7,090 patients conducted in 14 nations during the COVID-19 pandemic

AIMS: This international study aimed to assess: 1) the prevalence of preoperative and postoperative COVID-19 among patients with hip fracture, 2) the effect on 30-day mortality, and 3) clinical factors associated with the infection and with mortality in COVID-19-positive patients. METHODS: A multicentre collaboration among 112 centres in 14 countries collected data on all patients presenting with a hip fracture between 1(st) March-31(st) May 2020. Demographics, residence, place of injury, presentation blood tests, Nottingham Hip Fracture Score, time to surgery, management, ASA grade, length of stay, COVID-19 and 30-day mortality status were recorded. RESULTS: A total of 7090 patients were included, with a mean age of 82.2 (range 50-104) years and 4959 (70%) being female. Of 651 (9.2%) patients diagnosed with COVID-19, 225 (34.6%) were positive at presentation and 426 (65.4%) became positive postoperatively. Positive COVID-19 status was independently associated with male sex (odds ratio (OR) 1.38, p=0.001), residential care (OR 2.15, p<0.001), inpatient fall (OR 2.23, p=0.003), cancer (OR 0.63, p=0.009), ASA grade 4-5 (OR 1.59, p=0.008; OR 8.28, p<0.001), and longer admission (OR 1.06 for each increasing day, p<0.001). Patients with COVID-19 at any time had a significantly lower chance of 30-day survival versus those without COVID-19 (72.7% versus 92.6%, p<0.001). COVID-19 was independently associated with an increased 30-day mortality risk (hazard ratio (HR) 2.83, p<0.001). Increasing age (HR 1.03, p=0.028), male sex (HR 2.35, p<0.001), renal disease (HR 1.53, p=0.017), and pulmonary disease (HR 1.45, p=0.039) were independently associated with a higher 30-day mortality risk in patients with COVID-19 when adjusting for confounders. CONCLUSION: The prevalence of COVID-19 in hip fracture patients during the first wave of the pandemic was 9%, and was independently associated with a three-fold increased 30-day mortality risk. Among COVID-19-positive patients, those who were older, male, with renal or pulmonary disease had a significantly higher mortality risk

Ecophysiological variables retrieval and early stress detection: insights from a synthetic spatial scaling exercise

The ability to access physiologically driven signals, such as surface temperature, photochemical reflectance index (PRI), and sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF), through remote sensing (RS) are exciting developments for vegetation studies. Accessing this ecophysiological information requires considering processes operating at scales from the top-of-the-canopy to the photosystems, adding complexity compared to reflectance index-based approaches. To investigate the maturity and knowledge of the growing RS community in this area, COST Action CA17134 SENSECO organized a Spatial Scaling Challenge (SSC). Challenge participants were asked to retrieve four key ecophysiological variables for a field each of maize and wheat from a simulated field campaign: leaf area index (LAI), leaf chlorophyll content (Cab), maximum carboxylation rate (Vcmax,25), and non-photochemical quenching (NPQ). The simulated campaign data included hyperspectral optical, thermal and SIF imagery, together with ground sampling of the four variables. Non-parametric methods that combined multiple spectral domains and field measurements were used most often, thereby indirectly performing the top-of-the-canopy to photosystem scaling. LAI and Cab were reliably retrieved in most cases, whereas Vcmax,25 and NPQ were less accurately estimated and demanded information ancillary to RS imagery. The factors considered least by participants were the biophysical and physiological canopy vertical profiles, the spatial mismatch between RS sensors, the temporal mismatch between field sampling and RS acquisition, and measurement uncertainty. Furthermore, few participants developed NPQ maps into stress maps or provided a deeper analysis of their parameter retrievals. The SSC shows that, despite advances in statistical and physically based models, the vegetation RS community should improve how field and RS data are integrated and scaled in space and time. We expect this work will guide newcomers and support robust advances in this research field

Recommendations for enterovirus diagnostics and characterisation within and beyond Europe

Enteroviruses (EV) can cause severe neurological and respiratory infections, and occasionally lead to devastating outbreaks as previously demonstrated with EV-A71 and EV-D68 in Europe. However, these infections are still often underdiagnosed and EV typing data is not currently collected at European level. In order to improve EV diagnostics, collate data on severe EV infections and monitor the circulation of EV types, we have established European non-polio enterovirus network (ENPEN). First task of this cross-border network has been to ensure prompt and adequate diagnosis of these infections in Europe, and hence we present recommendations for nonpolio EV detection and typing based on the consensus view of this multidisciplinary team including experts from over 20 European countries. We recommend that respiratory and stool samples in addition to cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and blood samples are submitted for EV testing from patients with suspected neurological infections. This is vital since viruses like EV-D68 are rarely detectable in CSF or stool samples. Furthermore, reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) targeting the 5' noncoding regions (5' NCR) should be used for diagnosis of EVs due to their sensitivity, specificity and short turnaround time. Sequencing of the VP1 capsid protein gene is recommended for EV typing; EV typing cannot be based on the 5' NCR sequences due to frequent recombination events and should not rely on virus isolation. Effective and standardized laboratory diagnostics and characterisation of circulating virus strains are the first step towards effective and continuous surveillance activities, which in turn will be used to provide better estimation on EV disease burden

Humanity's Last Exam

Benchmarks are important tools for tracking the rapid advancements in large language model (LLM) capabilities. However, benchmarks are not keeping pace in difficulty: LLMs now achieve over 90\% accuracy on popular benchmarks like MMLU, limiting informed measurement of state-of-the-art LLM capabilities. In response, we introduce Humanity's Last Exam (HLE), a multi-modal benchmark at the frontier of human knowledge, designed to be the final closed-ended academic benchmark of its kind with broad subject coverage. HLE consists of 3,000 questions across dozens of subjects, including mathematics, humanities, and the natural sciences. HLE is developed globally by subject-matter experts and consists of multiple-choice and short-answer questions suitable for automated grading. Each question has a known solution that is unambiguous and easily verifiable, but cannot be quickly answered via internet retrieval. State-of-the-art LLMs demonstrate low accuracy and calibration on HLE, highlighting a significant gap between current LLM capabilities and the expert human frontier on closed-ended academic questions. To inform research and policymaking upon a clear understanding of model capabilities, we publicly release HLE at https://lastexam.ai

Humanity's Last Exam

Benchmarks are important tools for tracking the rapid advancements in large language model (LLM) capabilities. However, benchmarks are not keeping pace in difficulty: LLMs now achieve over 90\% accuracy on popular benchmarks like MMLU, limiting informed measurement of state-of-the-art LLM capabilities. In response, we introduce Humanity's Last Exam (HLE), a multi-modal benchmark at the frontier of human knowledge, designed to be the final closed-ended academic benchmark of its kind with broad subject coverage. HLE consists of 3,000 questions across dozens of subjects, including mathematics, humanities, and the natural sciences. HLE is developed globally by subject-matter experts and consists of multiple-choice and short-answer questions suitable for automated grading. Each question has a known solution that is unambiguous and easily verifiable, but cannot be quickly answered via internet retrieval. State-of-the-art LLMs demonstrate low accuracy and calibration on HLE, highlighting a significant gap between current LLM capabilities and the expert human frontier on closed-ended academic questions. To inform research and policymaking upon a clear understanding of model capabilities, we publicly release HLE at https://lastexam.ai

Recommendations for the introduction of metagenomic high-throughput sequencing in clinical virology, part I: Wet lab procedure

Metagenomic high-throughput sequencing (mHTS) is a hypothesis-free, universal pathogen detection technique for determination of the DNA/RNA sequences in a variety of sample types and infectious syndromes. mHTS is still in its early stages of translating into clinical application. To support the development, implementation and standardization of mHTS procedures for virus diagnostics, the European Society for Clinical Virology (ESCV) Network on Next-Generation Sequencing (ENNGS) has been established. The aim of ENNGS is to bring together professionals involved in mHTS for viral diagnostics to share methodologies and experiences, and to develop application recommendations. This manuscript aims to provide practical recommendations for the wet lab procedures necessary for i