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In this paper, we develop and analyze a mathematical model for spreading malaria, including treatment with transmission‐blocking drugs (TBDs). The paper's main aim is to demonstrate the impact the chosen model for demographic growth has on the disease's transmission and the effect of its treatment with TBDs. We calculate the model's control reproduction number and equilibria and perform a global stability analysis of the disease‐free equilibrium point. The mathematical analysis reveals that, depending on the model's demography, the model can exhibit forward, backward, and even some unconventional types of bifurcation, where disease elimination can occur for both small and large values of the reproduction number. We also conduct a numerical analysis to explore the short‐time behavior of the model. A key finding is that for one type of demographic growth, the population experienced a significantly higher disease burden than the others, and when exposed to high levels of treatment with TBDs, only this population succeeded in effectively eliminating the disease within a reasonable timeframe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City populations grow due to natural change, migration, and areas that are reclassified as part of a city. Because a time series of city boundaries was not available, most analyses ignore reclassification. This paper measures reclassification in a harmonized and transparent manner by applying a new harmonized definition of cities, towns, and rural areas, called the degree of urbanization, to gridded population data between 1980 and 2020. Ignoring reclassification would attribute city population growth equally to natural change and migration. Including the effects of reclassification reveals that two‐thirds of the growth is due to natural change, followed by reclassification (29 percent), and the remainder to migration (4 percent). This demonstrates the importance of accounting for reclassification. It also underlines that discouraging migration to cities will not significantly reduce city population growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estimating correlations among demographic parameters is an important method in population ecology. A recent paper by Deane et al. (Ecology and Evolution 13:e9847, 2023) attempted to explore the effects of different priors for covariance matrices on inference when using mark‐recovery data. Unfortunately, Deane et al. (2023) made a mistake when parameterizing some of their models. Rather than exploring the effects of different priors, they examined the effects of the use of incorrect equations on inference. In this manuscript, we clearly describe the mistake in Deane et al. (2023). We then demonstrate the use of an alternative and appropriate method and reach different conclusions regarding the effects of priors on inference. Consistent with other recent literature, informative inverse Wishart priors can lead to flawed inference, while vague priors on covariance matrix components have little impact when sample sizes are adequate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nutrition has played a central role in the management and outcomes of people with cystic fibrosis (pwCF) since the 1970s. Advances in therapies and practices in recent decades have led to a significant change in the patient landscape with dramatic improvements in life expectancy, as well as quality of life, bringing with it new issues. Historically, cystic fibrosis was a condition associated with childhood and malnutrition; however, changes in patient demographics, nutritional assessment and fundamental nutritional management have evolved, and it has become an increasingly prevalent adult disease with new nutritional challenges, including obesity. This paper aims to describe these changes and the impact and challenges they bring for those working in this field. Nutritional professionals will need to evolve, adapt and remain agile to the wider range of situations and support required for a new generation of pwCF. Specialised nutrition support will continue to be required, and it will be additionally important to improve and optimise quality of life and long‐term health. Key points: Traditional cystic fibrosis dietary advice focused on a default high‐fat/high‐calorie intake with limited consideration for other important nutrients. The emerging new era approach should be individualised, flexible and with an emphasis on diversity and longevity.Historically, this population was predominantly undernourished or at risk of undernutrition, but with the success and impact of nutritional guidelines, multidisciplinary teams, screening and new therapies, overnutrition is becoming an increasing concern that requires attention.Significant improvements in life expectancy mean more people with cystic fibrosis are living into old age, bringing with it age‐related complications and new opportunities that require nutritional consideration from childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract 1. Colony survivorship and numbers of nest cells, pupae, and adult females were monitored throughout the nesting season for a cohort of 78 colonies of the paper wasp Polistes metricus Say. Thirty-nine colonies received a twice-weekly nourishment supplement of honey during pre-emergence and early emergence phases of the colony cycle; 39 colonies were unsupplemented controls. 2. Colony survivorship was unaffected by the supplemental nourishment. Loss of colonies to predation differed among three sites but was unaffected by supplementation. 3. Honey-supplemented colonies constructed more nest cells than did control colonies but this effect was not expressed until after supplementation had ceased. 4. Honey-supplemented colonies produced more pupae than did control colonies but the number of adult females at nests did not differ between supplemented and control colonies. Because honey-supplemented colonies had more offspring but fewer of them remained as workers at the nest, honey supplementation led to a lower frequency of workers and corresponding higher frequency of reproductives than in control colonies. 5. In a second year of study, colony survivorship and numbers of nest cells, pupae, and adult females were monitored from late pre-emergence until the end of the nesting season for a cohort of 32 colonies of Polistes metricus . In 16 colonies, trophallactic saliva was taken from final-instar larvae on nine dates in the late pre-emergence and early emergence periods; 16 colonies served as controls. 6. Saliva-diminished colonies had lower survivorship, fewer nest cells, fewer pupae, and fewer adult females at the nest than did control colonies. 7. These results show that variation in nourishment in the early to mid phases of the colony cycle can have significant effects on the subsequent colony demographics of Polistes metricus paper wasps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Too often, dementia research is conducted in research silos without thorough integration and the involvement of people with lived experiences, care professionals and the Third Sector. Research can also get lost in academic publications, without reaching those benefiting most from the evidence. The aim of this methods and evaluation paper was to outline the aims, components and evaluation of the public‐facing and ‐engaging Liverpool Dementia & Ageing Research Forum, to provide a blueprint for setting up similar communities of practice. Methods: The Forum was set up in 2019 with the aim to (a) connect different stakeholders in dementia and ageing and co‐produce research and to (b) inform and educate. This paper provides an account of the Forum model and evaluates the following key elements: (1) engagement; (2) experiences of the Forum and its impact (via an online evaluation survey and three reflections). All Forum members and attendees were asked to complete a brief evaluation survey about their experiences from October to November 2022. Three regular Forum attendees provided a case study about their involvement and its impact. Findings: The Forum has reached out to diverse stakeholders and the general public, generating growing interest and engagement since its initiation. Forty‐four members and attendees completed the survey. Most attendees completing the evaluation survey have so far engaged in between 5 and 20 activities (47.8%), and 91% felt the aims of the Forum have been met. Engaging in the Forum has produced various benefits for attendees, including increased research capacity and knowledge, as well as improved connectivity with other stakeholders. Eleven percent of respondents, 39% of lived experts, stated they experienced improved access to postdiagnostic care. Conclusions: This is the first reported multistakeholder Community of Practice (CoP) on dementia and ageing. We make key recommendations for setting up and running similar dementia CoP, as they provide a noninterventional format for raising awareness, capacity and access to dementia care. Patient and Public Involvement: This paper reports on the involvement and engagement of people with dementia, unpaid carers, health and social care providers and Third Sector organisations in a CoP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Existing tools for rapid cognitive assessment in HIV-positive individuals with mild cognitive deficits lack sensitivity or do not meet psychometric requirements for tracking changes in cognitive ability over time. Methods Seventy-five nondemented HIV-positive patients were evaluated with the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), a brief battery of standardized neuropsychological tests, and computerized tasks evaluating frontal-executive function and processing speed. Rasch analyses were applied to the MoCA data set and subsequently to the full set of data from all tests. Results The MoCA was found to adequately measure cognitive ability as a single, global construct in this HIV-positive cohort, although it showed poorer precision for measuring patients of higher ability. Combining the additional tests with the MoCA resulted in a battery with better psychometric properties that also better targeted the range of abilities in this cohort. Conclusion This application of modern test development techniques shows a path towards a quick, quantitative, global approach to cognitive assessment with promise both for initial detection and for longitudinal follow-up of cognitive impairment in patients with HIV infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key challenge in the management of populations is to quantify the impact of interventions in the face of environmental and phenotypic variability. However, accurate estimation of the effects of management and environment, in large‐scale ecological research is often limited by the expense of data collection, the inherent trade‐off between quality and quantity, and missing data.In this paper we develop a novel modelling framework, and demographically informed imputation scheme, to comprehensively account for the uncertainty generated by missing population, management, and herbicide resistance data. Using this framework and a large dataset (178 sites over 3 years) on the densities of a destructive arable weed (Alopecurus myosuroides) we investigate the effects of environment, management, and evolved herbicide resistance, on weed population dynamics.In this study we quantify the marginal effects of a suite of common management practices, including cropping, cultivation, and herbicide pressure, and evolved herbicide resistance, on weed population dynamics.Using this framework, we provide the first empirically backed demonstration that herbicide resistance is a key driver of population dynamics in arable weeds at regional scales. Whilst cultivation type had minimal impact on weed density, crop rotation, and earlier cultivation and drill dates consistently reduced infestation severity.Synthesis and applications: As we demonstrate that high herbicide resistance levels can produce extremely severe weed infestations, monitoring herbicide resistance is a priority for farmers across Western Europe. Furthermore, developing non‐chemical control methods is essential to control current weed populations, and prevent further resistance evolution. We recommend that planning interventions that centre on crop rotation and incorporate spring sewing and cultivation to provide the best reductions in weed densities. More generally, by directly accounting for missing data our framework permits the analysis of management practices with data that would otherwise be severely compromised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the strongest empirical regularities in spatial demography is that flows of migrants are positively associated with population stocks at origin and destination and are inversely related to distance. This pattern was formalized into what are known as gravity models of migration. Traditionally, distance is measured geographically, but other measures of distance, such as cultural distance, are also relevant in explaining migration flows. However, measures of cultural distance are not widely adopted in the literature on modeling migration flows, partially because of the difficulties associated with operationalizing and producing these measures across space and time. In this paper, we use a scalable approach to obtain proxies for measuring cultural similarity between countries by using Facebook data and illustrate the impact of incorporating these measures, based on food and drink interests, into gravity models for predicting migration. Our results show that, despite their limitations, the new measures of cultural similarity derived from Facebook data improve the prediction power of traditional gravity models and have a predictive capacity comparable to that of classic variables used in the literature, such as shared language and history. The results open up new opportunities for understanding the determinants of migration and for predicting migration when considering broader and complementary perspectives on the meaning and measurement of distance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural selection can only occur if individuals differ in fitness. For this reason, the variance in relative fitness has been equated with the 'opportunity for selection' (I), which has a long, albeit somewhat controversial, history. In this paper we discuss the use/misuse of I and related metrics in evolutionary ecology.The opportunity is only realised if some fraction of I is caused by trait variation. Thus, I>0 does not imply that selection is occurring, as sometimes erroneously assumed, because all fitness variation could be independent of phenotype.The selection intensity on any given trait cannot exceed I, but this upper limit will never be reached because (a) stochastic factors always affect fitness, and (b) there might be multiple traits under selection.The expected magnitude of the stochastic component of I is negatively correlated with mean fitness. Uncertainty in realised I is also larger when mean fitness or population/sample size are low. Variation in I across time or space thus can be dominated (or solely driven) by variation in the strength of demographic stochasticity.We illustrate these points using simulations and empirical data from a population study on great tits Parus major. Our analysis shows that the scope for fecundity selection in the great tits is substantially higher when using annual number of recruits as the fitness measure, rather than fledglings or eggs, even after adjusting for the dependence of I on mean fitness. This suggests nonrandom survival of juveniles across families between life stages. Indeed, previous work on this population has shown that offspring recruitment is often nonrandom with respect to clutch size and laying date of parents, for example.We conclude that one cannot make direct inferences about selection based on fitness data alone. However, examining variation in ∆IF (the opportunity for fecundity selection adjusted for mean fitness) across life stages, years or environments can offer clues as to when/where fecundity selection might be strongest, which can be useful for research planning and experimental design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the overall results of a research project that investigated factors determining how speakers of Ugandan English express futurity, ability and obligation. Findings reveal that forms identified to convey these meanings in American, Indian, Kenyan or Nigerian English, and whose use would reveal influence from these, are seldom used. Rather, persisting exonormative orientation towards British English and first‐language influence seem to determine how many forms are tolerated and which ones are preferred. This challenges epicentre theory, according to which an endonormatively stable variety influences varieties in neighbouring countries, as well as models that assume that varieties with a high impact in terms of the demographic and economic weight of their speakers influence those with a lower impact, whilst findings furthermore indicate that regular long‐term exposure to another variety results in accommodation, making this a factor that needs to be better accounted for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individual age and population age composition are the major concerns of ecologists, evolutionary biologists and conservation biologists. In amphibians, skeletochronology—counting the number of lines of arrested growth deposited in the bone tissue, is the dominant method to determine actual age of an individual. Since 1970s, age data of the ectothermic taxa have been accumulated and increasingly used in comparative studies. Here we make a global assessment for the availability of the data, based on a collection of 369 published papers. For a specific species, more males than females were sampled. Among the extant 8146 amphibian species, only 266 (3.3%) have been skeletochronologically investigated. Of these studied species, 2 (0.9% of 214) belong to caecilians, 56 (7.6% of 740) salamanders and 208 (2.9% of 7192) anurans. A complete paucity of data was seen in 80%, 50%, and 54% of families in the corresponding orders. More temperate species than tropical species were sampled, while the proportion of Palearctic species studied was higher than that in the other 5 biogeographical realms. Species inhabiting semi‐aquatic niche were more likely to be studied than fossorial or plant dwellers. Age information of multiple populations (2–48) was available for species with a broad distribution, accounts for 61% of salamander and 43% of anuran species studied. Because these gaps in demographic knowledge can limit our understanding of questions ranging from life history evolution, population dynamics to conservation, we encourage herpetologists to pay more efforts on filling them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The size, composition, and spatial distribution of both people and households have a substantial impact on the demand for and development and delivery of infrastructure required to support the population. Infrastructure encompasses a wide range of domains including energy, transport, and water, each of which has its own set of spatial catchments at differing scales. Demographic projections are required to assess potential future demand; however, official projections are usually not provided at a high level of spatial resolution required for infrastructure planning. Furthermore, generating bespoke demographic projections, often incorporating a range of scenarios of possible future demographic change is a specialist, resource intensive job and as such is often missing from infrastructure development projects. In this paper we make the case that such demographic projections should be at the heart of infrastructure planning and present a set of open‐source models which can be used to undertake this demographic projection work, thus providing the tools needed to fill the identified gap. We make use of a case study for the United Kingdom to exemplify how a range of scenarios can be assessed using our model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zoonotic diseases—human diseases of animal origin—represent one of the world's greatest health challenges, both today and in the past. Since the Neolithic, zoonotic diseases have been one of the major factors shaping and influencing human adaptation. Archaeology is ideally situated to provide the long view on human–animal–pathogen relationships through combining cultural, environmental and biological datasets, yet long‐term studies of linked human and animal records have often been overlooked and undertheorized. The seven papers in this special issue "Zoonotic diseases: New directions in human–animal pathology" cover a range of diseases caused by bacterial, viral, and parasitic pathogens, from case studies drawn from across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. They speak to the diversity of human–animal–environment interactions that shaped disease emergence and transmission. They also review methodological advancements relating to disease identification and interpretation and discuss interdisciplinary approaches to effectively investigate these complex processes in the past. This introduction highlights their key themes and outcomes and identifies research priorities moving forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As our societies transform into knowledge societies, skills are playing an ever‐increasing role in life. Despite recent efforts to consistently measure adult skills across countries, a challenge remains to understand how skills evolve over time and what the main drivers behind these changes are. By applying demographic methods to estimate the development of skills over the life course, this paper presents the reconstruction of empirical adult literacy test results along cohort lines by age, sex, and educational attainment for 44 countries for the period 1970–2015. Results suggest significant heterogeneity in the pattern of changes in literacy skills with age, reflecting the differential exposure to cognitive stimulation over the life course and suggesting that the development of skills in a country is also the consequence of a changing composition of its population. Gender, however, was found to have hardly any effect on how literacy skills evolve between the ages of 15 and 65. On the aggregate level, findings reveal considerable differences between countries—regarding both the level of skills and their development over time. Overall, it was found that massive educational expansions happening globally in the recent past only partly resulted in a corresponding rise in skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent article published in Haemophilia reports the results of a survey of treatment center practices in the United States, and specifically the use of prophylaxis as treatment regimen [ ] . This article discusses the issues that may contribute to utilization of prophylactic regimens and issues to consider when determining treatment programs for pediatric patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The estimation of abundance and distribution and factors governing patterns in these parameters is central to the field of ecology. The continued development of hierarchical models that best utilize available information to inform these processes is a key goal of quantitative ecologists. However, much remains to be learned about simultaneously modeling true abundance, presence, and trajectories of ecological communities.Simultaneous modeling of the population dynamics of multiple species provides an interesting mechanism to examine patterns in community processes and, as we emphasize herein, to improve species‐specific estimates by leveraging detection information among species. Here, we demonstrate a simple but effective approach to share information about observation parameters among species in hierarchical community abundance and occupancy models, where we use shared random effects among species to account for spatiotemporal heterogeneity in detection probability.We demonstrate the efficacy of our modeling approach using simulated abundance data, where we recover well our simulated parameters using N‐mixture models. Our approach substantially increases precision in estimates of abundance compared with models that do not share detection information among species. We then expand this model and apply it to repeated detection/non‐detection data collected on six species of tits (Paridae) breeding at 119 1 km2 sampling sites across a P. montanus hybrid zone in northern Switzerland (2004–2020). We find strong impacts of forest cover and elevation on population persistence and colonization in all species. We also demonstrate evidence for interspecific competition on population persistence and colonization probabilities, where the presence of marsh tits reduces population persistence and colonization probability of sympatric willow tits, potentially decreasing gene flow among willow tit subspecies.While conceptually simple, our results have important implications for the future modeling of population abundance, colonization, persistence, and trajectories in community frameworks. We suggest potential extensions of our modeling in this paper and discuss how leveraging data from multiple species can improve model performance and sharpen ecological inference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The objective of this paper was to determine the effects of certain socio‐demographic characteristics of Turkish individuals who seek health information on the Internet. Methods: This study was granted permission to use data obtained by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TSI) in 2018 under their Household Information Technology Use (HITU) study. The original sample for this research comprised 19,389 participants. Results: Age, gender, educational level, place of residence and frequency of Internet use were all found to impact the participants' health information seeking behaviour on the Internet. Health information was sought more frequently by women than men, by younger than older people and by those with higher levels of education. Also, health information searches were conducted more often in developed regions than in less‐developed regions. In addition, it was also found that the habit of seeking health information was more common among those who use the Internet more frequently. Conclusion: Several socio‐demographic characteristics of individuals affect their health information seeking behaviour on the Internet. All individuals should be granted equivalent access to reliable health information by taking sociodemographic characteristics and discrepancies into consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Habitat fragmentation remains a major focus of research by ecologists decades after being put forward as a threat to the integrity of ecosystems. While studies have documented myriad biotic changes in fragmented landscapes, including the local extinction of species from fragments, the demographic mechanisms underlying these extinctions are rarely known. However, many of them—especially in lowland tropical forests—are thought to be driven by one of two mechanisms: (1) reduced recruitment in fragments resulting from changes in the diversity or abundance of pollinators and seed dispersers or (2) increased rates of individual mortality in fragments due to dramatically altered abiotic conditions, especially near fragment edges. Unfortunately, there have been few tests of these potential mechanisms due to the paucity of long‐term and comprehensive demographic data collected in both forest fragments and continuous forest sites. Here we report 11 years (1998–2009) of demographic data from populations of the Amazonian understory herb Heliconia acuminata (LC Rich.) found at Brazil's Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP). The data set comprises >66,000 plant × year records of 8586 plants, including 3464 seedlings established after the first census. Seven populations were in experimentally isolated fragments (one in each of four 1‐ha fragments and one in each of three 10‐ha fragments), with the remaining six populations in continuous forest. Each population was in a 50 × 100 m permanent plot, with the distance between plots ranging from 500 m to 60 km. The plants in each plot were censused annually, at which time we recorded, identified, marked, and measured new seedlings, identified any previously marked plants that died, and recorded the size of surviving individuals. Each plot was also surveyed four to five times during the flowering season to identify reproductive plants and record the number of inflorescences each produced. These data have been used to investigate topics ranging from the way fragmentation‐related reductions in germination influence population dynamics to statistical methods for analyzing reproductive rates. This breadth of prior use reflects the value of these data to future researchers. In addition to analyses of plant responses to habitat fragmentation, these data can be used to address fundamental questions in plant demography and the evolutionary ecology of tropical plants and to develop and test demographic models and tools. Though we welcome opportunities to collaborate with interested users, there are no restrictions on the use of this data set. However, we do request that those using the data for teaching or research purposes inform us of how they are doing so and cite this paper and the data archive when appropriate. Any publication using the data must also include a BDFFP Technical Series Number in the Acknowledgments. Authors can request this series number upon the acceptance of their article by contacting the BDFFP's Scientific Coordinator or E. M. Bruna. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use panel data from the 2016 and 2017 waves of the Voter Study and the 2018 American National Election Studies (ANES) Pilot, to better understand the relative influence of the Alt‐Right on mainstream US politics in the Trump era. Given the degree of formal alignment between Trump and a number of key voices within the movement, we first examine the strength of the association between affect for the Alt‐Right and support for Republican Party between 2016 and 2018. We also examine relative levels of affect for the Alt‐Right among Whites between this period, tracking a number of important changes. We find that, while affect for the Alt‐Right was strongly associated with support for Republican candidates such as Trump in the 2016 election cycle, we find a somewhat weaker relationship between affect for the Alt‐Right and White support for Trump and down ballot Republican candidates in 2018. We also find that, after rising between 2016 and 2017, levels of affect for Alt‐Right appear to have declined by 2018. The results are therefore reflective of exponential rise of the Alt‐Right during the 2016 election and the movement's subsequent implosion after the 2017 'United the Right', rally in Charlottesville, VA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Ancient demography is a recurrent topic in archaeology, thanks to new methods and evidence from different surveys and excavations. However, different cultures or periods are studied on their own, without any comparison being made between them and of their population dynamics. The present paper seeks to advance the situation by defining methodologies to allow diachronic comparisons between two different periods and cultures. After setting out a methodological approach, the paper goes on to apply the same to a case study: namely the Roman conquest of north‐east Spain, comparing the demography of the ancient Iberian communities (fourth‐second centuries BCE) to the Roman colonization (first century BCE to first century CE). Roman urbanism is generally supposed to increase the population in a particular territory, but our present evidence refutes this point: a decrease in population is visible in urban or proto‐urban sites from the Iberian to Roman periods, though there is an increase in the rural densities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization is one of the most important settlement shifts in human history and has been the focus of research within bioarchaeology for decades. However, there have been limited attempts to synthesize the results of these studies in order to gain a broader perspective on whether or how urbanization affects the biology, demography, and behavior of humans, and how these potential effects are embodied in the human skeleton. This paper outlines how bioarchaeology is well‐suited to examine urbanization in the past, and we provide an overview and examples of three main ways in which urbanization is studied in bioarchaeological research: comparison of (often contemporaneous) urban and rural sites, synchronic studies of the variation that exists within and between urban sites, and investigations of changes that occur within urban sites over time. Studies of urbanization, both within bioarchaeology and in other fields of study, face a number of limitations, including a lack of a consensus regarding what urban and urbanization mean, the assumed dichotomous nature of urban versus rural settlements, the supposition that urbanization is universally bad for people, and the assumption (at least in practice) of homogeneity within urban and rural populations. Bioarchaeologists can address these limitations by utilizing a wide array of data and methods, and the studies described here collectively demonstrate the complex, nuanced, and highly variable effects of urbanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: The 3 spotted owl (Strix occidentalis) subspecies in North America (i.e., northern spotted owl [S. o. caurina], California spotted owl [S. o. occidentalis], Mexican spotted owl [S. o. lucida]) have all experienced population declines over the past century due to habitat loss and fragmentation from logging. Now, the emerging influences of climate change, high‐severity fire, and barred owl (Strix varia) invasion also appear to be synergistically and differentially affecting population trends of each subspecies. Our objective was to review the existing literature on the spotted owl to describe historical and emerging threats and whether those threats have been adequately examined for each subspecies. Using 527 publications from a Web of Science search of the literature from 1900–2015, we statistically evaluated the emphasis placed on each subspecies regarding 4 influences: mechanical tree removal, fire, climate change, and barred owl invasion. There were 98 papers that explicitly examined the effects of ≥1 of these influences. Most of these papers were focused on the northern spotted owl, and for all 3 subspecies, most papers examined short‐term effects only. We used our results to identify significant information gaps relative to historical and emerging threats. Commercial timber harvesting remains a potential threat for all 3 spotted owl subspecies, but effects from forest thinning may be increasing because of the heightened emphasis on fuels reduction and forest restoration treatments on public lands. Owl response to mechanical tree removal, especially forest thinning, remains understudied. Climate change also may threaten all 3 subspecies. Changes in climate likely affect survival and reproduction of spotted owls and their prey, and alter habitat availability by affecting disturbance regimes and vegetation composition and succession, but little empirical information is available describing specific responses to climate change. The literature on response to high‐severity fire is sparse for some subspecies, primarily short‐term in nature, and not consistent. Barred owl invasion is a major threat to the northern spotted owl and the California spotted owl but does not currently threaten the Mexican spotted owl. Rigorous research on the response of spotted owls to all factors influencing population change, particularly for the Mexican spotted owl, is needed. The most useful information for predicting owl response to these threats stems primarily from long‐term studies of owl demography. The lack of such studies within the range of the Mexican spotted owl greatly limits our understanding of its population dynamics and our ability to predict the effects of various threats on Mexican spotted owl populations. For all 3 subspecies, we encourage long‐term studies of their responses to threats, using uniquely marked owls across large spatial extents to account for spatiotemporal variability in ecological conditions within and among subspecies. © 2018 The Wildlife Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the important goals in plant ecology is to form a mechanistic link between the underlying processes driving the dynamics and structure of communities and the observed demography (i.e., growth, survival, and recruitment) and assembly (i.e., distribution of species) in a community via traits. Although the importance of traits to performance is evident, their direct links to demography and the resulting assembly in tree communities are often found to be fairly weak probably because a single "mean" trait value for a species is not enough to capture complex life histories. In this paper, we review how traits at the organ‐level and at the whole plant level, demography, and assembly change with size in diverse tropical forests and summarize what know so far. We argue the importance of trait‐based life‐history strategies revealing trait‐environment‐demography linkages across ontogenetic stages to achieve the ultimate goal of forming a mechanistic link between the underlying processes driving the dynamics and structure of communities and the observed demography and assembly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: A significant minority of Australians drink within the 2009 national guidelines. Despite encouragement of low‐risk drinking as opposed to consumption patterns associated with greater harm, little is known about the drinking patterns of this group. This paper identifies subgroups of low‐risk drinkers and their distinguishable characteristics. Methods: Data were sourced from the 2016 National Drug Strategy Household Survey, specifically 8492 adults (18+) who consumed 1–730 Australian standard drinks (ASD; 10 g ethanol) in the past year, and never 5+ ASD on a single occasion. Cluster analysis enabled identification of subgroups from drinking variables. Drinking patterns, socio‐demographic characteristics, drinking context and alcohol‐related perceptions of subgroups were examined. Results: Three subgroups were identified. Special occasion drinkers (64.6%) drank low to moderate amounts very infrequently. Regular moderates (19.6%) and Regular sippers (15.8%) drank 5–6 days a week on average, with the average number of ASD per day 1.2 and 0.5, respectively. Special occasion drinkers tended to be younger than members of more regular drinking subgroups. Perceptions of regular alcohol use also differed between Special occasion drinkers and members of the other subgroups. Discussion: Alcohol consumption patterns among low‐risk drinkers are not homogeneous. Younger drinkers who consume at low‐risk levels are more likely to report infrequent consumption than moderate regular consumption. A better understanding of low‐risk drinkers may help increase the prominence and acceptability of this type of drinking, challenge the normativity of heavier drinking norms and help target campaigns as new information emerges on health risks associated with low‐level drinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As anthropogenic impacts on the natural world escalate, there is increasing interest in the role of humans in dispersing seeds. But the consequences of this Human‐Mediated Dispersal (HMD) on plant spatial dynamics are little studied. In this paper, we ask how secondary dispersal by HMD affects the dynamics of a natural plant metapopulation. In addition to dispersal between patches, we suggest within‐patch processes can be critical. To address this, we assess how variation in local population dynamics, caused by small‐scale disturbances, affects metapopulation size. We created an empirically based model with stochastic population dynamics and dispersal among patches, which represented a real‐world, cliff‐top metapopulation of wild cabbage Brassica oleracea. We collected demographic data from multiple populations by tagging plants over eight years. We assessed seed survival, and establishment and survival of seedlings in intact vegetation vs. small disturbances. We modeled primary dispersal by wind using field data and used experimental data on secondary HMD by hikers. We monitored occupancy patterns over a 14‐yr period in the real metapopulation. Disturbance had large effects on local population growth rates, by increasing seedling establishment and survival. This meant that the modeled metapopulation grew in size only when the area disturbed in each patch was above 35%. In these growing metapopulations, although only 0.2% of seeds underwent HMD, this greatly enhanced metapopulation growth rates. Similarly, HMD allowed more colonizations in declining metapopulations under low disturbance, and this slowed the rate of decline. The real metapopulation showed patterns of varying patch occupancy over the survey years, which were related to habitat quality, but also positively to human activity along the cliffs, hinting at beneficial effects of humans. These findings illustrate that realistic changes to dispersal or demography, specifically by humans, can have fundamental effects on the viability of a species at the landscape scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research is the first to examine the prevalence and dynamics of non‐Hispanic white natural decrease in fine scale subregional units of the United States. In 2015, more non‐Hispanic Whites died than were born in 65 percent of the US counties. This is the highest incidence of non‐Hispanic white natural decrease ever reported. It results from a complex interaction among fertility, mortality, and migration over a protracted period. Spatial regression is used to identify three critical variables (over‐65 population, child–women ratio, and women of childbearing age) that are the immediate demographic causes of this natural decrease. The timely, factual information in this paper provides a demographic context for analysis of the social, political, and policy implications of this emergent demographic phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the life history of humpback red snapper Lutjanus gibbus, an important fishery species for coastal communities across the Indo‐Pacific, in southern New Caledonia, where the species is lightly exploited. A total of 243 L. gibbus were sampled between January 2013 and December 2016 from occasional harvests of commercial fishers. Examination of sectioned otoliths revealed that opaque increment formation occurred annually between November and March, coinciding with the species' spawning season. Estimates of maximum age were similar between sexes, with observed ages of 38 and 36 years for females and males, respectively, extending the reported longevity of this species by at least 11 years. Growth differed significantly between sexes, with males reaching greater length at age and greater asymptotic length than females (38.88 v. 31.46 cm fork length (LF). Total mortality for all samples was estimated as 0.13 and was slightly higher for males (0.16) than females (0.11). Estimates of natural and fishing mortality were low and slightly higher for males than females. Male L. gibbus were found to mature at slightly greater lengths and younger ages than females, with the length and age at which 50% of individuals attained maturity estimated to be 25.8 cm LF and 3.9 years of age for females and 26.8 cm LF and 3.4 years of age for males. The results provide key baseline information from which to assess the effect of fishing on the species for populations in New Caledonia and adjacent locations and, when viewed with those of other studies, highlight the importance of understanding spatial patterns in demography of harvested fish species across gradients of exploitation and environmental influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to a burgeoning concern with the 'critical geographies of architecture'. The central argument is that recent architecture-geography encounters - inspired by non-representational approaches to material mutability and affective inhabitation - are failing to connect with socio-political framings of the architectural. In this light, the paper aligns Gordon Matta-Clark's architectural artwork Conical Intersect (1975) with the Deleuzo-Guattarian axiom of micropolitics and macropolitics to re-insert the architectural subject as a microtexture of political forms imbued with (1) asymmetrical assemblages of material volatility, (2) restricted capacities of 'dwelling or being with' architecture and (3) bounded notions of living affectively. I suggest Conical Intersect foregrounds architectural space as a meeting of dreamworlds and institutional effects. In its piercing of that space of interaction, the artwork produces an architectural form freed from the conventions of legal and physical constraints to suggest the potency of alternative modes of living with and living in architecture that should be of primary interest to critical geographies of architecture and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scleractinian corals are colonial animals with a range of life‐history strategies, making up diverse species assemblages that define coral reefs. We tagged and tracked ~30 colonies from each of 11 species during seven trips spanning 6 years (2009–2015) to measure their vital rates and competitive interactions on the reef crest at Trimodal Reef, Lizard Island, Australia. Pairs of species were chosen from five growth forms in which one species of the pair was locally rare (R) and the other common (C). The sampled growth forms were massive (Goniastrea pectinata [R] and G. retiformis [C]), digitate (Acropora humilis [R] and A. cf. digitifera [C]), corymbose (A. millepora [R] and A. nasuta [C]), tabular (A. cytherea [R] and A. hyacinthus [C]) and arborescent (A. robusta [R] and A. intermedia [C]). An extra corymbose species with intermediate abundance, A. spathulata was included when it became apparent that A. millepora was too rare on the reef crest, making the 11 species in total. The tagged colonies were visited each year in the weeks prior to spawning. During visits, two or more observers each took two or three photographs of each tagged colony from directly above and on the horizontal plane with a scale plate to track planar area. Dead or missing colonies were recorded and new colonies tagged to maintain ~30 colonies per species throughout the 6 years of the study. In addition to tracking tagged corals, 30 fragments were collected from neighboring untagged colonies of each species for counting numbers of eggs per polyp (fecundity); and fragments of untagged colonies were brought into the laboratory where spawned eggs were collected for biomass and energy measurements. We also conducted surveys at the study site to generate size structure data for each species in several of the years. Each tagged colony photograph was digitized by at least two people. Therefore, we could examine sources of error in planar area for both photographers and outliners. Competitive interactions were recorded for a subset of species by measuring the margins of tagged colony outlines interacting with neighboring corals. The study was abruptly ended by Tropical Cyclone Nathan (Category 4) that killed all but nine of the more than 300 tagged colonies in early 2015. Nonetheless, these data will be of use to other researchers interested in coral demography and coexistence, functional ecology, and parametrizing population, community, and ecosystem models. The data set is not copyright restricted, and users should cite this paper when using the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land‐use changes, which cause loss, degradation, and fragmentation of natural habitats, are important anthropogenic drivers of biodiversity change. However, there is an ongoing debate about how fragmentation per se affects biodiversity in a given amount of habitat. Here, we illustrate why it is important to distinguish two different aspects of fragmentation to resolve this debate: (a) geometric fragmentation effects, which exclusively arise from the spatial distributions of species and habitat fragments, and (b) demographic fragmentation effects due to reduced fragment sizes, and/or changes in fragment isolation, edge effects, or species interactions. While most empirical studies are primarily interested in quantifying demographic fragmentation effects, geometric effects are typically invoked as post hoc explanations of biodiversity responses to fragmentation per se. Here, we present an approach to quantify geometric fragmentation effects on species survival and extinction probabilities. We illustrate this approach using spatial simulations where we systematically varied the initial abundances and distribution patterns (i.e., random, aggregated, or regular) of species as well as habitat amount and fragmentation per se. As expected, we found no geometric fragmentation effects when species were randomly distributed. However, when species were aggregated, we found positive effects of fragmentation per se on survival probability for a large range of scenarios. For regular species distributions, we found weakly negative geometric effects. These findings are independent of the ecological mechanisms which generate nonrandom species distributions. Our study helps to reconcile seemingly contradictory results of previous fragmentation studies. Since intraspecific aggregation is a ubiquitous pattern in nature, our findings imply widespread positive geometric fragmentation effects. This expectation is supported by many studies that find positive effects of fragmentation per se on species occurrences and diversity after controlling for habitat amount. We outline how to disentangle geometric and demographic fragmentation effects, which is critical for predicting the response of biodiversity to landscape change. The response of species and communities to fragmentation involves geometric and demographic effects. However, so far, these two types are rarely disentangled. In this paper, we demonstrate approaches for the quantification of geometric fragmentation effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding population fluctuations is a major goal of population ecology. In unpredictable marine environments, population variation is thought to be caused primarily by varying survival rates through a critical early life‐history stage. However, there is increasing evidence that somatic growth variation is common and causes population fluctuations.We examine the relative effects of empirically validated variability in somatic growth and recruitment on two response metrics across eight different life‐history archetypes of marine fish. We evaluate how much variation is propagated into mature biomass (MB), a proxy for population resilience, and population production, a measure of population rebuilding capacity. Production is defined as the biomass produced by the stock above what is needed to sustain the population at a constant level.We used empirical estimates of reproductive success and somatic growth rate, coupled with a population model, to evaluate the relative role of both types of variation in population fluctuations. The effects of this variation on population production and MB were examined across three variation scenarios, in which somatic growth only, reproduction only or both processes varied temporally. We also examined three levels of age truncation to explore whether modified population age structure altered these dynamics.The contribution of somatic growth to biomass variability exceeded that of recruitment for some species (2/8), while in others (5/8 species), recruitment variation was more influential. When population production was examined, somatic growth variation contributed more to population variation for three species. The relative importance of the two processes was not clearly correlated with key life‐history traits (i.e., growth and mortality rates), but instead was determined by time‐series characteristics of growth and recruitment variation. Increasing age truncation slightly increased the relative effect of recruitment variation on MB variation for three species.These results suggest somatic growth variation can be as important as early life‐history survival in driving population fluctuations in some marine fish species. This analysis provides a counterexample to the commonly held assumption of many marine population dynamics models: That population variability is induced primarily through variation in reproductive success. This paper overturns a commonly held perception that fish population stochasticity is caused primarily by recruitment variation, instead showing somatic growth variation can be equally influential for some species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instructor behaviour is known to affect learning performance, but it is unclear which specific instructor behaviours can optimize learning. We used eye‐tracking technology and questionnaires to test whether the instructor's gaze guidance affected learners' visual attention, social presence, and learning performance, using four video lectures: declarative knowledge with and without the instructor's gaze guidance and procedural knowledge with and without the instructor's gaze guidance. The results showed that the instructor's gaze guidance not only guided learners to allocate more visual attention to corresponding learning content but also increased learners' sense of social presence and learning. Furthermore, the link between the instructor's gaze guidance and better learning was especially strong for participants with a high sense of social connection with the instructor when they learned procedural knowledge. The findings lead to a strong recommendation for educational practitioners: Instructors should provide gaze guidance in video lectures for better learning performance. Lay Description: What is currently known about the subject matter: Learners reported that they had to be far more focused when watching video lecture, and the learning effectiveness of video lectures was not satisfactory in educational practice.Attentional cues are non‐content information that can timely guide learners' visual attention to the information instructor mentioned.Human cues in video lectures not only inferred instructor's gestures but also inferred eye guidance. What their paper adds to this: The instructor's gaze guidance not only increased learners' level of social presence but also timely guided learners to allocate more visual attention to corresponding learning content.The instructor's gaze guidance facilitated learners' performance when learning via video lectures. The implications of study findings for practitioners: Instructor should provide gaze guidance in video lectures for better learning performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How computers in schools impact on children's learning has been studied through research that explores student achievement at one point in time or by comparing different classroom contexts with differing results. The introduction of an optional netbook purchasing scheme for children in a low socio‐economic community provided an opportunity to compare the academic improvement for those who joined the scheme with those who did not with both groups learning within the same context with the same teachers. Using nationally calibrated assessment tools that test reading, writing, and mathematical skill progression, the student achievement data from six schools across a 2‐year period were analysed using chi‐square testing, regression analysis, propensity score matching, and cumulative logit modelling. The results identified few significant differences between the students in most aspects of achievement and no significant difference in academic improvement between the two groups. Lay Description: What is currently known about the subject matter: Whole class use of netbooks can improve achievement in reading, writing and mathematics.Children in low socio‐economic contexts have limited access to the Internet or netbooks for learning. What this paper adds to this: The use of netbooks alone has an insignificant effect on achievement in standardized assessments.Academic progress of children in the same context is similar whether using netbooks or not. Implication of study findings for practitioners: Introduction of netbook schemes should enable all students to have dedicated access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constitutional designers often construct political institutions to provide greater autonomy to ethnic minority groups. One tool available to constitutional designers is 'ethnic gerrymandering', where the boundaries of local government units are altered to provide greater representation to minority groups. This paper analyses the effects of changes in the ethnic composition of municipalities, which occur as a result of ethnic gerrymandering, on ethnic party behaviour. I compare ethnic party behaviour in local elections in the Republic of Macedonia from 2000 to 2013. I expand on a theory initially proposed by Sherrill Stroschein linking ethnic demography to ethnic party behaviour. I find that changes in the ethnic composition of municipalities influence whether rival ethnic parties engage in outbidding or whether ethnic communities unite behind a single ethnic party. My findings have important implications for those tasked with designing political institutions in ethnically divided societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial configuration and size of patches influence metapopulation dynamics by altering colonisation–extinction dynamics and local density dependency. This spatial forcing as determined by the metapopulation typology then imposes strong selection pressures on life‐history traits, which will in turn feed back on the ecological metapopulation dynamics. Given the relevance of metapopulation persistence for biological conservation, and the potential rescuing role of evolution, a firm understanding of the relevance of these eco‐evolutionary processes is essential.We here follow a systems' modelling approach to quantify the importance of spatial forcing and experimentally observed life‐history evolution for metapopulation demography as quantified by (meta)population size and variability. We therefore developed an individual‐based model matching an earlier experimental evolution with spider mites to perform virtual translocation and invasion experiments that would have been otherwise impossible to conduct.We show that (a) metapopulation demography is more affected by spatial forcing than by life‐history evolution, but that life‐history evolution contributes substantially to changes in local‐ and especially metapopulation‐level population sizes, (b) extinction rates are minimised by evolution in classical metapopulations, and (c) evolution is optimising individual performance in metapopulations when considering the importance of more cryptic stress resistance evolution.Ecological systems' modelling opens up a promising avenue to quantify the importance of eco‐evolutionary feedbacks in spatially structured populations. Metapopulation sizes are especially impacted by evolution, but its variability is mainly determined by the spatial forcing.Eco‐evolutionary dynamics can increase the persistence of classical metapopulations. Conservation of genetic variation and, hence, adaptive potential is thus not only essential in the face of environmental change; it also generates putative rescuing feedbacks that impact metapopulation persistence. In this paper, the authors follow a system's modelling approach to disentangle the role of metapopulation structure relative to evolution for metapopulation performance. They provide evidence that metapopulation‐level selection maximises individual performance and, more importantly, that evolved changes in life histories following changes in metapopulation structure have the potential to feed back on metapopulation dynamics, especially on local and metapopulation sizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a new method is produced, it should be assessed for accuracy and reliability before widespread use. A new method by Falys and Prangle for estimating age from degeneration of the sternal end of the clavicle is tested in this paper on an 18th–19th‐century known‐age Dutch population (80 clavicles). Intra‐ and inter‐observer tests (Cohen's kappa) revealed slight to moderate agreement (k = 0.100–0.425 and 0.106–0.534 respectively). However, owing to large age ranges, 87% accuracy was achieved. Methodological improvements are suggested that could help the method further to improve age estimates for the elderly in past populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Timor-Leste's nation-building process faces significant demographic challenges because of its current and prospective population dynamics. Based on the 2010 census data this paper projects the demographic structure of Timor-Leste by 2030 and discusses the impact of the same on peace, development and environmental sustainability. This paper projects that Timor-Leste's population will increase from 1.06 million in 2010 to 1.82 million in 2030, and because of a slow decline in total fertility rates, its population characteristics will remain that of a very youthful country with an extraordinarily high dependency ratio. Timor-Leste will have extremely high proportion of excess labour, high concentration of uneducated and jobless youth in small urban areas and an ever-increasing demand on natural resources in the next two decades. In the context of poor performing domestic economy, very low formal sector employment and weak environmental governance, these challenges may well contribute to social conflict which is evident in the nation's recent past. This paper is an attempt to reflect upon the implications of Timor-Leste's population dynamics by 2030 on urbanisation, economy (labour market) and the environment which tend to have a strong relationship with social stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent interest in the spatial structure and dynamics of populations motivated numerous theoretical and empirical studies of spatial synchrony, the tendency of populations to fluctuate in unison over regional areas. The first comprehensive framework applied to spatial synchrony was probably the one elaborated by P. A. P. Moran back in 1953. He suggested that if two populations have the same linear density-dependent structure, the correlation between them will be equal to that between the local density-independent conditions. Surprisingly, the consequences of violating the assumption that the dynamics of the populations are identical has received little attention. In this paper, making the assumption that population dynamics can be described by linear and stationary autoregressive processes, I show that the observed spatial synchrony between two populations can be decomposed into two multiplicative components: the demographic component depending on the values of the autoregressive coefficients, and the correlation of the environmental noise. The Moran theorem corresponds to the special case where the demographic component equals unity. Using published data, I show that the spatial variability in population dynamics may substantially contribute to the spatial variability of population synchrony, and thus should not be neglected in future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demographic processes and demographic data are increasingly being included in models of the spatio-temporal dynamics of species' ranges. In this special issue, we explore how the integration of demographic processes further the conceptual understanding and prediction of species' range dynamics. The 12 papers originate from two workshops entitled 'Advancing concepts and models of species range dynamics: understanding and disentangling processes across scales'. The papers combine theoretical and empirical evidence for the interplay between environmental conditions, species interactions, demographic processes (births, deaths, dispersal), physiology, and evolution, and they point out promising avenues towards a better understanding and prediction of species' range dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Luis Bettencourt's book establishes the essential logic of a "science of the urban" built on cities articulated by processes that change in scale as cities change in size. As Bettencourt remarks, although cities are complex systems, they are "a different kind of complex system" unlike biological organisms, certainly not like machines which arguably are not complex systems at all. These sciences are integral to Bettencourt's book which is as much about how complexity theory itself changes its form as cities themselves change qualitatively as they grow in size and scale. [Extracted from the article]

This paper presents a comprehensive theory for the demographic analysis of populations in which individuals are classified by both age and stage. The earliest demographic models were age classified. Ecologists adopted methods developed by human demographers and used life tables to quantify survivorship and fertility of cohorts and the growth rates and structures of populations. Later, motivated by studies of plants and insects, matrix population models structured by size or stage were developed. The theory of these models has been extended to cover all the aspects of age‐classified demography and more. It is a natural development to consider populations classified by both age and stage. A steady trickle of results has appeared since the 1960s, analyzing one or another aspect of age × stage‐classified populations, in both ecology and human demography. Here, we use the vec‐permutation formulation of multistate matrix population models to incorporate age‐ and stage‐specific vital rates into demographic analysis. We present cohort results for the life table functions (survivorship, mortality, and fertility), the dynamics of intra‐cohort selection, the statistics of longevity, the joint distribution of age and stage at death, and the statistics of life disparity. Combining transitions and fertility yields a complete set of population dynamic results, including population growth rates and structures, net reproductive rate, the statistics of lifetime reproduction, and measures of generation time. We present a complete analysis of a hypothetical model species, inspired by poecilogonous marine invertebrates that produce two kinds of larval offspring. Given the joint effects of age and stage, many familiar demographic results become multidimensional, so calculations of marginal and mixture distributions are an important tool. From an age‐classified point of view, stage structure is a form of unobserved heterogeneity. From a stage‐classified point of view, age structure is unobserved heterogeneity. In an age × stage‐classified model, variance in demographic outcomes can be partitioned into contributions from both sources. Because these models are formulated as matrices, they are amenable to a complete sensitivity analysis. As more detailed and longer longitudinal studies are developed, age × stage‐classified demography will become more common and more important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In conservation, adaptive management relies on the assessment of past actions to improve conservation efficiencies in the future. Conservation management approaches for African elephants have recently changed, however little has been done to assess the effectiveness of these changes. This is a major shortcoming as elephants (and their management) have a considerable influence on other savanna species. Traditionally, the management of elephants has focused on artificially manipulating numbers through culling, water supplementation and fencing. Lately, and specifically in the Kruger National Park, the focus has progressed to promoting ecological processes that may naturally regulate elephant populations. Density‐dependent habitat selection – suggestive of competition for resources – is fundamental in stimulating the regulatory processes that managers expect to promote. In this paper, we evaluated how effective the changes in Kruger's elephant management approach had been in promoting density‐dependent habitat selection. We used 15 years of helicopter‐based surveys and resource selection functions to test our primary prediction that an increase in population density following the cessation of culling generalized dry‐season habitat selection by female elephants in Kruger (i.e. decreased selection of high‐quality habitat and increased selection of lower quality habitat). We found that as densities increased, female occupancy of the Park rose and dry season selection of highly wooded areas, which provide crucial resources for elephant survival and reproduction, weakened. Conversely, density had little effect on the selection of rivers. Rather, high dry‐season rainfall allowed female elephants to select areas farther from permanent water, potentially alleviating normal dry‐season foraging restrictions. Our novel identification of density‐dependent habitat selection for elephants suggests that the change in conservation management in Kruger was effective in promoting a potential driver of population regulation. We suggest that ecological principles continue to provide an effective framework for scientific evaluation and elephant conservation management in Kruger and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Spain is an ageing country, and the present demographic burden is not homogeneously distributed across space. Will the aged population be evenly distributed in the future, or will disparities broaden over time? Identifying the spatial patterns of the aged population concentration and the existence of a demographic burden convergence/divergence process is a pertinent question in Spain after the regional devolution the country has undergone in the last decades and the coexistence of different regimes. In this paper, we use a non‐parametric approach (geographically weighted regressions) to identify the determinants of the ageing dynamics, checking for the existence of a convergence/divergence ageing process after controlling for the socio‐economic characteristics of the Spanish municipalities. Although global estimations support the convergence hypotheses posed, GWR results show a significant variability of the effects depending on the area considered, which calls for a careful treatment of the results both for analysis and policy purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The objectives of this study were to estimate the age of complementary feeding introduction (CFI) and investigate the related health, demographic, and socio‐economic factors. Analyses were based on 10,931 infants from the French national birth cohort ELFE, born in 2011. Health, demographic, and socio‐economic data concerning infants and parents were collected at birth (face‐to‐face interviews and medical records) and 2 months (telephone interviews). Data on milk feeding and CFI practices were collected at birth and 2 months then monthly from 3 to 10 months using online or paper questionnaires. The associations between both health and social factors and CFI age were tested by multivariable multinomial logistic regressions. The mean CFI age was 5.2 ± 1.2 months; 26% of the infants started complementary feeding before 4 months of age (CF < 4 months), 62% between 4 and 6 months of age, and 12% after 6 months of age (CF > 6 months). CF < 4 months was more likely when mothers smoked, were overweight/obese, younger (<29 years), and used their personal experience as an information source in child caregiving and when both parents were not born in France. CF < 4 months was less likely when the infant was a girl, second‐born, when the mother breastfed longer, and had attended at least one birth preparation class. Mothers of second‐born infants and who breastfed their child longer were more likely to introduce CF > 6 months. Couples in which fathers were born in France and mothers were not born in France were less likely to introduce CF > 6 months. CF < 4 months occurred in more than 25% of the cases. It is important to continue promoting clear CFI recommendations, especially in smoking, overweight, young, not born in France, and nonbreastfeeding mothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Background: The social meanings, settings and habitual nature of health‐related activities and their integration into our daily lives are often overlooked in quantitative public health research. This reflects an overly individualized approach to epidemiological surveillance and evaluations of public health interventions, based on models of behaviour that are rooted in social cognition and rational choice theories. This paper calls for a new approach to alcohol epidemiology and intervention research informed by theories of practice. Argument: Practices are conceptualized as routinized types of human activity that are made up of, and can be recognized by, the coming together of several interwoven elements in the same situation (e.g. materials, meanings, skills, locations, timings). Different practices are interconnected—they can occur simultaneously (e.g. drinking and eating), hold each other in place (e.g. after‐work drinks) or compete for time (e.g. parenting versus socializing). Applying these principles to alcohol research means shifting attention away from individuals and their behaviours and instead making drinking practices an important unit of analysis. Studying how drinking practices emerge, persist and decay over time, how they spread through populations and local or social networks and how they relate to other activities of everyday life promises new insights into how, why, where, when and with whom drinking and getting drunk occur. Conclusions: Theories of practice provide a framework for generating new explanations of stability and change in alcohol consumption and other health behaviours. This framework offers potential for novel insights into the persistence of health inequalities, unanticipated consequences of policies and interventions and new interventions targets through understanding which elements of problematic practices are likely to be most modifiable. We hope this will generate novel insights into the emergence and decay of drinking practices over time and into the geographical and socio‐demographic patterning of drinking. Theories of practice‐informed research would consider how alcohol policies and population‐level interventions might differentially affect different drinking practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work in Ontario (Canada) revealed that adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities experience higher rates of frailty and use of aging care services at earlier ages than the general population, and that the subset aged 65+ years is increasing. This paper describes the reaction of knowledge users to study findings and implications for policy and practice. A knowledge transfer webinar was held with nearly 200 people representing different regions of the province, participant types (family members, service providers, decision makers, researchers), and sectors (health and developmental services). Most participants viewed health and developmental services systems as not ready for the aging population with intellectual and developmental disabilities for two main reasons: insufficient cross-sector expertise and inadequate funding. The need for healthcare, challenged informal supports, lack of services, and the desire for independence were thought to drive higher use of home care among younger adults, while inadequacies within the developmental services sector, challenged informal supports, medical and care needs, lack of community supports, and the need for coordinated cross-sector services were noted as contributing to admissions to long-term care. There is a lack of evidence-based information on aging and intellectual and developmental disabilities. Ongoing access to quality, population-level data on the number and needs of persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities is needed to improve policies and practices to support aging in the community. Persons working in health and developmental services had a shared understanding of the need for system reform, better collaboration, and integration of resources. Both sectors also viewed admission to long-term care as particularly problematic. The province-wide webinar brought together persons with various levels of responsibility from different sectors. Future exchanges should focus on identifying and promoting best practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to present the identified skeletal collection (by age, sex, cause of death, occupation and preservation state) from the Certosa Cemetery of Bologna (Italy), which was reviewed and checked through a consultation of the cemetery archives. The collection consists of 425 skeletons of individuals (from newborn to 91 years old) who died in Bologna between 1898 and 1944. The personal details associated with the skeletons were cross-checked with the data contained in the cemetery and municipal archives. For each skeleton, the biological profile was assessed using current anthropological methods in order to confirm its correct identification. Four hundred and eighteen skeletons (98.4%), mostly complete and well preserved, are identified at least for sex, and for 95% of these, the age is known. The distribution of sexes in the various age groups is fairly well balanced. The cause of death is known in 93% of the individuals. Approximately 30% of the individuals died from infectious diseases. The occupation is known for more than 92% of the individuals. Most of the women were housewives, while the men were employed in various jobs. The cross-check between archival data with the anthropological analysis of the remains enabled a reliable identification of the skeletons. The sexes and various age groups are well represented, and the sample is substantially uniform as far as geographical origin and socio-economic conditions (lower social classes) are concerned. Thanks to the reliability of the information collected, the Certosa collection is an excellent anthropological tool for the development and validation of osteobiographic methods. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically engages with debates on race, conviviality and the geography of encounters. Where much of this work is undertaken in multicultural places, far less is known about the doing and undoing of conviviality in mainly white localities. The study further contributes to this work by offering a richly embodied account of racism and belonging based on the biographical testimonies of British Bangladeshi Muslim young women. Through these accounts, I identify topographies of power, social inequality and forms of exclusion that disrupt the melody of multicultural conviviality. I demonstrate the visceral aspects of race as it is summoned to life in live encounters, where it is lived on the body, bleeds into the locality and congeals around imaginary ideas of the nation state. I argue that antagonistic encounters that serve to mark out British Bangladeshi Muslims as 'Other' perform a bigger role: purging the nation, detoxifying it from encroaching multicultural intimacies and stabilising it as white. Despite this ritual cleansing I demonstrate how respondents are implicated in new forms of civic belonging, laying claim to nationhood, locality and rights to the city that subvert and hollow out the fantasy of a white nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genomic and transcriptomic information has been largely leveraged in ecological investigations of primarily model species and their relatives. The amount of infrastructure and financing necessary for such investigations has meant that analyses of assemblages full of non-model species were impossible. These barriers have rapidly eroded over the past few years to the point where community ecology will soon see a large influx of genomic and transcriptomic investigations. The hope is that such studies will greatly refine or even transform our inferences regarding the distribution and co-occurrence of plant species., This special feature presents five studies that use cutting-edge 'omic concepts and approaches in assemblages of non-model species. All studies focus on the drivers of species co-occurrence. The work blends functional phylogenomic, differential gene expression and metagenomic approaches in observational and experimental frameworks., Two studies demonstrate of functional phylogenomic approaches that can be used in conjunction with neighbourhood demographic models to understand the role of neighbouring heterospecific species on focal tree demography. Two additional papers demonstrate how genes are differentially expressed in different competitive contexts and how this is related to species coexistence. The final study uses a metabarcoding approach to document whether the incredible levels of soil fungal and tree biodiversity in the tropics are linked., Synthesis. The articles presented in this special feature clearly demonstrate that 'omic toolkits can now be readily integrated into community ecology. While there are still many obstacles facing this integration, it seems clear that the amounts and types of data provided by such approaches will lead to a rapid transformation in how we study plant communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]