In a world careening towards climate chaos, nature is dead. It can no longer be separated from society. Everything is a blur of hybrids, where humans possess no exceptional agency that sets them apart from dead matter. But is it really so? In this blistering polemic and theoretical manifesto, Andreas Malm develops a contrary argument: in a warming world, nature comes roaring back, and it is more i

Recently Prévot-Julliard and colleagues presented a concept paper on biological conservation strategies using exotic species as a case study. They emphasized the difficulty of integrating conservation into a broad picture that accounts for public perception as well as scientific knowledge. We support this general call for better integration of society in conservation research, but we believe that

This paper focuses on understanding human impact on landscape. Both ecological and human practices are analysed as interacting processes. An agent-based model integrating biological and historical knowledge is used to analyse the pattern of Scots Pine encroachment in a French Mediterranean upland. In the STIPA model, pine trees are autonomous agents and a cellular automaton simulates land-use. We

BACKGROUND: It has been suggested that osteoblasts are involved in the regulation of haematopoietic stem cells. Whether osteocalcin, which is derived from osteoblasts and is metabolically active, influences blood haemoglobin (Hb) levels is not known.OBJECTIVE: To determine whether plasma osteocalcin is a determinant of Hb in elderly men.METHODS: A total of 993 men (mean age 75.3 ± 3.2 years) parti

AIM: To prospectively validate two mathematical models for calculating the likelihood of endometrial malignancy in patients with postmenopausal bleeding (PMPB), sonographic endometrial thickness (ET) ≥4.5 mm and no fluid in the uterine cavity.METHODS: This is a prospective observational diagnostic validation study performed in a PMPB clinic in a university hospital. Of 860 consecutive patients, 35

Recent genome-wide association studies confirm that human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes have the strongest associations with several autoimmune diseases, including type 1 diabetes (T1D), providing an impetus to reduce this genetic association to practice through an HLA-based disease predictive model. However, conventional model-building methods tend to be suboptimal when predictors are highly poly

What is the relationship between ballot reforms and electoral malpractice? This article contributes to the growing comparative politics literature on the causes of election fraud in democratizing countries using the case of the 19th-century United States. We examine the adoption of the Australian ballot and disenfranchisement laws, and estimate their effects on multiple types of election fraud. Us

Agricultural landscapes are characterised by dynamic crop mosaics changing in composition and configuration over space and time. Although semi-natural habitat has been often shown to contribute to pest biological control, the effects of increasing landscape heterogeneity with cropland have been disregarded. Here, we examine how cereal aphids, their enemies and biological control are affected by th

People who suffer from swallowing disorders, commonly referred to as dysphagia, are often restricted to a texture-modified diet. In such a diet, the texture of the fluid is modified mainly by the addition of gum or starch-based thickeners. For optimal modification of the texture, tunable rheological parameters are shear viscosity, yield stress, and elasticity. In this work, the flow properties of

Vibrations in a built environment can exceed the requirements for sensitive equipment in a building or can cause annoyance to residents. Hence, there is often a need for reducing such vibrations. The vibrations can originate from ambient sources such as motorway traffic, or from internal sources such as people walking inside the building. Disturbing vibrations can be reduced by reduction measures.

OBJECTIVES: Working on large scale construction sites have been shown to have severe health consequences in terms of increased risk of hospitalization and disability retirement compared to construction work in general. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether large scale construction work involving 12-h workdays and extended workweeks leads to insufficient recovery measured as incre

The present thesis investigated Swedish nouns differing in concreteness, specificity and emotional content using linguistic, psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic methods. The focus of Paper I was a semantic analysis of discourse produced by a person with a lesion in visual (left occipital) cortex. The results showed that the lesion site was related to with problems processing concrete nouns relateThe present thesis investigated Swedish nouns differing in concreteness, specificity and emotional content using linguistic, psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic methods. The focus of Paper I was a semantic analysis of discourse produced by a person with a lesion in visual (left occipital) cortex. The results showed that the lesion site was related to with problems processing concrete nouns relate

Gene therapy for inherited retinal diseases has been shown to ameliorate functional and structural defects in both animal models and in human clinical trials. X-linked retinoschisis (XLRS) is an early-age onset macular dystrophy resulting from loss of an extracellular matrix protein (RS1). In preparation for a human clinical gene therapy trial, we conducted a dose-range efficacy study of the clini