| 11. |
- Barrington, Sally F, et al.
(author)
-
PET-CT for staging and early response : results from the Response-Adapted Therapy in Advanced Hodgkin Lymphoma study.
- 2016
-
In: Blood. - : American Society of Hematology. - 0006-4971 .- 1528-0020. ; 127:12, s. 1531-1538
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- International guidelines recommend that positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT) should replace CT in Hodgkin lymphoma (HL). The aims of this study were to compare PET-CT with CT for staging and measure agreement between expert and local readers, using a 5-point scale (Deauville criteria), to adapt treatment in a clinical trial: Response-Adapted Therapy in Advanced Hodgkin Lymphoma (RATHL). Patients were staged using clinical assessment, CT, and bone marrow biopsy (RATHL stage). PET-CT was performed at baseline (PET0) and after 2 chemotherapy cycles (PET2) in a response-adapted design. PET-CT was reported centrally by experts at 5 national core laboratories. Local readers optionally scored PET2 scans. The RATHL and PET-CT stages were compared. Agreement among experts and between expert and local readers was measured. RATHL and PET0 stage were concordant in 938 (80%) patients. PET-CT upstaged 159 (14%) and downstaged 74 (6%) patients. Upstaging by extranodal disease in bone marrow (92), lung (11), or multiple sites (12) on PET-CT accounted for most discrepancies. Follow-up of discrepant findings confirmed the PET characterization of lesions in the vast majority. Five patients were upstaged by marrow biopsy and 7 by contrast-enhanced CT in the bowel and/or liver or spleen. PET2 agreement among experts (140 scans) with a κ (95% confidence interval) of 0.84 (0.76-0.91) was very good and between experts and local readers (300 scans) at 0.77 (0.68-0.86) was good. These results confirm PET-CT as the modern standard for staging HL and that response assessment using Deauville criteria is robust, enabling translation of RATHL results into clinical practice.
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| 12. |
- Benjamin, Daniel J., et al.
(author)
-
Redefine statistical significance
- 2018
-
In: Nature Human Behaviour. - : Nature Research (part of Springer Nature). - 2397-3374. ; 2:1, s. 6-10
-
Journal article (other academic/artistic)
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| 13. |
- Blundell, Geoffrey, 1970-
(author)
-
Nqabayo’s Nomansland: San Rock Art and the Somatic Past
- 2004
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The most significant challenge facing modern southern African rock art research is the integration of rock paintings into the construction of San history. This challenge is made all the more difficult because of poor chronological control over the images. In the absence of reliable dating techniques, the challenge to interdigitate image and history becomes a profoundly theoretical one. Drawing on theoretical studies of body and embodiment, this work takes up the challenge of incorporating rock paintings into the production of the past. Primarily concerned with a small area, previously known as Nomansland, in the south-eastern mountains of South Africa, the work uses embodiment as a tool for extending present interpretations of the art before moving on to arguing that a focus on body allows us to detect change in certain images in Nomansland. Finally, embodiment is used to re-evaluate present understandings of the social consumption of the paintings. In using embodiment to investigate issues of meaning, change and the production and consumption of San rock art, it becomes clear that this theoretical concept offers a way of incorporating rock paintings into the writing of San history in Nomansland. This work, then, contributes to the broader field of southern African San historiography, where the question of San interaction with other peoples is sometimes treated too simply and in a manner that is not consistent with broader postcolonial writing.
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| 14. |
- Buckland, Philip, 1973-
(author)
-
The development and implementation of software for palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatological research : the Bugs Coleopteran Ecology Package (BugsCEP)
- 2007
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis documents the development and application of a unique database orientated software package, BugsCEP, for environmental and climatic reconstruction from fossil beetle (Coleoptera) assemblages. The software tools are described, and the incorporated statistical methods discussed and evaluated with respect to both published modern and fossil data, as well as the author’s own investigations. BugsCEP consists of a reference database of ecology and distribution data for over 5 800 taxa, and includes temperature tolerance data for 436 species. It also contains abundance and summary data for almost 700 sites - the majority of the known Quaternary fossil coleopteran record of Europe. Sample based dating evidence is stored for a large number of these sites, and the data are supported by a bibliography of over 3 300 sources. Through the use of built in statistical methods, employing a specially developed habitat classification system (Bugs EcoCodes), semi-quantitative environmental reconstructions can be undertaken, and output graphically, to aid in the interpretation of sites. A number of built in searching and reporting functions also increase the efficiency with which analyses can be undertaken, including the facility to list the fossil record of species found by searching the ecology and distribution data. The existing Mutual Climatic Range (MCR) climate reconstruction method is implemented and improved upon in BugsCEP, as BugsMCR, which includes predictive modelling and the output of graphs and climate space maps. The evaluation of the software demonstrates good performance when compared to existing interpretations. The standardization method employed in habitat reconstructions, designed to enable the inter-comparison of samples and sites without the interference of differing numbers of species and individuals, also appears to be robust and effective. Quantitative climate reconstructions can be easily undertaken from within the software, as well as an amount of predictive modelling. The use of jackknifing variants as an aid to the interpretation of climate reconstructions is discussed, and suggested as a potential indicator of reliability. The combination of the BugStats statistical system with an enhanced MCR facility could be extremely useful in increasing our understanding of not only past environmental and climate change, but also the biogeography and ecology of insect populations in general. BugsCEP is the only available software package integrating modern and fossil coleopteran data, and the included reconstruction and analysis tools provide a powerful resource for research and teaching in palaeo-environmental science. The use of modern reference data also makes the package potentially useful in the study of present day insect faunas, and the effects of climate and environmental change on their distributions. The reconstruction methods could thus be inverted, and used as predictive tools in the study of biodiversity and the implications of sustainable development policies on present day habitats. BugsCEP can be downloaded from http://www.bugscep.com
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| 15. |
- Butler, Peter, et al.
(author)
-
Coulomb excitation of pear-shaped nuclei
- 2019
-
In: - : EDP Sciences. ; , s. 01007-01007
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- There is a large body of evidence that atomic nuclei can undergo octupole distortion and assume the shape of a pear. This phenomenon is important for measurements of electric-dipole moments of atoms, which would indicate CP violation and hence probe physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. Isotopes of both radon and radium have been identified as candidates for such measurements. Here, we have observed the low-lying quantum states in 224Rn and 226Rn by accelerating beams of these radioactive nuclei. We show that radon isotopes undergo octupole vibrations but do not possess static pear-shapes in their ground states. We conclude that radon atoms provide less favourable conditions for the enhancement of a measurable atomic electric-dipole moment.
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| 16. |
- Costanza, Robert, et al.
(author)
-
Developing an Integrated History and future of People on Earth (IHOPE)
- 2012
-
In: Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. - : Elsevier BV. - 1877-3435 .- 1877-3443. ; 4:1, s. 106-114
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Integrated History and future of People on Earth (IHOPE) initiative is a global network of researchers and research projects with its International Program Office (IPO) now based at the Stockholm Resilience Center (SRC), Uppsala University, Arizona State University, Portland State University, and the Australian National University. Research linked to IHOPE demonstrates that Earth system changes in the past have been strongly associated with changes in the coupled human-environment system. IHOPE supports integrating knowledge and resources from the biophysical and the social sciences and the humanities to address analytical and interpretive issues associated with coupled human-earth system dynamics. This integration of human history and Earth system history is a timely and important task. Until recently, however, there have been few attempts at such integration. IHOPE will create frameworks that can be used to help achieve this integration. The overarching goal is to produce a rich understanding of the relationships between environmental and human processes over the past millennia. HOPE recognizes that one major challenge for reaching this goal is developing 'workable' terminology that can be accepted by scholars of all disciplines. The specific objectives for IHOPE are to identify slow and rapidly moving features of complex social-ecological systems, on local to continental spatial scales, which induce resilience, stress, or collapse in linked systems of humans in nature. These objectives will be reached by exploring innovative ways of conducting interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary science, including theory, case studies, and integrated modeling. Examples of projects underway to implement this initiative are briefly discussed.
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| 17. |
- Ekblom, Anneli, 1969-
(author)
-
Changing Landscapes : An Environmental History of Chibuene, Southern Mozambique
- 2004
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis analyses the dynamics of environmental change and its embeddedness in the long term interactions of social history and rainfall variability through the building of an environmental history of the Chibuene locality, the coastal plain of southern Mozambique, 5 km south of the town Vilanculos, from 400 AD to present day. Land-use practices over time are discussed on the basis of vegetation and land-use history based pollen analysis, charcoal influx and diatom analysis. It is shown that the savanna vegetation is a long term feature of the Chibuene landscapes and that there have been several expansions of savannas and subsequent retractions of forests through time, linked primarily with rainfall variation. Written sources and archaeological material are drawn upon for a discussion on changing practices of environmental management and it is argued that as the Chibuene landscape is marked by a high degree of environmental insecurity, it is the competent management of resources that has enabled the continuous occupation of Chibuene from c. the 7th century AD, through management of natural resources, flexible farming practices and wide reaching social networks. The last two decades have seen a marked change in land-use patterns, reflected in a decrease in forests of the Chibuene area, the reasons for which are complex and needs to be further studied. Interviews with individual elders in the village community provide alternative ways of understanding environmental degradation as merely the loss of disappearance of forests, or the failure of crops due to droughts, but also as the erosion of local power, wars and social unrest. In a similar way, through a long-term perspective this study stresses that socio-political life, climatic variability and environmental dynamics are interlinked, highlighting the importance of the complimentarity of different forms of knowledge and ways of knowing the Chibuene landscape.
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| 18. |
- Ekblom, Anneli
(author)
-
Chibuene
- 2017
-
In: The Swahili World. - Abingdon : Routledge. - 9781138913462
-
Book chapter (peer-reviewed)
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| 19. |
- Ekblom, Anneli, et al.
(author)
-
Land use history and resource utilisation from A.D. 400to the present, at Chibuene, southern Mozambique
- 2014
-
In: Vegetation History and Archaeobotany. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0939-6314 .- 1617-6278. ; 23:1, s. 15-32
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper discusses changing patterns of resource utilisation over time in the locality of Chibuene, Vilankulos, situated on the coastal plain of southern Mozambique. The macroscopic charcoal, bone and shellassemblages from archaeological excavations are presented and discussed against the off-site palaeoecological records from pollen, fungal spores and microscopic charcoal. The Chibuene landscape has experienced four phases of land use and resource utilisation that have interacted with changes in the environment. Phase 1 (A.D. 400–900), forest savanna mosaic, low intensity cattle herding and cultivation, trade of resources for domestic use. Phase 2 (A.D. 900–1400), forest savanna mosaic, high intensity/extensive cultivation and cattle herding. Phase 3 (A.D. 1400–1800), savanna woodland and progressive decrease in forests owing to droughts. Decline of agricultural activities and higher reliance on marine resources. Possible trade of resources with the interior. Phase 4 (A.D. 1800–1900), open savanna with few forest patches. Warfare and social unrest. Collapse of trade with the interior. Decline in marine resources and wildlife. Loss of cattle herds. Expansion of agriculture locally and introduction of New World crops and clearing of Brachystegia trees. The study shows the importance of combining different environmental resources for elucidating how land use and natural variability have changed over time.
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| 20. |
- Falster, Daniel, et al.
(author)
-
AusTraits, a curated plant trait database for the Australian flora
- 2021
-
In: Scientific Data. - : Nature Portfolio. - 2052-4463. ; 8:1
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We introduce the AusTraits database - a compilation of values of plant traits for taxa in the Australian flora (hereafter AusTraits). AusTraits synthesises data on 448 traits across 28,640 taxa from field campaigns, published literature, taxonomic monographs, and individual taxon descriptions. Traits vary in scope from physiological measures of performance (e.g. photosynthetic gas exchange, water-use efficiency) to morphological attributes (e.g. leaf area, seed mass, plant height) which link to aspects of ecological variation. AusTraits contains curated and harmonised individual- and species-level measurements coupled to, where available, contextual information on site properties and experimental conditions. This article provides information on version 3.0.2 of AusTraits which contains data for 997,808 trait-by-taxon combinations. We envision AusTraits as an ongoing collaborative initiative for easily archiving and sharing trait data, which also provides a template for other national or regional initiatives globally to fill persistent gaps in trait knowledge.
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