Continent-wide declines in shallow reef life over a decade of ocean warming.

Human society is dependent on nature1,2, but whether our ecological foundations are at risk remains unknown in the absence of systematic monitoring of species' populations3. Knowledge of species fluctuations is particularly inadequate in the marine realm4. Here we assess the population trends of 1,057 common shallow reef species from multiple phyla at 1,636 sites around Australia over the past decade. Most populations decreased over this period, including many tropical fishes, temperate invertebrates (particularly echinoderms) and southwestern Australian macroalgae, whereas coral populations remained relatively stable. Population declines typically followed heatwave years, when local water temperatures were more than 0.5 °C above temperatures in 2008. Following heatwaves5,6, species abundances generally tended to decline near warm range edges, and increase near cool range edges. More than 30% of shallow invertebrate species in cool latitudes exhibited high extinction risk, with rapidly declining populations trapped by deep ocean barriers, preventing poleward retreat as temperatures rise. Greater conservation effort is needed to safeguard temperate marine ecosystems, which are disproportionately threatened and include species with deep evolutionary roots. Fundamental among such efforts, and broader societal needs to efficiently adapt to interacting anthropogenic and natural pressures, is greatly expanded monitoring of species' population trends7,8.

Promoting inclusive metrics of success and impact to dismantle a discriminatory reward system in science.

Success and impact metrics in science are based on a system that perpetuates sexist and racist "rewards" by prioritizing citations and impact factors. These metrics are flawed and biased against already marginalized groups and fail to accurately capture the breadth of individuals' meaningful scientific impacts. We advocate shifting this outdated value system to advance science through principles of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. We outline pathways for a paradigm shift in scientific values based on multidimensional mentorship and promoting mentee well-being. These actions will require collective efforts supported by academic leaders and administrators to drive essential systemic change.

Assessing Appearance, Speech, and Hearing (dis)Satisfaction in Individuals with Cleft Lip and/or Palate: A Contribution to General Population Norms.

BACKGROUND: Individuals with cleft lip and/or palate (CL/P) may grow up with a visible facial difference, alongside speech and/or hearing challenges. Self-perceptions are stronger predictors of psychosocial adjustment than objective assessments, highlighting the importance of patient-reported outcome measures. Previously titled the Satisfaction with Appearance (SwA) questionnaire, the Cleft Hearing, Appearance and Speech Questionnaire (CHASQ) has been used in several countries to assess patient satisfaction, guide clinical decision-making, and conduct craniofacial research, but has lacked general population norms from which to draw comparisons. The aim of this study was to contribute to the development of norms by utilising existing data collected in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2004 using the original SwA. METHODS: SwA data collected from school pupils (n = 761) aged 10-16 years were analysed across age and gender. RESULTS: Hair, Eyes and Ears received the highest ratings, while Teeth received the lowest ratings. Those who were younger, and those who were male, generally rated their appearance more favourably. Thresholds are proposed to identify young people in need of clinical monitoring (10%) and intervention (5%). DISCUSSION: This study supports the potential of the CHASQ as a clinically useful outcome measure and research tool with the ability to identify appearance concerns in relation to specific facial features, as well as overall appearance satisfaction in young people with and without CL/P. Further validation of its use in the CL/P population and other patient groups, as well as countries outside the UK would add additional weight to the CHASQ's utility.

The ecological relevance of critical thermal maxima methodology for fishes.

Critical thermal maxima methodology (CTM) has been used to infer acute upper thermal tolerance in fishes since the 1950s, yet its ecological relevance remains debated. In this study, the authors synthesize evidence to identify methodological concerns and common misconceptions that have limited the interpretation of critical thermal maximum (CTmax ; value for an individual fish during one trial) in ecological and evolutionary studies of fishes. They identified limitations of, and opportunities for, using CTmax as a metric in experiments, focusing on rates of thermal ramping, acclimation regimes, thermal safety margins, methodological endpoints, links to performance traits and repeatability. Care must be taken when interpreting CTM in ecological contexts, because the protocol was originally designed for ecotoxicological research with standardized methods to facilitate comparisons within study individuals, across species and contexts. CTM can, however, be used in ecological contexts to predict impacts of environmental warming, but only if parameters influencing thermal limits, such as acclimation temperature or rate of thermal ramping, are taken into account. Applications can include mitigating the effects of climate change, informing infrastructure planning or modelling species distribution, adaptation and/or performance in response to climate-related temperature change. The authors' synthesis points to several key directions for future research that will further aid the application and interpretation of CTM data in ecological contexts.

A Keynote Address: A Guide to Supporting Conference Speakers with Lived Experience of Cleft Lip and/or Palate.

Although the value of diversity within academia and society is increasingly recognised, the role of speakers with lived experience at cleft and craniofacial conferences remains inconsistent. This perspectives article shares reflection from three academics with lived experience of cleft discussing the value of including lived experience speakers routinely within conferences and outlining common challenges and barriers to the involvement of "experts-by-experience". Key considerations and recommendations are offered to help conference organisers and delegates to make the most of the lived experience perspective, while ensuring the conference experience is positive for lived experience speakers.

Does the Implementation of Multidisciplinary Developmental Care Rounds Increase the Utilization of Developmental Caregiving Interventions in the Neonatal Unit?

AIMS: The aims of this project were to improve the utilization of developmental care practices in the neonatal unit and to increase opportunities for parental involvement in the planning and provision of caregiving. METHODS: This implementation project was conducted in a 79-bed neonatal tertiary referral unit in Australia. A pre/postimplementation survey design was utilized. A preimplementation survey was conducted to collect data on staff's perceived perception of developmental care practices. Following analysis of the data, a process for multidisciplinary developmental care rounds was developed and then implemented across the neonatal unit. A postimplementation survey was then conducted to evaluate whether staff perceived any changes in developmental care practices. The project was conducted over 8 months. RESULTS: A total of 97 surveys (pre: n = 46/post: n = 51) were received. Differences were demonstrated in staff's perceived perception of developmental care practices between the pre- and postimplementation periods in 6 themes of developmental care practice. Identified areas of improvement included the use of the 5-step dialogue, encouragement of parents to contribute to care planning, availability of a well-defined care plan for parents to visualize and document caregiving activities, increased use of swaddled bathing, side-lying position for nappy changes, consideration of infants sleep state before caregiving, and increased use of skin-to-skin therapy for management of procedural pain. CONCLUSION: Despite the majority of staff members who participated in both surveys acknowledging the importance of family-centered developmental care practice on neonatal outcomes, their use in clinical care is not always considered or practiced. Although it is reassuring to see improvements in several areas of developmental care postimplementation of the developmental care rounds, continued awareness and reinforcement of developmental neuroprotective caregiving strategies through initiatives such as a multidisciplinary care rounds are warranted.

Effectiveness of workshops to teach a home-based exercise program (BEST at Home) for preventing falls in community-dwelling people aged 65 years and over: a pragmatic randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Falls are a significant public health issue. There is strong evidence that exercise can prevent falls and the most effective programs are those that primarily involve balance and functional exercises, however uptake of such programs is low. Exercise prescribed during home visits by health professionals can prevent falls however this strategy would be costly to deliver at scale. We developed a new approach to teach home exercise through group-based workshops delivered by physiotherapists. The primary aim was to determine the effect of this approach on the rate of falls among older community-dwelling people over 12 months. Secondary outcomes included the proportion of people falling, fear of falling, physical activity, lower limb strength, balance and quality of life. METHODS: A randomised controlled trial was conducted among community-dwelling people aged ≥65 in New South Wales, Australia. Participants were randomised to either the intervention group (exercise targeting balance and lower limb strength) or control group (exercise targeting upper limb strength). RESULTS: A total of 617 participants (mean age 73 years, +SD 6, 64% female) were randomly assigned to the intervention group (n = 307) or control group (n = 310). There was no significant between-group difference in the rate of falls (IRR 0.91, 95% CI 0.64 to 1.29, n = 579, p = 0.604) or the number of participants reporting one or more falls (IRR 0.99, 95% CI 0.76 to 1.29, n = 579, p = 0.946) during 12 month follow-up. A significant improvement in the intervention group compared to control group was found for fear of falling at 3, 6 and 12 months (mean difference 0.50, 95% CI 0.2 to 0.8, p = 0.004; 0.39, 95% CI 0.001 to 0.8, p = 0.049; 0.46, 95% CI 0.006 to 0.9, p = 0.047, respectively), and gait speed at 3 months (mean difference 0.09 s, 95% CI 0.003 to 0.19, p = 0.043). No statistically significant between-group differences were detected for the other secondary outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: There was no significant intervention impact on the rate of falls, but the program significantly reduced fear of falling and improved gait speed. Other exercise delivery approaches are needed to ensure an adequate intensity of balance and strength challenge and dose of exercise to prevent falls.

Decreasing delivery room intubations: A quality improvement project.

AIM: The delivery room intubation rate for babies born less than 32 weeks postmenstrual age (PMA) at the Mater Mothers' Hospital in 2017 was 51%. Delivery room intubation of preterm infants may be associated with an increased risk of developing bronchopulmonary dysplasia. This quality improvement project aimed to decrease the rate of delivery room intubation for infants born less than 32 weeks PMA. METHODS: A quality improvement process using the evidence-based practice for improving quality framework and Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles was undertaken from October 2018 to December 2019. Commencing bubble continuous positive airway pressure for initial resuscitation in the delivery room was the principal change idea. RESULTS: The delivery room intubation rate for infants born less than 32 weeks PMA before the commencement of this project was 48% (cohort 1, n = 221). There was a significant decrease in the rate to 37.2% while the project was being conducted (cohort 2, n = 277) and a further significant reduction to 28.2% after introducing bubble continuous positive airway pressure in the delivery room (cohort 3, n = 202). There was a significant improvement in admission temperatures and a significant decrease in mortality rate between cohort 1 and cohort 2 but not between cohort 2 and cohort 3. There was no change in the rate of discharge home on oxygen between cohorts. CONCLUSIONS: This quality improvement project led to a significantly decreased delivery room intubation rate in infants born less than 32 weeks PMA. There was no evidence of any adverse outcomes with this approach.

Disentangling the abundance-impact relationship for invasive species.

To predict the threat of biological invasions to native species, it is critical that we understand how increasing abundance of invasive alien species (IAS) affects native populations and communities. The form of this relationship across taxa and ecosystems is unknown, but is expected to depend strongly on the trophic position of the IAS relative to the native species. Using a global metaanalysis based on 1,258 empirical studies presented in 201 scientific publications, we assessed the shape, direction, and strength of native responses to increasing invader abundance. We also tested how native responses varied with relative trophic position and for responses at the population vs. community levels. As IAS abundance increased, native populations declined nonlinearly by 20%, on average, and community metrics declined linearly by 25%. When at higher trophic levels, invaders tended to cause a strong, nonlinear decline in native populations and communities, with the greatest impacts occurring at low invader abundance. In contrast, invaders at the same trophic level tended to cause a linear decline in native populations and communities, while invaders at lower trophic levels had no consistent impacts. At the community level, increasing invader abundance had significantly larger effects on species evenness and diversity than on species richness. Our results show that native responses to invasion depend critically on invasive species' abundance and trophic position. Further, these general abundance-impact relationships reveal how IAS impacts are likely to develop during the invasion process and when to best manage them.

Thermal biases and vulnerability to warming in the world's marine fauna.

A critical assumption underlying projections of biodiversity change associated with global warming is that ecological communities comprise balanced mixes of warm-affinity and cool-affinity species which, on average, approximate local environmental temperatures. Nevertheless, here we find that most shallow water marine species occupy broad thermal distributions that are aggregated in either temperate or tropical realms. These distributional trends result in ocean-scale spatial thermal biases, where communities are dominated by species with warmer or cooler affinity than local environmental temperatures. We use community-level thermal deviations from local temperatures as a form of sensitivity to warming, and combine these with projected ocean warming data to predict warming-related loss of species from present-day communities over the next century. Large changes in local species composition appear likely, and proximity to thermal limits, as inferred from present-day species' distributional ranges, outweighs spatial variation in warming rates in contributing to predicted rates of local species loss.

Global COVID-19 lockdown highlights humans as both threats and custodians of the environment.

The global lockdown to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic health risks has altered human interactions with nature. Here, we report immediate impacts of changes in human activities on wildlife and environmental threats during the early lockdown months of 2020, based on 877 qualitative reports and 332 quantitative assessments from 89 different studies. Hundreds of reports of unusual species observations from around the world suggest that animals quickly responded to the reductions in human presence. However, negative effects of lockdown on conservation also emerged, as confinement resulted in some park officials being unable to perform conservation, restoration and enforcement tasks, resulting in local increases in illegal activities such as hunting. Overall, there is a complex mixture of positive and negative effects of the pandemic lockdown on nature, all of which have the potential to lead to cascading responses which in turn impact wildlife and nature conservation. While the net effect of the lockdown will need to be assessed over years as data becomes available and persistent effects emerge, immediate responses were detected across the world. Thus, initial qualitative and quantitative data arising from this serendipitous global quasi-experimental perturbation highlights the dual role that humans play in threatening and protecting species and ecosystems. Pathways to favorably tilt this delicate balance include reducing impacts and increasing conservation effectiveness.

Incorporating the interaction between health and work into the undergraduate medical curriculum - a qualitative evaluation of a teaching pilot in English medical schools.

Introduction: There is a growing recognition of the impact of work on health both positive and negative. It is important that all health care professionals are equipped to understand the effects of work and worklessness on health and help patients remain in work or manage a healthy return to work where appropriate. Despite explicit reference to health and work in the General Medical Council's Outcomes for Graduates, currently, this is not a theme that is integrated across the undergraduate medical curricula.Aim: This study evaluates medical tutors' and undergraduates' perspectives of a selection of health and work topics in a teaching pilot to consider the suitability and appropriateness for delivery, integration into the curriculum, tailoring of the resources, and appropriateness and expected attainment of learning objectives.Methods: Qualitative, semi-structured interviews and focus groups were carried out with five medical tutors and 36 undergraduates. Interviews and focus groups were recorded, transcribed and thematically analysed.Results: Medical tutors and undergraduates identified suitability of appropriate subject specialities and years of teaching, whether learning objectives were important and if these had been achieved, and recommendations for future delivery.Discussion: Medical tutors were committed to delivering the health and work topics with the flexibility of tailoring the resources to existing subject specialities and with respect to the year of study. Learning objectives were perceived appropriate by tutors, despite ambivalence about their importance from some undergraduates. Resources were identified as having relevance to public health undergraduate teaching and during general practice placements.

Glioma patient-reported outcome assessment in clinical care and research: a Response Assessment in Neuro-Oncology collaborative report.

Clinical trials of treatments for high-grade gliomas have traditionally relied on measures of response or time-dependent metrics; however, these endpoints have limitations because they do not characterise the functional or symptomatic effect of the condition on the person. Including clinical outcome assessments, such as patient- reported outcomes (PROs), to determine net clinical benefit of a treatment strategy is needed because of the substantial burden of symptoms and impaired functioning in this patient population. The US National Cancer Institute convened a meeting to review previous recommendations and existing PRO measures of symptoms and function that can be applied to current trials and clinical practice for high-grade gliomas. Measures were assessed for relevance, relationship to disease and therapy, sensitivity to change, psychometric properties, response format, patient acceptability, and use of self-report. The group also relied on patient input including the results of an online survey, a literature review on available clinical outcomes, expert opinion, and alignment with work done by other organisations. A core set of priority constructs was proposed that allows more comprehensive evaluation of therapies and comparison of outcomes among studies, and enhances efforts to improve the measurement of these core clinical outcomes. The proposed set of constructs was then presented to the Society for Neuro-Oncology Response Assessment in Neuro-Oncology Working Group and feedback was solicited.

Acceptability and Feasibility of an Isometric Resistance Exercise Program for Abdominal Cancer Surgery: An Embedded Qualitative Study.

Although it is recognized in the early stages of cancer recovery that changes in lifestyle including increases in physical activity improves physical function, there are no clear findings whether low versus moderate intensity activity or home or gym exercise offer optimal benefit. Isometric-resistance exercises can be carried out with very little equipment and space and can be performed while patients are bed-bound in hospital or at home. This embedded qualitative study, based in an English hospital trust providing specialist cancer care, was undertaken as a component of a feasibility trial to evaluate the acceptability and feasibility of an isometric-resistance exercise program and explore the suitability of functional assessments by drawing from the experiences of abdominal cancer patients following surgery. Telephone interviews were undertaken with 7 participants in the intervention group, and 8 interviews with the usual care group (n = 15). The gender composition consisted of 11 females and 4 males. Participants' ages ranged from 27 to 84 (M = 60.07, SD = 15.40). Interviews were conducted between August 2017 and May 2018, with audio files digitally recorded and data coded using thematic framework analysis. Our results show that blinding to intervention or usual care was a challenge, participants felt the intervention was safe and suitable aided by the assistance of a research nurse, yet, found the self-completion questionnaire tools hard to complete. Our study provides an insight of trial processes, participants' adherence and completion of exercise interventions, and informs the design and conduct of larger RCTs based on the experiences of abdominal cancer surgery patients.

COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdown as a "Global Human Confinement Experiment" to investigate biodiversity conservation.

Efforts to curtail the spread of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV2) have led to the unprecedented concurrent confinement of nearly two-thirds of the global population. The large human lockdown and its eventual relaxation can be viewed as a Global Human Confinement Experiment. This experiment is a unique opportunity to identify positive and negative effects of human presence and mobility on a range of natural systems, including wildlife, and protected areas, and to study processes regulating biodiversity and ecosystems. We encourage ecologists, environmental scientists, and resource managers to contribute their observations to efforts aiming to build comprehensive global understanding based on multiple data streams, including anecdotal observations, systematic assessments and quantitative monitoring. We argue that the collective power of combining diverse data will transcend the limited value of the individual data sets and produce unexpected insights. We can also consider the confinement experiment as a "stress test" to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses in the adequacy of existing networks to detect human impacts on natural systems. Doing so will provide evidence for the value of the conservation strategies that are presently in place, and create future networks, observatories and policies that are more adept in protecting biological diversity across the world.

Specialist hospital treatment and care as reported by children with intellectual disabilities and a cleft lip and/or palate, their parents and healthcare professionals.

BACKGROUND: Research into hospital treatment and care of children with intellectual disabilities is extremely limited, but available literature points to difficulties. Some children have a co-occurring condition alongside an intellectual disability which requires ongoing treatment, such as a cleft lip/palate. To date, their experiences remain untapped. METHOD: Semi-structured interviews with 23 participants; five children with intellectual disabilities (aged 11-16), their parents (n = 9) and nine healthcare professionals working in cleft care. Thematic analysis determined patterns across the data. RESULTS: Three key themes were found: struggles (stress and distress, and power imbalance), tensions (perceived levels of choice and control in decision making, lack of training around intellectual disability assumptions and jargon) and good practice (appropriate communication and information, and tailored treatment). CONCLUSION: Good practice was evident, but was ad hoc. Individualized treatment and communication based upon children's needs are required as is further investigation into general anaesthetic induction for children with intellectual disabilities.

The shape of abundance distributions across temperature gradients in reef fishes.

Improving predictions of ecological responses to climate change requires understanding how local abundance relates to temperature gradients, yet many factors influence local abundance in wild populations. We evaluated the shape of thermal-abundance distributions using 98 422 abundance estimates of 702 reef fish species worldwide. We found that curved ceilings in local abundance related to sea temperatures for most species, where local abundance declined from realised thermal 'optima' towards warmer and cooler environments. Although generally supporting the abundant-centre hypothesis, many species also displayed asymmetrical thermal-abundance distributions. For many tropical species, abundances did not decline at warm distribution edges due to an unavailability of warmer environments at the equator. Habitat transitions from coral to macroalgal dominance in subtropical zones also influenced abundance distribution shapes. By quantifying the factors constraining species' abundance, we provide an important empirical basis for improving predictions of community re-structuring in a warmer world.

Integrating abundance and functional traits reveals new global hotspots of fish diversity.

Species richness has dominated our view of global biodiversity patterns for centuries. The dominance of this paradigm is reflected in the focus by ecologists and conservation managers on richness and associated occurrence-based measures for understanding drivers of broad-scale diversity patterns and as a biological basis for management. However, this is changing rapidly, as it is now recognized that not only the number of species but the species present, their phenotypes and the number of individuals of each species are critical in determining the nature and strength of the relationships between species diversity and a range of ecological functions (such as biomass production and nutrient cycling). Integrating these measures should provide a more relevant representation of global biodiversity patterns in terms of ecological functions than that provided by simple species counts. Here we provide comparisons of a traditional global biodiversity distribution measure based on richness with metrics that incorporate species abundances and functional traits. We use data from standardized quantitative surveys of 2,473 marine reef fish species at 1,844 sites, spanning 133 degrees of latitude from all ocean basins, to identify new diversity hotspots in some temperate regions and the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean. These relate to high diversity of functional traits amongst individuals in the community (calculated using Rao's Q), and differ from previously reported patterns in functional diversity and richness for terrestrial animals, which emphasize species-rich tropical regions only. There is a global trend for greater evenness in the number of individuals of each species, across the reef fish species observed at sites ('community evenness'), at higher latitudes. This contributes to the distribution of functional diversity hotspots and contrasts with well-known latitudinal gradients in richness. Our findings suggest that the contribution of species diversity to a range of ecosystem functions varies over large scales, and imply that in tropical regions, which have higher numbers of species, each species contributes proportionally less to community-level ecological processes on average than species in temperate regions. Metrics of ecological function usefully complement metrics of species diversity in conservation management, including when identifying planning priorities and when tracking changes to biodiversity values.

Temperature-Driven Biodiversity Change: Disentangling Space and Time.

Temperature regimes have multiple spatial and temporal dimensions that have different impacts on biodiversity. Signatures of warming across these dimensions may contribute uniquely to the large-scale species redistributions and abundance changes that underpin community dynamics. A comprehensive review of the literature reveals that 86% of studies were focused on community responses to temperature aggregated over spatial or temporal dimensions (e.g., mean, median, or extremes). Therefore, the effects of temperature variation in space and time on biodiversity remain generally unquantified. In the present article, we argue that this focus on aggregated temperature measures may limit advancing our understanding of how communities are being altered by climate change. In light of this, we map the cause-and-effect pathways between the different dimensions of temperature change and communities in space and time. A broadened focus, shifted toward a multidimensional perspective of temperature, will allow better interpretation and prediction of biodiversity change and more robust management and conservation strategies.