Older Adults Affected by Abuse-What about Their Mental Health and Social Participation? A Mixed Methods Study.

The purpose of the study was to describe what types of abuse of older adults the healthcare providers in hospital emergency departments are currently able to identify. The study aimed at producing new information about the identification of abuse to enable the development of staff skills in the identification of abuse and in optimal interventions. The study is the first on the topic from the perspective of hospital emergency staff in Finland. The 76 participants represent 5 hospitals. The results are based on a statistical analysis of quantitative questions and on an inductive content analysis of participant experiences of suspected abuse. The inductive content analysis revealed that older adults subjected to abuse have narrowed social networks and many of them surrender to loneliness. Based on the relevant literature, the study discusses how the formal and informal social participation and mental health of this group of people could be promoted. Given the current limited resources, it is proposed that the idea of social prescribing might be applied informally, with help of a volunteer link person. Any interventions should be based on the older adults' conceptions of what is meaningful to them.

Pan-European phylogeography of the European roe deer (Capreolus capreolus).

To provide the most comprehensive picture of species phylogeny and phylogeography of European roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), we analyzed mtDNA control region (610 bp) of 1469 samples of roe deer from Central and Eastern Europe and included into the analyses additional 1541 mtDNA sequences from GenBank from other regions of the continent. We detected two mtDNA lineages of the species: European and Siberian (an introgression of C. pygargus mtDNA into C. capreolus). The Siberian lineage was most frequent in the eastern part of the continent and declined toward Central Europe. The European lineage contained three clades (Central, Eastern, and Western) composed of several haplogroups, many of which were separated in space. The Western clade appeared to have a discontinuous range from Portugal to Russia. Most of the haplogroups in the Central and the Eastern clades were under expansion during the Weichselian glacial period before the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), while the expansion time of the Western clade overlapped with the Eemian interglacial. The high genetic diversity of extant roe deer is the result of their survival during the LGM probably in a large, contiguous range spanning from the Iberian Peninsula to the Caucasus Mts and in two northern refugia.

A partial migrant relies upon a range-wide cue set but uses population-specific weighting for migratory timing.

BACKGROUND: Many birds species range over vast geographic regions and migrate seasonally between their breeding and overwintering sites. Deciding when to depart for migration is one of the most consequential life-history decisions an individual may make. However, it is still not fully understood which environmental cues are used to time the onset of migration and to what extent their relative importance differs across a range of migratory strategies. We focus on departure decisions of a songbird, the Eurasian blackbird Turdus merula, in which selected Russian and Polish populations are full migrants which travel relatively long-distances, whereas Finnish and German populations exhibit partial migration with shorter migration distances. METHODS: We used telemetry data from the four populations (610 individuals) to determine which environmental cues individuals from each population use to initiate their autumn migration. RESULTS: When departing, individuals in all populations selected nights with high atmospheric pressure and minimal cloud cover. Fully migratory populations departed earlier in autumn, at longer day length, at higher ambient temperatures, and during nights with higher relative atmospheric pressure and more supportive winds than partial migrants; however, they did not depart in higher synchrony. Thus, while all studied populations used the same environmental cues, they used population-specific and locally tuned thresholds to determine the day of departure. CONCLUSIONS: Our data support the idea that migratory timing is controlled by general, species-wide mechanisms, but fine-tuned thresholds in response to local conditions.

Urbanization extends flight phenology and leads to local adaptation of seasonal plasticity in Lepidoptera.

Urbanization is gaining force globally, which challenges biodiversity, and it has recently also emerged as an agent of evolutionary change. Seasonal phenology and life cycle regulation are essential processes that urbanization is likely to alter through both the urban heat island effect (UHI) and artificial light at night (ALAN). However, how UHI and ALAN affect the evolution of seasonal adaptations has received little attention. Here, we test for the urban evolution of seasonal life-history plasticity, specifically changes in the photoperiodic induction of diapause in two lepidopterans, Pieris napi (Pieridae) and Chiasmia clathrata (Geometridae). We used long-term data from standardized monitoring and citizen science observation schemes to compare yearly phenological flight curves in six cities in Finland and Sweden to those of adjacent rural populations. This analysis showed for both species that flight seasons are longer and end later in most cities, suggesting a difference in the timing of diapause induction. Then, we used common garden experiments to test whether the evolution of the photoperiodic reaction norm for diapause could explain these phenological changes for a subset of these cities. These experiments demonstrated a genetic shift for both species in urban areas toward a lower daylength threshold for direct development, consistent with predictions based on the UHI but not ALAN. The correspondence of this genetic change to the results of our larger-scale observational analysis of in situ flight phenology indicates that it may be widespread. These findings suggest that seasonal life cycle regulation evolves in urban ectotherms and may contribute to ecoevolutionary dynamics in cities.

Identification of Elder Abuse through Out-of-Hospital Emergency Care Providers.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Elder abuse, neglect, and exploitation are under-detected and under-reported. The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe out-ofhospital emergency care providers' experiences of identifying elder abuse. METHODS: Individual theme interviews were conducted with nine prehospital emergency care providers and three community paramedics in spring 2019. The transcribed data were analyzed using inductive content analysis. RESULTS: Although the short duration of care contacts made the identification of elder abuse challenging, the emergency care providers detected indicators of physical, psychological and social abuse, unethical action, material exploitation, and self-neglect/self-abuse. The professionals based their observations on patient and family interviews, on clues in the home environment, on caregiving quality combined with the patient's medical history, and on physical signs, which were the easiest to identify. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: The identification of elder abuse may be improved by multiprofessional collaboration, by increased attention given to risk groups and common indicators of abuse, and by adoption or creation of screening tools to assist detection and reporting. Training on the detection of elder abuse should be included in nursing and social work curricula and in the continuing professional development of emergency care providers.

Identification of Child and Youth Maltreatment as Experienced by Prehospital Emergency Care Providers.

This mixed method study explores 200 prehospital emergency care providers' experiences of identifying child and youth maltreatment. The data were collected in Finland in 2019-2020 using an online survey tool and analysed using SPSS statistics and inductive content analysis. Respondents had encountered signs of physical and psychosocial maltreatment, and family challenges, contexts, and economic and social problems indicative of maltreatment. It is important for the early intervention and prevention of long-term mental health problems that prehospital emergency care providers receive continuing education on the identification of child maltreatment.

Integrating drone-borne thermal imaging with artificial intelligence to locate bird nests on agricultural land.

In conservation, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) carrying various sensors and the use of deep learning are increasing, but they are typically used independently of each other. Untapping their large potential requires integrating these tools. We combine drone-borne thermal imaging with artificial intelligence to locate ground-nests of birds on agricultural land. We show, for the first time, that this semi-automated system can identify nests with a high performance. However, local weather, type of arable field and height of the drone can affect performance. The results' implications are particularly relevant to conservation practitioners working across sectors, such as biodiversity conservation and food production in farmland. Under a rapidly changing world, studies like this can help uncover the potential of technology for conservation and embrace cross-sectoral transformations from the onset; for example, by integrating nest detection within the precision agriculture system that heavily relies on drone-borne sensors.

Large-scale spatial synchrony in red squirrel populations driven by a bottom-up effect.

Spatial synchrony between populations emerges from endogenous and exogenous processes, such as intra- and interspecific interactions and abiotic factors. Understanding factors contributing to synchronous population dynamics help to better understand what determines abundance of a species. This study focuses on spatial and temporal dynamics in the Eurasian red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) using snow-track data from Finland from 29 years. We disentangled the effects of bottom-up and top-down forces as well as environmental factors on population dynamics with a spatiotemporally explicit Bayesian hierarchical approach. We found red squirrel abundance to be positively associated with both the abundance of Norway spruce (Picea abies) cones and the predators, the pine marten (Martes martes) and the northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis), probably due to shared habitat preferences. The results suggest that red squirrel populations are synchronized over remarkably large distances, on a scale of hundreds of kilometres, and that this synchrony is mainly driven by similarly spatially autocorrelated spruce cone crop. Our research demonstrates how a bottom-up effect can drive spatial synchrony in consumer populations on a very large scale of hundreds of kilometres, and also how an explicit spatiotemporal approach can improve model performance for fluctuating populations.

Long-term effects of and physiological responses to nitrous oxide gas treatment during alcohol withdrawal: a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Nitrous oxide gas (N2O) has been proposed to be effective in the treatment of the alcohol withdrawal syndrome (AWS). This has not been proved, however, in studies performed according to good clinical practice guidelines. Moreover, previous studies have not measured end tidal N2O concentrations or physiologic responses during N2O treatment. We have recently reported that in a double-blind, randomized, controlled setting, N2O was not superior to placebo in relieving AWS symptoms. In this previous study, we did not find significant differences between the treatments either in the Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment of Alcohol scores or in the total use of benzodiazepines (diazepam and temazepam). The aim of the present study was to characterize other effects and side effects of the N2O treatment using several objective measures and to study the possible long-term efficacy of the treatment. METHODS: A total of 105 inpatients who had AWS and were admitted to the A-Clinic detoxification center were included in the study. The subjects were randomly assigned to one of the following three treatments: (1) N2O/oxygen (from 30 to 70% in oxygen), (2) air/oxygen (30%/70%), and (3) medical (normal) air. During the single 45-min treatment period, end-tidal N2O, carbon dioxide, and oxygen concentrations were measured. The physiologic responses were studied by measuring heart rate, blood pressure, pulse oximetric saturation, frontal muscle electromyographic activity, and plethysmographic pulse amplitude. Long-term effects were studied by measuring craving with the Obsessive-Compulsive Drinking Scale; severity of dependency with Severity of Alcohol Dependence Data; and liver enzymes with aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, and gamma-glutamyltransferase 3 and 6 months after the treatment. RESULTS: Patients in the N2O group demonstrated significantly higher facial muscle electromyographic activity and higher pulse amplitude than the air-treated subjects. Self-reported side effects between the gas treatments, however, did not differ between the groups. Regarding long-term effects of the treatments, there were no differences between the groups. CONCLUSIONS: Contrary to previously published data, N2O treatment did not decrease craving or liver enzymes during the 6-month follow-up. At the concentration used, N2O treatment produced signs of arousal instead of strong sedation.