Are we missing the boat? Current uses of long-term biological monitoring data in the evaluation and management of marine protected areas.

Protected area management agencies are increasingly using management effectiveness evaluation (MEE) to better understand, learn from and improve conservation efforts around the globe. Outcome assessment is the final stage of MEE, where conservation outcomes are measured to determine whether management objectives are being achieved. When quantitative monitoring data are available, best-practice examples of outcome assessments demonstrate that data should be assessed against quantitative condition categories. Such assessments enable more transparent and repeatable integration of monitoring data into MEE, which can promote evidence-based management and improve public accountability and reporting. We interviewed key informants from marine protected area (MPA) management agencies to investigate how scientific data sources, especially long-term biological monitoring data, are currently informing conservation management. Our study revealed that even when long-term monitoring results are available, management agencies are not using them for quantitative condition assessment in MEE. Instead, many agencies conduct qualitative condition assessments, where monitoring results are interpreted using expert judgment only. Whilst we found substantial evidence for the use of long-term monitoring data in the evidence-based management of MPAs, MEE is rarely the sole mechanism that facilitates the knowledge transfer of scientific evidence to management action. This suggests that the first goal of MEE (to enable environmental accountability and reporting) is being achieved, but the second and arguably more important goal of facilitating evidence-based management is not. Given that many MEE approaches are in their infancy, recommendations are made to assist management agencies realize the full potential of long-term quantitative monitoring data for protected area evaluation and evidence-based management.

Mutagenic mucus in the cervix of smokers.

A pilot study was conducted to determine whether any relationship exists between mutagenicity of a women's uterine cervical mucus and her current smoking status. Cervical fluids obtained from 78 premenopausal women seen between July 1983 and March 1984 at the University of California, San Francisco Dysplasia (and diethylstilbestrol) Clinic or in a private practice were tested for mutagenicity by means of the Ames-Salmonella microsomal test. Of 36 current smokers, 14 (39%) had positive tests as compared to 5 of 42 nonsmokers (12%). The odds ratio (OR) estimate was 4.7 with 95% confidence limits (CL) of 1.6-14.2. Secretions from 14 of 32 (44%) women who had smoked during the day of the sample collection--within the previous 7 hours--were positive on the laboratory test, whereas none of the 4 women was positive who had smoked 8 hours or more before the specimens were obtained. Fluids from women with dysplasia or carcinoma in situ were more likely to be mutagenic than were those from other women, although this finding may be due to chance (OR = 2.0 with 95% CL of .70-5.9). This relationship between smoking and mutagenic cervical fluids offers evidence that might help to explain the association between cervical cancer and cigarette smoking noted in previous epidemiologic studies.

Mouth breathing, occlusion, and modernization in a north Indian population. An epidemiologic study.

Village-dwelling Punjabi youths show significantly better dental occlusion and less chronic respiratory allergy than their city-dwelling counterparts. Field diagnosis finds posterior crossbite the only occlusal condition correlated with mouth breathing in the samples studied.

Factors in childhood as predictors of asthma in adult life.

OBJECTIVE: To determine which factors measured in childhood predict asthma in adult life. DESIGN: Prospective study over 25 years of a birth cohort initially studied at the age of 7. SETTING: Tasmania, Australia. SUBJECTS: 1494 men and women surveyed in 1991-3 when aged 29 to 32 (75% of a random stratified sample from the 1968 Tasmanian asthma survey of children born in 1961 and at school in Tasmania). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Self reported asthma or wheezy breathing in the previous 12 months (current asthma). RESULTS: Of the subjects with asthma or wheezy breathing by the age of 7, as reported by their parents 25.6% (190/741) reported current asthma as an adult compared with 10.8% (81/753) of subjects without parent reported childhood asthma (P < 0.001). Factors measured at the age of 7 that independently predicted current asthma as an adult were being female (odds ratio 1.57; 95% confidence interval 1.19 to 2.08); having a history of eczema (1.45; 1.04 to 2.03); having a low mild forced expiratory flow rate (interquartile odds ratio 1.40; 1.15 to 1.71); having a mother or father with a history of asthma (1.74 (1.23 to 2.47) and 1.68 (1.18 to 2.38) respectively); and having childhood asthma (1.59; 1.10 to 2.29) and, if so, having the first attack after the age of 2 (1.66; 1.17 to 2.36) or having had more than 10 attacks (1.70; 1.17 to 2.48). CONCLUSION: Children with asthma reported by their parents in 1968 were more likely than not to be free of symptoms as adults. The subjects who had more severe asthma (especially if it developed after the age of 2 and was associated with reduced expiratory flow), were female, or had parents who had asthma were at an increased risk of having asthma as an adult. These findings have implications for the treatment and prognosis of childhood asthma, targeting preventive and educational strategies and understanding the onset of asthma in adult life.

Parity and decreased use of oral contraceptives as predictors of asthma in young women.

BACKGROUND: Asthma is more prevalent among males in childhood, but females report higher rates in adulthood. The reasons are unknown; although it has been hypothesized that hormonal factors may explain this sex-dependent risk of adult-onset asthma. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether a woman's reproductive history or use of oral contraceptives is associated with adult-onset asthma. METHODS: In 1991-1993, we surveyed 681 women aged 29-32 years randomly sampled from participants first surveyed at age 7 years by the 1968 Tasmanian Asthma Survey, a study of all children born in 1961 and attending school. Current asthma was defined as reporting asthma or wheezy breathing in the past 12 months. RESULTS: In women who did not have asthma or wheezy breathing by age 7 years, 13% had current asthma. The risk of current asthma in these who were parous increased with the number of births (odds ratio (OR) 1.50 per birth, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.01-2.23 P=0.04) while women with one birth were at a lower risk than nulliparous women (OR 0.46 95% CI 0.2-1.06, P=0.07). Independent of parity, the risk decreased by 7% (95% CI 0-13%) per year of oral contraceptive pill use in all women. In women who did have asthma or wheezy breathing by age 7 years, neither reproductive history nor oral contraceptive pill use predicted current asthma. CONCLUSION: Our observation that parity and decreased oral contraceptive use predict asthma in women, is consistent with the hypothesis that the asthma that develops after childhood is in part a response to endogenous and exogenous female hormones. This may be due to alterations of cytokine responses by the pregnant state, triggering adult-onset asthma in women.

Univariate and multivariate methods for sexing the sacrum.

Metric data on 200 sacra of known sex, age and race are analyzed to determine the usefulness of conventional observations for determining sex in this bone. Results of the univariate analysis show that significant sex differences in the sacrum involve primarily the top portion of the bone for both whites and blacks. However, measurements of curvature are important sex differences in the sample of blacks. A new index relating the S1 body to sacral breadth is proposed as more useful in classifying the bones by sex than indices involving other measurements. Discriminant analysis shows that the sample of whites can be analyzed significantly better by this method than by using an index. The choice of univariate or multivariate method must depend on the condition of the bone, and will be influenced to some extent by the race from which the sample is drawn.

Incorporation of twins in the regressive logistic model for pedigree disease data.

Segregation and twin disease concordance analyses have assumed a theoretical underlying liability following a multivariate normal distribution. For reasons of computation, of incorporation of measured explanatory variables, and of testing of fit and assumptions, newer analytical methods are being developed. The regressive logistic model (RLM) relies on expressing the pedigree likelihood as a product of conditional probabilities, one for each individual. In addition to logistic regression modelling of measured epidemiological variables on disease prevalence, there is modelling of vertical transmission, of transmission of unmeasured genotypes and of sibship environment. This paper discusses methods for the analysis of binary traits in twins and in pedigrees. Some extensions to the RLM for pedigrees which include twins are proposed. These enable exploration of twin concordance in the context of the twins' common parenthood, the sibship similarities within the family, and the twins' similarity in age, sex, genes and environment.

The associations between childhood asthma and atopy, and parental asthma, hay fever and smoking.

The aim of this analysis was to examine the degree to which a life time prevalence of asthma in a 7-year-old child is statistically associated with atopic conditions of the child, and with parental asthma, hay fever and smoking. In 1968, 8585 children who were born in 1961 and who were attending school in Tasmania were surveyed. This comprised 99% of the eligible population. The prevalence of a history of asthma in the 7-year-olds was 16.2% (males 19.0%, females 13.2%). Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that a history of asthma in a 7-year-old was associated with the child being male (odds ratio [OR] 1.56; 99% confidence interval 1.30-1.86), having a history of hay fever (3.86; 3.12-4.78), eczema (2.04; 1.63-2.55), hives (1.34; 1.09-1.65) or allergy to foods or medicines (1.70; 1.26-2.30), the child's mother or father having a history of asthma (2.63; 2.08-3.31 or 2.52; 1.99-3.19, respectively), and the mother being a smoker (1.26; 1.05-1.51). Parental hay fever and paternal smoking were not independently associated with childhood asthma. The strength of association between childhood asthma and parental asthma was independent of the sex of either the parent or the child, and of atopic conditions in the child. In the 133 children for whom both parents were asthmatic, 65 (49%) had a history of asthma.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)