Predicting the exposure of diving grey seals to shipping noise.

There is high spatial overlap between grey seals and shipping traffic, and the functional hearing range of grey seals indicates sensitivity to underwater noise emitted by ships. However, there is still very little data regarding the exposure of grey seals to shipping noise, constraining effective policy decisions. Particularly, there are few predictions that consider the at-sea movement of seals. Consequently, this study aimed to predict the exposure of adult grey seals and pups to shipping noise along a three-dimensional movement track, and assess the influence of shipping characteristics on sound exposure levels. Using ship location data, a ship source model, and the acoustic propagation model, RAMSurf, this study estimated weighted 24-h sound exposure levels (10-1000 Hz) (SELw). Median predicted 24-h SELw was 128 and 142 dB re 1 µPa2s for the pups and adults, respectively. The predicted exposure of seals to shipping noise did not exceed best evidence thresholds for temporary threshold shift. Exposure was mediated by the number of ships, ship source level, the distance between seals and ships, and the at-sea behaviour of the seals. The results can inform regulatory planning related to anthropogenic pressures on seal populations.

Optogenetic disruption of sleep continuity impairs memory consolidation.

Memory consolidation has been proposed as a function of sleep. However, sleep is a complex phenomenon characterized by several features including duration, intensity, and continuity. Sleep continuity is disrupted in different neurological and psychiatric conditions, many of which are accompanied by memory deficits. This finding has raised the question of whether the continuity of sleep is important for memory consolidation. However, current techniques used in sleep research cannot manipulate a single sleep feature while maintaining the others constant. Here, we introduce the use of optogenetics to investigate the role of sleep continuity in memory consolidation. We optogenetically targeted hypocretin/orexin neurons, which play a key role in arousal processes. We used optogenetics to activate these neurons at different intervals in behaving mice and were able to fragment sleep without affecting its overall amount or intensity. Fragmenting sleep after the learning phase of the novel object recognition (NOR) task significantly decreased the performance of mice on the subsequent day, but memory was unaffected if the average duration of sleep episodes was maintained at 62-73% of normal. These findings demonstrate the use of optogenetic activation of arousal-related nuclei as a way to systematically manipulate a specific feature of sleep. We conclude that regardless of the total amount of sleep or sleep intensity, a minimal unit of uninterrupted sleep is crucial for memory consolidation.

Automation of duplicate record detection for systematic reviews: Deduplicator.

BACKGROUND: To describe the algorithm and investigate the efficacy of a novel systematic review automation tool "the Deduplicator" to remove duplicate records from a multi-database systematic review search. METHODS: We constructed and tested the efficacy of the Deduplicator tool by using 10 previous Cochrane systematic review search results to compare the Deduplicator's 'balanced' algorithm to a semi-manual EndNote method. Two researchers each performed deduplication on the 10 libraries of search results. For five of those libraries, one researcher used the Deduplicator, while the other performed semi-manual deduplication with EndNote. They then switched methods for the remaining five libraries. In addition to this analysis, comparison between the three different Deduplicator algorithms ('balanced', 'focused' and 'relaxed') was performed on two datasets of previously deduplicated search results. RESULTS: Before deduplication, the mean library size for the 10 systematic reviews was 1962 records. When using the Deduplicator, the mean time to deduplicate was 5 min per 1000 records compared to 15 min with EndNote. The mean error rate with Deduplicator was 1.8 errors per 1000 records in comparison to 3.1 with EndNote. Evaluation of the different Deduplicator algorithms found that the 'balanced' algorithm had the highest mean F1 score of 0.9647. The 'focused' algorithm had the highest mean accuracy of 0.9798 and the highest recall of 0.9757. The 'relaxed' algorithm had the highest mean precision of 0.9896. CONCLUSIONS: This demonstrates that using the Deduplicator for duplicate record detection reduces the time taken to deduplicate, while maintaining or improving accuracy compared to using a semi-manual EndNote method. However, further research should be performed comparing more deduplication methods to establish relative performance of the Deduplicator against other deduplication methods.

Systematic review automation tools improve efficiency but lack of knowledge impedes their adoption: a survey.

OBJECTIVE: We investigated systematic review automation tool use by systematic reviewers, health technology assessors and clinical guideline developerst. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: An online, 16-question survey was distributed across several evidence synthesis, health technology assessment and guideline development organizations. We asked the respondents what tools they use and abandon, how often and when do they use the tools, their perceived time savings and accuracy, and desired new tools. Descriptive statistics were used to report the results. RESULTS: A total of 253 respondents completed the survey; 89% have used systematic review automation tools - most frequently whilst screening (79%). Respondents' "top 3" tools included: Covidence (45%), RevMan (35%), Rayyan and GRADEPro (both 22%); most commonly abandoned were Rayyan (19%), Covidence (15%), DistillerSR (14%) and RevMan (13%). Tools saved time (80%) and increased accuracy (54%). Respondents taught themselves to how to use the tools (72%); lack of knowledge was the most frequent barrier to tool adoption (51%). New tool development was suggested for the searching and data extraction stages. CONCLUSION: Automation tools will likely have an increasingly important role in high-quality and timely reviews. Further work is required in training and dissemination of automation tools and ensuring they meet the desirable features of those conducting systematic reviews.

The TRIP database showed most acute respiratory infections questions were already addressed by Cochrane reviews.

OBJECTIVES: Cochrane systematic reviews require more methodological support from Cochrane Review Groups (CRGs) than is customarily received by authors from journals; CRGs must therefore prioritize reviews to conserve resources. The TRIP database provided a data set of questions to guide prioritization for the acute respiratory infections (ARIs) CRG. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: We extracted the ARI searches from the TRIP database (2010 to 2017) that contained at least one disease and one clinical management term, (defined as a "search"), and tabulated these by frequency. RESULTS: There were 314,346 ARI searches from which we inferred 45,497 clinical questions, covering 365 topics. Two-thirds (30,541) of these addressed 20 clinical questions, of which treatment were the most frequent, followed by diagnosis, mortality, and prognosis. The five most frequent clinical questions were "Influenza + Vaccination" 4,989 (12.1%), "acute otitis media + antibiotics" 3,578 (8.7%), "common cold + vitamin C" 3,528 (8.6%), "meningitis + corticosteroids" 1,910 (4.6%), and "pneumonia + general treatment" 1,765 (4.3%). The 20 most frequent clinical questions were addressed by Cochrane reviews or protocols. CONCLUSION: ARI questions are common and repeated often. Most may have been addressed by Cochrane reviews. The remainder form the basis of a priority list to assign resources for future Cochrane topics.

Determining the gaps between Cochrane reviews and trials of effectiveness of interventions for acute respiratory infections: an audit.

BACKGROUND: Cochrane primarily aims to systematically review trials of effectiveness that are important to inform clinical decisions. Editorial groups support authors to achieve high-quality reviews and prioritise review proposals in their clinical domain that are submitted or elicited. Prioritising proposals requires two approaches, identifying (1) clinical practises for which the evidence of effectiveness is uncertain and (2) interventions in which there are trials of effectiveness (especially randomised controlled trials (RCTs)) not systematically reviewed. This study addresses this second approach for the Cochrane Acute Respiratory Infections Group (CARIG) in order to identify RCTs of acute respiratory infections that have not been systematically reviewed. METHODS: We exported, on the 9th of September 2014, and then compared the group's trials register of RCTs against a list of current Cochrane ARI (systematic) Reviews to identify gaps in topics (the same intervention and health condition) where completed trials have not been systematically reviewed. We assigned a principle intervention and health condition to each of 157 Cochrane reviews (CRs) and 5393 RCTs. RESULTS: A majority of topics had been systematically reviewed; however, a substantial number (2174 or 41%) of RCTs were not included in any review. The topic that had been systematically reviewed the most was antibiotic vs placebo for pneumonia with 11 CRs and 205 RCTs. The topic that was the subject of most RCTs was vaccination for influenza with 525 RCTs and 6 CRs. Also, 6 CRs had no RCTs ('empty reviews'). CONCLUSIONS: We identified many RCT topics that have not been systematically reviewed. They need to be addressed in a separate process to establish their priority to clinicians.

Intrinsic and extrinsic factors drive ontogeny of early-life at-sea behaviour in a marine top predator.

Young animals must learn to forage effectively to survive the transition from parental provisioning to independent feeding. Rapid development of successful foraging strategies is particularly important for capital breeders that do not receive parental guidance after weaning. The intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of variation in ontogeny of foraging are poorly understood for many species. Grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) are typical capital breeders; pups are abandoned on the natal site after a brief suckling phase, and must develop foraging skills without external input. We collected location and dive data from recently-weaned grey seal pups from two regions of the United Kingdom (the North Sea and the Celtic and Irish Seas) using animal-borne telemetry devices during their first months of independence at sea. Dive duration, depth, bottom time, and benthic diving increased over the first 40 days. The shape and magnitude of changes differed between regions. Females consistently had longer bottom times, and in the Celtic and Irish Seas they used shallower water than males. Regional sex differences suggest that extrinsic factors, such as water depth, contribute to behavioural sexual segregation. We recommend that conservation strategies consider movements of young naïve animals in addition to those of adults to account for developmental behavioural changes.

A comparison of the performance of seven key bibliographic databases in identifying all relevant systematic reviews of interventions for hypertension.

BACKGROUND: Bibliographic databases are the primary resource for identifying systematic reviews of health care interventions. Reliable retrieval of systematic reviews depends on the scope of indexing used by database providers. Therefore, searching one database may be insufficient, but it is unclear how many need to be searched. We sought to evaluate the performance of seven major bibliographic databases for the identification of systematic reviews for hypertension. METHODS: We searched seven databases (Cochrane library, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE), Excerpta Medica Database (EMBASE), Epistemonikos, Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online (MEDLINE), PubMed Health and Turning Research Into Practice (TRIP)) from 2003 to 2015 for systematic reviews of any intervention for hypertension. Citations retrieved were screened for relevance, coded and checked for screening consistency using a fuzzy text matching query. The performance of each database was assessed by calculating its sensitivity, precision, the number of missed reviews and the number of unique records retrieved. RESULTS: Four hundred systematic reviews were identified for inclusion from 11,381 citations retrieved from seven databases. No single database identified all the retrieved systematic reviews for hypertension. EMBASE identified the most reviews (sensitivity 69 %) but also retrieved the most irrelevant citations with 7.2 % precision (Pr). The sensitivity of the Cochrane library was 60 %, DARE 57 %, MEDLINE 57 %, PubMed Health 53 %, Epistemonikos 49 % and TRIP 33 %. EMBASE contained the highest number of unique records (n = 43). The Cochrane library identified seven unique records and had the highest precision (Pr = 30 %), followed by Epistemonikos (n = 2, Pr = 19 %). No unique records were found in PubMed Health (Pr = 24 %) DARE (Pr = 21 %), TRIP (Pr = 10 %) or MEDLINE (Pr = 10 %). Searching EMBASE and the Cochrane library identified 88 % of all systematic reviews in the reference set, and searching the freely available databases (Cochrane, Epistemonikos, MEDLINE) identified 83 % of all the reviews. The databases were re-analysed after systematic reviews of non-conventional interventions (e.g. yoga, acupuncture) were removed. Similarly, no database identified all the retrieved systematic reviews. EMBASE identified the most relevant systematic reviews (sensitivity 73 %) but also retrieved the most irrelevant citations with Pr = 5 %. The sensitivity of the Cochrane database was 62 %, followed by MEDLINE (60 %), DARE (55 %), PubMed Health (54 %), Epistemonikos (50 %) and TRIP (31 %). The precision of the Cochrane library was the highest (20 %), followed by PubMed Health (Pr = 16 %), DARE (Pr = 13 %), Epistemonikos (Pr = 12 %), MEDLINE (Pr = 6 %), TRIP (Pr = 6 %) and EMBASE (Pr = 5 %). EMBASE contained the most unique records (n = 34). The Cochrane library identified seven unique records. The other databases held no unique records. CONCLUSIONS: The coverage of bibliographic databases varies considerably due to differences in their scope and content. Researchers wishing to identify systematic reviews should not rely on one database but search multiple databases.

Navigating uncertain waters: a critical review of inferring foraging behaviour from location and dive data in pinnipeds.

In the last thirty years, the emergence and progression of biologging technology has led to great advances in marine predator ecology. Large databases of location and dive observations from biologging devices have been compiled for an increasing number of diving predator species (such as pinnipeds, sea turtles, seabirds and cetaceans), enabling complex questions about animal activity budgets and habitat use to be addressed. Central to answering these questions is our ability to correctly identify and quantify the frequency of essential behaviours, such as foraging. Despite technological advances that have increased the quality and resolution of location and dive data, accurately interpreting behaviour from such data remains a challenge, and analytical methods are only beginning to unlock the full potential of existing datasets. This review evaluates both traditional and emerging methods and presents a starting platform of options for future studies of marine predator foraging ecology, particularly from location and two-dimensional (time-depth) dive data. We outline the different devices and data types available, discuss the limitations and advantages of commonly-used analytical techniques, and highlight key areas for future research. We focus our review on pinnipeds - one of the most studied taxa of marine predators - but offer insights that will be applicable to other air-breathing marine predator tracking studies. We highlight that traditionally-used methods for inferring foraging from location and dive data, such as first-passage time and dive shape analysis, have important caveats and limitations depending on the nature of the data and the research question. We suggest that more holistic statistical techniques, such as state-space models, which can synthesise multiple track, dive and environmental metrics whilst simultaneously accounting for measurement error, offer more robust alternatives. Finally, we identify a need for more research to elucidate the role of physical oceanography, device effects, study animal selection, and developmental stages in predator behaviour and data interpretation.

Better duplicate detection for systematic reviewers: evaluation of Systematic Review Assistant-Deduplication Module.

BACKGROUND: A major problem arising from searching across bibliographic databases is the retrieval of duplicate citations. Removing such duplicates is an essential task to ensure systematic reviewers do not waste time screening the same citation multiple times. Although reference management software use algorithms to remove duplicate records, this is only partially successful and necessitates removing the remaining duplicates manually. This time-consuming task leads to wasted resources. We sought to evaluate the effectiveness of a newly developed deduplication program against EndNote. METHODS: A literature search of 1,988 citations was manually inspected and duplicate citations identified and coded to create a benchmark dataset. The Systematic Review Assistant-Deduplication Module (SRA-DM) was iteratively developed and tested using the benchmark dataset and compared with EndNote's default one step auto-deduplication process matching on ('author', 'year', 'title'). The accuracy of deduplication was reported by calculating the sensitivity and specificity. Further validation tests, with three additional benchmarked literature searches comprising a total of 4,563 citations were performed to determine the reliability of the SRA-DM algorithm. RESULTS: The sensitivity (84%) and specificity (100%) of the SRA-DM was superior to EndNote (sensitivity 51%, specificity 99.83%). Validation testing on three additional biomedical literature searches demonstrated that SRA-DM consistently achieved higher sensitivity than EndNote (90% vs 63%), (84% vs 73%) and (84% vs 64%). Furthermore, the specificity of SRA-DM was 100%, whereas the specificity of EndNote was imperfect (average 99.75%) with some unique records wrongly assigned as duplicates. Overall, there was a 42.86% increase in the number of duplicates records detected with SRA-DM compared with EndNote auto-deduplication. CONCLUSIONS: The Systematic Review Assistant-Deduplication Module offers users a reliable program to remove duplicate records with greater sensitivity and specificity than EndNote. This application will save researchers and information specialists time and avoid research waste. The deduplication program is freely available online.

Writing for publication: faculty development initiative using social learning theory.

Demonstrating scholarly competency is an expectation for nurse faculty. However, there is hesitancy among some faculty to fully engage in scholarly activities. To strengthen a school of nursing's culture of scholarship, a faculty development writing initiative based on Social Learning Theory was implemented. The authors discuss this initiative to facilitate writing for publication productivity among faculty and the successful outcomes.