The PREDICTS database: a global database of how local terrestrial biodiversity responds to human impacts

Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species' threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeographic extents, and that support computation of a range of biodiversity indicators, is necessary to enable better understanding of historical declines and to project - and avert - future declines. We describe and assess a new database of more than 1.6 million samples from 78 countries representing over 28,000 species, collated from existing spatial comparisons of local-scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and types of anthropogenic pressures, from terrestrial sites around the world. The database contains measurements taken in 208 (of 814) ecoregions, 13 (of 14) biomes, 25 (of 35) biodiversity hotspots and 16 (of 17) megadiverse countries. The database contains more than 1% of the total number of all species described, and more than 1% of the described species within many taxonomic groups - including flowering plants, gymnosperms, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, beetles, lepidopterans and hymenopterans. The dataset, which is still being added to, is therefore already considerably larger and more representative than those used by previous quantitative models of biodiversity trends and responses. The database is being assembled as part of the PREDICTS project (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems - http://www.predicts.org.uk). We make site-level summary data available alongside this article. The full database will be publicly available in 2015.

The Belfast Storytelling Database: A spontaneous social interaction database with laughter focused annotation

To support the endeavor of creating intelligent interfaces between computers and humans the use of training materials based on realistic human-human interactions has been recognized as a crucial task. One of the effects of the creation of these databases is an increased realization of the importance of often overlooked social signals and behaviours in organizing and orchestrating our interactions. Laughter is one of these key social signals; its importance in maintaining the smooth flow of human interaction has only recently become apparent in the embodied conversational agent domain. In turn, these realizations require training data that focus on these key social signals. This paper presents a database that is well annotated and theoretically constructed with respect to understanding laughter as it is used within human social interaction. Its construction, motivation, annotation and availability are presented in detail in this paper.

The COMET initiative database: progress and activities update (2014)

The COMET Initiative database is a repository of studies relevant to the development of core outcome sets (COS). Use of the website continues to increase, with more than 16,500 visits in 2014 (36 % increase over 2013), 12,257 unique visitors (47 % increase), 9780 new visitors (43 % increase) and a rise in the proportion of visits from outside the UK (8565 visits; 51 % of all visits). By December 2014, a total of 6588 searches had been completed, with 2383 in 2014 alone (11 % increase). The growing awareness of the need for COS is reflected in the website and database usage figures.

Potentially inappropriate prescribing in two populations with differing socio-economic profiles: a cross-sectional database study using the PROMPT criteria

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to establish the prevalence of potentially inappropriate prescribing (PIP) in middle-aged adults (45-64 years) in two populations with differing socio-economic profiles, and to investigate factors associated with PIP, using the PROMPT (PRescribing Optimally in Middle-aged People's Treatments) criteria.METHODS: A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted using 2012 data from the Enhanced Prescribing Database (EPD), covering the full population in Northern Ireland and the Health Services Executive Primary Care Reimbursement Service (HSE-PCRS) database, covering the most socio-economically deprived third of the population in this age group in the Republic of Ireland. The prevalence for each PROMPT criterion and overall prevalence of PIP were calculated. Logistic regression was used to investigate the association between PIP and gender, age group and polypharmacy.RESULTS: This study included 441,925 patients from the EPD and 309,748 patients from the HSE-PCRS database. Polypharmacy was common in both datasets (46.7 % in the HSE-PCRS and 20.3 % in the EPD). The prevalence of PIP was 42.9 % (95%CI 42.7, 43.1) in the HSE-PCRS and 21.1 % (95%CI 21.0, 21.2) in the EPD. Age group, female gender and polypharmacy were significantly associated with PIP in both populations (p < 0.05) and polypharmacy had the strongest association.CONCLUSIONS: PIP is common amongst middle-aged people with the risk of PIP increasing with polypharmacy. Differences in the prevalence of polypharmacy and PIP between the two populations may relate to heterogeneity in healthcare services and different socio-economic profiles, with higher rates of multimorbidity and associated polypharmacy in more deprived groups.

Geochronological database and classification system for age uncertainties in Neotropical pollen records.

The newly updated inventory of palaeoecological research in Latin America offers an important overview of sites available for multi-proxy and multi-site purposes. From the collected literature supporting this inventory, we collected all available age model metadata to create a chronological database of 5116 control points (e.g. 14C, tephra, fission track, OSL, 210Pb) from 1097 pollen records. Based on this literature review, we present a summary of chronological dating and reporting in the Neotropics. Difficulties and recommendations for chronology reporting are discussed. Furthermore, for 234 pollen records in northwest South America, a classification system for age uncertainties is implemented based on chronologies generated with updated calibration curves. With these outcomes age models are produced for those sites without an existing chronology, alternative age models are provided for researchers interested in comparing the effects of different calibration curves and age–depth modelling software, and the importance of uncertainty assessments of chronologies is highlighted. Sample resolution and temporal uncertainty of ages are discussed for different time windows, focusing on events relevant for research on centennial- to millennial-scale climate variability. All age models and developed R scripts are publicly available through figshare, including a manual to use the scripts.

Potentially inappropriate prescribing among people with dementia in primary care: a retrospective cross-sectional study using the Enhanced Prescribing Database

Background: Little is known about prescribing appropriateness for community-dwelling people with dementia (PWD).
Objective To estimate potentially inappropriate prescribing (PIP) prevalence among PWD in primary care in Northern Ireland, and to investigate associations between PIP and polypharmacy, age and gender.

Methods: A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted, using data from the Enhanced Prescribing Database. Patients were eligible if a medicine indicated for dementia management was dispensed to them during 01/01/2013 – 31/12/2013. Polypharmacy was indicated by use of ≥4 repeat medications from different drug groups. A subset of the Screening Tool of Older Persons Potentially Inappropriate Prescriptions (STOPP) criteria, comprising 36 indicators, was applied to the dataset. Overall prevalence of PIP and the prevalence per each STOPP criterion was calculated as a proportion of all eligible persons in the dataset. Logistic regression was used to investigate associations between PIP, polypharmacy, age and gender.

Results: The study population comprised 6826 patients. Polypharmacy was observed in 81.5% (n=5564) of patients. PIP prevalence during the study period was 64.4% (95% CI 63.2 – 65.5; n=4393). The most common instance of PIP was the use of anticholinergic/antimuscarinic medications (n=1718; 25.2%; 95% CI 24.2 – 26.2). In multivariable analyses, both polypharmacy and gender (being female) were associated with PIP, with odds ratios of 7.6 (95% CI 6.6 – 8.7) and 1.3 (95% CI 1.2 – 1.4) respectively. No association was observed between PIP and age, after adjustments for gender and polypharmacy.

Conclusion: This study identified a high prevalence of PIP in community-dwelling PWD. Future interventions may need to focus on certain therapeutic categories and polypharmacy.

Managed Acceleration for In-Memory Database Analytic Workloads

In-Memory Databases (IMDBs), such as SAP HANA, enable new levels of database performance by removing the disk bottleneck and by compressing data in memory. The consequence of this improved performance means that reports and analytic queries can now be processed on demand. Therefore, the goal is now to provide near real-time responses to compute and data intensive analytic queries. To facilitate this, much work has investigated the use of acceleration technologies within the database context. While current research into the application of these technologies has yielded positive results, they have tended to focus on single database tasks or on isolated single user requests. This paper uses SHEPARD, a framework for managing accelerated tasks across shared heterogeneous resources, to introduce acceleration into an IMDB. Results show how, using SHEPARD, multiple simultaneous user queries all receive speed-up by using a shared pool of accelerators. Results also show that offloading analytic tasks onto accelerators can have indirect benefits for other database workloads by reducing contention for CPU resources.