Recent changes to US research funding are having far-reaching consequences that imperil the integrity of science and the provision of care to vulnerable populations. Resisting these changes, the BJPsych Portfolio reaffirms its commitment to publishing mental science and advancing psychiatric knowledge that improves the mental health of one and all.

Despite extensive paleoenvironmental research on the postglacial history of the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, uncertainties remain regarding the region's deglaciation, vegetation development, and past hydroclimate. To elucidate this complex environmental history, we present new proxy datasets from Hidden and Kelly lakes, located in the eastern Kenai lowlands at the foot of the Kenai Mountains, including sedimentological properties (magnetic susceptibility, organic matter, grain size, and biogenic silica), pollen and macrofossils, diatom assemblages, and diatom oxygen isotopes. We use a simple hydrologic and isotope mass balance model to constrain interpretations of the diatom oxygen isotope data. Results reveal that glacier ice retreated from Hidden Lake's headwaters by ca. 13.1 cal ka BP, and that groundwater was an important component of Kelly Lake's hydrologic budget in the Early Holocene. As the forest developed and the climate became wetter in the Middle to Late Holocene, Kelly Lake reached or exceeded its modern level. In the last ca. 75 years, rising temperature caused rapid changes in biogenic silica content and diatom oxygen isotope values. Our findings demonstrate the utility of mass balance modeling to constrain interpretations of paleolimnologic oxygen isotope data, and that groundwater can exert a strong influence on lake water isotopes, potentially confounding interpretations of regional climate.

Tropical soda apple is an aggressive prickly perennial shrub growing up to 2 m high. It invades open to semishaded areas, including pastures, forests, riparian zones, roadsides, recreational areas, and horticultural and cropping areas. In Australia during August 2010, the weed was identified on the New South Wales Mid North Coast. It is believed that tropical soda apple has been present in this area for a number of years and both systematic and ad hoc surveys have found the weed in other satellite locations. The discovery of tropical soda apple at several cattle handling facilities indicated that cattle are a significant vector for the weed. The aim of this project was to use the National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) data to trace cattle movements from affected properties throughout New South Wales and into other Australian states. This has proved advantageous, as there are few other nonecological mechanisms to systematically trace significant weed movement. We have been able to conduct a pathway analysis of where this weed is likely to occur across New South Wales through the use of NLIS. Importantly, we can use this information to pinpoint surveillance activities for local managers, thus ensuring better use of resources. We have also been able to create a stochastic model for incursions at these sites using information gleaned from the NLIS data.

A study of an inshore southern North Sea population of lesser weever, Echiichthys vipera, on the Suffolk coast, England, found this small, abundant, benthic fish to reach an age of 15 years and suffer an adult mortality rate of only 0.23 y−1. The maximum length observed of 195 mm Standard length (SL) (225 mm total length, TL) was the greatest yet reported and many individuals >140 mm SL (163 mm TL) were caught between 2009 and 2012. Previous studies have reported a maximum of 160 mm TL and a von Bertalanffy asymptotic TL of 150.3 mm. Age structure analysis showed that recruitment into the local inshore Sizewell population continued until 5 or more years of age. A 6 year age of recruitment corresponds to the age when they have been reported to have disappeared from offshore locations and previously assumed to have died from old age. Regular seasonal changes in local abundance were observed with peak captures during May, presumably caused by seasonal immigration, followed by a summer minimum and a second, more variable, maximum in early autumn before the winter minimum. The winter minimum in captures may be due to either inactivity or offshore migration. Lesser weever has evolved a long-lived, slow growing, life history strategy unusual for small benthic fish in the southern North Sea. By spending long periods hidden in sand, using venom for defence and remaining inactive for an extended period each winter, lesser weever has adopted a strategy which favours high survival and increased longevity.

Persuasion and Healing was one of the most significantbooks for psychiatry and clinical psychology during the 20th century. Thirtyyears after it was first published, Frank was joined by his daughter, JuliaB. Frank, in an expanded edition in 1991. After training in psychology andmedicine at Harvard and Berlin, then psychiatry at the Johns HopkinsUniversity, he had come to formulate a truly fundamental question: what ishappening when we make a troubled person better? In trying to answer this,Frank took the study of psychotherapy to a conceptually much higher level,doing so in a non-partisan manner in times when psychoanalysis was endemicand highly influential in America. He helped a whole generation think moredeeply about psychotherapy, to see beyond the immediacy of thedoctor–patient situation. The forces that are at work are also to be seen inreligious healing ceremonies, in the prescription of a placebo and inrhetoric using hermeneutics. In each, the recipient is urged to accept thetherapist's assumptive world and is expected to be the better for doingso.

Patients with psychiatric disorders have an increased rate of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality compared with the general population. Metabolic issues such as weight gain, dyslipidemia, diabetes mellitus, diabetic ketoacidosis, and pancreatitis have been reported with the use of antipsychotic agents. Although atypical antipsychotics have not been linked directly to the development of metabolic syndrome, these medications have been shown to increase risk factors that can lead to metabolic and endocrine disturbances. Therefore, clinicians should provide ongoing monitoring for patients who are being treated for psychiatric disorders with these agents. According to the 2004 Consensus Report on Antipsychotics, screening measures should include baseline and follow-up monitoring of personal/family histories, weight (body mass index), waist circumference, blood pressure, fasting plasma glucose, and fasting lipid profile.

Patients with psychiatric disorders have an increased rate of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality compared with the general population. Metabolic issues such as weight gain, dyslipidemia, diabetes mellitus, diabetic ketoacidosis, and pancreatitis have been reported with the use of antipsychotic agents. Although atypical antipsychotics have not been linked directly to the development of metabolic syndrome, these medications have been shown to increase risk factors that can lead to metabolic and endocrine disturbances. Therefore, clinicians should provide ongoing monitoring for patients who are being treated for psychiatric disorders with these agents. According to the 2004 Consensus Report on Antipsychotics, screening measures should include baseline and follow-up monitoring of personal/family histories, weight (body mass index), waist circumference, blood pressure, fasting plasma glucose, and fasting lipid profile.

This article is an executive summary of a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia Surveillance Definition Working Group, entitled “Developing a new, national approach to surveillance for ventilator-associated events” and published in Critical Care Medicine. The full report provides a comprehensive description of the Working Group process and outcome.

In September 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) convened a Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia (VAP) Surveillance Definition Working Group to organize a formal process for leaders and experts of key stakeholder organizations to discuss the challenges of VAP surveillance definitions and to propose new approaches to VAP surveillance in adult patients (Table 1).

Australia has a generally progressive approach to mental health law, reflective of international trends in human rights. Responsibility for most legislation is vested in the six States and two Territories, a total of eight jurisdictions, such that at any given time several new mental health acts are in preparation. In addition there is a model mental health act that promotes common standards. Transfer of orders between jurisdictions relies on Memoranda of Understanding between them, and is patchy. State and Territory legislation is generally cognisant of international treaty obligations, which are themselves the preserve of the Federal Parliament and legislature. UK legislation has had a key influence in Australia, the 1959 Mental Health Act in particular, with its strong emphasis on voluntary hospitalisation, prefacing deinstitutionalisation.

During the past two decades, sociologists, political scientists, and historians have been increasingly interested in the development of modern states and their administrative structures. By focusing on specific policies and government agencies, these scholars have provided various frameworks for understanding the growth of the American state in the twentieth century, especially during the New Deal and the 1940s. One issue that has received scant attention, though, is housing policies. Public housing, federally insured home mortgages, and tax policies that privileged home owners were significant state interventions that profoundly affected economic relationships and the formation of social policy. Housing policies therefore need to be seen as part of larger economic and political developments.

Aim – To describe the rationale for introducing molecular genetic analyses to psychiatric epidemiology. This offers new possibilities for aetiological research on common mental disorders. Method – In addition to the traditional variables used in field surveys, it is now possible to include molecular genetic information. This is currently done by looking for allelic associations rather than by linkage analysis, and can be directed either at traits conferring susceptibility or at states. The purpose is to identify quantitative trait loci (QTLs) by examining candidate genes. An alternative strategy is genome scanning, which can identify genes by their chromosomal position with increasing resolution. Results – Some associations have already been reported in the literature, linking personality traits with particular alleles: extraversion or novelty-seeking with a polymorphism of the dopamine DRD4 receptor gene; and neuroticism with a polymorphism of the serotonin transporter gene. Conclusions – These findings are of major interest, but cannot yet be looked upon as confirmed. What is significant for epidemiology is the opportunity to link behavioural and psychiatric variables with genes influencing biochemical and physiological processes in the brain, and to do so at the population level. For further allelic association studies, there are four principal requirements: valid measures of phenotypes; replication of findings across diverse populations; more candidate genes; and exploration of the interaction between genotype and environmental exposures from conception to late life. Through such research, psychiatric epidemiology can now investigate biopsychosocial phenomena.

The Galapagos Archipelago is renowned for its high endemism but little effort has been made to quantify the human disturbance that compromises the islands' ecological integrity. We provide a quantitative assessment of anthropogenic degradation, which we define as areas either transformed by direct human activity or heavily invaded by four of the most prevalent alien plant species (Psidium guajava, Rubus niveus, Cinchona pubescens and Syzygium jambos). We assessed how the amount of degraded area varied among the six major vegetation zones (bare ground, littoral, arid, transition, humid and very humid) across five inhabited or formerly inhabited islands. Overall, we found that 37,833 ha (5.5%) of the Archipelago have been completely degraded. The islands that have suffered the greatest human impact (13,000–14,000 ha each) are Santa Cruz (the most populous) and Isabela (the largest). When vegetation type is considered the humid and very humid vegetation zones have been most affected by humans (29 and 45%, respectively). On San Cristobal and Santa Cruz 100 and 76%, respectively, of the very humid zone and 94 and 88%, respectively, of the humid zone have been transformed. These results are underestimations as mapping of the anthropogenic change in some vegetation zones (e.g. on Floreana) is poor, and the analysis did not take into account the effects of introduced animals. Nevertheless, this research points to an urgent need to prioritize restoration efforts in humid and very humid vegetation zones and to improve spatial mapping across the Archipelago to obtain a better understanding of the impacts of humans.