GPS Tracking Devices Attached to Toucans Help Scientists Gather Data on Seed Dispersal

In Panama, scientists form the Smithsonian Institute are using GPS tracking devices to gather data on how Toucans disperse seeds.

Toucans love nutmeg seeds. When Toucans eat, they gulp the nutmeg seeds whole. The outer pulp is processed in the bird’s crop, and the hard inner seed is then regurgitated.

There were were two main things scientists had to do to set up the experiment. First, the scientists had to figure out how long and how many seeds the Toucans would eat in a day. So the scientists gathered fresh seeds from a nutmeg tree and fed them to captive toucans at the Rotterdam Zoo.

During the GPS tracking experiment, five zoo toucans fed 100 nutmeg seeds took an average of 25.5 minutes to process and regurgitate the seeds.

Next the scientists captured six wild toucans that were feeding from a large nutmeg tree in the rainforest. The scientists attached lightweight backpacks containing GPS tracking devices to the wild birds. The GPS tracking devices recorded the birds’ exact location every 15 minutes and used accelerometers to measure the Toucans’ daily activity level.

The GPS-enabled backpacks are designed to fall off the Toucans after 10 days.

When matched with the seed-regurgitation time of the zoo toucans, the GPS tracking data indicated the wild toucans were probably dropping nutmeg seeds a distance of 472 feet, on average, from the mother tree. Each seed had a 56 percent probability of being dropped at least 328 feet from its mother tree and an 18 percent chance of being dropped some 656 feet from the tree. In addition, the accelerometer revealed that the toucans’ peak activity and movement was in the morning followed by a lull at midday, a secondary activity peak in the afternoon, and complete inactivity at night. This is a normal pattern of tropical birds.

“Time of feeding had a strong influence on seed dispersal,” the scientists write. “Seeds ingested in morning (breakfast) and afternoon (dinner) were more likely to achieve significant dispersal than seeds ingested mid-day (lunch).” This observation explains why tropical nutmegs are “early morning specialists” with fruits that typically ripen at early and mid-morning so they are quickly removed by birds.

Ideally, the scientists observed, nutmeg trees could increase their seed dispersal distances by producing fruit with gut-processing times of around 60 minutes.

Source: The original article, “The effect of feeding time on dispersal of Virola seeds by toucans determined from GPS tracking and accelerometers,” was recently published in the journal Acta Oecologica (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1146609X1100107X).

Patient safety: what's to be learned from road safety?

The idea that healthcare has a lot to learn from industries that are inherently risky but nonetheless manage good safety records – like aviation – has proven enormously persuasive. Aviation provides many examples of how to improve things that are currently not done as well as they could be, including effective teamwork and standardisation of routines.

But there are important differences between healthcare and air travel. Aviation incidents, when they occur, are dramatic, headline-grabbing events. And when a plane crashes, the crew has as much chance of going down as the passengers, so the stakes are as high for them as those they serve. By contrast, when errors occur in healthcare, they tend to harm one patient at a time, and clinicians are not affected by the outcome in the same way as patients.

Further differences lie in the scale and nature of the systems, and the constraints on what can and can’t be done. In aviation, the number of different types of personnel and types of procedure is limited: flights are scheduled and airlines can control exactly how many people are on a flight. Both crew and passengers can be compelled to comply with safety instructions, and those thought likely to pose a security risk or cause trouble can be stopped from boarding.

Hospitals are vastly more complex. Delivering good healthcare may require crossing multiple organisational, professional and institutional boundaries. Healthcare organisations conduct many thousands of different procedures, involving multiple staff, and are subject to problems of uncontrollable surge. But they often lack the ability to turn people away either because of capacity problems or because individuals pose a risk in some way.

Many of the factors that disrupt good care may be outside the control of individuals or teams, and they are dealing with autonomous patients, who may either decline or be unable to cooperate with what others feel would be in the best interests of safety. And hospital facilities, sometimes built in centuries past, are often poorly designed for the tasks they now undertake.

So, though there is much to be learned from aviation, it will never provide the full answer for healthcare, and some of its ‘solutions’ may require more adaptation to make them work in healthcare than is often recognised. In fact, looking at examples where achieving safety has been much more challenging, such as road safety, may in fact provide important lessons for patient safety.

As in healthcare, road safety accidents are only rarely headline-grabbers. Road use has the same deceptive familiarity as healthcare, and everyone has had a prang or two.

Road transportation suffers from many problems endured by healthcare: unsuitable physical infrastructure, poorly coordinated design, complexity introduced by individual autonomy and preferences, unpredictable surges, behaviour that is not always consistent with what is known to be safety-promoting, and a wide range of expertise and experience among road users, among many other things. But though it is not fully there yet, road transportation has succeeded in becoming much safer.

Both casualties and deaths on the road have shown steep declines since the 1960s (see the Office for National Statistics website), even though road traffic has substantially increased. Nearly 8,000 people were killed on the roads in the UK 1966, compared with just over 2,200 in 2009. The key is that improvements have been brought about by a range of strategies, targeting different levels and facets of the problem.

Structural and regulatory changes have gone hand in hand with large scale behavioural and cultural adjustments, and improvements to technology and infrastructure. For example, legal interventions have targeted unsafe behaviours such as speeding and drink driving; car design has massively improved; and standards of driving have improved through more rigorous training and licensing regimes.

Some interventions have removed choice and autonomy (such as removing the right to travel without a seatbelt, or to drive a banger that’s deemed not to be road worthy), but over time the resistance to them has diminished. That many people continue to be killed every year shows how difficult it can be to achieve institutional, cultural and behavioural change across the board, especially once the fabled low-hanging fruit has been picked.

Clearly, I am not trying to argue that road safety is a perfect model for patient safety. But neither is aviation. We need to be smart about how we learn from other areas, recognise that we need to select and combine many different instruments, figure out the optimal balance of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ interventions, and keep working at the wicked problems.

Mary is Professor of Medical Sociology at the University of Leicester and a member of The Health Foundation's Improvement Science Network.

Record satisfaction levels for Yorkshire telecare service

Satisfaction levels for a Yorkshire telecare service that allows elderly and vulnerable people to live independently for longer is at an all time high, according to figures from Wakefield and District Housing (WDH).

Care Link, which provides a range of modern community alarms and telecare equipment to more than 15,500 customers across the Wakefield district, has revealed that overall satisfaction for the service has grown to 96%.

Last year it became the first business in Yorkshire to receive full accreditation from its representative body, the Telecare Services Association (TSA), and will come as welcome news for the government on both local and national levels.

Telecare services help people live independently in their own homes for longer and are seen as key parts in government strategy to deal with the UK’s ageing population as they take pressure off care homes that are currently struggling to meet demand due to funding cuts from local authorities.

WDH Customer Contact Manager Mick Walsh said: “These figures are the result of our commitment to improving the service and driving it forward to meet the changing needs and requirements from our customer.

“This is obviously represented in the highest satisfaction levels we have ever recorded. This demonstrates that we are getting things right and delivering genuine peace of mind for our customers. We will continue to invest in modern technology to develop the service around those who use it.”

Care Link was founded in 1990 as part of Wakefield Council’s housing department and operated from a small converted flat in Normanton, with just 12 employees serving 7,000 customers.

Today it operates from a purpose built customer contact centre in Glasshoughton as part of WDH and has 40 employees working 24 hours a day – through Christmas, Easter and Bank Holidays – responding to emergency call-outs.

“We have a very special group of people working for us. They are absolutely dedicated to ensuring that our customers receive all the support they need, and that is the reason behind our success,” said Mr Walsh.

“Working for Care Link is more than just a job; it’s about serving the people who rely on us, round the clock, to the highest standard.”

Argyll Lone Worker Launches Proactive Risk Management Service

At the ‘Emergency Scotland 2011’ exhibition held at the SECC today, the UK’s largest Lone Worker service provider, Argyll, announced the release of ‘PRiSM’ a Proactive Risk and Safety Management service. PRiSM is a free of charge service to Argyll’s clients and stakeholders. It enables organisations with Lone Workers to identify and log the location of specific risks, such as violence & aggression, affecting their personnel and then ensure their safety by providing early intervention using powerful search tools or by issuing proactive alerts to Lone Workers upon approach to the risk location. This innovative solution is thought to be the first proactive service of it’s kind operated within the Lone Worker industry. The service has been developed by Argyll in consultation with Nick Arnold, the current Chairperson of the National Ambulance Security Group and LSMS based at East Midlands Ambulance Service who initially came to Argyll seeking a solution to enable an intelligent proactive link between workers and known locations of risk and this joint working brought about PRiSM which complies with the NHS Protect National Guidelines.

PRiSM is a membership based solution and it has been designed to be shared amongst key partner stakeholders whilst still meeting the requirements of legislation. Key risks to personnel are identified and logged by front-line staff using an Internet service. Incident markers are then vetted and eventually published to the wider membership using a rigorous management and review process. The solution is designed to reduce under reporting, eliminate false markers, minimise the time involved in creating warning markers, improve accessibility and improve management of risk incidents and data. PRiSM additionally provides each organisation with analytical statistics and helps improve work processes for risk warning markers. A formal review process ensures the quality of data reassuring the organisation that risk markers affecting the safety of personnel remain up-to-date and valid.

For further information on the PRiSM solution visit: PRiSM Solution

Garda handed $92,750 in penalties for failing to ensure worker safety

The vast majority of $92,750 in penalties levied against a national security company on Friday, for failing to ensure the safety of a female guard who was raped by an intruder at an unsecure construction site nearly five years ago, will go to a new program for safety training of lone workers.

Provincial court Judge Marlene Graham accepted the joint sentencing submission by Crown lawyer Alison McGill and Robbie Davidson, counsel for Garda Canada Securities Corp., which pleaded guilty to the Occupational Health and Safety Act charge.

The total amount includes a $5,000 fine and $750 victim fine surcharge, plus $87,000 for the Hazard Assessment Working Alone program at SAIT Polytechnic starting in September 2012.

"I like this program," said the 39-year-old woman who was attacked by the man about 3 a.m. on Nov. 1. "I feel nobody will get hurt after this program is going. It will benefit everybody."

Previously, the victim, who had been living in Canada for three years and had only been issued her security guard licence by Garda three weeks prior to the assault, told court in a victim impact statement she thought she was going to die.

"I was scared when I got there that night," she recalled on Friday outside court. "There was no entrance. It was just covered with plastic. When I heard the noise, I was in the corner so he wouldn't see me."

McGill previously told the judge this is the first such prosecution under the OHSA in Alberta, and possibly Canada, where a company has been charged after an employee working alone was the victim of a criminal offence.

The victim was called by a supervisor to keep watch overnight at a Macleod Trail site where a Shoppers Drug Mart was under construction after a co-worker called in sick.

Graham said Garda's primary negligence was failing to conduct a specific site assessment.

"In my view, this was very obviously a dangerous and unsafe site," said the judge. "It was an outdoor site just off Macleod Trail. "There was an exit door at the back that was always locked. One wonders why you'd have an exit door if it's always locked."

Graham noted the front of the site was covered by an orange tarp flap that was unsecured. She was provided with a chair, but no means of protection from anyone who might venture on to the site.

"There was a high degree of probability an intruder might enter at night in winter, for warmth or to take construction material . . . who knows what else," she said.

"It was also foreseeable that a criminal act could happen. It was patently unsafe and not addressed by Garda. It showed a high degree of negligence. (The victim) was affected profoundly by the sexual and physical assault.

"Garda is not to be prosecuted for the act of the intruder, but for its own negligence."

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/Garda+handed+penalties+failing+ensure+worker+safety/5077364/story.html#ixzz1RnMzd86q

US soldier makes app for tracking down Taliban fighters

Getting shot at by Taliban fighters and need to call an air strike? There's an app for that.

Tactical Nav can be downloaded to a smartphone to figure out where an enemy is firing from, and to call in an air strike or covering fire.

It was created by US army captain Jonathan Springer after two of his comrades were killed in a rocket attack.

He says it is as accurate as any technology currently in use for the same purpose, and far cheaper too.

Captain Springer is back in his Indiana home after a 12-month tour in Afghanistan with the 101st Airborne.

Over a beer, he remembers fallen comrades - and two in particular.

"Specialist Plunk and Specialist Thompson. We were in the Pesh River Valley. They took a rocket. Died instantly."

Those deaths, he said, got him thinking.

"What can I do to help prevent something like this in future?"

His answer was to create the Tactical Nav app, which troops can download to their smartphones.

"It combines three components," he said.

"A compass, a map, and a camera. It's pretty simple - but obviously it does a little more than that."

He said he's tested his app against everything currently in use in Afghanistan - and claimed it is just as accurate.

The app is designed to give soldiers exact co-ordinates for where enemy fire is coming from.

They can then send that information to their command centre, who will decide whether to call in an air strike, or send a rescue helicopter to help wounded troops.

"The first time I tried it for real," he said, "I sighed with relief.

"I could have got into trouble - but it worked.

"As a fire support officer, I take into battle a compass, binoculars, a map, a protractor, a GPS device - a secondary GPS device in case one fails - and batteries.

"What this does is, it combines all these components, and throws it into just the one app," he said.

But Captain Springer said he'd been disappointed that his US army bosses hadn't taken more of an interest in the idea.

He said he had spent about £20,000 (more than $30,000) of his own money - and that he asked the military for financial support.

"I emailed the army saying, 'I'm not looking for a pay-cheque, but are there any kind of grants or anything you can help me with?'

"They said, 'sorry, we don't have the funds right now'."

Captain Springer said he was "very frustrated" by that response. He called it "a slap in the face".

"It really hurts because I'm doing something for the troops. But it just motivates me to continue."

The US military didn't respond when Newsbeat asked them for a comment.

In the UK, the Ministry of Defence says it's "actively exploring" ways to use smartphones in recruitment and training, as well as on the battlefield.

Now, Captain Springer is selling his app to anyone that wants it - on the iPhone's app store.

"I only sell it to try to make back the money I invested - I don't see dollar signs. I see soldiers' lives," he said.

(For full report, go to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/13928538 )

Elderly 'facing cuts to care despite promises'

Social care budgets for the elderly in England will be cut this year - despite promises to invest more cash, according to an analysis of spending plans.

The Age UK research, based on freedom of information data, suggested spending on the over-65s would drop by over 8%.

The charity predicted the impact of such a cut could be "devastating" as the system was already at crisis point.

Care services minister Paul Burstow questioned the figures, suggesting the situation was not as bad as claimed.

He acknowledged budgets were "under pressure" but said that did not always lead to a deterioration in care.

"While some councils may simply be cutting care, others are working hard to get more for less with innovative ways of delivering better care, including using more telecare and cutting needless admissions to hospital and residential care," said Mr Burstow.

The findings come after extra money was promised in the 2010 spending review.

Ministers said £2bn more would be invested in social care by 2015, with the first tranche coming this financial year.

This was earmarked for both elderly care and younger adults with disabilities.
Rationing

The promise came after the government had announced a review of the system amid evidence councils were having to ration care because of the increased demands being placed on services by an ageing population.

That review is due to publish its recommendations next Monday (4th July) and pave the way for an overhaul of the means-tested system.

Social care has been struggling for funding in recent years with the overall budget only rising slightly above inflation.

In recognition of the problems, the government said last year it would set aside some extra funds to help the system until any new arrangements were introduced.

But the Age UK research suggested that the money was not yet getting through to the frontline of elderly care.

It asked all 152 councils with responsibility for social care for data on their spending plans and service provision for the elderly for this financial year.

The charity received information on spending from 110 councils, which suggested the budget would be cut by 8.4% - equivalent to £610m.

It also received evidence councils were coping by taking measures such as reducing the number of care home places and hours of home help.

Michelle Mitchell, from Age UK, said: "Funding for social care is already inadequate. The consequences of cutting expenditure further could be devastating.

"We are fearful that even more vulnerable older people will be left to struggle alone and in some cases will be put at risk."

Councillor David Rogers, of the Local Government Association (LGA), pointed out while extra money had been promised by ministers for social care, it was being cancelled out by the wider cuts to local government - its budget from central government is being reduced by a quarter over the next four years.

"As the LGA warned last year, and this report backs up, government funding cuts have left councils with huge gaps in their adult social care budgets. Savings have to be found and tough decisions will have to be made in some areas."