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Pillars of open science are often included within the editorial pol-icies of scholarly journals, including policies on open access publication,availability of underlying research data, preprints and open peer review. Theaim of this paper is to examine and analyse perceptions and editorial prac-tices related to open access, preprints, open research data and open peerreview, from the perspective of editors of scientific journals published inSpain, to gain an insight into editorial policies related to open science.Results and data were obtained by a combined method of online interviewsand an online questionnaire. The online survey was sent to editors fromjournals indexed in the Dulcinea directory, which at the time of the studyincluded 1875 academic journals. A total of 420 responses (22.4%) wereobtained. The results indicated that 92% of the journals were open accessjournals, 2% of the journals conducted open peer review, 15% of thejournals had instructions to allow archiving preprints, and out of375 responses, only 59 journals (16%) reported having a policy on underly-ing research data. Based on these results, there is a trend in favour of openaccess, but the perceived barriers to open peer review outweighed theadvantages. There is also some reluctance to allow preprints to be madeavailable. This concern might be because editors want authors and readersto read and cite the contents published in their journals, rather than theirpreprint versions.

At large scales, the mechanisms underpinning stability in natural communities may vary in importance due to changes in species composition, mean abundance, and species richness. Here we link species characteristics (niche positions) and community characteristics (richness and abundance) to evaluate the importance of stability mechanisms in 156 butterfly communities monitored across three European countries and spanning five bioclimatic regions. We construct niche-based hierarchical structural Bayesian models to explain first differences in abundance, population stability, and species richness between the countries, and then explore how these factors impact community stability both directly and indirectly (via synchrony and population stability). Species richness was partially explained by the position of a site relative to the niches of the species pool, and species near the centre of their niche had higher average population stability. The differences in mean abundance, population stability, and species richness then influenced how much variation in community stability they explained across the countries. We found, using variance partitioning, that community stability in Finnish communities was most influenced by community abundance, whereas this aspect was unimportant in Spain with species synchrony explaining most variation; the UK was somewhat intermediate with both factors explaining variation. Across all countries, the diversity–stability relationship was indirect with species richness reducing synchrony which increased community stability, with no direct effects of species richness. Our results suggest that in natural communities, biogeographical variation observed in key drivers of stability, such as population abundance and species richness, leads to community stability being limited by different factors and that this can partially be explained due to the niche characteristics of the European butterfly assemblage.

Aims To assess the prognostic accuracy of comorbidity‐adjusted National Early Warning Score in suspected Coronavirus disease 2019 patients transferred from nursing homes by the Emergency Department. Design Multicentre retrospective cohort study. Methods Patients transferred by high‐priority ambulances from nursing homes to Emergency Departments with suspected severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection, from March 12 to July 31 2020, were considered. Included variables were: clinical covariates (respiratory rate, oxygen saturation, systolic blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, level of consciousness and supplemental oxygen use), the presence of comorbidities and confirmatory analytical diagnosis of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection. The primary outcome was a 2‐day mortality rate. The discriminatory capability of the National Early Warning Score was assessed by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve in two different cohorts, the validation and the revalidation, which were randomly selected from the main cohort. Results A total of 337 nursing homes, 10 advanced life support units, 51 basic life support units and 8 hospitals in Spain entailing 1,324 patients (median age 87 years) was involved in this study. Two‐day mortality was 11.5% (152 cases), with a positivity rate of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 of 51.2%, 77.7% of hospitalization from whom 1% was of intensive care unit admission. The National Early Warning Score results for the revalidation cohort presented an AUC of 0.771, and of 0.885, 0.778 and 0.730 for the low‐, medium‐ and high‐level groups of comorbidities. Conclusion The comorbidity‐adjusted National Early Warning Score provides a good short‐term prognostic criterion, information that can help in the decision‐making process to guide the best strategy for each older adult, under the current pandemic. Impact What problem did the study address? Under the current coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, targeting older adults at high risk of deterioration in nursing homes remains challenging. What were the main findings? Comorbidity‐adjusted National Early Warning Score helps to forecast the risk of clinical deterioration more accurately. Where and on whom will the research have impact? A high NEWS, with a low level of comorbidity is associated with optimal predictive performance, making these older adults likely to benefit from continued follow up and potentially hospital referral under the current coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.

Neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) are webs of extracellular nuclear DNA extruded by dying neutrophils infiltrating tissue. NETs constitute a defence mechanism to entrap and kill fungi and bacteria. Tumours induce the formation of NETs to the advantage of the malignancy via a variety of mechanisms shown in mouse models. Here, we investigated the presence of NETs in a variety of human solid tumours and their association with IL-8 (CXCL8) protein expression and CD8+ T-cell density in the tumour microenvironment. Multiplex immunofluorescence panels were developed to identify NETs in human cancer tissues by co-staining with the granulocyte marker CD15, the neutrophil marker myeloperoxidase and citrullinated histone H3 (H3Cit), as well as IL-8 protein and CD8+ T cells. Three ELISA methods to detect and quantify circulating NETs in serum were optimised and utilised. Whole tumour sections and tissue microarrays from patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC; n = 14), bladder cancer (n = 14), melanoma (n = 11), breast cancer (n = 31), colorectal cancer (n = 20) and mesothelioma (n = 61) were studied. Also, serum samples collected retrospectively from patients with metastatic melanoma (n = 12) and NSCLC (n = 34) were ELISA assayed to quantify circulating NETs and IL-8. NETs were detected in six different human cancer types with wide individual variation in terms of tissue density and distribution. At least in NSCLC, bladder cancer and metastatic melanoma, NET density positively correlated with IL-8 protein expression and inversely correlated with CD8+ T-cell densities. In a series of serum samples from melanoma and NSCLC patients, a positive correlation between circulating NETs and IL-8 was found. In conclusion, NETs are detectable in formalin-fixed human biopsy samples from solid tumours and in the circulation of cancer patients with a considerable degree of individual variation. NETs show a positive association with IL-8 and a trend towards a negative association with CD8+ tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes. © 2021 The Authors. The Journal of Pathology published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. on behalf of The Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

Ground cover management (GCM) is an important agricultural practice used to reduce weed growth, erosion and runoff, and improve soil fertility. In the present study, an approach to account for GCM is proposed in the modeling of pesticide emissions to evaluate the environmental sustainability of agricultural practices. As a starting point, we include a cover crop compartment in the mass balance of calculating initial (within minutes after application) and secondary (including additional processes) pesticide emission fractions. The following parameters were considered: (i) cover crop occupation between the rows of main field crops, (ii) cover crop canopy density, and (iii) cover crop family. Two modalities of cover crop occupation and cover crop canopy density were tested for two crop growth stages, using scenarios without cover crops as control. From that, emission fractions and related ecotoxicity impacts were estimated for pesticides applied to tomato production in Martinique (French West Indies) and to grapevine cultivation in the Loire Valley (France). Our results demonstrate that, on average, the presence of a cover crop reduced the pesticide emission fraction reaching field soil by a factor of 3 compared with bare soil, independently of field crop and its growth stage, and cover crop occupation and density. When considering cover exported from the field, ecotoxicity impacts were reduced by approximately 65% and 90%, compared with bare soil for grapevine and tomato, respectively, regardless of the emission distribution used. Because additional processes may influence emission distributions under GCM, such as runoff, leaching, or preferential flow, further research is required to incorporate these processes consistently in our proposed GCM approach. Considering GCM in pesticide emission modeling highlights the potential of soil cover to reduce pesticide emissions to field soil and related freshwater ecotoxicity. Furthermore, the consideration of GCM as common farming practice allows the modeling of pesticide emissions in intercropping systems. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2021;00:1–15. © 2021 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC).

Aim: It is important to understand the factors affecting community stability because ecosystem function is increasingly at risk from biodiversity loss. Here, we evaluate how a key factor, the position of local environmental conditions within the thermal range of the species, influences the stability of butterfly communities at a continental scale.Location: Spain, UK and Finland.Time period: 1999– 2017.Major taxa studied: Butterflies.Methods: We tested the following hypotheses about how species responses to tem-perature anomalies aggregate to influence stability: Hypothesis 1, species have con-trasting responses to local temperature anomalies at opposing edges of their thermal range; hypothesis 2, communities with central thermal range positions have higher community stability; and the impacts of thermal range position on community stabil-ity are driven by hypothesis 3, population asynchrony, or hypothesis 4, additive popu-lation stability. Data were analysed at 876 sites for 157 species.Results: We found some support for hypothesis 1, because there were interactions be-tween thermal range and response to temperature anomalies such that species at dif-ferent range edges could provide weak compensatory dynamics. However, responses were nonlinear, suggesting strong declines with extreme anomalies, particularly at the hot range edge. Hypothesis 2 was supported in part, because community stabil-ity increased with central thermal range positions and declined at the edges, after accounting for species richness and community abundance. Thermal range position was weakly correlated with asynchrony (hypothesis 3) and population stability (hy-pothesis 4), although species richness and population abundance had larger impacts. Main conclusions: Future extreme heat events will be likely to impact species nega-tively across their thermal range, but might be particularly impactful on populations at the hottest end of the thermal range. Thermal range position influenced community stability because range edge communities were stable. However, the prediction of community stability from thermal range position is challenging because of nonlinear responses to temperature, with small temperature anomalies producing weak com-pensatory dynamics, but large extreme events synchronizing dynamics. The UK butterfly monitoring scheme is organized and funded by Butterfly Conservation, the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, British Trust for Ornithology and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee. The Catalan butterfly monitoring scheme is funded by the Catalan Government, the Barcelona Provincial Council and other local partners. The Catalan butterfly monitoring scheme also incorpo-rates the Andora butterfly monitoring scheme, which is run by Centre d'Estudis de la Neu i la Mutanya d'Andorra (CENMA) and funded by Govern d'Andorra. The Finnish butterfly monitoring scheme is organ-ized and funded by the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE).

Purple phototrophic bacteria (PPB) showed an enormous potential for polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) production using the hydrolysate from lignocellulosic waste as feedstock. Thermal hydrolysis pretreatment was carried out at three different temperatures (120, 150 and 180 °C) aiming to improve the biodegradability of the lignocellulosic waste. After this pretreatment, two streams are collected: a solid and a liquid fraction. The anaerobic digestion process of the pretreated solid fraction at 180 °C increased its biodegradability extent by 31% compared to the untreated biomass, yielding 210 ± 10 LCH4 kgVS-1 even when the liquid fraction was removed. On the photo-heterotrophic of the liquid fraction, PPB was able to remove up to 55% of COD during batch operation, showing peaks of PHA production yield up to 21 wt. %. The treatment of the liquid fraction obtained at high temperatures (T˃120⁰C) reduce biomass growth and COD consumption efficiency, and thus potential productivity, with no effect over the specific activity This article is protected by copyright. All rights reservedand the biomass yield, indicating growth limitation by lack of nutrients (N and P). A preliminary economical assessment indicates suitable economic viability based on an energetic autarchy process. This study pioneered a PPB-based biorefinery for PHA production from lignocellulosic residues and aligned within the bioeconomy strategy of the European Union.