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Mimicry is considered a classic example of the elaborate adaptations that natural selection can produce, yet often similarity between Batesian (harmless) mimics and their unpalatable models is far from perfect. Variation in mimetic accuracy is a puzzle, as natural selection should favour mimics that are hardest to distinguish from their models. Numerous hypotheses exist to explain the persistence of inaccurate mimics, but most have rarely or never been tested against empirical observations from wild populations. One reason for this is the difficulty in measuring pattern similarity, a key aspect of mimicry. Here, we use a recently developed method, based on the distance transform of binary images, to quantify pattern similarity both within and among species for a group of hoverflies and their hymenopteran models. This allowed us to test three key hypotheses regarding inaccurate mimicry. Firstly, we tested the prediction that selection should be more relaxed in less accurate mimics, but found that levels of phenotypic variation are similar across most hoverfly species. Secondly, we found no evidence that mimics have to compromise between accuracy to multiple model species. However, we did find that darker-coloured hoverflies are less accurate mimics, which could lead to a trade-off between mimicry and thermoregulation in temperate regions. Our results shed light on a classic problem concerning the limitations of natural selection., (© 2016 The Author(s).)

Safety in aviation has often been compared with safety in healthcare. Following a recent article in this journal, the UK government set up an Independent Patient Safety Investigation Service, to emulate a similar well-established body in aviation. On the basis of a detailed review of relevant publications that examine patient safety in the context of aviation practice, we have drawn up a table of comparative features and a conceptual framework for patient safety. Convergence and divergence of safety-related behaviours across aviation and healthcare were derived and documented. Key safety-related domains that emerged included Checklists, Training, Crew Resource Management, Sterile Cockpit, Investigation and Reporting of Incidents and Organisational Culture. We conclude that whilst healthcare has much to learn from aviation in certain key domains, the transfer of lessons from aviation to healthcare needs to be nuanced, with the specific characteristics and needs of healthcare borne in mind. On the basis of this review, it is recommended that healthcare should emulate aviation in its resourcing of staff who specialise in human factors and related psychological aspects of patient safety and staff wellbeing. Professional and post-qualification staff training could specifically include Cognitive Bias Avoidance Training, as this appears to play a key part in many errors relating to patient safety and staff wellbeing.

The management of safety culture in international and culturally diverse organizations is a concern for many high-risk industries. Yet, research has primarily developed models of safety culture within Western countries, and there is a need to extend investigations of safety culture to global environments. We examined (i) whether safety culture can be reliably measured within a single industry operating across different cultural environments, and (ii) if there is an association between safety culture and national culture. The psychometric properties of a safety culture model developed for the air traffic management (ATM) industry were examined in 17 European countries from four culturally distinct regions of Europe (North, East, South, West). Participants were ATM operational staff (n = 5,176) and management staff (n = 1,230). Through employing multigroup confirmatory factor analysis, good psychometric properties of the model were established. This demonstrates, for the first time, that when safety culture models are tailored to a specific industry, they can operate consistently across national boundaries and occupational groups. Additionally, safety culture scores at both regional and national levels were associated with country-level data on Hofstede's five national culture dimensions (collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and long-term orientation). MANOVAs indicated safety culture to be most positive in Northern Europe, less so in Western and Eastern Europe, and least positive in Southern Europe. This indicates that national cultural traits may influence the development of organizational safety culture, with significant implications for safety culture theory and practice., (© 2015 Society for Risk Analysis.)

Background: Patient complaints have been identified as a valuable resource for monitoring and improving patient safety. This article critically reviews the literature on patient complaints, and synthesises the research findings to develop a coding taxonomy for analysing patient complaints., Methods: The PubMed, Science Direct and Medline databases were systematically investigated to identify patient complaint research studies. Publications were included if they reported primary quantitative data on the content of patient-initiated complaints. Data were extracted and synthesised on (1) basic study characteristics; (2) methodological details; and (3) the issues patients complained about., Results: 59 studies, reporting 88,069 patient complaints, were included. Patient complaint coding methodologies varied considerably (eg, in attributing single or multiple causes to complaints). In total, 113,551 issues were found to underlie the patient complaints. These were analysed using 205 different analytical codes which when combined represented 29 subcategories of complaint issue. The most common issues complained about were 'treatment' (15.6%) and 'communication' (13.7%). To develop a patient complaint coding taxonomy, the subcategories were thematically grouped into seven categories, and then three conceptually distinct domains. The first domain related to complaints on the safety and quality of clinical care (representing 33.7% of complaint issues), the second to the management of healthcare organisations (35.1%) and the third to problems in healthcare staff-patient relationships (29.1%)., Conclusions: Rigorous analyses of patient complaints will help to identify problems in patient safety. To achieve this, it is necessary to standardise how patient complaints are analysed and interpreted. Through synthesising data from 59 patient complaint studies, we propose a coding taxonomy for supporting future research and practice in the analysis of patient complaint data., (Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.)

Populations of genetically uniform microorganisms exhibit phenotypic heterogeneity, where individual cells have varying phenotypes. Such phenotypes include fitness-determining traits. Phenotypic heterogeneity has been linked to increased population-level fitness in laboratory studies, but its adaptive significance for wild microorganisms in the natural environment is unknown. Here, we addressed this by testing heterogeneity in yeast isolates from diverse environmental sites, each polluted with a different principal contaminant, as well as from corresponding control locations. We found that cell-to-cell heterogeneity (in resistance to the appropriate principal pollutant) was prevalent in the wild yeast isolates. Moreover, isolates with the highest heterogeneity were consistently observed in the polluted environments, indicating that heterogeneity is positively related to survival in adverse conditions in the wild. This relationship with survival was stronger than for the property of mean resistance (IC(50)) of an isolate. Therefore, heterogeneity could be the major determinant of microbial survival in adverse conditions. Indeed, growth assays indicated that isolates with high heterogeneities had a significant competitive advantage during stress. Analysis of yeasts after cultivation for ≥ 500 generations additionally showed that high heterogeneity evolved as a heritable trait during stress. The results showed that environmental stress selects for wild microorganisms with high levels of phenotypic heterogeneity., (© 2013 The Authors. Environmental Microbiology published by Society for Applied Microbiology and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Palatable Batesian mimics are avoided by predators because they resemble noxious or defended species. The striking resemblance of many hoverflies to noxious Hymenoptera is a "textbook" example of Batesian mimicry, but evidence that selection by predators has shaped the evolution of hoverfly patterns is weak. We looked for geographical and temporal trends in frequencies of morphs of the polymorphic hoverfly Volucella bombylans that would support the hypothesis that these morphs are Batesian mimics of different bumblebee species. The frequency of the black and yellow hoverfly morph was significantly positively related to the frequency of black and yellow bumblebees across 52 sites. Similarly, the frequency of the red-tailed hoverfly morph was positively related to the frequency of red-tailed bumblebees. However, the frequencies of hoverfly morphs were positively spatially autocorrelated, and after controlling for this, only one of the two common hoverfly morphs showed a significant positive relationship with its putative model. We conclude that the distribution of V. bombylans morphs probably reflects geographical variation in selection by predators resulting from differences in the frequencies of noxious bumblebee species., (© 2013 The Author(s). Evolution © 2013 The Society for the Study of Evolution.)

Aim: To compare the self-construal of nurses and doctors and establish whether their roles affect perceptions of independence and interdependence., Background: Previous research has identified that errors in patient care occur when health professionals do not work cohesively as a team and have divergent beliefs about collaboration. Thus, it is important to understand factors shaping these beliefs. Although these are usually explained by aspects of group norms, the concept of self-construal may serve as an underlying explanation., Design: A quasi-experimental design was used., Participants: One hundred and two nurses and doctors working in three nursing homes in Belgium took part in this study in 2009., Methods: Nurses' and doctors' self-construal was measured at their workplace, using Singelis' self-construal scale. Statistical differences between nurses and doctors were investigated using analysis of covariance., Results: Results showed statistically significant differences between doctors' and nurses' self-construal. Doctors reported higher and dominant levels of 'independent self-construal' compared with nurses. There were no differences between nurses and doctors for interdependence. However, gender differences emerged with male doctors reporting lower levels of interdependent self-construal than male nurses. Conversely, female doctors reported higher levels of interdependent self-construal than female nurses., Conclusions: Differences in the roles and training of nurses and doctors and in knowledge of their interdependencies may explain differences in self-construal. This might be useful for understanding why nurses and doctors develop divergent attitudes towards teamwork. Training that focuses on sharing knowledge on team interdependencies may positively influence teamwork attitudes and behaviour., (© 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Natural selection should favour parents that are able to adjust their offspring's life-history strategy and resource allocation in response to changing environmental and social conditions. Pathogens impose particularly strong and variable selective pressure on host life histories, and parental genes will benefit if offspring are appropriately primed to meet the immunological challenges ahead. Here, we investigated transgenerational immune priming by examining reproductive resource allocation by female mice in response to direct infection with Babesia microti prior to pregnancy. Female mice previously infected with B. microti gained more weight over pregnancy, and spent more time nursing their offspring. These offspring generated an accelerated response to B. microti as adults, clearing the infection sooner and losing less weight as a result of infection. They also showed an altered hormonal response to novel social environments, decreasing instead of increasing testosterone production upon social housing. These results suggest that a dominance-resistance trade-off can be mediated by cues from the previous generation. We suggest that strategic maternal investment in response to an infection leads to increased disease resistance in the following generation. Offspring from previously infected mothers downregulate investment in acquisition of social dominance, which in natural systems would reduce access to mating opportunities. In doing so, however, they avoid the reduced disease resistance associated with increased testosterone and dominance. The benefits of accelerated clearance of infection and reduced weight loss during infection may outweigh costs associated with reduced social dominance in an environment where the risk of disease is high.

Background: The ability of medical teams to develop and maintain team situation awareness (team SA) is crucial for patient safety. Limited research has investigated team SA within clinical environments. This study reports the development of a method for investigating team SA during the intensive care unit (ICU) round and describes the results., Methods: In one ICU, a sample of doctors and nurses (n = 44, who combined to form 37 different teams) were observed during 34 morning ward rounds. Following the clinical review of each patient (n = 105), team members individually recorded their anticipations for expected patient developments over 48 h. Patient-outcome data were collected to determine the accuracy of anticipations. Anticipations were compared among ICU team members, and the degree of consensus was used as a proxy measure of team SA. Self-report and observational data measured team-member involvement and communication during patient reviews., Results: For over half of 105 patients, ICU team members formed conflicting anticipations as to whether patients would deteriorate within 48 h. Senior doctors were most accurate in their predictions. Exploratory analysis found that team processes did not predict team SA. However, the involvement of junior and senior trainee doctors in the patient decision-making process predicted the extent to which those team members formed team SA with senior doctors., Conclusions: A new method for measuring team SA during the ICU round was successfully employed. A number of areas for future research were identified, including refinement of the situation awareness and teamwork measures.

Reports that low-intensity microwave radiation induces heat-shock reporter gene expression in the nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans, have recently been reinterpreted as a subtle thermal effect caused by slight heating. This study used a microwave exposure system (1.0 GHz, 0.5 W power input; SAR 0.9-3 mW kg(-1) for 6-well plates) that minimises temperature differentials between sham and exposed conditions (< or =0.1 degrees C). Parallel measurement and simulation studies of SAR distribution within this exposure system are presented. We compared five Affymetrix gene arrays of pooled triplicate RNA populations from sham-exposed L4/adult worms against five gene arrays of pooled RNA from microwave-exposed worms (taken from the same source population in each run). No genes showed consistent expression changes across all five comparisons, and all expression changes appeared modest after normalisation (< or =40% up- or down-regulated). The number of statistically significant differences in gene expression (846) was less than the false-positive rate expected by chance (1131). We conclude that the pattern of gene expression in L4/adult C. elegans is substantially unaffected by low-intensity microwave radiation; the minor changes observed in this study could well be false positives. As a positive control, we compared RNA samples from N2 worms subjected to a mild heat-shock treatment (30 degrees C) against controls at 26 degrees C (two gene arrays per condition). As expected, heat-shock genes are strongly up-regulated at 30 degrees C, particularly an hsp-70 family member (C12C8.1) and hsp-16.2. Under these heat-shock conditions, we confirmed that an hsp-16.2::GFP transgene was strongly up-regulated, whereas two non-heat-inducible transgenes (daf-16::GFP; cyp-34A9::GFP) showed little change in expression.

Maternal experience before and during pregnancy is known to play a key role in offspring development. However, the influence of social cues about disease in the maternal environment has not been explored. We indirectly exposed pregnant mice to infected neighbours by housing them next to non-contagious conspecifics infected with Babesia microti. We examined the effect of this indirect immunological exposure on both the females and their adult offspring. Exposed females had higher levels of serum corticosterone and increased kidney growth compared with those with uninfected neighbours. These exposed females subsequently produced offspring that as adults showed an accelerated immune response to B. microti and less aggression in social groups. We suggest that ambient information regarding disease is used adaptively to maximize offspring survival and reproductive success in a challenging environment. Our results shed light on the impact of social information and maternal effects on life histories, and have important consequences for our understanding of epidemiology and individual disease susceptibility in humans and other animals. They also lead us to question the suitability of some laboratory housing conditions during experimental procedures, which may impact negatively upon both animal welfare and the validity of animal science.