Drawing on a landscape analysis of existing data-sharing initiatives, in-depth interviews with expert stakeholders, and public deliberations with community advisory panels across the U.S., we describe features of the evolving medical information commons (MIC). We identify participant-centricity and trustworthiness as the most important features of an MIC and discuss the implications for those seeking to create a sustainable, useful, and widely available collection of linked resources for research and other purposes.

During the 2009 influenza pandemic, a rapid assessment of disease severity was a challenge as a significant proportion of cases did not seek medical care; care-seeking behaviour changed and the proportion asymptomatic was unknown. A random-digit-dialling telephone survey was undertaken during the 2011/12 winter season in England and Wales to address the feasibility of answering these questions. A proportional quota sampling strategy was employed based on gender, age group, geographical location, employment status and level of education. Households were recruited pre-season and re-contacted immediately following peak seasonal influenza activity. The pre-peak survey was undertaken in October 2011 with 1061 individuals recruited and the post-peak telephone survey in March 2012. Eight hundred and thirty-four of the 1061 (78.6%) participants were successfully re-contacted. Their demographic characteristics compared well to national census data. In total, 8.4% of participants self-reported an influenza-like illness (ILI) in the previous 2 weeks, with 3.2% conforming to the World Health Organization (WHO) ILI case definition. In total, 29.6% of the cases reported consulting their general practitioner. 54.1% of the 1061 participants agreed to be re-contacted about providing biological samples. A population-based cohort was successfully recruited and followed up. Longitudinal survey methodology provides a practical tool to assess disease severity during future pandemics.

The Pueblo population of Chaco Canyon during the Bonito Phase (AD 800–1130) employed agricultural strategies and water-management systems to enhance food cultivation in this unpredictable environment. Scepticism concerning the timing and effectiveness of this system, however, remains common. Using optically stimulated luminescence dating of sediments and LiDAR imaging, the authors located Bonito Phase canal features at the far west end of the canyon. Additional ED-XRF and strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) analyses confirm the diversion of waters from multiple sources during Chaco’s occupation. The extent of this water-management system raises new questions about social organisation and the role of ritual in facilitating responses to environmental unpredictability.

Protected areas are central to global efforts to prevent species extinctions, with many countries investing heavily in their establishment. Yet the designation of protected areas alone can only abate certain threats to biodiversity. Targeted management within protected areas is often required to achieve fully effective conservation within their boundaries. It remains unclear what combination of protected area designation and management is needed to remove the suite of processes that imperil species. Here, using Australia as a case study, we use a dataset on the pressures facing threatened species to determine the role of protected areas and management in conserving imperilled species. We found that protected areas that are not resourced for threat management could remove one or more threats to 1,185 (76%) species and all threats to very few (n = 51, 3%) species. In contrast, a protected area network that is adequately resourced to manage threatening processes within their boundary could remove one or more threats to almost all species (n = 1,551; c. 100%) and all threats to almost half (n = 740, 48%). However, 815 (52%) species face one or more threats that require coordinated conservation actions that protected areas alone could not remove. This research shows that investing in the continued expansion of Australia's protected area network without providing adequate funding for threat management within and beyond the existing protected area network will benefit few threatened species. These findings highlight that as the international community expands the global protected area network in accordance with the 2020 Strategic Plan for Biodiversity, a greater emphasis on the effectiveness of threat management is needed.

The Taipan galaxy survey (hereafter simply ‘Taipan’) is a multi-object spectroscopic survey starting in 2017 that will cover 2π steradians over the southern sky (δ ≲ 10°, |b| ≳ 10°), and obtain optical spectra for about two million galaxies out to z < 0.4. Taipan will use the newly refurbished 1.2-m UK Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory with the new TAIPAN instrument, which includes an innovative ‘Starbugs’ positioning system capable of rapidly and simultaneously deploying up to 150 spectroscopic fibres (and up to 300 with a proposed upgrade) over the 6° diameter focal plane, and a purpose-built spectrograph operating in the range from 370 to 870 nm with resolving power R ≳ 2000. The main scientific goals of Taipan are (i) to measure the distance scale of the Universe (primarily governed by the local expansion rate, H 0) to 1% precision, and the growth rate of structure to 5%; (ii) to make the most extensive map yet constructed of the total mass distribution and motions in the local Universe, using peculiar velocities based on improved Fundamental Plane distances, which will enable sensitive tests of gravitational physics; and (iii) to deliver a legacy sample of low-redshift galaxies as a unique laboratory for studying galaxy evolution as a function of dark matter halo and stellar mass and environment. The final survey, which will be completed within 5 yrs, will consist of a complete magnitude-limited sample (i ⩽ 17) of about 1.2 × 106 galaxies supplemented by an extension to higher redshifts and fainter magnitudes (i ⩽ 18.1) of a luminous red galaxy sample of about 0.8 × 106 galaxies. Observations and data processing will be carried out remotely and in a fully automated way, using a purpose-built automated ‘virtual observer’ software and an automated data reduction pipeline. The Taipan survey is deliberately designed to maximise its legacy value by complementing and enhancing current and planned surveys of the southern sky at wavelengths from the optical to the radio; it will become the primary redshift and optical spectroscopic reference catalogue for the local extragalactic Universe in the southern sky for the coming decade.

I propose that there remains a central role for the item (or its equivalent) in a wider range of search and search-related tasks/functions than might be conveyed by the article. I consider the functional relationship between the framework and some aspects of previous theories, and suggest some challenges that the new framework might encounter.

Leibovich et al. argue persuasively that researchers should not assume that approximate number system (ANS) tasks harness an innate sense of number. However, some studies have reported a causal link between ANS tasks and mathematics performance, implicating the ANS in the development of numerical skills. Here we report a p-curve analysis, which indicates that these experimental studies do not contain evidential value.

Among the most important stimuli for developing the FLAIR multi-object spectroscopy system on the 1.2-m UK Schmidt Telescope was its potential for carrying out large-scale redshift surveys of galaxies of intermediate magnitude (B <~ 17). During FLAIR’s lengthy development period, these objects provided the yardstick by which the system’s performance was measured, and a number of limited-area redshift surveys were carried out. We are now following these with a 1-in-3 survey over the 60 fields of the ROE/Durham Galaxy Catalogue to produce a redshift map of some 4000 galaxies out to a distance of ~ 300h −1 Mpc (where the parameter h is the Hubble constant expressed as a fraction of 100 kms−1 Mpc−1). In this paper we summarise the results from our redshift surveys to highlight the capabilities of FLAIR. We present a status report on the current large-scale survey, and show that the recently-introduced FLAIR II system will speed its progress considerably.

The four-fold advantage over a conventional 4 m reflector which naive information theory confers on the 1.2 m UK Schmidt telescope (Dawe and Watson 1982, Watson 1983) is only approachable in practice under certain rather specific conditions. These relate principally to the surface distribution on the sky of the object classes of interest, and the type of detection employed. Clearly, for general survey work with sky-limited photographic detection, the information advantage is high, but it can be demonstrated (Dawe and Watson 1983) that the relatively new technique of multi-object fibre-optics spectroscopy (eg Hill et al. 1980, 1982, Gray 1983, Lund and Enard 1983) with linear detectors offers very high potential in certain regimes of operation. In particular, the UK Schmidt telescope (UKST) equipped with 400 fibre channels has four times the effective light grasp (= number of fibres utilized × aperture) of a 4 m reflector (with a 1 deg field and equipped with any number of fibres) for target objects with surface densities between approximately 1 and 10 per square degree (Dawe and Watson 1983). Objects ranging from galactic variable stars to quasars lie within these limits, but of especial interest are galaxies, whose apparent luminosity function in this range of surface densities runs from magnitudes 15 to 17 (MacGillivray, private communication). Large-scale, medium accuracy (60 km s−1) redshift surveys of galaxies within this magnitude range promise to be extremely fruitful (Davis 1982) and are easily within the reach of the UKST fibre-coupled to a CCD spectrograph (Watson and Dawe 1984).