No abstract

Access to multiple males can benefit a female because it increases her fecundity and/or the performance of her offspring due to males providing material benefits and/or genetic gains from polyandry (i.e. cryptic female choice). However, the presence of more males can also impose costs on females that arise from an elevated mating rate and/or increased harassment. Understanding how different environments influence the relative magnitude of these costs and benefits is important to understanding how factors that affect the rate of male-female interactions, such as the sex ratio and density of each sex, will alter the evolution of traits due to shifts in the magnitude of sexual conflict and sexual selection. Here we explored whether the net fitness of female seed beetles (Callosobruchus maculatus) is affected by breeding in either a dry or wet environment when housed with differing numbers of males (either none, one or four). Consistent with costly male harassment, females housed with four males laid significantly fewer eggs than those housed alone or with a single male. However, there was no significant effect of the number of males on a female's egg laying rate, her lifespan, larval development rate or the egg-adult survival of offspring. Although females in the wet environment lived significantly longer, the decline in the rate of egg laying and egg-adult survival with maternal age was stronger in the wet than the dry environment. Crucially, there was no evidence that water availability affects the net fitness cost to females of being exposed to more males.

Background COVID-19 vaccine coverage in low- and middle-income countries continues to be challenging. As supplies increase, coverage is increasingly becoming determined by rollout capacity. Methods We developed a deterministic compartmental model of COVID-19 transmission to explore how age-, risk-, and dose-specific vaccine prioritisation strategies can minimise severe outcomes of COVID-19 in Sierra Leone. Results Prioritising booster doses to older adults and adults with comorbidities could reduce the incidence of severe disease by 21% and deaths by 32% compared to the use of these doses as primary doses for all adults. Providing a booster dose to pregnant women who present to antenatal care could prevent 39% of neonatal deaths associated with COVID-19 infection during pregnancy. The vaccination of children is not justified unless there is sufficient supply to not affect doses delivered to adults. Conclusions Our paper supports current WHO SAGE vaccine prioritisation guidelines (released January 2022). Individuals who are at the highest risk of developing severe outcomes should be prioritised, and opportunistic vaccination strategies considered in settings with limited rollout capacity.

Maternal pneumococcal vaccines have been proposed as a method of protecting infants in the first few months of life. In this paper, we assess the cost-effectiveness of a maternal pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine using a health sector perspective. We estimate the costs of delivering a maternal pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine, and the healthcare costs averted through the prevention of severe pneumococcal outcomes such as pneumonia and meningitis, with estimates of vaccine effectiveness based on previous research. Our model estimates that a maternal pneumococcal program would cost $570 per DALY averted (2020 USD, range $558-582), and hence not be cost-effective in our study setting of Sierra Leone using the nation’s GDP per capita of $527 as a benchmark. However, the choice of discounting rates for health outcomes determines whether the maternal pneumococcal vaccine was deemed cost-effective. Without discounting, the cost per DALY averted would be $277 (53% of Sierra Leone’s GDP per capita). Further, the cost per DALY averted would be $128 (24% GDP per capita) if PPV could be procured at the same cost relative to PCV in Sierra Leone as on the PAHO reference price list. Overall, our paper demonstrates that maternal pneumococcal vaccines have the potential to be cost-effective in low-income settings; however, their cost-effectiveness depends on the choice of discounting rates determined by social values, and negotiations with vaccine providers on vaccine price. Vaccine price is the largest cost driving the cost-effectiveness of a future maternal pneumococcal vaccine.

The ‘Born or Built? — Our Robotic Future’ (‘BOB?’) exhibition examines relationships between humans, robots and artificial intelligence. It encourages visitors to explore ethical and social issues surrounding these new technologies and invites visitors to post their own questions. We examine visitor responses to the exhibit “A of the Day”, which encourages visitors to engage by writing down their own question prompted by their experience in ‘BOB?’. As responses were submitted, it became apparent that the questions posed by visitors were potentially a valuable contribution to future science communication policy about robotics, and to those designing and implementing these technologies. We performed a content analysis that distilled themes in visitors' open-ended questioning that conveyed visitor knowledge and insight into what science communication about robotic technologies needs to address. Taken this way, visitors' questions form a moment of dialogue between the public and science communicators, engineers and researchers in which visitors contribute their knowledge and ideas about robotics. Such moments of dialogue are potentially valuable if the public is to be included in the development of robotics technology to build trust in robotics technology.