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Highly pathogenic zoonotic Hendra virus (HeV) and Nipah virus (NiV) are prototypic members of the genus Henipavirus, family Paramyxoviridae, that have natural reservoirs in pteropodid flying foxes (1). These viruses [...]

Formal peer mentoring schemes are often viewed as supportive mechanisms enabling individuals to engage with role models to scaffold the acquisition of social capital that aids successful transition between different educational or professional environments and to inspire and motivate decision-making processes. This study explores the findings of mentor exit interviews conducted at the end of a pilot peer-mentoring scheme to support aspirations for progression into postgraduate study that was delivered within a UK conservatoire's Faculty of Music. These exit interviews illuminated constellations of informal mentoring platforms, implicit within multiple sites where the 'horizontal' structure of music programmes (UK FHEQ levels 4-7) intersects with principal instrumental study and associated activities structured in 'vertical' departments. The findings suggested that these reflexive multi-directional exchanges are not formally conceptualised as 'mentoring' but recognised within the subject area, and hold potential transformative power in supporting students in their transition throughout higher education and beyond.

How should academic staff engage in outreach with communities outside of the university? The need of academics to answer this question has intensified in the UK given the changing priorities of academic job roles, shaped by increasing institutional concern for widening participation, graduate employability and research impact in an era of austerity and high tuition fees. While university outreach professionals, such as those in widening participation, have access to a range of networks, resources and support mechanisms for outreach activity, academics often face a series of profession-specific pressures that make engagement in outreach complex and contingent. This article draws upon the experience of 25 academics from 18 different subject areas and 18 institutions to examine and provide responses to key challenges faced by academics involved in outreach in the UK. We examine such issues as: the conceptualisation of outreach; funding; recognition and management of workload; nurturing relationships with internal and external partners; capacity-building; commercial interests, payment and responsibility; pedagogical style and content; integration of outreach into curricula, and evaluation of programmes. The examination offered is not all encompassing, but acts as a series of reference points to consider the challenges faced by UK academics in an evolving outreach sector.

Blue spaces, like canals, are central to health policies promoting physical activity (PA), enhancing wellbeing, and addressing inequalities. Alongside the health benefits, they can offer an array of societal, environmental, cultural, and other welfare-enhancing benefits, which shape the overall value of blue spaces for population wellbeing. This study investigated the multifaceted value of canals for promoting physical activity and wider community wellbeing from the perspective of local community members in Birmingham (UK). Two consensus workshops were conducted to identify enablers and barriers to engaging in PA alongside canals. Data were generated using the nominal group technique and analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. The community members shared that connecting with nature, enhancing mental health, and socialising were all key facilitators for using canals for PA. Prominent barriers identified were safety concerns, including anti-social behaviour, inadequate lighting, and fear of visiting alone, as well as a lack of accessibility. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of understanding the community perspective when considering the value of blue spaces, and subsequent investment opportunities. By incorporating the community perspective and embedding a notion of 'ownership' over these local assets, this will further enhance the sustainability of investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how and in what ways workplace 'sexual harassment' achieved social and legal recognition in the UK news press following its importation from North America in the mid-1970s. It assesses the role of feminist campaigners working within institutions (trade unions, human rights advocacy, the Equal Opportunities Commission and journalism itself) in shifting public discourse and in using the media to educate and promote social change. We demonstrate that the trajectory was far from a linear progression. Initial hostility within the popular press in the early 1980s was replaced with sympathetic coverage across the party-political spectrum by 1990. However, this consensus broke down in the 1990s as a result of politicised and polarised coverage of a series of claims brought by women in the services and armed forces against the backdrop of debates about 'compensation culture' and membership of the European Union. Whilst change was effected at the level of employment law, formal practice and in the human resources policies of larger employers, 'sexual harassment myths' were resilient as a thread within 'everyday cultural discourse' and, by implication, within informal workplace cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People convicted of child sex offences are viewed as a dangerous and demonised offender group, yet little research has considered their resettlement post-residency from Approved Premises. Using data from two qualitative studies carried out 15 years apart, we explore what changes there have been in the discourses and practices with residents convicted of child sex offences. The authors found that whilst rehabilitation and resettlement were contemporarily considered as more holistic endeavours, the primary function of the Approved Premises remains managing the risks of residents convicted of child sex offences. Most significantly, this hindered their social integration into the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurship skills have become a naturalised part of many curricula in higher education, especially in arts contexts. But what does the term actually mean? By investigating entrepreneurship research, and connecting it with political philosophy, we explore the ways in which the elusive figure of the entrepreneur, both in the academy and in society more generally, is far from being natural or inevitable, and is actually an elaborate type of construction with contradictory features.

Understanding student transition into higher education is an important aspect of module design, linking content, delivery, and assessment with a student's prior educational experience and knowledge bases. However, reflections on how modules designed choices are, generally, not widely disseminated. Here, we document the reflections of a junior lecturer responsible for redesigning a Level-4 Political Systems module and analyze the intentions of change via a transition pedagogy perspective, presenting a program renewal that establishes connected curriculum as an enabling infrastructure for students to actively engage with learning. First-year experience is considered as a major impacting factor of a student's subsequent success on a program of higher education and the diversification of student cohorts requires teaching staff to consider a wider number of intersectional factors that may impact on a student's opportunity to succeed in their studies. With a focus on simulations and active-learning, by providing examples of the thinking behind the resultant activities and assessment realignment we hope to provide an example of how a transition approach to a first-year module can be explored.

Abstract Background Quantification of ecosystem services, such as carbon (C) storage, can demonstrate the benefits of managing for both production and habitat conservation in agricultural landscapes. In this study, we evaluated C stocks and woody plant diversity across vineyard blocks and adjoining woodland ecosystems (wildlands) for an organic vineyard in northern California. Carbon was measured in soil from 44 one m deep pits, and in aboveground woody biomass from 93 vegetation plots. These data were combined with physical landscape variables to model C stocks using a geographic information system and multivariate linear regression. Results Field data showed wildlands to be heterogeneous in both C stocks and woody tree diversity, reflecting the mosaic of several different vegetation types, and storing on average 36.8 Mg C/ha in aboveground woody biomass and 89.3 Mg C/ha in soil. Not surprisingly, vineyard blocks showed less variation in above- and belowground C, with an average of 3.0 and 84.1 Mg C/ha, respectively. Conclusions This research demonstrates that vineyards managed with practices that conserve some fraction of adjoining wildlands yield benefits for increasing overall C stocks and species and habitat diversity in integrated agricultural landscapes. For such complex landscapes, high resolution spatial modeling is challenging and requires accurate characterization of the landscape by vegetation type, physical structure, sufficient sampling, and allometric equations that relate tree species to each landscape. Geographic information systems and remote sensing techniques are useful for integrating the above variables into an analysis platform to estimate C stocks in these working landscapes, thereby helping land managers qualify for greenhouse gas mitigation credits. Carbon policy in California, however, shows a lack of focus on C stocks compared to emissions, and on agriculture compared to other sectors. Correcting these policy shortcomings could create incentives for ecosystem service provision, including C storage, as well as encourage better farm stewardship and habitat conservation.

At an organic farm in California, managed biodiversity was manipulated by establishing a mustard cover crop (MCC) and fallow during winter, and after incorporation, tomato mixtures of one, three, and five cultivars were planted in the spring (1-cv, 3-cv, and 5-cv, respectively). It was hypothesized that cultivar mixtures may increase yields over a monoculture if disease pressure or nitrogen (N) availability is affected by the previous cover crop. The monoculture (1-cv) of the grower’s preferred cultivar was compared with mixtures of it and other high-yielding cultivars in the region. Soil nitrogen, soil microbial biomass carbon (MBC), soil emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrous oxide (N2O), crop nutrient uptake, biomass, fruit quality, intercepted photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), and disease symptoms were measured. The MCC reduced soil N leaching potential during winter and immobilized soil N early in the tomato season as suggested by higher soil MBC and CO2 emissions. Tomatoes had higher PAR, aboveground biomass, fruit yields, and harvest index in the winter fallow than in the winter MCC, likely due to higher N availability in the fallow plots after transplanting. All cultivar mixtures had fairly similar yield and shoot biomass within fallow and MCC, probably explained by the low genetic diversity among California modern tomato cultivars. However, at mid-season (75 days after planting (DAP)), the 3-cv mixture had higher shoot and fruit biomass, by 46% and 63%, than the monoculture in the MCC, indicating some plasticity under lower N availability. In the fallow treatment, soil CO2 emissions were lower in the 3-cv mixture than the monoculture at 77 and 100 DAP. Tomatoes in the 3-cv mixture were redder than the monoculture. The 3-cv mixture thus had some minor advantages compared with the monoculture, but overall, there was little evidence of higher ecosystem functions from mixtures vs. monoculture. Further research on mixtures of processing tomatoes may only be warranted for conditions of higher environmental stress than occur in California organic farms or if specific genotypic traits become available such as for disease resistance or improved nutrient uptake.

Forested riparian buffers in California historically supported high levels of biodiversity, but human activities have degraded these ecosystems over much of their former range. This study examined plant communities, belowground biodiversity and indicators of multiple ecosystem functions of riparian areas across an agricultural landscape in the Sacramento Valley of California, USA. Plant, nematode and soil microbial communities and soil physical and chemical properties were studied along 50-m transects at 20 sites that represented the different land use, soil and vegetation types in the landscape. Riparian zones supported greater plant diversity and nearly twice as much total carbon (C) per hectare compared to adjacent land managed for agricultural uses, but had generally lower soil microbial and nematode diversity and abundance. When woody plant communities were present in the riparian zone, plant diversity and species richness were higher, and soil nitrate and plant-available phosphorus levels were lower. Belowground diversity and community structure, however, appeared to depend more on plant productivity (as inferred by vegetation cover) than plant diversity or species richness. Greater plant species richness, nematode food web structure, total microbial biomass, woody C storage and lower soil nitrate and phosphorus loading were correlated with higher visual riparian health assessment scores, offering the possibility of managing these riparian habitats to provide multiple ecosystem functions.

This paper critically discusses an investigation into approaches to teaching and learning strategies with first-year undergraduate students studying dance in a Higher Education context. The authors investigate a pedagogical practice of using a flipchart to embed reflection as a shared activity as an integral part of studio practice. This study demonstrates how using a flipchart was effective in modelling a mode of capturing reflection and facilitating the generation of collaborative feedback as powerful tools to inspire and support learning strategies in a release-based Contemporary dance technique context. It charts the emergent nature of the study from a reconsideration of feedback to the building of a shared process of inquiry-oriented learning through dialogue.

This article reflects on methodological and ethical issues that have shaped a collaborative project which aims to chart social, legal and political responses to child sexual abuse in England and Wales across the twentieth century. The etymological problem of searching for child sexual abuse in the historical archive is discussed, given that the term itself is a relatively recent one. Acknowledging that research tools will always be partial, it then focuses on the gaps and silences in the archive, most problematically in relation to the voices and experiences of victims and survivors themselves. Finally it discusses ethical issues relating to the naming or anonymising of those accused and convicted (as well as victims and survivors) in the writing up of research findings. The discussion focuses on two key periods--the 1920s and 1950s--and on education policy, including regulatory procedures for teachers in state and fee-paying schools.