Open Research Exeter - University of Exeter
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Artificial light at night alters earthworm communities and soil aggregation
No full textThe global expansion of artificial light at night (ALAN) threatens many plants and animals. However, potentially important predicted impacts on earthworm communities, both directly (dALAN) and through plant-mediated pathways (plant-mediated ALAN), remain little explored. Also, whether and how any impacts extend to changes in key ecosystem processes, such as soil aggregation, are not known. Here, we sampled earthworm assemblages and soil near and between streetlights that have been nocturnally lit for 9 years. Using streetlight illuminance and correlated colour temperature (CCT) as ALAN proxies, we explored the impacts of dALAN and plant-mediated ALAN on earthworm abundance and biomass across ecological categories (total, anecic, epigeic and endogeic) and age classes (total, adult and juvenile), and subsequently, on earthworm-driven soil aggregation (large macro-aggregates, small macro-aggregates and micro-aggregates). We found that increasing CCT (‘bluer’ light) decreased both total earthworm abundance and biomass, whilst increasing illuminance promoted total earthworm biomass; the magnitude of positive effects of illuminance reduced as CCT increased. However, such impacts differed across earthworm ecological categories and age classes. Our results also suggested that illuminance and CCT can shape earthworm communities contingent on plant cover. The pathway of ALAN-earthworm communities-soil aggregation was, in part, confirmed. Specifically, ALAN, via juvenile endogeic earthworms enhanced the formation of large macro-aggregates whilst inhibiting that of small macro-aggregates and micro-aggregates. Synthesis and applications. Our results provide evidence that continuous night-time street lighting can affect earthworm communities and earthworm-driven soil aggregation. The nature of these effects differed across earthworm ecological categories and age classes and appeared to depend on illuminance, light spectrum and/or plant cover. This highlights that, rather than a one-size-fits-all reduction in light, effective ALAN management should involve adjusting illuminance and spectral composition in relation to local ecological conditions—including variations in habitat characteristics—to support community diversity and maximise earthworm-driven soil functionality.</p
Rethinking Mobilities of Academics At-Risk: Beyond the Humanitarian Turn
No full textIntroductionAs the dominant field that explores and promotes academic mobilities, the internationalization agenda has brought forth representations that bind international academic mobilities to a global economy driven by competition, prestige and human capital frameworks in higher education. This understanding serves to reinforce universalized assumptions of individual autonomy, choice and freedom. However, these idealized frames reduce the understanding of academic mobility to an unquestioned imperative (Courtois and O’Keefe, 2024; Morley and Leyton, 2023). In the context of the experiences of academics at risk, this tendency has been reinforced by a grand narrative that overemphasizes the individual success of a select few exiled academics, downplaying the role of their social, economic and cultural capital, their affinity with Euro-Atlantic academic culture, and misrecognizing the structural violence that affect them (Tuori, 2022). These limitations ultimately gloss over the diverse and widespread struggles, inequalities and challenges faced by academics at risk.In this chapter, I build upon Henderson’s definitional politics (2020) to critically interrogate the humanitarian turn to academic mobility (Ergin et al., 2019; Streitwieser, 2019). This turn locates itself as the privileged and morally corrective internationalization to support the mobility for academics at risk. However, I argue that while the humanitarian expression of internationalization responds to emerging authoritarianism and related life-threatening conflicts that have sparked the mobilities of these academics, it ultimately aligns with hegemonic agendas. These include practices invested in maintaining global inequalities, often by contributing to the idealization of both mobility and internationalization, and failing to recognize the salience of dispossession in the experiences of at-risk academics.In what follows, after briefly contextualizing the mobilities of academics at risk, I develop a critique of the humanitarian turn in internationalization. Then, I propose an alternative analytic lens, dispossession, as discussed by Butler and Athanasiou (2013). This perspective is capable of better informing our understanding of the mobilities of academics at risk. Within this perspective, I examine the experiences of Venezuelan academics at risk who have moved to Chile. Reframing these mobilities as dispossession underscores the urgency of going beyond the humanitarian turn in internationalization and opens the space for considering supporting strategies beyond hegemonic interests and strategies that are functional to the preservation of global inequalities in higher education.</p
Listen Without Prejudice: Queer Masculinities in the Popular Music Cultures of Thatcher's Britain
No full textThis thesis brings into academic discourse the first substantial, periodised investigation into the role of British popular music in catalysing a rise in
mainstream gay male visibility during Margaret Thatcher’s premiership (1979- 1990). I examine how popular music afforded a radical space within this seismic cultural and socio-political context that permitted artists to express, challenge, and remodel expectations of masculinity and male (homo)sexuality, often antithetical to the dominant political ideology. Interrogating the tensions faced by gay individuals within a Thatcherite neoliberal capitalist society, which advocated individual freedom and autonomy whilst simultaneously restricting queer lives, the thesis explores the spectrum of male sexuality and masculinity articulated by specific mainstream musicians, and their subsequent influence on challenging existing attitudes towards queer individuals. During this period, artistic and musical innovation offered a creative sense of catharsis, subversion, and self-expression,
which represented and validated a spectrum of queer experiences. As electronic music continued to flourish into new subgenres such as Hi-NRG and house, the musical successors of disco continued its legacy of danceability. The visible presence of the autonomous dancing queer body remains radically symbolic and significant in a historical moment in which queer bodies, specifically those of gay men, were too often discriminately depicted in the context of anxiety
and infection. Against this backdrop, this thesis explores the striking prominence of electronic music and synth-pop amid this rise of queerness within popular culture, drawing on the parallels in criticisms of and scholarship surrounding the bricolage, constructed nature of both queerness and synth-pop. Taking an
interdisciplinary and chronological approach, I begin with the legacies of punk, new wave, and New Romanticism in the early 1980s, before considering the
vitality of popular electronic acts during the early years of the AIDS crisis and the enactment of Section 28. In doing so, this thesis brings into academic debate a
significant aspect of post-war queer British cultural history hitherto overlooked in existing scholarship.</p
Interweaving disciplines
No full textThis edition of environmental SCIENTIST explores an approach that the IES has long championed in the sector: interdisciplinarity. Defined here as a way of working across and beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries, interdisciplinarity is fundamental to environmental science: a field that is home to a broad range of topics, concepts, and approaches to research and practice.It could therefore be argued that environmental science is the natural habitat of interdisciplinary working. A less siloed approach to environmental work has gained traction over the last decade, and interdisciplinarity is now often held up as the gold standard of new research and working practices in environmental science. Professionals are encouraged to think and work with interdisciplinarity in mind: but how does this take shape when creating new research projects, new interdisciplinary teams, or engaging new audiences? Does the buzzword of interdisciplinarity bring with it adequate funding, support, and impetus for systemic change: enough to allow truly interdisciplinary work to take place, and break new ground?This issue of environmental SCIENTIST considers the answers to these questions by showcasing success stories of the creation of new interdisciplinary communities, the formation of interdisciplinary Higher Education (HE) curricula for the next generation of environmental scientists, and considering how environmental professionals can follow their own game-changing interdisciplinary career paths.</p
‘You're talking about all these things you're doing … it is just seen as the norm’: exploring young people's perspectives on disclosing their own use of harmful behaviour
No full textExisting research into adolescent dating abuse demonstrates that young people experiencing harm are most likely to confide in their friends, but far less is known about the disclosure habits of young people instigating harm. This paper explores the findings from a mixed-methods study relating to whom young people would speak to about their own use of behaviour they describe as harmful and why. Data were collected through a mixed-methods survey responded to by 749 young people aged 11–25, and through semistructured interviews with 11 young people aged 17–23. Analysis of this data identified closest friends as the group young people felt most likely to confide in, mirroring the literature on young victims, followed by their partners/the person they are seeing and a therapist/counsellor. Findings showed these individuals were chosen due to the young person feeling comfortable talking to them about this topic, believing their disclosure would remain confidential and feeling they would offer a nonjudgemental response. This paper outlines the need for a systemic response to abuse in young people's relationships, which is centred around improved relationship literacy for young people themselves and across society. It also highlights some practical implications focused on ensuring young people have adequate support and guidance in place to navigate early romantic/dating relationships. These findings offer some direction for where to focus resources and support, as well as some guidance around approaches that may encourage disclosures from young people instigating harm.</p
Harnessing droplet microfluidics and morphology-based deep learning for the label-free study of polymicrobial-phage interactions
No full textEvaluating the impact of bacteriophages on bacterial communities is required to assess the future utility of phage therapy. Methods able to study bacterial polycultures in the presence of phages are useful to mimic evolutionary pressures found in natural environments and recapitulate complex ecological contexts. Bacteriophages can drive rapid genetic and phenotypic changes in host cells. However, the presence of other bacteria can also impact bacterial densities and community structure and classical methods remain lengthy and resource intensive. Here we introduce a microdroplet-based encapsulation method in which bacterial co-cultures are imaged using Z-stack brightfield microscopy. The method relies on automated droplet imaging using an AI-based autofocus function, coupled with morphology-based deep learning models for accurate identification of two morphologically distinct bacterial species. We monitor the interactions between bacterial mono- or co-cultures of P. aeruginosa and S. aureus in the presence of a P. aeruginosa phage growing in 11 picolitre droplets for up to 20 h. We demonstrate quantification of growth rates, bacterial densities and lysis dynamics of the two species without the need for plating. We show that a potent lytic phage of P. aeruginosa can keep its density low long-term when in the presence of S. aureus. </p
Co-contaminant risks in water reuse and biosolids application for agriculture
No full textAgriculture made the shift toward resource reuse years ago, incorporating materials such as treated wastewater and biosolids. Since then, research has documented the widespread presence of contaminants of emerging concern in agricultural systems. Chemicals such as pesticides, pharmaceuticals and poly- and -perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs); particulate matter such as nanomaterials and microplastics; and biological agents such as antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and bacteria (ARB) are inadvertently introduced into arable soils where they can be taken up by crops and introduced to the food-web. Thus, concern about the presence of contaminants in agricultural environments has grown in recent years with evidence emerging linking agricultural exposure and accumulation in crops to ecosystem and human health effects. Our current assessment of risk is siloed by working within disciplines (i.e., chemistry and microbiology) and mostly focused on individual chemical classes. By not acknowledging the fact that contaminants are mostly introduced as a mixture, with the potential for interactions, with each other and with environmental factors, we are limiting our current approach to evaluate the real potential for ecosystem and human health effects. By uniting expertise across disciplines to integrate recent understanding regarding the risks posed by a range of chemically diverse contaminants in resources destined for reuse, this review provides a holistic perspective on the current regulatory challenges to ensure safe and sustainable reuse of wastewater and biosolids to support a sanitation-agriculture circular economy.</p
Meta-Analysis of a Decade of Studies Assessing Accuracy of Abbott FreeStyle Libre Continuous Glucose Monitor
No full textBackground and Aims: This meta-analysis provides a summary of research publications over a decade since the FreeStyle Libre device was first launched by Abbott in 2014. This includes research publications in which the Libre freestyle glucose measurements have been evaluated for accuracy or compared to other glucose devices.Methods and Results: The dichotomy is organized into six sections: (1) Comparing Libre to Dexcom CGM, (2) Assessing Libre accuracy, (3) Efficacy for diabetes, (4) Ease of use, (5) Direction of change trend arrows, (6) Exercise while wearing Libre. A comprehensive meta-analysis of studies comparing Libre and Dexcom is presented. Main results include: Libre and Dexcom give close matching glucose measurements. Libre and Dexcom are both clinically acceptable. Libre efficacy is worse for glycemic variability and does not reduce the risk of recurrent hypoglycemia. Our comprehensive meta-analysis integrates data from these key studies; our results demonstrate that the accuracy of Libre was not significantly different from accuracy of Dexcom when compared with a gold standard comparator.Conclusions: Several factors reduce Libre accuracy: hypoglycemia, rapid glucose changes, night time, exercise, the first and last days of the 14-day sensor life, placing on abdomen instead or arm or thigh, and variation between left and right arms. The direction of change arrows need more consideration before integrating with clinical decisions. Libre can also perform well when used by children and pregnant women. This provides a current overview of Libre, highlighting open questions for future research direction.</p