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Managing local assets collaboratively:A policy brief for community & town councils' Biodiversity Champions
No full textThis policy brief explains how community & town councils can implement a ‘Wild Pathways’ strategy to deliver their multiple responsibilities for community development, public health and wellbeing, and biodiversity.• Statutory guidance encourages community & town councils to work with other organisations on a range of issues, from managing local assets to implementing biodiversity plans.• Recent research in Wales identified multiple dilemmas for collaborative partnerships, which risk councils losing the focus on local priorities. • The research project created a specific strategy called ‘Wild Pathways’ that can help Biodiversity Champions to work with local partners to manage community assets without losing the focus on community & town councils’ priorities.• The briefing builds on a focussed group discussion with 23 Biodiversity Champions, organised by One Voice Wales’ Pethau Bychain project in November 2023.<br/
Isolated to the internet: which Facebook posts from zoological collections generated greater community engagement during lockdown closures when society was isolated to their homes?
Get PDFLanguage, belonging and psychosis: a mixed methods study testing the presence of a linguistic group density association in Wales and its possible mechanisms
Get PDFAuthor Correction: Vulnerability to collapse of coral reef ecosystems in the Western Indian Ocean
Get PDFCorrection to: Nature Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00817-0, published online 6 December 2021.This paper was originally published under the standard Springer Nature license (© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature America, Inc.). It is now available as an open-access paper under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, © The Author(s). The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article
Interpretation of the European legal framework for the microbiological classification of bivalve mollusc production areas
Get PDFWater quality, in terms of the bacteria and viruses present, affects the incidence of microbial contamination in bivalve molluscs. The European Union Official Control Regulations manage these potential human health risks, requiring all Member States to routinely monitor the level of faecal contamination in production and relaying areas, and to classify these production areas accordingly. How a site is classified can affect business flexibility, operating costs, and even the ability to trade. The protection of public health is the primary remit of the national competent authorities implementing the regulations, while businesses are keen to achieve and maintain a classification indicative of good water quality, and to minimise the likelihood of a site being downgraded or closed. Equally, they do not want to make their customers sick. Balancing protection of public health and the viability of bivalve shellfish production is most easily achieved with a regulatory system that is responsive, adaptive and ultimately risk-based. Despite the standard legislation and supplementary guidance to ensure consistency of approach, interpretation and implementation varies across countries. Some take a risk based and more permissive approach, whilst others are much more restrictive. This indicates the ability of Member States to exert some independence within the overarching legal framework, reflecting regional variation in environmental conditions, historical approaches to shellfish hygiene controls as well as the range of relationships between producers and regulators
Stress in the social context: a behavioural and eco-evolutionary perspective
Get PDFThe social environment is one of the primary sources of challenging stimuli that can induce a stress response in animals. It comprises both short-term and stable interactions among conspecifics (including unrelated individuals, mates, potential mates and kin). Social stress is of unique interest in the field of stress research because (1) the social domain is arguably the most complex and fluctuating component of an animal's environment; (2) stress is socially transmissible; and (3) stress can be buffered by social partners. Thus, social interactions can be both the cause and cure of stress. Here, we review the history of social stress research, and discuss social stressors and their effects on organisms across early life and adulthood. We also consider cross-generational effects. We discuss the physiological mechanisms underpinning social stressors and stress responses, as well as the potential adaptive value of responses to social stressors. Finally, we identify outstanding challenges in social stress research, and propose a framework for addressing these in future work
Cultural and societal motivations for being informal caregivers: a qualitative systematic review and meta-synthesis
Get PDFInformal caregiving constitutes the mainstay of a society’s care supply. Motivations for caring and continuing to provide care are crucial to understanding the nature of caregiver experiences and their relationship with the person/people they support. This systematic review of qualitative evidence examines determinants of motivations and willingness to provide informal care. One hundred and five qualitative studies published before August 2019 and fitting the inclusion criteria were identified, 84 of them pertaining to cultural and societal motivations for caregiving. Grounded theory-based, thematic synthesis was conducted. Cultural and societal factors strongly underpinned motivations and willingness for informal caregiving. The main cultural motives for caregiving were cultural values and beliefs encompassing the ethnocultural context of the caregiving role, culture-specific norms, cultural and spiritual beliefs, illness beliefs and socialisation. Societal norms and perceived expectations, such as gendered roles, norms and expectations of caregiving, and perceptions of health and social care services further shaped caregiver motivations and willingness to provide care. These meta-synthesis findings contribute towards novel understandings about the cultural and societal aspects shaping informal care provision. These findings bear important implications for theory, research, policy and practice; all of which contributing to the issue of the sustainability of informal care from a ‘macro’ perspective
As clear as glass: How figurativeness and familiarity impact simile processing in readers with and without dyslexia
Get PDFFor skilled readers, idiomatic language confers faster access to overall meaning compared with non-idiomatic language, with a processing advantage for figurative over literal interpretation. However, currently very little research exists to elucidate whether atypical readers – such as those with developmental dyslexia – show such a processing advantage for figurative interpretations of idioms, or whether their reading impairment implicates subtle differences in semantic access. We wanted to know whether an initial figurative interpretation of similes, for both typical and dyslexic readers, is dependent on familiarity. Here, we tracked typical and dyslexic readers’ eye movements as they read sentences containing similes (e.g. as cold as ice), orthogonally manipulated for novelty (e.g. familiar: as cold as ice, novel: as cold as snow) and figurativeness (e.g. literal: as cold as ice [low temperature], figurative: as cold as ice [emotionally distant]), with figurativeness being defined by the sentence context. Both participant groups exhibited a processing advantage for familiar and figurative similes over novel and literal similes. However, compared to typical readers, participants with dyslexia had greater difficulty processing similes both when they were unfamiliar, and when the context biased the simile meaning toward a literal rather than a figurative interpretation. Our findings suggest a semantic processing anomaly in dyslexic readers, which we discuss in light of recent literature on sentence-level semantic processing.For skilled readers, idiomatic language confers faster access to overall meaning compared with non-idiomatic language, with a processing advantage for figurative over literal interpretation.However, currently very little research exists to elucidate whether atypical readers – such as those with developmental dyslexia – show such a processing advantage for figurative interpretations of idioms, or whether their reading impairment implicates subtle differences in semantic access. We wanted to know whether an initial figurative interpretation of similes, for both typical and dyslexic readers, is dependent on familiarity. Here, we tracked typical and dyslexic readers’ eye movements as they read sentences containing similes (e.g. as cold as ice),orthogonally manipulated for novelty (e.g. familiar: as cold as ice, novel: as cold as snow) and figurativeness (e.g. literal: as cold as ice [low temperature], figurative: as cold as ice [emotionally distant]), with figurativeness being defined by the sentence context. Both participant groups exhibited a processing advantage for familiar and figurative similes over novel and literal similes. However, compared to typical readers, participants with dyslexia had greaterdifficulty processing similes both when they were unfamiliar, and when the context biased the simile meaning toward a literal rather than a figurative interpretation. Our findings suggest a semantic processing anomaly in dyslexic readers, which we discuss in light of recent literature on sentence-level semantic processing