5715 research outputs found
Sort by
An A-Z of Beatrix Potter
No full textFrom Peter Rabbit to Mrs. Tiggy-winkle, The Tailor of Gloucester to The Fairy Caravan, the works and characters of Beatrix Potter have bewitched children the world over for more than a century – and have never been out of print. This lively and curious book explores Potter's works via a series of short, interlinked essays that take their starting point from 26 key words and phrases from her children's books, her letters, journals and other writings. For students and enthusiasts alike, this engaging collection of essays offers fresh angles on familiar Potter themes and topics (A is for Animal; C is for Clothes) whilst others cast light on uncharted corners of her imagination (D is for Dancing; U is for Uncanny; G is for Ginnett's Circus). Entries like F is for Fairy, T is for Trees, S is for Seasons and R is for Rabbit Tobacco look at topics related to race, gender and the environment as other essays use key words to open up discussion of Potter's legacies and impact (L is for Lake District; P is for Peter Rabbit; H is for The Horn Book), including global reception, TV and film adaptations, and the development of Potter's beloved Lake District as a thriving tourist destination. Paying close attention to the texts while also considering the broader contexts at play, this book broaches questions that offer intriguing ways into the works readers feel they know so well: how does a youthful encounter with a circus come to shape Potter's imagination? Why does eating and food feature so extensively in her writing and how does this relate to contemporary debates on diet and environmental crisis? Providing a close-up encounter with one of the most celebrated children's authors, this book invites new recognition of the ways in which Beatrix Potter's writing explores ideas which remain deeply relevant today, including the relationship between humans and the natural environments they inhabit
Monitoring terrestrial rewilding with environmental DNA metabarcoding: a systematic review of current trends and recommendations
Get PDFIntroduction: Rewilding, the facilitation of self-sustaining and resilient ecosystems by restoring natural processes, is an increasingly popular conservation approach and potential solution to the biodiversity and climate crises. Outcomes of rewilding can be unpredictable, and monitoring is essential to determine whether ecosystems are recovering. Metabarcoding, particularly of environmental DNA (eDNA), is revolutionizing biodiversity monitoring and could play an important role in understanding the impacts of rewilding but has mostly been applied within aquatic systems.
Methods: This systematic review focuses on the applications of eDNA metabarcoding in terrestrial monitoring, with additional insights from metabarcoding of bulk and ingested DNA. We examine publication trends, choice of sampling substrate and focal taxa, and investigate how well metabarcoding performs compared to other monitoring methods (e.g. camera trapping).
Results: Terrestrial ecosystems represented a small proportion of total papers, with forests the most studied system, soil and water the most popular substrates, and vertebrates the most targeted taxa. Most studies focused on measuring species richness, and few included analyzes of functional diversity. Greater species richness was found when using multiple substrates, but few studies took this approach. Metabarcoding did not consistently outperform other methods in terms of the number of vertebrate taxa detected, and this was likely influenced by choice of marker, sampling substrate and habitat.
Discussion: Our findings indicate that metabarcoding, particularly of eDNA, has the potential to play a key role in the monitoring of terrestrial rewilding, but that further ground- truthing is needed to establish the most appropriate sampling and experimental pipelines for the target taxa and terrestrial system of interest.
Systematic Review Registration: https://osf.io/38w9q/?view_only=47fdab224a7a43d298eccbe578f1fcf0, identifier 38w9q
Non-graduate entry a retrograde step for the police professionalisation agenda?
Get PDFSince its inception the College of Policing has promoted policing as a profession and it has established a code of ethics, a body of knowledge and graduate entry in pursuit of its ambition. The graduate entry programme has been the subject of criticism and in response a non-graduate entry route has been introduced. Graduate entry is fundamental to most professions and this change could undermine the professionalisation agenda. This article uses a series of focus groups to compare the views of probationary officers from graduate and non-graduate training programme to assess the impact of the graduate entry programme on student officers. While the research found many similarities between the cohorts. IPLDP students expressed a greater affinity with the role of police as crime fighters than their graduate peers. While the graduate students were concerned about limitations on their ability to use their discretion and the extent of their autonomy
Prevalence of men’s intimate partner violence victimization and perpetration among two samples of male victims: an international study of English-speaking countries
No full textThere is a lack of research on men’s engagement in intimate partner violence (IPV) in the international context. This study compared the rates of IPV victimization and perpetration in two samples of men recruited from four English-speaking regions: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom/Ireland, Australia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand: (a) male victims recruited though the platform Prolific (n = 1380) and (b) self-identified male victims recruited via community advertisements (n = 594). The self-identified male victim sample reported significantly higher rates of both perpetration and victimization compared to the Prolific sample of men who experienced at least one type of IPV; the prevalence rates of victimization in the self-identified victim sample ranged from 50.0% (sexual IPV) to 96.1% (physical IPV), and perpetration rates ranged from 21.1% (sexual IPV) to 54.0% (physical IPV). Regardless of the sample type, U.S. participants reported perpetrating and experiencing significantly more IPV than men from other countries, although there are some caveats. These findings emphasize the serious issue of men’s involvement in IPV as victims and highlight the importance of culture in understanding IPV
Functional composition of the Amazonian tree flora and forests
Get PDFPlants cope with the environment by displaying large phenotypic variation. Two spectra of global plant form and function have been identified: a size spectrum from small to tall species with increasing stem tissue density, leaf size, and seed mass; a leaf economics spectrum reflecting slow to fast returns on investments in leaf nutrients and carbon. When species assemble to communities it is assumed that these spectra are filtered by the environment to produce community level functional composition. It is unknown what are the main drivers for community functional composition in a large area such as Amazonia. We use 13 functional traits, including wood density, seed mass, leaf characteristics, breeding system, nectar production, fruit type, and root characteristics of 812 tree genera (5211 species), and find that they describe two main axes found at the global scale. At community level, the first axis captures not only the ‘fast-slow spectrum’, but also most size-related traits. Climate and disturbance explain a minor part of this variance compared to soil fertility. Forests on poor soils differ largely in terms of trait values from those on rich soils. Trait composition and soil fertility exert a strong influence on forest functioning: biomass and relative biomass production
Transformational learning
No full textNo. 8 (August 2025) in the 'Mastery in Writing' series of articles: https://www.paramedicpractice.com/content/mastery-in-writing.
Last month we looked at critical reflection and how you can expand this into reflexion, moving forward in the way you think more widely about the issues you encounter in practice. When you study at level 7, you may well come across the terms of transactional, transformational or transformative learning and wonder what these mean. In brief, transactional learning occurs when ‘something’ is passed from person to person through interactions and experiences. In basic terms, this can be seen as: learn this, sit exam, receive result. Teaching of clinical skills by repetition and rote to become proficient results in transactional learning. Simple reflection using Gibbs’ reflective cycle results in transactional learning, which leads to an increase in knowledge or skill, but at a more surface level
Bushcraft as cultural continuity in ‘English’ hunter-gathering
Get PDFThis paper argues that the relationship bushcraft creates between artisan, landscape and tools to enable the acquisition of food and spatial mobility expresses a broadly-based environmental cultural continuity in English foraging practices. The perspective of bushcraft practitioners has rarely been represented in academic literature, partly, perhaps, because it cuts across many different sectors of research and practice. Accordingly, we bring a transdisciplinary approach, utilising queer theory and trans theory as a helpful methodology for examining marginalised communities. Recognising the problematic nature of ‘slippery’ terms like ‘bushcraft’, ‘hunter-gatherer’, and ‘Indigenous’, we explain the key concepts and terms used to delineate an ethos of ‘discontinuous continuity’ in bushcraft practices over time. Limiting our geographical context to England, we provide a historical record of the disenfranchisement of endemic English people from their traditional rights to hunting and gathering, subsequently extended under Norman rule by Forest Law, demonstrating a detailed record of increasing suppression of local traditional foraging practices in the early Medieval period. We focus first on the historical record of these practices before making comparisons with those in the prehistoric Mesolithic, to counter ethnonationalist fantasies of ‘Englishness’ as defined by unbroken racial or linguistic purity. Moving to the modern period, we identify this continuity of foraging as forms of knowledge, practice and a counter-cultural movement, represented by the contemporary bushcraft movement’s creation of a place for reconnection with traditional knowledge. We thereby challenge pop-survival television’s depiction of bushcraft, which positions the natural world as dangerous and something to be feared. Current restrictions on land-use act against this reclamation and exploration of foraging skills in England. Nevertheless, contemporary bushcraft provides a valuable education in resilience and a sustaining vision of kinship between those wishing to re-establish at least some parts of the knowledge and skillsets which were once the only means to survive and thrive in the English landscape
Strengthening Cumbria's civil society: a report of findings and recommendations
Get PDFThis report presents the findings of a collaborative action research and knowledge exchange project aimed at understanding what is most needed for a more thriving and equitable community life in Cumbria. The project brought together The Office of the Lord Lieutenant of Cumbria, University of Cumbria, Cumbria Development Education Centre (CDEC) and Thinking Philanthropy. Since July 2023, the partners have been working together on various activities in support of this process – developing an online directory of Cumbrian civil society groups and organisations, undertaking desk-based research, and designing a Q Method study for online and face-to-face provision which Q enables with relatively small samples (see more in Methodology section. We subsequently engaged various representatives of Cumbria’s civil society via a series of workshops across the county from March-July 2024 – in Ambleside, Carlisle, Workington, and Barrow-in-Furness. The findings from these workshops and the online version of the Q study have enabled us to gain a bottom-up, influenced view of what mattered most to our 92 study participants to empower Cumbrian communities to be more thriving and equitable. By exploring diverse perspectives across the county, we uncovered four distinct viewpoints from Cumbria’s civil society. Our report describes the key learnings and presents recommendations for a strategic understanding of the aims and values of the Cumbrian Lieutenancy, offering potential pathways for integrating this understanding into a strategic approach for strengthening Cumbria’s civil society
Digital maturity and hybrid strategies in emerging markets: the structural limits of entrepreneurial transformation
Get PDFPurpose: This study examined the influence of digital maturity, technological adoption and environmental barriers on entrepreneurial performance within Nigeria’s diverse business landscape. By situating the technology–organization–environment (TOE) framework within conditions of institutional voids, the paper challenges assumptions of linear digital transformation and explores hybridity as an adaptive organizational equilibrium.
Design/methodology/approach: A cross-sectional survey of 553 entrepreneurs across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones was analyzed using ANOVA, chi-square tests and robustness diagnostics. The analysis examined the effects of digital maturity, digital tool adoption and systemic barriers on revenue generation, customer acquisition, operational efficiency and market expansion, while controlling for sectoral and locational differences to account for contextual heterogeneity.
Findings: Results demonstrate that advanced digital maturity and broad tool adoption significantly enhance performance outcomes, while infrastructural deficits, policy inconsistency and skill gaps act as structural determinants that constrain digital integration. Hybrid business models emerge as a pragmatic equilibrium in navigating institutional voids, especially in high-potential sectors such as fintech, edutech, agritech and healthtech. The findings reveal that maturity trajectories are nonlinear and often threshold-based, with effects stronger in urban regions, reflecting entrenched structural inequalities.
Practical implications: This research highlights the urgency of addressing infrastructural, policy and skills barriers to unlock the full potential of digital entrepreneurship. Policy interventions should prioritize reliable infrastructure, coherent regulation and advanced capacity building, while managers should pursue hybrid strategies to balance ambition with contextual realities.
Originality/value: This study advances digital entrepreneurship theory by reframing the TOE model through a structural lens, showing that environmental constraints are not passive conditions but active determinants of digital trajectories. It introduces hybridity as a theoretically significant equilibrium form in emerging markets and reconceptualizes digital maturity as nonlinear, contingent and threshold-based rather than sequential and linear