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Management of nonnative invasive species in the Anthropocene
No full textReviewing the discussion on invasive species management in the literature on nature conservation and environmental eography, this article puts forward an approach to invasive species management fit for the Anthropocene. It suggests that the biosecurity-driven rhetoric on invasive species needs to be discarded in favor of a more pragmatic approach to their anagement because the direct and indirect costs of invasive species control are high and learning to live with them may well be the best way to manage them. Harvesting invasive species an make space for native nature and transitional markets can play a role in invasive species control
Evaluating the UK Parliament's Career Transition Scheme for departing MPs
No full textLeaving Parliament is not easy. The way that Members of Parliament (MPs) exit Parliament matters because it can deter others from being an MP. The UK Parliament introduced a career transition scheme (CTS) after the 2024 general election to aid this transition. In this paper, I make a theoretical contribution to the literature on exiting political office by extending a typology developed for ex-leaders to cover departing MPs more generally and make an empirical contribution by providing the first detailed empirical study into the CTS and creating an original and unique dataset on the CTS. I interviewed sixteen ex-MPs eligible for the CTS and asked whether the CTS provided them with appropriate support. Overall, the CTS did provide effective support. There was a desire among interviewees for tailored support to reflect the unique challenges faced by ex-MPs
The problem of free will is child's play
No full textI argue that the essence of ‘free will’ is control, the ability to do otherwise and that this ability is an acquired skill: We can and do see people acquire it, as for example small children learn to play and to do all the other things that human agents characteristically do
Spatiotemporal epidemiology, geographic hotspots, and risk factor associations of drug-resistant tuberculosis incidence in Indonesia: a Bayesian hierarchical modelling approach
No full textBackground: Indonesia ranks among the countries with the highest burden of drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB), contributing approximately 7.4% of global cases, many of which are likely underdiagnosed. To support targeted public health surveillance and control efforts, this study aimed to characterize the spatiotemporal distribution of DR-TB incidence in Indonesia, identify geographic hotspots, and examine associations with health system and socioeconomic factors.
Methods: We conducted a nationwide retrospective analysis using annual DR-TB notification data from 2017 to 2022 across all 514 districts, obtained from the national tuberculosis information system. Multivariable Bayesian spatiotemporal regression models were fitted under alternative likelihood assumptions and space-time random effect structures. Model selection criteria were used to identify the best-fitting models for hotspot detection and estimation of risk factor associations.
Results: DR-TB predominantly affected individuals aged 25–54 years, aligning with the working-age population. Hotspots were concentrated in urbanized regions, including the Jabodetabek megacity, Greater Surabaya, and districts in South Sumatra. The best-fitting model identified a protective association between first-line treatment success rates and DR-TB incidence [incidence rate ratio (IRR): 0.508; 95% credible interval (CrI): 0.368–0.702]. In contrast, DR-TB incidence was positively associated with the proportion of the population living below the poverty line (IRR: 1.028; 95% CrI: 1.013–1.044), households with improved sanitation access (IRR: 1.006; 95% CrI: 1.002–1.010), and increased municipal human development index (IRR: 1.068; 95% CrI: 1.049–1.094).
Conclusions: DR-TB hotspots were primarily concentrated in urban areas, highlighting the need for targeted interventions. Improving first-line tuberculosis treatment success rates and addressing socioeconomic drivers, such as poverty, are critical for controlling DR-TB. Public health policies should prioritize workplace-based support for improving treatment adherence, provide safeguards for TB patients affected by poverty, and underscore the importance of a multisectoral TB surveillance and control program
The potential for a transdisciplinary systems approach to improve national policy analysis: learning from UK cases of home energy transitions
Get PDFThe urgent imperative to decarbonise societies requries effective decisions to neogotiate interconnections of people, technology and policies. In this theory paper, we hypothesise that integrating transdisciplinary engineering with systems approaches can provide useful principles and tools to support effective sustainability policymaking. We consider this hypothesis in the context of a historic and current UK energy sector transition: (a) the transition from ‘town-gas’ to natural gas in the 1960–1970s and (b) the current shift from natural gas to low carbon domestic heating, focussing on heat pump deployment. Through these casestudies, we find that transdisciplinary and systems approaches are apparent in the successful historic transition, while remaining largely absent in the present low carbon heating transition, which is currently stalled. We argue this is caused by policy analysis being siloed and economically focused. We present two systems approach examples to show how they might be applied to begin addressing current UK policy failures for low carbon heating. We identify benefits while recognising some key limitations of this approach, including the resource requirements on officials. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research to continue developing the conceptual and practical basis and therefore lead to improved decision making in national sustainability policymaking
An investigation into the breadth of learning objectives developed in STEM online laboratories
No full textOnline laboratories have gained a great deal of interest in recent years with benefits including reduced costs, support for increasing student numbers, increased flexibility and accessibility to practical work for students attending distance learning courses or with physical disabilities. However, designing teaching and learning activities for online laboratories introduces new challenges because many learning aspects that are inherent in conventional laboratories (e.g. safety, ethics, motor skills etc.) must be explicitly designed into online laboratories. This research aims to assist educators to design Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) online laboratories that develop a broad range of learning objectives to meet students’ educational needs.
In this paper a framework for STEM online laboratory learning objectives is introduced, building on previous approaches in the literature. The framework provides a structured approach to help course designers and educational technologists to design and assess the learning objectives and design characteristics of online experiments. The framework was used to map 23 online laboratories at a large distance learning university, and the results identified some trends and gaps in learning objective coverage. The results highlight the importance of defining the full breadth of learning objectives for online experiments at the design stage to ensure that the experiment is appropriately designed to allow students to achieve the desired learning outcomes. Furthermore, different online experiment designs are appropriate to different learning objectives, so care must be taken to select the most appropriate delivery mechanism for the online laboratory.
It is proposed that the framework could be used by educators to support the design of new online laboratories as well as evaluating the laboratory learning objectives coverage in existing online laboratories
Butterflies in The City: Landscape Connectivity and Conservation of Urban Woodland Butterflies
Get PDFButterflies are charismatic pollinators and bioindicators whose global declines herald wider biodiversity loss. Urbanisation, a principal driver of habitat fragmentation and degradation, poses an acute threat to butterfly populations. Yet urban woodlands, despite providing vital ecosystem services, including opportunities for people to connect with nature, remain poorly studied as butterfly habitat. This thesis offers the first comprehensive study of butterflies in urban woodlands by addressing four core questions: What habitat preferences and life history traits can define an urban butterfly? What habitat characteristics influence butterfly richness, abundance and diversity in urban woodlands? How does woodland habitat connectivity for butterflies compare between different urban areas? And how are individual urban butterfly species distributed across the Milton Keynes habitat network?
Chapter 1 introduces the thesis, and discusses the impact of urbanisation on biodiversity, discussions of habitat loss, fragmentation, and general concepts in landscape ecology that apply to the impact of urbanisation on the British countryside. It also describes the importance of butterflies, urban woodlands and the rationale for studying both, closing with research questions to be investigated by the proceeding chapters.
Chapter 2 defines “urban‑tolerant” British butterfly species using life‑history and habitat‑association traits across all resident species. Through generalised linear modelling, it identifies a suite of urban‑tolerant species characterised by multiple broods per year, reliance on woodland‑grassland ecotones, and avoidance of egg‑laying on short turf or herbaceous plants. These findings reveal the ecological filters shaping urban butterfly assemblages.
Chapter 3 examines how woodland structure influences butterfly richness and diversity. Sampling across a gradient of patch sizes and woodlands with variation in canopy structural complexity shows that larger woodlands with diverse maximum canopy heights host the richest and most varied communities of butterflies. The results underscore the need for management practices that promote structural heterogeneity, such as maintaining rides and glades, opening up the canopy through coppicing while maintaining some dense vegetation to conserve urban woodland butterflies.
Chapter 4 explores landscape‑scale connectivity in eleven UK cities using Expected Cluster Size (ECS) metrics. These cities show a range of connectivity patterns from Milton Keynes, which emerges as exceptionally well connected via numerous small patches, to Plymouth which achieves comparable ECS through fewer, larger patches and Kingston-Upon-Hull which is very poorly connected. This contrast raises questions about optimal patch configuration for butterfly movement and gene flow in urban networks.
Chapter 5 implements occupancy modelling for butterflies in Milton Keynes using 29 sites supplemented by citizen‑science data from The Parks Trust. The study demonstrates the high survey effort required for robust models and highlights some potential challenges, such as identification—particularly among the “white” butterflies (Large White, Small White, Green‑veined White), which exhibit overlapping detections. Despite these hurdles, occupancy estimates reveal key patterns in species distribution and density across woodland patches. The principal finding of this chapter is that the extent of a truly powerful occupancy model requires more survey effort than one team could likely provide (90 sites visited 5 times) and therefore suggests a multi-city approach.
By integrating species‑trait analysis, habitat‑structure assessment, connectivity evaluation, and occupancy modelling, this thesis delivers a broad understanding of urban woodland butterflies. Its findings provide actionable guidance for urban ecology and conservation practitioners—advocating trait‑informed species protection, urban woodland management, with an analysis of landscape scale connectivity in urban areas. Finally, it emphasises the pressing need for empirical movement studies to more directly measure how butterflies navigate complex urban environments
Subversion within the system: Ethnicization as Tactical Agency in Urban Street Commerce
No full textThis article conceptualises tactical agency as a multimodal, corporeal accomplishment emerging within conditions of urban marginality. Analysing video-ethnographic data of an Indigenous street vendor in Medellín, it identifies four interrelated dimensions of tactical agency: epistemic authority, relational co-construction, ethnicization, and socio-spatial navigation. The findings show how agency is achieved not as an abstract capacity but through the coordinated deployment of talk, gesture, movement, and material objects in real time. By reappropriating racialised categorisation as epistemic credential and converting precarity into performance capital, the vendor momentarily reorders evaluative hierarchies without dissolving structural inequality. Tactical action thus operates through contingent, interactionally sustained inversions that reconfigure authority within dominant systems. The article argues for integrating fine-grained multimodal analysis into studies of language, informal economies, and everyday resistance to better account for how marginalised actors enact agency under constraint
Articulating place: towards a conjunctural analysis of public health
No full text‘Place’ is again circulating as a policy solution to improve health, wealth and wellbeing. But while place-based policymaking is quickly becoming ‘common sense’, we stress the need to think conjuncturally about the changing place of health. By conceptualising places as open articulations—rather than straightforwardly local territories—much wider geographies come into view. In dialogue with decentred approaches to public health which take seriously competing policy narratives, we therefore situate place-based policymaking within ongoing struggles over places and their pasts. To develop our argument, we look at public health through the lens of Wigan, North West England, which has become an unlikely ‘exemplar’ for place-based reforms. Framed by different, often contradictory, narratives of loss, control, and hope, it may be the talk of the town, but we reject the politics of self-responsibilisation implicit within recent attention towards purportedly ‘left behind’ places. Instead, we foreground how Wigan has been shaped by wider forces and relations such as de-industrialisation, postcolonialism, austerity and state restructuring, as well as the pandemic. By locating the many crises, contradictions and antagonisms conditioning public health in this conjuncture, we can start to articulate political alternatives and identify possibilities for making policy otherwise
