Changes in the Status and Distribution of the Yellow-faced Bumble Bee

Bombus vosnesenskii, the distinctively-patterned Yellow-faced Bumble Bee, has undergone a significant and rapid range extension in British Columbia. Known initially from a single record of a few specimens at Osoyoos in 1951, it was put forward in 1996 as a species that warranted a threatened or endangered status because of its severely restricted range in the province. However, since 2000, the species has expanded north in the Okanagan Valley, west to the Similkameen Valley and, especially, has become firmly established in south coastal regions of the province, including Vancouver Island. Population increases in B. vosnesenskii to the south of BC have also been reported. The reasons for the rapid expansion of B. vosnesenskii in BC are unclear. Particularly in lowland southwestern BC, the range expansion might have been enhanced through escapes from colonies kept as pollinators of agricultural crops. The spread of B. vosnesenskii has coincided with the decline of B. occidentalis, so the former may have been introduced or naturally expanded its range at the same time as a niche was becoming vacant

Supervising role emerging placements: a CPD opportunity that supports innovation in practice

Supervision of occupational therapy students on placements is a challenging, but rewarding experience. There is a growing body of literature related to role emerging placements but the experiences of the occupational therapists who undertake the role of off-site supervisors are underrepresented. These placements are based in settings where there is no defined occupational therapy role and the professional supervisor is not based at the placement site. Drawing from research in two European countries with off-site supervisors the enablers and barriers of this role are presented. Supervising students with innovative occupational therapy interventions positively influenced the off-site supervisors’ professional practice. Practical guidance for those interested in this role is shared to encourage occupational therapists to pursue this rewarding role including the need for peer support while undertaking this valuable role

Bad faith in All’s Well That Ends Well

All’s Well That Ends Well is a complicated and disturbing play that has a comic ending, but which seems anything but a comedy with a forced marriage based on bed-trickery between the reluctant Bertram and the feisty and witty Helena. Unsurprisingly, audiences have tended to side with Helena and the play has been classified as a “problem comedy” ever since William Lawrence identified this particular group of Shakespeare plays nearly a century ago. I want to argue in this essay that the play might better be classified as an “equivocation” play alongside Macbeth, Othello, and Troilus and Cressida and that the anxieties about fidelity, honesty and truthfulness in marriage need to be read in terms of the fear of religious tolerance/intolerance which dominated religious politics in the early years of James’s reign before the passing of the Oath of Allegiance (1606). The play is notable for its interest in chop logic, which the clown in particular displays throughout the play, a counterpoint to the arguments of Bertram and Helena who want very different things, but who are bound together as future husband and wife. Although the language of treason and treachery is used throughout, the play is less interested in answering the question of how far one can trust a stranger within than the issue of how far one can accommodate the needs of others. This article is published as part of a collection to commemorate the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death

Neutron scattering study of the excitation spectrum of solid helium at ultra-low temperatures

There has been a resurgence of interest in the properties of solid helium due to the recent discovery of non-classical rotational inertia (NCRI) in solid 4He by Chan and coworkers below 200 mK which they have interpreted as a transition to a ‘supersolid’ phase. We have carried out a series of elastic and inelastic neutron scattering measurements on single crystals of hcp 4He at temperatures down to 60 mK. While we have found no direct evidence of any change in the excitation spectrum at low temperatures, we have found that the excitation spectrum of solid 4He shows several interesting features, including extra branches in addition to the phonon branches. We interpret these extra branches as single particle excitations due to propagating vacancy waves, which map on to the famous ‘roton minimum’ long known in the excitation spectrum of superfluid liquid 4He. The results show that in fact solid 4He shares several features in common with the superfluid

Multi-breed genomic evaluation for tropical beef cattle when no pedigree information is available

Abstract Background It has been challenging to implement genomic selection in multi-breed tropical beef cattle populations. If commercial (often crossbred) animals could be used in the reference population for these genomic evaluations, this could allow for very large reference populations. In tropical beef systems, such animals often have no pedigree information. Here we investigate potential models for such data, using marker heterozygosity (to model heterosis) and breed composition derived from genetic markers, as covariates in the model. Models treated breed effects as either fixed or random, and included genomic best linear unbiased prediction (GBLUP) and BayesR. A tropically-adapted beef cattle dataset of 29,391 purebred, crossbred and composite commercial animals was used to evaluate the models. Results Treating breed effects as random, in an approach analogous to genetic groups allowed partitioning of the genetic variance into within-breed and across breed-components (even with a large number of breeds), and estimation of within-breed and across-breed genomic estimated breeding values (GEBV). We demonstrate that moderately-accurate (0.30–0.43) GEBV can be calculated using these models. Treating breed effects as random gave more accurate GEBV than treating breed as fixed. A simple GBLUP model where no breed effects were fitted gave the same accuracy (and correlations of GEBV very close to 1) as a model where GEBV for within-breed and the GEBV for (random) across-breed effects were included. When GEBV were predicted for herds with no data in the reference population, BayesR resulted in the highest accuracy, with 3% accuracy improvement averaged across traits, especially when the validation population was less related to the reference population. Estimates of heterosis from our models were in line with previous estimates from beef cattle. A method for estimating the number of effective breed comparisons for each breed combination accumulated across contemporary groups is presented. Conclusions When no pedigree is available, breed composition and heterosis for inclusion in multi-breed genomic evaluation can be estimated from genotypes. When GEBV were predicted for herds with no data in the reference population, BayesR resulted in the highest accuracy

Barriers and enablers to delivering intensive upper limb rehabilitation for children with unilateral cerebral palsy

This article is free to read on the publishers website Introduction Supervision of occupational therapy students on placements is a challenging, but rewarding experience. There is a paucity of literature on supervisors’ experiences in role emerging settings, where there is no defined occupational therapy role. The ‘long arm’ professional supervisor is an offsite occupational therapists who provides sessional supervision..