Macroalgae Decrease Growth and Alter Microbial Community Structure of the Reef-Building Coral, Porites astreoides

This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by the Public Library of Science and can be found at: http://www.plosone.org/home.action.With the continued and unprecedented decline of coral reefs worldwide, evaluating the factors that contribute to coral demise is of critical importance. As coral cover declines, macroalgae are becoming more common on tropical reefs. Interactions between these macroalgae and corals may alter the coral microbiome, which is thought to play an important role in colony health and survival. Together, such changes in benthic macroalgae and in the coral microbiome may result in a feedback mechanism that contributes to additional coral cover loss. To determine if macroalgae alter the coral microbiome, we conducted a field-based experiment in which the coral Porites astreoides was placed in competition with five species of macroalgae. Macroalgal contact increased variance in the coral-associated microbial community, and two algal species significantly altered microbial community composition. All macroalgae caused the disappearance of a γ-proteobacterium previously hypothesized to be an important mutualist of P. astreoides. Macroalgal contact also triggered: 1) increases or 2) decreases in microbial taxa already present in corals, 3) establishment of new taxa to the coral microbiome, and 4) vectoring and growth of microbial taxa from the macroalgae to the coral. Furthermore, macroalgal competition decreased coral growth rates by an average of 36.8%. Overall, this study found that competition between corals and certain species of macroalgae leads to an altered coral microbiome, providing a potential mechanism by which macroalgae-coral interactions reduce coral health and lead to coral loss on impacted reefs

Local Air Quality Management policy and practice in the UK: The case for greater Public Health integration and engagement

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. The UK's Local Air Quality Management (LAQM) regime is designed to protect people's health from the ill-effects of air pollution, but it is failing to achieve its full potential. The Public Health aspects of, perspectives on, and integration and engagement in, LAQM have been poorly considered to date. This critical literature review assessed LAQM-related strengths and limitations in order to explore how Public Health, through greater integration and engagement, can add value to the regime.'Structure' and 'process' weaknesses were identified, including: A poorly defined Public Health role, a narrowly-scoped prescribed process, risk assessment uncertainties, ineffective communications, shallow evaluations and disconnected policies. Separately and cumulatively, these have hindered Public Health integration in LAQM policy and practice and stunted the regime's evolution. Engaging Public Health in LAQM future design and delivery can help solve these problems, by improving risk assessments and raising awareness of air pollution and other health-influencing relationships, targeting action in high-need areas, coordinating air pollution mitigation and health improvement interventions, and connecting different policy areas.Increasing Public Health integration and engagement in LAQM can enhance the existing regime. Acting now is timely from both LAQM and Public Health perspectives. This review's findings should be used to inform debates and decisions around the future development of Local Air Quality Management arrangements both in the UK and beyond

Private finance for the delivery of school projects in England

This paper analyses the use of the private finance initiative (PFI) approach to deliver school projects in England. The findings are based on case-study research in the Building Schools for the Future scheme (BSF), the largest single capital investment in SO years to rebuild and renew all of England's secondary schools. Up to half of the school infrastructure is to be procured by PFI contracts. A major concern has been the high cost associated with PFI procurement and any subsequent changes to scope. Furthermore, in some cases PFI-funded schools have been closed soon after completion; at great cost to the public sector. The aim of this research was therefore to understand the underlying reasons for these problems. The main conclusion is that the difficulties in BSF arise from not sorting out strategic issues and instituting appropriate organisational frameworks before engaging the private sector. The result of this is a lack of clarity about the long-term needs and end user aspirations. A brief outline of current programme management methods is given and it is suggested that this might be integral to the successful delivery of schools using private finance. A clear strategic vision that cascades into projects via programmes will ensure that the school infrastructure is appropriate for the anticipated strategic benefits and is aligned to the overall service delivery ambitions

A review of the rural-digital policy agenda from a community resilience perspective

© 2016 The Authors This paper utilises a community resilience framework to critically examine the digital-rural policy agenda. Rural areas are sometimes seen as passive and static, set in contrast to the mobility of urban, technological and globalisation processes (Bell et al., 2010). In response to notions of rural decline (McManus et al., 2012) rural resilience literature posits rural communities as ‘active,’ and ‘proactive’ about their future (Skerratt, 2013), developing processes for building capacity and resources. We bring together rural development and digital policy-related literature, using resilience motifs developed from recent academic literature, including community resilience, digital divides, digital inclusion, and rural information and communication technologies (ICTs). Whilst community broadband initiatives have been linked to resilience (Plunkett-Carnegie, 2012; Heesen et al., 2013) digital inclusion, and engagement with new digital technologies more broadly, have not. We explore this through three resilience motifs: resilience as multi-scalar; as entailing normative assumptions; and as integrated and place-sensitive. We point to normative claims about the capacity of digital technology to aid rural development, to offer solutions to rural service provision and the challenges of implementing localism. Taking the UK as a focus, we explore the various scales at which this is evident, from European to UK country-level

Biofuels and the role of space in sustainable innovation journeys

This paper aims to identify the lessons that should be learnt from how biofuels have been envisioned from the aftermath of the oil shocks of the 1970s to the present,and how these visions compare with biofuel production networks emerging in the 2000s. Working at the interface of sustainable innovation journey research and geographical theories on the spatial unevenness of sustainability transition projects,we show how the biofuels controversy is linked to characteristics of globalised industrial agricultural systems. The legitimacy problems of biofuels cannot be addressed by sustainability indicators or new technologies alone since they arise from the spatial ordering of biofuel production. In the 1970-80s, promoters of bioenergy anticipated current concerns about food security implications but envisioned bioenergy production to be territorially embedded at national or local scales where these issues would be managed. Where the territorial and scalar vision was breached, it was to imagine poorer countries exporting higher-value biofuel to the North rather than the raw material as in the controversial global biomass commodity chains of today. However, controversy now extends to the global impacts of national biofuel systems on food security and greenhouse gas emissions, and to their local impacts becoming more widely known. South/South and North/North trade conflicts are also emerging as are questions over biodegradable wastes and agricultural residues as global commodities. As assumptions of a food-versus-fuel conflict have come to be challenged, legitimacy questions over global agri-business and trade are spotlighted even further. In this context, visions of biofuel development that address these broader issues might be promising. These include large-scale biomass-for-fuel models in Europe that would transform global trade rules to allow small farmers in the global South to compete, and smallscale biofuel systems developed to address local energy needs in the South

The Role of Tacit Knowledge in Developing Networks for Sustainable Agriculture

Whilst objectivist epistemologies have been dominant in productivist agriculture, the local, cultural and environmental contexts of sustainable agriculture are more fully informed by constructivist epistemologies. Within constructivism, tacit knowledge - an intuitive knowledge that cannot be formalised - is explored empirically. Six types of tacit knowledge were identified as a result of working closely with a sustainable food network: the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership. Customs cohere around integrating food with other sustainable activity; developing a complex unregulated organisation requires savoir-faire. The unique character of Brighton has developed an operational folklore, and network identity is important, particularly in relation to conventional agriculture and to the city as a whole. A confidence in people's roles has helped define network development and using different discourses, communicating the network in diverse contexts, is important for understanding the network. All these tacit knowledge elements have a strong influence over the network but have to be assimilated knowledge rather than learned

Increasing biomass resource availability through supply chain analysis

Increased inclusion of biomass in energy strategies all over the world means that greater mobilisation of biomass resources will be required to meet demand. Strategies of many EU countries assume the future use of non-EU sourced biomass. An increasing number of studies call for the UK to consider alternative options, principally to better utilise indigenous resources. This research identifies the indigenous biomass resources that demonstrate the greatest promise for the UK bioenergy sector and evaluates the extent that different supply chain drivers influence resource availability. The analysis finds that the UK's resources with greatest primary bioenergy potential are household wastes (>115 TWh by 2050), energy crops (>100 TWh by 2050) and agricultural residues (>80 TWh by 2050). The availability of biomass waste resources was found to demonstrate great promise for the bioenergy sector, although are highly susceptible to influences, most notably by the focus of adopted waste management strategies. Biomass residue resources were found to be the resource category least susceptible to influence, with relatively high near-term availability that is forecast to increase – therefore representing a potentially robust resource for the bioenergy sector. The near-term availability of UK energy crops was found to be much less significant compared to other resource categories. Energy crops represent long-term potential for the bioenergy sector, although achieving higher limits of availability will be dependent on the successful management of key influencing drivers. The research highlights that the availability of indigenous resources is largely influenced by a few key drivers, this contradicting areas of consensus of current UK bioenergy policy

Constructing the eastern european other: The horsemeat scandal and the migrant other

The Horsemeat scandal in the UK in 2013 ignited a furore about consumer deception and the bodily transgression of consuming something so alien to the British psyche. The imagination of the horse as a noble and mythic figure in British history and sociological imagination was invoked to construct the consumption of horsemeat as a social taboo and an immoral proposition in the British media debates. This paper traces the horsemeat scandal and its media framing in the UK. Much of the aversion to horsemeat was intertextually bound with discourses of immigration, the expansion of the EU and the threat in tandem to the UK. Food as a social and cultural artefact laden with symbolic meaning and national pride became a platform to construct the ‘Other’ – in this case the Eastern European Other. The media debates on the horsemeat scandal interwove the opening up of the EU and particularly UK to the influx of Eastern European migration. The horsemeat controversy in implicating the Eastern Europeans for the contamination of the supply chain became a means to not just construct the ‘Other’ but also to entwine contemporary policy debates about immigration. This temporal framing of contemporary debates enables a nation to renew and contemporise its notions of ‘otherness’ while sustaining an historic social imaginary of itself

New social directions in UK flood risk management: moving towards flood risk citizenship?

This paper explores the evolution of a more sociotechnical variety of flood and coastal risk management (FCRM) in the UK that emphasises community engagement and personal or community level responsibility for flood risk planning, awareness and resilience alongside more traditional, centrally managed structural and technical measures. Specifically, it explores three interlocking drivers of the social turn in UKFCRM: (i) the need to adapt to climate change and address the lessons from associated high profile flood events; (ii) pressures to integrate FCRM with the sustainable development agenda; and (iii) a broader trend towards a ‘civic model’ in UK environmental policy-making and delivery. The paper also explores the practical impact and manifestation of these drivers in current FCRM planning and delivery frameworks, and suggests several critical pathways for a deeper embedding of the approach