The Potential Economic Returns of Converting Agricultural Land to Forestry: An Analysis of System and Soil Effects from 1995 to 2009

peer-reviewedPrivate land owners have been responsible for the majority of annual afforestation in Ireland since the mid1990s, but planting rates have generally been declining since 2002. Although the decision to plant may be driven by a number of factors, the profitability of forestry as a landuse option should be an important driver and offer some insight into trends in afforestation rates. As farmers undertake most afforestation in Ireland it is important to account for the opportunity cost of lost agricultural income when analysing the financial outcome of planting. In addition, soil quality plays an essential role in dictating the productivity and profitability of both agriculture and forestry. This study examines the effects of soil quality and superseded agricultural system on the potential profitability of afforestation by farmers between 1995 and 2009. Data from the National Farm Survey were employed to identify the annual gross margins for six agricultural systems on six soil types that differ in terms of quality. The measures of soil quality were translated into potential yield classes for forestry using an existing productivity model and Teagasc’s Forest Investment and Valuation Estimator was employed to calculate the net present value of afforestation for each of the systems and soil types. The results demonstrate how the competitiveness of forestry as a landuse option is influenced by soil quality and superseded enterprise and how forestry has become more competitive with agricultural enterprises over the period of analysis.Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marin

The discursive construction of mental health problems in Irish print news media

The manner in which various media formats report events and topics that are considered newsworthy is an important site for making discourse visible. Discourses construct realities and are revealed in how objects are spoken about. The aim of this study was to gain a more sophisticated understanding of the way in which ‘common sense’ understandings were employed in establishing knowledge about mental health problems and the resultant production of power through an examination of how mental health problems are constructed in Irish newspapers. This study reports on 123 news items collected over a one month period from five Irish newspapers. The methodological approach adopted was discourse analysis, based on a Foucauldian understanding of discourse, emphasizing the ubiquity and inter connectedness of knowledge and power. The findings suggest that mental health problems were discursively constructed inIrish newspapers enlisting discursive categories of hiddenness, visibility, crises and risk, devastation, illness, psychosocial causation, recovery and professional treatment. These discourses operated to produce an understanding of mental health problems and mental distress as being an individual, biomedically defined phenomenon, beyond the control of the individual, dangerous and devastating to the person, others and society, constructing mental health problems as outside the locus and control of people who experience them, producing a need for the government of mental health. These ‘common sense’ understandings of mental health problems reinforce the superior status of psychiatric knowledge as the legitimate means of both making mental distress visible and as a means of response. Association with physical illness was frequently used to legitimize and de-stigmatize mental health problems. Competing recovery and psychosocial discourses were appropriated by the use of psychiatrically oriented language and by association with psychiatric structures. Representation of social factors related to causation was limited to proximal factors obscuring macro structures that are implicated in the creation and perpetuation of inequality, social deprivation and isolation. Critical discourses that challenge the legitimacy of biological explanations and psychiatry were largely absent

Cultivating engagement in research using social media networks to recruit participants for health related research

The rise of online communication has meant that a growing number of users now spend more time communicating through social media, such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. As new technologies continue to emerge, researchers are considering social media as a medium for recruiting participants for research. Social scientists including health related researchers often face challenges with participant recruitment. Recruitment remains a persistent challenge for researchers particularly when topics are sensitive such as healthcare and mental health. Inadequate sample size, delay and even cancelled studies can occur due to lack of enrolment and are challenging for researchers. Using social media networks health researchers can improve the pool of research participants, who then can be selectively recruited for both online and offline studies. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process involved and the issues researchers encountered with participant recruitment during two research studies that employed online social media methods. This is a growing field and more research is required to explore optimal strategies for the successful recruitment using online social media platforms. Researchers need to consider new and evolving ways to recruit research participants particularly within difficult-to-reach populations

The development of international Wound Debridement Best Practice Recommendations: Consensus between Nurses Specialized in Wound, Ostomy and Continence Canada and the Society of Tissue Viability

Debridement is an important component of wound management and can improve outcomes for patients. Debridement needs to be done by an appropriately trained health professional, but the scope of practice, credentials, training, competencies, and regulatory requirements regarding wound debridement can differ. Best Practice Recommendations were created to positively influence patient safety related to all methods of debridement, across the continuum of care, and to be implemented widely by nurses at all professional levels in Canada. Aim: To further develop the Best Practice Recommendations for wound debridement, with an international perspective, by creating a consensus document to support the global adoption of evidence-based debridement practice for health professionals. Methods: A consensus meeting utilising Delphi methods was conducted between the authors to review the consensus statements. Once 80% agreement was achieved, a wide range of wound care experts were identified by the authors and invited to participate in an external review of the statements. Results: Fifteen consensus statements about wound debridement were agreed upon and are presented in this paper. Conclusions: These best practice recommendations have been reviewed by a wide range of practitioners from across the UK and Canada and aim to provide guidance on the standardisation of debridement practices for healthcare professionals

The Design of Student Training Resources to Enhance the Student Voice in Academic Quality Assurance and Quality Enhancement Processes

Without appropriate training and recognition, students – in particular Class Representatives – often struggle to engage fully with a University’s quality assurance and quality enhancement processes. Through the “Our Student Voice” project in Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin), a suite of digital training resources were designed to provide training for students to help develop the requisite knowledge and skills for effective participation there processes, thus strengthening student engagement and enhancing the student voice. The resources are organised into thirteen accessible episodes that each commence with an animated scenario that sets out key messages. The remainder of the episode provides detailed guidance for students and learning activities to help students develop their skillset. Upon completion of the learning activities, and having satisfactorily undertaken one of three specific student role in the quality processes, students can apply for recognition through a digital badge. The training resources and digital badges have been co-designed by a project team comprised of staff and students from across the University guided by best practice internationally. This paper describes the co-design process and presents a set of lessons learned that may assist other higher education institutions in enabling impactful student engagement in their academic quality assurance and quality enhancement processes

A Response to the Draft National Mitigation Plan. Teagasc submission to the Department of Communications, Climate Action & theEnvironment

Teagasc SubmissionThis submission details the mitigation potential of agriculture to shortly be published as an update to the Marginal Abatement Cost Curve (MACC) for Agriculture and and describes how the MACC mitigation strategies relate to the measures in the National Mitigation Plan

An Analysis of Abatement Potential of Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Irish Agriculture 2021-2030

Teagasc SubmissionThis report has been prepared by the Teagasc Working Group on GHG Emissions, which brings together and integrates the extensive and diverse range of organisational expertise on agricultural greenhouse gases. The previous Teagasc GHG MACC was published in 2012 in response to both the EU Climate and Energy Package and related Effort Sharing Decision and in the context of the establishment of the Food Harvest 2020 production targets

Phylogenetic ctDNA analysis depicts early-stage lung cancer evolution.

The early detection of relapse following primary surgery for non-small-cell lung cancer and the characterization of emerging subclones, which seed metastatic sites, might offer new therapeutic approaches for limiting tumour recurrence. The ability to track the evolutionary dynamics of early-stage lung cancer non-invasively in circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) has not yet been demonstrated. Here we use a tumour-specific phylogenetic approach to profile the ctDNA of the first 100 TRACERx (Tracking Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Evolution Through Therapy (Rx)) study participants, including one patient who was also recruited to the PEACE (Posthumous Evaluation of Advanced Cancer Environment) post-mortem study. We identify independent predictors of ctDNA release and analyse the tumour-volume detection limit. Through blinded profiling of postoperative plasma, we observe evidence of adjuvant chemotherapy resistance and identify patients who are very likely to experience recurrence of their lung cancer. Finally, we show that phylogenetic ctDNA profiling tracks the subclonal nature of lung cancer relapse and metastasis, providing a new approach for ctDNA-driven therapeutic studies