Soil microbial communities in bioenergy cropping systems: unearthing relationships across a heterogeneous agroecosystem

Microbial communities are at the heart of important ecosystem functions such as decomposition and the mineralization of nutrients. Thus, understanding the factors that shape the spatial distribution of microbial communities is important in order to predict the ecosystem services they support and biogeochemical feedbacks to climate change. Both edaphic factors and plants shape microbial communities, yet the integrated influence of these factors on microbial community dynamics is largely unknown. The goal of this research was to quantify how edaphic conditions affect microbial abundance, composition and diversity and subsequent changes in microbial activity under different cropping systems. To address this goal, I conducted studies at the Landscape Biomass Project, Boone County, IA, using an annual (continuous corn) and perennial (switchgrass) cropping systems replicated at three landscape positions along a topographic gradient. In addition, I investigated the effect of land use on variation in microbial variables along a transect across a cultivated corn field and an uncultivated switchgrass monoculture. Cropping system was found to be a stronger driver of microbial diversity and activity than landscape position, with consequences for rates of decomposition. In contrast, microbial community abundance and composition were most strongly shaped by landscape position. This disparity between drivers of microbial communities and activity suggests an important, but often overlooked, temporal component to our predictions of microbial parameters - where the soil environment over longer temporal scales shapes community membership and shorter temporal dynamics associated with plants shape a small but consistent group of microbes and community activity. Spatial modeling using wavelet analysis indicated microbial communities and enzyme activity were structured by fine-scale environmental heterogeneity, both within and across land use. We also detected a distinct signature of homogenization of microbial communities and stochastic community assembly in the cultivated soil. Correlations between microbial communities and enzyme activity revealed scale-specific relationships, suggesting the importance of microbial abundance to nitrogen and phosphorus cycling enzymes and microbial community structure to carbon cycling enzymes. Results highlight the importance of scale to understanding the biological mechanisms regulating ecosystem functions, which has implications for predicting biogeochemical cycling

A Mixed Methods Exploration of the Relationship between Activities within the Home and Health in Older People with Heart Failure: Implications for Lifestyle Monitoring

Introduction Older people and those with long-term conditions are more vulnerable to declining health. One experimental method of detecting early signs of a health decline is lifestyle monitoring (LM) based on the idea that the health state of an individual can be inferred via indirect measurement of home activities. This primarily qualitative research explored activities within the context of heart failure (HF), and range of factors that shape everyday activity. Quantitative analysis tested whether home activities vary according to the health state. Methods A mixed methods approach was utilised. Quantitative: analysis of secondary LM data explored associations between proxy activity and self-reported measures of health from 17 participants with HF, aged 60 years and over. Qualitative: twenty older people with HF were interviewed (and 11 partners) to explore whether activities changed during variations in their symptoms; and wider influences on everyday activity. Data was analysed using template analysis. Views of 6 specialist nurses, 27 attendees of a HF support group, and 2 experts on LM, were summarised. Results LM data analysis proved that proxy activity levels varied according to self-reported health states, within a significant proportion of the analysis. However results were complex, without any observable patterns in activity according to health. Qualitative enquiry confirmed that health does influence everyday activity but this occurs in a complex way, and is influenced by individual, psychological, contextual, and environmental factors. However during an exacerbation of symptoms common activities were undertaken to ease symptoms. Discussion This study adds to the understanding of everyday life lived within the context of HF, and debate about how to improve health monitoring technology. Home activity has many influences, and of these attitudes and psychological factors are key and thus this poses a challenge to LM based on the idea that the health state of an individual can be inferred from home activity. The technology therefore requires further consideration of purpose, methods, and target audience

Modelling the future impacts of urban spatial planning on the viability of alternative water supply

Greywater recycling and rainwater harvesting have the potential to increase the resilience of water management and reduce the need for investment in conventional water supply schemes. However, their water-savings would partly depend on the location and built-form of urban development and hence its household sizes and rainwater per dwelling. We have therefore tested how spatial planning options would affect the future viability of alternative water supply in the Greater South East of England. Our integrated modelling framework, for the first time, forecasts the future densities and variability of built-form to provide inputs to the modelling of alternative water supply. We show that using projections of the existing housing stock would have been unsound, and that using standard dwelling types and household sizes would have substantially overestimated the water-savings, by not fully representing how the variability in dwelling dimensions and household-sizes would affect the cost effectiveness of these systems. We compare the spatial planning trend over a 30 year period with either compaction at higher densities within existing urban boundaries, or market-led more dispersed development. We show how the viability of alternative water supply would differ between these three spatial planning options. The water-savings of rainwater harvesting would vary greatly at a regional scale depending on residential densities and rainfall. Greywater recycling would be less affected by spatial planning but would have a finer balance between system costs and water-savings and its feasibility would vary locally depending on household sizes and water efficiency. The sensitivity of the water savings to differences in rainfall and water prices would vary with residential density. The findings suggest that forecasts of residential densities, rainfall and the water price could be used in conjunction with more detailed local studies to indicate how spatial planning would affect the future water saving potential of alternative water supply

Confident and competent?: helping students to develop their practice based skills

The Competence in Practice Assessment (CiPA) Tool was designed and developed to support student self-assessment in a social care or health setting. It is one of many artefacts created as part of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning called ‘Assessment and Learning in Practice Settings’. Demonstration of competence is essential for courses leading to professional registration. This presentation will chart the development and evaluation of the CiPA tool into responsive software that students can self complete at stages throughout their course: In doing this we demonstrate how a research project became the springboard for the development of student centred learning and teaching innovation. 14 students from a range of health and social work courses, who responded to a job advertisement, worked in multiprofessional collaborative groups to design feedback, reflective prompts and resource links in response to students’ self assessment ratings. This was then built into a simple software package by a computing placement student. The result is that students complete the tool [with potential for PC, web or Mobile access] by assessing their perception of their own competency at their current stage in the course. The software provides them with feedback designed to support their own assessment and suggest actions: this is confidential and thus a safe activity, but linked to Personal Development Planning and so able to be incorporated into their record of professional growth, preparation for further placement experience and readiness for qualification. Taking responsibility for one’s own learning, and developing self assessment skills are parts of becoming a competent practitioner in any profession; thus whilst the questions as they stand relate to health and social care professions, the design principles apply to any placement experience, leading to opportunities for creative development of the tool

Deintensification of Adjuvant Treatment After Transoral Surgery in Patients With Human Papillomavirus-Positive Oropharyngeal Cancer:The Conception of the PATHOS Study and Its Development

PATHOS is a phase II/III randomized controlled trial (RCT) of risk-stratified, reduced intensity adjuvant treatment in patients undergoing transoral surgery (TOS) for human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC). The study opened in the UK in October 2015 and, after successful recruitment into the phase II, transitioned into phase III in the autumn of 2018. PATHOS aims to establish whether the de-intensification of adjuvant treatment in patients with favorable prognosis HPV-positive OPSCC will confer improved swallowing outcomes, whilst maintaining high rates of cure. In this article, we will outline the rationale for the study and how it aims to answer fundamentally important questions about the safety, effectiveness and functional outcomes of minimally invasive TOS techniques followed by adjuvant radiotherapy (RT) or chemo-radiotherapy (CRT) in this patient population

Schools should still be the last to close and first to open if there were any future lockdown

As schools in England return for the start of the new term this week, these authors argue why schools should be provided with resources to remain open amid rising covid cases

Reading in the digital age

In 2019, Learning Developers at Lancaster University were awarded funding by ALDinHE to conduct a small project into how students read (Hargreaves et al., 2022a). We explored students’ perspectives and practices around reading academic texts in digital format. We analysed how students manage their digital reading, how they interact and engage with texts on-screen, and what influences their choices related to text format. One output of this project is an interactive online resource (see Hargreaves et al., 2022b) based upon insights gained from our students and we would like to present parts of this resource to the ALDinHE community

Diagramming social practice theory:An interdisciplinary experiment exploring practices as networks

Achieving a transition to a low-carbon energy system is now widely recognised as a key challenge facing humanity. To date, the vast majority of research addressing this challenge has been conducted within the disciplines of science, engineering and economics utilising quantitative and modelling techniques. However, there is growing awareness that meeting energy challenges requires fundamentally socio-technical solutions and that the social sciences have an important role to play. This is an interdisciplinary challenge but, to date, there remain very few explorations of, or reflections on, interdisciplinary energy research in practice. This paper seeks to change that by reporting on an interdisciplinary experiment to build new models of energy demand on the basis of cutting-edge social science understandings. The process encouraged the social scientists to communicate their ideas more simply, whilst allowing engineers to think critically about the embedded assumptions in their models in relation to society and social change. To do this, the paper uses a particular set of theoretical approaches to energy use behaviour known collectively as social practice theory (SPT) - and explores the potential of more quantitative forms of network analysis to provide a formal framework by means of which to diagram and visualize practices. The aim of this is to gain insight into the relationships between the elements of a practice, so increasing the ultimate understanding of how practices operate. Graphs of practice networks are populated based on new empirical data drawn from a survey of different types (or variants) of laundry practice. The resulting practice networks are analysed to reveal characteristics of elements and variants of practice, such as which elements could be considered core to the practice, or how elements between variants overlap, or can be shared. This promises insights into energy intensity, flexibility and the rootedness of practices (i.e. how entrenched/ established they are) and so opens up new questions and possibilities for intervention. The novelty of this approach is that it allows practice data to be represented graphically using a quantitative format without being overly reductive. Its usefulness is that it is readily applied to large datasets, provides the capacity to interpret social practices in new ways, and serves to open up potential links with energy modeling. More broadly, a significant dimension of novelty has been the interdisciplinary approach, radically different to that normally seen in energy research. This paper is relevant to a broad audience of social scientists and engineers interested in integrating social practices with energy engineering

Sharing and empathy in digital spaces: qualitative study of online health forums for breast cancer and motor neuron disease. (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis)

Background: The availability of an increasing number of online health forums has altered the experience of living with a health condition, as more people are now able to connect and support one another. Empathy is an important component of peer-to-peer support, although little is known about how empathy develops and operates within online health forums. Objective: The aim of this paper is to explore how empathy develops and operates within two online health forums for differing health conditions: breast cancer and motor neuron disease (MND), also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Methods: This qualitative study analyzed data from two sources: interviews with forum users and downloaded forum posts. Data were collected from two online health forums provided by UK charities: Breast Cancer Care and the Motor Neurone Disease Association. We analyzed 84 threads from the breast cancer forum and 52 from the MND forum. Threads were purposively sampled to reflect varied experiences (eg, illness stages, topics of conversation, and user characteristics). Semistructured interviews were conducted with 14 Breast Cancer Care forum users and five users of the MND forum. All datasets were analyzed thematically using Braun and Clarke’s six-phase approach and combined to triangulate the analysis. Results: We found that empathy develops and operates through shared experiences and connections. The development of empathy begins outside the forum with experiences of illness onset and diagnosis, creating emotional and informational needs. Users came to the forum and found their experiences and needs were shared and understood by others, setting the empathetic tone and supportive ethos of the forum. The forum was viewed as both a useful and meaningful space in which they could share experiences, information, and emotions, and receive empathetic support within a supportive and warm atmosphere. Empathy operated through connections formed within this humane space based on similarity, relationships, and shared feelings. Users felt a need to connect to users who they felt were like themselves (eg, people sharing the same specific diagnosis). They formed relationships with other users. They connected based on the emotional understanding of ill health. Within these connections, empathic communication flourished. Conclusions: Empathy develops and operates within shared experiences and connections, enabled by structural possibilities provided by the forums giving users the opportunity and means to interact within public, restricted, and more private spaces, as well as within groups and in one-to-one exchanges. The atmosphere and feeling of both sites and perceived audiences were important facilitators of empathy, with users sharing a perception of virtual communities of caring and supportive people. Our findings are of value to organizations hosting health forums and to health professionals signposting patients to additional sources of support

When activities connect: Sequencing, network analysis, and energy demand modelling in the United Kingdom

This work applies a network analysis technique to the study of real and synthetic residential activity data commonly used in activity and energy demand research. UK Time Use Survey activity diaries are converted into network graphs of activity sequences. Differences between weekday and weekend networks are compared using network metrics: size, density, centrality and homophily. The results show that the weekday activity sequence network is smaller, less dense, more central and has lesser homophily than the weekend network. The technique is applied to test the validation of a model of residential active occupancy in buildings that uses a first-order Markov chain technique to generate synthetic data. The results show that the synthetic data reproduces relative differences between the network metrics for weekdays and weekends but the differences between real and synthetic data are statistically significant and greater or comparable to the differences observed between real weekday and weekend data. The first-order Markov chain technique fails to capture important characteristics of the sequence network that are present in the real data. The analysis technique presented here can be used to improve the testing and validation of such models in future, as well the comparative analysis of sets of aggregated activity data for periods of known difference in energy demand