Literature Review - Health behaviour change models and approaches for families and young people to support HEAT 3: Child Healthy Weight Programmes

The literature review has been commissioned by NHS Health Scotland to review the health behaviour change models and approaches for families, children and young people to support the development and delivery of effective child healthy weight programmes. Despite the consistent recommendations from NICE and SIGN for the inclusion of behavioural components in child healthy weight programmes, there is little information on effectiveness of specific techniques and which to incorporate. The aim was therefore to provide information on which specific behavioural treatment components, behaviour change models and approaches should underpin clinical guidelines and childhood obesity treatment programmes. Secondly, in light of recommendations for programmes to be delivered by appropriately trained professionals, the review aimed to identify the skills and competencies required and resources and training available for effective delivery of the behavioural components. The outcomes of the literature review will be applied in enhancing the guidance for practitioners involved in the development and delivery of effective child healthy weight programmes; and thereby support achievement of the Scottish Government’s HEAT 3 target aimed at monitoring the attendance and completion of approved ’child healthy weight intervention programmes’. The report includes the background, aims, and objectives, sets out the scope of the review, presents a brief description of the methods and main findings. The methods and stakeholder views are then presented followed by a discussion of the implications for applying the evidence in practice and further research recommendations

A fresh approach to evidence synthesis.

For most conservation interventions, insufficient evidence exists for investigators to be able to conduct a meta-analysis for each species or genus. However, by being apprised of studies that examine how a particular intervention has worked for an order — for birds in general, say — practitioners can better weigh up the chances of success for their intended programme

Bats in the Ghats: Agricultural intensification reduces functional diversity and increases trait filtering in a biodiversity hotspot in India

The responses of bats to land-use change have been extensively studied in temperate zones and the neotropics, but little is known from the palaeotropics. Effective conservation in heavily-populated palaeotropical hotspots requires a better understanding of which bats can and cannot survive in human-modified landscapes. We used catching and acoustic transects to examine bat assemblages in the Western Ghats of India, and identify the species most sensitive to agricultural change. We quantified functional diversity and trait filtering of assemblages in forest fragments, tea and coffee plantations, and along rivers in tea plantations with and without forested corridors, compared to protected forests. Functional diversity in forest fragments and shade-grown coffee was similar to that in protected forests, but was far lower in tea plantations. Trait filtering was also strongest in tea plantations. Forested river corridors in tea plantations mitigated much of the loss of functional diversity and the trait filtering seen on rivers in tea plantations without forested corridors. The bats most vulnerable to intensive agriculture were frugivorous, large, had short broad wings, or made constant frequency echolocation calls. The last three features are characteristic of forest animal-eating species that typically take large prey, often by gleaning. Ongoing conservation work to restore forest fragments and retain native trees in coffee plantations should be highly beneficial for bats in this landscape. The maintenance of a mosaic landscape with sufficient patches of forest, shade-grown coffee and riparian corridors will help to maintain landscape wide functional diversity in an area dominated by tea plantations

“Flipping or flapping?” Investigating engineering students’ experience in flipped classrooms

Purpose This study has explored the flipped classroom model in a private university in Malaysia. It aims to present a flipped classroom intervention for engineering education innovation. Design/methodology/approach The research (1) revisited prominent educational theories for a flipping or flapping pedagogy, (2) implemented and explored the flipped classroom experiences in one engineering subject using the action inquiry method with thematic analysis and (3) reflectively evaluated both students’ and educators’ “flipping or flapping experience”. Findings The responses of the research participants are analysed and used to develop the flipping or flapping classroom principles and an ideal flipped classroom model. From passive lectures to active learning with collaborative discourse and reflective communication, flipping the classroom can offer a seamless learning experience. Research limitations/implications The flipped classroom model can provide good reference for other educational researchers who intended to conduct a flipped classroom. However, the small sample size with qualitative method and thematic analysis useds led to considerable theoretical development, but it may not achieve the validity standards to generalise the findings. Further empirical investigation with a systematic controlled group is recommended for future work across disciplines for extrapolation. Originality/value This is a genuine case study with an identified innovative teaching need to investigate how flipped classrooms can be enabled and enhanced in engineering education innovation

Landscape scale habitat suitability modelling of bats in the Western Ghats of India: Bats like something in their tea

To conserve biodiversity it is imperative that we understand how different species respond to land use change, and determine the scales at which habitat changes affect species' persistence. We used habitat suitability models (HSMs) at spatial scales from 100-4000. m to address these concerns for bats in the Western Ghats of India, a biodiversity hotspot of global importance where the habitat requirements of bats are poorly understood. We used acoustic and capture data to build fine scale HSMs for ten species (Hesperoptenus tickelli, Miniopterus fuliginosus, Miniopterus pusillus, Myotis horsfieldii, Pipistrellus ceylonicus, Megaderma spasma, Hipposideros pomona, Rhinolophus beddomei, Rhinolophus indorouxii and Rhinolophus lepidus) in a tea-dominated landscape. Small (100-500. m) scale habitat variables (e.g. percentage tea plantation cover) and distances to habitat features (e.g. distance to water) were the strongest predictors of bat occurrence, likely due to their high mobility, which enables them to exploit even small or isolated foraging areas. Most species showed a positive response to coffee plantations grown under native shade and to forest fragments, but a negative response to more heavily modified tea plantations. Two species were never recorded in tea plantations. This is the first study of bats in tea plantations globally, and the first ecological Old World bat study to combine acoustic and capture data. Our results suggest that although bats respond negatively to tea plantations, tea-dominated landscapes that also contain forest fragments and shade coffee can nevertheless support many bat species

Ecology and conservation of bat species in the Western Ghats of India

The Western Ghats of India are a globally important biodiversity hotspot, but around 90 % of the land has been converted to agriculture. Little is known about how bats respond to the conversion of native rainforest to different plantation types in the Western Ghats. This thesis examines the response of bats to coffee and tea plantations, and to riparian habitats, in the southern Western Ghats. Most bat assemblages in the tropics have been studied by catching bats, but many studies have shown that catching alone can give biased and incomplete results. In order to use acoustic data as well as catching data in this landscape I made a library of the echolocation calls of fifteen echolocating species in the landscape. Comparisons of the data from each method showed that combining catching and acoustic data gave the most complete picture of the assemblage, but that acoustic data alone detected more species than catching data alone. Acoustic and catching data were used to build habitat suitability models for ten species. Scales of 100 m – 500 m were the most important for predicting bat presence. Several species showed a positive response to habitats containing native trees and habitat richness, and a negative response to tea plantations and distance to water. Coffee plantations did not differ significantly from forest fragments in terms of bat species or abundance, but did differ in species composition. Bat assemblages in coffee plantations were functionally very similar to those in forest fragments. Tea plantations had the lowest bat species richness of all habitats and differed in species composition from all other habitats. Bat assemblages in tea plantations had lower functional richness and specialisation than other habitats, and the bats remaining were open-adapted species. Rivers with riparian corridors did not have significantly greater bat species richness than rivers without corridors, but differed functionally in several ways. Rivers without riparian corridors had reduced functional specialisation and functional divergence. Rivers with riparian corridors supported more forest adapted species than rivers without riparian corridors

Heard but not seen: Comparing bat assemblages and study methods in a mosaic landscape in the Western Ghats of India.

We used capture (mist-netting) and acoustic methods to compare the species richness, abundance, and composition of a bat assemblage in different habitats in the Western Ghats of India. In the tropics, catching bats has been more commonly used as a survey method than acoustic recordings. In our study, acoustic methods based on recording echolocation calls detected greater bat activity and more species than mist-netting. However, some species were detected more frequently or exclusively by capture. Ideally, the two methods should be used together to compensate for the biases in each. Using combined capture and acoustic data, we found that protected forests, forest fragments, and shade coffee plantations hosted similar and diverse species assemblages, although some species were recorded more frequently in protected forests. Tea plantations contained very few species from the overall bat assemblage. In riparian habitats, a strip of forested habitat on the river bank improved the habitat for bats compared to rivers with tea planted up to each bank. Our results show that shade coffee plantations are better bat habitat than tea plantations in biodiversity hotspots. However, if tea is to be the dominant land use, forest fragments and riparian corridors can improve the landscape considerably for bats. We encourage coffee growers to retain traditional plantations with mature native trees, rather than reverting to sun grown coffee or coffee shaded by a few species of timber trees

Scientists must act on our own warnings to humanity

We face interconnected planetary emergencies threatening our climate and ecosystems. Charlie J. Gardner and Claire F. R. Wordley argue that scientists should join civil disobedience movements to fight these unprecedented crises

A pivotal year for Bolivian conservation policy

Non peer reviewe

Poor availability of context-specific evidence hampers decision-making in conservation

Evidence-based conservation relies on reliable and relevant evidence. Practitioners often prefer locally relevant studies whose results are more likely to be transferable to the context of planned conservation interventions. To quantify the availability of relevant evidence for amphibian and bird conservation we reviewed Conservation Evidence, a database of quantitative tests of conservation interventions. Studies were geographically clustered, and few locally conducted studies were found in Western sub-Saharan Africa, Russia, South East Asia, and Eastern South America. Globally there were extremely low densities of studies per intervention - fewer than one study within 2000 km of a given location. The availability of relevant evidence was extremely low when we restricted studies to those studying biomes or taxonomic orders containing high percentages of threatened species, compared to the most frequently studied biomes and taxonomic orders. Further constraining the evidence by study design showed that only 17–20% of amphibian and bird studies used reliable designs. Our results highlight the paucity of evidence on the effectiveness of conservation interventions, and the disparity in evidence for local contexts that are frequently studied and those where conservation needs are greatest. Addressing the serious global shortfall in context-specific evidence requires a step change in the frequency of testing conservation interventions, greater use of reliable study designs and standardized metrics, and methodological advances to analyze patchy evidence bases