The recruitment of foster carers: key messages from the research literature

This report summarises key learning from existing literature around the recruitment of foster carers

The Barnardo's Safe Accommodation Project: consultation with young people

This report presents the findings of a consultation with young people in the care system affected by sexual exploitation or trafficking, conducted as part of the Barnardo's Safe Accommodation project. The consultation focused on experiences of the care system and how these could be improved

Safe accommodation for sexually exploited and trafficked young people: briefing paper

This briefing paper considers the factors that will contribute to effective and safe accommodation by summarising key messages from literature related to sexually exploited and trafficked young people, as well as the provision of specialist foster care for vulnerable young people in general

The costs and benefits of multiple mating in a mostly monandrous wasp

Funding: NERC DTGThe taxonomically widespread nature of polyandry remains a puzzle. Much of the empirical work regarding the costs and benefits of multiple mating to females has, for obvious reasons, relied on species that are already highly polyandrous. However, this makes it difficult to separate the processes that maintain the current level of polyandry from the processes that facilitate its expression and initiated its evolution. Here we consider the costs and benefits of polyandry in Nasonia vitripennis, a species of parasitoid wasp that is “mostly monandrous” in the wild, but which evolves polyandry under laboratory culture conditions. In a series of six experiments, we show that females gain a direct fecundity and longevity benefit from mating multiply with virgin males. Conversely, mating multiply with previously mated males actually results in a fecundity cost. Sexual harassment may also represent a significant cost of reproduction. Harassment was, however, only costly during oviposition, resulting in reduced fecundity, longevity and disrupted sex allocation. Our results show that ecological changes, in our case associated with differences in the local mating structure in the laboratory can alter the costs and benefits of mating and harassment and potentially lead to shifts in mating patterns.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Sex allocation theory reveals a hidden cost of neonicotinoid exposure in a parasitoid wasp

P.R.W. was funded by the University of Stirling, C.V.B. and S.M.G. were funded by Nuffield Research Placements and N.C., J.G. and D.M.S. were funded by NERC (NE/J024481/1).Sex allocation theory has proved to be one the most successful theories in evolutionary ecology. However, its role in more applied aspects of ecology has been limited. Here we show how sex allocation theory helps uncover an otherwise hidden cost of neonicotinoid exposure in the parasitoid wasp Nasonia vitripennis. Female N. vitripennis allocate the sex of their offspring in line with Local Mate Competition (LMC) theory. Neonicotinoids are an economically important class of insecticides, but their deployment remains controversial, with evidence linking them to the decline of beneficial species. We demonstrate for the first time to our knowledge, that neonicotinoids disrupt the crucial reproductive behaviour of facultative sex allocation at sub-lethal, field-relevant doses in N. vitripennis. The quantitative predictions we can make from LMC theory show that females exposed to neonicotinoids are less able to allocate sex optimally and that this failure imposes a significant fitness cost. Our work highlights that understanding the ecological consequences of neonicotinoid deployment requires not just measures of mortality or even fecundity reduction among non-target species, but also measures that capture broader fitness costs, in this case offspring sex allocation. Our work also highlights new avenues for exploring how females obtain information when allocating sex under LMC.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Information System Adoption and Use in Local Cooperatives

Advances in information technology can help local cooperatives remain competitive in a changing agricultural sector. This study examines the adoption and use of information systems by local farm supply and grain cooperatives and the relationships between information system characteristics and cooperative performance. Cooperative characteristics were found to have a significant effect on information selection, overall cost structure, and the allocation of information system expenses. Information system selection was also related to operating performance. In all size categories, farm supply cooperatives that owned computers had better operating performance than those that did not. In contrast, operating performance was not related to computer ownership in grain cooperatives.Agribusiness,

All-optical reconstruction of atomic ground-state population

The population distribution within the ground-state of an atomic ensemble is of large significance in a variety of quantum optics processes. We present a method to reconstruct the detailed population distribution from a set of absorption measurements with various frequencies and polarizations, by utilizing the differences between the dipole matrix elements of the probed transitions. The technique is experimentally implemented on a thermal rubidium vapor, demonstrating a population-based analysis in two optical pumping examples. The results are used to verify and calibrate an elaborated numerical model, and the limitations of the reconstruction scheme which result from the symmetry properties of the dipole matrix elements are discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure