An environmental assessment activity to promote active distance learning and challenge of personal lifestyles and values

This paper introduces a new distance learning course, 'Working with our Environment: Technology for a Sustainable Future'. An inter-disciplinary team within the Technology Faculty of the Open University developed this undergraduate course, which enrols over 1500 students per year. One of the overall aiims is to help students understand how the use of technology to meet human material needs contributes to environmental effects. The process of producing this course, its philosophy, aims and design will be briefly discussed. At the start of the course a lifestyle environmental assessment activity, called EcoCal, is intergrated within students’ study materials. The activity enables students to assess the main impacts on the environment arising from their own household’s consumption of energy, transport, food and water and production of waste. Through the use, either of a printed questionnaire or publicly available software, students can calculate their ‘Ecological Footprint’ and then consider and model the effects of changes to their lifestyle. Through the combination of undertaking this activity and submitting an appropriate assignment, students are encouraged to think critically and creatively about their impacts on the environment and how these might be reduced at both individual and societal levels. At the end of the course students were surveyed to explore whether their attitudes and behaviour had changed

Household ecological footprinting for active distance learning and challenge of personal lifestyles

This paper introduces a new distance learning course, 'Working with our environment: technology for a sustainable future'. An inter-disciplinary team within the Technology Faculty of the Open University developed this undergraduate course, which enrols over 1,500 students per year. One of the overall course aims is to help students understand how the use of technology to meet human material needs contributes to environmental effects. The process of producing this course, its philosophy, aims and design will be briefly discussed. At the start of the course a lifestyle environmental assessment activity, called EcoCal, is integrated within students' study materials. The activity enables students to assess the main impacts on the environment arising from their own households' consumption of transport, energy, food and water and production of waste. Through the use either of a printed questionnaire or publicly available software students can calculate their 'ecological footprints' and then consider and model the effects of changes to their lifestyles. Through the combination of undertaking this activity and submitting an appropriate assignment, students are encouraged to think critically and creatively about their personal and household impacts on the environment and how these might be reduced. At the end of the course students are surveyed to explore whether their attitudes and behaviour have changed

The Synergistic Effect of Concomitant Schistosomiasis, Hookworm, and Trichuris Infections on Children's Anemia Burden

Polyparasitic infections have been recognized as the norm in many tropical developing countries, but the significance of this phenomenon for helminth-associated morbidities is largely unexplored. Earlier studies have suggested that multi-species, low-intensity parasitic infections were associated with higher odds of anemia among school-age children relative to their uninfected counterparts or those with one low-intensity infection. However, specific studies of the nature of interactions between helminth species in the mediation of helminth-associated morbidities are lacking. This study quantifies the extent to which polyparasitic infections have more than the sum of adverse effects associated with individual infections in the context of childhood anemia. This study found that the risk of anemia is amplified beyond the sum of risks for individual infections in children simultaneously exposed to 1) hookworm and schistosomiasis, and 2) hookworm and trichuris, and suggests that combined treatment for some geohelminth species and schistosomiasis could yield greater than additive benefits for the reduction of childhood anemia in helminth-endemic areas. However, more studies to understand the full range of interactions between parasitic species in their joint effects on helminth-associated morbidities will be necessary to better predict the impact of any future public health intervention

Deforestation-induced surface warming is influenced by the fragmentation and spatial extent of forest loss in Maritime Southeast Asia

Deforestation in the tropics causes warming which contributes to regional climate change. Forest loss occurs over a broad range of spatial scales, producing a variety of spatial patterns of cleared and forested land. Whether the spatial attributes of these patterns influence the resulting temperature change remains largely unknown. We adopted a differences-in-differences approach to analyse remotely-sensed forest loss and land surface temperature (LST) data in maritime Southeast Asia. We found that deforestation increased LST, as expected, but that the temperature increases were smaller when forest loss produced more fragmented landscapes in which non-forest and forest edges were heavily interlaced. Temperature increases were greater where the forest loss was more extensive. Warming also extended beyond the location of forest removal, so that forest loss increased temperatures in undisturbed locations up to 6 km away. Different spatial patterns of land clearing, for example, as might be produced by small-holder agriculture as opposed to large-scale deforestation, would therefore have different impacts on the local climate. Conserving forests within 4 km of farmland, urban areas or other sensitive environments may help to avoid temperature increases that reduce land productivity and worsen human health

A capability framework to develop leadership for evidence-informed therapies in publicly-funded mental health services

Purpose - It is difficult to replicate evidence-informed models of psychosocial and assertive care interventions in non-research settings, and means to determine workforce capability for psychosocial therapies have not been readily available. The purpose of this paper is to describe and provide a rationale for the Therapy Capability Framework (TCF) which aims to enhance access to, and quality of, evidence-informed practice for consumers of mental health services (MHSs) by strengthening workforce capabilities and leadership for psychosocial therapies

Forest loss in Brazil increases maximum temperatures within 50 km

Forest cover loss in the tropics is well known to cause warming at deforested sites, with maximum temperatures being particularly sensitive. Forest loss causes warming by altering local energy balance and surface roughness, local changes that can propagate across a wide range of spatial scales. Consequently, temperature increases result from not only changes in forest cover at a site, but also by the aggregate effects of non-local forest loss. We explored such non-local warming within Brazil’s Amazon and Cerrado biomes, the region with the world’s single largest amount of forest loss since 2000. Two datasets, one consisting of in-situ air temperature observations and a second, larger dataset consisting of ATs derived from remotely-sensed observations of land surface temperature, were used to quantify changes in maximum temperature due to forest cover loss at varying length-scales. We considered undisturbed forest locations (1 km ^2 in extent), and forest loss trends in annuli (‘halos’), located 1–2 km, 2–4 km, 4–10 km and 10–50 km from these undisturbed sites. Our research finds significant and substantial non-local warming, suggesting that historical estimates of warming due to forest cover loss under-estimate warming or mis-attribute warming to local change, where non-local changes also influence the pattern of temperature warming