Most ornamental plants on sale in garden centres are unattractive to flower-visiting insects

PeerJ ◽

10.7717/peerj.3066 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 5 ◽

pp. e3066 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Mihail Garbuzov ◽

Karin Alton ◽

Francis L.W. Ratnieks

Keyword(s):

Consumer Choice ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Plant Cover ◽

Ornamental Plants ◽

Absolute Number ◽

Wide Range ◽

Flower Visiting ◽

One Year ◽

The Uk ◽

The Right

Background Gardeners and park managers seeking to support biodiversity in urban areas often plant ornamentals attractive to flower-visiting insects. There is a huge diversity of garden plant varieties, and some recommendations are available as to which are attractive to insects. However, these are largely not based on rigorous empirical data. An important factor in consumer choice is the range of varieties available for purchase. In the UK, garden centres are a key link in the supply chain between growers and private gardens. This study is the first to determine the proportions of flowering ornamentals being sold that are attractive to flower-visiting insects. Methods We surveyed six garden centres in Sussex, UK, each over two days in 2015, by making 12 counts of insects visiting patches of each ornamental plant on display for sale that was in bloom. To provide a consistent baseline among different locations, we brought with us and surveyed marjoram (Origanum vulgare) plants in pots, which are known to be attractive to a wide range of flower-visiting insects. The attractiveness of plant varieties to insects was then expressed in two ways: the absolute number and relative to that on marjoram (‘marjoram score’), both per unit area of plant cover. In addition, we noted whether each variety was recommended as pollinator-friendly either via a symbol on the label, or by being included in the Royal Horticultural Society’s ‘Perfect for Pollinators’ list. Furthermore, we compared the attractiveness of plants that are typically grown for more than one year versus only one year. Results We surveyed 59–74 plant varieties in bloom across the six garden centres. In each garden centre, the distributions of variety attractiveness were highly skewed to the right, with most varieties being relatively unattractive, and few varieties highly attractive to flower-visiting insects. The median attractiveness of varieties with a recommendation was 4.2× higher than that of varieties without. But, due to the large variation there was a substantial number of both poor varieties that had a recommendation and good varieties that did not. Median attractiveness of multi-year plants was 1.6× that of single-year plants, with a similar overlap in distributions. Discussion Our study demonstrates the practicality of carrying out plant surveys in garden centres. Garden centres display large numbers of varieties for sale, most of which are in bloom. Furthermore, data gathered in garden centres appear to correlate well with data gathered in two previous studies in Sussex for plants established in gardens. Although it is unclear whether the varieties being sold in garden centres are a fair representation of varieties that are actually grown by gardeners, our results suggest that there might be considerable scope for making parks and gardens considerably more insect-friendly through judicious variety choices.

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Michael John O'Hara. 22 February 1933 — 24 November 2014

Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society ◽

10.1098/rsbm.2015.0019 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 61 ◽

pp. 305-330

Author(s):

David Rickard

Keyword(s):

Earth Science ◽

Experimental Petrology ◽

Igneous Petrology ◽

Cambridge University ◽

Wide Range ◽

Distinguished Research ◽

One Year ◽

The Uk ◽

The University ◽

Head Of Department

Michael John (Mike) O'Hara was born in Sydney, Australia, but came to the UK when he was one year old. He received his BSc and PhD degrees from Cambridge University. He was appointed assistant lecturer at the Grant Institute of Geology at Edinburgh University in 1958, where he rose to a personal chair in 1970. He moved to the University College of Wales Aberystwyth in 1978 as Head of Department and was appointed Distinguished Research Professor at Cardiff University in 1993. Mike O'Hara was one of the leading igneous petrologists of his generation, a pioneering mountaineer and eminent science administrator. He made fundamental contributions to a wide range of topics in igneous petrology, including identifying rocks from the Earth's deep mantle, experimental petrology, the primary magma problem and mathematical modelling of igneous rock formation. Mike O'Hara's name is legendary in climbing circles because he made the first ascents of 39 of the finest rock climbs in the UK. As a national science administrator he was mainly responsible for the present profile of Earth science teaching and research in UK universities.

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City-wide building height determination using light detection and ranging data

Environment and Planning B Urban Analytics and City Science ◽

10.1177/2399808318774336 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 46 (9) ◽

pp. 1741-1755 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Yue Wu ◽

Luke S Blunden ◽

AbuBakr S Bahaj

Keyword(s):

Urban Areas ◽

Light Detection And Ranging ◽

Light Detection ◽

Building Height ◽

Height Determination ◽

Wide Range ◽

Building Geometry ◽

Building Characteristics ◽

Regional Housing Market ◽

The Uk

The research presented in this paper addresses a current gap in the availability of building geometry data and provides estimates of individual building characteristics at city scale. Such data are crucial for a wide range of subjects such as modelling building energy consumption as well as regional housing market studies. However, such data are currently not available in the UK. In this work, a new approach was developed to automatically estimate the geometric characteristics of buildings, including height and floor count. A wide range of datasets have been brought together including high-resolution light detection and ranging data to accurately estimate building elevation and to obtain the external dimension of buildings. In the UK, most of the datasets required for this model are available for urban areas, allowing the model to be widely applied both in cities and beyond. The paper presents the results of building height and floor count determined from this model and compares these with the actual data obtained from a survey of 108 representative buildings in the city of Southampton. The results show good accuracy of the model with 97% of the estimates having an error under ±1 floor and an absolute mean error of 0.3 floors. These results provide confidence in utilising this model for future building studies at a city scale.

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Researching Migration in a Superdiverse Society: Challenges, Methods, Concerns and Promises

Sociological Research Online ◽

10.5153/sro.4168 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 22 (1) ◽

pp. 15-27 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Lisa Goodson ◽

Aleksandra Grzymala-Kazlowska

Keyword(s):

Lived Experience ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Structural Characteristics ◽

Fundamental Rights ◽

Migrant Populations ◽

Community Stakeholders ◽

Wide Range ◽

Socio Economic Variables ◽

Conducting Research ◽

The Uk

The arrival of superdiversity raises a wide range of methodological issues that warrant further consideration by social researchers conducting research in superdiverse contexts. The complex multi-layering of population settlement that has emerged due to successive waves of migration means that identities, lived experience and access to services including welfare are played out in a plethora of different ways, often determined by the interplay of a range of socio-economic variables alongside structural characteristics, which influence the fundamental rights and entitlements of individuals living in the UK and in turn their settlement and adaptation experiences. This paper reflects on the limitations of ethno-centric research designs, which concentrate on ethnicity as the most important unit of analysis, and calls for more participatory and multidimensional methodologies that engage diverse participants and reflect the levels of socio-demographic complexity experienced in urban areas of society. It then moves on to discuss a number of specific methodological challenges associated with complex populations. In particular sampling and access issues associated with diverse migrant populations will be considered. The latter part of this paper discusses the adoption of a range of research approaches that offer promising potential in terms of better capturing and understanding the heterogeneity, complexity and fluidity concomitant with superdiversity as well as engaging a range of community stakeholders in the production of knowledge.

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Sexual harassment and the right to everyday life

Progress in Human Geography ◽

10.1177/03091325211024340 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 030913252110243

Author(s):

Kate Boyer

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Sexual Harassment ◽

Cultural Change ◽

Vital Role ◽

Night Time ◽

Human Right ◽

Spatial Justice ◽

Wide Range ◽

The Uk ◽

The Right

Freedom from harassment is a basic human right and precondition to mental and physical health. While sexual harassment has become a higher-profile issue in recent years across a range of cultural contexts, including through the global rise of the # MeToo movement and the Everyday Sexism project, this issue has also attracted the attention of policymakers at the highest levels, leading, in the UK, to a Parliamentary Inquiry in 2018 on sexual harassment in public places, and a briefing paper on sexual harassment in higher education from the House of Commons in 2018. All of these highlight the urgent need for both deeper understanding and cultural change on this issue. Meanwhile, sexual harassment constitutes an important area of academic inquiry across a wide range of scholarly fields including psychology, sociology, women’s studies, criminology, law and social policy as well as geography. This article critically reviews key trends in scholarship on sexual harassment in public. It focuses on the spatial contexts of the street, the night-time economy and higher education institutions. A fundamental question of spatial justice, I argue that sexual harassment can be approached through three conceptual lenses: the relational emergence of bodies; the politics of everyday spatial practice; and the ways affects and the atmospheres they generate shape spatial experience. I argue that geographers have a vital role to play in advancing knowledge on this issue, and conclude by outlining a research agenda tracing outlines along which this work might unfold.

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National Green Infrastructure Facility – a specialised ‘living laboratory’ to assess the value of urban green infrastructure

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12457 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Daniel Green ◽

Ross Stirling ◽

Claire Walsh ◽

Eleanor Starkey ◽

Alethea Walker ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Green Infrastructure ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Evidence Base ◽

Environmental Data ◽

Future Research ◽

Surface Water Management ◽

Research Activities ◽

Wide Range ◽

The Uk ◽

Newcastle Upon Tyne

Green Infrastructure (GI) offers multiple and integrated benefits to urban areas, including relieving pressure on &#8216;grey&#8217; infrastructure systems by locally managing surface runoff within cities to reduce the risk of urban flooding. Although the use of GI has been shown to attenuate flooding, monitored and quantifiable data determining the effectiveness of GI is imperative for supporting widespread adoption of GI within cities and to provide an evidence-base to inform the design and maintenance procedures of such systems and ultimately influence key decision makers .The National Green Infrastructure Facility (NGIF) based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, is a purpose-built, publicly accessible, &#8216;living laboratory&#8217; and demonstration site established in 2017, funded by the UK Collaboratorium for Research on Infrastructure and Cities. The NGIF explores how a wide range of green features such as trees, shrubs and soils can help reduce flooding in cities and make them more resilient and sustainable to future changes in climate and urban pressures. The facility hosts a number of novel GI features of varying scale, monitored with dense sensor networks to allow the in-situ measurement of key hydrological, climatic and biophysical variables (e.g. precipitation, temperature, soil moisture, water depth, runoff and outflow rates) which are able to provide quantified evidence of the hydrological performance of sustainable drainage systems (SuDS). Such systems generate detailed insights into how SuDS and nature-based solutions can be used to improve surface water management, optimise geo-energy for building heating/cooling and how systems can be used for urban water treatment.GI features across the NGIF include an experimental &#160;and fully functional swale, providing protection to the area of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in which the feature is located, 10 lysimeter bioretention cells, a series of rain-garden &#8216;ensembles&#8217; and a monitored green roof system. All experimental features are subjected to prevalent environmental conditions and act as fully functional GI systems, but conditions can also be augmented and simulated to ensure that the GI features act as semi-controlled experimental systems to determine responses outside of the natural instrumented record. All environmental data is recorded at high temporal (< 5 minutes) and spatial resolution and is publicly accessible in real-time via the NGIF API.This presentation provides an overview of the NGIF and discusses the current research activities taking place across the site. Data is presented from each of the GI systems to demonstrate and discuss their performance and responses during natural and simulated events, including extremes, and to assess their effectiveness in responding to localised changes in climate. Future research directions and collaborative opportunities are also highlighted.

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Nutrient profiling for front of pack labelling: how to align logical consumer choice with improvement of products?

Proceedings of The Nutrition Society ◽

10.1017/s0029665117000337 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 76 (3) ◽

pp. 247-254 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Annet J. C. Roodenburg

Keyword(s):

Consumer Choice ◽

Success Factors ◽

New Technology ◽

Food Choices ◽

Nutritional Composition ◽

Improve Product ◽

Product Composition ◽

Wide Range ◽

The Right ◽

Labelling System

The primary goal of front of pack (FOP) labelling is to help consumers make healthier choices through communication. A secondary goal is to encourage producers to improve the nutritional composition of their products. Evidence has shown that (FOP) labelling can help consumers to make healthier food choices and has been an incentive for producers to improve product composition. As FOP labelling is seen as an important tool to improve food environments for public health purposes, the WHO supports initiatives of governments to implement an FOP labelling system. Based on the experiences of a wide range of countries over many years, possible success factors for such an FOP system have been defined, six of which are discussed in the present paper and used to evaluate the Dutch Choices Programme that was started in 2006. In the course of time a large number of producers joined the programme and the logo was recognised by more than 90 % of the consumers, but by 2016 the Dutch consumer organisation argued on the basis of their own research that a quarter of the consumers did not understand the colour coding of the logo and as a result the Dutch government decided to no longer support this logo and to introduce a nutrition app. The challenge that remains is to find a system that consumers understand well and that still encourages manufacturers of food to improve product composition. New technology-based data collecting initiatives might provide the right tools to develop such a system.

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Understanding how midwives employed by the National Health Service facilitate women’s alternative birthing choices: Findings from a feminist pragmatist study

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0242508 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 15 (11) ◽

pp. e0242508

Author(s):

Claire Feeley ◽

Gill Thomson ◽

Soo Downe

Keyword(s):

Clinical Skills ◽

Relationship Building ◽

Snowball Sampling ◽

Written Narratives ◽

Active Involvement ◽

Recommended Treatment ◽

Wide Range ◽

Narrative Methodology ◽

The Uk ◽

The Right

UK legislation and government policy favour women’s rights to bodily autonomy and active involvement in childbirth decision-making including the right to decline recommendations of care/treatment. However, evidence suggests that both women and maternity professionals can face challenges enacting decisions outside of sociocultural norms. This study explored how NHS midwives facilitated women’s alternative physiological birthing choices–defined in this study as ‘birth choices that go outside of local/national maternity guidelines or when women decline recommended treatment of care, in the pursuit of a physiological birth’. The study was underpinned by a feminist pragmatist theoretical framework and narrative methodology was used to collect professional stories of practice via self-written narratives and interviews. Through purposive and snowball sampling, a diverse sample in terms of age, years of experience, workplace settings and model of care they operated within, 45 NHS midwives from across the UK were recruited. Data were analysed using narrative thematic that generated four themes that described midwives’ processes of facilitating women’s alternative physiological births: 1. Relationship building, 2. Processes of support and facilitation, 3. Behind the scenes, 4. Birth facilitation. Collectively, the midwives were involved in a wide range of alternative birth choices across all birth settings. Fundamental to their practice was the development of mutually trusting relationships with the women which were strongly asserted a key component of safe care. The participants highlighted a wide range of personal and advanced clinical skills which was framed within an inherent desire to meet the women’s needs. Capturing what has been successfully achieved within institutionalised settings, specifically how, maternity providers may benefit from the findings of this study.

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Modelling human mobility patterns using photographic data shared online

Royal Society Open Science ◽

10.1098/rsos.150046 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 2 (8) ◽

pp. 150046 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Daniele Barchiesi ◽

Tobias Preis ◽

Steven Bishop ◽

Helen Susannah Moat

Keyword(s):

Urban Areas ◽

Large Scale ◽

Learning Algorithm ◽

Human Mobility ◽

Transportation Systems ◽

Mobility Patterns ◽

Online Data ◽

Photo Sharing ◽

Wide Range ◽

The Uk

Humans are inherently mobile creatures. The way we move around our environment has consequences for a wide range of problems, including the design of efficient transportation systems and the planning of urban areas. Here, we gather data about the position in space and time of about 16 000 individuals who uploaded geo-tagged images from locations within the UK to the Flickr photo-sharing website. Inspired by the theory of Lévy flights, which has previously been used to describe the statistical properties of human mobility, we design a machine learning algorithm to infer the probability of finding people in geographical locations and the probability of movement between pairs of locations. Our findings are in general agreement with official figures in the UK and on travel flows between pairs of major cities, suggesting that online data sources may be used to quantify and model large-scale human mobility patterns.

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