Spatio-temporal shifts in British wild bees in response to changing climate.

Climate plays a major role in determining where species occur, and when they are active throughout the year. In the face of a changing climate, many species are shifting their ranges poleward. Many species are also shifting their emergence phenology.

Climate-driven phenological shifts in emergence dates of British bees.

Climate change has a diverse range of impacts on wild bees, including their phenology or timing of life history events. Climate-driven phenological shifts can not only impact individuals at species level but also threaten the vital pollination service that wild bees provide to both wild plants and cultivated crops. Despite their involvement in pollination, for most bee species, especially in Great Britain, little is known about phenological shifts.

Rural health workforce response to Australia's recent natural disasters and emergencies, with a focus COVID-19.

Introduction: Australia has recently been heavily impacted by natural disasters and emergencies including drought, bushfire, floods and COVID-19. The New South Wales Rural Doctors Network (RDN) and partners developed and implemented strategies to support the primary health care response during this challenging time.

Methods: Strategies included the establishment of an inter-sectoral working group of 35 government and non-government agencies, a stakeholder survey, a rapid literature review, and broad consultation aimed at understanding the impacts of natural disasters and emergencies on primary health care services and workforce in rural NSW.

Collaborative Care - empowering community in the development of rural primary health workforce and service delivery models.

Introduction: Across Australia, providing sustainable primary care services in small rural communities (<1000 population) has been increasingly challenging. It is acknowledged that health system planners must take coordinated action to strengthen systems to enable a community-empowered response to such challenges. In partnership with the Australian Government, Collaborative Care is a whole-of-system approach used in five Australian rural sub-regions to align communities, organisations, policy and funding levers with a common purpose in health workforce and service planning (article here).

Job Satisfaction of Health Practitioners Providing Outreach Health Services during COVID-19 in Rural New South Wales (NSW) and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Australia.

Outreach health practitioners play a key role in enhancing access to healthcare for remote, rural, regional, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia. Outreach health practitioners are those providing ongoing and integrated health services in communities that would otherwise have limited access. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to understand the job satisfaction of health workers as it correlates with long-term retention of the workforce, as well as effectiveness in the role and clinical outcomes for patients.

Addressing pollination deficits in orchard crops through habitat management for wild pollinators.

There is increasing evidence that farmers in many areas are achieving below maximum yields due to insufficient pollination. Practical and effective approaches are needed to maintain wild pollinator populations within agroecosystems so they can deliver critical pollination services that underpin crop production. We established nesting and wildflower habitat interventions in 24 UK apple orchards and measured effects on flower-visiting insects and the pollination they provide, exploring how this was affected by landscape context.

Persuasive Design Techniques and App Design Recommendations to Improve Health Workforce Capability in Rural Health Professionals: What Do Users Want and How Does an App Help?

Background: Health professionals' perceptions of persuasive design techniques for use in technological solutions to improve health workforce capability have not been previously explored.

Objective: This study aims to explore rural health professionals' perceptions of health workforce capability and persuasive design techniques; and translate these into recommendations for designing a health workforce capability app to increase their impact and usefulness.

Methods: Qualitative interviews with 13 rural health professionals were conducted.

Persuasive Design Solutions for a Sustainable Workforce: Review of Persuasive Apps for Real-Time Capability Support for Rural Health Care Professionals.

Background: There is a need to further investigate how persuasive design principles can change rural health professionals' behaviors to look after their own health workforce capability. Several theories are used when developing apps to persuade people to change behavior, including the Persuasive System Design Model, consisting of primary task, dialogue, system credibility, and social support categories, and Cialdini's principles of persuasion. These have not been analyzed yet in the field of health workforce capability.

Establishment and management of wildflower areas for insect pollinators in commercial orchards.

Sown wildflower areas are increasingly recommended as an agri-environmental intervention measure, but evidence for their success is limited to particular insect groups or hampered by the challenges of establishing seed mixes and maintaining flower abundance over time. We conducted a replicated experiment to establish wildflower areas to support insect pollinators in apple orchards. Over three years, and across 23 commercial UK orchards with and without sown wildflowers, we conducted 828 transect surveys across various non-crop habitats.

Sown Wildflowers Enhance Habitats of Pollinators and Beneficial Arthropods in a Tomato Field Margin.

We evaluated the capacity of selected plants, sown along a processing tomato field margin in central Greece and natural vegetation, to attract beneficial and Hymenoptera pollinating insects and questioned whether they can distract pollinators from crop flowers. Measurements of flower cover and attracted pollinators and beneficial arthropods were recorded from early-May to mid-July, during the cultivation period of the crop. Flower cover was higher in the sown mixtures compared to natural vegetation and was positively correlated with the number of attracted pollinators.

Capability ... what's in a word? Rural Doctors Network of New South Wales Australia is shifting to focus on the capability of rural health professionals.

Rural health services, and the workforces that provide those services, are under unprecedented pressure due to insufficient health workforce numbers and distribution of health workforce weighted to urban areas. This creates health service access issues in rural areas, compounding existing health inequalities between rural and urban people. Many approaches to date have aimed to rectify these issues, with moderate success.

Evaluation of single molecule array digital immunoassay technology to quantitate neurofilament light chain.

Globally, neurodegeneration accounts for significant morbidity and mortality among the elderly. Millions of people are afflicted with neurodegenerative diseases, with the most notable cases attributed to Alzheimer's, Huntington's, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and Parkinson's diseases. Sensitive assays that can detect proteopathic anomalies indicative of early neurodegeneration have remained elusive.

Widespread losses of pollinating insects in Britain.

Pollination is a critical ecosystem service underpinning the productivity of agricultural systems across the world. Wild insect populations provide a substantial contribution to the productivity of many crops and seed set of wild flowers. However, large-scale evidence on species-specific trends among wild pollinators are lacking.

Evaluating the Clinical Practice Model's Strengths and Improvement Opportunities Using the Professional Practice Framework Assessment Survey: One Integrated Healthcare System's Experience.

Objectives: The aims of this study are (1) to describe the division, organizational strengths, and improvement opportunities of self-reported behaviors indicative of the multidimensional construct of professional practice and (2) to understand demographic characteristics that contributed to these strengths and improvement opportunities.

Background: Prior to implementing a system-wide interdisciplinary shared governance structure, ProHealth Care measured staff attitudes toward the multidimensional construct of professional practice as proposed within the Clinical Practice Model framework using the Professional Practice Framework Assessment Survey (PPFA-S).

Methods: Clinical and support staff were invited to share their views toward professional practice using the previously validated, reliable tool, the PPFA-S.

Heavy Barbell Hip Thrusts Do Not Effect Sprint Performance: An 8-Week Randomized Controlled Study.

Jarvis, P, Cassone, N, Turner, A, Chavda, S, Edwards, M, and Bishop, C. Heavy barbell hip thrusts do not effect sprint performance: an 8-week randomized controlled study. J Strength Cond Res 33(7S): S78-S84, 2019-The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an 8-week barbell hip thrust strength training program on sprint performance.

Characteristics and experiences of interns in strength and conditioning.

Student coaches undertake internships to develop practical skills and gain experience to improve employability prospects. The characteristics of the coaches who undertake these internships, their experiences and the nature of the work being performed are currently unknown. The purpose of this study was to report the characteristics of strength and conditioning (S&C) coaches who have undertaken internships and their experiences during their respective placements.

Physical Characteristics Underpinning Lunging and Change of Direction Speed in Fencing.

Turner, A, Bishop, C, Chavda, S, Edwards, M, Brazier, J, Kilduff, LP. Physical characteristics underpinning lunging and change of direction speed in fencing. J Strength Cond Res 30(8): 2235-2241, 2016-Lunge velocity (LV) and change of direction speed (CODS) are considered fundamental to success during fencing competitions; investigating the physical characteristics that underpin these is the aim of this study.

Developing and enhancing biodiversity monitoring programmes: a collaborative assessment of priorities.

Biodiversity is changing at unprecedented rates, and it is increasingly important that these changes are quantified through monitoring programmes. Previous recommendations for developing or enhancing these programmes focus either on the end goals, that is the intended use of the data, or on how these goals are achieved, for example through volunteer involvement in citizen science, but not both. These recommendations are rarely prioritized.

Pollinator declines. Extinctions of aculeate pollinators in Britain and the role of large-scale agricultural changes.

Pollinators are fundamental to maintaining both biodiversity and agricultural productivity, but habitat destruction, loss of flower resources, and increased use of pesticides are causing declines in their abundance and diversity. Using historical records, we assessed the rate of extinction of bee and flower-visiting wasp species in Britain from the mid-19th century to the present. The most rapid phase of extinction appears to be related to changes in agricultural policy and practice beginning in the 1920s, before the agricultural intensification prompted by the Second World War, often cited as the most important driver of biodiversity loss in Britain.

Spatio-temporal dynamics of bumblebee nest parasites (Bombus subgenus Psythirus ssp.) and their hosts (Bombus spp.).

1. A 39-year bumblebee data base was used to study the codistribution of six cuckoo bumblebees in the subgenus Psythirus of Bombus (hereafter called Psythirus) and their free-living bumblebee hosts in the British Isles. 2.

Membrane toxicity of antimicrobial compounds from essential oils.

Natural antimicrobial compounds perform their action mainly against cell membranes. The aim of this work was to evaluate the interaction, meant as a mechanism of action, of essential oil antimicrobial compounds with the microbial cell envelope. The lipid profiles of Escherichia coli O157:H7, Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, Pseudomonas fluorescens, and Brochothrix thermosphacta cells treated with thymol, carvacrol, limonene, eugenol, and cinnamaldehyde have been analyzed by gas chromatography.