Does worry affect adjustment to bereavement? A longitudinal investigation

This work was supported with a ZonMw TOP grant of the Dutch Association for Scientific Research (NWO), grant number: 91208009.

Treatment for Complicated Grief : State of the Science and Ways Forward

Peer reviewed

Learning from a deceptively spacious policy discourse

In this chapter, the way in which varied terms such as Networked learning, e-learning and Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) have each become colonised to support a dominant, economically-based world view of educational technology is discussed. Critical social theory about technology, language and learning is brought into dialogue with examples from a corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of UK policy texts for educational technology between1997 and 2012. Though these policy documents offer much promise for enhancement of people’s performance via technology, the human presence to enact such innovation is missing. Given that ‘academic workload’ is a ‘silent barrier’ to the implementation of TEL strategies (Gregory and Lodge, 2015), analysis further exposes, through empirical examples, that the academic labour of both staff and students appears to be unacknowledged. Global neoliberal capitalist values have strongly territorialised the contemporary university (Hayes & Jandric, 2014), utilising existing naïve, utopian arguments about what technology alone achieves. Whilst the chapter reveals how humans are easily ‘evicted’, even from discourse about their own learning (Hayes, 2015), it also challenges staff and students to seek to re-occupy the important territory of policy to subvert the established order. We can use the very political discourse that has disguised our networked learning practices, in new explicit ways, to restore our human visibility.

Toxoplasma gondii seropositive rates of animals living on Svalbard

Samples (blood or tissue fluid) from 594 arctic foxes (Alopex lagopus), 390 Svalbard reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus), 361 sibling voles (Microtus rossiaemeridionalis), 17 walruses (Odobenus rosmarus), 149 barnacle geese (Branta leucopsis), 58 kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla), and 27 glaucous gulls (Larus hyperboreus) from Svalbard and nearby waters were assayed for antibodies against Toxoplasma gondii using a direct agglutination test. The proportion of seropositive animals was 43% in arctic foxes, 7% in barnacle geese, and 6% (1 of 17) in walruses. There were no seropositive Svalbard reindeer, sibling voles, glaucous gulls, or kittiwakes. The prevalence in the arctic fox was relatively high compared to previous reports from canid populations. There are no wild felids in Svalbard and domestic cats are prohibited, and the absence of antibodies against T gondii among the herbivorous Svalbard reindeer and voles indicates that transmission of the parasite by oocysts is not likely to be an important mechanism in the Svalbard ecosystem. Our results suggest that migratory birds, such as the barnacle goose, may be the most important vectors bringing the parasite to Svalbard. In addition to transmission through infected prey and carrion, the age-seroprevalence profile in the fox population suggests that their infection levels are enhanced by vertical transmission.

Results from a stable isotope tracer experiment in Potter Cove, King George Island, Antarctica

Antarctic meiofauna is still strongly understud- ied, and so is its trophic position in the food web. Primary producers, such as phytoplankton, and bacteria may repre- sent important food sources for shallow water metazoans, and the role of meiobenthos in the benthic-pelagic coupling represents an important brick for food web understanding. In a laboratory, feeding experiment 13C-labeled freeze- dried diatoms (Thalassiosira weissflogii) and bacteria were added to retrieved cores from Potter Cove (15-m depth, November 2007) in order to investigate the uptake of 3 main meiofauna taxa: nematodes, copepods and cumaceans. In the surface sediment layers, nematodes showed no real difference in uptake of both food sources. This outcome was supported by the natural delta 13C values and the community genus composition. In the first centimeter layer, the dominant genus was Daptonema which is known to be opportunistic, feeding on both bacteria and diatoms. Copepods and cumaceans on the other hand appeared to feed more on diatoms than on bacteria. This may point at a better adaptation to input of primary production from the water column. On the other hand, the overall carbon uptake of the given food sources was quite low for all taxa, indicating that likely other food sources might be of relevance for these meiobenthic organisms. Further studies are needed in order to better quantify the carbon requirements of these organisms.

Isotopic composition of diet and tissues, and isotope discrimination factors for pink-footed and barnacle geese, Svalbard

Breeding in the high Arctic is time constrained and animals should therefore start with their annual reproduction as early as possible. To allow for such early reproduction in migratory birds, females arrive at the breeding grounds either with body stores or they try to rapidly develop their eggs after arrival using local resources. Svalbard breeding barnacle geese Branta leucopsis have to fly non-stop for about 1100 km from their last continental staging site to the archipelago making the transport of body stores costly. However, environmental conditions at the breeding grounds are highly unpredictable favouring residual body stores allowing for egg production after arrival on the breeding grounds. We estimated the reliance on southern continental resources, i.e. body stores for egg formation, in barnacle geese using stable isotope ratios in the geese's forage along the flyway and in their eggs. Females adopted mixed breeding strategies by using southern resources as well as local resources to varying extents for egg formation. Southern capital in lipid-free yolk averaged 41% (range: 23-65%), early laid eggs containing more southern capital than eggs laid late in the season. Yolk lipids and albumen did not vary over time and averaged a southern capital proportion of 54% (range: 32-73%) and 47% (range: 25-88%), respectively. Our findings indicate that female geese vary the use of southern resources when synthesizing their eggs and this allocation also varies among egg tissues. Their mixed and flexible use of distant and local resources potentially allows for adaptive adjustments to environmental conditions encountered at the archipelago just before breeding.

Interpolated maps of pollen percentages in Europe over the last 15,000 years

Aim Palaeoecological reconstructions document past vegetation change with estimates of rapid rates of changing species distribution limits that are often not matched by model simulations of climate-driven vegetation dynamics. Genetic surveys of extant plant populations have yielded new insight into continental vegetation histories, challenging traditional interpretations that had been based on pollen data. Our aim is to examine an updated continental pollen data set from Europe in the light of the new ideas about vegetation dynamics emerging from genetic research and vegetation modelling studies. Location Europe Methods: We use pollen data from the European Pollen Database (EPD) to construct interpolated maps of pollen percentages documenting change in distribution and abundance of major plant genera and the grass family in Europe over the last 15,000 years. Results: Our analyses confirm high rates of postglacial spread with at least 1000 metres per year for Corylus, Ulmus and Alnus and average rates of 400 metres per year for Tilia, Quercus, Fagus and Carpinus. The late Holocene expansions of Picea and Fagus populations in many European regions cannot be explained by migrational lag. Both taxa shift their population centres towards the Atlantic coast suggesting that climate may have played a role in the timing of their expansions. The slowest rates of spread were reconstructed for Abies. Main conclusions: The calculated rates of postglacial plant spread are higher in Europe than those from North America, which may be due to more rapid shifts in climate mediated by the Gulf Stream and westerly winds. Late Holocene anthropogenic land use practices in Europe had major effects on individual taxa, which in combination with climate change contributed to shifts in areas of abundance and dominance. The high rates of spread calculated from the European pollen data are consistent with the common tree species rapidly tracking early Holocene climate change and contribute to the debate on the consequences of global warming for plant distributions.