All Outputs (36)

Enhancing radiological monitoring of 137Cs in coastal environments using taxonomic signals in brown seaweeds (2023)
Journal Article
Hunt, D., Dewar, A., Dal Molin, F., & Willey, N. (2023). Enhancing radiological monitoring of 137Cs in coastal environments using taxonomic signals in brown seaweeds. Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, 268-269, Article 107261. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvrad.2023.107261

With the rapidly expanding global nuclear industry, more efficient and direct radiological monitoring approaches are needed to ensure the associated environmental health impacts and risk remain fully assessed and undertaken as robustly as possible. C... Read More about Enhancing radiological monitoring of 137Cs in coastal environments using taxonomic signals in brown seaweeds.

Radioactivity in future phosphogypsum: New predictions based on estimates of ‘Peak P’ and rock phosphate resources (2022)
Journal Article
Willey, N., & Timbs, P. (2022). Radioactivity in future phosphogypsum: New predictions based on estimates of ‘Peak P’ and rock phosphate resources. Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, 244-245, Article 106828. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvrad.2022.106828

Global food supplies currently depend on producing inorganic P fertilisers from a finite reserve of rock phosphate (RP). P fertilisers are themselves significant pollutants but their production from RP also leaves a phosphogypsum (PG) by-product that... Read More about Radioactivity in future phosphogypsum: New predictions based on estimates of ‘Peak P’ and rock phosphate resources.

Developmental, morphological and physiological traits in plants exposed for five generations to chronic low-level ionising radiation (2020)
Journal Article
Caplin, N. M., Halliday, A., & Willey, N. J. (2020). Developmental, morphological and physiological traits in plants exposed for five generations to chronic low-level ionising radiation. Frontiers in Plant Science, 11, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2020.00389

The effects of ionising radiation (IR) on plants are important for environmental protection but also in agriculture, horticulture, space science, and plant stress biology. Much current understanding of the effects of IR on plants derives from acute h... Read More about Developmental, morphological and physiological traits in plants exposed for five generations to chronic low-level ionising radiation.

Moving radiation protection on from the limitations of empirical concentration ratios (2019)
Journal Article
Beresford, N. A., & Willey, N. (2019). Moving radiation protection on from the limitations of empirical concentration ratios. Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, 208-209, Article 106020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvrad.2019.106020

Radionuclide activity concentrations in food crops and wildlife are most often predicted using empirical concentration ratios (CRs). The CR approach is simple to apply and some data exist with which to parameterise models. However, the parameter is h... Read More about Moving radiation protection on from the limitations of empirical concentration ratios.

Chernobyl; The disaster zone becomes a laboratory (2017)
Journal Article

Zapping plants with radiation might not initially appear useful, however Prof Neil Willey from the University of the West of England monitors the responses of plants under conditions similar to those at the infamous Chernobyl site, and for good reaso... Read More about Chernobyl; The disaster zone becomes a laboratory.

An extended dose-response model for microbial responses to ionizing radiation (2017)
Journal Article

© 2017 Siasou, Johnson and Willey. An understanding of the environmental toxicology of ionizing radiation (IR) is needed because nuclear power production is expanding and there is increasing pressure to build nuclear waste repositories. The effects o... Read More about An extended dose-response model for microbial responses to ionizing radiation.

Inter-Taxa differences in iodine uptake by plants: Implications for food quality and contamination (2015)
Journal Article

© 2015 by the authors. Although iodine is not essential for plants, they take it up readily and, in foodchains, are significant sources of iodine for organisms with an essential requirement for it. During several nuclear accidents radioiodine has bee... Read More about Inter-Taxa differences in iodine uptake by plants: Implications for food quality and contamination.

Making the most of what we have: Application of extrapolation approaches in radioecological wildlife transfer models (2015)
Journal Article

© 2015 The Authors. We will never have data to populate all of the potential radioecological modelling parameters required for wildlife assessments. Therefore, we need robust extrapolation approaches which allow us to make best use of our available k... Read More about Making the most of what we have: Application of extrapolation approaches in radioecological wildlife transfer models.

Thai visitors’ expectations and experiences of explainer interaction within a science museum context (2015)
Journal Article

© The Author(s) 2015. In Western literature, there is evidence that museum explainers offer significant potential for enhancing visitors’ learning through influencing their knowledge, content, action, behaviour and attitudes. However, little research... Read More about Thai visitors’ expectations and experiences of explainer interaction within a science museum context.

Using research-based learning to enhance doctoral skills development (2014)
Journal Article

Soil to plant transfer of radionuclides: Predicting the fate of multiple radioisotopes in plants (2014)
Journal Article

Predicting soil-to-plant transfer of radionuclides is restricted by the range of species for which concentration ratios (CRs) have been measured. Here the radioecological utility of meta-analyses of phylogenetic effects on alkali earth metals will be... Read More about Soil to plant transfer of radionuclides: Predicting the fate of multiple radioisotopes in plants.

A new approach to predicting environmental transfer of radionuclides to wildlife: A demonstration for freshwater fish and caesium (2013)
Journal Article

The application of the concentration ratio (CR) to predict radionuclide activity concentrations in wildlife from those in soil or water has become the widely accepted approach for environmental assessments. Recently both the ICRP and IAEA have produc... Read More about A new approach to predicting environmental transfer of radionuclides to wildlife: A demonstration for freshwater fish and caesium.

Low dose ionizing radiation produces too few reactive oxygen species to directly affect antioxidant concentrations in cells (2012)
Journal Article

It has been hypothesized that radiation-induced oxidative stress is the mechanism for a wide range of negative impacts on biota living in radioactively contaminated areas around Chernobyl. The present study tests this hypothesis mechanistically, for... Read More about Low dose ionizing radiation produces too few reactive oxygen species to directly affect antioxidant concentrations in cells.

Phylogeny can be used to make useful predictions of soil-to-plant transfer factors for radionuclides (2010)
Journal Article

Soil-to-plant transfer of radionuclides can be related to plant evolutionary history (phylogeny). For some species and radionuclides the effect is significant enough to be useful in predicting Transfer Factors (TFs). Here a Residual Maximum Likelihoo... Read More about Phylogeny can be used to make useful predictions of soil-to-plant transfer factors for radionuclides.

The effects of plant traits and phylogeny on soil-to-plant transfer of 99Tc (2010)
Journal Article

Assessments of the behaviour of 99Tc in terrestrial environments necessitate predicting soil-to-plant transfer. An experiment with 116 plant taxa showed that 99Tc transfer to plants was positively related to plant dry weight but negatively related to... Read More about The effects of plant traits and phylogeny on soil-to-plant transfer of 99Tc.

Phylogenetic variation in the tolerance and uptake of organic contaminants (2009)
Journal Article
Collins, C. D., & Willey, N. (2009). Phylogenetic variation in the tolerance and uptake of organic contaminants. International Journal of Phytoremediation, 11(7), 623-639. https://doi.org/10.1080/15226510902787286

An investigation into the phylogenetic variation of plant tolerance and the root and shoot uptake of organic contaminants was undertaken. The aim was to determine if particular families or genera were tolerant of, or accumulated organic pollutants. D... Read More about Phylogenetic variation in the tolerance and uptake of organic contaminants.

Phylogeny and growth strategy as predictors of differences in cobalt concentrations between plant species (2008)
Journal Article
Willey, N., & Wilkins, J. (2008). Phylogeny and growth strategy as predictors of differences in cobalt concentrations between plant species. Environmental Science and Technology, 42(6), 2162-2167. https://doi.org/10.1021/es071531r

Analyses reported here quantify the contribution of plant phylogeny and plant growth strategy to soil-to-plant transfer of Co. Estimated relative mean (ERM) Co concentrations in shoots of 241 species of flowering plant were derived using a residual m... Read More about Phylogeny and growth strategy as predictors of differences in cobalt concentrations between plant species.

Some effects of nitrogen nutrition on caesium uptake and translocation by species in the Poaceae, Asteraceae and Caryophyllidae (2006)
Journal Article
Willey, N., & Tang, S. (2006). Some effects of nitrogen nutrition on caesium uptake and translocation by species in the Poaceae, Asteraceae and Caryophyllidae. Environmental and Experimental Botany, 58(1-3), 114-122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envexpbot.2005.07.001

There is current interest in managing and manipulating 137Cs transfer from soil to plants. We hypothesized that N source might affect Cs uptake by plants and report experiments that confirm this. Uptake experiments using hydroponics with a variety of... Read More about Some effects of nitrogen nutrition on caesium uptake and translocation by species in the Poaceae, Asteraceae and Caryophyllidae.

An analysis of intertaxa differences in sulfur concentration in angiosperms (2006)
Journal Article
Willey, N., & Wilkins, J. (2006). An analysis of intertaxa differences in sulfur concentration in angiosperms. Journal of Plant Nutrition and Soil Science, 169(5), 717-727. https://doi.org/10.1002/jpln.200520590

Understanding the behavior of sulfur (S) in the soil-plant system is important for crop production, for predicting the movement of the radioisotope 35S in the environment, and for investigating the role of S in plant metabolism of xenobiotics. A data... Read More about An analysis of intertaxa differences in sulfur concentration in angiosperms.

A phylogenetic effect on strontium concentrations in angiosperms (2006)
Journal Article
Willey, N., & Fawcett, K. (2006). A phylogenetic effect on strontium concentrations in angiosperms. Environmental and Experimental Botany, 57(3), 258-269. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envexpbot.2005.06.005

A Residual Maximum Likelihood (REML) procedure was used to compile Sr concentrations in 103 plant species from experiments with Sr concentrations in 66 plant species from the literature. There were 14 species in common between experiments and the lit... Read More about A phylogenetic effect on strontium concentrations in angiosperms.