Last month, ISIS destroyed the 1,500-year-old Mar Elian Monastery in Al-Qaryatayn, Syria. Professor Emma Loosley, expert in Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter, has lived in the area and has studied the sacred site. Here, in an article adapted from one first published in The Catholic Herald, she outlined the sense of loss to local people.

The Mar Elian Monastery has been destroyed by IS.

When I first moved to Dayr Mar Elian in the summer of 2001 I was slightly disconcerted when the Qurwani, as the people of Qaryatayn are known, kept asking me if I had met Mar Elian yet.

Since he is believed to have died over 1,500 years ago I thought that they meant had I seen the sarcophagus, which of course I had. When I said this I was somewhat perplexed to realise that I had misunderstood the question (complicated of course by my faltering Arabic and their thick regional dialect).

What the Qurwani meant was: ‘had I spoken to the saint personally?’ One man told me of walking in the vicinity when a stranger accompanied and blessed him, and he later realised that the man had been Mar Elian (St Julian) and the site guardian told me that late at night in the chapel a voice had repeated: “God give you health,” three times – which he took to be Mar Elian praying for him as he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

I recount these stories to try and impress on the reader how central the Monastery of Mar Elian was to the local populace. The saint was a much-loved figure in the town and treated more as a venerable uncle in most homes than a distant exemplar of the faith.

What is more, in the case of that first man who had seen Mar Elian, I don’t know whether he was Christian or Muslim. The Sunni townspeople named him Sheikh Ahmed Khoury (Sheikh Ahmed the Priest) and the Christians of the town allowed their Muslim neighbours to place the green satin shroud of a Muslim holy man over the Byzantine sarcophagus in the monastery church. There, on a Muslim satin shroud, rosaries and saints’ cards lay with votive candles lit by those of both faiths.

Much has been written in the last few weeks on the physical impact of the loss of the monastery but little consideration has been given to the psychological trauma that currently affects those of us who knew and loved the shrine.

Mar Elian or Sheikh Ahmed was a very real presence in the lives of all who knew the monastery and I know at least one family who credit the intercession of the saint for leading them to the doctor who was able to cure their young son and enable him to walk. IS has ripped the heart out of a poor desert community who were united in their pride in Mar Elian.

Qaryatayn is one of the remotest, poorest settlements in Syria. Located in the midst of the Syrian desert between Homs and Palmyra it only exists because the site has a modest oasis that has permitted limited agriculture. It was the centre of a kingdom in the Middle Bronze Age and, under the name Hazar-enan, appears in the Old Testament (Ezekiel 47:17, 48:1; Numbers 34:9-10). The monastery (Dayr) of Mar Elian almost certainly dates back to around the fifth century and is considered the last resting place of Mar Elian esh-Sheikh.

Dayr Mar Elian appears to have been inhabited from Late Antiquity until the eighteenth or nineteenth century, when it was abandoned at the time when many local Christians left the Syrian Orthodox Church to join with Rome as members of the Syrian Catholic Church.

In 2001 the Syrian Catholic Metropolitan of Homs, Msgr Georges Kassab appointed Fr Jacques (Yaqub) Mourad from the Community of Al-Khalil as parish priest. Fr Jacques was one of two founder members of the Community of Al-Khalil with his superior, Fr Paolo Dall’Oglio SJ and the two of them believed in a vocation of Abrahamic hospitality and Christian-Islamic Dialogue. Both have now been kidnapped by IS – Paolo in July 2013 and Jacques in May 2015.

Until Jacques’ abduction Dayr Mar Elian had remained the heart of the town, comforting the local population and becoming home to hundreds of, mainly Muslim, internal refugees. It was a beacon of Inter-Faith co-operation with Jacques and the local Sheikh standing side by side to prevent the town splintering along sectarian lines.

Last week IS broke the heart of a whole town and only time will tell if it can ever be mended. A friend from Qaryatayn who has managed to escape to Europe sent me a text that says it all: “My heart keeps crying Mar Elian.”

Since the destruction of the monastery we have learned that IS have broken more hearts by destroying the Temples of Bel and Baalshamin and a series of tomb towers at Palmyra, and brutally murdering the man who had looked after them for more than 50 years, Khaled al-Asad.

This destruction has been dismissed as some as being irrelevant compared to the human suffering the Syrians are enduring, but if we think back to the emotional suffering of the people of Britain not only in London, but in Coventry, Exeter and many other places during the Second World War, we should understand that this destruction is robbing many Syrians of any hope that their lives will ever be the same again.

Honorary Research Fellow, Dr Malcom Burgess is a Conservation Scientist at the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science been interested in woodland birds since childhood, and has a PhD on the Mauritius kestrel, a tropical woodland bird.

Dr Burgess set up, and now runs citizen science website www.piedfly.net, to monitor Pied Flycatchers in the south west of England. In this blog post, he writes about how they have managed to track the migration of the Pied Flycatcher.

This blog post first appeared on the British Ornithologists’ Union site.

Pied Flycatchers Ficedula hypoleuca are one of the best studied passerines in Europe, yet we know little about their migratory timings or even where populations winter. We are now starting to find out.

Pied Flycatchers, like Blue Tits Cyanistes caeruleus and Great Tits Parus major, breed in nest boxes at high densities which enables large numbers to be monitored, so making them good model systems for all manner of studies. But an important difference between tits and flycatchers is that flycatchers migrate. Despite knowing a huge amount about Pied Flycatcher breeding ecology, we actually know little about their migration timings, migration routes or the locations of their African non-breeding grounds. This is important to find out, as the UK population has declined by 53 per cent since 1995 (Baillie et al. 2014) and has declined in other parts of their European breeding range (BirdLife International 2015).

In the UK there is little evidence that declines are strongly linked to factors affecting them on their breeding grounds. Availability and quality of western oakwoods is largely unchanged (Amar et al. 2010), although it is possible that timing of breeding has become increasingly mismatched with prey availability as warmer and advanced springs result in earlier availability of invertebrate food (see my previous BOU blogs here and here). Such a phenological mismatch has been linked to European Pied Flycatcher declines (Both et al. 2006) although UK data suggests some adaptation, with advances in egg laying date at the same time as relatively unchanged productivity (Baillie et al. 2014). Although these factors may play some role, it seems likely that other important pinch points exist outside of the breeding season.

We know so little about the non-breeding and migratory ecology of Pied Flycatchers partly because we have been unable to follow individuals. Without any precise information about where they go between breeding seasons we have little to go on. In the UK, 645,000 Pied Flycatchers have been ringed since 1909, and yet just five UK breeding (and no UK hatched) have subsequently been found in African wintering grounds. This is one recovery per 129,000 birds; ringing alone is not going to help us. But continued miniaturisation of the lightest available tracking devises, geolocators, now means we are able to track Pied Flycatchers.

A 0.36g geolocator and leg loop harness ready for deployment in 2015. In contrast the geolocator and harness we used in 2012 together weighed 0.59g © David Price

In 2012 myself and Chris Hewson (BTO) fitted geolocators to 20 adult male Pied Flycatchers at my long term monitored population at East Dartmoor National Nature Reserve in Devon, UK (Burgess 2014). This transpired to be an unlucky choice of year. The following spring was the coldest since 1962 with winter-like conditions continuing into April resulting in the latest Pied Flycatcher first arrival date at the study site for 23 years (despite a long term trend for earlier arrival). It was an extra nervous wait for tagged birds to return. But once they did arrive we quickly identified two birds, caught them and removed their loggers. The late and cold spring meant return rates were low for both tagged and untagged males and so we retrieved fewer loggers than we hoped. But the two tags we did retrieve revealed tracks and timings to Africa and back, and the two winter locations derived from 20 loggers is equivalent to 35 years of national effort ringing hundreds of thousands of individuals.

Just one track from a species can be newsworthy and provide totally new information, such as recent work on Red-necked Phalarope Phalaropus lobatus(Smith et al. 2014 – see their BOU blog post) and Ring ouzel Turdus torquatus(Sim et al. in press). Our two UK breeding Pied Flycatchers went to the same region as the UK ring recoveries – Liberia or southeast Guinea. This is important information, suggesting UK birds are concentrated in a relatively small portion of the species’ winter distribution in sub-Saharan western Africa.

Attachment of a 0.36g geolocator to a male Pied flycatcher in 2015 © David Price

University of Groningen PhD student Janne Ouwehand combined our UK data with equivalent data collected from other breeding populations from the Netherlands, Finland and Norway, which has recently been published in the Journal of Avian Biology (Ouwehand et al. 2015). This reveals an interesting pattern of migration connectivity. Instead of African wintering ranges being stacked west to east in order of breeding latitude, the opposite was found. This pattern was evident in both the geolocation and ring recovery data. Flycatchers from all populations shared a similar autumn migration route through Iberia and the western edge of the Sahara. But the timings were different, reflecting population differences in the mean timing of breeding. The earlier breeding UK and Dutch flycatchers departed their breeding grounds first (in mid-August). These flycatchers arrived in the humid sub-Saharan zone of western Africa first and then moved east until settling in an area encompassing Liberia/Guinea/Ivory Coast. The later breeding Fennoscandia flycatchers departed breeding grounds later, arrived in sub-Saharan Africa later, but remained in the western part of the humid zone instead of continuing eastwards. The geolocator data showed this was reversed in spring, with UK and Dutch birds departing from wintering grounds first and arriving back to breeding grounds earliest.

The work of Ouwehand et al. suggests the differences in wintering locations, and unexpected pattern of migratory connectivity, results from geographical variation in breeding phenology and timing of migration. From a conservation perspective this highlights a need for more study of seasonal food availability in wintering areas and how this affects migration ecology and fitness. This work contributes to the growing literature and debate on migratory connectivity (Cresswell 2014), which tracking studies are well placed to contribute to, especially through pan-population analysis of tracking data – another recent example being a pan-European study of European RollersCoracias garrulus (Finch et al. 2015).

We waited for further miniaturisation of geolocators before tagging more UK flycatchers, but this season we tagged a further 20 adult males using geolocators 39 per cent lighter than those used in 2012. We eagerly await some of these birds back next spring and hope in the future to look at individual repeatability and relate tracks to demographic information.

References

Amar, A., Smith, K. W., Butler, S., Lindsell, J., Hewson, C., Fuller, R. & Charman, E.2010. Recent patterns of change in vegetation structure and tree composition of British broadleaved woodland: evidence from large-scale surveys. Forestry 83: 345-356.

Baillie, S. R., Marchant, J., Leech, D. I., Massimino, D., Sullivan, M., Eglington, S. M., Barimore, C., Dadam, D., Downie, I., Harris, S., Kew, A., Newson, S. E., Noble, D. G., Risely, K. & Robinson, R. A. 2014. BirdTrends 2014: trends in numbers, breeding success and survival for UK breeding birds. BTO Research Report 662. BTO, Thetford. View

BirdLife International. 2015. Species factsheet: Ficedula hyploeuca. View

Both, C., Bouwhuis, S., Lessells, C. M. & Visser, M. E. 2006. Climate change and population declines in a long-distance migratory bird. Nature 441: 81-83.

Burgess, M. D. 2014. Restoring abandoned coppice for birds: Few effects of conservation management on occupancy, fecundity and productivity of hole nesting birds. Forest Ecology and Management 330: 205-217.

Cresswell, W. 2014. Migratory connectivity of Palaearctic–African migratory birds and their responses to environmental change: the serial residency hypothesis. Ibis 156: 493-510.

Finch, T., Saunders, P., Avilés, J. M., Bermejo, A., Catry, I., de la Puente, J., Emmenegger, T., Mardega, I., Mayet, P., Parejo, D., Račinskis, E., Rodríguez-Ruiz, J., Sackl, P., Schwartz, T., Tiefenbach, M., Valera, F., Hewson, C., Franco, A. & Butler, S. J. 2015. A pan-European, multipopulation assessment of migratory connectivity in a near-threatened migrant bird. Diversity and Distributions. DOI: 10.1111/ddi.12345. View

Ouwehand, J., Ahola, M. P., Ausems, A. N. M. A., Bridge, E. S., Burgess, M., Hahn, S., Hewson, C., Klaassen, R. H. G., Laaksonen, T., Lampe, H. M., Velmala, W. & Both, C.2015. Light-level geolocators reveal migratory connectivity in European populations of pied flycatchers Ficedula hypoleuca. Journal of Avian Biology. DOI: 10.1111/jav.00721.

Sim, I. M., Green, M., Rebecca, G. W. & Burgess, M. D. in press. Geolocators reveal new insights into Ring Ouzel Turdus torquatus migration routes and non-breeding areas. Bird Study. DOI: 10.1080/00063657.2015.1077779.

Smith, M., Bolton, M., Okill, D. J., Summers, R. W., Ellis, P., Liechti, F. & Wilson, J. D.2014. Geolocator tagging reveals Pacific migration of Red-necked Phalarope Phalaropus lobatus breeding in Scotland. Ibis 156: 870-873.

Wednesday 1 October is International Day of Older Persons; to celebrate, we have a blog from Dr Cassandra Phoenix on the demographic change in our communities and how the older people taking part in her research are embracing retirement, using it to explore new hobbies and pursue new activities.

Dr Phoenix is a researcher at the University of Exeter Medical School and European Centre of Environment and Human Health. She specialises in understanding how people maintain good health and wellbeing as they age, in her latest research has considered how physical activity can affect the ageing process – and how people feel about it.

We live in a society that is undergoing a dramatic demographic change. As 11 million post-war baby boomers march towards retirement, more than one in six people in the UK are aged over 65. In less than thirty years it will be one in four.

Combined with changes in social convention, such as smaller families and couples having children later in life, we’re experiencing a significant shift in the makeup of our communities.

Like much of the population, older adults often live inactive lifestyles and this can have a detrimental effect on both their health and wellbeing. Add to this a swathe of negative stereotypes about what can and can’t be done in older age – and the use of words like ‘burden’ and ‘care crisis’ – and older people could be forgiven for thinking they’ve already been condemned to the scrap heap.

Stigma

As we increasingly see growing older as something to fear rather than embrace, we’re confronted with a period in our lives that’s stigmatised as a time to shut down and disengage. Commonly perceived as relics of a bygone age, older people are often viewed as being immobilised by frailty – out of touch and all too often, out of sight.

Yet the stories and experiences of many older people do not conform to these antiquated and outmoded stereotypes. They view retirement as an opportunity to explore new hobbies, activities and relationships, and could offer the key to helping us all age in a positive and active way.

Over the last two years our research team, based at the University of Exeter Medical School, has followed a group of active older adults as part of the Moving Stories project. We’ve talked to them about their pastimes, sports and hobbies, taken photos of them in action, and asked others what they think about their lifestyles and stories.

Physical activity can have an impact on your experiences and perceptions of ageing

We’re hoping that by listening to their accounts of ‘moving’, we can understand how and why they’ve been able to deal with the challenges of growing older and being active that everyone faces. We also want to know what role all types of physical activity, rather than just exercise, can play in ageing well.

An incredibly broad range of people from across Cornwall signed up to take part and share their stories with us – from sea swimmers, dancers and golfers, to cyclists, walkers, bowls  and badminton players. Our participants ranged in age from a positively youthful 60 to a spritely 92 and continuously conveyed their enthusiasm and desire to remain fit and active.

We’re still analysing the huge amounts of data we’ve captured, but one theme has already emerged across the majority of people we spoke to and that’s the experience of pleasure.

The importance of pleasure is under-researched in health-related areas, particularly in relation to physical activity in older age. Pleasure can take many forms but in this context we’re talking about feelings that make a person feel good, including happiness, joy, fun, and tranquillity.

Many of our participants described so-called ‘sensual’ pleasures – such as the feeling of the wind in their hair when walking outdoors, and the gliding and floating sensations of swimming through the ocean or a pool. These types of experiences show signs of the human senses connecting people with their environment and providing feelings that help contribute to happiness and wellbeing.

Diaries

We found that people also drew pleasure from documenting their experiences. Whether it was through keeping a diary or writing articles for community magazines, our participants felt a sense of pleasure long after the activity had taken place. So it looks as though it’s not just the activity itself that can give pleasure, but what happens before and after. We think this might be a really important mechanism for expanding the appeal of taking part in some form of activity, particularly in those for whom exercise alone does not appeal.

Perhaps somewhat unexpectedly, the active older people in our study also described the pleasure they derived from simply having a routine. The habitual nature of some of their activities gave them a structure that, in the absence of work, was very welcome. They also described the joy that intense focus can bring, enabling them to escape from – and gain perspective on – issues that demand attention in their everyday lives. This immersion in their activity served an important purpose and several participants reported an improved sense of wellbeing as a result.

So the experience of pleasure seems like an important factor in how and why people stay active. It’s also giving us an important insight into how we measure the impact of physical activity, showing that being active is about much more than just meeting recommended guidelines and preventing or managing illness.

Through the help of our participants we’re starting to uncover the other ways in which physical activity might enable us to ‘move’ through life (and later life in particular) in a positive and pleasurable way. We’re hoping that our findings will go on to influence the way that people are encouraged and empowered to stay active and we’re working with AgeUK and Cornwall Sports Partnership to help this happen.

If you’d like to find out more about our research, we’ve teamed up with TheatreScience to bring this project to life on stage. The play ‘Moving Stories – Moving On’ has been inspired by interviews with our participants and tells stories from their lives with a focus on their attitudes to health, wellbeing and ageing. The opening performance is free and takes place in Truro on 2 October 2014. More information can be found at www.ecehh.org/events/moving-stories-theatre.

Dementia is a growing global health priority, with 7.7 million new cases identified each year. As research efforts begin to improve our understanding of this irreversible syndrome, there is growing consensus that patient wellbeing can be improved without the use of drugs. Interventions that focus on the use of therapeutic spaces are gaining momentum but what evidence exists to support their use?

A team at the University of Exeter Medical School, supported by the National Institute for Health Research Collaboration for Applied Health Research and Care South West Peninsula (NIHR PenCLAHRC), has been conducting research into the various aspects of dementia care. Here Rebecca Whear, a specialist in health services research, describes their recent work and how it sits in the context of the growing dementia care debate.

Associated with an ongoing decline of the brain and its abilities, symptoms of dementia include memory loss and a reduction in thinking speed, language use and understanding. In 2012 David Cameron pledged to increase funding for research into dementia health and care as part of the UK’s National Dementia Strategy and since then there has been a steady flow of research findings and recommendations.

The majority of people living with dementia in the UK are supported by their close families, friends or more formal carers in their own home. However, a third live in residential care homes and at this stage are likely to be displaying more severe and challenging symptoms of the disease. Almost half of the elderly people living in residential care have dementia or dementia symptoms, a figure which increases to more than three-quarters in nursing homes. Antipsychotic medications are commonly used to manage the behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia, but some research has suggested a clear link between this treatment and increased risk of illness and death.

Consequently there is now important and increasing interest in exploring opportunities to help people to feel better without the use of (or by reducing) medication.  Such opportunities might include changes in the environment and design of the residential care setting, engagement in other activities such as spending time in a garden, and improved training for care home staff.  Such changes may be able to help calm and relax residents with dementia and may also benefit other residents and the staff around them.

The new Devon Garden for patients with dementia, which is currently in development at the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust.

In some of our most recent research we analysed how spending time in a garden can affect the wellbeing of people with dementia in care homes. We also examined the perspectives of families and carers about the use of a garden as part of the care setting in order to identify information that would help in the design and use of care home gardens in the future.

Our systematic review, which analyses all available evidence on this particular question, critically assesses 17 small studies from the US, UK, Australia, China, Canada, Sweden and Finland. Most of this research looked at the impact of gardens on the wellbeing of people with dementia, but three looked at the impact of horticulture therapy. The results suggest that use of a garden may lower levels of agitation in residents with dementia but that impacts on emotional wellbeing, sleep, changes to medication and risk of falls were less certain. The views and experiences of the garden for residents, families and staff give us further insights into how the gardens are used and the impact they can have. Families said they valued somewhere pleasant to meet that stimulated interest and conversation with their loved ones, and care home staff reported the calming effects the gardens had on residents.

Importantly, our research also highlighted some barriers to using gardens, such as the perception of the garden as a hazard and limited staff time for supervision, leading to gardens being effectively inaccessible for residents.

Another area of our research looked at a range of measures that could improve the experience of mealtimes in residential care – in order to improve the nutrition and behaviour of residents with dementia. Looking at all the available research we found that a number of factors, such as playing music at mealtimes, could result in improved food intake among the elderly and better mealtime behaviour in those with dementia. We also found that introducing changes such as a wider choice of menu and more pleasant eating environment could reduce the risk of malnutrition and agitated behaviours.

Similar pieces of research have also been conducted on a range of therapies to improve the psychological and behavioural symptoms of dementia including light therapy, music therapy, reminiscence therapy and validation therapy. All of which report inconclusive findings due to the low number and poor quality of research studies conducted so far. This is characteristic of studies in this area, small study sizes, use of a variety of tools to measure the same points of interest and poor reporting of studies make it difficult to draw together a common understanding of the evidence.

Despite some positive findings, it is clear that the use of non-pharmacological interventions for people living with dementia are currently understudied and undervalued by policy makers. We really need more high quality evidence to establish clear results and ensure benefits for those living with dementia.