Showing 421 - 430 of 733 Items
Oil and indigenous people in sub-Arctic Russia: Rethinking equity and governance in benefit sharing agreements
Date: 2018-03-01
Creator: Maria Tysiachniouk, Laura A. Henry, Machiel Lamers, Jan P.M. van Tatenhove
Access: Open access
- How can the interests of extractive industries and indigenous communities in the Arctic be balanced through benefit sharing policies? This paper analyses how the international oil consortia of Sakhalin Energy and Exxon Neftegaz Limited (ENL) on Sakhalin Island in Russia have introduced benefit sharing through tripartite partnerships. We demonstrate that the procedural and distributional equity of benefit sharing depend on corporate policies, global standards, pressure from international financial institutions, and local social movements connected in a governance generating network. Sakhalin Energy was profoundly influenced by international financial institutions’ global rules related to environmental and indigenous people's interests. The benefit sharing arrangement that evolved under these influences resulted in enhanced procedural equity for indigenous people, but has not prevented conflict with and within communities. In contrast, ENL was not significantly influenced by international financial institutions. Its more flexible and limited benefit sharing arrangement was shaped predominantly by global corporate policies, pressure from the regional government and the influence of Sakhalin Energy's model. The paper closes with policy recommendations on benefit sharing arrangements between extractive industries and indigenous communities across Arctic states that could be further developed by the Arctic Council Sustainable Development Working Group.
Varieties of digital authoritarianism analyzing Russia’s approach to internet governance
Date: 2021-12-01
Creator: Laura Howells, Laura A. Henry
Access: Open access
- Digital authoritarianism threatens the privacy and rights of Internet users worldwide, yet scholarship on this topic remains limited in analytical power and case selection. In this article, we introduce a comprehensive analytical framework to the field of Internet governance and apply it first, briefly, to the well-known case of China and then, in more depth, to the still-understudied Russian case. We identify the extent and relative centralization of Internet governance as well as proactive versus reactive approaches to governance as notable differences between the cases, highlighting variation among digital authoritarians’ governance strategies. We conclude that Russia’s Internet governance model is less comprehensive and consistent than China’s, but its components may be more easily exported to other political systems. We then consider whether recent changes to Russia’s Internet governance suggest that it could converge with the Chinese model over time.
Glycans in pathogenic bacteria - potential for targeted covalent therapeutics and imaging agents
Date: 2014-04-08
Creator: Van N. Tra, Danielle H. Dube
Access: Open access
- A substantial obstacle to the existing treatment of bacterial diseases is the lack of specific probes that can be used to diagnose and treat pathogenic bacteria in a selective manner while leaving the microbiome largely intact. To tackle this problem, there is an urgent need to develop pathogen-specific therapeutics and diagnostics. Here, we describe recent evidence that indicates distinctive glycans found exclusively on pathogenic bacteria could form the basis of targeted therapeutic and diagnostic strategies. In particular, we highlight the use of metabolic oligosaccharide engineering to covalently deliver therapeutics and imaging agents to bacterial glycans. © 2014 The Partner Organisations.
Reproducibility of Ba/Ca variations recorded by northeast Pacific bamboo corals
Date: 2017-09-01
Creator: G. Serrato Marks, M. LaVigne, T. M. Hill, W. Sauthoff, T. P., Guilderson, E. B. Roark, R. B. Dunbar, T. J. Horner
Access: Open access
- Trace elemental ratios preserved in the calcitic skeleton of bamboo corals have been shown to serve as archives of past ocean conditions. The concentration of dissolved barium (Ba ), a bioactive nutrientlike element, is linked to biogeochemical processes such as the cycling and export of nutrients. Recent work has calibrated bamboo coral Ba/Ca, a new Ba proxy, using corals spanning the oxygen minimum zone beneath the California Current System. However, it was previously unclear whether Ba/Ca records were internally reproducible. Here we investigate the accuracy of using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry for Ba/Ca analyses and test the internal reproducibility of Ba/Ca among replicate radial transects in the calcite of nine bamboo corals collected from the Gulf of Alaska (643–720 m) and the California margin (870–2054 m). Data from replicate Ba/Ca transects were aligned using visible growth bands to account for nonconcentric growth; smoothed data were reproducible within ~4% for eight corals (n = 3 radii/coral). This intracoral reproducibility further validates using bamboo coral Ba/Ca for Ba reconstructions. Sections of the Ba/Ca records that were potentially influenced by noncarbonate bound Ba phases occurred in regions where elevated Mg/Ca or Pb/Ca and coincided with anomalous regions on photomicrographs. After removing these regions of the records, increased Ba/Ca variability was evident in corals between ~800 and 1500 m. These findings support additional proxy validation to understand Ba variability on interannual timescales, which could lead to new insights into deep sea biogeochemistry over the past several centuries. SW SW coral coral SW coral SW
Environmental, economic, and energetic costs and benefits of biodiesel and ethanol biofuels
Date: 2006-07-25
Creator: Jason Hill, Erik Nelson, David Tilman, Stephen Polasky, Douglas, Tiffany
Access: Open access
- Negative environmental consequences of fossil fuels and concerns about petroleum supplies have spurred the search for renewable transportation biofuels. To be a viable alternative, a biofuel should provide a net energy gain, have environmental benefits, be economically competitive, and be producible in large quantities without reducing food supplies. We use these criteria to evaluate, through life-cycle accounting, ethanol from corn grain and biodiesel from soybeans. Ethanol yields 25% more energy than the energy invested in its production, whereas biodiesel yields 93% more. Compared with ethanol, biodiesel releases just 1.0%, 8.3%, and 13% of the agricultural nitrogen, phosphorus, and pesticide pollutants, respectively, per net energy gain. Relative to the fossil fuels they displace, greenhouse gas emissions are reduced 12% by the production and combustion of ethanol and 41% by biodiesel. Biodiesel also releases less air pollutants per net energy gain than ethanol. These advantages of biodiesel over ethanol come from lower agricultural inputs and more efficient conversion of feedstocks to fuel. Neither biofuel can replace much petroleum without impacting food supplies. Even dedicating all U.S. corn and soybean production to biofuels would meet only 12% of gasoline demand and 6% of diesel demand. Until recent increases in petroleum prices, high production costs made biofuels unprofitable without subsidies. Biodiesel provides sufficient environmental advantages to merit subsidy. Transportation biofuels such as synfuel hydrocarbons or cellulosic ethanol, if produced from low-input biomass grown on agriculturally marginal land or from waste biomass, could provide much greater supplies and environmental benefits than food-based biofuels. © 2006 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA.
Reactivity and regulation: The impact of Mary Rothbart on the study of temperament
Date: 2008-07-01
Creator: Samuel P. Putnam, Cynthia A. Stifter
Access: Open access
- Through her theoretical and empirical work, Mary Rothbart has had a profound impact on the scientific understanding of infant and child temperament. This special issue honors her contributions through the presentations of original, contemporary studies relevant to three primary themes in Rothbart's conceptual approach: the expansive scope and empirically-derived structure of temperament, the importance of considering developmental change, and the interplay of reactive and regulatory processes. In addition to summarizing these themes, this introductory article acknowledges the ways Mary has spurred progress in the field through methodological advances, institutional service, and pedagogy. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Soft Photon and Graviton Theorems in Effective Field Theory
Date: 2017-06-08
Creator: Henriette Elvang, Callum R.T. Jones, Stephen G. Naculich
Access: Open access
- Extensions of the photon and graviton soft theorems are derived in 4D local effective field theories with massless particles of arbitrary spin. We prove that effective operators can result in new terms in the soft theorems at subleading order for photons and subsubleading order for gravitons. The new soft terms are unique, and we provide a complete classification of all local operators responsible for such modifications. We show that no local operators can modify the subleading soft graviton theorem. The soft limits are taken in a manifestly on-locus manner using a complex double deformation of the external momenta. In addition to the new soft theorems, the resulting master formula yields consistency conditions, such as the conservation of electric charge, the Einstein equivalence principle, supergravity Ward identities, and that particles with spin greater than two cannot couple to those with spin less than or equal to two.
Genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism map for Candida albicans
Date: 2004-06-01
Creator: Anja Forche, P. T. Magee, B. B. Magee, Georgiana May
Access: Open access
- Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are essential tools for studying a variety of organismal properties and processes, such as recombination, chromosomal dynamics, and genome rearrangement. This paper describes the development of a genome-wide SNP map for Candida albicans to study mitotic recombination and chromosome loss. C. albicans is a diploid yeast which propagates primarily by clonal mitotic division. It is the leading fungal pathogen that causes infections in humans, ranging from mild superficial lesions in healthy individuals to severe, life-threatening diseases in patients with suppressed immune systems. The SNP map contains 150 marker sequences comprising 561 SNPs and 9 insertions-deletions. Of the 561 SNPs, 437 were transition events while 126 were transversion events, yielding a transition-to-transversion ratio of 3:1, as expected for a neutral accumulation of mutations. The average SNP frequency for our data set was 1 SNP per 83 bp. The map has one marker placed every 111 kb, on average, across the 16-Mb genome. For marker sequences located partially or completely within coding regions, most contained one or more nonsynonymous substitutions. Using the SNP markers, we identified a loss of heterozygosity over large chromosomal fragments in strains of C. albicans that are frequently used for gene manipulation experiments. The SNP map will be useful for understanding the role of heterozygosity and genome rearrangement in the response of C. albicans to host environments.
Making predictions in an uncertain world: Environmental structure and cognitive maps
Date: 1999-01-01
Creator: Eric Chown
Access: Open access
- This article examines the relationship between environmental and cognitive structure. One of the key tasks for any agent interacting in the real world is the management of uncertainty; because of this the cognitive structures which interact with real environments, such as would be used in navigation, must effectively cope with the uncertainty inherent in a constantly changing world. Despite this uncertainty, however, real environments usually afford structure that can be effectively exploited by organisms. The article examines environmental characteristics and structures that enable humans to survive and thrive in a wide range of real environments. The relationship between these characteristics and structures, uncertainty, and cognitive structure is explored in the context of PLAN, a proposed model of human cognitive mapping, and R-PLAN, a version of PLAN that has been instantiated on an actual mobile robot. An examination of these models helps to provide insight into environmental characteristics which impact human performance on tasks which require interaction with the world. Copyright 1999 International Society for Adaptive Behavior.
Accelerating change: The power of faculty change agents to promote diversity and inclusive teaching practices
Date: 2019-10-02
Creator: R. Heather Macdonald, Rachel J. Beane, Eric M.D. Baer, Pamela L. Eddy, Norlene R., Emerson, Jan Hodder, Ellen R. Iverson, John R. McDaris, Kristin O’Connell, Carol J. Ormand
Access: Open access
- Faculty play an important role in attracting students to the geosciences, helping them to thrive in geoscience programs, and preparing them for careers. Thus, faculty have the responsibility to work toward broadening participation in the geosciences by implementing equitable and inclusive practices in their teaching and their programs. Faculty professional development that promotes diversity and inclusion is one way to move evidence-based practices into wider use. The adoption of these practices may be accelerated through a professional development diffusion model that amplifies the impacts through the work of faculty change agents. An example of this approach is the SAGE 2YC professional development program, in which faculty change agents learn and practice strategies during workshop sessions, implement changes in their own teaching, and then work in teams to lead workshops in their region under the auspices of the national program. Although this example focuses on two-year colleges, the model is applicable to faculty professional development more broadly. The success of the model is due in large part to a suite of leader-developed workshop sessions and curated resources that change agent teams may select and adapt for the regional workshops they lead. Furthermore, change agents are trusted colleagues, which makes adoption of the evidence-based practices by regional workshop participants more likely. Increased adoption of a change agent approach to faculty development will support the creation and sharing of additional resources, leading to wider diffusion and implementation of inclusive teaching practices.