543 research outputs found
Short-term response of herpetofauna to timber harvesting in conjuction with streamside-management zones in seasonally-flooded bottomland-hardwood forests of southeast Texas
No full textDue to the character of the original source materials and the nature of batch digitization, quality control issues may be present in this document. Please report any quality issues you encounter to [email protected], referencing the URI of the item.Includes bibliographical references.Impacts of selection-cutting and clearcutting on local herpetofauna populations were evaluated. Also, the effectiveness of a streamside-management zone (SMZ) implemented within harvested areas was assessed. Research was conducted at Forest Lake Forest and Wildlife Research Station, located in southeast Tyler County, Texas. A randomized block design experiment was used. Three 24-ha blocks, bisected lengthwise by an intermittent stream, were subdivided into three (8-ha) plots consisting of a control, selection-cut, and clearcut. A SMZ was established 20. 1-m from each bank of the intermittent stream and subjected only to limited selection-cutting. Herpetofauna were censused using 144 drift fence arrays, consisting of pit-fall and double-ended-wire funnel traps. Traps were checked for 180 days, between 24 January 1993 and 22 June 1994. During this time, 8194 individual reptiles and amphibians comprising 38 species were captured. Differences in abundance between control and both timber harvesting treatments and between SMZ within control and SMZ within both timber harvesting treatments were analyzed utilizing a one-way ANOVA and multiple comparison tests for the 15 most commonly captured species. The remaining 23 species were rarely encountered, preventing meaningful statistical evaluation. Selection-cutting did not decreased abundance of any species. Selection-cutting increased abundance of 2 species and had no effect on the remaining 13 species. Clearcutting decreased abundance of one species. Clearcutting increased abundance of 3 species and had no impact on I I species. No species decreased in abundance in SMZs of either selection-cut or clearcut plots. Two species increased in abundance in SMZs implemented within selection-cuts. Two species increased in abundance in SMZs implemented within clearcuts. Both selection-cut and clearcut treatments possessed greater species diversities than control areas. In addition, selection-cut and clearcut Sws possessed greater species diversities than control SMZS. In the short-term, genotypic species of seasonally-flooded-bottomland forests suffer greatest impact after timber harvest, while more generalist species remain stable or increase in abundance. Selection-cutting appeared to have the least harmful effect on herpetofauna, as this method maintains the essence of natural forests by allowing heterogeneity in stand age and habitat. The continued use of SMZs is recommended. These areas provide a refugium and may act as centers of dispersal for detrimentally impacted species to repopulate the new emerging forest
The Stability and Growth Pact - Not the best but better than nothing. Reviewing the debate on fiscal policy in Europe's Monetary Union
No full textThis paper aims to review the economic literature on the Maastricht deficit rule and the Stability and Growth Pact. The author tries to expose the contradictions and inconclusiveness of the debate, highlighting both the criticism and the defense of the fiscal policy regime in EMU. The paper is non-technical and seeks to provide an overview for a readership outside the economics profession. The concluding judgment is that the pact can be criticized on a number of grounds, but that the lack of a politically feasible alternative makes it a second best solution that should not be undermined in the present crisis. -- Dieses Papier ist eine summarische Auswertung der wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Fachliteratur zur Defizitregel des Maastrichter Vertrages und dem Europäischen Stabilitäts- und Wachstumspakt. Der Autor versucht, Widersprüche und fehlenden Konsens der Debatte darzustellen, indem die Argumente für und gegen das fiskalpolitische Regime der Währungsunion einander gegenübergestellt werden. Der Aufsatz ist nicht technisch und dient dem Zugang einer an der Materie interessierten, aber wirtschaftstheoretisch nicht vorgebildeten Leserschaft. Das abschließende Urteil sieht den Pakt als in einer Reihe von Punkten kritikwürdiges Provisorium an, das jedoch mangels einer realisierbaren Alternative nicht ausgehebelt werden sollte.
Perspective:Sign Epistasis and Genetic Constraint on Evolutionary Trajectories
No full textEpistasis for fitness means that the selective effect of a mutation is conditional on the genetic background in which it appears. Although epistasis is widely observed in nature, our understanding of its consequences for evolution by natural selection remains incomplete. In particular, much attention focuses only on its influence on the instantaneous rate of changes in frequency of selected alleles via epistatic contribution to the additive genetic variance for fitness. Thus, in this framework epistasis only has evolutionary importance if the interacting loci are simultaneously segregating in the population. However, the selective accessibility of mutational trajectories to high fitness genotypes may depend on the genetic background in which novel mutations appear, and this effect is independent of population polymorphism at other loci. Here we explore this second influence of epistasis on evolution by natural selection. We show that it is the consequence of a particular form of epistasis, which we designate sign epistasis. Sign epistasis means that the sign of the fitness effect of a mutation is under epistatic control; thus, such a mutation is beneficial on some genetic backgrounds and deleterious on others. Recent experimental innovations in microbial systems now permit assessment of the fitness effects of individual mutations on multiple genetic backgrounds. We review this literature and identify many examples of sign epistasis, and we suggest that the implications of these results may generalize to other organisms. These theoretical and empirical considerations imply that strong genetic constraint on the selective accessibility of trajectories to high fitness genotypes may exist and suggest specific areas of investigation for future research
Jakelin Troy (1960-)
No full textJakelin Troy’s The Sydney Language, first published in 1993, and later in a 2019 edition,
is a book of words—“lost” words. The author describes the Sydney language as
“extinct.”1 That word grates for many Indigenous people because it echoes doomed
race theories of the late nineteenth century and “last of” narratives that endure in
popular fiction. Language extinction, however, is a real and imminent force, hence
the United Nations’ urgency in declaring the International Decade of Indigenous
Languages 2022–2032. Embodying knowledge, collective identity, ways of thinking,
and a wealth of intangible heritage, a people’s native language epitomizes and transmits
their culture.2 In this book, Troy, a Ngarigu woman from the Snowy Mountains
High Country of New South Wales and a Professor at the University of Sydney,
demonstrates her profound commitment to the preservation of threatened languages
On Fernando's Photograph: The Biopolitics of Aparicion in Contemporary Argentina
No full textThis article concerns the striking photograph of a young man, Fernando Brodsky, taken shortly after he was kidnapped in Argentina in 1979. Brodsky was detained in the notorious Escuela de la Armada (ESMA) in Buenos Aires, and remains disappeared. The negative of the photograph was smuggled out of ESMA and the image became part of a bundle of photographic evidence submitted by families of the disappeared during the trials of the military after the return to democracy in 1983. This article seeks to under- stand the vitality of the photograph, the different courses it takes, the archives it joins and leaves, asking: ‘What sort of life can the photograph have? What sort of desire? What sort of politics?’ The article proposes that we might consider the role of such images ‘biopolitically’, which is to say in the context of the relations established through the attempts to govern populations in times of military rule and in times of transitional democracy. The re-appearance of Fernando in the photograph is part of post-dictator- ship politics in which the demand ‘aparición’ resounds. Fernando, an absolute witness who does not, who cannot, speak nevertheless re-appears in the law courts and in art exhibitions. The article considers the difference between the photograph’s appearance as evidence and its reappearance in the art galleries, arguing that its ‘desires’ can be imagined differently in each. The article argues that while the photograph does not escape archives tout court, in raising the question of how it should be filed, it prompts reflec- tion on the biopolitical present, with its inequitable distribution of life and security among populations. This is a politics of the present, more than it is a politics of memory
The Evolution of Market Integration in Russia
No full textWe use a statistical model of commodity trade to measure the extent of integration between regional commodity markets within Russia. Monthly time-series data on regional commodity prices spanning 1994 through 1999 indicate substantial temporal fluctuations in integration over this period: an initial period of widespread integration gradually gave way to a period of disconnectedness in 1995 through 1997, which seems to have subsided by mid-1998. These temporal fluctuations exhibit strong statistical relationships with a host of aggregate variables; most notably, internal integration exhibits a strong negative relationship with international trade.internal borders, temporal fluctuations
George Eliot and the dramatic imagination
No full textDramatic Imagination emerges as the vehicle by which George Eliot demonstrates her skills as a dramatist within the novel genre. Eliot's protagonists, particularly in Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda , process experience or speculate about future events in terms of dramatically structured scenes. Eliot employs three modes of dramatic imagination, ¿dramatic exchange,¿ ¿speculative drama,¿ and ¿allusional drama,¿ to complicate the private contemplations of her most sympathetic characters and to encourage the reader's active participation in the creative process. ¿Dramatic exchange,¿ a term that remedies a key omission in Dorrit Cohn's analysis of interior monologue, describes a form of internalized dialogue that becomes uniquely ¿dramatic¿ via references to religious allegory and in the uncharacteristic absence of the Eliot narrator. The ¿speculative drama¿ turns a character's dreamy vision of the future into a scene that informs the larger themes of the text. Will Ladislaw's speculative drama in Middlemarch exposes his impractical optimism and his inclination to imagine life in terms of dramatic sub-genres. Ladislaw's response to disappointment parallels Eliot's pragmatic return to the novel after Armgart ; this connection to the author, conveyed through dramatic imagination, evokes sympathy for Ladislaw and redeems him as a worthy companion for Dorothea. The speculative dramas in Daniel Deronda , Eliot's last major work, reflect the cosmopolitan aspects of the novel. As the characters move within a fast-paced society characterized by mobility and social distraction, the speculative dramas are, at best, random vignettes. ¿Allusional drama¿ occurs when, in the course of introspection, Eliot's character draws upon a past drama to make sense of experience. In Middlemarch , Dorothea defines her loss of Will Ladislaw in terms of an allusion to the grieving mother in the Solomon story; she rewrites the original text, positioning herself in the role that more closely reflects the experiences of ¿the other woman.¿ Dorothea's revisionist imagination leads to empathy and to a selfless response. Similarly, Daniel Deronda contemplates his response to Jewish nationalism with an allusional drama. His response, to proceed with cautious pragmatism, continues the theme of modernity previously established
John Gay's the beggar's opera: early eighteenth-century responses in the arts to cultural, sociological and political issues in London life
No full textDiffering responses in art media to these contemporary issues of London life are explored, taking John Gay's the Beggar's Opera as the focal point for discussion. Initially, a general survey is made of Gay's role as cultural, social and moral critic. Comparison with George Frederick Handel's Floridante allows Gay's work to be placed in the context of operatic responses to contemporary society, highlighting usage both of overt portrayal and indirect satire. Gay's approach to political issues is examined alongside that of Dean Swift's Gulliver's Travels enabling an estimation to be made of the effectiveness of these art media as tools of political propaganda. Similarly, responses in the field of painting are discussed in the light of representative works of James Thornhill and William Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress and A Rake's Progress. In considering all these responses it is noted that art can be interpreted at differing levels, from the sophisticated to the naive. All these art media are then placed in the context of artistic philosophy of the period, thus facilitating an objective assessment of the parallels and differences of art's responses to contemporary issues. Taking into account inherent limitations in the media, to conclude our study, Hogarth's The Beggar's Opera Scenes are compared and contrasted with Gay's prototype. The thesis highlights the trend towards realism in the arts during this period. Nevertheless, we are left with the conundrum that art, 'per se', can only 'mirror' life. It does not necessarily solve its problems. Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Music. University of Durham Department of Music 198
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