7,685 research outputs found
Impacts of Population and Income Growth Rates on Threatened Mammals and Birds
No full textPer capita income and human population levels in a country have direct influences on its environmental outcomes. Countries with same level of income may have different rate of income growth and vice versa, suggesting that the influence of the rate of income growth on environmental outcomes could be different than that of income level. Similarly, the rate of population growth might have different impact in addition to the impacts of sheer number of population. We explore this empirical question using country-level data on threatened species published by IUCN for the year 2007. Controlling for other factors, our model estimates the influences of the rate of population and income growth on threatened mammals and birds across 113 continental countries. The results suggest that, among other factors, the rate of population growth has significant influences on number of threatened mammals and birds.income, population, spatial models, spatial autocorrelation, endemic species, biodiversity, Environmental Economics and Policy, C21, Q57,
The impact of forest service litigation success on administrative appeals of proposed fuels reduction actions
No full textIn this paper, we explore empirically whether the USDA Forest Service's litigation success rate in each Forest Service region helps explain the persistent regional effects noted by Laband et al. (Laband, D.N., González-Cabán, A., and Hussain, A. (2006). "Factors That Influence Administrative Appeals of Proposed USDA Forest Service Fuels Reduction Actions," Forest Science, 52(5): 477-488.) with respect to the pattern of administrative appeals of proposed fuels reduction actions. We find strong evidence of an inverse relationship between the Forest Service's litigation success rate and the likelihood of administrative appeal of proposed fuels reduction actions on public lands. However, inclusion of this variable explains only about 20% of the region-specific impact noted in Laband et al. (Laband, D.N., González-Cabán, A., and Hussain, A. (2006). "Factors That Influence Administrative Appeals of Proposed USDA Forest Service Fuels Reduction Actions," Forest Science, 52(5): 477-488.), which continues to command additional investigation.
Author Order and Research Quality
No full textSouthern Economic Journal © 2005 Southern Economic AssociationWe observe a great deal of heterogeneity in the manner in which author orderings are assigned both across and within academic markets. To better understand this phenomenon, we develop and analyze a stochastic model of author orderings. In our model, authors work equally hard to obtain priority in listings but final contributions are stochastic. Further, research outlets differ in their quality hurdles. In this setting, our simulation results are consistent with two empirical regularities. First, we find that the rate of alphabetization increases with the stringency with which papers are accepted for publication. Second, conditional on clearing the publication hurdle, quality increases with alphabetization. These findings arise because increases in the publication hurdle make it more likely that authors will exceed this threshold only when both contribute a high amount. This, in turn, leads to roughly equal contributions (alphabetization) and also generates a positive correlation between alphabetization and quality
Cult: A Composite Novel
No full textCult (redacted)
The first component of the thesis is a composite novel called Cult which falls into two parts with seven narratives in each. Part 1 tracks the protagonist, Ellen, from her first involvement with the cult through to her eventually leaving it. Although fiction, the first half of the book answers the kinds of questions the author is asked when people discover that she was once a sannyasin (a follower of the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh). While the experiences of meditation, group therapy and communal living are all faithfully rendered within the stories, the need for strong characters, narrative drive and a lightness of touch takes precedence.
Part 2 picks up Ellen’s story some twenty or so years later and explores what becomes of her in middle age. It also looks at other groups in society, such as academia, the law and the internet dating community which each have their own jargon, hierarchies, rituals and rules but are not considered to be cults.
The book examines the question raised in the Epigraph, ‘how do we be together when we feel so alone’ with a focus on relationships other than the familial and the romantic.
Collisions, Chasms and Connections: a Performative Exploration of the Composite Novel Form
The second part of the thesis is both a critical and creative response to three contemporary American books: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout; A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan; and Legend of a Suicide by David Vann. The critical element comprises a close reading of the three books; a chronological reconstruction of their overarching storylines; and a consideration of what their authors have said about writing the books. It concludes that, in the composite novel, the simultaneous presentation of multiple views and storylines operate much like a 3D image to give the impression of depth to the characters and situations rendered. The creative element of the essay is a playful and personal response to the texts
Immaculate catalogues, indexes and monsters too…: David E. Bennett reports on the three-day residential CILIP Cataloguing and Indexing Group Annual Conference, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, 13-15 September 2006.
No full textDynamics and folding of single two-stranded coiled-coil peptides studied by fluorescent energy transfer confocal microscopy
No full textWe report single-molecule measurements on the folding and unfolding conformational equilibrium distributions and dynamics of a disulfide crosslinked version of the two-stranded coiled coil from GCN4. The peptide has a fluorescent donor and acceptor at the N termini of its two chains and a Cys disulfide near its C terminus. Thus, folding brings the two N termini of the two chains close together, resulting in an enhancement of fluorescent resonant energy transfer. End-to-end distance distributions have thus been characterized under conditions where the peptide is nearly fully folded (0 M urea), unfolded (7.4 M urea), and in dynamic exchange between folded and unfolded states (3.0 M urea). The distributions have been compared for the peptide freely diffusing in solution and deposited onto aminopropyl silanized glass. As the urea concentration is increased, the mean end-to-end distance shifts to longer distances both in free solution and on the modified surface. The widths of these distributions indicate that the molecules are undergoing millisecond conformational fluctuations. Under all three conditions, these fluctuations gave nonexponential correlations on 1- to 100-ms time scale. A component of the correlation decay that was sensitive to the concentration of urea corresponded to that measured by bulk relaxation kinetics. Thetrajectories provided effective intramolecular diffusion coefficients as a function of the end-to-end distances for the folded and unfolded states. Single-molecule folding studies provide information concerning the distributions of conformational states in the folded, unfolded, and dynamically interconverting states.Author manuscript. Published in final edited form as: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2000 November 21; 97(24): 13021-13026.The final published version of this article is located at: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/97/24/13021NIH GM54616; to William F. DeGradoNIH GM12592; to Robin M. HochstrasserNIH GM48130; to William F. Degrado and Robin M. HochstrasserThis work was supported by GM54616 (to W.F.D.), GM12592 (to R.M.H.) and GM48130 (to W.F.D. and R.M.H.) with instrumentation developed under RR01348. D.S.T. was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant NRSA F32-GM18589.Also available in PubMed Central. PMCID:PMC2717
An Impact Study of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) in the Six ACP Regions
No full textThis article intends to present a very detailed analysis of the trade-related aspects of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) negotiations. We use a dynamic partial equilibrium model – focusing on the demand side – at the HS6 level (covering 5,113 HS6 products). Two alternative lists of sensitive products are constructed, one giving priority to the agricultural sectors, the other focusing on tariff revenue preservation. In order to be WTO compatible, EPAs must translate into 90 percent of bilateral trade fully liberalised. We use this criterion to simulate EPAs for each negotiating regional block. ACP exports to the EU are forecast to be 10 percent higher with the EPAs than under the GSP/EBA option. On average ACP countries are forecast to lose 70 percent of tariff revenues on EU imports in the long run. Yet imports from other regions of the world will continue to provide tariff revenues. Thus when tariff revenue losses are computed on total ACP imports, losses are limited to 26 percent on average in the long run and even 19 percent when the product lists are optimised. The final impact on the economy depends on the importance of tariffs in government revenue and on potential compensatory effects. However this long term and less visible effect will mainly depend on the capacity of each ACP country to reorganise its fiscal base.Preferential Trade Agreements, Africa, EPAs, Partial Equilibrium Simulations, International Relations/Trade,
Corrigendum: Pneumococcal vaccine impacts on the population genomics of non-typeable haemophilus influenzae: (Microbial Genomics 2021; 9, 10.1099/mgen.0.000209)
No full textThere was a change in the author names in the published article. The new list should read: David W. Cleary1,2, Vanessa T. Devine3, Denise E. Morris1, Karen L. Osman1, Rebecca A. Gladstone4, Stephen D. Bentley4, Saul N. Faust1,5, Stuart C. Clarke1,2,6 1Faculty of Medicine and Institute for Life Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK. 2NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre, University Hospital Southampton Foundation NHS Trust, Southampton, UK. 3Northern Ireland Centre for Stratified Medicine and Clinical Translational Research Innovation Centre, Londonderry, UK. 4Pathogen Genomics, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, UK. 5NIHR Southampton Clinical Research Facility, University Hospital Southampton Foundation NHS Trust, Southampton, UK. 6Global Health Research Institute, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK.</p
Tree Shade and Energy Savings: An Empirical Study
No full textTrees cast shade on homes and buildings, lowering the inside temperatures and thus reducing demand for power to cool these buildings during hot times of the year. Drawing from a large sample of residences in Auburn, Alabama, we develop a statistical model that produces specific estimates of the electricity savings generated by shade-producing trees in a suburban environment. This empirical model links residential energy consumption to hedonic characteristics of the structures, characteristics and behaviors of the occupants, and the extent, density, and timing of shade cast on the structures. Our estimates suggest that if an additional 10 percent of the 125 million home owners in America started using tree shade to reduce electricity consumption an average of 10 kwh/day for 100 days per year, the annual amount of electricity conserved would be approximately 12,500 thousand megawatts. At the 2007 average residential price of electricity (106/year and $1.3 billion in the aggregate. Moreover, the electricity saved would represent approximately one-third of the electricity produced annually in the U.S. by wind power.Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
Serializing Evil: David Peace and the Formulae of Crime Fiction
No full textTraditionally, in crime fiction, a series is grounded in the permanence of the protagonist that keeps being the same all through the different stories that are told by the author, possibly evolving over time, but always keeping identifiable and providing the series with its unifying element. It is not so with David Peace. Unversally considered as one of the most brilliant and unusual novelist in contemporary crime fiction, Peace is the author of two series: the so called Red Riding Quartet (set in Yorkshire, UK, and also adapted as a television series) and the Tokyo trilogy (not completed yet, with its third novel still on the way). In both series, Peace chooses to construct a web of interlaced stories where the protagonists are all different while the setting stays the same. In the Red Riding Quartet, this strategy seems even more sophisticated, in that the protagonist of each book ends by either dying or going crazy, to be replaced, in the next novel, by one of the secondary characters that suddenly switches to a primary role.
By his own admission in several interviews, Peace is interested in portraying the many sides of evil. Consequently, this strategic and stylistic choice seems to suggest a very specific stance, an ethic of persuasion that any human being, in given circumstances, may become a criminal.
Just like in Dickens, the story is always well documented and moulded by a sharp awareness of the historic conditions marking the context, be it a small city in Yorkshire, in Thatcher’s years, or the recently defeated Tokyo. The settings are normally overdetermined, and so are also the choices of the characters and their behaviours, that appear tightly, often compulsively oriented by strongly restraining circumstances
- …
