Salmon policy: science,society, restoration,and reality

Salmon policy in the Pacific Northwest illustrates a class of contentious, socially wrenching issues that are becoming increasingly common in the western United States as demands increase for limited ecological resources. Many Pacific salmon “stocks” (a term used in fisheries management for a group of interbreeding individuals that is roughly equivalent to “population”) have declined and some have been extirpated. The salmon “problem” is one of the most vexing public policy challenges in natural resource management. Even with complete scientific knowledge — and scientific knowledge is far from complete or certain — it would be a challenging policy problem. The salmon decline issue is often defined simplistically as a watershed management problem, in part because changes in watersheds are highly visible and often occur on public or corporate lands where individuals and organizations often have direct input to decision making. Yet, changes in climate and ocean conditions, for example, occur frequently and such changes have a major influence on salmon abundance. The scientific challenges are great, but the more difficult — and critical — aspect of the debate concerns policies and decisions affecting everyone, including those involved in rural enterprises (especially farming and logging); manufacturing and construction; electricity generation (including hydro, fossil fuel, and nuclear); national defense; urban development; transportation (including road, rail, air, and water). The debate also involves competing personal rights and freedoms; the prerogatives and roles of local, state, and federal government and Indian tribes; policies on human population level, reproduction, emigration, and immigration; and the future of fishing (commercial, recreational, and Indian). The salmon policy conundrum is characterized by: (1) nearly everyone claims to support maintaining wild salmon runs; (2) many competing societal priorities exist, many of which are partially or wholly mutually exclusive; (3) the region’s rapidly growing human population creates increasing pressures on all natural resources (including salmon and their habitats); (4) policy stances in the salmon debate are solidly entrenched; (5) society expects salmon experts to help solve the salmon problem; (6) each of the many sides of the political debate over the future of salmon use salmon experts and scientific “facts” to bolster its argument; (7) it has proved to be nearly impossible for salmon scientists to avoid being categorized as supporting a particular policy position; and (8) many advocates of policy positions couch their positions in scientific terms rather than value-based preferences. Although far from indisputable, I conclude that over the next century and allowing for considerable year-to-year and decade-to-decade variation, many, perhaps most, stocks of wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest likely will remain at their current low levels or continue to decline in spite of costly protection and restoration efforts.     

果阿:旅游业、人口迁徙及生态系统转化

本文是根据一个较大的案例研究结果编写而成的.该研究调查了旅游和其它的人口流动在造成印度果阿地区沿岸生态系统变化中的作用.特别重点研究了当地被称为"克赞"(khazan)土地和沙丘的农业生态系统,以及如何被转化来适应旅游者和旅游业的需要.本文还评估了不同形式的旅游业对土地覆盖和土地利用变化的影响.研究结果表明,引起生态系统变化的不仅仅只是人口流动,而且还有人与生态系统关系的变化.这意味着有些情况下土地覆盖变化没有像土地利用变化那样大,其它情况下土地覆盖的变化则十分巨大.影响土地利用和土地覆盖变化的因素还有立法、政治和经济方面的,特别是财产权的变化.     

Neonatal hemochromatosis: management,outcome, and prevention

Neonatal hemochromatosis (NH) is a rare disorder but the most common cause of acute liver failure in neonates. NH is characterized by severe hepatic injury and iron overload and is associated with high perinatal mortality and morbidity rates. NH is often preceded by oligohydramnios and intrauterine growth restriction, suggesting an important impact of NH during fetal life. Stillbirth and prematurity are not uncommon. During the last decade, major discoveries on the etiology of NH have radically changed the management and outcome of this disease. NH is now regarded as an alloimmune disease and is, as such, often referred to as gestational alloimmune liver disease. Antenatal treatment with intravenous immunoglobulins starting at 14 weeks' gestation has been shown to prevent the development of NH in subsequent pregnancies. Postnatal treatment, previously based on the use of anti-oxidants and chelation therapy, has now successfully been replaced by exchange transfusions and intravenous immunoglobulins substitution. This review summarizes the latest discoveries on the etiology of NH and the new recommendations concerning its management and prevention. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Introduction and overview: environmental knowledge,rights, and ethics: co-managing with communities

This special issue of Environmental Science & Policy presents various approaches for assessing local environmental knowledge and perceptions. Many environmental management problems are caused by a mismatch between environmental decision-makers and locally affected communities. Our objective with this special issue is to present a range of environmental decision-making approaches to be matched with a range of community types. On one end of this range are traditional, indigenous communities where careful co-management is needed. On the other end are mixed residential/transient communities, where a regional survey of awareness of an environmental issue can provide adequate information for a practitioner to design an appropriate solution from the office. We may also have a wide range of environmental knowledge from the traditional community's elders to the transients. It may be encoded in folkloric symbols or verbal references to Internet WebPages, or a combination of these and other codes, signifying membership in social groups. Such diversity requires skill in assessing levels of environmental knowledge and appropriate strategies for engaging local knowledge as a basis for building culturally and environmentally appropriate projects.     

Friction stir welding: Process,automation, and control

This article provides an introduction to the basic principles of friction stir welding (FSW) as well as a survey of the latest research and applications in the field. The basic principles covered include terminology, material flow, joint configurations, tool design, materials, and defects. Material flow is discussed from both an experimental and a modeling perspective. Process variants are discussed as well, which include self-reacting (SR-FSW), stationary shoulder, friction stir processing (FSP), friction stir spot welding (FSSW), assisted FSW, and pulsed FSW. Multiple aspects of robotic friction stir welding are covered, including sensing, control, and joint tracking. Methods of evaluating weld quality are surveyed as well. The latest applications are discussed, with an emphasis on recent advances in aerospace, automotive, and ship building. Finally, the direction of future research and potential applications are examined.     

Uniparental disomy: Origin,frequency, and clinical significance

Uniparental disomy (UPD) is defined as two copies of a whole chromosome derived from the same parent. There can be multiple mechanisms that lead to UPD; these are reviewed in the context of contemporary views on the mechanism leading to aneuploidy. Recent studies indicate that UPD is rare in an apparently healthy population and also rare in spontaneous abortion tissues. The most common type of UPD is a maternal heterodisomy (both maternal allele sets present). Isodisomy (a duplicated single set of alleles) or segmental loss of heterozygosity is sometimes encountered in SNP-based microarray referrals. Decisions regarding the most appropriate follow-up testing should consider the possibility of consanguinity (that will generally involve multiple regions), an imprinted gene disorder (chromosomes 6, 7, 11, 14, 15, 20), expression of an autosomal recessive disorder, and an occult aneuploid cell line that may be confined to the placenta. Upd(16)mat, per se, does not appear to be associated with an abnormal phenotype. UPD provides an insight into the history of early chromosome segregation error and understanding the rates and fate of these events are of key importance in the provision of fertility management and prenatal healthcare.     

Life history evolution: successes, limitations, and prospects

Life history theory tries to explain how evolution designs organisms to achieve reproductive success. The design is a solution to an ecological problem posed by the environment and subject to constraints intrinsic to the organism. Work on life histories has expanded the role of phenotypes in evolutionary theory, extending the range of predictions from genetic patterns to whole-organism traits directly connected to fitness. Among the questions answered are the following: Why are organisms small or large? Why do they mature early or late? Why do they have few or many offspring? Why do they have a short or a long life? Why must they grow old and die? The classical approach to life histories was optimization; it has had some convincing empirical success. Recently non-equilibrium approaches involving frequency-dependence, density-dependence, evolutionary game theory, adaptive dynamics, and explicit population dynamics have supplanted optimization as the preferred approach. They have not yet had as much empirical success, but there are logical reasons to prefer them, and they may soon extend the impact of life history theory into population dynamics and interspecific interactions in coevolving communities.     

Gastroschisis: sonographic diagnosis,associations, management and outcome

Gastroschisis is a defect in the abdominal wall, typically on the right side of a normally inserted umbilical cord through which bowel and other abdominal contents herniate. Classically, no membrane covers the herniated abdominal contents, which distinguishes the defect from exomphalos, an important differential diagnosis. Gastroschisis is usually diagnosed prenatally using ultrasound examination. The prevalence is increasing worldwide from approximately 0.1 per 10 000 total births in the 1970s to over 5 in the early 2000s. The reasons for this are unknown, but factors such as maternal smoking, recreational drugs and young maternal age are strongly associated with the defect. The increasing prevalence is causing concern because the cost of treating gastroschisis is high. Neonatal morbidity depends on significant complicating factors such as bowel atresia or necrosis and prolonged post-operative ileus. Foetuses with gastroschisis are more likely to be born premature and with intra-uterine growth restriction, both of which contribute to the morbidity. Gastroschisis requires early surgery after birth, often followed by prolonged neonatal care. However, advances in surgical and post-operative care in the last decade have meant that currently 90% of affected neonates survive, with few long-term problems. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The 4Cs of adaptation tracking: consistency,comparability, comprehensiveness,coherency

Adaptation tracking seeks to characterize, monitor, and compare general trends in climate change adaptation over time and across nations. Recognized as essential for evaluating adaptation progress, there have been few attempts to develop systematic approaches for tracking adaptation. This is reflected in polarized opinions, contradictory findings, and lack of understanding on the state of adaptation globally. In this paper, we outline key methodological considerations necessary for adaptation tracking research to produce systematic, rigorous, comparable, and usable insights that can capture the current state of adaptation globally, provide the basis for characterizing and evaluating adaptations taking place, facilitate examination of what conditions explain differences in adaptation action across jurisdictions, and can underpin the monitoring of change in adaptation over time. Specifically, we argue that approaches to adaptation tracking need to (i) utilize a consistent and operational conceptualization of adaptation, (ii) focus on comparable units of analysis, (iii) use and develop comprehensive datasets on adaptation action, and (iv) be coherent with our understanding of what constitutes real adaptation. Collectively, these form the 4Cs of adaptation tracking (consistency, comparability, comprehensiveness, and coherency).     

中国资源的进出口与产出率：演化、挑战及对策

资源可持续利用是实现中国可持续发展和生态文明的重要保障,然而过去30多年经济的快速发展带来了严重的资源短缺和环境污染。为了揭示1949年以来尤其是改革开放以来中国资源利用与经济发展之间的关系,论文系统梳理中国资源供给状况,总结中国资源进出口及资源产出率演化特点、面临的挑战及相应的对策。研究发现：中国近年来进口以金属矿产、石油、部分固体废弃产品构成的自然矿产和城市矿产资源为主,主要出口以工业产品、水海产品等为代表的资源类型,进出口的结构类型随年份变化不大,但进口量呈现快速增长的态势;中国资源产出率逐步增长,达到1.6元/kg,但仍与发达国家有较大差距。为了应对面临的挑战,未来中国应着力提升在全球价值链的地位,同时国内应大力发展循环经济,提高资源产出率。     

Plasma arc welding: Process,sensing, control and modeling

This article introduces the basic principles of plasma arc welding (PAW) and provides a survey of the latest research and applications in the field. The PAW process is compared to gas tungsten arc welding, its process characteristics are listed, the classification is made, and two modes of operation in PAW, i.e., melt-in and keyhole, are explained. The keyhole mechanism and its influencing factors are introduced. The sensing and control methodologies of the PAW process are reviewed. The coupled behaviors of weld pool and keyhole, the heat transfer and fluid flow as well as three-dimensional modeling and simulation in PAW are discussed. Finally, a novel PAW process variant, the controlled pulse keyholing process and the corresponding experimental system are introduced.     

Cycads: their evolution,toxins, herbivores and insect pollinators

Palaeobiological evidence indicates that gymnosperms were wind-pollinated and that insect pollination began in angiosperms in the Lower Cretaceous (ca. 135 mya) leading to close associations between higher plants and their pollinators. Cycads, which were widespread and pervasive throughout the Mesozoic (250-65 mya) are among the most primitive living seed-plants found today. Because pollination by beetles and by thrips has now been detected in several modern cycads, it is attractive to speculate that some insects and cycads had already developed similar mutualistic interactions in the Triassic (250-205 mya), long before the advent of angiosperms. We also draw attention to another key factor in this insect-plant relationship, namely secondary, defensive plant substances which must always have controlled interspecific interactions. Cycads mainly produce toxic azoglucosides and neurotoxic non-protein amino acids (e.g. BMAA), which apparently are crucial elements in the development and maintenance of mutualism (pollination) and parasitism (herbivory) by cycad-linked herbivores. We now add new results on the uptake and storage of the main toxin, cycasin, of the Mexican cycad Zamia furfuracea by its pollinator, the weevil Rhopalotria mollis, and by a specialist herbivore of Zamia integrifolia, the aposematic Atala butterfly Eumaeus atala.     

学案导学:要求、条件、策略及局限

在当前基础教育课程改革深化的背景下,学案导学被作为教学创新的一个重要突破口。虽然不同地区、不同学校、不同教师实施着各式各样的学案导学,但是其效果大多不尽如人意,似乎很难撼动以教案为核心的传统教学模式。究其原因是学案导学被抽象化了,它所需要的一些重要条件和前提被不同程度地忽略了。因此,正视学案导学需要满足的现实要求,明晰学案导学得以顺利开展的支撑条件,围绕促进学生自主学习而提出改进学案导学的实践策略,并注意规避学案导学自身的一些局限,才可能更为有效地提升学案导学的教学效果。