From the ground up: holistic management and grassroots rural adaptation to bovine spongiform encephalopathy across western Canada

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) has been documented in 28 countries and adversely affected farmers and rural communities around the world. Our study examines the impacts of and adaptive responses of producers to BSE in western Canada. Moreover, it explores the role that holistic management (HM), and its combined focus on environmental, social, and economic sustainability, might play in mitigating the effects of BSE. One survey was sent to 835 HM producers and another to 9,740 producers across Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. The disease, and concomitant climate change and low commodity prices, had devastating impacts on both groups. Yet, HM producers were much more optimistic about their ability to adapt to BSE and the future of agriculture than their non-HM counterparts. Social networks, namely HM clubs and the larger HM community, enabled these producers to mitigate the impacts of BSE. Agronomic responses, especially those associated with rotational grazing and increases in on-farm biodiversity were also important. That HM has been such an effective adaptive response to BSE indicates the importance of this and other grassroots responses to rural crises, whether they be associated with zoonotic diseases or indeed environmental change as a whole.     

Conversion of the refractory ammonia and acetic acid in catalytic wet air oxidation of animal byproducts

Wet air oxidation (WAO) and catalytic wet air oxidation (CWAO) of slaughtered animal byproducts (ABPs) were investigated. Two step experiment was carried out consisting of a non-catalysedWAO run followed by a CWAO run at 170–275°C , 20 MPa, and reaction time 180 min. TheWAO (1st step) of sample (5 g/L total organic carbon (TOC)) yielded (82.0 4)% TOC removal and (78.4 13.2)% conversion of the initial organic-N into NH4 +-N. Four metal catalysts (Pd, Pt, Rh, Ru) supported over alumina have been tested in catalytic WAO (2nd step) at elevated pH to enhance ammonia conversion and organic matter removal, particularly acetic acid. It was found that the catalysts Ru, Pt, and Rh had significant e ects on the TOC removal (95.1%, 99.5% and 96.7%, respectively) and on the abatement of ammonia (93.4%, 96.7% and 96.3%, respectively) with high nitrogen selectivity. The catalyst Pd was found to have the less activity while Pt had the best performance. The X-Ray di raction analysis showed that the support of catalyst was not stable under the experimental conditions since it reacted with phosphate present in solution. Nitrite and nitrate ions were monitored during the oxidation reaction and it was concluded that CWAO of ammonia in real waste treatment framework was in good agreement with the results obtained from the literature for ideal solutions of ammonia.     

A Phororhacoid bird from the Eocene of Africa

The bird fossil record is globally scarce in Africa. The early Tertiary evolution of terrestrial birds is virtually unknown in that continent. Here, we report on a femur of a large terrestrial new genus discovered from the early or early middle Eocene (between ～52 and 46?Ma) of south-western Algeria. This femur shows all the morphological features of the Phororhacoidea, the so-called Terror Birds. Most of the phororhacoids were indeed large, or even gigantic, flightless predators or scavengers with no close modern analogs. It is likely that this extinct group originated in South America, where they are known from the late Paleocene to the late Pleistocene (～59 to 0.01?Ma). The presence of a phororhacoid bird in Africa cannot be explained by a vicariant mechanism because these birds first appeared in South America well after the onset of the mid-Cretaceous Gondwana break up (～100?million years old). Here, we propose two hypotheses to account for this occurrence, either an early dispersal of small members of this group, which were still able of a limited flight, or a transoceanic migration of flightless birds from South America to Africa during the Paleocene or earliest Eocene. Paleogeographic reconstructions of the South Atlantic Ocean suggest the existence of several islands of considerable size between South America and Africa during the early Tertiary, which could have helped a transatlantic dispersal of phororhacoids.     

Paratenic hosts as regular transmission route in the acanthocephalan Pomphorhynchus laevis: potential implications for food webs

Although trophically transmitted parasites are recognized to strongly influence food-web dynamics through their ability to manipulate host phenotype, our knowledge of their host spectrum is often imperfect. This is particularly true for the facultative paratenic hosts, which receive little interest. We investigated the occurrence and significance both in terms of ecology and evolution of paratenic hosts in the life cycle of the fish acanthocephalan Pomphorhynchus laevis. This freshwater parasite uses amphipods as intermediate hosts and cyprinids and salmonids as definitive hosts. Within a cohort of parasite larvae, usually reported in amphipod intermediate hosts, more than 90% were actually hosted by small-sized fish. We demonstrated experimentally, using one of these fish, that they get infected through the consumption of parasitized amphipods and contribute to the parasite's transmission to a definitive host, hence confirming their paratenic host status. A better knowledge of paratenic host spectrums could help us to understand the fine tuning of transmission strategies, to better estimate parasite biomass, and could improve our perception of parasite subwebs in terms of host-parasite and predator-parasite links.     

Inclusive education for children with disabilities in a refugee camp

Children in refugee camps, and particularly those with disabilities, face unique challenges in accessing education and are at high risk of being marginalised. Best practices suggest that main-streaming is the optimal strategy for serving students with disabilities. This study examines the extent to which mainstreaming in a refugee camp helps to promote children's prosocial behaviours, taking into account their emotional and behavioural problems. In Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya, researchers collected data from the parents of children currently enrolled in special needs education centres (n=65) and from those formerly enrolled at these facilities who transitioned to mainstream classrooms (n=81). Children in mainstream schools functioned better in terms of prosocial behaviours, but this relationship disappeared when factoring in children's emotional and behavioural difficulties. In the context of a refugee camp, mainstreaming alone is not likely to help children's psychosocial and educational functioning, which requires dedicated supports, appropriate facilities and infrastructure, and a dual focus on disability-specific and disability-inclusive initiatives.     

Interpersonal emotion regulation strategies: Enabling flexibility in high-stress work environments

While scholars have demonstrated that emotions play a central role in cognition, behavior, and decision making, most of the studies on emotions in work contexts show that emotions, or their expression, are often suppressed. We thus investigated how workers in high-stress work environments deal with emotions and remain functional by focusing on the range of extrinsic regulation strategies used by workers in these environments. Drawing from participant observations and in-depth, semistructured interviews, we show how police officers are flexible in their choices of emotion-regulation strategies and how contextual factors emerge as the crux of this process. We contribute to the understanding of regulatory flexibility—defined as the process of matching emotion regulation strategies to environmental circumstances as they unfold in real work situations—by identifying two main enabling factors: coregulation and third party interference.     

Design of Polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) Microbeads with Tunable Functional Properties and High Biodegradability in Seawater

Journal of Polymers and the Environment - Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) and poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyhexanoate) were used to prepare microbeads, with diameter ranging from...