Rethinking assessment of success of mitigation strategies for elephant-induced crop damage

Crop damage is the most common impact of negative interactions between people and elephants and poses a significant threat to rural livelihoods and conservation efforts. Numerous approaches to mitigate and prevent crop damage have been implemented throughout Africa and Asia. Despite the documented high efficacy of many approaches, losses remain common, and in many areas, damage is intensifying. We examined the literature on effectiveness of crop-damage-mitigation strategies and identified key gaps in evaluations. We determined there is a need to better understand existing solutions within affected communities and to extend evaluations of effectiveness beyond measurement of efficacy to include rates of and barriers to adoption. We devised a conceptual framework for evaluating effectiveness that incorporates the need for increased emphasis on adoption and can be used to inform the design of future crop-damage mitigation assessments for elephants and conflict species more widely. The ability to prevent crop loss in practice is affected by both the efficacy of a given approach and rates of uptake among target users. We identified the primary factors that influence uptake as local attitudes, sustainability, and scalability and examined each of these factors in detail. We argue that even moderately efficacious interventions may make significant progress in preventing damage if widely employed and recommend that wherever possible scientists and practitioners engage with communities to build on and strengthen existing solutions and expertise. When new approaches are required, they should align with local attitudes and fit within limitations on labor, financial requirements, and technical capacity.     

Mainstreaming human and large carnivore coexistence through institutional collaboration

Achieving coexistence between large carnivores and humans in human-dominated landscapes (HDLs) is a key challenge for societies globally. This challenge cannot be adequately met with the current sectoral approaches to HDL governance and an academic community largely dominated by disciplinary sectors. Academia (universities and other research institutions and organizations) should take a more active role in embracing societal challenges around conservation of large carnivores in HDLs by facilitating cross-sectoral cooperation to mainstream coexistence of humans and large carnivores. Drawing on lessons from populated regions of Europe, Asia, and South America with substantial densities of large carnivores, we suggest academia should better embrace the principles and methods of sustainability sciences and create institutional spaces for the implementation of transdisciplinary curricula and projects; reflect on research approaches (i.e., disciplinary, interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary) they apply and how their outcomes could aid leveraging institutional transformations for mainstreaming; and engage with various institutions and stakeholder groups to create novel institutional structures that can respond to multiple challenges of HDL management and human–large carnivore coexistence. Success in mainstreaming this coexistence in HDL will rest on the ability to think and act cooperatively. Such a conservation achievement, if realized, stands to have far-reaching benefits for people and biodiversity.     

“Hey Friend,Buy Green”: Social Media Use to Influence Eco-Purchasing Involvement

This study addresses the use of message carriers to convey corporate social responsibility information to promote eco-purchasing involvement. The work tests various media formats transmitted via social media. The effects of corporate vs. peer communication in a corporate social responsibility campaign in stimulating self-reported eco-purchasing involvement are indicated. The research varies communication dimensions of a fictional corporate social responsibility campaign sent through social media. Multiple media formats; new release; article; and advertisement were tested, as was the inclusion of social media persuasive sentiment. The analysis of source/format combinations and source/format/sentiment combinations found statistically significant differences for consumer-to-consumer communication in stimulating eco-purchasing involvement in certain circumstances. This research suggests an emerging role for the consumer communicator as a content co-creator and validates the effective use of articles and news releases instead of advertising on social media, yielding managerial and scholarly implications.     

基于复杂系统建模的水管理政策研究进展

基于Agent的建模方法（ABSS）通过自下而上的方式，考察系统中主体的不同状态和行为特征、主体与环境的作用、主体之间的作用，来表征系统的宏观特征，是进行复杂社会环境系统分析和政策研究的重要手段，在水资源、水环境管理系统中得到了有效的应用。本文在大量文献调研的基础上，讨论了ABSS建模方法的基本原理、主要特征、系统构成、分类方法和开发工具等特征，总结了其供水系统发展、水资源分配和流域水资源管理、农业土地和水资源利用、居民用水行为、农业污染控制及人类活动的水环境影响等方面的应用，分析了其在研究内容、研究方法、研究结果等方面的发展趋势，讨论了利用该方法研究我国水资源管理和水污染控制政策的必要性和重要性。     

Social Sciences and landscape analysis: opportunities for the improvement of conservation policy design

This article develops a methodology aimed at generating a systematic social diagnosis of social and natural landscapes. The analytical process is divided into six easily replicable and causatively connected steps. The goal is two-fold: first, to present the inextricable connections between physical landscapes and the communities that occupy them. And second, to provide a fundamental tool to public policy designers that should simultaneously improve social acceptability of conservation policies and policy efficiency and effectiveness. Finally, this methodology is consciously heterogeneous from a theoretical perspective. This article puts together, in fruitful dialogue, contributions from varying places on the social theory spectrum: from political economy to poststructural theory.     

Reflections on the use of Bayesian belief networks for adaptive management

A broad range of tools are available for integrated water resource management (IWRM). In the EU research project NeWater, a hypothesis exists that IWRM cannot be realised unless current management regimes undergo a transition toward adaptive management (AM). This includes a structured process of learning, dealing with complexity, uncertainty etc. We assume that it is no longer enough for managers and tool researchers to understand the complexity and uncertainty of the outer natural system-the environment. It is just as important, to understand what goes on in the complex and uncertain participatory processes between the water managers, different stakeholders, authorities and researchers when a specific tool and process is used for environmental management. The paper revisits a case study carried out 2001-2004 where the tool Bayesian networks (BNs) was tested for groundwater management with full stakeholder involvement. With the participation of two researchers (the authors) and two water managers previously involved in the case study, a qualitative interview was prepared and carried out in June 2006. The aim of this ex-post evaluation was to capture and explore the water managers' experience with Bayesian belief networks when used for integrated and adaptive water management and provide a narrative approach for tool enhancement.     

Prenatal ultrasound diagnosis of Toriello–Carey syndrome

Toriello–Carey syndrome is a rare malformative complex, described for the first time in 1988, characterized by agenesis of the corpus callosum, facial anomalies, cardiac defects and hypotonia. Relatively few neonatal cases have been reported. We describe here the first prenatal ultrasound diagnosis of the syndrome based on the detection of agenesis of the corpus callosum and spongious cardiomyopathy in a 22-week-old fetus of a couple with positive family history. The first sib of the couple was diagnosed with Toriello–Carey syndrome at 1 year of age, and had, in addition to the typical facial anomalies not detectable by ultrasound, agenesis of the corpus callosum and the same heart lesion (spongious cardiomyopathy). This report demonstrates that prenatal diagnosis of Toriello–Carey syndrome is feasible in the second trimester of pregnancy. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Small queens in the ant Ectatomma tuberculatum: a new case of social parasitism

Social parasites exploit the worker force of colonies of other social insects to rear their own young. Social parasitism occurs in several Hymenoptera and is particularly common in several tribes of the ant subfamilies Myrmicinae and Formicinae. Here, we document the occurrence of miniaturized queens (microgynes) in colonies of Ectatomma tuberculatum, an ant belonging to the subfamily Ectatomminae. Behavioral observations and genetic analyses show that microgynes concentrate their reproductive efforts almost exclusively on the production of sexual offspring (microgynes and males), whereas the regular, large queens (macrogynes) produce workers in addition to sexuals. According to mitochondrial and nuclear markers, gene flow between microgynes and macrogynes is extremely limited. Whereas the co-occurrence of microgynes and macrogynes in the related species Ectatomma ruidum constitutes an intraspecific polymorphism associated with alternative dispersal tactics, microgynes found in colonies of E. tuberculatum appear to be a distinct species and to represent the first case of social parasitism in the poneromorph subfamilies of ants.     

北京水灾及其社会影响

北京在历史上曾发生多次重大水灾,给人民生命财产、城市建设及社会安定带来了巨大影响。形成水灾的主要因素是永定河决口泛溢和区域雨涝。现从大量的历史文献中列举几个实例,来看水灾的严重程度及其影响后果。