Animal agency in wildlife conservation and management

Wildlife conservation and management (WCM) practices have been historically drawn from a wide variety of academic fields, yet practitioners have been slow to engage with emerging conversations about animals as complex beings, whose individuality and sociality influence their relationships with humans. We propose an explicit acknowledgement of wild, nonhuman animals as active participants in WCM. We examined 190 studies of WCM interventions and outcomes to highlight 3 common assumptions that underpin many present approaches to WCM: animal behaviors are rigid and homogeneous; wildlife exhibit idealized wild behavior and prefer pristine habitats; and human–wildlife relationships are of marginal or secondary importance relative to nonhuman interactions. We found that these management interventions insufficiently considered animal learning, decision-making, individuality, sociality, and relationships with humans and led to unanticipated detrimental outcomes. To address these shortcomings, we synthesized theoretical advances in animal behavioral sciences, animal geographies, and animal legal theory that may help conservation professionals reconceptualize animals and their relationships with humans. Based on advances in these fields, we constructed the concept of animal agency, which we define as the ability of animals to actively influence conservation and management outcomes through their adaptive, context-specific, and complex behaviors that are predicated on their sentience, individuality, lived experiences, cognition, sociality, and cultures in ways that shape and reshape shared human–wildlife cultures, spaces, and histories. Conservation practices, such as compassionate conservation, convivial conservation, and ecological justice, incorporate facets of animal agency. Animal agency can be incorporated in conservation problem-solving by assessing the ways in which agency contributes to species’ survival and by encouraging more adaptive and collaborative decision-making among human and nonhuman stakeholders.     

“Science is Everywhere,but No One Knows It”: Assessing the Cultural Distance to Science of Rural South African Publics

ABSTRACT

In science communication, a prerequisite for reaching different parts of a society is to find out how these publics experience and interpret science. Since rural South African publics are perceived to exhibit a large cultural distance to science, the present exploratory study aimed to know in more detail how rural South Africans perceive and understand science in their local and social contexts. Theoretical notions on cultural distance and the methodological approach of segmentation studies were considered. Semi-structured interviews with rural South Africans were carried out in four towns (n?=?52) that differ with respect to having a large scientific installation in their vicinity, or not. Sensitively comparing local and social contexts helped identifying three different publics who differed regarding their perceptions of science; however, the large scientific installations only made a difference in perceptions for those publics who were generally less exposed to and less knowledgeable about science.     

Oil dependency,political institutions,and urban–rural disparities in access to electricity in Africa

In line with the resource curse literature, this paper examines the effect of oil dependency on the disparities in access to electricity between urban and rural areas in Africa, conditional on the quality of political institutions. Based on data from 36 African countries over the period 2000–2017, our investigation suggests that oil rents (% of GDP) increase urban–rural disparities in access to electricity. However, the quality of institutions shapes the effect of oil dependency on these disparities. Specifically, a 10% increase in the institutional quality score reduces the adverse effects of oil rent on electricity access disparity by around 19%, and the negative impact of oil dependency on urban–rural disparities is reversed when institutional quality reaches a score of 52% on a scale from 0 to 100. The robustness tests support these results and call for strengthening the quality of institutions to overcome the resource curse in Africa.     

薄膜扩散梯度技术在重金属生物有效态监测中的应用

重金属生物有效性是评估重金属元素迁移性、生物可利用性和生态影响的关键参数。薄膜扩散梯度技术(DGT)是一种原位被动采样技术,因其具有原位富集性、形态选择性,可提供被监测物质在监测时间段内的平均浓度等优点,可作为生物对重金属摄取的模拟替代物对环境介质中重金属的生物可利用度进行预测,已被广泛应用于环境介质中重金属生物有效性的测定。研究主要介绍了DGT技术的原理、组成和特点,评述了其近年来在水体、土壤、沉积物中重金属生物有效态应用方面的新进展,提出了DGT技术未来要提高抗生物污染能力及寻找可与DGT技术联用的相关技术的观点。     

隧道与横通道交叉角对火灾烟气蔓延影响机制研究

为探索隧道与横通道交叉角对火灾烟气蔓延的影响机制，采用FDS数值模拟，研究横通道与隧道不同交叉角情况下火灾烟气温度、浓度、烟气层高度等的变化规律，建立开启火源下风向横通道时隧道内烟气最高温度修正公式，提出烟气纵向蔓延恢复长度的概念，并探讨其影响规律。 结果表明:隧道和横通道交叉角越小，隧道内同一位置烟气层高度越高，当交叉角由90°降低到30°时，烟气层高度最大增加32%；烟气纵向蔓延恢复长度与交叉角及通风速率呈正相关，而与火源功率几乎无关。研究结果对隧道通风排烟系统设计及相关标准的制定具有参考意义。     

汽车道路试验安全管理体系建设研究

为了保障汽车道路试验安全、提高安全管理水平,设计提出汽车道路试验安全管理体系(SMS)总方案。根据OHSAS 18001和安全标准化规范的特点分析,论证了融合两种体系建立道路试验SMS的适用性。并从政策与目标、风险管理、安全保证和安全促进四个模块阐述了该体系的搭建思路、框架内容和搭建步骤。最后,以某自主品牌车企研发中心道路试验的应用情况为例进行效果评估,结果表明:汽车道路试验SMS能有效防控风险、提升试验安全管理水平。     

Impacts of rural to urban migration,urbanization, and generational change on consumption of wild animals in the Amazon

For the first time in history, more people live in urban areas than in rural areas. This trend is likely to continue, driven largely by rural-to-urban migration. We investigated how rural-to-urban migration, urbanization, and generational change affect the consumption of wild animals. We used chelonian (tortoises and freshwater turtles), one of the most hunted taxa in the Amazon, as a model. We surveyed 1356 households and 2776 school children across 10 urban areas of the Brazilian Amazon (6 small towns, 3 large towns, and Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon Basin) with a randomized response technique and anonymous questionnaires. Urban demand for wild meat (i.e., meat from wild animals) was alarmingly high. Approximately 1.7 million turtles and tortoises were consumed in urban areas of Amazonas during 2018. Consumption rates declined as size of the urban area increased and were greater for adults than children. Furthermore, the longer rural-to-urban migrants lived in urban areas, the lower their consumption rates. These results suggest that wild meat consumption is a rural-related tradition that decreases as urbanization increases and over time after people move to urban areas. However, it is unclear whether the observed decline will be fast enough to conserve hunted species, or whether children's consumption rate will remain the same as they become adults. Thus, conservation actions in urban areas are still needed. Current conservation efforts in the Amazon do not address urban demand for wildlife and may be insufficient to ensure the survival of traded species in the face of urbanization and human population growth. Our results suggest that conservation interventions must target the urban demand for wildlife, especially by focusing on young people and recent rural to urban migrants. Article impact statement: Amazon urbanite consumption of wildlife is high but decreases with urbanization, over time for rural to urban migrants, and between generations. Impactos de la Migración del Campo a la Ciudad, la Urbanización y del Cambio Generacional sobre el Consumo de Animales Silvestres en el Amazonas     

基于稳健统计方法对实验室比对中土壤汞的质量控制指标研究

利用稳健四分位间距法和迭代法2种稳健统计方法,通过对全国31个省、自治区、直辖市范围内共334家环境监测单位开展土壤中汞的实验室间比对,对比对测定结果和质控数据进行统计分析,系统性地研究了土壤中汞的质量控制指标。建议实际监测工作中土壤汞的实验室间相对标准偏差范围为7%～19%,相对误差控制指标为±8%,低浓度水平下可适当放宽至±10%,加标回收率控制范围为81%～109%,为日常监测开展土壤汞的质量控制工作提供了评价依据,具有广泛的应用价值和较好的指导作用。     

Arsenic residue in residential area after cleanup of pesticide illegal dumping sources in Thanh Hoa province,Central Vietnam

In Vietnam, Nicotex's site is perhaps the most infamous case of illegal disposal of toxic pesticides near residential areas. In 2013, affected villagers discovered illegal burials of around 1,000 tons of expired pesticides in the Nicotex factory. Organic pesticides were detected in illegal burial areas (IBAs) around 60 times greater than acceptable levels, but no attention was paid to contamination of metals, metalloids, and other classes of organic contaminants, which could be co-contaminants in pesticide formulation. This study assessed the contaminants remaining in the IBAs and surrounding residential areas two years after the source removal conducted in 2014. Additionally, a preliminary health risk assessment from residual contaminants was performed. Nine classes of chemicals including parental pesticides, inorganic and organic degradation byproducts, and metals and metalloids, comprising 123 chemicals were quantified in soil, sediment, and water samples from Nicotex and surrounding residential areas. Although concentrations of organic pesticides were below acceptable levels, arsenic contamination in the soil in a Nicotex IBA named NCT5 and Nap village (NV) exceeded the acceptable level. The enrichment factor and log-probability plot indicate that arsenic enrichment at NV is not from natural sources but is associated with arsenic contamination in NCT5. Arsenic may be a co-contaminant in pesticide manufacturing or an arsenical pesticide, such as monosodium methanearsonate. Arsenic found in NV was toxic arsenate for which the preliminary risk assessment yielded an unacceptable excess carcinogenic risk (1 × 10^?4). While all attention was paid to investigate and treat contamination of organic pesticides, it turns out that arsenic is the major existing threat which poses an unacceptable cancer risk in good agreement with the high cancer rate claimed by villagers near Nicotex. This justifies the need for further investigation of the extent of the arsenic contamination and restoration of the contaminated land.     

超前支架迈步过程稳定控制方法研究

为提高巷道超前支架迈步前移过程的稳定性和安全性,建立一种基于液压油液体积平均释放原则的迈步稳定控制方法。用软件仿真及样机实测的方法,检验所提出控制方法的控制效果。结果表明,与传统的直线、对数曲线、指数曲线的阀芯位移控制方法相比,应用所建立的方法,设备迈步过程支撑力波动最小,稳定过程耗时最短,为2.2 s,顶板变形量最小,最大值约为4.74 mm。而采用对数曲线控制方式效果最差,稳定过程耗时3.8 s,顶板变形量最大值达到9.48 mm。