Ascospore appendages of marine ascomycetes: An evaluation of appendages as taxonomic criteria

Ascospore appendages of 18 marine Ascomycetes, belonging to the genera Amylocarpus, Carbosphaerella, Corollospora, Eiona, Emericellopsis, Haligena, Halosphaeria, Lulworthia, Remispora and Torpedospora, were examined with the scanning electron microscope. A number of basic types of spore appendage development are recognised. The significance of these observations to the taxonomy of marine Ascomycetes, and especially the Halosphaeriaceae, is discussed. Remispora is considered a valid genus and not a synonym of Halosphaeria. Both Corollospora and Halosphaeria are considered to be an assemblage of disparate species. The establishment of new genera is considered premature until material of other species has been re-examined. The ontogeny and structure of spore appendages are considered useful taxonomic criteria at the specific and generic level.     

The effects of long-term unemployment on attitudes to employment

This paper is concerned with whether long-term unemployment (6-24 months) affects people's attitudes to employment once they have found a new job. One hundred and forty men aged 25-40 were asked whether they felt various aspects of employment (e.g. job security, pay) are more important to them as a result of being unemployed. The effects of mental well-being when unemployed on attitudes to employment are explored. Unemployment is reported to have made most aspects of employment more important to people. Those whose mental health was worst when unemployed report that job security is most important to them.     

Wheat yield functions for analysis of land-use change in China

CERES-Wheat, a dynamic process crop growth model, is specified and validated for eight sites in the major wheat-growing regions of China. Crop model results are then used to test the Mitscherlich-Baule and the quadratic functional forms for yield response to nitrogen fertilizer, irrigation water, temperature, and precipitation. The resulting functions are designed to be used in a linked biophysical-economic model of land-use and land-cover change in China. While both functions predict yield responses adequately, the Mitscherlich-Baule function is preferable to the quadratic function because its parameters are biologically and physically realistic. Variables explaining a significant proportion of simulated yield variance are nitrogen, irrigation water, and precipitation; temperature was a less significant component of yield variation within the range of observed year-to-year variability at the study sites. Crop model simulations with a generic soil with median characteristics of the eight sites compared to simulations with site-specific soils showed that agricultural soils in China have similar and, in general, low-to-moderate water-holding capacities and organic matter contents. The validated crop model is useful for simulating the range of conditions under which wheat is grown in China, and provides the means to estimate production functions when experimental field data are not available.     

Local attitudes on protected areas: Evidence from three Natura 2000 wetland sites in Greece

Environmental policies aimed at the conservation of protected areas are significantly influenced by social factors revealing the importance of investigating local knowledge and perceptions during their planning and implementation. The present article aims to explore perceptions and awareness of citizens in three protected areas of Greece: The National Park of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, the Wetland of Kalloni, and Lake Tavropou. The survey explores perceptions of individuals on environmental issues and alternative management scenarios referring to management actors, funding sources, and management schemes for the conservation of biodiversity. Differences between the three research areas are also explored. According to the results of the study, citizens are in general supportive of protected areas and present relatively high levels of knowledge of environmental issues. However, environmental awareness is not accompanied by active participation for the resolution of environmental problems. By exploring differences between the three research areas, it is revealed that the provision of information significantly influences individuals’ perceptions on relevant issues. Also, a significant finding of the study is that citizens are supportive of some forms of participatory management. It is essential, to encourage public participation and deliberation in order to promote their sustainable management.     

Variability in the spatial association patterns of sponge assemblages in response to environmental heterogeneity

Previous work on tropical sponge assemblages has provided strong evidence that sponges coexist on coral reefs through a diversity of positive and negative associations; however, the majority of this work has focused on Caribbean coral reefs. Here, we investigate the intra-phyletic spatial associations between the 20 most abundant sponge species at two sites experiencing different environmental regimes in the Wakatobi National Marine Park, Indonesia. We used a Monte Carlo simulation approach to compare the number of spatial associations between each species pair to that expected if species distribution patterns were non-associative (i.e. random). We found that sponges were predominately randomly distributed at the high coral cover site, whereas most sponges were negatively associated with other sponges at the sedimented, low coral cover site. We also found differences between distribution patterns for specific species at the two sites; a number of species that showed a random distribution pattern at the high coral cover site had negative association patterns at the low coral cover site. Our research supports recent ecological studies suggesting that interactions between species are unlikely to be homogenously distributed, as we found that some sponge species interactions differed depending on the environmental regimes in which they were found; this suggests that species interactions may be spatially variable. Finally, our results contrast with studies from elsewhere, as the sponge assemblages at these two sites in the Wakatobi appear to be dominated by negative associations and random distribution patterns rather than widespread competition.     

A Review of the Air Pollution Research Program of the Smoke and Fumes Committee of the American Petroleum Institute

Canada’s new Green Plan charts a course for dealing with environmental issues that will require an unflinching commitment to changes in thought, decision-making and action by all sectors of Canadian society. The five-year, $3-billion Plan lists 120 specific initiatives in eight areas of activity. It will enlist the participation of some 40 federal departments and agencies, alone, cooperatively or in creative partnerships with industry, the academic and scientific community, and citizens’ groups.     

Surrogate Measures for Providing High Frequency Estimates of Total Suspended Solids and Total Phosphorus Concentrations1

Spackman Jones, Amber, David K. Stevens, Jeffery S. Horsburgh, and Nancy O. Mesner, 2010. Surrogate Measures for Providing High Frequency Estimates of Total Suspended Solids and Total Phosphorus Concentrations. Journal of the American Water Resources Association (JAWRA) 1‐15. DOI: 10.1111/j.1752‐1688.2010.00505.x Abstract: Surrogate measures like turbidity, which can be observed with high frequency in situ, have potential for generating high frequency estimates of total suspended solids (TSS) and total phosphorus (TP) concentrations. In the semiarid, snowmelt‐driven, and irrigation‐regulated Little Bear River watershed of northern Utah, high frequency in situ water quality measurements were recorded in conjunction with periodic chemistry sampling. Site‐specific relationships were developed using turbidity as a surrogate for TP and TSS at two monitoring locations. Methods are presented for employing censored data and for investigating categorical explanatory variables (e.g., hydrologic conditions). Turbidity was a significant explanatory variable for TP and TSS at both sites, which differ in hydrologic and water quality characteristics. The relationship between turbidity and TP was stronger at the upper watershed site where TP is predominantly particulate. At both sites, the relationships between turbidity and TP varied between spring snowmelt and base flow conditions while the relationships between TSS and turbidity were consistent across hydrological conditions. This approach enables the calculation of high frequency time series of TP and TSS concentrations previously unavailable using traditional monitoring approaches. These methods have broad application for situations that require accurate characterization of fluxes of these constituents over a range of hydrologic conditions.     

An integrated approach to assessing the environmental and health impacts of pollution in the urban environment: Methodology and a case study

This paper presents a new decision-support methodology and software tool for sustainable management of urban pollution. A number of different methods and tools are integrated within the same platform, including GIS, LCA, fate and transport modelling, health impact assessment and multi-criteria decision analysis. The application of the framework is illustrated on a case study which investigates the environmental and health impacts of pollution arising from different industrial, domestic and transport sources in a city. The example city chosen for the study is Sheffield, UK, and the main pollutants considered are NO_x, SO₂ and PM10. The results suggest that the absence of the current large industrial sources in the city would lead to a 90% reduction of the SO₂ and 70% of the NO₂ ground concentrations, consequently preventing 27 deaths and 18 respiratory hospital admissions per annum for a population of 500,000. Based on the total annual mortality and hospital admissions in Sheffield for the year of the assessment, this means that 0.53% of premature deaths and 0.49% of respiratory hospital admissions would be prevented by the estimated reduction in air pollution.     

Organizational identification: Extending our understanding of social identities through social networks

Although organizational identification is founded on social identity and symbolic interactionist theories, current theories emphasize a social identity whereby organizational members categorize themselves and others based on roles and membership in an organization or work unit. In contrast symbolic interactionism, which resides in interpersonal relationships, is rarely theorized or empirically assessed in studies of organizational identification. We use survey data collected at an academic institution to explore how the strength and structure of an individual's social network both directly influences organizational identification as well as moderates the relation between social identity, or categorical, antecedents and organizational identification. Our results show that the size of an individual's network as well as the interaction between relationship strength and prestige better explain organizational identification than do antecedents based solely on categorization and social comparison processes. Thus networks of relationships, which have been a foundational but much neglected premise and process for organizational identification, are brought back into a theory of organizational identification. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.