Of Bodies, Place, and Culture: Re-Situating Local Food

In the US, an increasingly popular local food movement is propelled along by structural arguments that highlight the inequity and unsustainablity of the current agri-food system and by individually based arguments that highlight personal health and well-being. Despite clear differences in their foci, the deeper values contained in each argument tend to be neglected or lost, while local innovations assume instrumental and largely market-based forms. By narrowing their focus to the rational and the economic, movement activists tend to overlook (or marginalize) the role of the sensual, the emotional, the expressive for maintaining layered sets of embodied relationships to food and to place. This paper seeks to show that cultural and nonrational elements are fundamental to local food discussions. It proceeds from the assumption that, without them as full partners, the movement cannot be sustained in any felt, practiced, or committed way. To this end, it discusses the concept of place and bodies in place, as well as the connections between the ecological and the cultural, the sensual and the scientific. It offers a new set of questions and conceptual tools with which advocates and activists may “ground,” and thereby revalue and restore, the promise and practice of local food.     

一种改进的疏散节点踩踏风险评估算法

为解决四变量算法中存在的计算精度不高和数值不连续问题,基于踩踏事故概率设计随坡度单调递增的倾斜度函数、以人流股数为计算单位的宽度系数函数以及以节点直接承受疏散人流为基础的汇集度函数,并据此构建点型节点、线型节点和面型节点的踩踏风险评估算法.研究结果表明:改进算法能够有效避免四变量算法存在的问题,在算法稳定性、参数敏感性...     

Discourses of Place: Environmental Interpretation about Vermont Forests

Motivated by a lack of scholarly attention to the substance of interpretive messages and materials, this study examines discursive aspects of interpretative brochures available at forest recreation and tourism sites in Vermont, United States. Directive statements that instruct and guide visitor experiences—and the discourses to which they contribute—were analyzed for content, form, and meaning. Across the interpretive brochures, four broad discourses were identified: the natural forest, the recreational forest, the productive forest, and the dependent forest. Consideration of intertextuality revealed a fifth, hybrid discourse that linked forests to meanings of Vermont as a distinctive place. The convergence of these discourses across the set of brochures gives insight into the ways interpretation serves to both direct individual visitor experiences at particular sites, and to influence the development of larger-scale place meanings.     

Understanding conflicting cultural models of outdoor cats to overcome conservation impasse

Many conservation conflicts are scientifically complex yet are rooted in value conflicts, which result in an impasse. Additional biological information alone is insufficient to resolve this type of conflict. Conceptual models that articulate the material aspects of a system are increasingly used to identify areas where parties disagree. Yet, modeling processes typically follow the conveners’ rules for discussing and assessing the topic, which can exacerbate conflict. Researchers have identified a need for processes that require participants to reflect on the limits of their own philosophical assumptions and acknowledge other perspectives. Cultural models are a promising tool for this purpose because they include nonmaterial beliefs, morals, and values that guide people's understanding of how to interact with an issue, sometimes subconsciously. We explored how cultural models used with conceptual models can improve understanding of value conflicts and used outdoor cat management as a case study. We conducted interviews and focus group discussions with wildlife conservation and cat welfare professionals involved in outdoor cat policy discussions in Hawaii and Washington, D.C. From these conversations, we developed a conceptual model of the outdoor cat management system and cultural models that led stakeholders to weigh elements of the conceptual model differently. Although wildlife conservation professionals generally spoke about outdoor cats as invasive species, cat welfare professionals spoke about them as homeless pets. These conflicting conceptualizations of what an outdoor cat is may help explain the root of many long-standing disagreements. Examining how and when stakeholders invoke different cultural models allowed us to identify management actions that work with, rather than challenge, those models. Dialogue that embraces conflicting cultural models can be difficult and uncomfortable, but has great potential to overcome conservation impasse and achieve lasting conservation results.     

Place attachment and flood preparedness

Does place attachment and the consequent emotional connections and ties that people have with environments affect their preparedness for natural disasters, such as floods? This study took up this research question for the understudied geographical region of Orissa, India. In particular, investigation focused on three kinds of place attachment, viz. economic, genealogical, and religious. Contextualized scales for place attachment and flood preparedness were developed for a survey. Data were collected from 300 residents in flood prone areas. Validity and reliability of the scales were established. Overall, place attachment was found to significantly influence flood preparedness. Hierarchical regression analysis was performed to determine whether the three factors of place attachment influence flood preparedness. Controlling for confounding effects of age and family type, regression analysis revealed that people having genealogical and economic place attachment prepared for floods, but those with religious place attachment did not prepare for floods. The implications of these findings for future studies are described.     

北京西单文化广场的火灾安全评价与管理

以火灾危险辨识、危险评价方法和人员培训手段相结合 ,提出了北京西单文化广场火灾安全评价与管理的总体思路 ;分析并说明了火灾危险评价中火灾模型的选取、确定几种极限情形需要考虑的主要因素以及人员疏散策略有效性的衡量等关键问题 ;同时给出了人员培训的详细内容。本文为受限空间类城市公共场所的安全评价与管理提供了一种可供参照的研究模式     

镇海炼化公司作业场所健康促进效果评价

对镇海炼化公司所采取的石油化工作业场所作业人员健康促进措施进行了效果评价.评价结果发现,职工职业安全卫生知识知晓率、正确态度和行为形成率有所提高,健康促进工作初见成效.     

Theorising pathways to sustainability

Using a Pathways approach, controversies over environmental and natural resource management are viewed as expressions of alternative, or competing, pathways to sustainability. This supports deeper understanding of the underlying causes of natural resource management controversies. The framework is composed of two elements: the STEPS (Social, Technological, and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) Pathways approach and frame analysis. Many sustainable development dilemmas are played out in specific places and consequently, the Pathways approach is integrated with a place-based frame analysis. The resulting framework guides empirical investigation in place-based contexts. This theorising about sustainability science can be used to cast light on contested natural resource management issues, in this case mining in northern Sweden. By exposing the range of alternative Pathways to critical norms of sustainable development, we ascertain whether action alternatives are compatible with sustainable futures. The framework provides a way in which sustainability science can better understand the origins of natural resource management conflicts, characterise the positions of the actors involved, identify the potential for cooperation between stakeholders leading to policy resolution and judge what Pathways help or hinder the pursuit of sustainable development. In addition, it can enhance sustainability science by guiding integrative sustainability research at the project scale.     

熟悉环境条件下的公共场所人员疏散仿真模型研究

建立能够准确描述熟悉公共场所环境人员真实疏散行为的仿真模型,用于指导编制开发具有较高仿真度的程序软件。该模型是在参考Helbing社会力模型建模思想的基础上,分析和量化影响熟悉环境人员疏散行为的主要因素,同时引入可翻越度概念区分不同属性障碍物对人员疏散行为的不同影响,并结合分子模拟原理建立,最后运用C#编程语言实现一个比较具有代表性虚拟场景的模拟,其仿真结果显示模型能够较为完整地体现熟悉环境人员的疏散轨迹及移动速度变化,适用于高铁客运站等公共场所。     

Learning about Environments: The Significance of Primal Landscapes

The way we learn about our environments—be they farms, forests, or tribal lands—has implications for the formulation of environmental policy. This article presents the findings of how residents learned about their environments in two rural case studies conducted in northern Queensland and relates these to the concept of “primal landscapes,” which is concerned with the interaction that occurs between children and the environments in which they mature. Rather than focusing specifically on built environments or natural environments, the article draws on an approach that conceptualizes environment as meaning-laden places in which we live and work, which integrate social, cultural, biological, physical, and economic dimensions. In drawing insights for environmental policy, the article draws attention to the timing of policy interventions, the significance of experiential environmental education, the potential to learn from place-based festivals, and the importance of learning from extreme events such as fires and floods.