Assessing Ecotourism from a Multi-stakeholder Perspective: Xingkai Lake National Nature Reserve,China

Ecotourism development is closely associated with the sustainability of protected natural areas. When facilitated by appropriate management, ecotourism can contribute to conservation and development, as well as the well-being of local communities. As such, ecotourism has been proposed and practiced in different forms in many places, including China. This study assesses ecotourism development at Xingkai Lake National Nature Reserve in Heilongjiang Province, China. Key informant interviews were conducted with representatives from the provincial Forestry Department, the Nature Reserve, and the local community. Observation was undertaken on three site visits and secondary data were collected. The potential for providing quality natural experiences is high and tourism development is occurring rapidly. However, current relationships between people, resources, and tourism have yet to provide mutual benefits necessary for successful ecotourism. The multi-stakeholder management style and the ambiguity of landownership within the nature reserve constitute structural difficulties for ecotourism management and operation. Although participation in ecotourism could provide a livelihood opportunity and interests in involvement in tourism have been identified among the local fishing community, current involvement is limited mainly due to the lack of mechanisms for participation. Therefore, it is recommended that management programs and government policies should be established to provide a platform for community participation in ecotourism. Then, a positive synergistic relationship between tourism, environment, and community could be developed. Planning and policy requirements are discussed for ecotourism development in protected areas in China.     

Demonstrations of coal-fired oxy-fuel technology for carbon capture and storage and issues with commercial deployment

As one of the three major carbon capture technologies associated with carbon capture and storage (CCS), oxy-fuel technology is currently undergoing rapid development with a number of international demonstration projects of scale 10–30 MW_e having commenced and units with a scale of 250–300 MW_e emerging in the progression towards commercialisation. Industrial scale testing of coal combustion and burners is also being conducted by technology vendors.The paper details the current international status of the technology; the contributions of current demonstrations; and a roadmap for commercial deployment.At its current state of maturity oxy-fuel technology may be considered semi-commercial, in that even if a unit was economically viable and could be provided by a vendor, the generator and vendor would need to share the technical risk. This is because guarantees could not at present be provided for operating characteristics associated with mature technologies such as reliability, emissions, ramp rate and spray control. This is due to the maturity of the technology associated with the capability of vendors and associated design and operational uncertainties, associated with a lack of plant experience at scale.The projected development of oxy-fuel technology for first-generation plant is provided, using an ASU for oxygen supply, standard furnace designs with externally recirculated flue gas, and limited thermal integration of the ASU and compression plant with the power plant. Potential features of second generation technology are listed.Listed issues delaying deployment indicate that market, economic, legal and issues of public acceptance are more significant than technical barriers.     

The mediating role of job characteristics in job redesign interventions: A serendipitous quasi‐experiment

The aim of this paper is to examine the mediating role played by five key job characteristics in the relationship between employee participation in a job redesign intervention and employee well‐being. In studies of job redesign interventions, it has been assumed that any effects of employee participation in job redesign on well‐being are a result of changes in job characteristics rather than participation in change per se. It is therefore important to statistically test for mediation in job redesign intervention studies to help establish that the change in job characteristics is the mechanism through which job redesign interventions work. However, this has rarely been tested directly, either because data to allow tests of mediation have not been collected (e.g. assessments of job characteristics) or because data have been collected but mediation has not been tested using accepted procedures. This makes it unclear whether changes in job characteristics explain the effects. Results from multilevel analyses of a longitudinal 9‐month long serendipitous quasi‐experimental participative job redesign intervention showed that changes in job control, participation, skill utilization and feedback, but not task obstacles, were sufficient to account for the relationship between the intervention and employee well‐being. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fetal hydrops caused by a novel pathogenic MECOM variant

We report a fetus with hydrops, congenital heart disease and bilateral radioulnar synostosis caused by a novel pathogenic MECOM variant. The female fetus was referred for post-mortem examination after fetal hydrops and intrauterine death was diagnosed at 20 weeks gestation. Post-mortem examination confirmed fetal hydrops, pallor, truncus arteriosus and bilateral radioulnar synostosis. Trio whole genome sequencing analysis detected a novel de novo heterozygous pathogenic loss-of-function variant in MECOM (NM_004991), associated with a diagnosis of Radioulnar Synostosis with Amegakaryocytic Thrombocytopenia 2 (RUSAT-2). RUSAT-2 is a variable condition associated postnatally with bone marrow failure, radioulnar synostosis and congenital anomalies. RUSAT-2 is not currently associated with a prenatal phenotype or fetal demise, and was not present on diagnostic NHS prenatal gene panels at time of diagnosis. This case highlights the diagnostic value of detailed phenotyping with post-mortem examination, and of using a broad sequencing approach.     

European starling nestling response to chlorpyrifos exposure in a corn agroecosystem

European starling (Sturnus vulgaris) nestlings were used as a surrogate to study the effect of chlorpyrifos application to a corn agroecosystem on songbird reproduction. Chlorpyrifos was applied in a T‐band at 1.3 kg AI/ha, and residues were measured in soil, earthworms, ground‐dwelling insects, and diet items collected from the crop of starling nestlings. Chlorpyrifos levels in soil peaked at 34.2 μg/g, 4 days post‐application, and dissipated to trace levels by 64 days post‐application. Concentrations of chlorpyrifos in earthworms and ground‐dwelling insects reached 0.9 and 0.7 ug/g, respectively. Starling nestling diet items included invertebrates from eight orders with chlorpyrifos concentrations ranging from trace levels to 10.6 μg/g in earthworms. Nestling brain and plasma cholinesterase (ChE) activity and body mass measurements were taken at 3, 8, and 13 days post‐hatch (DPH). Adult starling fecundity was also measured. Body mass differences between treatment and reference site nestlings at 3 and 13 DPH were not significant at α = 0.05. However, 8 DPH nestlings from the Treatment Site had a transient reduction in weight (p = 0.03) when compared with 8 DPH reference nestlings. There were no significant differences in brain or plasma ChE activities of 3, 8, or 13 DPH nestlings. Further, multiple measures of fecundity (i.e., clutch size, hatching percentage, and fledging percentage) indicated that chlorpyrifos application did not affect starling nestling survival to fledging, as the values from the Treatment and Reference Site were nearly identical. This screening‐level study suggests that although one age group of starling nestlings from the Treatment Site weighed less than their Reference Site counterparts, a single T‐band application of chlorpyrifos did not impair starling nesting success.     

Trait space of rare plants in a fire‐dependent ecosystem

The causes of species rarity are of critical concern because of the high extinction risk associated with rarity. Studies examining individual rare species have limited generality, whereas trait‐based approaches offer a means to identify functional causes of rarity that can be applied to communities with disparate species pools. Differences in functional traits between rare and common species may be indicative of the functional causes of species rarity and may therefore be useful in crafting species conservation strategies. However, there is a conspicuous lack of studies comparing the functional traits of rare species and co‐occurring common species. We measured 18 important functional traits for 19 rare and 134 common understory plant species from North Carolina's Sandhills region and compared their trait distributions to determine whether there are significant functional differences that may explain species rarity. Flowering, fire, and tissue‐chemistry traits differed significantly between rare and common, co‐occurring species. Differences in specific traits suggest that fire suppression has driven rarity in this system and that changes to the timing and severity of prescribed fire may improve conservation success. Our method provides a useful tool to prioritize conservation efforts in other systems based on the likelihood that rare species are functionally capable of persisting.     

The intercoder agreement when using the Driving Reliability and Error Analysis Method in road traffic accident investigations

Many different classification schemes have been used in the analysis of road traffic accidents but the agreement between coders using the same classification scheme is rarely tested and/or reported. As a high intercoder agreement is a prerequisite for a study’s validity, this is a serious shortcoming. The aim of the present study was, therefore, to test the intercoder agreement of the Driving Reliability and Error Analysis Method (DREAM) version 3.0 by letting seven coders from different European countries analyse and classify the causes of the same four accident scenarios. The results showed that the intercoder agreement for genotypes (contributing factors) ranges from 74% to 94% with an average of 83%, while for phenotypes (observable effects) it ranges from 57% to 100% with an average of 78%. The results also showed that weaknesses in classification schemes, methods, training of coders as well as in presentation of accident information can be identified by testing the intercoder agreement.     

Does plant species co-occurrence influence soil mite diversity?

Few studies have considered whether plant taxa can be used as predictors of belowground faunal diversity in natural ecosystems. We examined soil mite (Acari) diversity beneath six grass species at the Konza Prairie Biological Station, Kansas, USA. We tested the hypotheses that soil mite species richness, abundance, and taxonomic diversity are greater (1) beneath grasses in dicultures (different species) compared to monocultures (same species), (2) beneath grasses of higher resource quality (lower C:N) compared to lower resource quality, and (3) beneath heterogeneous mixes of grasses (C3 and C4 grasses growing together) compared to homogeneous mixes (C3 or C4 grasses) using natural occurrences of plant species as treatments. This study is the first to examine the interaction between above- and belowground diversity in a natural setting with species-level resolution of a hyper-diverse taxon. Our results indicate that grasses in diculture supported a more species and phylogenetically rich soil mite fauna than was observed for monocultures and that this relationship was significant at depth but not in the upper soil horizon. We noted that mite species richness was not linearly related to grass species richness, which suggests that simple extrapolations of soil faunal diversity based on plant species inventories may underestimate the richness of associated soil mite communities. The distribution of mite size classes in dicultures was considerably different than those for monocultures. There was no difference in soil mite richness between grass combinations of differing resource quality, or resource heterogeneity.