Willingness of marine artisanal fishermen to integrate aquaculture in enterprise mix: Evidence from Ghana

Marine resources are depleting, making the dependence of economies on fish from such sources no longer the best option. Aquaculture has been suggested as an alternative livelihood. This study assesses the willingness of marine artisanal fishermen in the coastal region of Ghana to adopt aquaculture. The Effutu municipality in the central region of Ghana was purposely selected for the study. A multi stage cluster sampling procedure was used to randomly select150 artisanal fishermen from two communities in the coastal area of the district. Data was collected using semi structured questionnaire. The study employed the Binary Logit model to assess the influence of technical, socioeconomic and institutional factors on the decision to integrate the aquaculture enterprise into household enterprises of fishermen. The results of the study showed that about62 percent of the marine fishermen were willing to adopt and integrate aquaculture into their enterprise mix. The Logit estimation results reveal that fishermen who lacked savings, had difficulty in accessing credit, did not belong to fishermen's association, and were new in marine fishing were more likely to be convinced about integrating aquaculture. There is potential for marine fishers to explore and use aquaculture to enhance their wealth. The study recommends that targeting marine fishers who are youthful and inexperienced for training and capacity building is the best policy option for stakeholders who are interested in aquaculture development. Key Words: Marine artisanal fishermen, aquaculture, enterprise mix, Binary Logit Model, Ghan

Changes in children’s cognitive development at the Start of School in England 2001–2008.

Since 1997, England has seen massive changes in the Early Years including the introduction of an early childhood curriculum, free pre-school education for three-year-olds and local programmes for disadvantaged communities. Many of these initiatives took time to introduce and become established. Beginning in 2001, and each year thereafter until 2008, the authors collected consistent data from thousands of children when they started school at the age of four on a range of variables, chosen because they are good predictors of later success. These included vocabulary, early reading and early mathematics. Children from the same set of 472 state primary schools in England were assessed each year. This paper contributes to the existing studies of educational trends over time by examining the extent to which children's scores on these measures changed over that period; in general, they were found to have remained stable

CGILS: Results From The First Phase of An International Project to Understand The Physical Mechanisms of Low Cloud Feedbacks in Single Column Models

CGILS—the CFMIP-GASS Intercomparison of Large Eddy Models (LESs) and single column models (SCMs)—investigates the mechanisms of cloud feedback in SCMs and LESs under idealized climate change perturbation. This paper describes the CGILS results from 15 SCMs and 8 LES models. Three cloud regimes over the subtropical oceans are studied: shallow cumulus, cumulus under stratocumulus, and well-mixed coastal stratus/stratocumulus. In the stratocumulus and coastal stratus regimes, SCMs without activated shallow convection generally simulated negative cloud feedbacks, while models with active shallow convection generally simulated positive cloud feedbacks. In the shallow cumulus alone regime, this relationship is less clear, likely due to the changes in cloud depth, lateral mixing, and precipitation or a combination of them. The majority of LES models simulated negative cloud feedback in the well-mixed coastal stratus/stratocumulus regime, and positive feedback in the shallow cumulus and stratocumulus regime. A general framework is provided to interpret SCM results: in a warmer climate, the moistening rate of the cloudy layer associated with the surface-based turbulence parameterization is enhanced; together with weaker large-scale subsidence, it causes negative cloud feedback. In contrast, in the warmer climate, the drying rate associated with the shallow convection scheme is enhanced. This causes positive cloud feedback. These mechanisms are summarized as the “NESTS” negative cloud feedback and the “SCOPE” positive cloud feedback (Negative feedback from Surface Turbulence under weaker Subsidence—Shallow Convection PositivE feedback) with the net cloud feedback depending on how the two opposing effects counteract each other. The LES results are consistent with these interpretations

A Voltage-Gated H+ Channel Underlying pH Homeostasis in Calcifying Coccolithophores

Marine coccolithophorid phytoplankton are major producers of biogenic calcite, playing a significant role in the global carbon cycle. Predicting the impacts of ocean acidification on coccolithophore calcification has received much recent attention and requires improved knowledge of cellular calcification mechanisms. Uniquely amongst calcifying organisms, coccolithophores produce calcified scales (coccoliths) in an intracellular compartment and secrete them to the cell surface, requiring large transcellular ionic fluxes to support calcification. In particular, intracellular calcite precipitation using HCO3− as the substrate generates equimolar quantities of H+ that must be rapidly removed to prevent cytoplasmic acidification. We have used electrophysiological approaches to identify a plasma membrane voltage-gated H+ conductance in Coccolithus pelagicus ssp braarudii with remarkably similar biophysical and functional properties to those found in metazoans. We show that both C. pelagicus and Emiliania huxleyi possess homologues of metazoan Hv1 H+ channels, which function as voltage-gated H+ channels when expressed in heterologous systems. Homologues of the coccolithophore H+ channels were also identified in a diversity of eukaryotes, suggesting a wide range of cellular roles for the Hv1 class of proteins. Using single cell imaging, we demonstrate that the coccolithophore H+ conductance mediates rapid H+ efflux and plays an important role in pH homeostasis in calcifying cells. The results demonstrate a novel cellular role for voltage gated H+ channels and provide mechanistic insight into biomineralisation by establishing a direct link between pH homeostasis and calcification. As the coccolithophore H+ conductance is dependent on the trans-membrane H+ electrochemical gradient, this mechanism will be directly impacted by, and may underlie adaptation to, ocean acidification. The presence of this H+ efflux pathway suggests that there is no obligate use of H+ derived from calcification for intracellular CO2 generation. Furthermore, the presence of Hv1 class ion channels in a wide range of extant eukaryote groups indicates they evolved in an early common ancestor

A funds of knowledge approach to examining play interests: listening to children’s and parents’ perspectives.

Children’s interests are widely recognised as pivotal to meaningful learning and play in the early years. However, less is known about how children’s diverse interests may contribute to relationships within peer cultures. This article builds upon previous studies to argue that participation in sociocultural activity generates interests informed by funds of knowledge that children reconstruct in their play. It reports findings from an interpretive study that used filmed footage of children’s play as a provocation to explore the perspectives of children, parents and teachers. The article presents original insights regarding some ways in which mutually constituted funds of knowledge afford opportunities for children to co-construct meaning within peer cultures. The findings also indicate that interests arising from diverse funds of knowledge may contribute to the interplay of power, agency and status during play. This raises some issues regarding how matters of inclusion and exclusion are understood and responded to within early years settings. The article recommends that teachers and researchers engage critically with children’s individual and collective funds of knowledge in order to better understand the complexities of play cultures

Observational constraints on atmospheric and oceanic cross-equatorial heat transports: revisiting the precipitation asymmetry problem in climate models

Satellite based top-of-atmosphere (TOA) and surface radiation budget observations are combined with mass corrected vertically integrated atmospheric energy divergence and tendency from reanalysis to infer the regional distribution of the TOA, atmospheric and surface energy budget terms over the globe. Hemispheric contrasts in the energy budget terms are used to determine the radiative and combined sensible and latent heat contributions to the cross-equatorial heat transports in the atmosphere (AHT_EQ) and ocean (OHT_EQ). The contrast in net atmospheric radiation implies an AHT_EQ from the northern hemisphere (NH) to the southern hemisphere (SH) (0.75 PW), while the hemispheric difference in sensible and latent heat implies an AHT_EQ in the opposite direction (0.51 PW), resulting in a net NH to SH AHT_EQ (0.24 PW). At the surface, the hemispheric contrast in the radiative component (0.95 PW) dominates, implying a 0.44 PW SH to NH OHT_EQ. Coupled model intercomparison project phase 5 (CMIP5) models with excessive net downward surface radiation and surface-to-atmosphere sensible and latent heat transport in the SH relative to the NH exhibit anomalous northward AHT_EQ and overestimate SH tropical precipitation. The hemispheric bias in net surface radiative flux is due to too much longwave surface radiative cooling in the NH tropics in both clear and all-sky conditions and excessive shortwave surface radiation in the SH subtropics and extratropics due to an underestimation in reflection by clouds