Principles and components of a strategic EPM process relevant to the peri-urban interface (PUI)

In the first instance the concern of this paper is with inquiring, as stated in the title of the paper, into principles and components of a strategic environmental planning and management (EPM) process relevant to the PUI. The research focuses attention in particular on the problems and needs of the poor living at the interface

Promoting sustainable human development in cities in the South: A Southeast Asian perspective

This paper considers the frequent discrepancies between theory and practice in Third World urban development programmes. Drawing upon three Southeast Asian case studies (the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia), it highlights the importance of understanding the challenges posed for sustainable urban development by current processes of urbanization, democratization, decentralization and economic liberalization. Urbanization in Southeast Asian countries is extremely complex and fluid, raising difficult social, as well infrastructural and financial, questions. Very different groups of people must be drawn into a common planning process. Furthermore, complex relations between cities and their hinterlands must be taken into account. Decentralization and democratization serve to complicate the picture. In most cases, local and regional institutions are ill-prepared to meet the new responsibilities implicit in decentralization, and central governments are reluctant to give up their power over lower level authorities. Effective democratization of decision making is also hampered by local political structures hostile to participation. In some cases, however, democracy is growing, and potentially serves as a focus for sustainable development planning and management. The paper questions the poverty alleviation powers of economic liberalization. It points out that neo-liberal policies undermine development efforts by weakening government responsibility in key areas of public concern. In addition, free-market reforms lack environmental sensitivity and encourage deep splits within communities, as income gaps grow larger. The experience of the Philippines provides insight into these issues. Rapid urbanization and a high incidence of poverty, combined with sub-optimal urban management, have lead to problems with water provision and pollution. For the poor, deeply embedded legal problems of land tenure constitute a key concern. The administrative structure of the Philippines, where legislation has encouraged decentralization of powers and resources to the municipal and community levels, has the potential to facilitate the implementation of sustainable development initiatives. However, the continuing strength of powerful local bosses blocks many efforts to address the needs of the poor and to consider paths to sustainable urban development. The development of physical infrastructure tends to be granted priority over smaller participatory community projects. Thailand is the least urbanized of the three case countries, and urban poverty is less prominent than in the Philippines or Indonesia. Urban water supply is generally good, but industrial waste, pollution, land tenure and access to services are serious problems. Although the aim of sustainable development features in Thai economic and social policies, and some headway has been made in the environmental sector, there is virtually no progress towards this goal at the local level. The new Thai constitution provides for strengthening of local government; but, with the exception of strong private sector involvement, participatory forms of local planning required by the constitution are slow in materializing. In part, this is because of the overarching powers of the Ministry of Interior, which is determined to maintain its control over local affairs. It is also because structures of political patronage slow the devolution of power from central to lower levels. NGO and community representation in local development processes is relatively weak and a long-term vision for local level development is absent. Although some highly structured urban development programmes have been implemented over the past few years in Indonesia, urbanization is still uncontrolled, predominantly informal and characterized by high poverty incidence-especially following the collapse of the economy after July 1997. As in the Philippines, environmental pollution and land tenure problems are serious. But continued economic crisis dominates the policy agenda, and sustainable development planning remains weak at the local level. Post-Suharto-era legislation could allow Indonesia to do better than Thailand in terms of decentralization, but the current fluidity of the legal situation can work against, as well as for, sustainable development initiatives. Immediately following the collapse of authoritarian government, the co-operation of local level groups in consultative processes was limited by their fear of government co-optation. More recently, however, there are some signs that NGOs and community groups are engaging more effectively with recently elected councils and the municipal machinery. The concluding section of the paper draws attention to the role that may be played in sustainable development initiatives by the new urban middle class of Southeast Asia. The collapse of authoritarianism has brought to the fore aspirations for a greater say in political processes. However, the dominant economic model is also breeding more divided societies. Two distinct kinds of local development initiatives are emerging. On one hand, poor communities are being assisted by international development agencies, local governments and NGOs to improve their quality of life. On the other, middle class groups are organizing to improve the way that local governments are run. Yet these initiatives are not enough in themselves to overcome the deep divisions in these societies and to promote sustainable human development. Furthermore, this situation supports the survival of local patronage politics, which in turn militates against the success of any broader movement towards significant improvement in the processes of urban development. Democratization has opened up spaces for progressive forces for change. In such a context, international development agencies can increase their support for community organizations-not only to promote self-help initiatives, but also to strengthen their voice in local political processes. It is also necessary to provide simultaneous support at the level of the municipality. Too often, however, external support has been given on a short-term basis and targeted to local level interventions. So far there has been relatively little support for integrated urban programmes. Furthermore in the current climate of economic and social crisis, considerations of sustainable development can too easily be pushed into the background. External agencies need to focus attention on how to organize and operate such programmes and to commit themselves to longer term and more flexible interventions that are effective in rapidly changing conditions. More thought should also be given to the national level context that would ensure that local level activities make genuine progress. Such support includes reinforcement of the decentralization process-and also devising defences against the social and environmental effects of neo-liberal policies

Super Ball Bot - Structures for Planetary Landing and Exploration, NIAC Phase 2 Final Report

Small, light-weight and low-cost missions will become increasingly important to NASA's exploration goals. Ideally teams of small, collapsible, light weight robots, will be conveniently packed during launch and would reliably separate and unpack at their destination. Such robots will allow rapid, reliable in-situ exploration of hazardous destination such as Titan, where imprecise terrain knowledge and unstable precipitation cycles make single-robot exploration problematic. Unfortunately landing lightweight conventional robots is difficult with current technology. Current robot designs are delicate, requiring a complex combination of devices such as parachutes, retrorockets and impact balloons to minimize impact forces and to place a robot in a proper orientation. Instead we are developing a radically different robot based on a "tensegrity" structure and built purely with tensile and compression elements. Such robots can be both a landing and a mobility platform allowing for dramatically simpler mission profile and reduced costs. These multi-purpose robots can be light-weight, compactly stored and deployed, absorb strong impacts, are redundant against single-point failures, can recover from different landing orientations and can provide surface mobility. These properties allow for unique mission profiles that can be carried out with low cost and high reliability and which minimizes the inefficient dependance on "use once and discard" mass associated with traditional landing systems. We believe tensegrity robot technology can play a critical role in future planetary exploration

Super Ball Bot - Structures for Planetary Landing and Exploration

Small, light-weight and low-cost missions will become increasingly important to NASA's exploration goals for our solar system. Ideally teams of dozens or even hundreds of small, collapsable robots, weighing only a few kilograms a piece, will be conveniently packed during launch and would reliably separate and unpack at their destination. Such teams will allow rapid, reliable in-situ exploration of hazardous destination such as Titan, where imprecise terrain knowledge and unstable precipitation cycles make single-robot exploration problematic. Unfortunately landing many lightweight conventional robots is difficult with conventional technology. Current robot designs are delicate, requiring combinations of devices such as parachutes, retrorockets and impact balloons to minimize impact forces and to place a robot in a proper orientation. Instead we propose to develop a radically different robot based on a "tensegrity" built purely upon tensile and compression elements. These robots can be light-weight, absorb strong impacts, are redundant against single-point failures, can recover from different landing orientations and are easy to collapse and uncollapse. We believe tensegrity robot technology can play a critical role in future planetary exploration

Data-Intensive architecture for scientific knowledge discovery

This paper presents a data-intensive architecture that demonstrates the ability to support applications from a wide range of application domains, and support the different types of users involved in defining, designing and executing data-intensive processing tasks. The prototype architecture is introduced, and the pivotal role of DISPEL as a canonical language is explained. The architecture promotes the exploration and exploitation of distributed and heterogeneous data and spans the complete knowledge discovery process, from data preparation, to analysis, to evaluation and reiteration. The architecture evaluation included large-scale applications from astronomy, cosmology, hydrology, functional genetics, imaging processing and seismology

An investigation of the factor-analytic approach to the determination of abilities involved in psychomotor learning

This research began with an attempt to solve a practical problem, namely, the prediction of the rate at which an operator will learn a task. From a review of the literature, communications with researchers in this area and the study of psychomotor learning in factories it was concluded that a more fundamental approach was required which included the development of a task taxonomy. This latter objective had been researched for over twenty years by E. A. Fleishman and his approach was adopted. Three studies were carried out to develop and extend Fleishman's approach to the industrial area. However, the results of these studies were not in accord with FIeishman's conclusions and suggested that a critical re-assessment was required of the arguments, methods and procedures used by Fleishman and his co-workers. It was concluded that Fleishman's findings were to some extent an artifact of the approximate methods and procedures which he used in the original factor analyses and that using the more modern computerised factor analytic methods a reliable ability taxonomy could be developed to describe the abilities involved in the learning of psychomotor tasks. The implications for a changing-task or changing-subject model were drawn and it was concluded that a changing task and subject model needs to be developed

Using the NOAA Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer to characterise temporal and spatial trends in water temperature of large European lakes

Lakes are major repositories of biodiversity, provide multiple ecosystem services and are widely recognised as key indicators of environmental change. However, studies of lake response to drivers of change at a pan-European scale are exceptionally rare. The need for such studies has been given renewed impetus by concerns over environmental change and because of international policies, such as the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD), which impose legal obligations to monitor the condition of European lakes towards sustainable systems with good ecological status. This has highlighted the need for methods that can be widely applied across large spatial and temporal scales and produce comparable results. Remote sensing promises much in terms of information provision, but the spatial transferability and temporal repeatability of methods and relationships observed at individual or regional case studies remains unproven at the continental scale. This study demonstrates that NOAA Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) thermal data are capable of producing highly accurate (R2 &gt; 0.9) lake surface temperature (LST) estimates in lakes with variable hydromorphological characteristics and contrasting thermal regimes. Validation of the approach using archived AVHRR thermal data for Lake Geneva produced observations that were consistent with field data for equivalent time periods. This approach provides the basis for generalizing temporal and spatial trends in European lake surface temperature over several decades and confirms the potential of the full 30 year NOAA AVHRR archive to can provide AVHRR-derived LST estimates to help inform European policies on lake water quality.</p

Iron Status and Associated Malaria Risk Among African Children.

BACKGROUND: It remains unclear whether improving iron status increases malaria risk, and few studies have looked at the effect of host iron status on subsequent malaria infection. We therefore aimed to determine whether a child's iron status influences their subsequent risk of malaria infection in sub-Saharan Africa. METHODS: We assayed iron and inflammatory biomarkers from community-based cohorts of 1309 Kenyan and 1374 Ugandan children aged 0-7 years and conducted prospective surveillance for episodes of malaria. Poisson regression models were fitted to determine the effect of iron status on the incidence rate ratio (IRR) of malaria using longitudinal data covering a period of 6 months. Models were adjusted for age, sex, parasitemia, inflammation, and study site. RESULTS: At baseline, the prevalence of iron deficiency (ID) was 36.9% and 34.6% in Kenyan and Ugandan children, respectively. ID anemia (IDA) affected 23.6% of Kenyan and 17.6% of Ugandan children. Malaria risk was lower in children with ID (IRR, 0.7; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.6, 0.8; P < .001) and IDA (IRR, 0.7; 95% CI, 0.6, 0.9; P = .006). Low transferrin saturation (<10%) was similarly associated with lower malaria risk (IRR, 0.8; 95% CI, 0.6, 0.9; P = .016). However, variation in hepcidin, soluble transferrin receptors (sTfR), and hemoglobin/anemia was not associated with altered malaria risk. CONCLUSIONS: ID appears to protect against malaria infection in African children when defined using ferritin and transferrin saturation, but not when defined by hepcidin, sTfR, or hemoglobin. Additional research is required to determine causality. CLINICAL TRIALS REGISTRATION: ISRCTN32849447

Deep machine learning provides state-of-the art performance in image-based plant phenotyping

Deep learning is an emerging field that promises unparalleled results on many data analysis problems. We show the success offered by such techniques when applied to the challenging problem of image-based plant phenotyping, and demonstrate state-of-the-art results for root and shoot feature identification and localisation. We predict a paradigm shift in image-based phenotyping thanks to deep learning approaches

Hysteresis phenomenon in turbulent convection

Coherent large-scale circulations of turbulent thermal convection in air have been studied experimentally in a rectangular box heated from below and cooled from above using Particle Image Velocimetry. The hysteresis phenomenon in turbulent convection was found by varying the temperature difference between the bottom and the top walls of the chamber (the Rayleigh number was changed within the range of $10^7 - 10^8$). The hysteresis loop comprises the one-cell and two-cells flow patterns while the aspect ratio is kept constant ($A=2 - 2.23$). We found that the change of the sign of the degree of the anisotropy of turbulence was accompanied by the change of the flow pattern. The developed theory of coherent structures in turbulent convection (Elperin et al. 2002; 2005) is in agreement with the experimental observations. The observed coherent structures are superimposed on a small-scale turbulent convection. The redistribution of the turbulent heat flux plays a crucial role in the formation of coherent large-scale circulations in turbulent convection.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, REVTEX4, Experiments in Fluids, 2006, in pres