Reflecting on Local Ecological Stewardship, Care, and Action across Two Decades of Research

In this perspective, we draw from 20 years of implementing the Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project (STEW-MAP) to show how civic actors provide capacity and local knowledge needed for effective decision-making and implementation in the face of multiple interconnected stressors, including climate change and inequality. Urban areas are striving to achieve sustainability and resilience goals while advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. There is broad recognition that systematic change cannot be achieved via single sector solutions. Rather, just and equitable sustainability and resilience outcomes will be achieved through multi-sector, trans-disciplinary efforts led by diverse and inclusive partnerships. Processes of collaboration between groups and across sectors can foster trust and social cohesion to build adaptive environmental governance capacity. Hindering these outcomes is a lack of approaches for identifying civic groups and their networks, understanding their roles in the larger governance system, and harnessing their capacities systematically and at landscape scales. STEW-MAP was developed to address this gap in a natural resources management context and has been applied in 20 locations across the Americas. Synthesizing key insights for practitioners and researchers, we identify the critical role of civic organizations in collaborative, networked governance, while highlighting inequities that affect this stewardship work. We reflect on how stewardship mapping has been used as a decision-support, networking, and visualization tool and identify future research and practitioner directions that fully acknowledge the persistent role of civic groups in caring for the environment and enlivening democratic practice

Quantitative trait loci for sensitivity to ethanol intoxication in a C57BL/6J × 129S1/SvImJ inbred mouse cross

Individual variation in sensitivity to acute ethanol (EtOH) challenge is associated with alcohol drinking and is a predictor of alcohol abuse. Previous studies have shown that the C57BL/6J (B6) and 129S1/SvImJ (S1) inbred mouse strains differ in responses on certain measures of acute EtOH intoxication. To gain insight into genetic factors contributing to these differences, we performed quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis of measures of EtOH-induced ataxia (accelerating rotarod), hypothermia, and loss of righting reflex (LORR) duration in a B6 × S1 F2 population. We confirmed that S1 showed greater EtOH-induced hypothermia (specifically at a high dose) and longer LORR compared to B6. QTL analysis revealed several additive and interacting loci for various phenotypes, as well as examples of genotype interactions with sex. QTLs for different EtOH phenotypes were largely non-overlapping, suggesting separable genetic influences on these behaviors. The most compelling main-effect QTLs were for hypothermia on chromosome 16 and for LORR on chromosomes 4 and 6. Several QTLs overlapped with loci repeatedly linked to EtOH drinking in previous mouse studies. The architecture of the traits we examined was complex but clearly amenable to dissection in future studies. Using integrative genomics strategies, plausible functional and positional candidates may be found. Uncovering candidate genes associated with variation in these phenotypes in this population could ultimately shed light on genetic factors underlying sensitivity to EtOH intoxication and risk for alcoholism in humans

Business Ethics: The Promise of Neuroscience

Recent advances in cognitive neuroscience research portend well for furthering understanding of many of the fundamental questions in the field of business ethics, both normative and empirical. This article provides an overview of neuroscience methodology and brain structures, and explores the areas in which neuroscience research has contributed findings of value to business ethics, as well as suggesting areas for future research. Neuroscience research is especially capable of providing insight into individual reactions to ethical issues, while also raising challenging normative questions about the nature of moral responsibility, autonomy, intent, and free will. This article also provides a brief summary of the papers included in this special issue, attesting to the richness of scholarly inquiry linking neuroscience and business ethics. We conclude that neuroscience offers considerable promise to the field of business ethics, but we caution against overpromise