Effects of presenting forest simulation results on the forest values and attitudes of forestry professionals and other forest users in Central Labrador

This research tested whether demonstration of the long term effect of different forest management scenarios in a large forested area changes people's forest values and attitudes. Forestry professionals and other forest users in Central Labrador were shown simulation results of three alternative forest management scenarios illustrating possible long term effects on various indicators. Forest values and attitudes towards forestry were measured before and after the presentation. Our conception of values and attitudes is based on the cognitive hierarchy model of human behaviour which states that values are more enduring and more difficult to change than attitudes. It was thus hypothesized that attitudes would change but not values and that change in forestry professionals would be less than in other forest users since foresters are trained to think about long-term effects and large-scale processes of forest management scenarios. We also hypothesized that a greater number of people would have an opinion on forest management after the presentation. All three hypotheses were partially supported by the results. The results indicated that some attitude change occurred, but that values also changed somewhat. Most of the significant changes occurred when persons with no clear opinion on several forest-related questions formed an opinion. Long-term, landscape simulation results provide valuable information and enhance understanding of both forestry professionals and other forest users. However, being provided the same information, the two groups learned different things. While forest users gained more confidence in the current forest management plan and were motivated to further participate, professionals learned more specific things. This reflects differences between technical and local knowledge

Lipschitz spaces and M-ideals

For a metric space $(K,d)$ the Banach space \Lip(K) consists of all scalar-valued bounded Lipschitz functions on $K$ with the norm $\|f\|_{L}=\max(\|f\|_{\infty},L(f))$, where $L(f)$ is the Lipschitz constant of $f$. The closed subspace \lip(K) of \Lip(K) contains all elements of \Lip(K) satisfying the \lip-condition $\lim_{0<d(x,y)\to 0}|f(x)-f(y)|/d(x,y)=0$. For $K=([0,1],| {\cdot} |^{\alpha})$, $0<\alpha<1$, we prove that \lip(K) is a proper $M$-ideal in a certain subspace of \Lip(K) containing a copy of $\ell^{\infty}$.Comment: Includes 4 figure

Building a Document Genre Corpus: a Profile of the KRYS I Corpus

This paper describes the KRYS I corpus (http://www.krys-corpus.eu/Info.html), consisting of documents classified into 70 genre classes. It has been constructed as part of an effort to automate document genre classification as distinct from topic detection. Previously there has been very little work on building corpora of texts which have been classified using a non-topical genre palette. The reason for this is partly due to the fact that genre as a concept, is rooted in philosophy, rhetoric and literature, and highly complex and domain dependent in its interpretation ([11]). The usefulness of genre in everyday information search is only now starting to be recognised and there is no genre classification schema that has been consolidated to have applicable value in this direction. By presenting here our experiences in constructing the KRYS I corpus, we hope to shed light on the information gathering and seeking behaviour and the role of genre in these activities, as well as a way forward for creating a better corpus for testing automated genre classification tasks and the application of these tasks to other domains

Narrative writing, reading and cognitive processes in middle childhood: what are the links?

This study investigated the relationship between measures of reading and writing, and explored whether cognitive measures known to be related to reading ability were also associated with writing performance in middle childhood. Sixty-Four children, aged between 8 years 9 months and 11 years 9 months, took part in a battery of writing, reading, and cognitive ability tasks. Reading fluency emerged as having a strong relationship to written language performance, after controlling for age and verbal reasoning. While children with reading difficulties were weak at spelling accuracy, they were otherwise found to produce written compositions of similar quality to typical readers. Boys produced less written text than girls, but did not demonstrate weaker written language abilities. Collectively the results demonstrate that writing skills can be separated into transcription and composition processes, and highlight the need for further research on the relationship between reading fluency and children’s writing

Building a document genre corpus: a profile of the KRYS I corpus

This paper describes the KRYS I corpus, consisting of documents classified into 70 genre classes. It has been constructed as part of an effort to automate document genre classification as distinct from topic detection. Previously there has been very little work on building corpora of texts which have been classified using a nontopical genre palette. The reason for this is partly due to the fact that genre as a concept, is rooted in philosophy, rhetoric and literature, and highly complex and domain dependent in its interpretation ([11]). The usefulness of genre in everyday information search is only now starting to be recognised and there is no genre classification schema that has been consolidated to have applicable value in this direction. By presenting here our experiences in constructing the KRYS I corpus, we hope to shed light on the information gathering and seeking behaviour and the role of genre in these activities, as well as a way forward for creating a better corpus for testing automated genre classification tasks and the application of these tasks to other domains.

Unsaturated subsurface flow with surface water and nonlinear in- and outflow conditions

We analytically and numerically analyze groundwater flow in a homogeneous soil described by the Richards equation, coupled to surface water represented by a set of ordinary differential equations (ODE's) on parts of the domain boundary, and with nonlinear outflow conditions of Signorini's type. The coupling of the partial differential equation (PDE) and the ODE's is given by nonlinear Robin boundary conditions. This article provides two major new contributions regarding these infiltration conditions. First, an existence result for the continuous coupled problem is established with the help of a regularization technique. Second, we analyze and validate a solver-friendly discretization of the coupled problem based on an implicit-explicit time discretization and on finite elements in space. The discretized PDE leads to convex spatial minimization problems which can be solved efficiently by monotone multigrid. Numerical experiments are provided using the DUNE numerics framework.Comment: 34 pages, 5 figure

On the links between employment, partnership quality, and the desire to have a first child

We examine the impact of precarious work (low income and job security satisfaction) on the intention to have a first child. We consider a direct and an indirect effect; the latter is mediated by partners’ conflict behaviour, conflict level, and partnership quality. We assume that a satisfactory partnership is positively associated with the intention to have a first child. The analyses are based on a subsample of the German Generations and Gender Survey. For men we found a direct effect of income and an indirect effect of job security satisfaction on childbearing intentions, whereas for women no direct and only a weak indirect impact of precarious work could be observed.employment, fertility, partnerships

Cascading reaction of arginase and urease on a graphene-based FET for ultrasensitive, real-time detection of arginine

Herein, a biosensor based on a reduced graphene oxide field effect transistor (rGO-FET) functionalized with the cascading enzymes arginase and urease was developed for the detection of L-arginine. Arginase and urease were immobilized on the rGO-FET sensing surface via electrostatic layer-by-layer assembly using polyethylenimine (PEI) as cationic building block. The signal transduction mechanism is based on the ability of the cascading enzymes to selectively perform chemical transformations and prompt local pH changes, that are sensitively detected by the rGO-FET. In the presence of L-arginine, the transistors modified with (PEI/urease(arginase)) multilayers showed a shift in the Dirac point due to the change in the local pH close to the graphene surface, produced by the catalyzed urea hydrolysis. The transistors were able to monitor L-arginine in the 10–1000 μM linear range with a LOD of 10 μM, displaying a fast response and a good long-term stability. The sensor showed stereospecificity and high selectivity in the presence of non-target amino acids. Taking into account the label-free, real-time measurement capabilities and the easily quantifiable, electronic output signal, this biosensor offers advantages over state-of-the-art L-arginine detection methods.Fil: Berninger, Teresa. Austrian Institute Of Technology; AustriaFil: Bliem, Christina. Austrian Institute Of Technology; AustriaFil: Piccinini, Esteban. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas; ArgentinaFil: Azzaroni, Omar. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas; ArgentinaFil: Knoll, Wolfgang. Austrian Institute Of Technology; Austri

Written language skills in children with specific language impairment

Background. Young children are often required to carry out writing tasks in an educational context. However, little is known about the patterns of writing skills that children with Specific Language Impairment (CwSLI) have relative to their typically developing peers