Commodification and ‘the commons’: the politics of privatising public water in Greece and Portugal during the Eurozone Crisis

In response to the Eurozone crisis, austerity and restructuring has been imposed on the European Union’s (EU) peripheral member states in order to receive financial bailout loans. In addition to cuts in funding of essential public services, cuts in public sector employment and further liberalisation of labour markets, this has also included pressure towards the privatisation of state assets. And yet, workers have not simply accepted these restructuring pressures. They have organised and fought back against austerity and enforced privatisation. Based on a historical materialist perspective and following a strategy of incorporated comparison, in this paper we will comparatively assess the struggles against enforced water privatisation in Greece and Portugal set against the background of the structuring conditions surrounding the Eurozone crisis

Research applications of primary biodiversity databases in the digital age.

Our world is in the midst of unprecedented change-climate shifts and sustained, widespread habitat degradation have led to dramatic declines in biodiversity rivaling historical extinction events. At the same time, new approaches to publishing and integrating previously disconnected data resources promise to help provide the evidence needed for more efficient and effective conservation and management. Stakeholders have invested considerable resources to contribute to online databases of species occurrences. However, estimates suggest that only 10% of biocollections are available in digital form. The biocollections community must therefore continue to promote digitization efforts, which in part requires demonstrating compelling applications of the data. Our overarching goal is therefore to determine trends in use of mobilized species occurrence data since 2010, as online systems have grown and now provide over one billion records. To do this, we characterized 501 papers that use openly accessible biodiversity databases. Our standardized tagging protocol was based on key topics of interest, including: database(s) used, taxa addressed, general uses of data, other data types linked to species occurrence data, and data quality issues addressed. We found that the most common uses of online biodiversity databases have been to estimate species distribution and richness, to outline data compilation and publication, and to assist in developing species checklists or describing new species. Only 69% of papers in our dataset addressed one or more aspects of data quality, which is low considering common errors and biases known to exist in opportunistic datasets. Globally, we find that biodiversity databases are still in the initial stages of data compilation. Novel and integrative applications are restricted to certain taxonomic groups and regions with higher numbers of quality records. Continued data digitization, publication, enhancement, and quality control efforts are necessary to make biodiversity science more efficient and relevant in our fast-changing environment

Research applications of primary biodiversity databases in the digital age

Our world is in the midst of unprecedented change-climate shifts and sustained, widespread habitat degradation have led to dramatic declines in biodiversity rivaling historical extinction events. At the same time, new approaches to publishing and integrating previously disconnected data resources promise to help provide the evidence needed for more efficient and effective conservation and management. Stakeholders have invested considerable resources to contribute to online databases of species occurrences. However, estimates suggest that only 10% of biocollections are available in digital form. The biocollections community must therefore continue to promote digitization efforts, which in part requires demonstrating compelling applications of the data. Our overarching goal is therefore to determine trends in use of mobilized species occurrence data since 2010, as online systems have grown and now provide over one billion records. To do this, we characterized 501 papers that use openly accessible biodiversity databases. Our standardized tagging protocol was based on key topics of interest, including: database(s) used, taxa addressed, general uses of data, other data types linked to species occurrence data, and data quality issues addressed

Effect of strain rate on tensile mechanical properties of high-purity niobium single crystals for SRF applications

An investigation of the mechanical properties of high-purity niobium single crystals is presented. Specimens were cut with different crystallographic orientations from a large grain niobium disk and uniaxial tensile tests were conducted at strain rates between 10-4 and 103 s-1. The logarithmic strain rate sensitivity for crystals oriented close to the center of a tensile axis inverse pole figure (IPF) is ~0.14 for all strain rates. The strain at failure (ranging from 0.4 to 0.9) is very sensitive to crystal orientation and maximal at ~10-2 s-1 for crystals oriented close to the center of an IPF. The high anisotropy observed at quasi-static strain rates decreased with increasing strain rate. The activation of multiple slip systems in the dynamic tests could account for this reduction in anisotropy. A transition from strain hardening to softening in the plastic domain was observed at strain rates greater than approximately 6 × 10-2 s-1 for crystals oriented close to the center of a tensile axis IPF. Shear bands were observed in specimens with orientations having similarly high Schmid factors on both {110} and {112} slip families, and they are correlated with reduced ductility. Crystal rotations at fracture are compared for the different orientations using scanning electron microscopy images and EBSD orientation maps. A rotation toward the terminal stable [101] orientation was measured for the majority of specimens (with tensile axes more than ~17° from the [001] direction) at strain rates between 1.28 × 10-2 and 1000 s-1.The authors would like to acknowledge the work of CERN's Materials, Metrology and Non-Destructive Testing (EN-MME-MM) section for granting access to their equipment for specimen preparation and scanning electron microscope (SEM) analyses. The authors would also like to thank Mr. Larry Vladic of Elite Motion LLC for lending us the high-speed camera during the high strain rate tests performed ASU. This Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action (MSCA) Innovative Training Network (ITN) receives funding from the European Union's H2020 Framework Programme under grant agreement no. 764879. T.R. Bieler, D. Kang, E. Pai Kulyadi, P. Eisenlohr, C. Kale, and K.N. Solanki acknowledge support from DOE/OHEP grant DE-SC0009962

Investigating the Bivalve Tree of Life -- an exemplar-based approach combining molecular and novel morphological characters.

To re-evaluate the relationships of the major bivalve lineages, we amassed detailed morpho-anatomical, ultrastructural and molecular sequence data for a targeted selection of exemplar bivalves spanning the phylogenetic diversity of the class. We included molecular data for 103 bivalve species (up to five markers) and also analysed a subset of taxa with four additional nuclear protein-encoding genes. Novel as well as historically employed morphological characters were explored, and we systematically disassembled widely used descriptors such as gill and stomach ‘types’. Phylogenetic analyses, conducted using parsimony direct optimisation and probabilistic methods on static alignments (maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference) of the molecular data, both alone and in combination with morphological characters, offer a robust test of bivalve relationships. A calibrated phylogeny also provided insights into the tempo of bivalve evolution. Finally, an analysis of the informativeness of morphological characters showed that sperm ultrastructure characters are among the best morphological features to diagnose bivalve clades, followed by characters of the shell, including its microstructure. Our study found support for monophyly of most broadly recognised higher bivalve taxa, although support was not uniform for Protobranchia. However, monophyly of the bivalves with protobranchiate gills was the best-supported hypothesis with incremental morphological and/or molecular sequence data. Autobranchia, Pteriomorphia, Heteroconchia, Palaeoheterodonta, Archiheterodonta, Euheterodonta, Anomalodesmata and Imparidentia new clade ( = Euheterodonta excluding Anomalodesmata) were recovered across analyses, irrespective of data treatment or analytical framework. Another clade supported by our analyses but not formally recognised in the literature includes Palaeoheterodonta and Archiheterodonta, which emerged under multiple analytical conditions. The origin and diversification of each of these major clades is Cambrian or Ordovician, except for Archiheterodonta, which diverged from Palaeoheterodonta during the Cambrian, but diversified during the Mesozoic. Although the radiation of some lineages was shifted towards the Palaeozoic (Pteriomorphia, Anomalodesmata), or presented a gap between origin and diversification (Archiheterodonta, Unionida), Imparidentia showed steady diversification through the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic. Finally, a classification system with six major monophyletic lineages is proposed to comprise modern Bivalvia: Protobranchia, Pteriomorphia, Palaeoheterodonta, Archiheterodonta, Anomalodesmata and Imparidentia

Clustering and meso-level variables in cross-sectional surveys: an example of food aid during the Bosnian crisis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Focus groups, rapid assessment procedures, key informant interviews and institutional reviews of local health services provide valuable insights on health service resources and performance. A long-standing challenge of health planning is to combine this sort of qualitative evidence in a unified analysis with quantitative evidence from household surveys. A particular challenge in this regard is to take account of the neighbourhood or clustering effects, recognising that these can be informative or incidental.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>An example of food aid and food sufficiency from the Bosnian emergency (1995-96) illustrates two Lamothe cluster-adjustments of the Mantel Haenszel (MH) procedure, one assuming a fixed odds ratio and the other allowing for informative clustering by not assuming a fixed odds ratio. We compared these with conventional generalised estimating equations and a generalised linear mixed (GLMM) model, using a Laplace adjustment.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The MH adjustment assuming incidental clustering generated a final model very similar to GEE. The adjustment that does not assume a fixed odds ratio produced a final multivariate model and effect sizes very similar to GLMM.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>In medium or large data sets with stratified last stage random sampling, the cluster adjusted MH is substantially more conservative than the naïve MH computation. In the example of food aid in the Bosnian crisis, the cluster adjusted MH that does not assume a fixed odds ratio produced similar results to the GLMM, which identified informative clustering.</p

The heterogeneous coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as seen by ROSINA: H <inf>2</inf> O, CO <inf>2</inf>, and CO from September 2014 to February 2016

Context. The ESA Rosetta mission has been investigating the environment of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P) since August 2014. Among the experiments on board the spacecraft, the ROSINA experiment (Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis) includes two mass spectrometers to analyse the composition of neutrals and ions and a COmet Pressure Sensor (COPS) to monitor the density and velocity of neutrals in the coma. Aims. We study heterogeneities in the coma during three periods starting in October 2014 (summer in the northern hemisphere) and ending in February 2016 (end of winter in the northern hemisphere). We provide a detailed description of the main volatiles dynamics (H2O, CO2, CO) and their abundance ratios. Methods. We analysed and compared the data of the Reflectron-Type Time-Of-Flight (RTOF) mass spectrometer with data from both the Double Focusing Mass Spectrometer (DFMS) and COPS during the comet escort phase. This comparison has demonstrated that the observations performed with each ROSINA sensor are indeed consistent. Furthermore, we used a Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) model to compare modelled densitites with in situ detections. Results. Our analysis shows how the active regions of the main volatiles evolve with the seasons with a variability mostly driven by the illumination conditions; this is the case except for an unexpected dichotomy suggesting the presence of a dust layer containing water deposited in the northern hemisphere during previous perihelions hiding the presence of CO2. The influence of various parameters is investigated in detail: distance to the comet, heliocentric distance, longitude and latitude of sub-satellite point, local time, and phase angle