Commentary: STS of the Underground

Geographer Trevor Birkenholtz draws out major themes across the articles in the thematic collection "Engaging the Underground: An STS Field in Formation," with reference to cartographic and model production and representation, particularly in the ways that they render the landscapes partially knowable and contestable

‘Full-cost recovery’: producing differentiated water collection practices and responses to centralized water networks in Jaipur, India

This paper examines the political ecological effects of the expansion of an urban centralized water-supply network and the transformation of it into a full-cost-recovery system in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. It draws on data collected through a 2007 household survey of six Jaipur neighborhoods stratified by class; follow-up household interviews in 2007 and 2009; and interviews with public water supply managers and private water tanker vendors in both 2007 and 2009. The investigation concludes that the spatially uneven integration of network expansion and the intermittent flow of water circulating through it, combined with historical axes of political economic difference produces uneven adaptive responses to maintain access to water, such as waiting on water, private tubewell construction, and private water tanker operations, while transforming social power relations. It is concluded, first, that these uneven flows and cost-recovery initiatives are exacerbating current disparities in access to drinking water and, second, that the current public water-supply system has only been partially reformed and that these policy changes have rendered the public supplier unable to recover costs. This makes the need for a private sector rescue of an incapacitated and inefficient public institution seem obvious to planners, yet the public utility’s inability to set costs or to set infrastructure priorities draws into question the need for the private sector and full-cost-recovery reforms.

Génétique quantitative - aspects généraux et application à l'amélioration des plantes

Ce document n'a pas la prétention de couvrir l'ensemble de la génétique quantitative. Son but est d'initier ou de revoir les outils permettant de mieux maîtriser les phases de sélection dans les programmes d'amélioration des plantes, avec pour objectif d'optimiser le progrès génétique attendu. Une dernière partie permet de visualiser un cas concret et de mettre en application les arides formules exposées dans les premiers chapitre

Agricultural intensification and changes in cultivated areas, 1970-2005

Does the intensification of agriculture reduce cultivated areas and, in so doing, spare some lands by concentrating production on other lands? Such sparing is important for many reasons, among them the enhanced abilities of released lands to sequester carbon and provide other environmental services. Difficulties measuring the extent of spared land make it impossible to investigate fully the hypothesized causal chain from agricultural intensification to declines in cultivated areas and then to increases in spared land. We analyze the historical circumstances in which rising yields have been accompanied by declines in cultivated areas, thereby leading to land-sparing. We use national-level United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization data on trends in cropland from 1970-2005, with particular emphasis on the 1990-2005 period, for 10 major crop types. Cropland has increased more slowly than population during this period, but paired increases in yields and declines in cropland occurred infrequently, both globally and nationally. Agricultural intensification was not generally accompanied by decline or stasis in cropland area at a national scale during this time period, except in countries with grain imports and conservation set-aside programs. Future projections of cropland abandonment and ensuing environmental services cannot be assumed without explicit policy intervention