Increased public participation as a potential human

Large carnivores are species that have a great impact on their environment. They influence their prey population directly by killing animals, and indirectly by affecting their behavior (e.g., feeding, vigilance and distribution). They are also known to affect people through induction of fear and controversy resulting often in conflicts between stakeholders. The life of people that live close to large carnivores is affected by their presence every day. Recently, wildlife managers and scientists are recognizing more and more the importance of stakeholder participation and responsibilities in the management of large carnivores to reduce conflict potential. Stakeholder engagement in wildlife management can be implemented by two general approaches. The top‐down approach, where stakeholder involvement in management decision making is low, and the bottom‐up approach were this is high. Several studies have addressed the theory that public participatory processes increase conflict resolution potential of large carnivore management. However, to date, there has been limited empirical evidence to confirm the claim that conservation conflicts can be resolved through effective or more public participation. Therefore, I have attempted to evaluate how effective an increase of public participation and responsibility in the management of the four large carnivores of Europe is in mitigating conflicts. As an indicator of whether conflict potential is high or low for a given country, I have used general attitudes toward the four large carnivore species. A meta – analytic approach was chosen for this study. I have found an indication that the mean positive attitudes toward the brown bear seem to be higher than toward the wolf. In addition, for the brown bear I have found indications that the mean positive attitudes toward the species increases as stakeholder involvement increases. Whereas for the wolf I did find this indication for the general public, but not for the public within large carnivore area. On top of that I have found indications of a general trend regarding the changes in natural resource management for the chronological time course (from 1950 – 2016) for the brown bear, wolf, and lynx. The expert authority + passive receptive approach seems to have dominated until the 1990’s. Starting from 2000, the transactional approach has emerged, indicating a general increase of stakeholder involvement of large carnivore management in Europe as time passes. The protection of the four large carnivores in Europe seems to have shifted from unprotected to protected over the years. For hunting regulation, a shift is visible from free to hunt and bounty hunts to no hunting at al. During the time periods of these changes, the Habitats Directive was implemented in Europe. My results give an indication that attitudes are higher toward brown bears than toward wolves. This finding has been reported before. Suggested reasons behind this difference in attitudes are that wolves are more often perceived as a threat to livestock and competitor for big game, self‐reported fear and concern for oneself and others, knowledge about the species, and the allowance of hunting bears, but not wolves. In addition, I have found an indication that attitudes toward wolves among the public within large carnivore area do not increase when public involvement in the wolf governance increases, in contradiction to my finding for the brown bear. I suggest three possible explanations for these findings. Firstly, it could be that the current way of stakeholder engagement and involvement for wolf management fails to succeed in mitigating conflicts. Secondly, it could be that European laws, like the Habitats Directive, could limit the implementation of certain inputs from stakeholders in wolf governance. Finally, I suggest that as long as rural cultural values and stakeholder identities are not taken into account by the governance system, attitudes toward large carnivores could remain the same regardless of the level of stakeholder engagement in large carnivore governance. However, one should interpret my results and conclusions with extreme caution. My study suffers from a great attitude data deficit. This is the main limitation that makes interpretations of my results unreliable due to a high potential of biased results and a lack of statistical testing. Nevertheless, my study sheds a light on subjects that can be useful to investigate in future studies

Henry Moore and the historiography of early Italian art

Henry Moore’s fascination with early Italian art manifests itself not only in his work but also in interviews, letters and other texts. His comments on Giotto, Masaccio and Giovanni Pisano are of special interest. They testify to Moore’s admiration for these artists and for qualities in their work that fuelled his own modernist ambitions. They also bear witness to art-historical debates about early Italian art at a moment when it was undergoing a particularly formalist construction. In this article, Moore’s ideas will be situated against the background of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century scholarship on early Italian art. The article will explore to what extent Moore’s observations are comparable to that of contemporary art historians. It will also identify moments where Moore’s ideas offer unique and original perspectives on the work of Giotto, Giovanni Pisano and Masaccio that were not shared by his contemporaries

Echoscopische meting van de foetale schedel- en rompgrootte

Een opvallend kenmerk van de ontwikkeling van bevruchte eicel tot voldragen foetus is de enorme toeneming van het aantal cellen, een proces dat wordt aangeduid als foetale groei. In de verloskunde wordt in het algemeen het resultaat van foetale groei afgemeten aan het geboortegewicht in relatie tot een bepaalde zwangerschapsduur. Het is gebruikelijk geworden om in de verdeling van de geboortegewichten grenzen aan te brengen. Met betrekking tot deze grenzen wordt een geboortegewicht dan hoog, normaal of laag genoemd en kan worden aangenomen dat een sterke, een normale of een geringe foetale groei heeft plaatsgevonden. Het geboortegewicht wordt beïnvloed door de genetische aanleg. Dit blijkt onder meer uit de waarneming dat jongens bij de geboorte gemiddeld zwaarder zijn dan meisjes bij een overeenkomstige zwangerschapsduur (Kloosterman, 1970). Tussen verschillende etnische groepen blijken grote verschillen in de gemiddelde geboortegewichten te bestaan (Adams, 1968; Meredith, 1970). Een extreem voorbeeld van de mate waarin het geboortegewicht bij de mens varieert is de Lumi-stam, Nieuw Guinea, met een gemiddeld à terme geboortegewicht van slechts 2400 gram (Wark, 1969); dit is in vergelijking tot het gemiddelde à terme geboortegewicht in Nederland (3400 gram) ruim beneden de 2.3e percentiel gelegen. Het geboortegewicht wordt ook in negatieve zin beïnvloed door congenitale afwijkingen, infecties en door een niet op de foetale behoeften afgestemde placentafunctie. Daarentegen hebben ziekten als diabetes mellitus van de moeder en rhesusisoïmmunisatie niet zelden een te hoog geboortegewicht tot gevolg. In het algemeen zal de oorzaak pas retrospectief kunnen worden vastgesteld en ook een abnormaal geboortegewicht, als gevolg van een te geringe of een te sterke foetale groei, is een retrospectief gegeven. Belangrijker lijkt het om reeds prospectief de groei van de foetus te kunnen volgen en vastleggen, zodat bij afwijkende groei diagnostische en zo mogelijk therapeutische maatregelen kunnen worden genomen

Signature of Anomalous Exciton Localization in the Optical Response of Self-Assembled Organic Nanotubes

We show that the disorder scaling of the low-temperature optical absorption linewidth of tubular molecular assemblies sharply contrasts with that known for one-dimensional aggregates. The difference can be explained by an anomalous localization of excitons, which arises from the combination of long-range intermolecular interactions and the tube's higher-dimensional geometry. As a result, the exciton density of states near the band bottom drops to zero, leading to a strong suppression of exciton localization. Our results explain the strong linear dichroism and weak exciton-exciton scattering in tubular J aggregates observed in experiments and suggest that for nanoscale wirelike applications a tubular shape is to be preferred over a truly one-dimensional chain

Green Space Visits among Adolescents: Frequency and Predictors in the PIAMA Birth Cohort Study.

Green space may influence health through several pathways, for example, increased physical activity, enhanced social cohesion, reduced stress, and improved air quality. For green space to increase physical activity and social cohesion, spending time in green spaces is likely to be important

Compositional data analysis of Holocene sediments from the West Bengal Sundarbans, India: Geochemical proxies for grain-size variability in a delta environment

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd This paper is part of a special issue of Applied Geochemistry focusing on reliable applications of compositional multivariate statistical methods. This study outlines the application of compositional data analysis (CoDa) to calibration of geochemical data and multivariate statistical modelling of geochemistry and grain-size data from a set of Holocene sedimentary cores from the Ganges- Brahmaputra (G-B) delta. Over the last two decades, understanding near-continuous records of sedimentary sequences has required the use of core-scanning X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry, for both terrestrial and marine sedimentary sequences. Initial XRF data are generally unusable in ‘raw-format’, requiring data processing in order to remove instrument bias, as well as informed sequence interpretation. The applicability of these conventional calibration equations to core-scanning XRF data are further limited by the constraints posed by unknown measurement geometry and specimen homogeneity, as well as matrix effects. Log-ratio based calibration schemes have been developed and applied to clastic sedimentary sequences focusing mainly on energy dispersive-XRF (ED-XRF) core-scanning. This study has applied high resolution core-scanning XRF to Holocene sedimentary sequences from the tidal-dominated Indian Sundarbans, (Ganges-Brahmaputra delta plain). The Log-Ratio Calibration Equation (LRCE) was applied to a sub-set of core-scan and conventional ED-XRF data to quantify elemental composition. This provides a robust calibration scheme using reduced major axis regression of log-ratio transformed geochemical data. Through partial least squares (PLS) modelling of geochemical and grain-size data, it is possible to derive robust proxy information for the Sundarbans depositional environment. The application of these techniques to Holocene sedimentary data offers an improved methodological framework for unravelling Holocene sedimentation patterns

Prenatal exposure to ambient air pollution and traffic and indicators of adiposity in early childhood: the Healthy Start study

Background: Prenatal exposure to ambient air pollution and traffic have been related to a lower birth weight and may be associated with greater adiposity in childhood. We aimed to examine associations of maternal exposure to ambient air pollution and traffic during pregnancy with indicators of adiposity in early childhood. Methods: We included 738 participants of the Colorado-based Healthy Start study whose height, weight, waist circumference and/or fat mass were measured at age 4–6 years. We estimated residential exposure to ambient concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone (O3) averaged by trimester and throughout pregnancy via inverse distance-weighted interpolation of central site monitoring data. We assessed the distance to the nearest major roadway and traffic density in multiple buffers surrounding the participants’ homes. Associations of prenatal exposure to air pollution and traffic with overweight, waist circumference, percent fat mass and fat mass index (FMI) were assessed by logistic and linear regression. Results: Associations of exposure to PM2.5 and O3 at the residential address during pregnancy with percent fat mass and FMI at age 4–6 years were inconsistent across trimesters. For example, second trimester PM2.5 was associated with a higher percent fat mass (adjusted difference 0.70% [95% CI 0.05, 1.35%] per interquartile range (IQR; 1.3 µg/m3) increase), while third trimester PM2.5 was associated with a lower percent fat mass (adjusted difference −1.17% [95% CI −1.84, −0.50%] per IQR (1.3 µg/m3) increase). Residential proximity to a highway during pregnancy was associated with higher odds of being overweight at age 4–6 years. We observed no associations of prenatal exposure to PM2.5 and O3 with overweight and waist circumference. Conclusions: We found limited evidence of associations of prenatal exposure to ambient PM2.5 and O3 with indicators of adiposity at age 4–6 years. Suggestive relationships between residential proximity to a highway during pregnancy and greater adiposity merit further investigation