From Rising Heat Comes Rising Tension in Syria: How Global Warming Started a War & Threatens Homeland Security

This Essay investigates the links of climate change as it relates to civil unrest and terrorism in Syria and the ongoing civil war occurring in the region. The goals are to explore how climate change leads to instability in the region and gives rise to the spread of terrorist organizations, and to suggest solutions to lay the foundation for restoring economic, social, and political stability in the region

Who Helps Public Schools: A Portrait of Local Education Funds, 1991-2001

This study was commissioned by PEN with the goals of building awareness about the vital role and characteristics of LEFs and educating policymakers, the media and the public. Through the provision of data on the financial, programmatic and functional aspects of this relatively new movement, this research intends to more clearly define LEFs and distinguish them from other nonprofit organizations involved in K-12 public education at the local level.This report was written by Linda M. Lampkin and David D. Stern, with assistance from Sheryl Romeo, all at the Urban Institute's Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy based in Washington, DC. The project was commissioned by the Public Education Network in Washington, DC

Using Eco-schemes in the new CAP: a guide for managing authorities

This guide has been developed primarily for policy makers and Member State officials involved in the national and regional programming processes of the CAP Strategic Plans (CSPs). This process might involve different administrative levels (national, regional, local), different political fields (agriculture, environmental, food and health ministries), different public bodies (paying agencies, environmental agencies, rural development offices) depending on the administrative setting of each MS. In addition, the guide provides support to other stakeholders and practitioners from the public and private sectors and civil society (including agricultural, environmental, food, health and consumer NGOs), with a direct or indirect involvement in the programming and evaluation process of the CSPs. Since these new plans will have a strong impact on MS environments, agricultural sectors, rural areas, etc., the engagement of all stakeholders will be an important asset for supporting an effective implementation of the CSP objectives. There are many others with potential interests in the contents of this guide. EU citizens have demonstrated their increasing interest in the contents of the CAP objectives and policy framework, as demonstrated both by civil society initiatives and consumption decisions. The contents of this guide may therefore also be of interest to other societal actors with interests in agricultural and environmental policies, such as researchers, journalists, trade unions, and civil society organizations. However, the guide is intentionally more focused on the technical needs of those involved in CSP development and implementation

"What drives commuter behaviour?": A Bayesian clustering approach for understanding opposing behaviours in social surveys

This is the final version. Available on open access from Wiley via the DOI in this recordThe city of Exeter, UK, is experiencing unprecedented growth, putting pressure on traffic infrastructure. As well as traffic network management, understanding and influencing commuter behaviour is important for reducing congestion. Information about current commuter behaviour has been gathered through a large online survey, and similar individuals have been grouped to explore distinct behaviour profiles to inform intervention design to reduce commuter congestion. Statistical analysis within societal applications benefit from incorporating available social scientist expert knowledge. Current clustering approaches for the analysis of social surveys assume the number of groups and the within group narratives to be unknown a priori. Here, however, informed by valuable expert knowledge, we develop a novel Bayesian approach for creating a clear opposing transport mode group narrative within survey respondents, simplifying communication with project partners and the general public. Our methodology establishes groups characterising opposing behaviours based on a key multinomial survey question by constraining parts of our prior judgement within a Abbreviations: EST, Engaged Smart Transport; GI, Group Identifier; BI, Behavioural Influencer; MV, Motor Vehicle; PT, Public Transport; Markov chain Monte Carlo, MCMC. 1 2 DAWKINS ET AL. Bayesian finite mixture model. Drivers of group membership and within-group behavioural differences are modelled hierarchically using further information from the survey. In applying the methodology we demonstrate how it can be used to understand the key drivers of opposing behaviours in any wider application

Influencing transport behaviour: a Bayesian modelling approach for segmentation of social surveys

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.Current approaches for understanding and influencing transport behaviour often involve creating fixed, homogenous groups of similar surveyed individuals in order to explore specific behavioural profiles, an approach known as segmentation. Most commonly, segmentation is not based on a formal statistical model, but either a simple ‘a priori’ defined group classification narrative, failing to capture the complexity of varying group characteristics, or a ‘post hoc’ heuristic cluster analysis, applied to multi-dimensional behavioural variables, creating complex descriptive group narratives. Here we present an alternative, Bayesian finite mixture-modelling approach. A clear group narrative is created by constraining the Bayesian prior to group survey respondents based on the predominance of a single apposing transport behaviour, while a detailed insight into the behavioural complexity of each group is achieved using regression on multiple additional survey questions. Rather than assuming within group homogeneity, this creates a dynamic group structure, representing individual level probabilities of group membership and within group apposing travel behaviours. This approach also allows for numerical and graphical representation of the characteristics of these dynamic, clearly defined groups, providing detailed quantitative insight that would be unachievable using existing segmentation approaches. We present an application of this methodology to a large online commuting behaviour survey undertaken in the city of Exeter, UK. Survey respondents are grouped based on which transport mode type they predominantly commute by, and the key drivers of these predominant behaviours are modelled to inform the design of behavioural interventions to reduce commuter congestion in Exeter. Our approach allows us to prioritise the most effective intervention themes, and quantify their potential effect on motor vehicle usage. For example, we identify that individuals that predominantly commute by public transport, but also sometimes motor vehicle, do so on average up to one day per week less often, if they are strongly concerned about the environment, demonstrating how an intervention to promote environmental awareness could greatly reduce motor vehicle usage within this group.This work was funded by Innovate-UK project ‘Engaged Smart Travel’ NE/N007328/1

A systematic review of the relationships between principal characteristics and student achievement

This report reviews studies that have investigated the relationships between principal characteristics (including precursors, behaviors, and leadership styles) and student achievement. Only one experimental study examined a principal intervention designed to improve student achievement. It found that grade 8 students randomly assigned to have one-on-one conversations with the principal scored higher on the state English language arts test. An additional 38 quantitative and 2 mixed method studies provided mixed evidence of the relationships between principal characteristics and student achievement; 11 qualitative studies mirrored the quantitative findings

Transcriptional down-regulation of ccr5 in a subset of HIV+ controllers and their family members.

HIV +Elite and Viremic controllers (EC/VCs) are able to control virus infection, perhaps because of host genetic determinants. We identified 16% (21 of 131) EC/VCs with CD4 +T cells with resistance specific to R5-tropic HIV, reversed after introduction of ccr5. R5 resistance was not observed in macrophages and depended upon the method of T cell activation. CD4 +T cells of these EC/VCs had lower ccr2 and ccr5 RNA levels, reduced CCR2 and CCR5 cell-surface expression, and decreased levels of secreted chemokines. T cells had no changes in chemokine receptor mRNA half-life but instead had lower levels of active transcription of ccr2 and ccr5, despite having more accessible chromatin by ATAC-seq. Other nearby genes were also down-regulated, over a region of ~500 kb on chromosome 3p21. This same R5 resistance phenotype was observed in family members of an index VC, also associated with ccr2/ccr5 down-regulation, suggesting that the phenotype is heritable

Development of criteria und procedures for the evaluation of the European Action Plan of Organic Food and Farming

Within the EU funded project ORGAP a toolbox for the evaluation of the European as well as national action plans for organic food and farming has been developed (www.orgap.org). This toolbox was based on a comparative analysis of national action plans in eight countries (CH, UK, DE, IT, DK, SI, CZ, NL, ES), a meta-evaluation of existing evaluations of national action plans, workshops with national stakeholders and a European Advisory Committee, interviews with experts. Furthermore synergies and conflicts between national and the European Action Plan were identified

Lessons learnt from ORGAP Project – planning, implementation and evaluation of Action Plans for Organic Food and Farming

Within the EU funded project ORGAP, a toolbox was developed for the evaluation of the European as well as national action plans for organic food and farming. Also recommendations and a resource manual for policy makers and stakeholders were developed. These were based on the analysis of national Organic Action Plans as well as stakeholder and expert consultation. The analysis showed that several EU member states have emphasised the need to balance supply-push policies with more market-focused demand-pull policies. An integrated approach is required and this has been to differing degrees through the formulation of multi-functional Organic Action Plans (OAPs), which also adress the dual roles of organic farming (from a policy perspective) to provide public goods and satisfy consumer demand. Eight Organic Action Plans, reviewed in the ORGAP project, vary with regard to the elaboration process, targets, objectives and the emphasis of measures on certain areas (e.g. market versus environment orientation). This variation is due to quite different political and socio-economic framework conditions for organic farming in these countries. It revealed that the weaknesses identified in the status quo analysis of the organic sector have only partly been translated to the targets and measures included in the action plan documents. Definition of the priorities for development of organic agriculture must be agreed by all relevant stakeholders. The priorities, and hence the programmes, will depend on correct analysis of the issues (and conflicts) that need to be addressed and clear objectives with measurable outcomes (for effective evaluation). For more information on the project, on the practical project manual and the evaluation toolbox for Organic Action Plans see project website www.orgap.or

Comparison Between SMMR and SSM/I Passive Microwave Data Collected Over the Antarctic Ice Sheet

Passive microwave brightness temperature data collected during the overlap period betwen the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer and the Special Sensor Microwave Imager are compared. Only data collected over the Antarctic Ice Sheet are used in order to limit spatial and temporal complications associated with the open ocean and sea ice. Linear regressions are computed from scatter plots of complementary pairs of channels from each sensor revealing hightly correlated data sets. That a simple linear model can be used to correlate the data is used to support the argument that there are important relative calibration differences between the two instruments