Silence and Outrage: Reassessing the Complex Christian Response to Kristallnacht in English-Speaking Canada

Historians assessing the response of Canadian Christians to the German Jewish refugee crisis exacerbated by the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938 have broadly described the Christian response as one of silence; this article adds nuance to that description. Denominational records support the established thesis, but a fresh examination of the records of the Canadian National Committee of Refugees and texts published in leading newspapers leaves a different impression, one of an organized and sustained protest movement led by Christians. These sources testify to an outburst of widespread outrage in the weeks following Kristallnacht, followed by the emergence of a cohesive campaign spearheaded by the Canadian National Committee of Refugees. It was Christian clergy and prominent Christian lay people who forcefully protested the government’s inaction and actively sought to intervene on behalf of Jewish refugees. Many of them harshly criticized their own denominations’ response as reprehensible, but their involvement and voice means that the “silence of Christians” theory needs to be revised to reflect the privatization of religious expression which took place in Canadian culture during the 1930s

Value change in adolescents: school effectiveness in the affective domain

Factors contributing to school effectiveness in the affective domain have been largely ignored in recent research in spite of a transnational concern about value disorientation. This thesis explores the influence a secondary school has on adolescent value formation. Current theories on "effective schooling" and "valuing" provide a framework for the research. Following an introduction to the issue of values in schools, the thesis reviews the literature on "values", "effective schools", and "school climate" before proceeding to a description of a two site, longitudinal study. The creation of a value change-effective schools (VCES) model enabled local school issues to be analysed in conjunction with an overarching theory and principles which are relevant to a broad educational community. The four complementary surveys of parents, students and staff included a wide range of items which address frequently voiced methodological criticisms of the "effective schools” approach. Subsequent chapters summarise and discuss the findings of the surveys and place them in the context of current research. The thesis demonstrates that a school has a significant, unique role to play in adolescent value formation. Value change did not emerge as a cause and effect phenomenon, but as a complex interaction of change agents operating within the terms of the value change-effective schools model. Programmes and strategies, which have meaning at the local level, can be developed for the affective domain based on insights provided by the model. The factors associated with effectiveness were determined and defined primarily by the local schools. They crossed over domains from the cognitive to the affective, coalescing to form an effective learning environment

Apprentissage organisationnel, économie de la connaissance: mode ou modèle?

cahier de recherche du LIPSORCe texte vise la tension "apprentissage organisationnel - modèle organisationnel

Estimating the size distribution of plastics ingested by animals

The ingestion of plastics appears to be widespread throughout the animal kingdom with risks to individuals, ecosystems and human health. Despite growing information on the location, abundance and size distribution of plastics in the environment, it cannot be assumed that any given animal will ingest all sizes of plastic encountered. Here, we use published data to develop an allometric relationship between plastic consumption and animal size to estimate the size distribution of plastics feasibly ingested by animals. Based on more than 2000 gut content analyses from animals ranging over three orders of magnitude in size (lengths 9 mm to 10 m), body length alone accounts for 42% of the variance in the length of plastic an animal may ingest and indicates a size ratio of roughly 20:1 between animal body length and the largest plastic the animal may ingest. We expect this work to improve global assessments of plastic pollution risk by introducing a quantifiable link between animals and the plastics they can ingest

Apprentissage organisationnel, économie de la connaissance: mode ou modèle?

Ce texte vise la tension "apprentissage organisationnel - modèle organisationnel"apprentissage organisationnel, modèle organisationnel

The challenge of valuing ecosystem services that have no material benefits

Since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, ecosystem service science has made much progress in framing core concepts and approaches, but there is still debate around the notion of cultural services, and a growing consensus that ecosystem use and ecosystem service use should be clearly differentiated. Part of the debate resides in the fact that the most significant sources of conflict around natural resource management arise from the multiple managements (uses) of ecosystems, rather than from the multiple uses of ecosystem services. If the ecosystem approach or the ecosystem service paradigm are to be implemented at national levels, there is an urgent need to disentangle what are often semantic issues, revise the notion of cultural services, and more broadly, practically define the less tangible ecosystem services on which we depend. This is a critical step to identifying suitable ways to manage trade-offs and promote adaptive management. Here we briefly review the problems associated with defining and quantifying cultural ecosystem services and suggest there could be merit in discarding this term for the simpler non-material ecosystem services. We also discuss the challenges in valuing the invaluable, and suggest that if we are to keep ecosystem service definition focused on the beneficiary, we need to further classify these challenging services, for example by differentiating services to individuals from services to communities. Also, we suggest that focussing on ecosystem service change rather than simply service delivery, and identifying common boundaries relevant for both people and ecosystems, would help meet some of these challenges

Insight into long-term ecological dynamics from the Lynn Brianne Observatory

Understanding the erosion of freshwater biodiversity has become a global imperative, but consistent series of long-term data from which to appraise changes are rare. In central Wales (UK), the Lynn Brianne Stream Observatory has provided unique insight into the complexity of biodiversity dynamics over four decades, revealing how apparent stasis in alpha- and beta-diversity might mask non-random functional changes in macroinvertebrate assemblages. Assessments of synchrony and stability at population and community levels reveal the effect of climatic variations in which warmer, wetter phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) have been associated with large interannual changes in community composition. Moreover, these positive NAO periods have brought greater synchrony in species abundances within streams (community synchrony) and across streams (spatial population synchrony). Increasing synchrony can destabilise ecosystems with consequences for the persistence of populations. Preliminary analyses at Lynn Brianne suggest that species with greater spatial synchrony tend to decline in abundance over time. For instance, the abundance of cold-adapted species has declined by 40% since the 1980s reflecting the general increase in temperatures. Moreover, populations of these species displayed significantly higher spatial synchrony than warm-adapted species, which increased by 30% over the same time period. We suggest that both directional climate warming and the NAO contribute to the long-term reorganisation of benthic communities in temperate headwater

Persistence in the longitudinal distribution of lotic insects in a changing climate: a tale of two rivers

The longitudinal distribution of many taxa in rivers is influenced by temperature. Here we took advantage of two older datasets on net-spinning caddisflies (Hydropsychidae) from contrasting European rivers to assess changes in species occurrence and relative abundance along the river by resampling the same sites, postulating that an increase in river temperature over the intervening period should have resulted in cool-adapted species retreating into the headwaters and warm adapted species expanding upstream. Distributional changes in the Welsh Usk were slight between 1968/69 and 2010, one rare species appearing at a single headwater site and one warm-adapted species disappearing from the main river. Distributional changes in the French Loire, between 1989–93 and 2005, were similarly modest, with no consistent movement of species up- or downstream. We estimate that the decadal rate of increase in the mean summer daily maximum in the Usk was only 0.1 °C at one ‘summer cool’ headwater site, while a neighbouring ‘summer warm’ tributary increased by 0.16 °C per decade, and the main river by 0.22 °C. The Loire is warmer than the Usk and the mean decadal rates of increase, over the period 1989–2005, at three sites along the lower reaches were 0.39, 0.48 and 0.77 °C. Increases in stream and river temperature, therefore, were spatially variable and were not associated with consistent upstream movement of species in either of these (very different) rivers. We conclude that either the temperature increases have hitherto been insufficient to affect species distribution or, more speculatively, that it may not be possible for river organisms (that do not respond only to temperature) to move upstream because of a developing spatial mismatch between key habitat characteristics, some of them changing with the climate but others not

Natural or synthetic – how global trends in textile usage threaten freshwater environments

As the global demand for textiles increases, so to do the potential environmental impacts that stem from their production, use and disposal. Freshwater ecosystems are particularly at risk: rivers often act as the primary recipients of waste generated during the production of textiles and are subject to pollutants released during the broader lifecycle of a textile product. Here, we investigate how global technological and societal processes shape the way we produce, use and dispose of textiles, and what this means for the environmental quality and ecological health of freshwaters. We examine two predominant ‘natural’ and synthetic textiles (wool and Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), respectively), and find that risks to freshwater ecosystems vary throughout the lifecycle of these textiles; and across geographies, in-line with regulatory and economic landscapes. Woollen textiles pose most risk during the Production Phase, while PET textiles pose most risk during the Use and Disposal Phases. Our findings show that: (i) both ‘natural’ and synthetic textiles present substantial challenges for freshwater environments; and (ii) bespoke solutions are needed in areas of the world where the global division of labour and less stringent environmental regulations have concentrated textile production; but also in regions where high textile consumption combines with unsustainable disposal behaviours. Effective mitigation may combine technological advances with societal changes in market mechanisms, regulations, textile use and disposal