Strengthening the global system of protected areas post-2020: A perspective from the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas

Protected areas are the cornerstones of biodiversity conservation and have never been more relevant than at the present time when the world is facing both a biodiversity and a climate change crisis. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) has been helping to set global standards and best practice guidelines in protected area planning and management for 60 years. Following this guidance, many countries have made significant progress toward their Aichi Target 11 commitments under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The global community will be coming together at the 15th Conference of the Parties of the CBD to set new biodiversity conservation targets for the next decade, as milestones to 2050 and a vision of “a world living in harmony with nature.” This paper lays out the WCPA perspective on priorities for supporting effective protected and conserved areas for the post-2020 era

American Gothic: Chaos, Anachronism and Modernity in Eyvind Earle's Sleeping Beauty

In 1951, Walt Disney hired the American illustrator and painter Eyvind Earle (1916-2000) to design the look and ambience of his feature-length animated film, Sleeping Beauty (1959), adapted from the story by Charles Perrault. In his role as 'Colour Stylist,' Earle not only produced abundant conceptual studies (for mood, lighting and scenery), he also painted many of the backgrounds used in the finished film. In an effort to create an 'authentic' historical atmosphere for the film, Earle conducted research into fourteenth- and fifteenth-century European tapestries, paintings and illuminated manuscripts, but his style remains grounded in the influence of post-war architecture, illustration and interior design. Aside from being a failed representation of history (typical of anachronism) this balancing act was arguably necessitated by a cultural context in which modernism had been widely accepted and commodified in American design culture.My paper seeks to address these shifting ideologies of taste and form in relation to the film's notoriously conservative rhetoric of gender

Pressure-induced insulator-to-metal transition in low-dimensional TiOCl

We studied the transmittance and reflectance of the low-dimensional Mott-Hubbard insulator TiOCl in the infrared and visible frequency range as a function of pressure. The strong suppression of the transmittance and the abrupt increase of the near-infrared reflectance above 12 GPa suggest a pressure-induced insulator-to-metal transition. The pressure-dependent frequency shifts of the orbital excitations, as well as the pressure dependences of the charge gap and the spectral weight of the optical conductivity above the phase transition are presented.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure

Order to disorder transition in the XY-like quantum magnet Cs2CoCl4 induced by noncommuting applied fields

We explore the effects of noncommuting applied fields on the ground-state ordering of the quasi-one-dimensional spin-1/2 XY-like antiferromagnet Cs2CoCl4 using single-crystal neutron diffraction. In zero field interchain couplings cause long-range order below T_N=217(5) mK with chains ordered antiferromagnetically along their length and moments confined to the (b,c) plane. Magnetic fields applied at an angle to the XY planes are found to initially stabilize the order by promoting a spin-flop phase with an increased perpendicular antiferromagnetic moment. In higher fields the antiferromagnetic order becomes unstable and a transition occurs to a phase with no long-range order in the (b,c) plane, proposed to be a spin liquid phase that arises when the quantum fluctuations induced by the noncommuting field become strong enough to overcome ordering tendencies. Magnetization measurements confirm that saturation occurs at much higher fields and that the proposed spin-liquid state exists in the region 2.10 < H_SL < 2.52 T || a. The observed phase diagram is discussed in terms of known results on XY-like chains in coexisting longitudinal and transverse fields.Comment: revtex, 14 figures, 2 tables, to appear in Phys. Rev.

About 'The Great Macguffin'

In this paper I will address the formal and ideological implications of silence (and associated strategies of reticence, enigma, and failed or obstructed communication) when writing creatively in response to visual art. My presentation will give special emphasis to my prose poem ‘The Great Macguffin’, which I recited for a live audience at the Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Visual Art in 2012, and which had evolved in conjunction with a large-scale drawing (also entitled The Great Macguffin (2005/2012)). In both text and drawing I deployed the concept of the ‘McGuffin’ (Hitchcock’s term for a hollow, arbitrary plot-device), in relation to the term ‘voice’ which (when used in respect of visual art objects – what they ‘mean’ or ‘say’) implicates not only their philosophic or literary subject-matter, but also their interpretation by third parties (promoters, viewers and critics). Acknowledging the challenges posed to artists and interpreters alike by the essentially non-verbal or abstract material character of visual art, we can state that to silence the art object (to obfuscate its meanings) and yet to force it to speak or to speak ‘for it’ can activate power relations in subtle and contradictory ways. My presentation will conclude with a reading of ‘The Great Macguffin,’ a piece of creative writing in which these ideas are animate

Performance Improvement Techniques for Photovoltaic Systems in Qatar: Results of First year of Outdoor Exposure

AbstractThe state of Qatar has established firm renewable energy deployment targets for the next decade, using primarily solar photovoltaic technologies.Qatar, in the Arabian Peninsula, is in the MENA Region, where the solar resource is fairly abundant, but local environmental conditions are challenging, particularly, high ambient temperatures all-year round, a dusty atmosphere due to high aerosol content, and water scarcity, which impact negatively on PV system performance and reliability.The Solar Test Facility (STF) at the Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP) was founded in 2012 for the main purpose of contributing to the achievement of Qatar's sustainable energy technology deployment targets. STF provides scientific and technical capabilities for testing and evaluation of solar technologies under the specific local climate conditions.This paper presents the results of outdoor exposure of a specific model of multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) photovoltaic (PV) modules after their first complete year of operation at STF. The impact of module cleaning frequency, use of commercial anti- soiling coatings and module mounting on either fixed, one-axis-tracking or two-axis-tracking systems was studied.These results give some indication of the next steps to be taken and the solutions that would eventually work for the improvement of both the energy yield and the durability of PV systems deployed in this region

cis-Bis(2,2′-bipyridine-κ2 N,N′)dichlorido­iron(III) perchlorate

In the crystal structure of the title compound, [FeCl2(C10H8N2)2]ClO4, the coordination around the FeIII atom is approximately octa­hedral. The equatorial positions are occupied by two N atoms from two 2,2′-bipyridyl ligands [Fe—N = 2.121 (5) and 2.147 (5) Å] and two Cl atoms [Fe—Cl = 2.220 (2) and 2.2074 (18) Å]. Weak inter­molecular C—H⋯O and C—H⋯Cl hydrogen bonds and C—H⋯π inter­actions consolidate the crystal packing

Modelling trade offs between public and private conservation policies

To reduce global biodiversity loss, there is an urgent need to determine the most efficient allocation of conservation resources. Recently, there has been a growing trend for many governments to supplement public ownership and management of reserves with incentive programs for conservation on private land. At the same time, policies to promote conservation on private land are rarely evaluated in terms of their ecological consequences. This raises important questions, such as the extent to which private land conservation can improve conservation outcomes, and how it should be mixed with more traditional public land conservation. We address these questions, using a general framework for modelling environmental policies and a case study examining the conservation of endangered native grasslands to the west of Melbourne, Australia. Specifically, we examine three policies that involve: i) spending all resources on creating public conservation areas; ii) spending all resources on an ongoing incentive program where private landholders are paid to manage vegetation on their property with 5-year contracts; and iii) splitting resources between these two approaches. The performance of each strategy is quantified with a vegetation condition change model that predicts future changes in grassland quality. Of the policies tested, no one policy was always best and policy performance depended on the objectives of those enacting the policy. This work demonstrates a general method for evaluating environmental policies and highlights the utility of a model which combines ecological and socioeconomic processes.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figure