Emerging scarcity and emerging commons: Water management groups and groundwater governance in Aotearoa New Zealand

In New Zealand, intensifying agricultural production, particularly in the Canterbury and Heretaunga Plains, has led to groundwater overabstraction. Aquifer connectivity to lowland streams results in decreased streamflow with concomitant impacts on nutrient concentrations and other relevant factors for indigenous flora and fauna. Recent legislative reforms including the 2017 amendments to the National Policy Statement – Freshwater Management have increased local government responsibility and authority to address cumulative effects of diffuse resource use and have increased pressure on agricultural communities to farm within environmental constraints. Numerous water management groups (WMGs) have emerged across New Zealand in the past decade to deal with these reforms and ensure reliability of irrigation water supply. Regional governments view WMGs as helpful in dealing with water allocation challenges and integrated environmental management approaches. This paper uses two case study WMGs from Hawke’s Bay and Canterbury to illustrate aspects of common property management and explore the viability of this type of localised resource governance. The study highlights how these WMGs have navigated groundwater, local government, and environmental management issues and how their local context and constraints shaped their development. It also illustrates how WMGs can engage with water quality and broader environmental challenges while ensuring members’ economic viability

On the psychological origins of tool use

The ubiquity of tool use in human life has generated multiple lines of scientific and philosophical investigation to understand the development and expression of humans' engagement with tools and its relation to other dimensions of human experience. However, existing literature on tool use faces several epistemological challenges in which the same set of questions generate many different answers. At least four critical questions can be identified, which are intimately intertwined-(1) What constitutes tool use? (2) What psychological processes underlie tool use in humans and nonhuman animals? (3) Which of these psychological processes are exclusive to tool use? (4) Which psychological processes involved in tool use are exclusive to Homo sapiens? To help advance a multidisciplinary scientific understanding of tool use, six author groups representing different academic disciplines (e.g., anthropology, psychology, neuroscience) and different theoretical perspectives respond to each of these questions, and then point to the direction of future work on tool use. We find that while there are marked differences among the responses of the respective author groups to each question, there is a surprising degree of agreement about many essential concepts and questions. We believe that this interdisciplinary and intertheoretical discussion will foster a more comprehensive understanding of tool use than any one of these perspectives (or any one of these author groups) would (or could) on their own

Development of a composite drought indicator for operational drought monitoring in the MENA region

This paper presents the composite drought indicator (CDI) that Jordanian, Lebanese, Moroccan, and Tunisian government agencies now produce monthly to support operational drought management decision making, and it describes their iterative co-development processes. The CDI is primarily intended to monitor agricultural and ecological drought on a seasonal time scale. It uses remote sensing and modelled data inputs, and it reflects anomalies in precipitation, vegetation, soil moisture, and evapotranspiration. Following quantitative and qualitative validation assessments, engagements with policymakers, and consideration of agencies’ technical and institutional capabilities and constraints, we made changes to CDI input data, modelling procedures, and integration to tailor the system for each national context. We summarize validation results, drought modelling challenges and how we overcame them through CDI improvements, and we describe the monthly CDI production process and outputs. Finally, we synthesize procedural and technical aspects of CDI development and reflect on the constraints we faced as well as trade-offs made to optimize the CDI for operational monitoring to support policy decision-making—including aspects of salience, credibility, and legitimacy—within each national context

Neonatal Imitation in Rhesus Macaques

The emergence of social behaviors early in life is likely crucial for the development of mother–infant relationships. Some of these behaviors, such as the capacity of neonates to imitate adult facial movements, were previously thought to be limited to humans and perhaps the ape lineage. Here we report the behavioral responses of infant rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) to the following human facial and hand gestures: lip smacking, tongue protrusion, mouth opening, hand opening, and opening and closing of eyes (control condition). In the third day of life, infant macaques imitate lip smacking and tongue protrusion. On the first day of life, the model's mouth openings elicited a similar matched behavior (lip smacking) in the infants. These imitative responses are present at an early stage of development, but they are apparently confined to a narrow temporal window. Because lip smacking is a core gesture in face-to-face interactions in macaques, neonatal imitation may serve to tune infants' affiliative responses to the social world. Our findings provide a quantitative description of neonatal imitation in a nonhuman primate species and suggest that these imitative capacities, contrary to what was previously thought, are not unique to the ape and human lineage. We suggest that their evolutionary origins may be traced to affiliative gestures with communicative functions

On the psychological origins of tool use

The ubiquity of tool use in human life has generated multiple lines of scientific and philosophical investigation to understand the development and expression of humans’ engagement with tools and its relation to other dimensions of human experience. However, existing literature on tool use faces several epistemological challenges in which the same set of questions generate many different answers. At least four critical questions can be identified, which are intimately intertwined—(1) What constitutes tool use? (2) What psychological processes are involved in tool use? (3) Which of these psychological processes are specific to tool use? (4) Which psychological processes involved in tool use are specific to Homo sapiens? To help advance a multidisciplinary scientific understanding of tool use, six author groups representing different academic disciplines (e.g., anthropology, psychology, neuroscience) and different theoretical perspectives respond to each of these questions, and then point to the direction of future work on tool use. We find that while there are marked differences among the responses of the respective author groups to each question, there is a—perhaps surprising—degree of agreement about many essential concepts and questions. We believe that this interdisciplinary and intertheoretical discussion will foster a more comprehensive understanding of tool use than any one of these perspectives (or any one of these author groups) would (or could) on their own

Between representation and simulation: a paradigm shift in contemporary architectural drawing

[EN] Contemporary architectural drawing has undergone a series of major transformations in both its methodologies as well as concepts since the introduction of the computer. Though continuous, this process has been directly tied to technological advances in each phase of the so-called digital revolution, the latest transformations of which are directly related to the progressively greater capacity for replicating reality in an increasingly hyperrealistic manner, as well as interface innovations that create immersive experiences nearly indiscernible from a direct sensory experience. The result is architectural drawing’s shift away from parameters based on the principles of representation, a concept upon which the trade’s theoretical concepts have been built, towards a graphical image based on the principles of what has come to be called simulation. A conceptual shift that profoundly transforms the theoretical principles of architectural design.[ES] El dibujo arquitectónico contemporáneo ha sido sometido a toda una serie de profundas transformaciones, tanto metodológicas como conceptuales, producto del impacto derivado de la introducción del ordenador. Este proceso, aunque continuo, ha ido directamente vinculado a los progresos tecnológicos propios de cada fase de la denominada revolución digital, cuyas últimas transformaciones están directamente relacionadas con la progresivamente mayor capacidad de replicar la realidad de una manera cada vez más hiperrealista, así como de nuevos modos de interacción que posibilitan una experiencia inmersiva, casi indiscernible de la experiencia sensorial directa. El resultado es el tránsito del dibujo arquitectónico desde unos parámetros basados en los principios de la representación, concepto sobre el que se ha construido la propia conceptualización teórica del área, hacia una imagen gráfica asentada sobre los principios de lo que se ha dado en llamar simulación. Un tránsito conceptual que transforma profundamente los propios principios teóricos del dibujo arquitectónico.Llopis Verdú, J. (2018). Entre representación y simulación. Un cambio de paradigma en el dibujo arquitectónico contemporáneo. EGA. Revista de Expresión Gráfica Arquitectónica. 23(34):180-193. doi:10.4995/ega.2018.10860180193233