Tourists, gorillas and guns: integrating conservation and development in the Central African Republic

Integrated conservation and development programs (ICDPs) are aimed at addressing both conservation and development issues through the involvement of local communities in the process of wildlife management. Typically this involves providing park-adjacent communities with conservation-related benefits to induce pro-conservation behaviour. The Dzanga-Sangha ICDP Project (DSP), southwest Central African Republic, has coordinated the management of a protected area complex since 1990. Its activities include traditional conservation measures such as anti-poaching patrols, a developing gorilla tourism programme, and focused development activities. This study adopts an interdisciplinary approach to evaluate its efficacy at meeting both local development and conservation goals, with a strong focus on how these two areas interact. Evaluation of the DSPs impact on poverty alleviation in the reserve community suggests that the considerable opportunity costs caused by park formation largely fail to be compensated by the benefits provided. This effect is augmented by the high level of in-migration into the reserve. Examination of discrepancies between cost/benefit provision and recognition show that community-level benefits are particularly undervalued by local residents. Attitudinal surveys suggest benefit recognition to be strongly linked to pro-conservation attitudes. However, results from a 12-month market survey, a concurrent household consumption survey, participant observation and key informant interviews showed that conservation-related behaviour, in terms of both wild-food extraction and consumption, is largely unrelated to either benefit receipt or attitudes. Furthermore, evaluation of conservation efficacy suggested the main prey species are being hunted at unsustainable rates. This empirical study takes its place in a growing literature addressing not only the direct social and environmental implications of ICDPs but, crucially, the interactions between the two. It provides both applied management recommendations in addition to further contributing to our theoretical understanding of the dual development-conservation approach

Supersymmetric Higgs Singlet Effects on B-Meson FCNC Observables at Large tan(beta)

Higgs singlet superfields are usually present in most extensions of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) that address the mu-problem, such as the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM) and the Minimal Nonminimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MNSSM). Employing a gauge- and flavour-covariant effective Lagrangian formalism, we show how the singlet Higgs bosons of such theories can have significant contributions to B-meson flavour-changing neutral current (FCNC) observables for large values of $\tan\beta \stackrel{>}{{}_\sim} 50$ at the 1-loop level. Illustrative results are presented including effects on the B_s and B_d mass differences and on the rare decay $B_s\to\mu^+\mu^-$. In particular, we find that depending on the actual value of the lightest singlet pseudoscalar mass in the NMSSM, the branching ratio for $B_s\to\mu^+\mu^-$ can be enhanced or even suppressed with respect to the Standard Model prediction by more than one order of magnitude.Comment: 28 pages, 8 figures, LaTeX. Minor updates. Version to be published in PR

De-Intensification of Grasslands: Understanding the Processes to Find the Balance

There is a growing trend in Australia and other developed countries for deintensification of animal production from grasslands and for grasslands to be used for purposes other than livestock grazing. These shifts are occurring for a variety of reasons including unsustainable land management practices, environmental pollution, loss of conservation value, poor commodity prices and declining rural infra-structure and communities. In Australia, the shifts are under way in agricultural grasslands, where sown pastures occur in a matrix of semi-natural woodlands, but less so in the other three major natural grasslands that forms the arid and semi-arid rangelands. The conversion of natural wooded grasslands to agricultural grasslands, often involving crop/pasture rotations, began over 100 years ago in those regions of Australia where rainfall was sufficiently high and regular to allow cropping and pasture sowing. Later, agricultural research identified soil nutrient deficiencies, found European and African grasses and legumes to utilise the raised fertility and developed machines that raised the scale and efficiency of livestock production. Governments promoted pasture improvement, and with livestock breeding, fibre and meat production per hectare was significantly raised. The Australian people in general, accepted as worthwhile and successful the conversion to agricultural grasslands. Conquering the “bush”, taming nature and establishing livestock grazing businesses were seen to be appropriate activities for rural pioneers and later generations. However, doubts about the long-term sustainability of livestock grazing businesses on agricultural grasslands and to a lesser extent other natural grasslands, have grown in the minds of scientists and pastoralists and now the public. Salt has risen to the surface in many regions from tree removal changing hydrological processes. Soils have poor structure and low potential productivity. Added nutrients and chemicals are moving off property with undesirable and public consequences eg toxic algal blooms in rivers. Significant species extinction within Australia’s unique plants and animals are linked to land clearing and pastoral management; survival of many threatened species is problematic. Persistent low commodity prices for traditional products are making many livestock grazing businesses untenable. Rural communities are struggling to survive with the withdrawal of services by Government and major businesses. These problems are being addressed across many fronts. Foremost there is a substantial and growing ownership of the problems by rural communities through “Landcare” and catchment management groups. Research into the sustainability of low-input native pasture systems, the spatial requirements for remnant and plantation vegetation (amount, location and continuity) to lower water tables, ecosystem services and processes involving native plants and animals, effective mechanisms for knowledge sharing and alternative land uses are underway

Stress Urinary Incontinence in the Human Female: Gravity and Ecomorphologic Influences on Bladder and Urethral Function of the Human Female

This study was undertaken to determine if the biped stale of the human female constituted a stress force in urethrovesical physiological function. To arrive at realistic conclusions, the ecomorphologic changes incidental to the conquest of gravity by the vertebrates have been reviewed. Accepting the evolutionary precepts as expressed by Hobart Smith that if all parts of the evolutionary chain were known, it would be impossible to draw a logical distinction between man and nonman, Romer slated Bone for bone, muscle for muscle, organ for organ, almost every feature of the ape is repeated in the human body. The differences are almost entirely differences in proportions and relations of parts Assumption of erect posture by man, as compared to the quadruped, sharply altered urethrovesical relationship. The relative position in the abdominal cavity of the bladder and urethra was changed from a lateral to an inferior position, resulting in an increase in intravesical pressure because the long diameter of the abdominal cavity was oriented vertically. More specifically, the relative position of the urethrovesical function was changed from a lateral to an inferior position when the pressure was the greatest. There is little doubt that this change has played a role in the development of stress urinary incontinence, and there is some evidence to suggest that deficient urethrovesical function to increased gravimetric stress may represent an example of deficient evolutionary adaptation

The identification of biomarkers of chemotherapy resistance in breast cancer using comparative proteomics

Background:Chemotherapy resistance is a major obstacle in effective neoadjuvant treatment for locally advanced breast cancer. The ability to predict tumour response would allow chemotherapy administration to be directed towards only those patients who would benefit, thus maximising treatment efficiency. This project aimed to identify predictive protein biomarkers associated with chemotherapy resistance, using proteomic analysis of fresh breast cancer tissue samples.Materials and Methods:Chemotherapy-sensitive (CS) and chemotherapy-resistant (CR) tumour samples were collected from breast cancer patients who received neoadjuvant therapy consisting of epirubicin with cyclophosphamide followed by docetaxel. Comparative proteomic analysis was performed, to identify differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) between CS and CR invasive ductal carcinoma samples, using 2-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2D-PAGE) with MALDI-TOF/TOF mass spectrometry and antibody microarray analysis. DEPs were submitted to Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) to identify any canonical pathway links, confirmed using western blotting and clinically validated in a pilot series of archival breast cancer samples, from patients treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy.Results:Five datasets were generated by antibody microarray analysis, revealing 38 targets. Of these, 7 DEPs were identified in at least 2 datasets and these included 14-3-3 theta/tau, BID and Bcl-xL. Three datasets were generated using 2D-PAGE with MALDI-TOF/TOF MS, containing 132 unique DEPs. These included several isoforms of 14-3-3 proteins. The differential expression of 14-3-3, BID and Bcl-xL was confirmed by immunoblotting in samples used for the discovery phase. Clinical validation using immunohistochemical analysis of archival breast cancers revealed 14-3-3 theta/tau and tBID to be significantly associated with chemotherapy resistance.Discussion:The use of comparative proteomic techniques using fresh clinical tumour samples, for the search for putative biomarkers of chemotherapy resistance has been successful. Two DEPs; 14-3-3 theta/tau and tBID have passed through all stages of the biomarker discovery pipeline, and present themselves as putative predictive biomarkers of neoadjuvant chemotherapy resistance in breast cancer

How often does the Unruh-DeWitt detector click beyond four dimensions?

We analyse the response of an arbitrarily-accelerated Unruh-DeWitt detector coupled to a massless scalar field in Minkowski spacetimes of dimensions up to six, working within first-order perturbation theory and assuming a smooth switch-on and switch-off. We express the total transition probability as a manifestly finite and regulator-free integral formula. In the sharp switching limit, the transition probability diverges in dimensions greater than three but the transition rate remains finite up to dimension five. In dimension six, the transition rate remains finite in the sharp switching limit for trajectories of constant scalar proper acceleration, including all stationary trajectories, but it diverges for generic trajectories. The divergence of the transition rate in six dimensions suggests that global embedding spacetime (GEMS) methods for investigating detector response in curved spacetime may have limited validity for generic trajectories when the embedding spacetime has dimension higher than five.Comment: 30 pages. v3: presentational improvement. Published versio