Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology: Studies in the Neotropical Lowlands

Book review of Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology: Studies in the Neotropical Lowlands. William Balée and Clark L. Erickson, editors. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. The Historical Ecology Series. xii + 417 pp., maps, figures, tables, notes, references, index. $80.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-231-13288-3. [www.columbia.edu/cu/cup

Snabb processreglering med transient börvärde

Syftet med detta arbete var att minimera insvängningstiden av en temperaturreglering. Det görs genom att påbörja regleringen medan börvärdet fortfarande är i den transienta delen av insvängningen. Detta innebär att börvärdet skall filtreras med ett digitalt lågpass filter för att ta bort mätbrus. Filtreringen i sin tur orsakar en fördröjning till den transienta delen av insvängningen. Därmed skall lågpass filtret vara grovt i början av processen för att inte någon märkbar fördröjning skall ske och sedan ändras filtret linjärt sådant att filtreringen blir fin mot slutet. Detta minimerar filtrets fördröjning till insvängningen. Genom att mäta derivatan för bör- och ärvärdet och sedan styra ärvärdets derivata mot börvärdet kan en optimal insvängning åstadkommas. Slutligen skall regulatorn vara adaptiv eftersom tidskonstanten för processen är okänd.The goal of this thesis is lower the settling time of a temperature control process. The process consists of a transient phase and a stable phase. Currently the controller doesn't react until the stable phase is reached. The improved controller will start controlling the process during the transient phase. This is made possible by implementing a digital low pass filter that linearly increases the smoothing of the measured setpoint. A digital low pass filter that applies excessive smoothing during the transient phase would cause a delay that would ultimately increase the settling time. As an additional control parameter the derivative of the setpoint is used to control the temperature during the transient phase. During the transient phase the controller relies on the derivative to controll the process while the error is used more during the stable phase. The controller can only apply heating not cooling.Tämän työn tavoitteena on lyhentää lämpöohjausprosessin asettumisaikaa. Prosessi koostuu kahdesta eri vaiheesta, ohimenevästä ja stabiilista. Lyhenetty asettumisaika saavutetaan aloittamalla säätäminen transientin vaiheen aikana. Alkuperäinen ohjain odottaa asetusarvon stabilisoitumista ennen kuin säätäminen aloitetaan. Uudella ohjaimella pyritään aloittamaan säätäminen transientin vaiheen aikana. Tämän mahdollistaa digitaalinen matalapäästösuodatin, jonka vahvuus muuttuu linearisesti prosessin aikana. Liiallinen suodattaminen prosessin alussa johtaa viiveeseen, joka pidentää asettumisaikaa. Transientin aikana käytetään erosuureen lisäksi asetusarvon sekä prosessin todellisen arvon derivaattaa. Näin pystytään ohjaamaan todellinen arvo seuraamaan asetusarvon käyttäytmistä transientin vaiheen aikana. Prosessiin voidaan ainoastaan vaikuttaa säätämällä lämpöä

Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology: Studies in the Neotropical Lowlands

Book review of Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology: Studies in the Neotropical Lowlands. William Balée and Clark L. Erickson, editors. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. The Historical Ecology Series. xii + 417 pp., maps, figures, tables, notes, references, index. ISBN 0-231-13288-3

Amazon Sweet Sea: Land, Life, and Water at the River’s Mouth

Book review of Amazon Sweet Sea: Land, Life, and Water at the River’s Mouth. Nigel J.H. Smith. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. xii + 296 pp., plates, map, notes, appendix, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-292-77770-1

Mobility and Migration in Indigenous Amazonia: Contemporary Ethnoecological Perspectives

Book review of Mobility and Migration in Indigenous Amazonia: Contemporary Ethnoecological Perspectives. Miguel. N. Alexiades, editor. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2009. Studies in Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology. Xviii + 310 pp., figures, tables, notes, references, index. $90.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-1-84545-563-7 [http://www.berghahnbooks.com]

Are you content with being just ordinary? Or do you wish to make progress and be outstanding?' New ritual practices in contemporary Sweden

This article examines the emergence and features of new practices in contemporary Sweden, which are being sold to individuals as therapy or coaching in order for them find their ‘inner potential’ as a means to achieve health, self-realisation and prosperity in life as well as in work. The focus on the inner self and the formation of a new personhood demands new ritual creativity, responding to the individual’s longing for intense experiences of transform­ation and the authentic self. The development of a new outlook on the self is thus the focus of these practices, that is to say, individuals are encouraged to stage new ways to perform themselves. In this construction of a new self, or the image of an ideal self, the layman therapist or coach is very much in demand. In order to discuss these new practices, the Health Academy Europe (Hälsoakademin Europa) is chosen. One reason for a closer study of this enterprise is that it was one of the coaching enterprises chosen in 2009 by the Swedish public Employment Service (Arbetsförmedlingen) to give employment coaching, when the Swedish government allocated 300 million euros to buy the services of 1,500 coaches to help approximately 250,000 unemployed Swedes to get work.These new practices could be classified as new rituals, adapted to late modern society with a focus on the individual, the inner self and prosperity. The ambition is to encourage the participant to design a new, empowered self in order to turn dreams into reality and to find hope for better circumstances in life

A Landscape of Left-Overs : Changing Conceptions of Place and Environment among Mi'kmaq Indians of Eastern Canada

This dissertation seeks to explore historical changes in the lifeworld of the Mi’kmaq Indians of Eastern Canada. The Mi’kmaq culture hero Kluskap here serves as a key persona in discussing issues such as traditions, changing conceptions of land, and human-environmental relations. In order not to depict Mi’kmaq culture as timeless, two important periods in its history are examined. The first study reviews historical evidence of the ontology, epistemology, and ethics – jointly labeled animism – that stem from a premodern Mi’kmaq hunting subsistence. This evidence dates from the period between 1850 and 1930, which is also the period when the Mi’kmaq were gradually being forced to settle in the reserves. The second study situates the culture hero in the modern world of the 1990s, when allusions to Mi’kmaq tradition and to Kluskap played an important role in the struggle against a planned superquarry on Cape Breton. This study discusses the ecocosmology that has been formulated by modern reserve inhabitants and that could be labeled a “sacred ecology”. If the premodern ecocosmologies have been favorably treated by Westerners, the modern Natives’ attempt to create a “sacred ecology” has been received with ambivalence. It has been welcomed by some as an alternative to Western ways of treating nature, which threaten our global survival. But it has also been criticized as a modern construction designed by Natives to gain benefits from Canadian society. In the example of the Mi’kmaq struggle against the superquarry, this critique is discussed, with a focus on how the Mi’kmaq are rebuilding their traditions and environmental relations in interaction with modern society. In this process, environmental groups, pan-Indianism, and education play an important role, but so does reserve life. By anchoring their engagement in reserve life the Mi’kmaq traditionalists have to a large extent been able to confront both external and internal doubts about their authenticity

Selective fishing induces density-dependent growth

Over the last decades, views on fisheries management have oscillated between alarm and trust in management progress. The predominant policy for remedying the world fishing crisis aims at maximum sustainable yield (MSY) by adjusting gear selectivity and fishing effort. Here we report a case study on how striving for higher yields from the Eastern Baltic cod stock by increasing selectivity has become exceedingly detrimental for its productivity. Although there is a successive increase in numbers of undersized fish, growth potential is severely reduced, and fishing mortality in fishable size has increased. Once density-dependent growth is introduced, the process is self-enforcing as long as the recruitment remains stable. Our findings suggest that policies focusing on maximum yield while targeting greater sizes are risky and should instead prioritize catch rates over yield. Disregarding the underlying population structure may jeopardize stock productivity, with dire consequences for the fishing industry and ecosystem structure and function