Rollins Alumni Record, February 1970

\u27The Old Ramp Tramper: An alumnus profil

Halting indigenous biodiversity decline: ambiguity, equity, and outcomes in RMA assessment of significance

In New Zealand, assessment of ‘significance’ is undertaken to give effect to a legal requirement for local authorities to provide for protection of significant sites under the Resource Management Act (1991). The ambiguity of the statute enables different interests to define significance according to their goals: vested interests (developers), local authorities, and non-vested interests in pursuit of protection of environmental public goods may advance different definitions. We examine two sets of criteria used for assessment of significance for biological diversity under the Act. Criteria adapted from the 1980s Protected Natural Areas Programme are inadequate to achieve the maintenance of biological diversity if ranking is used to identify only highest priority sites. Norton and Roper-Lindsay (2004) propose a narrow definition of significance and criteria that identify only a few high-quality sites as significant. Both sets are likely to serve the interests of developers and local authorities, but place the penalty of uncertainty on non-vested interests seeking to maintain biological diversity, and are likely to exacerbate the decline of biological diversity and the loss of landscape-scale processes required for its persistence. When adopting criteria for assessment of significance, we suggest local authorities should consider whose interests are served by different criteria sets, and who will bear the penalty of uncertainty regarding biological diversity outcomes. They should also ask whether significance criteria are adequate, and sufficiently robust to the uncertainty inherent in the assessment of natural values, to halt the decline of indigenous biological diversity

Applying psychological science to the CCTV review process: a review of cognitive and ergonomic literature

As CCTV cameras are used more and more often to increase security in communities, police are spending a larger proportion of their resources, including time, in processing CCTV images when investigating crimes that have occurred (Levesley & Martin, 2005; Nichols, 2001). As with all tasks, there are ways to approach this task that will facilitate performance and other approaches that will degrade performance, either by increasing errors or by unnecessarily prolonging the process. A clearer understanding of psychological factors influencing the effectiveness of footage review will facilitate future training in best practice with respect to the review of CCTV footage. The goal of this report is to provide such understanding by reviewing research on footage review, research on related tasks that require similar skills, and experimental laboratory research about the cognitive skills underpinning the task. The report is organised to address five challenges to effectiveness of CCTV review: the effects of the degraded nature of CCTV footage, distractions and interrupts, the length of the task, inappropriate mindset, and variability in people’s abilities and experience. Recommendations for optimising CCTV footage review include (1) doing a cognitive task analysis to increase understanding of the ways in which performance might be limited, (2) exploiting technology advances to maximise the perceptual quality of the footage (3) training people to improve the flexibility of their mindset as they perceive and interpret the images seen, (4) monitoring performance either on an ongoing basis, by using psychophysiological measures of alertness, or periodically, by testing screeners’ ability to find evidence in footage developed for such testing, and (5) evaluating the relevance of possible selection tests to screen effective from ineffective screener

Photography and the construction of collective memory in Ghent, Belgium

The paper investigates the shifting role of photography in the construction of collective cultural memory. It focuses on urban photography in Ghent, Belgium, at two particular periods of time. The paper is situated within the framework of the exhibition Edmond Sacré. Portrait of a City, curated by Ghent University in STAM (Ghent city museum), and a parallel artistic research project at the School of Arts at Ghent University College (2011-2012). At the turn of the XX century, new monumental squares and historicizing architecture created a new sense of history rooted in Flemish patriotism, especially in the run-up to the 1913 Ghent World Fair. The photographer Edmond Sacré created canonical images of the renewed city centre that went around the world for the promotion of the World Fair. Since the 1970s, the role of photography in the construction of cultural memory in Ghent has altered. In contrast to Sacré, photographers of the late XX and early XXI century have created a more complex image of the city. A number of contemporary photographers who worked on the Wondelgemse Meersen, a brownfield site north of the city centre, depicted the site as the locus of marginalised social groups who did not find their place in the historical city centre. The paper investigates if and how these photographers contribute to a different kind of cultural memory related to ephemeral places and practices in contrast to Sacré’s image of Ghent

Cumulative Risk and a Call for Action in Environmental Justice Communities

Health disparities, social inequalities, and environmental injustice cumulatively affect individual and community vulnerability and overall health; yet health researchers, social scientists and environmental scientists generally study them separately. Cumulative risk assessment in poor, racially segregated, economically isolated and medically underserved communities needs to account for their multiple layers of vulnerability, including greater susceptibility, greater exposure, less preparedness to cope, and less ability to recover in the face of exposure. Recommendations for evidence-based action in environmental justice communities include: reducing pollution in communities of highest burden; building on community resources; redressing inequality when doing community-based research; and creating a screening framework to identify communities of greatest risk

Thinking international relations differently - Introduction

Son muchas las voces que se alzan para enfrentarse al dominio de Occidente, al que podríamos también llamar el núcleo o el centro, en el campo de las Relaciones Internacionales. Que esta disciplina es indiferente a las prácticas académicas y a las cuestiones políticas ajenas a dicho núcleo, e incluso las desprecia, y que sus herramientas conceptuales primarias, categorías analíticas y conceptos están escasamente preparados para comprender muchos de los problemas globales más importantes, es algo que no discuten más que un número sorprendentemente pequeño de académicos, incluso de los que pertenecen a corrientes mayoritarias. Y sin embargo, la estructura centro-periferia que gobierna el aparato de producción intelectual de las Relaciones Internacionales se ha mostrado relativamente inmune a estas acusacionesA host of voices has risen to challenge Western or core dominance of the field of International relations (IR). That the field is indifferent to scholarly practices and policy issues outside the core and even dismissive of them, and that its primary conceptual tools, analytical categories, and concepts are ill-equipped for understanding many of today’s key global problems, is disputed by shockingly few scholars, even those that represent the “mainstream”. And yet, the core-periphery structure that governs the apparatus of intellectual production in IR has proven relatively immune to these charge

Participação científica da mulher em ciência política e relações internacionais no Brasil

Este artigo mapeia a participação das mulheres na produção científica brasileira nas áreas de Ciência Política e Relações Internacionais, no período de 2006 a 2016. Para isso, foram criados seis indicadores, a fim de medir a participação das mulheres na produção de dissertações de mestrado, teses de doutorado e artigos científicos, bem como sua participação como docentes de programas de pós-graduação e sua presença em conselhos editoriais de importantes revistas científicas brasileiras nesses campos. Os resultados revelaram que, apesar de haver uma crescente participação das mulheres nos últimos anos, o espaço que ocupam ainda está sub-representado, especialmente quando se considera posições estratégicas relacionadas ao ensino e pesquisa.This article maps the participation of women in Brazilian scientific production in the areas of Political Science and International Relations, from 2006 to 2016. To do so, six indicators were created, to measure women’s participation in the production of master’s dissertations, doctoral theses and scientific papers, as well as their participation as faculty members of graduate programs and their presence on editorial boards of important Brazilian Journals in these fields. The results revealed that, despite an increasing participation of women in recent years, the space they occupy is still underrepresented, especially when considering strategic positions related to education and research