119 research outputs found

    Defining denial and sentient seafood

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    Sneddon et al. address the scientists who reject the empirical evidence on fish sentience, calling them “sceptics” and their work “denial”. This is the first article to frame the question of fish sentience in these terms, and it provides an obvious opening for social science and humanities research in the science of fish sentience. It is also worth asking what practical changes in the lives of fish might arise from the mounting evidence of their sentience. I suggest that the relationship between sentience and our sense of moral obligation is not as clear as we often assume

    The octopus mind and the argument against farming it

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    Mather is convincing about octopuses having ‘a controlling mind, motivated to gather information,’ but stops short of asking what having that mind means for octopus moral standing. One consequence of understanding the octopus mind should be a refusal to subject octopuses to mass production. Octopus farming is in an experimental phase and supported by various countries. We argue that it is unethical because of concerns about animal welfare as well as environmental impacts

    Passive and active roles of fat-free mass in the control of energy intake and body composition regulation

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    While putative feedback signals arising from adipose tissue are commonly assumed to provide the molecular links between the body’s long-term energy requirements and energy intake, the available evidence suggests that the lean body or fat-free mass (FFM) also plays a role in the drive to eat. A distinction must, however, be made between a ‘passive’ role of FFM in driving energy intake, which is likely to be mediated by ‘energy-sensing’ mechanisms that translate FFM-induced energy requirements to energy intake, and a more ‘active’ role of FFM in the drive to eat through feedback signaling between FFM deficit and energy intake. Consequently, a loss of FFM that results from dieting or sedentarity should be viewed as a risk factor for weight regain and increased fatness not only because of the impact of the FFM deficit in lowering the maintenance energy requirement but also because of the body’s attempt to restore FFM by overeating—a phenomenon referred to as ‘collateral fattening’. A better understanding of these passive and active roles of FFM in the control of energy intake will necessitate the elucidation of peripheral signals and energy-sensing mechanisms that drive hunger and appetite, with implications for both obesity prevention and its management

    Men Set Their Own Cites High: Gender and Self-citation across Fields and over Time

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    How common is self-citation in scholarly publication, and does the practice vary by gender? Using novel methods and a data set of 1.5 million research papers in the scholarly database JSTOR published between 1779 and 2011, the authors find that nearly 10 percent of references are self-citations by a paper's authors. The findings also show that between 1779 and 2011, men cited their own papers 56 percent more than did women. In the last two decades of data, men self-cited 70 percent more than women. Women are also more than 10 percentage points more likely than men to not cite their own previous work at all. While these patterns could result from differences in the number of papers that men and women authors have published rather than gender-specific patterns of self-citation behavior, this gender gap in self-citation rates has remained stable over the last 50 years, despite increased representation of women in academia. The authors break down self-citation patterns by academic field and number of authors and comment on potential mechanisms behind these observations. These findings have important implications for scholarly visibility and cumulative advantage in academic careers.Comment: final published articl

    A multilevel evolutionary framework for sustainability analysis

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    Sustainability theory can help achieve desirable social-ecological states by generalizing lessons across contexts and improving the design of sustainability interventions. To accomplish these goals, we argue that theory in sustainability science must (1) explain the emergence and persistence of social-ecological states, (2) account for endogenous cultural change, (3) incorporate cooperation dynamics, and (4) address the complexities of multilevel social-ecological interactions. We suggest that cultural evolutionary theory broadly, and cultural multilevel selection in particular, can improve on these fronts. We outline a multilevel evolutionary framework for describing social-ecological change and detail how multilevel cooperative dynamics can determine outcomes in environmental dilemmas. We show how this framework complements existing sustainability frameworks with a description of the emergence and persistence of sustainable institutions and behavior, a means to generalize causal patterns across social-ecological contexts, and a heuristic for designing and evaluating effective sustainability interventions. We support these assertions with case examples from developed and developing countries in which we track cooperative change at multiple levels of social organization as they impact social-ecological outcomes. Finally, we make suggestions for further theoretical development, empirical testing, and application

    A New Tool to Evaluate, Improve, and Sustain Marine Protected Area Financing Built on a Comprehensive Review of Finance Sources and Instruments

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    Marine protected areas (MPAs) require sustained funding to provide sustained marine protection. Up until now government budgets, multi- and bi-lateral aid, and philanthropic grants have been commonly relied upon to finance the management and enforcement of MPAs. But new funding mechanisms, such as impact investments or blue carbon, are increasingly applied and developed. Here, we present a semi-structured review that identifies 11 or more sources of finance, 21 financial instruments and more than 75 potential combinations thereof that show the current diversity of financial mechanisms available to support MPA establishment and operations. Based on the review, we developed nearly 100 indicators reflecting environmental, governmental, socioeconomic, and management characteristics that can inform the appropriateness, and corresponding strengths and weaknesses, of applying these financial mechanisms to any given MPA. The outputs provide a series of recommendations for implementing new funding mechanisms and ways to improve the sustainability of in-place mechanisms. The findings were compiled into a replicable framework and excel tool that was pilot tested in May 2021 for Parque Nacional Natural Corales de Profundidad in Colombia that identified potential ways to improve upon financial mechanisms, including, hiring a full-time manager and potential alternative mechanisms like biodiversity offsets from fossil fuel exploration and exploitation, among several others. The research also identified barriers for implementing financial mechanisms that reflect broader systemic challenges for MPA finance worldwide

    Fish Farms at Sea: The Ground Truth from Google Earth

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    In the face of global overfishing of wild-caught seafood, ocean fish farming has augmented the supply of fresh fish to western markets and become one of the fastest growing global industries. Accurate reporting of quantities of wild-caught fish has been problematic and we questioned whether similar discrepancies in data exist in statistics for farmed fish production. In the Mediterranean Sea, ocean fish farming is prevalent and stationary cages can be seen off the coasts of 16 countries using satellite imagery available through Google Earth. Using this tool, we demonstrate here that a few trained scientists now have the capacity to ground truth farmed fish production data reported by the Mediterranean countries. With Google Earth, we could examine 91% of the Mediterranean coast and count 248 tuna cages (circular cages >40 m diameter) and 20,976 other fish cages within 10 km offshore, the majority of which were off Greece (49%) and Turkey (31%). Combining satellite imagery with assumptions about cage volume, fish density, harvest rates, and seasonal capacity, we make a conservative approximation of ocean-farmed finfish production for 16 Mediterranean countries. Our overall estimate of 225,736 t of farmed finfish (not including tuna) in the Mediterranean Sea in 2006 is only slightly more than the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reports. The results demonstrate the reliability of recent FAO farmed fish production statistics for the Mediterranean as well as the promise of Google Earth to collect and ground truth data

    Protect global values of the Southern Ocean ecosystem

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    The Southern Ocean, which comprises ∼10% of the global ocean, is critically important to the homeostasis of the Earth system, exhibits distinctive marine biodiversity, and has tremendous scientific, diplomatic, and wilderness value. Yet, the region and its suite of global values are critically threatened by climate change, which is exacerbated by commercial fishing, an activity that provides value for relatively few industrial actors and compromises the greater values that the Southern Ocean ecosystem provides to the world. The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), the arm of the Antarctic Treaty System responsible for managing Southern Ocean marine living resources, meets in October–November 2022 and is under pressure to strengthen fisheries management, especially toward climate change resilience. We encourage improved management practices that account for the environmental externalities arising from trade-offs between fishing and the global contribution of the Southern Ocean ecosystem, including under a changing climate.The Pew Charitable Trusts; Biodiversa ASICS. U.R.S. and the University of British Columbia–based Solving Food-Climate-Biodiversity research partnership sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.http://www.sciencemag.orghj2023Plant Production and Soil Scienc

    Argumentum ad misericordiam - the critical intimacies of victimhood

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    This article discusses the widespread use of victim tropes in contemporary Anglo-American culture by using cultural theory to analyse key social media memes circulating on Facebook in 2015. Since the growth of social media, victim stories have been proliferating, and each demands a response. Victim narratives are rhetorical, they are designed to elicit pity and shame the perpetrator. They are deployed to stimulate political debate and activism, as well as to appeal to an all-purpose humanitarianism. Victimology has its origins in Law and Criminology, but this paper opens up the field more broadly to think about the cultural politics of victimhood, to consider how the victim-figure can be appropriated by/for different purposes, particularly racial and gender politics, including in the case of Rachel Dolezal, and racial passing. In formulating an ethical response to the lived experience of victims, we need to think about the different kinds of critical intimacies elicited by such media
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