3,173 research outputs found
Field boundary habitats and their contribution to the area of semi-natural habitats on lowland farms in east Galway, western Ireland
peer-reviewedSustainable agriculture and the provision of environmental public goods are key deliverables for European farming and food production. Farmland biodiversity, cultural landscapes, soil functionality and climate stability are among the environmental public goods provided through agriculture.
Future Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) direct payments are intended to be more targeted at the provision of these agricultural deliverables. Field boundaries are an example of such deliverables.
They are widespread features that have both environmental and aesthetic functions in farmed landscapes. However, research on their variety, density and contribution to semi-natural habitat cover on farms in Ireland is lacking. This study investigates the diversity and density of all field
boundary habitat types on 32 lowland farms in east County Galway, western Ireland. A total of 286km of field boundaries were surveyed across six study sites. Five types of field boundary habitats were recorded. The density of field boundaries on the farms studied was high and could have
positive implications for delivery of environmental public goods and sustainable farming metrics. In more intensively farmed areas, field boundaries were the only remaining semi-natural habitat on
some farms highlighting the need to retain, and improve the ecological quality, of these features. The condition of one field boundary type (hedgerows) was also investigated in further detail. While
the density of field boundaries was high on many of the surveyed farms, we found that the
hedgerows on these farms were not necessarily in good condition for wildlife
Glocalization: connecting glocalization to local Cuban musicians and their music
The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file.Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on April 17, 2009)Includes bibliographical references.Thesis (M.A.) University of Missouri-Columbia 2006.Dissertations, Academic -- University of Missouri--Columbia -- Geography.After nearly three decades of cultural isolation from the West, and a paralyzing economic crisis in the early 1990s, Cuba has increasingly become more active in the global community. Consequently, increased levels of globalization are affecting all sectors of Cuban society. This is especially true for many of the islands musicians whose careers are deeply imbedded in the international market. Using a qualitative case study method, I explore how increasing globalization throughout Cuba is changing and affecting the artistic and musical choices, professional goals and aspirations, opinions, perceptions, and audiences of three Cuban musicians at different levels of their professional development. I report that the relationship between western consumers of culture and these musicians (in this case the "producers" of culture) is much more complex than past models and theories may suggest
The Development of New Wake Survey Techniques at the University of Michigan
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/96585/1/39015087358860.pd
Degenerate Variational Integrators for Magnetic Field Line Flow and Guiding Center Trajectories
Symplectic integrators offer many advantages for the numerical solution of
Hamiltonian differential equations, including bounded energy error and the
preservation of invariant sets. Two of the central Hamiltonian systems
encountered in plasma physics --- the flow of magnetic field lines and the
guiding center motion of magnetized charged particles --- resist symplectic
integration by conventional means because the dynamics are most naturally
formulated in non-canonical coordinates, i.e., coordinates lacking the familiar
partitioning. Recent efforts made progress toward non-canonical
symplectic integration of these systems by appealing to the variational
integration framework; however, those integrators were multistep methods and
later found to be numerically unstable due to parasitic mode instabilities.
This work eliminates the multistep character and, therefore, the parasitic mode
instabilities via an adaptation of the variational integration formalism that
we deem ``degenerate variational integration''. Both the magnetic field line
and guiding center Lagrangians are degenerate in the sense that their resultant
Euler-Lagrange equations are systems of first-order ODEs. We show that
retaining the same degree of degeneracy when constructing a discrete Lagrangian
yields one-step variational integrators preserving a non-canonical symplectic
structure on the original Hamiltonian phase space. The advantages of the new
algorithms are demonstrated via numerical examples, demonstrating superior
stability compared to existing variational integrators for these systems and
superior qualitative behavior compared to non-conservative algorithms
Development of a scoring method to identify important areas of plant diversity in Ireland
peer-reviewedIn the face of accelerating biodiversity loss it is more important than ever to identify important areas of biodiversity and target limited resources for conservation. We developed a method to identify areas of important plant diversity using known species’ distributions and evaluations of the species importance. We collated distribution records of vascular plants and developed a scoring method of spatial prioritisation to assign conservation value to the island of Ireland at the hectad scale (10 km × 10 km) and at the tetrad scale (2 km × 2 km) for two counties where sufficient data were available. Each plant species was assigned a species conservation value based on both its conservation status and distribution in Ireland. For each cell, the species conservation values within the cell were summed, thereby differentiating between areas of high and low conservation value across the landscape. Areas with high conservation value represent the most important areas for plant conservation.
The protected area cover and the number of species present in these important areas were also examined by first defining threshold values using two different criteria. Species representation was high in the important areas; the identified important areas of plant diversity maintained high representation of species of conservation concern and achieved high species representation overall, requiring a low number of sites (<8%) to do so. The coincidence of protected areas and important areas for plant diversity was found to be low and while some important areas of plant diversity might benefit from the general protection afforded by these areas, our research highlights the need for conservation outside of protected areas
A new concept in cancer care: The supportive care program
This article describes the findings of a pilot program designed to enter advanced prostate cancer patients into the hospice benefit while they are still being actively treated, but in situations where treatment is known to be primarily palliative in nature. The supportive care program (SCP) combines the medical model’s goal to prolong life with the goal of hospice to palliate symptoms and improve quality of life (QOL). The concept of a SCP was developed to create a team approach where advanced prostate cancer patients who are starting investigational chemotherapy are concurrently enrolled into a hospice program. The objectives were to identify whether SCP improved QOL and continuity of care while remaining cost-effective. Data were collected on patient quality of life, performance status, use of health care resources, and costs for the 36 enrolled patients. A comparison was made to a matched set of 23 control patients. Our findings indicate that the SCP contributes to continuity of care while being cost-effective.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66626/2/10.1177_104990919901600608.pd
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