Taking a more nuanced look at behavior change for demand reduction in the illegal wildlife trade

The illegal wildlife trade threatens the future of many species, and undermines economies and livelihoods. Conservationists have largely responded with supply‐side interventions, such as antipoaching patrols, but these often fail to stem the tide of wildlife trafficking. There is now increasing interest in demand‐side interventions, which seek to lower poaching pressure on sought‐after species by reducing consumer's desire for, and purchase of, specific wildlife products. Individual behavior change approaches, from environmental education to social marketing, have been widely advocated by academics, practitioners, and policy makers. However, this is an emerging field and we lack the breadth of evidence needed to understand and predict the potential outcomes of demand reduction interventions. To help us gain broader insights, we examine the literature from public health and international development on the effectiveness of behavior change interventions, and critique the current conceptualization of strategies for reducing consumer demand in the illegal wildlife trade. We show that behavior change is difficult to achieve and interventions may have unintended and undesirable consequences because of unaddressed systemic, cultural and environmental drivers, and limited resourcing. We conclude that some sections of the conservation community are advocating a shift from one reductionist approach based on limiting supply, to another based on limiting demand, and argue that conservationists should learn from the public health and international development projects that have integrated systems thinking. By accounting for the multiple interactions and synergies between different factors in the wildlife trade, we can develop more strategic approaches to protecting endangered species

I-Challenges: Influencing Others’ Perspectives by Mentioning Personal Experiences in Therapeutic Community Group Meetings

PINO, M., 2017. I-challenges: influencing others’ perspectives by mentioning personal experiences in therapeutic-community group meetings. Social Psychology Quarterly, 80(3), pp. 217–242. SAGE © American Sociological Association. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0190272517706048In this paper I examine the communicative practice of mentioning a personal experience as a vehicle for challenging a peer’s perspective. I study this in the context of Therapeutic Community (TC) group meetings for clients recovering from drug misuse. Using conversation analysis, I demonstrate that TC clients use this practice, which I call an I-challenge, to influence how their peers make sense of their own experiences, and to do so without commenting on those peers’ experiences and perspectives. This study highlights the power of talking in the first person as a means of influencing others–a notion previously made popular by Thomas Gordon’s work on ‘I-messages’. Additionally, this study illustrates a novel way of studying social influence. Whereas previous research in social psychology has focused on the cognitive constraints behind phenomena of social influence and persuasion, here I contribute towards understandings of the interactional norms underlying the organisation of influence as a structured and coordinated domain of social practice

The structural organization of the human Na+/myo-inositol cotransporter (SLC5A3) gene and characterization of the promoter

The genomic structure, transcription start site, polyadenylation signals, and promoter of the human Na+/myo-inositol cotransporter (SLC5A3) gene have been elucidated through cloning, sequencing, mRNA analyses, and reporter gene assays. The gene consists of one promoter and two exons spanning approximately 26 kb. Exon 1 contains 175 bp of 5' untranslated sequence and is 15 kb upstream of exon 2, The 9.5-kb exon 2 contains the entire 2157-bp open reading frame and a large 3' untranslated sequence with seven putative polyadenylation signals. Multiple messages with different-sized 3' untranslated regions can be detected on Northern blots, Hypertonic stress caused mRNA levels, and primarily that of the full-length 9.5-kb transcript, to increase in cultured melanoma cells; ribonuclease protection analysis demonstrated that the transcription start site was the same in stressed as in control cells. The SLC5A3 gene functions in cellular osmoregulation and is expressed in many human tissues including the brain, kidney, and placenta. It is localized to chromosome 21q22.1. An overexpression of the SLC5A3 gene deserves consideration as a factor in the pathophysiology of Down syndrome.close282

Real-time-capable prediction of temperature and density profiles in a tokamak using RAPTOR and a first-principle-based transport model

The RAPTOR code is a control-oriented core plasma profile simulator with various applications in control design and verification, discharge optimization and real-time plasma simulation. To date, RAPTOR was capable of simulating the evolution of poloidal flux and electron temperature using empirical transport models, and required the user to input assumptions on the other profiles and plasma parameters. We present an extension of the code to simulate the temperature evolution of both ions and electrons, as well as the particle density transport. A proof-of-principle neural-network emulation of the quasilinear gyrokinetic QuaLiKiz transport model is coupled to RAPTOR for the calculation of first-principle-based heat and particle turbulent transport. These extended capabilities are demonstrated in a simulation of a JET discharge. The multi-channel simulation requires ∼0.2 s to simulate 1 second of a JET plasma, corresponding to ∼20 energy confinement times, while predicting experimental profiles within the limits of the transport model. The transport model requires no external inputs except for the boundary condition at the top of the H-mode pedestal. This marks the first time that simultaneous, accurate predictions of Te, Tiand nehave been obtained using a first-principle-based transport code that can run in faster-than-real-time for present-day tokamaks