Desertification and political onstability in the Tigris and Euphrates River Basins

The Tigris and Euphrates river basin is located in arid and semi-arid regions of the Middle East. Five countries share this basin, with Turkey, Syria, and Iraq being the main nations concerned. The water resources of the basin are unable to meet the entire current and future water demands of all of these nations. Water scarcity in this basin is caused by one-sided, unilateral development projects and complicated by natural conditions, such as reduced annual rainfall. Shared freshwater resources are complicated matters that cause tensions between nations sharing river basins, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. The shared fresh water problem in the Tigris and Euphrates River Basins nations is further complicated since it exacerbates desertification and environmental instability in Iraq because of its downstream location. The problem of environmental instability in Iraq further complicates the shared fresh water problem because it raises current tensions among Iraq’s ethnic groups causing more conflicts over resources, which in turn threatens the regional security in the Tigris and Euphrates River Basins. To this day, these three nations do not have an agreement for sharing the water resources to ensure sustainable water management in the basin. This thesis provides: (1) insights on how to manage water resources in the Tigris and Euphrates basin to prevent regional conflicts between the nations sharing this fresh water resource, and (2) suggests water conservation methods targeted specifically to Iraq. These methods include rainwater harvesting, managing vegetative cover through forestry systems to slow desertification, and using available water resources as efficiently as possible, particularly in northern Iraq

The Role of System Dynamics Approaches in Aquatic Disease Management: An Application to Sea Lice Control in Norway

Different methodologies have been used to model the epidemiology and economics of aquaculture diseases, including input-output models, benefit- cost analysis, linear programming, simple spreadsheet-based models, compartment models based on differential equations, and spatial models. Despite the advantages that each of these different models provide, there is a need to develop a more integrated approach to the epidemiology and economics of disease that better represents and captures existing feedback mechanisms, interventions to control aquatic disease, and the economic consequences of these interventions on producer behavior. System Dynamics (SD) modeling approaches have utility in this context. While SD has been used to model terrestrial animal diseases, its application in fisheries has been limited to questions of stock management. In this paper, we apply system dynamics modeling in the context of sea lice control in Norwegian farmed salmon. Separate models of sea lice and salmon growth evolution were designed and integrated to capture the feedback between them. Different simulation scenarios highlight the benefits of the approach.GEO-SD360JMASV-SYS

The dentist as expert witness

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73269/1/j.1754-4505.1988.tb00732.x.pd

Changing an Unfavorable Employment Reputation: A Longitudinal Examination

Although a favorable employment reputation plays an important role in generating a large and qualified pool of job applicants for an organization (Rynes & Cable, 2003), little research has investigated whether organizations can improve applicants’ existing unfavorable employment reputation perceptions. Results from a four-week longitudinal experiment using 222 student job seekers revealed that participants’ employment reputation perceptions improved after exposure to recruitment practices and followed diminishing returns trajectories over time. High information recruitment practices (e.g., personal communication from a recruiter) from both single and multiple sources were more effective for changing unfavorable employment reputation perceptions than repeated mere exposure to the organization (i.e., exposure to only the company logo), and high information practices from multiple sources were the most effective overall. Finally, participants reporting less familiarity with the organization experienced greater reputation change across the four weeks, but only for participants in the mere exposure condition

A Multilevel Analysis of the Effect of Prompting Self-Regulation in Technology-Delivered Instruction

We used a within-subjects design and multilevel modeling in two studies to examine the effect of prompting self-regulation, an intervention designed to improve learning from technology-delivered instruction. The results of two studies indicate trainees who were prompted to self-regulate gradually improved their knowledge and performance over time, relative to the control condition. In addition, Study 2 demonstrated that trainees’ cognitive ability and self-efficacy moderated the effect of the prompts. Prompting self-regulation resulted in stronger learning gains over time for trainees with higher ability or higher self-efficacy. Overall, the two studies demonstrate that prompting self-regulation had a gradual, positive effect on learning, and the strength of the effect increased as trainees progressed through training. The results are consistent with theory suggesting self-regulation is a cyclical process that has a gradual effect on learning and highlight the importance of using a within-subjects design in self-regulation. research

Some things on my mind

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72147/1/j.1754-4505.1994.tb01119.x.pd

The oral tradition in special care issues

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75515/1/j.1754-4505.1992.tb00420.x.pd