Bottom‐up effects of soil quality on a coffee arthropod interaction web

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117198/1/ecs213000721.pd

Are waiting times for hospital admissions affected by patients' choices and mobility?

Background Waiting times for elective care have been considered a serious problem in many health care systems. A topic of particular concern has been how administrative boundaries act as barriers to efficient patient flows. In Norway, a policy combining patient's choice of hospital and removal of restriction on referrals was introduced in 2001, thereby creating a nationwide competitive referral system for elective hospital treatment. The article aims to analyse if patient choice and an increased opportunity for geographical mobility has reduced waiting times for individual elective patients. Methods A survey conducted among Norwegian somatic patients in 2004 gave information about whether the choice of hospital was made by the individual patient or by others. Survey data was then merged with administrative data on which hospital that actually performed the treatment. The administrative data also gave individual waiting time for hospital admission. Demographics, socio-economic position, and medical need were controlled for to determine the effect of choice and mobility upon waiting time. Several statistical models, including one with instrument variables for choice and mobility, were run. Results Patients who had neither chosen hospital individually nor bypassed the local hospital for other reasons faced the longest waiting times. Next were patients who individually had chosen the local hospital, followed by patients who had not made an individual choice, but had bypassed the local hospital for other reasons. Patients who had made a choice to bypass the local hospitals waited on average 11 weeks less than the first group. Conclusion The analysis indicates that a policy combining increased opportunity for hospital choice with the removal of rules restricting referrals can reduce waiting times for individual elective patients. Results were robust over different model specifications

Michael Gove’s war on professional historical expertise : conservative curriculum reform, extreme Whig history and the place of imperial heroes in modern multicultural Britain

Six years of continuously baiting his opponents within the history profession eventually amounted to little where it mattered most. UK Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, finally backtracked in 2013 on his plans to impose a curriculum for English schools based on a linear chronology of the achievements of British national heroes. His ‘history as celebration’ curriculum was designed to instil pride amongst students in a supposedly shared national past, but would merely have accentuated how many students in modern multicultural Britain fail to recognise themselves in what is taught in school history lessons. Now that the dust has settled on Gove’s tenure as Secretary of State, the time is right for retrospective analysis of how his plans for the history curriculum made it quite so far. How did he construct an ‘ideological’ conception of expertise which allowed him to go toe-to-toe for so long with the ‘professional’ expertise of academic historians and history teachers? What does the content of this ideological expertise tell us about the politics of race within Conservative Party curriculum reforms? This article answers these questions to characterise Gove as a ‘whig historian’ of a wilfully extreme nature in his attachment to imperial heroes as the best way to teach national history in modern multicultural Britain

Quantitative importance of staminodes for female reproductive success in Parnassia palustris under contrasting environmental conditions.

The five sterile stamens, or staminodes, in Parnassia palustris act both as false and as true nectaries. They attract pollinators with their conspicuous, but non-rewarding tips, and also produce nectar at the base. We removed staminodes experimentally and compared pollinator visitation rate and duration and seed set in flowers with and without staminodes in two different populations. We also examined the relative importance of the staminode size to other plant traits. Finally, we bagged, emasculated, and supplementary cross-pollinated flowers to determine the pollination strategy and whether reproduction was limited by pollen availability. Flowers in both populations were highly dependent on pollinator visitation for maximum seed set. In one population pollinators primarily cross-pollinated flowers, whereas in the other the pollinators facilitated self-pollination. The staminodes caused increased pollinator visitation rate and duration to flowers in both populations. The staminodes increased female reproductive success, but only when pollen availability constrained female reproduction. Simple linear regression indicated a strong selection on staminode size, multiple regression suggested that selection on staminode size was mainly caused by correlation with other traits that affected female fitness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR

The value and limitations of local ecological knowledge: longitudinal and retrospective assessment of flagship species in Golfo Dulce, Costa Rica

1. Anthropogenic activities and climate change are affecting marine ecosystems worldwide, but systematic biodiversity assessments through periodic biomonitoring can be challenging and costly. Local ecological knowledge (LEK), obtained from experienced residents, can complement other approaches and provide improved understanding of the conservation status of marine areas. Here we explore the value and limitations of LEK to assess the status of several flagship species of tourism interest: cetaceans, sea turtles, whale sharks, and sea snakes in a unique tropical fiord and biodiversity hotspot, Golfo Dulce, Costa Rica. 2. We analysed interviews conducted with fishermen and tour-boat guides in 2010 and 2020 and compared their responses to biomonitoring data obtained through boat-based sighting surveys during in the same two time periods. Our questionnaire asked for estimates of sighting frequencies in both years, and in 2020 it also inquired about perceived changes over the time gap. 3. A key limitation was that many interviewees from 2010 could not be relocated in 2020, though 13 repeat participants served as a panel. Their responses suggest shifts in abundance that vary across taxa. For example, changes in reported sighting frequencies from 2010 to 2020 indicate a possible decline in whales but an increase in sea snakes. Those changes were also reflected in our biomonitoring data, suggesting respondents were fairly accurate in their reports of current abundance. However, when asked about perceived changes over the decade we found their answers were not consistent with changes detected through their reported frequencies nor though biomonitoring. 4. Our results suggest LEK can be a good source of information for current assessment but highlight the potential biases of perceptions of change. Evaluating changes through LEK may best be done by obtaining interview data at multiple points in time and systematically assessing trends, though, notably, there can be challenges with acquiring consistent sample sizes. Interviews should not replace but can complement biomonitoring while also providing further value via community engagement and as an avenue to gain insights into local opinions regarding conservation measures

Public History and the study of Law: reviewing The Limehouse Golem (2017). Directed by Juan Carlos Medina [film]. 109 min. UK. Production: Lipsync Post, Number 9 Films.

This is an interdisciplinary discussion, looking at the use of popular history for the critical understanding of the reconstruction of crime and patriarchal hierarchy. By way of reviewing the recent movie The Limehouse Golem, it illustrates the significance of theoretically engaging with a period crime fiction movie. It is argued that this assessment is less relevant in terms of producing historical understanding; rather, what may be a fiction, reveals instead our own contemporary cultural fixations

‘All histories are against you?’: Family history, domestic history and the feminine past in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion

© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2013. The famous exchange between Anne Elliot, the heroine of Persuasion, and Captain Harville, where he asserts that ‘all histories are against you’, has become for many the key to understanding Jane Austen’s particular view of history. Most critics contend that Anne Elliot is voicing the view of the mature Austen, an author at the height of her powers, well placed to defend feminine modes of narration. Reading Anne Elliot’s statements as Austen’s views usually involves comparing Anne’s opinions with those of Austen’s ‘first’ heroine, Catherine Morland, who decried ‘real solemn history’ in Northanger Abbey. While certain critics have identified in Catherine Morland a refusal on the young Austen’s part to take history seriously, the words of Anne Elliot have been read as a passionate refusal of masculinist history. As Stuart Curran has astutely observed, Anne’s ‘sharp observation […] has often been taken as a characteristically oblique expression’ of Austen’s ‘feminism as well as a defense of her singular craft’ (1993, 177)

An Extraordinary Destiny: Mary Hays, Dissenting Feminist

Since the late eighteenth century Mary Hays has occupied an unfortunate critical space, akin perhaps to the place she must have felt she occupied for sometime in her life, awkwardly positioned between the rational philosopher William Godwin and the `romantic feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Known principally for the scandalous `novel Memoirs of Emma Courtney (1796), Hays was grouped by contemporaries along with those women named in Richard Polwheles rabidly anti-feminist poem `The Unsexd Females (1798) as `a Wollstonecraftian. When critical attention turned to Hays in the mid-twentieth century, she was first categorized as a `disciple of Godwin, one of a number of women who formed `a sort of philosophic seraglio around him.1 This slightly scandalous assignment echoed Polwhele and implied that Hays primary interest in Godwin was erotic. Early biographers of Godwin such as Ford K Brown reported that Hays proposed marriage to Godwin `in 1795 or early 17962 - an unsubstantiated claim implying that Hays was in love with William Frend and William Godwin simultaneousl

Feminist publishing in a cold climate?: Australian Feminist Studies and the new ERA of research

This article explores the implications for feminist research and publishing in Australia in the new 'ERA' of research excellence. Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) is an initiative of the Australian Federal government to assess research quality within Australia's higher education institutions using a combination of indicators and expert review by committees comprising experienced, internationally recognised experts (Australian Research Council, 2008). © 2010 Feminist Review

La Reine malheureuse : Stuart history, sympathetic history and the Stricklands' history of Henrietta Maria

This article examines the representation of 'Stuart' queens, particularly Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, in the writings of Victorian royal biographers, Agnes and Elizabeth Strickland, to consider how their depiction of women associated with the Stuarts might alter our understanding of the Stuart heritage in Victorian Britain. The article will demonstrate that the Stricklands' sympathetic representation of Henrietta Maria can be read, not merely as an attempt to insert women into the historical record, but rather, as an alternate feminine historiography of Britain, which contrary to the Whig tradition, retained a sympathy for things French, Catholic and Stuart.20 page(s