Contributions and perspectives of Indigenous Peoples to the study of mercury in the Arctic

Arctic Indigenous Peoples are among themost exposed humanswhen it comes to foodbornemercury (Hg). In response, Hgmonitoring and research have been on-going in the circumpolar Arctic since about 1991; this work has beenmainly possible through the involvement of Arctic Indigenous Peoples. The present overview was initially conducted in the context of a broader assessment of Hg research organized by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme. This article provides examples of Indigenous Peoples' contributions to Hg monitoring and research in the Arctic, and discusses approaches that could be used, and improved upon, when carrying out future activities. Over 40 mercury projects conducted with/by Indigenous Peoples are identified for different circumpolar regions including the U.S., Canada, Greenland, Sweden, Finland, and Russia as well as instances where Indigenous Knowledge contributed to the understanding of Hg contamination in the Arctic. Perspectives and visions of future Hg research as well as recommendations are presented. The establishment of collaborative processes and partnership/co-production approaches with scientists and Indigenous Peoples, using good communication practices and transparency in research activities, are key to the success of research and monitoring activities in the Arctic. Sustainable funding for community-driven monitoring and research programs in Arctic countries would be beneficial and assist in developing more research/monitoring capacity and would promote a more holistic approach to understanding Hg in the Arctic. These activities should be well connected to circumpolar/international initiatives to ensure broader availability of the information and uptake in policy development

Contributions and perspectives of Indigenous Peoples to the study of mercury in the Arctic

Arctic Indigenous Peoples are among the most exposed humans when it comes to foodborne mercury (Hg). In response, Hg monitoring and research have been on-going in the circumpolar Arctic since about 1991; this work has been mainly possible through the involvement of Arctic Indigenous Peoples. The present overview was initially conducted in the context of a broader assessment of Hg research organized by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme. This article provides examples of Indigenous Peoples' contributions to Hg monitoring and research in the Arctic, and discusses approaches that could be used, and improved upon, when carrying out future activities. Over 40 mercury projects conducted with/by Indigenous Peoples are identified for different circumpolar regions including the U.S., Canada, Greenland, Sweden, Finland, and Russia as well as instances where Indigenous Knowledge contributed to the understanding of Hg contamination in the Arctic. Perspectives and visions of future Hg research as well as recommendations are presented. The establishment of collaborative processes and partnership/co-production approaches with scientists and Indigenous Peoples, using good communication practices and transparency in research activities, are key to the success of research and monitoring activities in the Arctic. Sustainable funding for community-driven monitoring and research programs in Arctic countries would be beneficial and assist in developing more research/ monitoring capacity and would promote a more holistic approach to understanding Hg in the Arctic. These activities should be well connected to circumpolar/international initiatives to ensure broader availability of the information and uptake in policy development

Surveying Human Vulnerabilities across the Life Course

Este libro fue publicado en 2016 y esta es una edición corregida de 2018. El libro completo está sujeto a una licencia CC BY 4.0This open access book details tools and procedures for data collections of hard-to-reach, hard-to-survey populations. Inside, readers will discover first-hand insights from experts who share their successes as well as their failures in their attempts to identify and measure human vulnerabilities across the life course. Coverage first provides an introduction on studying vulnerabilities based on the Total Error Survey framework. Next, the authors present concrete examples on how to survey such populations as the elderly, migrants, widows and widowers, couples facing breast cancer, employees and job seekers, displaced workers, and teenagers during their transition to adulthood. In addition, one essay discusses the rationale for the use of life history calendars in studying social and psychological vulnerability while another records the difficulty the authors faced when trying to set-up an online social network to collect relevant data. Overall, this book demonstrates the importance to have, from the very beginning, a dialogue between specialists of survey methods and the researchers working on social dynamics across the life span. It will serve as an indispensable resource for social scientists interested in gathering and analyzing data on vulnerable individuals and populations in order to construct longitudinal data bases and properly target social policies.Peer reviewe

Can Face Recognition Really Be Dissociated From Object Recognition?

lice remarked in a thoughtful tone. "That's just what I complain of," said Humpty Dumpty. "Your face is the same as everybody has - the two eyes, so -" (marking their places in the air with his thumb) "nose in the middle, mouth under. It's always the same. Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance - or the mouth at the top - that would be some help." -Lewis Carroll (1946) Introduction The study of visual recognition deficits is central to the issue of whether there is a special module or area of the brain dedicated to face recognition or whether faces are processed by more general-purpose visual recognition mechaWe wish to thank Dr. P. Freeman and Dr. G. Ratcliff for referring these patients to us as well as CR, SM and their families for their cooperation and goodwill. We are grateful to Ian Neath for sharing scanned version of the snowflakes from Bentley & Humphreys (1962). This work was supported by NSF award to MJT (SBR 9615819

Behavioral change and its neural correlates in visual agnosia after expertise training

& Agnosia, the impairment in object and face recognition despite intact vision and intelligence, is one of the most intriguing, and debilitating, neuropsychological deficits. The goal of this study was to determine whether S.M., an individual with longstanding visual agnosia and concomitant prosopagnosia, can be retrained to perform visual object recognition and, if so, what neural substrates mediate this reacquisition. Additionally, of interest is the extent to which training on one type of visual stimuli generalizes to other visual stimuli, as this informs our understanding of the organization of ventral visual cortex. Greebles were chosen as the stimuli for retraining given that, in neurologically normal individuals, these stimuli can engage the fusiform face area. Posttraining, S.M. showed significant improvement in recognizing Greebles, although he did not attain normal levels of performance. He was also able to recognize untrained Greebles and showed improvement in recognizing common objects. Surprisingly, his performance on face recognition, albeit poor initially, was even more impaired following training. A comparison of preand postintervention functional neuroimaging data mirrored the behavioral findings: Face-selective voxels in the fusiform gyrus prior to training were no longer so and were in fact more Greeble-selective. The findings indicate potential for experience-dependent dynamic reorganization in agnosia with the possibility that residual neural tissue, with limited capacity, will compete for representations. &amp

Multimodal reflectivity of CRIGF filters: First experimental observation and modelling

International audienceCavity Resonator Integrated Guided-mode Resonance Filter (CRIGF) are a new class of filtering reflectors whose selected wavelength and spectral width are independent of the angle of incidence unlike GMRF. These particular properties allow both compactness and a high angular acceptance. However, ours studies show that CRIGFs offer simultaneously spectral and modal filtering and we evidence high-spatial-order reflected modes. In this paper, we will present characterization of the spectral and spatial profile that demonstrates the existence of these high-order modes. In addition, we will present a model based on the physical understanding of implied phenomena to explain the experimental results. This model combines coupled-mode modelling and moiré fringes analysis. These modes could be harnessed for simultaneous spatial and spectral laser stabilization, to design and fabricate selective reflectors or outcouplers for spatial mode division multiplexing (SMDM) in few-mode fibers (FMFs) or for particles optical trapping