Opportunities to utilize traditional phenological knowledge to support adaptive management of social-ecological systems vulnerable to changes in climate and fire regimes

The field of adaptive management has been embraced by researchers and managers in the United States as an approach to improve natural resource stewardship in the face of uncertainty and complex environmental problems. Integrating multiple knowledge sources and feedback mechanisms is an important step in this approach. Our objective is to contribute to the limited literature that describes the benefits of better integrating indigenous knowledge (IK) with other sources of knowledge in making adaptive-management decisions. Specifically, we advocate the integration of traditional phenological knowledge (TPK), a subset of IK, and highlight opportunities for this knowledge to support policy and practice of adaptive management with reference to policy and practice of adapting to uncharacteristic fire regimes and climate change in the western United States

Participatory Geographic Information Systems as an Organizational Platform for the Integration of Traditional and Scientific Knowledge in Contemporary Fire and Fuels Management

Traditional knowledge about fire and its effects held by indigenous people, who are connected to specific landscapes, holds promise for informing contemporary fire and fuels management strategies and augmenting knowledge and information derived from western science. In practice, however, inadequate means to organize and communicate this traditional knowledge with scientists and managers can limit its consideration in decisions, requiring novel approaches to interdisciplinary and cross-cultural communication and collaboration. We propose that Participatory Geographic Information Systems (PGIS) is one platform for the assemblage and communication of traditional knowledge vital to fire and fuels management, while preserving linkages to broader cultural contexts. We provide summaries of four preliminary case studies in the Intermountain West of North America to illustrate different potential applications of a PGIS tool in this context and describe some remaining challenges. Management and Policy Implications: Participatory Geographic Information Systems (PGIS) can offer a powerful approach for enhancing current decisionmaking by allowing for the integration of traditional and scientific knowledge systems with spatial environmental data in an interactive participatory process. Integrated data sets can allow traditional and scientific knowledge experts to share, explore, manage, analyze, and interpret multidimensional data in a common spatial context to develop more informed management decisions. Such combined data sets could provide a more comprehensive assessment of fire-related ecological change than is currently used in decisionmaking and enhance inclusion of effects on local resource utility values and areas of cultural significance. The use of a PGIS interface creates opportunities for traditional knowledge holders to share information and potential prescriptions while maintaining confidentiality. Knowledge integration efforts using PGIS as an organizational tool would help to bridge the communication gap that commonly exists between scientists, managers, and traditional knowledge holders as ecosystems continue to be altered through processes of land management and climate change

Usability of a barcode scanning system as a means of data entry on a PDA for self-report health outcome questionnaires: a pilot study in individuals over 60 years of age

BACKGROUND: Throughout the medical and paramedical professions, self-report health status questionnaires are used to gather patient-reported outcome measures. The objective of this pilot study was to evaluate in individuals over 60 years of age the usability of a PDA-based barcode scanning system with a text-to-speech synthesizer to collect data electronically from self-report health outcome questionnaires. METHODS: Usability of the system was tested on a sample of 24 community-living older adults (7 men, 17 women) ranging in age from 63 to 93 years. After receiving a brief demonstration on the use of the barcode scanner, participants were randomly assigned to complete two sets of 16 questions using the bar code wand scanner for one set and a pen for the other. Usability was assessed using directed interviews with a usability questionnaire and performance-based metrics (task times, errors, sources of errors). RESULTS: Overall, participants found barcode scanning easy to learn, easy to use, and pleasant. Participants were marginally faster in completing the 16 survey questions when using pen entry (20/24 participants). The mean response time with the barcode scanner was 31 seconds longer than traditional pen entry for a subset of 16 questions (p = 0.001). The responsiveness of the scanning system, expressed as first scan success rate, was less than perfect, with approximately one-third of first scans requiring a rescan to successfully capture the data entry. The responsiveness of the system can be explained by a combination of factors such as the location of the scanning errors, the type of barcode used as an answer field in the paper version, and the optical characteristics of the barcode scanner. CONCLUSION: The results presented in this study offer insights regarding the feasibility, usability and effectiveness of using a barcode scanner with older adults as an electronic data entry method on a PDA. While participants in this study found their experience with the barcode scanning system enjoyable and learned to become proficient in its use, the responsiveness of the system constitutes a barrier to wide-scale use of such a system. Optimizing the graphical presentation of the information on paper should significantly increase the system's responsiveness

Observed communication semantics for classical processes

Classical Linear Logic (CLL) has long inspired readings of its proofs as communicating processes. Wadler's CP calculus is one of these readings. Wadler gave CP an operational semantics by selecting a subset of the cut-elimination rules of CLL to use as reduction rules. This semantics has an appealing close connection to the logic, but does not resolve the status of the other cut-elimination rules, and does not admit an obvious notion of observational equivalence. We propose a new operational semantics for CP based on the idea of observing communication, and use this semantics to define an intuitively reasonable notion of observational equivalence. To reason about observational equivalence, we use the standard relational denotational semantics of CLL. We show that this denotational semantics is adequate for our operational semantics. This allows us to deduce that, for instance, all the cut-elimination rules of CLL are observational equivalences

Recognition and social freedom

In this paper I develop an account of social freedom grounded in intersubjective recognition, which I term the “normative authorisation” account. According to this model, a person enjoys social freedom if she is recognised as a discursive equal who can engage in justificatory dialogue with other social agents about the appropriateness of her reasons for action. I contrast this with Axel Honneth’s theory of social freedom, which I label the “self-realisation” account. Within this model, the affirmative recognition of others is required in order to achieve a positive relation-to-self and hence freedom. I highlight several issues with this account, which challenge the relationship Honneth draws between social recognition and freedom. I demonstrate that the normative authorisation account avoids these problems. I also show how it captures some basic features of our everyday, normative interactions. Finally, I suggest that the account fits well with recent work on epistemic injustice. Specifically, it shows that establishing the social conditions of freedom requires ensuring epistemically-just social relations. In sum, the normative authorisation account is an explanatorily powerful, inclusive theory of social freedom that fits well with wider accounts of justice and freedom. It represents the most promising way of construing social freedom in terms of interpersonal recognition

Strategies for Diagnosis and Treatment of Suspected Leptospirosis: A Cost-Benefit Analysis

Symptoms and signs of leptospirosis are non-specific. A number of diagnostic tests for leptospirosis are available. We compared the cost-benefit of 5 management strategies: 1) no patients tested or given antibiotic treatment; 2) all patients given empirical doxycycline treatment; patients given doxycycline when a patient is tested positive for leptospirosis using: 3) lateral flow; 4) MCAT; 5) latex test. Outcomes were measured in duration of fever which is then converted to productivity losses to capture the full economic costs. Empirical doxycycline treatment was found to be the most efficient strategy, being both the least costly alternative and the one that resulted in the lowest average duration of fever. The significantly higher relative cost of using a diagnostic test as compared with presumptive treatment, and the limited sensitivity of all the diagnostic tests implied that only the latex test could be considered cost-effective when compared with the no-antibiotic-treatment option, and that all three tests were still inferior to empirical treatment

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Chinese Language and Reading Abilities

This study investigated the etiology of individual differences in Chinese language and reading skills in 312 typically developing Chinese twin pairs aged from 3 to 11 years (228 pairs of monozygotic twins and 84 pairs of dizygotic twins; 166 male pairs and 146 female pairs). Children were individually given tasks of Chinese word reading, receptive vocabulary, phonological memory, tone awareness, syllable and rhyme awareness, rapid automatized naming, morphological awareness and orthographic skills, and Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices. All analyses controlled for the effects of age. There were moderate to substantial genetic influences on word reading, tone awareness, phonological memory, morphological awareness and rapid automatized naming (estimates ranged from .42 to .73), while shared environment exerted moderate to strong effects on receptive vocabulary, syllable and rhyme awareness and orthographic skills (estimates ranged from .35 to .63). Results were largely unchanged when scores were adjusted for nonverbal reasoning as well as age. Findings of this study are mostly similar to those found for English, a language with very different characteristics, and suggest the universality of genetic and environmental influences across languages

Variations in achievement of evidence-based, high-impact quality indicators in general practice : An observational study

BACKGROUND: There are widely recognised variations in the delivery and outcomes of healthcare but an incomplete understanding of their causes. There is a growing interest in using routinely collected 'big data' in the evaluation of healthcare. We developed a set of evidence-based 'high impact' quality indicators (QIs) for primary care and examined variations in achievement of these indicators using routinely collected data in the United Kingdom (UK). METHODS: Cross-sectional analysis of routinely collected, electronic primary care data from a sample of general practices in West Yorkshire, UK (n = 89). The QIs covered aspects of care (including processes and intermediate clinical outcomes) in relation to diabetes, hypertension, atrial fibrillation, myocardial infarction, chronic kidney disease (CKD) and 'risky' prescribing combinations. Regression models explored the impact of practice and patient characteristics. Clustering within practice was accounted for by including a random intercept for practice. RESULTS: Median practice achievement of the QIs ranged from 43.2% (diabetes control) to 72.2% (blood pressure control in CKD). Considerable between-practice variation existed for all indicators: the difference between the highest and lowest performing practices was 26.3 percentage points for risky prescribing and 100 percentage points for anticoagulation in atrial fibrillation. Odds ratios associated with the random effects for practices emphasised this; there was a greater than ten-fold difference in the likelihood of achieving the hypertension indicator between the lowest and highest performing practices. Patient characteristics, in particular age, gender and comorbidity, were consistently but modestly associated with indicator achievement. Statistically significant practice characteristics were identified less frequently in adjusted models. CONCLUSIONS: Despite various policy and improvement initiatives, there are enduring inappropriate variations in the delivery of evidence-based care. Much of this variation is not explained by routinely collected patient or practice variables, and is likely to be attributable to differences in clinical and organisational behaviour