Tamils in Switzerland: An Emerging Post-Asylum Community?

[Please note: this article is written in English with a French abstract] En Suisse, la communauté tamoule peine à trouver son unité. Les vagues successives de migrants qui la composent, les différences de positionnement politique et de niveau social entre ses membres brouillent son homogénéité. Jusqu’à présent, l’emprise des LTTE masquait ces divisions internes en ralliant les Tamouls, de manière volontaire ou forcée, sous la bannière de l’Eelam tamoul. La fin de la guerre ouvre des possibilités inédites pour une structuration renouvelée des Tamouls de Suisse et une meilleure implication dans la vie de leur territoire d’accueil

Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation: Implications for land acquisition and population relocation

In response to the challenge of climate change, governments of developing countries are evolving adaptation and mitigation programmes for which they are seeking international financing. This paper presents the findings of a review of national action programmes and other interventions to assess their likely societal impacts with an emphasis on land-use change, future land acquisitions, population displacement and resettlement. Evidence presented suggests there is likely to be additional and large-scale resettlement related to adaptation and mitigation investments in the coming decades. It describes such climate change-related projects as infrastructure development projects and the population displacement they may generate as a form of development-created involuntary resettlement. The article considers the policy and development challenges such involuntary resettlement will pose and assesses the robustness of current governance arrangements to manage that resettlement. It is argued that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process presents opportunities for improving the national and international management of land acquisition and resettlement, particularly in least developed countries and small island states, but cautions that, at present, the financing arrangements do not prioritise the legal protection of affected populations

‘Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation: Implications for land acquisition and population relocation’

In response to the challenge of climate change developing country governments are evolving adaptation and mitigation programmes for which they are seeking international financing. This article presents the findings of a review of national action programmes and other interventions to assess their likely societal impacts with an emphasis on land-use change, future land acquisitions, population displacement and resettlement. Evidence presented suggests there is likely to be additional and large scale resettlement related to adaptation and mitigation investments in the coming decades. It describes such climate change related projects as infrastructure development projects and the population displacement they may generate as a form of development-created involuntary resettlement. The article considers the policy and development challenges such involuntary resettlement will pose and assesses the robustness of currentgovernance arrangements to manage that resettlement. It is argued that the UNFCCC process presents opportunities for improving the national and international management of land acquisition and resettlement particularly in LDCs and Small Island States but cautions that at present the financing arrangements do not prioritise the legal protection of affected populations

Displacement and Transition Risks

The refugee journey from a place of danger to a place of safety involves a series of transitions. At each stage of the displacement cycle individuals become defined by legal-bureaucratic and descriptive labels that may include an ‘internally displaced person (IDP)’, an ‘asylum seeker’, a ‘refugee claimant’, a ‘registered refugee’, a ‘prioritised or deprioritised “resettlement case”’, a ‘rejected asylum seeker’, or a ‘returnee’

Distribution of contaminants in the environment and wildlife habitat use: a case study with lead and waterfowl on the Upper Texas Coast

The magnitude and distribution of lead contamination remain unknown in wetland systems. Anthropogenic deposition of lead may be contributing to negative population-level effects in waterfowl and other organisms that depend on dynamic wetland habitats, particularly if they are unable to detect and differentiate levels of environmental contamination by lead. Detection of lead and behavioral response to elevated lead levels by waterfowl is poorly understood, but necessary to characterize the risk of lead-contaminated habitats. We measured the relationship between lead contamination of wetland soils and habitat use by mottled ducks (Anas fulvigula) on the Upper Texas Coast, USA. Mottled ducks have historically experienced disproportionate negative effects from lead exposure, and exhibit a unique nonmigratory life history that increases risk of exposure when inhabiting contaminated areas. We used spatial interpolation to estimate lead in wetland soils of the Texas Chenier Plain National Wildlife Refuge Complex. Soil lead levels varied across the refuge complex (0.01–1085.51 ppm), but greater lead concentrations frequently corresponded to areas with high densities of transmittered mottled ducks. We used soil lead concentration data and MaxENT species distribution models to quantify relationships among various habitat factors and locations of mottled ducks. Use of habitats with greater lead concentration increased during years of a major disturbance. Because mottled ducks use habitats with high concentrations of lead during periods of stress, have greater risk of exposure following major disturbance to the coastal marsh system, and no innate mechanism for avoiding the threat of lead exposure, we suggest the potential presence of an ecological trap of quality habitat that warrants further quantification at a population scale for mottled ducks

Long-term trends of changes in pine and oak foliar nitrogen metabolism in response to chronic nitrogen amendments at Harvard Forest, MA

We evaluated the long-term (1995–2008) trends in foliar and sapwood metabolism, soil solution chemistry and tree mortality rates in response to chronic nitrogen (N) additions to pine and hardwood stands at the Harvard Forest Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site. Common stress-related metabolites like polyamines (PAs), free amino acids (AAs) and inorganic elements were analyzed for control, low N (LN, 50 kg NH4NO3 ha−1 year−1) and high N (HN, 150 kg NH4NO3 ha−1 year−1) treatments. In the pine stands, partitioning of excess N into foliar PAs and AAs increased with both N treatments until 2002. By 2005, several of these effects on N metabolites disappeared for HN, and by 2008 they were mostly observed for LN plot. A significant decline in foliar Ca and P was observed mostly with HN for a few years until 2005. However, sapwood data actually showed an increase in Ca, Mg and Mn and no change in PAs in the HN plot for 2008, while AAs data revealed trends that were generally similar to foliage for 2008. Concomitant with these changes, mortality data revealed a large number of dead trees in HN pine plots by 2002; the mortality rate started to decline by 2005. Oak trees in the hardwood plot did not exhibit any major changes in PAs, AAs, nutrients and mortality rate with LN treatment, indicating that oak trees were able to tolerate the yearly doses of 50 kg NH4NO3 ha−1 year−1. However, HN trees suffered from physiological and nutritional stress along with increased mortality in 2008. In this case also, foliar data were supported by the sapwood data. Overall, both low and high N applications resulted in greater physiological stress to the pine trees than the oaks. In general, the time course of changes in metabolic data are in agreement with the published reports on changes in soil chemistry and microbial community structure, rates of soil carbon sequestration and production of woody biomass for this chronic N study. This correspondence of selected metabolites with other measures of forest functions suggests that the metabolite analyses are useful for long-term monitoring of the health of forest trees

Chandra Observations of Arp 220: The Nuclear Source

We present the first results from 60ks of observations of Arp 220 using the ACIS-S instrument on Chandra. We report the detection of several sources near the galaxy's nucleus, including a point source with a hard spectrum that is coincident with the western radio nucleus B. This point source is mildly absorbed (N_H ~ 3 x 10^22 cm^-2) and has an estimated luminosity of 4 x 10^40 erg/s. In addition, a fainter source may coincide with the eastern nucleus A. Extended hard X-ray emission in the vicinity raises the total estimated nuclear 2-10 keV X-ray luminosity to 1.2 x 10^41 erg/s, but we cannot rule out a hidden AGN behind columns exceeding 5 x 10^24 cm^-2. We also detect a peak of soft X-ray emission to the west of the nucleus, and a hard point source 2.5 kpc from the nucleus with a luminosity of 6 x 10^39 erg/s.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

Chandra Observations of Arp 220: The Nuclear Source

We present the first results from 60ks of observations of Arp 220 using the ACIS-S instrument on Chandra. We report the detection of several sources near the galaxy's nucleus, including a point source with a hard spectrum that is coincident with the western radio nucleus B. This point source is mildly absorbed (N_H ~ 3 x 10^22 cm^-2) and has an estimated luminosity of 4 x 10^40 erg/s. In addition, a fainter source may coincide with the eastern nucleus A. Extended hard X-ray emission in the vicinity raises the total estimated nuclear 2-10 keV X-ray luminosity to 1.2 x 10^41 erg/s, but we cannot rule out a hidden AGN behind columns exceeding 5 x 10^24 cm^-2. We also detect a peak of soft X-ray emission to the west of the nucleus, and a hard point source 2.5 kpc from the nucleus with a luminosity of 6 x 10^39 erg/s.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

Performance of Historically Underrepresented Firms in the Public-Private Sector

This study examines the performance of historically underrepresented firms, which includes women-owned businesses and socially disadvantaged businesses. We examine performance in the context of securing public contracts and compare the performance of these historically underrepresented firms to those of non-minority small and large businesses. Utilizing a sample of all contracts awarded by the Johnson Space Center, a NASA directorate located in Houston, Texas, which identified 5,676 contracts totaling approximately $157 billion, we found that small businesses received around 63% of all contracts. The results indicate that more diverse firms received higher awards than specialists and that disadvantaged firms received higher dollar awards than general small businesses. In addition, women-owned businesses neither outperformed nor performed more poorly than general small business in the dollar amounts of contracts received, and they are neither more or less specialized than general small and large businesses. A discussion, practical implications, and future research ideas are also presented