Contextual Factors in the Management of Common Grazing Lands: Lessons from Mongolia and Northwestern China

Seen in a global perspective, pastoral development is now increasingly motivated by social and environmental objectives rather than by production- or output-orientated objectives. Attention is shifting towards a broader concern with sustainability, both of grasslands, and of the livelihoods of those who rely on them (de Haan et al, 1997, Fratkin and Mearns forthcoming). Quite how these twin sustainability objectives may be achieved in particular contexts, however, is an empirical question. Drawing on examples from a diverse range of natural grassland-based livestock production systems under economic transition in Mongolia and northwestern China, this summary paper aims to show how an appreciation of context is essential if we are to understand how best to intervene in common grazing systems in order to achieve secure and sustainable livelihoods for livestock producers while at the same time promoting sustainable grassland management

Downscaling extremes: A comparison of extreme value distributions in point-source and gridded precipitation data

There is substantial empirical and climatological evidence that precipitation extremes have become more extreme during the twentieth century, and that this trend is likely to continue as global warming becomes more intense. However, understanding these issues is limited by a fundamental issue of spatial scaling: most evidence of past trends comes from rain gauge data, whereas trends into the future are produced by climate models, which rely on gridded aggregates. To study this further, we fit the Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution to the right tail of the distribution of both rain gauge and gridded events. The results of this modeling exercise confirm that return values computed from rain gauge data are typically higher than those computed from gridded data; however, the size of the difference is somewhat surprising, with the rain gauge data exhibiting return values sometimes two or three times that of the gridded data. The main contribution of this paper is the development of a family of regression relationships between the two sets of return values that also take spatial variations into account. Based on these results, we now believe it is possible to project future changes in precipitation extremes at the point-location level based on results from climate models.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AOAS287 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Skills, knowledge and senior managers’ demonstrations of safety commitment.

Senior managers’ safety commitment is emphasised in the safety literature as a crucial influence on organisational safety. Yet there is little understanding of the characteristics that underpin their ability to engage in behaviours that demonstrate safety commitment. This study investigates the contribution of problem-solving, social competence and safety knowledge to such behaviours. Senior managers (N = 60) from European and North American air traffic management organisations participated in interviews consisting of open questions designed to trigger safety knowledge and descriptions of behaviours that demonstrate safety commitment as well as scenarios designed to trigger problem-solving and social competence. Reliable scores were generated through systematic scoring procedures involving two independent coders. The results indicated that problem-solving, namely the number of issues and information sources considered when understanding problems and generating ideas to solve a problem were positively related to demonstrations of safety commitment. The ability to perceive others was also found to correlate with safety commitment, whereas safety knowledge was not associated with behaviours that demonstrate safety commitment. It is proposed that training and guidance designed for senior managers should focus on their problem-solving abilities and perception of others in order to support them in demonstrating safety commitment

Q fever through consumption of unpasteurised milk and milk products – a risk profile and exposure assessment

Q fever is a zoonotic disease caused by the bacterium Coxiella burnetii which is endemic in cattle, sheep and goats in much of the world, including the United Kingdom (UK). There is some epidemiological evidence that a small proportion of cases in the developed world may arise from consumption of unpasteurised milk with less evidence for milk products such as cheese. Long maturation at low pH may give some inactivation in hard cheese, and viable C. burnetii are rarely detected in unpasteurised cheese compared to unpasteurised milk. Simulations presented here predict that the probability of exposure per person to one or more C. burnetii through the daily cumulative consumption of raw milk in the UK is 04203. For those positive exposures, the average level of exposure predicted is high at 1266 guinea pig intraperitoneal infectious dose 50% units (GP_IP_ID50) per person per day. However, in the absence of human dose–response data, the case is made that the GP_IP_ID50 unit represents a very low risk through the oral route. The available evidence suggests that the risks from C. burnetii through consumption of unpasteurised milk and milk products (including cheese) are not negligible but they are lower in comparison to transmission via inhalation of aerosols from parturient products and livestock contact

Safety intelligence : An exploration of senior managers' characteristics

Peer reviewedPostprin

Regional probabilities of precipitation change: A Bayesian analysis of multimodel simulations

Tebaldi et al. [2005] present a Bayesian approach to determining probability distribution functions (PDFs) of temperature change at regional scales, from the output of a multi-model ensemble, run under the same scenario of future anthropogenic emissions. The main characteristic of the method is the formalization of the two criteria of bias and convergence that the REA method [Giorgi and Mearns, 2002] first quantified as a way of assessing model reliability. Thus, the General Circulation Models (AOGCMs) of the ensemble are combined in a way that accounts for their performance with respect to current climate and a measure of each model's agreement with the majority of the ensemble. We apply the Bayesian model to a set of transient experiments under two SRES scenarios. We focus on predictions of precipitation change, for land regions of subcontinental size. We highlight differences in the PDFs of precipitation change derived in regions where models find easy agreement, and perform well in simulating present day precipitation, compared to regions where models have large biases, and/or their future projections disagree. We compare results from the two scenarios, thus assessing the consequences of the two alternative hypotheses, and present summaries based on their averaging

Bilingual education and CLIL in the Netherlands: The paradigm and the pedagogy

The Netherlands is often held up an example of a ‘success story’ in terms of practices and research regarding the teaching and learning of subject content in a second language (de Graaff & van Wilgenburg, 2015; Pérez-Cañado, 2012). Nearly 30 years after its initial beginnings, bilingual secondary education in the Netherlands continues to thrive and to evolve in fitting with educational demands, as does the research associated with it. This Special Issue includes contributions addressing Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) as a pedagogical approach in the context of bilingual education as a curricular paradigm, both specifically within the Dutch context. The issue contains six research articles from different perspectives, supported by discussions both from an international research standpoint and from the educational field. It is hoped that the publication of this issue will not only indicate a next stage for bilingual education policy and practice, but also give impetus to new areas for research.Teaching and Teacher Learning (ICLON