140 research outputs found
Challenges and opportunities in the design and construction of a GIS-based emission inventory infrastructure for the Niger Delta region of Nigeria
© 2017, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. Environmental monitoring in middle- and low-income countries is hampered by many factors which include enactment and enforcement of legislations; deficiencies in environmental data reporting and documentation; inconsistent, incomplete and unverifiable data; a lack of access to data; and technical expertise. This paper describes the processes undertaken and the major challenges encountered in the construction of the first Niger Delta Emission Inventory (NDEI) for criteria air pollutants and CO2 released from the anthropogenic activities in the region. This study focused on using publicly available government and research data. The NDEI has been designed to provide a Geographic Information System-based component of an air quality and carbon management framework. The NDEI infrastructure was designed and constructed at 1-, 10- and 20-km grid resolutions for point, line and area sources using industry standard processes and emission factors derived from activities similar to those in the Niger Delta. Due to inadequate, incomplete, potentially inaccurate and unavailable data, the infrastructure was populated with data based on a series of best possible assumptions for key emission sources. This produces outputs with variable levels of certainty, which also highlights the critical challenges in the estimation of emissions from a developing country. However, the infrastructure is functional and has the ability to produce spatially resolved emission estimates
Accounting for International War: The State of the Discipline
In studies of war it is important to observe that the processes leading to so frequent an event as conflict are not necessarily those that lead to so infrequent an event as war. Also, many models fail to recognize that a phenomenon irregularly distributed in time and space, such as war, cannot be explained on the basis of relatively invariant phenomena. Much research on periodicity in the occurrence of war has yielded little result, suggesting that the direction should now be to focus on such variables as diffusion and contagion. Structural variables, such as bipolarity, show contradictory results with some clear inter-century differences. Bipolarity, some results suggest, might have different effects on different social entities. A considerable number of studies analysing dyadic variables show a clear connection between equal capabilities among contending nations and escalation of conflict into war. Finally, research into national attributes often points to strength and geographical location as important variables. In general, the article concludes, there is room for modest optimism, as research into the question of war is no longer moving in non-cumulative circles. Systematic research is producing results and there is even a discernible tendency of convergence, in spite of a great diversity in theoretical orientations.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69148/2/10.1177_002234338101800101.pd
Context, cognition and communication in language
Questions pertaining to the unique structure and organisation of language have a
long history in the field of linguistics. In recent years, researchers have explored
cultural evolutionary explanations, showing how language structure emerges from
weak biases amplified over repeated patterns of learning and use. One outstanding
issue in these frameworks is accounting for the role of context. In particular,
many linguistic phenomena are said to to be context-dependent; interpretation
does not take place in a void, and requires enrichment from the current state
of the conversation, the physical situation, and common knowledge about the
world. Modelling the relationship between language structure and context is
therefore crucial for developing a cultural evolutionary approach to language.
One approach is to use statistical analyses to investigate large-scale, cross-cultural
datasets. However, due to the inherent limitations of statistical analyses, especially
with regards to the inadequacy of these methods to test hypotheses about
causal relationships, I argue that experiments are better suited to address questions
pertaining to language structure and context. From here, I present a series
of artificial language experiments, with the central aim being to test how
manipulations to context influence the structure and organisation of language.
Experiment 1 builds upon previous work in iterated learning and communication
games through demonstrating that the emergence of optimal communication systems
is contingent on the contexts in which languages are learned and used. The
results show that language systems gradually evolve to only encode information
that is informative for conveying the intended meaning of the speaker - resulting
in markedly different systems of communication. Whereas Experiment 1 focused
on how context influences the emergence of structure, Experiments 2 and 3 investigate
under what circumstances do manipulations to context result in the loss
of structure. While the results are inconclusive across these two experiments,
there is tentative evidence that manipulations to context can disrupt structure,
but only when interacting with other factors. Lastly, Experiment 4 investigates
whether the degree of signal autonomy (the capacity for a signal to be interpreted without recourse to contextual information) is shaped by manipulations
to contextual predictability: the extent to which a speaker can estimate and exploit
contextual information a hearer uses in interpreting an utterance. When
the context is predictable, speakers organise languages to be less autonomous
(more context-dependent) through combining linguistic signals with contextual
information to reduce effort in production and minimise uncertainty in comprehension.
By decreasing contextual predictability, speakers increasingly rely on
strategies that promote more autonomous signals, as these signals depend less on
contextual information to discriminate between possible meanings. Overall, these
experiments provide proof-of-concept for investigating the relationship between
language structure and context, showing that the organisational principles underpinning
language are the result of competing pressures from context, cognition,
and communication
Is Happiness a trait?
ABSTRACT
One of the ideological foundations of the modern welfare states is the belief that people can be made happier by providing them with better living conditions. This belief is challenged by the theory that happiness is a fixed 'trait', rather than a variable 'state'. This theory figures both at the individual level and at the societal level. The individual level variant depicts happiness as an aspect of personal character; rooted in inborn temperament or acquired disposition. The societal variant sees happiness as a matter of national character; embedded in shared values and beliefs. Both variants imply that a better society makes no happier people.
Happiness can be regarded as a trait if it meets three criteria: 1) temporal stability, 2) cross-situational consistency, and 3) inner causation. This paper checks whether that is, indeed, the case.
The theory that happiness is a personal-character-trait is tested in a (meta) analysis of longitudinal studies. The results are:
1) Happiness is quite stable on the short term, but not in the long run, neither relatively nor absoloutely.
2) Happiness is not insensitive to fortune or adversity.
3) Happiness is not entirely built-in: its genetic basis is at best modest and psychological factors explain only part of its variance.
The theory that happiness is a national-character-trait is tested in an analysis of differences in average happiness between nations. The results point in the same direction:
1) Though generally fairly stable over the last decades, nation-happiness has changed profoundly in some cases both absolutely and relatively.
2) Average happiness in nations is clearly not indep
FROM CORRELATIONS TO CAUSES: A NEW AND SIMPLE METHOD FOR CAUSAL ANALYSIS IN CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH
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