The impact of natural resource use on bird and reptile communities within multiple-use protected areas: evidence from sub-arid southern Madagascar

Multiple-use protected areas, in which sustainable levels of extractive livelihood activities are permitted, play an increasingly important role in the global protected area estate, and are expected to rise in prevalence. However, we know little about their effectiveness at conserving biodiversity. We surveyed bird and reptile communities in three areas across a forest disturbance gradient resulting from charcoal production and shifting cultivation within a multiple-use protected area in Madagascar’s sub-arid spiny forest. We scored individual species using a Conservation Value Index (CVI; a simple metric based on rarity, threat and distinctiveness), and estimated the total conservation value of each treatment by calculating the sum of frequency-weighted CVI scores across all present species. Bird and reptile community responses to forest disturbance were idiosyncratic. Bird richness was greatest in the moderate-disturbance treatment, but the low-disturbance treatment had the superior conservation value due to higher frequencies of locally-endemic species. Reptile richness was the same in low- and moderate-disturbance treatments, but the conservation value of the latter was greater. The high-disturbance areas had lowest richness and conservation value for both groups. For birds, increasing disturbance levels were accompanied by community turnover from high-value to low-value species, a pattern highlighted by CVI that is masked by assessing species richness alone. Although some endemic species appear to be resilient to degradation, multiple-use protected areas in Madagascar may lose biodiversity since most endemic species are forest-dependent. Stricter protected area models may be more appropriate in areas where much of the high-value biodiversity is sensitive to habitat degradation

L’alternative public/privé est-elle complète ?

L'exposé montre comment le nominalisme politique de Hobbes à Rawls engendre mécaniquement l’abolition du Grand partage entre le public et le privé : le fétichisme des libertés individuelles se mue en tyrannie des modes de vie. Pour le dire autrement : la focalisation sur les libertés individuelles engendre par défaut un paternalisme du système, sur lequel les individus n’ont aucune emprise. (Ce qui est évidemment paradoxal, toute la construction de Rawls par exemple étant faite pour contrer toute forme de paternalisme ; mais ce que les individus doivent éviter les uns envers les autres, le système le leur impose sans possibilité de s’y opposer)

La Belgique, entre fédéralisme, confédéralisme et séparatisme

Belgium has long been described both as a state ripped appart by two distinct communities and a model for pacific coexistence between them. But in the last ten years, repeated crisis put to the forefront the idea that Belgium could split up and cease to exist. More pragmatically some political forces aspire to transform Belgian federation in a confederation. After having described Belgian federalism and nationalist's confederation project, this paper aim to assess the possibilities of seeing these differents scenarios happening. To do this, we take into account international rules of secessions as well as economic and sociologic aspects of Belgium

RESUMÉ

Nous nous efforçons de montrer, dans l'optique du développement de systèmes d'assistance intelligents, que la coopération est indissociable des explications et de l'acquisition incrémentale de connaissances et que le contexte joue un rôle essentiel dans ces processus. Les explications sont une partie intrinsèque de toute coopération car elles permettent le partage de connaissances en étendant le contexte de la coopération et donc, de renforcer cette coopération. Inversement, en explicitant le contexte de la coopération, il est possible de produire des explications plus pertinentes, ce qui a pour but de renforcer la coopération. L'acquisition incrémentale de connaissances permet au système de s'améliorer au cours d'une résolution de problème (les connaissances étant alors acquises dans leur contexte d'utilisation) et donc, au cours de toutes ses interactions ultérieures avec un utilisateur. L'acquisition incrémentale de connaissances est importante dans la génération d'explications car le système doit pouvoir accepter des explications de l'utilisateur. Pour ces deux aspects de la coopération

Pulse Wave Velocity is Associated With 1-Year Cognitive Decline in the Elderly Older than 80 Years: the PARTAGE Study.

OBJECTIVES:Studies have shown the importance of vascular risk factors in the pathogenesis and evolution of cognitive disorders and dementia especially among the very elderly. The aim of the present longitudinal 1-year cohort analysis was to evaluate the influence of arterial stiffness on cognitive decline in institutionalized subjects older than 80 years.DESIGN:Longitudinal study.SETTING:Nursing homes in France and Italy.PARTICIPANTS:A total of 873 subjects (79% women), aged 87 \ub1 5 years were included in this longitudinal analysis from the PARTAGE cohort.MEASUREMENTS:All completed the Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE) on the 2 visits over 1 year and underwent a measurement of carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (PWV), an indicator of aortic stiffness. Clinical and 3-day self-measurements of blood pressure (BP) and activities of daily living (ADL) were evaluated at baseline visit.RESULTS:According to PWV tertiles and after adjustment for baseline MMSE, mean BP (MBP), age, education level, and ADL, \u394 MMSE was -1.42 \ub1 3.60 in the first tertile, -1.78 \ub1 4.08 in the second tertile, and -2.20 \ub1 3.98 in the third tertile (P < .03). Similar analyses with self-measured MBP failed to show any association between BP on MMSE decline.CONCLUSION:This 1-year longitudinal study in institutionalized patients older than 80 years shows that the higher the aortic stiffness, the more pronounced the decline in cognitive function. These results point out the interest of measuring PWV, a simple noninvasive and validated method for arterial stiffness assessment, to detect high-risk patients for cognitive decline