People and Oceans: Managing Marine Areas for Human Well-Being

This booklet demonstrates an awakening within the conservation community that the human relationship with coastal and ocean environments must be evaluated in cultural, social, and economic -- as well as ecological -- dimensions. The major insights from this booklet include:People depend on oceans for food security, recreational opportunities, shoreline protection, climate regulation, and other ecosystem services.Marine resources have tremendous economic value that far exceeds current investments in marine governance, and visitors often are willing to pay far more than existing user fees.MMAs improve human well-being by diversifying livelihoods, enhancing incomes, and improving environmental awareness. They also pose challenges, including loss of access to fishing grounds, inequitable distribution of benefits, dependence on project assistance, and unmet expectations.MMAs are influenced by socioeconomic and governance conditions, including benefits exceeding costs, shared benefits, improved livelihood options, strong community participation, accountable management style, supportive local government, enabling legislation, enforced rules, empowerment and capacity building, strong persistent leadership, and involved external agents.Effective MMAs require strong enforcement, including both soft measures (i.e., education, partnerships) and hard measures (i.e., detection, interception, prosecution, and sanctions).Approaches such as buyouts, conservation agreements, and alternative livelihoods provide positive incentives for altering human behavior

Makibaa: The Living out Experience Among the iMiligan of Upper Bauko, Mountain Province

This study was conducted to find out why iMiligan youth leave their biological families and live with non-relatives in other provinces in the lowlands (Makibaa). It also studied the problems they encountered and how they managed such problems. Using a descriptive-qualitative-exploratory method, responses had been identified through key informant interviews and focus group discussions. Findings revealed that the participants moved to various destinations in the lowlands due to push and pull factors. The push factors were economic, geographical, social, political and education. The pull factors were availability and proximity of schools, educational opportunities, values and skills’ development and higher demand from foster parents.Participants described their stay in the lowlands as memorable, rewarding, and gratifying although some encountered negative experiences. Varied strategies were employed by the foster children in response to the negative encounters. The choice of destinations and prospective foster families followed some dynamics such as referrals from former or current baa; by invitation from prospective foster parents or referrals of foster parents; and through request by biological parents for foster families. Keywords: Baa, iMiligan, Igorots, Living out, Makiba

Should we change the way we model change? Comparing traditional and modern techniques in modeling change in sense of identity over time

Repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) are two of the most common techniques employed in longitudinal data analysis. These methods, however, are extremely limited in the type of data permitted in analysis, the residual covariance matrices employed in analysis, as well as in the focus of the research questions. There are, however, modern techniques for analyzing longitudinal data that do not have the same limitations of repeated measures ANOVA and MANOVA. This study aims to compare traditional methods of analyzing longitudinal data with more modern techniques, including alternative covariance structure (ACS) modeling and multilevel modeling (MLM), through an example involving Sense of Identity in college students. This is done by first exploring assumptions of traditional and modern methods of analyzing longitudinal data. Next, an introduction to the identity literature is provided. The concept of residuals in between- and within-subjects analyses is then discussed. Finally, both traditional and modern techniques are employed to analyze the Sense of Identity data and results are compared and contrasted in an attempt to demonstrate the utility and benefits of more advanced techniques in longitudinal data analysis

Marine Managed Areas: What, Why, and Where

This paper, which focuses on ocean and coastal areas, explores the challenge of public participation by discussing the role of communities in IM. It draws on a decade of collaboration between academics and community partners to outline the community perspective on both the limiting factors and the opportunities, and a state-of-the-art survey of community involvement in IM, parti-cularly in the Canadian Maritimes. The paper highlights the importance of linking communities and governments, and the need to overcome the growing disconnect between the two. It also illustrates the varied experiences of local coastal communities with IM through three concrete examples. These practical examples lead to two specific out-puts: a set of fundamental IM values and attributes from a community perspective, and a four-step process for facilitating and enabling community-focused IM.The conclusion summarizes key outcomes in terms of inclusivity and active involvement of communities

A Solvable Sequence Evolution Model and Genomic Correlations

We study a minimal model for genome evolution whose elementary processes are single site mutation, duplication and deletion of sequence regions and insertion of random segments. These processes are found to generate long-range correlations in the composition of letters as long as the sequence length is growing, i.e., the combined rates of duplications and insertions are higher than the deletion rate. For constant sequence length, on the other hand, all initial correlations decay exponentially. These results are obtained analytically and by simulations. They are compared with the long-range correlations observed in genomic DNA, and the implications for genome evolution are discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Get Cookin’: Investigating the Effects of a Six-week Cooking Intervention on Cooking and Dietary Behaviors among Low-income Families

Background and Purpose: Healthy eating practices have been associated with prevention of chronic diseases. There is limited information about strategies for healthy eating practices among families. The current study examined the effectiveness of Get Cookin’, a six-week intervention consisting of nutrition education and hands-on cooking and tasting activities among low-income families. Methods: Lowincome adults participated in Get Cookin’, a six-week intervention consisting of nutrition education and hands-on cooking activities. Ninety-six participants completed a retrospective survey which examined their meal planning, budgeting and cooking behaviors, as well as fruit and vegetable consumption. Thirteen graduates of the program participated in focus groups. The Wilcoxon signed ranks test was used to examine pre-to-post changes. Results: Participants showed significant improvements in meal planning and budgeting skills. They started cooking meals at home more frequently and increased consumption and variety of healthy foods such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Focus groups revealed that participants shared cooking and nutrition information and skills learned with their families. Additionally, participants with diverse backgrounds gained a sense of empowerment to overcome personal challenges to make healthy choices. Conclusions: Nutrition education, combined with cooking and tasting activities, appears to have a positive impact on healthy behaviors among low-income families. Further research with a control group would be needed to more definitively understand the effectiveness of the Get Cookin’ intervention

The Role of Nutritional Status in Neuroepigenetic Modification

Abstract The study of epigenetic has brought about a deeper understanding of developmental programming through a complex network of modifications involving the DNA. While the DNA sequence remains conservative throughout, the mechanism of epigenetic modification involves changes through histone modification, DNA methylation, and chromatin remodeling. The overall dynamic effect of epigenetic modification allows the gene expression to be altered leading to a diverse phenotypical expression; a functional change in the genome without affecting the DNA. The emergence of nutritional neuroepigenetic serves to bring into focus the impact of nutrition as an environmental agent in regulating gene expression patterns leading to phenotypical expression with profound neurological and cognitive implication in later life. This link is supported by evidence from animal models suggesting that epigenetic marks, which are formed following DNA methylation or histone modification, can induce changes leading to developmental diseases or persist into adulthood. The difficulty in understanding the intrinsic biomolecular correlation between 1) epigenetic modification, 2) nutritional imbalance, and 3) cognitive impairment in an animal based model provides a compelling question regarding the developmental origins of cognitive related diseases. There have been few animal model studies involving the molecular basis of neuroepigenetic dysfunction in the relation to overnutrition or under nutrition. The main criteria in this review will focus on the few animal based studies in nutrition based epigenetic reprogramming and its role in neuroepigenetic dysregulation and cognitive impairment

The Effect of Marine Protected Areas on Fishers\u27 Income in the Philippines

The fisheries sector is vital to the Philippine economy, providing substantial employment and income, contributing export earnings, and meeting local food security and nutrition requirements. To protect coastal and marine habitat and to sustain fisheries, over 1000 marine protected areas (MPAs) have been established, in the Philippines. This paper provides empirical evidence on the variance of net revenues linked with MPA establishment and the possible range of relocation costs for fishing effort displaced by an MPA. A total of 424 households were randomly selected from 18 barangays (villages) adjacent to MPAs in three regions in the Philippines. Results show that incomes decrease significantly for both fulltime and seasonal types of fishers after 1-3 years of MPA establishment. The loss occurring through MPA is higher than expected and at least on the short run (up to 4 years) the spill-over effect does not compensate. This information helped to determine the necessary conditional cash transfers for coastal communities who are highly dependent on coastal and marine resources

Cryptic haplotype‐specific gamete selection yields offspring with optimal MHC immune genes

Females choose specific mates in order to produce fitter offspring. However, several factors interfere with females' control over fertilization of their eggs, including sneaker males and phenotypically unpredictable allele segregation during meiosis. Mate choice at the individual level thus provides only a poor approximation for obtaining the best genetic match. Consequently, postcopulatory sperm selection by female oocytes has been proposed as a mechanism to achieve complementary combinations of parental haplotypes. Here, using controlled in vitro fertilization of three‐spined stickleback eggs, we find haplotype‐specific fertilization bias toward gametes with complementary major histocompatibility complex (MHC) immunogenes. The resulting zygote (and thus offspring) genotypes exhibit an intermediate level of individual MHC diversity that was previously shown to confer highest pathogen resistance. Our finding of haplotype‐specific gamete selection thus represents an intriguing mechanism for fine‐tuned optimization of the offspring's immune gene composition and an evolutionary advantage in the Red Queen dynamics of host‐parasite coevolution