SHRIMP MARICULTURE DEVELOPMENT IN ECUADOR: SOME RESOURCE POLICY ISSUES

During the past 15 years, Ecuador has become the Western Hemisphere's leading producer and exporter of shrimp. Growth has come about largely through mariculture development. About 8,000 metric tons (MT) of shrimp have been captured off the Ecuadorian coast each year since the late 1970s. Meanwhile, pond output has increased several-fold, from less than 5,000 MT in 1979 to over 100,000 MT 12 years later (Table 1). Mariculture has expanded largely at the expense of renewable natural resources. Mangrove swamps, characterized by extremely high biological productivity and, therefore, a critical element of coastal ecosystems, have been displaced. In addition, shrimp postlarvae (PL) collection has at times been excessive and wastewater emissions from some enterprises harm the environment. Mariculture also suffers from water pollution from agricultural, urban, and industrial sources. This paper first describes the extent and consequences of coastal ecosystem disturbance; then presents a causal analysis of environmental problems. Policies contributing to depletive management of wetlands and related resources are similar to policies stimulating tropical deforestation. The tenurial regime rewards those who convert coastal ecosystems into shrimp ponds, just as frontier property arrangements encourage agricultural colonists to convert natural ecosystems into farmland (Southgate 1990). In addition, mariculture's geographic expansion, like agriculture's, has been accelerated by inadequate spending on education, research, and extension (Southgate 1991). If this policy regime remains unchanged, continued deterioration of Ecuador's coastal ecosystems is inevitable.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Food Insecurity and Its Determinants in Asia and the Pacific

In Asian-Pacific developing countries, the prevalence of food insecurity has diminished dramatically in the past generation. Despite this, many millions continue to suffer from persistent or periodic food insecurity. The causes of food insecurity are both structural and market-related, including influences of public policy on market operations. The most vulnerable populations are those that simultaneously experience both these forms of insecurity. The places they inhabit tend to have poor-quality land, are exposed to climatic and other environmental risks, or both. These same populations either have relatively weak links with the non-food economy, in which higher wages and better income-earning opportunities make food self-sufficiency less important, or are prevented from accessing opportunities in the non-food economy because of poor or misguided policies.

Excavating widening participation policy in Australian higher education: subject positions, representational effects, emotion

This article uses Foucauldian discourse analysis to identify two subject positions within Australia\u27s Widening Participation higher education policy. Purpose The massification of higher education is a definitive feature of the late twentieth century. Widening Participation (WP) policy is a recent manifestation of this phenomenon in Britain and Australia. This article uses Foucauldian discourse analysis to identify two subject positions within Australian WP higher education policy, that of the cap(able) individual and the proper aspirant. The article also traces the feeling-rules associated with these subject positions to ask critical questions about neo-liberal social justice. Design/methodology/approach A Foucauldian discourse analysis was conducted on a range of policy documents relating the higher education during the period 2008-2013. Using Bacchi’s (2012) ‘what is the problem represented to be?’ (WPR) approach, two subject positions and their attendant feeling-rules are identified.    Findings The two subject positions, the cap(able) individual and the proper aspirant, represent a quintessential neo-liberal subject who possesses ‘natural’ ability, hope for social mobility and is highly individualised and entrepreneurial in disposition. As a reinvention of social justice approaches to higher education, WP has wide emotional and common sense appeal derived from its links into older discourses on social justice, meritocracy and the redemptive promise of education and childhood hope.  A new neo-liberal appropriation of social justice, WP neglects critical historical, social and contextual factors related to educational inequity

Agent-based computational modeling of wounded epithelial cell monolayers

Computational modeling of biological systems, or ‘in silico biology’ is an emerging tool for understanding structure and order in biological tissues. Computational models of the behavior of epithelial cells in monolayer cell culture have been developed and used to predict the healing characteristics of scratch wounds made to urothelial cell cultures maintained in low and physiological [Ca2+] environments. Both computational models and in vitro experiments demonstrated that in low exogenous [Ca2+], the closure of 500mm scratch wounds was achieved primarily by cell migration into the denuded area. The wound healing rate in low (0.09mM) [Ca2+] was approximately twice as rapid as in physiological (2mM) [Ca2+]. Computational modeling predicted that in cell cultures that are actively proliferating, no increase in the fraction of cells in S-phase would be expected, and this conclusion was supported experimentally in vitro by BrdU incorporation assay. We have demonstrated that a simple rule-based model of cell behavior, incorporating rules relating to contact inhibition of proliferation and migration, is sufficient to qualitatively predict the calcium-dependent pattern of wound closure observed in vitro. Differences between the in vitro and in silico models suggest a role for wound-induced signaling events in urothelial cell cultures

Nature’s million-fuelèd bonfire: thoughts on honest poetic contemplation

Christian poetry has often concentrated on the beauty of the natural world, ignoring the competition and struggle which are factors integral to evolution. Struggle in nature, however, may lead to God’s ends for his creatures and it is this that Christopher Southgate seeks to explore by examining the work of poets such as Gerard Manley Hopkins, Louis MacNeice and R. S. Thomas. He suggests that this kind of honest contemplation allows us to view the struggles in the natural world in counterpoint with the sense of God’s depth of engagement with all suffering; as such it represents a search for divine glory. To seek to glimpse this glory requires us to view nature through three complementary lenses: what the world discloses of its creator (gloria mundi); the gift – made possible by the character of the creation – of the Incarnate Christ and his self-surrender (gloria crucis); and the song of the new creation, in which creaturely flourishing will be attained without creaturely struggle (gloria in excelsis).Publisher PD

Do 18-month-olds really attribute mental states to others? A critical test

In the research reported here, we investigated whether 18-month-olds would use their own past experience of visual access to attribute perception and consequent beliefs to other people. Infants in this study wore either opaque blindfolds (opaque condition) or trick blindfolds that looked opaque but were actually transparent (trick condition). Then both groups of infants observed an actor wearing one of the same blindfolds that they themselves had experienced, while a puppet removed an object from its location. Anticipatory eye movements revealed that infants who had experienced opaque blindfolds expected the actor to behave in accordance with a false belief about the object's location, but that infants who had experienced trick blindfolds did not exhibit that expectation. Our results suggest that 18-month-olds used self-experience with the blindfolds to assess the actor's visual access and to update her belief state accordingly. These data constitute compelling evidence that 18-month-olds infer perceptual access and appreciate its causal role in altering the epistemic states of other people

Baby steps: investigating the development of perceptual-motor couplings in infancy

There are cells in our motor cortex that fire both when we perform and when we observe similar actions. It has been suggested that these perceptual-motor couplings in the brain develop through associative learning during correlated sensorimotor experience. Although studies with adult participants have provided support for this hypothesis, there is no direct evidence that associative learning also underlies the initial formation of perceptual–motor couplings in the developing brain. With the present study we addressed this question by manipulating infants’ opportunities to associate the visual and motor representation of a novel action, and by investigating how this influenced their sensorimotor cortex activation when they observed this action performed by others. Pre-walking 7–9-month-old infants performed stepping movements on an infant treadmill while they either observed their own real-time leg movements (Contingent group) or the previously recorded leg movements of another infant (Non-contingent control group). Infants in a second control group did not perform any steps and only received visual experience with the stepping actions. Before and after the training period we measured infants’ sensorimotor alpha suppression, as an index of sensorimotor cortex activation, while they watched videos of other infants’ stepping actions. While we did not find greater sensorimotor alpha suppression following training in the Contingent group as a whole, we nevertheless found that the strength of the visuomotor contingency experienced during training predicted the amount of sensorimotor alpha suppression at post-test in this group. We did not find any effects of motor experience alone. These results suggest that the development of perceptual–motor couplings in the infant brain is likely to be supported by associative learning during correlated visuomotor experience

THE INSTITUTIONAL ORIGINS OF DEFORESTATION IN LATIN AMERICA

Land Economics/Use,