Michel Butor: The Mytho-Fantastic Function of Naming

Michel Butor, a contemporary writer of the French New Novel, now the New New Novel, makes extensive use of naming, repetition of epithet -like phrases, distortions of q notations, sight -sound similarities of words and phrases, to create stories within stories and from other stories, and to evoke an oneiric level which allows times and locations to blend while still remaining separated. Carrying to the extreme the practice of immersion of text within text and meaning within meaning in Boomerang, the novel of 1978, the author combines eight different story lines, printed in four different colors, skillfully interweaving with his own narrative the elliptic citation of twenty-three sources ranging from the accounts of adventurers and explorers such as Cook and Bougainville to fantasy voyage writers like Jules Verne, and even aborigine story-tellers. In this study, the method and purpose of this type of creation is analyzed to show relationship between new literary production and new society, and the role that naming, as a creative technique, plays in that relationship. But or himself in Repertoire II has indicated that because the world only appears to us for the most part through what we are told about it, in conversations, classrooms, news media, a vital role of the literary text is to restructure information in such a way as to reveal hitherto unsuspected relationships, thereby enriching us with new perspectives and transforming our submission to the media into positive use of them (89-90). Butor\u27s statement introduces indirectly his method of restructuring or re-using information from a myriad of sources to create his own literature, and sets this study in motion. To discuss mytho-fantastic function in Michel Butor\u27s work, we must begin with a retrospective glance at this creativity, and we must define mythic function both globally .and as it performs in this author\u27s texts. By extending this definition of mythic function in a literary text to encompass the introduction of fantastic levels in writing we can observe the growth not only of Michel Butor as a writer, but of new writings and their reason for being

Mixed policies give more options in multifunctional tropical forest landscapes

This archive stores data utilised in: Mixed policies give more options in multifunctional tropical forest landscapesLaw E.A., Bryan B.A., Meijaard E., Mallawaarachchi T., Struebig M.J., Watts M., Wilson K.A.Journal of Applied Ecology 2016Corresponding author:Elizabeth A. Law*The University of Queensland, School of Biological [email protected]: Jan 18, 2016----------------------DETAILS:Along with this txt file, this archive contains five csv files included, and one folder containing a shape file. These are in the typical format required for input into Marxan with Zones, available from http://www.uq.edu.au/marxan/ (also see new cloud development on Marxan.net). The data time frames relate to a start year of 2008 (see associated publication for further details.Readme.txt - this documentZones.csv - contains zone identification numbers (zoneid) and names (zonenames)FeatureTargets.csv - contains feature id (id), the targets (target; units are specified in supplementary material), species penalty factor (spf; weighting number to determine if the feature is considered as an optimisation threshold constraint, 1, or not, 0), and feature names (name; features 1-9 and 19-20 represent primate species, 10-14 forest types, and 15-17 production values smallholder agriculture, timber, and oil palm, and 18 carbon emissions reduction.Extant.csv - contains planning unit id (pu), the extant class (class; using descriptive codes), and the area (area.ha, in hectares).PuVsFeatures.csv - for every planning unit and feature combination, the 'amount' gives the maximum possible achievement for that feature in that planning unit. Units of measurement are indicated in the main text/supplementary methods and associated papers detailing data development.BaselineZoneContributions.csv - for every zone, planning unit, and feature combination (identified using zoneid, puid, featid codes found in their respective files), this gives the fraction of the full amount possible to achieve within that pu for that feature. Pulayer folder - contains a shape file created in arcgis for the planning units. Coordinate reference system is WGS 84 / UTM zone 49S. One column in the attribute table, indicating the planning unit number (pu)

Ecosystem services from a degraded peatland of Central Kalimantan: implications for policy, planning, and management

Increasingly, landscapes are managed for multiple objectives to balance social, economic, and environmental goals. The Ex-Mega Rice Project (EMRP) peatland in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia provides a timely example with globally significant development, carbon, and biodiversity concerns. To inform future policy, planning, and management in the EMRP, we quantified and mapped ecosystem service values, assessed their spatial interactions, and evaluated the potential provision of ecosystem services under future land-use scenarios. We focus on key policy-relevant regulating (carbon stocks and the potential for emissions reduction), provisioning (timber, crops from smallholder agriculture, palm oil), and supporting (biodiversity) services. We found that implementation of existing land-use plans has the potential to improve total ecosystem service provision. We identify a number of significant inefficiencies, trade-offs, and unintended outcomes that may arise. For example, the potential development of existing palm oil concessions over one-third of the region may shift smallholder agriculture into low-productivity regions and substantially impact carbon and biodiversity outcomes. While improved management of conservation zones may enhance the protection of carbon stocks, not all biodiversity features will be represented, and there will be a reduction in timber harvesting and agricultural production. This study highlights how ecosystem service analyses can be structured to better inform policy, planning, and management in globally significant but data-poor regions. Read More: http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/13-2014.

Phylogenomic Resolution of the Cetacean Tree of Life Using Target Sequence Capture.

The evolution of cetaceans, from their early transition to an aquatic lifestyle to their subsequent diversification, has been the subject of numerous studies. However, while the higher-level relationships among cetacean families have been largely settled, several aspects of the systematics within these groups remain unresolved. Problematic clades include the oceanic dolphins (37 spp.), which have experienced a recent rapid radiation, and the beaked whales (22 spp.), which have not been investigated in detail using nuclear loci. The combined application of high-throughput sequencing with techniques that target specific genomic sequences provide a powerful means of rapidly generating large volumes of orthologous sequence data for use in phylogenomic studies. To elucidate the phylogenetic relationships within the Cetacea, we combined sequence capture with Illumina sequencing to generate data for ∼3200 protein-coding genes for 68 cetacean species and their close relatives including the pygmy hippopotamus. By combining data from >38,000 exons with existing sequences from 11 cetaceans and seven outgroup taxa, we produced the first comprehensive comparative genomic dataset for cetaceans, spanning 6,527,596 aligned base pairs and 89 taxa. Phylogenetic trees reconstructed with maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference of concatenated loci, as well as with coalescence analyses of individual gene trees, produced mostly concordant and well-supported trees. Our results completely resolve the relationships among beaked whales as well as the contentious relationships among oceanic dolphins, especially the problematic subfamily Delphininae. We carried out Bayesian estimation of species divergence times using MCMCTree, and compared our complete dataset to a subset of clocklike genes. Analyses using the complete dataset consistently showed less variance in divergence times than the reduced dataset. In addition, integration of new fossils (e.g., Mystacodon selenensis) indicate that the diversification of Crown Cetacea began before the Late Eocene and the divergence of Crown Delphinidae as early as the Middle Miocene

Analyzing procedural equity in government-led community-based forest management

Participatory approaches to forest management have been promoted as a means of returning rights historically removed, and as a way of managing natural resources sustainably, fairly, and to improve livelihoods in communities. Top-down models of community-based forest management take the perspective that if people feel ownership over, have a voice in decisions about, and can benefit from surrounding ecosystems, then they will be motivated to maintain and protect them. However, even participatory approaches, such as community-based forest management, may not always result in clear positive outcomes for involvement in decision making and forest conservation. We examine whether an Indonesian government initiative for community-based forest management was positively associated with community members' participation in local decision making and support for conservation and sustainable management of forest resources, in the context of state-owned lands. We used household questionnaire data to compare villages with and without a community forest, and community forests over time in a case study region of West Kalimantan. Analyzing forest visitations, conservation support, and indicators of procedural equity, we found no consistent association between having a community forest and higher levels of participation in decision making or household support for forest conservation. However, well-being indicators were positively associated with more active participation. The level of support for forest conservation was also positively related to households' leadership in village institutions and higher levels of well-being, particularly subjective well-being, land tenure, and material wealth. These social-demographic factors are important considerations when designing and implementing community-based forest management, which strives for fair and just decision-making processes along with forest conservation. The findings highlight how existing socioeconomic contexts factor into local institutions, and that accounting for these in program design and implementation may help address existing social inequalities that influence achieving joint social and ecological objectives

Does oil palm agriculture help alleviate poverty? A multidimensional counterfactual assessment of oil palm development in Indonesia

Palm oil producing countries regularly promote the positive impact of oil palm agriculture on poverty alleviation, despite limited evidence about the contribution of this crop on village well-being. Past evaluations that quantify the social impact of oil palm are dominated by localized studies, which complicate the detection of generalizable findings. Moreover, only a few of these evaluations are based on rigorous case-control studies, which limits the robustness of the conclusions. Here we examined the association between the development of oil palm plantations and change in objective or material well-being between 2000 and 2014 across villages in Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. We applied a matching method to evaluate the impacts of oil palm plantations across different aspects of well-being, accounting for varying time delays in the accrual and realization of benefits after plantation development. Our study reveals that the social impacts of oil-palm plantations are not uniformly positive, nor negative, and have varied systematically with biophysical locations and baseline socioeconomic conditions of nearby communities prior to oil palm development. Plantations developed in villages with low to moderate forest cover, in which the majority of communities already relied on market-oriented livelihoods, were associated with improved socioeconomic well-being compared to villages without oil palm development. However, we found the opposite for plantations developed in remote villages with higher forest cover, in which the majority of communities previously relied on subsistence-based livelihoods. Overall, oil palm growing villages were more associated with reduced rate of improvement of social and environmental well-being compared to villages without oil palm development, regardless of location and baseline community livelihoods. Our findings highlight an urgent need for careful evaluation and planning in the development of oil palm agriculture in remote forested areas. For oil palm regions that have been developed, our study shows that unsustainable livelihoods, increased socioeconomic disparity, and environmental issues remain major challenges

The ecological outcomes of biodiversity offsets under “no net loss” policies: A global review

No net loss (NNL) biodiversity policies mandating the application of a mitigation hierarchy (avoid, minimize, remediate, offset) to the ecological impacts of built infrastructure are proliferating globally. However, little is known about their effectiveness at achieving NNL outcomes. We reviewed the English-language peer-reviewed literature (capturing 15,715 articles), and identified 32 reports that observed ecological outcomes from NNL policies, including >300,000 ha of biodiversity offsets. Approximately one-third of NNL policies and individual biodiversity offsets reported achieving NNL, primarily in wetlands, although most studies used widely criticized area-based outcome measures. The most commonly cited reason for success was applying high offset multipliers (large offset area relative to the impacted area). We identified large gaps between the global implementation of offsets and the evidence for their effectiveness: despite two-thirds of the world’s biodiversity offsets being applied in forested ecosystems, we found none of four studies demonstrated successful NNL outcomes for forested habitats or species.We also found no evidence for NNL achievement using avoided loss offsets (impacts offset by protecting existing habitat elsewhere). Additionally, we summarized regional variability in compliance rates with NNL policies. As global infrastructural expansion accelerates, we must urgently improve the evidence-base around efforts to mitigate development impacts on biodiversity

MAGIC Upper Limits for two Milagro-detected, Bright Fermi Sources in the Region of SNR G65.1+0.6

We report on the observation of the region around supernova remnant G65.1+0.6 with the stand-alone MAGIC-I telescope. This region hosts the two bright GeV gamma-ray sources 1FGL J1954.3+2836 and 1FGL J1958.6+2845. They are identified as GeV pulsars and both have a possible counterpart detected at about 35 TeV by the Milagro observatory. MAGIC collected 25.5 hours of good quality data, and found no significant emission in the range around 1 TeV. We therefore report differential flux upper limits, assuming the emission to be point-like (<0.1 deg) or within a radius of 0.3 deg. In the point-like scenario, the flux limits around 1 TeV are at the level of 3 % and 2 % of the Crab Nebula flux, for the two sources respectively. This implies that the Milagro emission is either extended over a much larger area than our point spread function, or it must be peaked at energies beyond 1 TeV, resulting in a photon index harder than 2.2 in the TeV band.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

Changing landscapes, livelihoods and village welfare in the context of oil palm development

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals underscore the need for improved understanding of relationships between changes in landscapes, livelihoods, and social welfare, and how these relate to tackling poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation. Such assessments are especially relevant in the context of oil palm agricultural expansion, which has rapidly replaced traditional livelihoods and generates ongoing political debates around the world. Proponents of the oil palm industry have used economic objectives to justify expansion, while opponents have raised the negative socioecological impacts on communities. To assist the debate, we assessed the association between the change in land-uses and climate, the change in village primary livelihoods towards monocultural oil palm cultivation, and the change in village welfare after adopting oil palm across Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, between 2000 and 2014. We show that the change in village primary livelihoods towards monocultural oil palm cultivation during this period was associated with complex interrelations between the expansion of agricultural industries, and conducive climate and market conditions for supporting agricultural production. The shift to oil palm monoculture brought significant economic benefit to villages, but this was limited to those with past exposure to plantation management and the market economy, such as in polyculture plantation villages. For villages where the majority of communities practiced traditional subsistence-based livelihoods (farming, foraging and fishing), the economic benefit from a shift to oil palm lasted only a few years after transition, while the socioecological welfare deteriorated. Furthermore, the shift to oil palm monoculture jeopardized food security among these subsistence livelihood villages. Baseline economic and socioecological conditions of villages, therefore, critically determine the success of the oil palm sector in providing economic benefits over the long term. Our study urgently calls for considering oil palm development objectives not only in terms of regional economic gain, but also the future maintenance of socioecological welfare of village communities