Accumulation by development: The key role of poverty reduction narratives for resource capture in rural Cambodia

Indigenous shifting agriculture has been criticized for its negative effects on forest carbon stocks and mitigation policies have consequently fostered different forest management approaches. This has caused land disputes with indigenous populations in countries of the South, who have lost access to livelihood resources, finding themselves forced to c

Ecological distribution conflicts as forces for sustainability

Can ecological distribution conflicts turn into forces for sustainability? This overview paper addresses in a systematic conceptual manner the question of why, through whom, how, and when conflicts over the use of the environment may take an active role in shaping transitions toward sustainability. It presents a conceptual framework that schematically maps out the linkages between (a) patterns of (unsustainable) social metabolism, (b) the emergence of ecological distribution conflicts, (c) the rise of environmental justice movements, and (d) their potential contributions for sustainability transitions. The ways how these four processes can influence each other are multi-faceted and often not a foretold story. Yet, ecological distribution conflicts can have an important role for sustainability, because they relentlessly bring to light conflicting values over the environment as well as unsustainable resource uses affecting people and the planet. Environmental justice movements, born out of such conflicts, become key actors in politicizing such unsustainable resource uses, but moreover, they take sometimes also radical actions to stop them. By drawing on creative forms of mobilizations and diverse repertoires of action to effectively reduce unsustainabilities, they can turn from ‘victims’ of environmental injustices into ‘warriors’ for sustainability. But when will improvements in sustainability be lasting? By looking at the overall dynamics between the four processes, we aim to foster a more systematic understanding of the dynamics and roles of ecological distribution conflicts within sustainability processes

Correction to: Ecological distribution conflicts as forces for sustainability: an overview and conceptual framework

The article Ecological distribution conflicts as forces for sustainability: an overview and conceptual framework, written by Arnim Scheidel, Leah Temper, Federico Demaria and Joan Martínez‑Alier was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal (currently SpringerLink) on 13 December 2017 without open access. With the author(s)’ decision to opt for Open Choice the copyright of the article changed on 13 December 2017 to © The Author(s) 2017 and the article is forthwith distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, duplication, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The original article was corrected

Flood Rescue: A Gender-Inclusive Integrated STEM Curriculum Unit

As national reform documents and movements in the United States, such as Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013), push K-12 educators to begin to include engineering and integration of the STEM disciplines, there is a need to create curricula that meet a multitude of different standards. Additionally, there is a need to engage a more diverse population of students to pursue STEM careers. The 6th grade curriculum presented here focuses on an example of a teacher-created integrated STEM curriculum that combines girl-friendly instructional strategies (Häussler et al., 1998; Newbill & Cennamo, 2008) with an integrated STEM framework (Moore et al., 2014). An engineering design challenge that asks students to create a prototype of a watercraft used by the National Guard to rescue people during floods engages students in learning various physics concepts (forces, buoyancy, volume, and maximum capacity). In this article, we describe the lessons of the unit with respect to the frameworks, as well as key areas that particularly impacted 6th grade girls and boys

Diclofenac Prolongs Repolarization in Ventricular Muscle with Impaired Repolarization Reserve

Background: The aim of the present work was to characterize the electrophysiological effects of the non-steroidal anti- inflammatory drug diclofenac and to study the possible proarrhythmic potency of the drug in ventricular muscle. Methods: Ion currents were recorded using voltage clamp technique in canine single ventricular cells and action potentials were obtained from canine ventricular preparations using microelectrodes. The proarrhythmic potency of the drug was investigated in an anaesthetized rabbit proarrhythmia model. Results: Action potentials were slightly lengthened in ventricular muscle but were shortened in Purkinje fibers by diclofenac (20 mM). The maximum upstroke velocity was decreased in both preparations. Larger repolarization prolongation was observed when repolarization reserve was impaired by previous BaCl 2 application. Diclofenac (3 mg/kg) did not prolong while dofetilide (25 mg/kg) significantly lengthened the QT c interval in anaesthetized rabbits. The addition of diclofenac following reduction of repolarization reserve by dofetilide further prolonged QT c . Diclofenac alone did not induce Torsades de Pointes ventricular tachycardia (TdP) while TdP incidence following dofetilide was 20%. However, the combination of diclofenac and dofetilide significantly increased TdP incidence (62%). In single ventricular cells diclofenac (30 mM) decreased the amplitude of rapid (I Kr ) and slow (I Ks ) delayed rectifier currents thereby attenuating repolarization reserve. L-type calcium current (I Ca ) was slightly diminished, but the transient outward (I to ) and inward rectifier (I K1 ) potassium currents were not influenced. Conclusions: Diclofenac at therapeutic concentrations and even at high dose does not prolong repolarization markedly and does not increase the risk of arrhythmia in normal heart. However, high dose diclofenac treatment may lengthen repolarization and enhance proarrhythmic risk in hearts with reduced repolarization reserve

The coming of the Greeks to Provence and Corsica: Y-chromosome models of archaic Greek colonization of the western Mediterranean

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The process of Greek colonization of the central and western Mediterranean during the Archaic and Classical Eras has been understudied from the perspective of population genetics. To investigate the Y chromosomal demography of Greek colonization in the western Mediterranean, Y-chromosome data consisting of 29 YSNPs and 37 YSTRs were compared from 51 subjects from Provence, 58 subjects from Smyrna and 31 subjects whose paternal ancestry derives from Asia Minor Phokaia, the ancestral embarkation port to the 6^thcentury BCE Greek colonies of Massalia (Marseilles) and Alalie (Aleria, Corsica).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>19% of the Phokaian and 12% of the Smyrnian representatives were derived for haplogroup E-V13, characteristic of the Greek and Balkan mainland, while 4% of the Provencal, 4.6% of East Corsican and 1.6% of West Corsican samples were derived for E-V13. An admixture analysis estimated that 17% of the Y-chromosomes of Provence may be attributed to Greek colonization. Using the following putative Neolithic Anatolian lineages: J2a-DYS445 = 6, G2a-M406 and J2a1b1-M92, the data predict a 0% Neolithic contribution to Provence from Anatolia. Estimates of colonial Greek vs. indigenous Celto-Ligurian demography predict a maximum of a 10% Greek contribution, suggesting a Greek male elite-dominant input into the Iron Age Provence population.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Given the origin of viniculture in Provence is ascribed to Massalia, these results suggest that E-V13 may trace the demographic and socio-cultural impact of Greek colonization in Mediterranean Europe, a contribution that appears to be considerably larger than that of a Neolithic pioneer colonization.</p

The Economic Archaeology of Roman Economic Performance

Recent years have witnessed a paradigm shift in the study of the Roman economy. Methodologically modern economic analysis is now far more acceptable than it once was, and archaeology has become the major source of empirical data for many questions. On the substantive side there is now a far clearer appreciation of the major changes that the Roman economy underwent, with substantial growth of population and aggregate production and even some improvements in standard of living, but followed by equally dramatic decline. This economic success was not limited to the imperial core, but also extended to the provinces

Revisiting the ‘Great Levelling’: the limits of Piketty’s Capital and Ideology for understanding the rise of late 20th century inequality

In Capital and Ideology, Thomas Piketty returns to questions of historical inequality, not merely to fill in the gaps in the earlier, widely circulated and impactful Capital in the 21st Century, but to undertake a far more ambitious and nuanced project. Critics (Bhambra and Holmwood 2017; Moeller 2015) pointed out that in the previous book, Piketty’s consideration of the role of high concentrations wealth on inequality focused largely on a handful of relatively wealthy countries (the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan). More importantly, it did not consider the political and economic relationships, forged by European colonization and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, that helped create lasting inequalities in wealth, status, education and life expectancy around the globe. These oversights corresponded to significant methodological gaps, in which inequalities defined by social status and identity, including gender, race and caste, were largely left out of considerations that centred around economic and material disparities. Yet these different forms of inequalities are intimately connected, as gender wage gaps and racial wealth gaps in different parts of the world attest

The Equifinality of Archaeological Networks: an Agent-Based Exploratory Lab Approach

When we find an archaeological network, how can we explore the necessary versus contingent processes at play in the formation of that archaeological network? Given a set of circumstances or processes, what other possible network shapes could have emerged? This is the problem of equifinality, where many different means could potentially arrive at the same end result: the networks that we observe. This paper outlines how agent-based modelling can be used as a laboratory for exploring different processes of archaeological network formation. We begin by describing our best guess about how the (ancient) world worked, given our target materials (here, the networks of production and patronage surrounding the Roman brick industry in the hinterland of Rome). We then develop an agent-based model of the Roman extractive economy which generates different kinds of networks under various assumptions about how that economy works. The rules of the simulation are built upon the work of Bang (2006; 2008) who describes a model of the Roman economy which he calls the ‘imperial Bazaar’. The agents are allowed to interact, and the investigators compare the kinds of networks this description generates over an entire landscape of economic possibilities. By rigorously exploring this landscape, and comparing the resultant networks with those observed in the archaeological materials, the investigators will be able to employ the principle of equifinality to work out the representativeness of the archaeological network and thus the underlying processes

A novel pathogenic MLH1 missense mutation, c.112A > C, p.Asn38His, in six families with Lynch syndrome

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>An unclassified variant (UV) in exon 1 of the <it>MLH1 </it>gene, c.112A > C, p.Asn38His, was found in six families who meet diagnostic criteria for Lynch syndrome. The pathogenicity of this variant was unknown. We aim to elucidate the pathogenicity of this <it>MLH1 </it>variant in order to counsel these families adequately and to enable predictive testing in healthy at-risk relatives.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We studied clinical data, microsatellite instability and immunohistochemical staining of MMR proteins, and performed genealogy, haplotype analysis and DNA testing of control samples.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The UV showed co-segregation with the disease in all families. All investigated tumors showed a microsatellite instable pattern. Immunohistochemical data were variable among tested tumors. Three families had a common ancestor and all families originated from the same geographical area in The Netherlands. Haplotype analysis showed a common haplotype in all six families.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We conclude that the <it>MLH1 </it>variant is a pathogenic mutation and genealogy and haplotype analysis results strongly suggest that it is a Dutch founder mutation. Our findings imply that predictive testing can be offered to healthy family members. The immunohistochemical data of MMR protein expression show that interpreting these results in case of a missense mutation should be done with caution.</p