Collective responses to state-led displacement and relocation projects : lessons learned from Beleninos river communities

Most social sciences scholarship on the relationship between environmental issues and forced displacement on poor communities in Latin America, and particularly in Peru, explores the risk recognized as evident by all involved actors; however, in this study, it is the state that is producing a perception of risk by attempting to forcibly displace the residents of a community adjacent to the Belen river in the Peruvian Amazon. This research focuses on the perceptions of the residents, ex-residents and the institutions involved in the process of displacement. Thus, the central themes of this thesis seek to answer the following questions: how poor people respond to government initiatives of displacement and relocation based on their local knowledge of risk assessment? How they perceive risk? What are their subjective and material worldviews of space? And how they understand their decision to either stay or leave Bajo Belen? This study demonstrates that the government’s risk assessment policies resulted from the reorganization and simplification of nature by the Peruvian government to suit developers’ and public and private institutions’ goals, instead of leveraging on the local know-how as the basis for the design of public policies.Latin American Studie

A STUDY OF FACTORS IMPACTING UPON THE PERCEIVED ROLE AND PRACTICE OF SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGISTS WORKING WITH SEXUAL MINORITY YOUTH

The present study examined the archived results of a national survey involving the perceived role and actual practices of school psychologists working with sexual minority youth. The study focused on identifying factors associated with the perceived role and responsibility of school psychologists when working with this population and subsequent provision of support services. The majority of school psychologists agreed addressing harassment should be a part of their role while only one-third gave such ratings in regard to addressing sexual risks. There was wide variability across differing types of actual services provided. Less than one-quarter of the respondents reported involvement with sexual health related issues and one-quarter had intervened to address harassment of LGBQ youth. Survey responses demonstrated a significant relationship between the amount of services delivered to LGBQ youth by school psychologists and the amount of both formal and professional development training these psychologists received related to LGBQ youth. However, only professional development training was related to perceived role. No relationship between the time elapsed since graduate training and services provided to LGBQ youth was found. Although attitudes about the role and responsibility of the school psychologist in working with LGBQ youth may not have changed, some individuals had the skill base to deliver such services. Clearly, given the literature's emphasis on viewing the school psychologist's role within this comprehensive health care model, it would be imperative to provide professional development and pre-service training in both the role and the skills needed for addressing the multiple needs of sexual minority youth

Materials and structures

Materials and structures technology covers a wide range of technical areas. Some of the most pertinent issues for the Astrotech 21 missions include dimensionally stable structural materials, advanced composites, dielectric coatings, optical metallic coatings for low scattered light applications, low scattered light surfaces, deployable and inflatable structures (including optical), support structures in 0-g and 1-g environments, cryogenic optics, optical blacks, contamination hardened surfaces, radiation hardened glasses and crystals, mono-metallic telescopes and instruments, and materials characterization. Some specific examples include low coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) structures (0.01 ppm/K), lightweight thermally stable mirror materials, thermally stable optical assemblies, high reliability/accuracy (1 micron) deployable structures, and characterization of nanometer level behavior of materials/structures for interferometry concepts. Large filled-aperture concepts will require materials with CTE's of 10(exp 9) at 80 K, anti-contamination coatings, deployable and erectable structures, composite materials with CTE's less than 0.01 ppm/K and thermal hysteresis, 0.001 ppm/K. Gravitational detection systems such as LAGOS will require rigid/deployable structures, dimensionally stable components, lightweight materials with low conductivity, and high stability optics. The Materials and Structures panel addressed these issues and the relevance of the Astrotech 21 mission requirements by dividing materials and structures technology into five categories. These categories, the necessary development, and applicable mission/program development phasing are summarized. For each of these areas, technology assessments were made and development plans were defined

Near-IR Search for Lensed Supernovae Behind Galaxy Clusters - II. First Detection and Future Prospects

Powerful gravitational telescopes in the form of massive galaxy clusters can be used to enhance the light collecting power over a limited field of view by about an order of magnitude in flux. This effect is exploited here to increase the depth of a survey for lensed supernovae at near-IR wavelengths. A pilot SN search program conducted with the ISAAC camera at VLT is presented. Lensed galaxies behind the massive clusters A1689, A1835 and AC114 were observed for a total of 20 hours split into 2, 3 and 4 epochs respectively, separated by approximately one month to a limiting magnitude J<24 (Vega). Image subtractions including another 20 hours worth of archival ISAAC/VLT data were used to search for transients with lightcurve properties consistent with redshifted supernovae, both in the new and reference data. The feasibility of finding lensed supernovae in our survey was investigated using synthetic lightcurves of supernovae and several models of the volumetric Type Ia and core-collapse supernova rates as a function of redshift. We also estimate the number of supernova discoveries expected from the inferred star formation rate in the observed galaxies. The methods consistently predict a Poisson mean value for the expected number of SNe in the survey between N_SN=0.8 and 1.6 for all supernova types, evenly distributed between core collapse and Type Ia SN. One transient object was found behind A1689, 0.5" from a galaxy with photometric redshift z_gal=0.6 +- 0.15. The lightcurve and colors of the transient are consistent with being a reddened Type IIP SN at z_SN=0.59. The lensing model predicts 1.4 magnitudes of magnification at the location of the transient, without which this object would not have been detected in the near-IR ground based search described in this paper (unlensed magnitude J~25). (abridged)Comment: Accepted by AA, matches journal versio

Radial structure, inflow and central mass of stationary radiative galaxy clusters

We analyse the radial structure of self-gravitating spheres consisting of multiple interpenetrating fluids, such as the X-ray emitting gas and the dark halo of a galaxy cluster. In these dipolytropic models, the adiabatic dark matter sits in equilibrium, while the gas develops a gradual, smooth, quasi-stationary cooling flow. Both affect and respond to the collective gravitational field. We find that all subsonic, radially continuous, steady solutions require a non-zero minimum central point mass. For Mpc-sized haloes with 7–10 effective degrees of freedom (F2), the minimum central mass is compatible with observations of supermassive black holes. Smaller gas mass influxes enable smaller central masses for wider ranges of F2. The halo comprises a sharp spike around the central mass, embedded within a core of nearly constant density (at 101–102.5 kpc scales), with outskirts that attenuate and naturally truncate at finite radius (several Mpc). The gas density resembles a broken power law in radius, but the temperature dips and peaks within the dark core. A finite minimum temperature occurs due to gravitational self-warming, without cold mass dropout nor needing regulatory heating. X-ray emission from the intracluster medium mimics a β-model plus bright compact nucleus. Near-sonic points in the gas flow are bottlenecks to the allowed steady solutions; the outermost are at kpc scales. These sites may preferentially develop cold mass dropout during strong perturbations off equilibrium. Within the sonic point, the profile of gas specific entropy is flatter than s∝r1/2, but this is a shallow ramp and not an isentropic core. When F2 is large, the inner halo spike is only marginally Jeans stable in the central parsec, suggesting that a large non-linear disturbance could trigger local dark collapse on to the central object