Understanding the pathways from biodiversity to agro-ecological outcomes: A new, interactive approach

The adoption of agro-ecological practices in agricultural systems worldwide can contribute to increased food production without compromising future food security, especially under the current biodiversity loss and climate change scenarios. Despite the increase in publications on agro-ecological research and practices during the last 35 years, a weak link between that knowledge and changed farmer practices has led to few examples of agro-ecological protocols and effective delivery systems to agriculturalists. In an attempt to reduce this gap, we synthesised the main concepts related to biodiversity and its functions by creating a web-based interactive spiral (www.biodiversityfunction.com). This tool explains and describes a pathway for achieving agro-ecological outcomes, starting from the basic principle of biodiversity and its functions to enhanced biodiversity on farms. Within this pathway, 11 key steps are identified and sequentially presented on a web platform through which key players (farmers, farmer networks, policy makers, scientists and other stakeholders) can navigate and learn. Because in many areas of the world the necessary knowledge needed for achieving the adoption of particular agro-ecological techniques is not available, the spiral approach can provide the necessary conceptual steps needed for obtaining and understanding such knowledge by navigating through the interactive pathway. This novel approach aims to improve our understanding of the sequence from the concept of biodiversity to harnessing its power to improve prospects for ‘sustainable intensification’ of agricultural systems worldwide

Review of research to inform California's climate scoping plan: Agriculture and working lands

Agriculture in California contributes 8% of the state's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To inform the state's policy and program strategy to meet climate targets, we review recent research on practices that can reduce emissions, sequester carbon and provide other co-benefits to producers and the environment across agriculture and rangeland systems. Importantly, the research reviewed here was conducted in California and addresses practices in our specific agricultural, socioeconomic and biophysical environment. Farmland conversion and the dairy and intensive livestock sector are the largest contributors to GHG emissions and offer the greatest opportunities for avoided emissions. We also identify a range of other opportunities including soil and nutrient management, integrated and diversified farming systems, rangeland management, and biomass-based energy generation. Additional research to replicate and quantify the emissions reduction or carbon sequestration potential of these practices will strengthen the evidence base for California climate policy

SDM:A New Data Set on Self-determination Movements with an Application to the Reputational Theory of Conflict

This dataset, of self-determination movements (SDMs) with universal coverage for the period from 1945 to 2012, corrects the selection bias that characterizes previous efforts to code SDMs and significantly expands coverage relative to the extant literature. For a random sample of cases, we add information on state–movement interactions and several attributes of SDM groups. The data can be used to study the causes of SDMs, the escalation of self-determination (SD) conflicts over time, and several other theoretical arguments concerning separatist conflict that have previously been tested with incomplete or inferior data.The creators request that the associated paper is cited in place of this dataset

Character, Incidence, and Predictors of Knee Pain and Activity after Infrapatellar Intramedullary Nailing of an Isolated Tibia Fracture

© Copyright 2015 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved. Objective: To study the activity and incidence of knee pain after sustaining an isolated tibia fracture treated with an infrapatellar intramedullary nail at 1 year. Design: Retrospective review of prospective cohort. Setting: Multicenter Academic and Community hospitals. Patients: Four hundred thirty-seven patients with an isolated tibia fracture completed a 12-month assessment on pain and self-reported activity. Intervention: Infrapatellar intramedullary nail. Outcomes: Demographic information, comorbid conditions, injury characteristics, and surgical technique were recorded. Knee pain was defined on a 1-7 scale with 1 being no pain and 7 being a very great deal of pain. Knee pain \u3e4 was considered clinically significant. Patients reported if they were able, able with difficulty, or unable to perform the following activities: kneel, run, climb stairs, and walk prolonged. Variables were tested in multilevel multivariable regression analyses. Results: In knee pain, 11% of patients reported a good deal to a very great deal of pain (\u3e4), and 52% of patients reported no or very little pain at 12 months. In activity at 12 months, 26% and 29% of patients were unable to kneel or run, respectively, and 31% and 35% of patients, respectively, stated they were able with difficulty or unable to use stairs or walk. Conclusions: Clinically significant knee pain (\u3e4/7) was present in 11% of patients 1 year after a tibia fracture. Of note, 31%-71% of patients had difficulty performing or were unable to perform routine daily activities of kneeling, running, and stair climbing, or walking prolonged distances

Mucedorus: the last ludic playbook, the first stage Arcadia

This article argues that two seemingly contradictory factors contributed to and sustained the success of the anonymous Elizabethan play Mucedorus (c. 1590; pub. 1598). First, that both the initial composition of Mucedorus and its Jacobean revival were driven in part by the popularity of its source, Philip Sidney's Arcadia. Second, the playbook's invitation to amateur playing allowed its romance narrative to be adopted and repurposed by diverse social groups. These two factors combined to create something of a paradox, suggesting that Mucedorus was both open to all yet iconographically connected to an elite author's popular text. This study will argue that Mucedorus pioneered the fashion for “continuations” or adaptations of the famously unfinished Arcadia, and one element of its success in print was its presentation as an affordable and performable version of Sidney's elite work. The Jacobean revival of Mucedorus by the King's Men is thus evidence of a strategy of engagement with the Arcadia designed to please the new Stuart monarchs. This association with the monarchy in part determined the cultural functions of the Arcadia and Mucedorus through the Interregnum to the close of the seventeenth century

Property and Contract Rights in Autocracies and Democracies

We present and test empirically a new theory of property and contract rights. Any incentive an autocrat has to respect such rights comes from his interest in future tax collections and national income and increases with his planning horizon. We find a compelling empirical relationship between property and contract rights and an autocrat's time in power. In lasting -- but not in new -- democracies, the same rule of law and individual rights that ensure continued free elections entail extensive property and contract rights. We show that the age of a democratic system is strongly correlated with property and contract rights

Crop pests and predators exhibit inconsistent responses to surrounding landscape composition

The idea that noncrop habitat enhances pest control and represents a win–win opportunity to conserve biodiversity and bolster yields has emerged as an agroecological paradigm. However, while noncrop habitat in landscapes surrounding farms sometimes benefits pest predators, natural enemy responses remain heterogeneous across studies and effects on pests are inconclusive. The observed heterogeneity in species responses to noncrop habitat may be biological in origin or could result from variation in how habitat and biocontrol are measured. Here, we use a pest-control database encompassing 132 studies and 6,759 sites worldwide to model natural enemy and pest abundances, predation rates, and crop damage as a function of landscape composition. Our results showed that although landscape composition explained significant variation within studies, pest and enemy abundances, predation rates, crop damage, and yields each exhibited different responses across studies, sometimes increasing and sometimes decreasing in landscapes with more noncrop habitat but overall showing no consistent trend. Thus, models that used landscape-composition variables to predict pest-control dynamics demonstrated little potential to explain variation across studies, though prediction did improve when comparing studies with similar crop and landscape features. Overall, our work shows that surrounding noncrop habitat does not consistently improve pest management, meaning habitat conservation may bolster production in some systems and depress yields in others. Future efforts to develop tools that inform farmers when habitat conservation truly represents a win–win would benefit from increased understanding of how landscape effects are modulated by local farm management and the biology of pests and their enemies

Socialization and generational political trajectories: an age, period and cohort analysis of political participation in Britain

The role of political socialization in explaining disengagement from specific modes of activism beyond voting remains largely unexplored, limited to date by available data and methods. While most previous studies have tended to propose explanations for disengagement linked to specific repertoires of political action, we propose a unified theory based on the different socialization experiences of subsequent generations. We test this theory using a new dataset of collated waves of the British Social Attitudes Survey and by applying age–period–cohort models for repeated cross-sectional data and generalized additive models to identify generational effects. We show that generational effects underlie the participatory decline across repertoires. Consistent with our expectations, the results reveal that the generation of “Thatcher’s Children” are much less likely to engage in a range of repertoires of political action than “Wilson/Callaghan’s Children”, who came of age in the more politicized 1960s and 1970s. Significantly, and in line with our theoretical expectations, the “Blair’s Babies” generation is the least politically engaged of all. We reflect on these findings and highlight the concerning implications of falling levels of activism for advanced democracies