Taking a deeper look : revisiting our understanding of deep groundwater systems

Improved identification and protection of fresh groundwater resources is important in an increasingly water stressed world. Total dissolved solids (TDS) in groundwater can be used to better understand variations in the quality of deep groundwater systems. Here ‘deep groundwater’ refers to an interval below the current depth of groundwater exploitation. Could this be used in the future for additional resources

The politics of accelerating low-carbon transitions: towards a new research agenda

Meeting the climate change targets in the Paris Agreement implies a substantial and rapid acceleration of low-carbon transitions. Combining insights from political science, policy analysis and socio-technical transition studies, this paper addresses the politics of deliberate acceleration by taking stock of emerging examples, mobilizing relevant theoretical approaches, and articulating a new research agenda. Going beyond routine appeals for more ‘political will’, it organises ideas and examples under three themes: 1) the role of coalitions in supporting and hindering acceleration; 2) the role of feedbacks, through which policies may shape actor preferences which, in turn, create stronger policies; and 3) the role of broader contexts (political economies, institutions, cultural norms, and technical systems) in creating more (or less) favourable conditions for deliberate acceleration. We discuss the importance of each theme, briefly review previous research and articulate new research questions. Our concluding section discusses the current and potential future relationship between transitions theory and political science

Three decades of climate mitigation: why haven't we bent the global emissions curve?

Despite three decades of political efforts and a wealth of research on the causes and catastrophic impacts of climate change, global carbon dioxide emissions have continued to rise and are 60% higher today than they were in 1990. Exploring this rise through nine thematic lenses—covering issues of climate governance, the fossil fuel industry, geopolitics, economics, mitigation modeling, energy systems, inequity, lifestyles, and social imaginaries—draws out multifaceted reasons for our collective failure to bend the global emissions curve. However, a common thread that emerges across the reviewed literature is the central role of power, manifest in many forms, from a dogmatic political-economic hegemony and influential vested interests to narrow techno-economic mindsets and ideologies of control. Synthesizing the various impediments to mitigation reveals how delivering on the commitments enshrined in the Paris Agreement now requires an urgent and unprecedented transformation away from today's carbon- and energy-intensive development paradigm

Representativeness of the European social partner organisations : human health sector

Aquesta publicació s'elabora a partir de les contribucions de cadascú dels membres nacionals que integren la Network of Eufound Correspondent. Pel cas d'Espanya la contribució ha estat realitzada per l'Oscar MolinaThis study provides information allowing for an assessment of the representativeness of the actors involved in the European sectoral social dialogue committee for the human health sector. Their relative representativeness legitimises their right to be consulted, their role and effective participation in the European sectoral social dialogue, and their capacity to negotiate agreements. The aim of Eurofound's studies on representativeness is to identify the relevant national and European social partner organisations in the field of industrial relations in the EU Member States. This study identified the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) - representing employees - and the European Hospital and Healthcare Employers' Association (HOSPEEM) - representing employers - as the most representative European-level social partner organisations in the human health sector. The member organisations of the European Confederation of Independent Trade Unions (CESI) and UNI Europa also organise employees in the sector in several Member States

A dimensional summation account of polymorphous category learning

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via the DOI in this record.Data and code availaibility: The data and code for all analyses for all experiments are available at the OSF addresses given in each Results section. The stimuli are available at the same locations.Polymorphous concepts are hard to learn, and this is perhaps surprising because they, like many natural concepts, have an overall similarity structure. However, the dimensional summation hypothesis (Milton & Wills, 2004) predicts this difficulty. It also makes a number of other predictions about polymorphous concept formation, which are tested here. In Experiment 1 we confirm the theory’s prediction that polymorphous concept formation should be facilitated by deterministic pretraining on the constituent features of the stimulus. This facilitation is relative to an equivalent amount of training on the polymorphous concept itself. In Experiments 2–4, the dimensional summation account of this single feature pretraining effect is contrasted with some other accounts, including a more general strategic account (Experiment 2), seriality of training and stimulus decomposition accounts (Experiment 3), and the role of errors (Experiment 4). The dimensional summation hypothesis provides the best account of these data. In Experiment 5, a further prediction is confirmed — the single feature pretraining effect is eliminated by a concurrent counting task. The current experiments suggest the hypothesis that natural concepts might be acquired by the deliberate serial summation of evidence. This idea has testable implications for classroom learning.Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC

Dissociable learning processes, associative theory, and testimonial reviews: A comment on Smith and Church (2018

Smith and Church (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25, 1565–1584 2018) present a “testimonial” review of dissociable learning processes in comparative and cognitive psychology, by which we mean they include only the portion of the available evidence that is consistent with their conclusions. For example, they conclude that learning the information-integration category-learning task with immediate feedback is implicit, but do not consider the evidence that people readily report explicit strategies in this task, nor that this task can be accommodated by accounts that make no distinction between implicit and explicit processes. They also consider some of the neuroscience relating to information-integration category learning, but do not report those aspects that are more consistent with an explicit than an implicit account. They further conclude that delay conditioning in humans is implicit, but do not report evidence that delay conditioning requires awareness; nor do they present the evidence that conditioned taste aversion, which should be explicit under their account, can be implicit. We agree with Smith and Church that it is helpful to have a clear definition of associative theory, but suggest that their definition may be unnecessarily restrictive. We propose an alternative definition of associative theory and briefly describe an experimental procedure that we think may better distinguish between associative and non-associative processes

Carbon-sensitive pedotransfer functions for plant available water

Currently accepted pedotransfer functions show negligible effect of management-induced changes to soil organic carbon (SOC) on plant available water holding capacity (θAWHC), while some studies show the ability to substantially increase θAWHC through management. The Soil Health Institute\u27s North America Project to Evaluate Soil Health Measurements measured water content at field capacity using intact soil cores across 124 long-term research sites that contained increases in SOC as a result of management treatments such as reduced tillage and cover cropping. Pedotransfer functions were created for volumetric water content at field capacity (θFC) and permanent wilting point (θPWP). New pedotransfer functions had predictions of θAWHC that were similarly accurate compared with Saxton and Rawls when tested on samples from the National Soil Characterization database. Further, the new pedotransfer functions showed substantial effects of soil calcareousness and SOC on θAWHC. For an increase in SOC of 10 g kg–1 (1%) in noncalcareous soils, an average increase in θAWHC of 3.0 mm 100 mm–1 soil (0.03 m3 m–3) on average across all soil texture classes was found. This SOC related increase in θAWHC is about double previous estimates. Calcareous soils had an increase in θAWHC of 1.2 mm 100 mm–1 soil associated with a 10 g kg–1 increase in SOC, across all soil texture classes. New equations can aid in quantifying benefits of soil management practices that increase SOC and can be used to model the effect of changes in management on drought resilience

Linking soil microbial community structure to potential carbon mineralization: A continental scale assessment of reduced tillage

Potential carbon mineralization (Cmin) is a commonly used indicator of soil health, with greater Cmin values interpreted as healthier soil. While Cmin values are typically greater in agricultural soils managed with minimal physical disturbance, the mechanisms driving the increases remain poorly understood. This study assessed bacterial and archaeal community structure and potential microbial drivers of Cmin in soils maintained under various degrees of physical disturbance. Potential carbon mineralization, 16S rRNA sequences, and soil characterization data were collected as part of the North American Project to Evaluate Soil Health Measurements (NAPESHM). Results showed that type of cropping system, intensity of physical disturbance, and soil pH influenced microbial sensitivity to physical disturbance. Furthermore, 28% of amplicon sequence variants (ASVs), which were important in modeling Cmin, were enriched under soils managed with minimal physical disturbance. Sequences identified as enriched under minimal disturbance and important for modeling Cmin, were linked to organisms which could produce extracellular polymeric substances and contained metabolic strategies suited for tolerating environmental stressors. Understanding how physical disturbance shapes microbial communities across climates and inherent soil properties and drives changes in Cmin provides the context necessary to evaluate management impacts on standardized measures of soil microbial activity