			Home About us Contact

Continuing Debate (continuing + debate)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%
Medical Sciences	20%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	20%

Selected Abstracts

Effects of Economic Prosperity on Numbers of Threatened Species

CONSERVATION BIOLOGY, Issue 4 2001
Robin Naidoo
We corrected for factors that might otherwise confound such a relationship. Our study was motivated by the continuing debate over the relationship between environmental degradation and per-capita income. Proponents of the environmental Kuznets-curve hypothesis argue that although environmental degradation may increase initially, increases in per-capita income will eventually result in greater environmental quality. Theoretical objections and the lack of widespread empirical evidence recently have thrown doubt on the existence of such a pattern. Treating threat to biodiversity as one potential indicator of environmental degradation, we divided threatened species into seven taxonomic groups ( plants, mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, fishes, and invertebrates) and analyzed each group separately. Count-data regression analysis indicated that the number of threatened species was related to per-capita gross national product in five of seven taxonomic groups. Birds were the only taxonomic group in which numbers of threatened species decreased throughout the range of developed countries' per-capita gross national product. Plants, amphibians, reptiles, and invertebrates showed increasing numbers of threatened species throughout this same range. If these relationships hold, increasing numbers of species from several taxonomic groups are likely to be threatened with extinction as countries increase in prosperity. A key challenge is to understand the interactions among consumer preferences, biology, and institutions that lead to the relationship observed for birds and to see whether this knowledge can be applied to conservation of other taxa. Resumen: Utilizamos datos de más de 100 países para investigar la relación entre números de especies amenazadas y el producto interno bruto per cápita. Hicimos ajustes para factores que pudieran confundir tal relación. Nuestro estudio fue motivado por el continuo debate sobre la relación entre la degradación ambiental y el ingreso per cápita. Proponentes de la hipótesis de la curva ambiental de Kuznets argumentan que, aunque la degradación ambiental puede aumentar inicialmente, el incremento en el ingreso per cápita eventualmente resultará en una mejor calidad ambiental. Recientemente, objeciones teóricas y la carencia de evidencia empírica generalizada hacen dudar de la existencia de ese patrón. Tratando la amenaza a la biodiversidad como un potencial indicador de la degradación ambiental, dividimos a las especies amenazadas en siete grupos taxonómicos (plantas, mamíferos, aves, anfibios, reptiles, peces e invertebrados) y analizamos cada uno por separado. El análisis de regresión de los datos de conteo indicó que el número de especies amenazadas se relacionó con el producto interno bruto per cápita en 5 de los 7 grupos taxonómicos. Las aves fueron el único grupo en el que el número de especies amenazadas decreció a lo largo del rango del producto interno bruto per cápita de los países desarrollados. Las plantas, anfibios, reptiles e invertebrados mostraron un incremento en el número de especies amenazadas en este mismo rango. Si estas relaciones persisten, es posible que aumente el número de especies, de varios grupos taxonómicos, amenazadas de extinción a medida que los países incrementen su prosperidad. Constituye un reto clave entender las interacciones entre la preferencia de los consumidores y los factores biológicos e institucionales que conducen a la relación observada en las aves, y ver si este conocimiento puede aplicarse en la conservación de otros taxones. [source]

August 1961: Christa Wolf and the Politics of Disavowal

GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 1 2002
Charity Scribner
Throughout her career Christa Wolf has circumvented any explicit reference to the Berlin Wall. Although Der geteilte Himmel reaches its climax in the summer of 1961, the Wall does not figure in this novel. None the less it provides a framework for the narrative through its absence. Wolf's latest novel, Medea, also organises itself around the tropes of walls and borders. Today, forty years after Berlin's division, one could easily dismiss Wolf's writing because of her ,blind spot'vis-á-vis the Wall. But to do so would forfeit Wolf's subtle handling of literary representation, prohibition, and disavowal. This essay argues that Wolf's elaborations of disavowal play a critical (but as yet unexamined) role in the continuing debate over the politics of memory that has come to define German studies. Freudian theories of repression and fetishism are engaged to discern the structures of disavowal that give form not only to Der geteilte Himmel and Medea, but also to Wolf's most important writings on ethics, ,Selbstanzeige' and ,Nagelprobe'. The essay concludes that authentic memory does not reconstitute a homogeneous image of the past. Rather, as Wolf demonstrates, it reawakens the antagonisms that forever thwart the resolution of and in any narrative. [source]

Linearity in rhetorical organisation: a comparative cross-cultural analysis of newstext from the People's Republic of China and Australia

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS, Issue 2 2000
Guy RamsayArticle first published online: 3 APR 200
Second or foreign language teachers would be familiar with student comments such as, "I can't follow what they're saying!", "What are they getting at?", or "What's their point?", particularly when reading L2 texts of considerable length. This paper seeks to address the issues premised by such comments made by L2 learners of Modern Standard Chinese, within the rubric of contrastive rhetoric studies. Such studies to date have produced equivocal evidence of variation in rhetorical organisation across culturo-linguistic groups. In order to contribute to this continuing debate, this study employs the Rhetorical Structure Theory analytic framework to produce pictorial representations of lengthy Chinese and Australian news journal text. Results obtained clearly demonstrate the feasibility of using the RST framework in this kind of analysis. While the small size of the newstext corpus severely limits the generality of other findings, they give tentative support to the contrastive rhetoric hypothesis. Pedagogical implications include the benefits of promoting awareness of such cross-cultural variation within the L2 classroom. [source]

A Review and Extension of Current Models of Dynamic Criteria

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SELECTION AND ASSESSMENT, Issue 3 2000
Debra Steele-Johnson
An important issue in personnel selection and test validation has been the nature of performance criteria and more specifically the existence of dynamic criteria. There is a continuing debate regarding the extent to which performance and validity coefficients remain stable over time. We examine research within work, laboratory, and academic settings and evaluate existing models of dynamic criteria. Building on previous models, we propose an integrative model of dynamic criteria that identifies important issues for ability and performance constructs and discusses how variables related to the task, job, and organization can affect the temporal stability of criterion performance and the ability-performance relationship. [source]

U.S. Perceptions of Nuclear Security in the Wake of the Cold War: Comparing Public and Elite Belief Systems

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2002
Kerry G. Herron
Our research adds new evidence to the continuing debate about capacities of mass publics to contribute to foreign and security policy processes. Focusing on U.S. beliefs and preferences about nuclear security in the post,Cold War era, we examine not only linear relationships among elite and mass belief structures, but also combinations of beliefs that may be precursors to policy coalitions. We examine attitudes and preferences about nuclear issues among two elite publics,scientists and legislators,surveyed in 1997, and among two samples of the U.S. general public surveyed in 1997 and 1999. We compare elite and mass belief structures using three different methods: descriptive comparisons of central tendencies, relational analyses using bivariate and multivariate regressions, and coalitional analyses using cluster analytical techniques. With each method of analysis we find evidence of similar belief structures and similar relationships between beliefs and nuclear policy preferences among our elite and mass samples. [source]

Bias from Farmer Self-Selection in Genetically Modified Crop Productivity Estimates: Evidence from Indian Data

JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2007
Benjamin Crost
Q12; D81 Abstract In the continuing debate over the impact of genetically modified (GM) crops on farmers of developing countries, it is important to accurately measure magnitudes such as farm-level yield gains from GM crop adoption. Yet most farm-level studies in the literature do not control for farmer self-selection, a potentially important source of bias in such estimates. We use farm-level panel data from Indian cotton farmers to investigate the yield effect of GM insect-resistant cotton. We explicitly take into account the fact that the choice of crop variety is an endogenous variable which might lead to bias from self-selection. A production function is estimated using a fixed-effects model to control for selection bias. Our results show that efficient farmers adopt Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton at a higher rate than their less efficient peers. This suggests that cross-sectional estimates of the yield effect of Bt cotton, which do not control for self-selection effects, are likely to be biased upwards. However, after controlling for selection bias, we still find that there is a significant positive yield effect from adoption of Bt cotton that more than offsets the additional cost of Bt seed. [source]

The place of suxamethonium in pediatric anesthesia

PEDIATRIC ANESTHESIA, Issue 6 2009
MARCIN RAWICZ MD
Summary Suxamethonium is a drug that promotes very strong views both for and against its use in the context of pediatric anesthesia. As such, the continuing debate is an excellent topic for a ,Pro,Con' debate. Despite ongoing efforts by drug companies, the popular view still remains that there is no single neuromuscular blocking drug that can match suxamethonium in terms of speed of onset of neuromuscular block and return of neuromuscular control. However, with this drug the balance of benefit vs risk and side effects are pivotal. Suxamethonium has significant adverse effects, some of which can be life threatening. This is particularly relevant for pediatric anesthesia because the spectrum of childhood diseases may expose susceptible individuals to an increased likelihood of adverse events compared with adults. Additionally, the concerns related to airway control in the infant may encourage the occasional pediatric anesthetist to use the drug in preference to slower onset/offset drugs. In the current environment of drug research, surveillance and licensing, it is debatable whether this drug would achieve the central place it still has in pediatric anesthesia. The arguments for and against its use are set out below by our two international experts, Marcin Rawicz from Poland and Barbara Brandom from USA. This will allow the reader an objective evaluation with which to make an informed choice about the use of suxamethonium in their practice. [source]

Democracy and decentralisation: local politics, marginalisation and political accountability in Uganda and South Africa

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2006
Carol L. Dauda
Abstract While democratic decentralisation is viewed as an important vehicle for development in sub-Saharan Africa, its viability in practice is often doubted. Lack of resources, expertise, marginalised populations and the inexperience of local electors are all barriers to successful decentralisation. However, often overlooked are the diverse ways in which local people use the opportunities provided by democratic decentralisation to engage local authorities and demand accountability. Using examples from Uganda and South Africa,1 this article demonstrates how local people use democratic openings to meet the challenges of marginalisation and demand accountability. While the data is from the mid to late 1990s, the evidence presented here is relevant to the continuing debate over democratic decentralisation for it reveals something that is not always recognised: lack of resources is not necessarily the problem; developing political capacity for demanding accountability for existing resources is what is important. The implication is that for decentralisation to be effective, practitioners must develop a better understanding of local political engagement so that their efforts may strengthen rather than thwart emerging political relations of accountability. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

The relationship between epilepsy and autism: a continuing debate

ACTA PAEDIATRICA, Issue 4 2009
Frank M C Besag
No abstract is available for this article. [source]

Radical Opinion in an Age of Reform: Thomas Perronet Thompson and the Westminster Review

HISTORY, Issue 281 2001
Michael J. Turner
Historians have long been interested in the growth of the nineteenth-century political press, and many commentators recognize the instrumentality of newspapers, pamphlets, prints and publications of all kinds in the development of radical opinion and popular participation in politics. This article is offered as a contribution to continuing debates about the links between radicalism and the press. Its purpose is to examine the establishment and early history of the Westminster Review, the leading radical periodical of the early nineteenth century. Special attention will be paid to the role of Thomas Perronet Thompson (1783-1869), who was associated with the review for several years as owner, editor and contributor. This article will demonstrate the importance of Thompson's involvement with the Westminster Review with reference to its politics, reputation, influence, management and status. Personal relationships which had a bearing on the review's early history - particularly those between Thompson, Jeremy Bentham, John Bowring and the Mills - will be examined, and there will also be discussion of editorial processes, journalistic standards, business rivalry, the nature of the Westminster Review's content, and its conflict with the Whig Edinburgh Review. [source]