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User Groups (user + groups)
Selected AbstractsThe Spatially Splintered State: Myths and Realities in the Regulation of Marine Fisheries in Tamil Nadu, IndiaDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 4 2003Maarten Bavinck The spatial dimension of law is a neglected field of study. This article responds to suggestions that have been made to develop a ,geography of law', and investigates expressions of State-centred law regarding common pool natural resources. It asks how variations in law between lower-level territorial units are to be explained in situations where patterns of resource exploitation are similar and the overarching State proclaims an even approach. To explore these issues, the article focuses on a case study of Tamil Nadu marine fisheries. Comparing the reality of State regulation in different coastal districts, the author argues that the State occupies a relatively weak position vis-à-vis user groups, and strives to maximize its legitimacy by adapting to local political circumstances. The end result is a legal patchwork with strong spatial connotations. [source] Decision support systems: barriers and farmers' need for support,EPPO BULLETIN, Issue 2 2007L. N. Jørgensen The highly complex knowledge of scientific disciplines makes nuanced analysis and modelling possible. However, the information produced often does not reach farmers because it is presented in a way that does not correspond to the way their work is carried out in practice. The decision support system Crop Protection Online is widely used by advisors and as a learning tool for students. Although the system has been validated in many field trials over the years and has shown reliable results, the number of end-users among farmers has been relatively low during the last 10 years (approximately 1000 farmers). A sociological investigation of farmers' decision-making styles in the area of crop protection has shown that arable farmers can be divided into three major groups: (a) system-orientated farmers, (b) experience-based farmers and (c) advisory-orientated farmers. The information required by these three groups to make their decisions varies and therefore different ways of using decision support systems need to be provided. Decision support systems need to be developed in close dialogue and collaboration with user groups. [source] The relationship between fishing methods, fisheries management and the estimation of maximum sustainable yieldFISH AND FISHERIES, Issue 4 2002Mark N Maunder Abstract The allocation of effort among fishing gears is as important as controlling effort with respect to both sustainable yield and ecosystem management. Differences in age-specific vulnerability to the fishing method can modify the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) that is obtainable from a fish stock. Different gears or methods are more or less selective for the species targeted, and MSY is rarely, if ever, attainable simultaneously for all species. The different fishing methods capture different types of nontarget species. Some methods will often be more profitable than others, and different user groups will prefer different methods. In many fisheries, it is unlikely that fishing can be limited to a single gear or method, so compromises among them will be required. Global MSY is discussed as a possible reference point for fisheries management. The yellowfin tuna fishery in the eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO) shows all the above characteristics and is used to illustrate effort allocation among fishing methods. [source] Interactions between the implementation of marine protected areas and right-based fisheries management in AustraliaFISHERIES MANAGEMENT & ECOLOGY, Issue 1 2005Article first published online: 11 JAN 200, P. BAELDE Abstract, The declaration of marine protected areas (MPAs) in Australia generates much confusion and controversy between government conservation and fisheries agencies, the fishing industry and NGOs. There are fundamental differences between the principles and practices underpinning the implementation of MPAs and fisheries management. This paper analyses the interactions between these two approaches to natural resource management and highlights the difficulties in integrating them effectively. The major challenges for governments are: poor cooperation between fisheries and conservation agencies; in principle inconsistencies between allocation of fishing rights by fisheries agencies and loss of these rights through MPA declaration; re-allocation of resources between user groups through spatial zoning; lack of fisheries expertise in conservation planning, and inappropriate single-species/single-issue approach to fisheries management. As fisheries agencies are now considering developing their own MPAs as tools for fisheries management, the need to address inconsistencies between conservation and fisheries approaches to the spatial management of natural resources increases further. Better collaboration between government agencies and better coordination of their activities would help more effective and less conflicting management of marine resources. [source] How to link biomanipulation and sustainable fisheries management: a step-by-step guideline for lakes of the European temperate zoneFISHERIES MANAGEMENT & ECOLOGY, Issue 3-4 2004T. Mehner Abstract Biomanipulation, the reduction of planktivorous fish to enhance filter-feeding zooplankton, has been used to rehabilitate eutrophied lakes. However, efficacy and long-term success were dependent on nutrient load, lake morphometry and biomanipulation measures. The ongoing focus on sustainable use of aquatic resources offers the chance to perform lake rehabilitation using a combined strategy of nutrient load reduction and traditional inland fisheries management techniques. Particularly in Central and Western Europe where piscivorous fish are the target species of most commercial and recreational fisheries, an enhancement of the piscivores by stocking and harvest regulations may act successfully in the co-management of ecosystem and fisheries. Guidelines are presented on how biomanipulation can be used as in lake rehabilitation by considering the objectives and constraints of traditional fisheries management. Alternatives in the decision tree are elucidated by examples from biomanipulations and lake management programmes in the temperate zone of Europe and North America. It is suggested that biomanipulation may support many lake rehabilitation programmes where fisheries' stakeholders are the principal user groups. [source] Internet-based information-seeking behaviour amongst doctors and nurses: a short review of the literatureHEALTH INFORMATION & LIBRARIES JOURNAL, Issue 1 2010Paula Younger Background:, Reviews of how doctors and nurses search for online information are relatively rare, particularly where research examines how they decide whether to use Internet-based resources. Original research into their online searching behaviour is also rare, particularly in real world clinical settings. as is original research into their online searching behaviour. This review collates some of the existing evidence, from 1995 to 2009. Objectives:, To establish whether there are any significant differences in the ways and reasons why doctors and nurses seek out online information; to establish how nurses and doctors locate information online; to establish whether any conclusions can be drawn from the existing evidence that might assist health and medical libraries in supporting users. Methods:, An initial scoping literature search was carried out on PubMed and CINAHL to identify existing reviews of the subject area and relevant original research between 1995 and 2009. Following refinement, further searches were carried out on Embase (Ovid), LISA and LISTA. Following the initial scoping search, two journals were identified as particularly relevant for further table of contents searching. Articles were exclused where the main focus was on patients searching for information or where the focus was the evaluation of online-based educational software or tutorials. Articles were included if they were review or meta-analysis articles, where they reported original research, and where the primary focus of the online search was for participants' ongoing Continuing Professional Development (CPD). The relevant articles are outlined, with details of numbers of participants, response rates, and the user groups. Results:, There appear to be no significant differences between the reasons why doctors and nurses seek online Internet-based evidence, or the ways in which they locate that evidence. Reasons for searching for information online are broadly the same: primarily patient care and CPD (Continuing Professional Development). The perceived barriers to accessing online information are the same in both groups. There is a lack of awareness of the library as a potential online information enabler. Conclusions:, Libraries need to examine their policy and practice to ensure that they facilitate access to online evidence-based information, particularly where users are geographically remote or based in the community rather than in a hospital setting. Librarians also need to take into account the fact that medical professionals on duty may not be able to take advantage of the academic model of online information research. Further research is recommended into the difference between the idealised academic model of searching and real world practicalities; and how other user groups search, for example patients. [source] Visuo-spatial working memory deficits in current and former users of MDMA (,ecstasy')HUMAN PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY: CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL, Issue 2 2005Michelle Wareing Abstract Verbal working memory and executive deficits have been observed in ecstasy users. The present study sought to establish whether these also extended to visuo-spatial working memory. Thirty-six current ecstasy users, 12 former users (abstinent for at least 6 months) and 31 individuals that had never used ecstasy were tested on a maintenance plus type visuo-spatial working memory task. The task required participants to recall a sequence of specially marked cells in a four-by-four matrix display while at the same time performing a concurrent visual judgement task. Both the current and former user groups registered impairments relative to nonusers. These remained significant following statistical controls for a range of potentially confounding variables including the use of various other drugs during the 3 months prior to testing. Users were unimpaired on a simple spatial span measure suggesting that the deficits observed reflected the executive aspects of the spatial working memory task. Also consistent with executive involvement, statistical controls for measures of verbal working memory performance (computation span) removed half of the ecstasy-related variance in spatial working memory. The possibility that the pattern of results obtained might reflect some general impairment in information processing efficiency is discussed. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Interannual variability in rainy season characteristics over the Limpopo region of southern AfricaINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY, Issue 14 2005C. J. C. Reason Abstract This study focuses on the interannual variability of dry spell frequencies, dry and wet spell characteristics and onset dates of the austral summer rainy season over the Limpopo region (22,25 °S, 27,32 °E) of northern South Africa. These characteristics of the rainy season are of considerable interest to farmers, water resource managers and other user groups. The Limpopo region supports a large rural population dependent on rain-fed agriculture as well as significant biodiversity, particularly in the Kruger National/Limpopo Transfrontier Park. It is also a region prone to devastating floods and droughts. Evidence is presented that summer dry spell frequency and onset date are related to ENSO via changes in regional circulation. Niño 3.4 sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies appear to show a robust relationship with dry spell frequency during the 1979,2002 period analysed. Anomalies in onset date of the rainy season during 1979,2002 appear to be inversely related to Niño 3.4 SST, with the relationship strengthening after 1986. These results suggest that there may be some predictability in these parameters, particularly in dry spell frequency during austral summer, based on existing skill in predicting tropical Pacific SST. Copyright © 2005 Royal Meteorological Society. [source] An architecture for an intelligent support system for design validation and manufacturing of aerospace componentsINTERNATIONAL TRANSACTIONS IN OPERATIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 4 2003Costas Lambrinoudakis Abstract This paper presents the architecture of a multi-agent system that aims to support the design and manufacturing processes of composite material components for the aerospace, automobile, ship and other industries. The major goals are to accelerate the design process while minimising cost; support users in selecting the optimum material in terms of its properties, cost and environmental impact; and enhance the efficiency of the component manufacturing phase by extending the decision support capabilities of the existing real-time monitoring software. An important requirement for achieving these objectives is to enable the more efficient utilisation of existing distributed information on composite materials. To this end, state-of-the-art advances in metadata concepts were adopted and extended. By implementing metadata structures for each data category available, the searching and retrieval mechanisms are improved both in terms of speed and usage. In addition, large amounts of knowledge about the design and manufacturing processes themselves are incorporated into a multi-agent environment in order to enhance the ability to support the user groups involved in the various stages of component design and manufacturing. In order to present the system architecture here, an example from the aerospace industry has been used. [source] Expanding the traditional user versus non-user dichotomy amongst ecstasy usersJOURNAL OF COMMUNITY & APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2003Brian McMillan Abstract Differences in the drug use characteristics and psychosocial variables in the use and non-use of ecstasy within 845 16,25 year-olds in the UK was examined. Based on levels of ecstasy use and intentions, two groups of non-users (resistant and vulnerable), three groups of users (light, moderate and heavy) and an ex-user group were identified. It was found that there is predictive utility in this way of expanding the widely employed ,user versus non-user' dichotomy. Resistant non-users were more likely to be younger, female, and were characterized by lower levels of use of four other drugs (amphetamine, cannabis, cocaine and LSD). Those ,at risk' of using ecstasy reported more frequent use of amphetamine, LSD, and cannabis than resistant non-users. Heavy user groups reported using amphetamine, cocaine and LSD more frequently than all the other groups. Having ecstasy using friends increased the odds of being an ,at risk' non-user or an ecstasy user. Normative influence also differentiated between the three user groups (light, moderate, and heavy). Beliefs about ecstasy use being immoral, ecstasy offers being difficult to resist, ecstasy use making one feel guilty and ecstasy being readily available differentiated between user and non-user groups. These factors could usefully inform the content of health education materials designed to change ecstasy use. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Should service user involvement be consigned to history?JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRIC & MENTAL HEALTH NURSING, Issue 5 2006A critical realist perspective Service user involvement in the UK healthcare agenda is now widely expected. Historically, service user groups have been increasingly successful in their demands for greater involvement. Hierarchies of involvement exist that include consultation and partnership working. Psychiatry is an archetypal arena in terms of power and control. The traditional view of interpreting the place of service users within this arena is that the service user is at the bottom of this hierarchy; involvement allows transcendence of the power hierarchy. Critical realist theory is offered as an alternative approach to understanding these complex relationships. It is argued that contemporary models of involvement perpetuate and sustain the power positions of the dominant discourse within psychiatry. It is suggested that a critical realism perspective, offers a model that does not kowtow to the dominant discourse but rather recognizes that service users now possess power, especially in terms of being able to provide services that statutory services providers now require. Is it time for service users to call the tune, and, in doing so, establish a power position outside the traditional hierarchy of power? [source] The Beamline X28C of the Center for Synchrotron Biosciences: a National Resource for Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics Experiments Using Synchrotron FootprintingJOURNAL OF SYNCHROTRON RADIATION, Issue 3 2007Sayan Gupta Structural mapping of proteins and nucleic acids with high resolution in solution is of critical importance for understanding their biological function. A wide range of footprinting technologies have been developed over the last ten years to address this need. Beamline X28C, a white-beam X-ray source at the National Synchrotron Light Source of Brookhaven National Laboratory, functions as a platform for synchrotron footprinting research and further technology development in this growing field. An expanding set of user groups utilize this national resource funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health. The facility is operated by the Center for Synchrotron Biosciences and the Center for Proteomics of Case Western Reserve University. The facility includes instrumentation suitable for conducting both steady-state and millisecond time-resolved footprinting experiments based on the production of hydroxyl radicals by X-rays. Footprinting studies of nucleic acids are routinely conducted with X-ray exposures of tens of milliseconds, which include studies of nucleic acid folding and their interactions with proteins. This technology can also be used to study protein structure and dynamics in solution as well as protein,protein interactions in large macromolecular complexes. This article provides an overview of the X28C beamline technology and defines protocols for its adoption at other synchrotron facilities. Lastly, several examples of published results provide illustrations of the kinds of experiments likely to be successful using these approaches. [source] Personalized recommendation with adaptive mixture of markov modelsJOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Issue 12 2007Yang Liu With more and more information available on the Internet, the task of making personalized recommendations to assist the user's navigation has become increasingly important. Considering there might be millions of users with different backgrounds accessing a Web site everyday, it is infeasible to build a separate recommendation system for each user. To address this problem, clustering techniques can first be employed to discover user groups. Then, user navigation patterns for each group can be discovered, to allow the adaptation of a Web site to the interest of each individual group. In this paper, we propose to model user access sequences as stochastic processes, and a mixture of Markov models based approach is taken to cluster users and to capture the sequential relationships inherent in user access histories. Several important issues that arise in constructing the Markov models are also addressed. The first issue lies in the complexity of the mixture of Markov models. To improve the efficiency of building/maintaining the mixture of Markov models, we develop a lightweight adapt-ive algorithm to update the model parameters without recomputing model parameters from scratch. The second issue concerns the proper selection of training data for building the mixture of Markov models. We investigate two different training data selection strategies and perform extensive experiments to compare their effectiveness on a real dataset that is generated by a Web-based knowledge management system, Livelink. [source] State digital library usability: Contributing organizational factorsJOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Issue 13 2002Hong (Iris) Xie Usage and user feedback about a state digital library, in which the developers/designers, content providers, different types of libraries and their staffs, and a variety of user groups represent a loose federation of separate organizations with diverse expectations and needs, are investigated. Through corroboratory evidence from usage statistics of Internet-based database services available through the digital library, responses to a statewide-administered library survey, and a Web-based survey of end users, the authors identify contributing factors for the organizational usability of state digital libraries. The authors refine and enhance an organizational usability model for the unique environment of state digital libraries and identify three modes of interaction (influence, communication, activity) and the challenges each interaction presents: in addressing diverse player needs and expectations; the unequal awareness and training in using state digital libraries; and the lack of sufficient communication channels among players. In addition, the findings highlight the double-edged impact of physical libraries on the state digital library. [source] Finding aid as interface?PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1 2003Enhancing K-12 access to digitized cultural heritage resources through adaptive systems technology: An exploratory study To what extent must diverse users adapt themselves to singular one-interface systems, and in what ways does this impede access and use? In a perfect world of adaptive systems, backend architecture structuring digital information would be accessible through multiple user interfaces that support the literacy levels, technological capabilities and other characteristics of different user groups. Collaborating with the California Digital Library, usability testing was conducted with 4th and 12th graders to compare the effectiveness of an existing finding aid-based interface with a newly developed prototype interfaco in retrieving cultural heritage information. Findings inform the growing number of efforts by cultural heritage communities,including libraries, archives, museums, and community organizations,to create broader access to their rich resources through digitization. [source] Comparing the perceived value of information and entertainment mobile servicesPSYCHOLOGY & MARKETING, Issue 8 2008Minna Pihlström The importance of perceived value in customer decision making is well known. However, few studies assess empirically the direct effects of various perceived value dimensions on post-purchase behavior. This article examines differences between information and entertainment mobile content service users in how their value perceptions influence intentions to repurchase, intentions to spread positive word of mouth, and willingness to pay a price premium. The direct effects of four value dimensions are analyzed: monetary, convenience, emotional, and social value. Within this study we also propose and test the antecedent effects of conditional and epistemic value. This approach advances the value literature through increasing our understanding of how individual value dimensions influence post-purchase behavior and of the role of epistemic and conditional value. Using a sample of 579 mobile service users, results are analyzed with multi-group structural equation modeling. The findings support use of multidimensional value and loyalty constructs to identify differences between service user groups, and argue for the use of differentiated value-based marketing strategies for entertainment and information mobile services. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||