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Effects Change (effects + change)
Selected AbstractsThe Life and Death of Public Organizations: A Question of Institutional Design?GOVERNANCE, Issue 3 2010ARJEN BOIN Why do some public organizations grow old and others die young? Since Herbert Kaufman first posed this question, considerable research has been devoted to answering it. The findings of that research suggest that the design of new public organizations affects, to a significant degree, their survival chances. In this article, we test whether and how "design factors" affected the durability of the so-called New Deal organizations initiated under FDR's first term. Our findings confirm that design factors do matter, but their effects change over time. We draw out some potential implications for institutional design and sketch a renewed research agenda to determine why some public organizations survive environmental pressure whereas others succumb to it. [source] Changes in plant interactions along a gradient of environmental stressOIKOS, Issue 1 2001Francisco I. Pugnaire A combination of competition and facilitation effects operating simultaneously among plant species appears to be the rule in nature, where these effects change along productivity gradients often in a non-proportional manner. We investigated changes in competition and facilitation between a leguminous shrub, Retama sphaerocarpa, and its associate understorey species along an environmental gradient in semi-arid southeast Spain. Our results show a change in the net balance of the interaction between the shrub and several of its associated species, from clearly positive in the water-stressed, infertile environment to neutral or even negative in the more fertile habitat. There was a weakening of facilitation along the fertility gradient as a consequence of improved abiotic conditions. Competition was the most intense for below-ground resources in the less fertile environment while total competition tended to increase towards the more productive end of the gradient. Changes in the balance of the interaction between and among different plant species along the gradient of stress were caused by a decline in facilitation rather than by a change in competition. As both competition intensity and facilitation change along gradients of resource availability, plant interactions are best viewed as dynamic relationships, the outcome of which depends on abiotic conditions. [source] The influence of maternal and child characteristics and paternal support on interactions of mothers and their medically fragile infants,RESEARCH IN NURSING & HEALTH, Issue 1 2007Tzu-Ying Lee Abstract The influences of maternal characteristics, infant characteristics, and paternal support on maternal positive involvement and developmental stimulation were examined over time in 59 mothers and their medically fragile infants using an ecological framework. Higher maternal education was associated with greater maternal positive involvement. More maternal depressive symptoms, more infant technological dependence, and lower birthweights were associated with less maternal positive involvement at 6 months but greater involvement at 12 months. Higher paternal helpfulness facilitated positive involvement in mothers with low depressive symptoms but not in those with elevated symptoms. Higher maternal education and more depressive symptoms were associated with more developmental stimulation. Thus, maternal interactive behaviors are affected by maternal, infant, and environment factors, and these effects change over time. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Res Nurs Health 30: 17,30, 2007 [source] Oral glucose as an analgesic to reduce infant distress following immunization at the age of 3, 5 and 12 monthsACTA PAEDIATRICA, Issue 2 2007Margit Thyr Abstract Aim: To evaluate oral glucose as an analgesic to reduce infant distress after immunization during the first year of life and to investigate if these effects change during this period. Methods: A prospective controlled trial of the effectiveness of glucose on crying response to immunizations at 3, 5 and 12 months of age. A total of 110 infants were randomized to receive 2 mL of 30% glucose or water. The same solution was given at 3, 5 and 12 months. Crying was registered from onset of the injection up to 120 seconds. Infanrix Polio Hib was administered intra-muscular in the thigh. Observation nurse and parents were blind to the nature of the solution. Results: Administration of glucose reduced the mean crying time by 22% at 3 months, 62% at 5 months and 52% at 12 months. The difference was significant at 5 and at 12 months. In the water group, there was a significant correlation between the children who cried at 3 months and who subsequently cried at 5 and 12 months. No correlations were found in the glucose group. Conclusion: Sweet solution can be used as a simple and safe method to reduce the distress following immunization in infants up to 12 months. [source] Formal semantics of meta-level architectures: Temporal epistemic reflectionINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS, Issue 12 2003Wiebe Van Der Hoek In this article we show how formal semantics can be given to reasoning processes in meta-level architectures that reason about (object level) knowledge states and effects changes may have on them. Especially, attention is focused on the upward and downward reflections in these architectures. Temporalized epistemic logic is used to specify meta-level reasoning processes and the outcomes of these. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] Dendritic network structure constrains metacommunity properties in riverine ecosystemsJOURNAL OF ANIMAL ECOLOGY, Issue 3 2010B. L. Brown Summary 1.,Increasingly, ecologists conceptualize local communities as connected to a regional species pool rather than as isolated entities. By this paradigm, community structure is determined through the relative strengths of dispersal-driven regional effects and local environmental factors. However, despite explicit incorporation of dispersal, metacommunity models and frameworks often fail to capture the realities of natural systems by not accounting for the configuration of space within which organisms disperse. This shortcoming may be of particular consequence in riverine networks which consist of linearly -arranged, hierarchical, branching habitat elements. Our goal was to understand how constraints of network connectivity in riverine systems change the relative importance of local vs. regional factors in structuring communities. 2.,We hypothesized that communities in more isolated headwaters of riverine networks would be structured by local forces, while mainstem sections would be structured by both local and regional processes. We examined these hypotheses using a spatially explicit regional analysis of riverine macroinvertebrate communities, focusing on change in community similarity with distance between local communities [i.e., distance-decay relationships; (DDRs)], and the change in environmental similarity with distance. Strong DDRs frequently indicate dispersal-driven dynamics. 3.,There was no evidence of a DDR in headwater communities, supporting our hypothesis that dispersal is a weak structuring force. Furthermore, a positive relationship between community similarity and environmental similarity supported dynamics driven by local environmental factors (i.e., species sorting). In mainstem habitats, significant DDRs and community × environment similarity relationships suggested both dispersal-driven and environmental constraints on local community structure (i.e., mass effects). 4.,We used species traits to compare communities characterized by low vs. high dispersal taxa. In headwaters, neither strength nor mode (in-network vs. out of network) of dispersal changed our results. However, outcomes in mainstems changed substantially with both dispersal mode and strength, further supporting the hypothesis that regional forces drive community dynamics in mainstems. 5.,Our findings demonstrate that the balance of local and regional effects changes depending on location within riverine network with local (environmental) factors dictating community structure in headwaters, and regional (dispersal driven) forces dominating in mainstems. [source] | |||||||||||||