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Great Distances (great + distance)
Selected AbstractsIntervention et représentation de la pauvretéCANADIAN REVIEW OF SOCIOLOGY/REVUE CANADIENNE DE SOCIOLOGIE, Issue 3 2010PIERRE-ANDRÉ TREMBLAY Ph.D. Résumé L'intervention sur la pauvreté est moins un processus administratif, qu'une relation sociale incarnée dans l'interaction entre des acteurs qu'elle contribue à définir. Elle implique, comme toute action sociale, la production de significations guidant les acteurs. La compréhension de ce réseau sémantique nécessite un processus d'interprétation. Ce texte présente un modèle simplifié d'une telle interprétation. Il contraste la façon dont des intervenants présentent les pauvres et la pauvreté et la façon dont des personnes en situation de pauvreté parlent d'elles-mêmes et de leurs difficultés. Cette mise en regard fait ressortir la très grande distance entre ces deux discours. Abstract Any intervention against poverty is not so much an administrative process as a social relation between categories of actors that are partly defined by it. Being a social action, it implies a construction of meaning that will guide the behavior of the actors. This semantic network needs an interpretation. This article presents a simplified model (an "ideal-type") of this meaningful interaction. It will contrast the way the professional actors of the poverty field present poverty and poor people and the way poor people themselves present their situation and the difficulties they face. This comparison will show the great distance between these discourses. [source] Tales from Two Deltas: Catfish Fillets, High-Value Foods, and GlobalizationECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2005Dominique M. Duval-Diop Abstract: This article examines two places of catfish production, the Mekong River Delta of Vietnam and the Mississippi River Delta of the United States, and uses the concept of globalization to illustrate how these distant places have been brought into competition and how this competition is mediated. Bringing these deltas together is a similar commitment to an economic development strategy that is based on catfish production, a desire to gain access to wealthy consumers who are willing to purchase this high-value food item, and processing and transportation technologies that allow this perishable product to be made more "durable" and to be shipped great distances. Mediating this relationship are consumers' preferences, product labeling, and the U.S. state. This case study illustrates the heterogeneous outcomes of globalization as these deltas are brought into a relationship that, in some ways, is closer than their absolute distance may indicate. The "backlash" forces, such as nontariff trade barriers, nationalism, and a still-powerful state (as both a regulator and consumer), characterize these globalizations. [source] Subaqueous hydrochory: open-channel hydraulic modelling of non-buoyant seed movementFRESHWATER BIOLOGY, Issue 11 2008SCOTT H. MARKWITH Summary 1. Subaqueous transport may be a significant dispersal and migration mechanism of non-buoyant seeds of aquatic and riparian plants, and also secondary transport of seeds once they have lost buoyancy, but the efficiency of this difficult to observe process is largely unexamined. This study uses hydraulic modelling to establish the discharges that move the non-buoyant seeds of Hymenocallis coronaria as bedload or suspended load; uses stream gauge data to examine the frequency of effective discharges from late June to late September, the seed maturation and germination period; and the potential transport distance of the seeds. 2. The results show that the majority of non-buoyant seeds of H. coronaria can be transported as bedload through entire modelled stream reaches of lengths 10.8, 18 and 14.4 km with the 0.5 year return interval flow. Bedload apparently has the ability to move seeds over great distances, and may be a substantial factor determining the genetic structure, demography and dynamics of populations and communities. However, prolonged movement of non-buoyant seeds in suspension appears to be quite rare. 3. Although insect mediated pollination and biochory occur concurrently with bedload transport, bedload transport alone may be sufficient to account for the established gene flow rate of H. coronaria. The potential transport distance of many of the seeds exceed that between populations, and migration may occur more frequently than the species' generation time. 4. This is the first known study to use open-channel hydraulic modelling and sediment transport analysis to determine the effectiveness of non-buoyant seed transport. This method of analysis shows promise for application in other contexts, and especially where flow management is a critical issue for maintenance of rare species. [source] Projective virtual reality as a basis for on-line control of complex systems-not only-over the internetJOURNAL OF FIELD ROBOTICS (FORMERLY JOURNAL OF ROBOTIC SYSTEMS), Issue 3 2005Eckhard Freund Already in 1994 the term Projective Virtual Reality was coined and a first implementation was used to control a complex multirobot system in Germany over the Internet from California. Building on this foundation, the general aim of the development of virtual reality technology for automation applications at the Institute of Robotics Research (IRF) today is to provide the framework for Projective Virtual Reality for a broad range of applications. The general idea of Projective Virtual Reality is to allow users to "project" actions carried out in the virtual world into the real world by means of robots or other means of automation. The framework is based on a task-oriented approach which builds on the "task deduction" capabilities of a newly developed virtual reality system and a task planning component. The advantage of this approach is that robots which work at great distances from the control station can be controlled as easily and intuitively as robots that work right next to the control station. Robot control technology now provides the user in the virtual world with a "prolonged arm" into the physical environment, thus paving the way for intuitive control of complex systems over the Internet,and in general for a new quality of user-friendly man-machine interfaces for automation applications. Lately, this work has been enhanced by a new structure that allows one to distribute the virtual reality application over multiple computers on a network. With this new feature, it is now possible for multiple users to share the same virtual room, although they may physically be thousands of miles apart. They only need an Internet connection to share this new experience. Lately, the network distribution techniques have been further developed to not just allow users to cooperate over networked PCs but also to be able to set up a panorama projection or a cave running of a networked cluster of PCs. This approach cuts down the costs for such a high-end visualization environment drastically and allows for a new range of applications. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] E-improvisation: collaborative groupware technology expands the reach and effectiveness of organizational improvisationKNOWLEDGE AND PROCESS MANAGEMENT: THE JOURNAL OF CORPORATE TRANSFORMATION, Issue 4 2002Brent McKnight With today's increasing pace of change, managers who are struggling to continuously adapt and survive are turning to an emerging management technique known as organizational improvisation. This field of management science draws from a metaphor based in improvisational theatre and jazz music and is defined as: The ability to spontaneously recombine knowledge, processes and structure in real time, resulting in creative problem solving that is grounded in the realities of the moment. As part of these changes, organizations are working across great distances and in groups that include diverse constituents such as suppliers, partners and customers. The distance separating these team members poses a problem for improvisation as improvisation relies heavily on interpersonal communication between group members. The collaborative wealth of creativity, innovation and productivity flows in part from this real-time interaction. The increasing distance between group members hampers the effective reach of organizational improvisation. The proposed concept of e-improvisation suggests that the adoption of groupware collaborative software, in particular a peer-to-peer offering called Groove, can extend the reach of improvisation and enhance its effectiveness. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Phylogeography of colonially nesting seabirds, with special reference to global matrilineal patterns in the sooty tern (Sterna fuscata)MOLECULAR ECOLOGY, Issue 11 2000John C. Avise Abstract Sooty tern (Sterna fuscata) rookeries are scattered throughout the tropical oceans. When not nesting, individuals wander great distances across open seas, but, like many other seabirds, they tend to be site-faithful to nesting locales in successive years. Here we examine the matrilineal history of sooty terns on a global scale. Assayed colonies within an ocean are poorly differentiated in mitochondrial DNA sequence, a result indicating tight historical ties. However, a shallow genealogical partition distinguishes Atlantic from Indo-Pacific rookeries. Phylogeographic patterns in the sooty tern are compared to those in other colonially nesting seabirds, as well as in the green turtle (Chelonia mydas), an analogue of tropical seabirds in some salient aspects of natural history. Phylogeographic structure within an ocean is normally weak in seabirds, unlike the pronounced matrilineal structure in green turtles. However, the phylogeographic partition between Atlantic and Indo-Pacific rookeries in sooty terns mirrors, albeit in shallower evolutionary time, the major matrilineal subdivision in green turtles. Thus, global geology has apparently influenced historical gene movements in these two circumtropical species. [source] | |||||||||||||