New Circumstances (new + circumstance)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Grasslands, grazing and biodiversity: editors' introduction

JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECOLOGY, Issue 2 2001
Watkinson A.R.
Summary 1Natural, semi-natural and artificial grasslands occur extensively around the globe, but successful management for production and biodiversity poses several dilemmas for conservationists and farmland managers. Deriving from three continents (Africa, Australia and Europe), papers in this Special Profile interface three specific issues: plant responses to grazing, plant invasions and the responses to management of valued grassland biota. 2Although pivotal in grassland management, plant responses to grazing are sometimes difficult to predict. Two alternative approaches are presented here. The first uses natural variations in sheep grazing around a water hole to model the dynamic population response of a chenopod shrub. The second analyses a long-term grazing experiment to investigate the links between plant traits and grazing response. 3Linked often crucially with grazing, but also driven sometimes by extrinsic factors, invasions are often cause for concern in grassland management. The invasions of grasslands by woody plants threatens grassland habitats while the invasions of pastures by alien weeds reduces pasture productivity. The papers in this section highlight how a complementary range of management activities can reduce the abundance of invaders. A final paper highlights how global environmental change is presenting new circumstances in which grassland invasion can occur. 4The impact of grassland management on biodiversity is explored in this Special Profile with specific reference to invertebrates, increasingly recognized both for the intrinsic conservation value of many groups and for their role in ecosystem processes. The potential for manipulating flooding in wet grasslands to increase the soil invertebrate prey of wading birds is illustrated, together with the roles of management and landscape structure in enhancing insect diversity. 5In the face of climate change and growing demands for agricultural productivity, future pressures on grassland ecosystems will intensify. In this system in which productivity and conservation are so closely bound, there is a need both to raise the profile of the issues involved, and to improve our understanding of the applied ecology required for successful management. [source]


Large-scale ecology and hydrology: an introductory perspective from the editors of the Journal of Applied Ecology

JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECOLOGY, Issue 2000
S.J. Ormerod
1. Five key features characterize large-scale factors in ecology: (a) they incorporate some of the most major of all ecological phenomena , the ranges of organisms, patterns of diversity, variations in ecosystem character and environmental processes such as climate, biogeochemical cycles, dispersal and migration; (b) they involve interactions across scales through both top-down and bottom-up processes; (c) they are multifaceted, and hence require an interdisciplinary perspective; (d) they reflect the cumulative effects of anthropogenic change across all scales, and so have direct relevance to environmental management; (e) they invariably exceed the range of classical ecological experiments, and so require alternative approaches to hypothesis testing. 2. Against this background, a recent research initiative on large-scale ecology and hydrology was funded jointly by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Scottish Executive Rural Affairs Department (SERAD). Outputs from this programme are reported in this special issue of the Journal of Applied Ecology, and they illustrate some of the ecological research that is currently in progress in the UK at large spatio-temporal scales. 3. The spatial scales investigated in the papers range from hectares to whole continents, and much of the work reported here involves modelling. Although the model outputs are intrinsically valuable, several authors express the need for improved validation and testing. We suggest that this is an area requiring much development, and will need considerable innovation due to the difficulties at the scales involved (see 1d). Possible methods include: model applications to new circumstances; large-scale environmental manipulations; large-scale surveys that mimic experimental protocols; support from process studies at smaller scales. These alternatives are not mutually exclusive, and all can allow robust hypothesis testing. 4. Much of the work reported here is interdisciplinary linking, for example, geographical, mathematical, hydrological, hydrochemical and ecological concepts (see 1c). We suggest that even stronger links between environmental disciplines will further aid large-scale ecological research. 5. Most important in the context of the Journal of Applied Ecology, the work reported in this issue reveals that large-scale ecology already has applied value. Sectors benefiting include the conservation of biodiversity, the control of invasive species, and the management of land and water resources. 6. Large-scale issues continue to affect many applied ecologists, with roughly 30,40% of papers published in the Journal of Applied Ecology typically confronting such problems. This special issue adds to the growing body of seminal contributions that will add impetus to further large-scale work. Moreover, occurring in a period when other areas of biology are increasingly reductionist, this collection illustrates that, at least with respect to large-scale environmental problems, ecology still holds centre ground. [source]


Parents of Children with Intellectual Disabilities: Their Expectations and Experience of Genetic Counselling

JOURNAL OF APPLIED RESEARCH IN INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES, Issue 3 2003
Owen Barr
Background, Following the birth of a child, parents and other family members have to adapt to their new circumstances. This process takes time and can become more complex when the child is suspected or diagnosed as having intellectual disabilities. When a child has a disability, parents often seek answers as to the origin and nature of the condition as part of the adaptation process. For some parents, this will result in genetic investigations and could lead to the provision of personal genetics about the child and parents. Materials and methods, This paper reports a mixed-method project that combined questionnaires prior to and interviews after an appointment with a geneticist. The project sought to identify the expectations and experience of parents who had a child referred to specialist genetics services. Results and conclusions, The findings identify that parents felt largely unprepared for their appointment and reported feelings of failing to maximize the opportunity present. The need for more effective liaison between specialist regional and local primary care and learning disability services is also highlighted. Parents made practical suggestions relevant to all the above services about how they could be better supported at this difficult stage in the adaptation process. [source]


From Antagonistic Autonomy to Relational Autonomy: A Theoretical Reflection from the Southern Cone

LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 1 2003
Roberto Russell
ABSTRACT The concept of autonomy has acquired a plurality of meanings in international relations; this article analyzes the distinct uses given to this term in Latin America and its relationship to theoretical contributions from outside the region. The authors propose a far-reaching reconceptualization of autonomy appropriate to Latin America's new circumstances in the global context. They argue that these new circumstances favor the shift from autonomy as traditionally defined to what they call relational autonomy, a construct based on contributions from classical political theory, political sociology, gender studies, social and philosophical psychology, and the theory of complex thought. [source]


Choosing remediation and waste management options at hazardous and radioactive waste sites

REMEDIATION, Issue 1 2002
Michael Greenberg
This article discusses a process for finding insights that will allow federal agencies and environmental professionals to more effectively manage contaminated sites. The process is built around what Etzioni (1968) called mixed-scanning, that is, perpetually doing both comprehensive and detailed analyses and periodically re-scanning for new circumstances that change the decision-making environment. The article offers a checklist of 127 items, which is one part of the multiple-stage scanning process. The checklist includes questions about technology; public, worker, and ecological health; economic cost and benefits; social impacts; and legal issues. While developed for a DOE high-level radioactive waste application, the decision-making framework and specific questions can be used for other large-scale remediation and management projects. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]


Laïcité and multiculturalism: the Stasi Report in context1

THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2009
Murat Akan
Abstract French republican universalism , expressed most strongly in the principle and practice of laïcité, and multiculturalism have constituted opposite poles on questions of citizenship and integration. The report of the Stasi Commission on laïcité on 11 December 2003 and the following legislation on the donning of religious symbols in French public schools have once again, spurred debates over the meanings and practices of laïcité. The report and the law have been interpreted in different ways. Some have presented them as a reaffirmation of a historically constituted laïcité under new circumstances, others as a divergence from the real problems of racism, unemployment and gender inequality. In this article, I offer an alternative reading by supplementing a critical reading of the report with an analysis of its historical and immediate institutional context. I evaluate the Stasi Report in its immediate context of institutional change, and in the historical context of selected developments concerning laïcité since the 1905 law separating churches and State. I argue that the Stasi Report marks a fundamental break with French republican universalism, and I show that this break occurred contemporaneously with key gestures of multiculturalism: the establishment of the French Muslim Council and the creation of Muslim high schools under contract with the French state. This double movement to narrow the boundaries of laïcité, and for the state to expand the boundaries of identity-specific, Muslim public institutions and private schooling constitutes a reorganization of the public sphere in France which qualifies as a move towards multiculturalism. [source]


The Reappraisal of the White Australia Policy against the Background of a Changing Asia, 1945,67,

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 2 2006
Matthew Jordan
This paper is concerned with the way in which Australian policy-makers approached the problem of "White Australia" in the years 1945,67. It makes extensive use of original archival material to show how Australia's increasing engagement with Asia in the 1950s and 1960s exercised a direct influence on officials within the Department of Immigration. In response to Australia's changing geopolitical circumstances and the international community's increasing hostility towards racism during this period, Immigration Department officials persuaded the government to introduce a series of piecemeal adjustments which were specifically designed to placate Asian and world opinion. Although cautious, these changes nevertheless involved a corresponding reassessment of the policy's racial assumptions. By accepting in the late 1960s that certain Asians were capable of being integrated into the Australian community, policymakers had discarded the previously inviolable belief that all non-Europeans were unassimilable by virtue of their race. The White Australia Policy, though not entirely defunct by the end of the decade, was nevertheless crumbling under the weight of Australia's new circumstances. [source]