History, Distribution, and Conservation, of Large Mammals and Their Habitats in Jordan

Jordan lies at a meeting-point of three zoogeographical areas: the Palaearctic, the Afrotropical, and the Oriental—circumstances which were conducive to habitat diversity in Jordan and hence the diversity and often abundant occurrence of different floral and faunal elements.The present paper gives information about the history and past occurrence of large mammalian species and their populations in Jordan, while also focusing on the present status of the large mammalian species, and gives the reasons for extinctions and the preventive measures that are being taken to conserve the populations remaining. In addition, this study gives a future prospective outlook for habitat and mammalian conservation, and the reintroduction programme that is being implemented in Jordan.The first part of the paper sheds light on the past existence of large mammals in Jordan. The historical sequence of events starting from the Upper Palaeolithic and continuing right up to the present, and the succession of civilizations, had a negative impact on the large mammalian populations. This section gives tabulated data on the past occurrence of 26 species, supported by evidence of their past existence such as bone remains, rock drawings, engravings, mosaics, and frescos, found in various archaeological sites in Jordan.The second part of the paper deals with the present status of large mammalian populations, their distribution being reflected through maps indicating recent sightings in some outstanding cases. Among those are reintroduced species such as the Arabian Oryx and the Syrian Wild Ass, and highly threatened species such as the Nubian Ibex. This part also investigates the reasons for extinction, which mainly link the destruction of habitats with the direct deterioration of mammalian populations. Habitat destruction was chiefly due to the rapid decline of the natural pasture areas, overgrazing, urban expansions, unorganized construction plans, human impact, mismanagement of the highlands, fire, and hunting. All of these factors led to deforestation and soil erosion, resulting in a patchy, fragile ecocomplex. The decrease of rainfall assisted the severe deterioration of natural forests.The future outlook of this study includes plans to restore ecosystems and, with them, much of the overall ecocomplex. For this and other reasons it also stresses the urgent need to establish more reserves, both grazing and natural. This concluding part of the paper encourages the improvement of national parks, and urges the authorities to look seriously at the often disastrous effects of mismanagement. The importance of collaboration between Jordan and the various international agencies is emphasized, as well as the need to speed up work on the National Conservation Strategy of Jordan.

Download Full-text

STUDY OF POND STATUS IN INDIA : A REVIEW

FLORA AND FAUNA ◽

10.33451/florafauna.v23i1pp99-104 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 23 (1) ◽

Author(s):

V.K. YADAV ◽

SONAM SHARMA ◽

A.K. SRIVASTAVA ◽

P.K. KHARE

Keyword(s):

Fresh Water ◽

Land Surface ◽

Human Population ◽

Climate Changes ◽

Hydrological Cycle ◽

Habitat Destruction ◽

Conservation Strategy ◽

Goods And Services ◽

Human Use ◽

Over Exploitation

Ponds are an important fresh water critical ecosystem for plants and animals providing goods and services including food, fodder, fish, irrigation, hydrological cycle, shelter, medicine, culture, aesthetic and recreation. Ponds cover less than 2 percent of worlds land surface. Ponds are important source of fresh water for human use. These are threatened by urbanization, industrialization, over exploitation, fragmentation, habitat destruction, pollution, illegal capturing of land and climate changes. These above factors have been destroying ponds very rapidly putting them in danger of extinction of a great number of local biodiversity. It is necessary to formulate a correct conservation strategy for pond restoration in order to meet the growing needs of fresh water by increasing the human population. Some measures have been compiled and proposed in the present review.

Download Full-text

Collective Memory: Between Values and Historical Knowledge

Sociology: Theory, Methods, Marketing ◽

10.15407/sociology2020.03.124 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 124-142

Author(s):

VICTOR BURLACHUK

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Soviet Union ◽

Collective Memory ◽

Rapid Change ◽

Modern Society ◽

The State ◽

Main Element ◽

Rapid Decline ◽

The Past ◽

The Future

At the end of the twentieth century, questions of a secondary nature suddenly became topical: what do we remember and who owns the memory? Memory as one of the mental characteristics of an individual’s activity is complemented by the concept of collective memory, which requires a different method of analysis than the activity of a separate individual. In the 1970s, a situation arose that gave rise to the so-called "historical politics" or "memory politics." If philosophical studies of memory problems of the 30’s and 40’s of the twentieth century were focused mainly on the peculiarities of perception of the past in the individual and collective consciousness and did not go beyond scientific discussions, then half a century later the situation has changed dramatically. The problem of memory has found its political sound: historians and sociologists, politicians and representatives of the media have entered the discourse on memory. Modern society, including all social, ethnic and family groups, has undergone a profound change in the traditional attitude towards the past, which has been associated with changes in the structure of government. In connection with the discrediting of the Soviet Union, the rapid decline of the Communist Party and its ideology, there was a collapse of Marxism, which provided for a certain model of time and history. The end of the revolutionary idea, a powerful vector that indicated the direction of historical time into the future, inevitably led to a rapid change in perception of the past. Three models of the future, which, according to Pierre Nora, defined the face of the past (the future as a restoration of the past, the future as progress and the future as a revolution) that existed until recently, have now lost their relevance. Today, absolute uncertainty hangs over the future. The inability to predict the future poses certain challenges to the present. The end of any teleology of history imposes on the present a debt of memory. Features of the life of memory, the specifics of its state and functioning directly affect the state of identity, both personal and collective. Distortion of memory, its incorrect work, and its ideological manipulation can give rise to an identity crisis. The memorial phenomenon is a certain political resource in a situation of severe socio-political breaks and changes. In the conditions of the economic crisis and in the absence of a real and clear program for future development, the state often seeks to turn memory into the main element of national consolidation.

Download Full-text

Putative neural consequences of captivity for elephants and cetaceans

Reviews in the Neurosciences ◽

10.1515/revneuro-2021-0100 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 0 (0) ◽

Author(s):

Bob Jacobs ◽

Heather Rally ◽

Catherine Doyle ◽

Lester O’Brien ◽

Mackenzie Tennison ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Basal Ganglia ◽

Behavioral Health ◽

Negative Impact ◽

Well Being ◽

Present Review ◽

Large Mammals ◽

Impoverished Environment ◽

Neural Underpinnings ◽

The Impact ◽

The Brain

Abstract The present review assesses the potential neural impact of impoverished, captive environments on large-brained mammals, with a focus on elephants and cetaceans. These species share several characteristics, including being large, wide-ranging, long-lived, cognitively sophisticated, highly social, and large-brained mammals. Although the impact of the captive environment on physical and behavioral health has been well-documented, relatively little attention has been paid to the brain itself. Here, we explore the potential neural consequences of living in captive environments, with a focus on three levels: (1) The effects of environmental impoverishment/enrichment on the brain, emphasizing the negative neural consequences of the captive/impoverished environment; (2) the neural consequences of stress on the brain, with an emphasis on corticolimbic structures; and (3) the neural underpinnings of stereotypies, often observed in captive animals, underscoring dysregulation of the basal ganglia and associated circuitry. To this end, we provide a substantive hypothesis about the negative impact of captivity on the brains of large mammals (e.g., cetaceans and elephants) and how these neural consequences are related to documented evidence for compromised physical and psychological well-being.

Download Full-text

Deliberation, demobilization, and limited empowerment: a survey study on participatory pricing in China

Japanese Journal of Political Science ◽

10.1017/s1468109918000300 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 19 (4) ◽

pp. 694-708 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Xuan Qin ◽

Baogang He

Keyword(s):

Negative Impact ◽

Negative Relationship ◽

Political Activism ◽

Specific Form ◽

Public Deliberation ◽

Survey Study ◽

High Quality ◽

Low Level ◽

The Past ◽

Significant Negative Impact

AbstractAuthoritarian deliberation has been used widely to describe the specific form of deliberation developed in China. However, whether its practice will strengthen authoritarianism or lead to democratization remains unknown. In this study, we examine this question from the perspective of participants in public deliberation. Surveying the participants in participatory pricings held in Shanghai over the past 5 years, we find that participants’ perception of deliberative quality has a statistically significant negative impact on their level of political activism, while their level of empowerment has a moderating effect on this negative relationship. In this light, Chinese deliberative practices characterized by high-quality deliberation and low-level empowerment are likely to have a demobilization effect; thus, they reinforce the authoritarian rules.

Download Full-text

Ore textures: problems and opportunities

Mineralogical Magazine ◽

10.1180/minmag.1991.055.380.02 ◽

1991 ◽

Vol 55 (380) ◽

pp. 303-315 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Paul B. Barton

Keyword(s):

Spatial Relations ◽

Ore Deposits ◽

Chemical Processes ◽

Process Models ◽

Textural Features ◽

The Past ◽

Geological Processes ◽

Sequence Of Events ◽

Definition Of ◽

Scientific Endeavour

AbstractOver the past several decades, thinking about chemical processes in rocks had been dominated by experimental and theoretical treatments of mineral equilibrium, which is the state from which the time variable has been excluded. But, to an extent exceeding that of any of our sister sciences, we in geology are concerned with the behaviour of things as a function of time; thus equilibrium is but one of several interesting boundary conditions. Textures, (defined as the spatial relations within and among minerals and fluids, regardless of scale or origin) provide a means to sort out and identify successive states. In fact, it is the pattern of evolution of those states that enables us to deduce the processes. We may well draw the analogy with thermodynamics and kinetics, respectively:equilibrium textures and phase assemblages, via thermodynamic analysis → definition of conditions of equilibration,whereaskinetics, as displayed in disequilibrium textures → sequence of events and processes of mineralization.The interpretation of textures is one of the most difficult yet important aspects of the study of rocks and ores, and there are few areas of scientific endeavour that are more subject to misinterpretation. Although the difficulties are many, the opportunites for new understanding are also abundant. Textural interpretations have many facets: some are well established and accepted; some that are accepted may be wrong; others are recognised to be speculative and controversial; and we trust that still other textural features remain to be described and interpreted. This paper will deal principally with low-temperature, epigenetic ore deposits, and will emphasise silica and sphalerite; but extension to other materials is not unreasonable.Ore and gangue minerals react internally, or with their environment, at widely ranging rates, ranging from the almost inert pyrite, arsenopyrite, well-crystallised quartz, and tourmaline to the notoriously fickle copper/iron and copper/silver sulfides. Arrested or incomplete reactions may be identifed by textural criteria and, when appropriately quantified, can provide guides to the duration of geological processes.In recent years so much emphasis has been placed on isotopes, fluids, chemistry, and deposit and process models that the textural features have been ignored. In part this oversight occurs because we have grown accustomed to using superposition, cross-cutting, pseudomorphism, mutual intergrowths, exsolution and so on as off-the-shelf tools, to be grasped and applied without evaluation or even description. Surely science must build on previous work without constant and exhaustive reassessment, but for mineral textures a little reassessment may yield substantial benefit.

Download Full-text

The echographic characteristics of structural and functional development of organs and systems in children born with low birth weight, very low birth weight and extremely low birth weight

Russian Pediatric Journal ◽

10.15690/rpj.v1i3.2170 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 1 (3) ◽

pp. 11-17

Author(s):

P. E. Khodkevich ◽

K. V. Кulikova ◽

V. V. Gorev ◽

I. A. Deev

Keyword(s):

Birth Weight ◽

Low Birth Weight ◽

Very Low Birth Weight ◽

Negative Impact ◽

Extremely Low Birth Weight ◽

Small Children ◽

Neuropsychological Development ◽

The Past ◽

Functional Development ◽

Development Of Organs

Over the past decade, an increase in the survival rate of children born with low birth weight, very low birth weight, and extremely low birth weight has been observed in Russian Federation, which is due to transition to new live birth criteria. Premature infants are exposed to a number of adverse factors that have a negative impact on the development of organs and systems, which, in turn, can lead to the occurrence of acute and chronic diseases in various age periods. Therefore, neonatologists and pediatricians are dealing with a new cohort of small children who have particular features of physical and neuropsychological development which may lead to severe debilitating diseases. This review article surveys previous studies evaluating the echographic characteristics of structural and functional development of the urinary, cardiovascular and endocrine systems as a function of body weight at birth and gestational age, and in different age periods.

Download Full-text

A Proposed Hypothesis on Dementia: Inflammation, Small Vessel Disease, and Hypoperfusion Is the Sequence That Links All Harmful Lifestyles to Cognitive Impairment

Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience ◽

10.3389/fnagi.2021.679837 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 ◽

Author(s):

Antoine M. Hakim

Keyword(s):

Risk Factors ◽

Risk Factor ◽

Cognitive Impairment ◽

Cerebral Perfusion ◽

Small Vessel Disease ◽

Negative Impact ◽

Small Vessel ◽

Vessel Disease ◽

Sequence Of Events ◽

Do So

There is growing consensus that certain lifestyles can contribute to cognitive impairment and dementia, but the physiological steps that link a harmful lifestyle to its negative impact are not always evident. It is also unclear whether all lifestyles that contribute to dementia do so through the same intermediary steps. This article will focus on three lifestyles known to be risk factors for dementia, namely obesity, sedentary behavior, and insufficient sleep, and offer a unifying hypothesis proposing that lifestyles that negatively impact cognition do so through the same sequence of events: inflammation, small vessel disease, decline in cerebral perfusion, and brain atrophy. The hypothesis will then be tested in a recently identified risk factor for dementia, namely hearing deficit. If further studies confirm this sequence of events leading to dementia, a significant change in our approach to this debilitating and costly condition may be necessary, possible, and beneficial.

Download Full-text

SCIENTIFIC AND METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS AND PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE FOR THE FORMATION OF THE EVIDENTIAL BASE OF HAZARD TO HEALTH IN THE POPULATION IN THE ZONE OF INFLUENCE OF WASTE FROM THE PAST ECONOMIC ACTIVITY

Hygiene and Sanitation ◽

10.18821/0016-9900-2017-96-11-1038-1044 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 96 (11) ◽

pp. 1038-1044 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

N. V. Zaitseva ◽

Irina V. May ◽

S. V. Klein ◽

S. S. Khankharev ◽

A. A. Boloshinova

Keyword(s):

Heavy Metals ◽

Drinking Water ◽

Negative Impact ◽

Health Hazard ◽

Harmful Effect ◽

Morbidity Rate ◽

Atmospheric Air ◽

The Past ◽

Zone Of Influence

There are described an algorithm and methods for collecting the evidential base for causing hazard to the health of the population of Zakamensk (the Republic of Buryatia) in the zone of influence of the waste of the past activities of the Dzhidinsky tungsten-molybdenum combine. The source of danger is lying sands, containing a complex of toxic heavy metals - lead, cadmium, manganese, nickel, chromium, etc. The algorithm for the formation of the evidential base included: a general analysis of the sanitary and hygienic situation; assessment in the dynamics of the quality of atmospheric air, drinking water, soil, food; assessment of the risk to the health of the population; epidemiological studies; in-depth clinical surveys of a representative group of city residents (280 people). In the blood of the examinees, heavy metals were identified as biological markers of the exposure. There was evaluated a complex of the response (effect) adequate to effects of laboratory markers. By methods of mathematical statistics there was established the presence of reliable relationships in the system “source of hazard - the quality of the environment - exposure to risk factors - health status.” The hazard to the health of a citizen, due to the negative impact of the factor, was considered to be proven if it was possible to build a continuous step-by-step logical chain of relationships between the source of the harmful effect, the quality of the habitat and the establishment of the fact of the disease. The quality of the habitat of the population of Zakamensk was shown to give rise in unacceptable risks to the health of residents. The main influencing factor is the pollution of atmospheric air, local food products and drinking water from public and private wells. Risks are realized in terms of a level of the primary morbidity rate of the population of the respiratory diseases, endocrine system, digestive organs that is relatively high compared to the matched area. The relationship between health hazard and environmental factors has been fully proved in 14% of the surveyed persons. At the same time, the territory was shown not be characterized as a zone of “ecological disaster” or “an emergency environmental situation”.

Download Full-text

Strategi Konservasi Guna Mempertahankan Identitas Arsitektur Pura Situs di Desa Sibang (Pengurangan Resiko Sosial, Ekonomi, dan Arsitektural)

Jurnal Arsitektur ZONASI ◽

10.17509/jaz.v2i1.15063 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 68

Author(s):

Ni Putu Ratih Pradnyaswari Anasta Putri ◽

I Putu Adi Widiantara

Keyword(s):

Data Analysis ◽

Cultural Heritage ◽

Qualitative Data ◽

Conservation Strategy ◽

The Real ◽

The Past ◽

Depth Interview ◽

History Of ◽

Depth Interviews ◽

Site Conservation

Abstract: Pura is one of Balinese architectural works that serves as a place of worship for Hindus. Pura as one of the local wisdom of the Balinese people is often associated with the identity of a region and cultural heritage. Pura is considered as one of the real proofs of the history of history from the past until now. The rolling of time and time, and the absence of adequate historical documentation regarding temples in Bali caused changes and developments that often did not match the standard. Many factors can be said to be the cause of changes or developments in a temple, including: (1) lack of documentation; (2) understanding of local people who are still minimal in the process of building a temple; (3) the absence of rules, awig-awig, or guidelines regarding the process of building a temple; (4) the people's desire to carry out practical and inexpensive temple renovation processes; and (5) people's insensitivity to the identity of their territory. Sites that have historical value are instead replaced with new or current models that are not necessarily based on original literature from previous ancestral orders. Seeing this phenomenon, researchers believe that there needs to be a preservation effort, namely a conservation strategy so that changes and developments can be overcome and controlled according to their portion. This research was carried out in an exploratory manner with qualitative data analysis, which explores data in depth through in-depth interviews. Keywords : Pura, Site, Conservation, IdentityAbstrak: Pura merupakan salah satu karya arsitektur Bali yang berfungsi sebagai tempat ibadah bagi umat Hindu. Pura sebagai salah satu kearifan lokal masyarakat Bali seringkali dikaitkan dengan identitas suatu wilayah dan warisan budaya. Pura dianggap sebagai salah satu bukti nyata perjalanan sejarah dari masa lampau hingga sekarang. Bergulirnya waktu dan jaman, serta tidak adanya dokumentasi sejarah yang memadai mengenai pura-pura di Bali menyebabkan terjadinya perubahan dan perkembangan yang seringkali tidak sesuai pakemnya. Banyak faktor yang dapat dikatakan sebagai penyebab dalam perubahan ataupun perkembangan sebuah pura, antara lain : (1) tidak adanya dokumentasi; (2) pemahaman masyarakat setempat yang masih minim terhadap proses pembangunan sebuah pura; (3) tidak adanya aturan, awig-awig, ataupun guidelines mengenai proses pembangunan sebuah pura; (4) keinginan masyarakat untuk melakukan proses renovasi pura dengan praktis dan murah; dan (5) ketidakpekaan masyarakat akan identitas wilayahnya. Situs-situs yang memiliki nilai historis malah diganti dengan model kebaruan atau kekinian yang belum tentu berdasarkan sastra asli dari tatanan leluhur sebelumnya. Melihat fenomena tersebut, peneliti meyakini perlu adanya sebuah upaya pelestarian yaitu strategi konservasi sehingga perubahan dan perkembangan dapat diatasi dan dikendalikan sesuai dengan porsinya. Penelitian ini dilakukan secara eksploratif dengan analisis data kualitatif, dimana menggali data sedalam-dalamnya melalui wawancara mendalam (in depth interview).Kata Kunci: Pura, Situs, Konservasi, Identitas

Download Full-text