The impact of individual Callitris glaucophylla (white cypress pine) trees on agricultural soils and pastures of the north-western slopes of NSW, Australia

2009 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda T. McHenry ◽  
Brian R. Wilson ◽  
Peter V. Lockwood ◽  
Christopher N. Guppy ◽  
Brian M. Sindel ◽  
...  

Woody vegetation thickening occurs in agri-ecosystems worldwide, often with negative consequences for production. Dense Callitris glaucophylla (Joy Thomps. & L.A.S. Johnson) stands affect landscapes across NW NSW, Australia, and strategies to reduce tree density to levels which maintain biodiversity values alongside agricultural production are currently being sought. We investigated soil chemical and groundcover patterns associated with individual small and large C. glaucophylla trees at six sites of variable management history and lithology in NW NSW, Australia. We posed two questions: (1) do individual C. glaucophylla trees impose patterns on soil and groundcover (soil extractable P, C, N, S and pH, litter biomass, litter P and pasture cover), and, (2) if patterns exist, do they differ between tree sizes? Results showed that extractable P, C and pH decreased away from trees of both sizes, but significantly higher values were recorded adjacent to the stem of large trees. Litter biomass exhibited a strong site-related trend independent of soil variables. Positive correlations between litter and soil variables existed for some sites and not others, indicative of processes such as grazing which contribute to the transport of litter away from the tree. Irrespective of tree size ground-storey vegetation cover increased significantly away from the stem, presumably as a consequence of competition for soil water. Further results indicated that single C. glaucophylla trees enrich soils in patterns analogous to other species in similar environments worldwide. However, localised soil improvements must be weighed up against the negative effects of decreased groundcover associated with trees, and the potential for the species to re-seed prolifically into managed paddocks. Future research will discern the impact of individual C. glaucophylla trees at higher densities, where soil patterning may be modified by intense within-stand competition.

2019 ◽  
pp. 4-15
Author(s):  
I. A. Korgun ◽  
G. D. Toloraya

The presented study analyzes the opportunities for North Korea to capitalize on its competitive advantages in foreign trade in the context of sanctions.Aim. The study aims to identify mechanisms that allow North Korea to engage in foreign trade in circumvention of UN sanctions and to analyze their impact on the national economy.Tasks. The authors analyze the structure of North Korea’s national economy, its initial competitive advantage, identify the specific features of North Korea’s foreign trade in the context of sanctions, and determine the consequences of illicit trade in circumvention of sanctions for the national economy.Methods. This study uses an interdisciplinary approach that combines the classical theory of competitive advantage with the concept of rent seeking, with the concept of rent seeking and analysis of trade flows.Results. The study shows that, despite the restrictions imposed by sanctions, North Korea strives to make the most of its advantages, such as resource availability and cheap labor, in global trade. The country builds its own export-import chains in circumvention of sanctions. These chains are rather mobile, flexible, and controlled by the elite. As a result, benefits from trade that could be evenly distributed among the population are concentrated in the hands of a narrow segment of society. ‘Rent seeking’ makes it possible to formulate the negative consequences of these processes for the North Korean economy and the international community.Conclusions. Solving the North Korean issue requires an economic transformation in the country through the replacement of restrictive sanctions with more constructive ones. The exclusion of North Korea from open global trade leads to the country’s marginalization and impairs the transparency of international commodity flows.


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Augustin Ignatov

Abstract Entrepreneurship is the driving force of economic development and progress. A successful state, first of all, provides favourable conditions motivating the businesses to grow and flourish. Presently, the European Union is developing unevenly with multiple economic misbalances across the community, the West and the North being more competitive than the South and the East. The aim of the present research is to examine the framework of interdependence between the degree to which the governance quality and economic freedom in the European Union are supporting entrepreneurial activities and the performance of the community in terms of entrepreneurial innovation. The results reached through applying both qualitative and quantitative analyses show that the interdependence between entrepreneurial innovation and regulatory efficiency is strong for many of the European Union states which is determined by multiple factors including the institutional and economic ones. Also, the present paper underlines the importance of the proper regulatory framework for the efficient development of business innovation. The future research on this matter could consider in depth the impact of socio-cultural environment, its influence on the quality of governance and the impact of both upon the European entrepreneurial innovation.


2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (13) ◽  
pp. 2368-2378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica T Monroe ◽  
Ingrid E Lofgren ◽  
Becky L Sartini ◽  
Geoffrey W Greene

AbstractObjectiveTo investigate the effectiveness of an online, interactive intervention, referred to as the Green Eating (GE) Project, to motivate university students to adopt GE behaviours.DesignThe study was quasi-experimental and integrated into courses for credit/extra credit. Courses were randomly stratified into experimental or non-treatment control. The 5-week intervention consisted of four modules based on different GE topics. Participants completed the GE survey at baseline (experimental,n241; control,n367) and post (experimental,n187; control,n304). The GE survey has been previously validated and consists of Transtheoretical Model constructs including stage of change (SOC), decisional balance (DB: Pros and Cons) and self-efficacy (SE: School and Home) as well as behaviours for GE. Modules contained basic information regarding each topic and knowledge items to assess content learning.SettingThe GE Project took place at a public university in the north-eastern USA.SubjectsParticipants were full-time students between the ages of 18 and 24 years.ResultsThe GE Project was effective in significantly increasing GE behaviours, DB Pros, SE School and knowledge in experimental compared with control, but did not reduce DB Cons or increase SE Home. Experimental participants were also more likely to be in later SOC for GE at post testing.ConclusionsThe GE Project was effective in increasing GE behaviours in university students. Motivating consumers towards adopting GE could assist in potentially mitigating negative consequences of the food system on the environment. Future research could tailor the intervention to participant SOC to further increase the effects or design the modules for other participants.


Author(s):  
Benjamin De Cleen ◽  
Ewen Speed

Building on Rinaldi and Bekker’s scoping review of articles on the impact of populist radical right (PRR) politics on welfare and population health, this short article formulates three pointers towards a framework that might help structure future research into PRR, populist politics more generally, and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and other health issues. First, we discuss the centrality of welfare chauvinism to the PRR’s impact on health, taking this as a cue for a broader reflection on the importance on distinguishing between the nativist and populist dimensions of PRR politics. Secondly, we turn our attention to the potential moderating effect of the PRR’s welfare chauvinism on the welfare cuts proposed by their right-wing coalition partners, comments we see as pointing to the need to focus on nativist, populist, neoliberal and other threats to welfare policy more generally, rather than on the PRR only. Thirdly, we reflect on the paradoxical nature of welfare chauvinism – its negative consequences for the health of the ‘own people’ it proclaims to defend – as a starting point for a brief discussion of the need to consider carefully the not-so-straightforward relation between the PRR’s political rhetoric, its (impact on) policy and institutions, and the outcomes of such policy.


Animals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 1138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanja Hofmann ◽  
Sonja S. Schmucker ◽  
Werner Bessei ◽  
Michael Grashorn ◽  
Volker Stefanski

During their lifespan, chickens are confronted with a wide range of acute and chronic stressors in their housing environment that may threaten their welfare and health by modulating the immune system. Especially chronic stressful conditions can exceed the individual’s allostatic load, with negative consequences for immunity. A fully functional immune system is mandatory for health and welfare and, consequently, also for high productivity and safe animal products. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the impact of housing form, light regime as well as aerial ammonia and hydrogen sulfide concentrations on the immune system in chickens. Certain housing conditions are clearly associated with immunological alterations which potentially impair the success of vaccinations or affect disease susceptibility. Such poor conditions counteract sustainable poultry production. This review also outlines current knowledge gaps and provides recommendations for future research.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Verfaillie ◽  
Francisco J. Doblas-Reyes ◽  
Markus G. Donat ◽  
Nuria Pérez-Zanón ◽  
Balakrishnan Solaraju-Murali ◽  
...  

<p>Decadal climate predictions and forced climate projections both provide potentially useful information to users for the next ten years. They only differ in the former being initialised with observations, while the latter is not. Bringing together initialised decadal climate predictions and non-initialised climate projections in order to provide seamless climate information for users over the next decades is a new challenging area of research. This can be achieved by comparing the forecast quality of global initialised and non-initialised simulations in their common prediction time horizons (up to 10 years ahead), and quantify in how far initialisation improves the forecast quality. Forecast quality has been usually explored through skill assessment. However, the impact of initialisation on the reliability, which quantifies the agreement between the predicted probabilities and observed relative frequencies of a given event, of decadal predictions has not yet been investigated sufficiently. Hence, users of probabilistic predictions are particularly sensitive to the potential lack of reliability which would imply that the probabilities are not trustworthy and this can have negative consequences for decision-making. In this communication, initialised decadal hindcasts (or retrospective forecasts) from 12 forecasting systems of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 are compared to the corresponding non-initialised historical simulations in terms of reliability over their common period 1961-2005. We show that reliability varies greatly depending on the region or model ensemble analysed and on the correction applied. In particular, the North Atlantic and Europe stand out as regions where there is some added-value of initialised decadal hindcasts over non-initialised historical simulations in terms of reliability, mainly because of smaller biases and/or a better representation of the trend. Furthermore, we show that post-processed data display more reliable results, indicating that bias correction and calibration are fundamental to obtain reliable climate information.</p>


2019 ◽  
pp. 088626051985716 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carly Lyn Baetz ◽  
Michael Surko ◽  
Mahtab Moaveni ◽  
Felicia McNair ◽  
Amanda Bart ◽  
...  

The majority of youth in the juvenile justice system have experienced multiple traumatic events in their lives, including community violence, physical abuse, neglect, and traumatic loss. These high prevalence rates, coupled with the known negative consequences of trauma in childhood and adolescence, have led to a greater emphasis on implementing trauma-informed services and practices within juvenile justice settings. However, although many stakeholders and government entities have expressed support for creating more trauma-informed juvenile justice systems, there is still limited empirical knowledge about which interventions are most effective at improving outcomes, particularly at the organizational or facility level. In an effort to fill this gap, the current study evaluated the impact of a trauma-informed milieu intervention, including skills training for youth and training for staff, on rates of violence at two secure juvenile detention facilities ( N = 14,856) located in a large Northeastern city. The analyses revealed that the intervention was significantly related to a reduction of violent incidents in Facility A, with no impact on incidents in Facility B. Follow-up analyses revealed that a larger proportion of eligible youth in Facility A completed the skills group program as compared with eligible youth in Facility B (16% vs. 9%). This finding has important implications for the implementation of trauma-informed interventions for youth in juvenile detention settings, as it suggests that to impact outcomes at the facility level, a minimum threshold of youth may need to be exposed to the intervention. In addition, reductions in violence at Facility A were only realized after both staff training and youth skills components were implemented, suggesting that both components are necessary to create change at the facility level. Future research is needed to further explore the impact of organizational and implementation-level factors on trauma-informed care outcomes in juvenile justice settings.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vinh Nhat Lu ◽  
Jochen Wirtz ◽  
Werner H. Kunz ◽  
Stefanie Paluch ◽  
Thorsten Gruber ◽  
...  

PurposeRobots are predicted to have a profound impact on the service sector. The emergence of robots has attracted increasing interest from business scholars and practitioners alike. In this article, we undertake a systematic review of the business literature about the impact of service robots on customers and employees with the objective of guiding future research.Design/methodology/approachWe analyzed the literature on service robots as they relate to customers and employees in business journals listed in the Financial Times top 50 journals plus all journals covered in the cross-disciplinary SERVSIG literature alerts.FindingsThe analysis of the identified studies yielded multiple observations about the impact of service robots on customers (e.g. overarching frameworks on acceptance and usage of service robots; characteristics of service robots and anthropomorphism; and potential for enhanced and deteriorated service experiences) and service employees (e.g. employee benefits such as reduced routine work, enhanced productivity and job satisfaction; potential negative consequences such as loss of autonomy and a range of negative psychological outcomes; opportunities for human–robot collaboration; job insecurity; and robot-related up-skilling and development requirements). We also conclude that current research on service robots is fragmented, is largely conceptual in nature and focused on the initial adoption stage. We feel that more research is needed to build an overarching theory. In addition, more empirical research is needed, especially on the long(er)-term usage service robots on actual behaviors, the well-being and potential downsides and (ethical) risks for customers and service employees.Research limitations/implicationsOur review focused on the business and service literature. Future work may want to include additional literature streams, including those in computer science, engineering and information systems.Originality/valueThis article is the first to synthesize the business and service literature on the impact of service robots on customers and employees.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rupali Chandola ◽  
S. C. Tiwari ◽  
Rakesh Kumar Tripathi

Background: Crying is an important means of communication for babies. It plays a crucial role in ensuring the survival, health and development of the child. Whether infants cry intensely for a few months or fuss frequently for the first year of life, a systems approach to development would suggest that the impact of extremes in crying on the infant’s immediate environment may have negative consequences for the dynamics of the parent-child relationship, which in turn would have implications for the child’s psychosocial development. Parents have important roles in child rearing, but the influence of their personality on rearing practices and their impact on the behavior of children has received surprisingly little attention. The aim of the current study was to investigate the relationship between parent’s personality and child crying behavior and future mental health. Methods:  Study examined personality dimension of 300 parents of normal and psychiatrically ill male and female subjects selected purposively between 20-25 years age group. A question was asked to all the parents of the subjects, “What was the behavior of the subject during two years from the birth? Was he or she used to ‘cry’ often or not? The study was conducted on the parents of diagnosed 75 indoor and outdoor psychiatric patients and 75 normal controls. GHQ-12 negative subjects from the community formed the normal group.  Dimension Personality Inventory (DPI) was administered on all parents of included subjects. Result: Significant difference was found in all the dimensions of DPI between ‘crying’ and ‘non crying’ child’s parents. Conclusion: The maturity of parent’s character appears to have a key role in reducing the risk of behavior problems in their children. Suggestions are made for parental education and future research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
pp. 11854
Author(s):  
Jozef Klucka ◽  
Rudolf Gruenbichler ◽  
Jozef Ristvej

The routine approach used in risk management is based on the scheme that within the prevention period an organisation or a state prepares for the expected risks and once the risks occur, resources and internal procedures are implemented to mitigate their negative consequences. The objective of the paper is to analyse risk management and its constraints, its application in COVID-19 period and based on it provide mitigating strategies for specific problems/risks related to COVID-19. The research methods related to the topics are: (a) study of books, newspapers and other internet resources and (b) interviews with COVID-19 managers at district and regional level in the north of Slovakia. The proposals for mitigation strategies are based on the basic assumption relevant for COVID-19 that there are risks with unknown probability and unknown consequences. Therefore, the mitigation strategies are adapted to the current situation, which includes lack of data and know-how, lack of experience, political and economic unrest and social problems. The impact of constraints is based on an ad-hoc or unplanned and clearly structured approach. Problems and risks are identified and mitigation strategies are proposed. The proposed measures (quantitative/qualitative) should be evaluated and via benchmarking the development and efficiency of applied measures monitored and assessed. The output of identified risk-known and –unknown creates a framework for implementation.


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