Sustainable Transformation of Resettled Communities for Landless Peasants: Generation Logic of Spatial Conflicts

Urbanization in China has resulted in serious conflicts. Landless peasants are resettled between urban and rural areas in transitional communities. where their rural lifestyles often lead to spatial conflicts. We proposed a conceptual model to provide theoretical guidance for the governance of spatial conflicts and the sustainable transformation of resettled communities. Using field observations and semi-structured interviews, we examined 10 resettled communities in Hangzhou, China. The use of grounded theory to code the interview texts yielded 71 initial concepts and 22 categories that we then refined into six main categories: community physical environment (e.g., quality of private housing), community communication environment (e.g., heterogeneity of community population), landless peasants’ risk perceptions (e.g., impacts on social psychology), community governance capacity (e.g., trust in community’s self-governing organizations), residents’ space perceptions (e.g., awareness of space rights), and space competition behavior (e.g., fighting for public space). Finally, we applied social combustion theory to construct a logical relationship between the core category and main categories. The results show that changes in the physical and communication environments are the root elements (“combustion substances”) of spatial conflicts; the driving factors are landless peasants’ risk perceptions and community governance capabilities; direct elements (“ignition temperature”) are residents’ space perceptions and space competition behavior. Strategies for sustained transformation in resettled communities should prioritize gradual transitions of community space, improve support mechanisms for landless peasants, optimize community governance mechanisms, and cultivate awareness of community rules. This study aids the understanding of the inner mechanism for the sustainable development of resettled communities and has implications for other countries and regions in similar contexts.

Preliminary structural design for extraterrestrial buildings

The adventurous human nature had recently expanded to extraterrestrial habitation. Public billion-dollar companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin are investing extra ordinary capitals in space exploration. Australian Space Agency had also joined the space competition in 2018 in a so-called Mars mission. Although might sound far reaching, the idea of building human habitats on Mars requires well evaluated engineering design in the first stage as the cost of transporting equipment and materials as light as a kilogram to another planet is a massive financial burden. Throughout this passage, the effect of gravity, atmospheric pressure, and radiation on extra terrestrial buildings will be discussed. Following that a cylindrical structure as the most stable type of shell against internal pressure will be analyzed.

New cornulitid from the Ohesaare Formation (late Pŕidoli) of Saaremaa, Estonia

A new cornulitid species Cornulites baranovi sp. nov. is described from the Ohesaare Formation (late Přidoli) of Saaremaa, Estonia. The new species exhibits straight to slightly curved tubes that expand moderately in diameter, a vesicular tube structure and strong annular crests and costae. In addition to C. baranovi sp. nov., Conchicolites sp. also occurs in the Ohesaare Formation. The diversity of cornulitids is low in the Přidoli of Estonia, but not lower than in the Silurian of Estonia in general. C. baranovi often forms a symbiotic association with the bryozoan Fistulipora. It is not sure whether sealing off one cornulitid specimen by host bryozoan was a result of space competition or a post- mortem overgrowth. Specimens of C. baranovi also occur as solitary encrusters and aggregative encrusters in the Ohesaare Formation. C. baranovi presumably represents ecological generalists among the Silurian tentaculitoid tubeworms.

Stony coral populations are more sensitive to changes in vital rates in disturbed environments

Reef-building corals, like many long-lived organisms, experience environmental change as a combination of separate but concurrent processes, some of which are gradual yet long-lasting, while others are more acute but short-lived. For corals, some chronic environmental stressors, such as rising temperature and ocean acidification, are thought to induce gradual changes in colonies’ vital rates. Meanwhile, other environmental changes, such as the intensification of tropical cyclones, change the disturbance regime that corals experience. Here, we use a physiologically structured population model to explore how chronic environmental stressors that impact the vital rates of individual coral colonies interact with the intensity and magnitude of disturbance to affect coral population dynamics and cover. We find that when disturbances are relatively benign, intraspecific density dependence driven by space competition partially buffers coral populations against gradual changes in vital rates. However, the impact of chronic stressors is amplified in more highly disturbed environments, because disturbance weakens the buffering effect of space competition. We also show that coral cover is more sensitive to changes in colony growth and mortality than to external recruitment, at least in non-self-seeding populations, and that space competition and size structure mediate the extent and pace of coral-population recovery following a large-scale mortality event. Understanding the complex interplay among chronic environmental stressors, mass-mortality events, and population size structure sharpens our ability to project coral dynamics in an increasingly disturbed future.

Dynamic motility selection drives population segregation in a bacterial swarm

Population expansion in space, or range expansion, is widespread in nature and in clinical settings. Space competition among heterogeneous subpopulations during range expansion is essential to population ecology, and it may involve the interplay of multiple factors, primarily growth and motility of individuals. Structured microbial communities provide model systems to study space competition during range expansion. Here we use bacterial swarms to investigate how single-cell motility contributes to space competition among heterogeneous bacterial populations during range expansion. Our results revealed that motility heterogeneity can promote the spatial segregation of subpopulations via a dynamic motility selection process. The dynamic motility selection is enabled by speed-dependent persistence time bias of single-cell motion, which presumably arises from physical interaction between cells in a densely packed swarm. We further showed that the dynamic motility selection may contribute to collective drug tolerance of swarming colonies by segregating subpopulations with transient drug tolerance to the colony edge. Our results illustrate that motility heterogeneity, or “motility fitness,” can play a greater role than growth rate fitness in determining the short-term spatial structure of expanding populations.

Space logistics on the planets of the solar system and the star fieldspace logistics is not a vision anymore but has become reality

In my article, after a short overview of space exploration of the past decades, I analyze the current situation and vision of research of the Solar System. I present the possibilities of exploiting the Moon and Mars, along with the feasibility of living conditions, with logistics in the main focus. I demonstrate the emergence of the private sector in the space program of the USA, as a new potential, the continuously intensifying space competition and the role of the participating countries. I highlight the application of logistic and hybrid logistic solutions in the area, with the correlations of risk and security. I also touch upon the legal background of lunar mining and the extraction of rare earths, ownership of the extracted and acquired materials and the possibilities of their commercial distribution, as well as the distant future of space logistics in space exploration.

The Effects of Colicin Production Rates on Allelopathic Interactions in Escherichia coli Populations

Allelopathic interactions mediated by bacteriocins production serve microorganisms in the never-ending battle for resources and living space. Competition between the bacteriocin producer and sensitive populations results in the exclusion of one or the other depending on their initial frequencies, the structure of their habitat, their community density and their nutrient availability. These interactions were extensively studied in bacteriocins produced by Escherichia coli, the colicins. In spatially structured environments where interactions are local, colicin production has been shown to be advantageous to the producer population, allowing them to compete even when initially rare. Yet, in a well-mixed, unstructured environment where interactions are global, rare producer populations cannot invade a common sensitive population. Here we are showing, through an experimental model, that colicin-producers can outcompete sensitive and producer populations when the colicin production rates are enhanced. In fact, colicin production rates were proportional to the producer competitive fitness and their overall success in out-competing opponents when invading at very low initial frequencies. This ability of rare populations to invade established communities maintains diversity and allows the dispersal of beneficial traits.