Marine Connectivity Conservation Rules of Thumb for MPA and MPA Network Design

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are widely used as place-based protective measures for restoring and safeguarding marine biodiversity. When ecological connectivity is taken into account during design and management, the results can lead to more effective and resilient MPAs and MPA networks. This publication provides 13 ‘Rules of Thumb’ to support more consistent efforts by MPA managers and marine conservation professionals to implement connectivity conservation and better measure progress towards global conservation targets. These purpose-built tools are intended to inform more effective management and protection of oceans and coasts by covering a diversity of science and policy issues. They can also be used to progress system-based marine conservation as an essential component of national, transboundary, and global policies that establish greater connectivity across borders and at larger scales.

Rethinking science communication as the social conversation around science

In this essay the authors reflect on some recent trends in science communication research, celebrating it as an inherently interdisciplinary endeavour. Some current tendencies in science communication are more limiting, however: they present theoretical and strategic prescriptions that do not adquately reflect the variety and cultural diversity of science communication internationally. Rethinking science communication in the context of such diverse practices and cultural reorientations, the authors revise some of their own views and revisit notions of communication as conversation to propose an inclusive definition of science communication as the social conversation around science.

Movement control, decision-making, and the building of Roman roads to link them

In science, as in life, one can only hope to both inform others, and be informed by them. The commentaries associated with our book Vigor have highlighted the many ways in which the theory that we proposed can be improved. For example, there are a myriad of factors that need to be considered in a fully encompassing objective function. The neural mechanisms underlying the links between movement and decision-making have yet to be unraveled. The implications of a two-way interaction between movement and decisions at both the individual and social levels remain to be understood. The commentaries outline future questions, and encouragingly highlight the diversity of science communities that may be linked via the concept of vigor.

Cultural Intelligence in The Diversity of Science

The purpose of this paper is to conceptually and empirically analyze cultural intelligence from a variety of perspectives. Intensive conceptual and empirical studies of the trends in the dynamics of cultural intelligence in the perspective of the fields of psychology, sociology and organization are the research methods used. This paper is expected to contribute to the development of science in the field of multicultural services, especially cross-cultural guidance and counselling services. This paper is then expected to be one of the treasures of developing multicultural competencies in the implementation of guidance and counselling services.

The New Mechanical Philosophy

This book argues for a new image of nature and of science—one that understands both natural and social phenomena to be the product of mechanisms, and that suggests that much of the work of natural and social scientists involves discovering, describing, and explaining how these mechanisms work. The book explores the interplay between ontological questions about mechanisms as things in the world and methodological questions about how these mechanisms can be characterized. Ontologically, mechanisms are understood to be collections of entities whose organized activities and interactions give rise to phenomena. This minimal conception of mechanism is abstract enough to encompass most of the wide variety of things that scientists have called mechanisms. While mechanisms are particular things, localized in space and time, the models that scientists use to describe them must be abstract and idealized. The mechanistic approach provides new ways of thinking about traditional metaphysical questions—for instance, about the nature of objects, part-whole and cause-effect relations, properties and universals, natural kinds, and laws of nature. It also suggests novel approaches for thinking about methodological questions concerning scientific representation, causal inference, reduction, and scientific explanation. The New Mechanical Philosophy offers the promise of a better understanding of the sources of both the unity and diversity of science.