Academic literature on the topic 'Fields of Research – 210000 Science-General'

With a geological reserve of over 170 billion tons, coal is the most abundant energy source in Mongolia with six operating thermal power stations. Moreover, in Ulaanbaatar city over 210000 families live in the Ger district and use over 800000 tons of coal as a fuel. The three thermal power plants in Ulaanbaatar burn about 5 million tons of coal, resulting in more than 500000 tons of coal combustion by-products per year. Globally, the ashes produced by thermal power plants, boilers, and single ovens pose serious environmental problems. The utilization of various types of waste is one of the factors determining the sustainability of cities. Therefore, the processing of wastes for re-use or disposal is a critical topic in waste management and materials research. According to research, the Mongolian capital city's air and soil quality has reached a disastrous level. The main reasons for air pollution in Ulaanbaatar are reported as being coal-fired stoves of the Ger residential district, thermal power stations, small and medium-sized low-pressure furnaces, and motor vehicles. Previously, coal ashes have been used to prepare advanced materials such as glass-ceramics with the hardness of 6.35 GPa, geopolymer concrete with compressive strength of over 30 MPa and zeolite A with a Cr (III) removal capacity of 35.8 mg/g. Here we discuss our latest results on the utilization of fly ash for preparation of a cement stabilized base layer for paved roads, mechanically activated fly ash for use in concrete production, and coal ash from the Ger district for preparation of an adsorbent. An addition of 20% fly ash to 5-8% cement made from a mixture of road base gave a compressive strength of ~ 4MPa, which exceeds the standard. Using coal ashes from Ger district prepared a new type of adsorbent material capable of removing various organic pollutants from tannery water was developed. This ash also showed weak leaching characteristics in water and acidic environment, which opens up an excellent opportunity to utilize.

This article introduces the fractal theory and its applications in wood fracture、wood texture、wood drying 、wood defect nondestructive detecting and other fields in wood science researching, among which many researching results are characterised by fractal dimension. While the methods in other fields which fractal were used in their researches were refered , the writer attempts to apply them in wood science researches.At last the new viewpoints and its applications were proposed.

This article has been supported by Chinese National Natural Science Fund in 2010, “Strategy research of using supply chain partner’s knowledge in enterprise knowledge creation process”, Project approving code: 71072124. It was also supported by Fund of Liaoning Province reform of higher education "Research of service outsourcing personnel training mode" in 2007, Fund of Dalian Science and Technology Plan "Research of ways expanding Dalian outsourcing service industry market" in 2008, Fund of Dalian Science and Technology Plan "Research of Dalian comprehensive prediction system of electric power and energy" in 2009, Fund of Chongqing Electric Power Corporation "Research of Chongqing comprehensive prediction system of electric power and energy" in 2008 and Project of Dalian Maritime University reform of graduate education and teaching “Construction of teaching content system of Management Science and Engineering based on the platform of motion and internet of things ” in 2010.

Metaphor is widely used in human communication. The cohort of scholars studying metaphor in various fields is continuously growing, but very few work has been done in bibliographical analysis of metaphor research. This paper examines the advancements in metaphor research from 2000 to 2017. Using data retrieved from Microsoft Academic Graph and Web of Science, this paper makes a macro analysis of metaphor re search, and expounds the underlying patterns of its development. Taking into consideration sub-fields of metaphor research, the internal analysis of metaphor research is carried out from a micro perspective to reveal the evolution of research topics and the inherent relationships among them. This paper provides novel insights into the current state of the art of metaphor research as well as future trends in this field, which may spark new research interests in metaphor from both linguistic and interdisciplinary perspectives.

The influence of soil texture on canopy growth, vine yield, and fruit composition of Sauvignon blanc were assessed on a mature vineyard from the Rapaura area in Marlborough. The subject vines were mature Sauvignon blanc in a commercial vineyard trained to four cane VSP and planted with a north south orientation. Row and vine spacings were typical of the area at 3m x 1.8m. Four areas of different soil texture were identified using trunk circumference measurements, visual assessment of the surface soil and aerial photographs to identify changes in vine growth. Soil pits were excavated at a later date to determine root numbers and record the soil texture in the different areas. Two crop treatments were imposed on half of the plots at approximately 50% veraison: unthinned crop and 50% crop. A shading treatment was also imposed at 50% veraison where three sets of tagged shoots had bunches that were exposed to sunlight, bunches that had some natural shading from leaves or bunches that had paper bags fastened over each to provide a completely shaded environment. Vine vegetative vigour for each plot was assessed during the growing season using the Point Quadrat method and at pruning using bud counts and pruning weights. Thirty berry samples were collected from the 32 plots and analysed weekly for soluble solids and berry weight. Harvest of bunches from the tagged shoots occurred on two different dates with the first harvest picked when fruit from one soil and crop treatment had reached 21 °Brix. The second picking took place just before the commercial harvest, which coincided with last soil and crop treatment reaching 21 °Brix. Bunches from each tagged shoot were weighed, frozen and later analysed for soluble solids, pH, organic acids, and methoxypyrazines. Vines on very stony textured soils had small trunk circumferences with a high root density and yield to pruning weight ratio compared to those growing on deep silt soils. Vines on deep silt soils had more vigorous canopies with large shoots and a higher leaf layer number. The target soluble solids was reached first by the vines on the very stony plots despite the higher crop load with soil texture appearing to be a dominant factor by influencing the time of flowering. Cluster shading decreased soluble solids, consistent with other studies, whilst crop thinning resulted in an earlier harvest. This was contrary to popular opinion that crop thinning at veraison would have no impact on sugar accumulation. pH and organic acids were unaffected by shading or bunch thinning. Vines growing on deep silt soils had a significantly higher level of total acidity and malic acid than those on the stony soils. At harvest, methoxypyrazine levels were very low compared to previously reported figures for Marlborough, which may have been a result of sample preparation. IBMP was significantly higher on deep silt soils, however, with no impact from the shading or crop treatment. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that IBMP synthesis may be increased by the number of leaves surrounding bunches (Roujou de Boubee, 2003). The results suggest that soil texture plays a dominant role in influencing Sauvignon blanc flavour and aroma and due consideration should be given to vineyard layout and site selection prior to new plantings taking place.

When plants are exposed to multiple environmental stress factors, one form of stress can affect the response to another stress. This study used seedlings of a new cultivar of wheat(Triticum aestivum L. cv. 1862), grown under factorial combinations of two levels of ultraviolet-B (UV-B)radiation, two salinity regimes and two levels of iron treatment in chelator-buffered nutrient solutions in a growth chamber. A number of morphological and physiological measurements were made. The accumulation of chlorophyll, UVabsorbing compounds and proline in shoots, as well as phytosiderophores (PSs) in root exudates were measured. Feed value measurements included crude protein, water-soluble carbohydrates, acid detergent fibre and Fe in shoots and roots. After 21 days of stress exposure, results showed that Fe deficiency and NaCl stress generally decreased plant growth and function as well as nutritive value, but increased plant biochemical protection traits such as proline accumulation (16.3 fold under salinity stress) and release of PSs (2.4 fold under Fe deficiency). Interestingly, UV-B radiation affected belowground parameters, inducing a 47% reduction in PS release, together with decreasing root DM by 9% and Fe concentration in roots by 7%. When Fe deficiency and NaCl stress were combined, the results showed a decrease in PS release by 3.5 fold compared to unstressed plants. UV-B radiation synergistically increased UV-absorbing compound levels in combination with Fe deficiency, compared to plants grown under optimal Fe levels. This stress combination also resulted in a cumulative effect by decreasing Fe concentration in shoots and roots. However, salt stress did not interact with UV-B radiation for any of the traits measured. In addition, some three-way interactions were noted, with the Fe x NaCl x UV-B stress combination slightly decreasing PS release and resulting in a cumulative effect by decreasing Fe concentration in roots. In conclusion, this study found that aboveground stress factors such as UV-B can affect important aspects of belowground plant function, and that Fe deficiency can interact with UV-B and salinity stress in modifying plant responses to either stress alone.

The Canterbury plains are frequently exposed to summer drought and climate predictions forecast that the severity and frequency of summer drought will increase. The most commonly used pasture grass, perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.), is drought sensitive. One possible method to maintain sward dry matter (DM) production under water stress is to use an alternative grass species such as tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.). The objective of this research was to compare summer DM production of monoculture swards of perennial ryegrass and tall fescue under various seasonal drought regimes to study physiological and biochemical drought responses of each species. Data were collected over a period of two-summer seasons, Season One (2006-2007) and Season Two (2007-2008) in an automated rain shelter at Lincoln, Canterbury. Drought treatments included exposure of plants to a spring or autumn drought or a four-weekly "irrigated" drought regime. DM yields of the two species were similar under each watering regime. The control treatment, under non-limiting conditions, has the highest accumulated yield in both Season One and Two for ryegrass (17.1 and 15.7 t DM ha⁻¹) and tall fescue (18.8 and 16.0 t DM ⁻¹) respectively. Spring and autumn drought treatments were similar for the two species in accumulated yield in either season, however the exposure to drought stress returned yields lower than the control. Consistently, the lowest-yielding treatment was the four-weekly irrigated drought, which resulted in an average yield across species in Season One of 10.1 t DM ha⁻¹ and 8.35 t DM ha⁻¹ in Season Two. Growth rates of the swards were calculated using accumulated DM production against accumulated thermal time using a base temperature of 3°C for both species. The control treatments showed a strong linear relationship for both species in both seasons, though Season Two showed a period of approximately 390 °Cd of no growth. Spring growth was similar for all treatments until October when both the spring drought and four-weekly irrigated treatment deviated from the control as water stress commenced. Growth also ceased under autumn drought later in the season. The physiological drought responses between species and among treatments differed. Tall fescue under control conditions had the highest photosynthesis rates of 20.5 µmol CO₂ m⁻² s⁻¹,or 22% higher than ryegrass, whereas the four-weekly irrigated treatment showed no inter-species differences. Differences were also found for other gas exchange parameters. Physiological water use efficiency (phys WUE) in ryegrass was 15% greater than tall fescue in Season Two. Photosynthesis and gas exchange rates against leaf water potential showed declining gas flow in both species across all treatments in response to drying soil conditions and across all irrigation treatments. The osmo-protectant proline was 22% higher in concentration in ryegrass than in tall fescue in Season Two and increased in drought stressed treatments in both seasons. Water stress was found to reduce total chlorophyll concentrations in all treatments and in tall fescue, while little change occurred in the chlorophyll a:b ratio. In conclusion, the findings from this thesis suggest similar DM responses for the two species under drought. The findings suggests that tall fescue performs more as a "water user" under drought conditions, compared with perennial ryegrass, which is more a "water saver." Resonses to the changing environment to a point, before "shuttting up shop" through lower stomatal conductance.

The sap beetle genus Carpophilus Stephens (Coleoptera: Nitidulidae) is a large genus consisting of over 200 species and are found worldwide. Several species are important pests of crops and stored products, and are frequently intercepted as part of biosecurity operations. The genus is poorly known taxonomically, and there are several species groups that are challenging to identify by morphological methods. In particular, two species found across the Pacific, C. maculatus Murray and C. oculatus Murray are frequently confused with each other. These two species are similar in size and colour, but differ primarily by the shape of the colour pattern on their elytra. However, this colour pattern is highly variable within both species, leading to ambiguity in the indentification of these species. Within C. oculatus, three subspecies have been described based on differences in the male genitalia and pronotal punctation: C. o. oculatus and C. o. gilloglyi Dobson are distributed widely across the Pacific, while C. o. cheesmani Dobson is known only from Vanuatu. A search of literature records and specimen collections revealed 32 species of Carpophilus recorded from the Pacific region. In addition there remain several unidentified specimens representing at least four species, two of which will be described subsequent to this research. A number of species recorded in the literature may have been misidentified, and these require further field collections and inspection of museum specimens to confirm their presence in the Pacific. To test the validity of the subspecies of C. oculatus, and its distinctiveness from C. maculatus, a phylogeny of available specimens of Carpophilus was inferred from one mitochondrial gene (cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI)), and two nuclear genes (28S ribsomal RNA (28S) and the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2)). These data show large genetic distances between the three subspecies of C. oculatus of 7-12%. Given these distances are similar to those between other species in the genus, this indicates these subspecies may be elevated to full species. The data also consistently support a monophyletic relationship between C. o. oculatus and C. o. gilloglyi. Nuclear genes also support C. o. cheesmani as part of a clade with the other subspecies, but these relationships are unresolved in COI. Carpophilus maculatus was not supported as being the sister taxon of the C. o. oculatus and C. o. gilloglyi clade. Other relationships within Carpophilus were unresolved, possibly due to a combination of incomplete taxon sampling, and saturation of substitutions within the COI gene. Phylogeographic analysis of specimens collected from several localities within the range of C. oculatus showed that, with only one exception, there were no shared haplotypes between archipelagoes. This result suggests it may be possible to determine the provenence of intercepted specimens, providing further information regarding potential invasion pathways. A degree of geographic structuring was also present within C. o. gilloglyi, being separated into a western clade found in Fiji and Rotuma and an eastern clade distributed from the Kermadec Islands and Tonga to French Polynesia. This separation was most profound in COI data, with a mean pairwise distance between the clades of 7%. ITS2 data also demonstrates a degree of differentiation between the two clades, based on differences in the insertions and deletions between the clades. The variability in the shape and colour of the elytral pattern of C. oculatus was also investigated. Colour was quantified using a method based on Red-Green-Blue (RGB) colour values derived from digital photographs, while an outline analysis of the elytral pattern was conducted using elliptic Fourier analysis (EFA). Principal Components Analysis of the RGB values and EFA coefficients showed no clear separation between subspecies, nor were any trends correlated with host fruit or collection localities. Variation at all levels and all measures studied in this thesis show that this geographic region and this genus of beetles offer intruiging insights into speciation, biogeography and biological invasions. There is much scope for further research on the causes and consequences of this variation and the lives of these interesting insects.

Arthropod species that have the potential to damage crops are food resources for communities of predators and parasitoids. From an agronomic perspective these species are pests and biocontrol agents respectively, and the relationships between them can be important determinants of crop yield and quality. The impact of biocontrol agents on pest populations may depend on the availability of other food resources in the agroecosystem. A scarcity of such resources may limit biological control and altering agroecosystem management to alleviate this limitation could contribute to pest management. This is a tactic of ‘conservation biological control’ and includes the provision of flowers for species that consume prey as larvae but require floral resources in their adult stage. The use of flowers for pest management requires an understanding of the interactions between the flowers, pests, biocontrol agents and non-target species. Without this, attempts to enhance biological control might be ineffective or detrimental. This thesis develops our understanding in two areas which have received relatively little attention: the role of flowers in biological control by true omnivores, and the implications of flower use by fourth-trophic-level life-history omnivores. The species studied were the lacewing Micromus tasmaniae and its parasitoid Anacharis zealandica. Buckwheat flowers Fagopyrum esculentum provided floral resources and aphids Acyrthosiphon pisum served as prey. Laboratory experiments with M. tasmaniae demonstrated that although prey were required for reproduction, providing flowers increased survival and oviposition when prey abundance was low. Flowers also decreased prey consumption by the adult lacewings. These experiments therefore revealed the potential for flowers to either enhance or disrupt biological control by M. tasmaniae. Adult M. tasmaniae were collected from a crop containing a strip of flowers. Analyses to determine the presence of prey and pollen in their digestive tracts suggested that predation was more frequent than foraging in flowers. It was concluded that the flower strip probably did not affect biological control by lacewings in that field, but flowers could be significant in other situations. The lifetime fecundity of A. zealandica was greatly increased by the presence of flowers in the laboratory. Providing flowers therefore has the potential to increase parasitism of M. tasmaniae and so disrupt biological control. A. zealandica was also studied in a crop containing a flower strip. Rubidium-marking was used to investigate nectar-feeding and dispersal from the flowers. In addition, the parasitoids’ sugar compositions were determined by HPLC and used to infer feeding histories. Although further work is required to develop the use of these techniques in this system, the results suggested that A. zealandica did not exploit the flower strip. The sugar profiles suggested that honeydew had been consumed by many of the parasitoids. A simulation model was developed to explore the dynamics of aphid, lacewing and parasitoid populations with and without flowers. This suggested that if M. tasmaniae and A. zealandica responded to flowers as in the laboratory, flowers would only have a small effect on biological control within a single period of a lucerne cutting cycle. When parasitoids were present, the direct beneficial effect of flowers on the lacewing population was outweighed by increased parasitism, reducing the potential for biological control in future crops. The results presented in this thesis exemplify the complex interactions that may occur as a consequence of providing floral resources in agroecosystems and re-affirm the need for agroecology to inform the development of sustainable pest management techniques.

When the New Zealand Government restructured the system of the public funding of research (1990-1992) it created Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) as companies operating in a global, market-led economy. One CRI, AgResearch, responded to this environment by corporatisation and instituted a normative system of control of workers which, through strategic plans, vision and mission statements, and performance appraisal processes, encouraged workers to adhere to company goals. This thesis, reporting on an ethnographic study of this CRI, shows how most scientific workers (technical workers and scientists alike) experienced insecurity through estrangement because the contributions they wished to make were less valued both in society and in their work organisation. They were excluded from participation in both organisational and Government policy-making, and felt they did not ‘belong’ anymore. Scientists in particular were also experiencing alienation (in the Marxist sense), as they were losing autonomy over the production of their work and its end use. Scientific workers developed tactics of compliance in order to resist these experiences and ostensibly comply with organisational goals while maintaining and protecting their self-identities, and making their work meaningful. Meanwhile, to outward appearances, the work of the CRI continued. This thesis adds to the sociology of work literature by extending the understanding of the concepts of compliance and resistance in white-collar work, particularly under normative control, by developing two models of resistance. It adds to the stories of the impact on public sector workers of the restructuring of this sector in New Zealand’s recent history, and develops implications for science policy and practice.

This thesis is concerned with creativity as an object of educational governance and a category of subjective identification. It studies a ‘creativity explosion’ in higher education in New Zealand, focusing on how fashion design students are being mobilized as subjects of creativity through ‘joined up’ modes of governance and technologies of educational choice. Using a poststructural ethnographic ‘methodology’ I explain how, from the late 1990s, models of educational governance began to appear dysfunctional and unable to deliver the attributes and capacities expected of citizens in a knowledge economy. I argue that creativity gained significance as a result of new ways of ‘thinking culture and economy together’. Neoliberal rhetorics representing creativity as flexible human capital and a generic, transferable skill needed by workers in the new economy, were articulated with liberal humanist notions about creativity, which are commonly understood and performed through the social categories of art. All kinds of individual and institutional actors took advantage of these shifting opportunity structures to position themselves with ‘creative’ identities. Within various cultural organisations, including universities, moves to strengthen a liberal agenda and retain creativity as a form of ‘arts knowledge’ with high cultural capital, rubbed up against counter-hegemonic strategies to enlist and develop more universal concepts about creativity as a collaborative endeavour, vital to new forms of capitalist enterprise. By historicising the context in which a new ‘normative doctrine’ of creativity has emerged, and by treating its theorisation as culturally performative, I develop the position that fashion design graduates, as ‘creative girls’, are highly productive performers in the new categories of cultural economy. However I argue that the creative girl occupies a subject position fitted to after-neoliberalised social and economic arrangements, not because she is shaped by neoliberal ideologies, but because she is made up by techniques and tactics of an ‘after-neoliberal’ governmentality. This demonstrates the mutual constitution of ‘creative economy’ and ‘creative persons’ and underlines the fact that despite after-neoliberal ambitions for managing education, there can be no simple cause and effect relation between higher education and economic performance.

In many ways, coastal marine resources have provided an important source of protein, income and even employment for coastal rural Solomon Islands communities. Fishing, for instance, has always played a very important role in these communities' culture and tradition. Subsistence fishing is traditional in most rural coastal communities. Small-scale fishing is also wide-spread. Traditionally marine areas and resources were managed by the custodians of the adjacent land and the traditional leaders in some local communities. While small-scale fisheries are managed by the Government, much of the enforcement responsibility is in the hands of the community leaders, given the realities of what that Government can provide. This research has explored the interaction between rural coastal livelihoods and marine resource management under Customary Marine Tenure (CMT) in one area of Temotu Province, Solomon Islands. Specifically the research seeks to explore, explain and describe how the livelihoods of the rural coastal villagers influence the use, access and management of marine resources and vice versa. Particular attention has been given to: first exploring the traditional marine resource management under CMT and livelihoods in the three villages; second, how the changes in the villagers' livelihoods system affects the customary marine resource management in the three case study villages; third, how changes in customary marine resource management influences the livelihoods of the villagers and finally the nature of the relationship between livelihoods and customary marine resource management is described for the first time for this part of the Solomon Islands. The research results showed that villagers' livelihoods have changed over the past decade and much of these changes have affected the customary marine resource management in the three case study villages. Consequently, customary marine resource management under CMT is no longer effective. The changes in customary marine resource also have implications on the villagers' livelihoods. For this reason the study argues that when trying to understand the factors affecting customary marine resource, the entire livelihoods system of the people should be considered. The study states that the nature of the interactions between livelihoods and customary marine resource management is a two-way relationship, dynamic and very complex. Should there be further marine resource development, the study suggests that understanding the livelihoods of the people concerned is important for better management.

This thesis explores how stakeholders in Mongolian rural development projects interpret the concept of 'participation'. While previous research has provided an ethnographic snapshot of participation in rural development projects, none has yet focused on Mongolia – a post-socialist nation that receives significant amounts of foreign aid. To gain a holistic picture of 'participation', this study explores: how stakeholders understand participation; what stakeholders perceive and prioritise as the benefits of participation; and which factors motivate or inhibit participation. This study's methodology involved an inductive, qualitative approach with a multiple case study design. Three Mongolia rural development projects, each with objectives of poverty-reduction and participation, were selected from three different development organisations and interviews were conducted with different stakeholder groups: development organisation managers, field staff, and local people of the project sites (participants and non-participants). The results of this study revealed a dominant or 'Mongolian' understanding of 'participation' existed across the various stakeholders: 'Participation is local contributions of group labour and information for material benefits, within a top-down authoritarian structure (including local institutions)'. This understanding arose from development organisations' emphasis on efficiency and sustainable results and local people engaging with the project as a normative livelihood strategy. In this study, given the incidence and nature of rural poverty, stakeholders prioritised the tangible benefits of participation over the intangible and linked empowerment to tangible outcomes. Development staff prioritised the longer-term tangible benefits (food security and income), and to ensure their sustainability sub-benefits were provided sequentially, mental capital, then physical capital, with social capital built naturally through the project's formal and informal activities. In contrast, local people prioritised the manifest tangible benefits, which initially meant the physical capital gifted by the project, and then later the material outcomes of the new livelihoods. While development staff envisioned intangible benefits as important in their own right, for Mongolian participants they were a gateway to the project's tangible outputs. Four prominent intangible benefits emerged: knowledge/mental investment, 'power within', social connections, and involvement in groups – each uniquely valuable within the Mongolian context. The results also showed that the factors which shaped participation reflected the unique circumstances of rural Mongolia and each project's activities. Economic rationality appeared as the foundational incentive for participation, followed by social motivations that included: widespread, detailed, and positive information about the project; the perceived power, leadership, and organisational skills of the development organisation; a deep personal relationship between development staff and local people; and rurally-oriented seminars and workshops. The major barriers to 'Mongolian' participation included: a lack of opportunity or incentive to participate; the current situation of poverty and unemployment; Mongolia's governance structures, culture, and history; the geography of isolation; the development organisation‟s procedures; and the dynamics of project 'groups'. Moreover, the results indicated that projects which require higher levels of local participation, i.e. decision-making, may face more fundamental obstacles because of the cultural value placed upon top-down, authoritarian leadership and a prevailing mentality of dependence. Based on these results, this study concludes that interpretations of participation arise out of field-level realities, and thus the level of participation incorporated into development projects needs to reflect the local culture, context, and history.

The aims of this thesis are to determine to what extent the Crown remains important as a source of legitimacy for the constitutional order and as a focus of sovereignty; how the Crown has developed as a distinct institution; and what the prospects are for the adoption of a republican form of government in New Zealand. The imperial Crown has evolved into the New Zealand Crown, yet the implications of this change are as yet only slowly being understood. Largely this is because that evolution came about as a result of gradual political development, as part of an extended process of independence, rather than by deliberate and conscious decision. The continuing evolution of political independence does not necessarily mean that New Zealand will become a republic in the short-to-medium term. This is for various reasons. The concept of the Crown has often been, in New Zealand, of greater importance than the person of the Sovereign, or that of the Governor-General. The existence of the Crown has also contributed to, rather than impeded, the independence of New Zealand, through the division of imperial prerogative powers. In particular, while the future constitutional status of the Treaty of Waitangi remains uncertain, the Crown appears to have acquired greater legitimacy through being a party to the Treaty. The expression of national identity does not necessarily require the removal of the Crown. The very physical absence of the Sovereign, and the all-pervading nature of the legal concept of the Crown, have also contributed to that institution's development as a truly national organ of government. The concept of the Crown has now, to a large extent, been separated from its historical, British, roots. This has been encouraged by conceptual confusion over the symbolism and identity of the Crown. But this merely illustrates the extent to which the Crown has become an autochthonous polity, grounded in our own unique settlement and evolution since 1840. Whether that conceptual strength is sufficient to counterbalance symbolic and other challenges in the twenty-first century remains uncertain. But it is certain that the Crown has had a profound affect upon the style and structure of government in New Zealand.

The authors present the most relevant factors and considerations involved in the intersection between behavioral science and firearms. The intent is to provide a comprehensive review of these issues in the context of the professional literatures in these areas and to serve as an informational and educational source for a wide range of readers and as a reference text for practitioners, institutional and law enforcement personnel, legislators, and academicians and students in fields such as psychology, criminal justice, and public health. Concepts are presented using a best-practices model that encourages and promotes empirically supported practice, research, policy, and overall decision-making. This book is distinct from all others published in this area, given its inclusion and integration of the following: (1) a focus on the behavioral science of firearm-related matters; (2) review of the professional literatures and case law/legal statutes, particularly as related to firearm development and use, laws, regulations, violence, suicide, and safety; (3) considerations and information from various relevant areas: psychology, sociology, criminal justice, law, and others specific to the general public (e.g., media); (4) presentation of a framework for the assessment of civilians seeking firearms permits, reinstatement of their firearms subsequent to revocation, and considerations for relevant others, such as military, law enforcement and corrections personnel, and security and armed guards; (5) issues related to treatment and self-care in the context of firearm use and ownership; (6) a focus on how the principles and empirical knowledge within behavioral science can inform and improve firearm-related policy, practice, and research.

This Handbook provides the reader with access to core areas in the philosophy of science and to new directions in the discipline. Part I contains broad overviews of the main lines of research and the state of established knowledge in six principal areas of the discipline, including computational, physical, biological, psychological, and social sciences, as well as general philosophy of science. Part II covers what are considered to be the traditional topics in the philosophy of science such as causation, probability, models, ethics and values, and explanation. Part III identifies new areas of investigation that show promise of becoming important areas of research, including the philosophy of astronomy and astrophysics, data, complexity theory, neuroscience, simulations, post-Kuhnian philosophy, post-empiricist epistemology, and emergence. Most chapters are accessible to scientifically educated non-philosophers as well as to professional philosophers. The authors bring different perspectives from the North American, European, and Australasian research communities, and all are leading researchers in their fields. All the contributors were encouraged to provide a new perspective on the topic at hand in addition to providing basic information about the subject.

The executive branch in Western democracies has been handed a virtually impossible task. Expected to ‘imperially’ direct the life of the nation through thick and thin, it is concurrently required to be subservient to legislation meted out by a sovereign parliament. Drawing on a general argument from constitutional theory that prioritizes dispersal of power over concepts of hierarchy, the book argues that the tension between the political dominance of the executive branch and its submission to law is maintained by the adoption of various forms of fuzziness, under which a guise of legality masks the absence of substantive limitation of power. Under this 'internal tension' model, the executive branch is concurrently subservient to law and dominant over it, while concepts of substantive legality are compromised. Drawing on legal and political science research, the book classifies and analyses thirteen forms of fuzziness, ranging from open-ended or semi-written constitutions to unapplied legislation. The study of this unavoidable yet problematic feature of the public sphere is addressed descriptively and normatively. Adding detailed examples from two fields of law, emergency and air-pollution law, in two systems (the UK and the US), the book ends with a call for raising the threshold of judicial review, grounded in theories of participatory and deliberative democracy. This innovative book, concerned with an area that has been surprisingly under-researched on a general level beyond extensive studies of national executives, offers a theoretical foundation that should ground all analyses of the arguably most powerful branch of modern government.

The collection contains the scientific works of the All-Russian Scientific and Practical conference «Epidemiological surveillance of current infections: new threats and challenges», held by the FBIS «Academician I.N. Blokhina Nizhny Novgorod Scientific Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology» of Rospotrebnadzor in honor of the 100th anniversary of the outstanding scientist I. N. Blokhina, who headed the Institute for 44 years. Leading scientists and specialists from 57 scientific and practical institutions of Rospotrebnadzor, healthcare, education and other organizations from 32 regions of Russia and foreign countries took part in the compilation of the materials. The materials of the collection present the results of scientific research on the epidemiology of current infections, including the use of GIS technologies, methods of molecular epidemiology and bioinformatics, achievements in the field of diagnostics, molecular genetic and molecular biological studies of pathogens of bacterial and viral nature, in the study of human immune defense mechanisms, means of ensuring biological safety, general and population ecology of microorganisms of various biosystems, a number of aspects of biotechnology of immunobiological drugs, etc A separate section of the collection is devoted to new threats to the safety of the population, among them the most relevant is the pandemic of a new coronavirus infection. The collection contains materials on the results of studies on the pathogenesis, epidemiology, clinic and diagnosis of COVID-19. The conference materials will be useful for both scientific and practical employees of Rospotrebnadzor institutions, other ministries and departments involved in the work of the system of anti-epidemic protection of the population, as well as epidemiologists, microbiologists, virologists, biotechnologists, etc. working in various fields of science, education and practical health care. Scientific articles are published in the author’s edition.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

AbstractCitizen science broadly refers to the active engagement of the general public in scientific research tasks. Citizen science is a growing practice in which scientists and citizens collaborate to produce new knowledge for science and society. Although citizen science has been around for centuries, the term citizen science was coined in the 1990s and has gained popularity since then. Recognition of citizen science is growing in the fields of science, policy, and education and in wider society. It is establishing itself as a field of research and a field of practice, increasing the need for overarching insights, standards, vocabulary, and guidelines. In this editorial chapter we outline how this book is providing an overview of the field of citizen science.

AbstractSynthetic biology is a new, rapidly growing interdisciplinary field which seeks to use engineering techniques to alter and construct new biological components, devices, and systems. The rate of synthetic biology development and research has increased over the past two decades in both industry and academia (Ahteensuu 2017). Applications include medicine (new vaccines, delivery of therapeutics, and treatments), energy (biofuels), environmental remediation, food production, and general industry (detergents, adhesives, perfumes) (Evans and Selgelid 2015; Gronvall 2015). While synthetic biology heralds advances in these fields, its techniques could also be adapted for malicious purposes and used by terrorist organizations, rogue actors, or hostile nations to create dangerous pathogens, invasive organisms, or other disruptive biological agents (Yeh et al. 2012). Such potential makes synthetic biology a dual-use research area of concern (DURC) as the same techniques can be used to benefit or harm people, animals, environments, technology, or nations (Getz and Dellaire 2018). To cope with threats arising from synthetic biology’s dual-use nature, biosecurity is needed to prevent, detect, and attribute biological attacks.

AbstractLinear accelerators (linacs) use alternating radiofrequency (RF) electromagnetic fields to accelerate charged particles in a straight line. Linacs were invented about 95 years ago and have seen many significant technical innovations since. A wide range of particle beams have been accelerated with linacs including beams of electrons, positrons, protons, antiprotons, and heavy ions. Linac parameter possibilities include pulsed versus continuous wave, low and high beam powers, low and high repetition rates, low transverse emittance beams, short bunches with small energy spreads, and accelerated multiple bunches in a single pulse. The number of linacs around the world has grown tremendously with thousands of linacs in present use, many for medical therapy, in industry, and for research and development in a broad spectrum of scientific fields. Researchers have developed accelerators for scientific tools in their own right, being awarded several Nobel prizes. Moreover, linacs and particle accelerators in general have enabled many discovery level science experiments in related fields, resulting in many Nobel prizes as well.

AbstractOne of the topics addressed by e-science research is the measurement of academic knowledge production based on electronic data and its relevance in defining the academic landscape. The author employs e-science methods to research cooperative authorships and scientific structures in a specific area of applied e-sciences: virtual 3D modelling in the humanities. Based on the findings, possibilities for cross-disciplinary and international cooperation are discussed. The number of international publications and average number of authors involved in each publication are lower than those found in other scientific fields. Moreover, research indicates that in the humanities, 3D modelling is relatively new and still emergent. Besides such general indications, several key players as people and institutions which interconnect groups of researchers could be identified on a structural level.

Abstract In recent years, with the advancements in technology and research as well as changes in society, Digital Earth transformed. It evolved from its original concept of a 3D multilayer representation of our planet into a more practical system design to fulfil the demand for information sharing, which now embraces fields such as global climate change, food security and natural disaster prevention. In this novel scenario, Europe has become one of the major players at the global level; accordingly, the goal of this chapter is to provide a general overview of the major European contributions to the overall objectives of Digital Earth. These include the establishment of a European spatial data infrastructure through the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) directive, the initiation of the Galileo and Copernicus programs that provide a wealth of big data from space, the launch of novel cloud-based platforms for data processing and integration and the emergence of citizen science. An outlook on major upcoming initiatives is also provided.

This chapter explores issues that have influenced Black women in Canada and the Caribbean in their pursuit of advanced degrees and regular academic roles in Computer Science (CS) and related fields. The concern is with the low representation of Black women in such roles and the reasons why some women have chosen the field and others have fled from it. The issues are related to gender and race and have been gathered from the scientific literature on Computer Science Education. Black women in Canada and the Caribbean who are on paths towards and in regular academic roles in CS were surveyed about how these issues have influenced them and their peers for or against CS in general and more specifically advanced education in Computer Science, since these such choices for CS are a requirement for regular academic roles in CS. This work delivers insights into an understudied locale for an underrepresented group in a field critical to economic development in Canada and the Caribbean. Based on our findings, we make recommendations to increase the number of this underrepresented group.

This chapter is an attempt to map the interdisciplinary nature of Indian library and information science (LIS) research. For this purpose, citation information of 28 Indian LIS journals is considered from Indian Citation Index (ICI) database. ICI is a bibliographic and citation database of research journals published from India. In order to understand the anatomical pattern of citations, social networking software UCINET is used to map the citation network. The result shows that self-citations (about 23%) are the prevalent pattern of citations among Indian LIS journals. Beside this, citation pattern at large is confined to the subject of LIS (about 93%) area. Further, the analysis also shows that about 7% of articles are cited from non-LIS journals. However, citations of non-LIS fields are from a closely related field, for example, general science and technology, computer science, and so on. Thus, it can be concluded that Indian LIS research does not show true interdisciplinary nature.

When the Arctic (ARC) Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) project began, I was an aquatic ecologist with experience in managing large projects in freshwaters and estuaries and a specialization in microbes. This project, which studies lakes, streams, and tundras, has greatly increased my breadth as an ecologist and allowed me to take part in terrestrial modeling, microbial studies in streams, and the role of soil mycorrhizal fungi in providing nutrients to many species of plants. As a mentor to several postdoctoral fellows, my LTER research has enabled me to learn about other fields such as the application of molecular biology to microbial ecology. The Arctic LTER project data, the long-term field experiments, and the facilities available at the University of Alaska field station brought me in contact with ecologists from many countries. One result of this association with experts was my coauthorship of a book on Arctic natural history aimed at communicating scientific knowledge to scientists and the general public unfamiliar with the Arctic (Huryn and Hobbie 2012). I have always collaborated extensively with many scientists and encouraged collaboration as the best way to carry out ecosystem research. The Arctic LTER project brought many opportunities to broaden the scope of my collaboration to include terrestrial ecologists and microbiologists. My PhD research was about year-round primary productivity of an Arctic lake but while on a postdoctoral fellowship at Uppsala University, Sweden, I switched to an emphasis on bacterial uptake kinetics in lakes. The techniques I helped develop in freshwater worked in the ocean and estuaries too (Hobbie and Williams 1984). In addition we developed the epifluorescence method for quantifying the abundance of planktonic bacteria. Our paper (Hobbie, Daley, and Jasper 1977) finally convinced oceanographers that bacteria are abundant (at 10⁹ per liter) and important. Recently, I have used my understanding of kinetics of uptake to analyze microbial activity in the soil. My Arctic expertise led to leadership of the aquatic part of the International Biological Program (IBP) at Barrow, Alaska, beginning in 1970. We (28 scientists, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows) studied shallow ponds to quantify the carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycles.

The essays in this volume are analyzed to assess the degree to which they portray scientific and beyond-science interactions. The Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program represents a scientific or intellectual movement based on articulation of the program’s highly respected founders, resource allocation for individual and collective pursuits, use of LTER sites for recruitment, and commonly held themes or foci for research. Interdisciplinary scientific interactions within the LTER program have influenced researchers’ ideas, networks, and productivity but have also presented challenges, particularly for junior participants. Interactions beyond the scientific community focus on one-dimensional flows of information as well as on collaborative, multidirectional partnerships with a variety of stakeholders. This analytical chapter explores social interactions catalyzed by experiences of scientists associated with the LTER program. I analyze the essays by LTER scientists in this volume using a broad, three- tiered structure: (1) the degree to which insights from the essays suggest that the LTER program represents a scientific or intellectual movement within environmental sciences examining ecological dynamics; (2) the extent of interdisciplinary interactions with scientists across broader fields of study, including associated reactions and challenges; and (3) interactions with others beyond science. Findings are examined across different career stages of respondents. Direct quotations are used to illustrate findings and to provide evidence for conclusions based on the LTER scientists’ own words. The LTER program was initiated 34 years ago (Waide [Chapter 2]; Gholz, Marinelli, and Taylor [Chapter 3]). Given the growth of the LTER program, in terms of the number and geographic distribution of sites, as well as the contributions of engaged scientists and students, there is no doubt of the influence of the LTER program on the science of ecology and general understanding of ecosystems around the world (Robertson et al. 2012). In this chapter, I examine the social interactions of scientists in the LTER program through the lenses provided by their essays in this volume to explore three dimensions—interactions within the environmental sciences focused on ecological dynamics, broader interdisciplinary interactions, and interactions with stakeholders beyond science.

Technology Assessment (TA) has taken up the field of Information Science and Technology (IST) as a subject of study from the 1970s on. Nowadays, this field is of central relevance to TA in a triple respect: (a) as research field per se, e.g. with regard to impact dimensions such as privacy, data protection, increasing use of autonomous agents, safety and security, sustainable development, intellectual property rights, regulation, societal vulnerability, et cetera. It is (b) also of major and even increasing importance by entering and influencing other fields of technology, e.g. energy supply, military, robotics, logistics, nanotechnology, cognitive science, neuroscience, et cetera. Finally (c), several new services made available by IST developments are of high utility in TA practice of scientific projects and policy advice, e.g. in the fields of e-participation. This article provides an overview of TA with respect to its origin, its development, and its current situation in general, followed by a more specific consideration of TA themes and activities in the IST field.

The nature of manufacturing is using information to control energy field in order to convert material into useful configurations, products, and systems. One way to view manufacturing differently is to explore it from the perspective of energy fields. In this paper, the origination and the evolution of Energy Field Manufacturing (EFM) and the concept of a dynamic M-PIE (Material-Process-Information-Energy) model of manufacturing are reviewed. The generality of energy fields and the importance of re-thinking of traditional and non-traditional manufacturing are discussed. Giving a general definition to intelligence, this paper further broadens the methodology of EFM to Intelligent EFM, which incorporates the ability to gather, interpret and use the information in energy fields, materials and systems in a systematic way. This paper further discusses the meaning and tasks of Intelligent EFM research. A systematic approach of energy field integration and optimization is proposed. Finally, representative processes are reviewed to highlight some principles of Intelligent EFM.

The flow-field design of Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (DMFCs) is an important subject about the DMFCs performance. Flow-fields play an important role on ability to transport fuel and drive out the products (H2O, CO2). In general, most of fuel cells utilize the same structure of flow-field for both anode and cathode. The popular flow-fields used for DMFCs are parallel and grid designs. Nevertheless, the characteristics of reactants and products are entirely different in anode and cathode of DMFCs. Therefore; the influences of the flow-fields designs on the cell performance were investigated due to the same logic for catalyst used for cathode and anode differently. To get the better and more stable performance of DMFC, three flow-fields (Parallel, Grid and Serpentine) are utilized with different combination were studied in this research. As a consequence, by using parallel flow-field in anode side and serpentine flow -field in cathode, the most and highest power output was obtained.

Eye-tracking technology was used to analyze the participants’ visual attention while solving a multiple-choice science problem. The research encompassed 103 people of varying levels of knowledge, from pupils to scientists. The respondents in general devoted more time to analyze the chosen fields. However, the trend is reversed for people with high scientific expertise and criticism and with extreme motivation to solve a problem. The trend depends also on the strategies of solving a problem and conviction about the correctness of the answer. Key words: eye-tracking, mathematics and physics education, problem solving, new technology in didactics of science.

Driven by the automotive industry’s drive towards lightweighting, electrically assisted forming (EAF) is one of the most rapidly growing research fields in bulk deformation, and is classified under the general term “Electrically-Assisted Manufacturing (EAM)”. In EAF electric current (continuous or intermittent) is applied to a metallic sheet during the forming process, leading to numerous advantageous effects that have been studied and proven by several research groups and for different structural metals, such as reduced forming load and flow stress, increased formability, and reduction (or even elimination) of springback. Electrically-assisted bending (EAB) is a recent evolution of EAF technique, with the aim of capitalizing on the aforementioned advantages of EAF technique. In this work the effects of the EAB process on the final springback in an air bending test are identified, with the metal sheet being bent under different electrical field conditions. In addition, a comparison between the effects of applying the current during forming versus post forming are investigated. It was found that in general, higher current density (amount of current through cross sectional area of specimen (A/mm2), more frequent pulse period, and longer pulse duration all resulted in a greater degree of springback reduction. A microstructural evaluation showed no change in grain size in the presence of electric current.

An experimental investigation was conducted to measure skin friction along the chamber walls of supersonic combustors. A direct force measurement device was used to simultaneously measure an axial and transverse component of the small tangential shear force passing over a non-intrusive floating element. This measurement was made possible with a sensitive piezoresistive deflection sensing unit. The floating head is mounted to a stiff cantilever beam arrangement with deflection due to the flow on the order of 0.00254 mm (0.0001 in). This allowed the instrument to be a non-nulling type. A second gauge was designed with active cooling of the floating sensor head to eliminate non-uniform temperature effects between the sensor head and the surrounding wall. The key to this device is the use of a quartz tube cantilever with piezoresistive strain gages bonded directly to its surface. A symmetric fluid flow was developed inside the quartz tube to provide cooling to the backside of the floating head. Tests showed that this flow did not influence the tangential force measurement. Measurements were made in three separate combustor test facilities. Tests at NASA Langley Research Center consisted of a Mach 3.0 vitiated air flow with hydrogen fuel injection at Pt = 500 psia (3446 kPa) and Tt = 3000 R (1667 K). Two separate sets of tests were conducted at the General Applied Science Laboratory (GASL) in a scramjet combustor model with hydrogen fuel injection in vitiated air at Mach = 3.3, Pt = 800 psia (5510 kPa), and Tt = 4000 R (2222 K). Skin friction coefficients between 0.001–0.005 were measured dependent on the facility and measurement location. Analysis of the measurement uncertainties indicate an accuracy to within ±10–15% of the streamwise component.

Aim/Purpose: This paper examines the behavior of financial firm employees with regard to information security procedures instituted within their organization. Furthermore, the effect of information security awareness and its importance within a firm is examined. Background: The study focuses on employees' attitude toward compliance with information security policies (ISP), combined with various norms and personal abilities. Methodology: A self-reported questionnaire was distributed among 202 employees of a large financial institution. Contribution: As far as we know, this is the first paper to thoroughly examine employees' awareness of information system procedures, among financial organizations in Israel and also the first to develop operative recommendations for these organizations aimed at increasing ISP compliance behavior. Findings: Our results indicate that employees' attitudes, normative beliefs and personal capabilities to comply with firm's ISP, have positive effects on the firm's ISP compliance. Also, employees' general awareness of IS, as well as awareness to ISP within the firm, positively affect employees' ISP compliance. Impact on Society: This study offers another level of understanding of employee behavior with regard to information security in organizations and comprises a significant contribution to the growing knowledge in this area. The research results form an important basis for IS policymakers, culture designers, managers, and those directly responsible for IS in the organization. Future Research: Future work should sample employees from other financial institutions and also institutions from other fields and also should apply qualitative analysis to explore other pillars of behavioral patterns related to the subject matter.

Education, in general, creates strong basics of sustainable development. Higher education is one of the important settings for accomplishing better education and quality of human life. Region based higher educational institutions (HEIs) have high input in regional economic development through traditional functions of teaching and research. Educational institutions acquiring graduates with relevant knowledge and skills for the labour market. The given paper examines: How Georgian regional universities enhance the graduates’ employability and workforce formation? Do the institutions encouraging university-business interactions? What are the main challenges and optimal ways of improvement? The article is using a qualitative research method with a combination of mixed research techniques by collecting and analysing other qualitative and quantitative information from national governmental reports, scientific articles, and annual statistical data. The paper draws the background information, that enhances the bed climate for recent graduates on the labour market, the unemployment and employment rate, proportion of horizontal mismatch, fields or groups of studies that students are most likely to be mismatched, its cause and effects relationship. Results show that institutions have week interaction with regional enterprises and SMEs: HEIs do not have skills anticipation strategy based on the regional business sector to avoid potential misbalance in the labour market. HEIs instead of showing initiative often take a proactive position and are looking at interactions between labour market stakeholders; they have weak interaction with public and private enterprises. Regional SMEs’ participation in creating curriculums is uncommon.

[This Proceedings paper was revised and published in the "Interdisciplinary Journal of e-Skills and Lifelong Learning," 16, 1-17.] Aim/Purpose: Using Artificial Intelligence with Deep Learning (DL) techniques, which mimic the action of the brain, to improve a student’s grammar learning process. Finding the subject of a sentence using DL, and learning, by way of this computer field, to analyze human learning processes and mistakes. In addition, showing Artificial Intelligence learning processes, with and without a general overview of the problem that it is under examination. Applying the idea of the general perspective that the network gets on the sentences and deriving recommendations from this for teaching processes. Background: We looked for common patterns of computer errors and human grammar mistakes. Also deducing the neural network’s learning process, deriving conclusions, and applying concepts from this process to the process of human learning. Methodology: We used DL technologies and research methods. After analysis, we built models from three types of complex neuronal networks – LSTM, Bi-LSTM, and GRU – with sequence-to-sequence architecture. After this, we combined the sequence-to- sequence architecture model with the attention mechanism that gives a general overview of the input that the network receives. Contribution: The cost of computer applications is cheaper than that of manual human effort, and the availability of a computer program is much greater than that of humans to perform the same task. Thus, using computer applications, we can get many desired examples of mistakes without having to pay humans to perform the same task. Understanding the mistakes of the machine can help us to under-stand the human mistakes, because the human brain is the model of the artificial neural network. This way, we can facilitate the student learning process by teaching students not to make mistakes that we have seen made by the artificial neural network. We hope that with the method we have developed, it will be easier for teachers to discover common mistakes in students’ work before starting to teach them. In addition, we show that a “general explanation” of the issue under study can help the teaching and learning process. Findings: We performed the test case on the Hebrew language. From the mistakes we received from the computerized neuronal networks model we built, we were able to classify common human errors. That is, we were able to find a correspondence between machine mistakes and student mistakes. Recommendations for Practitioners: Use an artificial neural network to discover mistakes, and teach students not to make those mistakes. We recommend that before the teacher begins teaching a new topic, he or she gives a general explanation of the problems this topic deals with, and how to solve them. Recommendations for Researchers: To use machines that simulate the learning processes of the human brain, and study if we can thus learn about human learning processes. Impact on Society: When the computer makes the same mistakes as a human would, it is very easy to learn from those mistakes and improve the study process. The fact that ma-chine and humans make similar mistakes is a valuable insight, especially in the field of education, Since we can generate and analyze computer system errors instead of doing a survey of humans (who make mistakes similar to those of the machine); the teaching process becomes cheaper and more efficient. Future Research: We plan to create an automatic grammar-mistakes maker (for instance, by giving the artificial neural network only a tiny data-set to learn from) and ask the students to correct the errors made. In this way, the students will practice on the material in a focused manner. We plan to apply these techniques to other education subfields and, also, to non-educational fields. As far as we know, this is the first study to go in this direction ‒ instead of looking at organisms and building machines, to look at machines and learn about organisms.

Aim/Purpose: [This Proceedings paper was revised and published in the 2018 issue of the journal Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, Volume 15] In this exploratory study we investigate the influential factors of users' decisions in the dilemma whether to agree to online personalization or to protect their online privacy. Background: Various factors related to online privacy and anonymity were considered, such as user's privacy concern on the Web in general and particularly on social networks, user online privacy literacy and field of study. Methodology: To this end, 155 students from different fields of study in the Israeli academia were administered closed-ended questionnaires. Contribution: The main conceptual contribution of this study was the creation of a new direct scale for assessing user decisions regarding the personalization-privacy tradeoff. Another contribution was the investigation of the predictive factors of the personalization-privacy tradeoff. While previous studies found that users seldom allow their privacy concerns to affect their online behavior, our results revealed the opposite, as the participants with a higher level of concern for online privacy tended to prefer privacy protection, at the expense online personalization. Findings: The multivariate linear regression analysis showed that as the participants' privacy concern increases, they tend to prefer privacy protection over online personalization. In addition, we found significant differences between men and women, as men tended to favor privacy protection more than women did. Recommendations for Practitioners: The new direct scale that was developed may be used by other practitioners to measure other issues relating to the privacy paradox behavior. Recommendation for Researchers: The questionnaire may be used by other researchers to examine online information behavior. Impact on Society: This research has social implications for the academia and general public as they show that by raising the concern for the protection of personal information on the Web, it is possible to influence the personalization-privacy tradeoff and encourage users to prefer privacy protection. Furthermore, the enhancement of users' preference for privacy protection over Web-surfing convenience may be used as a mean to mitigate the online privacy paradox behavior. Future Research: Since our results were based on students' self-perceptions, which might be biased, future work should apply qualitative analysis to explore additional types and influencing factors of online privacy behavior.

Despite over 25 years of intensive work in the field, sonification research and practice continue to be hindered by a lack of theory. In part, sonification theory has languished, because the requirements of a theory of sonification have not been clearly articulated. As a design science, sonification deals with artifacts—artificially created sounds and the tools for creating the sounds. Design fields require theoretical approaches that are different from theory-building in natural sciences. Gregor and Jones [1] described eight general components of design theories: (1) purposes and scope; (2) constructs; (3) principles of form and function; (4) artifact mutability; (5) testable propositions; (6) justificatory knowledge; (7) principles of implementation; and (8) expository instantiations. In this position paper, I examine these components as they relate to the field of sonification and use these components to clarify requirements for a theory of sonification. The current status of theory in sonification is assessed as it relates to each component, and, where possible, recommendations are offered for practices that can advance theory and theoretically-motivated research and practice in the field of sonification.