Coexistence between livestock grazing and carnivores in rangelands is a major challenge in terms of sustainable agriculture, animal welfare, species conservation and ecosystem function. Many effective non-lethal tools exist to protect livestock from predation, yet their adoption remains limited. Using a social-ecological transformations framework, we present two qualitative models that depict transformative change in rangelands grazing. Developed through participatory processes with stakeholders from South Africa and the United States of America, the models articulate drivers of change and the essential pathways (...) to transition from routine lethal management of carnivores towards mutually beneficial coexistence. The pathways define broad actions that incorporate multiple values in grazing systems including changes to livestock management practices, financial support, industry capacity building, research, improved governance and marketing initiatives. A key finding is the new concept of ‘Predator Smart Farming’, a holistic and conscientious approach to agriculture, which increases the resilience of landscapes, animals and rural livelihoods. Implementation of these multiple pathways would lead to a future system that ensures thriving agricultural communities, secure livelihoods, reduced violence toward animals, and landscapes that are productive and support species conservation and coexistence. (shrink)

Selected response items and constructed response items are often found in the same test. Conventional psychometric models for these two types of items typically focus on using the scores for correctness of the responses. Recent research suggests, however, that more information may be available from the CR items than just scores for correctness. In this study, we describe an approach in which a statistical topic model along with a diagnostic classification model was applied to a mixed item format formative test (...) of English and Language Arts. The DCM was used to estimate students’ mastery status of reading skills. These mastery statuses were then included in a topic model as covariates to predict students’ use of each of the latent topics in their written answers to a CR item. This approach enabled investigation of the effects of mastery status of reading skills on writing patterns. Results indicated that one of the skills, Integration of Knowledge and Ideas, helped detect and explain students’ writing patterns with respect to students’ use of individual topics. (shrink)

The rapid emergence and exploding usage of online social networking forums, which are frequented by millions, present clinicians with new ethical and professional challenges. Particularly among a younger generation of physicians and patients, the use of online social networking forums has become widespread. In this article, we discuss ethical challenges facing the patient–doctor relationship as a result of the growing use of online social networking forums. We draw upon one heavily used and highly trafficked forum, Facebook, to illustrate the elements (...) of these online environments and the ethical challenges peculiar to their novel form of exchange. Finally, we present guidelines for clinicians to negotiate responsibly and professionally their possible uses of these social forums. (shrink)

Hidden Markov models (HMMs) have been successful for modelling the dynamics of carefully dictated speech, but their performance degrades severely when used to model conversational speech. Since speech is produced by a system of loosely coupled articulators, stochastic models explicitly representing this parallelism may have advantages for automatic speech recognition (ASR), particularly when trying to model the phonological effects inherent in casual spontaneous speech. This paper presents a preliminary feasibility study of one such model class: loosely coupled HMMs. Exact model (...) estimation and decoding is potentially expensive, so possible approximate algorithms are also discussed. Comparison of one particular loosely coupled model on an isolated word task suggests loosely coupled HMMs merit further investigation. An approximate algorithm giving performance which is almost always statistically indistinguishable from the exact algorithm is also identified, making more extensive research computationally feasible. (shrink)

PREFACE The author has ventured into a topic which is delicate and under researched by South African intellectuals and scholars. ...

A user-friendly textbook for students and teachers, The Philosophy of Public Administration covers all aspects of the public administration and management process as an instrument of serving the public. It lays a sound foundation of the basic principles and values, and it facilitates excellence in all the varied circumstances a professional public manager/administrator may encounter in practice. An MS PowerPoint presentation is also available on CD-ROM for instruction.

'Uncertainty and chance' is a subject with a broad span, in that there is no academic discipline or walk of life that is not beset by uncertainty and chance. In this book a range of approaches is represented by authors from varied disciplines: natural sciences, mathematics, social sciences and medical sciences. At one extreme, this volume is concerned with the foundations of probability. At the other extreme, we have scholars who acknowledge the concept of chance and uncertainty but do not (...) cope with it by means of systematic measurement or quantative analysis. (shrink)

Contemplative practices, such as meditation and yoga, are increasingly popular among the general public and as topics of research. Beneficial effects associated with these practices have been found on physical health, mental health, and cognitive performance. However, studies and theories that clarify the underlying mechanisms are lacking or scarce. This theoretical review aims to address and compensate this scarcity. We will show that various contemplative activities have in common that breathing is regulated or attentively guided. This respiratory discipline in turn (...) could parsimoniously explain the physical and mental benefits of contemplative activities through changes in autonomic balance. We propose a neurophysiological model that explains how these specific respiration styles could operate, by phasically and tonically stimulating the vagal nerve: respiratory vagal nerve stimulation. The vagal nerve, as a proponent of the parasympathetic nervous system, is the prime candidate in explaining the effects of contemplative practices on health, mental health, and cognition. We will discuss implications and limitations of our model. (shrink)

Healthcare workers are often assumed to have a duty to work, even if faced with personal risk. This is particularly so for professionals. However, the health service also depends on non-professionals, such as porters, cooks and cleaners. The duty to work is currently under scrutiny because of the ongoing challenge of responding to pandemic influenza, where an effective response depends on most uninfected HCWs continuing to work, despite personal risk. This paper reports findings of a survey of HCWs conducted across (...) three National Health Service trusts in the West Midlands, UK, to establish whether HCWs’ likelihood of working during a pandemic is associated with views about the duty to work. The sense that HCWs felt that they had a duty to work despite personal risk emerged strongly regardless of professional status. Besides a strong sense that everyone should pull together, all kinds of HCWs recognised a duty to work even in difficult circumstances, which correlated strongly with their stated likelihood of working. This suggests that HCWs’ decisions about whether or not they are prepared to work during a pandemic are closely linked to their sense of duty. However, respondents’ sense of the duty to work may conflict with their sense of duty to family, as well as other factors such as a perceived lack of reciprocity from their employers. Interestingly, nearly 25% of doctors did not consider that they had a duty to work where doing so would pose risks to themselves or their families. (shrink)

Originally published: London: Allen & Unwin, 1936.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This paper discusses the views of 17 healthcare practitioners involved with transplantation on the ethics of live liver donations . Donations between emotionally related donor and recipients increased the acceptability of an LLD compared with those between strangers. Most healthcare professionals disapproved of altruistic stranger donations, considering them to entail an unacceptable degree of risk taking. Participants tended to emphasise the need to balance the harms of proceeding against those of not proceeding, rather than calculating the harm-to-benefits ratio of donor (...) versus recipient. Participants’ views suggested that a complex process of negotiation is required, which respects the autonomy of donor, recipient and HCP. Although they considered that, of the three, donor autonomy is of primary importance, they also placed considerable weight on their own autonomy. Our participants suggest that their opinions about acceptable risk taking were more objective than those of the recipient or donor and were therefore given greater weight. However, it was clear that more subjective values were also influential. Processes used in live kidney donation were thought to be a good model for LLD, but our participants stressed that there is a danger that patients may underestimate the risks involved in LLD if it is too closely associated with LKD. (shrink)

The long-term persistence of neurotic symptoms, such as anxiety, poses difficult problems for any psychological theory. An attempt is made to revive the Watson-Mowrer conditioning theory and to avoid the many criticisms directed against it in the past. It is suggested that recent research has produced changes in learning theory that can be used to render this possible. In the first place, the doctrine of equipotentiality has been shown to be wrong, and some such concept as Seligman's “preparedness” is required, (...) that is the notion that certain CS are biologically prepared to be more readily connected with anxiety responses than others. In the second place, the law of extinction has to be amended, and the law of incubation or enhancement added, according to which the exposure of the CS-only may, under certain specified conditions, have the effect of increasing the strength of the CR, rather than reducing it. The major conditions favouring incubation are Pavlovian B conditioning, that is a type of conditioning in which the CR is a drive; a strong UCS, and short exposure of the CS-only. (shrink)

MicroRNAs are non-coding parts of nuclear and mitochondrial genomes, preventing the weakest part of the genetic regulatory networks from being expressed and preventing the appearance of a too many attractors in these networks. They have also a great influence on the chromatin clock, which ensures the updating of the genetic regulatory networks. The post-transcriptional inhibitory activity by the microRNAs, which is partly unspecific, is due firstly to their possibly direct negative action during translation by hybridizing tRNAs, especially those inside the (...) mitochondrion, hence slowing mitochondrial respiration, and secondly to their action on a large number of putative m-RNA targets like those involved in immunetworks; We show that the circuits in the core of the interaction graphs are responsible for the small number of dedicated attractors that correspond to genetically controlled functions, partly due to a general filtering by the microRNAs. We analyze this influence as well as their impact on important functions like the control by the p53 network over the apoptosis/proliferation system and the homeostasis of the energy metabolism. In this last case, we show the role of two kinds of microRNAs, both involved in the control of the mitochondrial genome: (1) nuclear microRNAs, called mitoMirs, inhibiting mitochondrial genes and (2) putative mitochondrial microRNAs inhibiting the tRNAs functioning. (shrink)

Background Informed consent confers upon participants the right to decline or accept participation in a study in equal measure. Consent declines can be used as a potential metric to assess the adequacy of the informed consent process. Limited literature is available on the reporting of consent declines in Clinical Research. We evaluated randomized controlled trials published in three high-impact factor journals for consent declines to assess the extent of exertion of autonomy by research participants. Methods CONSORT flow charts in RCTs (...) published in New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and Journal of the American Medical Association between 2012 and 2015 were evaluated. The total and per journal proportion of RCTs reporting consent declines was calculated. Percentage of consent declines was also compared based on number of centers and type of setting. Between-groups analysis was done using Chi Square, Chi Square for trend and a Crude odds ratio [95% C.I] were calculated. Results Only 3.7% of the published articles were RCTs. Of the 1103 RCTs, only 532 reported consent declines. JAMA had the highest RCTs reporting consent declines, the Lancet [129,150/781,924, 16.5%] had the most participants declining consent. Difference was significant using Chi square for linear trend [ p < 0.00001]. Consent decline rate was higher in developed countries relative to developing countries [cOR: 2.27, p < 0.000001] and in single centric versus multicentric studies [cOR : 3.63, p < 0.0000001]. Conclusion Both authors and journal editors need to ensure better reporting of consent declines. (shrink)