A landslide inventory is a detailed register of the spatial distribution, geometry, and attributes of landslides and is essential for landslide hazard analysis, risk management, regional planning, and land use management and development, especially in landslide-prone regions. However, the development of a national landslide inventory is time-consuming and costly. Accordingly, most developing countries, including Sri Lanka, have basic landslide databases, which identify the location, date, and time of occurrence on a point map. This study, therefore, aimed to introduce a new (...) method to report landslide information via a mobile application based on a participatory approach with information recorded in a web portal called the participatory landslide inventory. Twenty-one landslide site locations and their attributes were captured on the PLI web portal using the PLI mobile app. The system administrator then demarcated the landslide boundaries and performed geometrical calculations for each landslide to complete the inventory. Finally, the landslide information was published through the PLI web portal. The PLI is an effective and efficient tool for developing a landslide inventory economically. (shrink)

Because of cultural differences between East and West, any attempt at outright adaptation of Western ideas in Asia will undoubtly encounter problems, if not rejection. Transferring an idea from one place to another is just like transplanting an organ from a donor to a recipient—rejection is to be expected. Human cultures respond to new ideas from different value systems in very much the same way.Recently, biomedical ethics has received much attention in Asia. Fundamental advances in medicine have motivated medical scientists (...) to look at the ethical issues arising from this progress. Will the principles upheld by the bioethicists in the West meet the challenge in Asia? This article argues that Asian bioethicists must develop a bioethics responding to their own cultural contexts. If Western principles are adopted, then they must be re-interpreted and even modified, if necessary, in light of Asian beliefs. (shrink)

This chapter describes the potential far‐reaching consequences of contemplative higher education for the fields of science and medicine.

In moral case deliberation (MCD), healthcare professionals meet to reflect upon their moral questions supported by a structured conversation method and non-directive conversation facilitator. An increasing number of Dutch healthcare institutions work with MCD to (1) deal with moral questions, (2) improve reflection skills, interdisciplinary cooperation and decision-making, and (3) develop policy. Despite positive evaluations of MCD, organization and implementation of MCD appears difficult, depending on individuals or external experts. Studies on MCD implementation processes have not yet been published. The (...) aim of this study is to describe MCD implementation processes from the perspective of nurses who co-organize MCD meetings, so called ‘ local coordinators ’. Various qualitative methods were used within the framework of a responsive evaluation research design. The results demonstrate that local coordinators work hard on the pragmatic implementation of MCD. They do not emphasize the ethical and normative underpinnings of MCD, but create organizational conditions to foster a learning process, engagement and continuity. Local coordinators indicate MCD needs firm back-up from management regulations. These pragmatic action-oriented implementation strategies are as important as ideological reasons for MCD implementation. Advocates of clinical ethics support should pro-actively facilitate these strategies for both practical and ethical reasons. (shrink)

Patients in a vegetative state/ unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (VS/UWS) pose ethical dilemmas to those involved. Many conflicts occur between professionals and families of these patients. In the Netherlands physicians are supposed to withdraw life sustaining treatment once recovery is not to be expected. Yet these patients have shown to survive sometimes for decades. The role of the families is thought to be important. The aim of this study was to make an inventory of the professional perspective on conflicts in long-term (...) care of patients in VS/UWS. A qualitative study of transcripts on 2 Moral Deliberations (MD’s) in 2 cases of patients in VS/UWS in long-term care facilities. Six themes emerged: 1) Vision on VS/UWS; 2) Treatment and care plan; 3) Impact on relationships; 4) Feelings/attitude; 5) Communication; 6) Organizational aspects. These themes are related to professionals and to what families had expressed to the professionals. We found conflicts as well as contradictory feelings and thoughts to be a general feature in 4 of these themes, both in professionals and families. Conflicts were found in several actors: within families concerning all 6 themes, in nurse teams concerning the theme treatment and care plan, and between physicians concerning all 6 themes. Different visions, different expectations and hope on recovery, deviating goals and contradictory feelings/thoughts in families and professionals can lead to conflicts over a patient with VS/UWS. Key factors to prevent or solve such conflicts are a carefully established diagnosis, clarity upon visions, uniformity in treatment goals and plans, an open and empathic communication, expertise and understanding the importance of contradictory feelings/thoughts. Management should bridge conflicts and support their staff, by developing expertise, by creating stability and by facilitating medical ethical discourses. Shared compassion for the patient might be a key to gain trust and bridge the differences from non-shared to shared decision making. (shrink)

The framework of Findlay & Walker's target article provides a first attempt to model the saccadic system at all levels. Their scheme is based on two main principles. These are “parallel processing of saccade timing and metrics” and “competitive inhibition through winner-take-all strategies.” In our opinion, however, both concepts are in their strictest sense at odds with the current knowledge of the saccadic system, and need to be refined to make the scheme more relevant.

Little research has explored the perceptions of military medical providers in the deployed environment and how their perceptions may change over time across an extended military conflict. To our knowledge, no studies have examined military medical providers’ opinions on readiness for their roles in the post-9/11 contingency operations. What has been published indicates that, during the height of Operation Iraqi Freedom, military medical providers often deployed with little notice and minimal formal training. The present report examines data obtained from multiple (...) cohorts of military medical providers (N = 321) deployed to Iraq between 2005 and 2009. Despite varying degrees of support from the U.S. public, our findings indicate that U.S. Air Force military medical providers’ support for the people of Iraq, their belief in the mission, and their ability to influence change did not vary with time. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Global biodiversity declines are increasingly recognized as profound ecological and social crises. In areas subject to colonialization, these declines have advanced in lockstep with settler colonialism and imposition of centralized resource management by settler states. Many have suggested that resurgent Indigenous-led governance systems could help arrest these trends while advancing effective and socially just approaches to environmental interactions that benefit people and places alike. However, how dominant management and conservation approaches might be decolonized (i.e., how their underlying colonial structure (...) might be addressed, transformed, and replaced) is not always clear. Here, we describe a ‘Decolonial Model of Environmental Management and Conservation’ as an alternative paradigm to dominant approaches of conservation and management. The tenets of the model describe characteristics that might be expected of decolonized management, contrasted with those of dominant state-led approaches such as those embedded in the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. The model does not prescribe how Indigenous governments or communities ought to govern their own territories, but instead offers insights into how external management and conservation agencies and practitioners might support (or stop impeding) Indigenous-led governance. We illustrate the model with a conservation ‘bright spot’: grizzly bear stewardship in the area now referred to as the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia, Canada, with a focus on work led by or in collaboration with, and within the territories of, the Haíɫzaqv, Kitasoo/xai’xais, Nuxalk, and Wuikinuxv First Nations. While acknowledging the important context-specific variability among place-based management and conservation applications, we also discuss the model’s broader applicability. (shrink)

We present the idea of searching for X-rays as a signature of the mechanism inducing the spontaneous collapse of the wave function. Such a signal is predicted by the continuous spontaneous localization theories, which are solving the “measurement problem” by modifying the Schrödinger equation. We will show some encouraging preliminary results and discuss future plans and strategy.

Context. The identification of the sources that reionized the Universe and their specific contribution to this process are key missing pieces of our knowledge of the early Universe. Faint star-forming galaxies may be the main contributors to the ionizing photon budget during the epoch of reionization, but their escaping photons cannot be detected directly due to inter-galactic medium opacity. Hence, it is essential to characterize the properties of faint galaxies with significant Lyman continuum photon leakage up to z 4 to (...) define indirect indicators allowing analogues to be found at the highest redshift. Aims. Long gamma-ray bursts explode typically in star-forming regions of faint, star-forming galaxies. Through LGRB afterglow spectroscopy it is possible to detect directly LyC photons. Our aim is to use LGRBs as tools to study LyC leakage from faint, star-forming galaxies at high redshift. Methods. Here we present the observations of LyC emission in the afterglow spectra of GRB 191004B at z = 3:5055, together with those of the other two previously known LyC-emitting LGRB, to determine their LyC escape fraction and compare their properties. Results. From the afterglow spectrum of GRB 191004B we determine a neutral hydrogen column density at the LGRB redshift of og =17:2 0:15, and negligible extinction. The only metal absorption lines detected are C iv and Si iv. In contrast to GRB 050908 and GRB 060607A, the host galaxy of GRB 191004B displays significant Ly emission. From its Ly emission and the non-detection of Balmer emission lines we constrain its star-formation rate to 1 SFR 4:7 M yr. 1. We fit the Ly emission with a shell model and find parameters values consistent with the observed ones. The absolute LyC escape fractions we find for GRB 191004B, GRB 050908 and GRB 060607A are of 0:35+0:10.0:11, 0:08+0:05.0:04 and :20+0:05.0:05, respectively. We compare the LyC escape fraction of LGRBs to the values of other LyC emitters found from the literature, showing that LGRB afterglows can be powerful tools to study LyC escape for faint high-redshift star-forming galaxies. Indeed we could push LyC leakage studies to much higher absolute magnitudes. The host galaxies of the three LGRB presented here have all M1600 >.19:5 mag, with the GRB 060607A host at M1600 >.16 mag. LGRB hosts may therefore be particularly suitable for exploring the ionizing escape fraction in galaxies that are too faint or distant for conventional techniques. Furthermore the time investment is very small compared to galaxy studies. (shrink)

Early versions of satellite and radiosonde datasets suggested that the tropical surface had warmed more than the troposphere, while climate models consistently showed tropospheric amplification of surface warming in response to human-caused increases in greenhouse gases. We revisit such comparisons here using new observational estimates of surface and tropospheric temperature changes. We find that there is no longer a serious discrepancy between modeled and observed trends in the tropics. Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in (...) the tropical troposphere are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on the use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability and application of an inappropriate statistical “consistency test”.This emerging reconciliation of models and observations has two primary explanations. First, because of changes in the treatment of buoy and satellite information, new surface temperature datasets yield slightly reduced tropical warming relative to earlier versions. Second, recently developed satellite and radiosonde datasets now show larger warming of the tropical lower troposphere. In the case of a new satellite dataset from remote sensing systems, enhancedRSS warming is due to an improved procedure of adjusting for inter-satellite biases. When the RSS-derived tropospheric temperature trend is compared with four different observed estimates of surface temperature change, the surface warming is invariably amplified in the tropical troposphere, consistent with model results. Even if we use data from a second satellite dataset with smaller tropospheric warming than in remote sensing systems RSS, observed tropical lapse rates are not significantly different from those in all model simulations.Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in the tropical troposphere and in tropical lapse rates are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on the use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability and application of an inappropriate statistical “consistency test”. (shrink)

The dominant position in Philosophy of Science contends that downward causation is an illusion. Instead, we argue that downward causation doesn’t introduce vicious circles either in physics or in biology. We also question the metaphysical claim that “physical facts fix all the facts.” Downward causation does not imply any contradiction if we reject the assumption of the completeness and the causal closure of the physical world that this assertion contains. We provide an argument for rejecting this assumption. Furthermore, this allows (...) us to reconsider the concept of diachronic emergence. (shrink)

The focus of this study was to analyze the content, distribution, and comparative genome relationships of 996 chromosome bin-mapped expressed sequence tags accounting for 2266 restriction fragments on the homoeologous group 3 chromosomes of hexaploid wheat. Of these loci, 634, 884, and 748 were mapped on chromosomes 3A, 3B, and 3D, respectively. The individual chromosome bin maps revealed bins with a high density of mapped ESTs in the distal region and bins of low density in the proximal region of the (...) chromosome arms, with the exception of 3DS and 3DL. These distributions were more localized on the higher-resolution group 3 consensus map with intermediate regions of high-mapped-EST density on both chromosome arms. Gene ontology classification of mapped ESTs was not significantly different for homoeologous group 3 chromosomes compared to the other groups. A combined analysis of the individual bin maps using 537 of the mapped ESTs revealed rearrangements between the group 3 chromosomes. Approximately 232 of the consensus mapped ESTs matched sequences on rice chromosome 1 and revealed large- and small-scale differences in gene order. Of the group 3 mapped EST unigenes ∼21 and 32% matched the Arabidopsis coding regions and proteins, respectively, but no chromosome-level gene order conservation was detected. (shrink)

This study explores the complex relationships between anomalous experiences, mental health, creativity, and psi within a sample of 113 visual artists in three art schools. The main objective was to assess whether psi could play a role in the emergence of anomalous experiences and their association with mental health and creativity. Participants took part in a retro-priming task, already used by Bem to assess unconscious precognitive abilities. They then completed three questionnaires evaluating anomalous experiences, mental health, and creativity. The results (...) show no significant effect on the retro-priming task, but the number of anomalous experiences reported by each participant was significantly correlated with their retro-priming performance. Creativity did not correlate with retro-priming, except for one subscale, the use of analogies. Anomalous experiences as a whole were correlated with mental health and creativity, in keeping with the high rate of unusual experiences previously reported in artistic populations. The theoretical implication of these findings and possible directions for future studies are discussed. (shrink)

We study the minimal enumeration degree problem in models of fragments of Peano arithmetic () and prove the following results: in any model M of Σ2 induction, there is a minimal enumeration degree if and only if M is a nonstandard model. Furthermore, any cut in such a model has minimal e-degree. By contrast, this phenomenon fails in the absence of Σ2 induction. In fact, whether every Σ2 cut has minimal e-degree is independent of the Σ2 bounding principle.

To localize wheat ESTs on chromosomes, 882 homoeologous group 6-specific ESTs were identified by physically mapping 7965 singletons from 37 cDNA libraries on 146 chromosome, arm, and sub-arm aneuploid and deletion stocks. The 882 ESTs were physically mapped to 25 regions flanked by 23 deletion breakpoints. Of the 5154 restriction fragments detected by 882 ESTs, 2043 were localized to group 6 chromosomes and 806 were mapped on other chromosome groups. The number of loci mapped was greatest on chromosome 6B and (...) least on 6D. The 264 ESTs that detected orthologous loci on all three homoeologs using one restriction enzyme were used to construct a consensus physical map. The physical distribution of ESTs was uneven on chromosomes with a tendency toward higher densities in the distal halves of chromosome arms. About 43% of the wheat group 6 ESTs identified rice homologs upon comparisons of genome sequences. Fifty-eight percent of these ESTs were present on rice chromosome 2 and the remaining were on other rice chromosomes. Even within the group 6 bins, rice chromosomal blocks identified by 1-6 wheat ESTs were homologous to up to 11 rice chromosomes. These rice-block contigs were used to resolve the order of wheat ESTs within each bin. (shrink)

The editors welcome letters from readers, although we cannot guarantee that all will be published. To ensure timeliness, correspondents must respond to an article within seven weeks and not exceed two double‐spaced pages. Letters become the property of the editors and may be edited and shortened at our discretion.

Delusion is one of the most intriguing psychopathological phenomena and its conceptualization remains the subject of genuine debate. Claims that it is ill-defined, however, are typically grounded on essentialist expectations that a given definition should capture the core of every instance acknowledged as delusion in the clinical setting.

The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

In recent times, daily, ordinary medical practices have incontrovertibly been developing under the condition of complexity. Complexity jeopardizes the moral core of practicing medicine: helping people, with their illnesses and suffering, in a medically competent way. Practical wisdom (a modification of the Aristotelian phronèsis) has been proposed as part of the solution to navigate complexity, aiming at the provision of morally good care. Practical wisdom should help practitioners to maneuver in complexity, where the presupposed linear ways of operating prove to (...) be insufficient. However, this solution is unsatisfactory, because the proposed versions of practical wisdom are too individualistic of nature, while physicians are continuously operating in varying teams, and dealing with complicated technologies and pressing structures. A second point of critique is, that these versions are theory based, and thus insufficiently attuned to the actual context of everyday medical practices. Now, our proposal is to use an approach of practical wisdom that enables medical practices to counter the complexity issue and to re-invent the moral core of medical practicing as well. This implies a practice oriented approach, as thematized by practice theory, qualitative empirical research from the inside, and abduction from actual performed practical wisdom towards an apt understanding of phronèsis. (shrink)

Environmental ethicists have frequently criticized ancient Greek philosophy as anti-environmental for a view of philosophy that is counterproductive to environmental ethics and a view of the world that puts nature at the disposal of people. This provocative collection of original essays reexamines the views of nature and ecology found in the thought of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Plotinus. Recognizing that these thinkers were not confronted with the environmental degradation that threatens contemporary philosophers, the contributors to this book find that (...) the Greeks nevertheless provide an excellent foundation for a sound theory of environmentalism. (shrink)

The complex hexaploid wheat genome offers many challenges for genomics research. Expressed sequence tags facilitate the analysis of gene-coding regions and provide a rich source of molecular markers for mapping and comparison with model organisms. The objectives of this study were to construct a high-density EST chromosome bin map of wheat homoeologous group 2 chromosomes to determine the distribution of ESTs, construct a consensus map of group 2 ESTs, investigate synteny, examine patterns of duplication, and assess the colinearity with rice (...) of ESTs assigned to the group 2 consensus bin map. A total of 2600 loci generated from 1110 ESTs were mapped to group 2 chromosomes by Southern hybridization onto wheat aneuploid chromosome and deletion stocks. A consensus map was constructed of 552 ESTs mapping to more than one group 2 chromosome. Regions of high gene density in distal bins and low gene density in proximal bins were found. Two interstitial gene-rich islands flanked by relatively gene-poor regions on both the short and long arms and having good synteny with rice were discovered. The map locations of two ESTs indicated the possible presence of a small pericentric inversion on chromosome 2B. Wheat chromosome group 2 was shown to share syntenous blocks with rice chromosomes 4 and 7. (shrink)