Lack of cross-scale linkages reduces robustness of community-based fisheries management.

Community-based management and the establishment of marine reserves have been advocated worldwide as means to overcome overexploitation of fisheries. Yet, researchers and managers are divided regarding the effectiveness of these measures. The "tragedy of the commons" model is often accepted as a universal paradigm, which assumes that unless managed by the State or privatized, common-pool resources are inevitably overexploited due to conflicts between the self-interest of individuals and the goals of a group as a whole. Under this paradigm, the emergence and maintenance of effective community-based efforts that include cooperative risky decisions as the establishment of marine reserves could not occur. In this paper, we question these assumptions and show that outcomes of commons dilemmas can be complex and scale-dependent. We studied the evolution and effectiveness of a community-based management effort to establish, monitor, and enforce a marine reserve network in the Gulf of California, Mexico. Our findings build on social and ecological research before (1997-2001), during (2002) and after (2003-2004) the establishment of marine reserves, which included participant observation in >100 fishing trips and meetings, interviews, as well as fishery dependent and independent monitoring. We found that locally crafted and enforced harvesting rules led to a rapid increase in resource abundance. Nevertheless, news about this increase spread quickly at a regional scale, resulting in poaching from outsiders and a subsequent rapid cascading effect on fishing resources and locally-designed rule compliance. We show that cooperation for management of common-pool fisheries, in which marine reserves form a core component of the system, can emerge, evolve rapidly, and be effective at a local scale even in recently organized fisheries. Stakeholder participation in monitoring, where there is a rapid feedback of the systems response, can play a key role in reinforcing cooperation. However, without cross-scale linkages with higher levels of governance, increase of local fishery stocks may attract outsiders who, if not restricted, will overharvest and threaten local governance. Fishers and fishing communities require incentives to maintain their management efforts. Rewarding local effective management with formal cross-scale governance recognition and support can generate these incentives.

Do diabetic veterans use the Internet? Self-reported usage, skills, and interest in using My HealtheVet Web portal.

OBJECTIVE: The Veterans Health Administration has developed My HealtheVet (MHV), a Web-based portal that links veterans to their care in the veteran affairs (VA) system. The objective of this study was to measure diabetic veterans' access to and use of the Internet, and their interest in using MHV to help manage their diabetes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Cross-sectional mailed survey of 201 patients with type 2 diabetes and hemoglobin A(1c) > 8.0% receiving primary care at any of five primary care clinic sites affiliated with a VA tertiary care facility. Main measures included Internet usage, access, and attitudes; computer skills; interest in using the Internet; awareness of and attitudes toward MHV; demographics; and socioeconomic status. RESULTS: A majority of respondents reported having access to the Internet at home. Nearly half of all respondents had searched online for information about diabetes, including some who did not have home Internet access. More than a third obtained "some" or "a lot" of their health-related information online. Forty-one percent reported being "very interested" in using MHV to help track their home blood glucose readings, a third of whom did not have home Internet access. Factors associated with being "very interested" were as follows: having access to the Internet at home (p < 0.001), "a lot/some" trust in the Internet as a source of health information (p = 0.002), lower age (p = 0.03), and some college (p = 0.04). Neither race (p = 0.44) nor income (p = 0.25) was significantly associated with interest in MHV. CONCLUSIONS: This study found that a diverse sample of older VA patients with sub-optimally controlled diabetes had a level of familiarity with and access to the Internet comparable to an age-matched national sample. In addition, there was a high degree of interest in using the Internet to help manage their diabetes.

Recent national trends in Salvia divinorum use and substance-use disorders among recent and former Salvia divinorum users compared with nonusers.

CONTEXT: Media and scientific reports have indicated an increase in recreational use of Salvia divinorum. Epidemiological data are lacking on the trends, prevalence, and correlates of S. divinorum use in large representative samples, as well as the extent of substance use and mental health problems among S. divinorum users. OBJECTIVE: To examine the national trend in prevalence of S. divinorum use and to identify sociodemographic, behavioral, mental health, and substance-use profiles of recent (past-year) and former users of S. divinorum. DESIGN: Analyses of public-use data files from the 2006-2008 United States National Surveys on Drug Use and Health (N = 166,453). SETTING: Noninstitutionalized individuals aged 12 years or older were interviewed in their places of residence. MAIN MEASURES: Substance use, S. divinorum, self-reported substance use disorders, criminality, depression, and mental health treatment were assessed by standardized survey questions administered by the audio computer-assisted self-interviewing method. RESULTS: Among survey respondents, lifetime prevalence of S. divinorum use had increased from 0.7% in 2006 to 1.3% in 2008 (an 83% increase). S. divinorum use was associated with ages 18-25 years, male gender, white or multiple race, residence of large metropolitan areas, arrests for criminal activities, and depression. S. divinorum use was particularly common among recent drug users, including users of lysergic acid diethylamide (53.7%), ecstasy (30.1%), heroin (24.2%), phencyclidine (22.4%), and cocaine (17.5%). Adjusted multinomial logistic analyses indicated polydrug use as the strongest determinant for recent and former S. divinorum use. An estimated 43.0% of past-year S. divinorum users and 28.9% of former S. divinorum users had an illicit or nonmedical drug-use disorder compared with 2.5% of nonusers. Adjusted logistic regression analyses showed that recent and former S. divinorum users had greater odds of having past-year depression and a substance-use disorder (alcohol or drugs) than past-year alcohol or drug users who did not use S. divinorum. CONCLUSION: S. divinorum use is prevalent among recent or active drug users who have used other hallucinogens or stimulants. The high prevalence of substance use disorders among recent S. divinorum users emphasizes the need to study health risks of drug interactions.

Transcultural satire in German fiction of Turkish migration: Self-deprecation, ethnic impersonation, intertexuality

My dissertation presents a study of satire in contemporary German Fiction of Turkish migration. Engaging with a body of works hitherto neglected in scholarship, I examine how satirical texts, films, and plays intervene critically in discourses on post-unification German national identity. Drawing on the seminal work of scholars such as Leslie Adelson, Tom Cheesman, B. Venkat Mani, Petra Fachinger, and Deniz Göktürk, my dissertation expands the scholarship of Turkish German Studies by linking a discussion of satire as a critical rhetoric to the question of how we talk about what it means to be German.

Chapter one offers a novel framework of the satirical vis-à-vis standard conceptions of satire and deconstructionist theories of reading. I understand satire as a form of rhetoric that creates moments of ambiguity by bringing together intersectional categories like gender, ethnicity, race, religion, in order to challenge the audience’s practices of interpreting cultural otherness. Chapter two examines the use of ethnic self-deprecation as one such strategy in Osman Engin’s short stories and his first novel, Kanaken-Ghandi through the lens of Bakhtinian polyphony and Judith Butler’s work on hate speech. Engin, I argue, employs ethnic selfdeprecation as a narrative strategy to straddle the line between deconstructing and re-affirming cultural stereotypes. Investigating the role of ethnic impersonation in Hussi Kutlucan’s film Ich Chef, Du Turnshuh, the third chapter turns to the question of ethnicity as a visual signifier for the negotiation of cultural inclusion and exclusion in post-1990 film. In dialogue with Katrin Sieg’s work on ethnic drag and Amy Robinson’s theory of passing, I show how the film challenges ethnically-coded narratives of Germanness. In the final chapter on Nurkan Erpulat and Jens Hillje’s play Verrücktes Blut, I discuss how intertextuality and adaptation (Hutcheon, Genette) of different story and character worlds are used to create moments of ambiguity and overdeterminacy in the play, in order to challenge the audience’s perception of what an inclusive German society might look like.