Media, ecology and conservation:using the media to protect the world's wildlife and ecosystems

The second book in The Converging World series, Media, Ecology and Conservation focuses on global connectivity and the role of new digital and traditional media in bringing people together to protect the world's endangered wildlife and conserve fragile and threatened habitats. New media offers opportunities for like-minded individuals, community groups, businesses and public organisations to learn and work cooperatively for the good of all species. One of the key themes of this book explores the important issue of how new information and communication technologies mediate the natural world, and our understanding of our place in it. By exploring the role of film, television, video, photography and the internet in animal conservation in the USA, India, Africa, Australia and the United Kingdom John Blewitt investigates the politics of media representation surrounding important controversies such as the trade in bushmeat, whaling and habitat destruction. The work and achievements of media/conservation activists are located within a cultural framework that simultaneously loves nature, reveres animals but too often ignores the uncomfortable realities of species extinction and animal cruelty.

Critical practice and the public pedagogy of environmental and conservation media

Natural History filmmaking has a long history but the generic boundaries between it and environmental and conservation filmmaking are blurred. Nature, environment and animal imagery has been a mainstay of television, campaigning organisations and conservation bodies from Greenpeace to the Sierra Club, with vibrant images being used effectively on posters, leaflets and postcards, and in coffee table books, media releases, short films and viral emails to educate and inform the general public. However, critics suggest that wildlife film and photography frequently convey a false image of the state of the world’s flora and fauna. The environmental educator David Orr once remarked that all education is environmental education, and it is possible to see all image-based communication in the same way. The Media, Animal Conservation and Environmental Education has contributions from filmmakers, photographers, researchers and academics from across the globe. It explores the various ways in which film, television and video are, and can be, used by conservationists and educators to encourage both a greater awareness of environmental and conservation issues, and practical action designed to help endangered species. This book is based on a special issue of the journal Environmental Education Research.

Intelligent execution monitoring and error analysis in planning involving processes

An intelligent agent, operating in an external world which cannot be fully described in its internal world model, must be able to monitor the success of a previously generated plan and to respond to any errors which may have occurred. The process of error analysis requires the ability to reason in an expert fashion about time and about processes occurring in the world. Reasoning about time is needed to deal with causality. Reasoning about processes is needed since the direct effects of a plan action can be completely specified when the plan is generated, but the indirect effects cannot. For example, the action `open tap' leads with certainty to `tap open', whereas whether there will be a fluid flow and how long it might last is more difficult to predict. The majority of existing planning systems cannot handle these kinds of reasoning, thus limiting their usefulness. This thesis argues that both kinds of reasoning require a complex internal representation of the world. The use of Qualitative Process Theory and an interval-based representation of time are proposed as a representation scheme for such a world model. The planning system which was constructed has been tested on a set of realistic planning scenarios. It is shown that even simple planning problems, such as making a cup of coffee, require extensive reasoning if they are to be carried out successfully. The final Chapter concludes that the planning system described does allow the correct solution of planning problems involving complex side effects, which planners up to now have been unable to solve.

Deep hole drilling with twist drills: aspects of the CNC process and its real time monitoring and adaptive control

Deep hole drilling is one of the most complicated metal cutting processes and one of the most difficult to perform on CNC machine-tools or machining centres under conditions of limited manpower or unmanned operation. This research work investigates aspects of the deep hole drilling process with small diameter twist drills and presents a prototype system for real time process monitoring and adaptive control; two main research objectives are fulfilled in particular : First objective is the experimental investigation of the mechanics of the deep hole drilling process, using twist drills without internal coolant supply, in the range of diarneters Ø 2.4 to Ø4.5 mm and working length up to 40 diameters. The definition of the problems associated with the low strength of these tools and the study of mechanisms of catastrophic failure which manifest themselves well before and along with the classic mechanism of tool wear. The relationships between drilling thrust and torque with the depth of penetration and the various machining conditions are also investigated and the experimental evidence suggests that the process is inherently unstable at depths beyond a few diameters. Second objective is the design and implementation of a system for intelligent CNC deep hole drilling, the main task of which is to ensure integrity of the process and the safety of the tool and the workpiece. This task is achieved by means of interfacing the CNC system of the machine tool to an external computer which performs the following functions: On-line monitoring of the drilling thrust and torque, adaptive control of feed rate, spindle speed and tool penetration (Z-axis), indirect monitoring of tool wear by pattern recognition of variations of the drilling thrust with cumulative cutting time and drilled depth, operation as a data base for tools and workpieces and finally issuing of alarms and diagnostic messages.

The pharmacist's contribution towards monitoring and reporting adverse drug reactions

The activities and function of the West Midlands Adverse Drug Reaction Study Group are described. The impact of the Group on the reporting of adverse drug reactions to the CSM by the yellow card system has been evaluated in several ways including a comparison with the Trent Region. The role of the pharmacist in the Group is highlighted. A nationwide survey of the hospital pharmacist's involvement in adverse drug reaction reporting and monitoring is described, the results are reported and discussed. The available sources of information on adverse drug reactions, both primary and secondary, are critically reviewed. A checklist of necessary details for case reports is developed and examples of problems in the literature are given. The contribution of the drug information pharmacist in answering enquiries and encouraging reporting is examined. A role for the ward pharmacist in identifying, reporting, documenting and following up adverse drug reactions is proposed. Studies conducted to support this role are described and the results discussed. The ward pharmacist's role in preventing adverse drug reactions is also outlined. The reporting of adverse drug reactions in Australia is contrasted with the U.K. and particular attention is drawn to the pharmacist's contribution in the former. The problems in evaluating drug safety are discussed and examples are given where serious reactions have only been recognised after many patients have been exposed. To remedy this situation a case is made for enhancing the CSM yellow card scheme by further devolution of reporting, increasing the involvement of pharmacists and improving arrangements at the CSM. It is proposed that pharmacists should undertake the responsibility for reporting reactions to the CSM in some instances.

Critical practice and the public pedagogy of environmental and conservation media

This article addresses the reluctance of mainstream corporate and commercial media to critically address major environmental and conservation issues. The resulting public pedagogy largely reproduces the neoliberal ideology informing much conservation practice and discourse. Nonetheless, the media retains an unrealised critical educative potential that needs to be drawn upon by critical media practitioners and educators. To do this, educators need to be cognisant of the phenomenological experience of spectatorship, the aesthetic form and relational contexts of media consumption, production and informal learning. Referring to the work of Vivian Sobchack, Henry Giroux, Pierre Bourdieu and Gilles Deleuze, the article argues that if critical practitioner-educators apply an analytic framework informed by critical realism, counter-hegemonic elements found within corporate and independent media productions and conservation initiatives may be rearticulated and re-presented in a more positive manner. For this to occur, critical media practitioners-educators need to recognise that feasible political and normative alternatives are both available and practically possible. The article ends by discussing some relatively recent non-fiction productions that express a commonality between human and non-human animals and so form the basis of a critical environmental education-media practice.

CEO power, government monitoring, and bank dividends

We investigate the role of CEO power and government monitoring on bank dividend policy for a sample of 109 European listed banks for the period 2005-2013. We employ three main proxies for CEO power: CEO ownership, CEO tenure, and unforced CEO turnover. We show that CEO power has a negative impact on dividend payout ratios and on performance, suggesting that entrenched CEOs do not have the incentive to increase payout ratios to discourage monitoring from minority shareholders. Stronger internal monitoring by board of directors, as proxied by larger ownership stakes of the board members, increases performance but decreases payout ratios. These findings are contrary to those from the entrenchment literature for non-financial firms. Government ownership and the presence of a government official on the board of directors of the bank, also reduces payout ratios, in line with the view that government is incentivized to favor the interest of bank creditors before the interest of minority shareholders. These results show that government regulators are mainly concerned about bank safety and this allows powerful CEOs to distribute low payouts at the expense of minority shareholders.

Architecture of remote monitoring and diagnosis system based on service-oriented architecture(SOA)

In view of the increasingly complexity of services logic and functional requirements, a new system architecture based on SOA was proposed for the equipment remote monitoring and diagnosis system. According to the design principles of SOA, different levels and different granularities of services logic and functional requirements for remote monitoring and diagnosis system were divided, and a loosely coupled web services system was built. The design and implementation schedule of core function modules for the proposed architecture were presented. A demo system was used to validate the feasibility of the proposed architecture.

A virtual species set for robust and reproducible species distribution modelling tests

Predicting species potential and future distribution has become a relevant tool in biodiversity monitoring and conservation.In this data article we present the suitability map of a virtual species generated based on two bioclimatic variables, and a dataset containing more than 700,000 random observations at the extent of Europe. The dataset includes spatial attributes such as: distance to roads, protected areas, country codes, and the habitat suitability of two spatially clustered species (grassland and forest species) and a wide-spread species.

Introduction: the media, animal conservation and environmental education

Natural History filmmaking has a long history but the generic boundaries between it and environmental and conservation filmmaking are blurred. Nature, environment and animal imagery has been a mainstay of television, campaigning organisations and conservation bodies from Greenpeace to the Sierra Club, with vibrant images being used effectively on posters, leaflets and postcards, and in coffee table books, media releases, short films and viral emails to educate and inform the general public. However, critics suggest that wildlife film and photography frequently convey a false image of the state of the world’s flora and fauna. The environmental educator David Orr once remarked that all education is environmental education, and it is possible to see all image-based communication in the same way. The Media, Animal Conservation and Environmental Education has contributions from filmmakers, photographers, researchers and academics from across the globe. It explores the various ways in which film, television and video are, and can be, used by conservationists and educators to encourage both a greater awareness of environmental and conservation issues, and practical action designed to help endangered species. This book is based on a special issue of the journal Environmental Education Research.

The media, animal conservation and environmental education

Natural History filmmaking has a long history but the generic boundaries between it and environmental and conservation filmmaking are blurred. Nature, environment and animal imagery has been a mainstay of television, campaigning organisations and conservation bodies from Greenpeace to the Sierra Club, with vibrant images being used effectively on posters, leaflets and postcards, and in coffee table books, media releases, short films and viral emails to educate and inform the general public. However, critics suggest that wildlife film and photography frequently convey a false image of the state of the world’s flora and fauna. The environmental educator David Orr once remarked that all education is environmental education, and it is possible to see all image-based communication in the same way. The Media, Animal Conservation and Environmental Education has contributions from filmmakers, photographers, researchers and academics from across the globe. It explores the various ways in which film, television and video are, and can be, used by conservationists and educators to encourage both a greater awareness of environmental and conservation issues, and practical action designed to help endangered species. This book is based on a special issue of the journal Environmental Education Research.

A simple remote sensing based information system for monitoring sites of conservation importance

Monitoring is essential for conservation of sites, but capacity to undertake it in the field is often limited. Data collected by remote sensing has been identified as a partial solution to this problem, and is becoming a feasible option, since increasing quantities of satellite data in particular are becoming available to conservationists. When suitably classified, satellite imagery can be used to delineate land cover types such as forest, and to identify any changes over time. However, the conservation community lacks (a) a simple tool appropriate to the needs for monitoring change in all types of land cover (e.g. not just forest), and (b) an easily accessible information system which allows for simple land cover change analysis and data sharing to reduce duplication of effort. To meet these needs, we developed a web-based information system which allows users to assess land cover dynamics in and around protected areas (or other sites of conservation importance) from multi-temporal medium resolution satellite imagery. The system is based around an open access toolbox that pre-processes and classifies Landsat-type imagery, and then allows users to interactively verify the classification. These data are then open for others to utilize through the online information system. We first explain imagery processing and data accessibility features, and then demonstrate the toolbox and the value of user verification using a case study on Nakuru National Park, Kenya. Monitoring and detection of disturbances can support implementation of effective protection, assist the work of park managers and conservation scientists, and thus contribute to conservation planning, priority assessment and potentially to meeting monitoring needs for Aichi target 11.

Practices and views on fetal heart monitoring:A structured observation and interview study

Objective: To assess and explain deviations from recommended practice in National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines in relation to fetal heart monitoring. Design: Qualitative study. Setting: Large teaching hospital in the UK. Sample: Sixty-six hours of observation of 25 labours and interviews with 20 midwives of varying grades. Methods: Structured observations of labour and semistructured interviews with midwives. Interviews were undertaken using a prompt guide, audiotaped, and transcribed verbatim. Analysis was based on the constant comparative method, assisted by QSR N5 software. Main outcome measures: Deviations from recommended practice in relation to fetal monitoring and insights into why these occur. Results: All babies involved in the study were safely delivered, but 243 deviations from recommended practice in relation to NICE guidelines on fetal monitoring were identified, with the majority (80%) of these occurring in relation to documentation. Other deviations from recommended practice included indications for use of electronic fetal heart monitoring and conduct of fetal heart monitoring. There is evidence of difficulties with availability and maintenance of equipment, and some deficits in staff knowledge and skill. Differing orientations towards fetal monitoring were reported by midwives, which were likely to have impacts on practice. The initiation, management, and interpretation of fetal heart monitoring is complex and distributed across time, space, and professional boundaries, and practices in relation to fetal heart monitoring need to be understood within an organisational and social context. Conclusion: Some deviations from best practice guidelines may be rectified through straightforward interventions including improved systems for managing equipment and training. Other deviations from recommended practice need to be understood as the outcomes of complex processes that are likely to defy easy resolution. © RCOG 2006.

Targets and self monitoring in hypertension: randomised controlled trial and cost effectiveness analysis

OBJECTIVES: To assess whether blood pressure control in primary care could be improved with the use of patient held targets and self monitoring in a practice setting, and to assess the impact of these on health behaviours, anxiety, prescribed antihypertensive drugs, patients' preferences, and costs. DESIGN: Randomised controlled trial. SETTING: Eight general practices in south Birmingham. PARTICIPANTS: 441 people receiving treatment in primary care for hypertension but not controlled below the target of < 140/85 mm Hg. INTERVENTIONS: Patients in the intervention group received treatment targets along with facilities to measure their own blood pressure at their general practice; they were also asked to visit their general practitioner or practice nurse if their blood pressure was repeatedly above the target level. Patients in the control group received usual care (blood pressure monitoring by their practice). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Primary outcome: change in systolic blood pressure at six months and one year in both intervention and control groups. Secondary outcomes: change in health behaviours, anxiety, prescribed antihypertensive drugs, patients' preferences of method of blood pressure monitoring, and costs. RESULTS: 400 (91%) patients attended follow up at one year. Systolic blood pressure in the intervention group had significantly reduced after six months (mean difference 4.3 mm Hg (95% confidence interval 0.8 mm Hg to 7.9 mm Hg)) but not after one year (mean difference 2.7 mm Hg (- 1.2 mm Hg to 6.6 mm Hg)). No overall difference was found in diastolic blood pressure, anxiety, health behaviours, or number of prescribed drugs. Patients who self monitored lost more weight than controls (as evidenced by a drop in body mass index), rated self monitoring above monitoring by a doctor or nurse, and consulted less often. Overall, self monitoring did not cost significantly more than usual care (251 pounds sterling (437 dollars; 364 euros) (95% confidence interval 233 pounds sterling to 275 pounds sterling) versus 240 pounds sterling (217 pounds sterling to 263 pounds sterling). CONCLUSIONS: Practice based self monitoring resulted in small but significant improvements of blood pressure at six months, which were not sustained after a year. Self monitoring was well received by patients, anxiety did not increase, and there was no appreciable additional cost. Practice based self monitoring is feasible and results in blood pressure control that is similar to that in usual care.

Real-time detection, tracking, and monitoring of automatically discovered events in social media

We introduce ReDites, a system for realtime event detection, tracking, monitoring and visualisation. It is designed to assist Information Analysts in understanding and exploring complex events as they unfold in the world. Events are automatically detected from the Twitter stream. Then those that are categorised as being security-relevant are tracked, geolocated, summarised and visualised for the end-user. Furthermore, the system tracks changes in emotions over events, signalling possible flashpoints or abatement. We demonstrate the capabilities of ReDites using an extended use case from the September 2013 Westgate shooting incident. Through an evaluation of system latencies, we also show that enriched events are made available for users to explore within seconds of that event occurring.