Effect of industrial pollution on the benthic communities of a tropical estuary

Cochin backwaters, a tropical barbuilt estuary is well known for its prawn, molluscan and demersal fisheries. Also it formed the dumping area for sewage,235 retting of husks and discharge of effluents from industries located on either side of it. As a result the fishery is being gradually dwindled year after year due to the lowering of the water quality. The effect of industrial polution on the benthic community of this tropical estuary was worked out. An area extending over 21 km from the mouth of the estuary to upstream of industrial belt was selected. Temporal and spatial variations of 16 environmental parameters at 9 stations along the area were monitored monthly during 1981. Benthic fauna of these 9 stations consisted of amphipods , polychaetes, isopods, tanaidaceans, molluscs and other crustaceans (Decapods, Acetes, Alpheids, Balanus, insect larvae, chironomid larvae, cumacea and some fresh water forms ). Apart from these, sea anemone, flat worms, nematodes, sipunculoids, echinoderms and fishes were also encountered. 75 species belonging to 31 faunal groups were identified. Of these 31 groups, amphipods, polychaedes, isopods, tanaidaceans and molluscs were numerically abundant. Rest of the 26 groups (including 13 riverine forms) were found less significant due to their rare occurrence/low numerical abundance. Polychaetes and molluscs were the only major groups present at all the stations.

Socio-Economic Dimensions of Health Care Development Among Tribals in Kerala: A Study of Tribal Communities in Wynad

The contemporary explanations and discussions of the relationship between medicine and health, and society centre around assumptions that can be broadly classified into three setsl. The first set considers health and illness as predominantly ‘biological’ and therefore, having nothing to do with the social and economic environment in which it occurs. The struggle to combat illness therefore, lies entirely within the purview of modern medicine which is neutral to economic or social change. The second considers practice of medicine as a natural science. It allows the doctor to separate himself from his subject matter, the patient, in the samelway as the natural scientist is assumed to separate himself from his subject matter, the natural world. As a 'science' and with the scientific method, it can produce unchallengable and autonomous body of knowledge which is free from the wider social and economic context. The third, different from the above, recognises the relationship between health, medicine and society. Social and environmental aspects as determinants of illness or of health comes to sharp focus here and it assigns to medicine the status of a mediator, the only viable mediator, between people and diseases. In this scheme of things the usefulness of medicine is unquestionable but the problem lies in not having enough of it to go arounds.

Impact of climate change on hetrotrophic bacterial communities in the water and sediment of kongsfjord in norwegian artic

Considering the extent of warming in the artic region and the resultant changes in the dynamic marine enviornments there is a need to monitor the bacterial diversity in the fjord enviornments especially in terms of cultivable bacteria. The present study reports the diversity of cultivable hetrotrophic bacteria from the water and sediment samples of kongsfjord their growth responses to important enviornmental variables and ability to produce industrially important hydrolytic enzymes.

Wege zur Entdeckung von Communities in Folksonomies

Ein wichtiger Baustein des neu entdeckten World Wide Web - des "Web 2.0" - stellen Folksonomies dar. In diesen Systemen können Benutzer gemeinsam Ressourcen verwalten und mit Schlagwörtern versehen. Die dadurch entstehenden begrifflichen Strukturen stellen ein interessantes Forschungsfeld dar. Dieser Artikel untersucht Ansätze und Wege zur Entdeckung und Strukturierung von Nutzergruppen ("Communities") in Folksonomies.

Discovering similarities in the time use patterns of the Spanish Autonomous Communities by Fuzzy techniques

In 2000 the European Statistical Office published the guidelines for developing the Harmonized European Time Use Surveys system. Under such a unified framework, the first Time Use Survey of national scope was conducted in Spain during 2002– 03. The aim of these surveys is to understand human behavior and the lifestyle of people. Time allocation data are of compositional nature in origin, that is, they are subject to non-negativity and constant-sum constraints. Thus, standard multivariate techniques cannot be directly applied to analyze them. The goal of this work is to identify homogeneous Spanish Autonomous Communities with regard to the typical activity pattern of their respective populations. To this end, fuzzy clustering approach is followed. Rather than the hard partitioning of classical clustering, where objects are allocated to only a single group, fuzzy method identify overlapping groups of objects by allowing them to belong to more than one group. Concretely, the probabilistic fuzzy c-means algorithm is conveniently adapted to deal with the Spanish Time Use Survey microdata. As a result, a map distinguishing Autonomous Communities with similar activity pattern is drawn. Key words: Time use data, Fuzzy clustering; FCM; simplex space; Aitchison distance

Communities and the Web

What is a social network? How does an online community differ from a real world community? See also: Anne Hornsby, 'Surfing the net for community: a Durkheimian analysis of electronic gatherings' ch.3 in Peter Kivisto (ed.) Illuminating Social Life (3rd ed 2005). Libr ref HM51KIV. Graham Crow and Catherine Maclean, 'Community' in Geoff Payne (ed.) Social Divisions (2nd ed. 2006) HM821PAY.

Universities as communities of difference

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Learning within communities of practice in preservice Secondary School teachers education. 'Aprendizaje en la formación inicial de profesores de Educación Secundaria desde la perspectiva de las comunidades de práctica'.

Resumen tomado de la publicación

Virtual communities and strategic learning of calculus in enginery. 'Comunidades virtuales y el aprendizaje estratégico de cálculo en ingeniería'.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación

Social Networking Sites as Technology Enhanced Learning Communities towards autonomous language learning

The following contribution pretends to cope with the demands of a globalised, post-modern environment through the design and implementation of an online international project where an SNS is used in order to join English as Second Language (ESL) students from different parts of the world. The design of the project appears around the implementation of the Bologna process in the Faculty of Education from the University of Girona where the basic prerequisite of all students to acquire English at the level B1 of the Common European Portfolio makes English a compulsory competence for communication among its higher education candidates in order to develop in the world. Together with the University of Girona, there is the International Educational and Resources Network (iEARN) which promotes the participation of schools around the world in online international projects

Efficiency and Equity in Learning Communities and schools

Traditionally, school efficiency has been measured as a function of educational production. In the last two decades, however, studies in the economics of education have indicated that more is required to improve school efficiency: researchers must explore how significant changes in school organization affect the performance of at-risk students. In this paper we introduce Henry Levin’s adoption of the X-efficiency approach to education and we describe the efficient and cost-effective characteristics of one Learning Communities Project School that significantly improved its student outcomes and enrollment numbers and reduced its absenteeism rate to zero. The organizational change that facilitated these improvements defined specific issues to address. Students’ school success became the focus of the school project, which also offered specific incentives, selected teachers, involved parents and community members in decisions, and used the most efficient technologies and methods. This case analysis reveals new two elements—family training and community involvement—that were not explicit parts of Levin’s adaptation. The case of the Antonio Machado Public School should attract the attention of both social scientists and policy makers

Distribution of diatom communities in agricultural and mining watersheds of Southwest Spain

Els sistemes aquàtics continental representen un dels ecosistemes més amenaçats a nivell mundial, com a conseqüència de l'ús intensiu quel'home en fa. La conca del Guadiana no està lliure d'aquestes pressions antròpiques. Les grans infraestructures hidràuliques i l'escorrentia provinent de l'agricultura són només exemples dels greus problemes que pateix la conca. Aquests problemes es fan especialment palesos en la zona alta de la conca, on l'escassetat d'aigua no fa més que agreujar el problema.Tot això ha generat la necessitat urgent d'avaluar l'estat de conservació d'aquests ecosistemes aquàtics continentals, poder determinar la mesura i la magnitud de les pertorbacions que els estan afectant i així proposar mesures de gestió destinades a restaurar-ne la integritat ecològica. El principal objectiu que presenta aquest és determinar els patrons de distribució de les comunitats de algals (amb una menció especial en el grup de les diatomees) i de les seves causes en la conca del Guadiana i associades, amb la finalitat d'establir i proposar eines que permetin avaluar l'estat de conservació de les masses d'aigua d'aquestes conques.

Distributional patterns of diatom communities in Mediterranean rivers

Aquesta tesi tracta la jerarquia i l'heterogeneïtat dels sistemes fluvials que afecten l'estructura de les comunitats bentòniques de diatomees. A nivell regional, es van buscar diferents grups de punts i les seves espècies indicadores, es va estudiar la resposta de les comunitats de diatomees als gradients ambientals, es va avaluar la utilitat de diferents índexs de diatomees i es va buscar el millor sistema de classificació per a condicions de referència. A nivell de conca, es volien definir els factors que determinen la distribució longitudinal de la diversitat de les comunitats de diatomees. Finalment, a nivell d'hàbitat es van determinar quins factors afecten les algues i els cianobacteris a aquesta escala i es va examinar la contribució relativa de l'ambient i l'espai en la distribució de la biomassa i composició d'algues i cianobacteris. Per tant, els diferents capítols d'aquesta tesi han estat desenvolupats seguint aquest esquema.