TABLE 1. - Taxa list at Bahi'a Ushuaia and Bahi'a Golondrina

This paper describes the composition and abundance of mesozooplankton of Bahi'a Ushuaia and Bahi'a Golondrina. These small bays are located in the northern Beagle Channel. Sampling was carried out from January 20 to 23, 2001 and samples were collected from the upper layer at nine stations. This study is the first research on mesozooplankton in this part of the Beagle Channel. Due to their dominance in the mesozooplankton community, we compared our Copepoda data with those reported by other authors from Antarctic coastal environments. By applying cluster analysis, we found two station groups in both bays: one in slightly polluted zones and the other in undisturbed external zones. Four assemblages in Bahi'a Ushuaia and two in Bahi'a Golondrina were determined by using non-metric multidimensional scaling (MDS) and cluster analysis. Mesozooplanktonic assemblages showed a certain resemblance in zones with and without anthropogenic influence. Most of the copepod species in our samples are typical of the sub-Antarctic region. Oithona similis (=0. helgolandica sensu Ramirez, 1966), Oncaea curvata, and Ctenocahmus citer show either similar or higher abundances at Antarctic coastal sites, including the upper layer in oceanic areas, in comparison with sub-Antarctic coastal localities. This suggests that, in agreement with other findings, the Polar Front is probably not a major geographic boundary for the distribution of these species.

Juniperus navicularis - a study of Portuguese population structure and fitness

Juniperus navicularis Gand. is a dioecious endemic conifer that constitutes the understory of seaside pine forests in Portugal, areas currently threatened by increasing urban expansion. The aim of this study is to assess the conservation status of previously known populations of this species located on its core area of distribution. The study was performed in south-west coast of Portugal. Three populations varying in size and pine density were analyzed. Number of individuals, population density, spatial distribution and individual characteristics of junipers were estimated. Female cone, seed characteristics and seed viability were also evaluated. Results suggest that J. navicularis populations are vulnerable because seminal recruitment is scarce, what may lead to a reduction of genetic variability due solely to vegetative propagation. This vulnerability seems to be strongly determined by climatic constraints toward increasing aridity. Ratio between male and female shrubs did not differ from 1:1 in any population. Deviations from 1:1 between mature and non-mature plants were found in all populations, denoting population ageing. Very low seed viability was observed. A major part of described Juniperus navicularis populations have disappeared through direct habitat loss to urban development, loss of fitness in drier and warmer locations and low seed viability. This study is the first to address J. navicularis conservation, and represents a valuable first step toward this species preservation. 

Utilizing ICT to prevent loneliness and social isolation of the elderly. A literature review

Ageing of the population is a worldwide phenomenon. Numerous ICT-based solutions have been developed for elderly care but mainly connected to the physiological and nursing aspects in services for the elderly. Social work is a profession that should pay attention to the comprehensive wellbeing and social needs of the elderly. Many people experience loneliness and depression in their old age, either as a result of living alone or due to a lack of close family ties and reduced connections with their culture of origin, which results in an inability to participate actively in community activities (Singh & Misra, 2009). Participation in society would enhance the quality of life. With the development of information technology, the use of technology in social work practice has risen dramatically. The aim of this literature review is to map out the state of the art of knowledge about the usage of ICT in elderly care and to figure out research-based knowledge about the usability of ICT for the prevention of loneliness and social isolation of elderly people. The data for the current research comes from the core collection of the Web of Science and the data searching was performed using Boolean? The searching resulted in 216 published English articles. After going through the topics and abstracts, 34 articles were selected for the data analysis that is based on a multi approach framework. The analysis of the research approach is categorized according to some aspects of using ICT by older adults from the adoption of ICT to the impact of usage, and the social services for them. This literature review focused on the function of communication by excluding the applications that mainly relate to physical nursing. The results show that the so-called ‘digital divide’ still exists, but the older adults have the willingness to learn and utilise ICT in daily life, especially for communication. The data shows that the usage of ICT can prevent the loneliness and social isolation of older adults, and they are eager for technical support in using ICT. The results of data analysis on theoretical frames and concepts show that this research field applies different theoretical frames from various scientific fields, while a social work approach is lacking. However, a synergic frame of applied theories will be suggested from the perspective of social work.

Adaptación del sector turístico al cambio climático en España. La importancia de las acciones a escala local y en empresas turísticas

El 5º Informe del IPCC (Panel Intergubernamental de Cambio Climático, 2014) señala que el turismo será una de las actividades económicas que mayores efectos negativos experimentará en las próximas décadas debido al calentamiento térmico del planeta. En España, el turismo es una fuente principal de ingresos y de creación de puestos de trabajo en su economía. De ahí que sea necesaria la puesta en marcha de medidas de adaptación a la nueva realidad climática que, en nuestro país, va a suponer cambios en el confort climático de los destinos e incremento de extremos atmosféricos. Frente a los planes de adaptación al cambio climático en la actividad turística, elaborados por los gobiernos estatal y regional, que apenas se han desarrollado en España, la escala local muestra interesantes ejemplos de acciones de adaptación al cambio climático, desarrolladas tanto por los municipios (energía, transporte, vivienda, planificación urbanística) como por la propia empresa turística (hoteles, campings, apartamentos). Medidas de ahorro de agua y luz, fomento del transporte público y de las energías limpias, creación de zonas verdes urbanas y adaptación a los extremos atmosféricos destacan como acciones de mitigación del cambio climático en los destinos turísticos principales de nuestro país.

Maximilian’s Journeys through Spain and Brazil: The Long Way to the Mexican Empire

In May of 1864, Maximilian of Austria reached the Mexican coast, being this journey his last, ending three years later with his execution. Much has been written about the reasons that prompted his acceptance of the crown of Mexico, a country so distant in every sense of his cultural environment. However, years ago Maximilian had traveled to Spain and Brazil (to Spain twice) and these experiences, although not determinant, greatly influenced the decision of the Archduke, who saw the chance to realize a dream he had conceived on his trip to Spain and that was consolidated during his stay in Brazil, as we can extract from his travel memoirs.

Sea turtles recovered at the Wild Fauna Recovery Center in Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain)

[EN] Since the beginning of the 1990's, the Wild Fauna Recovery Center in Gran Canaria Canary Islands, Spain) has received a large number of injured animals for recovery. Apart from birds and mammals, a considerable number of sea turtles representing different species are gathered each year. During the last five years (1999-2003), more than 100 turtles were sheltered annually; more than 80% successfully recovered and were released.

Capturing and indexing rehearsals: the design and usage of a digital archive of performing arts

Preserving the cultural heritage of the performing arts raises difficult and sensitive issues, as each performance is unique by nature and the juxtaposition between the performers and the audience cannot be easily recorded. In this paper, we report on an experimental research project to preserve another aspect of the performing arts—the history of their rehearsals. We have specifically designed non-intrusive video recording and on-site documentation techniques to make this process transparent to the creative crew, and have developed a complete workflow to publish the recorded video data and their corresponding meta-data online as Open Data using state-of-the-art audio and video processing to maximize non-linear navigation and hypervideo linking. The resulting open archive is made publicly available to researchers and amateurs alike and offers a unique account of the inner workings of the worlds of theater and opera.

Macroinvertebrate Diversity in Urban and Rural Ponds: Implications for Freshwater Biodiversity Conservation

Ponds are among the most biodiverse freshwater ecosystems, yet face significant threats from removal, habitat degradation and a lack of legislative protection globally. Information regarding the habitat quality and biodiversity of ponds across a range of land uses is vital for the long term conservation and management of ecological resources. In this study we examine the biodiversity and conservation value of macroinvertebrates from 91 lowland ponds across 3 land use types (35 floodplain meadow, 15 arable and 41 urban ponds). A total of 224 macroinvertebrate taxa were recorded across all ponds, with urban ponds and floodplain ponds supporting a greater richness than arable ponds at the landscape scale. However, at the alpha scale, urban ponds supported lower faunal diversity (mean: 22 taxa) than floodplain (mean: 32 taxa) or arable ponds (mean: 30 taxa). Floodplain ponds were found to support taxonomically distinct communities compared to arable and urban ponds. A total of 13 macroinvertebrate taxa with a national conservation designation were recorded across the study area and 12 ponds (11 floodplain and 1 arable pond) supported assemblages of high or very high conservation value. Pond conservation currently relies on the designation of individual ponds based on very high biodiversity or the presence of taxa with specific conservation designations. However, this site specific approach fails to acknowledge the contribution of ponds to freshwater biodiversity at the landscape scale. Ponds are highly appropriate sites outside of protected areas (urban/arable), with which the general public are already familiar, for local and landscape scale conservation of freshwater habitats.

Long-term community responses to droughts in the early modern period: the case study of Terrassa, Spain

New challenges posed by global environmental change have motivated scholars to pay growing attention to historical long-term strategies to deal with climate extremes. We aim to understand long-term trends in community responses to cope with droughts, to explain how many preindustrial societies coevolved with local hydro-climatic dynamics and coped with climate extremes over time. The specific goals of this work are: (1) to analyze how local communities experienced droughts over long periods of time and (2) to document the spectrum of recorded community responses to drought. Our research covers over one century (1605-1710) of responses to drought in the community of Terrassa, Barcelona, Spain. Data were collected through archival research. We reviewed and coded 2076 village council minutes. Our results show that the local community adopted a mixture of symbolic, institutional, and infrastructural responses to drought and that drought-related decisions varied through time. We discuss adaptation strategies on the basis of the distinct physical signals of drought propagation and the role of nonclimatic historical factors, such as warfare and public debt, in shaping responses. We conclude that long-term perspectives on premodern history and comparable empirical studies are fundamental to advance our understanding of past social responses to hydro-climatic extremes.

Setting priorities for private land conservation in fire-prone landscapes: Are fire risk reduction and biodiversity conservation competing or compatible objectives?

Although wildfire plays an important role in maintaining biodiversity in many ecosystems, fire management to protect human assets is often carried out by different agencies than those tasked for conserving biodiversity. In fact, fire risk reduction and biodiversity conservation are often viewed as competing objectives. Here we explored the role of management through private land conservation and asked whether we could identify private land acquisition strategies that fulfill the mutual objectives of biodiversity conservation and fire risk reduction, or whether the maximization of one objective comes at a detriment to the other. Using a fixed budget and number of homes slated for development, we simulated 20 years of housing growth under alternative conservation selection strategies, and then projected the mean risk of fires destroying structures and the area and configuration of important habitat types in San Diego County, California, USA. We found clear differences in both fire risk projections and biodiversity impacts based on the way conservation lands are prioritized for selection, but these differences were split between two distinct groupings. If no conservation lands were purchased, or if purchases were prioritized based on cost or likelihood of development, both the projected fire risk and biodiversity impacts were much higher than if conservation lands were purchased in areas with high fire hazard or high species richness. Thus, conserving land focused on either of the two objectives resulted in nearly equivalent mutual benefits for both. These benefits not only resulted from preventing development in sensitive areas, but they were also due to the different housing patterns and arrangements that occurred as development was displaced from those areas. Although biodiversity conflicts may still arise using other fire management strategies, this study shows that mutual objectives can be attained through land-use planning in this region. These results likely generalize to any place where high species richness overlaps with hazardous wildland vegetation.

Networking for conservation: social capital and perceptions of organizational success among land trust boards

As an important component in collaborative natural resource management and nonprofit governance, social capital is expected to be related to variations in the performance of land trusts. Land trusts are charitable organizations that work to conserve private land locally, regionally, or nationally. The purpose of this paper is to identify the level of structural and cognitive social capital among local land trusts, and how these two types of social capital relate to the perceived success of land trusts. The analysis integrates data for land trusts operating in the U.S. south-central Appalachian region, which includes western North Carolina, southwest Virginia, and east Tennessee. We use factor analysis to elicit different dimensions of cognitive social capital, including cooperation among board members, shared values, common norms, and communication effectiveness. Measures of structural social capital include the size and diversity of organizational networks of both land trusts and their board members. Finally, a hierarchical linear regression model is employed to estimate how cognitive and structural social capital measures, along with other organizational and individual-level attributes, relate to perceptions of land trust success, defined here as achievement of the land trusts’ mission, conservation, and financial goals. Results show that the diversity of organizational partnerships, cooperation, and shared values among land trust board members are associated with higher levels of perceived success. Organizational capacity, land trust accreditation, volunteerism, and financial support are also important factors influencing perceptions of success among local, nonprofit land trusts.

King of the Renaissance: Art and Politics at the Neapolitan Court of Ferrante I, 1458-1494

In the second half of the fifteenth century, King Ferrante I of Naples (r. 1458-1494) dominated the political and cultural life of the Mediterranean world. His court was home to artists, writers, musicians, and ambassadors from England to Egypt and everywhere in between. Yet, despite its historical importance, Ferrante’s court has been neglected in the scholarship. This dissertation provides a long-overdue analysis of Ferrante’s artistic patronage and attempts to explicate the king’s specific role in the process of art production at the Neapolitan court, as well as the experiences of artists employed therein. By situating Ferrante and the material culture of his court within the broader discourse of Early Modern art history for the first time, my project broadens our understanding of the function of art in Early Modern Europe. I demonstrate that, contrary to traditional assumptions, King Ferrante was a sophisticated patron of the visual arts whose political circumstances and shifting alliances were the most influential factors contributing to his artistic patronage. Unlike his father, Alfonso the Magnanimous, whose court was dominated by artists and courtiers from Spain, France, and elsewhere, Ferrante differentiated himself as a truly Neapolitan king. Yet Ferrante’s court was by no means provincial. His residence, the Castel Nuovo in Naples, became the physical embodiment of his commercial and political network, revealing the accretion of local and foreign visual vocabularies that characterizes Neapolitan visual culture.

Conservation value, biodiversity value and methods of assessment in regenerating and human disturbed tropical forest

Although the value of primary forests for biodiversity conservation is well known, the potential biodiversity and conservation value of regenerating forests remains controversial. Many factors likely contribute to this, including: 1. the variable ages of regenerating forests being studied (often dominated by relatively young regenerating forests); 2. the potential for confounding on-going human disturbance (such as logging and hunting); 3. the relatively low number of multi-taxa studies; 4. the lack of studies that directly compare different historic disturbances within the same location; 5. contrasting patterns from different survey methodologies and the paucity of knowledge on the impacts across different vertical levels of rainforest biodiversity (often due to a lack of suitable methodologies available to assess them). We also know relatively little as to how biodiversity is affected by major current impacts, such as unmarked rainforest roads, which contribute to this degradation of habitat and fragmentation. This thesis explores the potential biodiversity value of regenerating rainforests under the best of scenarios and seeks to understand more about the impact of current human disturbance to biodiversity; data comes from case studies from the Manu and Sumaco Biosphere Reserves in the Western Amazon. Specifically, I compare overall biodiversity and conservation value of a best case regenerating rainforest site with a selection of well-studied primary forest sites and with predicted species lists for the region; including a focus on species of key conservation concern. I then investigate the biodiversity of the same study site in reference to different types of historic anthropogenic disturbance. Following this I investigate the impacts to biodiversity from an unmarked rainforest road. In order to understand more about the differential effects of habitat disturbance on arboreal diversity I directly assess how patterns of butterfly biodiversity vary between three vertical strata. Although assessments within the canopy have been made for birds, invertebrates and bats, very few studies have successfully targeted arboreal mammals. I therefore investigate the potential of camera traps for inventorying arboreal mammal species in comparison with traditional methodologies. Finally, in order to investigate the possibility that different survey methodologies might identify different biodiversity patterns in habitat disturbance assessments, I investigate whether two different but commonly used survey methodologies used to assess amphibians, indicate the same or different responses of amphibian biodiversity to historic habitat change by people. The regenerating rainforest study site contained high levels of species richness; both in terms of alpha diversity found in nearby primary forest areas (87% ±3.5) and in terms of predicted primary forest diversity from the region (83% ±6.7). This included 89% (39 out of 44) of the species of high conservation concern predicted for the Manu region. Faunal species richness in once completely cleared regenerating forest was on average 13% (±9.8) lower than historically selectively logged forest. The presence of the small unmarked road significantly altered levels of faunal biodiversity for three taxa, up to and potentially beyond 350m into the forest interior. Most notably, the impact on biodiversity extended to at least 32% of the whole reserve area. The assessment of butterflies across strata showed that different vertical zones within the same rainforest responded differently in areas with different historic human disturbance. A comparison between forest regenerating after selective logging and forest regenerating after complete clearance, showed that there was a 17% greater reduction in canopy species richness in the historically cleared forest compared with the terrestrial community. Comparing arboreal camera traps with traditional ground-based techniques suggests that camera traps are an effective tool for inventorying secretive arboreal rainforest mammal communities and detect a higher number of cryptic species. Finally, the two survey methodologies used to assess amphibian communities identified contrasting biodiversity patterns in a human modified rainforest; one indicated biodiversity differences between forests with different human disturbance histories, whereas the other suggested no differences between forest disturbance types. Overall, in this thesis I find that the conservation and biodiversity value of regenerating and human disturbed tropical forest can potentially contribute to rainforest biodiversity conservation, particularly in the best of circumstances. I also highlight the importance of utilising appropriate study methodologies that to investigate these three-dimensional habitats, and contribute to the development of methodologies to do so. However, care should be taken when using different survey methodologies, which can provide contrasting biodiversity patterns in response to human disturbance.

Costa del Sol (Spain), analysis of economic and land changes caused by tourism

Malaga is in southern Spain, in a region called Andalusia. Costa del Sol belongs to the province of Malaga, near the Strait of Gibraltar and near the coast of Africa (about 300 km) and about 2,300 km of Sluptz. The Costa del Sol is next to the Mediterranean Sea and near the Atlantic Ocean. Strong and rapid growth of tourism in the countries of southern Europe and in Poland. Spain currently (2015) is the third largest inbound of international tourism (68 mil.) and the second inbound in tourism revenue. Europe is a major world tourist region. The first recipient of tourism in the world is France. Most tourism takes place between developed countries.

Capturing and indexing rehearsals: the design and usage of a digital archive of performing arts

Preserving the cultural heritage of the performing arts raises difficult and sensitive issues, as each performance is unique by nature and the juxtaposition between the performers and the audience cannot be easily recorded. In this paper, we report on an experimental research project to preserve another aspect of the performing arts—the history of their rehearsals. We have specifically designed non-intrusive video recording and on-site documentation techniques to make this process transparent to the creative crew, and have developed a complete workflow to publish the recorded video data and their corresponding meta-data online as Open Data using state-of-the-art audio and video processing to maximize non-linear navigation and hypervideo linking. The resulting open archive is made publicly available to researchers and amateurs alike and offers a unique account of the inner workings of the worlds of theater and opera.