Improving the performance of a Mediterranean demersal fishery towards societal objectives beyond MSY

Mediterranean demersal fisheries are highly multispecific and many of their target stocks are overexploited. In addition, rocketing fuel costs and low market prices of traditionally high-value species are challenging the viability of fisheries. Here, based on the numeric results of a simulation model, we conclude that this situation can be remedied by reducing both fishing mortality and fishing costs. According to our model results, fishing effort reductions of 48–71% would improve the health of fish stocks while increasing the economic profits of Mallorca islands bottom trawl fishery to as much as 1.9 M€ (146% higher than current profits). If all fish stocks were exploited at their MSY (or below) level, the reduction in fishing effort would have to be of 71% from current values. If equilibrium profits from the fishery were to be maximized (MEY), fishing effort would need to be reduced by 48%. These results must be taken with caution due the many sources of uncertainty of our analysis. The modeling tools used to estimate these values are conditional to the adequate treatment of two sources of uncertainty that are particularly problematic in Mediterranean fisheries: insufficiently known recruitment variability and lack of periodic evaluations of the state of many species. Our results show that fishing effort reductions would produce economic yield gains after a period of transition. Further studies on the benefits of changing the size-selection pattern of fisheries, on better estimation of stock–recruitment relationships and on better quantifications of the contribution of secondary species to these fisheries, are expected to improve the scientific recommendations for Mediterranean demersal fisheries toward sustainability principles.

Improving the performance of a Mediterranean demersal fishery toward economic objectives beyond MSY

Mediterranean demersal fisheries are highly multispecific and many of their target stocks are overexploited. In addition, rocketing fuel costs and low market prices of traditionally high-value species are challenging the viability of fisheries. Here, based on the numeric results of a simulation model, we conclude that this situation can be remedied by reducing both fishing mortality and fishing costs. According to our model results, fishing effort reductions of 48-71% would improve the health of fish stocks while increasing the economic profits of Mallorca islands bottom trawl fishery to as much as 1.9 M(sic) (146% higher than current profits). If all fish stocks were exploited at their MSY (or below) level, the reduction in fishing effort would have to be of 71% from current values. If equilibrium profits from the fishery were to be maximized (MEY), fishing effort would need to be reduced by 48%. These results must be taken with caution due the many sources of uncertainty of our analysis. The modeling tools used to estimate these values are conditional to the adequate treatment of two sources of uncertainty that are particularly problematic in Mediterranean fisheries: insufficiently known recruitment variability and lack of periodic evaluations of the state of many species. Our results show that fishing effort reductions would produce economic yield gains after a period of transition. Further studies on the benefits of changing the size-selection pattern of fisheries, on better estimation of stock recruitment relationships and on better quantifications of the contribution of secondary species to these fisheries, are expected to improve the scientific recommendations for Mediterranean demersal fisheries toward sustainability principles.

Fate and transport of volatile organic compounds in glacial till and groundwater at an industrial site in Northern Ireland

Volatile organic compound (VOC) contamination of subsurface geological material and groundwater was discovered on the Nortel Monkstown industrial site, Belfast, Northern Ireland. The objectives of this study were to (1) investigate the characteristics of the geological material and its influences on contaminated groundwater flow across the site using borehole logs and hydrological evaluations, and (2) identify the contaminants and examine their distribution in the subsurface geological material and groundwater using chemical analysis. This report focuses on the eastern car park (ECP) which was a former storage area associated with trichloroethene (TCE) degreasing operations. This is where the greatest amount of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), particularly TCE, were detected. The study site is on a complex deposit of clayey glacial till with discontinuous coarser grained lenses, mainly silts, sands and gravel, which occur at 0.45–7.82 m below ground level (bgl). The lenses overall form an elongated formation that acts as a small unconfined shallow aquifer. There is a continuous low permeable stiff clayey till layer beneath the lenses that performs as an aquitard to the groundwater. Highest concentrations of VOCs, mainly TCE, in the geological material and groundwater are in these coarser lenses at ~4.5–7 m bgl. Highest TCE measurements at 390,000 µg L-1 for groundwater and at 39,000 µg kg-1 at 5.7 m for geological material were in borehole GA19 in the coarse lens zone. It is assumed that TCE gained entrance to the subsurface near this borehole where the clayey till was thin to absent above coarse lenses which provided little retardation to the vertical migration of this dense non-aqueous phase liquid (DNAPL) into the groundwater. However, TCE is present in low concentrations in the geological material overlying the coarse lens zone. Additionally, VOCs appear to be associated with poorly drained layers and in peat

The general and specific effects of educational programmes aimed at promoting awareness of and respect for diversity among young children

This article reports the findings of a mixed-method evaluation of a pilot educational programme undertaken with 6-7 year olds in a sample of primary schools in England with the aim of increasing their awareness of and respect for diversity through theatre, workshops and related teacher-led classroom activities. The qualitative feedback from the teachers involved was extremely positive and encouraging and an analysis of the actual impact of the pilot programme on the children’s attitudes and awareness, using an experimental design, demonstrated some positive effects. In particular, the programme was found to increase the children’s general awareness of diversity and their ability to recognise instances of exclusion. While not a planned objective of the pilot programme, the evaluation also examined whether it had any effects on the children’s attitudes to specific differences, in this particular case racial differences. Interestingly, however, no evidence was found of any change in the children’s racial attitudes. With this in mind the article suggests that there is a need to distinguish between the general and specific effects of such educational programmes. The article considers the implications of this for future work in the area and also stresses the need to undertake more thorough and rigorous evaluations of such initiatives.

La valoración que los graduados tienen sobre su formación universitaria desde su situación laboral actual

En este artículo analizamos la valoración de los titulados universitarios sobre la formación recibida y su utilidad en la ocupación actual. El objetivo es analizar si existen diferencias por el nivel formativo de origen y el sexo de los estudiantes. A su vez, examinamos si las características de la situación laboral intervienen en estas relaciones afectando diferencialmente según las características sociodemográficas. Los resultados muestran la existencia de diferencias valorativas entre los jóvenes según su origen social y sexo, siendo las mujeres y los jóvenes de clase trabajadora los que valoran mejor su formación recibida. Finalmente, con la introducción de la situación laboral como variable de control constatamos que, en algunos casos, estas diferencias valorativas son debidas al contexto laboral actual de los graduados más que a diferencias sociodemográficas.

Peer-mentoring for first-time mothers from areas of socio-economic disadvantage: a qualitative study within a randomised controlled trial

Objective: To explore the difficulties experienced by lay-workers, women and health professionals involved in a peer-mentoring programme for first-time mothers living in socially disadvantaged areas. Design: Qualitative study; semi-structured interviews with lay-worker peer-mentoring programme participants at two separate stages of the programme (antenatal and postnatal). Setting: Community based. Participants: 11 women receiving peer-mentoring support (from first hospital antenatal visit to one year postnatal); 11 lay-workers; 2 research midwives. Results: Lay-workers had difficulty initiating contact with women and failure to establish contact affected their morale adversely. They felt that women understood their intended role poorly and attempted to develop relationships with them by sharing personal experiences and offering friendship; women who participated in the programme appreciated this. Developing a peer-mentor relationship was difficult if women lacked interest in the programme or in continuing contact. External influences on peer-mentoring uptake and delivery included family and friends who could prevent or encourage women’s participation and cause difficulties for the lay-worker both in delivering support and arranging follow-up. Lay-workers providing support to women from a different ethnic background experienced difficulties relating to both language and culture: these were perceived to affect peer-mentor relationships adversely. Major personal difficulties for lay-workers related to time constraints in reconciling mentoring requirements with demands of family and other work. Informing midwives of these difficulties helped identify solutions through training and ongoing professional support for the lay-workers. Conclusions: Lay-worker peer support is appreciated by first time mothers but difficulties in initiating contact, developing peer-mentor relationships and external influences such as family, ethnicity and time constraints are relevant to poor uptake and high staff turnover. In developing peer support programmes, awareness of potential difficulties and of how professional support can help resolve these should improve uptake and thus optimise the evaluations of their effectiveness.

Population-based local search for protein folding simulation in the MJ energy model and cubic lattices

We present experimental results on benchmark problems in 3D cubic lattice structures with the Miyazawa-Jernigan energy function for two local search procedures that utilise the pull-move set: (i) population-based local search (PLS) that traverses the energy landscape with greedy steps towards (potential) local minima followed by upward steps up to a certain level of the objective function; (ii) simulated annealing with a logarithmic cooling schedule (LSA). The parameter settings for PLS are derived from short LSA-runs executed in pre-processing and the procedure utilises tabu lists generated for each member of the population. In terms of the total number of energy function evaluations both methods perform equally well, however. PLS has the potential of being parallelised with an expected speed-up in the region of the population size. Furthermore, both methods require a significant smaller number of function evaluations when compared to Monte Carlo simulations with kink-jump moves. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

‘The Judiciary and Political Change in Africa: Developing Transitional Jurisprudence in Nigeria’

At a time of increased evaluations of law, human rights, and the rise of judicial power all over the globe, the work of most African judiciaries and the principles of the jurisprudence they espouse in promoting social justice remain an unlikely focus of comparative legal scholarship. This ought not to be so in view of the considerable activities of the courts on the continent in the dawn of the third wave of democratization. This article explores the work of the Nigerian Supreme Court in the political transition to democracy since 1999. Utilizing insights from the work of Ruti Teitel, it attempts to outline some of the major constitutional and extraconstitutional principles adopted by the Court in mediating intergovernmental contestations in the turbulent transition away from almost three decades of authoritarian military rule. It emerges that the task of fostering social transformation through the “weakest” branch seriously tasks the institutional integrity of the judiciary.

Overcoming health inequalities: A participative evaluation framework fit for the task

Aims: Healthcare providers are confronted with the claim that the distribution of health and healthcare provision is inherently unfair. There is also a growing awareness that the tools and methodologies applied in tackling health inequalities require further development. Evaluations as well as interventions usually focus on population-based indicators, but do not always provide guidance for frontline service evaluation and delivery. That is why the evaluation framework presented here focuses on facilitating local service development, service provider and user involvement, and the adequate representation of different population groups. Methods: A participative evaluation framework was constructed by drawing on six common success characteristics extrapolated from the published literature and policies on health inequalities. This framework was then applied to an intervention addressing women’s psychosocial health needs in order to demonstrate its utility in practice. Results: The framework provides healthcare professionals with an evidence-based tool for evaluating projects or programmes targeting health inequalities in ways that are responsive to local contexts and stakeholders. Conclusion: This participative evaluation framework supports the identification of meaningful psychosocial and contextual indicators for assessing the diverse health and social needs of service users. It uses multi-dimensional indicators to assess health and social care needs, to inform local service development, and to facilitate the exchange of knowledge between researchers, service providers, and service users. The inherent responsiveness enables rigorous yet flexible action on local health inequalities.

Who is susceptible to conjunction fallacies in category-based induction?

Recent evidence suggests that the conjunction fallacy observed in people's probabilistic reasoning is also to be found in their evaluations of inductive argument strength. We presented 130 participants with materials likely to produce a conjunction fallacy either by virtue of a shared categorical or a causal relationship between the categories in the argument. We also took a measure of participants' cognitive ability. We observed conjunction fallacies overall with both sets of materials but found an association with ability for the categorical materials only. Our results have implications for accounts of individual differences in reasoning, for the relevance theory of induction, and for the recent claim that causal knowledge is important in inductive reasoning.

Innovative Approaches to Involving Service Users in Palliative Care Social Work Education

Service user involvement in social work education is now a firmly established concept in UnitedKingdom.As a result, it is common practice for service users to occupy central roles the education and training of social work students and staff in both qualifying and postqualifying programmes. This paper describes an initiative, undertaken inNorthern Ireland, which compares two methods of user involvement employed with undergraduate and postqualifying social work students. In both situations the students firstly observed discussedDVDexcerpts of narratives from people affected by cancer and secondly observed live facilitated interview with a 25-year-old male service user who shared his experiences being diagnosedwith cancer at a young age.Understanding the social work role in palliative care is crucial as all social workers, regardless of practice context, will have some degree involvement in helping individuals and families to address end-of-life care issues. paper compares the findings of evaluations from two student groups which may help inform social work educators about the effectiveness of different teaching methods used achieve meaningful and effective user involvement with seldom heard groups.

Prising open the black box: Critical realism, action research and social work

There is a growing interest in critical realism and its application to social work. This article makes a case for adopting this philosophical position in qualitative social work research. More specifically, it suggests that there is a concordance between critical realist premises and action research with its cyclical inquiry and advancement of social change. This combination of philosophy and method, it is argued, promotes anti-oppressive social work research and illuminates the processes shaping outcomes in programme evaluations. Overall, the article underscores the importance of 'depth' in qualitative inquiry by conceiving the social world in terms of five interlacing, social domains.

Electron-impact excitation of Ni II: Collision strengths and effective collision strengths for low lying fine-structure forbidden transitions

Context. Considerable demand exists for electron excitation data for Ni ii, since lines from this abundant ion are observed in a wide variety of laboratory and astrophysical spectra. The accurate theoretical determination of these data can present a significant challenge however, due to complications arising from the presence of an open 3d-shell in the description of the target ion. Aims. In this work we present collision strengths and Maxwellian averaged effective collision strengths for the electron-impact ex- citation of Ni ii. Attention is concentrated on the 153 forbidden fine-structure transitions between the energetically lowest 18 levels of Ni ii. Effective collision strengths have been evaluated at 27 individual electron temperatures ranging from 30–100 000 K. To our knowledge this is the most extensive theoretical collisional study carried out on this ion to date.Methods. The parallel R-matrix package RMATRX II has recently been extended to allow for the inclusion of relativistic effects. This suite of codes has been utilised in the present work in conjunction with PSTGF to evaluate collision strengths and effective collision strengths for all of the low-lying forbidden fine-structure transitions. The following basis configurations were included in the target model – 3d9 , 3d8 4s, 3d8 4p, 3d7 4s2 and 3d7 4s4p – giving rise to a sophisticated 295 j j-level, 1930 coupled channel scattering problem. Results. Comprehensive comparisons are made between the present collisional data and those obtained from earlier theoretical evaluations. While the effective collision strengths agree well for some transitions, significant discrepancies exist for others.

Crossing Thresholds and Expanding Conceptual Spaces: Using Arts-Based Methods to Extend Teachers’ Perceptions of Literacy

The context for this paper is a teacher education program for adult literacy practitioners at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland. This paper describes and reflects on the use of arts-based approaches to enhance these practitioners’ conceptualizations of literacy, presenting their arts-based responses and their evaluations of the methods and their contrasting definitions of literacy at the start and the end of the course. The discussion raises questions about the inclusion of visual literacy in adult literacy teacher education programmes.

Tolstoy, stories, and facilitating insight in end of life care: Exploring ethics through vicarious experience (with Glackin M and Henry R)

Facilitating moral insight in end of life care can be challenging, and the purpose of this paper is to illustrate how this can be nurtured by means of creative literature. Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilych is presented as an example of such literature. Aristotle's Nichomean Ethics provides the philosophical underpinning for the method used. Sources also include the nursing literature, and students' evaluations of the impact of Tolstoy's novella on their ability to perceive the ethical issues arising in end of life care. Comments from evaluations were analysed and significant themes emerged. Students' comments clearly support the suggestion that use of this novella has facilitated insight into ethical issues at the end of life. Evaluations also indicate that vicarious experience gained through reading this novella has helped to nurture sensitivity and professional insight into the importance of compassion and offering ‘comfort’ to the dying person.