SMART social science? Examining the nature and role of social scientific expertise in institutional design

Daniel Bromley argues against Oran Young’s FIT model as a basis for environmental governance, on the grounds that humans cannot manage nature and that attempts to do so are based on a scientistic, modernist conceit. At issue is the role of natural and social scientists in adjudicating questions about what we ought to do to close governance gaps and address unsustainable behaviors. If Bromley is right, then the lessons of the American pragmatist tradition recommend against attempts to “fit” social institutions to the natural world. The first objective of this paper is to argue that Bromley’s view is not in keeping with the pragmatism of C. S. Peirce and John Dewey, which actually places a high value on natural and social scientific modes of inquiry in the service of social ends. I argue that Young’s proposal is in fact a development of the pragmatist idea that social institutions must be fit in the sense of fitness, i.e., resilient and able to navigate uncertainty. Social institutions must also evolve to accommodate the emerging values of the agents who operate within them. The second objective of this paper is to examine the role of social science expertise in the design of social policies. Governance institutions typically rely on the testimony of natural scientists, at least in part, to understand the natural systems they operate within. However, natural systems are also social systems, so it seems pertinent to ask whether there is a role for social systems experts to play in helping to design environmental governance institutions. I argue that social scientists can make a unique contribution as experts on social institutions, and as such, are necessary to bring about a transformation of the unsustainable institutions that are preventing us from achieving stated sustainable development goals.

Disentangling trade-offs and synergies around ecosystem services with the influence network framework: illustration from a consultative process over the French Alps

An important aspect of sustainability is to maintain biodiversity and ecosystem functioning while improving human well-being. For this, the ecosystem service (ES) approach has the potential to bridge the still existing gap between ecological management and social development, especially by focusing on trade-offs and synergies between ES and between their beneficiaries. Several frameworks have been proposed to account for trade-offs and synergies between ES, and between ES and other components of social-ecological systems. However, to date, insufficient explicit attention has been paid to the three facets encompassed in the ES concept, namely potential supply, demand, and use, leading to incomplete descriptions of ES interactions. We expand on previous frameworks by proposing a new influence network framework (INF) based on an explicit consideration of influence relationships between these three ES facets, biodiversity, and external driving variables. We tested its ability to provide a comprehensive view of complex social-ecological interactions around ES through a consultative process focused on environmental management in the French Alps. We synthetized the interactions mentioned during this consultative process and grouped variables according to their overall propensity to influence or be influenced by the system. The resulting directed sequence of influences distinguished between: (1) mostly influential variables (dynamic social variables and ecological state variables), (2) target variables (provisioning and cultural services), and (3) mostly impacted variables (regulating services and biodiversity parameters). We discussed possible reasons for the discrepancies between actual and perceived influences and proposed options to overcome them. We demonstrated that the INF holds the potential to deliver collective assessments of ES relations by: (1) including ecological as well as social aspects, (2) providing opportunities for colearning processes between stakeholder groups, and (3) supporting communication about complex social-ecological systems and consequences for environmental management.

Insulin and leptin relations in obesity: a multimedia approach

Obesity has been recognized as a worldwide public health problem. It significantly increases the chances of developing several diseases, including Type II diabetes. The roles of insulin and leptin in obesity involve reactions that can be better understood when they are presented step by step. The aim of this work was to design software with data from some of the most recent publications on obesity, especially those concerning the roles of insulin and leptin in this metabolic disturbance. The most notable characteristic of this software is the use of animations representing the cellular response together with the presentation of recently discovered mechanisms on the participation of insulin and leptin in processes leading to obesity. The software was field tested in the Biochemistry of Nutrition web-based course. After using the software and discussing its contents in chatrooms, students were asked to answer an evaluation survey about the whole activity and the usefulness of the software within the learning process. The teaching assistants (TA) evaluated the software as a tool to help in the teaching process. The students' and TAs' satisfaction was very evident and encouraged us to move forward with the software development and to improve the use of this kind of educational tool in biochemistry classes.

Photosynthesis and water relations of well-watered orange plants as affected by winter and summer conditions

The aim of this study was to evaluate how the summer and winter conditions affect the photosynthesis and water relations of well-watered orange trees, considering the diurnal changes in leaf gas exchange, chlorophyll (Chl) fluorescence, and leaf water potential (I) of potted-plants growing in a subtropical climate. The diurnal pattern of photosynthesis in young citrus trees was not significantly affected by the environmental changes when compared the summer and winter seasons. However, citrus plants showed higher photosynthetic performance in summer, when plants fixed 2.9 times more CO(2) during the diurnal period than in the winter season. Curiously, the winter conditions were more favorable to photosynthesis of citrus plants, when considering the air temperature (< 29 A degrees C), leaf-to-air vapor pressure difference (< 2.4 kPa) and photon flux density (maximum values near light saturation) during the diurnal period. Therefore, low night temperature was the main environmental element changing the photosynthetic performance and water relations of well-watered plants during winter. Lower whole-plant hydraulic conductance, lower shoot hydration and lower stomatal conductance were noticed during winter when compared to the summer season. In winter, higher ratio between the apparent electron transport rate and leaf CO(2) assimilation was verified in afternoon, indicating reduction in electron use efficiency by photosynthesis. The high radiation loading in the summer season did not impair the citrus photochemistry, being photoprotective mechanisms active. Such mechanisms were related to increases in the heat dissipation of excessive light energy at the PSII level and to other metabolic processes consuming electrons, which impede the citrus photoinhibition under high light conditions.

The interaction between technologies and society: Lessons learnt from 160 evolutionary years of online news services

In mapping the evolutionary process of online news and the socio-cultural factors determining this development, this paper has a dual purpose. First, in reworking the definition of “online communication”, it argues that despite its seemingly sudden emergence in the 1990s, the history of online news started right in the early days of the telegraphs and spread throughout the development of the telephone and the fax machine before becoming computer-based in the 1980s and Web-based in the 1990s. Second, merging macro-perspectives on the dynamic of media evolution by DeFleur and Ball-Rokeach (1989) and Winston (1998), the paper consolidates a critical point for thinking about new media development: that something technically feasible does not always mean that it will be socially accepted and/or demanded. From a producer-centric perspective, the birth and development of pre-Web online news forms have been more or less generated by the traditional media’s sometimes excessive hype about the power of new technologies. However, placing such an emphasis on technological potentials at the expense of their social conditions not only can be misleading but also can be detrimental to the development of new media, including the potential of today’s online news.

Relativizing Minimality for A-movement: phi- and theta-relations

This paper discusses two arguments raised against Hornstein`s (1999, 2001) Movement Theory of Control (MTC): Landau`s (2003) contrast between raising and passivized subject control predicates and Culicover and Jackendoff`s (2001) contrast between control and raising within nominals. I show that rather than counter-arguments, the data they present can actually be analyzed as arguments in favor of the MTC. More specifically, I argue that the puzzling contrasts discussed by these authors can be adequately accounted for within the MTC if minimality computations regarding A-movement are relativized in terms of phi- or theta-relations.