An overview of fisheries conflicts in South and Southeast Asia: Recommendations, challenges and directions

Fisheries conflicts are among the persistent problems affecting the security of food, livelihoods and fishing environments crucial to poor fishing communities in developing countries in South and Southeast Asia. Most conflicts arise from excessive fishing efforts due to increasing population and economic motivations. Conflicts are not all undesirable as some disputes become a catalyst for much needed reforms for policy and economic improvements. However, a framework for analyzing conflicts in fisheries is necessary to organize interventions relevant to the nature of conflicts, and the needs and capacities of fisheries stakeholders in the region. The WorldFish Center, together with research partners, conducted studies that identify a framework for managing fisheries conflicts. Thematic policy recommendations for managing fishing capacity and related conflicts in small-scale fisheries in the region are identified for further consideration by fisheries stakeholders.

Management of wetland resources in the lower Mekong Basin: issues and future directions

The Lower Mekong Basin has extensive wetlands and these are being threatened by numerous problems. Most of these problems are interdependent and interact with one another. The lack of an appropriate definition of wetlands applicable to the region, pervasive inefficiencies and chronic lack of funds among riparian governments, and the poor appreciation of the true economic importance of wetlands and its resources are among the most prominent. The current definition, based on the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar, Iran, 1971), is too broad when compared to the understanding of wetlands as being swamps, marshes and the like, and was developed specifically for wetlands with international importance as waterfowl habitats. Furthermore, wetlands are composed of different types of resources, which require different modes of management. Often, institutional competition, overlapping mandates and sometimes jealousies occur between government departments when they try to assert their authority on a particular wetland resource and use, and put forward their development plans without considering how these may conflict with other wetlands uses. Finally, effective wetland management requires reliable statistics or information on rate of harvest of natural resources such as fish and others, fishing/harvesting methods over time in order to determine the level of exploitation, and the status of the natural resources. This information is needed to identify opportunities for expansion, to establish historical trends, and to determine when management interventions are necessary to protect the resources from being overused by other developments. In order to address these issues, ICLARM - The World Fish Center has launched a project, the aim of objectives of which are described in this paper.

Critical current densities of MOCVD tapes for different current directions

The critical current density Jc of an MOCVD/IBAD coated conductor was measured on tracks patterned longitudinally (L) and transversely (T) to the tape direction. Despite the samples' vicinality no dependence J c of on track direction was found for magnetic fields applied perpendicular to the film plane. In angular out-of-plane measurements the previously reported asymmetry due to tilted precipitate planes was observed in an L track, whereas curves from a T track were almost perfectly symmetric with similarly high absolute values of Jc. At low fields the effects of surface pinning were seen. Our results show that in most scenarios the current carrying capability is equally as good parallel and perpendicular to the tape direction, which is highly relevant for ROEBEL cables. In measurements where the magnetic field was swept in the film plane the anisotropy was found to be significantly higher than for MOD/RABiTS samples, which we explain by the different morphology of grain boundaries in the tapes. At low temperatures Jc of a T track exhibited a clear signature of vortex channeling. © 2010 IEEE.

Impedance control is tuned to multiple directions of movement

Humans are able to learn tool-handling tasks, such as carving, demonstrating their competency to make and vary the direction of movements in unstable environments. It has been shown that when a single reaching movement is repeated in unstable dynamics, the central nervous system (CNS) learns an impedance internal model to compensate for the environment instability. However, there is still no explanation for how humans can learn to move in various directions in such environments. In this study, we investigated whether and how humans compensate for instability while learning two different reaching movements simultaneously. Results show that when performing movements in two different directions, separated by a 35° angle, the CNS was able to compensate for the unstable dynamics. After adaptation, the force was found to be similar to the free movement condition, but stiffness increased in the direction of instability, specifically for each direction of movement. Our findings suggest that the CNS either learned an internal model generalizing over different movements, or alternatively that it was able to switch between specific models acquired simultaneously. © 2008 IEEE.

Future directions in modelling

An improved understanding of lean fuel turbulent premixed flames must play a central role in the fundamental science of these new concepts.

Impedance control is selectively tuned to multiple directions of movement

Humans are able to learn tool-handling tasks, such as carving, demonstrating their competency to make movements in unstable environments with varied directions. When faced with a single direction of instability, humans learn to selectively co-contract their arm muscles tuning the mechanical stiffness of the limb end point to stabilize movements. This study examines, for the first time, subjects simultaneously adapting to two distinct directions of instability, a situation that may typically occur when using tools. Subjects learned to perform reaching movements in two directions, each of which had lateral instability requiring control of impedance. The subjects were able to adapt to these unstable interactions and switch between movements in the two directions; they did so by learning to selectively control the end-point stiffness counteracting the environmental instability without superfluous stiffness in other directions. This finding demonstrates that the central nervous system can simultaneously tune the mechanical impedance of the limbs to multiple movements by learning movement-specific solutions. Furthermore, it suggests that the impedance controller learns as a function of the state of the arm rather than a general strategy. © 2011 the American Physiological Society.

Object-recognition with oblique observation directions based on biomimetic pattern recognition

In this paper, we propose a new scheme for omnidirectional object-recognition in free space. The proposed scheme divides above problem into several onmidirectional object-recognition with different depression angles. An onmidirectional object-recognition system with oblique observation directions based on a new recognition theory-Biomimetic Pattern Recognition (BPR) is discussed in detail. Based on it, we can get the size of training samples in the onmidirectional object-recognition system in free space. Omnidirection ally cognitive tests were done on various kinds of animal models of rather similar shapes. For the total 8400 tests, the correct recognition rate is 99.89%. The rejection rate is 0.11% and on the condition of zero error rates. Experimental results are presented to show that the proposed approach outperforms three types of SVMs with either a three degree polynomial kernel or a radial basis function kernel.

Ordering along <111> and <100> directions in GaInP demonstrated by photoluminescence under hydrostatic pressure

Photoluminescence of GaInP epilayers under hydrostatic pressure is investigated. The Gamma valley of disordered GaInP shifts sublinearly upwards with respect to the top of the valence band with increasing pressure and this sublinearity is caused by the nonlinear dependence of lattice constant on the hydrostatic pressure. The Gamma valleys of ordered GaInP epilayers rise slower than that of the disordered one. Considering the interactions between the Gamma valley and folded L and X valleys, the pressure dependence of the band gap of ordered GaInP is calculated and fitted. The results demonstrate that not only ordering along [111] directions but also sometimes simultaneous ordering along [111] and [100] directions can occur in ordered GaInP. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.