bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Metallothionein - A potential biomarker to assess the metal contamination in marine fishes
Authors: Hemmadi Vijay 
Published: June 2016

In this review, the fish Metallothionein (MT) is broadly discussed in relation to their utilization as a biomarker to assess the heavy metal contamination in marine ecosystem. Heavy metals are the main marine pollutants whose bioaccumulation in fishes results in deleterious effects on physiology, biochemistry and behavior. To assess the health status of fishes, an early determination of metal levels along with a biomarker like MT will help us to understand the bioavailability and toxicity of the metals. MTs constitute a family of low-molecular-weight, cysteine-rich proteins functioning in the regulation of essential metals and detoxification of both essential and nonessential metals. Since 1980, MT has been the useful tool for toxicity assessment of metals before sub lethal and lethal damage to organisms because of quick induction of MTs as metals enter the tissue. Various studies conducted on the induction, regulation and estimation of the MT by the metals showed that many variables such as sexual maturity, age, tissue type, metal type, route of exposure, changes in the environmental conditions of the living habitat of the organisms under study and presence of exogenous and endogenous substances do create fluctuations in the level of MT. Keeping in view of the above factors, this review attempts to understand the effectiveness of this biomarker in assessing the health status of the fishes.
Some aspects of the reproductive physiology of the Flathead grey mullet Mugil cephalus (Linnaeus, 1758) in Benghazi coast, eastern Libya.
Authors: El-Mor Mohammad , Moftah Souad A. M. , Abdalafid* Yousef K. A. , Abdulnabi Bulkasim M. 
Published: June 2016

The reproductive physiology of 530 specimens of Mugil cephalus (Family: Mugilidae) were collected from catches by gill and trammel nets operating on Benghazi coast on Mediterranean Sea - Libya was studied, there were monthly variations in sex ratio and a tendency for females (298 fish = 56.2%) than males (232 fish = 43.8%) for the whole population, Overall sex ratio was (1 : 1.28) for males to females respectively, First maturation size was determined for females L50 = 34.1 cm and for males L50 = 32.3 cm, All individuals have definite breeding season which extends from July to October, An increase in Oocyte diameters was evident in July (489 µ ± 5.34), and this increase continued in the following months till October (599 µ ± 11.04), the absolute fecundity ranged from 578981 to 2598022 for fish total length ranging from 19.5 to 47.4 cm, whereas relative fecundity ranged from 29036 to 57352 / cm.
Estimating age and age class of harvested hog deer from eye lens mass using frequentist and Bayesian methods
Authors: Forsyth David M. , Garel Mathieu , McLeod Steve R. 
Published: June 2016

Estimation of the age or age class of harvested animals is often necessary to interpret the condition and dynamics of wildlife populations. The mammalian eye lens continues to grow until death and hence the dry mass of the eye lens has commonly been used to estimate the age of mammals. The method requires the relationship between eye lens mass and age to be parameterized using individuals of known age. However, predicting age is complicated by the curvilinear relationship between eye lens mass and age. We used frequentist and Bayesian methods to predict the ages and age classes of harvested hog deer Axis porcinus from eye lens mass. Deer were tagged as calves and harvested 4–177 months later in southeastern Australia. Lenses were extracted, fixed and oven‐dried. Of the five growth models evaluated, the Lord model best described the relationship between age and eye lens dry mass (R2 = 95%). The precision of age predictions obtained using the Lord model in a Bayesian mode of inference decreased with increasing eye lens dry mass, with the size of the 95% CI equaling or exceeding predicted age for hog deer > 6 years. However, most predictions of hog deer age will have reasonable precision because few animals > 6 years are harvested. Linear discriminant analysis had high predictive power for classifying hog deer to four widely‐used age classes (juvenile, yearling, prime‐age and senescent). The Bayesian method is recommended for inverse non‐linear prediction of age and the frequentist linear discriminant analysis method is recommended for estimating age class. We provide tables of correspondence between hog deer eye lens dry mass and predicted age and age class. Our statistical methods can be used to estimate age and age class for other mammalian species, including from other ageing techniques such as tooth eruption‐wear criteria.
The Nature-Culture Trap: A Critique of Late 20th Century Global Paradigms of Environmental Change in Africa and Beyond
Authors: Kreike Emmanuel 
Published: June 2016

Abstract

During the late 20th century, the modernization, the declinist, and the inclinist paradigms dominated how environmental change was conceptualized, analyzed, and described. Each paradigm was treated as being exclusive, global and universal in scope. Although the paradigms differed in how they evaluated the direction and outcome of environmental change, a characteristic they had in common was that they framed change in a unilinear Nature-to-Culture fashion and homogenized the agency, process, and outcome of environmental change. A more open-ended approach that is not based on
a priori
environmental unilinear trends (e.g., deforestation or reforestation) yields a more nuanced understanding of environmental change. Such an approach requires disaggregating the objects and subjects of environmental changes as well as differentiating the process itself, allowing for the identification of multiple (sub-)processes and multiple trajectories of change.
Japan’s Eco-Towns And Innovation Clusters - Synergy Towards Sustainability
Authors: Higuchi Kazukiyo , Norton Michael G. 
Published: June 2016

Abstract
There are substantial differences in resource productivity between countries. This suggests that the global environmental impact of economic activities could be reduced if appropriate policies were applied more widely. Japan has one of the most eco-efficient economies in the world. The present paper looks at the history of two central policy measures designed to stimulate the emergence of a more sustainable industrial base. One of these (Eco-town) focuses on creating concentrations of industry designed to use societal wastes and industrial by-products as sources of products and raw materials. The other (industrial clusters) encourages innovation and the creation of new businesses focused on environmental protection. The results are now showing that investment - both in recycling technology and facilities, and in organisational structures supporting a more recycling-oriented economy - promises to establish viable industries with significant contributions to local economies. The international relevance of Japan’s experience is also considered.
The Effect of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict on the Water Resources of the Jordan River Basin
Authors: Ferragina Eugenia 
Published: June 2016

Abstract
The article analyses the interaction between security and environment in the Mediterranean, focusing on the paradigmatic example of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over water resources in the Jordan River basin. Control of water can hardly be considered the main cause of conflict between Israel and Palestine, but it certainly has increased the potential for conflict and had a long-term negative effect on the environment. The article starts with an historical reconstruction of the main attempts to reach a cooperative solution to water management in the Jordan River basin. These attempts failed as a consequence of the emergence of a zero-sum game between the co-riparian countries of the basin. The lack of cooperation has had a heavy impact on water quantity and quality. Two third of the deep wells in the centre of Israel are polluted, partly due to the infiltration of untreated wastewater from West Bank sites. The level of the coastal aquifer has fallen and sea water has penetrated it. As a consequence, much of the population of the Gaza Strip now has access only to brackish water that does not meet the WHO standard for drinking water. The 1995 Oslo Interim Agreement recognised the water rights of Palestinians and the need to share water resources. Its aftermath witnessed new cooperative efforts involving offi cials, experts and people of both sides. The so-called “Second Intifada”, however, blocked cooperation in many sectors and provoked large-scale damage to the water infrastructure. The violent outbreaks of October 2000 had a serious impact on the wells, the water infrastructure and the wastewater disposal system. Reportedly, the Israeli deliberately filled up wells in Gaza as retaliation against the Palestinian attack on Israeli settlements, did not allow the Palestinians to buy spare parts for pumps, and kept water tankers from reaching the Palestinian villages. The Israeli authorities did not directly plan these acts of vandalism - they are mainly the consequences of an escalation of violence among the settlers - but were responsible for not taking action to prevent them and forbidding the use water as a weapon against Palestinians. The separation barrier Israeli has been building since 2002 does not follow the Green Line, but creates a de facto annexation of 16% of the West Bank. The wall keeps people on either side of the Wall separated from their land, water resources and socialties.
What is Global Environmental History? Conversation with Piero Bevilacqua, Guillermo Castro, Ranjan Chakrabarti, Kobus du Pisani, John R. McNeill and Donald Worster
Authors: Corona Gabriella 
Published: June 2016

Abstract
The telematic debate on the theme “Global History and Global Policies” has provided historians from different historiographic traditions and distant countries – Piero Bevilacqua, Guillermo Castro, Ranjan Chakrabarti, Gabriella Corona, Kobus du Pisani, John McNeill, Donald Worster – with an opportunity to compare views on the different interpretive paradigms of global environmental history. A wide range of subjects was covered: the definition of the discipline’s field of research, themes, and chronological scope; the relationship between global and local; the role of the West in history and historiography; the perspective of the dominated; the discipline’s role in policy making; and its relationship with the natural sciences. The discussion has yielded a rich harvest of reflections on global environmental history as a paradigm for the interpretation of the past and a cultural and political instrument for action in the present. Important indications have emerged as regards the research paths a global environmental historian can follow to contribute to this field of studies.
Sustaining Soil fertility: Agricultural Practice in the Old and New Worlds
Authors: Cunfer Geoff , Krausmann Fridolin 
Published: June 2016

Abstract
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tens of millions of Europeans migrated to the Americas. Many traded rural lives for industrial jobs in growing cities, while a significant number travelled west to make farms on the Great Plains. Using case studies from Austria and Kansas, this paper compares the socioecological structures of the agricultural communities immigrants left to those that they found and created on the other side of the Atlantic. It employs material and energy flow accounting (MEFA) methods to examine the social metabolic similarities and differences between Old World and New World farm systems at either end of the migration chain. Nine indicators reveal significant differences in land use strategy, labor deployment, and the role of livestock. Indicators include population density, average farm size, land availability, grain yield, area productivity, labor productivity, marketable crop production, livestock density, and nitrogen return to cropland. Whereas Old World farms had abundant human and animal labor and a shortage of land, Great Plains farms had excess land and a shortage of labor and livestock. Austrian farmers returned over 90% of extracted nitrogen to cropland, thus sustaining soils over many generations, but they produced little marketable crop surplus. A key difference was livestock density. Old World communities kept more animals than they needed for food and labor, primarily to supply manure that maintained cropland fertility. Great Plains farmers used few animals to exploit rich grassland soils, returning less than half of the nitrogen they extracted each year. Farmers depleted soil fertility over six decades, relying on a stockpiled endowment of nitrogen. They produced stupendous surpluses for market export, but watched crop yields decline steadily between 1880 and 1940. Austrian immigrants to Kansas in the late nineteenth century found that their return on labor could increase by 20 times over what they were used to. But by the early twentieth century Austrian productivity had increased while in Kansas it dropped steadily lower. Both farm systems were efficient in their own way, one producing long-term stability, the other remarkable commercial exports. Kansas farmers faced a soil nutrient crisis by the 1940s, one that was solved in the second half of the twentieth century by the massive importation of fossil fuels. Austrian and Great Plains agriculture converged thereafter, with dramatically increased productivity based on oil, diesel fuel, petroleum-based pesticides, and synthetic nitrogen fertilizers manufactured from natural gas.
Socio-Ecological Transformation from Rural into a Residential landscape in the Matadepera Village (Barcelona Metropolitan Region), 1956-2008
Authors: Estany Gemma , Badia Anna , Otero Iago , Boada Martí 
Published: June 2016

Abstract
Mediterranean countries are experiencing the fastest rates of urban sprawl in Europe, and concern about potential negative environmental effects is increasing. This expansion is occurring in a context of declining rural activities, where highly diverse cultural landscapes are giving way to homogenous low-density housing developments and entirely new forms of human-nature relations. In the present study we offer an analysis of the socio-ecological transformation of Matadepera, a wealthy suburb of metropolitan Barcelona that evolved out of a rural village inhabited by poor peasants who farmed rain-fed cropland and managed the forest. By cross-checking data from land-cover maps, documentary sources and semi-structured interviews with elderly local peasants, we managed to gain a detailed understanding of the driving forces behind land cover transformation and give voice to perceptions of landscape change among a quite neglected social group. Our results indicate dramatic urban sprawl onto former fields and woods over the last decades, driven by a combination of different factors. They also show that oral sources can yield information on landscape changes not available from any other kind of source. Moreover, by recovering valuable and so far neglected personal memories we hope to provide further stimulus to policy actions aimed at charting a more balanced development path for the area.
Artificial Apple Production in Fraiburgo, Brazil, 1958-1989
Authors: Klanovicz Jó 
Published: June 2016

Abstract
This article explores connections between the “domestication” of apples in Southern Brazil, the polemic on contaminated apples in 1989, and the reactions of the apple industry to the news published in the press on the use of pesticides in Brazilian orchards. The issue is viewed in the wider context of notions of toxicity and “danger”, nature control, correction of nature, and temperate climate agriculture in Brazil, which have become very influential both in the public consciousness and in individual awareness, in connection with aspirations to healthier and safer food. The article states that apple producers’ responses to the issue can be much better understood through a historical examination of the agroecology of the apple monoculture, as well as the structures, agents, and discourses informing perceptions of the environment in apple-producing regions.
Green Colonialism and Forest Policies in South India, 1800-1900
Authors: Kumar V.M. Ravi 
Published: June 2016

Abstract
British colonial rule and its impact on the environment of the Indian sub-continent has made for a fascinating historical research subject over the last three decades. While exploitation of forests and the socio-economic impact of the process on tribal and other forest-dependent communities are well documented, the role of scientific discourse in facilitating the hegemonic control of the colonial state over forests had not been adequately treated in the existing literature. This article looks at the history of colonial forest policies in South India to argue that initially British destroyed most the accessible forests by logging them for shipbuilding, railways and the requirements of the military and public works departments. When the sustainability of the wood supply emerged as a problem, desiccationist ideas began to be systematically propagated. The desiccationist discourse branded forest utilisation by the natives as the main culprit for deforestation and the consequent reduction of the water flow of some rivers in South India. This alarmist discourse facilitated the control of the colonial state over most of the forests in South India by establishing a rhetoric of the preservation of forests as a means to save the environment and irrigation as prerequisites for the well-being of the agrarian economy. This article illustrates how desiccationist fears were used to justify the colonial state’s monopolistic control over the forests of South India.
Responses to Air Pollution Based on Historical and Current Policies in the EU and ASEAN
Authors: Goodsite Michael , Wong Mei Ling Catherine , Hertel Ole 
Published: June 2016

Abstract
This review paper focuses on an important new question: how can climate change affect maritime and other cities of Southeast Asia, and what challenges and possible responses can be identified based on historical and current regional policies and action, especially with regard to air pollution? This review was undertaken as part of the ISDP and ISEAS sponsored initiative: Regional Cooperation in Environmental Protection: Lessons from Two Regions (EU and ASEAN). We examined the cases of the EU and ASEAN policies for the protection of air quality from a scientific practitioner’s point of view. We seek to ascertain if ASEAN can respond to regional human-induced environmental problems given existing problems of national sovereignty and the interest-based character of ASEAN-type associations, since ASEAN’s goal, in contrast to that of the EU, has been regional cooperation rather than regional integration. Both regions are responding differently to climate change and the global economic and environmental realities resulting from, or arising in reaction to, their policies (or lack thereof ). While the EU and ASEAN can and should learn from one another and their relations have been the subject of studies (see for example), there are still challenges to be addressed to effectively drive improvement of critical regional (air) pollution issues that may ultimately impact health and productivity. Each regional organization has in its own manner made exemplary efforts towards resolving environmental degradation within its own region and taken efforts to make a positive international impact, but there is still the need for international treaties and more local efforts to empower the regional visions. Our aim is to highlight the status of the respective policy frameworks and exemplify areas in which we can learn from one another in the field of air pollution, given its global relevance for climate change. We conclude by suggesting a strategic summary framework for future action. This paper is not meant to be a history of either EU or ASEAN policy; for this, the reader is referred instead to appropriate literature, most notably the EU Environmental Policy Handbook, especially the air quality chapter (3) with excellent background information on European Atmospheric Environment Policy.
Colonial Famine Relief and Development Policies: Towards an Environmental History of Northern Ghana
Authors: Grischow Jeff , Weiss Holger 
Published: June 2016

Abstract
Since the 1980s, scientific experts have made a number of recommendations for averting food insecurity and famine in Northern Ghana and other dryland areas of West Africa. These studies are based on regional meteorological data, and their suggestions include early warning systems, smallholder agricultural development, and the depopulation of densely settled regions. Much of this literature posits two main hypotheses: that regional data can provide a reliable indicator of the potential for harvest failure, and that the recommended policy actions can work because they are new and innovative, without historical precedent. This article delves into the colonial past to challenge both of these hypotheses. Using Northern Ghana as a case study, we question the usefulness of regional data for understanding food insecurity, and we show that the supposedly novel ideas of the present in fact have a strong colonial lineage.
MHD Mixed Convection Flow of a Micropolar Fluid Past a Wedge Fixed in a Fluctuating Free Stream and Surface Temperature
Authors: Roy NC , Akther P , Halder AK 
Published: June 2016

The flow an heat transfer on the unstea y laminar mixe convection boun ary layer in a micropolar flui past a vertical we ge have been stu ie taking into account the effect of magnetic fiel . We assume that the free stream velocity an surface temperature oscillate in magnitu e but not in the irection of the oncoming flow velocity. The governing equations have been solve numerically by using the straight forwar finite ifference metho . The amplitu es of skin friction an couple stress are foun to be significantly epen ent on the Richar sons number, Ri, the magnetic parameter, M, an the vortex viscosity parameter, K. We observe that the amplitu es of skin friction an couple stress increases owing to an increase of the Richar sons number, Ri, while these become lower for the higher value of the magnetic parameter, M, an the vortex viscosity parameter, K. Also the results emonstrate that the effects of the parameters on the amplitu es of heat transfer are rather weak. Dhaka Univ. J. Sci. 64(1): 65-70, 2016 (January)