bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Soil nitrogen and carbon heterogeneity in woodlands and grasslands: contrasts between temperate and tropical regions
Authors: Pärtel Meelis , Laanisto Lauri , Wilson Scott D. 
Published: June 2007

ABSTRACTAim  Soil resource heterogeneity is linked to several ecological processes including invasion of woody species into grasslands. Studies from the temperate zone have demonstrated greater soil heterogeneity beneath woody vegetation than beneath grasslands. Woody species have a more widespread and coarser root system than herbaceous species, and may have a competitive advantage in relatively heterogeneous soils. We tested the global generality of greater soil heterogeneity beneath woody vegetation.Location  Global.Methods  We used data from published literature for soil nitrogen and carbon heterogeneity from paired woodland and grassland sites around the world.Results  Woodland and grassland soil heterogeneities from paired observations were strongly correlated. There was, however, significant geographical variability in the relationship. Soils were more heterogeneous in woodlands than grasslands in temperate areas, but the opposite was true for tropical habitats. Grassland soils were more heterogeneous at lower than higher latitudes. Woodland soil heterogeneity did not vary with latitude.Main conclusions  The previously described high soil heterogeneity in woody vegetation compared to grasslands holds only for temperate regions. Consequently, the relationship between soil resource heterogeneity and vegetation type is dependent on the study region. Macroecological studies should test the generality of relationships between soil and vegetation at the global scale.
Small fish, big fish, red fish, blue fish: size‐biased extinction risk of the world's freshwater and marine fishes
Authors: Olden Julian D. , Hogan Zeb S. , Zanden M. Jake Vander 
Published: June 2007

ABSTRACTAim  In light of the current biodiversity crisis, there is a need to identify and protect species at greatest risk of extinction. Ecological theory and global‐scale analyses of bird and mammal faunas suggest that small‐bodied species are less vulnerable to extinction, yet this hypothesis remains untested for the largest group of vertebrates, fish. Here, we compare body‐size distributions of freshwater and marine fishes under different levels of global extinction risk (i.e. listed as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species) from different major sources of threat (habitat loss/degradation, human harvesting, invasive species and pollution).Location  Global, freshwater and marine.Methods  We collated maximum body length data for 22,800 freshwater and marine fishes and compared body‐size frequency distributions after controlling for phylogeny.Results  We found that large‐bodied marine fishes are under greater threat of global extinction, whereas both small‐ and large‐bodied freshwater species are more likely to be at risk. Our results support the notion that commercial fishing activities disproportionately threaten large‐bodied marine and freshwater species, whereas habitat degradation and loss threaten smaller‐bodied marine fishes.Main conclusions  Our study provides compelling evidence that global fish extinction risk does not universally scale with body size. Given the central role of body size for trophic position and the functioning of food webs, human activities may have strikingly different effects on community organization and food web structure in freshwater and marine systems.
Efficiency of gene silencing in Arabidopsis: direct inverted repeats vs. transitive RNAi vectors
Authors: Filichkin Sergei A. , DiFazio Stephen P. , Brunner Amy M. , Davis John M. , Yang Zamin K. , Kalluri Udaya C. , Arias Renee S. , Etherington Elizabeth , Tuskan Gerald A. , Strauss Steven H. 
Published: June 2007

SummaryWe investigated the efficiency of RNA interference (RNAi) in Arabidopsis using transitive and homologous inverted repeat (hIR) vectors. hIR constructs carry self‐complementary intron‐spliced fragments of the target gene whereas transitive vectors have the target sequence fragment adjacent to an intron‐spliced, inverted repeat of heterologous origin. Both transitive and hIR constructs facilitated specific and heritable silencing in the three genes studied (AP1, ETTIN and TTG1). Both types of vectors produced a phenotypic series that phenocopied reduction of function mutants for the respective target gene. The hIR yielded up to fourfold higher proportions of events with strongly manifested reduction of function phenotypes compared to transitive RNAi. We further investigated the efficiency and potential off‐target effects of AP1 silencing by both types of vectors using genome‐scale microarrays and quantitative RT‐PCR. The depletion of AP1 transcripts coincided with reduction of function phenotypic changes among both hIR and transitive lines and also showed similar expression patterns among differentially regulated genes. We did not detect significant silencing directed against homologous potential off‐target genes when constructs were designed with minimal sequence similarity. Both hIR and transitive methods are useful tools in plant biotechnology and genomics. The choice of vector will depend on specific objectives such as cloning throughput, number of events and degree of suppression required.
Measuring Heterogeneous Preferences for Cattle Traits among Cattle‐Keeping Households in East Africa
Authors: Ouma Emily , Abdulai Awudu , Drucker Adam 
Published: June 2007

AbstractThis study employs mixed logit and latent class models to examine preferences for cattle traits with a focus on heterogeneity among cattle keepers, using choice experiment data of 506 cattle‐keeping households in Kenya and Ethiopia. The findings indicate the existence of preference heterogeneity based on cattle production systems. Highly valued cattle traits for the cropping systems include traction fitness and trypanotolerance, while traits associated with herd increase are considered important in pastoral systems. Considering heterogeneity within population segments provides a framework for adapting breeding policy interventions to specific producer segments, by integrating preferred traits in a breed improvement program.
Willingness to Pay versus Expected Consumption Value in Vickrey Auctions for New Experience Goods
Authors: Alfnes Frode 
Published: June 2007

AbstractOver the past two decades, Vickrey auctions have been widely used to elicit willingness to pay for new food products. This article shows that in a multiperiod context, it can be optimal for consumers to bid higher than the expected consumption value for a new experience good to obtain information about how the new good fits into their preference set. The degree of uncertainty about the consumption value, the purchasing frequency, and expected future market prices affect both the expected value of the quality information and the subgame perfect bidding strategy in Vickrey auctions for new experience goods.
Willingness to Pay for Agricultural Land Preservation and Policy Process Attributes: Does the Method Matter?
Authors: Johnston Robert J. , Duke Joshua M. 
Published: June 2007

AbstractThis article examines relationships between willingness to pay for land preservation and policy process attributes. The approach departs from traditional welfare assessments in that it does not constrain attributes of the policy process to be utility‐neutral. Results indicate policy process attributes may influence utility in some circumstances, even after controlling for the influence of land use outcomes often correlated with specific policy techniques. Results further imply that in some cases, even comprehensive specification of land use outcomes by stated preference instruments may be insufficient to prevent systematic shifts in willingness to pay related to unspecified, yet assumed, policy process attributes.
The Matching Problem (and Inventories) in Private Negotiation
Authors: Menkhaus Dale J. , Phillips Owen R. , Bastian Christopher T. , Gittings Lance B. 
Published: June 2007

AbstractThis study examines laboratory market outcomes under alternative matching risk scenarios and advance production. Limited access and/or asymmetry in the number of buyers and sellers cause a matching problem. When sellers hold inventory before sale and there is buyer concentration, prices are about 23% below the competitive level and close to the predicted monopsony price. The bargaining advantage shifts to buyers in this market environment. Sellers can benefit by creating alliances or cooperatives to increase their bargaining position for price and overcome poor access to buyers.
The Relationship Between Text Comprehension and Second Language Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition: A Matter of Topic Familiarity?
Authors: Pulido Diana 
Published: June 2007

The study reported in this article describes second language (L2) vocabulary learning outcomes associated with adult L2 reading comprehension processes, thus connecting L2 learning with the complex cognitive and linguistic processing involved in reading. The study aimed to determine whether background knowledge moderated the relationship between passage comprehension and lexical input processing outcomes, such as intake and receptive gain and retention of target‐word meanings. The primary theoretical contribution concerns the nature of the relationships that obtained between passage comprehension and lexical input processing. Overall, the results suggest that as learners become more efficient in engaging in the various processing activities required during L2 reading, they experience greater memory for linguistic elements encountered during reading, such as orthographic forms and semantic aspects of new lexical items. The results support connectionist models of L2 reading and conclusions concerning efficiency in lower level text processing (e.g., see Koda, 2005; Nassaji, 2002). Reading is a complex cognitive activity, involving simultaneous linguistic processing such as pattern recognition, letter identification, lexical access, concept activation, syntactic analysis, propositional encoding, sentence comprehension, and intersentence integration, as well as the activation of prior knowledge, information storage, and comprehension monitoring. The prior knowledge that is accessed is largely determined by the quality of the textbase that is constructed during reading, which is affected by the individual's efficiency in carrying out the various text‐processing operations listed above.The finding that background knowledge did not moderate the relationship between comprehension and receptive retention of meaning provides further support for the robust role of text‐processing efficiency in bootstrapping processes, such as those involved in mapping new linguistic forms to familiar concepts already stored in memory. The secondary finding with regard to intake of the target words corroborates the main finding, demonstrating that efficient text processing skills are also essential to other aspects of lexical input processing, such as establishing and retrieving the connections between new linguistic forms and the specific contexts in which they were encountered. The study also expands upon previous reading and research in the area of methodological innovations applied to incidental learning research paradigms, for instance, by measuring intake and episodic memory and the relationships between text processing and language learning outcomes. In addition, through the concurrent investigation of the impact of several factors on lexical input processing, the study sets the stage for more complex modeling of the processes that contribute to L2 development.
Crude oil — end‐product linkages in the European petroleum markets
Authors: Wlazlowski Szymon 
Published: June 2007

AbstractCrude oil prices were found to have a significant impact on retail petroleum product prices and were shown to affect inflation and other key economic indicators. This article analyses the former's link in the European Union (EU) within a multi‐national and multi‐product framework. The results indicate that the old EU countries from North‐West Europe are well integrated in the global petroleum markets, while the Mediterranean and Eastern European countries depend on the low‐quality Russian oils. Furthermore, while product prices in the North West Europe are driven by the world benchmark crudes, countries with easy access to Russian oil are in the bidirectional relationship with its prices.
Africa's oil: potential and implications
Authors: Bahgat Gawdat 
Published: June 2007

AbstractOn 1 January 2007, the Republic of Angola officially joined the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Luanda's accession is the first change in the organization's membership in more than three decades. This significant development demonstrates Africa's growing contribution to the overall global energy security. This study examines the oil outlook of the major producers in the continent: Nigeria, Angola and Sudan. It also analyses the growing interdependence between major oil consuming nations (the United States, China and the European Union) and African producers. The contention is that increasing production from Africa and consolidating partnership with OPEC Members will contribute to global energy security and further enhance cooperation between producers and consumers.
Gasoline demand, pricing policy and social welfare in the Islamic Republic of Iran
Authors: Ahmadian Majid , Chitnis Mona , Hunt Lester C. 
Published: June 2007

AbstractThis study estimates the gasoline demand function for the Islamic Republic of Iran, using the structural time series model over the period 1968‐2002, and uses it to estimate the change in social welfare for 2003 and 2004, of a higher gasoline price policy. It is found that short‐ and long‐run demand price elasticities are inelastic, although the response is greater in the long run. Hence, social welfare is estimated to fall because of the higher gasoline price (ceteris paribus). However, allowing all variables in the model to change, social welfare is estimated to increase since the changes in the other variables more than compensate for the negative effects of the policy.
Bread, Cheese and Genocide: Imagining the Destruction of Peoples in Medieval Western Europe
Authors: SCALES LEN 
Published: June 2007

AbstractWestern European society in the middle ages is generally perceived as lying, in its modes of thought and action, far remote from those acts of mass ethnic destruction which have been a recurrent element in world history since the early twentieth century. Yet medieval Europeans too were capable of envisaging the violent obliteration of peoples. Indeed, the view that such acts had occurred in times past and were liable to occur again was deeply embedded in medieval thought and assumption. For some commentators, the destruction of certain peoples was inseparable from the making of others, an essential motor of historical change, underpinned by biblical narratives of divine election and condemnation. Such notions constituted a matrix within which medieval writers interpreted real acts of social and political violence, the scale and the ethnic foundations of which they were thus naturally inclined to inflate. Nevertheless, their belief in the recurrent historical reality of ethnic destruction was, in their own terms, well founded – although medieval conceptions of what constituted the undoing of peoples were broader than most modern definitions of ‘genocide’. By the later middle ages, moreover, government was increasingly perceived – not without justification – as a powerful agent for remaking the ethnic map.
Michael Collins, General Commanding‐in‐Chief, as a Historiographical Problem
Authors: REGAN JOHN M. 
Published: June 2007

AbstractThis revisionist article argues the case for recognizing a short‐lived military dictatorship in 1922 in southern Ireland under the revolutionary leader Michael Collins. Central to understanding this situation, and how it came about, is the identification of a secret Irish Republican Brotherhood–Free State diarchy from February 1922 that evolved into a military government in July after the beginning of the civil war. This reinterpretation makes four claims. First, it challenges assumptions about the structure of power under Collins while he was commander‐in‐chief of the Free State army. Secondly, it re‐evaluates Collins's role as an icon of southern Irish nationalism associated with constitutionalism and democracy. Thirdly, it questions part of the foundation myth of the southern Irish state, which assumes independence was achieved in 1922 by an uninterrupted, constitutional process. Fourthly, it calls into question the methodologies applied by historians defending this constitutional interpretation. Since 1970 the historiographical context of a grand constitutional narrative of southern state formation has been war in Northern Ireland. In response to this event, it is suggested, historians have emphasized the Irish state's democratic origins so as to define southern experiences in 1922, against the Provisional IRA's unmandated attempt at violent state formation. This has contributed to distortions in both historical method and interpretation.
Turning of the Tide? A Case Study of the Liberal Party in Provincial Britain in the Late 1930s
Authors: TREGIDGA GARRY 
Published: June 2007

AbstractSince the 1960s much has been written about the decline of the Liberal Party in British politics during the first half of the twentieth century. Yet there is a tendency for historians to focus on the reasons for the demise of the Liberals as a party of government in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. This article seeks to extend Liberal historiography by investigating issues of decline and survival in subsequent decades. It focuses on the political experience of Cornwall, a traditional Liberal stronghold, to highlight the need to consider electoral realignment from a provincial perspective. This was particularly the case in the late 1930s, which tends to be dismissed as a further period of decline for the Liberals culminating in the disastrous election result of 1945. In Cornwall, however, the pre‐war years held out the prospect of a recovery in the general election due by 1940. The possibility of a protest vote on the part of the farming community, combined with a local momentum in favour of a Popular Front with Labour, meant that the Liberals were now in a position to mount a serious challenge to the National government's supremacy at the local level.
Social Justice as a Guide to Planning Theory and Practice: Analyzing the Portuguese Planning System
Authors: CARDOSO RICARDO , BREDA‐VÁZQUEZ ISABEL 
Published: June 2007

AbstractThe first utilizations of social justice theory as a guide to planning theory and practice were founded on David Harvey's attempt to incorporate issues of redistributive justice into geographical methods of analysis. Later conceptualizations utilize Iris Marion Young's view of social justice as an institutional condition that enables participation and overcomes oppression and domination through the achievement of self‐development and self‐determination. These two conceptual paths create a constructive argumentative tension that should underlie contemporary spatial planning in democratic societies. This means that, in order to contribute to more socially just urban societies, planning needs to be focused not only on patterns of distribution, but also on the relational social structures and institutional contexts in which these come about. Comprehensive and functionalist, mainstream planning in Portugal is unmistakably situated within the modernist planning project. We argue that the normative disposition of the identified argumentative tension undermines the theoretical capacity of modernist practices to achieve socially just territories. The aim of this article is to study the validity of this argument by analyzing the Portuguese planning system against a twofold set of social justice criteria.RésuméLes premiers recours à la justice sociale comme guide en matière de théorie et pratique de l’aménagement urbain s’appuyaient sur la tentative de David Harvey d’intégrer des aspects de justice redistributive dans les méthodes d’analyse géographiques. Plus tard, d’autres conceptions se serviront de la perspective d’Iris Marion Young sur la justice sociale comme condition institutionnelle permettant la participation tout en surmontant oppression et domination grâce au développement personnel et à l’autodétermination. Ces deux voies conceptuelles créent une tension argumentaire constructive qui devrait sous‐tendre l’aménagement spatial contemporain dans les sociétés démocratiques. Autrement dit, pour contribuer à des sociétés urbaines plus justes socialement, l’aménagement doit s’attacher, non seulement aux schémas de distribution, mais aussi aux structures sociales relationnelles et cadres institutionnels dans lesquels ses schémas opèrent. L’aménagement urbain portugais, conventionnel, général et fonctionnaliste, se situe immanquablement dans un projet d’urbanisation moderniste. Selon nous, la nature normative de la tension argumentaire établie entrave la capacité théorique des pratiques modernistes à aboutir à des territoires justes au plan social. L’article étudie la validité de cet argument en analysant le système d’aménagement urbain portugais en fonction de deux gammes de critères de justice sociale.
Taking City Regions Seriously? Response to Debate on ‘City‐Regions: New Geographies of Governance, Democracy and Social Reproduction’
Authors: HARDING ALAN 
Published: June 2007

AbstractThis article takes up the invitation extended by the co‐editors of the recent IJURR debate on city‐regions for others to join them in ‘a wider dialogue over the constitutive role of politics in the brave new world of ‘city‐regions’. It begins by considering the extent to which the collection was successful in describing this ‘brave new world’ and in populating it with the variety of social and environmental concerns which, the co‐editors claimed, have so far been neglected in recent debates about the significance of city‐regions. Adjudging the debate to have been only partially successful in these respects, the article goes on to argue that the goal the co‐editors strove for — effectively to liberate ‘city‐regionalism’ from its ostensible captors — is unlikely to be achieved unless and until its critics (1) engage more explicitly and seriously with claims that are made for the significance of changes in the material circumstances of city‐regions, and (2) recognize that there is nothing inherently ‘neoliberal’ or regressive about the concept of the city‐region or the way it is used. These arguments are illustrated with reference to the economics of city‐regions and the politics of city‐regionalism in England.RésuméRépondant à l'invitation des co‐responsables du dernier débat publié dans IJURR sur les régions métropolitaines, cet essai vient ‘élargir le dialogue sur le rôle constitutif de la politique dans l'univers idéal des régions métropolitaines’. Pour commencer, il étudie dans quelle mesure cet ensemble d'articles a réussi à décrire ce ‘meilleur des mondes’ et à le nourrir de diverses questions sociales et environnementales qui, d'après les co‐responsables, ont jusqu'alors été ignorées dans les récentes discussions sur l'importance de ces régions. Etablissant que le débat n'a qu'en partie atteint ces objectifs, l'article affirme ensuite qu'on ne parviendra probablement pas au but poursuivi — libérer le ‘régionalisme métropolitain’ de ses entraves apparentes —à moins que ses critiques (1) ne s'attachent plus explicitement et sérieusement aux arguments sur l'importance des changements apportés aux situations matérielles des régions métropolitaines, et (2) ne reconnaissent qu'il n'y a rien d'intrinsèquement ‘néolibéral’ ni régressif dans le concept de région métropolitaine ou dans son exploitation. Cette démonstration est illustrée à partir de l'économie des régions métropolitaines et de la politique de régionalisme métropolitain en Angleterre.