Communities - Science topic

Hello, it seems like a multifactorial situation to me, first, the complexity for the compilation. Here it is noted that the lack of use of technological tools limits this action. Second, many of these municipalities are those that have the greatest economic limitations and institutional capacity, highly lagging behind. Third, it could be the periodicity, since this type of census is carried out every 10 years, and even though the RAN has made efforts to improve the information, it has not been enough. Greetings

I should emphasize that I don't have a problem with U3A's use of unpaid instructors. I have great respect for pro bono volunteerism. Nor do I have a problem with people who make use of U3A's course offerings and other benefits having to pay a reasonable membership fee; the various U3A chapters do after all have overhead costs to cover. But I was taken askance by the idea that volunteer instructors or tutors should be required to pay U3A membership fees even when they make no use of U3A's services. Also, it likely works as a disincentive for potential volunteers.

I work with decentralized biological wastewater treatment solutions that can be adopted not only by cities and industries but also in needy and isolated communities that do not have sewage collection and treatment services.

RG is the most usable social network for scientists.

Ensuring that the participants feel as quick as possible a sense of social inclusion and wellbeing - we have been inspired some research on this in our projects and conducted our own research - see attached

Hi all, I've got a similar question with FDis values from 9 mammal assemblages which range from 4.001 to 5.031 (mean ± SD = 4.690 ± 0.290). I'm using a set of 28 traits, mostly binary traits. As far as I know, these values appear to be very high. For the same assemblages, functional evenness ranged from 0.481 to 0.667 (mean ± SD = 0.557 ± 0.048) and and Rao’s square entropy from 17.62 to 26.04 (mean ± SD = 23.150 ± 2.582).

Thank you in advance for any suggestions!

Vania and Hayder - great ideas.

I was going to propose also the use of AI in smart healthcare as a way to achieve quality personalized health service, while maximizing human personnel use and lowering hospital costs:

https://healthcareweekly.com/artificial-intelligence-in-healthcare/

https://www.smartcity.press/first-smart-medical-district/

The topic has a bright future, but is still in a nascent form. I do not know how much quantitative analysis can you perform in this context.

In terms of already available data that you can work with, out of all the topics you have enumerated, perhaps crowdsourced cartography (e.g. OpenStreetMap, efficient use of water/ land resources in agriculture) provides the best shot.

Dear سالم عبدالله أبو مخدة thank you for sharing your thoughts.

This might be of your interest

I liked Maths and Physics a lot. But, when I did tests of professional orientation at the end of my high school (mathematical gymnasium) the psychologists told me that I can't work with people and to chose the occupation connected to numbers and formulas. I was really very angry because of that and decided to become a teacher and to work with people.

We need to distinguish between the fact of evolution and Darwin and Wallace's nineteenth-century explanations of the underlying mechanism. Virtually no biologists today doubt the fact that biological evolution took place over the last billion years, since it is the whole basis of modern biology without which the science loses its coherence. Darwin and Wallace's theory, that natural selection is the main mechanism underlying biological evolution, has been fundamentally and extensively confirmed by a vast array of subsequent findings in different fields of geology, chemistry and biology. Of course Darwin and Wallace were not able to provide a full explanation, since in those times genetics as a field did not exist - which actually makes their insight more remarkable. This means that there is now open and legitimate discussion of the details of the mechanisms of natural selection, sexual selection, genetics, etc. None of this discussion, however, puts the fundamental correctness of the theory in doubt and the fact of evolution is as reliable as any other profound set of ideas in any field of science.

There really wasn't very much literature on global cooling.

There is a useful study addressing this issue: Peterson, Thomas; Connolley, William; Fleck, John (September 2008). The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. American Meteorological Society. 89 (9): 1325–1337.

By the late 1970s when the popular media captured on the idea of global cooling and deemed that argument headline worthy, the majority of scientific papers on climate change were suggesting warming rather than cooling (see Peterson et al cited above, which found that of the 71 papers published on climate change from 1965 through 1979, 7 [9.86%] suggested cooling; 61.97% predicted warming; and the remaining 28.17% reached no conclusion). Moreover, based on the difference between the scientific literature and the suggestion of global cooling taken up in the media, the World Meteorological Organization issued a statement (a reprint of the article is here: https://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/h-h-lamb/1976_june_22_times_worldstemperaturelikelytorise/) to the media that the current scientific evidence in 1976 that stated "significant rises in global temperature are probable over the next century..."

So, in this example, one could say newspapers and magazines (Time magazine, for example, published an issue in April 1977 with a cover depicting a penguin walking on ice with the bold "headline" that read "How to Survive the Coming Ice Age"), which have some level of established social capital (some level of trust in news-reporting), attempted to play up the cooling findings in a minor portion of the scientific literature. Since newspapers were not, at the same time, reporting that most of the literature was reporting concern about a future warming trend, newspaper publishers/editors were using their social capital to, one could say, manipulate public opinion. Why? Who knows....

In any event, the "famous" scientific paper, which was in part at the center of the cooling claim, was also being mis-represented, (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/173/3992/138). That paper suggested that cooling might result from air pollution related to aerosols if aerosol pollution levels increased by a factor of 4. One of the authors of that article, Stephen Schneider, later argued that he had mis-calculated/over-stated the cooling effect, and underestimated the heating effect of CO-2 by a factor of 3 (see his book, Stephen H. Schneider and Lynne E. Mesirow, The Genesis Strategy: Climate and Global Survival, Plenum, April 1976). Thereafter, as is well known, Schneider published numerous manuscripts on climate change and global warming. Later, Schneider also used his social capital, appearing on TV talk shows and in documentaries to discuss climate change to provide a scientific view.

thanks Majid..

Very interesting subject. I know many examples of monitoring and conservation (as well as management) by indigenous and peasant communities in the Bolivian Amazon, and have tried to write down some examples to be able to alert regional and national policy makers about what you call the “tragedy of unseen sentinels”. However, I’m afraid most documentation is very superficial, and mostly just a small part of publications with much broader focusses. But anyway, I’ll try and suggest some publications that may be of interest to you.

In the ForLive project (Manejo Forestal por Pequeños Productores en la Amazonía) we identified several examples of practices of management of forests and valuable species. The following publications present some of these practices, while suggesting corresponding adaptations in forest policies for the Amazon.

Pokorny, B., J. Godar, L. Hoch, J. Johnson, J. de Koning, G. Medina, R. Steinbrenner, V. Vos & J. Weigelt. 2010. La Producción Familiar como Alternativa de un desarrollo sostenible para la Amazonía: lecciones aprendidas de iniciativas de uso forestal por productores familiares en la Amazonía boliviana, brasilera, ecuatoriana y peruana. CIFOR, Brasil. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49908448_La_produccion_familiar_como_alternativa_de_un_desarrollo_sostenible_para_la_Amazonia_Lecciones_aprendidas_de_iniciativas_de_uso_forestal_por_productores_familiares_en_la_Amazonia_boliviana_brasilera_e

Although the PROMAB Project had a more applied focus, the publication summarizing most of the findings of this Project (in the form of a proposal for community forestry) includes some information on local practices, and the need for their consideration:

Llanque A., & V. Vos (Eds.). 2011. Manejo Forestal Comunitario; Una propuesta para el norte Amazónico Boliviano. Programa Manejo de Bosques de la Amazonía Boliviana. Riberalta, Bolivia. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315114820_Manejo_Forestal_Comunitario_una_propuesta_para_el_norte_amazonico_boliviano

You may also be interested in a study we published with CIPCA. Although it’s more on agroforestery systems promoted by a national NGO, it also includes some information on local practices and the adaptation of the original technical proposal by local producers, while also entering a bit more into the motivations for the managment of these agroforestry systems.

Vos, V.A., O. Vaca Ruiz & A.Cruz. 2015. Sistemas agroforestales en la Amazonía Boliviana, Una valoración de sus múltiples beneficios. Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado en coordinación con IIFA-UAB. Riberalta, Bolivia. 198 Pp. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280805298_Sistemas_Agroforestales_en_la_Amazonia_Boliviana_una_valorizacion_de_sus_multiples_funciones

Another publication I’d like to suggest is the proposal we elaborated in relation to the brazil nut crisis. This document includes a chapter on local proposals to improve the sustainability of brazil nut populations.

Vos. V.A. 2017. Propuesta para el componente productivo de los planes de mitigación de la crisis de la castaña de la Amazonía boliviana, Aporte técnico como insumo para los planes de emergencia. Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado Regional Norte Amazónico. Riberalta, Bolivia. Pp. 79. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316120830_Propuesta_para_el_componente_productivo_de_los_planes_de_mitigacion_de_la_crisis_de_la_castana_de_la_Amazonia_boliviana_-_aporte_tecnico_como_insumo_para_los_planes_de_emergencia

A more popular description of some of the local practices for Brazil nut managment and conservation can be found in: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320420919_La_Castana_-_reporte_informativo_CIPCA_NA

Finally I’d like to suggest the article lead by Carolina Levis on domesticated species in the Amazon. Although it doesn’t really enter into the practices that could have shaped the amazon forests, it gives a good idea of the potential long-term impact these activities may have had on shaping the composition of these forests.

Levis, C et al. 2017. Persistent effects of pre-Columbian plant domestication on Amazonian forest composition. Science 355, Pp. 925-931. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314338566_Persistent_effects_of_pre-Columbian_plant_domestication_on_Amazonian_forest_composition

These are just some suggestions, and there is a lot more written and even more non-written information I'd be interested in sharing. Please feel free to contact me at vincentvosbolivia@gmail.com

The size (or width) of the bins also depends on the quality of sizing. Are you using data from automatic sequencers or from conventional gels? In our GelQuest/ClusterVis software package (see: http://sequentix.de/software.php) we discriminate bins from 'hyperbins'.

Please refer to the two examples given here: http://sequentix.de/gelquest/help/hyperbinningdetails.htm

Complete help: http://sequentix.de/gelquest/help/index.html

Hi Manuel,

Communality values are more relevant in factor analysis since they account for the variance of the items.

Hi Dr. Menon, (Sorry, cannot find your name). So, we in Ukraine have the same problems in science and education that is closely connected with degradation of society. Efforts to provide western values actually leads to losing of traditional culture and appearance of a "new" generation of pseudo-scientists that only imitate some scientific activity to occupy good social position and to integrate into general scheme of state corruption in education and science. So, I even prepare a project about degradation of any principles and simple moral of e.g. biological faculty of UZHGOROD NATIONAL University. I'm publishing the facts and materials in Ukrainian as I'm really ashamed of what happening with my country but what can you say if a dean of biological faculty (!) has no any paper in the SJR-SCOPUS rank journals? Or professors of this faculty that nobody even eared about them in Europe? Post graduates that peaking and publishing results from their chiefs? Preparing diplomas for students for money bribing (and what about exams)?

Some of such professors didn’t make any experiment during last 20 years or even not participated one expedition. But what is the university that doesn’t support financially investigations and expeditions and where scientific advisors of post-graduates didn’t publish a single paper in SJR class journals? So, the name of it is GENERAL DEGRADATION. Moreover - these primitives are trying to destroy every normal scientist that shows their irresponsibility.

But simple peasant doesn’t differ professors and he is thinking that all lectures at the university are corrupted and bribers!

I hope that situation in your country is not worse... But anyway I see some bad signals over the RG as well.

So, first should clean the science from different fakers by improving precise criterions of possibility to occupy important position and to have mechanisms to follow the procedure. LIKE IN UKRAINIAN POLICE NOW WHEN YOU WILL PROPOSE BRIBE WILL BE WARNING IMMEDIATELY OR EVEN ARRESTED!

But returning for yours question. What can we do now is an example of our activity! I'm partially living now in the mountainous village in the Carpathians. I built their solar green tariff station on my roof! So, it is good example for locals how to act. It is the National Park area, and sometimes appear venomous snakes, so I'm catching them and move it into the forest... EXAMPLES. The only way.

Andrey

Hi Sama,

This is a literature review carried out on ethnic communities and family violence in New Zealand. It might be of interest to you.

Kind regards,

Alison Towns

You should read a fantastic dissertation in anthropology by Giovanni Batz, University of Texas at Austin, 2017. He did his research in the Ixil region of Guatemala.

I agree with Samy Azer. This combination of research tools will lend more depth and meaning to the data analysis. I would also recommend your using the CoI survey to gauge faculty's satisfaction with the overall online PD experience.

Muchas gracias estimads César y Dolores!

thanks Muhammed...

Dear Husam,

I think major cause of diabetes is definitely lifestyle factors and genetic susceptibility BUT it has been seen that some infections are also the causes of Diabetes

This is an interesting question and study. I would try to find out firstly by looking at policy documents from government what the aims and intended outputs of these projects are, how long they claim thelife span of these projets is and then undertake case studies with the local communiites and local governemtns abour their view of the intended v. real outcomes. I would also want to know if the local communties were consulted in the setting up of these projects. ie i would use a literature search followed by qualitative methods using semi-structured interviews to gain in-depth knowledge of local views in the regions. You could perhaps look to see how this kind of development has proceeded in other countries.

I would recommend searching within the International Journal of Transgenderism and the Transgender Studies Quarterly. Additionally, a quick search of 'transgender rural' in Google turned up a number of good articles to start your search, such as:

Being morally virtuous (as Aristotle explains it) involves having a disposition to behave in the right manner and at the mean between extremes of deficiency and excess, which are vices. In that sense, individualism per se is neither a vice nor a virtue. However, acting individualistically may be either vicious or virtuous, depending on one's motives and particular circumstances. 

Risk communication is an essential tool in health emergencies and disaster preparedness

See: www.crcpress.com/9781138093171

This applies only the US as I understand it, but may be of interest.

The Unexplained Resistance to Malaria

In addition to their knowledge of rice and cotton growing, enslaved Africans from the “Rice” and “Windward” regions of Africa were valued because they appeared to have a higher resistance to the deadly mosquito-borne malaria disease than Whites and slaves from other regions of Africa. While this turned out to be the case, it was not until the mid-twentieth century the connection between sickle cell disease and resistance to malaria was discovered.

In the human body, normal red blood cells that carry oxygen are in the shape of discs (and are abbreviated HbAA.) However, when a person suffers from sickle cell disease, the cells become sickle shaped, which reduces their oxygen carrying capacity (HbSS). If a single copy of the mutated gene is inherited from one parent, it will result in the sickle cell trait, in which only some of the red blood cells of the individual will be sickle shaped (HbAS). An individual with normal red blood cells (HbAA) is susceptible to death from malaria. A person with sickle cell disease (HbSS) is susceptible to death from the complications relating to sickle cell disease. The individual with sickle cell trait, who has one normal and one abnormal gene (HbAS), has a greater chance of surviving malaria and not suffering the adverse consequences of sickle cell disease. (The first systematic investigation of the malaria trait hypothesis was conducted by Anthony Allison in East Africa in 1953. This required working with children between four months and four years of age, when the morbidity and mortality from malaria is greatest. The study was done in Ugandan villages...and Allison found that children in this age group carrying HbAS had significantly lower malaria parasite counts than in those with HbAA.)

While it was true enslaved Africans had some inherited resistance to tropical diseases, their masters were extremely vulnerable. Because of this, white planters lived miles away from their rice and cotton fields, and visited their plantations only between March and October. A white manager, or overseer, would be in charge of day-to-day operations, and even then, he might delegate that responsibility to a trusted slave working as foreman or “driver.” Thus, the coastal and island enslaved Africans had little contact with Whites, which allowed them to blend together the various African tribal traditions to form their own Gullah language, rituals, customs, religion, music, crafts and diet. The task system of labor would also play an instrumental part in this process.

From: Gullah Culture: 1670 to 1950 Paperback – March 16, 2017 by David B. McCoy Amazon

Gullah Culture: 1670 to 1950 Kindle Edition by David B McCoy. Also B % N.

This is on line.

Allison, AC. "Protection Afforded by Sickle-cell Trait Against Subtertian Malarial Infection". (FEB. 6, 1954). British Medical Journal.

Yes, you can – communities are, in fact, the same as 'species groups', whereas populations are comprised of just one species :)

Thanks professor Mazur and Brownlow!

Francesco Molteni

Dear Luay. Thank you for your input. That is brilliant work (and somehow old now) from a brilliant team. Anything else?

The Cooper article helped me negotiate my understanding of agency. I have read the Gabrill et. al. piece, which shows how agency is situated within a certain context.

Recently, I came across Zappen's article "Digital Rhetoric: Toward an Integrated Theory." He discusses how discourse is modified through the medium of online communication. Speed, reach, anonymity, and interactivity, through online discourse have modified the way in which people think about communication and interaction has changed, since face-to-face rhetorical persuasion was introduced as an art. But more work has to happen for us to better understand the nuances and heightened emotions which the online medium allows us to engage.

Thank you Reza Biria and Dennis Mazur. This is helpful.

You need to determine power. The power of any test of statistical significance is defined as the probability that it will reject a false null hypothesis. Statistical power is inversely related to beta, or the probability of making a Type II error. So, power = 1 – β. 

Statistical power is the likelihood that a study will detect an effect when there is an effect there to be detected. If statistical power is high, the probability of making a Type II error, or concluding there is no effect when, in fact, there is one, decreases.

Statistical power is affected chiefly by the size of the effect and the size of the sample used to detect it. Bigger effects are easier to detect than smaller effects, while large samples offer greater test sensitivity than small samples.

The power of any test of statistical significance will be affected by four main parameters:

1. The effect size

2. The sample size (N)

3. The alpha significance criterion (α)

4. Statistical power, or the chosen or implied beta (β)

All four parameters are mathematically related. If you know any three of them you can figure out the fourth.

So, you can calculate minimum sample size required to have a decent chance of detecting the effect you are studying. For example, if you had a sample of N = 100 households and you expected to find an effect size equivalent to R = 0.30, a quick calculation would reveal that you have an 57% chance of obtaining a statistically significant result using a two-tailed test with alpha set at the conventional level of 0.05. If you had a sample twice as large, the probability that your results will turn out to be statistically significant would be 86%.

I hope this helps :)

That makes sense: if an entire guild of species is lost, the likelihood of species redundancy would be greatly reduced.  Hypothesis: when a guild is composed of a single species, its loss would be more impactful.

There are many ways to go about documenting TEK, but the heart of it (in my experience) is combining ethnographic and ethnobiological methods. A good place to start will be defining what kind of TEK you want to look at (plants, animals, climate patterns, environment/human relation constructs, etc.), then using methods like free listing, pile sorts, and other structured interviews to understand cultural domains (Puri & Vogl, M. Quinlan, Berlin, Ellen, and many others have great examples of methods/theory here). These are a good jumping off point, and a great way to identify key informants in the field for future participant observation. From there, for more on informal interviews, collecting voucher specimens, etc. look up Nesbitt, Alexiades, or other ethnobotanists and -zoologists for protocol.  Hunn has quite a bit on TEK as well. Participant observation will be key.

All the best to you!

Read the book; Smart Communities: How Citizens and Local Leaders Can Use Strategic Thinking to Build a Brighter Future by Suzanne W. Morse and published by Jossey-Bass. She is very thorough in defining smart communities.

 Thank you Steve!

Hi, for a start, you have to first identify the countries and communities practicing female genital mutilation. As you know, it is not universally practiced. Then you can design a research problem and form research group in these countries to work according to your design. Please see, if this sort of research collaboration is feasible. 

You may find the following WHO publication useful : HEALTHY HOSPITALS,

HEALTHY PLANET, HEALTHY PEOPLE - Addressing climate change

in health care settings.

No problem, good to know you benefitted. Regards

Hi Khanal,

To find a generic methodology for every country community won’t be easy. Since the conditions regarding, the energy system, local planning traditions, amount planning participants or their interests might differ strongly. Here, a generic energy planning approach which might be helpful for you. It have being referred in many papers and used in different cities.

 Mirakyan A, De Guio R (2013) Integrated energy planning in cities and territories: A review of methods and tools. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 22 (0):289-297. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2013.01.033

Thank you, Naresh, I will be sharing more details on this study after March 15.  Look forward to having all interested persons involved.

In Scandinavia there is a long tradition of "learning communities" called study circles. They have been popular especially among associations and other entities of the so called Liberal Adult Education. One common practice identified e.g. by the Finnish legislation has been a minimum 5 people studying a minimum 10hrs on a theme chosen by the group members themselves while one of the group members (who also can take turns in this) acts as the falicitator of the group (no teachers needed).

Have you got a typology for "type of people" yet? How are you looking at disaggregating "types of people".  Also, is the assumption that it is a good thing that TedX clips get curated. I curate all kinds of stuff, (I use Scoop.it) and I make my students follow me. So are you advancing a curation agenda, or a TedX one?

Any move should be based on authentic data / details regarding various communities. A comprehensive Socio-economic Census (more detailed than the 2011 Census) needs to be conducted. Accordingly, the relative deprivation, socio-economic status etc. of various communities (including SC/ST/OBCs who are enjoying such benefits) should be assessed. Then only any move for changing the present system could be substantiated; say, before the Legislature / Courts of Law, or even the general public.    

I need a bit more information. First, it sounds like there are five "points" on the response scale for the question (for example., from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree, with a score of 3 in the middle). There is no problem with that.

What I really need to know is how many such questions there are in the overall index.

Dear Klara, it is important to clarify your question:

You could compute functional diversity of each community at time point A and compare to functional diversity of the same communities at time point B. For this I suggest using Rao entropy, for which you will need to compute a dissimilarity matrix between species based on their traits (if the traits are of mixed type, the Gower index may be useful). In this case you can only tell about the temporal change in the overall functional diversity of each community, and nothing about the functional identity of the community components. This is a limitation analogous to when communities are compared by their species diversity (e.g., by using Shannon diversity). 

Another option is to compare the communities based on their functional composition, for which you may consider the definition of fuzzy-weighted community composition. This is described in Pillar et al. (2009, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1654-1103.2009.05666.x). See also Pillar & Duarte (2010, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2010.01456.x) in the context of phylogenetic analysis. The fuzzy-weighting requires as input a similarity matrix between species based on their traits (which could be the above mentioned Gower index), which after proper standardisation to unit column will define a fuzzy set matrix U of species by species. The fuzzy-weighted community composition is given by matrix X obtained by matrix multiplication (X = UW), where W is the matrix of species composition in the communities.

There have been many definitions of community over the years, moving from concepts of community as a location to relational to symbolism... to the collapse of community and then postmodern understandings and the influence of the internet.

Some suggested reading - I've highlighted the ones which might be good to start with as a general overview.

Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities: Refections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, London & New York: Verso.

Bauman, Z. (2001) Community: Seeking safety in an insecure world, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Cohen, A. P. (1985) The Symbolic Construction of Community, London: Tavistock.

Day, G. (2006) Community and Everyday Life, Abingdon: Routledge.

McMillan, D. W. & Chavis, D. M. (1986) 'Sense of community: A definition and theory', Journal of community psychology, 14(1), 6-23.

Pahl, R. & Spencer, L. (2004) 'Capturing personal communities', Social networks and social exclusion: Sociological and policy perspectives, 72-96.

Sarason, S. B. (1974) The psychological sense of community: Prospects for a community psychology: Jossey-Bass.

Somerville, P. (2011) Understanding Community: Politics, Policy and Practice, Bristol: The Policy Press.

Blackshaw, T. (2010) Key Concepts in Community Studies, London: Sage Publications Ltd.

Chayko, M. (2002) Connecting: How We Form Social Bonds and Communities in the Internet Age, Albany, NY: State University of New York.

Thank you for your answer. However, the question was about the comparison of indices nestedness of the ecological community, for example NODF.

Nick Williams and myself have conducted research on the barriers to entrepreneurship in deprived communities, published in Local Economy, and Entrepreneurship and Regional Development. You will find it on my ResearchGate page. In addition, I have conducted research on how a greater proportion of entrepreneurship in deprived communities tend to be conducted in the informal economy where start-ups use the informal economy as a test-bed during venture creartion, and many continue to operate on such a basis afterwards.

Dear Kathryn,

I do not know why you are treating with glyphosphate?

You need to do some basic data collection.

As Rebecca mentioned, do simple statistical analysis. Then you may get some idea regarding the species composition of the study area. It will give you further idea to improve the work. 

I can help you to tell about Indian village structure. Write me on vimal_msw@rediffmail.com

Helma, I haven't studied PLCs but have attempted to create them in a teaching environment. I work with 12 to 15 teachers most of the time but am involved beyond that as part of a committee to develop up to 100 teachers. My experience is that being part of a learning group requires intellectual commitment and the only way to get that buy in is by appealing to their professional ethics and goals. My group are mainly teachers of science so I appealed to their belief in experimentation. The way they see learning is through action research. We discuss problems that need working on, ideas to try to improve outcomes, experiments to try in pedagpgy, assessment and curriculum, then action the ideas as indepndant professionals and report back. I keep this fairly informal and often act as  conduit for ideas. In 10 years, I have a fairly active PLC as evidenced by the interactions between staff members, groups and me as their manager. If I want a particular focus now, I insert it into the mix of problems to solve. One important spect is to keep the descriptions of problems, solutions, ideas to experiment with fairly general so individuals can take their own approach. That way they feel in control and we get a wide range of experiments.

Dear Norman,

your question is very ambitous and komplex, because it's a great challenge to implement LED projects in rural communities.The reports, that I know, emphasise, that LED projects are mainly realised in urban areas, but can be realised in rural areas too.This indicates the great difficulties of your question, and it's clear to me, that rural LED projects are needed urgently in order to alleviate poverty. In addition I don't know your knowledge base and the background of your question (e.g.: Is it for a scientific paper or for practical use?).

For your insight, I added the links and files below. So ILO and world bank have an own website with the topic "LED". There you can perhaps find case studies or best practice examples of successful LED projects. In my opinion the trainer's guide manual is valuable (see below). There you find a "five stage sequence of the LED strategic planning process" (page 1), respectively:

Local Economic Development - The Five Stages of Strategic Planning

Stage 1: Organizing the Effort

Stage 2: Local Economy Assessment

Stage 3: Strategy Making

Stage 4: Strategy Implementation

Stage 5: Strategy Review

So relating to your question of best management models you need at any rate an integrative model like the New St. Gallen Management Model (see below). Such a model integrates different levels (individual micro-, institutional meso- and social macro-level), that you have to consider. In addition you can include the necessary change management or project management modells. Finally you can comprise normative, strategic and operative business management models, because you need them, in order to implement rural LED projects successfully.

I assume, if using such an integrative modell, you will already discover in stage 2 (Local Economy Assessment) differences between urban and rural areas. These differences could be valuable, in order to explain the difficulties with rural LED projects. I expect, you will find worse infrastructural conditions, more traditional values and life-forms as well as more fears of change in rural areas, compared to urban areas. If this hypothesis could be proved, you'll be able to deduce appropriate management models.

Good luck and kind regards

Detlef

I believe this must occur at the policy and development level. There is more than enough written on this subject of integration. My experience, however, is that silos dictate and government entities believe that these two concepts are unique. 

We have similar issues in Southern Africa:

Becker, P., Abrahamsson, M., & Hagelsteen, M. 2013. Parallel structures for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in Southern Africa. Jàmbá: Journal of Disaster Risk Studies. :1–5.

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Dear Tawanad.

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I animated myself with the question and have not finished giving an answer.

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From my point of view I think that tourism can be seen as a complementary activity to generate foreign exchange and not as a principal or worse, as the only.

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I do not see how important the fight for the locals to top posts as managers, I think the most important use of resources obtained by tourism to develop other activities, such as the modernization of agricultural activities because they see with these activities maintenance of equipment that is a germ for autochthonous industrial activities.

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At this point, simple management policies to stimulate development of small businesses are relatively inexpensive and easily implemented.

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The choice of ordination methods depends on 1) the type of data you have, 2) the similarity distance matrix you want/can use, and 3) what you want to say. All of these ordination methods are based on similarity distance matrix constructed on your data, using different methods (such as Euclidean, Bray-Curtis (=Sorensen), Jaccard etc.) to calculate the distance between samples. However, the different methods to calculate the similarity matrix will not give the same results. Different ordination methods use different similarity matrix, and can significantly affect the results. For example, PCA and PCoA will use only Euclidean distance, while nMDS use any similarity distance you want.

So, how to choose a method?

- If you have a dataset that include null values (e.g. most dataset from genotyping using fingerprinting methods include null values, when for example a bacterial OTU is present in some samples and not in others), I would advise you to use Bray-Curtis similarity matrix and nMDS ordination. Bray-Curtis distance is chosen because it is not affected by the number of null values between samples like Euclidean distance, and nMDS is chosen because you can choose any similarity matrix, not like PCA.

- if you have a dataset that do not include null values (e.g. environmental variables), you can use Euclidean distance, and use either PCA or nMDS, and you will see that in this case, it will give you the same results.

Many ordination methods exist, such as the ones you mentioned, but also RDA (Redundancy analysis), CAP (canonical analysis of principal coordinates), dbRDA (distance based redundancy analysis), and others… Some methods will be better than others to show complex community or a specific effect of a factor on your data. For example, CAP will be good to show the effect of the interaction between factors on your community. So sometimes, it is good to try different methods if you are not happy about the results, but keep in mind that these methods are “only” ordination, and you need to perform test for significant differences between groups (e.g. ANOSIM, ADONIS, PERMANOVA, MRPP…).

Often different ordination methods and different features/characteristics than you will find interesting, such overlay vectors or extra variables, % explained by each axis, 3D… However, all these details are more software related than truly related to the ordination methods.

You can find more information about ordination methods and also test for significant differences between groups in this review:

A. Ramette (2007) Multivariate analyses in microbial ecology, FEMS Microbiology Ecology, 62, 142-160.

Hope that help

Aimeric

There are two approaches, top down and bottom up, in the top down approach, which has been used, first you need to perform climate modeling, and then to go for impacts assessment, based on impacts, you need to plan for adaptation. As for example, let us say, you need to find agricultural policy, you need to first perform regional modeling and then crop modeling, compute future risk and then find the optimum policy...but one of the major limitation is that, scientists don't know what stakeholders like farmers really want. That gives birth to the bottom up approach. Here, farmers will ask certain questions, which they feel really useful for long term planning. Let us say, what is the possibility, that there will be 3 consecutive drought years in a region. The scientists need to find out, under what warming scenario, such situation will happen, and what is the probability. This will also make aware the farmers about the possibility of such occurrences...

Dear Ulfert,

Yes I know that you have found such discontinuities in the composition of annelid communities (be sure that all your publications are well-known to me). You are one of the few soil animal scientists to have search (and given) evidence that discontinuities exist in the composition of communities and do not results from a priori classificatory systems. However, more remains to be done in this respect, in particular along spatially delimited environmental gradients, i.e; transects. Imagine (as I have the feeling it be true, based on my own field experience) that you pass abruptly from a given community composition to another while environmental conditions change monotonously. This would be a nice demonstration of the existence of ecological attractors at community level, no? There is a dearth of literature (mostly theoretical) on the matter, but nothing definitely demonstrative, to my opinion.

We have an article coming out in the next few months in the Journal of Community Psychology that discusses the development of our Index of Perceived Community Resiliency (IPCR). This tool may be helpful to you. Please let me know and we can arrange for you to look at it.