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Wildlife and natural resources constitute an integral part of the ecosystem, whereas human interventions dismantled the living conditions of the wildlife. This is testified in the Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary (DWS) where the habitats of Asian elephants have changed due to human intervention and deforestation over the decades. The present study aimed to assess the elephant habitat suitability in the DWS of Jharkhand state (India) using the geospatial parameters such as forest density, degree of slope, proximity to water bodies, land use land cover, proximity to agricultural land, built-up density, and road density. The analytical hierarchical process technique was utilized to determine habitat preference and selection of relevant factors to categorize criteria. The study revealed that about 6.7% (26.74 km2) of the area is very highly suitable for elephant habitat, while 52.26% (208.49 km2) of the forest area was found highly suitable. The most suitable habitat was identified in the core parts of the forest, while the least suitable areas were found in the southern part, where the presence of roads, built-up, and agricultural land was prominent. It was also observed that most human–elephant conflicts were exhibited in the low and very low suitable areas, while 90% of the elephant movement was witnessed in the high and very high suitable areas. Among the four identified corridors, three are inactive, and their location corresponds with low to very low suitable habitats. The study identified the migratory corridor routes inside the sanctuary where effective management is required for the conservation of elephant habitats and minimizing conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of social sciences has been recognized as valuable to inclusive humanitarian programming that aims to be attentive to the needs and initiatives of affected communities. However, the integration of social science-informed community engagement (CE) approaches in humanitarian action remains episodic, fragmented, and under-resourced. This research article provides insights from a study that reviewed existing and needed capacities for the systematic integration of social sciences for community engagement in humanitarian action. We examined what capacity resources exist and what resources need to be developed for strengthening social science integration into humanitarian programming for improved engagement of affected and at-risk communities in conflict and hazard contexts. A mixed method approach was used, including twenty-two key informant interviews and a focus group discussion with social scientists and humanitarian practitioners, an online survey with 42 respondents, a literature review, and a year-long monthly consultation with social scientists and humanitarian practitioners in a UNICEF-led global technical working group. Results illustrate insights on the value of the "social science lens" in humanitarian action and current usage of different social science disciplines. Challenges found include different understandings (e.g., on standardization), languages and methods used by practitioners and social scientists, and how to integrate the seemingly "slow" processes of social sciences to fit emergency response. Institutional barriers to mainstream community-centered humanitarian action facilitated by the social sciences include top-down decision-making and resourcing, lack of localization, and many siloed, dispersed, and episodic efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the effect of migrant remittances (MR) on conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa. From a sample of 45 countries, we specify and estimate a panel data model using the two-way fixed effects method (TWFE) whose robustness is proven by the system generalized method of moments (S-GMM) and the lagged explanatory variables method (LEVM) over the period from 2000 to 2020. Two main results emerge. Firstly, MR significantly increases conflicts in SSA. Secondly, the effects of MR on conflicts are mediated by corruption, education, diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICT), and financial development. The results remained robust and sensitive to the exclusion of countries in situations of intense conflict, serious conflict, intense and serious conflict, and cultural variables. We suggest the consolidation of legislation on MR and setting up a traceability system to control their volume and channel them as far as possible towards productive investments to the detriment of conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The military-industrial complex, military operations, and wars are major contributors to exacerbating both climate change and biodiversity crises. However, their environmental impacts are often shadowed due to national security reasons. The current paper aims to go through the devastating impacts of military operations and wars on climate change and biodiversity loss and challenges that hinder the inclusion of military-related activities into environmental crisis mitigation efforts. The information blind spot induced by concerns about national security reasons jeopardizes the efforts to involve the military-industrial complex and military operations in the global climate and biodiversity agendas. Besides that, many military-related challenges, such as specificity of operational requirements and lifecycles, dependence on fossil fuels, complex supply change, inadequate civilian technologies and innovations, and requirements of structural changes, can hinder emission reduction. Meanwhile, wars and conflicts not only threaten to drain all human and material resources available to tackle environmental problems but also inflict long-lasting destructions, pains, and trauma that can lead to hatred and distrust among nations and parties. With the rising hatred and distrust, global agreement and commitment to address climate change and biodiversity will hardly be achieved. Thus, promoting peace is the humanistic and planetary conscience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The endangered Iberian wolf (Canis lupus signatus) populations have been decreasing in Portugal due to a combination of factors such as habitat destruction and human persecution. This is particularly worrying in Central Portugal, where packs are highly fragmented, isolated, and with few individuals. Human-Wildlife-Conflicts occur in this area due to high levels of livestock depredation, an outcome of the low diversity and density of wild prey. As a consequence, human persecution is relatively high and is considered a main threat to wolves' survival. Through studying public attitudes towards these wolf populations and discerning prevalent patterns, insights can be gained to guide management strategies in mitigating these factors. A total of 222 questionnaires were collected from populations inhabiting Central Portugal, divided into three interest groups (general public, livestock owners, and hunters).We estimated Attitude, Fear, and Knowledge Indexes regarding the wolf. Attitudes towards wolves were positive, with the fear being neutral but the knowledge being low; attitudes tend to be more positive with the decrease of fear and the increase of knowledge, and fear tends to decrease with the increase of knowledge. The main factor negatively influencing attitudes was fear, although age seemed to have more influence on livestock owners' attitudes. The factors influencing fear included gender, knowledge, and personal experience with wolves. These findings can be used to target specific groups with environmental awareness initiatives, aiming to increase knowledge and reduce sources of fear. It is crucial to develop tailored conservation measures considering stakeholders' viewpoints to effectively protect the Iberian wolf. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa has vigorously embraced the concept of the ‘blue economy’ and is aggressively pursuing a blue growth strategy to expand the ocean economy, create jobs, and alleviate poverty. However, many of these ‘blue initiatives’ are leading to conflicts amongst various stakeholders with different histories, relationships with resources and areas, worldviews, and values. Investment in the ocean economy is being prioritized by government and planning, environmental assessment, and decision-making processes are being fast-tracked. Consequently, historical inequities as well as environmental and social justice considerations are not being given due consideration. Communities are not being effectively consulted. This has resulted in tensions and conflicts amongst proponents of these projects and local communities living in areas affected by these initiatives. We examine the drivers of conflict and then explore the strategies that local communities and their social partners have employed in these case studies to challenge contentious developments, defend coastal and marine areas, and make their voices heard. The cases involve conflicts over air quality in an expanding marine industrial zone at Saldanha Bay, prospecting and mining applications in the vicinity of the Olifants Estuary in the Western Cape, and the expansion of the Richard’s Bay Port, mining activities, and conservation initiatives in KwaZulu-Natal. The barriers and potential opportunities to opening up deliberative spaces, shifting values and views, and co-producing knowledge, in contexts that are characterised by structural inequality, poverty, and power asymmetries, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has been linked to water scarcity, land degradation, and food insecurity, exacerbating existing tensions and creating new conflicts in countries with weak political institutions. Despite the critical need for effective conflict management and climate adaptation measures, prior studies failed to emphasize the role climate change plays in civil clashes in conflict-affected countries. In this research, we undertake a comprehensive investigation of the effects of climate change and government stability on internal conflicts in 14 selected SSA nations between 1996 and 2016. The study embraces contemporary heterogeneous panel techniques to address heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence issues that usually appear in panel data estimates. We employed second-generation unit root tests, such as CADF and CIPS, to determine the order of integration of the variables. In addition, Pedroni and Westerlund cointegration tests confirmed the long-run relationship among the variables. Although temperatures were insignificant, the long-run results of the pooled mean group (PMG) approach suggested that civil conflicts decline when precipitation increases. In addition, the outcomes indicate that environmental degradation and population growth are long-run aggravators of social unrest. The short-run results suggest that rising temperatures exacerbate civil conflicts in the selected SSA countries. However, the study found that government stability lessens internal conflicts in the short run, but not in the long run. The DOLS technique validated the long-run outcomes of the PMG technique. Based on the findings of the study, conflict-prone SSA countries should integrate climate change adaptation and conflict prevention strategies, implement sustainable water resource management practices, and endorse climate-related conflict resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a model to explain the potential role of inter-group conflicts in determining the rise and fall of signaling norms. Individuals in a population are characterized by high and low productivity types and they are matched in pairs to form social relationships such as mating or foraging relationships. In each relationship, an individual's payoff is increasing in its own type and its partner's type. Hence, the payoff structure of a relationship does not resemble a dilemma situation. Assume that types are not observable. In one population, assortative matching according to types is sustained by signaling. In the other population, individuals do not signal and they are randomly matched. Types evolve within each population. At the same time, the two populations may engage in conflicts. Due to assortative matching, high types grow faster in the population with signaling, yet they bear the cost of signaling, which lowers their population's fitness in the long run. Through simulations, we show that the survival of the signaling population depends crucially on the timing and the efficiency of weapons used in inter-group conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Rural populations are particularly exposed to increasing weather variability, notably through agriculture. In this paper, we exploit longitudinal data for Turkish provinces from 2008 to 2018 together with precipitation records over more than 30 years to quantify how variability in a standardized precipitation index (SPI) affects out-migration as an adaptation mechanism. Doing so, we document the role of three potential causal channels: per capita income, agricultural output, and local conflicts. Our results show that negative SPI shocks (droughts) are associated with higher out-migration in rural provinces. A mediated-moderator approach further suggests that changes in per capita income account for more than one quarter of the direct effect of droughts on out-migration, whereas agricultural output is only relevant for provinces in the upper quartile of crop production. Finally, we find evidence that local conflict fatalities increase with drought and trigger out-migration, although this channel is distinct from the direct effect of SPI shocks on out-migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conditions and pathways for transforming ocean conflicts require an understanding of the wide range of perspectives and values from all relevant stakeholders. In such cases, participatory assessment of conflicts can lead to knowledge co-production and collective learning. In this approach, the different views and the relevance assigned to conflicts are described by the involved stakeholders. In this paper, we aim to present a participatory assessment of conflicts involving small-scale fishing communities of São Paulo coastline, southeastern Brazil from the perspective of the multiple actors involved with the marine-coastal ecosystems of the region. The conflicts were assessed through an online survey and virtual participatory workshops. The survey was used to assess the conflicts related to the fishing activities in the territory. Participatory workshops were carried out to validate and complement the conflict assessment by the online survey and to establish a ranking of the most important conflicts by different stakeholders. A total of 132 conflicts were systematized into 12 categories, and the most relevant were as follows: legislation and surveillance, large-scale enterprises in coastal areas, pollution, fishing regulation, and fisheries management and planning. We argue that a collaborative identification of conflicts has the potential to refine and validate different interpretations and to foster social learning among the stakeholders that is essential to promote sustainability in the territory. This participatory process seeks to increase the social legitimacy for future marine spatial planning processes and to contribute with a novel process of coproducing transformative knowledge action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper stems from calls for methodological advancement in two areas of research: primary mathematics education and dialogical education. We respond to these calls from the commognitive standpoint by introducing the Grove of Realizations as a tool for capturing and visualizing individual students' learning through collaborative work in small groups. We focus on a group of four students from a New Zealand Year 4 class (aged 8 and 9 years old), as they classified odd and even numbers and reasoned about their sums. This data is used to present the analytical affordances of the tool for (i) visualizing gaps in communication between group members, (ii) mapping their discursive development, and (iii) showing whether and how gaps are bridged within a group. The paper concludes with the discussion of the tool's affordances and directions for further development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) are derived from natural populations of plants or fungi, or farmed in forests. Harvesters and producers often benefit from NTFPs by selling them to generate income. This article explores research on the producers, production, marketing, and sales of NTFPs in the United States, including the continuum of production from wild-harvesting to forest farming of NTFPs, and their costs and benefits. Specific examples are presented, but the concepts and generalizations are broadly applicable to many NTFPs throughout the U.S. and other parts of the world. Integrating NTFPs into forest management can enhance economic opportunities but also will increase complexity, and will entail balancing multiple and potentially conflicting objectives among a diverse community of stakeholders. We identify information gaps including the need for inventories and yield models of NTFPs, understanding the effect of silvicultural activities on NTFP survival and yield, time series and trends in collection of NTFPs by U.S. households, identification of vulnerable and marginalized communities associated with NTFP harvest, and harvesters' motivations and drivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of regionalism is based on identity, i.e., the cultural, historical, political association of individuals, peoples, states, and leaders with a certain region. Regionalization is associated with institution building or the conclusion of formal agreements, which are sometimes substituted by informal ties. Regionalization in the Middle East is affected by quite contradictory trends since the region has always been considered a highly conflict-prone zone and not much amenable to change. The conflicts themselves have become the system-forming elements, which in their own way tightened this space and ensured the building of coalitions and alliances. Modern conflicts, most of which have become rapidly internationalizing intrastate confrontations, and the general increase in militarization are still eminent characteristics of the Middle East. At the same time, the trends towards the rapprochement of individual opponents and normalization are becoming clearer, and their further development could possibly play an integration role in the future. The involvement of both states and nonstate or quasi-state actors in these processes is noteworthy. There is a growing independence of the leading regional states, as well as an activation of small countries, driven by their national interests. The fragmentation of the Middle East does not mean the absence of internal ties and of interdependence of states, of common challenges, and of attempts to work out group strategies on certain issues. There is an ad hoc cohesion of individual organizations, new logistical and transport routes are being built, and trade and economic relations between individual countries are expanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Anthropogenic activities cause habitat loss for wildlife, thus increasing human-wildlife conflicts globally. This study focused on highlighting factors that need to be explored when assessing human-wildlife conflicts for managerial actions. To identify critical factors influencing co-existence between humans and wildlife and the role these factors can play in supporting conservation of flora and fauna. A structured questionnaire was developed and administered to four communities around the two divisions of Cross-River National park to collect information demographic characteristics and series of tolerance construct statements to understand tolerance towards human-wildlife conflicts. The factors influencing tolerance in human-wildlife conflicts in Cross River National Park were highlighted using factor analysis on 335 households from communities living near the park. Tolerance in human-wildlife conflicts influences conservation and management in protected areas. The identified factors were a contribution to conservation, wealth & multiple livelihood sources, Compensation & Benefits, and community resilience. Furthermore, it was also discovered that carnivore conservation requires special attention for communities to provide support for conservation. Our results suggest that even though conservation is a central concept in human-wildlife conflict, other factors such as tolerance, the occupation of locals and the benefits to be derived play a critical role in ameliorating human-wildlife conflicts. Human-wildlife conflicts cannot be totally eliminated but having a clear understanding of the factors that play a major role in determining tolerance levels is a huge step towards peaceful coexistence and hence better management of the protected area [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a novel hybrid metaheuristic for the Knapsack Problem with Forfeits (KPF). KPF is a recently introduced generalization of the Knapsack Problem. In this variant, a penalty cost incurs whenever both items composing a so-called forfeit pair belong to the solution. Our proposed algorithm, called GA–CG Forfeits, combines the strengths of the Genetic and Carousel Greedy paradigms. In this work, we define the algorithm and compare it with two previously proposed heuristics on a set of benchmark instances. In these tests, GA–CG Forfeits provided significantly better solutions than the other two algorithms on all instances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University–industry interaction has many supporters and some detractors in the scholarly literature. Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) policy frameworks emphasise interactions between universities and stakeholders other than industry, and the contribution made by these interactions to a range of goals such as environmental sustainability. Given the significance of discourse to shape public opinion, it is important that academic and policy actors convey positive views of university interaction. We investigate whether this is happening by examining representations of university interactions in popular culture. Since public opinion can shape science, our investigation could also suggest new research questions. Our sample includes science fiction novels that won prestigious awards (Hugo, Nebula and Locus) for the genre, from the 1970s to the 2010s. The use of an objective corpus of the literature increases external validity, a methodological novelty in representations of science studies. We show how science fiction, predominantly, is critical of university interactions, reflecting a lack of convincing institutional narratives on their benefits. The apprehensions expressed about interactions with industry or other stakeholders are equivalent. We offer some recommendations for research on STI policy frameworks to incorporate critical views of university–society interaction, including threats to sustainability, and new research questions related to defence of non-disclosure of information for political reasons and conflicts of equity due to the lack of career progression for 'disengaged' academics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conflicts are socio-political pressures that alter wellbeing, social structure, and economic sustenance. However, very limited studies have assessed the long-term impact of conflicts on environmental sustainability. This study investigates the role of internal and external conflicts on ecological footprint in the Middle East and North African countries (MENA) over the period 1995–2016. Here, we test whether the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis is valid for MENA countries during the period of internal and external conflicts—characterized by energy disasters and deteriorating income levels. Using robust econometric tools based on 12 MENA countries, the results show that income growth has negative impact with evidence of inherent heterogeneity across quantile distribution of ecological footprint. However, the positive impact of the square term of income decreases ecological footprint, thus, confirming U-shaped relationship between income and environmental indicator across MENA countries. The results further show that excessive energy consumption is attributed to a rising level of urbanization, while increase in conflicts stimulates environmental degradation. These findings are essential for effective conflict resolution and environmental policies across conflict-prone countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing social stressor concepts disregard the variety of task-related situations at work that require skillful social behavior to maintain good social relationships while achieving certain task goals. In this article, we challenge the view that social stressors at work are solely dysfunctional aspects evoking employee ill health. Drawing from the challenge-hindrance stressor framework, we introduce the concept of social challenge stressors as a job characteristic and examine their relationships with individual well-and ill-being. In study 1, we developed a new scale for the measurement of social challenge stressors and tested the validity of the scale. Results from two independent samples indicated support for a single-factor structure and showed that social challenge stressors are distinct from related stressor concepts. Using two samples, one of which was already used to test the factor structure, we analyzed the unique contribution of social challenge stressors in predicting employee well- and ill-being. As expected, social challenge stressors were simultaneously related to psychological strain and well-being. Using time-lagged data, study 2 investigated mechanisms that may explain how social challenge stressors are linked to well-being and strain. In line with the stress-as-offense-to-self approach, we expected indirect relationships via self-esteem. Additionally, social support was expected to moderate the relationships between social stressors and self-esteem. Whereas the indirect relationships were mostly confirmed, we found no support for the buffering role of social support in the social hindrance stressors-self-esteem link. Although we found a moderation effect for social challenge stressors, results indicated a compensation model that conflicted with expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Goal-oriented requirements engineering aims to capture desired goals and strategies of relevant stakeholders during early requirements engineering stages, using goal models. Goal-oriented modeling techniques support the analysis of system requirements (especially non-functional ones) from an operationalization perspective, through the evaluation of alternative design options. However, conflicts and undesirable interactions between requirements produced from goals are inevitable, especially as stakeholders often aim for different objectives. In this paper, we propose an approach based on game theory and the Goal-oriented Requirement Language (GRL) to reconcile interacting stakeholders (captured as GRL actors), leading to reasonable trade-offs. This approach consists in building a payoff bimatrix that considers all actor's valid GRL strategies, and computing its Nash equilibrium. Furthermore, we use two optimization techniques to reduce the size of the payoff bimatrix, hence reducing the computational cost of the Nash equilibrium. The approach goes beyond existing work by supporting nonzero-sum games, multiple alternatives, and inter-actor dependencies. We demonstrate the applicability of our game-theoretic modeling and analysis approach using a running example and two GRL models from the literature, with positive results on feasibility and applicability, including performance results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation: Zeitschrift für Angewandte Organisationspsychologie (GIO) is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Checking the consistency of a metamodel involves finding a valid metamodel instance that provably meets the set of constraints that are defined over the metamodel. These constraints are often specified in Object Constraint Language. Often, a metamodel is inconsistent due to conflicts among the constraints. Existing approaches and tools are typically incapable of pinpointing the conflicting constraints, and this makes it difficult for users to debug and fix their metamodels. In this paper, we present a formal approach for locating conflicting constraints in inconsistent metamodels. Our approach has four distinct features: (1) users can rank individual metamodel features using their own domain-specific knowledge, (2) we transform these ranked features to a weighted maximum satisfiability modulo theories problem and solve it to compute the set of maximum achievable features, (3) we pinpoint the conflicting constraints by solving the set cover problem using a novel algorithm, and (4) we have implemented our approach into a fully automated tool called MaxUSE. Our evaluation results, using our assembled set of benchmarks, demonstrate the scalability of our work and that it is capable of efficiently finding conflicting constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generally, nonreproductive sex is thought to act as "social grease," facilitating peaceful coexistence between subjects that lack close genetic ties. However, specifc nonreproductive sexual behaviors may fulfill different functions. With this study, we aimed to test whether nonreproductive mounts in Barbary macaques are used to 1) assert dominance, 2) reinforce social relationships, and/or 3) solve conflicts. We analyzed nonreproductive mounts (N = 236) and postmount behavior in both aggressive and nonaggressive contexts, in 118 individuals belonging to two semi-free-ranging groups at La Montagne des Singes (France). As predicted by the dominance assertion hypothesis, the probability to be the mounter increased with rank difference, especially in aggressive contexts (increasing from 0.066 to 0.797 in nonaggressive contexts, and from 0.011 to 0.969 in aggressive contexts, when the rank difference was minimal vs. maximal). The strength of the social bond did not significantly predict the proportion of mounts across dyads in nonaggressive contexts, providing no support for the relationship reinforcement hypothesis. Finally, in support of the conflict resolution hypothesis, when individuals engaged in postconflict mounts, 1) the probability of being involved in further aggression decreased from 0.825 to 0.517, while 2) the probability of being involved in grooming interactions with each other increased from 0.119 to 0.606. The strength of the social bond between former opponents had no significant effect on grooming occurrence and agonistic behavior after postconflict mounts. Overall, our findings suggest that nonreproductive mounts in Barbary macaques have different functions that are not affected by the strength of the social bond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, marine fisheries sector provides livelihood, food security and employment to the fishers engaged in subsistence, artisanal and industrial fishing activities. The dependency on marine fish supplies keeps rising globally leading to intense competition, fishery conflicts and unsustainable fishing practices which threatens the sustainability and leading to the depletion of marine fishery resources. Andaman and Nicobar Islands (ANI) in India is a tropical archipelago cited as an example where marine fishery resources were considered to be highly underutilized vis-a-vis the harvestable potential. Developmental plans often envisage the enormous scope to harness the oceanic fishery resources however, the overriding issues which affect the sustainable fishery management were least understood or addressed. Offshore fisheries were trade and economy based whereas small scale fisheries are livelihood and food security-based, operating with small to medium scale commercial prospects. Radical management approaches in artisanal and industrial fisheries is essential to foster community resilience and sustainable fishery management. The emerging body of evidence suggests the critical need to reliably estimate the fish catches and population dynamics for sustainable fisheries management. Comprehensive opinions on prevailing issues, complexities in governance, challenges faced and the management strategies that need to be adopted were discussed to ensure the robust governance and sustainability of marine fisheries sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with climate change and nomadic migration relationships at a long-term and wide geographical scale using a statistical approach in the vein of Bai and Kung (Rev Econ Stat 93:970–981 2011). More precisely, it presents a reassessment of these relationships in a nonlinear world using threshold regressions, time varying-copula, and nonlinear causality tests. The large amount of historical records in China enables us to re-interpret the link between climate and historical social dynamics (Hsiang et al., Science 341:1235367 2013) through different regimes of temperature and precipitation. Our nonlinear results have confirmed the role of climatic factors on migration. However, we find that climatic factors have affected the migration flows only during some sub-periods (especially 300–500 AD and 1050–1300 AD). As a consequence, the importance of the precipitation effect on migration has probably been slightly overestimated whereas the role of temperature anomalies has been underestimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Farmer–grazier conflicts are a major cause of the stagnated development experienced in rural, peri-urban, and suburban areas across Africa and the developing world, as these conflicts often lead to the loss of crops, livestock, and even human lives, precipitating untold misery and excruciating poverty. In Cameroon where this study was undertaken, the situation is simply pathetic as farmer–grazier conflicts occur regularly, especially during the dry season when herders move livestock (especially cattle, sheep and horses) from hills to the valleys (transhumance), in search of pasture, destroying farmers' crops in the process. It is within this framework that this study sought to look at the contribution of agroforestry practices to farmer–grazier conflict mitigation. Data collection methods for the study were household surveys, key informant interviews and direct observations. Data analysis was done through descriptive and inferential statistics, using two main statistical analyses software: Microsoft Excel 2007 and SPSS 20. Findings revealed that the main cause of farmer–grazier conflicts was limited arable and grazing land (100%), with the main consequences being loss of human lives and crops/livestock (100%). The main agroforestry practices of farmers were home gardens with animals (52%), trees on croplands (60%) and live fences/hedges (52%) while graziers' agroforestry practices were home gardens with animals (73%), trees on grazing lands (60%) and live fences/hedges (53%). Agroforestry was found to provide many socio-economic and ecosystem benefits to both farmers and graziers like food, fuelwood, fodder, building materials and shade which make farmers and graziers less interdependent. Correlation analysis revealed a strong inverse relationship between the practice of agroforestry and farmer–grazier conflicts (p < 0.01). Chi square test statistic showed a significant relationship between agroforestry practices and farmer–grazier conflicts (p < 0.01). Parameter estimates of the Binary Logistic Regression model revealed that three main agroforestry practices (home garden with animals, trees on crop/grazing lands and home garden) were determinant in mitigating farmer–grazier-conflicts (p < 0.01). This clearly demonstrates that the practice of agroforestry can contribute in a sustainable way to end recurrent farmer–grazier conflicts. The study therefore recommends that more attention be directed towards agroforestry by policy makers and other stakeholders who seek to mitigate the farmer–grazier conflict hot potato. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Syria has been afflicted with a civil war that has turned into a humanitarian and refugee crisis. Millions of people have had to leave their homes to find safer places to survive. This recent refugee crisis has been considered as a serious social phenomenon that should be scrutinized using a scientific lens to understand what is being experienced by the victims of the war. In this respect, this qualitative study aims to investigate why the civil war in Syria broke out and why it still continues. The article also discusses the expectations of Syrian refugee minors from the international community. The refugees expect the international community to solve their long-standing problems and challenges. The results of the study revealed that Syrian minors expect the international community to solve their problems including inadequate access to health services and educational opportunities, food and accommodation, and forced child marriage. In addition, Syrian minors were found to be unaware of potential ways to overcome difficulties and seek solutions for the problems they suffer from. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Requirements are inherently prone to conflicts. Security, data-minimization, and fairness requirements are no exception. Importantly, undetected conflicts between such requirements can lead to severe effects, including privacy infringement and legal sanctions. Detecting conflicts between security, data-minimization, and fairness requirements is a challenging task, as such conflicts are context-specific and their detection requires a thorough understanding of the underlying business processes. For example, a process may require anonymous execution of a task that writes data into a secure data storage, where the identity of the writer is needed for the purpose of accountability. Moreover, conflicts not arise from trade-offs between requirements elicited from the stakeholders, but also from misinterpretation of elicited requirements while implementing them in business processes, leading to a non-alignment between the data subjects' requirements and their specifications. Both types of conflicts are substantial challenges for conflict detection. To address these challenges, we propose a BPMN-based framework that supports: (i) the design of business processes considering security, data-minimization and fairness requirements, (ii) the encoding of such requirements as reusable, domain-specific patterns, (iii) the checking of alignment between the encoded requirements and annotated BPMN models based on these patterns, and (iv) the detection of conflicts between the specified requirements in the BPMN models based on a catalog of domain-independent anti-patterns. The security requirements were reused from SecBPMN2, a security-oriented BPMN 2.0 extension, while the fairness and data-minimization parts are new. For formulating our patterns and anti-patterns, we extended a graphical query language called SecBPMN2-Q. We report on the feasibility and the usability of our approach based on a case study featuring a healthcare management system, and an experimental user study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review the economic channels by which the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent policy responses may affect wildlife and biodiversity. The pandemic is put in the context of more than 5,000 disease outbreaks, natural disasters, recessions and armed conflicts in a sample of 21 high biodiversity countries. The most salient feature of the pandemic is its creation of multiple income shocks to rural and coastal households in biodiverse countries, correlated across sectors of activities and spatially. Various research and policy opportunities and challenges are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Syrian crisis caused a massive influx of displaced people into neighboring countries, with Lebanon hosting the highest per capita number of refugees (3:10). Water remains the most critical natural resource that influences the resilience of host and refugee communities. We provide a new GIS-based updated water balance and water scarcity analysis at the national and the watershed level in Lebanon by comparing current conditions to no-refugee levels. Results show a small (6%) increase in water stress in an average water year at the national level that masks hot spots of water scarcity at the local geography. While domestic water use increased by 20%, we find that refugees' water use is only 10% of agricultural water use in summer. We also show that interventions to rehabilitate the water networks can reduce water stress to better than pre-conflict levels (3% less stress). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecosystem services (ES) are highly impacted by human-induced land-use change. Progressive urbanization and agricultural land abandonment in Western Europe necessitate assessments of future land-change impacts on ES to ensure sustainable service management. The present study aims at evaluating future demand and supply of three key services (flood protection, nearby recreation and biodiversity) in the mountainous region of Vorarlberg, Austria. We mapped the ES for the referenced time step 2016 and two scenarios for 2050, assuming the continuation of current land-change trends and pressure on landscape development. Results for the referenced landscape in 2016 show the highest ES supply for intermediate levels, while ES supply was low in the lowlands and valley bottoms and in high-elevation areas. We found a high positive correlation of ES with the distribution of forested areas. In contrast, service demand was highest in low-elevation areas and decreased with increasing elevation. This indicates that densely settled and intensively used agricultural areas currently suffer from ES undersupply. The projected future development of land use showed an increase in both supply and demand of the selected ES. The overall service supply increased more than the respective demand due to some reforestation of open land. As forests were found to be important synergistic areas for overall service provision, we expect decreasing demand on related services. Locally, demand was found to exceed the supply of ES, especially in the densely populated Rhine valley- requiring further policy interventions. Such ES-related information may contribute to regional policy making and ensure the long-term provision of ESs for future generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Jiangsu coast, with the unique feature of expanding tidal flat along the west border of the South Yellow Sea, has the famous coastal ecosystem of tidal flat, which is also the habitat for the long-distance migration birds. Using the comprehensive analysis of the historical documents and historical maps as well as the remote sensing images, the authors reviewed the development and conservation of the tidal flat in Jiangsu coast. The development of the tidal flat has a long history of more than two thousand years. Salt production was the earliest economic purpose of the tidal flat development, obvious transition of the tidal flat use changed from salt production to farming in the late nineteenth century. The large-scale reclamation began in the early time of 1910s and the fast reclamation periods in the past century corresponded with the policy-oriented supporting from the government. The conservation of the tidal flat and the salt marsh in the central part of the Jiangsu coast oriented the setup of the Yancheng Wetland Conserves in the year of 1983. The conflicts between the tidal flat conservation and the development in the past decades was discussed in the aspect of the key periods. Large amount loss of tidal flat resulted in the food-rich, continuous wetland became more fragmental and food shortage along the tidal flat of Jiangsu coast. The author believed the policy and the decision- making play important role in the conflicts about the coastal wetland conservation and development in Jiangsu Province. There are more potentials for the improvement of the coastal development policy and decision-making in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the recent paradigmatic shift in conservation science, protected areas (PAs), which are associated with seminal conservation strategies, remain a key tool for achieving biodiversity conservation. Nevertheless, PAs' effectiveness as conservation measures is undermined by conflicts arising within their socio-ecological systems. Potential reasons for the negative impact of the conflicts include the tendency of researchers to emphasise managerial or behavioural aspects of conservation conflicts, while neglecting to develop theoretical foundations for conflict analysis. We aimed to critically review existing conceptual frameworks applied within the broadly defined field of conservation conflicts and to develop a new more comprehensive framework that better reflects contemporary identified challenges within nature conservation. We particularly proposed and emphasised the integration of a geographical perspective within existing interdisciplinary approaches for the application to PA settings. We systemised and unified conflict-related terminology, assessed the contributions and limitations of existing frameworks and identified critical gaps in the field. These gaps are: inadequate recognition of the spatial aspects of conflict analysis, a lack of consistency between individual-level and community-level frameworks and a lack of systematic linkages among the main structural attributes of conflicts, such as determinants, interests or types of conflicts. We systematically distinguished 26 conflict-related terms, including: conflict frames, images, orientations, factors, categories, issues, potential, or intensity. Our framework covers three major conflict components (determinants, dimensions, levels) and foregrounds the socio-psychological and spatial characteristics of PA conflicts, while enabling systemisation of existing conservation conflict typologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conflicts or disagreements during which negative, antagonistic emotions are expressed are perceived as uncomfortable. By contrast, disagreements accompanied by positive, affiliative emotions are less detrimental to interaction quality. We assessed whether individual differences in emotional mimicry have differential effects on interaction quality during disagreements with negative emotions compared to disagreements with positive emotions. For this, participants talked with someone who disagreed with them in a controlled laboratory setting, while emotional mimicry was assessed via facial EMG. The interaction partner showed either an antagonistic or an affiliative demeanor during the interaction. Following the interaction, participants reported on perceived interaction quality. In line with the Emotional Mimicry in Context view (Hess and Fischer in Pers Social Psychol Rev 17:142–157, 2013), emotional mimicry decreased interaction quality when the person who disagreed showed an antagonistic demeanor but increased interaction quality when the person who disagreed showed an affiliative demeanor. Furthermore, implicit affiliation motivation predicted emotional mimicry regardless the context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Pädiatrie & Pädologie is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Bycatch in fisheries can have profound effects on the abundance of species with relatively low resilience to increased mortality, can alter the evolutionary characteristics and concomitant fitness of affected populations through heritable trait-based selective removals, and can alter ecosystem functions, structure and services through food web trophic links. We challenge current piecemeal bycatch management paradigms, which reduce the mortality of one taxon of conservation concern at the unintended expense of others. Bycatch mitigation measures may also reduce intraspecific genetic diversity. We drew examples of broadly prescribed 'best practice' methods to mitigate bycatch that result in unintended cross-taxa conflicts from pelagic longline, tuna purse seine, gillnet and trawl fisheries. We identified priority improvements in data quality and in understanding ecological effects of bycatch fishing mortality to support holistic ecological risk assessments of the effects of bycatch removals conducted through semi-quantitative and model-based approaches. A transition to integrated bycatch assessment and management that comprehensively consider biodiversity across its hierarchical manifestations is needed, where relative risks and conflicts from alternative bycatch management measures are evaluated and accounted for in fisheries decision-making processes. This would enable managers to select measures with intentional and acceptable tradeoffs to best meet objectives, when conflicts are unavoidable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Version control systems such as Git support parallel collaborative work and became very widespread in the open-source community. Whilst Git offers some very interesting features, resolving conflicts that arise during synchronisation of parallel changes is a time-consuming task. In this paper we present an analysis of concurrency and conflicts in official Git repository of four projects: Rails, IkiWiki, Samba and Linux Kernel. We analyse the collaboration process of these projects at specific periods revealing how change integration and conflict rates vary during project development life-cycle. We also analyse how often users decide to rollback to previous document version when the integration process generates conflicts. Finally, we discuss the mechanism adopted by Git to consider changes made on two continuous lines as conflicting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Requirements uncertainty and conflict are the two pervasive phenomena that are currently receiving more attention in the development of information system (IS) projects. The existing literature based on requirements engineering indicates that, as a result of frequent interactions between users and IS practitioners, requirements uncertainty can negatively affect team performance. However, the nature of conflicts and requirements uncertainty have limited exploratory power with regard to software team effectiveness. The main objective of this work is to obtain additional insight into this phenomena by examining the relationships between requirements uncertainty (which comprises both requirements instability and variability) and conflict (i.e. task and relationship conflict). Furthermore, the impact of task and relationship conflict on team effectiveness has also been investigated separately. In order to address these relationships, a theoretical research model was developed and validated through an empirical study based on an online questionnaire survey. We gathered 71 complete responses, mostly from experts within the Indian software industry. The findings of this study indicate that there is a strong positive relationship between requirements instability and variability and relationship conflict; however, task conflict task conflict was not found to have a significant relationship with these dimensions. Additionally, we have observed a strong stronger negative effect of relationship conflict on team effectiveness than that of task conflict during the requirements uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptive water governance seeks to increase a social-ecological system’s adaptive capacity in the face of uncertainty and change. This is especially important in non-linear dryland systems that are already exposed to water scarcity and increasing degradation. Conservation of water ecosystem services is key for increasing adaptive capacity in drylands, however, how stakeholders perceive water ecosystem services greatly affects how they are managed, as well as the potential for adaptive water governance. This paper focuses on identifying the system’s potential for enabling adaptive water governance by analysing different stakeholder perceptions on water ecosystem services. It takes the Rio del Carmen watershed as a case study, offering important insights for an increasing number of water-scarce regions. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with key stakeholders in the watershed in order to unravel their perceptions and understand the governance context. We found disparities in how stakeholders perceive water ecosystem services have led to water overexploitation and several conflicts over water access. Our results indicate that stakeholder perceptions have a major influence on the system’s adaptability, as they shape the acquisition of water ecosystem services. Divergent stakeholder perceptions act as an important barrier to collaboration. Generating and sharing knowledge could facilitate the development of a common vision, allowing all actors to co-create information about water ecosystem services and the system state, engaging them in a participatory process, suitable for their context, and that will better support adaptive water governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose and analyze a new descriptive model of armed conflicts among N groups. The model is composed of N2 ordinary differential equations, with 3(N2+N) constant parameters that describe military characteristics and recruitment policies, ranging from pure defensivism to pure fanaticism. The results are only preliminary, but point out interesting (though not very surprising) properties: periodic coexistence is possible, and multiple attractors can exist; governmental groups cannot go extinct if they are highly defensivist, and rebels cannot be eradicated if they are highly fanatic. Shocks due to interventions of short duration of an external army can stabilize/destabilize the system and/or eradicate some group, and the same holds true for small structural changes. Other more subtle questions concerning, for example, the existence of chaotic regimes and the systematic evaluation of the role of strategic factors like power, intelligence, and fanaticism, remain open and require further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the sub-Saharan African countries, Ivory Coast has suffered more than 10 years of political instability and absence of peace. Using nationally representative household surveys, this study exploits temporal and geographical variations of the 1999-2011 Ivorian political instability to identify its causal effect on children's schooling and child mortality. The results showed that individuals who lived in conflict areas and who reached the official age to be enrolled in school within the period of the instability had a 10 % lower probability of being enrolled in school. Students who spent their school years during the conflict and who lived in an affected area experienced a lag in schooling attainment of more than a year. Older students or those who were likely to be in high school during the conflict underwent a loss in schooling attainment of nearly 2 years. In addition, results showed that the Ivorian armed conflict increased the mortality of children under age five by at least 3 %. My results also suggest that the deterioration of living conditions and the limitation of health service use during the conflict contributed to the explaination of these adverse effects. Placebo tests suggested that the results were not driven by preexisting differences across conflict and non-conflict areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business organisations have always existed in a constantly changing environment. To survive it is necessary for them to adapt and adjust to the changes. When analysing complex entities, such as organisations, researchers have frequently adopted the methods of action research. But with the advent of greater use of information and communication technology businesses are changing in their composition and one practical manifestation of this is the rise of virtual teams. Virtual teams reflect the trend for an organisation to comprise 'satellites' or clusters of expertise in different parts of the globe. Such a transformation of what we can now take as an organisation creates new challenges for managers and for those inquiring into organisational problems. In this paper we attempt to address the question whether action research is any longer a valid way of organisational intervention for the researcher and consultant alike. In this paper we describe field research in which a soft method of Action Research was used during the analysis phase of IS development as a means of understanding the problem domain, identifying information requirements, evaluating technologies and reducing conflicts. The research was conducted between two institutions that were separated by several thousand miles and all participants connected from individual locations using virtual synchronous ICT. The study provided insight into the use of AR in virtual settings and as a means of conflict resolution in virtual teams. The findings have implications for IS development (which is increasingly conducted in virtual teams), education and management among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While we primarily love individual persons, we also love our work, our homes, our activities and causes. To love is to be engaged in an active concern for the objective well-being-the thriving-of whom and what we love. True love mandates discovering in what that well-being consists and to be engaged in the details of promoting it. Since our loves are diverse, we are often conflicted about the priorities among the obligations they bring. Loving requires constant contextual improvisatory adjustment of priorities among our commitments. Besides delighting in-and being enhanced by-the presence and existence of another person (a place, an institution, profession), love requires extended reflection and work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies of financial development have shown that the quality of institutions is an important determinant of international financial flows to a country. Our paper contributes to this literature by examining and comparing the effects of internal conflict and terrorism on domestic credits extended to the private sector by banks in developing countries. We use a panel dataset for 125 developing countries over the 1984-2012 period to explore the relationship between political instability and bank lending. Internal conflict negatively affects domestic bank credit to the private sector, and the extent of this impact depends on the degree of ethnic fractionalization. The impact of terrorism, however, is not statistically robust. Our findings are also relevant for the literature that investigates the costs of conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With disagreement, doubts, or ambiguous grounds in end-of-life decisions, doctors are advised to involve a clinical ethics committee (CEC). However, little has been published on doctors' experiences with discussing an end-of-life decision in a CEC. As part of the quality assurance of this work, we wanted to find out if clinicians have benefited from discussing end-of-life decisions in CECs and why. We will disseminate some Norwegian doctors' experiences when discussing end-of-life decisions in CECs, based on semi-structured interviews with fifteen Norwegian physicians who had brought an end-of-life decision case to a CEC. Almost half of the cases involved conflicts with the patients' relatives. In a majority of the cases, there was uncertainty about what would be the ethically preferable solution. Reasons for referring the case to the CEC were to get broader illumination of the case, to get perspective from people outside the team, to get advice, or to get moral backing on a decision already made. A great majority of the clinicians reported an overall positive experience with the CECs' discussions. In cases where there was conflict, the clinicians reported less satisfaction with the CECs' discussions. The study shows that most doctors who have used a CEC in an end-of-life decision find it useful to have ethical and/or legal aspects illuminated, and to have the dilemma scrutinized from a new perspective. A systematic discussion seems to be significant to the clinicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]