Losing the watershed focus: a look at complex community-managed irrigation systems in Bolivia

Water policies tend to misrecognize the complexity of community-managed irrigation systems. This paper focuses on water allocation practices in peasant communities of the Bolivian interandean valleys. These communities manage complex irrigation systems, and tap water from several surface sources, many of them located outside the watershed boundaries, resulting in complex hydro-social networks. Historical claims, organizational capacity, resources availability, and geographical position and infrastructure are identified as the main factors influencing current water allocation. Examining the historical background and context-based conceptualizations of space, place and water system development are crucial to understanding local management practices and to improving water policies.     

“Crashing the gates” – selection criteria for television news reporting of traffic crashes

This study investigates which crash characteristics influence the probability that the crash is reported in the television news. To this purpose, all news items from the period 2006–2012 about traffic crashes from the prime time news of two Belgian television channels are linked to the official injury crash database. Logistic regression models are built for the database of all injury crashes and for the subset of fatal crashes to identify crash characteristics that correlate with a lower or higher probability of being reported in the news.     

Inferring urban land use using the optimised spatial reclassification kernel

In the 1990s, promising results in land-use classification were obtained by kernel-based contextual classification algorithms. Soon, however, it was recognised that kernel-based reclassifiers have important shortcomings and research instead focused on object-based image analysis. This study proposes a solution to two of the most important drawbacks of kernel-based reclassifiers: (1) the use of kernels tends to smooth boundaries between discrete land-use/land-cover parcels, and (2) it is difficult to determine a priori the optimum kernel size of the classifier. The Spatial Reclassification Kernel (SPARK) algorithm has been adapted in order to automatically optimise the kernel size depending on the spatial variation found in the neighbourhood of a pixel to be classified, resulting in the Optimised SPARK (OSPARK) algorithm. The performance of SPARK and OSPARK for land-use classification has been evaluated for the Dublin urban area (Ireland), using a Landsat TM image. The MOLAND land-use map of 1990 was used as a reference. Results show that the use of optimal kernel sizes instead of fixed kernel sizes reduces the omission and commission errors for most land-use classes.     

Professional Burnout in the Mirror: A Qualitative Study From a Lacanian Perspective.

This article reports on a qualitative interview study that examined the job experiences of a group of burned-out professionals (n = 15). The authors studied the meanings these professionals associate with incidents in their intersubjective relations, as well as how they relate these incidents to their identity. The interpretation of the data starts from Lacanian psychoanalytic theory on identity (Lacan's "schema of the 2 mirrors"). The authors show how the concepts under discussion enable one to trace burnout dynamics in the relation between subject and other. A tripartite conceptual model that accounts for dynamic processes is presented. Each process is formulated conceptually on the basis of Lacan's schema of the 2 mirrors and is discussed with narrative data drawn from interview research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Efficient performance analysis of newly proposed sleep-mode mechanisms for IEEE 802.16m in case of correlated downlink traffic

There is a considerable interest nowadays in improving energy efficiency of wireless telecommunications. The sleep-mode mechanism in WiMAX (IEEE 802.16) and the discontinuous reception (DRX) mechanism of LTE are prime examples of energy saving measures. Recently, Samsung proposed some modifications on the sleep-mode mechanism, scheduled to appear in the forthcoming IEEE 802.16m standard, aimed at minimizing the signaling overhead. In this work, we present a performance analysis of this proposal and clarify the differences with the standard mechanism included in IEEE 802.16e. We also propose some special algorithms aimed at reducing the computational complexity of the analysis.     

Explaining variation in safety performance of roundabouts

The conversion of an intersection into a roundabout has been proven to reduce generally the number of crashes with injuries or fatalities. However, evaluation studies frequently showed considerable individual differences in safety performance of roundabouts or particular groups of roundabouts. The main purpose in the present study was to explain the variance in safety performance of roundabouts through the use of state-of-the-art cross-sectional risk models based on crash data, traffic data and geometric data of a sample of 90 roundabouts in Flanders-Belgium. Poisson and gamma modelling techniques were used, the latter one since underdispersion in the crash data was observed. The results show that the variation in crash rates is relatively small and mainly driven by the traffic exposure. Vulnerable road users are more frequently than expected involved in crashes at roundabouts and roundabouts with cycle lanes are clearly performing worse than roundabouts with cycle paths. Confirmation is found for the existence of a safety in numbers-effect for bicyclists, moped riders and - with less certainty - for pedestrians at roundabouts.     

Additional road markings as an indication of speed limits: Results of a field experiment and a driving simulator study

Although speed limits are indicated by road signs, road users are not always aware, while driving, of the actual speed limit on a given road segment. The Roads and Traffic Agency developed additional road markings in order to support driver decisions on speed on 70 km/h roads in Flanders-Belgium. In this paper the results are presented of two evaluation studies, both a field study and a simulator study, on the effects of the additional road markings on speed behaviour. The results of the field study showed no substantial effect of the markings on speed behaviour. Neither did the simulator study, with slightly different stimuli. Nevertheless an effect on lateral position was noticed in the simulator study, showing at least some effect of the markings. The role of conspicuity of design elements and expectations towards traffic environments is discussed. Both studies illustrate well some strengths and weaknesses of observational field studies compared to experimental simulator studies.