The Challenges of Inclusive Cross-Scale Collective Action in Watersheds

Abstract

Increasing attention to watershed management is part of an international policy trend toward integrated water resource management. Integration is multidimensional—across sectors, administrative regions, ministerial portfolios and levels of hydrologic structure and socioeconomic organization. Collective action is key. Individuals need to work effectively together to share common water points; upstream land users and downstream water consumers need to manage and resolve potential conflicts over water quantity and quality, while all the industries, farming communities, urban residents and public agencies that have interests in resource use and environmental quality need to agree on development and conservation objectives and approaches at the basin level. Initiatives that seek to foster collective action in watersheds need to account for the very different interests in water and watershed management. While there may be relatively straightforward ways to foster collective action at a local scale, some forms of collective action may, in fact, be detrimental to other stakeholders. In the developing world in particular, there are often geographic pockets and social groups that are chronically disadvantaged in collective and public processes. Water-users' associations and basin authorities may exacerbate these disparities and further marginalize already poor people. New statutory institutions may intentionally or inadvertently disempower effective customary local institutions. To enable project and program designers to address these challenges better, this paper lays out a framework for assessing the potential for, and implications of, individual and collective decisions in a watershed context. The framework integrates concepts drawn from the biophysical and social sciences, including new perspectives on watershed components, poverty, and collective action. Collective action is seen as a fractal process: collective action for water management at one level of social-spatial organization can have spillover effects at lower and higher levels of social-spatial resolution. To be pro-poor, watershed-management institutions must be genuinely inclusive, deliberately recognizing the interests, perspectives and knowledge of groups that may be systematically excluded from other political and social processes. Researchers, evaluators, watershed-management practitioners and others who apply the framework should be better placed to lay the foundations for that illusive goal: pro-poor, inclusive and resource-conserving development.     

A resistometric study of ageing in nimonic alloys (II). 80a

Part II of this paper concerns the resistance changes observed on the isothermal ageing of solution-treated Nimonic 80A. Ageings were carried out in the temperature range 800 K to 1040 K. The nucleation of γ' is initially controlled by the supersaturation of quenched-in vacancies; this transient rapidly decays to leave precipitation controlled by thermally activated vacancies. The activation energy of the initial ageing rate, of $\text{1.10 ± 0.10}$ eV, is associated with the migration of Al and Ti into Ni-rich regions and possibly with a relaxation process on nucleation. The time for the resistance change to reach a maximum is strongly temperature-dependent in 80A. The activation energy for this process, $\text{2.9 ± 0.3}$ eV, agrees with the accepted values for the isothermal diffusion activation energy     

Reflectance spectroscopy of oxide films. II. Oxide layers on chromium metal

Infrared reflectance spectra of oxidized chromium are presented as the first of a series of investigations of the reflectance spectra of oxidized materials. The spectra agree well with the behavior predicted in an earlier note, and confirm that simultaneous identification and thickness measurements of corrosion films are possible using this technique. The most prominent features for identification purposes are absorption bands at 610, 540, and 440 cm ^–1 for films 1.5- thick, and at 610 and 300 cm^–1 for thicker films. These bands are discernable despite the complicated effects introduced by interference fringes in the low-energy spectral region.     

Self‐Compensation in Transparent Conducting F‐Doped SnO2

The factors limiting the conductivity of fluorine‐doped tin dioxide (FTO) produced via atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition are investigated. Modeling of the transport properties indicates that the measured Hall effect mobilities are far below the theoretical ionized impurity scattering limit. Significant compensation of donors by acceptors is present with a compensation ratio of 0.5, indicating that for every two donors there is approximately one acceptor. Hybrid density functional theory calculations of defect and impurity formation energies indicate the most probable acceptor‐type defects. The fluorine interstitial defect has the lowest formation energy in the degenerate regime of FTO. Fluorine interstitials act as singly charged acceptors at the high Fermi levels corresponding to degenerately n‐type films. X‐ray photoemission spectroscopy of the fluorine impurities is consistent with the presence of substitutional F_O donors and interstitial F_i in a roughly 2:1 ratio in agreement with the compensation ratio indicated by the transport modeling. Quantitative analysis through Hall effect, X‐ray photoemission spectroscopy, and calibrated secondary ion mass spectrometry further supports the presence of compensating fluorine‐related defects.     

Impacts of HIV / AIDS on food consumption and wild food use in rural South Africa

HIV/AIDS can affect household food consumption in many ways, including through reductions in availability and quality of labour, reductions in earned income, and increased expenditure on medications. In rural South Africa, these negative effects can be buffered by social safety net programs provided by government and collection of wild foods. Despite some acknowledgement of the potential safety net role of wild foods, however, their contribution relative to other food sources in the context of HIV/AIDS remains underexplored. Here we report empirical findings from two rural communities in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to characterise food sources, intake and calories from 68 HIV/AIDS afflicted households and 87 non-afflicted households every quarter over 12 months. Results show that diets were moderately well-balanced though limited in variety, with cereal items contributing 52 % to total calorie intake. The bulk of food consumed by households was purchased, with supplementation from own production, collected wild vegetables and collected wild fruits. Up to 20 % of respondents from both HIV/ AIDS afflicted and non-afflicted households had insufficient daily caloric intake. Multivariate analyses show that, all else equal, individuals living in households afflicted by HIV/AIDS consumed fewer calories, had less diverse diets, and were more dependent on wild foods than those living in non-afflicted households. Given the detrimental effects of HIV/AIDS on income and home production, wild foods represent a free and readily available food source for vulnerable households.     

Direct introduction of phosphonate by the surface modification of polymers enhances biocompatibility

A novel chemical method for the modification of polystyrene and nylon polymers by the reaction of diaryl carbenes permits the direct and efficient introduction of phosphonate residues upon the polymer surface. The method is simple to execute, involving solution coating to adsorb the reactive coating agent, followed by drying and thermolysis at temperatures not greater than 150 °C. This material can be further modified to the calcium phosphonate derivative, by treatment with aqueous calcium hydroxide. The modified polymers show enhanced biocompatibility of the modified polymer, as evidenced by the improved growth of MG63 human osteosarcoma cell line on the surface. This method is of significance since it offers a simple chemical protocol for the tailoring of the surface properties of materials, it avoids the need to construct ab initio new polymers for a given application, it provides an alternative to existing surface modification protocols, and it extends the range of polymers suitable as biocompatible materials .     

Some Biochemical Processes Induced by Radiation as Studied by Pulse Radiolysis

The main types of biochemically important electron transfer substances can be made to undergo reactions under irradiation which in some ways mimic those which occur in nature. In the case of NAD⁺, pulse radiolysis shows that electrons add to the pyridine ring forming an NAD· radical with a characteristic absorption in the visible range which is capable of transferring its electron to oxygen. Using simpler pyridinyl compounds it has been found that, as well as the absorptions in the visible range, the radicals exhibit absorptions in the infrared range which correlate well with transitions which may be deduced from the known charge-transfer bands of the parent compound. The NAD· radical can be made by one-electron oxidation of NADH as well as by reduction of NAD⁺, and the reaction with oxygen enables NADH to be converted into NAD⁺ by an unambiguous free radical route. Cytochrome-c can be reduced either by hydrated electrons or CO₂^?. In solution buffered to neutral pH, the reduction gives rise immediately to normal reduced cytochrome-c, but in mildly alkaline solution, an unstable reduced form appears whose conformation changes over a fraction of a second to that of normal reduced cytochrome-c. As well as the hydrated electron and CO₂^?, the superoxide anion radical O₂^? has also been found to reduce cytochrome-c. This reaction is very slow (k ～ 10⁵ M^?1 sec^?1).     

Chemomechanics of ionically conductive ceramics for electrical energy conversion and storage

Functional materials for energy conversion and storage exhibit strong coupling between electrochemistry and mechanics. For example, ceramics developed as electrodes for both solid oxide fuel cells and batteries exhibit cyclic volumetric expansion upon reversible ion transport. Such chemomechanical coupling is typically far from thermodynamic equilibrium, and thus is challenging to quantify experimentally and computationally. In situ measurements and atomistic simulations are under rapid development to explore how this coupling can be used to potentially improve both device performance and durability. Here, we review the commonalities of coupling between electrochemical and mechanical states in fuel cell and battery materials, illustrating with specific cases the progress in materials processing, in situ characterization, and computational modeling and simulation. We also highlight outstanding questions and opportunities in these applications – both to better understand the limiting mechanisms within the materials and to significantly advance the durability and predictability of device performance required for renewable energy conversion and storage.     

High-performance sorting algorithms for the CRAY T3D parallel computer

In this paper we study the sorting performance of a 128-processor CRAY T3D and discuss the efficient use of the toroidal network connecting the processors. The problems we consider range from that of sorting one word per processor to sorting the entire memory of the machine, and we give efficient algorithms for each case. In addition, we give both algorithms that make assumptions about the distribution of the data and those that make no assumptions. The clear winner, if data can be assumed to be uniformly distributed, is a method that we call a hash-and-chain sort. The time for this algorithm to sort one million words per processor over 64 processors is less than two seconds, which compares favorably to about four seconds using a 4-processor CRAY C90 and about 17 seconds using a 64-processor Thinking Machines CM-5.