Cartography and Clandestinité in Leïla Sebbar’s Shérazade: 17 ans, brune, frisée, les yeux verts

In this paper, I read Leïla Sebbar’s staging in her novel Shérazade: 17 ans, brune, frisée, les yeux verts of the resistance by children of North African and other immigrants in the early 1980s to the French state’s cartographic modes and documents of control. The paper will consider the many uses to which the map was put by the French state in its colonization of North Africa and particularly Algeria, and later in its attempts to control the banlieues its policies of citizenship and cartographic control yielded on the margins of Paris. In this context, I will explore the ways in which the novel’s characters, living clandestinely in a squatt, simultaneously resist, put to use, and even supercede state documents of control as they disrupt everyday life and conduct heists across the city of Paris. The paper will explore unofficial cartographies of Paris, from those afforded by the radios libres and alternative publications such as Libération and Sans Frontièrez, to oral and almost proverbial networks of knowledge criss-crossing the city of Paris, while also tracing the uses to which supplemental cartographic sketches and counterfeit identity cards are put in the pages of the novel. The paper will be in dialogue with theoretical and critical formulations of space, cartography, and state control put forward by Michel de Certeau, Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, and Tom Conley. The paper will conclude with a consideration of the means and limits of resistance by the novel’s characters in the context of this body of theory and criticism.     

Examination of the 'founder effect' in biodiversity research: patterns and imbalances in the published literature

We reviewed 2524 articles published from 1987 to 1995 in five international journals, Conservation Biology , Biological Conservation , Biodiversity and Conservation , Ecological Applications , and the Journal of Applied Ecology , to assess patterns and imbalances in biodiversity research in the following subject areas: locations where research was conducted, types of organisms studied, types of ecosystems studied, types of methodologies used, and types of stresses investigated. Biodiversity research was found to be narrowly focused with little deviation from its initial course set of being a discipline concerned largely with the implications of forest habitat loss on charismatic terrestrial megafauna; i.e. the 'founder effect' is very much in evidence. The 'sleeping dragon' of ignored marine biodiversity is really symptomatic of a wider problem, and can perhaps be referred to as a 'hibernating hydra' of many imbalances due to, for example, under-representations of research from developing nations, or on amphibians and invertebrates, alpine and arctic systems, sociological components and chemical stresses etc. It is time to take steps to actively awaken the creature so that conservation biology/applied ecology can become more pluralistic in scope.     

Flora Europaea: the background to the revision of Volume One

AKEROYD, J. R. & WALTERS, S. M. 1987. Flora Europaea: the background to the revision of Volume One. Flora Europaea, published 1964-80, is a synthetic catalogue of Europe's vascular plants. Its publication has provided a relatively stable taxonomic and nomenclatural framework for the study of the flora of the continent, and has stimulated much further research and publication. The revision of the first volume of Flora Europaea, at Reading University, has been necessary in order to accommodate new information, to satisfy the continued demand for a complete Flora of Europe, and to update the original text. The revision is being carried out in cooperation with other European and Mediterranean floristic projects.     

HomeRange: A global database of mammalian home ranges

Motivation

Home range is a common measure of use of space by animals because it provides ecological information that is useful for conservation applications. In macroecological studies, values are typically aggregated to species means to examine general patterns of use of space by animals. However, this ignores the environmental context in which the home range was estimated and does not account for intraspecific variation in home range size. In addition, the focus of macroecological studies on home ranges has historically been biased towards terrestrial mammals. The use of aggregated numbers and the terrestrial focus limit our ability to examine home-range patterns across different environments, their variation in time and variation between different levels of organization. Here, we introduce HomeRange, a global database with 75,611 home-range values across 960 different species of mammals, including terrestrial, aquatic and aerial species.

Main types of variables contained

The dataset contains estimates of home ranges of mammals, species names, methodological information on data collection, method of home-range estimation, period of data collection, study coordinates and name of location, in addition to species traits derived from the studies, such as body mass, life stage, reproductive status and locomotor habit.

Spatial location and grain

The collected data are distributed globally. Across studies, the spatial accuracy varies, with the coarsest resolution being 1°.

Time period and grain

The data represent information published between 1939 and 2022. Across studies, the temporal accuracy varies; some studies report start and end dates specific to the day, whereas for other studies only the month or year is reported.

Major taxa and level of measurement

Mammalian species from 24 of the 27 different taxonomic orders. Home-range estimates range from individual-level values to population-level averages.

Software format

Data are supplied as a comma-delimited text file (.csv) and can be loaded directly into R using the “HomeRange” R package ( https://github.com/SHoeks/HomeRange ).     

近20年黄土高原生态系统服务研究进展

生态系统服务是自然生态系统及其物种提供的供给和维持人类生存的条件和过程,是人类通过生态系统的功能直接或间接得到的产品或服务,具有典型的区域性特征。黄土高原是黄河流域重要生态安全屏障,生态建设规模大、历时长,是我国生态系统服务研究的重要案例区。已有研究针对黄土高原生态系统服务进行物质量与价值量估算、权衡与协同关系识别和供需关系评估,但不同结论之间缺少归纳和对比。研究对近20年来黄土高原地区生态系统服务研究的文献总体特征和主要研究发现分析表明：相关中英文论文数量和被引频次整体呈上升趋势,研究内容上主要关注黄土高原生态系统服务的定量估算,近年来逐渐向生态系统服务权衡分析和供需关系评估拓展;黄土高原地区自退耕还林以来,各项生态系统服务总量呈上升趋势,呈现出东南增量较多、西北增量较少的空间格局;黄土高原地区供给服务和调节服务存在较明显的权衡关系,但在不同尺度上强度分异明显;区域内生态系统服务供给量和需求量均呈增加趋势,供需匹配状况具有明显时空差异。面向当前研究中物质量评估种类不足、价值量估算高度不确定、权衡与协同现象缺乏归因、空间流动性体现不足等问题,未来黄土高原生态系统服务研究有待加强面向生态...     

中国森林生态系统净初级生产力时空分布及其对气候变化的响应研究综述

植被生产力是表征植被活力的关键变量,能够反映陆地生态系统的质量状况。森林净初级生产力(NPP)对气候变化的响应研究,是理解森林生态系统碳收支的基础,有助于认识气候变化与森林生态系统的相互作用机制,因而对于深刻理解陆地碳循环和全球变化均具有重要意义。目前我国已有大量针对近几十年国家和区域尺度上植被NPP时空分布的研究,其中专门针对森林生态系统NPP的研究也有不少。研究尺度多为全国范围或者片段式区域,以行政区或流域尺度最为多见。然而,这些研究总体比较分散,其中部分研究的结果、结论并不一致甚至相悖,尚缺乏异同性分析与比较,也缺乏系统性和综合性。这并不利于全面掌握我国相关研究的整体情况、了解清晰明确的研究结论以及进行更深层次的规律及原因探究,也非常影响对森林NPP的精确评估及机理认识,因而,对相关研究成果进行梳理、整合和总结非常有必要。鉴于此,本文收集了近几十年我国植被NPP研究的相关文献,依据其研究结果,系统地综述了全国及区域尺度森林生态系统NPP的时空分布规律及未来可能变化趋势,揭示出NPP与气候因子(以CO_2、温度、降水为主)的关系及对气候变化的响应情况,并指出目前国家研究中存在的主要问题及未来重点研究方向,以期为以后进一步的研究起到一定的索引和参考作用。     

Focus: Zoonotic Disease: The Practice of Science as the Pursuit of Knowledge

Choosing what scientific project to pursue is the most important decision that scientists at all levels continually face. Time devoted to a project can further desirable knowledge and advance a career or cost years in lost opportunity. Knowing what to consider before embarking on a specific scientific journey, as well as when to drop a project and change course, offers a way of practicing science that keeps us mindful of what is relevant at a given time and place while preserving our freedom to explore the most exciting findings. This article explores both the pressures that restrict this delicate decision-making process and the processes that scientists can apply to overcome those pressures. Above all else, as it turns out, we must still love the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake – and this love directly impacts our results.     

Relative efficiency of using summary versus individual data in random-effects meta-analysis

Meta-analysis is a statistical methodology for combining information from diverse sources so that a more reliable and efficient conclusion can be reached. It can be conducted by either synthesizing study-level summary statistics or drawing inference from an overarching model for individual participant data (IPD) if available. The latter is often viewed as the “gold standard.” For random-effects models, however, it remains not fully understood whether the use of IPD indeed gains efficiency over summary statistics. In this paper, we examine the relative efficiency of the two methods under a general likelihood inference setting. We show theoretically and numerically that summary-statistics-based analysis is at most as efficient as IPD analysis, provided that the random effects follow the Gaussian distribution, and maximum likelihood estimation is used to obtain summary statistics. More specifically, (i) the two methods are equivalent in an asymptotic sense; and (ii) summary-statistics-based inference can incur an appreciable loss of efficiency if the sample sizes are not sufficiently large. Our results are established under the assumption that the between-study heterogeneity parameter remains constant regardless of the sample sizes, which is different from a previous study. Our findings are confirmed by the analyses of simulated data sets and a real-world study of alcohol interventions.     

Ethnic identity and Chicano literature: How ethnicity affects reading and reading affects ethnic consciousness

This article interrogates the impact of readers’ ethnicity (Latino and non-Latino) on meanings crafted from Chicano literature. This article addresses the effect of Chicano literature on ethnic identity and worldview formation. The data source is participant observation and interviews with eighteen students in a college-level Chicano literature seminar in the United States. Latino students found that the literature spoke to their experience as Latinos, inciting a sense of membership in a community that merits inclusion in a college course. This connection with the literature transmuted into ethnic validation for nearly all Latino students. Non-Latinos, hindered from relating to the course content on an ethnic level, discovered alternate entryways into the texts that allowed for identification on other particular levels. Non-Latinos ascertained how ethnic distinctions partially shape human experience and that this understanding is critical to cross-cultural appreciation and empathy. Non-Latinos additionally perceived that a common humanity tunnels beneath ethnic difference.