An application of Social Values for Ecosystem Services (SolVES) to three national forests in Colorado and Wyoming

Despite widespread recognition that social-value information is needed to inform stakeholders and decision makers regarding trade-offs in environmental management, it too often remains absent from ecosystem service assessments. Although quantitative indicators of social values need to be explicitly accounted for in the decision-making process, they need not be monetary. Ongoing efforts to map such values demonstrate how they can also be made spatially explicit and relatable to underlying ecological information. We originally developed Social Values for Ecosystem Services (SolVES) as a tool to assess, map, and quantify nonmarket values perceived by various groups of ecosystem stakeholders. With SolVES 2.0 we have extended the functionality by integrating SolVES with Maxent maximum entropy modeling software to generate more complete social-value maps from available value and preference survey data and to produce more robust models describing the relationship between social values and ecosystems. The current study has two objectives: (1) evaluate how effectively the value index, a quantitative, nonmonetary social-value indicator calculated by SolVES, reproduces results from more common statistical methods of social-survey data analysis and (2) examine how the spatial results produced by SolVES provide additional information that could be used by managers and stakeholders to better understand more complex relationships among stakeholder values, attitudes, and preferences. To achieve these objectives, we applied SolVES to value and preference survey data collected for three national forests, the Pike and San Isabel in Colorado and the Bridger–Teton and the Shoshone in Wyoming. Value index results were generally consistent with results found through more common statistical analyses of the survey data such as frequency, discriminant function, and correlation analyses. In addition, spatial analysis of the social-value maps produced by SolVES provided information that was useful for explaining relationships between stakeholder values and forest uses. Our results suggest that SolVES can effectively reproduce information derived from traditional statistical analyses while adding spatially explicit, social-value information that can contribute to integrated resource assessment, planning, and management of forests and other ecosystems.     

Social isolation,and concentration effects: William Julius Wilson ­revisited and re-applied

Two concepts employed by William Julius Wilson in his effort to advance scholarship on race and urban poverty in America are social isolation and concentration effects. These concepts help comprise a conceptual scheme that provides an alternative lens to that which centres on the behaviour of the urban poor as the principal source of their troubled lives. This article elucidates a research agenda that asserts that the impact of social isolation and concentration effects extends beyond measures of distance or proximity to institutions and individuals that can enable greater efficacy for the urban poor. Rather, social isolation and the concentration of disadvantaged people within bounded geographic regions also facilitates serial patterns of social contact and exposure that become crucial factors for how people construct interpretations of social reality. These interpretations are crucial factors for initiating (or, in some cases, inhibiting) individual action on the part of the urban poor.     

海南猕猴的形态学特征及其适应性

本文通过测量猕猴海南亚种(Macaca mulatta brevicaudus)的形态学指标,讨论了该亚种的形态特点及其适应性意义。于2015年7-8月在海南省陵水县猕猴自然保护区对8个群的猕猴进行了形态学指标测量,共测得253只个体的体质量,132只个体的头长、顶臀长、尾长、前脚掌长、后脚掌长、前臂长、后臂长、大腿长、小腿长等体长数据。研究结果发现：1)猕猴海南亚种的体型明显小于位于更高纬度地区的川西亚种、福建亚种和指名亚种,也小于相近纬度的大陆猕猴,结果支持贝格曼法则和岛屿法则。2)猕猴海南亚种雄性的生长速度大于雌性,且前者体型显著大于后者。3)群大小对群内个体的体型无显著影响,无显著群间竞争。4)个体的体质量、头长、顶臀长随等级增加而增加,但是尾长、臂长、腿长和脚掌长与等级无显著相关关系。本文为探讨猕猴属的形态演化提供基础资料,同时也为濒危灵长类保护和管理提供科学依据。     

团体咨询改善小学生社会技能的实验研究

目的：通过实验研究表明团体咨询对改善小学生社会技能方面有重要作用。方法：某小学四年级一个班作为实验组,共41人（其中男生23人,女生18人）。采用前后测设计。对实验组进行十二次团体心理咨询,采用社会技能等级评定表进行前后测,以前后测结果的对照及受欢迎程度的改变值和喜欢他人程度的改变值作为效果指标。结果：在受欢迎程度上,前后测得分在受欢迎组、被拒绝组、低接纳组和女生中差异显著,被拒绝组学生团体咨询效果要优于受欢迎组的;在喜欢他人程度的改变上,低接纳组学生的团体咨询效果要优于高接纳组的;在受欢迎程度的改变上,女生的团体咨询效果要优于男生。结论：团体心理咨询对小学生社会技能的干预有效;采取班级团体心理咨询的方式,团体咨询的效果在人际关系不良的学生及女生中表现得更为明显。     

Social benefits of luxury brands as costly signals of wealth and status

Drawing from costly signaling theory, we predicted that luxury consumption enhances status and produces benefits in social interactions. Across seven experiments, displays of luxury — manipulated through brand labels on clothes — elicited different kinds of preferential treatment, which even resulted in financial benefits to people who engaged in conspicuous consumption. Furthermore, we tested preconditions in which the beneficial consequences of conspicuous consumption may arise and determined the proximate mechanisms underlying them. The present data suggest that luxury consumption can be a profitable social strategy because conspicuous displays of luxury qualify as a costly signaling trait that elicits status-dependent favorable treatment in human social interactions.     

Murtuka Yirraru: Automobility in Pilbara Song-Poems

Arguably one of the most enduring icons of modernity is the automobile. The innumerable songs about motor vehicles are testimony to this status. This article examines Pilbara Aboriginal (marrngu) songs about the murtuka (motorcar). Focusing on a particular style of song known as yirraru to Ngarla people of the De Grey River area in Western Australia, I explore a range of questions concerning the impact of automobility on marrngu lifeworlds. Is the ‘freedom of the road’ a value historically shared by marrngu and walypala? Or is the marrngu passion for automobility evinced in these yirraru simply an adaptation of precolonial values, beliefs, and behaviours associated with mobility? This is not an ethnomusicology article; I treat yirraru as narratives, narratives that convey something about the relational in marrngu modes of orientation and engagement with the motor vehicle. Using archival and ethnographic data, I argue that murtuka song-poems show that marrngu regarded motor vehicles as instrumental in their own efforts for autonomy in the decades in which these yirraru originated (1920–1960s). Ultimately I consider what the enthusiastic embrace of the murtuka by marrngu might say about the nature of sociocultural difference, similarity, and marrngu and walypala boundedness in the Pilbara.     

Factors influencing the temporal patterns of dyadic behaviours and interactions between domestic cats and their owners

Human-cat dyads may be similar in interaction structure to human dyads because many humans regard their cats as being social companions. Consequently, we predict that dyadic structure will be contingent on owner and cat personalities, sex, and age as well as duration of cohabitation of the partners. Forty owner-cat dyads were visited in their homes, on four occasions, during which their behaviours and interactions were video-taped. Behaviour was coded from tape and was analysed for temporal (t)-patterns using Theme^® (Noldus; Magnusson, 1996). Owner personality was assessed using the NEO-FFI. Five cat personality axes were identified by Principal Component Analysis (PCA) based on observer-rated items and on coded behaviours. We found that the higher the owner in neuroticism, the fewer t-patterns occurred per minute. The higher the owner in extraversion, the higher was the number of non-overlapping patterns per minute. The more “active” the cat, the fewer non-overlapping patterns occurred per minute, but the higher was the event type complexity. The older the cat, the lower was dyadic event type complexity. We suggest that basic temporal structures similar to those of human-cat dyads may also be found in other long-term and complex dyadic relationships, including those between humans.     

我国环境微生物学发展现状与面临的挑战—“第十三次全国环境微生物学学术研讨会”专刊序言

第十三次全国环境微生物学术研讨会于2010年11月在南京大学顺利召开,本次会议围绕"环境微生物与社会发展"的主题,在环境微生物学研究前沿、环境微生物与节能减排、环境微生物与气候变化、环境微生物资源发掘与应用、环境保护工程、污染环境生物修复、蓝藻水华衍生污染物与生态风险等诸多领域阐述了最新研究进展并展开了深入的研讨。为了展现国内环境微生物及相关交叉领域科研工作者取得的最新进展,《微生物学通报》针对"第十三次全国环境微生物学学术研讨会"组织出版了这期"环境微生物专刊",期望该专刊的出版有助于促进我国环境微生物学相关领域的交流与发展。     

Friends with benefits: Social support and its relevance for farm animal welfare

Despite growing interest in promoting positive welfare, rather than just alleviating poor welfare, potential measures of good welfare, and means to provide it, have remained elusive. In humans social support improves stress-coping abilities, health, and promotes positive psychological welfare. Therefore, social support may be a key approach to promote positive physical and psychological welfare in farm animals. However, the roles of positive social behaviors and social support have been overlooked in comparison to negative social behaviors such as agonistic interactions. The benefits of social partners on an animal's stress coping abilities and welfare are yet poorly understood.The purpose of this paper is to review the protective or buffering effects of social support against stressful challenges and its potential implications for farm animal welfare. The biology of social support is first presented with its behavior, endocrine, autonomic and immune components. The major factors modulating the social support process are then synthesized. Research and implications for animal welfare in different farm species are discussed. Lastly, this review identifies research areas that especially deserve further attention in our effort to understand and implement social support in farm animal welfare.Social support could constitute one of the foundations for welfare researchers to leap from the absence of negative welfare to the provision of positive welfare and emotional experiences.