珊瑚礁生态保护与管理研究

珊瑚礁以其极高的生物多样性和生物生产力以及优美的自然景观 ,为人们提供了生活需要和游乐的资源 ,但同时也受到过度利用的破坏 ,尤其是近年来显得更为严重 ,因而珊瑚礁的生态保护与管理成为近 2 0年来倍受关注的问题。本文回顾了国内外珊瑚礁生态保护和管理的一些研究成果 ,通过自然和社会经济调查 ,并根据保护、研究和可持续利用的原则 ,将雷州半岛灯楼角珊瑚礁保护区划分为野生区 ,保护区、季节性封闭区和一般使用区 ,并强调公众参与、社区组织和领导组成、教育和培训、资源管理等为保护和管理中的措施     

地方院校生物类专业微生物学课程体系的改革与建设

微生物学是生物类专业重要的一门核心课程,也是培养生物领域高级技术人员必修的一门课程。从教材建设、教学内容优化、教学方法和手段的改进、课程网站建设、开放式创新性自主实验构建及课程考核等方面介绍了微生物学课程的系列探索与实践。通过课程体系的改革与建设,促进了地方院校生物类专业微生物教学质量和教学水平的提高。     

National Celebration or Local Act of Reconciliation? Public Ritual Performance and Inter-Ethnic Relations in an Australian City

This is a study of the reshaping of Australia Day celebrations in Lismore, a small city in New South Wales, which was motivated by an attempt to make the celebrations inclusive of Indigenous people and to portray the Australian nation as unified rather than divided along lines of race and culture. It shows how and why a group of local people went about reconstructing the Day's events, and how this helped to shape (but not to homogenise) the symbolic messages conveyed. The analysis demonstrates how the specific changes were located structurally both in local initiatives concerning the relationship between Indigenous and White Australians, and also in a wider State and Federal context affecting this relationship. The nature and significance of the changes made to Australia Day are analysed by drawing on the anthropology of performance and other work on public ritual.     

Community-based Monitoring of Fog Capture and Biodiversity at Loma Alta,Ecuador Enhance Social Capital and Institutional Cooperation

Monitoring of fog capture and bird communities helped to build social capital for conservation at Loma Alta, Ecuador and encouraged the local community to protect 3000 hectares of tropical forest. Data collected during monitoring were used to facilitate action and cooperation at local, regional, national, and international levels for conservation of biodiversity in western Ecuador, including the designation of an Important Bird Area in the region. Through involvement with the monitoring efforts, local people became more aware of the value of ecosystem services, learned about local birds and their conservation status, became familiar with ecotourism, and began to include conservation of biodiversity with sustainable development planning in their community. The context of monitoring, the objectives and participants, field methods, impacts in terms of conservation action, and the costs and benefits of the two monitoring initiatives are described.     

Perspectives in marine science: A European point of view

Marine research has always been a field in science which was particularly open to, and at times dependent on, international cooperation, and this has become even more obvious during the last decade when issues of global change became central to any discussion. The global nature of scientific and other problems, required the development of new concepts and led to the establishment of new structures in research, coordination and funding on an international level. In Europe the 12 member European Community often served as a nucleus for larger networks and initiatives (e.g. COST, EUREKA), and in 1989 the EC itself launched a specific programme on marine research and technology (MAST). The various initiatives are not meant to replace, national efforts but to complement them — where added value arises from international cooperation, e.g. in global programmes like IGBP, WCRP and their various core projects. The focus of support for these programmes through international funding agencies and networks is not primarily on additional research money but more on structural support and coordination. In contrast, the MAST targeted projects on the North Atlantic margin and the Mediterranean also receive substantial basic support, and are designed to fill gaps left by other international research projects. Both EC and other projects profit from the coordinating measures offered by the EC Commission. A more efficient use of facilities (research vessels, special equipment) can be achieved by having central information services. Well-integrated international projects also require additional efforts in standardization of instrumentation, methods and units, with respect to sampling, sample processing and data treatment. Furthermore, the scope of the task to tackle questions of global change demands the development of new technologies like ROVs, biosensors, automatized sample and data acquisition and treatment, etc. Full exploitation of the results in scientific, political and economical terms is only facilitated through special concertation. Mathematical modelling of ecosystems is still in its infancy and needs further cooperative development in order to provide tools for forecasting and management. Finally, training and exchange of personnel on a European, and possibly wider, level needs to be intensified in order to meet the requirements of modern science.     

Ethnobotanical Survey of Medicinal Plants at Periodic Markets of Autonomous County of Gongcheng Yao in Guangxi

Gongcheng is the second largest county in Guangxi with about 163000 Yao population. Periodic Markets are important places for trading of medicinal plants harvested by Gongcheng Yao villagers. The study aimed to look into the marked traded medicinal plants that are used by local people for curing various ailments. Ethnobotanical market survey methods, interviews, Participatory Action Research (PAR) and field visits were planned to elicit information on the uses of various medicinal plants. It was found that 71 plant species in the market which belong to 41 families are commonly used by local people for curing various diseases, all species are wild plants. A total of 133 records of medical uses in 52 herbal recipes for the treatment some common diseases. In most of the recipes recorded, digestion diseases, respiratory system diseases, infectious diseases,rheumatological diseases and surgery are used. The traditional knowledge about the number of medicinal plants available in that area and used by interviewees was positively correlated with the threats on medicinal plants in the wild habitats of the research area, which indicating that the diversity of wild medicinal plants and the associated traditional knowledge trends to disappear in the area.     

广西恭城瑶族集市药用植物的民族植物学调查

采用民族植物学的研究方法和手段,对恭城瑶族境内周期性集市药用植物及相关的传统知识进行了调查。主要研究结果如下：恭城瑶族民众与野生药用植物的关系极为密切,研究地区集市中常见药用植物71种,均为野生植物,常用于治疗肠胃、呼吸道、感染、风湿和外伤等疾病。在调查地区的野生药用植物资源及相关的传统知识面临着新的威胁,亟待采取必要的措施予以保护。     

Local technicians in long-term research projects: evaluation of 25 years experience in an active tropical research station

Most field ecology is conceived and financed by scientists from urban areas but is actually carried out in rural areas. Field staff can either be imported from urban areas or recruited from local residents. We evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of involving rural residents as local technicians over a 25- year period at active field research site in Costa Rica. We defined "local technicians" as local residents with no university education who acquired significant experience in field data collection, data management and/or laboratory work. We analyzed the experiences of incorporating these technicians into field research in developing countries from the points of view of scientist and of the local technicians themselves. Primary data were written responses from to a standardized survey of 19 senior scientists and Ph.D. students,and results from standardized personal interviews with 22 local technicians. Researchers highlighted the advantages of highly-skilled technicians with minimal staff turnover, as well as the technicians' knowledge of local ecological conditions. Local technicians considered the primary advantages of their jobs to be opportunities for continuing education training in science as well as cultural enrichment through interactions with people of different cultures. The main challenges identified by researchers were the lack of long-term funding for projects and extended training required for local technicians. Local technicians can be of great benefit to research projects by providing high-quality data collection at reasonable costs with low staff turnover. Over the last 25 years the research model at the field station we studied has evolved to the point that most long-term projects now depend heavily on local technicians. This model of involving local technicians in long-term research has multiple benefits for the researchers, the technicians and the local community, and could be adapted to a variety of settings in rural areas of developing countries.     

Impact of health research capacity strengthening in low- and middle-income countries: the case of WHO/TDR programmes

Background

Measuring the impact of capacity strengthening support is a priority for the international development community. Several frameworks exist for monitoring and evaluating funding results and modalities. Based on its long history of support, we report on the impact of individual and institutional capacity strengthening programmes conducted by the UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) and on the factors that influenced the outcome of its Research Capacity Strengthening (RCS) activities.

Methodology and Principal Findings

A mix of qualitative and quantitative methods (questionnaires and in-depth interviews) was applied to a selected group of 128 individual and 20 institutional capacity development grant recipients that completed their training/projects between 2000 and 2008. A semi-structured interview was also conducted on site with scientists from four institutions. Most of the grantees, both individual and institutional, reported beneficial results from the grant. However, glaring inequities stemming from gender imbalances and a language bias towards English were identified. The study showed that skills improvement through training contributed to better formulation of research proposals, but not necessarily to improved project implementation or communication of results. Appreciation of the institutional grants'' impact varied among recipient countries. The least developed countries saw the programmes as essential for supporting basic infrastructure and activities. Advanced developing countries perceived the research grants as complementary to available resources, and particularly suitable for junior researchers who were not yet able to compete for major international grants.

Conclusion

The study highlights the need for a more equitable process to improve the effectiveness of health research capacity strengthening activities. Support should be tailored to the existing research capacity in disease endemic countries and should focus on strengthening national health research systems, particularly in the least developing countries. The engagement of stakeholders at country level would facilitate the design of more specific and comprehensive strategies based on local needs.     

Gene Function Prediction Based on the Gene Ontology Hierarchical Structure

The information of the Gene Ontology annotation is helpful in the explanation of life science phenomena, and can provide great support for the research of the biomedical field. The use of the Gene Ontology is gradually affecting the way people store and understand bioinformatic data. To facilitate the prediction of gene functions with the aid of text mining methods and existing resources, we transform it into a multi-label top-down classification problem and develop a method that uses the hierarchical relationships in the Gene Ontology structure to relieve the quantitative imbalance of positive and negative training samples. Meanwhile the method enhances the discriminating ability of classifiers by retaining and highlighting the key training samples. Additionally, the top-down classifier based on a tree structure takes the relationship of target classes into consideration and thus solves the incompatibility between the classification results and the Gene Ontology structure. Our experiment on the Gene Ontology annotation corpus achieves an F-value performance of 50.7% (precision: 52.7% recall: 48.9%). The experimental results demonstrate that when the size of training set is small, it can be expanded via topological propagation of associated documents between the parent and child nodes in the tree structure. The top-down classification model applies to the set of texts in an ontology structure or with a hierarchical relationship.     

Somatic embryogenesis in forestry with a focus on Europe: state-of-the-art, benefits, challenges and future direction

Vegetative propagation of forest trees offers advantages to both tree breeders and the forest industry. This review will describe benefits, type of vegetative propagation, and its integration into breeding programmes. Of all of the different methods for vegetative propagation, only rooted cuttings and somatic embryogenesis (and the combined use of both) offer any practical methods for large-scale commercial use. However, it is very difficult to fully appreciate the overall level of activity of the research and application of somatic embryogenesis of forest trees. Publications and reports only highlight a small fraction of the ongoing work. To this end, a survey was conducted across Europe (under EU Research Infrastructure Concerted Action “Treebreedex”) to document the species involved, the state-of-the-art of somatic embryogenesis, its stage of development and its application in tree improvement programmes and to commercial forestry. The results of this survey are presented and discussed. In addition, this review presents the challenges (biological, economic, public acceptance and regulatory) and their relationships to European forestry. Finally, a strategy to promote the use of this technology is proposed.     

丛枝菌根真菌生物地理学研究进展

丛枝菌根真菌(arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi,AMF)普遍存在于陆地生态系统中,能与绝大多数高等植物形成菌根共生体系。AMF能够促进植物对矿质养分的吸收,增强植物的抗逆能力,在维持生态系统稳定性和生产力中发挥着重要作用。AMF生物地理学主要研究AMF的生物地理分布格局和群落构建机制,对于理解AMF在不同生态系统中的重要性至关重要。总结了AMF生物地理学最新研究进展及研究方法,提出了AMF生物地理学研究理论框架。认为AMF在自然界中并非简单随机分布,宿主植物、地理因子、气候因子和土壤因子共同决定AMF的群落结构,不同尺度下的AMF群落构建符合生态位-中性连续统假说,但在不同尺度下这些驱动因子的相对重要性不同。在全球尺度和区域尺度下,AMF的地理分布格局主要受地理距离和气候因子的影响,中性理论的作用大于生态位理论。随着空间尺度的缩减,宿主植物和环境因子对AMF群落的影响胜过地理距离和扩散限制的作用,生态位理论取代中性理论在AMF群落构建中的主导地位。此外,很多研究发现,同一生境中AMF的群落构建机制并非一成不变,会随环境的变化而发生改变。在未来的研究中,应在野外调查和公共数据库的基础上加强整合分析和数据挖掘工作,从而进一步丰富和完善AMF生物地理学理论。     

How long does it take to become fit?

To become fit an individual must generate optimal muscle strength and must develop cardiopulmonary reserve, or stamina. Physical fitness programmes require motivation, a graded series of appropriately designed exercises, and scientific surveillance. Motivation and efficiency in fitness programmes depends on early positive feedback to participants, confirming that stamina and strength are developing. A practical field experiment was performed to determine the minimum time that healthy young adults require to reach an initial plateau in objective measures of fitness. Fifty male university undergraduates were studied during an annual volunteer military training camp. Thirty had volunteered to take part in the fitness programme; the remaining 20 had initially rejected the offer but underwent the programme as part of their military training and acted as unmotivated controls. All the subjects became fit within 14 days of starting training, with objective improvement in both absolute strength and pulse recovery times. Non-motivated individuals, training with motivated individuals for 20 minutes each day, can therefore achieve levels of fitness indistinguishable from those of healthy highly motivated subjects. Fitness programmes must be carefully supervised, however, with medical examinations for those about to undergo vigorous exercise.     

Action-oriented use of ergonomic checkpoints for healthy work design in different settings

Recent experiences in the action-oriented use of ergonomic checkpoints in different work settings are reviewed. The purpose is to know what features are useful for healthy work design adjusted to each local situation. Based on the review results, common features of ergonomic checkpoints used in participatory training programs for improving workplace conditions in small enterprises, construction sites, home work and agriculture in industrially developing countries in Asia are discussed. These checkpoints generally compile practical improvement options in a broad range of technical areas, such as materials handling, workstation design, physical environment and work organization. Usually, "action checklists" comprising the tiles of the checkpoints are used together. A clear focus is placed on readily applicable low-cost options. Three common features of these various checkpoints appear to be important. First, the checkpoints represent typical good practices in multiple areas. Second, each how-to section of these checkpoints presents simple improvements reflecting basic ergonomic principles. Examples of these principles include easy reach, fewer and faster transport, elbow-level work, coded displays, isolated or screened hazards and shared teamwork. Third, the illustrated checkpoints accompanied by corresponding checklists are used as group work tools in short-term training courses. Many practical improvements achieved are displayed in websites for inter-country work improvement networks. It is suggested to promote the use of locally adjusted checkpoints in various forms of participatory action-oriented training in small-scale workplaces and in agriculture particularly in industrially developing countries.     

New applications of biological monitoring for environmental exposure and susceptibility monitoring. Report of the 7th International Symposium on Biological Monitoring in Occupational and Environmental Health

Validated biological monitoring methods are used in large-scale monitoring programmes involving determination of ubiquitous environmental pollutants such as metals and pesticides. Some programmes focus on children's exposure, and policies to prevent adverse health effects. Most of these initiatives are aimed at characterizing trends. Some of these programmes are designed to investigate the role of certain exposures in disease. Fewer new biological monitoring methods were presented during the present meeting than in previous meetings. All of these new methods used mass spectrometric-based detection and quantification. There is an increasing use of biomarkers to study genetic polymorphisms of enzyme systems involved in both toxification pathways and metabolite conjugation and DNA repair. At the meeting a discussion was started that could lead to a further harmonization of the scientific fundaments of the use of biological monitoring in occupational health with possible value also for applications in the field of environmental health.     

Understanding of Factors that Enable Health Promoters in Implementing Health-Promoting Schools: A Systematic Review and Narrative Synthesis of Qualitative Evidence

Health-promoting schools have been regarded as an important initiative in promoting child and adolescent health in school settings using the whole-school approach. Quantitative research has proved its effectiveness in various school-based programmes. However, few qualitative studies have been conducted to investigate the strategies used by health promoters to implement such initiatives. In this study, the researchers conducted a systematic review and narrative synthesis of the qualitative literature to identify important enablers assisting the implementation of health-promoting schools from the perspectives of health promoters. Five enablers have been identified from the review: (a) Following a framework/guideline to implement health-promoting schools; (b) Obtaining committed support and contributions from the school staff, school board management, government authorities, health agencies and other stakeholders; (c) Adopting a multidisciplinary, collaborative approach to implementing HPS; (d) Establishing professional networks and relationships; and (e) Continuing training and education in school health promotion. This highlights the importance of developing school health policies that meet local health needs, and socio-cultural characteristics that can foster mutual understanding between the health and education sectors so as to foster health promotion in children and adolescents.     

Validating Community-Led Forest Biomass Assessments

The lack of capacity to monitor forest carbon stocks in developing countries is undermining global efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Involving local people in monitoring forest carbon stocks could potentially address this capacity gap. This study conducts a complete expert remeasurement of community-led biomass inventories in remote tropical forests of Papua New Guinea. By fully remeasuring and isolating the effects of 4,481 field measurements, we demonstrate that programmes employing local people (non-experts) can produce forest monitoring data as reliable as those produced by scientists (experts). Overall, non-experts reported lower biomass estimates by an average of 9.1%, equivalent to 55.2 fewer tonnes of biomass ha^-1, which could have important financial implications for communities. However, there were no significant differences between forest biomass estimates of expert and non-expert, nor were there significant differences in some of the components used to calculate these estimates, such as tree diameter at breast height (DBH), tree counts and plot surface area, but were significant differences between tree heights. At the landscape level, the greatest biomass discrepancies resulted from height measurements (41%) and, unexpectedly, a few large missing trees contributing to a third of the overall discrepancies. We show that 85% of the biomass discrepancies at the tree level were caused by measurement taken on large trees (DBH ≥50cm), even though they consisted of only 14% of the stems. We demonstrate that programmes that engage local people can provide high-quality forest carbon data that could help overcome barriers to reducing forest carbon emissions in developing countries. Nonetheless, community-based monitoring programmes should prioritise reducing errors in the field that lead to the most important discrepancies, notably; overcoming challenges to accurately measure large trees.     

脊椎动物学野外实习教学改革与实践

随着人们对自然资源保护意识的提高以及高校课程改革的发展,传统的脊椎动物学野外实习模式已经不能适应新形势下的教学要求。如何在不破坏自然资源和有限的实习时间内取得令人满意的野外实习效果,是很多高校生物学教师面临的挑战。基于作者自身的教学实践,对山地脊椎动物学野外实习教学方式、教学内容以及考核方式的改革进行了探讨。     

Treadmill control protocols for arbitrary work rate profiles combining simultaneous nonlinear changes in speed and angle

Treadmill training and testing applications combine changes in speed and angle to achieve a target work rate profile. Here we derive new methods which increase the flexibility available in the design of such protocols.Current methods of computing speed and angle are first reformulated in terms of work rate, rather than time, so that the existing limitation to work rate ramps is removed: the new methods allow arbitrary changes in work rate over time. New solutions are derived which allow the speed and angle functions to be positioned arbitrarily within the available speed and angle envelopes. It is shown that the methods can be easily specialised to the particular case of an incremental exercise test where work rate is defined to increase linearly with respect to time.The new methods facilitate the definition of arbitrary, possibly discontinuous, work rate profiles while permitting complete flexibility in the design of speed and angle profiles for treadmill training and testing applications.     

What determines attitude of local people towards tiger and leopard in Nepal?

Understanding attitude of local people towards big cats is vital for conservation interventions to succeed. Taking tigers and leopards as focal species, we investigated local peoples' attitude towards four subjects—tiger, tiger conservation, leopard, and leopard conservation—considering demographic and socio-economic factors as well as past experience with such predators in Nepal's first national park and a world heritage site, Chitwan National Park. The data were collected from 414 local people using structured questionnaires and their attitude towards the four subjects determined. We performed ordinal logistic regression analysis to identify the best fitted model and significant variables affecting attitudes. While majority of the people (51%) strongly liked tigers, fewer people (38%) had similar view while it came to leopard. However, a greater proportion of people strongly agreed that the conservation of tigers (61%) and leopards (53%) is important. About 12% people had negative attitude towards both big cats. We found women and low income respondents to likely have negative attitudes and higher caste Hindus to have positive attitudes towards both big cats and their conservation. Better educated persons and the owners to larger herds of livestock only agreed on conservation of tiger but not leopard. Past experience with the predator negatively affected attitude towards tiger but not leopard. We suggest the identified cohort of people with negative attitudes be more targeted in conservation initiatives. The reasons behind the similarities and differences in peoples’ attitudes are discussed and designation of species-specific programmes for both cats is recommended.