Property Rights in Fisheries: Iceland’s Experience with ITQs

The fundamental problem of economic inefficiency in fisheries, the so-called common property problem, may be seen to be caused by inadequate or lacking property rights in the underlying natural resources. The introduction of Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) into fisheries represents an attempt to correct this failure. ITQs, however, are not property rights in the relevant natural resources, i.e. the fish stocks and their habitat. They are merely harvesting rights and thus far from ideal as property rights. Nevertheless, ITQs have been introduced in numerous fisheries around the world, apparently with generally, even consistently, good economic results. This paper outlines the basic theory of property rights and the strengths and weaknesses of ITQs as property rights in fisheries. The paper goes on to discuss the Icelandic ITQ system and compares its property rights value with that of the New Zealand ITQ system and the Norwegian IQ system. Finally, the paper reviews some measures of the economic outcomes of the ITQ system in Iceland.     

Ambivalent moralities of cooperation and corruption: Local explanations for (under)development on a Philippine island

Concepts of development are inevitably loaded with value judgements concerning what constitutes ‘proper’ social and economic organisation. Focusing on the cultural politics of development on Siquijor, an island in the Central Visayas region of the Philippines, this paper explores these often tacit ideals. It considers one of the key idioms Siquijodnon use in explaining how development is brought about—cooperation—and some of its locally perceived opposites—‘crab mentality’, politicking and corruption—which contain powerful moral critiques of self and society. On Siquijor, local discourses of development have it that widespread poverty in the Philippines demonstrates a failing of Filipinos to live up to supposedly universal norms of ethical socio‐economic conduct. However, I argue that attention to local norms of moral economy reveal the ambivalence underlying these notions of development, particularly in relation to the roles of individualism and reciprocity in socio‐economic organisation.     

REDD Policy Impacts on Indigenous Property Rights Regimes on Palawan Island, the Philippines

Several Southeast Asian states have been working feverishly to design and implement REDD policy frameworks to fulfil their commitment to global climate change mitigation. In doing so, state agencies will be challenged to design REDD plus policies that value and conserve forest carbon in ways that align with national policies and local priorities for managing forest landscapes defined by complex property rights regimes. However, as with other market-based policies, the expeditious delivery of REDD could bypass critical analysis of potential interactions with national tenure regimes, customary property rights, and local livelihoods. Drawing on the case of Palawan Island—a forested frontier island in the Philippines—we examine how nascent REDD policies can articulate with state sanctioned tenure, customary tenure, and forest uses in changing livelihood contexts. This paper draws on research among Tagbanua and Pala’wan people to illustrate how complex and changing tenure structures, commodity markets and livelihood dynamics may influence how REDD plus interventions affect indigenous customary lands and forest use. We argue that the ability of indigenous forest users to maintain stored carbon and improve livelihoods is contingent upon the ‘socio-material’ form of carbon—a commodity defined in relation to the resources and social processes of which it is part.     

Amorphic kinds: Cluster’s last stand?

I raise a puzzle case for “cluster” accounts of natural kinds—the homeostatic property cluster and stable property cluster accounts, especially—on the basis of their expected treatment of the metaphysics of certain disease kinds. Some kinds, I argue, fail to exhibit the co-instantiated property clusters these cluster views take to be (partly) constitutive of natural kinds. Some genetic diseases, for example, have archetypical instances with few or none of the pathological processes or symptoms associated with the kind: their instances are typified by a single dispositional property. I dub such kinds ‘amorphic’, owing to their limited morphology, and try out a number of ways in which these kinds might be treated in terms of property clusters, adapting responses cluster theorists have offered to the problem of polymorphic species. Finding these responses wanting, I conclude that cluster accounts are unlikely to be the best account of the metaphysics of amorphic kinds.     

Smallholder Livelihoods,Wealth and Deforestation in the Eastern Amazon

In this paper, I examine patterns of wealth accumulation and their influence on deforestation among smallholders at Uruará and Redenção, in the state of Pará in the Brazilian Eastern Amazon. I argue that the development of the smallholder economy has not been a linear process, and the diversity of smallholder farming systems and their patterns of wealth accumulation have varied implications for the rate and magnitude of deforestation. However, whilst there are differential impacts of farming practices on deforestation—cattle ranching has a greater impact than cash cropping or subsistence agriculture—the stronger correlate of deforestation is the wealth of the farmers. Wealthier farmers not only tend to deforest more in absolute terms, but also show a slightly greater propensity to deforest whatever their production system. Though cattle production is a key driver of wealth accumulation and thus deforestation, a significant number of smallholders adopt diversified production systems. The main factors explaining the relationship between the farming systems and deforestation were years of residence on the lot, distance of the lot to main market and the amount of day labor hired—and not variables describing household structure.     

稻田生态系统氮素吸收功能及其经济价值

稻田生态系统中水稻植株吸收土壤中氮素并转化为秸秆中的氮素以及籽粒中的蛋白质和氨基酸的过程是稻田氮素转化的主要过程。在2003年上海市郊五四农场田间试验数据的基础上,研究了稻田生态系统氮素吸收功能及其形成过程,然后运用替代价格法估算了稻田氮素吸收经济价值,同时还对不同地区、施氮水平和作物的氮素吸收物理量和价值量进行了对比。结果表明,稻田植株地上部分氮素累积吸收量在拔节期至抽穗期之间增长最快,抽穗期至成熟期增加减缓,而在收获前有所下降。稻田植株氮素吸收经济价值随生育期不断提高,到成熟期显著增加。施加氮肥对水稻氮素吸收物理量及其价值量都具有促进作用。就不同作物而言,水稻氮素吸收转化量及其经济价值高于小麦和油菜。几乎所有作物籽粒氮素吸收量及其经济价值都高于秸秆。     

种植密度对玉米-大豆间作群体产量和经济产值的影响

采用二次饱和D最优设计,研究了种植密度对玉米 大豆间作群体产量和经济产值的影响,并建立了以玉米和大豆密度为变量,以间作群体籽粒产量、干物质积累和经济产值为目标函数的二元二次数学模型.模型解析表明： 种植密度对玉米 大豆间作群体籽粒产量、干物质积累和经济产值影响显著,玉米密度对群体各指标的影响大于大豆密度.在低密度水平下,群体籽粒产量、干物质积累和经济产值均随密度的增加而增加.群体籽粒产量达到8101.31 kg·hm^-2,最优措施组合为：玉米密度72023株·hm^-2+大豆密度99924株·hm^-2;群体干物质积累达到15282.45 kg·hm^-2,最优措施组合为：玉米密度75000株·hm^-2+大豆密度93372株·hm^-2;群体经济产值达到23494.50元·hm^-2,最优措施组合为：玉米密度73758株·hm^-2+大豆密度87597株·hm^-2.通过计算机模拟得出,在本试验条件下,玉米-大豆间作群体籽粒产量≥7500kg·hm^-2、干物质积累≥14250 kg·hm^-2、经济产值≥22500元·hm^-2的最佳密度组合为：玉米种植密度58554～71547株·hm^-2,大豆种植密度82217～100303株·hm^-2.     

Bridging the explanatory gaps: What can we learn from a biological agency perspective?

We begin this article by delineating the explanatory gaps left by prevailing gene-focused approaches in our understanding of phenotype determination, inheritance, and the origin of novel traits. We aim not to diminish the value of these approaches but to highlight where their implementation, despite best efforts, has encountered persistent limitations. We then discuss how each of these explanatory gaps can be addressed by expanding research foci to take into account biological agency—the capacity of living systems at various levels to participate in their own development, maintenance, and function by regulating their structures and activities in response to conditions they encounter. Here we aim to define formally what agency and agents are and—just as importantly—what they are not, emphasizing that agency is an empirical property connoting neither intention nor consciousness. Lastly, we discuss how incorporating agency helps to bridge explanatory gaps left by conventional approaches, highlight scientific fields in which implicit agency approaches are already proving valuable, and assess the opportunities and challenges of more systematically incorporating biological agency into research programs.     

What Affects the Secondhand Value of Smartphones: Evidence from eBay

Reuse via secondhand markets can extend the use phase of products, thereby reducing environmental impacts. Analyzing 500,000 listings of used Apple and Samsung smartphones sold in 2015 and 2016 via eBay, we examine which product properties affect how long smartphones retain market value and facilitate market‐based reuse. Our results suggest that although repairability and large memory size are typically thought to be “life extending,” in practice they have limited impact on the current economic life span of smartphones and their market‐based reuse. In contrast, we show that brand, an intangible product property, can extend smartphones’ economic life span by 12.5 months. Because longer economic life spans imply extended use phases and longer life spans overall, these results illustrate the potential of harnessing the intangible properties of products to promote sustainable consumption.     

Global impacts of human mineral malnutrition

Malnutrition—in the form of insufficient energy intakes—affects millions of people worldwide and the negative impact of this kind of hunger is well acknowledged, not least by agronomists trying to increase yields to ensure a sufficient supply of food. This review focuses on another, more particular and “hidden” form of malnutrition, namely mineral malnutrition. It illustrates the burden of disease that is caused by mineral deficiencies and the social and economic consequences they bring about. Mineral malnutrition has a considerable negative impact on individual well-being, social welfare and economic productivity. Agricultural scientists should keep the nutritional qualities of food in mind and—next to optimizing the agricultural properties of crops that are paramount for their adoption by farmers—in particular try to increase the micronutrient content in major staple crops as one way to address vitamin and mineral malnutrition in humans; especially plant breeding approaches promise to be very cost-effective.     

Would Industrial Ecology Exist without Sustainability in the Background?

Industrial ecology rests historically—even in a short lifetime of 15 years or so—on the metaphorical power of natural ecosystems. Its evolution parallels the rise of concerns over unsustainability, that is, the threats to our world's ability to support human life the emergence of sustainability as a normative goal on a global scale. This article examines the relationships between industrial ecology and sustainability and argues that, in its historical relationship to classical ecology models, the field lacks power to address the full range of goals of sustainability, however defined. The classical ecosystem analogy omits aspects of human social and cultural life central to sustainability. But by moving beyond this model to more recent ecosystem models based on complexity theory, the field can expand its purview to address sustainability more broadly and powerfully. Complexity models of living systems can also ground alternative normative models for sustainability as an emergent property rather than the output of a mechanistic economic model for society's workings.     

TRANSPORT OF CHOLINE ACETYLTRANSFERASE AND ACETYLCHOLINESTERASE IN THE RAT SCIATIC NERVE: A BIOCHEMICAL AND ELECTRON HISTOCHEMICAL STUDY

The transport of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and choline acetyltransferase (ChAc) were investigated by biochemical and histochemical methods. After ligature of one of the sciatic nerves of the rat for varying times—4, 14, 20 and 44 h—the normal levels and the accumulation of AChE and ChAc activities were investigated. It can be inferred from the results that there is a rapid accumulation of AChE activity just proximal to the ligature, while the increase in ChAc activity is less pronounced. Distal to the ligature the level of AChE is above the control value whereas, in contrast to this, the ChAc activity is significantly decreased. Histochemical demonstration of the two enzymes indicates that they are present in the cholinergic axons. The reaction end-product produced by AChE occurs within vesicles and neurotubules, while the endproduct due to ChAc appears to be free in the axoplasm, bound to neurofilaments and on the outer surface of vesicles and tubules.     

Whatever happened to economic anthropology?1

In the 1970s, economic anthropology, along with kinship and ecological anthropology, was regarded as a core discipline in the teaching of anthropology. The centrality of all these subjects was reflected in the debates of the time. For economic anthropology, understanding the articulation of modes of production was the problem; the holy trinity—tribe, peasant, capitalist—provided the key terms of the debate. These terms, and this problem, are history. The discipline of anthropology has been de‐cored over the past 30 years: economic anthropology, kinship and ecological anthropology are not even on the agenda in many universities today (ANU included). This presents us with a paradox because these academic trends are in inverse proportion to the importance of contemporary developments in the economy, the family and ecology as global problems facing humanity. This paradox must be addressed not by arguing for a rehabilitation of the core subjects of the 1970s—those days are long gone—but by taking a critical look at the implicit theories of value that inform anthropological thinking about the economy, the family and ecology today. I shall argue that, along with neoliberalism, ‘agency’ has been the key term of the new paradigm that emerged in the 1970s, that this paradigm is about to become history and that new ways of thinking about the economy will have to emerge as we all become victims of the ‘financialisation’ of Europe, the industrialisation of Asia and the desiccation of Australia.     

Women and property in Guajiro society*

This paper discusses property‐related issues and concepts among the Guajiro—a matrilineal cattle pastoralist society in Colombia and Venezuela—from a women‐oriented perspective, focusing on types of, acquisition and management of property as well as death‐ and compensation‐linked property transactions. Also considered are questions pertaining to female productivity in pastoral societies and women's significance as resources and potential property.     

微藻去除重金属镉的抗性机理研究进展

与水体中重金属去除的传统方法相比,生物吸附法是一种更具经济效益和环境效益的技术。微藻由于自身的廉价性和高吸附性已成为高效生物吸附剂的材料来源。要评价微藻在镉(Cd)去除方面的应用潜力,解析微藻抗重金属的机理是必要条件。因此,本文从抗Cd微藻种类,Cd对微藻光合作用、生长及结构的影响,胞外吸附的机理,胞内积累的机理,以及基因调控水平,阐述了目前微藻抗Cd的研究进展,以期为后续的研究提供理论帮助。     

Thermal proteome profiling: Insights into protein modifications,associations, and functions

Tracking proteins’ biophysical characteristics on a proteome-wide scale can provide valuable information on their functions and interactions. Thermal proteome profiling (TPP) is a multiplexed quantitative proteomics approach that measures changes in protein thermal stability—a key biophysical property—across different cellular states. Developed in 2014, as a target-deconvolution assay for drugs and other small molecules, TPP has since evolved to a system-level biochemical omics technique providing insights into context-dependent changes in protein states. In this review, we summarise key advances in the experimental and data analysis pipeline that have aided this transformation and discuss the recent developments and applications of TPP.     

Non‐allosteric enzyme switches possess larger effector‐induced changes in thermodynamic stability than their non‐switch analogs

The ability to regulate cellular protein activity offers a broad range of biotechnological and biomedical applications. Such protein regulation can be achieved by modulating the specific protein activity or through processes that regulate the amount of protein in the cell. We have previously demonstrated that the nonhomologous recombination of the genes encoding maltose binding protein (MBP) and TEM1 β‐lactamase (BLA) can result in genes that confer maltose‐dependent resistance to β‐lactam antibiotics even though the encoded proteins are not allosteric enzymes. We showed that these phenotypic switches—named based on their conferral of a switching phenotype to cells—resulted from a specific interaction with maltose in the cell that increased the switches cellular accumulation. Since phenotypic switches represent an important class of engineered proteins for basic science and biotechnological applications in vivo, we sought to elucidate the phenomena behind the increased accumulation and switching properties. Here, we demonstrate the key role for the linker region between the two proteins. Experimental evidence supports the hypothesis that in the absence of their effector, some phenotypic switches possess an increased rate of unfolding, decreased conformational stability, and increased protease susceptibility. These factors alone or in combination serve to decrease cellular accumulation. The effector functions to increase cellular accumulation by alleviating one or more of these defects. This perspective on the mechanism for phenotypic switching will aid the development of design rules for switch construction for applications and inform the study of the regulatory mechanisms of natural cellular proteins.     

Dignity and indignation: bridging morality and political economy in contemporary Spain

In the current Spanish conjuncture, characterized by political and economic crisis and the rapid impoverishment of the working classes, we have seen the emergence of moral discourses around indignation and the demand of dignity. While these moral exhortations have rightly been scrutinized with skepticism from Marxist positions for their lack of attention to political economic structures, this paper discusses whether we can find in them elements for what Gavin Smith calls a “revindicative politics,” able to transcend the frame of reference of the society of capital. Exploring the notion of dignity both in the Indignados movement and in my own ethnographic field site of Southern Catalonia—a region where claims to dignity have saturated the sphere of the political for decades—I suggest that the demand for dignity should be understood as an expression of what Ernst Bloch called “nonsynchronous contradictions,” being not entirely reducible to the contemporary workings of capitalist accumulation. Dignity points toward unsettled memories and unfulfilled pasts as well as to a rejection of servile relations and the desire to make sense of oneself outside of the morality of capital. Understanding this demand for dignity forces Marxist anthropologists to look at capital from the “margins,” challenging its centrality. In so doing it also invites us to refine and invigorate our critique of political economy.     

The hologenome concept: we need to incorporate function

Are we in the midst of a paradigm change in biology and have animals and plants lost their individuality, i.e., are even so-called ‘typical’ organisms no longer organisms in their own right? Is the study of the holobiont—host plus its symbiotic microorganisms—no longer optional, but rather an obligatory path that must be taken for a comprehensive understanding of the ecology and evolution of the individual components that make up a holobiont? Or are associated microbes merely a component of their host’s environment, and the holobiont concept is just a beautiful idea that does not add much or anything to our understanding of evolution? This article explores different aspects of the concept of the holobiont. We focus on the aspect of functional integration, a central holobiont property, which is only rarely considered thoroughly. We conclude that the holobiont comes in degrees, i.e., we regard the property of being a holobiont as a continuous trait that we term holobiontness, and that holobiontness is differentiated in several dimensions. Although the holobiont represents yet another level of selection (different from classical individual or group selection because it acts on a system that is composed of multiple species), it depends on the grade of functional integration whether or not the holobiont concept helps to cast light on the various degrees of interactions between symbiotic partners.