Modeling Air Quality in Urban Areas: A Cell‐Based Statistical Approach

Statistical regression models are presented that explain the observed variations, across urban areas, in the concentrations of two major pollutants, ozone and carbon monoxide. Model specification and estimation are based on an explicit and new spatial framework derived from the theoretical concept of well‐mixed cells, whereby the basic Fickian system of diffusion equations is integrated over the regional space partitioned into a grid of large cells. The concentration in each cell results from the balance of pollutant flows into and out of this cell and of pollutant emissions and removal within that cell, and is expressed as the sum of two concentration contributions: (1) the local effect, dependent upon pollution‐related factors around the measuring station, and (2) the regional effect, dependent upon pollutant flows originating outside the local area. A large database is developed, making extensive use of GIS technology, to spatially relate such data as pollution measurements, meteorological factors, land‐use characteristics, census socioeconomic data, and major highway network characteristics. The results confirm the appropriateness of the well‐mixed cell framework, are in line with general knowledge regarding the determinants of ozone and carbon monoxide concentrations, and clarify the role of transportation, residential fuel use, economic activities, natural environments, and meteorological factors such as temperature and solar radiation. About SO percent of the variations in concentrations are explained by these models. Several areas of further research are outlined.     

From Promising Settler to Undesirable Immigrant: The Deportation of British-born Migrants from Mental Hospitals in Interwar Australia and South Africa

This article examines the process by which British-born migrants to Australia and South Africa were deported from mental hospitals in the 1920s and 1930s. It shows how men and women who arrived as permanent settlers could be re-classified as immigrants subject to expulsion. Debates over who was responsible for those who through mental illness or alcoholism were deemed ‘undesirable’ were conducted at the levels of both high diplomacy and petty bureaucracy. Tracing the history of deportation as a means of social engineering within the empire, this article highlights the tension between the transnational ideology of white supremacy and its expression in national terms. Using the case files of those deported from two settler colonial mental hospitals, Callan Park in Sydney and Valkenberg in Cape Town, as well as official deportation paperwork, it also traces how such diplomatic decisions were refracted through the process of attempted implementation. These files show firsthand both the social history of deportation and the mechanisms through which the settler colonial state aimed to shape its population by excluding not only those perceived to be racially other, but also those judged to be racially unfit. The process of determining domicile and of deportation itself reveals much about the frequently precarious circumstances and life histories of these migrants and their often far-flung networks, as well as the ways in which migrants and their families were able to negotiate the regulatory mechanisms of both the state and the asylum.     

New records of the hypercalcified sponge Plectroninia (Calcarea,Minchinellidae) in the Recent deep ocean

Vacelet, J., James, B. 1, & Zibrowius, H., November 2017. New records of the hypercalcified sponge Plectroninia (Calcarea, Minchinellidae) in the Recent deep ocean. Alcheringa 42, 312–319. ISSN 0311-5518

Numerous small specimens of hypercalcified sponges of the genus Plectroninia (Jurassic to Recent) are recorded from deep water in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans, where they are attached to diverse hard substrata, mostly scleractinian skeletons. Being represented as skeletons of linked calcareous tetractines with an incomplete free spicule complement, the specimens could not be identified at the species level. These observations show that Plectroninia spp. have a wide distribution in the bathyal zone of the Recent World Ocean, where they may be the most common calcareous sponges.

Jean Vacelet* [jean.vacelet@imbe.fr], Benjamin James [ben.james672@gmail.com], Helmut Zibrowius [helmut.zibrowius@gmail.com] UMR 7263 IMBE, Institut Méditerranéen de Biodiversité et d’Écologie Marine et Continentale, CNRS, IRD, Aix Marseille Université, Avignon Université, Station Marine d’Endoume, Rue de la Batterie des Lions, 13007 Marseille, France.     

Assessing the relationship between physician availability and viral load suppression in British Columbia

In 2014, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS set the target of dramatically reducing the burden of HIV through expansion of access to timely HIV treatment. In order to achieve this target, it is necessary to expand access to care along the HIV cascade of care. This study examines the relationship between viral suppression and the availability of physicians providing HIV treatment in British Columbia, Canada. Data from the Drug Treatment Program of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS was analyzed. The floating catchment method was used to assess physician availability and multivariable logistic regression was used to implement a confounder selection technique to independently assess the relationship between physician availability and viral load suppression. Individuals with more than 25 physicians within a one‐hour catchment were more likely to reside in urban areas and almost twice as likely to have a suppressed viral load (adjusted odds ratio: 1.97; 95% CI 1.50 – 2.58). This study highlights the impact of physicians’ availability on viral load levels. Mapping technology was used to identify the locations in which patients were most impacted by the lack of physicians.     

Carbon Sequestration in Community Forests: Trade‐offs,Multiple Outcomes and Institutional Diversity in the Bolivian Amazon

Carbon sequestration in community forests presents a major challenge for the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) programme. This article uses a comparative analysis of the agricultural and forestry practices of indigenous peoples and settlers in the Bolivian Amazon to show how community‐level institutions regulate the trade‐offs between community livelihoods, forest species diversity, and carbon sequestration. The authors argue that REDD+ implementation in such areas runs the risk of: 1) reinforcing economic inequalities based on previous and potential land use impacts on ecosystems (baseline), depending on the socio‐cultural groups targeted; 2) increasing pressure on land used for food production, possibly reducing food security and redirecting labour towards scarce off‐farm income opportunities; 3) increasing dependence on external funding and carbon market fluctuations instead of local production strategies; and 4) further incentivising the privatization and commodification of land to avoid transaction costs associated with collective property rights. The article also advises against taking a strictly economic, market‐based approach to carbon sequestration, arguing that such an approach could endanger fragile socio‐ecological systems. REDD+ schemes should directly support existing efforts towards forest sustainability rather than simply compensating local land users for avoiding deforestation and forest degradation.     

Public Perceptions of Expert Credibility on Policy Issues: The Role of Expert Framing and Political Worldviews

How do individuals assess the credibility of experts in various policy domains? Under what conditions does the public interpret particular scientific knowledge claims as being trustworthy and credible? Using data collected from an online survey experiment, administered to 1,507 adult residents of Quebec, this paper seeks answers to these questions. Specifically, we examine variation in the way members of the public perceive the credibility of scientific experts in the areas of climate change, shale gas extraction, cell phones, and wind farms. Our results contribute to the existing literatures on public perceptions of policy experts, framing, and cultural theory. We find that individuals evaluate expert credibility based on the way in which experts frame issues, and on the congruity/dissonance between these expert communication frames and one's underlying worldview. However, we also identify limits to these framing effects. Our findings shed light on the interaction of framing and political worldviews in shaping public perceptions of expert credibility in various policymaking contexts.     

ART‐P‐MAP Neural Networks Modeling of Land‐Use Change: Accounting for Spatial Heterogeneity and Uncertainty

Spatial land‐use models over large geographic areas and at fine spatial resolutions face the challenges of spatial heterogeneity, model predictability, data quality, and of the ensuing uncertainty. We propose an improved neural network model, ART‐Probability‐Map (ART‐P‐MAP), tailored to address these issues in the context of spatial modeling of land‐use change. First, it adaptively forms its own network structure to account for spatial heterogeneity. Second, it explicitly infers posterior probabilities of land conversion that facilitates the quantification of prediction uncertainty. Extensive calibration under various test settings is conducted on the proposed model to optimize its utility in seeking useful information within a spatially heterogeneous environment. The calibration strategy involves building a bagging ensemble for training and stratified sampling with varying category proportions for experimentation. Through a temporal validation approach, we examine models’ performance within a systematic assessment framework consisting of global metrics and cell‐level uncertainty measurement. Compared with two baselines, ART‐P‐MAP achieves consistently good and stable performance across experiments and exhibits superior capability to handle the spatial heterogeneity and uncertainty involved in the land‐use change problem. Finally, we conclude that, as a general probabilistic regression model, ART‐P‐MAP is applicable to a broad range of land‐use change modeling approaches, which deserves future research.     

The retreat from neoliberalism that was not: Australia’s Building the Education Revolution

This article examines the durability of neoliberalism in the face of crisis by analysing the Building the Education Revolution (BER), a key part of the Australian Labor Government’s stimulus measures in response to the global financial crisis in 2009. The fiscal stimulus measures enacted by governments in the aftermath of the crisis led many commentators to herald the end of neoliberalism. By examining the design of the BER, however, this article finds that one of the key policy tools of neoliberalism – the outsourcing of public sector capacity – was extended through such stimulus programs. The article argues that a materialist analysis of neoliberalism is better able to understand this phenomenon than the recent tendency to analyse neoliberalism in ideational terms.