Combination Of Geography Research Articles

GeoAI Technologies and Their Application Areas in Urban Planning and Development: Concepts, Opportunities and Challenges in Smart City (Kuwait, Study Case)

Artificial intelligence has significantly altered many job workflows, hence expanding earlier notions of limitations, outcomes, size, and prices. GeoAI is a multidisciplinary field that encompasses computer science, engineering, statistics, and spatial science. Because this subject focuses on real-world issues, it has a significant impact on society and the economy. A broad context incorporating fundamental questions of theory, epistemology, and the scientific method is used to bring artificial intelligence (Al) and geography together. This connection has the potential to have far-reaching implications for the geographic study. GeoAI, or the combination of geography with artificial intelligence, offers unique solutions to a variety of smart city issues. This paper provides an overview of GeoAI technology, including the definition of GeoAI and the differences between GeoAI and traditional AI. Key steps to successful geographic data analysis include integrating AI with GIS and using GeoAI tools and technologies. Also shown are key areas of applications and models in GeoAI, likewise challenges to adopt GeoAI methods and technology as well as benefits. This article also included a case study on the use of GeoAI in Kuwait, as well as a number of recommendations.

Phylogeny, classification, and character evolution of tribe Citharexyleae (Verbenaceae).

As a family of Neotropical origin and primarily Neotropical distribution, the Verbenaceae are a good but understudied system with which to understand Neotropical evolution. Tribe Citharexyleae comprises three genera: Baillonia, Citharexylum-one of the largest genera in Verbenaceae-and Rehdera. A molecular phylogenetic approach was taken to resolve intergeneric relationships in Citharexyleae and infrageneric relationships in Citharexylum. The phylogeny is used to elucidate character evolution in a widespread, morphologically diverse Neotropical genus. Seven plastid regions, two nuclear ribosomal spacers, and six low-copy nuclear loci were analyzed for 64 species of Citharexyleae. Phylogenetic analyses were conducted using maximum likelihood, Bayesian inference, and multispecies coalescent approaches. Habit, presence or absence of thorns, inflorescence architecture, flower color, fruit color, and geography were examined to identify diagnostic character states for clades within Citharexylum. Rehdera is resolved as sister to Citharexylum, and Baillonia nested within Citharexylum. Two species, C. oleinum and C. tetramerum, are not closely related to tribe Citharexyleae, but may be related to members of tribe Duranteae instead. Seven clades within Citharexylum are inferred, each characterized by a combination of geography, fruit color and/or maturation, and inflorescence architecture. There is evidence of correlated evolution between habit, axillary inflorescences, and flower number per inflorescence. Shrubs with reduced inflorescences have evolved repeatedly. A subgeneric classification for Citharexylum is proposed. Although suites of associated traits are found, character morphology has been labile throughout Citharexylum's evolutionary history. Morphological diversity may be related to adaptation to differing mesic and xeric habitats.

Genetic variation, environment and demography intersect to shape Arabidopsis defense metabolite variation across Europe.

Plants produce diverse metabolites to cope with the challenges presented by complex and ever-changing environments. These challenges drive the diversification of specialized metabolites within and between plant species. However, we are just beginning to understand how frequently new alleles arise controlling specialized metabolite diversity and how the geographic distribution of these alleles may be structured by ecological and demographic pressures. Here, we measure the variation in specialized metabolites across a population of 797 natural Arabidopsis thaliana accessions. We show that a combination of geography, environmental parameters, demography and different genetic processes all combine to influence the specific chemotypes and their distribution. This showed that causal loci in specialized metabolism contain frequent independently generated alleles with patterns suggesting potential within-species convergence. This provides a new perspective about the complexity of the selective forces and mechanisms that shape the generation and distribution of allelic variation that may influence local adaptation.

Geographical Education in Primary School Curriculum in Turkey Between 1923-2018

This study aims to examine the change and transformation of geographical education in the Turkish primary school curriculum between 1923-2018. The research uses a qualitative document review method and a descriptive analysis process to analyse the data. Nine primary school programs created by the Ministry of National Education (MoNE) are identified as research documents. Dates of primary school curricula in Turkey between 1923-2018 are analyzed: 1924, 1926, 1936, 1948, 1962, 1968, 1997, 2005 and 2018. The 1924 Boys' Primary School curriculum is a continuation of the pre-republic program and geographical education was included in Grades three, four and five under the name “Geography”. The 1926 Primary School curriculum, and the 1936 Primary School curriculum, and the 1948 Primary School curriculum all include the name “Geography”. The 1962 Primary School curriculum includes geographical education as “Society and Country Studies” and “Science and Nature” in Grades Four and Five. The lesson information in the 1968 Primary School curriculum and also in 1997, 2005 and 2018 show geographical education as “Social Studies”, “Science (1968 and 1997), “Science and Technology” (2005) and “Science” (2018) for Grades Four and Five. From the 1926 Primary School curriculum to the 2018 Primary School curriculum, it is evident that geographical education occurs in Grades One, Two, and Three and Geography was included under the name of “life knowledge, which is a combination of Geography, History, Civics, Nature, and Science. It was determined the course hours differed from program. Purpose/objectives related to geographical education have gradually decreased. Given the importance of geographical education from the primary school level, achievements related to geography education can be increased.

Assessing the diversity of Western North American Juga (Semisulcospiridae, Gastropoda)

Juga is a genus of freshwater gastropods distributed in Pacific and Interior drainages of the Pacific Northwest from central California to northern Washington. The current classification has relied heavily on features of the shell, which vary within and across drainages, and often intergrade without sharp distinctions between species. The only previous molecular analysis included limited population sampling, which did not allow robust assessment of intra- versus interspecific levels of genetic diversity, and concluded almost every sampled population to be a distinct OTU. We assembled a multilocus mitochondrial (COI, 16S) and nuclear gene (ITS1) dataset for ∼100 populations collected across the range of the genus. We generated primary species hypotheses using ABGD with best-fit model-corrected distances and further explored our data, both individual gene partitions and concatenated datasets, using a diversity of phylogenetic and species delimitation methods (Bayesian inference, maximum likelihood estimation, StarBEAST2, bGMYC, bPTP, BP&P). Our secondary species delimitation hypotheses, based primarily on the criterion of reciprocal monophyly, and informed by a combination of geography and morphology, support the interpretation that Juga comprises a mixture of geographically widespread species and narrow range endemics. As might be expected in taxa with low vagility and poor dispersal capacities, analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) revealed highly structured populations with up to 80% of the observed genetic variance explained by variation between populations. Analyses with bGMYC, bPTP, and BP&P appeared sensitive to this genetic structure and returned highly dissected species hypotheses that are likely oversplit. The species diversity of Juga is concluded to be lower than presently recognized, and the systematics to require extensive revision. Features of the teleoconch considered significant in species-level and subgeneric classification were found to be variable within some species, sometimes at a single site. Of a number of potentially new species identified in non-peer reviewed reports and field guides, only one was supported as a distinct OTU.

Peopling policy processes? Methodological populism in the Bangladesh health and education sectors

Policy makers are frequently characterized as being out of touch with the communities they serve. But closing the “gap” between policy makers and people is not straightforward, since distancing effects are produced by a combination of geography, politics and knowledge. This article analyses the case of an experimental initiative in Bangladesh known as the “reality check” that attempted to influence policy makers in the health and education sectors by providing them with people-centered data gathered at community level. The case is analyzed as an example of “methodological populism” that combined participatory and ethnographic approaches, and as one that challenged current managerialist cultures of what can be considered as acceptable evidence for policy. The case highlights tensions between participation, populism and policy that are potentially productive but constrained by three sets of factors: (i) contestations over the status of “popular knowledge”, (ii) the need for critical “policy spaces” within policy processes in which policy makers can engage with such knowledge, and (iii) the “disruptive temporalities” within policy processes that tend to inhibit learning. Drawing on the “guarded hopefulness” of meta-modernist theory, the paper concludes that if more attention can be paid to such issues, initiatives informed by methodological populism such as the reality check could be further built upon in ways that may contribute to the humanization or “peopling” of policy processes.

Geographical vision of the prof. O. Vashchenko: projecting on contemporary

The contribution of the well-known Ukrainian economist-geographer, cartographer, organizer and long-time leader of the Department of Economic Geography of the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv O. Vashchenko on the theory, methodology and method of social geography, the main directions of the development of scientific ideas by the students and followers of the professor are determined. Prof. O. Vashchenko was one of the first in Ukrainian science to consider the subject and structure of economic geography. O. Vashchenko is the first Ukrainian author who carried out the classification of economic-geographical science with the allocation of four classes of scientific disciplines: comprehensive synthetic, branch analytical, scientific and methodological, general education disciplines. The dominant features of the geographic worldview as a theory of cognition and social practice of geospatial development for prof. O. Vashchenko were specificity, geospatial differentiation and delimitation, systemicity and complexity, the use of the cartographic method of research. Interpretation of prof. O. Vashchenko subject of economic geography as the placement of productive forces predetermined the use of his cartographic method of research, and the system methodology – the appropriateness of atlas mapping. Prof. O. Vashchenko is a worthy follower of the Galician cartographic tradition (S. Rudnyts'kyi, V. Kubiyovych), the founder of the Ukrainian Atlas Mapping in the postwar period (doctoral thesis "Atlas of the development of the economy of the western part of the Ukrainian SSR (from ancient times to the 70's of the twentieth century"), 1971). For the scientific worldview prof. O. Vaschenko is characterized by an organic combination of geography and historicism. Dominant signs of historicism of scientific views prof. O. Vaschenko: scientific and pedagogical activity in the field of geography history, geographic biography, periodization of the economy of the Western region of Ukraine (from ancient times to the 70's of the twentieth century), periodization of the formation and development of economic geography in Ukraine (1917–1977), the periodization of the research work of the Department of Economic Geography of Lviv University (1945–1965), as well as the transition from the analysis of time dynamics to the analysis of the functioning of economic objects and their combinations. A general conclusion is drawn about the logical triad of scientific worldview prof. O. Vashchenko, formed by geography, historicism, economism, which are connected with cybernetic connections. Supplemented by ecological and humanitarian approaches, it determines the current progress of geographic science.

University Geographies and Folk Music Landscapes

By examining folk music activities connecting students and local musicians during the early 1960s at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, this article demonstrates how university geographies and musical landscapes influence musical activities in college towns. The geography of the University of Illinois, a rural Midwestern location with a mostly urban, middle-class student population, created an unusual combination of privileged students in a primarily working-class area. This combination of geography and landscape framed interactions between students and local musicians in Urbana-Champaign, stimulating and complicating the traversal of sociocultural differences through traditional music. Members of the University of Illinois Campus Folksong Club considered traditional music as a high cultural form distinct from mass-culture artists, aligning their interests with then-dominant scholarly approaches in folklore and film studies departments. Yet students also interrogated the impropriety of folksong presentation on campus, and community folksingers projected their own discomfort with students’ liberal politics. In hosting concerts by rural musicians such as Frank Proffitt and producing a record of local Urbana-Champaign folksingers called Green Fields of Illinois (1963), the folksong club attempted to suture these differences by highlighting the aesthetic, domestic, historical, and educational aspects of local folk music, while avoiding contemporary socioeconomic, commercial, and political concerns. This depoliticized conception of folk music bridged students and local folksingers, but also represented local music via a nineteenth-century rural landscape that converted contemporaneous lived practice into a temporally distant object of aesthetic study. Students’ study of folk music thus reinforced the power structures of university culture—but engaging local folksinging as an educational subject remained for them the most ethical solution for questioning, and potentially traversing, larger problems of inequality and difference.

Assessing the potential for reverse colonization among Japanese birds by mining DNA barcode data

Reverse colonization from an island to a continent runs counter to the classic models of speciation in island biogeography. We mined the Barcode of Life Data Systems and generated mitochondrial DNA-based phylogenetic analyses for 118 Japanese bird species to identify candidates for reverse colonization histories from Japan to mainland Asia. Mitochondrial DNA tree topologies suggested 5 strong and 35 weak candidate species for reverse colonization from Japan to mainland Asia. Thirty-nine mitochondrial DNA topologies contradicted a reverse colonization hypothesis. For the remaining 39 species the ancestral distribution is ambiguous from the available mitochondrial DNA gene tree topology. A combination of geography and climatic and geologic history are likely drivers of avian speciation in the Japanese Islands and subsequent reverse colonization events to mainland Asia. These data highlight the utility of large scale DNA barcoding databases in generating phylogenetic and biogeographic hypotheses.

Regional disparities in psychiatric distress, violent behavior, and life satisfaction in Iranian adolescents: the CASPIAN-III study.

The purpose of this study was to assess the prevalence of violence behaviors, psychiatric distress, and life satisfaction among 10- to 18-year-old Iranian adolescents at national and regional disparities. In this national survey, 5570 students of age 10 to 18 years from urban and rural regions of 27 provinces of Iran were selected through stratified multistage sampling method. Violence behaviors, psychiatric distress, and life satisfaction were assessed by a questionnaire that was prepared based on WHO global school-based student health survey and the WHO-stepwise approach to noncommunicable diseases (Tools version 9.5). The country classification into 4 subnational regions was done based on combination of geography and socioeconomic status (SES). The data were analyzed by the SPSS software. The prevalence of emotional, depressive, and anxiety problem among Iranian students was 17.7%, 16.3%, and 5.7%, respectively. The percentage of emotional and depressive problem differed significantly between different SES distress (p value <.001). The prevalence of bullying, victim, and physical fight was 27.1%, 32.7%, and 50.6% among students aged 10 to 18 years, respectively. Bullying and victim experience were linearly associated with regions' SES. Students who were living in the north-northeast region had maximum self-rated health and life satisfaction in Iran. The results declared that psychiatric distress was more frequent in high SES distress, whereas violence behavior was more frequent in the lowest SES distress. Therefore, in communities with large variations in health and SES in regional level, health policies for primordial and primary prevention of mental and behavioral distress have to be made at regional levels.

以生态景观构建乡村审美空间

On the surface,rural aesthetic spaces are not considered practical or utilitarian. However,mapping them out is valuable,because permanently sustainable development is the essence of the relationship between man and land. In the early agrarian age,the layout of rural areas was guided by people' s aesthetic views of ecology rather than modern precise statistics,calculations,and related design principles. The inherited philosophy of respecting the natural landscape is the original driving force for preserving aesthetic spaces. Ancient feng shui landforms should be preserved in China. These nonutilitarian elements carried villagers' natural aesthetic philosophy across generations and captured the meaning of continuous development of the man-land relationship. At present,rural research focuses on the economics of land use. Research on the ecological landscape construction of rural aesthetic spaces is limited,and this needs to be investigated as an important topic in the field. As rural landscapes evolve,human agricultural activities leave an imprint on the aesthetics of ecological spaces,and modern layout patterns result in an inversion of the rural landscape. In recent years,the destruction of the regional geographical structure by the rapid development of modern urbanization has been devastating. My research aims to analyze rural ecological landscapes and aesthetic spaces corresponding to the elements,and how aesthetic spaces are constructed based on geographical frames. I will carry out a multi-scale study of morphological characteristics,landscape space,and the relationship between evolution patterns and response mechanisms. In large-scale landscape areas,preserving the spatial relationship between villages and geographic landscapes is particularly essential if villages are to inherit cultural and historical traditions. Town regions are medium-scale landscape areas. Based on the investigation of geographic elements such as mountain ranges and water systems,the principle of ecological art composition requires villages and fields to consider distribution contrast and plan the height,scale,and density of rural construction,road linearity and strength,andother urban construction indexes from the perspective of ecological aesthetics. Small-scale areas usually adopt aesthetic space composition with architectural design methods,which should consider natural aesthetic philosophy,interior and exterior spaces,and rural social factors. The combination of geography and urban planning that shapes spaces and the connotation of space far exceeds social relationships when determining the development scale and construction layout of rural areas. The priority is to maintain harmony in the social space. The construction of rural aesthetic space operates through the"hardware"of the geographical landscape and the "software"of cultural inheritance and accumulation with respect to landscape forms,mechanisms,functional structures,and so on. Rural landscape planning must use geography as its basic space structure,base itself on regional geographical space analysis and landscape preservation,and place importance on indexes of preservation of the regional landscape and traditional culture. It should be specified that the requirements of landscape optimization and socioeconomic development are embedded in the requirements of ecological civilization and social development in the layout of landscape space. These elements form a landscape network that can maintain the comprehensive environment. The philosophy of landscape aesthetics should be expanded to broader spaces in order to introduce the concept of landscape beauty to towns,villages,and even farmlands.

Theodor Waitz on Psychic Unity

The tolerant stance on 'race' by prominent Enlightenment figures was followed in the 19th century by a powerful wave of biological racism. Many of its proponents took the view that human 'races' constitute separate species, and that most non-white ones are of inferior mentality. An early opponent of this claim was James Cowles Prichard, who used mainly missionary reports in seeking to refute it. Far more extensive work was undertaken by the Herbartian psychologist Theodor Waitz, who collected ethnographic material from all over the world. It was published in six volumes - the last two after his death by his former student Georg Gerland. Waitz aim was to demonstrate the 'psychic unity' of mankind. Initially extracts from the volume on African peoples are presented in order to show how he dealt with his material. The main focus is on his first volume entitled Introduction to Anthropology, in which he elaborates his general thesis. In it Waitz maintains, against the biological racists, that mankind is a single species. Furthermore he discusses the changes from savagery to civilization, attributing them to a combination of geography and history. He was followed by Adolf Bastian who, unlike Waitz, was a great traveller with personal experience of peoples all over the globe. Both firmly believed in the psychic unity of mankind, but Bastian's approach to psychology was very different.

‘Culturally Unsuited to Property Rights?’: Colonial Land Laws and African Societies

Hernando de Soto, advocate of central registers of land rights, raised the possibility of Africans being culturally unsuited to property rights. This article argues that sub‐Saharan Africa's high proportion of tribal/communal land (as distinguished from private and public/state land) results from a combination of geography, history, and population distribution. External colonial rule created a dual system of land tenure that restrained private property rights in the tribal/communal land areas. The research draws upon archival evidence from the colonial land tenure panel chaired by Lord Hailey (1945–50). The finding is not that Africans are inherently culturally unsuited to property ownership, but that colonialism reinforced pluralistic forms of property rights, which create particular challenges to land law reform.

Liquid Landscape: Possession and Floridian Geography

third volume of John James Audubon's Ornithological Biography (1835) includes painting of brown pelican perched upon mangrove in Florida Keys. While bird is Audubon's primary object of interest, he is also evidently fascinated by glossy and deep-coloured mangroves on which it nestles, for at end of his lengthy description of brown pelican is short section entitled The Mangrove (383). am at loss for an object with which to compare these trees, in order to afford you an idea of them, Audubon writes, but he settles on figure of a tree reversed, and standing on its summit (386). Audubon asks us to imagine mangrove as an upside down tree, roots of which spread widely above ground while its trunk is submerged below. Unlike most trees, he means to say, mangroves grow low along earth's surface and have roots that take hold by spreading outward over ground rather than delving deeply into it. Such lateral roots present some unique spectacles. From shores of Florida, Audubon observes, the Mangroves extend towards sea, their hanging branches taking root wherever they come in contact with bottom (386). He even notices islands entirely formed of Mangroves, which raising their crooked and slender stems from bed of mud, continue to increase until their roots and pendent branches afford shelter to accumulating debris, when earth is gradually raised above surface of (386). As Audubon observes, mangrove trees that cover Florida's coasts prosper precisely because their roots construct their own solid foundations. As roots spread outward sand clings to them and it is not unusual for small islet to form where before there was only water. This is why mangrove tree is sometimes described as nature's way of converting water into (Blake 30l). Interestingly, mangrove cannot take root in dry and stable earth; its shallow, lateral roots require wet and unstable ground in order to establish themselves. I begin with Audubon's mangrove because his observations on it suggest that roots can be successfully pursued in absence of secure material foundations. While early Anglo-American discussions of possession idealize terra firma, message of The Mangrove is that possession does not require stable ground. Here and in other early writing on Florida, mangrove trees are only one of many unique features that provide useful metaphors for considering variety of forms that founding and belonging could take. Florida's combination of geography and topography, which was singular among all of nation's actual and prospective possessions, secured its prolonged lack of political incorporation. But these exceptional qualities also made it testing ground for alternative models of taking root. In discourses of agriculture, natural history, and geography, language used to describe root taking in Florida countered many of claims about foundation and settlement that were developing elsewhere in new nation, finally putting productive pressure on philosophical bases of emerging model of agrarian republicanism itself. in Florida has been called land for good reason. (1) Many early Americans were fascinated by variety of singular ways in which and water combine in and around peninsula because of excessive rainfall, frequent hurricanes, and vast swamps that extend across seemingly interminable flatness saturated with standing water. phenomenon of erosion is particularly remarkable in Florida because it happens on three sides. Some early visitors even speculated that peninsula constantly dissolved, and that Florida Keys were mere marks and traces of an original shoreline lost long ago to sea (De Brahm, Report 240). To stand on Floridian ground is to experience precarious footing: as naturalist William Bartram notes, because Florida's unique geological base is permeable limestone reservoir that routes water along innumerable subterranean avenues, even where seems solid it is thick with liquid running incessantly through concealed hydrological networks just beneath surface (192-93, 226). …

Variation of Stinga Evans, 1955, with description of a new species from Mexico (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae: Hesperiinae: Hesperiini)

Stinga Evans, 1955, has been considered monotypic since its description despite geographical variation that has not been elucidated. The variation of Stinga morrisoni (W. H. Edwards, 1878) described and figured here includes a range of superficial phenotypes segregated by a combination of geography and elevation, but united by a common genital morphology of both sexes. In addition, a second species of the genus occurring in southern Mexico (Tlaxcala, Puebla and Oaxaca), with different genitalia and superficial traits outside the range of variation seen in S. morrisoni, is described and named as a new species.

Geographic Variation in Male Sexual Signals in Strawberry Poison Frogs (Dendrobates pumilio)

AbstractIn this paper, we compare the advertisement calls of 207 neotropical strawberry poison frogs (Dendrobates pumilio) collected in 21 localities along a transect from northern Costa Rica to western Panama. Populations varied most in call duration and call rate, while pulse rate and duty cycle were less variable. Multivariate analyses showed that call variation followed a cline with higher call rates, shorter calls, lower duty cycles and higher pulse rates in the southeast. Body size decreased towards the southeast and explained most variation in dominant frequency, as well as some residual variation in call rate. We conclude that a combination of geography and morphology is largely responsible for call variation within this species. Two inferred bio‐acoustic groups were roughly in accordance with two genetic groups, geographically separated in central Costa Rica. However, genetic distances among populations did not co‐vary with call dissimilarity after correction for geographic distances. Thus, differences in calls between genetic groups are probably mainly a result of clinal variation. These findings agree with the general observation that bio‐acoustic variation is often not (highly) associated with genetic divergence. Moreover, colour polymorphism observed among Panamanian populations was not reflected in a higher variability in call parameters relative to the monomorphic Costa Rican populations.

Canadian-U.S. Environmental Cooperation: Climate Change Networks and Regional Action

Introduction Canadian-U.S. environmental relations manifest a growing importance of transborder state and provincial cooperation and policy-making. (2) This trend is clear in American climate change action. Though the Canadian and American federal governments have adopted diverging positions on climate change policy, extensive sub-national climate change action across the Canadian-U.S. border is developing in northeast America. In this region, Canadian provinces and U.S. states forge ahead with climate change action beyond requirements mandated by their federal governments. (3) This collective effort includes the six states (Maine, Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut) and five Eastern Canadian provinces (Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Brunswick, and Quebec). Under the joint Climate Change Action Plan, adopted by the Governors (NEG) and the Eastern Canadian Premiers (ECP) in August 2001, participating provinces and states commit to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 1990 levels by 2010 and 10 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. (4) The provinces and states moreover pledge to ultimately decrease GHG emissions to levels that do not pose a threat to the climate, which according to an official estimate would require a 75-85 percent reduction from 2001 emission levels. (5) Since 2001, state and provincial officials have worked to develop and implement more detailed provincial and state level policies and programs and built public-private partnerships in support of the regional plan and goals. This article draws insights from the literatures on and networks to examine growing Canadian provincial and U.S. state level environmental cooperation with a case study of the regional NEG-ECP climate change action. The authors attended multiple regional meetings and workshops with public, private, and civil society participants, conducted a large series of semi-structured and open-ended interviews with stakeholders and experts, and reviewed a multitude of climate change documents and reports. We begin by discussing central aspects of and networks as tools for analyzing NEG-ECP policy-making and implementation. Next, we examine regional NEG-ECP climate change policy and implementation and discuss potential avenues through which developments in northeast may influence national climate change debates in the U.S. and Canada. Regionalism and Networks The two concepts of and networks offer an opportunity to critically examine central aspects and drivers of developing NEG-ECP climate change action. Traditionally, social science scholars have relied primarily on a combination of geography, administrative designations, and economic factors such as trade patterns, currency use, and/or capital or labor flows to define regions. (6) In contrast, scholarship focuses on more complex combinations of political, economic, social, and cultural factors to define regions, stressing the social construction of regions. (7) This new includes interactions among (1) ideas and their ties to institutions, (2) systems of production, (3) labor supply, and (4) sociocultural institutions, all undergirded by power relations. (8) If one views regions as complex social constructs that are often based on a multitude of factors, a and regionalism can occur at various scales, from the macro-level to the micro-level. There can, moreover, be smaller regions within a larger region. For example, North America denotes a large commonly recognized continental scale region while it simultaneously incorporates geographically smaller regional areas with which many people identify, such as New England and the Canadian Maritimes. In addition, regions vary greatly in the extent to which their constituting interactions involve shared decision making organizations, identities, traditions, civil societies, and so on. …

Geo-Policy Barriers and Rural Internet Access: The Regulatory Role in Constructing the Digital Divide

A combination of geography, public policy, and commercial investment in information infrastructure combines to create geo-policy barriers that in turn structure the ability of rural citizens to access the Internet. A statistical study of 208 rural telephone exchanges in Texas combined with case studies from rural counties explores the impact of distance and policies aimed at enabling rural telephone connection on the presence of Internet service providers. Market territories, including exchange areas and LATAs, and the distance requirements of expanded local calling policy in Texas can both help and hinder Internet access in remote areas.

Application behavior and disability in ambulatory care according to SGB XI. A structural regional approach

A REGIONAL ANALYSIS: The target of this task undertaken by a geographer was an analysis according to limited regional areas, of application for and demands on benefits granted by the statutory social long-term care insurance body, and hence an interdisciplinary estimate. Definite differences between individual areas in Schleswig-Holstein were seen, and it was partly possible to explain why such differences exist. The infrastructure, the housing space ownership conditions and individual self-assessment are essential factors when applying for benefits. Identification of the geography of the relevant residential location was effected by the individual zip code. In 79.8% of the cases included in a random test the locations were clearly defined. The combination of geography and epidemiology enables a clear allocation of medical phenomena also for further research concerning differences between well-defined areas.

Resources Versus Results: Comparative Performance of State Highway Systems, 1984–1990

This article compares the relative performance of the U.S. and the 50 state highway systems against resources available, over the period 1984–1990. Data are collected on 13 measures of revenues, expenditures, pavement condition, congestion, bridge condition, and accidents. Statistics are normalized to control the effects of size and inflation. Each state's performance is then graded according to whether the state is making progress, holding steady, or losing ground relative to the national trends. Findings show that the U.S. highway system is in good condition and is continuing to improve: even statistics on congestion are now beginning to show improvement. Against this general improvement six states have been able to maintain or improve their highway systems with considerably less resources per mile than other states. These states are New Mexico, South Dakota, Wyoming, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Arkansas. Each of these stales seems to have a combination of geography, traffic, economic structure, and fiscal capability that results in particularly cost‐effective highway systems. The findings suggest that simplistic explanations of performance based on location, urban/rural distinctions, weather, climate, or taxes are inadequate; more research is needed to explain the causes of these differences.