User Resource Research Articles

Bossiedokters and the challenges of nature co-management in the Boland area of South Africa's Western Cape

In 2007, the National People and Parks Programme was rolled out as a platform for co-management between successful land claimants, indigenous natural resource user groups and conservation authorities. It aimed to promote social ‘transformation’ in South African conservation management. This paper engages with the efforts made by CapeNature Conservation Board and the Boland indigenous healers – Bossiedokters – to resolve conflict around illegal harvesting of indigenous medicinal flora from protected areas. Dialogues emerging around such co-management platforms reveal that inequalities voiced by healers are once again silenced by government practices ostensibly designed to resolve them. Conceptualising this conflict through the lens of ‘environmentality’ suggests its usefulness, as well as its limitations in grasping contemporary South African dilemmas about transformation of nature. Bossiedokters reveal a substantially different way of being-with-nature in comparison to historically produced dominant conceptions of nature. This difference cannot be understood outside the complex relations from which they emerge and allows a better understanding of the social condition for the possibility of their voices to be heard today. While Bossiedokters want to reclaim their pre-colonial social authority, the question remains as to how and whether they will be able to transform conservation practice before conservation practice transforms them.

FPGA Implementations of Ladder Diagrams

The performance of programmable logic controllers is often constrained by the microprocessor and the real-time firmware of the controller. Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are an attractive potential implementation medium for high-speed control because of their fast and parallel execution and programmable nature. Ladder Diagrams are a standard graphical programming method for industrial controllers, but compilers from Ladder Diagrams to FPGA hardware do not yet exist. This paper explores the comparative speed of four different classes of FGPA implementation of Ladder Diagrams - Interpreted Software, Compiled Software, Interpreted Hardware and Compiled Hardware. It also explores parallel versus serial execution of Ladder Diagrams in hardware, and identifies timers as a major resource user in parallel implementations. Overall, a Shared Timer Serial Compiled Hardware system for FPGA implementation of Ladder Diagrams is recommended. Using comparable FPGA resources to other alternatives it provides a 20-600 times speed improvement over other solutions whilst maintaining correct Ladder Diagram semantics.

An Interactive Approach for Multi-Attribute Resource Allocation in Grids

Auction-based models and protocols introduce money and pricing as the technique for coordination between users and producers of resources in grids. In this paper, we propose a multi-attribute reverse auction protocol to allocate grid resource. In order to enhance the information efficiency we develop a novel interactive approach supporting both user agents and producer agents. In this approach, an iterative algorithm used to estimate the resource user’s preference utility function can facilitate producer agents to update their bids with incomplete information. Numerical simulating experiments show that our approach can satisfy the resource user’s quality demand on multiple attributes, and achieve high efficiency in user utility. The results also provide an idea to analyze the two-side private information problem in gird resource allocation.

A uplink radio resource allocation scheme for localized SC-FDMA transmission in LTE network

The radio resource allocation is one of the most important issues to achieve effective wireless communication. In Long Term Evolution (LTE) network, single carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) is applied as the transmission technology for uplink traffic. Most researches focus on maximizing the system throughput of SC-FDMA under changeable channel condition. However, users may require different quality of services (QoS) for different applications. This paper studies radio resource allocation for QoS users in localized SC-FDMA system. The proposed scheme divides allocation process into matching algorithm and radio resource assignment algorithm. The Gale---Shapley algorithm is applied to find the optimal matching between resource blocks (RB) and user equipment (UE) by considering channel conditions and the desired QoS. Then the resource assignment algorithm heuristically allocates bandwidth to UE by referring the matched RB under the constraint of carrier continuity. This paper modified the Recursive Maximum Expansion (RME) algorithm to effectively assign radio resource for UEs with different bandwidth demands. The performance of our proposed scheme is compared with the modified RME scheme through exhaustive simulations. The video streaming, VoIP, and FTP traffic types were adopted for simulations. Our simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves better QoS satisfaction and system throughput than the RME-modified scheme.

Understanding Variability in Adaptive Capacity on Rangelands

The art and science of developing effective policies and practices to enhance sustainability and adapt to new climate conditions on rangelands and savannas are typically founded on addressing the “average” or “typical” resource user. However, this assumption is flawed since it does not appreciate the extent of diversity among resource users; it risks that strategies will be irrelevant for many people and ignored, and that the grazing resource itself will remain unprotected. Understanding social heterogeneity is vital for effective natural resource management. Our aim was to understand the extent to which graziers in the northern Australian rangelands varied in their capacity to adapt to climate variability and recommended practices. Adaptive capacity was assessed according to four dimensions: 1) the perception of risk, 2) skills in planning, learning and reorganising, 3) financial and emotional flexibility, and 4) interest in adapting. We conducted 100 face-to-face interviews with graziers in their homes obtaining a 97% response rate. Of the 16 possible combinations that the four dimensions represent, we observed that all combinations were present in the Burdekin. Any single initiative to address grazing land management practices in the region is unlikely to address the needs of all graziers. Rather, policies could be tailored to type-specific needs based on adaptive capacity. Efforts to shift graziers from very low, low, or moderate levels of adaptive capacity are urgently needed. We suggest some strategies.

The Influence of Ethnic Diversity on Social Network Structure in a Common-Pool Resource System: Implications for Collaborative Management

Social networks have recently been identified as key features in facilitating or constraining collaborative arrangements that can enhance resource governance and adaptability in complex social-ecological systems. Nonetheless, the effect of ethnicity on social network structure in an ethnically diverse common-pool resource system is virtually unknown. We characterize the entire social network of Hawaii’s longline fishery, an ethnically diverse competitive pelagic fishery, and investigate network homophily, network structure, and cross-scale linkages. Results show that ethnicity significantly influences social network structure and is responsible for a homophily effect, which can create challenges for stakeholder collaboration across groups. Our analysis also suggests that ethnicity influences the formation of diverse network structures, and can affect the level of linkages to outside industry leaders, government or management officials, and members of the scientific community. This study provides the first empirical examination of the impact of ethnic diversity on resource user’s social networks in the common-pool resource literature, having important implications for collaborative resource management.

Public Verifiability in Cloud Computing Using Signcryption Based on Elliptic Curves

Cloud computing is a computing paradigm that involves outsourcing of computing resources with the capabilities of expendable resource scalability, on-demand provisioning with little or no up-front IT infrastructure investment costs. It has recently emerged as a promising hosting platform that performs an intelligent usage of a collection of services, applications, information and infrastructure comprised of pools of computer, network, information and storage resources. However along with these advantages, storing a large amount of data including critical information on the cloud motivates highly skilled hackers thus creating a need for the security to be considered as one of the top issues while considering Cloud Computing. In the cloud storage model, data is stored on multiple virtualized servers. Physically the resources will span multiple servers and can even span storage sites. We have proposed an effective scheme to ensure the correctness of user's data on cloud data storage and public verifiability without demanding user's time, feasibility or resources. Whenever data corruption is detected during the storage correctness verification, this scheme can almost guarantee the simultaneous localization of data errors and the identification of the misbehaving server(s). Keywords - Elliptic Curves, Homomorphic, Signcryption, Unsigncryption.

Implementation of Secure Authentication Mechanism for LBS using best Encryption Technique on the Bases of performance Analysis of cryptographic Algorithms

Today’s location-sensitive service relies on user’s mobile device to determine its location and send the location to the application. With the growth of the importance and of the audience of location-based services, questions of security and privacy are brought forward. As services are being built on top of this technology, the number of parties increases significantly, and the possibility of a malicious insider (or a misbehaving insider) emerges. The extent to which the parties care to trust each other has reduced, and trust amongst the various parties can no longer be assumed by a location-based service. An attacker may try to steal a service (e.g., claiming to be a client to get free internet access), service providers may gain of private information. There should be a proper authentication mechanism between client and server to access the services. In this paper we have proposed an Authentication Mechanism in which mobile Phone Users will send request for some services from server. Firstly Location Verification is done; server verifies the User’s Mobile Phone’s location against authorized location. After User/Device Authentication is done, server checks User/Device Identification. If both conditions are true, server will grant access to the users for services and resources. The information flow between client and server should be securely managed. The security of transmitted data over a wireless channel aims at protecting the data from unauthorized intrusion.Encryption algorithms, which play a main role in information security systems, consume a significant amount of computing resources and battery energy, which are very limited because usage time of a mobile device is constrained by its most critical resource – battery. High energy consumption has a direct impact on the battery life, and, consequently, on the duration and extent of the user’s mobility. Thus, the reduction of energy consumption of a portable system is of the primary importance. We have compared the encryption algorithms to encrypt the User/Device information before sending it to server. Numerical results obtained through simulation are compared on the bases of throughput of various Encryption Algorithms. Encryption time is used to calculate the throughput of an encryption scheme. Increased throughput results in decrease of power consumption. The results are shown with respect to key size variation. It has been observed that AES 128 bit encryption Algorithm is better solution for our application.

The Science of Goal Setting

Goal setting within social marketing campaigns is art and science. An analysis of Rare Pride conservation campaigns shows the quantitative, replicable relationship among the impact of these conservation campaigns with diffusion of innovation theory, and collective behavior theory that can guide marketers to set better goals. Rare is an environmental conservation organization that focuses on reducing community-based threats to biodiversity through a social marketing campaign called Pride. Pride campaigns work by removing barriers to change (whether they are technical, social, and political or something else) and inspiring people to make change happen. Based on the analysis of historical Pride campaign survey data, we found that the starting percentage of engagement has a great influence on the percentage change at the end of the campaign: The higher the initial adoption level of knowledge, attitude, and behavior change, the easier these measures are to improve. The result also suggests a difference in the potential of change with different audience segments: It is easiest to change influencer, then general public, and finally resource user who are the target of the social marketing campaign. In this article, we will analyze how to use diffusion of innovation and collective behavior theories to explain the impact of campaigns, as well as how to set more attainable goals. This article is consistent with similar research in the field of public health, which should help marketers set goals more tightly, allocate resources more effectively, and better manage donor expectations.

The role of behavioural flexibility in a whole of ecosystem model

Abstractvan Putten, I. E., Gorton, R. J., Fulton, E. A., and Thebaud, O. 2013. The role of behavioural flexibility in a whole of ecosystem model. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 70:150–163. The predictive accuracy of complex fisheries models developed to anticipate the effects of changing fishery regulations appears to depend on a solid understanding of the processes and feedback systems linking biological and physical information to resource user. Many fisher decisions are modelled in the human component of the models, including inertia, or location choice flexibility. We unpack a whole of ecosystem system model and explore how location choice flexibility in fleet behaviour (sticking to the same seasonal and spatial distribution of fishing) affects outcomes such as catches and income levels and variability. Our analysis shows that the interpretation is not straightforward, and the relationship between behavioural flexibility and income level and income variability has to be considered in the context of three main fleet characteristics: profitability; how diversified the fleet is; and growing or declining target species biomass. We contend that making behavioural flexibility sensitive to the health of the stock and fleet profitability could potentially improve accuracy of large whole of ecosystem models such as Atlantis.

Mobile Client's Access Mechanism for Location based Service using Cell-ID

location-sensitive service relies on user's mobile device to determine its location and send the location to the application. A location-based service is a service that determines the location of a mobile device and uses this to provide functionalities and information specific to that location. With the growth of the importance and of the audience of location-based services, questions of security and privacy are brought forward. As services are being built on top of this technology, the number of parties increases significantly, and the possibility of a malicious insider (or a misbehaving insider) emerges. The extent to which the parties care to trust each other has reduced, and trust amongst the various parties can no longer be assumed by a location-based service. An attacker may try to steal a service (e.g., claiming to be a client to get free internet access), service providers may gain of private information. There should be a proper authentication mechanism between client and server to access the services. By considering some important factors like Cost, Energy Efficiency, we have proposed an Access Mechanism in which mobile Phone Users will send request for some services from server. Firstly Location Verification is done; server verifies the User's Mobile Phone's location against authorized location. After User/Device Authentication is done, server checks User/Device Identification. If both conditions are true, server will grant access to the users for services and resources.

Comparing Fisher Interviews, Logbooks, and Catch Landings Estimates of Extraction Rates in a Small-Scale Fishery

Researchers are turning to alternative data sources (e.g., resource user knowledge) to provide information required for wildlife management. Little is known about the reliability of data elicited from resource users relative to data obtained from user-independent approaches (e.g., observations of fish catches). We test for consensus among three methods that quantify past (1996 to 2007) seahorse catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) for a small-scale, data-poor fishery in the Philippines: interviews with fishers about good, bad, and typical catch; fisher logbooks; and observations of catch landings. Interviews and logbooks indicated no trends in CPUE through time, consistent with results from the fisher-independent metric, catch landings. Although interview estimates of “typical” CPUE greatly exceeded “typical” observed catches and logbook estimates, interview estimates of “bad” CPUE were comparable. Catch landings estimates for a fisher in a particular year were uncorrelated to what he reported during retrospective interviews. Interviews should be used cautiously to inform specific catch targets (e.g., total allowable catches), although including interview questions about a range of catch experiences (e.g., good, bad and typical), may improve interview-derived data. Logbooks are particularly useful for capturing information about fishing expeditions that produce no fish, which are largely missed by other methods.

FACTORS INFLUENCING THE USE OF GREEN LOGISTICS: THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS

As the climate change is getting more and more visible through global warming and more rapidly appearing weather anomalies. Planet resources are used more widely and rapidly due to that coming to an end. World society is concerned, how to affect global warming effect, how to find measures to preserve natural resources and promote recycling. In this global process logistics plays very important role, as it is one of the main pollution sources and resource user. Thus the rising attention to the greener solutions, doesn’t leave logistics aside. Many countries make steps to promote greener technologies and recycling in logistics field, as the logistics process cannot be stopped or make completely green, as the, necessary resource is fuel. Full stop of logistics it would lead to economics stop. Nevertheless not only technology drives logistics, also logistic processes influence heavily on ecology. If processes are not efficient, they also lead to wasting of resources. So the aim of this article is to reveal factors influencing green logistics use at the level of company from the theoretical point of view. First off all the difference between the conceptions of green logistics and logistics are presented. Secondly the use of green logistics and it’s impact to global ecology are discussed. Finally the solution of using green logistics and the factors of using it through the theoretical implications are presented. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.em.17.2.2202

Who determines biodiversity? An analysis of actors' power and interests in community forestry in Namibia

Recent and ongoing research has begun to question the efficacy of community forestry programs. In particular, analysis seems to reveal that devolution of power to the local resource user does not happen. Nevertheless, it also appears that community forestry programs do deliver some of their promises. Especially, the biodiversity of the resources involved is often improved. But who determines this, if not the local resource user? This article seeks to answer this by analyzing the biodiversity of 14 community forests in Namibia. The authors apply their power theory and methodology to identify the powerful, actors and these actors' interests. Finally, the author relates his findings to the real outcomes for biodiversity.The article concludes that biodiversity is only in the interest of a few powerful actors who have used their power to achieve a positive outcome for biodiversity. Therefore, the article argues that biodiversity in community forestry depends on the interests of powerful actors.

Service Path Attribution Networks (SPANs)

Ecosystem services are the effects on human well-being of the flow of benefits from ecosystems to people over given extents of space and time. The Service Path Attribution Network (SPAN) model provides a spatial framework for determining the topology and strength of these flows and identifies the human and ecological features which give rise to them. As an aid to decision-making, this approach discovers dependencies between provision and usage endpoints, spatial competition among users for scarce resources, and areas of highest likely impact on ecosystem service flows. Particularly novel is the model’s ability to quantify services provided by the absence of a flow. SPAN models have been developed for a number of services (scenic views, proximity to open space, carbon sequestration, flood mitigation, nutrient cycling, and avoided sedimentation/deposition), which vary in scale of effect, mechanism of provision and use, and type of flow. Results using real world data are shown for the US Puget Sound region.

Dominant discourses, among fishers and middlemen, of the factors affecting coral reef fish distributions in Solomon Islands

Understanding resource stakeholders' perceptions of resource condition and management is vital to the formulation of efficacious management policy to sustain natural systems because agreement among stakeholders is likely to result in more effective outcomes. Understanding perceptions is particularly important in the context of coral reefs because threats are often diverse and management options are numerous, and therefore perceptions are likely to be diverse. This study identified the dominant discourses of reef fish decline, and increase, among 119 fishers and fish traders (herein middlemen) in Solomon Islands, and compared these discourses to current scientific knowledge. Discourses were then explored for dominant themes that might improve understanding of resource user perceptions. The findings suggest that certain fisher and middlemen discourses align with scientific understanding of the causal links between human activity and fish stock declines, and that many of the elicited management strategies are aligned with current scientific recommendations. A theme that emerged across the fisher and middlemen discourses of fish decline was a dichotomy in perception between fishing for economic affluence and fishing for subsistence and economic survival. A theme that emerged across discourses of fish increase was a dichotomy between support for command-and-control approaches and support for community-based approaches to management. Differences between some fisher and middlemen discourses were explained by the location in which interviews were conducted suggesting consensual perceptions achieved through local knowledge networks. Similarity between scientific understanding and local perceptions suggests that local resource users are aware of, and might support, fishery management strategies based on scientific evidence. Such strategies must consider factors such as location because resource user perceptions differ between locations and because many threats to the fishery and preferred management strategies are likely to be context specific. ► Consensual stakeholder perceptions likely to improve fisheries policy outcomes. ► This study compares stakeholder perceptions on the causes of resource decline. ► Fishers and middlemen have similar perceptions to scientific evidence and. ► Dominant themes emerge that relate to perception of exploitation and management. ► Fisher and middlemen attributes explain some differences in perception.

THE INFLUENCE OF SOFTWARE QUALITY HUMAN RESOURCES INFORlVlATION SYSTEM AND USER PARTICIPATION TOWARD USER SATISFACTION AS SYSTEM USER (Study in Human Resources Bureau Trisakti University)

The research on the influence of the quality of software human resources information systems and user pariticipation on user satisfaction in the Bureau of Human Resources Trisakti University. <br />The research purposes (1) Identify the effect of the quality of software human resources information system for user satisfaction as users of the system, (2) Identify the effect of user participation on user as users ofthe system (3) identification of the influence of the quality of software human resource information systems and participation user together to user satisfaction as users <br />of the system. <br />This research is descriptive and correlational research is to describe the characteristics of respondents and aims to determine the relationship between two or more variables. <br />The research was conducted at the Bureau of Human Resources University of Trisakti by respondents as many as 32 people and using correlational and regression analyzes. <br />The study found that the quality of the software (XI) and user participation (X2) either individually or group have a strong influence and positive impact on user satisfaction (Y) as the user s system. <br />From this study several can be drawn as follows: (I) there is a strong and positive relationship between software quality variables (Xl) to the satisfaction of the user 01 with r values of 0.584, (2) there is a strong and positive relationship between the variables user participation (X2) with user satisfaction (Y) with r value of 0.721 (3) The regression model obtained is Y = -2.125 + 0.304 software quality (Xl ) + 0.397 user participation (X2), (4) regression models can state that the variable quality of the software and user participation is jointly affect user satisfaction as users of the system. It is shown from ANOVA test results were obtained Fcount of 22.642 with a significance level of F = 0.000 which is much smaller than 0.05, (5) The coefficient of determination (R Square) of 0.610 implies that, 61.0% user satisfaction can be explained by a variety of software quality and variety of user participation, while the rest is explained by other factors. <br /><br />

Dynamic Planning of Water Resource and Electric Power Systems under Uncertainty

AbstractHydropower plays an important role in electric power systems. It not only interacts with many non-hydropower generation activities but also competes with other water users (industrial, commercial, residential, and agricultural) for limited water resources. Therefore, the objective of this study is to investigate an optimized water allocation scheme within a water resource and electric power management system through developing an inexact water resource and electric power systems planning model (WPEM). WPEM is based on the interval-parameter programming and mixed-integer programming techniques; thus, it can deal with dynamics of capacity expansion and uncertainties associated with system management. The developed method is then applied to a power system with water shortage issues in the future. The results of scenario analysis indicate that WPEM could help get insights into the tradeoff between system benefit and water utilization as well as that between system benefit and environmental concern. Th...

Research on Set up of Web-Based Surveying and Mapping Data Processing Center

The set up of Web-based Surveying and Mapping data processing center, not only conducive to the standardization and modularity of Surveying and Mapping data processing, but also help the management and use of data, making the data providers and users no longer subject to geographic areas restrictions; at the same time as using the B/S (Browser/Server) architecture network platform, users avoid the installation process, saving the user's system resources.

Transitions toward co-management: The process of marine resource management devolution in three east African countries

Communities are increasingly empowered with the ability and responsibility of working with national governments to make decisions about marine resources in decentralized co-management arrangements. This transition toward decentralized management represents a changing governance landscape. This paper explores the transition to decentralisation in marine resource management systems in three East African countries. The paper draws upon expert opinion and literature from both political science and linked social-ecological systems fields to guide exploration of five key governance transition concepts in each country: (1) drivers of change; (2) institutional arrangements; (3) institutional fit; (4) actor interactions; and (5) adaptive management. Key findings are that decentralized management in the region was largely donor-driven and only partly transferred power to local stakeholders. However, increased accountability created a degree of democracy in regards to natural resource governance that was not previously present. Additionally, increased local-level adaptive management has emerged in most systems and, to date, this experimental management has helped to change resource user's views from metaphysical to more scientific cause-and-effect attribution of changes to resource conditions.