Shared Interests Research Articles

Does wild rabbit population size affect connectivity?

<p>Wild rabbit is a relevant species in the Iberian Peninsula due to its ecological and economic roles. Conservationists and game managers therefore have a shared interest in assuring the existence of resilient and sustainable populations. Although management principles and guidelines are mostly known and understood, often the results are not as good as expected. Local abundance can vary significantly even in short periods, while the colonisation of adjacent territories is uncommon, probably due to the territorial behaviour of the species. Aware that the foundation of nuclei requires interaction among individuals, we hypothesised that rabbit abundance plays a significant part in population connectivity. In order to find out whether the population size affects nuclei connectivity, we conducted a graph theory-based connectivity analysis. The results confirm that connectivity grows with rabbit abundance, but only to a certain degree, and there is a spatial separation of the nuclei regardless of the population size. These outcomes suggest that a comprehensive wild rabbit population increment plan should address both the abundance and spatial distribution, but should not aim at achieving a continuous distribution of wild rabbit with constant or similar abundance. Regarding specific management actions, we argue that in restocking operations new nuclei should be located within dispersal range from the existing ones to promote inter-nuclei connectivity, but not too close, as the nuclei segregation tendency is likely to persist due to the species’ territoriality.</p>

The great collector and his man in Rome

Abstract This article analyses the relationship between one of early modern Italy’s most illustrious collectors, Prince and Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici (1617–1675), and his principal agent in Rome, Ottavio Falconieri (1636–1675). It draws on an extraordinary new source: a volume containing 350 original letters sent by Leopoldo to Ottavio, never before seen by any other scholar. Letters written by Leopoldo are rare documents: they provide a unique insight into his expectations, instructions and reactions, showing the active role he always played in the collecting process. These new letters also demonstrate that Falconieri was far more than just an art agent: he was Leopoldo’s point of reference in Rome, a man with whom the cardinal shared many interests, ranging from literature to astronomy, from poetry to natural science, and Falconieri’s indefatigable collecting work went well beyond antiquities to include books, scientific instruments, curiosities and much more.

The International Dimension of Academic Integrity: An Integrative Literature Review

Over half a million international students now study in Canada. This rapid increase in international enrollments has intensified focus on academic integrity because the stakes are high for both international students and the institutions that host them. Academic integrity violations involving international students may garner scandalous attention, and the international students who become entangled in incidents of academic misconduct face potentially devastating life consequences, including expulsion from academic studies and dishonor in family life. International students studying in Canada, particularly those whose first language is not English, face several hurdles not experienced by their Canadian counterparts. Overcoming these cultural barriers is a shared interest and a top strategic priority because academic credentials are a signal that assert students have mastered academic norms of the new culture. There remains considerable debate surrounding international students regarding their increased likelihood to commit academic integrity violations, and this integrative literature review explores the intersection of academic integrity and international students. It takes a broad and holistic approach to identify areas of conflict and knowledge gaps, with a focus on successful institutional interventions that proactively reduce the likelihood of academic misconduct. Little research details efficacious methods to reduce incidents of academic integrity violations involving international students, but taking stock of current interventions provides some guidance to institutions welcoming international students, and the faculty who teach them, so that they can both be successful in addressing academic integrity issues.

To Kill a Mockingjay: Katniss's Corrosive Queerness in the Hunger Games Trilogy

ABSTRACT The third volume of Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games Trilogy, Mockingjay, depicts two dystopian political alternatives: the exploitative capitalist Capitol and the planned economy of District 13. Protagonist Katniss Everdeen repudiates both political structures. This article reads her choice through Lee Edelman's work on futurity and Judith Butler's work on mourning and violence to suggest that it is possible to read the ending of The Hunger Games Trilogy as a utopian response to Snow's and Coin's regimes. While Snow figures Katniss as the victorious Child for the Capitol and Coin figures her as the Child-Soldier for the rebellion, Collins's epilogue undercuts these symbolic roles and tries to decouple Katniss's individual future from the futurity of the state. Her choices at the end of the novel manifest a community that is constituted by shared work, mutual interest, and memorial rather than futurity.

The Case of The Case of Peter Pan or the Impossibility of Children's Fiction: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, Childhood, Animality

This article argues a different understanding to that in children's literature studies more widely of the implications of the work of Jacqueline Rose in The Case of Peter Pan or: The Impossibility of Children's Fiction (1984) for thinking about childhood, animality and children's literature and links these implications to the similar implications of Jacques Derrida's thinking about the child and animality. In both cases, the child and the animal are seen not as psycho-biological entities nor as products of social constructivism nor as categories that must be seen as inclusive of variety, but as memories, where memory is understood in the psychoanalytic sense as a present production of a past, including ‘observation’ as remembered. The implications of the arguments are demonstrated in relation to readings of Jessica Love's award-winning picture book Julián is a Mermaid (2018) as well as several reviews of the text in relation specifically to ideas of (trans) sexuality, gender, childhood, ethnicity and mermaids. Key here is what is understood to be the shared interest of psychoanalysis and deconstructive thinking in not stabilising definitions but instead in reading them as shifting in perspective.

Mechanoperovskites for Photovoltaic Applications: Preparation, Characterization, and Device Fabrication.

Hybrid organic-inorganic metal halide perovskites (MHPs) have emerged as excellent absorber materials for next generation solar cells owing to their simple solution-processed synthesis and high efficiency. This breakthrough in photovoltaics along with an accompanying impact in light-emitting applications prompted a renaissance of interest in the broad family of MHPs. Notably, the optoelectronic properties and the photovoltaic parameters of MHPs are highly sensitive to the adopted synthetic strategy. The preparation of MHPs has commonly relied on solution-based methods requiring elevated temperatures for homogeneity of reaction mixtures. While the solution-based approach is relatively versatile, it faces challenges such as limitations in compositional engineering of MHPs or their long-term storage among others. Therefore, there is a continuous great challenge to develop efficient synthetic strategies affording various high-quality MHP materials for numerous technological optoelectronic applications. In the past decade, mechanochemistry has appeared as a green alternative to traditional synthesis. This solid-state, re-emerging efficient synthetic methodology mediated by direct absorption of mechanical energy is growing explosively across organic and inorganic chemistry and materials science. In this Account, we describe our shared interest in the productive use of mechanical force in chemistry of MHPs, as well as assembly of the respective solar cell devices. We highlight the milestones achieved by our groups along with the seminal contributions by other groups. In particular, we demonstrate that mechanochemistry efficiently allows the formation of various phase pure hybrid lead and lead-free halide perovskite compositions (called hereafter "mechanoperovskites"). The progress in solvent-free solid-state synthesis is greatly enhanced by the integration of advanced methods of solid-state analysis like powder X-ray diffraction (pXRD), solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (ss-NMR) and UV-vis spectroscopies, and we aim to illustrate this ongoing integration through appropriate examples. Furthermore, we show that thin films based on mechanoperovskites have the advantage of providing a higher degree of control of the stoichiometry and higher reproducibility, stability, and material phase purity. The impact of using powdered mechanoperovskite as a precursor for thin film formation on the electrochemical and photovoltaic properties of the solar cells is also discussed. Finally, our view of current challenges and future directions in this emerging interdisciplinary area of research is provided.

Bad external actors and good nuclear energy: Media discourse on energy supplies in the Czech Republic and Slovakia

For Central and Eastern European countries, energy security has been one of the top political topics ever since the 2009 gas crisis. Although these countries have a shared interest in this issue, their preferences – especially those regarding the role of Russia as their main energy supplier – are not identical. This paper examines and juxtaposes the discourses on natural gas supply in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Utilizing a broadly constructivist perspective, the article explores the media discourses connected to energy supplies in these countries. Methodologically, the paper employs critical discourse analysis to examine this discourse. The paper argues that the media discourses in both countries underline the overall unreliability of the external environment and stress the necessity to rely on domestic energy sources. In the Czech case, such an environment also includes the EU, which translates into a critical stance towards renewable energy, viewed as being forced on country by the EU. In contrast, the Slovak discourse presents the EU as a suitable arena for energy cooperation. Both countries agree on the support for nuclear energy, which is considered to be a domestic – and therefore most reliable – energy source.

Bridging senses: novel insights from synaesthesia

Synaesthesia is a neurological phenomenon that can offer an unusually clear window into the factors influencing human sensory perception and the range of normal experience [1,2]. Sometimes described as a blending of the senses, where exposure to a triggering stimulus (e.g. music and letters of the alphabet) causes an immediate additional sensation (e.g. colours and tastes), it has been reported that synaesthesia naturally affects 1–4% of people [2], and has a range of different types [3]. These developmental forms of synaesthesia are thought to involve an intertwining of innate predispositions [4] with environmental factors and so have potential to give insights into how genetics and learning interact to create our views of the world around us [1]. The status of synaesthesia as a topic of shared interest across multiple areas of science (psychology, linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, genetics, etc.) necessitates a high level of interdisciplinary interaction to generate scientific advances. Therefore, in October 2018, international experts from these diverse disciplines came together at the Royal Society in London for a Scientific Discussion Meeting on ‘Bridging senses: new developments in synaesthesia’. Over 2 days, we exchanged views on the nature of this fascinating condition and what it might tell us more broadly about the biology of human sensory experiences, with a series of engaging talks presenting new research findings, as well as lively interactive debates. In the current special issue, comprising 16 different articles, speakers and participants from the meeting have contributed peer-reviewed opinion pieces, reviews and original research capturing both the state of the art and insights into future directions of this dynamic field.

The case for "structural missingness:" A critical discourse of missed care.

Stimulated by our conversations at the 2018 International Philosophy of Nursing Society Conference and our shared interests, the coauthors present an argument for augmenting the broader discussion of "missed care" with our synthesized concept called structural missingness. We take the problem of missed care to be largely grounded on a particular economic construction of the healthcare system within an era of what some are calling the Capitalocene, capturing the pervasive influence of capitalism on nature, humanity and the world order. Our perspective is that of the UnitedStates, however, extrapolations can be made to the social and healthcare systems in other countries. We are concerned with the underlying conditions that structurally reify inequality and ultimately undermine nursing practice. To situate the discussion, we briefly review existing literature on the contextualization of missed care. We understand contemporary circumstances of missed care as a function of the neoliberalization of healthcare, including the idea of nursing as a commodity. From this, we discuss the implications of missed care, which forms the basis of our critique. Synthesizing the term "structural missingness, we locate a moral imperative in the professional and disciplinary commitments of nursing to consider who and what have been left out. This moral imperative for the nursing profession, along with other social and health related professions, underscores our obligation to be involved in uncovering inequities and conceptualizing upstream solutions for structural missingness.

What design education tells us about design theory: a pedagogical genealogy

ABSTRACTIn design theory, we often come across scholarly efforts that seek to define design as a unique discipline and to characterize it as a distinct category of practice, with its own epistemology in that it differs from sciences, arts and humanities (Cross, N. 2011. Design Thinking: Understanding How Designers Think and Work. Oxford: Berg.; Dorst, K. 2015. Frame innovation: Create New Thinking by Design. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Nelson, H. G., and E. Stolterman. 2012. The Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World. The MIT Press.; Redström, J. 2017. Making Design Theory. MIT Press.). Although such efforts are helpful in teasing forward the nature of design epistemologies and practices, we question them by critically engaging with epistemic paradigms informing design education, its structural forms, origins and purposes, historically, while suggesting the time has come to reevaluate design’s relationships with other epistemological traditions, including the sciences and humanities. We unpack history of design education, in order to problematize what we have come to view as overly schematized epistemological distinctions, most notably the asserted opposition between (what Schön calls) technical rationality and an alternative epistemology broadly linked to pragmatism and/or phenomenology. We do so by offering a genealogy of design education showing that since the nineteenth century, design programmes have continuously, if diversely, taught novice designers, methods, crafts, and attitudes that reflect diverse epistemological traditions. Theorists and educators of design have a shared interest in balancing the needs to appreciate and help develop that which is distinctive of design and also to build upon design’s rich epistemological connections to the sciences and humanities. Whereas the former helps the field improve its abilities to contribute to society, the latter provides many of the theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical resources that make such contributions possible.

Artificial Intelligence in Health Care and Medicine: A Personalized Approach

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming more and more ubiquitous, and AI also invades health care and related fields ever more. We believe this is a good thing. Inspired by work that we have done in various projects at the Alan Turing Institute Almere (ATIA), Delft University of Technology (TUD), Utrecht University (UU), and Vrije University (VU), we’ll review a number of applications of AI in health care and medicine, mainly from a personal viewpoint, expertise and interest. In many of the projects we have worked on there is a shared focus and interest in creating a more personalized approach to health care and medicine. It is this focus on a more personalized health care that we want to highlight in this paper. To this end, we review various examples of work to illustrate and argue that AI, and Social AI in particular, has great potential for improving healthcare and enabling a more personalized approach. We show techniques from Social AI can be effectively applied in developing Behavior Change Management systems, and illustrate its use in related work on data collection for Value-Based Health Care. In particular, we’ll discuss artificial emotions, serious games for healthcare, and artificial companions to assist with the care of patients in a hospital or home setting. These companions are able to monitor the behavior of patients, help them remind of taking medication, but also can have conversations with them giving them the feeling that they are cared for. We argue that these examples of Social AI techniques can be used to enable and improve personalized health care even in times where health care is economized upon like we face in The Netherlands. More generally, in this article we discuss various methods and techniques from AI to do this.

Divergence and convergence in U.S.-Pakistan security relations

ABSTRACT This article examines the alignment between Pakistan’s policies and U.S. security interests in six areas. While political rhetoric in the 2010s suggested that there was substantial divergence across all areas, the actual record was a mixed. There was considerable divergence on the war in Afghanistan and on India; manageable divergence on China; convergence with limitations on nuclear security; and convergence on the Middle East and on multinational soft security issues (peacekeeping and counterpiracy). Looking ahead, some cases could change from divergence to convergence or vice-versa, and the degree of convergence or divergence within each case may also change, though the overall mixed picture of convergence and divergence may persist. Washington may then adopt a tailored approach toward Islamabad. It could pursue a combination of pressure and engagement to reduce differences in the areas of divergence, while maintaining engagement to consolidate shared interests in the areas of convergence.

Balancing or backscratching? Sino-Russian logrolling during US decline

How will American relative decline impact security cooperation between Russia and China? The conventional wisdom holds that the Sino-Russian “strategic partnership” is largely a “marriage of convenience” held together only by shared antipathy toward the US-led international order. From a traditional balance of power perspective, given their lack of a shared vision for global and regional order, we should expect Sino-Russian cooperation to deteriorate as US relative power recedes. I suggest, to the contrary, that Sino-Russian cooperation could remain quite durable throughout a prolonged period of American decline and retrenchment. I apply theories of bureaucratic and legislative “logrolling” to demonstrate how China and Russia each have incentives to support one another’s revisionist actions in their respective home regions. An underlying asymmetry of regional importance—China’s prioritization of East Asia, and Russia’s prioritization of Europe—enables this logrolling dynamic. Thus, I argue that while there are few shared interests between them, Russia and China could well maintain a limited but highly consequential cooperative relationship over the medium to long term. As such, the Sino-Russian threat to US-led order comes not from a coordinated balancing effort, but from reciprocal support of one another’s region-specific revisionist actions.

Comparing Teaching Methods of Mathematics at University Level

According to the views of social constructivism, learning takes place when individuals engage socially to talk about and act on shared problems or interests. In recent years, this approach has been very popular for the teaching and learning of mathematics in primary and secondary education. On the contrary, in tertiary education, it seems that most teachers still prefer the traditional way of delivering explicit mathematics instruction, sometimes combined with challenging questions and mathematical discourse with the students to promote conceptual understanding and critical analysis of the mathematical context. The paper at hand presents a classroom experiment comparing those two teaching methods at university level. The outcomes of the experiment were assessed and compared with the help of the Grade Point Average index to evaluate the student quality performance and by using grey numbers to evaluate their mean performance. Further empirical research is needed to obtain definitive results on the effectiveness of those two methods for teaching mathematics at university level.

Navigating student success: learning from the higher education landscape

Purpose This paper aims to demonstrate the variety of ways institutions and their libraries approach student success both conceptionally and operationally. Design/methodology/approach Librarians from nine different institutions of higher education were given a series of questions about student success on their campuses and in their libraries. They responded with written essays describing their experiences and perspectives. Findings The contributed pieces are collected together and display a shared interest in defining “student success,” aligning strategic planning with student success initiatives and establishing (and assessing) strong infrastructure to support student success. Originality/value These examples help us observe what is happening throughout higher education and see potential paths forward at our own institutions engaged in this work.

Development and Implementation of Interprofessional Relations Between a College of Pharmacy and Osteopathic Residency Programs in a Community Teaching Hospital.

Background: Team-based health care optimizes patient outcomes, and therefore, both interprofessional education (IPE) and interprofessional relations (IPR) are required in health professions education, postgraduate training, and real-world clinical practice. Existing literature describes progressive developments and assessments of IPE in colleges of pharmacy and medicine; however, there are fewer reports describing processes or projects that foster physician-pharmacist IPR in clinical practices without established interprofessional collaborations. Objectives: The primary objective was to establish IPR between pharmacists and osteopathic residents in a community teaching hospital. The secondary objective was to innovate the delivery of pharmacotherapeutic content delivered to the residents during their didactic lecture series by providing active learning strategies. Methods: This report describes a project wherein college of pharmacy faculty developed IPR with osteopathic residents in a community teaching hospital that previously did not have any established physician-pharmacist IPR. Osteopathic medical residents completed a post-implementation survey after they attended a 12-month series of didactic lectures that incorporated active learning delivered by pharmacist faculty. Results: Sixty-six residents were eligible to complete the survey; 20 residents completed the survey. Eighteen residents believed that both physicians and pharmacists should be educated to establish IPR and that it should be included in professional, graduate, and continuing education settings for both professions. Sixteen residents believed that the active learning techniques employed by college of pharmacy faculty were useful for IPR. Conclusions: Physician-pharmacist IPR may be achievable in settings where IPR was previously sparse. Shared interests, adherence, and innovations in IPR frameworks are essential for developing physician-pharmacist IPR.

Maximal velocity and amplitude decrement angle: a novel parameter for finger tapping instrumental evaluation in Parkinson disease

In our current knowledge-driven society, many information systems encourage users to utilize their online social connections’ information collections actively as useful sources. The abundant information-sharing activities among online social connections could be valuable in enhancing and developing a sophisticated user information model. In order to leverage the shared information as a user information model, our preliminary job is to determine how to measure effectively the resulting patterns. However, this task is not easy, due to multiple aspects of information and the diversity of information preferences among social connections. Which similarity measure is the most representable for the common interests of multifaceted information among online social connections? This is the main question we will explore in this paper. In order to answer this question, we considered users’ self-defined online social connections, specifically in Citeulike, which were built around an object-centered sociality as the gold standard of shared interests among online social connections. Then, we computed the effectiveness of various similarity measures in their capabilities to estimate shared interests. The results demonstrate that, instead of focusing on monotonous bookmark-based similarities, it is significantly better to zero in on more cognitively expressible metadata-based similarities in accounting for shared interests.

Leisure education and social capital: The case of university programmes for older adults in China

Older adults are considered a vulnerable group at high risk of social isolation. Social capital has been shown to be a protective factor against social isolation and a contributing factor to well-being. This study employs a mixed-methods approach to examine the effect of leisure education on social capital in the case of university programmes for older adults in China. Through its prospective design, the study found that leisure education enhanced the development of social capital. Shared interests, perceived social connectedness, information exchanges, norms of mutual care, and skill development were found to play important roles in enhancing seniors’ social capital.

Significant insignificances: Winston Smith’s diary and other reclaimed histories

The construction of counter-narratives which reclaim and rename history by challenging hegemonic discourse cannot simply be a question of replacing one metanarrative with another. Genuine counter-narratives also challenge the category of “the historical” itself, blurring its parameters and making value-claims for what is often regarded as historically insignificant or marginal. In this chapter, I examine works by three authors – George Orwell, Charles Olson and Georgi Gospodinov – who, despite the diversity of their outlook, output and circumstances, exhibit a shared interest in the significance of the seemingly insignificant and in its potentiality as a foundation for ethical challenges to the assumptions and definitions of hegemonic metanarratives. Winston Smith’s diary in Orwell’s 1984, the autobiographical anecdotes, obscure historical documents and local mythology included in Olson’s Maximus Poems and the fragmentary texts of Gospodinov’s Всички нашите тела are discussed in relation to Kierkegaard’s notion of dignity in personal history, Lyotard’s definition of postmodernism as an “incredulity towards metanarratives” and Auerbach’s discussion of modernism in Mimesis, which also serves to illuminate continuities between the different “epochs” of the modernist/ post-modernist age as well as identifying a possible need to interrogate the way literary history itself is defined and narrated.

Unraveling the Relationship between Collective Action and Social Learning: Evidence from Community Forest Management in Canada

An important outcome of social learning in the context of natural resource management is the potential for collective action—actions taken by a group of people that are the result of finding shared or common interest. Evidence of the relationship between collective action and social learning is beginning to emerge in the natural resource management literature in areas such as community forestry and participatory irrigation, but empirical evidence is sparse. Using a qualitative inquiry and research design involving a case study of the Wet’zinkw’a Community Forest Corporation, this paper presents research that examined the relationships between collective action and social learning through community forest management. Our findings show strong evidence of collective action outcomes on the part of board members responsible for the community forest, such as establishing a legacy fund, adding value to logs, protecting First Nations cultural values, and hiring locally. Our data also reveal that the actions taken by board members were encouraged through social learning that was related to acquiring (new) knowledge, developing an improved/deeper understanding, and building relationships. However, we found limited opportunities for community forest partners and the general public to learn and contribute to collective action outcomes since the actions taken and associated learning occurred mainly among board members.