Societal Dependence Research Articles

Pollinators respond positively to urban green space enhancements using wild and ornamental flowers

Abstract Pollinator diversity and abundance are under direct threat from human activities. Despite societal dependence on pollinators for crop production, humankind continues to drive pollinator declines through agricultural intensification and urbanisation. Urban environments can provide refuge to some pollinators. There is a need, however, to understand how pollinator communities can be supported in these areas while also considering human needs. Public green spaces provide a promising avenue to target plant–pollinator conservation measures in an urban setting due to their large area, high abundance and low plant–pollinator biodiversity. We used a paired design to compare the plant community, pollinator community and plant–pollinator interactions of (i) public urban green spaces enhanced with wildflower meadows and pollinator‐friendly ornamental plantings to (ii) control unenhanced urban green spaces. The planting types within enhanced sites were also separately compared. Our results show that not only was the diversity of the overall pollinator community higher in enhanced than control sites, but also the complexity of some wild Hymenoptera and the abundance of Diptera pollinator groups. The negative impact of urbanisation on some pollinator groups was reduced in enhanced sites compared with control sites. Planting both pollinator‐friendly ornamental plants and wildflower meadows significantly increased the visits from Diptera and the diversity in the plant–pollinator community compared with wildflower plantings alone. Our results suggest that enhancing public spaces for pollinators has positive effects on key groups and can help mitigate the impacts of urbanisation. Non‐native ornamental plants can also play a role in enhancing green spaces for pollinators while maintaining their recreational functions. This supports a mixed‐planting approach for improving public green spaces in urban areas for both people and nature.

Projected decline in the strength of vegetation carbon sequestration under climate change in India

Tropical vegetation plays a critical role in terrestrial carbon budget and supply many ecological functions such as carbon sequestration. In recent decades, India has witnessed an increase in net primary productivity (NPP), an important measure of carbon sequestration. However, uncertainties persist regarding the sustainability of these land carbon sinks in the face of climate change. The enhanced NPP is driven by the strong CO2 fertilization effect (CFE), but the temporal patterns of this feedback remain unclear. Using the carbon flux data from the Earth System Models (ESMs), an increasing trend in NPP was observed, with projections of NPP to 2.00 ± 0.12 PgCyr-1 (25 % increase) during 2021-2049, 2.36 ± 0.12 PgCyr-1 (18 % increase) during 2050-2079, and 2.67 ± 0.07 PgCyr-1 (13 % increase) during 2080-2099 in Indian vegetation under SSP585 scenario. This suggests a significant decline in the NPP growth rate. To understand the feedback mechanisms driving NPP, the relative effects of CFE and warming were analyzed. Comparing simulations from the biogeochemically coupled model (BGC) with the fully coupled model, the BGC model projected a 74.7 % increase in NPP, significantly higher than the 55.9 % increase projected by the fully coupled model by the end of the century. This indicates that the consistent increase in NPP was associated with CO2 fertilization. More importantly, results reveal that the decrease in the NPP growth rate was due to the declining contribution of CFE at a rate of -0.62 % per 100 ppm CO2 increase. This decline could be attributed to factors such as nutrient limitations and high temperatures. Additionally, significant shifts in the strength of carbon sinks in offsetting the CO2 emissions were identified, decreasing at a rate of -1.15 % per decade. This decline in the strength of vegetation carbon sequestration may increase the societal dependence on mitigation measures to address climate change.

The Evolution of the Public Security Defence in EU Free Movement Law: Lessons from the Energy Sector

AbstractThis Article analyses the evolution of the public security defence to justify restrictions on free movement within the EU in the context of the energy sector. Taking the seminal 1984 Campus Oil case as the point of departure for its analysis, the Article focuses on the interplay between public security and energy security and shows two key changes in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. First, it demonstrates how the scope of the public security defence in the energy sector has gradually narrowed. Second, it shows how the public security defence has developed to take into account evolving social, technological, and legal contexts in the EU energy sector. Culminating in cases like Hidroelectrica in 2020 and OPAL in 2021, analysis of the relevant case law suggests that, despite the societal dependence on energy and the ongoing geopolitical turmoil in Europe, the Court of Justice interprets exceptions from free movement in an increasingly strict manner, highlighting the primacy of internal market approaches to energy security.

Factors associated with adolescent pregnancy and public health interventions to address in Nigeria: a scoping review

BackgroundAdolescent pregnancy is a global public health and social problem that affects both developed and developing countries. Reducing adolescent pregnancy is central to achieving sustainable development goals. In 2021 Nigeria’s Adolescent pregnancy was 106 per 1000 and showed an increasing rate. This study, therefore, aims to explore the literature to map the risk factors and interventions against adolescent pregnancy in Nigeria.MethodA scoping review of studies published between January 2007 and December 2022 using PubMed, Web of Science and Africa Journals Online were searched using the keywords' adolescent pregnancy' AND 'Nigeria'. Studies were screened using the eligibility criteria.ResultsA total of 241 articles, of which 229 were identified through the databases and 12 were identified through hand search. After the full-text review, 28 studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in the final review. In Nigeria, the prevalence of adolescent pregnancy is between 7.5 and 49.5%. Associated factors for adolescent pregnancy in Nigeria are multifactorial, including individual, community, societal, school, family, and peer factors. Policies on adolescent sexual and reproductive health exist in Nigeria. Still, the policies need more sponsorship, implementation, and monitoring, while only some interventions on adolescent pregnancy majorly based on contraceptives and education of health providers are available in Nigeria.ConclusionAssociated factors for adolescent Pregnancy in Nigeria are multidimensional, with educational attainment and wealth index being the highest associated factor. Intervention strategies aimed at the educational level have been identified as a critical factor in curbing adolescent pregnancy. Thus, policies on sexual, reproductive, and mental health development specifically targeting adolescents to reduce the cycle of societal dependence by empowering this group economically and educationally are justifiably warranted.

Interpretable fake news detection with topic and deep variational models

The growing societal dependence on social media and user generated content for news and information has increased the influence of unreliable sources and fake content, which muddles public discourse and lessens trust in the media. Validating the credibility of such information is a difficult task that is susceptible to confirmation bias, leading to the development of algorithmic techniques to distinguish between fake and real news. However, most existing methods are challenging to interpret, making it difficult to establish trust in predictions, and make assumptions that are unrealistic in many real-world scenarios, e.g., the availability of audiovisual features or provenance. In this work, we focus on fake news detection of textual content using interpretable features and methods. In particular, we have developed a deep probabilistic model that integrates a dense representation of textual news using a variational autoencoder and bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks with semantic topic-related features inferred from a Bayesian admixture model. Extensive experimental studies with 3 real-world datasets demonstrate that our model achieves comparable performance to state-of-the-art competing models while facilitating model interpretability from the learned topics. Finally, we have conducted model ablation studies to justify the effectiveness and accuracy of integrating neural embeddings and topic features both quantitatively by evaluating performance and qualitatively through separability in lower dimensional embeddings.

Sociotechnical Factors Supporting Mobile Phone Use by Bus Drivers

OCCUPATIONAL APPLICATIONS Results of a survey of drivers working for two bus companies in Norway suggest that 20% of drivers sometimes use a mobile phone while driving, even though it is not permitted. Sociotechnical analysis of the system surrounding drivers at one of the companies elicited ways in which social and technical factors combined to support mobile phone use by bus drivers. These factors were arranged under four themes: increased societal dependence on technology; developments in bus driver culture; the need for bus drivers to resolve conflicting goals; and a lack of belief in adverse consequences of using mobile phone while driving. Our findings (i) support claims that driver-centered analyses of mobile phone use or other traffic safety challenges are an insufficient basis for the development of measures and should be supplemented by sociotechnical analyses; and (ii) can inspire the design of more comprehensive measures to help reduce mobile phone use and road safety risks.

Optimal Sizing, Location, and Assignment of Photovoltaic Distributed Generators with an Energy Storage System for Islanded Microgrids

Disruptive events, such as the winter storm of 2021 that left 40 million people in the U.S. without power, have revealed the potential danger of societal dependence on centralized energy sources. Localized energy grids (called microgrids (MGs)) can help add energy reliability and independence by using distributed generators (DGs) with photovoltaic (PV) energy sources and energy storage systems (ESSs). Such MGs can independently energize critical energy demand nodes (DNs) when isolated from the primary grid with renewable energy. The optimal sizes and assignments of PVDG/ESS units to the DNs during outages are crucial to increasing energy reliability. However, finding an optimal configuration–energy management strategy is difficult due to the investment costs, complexity of assignments, potential capacities, and uncertainties in the PV system output. In this research, we developed a simulation framework, augmented by genetic algorithms (GAs), to optimize costs and fulfill energy demands by selecting the appropriate MG configuration and ESS management strategy for an islanded MG for emergency power during an extended disruption. The simulation model was based on historical data, referencing Knoxville, TN, models, and changing the output and load conditions due to the time of day and weather for PVDG/ESS MGs to help quantify some stochastic attributes. The solutions were evaluated under given investment budgets with minimal costs and maximal average hourly energy demands met. Solutions also provide an appropriate energy management strategy and prioritization of specific DNs during load shedding.

Narrative futures of a low carbon transition for hydrocarbon rentier states: Case of Qatar

The beginning of the post-fossil fuel era is evident in trends such as fossil fuel divestment, cheaper alternative energy sources, and disruptive technologies that are enabling responsive and reliable alternative energy systems. In this global low-carbon transition, states (countries) that are dependent on hydrocarbon revenues confront an uncertain future, requiring urgent actions to reduce their economic and societal dependence on hydrocarbon revenues. It is well known that choices made will have significant impacts on wealth and prosperity. Unfortunately, desirable transition pathways remain unclear and the benefits ill-defined. Addressing this critical gap in knowledge, this paper frames the construct of a ‘low-carbon transition’ for hydrocarbon-dependent rentier states, presenting 16 decision-support scenarios across three key categories of industrial, economic and energy/ environmental futures. The study used backcasting methods in four creative-narrative scenario workshops focusing on Qatar, engaging with a diverse group of senior technology and policy professionals. The authors discuss the findings in relation to tensions, contradictions and dominant narratives about a low carbon future. The utility of these narratives is concluded by providing a systematic approach for public and private sector leaders to appreciate and plan for a low carbon transition in hydrocarbon-dependent rentier states. The findings provide a useful framing for the future and foresight practitioners working in a similar cultural context.

Design Knowledge for Deep-Learning-Enabled Image-Based Decision Support Systems

With the ever-increasing societal dependence on electricity, one of the critical tasks in power supply is maintaining the power line infrastructure. In the process of making informed, cost-effective, and timely decisions, maintenance engineers must rely on human-created, heterogeneous, structured, and also largely unstructured information. The maturing research on vision-based power line inspection driven by advancements in deep learning offers first possibilities to move towards more holistic, automated, and safe decision-making. However, (current) research focuses solely on the extraction of information rather than its implementation in decision-making processes. The paper addresses this shortcoming by designing, instantiating, and evaluating a holistic deep-learning-enabled image-based decision support system artifact for power line maintenance at a German distribution system operator in southern Germany. Following the design science research paradigm, two main components of the artifact are designed: A deep-learning-based model component responsible for automatic fault detection of power line parts as well as a user-oriented interface responsible for presenting the captured information in a way that enables more informed decisions. As a basis for both components, preliminary design requirements are derived from literature and the application field. Drawing on justificatory knowledge from deep learning as well as decision support systems, tentative design principles are derived. Based on these design principles, a prototype of the artifact is implemented that allows for rigorous evaluation of the design knowledge in multiple evaluation episodes, covering different angles. Through a technical experiment the technical novelty of the artifact’s capability to capture selected faults (regarding insulators and safety pins) in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-captured image data (model component) is validated. Subsequent interviews, surveys, and workshops in a natural environment confirm the usefulness of the model as well as the user interface component. The evaluation provides evidence that (1) the image processing approach manages to address the gap of power line component inspection and (2) that the proposed holistic design knowledge for image-based decision support systems enables more informed decision-making. The paper therefore contributes to research and practice in three ways. First, the technical feasibility to detect certain maintenance-intensive parts of power lines with the help of unique UAV image data is shown. Second, the distribution system operators’ specific problem is solved by supporting decisions in maintenance with the proposed image-based decision support system. Third, precise design knowledge for image-based decision support systems is formulated that can inform future system designs of a similar nature.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12599-022-00745-z.

Power System Reliability and Maintenance Evolution: A Critical Review and Future Perspectives

In the last two decades, the number of strategies for planning the maintenance of power systems have increased considerably. As societal dependence on power system infrastructure continues to grow, there is an increased need to identify the best practices in the field of power system maintenance planning to ensure the continued reliable operation of the grid. This paper presents a comprehensive and systematic state-of-the-art review of advances in power system maintenance and the significance for the field of power system reliability. As the main contributions, this paper systematically organizes the published literature, and analyses the most relevant milestones in the context of power systems adequacy and security enhancement, producing a taxonomy of the different maintenance strategies. This includes detailing existing approaches for power system maintenance planning, and providing clear definitions, models, methods, and characteristics of maintenance policy. The review also includes the most relevant standards employed in the power system maintenance field. Finally, areas requiring further research are identified alongside emerging trends in power system maintenance, to inform industry practice and support further research.

A Petrostate’s Outlook on Low-Carbon Transitions: The Discursive Frames of Petroleum Policy in Norway

Norway is a petroleum exporting country that, simultaneously, is at the forefront of implementing ambitious climate policy measures. Through a discourse analysis of official documents that address petroleum policy, this article examines how the Norwegian government justifies a place for Norwegian petroleum in a low-carbon future. Our findings show that the frames used to justify continued petroleum production between 2011 and 2018 remains predominantly stable, despite the growing opposition to this official discourse in relation to climate change and the societal dependence on petroleum revenues. This article highlights the tension that Norway, as a petroleum-producing country, face in an increasingly carbon-constrained world, and how this is handled in the official petroleum discourse. It shows how the official discourse portrays continued petroleum production and exploration as both valid and necessary and how this framing is discursively linked to a strong commitment to mitigate climate change.

Digital Disenfranchisement and COVID-19: Broadband Internet Access as a Social Determinant of Health.

According to the Pew Research Center, approximately one quarter of American adults do not have access to broadband internet. This number does not account for the millions of people who are underconnected or lacking a stable internet connection. Although digital disparity in America is not new, the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic has increased our societal dependence on the internet and widened the digital divide. Access to broadband internet has become a basic need in this connected society, linking people to vital resources, such as jobs, education, health care, food, and information. However, it is still an overlooked and understudied issue in public health. In this article, we highlight five key points for why advocating for the expansion of affordable and accessible internet for all should be a priority issue for public health and health promotion. Recent studies offer evidence that digital disenfranchisement contributes to negative health outcomes, economic oppression, and racial injustice. Now more than ever, health advocacy to promote digital equity and inclusion is critical to our meaningful progress toward health equity.

Operando Measurement of Layer Breathing Modes in Lithiated Graphite

Despite their ubiquitous usage and increasing societal dependence on Li-ion batteries, there remains a lack of detailed empirical evidence of Li intercalation/deintercalation into graphite even though this process dictates the performance, longevity, and safety of the system. Here, we report direct detection and dissociation of specific crystallographic phases in the lithiated graphite, which form through a stepwise staging process. Using operando measurements, LiC18, LiC12, and LiC6 phases are observed via distinct low-frequency Raman features, which are the result of displacement of the graphite lattice by induced local strain. Density functional theory calculations confirm the nature of the Raman-active vibrational modes, to the layer breathing modes (LBMs) of the lithiated graphite. The new findings indicate graphene-like characteristics in the lithiated graphite under the deep charged condition due to the imposed strain by the inserted Li. Moreover, our approach also provides a simple experimental tool to measure induced strain in the graphite structure under full intercalation conditions.

Traditional medicine among the community of Gash-Barka region, Eritrea: attitude, societal dependence, and pattern of use

BackgroundDespite the growing conventional healthcare coverage in Eritrea, traditional medicine (TM) remains an essential source of healthcare service to the population. This study, therefore, aims at exploring the attitude, societal dependence, and pattern of TM use of the Gash-Barka community.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted between December 2018 and January 2019 in Gash-Barka region, one of the six regions of Eritrea. Two-stage stratified cluster sampling design was used to provide representative sample of households. The data collected through face-to-face interview using a structured questionnaire was entered twice and analyzed using CSPro7.2 and SPSS 23, respectively. Both descriptive and analytical analyses were performed to test statistical significance.ResultsOf the total 210 participants, 202 completed the interview with a response rate of 96.2%. Almost 97% of the respondents were aware of the general existence of TM. About half of the respondents (47.4%) had visited traditional health practitioners (THPs) at least once in their lifetime. The majority of the respondents claimed their medical condition had been improved (63.2%), were satisfied with the outcome (76.8%), and had not encountered complications (95.2%) due to TM use. Around 40% of the respondents admitted they do not disclose previous TM use to conventional health practitioners. Females are more likely to have had ever visited THPs (AOR = 1.85, CI: 1.01, 3.38) and use TM in the future (AOR = 2.26, CI: 0.92, 5.14) than males. Moreover, those who had visited THPs before (COR = 8.30, CI: 3.25, 21.20) are more likely to use TM as a primary treatment choice and prefer to use TM in the future (AOR = 4.40, CI: 1.97, 9.83) than those who had never visited THPs. About 61% of the total families claimed they had circumcised at least one female child, and 96.8% disclosed they had circumcised at least one male child. Out of which, 89.2% of the circumcisions were done by THPs.ConclusionTM is popular and widely relayed upon by Gash-Barka residents with exposure of children to harmful TM practices. Since the reliance of the community on TM is expected to continue, further representative studies are recommended to inform regulatory interventions and integrate TM into the health system.

Stakeholders Collaboration in Empowering Coastal Communities

Community empowerment has been reported to lead to societal dependence, as symptoms tend to allow the population not to be independent. In the coastal area of Bengkulu City, community empowerment has been reported to be carried out, most especially among the fishing population. However, it was not conducted sustainably, resulting in independence for the fishing community. For example, several Agencies often assist with temporary benefits. Moreover, there is no evaluation of program outcomes, as the assistance services do not run optimally. This study aims to describe the stakeholder collaboration patterns in empowering the coastal community at Bengkulu city. The method used was descriptive qualitative, as data were collected through observations, interviews, and documentation. The determination of objects was also carried out via the use of purposive and convenience sampling techniques. Also, the triangulation technique was used in order to check the data validity. The results showed that stakeholder collaboration was not being efficient and effective. The indicators also showed that the involved stakeholders have not entered into agreements and cooperation, which were observed as an effort to increase the capacity of coastal communities.

Variegated forms of embeddedness: home-grown neoliberal authoritarianism in Tunisia under Ben Ali

This article aims to analyse the impact of structural adjustment programmes, widely known as the ‘neoliberal model’, on the resilience of authoritarianism during Ben Ali’s regime in Tunisia, to uncover the possible outcomes of the embedded neoliberal and the authoritarian blending. To do this, it engages with two sets of broad questions. How did the Ben Ali regime continue to maintain the regime’s tight grip on power in Tunisia during a ‘neoliberal’ transformation which in theory aims at reducing state influence? What does the Tunisian example tell us about the nature of embedded neoliberalism and its links with authoritarianism in general? The article answers these questions through the analysis of the novel social policy institutions of economic restructuring that took place during the Ben Ali era, namely the National Solidarity Fund, the Tunisian Solidarity Bank and the National Employment Fund. It concludes that these new tools under ‘neoliberal’ transformation increased state intervention in both politics and the economy, and reproduced the societal dependence on the state. Such form of neoliberalism has helped to sustain authoritarianism, but at the same time led to its demise when the social contract in which selective social benefits were provided in exchange for political loyalty failed.

On the relationship between bug reports and queries for text retrieval-based bug localization

As societal dependence on software continues to grow, bugs are becoming increasingly costly in terms of financial resources as well as human safety. Bug localization is the process by which a developer identifies buggy code that needs to be fixed to make a system safer and more reliable. Unfortunately, manually attempting to locate bugs solely from the information in a bug report requires advanced knowledge of how a system is constructed and the way its constituent pieces interact. Therefore, previous work has investigated numerous techniques for reducing the human effort spent in bug localization. One of the most common approaches is Text Retrieval (TR) in which a system’s source code is indexed into a search space that is then queried for code relevant to a given bug report. In the last decade, dozens of papers have proposed improvements to bug localization using TR with largely positive results. However, several other studies have called the technique into question. According to these studies, evaluations of TR-based approaches often lack sufficient controls on biases that artificially inflate the results, namely: misclassified bugs, tangled commits, and localization hints. Here we argue that contemporary evaluations of TR approaches also include a negative bias that outweighs the previously identified positive biases: while TR approaches expect a natural language query, most evaluations simply formulate this query as the full text of a bug report. In this study we show that highly performing queries can be extracted from the bug report text, in order to make TR effective even without the aforementioned positive biases. Further, we analyze the provenance of terms in these highly performing queries to drive future work in automatic query extraction from bug reports.

On Resilience in Cloud Computing

Cloud infrastructures are highly favoured as a computing delivery model worldwide, creating a strong societal dependence. It is therefore vital to enhance their resilience, providing persistent service delivery under a variety of conditions. Cloud environments are highly complex and continuously evolving. Additionally, the plethora of use-cases ensures requirements for persistent service delivery vary. As a contribution to knowledge, this work surveys resilience techniques for cloud environments. We apply a novel perspective using a layered model of traditional and emerging cloud paradigms. Works are then classified according to the Resilinets model. For each layer, the most common techniques with limitations are derived including an actor’s strength in influencing resilience in the cloud with each technique. We conclude with some future challenges to the field of resilient cloud computing.

Bubble Formation in the Electrolyte Triggers Voltage Instability in CO2 Electrolyzers.

SummaryThe electrochemical reduction of CO2 is promising for mitigating anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions; however, voltage instabilities currently inhibit reaching high current densities that are prerequisite for commercialization. Here, for the first time, we elucidate that product gaseous bubble accumulation on the electrode/electrolyte interface is the direct cause of the voltage instability in CO2 electrolyzers. Although bubble formation in water electrolyzers has been extensively studied, we identified that voltage instability caused by bubble formation is unique to CO2 electrolyzers. The appearance of syngas bubbles within the electrolyte at the gas diffusion electrode (GDE)-electrolyte chamber interface (i.e. ∼10% bubble coverage of the GDE surface) was accompanied by voltage oscillations of 60 mV. The presence of syngas in the electrolyte chamber physically inhibited two-phase reaction interfaces, thereby resulting in unstable cell performance. The strategic incorporation of our insights on bubble growth behavior and voltage instability is vital for designing commercially relevant CO2 electrolyzers.

Monitoring the 'diabetes epidemic': A framing analysis of United Kingdom print news 1993-2013.

The view that we are in the midst of a global diabetes epidemic has gained considerable ground in recent years and is often linked to the prior 'obesity epidemic'. This research explored how the diabetes epidemic was represented in United Kingdom (UK) news over the same time period that the obesity epidemic was widely reported. The research was motivated by a sociological interest in how postmodern 'epidemics' synergise with each other amidst broader political, economic, moral and sociocultural discourses. We analysed three time-bound samples of UK news articles about diabetes: 1993 (n = 19), 2001 (n = 119) and 2013 (n = 324). Until now, UK media has had the least attention regarding portrayal of diabetes. We adopted an empathically neutral approach and used a dual method approach of inductive thematic analysis and deductive framing analysis. The two methods were triangulated to produce the findings. Framing of diabetes moved from medical in 1993 to behavioural in 2001, then societal in 2013. By 2001 obesity was conceptualised as causal to diabetes, rather than a risk factor. Between 2001 and 2013 portrayals of the modifiable risk factors for diabetes (i.e. diet, exercise and weight) became increasingly technical. Other risk factors like age, family history and genetics faded during 2001 and 2013, while race, ethnicity and culture were positioned as states of 'high risk' for diabetes. The notion of an 'epidemic' of diabetes 'powered up' these concerns from an individual problem to a societal threat in the context of obesity as a well-known health risk. Portraying diabetes and the diabetes epidemic as anticipated consequences of obesity enlivens the heightened awareness to future risks in everyday life brought about during the obesity epidemic. The freeform adoption of the 'epidemic' term in contemporary health discourse appears to foster individual and societal dependence on biomedicine, giving it political, economic and divisive utility.