Suchergebnisse

This thesis presents and asseses a method for participation in landscape planning and management. The method has a long-term perspective, while focusing on the interests of local stakeholders. Public participation has been recognized as a fundamental part of landscape planning and management. Through for example the European Landscape Convention's (ELC) inclusive definition of "landscape", landscape got a more democratic connotation where focus is put on people's perception of a landscape. This shift calls for more collaborative working methods requiring more and somewhat different skills from the professional planner than a traditional top-down system does. The research presented in this thesis is context-bound, and based on action-oriented working methods and approaches where citizens, planners and managers are involved in parallel. Academia, represented by researchers and students, is proposed to supplement and assist municipal authorities and the local society in collaborative planning. Methods and approaches related to awareness raising, embodied knowledge, strengthening people's relationship to their everyday landscape and identifying ways of letting local experts' voices be heard in the municipal planning process, have guided the research. All the cases presented, describe planning processes in peri-urban landscapes, at different scales with strong connection to nature reserves, changed patterns of land use, and with varying amounts of stakeholders directly related to the landscapes in question. Three cases were selected to discover, design and investigate potentials with the "connoisseur methods", and three cases were selected to test and refine the method, anchored in current municipal planning and resulting in actual plans. In this thesis 'The connoisseur method' is proposed as a way to achieve better collaborative planning. It invites a new type of expert to influence landscape development: the connoisseur is an expert in experiencing the landscape from her particular perspective, and represents the local society. The method proposed is a mix of different participatory methods used for landscape analysis as a way for the professional planner/manager to understand how the local community understands and uses different landscape features. The results of the different cases show how the process is of vital importance. A successful collaboration process is a valuable tool for learning, both locally among the connoisseurs and amongst the municipal planners and managers.

This report presents the outcome of the joint work of PhD students and senior researchers working with DNA-based biodiversity assessment approaches with the goal to facilitate others the access to definitions and explanations about novel DNA-based methods. The work was performed during a PhD course (SLU PNS0169) at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Uppsala, Sweden. The course was co-organized by the EU COST research network DNAqua-Net and the SLU Research Schools Focus on Soils and Water (FoSW) and Ecology - basics and applications. DNAqua-Net (COST Action CA15219, 2016-2020) is a network connecting researchers, water managers, politicians and other stakeholders with the aim to develop new genetic tools for bioassessment of aquatic ecosystems in Europe and beyond. The PhD course offered a comprehensive overview of the paradigm shift from traditional morphology-based species identification to novel identification approaches based on molecular markers. We covered the use of molecular tools in both basic research and applied use with a focus on aquatic ecosystem assessment, from species collection to the use of diversity in environmental legislation. The focus of the course was on DNA (meta)barcoding and aquatic organisms. The knowledge gained was shared with the general public by creating Wikipedia pages and through this collaborative Open Access publication, co-authored by all course participants.

This article discusses the present negative evaluation of stereotypes. Do people who use stereotypes believe that a characteristic attributed to a group is categorical; that all members of group A have this trait? Empirical research & ordinary observations indicate that judgments are not so crudely made, but that people categorize in terms of probabilities. Therefore the rule "one should not generalize" seems unjustified. Further, such a view often endorses a strategy of correcting old stereotypes with the promotion of new stereotypes. The main problem is often not the negative view of others, but the idolized or victimized picture of the own group. The way to improve group relations according to the presented analysis is to become more tolerant to skeptical views of the own group. Knowledge about the universal human propensity for in-group preferences & honest statistics about actual differences will be helpful in this process. Adapted from the source document.

This book is about the historical sciences' way of producing knowledge by contextualizing. It is aimed primarily at students and researchers in the humanities disciplines who work with historical perspectives. The book's ambition is to bring the reader into the actual making and show how contextualisation is an important element in historical studies at all levels. The book thus hopes to stimulate increased reflection and discussion about how we proceed when we interpret, create or reinterpret historical, cultural and social contexts.
The book firstly provides an introduction to what contextualization can be and do when we encounter the past in the form of texts, images or artifacts. From the very first day at the university, students in historical disciplines end up in such meetings. Therefore, the first four chapters of the book are primarily aimed at students in the introductory semesters. What does it really mean to analyze, synthesize, contextualize or criticize - and how do the ways of working with the past relate to each other? And further, what historical times are we working with: do we read source material from our own horizons or from those of the historical actors? Is the source material part of a long story or a short one? And who decides the answer to such questions?
Secondly, the book provides an in-depth discussion of the role of contextualisation when we create new historical knowledge. The book's later chapters ask questions about how contextualisation relates to historical theory and method, and sheds light on the activity of creating, arguing for, and reconsidering the contexts that give meaning and significance to historical source material.
The most central lesson the book wants to convey is that contextualization is an ongoing activity. Human horizons of understanding are constantly moving in step with contemporary knowledge interests. There will always be new ways of understanding historical expressions, and that is one reason why historical studies form an important part of society's common knowledge base.

The first decade of the 21st century has brought with it two important breakthroughs in the study of comparative politics. The first one concerns the availability of data. Nowadays, access to a wide range of information sources for a large number of countries in the world can be gained without too much effort. The second one concerns the methodological achievements made in recent years. Today, sophisticated multi-level analyses can be conducted fairly easily. Among qualitatively oriented researchers, Charles Ragin has made a significant contribution by introducing the fs/QCA-technique into the field of political science. However, the growing amount of data & the new methods not only open up new possibilities for the researcher. The present article explicitly deals with the problems related to the use of multi-level analyses & fs/QCA in comparative political research. In addition, attention is drawn to the drawbacks of using survey data from heterogeneous settings. Adapted from the source document.

Studien redovisar den tredje mätningen som följer upp förändringar av trafikanternas hastighetsval och hastighetsefterlevnad på det kommunala huvudvägnätet i tätort. Resultaten visar att de genomsnittliga reshastigheterna ligger under gällande hastighetsgräns, men att bristande hastighetsefterlevnad fortfarande är ett problem. År 2009 fattades ett riksdagsbeslut som innebar ett mål att antalet dödade i vägtrafiken skulle halveras mellan åren 2007 och 2020. En av indikatorerna för att följa utvecklingen är "hastighetsefterlevnad på det kommunala vägnätet". Ett delmål är att minst 80 procent av trafikarbetet ska ske inom gällande hastighetsgräns. År 2012 var startår för mätserien och under 2015 genomfördes den tredje uppföljande mätningen. ; In 2009 the Swedish Parliament passed a resolution stating that by 2020 the number of fatalities from road traffic crashes should be reduced to half the level in 2007. This corresponds to a maximum of 220 deaths in 2020. In order to monitor progress toward this goal, yearly national follow-up studies are conducted to examine trends in the numbers of people killed and severely injured, along with a number of indicators. One of these indicators is speed limit compliance on the municipality streets; the milestone here is to have at least 80 per cent of all traffic travelling within the speed limit. The aim of the present study is to report the changes between the years 2014 and 2015 concerning driver speed levels and speed limit compliance on the main municipality streets. The annual measurement series started in year 2012 and with the measurement series from 2015, this third follow-up was performed.