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In our day, with the increase of industrialization, the tendency towards natural resources has accelerated. This causes an increase in environmental pressure groups on the ecosystems. The increase in the demand for biological resources, lack of awareness of the global impact of biodiversity at the local level, and inadequate government policies regarding the protection of biological resources lead to loss in terms of biodiversity. Biological and ecological diversity are threatened especially due to inaccurate and intensive land use. For this reason, the importance of habitat protection is increasing, and potential ways to support environmental conservation efforts are being explored throughout the world. For landscape ecology and sustainability, a more effective and sustainable understanding of the use of space should be developed by demonstrating the current state of natural resources. In ecological planning, biotope mapping is a very important study to refer for taking decisions about conservation-utilization. With the biotope mapping, living environments and important habitats of plant and animal species are determined, the sensitivity status of each habitat is determined, thus, decisions regarding protection and utilization of biotopes can be taken according to their sensitivities. In this study, biotopes of Ganos Mountain and its immediate surroundings have been mapped. Within the scope of the study, selective and representative mapping methods have been used for biotope mapping.In this context, existing studies on the research topic and area have been collected and evaluated, and once the area has been determined and identified according to the land use types, the biotopes that are important in terms of conservation and the ones that may represent the entire area enabling generalization are checked, and floristic studies have been initiated in those areas. As a result of analyses, the potentials of the mapped biotopes have been identified and the areas under threat of deterioration have been identified and proposals have been developed to ensure the continuity of the ecosystem in these areas.

Addressing the concerns surrounding blast injury for the military community is a pressing matter. Specifically, sub-concussive blast effects, or those blast effects which do not yield a medical diagnosis but can result in symptom reporting and negative self-reported outcomes, are becoming increasingly important. This work evaluates explosive blast overpressure and impulse effects at the sub-concussive level on neurocognitive performance assessed with the Defense Automated Neurobehavioral Assessment (DANA) across seven breacher training courses conducted by the US Military. The results reported here come from 202 healthy, male military volunteer participants. Findings indicate that the neurocognitive task appearing most sensitive to identifying performance change is the DANA Procedural Reaction Time (PRT) subtask which may involve a sufficient level of challenge to reliably detect a small, transient cognitive impairment among a healthy undiagnosed population. The blast characteristic that was consistently associated with performance change was peak overpressure. Overall, this study provides evidence that increasing blast overpressure, defined as peak overpressure experienced in a training day, can lead to transient degradations in neurocognitive performance as seen on the DANA PRT subtask, which may generalize to other capabilities.

ABSTRACT  This article examines the current economic status of the areas surrounding major U.S. container ports. We define a "port district" as the geographic area within a 7.5‐mile radius of a port. Our sample includes the 10 largest container ports in the U.S. We find that when we compare port districts to their surrounding metropolitan areas, household unemployment and poverty rates are significantly higher in port districts. Thus, the same ports that serve as "economic engines" for the region and nation may be the cause of economic decline and deterioration in the immediate areas that surround them. This presents a challenge for policy makers who want to preserve the benefits of international trade while facing increasing opposition to port expansion by local communities.

Over the past decades, wildfires have become an important social, economic, and environmental problem across the globe, due to their increased frequency, severity, and spatial extent. Portugal is far from being an exception in this respect, having contributed significantly to the burnt area statistics of the EU and having more than 300.000 ha burnt yearly during the past years. The mega fires of June and October 2017 with their dramatic consequences in terms of human fatalities deserve special mention in the present context, as they provided the study areas for the bulk of the work presented here. Mitigation of the foreseen effects of further climate change on fire hazard regimes and restoration of degraded ecosystems, including from recurrent wildfires are now important concerns on the agenda of international policies and organizations. Wildfire regimes and their impacts have received considerable research attention in fire-prone regions. Some impacts, however, are still poorly known. This includes the impacts on terrestrial fauna. This knowledge gap was addressed in this PhD study but given its short duration of four years, the focus was on assessing the immediate and short-term effects of wildfires. For the same reason, the PhD study was limited to two distinct terrestrial fauna groups, i.e. ground-dwelling macroinvertebrates and medium-sized mammals due to their ecological importance and potential resilience to adverse wildfire effects. The former group was the study object of three of the four studies included in this thesis (Chapters 2 to 4), two of which were carried out in the June-2017 burnt area of Pedrogão and its immediate surroundings. By contrast, the latter group was studied in and around one of the coastal areas that burnt during October 2017, that of the Costal Woodlands of the Quiaios Dunes (Chapter 5). The two studies in and around the Pedrogão burnt area specifically addressed the role of surface stones in the immediate wildfire effects on ground-dwelling macroinvertebrates, as habitat of ...

The program's core goal: a knowledge and experience-oriented exchange between Chinese and European NGOs that are working on innovative solutions for social, environmental, and other challenges in their immediate surroundings.

Due to their lack of financial resources, poor residents of deprived neighbourhoods are very much reliant on support and assistance from their personal networks. Studies refer to the key importance of neighbourhood contacts transcending social boundaries to promote upward social mobility. Based on a mix of quantitative and qualitative findings, this paper looks at the importance of social mix within a person's neighbourhood and immediate surroundings for transferring different kinds of resources. The results show that even residents of deprived neighbourhoods can call on a well-developed support network to deal with everyday problems. The contribution also shows that network contacts to people endowed with more resources are no guarantee for the upward social mobility of the less well endowed. Indeed, it would seem that 'getting-ahead' resources are also accessible via their homogeneous networks. Much more to the point, the immediate surroundings turn out to be an important spatial context for contacts and resource transfers, especially for families with children.

The fourteenth excavation season of the Archaeological Expedition to Wad Ben Naga focused on archaeological exploration of the Typhonium (WBN 200) and its immediate surroundings, exploration of cemetery WBN C200 and on conservation of structures located in Central Wad Ben Naga.

After the events of 9/11, Sikh Americans were victims of specifi c hate crimes and more generalized discrimination and distrust. This essay draws on participant observation and interviews conducted in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 with the Sikh community of the greater Washington, DC, area to examine the range of their responses to the pressures confronted by the community. It examines both the creativity and the anxiety surrounding the intersubjective efforts of Sikh communities to redefi ne together diasporic Sikh identity in the eyes of a hostile non-Sikh public; this was achieved through the actions undertaken by a joint committee of the leadership of gurdwaras and advocacy groups. Vigils, charity work (sewa), public meetings, and advertisements in support of the 9/11 victims and their families were signifi cant not only insofar as they professed American patriotism but also because the backstage planning for them made clear the depth of diversity and difference within the Sikh-American communities of the region. Joint action was achieved even as, in certain pockets of the Sikh-American community of Washington, DC, Khalistani American activists confl ated their patriotism for America with their patriotism for Khalistan by creating a discourse in which their two "homelands" were seen as simultaneously under attack by outside terrorists (Al Qaeda and the Indian state, respectively).

The article focuses on the artistic interpretation of Dolný Kubín and its immediate surroundings by an important representative of the expressionist position of Slovak modernism – Arnold Weisz-Kubínčan. Through his work, he demonstrated his unique relationship with the region to which he immigrated as a child.

peer-reviewed ; This thesis is a study of the dynamics of the Anglo-Irish Truce of 11 July 1921 which brought a formal conclusion to the Irish War of Independence. Although this work explores the origins, character and significance of the agreement, its primary focus is an analysis of the effect the announcement the impending armistice had on the use of lethal violence in the final days and hours of the conflict. It uses empirical data to interrogate existing hypotheses, and test popular theories surrounding the cessation of the Irish Republican Army's military campaign. Furthermore, it examines in detail the hitherto neglected subject of the reaction and responses of the British forces in Ireland to the agreement. This study also establishes the role the advent of the Truce played in fomenting 'Belfast's Bloody Sunday', one of the most intense outbreaks of sectarian violence in modern Irish history. This thesis addresses key questions which are central to understanding the Truce and the conflict as a whole. The new research presented in this study challenges an established historical narrative. The empirical findings make a useful contribution to the development of a more complex and comprehensive history of the Irish revolutionary period. The research contained in this thesis arrives at a number of defining conclusions. The rank and file of both the IRA and British forces were taken completely unawares by the advent of the ceasefire and, contrary to previous claims; there was no premeditated or concerted national campaign by either side in an attempt to inflict as many fatalities on their enemies as possible immediately before the conflict ended. A handful of provincial IRA units issued orders to launch fresh military offensives after the announcement of the Truce but these had a desultory effect. Contrary to previous claims these units concentrated on regular military operations such as ambushes and barrack attacks rather than so called 'soft targets' such as the execution of civilians and assassinations of ...

AbstractFormal governance of agricultural biotechnology in Kenya—i.e. national institutional and policy developments—has been loosely co‐ordinated and largely reactive, both in terms of bio‐safety and in terms of setting national priorities. At the same time, modern biotechnology developments have been occurring for over a decade, mainly driven by public‐private partnerships. Governance of biotechnology has thus been largely informal with strategic decisions being made mainly outside state mechanisms. The distinction between formal and informal governance sheds light on the current draft biosafety bill of Kenya and how it is pivotal for tipping biotechnology developments more towards increased accountability and open participation of farmers and publics. The government of Kenya, non‐governmental actors and donors must all make actions to shape a more productive interaction between formal and informal governance to avoid immediate and long‐term repercussions. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

United Kingdom's Brexit from the European Union implies restricted access to the European Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) System - Galileo; with no access to the secured and encrypted signal used for defense and government purposes, which is restricted to European Union (EU) members. To mitigate this issue, the United Kingdom can, as a matter of urgency, launch a payload on a national military Communications Satellite to provide Navigation Overlay Services for the United Kingdom territory, surrounding waters and neighboring ally countries to meet the requirements of: Defense systems, Aviation, Maritime requirements and the effectiveness of Location-based Services for Emergencies and Crisis management etc. This paper describes the design of a navigation overlay service system as a hoisted payload on a national satellite and the required supporting ground infrastructure, highlighting various applications, services and solutions.

In the village of Kujava near Danilovgrad (Montenegro), two barrows belonging to the early Bronze Age were systematically investigated. In the same area there is a smaller tumuli-necropolis, but the object of research was two individual barrows that were in the immediate surroundings. The barrows were earthy with a stone mantle. The burial in them was done in stone coffins. In one of the explored barrows there were secondary burials from the early Iron Age.

ABSTRACTThe reconstruction of 8.1 km of dilapidated sea wall protecting the Hampshire coast of the Western Solent, near Lymington, presented the National Rivers Authority (Southern Region) with particular problems and substantial extra costs in coping with the needs of conservation. The resulting scheme, however, can be seen not only to have preserved but also enhanced the conservation value of its immediate surroundings in addition to the wider area of protected land.