Biodiversity action plans as a way towards local sustainable development

Local action for biodiversity is essential to ensure better conservation status for biodiversity and maintain ecosystem services. In many places the rich biodiversity is still relatively untouched and represents an outstanding asset for local sustainable development. The loss of biodiversity occurs mainly because of rapid changes in land use, urban sprawl, infrastructure development, acidification, eutrophication, desertification, overexploitation, intensification of agriculture, tourism development and climate change. There is a clear need for a more flexible, people-oriented and visionary approach for sustainable use of biodiversity resources. This article concerns “Local Biodiversity Action Plans”, which provide a comprehensive and integrated approach to biodiversity and ecosystem services for the sustainable development of rural municipalities and their local communities. Although biodiversity action planning is not a new concept, bringing a plan to life has significant societal benefits with innovative solutions to help biodiversity conservation while entailing close interaction of science, policy and society. This approach was developed together with project partners and local communities in selected regions of the Western Balkans and it benefits from a range of stakeholders, including social and natural scientists, practitioners, elected representatives of the local communities and end users in the frame of a participatory approach. The conclusion of this article discusses the role of communication and outlines the critical success factors and the challenges ahead for the future.     

A Mechanical Interpretation of the Coefficient of Rank Correlation and other Analogies

Periodically, the pyramid or “chain letter” scheme is offered to Americans under the guise of a business dealership. Recently, the FTC ordered Glen Turner's “Dare to be Great” firm to repay 44 million dollars to participants. In order to demonstrate that the potential gains are misrepresented by promoters, a probability model of the pyramid scheme is developed. The major implications are that the vast majority of participants have less than a ten percent chance of recouping their initial investment when a small profit is achieved as soon as they recruit three people and that, on the average, half of the participants will recruit no one else and lose all their money.     

A multimethod assessment of personal space development in female and male,black and white children

In order to obtain evidence of the effects of demographic parameters and measurement techniques on personal space, several different assessments were used to determine the impact of subject age, race, and sex on interpersonal distancing. Thirteen different variables representing stimulation, paper-and-pencil, and behavioral techniques indicated that as age increased, personal space requirements decreased, particularly for whites. Blacks as compared to whites required less space at age 7, and mixed-sex dyads tended to require more space than same-sex dyads. The results thus indicate that while some previous findings appear to be measurement method specific, others show intermethod consistency.     

Corporate political power and US foreign policy, 1981–2002: the role of the policy-planning network

Theory and Society - Recent empirical work has offered strong support for ‘biased pluralism’ and ‘economic elite’ accounts of political power in the United States, according...     

Sorokin as Lifelong Russian Intellectual: The Enactment of an Historically Rooted Sensibility

Prior to his 1922 emigration to Europe and thence to the United States, Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin had an exceptional intellectual and political career in Russia and the Soviet Union (Sorokin 1924, 1963a; Johnston 1995; Krotov 2005). Indeed, he was among the early founders of the science of sociology in his native land, where, according to a relatively recent bibliography (Sorokin 2000), he produced 162 Russian-language publications between the ages of 21 and 33. This listing includes not only book reviews and journal articles, but also substantial monographs and a two-volume theoretical treatise. While still a relatively young man, Sorokin had thus gained widespread recognition as a scholar of the first rank. He was also the initial chairperson (from 1919 to 1922) of a fledgling department of sociology at the University of Petrograd (St. Petersburg), an elected member of the national Constituent Assembly and an appointed staff member of the 1917 Provisional Government, the first democratic regime in Russia. This much would have sufficed for an entry in a sociological encyclopedia, and Sorokin’s political career has few parallels in the history of the field, other than the involvement of Emile Durkheim in French educational policy and the participation of Max Weber in creating the Weimar Republic in Germany. Nevertheless sociologists in the United States and most western historians of the field have not yet appreciated the full influence of the formative period, especially from 1905 to 1922. Lacking familiarity with Russian culture of that era and knowing little about the larger Russian socio-historical milieu, its intellectual discourse and collective memory, they have not been able to comprehend Sorokin’s outlook, behavior and professional output in the United States in relation to these earlier contextual factors. This is arguably a fundamental reason why many U.S. sociologists have tended to see Sorokin, especially since 1937, as a marginal figure and to regard his works largely as deviations from accepted social scientific practice. This paper will argue that a more adequate appreciation of Sorokin’s background and early adult life illumines both stylistic features of his works in America and also places into proper perspective several of his substantive foci that did not accord with contemporary “normal science” (Kuhn 1962). In short, despite his overall assimilation into American society and higher education, including his appointment at Harvard University and his election as president of the American Sociological Association, Sorokin should be understood in large measure as a life-long Russian intellectual. His was a Russian-born sensibility and consciousness—indeed a “Russian soul”—so deeply ingrained that it stamped his entire professional career in the United States, including his published researches, his popular sociology and his university teaching.     

Case study for evaluating campus sustainability: nitrogen balance for the University of Minnesota

American ecologists recently began to address the ecology of cities. Concurrently, higher education institutions have developed sustainability education programs and instituted sustainability policies and projects. This paper draws together these two disparate areas by examining the nitrogen (N) budget of the Twin Cities campus of the University of Minnesota. We addressed the question: what were the annual inputs, outputs and internal cycles of N on the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus? We found that 508 Mg N yr-1 were brought into the campus and 494 Mg N yr-1 were emitted from the University of Minnesota campus. The largest N inputs were abiotic fixation (conversion of N₂ to NO_x by combustion) and food for humans and animals. The largest N output was NO_x, followed by wastewater. Our results expand the understanding of the ecology of institutions within an urban area and provide an opportunity for improving urban ecology education and environmental policy at educational institutions.