Urban and agricultural soils: conflicts and trade-offs in the optimization of ecosystem services

On-going human population growth and changing patterns of resource consumption are increasing global demand for ecosystem services, many of which are provided by soils. Some of these ecosystem services are linearly related to the surface area of pervious soil, whereas others show non-linear relationships, making ecosystem service optimization a complex task. As limited land availability creates conflicting demands among various types of land use, a central challenge is how to weigh these conflicting interests and how to achieve the best solutions possible from a perspective of sustainable societal development. These conflicting interests become most apparent in soils that are the most heavily used by humans for specific purposes: urban soils used for green spaces, housing, and other infrastructure and agricultural soils for producing food, fibres and biofuels. We argue that, despite their seemingly divergent uses of land, agricultural and urban soils share common features with regards to interactions between ecosystem services, and that the trade-offs associated with decision-making, while scale- and context-dependent, can be surprisingly similar between the two systems. We propose that the trade-offs within land use types and their soil-related ecosystems services are often disproportional, and quantifying these will enable ecologists and soil scientists to help policy makers optimizing management decisions when confronted with demands for multiple services under limited land availability.     

England – whose England? Narratives of nostalgia,emptiness and evasion in imaginations of national identity

This paper explores the contested and racialised nature of Englishness as a national identity. Based on qualitative interviews of white mothers in London, the paper examines the different ways in which the interviewees positioned themselves in relation to concepts of Englishness. National identity involves ways of being, a sense of place and belonging. It is produced through forms of myth‐making and narrative production which depend on particular constructions of time and space. This paper examines how nation‐ness is imagined and lived by the interviewees. It asks how constructions of Englishness related to constructions of the self and how imaginings of belonging involved imagining of otherness. It also describes how, for some of the interviewees, the domestic, particularly in notions of cleanliness and dirt, as well as food and consumption, was a key metaphor for explaining their relationship to national identity.     

A NEW SHORT EXACT GEOMETRIC CONFIDENCE INTERVAL

For discrete distributions, the standard method of producing a two‐sided confidence interval generates an interval that is exact but conservative. This paper proposes a new algorithm to produce a short exact geometric confidence interval with proven properties, and compares the new interval with the standard interval.     

Politics beyond identity: reconsidering the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland

The Northern Irish civil rights movement, like other minority or subaltern struggles, has been interpreted in terms of the national minority’s struggle for state recognition. Such frameworks emphasise the importance of identity in political conflict and tend to assume the state as guarantor of the recognition of identity. The difficulty here is that political possibilities that exceed the terms of identity and the state are obscured. Moreover, the interpretation of the Northern Irish conflict in these terms forms part of the consociational approach to conflict resolution which operates as normative underpinning to the post-conflict state. This article provides an alternative interpretation of the political significance of the civil rights movement. Rather than assuming the analytical usefulness and political significance of identity, I seek to trace the tension between identity and disidentification within the movement, drawing attention to the ways in which activists were aware of, and sought to respond to, the dangers of identity politics.     

Leader vision formation and forecasting: The effects of forecasting extent,resources, and timeframe

Vision formation, and vision articulation, is held to be a central component of leader performance. Less is known, however, about the variables giving rise to viable visions. In the present effort, the impact of forecasting on vision formation was examined. Study participants were asked to write a speech describing their vision for a new school. Prior to writing this speech, participants were asked to forecast the outcomes of vision implementation. It was found that the extent of forecasting, along with forecasting of temporal and resources considerations, influenced the quality of vision statements. Forecasting was improved when people thought about causes, as opposed to goals, and implications, as opposed to facts. The implications of these findings for understanding leader performance in vision formation are discussed.     

Multivariate analysis with a stationary time series covariance structure

When a covariance matrix has a pattern associated with a stationary time series on the errors, it is shown how certain hypothesis testing problems In multivariate analysis can be transformed into a product of two similar multivariate problems that each involve unpatterned covariance matrices.     

Patterns of individual change and program satisfaction in a positive parenting program for parents at psychosocial risk

Despite the evidence of effectiveness of positive parenting programs, little is known about the typology of changes that parents at psychosocial risk undergo after an intervention. We compared individual patterns of change in three parenting outcomes in 256 at risk parents with young children attending the group‐based Growing Up Happily in the Family program delivered in municipal social services. We identified four clusters of individual change: Cluster 1 (30.6%) had negative changes in parental child‐rearing attitudes and parenting stress, Cluster 2 (27.7%) had positive changes in child‐rearing attitudes and negative results in parental perceived competence, and Cluster 3 (24.1%) and Cluster 4 (17.6%) showed overall better results. Residential area, type of social support, and quality of implementation characterized cluster membership. Participants in clusters with better results were more satisfied with the program than those with worse results. Practical recommendations are provided for the successful implementation of group parenting programs in family preservation services.     

‘Making Pies’—A Way of Exploring Pupils’ Views on Curriculum Innovation

This article examines the use of focus groups (FGs) as a way of gathering pupils’ views on the implementation of new curricula. We provide illustrations of creative activities, which were especially designed for a case‐study research project exploring the views of 11‐year‐old pupils in English schools adopting an innovative approach to the Year 7 curriculum. We argue that combining FGs with creative methods encourages pupils to take an active role in interviews, enriches the quality of the data being collected and enhances the place of FGs as important tools in eliciting pupils’ voices for both research and curriculum planning purposes.