Allele frequencies of 20 Y-chromosomal short tandem repeat loci in a tribal population of Deccan Plateau, India

Population: Eighty male individuals from a nomadic tribal population belonging to Dravidian and Indo-Caucasian ethnicities from Deccan Plateau, Andhra Pradesh, India, were analyzed in the present study.     

The Rebirth of Water as a Weapon: IS in Syria and Iraq

The so-called Islamic State (IS) has increasingly used water as a weapon in order to further its political and military aims in Syria and Iraq. In this water-scarce region, IS has retained water and cut off crucial supplies, flooded large areas as well as contaminated resources. The capture of large dams in the Euphrates and Tigris basin has made it possible to deploy the water weapon even more effectively and in a frequent, systematic, consistent and flexible manner. Measures to counter this weaponisation effectively have been limited to military means. However, several internal constraints create a dilemma for IS as its state-building ambitions conflict with the consequences of the weaponisation of water. The rebirth of using the water weapon in Syria and Iraq raises questions about protecting water infrastructures in conflict and post-conflict settings.     

三峡水库蓄水后宜昌至城陵矶河段枯水位变化及成因

根据三峡水库蓄水后宜昌-城陵矶河段水沙、河道冲淤等实测资料,分析了宜昌-城陵矶河段内水位变化的整体分布状况及其随时间的发展历程与成因.结果表明,该河段水位降幅以枝江-监利为中心,呈现＂中间大,两头小＂的规律,在水位下降的发展历程上表现为沙市水位最先下降,而后下降趋势向上游、下游双向传递.宜昌-枝江河段水位变化受局部卡口作用的控制;枝江-监利河段水位变化是由沙市上游溯源冲刷和沙市下游沿程冲刷同时发展引起的;监利以下河段水位变化主要受下游水位的控制.     

蕴涵于山水间的世事无常——黄真伊时调研究

黄真伊被称为“松都三绝之一”，她传奇的人生及卓越的才华被世人所称道。她是时调创作的杰出代表，她一生作有大量杰出时调，但流传至今的只有六首。黄真伊时调的创作常借助于自然山水来表达人生虚无感及对世事无常的感叹及惆怅。     

The Effects of Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease on Forensic Breath Alcohol Testing

Fifteen test subjects, 10 of whom were diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), were dosed with alcohol to BACs above 0.150 g/dL. Blood and breath assays taken at 20-min intervals for 8 h after dosing demonstrated close agreement between postabsorptive BAC and BrAC values. Three subjects exhibited elevated breath alcohol concentrations up to 0.105 g/dL during the absorptive phase that were apparently due to the passage of gastric alcohol through the lower esophageal sphincter not attributable to eruction or regurgitation. The effect of gastric alcohol was not consistently proportional to the amount of unabsorbed gastric alcohol. Absorption of alcohol in the esophagus explains the nonproportionality. Breath samples contaminated by GERD-related alcohol leakage from the stomach into a breath sample were found only when there was a high concentration of alcohol in the stomach. When contaminated breath samples were encountered, they were irreproducible in magnitude.     

Social,environmental and economic sustainability of Kazakhstan: a long-term perspective

This paper explores the evolution of Kazakhstan's development through an analysis of population trends, infant mortality, air emissions, water management, oil production, income, cost of living and average salary. The longitudinal data analysis demonstrates that the development of Kazakhstan during the Soviet period was far from sustainable in terms of uncontrolled environmental pollution. Time-series analysis illustrates that the 1990s transition to the market economy temporarily eased environmental degradation but also brought about initial socio-economic disarray and decline in living standards. Further support for rural areas and economic diversification is needed to move away from Kazakhstan's heavy reliance on mineral resource extraction to a more sustainable path of development.     

王蓬长篇小说中的陕南乡土人情

陕西籍作家王蓬的长篇小说《山祭》《水葬》以陕南山乡生活为背景,描写了两段关于在历史变迁下山里百姓的生活境遇和故事。在叙述故事、塑造人物形象的同时,作者给我们展现了陕南奇丽的山水风貌,别具一格的民风民俗,还有独具风情的陕南人民,向读者传达出了极具地域特色的文化风俗和乡土人情,表现了陕南山乡地区独有的秀美以及作者对这片土地的热爱之情。     

Policy Decentralization and the Endogenous Effects of State Traditions: Devolution of Water Management in Ghana and Senegal

Abstract

The widely held belief that decentralization of public services would reduce the fiscal burden of deeply indebted states led a large number of developing countries throughout the 1980s and 1990s to embark on devolution and public sector reform. Among the responsibilities that have generally been devolved are the provision and support of drinking water facilities. There is, however, a substantial cross-national difference in implementation records of public service devolution. This paper argues that state-building legacies, which shaped the capacity of local governments and the opportunity structure of local governments to cooperate with indigenous communities, explain this variation. This argument is analyzed in the context of devolution of water supply in Ghana and Senegal. The analysis shows that the weak capacity of local governments is compensated in Ghana, but not in Senegal, through co-optation of historically strong traditional authorities into local governance structures.     

Persistently Biased: The Devil Shift in Water Privatization in Jakarta

This article operationalizes an underinvestigated element of the Advocacy Coalition Framework—the “devil shift”—on the controversial issue of water privatization. In doing so, it offers a methodological premise for investigating intractable opposition to policies that are politically salient and high in technical content. It uses the Q methodology on the case of Jakarta, Indonesia to uncover seven discourse coalitions within the anti‐privatization groups. They confirm two key hypotheses within the devil shift, namely the underestimation of a coalition's resources compared with their opponents and the exaggeration of opponents’ unreasonableness. Intriguingly, it finds that the “devil” is constructed in three different ways by this coalition—the profiteer, the Goliath, and the ineffectual governor. The narrative strength of the combination of these beliefs answers an apparent paradox in the devil shift viz that of rational actors persisting in unreasonable beliefs concerning their opponents. It also offers some specific solutions on how to deal with public hostility in water privatization in Jakarta.     

Focusing Events and Changes in Ecologies of Policy Games: Evidence from the Paraná River Delta

Solving environmental problems on a regional scale demands joint efforts by multiple stakeholders, but coordinating such efforts can be difficult in complex governance systems. In this article, we combine the literature in Adaptive Governance with the Ecology of Policy Games (EPGs) framework to enhance our understanding of how complex governance systems react to environmental focusing events. We study the EPGs in the Paraná River delta in Argentina following widespread fires caused by slash‐and‐burn practices in 2008, and analyze how new forums created to address the consequences of this event differ from the forums created prior to the event in terms of their capacity to attract stakeholders and to provide higher interconnectivity to the whole governance system. Furthermore, we offer an initial evaluation of the Comprehensive Strategic Plan for the Conservation and Sustainability of the Paraná River delta, the main forum in the EPGs created to address the negative consequences of the focusing event. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for the study of complex governance systems where stakeholders are able to address the management of natural resources at a regional scale.