Temporal changes in net energy balance of animals strongly influence fitness; consequently, natural selection should favor behaviors that increase net energy balance by buffering individuals against ...negative effects of environmental variation. The relative importance of behavioral responses to climate-induced variation in costs vs. supplies of energy, however, is uncertain, as is the degree to which such responses are mediated by current stores of energy. We evaluated relationships among behavior, nutritional condition (i.e., energy state), and spatiotemporal variation in costs vs. supplies of energy available to a large-bodied endotherm, the North American elk (
Cervus elaphus
), occupying two ecosystems with contrasting climates and energy landscapes: a temperate, montane forest and an arid, high-elevation desert. We hypothesized that during spring through autumn, behavioral responses to the energy landscape would be both context dependent (i.e., would vary as a function of the contrasting environmental conditions experienced by elk in the forest vs. the desert), and state dependent (i.e., would vary as a function of the energy balance of an individual). We tested several predictions derived from that hypothesis by combining output from a biophysical model of the thermal environment with data on forage quality, animal locations, and nutritional condition of individuals. At the population level, elk in the desert selected areas that reduced costs of thermoregulation over those that provided the highest-quality forage. In the forest, however, costs imposed by the thermal environment were less pronounced, and elk selected areas that increased access to high-quality forage over those that reduced costs of thermoregulation. At the individual level, nutritional condition did not influence strength of selection for low-cost areas or high-quality forage among elk in the forest. In the desert, however, strength of selection for low-cost areas (but not forage quality) was state dependent; individuals in the poorest condition at the end of winter showed the strongest selection for areas that reduced costs of thermoregulation during spring and summer, and also expended the least amount of energy on locomotion. Our results highlight the importance of understanding the roles of behavior and nutritional condition in buffering endotherms against direct and indirect effects of climate on fitness.
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•Nuclear energy and economic complexity in the USA are examined.•A machine-learning and simulation approach to evaluate the ecological footprint.•Improved technology and nuclear ...energy support environmental quality.•Economic complexity decreases the environmental quality.•Initiatives related to the circular economy are interconnected.
The circular economy decouples economic activity from finite resource consumption, creating a resilient system that can tackle global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution. Nuclear energy has been designated as one of the primary concerns of energy sector modernization because it allows for significant reductions in dangerous material emissions into the environment. Therefore, nuclear energy and improved technologies may become critical growth areas aligned with circular economy principles. We use Dynamic Autoregressive Distributive Lag (DARDL) and Kernel-based Regularized Least Squares (KRLS) to analyze United States data from 1985 to 2016 empirically. The DARDL result shows a positive relationship between ecological footprint and economic complexity, increasing short-term environmental costs. However, nuclear power generation and improved technology significantly reduce ecological concerns. Economic complexity is explored in this work in more nuanced terms, emphasizing the importance of considering the external environment when implementing different economic activities.Policy implications, study limitations, and future research directions are discussed.
It would be easy to assume that, in the eighteenth century, slavery and the culture of taste--the world of politeness, manners, and aesthetics--existed as separate and unequal domains, unrelated in ...the spheres of social life. But to the contrary, Slavery and the Culture of Taste demonstrates that these two areas of modernity were surprisingly entwined. Ranging across Britain, the antebellum South, and the West Indies, and examining vast archives, including portraits, period paintings, personal narratives, and diaries, Simon Gikandi illustrates how the violence and ugliness of enslavement actually shaped theories of taste, notions of beauty, and practices of high culture, and how slavery's impurity informed and haunted the rarified customs of the time.
America's prison-based system of punishment has not always enjoyed the widespread political and moral legitimacy it has today. In this groundbreaking reinterpretation of penal history, Rebecca ...McLennan covers the periods of deep instability, popular protest, and political crisis that characterized early American prisons. She details the debates surrounding prison reform, including the limits of state power, the influence of market forces, the role of unfree labor, and the 'just deserts' of wrongdoers. McLennan also explores the system that existed between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, where private companies relied on prisoners for labor. Finally, she discusses the rehabilitation model that has primarily characterized the penal system in the twentieth century. Unearthing fresh evidence from prison and state archives, McLennan shows how, in each of three distinct periods of crisis, widespread dissent culminated in the dismantling of old systems of imprisonment.
In Brazil, all students in regular schools have English classes at some point in their lives, most of them usually start in 6th grade. However, when teachers and job interviewers ask about their ...knowledge, the answers show that they cannot speak, read, or write the language well. The Brazilian Educational Law of Guidelines and Bases requires a “foreign language” which may be Spanish, for example. When they become adults, it is essential to speak a second language to get better job opportunities. This study has investigated some aspects of English teaching/learning in Brazil, which may encourage many people to come to the U.S. to learn. Nowadays, there is a big wave of Brazilians coming to study English as an additional language. The study has mainly focused on adult Brazilian English learners living in the U.S. and it has identified the profile of these adult students, their motivation, their challenges, as well as issues about age, affection, and beliefs related to this topic.
Palavras-chave: english learners; adults; USA.
Reynold Humphries provide a history of the political and cultural factors underpinning the why and the how of the various investigations of alleged Communist infiltration of Hollywood.
