Co‐ordinating collective work and communicating a shared understanding of tasks is necessary to accomplishing organizational goals. Stigma could exacerbate co‐ordination challenges between public and ...private organizations by further widening differences in goals and incentives among employees. Using relational co‐ordination theory, we explore how stigma can influence employee behaviour in the context of healthcare delivery. We study healthcare professionals and frontline workers involved in the fight against AIDS in India to examine how public health systems fail due to a lack of communication and co‐ordination, and that these failures are worsened by stigma. When stigma is present, relationships between employees become strained due to misaligned work routines, lack of information sharing and cooperation failure. Our findings reveal emergent responses from frontline employees that mitigate co‐ordination failures through: (1) role adaptation to improve predictability of tasks; (2) social purpose identification to promote a common understanding and engage stigmatized clients; and (3) affective attachment that encourages extra‐role behaviours and task ownership. We draw implications for relational co‐ordination and stigma, as well as public‐private co‐ordination in public health systems.
The spatial structure of the environment (e.g. the configuration of habitat patches) may play an important role in determining the strength of local adaptation. However, previous studies of habitat ...heterogeneity and local adaptation have largely been limited to simple landscapes, which poorly represent the multiscale habitat structure common in nature. Here, we use simulations to pursue two goals: (i) we explore how landscape heterogeneity, dispersal ability and selection affect the strength of local adaptation, and (ii) we evaluate the performance of several genotype–environment association (GEA) methods for detecting loci involved in local adaptation. We found that the strength of local adaptation increased in spatially aggregated selection regimes, but remained strong in patchy landscapes when selection was moderate to strong. Weak selection resulted in weak local adaptation that was relatively unaffected by landscape heterogeneity. In general, the power of detection methods closely reflected levels of local adaptation. False‐positive rates (FPRs), however, showed distinct differences across GEA methods based on levels of population structure. The univariate GEA approach had high FPRs (up to 55%) under limited dispersal scenarios, due to strong isolation by distance. By contrast, multivariate, ordination‐based methods had uniformly low FPRs (0–2%), suggesting these approaches can effectively control for population structure. Specifically, constrained ordinations had the best balance of high detection and low FPRs and will be a useful addition to the GEA toolkit. Our results provide both theoretical and practical insights into the conditions that shape local adaptation and how these conditions impact our ability to detect selection.
Plant respiration is an important contributor to the proposed positive global carbon‐cycle feedback to climate change. However, as a major component, leaf mitochondrial (‘dark’) respiration (Rd) ...differs among species adapted to contrasting environments and is known to acclimate to sustained changes in temperature. No accepted theory explains these phenomena or predicts its magnitude. Here we propose that the acclimation of Rd follows an optimal behaviour related to the need to maintain long‐term average photosynthetic capacity (Vcmax) so that available environmental resources can be most efficiently used for photosynthesis. To test this hypothesis, we extend photosynthetic co‐ordination theory to predict the acclimation of Rd to growth temperature via a link to Vcmax, and compare predictions to a global set of measurements from 112 sites spanning all terrestrial biomes. This extended co‐ordination theory predicts that field‐measured Rd and Vcmax accessed at growth temperature (Rd,tg and Vcmax,tg) should increase by 3.7% and 5.5% per degree increase in growth temperature. These acclimated responses to growth temperature are less steep than the corresponding instantaneous responses, which increase 8.1% and 9.9% per degree of measurement temperature for Rd and Vcmax respectively. Data‐fitted responses proof indistinguishable from the values predicted by our theory, and smaller than the instantaneous responses. Theory and data are also shown to agree that the basal rates of both Rd and Vcmax assessed at 25°C (Rd,25 and Vcmax,25) decline by ~4.4% per degree increase in growth temperature. These results provide a parsimonious general theory for Rd acclimation to temperature that is simpler—and potentially more reliable—than the plant functional type‐based leaf respiration schemes currently employed in most ecosystem and land‐surface models.
We propose an optimality‐based theory of leaf dark respiration (Rd) thermal acclimation by assuming that Rd follows the optimal behaviour of photosynthetic capacity (Vcmax) so that available environmental resources can be most efficiently used. We predict Rd and Vcmax increase with growth temperature by 3.7% and 5.5% per degree warming. Those theoretical predictions are supported by the global field data, as indicated by the overlapped lines. The acclimated responses are indeed less steep than the instantaneous responses. Our results provide a parsimonious general theory for Rd thermal acclimation that is typically missing in Earth System models.
A new history of Buddhism that highlights the insights
and experiences of women from diverse communities and traditions
around the world
Buddhist traditions have extended over a period of twenty-five
...centuries, and recent decades have seen an unprecedented spread of
Buddhism globally. From India to Japan, Sri Lanka to Russia,
Buddhist traditions around the world have their own rich and
diverse histories, cultures, religious lives, and roles for
women.
Wherever Buddhism has taken root, it has interacted with
indigenous cultures and existing religious traditions. These
traditions have inevitably influenced the ways in which Buddhist
ideas and practices have been understood and adapted. Tracing the
branches and fruits of these culturally specific transmissions and
adaptations is as fascinating as it is challenging.
Women in Buddhist Traditions chronicles pivotal moments
in the history of Buddhist women, from the beginning of Buddhist
history until today. The book highlights the unique contributions
of Buddhist women from a variety of backgrounds and the strategies
they have developed to challenge patriarchy in the process of
creating an enlightened society.
Women in Buddhist Traditions offers a groundbreaking and
insightful introduction to the lives of Buddhist women
world-wide.
Distance-based ordinations have played a critical role in community ecology for more than half a century, but are still under active development. These methods employ a matrix of pairwise distances ...or dissimilarities between sample units, and map sample units from the high-dimensional distance or dissimilarity space to a low-dimensional representation for analysis. Distance- or dissimilarity-based methods employ continuum or gradient ecological theory and a variety of statistical models to achieve the mapping. Recently, ecologists have developed model-based ordinations based on latent vectors and individual species response models. These methods employ the individualistic perspective of Gleason as the ecological model, and Bayesian or maximum-likelihood methods to estimate the parameters for the low dimensional space represented by the latent vectors. In this research I compared two distance-based methods (NMDS and t-SNE) with two model-based methods (BORAL and REO) on five data sets to determine which methods are superior for (1) extracting meaningful ecological drivers of variability in community composition, and (2) estimating sample unit locations in ordination space that maximize the goodness-of-fit of individual species response models to the estimated sample unit locations. Environmental variables and species were fitted to the ordinations by generalized additive models (GAMs) with Gaussian, negative binomial, or Poisson distribution models as appropriate. Across the five data sets, 22 models of environmental variability and 449 models of species distributions were calculated for each of the ordination methods. To minimize the effects of stochasticity the entire analysis was replicated three times and results averaged across the replicates. Results were evaluated by deviance explained and AIC for environmental variables and species distributions, averaged by ordination method for each data set, and ranked from best to worst. For the four assessments distance-based methods ranked 1 and 2 in three cases, and 1 and 3 in one case, significantly out performing the model-based methods. t-SNE was the top-performing method, out performing NMDS especially on the more complex data sets. In general the gradient-based theoretical basis and data sufficiency of distance-based methods allowed distance-based methods to outperform model-based methods in every assessment.
It is common practice for ecologists to examine species niches in the study of community composition. The response curve of a species in the fundamental niche is usually assumed to be quadratic. The ...centre of a quadratic curve represents a species' optimal environmental conditions, and the width its ability to tolerate deviations from the optimum.
Most multivariate methods assume species respond linearly to niche axes, or with a quadratic curve that is of equal width for all species. However, it is widely understood that some species have the ability to better tolerate deviations from their optimal environment (generalists) compared to other (specialist) species. Rare species often tolerate a smaller range of environments than more common species, corresponding to a narrow niche.
We propose a new method, for ordination and fitting Joint Species Distribution Models, based on Generalized Linear Mixed‐effects Models, which relaxes the assumptions of equal tolerances.
By explicitly estimating species maxima, and species optima and tolerances per ecological gradient, we can better explore how species relate to each other.
Claiming to fulfill a 2016 decision by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria to revive the ancient order of deaconesses, Metropolitan Seraphim of Zimbabwe caught the Orthodox world by ...surprise by ordaining Angelic Molen (a married woman with two children) as a deaconess {St. Phoebe Center for the Deaconess, May 2). While confirming its 2016 "decision in principle to revive and activate the institution of deaconesses within its pastoral jurisdiction," the statement added that the decision had been "referred for further examination to establish the details concerning the attire, method of ministry delivery, and liturgical role of deaconesses in the contemporary life of the Church." The May 2 ordination will certainly boost the discussion on deaconesses in some sectors of the Orthodox Church, but its wider consequences are still unclear and it remains to be seen whether further ordinations will take place along the same lines. The current context is indeed a sensitive one, with the Moscow Patriarchate recently creating its own network of parishes on the African continent-in part by integrating former clergy of the Alexandria Patriarchate-and eager to position itself as the herald of "traditional" Orthodoxy in contrast to supposedly modern interpretations of the faith.
Ecology is often said to lack general theories sufficiently predictive for applications. Here, we examine the concept of a periodic table of niches and feasibility of niche classification schemes ...from functional trait and performance data. Niche differences and their influence on ecological patterns and processes could be revealed effectively by first performing data reduction/ordination analyses separately on matrices of trait and performance data compiled according to logical associations with five basic niche ‘dimensions’, or aspects: habitat, life history, trophic, defence and metabolic. Resultant patterns then are integrated to produce interpretable niche gradients, ordinations and classifications. Degree of scheme periodicity would depend on degrees of niche conservatism and convergence causing species clustering across multiple niche dimensions. We analysed a sample data set containing trait and performance data to contrast two approaches for producing niche schemes: species ordination within niche gradient space, and niche categorisation according to trait‐value thresholds. Creation of niche schemes useful for advancing ecological knowledge and its applications will depend on research that produces functional trait and performance datasets directly related to niche dimensions along with criteria for data standardisation and quality. As larger databases are compiled, opportunities will emerge to explore new methods for data reduction, ordination and classification.
Abstract This paper analyses various methods of ecological ordering that are often used in modelling the relationship between vegetation and habitat. The results of direct gradient ordination by ...Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA), which is based on correlation, were compared with Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS), which is based on rank analyses. Both tools were also compared with Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA), which is a popular indirect gradient analysis method. The macrophyte assessment was conducted at 98 river locations in the lowland regions of Poland. Each of the surveyed locations falls within a consistent abiotic category: small to medium-sized lowland rivers with a sandy bottom. Habitat elements analysed included limnological variables and geographic parameters, and the botanical survey focused on submerged macrophytes, including vascular plants, as well as bryophytes and algae. Firstly, it was shown that various analytical tools for determining the importance of ecological factors (Monte Carlo test, BIOENV) identify slightly different significant factors responsible for the development of macrophytes in rivers. Secondly, considerable similarity was found in the structure of macrophyte communities generated on NMDS and DCA biplots, while macrophyte communities were presented very differently based on CCA. Thirdly, the ecological preferences of aquatic plants based on one-dimensional analyses primarily reflected the results of CCA, whereas they did not always follow the ecological pattern revealed by NMDS. Finally, by conducting separate studies for non-vascular plants and vascular macrophytes, it was confirmed that different ecological drivers are responsible for the development of particular groups of macrophytes
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