Denitrifying microbial communities provide an important ecosystem function in aquatic systems. Yet, knowledge on predictive and modeling of these complex and changing communities is limited. The emergently challenging question of how the geographical distribution of denitrifiers responds to ongoing and future environmental change is not yet fully understood. In our study we use metadata-based correlative niche modeling to analyze the geographical distribution of selected putative denitrifiers in the genus Sphingomonas, Mycoplana, Shewanella, and Alteromonas at different predicted environmental conditions and future climatic scenarios across the Baltic Sea. Using the predictive power of an ensemble modeling approach and eight different machine-learning algorithms, habitat suitability and the distribution of the selected denitrifiers were evaluated using geophysical and bioclimatic variables, benthic conditions, and four Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) trajectories of future global warming scenarios. All algorithms provided successful prediction capabilities both for variable importance, and for habitat suitability with Area Under the Curve (AUC) values between 0.89 and 1.00. Model findings revealed that salinity and nitrate concentrations significantly explained the variation in distribution of the selected denitrifiers. Rising temperatures of 0.8 to 1.8 °C at future RCP60–2050 trajectories are predicted to diminish or eliminate the bioclimatic suitable habitats for denitrifier distributions across the Baltic Sea. Multi-collated terrestrial and marine environmental variables contributed to the successful prediction of denitrifier distributions within the study area. The correlative niche modeling approach with high AUC values presented in the study allowed for accurate projections of the future distributions of the selected denitrifiers. The modeling approach can be used to improve our understanding of how ongoing and predicted future environmental changes may affect habitat suitability for organisms with denitrification capacity across the Baltic Sea.
This article was written in order to contribute to a discussion about a critical definition of alternative media. Askingwhat role alternative media could play in challenging neoliberal discourse in an age where capitalism have become immune to criticism, it elaborates on the concept of “the alternative” and the media through three sections. The first section discusses neoliberalism and the connection between neoliberal doctrine and mainstream media. This connection is described as promoting “public amnesia”, financialization and economization of news journalism. The second section discusses alternative media from the perspective of new social movements and symbolic resistance, claiming that the symbolic resistance framework undermines the critical potential of alternative media, it also comments on some recent critical literature on neoliberalism and capitalism. The third section takes examples from artistic explorations of capitalism and television to propose how a distinction between social and formalist aspects of “the alternative” could inform a critical notion of alternative media.
In July 2006 archaeologists from the University of Bristol and Atkins Heritage embarked oil a contemporary archaeology project with a difference. We 'excavated' ail old (1991) Ford Transit van, used by archaeologists and later by works and maintenance teams at the Ironbridge Museum The object: to see what can be learnt from a very particular, common and characteristic type of contemporary place; to establish what archaeologists and archaeology can contribute to understanding the way society, and specifically we as archaeologists, use and inhabit these places; and to challenge and critique archaeologies of the contemporary past. In this report we describe our excavation and situate it within a wider debate about research practice in contemporary archaeology.
Parents place their youths in sport with the belief that doing so will produce developmental outcomes. However, it is unclear if parents enroll children in different sports based on different desired characteristics they wish their youth to develop. This paper analyses the link between youths engaged in martial arts (MA) compared to other leisure activities. MA research has indicated the importance of masculinity and gender ideals that suggest that parents hold certain visions when enrolling their youths in MA. For example, one such vision is for their youths to be able to handle themselves in physical encounters. Two research questions guided the study. First, what characteristics do MA parents desire their children to develop? Secondly, how do these desires correspond to MA youths' actual characteristics? We utilize multinomial logistic regression analysis on nationally representative data from the Netherlands. The results show that MA parents are younger, their youths are of migration background, and the parents value characteristics such as self-control, responsibility, and acting "gender appropriately". These results correspond to their youths; MA youths are consistently characterized by more masculinity compared to the youths in other groups. The results bear implications for how MA environments must safeguard against potentially harmful and misleading norms.
Coastal benthic biodiversity is under increased pressure from climate change, eutrophication, hypoxia, and changes in salinity due to increase in river runoff. The Baltic Sea is a large brackish system characterized by steep environmental gradients that experiences all of the mentioned stressors. As such it provides an ideal model system for studying the impact of on-going and future climate change on biodiversity and function of benthic ecosystems. Meiofauna (animals < 1 mm) are abundant in sediment and are still largely unexplored even though they are known to regulate organic matter degradation and nutrient cycling. In this study, benthic meiofaunal community structure was analysed along a salinity gradient in the Baltic Sea proper using high-throughput sequencing. Our results demonstrate that areas with higher salinity have a higher biodiversity, and salinity is likely the main driver influencing meiofauna diversity and community composition. Furthermore, in the more diverse and saline environments a larger amount of nematode genera classified as predators prevailed, and meiofauna-macrofauna associations were more prominent. These findings show that in the Baltic Sea, a decrease in salinity resulting from accelerated climate change will likely lead to decreased benthic biodiversity, and cause profound changes in benthic communities, with potential consequences for ecosystem stability, functions and services.
Immigration into states with historical linguistic minorities creates the dilemma of which language newly arrived immigrants should learn in the state-provided integration programmes. Research has shown how territorially concentrated historical minorities have used immigrants to favour their own nation-building projects. While these minorities to some extent operate like a majority within their federal state or province, this paper explores how constitutionally bilingual Finland, having a Swedish-speaking non-territorial minority with the same linguistic rights as the majority, governs immigrant integration. It investigates the implications of the strong legal and weak societal status of Swedish for immigrant integration by connecting scholarship on liberal multiculturalism and integration in multilingual states to laws, reports and interviews on integration in Swedish-speaking Finland. It shows tensions between Finland-Swedish integration aspirations and state level policies promoting a majority-monolingual integration. Unlike minorities with federal protection, the non-territorial Swedish-speaking minority largely relies on the voluntary choice of immigrants to choose Swedish as their language of integration. Structural obstacles, however, hinder this choice in bilingual regions, having resulted in political debates and actions. This article bridges research on Finnish multiculturalism and research on integration policy in contexts where historical minorities are present by introducing a non-territorial, formerly dominant minority to the research field.
In an endeavour to understand connections between immigration policy and contemporary colonialism on Indigenous territory, this study investigates how state-led immigrant integration policies and practices reproduce colonialism in Swedish Sapmi. It explores the applicability of scholarship on settler colonialism on Sweden and develops the notion of banal colonialism by combining scholarship on settler and everyday colonialism with banal nationalism. Drawing from state documents regulating immigrant integration and semi-structured interviews conducted with integration workers in Swedish Sapmi, the study shows that immigrant integration policy largely silences the colonial past and present of Sweden. While the implementation of national-level policies on Indigenous land reproduces majority-centred narratives, also practices challenging the colonial order are identified. The study shows how the notion of banal colonialism captures mundane colonial practices, but also brings attention to instances where immigrant integration policy has the potential of challenging settler colonialism.
This article examines how members of the Swedish Parliament framed nuclear energy in the 2010 debate on the future of nuclear power in Sweden in order to understand how politicians construct and contextualize their views on the role of nuclear energy in energy transitions. Our findings suggest that four themes could be identified in the debate and that these were formative for politicians in framing nuclear energy. Even though all political actors anticipate an energy transition towards a more sustainable system, different paths to advancing in this process were brought up in the debate, both with and without prolongation of the nuclear energy program. Our analysis suggests that framings of nuclear energy are closely related to the political ideologies of the parties in the Parliament because the two framings of nuclear energy correspond with the division of the Swedish Parliament into two political blocs. However, views on nuclear energy are not inherent to political ideologies but are constructed. This article thus integrates the politics of nuclear energy within the research on energy transitions.
Both theory on motivational crowding and recent empirical evidence suggest that nudging may sometimes backfire and actually crowd out prosocial behavior, due to decreased intrinsic motivation and warm glow. In this study, we tested this claim by investigating the effects of three types of nudges (default nudge, social norm nudge, and moral nudge) on donations to charity in a preregistered online experiment (N = 1098). Furthermore, we manipulated the transparency of the nudges across conditions by explicitly informing subjects of the nudges that were used. Our results show no indication that nudges crowd out prosocial behavior; instead, all three nudges increased donations. The positive effects of the nudges were driven by the subjects who did not perceive the nudges as attempts to manipulate their behavior, while donations among subjects who felt that the nudges were manipulative remained unaffected. Subjects’ self-reported happiness with their choice also remained unaffected. Thus, we find no indication that nudges crowded out warm glow when acting altruistically. Generally, our results are good news for the proponents of nudges in public policy, since they suggest that concerns about unintended motivational crowding effects on prosocial behavior have been overstated.
Technical professions were important agents in medicine and its knowledge production in the nineteenth century. This paper will look more closely at two examples of the social strategies used by Danish surgical instrument maker Camillus Nyrop and his Swedish colleague, Max Stille respectively. Although the work of these two instrument makers attracted attention both within their respective countries as well as internationally, and they were regular fixtures in medical circles, their contributions have merited little academic interest thus far. By examining the social strategies used by nineteenth century technicians, in this case surgical instrument makers, we might better understand the interrelationships between technical professions and physicians in the knowledge production of modern medicine and the interplay between medicine and commerce.