Monitoring the Environment Exposed to Road Waste

This study aimed to carry out a systematic analysis of the literature on the environmental impactsof waste resulting from year-round maintenance of roads (WMR) with deicing agents. The impacts on economic factors and the environment at all stages of the life cycle were systematically examined, taking into account the engineering and technological efficiencies, and the direct, indirect, prolonged and deferred effects. A structural-integral block-hierarchical model for monitoring and evaluating the impacts of WMR on the environment and on the industrial, social and economic system as a whole was developed.This incorporated the complex spatial-temporal industrial, biological, physical and chemical impacts of elements of the road infrastructure itself, as well as external conditions. Keywords: pollution monitoring, environmental impact of waste, pollution from transport

Flight plan for the future: floatplane pilots and researchers team up to predict invasive species dispersal in Alaska

Aircraft can transport aquatic invasive species (AIS) from urban sources to remote waterbodies, yet little is known about this long-distance pathway. In North America and especially Alaska, aircraft with landing gear for water called floatplanes are used for recreation access to remote, often road-less wilderness destinations. Human-mediated dispersal of AIS is particularly concerning for the conservation of pristine wildlands, yet resource managers are often challenged by limited monitoring and response capacity given the vast areas they manage. We collected pathway data through a survey with floatplane pilots and used a Bayesian hierarchical model to inform early detection in a data-limited situation. The study was motivated by Alaska’s first known AIS, Elodea spp. (Elodea) and its floatplane-related dispersal. For 682 identified floatplane destinations, a Bayesian hierarchical model predicts the chance of flights originating from AIS source locations in freshwater and estimates the expected number of flights from these sources. Model predictions show the potential for broad spread across remote regions currently not known to have Elodea and informed monitoring and early detection efforts. Our result underlines the small window of opportunity for Arctic conservation strategies targeting an AIS free Arctic. We recommend management that focuses on long-distance connectivity, keeping urban sources free of AIS. We discuss applicability of the approach for other data-limited situations supporting data-informed AIS management responses.

Synthesizing the impacts of baseflow contribution on concentration–discharge (<i>C</i>–<i>Q</i>) relationships across Australia using a Bayesian hierarchical model

Understanding concentration–discharge (C–Q) relationships can inform catchment solute and particulate export processes. Previous studies have shown that the extent to which baseflow contributes to streamflow can affect C–Q relationships in some catchments. However, the current understanding on the effects of baseflow contribution in shaping the C–Q patterns is largely derived from temperate catchments. As such, we still lack quantitative understanding of these effects across a wide range of climates (e.g. arid, tropical and subtropical). The study aims to assess how baseflow contributions, as defined by the median and the range of daily baseflow indices within individual catchments (BFI_m and BFI_range, respectively), influence C–Q slopes across 157 catchments in Australia spanning five climate zones. This study focuses on six water quality variables: electrical conductivity (EC), total phosphorus (TP), soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP), total suspended solids (TSS), the sum of nitrate and nitrite (NOx) and total nitrogen (TN). The impact of baseflow contributions is explored with a novel Bayesian hierarchical model. For sediments and nutrient species (TSS, NOx, TN and TP), we generally see largely positive C–Q slopes, which suggest a dominance of mobilization export patterns. Further, for TSS, NOx and TP we see stronger mobilization (steeper positive C–Q slopes) in catchments with higher values in both the BFI_m and BFI_range, as these two metrics are positively correlated for most catchments. The enhanced mobilization in catchments with higher BFI_m or BFI_range is likely due to the more variable flow pathways that occur in catchments with higher baseflow contributions. These variable flow pathways can lead to higher concentration gradients between low flows and high flows, where the former is generally dominated by groundwater/slow subsurface flow while the latter by surface water sources, respectively. This result highlights the crucial role of flow pathways in determining catchment exports of solutes and particulates. Our study also demonstrates the need for further studies on how the temporal variations of flow regimes and baseflow contributions influence flow pathways and the potential impacts of these flow pathways on catchment C–Q relationships.

Designing an API-Based Protocol for the Interoperability of Textual Resources

Designing a protocol for the interoperability of digital textual resources—or, more simply, a “IIIF for texts”—remains a challenge, as such a protocol must cater to their vastly heterogenous formats, structures, languages, text encodings and metadata. There have been many attempts to propose a standard for textual resource interoperability, from the ubiquitous Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) format to more recent proposals like the Distributed Text Services (DTS) protocol. In this paper, we introduce our proposal called SHINE, which prioritizes instead the ease for software developers to represent and exchange textual resources and their associated metadata. We do so by combining a hierarchical model of textual structure with a flexible metadata scheme in SHINE, and we continue to define and develop it based on user-centered and iterative design principles. Therefore, we argue that SHINE is a protocol for textual interoperability that successfully balances flexibility of resource representation, consistency across resource representation, and overall simplicity of implementation.RésuméConcevoir un protocole pour l’interopérabilité des ressources textuelles numériques – c’est-à-dire, un IIIF pour des textes – demeure un défi, puisqu’un tel protocole doit correspondre à leurs formats considérablement hétérogènes, ainsi qu’à leurs structures, langues, encodages textuels et métadonnées. Il existe déjà plusieurs tentatives de proposer des standards pour l’interopérabilité des ressources textuelles, tel que l’ubiquiste Text Encoding Initiative (TEI – Initiative d’encodage textuel) ou des propositions plus récentes comme le protocole de Distributed Text Services (DTS – Services de texte distribuées). Dans cet article, nous présenterons une proposition que nous appelons SHINE, qui priorise la facilité de la représentation et de l’échange des ressources textuelles et des métadonnées associées pour les développeurs de logiciel. Nous le ferons en combinant un modèle de structure textuelle hiérarchique avec un schéma de métadonnées flexible dans SHINE et nous le définirons et le développerons selon des principes axés sur l’utilisateur et selon des principes de conceptions itératifs. Par conséquent, nous avançons que SHINE est un protocole pour l’interopérabilité textuelle qui équilibre systématiquement la flexibilité de la représentation de ressources, ainsi que la simplicité globale de l’implémentation, pour toute représentation de ressources.Mots-clés: format d’échange; modélisation de documents; métadonnées; infrastructure numériques; interopérabilité

Альтернативний погляд на альтернативну історію

The article is a review of a text entitled Alternative history as a meta-genre of Ukrainian and foreign prose: Comparative genealogy and poetics by Antonina Anistratenko, scientific editor: Halyna Syvachenko (Chernivtsi, 2020). The monograph consists of 548 pages. The subject of the study is the comparative genology and poetics of the alternative history meta-genre. According to the researcher’s well-founded belief, the subgenre accumulates a corpus of science fiction texts, fantasy literature with a component of the formula of alternative history in the artistic structure. Antonina Anistratenko analyses the works of representatives of different national literatures as well as develops an original hierarchical model of alternative history.

Company top-managers’ ideologies as a mental protection from environmental uncertainty

Introduction. At the beginning, entrepreneur creates his own concept of organization – value-cognitive-actional pattern, which is socialized, coming into conflict with CEOs’ individual interests. For this purpose, they use various distortion styles of organizational reality in their interpretations of values, cognitions and actions, thereby destroying organizational productivity. Aim. We have aim to explore wide-spread distortion styles in interpretations of organizational reality (CEO). We obtained 95 organizational self-descriptions of companies (from 50-1500 individuals) and classified them (key topics, actors, intention). Then we discovered interpretation styles and have grouped them according to a specially developed hierarchical model of organizational self-descriptions on several levels (formal: procedures and rules of behavior; content (statics: objects, agents and their attributes; dynamics: processes, algorithms and technologies); sense-logical: purposes, causes, values and beliefs). Results. We identified the following distortion styles of the entrepreneur’s value- cognitive-actional pattern: procedural (formal) - formal following of rules, norms, and instructions; personnel follow formal rules. Authoritarian (static) – the power of guarantor, authority and enactor of rules; personnel are obedient and loyal; participative (dynamic) – interaction, rules and hierarchies are the result of negotiations; the head of organization is a moderator; personnel are a part in negotiations. Conclusions. Destructive distortion styles lead organizations to: moral disengagement – avoidance of values in relationships, decisions and actions; guilt instead of responsibility – feeling guilt or self-justification; narrow-mindedness – insisting on one’s own vision and ignoring feedback.