Grazing catfish, fishing birds, and attached algae in a Panamanian stream

In streams where algivorous fishes abound, striking variation of attached algae often develops along depth gradients, with bands of high standing crops in shallow water (<20 cm) and sparse standing crops on deeper substrates. Experimental results from a stream in central Panama support the hypothesis that vertical variation in algal standing crops arises when grazing fishes avoid predators in shallow water by forgoing food resources that accumulate there. When 38 rocks bearing algae in a stream in central Panama were transferred from shallow (<20 cm) to deeper (>20 cm) water, algae were rapidly consumed by grazing catfish. Catfish were removed from three stream pools and left in place in three control pools. Ten days after catfish removal, algal standing crops in deep and shallow areas of removal pools were similar, while algal standing crops were higher in shallow than in deep areas of control pools. Catfish were exposed to fishing birds in open-topped enclosures. In one of three series of these pens, most catfish in shallow pens (10 and 20 cm) disappeared after 14 days, while catfish in deeper pens (30 and 50 cm) did not. Other groups of catfish which were caged 8 days showed differences in behavior depending on whether they had been fed or starved. After their release into their home pool, starved catfish spent more time feeding than did fed catfish. Despite their apparently increased hunger levels, starved catfish did not venture into shallow water to obtain algae. These results support the view that predator induced avoidance by grazers of certain areas can produce spatial pattern in the flora of flowing water communities. © 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers

Management and leadership in UK universities: exploring the possibilities of change

This paper considers the case for reform of management struc- tures in UK universities and offers proposals for change. The model of top-down, performance-led management that characterises many institutions is both outmoded and ill-suited to the chal- lenges of an increasingly turbulent higher education sector. Drawing on the experiences of a university that introduced a new scheme of performance management, I explore alternative approaches to leadership and management, collaborative or part- nership working designed to improve employee voice and the need to re-evaluate approaches to Human Resource Management. I conclude with a five-point model for change

Fertility, Living Arrangements, Care and Mobility

There are four main interconnecting themes around which the contributions in this book are based. This introductory chapter aims to establish the broad context for the chapters that follow by discussing each of the themes. It does so by setting these themes within the overarching demographic challenge of the twenty-first century – demographic ageing. Each chapter is introduced in the context of the specific theme to which it primarily relates and there is a summary of the data sets used by the contributors to illustrate the wide range of cross-sectional and longitudinal data analysed

The politicisation of evaluation: constructing and contesting EU policy performance

Although systematic policy evaluation has been conducted for decades and has been growing strongly within the European Union (EU) institutions and in the member states, it remains largely underexplored in political science literatures. Extant work in political science and public policy typically focuses on elements such as agenda setting, policy shaping, decision making, or implementation rather than evaluation. Although individual pieces of research on evaluation in the EU have started to emerge, most often regarding policy “effectiveness” (one criterion among many in evaluation), a more structured approach is currently missing. This special issue aims to address this gap in political science by focusing on four key focal points: evaluation institutions (including rules and cultures), evaluation actors and interests (including competencies, power, roles and tasks), evaluation design (including research methods and theories, and their impact on policy design and legislation), and finally, evaluation purpose and use (including the relationships between discourse and scientific evidence, political attitudes and strategic use). The special issue considers how each of these elements contributes to an evolving governance system in the EU, where evaluation is playing an increasingly important role in decision making

Governors and directors: Competing models of corporate governance

Why do we use the term ‘corporate governance’ rather than ‘corporate direction’? Early British joint stock companies were normally managed by a single ‘governor’. The ‘court of governors’ or ‘board of directors’ emerged slowly as the ruling body for companies. By the nineteenth century, however, companies were typically run by directors while not-for-profit entities such as hospitals, schools and charitable bodies had governors. The nineteenth century saw steady refinement of the roles of company directors, often in response to corporate scandals, with a gradual change from the notion of the director as a ‘representative shareholder’ to the directors being seen collectively as ‘representatives of the shareholders’. Governors in not-for-profit entities, however, were regarded as having broader responsibilities. The term ‘governance’ itself suggests that corporate boards should be studied as ‘political’ entities rather than merely through economic lenses such as agency theory

A Generic Framework for Criterion-Referenced Assessment of Undergraduate Essays

This paper presents a brief review of the relative merits of norm-referenced and criterion-referenced assessment of undergraduate students' written work. Acknowledging that there are both positive and negative aspects of criterion referencing, a generic framework for such assessment of undergraduate essays is presented. It comprises criteria and standards (organised by `dimensions of achievement', i.e. content, process, affect and skills), proficiency standards for English language and communication competence, and cartographic and graphic skills. Problems of implementation include the size and complexity of the framework and the need to interpret and clarify the criteria and standards for students

The sedimentation of an institution: changing governance in UK financial services

Post-print version. Final version published by Sage; available online at http://jmi.sagepub.com/The Financial Services Act (FSA) 1986 was the first comprehensive attempt to create a unified statutorily based system of regulation within the UK financial sector. It generated a framework of regulation that is in a continuous state of development and modification. In this paper we study the development of UK financial regulation between 1986 and 2011. We trace how competing theorizations and logics of regulation have led to the institutionalization of a meta-form of financial regulation. In doing so, we address the conundrum of conscious, strategic theorizations leading to cognitive taken-for-granted institutions by identifying four catalysts that contribute to institutionalization when concurring with theorization. These are: the evocation of political ideologies, the appropriation of scandals, the growing number of actors and the increasing organization of actors. Finally, we argue that sedimentation is the appropriate metaphor for the version of institutionalization occurring in this setting

On the Dialectics of Charisma in Marina Abramović’s The Artist is Present

While ‘charisma’ can be found in dramatic and theatrical parlance, the term enjoys only minimal critical attention in theatre and performance studies, with scholarly work on presence and actor training methods taking the lead in defining charisma’s supposed ‘undefinable’ quality. Within this context, the article examines the appearance of the term ‘charismatic space’ in relation to Marina Abramovic’s retrospective The Artist is Present at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2010. Here Abramovic uses this term to describe the shared space in which performer and spectator connect bodily, psychically, and spiritually through a shared sense of presence and energy in the moment of performance. Yet this is a space arguably constituted through a number of dialectical tensions and contradictions which, in dialogue with existing theatre scholarship on charisma, can be further understood by drawing on insights into charismatic leaders and charismatic authority in leadership studies. By examining the performance and its documentary traces in terms of dialectics we consider the political and ethical implications for how we think about power relations between artist/spectator in a neoliberal, market-driven art context. Here an alternative approach to conceiving of and facilitating a charismatic space is proposed which instead foregrounds what Bracha L. Ettinger calls a ‘matrixial encounter-event’: A relation of coexistence and compassion rather than dominance of self over other; performer over spectator; leader over follower. By illustrating the dialectical tensions in The Artist is Present, we consider the potential of the charismatic space not as generated through the seductive power or charm of an individual whose authority is tied to his/her ‘presence’, but as something co-produced within an ethical and relational space of trans-subjectivity

nIFTy galaxy cluster simulations – I. Dark matter and non-radiative models

We have simulated the formation of a galaxy cluster in a Ʌ cold dark matter universe using 13 different codes modelling only gravity and non-radiative hydrodynamics (RAMSES, ART, AREPO, HYDRA and nine incarnations of GADGET). This range of codes includes particle-based, moving and fixed mesh codes as well as both Eulerian and Lagrangian fluid schemes. The various GADGET implementations span classic and modern smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) schemes. The goal of this comparison is to assess the reliability of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of clusters in the simplest astrophysically relevant case, that in which the gas is assumed to be non-radiative. We compare images of the cluster at z = 0, global properties such as mass and radial profiles of various dynamical and thermodynamical quantities. The underlying gravitational framework can be aligned very accurately for all the codes allowing a detailed investigation of the differences that develop due to the various gas physics implementations employed. As expected, the mesh-based codes RAMSES, ART and AREPO form extended entropy cores in the gas with rising central gas temperatures. Those codes employing classic SPH schemes show falling entropy profiles all the way into the very centre with correspondingly rising density profiles and central temperature inversions. We show that methods with modern SPH schemes that allow entropy mixing span the range between these two extremes and the latest SPH variants produce gas entropy profiles that are essentially indistinguishable from those obtained with grid-based methods