‘All my hopes and dreams are shattered’: Urbanization and migrancy in an imploding African economy - the case of Zimbabwe

During the 1990s, urban livelihoods in Zimbabwe began to suffer a series of economic stresses, which accelerated in 1997 and then accelerated again, with the inception of fast-track land reform, from 2000. This has reduced urban living standards significantly and devastated real urban income levels. After a discussion of the economic and political parameters of this period, this paper links these to empirical changes in the urban livelihoods and perceptions of urban living standards of recent in-migrants to Harare. This draws on a longitudinal database of four surveys of recent migrants to the city conducted in 1985, 1988, 1994 and 2001. Among a range of qualitative issues explored in these surveys has been the question of migrants’ future plans in relation to their intended length of stay in town. It is shown that migrants have been feeling increasingly negative or unsure about their urban experience since structural adjustment began in the early 1990s, and that these perceptions had greatly strengthened by 2001. By the last survey only a small minority felt they would remain permanently in town and most of the migrants from rural areas felt that their living standards in Harare were either worse than rural living standards, or no better. While Zimbabwe’s current political and economic crisis is exceptional, serious urban poverty is a feature across sub-Saharan African countries and it is argued that this has had a depressing effect on net rural-urban migration rates.     

Searching for silenced voices in Appalachian music

Music is extremely important in representations of place in the Appalachian Region of the United States, where ballads and banjo tunes become musical signposts in popular and academic culture to mark the region’s Otherness. Embedded in the discourse about the region and its music are silences about groups of people that do not fit dominant expectations of authenticity or belonging, the Others within. This essay serves to highlight some historical contributions of these groups, the social processes that have silenced them, and directions for future research to amplify those voices.     

Nonprofit Foundations and Grassroots Organizing: Reshaping Urban Governance*

Collaborative urban governance has increased the role of community organizations in local decision‐making processes. These organizations need financial resources in order to participate in urban governance. In this article, I examine the impact of foundation grants on the relationships and agendas of four community organizations in one neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota. Drawing on interviews, observations of organizations, and archival research, I demonstrate that in the 1990s, nonprofit foundations had a significant impact on the formation of new organizations and on their agendas in the neighborhood. Foundations are, therefore, an important player in urban governance, shaping a “neighborhood policy regime.”     

Dominance of Tilapia mossambica,an introduced fish species,in three Puerto Rican estuaries

We compared species presence, abundance, and size characteristics of fish in three brackish, coastal marshes at Humacao, Roosevelt Roads, and Boqueron, Puerto Rico, in February and March 1988. The three marsh ecosystems were similar with respect to the presence of large expanses of open water bordered by emergent vegetation, creeks, and mangroves, and all had some recreational use. We sampled fish using gill nets. Tilapia (Oreochromis) mossambica were the most abundant fish, accounting for 55–79% of the samples at all three marshes. Overall, tilapia were both the largest (North Lagoon) and the smallest (Frontera Creek) at Humacao. Tilapia were most common in open lagoons rather than creeks or bays (except for Mandri Creek), and their distribution seemed unrelated to salinity. Tarpon (Megalops atlantica) were more abundant at low salinities, whereas other fish were more abundant at higher salinities.     

Exposing the urban continuum: implications and cross-comparison from an interdisciplinary perspective

ABSTRACT

There is an increasing availability of geospatial data describing patterns of human settlement and population such as various global remote-sensing based built-up land layers, fine-grained census-based population estimates, and publicly available cadastral and building footprint data. This development constitutes new integrative modeling opportunities to characterize the continuum of urban, peri-urban, and rural settlements and populations. However, little research has been done regarding the agreement between such data products in measuring human presence which is measured by different proxy variables (i.e. presence of built-up structures derived from different remote sensors, census-derived population counts, or cadastral land parcels). In this work, we quantitatively evaluate and cross-compare the ability of such data to model the urban continuum, using a unique, integrated validation database of cadastral and building footprint data, U.S. census data, and three different versions of the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) derived from remotely sensed data. We identify advantages and shortcomings of these data types across different geographic settings in the U.S., which will inform future data users on implications of data accuracy and suitability for a given application, even in data-poor regions of the world.     

Serum and blood from adult striped bass,Morone saxatilis

Results of blood and serum analyses on striped bass,Morone saxatilis (Walbaum), adults taken during the 1975 spawning season on the Nanticoke River, Maryland, are reported. The range in values found were 16–70% for hematocrit, 4.0–12.3 g/100 ml for hemoglobin, 2.86–4.49×10⁶/cc for erythrocyte count, 4.5–18.8 mg% for serum calcium, and 6.1–13.0 g/100 ml for plasma protein. These values are compared with others previously reported for adult bass. Serum chloride and serum protein values, ranging from 80 to 186 mEq/l and 3.92 to 8.32 g%, respectively, are reported for the first time for this species. Hemoglobin and hematocrit values for non-spawning, mature striped bass held in ambient sea water for a year fall within the reported ranges. Serum total protein values ranged from 2.36 to 6.14 g% and serum calcium values varied between 8.1 and 14.9 mg% from migratory adult striped bass. The possibility of sexing striped bass using serum calcium levels is discussed. Hematological values reported will help in defining the range encountered in healthy adults of this species.     

Indications of a biological and biochemical evolutionary trend during the archean and early proterozoic

Micropaleontological observations and organic geochemical analyses imply, but certainly do not prove, that life may not have been present ～3,800 Ma ago in Southwestern Greenland; however, physiologically complex prokaryotes flourished by the Early Proterozoic in other locations. It is, of course, also possible that life may have appeared earlier in locations other than Greenland. Investigations of Precambrian biological and biochemical evolutionary trends require interdisciplinary efforts, up-to-date instrumentation and methodology (such as ultramicrochemical analyses of individual microfossils/microstructures), and caution in the interpretation of experimental results.