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El principal programa de investigación de la Asociación de Carbón en Australia (ACARP), RISKGATE ha completado tres años de conocimiento en la captura y el desarrollo del sistema. El cuerpo de conocimiento del manejo de riesgos de neumáticos, colisiones, incendios, aislamiento, estratos de suelo en las minas subterráneas, suelo en minas de cielo abierto, explosiones, explosivos en minas subterráneas, explosivos en minas de cielo abierto, trabajos manuales, resbalones/tropiezos/caídas fue lanzada en diciembre del 2012. Recientemente, el proyecto a adicionado al cuerpo de conocimiento temas relacionados a escapes de gas espontaneo, fallas en la extracción de carbón, interface entre la interacción máquina-humano, depósito de escoria, higiene ocupacional y escape de cuerpos de agua a los originales 11 tópicos. En el 2014, los planes del proyecto (pendiente a la aprobación a la fundación de ACARP) es al enfoque en problemas relacionados con salud ocupacional. RISKGATE provee un ambiente en la captura de conocimiento y reciprocidad en un mundo de innovación e intercambio de prácticas actuales a través de la industria en la identificación, evaluación y manejo de riesgo. En la captura del conocimiento operacional por medio de expertos industriales, RISKGATE provee memoria corporativa acumulativa en un momento de alta rotación del personal en la industria del carbón. Este artículo presenta una visión en conjunto de los primeros diecisiete tópicos, estructura de los tópicos y contraste de relaciones internas entre los tópicos. La segunda parte del articulo discute algunos primeros pasos que las compañías están tomando para integrar RISKGATE en estas operaciones; y concluye con algunos ideas en donde RISKGATE puede ir en un futuro. The major Australian Coal Association Research Program (ACARP) project, RISKGATE has now completed three years of knowledge capture and system development. The body of knowledge for risk management of tyres, collisions, fires, isolation, strata underground, ground control open cut, explosions, explosives underground, explosives open cut, manual tasks and slips/trips/falls was launched in December 2012. Recently, the project added knowledge about outbursts, coal bumps and bursts, human-machine interface, tailings dams, occupational hygiene and inrush to the original 11 topics. In 2014, the project plans (pending ACARP funding approval) to focus on issues around Fitness for Work. RISKGATE provides an environment for knowledge capture and knowledge exchange to drive innovation and cross industry sharing of current practice in the identification, assessment and management of risk. By capturing operational knowledge from industry experts, RISKGATE provides a cumulative corporate memory at a time of high personnel turnover in the coal industry. RISKGATE is the largest single ACARP Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) initiative to date. This paper presents an overview of the first seventeen topics, topic structures, and contrasts and inter-relationships between topics. The second part of the paper discusses some early steps that companies are taking to integrate RISKGATE into their operations; and conclude with some thoughts on where RISKGATE can go in the future.

Policymakers in the Brazilian Amazon face the challenge of meeting environmental and developmental goals as cities and towns within these tropical forests continue to face migration pressure. Alternative government planning strategies have been implemented to address forest clearing in conjunction with meeting social agendas. This paper uses panel estimation methods to investigate the impact of settlement design on land use. Results indicate that new settlement designs developed to further social interaction have had a negative impact on land cover and land use transformation. Thus, while new settlement designs appear to positively impact stated social goals, including greater contact between families and access to water and services, these social advances have come at the expense of environmental goals.

Tulving and Schacter proposed that there is a specific memory system responsible for priming, which they termed the Perceptual Representation System (PRS). It is considered responsible for representing the form and structure of stimuli rather than information about meaning, it is highly inflexible in its representation of stimuli, and is thought to comprise three domain-specific subsystems: the visual word form subsystem, the auditory word form subsystem, and the structural description subsystem. The purpose of the present programme of studies was to examine the properties of subsystems of the PRS underlying priming. Evidence for the PRS comes from a number of sources: neuropsychological, experimental dissociations in non-clinical samples, and neuroimaging studies. Although informative with respect to the theory, each of these methodologies has its own limitations. A procedure developed by Rugg et al. (1998) overcame a number of previous limitations of studies of priming and provided a tool for examining the subsystems of the PRS. Rugg et al. (1998), using ERPs, observed two qualitatively different ERP old/new effects associated with visual word-form priming (i.e., N400 old/new effect) and recollection memory (i.e., LPC old/new effect), and on this basis reported the first dissociation of the visual word form subsystem from explicit memory. Importantly, this dissociation was achieved when the two types of memory were tested concurrently, rather than using different tasks, and in a way that minimised the possible confounding of priming by explicit memory. Studies 1a, 1b, and 2 reported in Chapter 3 were directed to replicating the findings of Rugg et al. (1998) using highly similar procedures. Visually presented words were used to identify neural correlates of priming and explicit memory. The substantial success of these studies made possible an extension of the experimental work to the study of objects as stimuli (Studies 3a and 3b reported in Chapter 4) and to words presented aurally (Studies 4a and 4b in Chapter 5). Thus the three subsystems of the PRS were examined. Prior to this research programme there had not been any replications of the findings of Rugg et al. (1998) reported in the literature and no attempts to use stimuli in domains other than the visual. Using visually presented words, objects, and aurally presented words, priming and explicit memory effects were identified. Across all modes of stimuli, the explicit memory effect was indexed between 500 and 800 ms post-stimulus, and was maximal at left parieto-central regions. The presence of the LPC old/new effect at the left parietal electrode site may be explained as reflecting the operations of verbal memory, which is localised to the left hemisphere. A N400 old/new effect that appeared to index priming was also present across each mode of stimuli. Spatially, this effect was present most consistently across tests at parietal sites and specifically the right parietal site. This may suggest that a common area that subserves the PRS is located in the posterior regions of the cortex. These outcomes support findings from neuroimaging studies that have identified priming effects associated with visual word, object, and auditory word priming tasks in secondary sensory and associative areas of the cortex. Each mode of priming displayed N400 old/new effects at the right hemisphere, a spatial distribution that was not generally evident for the explicit memory effect. This outcome (right lateralisation) supports the proposition that the right hemisphere is engaged more than the left hemisphere in perceptual priming. The right hemisphere advantage associated with perceptual priming, has been consistently identified in studies across each mode of priming and across neuropsychological, behavioural, and neuroimaging studies. Qualitative differences were observed between the three subsystems of the PRS and explicit memory which indicate independent operations. This dissociation was achieved when the two types of memory were tested concurrently, rather than using different tasks, and in a way that minimises the possible confounding of implicit by explicit memory. On this basis, convincing evidence is provided to support the Multiple Memory Systems (MMS) view that memory consists of independent explicit and implicit memory systems. Further, the methods of this research programme have been shown to be a sensitive tool for studying the properties of the PRS. The priming effects elicited by each of the three subsystems were characterised by pre-semantic and non-conscious processing of the perceptual features of stimuli. The priming effect elicited by objects and aural words were also found to be longer-lasting effects ( 30 min) which provided evidence to support the long-term nature of the PRS subsystems. These characteristics converge with the conclusions other research perspectives have similarly associated with the PRS. Taken together, the properties of the three subsystems of the PRS identified in this research provide evidence to support the PRS and MMS theories. A final outcome of this research programme relates to ERP methods and memory. This research programme has observed N400 old/new effects across three modes of priming. This outcome is important as there are no reports in the literature of N400 old/new effects associated with object and auditory priming. These results provide evidence to support the functional significance of the N400 old/new effect as an index of the PRS subsystems that support priming.

In developing countries across the globe the impact of livestock on deforestation levels has been profound. This paper explores the role of the cattle industry in household decision making for small landholders in the Brazilian Amazon. Important inquiries raised in the literature are addressed, including the determinants of the co-evolution of deforestation and cattle herds, the possibility of production specialization, and the role of cattle in household livelihoods. Panel data suggest that households have changed focus from crop introduction to cattle. Empirical models reveal that location, wealth, and education are among the important determinants of production decisions and cattle accumulation. Policy recommendations include a focus on the cattle sector coupled with initiatives to establish and enforce protected areas.

The adoption of sustainable agriculture and other sustainable forestry methods that can help to reduce tropical deforestation have received a great deal of attention in the literature (Adesina and Zinnah 1993, Akinola and Young 1985, Feder and Slade 1984, Holden 1993, Kebede et al. 1990). Although results from different studies can be compared in an absolute sense, there are very few individual studies that compare results and determine, through empirical analysis, whether policy can be universally applied. This paper uses farm-level data to determine whether some universal conclusions can be drawn about the adoption of agroforestry by peasant farmers in developing countries by comparing the land use choices of farmers in Rondônia, Brazil and Campeche, Mexico. The empirical results indicate that education level and the degree of exposure to information about agroforestry significantly influence the adoption of agroforestry and that deforestation levels for farmers in both nations are influenced by the size of the farm lots. The two communities used in the analysis differ in terms of tradition, history, geography, and economics but both experience a link between deforestation and imperfect information. Policies that address imperfect information in developing countries are likely to decrease deforestation as well as improve the well being of residents.