Context:When Timor Leste became an independent country in 1999, much of its basic power, water, transport and telecommunications infrastructure had been destroyed in the preceding years of conflict. Almost everything needed to be rebuilt and the country faced a massive task in planning and executing a wholesale infrastructure investment program estimated at more than $10 billion. Eleven years later, while notable progress had been made in some sectors, Timor-Leste remained far behind its original investment targets. While the country possessed significant oil & gas resources to support infrastructure financing, its capacity for investment planning and implementation remained constrained, and as such its engagement with the private sector was narrowly focused on traditional construction and engineering contracts. Much of the potential for the private sector to expand the Government's capacity to deliver infrastructure and related services remained untapped.
International audience ; We study a linear location model (Hotelling, 1929) in which n (with n ≥ 2) boundedly rational players follow (noisy) myopic best-reply behavior. We show through numerical and mathematical analysis that such players spend almost all the time clustered together near the center, re-establishing Hotelling's " Principle of Minimum Differentiation " that had been discredited by equilibrium analyses. Thus, our analysis of the best-response dynamics shows that when considering e.g. market dynamics as well as their policy and welfare implications, it may be important to look beyond equilibrium analyses
International audience We study a linear location model (Hotelling, 1929) in which n (with n ≥ 2) boundedly rational players follow (noisy) myopic best-reply behavior. We show through numerical and mathematical analysis that such players spend almost all the time clustered together near the center, re-establishing Hotelling's " Principle of Minimum Differentiation " that had been discredited by equilibrium analyses. Thus, our analysis of the best-response dynamics shows that when considering e.g. market dynamics as well as their policy and welfare implications, it may be important to look beyond equilibrium analyses
Abstract China does not have a unified and consistent ethical understanding. Ethics have to be mostly conceived and applied in personal terms. At the negotiation table, parties bring their own moral principles and values from their cultural background, education, and experience. Justice principles anchored in Chinese moral philosophy clearly take precedence over legal justice principles. For a Chinese negotiator, striking a deal is a process of balancing between two contradictory sets of values: Confucius' notions of rightness, and those of modern distributive (and procedural) justice. Now, distributive justice implies a whole range of criteria, such as rewards according to efforts, merits, and contribution, as well as need. Equality is still not on the Chinese justice agenda. Fairness has to find its own way between guanxi requirements, traditional nepotism, the influence of symbols, propitious numbers, references to ancestors, feng shui, and astrology.
A Store Almost in Sight tells the story of commercial development in central Missouri from the early days of American settlement following the Louisiana Purchase to the Civil War. Focusing on those counties near or on the Missouri River, historian Jeff Bremer confirms that the history of the frontier is also the history of the spread of capitalist values. The letters, journals, diaries, and travel accounts of Missouri settlers and visitors reveal how small decisions made by Missouri's rural white settlers-ranging from how much of a certain crop to plant to how many eggs to take to.
Few areas of the world have had such a profound effect upon history as that of the Near East. Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, the Hittite Empire, Phoenicia, Syria, ancient Israel and Judah, and the smaller kingdoms and states of the area interacted through three thousand years until Rome occupied almost the entire area. The Fertile Crescent is not a vast area, so the various civilizations and cultures were in frequent contact.
The 'best interests of the child' is rhetoric often applied and to an obscure legal concept. Nevertheless, it remains one of the most important standards, if not the most important, to be applied when attempting to determine what might be the interests of children at law. But as might be the case with other supposedly fundamental principles, there is much ambiguity in the meaning and uncertainty in the application of this principle and the standard it presumes to impose. Not surprisingly, many questions remain unanswered. Firstly, what exactly is the paramount status of the best interests standard? Secondly, in deciding the best interests of the child, does the ultimate responsibility lie with the judge or does it require some judicial deference to community values, as presumably expressed in the legislation? Lastly, does the standard, as it stands today, run the risk of being so general that its application can easily be distorted? Indeed, given the inherent difficulties in articulation and application of the standard, it might be unrealistic to expect mere legal provisions to ease social and emotional tensions that exist in the realm of child welfare today. As children themselves generally do not make applications to the court, their interests inevitably will be dependent on those of other parties, such as parents and the various professionals who assist them. As long as these principles are sought to be upheld in a system which is philosophically and practically adversarial, our ability to promote, maintain and protect the best interests of children will be inhibited. Is near enough good enough … or is it just the best we can do?
We discuss the stability of the tip motion in dynamic atomic force microscopy. A nonlinear dynamics analysis shows that the tip's phase space is divided in two basins of attraction. A phase space diagram dominated by either basin of attraction implies a stable motion while a substantial contribution from both basins is associated with instabilities. Because the dominance of a given basin of attraction depends on the tip-surface interaction potential and separation, stable and unstable motions are intrinsic features of an oscillating tip near or in intermittent contact with a surface. ; This work has been supported by the Dirección General de Investigación Científica y Técnica (PB98-0471) and the European Union (BICEPS, BIO4-CT-2112). A.S.P. acknowledges financial support from the Comunidad de Madrid. ; Peer reviewed
Governance is referred to today in almost fetishistic terms, although the origins of what is regarded as a new notion are not always recognised. In fact the term comes from the France of the Ancien Regime, where negotiation and arbitration were commonplace in the absence of a strong state monopoly. In the more distant etymological sense, the term signified a helm. In the context of environmental challenges, governance is necessary to orchestrate cooperation between states (and their bureaucracies), sometimes also including international companies, learned societies and scientific bodies – some of which are decision-makers – NGOs and even ordinary citizens who may be involved in short-term experiments of participative and deliberative democracy.
Governance is referred to today in almost fetishistic terms, although the origins of what is regarded as a new notion are not always recognised. In fact the term comes from the France of the Ancien Regime, where negotiation and arbitration were commonplace in the absence of a strong state monopoly. In the more distant etymological sense, the term signified a helm. In the context of environmental challenges, governance is necessary to orchestrate cooperation between states (and their bureaucracies), sometimes also including international companies, learned societies and scientific bodies – some of which are decision-makers – NGOs and even ordinary citizens who may be involved in short-term experiments of participative and deliberative democracy.
Here a survey of current definitions is the starting point to underline inconsistencies and critical issues, and to identify weak points. From these, distinguishing between energy and primary energy, with all its attributes, and between energy sources and energy carriers, a proposal of revised definitions of near zero, zero and plus energy buildings is formulated. This analysis is based on the use of the classic energy balance, but taking into consideration that a building is always a net energy consumer (it always produce entropy or destroy exergy). Special attention is then paid in clearly defining primary energy factors for energy carriers produced from renewable energy sources on site, nearby or far. Although the primary energy factors values have been fixed sometime by political reasons, a clear scientific definition is limiting them to a reasonable range these values, which at least do not violate the basic principles of thermodynamics. Finally, to clarify that a "plus" building cannot create energy but can just contribute to the local or regional electrical energy production by feeding the grid, a complementary energy index is then proposed beyond than required by the EPBD. This can overcome the questioning on the "negative" primary energy index that can be achieved by such building using some of current net ZEB definition. In this way is possible to spit the main function (and its quality) of a building from the secondary function (and quality) of being a distributed electric generator for the grid without losing any values and complying with the nearly Zero Energy Building definition of EPBD.
My critics in this symposium illustrate one principle and three fallacies of disability studies. The principle, which we all share, is that all persons are equal and none are less equal than others. No disability, however slight, nor however severe, implies lesser moral, political or ethical status, worth or value. This is a version of the principle of equality. The three fallacies exhibited by some or all of my critics are the following: (1) Choosing to repair damage or dysfunction or to enhance function, implies either that the previous state is intolerable or that the person in that state is of lesser value or indicates that the individual in that state has a life that is not worthwhile or not thoroughly worth living. None of these implications hold. (2) Exercising choice in reproduction with the aim of producing children who will be either less damaged or diseased, or more healthy, or who will have enhanced capacities, violates the principle or equality. It does not. (3) Disability or impairment must be defined relative either to normalcy, "normal species functioning", or "species typical functioning". It is not necessarily so defined.
Consumption taxes have an important place in the tax systems of modern states. They provide a large amount of revenue for the state budget. However, they are generous, but they are very regressive. It is a bad characteristic. The regressivity problem of the tax burden implies that the consumption tax is burdensome for the population with lower income. They pay similar tax rate as people with high income. The aim of this paper is to point to the existence of the problem of regressivity in underdeveloped and developed countries. This paper analyses the possibilities of reducing this problem in order to satisfy the principle of fairness in taxation.
