Suchergebnisse

O presente artigo tem como objetivo explorar a temática referente à classe dos agentes químicos neurotóxicos. Ao longo deste artigo, será abordado o aspecto histórico dos agentes neurotóxicos, peculiaridades das armas químicas binárias, propriedades físicas e químicas dos agentes neurotóxicos, mecanismos de ação, toxicidades, efeitos diretos no sistema nervoso, ligação com colinesterases sanguíneas e pré-tratamentos. No presente trabalho, será explorada ainda a possibilidade da utilização de agentes químicos neurotóxicos por organizações terroristas, bem como será demonstrada a preocupação que as autoridades governamentais devem possuir com os pesticidas, uma vez que estas substâncias podem ocasionar efeitos fisiológicos bastante semelhantes aos ocasionados pelos agentes neurotóxicos.

Biogas production from manure has been proposed as a partial solution to energy and environmental concerns. However, manure markets face distortions caused by considerable unbalance between supply and demand and environmental regulations imposed for soil and water protection. Such market distortions influence the cooperation between animal farmers, biogas producers and arable land owners causing fluctuations in manure prices paid (or incurred) by animal farmers. This paper adopts an agent-based modeling approach to investigate the interactions between manure suppliers, i.e., animal farmers, and biogas producers in an industrial symbiosis case example consisting of 19 municipalities in the Overijssel region (eastern Netherlands). To find the manure price for successful cooperation schemes, we measure the impact of manure discharge cost, dimension and dispersion of animal farms, incentives provided by the government for bioenergy production, and the investment costs of biogas plants for different scales on the economic returns for both actor types and favorable market conditions. Findings show that manure exchange prices may vary between −3.33 €/t manure (i.e., animal farmer pays to biogas producer) and 7.03 €/t manure (i.e., biogas producer pays to animal farmer) and thanks to cooperation, actors can create a total economic value added between 3.73 €/t manure and 39.37 €/t manure. Hence, there are cases in which animal farmers can profitably be paid, but the presence of a supply surplus not met by demand provides an advantage to arable land owners and biogas producers in the price contracting phase in the current situation in the Netherlands.

L'ouvrage que Loïc Bonneval consacre aux agents immobiliers propose d'aborder la question du logement dans sa dimension marchande. Si la théorie économique a produit un nombre important de travauxportant sur les dynamiques de prix ou des logiques d'achat et de vente de biens immobiliers, les sociologues ont souvent privilégié l'angle de la sociologie urbaine ou des politiques publiques pour réfléchiraux questions relatives au logement. Dans une perspective de sociologie économique, Bonneval s'intéresse aux agents immobiliers en tant qu'intermédiaires de marchés. En s'interrogeant sur le rôle de ces acteurs économiques dans l'appariement de l'offre et de la demande de biens immobiliers, le livre questionne pluslargement la façon dont le travail marchand de ces agents contribue à construire et structurer le jugement et les choix résidentiels des ménages. [Premier paragraphe]

L'ouvrage que Loïc Bonneval consacre aux agents immobiliers propose d'aborder la question du logement dans sa dimension marchande. Si la théorie économique a produit un nombre important de travauxportant sur les dynamiques de prix ou des logiques d'achat et de vente de biens immobiliers, les sociologues ont souvent privilégié l'angle de la sociologie urbaine ou des politiques publiques pour réfléchiraux questions relatives au logement. Dans une perspective de sociologie économique, Bonneval s'intéresse aux agents immobiliers en tant qu'intermédiaires de marchés. En s'interrogeant sur le rôle de ces acteurs économiques dans l'appariement de l'offre et de la demande de biens immobiliers, le livre questionne pluslargement la façon dont le travail marchand de ces agents contribue à construire et structurer le jugement et les choix résidentiels des ménages. [Premier paragraphe]

When political principals send agents to international organizations (IOs), those agents are often assumed to speak in a single voice. Yet various types of country representatives appear on the international stage including permanent representatives as well as more overtly "political" government officials. We argue that permanent delegates at the United Nations face career incentives that align them with the bureaucracy, setting them apart from political delegates. To that end, they tend to speak more homogeneously than do other types of speakers, while also using relatively more technical, diplomatic rhetoric; and career incentives will make them more reluctant to criticize the UN. In other words, permanent representatives speak more like bureaucratic agents than like political principals. We apply text analytics to study differences across agents' rhetoric at the UN General Assembly. We demonstrate marked distinctions between the speech of different types of agents, contradictory to conventional assumptions, with implications for our understandings of the interplay between public administration and agency at IOs.

The article makes four interrelated claims: (1) The mechanism approach to social explanation does not presuppose a commitment to the individual-level microfoundationalism. (2) The microfoundationalist requirement that explanatory social mechanisms should always consists of interacting individuals has given rise to problematic methodological biases in social research. (3) It is possible to specify a number of plausible candidates for social macro-mechanisms where interacting collective agents (e.g. formal organizations) form the core actors. (4) The distributed cognition perspective combined with organization studies could provide us with explanatory understanding of the emergent cognitive capacities of collective agents.

Objective: This study uses a dyadic approach to understand human-agent cooperation and system resilience. Background: Increasingly capable technology fundamentally changes human-machine relationships. Rather than reliance on or compliance with more or less reliable automation, we investigate interaction strategies with more or less cooperative agents. Method: A joint-task microworld scenario was developed to explore the effects of agent cooperation on participant cooperation and system resilience. To assess the effects of agent cooperation on participant cooperation, 36 people coordinated with a more or less cooperative agent by requesting resources and responding to requests for resources in a dynamic task environment. Another 36 people were recruited to assess effects following a perturbation in their own hospital. Results: Experiment 1 shows people reciprocated the cooperative behaviors of the agents; a low-cooperation agent led to less effective interactions and less resource sharing, whereas a high-cooperation agent led to more effective interactions and greater resource sharing. Experiment 2 shows that an initial fast-tempo perturbation undermined proactive cooperation—people tended to not request resources. However, the initial fast tempo had little effect on reactive cooperation—people tended to accept resource requests according to cooperation level. Conclusion: This study complements the supervisory control perspective of human-automation interaction by considering interdependence and cooperation rather than the more common focus on reliability and reliance. Application: The cooperativeness of automated agents can influence the cooperativeness of human agents. Design and evaluation for resilience in teams involving increasingly autonomous agents should consider the cooperative behaviors of these agents.

Cet article examine les tendances récentes de l'évolution du système de pension des agents de l'Union européenne ainsi que les débats qu'elle suscite.