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The Menominee, and Salish and Kootenai indigenous groups of North America have implemented successful frameworks of uneven-aged forest management which pre-date European contact. Uneven-aged forest management strategies such as the ones practiced by these indigenous groups have been historically limited in North America due to a culture of even-aged forest management focused on short rotations and vast clearcuts. Academic recognition of methods utilized in uneven-aged forest management remains widespread in the Pacific Northwest. Environmental, social, cultural and spiritual acknowledgement of uneven-aged forest management in North America further implies the feasibility of replicating similar methods in British Columbia. With the inception of the New Relationship, a B.C. government – B.C. First Nations resource planning framework, applications of uneven-aged forest management based on the practices of the Menominee, and Salish and Kootenai should be strongly considered for implementation in B.C. forests. ; Forestry, Faculty of ; Unreviewed ; Undergraduate

After 15 years of created, the Border Environmental Cooperation Commission (BECC, in Spanish COCEF, Comisión de Cooperación Ecológica Fronteriza) is interested in measuring sustainability in the Mexican municipalities along the US-Mexico border. BECC is a bi-national organization created by the Governments of United States and Mexico to help conserve, protect and enhance the environment in the region. This assessment of municipal sustainability helps understand the impact of the BECC actions and guide plans and projects on the region. Sustainability is evaluated through a series of indices. Each one is the result of comparative interpretation of indicators based on a graphic display of weighted interactions of environmental, social, and economic nature. The assessment is conducted through workshops with a group of experts in BECC and Utah State University. Scores, percentages, and rankings are produced by an interactive computer application allowing a stronger and detailed diagnosis for each municipal unit. ; Peer Reviewed

The research presented in this paper was collected over a one-year period and is drawn from a wider two-year study of student teachers at the Higher Colleges of Technology in the United Arab Emirates, in a new Bachelor of Education degree, which prepares young Emirati women for English language teaching positions in local government schools. The study theorized the student teachers as comprising an evolving community of practice and this paper draws on data from online discussion forums to explore the discursive construction of interpersonal relations within this community of practice. In particular the paper draws on critical discourse analysis to examine a range of discursive `legitimation` strategies, through which the student teachers co-constructed community and communication. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of the study`s implications that may also have resonance in other contexts where systems of knowledge and forms of communication are being discursively co-constructed.

The literature on taxation of rents from nonrenewable resources uses different theoretical assumptions and methods and a variety of empirical observations to arrive at widely diverging conclusions. Many studies use models and methods which disregard uncertainty, investigating distortionary effects of different taxes on whether, when, and how to explore for, develop and operate resource deposits. Introducing uncertainty into the analysis opens a range of challenges, and leads to results which cast doubt upon the relevance of studies which neglect uncertainty. There are, however, several ways to analyze uncertainty, regarding companies' behavior, resource price processes, and diversification opportunities, all with different implications for taxation. Methods developed in financial economics since the 1980's are promising, but still not in widespread use. Some more specific topics covered in this review are optimal risk sharing between companies and governments, time consistency and fiscal stability, the relationship between taxes and discount rates, and transfer pricing.

The shadow economy is the people's opposition to government actions and norms. Its capacity, forms and expression methods are constantly changing, whereas the informal economy is very flexible to adapt to the regulatory changes, and even morality changes. Any new ban or restriction extends the area of the shadow economy, and thus its specific scale and form. According to Gediminas Kirkilas, shadow economy - the scourge for all countries. Shadow economy distorts official statistics, so the development of policy may become unreliable or simply irrational. Other, more serious economic damage is the fact that honest taxpayers have to pay for those who don't pay taxes. Tax non-payment is nothing more than a theft from those who pay taxes. All this is hampering economic growth, so restriction of shadow economy growth in almost all countries is a relevant issue. Thus, in this work will be analyze aspects of the shadow economy and antieconomy consequences.

The reasons for the current financial crisis are analysed and a proposal for financing a bad bank is made. In particular, it is proposed to give the banks in trouble government zero bonds rather than cash in exchange for their toxic assets. The term of the zero bonds is determined individually according to the effective failure ratio of the toxic assets. As the latter is yet unknown, this procedure avoids the problem of evaluating them in advance and at the same time ensures that the entire costs of adjustments are lastly borne by the banks themselves rather than by the taxpayer. This solution is suitable for all but the worst cases, where insolvency is inevitable. It is argued that a similar asset exchange approach has already proved to work two times in German History, and that there is no reason to fear that it could hamper the effectiveness of financial markets in future.

High piezoelectric and ferroelectric properties have been found in Mn-doped Na0.5Bi0.5TiO3-BaTiO3 single crystals, which were grown by a top-seeded solution method. The electrical resistivity, dielectric constant, and ferroelectric and piezoelectric properties were all found to be notably enhanced by Mn. The piezoelectric constant d(33) and electromechanical coupling coefficients k(t) and k(31) were found to be as high as 483 pC/N, 0.56, and 0.40, respectively. These values are much higher than those previously reported for Pb-free piezoelectric crystals, demonstrating the real potential for alternative lead-free systems for sensor and piezoelectric applications. ; Ministry of Science and Technology of China_2008AA03Z410, 2009CB623305 ; Natural Science Foundation of China 60837003, 50777065, 50602047 ; Shanghai Municipal Government 08JC1420500 ; Innovation Fund of Shanghai Institute of Ceramics SCX0608 ; Fund of National Engineering Research Center for Optoelectronic Crystalline Materials 2005DC105003, 2007K05 ; National Science Foundation DMR-0806592 ; U. S. Department of Energy DE-FG02-07ER46480

This paper explores the poverty agenda in Uganda, its drivers and its effects. We show that transforming the economy by increasing productivity was initially considered more important than to reduce poverty through redistributive policies. However, as a consequence of the 1996 elections a consensus on poverty eradication through health and education emerged. The Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) had a shopping list nature and it is therefore difficult to establish whether it was implemented. Growth and poverty reduction during the PEAP period was mainly due to a continuation of macro-economic policies that were introduced prior to the PEAP. Around the multi-party elections in 2006, policy priorities changed towards more focus on agricultural production, agro-business and infrastructure. The government now has a two-edged focus: poverty reduction through economic transformation and poverty reduction through social services. However, there is also a political agenda about remaining in power which threatens to undermine the results achieved so far.

There is enough consensus to show that India's economic performance since 1991 is a direct result of the economic liberalization measures that have been put in place. One of the outcomes of this improved performance is the growth of innovations in the country. This was accompanied by or caused by the emergence of a number of technology-based enterprises. This paper takes a critical look at the available quantitative evidence on the growth of knowledge or technology-based entrepreneurship. It then looks at five facilitating factors for the emergence of this phenomenon in terms of the existence of increased market opportunities, availability of financial support schemes in the form of venture capital funds, existence and enlargement of a number of government programmes, a number of private sector initiatives and education, and training leading to the supply of technically trained personnel. The paper concludes with certain policy suggestions for the continued sustenance of this activity.

For those who continue to doubt the studiability of distress or suffering or misery in all of its forms in animals, consider the following thought experiment: If the government were to come up with a billion dollars in research funding for animal distress, would that money go a-begging? We can study these states just as we studied pain—excellent work on boredom by Franciose Wemelsfelder in a volume on laboratory animal welfare I co-edited made the methodology for such study quite explicit. (Wemelsfelder, 1990) And when the ideological scales fall from our eyes, we realize that the work of scientists like John Mason (Mason, 1971), Seymour Levine (Levine, 1990) and even the odious work of Harlow do provide clear ingression into animal unhappiness. Even more promising, it has recently become legitimate to talk of animal happiness, a notion I have argued elsewhere is in fact clearer than that of human happiness (Rollin, 2004).

Globalisation means intensified competition, the transfer of investments, production relocation outside of Europe, job losses, unemployment and rapid structural changes. European labour markets are characterised as relatively rigid, with high social security and strong industrial relations (IR). The aim of this study is to find out, how the social partners, governments and researchers interpret the challenges of globalisation on future developments of industrial relations. The research is based on expert foresight survey where IR experts from 34 countries were interviewed. The project looked to the future, to the year 2025 and discussed on what industrial relations and social dialogue would look like after fifteen-twenty years. The main findings convinced that decentralisation of collective bargaining is expected in old member states, while the situation will remain unchanged in majority of the new member states. We can conclude that European level convergence is expected in the area of industrial relations

The objective of this project was to research NASA's concerns with public and media outlets during the mid-1980s, and gauge the effect of these concerns in exerting pressure which contributed to the Challenger explosion in January 1986.Research methods were primarily computer and text-based, both methods utilizing the Virginia Tech Newman Library resources. The library's stacks provided necessary books, while Newman's online connections to various historical databases provided key examples of primary sources, such as news articles surrounding the Challenger disaster.The paper concludes that NASA's over-attention to public relations issues did indeed allow the persistence of the mechanical problems which were the direct cause of the space shuttle's explosion.The wider aim of this paper hopes to encourage continual public scrutiny of the inner workings of government organizations, as well as caution in such organizations of the hazards of overattention to public popularity at the expense of safety.

It is often assumed that Britain's colonies followed the British doctrine of free trade in the second half of the nineteenth century. Malta, which became a British colony in 1814, did indeed become an early free trader. However, she failed to liberalize the grain trade, even when the mother country famously repealed the Corn Laws. This paper documents that although institutions changed over the years, the ad valorem equivalents of the duties on wheat did not. The reason for this seems to be that administrators were convinced that is was not possible to fund government spending in any other way. The duties on grain in Malta were therefore not protectionist, but rather for revenue purposes, in contrast to the UK Corn Laws. Taxing an inelastic demand for foreign wheat by Maltese, who were unable to grow enough food to support themselves, was certainly an effective way of raising revenue, but probably not the fairest one, as contemporaries were well aware.

Reed-Muller Workshop (RM2009), pp.127-136, May 23-24, 2009. ; This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. As such, it is in the public domain, and under the provisions of Title 17, United States Code, Section 105, may not be copyrighted. ; Significant research has been done on bent functions, yet researchers in switching theory have paid little attention to this important topic. The goal of this paper is to provide a concise exposition. Bent functions are the most nonlinear functions among n-variable switching functions, and are useful in cryptographic applications. This paper discusses three other kinds of cyptographic properties, strict avalanche criterion, propation criterion, and correlation immunity. We discuess known properties, as well as open questions. It assumes the reader is familiar with switching circuit theory. Familiarity with Reed-Muller expansions is helpful, but not essential.

In the pursuit of energy market restructure to sustainable forms of development, governments have at their disposal an increasingly diverse mix of renewable energy sources options. Indeed, renewable energy sources can be seen as a way to reduce carbon emissions, decrease fossil fuel imports, and meet other energy policy objectives. However, appraising renewable energy sources options is a really complex task, taking into consideration the imprecision and subjectivity of the related information. The main scope of this article is to present a transparent and flexible multiple criteria decision support model, based on TOPSIS extension, using the 2-tuple representation. This model aims to assist the energy actors for appraising renewable energy sources options in terms of their contribution to the energy policy objectives, using linguistic variables. Moreover, the application of the proposed model's software realization to a number of renewable energy sources options of the Greek energy market is presented and discussed.