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International audience ; Large-scale hydrological models describing the terrestrial water balance at continental and global scales are increasingly being used in earth system modeling and climate impact assessments. However, because of incomplete process understanding and limits of the forcing data, model simulations remain uncertain. To quantify this uncertainty a multimodel ensemble of nine large-scale hydrological models was compared to observed runoff from 426 small catchments in Europe. The ensemble was built within the framework of the European Union Water and Global Change (WATCH) project. The models were driven with the same atmospheric forcing data. Models were evaluated with respect to their ability to capture the interannual variability of spatially aggregated annual time series of five runoff percentiles--derived from daily time series--including annual low and high flows. Overall, the models capture the interannual variability of low, mean, and high flows well. However, errors in the mean and standard deviation, as well as differences in performance between the models, became increasingly pronounced for low runoff percentiles, reflecting the uncertainty associated with the representation of hydrological processes, such as the depletion of soil moisture stores. The large spread in model performance implies that any single model should be applied with caution as there is a great risk of biased conclusions. However, this large spread is contrasted by the good overall performance of the ensemble mean. It is concluded that the ensemble mean is a pragmatic and reliable estimator of spatially aggregated time series of annual low, mean, and high flows across Europe.

It has been suggested that observed spatial variation in mackerel fisheries, extending over several hundreds of kilometers, is reflective of climate-driven changes in mackerel migration patterns. Previous studies have been unable to clearly demonstrate this link. In this paper we demonstrate correlation between temperature and mackerel migration/distribution as proxied by mackerel catch data from both scientific bottom trawl surveys and commercial fisheries. We show that mackerel aggregate and migrate distances of up to 500 km along the continental shelf edge from mid-November to early March. The path of this migration coincides with the location of the relatively warm shelf edge current and, as a consequence of this affinity, mackerel are guided towards the main spawning area in the south. Using a simulated time series of temperature of the shelf edge current we show that variations in the timing of the migration are significantly correlated to temperature fluctuations within the current. The proposed proxies for mackerel distribution were found to be significantly correlated. However, the correlations were weak and only significant during periods without substantial legislative or technical developments. Substantial caution should therefore be exercised when using such data as proxies for mackerel distribution. Our results include a new temperature record for the shelf edge current obtained by embedding the available hydrographic observations within a statistical model needed to understand the migration through large parts of the life of adult mackerel and for the management of this major international fishery. ; ISSN:1932-6203

International audience ; Large-scale hydrological models describing the terrestrial water balance at continental and global scales are increasingly being used in earth system modeling and climate impact assessments. However, because of incomplete process understanding and limits of the forcing data, model simulations remain uncertain. To quantify this uncertainty a multimodel ensemble of nine large-scale hydrological models was compared to observed runoff from 426 small catchments in Europe. The ensemble was built within the framework of the European Union Water and Global Change (WATCH) project. The models were driven with the same atmospheric forcing data. Models were evaluated with respect to their ability to capture the interannual variability of spatially aggregated annual time series of five runoff percentiles--derived from daily time series--including annual low and high flows. Overall, the models capture the interannual variability of low, mean, and high flows well. However, errors in the mean and standard deviation, as well as differences in performance between the models, became increasingly pronounced for low runoff percentiles, reflecting the uncertainty associated with the representation of hydrological processes, such as the depletion of soil moisture stores. The large spread in model performance implies that any single model should be applied with caution as there is a great risk of biased conclusions. However, this large spread is contrasted by the good overall performance of the ensemble mean. It is concluded that the ensemble mean is a pragmatic and reliable estimator of spatially aggregated time series of annual low, mean, and high flows across Europe.

International audience ; Large-scale hydrological models describing the terrestrial water balance at continental and global scales are increasingly being used in earth system modeling and climate impact assessments. However, because of incomplete process understanding and limits of the forcing data, model simulations remain uncertain. To quantify this uncertainty a multimodel ensemble of nine large-scale hydrological models was compared to observed runoff from 426 small catchments in Europe. The ensemble was built within the framework of the European Union Water and Global Change (WATCH) project. The models were driven with the same atmospheric forcing data. Models were evaluated with respect to their ability to capture the interannual variability of spatially aggregated annual time series of five runoff percentiles--derived from daily time series--including annual low and high flows. Overall, the models capture the interannual variability of low, mean, and high flows well. However, errors in the mean and standard deviation, as well as differences in performance between the models, became increasingly pronounced for low runoff percentiles, reflecting the uncertainty associated with the representation of hydrological processes, such as the depletion of soil moisture stores. The large spread in model performance implies that any single model should be applied with caution as there is a great risk of biased conclusions. However, this large spread is contrasted by the good overall performance of the ensemble mean. It is concluded that the ensemble mean is a pragmatic and reliable estimator of spatially aggregated time series of annual low, mean, and high flows across Europe.

It has been suggested that observed spatial variation in mackerel fisheries, extending over several hundreds of kilometers, is reflective of climate-driven changes in mackerel migration patterns. Previous studies have been unable to clearly demonstrate this link. In this paper we demonstrate correlation between temperature and mackerel migration/distribution as proxied by mackerel catch data from both scientific bottom trawl surveys and commercial fisheries. We show that mackerel aggregate and migrate distances of up to 500 km along the continental shelf edge from mid-November to early March. The path of this migration coincides with the location of the relatively warm shelf edge current and, as a consequence of this affinity, mackerel are guided towards the main spawning area in the south. Using a simulated time series of temperature of the shelf edge current we show that variations in the timing of the migration are significantly correlated to temperature fluctuations within the current. The proposed proxies for mackerel distribution were found to be significantly correlated. However, the correlations were weak and only significant during periods without substantial legislative or technical developments. Substantial caution should therefore be exercised when using such data as proxies for mackerel distribution. Our results include a new temperature record for the shelf edge current obtained by embedding the available hydrographic observations within a statistical model needed to understand the migration through large parts of the life of adult mackerel and for the management of this major international fishery

Wenn ganze Finanzsystemen von radikalem Vertrauensentzug betroffen sind, so können dem nur Einrichtungen nachhaltig entgegentreten, die einen fast unbegrenzten Zugriff auf Ressourcen haben. Solche Einrichtungen können auch Selbsthilfegruppen sein, wie etwa ein Pool mächtiger Banken, wie das 1907 der Fall war. Der US-Finanzminister hatte, in der Tat, am 24. September 2008 versucht, genau eine solche Pool-Lösung zu schaffen. Aber in einem Klima umfassender Unsicherheit kann Selbsthilfe nicht mehr greifen. Regierungen und Zentralbanken müssen einspringen, denn allein sie sind groß und schnell genug, und zudem müssen sich die Zentralbanken bei ihren fiscal bailouts immer stärker auf ihre jeweilige Regierung stützen. In der amerikanischen Politik wird ein neuer Staatskapitalismus als die werdende globale Wirklichkeit behandelt. Ein solcher Konsens zeichnet sich über Atlantik und Pazifik hinweg gleichermaßen ab. Diese Entwicklung wird die Politik der Nationalstaaten Europas und der Europäischen Integration verändern. Sie wird insbesondere die Bedeutung der kleinen Mitgliedstaaten deutlich mindern, denn sie können den neuen Herausforderungen am wenigsten gerecht werden. ; In a financial system that suffers a radical loss of confidence, only institutions with more or less infinite resources can stem the tide. Such institutions can conceivably be self-help organizations, such as pools of powerful banks: that was for instance the case in 1907. The US Treasury indeed tried to put together such a pool on Sunday, September 14th, 2008. But in a climate of profound uncertainty, self-help is not enough. Governments or central banks are needed, because only they are both big and quick enough, and central banks need to rely more and more on governments for fiscal bailouts. U.S. policy makers are treating a new state capitalism as the emerging global reality. This new consensus is shared both across the Atlantic and the Pacific. It will change the nature of European politics and European integration, because in particular small nation-states are unable to cope with the demands of the new role.

In the last fifteen years, Colombia's rapidly growing peace movement has produced activists who fervently work to create peace in a country that has been in conflict for more than forty years. These activists and the organizations that support them represent a heterogeneous group of people who use a diverse array of peace initiatives (or peace actions) to achieve their peace goals. Their work has attempted (and often succeeded) in influencing and impacting Colombian citizens, the government and foreign entities. This thesis focuses on how civil society peace initiatives have influenced and reacted to a changing political climate between 1997-2008 as the Colombian government shifted strategies from a negotiated settlement to a more militaristic approach. In this study I first examine the birth, decline, and rebirth of citizen participation in the Colombian peace movement. I demonstrate how the rise of citizen peace activism strongly influenced the government to sit at the negotiating table with non-state armed actors and how citizen frustration and the decline in participation caused the government to end negotiations and begin a new policy of Democratic Security. Next I analyze how peace organizations, especially at the national level have changed strategies in response to less citizen support and a governmental policy that has shifted away from a peaceful settlement. I suggest that these organizations have relied more heavily on public education, awareness, and networking than in previous years, and that these changes have made them more successful in fulfilling their missions.

Labor markets in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe underwent a dramatic transformation. Notably, this transformation took place within just a few years. Until the mid-2000s job opportunities were scarce and unemployment was high. But since then labor demand has picked up and unemployment has dropped substantially. In contrast to the earlier period of weak labor demand, it is now the supply side of the labor market that constrains job creation. These spectacular improvements can hardly be attributed to the greater labor market flexibility or to the more efficient matching of workers with jobs because no major reforms to labor market institutions were recently implemented in the region. Instead, the main cause was a strong increase in labor demand, as evidenced by the increase in the job vacancy rates and real wages. The surge in labor demand is likely to reflect successful enterprise restructuring supported by the improvements in the investment climate and access to global markets associated with the EU accession. For a long time enterprises in transition economies were improving competitiveness by shedding of redundant labor. Now they use productivity gains to invest, expand output and hire more workers. However, the emerging skills shortages may constrain firm growth. Thus the transition economies face a challenge of mobilizing effective labor supply. This requires improving labor supply incentives and investing in education. This paper documents the recent changes in labor market conditions in the transition economies, suggests tentative explanations, and finally suggests policies to address the emerging challenges.

In October 1998 the former military dictator of Chile, General Augusto Pinochet, was arrested in London and forced to face extradition proceedings to Spain, where a Spanish judge threatened to put him on trial for human rights violations. Pinochet's arrest outraged the armed forces and conservative sectors in Chile, while it elated human rights defenders and Chileans on the left. For both groups Pinochet's arrest opened up the possibility that the retired general would be forced to answer to accusations about the conduct of his regime. This article analyzes the impact of Pinochet's arrest and argues that the subsequent reinvigoration of human rights policy in Chile was as much the result of domestic changes within Chile as it was a consequence of actions taken by international actors. The article analyzes the evolution of human rights policy in Chile before, during, and after Pinochet's arrest and demonstrates that government policy reflected the changing interplay among competing interests. Even prior to Pinochet's arrest, the government took advantage of growing pragmatism on the right and opportunities for institutional reform in order to transform the legal climate and open the door for a new jurisprudence that reinterpreted how and when amnesty should be applied. While the government went on to protest Pinochet's detention, it used the fact of international judicial intervention to move even further toward creating conditions in Chile that would allow Pinochet to be tried at home rather than abroad. All in all, the article offers insights into the confluence of domestic and international influences in human rights policy.

Teak (Tectona grandis L.f.) has been grown in Indonesia since the beginning of 14th century. Teak forests in Indonesia are found mainly on the island of Java, which cover an area of about 1 million ha (Indonesia Forest State Enterprise, 1992). Outside Java, the natural area of teak is Muna Island, Southeast Sulawesi (Simon, 1997). In some recent years, teak has been planted in some other islands of Indonesia from Sumatra to Papua mainly by private sectors and farmers. Some of these plantations are in areas that would have been considered marginal for teak growing two decades ago.This phenomenon was encouraged by relatively new perception of teak planting as a commercially profitable venture, as well as by policy and legal changes. The rotation cycle of new high-intensity teak plantations is generally between 20 and 25 years which is three to four times shorter than for older low-intensity plantations (Nair & Souvannavong, 2000). Nowadays, the government does not control its harvesting and utilization for teak grown on private land.However, information on growth response of this kind of teak to climate is very limited. The fast growth of this kind of teak needs a specific environment that could be different for the slow growing one. Its resistance to water deficit may not be as high as the slow growing one as its needs much water to cover its fast growth particularly in the early period of growth. This experiment was intended to analyze the effects of water deficit to the growth of young fast growing teak.

Safety and security have emerged as a major force driving change in the multinational hotel industry. As a problem area not well-developed in the literature but considered a crucial force influencing hotel firms' value by the multinational hotel community, safety and security provide an excellent opportunity for industry professionals and academic researchers to improve the value creation of multinational hotel firms. A research need is more urgent in the upscale sector of the industry, and thus, an upscale brand of multinational hotel firm was selected for this study. This case study investigated how a multinational hotel firm developed a process of valuing its investments in safety and security for its properties under an upscale brand. This European hotel firm operates in twenty countries with a variety of business climates. The differences in the remote environments, namely the political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, and ecological environments, presented a great opportunity to gather different views regarding safety and security investments from hotel managers. The dimensions of hotel safety and security were identified by management teams running the firm's hotels to provide scope for decision-making. With this scope, the management teams continued to develop a framework for assessing the value generated from investments in safety and security by identifying the components of an investment decision-making model. A framework as a result of this exploratory study is suggested for future research where causality can be specified and a descriptive decision-making model can be built. ; Ph. D.

Examines the circumstances surrounding Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1937 attack on the US Supreme Court to force it to support his New Deal policies. It is asserted that standard accounts of this infamous "switch in time saves nine" episode ignores the fact that the New Deal was a failure, & that the Court's shift in interpretative course arguably prolonged the Depression & resulted in the advent of the modern regulatory state whereby it upheld laws clearly in favor of powerful special interests & not the general welfare. Chief among the casualties of the Supreme Court's apparent capitulation were the Constitution's Commercial & Due Process Clauses. While 1920s-1930s monetary policies contributed to the Great Depression, the First New Deal (1933-1935) policies are seen as the wrong policy corrective at the worst time. Further, the antibusiness tenor of the Second New Deal (1935-1941) fostered a climate of uncertainty that retarded recovery. In this light, it is maintained that recovery would not have been hastened had the Old Court been more amenable to FDR's policies & that the New Court does not deserve the credit given by New Deal proponents for aiding the recovery because the economy remained troubled even after the Court's change in course. Attention turns to exploring the true origins of the Old Court's 1935-1937 majority shift, its anti-New Deal stance, & FDR's 1937 Court-packing plan. Ultimately, it is argued that FDR's plan was unnecessary; his constitutional appointment powers meant that the Supreme Court would have changed directions anyway. 51 References. J. Zendejas

The problem with which this thesis is concerned is the relationship between literature and politics. By means of a biographical and historical study two significant writers of the 1930s/40s I examine the ways in which the pressures of Depression, the threat of fascism and the onset of war influenced Australian writing. In particular, I ask whether the political issues of the period affected what these authors wrote and how they wrote it. My conclusion is that pressure of political concern caused significant personal, philosophical and political changes in Barnard and Davison, and that it affected both the genre in which they wrote and the content of their fiction. They turned from fiction to cultural commentary, historical writing, political pamphleteering and activism. They utilised short fiction as a means of discussing their worries about the state of the world and in order to promote values they felt threatened. When they returned to longer fiction their work bore, to differing degrees, in its ideas, arguments and imagery, the influence of their political engagement. More generally, I conclude that liberal humanism was the major animating philosophy of writers in the 1930s and that their concern with political issues grew from their conviction that western liberal democracy was the most fruitful soil for the production of art, a climate of freedom which they felt threatened by both fascism and war. This anxiety is the most important factor in both their politicisation and the work they did under the latter's influence.