Suchergebnisse

The article discusses key aspects to be considered for the orientation of sustainable resource policies. Resource management at the local scale needs to be supplemented by governmental action in order to adjust production and consumption toward acceptable levels of global resource use. What is acceptable is being informed by scientific findings on environmental degradation and relevant cause&ndash ; effect relationships. However, the desired state of the environment, the tolerable level of uncertainties about environmental impacts, risks of societal conflicts, and ethical considerations all involve normative considerations. Policy decisions for sustainable global resource use must be taken on the basis of imperfect information. A wider systems perspective, longer time horizon, and broader involvement of available knowledge could provide a sufficiently valid basis to derive directionally safe targets. Possible proxy targets for global biotic and abiotic resource use, considering land, biodiversity, and water issues, are presented on a per-person basis for 2050 for further discussion and research. These values could be used to assess the resource footprints of countries with regard to sustainability, providing orientation for governments and industry.

This article follows the story of the first African students in the German Democratic Republic, 11 Nigerians who arrived in 1951. Thousands of other African students followed them in the years leading up to the GDR's dissolution in 1990. My work is the first to chronicle the Nigerians' story, and how East Germans received and reacted to these Africans living among them. I focus on what each side hoped to gain from the exchange. East German government officials and university administrators were intent on using the Nigerian students to promote socialism as an alternative in a British colony quickly moving towards independence. Meanwhile, the students wanted scientific educations to help boost their economic standing and class status when they returned to Nigeria. Although Nigeria would never become aligned with the Soviet Bloc after decolonization, in the 1950s East Germans imagined that a socialist future was possible. Drawing on their country's sizable scientific expertise, officials argued that the GDR offered the ideal blend of technological and Marxist knowledge to attract exchange students like the Nigerians into the communist orbit.

*UPDATE: On June 18, 2018, after this article went to press, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled on two high-profile cases related to partisan gerrymandering. In effect, the rulings sidestepped the issue of when partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional. Both cases—one concerning voting districts in Wisconsin, the other in Maryland—were sent back to lower courts. On June 25, the SCOTUS ruled on two other cases—in Texas and North Carolina—that will mostly let stand the use of purportedly gerrymandered maps.

On January 9, 2018, a trio of federal judges made history when they ruled that the boundaries of North Carolina’s congressional voting districts gave an unfair advantage to Republican candidates. It was the first case in the nation in which a federal court had declared congressional maps unconstitutional because of intentional bias in favor of one party. The case was all the more remarkable because the court decision relied in part on mathematical tools that can probe the practice of gerrymandering—the drawing of voting districts to give an intentional advantage to one party.



Changing the boundaries of voting districts can have a significant impact on an election outcome. North Carolina’s 2012 election districting map (bottom) led to Republicans winning nine seats and Democrats winning four. North Carolina’s redistricting for the 2016 election (middle map) led to Republicans winning 10 seats and Democrats winning three seats. But an arguably fairer redistricting plan (top), produced by retired judges, would have led to Republicans winning seven seats and Democrats the other six in 2012; it would have been nine seats for Republicans and four for Democrats in 2016. Image courtesy of Jonathan Mattingly (Duke University, Durham, NC).



It would be one of many gerrymandering cases. In February, the US Supreme Court rejected a request by Republican lawmakers to stay a lower court's decision—which …

Between 1834 and 1860 the British government mobilised the latest scientific knowledge in the construction of the new Palace of Westminster, home to the nation's Houses of Parliament. Built in a Gothic style, this legislative building embodied the latest experimental techniques and expertise from geology, mathematics, engineering, chemistry, and optics. By exploring the narrative of this architectural project, it becomes clear just how central scientific values were to Victorian politics. At the same time, this article shows how the experience of constructing Britain's nineteenth-century parliament building has implications and lessons for parliamentary architecture today. ; ERC project, Sound and Materialism in the Nineteenth Century

1.La scienza democratica, il dialogo pubblico e la proprietà intellettuale 2.Controllo privato dell'informazione e valutazione autoritaria della ricerca 3.La scienza aperta come scienza pubblica e democratica