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How do we understand national climate change politics in the United States? Using a methodological innovation in network analysis, this paper analyzes discussions about the issue within the US Congress. Through this analysis, the ideological relationships among speakers providing Congressional testimony on the issue of climate change are mapped. For the first time, issue stances of actors are systematically aggregated in order to measure coalitions and consensus among political actors in American climate politics in a relational way. Our findings show how consensus formed around the economic implications of regulating greenhouse gases and the policy instrument that should do the regulating. The paper is separated into three sections. First, we review the ways scholars have looked at climate change policymaking in the United States, paying particular attention to those who have looked at the issue within the US Congress. Next, we present analysis of statements made during Congressional hearings on climate change over a four-year period. Our analysis demonstrates how a polarized ideological actor space in the 109th Congress transforms into a more consensual actor landscape in the 110th Congress, which is significantly less guided by partisan differences. This paper concludes by discussing how these findings help us understand shifting positions within American climate politics and the implications of these findings.

Talent management is an issue which is engaging the attention of HR managers all across the globe. The amazing speed with which the corporate world is growing has put a great strain on managing human resources. This calls for innovative approaches in managing the work force. One of the means of achieving this is through Competency mapping. Identifying and nurturing competencies enables better performance management leading to successful organizations.

The concept of "deep mapping", as an approach to place, has been deployed as both a descriptor of a specific suite of creative works and as a set of aesthetic practices. While its definition has been amorphous and adaptive, a number of distinct, yet related, manifestations identify as, or have been identified by, the term. In recent times, it has garnered attention beyond literary discourse, particularly within the "spatial" turn of representation in the humanities and as a result of expanded platforms of data presentation. This paper takes a brief look at the practice of "deep mapping", considering it as a consciously performative act and tracing a number of its various manifestations. It explores how deep mapping is a reflection of epistemological trends in ontological practices of connectivity and the "flattening" of knowledge systems. In particular those put forward by post structural and cultural theorists, such as Bruno Latour, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, as well as by theorists who associate with speculative realism. The concept of deep mapping as an aesthetic, methodological, and ideological tool, enables an approach to place that democratizes knowledge by crossing temporal, spatial, and disciplinary boundaries.

AbstractWith each new report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the urgency to address climate change seems to increase. As the pressure to act rises, debates are intensifying regarding whether democracies can move toward sustainability fast enough. In this introduction to the special issue, we argue that current debates about the democracy–sustainability nexus revolve around the question of who should decide. Much of the recent debate can be structured along three opposites: experts versus laypersons, less versus more participation, and state versus market/private actor solutions. The first distinction asks whether climate change necessitates a shift of decision-making powers to scientists and experts rather than politicians or citizens. In the second debate, those who favor more participation in environmental policymaking face those who demand less. For example, whereas some promote new forms of deliberative forums, others doubt that these can be effective. Finally, there is a debate on whether markets and private actor networks might provide more efficient and effective ways to deal with the climate crisis than state regulation. While these perspectives are highly diverse and even contradictory, they are united in the belief that standard procedures of liberal democracy are insufficient to achieve sustainability.

The article considered application of the method of compression mappings and the method of successive approximation on the example fractal compression of images, a general algorithm for fractal coding of images is indicated and its advantages and the importance of studying this issue by students of higher educational institutions, in particular students of the physics and mathematics faculties of pedagogical universities, is substantiated. There are many problems in computational mathematics that can be reduced to finding a fixed point of reflection. To do this, use the method of sequential approximations (method of iterations), which is based on the principle of compression mappings. This principle is applied to the proof of the theorems on the existence and uniqueness of solutions of certain types of differential and integral equations; it also allows you to solve scientific problems in algebra, geometry, physics, medicine, computer science, fractal theory, and more. Among the advantages of the fractal image compression method are the following: it is able to provide the best ratio of compression ratio and quality of the reconstructed image; has a short unpacking time; provides the ability to restore only part of the image and any size; has a wide range of compression options. At the current stage, data compression is important for both transfer speed and storage efficiency. It is used in medicine for the reconstruction of images in computed tomography, and in addition to many commercial uses, compression technology is also important for military use. So, compression mapping has a wide range of uses and plays a big role in our lives. One example of its application is fractal image encoding. Knowledge of this method will allow specialists in physical and mathematical specialties to apply it when solving applied problems, and future teachers will be able to explain to students the mathematical apparatus on which modern technologies in many branches of life are built.

1. Media in peace and conflict studies / Jake Lynch -- 2. Media studies and the peace issue / Cees J. Hamelink -- 3. Peace and the absence of journalism / Virgil Hawkins -- 4. Conflict-sensitive journalism : (r)evolution in media peacebuilding / Ross Howard -- 5. The United Nations' "responsibility to protect" and the world's press : establishing a new humanitarian norm? / Simon Cottle & Charles Martin Hughes -- 6. Media and war propaganda : the value of exposure / Oliver Boyd-Barrett -- 7. Imagined violence : representations of masculinity and a culture of peace / Lara Mazurski -- 8. The media and deconstruction of the enemy image / Babak Bahador -- 9. Still caught in the crossfire? : UN peace operations and their information capacities / Ingrid A. Lehmann -- 10. Beyond journalism : expanding the use of media in peacebuilding / Vladimir Bratic -- 11. UN peacekeeping radio : the way forward / Michelle Betz & Helene Papper -- 12. Reflections on using monitoring & evaluation to enhance information interventions for peace / Maureen Taylor -- 13. Digital technology and peace / Steven Livingston -- 14. Strategic communications and the avoidance of violent conflict / Monroe E. Price & Nicole Stremlau -- 15. Capacity-building, institutional change and theories of change : creating an enabling environment for journalists in post-conflict environments / Michelle Betz -- 16. Confronting the conundrum of hate speech / Julia Hoffmann -- 17. Media as watchdogs and election monitors in fragile states / Marie-Soleil Frere -- 18. The role of the media in transitional justice / Lisa J. Laplante -- 19. Communication for memory and peace : articulating violence in post-repressive contexts / Kristin Sorensen -- 20. Community media as performers of peace / Clemencia Rodriguez -- 21. Communication towards a negotiated peace : conflict, contestation and the media / Pradip Thomas.

In 2012 the Socialist Party (PS) presidential candidate, Francois Hollande, defeated the incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy. The victory was convincing, though not overwhelming. Hollande thus became only the second Socialist president of the Fifth Republic after Francois Mitterrand. Hollande's success in the presidential contest was reinforced a few weeks later when the PS and immediate allies won an absolute majority of seats in the parliamentary election. The articles in this special issue explore many of the key aspects of both 2012 campaigns: from understanding how Sarkozy could fall so rapidly from grace to examining the extent to which the outcome symbolises a new direction for France, both domestically and internationally. Adapted from the source document.

An introduction to the special double issue on cultural mapping in planning and development contexts. Résumé: Introduction du numéro spécial portant sur la cartographie culturelle dans le contexte du développement et de la planification.

Data quality is emerging as an essential characteristics of all data driven processes. The problem is particularly severe when health or vital statistics are concerned, with important consequences on government intervention policies and distribution of financial resources. In this paper, we deal with the underreporting issue with particular attention on its effects on the estimation of the prevalence of a phenomenon. We propose a non parametric compound Poisson model that allows for the estimation of underreporting probabilities. We will apply the proposed model to original data about the incidence of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) in Apulia.

The physical phenomena derived from an analysis of remotely sensed imagery provide a clearer understanding of the spectral variations of a large number of land use and cover (LUC) classes. The creation of LUC maps have corroborated this view by enabling the scientific community to estimate the parameter heterogeneity of the Earth&rsquo ; s surface. Along with descriptions of features and statistics for aggregating spatio-temporal information, the government programs have disseminated thematic maps to further the implementation of effective public policies and foster sustainable development. In Brazil, PRODES and DETER have shown that they are committed to monitoring the mapping areas of large-scale deforestation systematically and by means of data quality assurance. However, these programs are so complex that they require the designing, implementation and deployment of a spatial data infrastructure based on extensive data analytics features so that users who lack a necessary understanding of standard spatial interfaces can still carry out research on them. With this in mind, the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) has designed TerraBrasilis, a spatial data analytics infrastructure that provides interfaces that are not only found within traditional geographic information systems but also in data analytics environments with complex algorithms. To ensure it achieved its best performance, we leveraged a micro-service architecture with virtualized computer resources to enable high availability, lower size, simplicity to produce an increment, reliable to change and fault tolerance in unstable computer network scenarios. In addition, we tuned and optimized our databases both to adjust to the input format of complex algorithms and speed up the loading of the web application so that it was faster than other systems.

This technical report is a deliverable of the CONNECT project (Coping with Fragmentation: Assessing and Reforming the current Architecture of Global Environmental Governance), funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NOW). CONNECT (1) takes stock of the existing level of fragmentation across a number of issue-areas in global environmental politics; (2) explains the causes of fragmentation of global governance architectures; (3) analyses the implications of fragmentation across different scales of governance; and finally, (4) suggests policy responses to increased fragmentation. This technical report presents a novel mapping of the global energy governance architecture. It presents a data-set and initial descriptive statistics that can be used for further analysis of fragmentation and institutional complexity of global energy governance.

Through mainstream discourses that infuse all components of society, settler superiority is naturalized in Canada. This process occurs at the expense of Indigenous peoples who continue to be displaced from the land, which is conceptualized as a 'resource'. Despite the seemingly static nature of settler colonialism, its hegemony is both contested and reinforced through the participatory social space of Instagram. Though it is primarily known for its aesthetic and visual communication properties, Instagram's visuality contributes substantially to public discourse, enabling resistant and political expressions around specific issues. Using data collected from Instagram, this article maps the social life of Canada's controversial Trans Mountain pipeline issue, as it develops under medium-specific affordances. Around the Trans Mountain pipeline issue, hashtags and imagery mutually inform one another on Instagram, connecting highly located and temporal experiences with national policies, as users performatively challenge and reinforce social relations as they exist under settler colonialism.

Inclusive urban planning requires comprehensive and sufficiently detailed information about urban areas. In the absence of such information, many informal settlements are left out in the city-wide planning process. In the metros as well as in many big cities in particular, large proportion of the urban population lives in slums in India. The urban projects undertaken in these cities tend to ignore significant slum improvement interventions. The development plans have really not addressed the issue of the marginalisation of the poor in the cities, often leading to their spatial exclusion. They are pushed out of the city, where services are poor and investments are low. Slum Environmental Sanitation Initiative (SESI) of UN-HABITAT in the cities of Bhopal, Indore, Gwalior and Jabalpur in the State of Madhya Pradesh has resulted in significant improvements in the lives of slum communities through creating open defecation free slums, improving access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene practices and mobilising men and women for community action. Poverty Pocket Situation Analysis (PPSA) has been used as an instrument to prioritise the slums for investments based on poverty and environmental infrastructure deficiency matrix. The process involved spatial mapping of infrastructural deficiencies in the slums. The outcome helped in the selection of the most vulnerable slums for water and sanitation intervention under SESI.

The San Joaquin Valley will have to adapt to a future with less water for irrigation under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. Some have raised concerns that this could put smaller farms at a disadvantage—but is this true? To gain insight on this issue, we decided to take a closer look, exploring where San Joaquin Valley farms of different sizes are located—and what they grow.

Attempts to study shifting cultivation landscapes are fundamentally impeded by the difficulty in mapping and distinguishing shifting cultivation, settled farms and forests. There are foundational challenges in defining shifting cultivation and its constituent land-covers and land-uses, conceptualizing a suitable mapping framework, and identifying consequent methodological specifications. Our objective is to present a rigorous methodological framework and mapping protocol, couple it with extensive fieldwork and use them to undertake a two-season Landsat image analysis to map the forest-agriculture frontier of West Garo Hills district, Meghalaya, in Northeast India. We achieve an overall accuracy of ~80% and find that shifting cultivation is the most extensive land-use, followed by tree plantations and old-growth forest confined to only a few locations. We have also found that commercial plantation extent is positively correlated with shortened fallow periods and high land-use intensities. Our findings are in sharp contrast to various official reports and studies, including from the Forest Survey of India, the Wastelands Atlas of India and state government statistics that show the landscape as primarily forested with only small fractions under shifting cultivation, a consequence of the lack of clear definitions and poor understanding of what constitutes shifting cultivation and forest. Our results call for an attentive revision of India&rsquo ; s official land-use mapping protocols, and have wider significance for remote sensing-based mapping in other shifting cultivation landscapes.