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ABSTRACT
M. R. Carey's unique novel The Girl with All the Gifts examines the intersection of human nature, natural rights, and the political future of transhumanism. Carey's novel is rare in the canon of dystopian literature, in that it portrays humanity's imminent extinction not as the result of human action—or inaction; there is no external, extraterrestrial force dismantling the world as we know it, nor has human technology escaped its masters' control. In the context of the novel, the extinction of humanity is not necessarily a negative outcome. The creatures initially presented as zombies are revealed to be humanity's successors: creatures with human intelligence that lack many human frailties. Carey's novel posits that human things—literature, philosophy, reason, poetry—may transcend humanity itself. Through the lens of Carey's novel, we examine the political and philosophical implications of a humanity ultimately bounded by the vicissitudes of nature.

The rapid advances in Marxian ecology in the last two decades have given rise to extensive debates within the left, reflecting competing conceptions of theory and practice in an age of planetary ecological and social crisis. One key area of dispute is the attempt by a growing number of radical environmental thinkers to deconstruct the labor theory of value in order to bring everything in existence within a single commodity logic. For many in Green circles, Karl Marx and a long tradition of Marxian theorists are to be faulted for not directly incorporating the expenditure of physical work/energy by extra-human nature into the theory of value. In response, this article argues that any form of analysis that seeks to eliminate the deep-seated dialectical contradictions between the natural form and the value form, as well as between the capitalist economy and the larger socioecological metabolism, fails to comprehend the complex, interdependent dialectics of nature and humanity.

When a terrorist attack occurs, a natural response may be increased public concern about terrorism. But when a self-described Muslim perpetrates a terrorist attack, do negative attitudes toward Muslims also increase? If so, is this effect conditional on the nature of people's past personal experiences with Muslims? We present natural experiment data based on a 2015 web-based survey of 2105 non-Muslims in the US, a survey that happened to span the terrorist attacks in Paris on 13 November and San Bernardino on 2 December. We thus test Americans' feelings toward Muslims immediately before and after both an international and a domestic terrorist attack. We find that, although the attacks significantly affected Americans' concerns about radicalism both in the US and abroad, they did not negatively affect Americans' thermometer feelings toward Muslims in the aggregate—a null finding conditioned only slightly by the nature of past personal experiences with Muslims.

AbstractThe growing complexity of parliamentary ethics regulation adopted over the last decades makes the systematic examination of its nature and the rationales underpinning regulatory choices an important endeavor. In this paper we introduce conceptualizations and measurements of conflict of interest (COI) regulation directed toward assuring the impartial and unbiased decisionmaking of national parliamentarians. We distinguish the strictness of rules, the nature of enforcement, sanctions, and transparency requirements as core elements defining COI regimes. Applying our framework to 27 European democracies, we select two cases for in‐depth analysis in which legislators chose very different solutions in response to growing pressures to regulate themselves, to inductively explore the drivers underpinning the choice of COI mechanisms: the United Kingdom, which adopted a highly transparency‐oriented regime, and Belgium, which adopted a highly sanction‐oriented COI regime. Echoing neo‐institutionalist perspectives, the longitudinal analyses indicate how the two democracies' different institutional environments shape distinct answers to similar functional pressures.

Military service is one of the key milestones in Jewish Israelis' transition to adulthood. Given the dominant role of the military in Israeli society, an understanding of young adults' attitude towards the importance of the military and the nature of their service is needed. Based on 44 group interviews with 132 Jewish Israeli high school students, the study follows the differential attitude of youths towards compulsory military service, along socioeconomic lines. It concludes that (a) despite changes in Israeli society, young people still consider soldiers as the ultimate models of heroism, and view military service as a necessary component of normative citizenship and (b) they negotiate the nature and content of their military service based on its expected contribution to future mobility opportunities. The findings indicate that within the shared cultural script of the military's importance, alternative paths play out without directly challenging the dominant consensus within Israeli society.

The article discusses the process of naturalization of Masuria in Polish contemporary culture through the paradoxical naturalization of vegetation, and more broadly the nature of the region, understood as the construction of its naturalniess, timelessness and non-intrusion into historical and geopolitical processes. This process is referred to earlier Polonization efforts of the Masurian landscape. The author pays attention to the main changes in the attitude towards the Masurian greenery and the natural landscape on the example of the walking path around Lake Ołów in Ryn. Nature is presented as an element determining the identity of the place in the face of effective erosion of the Masurian identity in the course of geopolitical processes, supporting, from the second half of the twentieth century, the erasure of the memory of Prussian or German identity of these areas and sometimes deliberately used for it, and at the same time sometimes constituting the only trace of this identity.

We report on two studies designed to test the effect of visual feedback technology on several dimensions of systems thinking. Participants were exposed to 'Citywide Dashboard' (CWD), a visual depiction of a city designed for display on digital signage. CWD is dynamically animated based on real‐time water and electricity flow data and environmental conditions. In study 1, college students were exposed to CWD (or a control) for 6 days. Exposure enhanced perceptions of ecological embeddedness, connectedness to nature, and perceptions of responsibility and impact (causal extent) among those who were initially low in connectedness to nature. Study 2, conducted on a US adult sample, revealed that even brief exposure to the CWD expands perceptions of causal extent. Findings indicate that certain core aspects of systems thinking are malleable and can be enhanced through brief exposure to visual manipulations with technology designed to prime cognitive orientation. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

<p>The nature of the link between economic growth, public and private consumption in theoretical and empirical research is not well known in Cameroon. The objective of this study is to examine the nature of the relationship between economic growth, public and private consumption in Cameroon from 1980 to 2015. In order to achieve our goal, the data from the CENUCED were collected and tested in the autoregressive vector model (VAR). The delay selection statistic for VAR allowed us to have the following causality results: in Cameroon, there is a unidirectional relationship between economic growth towards public consumption and economic growth towards private consumption. Meanwhile, there is no causal link between public and private consumption, from public and private consumption to economic growth. Thus, the recommendation is that the Cameroonian government should create an incentive framework conducive to the improvement of public and private consumption to stimulate investment and economic growth.</p>

Abstract
In recent years, four Nordic countries have implemented large-scale police reforms. Reforms have been evaluated and the present article discusses the merits of such processes. Three topics are discussed: first, it is argued that such evaluations are by nature of limited methodological rigour. The common model of nationwide implementation at one point in time limits possibilities for more sophisticated models of evaluation. Second, due to the nature of such evaluations, they are of limited value as a tool for organizational reorganization. In fact, organizational response to evaluation may take the form of denial rather than change. Third, it might be assumed that countries planning major police reforms would study such evaluations in detail and revise their plans accordingly, but available evidence from Norway and Sweden suggests otherwise. The article concludes with a discussion whether it would be possible to devise evaluations in ways that would increase their worth and impact.

While many have remarked upon Prime Minister John Howard's "use" of the Anzac legend for political purposes, our understanding of the nature and dynamics of such use remains fragmented and underdeveloped. Using the area of foreign policy as a case study, this essay approaches Howard's Anzac Day and related ceremonial rhetoric as examples of the epideictic genre, which presents speakers with a combination of unique rhetorical opportunities and strict generic constraints. While often perceived as apolitical and inconsequential, the genre embodies a form of argumentation that serves not only to increase the "intensity of adherence" to certain values, thus laying the groundwork for later deliberative appeals, but also creates a "disposition to act at the appropriate moment". This paper will argue that Howard's employment of Anzac was bounded and defined by the nature and dynamics of the epideictic genre, of which Howard proved to be a savvy user.

AbstractWaste management is a pressing issue for sustainable development, particularly in developing countries. Its urgent nature is an outcome of the increasing waste produced and the poor waste management in several developing countries. Waste is associated with negative environmental impacts, dangers to public health, social acceptability, and economic aspects. Several factors exacerbate the waste problem: inadequate waste disposal methods, mixing portions of waste electrical and electronic equipment components with municipal waste, and informal recycling. Other factors are a lack of awareness of the toxic nature of hazardous waste and limited legislation to regulate and control the disposal of hazardous waste. Focusing on municipal waste and waste electrical and electronic equipment, this article classifies the levels of waste management and proposes 26 indicators for assessing and enhancing waste management systems. The purpose of this research is to make a contribution to accelerating the transition to sustainable development in developing countries and to highlight business opportunities.

The preservation of grassland is an intensely disputed topic in th EU, in general, and in Germany in particular. Preservation of grassland is topical mainly for two reasons: the protection of abiotic resources (e.g. erosion) and the preservation of species rich grasslands. Both reason are addressed by the Greening of the Commn Agricultural Policy. We analyse how the share and area of agriculturally used grassland evolved between 2010 and 2015 in dependence of the areas' legal status and relevance for certain environmental aspects. The analysed categories are nature reserves ("Naturschutzgebiet"), sites of community importance (SCI), designated floodplains and grassland on organic soils. We use data of the Integrated Accounting and Control Systems from five German Federal States. Since 2014, the area of agricultural used permanent grassland increased in all investigated categories. In addition, in nature reserves and SCIs the share of permanent grassland managed organically is more than three times higher compared to normal landscapes.

The growing participation in social networking sites is altering the nature of social relations and changing the nature of political and public dialogue. This paper aims to contribute to the current debate on Web 2.0 technologies and their implications for local governance, through the identification of the perceptions of policy makers in local governments on the use of Web 2.0 in providing public services (reasons, advantages and risks) and on the change of the roles that these technologies could provoke in interactions between local governments and their stakeholders (governance models). This paper also analyzes whether the municipal size is a main factor that could influence on the policy makers' perceptions regarding these main topics. Findings suggest that policy makers are willing to implement Web 2.0 technologies in providing public services, but preferably under the Bureaucratic model framework, thus retaining a leading role in this implementation. The municipal size is a factor that could influence on policy makers' perceptions.

This paper seeks to counter popular and academic discourse that emphasizes the uniqueness or unprecedented nature of the Islamic State. Many of these claims highlight the violence perpetrated by ISIS as evidence of its unique ideology. This essay draws from the work of Foucault and Fanon, as well as from Richard Sakwa's thinking on the changing nature of the concept of revolution, in order to counter these popular narratives. The paper begins by reading ISIS's public executions through the lens of Foucault's discussion of the spectacle of violence in Discipline and Punish. What is often described as unique, irrational, unprecedented violence is reread as advancing particular rational goals. Yet, rather than dismiss ISIS's ideology altogether, the paper argues that ISIS is best understood as exhibiting qualities of an anticolonial revolutionary regime. Through violent actions, it forges new collective identities grounded in a national culture rooted in an effort to find authenticity in precolonial Sunni Islam.

From the perspective of this great relations, the purpose of this essay is to explore a dynamic amalgamation between two great democracies on the basis of education, culture, economy, defense, social phenomena, it is a broad-based story since India's independence to at present through which a relation between India and Canada has been settled on a true nature through various ways of cooperation, contribution, support, aid and many more. I am in Canada and as a student and researcher. I would like to approach this relation more fruitful and cordial by its nature. I would like to pursue my study in International Development and topic like this will be helpful for me to explore ideas, presentation, proposal writing, and developments between countries which is useful for the development of human being. This topic is my academic thesis during my master's program in International Relations at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, West Bengal, India.