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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ; An important objective in weed management is the discrimination between grasses (monocots) and broad-leaved weeds (dicots), because these two weed groups can be appropriately controlled by specific herbicides. In fact, efficiency is higher if selective treatment is performed for each type of infestation instead of using a broadcast herbicide on the whole surface. This work proposes a strategy where weeds are characterised by a set of shape descriptors (the seven Hu moments and six geometric shape descriptors). Weeds appear in outdoor field images which display real situations obtained from a RGB camera. Thus, images present a mixture of both weed species under varying conditions of lighting. In the presented approach, four decision-making methods were adapted to use the best shape descriptors as attributes and a choice was taken. This proposal establishes a novel methodology with a high success rate in weed species discrimination. ; This research was partly financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competition (AGL2011-30442-C02-02 project) and by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union under the Grand Agreement CP-IP245986-2 (RHEA project). Research of Herrera was supported by the JAE-Doc Program, financed by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the European Social Fund (ESF). We acknowledge support by the CSIC Open Access Publication Initiative throught its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI). ; Peer reviewed

У статті проводиться аналіз і надається оцінка соціально-економічній ситуації, що склалася в Україні, в умовах загострення політичної кризи на основі аналізу матеріалів як вітчизняних, так і закордонних фахівців у галузі економіки, соціальних відношень та ін. Робиться спроба надання практичних рекомендацій для розвитку країни на перспективу, щоб не бути слабким штучним утворенням, у якого не має майбутнього, та «розмінною монетою» у чужій грі. Наголошується на необхідності виключення корупційної складової, перш за все, з економічних відносин, зміни якості підприємницького середовища. Особлива увага приділяється моральному виміру усіх учасників процесу економічних відносин в умовах загострення системної кризи, коли кожен свідомо робить свій вибір, а починати потрібно з себе. ; The estimating and analysis of socio and economical situation in Ukraine under condition of political crisis on the base of the analysis of the materials as native as international specialists in the field of economics, social relations etc. are made in the article. The attempt of practical recommendations for the development of the country in the future not to be a weak artificial formation which hasn't a future and not to be a «loose change» in the strange game is made. The necessity of exclusion of corruption component, first of all, in economical relations, the changing of the quality of the entrepreneurial environment are stressed. Great attention is paid to the moral estimation of the all participants of the process of economical relations under conditions of the systemic crisis, when everybody makes his own choice and it should begin from himself.

American theologian and ethicist William F. May authors a new discourse on a covenantal understanding of the U.S. Constitution. Interpreting the American political landscape through the lens of dualism, the author examines foreign policies, free market ideologies, and American domestic policies. His observations lead him to posit that one has two alternatives to interpret the founding of this immigrant-based country on which to base future policies: a contractual or a covenantal perspective. The contractual perspective emphasizes choice in creating unity as a project or business transaction and seeks less government. In contrast, the covenantal perspective is relational and holds both the reality and the project at hand in a duality to create unity as reflected in the Constitution's "We the people" declaration. Tracing a covenant's biblical origins, May characterizes government covenantally as a gift arising from a promise, an agreement, from its own being as a community. May prefers the covenantal perspective as more adept functionally and more aligned with original intentions for containing runaway fears or appetites in society. Based on this covenantal interpretation, he offers an exposition of the constitution, its strengths and flaws, concluding with a series of thoughts for strengthening the national covenant for domestic tranquility and common defense, general welfare, education, nature, healthcare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, family, and immigration. While May's writing reflects clear biases and assumptions that will appeal more to progressive audiences, his use of resources and insights to support his argument reflect his depth of education and experience.

В статье рассматриваются классификации неформальных политических практик. Выбор темы обусловлен тем, что дифференциация типов неформального может объяснить источники, область и возможность институционализации политических практик. Авторы анализируют типологии неформальных политических институтов и неформальных политических практик, которые предложены отечественными и зарубежными исследователями. На основе этих классификаций авторами была разработана собственная модель классификации неформальных политических практик, которая исходит из возможностей их институционализации, отличий от неформальных политических институтов и сложности однозначной оценки. Большое внимание в статье уделяется видам неформальных политических практик, в частности клиентелизму (патрон-клиентским отношениям), фаворитизму, реципрокности. Данные феномены авторы анализируют с точки зрения их роли в политическом процессе, а также их спорного влияния на социально-политические отношения индивидов. ; The article deals with the classification of informal political practices. The choice of the theme is due to the fact that the differentiation of informal practices may explain the source, area and opportunities to institutionalize political practices. The authors analyse various typologies of informal political institutions and informal political practices that were off ered by Russian and foreign researchers. On the basis of these classifications, the authors develope their own classification of informal political practices, that is grounded on their institutionalization, differences from informal political institutions and complexity of the unambiguous assessment. Special attention is given to the types of informal political practices, especially to clientelism (patron-client relations), favouritism, and reciprocity. The authors analyze the phenomena from the perspective of their role in the political process, as well as their doubtful impact on the social and political relations of individuals.

This paper reflects on the limitations of international law expertise, using examples from the Juba peace process on the civil war in Uganda. In peace negotiations (like in all situations), the international law expert must acknowledge the limitations of international law. International law is one-dimensional, and cannot take all relevant factors into account. Further, in any given situation, there will be some regimes and some rules of international law that are more effective than others, because they have powerful support or efficient mechanisms. This means that some norms, some claims and the interests of some stakeholders will be privileged. Many of the controversies associated with international interventions based on international law – like the ICC prosecutions in Uganda – have in fact been caused by too much emphasis on, for instance, international criminal justice and civil rights, and too little emphasis on reparations, economic and social rights and collective rights. Still, even if international law could be better used, there are limits to what can be accomplished even with creative international law expertise. There is a structural bias in international law, which privileges the state. International law, and its institutions, can do too little to refer matters from the government to other legitimate stakeholders, often leaving us with a choice between the (distant) supranational level and the (corrupt) national level. While international law does determine an international minimum standard for the state, it is still much better at empowering the government than at empowering people.

non-peer-reviewed ; Background Asylum seekers in Ireland are required to live in State provided hostel type accommodation called Direct Provision. The system of Direct Provision places a number of restrictions on the lives of asylum seekers; they are not permitted to cook, to work or to access third level education and are expected to live on limited finances. This denies asylum seekers opportunities to engage in meaningful occupations of their choice. Objectives The research aimed to understand the occupational experiences of asylum seekers living in Direct Provision and to explore the potential risk of occupational deprivation. Methods A qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews was chosen to explore and gain an understanding of asylum seekers experiences of living in Direct Provision. Interviews were analysed using Braun and Clarke's (2006) six stages of thematic analysis informed by phenomenology to gain an insider's perspective. Results Four main themes emerged that captured the occupational experiences of asylum seekers; restricted environment, restricted occupational performance, impact of occupational deprivation on health and wellbeing and coping through doing and cognitive strategies. Conclusion This study reveals how vulnerable asylum seekers are to occupational deprivation because they are denied access to occupation participation over an extended period of time, with negative consequences on health and wellbeing. Occupational therapy with its emphasises on the importance of engaging in meaningful occupations has a vital role in approving the daily lives of asylum seekers through both intervention and raising awareness of the needs of asylum seekers at a broader social and political level.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the interrelationship between the structural changes and personal destinies of people who worked in the secondary sector at the beginning of the transition period. The focal question is whether structural and institutional changes were brought about by a minimum of adaptations and fluctuations or a by maximum of turbulence and mobility. The paper is based on indepth interviews conducted in 2003 and 2004 with people who graduated from secondary educational institutions in 1983 and belong to the so-called 'winners' cohort. One of the pivotal results of the analysis is that when companies were winding down and being reorganised, it launched processes of intercompany workers' displacement and lead to their imminent unemployment. Individuals changed their plans and behaviour because they had to adapt. Opportunities proved to be less a matter of individual control and planning, than of unfavourable structural conditions. A work place in the secondary sector often worked as a 'push' factor for mobility during the reforms, as massive layoffs and restructuring in the economy did not leave any other choices for people than to start looking for new possibilities. In spite of some attempts to set up businesses, the majority of former industrial workers belong to the same occupational group and are working in the same sector, even 15 years after the reforms. This means that the relative occupational ranking of the workers remained the same despite the change in the political and social order.

This paper reviews and evaluates recent research on family dynamics among immigrants and their descendants in Europe. While there is a large body of literature on various aspects of immigrant lives in Europe, research on family dynamics has emerged only in the last decade. Studies based on individual-level longitudinal data and disaggregated measures of partnership and fertility behaviour have significantly advanced our understanding of the factors shaping family patterns among immigrants and their descendants and have contributed to research on immigrant integration. By drawing on recent research this paper proposes several ways of further developing research on ethnic minority families. We emphasise the need to study family changes among immigrants and their descendants over their life courses, investigate various modes of family behaviour and conduct more truly comparative research to deepen our understanding of how ethnic minorities structure their family lives in different institutional and policy settings and to address the issues of inequality and social cohesion. ; The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007 - 2013) under grant agreement no. 320116 for the research project FamiliesAndSocieties ; 1. Introduction.-- 2. Particularities of research on immigrant and ethnic minority families.-- 3. Formation and dissolution of marriages.-- 3.1. Partner choice: exogamous versus endogamous couples.-- 3.2. Dissolution of marriages.-- 4. Fertility among immigrants and their descendants.-- 4.1. Immigrant fertility.-- 4.2. Childbearing patterns among the descendants of immigrants.-- 5. Challenges and opportunities ; Peer reviewed

AbstractThis ethnographic study seeks to understand the quality of life for residential undergraduate college students in the United States who restrict their diets either by choice or medical necessity. Since all kinds of dietary restrictions present similar lifestyle challenges not experienced by non‐dietary‐restricted residential college students, we define dietary restrictions broadly. A review of the existing research literature on dietary restrictions reveals that most studies are biomedical, focusing on clinical, cognitive, and psychological aspects of dietary restrictions. Few studies explore college students exclusively as a population, and even fewer consider how the social and material conditions of a college environment affect the lived experiences of dietary‐restricted students. This ethnography remedies the absence of qualitative and ethnographic research with a study of twenty‐nine individuals, most of whom are students who restrict their diets, across five undergraduate private college campuses over a fifteen‐week period in the spring of 2012. Our results add a new dimension to the biomedical research, which has tended to locate the "problem" of dietary restrictions within the dietaryrestricted. Contrary to the existing literature, we argue that such problems are sociocultural and institutional rather than pathological and individual. Our data illustrate that the quality of dietary‐restricted living improves when dietary‐restricted students advocate for and institutions respond to material, systemic solutions that allow the dietary‐restricted population to eat safely, socially, and quickly in a college environment, just like their non‐dietary‐restricted peers.

Human development considered as the engine of the economic
growth as it improves the economy's strength and increases the standard
of living of the people, increases the choices and maximises the welfare
of the society that is the prime objective of any government. The
development of the human capabilities is also necessary for the
sustainable growth, as there are many channels through which human
development foster the economic growth. It increases the labour
productivity, labour demand, employment and output. On the other hand,
human capital also attracts physical capital.1 Empirically, it is very
difficult to have an exact measure of human development and social
welfare. Several proxies used to measure human development, e.g. GNI per
capita as a measure of standard of living, Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)
criterion to measure the cost of living and to measure the welfare,
average year of schooling, school enrolment rate and health expenditures
as a percentage of GDP to capture this composite welfare and development
indicator. A fair index of Human Development Index (HDI) was developed
by United Nations Development Programme in 1990. This index based on the
standard of living (natural logarithm of GDP PPP per capita), access to
knowledge (adult literacy rate with two-third weighting and the
remaining is the gross enrolment ratio) and a healthy life (life
expectancy at birth). The value of index varies from 0 to 1, lower the
HDI, lesser would be the human development and welfare in the country or
vice versa.

This study contributes to the literature on mobility and wellbeing at older ages through an empirical exploration of the meanings of free bus travel for older citizens, addressing the meanings this holds for older people in urban settings, which have been under-researched. Taking London as a case study, where older citizens have free access to a relatively extensive public transport network through a Freedom Pass, we explore from a public health perspective the mechanisms that link this travel benefit to determinants of wellbeing. In addition to the ways in which the Freedom Pass enabled access to health-related goods and services, it provided less tangible benefits. Travelling by bus provided opportunities for meaningful social interaction; travelling as part of the 'general public' provided a sense of belonging and visibility in the public arena - a socially acceptable way of tackling chronic loneliness. The Freedom Pass was described not only as providing access to essential goods and services but also as a widely prized mechanism for participation in life in the city. We argue that the mechanisms linking mobility and wellbeing are culturally, materially and politically specific. Our data suggest that in contexts where good public transport is available as a right, and bus travel not stigmatised, it is experienced as a major contributor to wellbeing, rather than a transport choice of last resort. This has implications for other jurisdictions working on accessible transport for older citizens and, more broadly, improving the sustainability of cities.

Nigeria with an estimated $350 per capital annually still ranks near the bottom 158 out of 177 countries in the UN Human Capital Development Index in terms of per capita income, with more than half of the population living in poverty. Over the past decade U5MR is estimated to be 201 deaths/1000 lives births, the high rates of child mortality especially the 0-5 years shows the total breakdown of social and economic well-being of the country. This paper examined child health care demand in Nigeria using the Nested Multinomial Logit Model estimation technique. The study used parents' education as a proxy for child education, while the decision to make a choice of the health facilities was also assumed to be that of the House-Hold head. The study found out that female child has a higher probability of seeking health care facility ahead of their male counterpart. Also, the household head educational level was found to be a determinant of health care seeking behavior of the child. Empirical evidence also revealed that that the probability of seeking healthcare increases with household size and that demand for child health care in Nigeria is non linear in nature. Based on this, the paper recommends the need to show greater commitment to child health care and that government should reduce the problems militating against effective performance of the health sector such as, inefficiency, wasteful use of resources, low quality of service and poor enabling environment.

Research on professional service firms (PSFs) did not come off the ground until recently. This lack of attention is surprising, given their integral role in contemporary knowledge-based economies. In this dissertation, I focus on two professional industries: law and accounting. Historically, these industries were infused with a dominant professional logic, with its corresponding Professional Partnership configuration as dominant form of enterprise organization. However, changes in economic and social trends, government policies, and client preferences have led to the spread of a commercial ethos in the professions, with the corresponding configuration of the Managed Professional Business. This shift from the professional to the commercial logic is the point of departure for this dissertation. But what are the effects of this changing logic from professionalism to commercialism on PSFs? This dissertation shows, first, that the shift from professionalism to commercialism is not complete for all PSFs, as many professionals in mid-sized firms resist this new logic. Second, although in conflict with the logic of professionalism and the corresponding organizational practices, novel-to-context practices of strategy formation and formal governance do contribute to the performance of PSFs. Yet they do so at a cost, third, as they increase misconduct of lawyers which in Professional Partnerships were effectively remedied by collegial controls. Fourth, PSFs face a choice about the corporate objective function they pursue, as my final study suggests that combining professional and commercial logics in a single configuration is seemingly impossible.

The expansion of land used for crop production causes variable direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions, and other economic, social and environmental effects. We analyse the use of life cycle analysis (LCA) for estimating the carbon intensity of biofuel production from indirect land-use change (ILUC). Two approaches are critiqued: direct, attributional life cycle analysis and consequential life cycle analysis (CLCA). A proposed hybrid 'combined model' of the two approaches for ILUC analysis relies on first defining the system boundary of the resulting full LCA. Choices are then made as to the modelling methodology (economic equilibrium or cause–effect), data inputs, land area analysis, carbon stock accounting and uncertainty analysis to be included. We conclude that CLCA is applicable for estimating the historic emissions from ILUC, although improvements to the hybrid approach proposed, coupled with regular updating, are required, and uncertainly values must be adequately represented; however, the scope and the depth of the expansion of the system boundaries required for CLCA remain controversial. In addition, robust prediction, monitoring and accounting frameworks for the dynamic and highly uncertain nature of future crop yields and the effectiveness of policies to reduce deforestation and encourage afforestation remain elusive. Finally, establishing compatible and comparable accounting frameworks for ILUC between the USA, the European Union, South East Asia, Africa, Brazil and other major biofuel trading blocs is urgently needed if substantial distortions between these markets, which would reduce its application in policy outcomes, are to be avoided.

With the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008, European governments extensively intervened to avert a severe economic recession. Taxation is a crucial instrument to achieve such economic objectives, but it also represents a redistributive tool in democratic societies. Generally, left-wing parties are more supportive of progressive taxes and redistribution than right-wing governments. As a crisis response, one could assume that European governments, especially social-democrats, reinforced a redistributive stance to compensate for the substantial amounts of public money used to bail-out financial institutions. Yet, the internationalisation of capital markets has made it difficult to levy high income taxes as it might cause capital flights, less investments and growth. Based on the tax reforms introduced between 2008 and 2010, the paper explores how European governments mitigated the fiscal stress from the crisis. The findings show that fiscal pressures significantly restrained the policy choices available to governments. ; Mit dem Ausbruch der Wirtschafts- und Finanzkrise in 2008, verabschiedeten die Europäischen Regierungen vielfältige Maßnahmen, um eine langfristige Rezession zu verhindern. Steuern sind ein wichtiges Instrument, um solche wirtschaftspolitischen Zielen zu erreichen, jedoch stellen sie auch ein wichtiges Umverteilungsmittel in demokratischen Gesellschaften dar. Für gewöhnlich sind Parteien des linken Spektrums größere Befürworter von umverteilungspolitischen Maßnahmen und von progressiven Steuern als konservative und liberale Parteien. Als Antwort auf die Krise könnte man somit erwarten, dass Europäische Regierungen, vorzugsweise linke, umverteilungspolitische Maßnahmen verabschieden, besonders da große Mengen an Steuergeldern benötigt wurden, um für finanzielle Institutionen einen Rettungsschirm bereit zu stellen. Die Liberalisierung der Kapitalmärkte erschwert es jedoch, hohe Kapitalsteuern zu erheben, da befürchtet wird, dass dies eine Kapitalflucht, weniger Investitionen und Wachstum zur Folge haben könnte. Anhand der Steuerpolitik, die zwischen 2008 und 2010 eingeführt wurde, geht das Arbeitspapier der Frage nach, mit welchen Reformen Europäische Regierungen den Krisendruck bewältigt haben. Die empirischen Ergebnisse zeigen, dass fiskalpolitischer Druck den politischen Handlungsspielraum von Regierungen erheblich einschränkt.