الصفحة 8
الصفحة 8
Cross Regional Trade Agreements : Understanding Permeated Regionalism in East Asia
An unacknowledged key feature of East Asian FTA diplomacy is the region's active cross-regional preferential trading relations. In sharp contrast to the Americas and Europe, where cross-regional initiatives gained strength after the consolidation of regional trade integration, East Asian governments negotiate trade deals with partners outside of their region at an early stage in their FTA policies. The book asks three main questions: Are there regional factors in East Asia encouraging countries to explore cross-regionalism early on? What are the most important criteria behind the cross-regional partner selection? How do cross-regional FTSs (CRTAs) influence their intra-regional trade initiatives? Through detailed country case studies from China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia, we show the ways in which these governments seek to leverage their CRTAs in the pursuit of intra-regional trade integration objectives, a process that yields a much more permeated regionalism.
Crisis of the Criminal Law in the Democratic Constitutional State: Manifestations and Trends
Shares the results of project research granted by the Castilla-La Mancha government, which has been composed by philosophers of law and criminal law researchers, whose main conclusions are represented by the manifestations and trends of the current crisis of the constitutional State. The works identify these trends and manifestations in order to develop alternatives and remedies to solve the current negation process that classical liberties are involved, from the point of view of philosophy, policy, and dogmatic
Criminal Dilemmas : Understanding and Preventing Crime
Fighting crime breeds emotional responses which often lead to counter-productive government policy. To allow a rational analysis of these important concerns, this book employs the thinking of economics, political science, and game theory to develop new perspectives on crime and its causes. A basic assumption is that the criminal is a rational actor who makes decisions based on his or her personal expected gains and costs. By using this assumption, predictions about behaviour as well as emotional concerns such as prostitution and gun control are given a theoretical perspective. By understanding the strategic variables which cause, for example, gang wars and drug sales, we are better equipped to design effective public policy.
Countering Nuclear and Radiological Terrorism
One key outcome of this book is a better understanding of the independent contributions from across the international community of the scientific and technological components and the legal, policy and institutional components to combating nuclear/radiological terrorism. The book can serve as a tool for communicating the outcomes of the workshop to the multi-national scientific communities engaged in combating nuclear/radiological terrorism, and to those working at governmental and policy levels.
Cost-sharing and Accessibility in Higher Education : A Fairer Deal?
Higher education finances lie at the crossroads in many Western countries. On the one hand, the surging demand of the past three or four decades, driven by a belief in higher education as a principal engine of social and economic advancement, has led to dramatic growth of the higher education systems in these countries. On the other hand, this growth in demand was accompanied by rapidly increasing per-student cost pressures at a time when governments seemed increasingly unable to keep pace with these cost pressures through public revenues. Hence, worldwide, the most common approach to the need for increasing revenue was to use some form or forms of cost sharing, or the shift of some of the higher educational per-student costs from governments and taxpayers to parents and students.
Continuous Optimization : Current Trends and Modern Applications
The search for the best possible performance is inherent in human nature. Individuals, enterprises and governments all seek optimal—that is, the best—possible solutions of problems that they meet. Evidently, continuous optimization plays an increasingly significant role in everyday management and technical decisions in science, engineering and commerce. The collection of 16 refereed papers in this book covers a diverse number of topics and provides a good picture of recent research in continuous optimization. The first part of the book presents substantive survey articles in a number of important topic areas of continuous optimization. Most of the papers in the second part present results on the theoretical aspects as well as numerical methods of continuous optimization. The papers in the third part are mainly concerned with applications of continuous optimization.
Contaminated Soils, Sediments and Water : Science in the Real World
Contaminated Soils Volume 9 contains 38 technical papers, covering a wide range of environmental issues. Volume discussion includes: Part I Bioremediation; Part II Chemical Oxidation; Part III Heavy Metals; Part IV MTBE; Part V Phytoremediation; Part VI Radiation; Part VII Regulatory and Legal issues; Part VIII Remediation; Part IX Risk Based Cleanup; and Part X Site Assessment. Contributing authors to this volume are from government agencies, academic institutions, the consulting community and industrial companies. This important volume documents the state of environmental science and provides perspective on where we as an industry have come from. Increased scientific, engineering and consulting alliances and collaboration should drive our efforts going forward.
Construction Manager's BIM Handbook
Ensures the reader understands what BIM is, what the UK strategy is and what it means for key roles in the construction team. By providing concise summaries of key aspects of BIM, explaining the government documents and intentions, and providing pointers on implementation all readers will be fully aware of the implications of BIM for them and their organisations, and can begin to adopt this approach in future projects.
Computer Vision, Graphics and Image Processing ; 5th Indian Conference, ICVGIP 2006, Madurai, India, December 13-16, 2006, Proceedings
The Indian Conference on Computer Vision, Graphics and Image Processing (ICVGIP) is a forum bringing together researchers and practitioners in these related areas, coming from national and international academic institutes, from government research and development laboratories, and from industry. The proceedings of ICVGIP 2006, published in Springer's series Lecture Notes in Computer Science, comprise 85 papers that were selected for presentation from 284 papers, which were submitted from all over the world.
Computational intelligence in information assurance and security
The global economic infrastructure is becoming increasingly dependent upon information technology, with computer and communication technology being essential and vital components of Government facilities, power plant systems, medical infrastructures, financial centers and military installations to name a few. Finding effective ways to protect information systems, networks and sensitive data within the critical information infrastructure is challenging even with the most advanced technology and trained professionals. This volume provides the academic and industrial community with a medium for presenting original research and applications related to information assurance and security using computational intelligence techniques. The included chapters communicate current research on information assurance and security regarding both the theoretical and methodological aspects, as well as various applications in solving real world information security problems using computational intelligence.
Managing Information Quality : Increasing the Value of Information in Knowledge-intensive Products and Processes
It still holds true: information is not always the answer. Information is often part of the problem. While the main goal of information in the business place is to - able adequate decisions and actions, it can also lead to numerous negative effects: it can confuse, block creativity, or it can lead to hectic activism, stress and fatigue. Information can distract and divert attention, and it may even delay important - cisions – the paralysis by analysis. Strategies to avoid these dysfunctional effects of information can be divided into sender-based strategies and receiver-based strategies.
Managing Diversity in Intergovernmental Organisations
Intensifying worldwide environmental changes as well as political, cultural, religious, and economic crises have made intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) important instruments in international and global cooperation. In order to cope with their diverse stakeholders, it is more imperative than ever for intergovernmental organisations to engage in personnel policy on an international scale. Successful diversity management is an essential prerequisite for organisational performance, conflict management, and dynamics of IGOs. Björn A. Peters examines the challenges of diversity and managing diversity in IGOs on the basis of the Mekong River Commission case study.
Managing Cyber Threats : Issues, Approaches, and Challenges
Brings together the latest techniques for managing cyber threats, developed by some of the world’s leading experts in the area. The book includes broad surveys on a number of topics, as well as specific techniques. It provides an excellent reference point for researchers and practitioners in the government, academic, and industrial communities who want to understand the issues and challenges in this area of growing worldwide importance.
Managing Critical Infrastructure Risks
At the beginning of each year, there is a deluge of top-10 lists on just about every subject you can imagine. A top-10 list of biggest news stories, best-selling books, most popular music and movies, richest companies, and best places to visit or live. It seems everyone has his or her own top-10 list, reflecting, perhaps, differences in regional, national, and cultural values. Companies and governments most often tend to focus their top-10 lists on economic priorities, or priorities related to national defense, security, public health, and new infrastructure. This year, 2007, was no exception. Yet, increasingly, we see governments, private organizations, and companies advocating a new type of prioritization. This framework needs to reach beyond the realms of economics, world trade, and corporate management to include the environment, stakeholders, public preferences, and social goals. Moreover, corporations and individuals are not only interested in generic 10-best lists; they want lists tailored to their values, goals, and current economic and social state. For example, the U. S.
Macroeconomics of Monetary Union
This book, unlike other books, provides readers with a practical yet sophisticated grasp of the macroeconomic principles necessary to understand a monetary union. By definition, a monetary union is a group of countries that share a common currency. The most important case in point is the Euro area. Policy makers are the central bank, national governments, and national labour unions. Policy targets are price stability and full employment. Policy makers follow cold-turkey or gradualist strategies. Policy decisions are taken sequentially or simultaneously. The countries can differ in size or behaviour. Policy expectations are adaptive or rational. To illustrate all of this there are numerical simulations of monetary policy, fiscal policy, and wage policy.
Macroeconomic Risk Management Against Natural Disasters : Analysis focussed on governments in developing countries
Natural disasters cause considerable economic damage. While developed countries usually are able to cope with the impacts of natural hazards, developing countries are faced with severe consequences for their resources. In order to prevent long-term macroeconomic repercussions, governments need a comprehensive disaster risk management strategy.Budgetary resources are allocated to pre-disaster risk management strategies to reduce the probability of financing gaps. The framework and model approach allows cross country comparisons as well as the assessment of financial vulnerability, macroeconomic risk, and risk management strategies.
Long-Run Growth Forecasting
Explores how to set up an empirical model that helps with forecasting long-term economic growth in a large number of countries. It offers a systematic approach to models of potential GDP that can also be used for forecasts of more than a decade. It is an attempt to fill the wide gap between the high demand for such models by commercial banks, international organizations, central banks and governments on the one hand and the limited supply on the other hand. Frequent forecast failures in the past (e.g. Japan 1990, Asia 1997) and the heavy economic losses they produced motivated the work. The book assesses the large number of different theories of economic growth, the drivers of economic growth, the available datasets and the empirical methods on offer. A preference is shown for evolutionary models and an augmented Kaldor model. The book uses non-stationary panel techniques to find pair-wise cointegration among GDP per capita and its main correlates such as physical capital, human capital and openness.
Longer Life and Healthy Aging
Focuses on theoretical issues and empirical findings related to trends and determinants of healthy aging, including factors related to "healthy longevity" of the oldest-old, aged 80 and over. The group is the most rapidly increasing elderly sub-population and is most likely to need assistance in daily living in all countries. Chapters include both longitudinal and cross-sectional data from North America, Europe, and Asia in country-specific studies and cross-national comparisons. Part I focuses on the definition, components, concepts, measurements, and determinants of healthy aging, and discusses the trends and patterns of disability and healthy life expectancy at the macro level. Part II addresses individual healthy aging, including its biological and socio-demographic aspects. Part III focuses on issues concerning the family and healthy aging, and Part IV explores formal and informal care for healthy aging through governmental policy interventions and community service programs.
Locational Tournaments in the Context of the EU Competitive Environment : A New Institutional Economics Approach to Foreign Direct Investment Policy Competition between Governments in Europe
The last decade has witnessed a dramatic change in attitude towards foreign direct investment (FDI) and a significant increase in competition between governments to attract FDI as a result. These "locational tournaments" are perpetuated not simply by classical factor endowments, but also by government interventions that impact both market imperfections and FDI flows.
Linked Open Data -- Creating Knowledge Out of Interlinked Data : Results of the LOD2 Project
Linked Open Data (LOD) is a pragmatic approach for realizing the Semantic Web vision of making the Web a global, distributed, semantics-based information system. This book presents an overview on the results of the research project “LOD2 -- Creating Knowledge out of Interlinked Data”. LOD2 is a large-scale integrating project co-funded by the European Commission within the FP7 Information and Communication Technologies Work Program. Commencing in September 2010, this 4-year project comprised leading Linked Open Data research groups, companies, and service providers from across 11 European countries and South Korea.
