FEUTURE EU 28 Country Report. Estonia

Relations between Estonia and Turkey received renewed impetus after 2004, when Estonia joined the European Union (EU) (while Turkey was in the process of securing the official candidate status) and NATO, of which Turkey has been a member since 1952. Since its accession, Estonia has played a generally constructive role at the EU level when it comes to both its institutional future and enlargement policy. Its key tenets, thereby, seem in line with the principled open-door approach advocated by the fellow Nordic countries

The role of game rules in architectural design environments

'Experimenting' and 'observing' are crucial actions in architectural design thinking. They rely heavily on the representation environment used (e.g. sketching, scale models, sketch tools, CAD tools, etc.) and the 'game rules' at play in these environments. In this brief paper, we study the role of this representation environment in the overall architectural design thinking process. From this brief study, we indicate two design and implementation approaches to implement and design with such game rules in virtual design environments

Mining and development : examining the effectiveness of mining company community development intervention in New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Development Studies at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand

This thesis explores the effectiveness of mining company contributions to development within the gold mining communities of Lihir and Simberi islands, in New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG). More specifically, it analyses the extent to which forms of community development intervention undertaken on Lihir Island by Newcrest Mining Ltd, and on Simberi Island by St Barbara Ltd, actually support meaningful forms of development. This has been achieved through the use of development ethics (Goulet 1995) as a conceptual research framework, which when applied in research practice, gives priority to the wellbeing of those whose realities may be ignored, misread or marginalised within the neoliberal realm of development. This research is based on a total of four months of fieldwork undertaken on Lihir and Simberi islands. It draws on community narratives to frame the relevance of human wellbeing, human rights and inclusive development as development ethics within the research context. This development ethics research lens facilitates discussion about the meaningfulness of development intervention from a morally-informed community development perspective. Underpinned by a locally contextualised appreciation of what human wellbeing and meaningful development means on Lihir and Simberi islands (which results in the exposition of a set of local Community Wellbeing and Development Rights), a critical review of the practice and governance of development intervention within each Island community is then detailed. The analysis of development interventions then proceeds using firstly an evaluation of practices within a human rights lens, and secondly consideration of inclusive development outcomes relative to Newcrest's and St Barbara’s development related rhetoric. The resulting account of mining company community development intervention is critical, but ultimately hopeful. This hopefulness reflects the hope of customary landowners that mining will one day lead to meaningful development benefits. The analysis from this development ethics lens reveals insights into the promotion of social justice through the delivery of mining company development interventions. It is argued that mining companies have the opportunity to enhance a set of locally significant and internationally recognised human rights that are important to the wellbeing and development of customary landowners. Although, in some instances, mining company performance is falling short with respect to the enhancement of these human rights, it is argued that the enhancement of Community Wellbeing and Development Rights exists as a potential means for mining companies to add value to host communities. However, if such a development programme is to be meaningful to customary landowners, it must also advance equity and fairness. If mining companies fail to navigate such complexities, this thesis contends that mining, and forms of mining company community development intervention, will likely do more harm to communities than good

The role of itinerant teachers of reading : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education at Massey University

The position of Itinerant Teacher of Reading was established following a successful pilot scheme in 1974. The Department of Education indicated that the function of the itinerant teachers was to help alleviate the problem of children who experience severe difficulties in learning to read. Departmental instructions to Education Boards were couched in general terms to allow the Boards some latitude in defining and establishing the role. This study researches the role of Itinerant Teachers of Reading. The major objectives of the study were to describe the underlying purposes of the itinerant service and to clarify the role of Itinerant Teachers of Reading. The literature discussing children at risk in reading reveals a similarity of opinions on the alleviation of the problem. New Zealand authorities on reading agree that there is a minority group of children who require intensive regular and individualised instruction to improve their reading ability. Also apparent is the tendency for the varied methods of instruction to be focussed closely upon text reading rather than isolated skills acquisition. To ascertain the ways in which itinerant teachers were dealing with children at risk information was gathered via a questionnaire from all Itinerant Teachers of Reading in New Zealand. From their responses emerged three clearly discernible role patterns which ranged from an advisory type role to that of a travelling reading clinician. More detailed information was obtained by interviewing six of the fifteen itinerant teachers and observing four of the teachers at their work. To gain a balanced viewpoint of the itinerant service a second questionnaire solicited opinions and data from a representative adviser and an inspector from each of the ten Education Boards. In general their opinions of the true function of itinerant teachers supported their Board's itinerant teacher(s). Some variation between the methods of teaching advocated by this group and those used by the itinerant teachers was apparent. An examination of Departmental documents followed by a lengthy correspondence with personnel involved in the pilot scheme produced a description of the initial purposes of the itinerant service. The first itinerant teachers were required to establish a pool of resource teachers in schools by training selected teachers in appropriate teaching skills. Although the study is a descriptive one, the opinions expressed by the questionnaire respondents were discussed and presented as recommendations for possible future action. The recommendations encompassed the spheres of communications, service support, role clarification and standardisation, and accountability. The study concludes with a brief note on possible future evaluation

Quantitative genetics of maize (Zea mays L.) during seedling establishment under cool conditions : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Agricultural Science in Plant Science at Massey University

Two experiments were conducted to study cool tolerance in maize (Zea mays L.). The first experiment was carried out under controlled environment to evaluate several genotypes from five synthetic populations which are currently being used to develop hybrid maize for better adaptation to New Zealand climate and to study the qualitative inheritance of maize seedling growth under cool conditions. In this study, diurnal temperature of 16 °C day/6 °C night was used and characters related to seedling growth were examined. The second experiment conducted to study the effect of temperature on maize during its early growth and to examine whether the initial seed constitution and germination characteristics could be used as selection criteria for improvement of the subsequent seedling growth. Eleven physical, chemical, and morphological characters were measured. The growth was studied in germinators under two temperature regimes of 25/20 and 16/6 °C. The genotypic variation was highly significant for all nine characters examined in the first experiment. For the three repeatedly measured characters (i.e. chlorophyll content, shoot and root dry masses), the genotype x time interaction effect was significant. In the second experiment, the variation due to genotypic difference was highly significant only for the initial seed constitution characters and the amount of ion leakage during the early hours of germination process. It was non significant for the time to germinate, seedling growth rates, and seedling growth functions. The variation due to the difference of temperature regimes was significant for the time to germinate and seedling growth but not the growth functions. The genotypes of synthetic line NZS3 showed the best performance for general combining ability (GCA) for almost all characters studied in the first experiment. From all genotypes evaluated, however, only few of them consistently showed good GCA over the characters. Four of the characters studied in the first experiment had moderate to high narrow sense heritabilities, namely total leaves at 50 days after planting (82 %), chlorophyll content (46 %), anthocyanin (69%), and leaf area (62 %). In the second experiment, the estimated broad sense heritabilities observed ranged from very low to very high over all characters. The high broad sense heritabilities were recorded on most of the initial seed constitution characters, the conductivity of ion leakage, and the growth rates of root (length) and shoot (dry mass). Both the phenotypic and genotypic correlation coefficients between pairs are in good agreement and followed the same direction. Amongst the characters examined in the first experiment only time to achieve second mature leaf, total leaf number at 50 day after planting, chlorophyll content, leaf area had considerable correlations to the dry masses. In the second experiment a good correlation with growth rate was observed for the seed weight, nitrogen and maltose contents