Environmental Justice in Indian Country: Using Equity Assessments to Evaluate Impacts to Trust Resources, Watersheds and Eco-cultural Landscapes

Native American cultures, genetics, nutrition, and ways of life co-evolved with their natural systems through thousands of years. This process has resulted in seamless eco-cultural systems of humans, plants, animals, rivers, landforms, and air sheds. These eco-cultural systems have also provided its peoples with unique and valid environmental management science that has sustained the peoples and their resources for thousands of years. This resource-based perspective could form the basis of environmental justice risk assessment methodology in Indian Country. Cumulative impacts to tribal cultures are a combination of pre-existing stressors (existing conditions or co-risk factors) and any other contamination or new activity that affects environmental quality. Characterizing risks or impacts in Indian Country entails telling the cumulative story about risks to trust resources and a cultural way of life. Equity assessments could also be performed in a way that describes these systems-level cumulative risks/impacts. This requires improvements in metrics based on an understanding of the unbreakable ties between people, their cultures, and their resources. Specific recommendations are presented for performing equity assessments in Indian Country and for developing a Risk Ethics discipline

Multi-Plaintiff Litigation in Australia: A Comparative Perspective

Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms, laid out in a hexagonal lattice. The material has remarkable properties that opened up several new research areas since its discovery in 2004. One promising field is graphene based biosensors, where researchers hope to create new devices that are smaller, cheaper and more reliable than those based on today’s technology. Among several manufacturing methods, graphene grown on silicon carbide is one of the promising ones for biosensing. A chip design has been developed in order to support research into graphene on silicon carbide as a base material for biosensors. Along with the chip, a holder for electrochemical measurements has been designed and an investigation into the requirements of a custom measurement device for the sensor has been undertaken

The Asian regional response to its economic crisis and the global implications

This paper looks at regionalism through the lens of multilateralism in Asia–Pacific. Some of the substantial criticism from outside the region of Asia's multilateral institutions is warranted. That criticism is generally overdone, however, for two reasons: an inadequate understanding of the achievements of regional multilateralism over the past two or so decades; and an inadequate understanding of how the region responded to the economic crisis. The major achievements of regional multilateralism - normative frameworks for economic and security relations—have come through largely unaffected by the crisis. The prime objective of regional policies—internal security—has ensured a continued priority for economic growth and open liberal economic development; and the priority to settling disputes by peaceful means has not changed. Some weaknesses will continue—ASEAN enlargement for example— but these are largely not related to the crisis. Regionalist impulses have been strengthened by the crisis, but are likely to continue to remain supportive of the global institutional framework. A heightened sense of a need for increased regional representation in the unrepresentative nature of global institutions has emerged

Globalisation and China's diplomacy: structure and process

This study is concerned with how far globalisation has affected the capacity of China, as a developing nation, to make and implement foreign policy. Chinas entry into the UN, the Nixon/Kissinger visits, and expanding membership of international institutions, meant that a quantitative expansion of diplomatic links was needed. The reform of Chinas economy reflected other reasons for diplomatic change in the face of globalisation pressures. These changes led, among other things, to increased bureaucratisation, more skilled officials and more pluralism. The states power in political relations remains, but its exercise involves increased costs for other objectives, notably modernisation. A substantial cognitive learning process has occurred in the development of Chinas diplomatic processes and structures

Areal Distribution of the Various Combinations of Quaternary Climates

On reconnaît maintenant que les paléoclimats ont laissé leur trace dans le sol, sur la végétation et les paysages de diverses régions du monde. De nombreuses méthodes d'analyse, discutées et discutables, permettent de découvrir quels étaient les climats du Tertiaire et du Quaternaire, leur forme, leur influence et leur extension et ainsi de connaître l'évolution et les changements des paysages

Does China matter? The global economic issues

In 1999, Gerry Segal, then Director of Research at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs entitled Does China matter?. His article ranged across economic, political and strategic issues but his overall conclusion was that Chinas importance had been greatly exaggerated. As far as economic questions were concerned, Segal saw China as a small market that matters little to the world, especially outside Asia. This paper argues that while Segal was correct in the view that there had been considerable exaggeration of Chinas economic weight, mostly outside of China, his generalisation now needs qualification. The paper considers the standard economic comparisons across countries such as GDP, trade and investment volumes and other areas of Chinas growing global economic involvement. It also deals with issues such as the accuracy of Chinas growth statistics. It concludes with the idea that China does now matter to the world both for its substance and for its evident potential

Regional Economic Implications of Water Allocation and Reliability

The understanding of how allocation decisions can maximise the economic returns to the community from water for irrigation has received little attention, but is a significant issue for regional councils, those interested in water allocation policy development, and for irrigated farmers. There is a tradeoff between the amount of irrigated area and the reliability with which it can be undertaken. Overseas studies have generated a curve with optimum levels of allocation which maximise the economic return to the community from the resource. The study on which this paper is based used a single case study to model the individual and regional economic outcomes for four scenarios of water allocation, using daily time step simulation models of the hydrological, irrigation, farm and financial systems over the 1973 – 2000 period. The results show that there is an increasing return to the region as the allocation from the resource increases, at the expense of lower returns to existing users.Irrigation, reliability, regional economic impacts, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Agricultural Finance, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Financial Economics, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Land Economics/Use, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Heating of near-Earth objects and meteoroids due to close approaches to the Sun

It is known that near-Earth objects (NEOs) during their orbital evolution may often undergo close approaches to the Sun. Indeed it is estimated that up to ~70% of them end their orbital evolution colliding with the Sun. Starting from the present orbital properties, it is possible to compute the most likely past evolution for every NEO, and to trace its distance from the Sun. We find that a large fraction of the population may have experienced in the past frequent close approaches, and thus, as a consequence, a considerable Sun-driven heating, not trivially correlated to the present orbits. The detailed dynamical behaviour, the rotational and the thermal properties of NEOs determine the exact amount of the resulting heating due to the Sun. In the present paper we discuss the general features of the process, providing estimates of the surface temperature reached by NEOs during their evolution. Moreover, we investigate the effects of this process on meteor-size bodies, analyzing possible differences with the NEO population. We also discuss some possible effects of the heating which can be observed through remote sensing by ground-based surveys or space missions.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted by MNRA

From random walk to single-file diffusion

We report an experimental study of diffusion in a quasi-one-dimensional (q1D) colloid suspension which behaves like a Tonks gas. The mean squared displacement as a function of time is described well with an ansatz encompassing a time regime that is both shorter and longer than the mean time between collisions. This ansatz asserts that the inverse mean squared displacement is the sum of the inverse mean squared displacement for short time normal diffusion (random walk) and the inverse mean squared displacement for asymptotic single-file diffusion (SFD). The dependence of the single-file 1D mobility on the concentration of the colloids agrees quantitatively with that derived for a hard rod model, which confirms for the first time the validity of the hard rod SFD theory. We also show that a recent SFD theory by Kollmann leads to the hard rod SFD theory for a Tonks gas.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure