Country Profile on Disability: Republic of Uzbekistan

[Excerpt] The Law on Social Security of Disabled People in the Republic of Uzbekistan, Article 1 defines a person with disability as one who is in need of aid because he/she has physical or mental problems. Daily activities such as moving, orientation, speech, behavioral control, and/or work on one\u27s own are completely or partly limited. In Uzbekistan, persons with disabilities are screened in two steps. Firstly, a diagnosis is given by the hospitals where each person is registered according to his/her residential addresses. Secondly, persons with disabilities receive referrals to the Medicine Labour Expert Commissions (MLEC) of their respective district, which determines the grade of disability. Regarding reception of social security benefits, the MLEC defines persons with disabilities by legislature in accordance with national traditions, international norms, and the economic resources of Uzbekistan. According to the causes of disabilities, persons with disabilities are divided into three general groups: (1) Disability caused by genetic diseases, (2) Disability caused by acquired diseases, and (3) Disability caused by industrial injury such as traffic accidents, industrial accidents, and natural disasters

An Asia-Pacific Model of Development Cooperation

Part One of the Osaka Action Agenda has clarified the implications of the basic political commitment to free and open trade and investment in the Bogor Declaration and has set out operational guiding principles and a well-developed strategy of implementation. This paper seeks to build on the broad concepts set in Part Two of Osaka Agenda to clarify the implications of the shared commitment of APEC leaders to development cooperation. From the concepts put forward by the APEC Eminent Person Group and the proposal of Partners for Progress, precise objective, guiding principles and priorities can be set out for the implementation of a realistic and balanced strategy for development cooperation.trade sector, investment, APEC

An Asia-Pacific Model of Development Cooperation

Part One of the Osaka Action Agenda has clarified the implications of the basic political commitment to free and open trade and investment in the Bogor Declaration and has set out operational guiding principles and a well-developed strategy of implementation. This paper seeks to build on the broad concepts set in Part Two of Osaka Agenda to clarify the implications of the shared commitment of APEC leaders to development cooperation. From the concepts put forward by the APEC Eminent Person Group and the proposal of Partners for Progress, precise objective, guiding principles and priorities can be set out for the implementation of a realistic and balanced strategy for development cooperation.trade sector, investment, APEC

e-cooperation

Considers how the library tradition of co-operation and sharing can be transferred to an electronic environment. A range of activities from shared collections, OAI, digitisation and information arbitrage are considered. To paraphrase Ranganathan the development of electronic media and new forms of co-operation amongst libraries creates an environment where a role offers itself in the provision of the right information in the right format at the right price for the right user at the right time

Energy cooperation in Southern Africa: What role for Norway?

This Working Paper contains a full report from a Seminar on Regional Energy Co-operation, Luanda, 12-14 February 2002. Norwegian involvement in the energy sector in Southern Africa is considerable. Energy is a major area in Norwegian co-operation and includes a number of countries within SADC. There has been rapid change in the sector, which has moved from being an infrastructure sector to a commodity production sector. Also, the ongoing institutional changes in SADC will have an effect on its relation to energy. The donors' role must change accordingly. Important objectives of the seminar were to discuss the changes in the sector in the region and to improve the level of information in order to make better decisions.

Capacity Gain from Two-Transmitter and Two-Receiver Cooperation

Capacity improvement from transmitter and receiver cooperation is investigated in a two-transmitter, two-receiver network with phase fading and full channel state information available at all terminals. The transmitters cooperate by first exchanging messages over an orthogonal transmitter cooperation channel, then encoding jointly with dirty paper coding. The receivers cooperate by using Wyner-Ziv compress-and-forward over an analogous orthogonal receiver cooperation channel. To account for the cost of cooperation, the allocation of network power and bandwidth among the data and cooperation channels is studied. It is shown that transmitter cooperation outperforms receiver cooperation and improves capacity over non-cooperative transmission under most operating conditions when the cooperation channel is strong. However, a weak cooperation channel limits the transmitter cooperation rate; in this case receiver cooperation is more advantageous. Transmitter-and-receiver cooperation offers sizable additional capacity gain over transmitter-only cooperation at low SNR, whereas at high SNR transmitter cooperation alone captures most of the cooperative capacity improvement.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Choices: Caribbean Agriculture: Our way

Agriculture and food production should not be occupations of last resort. Showcasing many fascinating insights, this title features individuals, farm families and community groups in the Caribbean who have made a deliberate choice to enter, stay and focus on achieving success in this vibrant and rewarding sector. With stories that inform, educate and inspire, Choices provides accounts of innovations in aquaculture, hydroponics, permaculture, shade-house technology and organic farming

Labor-Management Cooperation

[Excerpt] In analyzing labor-management cooperation, it is important to be clear on what it is not. It is not an absence of strikes or conflict. Cooperation is not synonymous with industrial peace. Cooperation may take place even when bargaining leads to work stoppages; conversely, the mere absence of strikes is no evidence that there is labor-management cooperation. In the current period, there is a tendency to equate concessionary bargaining with labor-management cooperation. Demand for and acceptance of givebacks reflect economic pressures and relative bargaining strength and ought not to be interpreted as evidence of a cooperative relationship

Predicting Human Cooperation

The Prisoner's Dilemma has been a subject of extensive research due to its importance in understanding the ever-present tension between individual self-interest and social benefit. A strictly dominant strategy in a Prisoner's Dilemma (defection), when played by both players, is mutually harmful. Repetition of the Prisoner's Dilemma can give rise to cooperation as an equilibrium, but defection is as well, and this ambiguity is difficult to resolve. The numerous behavioral experiments investigating the Prisoner's Dilemma highlight that players often cooperate, but the level of cooperation varies significantly with the specifics of the experimental predicament. We present the first computational model of human behavior in repeated Prisoner's Dilemma games that unifies the diversity of experimental observations in a systematic and quantitatively reliable manner. Our model relies on data we integrated from many experiments, comprising 168,386 individual decisions. The computational model is composed of two pieces: the first predicts the first-period action using solely the structural game parameters, while the second predicts dynamic actions using both game parameters and history of play. Our model is extremely successful not merely at fitting the data, but in predicting behavior at multiple scales in experimental designs not used for calibration, using only information about the game structure. We demonstrate the power of our approach through a simulation analysis revealing how to best promote human cooperation.Comment: Added references. New inline citation style. Added small portions of text. Re-compiled Rmarkdown file with updated ggplot2 so small aesthetic changes to plot