Knocking on the EU's door: the political economy of EU-Ukraine relations

The EU has recently launched the European Neighbourhood Policy, aimed at fostering integration with countries located close to its borders. This article proposes a liberal intergovernmentalist framework for the analysis of Ukraine's prospects of integration with the EU and apply it to evaluate the main economic and political benefits and costs associated to three possible scenarios: free trade area, fully developed European Neighbourhood Policy and EU accession. Two main conclusions can be drawn. Firstly, gains from integration would be asymmetrically distributed and would mostly accrue to Ukraine, whilst the main obstacles to integration would not be economic, but political. Secondly, the European Neighbourhood Policy does not represent a credible long-term alternative to EU membership for Ukraine; thus the outcome of the integration process should probably consist either in the mere creation of a free trade area or in EU accession.Economic integration; European Union; European Neighbourhood Policy; Ukraine

TB STIGMA – MEASUREMENT GUIDANCE

TB is the most deadly infectious disease in the world, and stigma continues to play a significant role in worsening the epidemic. Stigma and discrimination not only stop people from seeking care but also make it more difficult for those on treatment to continue, both of which make the disease more difficult to treat in the long-term and mean those infected are more likely to transmit the disease to those around them. TB Stigma – Measurement Guidance is a manual to help generate enough information about stigma issues to design and monitor and evaluate efforts to reduce TB stigma. It can help in planning TB stigma baseline measurements and monitoring trends to capture the outcomes of TB stigma reduction efforts. This manual is designed for health workers, professional or management staff, people who advocate for those with TB, and all who need to understand and respond to TB stigma

Does Inequality Matter for Poverty Reduction? Evidence from Pakistan’s Poverty Trends

The paper explores the linkages between poverty, growth and inequality in the context of Pakistan. Time series macro data are used for the period 1979 to 2002. Consistent poverty and inequality measures are interpolated to facilitate the estimation of poverty elasticity with respect to growth and inequality in a multivariate regression framework. The paper also attempts to find out macroeconomic and structural correlates of inequality. The empirical findings—high poverty elasticity with respect to inequality measures—confirm the importance of inequality in poverty reducing effort. Inflation, sectoral wage gap, and terms of trade in favour of manufacturing exacerbate inequality, while progressive taxation, investment and development expenditure on social services play a significant role in reducing inequality. The results also indicate a positive correlation between per capita GDP and income inequality.Pakistan, Poverty Trend, Income Distribution, Poverty Elasticity with respect to Growth and Inequality

Measuring the coherence of normal and aphasic discourse production in Chinese using rhetorical structure theory (RST)

The study investigated the difference in discourse coherence between healthy speakers and speakers with anomic aphasia using Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST). The effect of genre types on coherence and potential factors contributing to the differences were also examined. Fifteen native Cantonese participants of anomic aphasia and their control matched in age, education and gender participated. Sixty language samples were obtained using the story-telling and sequential description tasks of the Cantonese AphasiaBank protocol. Twenty naïve listeners provided subjective ratings on the coherence, completeness, correctness of order, and clarity of each speech sample. Results demonstrated that the control group showed significantly higher production fluency, total number of discourse units, and fewer errors than the aphasia group. Controls used a richer set of relations than the aphasic group, particularly those to describe settings, to express causality, and to elaborate. The aphasic group tended to omit more essential information content and was rated with significantly lower coherence and clarity than controls. The findings suggested that speakers with anomic aphasia had reduced proportion of essential information content, lower degree of elaboration, and more structural disruptions than the controls, which may have contributed to the reduced overall discourse coherence.published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science

A Methodological Framework for Projecting Brand Equity: Putting Back the Imaginary into Brand Knowledge Structures

The aim of this paper is to outline a methodological framework for Brand Equity planning with structuralist rhetorical semiotics. By drawing on the connectionist conceptual model of the brand generative trajectory of signification (Rossolatos 2013a, 2013g) it will be displayed in a step-wise fashion how a set of nuclear semes and classemes or an intended semic structure that underlies manifest discursive structures may be projected by its internal stakeholders (i.e., a brand management team, an account planning team or a marketing research team) with view to attaining differential brand associations. The suggested methodological framework focuses on the strength and uniqueness of brand associations as integral aspects of a brand’s equity structure and comprises a set of calculi that aim at addressing from a brand textuality point of view how associations may be systematically linked to their key sources with an emphasis on the ad filmic text. The propounded methodology is exemplified by recourse to a corpus of ad filmic texts from the major brand players in the UK cereals market. The argumentative thrust is intent on demonstrating that structuralist rhetorical semiotics is not only useful for analyzing/interpreting brand texts, but, moreover, for constructing and for managing them over time. This demonstration is deployed by adopting a synchronic/diachronic and intra (ad) filmic / inter (ad) filmic approach to the formation of brand associations that make up a projected Brand Equity structure, in the context of embedded product category dynamics

MEDIA EFFECTS ON THE NEW YORK TIMES’ “THE WOMEN’S MARCH IN WASHINGTON” VIDEO NEWS COVERAGE ON FACEBOOK

The reliance towards Facebook in regard to obtaining information becomes a news habit among the society. Considerable number of news coverage from media is accessible to Facebook which creates effects on the audience on account of the media exposure. The study is conducted for the purposes of analyzing news elements which are embedded in The New York Times' “The Women's March in Wahsington”video news coverage on Facebook and discovering the effects of the coverage towards media audience. This study is constructed as a library research which utilizes textual and user-response analysis research methodology. The theory utilizes to support the study is Pan &Kosicki's Framing Analysis, and McComb& Shaw's Agenda-Setting theory is also applied in this study to support the framing analysis. The results of the study indicate that three salient elements of the coverage set public agenda to which the salient elements become prominent issues of the Women's March on Washington