Defining a US defence diplomacy for Brazil at the beginning of the century

At the beginning of the 1990s, the US military was apparently considered to be a significant threat by the Brazilian Armed Forces. Other military establishments in the Hemisphere likewise expressed a lack of confidence, and even a sense of fear, regarding the North Americans. After an ‘opening’ in military relations between Brazil and the United States, directed by General Barry McAfree, commander-in-chief of the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) in the mid 1990s, Brazilian military sentiment regarding the US marginally improved. Nevertheless, by the end of the 1990s and the beginning of this Century, the Brazilian Armed Forces again felt threatened by the unilateralism of the US military. This work examines the the concept of ‘defense diplomacy’ and the process by which the Clinton Administration initiated an experiment in conjunction with the National Defense University (Fort Leslie McNair, Washington, DC), at the request of the Deputy Assitant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs, that established between 1999 and 2001 a broader understanding of possible US defense diplomacy for the subsequent seven years. I was an invited participant in this experiment, along with more than two dozen North American and Latin American academics, including Brazilians, the aim of which was to complete a proposal under contract with the Defense Department. Although it was ended soon after the Bush Administration began, this experiment, and the broader concept of ‘defense diplomacy,’ may well have represented an important option for future hemispheric military relations

Calculating Risk, Denying Uncertainty: Seismicity and Hydropower Development in Nepal

If Ulrich Beck’s definition of ‘risk society’ describes societies increasingly structured by preoccupations with future environmental threats and related insecurities created by modernization, then Nepal’s hydropower community would appear to be quite the opposite, propelled into environmental denial by twin demands for domestic electricity and revenue earned through hydroelectric export. Our research reveals that prior to the April 2015 earthquake in Nepal, the hydropower community was engaging in what Eviatar Zerubavel calls ‘socially organized denial,’ largely ignoring the uncertainties associated with seismic activity. Earthquakes and tremors were viewed as unavoidable realities that should not impede hydropower development. This denial, we argue, was shaped not only by local political realities and demand for electricity, but also by a larger desire to capitalize on available funds from international finance, which are highly contingent upon Nepal presenting itself as a ‘safe’ zone for investment. Our study focuses on the elites of Nepal’s hydro community: the developers, investors, water experts, and government officials who occupy the ‘upstream’ positions at which scientific knowledge is produced and adjudicated. On one hand, the denial or omission of earthquake potential that we witnessed seems to identify the ineluctable challenges that Nepal faces in attempting to integrate its economy into global markets; on the other hand, it indicates the desire of the private sector to reap profits from hydropower in spite of obvious geophysical dangers. These dangers, we argue, are a bankable risk for these elites. However, for the people directly affected by new hydropower infrastructures, these are risks and uncertainties threatening already vulnerable livelihoods

Training and Union wages

This paper investigates whether unions, through imposing wage floors that lead to wage compression, increase on-the-job training. Our analysis focuses on Germany. Based on a model of unions and firm-financed training, we derive empirical implications regarding apprenticeship training intensity, layoffs, wage cuts, and wage compression in unionized and nonunionized firms. We test these implications using firm panel data matched with administrative employee data. We find support for the hypothesis that union recognition, via imposing minimum wages and wage compression, increases training in apprenticeship programs

A resource-advantage perspective on pricing: shifting the focus from ends to means-end in pricing research?

This paper contributes to a long-lasting debate between practitioners who argue that academia is unable to understand what pricing is all about and academics who criticize practitioner pricing approaches for lacking rigor or rationality. The paper conceptualizes a resource-advantage (R-A) perspective on pricing by drawing on the R-A theory of competition. After a review of R-A theory, the paper integrates the price discretion concept and pricing as a spanning competence by introducing a separation between resources that create and resources that extract value, thereby expanding R-A theory to pricing. The perspective aims to shed light on how the process of competition helps organizations to learn/benefit from pricing capabilities. The research shifts the focus of pricing research from an equilibrium-based static view to a dynamic, disequilibrium-provoking pricing competence. In this way, it draws attention to what is perhaps most relevant to pricing in practice: the actual means necessary to determine price

The kinematics and chemical stratification of the Type Ia supernova remnant 0519-69.0

We present an analysis of the XMM-Newton and Chandra X-ray data of the young Type Ia supernova remnant 0519-69.0 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. We used data from both the Chandra ACIS and XMM-Newton EPIC-MOS instruments, and high resolution X-ray spectra obtained with the XMM-Newton Reflection Grating Spectrometer. The Chandra data show that there is a radial stratification of oxygen, intermediate mass elements and iron, with the emission from more massive elements more toward the center. Using a deprojection technique we measure a forward shock radius of 4.0(3) pc and a reverse shock radius of 2.7(4) pc. We took the observed stratification of the shocked ejecta into account in the modeling of the X-ray spectra with multi-component NEI models, with the components corresponding to layers dominated by one or two elements. An additional component was added in order to represent the ISM, which mostly contributed to the continuum emission. This model fits the data well, and was also employed to characterize the spectra of distinct regions extracted from the Chandra data. From our spectral analysis we find that the fractional masses of shocked ejecta for the most abundant elements are: M(O)=32%, M(Si/S)=7%/5%, M(Ar+Ca)=1%, and M(Fe) = 55%. From the continuum component we derive a circumstellar density of nH= 2.4(2)/cm^3. This density, together with the measurements of the forward and reverse shock radii suggest an age of 450+/-200 yr,somewhat lower than, but consistent with the estimate based on the optical light echo (600+/-200 yr). From the RGS spectra we measured a Doppler broadening of sigma=1873+/-50 km/s, from implying a forward shock velocity of vS = 2770+/-500 km/s. We discuss the results in the context of single degenerate explosion models, using semi-analytical and numerical modeling, and compare the characteristics of 0519-69.0 with those of other Type Ia supernova remnants.Comment: Astronomy and Astrophysics in press. This version is the A&A accepted version, which contains improved figures and an extended discussion sectio

Another thread in the tapestry of stellar feedback: X-ray binaries

We consider X-ray binaries (XBs) as potential sources of stellar feedback. XBs observationally appear able to deposit a high fraction of their power output into their local interstellar medium, which may make them a non-negligible source of energy input. The formation rate of the most luminous XBs rises with decreasing metallicity, which should increase their significance during galaxy formation in the early universe. We also argue that stochastic effects are important to XB feedback (XBF) and may dominate the systematic changes due to metallicity in many cases. Large stochastic variation in the magnitude of XBF at low absolute star formation rates provides a natural reason for diversity in the evolution of dwarf galaxies which were initially almost identical, with several percent of such halos experiencing energy input from XBs roughly two orders of magnitude above the most likely value. These probability distributions suggest that the effect of XBF is most commonly significant for total stellar masses between ~10^7 and 10^8 Msun, which might resolve a current problem with modelling populations of such galaxies. We explain how XBs might inject energy before luminous supernovae (SNe) contribute significantly to feedback and how XBs can assist in keeping gas hot long after the last core-collapse SN has exploded. [...] XBF could be especially important to some dwarf galaxies, potentially heating gas without expelling it; the properties of XBF also match those previously derived as allowing episodic star formation. We also argue that the efficiency of SN feedback (SNF) might be reduced when XBF has had the opportunity to act first. In addition, we note that the effect of SNF is unlikely to be scale-free; galaxies smaller than ~100 pc might well experience less effective SNF. (Slightly abbreviated to fit arXiv size limit.)Comment: Very belatedly updated to include a note added in proof and additional reference. The definitive version is at: mnras.oxfordjournals.org/content/423/2/164