109 research outputs found
Motivations for and Barriers to Forest Certification of Washington State Trust Lands
Forest management certification is a system to assess whether forests are grown in a manner that complies to a pre-determined set of requirements. Certification programs (called āStandardsā) are designed to indicate that compliance to those conditions demonstrate the forest is managed in a way that is environmentally responsible, economically viable, and socially beneficial. In the United States, there are two recognized forest certification programs: the Forest Stewardship CouncilĀ® (FSCĀ®) and the Sustainable Forestry InitiativeĀ® (SFIĀ®). The Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) certifies 100% of their forested trust lands to the SFI Standard. Of those lands, 8% are dual certified to both SFI and FSC. This study explores why SFI is the dominant certification program at DNR, what motivates the decisions to certify to one standard or both, and what barriers exist to certification to a preferred standard. Interviews with DNR personnel were used to generate data for grounded theory content analysis. This allowed construction of theories as to the motivation for and barriers to forest certification of DNR-managed lands in Washington state.
The research suggests that DNR personnel believe forest certification is a valuable operating procedure primarily because of the positive ecological and socially responsible message it sends to the public. It also finds that DNR personnel greatly prefer certification to the SFI Standard over FSC because of SFIās relative procedural simplicity. FSC was found burdensome to implement, primarily due to paperwork processes and the necessity of engaging with FSC-International. However, having an existing Habitat Conservation Plan in place to meet requirements of the federal Endangered Species Act, makes compliance to the FSC Standard somewhat easier because documentation of environmental and operational procedures is already completed. Respondents to this study commonly stated they did not want to see coverage of FSC-certified lands expanded despite some environmentalist pressure to do so.
These findings cannot directly be applied to federally- or privately-owned landowners, both of whom are likely to have very different motivations and barriers than a state-owned and state-managed agency. Recommendations for further research include a study similar to this in which data is gathered from stakeholders, such as harvesters, sawmill owners, and trust beneficiaries. Because public pressure is a major motivation for forest certification, the opinions of other parties, such as environmental groups, and members of the Board of Natural Resources (BNR) would also be of importance
ATHENA Research Book, Volume 2
ATHENA European University is an association of nine higher education institutions with the mission of promoting excellence in research and innovation by enabling international cooperation. The acronym ATHENA stands for Association of Advanced Technologies in Higher Education. Partner institutions are from France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal and Slovenia: University of OrlĆ©ans, University of Siegen, Hellenic Mediterranean University, NiccolĆ² Cusano University, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Polytechnic Institute of Porto and University of Maribor. In 2022, two institutions joined the alliance: the Maria Curie-SkÅodowska University from Poland and the University of Vigo from Spain. Also in 2022, an institution from Austria joined the alliance as an associate member: Carinthia University of Applied Sciences. This research book presents a selection of the research activities of ATHENA University's partners. It contains an overview of the research activities of individual members, a selection of the most important bibliographic works of members, peer-reviewed student theses, a descriptive list of ATHENA lectures and reports from individual working sections of the ATHENA project. The ATHENA Research Book provides a platform that encourages collaborative and interdisciplinary research projects by advanced and early career researchers
Open Source Law, Policy and Practice
This book examines various policies, including the legal and commercial aspects of the Open Source phenomenon. Here, āOpen Sourceā is adopted as convenient shorthand for a collection of diverse users and communities, whose differences can be as great as their similarities. The common thread is their reliance on, and use of, law and legal mechanisms to govern the source code they write, use, and distribute. The central fact of open source is that maintaining control over source code relies on the existence and efficacy of intellectual property (āIPā) laws, particularly copyright law. Copyright law is the primary statutory tool that achieves the end of openness, although implemented through private law arrangements at varying points within the software supply chain. This dependent relationship is itself a cause of concern for some philosophically in favour of āopenā, with some predicting (or hoping) that the free software movement will bring about the end of copyright as a means for protecting software
A Solution for the Third-Party Doctrine in a Time of Data Sharing, Contact Tracing, and Mass Surveillance
Today, information is shared almost constantly. People share their DNA to track their ancestry or for individualized health information; they instruct Alexa to purchase products or provide directions; and, now more than ever, they use videoconferencing technology in their homes. According to the third-party doctrine, the government can access all such information without a warrant or without infringing on Fourth Amendment privacy protections. This exposure of vast amounts of highly personal data to government intrusion is permissible because the Supreme Court has interpreted the third-party doctrine as a per se rule. However, that interpretation rests on an improper understanding of the reasonable expectation of privacy standard developed in Katz v. United States.
There is a solution. A close reading of Katzās logic can reorient third-party analysis from a per se rule to a tailored test of the knowledge of the sharer and the nature of the recipient, asking whether the sharer (1) knowingly exposed information (2) to the public. This interpretation allows the Fourth Amendment to better evolve with changing technology, such that the exception no longer risks swallowing the rule
Devouring OneĀ“s Own Tail
Like the ancient ouroboros devouring its own tail, we are products of our own education, our own rules and methods of cognizing and shaping the world. As such, we are also their victims, living mostly by habit and inherited rules of conduct questioning them only in the moments of crises and sometimes even not then.
The purpose of this book is to explore the nature of autopoiesis or the ability of society and its various forms to create, re-create and maintain itself, by putting it in the broader interdisciplinary perspective as having been established within the project itself. The mark of the book is its broad interdisciplinary quality, stretching from philosophy, religious studies and literary theory to new media, linguistics, and political theory.Publishe
Methods and tools for analysis and management of risks and regulatory compliance in the healthcare sector: the hospital at home ā HaH
Changing or creating an organisation means creating a new process. Each process involves many risks that need to be identified and managed. The main risks considered here are procedural and legal risks. The former are related to the risks of errors that may occur during processes, while the latter are related to the compliance of processes with regulations. Managing the risks implies proposing changes to the processes that allow the desired result: an optimised process.
In order to manage a company and optimise it in the best possible way, not only should the organisational aspect, risk management and legal compliance be taken into account, but it is important that they are all analysed simultaneously with the aim of finding the right balance that satisfies them all. This is the aim of this thesis, to provide methods and tools to balance these three characteristics, and to enable this type of optimisation, ICT support is used.
This work isnāt a thesis in computer science or law, but rather an interdisciplinary thesis. Most of the work done so far is vertical and in a specific domain. The particularity and aim of this thesis is not to carry out an in-depth analysis of a particular aspect, but rather to combine several important aspects, normally analysed separately, which however have an impact and influence each other. In order to carry out this kind of interdisciplinary analysis, the knowledge base of both areas was involved and the combination and collaboration of different experts in the various fields was necessary.
Although the methodology described is generic and can be applied to all sectors, the case study considered is a new type of healthcare service that allows patients in acute disease to be hospitalised to their home. This provide the possibility to perform experiments using real hospital database
Understanding the dynamics and molecular interactions of the human cannabinoid receptor 1
Cannabinoid receptor 1 (CB1), one of the most populated G-protein coupled receptors (GPCR) present within the brain, is involved in various physiological and homeostatic processes. These pathways include metabolism and hunger, locomotion, memory processing, and the onset of psychoactive effects. In recent decades, it has been uncovered that (both endogenous and exogenous) ligands and protein-CB1 interactions can elicit specific cellular pathways via biased intracellular signalling. Biased signalling is commenced by inducing various receptor conformations through protein/ligand-based interactions. These receptor conformations promote CB1 coupling with different G-proteins. Coupling to various G-proteins mediates potential therapeutic or adverse side effects. However, the full details on how CB1 controls these pathways and produces its psychotropic effects (upon cannabis consumption) are not fully understood. Numerous attempts have been conducted to comprehend the CB1 receptor and its signalling mechanism. Unfortunately, due to the complexity and novelty of the field, many knowledge gaps remain.
Another prominent issue in the cannabinoid field is the lack of diverse and complete crystallographic structures. To date, the isolation of a complete human crystallographic CB1 structureāfree from alterations (i.e., truncations, mutations, and insertion of stabilizing domains) āhas not been solved. Moreover, thereās a limited crystallographic database on the reported CB1 interacting proteins, thus further restricting the accuracy of computational studies. For these studies, the ligand-receptor and protein-protein binding interactions and their adopted conformations under the influence of the complete receptor are unknown. These aspects further shroud the cannabinoid field in mystery and limit its clinical utility.
However, advancements in crystallographic and computational techniques it has facilitated a novel avenue in the generation of more accurate three-dimensional (3D) computational models and results. This MSc thesis project addressed two major aims ā i) developing a comprehensive atomistic model of the human CB1 receptor and investigating its effects on ligand binding, in addition to ii) modelling the interactions of the human CB1 receptor with one of its protein binding partners using computational tools.
To investigate the impacts of ligand-CB1 binding interactions, the first complete atomistic model of the human CB1 receptor was built. Three chemically similar ligands were docked to the receptor and subjected to classical molecular dynamic (MD) simulations and binding-free energy calculations. The role of the N-terminus in orthosteric ligand binding was observed and determined for each ligand. These examinations postulated the potential importance of incorporating the complete receptor in computer-aided drug design (CADD) studies.
Moreover, the recently published first mammalian cannabinoid interacting protein 1a (CRIP1a) crystallographic structure provided a productive template (~96% identity with that of the human CRIP1a protein) for this study. Construction of the complete activated human CB1 receptor and CRIP1a modelsā interactions were investigated utilizing docking approaches. The complexes were subjected to classical MD simulations and binding-free energy calculations that allowed for subsequent ranking of the best complex. Residues involved in the molecular recognition process between human CB1 and CRIP1a were all confined within the experimentally determined binding region, thus validating the model.
Overall, this thesis supports previous experimental and computational findings on CRIP1a-CB1 binding interactions and the role of the N-terminus in protein-ligand binding. These results demonstrate the significance of modelling the complete human CB1 receptor to comprehend the protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions within the receptor. Outcomes we can extract from this thesis are i) the entire N-terminal segment is necessary for CADD, docking, and affinity-binding predictions studies. Furthermore, we concluded that ii) the residues involved in the molecular recognition process between that of CRIP1a and CB1 are all within the confines of the experimentally determined regions (residues 34-110 for CRIP1a, and residues within the distal nine amino acids in CB1). Outcomes from this thesis can aid when driving future mutational in vitro studies or designing small molecules to target the CRIP1a-CB1 interface. These small molecules can be significant in the generation of anti-nociceptive therapeutical drugs
Blockchain-Based Digitalization of Logistics ProcessesāInnovation, Applications, Best Practices
Blockchain technology is becoming one of the most powerful future technologies in supporting logistics processes and applications. It has the potential to destroy and reorganize traditional logistics structures. Both researchers and practitioners all over the world continuously report on novel blockchain-based projects, possibilities, and innovative solutions with better logistic service levels and lower costs. The idea of this Special Issue is to provide an overview of the status quo in research and possibilities to effectively implement blockchain-based solutions in business practice. This Special Issue reprint contained well-prepared research reports regarding recent advances in blockchain technology around logistics processes to provide insights into realized maturity
- ā¦