Indo-Pacific offshore oil and gas safety and security: managing regional risks

Key Points: Indo-Pacific offshore oil and gas exploration and exploitation activity is expanding massively in economically and strategically important, environmentally sensitive areas. The risks of offshore oil and gas safety and security incidents that could have regional economic, environmental, human, food, and energy consequences are rising.In addition to man-­‐induced incidents, the often crowded waters of the Indo-­‐Pacific are particularly prone to natural hazards like extreme weather events and seismic activity. The possibility of armed conflict at sea, law and order issues, increasing maritime user intensity, decommissioned installations, and jurisdictional uncertainty add to concerns. Measures to deal with large scale offshore oil and gas safety and security events are often not well developed. Vulnerabilities arise from the lack of capacity and the lack of regional coordination regimes to prevent, respond to and recover from incidents. Some regional states are not parties to relevant international regimes; collective and cooperative maritime safety and security arrangements are lacking. Collaboration between states and other actors: regional entities and industry, is necessary and presents mutually beneficial opportunities; progress should be a high priority. Realistic and uncomfortable expectations must be faced. Sovereignty issues combined with greed for energy resources and commercial benefit may well continue to dominate. The likelihood of offshore oil and gas safety and security disasters in the Indo-Pacific, with major regional consequences, will continue to rise

Dialoguing with dragons. assisting Chinese students' academic achievement

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Inguinal hernia repair

A hernia usually presents as a painful lump in the groin, often associated with a large strain but it may also be asymptomatic and coincidentally discovered on routine examination. The incidence of hernia increases with age but a large number affected are working men and they can be severely disabled by the condition. Inguinal hernia is a common condition and 763 hernia operations were carried out in Government hospitals in Malta and Gozo during 1997.peer-reviewe

Post-occupancy evaluation of architecturally-designed low-income housing in Ahmadabad, India

This paper presents post-occupancy evaluation of low-income houses that have been built through the DMU: Square Mile India Programme in Ahmedabad, India. Questionnaire and interviews were conducted which elicited information on respondents’ socio-cultural and environmental experiences in the new houses compared to the existing dwellings in the community. Findings include: 1. increased expectations and higher demands for space and facilities in the new houses, 2. discontent with integrated courtyard/ open spaces, 3. prioritising flood protection over environmental quality and thermal comfort conditions in the existing houses and 4. Significant change in the perception of social status of families in the new homes. The findings highlight residents’ need for adequate sleeping area, thermal comfort, safety from animals and security. These aspects must be critically considered in future design of similar houses. The paper produces empirical evidence on users’ perception that will provide better knowledge and understanding to the designer and policy-makers to identify important factors to improve residents’ quality of life in a low-income housing context

Beyond Contradiction: Sacred-Profane Waters and the Dialectics of Everyday Religion

Studies of the relationship between religion and ecology are either highly enthusiastic about the ways that religious belief can motivate sound resource management or skeptical of the connection. Using an everyday religion approach, this text takes a middle ground to show that resources are variously interpreted in daily life and that religious orientations, while potentially supportive of environmentally sound action, are but one source of influence. Drawing from fieldwork, the discussion employs practice theory to look at how water resources in a Himalayan township are understood and the ways that notions of responsibility for sacred and profane waters are changing. The text aims to show that resource degradation is not necessarily indicative of contradictions in belief. This assertion pushes us to think more critically about the importance of everyday terrains of discourse and action, including how resource perceptions and management activities are influenced by structural constraints

Japan-North Korea relations since the North-South Summit: stuck in an ever deepening and divisive rut

Japan-North Korea relations have slipped into an ever deepening and divisive rut since the North-South summit of 2000, with little prospect of significant improvement in the near term. Japan has both intentionally and unintentionally constructed around itself a framework of international and domestic policy constraints that impede its ability to engage North Korea both bilaterally and trilaterally via US-South Korea-Japan co-ordination efforts. In particular, as the US and South Korea contemplate renewed engagement efforts with the North, Japan’s ability to follow its trilateral partners is hamstrung by domestic pressure on the abductions issue. The consequence could be that Japan will find itself as the most reluctant and least able of the trilateral partners to engage the North. In turn, this could mean that it is unable to provide crucial background support for international engagement efforts, and even undermine overall US and South Korea strategy. Meanwhile, the incapacitation of Japan’s diplomatic policy has had the effect of strengthening Japanese military containment efforts towards the North

Integrating Green Infrastructure Into Stormwater Policy: Reliability, Watershed Management, and Environmental Psychology as Holistic Tools for Success

As cities continue to expand, the issues of flood control and urban water quality have become major modern sustainability challenges. Green infrastructure—the use of nature-based solutions to target, treat, and store stormwater at its source—has emerged as a possible solution. While green infrastructure does offer multiple benefits for urban users, its performance is also highly variable. This Article addresses a key gap in existing literature by explicitly addressing how uncertainty in environmental and anthropogenic factors affects green infrastructure performance and integration within the Clean Water Act’s municipal separate storm sewer (MS4) regulatory program

Corporate Entrepreneurship for Internationalising Learning & Teaching Strategy in UK Higher Education: A Combination of Literature

The literature review combines uniquely writing from three academic domains: strategic management of HE (particularly internationalisation), entrepreneurship in HE and corporate entrepreneurship. This combination is applied to the internationalisation of UK universities to establish areas of overlap and to propose that an emergent strategic approach, resulting in an ‘umbrella strategy’ for internationalisation, is most appropriate and can be effectively executed in HE through corporate entrepreneurship. The review uses research and concepts from both private and public sectors. It recommends the adoption in HE of a broader definition of entrepreneurship and an ethical approach to internationalisation in order to appeal to the values of academics. Entrepreneurship can be conceptualised as part of university culture, and, as such, central to the execution of internationalisation

Hog Daddy and the Walls of Steel: Catch Shares and Ecosystem Change in the New England Groundfishery

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration implemented marketbased fishery management in the New England groundfishery as catch shares, controlling aggregate harvests through tradable annual catch quotas allocated to fishing groups called sectors. Policy supporters assert that resulting markets raise conservation incentives. In compliance with the Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, species assessments permit catch shares to replace more spatially and temporally specific constraints on fishing gear, time, areas, and daily harvest limits. Qualitative evidence from field interviews and participant observation questions the efficacy of catch shares. Fishing industry members observe that increased presence of large trawl vessels in previously protected areas damages fish subpopulations and benthic habitat. Regulatory bioeconomic models fail to consider these lay observations. The consequent inability of quota markets to recognize the materiality of human–environment relationships at the spatiotemporal scales of fishing activity, and to internalize associated externalities, may have devastating consequences for the fishery