Barbarism inc

The trajectory of the global capitalist economy at the beginning of the twenty first century is on a collision course with nature. Some of us used to joke that if corporations could bottle and sell the air that we breathe they would do it. Well, now nobody is laughing. The summit of these eight richest countries in the world - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States - will meet in July 2005 in Scotland. The G8 have consistently imposed a neo-liberal economic model that benefits the rich and powerful at the expense of the most destitute people in the world. This type of economics is characterized by privatization, deregulation and trade liberalization

Naming the problem

Everyone, even the most die-hard defender of the established order recognizes that we face serious social and environmental problems. The news media regularly circulate the latest figures on the latest social problems. The country with the worst pollution, highest infant mortality, lowest life expectancy, epidemic rates of drug abuse, poverty, anti-social behaviour. But the mainstream media, popular debate and elite discussion treat these - at best- as a procession of seemingly unrelated and inexplicable facts and events. At worst the tendency is to suggest that whatever the problem - racism, obesity, unemployment, famine, war - that the people affected are in some way culpable. If in doubt, blame the victim. Either way, the context necessary to understand the problem and how it is caused is invariably missing. To paint in the context requires that we show how apparently isolated facts are linked causally to other social facts; that they are not so isolated after all

Reconstruction of the Part Vegetation on the Headwaters of the Piney Creek Watershed in Houston and Trinity Counties, Texas

The National Forests and Grasslands of Texas began a project in 1994 for ecosystem management involving multiple disciplines in an holistic approach to resource inventories. We first began with an intensive archival study of the forest acquisition files and the General Land Office (GLO) files in an effort to identify the western limits of the longleaf pine at the time of initial Anglo-American settlement ca. 1850. Vegetation information was gleaned from this work along with an understanding of the historical occupation of the area, aided by plotting this information onto USGS 7.5\u27 maps overlain by the historic Tobin landownership maps. We have since narrowed our focus from the mosaic of a broad area, to the headwaters of the Piney Creek watershed, an area rich in prehistory and history. Archeological survey has provided data for prehistoric occupations dating to the Early Ceramic period (ca. A.D. 500). More recent deed records, and subsequent landline surveys, have data on witness trees in the 1830s, 1860s, and 1890s, and then again after the Forest Service acquired the land in the 1930s, offering an opportunity to study specie composition over a 100 year period. This study on specie composition, tree density, and basal area, provides preliminary indications that fire suppression in the historic period significantly altered the forest composition

Cattle farmers' preferences for disease-free zones in Kenya: an application of the choice experiment method

Management of livestock diseases is important in ensuring food safety to consumers in both domestic and export markets. Various measures are prescribed under the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards (SPS) agreement of the World Trade Organization. In order to prevent the spread of trans-boundary cattle diseases, the SPS agreement recommends the establishment of Disease-Free Zones (DFZs). These have been implemented successfully in some major beef-exporting countries, but in Kenya are still at a pilot stage. To understand Kenyan farmers' preferences on the type of DFZ that would be readily acceptable to them, a choice experiment was conducted using a D-optimal design. Results show that farmers would be willing to pay to participate in a DFZ where: adequate training is provided on pasture development, record keeping and disease monitoring; market information is provided and sales contract opportunities are guaranteed; cattle are properly labelled for ease of identification; and some monetary compensation is provided in the event that cattle die due to severe disease outbreaks. Preferences for the DFZ attributes are shown to be heterogeneous across three cattle production systems. We also derive farmers' preferences for various DFZ policy scenarios. The findings have important implications for policy on the design of DFZ programmes in Kenya and other countries that face similar cattle disease challenges. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

The United States Sentencing Guidelines and Crack Cocaine: A Call for Parsimony in the Form of Intermediate Sanctions

This is a qualitiative study that examines the assertions made by other legal scholars that minority based sentencing disparity, as it relates to the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, is due to intentional racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination. Professor Celesta A. Albonetti (1997) makes the unfounded assertion that minority based sentencing disparity, as it relates to the Guidelines, is due to intentional discrimination by federal judges and prosecutors. When examining minority based sentencing disparity under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, black males are incarcerated longer than other minority groups for violations of federal cocaine statutes. Black males are also incarcerated longer than nonminority offenders for violations of federal cocaine statutes. Black males are also incarcerated longer than nonminority offenders for violations of federal cocaine statutes. Minority based sentencing disparity does exist, but is not due to intentional discrimination. Minority based sentencing disparity is the product of past employment discrimination in the United States and legal, structural aspects of federal statutes and their interaction with the Guidelines. The primary cause for large numbers of black males being incarcerated more often and for longer periods of time is due to the fact that certain federal crimes that are committed disproportionately by white males. Crack cocaine violations are committed disproportionately by black males due to discrimination and economic deprivation. The false perception of intentional racial and ethnic sentencing disparity erroneously attributed to the Guidelines is due to the U.S. Congress and its willingness to place more emphasis upon the possession, use, and distribution of crack cocaine, the historicalexistence of deeply rooted racial, ethnic, and economic discrimination embedded in American culture, and the failure of the U.S. Sentencing Commission to formulate a sound and well balanced sentencing rationale. This study examines the controversy surrounding the U.S. Congress and the negative impace of mandatory minimum sentences on the Guidelines and minority offenders. The Guidelines transition from legally binding administrative law to vague advisory provisions is also considered. In addition to a consideration of negative effects of mandatory minimum sentences on the Guidelines and minority offenders, the Commission's inability ot justify a modified just dessert sentencing rationale with prolonged periods of offender incapicitation is also scrutinized. In order to dispel the myth of intentional discrimination presented by Albonetti, and to urther support the argument for the legal, structual causes of discrimination, and experiement by David B. Mustard (2001), a professor of Law and Economics at the University of Georgia, adn an experiment conducted by Professors Rodney L. Engen, a professor at North Carolina State University, and Rodney R. Gainey, a professor at Old Mominion University are compared. Mustard applies standard regression analysis to the Guidelines determinate sentencing grid and comes to the conclusion that the greatest sentencing disparity exists between black male and white male offenders who are isolated in a one-on-one basis in the same district court with similar characteristics. Engen and Gainey (2000) assert that standard linear regression analysis is unsuited for the determinate sentencing grid because it assumes a linear, additive relationship between crime seriousness and criminal history. In order to properly control for interaction between tese tow legal factors, Engen and Gainey assert that researchers should be aware that standard linear regression models erroneously assume a uniform change in the dependent variable with each unit increase of the independent variable. Mustard's standard regression model does assume a uniform change in the dependent variable with each unit increase of the independent variable. The Guidelines typically increase the severity of the variables radically for more serious offenses, including offenders with drug and weapons related criminal histories. Standard regression experiments in the field of criminal law and determinate sentencingthat fail to control for interaction between legal factors will result in distorted extralegal factors. Norval Morris (1990), a professor at the University of Chicago School of Law, asserts that the answer to past discrimination against minorities and the legal, structural problems that plague the Guidelines is to implement intermediate sanctions in the form of compulsory, community based drug rehabilitation programs.Master'sCollege of Arts and Sciences: Public AdministrationUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117715/1/Hubbard.pd

Chemical Lecture Demonstrations: An Opportunity for Engagement through Collections, Instruction, and Reference

Chemical lecture demonstrations have been used as a pedagogical tool since at least the founding of chemistry as a discipline in the 1600s. This paper describes how science librarians can engage chemistry faculty and students through chemical lecture demonstrations. This paper describes chemical lecture demonstrations–including history and efficacy–and discusses how science librarians can engage chemistry faculty and students through collections, instruction, and reference in support of this pedagogy. In addition to outlining a research guide and lesson plan for chemical lecture demonstrations, this paper identifies chemical lecture demonstration monographs found in WorldCat® and analyzes the holdings of those monographs within the thirty-six-member Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) consortium

Technical efficiency and technology gaps in beef cattle production systems in Kenya: A stochastic metafrontier analysis

In this study the stochastic metafrontier method is used to investigate technical efficiency and technology gaps across three main beef cattle production systems in Kenya. Results show that there is significant inefficiency in nomadic and agro-pastoral systems. Further, in contrast with ranches, these two systems were found to have lower technology gap ratios. The average pooled technical efficiency was estimated to be 0.69, which suggests that there is considerable scope to improve beef production in KenyaTechnical efficiency, technology gap, beef cattle, production systems, stochastic metafrontier, Kenya., Livestock Production/Industries, D24, O32, Q18,