Moving forward: strengthening cooperation in today’s Barents Region

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Valuation of Forest Resources in Watershed Areas: Selected Applications in Makiling Forest Reserve

The valuation of resources found in the watershed area is important in assessing the impacts of changes in the watershed. While the change will have positive impacts which are short-term in nature, there are long-term environmental damages associated with economic benefits. This paper gives a rational judgment on the soundness of such changes through cost and benefit analysis. The watershed approach is utilized to capture the effects that are relevant in the analysis.forestry sector, watershed, uplands

Valuation of Forest Resources in Watershed Areas: Selected Applications in Makiling Forest Reserve

The valuation of resources found in the watershed area is important in assessing the impacts of changes in the watershed. While the change will have positive impacts which are short-term in nature, there are long-term environmental damages associated with economic benefits. This paper gives a rational judgment on the soundness of such changes through cost and benefit analysis. The watershed approach is utilized to capture the effects that are relevant in the analysis.forestry sector, watershed, uplands

The Militarized Society and the Law

La sauvegarde de la sécurité nationale est le prétexte le plus souvent avancé par certains pays pour justifier la militarisation de leur société. Dans nombre de pays en voie de développement, c'est au nom de la sécurité nationale que les droits humains les plus fondamentaux sont bafoués. La doctrine de la sécurité nationale fournit la base idéologique d'une conception de l'État opposant ce dernier à la collectivité des pouvoirs. La loi martiale engendre sa propre logique inconciliable avec celle qui soutend les droits humains, notamment dans les pays du sud-est asiatique où les droits humains ne sont pas constitutionnalisés. L'auteur traite de la protection des droits humains dans les États militarisés et plus spécifiquement aux Philippines, où l'arrivée au pouvoir du gouvernement actuel permet d'espérer l'instauration d'une véritable démocratie conciliant les exigences du développement et le respect des droits humains

Polyethylene-based anion exchange membrane for alkaline fuel cell and electrolyser application : synthesis, characterisation and degradation studies

PhD ThesisAlkaline anion exchange membranes (AAEM) have been fabricated using polyethylene as the base polymer offering a low cost AAEM for electrolyser and fuel cell applications. This study focused on the synthesis and characterisation of AAEM with controlled degree of grafting (DOG) and ion-exchange capacity (IEC) with the following parameters investigated: low density polyethylene (LDPE) film thickness 30-130 μm, gamma radiation dose and monomer concentration. The corresponding IEC, water uptake (WU) and degree of swelling (DS) are reported. The performance of 74.6% DOG membrane in a hydrogen fuel cell showed a high open circuit voltage of 1.06 V, with a peak power density of 608 mW cm-2 at 50 °C under oxygen. The use of a membrane with a high DOG does not impact fuel cross-over significantly and provides improved fuel cell performance due to its high conductivity, water transport and resilience to dehydration. The AAEMs showed long term stability, at 80 °C, exhibiting a conductivity of ca. 0.11 S cm-1 over a period of 3300 h under nitrogen. The membrane showed a degradation rate of 5.7 and 24.3 mS kh-1 under nitrogen and oxygen, respectively. With the membrane lifetime defined as the duration of fuel cell operation until the conductivity of the membrane has reduced to a cut-off value of 0.02 S cm-1, the estimated lifetime of the membrane is 2 years under nitrogen and 5 months under oxygen operating at 80 °C. The fabricated anion exchange membranes were subjected to degradation tests in deionised water for electrolyser/fuel cell operation. After the degradation test, the decrease in ion exchange capacity (IEC) of the AEM, hence decrease in ionic conductivity, was influenced by the applied gamma radiation dose rate. The use of a high radiation dose rate produced membranes with improved stability in terms of % IEC loss due to shorter, more uniformly distributed vinylbenzyl chloride (VBC) grafts. For LDPE-based AEMs, increasing the applied radiation dose rate during grafting from 30 to 2000 Gy h-1 significantly reduced AEM % IEC loss from 38 to 11%, respectively. Analyses of both the aged functionalised membranes and their resulting degradation products confirmed the loss of not only the functional group, but also the VBC group, which has not been reported previously in the literature. Investigation of other amine functional groups revealed similar degradation via the removal of both VBC and head group. Oxidation reactions iii taking place at pH close to neutral are the main contributor to the IEC loss, in contrast to the widely reported E2 or SN2 attack on the head group in high alkalinity solutions. A parallel degradation mechanism is proposed to explain head group loss of AEMs, that involves peroxide radicals which are more dominant in low alkalinity solutions. The investigation of the degradation of a commercially available AEM (A201, Tokuyama Corp.) was performed and compared with the fabricated LDPE AEMs. Using similar membrane thickness, results revealed that the fabricated AEM exhibited superior stability to the commercial A201 membrane in terms of % IEC loss and ionic conductivity, both in fuel cell and electrolyser modes. It is believed that the faster degradation rate of the A201 membrane could possibly be due to the attack of OH- ions on both the head group and on the polymer backbone, the latter of which was not observed on the fabricated AEMs.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)and the Philippine Department of Science and Technology (DOST) through the Engineering Research and Development for Technology Program (ERDT) for funding my PhD fellowship

Public versus Private Education in Hawaii

This study presents a time-series evidence on the timing and degree of feedback relationship between participation in education and income growth in Hawaii. Using the unrestricted vector autoregression approach and two related measures of linear dependence and feedback, the results suggest that across all educational levels, i.e., K-12 and tertiary, participation in public education could be a good predictor of income growth in Hawaii. However, decomposing the feedback effect by frequency suggests that the dominance of public education over private education in explaining the variation in income growth to be concentrated mainly on the short-run to medium-run for tertiary level and long-run to permanent effect for K-12 level. Hawaii state legislature and educators should perhaps take these results as a motivation not to ignore the problems plaguing Hawaii's public schools but should work towards greater improvement and support for public education given its predicted significant overall contribution to the Hawaiian economy

Early Childhood iPad Use and Effects on Visual Spatial Attention Span

Despite the rising prevalence of mobile media in young children’s lives, little research exists that examines the effects of mobile media use on early childhood cognitive development. This study will explore how mobile media use, specifically iPad use, in early childhood affects development of visual spatial attention span. Researchers will recruit 160 participants, ages 3 to 6, and categorize them into three groups: TV viewers only, interactive iPad users, and passive iPad users. Children will complete a computer task to measure the length of their visual spatial attention span. Parents will report on the average daily amount of media use, their child’s top three most viewed or used programs and apps, and the pervasiveness of media use, as well as complete a demographics survey. Research assistants will rate the level of exogenous stimuli children are exposed to in their top three programs and apps. Researchers predict that iPad use will be associated with shorter visual spatial attention spans in comparison to TV viewing, due to longer amounts of use, higher levels of exogenous stimuli, and higher levels of pervasiveness. In addition, researchers hypothesize that interactive iPad use will correlate with the shortest visual spatial attention spans due to highest levels of exogenous stimuli and longest amounts of use. The results will help parents and educators to more effectively monitor young children’s mobile media usage

(E)Racing Youth: The Racialized Construction of California\u27s Proposition 21 and the Development of Alternate Contestations

Illustrating the way in which conceptions of race and crime shape and are shaped by law is California\u27s Proposition 21. Enacted in 2000, Proposition 21, also known as the Gang Violence and Juvenile Crime Prevention Act, was the product of California\u27s direct democratic process through which voters are able to change the California Constitution through a simple majority vote. Part II address the ideological foundations of direct democracy and examines critically its ability to serve a democratic function. I examine the founders\u27 rationale behind the decision not to employ a representative form of government, and look at direct democracy in California and the theoretical underpinning behind it. I argue that direct democracy has been used to oppress minority groups, partly due to the undermining of the structural protections in a representative form of government and that further, in the case of California, the racial impact of direct democracy was conceived at the inception of the system. Part III examines the socio-political landscape surrounding Proposition 21. I examine how the proposition system in California has been used to subjugate racial minorities throughout its history. Part IV highlights Proposition 21 and examines the discourse that surrounded youths, race, gangs, and crime at the time of the legislation and analyzes the rhetoric employed in the campaign. Part V looks to how this legislation has been challenged, both through traditional litigation and through progressive tactics. I evaluate the strategies\u27 liberatory potential and argue that creating greater transparency in racial dialogue is important from an anti-subordination standpoint and argue that this is necessary to mobilize and empower those most affected by these laws, to create the social change necessary to rectify racial injustice and contest the current discourse on race and class in society. I conclude with some suggestions on how to best build coalitions and steps that need to be taken to move forward with the struggle

“Do you know what a tower is?” The Crisis of 9/11 Remembrance Pedagogy in Samira Makhmalbaf’s God, Construction and Destruction

For Deborah Britzman and Alice Pitt (2004), “difficult knowledge” “signif[ies] the relations between representations of social trauma in curriculum and the individual's encounters with them in pedagogy” (p. 354). Difficult knowledge thus poses a twofold crisis for and of education. The remembrance of historical trauma is a crisis for education, since teaching and learning about such events are necessary when addressing their myriad legacies. It is also a crisis of education because the practices of teaching about and learning from traumatic experiences are themselves constituted by the events that education represents through pedagogy and curriculum. This paper takes up Britzman’s concept of “difficult knowledge” as it is embodied in the film God, Construction and Destruction. In particular, the paper unpacks the concept of difficult knowledge as it relates to the film’s aim of making 9/11 remembrance pedagogy more ethically accountable. This paper argues that the film’s portrayal of a “failed” lesson on 9/11 demonstrates how “strategic memorial practices” (Simon, Rosenberg, and Eppert, 2000, p. 3) risk equating 9/11 remembrance pedagogy with hegemonic and nationalist forms of remembrance that foreclose the crises that difficult knowledge otherwise poses. In its investigation into the futures of 9/11 remembrance pedagogy, the paper addresses three issues that preoccupy Makhmalbaf’s film: distinguishing between “learning from” versus “learning about” traumatic events; historicizing and contextualizing historical trauma; and lastly, assessing the significance of art and artists in education and public remembrance