THE STOPPING POWER OF WATER: ARE MARITIME STATES MORE LIKELY TO BUCK-PASS THAN LAND POWERS?

While most countries in East Asia have moved closer to the United States to balance against a People’s Republic of China that is increasingly flexing its military capability, several island nations of the Western Pacific have remained relatively passive and have carefully avoided picking sides in this nascent Sino-American competition. Vietnam, which shares a land border with China, is a regional actor that has made remarkable efforts to balance against China. The thesis explores the issue of whether land powers are more likely to balance against Chinese military capabilities than island nations; it is intended to determine if the differences in strategic behavior are related to the geographic setting of various states. The thesis asks if maritime states are more likely to pursue a buck-passing strategy than continental nations. The thesis conducts a comparative study between the strategic behavior of Vietnam as a nation connected to China by a land border and the behavior of Malaysia and the Philippines, which are separated by a maritime obstacle from China. It finds that continental states tend to see “common” threats as more dangerous than do maritime nations. In the language of international relations theory, land powers tend to balance while maritime powers tend to buck-pass. The thesis offers the refinement that as maritime capabilities grow and the “stopping power of water” diminishes, the less viable a buck-passing strategy becomes for island nations.Outstanding ThesisOberstleutnant i.G., German ArmyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Enhancing the Capacity of Community Health Centers to Achieve High Performance

Based on a survey of community health centers, assesses access to care, care coordination, quality improvement efforts, health information technology adoption, and ability to serve as patient-centered medical homes. Suggests policy to strengthen clinics

Cross-border Business in the European Union and Statutory Disclosure Requirements: Using IT as a Catalyst for Further Market Integration

This paper highlights the gap between the opportunities for EU-companies to fully exploittheir freedom of establishment on the one hand and the obstacles flowing from the mainly nationalorganisation of information filing requirements through business registers on the other hand. Fromthe point of view of companies, this gap partly neutralises the efforts replayed both in EU regulationand ECJ jurisprudence to guarantee the freedom of establishment. Companies are not only oftenobliged to file the same information in different countries but, due to the lack of information sharingbetween the countries in which they are established, investors, creditors and other stakeholders maysuffer information asymmetries. We analyse the possible legal approaches towards organising thefiling of information in a network model. The design of a technical solution to improve the crossbordersharing of corporate data in order to decrease administrative burdens on the freedom lies atthe heart of the BRITE project. BRITE wishes to increase the interoperability of business registers,not only with a view to facilitating the cross-border establishment of companies, but also as a toolfor other users (including public authorities) who can benefit from the better dissemination of publiccompany data and the possibility to aggregate data at a European level. We submit that the Europeanlawmakers have not yet fully exploited the possibilities offered by linking national publicinformation systems into networks, although the Transparency Directive does envisage a networkapproach as regards the dissemination of company and financial information by listed companies

Direct contact and authoritarianism as moderators between extended contact and reduced prejudice: Lower threat and greater trust as mediators

Using a representative sample of Dutch adults (N = 1238), we investigated the moderating influence of direct contact and authoritarianism on the potential of extended contact to reduce prejudice. As expected, direct contact and authoritarianism moderated the effect of extended contact on prejudice. Moreover, the third-order moderation effect was also significant, revealing that extended contact has the strongest effect among high authoritarians with low levels of direct contact. We identified trust and perceived threat as the mediating processes underlying these moderation effects. The present study thus attests to the theoretical and practical relevance of reducing prejudice via extended contact. The discussion focuses on the role of extended contact in relation to direct contact and authoritarianism as well as on the importance of trust in intergroup contexts

Customer engagement with digitalized interactive platforms in retailing

Digitalized interactive platforms (DIPs) such as Apple watch, Starbucks apps and Nike+ have seen enormous growth. This study empirically investigates the antecedents and consequences of customer engagement in a digitalized interactive platform of an online shoe retailing start-up. Specifically, we integrate service-dominant logic and self-determination theory to explore the complex relationships between human psychological needs, customer engagement and subjective well-being. We hypothesise that, in case of digitalized interactive platforms, the direct relationship between human psychological needs satisfaction (autonomy, relatedness and competence) and subjective well-being is mediated by customer engagement (cognitive, affective and behavioral). We applied a hybrid SEM-ANN approach to unravel the relationships. Findings show that autonomy and competence have significant relationships with all the dimensions of customer engagement (cognitive, affective and behavioral). Results also show that subjective well-being is not influenced by cognitive engagement but is influenced by affective and behavioral engagement. Theoretical and managerial contributions are discussed

The impact of high frequency/low energy seismic waves on unreinforced masonry

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (p. [85]-87).Traditionally, the high frequency components of earthquake loading are disregarded as a source of structural damage because of their small energy content and because their frequency is too high to resonate with the natural frequencies of structures. This thesis argues that higher frequency waves travelling through stiff masonry structures can trigger two types of failure mechanisms that have not yet been taken into account. First, the high frequencies can cause small vertical inter-stone vibrations that result in irreversible relative displacements of the stones, which may ultimately lead to collapse. The energy needed to cause this deformation and failure comes largely from gravitational forces. The second failure mechanism is associated with the increase of the outward thrust that results from the partial fluidization and densification of the loose granular inner core of some unreinforced masonry walls. Preliminary results of a series of static and dynamic tests, as well as of numerical models, demonstrate the potentially destructive effects of high frequency/low energy seismic waves on unreinforced masonry structures.by Patrik K. Meyer.S.M