The Canadian Military And The Environment. Environmental Protection And Sustainable Development In The Military: A Glimpse Behind The Curtain

In this paper, I explore the role of the military in relation to environmental sustainability, internationally and in Canada. The Department of National Defence (DND) and Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) are analyzed in regards to their motives and goals as well as the Canadian laws they abide by in order to ensure environmental protection and sustainable development as well as their intent to minimize their ecological footprint. Particular attention is given to the roles of the Office of the Auditor General and Commissioner for the Environment and Sustainable Development in overseeing the environmental performance of the Canadian military. The roles of departmental Sustainable Development Strategies (SDS) and the Federal Sustainable Development Strategy (FSDS) are also examined

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TOURISM AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN THE EUROPEAN CONTEXT

Issues of European tourism industry have become to the fore in recent years, partly as a result of political and economic moves towards increasing European integration and unity. Having into consideration these facts, we propose in this article to analyzetourism, sustainable development, European challenges

A PERSPECTIVE ON THE ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN NEIGHBORHOOD POLICY IN THE PAN-EUROPEAN INTEGRATION

The European Neighbourhood Policy introduces a new approach in the EU external relations with its interest neighbourhood; its strategic role is to provide a system which can allow the Union to set its external limits, without risking having new dividing lEuropean Neighborhood Policy, European Union, Pan-European Integration

15 Years of Urban Education in Romania

Traditionally, urban education in Romania has been part of architectural education. A first distinctive planning department has been created in the early '40s in the Faculty of Architecture. Planning education developed later on within the Institute of Architecture and Systematization "Ion Mincu" in Bucharest, as an important component of the syllabus. A significant change occurred, after the fall of the communist regime, in 1997, when a Faculty of Urbanism was set up in the same Institute of Architecture - which became later on the University of Architecture and Urbanism. Setting up of a separate faculty represented a step forward towards a more profound specialisation and diversification of education in urban planning. However, strong connections with architectural education were preserved through a number of common classes, projects and methodological approaches. Since 2005 the Faculty of Urbanism shifted to Bologna system, by developing distinctive bachelor (1st cycle) and master (2nd cycle) programmes. Recently, there have been established a number of 6 professional competencies for 1st cycle programmes among which urban and landscape design. The paper is aiming to presenting the evolution urban education in Romania, with a clear focus on the new system established 15 years ago, analysing its main characteristics and investigating its connections with the architectural education and connected fields

ROMANIAN FOREIGN TRADE - A REGIONAL PERSPECTIVE

The increasing integration of Romania in the global economy is a reality of the last years, proved through a constant growth of the foreign trade with other countries, which exceeded, in terms ofdynamics, both GDP and industrial production. In the first part of our paper, we intend to analyze the evolution of Romanian foreign trade in the period 1995-2007, focusing on the proportions of the imports and exports, at regional level. We wish to emphasize the correlations between the indicators that describe the degree of openness to foreign trade and indicators of competitiveness and specialization in different industries. The main goal of our approach is to highlight the sectors which generate comparative advantages and potential competitiveness poles, contributing significantly to the increase of the Romanian economy, expressed in GDP/capita. In the second part of the paper, based on the frame of analysis and interpretation defined and implemented in the first part, we intend to establish if the agglomeration processes in some regions of ourcountry will lead gradually to the strengthening of growth poles and, therefore to boost the foreign trade.foreign trade, regional specialization, openness degree, comparative advantage, competitiveness

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TOURISM AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN THE EUROPEAN CONTEXT

Issues of European tourism industry have become to the fore in recent years, partly as a result of political and economic moves towards increasing European integration and unity. Having into consideration these facts, we propose in this article to analyz

Primordial Black Holes as Generators of Cosmic Structures

Primordial black holes (PBHs) could provide the dark matter in various mass windows below $10^2 M_{\odot}$ and those of $30 M_{\odot}$ might explain the LIGO events. PBHs much larger than this might have important consequences even if they provide only a small fraction of the dark matter. In particular, they could generate cosmological structure either individually through through the `seed' effect or collectively through the `Poisson' effect, thereby alleviating some problems associated with the standard CDM scenario. If the PBHs all have a similar mass and make a small contribution to the dark matter, then the seed effect dominates on small scales, in which case PBHs could seed the supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei or even galaxies themselves. If they have a similar mass and provide the dark matter, the Poisson effect dominates on all scales and the first bound clouds would form earlier than in the usual scenario, with interesting observational consequences. If the PBHs have an extended mass spectrum, which is more likely, they could fulfill all three roles - providing the dark matter, binding the first bound clouds and generating galaxies. In this case, the galactic mass function naturally has the observed form, with the galaxy mass being simply related to the black hole mass. The stochastic gravitational wave background from the PBHs in this scenario would extend continuously from the LIGO frequency to the LISA frequency, offering a potential goal for future surveys.Comment: 48 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of Royal Astronomical Societ

Regions and the Territorial Cohesion

Territorial cohesion is an important target of European Union, constantly promoted by its institutions and their representatives. In the context of the Europe 2020 strategy, one of the most important support documents, the region represents a very important issue, being considered to be the key to its successfulness. The region is seen as a support for the smart growth and all the operational policy concepts try to make use of the spatial potential, by taking better account of the territorial specificities. Two main questions play attention: the need to transform the present-day developmental regions into administrative ones is a priority? What kind of regionalization it must to be promoted? Correlating these issues with already defined territorial cohesion, the administrative region is a real tool for the future territorial development. The experience of the last 14 years asks urgently the building of a new territorial administrative reform, giving competences to regions. For instant, each development region is a construction resulted from a free association of the counties. Their role in the regional development is much reduced one, because their regional councils are not elected; decisions taken at this level are consultative for the social, economical, cultural or political actors

Railway freight node capacity evaluation: A timetable-saturation approach and its application to the Novara freight terminal

Abstract This paper presents a timetable-based approach to assess the capacity of a railway freight node, based on the microscopic simulation and saturation of the timetable. Saturation is done by scheduling additional saturation train paths without introducing any traffic conflict, while respecting the required technical and operational constraints, until no more paths can be added. The approach is applied to analyze the potential effects on capacity of some infrastructure improvements planned by Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (RFI) for the rail freight node of Novara, Italy. The capacity is evaluated by means of two KPIs computed on saturated timetables: the number of daily pairs of saturation freight trains and the infrastructure Occupancy Time Rate (OTR). The first KPI represents an absolute estimation of the capacity (theoretical or practical, depending on the presence of buffer times). Instead, the OTR is computed by the UIC 406R compression method and it is used to identify local bottlenecks. For the analysis, we use SASTRE, an analysis environment for railway systems developed at Politecnico di Torino, which combines a MILP formulation for the timetable saturation problem with a saturation strategy layer. The saturation strategy considers a given set of priorities between the different network areas and the train types to be used during the saturation process. The results reveal that using a microscopic model to schedule traffic flows on a complex railway node allows for a good accuracy of the timetable, but at a high computational cost

A Comparative Study on Changes in the Spatial Industry Agglomeration in Eastern EU Developing Countries: Romania vs. Bulgaria

Taking a closer look at the spatial distribution of industrial sectors, it becomes quite obvious that there is an increasing disposition for industries to concentrate in certain regions in order to benefit of agglomeration assets. In this context, we consider necessary to analyze how industrial agglomerations have evolved over time and to what extent major transformations have affected agglomeration phenomenon in lagging regions of Eastern countries, finally our paper bringing supportive evidence from Romania and Bulgaria. To what extent, have patterns of industrial agglomeration modified during the transition period? Has relocation of economic activities taken place? What are the main determinants of industrial concentration patterns? These are some crucial questions that we try to find a realistic response through the present paper. Eastern economies are notably challenging from this point of view because they experienced several decades long economic development period which was earmarked by socialist industrialization. Under the planned economy, these countries have faced more barriers to an efficient geographical allocation of economic activities across regions than their peers in the Western Europe especially because they faced the legacy of a planned economy system that determined locations for economic activities based on political decisions, not based on economic efficiency. Thus, our effort can be seen as a contribution to knowledge about agglomeration in the non-Western countries in general, and in developing regions in particular. Focusing our study on two-digit industrial sectors of 14 regions at NUTS2 level, this paper aims to identify and explain the changes regarding the evolution of industrial agglomerations in the last years across Romania compared to Bulgaria. In the end, our analysis will be able to conclude in what manner the effects of transition period influenced the patterns of industrial agglomeration in these two neighboring countries