Greening the WTO's Disputes Settlement Understanding: Opportunities and Risks

It is reasonable to ask whether the WTO’s rules may hamper the ability of national and sub-national governments to be genuine pacesetters in environmental law making. Environmentalists consider that the WTO’s disputes panels may encourage governments to converge to the relevant international standard for a particular risk regulation because such uniformity is likely to reduce the incidence of trade disputes. Proposals that go beyond environmental advocacy and greater transparency in the WTO’s disputes settlement process—changes such as a weakening of the sound science requirement and incorporating stronger forms of the precautionary principle into WTO agreements on biosecurity laws—reduce due process safeguards against disguised regulatory protectionism in New Zealand’s agricultural export markets.World Trade Organization, trade disputes, environment, conservation, New Zealand

Three Steps Towards More Effective Development Assistance

There are three steps New Zealand can take to make its bilateral development assistance more effective in reducing poverty. These steps are ‘easy’ because they are unilateral: they improve the effectiveness of development assistance without requiring changes in the politics or policies of developing countries. By far the most important of these three steps is to focus New Zealand’s bilateral aid on those poor countries that are democracies pursing policies of market-led growth. One of the major findings of recent research is that development aid only reinforces what is already there. New Zealand should accept the developing countries as it finds them and pick and choose so that it helps those already helping themselves.aid effectiveness, autocracy, democracy, development, New Zealand

Global Connectedness and Bilateral Economic Linkages - Which Countries?

Access to off-shore markets, technology, and ideas are important to greater productivity and higher living standards in New Zealand. Global connectedness requires deep and rich links with other countries. However, as a small country, we only have the resources to focus on a handful of countries. Are there a key set of countries with which New Zealand should be seeking to form deeper bilateral economic relationships? This paper reviews the benefits from deeper external bilateral economic engagements using the insights from the new literature on economic growth, which place great importance on trade; international integration, human capital, and local and cross-border knowledge spillovers from research and development (R&D) and foreign direct investment (FDI). This paper will then use insights from the new literature on economic growth to develop criteria for selecting countries as partners for deeper bilateral economic linkages across six global connectedness dimensions: FDI, R&D links, trade in goods, inbound tourism, education exports, and people linkages. To account for the growing role of a number of economies in global trade, the partner selection criteria will identify two groupings of target countries. The first grouping is focus countries: those countries that are of immediate interest for deeper bilateral linkages. The second country grouping is horizon countries: countries that are likely to grow in their importance to New Zealand over the next 10 to 20 years. The key message of this paper is a greater bilateral economic focus by New Zealand on the major economies along the Asia-Pacific Rim (and the UK). When external initiatives come before decision-makers, they should be seen through a lens that places greater confidence in proposals for deeper relationships with the Asia-Pacific Rim countries (or the UK), and greater scrutiny of proposals that emphasise other regions and countries.economic growth; trade; economic integration; migration; technology diffusion; New Zealand

Identifying and teaching children and young people with dyslexia and literacy difficulties : an independent report

This UK report focuses on the identification of dyslexia among students and the possible intervention approaches that can be made by teachers and parents. The report recommends professional development courses for teachers to enable them to select and implement appropriate literacy programs. The report also recommends that all teachers have the opportunity to develop core skills in literacy intervention; that selected teachers at each school should have further specialised knowledge; and that local experts with highly advanced literacy knowledge and skills are available to be accessed by others in the region

HSR high lift research program: Status and plans

The viewgraphs for a report on the status and plans for High Speed Research (HSR) programs are provided. Benefits of improved high lift performance are listed. The objectives, approach, and experimental results are outlined. Future experimental tests and additional research opportunities are listed. The use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in high lift research is also outlined

The environmental dependence of neutral hydrogen content in spiral galaxies

We present a study of the relationship between the deficiency of neutral hydrogen and the local three-dimensional number density of spiral galaxies in the Arecibo catalog of global HI measurements (Springob et al. 2005). We find that the dependence on density of the HI content is weak at low densities, but increases sharply at high densities where interactions between galaxies and the intra-cluster medium become important. This behavior is reminiscent of the morphology-density relation (Dressler 1980) in that the effect manifests itself only at cluster-type densities, and indeed when we plot both the HI deficiency-density and morphology-density relations, we see that the densities at which they "turn up" are similar. This suggests that the physical mechanisms responsible for the increase in early types in clusters are also responsible for the decrease in HI content.Comment: To appear in AIP Conference Proceedings, "The Evolution of Galaxies through the Neutral Hydrogen Window", Feb 1-3 2008, Arecibo, Puerto Rico, eds. R. Minchin & E. Momjian. 3 pages, 2 figure

English language teaching and English-medium instruction

The role of English language teaching (ELT) in English-medium instruction (EMI) can vary widely depending on education policy objectives and teachers’ responses to EMI students’ language and learning needs. In this paper, we provide a narrative review of a growing number of studies reporting language-related challenges as the foremost barrier to successful implementation of EMI. Such research highlights the fundamental roles that English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Specific Purposes have in the provision of targeted language support for EMI students. Based on this review, we set a future research agenda, calling for explorations into the efficacy of English language programs for supporting EMI students to reach educational outcomes. We also call for explorations of greater collaboration between English language practitioners and content lecturers to ensure the right type of language support is being provided to students. The paper ends with a discussion for the need to reposition EAP as English for Specific Academic Purposes to ensure students’ specific academic needs are met. Essentially, universities offering EMI will need to account for their unique institutional characteristics to ensure ELT provision is central in organizational and curricular structures; otherwise, they may be setting their own students up to fail

Disentangling Deregulatory Takings

This Article focuses on the protections for infrastructure investors provided by the United States Constitution\u27s Takings Clause and on the wisdom of incorporating such protections into the constitutions of other nation states. The Takings Clause is an example of a state-established background norm that limits the government\u27s ability to undermine the profitability of private property. In the United States, this norm is an implicit term in every contract and provides a kind of guarantee against certain types of state actions. The state is required to pay compensation when it takes property for public use

Global Englishes and language teaching: a review of pedagogical research

The rise of English as a global language has led scholars to call for a paradigm shift in the field of English language teaching to match the new sociolinguistic landscape of the 21st century. In recent years a considerable amount of classroom-based research and language teacher education research has emerged to investigate these proposals in practice. This paper outlines key proposals for change in language teaching from the related fields of World Englishes, English as a lingua franca, English as an International Language, and Global Englishes, and critically reviews the growing body of pedagogical research conducted within these domains. Adopting the methodology of a systematic review, 58 empirical articles published between 2010-2020 were short-listed, of which 38 were given an in-depth critical review and contextualized within a wider body of literature. Synthesis of classroom research suggests a current lack of longitudinal designs, an underuse of direct measures to explore the effects of classroom interventions, and under-representation of contexts outside of university language classrooms. Synthesis of teacher education research suggests future studies need to adopt more robust methodological designs which measure the effects of Global Englishes content on teacher beliefs and pedagogical practices both before and throughout the program, and after teachers return to the classroom