Explaining Myanmar's Regime Transition: The Periphery is Central

In 2010, Myanmar (Burma) held its first elections after 22 years of direct military rule. Few compelling explanations for this regime transition have emerged. This article critiques popular accounts and potential explanations generated by theories of authoritarian ‘regime breakdown’ and ‘regime maintenance’. It returns instead to the classical literature on military intervention and withdrawal. Military regimes, when not terminated by internal factionalism or external unrest, typically liberalise once they feel they have sufficiently addressed the crises that prompted their seizure of power. This was the case in Myanmar. The military intervened for fear that political unrest and ethnic-minority separatist insurgencies would destroy Myanmar’s always-fragile territorial integrity and sovereignty. Far from suddenly liberalising in 2010, the regime sought to create a ‘disciplined democracy’ to safeguard its preferred social and political order twice before, but was thwarted by societal opposition. Its success in 2010 stemmed from a strategy of coercive state-building and economic incorporation via ‘ceasefire capitalism’, which weakened and co-opted much of the opposition. Having altered the balance of forces in its favour, the regime felt sufficiently confident to impose its preferred settlement. However, the transition neither reflected total ‘victory’ for the military nor secured a genuine or lasting peace

Burma/Myanmar's by-elections : will personalities trump institutions?

For more about the East-West Center, see http://www.eastwestcenter.org/Tin Maung Maung Than, Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, explains that “At this point in time it may be best for Myanmar to let personalities trump institutions, but it is imperative to immediately launch a serious effort to build up viable institutions that will steadily diminish the need for strong personalities to lead the nation.

Regional outlook : Southeast Asia 1999-2000

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Implementation of an Optimized Virtual Traffic Light Algorithm in SUMO

In the future, when all the vehicles will be smart vehicles (SVs) and the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) become mature, the virtual traffic lights system will be more cost-effective than physical traffic lights system. The Virtual Traffic Light (VTL) is a self-organizing traffic control system without requiring road infrastructures. However, the major weakness of the existing VTL algorithm allows only one vehicle crossing the intersection at a time and considers only the straight forward direction of vehicles. This paper implements an optimized VTL algorithm (O-VTL) for road intersections on the Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO) that allows more vehicles to cross the intersection without collision and considers various directions of vehicles. For performance evaluation, the travel time, CO2 emission, and fuel consumption of vehicles applying O-VTL are compared to that of the existing VTL algorithm and physical traffic light system in SUMO. According to the comparison result, the average travel time and fuel consumption of vehicles applying the O-VTL algorithm significantly decrease when compared to the existing VTL algorithm and physical traffic lights

Volcanic Eruption of Twindaung : Environmental Aspect

The project area is situated in Sagaing Region. Volcanic craters in this area are aligned in nearly NE-SW. East Twindaung and Taungbyauk craters are phreatomagmatic cones (maars) and the others are cinder cones. During Pliocene, volcanic rocks of the area first erupted and continued up to Holocene. The type of eruption is Vulcanian type phreatomagmatic eruption. The volcanic eruption of the area can be known by studying the volcanic rocks, sedimentary rocks and rock structures in this area. Type, style, and explosivity of the eruption control its products i.e. volcanic rocks and land-forms of the area. From the geological knowledge of the volcanic eruptions of the area combined with chemical and petrological knowledge of their products (in particular, volcanic rocks) it can be known that the effect of the rock and soils on the environments in connection with composition and properties of soils and rocks. The soils on the exposures of air-fall deposits are potassium rich. Therefore, vegetation grows well. Cultivation of millet, paddy rice and other crops is favorable. The soils occurring directly above the Irrawaddian sandstones are so porous and permeable that the trees are difficult to grow, as a result, scarcity of vegetation on them

Contribution of focal haemorrhage and microvascular fibrin deposition to fatal envenoming by Russell's viper (Vipera russelli siamensis) in Burma.

In Burma, clinicopathological studies were carried out in three young farmers who died 15, 52 and 36 h after being bitten by Russell's vipers. Clinical features included local swelling, spontaneous systemic bleeding, defibrination, shock, cardiac arrhythmia, hypoglycaemia, coma and oliguria. On admission to hospital, 15, 48 and 21 h after the bites, serum venom antigen concentrations ranged from 50 to 130 ng/ml. Autopsies revealed widespread congestion and bleeding in the lungs, gastrointestinal and renal tracts, adrenals, heart, brain and anterior pituitary. There was histopathological evidence of focal haemorrhage and fibrin deposition at the site of the bite and in the pituitary, lungs and kidneys and acute tubular necrosis. Deposition of fibrin microthrombi results from the action of venom procoagulants. Shock was attributed to increased capillary permeability, revealed clinically by conjunctival oedema. Acute pituitary/adrenal failure in one case was explained by fibrin deposition and haemorrhage in the anterior pituitary--resembling Sheehan's syndrome. Acute tubular necrosis resulted from ischaemia caused by fibrin deposition and to prerenal factors. An intractable cardiac tachyarrhythmia may have been caused by subendocardial and myocardial haemorrhages