Environmental Performance of Canadian Pulp and Paper Plants: Why Some Do Well and Others Do Not ?

It is generally recognized that firms face both internal and external pressure to improve their environmental performance. However, few studies have attempted to delineate the importance of those various sources of pressure as firms' managers themselves perceive them. In this study, we show that managers in the Canadian pulp and paper industry perceive government and public, but not financial and consumer markets, as the most important source of pressure. We also show that involvement of the firm's higher level management and environmental education of employees are important determinants of the firm's performance. While the paper provides a better understanding of the determinants of environmental performance, it re-asserts the crucial role of strong government regulatory intervention. Il est généralement reconnu que les firmes font face à des pressions internes et externes pour qu'elles améliorent leur performance environnementale. Cependant, peu d'études ont tenté d'identifier l'importance de ces différentes sources de pression tel que les gestionnaires les perçoivent. Dans cette étude, nous montrons que les directeurs «environnement» de l'industrie canadienne des pâtes et papiers perçoivent le gouvernement et le public comme les sources de pression les plus importantes, devant les marchés financiers et les consommateurs. Nous montrons également que l'implication de la haute direction à l'égard de l'environnement et la formation des employés par rapport à la problématique environnementale sont des déterminants importants de la performance environnementale. Cette recherche nous aide donc à mieux comprendre les déterminants de la performance environnementale et elle permet de réaffirmer le rôle crucial joué par une intervention gouvernementale vigoureuse dans le domaine.Environmental performance, Environmental policy, Environmental audit, Performance environnementale, Politique environnementale, Audit environnementalhttp://www.google.ca/search?q=comparaison+jet+d%27encre&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=40&sa=N

Techniques of Making Public: The Sensorium Through Eating and Walking

In this article, Doonan analyzes two performances presented by the SensoriuM, a collaborative participatory art platform in Montreal, Quebec. In doing so, she shows how the SensoriuM makes public through curatorial and dramaturgical practice. By making public, she refers to the active translation of materiality into representational forms, and also to the assembling of humans and non-humans in participatory performance. Doonan describes the concrete audiences bounded by the live events, as well as the more amorphous and immeasurable publics that are brought into being through the circulation of texts, including digital images, videos, and oral presentations. Drawing from science and technology studies and more-than-human geographies, she explores “epistemic publics,” or the animal, organic and machinic configurations that come into being in the process of creating (objects of) knowledge. Doonan analyzes two specific performances: Midsummer Mile End Foraging Tour and Hunter, Gatherer, Purveyor to show how these processes of making public are enacted. Both performances use food as a medium to complicate and undo binaries of public/private, self/other, domestic/wild, depressed/revitalized. The meanings and uses of particular places are brought into question through embodied and symbolic means. Doonan argues that these performances work to de-design the city by queering its dominant discourses and creating intimate spaces of exchange.Dans cette contribution, Doonan analyse deux performances du SensoriuM, une plateforme collective d’art participatif à Montréal, afin de montrer comment le SensoriuM façonne son public au moyen de pratiques curatoriales et dramaturgiques. Pour Doonan, façonner son public signifie une traduction active de matérialités en formes représentationnelles et l’assemblage d’humains et de non-humains dans des spectacles participatifs. Doonan décrit les publics concrets que délimitent les événements en direct, de même que les publics plus amorphes et impossibles à mesurer qui naissent grâce à la circulation de textes, incluant les images numériques, les vidéos et les présentations orales. S’inspirant des sciences et des technologies ainsi que des géographies plus qu’humaines, elle explore le concept des « publics épistémiques », ces configurations animales, organiques ou machiniques issues du processus de création (d’objets) du savoir. Par l’analyse de deux productions, Midsummer Mile End Foraging Tour et Hunter, Gatherer, Purveyor, Doonan montre comment ces processus sont mis en œuvre. Les deux prestations se servent de la nourriture comme médium pour problématiser et détruire une série de binaires : public/privé, soi/autre, indigène/sauvage, en déclin/revitalisé. La signification et le recours à des lieux spécifiques sont remis en question par des moyens concrets et symboliques. Doonan fait valoir que ces prestations opèrent une dé-conception de la ville en injectant une dimension « queer » aux discours dominants et en créant des lieux d’échange intimes

Integrating geochemical survey, ethnography and organic residue analysis to identify and understand areas of foodstuff processing

In this paper we explore the integration of science-based and ethnographic approaches that respond to the need to consider ancient economy and subsistence in the Greek world on a landscape level. It is particularly important to be in a position to understand changes and developments in the processes associated with the preparation of food as well as agro-industrial commodities such as wine and olive oil. While ancient economic and subsistence patterns are traditionally and most effectively investigated where animal and plant remains have been recovered from excavation, our strategy is less direct; operating by proxy, it is well suited in the first instance to archaeological field survey. Having first determined the soils’ chemical signatures and the identity of pottery residues, a comparison will then be made with data obtained from ethnographic surveys of abandoned 20th-century farmsteads and workplaces, where particular activities are known to have taken place. Integrating these approaches, our work is applying them to archaeological field survey, specifically the current project on the city of Sikyon and its vicinity in the North Peloponnese

Cyst nematode resistance and seed yield of soybean lines derived from SS97-6946

New sources of resistance to the soybean cyst nematode (SCN) (Heterodera glycines Ichinohe) would be useful for soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] cultivar development. The objective of this study was to determine the relationship between SCN resistance and seed yield for a new source of SCN resistance, SS97-6946, developed by the Univ. of Missouri-Columbia. F5-derived lines were developed from the cross of SS97-6946 x S27-T7, a SCN-susceptible cultivar developed by Syngenta. Nine sets of 32 F5:8 lines each were evaluated for yield in replicated tests at five Midwest locations during 2007. The lines were evaluated for resistance to four HG types of SCN populations in growth rooms by determining their female index, which was the number of cysts on the roots of a line relative to a SCN-susceptible cultivar. There were six out of the 36 combinations of sets and HG types that had significant negative phenotypic correlations between yields of the lines and their female indexes. This indicated that the lines with the highest yield tended to have lower female indexes and greater SCN resistance, and that SS97-6946 would be a useful source of SCN resistance for soybean cultivar development

Protecting The Medium-Sized Buisness Computer

Computers were first introduced into our lives in 1944, when the first one was designed and built for the Army. They were able to process simple information faster than man, allowing him to concentrate on more difficult problems. Progress came quickly and the first commercial use of the computer was in 1954. Today, computers are recognized as having a tremendous influence on our daily lives. They have been successfully incorporated into almost every aspect of human endeavor. Computer crime is an unfortunate reality in today\u27s world. If the crime is detected at all, the loss may very well run into the millions of dollars. There are countless threats of penetration to a computer system. The dataprocessing manager must do his best, within company constraints, to combat these different threats. These threats come from a variety of sources. The internal threats can range from embezzlement, fraud, blackmail or program substitution/contamination. External threats can take the form of direct sabotage, wiretapping, program modification or natural disaster. A variety of different protective techniques and devices can be implemented to guard against system penetration. It is up to the manager to decide what is the best alternative to suit his needs. Guarded entrances, sign-in/sign-out logs and separation of duties could be an effective protection against internal tampering. If these fail, the manager would have to employ more stringent controls over computer access. Strict password control could help discourage outsider penetration. Encryption/decryption devices will however, become a strong deterrence to outsider penetration in the near future. Should a crime be committed against the computer system, there is little legal resource available. Current laws are inadequate as written and need to be updated and strengthened if the penalty is ever going to match the crime. The information contained in this study consists of a variety of secondary sources. These include current periodicals, library textbooks, newspapers and journals. No computer system can be totally secure from penetration but with tight controls, the chance of hostile penetration is greatly reduced to an acceptable level. Security is everyone\u27s business when working with the system. Management and employees must become involved if the security procedures are going to be effective

An Analysis of Dialogue for Understanding Educators\u27 Stress: Implications for Voice, Listening and Leadership

Research indicates that educator stress is a widespread phenomenon that not only impacts the educational community, but society at large. This being the case, there is an urgent need to consider this phenomenon within responsible school leadership. In particular, understanding what creates stress for educators, and learning more about leadership responses that would support educators under stress, are critical to more holistic school leadership, and for enabling teachers to envision a viable future for themselves. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine how school principals and colleagues might respond to educators coping with professional stress, so that they can concomitantly support the educators\u27 needs, the needs of the educational community, and the society at large. Clearly, educator stress is not simply a local issue for a particular teacher, at a particular moment in time, but for the whole of a career. Problems of educator stress affect the community of students, staff, parents, and the educator\u27s family. Educator stress has a debilitating effect on the educator\u27s personal well-being, performance in the classroom, and the process of education. Much has been written about various aspects of the teaching environment considered fertile for producing stress. Quantitative studies have examined job-related stressors for teachers, linking organizational variables with the experience of stress. However, a qualitative study, such as this, with the intent of developing understanding of the leadership wisdom which might be gleaned from the stories of teachers who have coped well with stress, may enrich the existing research. This research is a qualitative, phenomenologically-based interview study of six experienced public school teachers reporting to have undergone a prolonged time of workplace stress, to understand their responses to stress. This research discovers what factors they believe enabled them to triumph over stress. As such, this research examines their relationships with school principals or significant colleagues in order to determine if these relationships exacerbated or alleviated their stress. The findings of this study reveal the critical importance of school leaders establishing trusting, caring, and supportive relationships with educators so that educators are able to give voice to their experience. Thus, dialogue is key for building collaborative educational communities that flourish. Furthermore, school principals need to recognize, encourage, and empower educators in their work. Moreover, in order to manage workplace stress, educators need to balance their workplace needs with their personal life, and maintain a healthy mind, a healthy body, and a healthy spirit to address stress. The findings of this study offers leaders and educators new awarenesses that might be useful in building school communities in which both children and teachers might prosper, and in which teachers would better sense a viable future in their work

Editorial::Phenomics

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Using hinged ligands to target structurally flexible copper(II) MOFs

First published online 23 Aug 2013Here we report two new flexible MOFs based on a bis-pyrazolylmethane 'hinged' link design that favours the formation of two distinct structural nodes within the resulting 2-D and 3-D structures. The less sterically demanding ligand H₂bcppm affords a 2-D layered MOF, {Cu₂[Cuˡˡ(NO₃)₂(bcppm)₂](DMF)₂}•2DMF (1), constructed from copper(II) paddlewheel and mononuclear octahedral copper(II) nodes. The use of a more sterically encumbered tetramethyl analogue H₂bcpdmpm induces a dramatic twisting of the ligand backbone that yields a 3-D MOF{Cu₄[Cuˡ(bcpdmpm)₂]₂(EtOH)₂(H₂O)₂}(NO₃)₂•12DMF (2) formed from a very similar mix of nodes, specifically copper(II) paddlewheel clusters and mononuclear tetrahedrally coordinated copper(I) centres. Herein we describe the crystal structures, solid-state flexibility, and gas adsorption properties of both materials.Witold M. Bloch, Christian J. Doonan and Christopher J. Sumb

Kinesins have a dual function in organizing microtubules during both tip growth and cytokinesis in Physcomitrella patens

Microtubules (MTs) play a crucial role in the anisotropic deposition of cell wall material, thereby affecting the direction of growth. A wide range of tip-growing cells display highly polarized cell growth, and MTs have been implicated in regulating directionality and expansion. However, the molecular machinery underlying MT dynamics in tip-growing plant cells remains unclear. Here, we show that highly dynamic MT bundles form cyclically in the polarized expansion zone of the moss Physcomitrella patens caulonemal cells through the coalescence of growing MT plus ends. Furthermore, the plant-specific kinesins (KINID1) that are is essential for the proper MT organization at cytokinesis also regulate the turnover of the tip MT bundles as well as the directionality and rate of cell growth. The plus ends of MTs grow toward the expansion zone, and KINID1 is necessary for the stability of a single coherent focus of MTs in the center of the zone, whose formation coincides with the accumulation of KINID1. We propose that KINID-dependent MT bundling is essential for the correct directionality of growth as well as for promoting growth per se. Our findings indicate that two localized cell wall deposition processes, tip growth and cytokinesis, previously believed to be functionally and evolutionarily distinct, share common and plant-specific MT regulatory components