An Assessment of Democratic and Non-Democratic Governments’ Effectiveness in Implementing Environmental Policy: A Case Study of the U.S. and China

The United States of America led the world in environmental policy throughout the 20thcentury but recently has relinquished its position as a global leader in international environmental policy, while China, the world’s leader in air pollution, is swiftly becoming the global leader in installing wind, water, and solar energy. Consequentially, this raises the question, do democratic nations lack the willingness and/or ability to enact swift and effective domestic and international environmental policy? First, the paper examines the United States of America as a proxy for both a democratic nation that at times has acted as a global leader in environmental protection and in other times has been unable to agree on an appropriate course of action due to complicated democratic procedures and bipartisanism. Second, this paper examines the foundational aspects that encompass U.S. democracy in order to understand what allowed the U.S to lead in international environmental policy throughout late 20thcentury while also noting that the U.S. government is a unique democratic system. Third, this paper examines the ability and willingness of China’s authoritarian regime to formulate and implement swift environmental policies in recent years, while also noting that china’s governing system is also unique and not representative of all non-democratic nations. Finally, this paper assesses the potential advantages and disadvantages of democratic and authoritarian governments in addressing domestic and global environmental issues. Specifically, this paper will focus on environmental public policy geared towards climate change, greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions, and renewable energy. Furthermore, this paper contends that China’s shift towards sustainable development will act as an avenue for increased international dominance and stability, while the U.S.’s recent environmental policies, or lack thereof, damages the perception of the U. S as a cooperative, progressive leader on the global stage

Point-free Ultrametric Spaces and the Category of Fuzzy Subsets

Some attempts to establish a link between point-free geometry and the categorical approach to fuzzy set theory is exposed. In fact, it is possible to find functors between the category of fuzzy sets as defined by Höhle in [4] and a category whose objects are the pointless ultrametric spaces

Statistical bias correction for daily precipitation in regional climate models over Europe

We design, apply, and validate a methodology for correcting climate model output to produce internally consistent fields that have the same statistical intensity distribution as the observations. We refer to this as a statistical bias correction. Validation of the methodology is carried out using daily precipitation fields, defined over Europe, from the ENSEMBLES climate model dataset. The bias correction is calculated using data from 1961 to 1970, without distinguishing between seasons, and applied to seasonal data from 1991 to 2000. This choice of time periods is made to maximize the lag between calibration and validation within the ERA40 reanalysis period. Results show that the method performs unexpectedly well. Not only are the mean and other moments of the intensity distribution improved, as expected, but so are a drought and a heavy precipitation index, which depend on the autocorrelation spectra. Given that the corrections were derived without seasonal distinction and are based solely on intensity distributions, a statistical quantity oblivious of temporal correlations, it is encouraging to find that the improvements are present even when seasons and temporal statistics are considered. This encourages the application of this method to multi-decadal climate projections

Didattica del ragionamento: un esempio di deduzione logica in ambiente Mathematica

Si mostra come, in un ambiente adeguato per il calcolo simbolico, si possano introdurre elementi di programmazione logica, “traducendo” una teoria in un insieme di definizioni di funzioni. Dal punto di vista didattico, tale riduzione della programmazione logica a programmazione funzionale risulta utile per l’ampliamento dell’uso di strumenti informatici all’ambito della logica matematica. Inoltre, un ulteriore obiettivo è quello di facilitare, attraverso tali strumenti, lo sviluppo di competenze non solo nell’ambito del calcolo numerico-algebrico ma anche in quello dell’ informazione di tipo assertivo-logico. Il nostro punto di vista è che nella sperimentazione didattica sia possibile riferirsi alla logica non solo per quanto riguarda il calcolo proposizionale ma anche al suo aspetto deduttivo. E’ necessario evidenziare come il metodo assiomatico sia presente nella vita di tutti i giorni. Nozioni come quelle di “sistema di assiomi” e di “teorema” devono essere interpretate in termini di informazione disponibile, (in generale non completa) circa situazioni della vita reale, e di conseguenze che si possono ricavare a partire da tale informazione

Primary teachers’ beliefs and emotional disposition towards mathematics and its teaching

As researches in mathematics education and as teacher educators we are strongly interested in facing the question “what is necessary for teaching mathematics effectively”. The main directions of research emphasize the cognitive side of the answer to this question. In our view, attention from a purely cognitive dimension has to shift to a wider view encompassing also an affective plane, focusing on teachers’ beliefs, emotions and attitudes. We conducted a study to investigate the attitude towards mathematics and its teaching of 189 primary school pre-service teachers. We used as tool a questionnaire composed by questions focused on the three components of attitude (emotional disposition, view, perceived competence), declined along the two dimensions of mathematics and its teaching, according to the TAMT-model. In this paper we discuss some of the results regarding the relationships among the different components of the model with a particular attention to the links among past experiences as students, present, and future perspectives as future teachers

Editorial. Still searching for the origin of migraine. From comorbidities to chronicization

Migraine is amultifactorial disorder with huge ramifications in the central nervous system. Despite the enormous progress made in recent years in understanding the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying this painful condition, little is known about the factors behind the evolution from the episodic to the chronic form of migrain