Power, Techno-economics, and Transatlantic Relations in 1987-1999

This essay suggests that in 1987-1999 European elites, in their efforts of asymmetric balancing against the United States hegemony, decided to trade-off military capability for economic competitiveness. Thus, it documents a correlation between a) the reluctance of especially France and Germany during the 1990s to fully embrace and pursue the US-led RMA; and, b) the European Union's efforts since the late 1980s to challenge America's technological and economic supremacy in the aerospace sector. Two projects (Airbus and Galileo) indicate that the quest for strategic independence and the fear of reduced influence in international affairs were the driving forces behind European efforts to challenge the US commercial and technological supremacy in the aerospace sector in 1987-99. Furthermore, the article tries to identify what role the RMA played in this context (focusing in particular on Germany and France). It argues also that since the late 1980s (and especially during the 1990s), the European Commission and countries such as France and Germany perceived US policies in high-technology sectors (accentuated also by vigorous pursuit of the RMA) as limiting Europe’s abilities to advance its own agenda in international economic and security affairs

A non-separable stochastic model for pulse-like ground motions

A phenomenological non-separable non-stationary stochastic model is proposed to represent near-fault pulse-like ground motions (PLGMs) by means of a parametrically defined evolutionary power spectrum (EPSD). Numerical data pertaining to ensembles of EPSD compatible realizations and considering statistical analysis of peak elastic and inelastic spectral ordinates demonstrate the applicability of the model to capture the salient effects of PLGMs to structural responses. To this aim, the model parameters are calibrated against a field recorded PLGM. Further numerical data considering stochastic processes compatible with the response spectrum of the European aseismic code (EC8) are furnished to demonstrate the potential of the proposed model for including near-fault effects to spectrum compatible representations of the seismic action. It is foreseen that this model can be a useful tool in accounting for the low-frequency content of PLGMs in both Monte Carlo simulation-based analyses and in statistical linearization based studies

Inflation Targeting, Between Rhetoric and Reality. The Case of Transition Economies

The paper examines the inflation targeting regime in the context of transition economies. Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of central banks in these countries moving towards the implementation of inflation targeting regimes. However, the success of such a regime depends largely on the degree to which certain general requirements are met. As experience in a number of transition economies has shown so far, targeting inflation is not an easy task. The ongoing restructuring process in these economies makes the inflation forecasting process more difficult and introduces an additional source of uncertainty in the system. By unequivocally choosing inflation as a nominal anchor the central banks could face potential dilemmas if, for example, exchange rate appreciated too much under the pressure of massive capital inflows. The paper presents the broad framework in which inflation targeting could operate efficiently and attempts to assess the extent to which such a regime, when applied to transition economies, could fit into this framework.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40129/3/wp743.pd

The Monetary Union: The Decade Ahead. The Case of Non-Member States

What are the prospects for New Member States to join the euro-zone in the not too distant future? They seem to be in a catch-22 situation Because of the current financial crisis some Maastricht criteria would be more difficult to fulfil in the short and medium term, which would make it hard for them to join the eurozone. But there is also an argument, which highlight benefits of a faster accession due to dynamic effects for the countries involved and for the eurozone as a whole.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64421/1/wp947.pd

Assessment of access to health services and vulnerabilities of female fish traders in the Kafue Flats, Zambia: analysis report

Under the regional programme Fisheries and HIV/AIDS in Africa: Investing in Sustainable Solutions, the WorldFish Center conducted this study on access to health services and vulnerabilities of female fish traders in the Kafue Flats floodplains in Zambia. This report outlines and analyses the particular vulnerabilities of female fish traders in the Kafue Flats fishery and formulates recommendations to facilitate stakeholder uptake of strategic responses to tackle the drivers of the epidemic in fishing communities and improve the livelihoods of fisher folk and fish traders in the Kafue Flats and other fisheries in Zambia. (pdf contains 55 pages

A CENSUS OF CREATIVE ACCOUNTING TECHNIQUES

Economic development, legal and social pressure and users of information has made it necessary innovation accounts on this basis and development of creative accounting. Such accounting has been developed especially in Anglo-Saxon economies due to the accounting profession freedoms. It sat on the edge of the legal form and economic substance of transactions and events.creative accounting, hiding financial statements; lease-back

ISSUES OF HUMAN RESOURCES, MEMBERS OF PROJECT TEAMS IN THE NGOS: A CASE STUDY

Romanian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have the specialists and the capacity necessary to atract funds from European Union for european integration aim. For this purpose they create and implement different kind of projects (social, cultural, etc.). To create such project it is only needed one or two specialists in writing a project, but to successfully implement one, it is needed a hole special united team, motivated and committed to the purpose. In making this succesfull team, the project team management confrunt with a lot of challenges. This paper illustrate, from a human resources percepective, some of the most common issues that a project team manager has to deal with. Using the case study method, this thesis suggests the challeges that the manager has in building the team, creating a united team, motivating the members and solving potential conflicts.human resources, project teams, NGO, voluntary work

PARTICULARITIES OF CAREER IMPROVEMENT IN A KNOWLEDGE-BASED ECONOMY AND INVESTMENT PROGRAMS FOR LIFELONG LEARNING

The concept of career planning comes nowadays along with the lifelong learning concept, which means investing in people’s potential and knowledge, supporting innovation and acquiring as many quality knowledge as possible by attending educational and learning programs. The most important investments that are made are in the human resources and the biggest profits come from the human capital and the experienced employees. Also, a great asset for the success companies are the persons who find themselves at the beginning of the career, but who are willing to adopt a lifelong learning strategy and to have a continuous personal and professional development. It is important to give each individual, no matter the age, gender or education, the opportunity to improve, to develop viable careers, following the requests of the labour market, having access to quality jobs in success companies, whether is inside their mother country or abroadcareer development, knowledge, lifelong learning.

Optimizing Anti-Phishing Solutions Based on User Awareness, Education and the Use of the Latest Web Security Solutions

Phishing has grown significantly in volume over the time, becoming the most usual web threat today. The present economic crisis is an added argument for the great increase in number of attempts to cheat internet users, both businesses and private ones. The present research is aimed at helping the IT environment get a more precise view over the phishing attacks in Romania; in order to achieve this goal we have designed an application able to retrieve and interpret phishing related data from five other trusted web sources and compile them into a meaningful and more targeted report. As a conclusion, besides making available regular reports, we underline the need for a higher degree of awareness related to this issue.Security, Phishing, Ev-SSL, Security Solutions

TCP/IP XML Solution

Since its introduction, Extensible Markup Language (XML) has evolved and helped us evolve in the way which we think about structuring, describing, and exchanging information. The ways in which XML is used in the software industry are many and growing. For example, for Web services the importance of XML is crucial; all key Web service technologies are based on it. In this paper it’s presented a TCP/IP XML solution for integrating an intermediary trading system with the Bucharest Stock Exchange trading system. The solution is presented from the intermediary point of view and can be the first step of a complete SOA solution.TCP/IP, XML, Bucharest Stock Exchange, Java