Real Capacity Research Articles

Mil-bot Fetishism: The Pataphysics of Military Robots

This paper begins by identifying a tendency in the mass media to represent military robotics in a manner that endows the devices with a degree of automation and agency that is actually beyond the technology. Military robot fetishism is not simply based upon an irrational or mistaken belief about the real capacities of the robots but, instead, their fetish value stems from their positive valuation according to a code of functionality (Baudrillard) that rests upon the risk-transfer labour of the robot. Acting as (Western) soldier surrogates, the promise of the military robot is one of casualty reduction but asymmetrically so. This fetishism arises, as Mulvey proposes, out of the difficulty of representing military reality— namely that waging war has not become a scientifically guided rational-antiseptic enterprise but continues to be a gruesome and violent activity. The fetishization of military robots can be attributed to the need to ameliorate a reality that is politically difficult for western governments and their militaries. In this context, military robotics becomes a science of imaginary technical solutions to the problem of war legitimation. The promotion of military robot fetishism in the mass media means that the military robot as fetish comes to circulate within both martial and civilian lifeworlds, re-legitimizing warfare and affording further militarization of civic life.

Youth for road safety: young people mobilising to be part of the solution

Road traffic accidents take young lives indiscriminately. Every day, over 1000 young people are killed on the world's roads. This issue is a global health concern and is recognised by...

Participação como representação: o impacto das conferências nacionais de políticas públicas no Congresso Nacional

The relationship between representative democracy and participatory and deliberative experiences is not trivial. Those who endorse the discourse of a crisis in political representation sometimes defend participatory and deliberative modalities of democracy as a way of denying the legitimacy of the Legislative Branch, questioning the latter's real capacity to express the people's sovereign will. Still, the emergence of new democratic spaces, as well as new actors involved in the management of the public good, can be seen as a way of strengthening political representation, and not as a sign of weakening in its institutions. The current article defends this argument, seeking to demonstrate that the Brazilian national conferences on public policy have actually provided impetus to the National Congress, thereby strengthening representative democracy in Brazil through a participatory and deliberative practice.

Grappling with Peace

I do not really think that we will get closer to by multiplying the number of technicians working in laboratories on scientific lines. We have to grapple with the untidy problems of the real world rather than retreat into an atmosphere where it is all too easy to construct solutions.John W Holmes, 1961'There is a view in some parts of the Canadian foreign policy establishment - mirrored more broadly in the populace as a whole - that international brokerage politics, with professional Canadian diplomats punching above our weight as a middle power in the world, is the most important instrument by which global might be sustained and secured.While such a perspective stems from the best of intentions, peace is not uniquely the product of diplomatic consensus, the engineering of treaties, or the intervention of honest brokers and well-intentioned or trusted intermediaries with inspired wordsmithing - the theoretical solutions to which John Holmes referred. On the contrary: comes only when combatants, actual or potential, believe that will bring more general benefits than war, insurgency, or terrorism.The hard reality is that the so-called golden age of Canadian diplomacy that we commonly associate with Lester B. Pearson was only possible because Canada had been part of an alliance that stopped the Axis powers, albeit with devastating if unavoidable destruction of Japanese and German military and civilian targets, after a war initiated by fascists that claimed 60 million lives worldwide. And in that conflict, Canadians played more than our fair military role, on the land, in the air, on the high seas. In the process, we lost, on a per capita basis, a tremendous amount of blood and treasure.But this commitment did earn us a place at the tables where the instruments of like the United Nations, NATO, and the international declaration of human rights were negotiated. Canadian diplomats of Pearson's generation, John Holmes included, performed above and beyond in so many forums to bring great credit to Canada and meaningful benefit to the world. But those points of constructive leverage were available to Canada because they were earned. They were earned by members of the Canadian armed forces at Hong Kong, Dieppe, Juno, Montecassino; on the transatlantic convoy routes and in the resupply of Russia at Murmansk; and by those on the home front producing munitions, ships, aircraft, and other materiel for the war effort. They were earned on the battlefields of Korea. And they were earned because the courtly and decent Louis St. Laurent, Pearson's prime minister through the early 1950s, not only maintained a huge Canadian military presence in Germany with other allies against the Soviet threat, but did so with jet fighters in the Royal Canadian Air Force armed with nuclear weapons long before the debate over the Bomarc missile that plagued the Conservative government of John Diefenbaker, first elected in 1957.Importantly, Pearson's superb initiative during the Suez crisis in 1956, one to which John Holmes was a significant contributor, was driven as much by our pivotal position as a self-reliant and deployment-capable NATO partner, trusted by allies like the US, Britain, and France, and understood by the Israelis to be both safe and trustworthy, as it was by a Canadian desire for peace. For Canada, the stakes were high. The western alliance was deeply fractured. With Nikita Khrushchev and the Soviet Union threatening to bomb London, there was a serious escalation of the thermonuclear threat. Israel, whose birth and very borders had been designed by Canadians like General E.LM. Burns, was facing Gamal Abdel Nasser, an Egyptian leader who was both a keen Soviet client and, in the context of dictatorships ofthat era, a popular Arab leader throughout the Middle East.But Pearson's initiative was underwritten by both real capacity and widespread trust. …

How to Achieve More Accurate Comparisons in Organ Donation Activity: Time to Effectiveness Indicators

We are used to comparisons of activity using donation or transplantation population (pmp) rates between regions or countries, without a further evaluation of the process. But crude pmp rates do not clearly reflect real transplantation capacity, because organ procurement does not finish with the donation step; it is also necessary to know the utilization of the obtained organs. The objective of this study was to present methods and indicators deemed necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of the process. We have proposed the use of simple definitions and indicators to more accurately measure and compare the effectiveness of the total organ procurement process. To illustrate the use and performance of these indicators, we have presented the donation and transplantation activity in Catalonia from 2002 to 2007.

Rift Valley fever virus(Bunyaviridae: Phlebovirus): an update on pathogenesis, molecular epidemiology, vectors, diagnostics and prevention.

Rift Valley fever (RVF) virus is an arbovirus in the Bunyaviridae family that, from phylogenetic analysis, appears to have first emerged in the mid-19th century and was only identified at the begininning of the 1930s in the Rift Valley region of Kenya. Despite being an arbovirus with a relatively simple but temporally and geographically stable genome, this zoonotic virus has already demonstrated a real capacity for emerging in new territories, as exemplified by the outbreaks in Egypt (1977), Western Africa (1988) and the Arabian Peninsula (2000), or for re-emerging after long periods of silence as observed very recently in Kenya and South Africa. The presence of competent vectors in countries previously free of RVF, the high viral titres in viraemic animals and the global changes in climate, travel and trade all contribute to make this virus a threat that must not be neglected as the consequences of RVF are dramatic, both for human and animal health. In this review, we present the latest advances in RVF virus research. In spite of this renewed interest, aspects of the epidemiology of RVF virus are still not fully understood and safe, effective vaccines are still not freely available for protecting humans and livestock against the dramatic consequences of this virus.

Remaking the architecture: the emerging powers, self-insuring and regional insulation

This article examines the interaction between the emerging and traditional powers in global governance reform, and asks whether we are heading towards an international financial system that is more fragmented, where power is more diffused and national and regional arrangements play a more prominent role, at the expense of global multilateral institutions. It begins with a brief discussion of the global systemic and country-specific factors that motivate Brazil, China and other emerging countries to accumulate large currency reserves. We find that national arrangements for managing financial and currency crises will continue to hold sway for emerging countries in the wake of the global crisis. However, the actual capacity of regional arrangements in managing future financial crises is uncertain, and the significance of regional alternatives in the emerging architecture should not be overstated. The real capacity of East Asian regional arrangements to manage financial crises, payments problems or currency attacks is still untested, and key thresholds in multilateralization still lie ahead. In South America, multilateral lender-of-last-resort support inside the region is largely confined to the sub-regional level and is limited by Brazil's reticence. Enduring reliance on bilateral measures for financial crisis management is noted. Where there has been progress in regional solutions, since the global crisis, has been in the role of regional development banks in providing financing for developing countries to enact counter-cyclical policies. Such support also provides insulation for states in the region against the contagion effects of international financial crisis. We are in the midst of transitioning to a more diverse and multi-tiered global financial and monetary system. A reformed IMF could have a role to play in addressing global imbalances and encouraging a shift from national reserves to collective insurance, however, it would be preconditioned by significant shifts in the policy, lending operations, and internal governance of the Fund, and willingness among the G20 to strike a new consensus on how to deal with imbalances, and new accommodation on acceptable reserve levels.

Increasing ‘local content’ in infrastructure procurement. Part 2

Part 1 of this paper argued that more could be done to ensure that funding invested in infrastructure in low-income countries benefits contractors, suppliers and workers in those countries. Increasing local content in the construction and maintenance of infrastructure would generate income and employment locally and contribute to economic growth and poverty reduction. The use of procurement to achieve this objective is supported by international agencies and has been practised by a number of countries over many years. While recognising that there are very real capacity constraints, this paper shows that there is room – within existing procurement guidelines and without contravening international procurement rules – to do more to promote local content in infrastructure projects. This can be done without necessarily sacrificing on cost or quality. Suggestions include actions at earlier stages of the procurement cycle (during project planning and design processes) and some minor modifications to the tender process.

Cooperative base station beamforming in WiMAX systems

Cooperative base station for downlink multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) system is known as a critical radio technology for worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) communications. This study proposes to use zero-forcing beamforming for cooperative base stations in a downlink multicell MIMO system. It is well known that beamforming requires perfect knowledge of channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter, and in practice the perfect CSI may not be available because of channel estimation errors. In this study, using approximate capacity loss analysis the authors are able to analyse the effect of channel estimation errors on system capacity in a cooperative base station system with zero-forcing beamforming. A power allocation policy is proposed to reduce the capacity loss under per base station power constraints. Numerical results show that the approximate capacity loss is very close to the real capacity loss, which can be reduced with the help of the power allocation policy.

De la sauvegarde de la planète à celle des réfugiés climatiques : l'activisme des ONG

L’interet pour la protection de l’environnement est ne grâce a l’activisme des ONG soutenu par les institutions internationales. Bien que les conferences internationales aient ete en deca des esperances des ONG, ces dernieres ont su deployer un veritable savoir-faire en matiere de lobbying et de technique de communication : l’evenement – meme decevant – est relaye mondialement. En particulier, a l’occasion du Sommet de Copenhague (decembre 2009), les ONG ont fait preuve d’une habilete remarquable en mettant en scene les « refugies climatiques ». Apres un historique de la mise sur l’agenda international de la question environnementale, l’objectif de cet article est d’analyser les strategies que les ONG adoptent pour dramatiser le peril qu’encourt la planete et mettre en avant des problematiques qui unifient le pole environnemental et le pole humanitaire.

O LOCAL E O REGIONAL: EXPERIÊNCIAS DE PLANEJAMENTO E A INTERVENÇÃO DOS ATORES

This work has how I aim to talk about the place and the regional thing like unity of intervention showing up the forms of articulation of these scales in the proposals of projection. Proceeding from the assumption of what the cutting out, the scales, the proposals of projection of any nature, are straightly linked to the interests of the wrapped actors, also we will present a discussion on the quality, the characteristics and the real capacity of transformation of the reality for several social actors, with distinction for the State. Conscious of the limitations of the plans in the different scales, in the context of the way of capitalist production, which nature, it is embasada in the social unequality, the article will be finished by the presentation of three Brazilian experiences of regional projection. There will be emphasized his methodology, the space cutting out and the obtained results, always retaking the analysis of the articulations between the place and the regional thing.Key-words: Location. Regional. Planning. Actors.

Social accountability and accreditation: a new frontier for educational institutions

An association with excellence should be reserved for educational institutions which verify that their actions make a difference to people's well-being. The graduates they produce should not only possess all of the competencies desirable to improve the health of citizens and society, but should also use them in their professional practice. Four principles enunciated by the World Health Organization refer to the type of health care to which people have a right, from both an individual and a collective standpoint: quality, equity, relevance and effectiveness. Therefore, social, economic, cultural and environmental determinants of health must guide the strategic development of an educational institution. Social responsibility implies accountability to society for actions intended to serve it. In the health field, social accountability involves a commitment to respond as best as possible to the priority health needs of citizens and society. An educational institution should verify its impact on society by following basic principles of quality, equity, relevance and effectiveness, and by active participation in health system development. Its social accountability should be measured in three interdependent domains concerning health personnel: conceptualisation, production and utilisability. An educational institution that fully assumes the position of a responsible partner in the health care system and is dedicated to the public interest deserves a label of excellence. As globalisation is reassessed for its social impact, societies will seek to justify their investments with more solid evidence of their impact on the public good. Medical schools should be prepared to be judged accordingly. There is an urgent need to foster the adaptation of accreditation standards and norms that reflect social accountability. Only then can educational institutions be measured and rewarded for their real capacity to meet the pressing health care needs of society.

Internationalisation of Indonesian Higher Education: A Study from the Periphery

Globalisation as a global phenomenon has been influencing Indonesian Higher Education like other education systems in the world. Internationalisation in response to globalisation is a common feature in majority universities. It is also a feature of Indonesian Higher Education institutions, yet so far it seems that the way in which Indonesian higher education is responding to globalisation with internationalisation of its universities is not well reported. This paper aims to address this gap by examining relevant government papers, policies, research, reports and other documents available on line as well as at web sites of universities and other related web sites depicting how internationalisation has been conducted in Indonesian higher education. The paper attempts to reveal the perceived challenges of globalisation for Indonesian higher education and to what extent and in what form internationalisation has been achieved. Particularly, it will analyse the relation between policies and practices and identify barriers to internationalisation. However, it should be noted that this article is selective rather than comprehensive in reflecting on the internationalisation process in Indonesian higher education. Findings show that globalisation is perceived as a challenge requiring a response rather than as a threat to be dealt with. Many sources reflect that the government has been initiating and facilitating various programs to support internationalisation within the system. It appears that lack of capability at the institution level slows down the process. Under-representation of institutions reflected in the under-developed websites results in opacity of the real capacity of institutions. It seems that improving the basic factors shaping internationalisation such as capacities in English and ICT (Marginson, 2007) would trigger further the development of internationalisation in Indonesian higher education.

THE APPLICATION OF HIGH RESOLUTION REMOTE SENSING IMAGE TO THREE-DIMENSIONAL URBAN LANDSCAPE CREATION

This paper deals with some techniques and methods for creation of a three-dimensional urban landscape model based on the high-resolution remote sensing image.As the high-resolution remote sensing images have such characteristics as high definition,rich information and strong real time capacity,they can be used to acquire a great abundance of information concerning urban landscape exactly and rapidly.The results show that the procedure is efficient,rapid and economical in creating the three-dimensional urban landscape model.

Le programme JACIE: du référentiel à son appropriation pour l'amélioration continue de la qualité, l'expérience du centre de lutte contre le cancer Léon-Bérard

JACIE, a European certification program for stem cell transplantation, has now been recognized by the French Health Authorities. It can be considered as an evaluation of professional practice, an activity that can be promoted by health centres. The present article has two aims: firstly, it describes the structure of the certification standard based on the relative structure of each of its components; secondly, it reports on the experience acquired by the Léon-Bérard cancer centre (Lyon-France) during the certification of its own stem cell transplantation program. The JACIE manual written in English is divided into three parts corresponding to the three processes identified. Part B describes the clinical haematopoietic stem cell transplantation program. Part C is dedicated to the collection of haematopoietic stem cells from blood and marrow. Finally, part D applies to the cell therapy laboratory in charge of cell preservation and the preparation of grafts for re-infusion. After the application has been submitted to the JACIE board, a date is set for an inspection visit. The cell therapy laboratory at Léon-Bérard cancer centre has already participated to a certified transplantation project of the Edouard-Herriot Hospital (Lyon public hospitals) [parts C and D of the certification]. The executive board proposed that the clinical haematology unit of the cancer centre also applied for JACIE certification. A multidisciplinary work group-combining document writing skills and a real capacity to convince and motivate clinical staff was formed. Secondly, a comprehensive collection of existing documents was issued and the clinical pathway of the patients was formalized so that no step of the graft process would be omitted. A physician from another hospital also tested the evaluation process with the organisation of a mock visit. He confirmed that everything was in good way and provided recommendations to improve the program. This huge preparation provided invaluable learning opportunities to the participants. After the final visit by JACIE inspectors, the cancer centre received four-year certification. The challenge is now to maintain this momentum for the next certifications and to better take into account the ethical and juridical constraints of haematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

초대형 컨테이너선박의 기항에 따른 컨테이너 터미널 장치장 규모 확대방안의 경제성 비교

국내 컨테이너 터미널의 대부분 컨테이너 처리량에 비해 장치장 규모가 협소한 편이다. 장치장이 협소한 이유는 터미널 개발 시 적용된 이론적인 안벽 처리능력이 실제 처리능력과 차이가 나기 때문이다. 또한 최근 선박이 대형화 되면서 터미널들이 안벽장비를 추가 투입함으로써 안벽 생산성을 당초보다 크게 향상시킨 현실에 기인하기도 한다. 본 연구에서는 터미널 운영 현실을 반영하여 하역 능력을 재산정하고 10,000TEU에 이르는 초대형 선박을 대상으로 하여 소요 장치장 규모를 산정 한 후 기존 터미널의 장치장 규모와 경제성을 비교하는 것을 주목적으로 한다. Most domestic container terminals are lack of container storage capacity compared to the throughput of container. The main reason is the difference between the theoretical capacity applied to the development of terminals and the real capacity of a berth Another reason seems to be the increase of the container crane in number per berth to match the need for the getting larger vessel, which is resulted from the increase of the berth capacity from the start. This study, therefore, aims to suggest the economic size of container yard by comparing the existing one. For this the berth capacity was recalculated, the required yard size derived considering up to 10,000TEU vessel and then cost comparison done.

An Innovative Pattern for Management Capacity Cultivation

Management, as a kind of capacity, should be formed in practice. Currently, however, management majors are mainly taught in knowledge instead of any platform or environment. As a result, students find it hard to convert their management knowledge into real capacity. In order to solve this problem, this article creates an innovative pattern for cultivating students’management capacity.

Real world finite capacity planning: a partial enumeration – based optimizer

Abstract Finite capacity planning is a central problem in manufacturing industries. At the heart of it lies a scheduling optimization problem, which has been so far studied in the optimization literature mainly in abstract forms, like job shop scheduling. There is a huge gap between the job shop instances used as benchmark in the literature and the scheduling instances met in real-world planning, this both with respect to instance size and to instance complexity, meaning the type of constraints and of variables considered. We present here the algorithmic core of a package primarily targeted to metallic carpentry industries, where instance types and CPU time constraints pose severe burdens on the optimization methods which can be used. We report about the results obtained by means of partial enumeration, a mathematic programming technique, here included in an Ant Colony Optimization framework.

Arguments For and Against Social Rights

I investigate the semantic and practical complexity of social rights, together with the obligations which correspond to the public authorities in terms of putting them into practice. I also discuss the role of meaningful economic equality in the discourse of social rights, explaining the points at which the two concepts interact, and the ways that formal equality can be improved. Finally, I reach the conclusion that there are two distinct meanings of the concept of discrimination, one which is equivalent to any violation of the general principal of equality, and another stricter one, which is the infringement of equality when any of the proscribed differentiating factors are present (race, sex, etc.). The legal aspect of the mandate to exercise and guarantee social rights is manifest in the programmed objective, as well as in the fact that the measures aimed at this objective are protected from the possibility of compliance. In this way, social rights constitute subjective rights, representing a programme through which goods would be distributed evenly among public, collective and private interests. This results in a singular structure with a special mechanism by which the State has to provide assistance and services, and create, strengthen and promote the conditions allowing individuals and groups to satisfy their needs. Thus their obligations are also related to the prerequisites for exercising positive liberty. The main point of departure is that individuals are moral subjects endowed with dignity. It defends the idea that we all have real capacity for choice and that we all direct our existence towards certain aims in life.

La profilaxis del viento. Instituciones represivas y sanitarias en la Patagonia argentina, 1880-1940

This article focuses on the study of some social control technologies and discourses, displayed in Argentina's provinces between 1880 and 1940, with particular reference to the so-called 'Territorios Nacionales' of La Pampa Río Negro and Neuquén, which were submitted to a direct federal authority. THe main purpose is to analyze - within these areas- - the building of repressive and sanitary institutions (i.e., police, prisons, asylums, hospitals) as well as the enforcement of positivists studying and classifying methodologies, intended to identify 'abnormality'. A straight and permanent rule of these "territorios Nacionales' on the federal State could have meant a longer attention to their social and economic development through a direct and intense presence of national, modernizing, positivist institutions. However, a deeper historical study of repressive and sanitary institutions allows to arrive to completely different conclusions. The sources show that these institutions had numerous daily problems, were frequently and severely under-budgeted and were obliged to develop not originally forseen functions and tasks. These situations imply revising not only these institutions' real regulation capacities but also the very existence of a generalized, efficient social control programme in Argentina at the beginning of the 20th century, as many scholars focused on Buenos Aires's study case have already argued.