World Leader In Terms Research Articles

Social Sciences in the Asian Age: Toward A New Paradigm

It is said that the 21st century will be the age. Judging by a variety of measures, the Asian age is certainly underway already. Asia is emerging as a world leader in terms of population, GDP, trade, and market size, but its growth has also generated higher levels of carbon emission, threatened ecological diversity, and highlighted limitations on water supply and other natural resources. The Asian region is now a major contributor to global-scale environmental problems.

INTERNATIONAL REGULATION OF INFORMATION SECURITY AND RUSSIA'S NATIONAL INTERESTS

In 2011 cyberspace obtained recognition at the highest level—first and foremost, in terms of its importance for international security. This is evidenced by several events and processes which may l...

Опыт инновационного развития Финляндии и Израиля

The production and promotion of high-tech products and new technologies to the global market is an essential condition for the competitiveness of the country. Some states that do not have abundant natural resources have made a stake on the development of advanced technologies. This secured them a place among the world leaders in terms of economic growth and population’s living standards. In-depth analysis of world practices of facilitating innovation is a pre-requisite for formulating the recommendations on the conditions for innovative development and competitiveness of Russia. From this point of view, the experience of Finland and Israel, which have managed to solve the respective problems is very interesting. Besides Finland and Israel, a similar model of innovation development is used in Sweden, Norway, Iceland and several other countries. The advantage of this model is that it creates an opportunity for national leadership at the world market of innovation. The national companies engaged in the development of new technologies create markets for themselves. Namely, they generate new needs and satisfy them, thus, they do not have to follow the market.

Estratégias de gestão de recursos hídricos participativa: contribuições da Política Brasileira de Recursos Hídricos para o Canadá

Os tomadores de decisão canadenses vêm sofrendo pressões socioambientais crescentes, por parte dediversos setores da sociedade, para a criação de uma política nacional de gestão de recursos hídricos. OCanadá, pelo fato de não possuir tal política, encontra-se, nesse sentido, distante de outros países comoo Brasil. Este possui uma política nacional de gestão de recursos hídricos que tem como unidade de gestão a bacia hidrográfica e é baseada em princípios de decentralização e participação social, em vigorhá mais de uma década. Como o Canadá, o Brasil é uma federação de economia complexa. Essas duaspotências são líderes mundiais em disponibilidade hídrica e em produção de energia hidrelétrica. Emambos os casos, as reservas de água mais abundantes estão concentradas nas regiões ao norte dessespaíses, com baixa densidade populacional, enquanto que a maior demanda por esses recursos ocorrenas regiões onde há maior densidade populacional e maior concentração das atividades econômicas,localizadas mais ao sul e a leste, o que causa escassez de água e acarreta desigualdades socioeconômicas.Apesar dessas semelhanças, existem inúmeras diferençcas entre os dois países no que concerceàs estruturas socioeconômicas e políticas. Apresenta-se um estudo da Política Nacional de RecursosHídricos brasileira que permite indicar algumas explicações por que essa Federação pôde desenvolveruma legistação inovadora que desencadeou um progresso no gerenciamento desses recursos, uma etapaque o Canadá deve ainda alcançar. Este estudo apresenta, ainda, algumas lições e exemplos úteis decomo um Estado federativo, como o Canadá, poderia criar e implementar a sua própria política nacionalde gestão de recursos hídricos.

Coal resources in Russia and abroad: A review

Existing information regarding the confirmed and predicted coal reserves in the world and in Russia and regarding current and predicted coal exporters and importers is analyzed. Russia is the world leader in terms of coal resources. Russia’s apparent deficit of coking coal for domestic use will be eliminated by 2014, thanks to the introduction of the El’ginsk, Elegestsk, and Usinsk deposits and the blast-furnace injection of coal dust made from noncoking coal.

Exploring the cross-country gap in patenting: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

This paper benchmarks the patent activities of a sample of OECD countries against the world frontier and explores the sources of the cross-country differences in patenting (regarded as a proxy for innovation). A patent production frontier is estimated for a panel of 21 OECD countries over the 1990–2002 period using Stochastic Frontier Analysis. Patenting performance for each country is decomposed into basic patenting capacity and patenting efficiency. The gap between Europe and the world leaders in terms of basic patenting capacity remains substantial with little sign of convergence over the sample period. In terms of patenting efficiency, Japan, Germany and Italy have improved their relative position in recent years. The gap in patenting performance between the UK and the world frontier is due to relative underperformance in both patenting capacity and efficiency in patent production. Institutional factors are found to be significantly associated with the patenting efficiency of an economy.

Wind power price trends in the United States: Struggling to remain competitive in the face of strong growth

The amount of wind power capacity being installed globally is surging, with the United States the world leader in terms of annual market share for three years running (2005–2007). The rapidly growing market for wind has been a double-edged sword, however, as the resulting supply-demand imbalance in wind turbines, along with the rising cost of materials and weakness in the US dollar, has put upward pressure on wind turbine costs, and ultimately, wind power prices. Two mitigating factors–reductions in the cost of equity provided to wind projects and improvements in project-level capacity factors–have helped to relieve some of the upward pressure on wind power prices over the last few years. Because neither of these two factors can be relied upon to further cushion the blow going forward, policymakers should recognize that continued financial support may be necessary to sustain the wind sector at its current pace of development, at least in the near term. Though this article emphasizes developments in the US market for wind power, those trends are similar to, and hold implications for, the worldwide wind power market.

An alternative approach to estimating demand: Neural network regression with conditional volatility for high frequency air passenger arrivals

Abstract In this paper we provide an alternative approach to analyze the demand for international tourism in the Balearic Islands, Spain, by using a neural network model that incorporates time-varying conditional volatility. We consider daily air passenger arrivals to Palma de Mallorca, Ibiza and Mahon, which are located in the islands of Mallorca, Ibiza and Menorca, respectively, as a proxy for international tourism demand for the Balearic Islands. Spain is a world leader in terms of total international tourist arrivals and receipts, and Mallorca is one of the most popular destinations in Spain. For tourism management and marketing, it is essential to forecast high frequency international tourist demand accurately. As it is important to provide sensible international tourism demand forecast intervals, it is also necessary to model their variances accurately. Moreover, time-varying variances provide useful information regarding the risks associated with variations in international tourist arrivals.

Women's Representation in the 2007 Scottish Parliament: Temporary Setback or Return to the Norm?

NTRODUCTION Since devolution, Scotland has been one of the world leaders in terms of levels of women’s representation: substantial proportions of female parliamentarians were returned in both the 1999 and 2003 elections. The ‘female face’ of the Scottish parliament was widely regarded as one of the ‘success stories’ of devolution and as evidence of a new kind of politics (Brown 2001, Burnside et al. 2003, Mackay et al. 2003). However the 2007 elections have resulted in the first drop in the number of female MSPs since the creation of the parliament. In the third elections, women took 43 out of 129 seats in Holyrood (33.3 per cent), compared with 39.5 per cent in the 2003 elections and 37.2 per cent in 1999. In terms of the victorious SNP, the performance on women’s representation was comparatively poor. Although the party has a number of high profile women

PERFORMANCE AND PRACTICE: EXAMINING THE MACHINE TOOL INDUSTRIES OF JAPAN AND THE UNITED STATES

Machine tool (MT) production is at the centre of most durable goods manufacturing and is in many ways, an indicator of a country's industrial prowess. Over the past three decades, the machine tool sectors of Japan and the United States have followed distinctly different trajectories. This paper compares and contrasts the performance and characteristics of the MT industries of both countries, with particular attention paid to several embedded differences in each country's manufacturing conditions at various levels. Once the world leader, the US MT industry is in a period of decline, despite signs of a rebound during the 1990s. Japanese MT producers continue to be among the world leaders in terms of both sales and technology, in the face of a recent domestic economic slowdown well over a decade long. The paper concludes with a discussion of the industry's future prospects.

Population Equation: Balancing What We Need With What We Have

Planet Earth, now home to about 6.5 billion human beings, has thus far disproved the doomsayers. In 1798, Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus predicted that population would outrun food supply on the assumption that human numbers would increase at a geometric rate while food would be limited to arithmetic increases. Then, in 1968, Stanford University professor Paul R. Ehrlich issued a similar warning in his book The Population Bomb, in which he predicted that hundreds of millions of people would die of starvation in the 1970s and 1980s. Both men underestimated humanity’s resourcefulness—as well as its scientific and technological acumen—in figuring out how to provide for its growing numbers. Still, there’s little doubt that the Earth’s human carrying capacity has a limit. And growth can’t continue indefinitely without more of the significant environmental health impacts we are already seeing. In addition to documenting exactly how much growth is occurring, scientists are now interested in trends reflecting where such growth is occurring and the effect of factors such as consumption rates and migration on sustainability of the Earth’s resources.

Renewable energy policy in Germany: pioneering and exemplary regulations

The development of renewable energy in Germany has been a great success: 9 % share of green electricity in 2002, world leader in terms of installed wind capacity amounting to 13,512 MW in October 2003 (nearly 40 % of the global capacity), second largest installed photovoltaic capacity in the world (nearly 350 MW at the end of September 2003), European leader in the sale of biodiesel (550,000 tonnes per year at the end of 2002) and in solar heating systems, with 4.75 million m 2 of installed systems at the end of 2002. To understand the success it is necessary to know that it results from – besides suitable background conditions – a comprehensive promotion approach which was launched at the beginning of the 1990s and has been given a further boost, since the coming into office of the Social Democratic-Green government in autumn 1998, through a series of promotion measures. Since 1991, with the coming into force of the first German feed-in law, the Act on Supplying Electricity from Renewables (Stromeinspeisegesetz, StrEG), fixed remuneration has been paid to electricity based on renewable energy sources (RES), leading to the market breakthrough in wind energy. Its successor, the Renewable Energy Sources Act (Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz, EEG) in April 2000, improved the regulations of the StrEG in many respects and made market entry possible for other renewables such as solar photovoltaics and biomass energy. The positive RES development in Germany can be explained by, besides this key promotion measure which served as a subsidy for the operational costs, several promotion programmes, which supported RES through investment subsidies (in the form of grants or soft loans), tax exemptions (within the scope of the Environmental Tax Reform) or in a more indirect way, through the decision to phase out nuclear energy, by means of information dissemination (i.e., the RES export initiative of the federal government) and corporate financing schemes in the case of wind energy.

Rhetoric and ethics: looking at the marks of our reading/speaking in society

ABSTRACT This article follows aspects of the current debate on racism as embodied in the AIDS-HIV controversy. It discusses President Thabo Mbeki's AIDS letter to world leaders in terms of the religious reality it invokes and his reaction to opposition at home regarding his stance on the link between AIDS and HIV. His handling of opposition is analysed in terms of Emmanuel Levinas's concept of the Other and J Hillis Miller's concept of the law of the text. The article concludes that the debate on racism is still stifled by essentialist thinking on both sides of the racial spectrum, making it very difficult to transcend the situation.