Reassurance or reason for concern: Security forces as a crisis management strategy

This paper examines effects of the deployment of security forces to a popular winter migrant destination faced with a unique humanitarian crisis situation. The study surveyed past winter migrants to the region to evaluate their perceptions regarding sociocultural, economic, and psychological impacts of security forces deployed to the region. In addition, this study evaluates the deployment's impact on satisfaction with life in the region, return intention and likelihood of recommending the region to others to find that perceived safety from the security forces significantly affected community factors and that satisfaction with life fully mediated community factor effects on destination loyalty. These finding significantly add to the limited research in crisis management response effects and substantiates the use of signaling and signal crimes perspective in managing crises.     

Attitude towards immigrants and security: Effects on destination-loyal tourists

This study was conducted in the midst of a surge of undocumented immigrants into a popular seasonal migrant destination in the U.S. and the subsequent state response of adding security forces. Factors examined include the effects of the role of media in shaping perceptions about security forces, perceptions about security force effectiveness, perceptions of undocumented immigrants and political orientation. The study of 413 respondents found that attitudes toward undocumented immigrants affect felt safety in the region, likelihood of recommending and returning to the region. Perceptions of the effectiveness of the security forces were important in affecting likelihood of recommending the region to others but not return intention. These and other findings contribute significantly to the scant research on both effectiveness of crises management responses and on effects of perceptions of undocumented immigrants on traveler behavior.     

An open-access method for targeting revegetation based on potential for emissions reduction,carbon sequestration and opportunity cost

We propose a simple heuristic that uses open-access models and government data on agricultural activities to estimate total carbon emissions from agriculture, the gross carbon benefit and the opportunity cost per tonne CO₂-e from revegetating to environmental plantings or plantation forestry. We test this across ten areas of mixed land-use that represent diverse Australian agricultural systems along a rainfall transect. The local value of agricultural production was obtained from government statistics and used to estimate the current economic opportunity cost of converting cleared agricultural land to mixed environmental plantings for carbon sequestration. Gross carbon benefit from revegetation was closely related to current agricultural use, as was financial opportunity cost. These were not related simply to site productivity potential or rainfall. The proportion of land cleared for agriculture that would need to be re-vegetated to achieve a localised zero-carbon land-use scenario was calculated by the ratio of current agricultural emissions to gross carbon benefit from revegetation; this ranged from 13% to 66% for groups of agricultural industries across Australian rainfall transects. While the heuristic does not capture the detail of models built specifically for local research questions it does provide a different lens on the questions policy makers and land managers may ask about the costs and benefits of revegetating agricultural land, and provides open-access methods to guide them.     

Comparative wind farm planning on a high plateau: Dust dispersion as a sitting constraint

In the current paper, the wind potential of a relatively flat area in central Peloponnese in Greece has been studied. The chosen region was selected based on environmental criteria and the wind speed was correlated based on the measurements of three specific mountainous sites in the wider plateau area using a Wind Resource Analysis (WRA) modeling methodology. Digital elevation data sets were used for the modeling procedure together with the Wind Atlas Analysis Program for the correlation process and the basic aim was to evaluate and identify appropriate sites for wind farm development within the flat area and compare the estimated net power output with the net power output from mountainous sites in the wider central Peloponnese area. Dust dispersion mapping from mining operations in the area contributed also to defining the physical boundaries for wind farm development.     

A preliminary analysis of incident investigation reports of an integrated steel plant: some reflection

Large integrated steel plants employ an effective safety management system and gather a significant amount of safety-related data. This research intends to explore and visualize the rich database to find out the key factors responsible for the occurrences of incidents. The study was carried out on the data in the form of investigation reports collected from a steel plant in India. The data were processed and analysed using some of the quality management tools like Pareto chart, control chart, Ishikawa diagram, etc. Analyses showed that causes of incidents differ depending on the activities performed in a department. For example, fire/explosion and process-related incidents are more common in the departments associated with coke-making and blast furnace. Similar kind of factors were obtained, and recommendations were provided for their mitigation. Finally, the limitations of the study were discussed, and the scope of the research works was identified.     

中国主要农产品市场竞争力研究

农产品市场竞争力决定着农业和农村经济的发展。文章选用国际市场占有率、净出口指数、显示比较优势等指标测算中国主要农产品市场的竞争力,并对中国11种主要农产品竞争力在加入WTO前的1999年与加入WTO后农产品全面开放的2004年以及中日美三国进行了对比实证分析,并给出了提高中国农产品市场竞争力的措施。     

我国矿产资源安全问题考察

发达国家和新兴市场经济国家矿产资源战略对中国三类重要矿产资源的影响方式,包括竞合关系、议价能力和环境影响三种类型。本文设计调查表,采用德尔菲法综合专家意见,得出不同方面的影响性质与强度,在此基础上,对重要矿产资源受不同类型国家影响的情况进行了总结,进而提出保障矿产资源安全的对策建议。     

人民币对美元实际汇率与中美贸易净出口关系的实证研究

中美双方的统计结果均表明,中美双边的贸易顺差是巨大的。按照中方提供的数据,格兰杰因果检验结果是人民币对美元实际汇率的变化对中美贸易净出口的变化没有统计上的影响;而按照美方提供的数据,人民币对美元实际汇率的变化对中美贸易净出口的变化有统计上的影响。然而,由于美方的数据夸大了中美之间实际上的净出口,因此美国的结论是不成立的。要解决中美之间的贸易冲突,在人民币汇率上做文章是行不通的,只有找出引起中美贸易净出口扩大的真正原因,才能有效解决中美巨额贸易顺差的问题。     

生态旅游利益相关者安全认知研究

近几年,生态旅游增长较快,己成为当今旅游业发展的热点。生态旅游迅速发展的同时,也出现了许多安全问题,如生态旅游景区游客安全事故时有发生,许多景区的附近居民与景区矛盾不断等。为了更好的促进生态旅游健康发展,选题基于利益相关者理论,选择桂林漓江古东景区作为实证研究区域,从游客、景区从业人员和社区居民三个层面对生态旅游安全认知进行了研究。     

Rating of Network-Integrated Corporations

While conventional rating systems are still focused on individual companies, in reality stand-alone business of a single enterprise respectively debtor is more likely the exception than the rule. Joint business activities of two or more companies (organizational networks) are becoming ubiquitous and have a critical influence on each partners’ success. In order to avoid that rating that turns into some rather useless ritual, network characteristics, such as network assets, network capital, network securities, network management competency, network business opportunities and network structure have to be taken into account when evaluating solvency of a network-embedded corporation. Using primary credit cooperatives as an illustrative object, this paper gives an overview on those new rating criteria becoming relevant in conjunction with network-embeddedness, so that workable opportunities can be shown to improve the reliability of ratings.