‘Swift Rail’—funding local rail transit through smarter growth

Many medium-size cities suffer from severe traffic congestion and poor accessibility, limiting their potential to improve their economy, environment, and social equity. These problems could be addressed by creating high-quality transit linking such cities with suburban and other catchment areas through use of existing rail lines and abandoned former railway alignments. This concept, termed ‘Swift Rail’, would call for an innovative approach to local railway and transport development.     

Sustainability and Land tenure: Who owns the floodplain in the Pantanal,Brazil?

In seeking to achieve poverty alleviation and environmental conservation, public policy has often centred on guaranteeing land titles to local peoples. However, such approaches have brought unintended outcomes, replacing small-scale economies and natural areas by intensive exploitation of resources with no clear improvement in local people’s wellbeing. To understand this, we go beyond a general political ecology framing to consider relations between sustainability and land tenure, focusing on the intersection of economics, ecology and anthropology to understand how land tenure, property and use play out on the ground. We draw together different concepts including bundle of rights, de facto and de jure resource use, property regimes, density-dependence and non-equilibrium theory. The significance of this three-discipline view is illustrated through a case study of the Pantanal wetland, Brazil, where conservationists, the government and the local population contest ownership of the Paraguay River floodplain. Government sought to address conflicts around tenure and access through a narrow view of property, which failed to encompass the overlapping layers of land tenure, property and use on the ground and only served to create further legal battles. This article concludes that a more complex view combining the three perspectives is needed in the case of the Pantanal, and in other cases of contested property rights, in order to resolve conflicting claims and foster sustainability. We dissect both the power plays involved between different groups competing for control of a valuable resource, and the legal frameworks which can and should provide checks and balances in the system. The more nuanced grasp that emerges of local systems of tenure and access, of how these diverge from western property concepts, and of their environmental implications favours a better understanding of local realities, allowing for better management policy and consequently contributing more effectively towards poverty alleviation and environmental protection.     

评价体验英语综合教程第一册(英文)

通过衡量体验英语综合教程第一册,得出教师对于教科书必须持客观态度,并通过教师自己的修改和补充,来更好的利用它。     

强化质量意识 需从细节做起——从表面形貌特征评定参数的拓展谈起

工件的某些表面形貌特征会对产品的性能和质量产生重大的影响,因此,拓展表面形貌特征的评定参数,以提升产品的质量监控水平已成为必需。文章以工件的回转密封面为例,就螺线纹理这一表面微观结构的形貌特征及其可能引起的产品质量隐患做了详细的说明,并介绍了如何利用精密仪器实施相关的测量。文中透过对这一往往被业内忽略的细节的监控思路,阐明了在企业内,强化质量意识必须从重视每个细节做起的观点。     

Influence of Hotel Information System Quality on System Use and User Satisfaction

ABSTRACT

By applying DeLone and McLean's Updated D&M IS Success Model, this study seeks to understand the influence of information system quality on the intention to use the system and user satisfaction within the context of HIS. Data used for the study were obtained from a survey that focuses on hotel employees' evaluation of HIS quality and their intention to use and satisfaction with the system. The results indicate that information system success measures can be meaningfully explained by HIS quality. Service quality that often represents support from information service providers within an organization, among the three aspects of HIS quality considered, has a significant positive influence on users' intention to use HIS and their satisfaction with the system, given the consideration of users' demographic characteristics, career, and the level of work reliance on HIS. Practical and theoretical insights of the findings are addressed.     

Adoption of volunteered geographic information into the formal land administration system in Kenya

Individualization of tenure through title registration programmes introduced in many African countries after independence with the promise of security of tenure and increased agricultural productivity has, instead, had the opposite effect. Informal land arrangements continue to emerge as a result of the slow pace of land adjudication (formalization) and updating of land information systems. The trend towards computerization of land information systems has only put focus on already existing formal land tenure arrangements, leaving out the informal social tenure arrangements. As a result, there are now many efforts worldwide motivated by the introduction of the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM), and freely-available and easy-to-use technology tools to identify, document and map land in support of informal land administration arrangements. Actions are made towards the use of community-generated information to support land administration. Using theories from the interplay between formal and informal institutions, this paper discusses the potential outcomes in adopting Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) in land administration in Kenya. Two case studies are presented that demonstrate the complementary-accommodating, versus the substitutive-competing approaches. These are then compared with the formal land adjudication process in Kenya. It is established that because of the direct involvement of the national mapping agency in land adjudication where VGI is utilized, the outcome is a case of formal adoption of VGI, while in the other case, where there is little or no involvement by the national mapping agency, the outcome is more of competition and substitution. The latter is an example in which the VGI is used just like any other information to inform policy making, rather than taking it as the authoritative source. We argue that since informality is – and will always be – part and parcel of land administration in many African countries as a result of ingrained social relations and power structures, adopting crowdsourced land information into existing formal land administration systems should consider the particular land administration process, satisfying innate demands and requirements, thus re-engineered to accommodate VGI.     

云南知识密集型服务业的人力资源管理研究——以高校为例

高校作为知识密集型服务业的一个组成部分,师资作为其核心发展动力,师资的建设和管理对于如今知识经济高度发达的社会来说就非常重要,通过完善师资的建设来带动高校的发展。文章主要阐述了知识密集型服务业的人力资源管理的方式和特点,进而论述了知识密集型服务业中的高校的人力资源管理即师资管理的对策,并针对云南省发展的特点和云南省高校的特点展开论证。     

钢管工字钢在门洞支架中的应用

新建道路施工与已有道路的正常营运形成交叉干扰,带来的安全问题也越来越突出。为确保施工及维持交通安全,我公司采用钢管工字钢柱式门洞支架,进行预留门洞保持车辆安全通行。     

浅谈修辞手法在英语写作中的运用

英语写作是一个学生英语综合素养的重要体现。一篇好的文章，除了追求思想深刻，内涵丰富，意境深远外，还应重视文辞。运用一定的具有英文特征的修辞手段，而且运用得好，会使语句生动从而增添语句亮点。因此，掌握一些一般常用修辞手段对于实现语句亮点也是非常必要的。善于根据表达的需要选择精妙的修辞，会使你的文章出奇出新，增色添彩。     

Measuring Production and Irrigation Efficiencies of Rice Farms: Evidence from the Punjab Province,Pakistan

We employ a non‐parametric approach, data envelopment analysis, to estimate the technical and irrigation efficiency of rice farms in the Punjab Province of Pakistan. We use a cross‐sectional dataset of 80 rice growers, including 45 tube‐well owners and 35 water buyers. Mean technical efficiency scores show that tube‐well owners and water buyers are operating at fairly high efficiency levels, indicating that access to technology is not a major constraint. However, irrigation inefficiency is pronounced, with water buyers being more inefficient than tube‐well owners. A bootstrap truncated regression is used to investigate the determinants of technical and irrigation efficiency. We suggest that groundwater management policies should be designed to address efficiency enhancing factors such as knowledge of crop water consumption requirement, better credit opportunities, outreach extension services and training programs.