What prompts the United Nations Security Council to engage forcefully in some crises at high risk for genocide and ethnic cleansing but not others? InAll Necessary Measures, Carrie Booth Walling ...identifies several systematic patterns in the stories that council members tell about conflicts and the policy solutions that result from them. Drawing on qualitative comparative case studies spanning two decades, including situations where the council has intervened to stop mass killing (Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Sierra Leone) as well as situations where it has not (Rwanda, Kosovo, and Sudan), Walling posits that the arguments council members make about the cause and character of conflict as well as the source of sovereign authority in target states have the potential to enable or constrain the use of military force in defense of human rights. At a moment when constructivist scholars in international relations are pushing beyond empirical claims for the value of norms and toward critical analysis of such norms,All Necessary Measuresestablishes discourse's real-world explanatory power. From her comparative chronology, Walling demonstrates that humanitarian intervention becomes possible when the majority of Security Council members come to a shared understanding of the conflict, perpetrators, and victims-and probable when the Council understands state sovereignty as complementary to human rights norms. By illuminating the relationship between national interests and the core values of Security Council members and how it influences decision-making,All Necessary Measuressuggests when and where the Security Council is likely to intervene in the future.
On the Strength and Validity of Hazard Banding Scheffers, Theo; Doornaert, Blandine; Berne, Nathalie ...
The Annals of occupational hygiene,
11/2016, Volume:
60, Issue:
9
Journal Article
Open access
Hazard Banding (HB) is a process of allocating chemical substances in bands of increasing health hazard based on their hazard classifications. Recent Control Banding (CB) tools use the ...classifications of the United Nations Global Harmonized System (UN GHS) or the European Union Classifications, Labelling and Packaging (EU CLP) which are grouped over 5 HBs. The use of CB is growing worldwide for the risk control of substances without an Occupational Exposure Limit Value (OELV). Well-known CB-tools like HSE-COSHH Essentials, BAuA-Einfaches Maßnahmenkonzept Gefahrstoffe (EMKG), and DGUV-IFA-Spaltenmodell (IFA) use however different GHS/CLP groupings which may lead to dissimilar HBs and control regimes for individual substances. And as the choice for a CB tool seems to be determined by geography and/or local status these differences may hamper a global, aligned HSE approach. Therefore, the HB-engines of the three public CBs and an in-company (Solvay) CB called ‘Occupational Exposure Banding’ (S-OEB) were compared mutually and ranked in their relation with the OELV as the ‘de facto’ standard. This was investigated graphically and using a 5 strength indicator, statistical method. A data set of 229 substances with high-quality GHS/CLP classifications and OELVs was used. HB concentration ranges, as linked to S-OEB and COSHH, were validated against the corresponding OELV distributions. The four HB-engines allocate between 23 and 64% of the 229 substances in the same bands. The remaining substances differ at least one band, with IFA placing more substances in a higher hazard band, EMKG doing the opposite and COSHH and S-OEB in between. The overall strength scores of S-OEB, IFA, and EMGK HB-engines are higher than COSHH, with S-OEB having the highest overall strength score. The lower ends of the concentration ranges defined for the 3 ‘highest’ hazard bands of S-OEB were in good agreement with the 10th percentiles of the corresponding OELV distributions obtained from the substance data set. The lower ends of the COSHH concentration ranges comply with the 10th percentiles of the COSHH OELV distributions for dust/aerosol but not for vapour/gas substances. Both the S-OEB and COSHH concentration ranges underestimate the overall width of the OELV distributions that can span 2–3 orders of magnitude. As the performance of the S-OEB HB-engine meets our criteria of being at least as good as the public engines, it will be used as a standard within Solvay’s global operations. In addition, the method described here to evaluate the strength of HB-engines and the validity of their corresponding concentration ranges is a useful tool enabling further developments and worldwide alignment of HB.
A short-term experiment was conducted to determine the effects of reducing tree size on peach tree water use (TWU). Tree size was progressively reduced by de-branching an individual isolated tree ...over a 15-day period. TWU was measured at 15-min intervals using heat pulse sap flow sensors located at eight positions in the trunk sapwood. Measures of TWU were compared with estimates derived from reference crop evapotranspiration (ETo) and the area of shade cast by the tree on the soil surface (A SH). A SH was estimated prior to each de-branching event using a combination of photographs of the tree taken from the direction of the sun, and measures of fractional radiation interception in the area of shade cast by the tree. TWU and ETo averaged 39.5 l/day and 4.7 mm/day, respectively, in the 6-day period prior to de-branching. Effective canopy cover (ECC; estimated as A SH measured at solar noon) was 5.8 m2 in that period. Five de-branching events reduced TWU and ECC by >95%. To account for the daytime variation in A SH, we used effective area of shade (EAS), calculated from estimates of A SH at solar noon and 3 h each side of solar noon. K cb, the basal crop coefficient defined by Allen et al. Crop evapotranspiration: guidelines for computing crop water requirements (FAO irrigation and drainage paper 56). Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, Rome, 1998, was related to EAS by K cb = 1.05 EAS. These data for an isolated tree suggest that the transpiration component of orchard water use may be related to ETo using estimates of effective fraction of shade on the soil surface.
A principal element of the United States Government's conception of general and complete disarmament pertains to establishment and development of a force not identified with any national governing ...entity, subject to control by an all-embracing international collectivity, and charged with missions of global scope in connection with peace-keeping. The purpose of this essay is to examine what might be entailed, as conditions and as consequences, in establishing such a force. The discussion focuses quite explicitly on terms in the United States' proposal before the eighteen-nation Disarmament Conference at Geneva in 1962—a document hereinafter referred to by the short title Outline. Other sources, including proposals and discussions of forces of kindred type, are referred to for details concerning conceivable forms and conditions for the undertaking. As set forth in the Outline, such a force would be brought into existence over a span of years. The process of realizing it would be linked, stage by stage, with a progressive diminution of all forces under national control. At a transforming juncture, national forces would have been scaled down to a level rendering impossible their projection of any threat beyond the borders of their respective domains.
Food security information on the Internet Parris, Thomas M
Environment : science and policy for sustainable development,
03/1997, Volume:
39, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Major Internet-accessible sources of information about the Nov 1996 World Food Summit and the issue of food security are highlighted. United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization ...(http://www.fao.org/wfs/homepage.htm); United States Department of Agriculture (http://ffas.usda.gov//ffas//food_summit/summit.html); (http://aceis.agr.ca/cb/fao/emain.html); United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (http://www.fao.org); (http://apps.fao.org/default.htm)
Stem cells obtained from umbilical cord blood (CB) are used to treat more than 80 different diseases and are a standard treatment for many types of leukemias, lymphomas, myelodysplasias, and ...inherited immune system disorders. CB transplants have been carried out in humans for over 25 years, and hundreds of clinical trials are currently underway investigating CB’s therapeutic potential for a wide range of disorders, including autism, diabetes, cerebral palsy, and spinal cord injury. Extensive storage facilities have been established in the United States and around the world to collect, test, and freeze CB for later use in medical procedures. However, a divide between two different banking models—public versus private—has emerged, presenting several policy challenges. While the Food and Drug Administration currently regulates CB storage and use in the United States, other state and federal guidelines on CB education, awareness, and ethical considerations remain variable, and no mandatory international guidelines exist. In addition, federal funding for an important CB collection initiative that specifically targets minority populations is set to expire by the end of FY2015. To help organize and coordinate efforts across the United States and other nations, policymakers should implement regulations for: high quality standards for both private and public CB banks, a commitment to ethical practices, and an investment in educational campaigns and training programs for all steps of the CB banking process.
The main goal of this research was to estimate the actual evapotranspiration (ETc) of a drip-irrigated apple orchard located in the semi-arid region of Talca Valley (Chile) using a remote ...sensing-based soil water balance model. The methodology to estimate ETc is a modified version of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) dual crop coefficient approach, in which the basal crop coefficient (Kcb) was derived from the soil adjusted vegetation index (SAVI) calculated from satellite images and incorporated into a daily soil water balance in the root zone. A linear relationship between the Kcb and SAVI was developed for the apple orchard Kcb = 1.82·SAVI − 0.07 (R2 = 0.95). The methodology was applied during two growing seasons (2010–2011 and 2012–2013), and ETc was evaluated using latent heat fluxes (LE) from an eddy covariance system. The results indicate that the remote sensing-based soil water balance estimated ETc reasonably well over two growing seasons. The root mean square error (RMSE) between the measured and simulated ETc values during 2010–2011 and 2012–2013 were, respectively, 0.78 and 0.74 mm·day−1, which mean a relative error of 25%. The index of agreement (d) values were, respectively, 0.73 and 0.90. In addition, the weekly ETc showed better agreement. The proposed methodology could be considered as a useful tool for scheduling irrigation and driving the estimation of water requirements over large areas for apple orchards.
PDF
