Working Paper

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Which Machine-Learning Model Do You Want In Your Ocean’s Eleven: A Computational Prisoner’s Dilemma Simulation
(2024) Bai, Jayden
Which machine-learning model is the best at winning the prisoner’s dilemma? Which models create the best cumulative outcomes? Is there a model that perfectly captures both winning and cumulative points? These are questions generated from a simple 2 x 2 payoff matrix of the prisoner’s dilemma. Imagine you and your partner in crime are caught and sent independently into questioning. You can either collaborate or defect, but you don’t know what your partner will do. If you both collaborate, cumulatively, you’ll each get one year in jail. If you defect and your partner collaborates, you’ll serve no time and they will serve 10 years, and vice versa. If you both defect, you’ll both serve 5 years in jail. Placing AIs against each other to play just one round doesn’t reveal much about their code, strategy, and end goal. So the Reinforcement Learning, Pattern Learning, Tit For Tat, and other models were put up against each other in a 100 round game where their behavior, convergence, and learning were analyzed to reveal the most effective ways strategies to beat the prisoner’s dilemma. All code and data is open sourced here.
Geographical Indication as a Strategy to Revive Small-Scale Agriculture: Evaluating Prospects for Geographical Indication Commodities as a Value-added Mechanism for Sustainable Agriculture
(2024) Petino, Gianni; Wilson, Jeffrey; Babb, Angela; Napoli, Donata; Ipsen, Carl; Conway, McKenna; Das, Sidd; Czebotar, Kamila; Knudsen, Daniel
The purpose of this report is to relay the results of an investigation into the ability of geographical indication (GI) to increase the profitability of small-scale agriculture in the EU and US and, consequently, revive and shore up the small agricultural communities in which producers live. The EU has long had a policy of using GI to differentiate its products within Europe and across the global economy. As a result, there is much we can learn from their experience. The US has relatively little experience in this regard, but examples do exist. In our European research we noted that GI status products seemed to be more resilient to the twin shocks of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. Much like “the farmer’s market economy’ in the US (Robinson et al. 2021), the “PDO economy” (Treccani, 2020) in Europe cushioned food producers during the pandemic (Dell’Orefice, 2022; Tetro, 2021). Also, new agricultural initiatives within the EU increasingly tie GI designation to the green economy through the inclusion of obligations to “social conditionality.” We also contend that the GI system used within the EU is entirely exportable. Indeed, the AVA system in the US is almost exactly a carbon copy of the system used for wines within the EU. For other food products, navigating US institutions to establish EU-like GIs is slightly more difficult. All the same, the case of Vidalia Onions provides an excellent blueprint – an enmeshment of state and federal law protecting a singular and unique foodstuff. In closing, it is critical to again specify exactly what that enmeshment entails: - Designation of the foodstuff as a state fruit, vegetable, or protein as appropriate; - Acquisition of a US certification mark held by an appropriate state government entity; - Acquisition of a USDA Market Order for the foodstuff. Only with the implementation of all three steps will a foodstuff acquire the necessary legal protection to reap the benefits of GI protection in the US. GI is not a panacea, but it is a tool in revitalizing the rural economy of the US.
Examining Miami Area Incidences and Impacts of Settler and Native American Conflict during the Second Seminole War
(2023) Galli, Gino; Galli, Gino
This article explores the overlooked history of conflicts during the Second Seminole War (1835-1842) in Southeastern Florida, focusing on the Miami area between 1836 and 1849. It delves into specific incidents, such as the Attack on the Cape Florida Lighthouse and various encounters involving Colonel William S. Harney and the 2nd Dragoons. The narrative details the establishment of Fort Dallas in response to the hostilities and its subsequent role as a pivotal center for the development of Miami. The author argues that the violent skirmishes between white settlers and Seminoles created a pervasive culture of fear, adversely affecting the growth of the Miami area. Additionally, the article examines the long-term impact of these conflicts on the population decline in the region, as reflected in census data, and underscores the complex interplay between settler-native relations during this critical period in Florida's history.
Peeling Back the Curtain to Unmask the Wizard of AI: Considering the Collaborative Relationship Between Non-Technical Subject Matter Experts and Artificial Intelligence
(2024) Galli, Gino
“Will robots steal our jobs?” Contrary to concerns about job displacement, this paper argues that the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in various industries creates new career opportunities for non-technical subject matter experts (SMEs), such as historians, educators, and ethicists. The role of these experts is crucial in shaping and fine-tuning AI models and addressing challenges like hallucinations and the lack of human nuance. Through case studies in historical research and legal domains, this paper draws upon research and recent articles from industry experts to demonstrate how AI, when complemented by non-technical SMEs, enhances productivity, accuracy, and innovation.
Ready to Regulate? The International Seabed Authority on the Brink of Commercial Mining
(2023) Bosco, David; Jaeckel, Aline; Singh, Pradeep
The International Seabed Authority (ISA) is a unique international organization mandated to regulate mining in seabed areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction (‘the Area’), protecting the marine environment from its harmful effects and sharing mining proceeds for the benefit of all of humankind. The ISA was created by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 and became operational in 1994. Since the early 2000s, the ISA has issued contracts for mineral exploration in the Area. As industry gears up for the beginning of commercial seabed mining, this complex multilateral organization faces a critical question: is it ready to regulate?
Applying Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development Framework to Natural Gas Allocation in Germany
(2022) Horgen, Emily
"Using Elinor Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development Framework and through researching legislation that has been implemented in response to the War in Ukraine, I study how decisions are made about natural gas allocation in Germany."
Stress Management of Teachers at Linamon District
(2022) Vallejos, Hanziel Montecalvo
"This study aimed to determine the stress management of teachers at Linamon District during the School Year 2022 – 2023. Specifically, the study sought to find out the following objectives: the demographic profiles and the work-related mental stressors of the respondents. Also, it sought the coping mechanisms relative to work-related-mental stress, the significant difference on the work-related mental stress and coping mechanisms when grouped to their demographic profile and the significant relationship between the teachers’ work-related mental stress and coping mechanisms. The study used the descriptive-correlation research design. It was conducted at Linamon District with 100 teachers as respondents. This research adopted two survey questionnaires. Frequency and percentage, Mean and standard deviation, Kruskall-Wallis H test, Mann-Whitney U test, Independent T-test, Pearson r Correlation and Stepwise Regression analysis were as statistical tools. Most of the respondents belonged in middle age, were females, majority were Christians, and were married. Descriptive result showed that majority of the respondents were Bachelor degree holders and they were tenured as Teacher II and Teacher III. Based from the result, stressors were sometimes experienced by the teachers in terms of demand, control, support, relationship, role and change. Work-related stress was manifested more on younger teachers as compared to older or seasoned teachers. Thus, the null hypothesis of no significant difference on the work-related stress when grouped to their age was rejected. It also depicted that support and coping mechanisms were significantly associated; role and coping mechanisms were significantly correlated; and change and coping mechanisms were negatively correlated. Results showed that the work-related stress relative to relationship significantly predicted the coping mechanisms of the respondents. A stress management program was designed based on the results of the study."
Genetically Modified Organisms and Food Security in Kenya: Conundrum and Discourse
(2022) Kadenge, Joshua
"The importance of food security and nourishment is recognized in East African region and in many communities, globally. However, the attainment of food security in East African countries is affected by many factors, including adverse environmental conditions, pests and diseases. Scientists have been insistently looking for innovative strategies to optimize crop production and combat challenges militating against attainment of food security. In agriculture, strategies of increasing crop production include but not limited to improved crop varieties, farming practices, extension services, irrigation services, mechanization, information technology, use of fertilizers and agrochemicals. Equally important is genetic modification (GM) technology, which brings new prospects in addressing food security problems. Nonetheless, since the introduction of genetically modified crops (GMOs) three decades ago, it has been a topic of public discourse across the globe, conspicuously so in Kenyan region. This is regardless of the evidence that planting GMOs positively influenced farmer’s incomes, economic access to food and increased tolerance of crops to various biotic and abiotic stresses. This paper looks at the issues surrounding GMOs adoption in Kenya and lack thereof, the discourse, and its potential in contributing to the attainment of food security for the present as well as future generations. The EAC is a regional trade grouping comprising Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, with its headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania. EAC regional bloc is characterized by rising population growth, diminishing arable land, increased malnutrition and frequent occurrence of natural disasters such as droughts and floods that have left the region food insecure.5 Faced with such challenges, strategies have to be formulated, adopted and implemented to ensure the poor and vulnerable communities in EAC, have access to resilient technologies that result in sustainable increase in production of nutritious food. Innovations in crop genetic improvement technologies like genetic engineering have the potential to offer increased, robust sustainable agricultural production in the face of population growth, climate change and shrinking natural resources.6 However, many promises of the technology that could have an impact on food security in EAC countries have not been realized because very few countries in the region have fully operationalized the necessary biosafety framework to regulate products of modern biotechnology. Most countries in EAC region have rather adopted a precautionary approach toward regulating GMO foods and crops irrespective of food shortages due to low agricultural production. Food security implies the physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life by all people.7 In light of this definition, food insecurity, under-nutrition and malnutrition are currently among the most serious concerns affecting many people in EAC region and other developing nations.8 Based on the results of EAC vulnerability assessment and analysis report, approximately 41 million people are food insecure and nine million are in urgent need of food aid.9 There is, therefore, an urgent need to increase production of nutritious food in EAC countries to avert hunger and malnutrition. Pursuant to that goal, the African Union, to which EAC countries belong, launched the Maputo Declaration on agriculture and food security in 2003 that stipulated that 10% of national budgetary resources of member countries should be committed to increase agricultural production."
Invisible Punishments: Causes And Collateral Consequences Of Racial Profiling and Incarceration In The United States
(2022) Aryan, Ibrahim
"A paper on how incarceration and racial profiling negatively affect black Americans in the United States of America. This paper focuses on three main areas of collateral consequences: a restriction against public benefits, limited employment and pay, and loss of civil rights in both the prison system and when reentering society where the majority of these black incarcerated individuals were in poverty before incarceration."
Case Study Research in Kenya and South Korea: Reflexivity and Ethical Dilemmas
(2022) Nissen, Aleydis
"Reflexivity increases the reliability of qualitative research studies and can fuel conversations as to how field researchers make judgments of complex challenges that are simultaneous of a practical, scientific and ethical nature. In this paper, I will reflect on the collection of empirical data for two case studies on the role of the European Union in the regulation and remediation of labour rights violations in the Kenyan floriculture industry and the South Korean electronics industry. This paper has two intertwined objectives. First, this paper explores reflexivity on my research experience and the use of methods in empirical fieldwork. Second, this paper questions the Anglo-American elements of my research, which had been reinforced by my School’s Research Ethics Committee. I explain how the contexts of research institutions and research participants can starkly differ and may not always be attuned to each other. I suggest that awareness of and training in 'positive ethics' might be useful to deal with such issues."
Can You Dig It? The Battle over the PolyMet Mine
(2022) Singer, Eliana
Environmentalists, mining advocates, and politicians have been battling over the permitting of the PolyMet mine in Minnesota’s Iron Range for north of a decade. The process has been extremely controversial and convoluted and a number of permits have been granted, then suspended, and now remain in limbo. In this paper, I apply the steps of the Institutional Analysis and Development framework in order to explain the factors that have governed this process. I begin by explaining the background of the region and its relevance to the case at hand, including the history of the Range’s declining mining economy, the health risks the mine poses, and a landmark case of environmental activism. I then establish the conditions near the site of the mine, the attributes of the community (with special attention to valuations based on historical memory and environmental imaginaries), and the network of rules-in-use. Next, I explore the long timeline of disputes over the mine, explaining how rules have been applied, shifted, or circumvented, how participants strategize, and what the situation looks like at the time of writing. Finally, I conclude by exploring how different participants may evaluate the mine’s status as it stands and lays out what a best-case scenario might look like.
What Went Wrong for TCI? Political Economy and Pricing Transportation Emissions
(2022) Shimberg, Naomi
"This paper follows the Institutional Framework for Policy Analysis and Design to analyze the policy development process of the Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI). TCI is a regional cap-and-trade program to reduce emissions in the transportation sector. However, in the fall of 2021, the program fell apart. This paper investigates why the number of participating jurisdictions in TCI dropped from 14 to four, and most recently, from four to zero."
Agriculture in the WTO and Rural Development
(2020) BAGDE, RAKSHIT
"Agriculture has been a major occupation of the Indian people since ancient times. Today 65% of the population is dependent on agriculture in various ways. The backbone of agriculture, once considered the backbone of the Indian economy, is crumbling today. The main reason for this is the neglect of agriculture by the government system and the newly started process of globalization. The rural economy that has survived is now on the brink of collapse due to the globalization process in agriculture, which is the only component of agriculture. By signing the WTO Agreement on January 1, 1995, India incorporated the agricultural sector into the process of globalization. In this regard, a secret agreement was reached between India and the United States on December 16, 1999, and India had to lift the numerical restrictions on its protected 715 agricultural commodities. The concept of globalization has been realized through the GATT Agreement, the Dunkel Proposal, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank."
Global Crises, Democratic Solutions—Within Days. Using Internet to Empower Citizens, Reach Popular Consensus, and Ensure Democratic Decision-making
(2021) Balli, Fabio
"In the last months, governments around the world have adopted public policies to promote large-scale vaccination, and covid certificates. Whether such measures are adequate or not has been largely debated. But why have such debates emerged? To this day, alternatives to centralized decision-making have been limitedly discussed. Here, I present how an online platform could help thousands of citizens express their needs (plurality), agree on common priorities (popular consensus), and pool resources to become the protagonists of a common project, like body cells coordinate in real time to preserve life. Building on the commons, on the free/libre and open-source movement (crowdsourcing), on short online events (hackathons), and on a method to coordinate large groups, I sketch how such a platform could help citizens build solidarity-driven solutions during three-day events."
Motivation: An Important Affective Factor in Second Language Learning
(2021) Caparoso, Jonel
"Motivation is not only important in language learning, but in all learning processes. Research reveals that students who are well-motivated perform better in school than those with low motivation (e.g. Dörnyei, 2014; Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011). As a result, it is essential that teachers, and parents pay close attention to the concept in question so that successful learning is always promoted. To be able to discuss the complexity of motivation in detail, five important articles were examined in this paper. These contributions have been written by Zoltan Dörnyei (Motivation in second, and foreign language learning, 2009; Attitudes, orientations, and motivation in language learning: Advances in theory, research, and application, 2005), Robert Gardner (Integrative motivation, and second language acquisition, 2005), Jacqueline Norris-Holt (Motivation as a contributing factor in second language acquisition, 2001), and Mehmet Nuri Gomleksiz (The effects of age, and motivation factors on second language acquisition, 2001)."
Revitalising the Agriculture Sector in India
(2020) Varma, Vijaya
"There is an abysmal disorder in the agriculture sector on account of multiple factors. The government’s apathy towards the farm sector is never-ending, which has led to the present situation where we have to depend heavily on imports of vegetable oils worth 74,000 crores, fruits worth 15,000 crores, pulses worth 12,000 crores during 2020-21. The input costs have overshot the returns in the farm sector. Farmers are unable to meet the rising input costs year after year with dwindling returns on farm yields. Farm incomes are decreasing and loan burden is increasing. The government is merely relying on temporary solutions in the form of hiking MSP prices grossly disproportionate to input costs, insufficient farm subsidies, and inadequate marketing facilities, scanty compensations for crop losses due to either floods or famine. If India was to achieve self-sufficiency in all types of food commodities, the central government should immediately focus on a complete overhaul of the farm sector to remove the malaise that is entrenched deeper inside, eating into the vitals before it is too late to repair the damage. In this scenario, this paper suggests concrete measures the government should take to increase the agricultural production at the lowest input cost so that farmers get maximum profits; for modernising procurement, storage and distribution network with greater efficiency; to inform and help farmers sell the produce at the best price using technology, to gather real time virtual data of all crops being cultivated, the crop yields on regular day to day basis thus arriving at their availability according to each village, district and states, and to evolve a single national agriculture market for selling; promoting and supporting area specific crops and vegetables linked to ever changing food habits and consumption by the people. A Route map to modernising and streamlining the agriculture sector in the country to achieve the following objectives 1. To double the agricultural production from the present level and achieve self-sufficiency in all food commodities 2. To stop farmer suicides by increasing incomes 3. To generate rural employment and stop migration of people to urban areas 4. To modernise agriculture practices, harvesting technologies, marketing structure, procurement, storage facilities and public distribution system 5. To make every district of India self-sufficiency in food grain production in 80% of crops, each state in 90% of crops and country as a whole in 100 % of crops 6. To avoid cross-transportation of agricultural produce and thus reduce transport cost of agricultural produce. It benefits both farmers and consumers 7. To decrease farming input costs and increase minimum support price for all agriculture produce. 8. To gradually reduce dependence on chemical fertilisers and pesticides, and instead promote organic farming by using natural manures and pest control methods. 9. To ensure allocation of all agriculture subsidies only to real farmers and keep rich farmers away from subsidies. 10. To achieve food security, energy security and fodder security 11. To overcome hardships from monsoon failures and frequent floods with advanced water resources management on the ground and by using satellite technology 12. To provide marketing facilities for all agricultural produce 13. To create efficient mechanism to sanction insurance for damaged crops due to floods, famines, drought and cyclones."
Electoral and Political Reforms in India
(2015) Varma, Vijaya
"Electoral and political reforms are urgently needed to reserve politics only to purists who intend to dedicate their whole time and energy to serve the people of the country round the clock. It is imperative to consider these new political and electoral reforms for better, healthy and improved democracy to remove corruption, inequalities, unemployment and misgovernance."
Structural Characteristics of Norms in Resource Dilemmas
(1994) Samuelson, Charles D.; Quinones, Miguel A.; Miyashiro, Bruce A.
"This research investigated the utility of Jackson's (1966) Return Potential Model (RPM) for assessing the structural characteristics of norms for choice behavior in a sequential resource dilemma. Two computer-controlled laboratory experiments were performed to test the conflict hypothesis (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959): normative power will increase as the degree of perceived conflict of interest between group members increases. The results of Study 1 demonstrated that subjects clearly perceived an equality norm in this resource sharing situation. In Study 2, three independent variables were manipulated in a 2 X 2 X 2 factorial design: (1) resource use (scarcity, abundance), (2) inequity in others' behavior (low, high), and (3) causal attribution for scarcity/abundance (group, environment). The results of Study 2 replicated the basic finding of Study 1 and showed further that the structure of the equality norm varied systematically as a function of both resource use and causal attribution. Consistent with the conflict hypothesis, normative power was higher under conditions of resource scarcity and high inequity. Contrary to expectations, under scarcity conditions, normative power was actually highest in the environment attribution rather than the group attribution condition. These findings suggest that the RPM approach has considerable promise as a reliable and useful method for obtaining quantitative measures of existing norms in small groups in laboratory settings."
The Impact of United States Power
(2021) Kulungu, Mustapha
Power is a crucial concept in the study of international relations. Power predicts countries' ability to dominate key critical institutions such as political, economic, and social institutions. It helps understand the outcomes of conflicts as closely associated with the 'cause' of conflicts among countries. Power provides bargaining in international matters as countries that seem more powerful have certain advantages over those with little power. In particular, the United States is regarded as a powerful country based on its economic, political, and social aspects, giving it an upper hand to influence international grounds' decision-making process.
An IAD Approach to COVID-19 on Campus
(2020) Clark, McKynzie
"In the wake of the coronavirus, many institutions have been forced to implement new policies, goals, and rules in promotion of public health and safety. Chief among these institutions, with varying degrees of success, are universities. The question administrators and students alike are left wondering is which features of a university might contribute to a successful response? Answering this question requires acknowledging how different success may be imagined by these occasionally disagreeing groups. As a student of Yale College, I will be grounding this exploration in our own unique residential college system, and more specifically, my own residential college, Grace Hopper. Unlike other college dormitories, residential colleges have their own administration and constitute their own institution, as well as community, within the university. The institutional analysis and development framework (IAD) offers a strategy with a small arsenal of strategies to observe and explain institutions, like universities, as well as the consequences of different institutional choices. This IAD arsenal contains tools for formulating and connecting questions, research agendas, and research itself that guide the curious to valid understandings of the important problems. With this framework, I hope to explore the institution of Grace Hopper’s residential college and ultimately find an explanation for compliance and consent to coronavirus response measures in this residential college."
The Urgency of Digital versus Conventional Community Services; Indonesia as Development Country (The Mid of Pandemic and Sustainable Development)
(2020/7/12) Sarbunan, Thobias
"This research was applied to analyse the urgency of digital and conventional community service types which purposefully to service in human resources' development. The researcher was argued that both terms of the community services were tangible as one of role model of knowledge administrated and also the bridge to human civilization that rapidly changed through invention. In addition, the researcher was considered that this kind of tool to develop human capacity either to sustains their life but also develop the acknowledgement to the change of literacy. Meanwhile, to the Indonesia context which constructed in the concrete and futuristic of government policy, this research in accordance to support the development of widespread impact to meet our sustainable development policy, therefore researcher underlined this research through analysis document to the urgency of the digital and conventional community service program. In conclusion, both digital and conventional were radical of the system that meant to the concern of the background needs and also community factual phenomenon to achieve each goal of the various community service programs. Besides that, to the future research and community services program, have to consider underlining to the knowledge of the digital concept which aimed to educated, because digital was defined not only for the term of the [Online] segment but also [Offline] side, so that by defined in structure flow, people will motivate and foster to develop their knowledge in purposes."
Digital Learning is Obligatory: Factual Tragedy of Absurd Unpreparedness (Invoice of Pandemic Learning)
(2020) Sarbunan, Thobias
"After the several of previous literatures asserted to the chaos of education in the mid of pandemic, the key point of that barriers was unprepared to the crisis which undergo immediately even to the wide background of countries, societies, also type of education institution. The main point of problem solving to the chaos of pandemic occurred to rethink and analyze all of education system that simultaneously adapt to all situation like pandemic."
Desert as a Parsimonious, Emergent Social Institution
(2020) Bower-Bir, Jacob S.
"Social scientists study the effects of many types of justice on human behavior and policy, generating important empirical findings, but often without a cogent underlying theory, and often at the expense of our understanding of justice, overall. I propose a single definition of justice, hinging on an emergent, variable desert. Whatever the context, justice is the rewarding of desert. Stipulating who deserves what, and why, conversely, depends critically context. Centering justice on desert clarifies the oft-abused language surrounding justice and bridges otherwise distinct conceptions of justice. Desert also provides a theoretical grounding for justice's influence on human behavior. Desert is a social institution that communities erect around an array of multiple-equilibria problems concerning the distribution of socioeconomic resources and responsibilities. As an institution, desert statements can be codified in the standard Institutional Grammar, thereby prescribing, demanding, or forbidding certain actions, with built-in incentives to conform."
CPR Coding Manual
(1989) Ostrom, Elinor; Agrawal, Arun; Blomquist, William; Schlager, Edella; Tang, S.Y.
"The fourth activity we have undertaken has been the identification of in-depth case studies that describe how CPR appropriators have succeeded or failed in efforts to manage inshore fisheries, small- to medium-sized irrigation systems, communal forests, or grazing lands. Identifying and coding in-depth case studies is undertaken in several steps. Most of this manual is devoted to an in-depth discussion of this activity."
Groundwater in the Eastern Desert with Reference to Application of Remote Sensing and GIS
(2007) Elewa, Hossam Hamdy
"The Eastern Desert of Egypt comprises almost one-fourth of the land surface of Egypt and covers an area of about 222117 km2. The northern tier is a limestone plateau, consisting of rolling hills, stretching from the Mediterranean coastal plain to a point roughly opposite Qena town on the River Nile. Near Qena, the plateau breaks up into cliffs about 487 m high and is deeply scored by wadis, which make the terrain very difficult to traverse. The outlets of some of the main wadis form deep bays, which contain small settlements of semi nomads. The second tier includes the sandstone plateau from Qena southward. The plateau is also deeply indented by ravines, but they are relatively free from obstacles, and some are usable as routes. The third tier consists of the Red Sea Hills and the Red Sea coastal plain. The hills run from near Suez town to the Sudanese border; they are not a continuous range but consist of a series of interlocking systems more or less in alignment. They are geologically complex, with ancient igneous and metamorphic rocks. These include granite that, in the neighborhood of Aswan area, extends across the Nile Valley to form the First Cataract—that is, the first set of rapids on the river. At the foot of the Red Sea Hills the narrow coastal plain widens southward, and parallel to the shore there are almost continuous coral reefs."
Pollution Attacks and Defense in Cloud-like Networks
(2018) Chang, Eric
"Various attacks and defenses in cloud-like systems have been proposed in recent years. This paper presents an investigation that compares various models on defending against content pollution. We categorize the various schemes into some groups and discuss the application-level model performance of each group. At end of the report, we present some future aspects on defending against content pollution; moreover, some important and useful evaluation results are in the report."
Cyber Security in the Digital Commons: How Commons Governance is Important on the Internet
(2019) Mirrlees, Carly
"The internet allows for a place where people from around the world can access and share information at free will (Mies, 2014). Because there are limited ways to track activity, and people can use the commons anonymously, it is hard to govern the commons in a way that ensures safety and integrity for everyone’s ideas (Mies, 2014). This paper seeks to examine different methods of commons governance to understand if any of them can be applied to the internet."
Economical Valuation of Allspice (Pimenta dioica) Production for the Restoration Strategies Proposed for the Recovery of 'Los Tuxtlas' Livestock Pastures (Veracruz, Mexico)
(2009) Hernandez, Luz Aliette; Ricker, Martin
"Laguna Escondida is an 'ejido' that is part of the natural protected area "Reserva de Biosfera Los Tuxtlas.' Currently, 71% of the surface of Laguna Exondida is occupied by livestock, which strongly influences the loss of the 'ejido' forest. The cultural acceptance of this productive activity is a result of several social factors related to the lack of alternative opportunities and the pressure for better incomes from the local population. Restoration initiatives for the region should incorporate these socio-economic demands and the stakeholders' participation in the proposal's design. As an alternative, in this study a restoration strategy was analyzed on the basis of the establishment of live fences with commercial use - using Pimenta dioica (L.) Merr. - in the cattle ranch area. The viability of the proposal was evaluated on the basis of the performance of P. dioica on: (1) the establishment of a demonstrative plot/ (2) the growth and yield projection for the species; (3) the analysis of the individuals' morphological variation according to their growing site; (4) the analysis of the environmental modifications as consequence of the presnece of P. dioica in the cattle area; and (5) the analysis of the commercial value of the proposal. As a result, it was observed that: (1) survivorship of P. dioica was successful (58%) on pasture land conditions; (2) in the pasture area, trees grew three times faster than trees developing inside the forest; (3) P. dioica trees improve the environmental conditions of the pasture; and (4) its establishment in live fences around the cattle area is profitable and economically competitive with the current 'ejido' livestock activity. These results allowed us to conclude that P. dioica has a high biological potential for the restoration initiatives; and its use as part of the live fences system in a commercial valuable alternative for the restoration of the pasture areas of Laguna Escondida."
The Impact of the Interaction between Formal and Informal Institutions on the Sustainability of Communal Initiatives of Forest Management in Oaxaca (Mexico)
(2009) Hernandez, Luz Aliette
"In this research the sustainability of the communal forest enterprises and its long term impacts in the quality of life of the individuals will be analyzed from the observation of two case studies - in the Oaxaca state of Mexico -, where poverty conditions (from income strategies analysis), social capital (from social network analysis), and natural capital (from GIS analysis) would be evaluated. These results will be subsequently used to develop an institutional analysis to identify the impact of the interaction between formal and informal institutions on the sustainability results observed. This institutional analysis will be developed using the frameworks of Social Ecological Systems (SES) and Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD), and the methodology of the International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI)."
How to Defend against Pollution Attacks in P2P Networks
(2018) Chang, Eric
"Pollution attacks in P2P networks become important and no existing work well solved this challenge. This paper presents an investigation that compares various models on defending against content pollution. We categorize the various schemes into some groups and discuss the application-level model performance of each group. At end of the report, we present some future aspects on defending against content pollution; moreover, some important and useful evaluation results are in the report."
Defending against Peer-to-Peer Pollution Behaviors
(2018) Chang, Eric
"In this report, we present a survey and comparison of various models on defending against content pollution. We categorize the various schemes into some groups and discuss the application-level model performance of each group. At end of the report, we present some future aspects on defending against content pollution; moreover, some important and useful evaluation results are in the report."
Towards A Framework for Detecting Tag Spam
(2017) Chang, Eric
"Tagging system is the killer application of Web2.0 services that can help users to share, tag and discover those interesting resources. In recent years, as tagging systems are gaining in popularity, many studies also indicated that tagging services are susceptible to tag spam: misleading tags that are generated in order to increase the popularity of some resources or simply to confuse users in the networks. In this report, we summarize both the representative tagging systems and the existing methods of defending against tag spam in the application. Through analyzing the existing tagging systems, we will propose the conclusions and future works at the end of the report."
Apropriacao de Sitio Arqueologico no Municipio de Rio Grande, RS: Relacoes entre Populacao e o Patrimonio Arqueologico
(2017) Martins, Andressa Ferreira; Goulart, Fábio Ortiz; Vecchia, Moacir Dallas
"Relatório apresentado como pré-requisito para aprovação na disciplina de Metodologia da Pesquisa Arqueológica I, realizado com o Sítio RS-Leggermann no município de Rio Grande, RS."
Exploring the ‘Shared Responsibility’ of Cyber Peace: Should Cybersecurity be a Human Right?
(2017) Shackelford, Scott
"Having access to the internet is increasingly considered to be an emerging human right. International organizations and national governments have begun to formally recognize its importance to freedom of speech, expression, and information exchange. The next step to help ensure some measure of cyber peace online may be for cybersecurity to be recognized as a human right, too. This Article investigates the nuances of this debate, and analyzes the implications of such a designation through the lens of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) movement."
Block-by-Block: Leveraging the Power of Blockchain Technology to Build Trust and Promote Cyber Peace
(2017) Shackelford, Scott; Myers, Steve
Published as: Shackelford, S., and S. Myers. 2017. “Block-by-Block: Leveraging the Power of Blockchain Technology to Build Trust and Promote Cyber Peace.” Yale Journal of Law & Technology 19:334–388. "There has been increasing interest in the transformative power of not only crypto-currencies like Bitcoin, but also the technology underlying them—namely blockchain. To the uninitiated, a blockchain is a sophisticated, distributed online ledger that has the potential, according to Goldman Sachs, to 'change everything.' From making businesses more efficient to recording property deeds to engendering the growth of ‘smart’ contracts, blockchain technology is now being investigated by a huge range of organizations and is attracting billions in venture funding. Even the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is investigating blockchain technology to 'create an unhackable messaging system.' However, the legal literature has largely ignored the rise of blockchain technology outside of its finance, securities, and copyright implications. This Article seeks to address this omission by analyzing the potential impact of blockchain technology on advancing the cybersecurity of firms across an array of sectors and industries with a particular focus on certificate authorities and the critical infrastructure context. Moreover, we examine the rise of blockchains through the lens of the literature on polycentric governance to ascertain what lessons this research holds to build trust in distributed systems and ultimately promote cyber peace."
The Firm as Common Pool Resource: Unpacking the Rise of Benefit Corporations
(2017) Hiller, Janine; Shackelford, Scott; Ma, Xiao
"This article investigates the processes and purposes of enacting benefit corporation statutes as a vehicle to better understand what role individuals, civil society, and other institutions play in reshaping the relationship between business and society. Furthermore, benefit corporation legislation supports cooperative (socially responsible) decision making that is the hallmark of a decentralized, multi-faceted management of common resources."
Estadísticas de la Educación 2015
(2017) Área de Estadística e Información Educativa
1. Datos generales. Todos los niveles y modalidades.-- 2. Modalidad común. Educación inicial.-- 3. Modalidad común. Educación primaria.- 4. Modalidad común. Educación secundaria.-- 5. Modalidad común. Educación superior.-- 6. Modalidad especial. Todas las ofertas y niveles.-- 7. Modalidad de educación permanente de jóvenes y adultos. Educación primaria y secundaria.-- 8. Modalidad artística.-- 9. Formación profesional y capacitación laboral.-- Glosario.-- Glosario de siglas.-- Bibliografía.-- Índice de tablas
As Diversidades Sexuais e de Gêneros Presentes nas Animaçoes de Canal Televisivo Infantil Cartoon Network
(2017) Goulart, Fábio Ortiz
"No presente texto busca-se apresentar as diferentes séries animadas realizadas pelo canal televisivo infantil Cartoon Network e as diversidades sexuais e de gêneros presentes dentro do mesmo canal de programas infantis. O presente trabalho partiu da análise de episódios específicos de diferentes séries animadas do Cartoon Network, onde foram feitas buscas em cenas onde se há temáticas relacionadas às diversidades sexuais e de gêneros. Entende-se que as crianças são influenciadas diretamente pela mídia, e os desenhos animados são de fato as melhores formas de construir as identidades das crianças. Estes programas infantis fazem parte do universo dos pequenos desde muito novos, que consequentemente são expostos a diferentes maneiras de pensar, ver e conversar com o mundo, portanto se há uma necessidade de estudar e estar a par do que as crianças assistem nestes canais e entendê-los como espaços educativos, pois eles são indispensáveis para a formação moral, cívica e intelectual de nossas crianças."
Ilha da Torotama: Os Registros nos Séculos XVIII e XIX
(2016) Goulart, Fábio Ortiz
"O presente trabalho, realizado no ano de 2015 (a pesquisa está em andamento, porém com um novo bolsista), visou pesquisar os registros históricos existentes acerca da Ilha da Torotama, localizada no 3º Distrito do município de Rio Grande/RS, com a finalidade de complementar o mapeamento de dados já realizado acerca dessa localidade em outros dois projetos relacionados. Para a realização da pesquisa, foram necessárias informações detalhadas acerca da constituição da ilha no que se refere ao mapeamento social, geográfico, histórico, demográfico e cultural da localidade, especificamente sobre a origem dos primeiros habitantes da Torotama, os movimentos migratórios, a densidade demográfica ao longo do tempo, os aspectos históricos relevantes, as práticas culturais e a culinária. Nesse sentido, foi preciso buscar informações e dados sobre esses pontos a partir da consulta em acervos que mantenham registros referentes aos séculos XVIII e XIX – neste presente trabalho, pretendemos nos dedicar a história da Ilha. Os objetivos específicos do projeto concentraram-se em (i) reunir essas informações em um dossiê, e (ii) promover a divulgação desse dossiê por meio de uma publicação."
Effective Governance for Groundwater Management: An Investigation of Indian and American Governance Approaches
(2017) Oliveira, Sasha
"Groundwater is a common-pool resource (CPR) that is extremely susceptible to overexploitation because of its difficulty of exclusion and high subtractibility of use. As groundwater is susceptible to overexploitation, it is also susceptible to the ‘tragedy of the commons’ (TOTC). In the tragedy of the commons, Garrett Hardin proposed private-property rights or state control as governance mechanisms capable of sustaining resources. In view of that, this paper seeks to answer: what CPR governance approach(es) are more effective in the management of groundwater? The CPR governance approaches examined in this paper are: self-governing institutions through the commons, privatization governance, and state-led governance. Governance examples from India and America are investigated to shed light on this question. In answering the question, the examples demonstrate that – no one single governance approach stands out from the rest. Firstly, a commons governance approach on resource management is minimal when private-property rights exist, where landowners frequently extract unlimited volumes of groundwater. On the other hand, state-led governance has the potential to be more effective at addressing groundwater problems. Yet, many examples of “too late” state-led governance are evident or in some cases the initiatives lack the inclusion of local communities and stakeholders. As such, this paper reasserts the position that Hardin’s proposed solutions for the TOTC are not full proof, and argues that commons are not effective at managing groundwater in the face of external drivers. Overall, I conclude that a multi-level form of governance is a promising approach for effective groundwater management."
Catalogação e Organização do Acervo do Núcleo de Estudos em Língua Portuguesa – NELP
(2017) Goulart, Fábio Ortiz
"O projeto de pesquisa 'Catalogação e Organização do Acervo do Núcleo de Estudos em Língua Portuguesa – NELP' foi realizado no período de um ano, de junho de 2016 a maio de 2017. O objetivo central consistia em catalogar os 1.700 volumes do núcleo, utilizando a tabela CDU, para classificação de acervos, e a tabela Cutter, para indicação de autoridade de uma obra. O novo banco de documentação permitiria, dessa forma, uma facilidade e um aperfeiçoamento na organização do acervo, na localização dos volumes nas estantes, no controle de retirada e devolução e na pesquisa online."
Manual Do Nucleo de Estudos em Lingua Portuguesa – NELP/ILA/FURG
(2017) RIBEIRO, ANA BEATRIZ OLIVEIRA; Goulart, Fábio Ortiz; GUERREIRO, NATÁLIA GARCIA; PIMPÃO, TATIANA SCHWOCHOW
"Pretende-se, neste manual, apresentar e divulgar o Núcleo de Estudos em Língua Portuguesa - NELP, vinculado ao Instituto de Letras e Artes - ILA - da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande - FURG -, e também realizar a exposição de algumas normas para bem utilizá-lo."
Playing Games to Save Water: Collective Action Games for Groundwater Management in India
(2017) Meinzen-Dick, Ruth; Janssen, Marco A.; Kandikuppa, Sandeep; Chaturved, Rahul; Rao, Kaushalendra R.; Theis, Sophie
"Groundwater is one of the most challenging common pool resources to govern, resulting in resource depletion in many areas. We present an innovative use of collective action games to not only measure propensity for collective action, but to improve local understanding of groundwater interrelationships and stimulate collective governance of groundwater, based on a pilot study with NGOs in Andhra Pradesh, India. The games simulate crop choice and consequences for the aquifer. These were followed by a community debriefing, which provided an entry point for discussing the interconnectedness of groundwater use, to affect mental models about groundwater. A slightly modified game was played in the same communities, one year later. Communication within the game increased the likelihood of groups reaching sustainable extraction levels in the second year, but not the first. Individual payments to participants based on how they played in the game had no effect on crop choice. Either repeated experience with the games or the revised structure of the game evoked more cooperation in the second year, outweighing other factors such as education, gender, and trust index scores. After the games were played, a significantly higher proportion of communities have adopted water registers and rules to govern groundwater, compared to other communities in the same NGO water commons program. Because groundwater levels are affected by many factors, games alone will not end groundwater depletion, but can contribute to understanding of the role of crop choice and collective action, to motivate behavior change toward more sustainable groundwater extraction."
Environmental Entrepreneurship: Case Studies of Common Pools with the Ostroms at Indiana University
(2017) Baden, John
"1970 Bozeman was a small town with a cow college located in the most remote state the contiguous USA. How did this place become the epicenter for FME & NRE? Why did ecological and environmental entrepreneurship develop there? Like most entrepreneurial success stories, the answer mixes luck, ambition and location."
As Diversidades na Série Animada Steven Universo do Cartoon Network
(2015) Goulart, Fábio Ortiz; Maio, José Endrew Vieira
"No presente artigo busca-se apresentar as diversidades presentes na série animada do Cartoon Network, Steven Universo, como também as representações na série que são de suma importância para o desenvolvimento do convívio social em relação às diversidades das crianças das séries iniciais do ensino fundamental. O trabalho partiu da ideia de que os contos de fadas são importantíssimos para o desenvolvimento das crianças. Dentre as diversidades apresentadas pela série estão as diversidades de gênero, racial e sexual, além do programa também mostrar quebras de estereótipos presentes em nossa cultura como, por exemplo, o fato do herói da animação ser gordo e possuir cabelos encaracolados."
Securing Peer-to-Peer Content Sharing Systems through Detecting Pollution Behaviors
(2017) Chang, Eric
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) content sharing systems have experienced an explosive growth, and now dominate large fractions of both the Internet users and traffic volume. However, due to the self-organization and self-maintenance nature of P2P overlay networks, these systems are vulnerable to the content pollution, where attackers aggressively inject a large quantity of polluted content into the systems. Such polluted content could largely reduce the availability of the original authentic content, thus enormously shattering genuine users' confidence in the P2P content sharing systems. In this report, we present a survey and comparison of various models on defending against content pollution. We categorize the various schemes into some groups and discuss the application-level model performance of each group. At end of the report, we present some future aspects on defending against content pollution; moreover, some important and useful evaluation results are in the report.
Highlighting Vulnerabilities via Context-Aware Framework
(2017) Chang, Eric
It is known to be full of challenges to score vulnerabilities based on various security requirements in cloud services. Although there have been several systems for scoring vulnerabilities (e.g., CVSS), most of them are unable to be leveraged to score vulnerabilities in cloud services, because they fail to consider some important factors located in cloud such as business context (i.e., dependency relationships between services) and threat levels of the same vulnerability on various security requirements. This paper aims to propose a novel framework to qualify and rank the vulnerabilities based on their threat degrees in cloud service. Through inputting or constructing service dependency graph, our framework is able to generate the importance degree of each service and the ranking list of all the vulnerabilities in cloud service. Moreover, our framework can be adopted not only into various cloud infrastructures, but also different categories of algorithms according to concrete requirements. To evaluate our framework, we adopt AssetRank algorithm into the framework, and present the whole design of our work. Comprehensive experiments prove the effectiveness of our framework on qualifying and ranking vulnerabilities in cloud service.
Defining Cybersecurity Due Diligence Under International Law: Lessons from the Private Sector
(2015) Shackelford, Scott; Russell, Scott; Kuehn, Andreas
"Although there has been a relative abundance of work done on exploring the contours of the law of cyber war, far less attention has been paid to defining a law of cyber peace applicable below the armed attack threshold. Among the most important unanswered questions is what exactly nations’ due diligence obligations are to their respective private sectors and to one another. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has not explicitly considered the legality of cyber weapons to this point, though it has ruled in the Corfu Channel case that one country’s territory should not be 'used for acts that unlawfully harm other States.' But what steps exactly do nations and companies under their jurisdiction have to take under international law to secure their networks, and what of the rights and responsibilities of transit states? This Article reviews the arguments surrounding the creation of a cybersecurity due diligence norm and argues for a proactive regime that takes into account the common but differentiated responsibilities of public- and private-sector actors in cyberspace. The analogy is drawn to cybersecurity due diligence in the private sector and the experience of the 2014 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Framework to help guide and broaden the discussion."
The Evolution of Collective Land Tenure Regimes in Pastoralist Societies: Lessons from Andean Countries
(2016) Damonte, Gerardo; Glave, Manuel; Rodríguez, Sandra; Ramos, Andrea
"This paper aims to analyse how land tenure regimes of pastoralist societies living in the Andean altiplano have transformed over the last 50 years and discusses the implications of these transformations for the sustainability of resource management in these areas. Much has been said about the importance of pastoralist livelihoods for the effective and sustainable use of drylands around the world. Yet, pastoralist societies are experiencing more pressures to their way of life than ever before. These pressures and changing trends are jeopardising pastoralist livelihoods as well as the sustainability of dryland resources. I n the face of this challenging reality, this paper aims to analyse how land tenure regimes of pastoralist societies living in the Andean altiplano have transformed over the last 50 years. It also discusses the implications of these transformations for the sustainability of resource management in these areas, based on the premise that a better understanding of customary land tenure regimes can help to inform public policy and decision making."
Secure and Usable Integrity Protection Model for Operating Systems
(2016) Chang, Eric
"Host compromise is one of the most serious security problems for operating systems today. Existing integrity protection models for operating systems are difficult to use; on the other hand, the most available integrity protection models only provide heuristic approaches without strong guarantees. This paper presents SecGuard, a secure and high-available integrity protection model for operating systems. To ensure the security of systems, SecGuard provides formal guarantees that operating systems are security under three threats: network-based threat, IPC communication threat, and contaminative file threat. On the other hand, we introduce some novel mechanisms to ensure high-available of the model. For instance, SecGuard leverages the information of the existing discretionary access control mechanism to initialize integrity labels for subjects and objects in the systems. Moreover, we describe the implementation of SecGuard for Linux using Linux Security Modules framework, and show it has low overhead and effectively achieve security and high-availability for operating systems."
As Diversidades na Série Animada Steven Universo do Cartoon Network
(2015) Goulart, Fábio Ortiz; Maio, José Endrew Vieira
"No presente artigo busca-se apresentar as diversidades presentes na série animada do Cartoon Network, Steven Universo, como também as representações na série que são de suma importância para o desenvolvimento do convívio social em relação às diversidades das crianças das séries iniciais do ensino fundamental. O trabalho partiu da ideia de que os contos de fadas são importantíssimos para o desenvolvimento das crianças. Dentre as diversidades apresentadas pela série estão as diversidades de gênero, racial e sexual, além do programa também mostrar quebras de estereótipos presentes em nossa cultura como, por exemplo, o fato do herói da animação ser gordo e possuir cabelos encaracolados."
Detecting Deceptive and Malicious Voting Behaviors in Decentralized Systems
(2016) Chang, Eric
"Deceptive behaviors of peers in today’s decentralized systems have become a serious problem due to the anonymous and self-organization nature. In this paper, we propose Soc, a novel active challenge-response mechanism based on the notion that the one side of transaction with preponderant knowledge can detect whether the other side is telling a lie. In Soc, through introducing the friend-based scheme, each peer can establish own friend relationships quickly. With the secret information of friends, Soc can construct the asymmetrical information between peers. Our active challenge-response mechanism can help peers find the deceivers in system based on the asymmetrical information. Soc also provides the mechanism which can reduce the probability of impact brought by deceptive peers. Compared with existing reputation models, Soc is more robust to the problems of collusive deceivers and cold start. The evaluation results illustrate that Soc can effectively address the problem of deceptive peers."
Defending against Spam in Tagging Systems via Reputations
(2016) Chang, Eric
"Global Internet is witnessing a rapidly growing popularity of tagging services on the social networks, which enable people to share and tag different categories of resources. However, the current tagging systems face a serious problem -- tag spam. In this paper, we propose SpamLimit -- a novel social- enhanced reputation mechanism against spam in tagging systems. First, we propose a basic reputation mechanism that provides the personalized reputation estimates to each user in system. Our approach can impose severe and quick punishment to spammers but also provide an incentive to promote normal users sharing the correct tags. Because users can rank the tag search results with the reputation estimates of owners of resources, the results provided by spammers can be degraded to the end of search results. Then, we utilize friend relationships, the social nature of tagging systems, to enhance the basic reputation mechanism. Because the friends are all real-world acquaintances, these reliable companions can provide many referential experiences to users. This will help to improve both performance and convergence of SpamLimit. Finally, our experiment results illustrate that SpamLimit can effectively defend against tag spam and work better than the existing tag search models in tagging systems."
Overcoming Risks in Hidden Dependencies within the Cloud
(2016) Chang, Eric
"In order to address reliability and availability of cloud services, redundancy-based techniques utilizing more than one cloud provider have been recently proposed. Unfortunately these approaches fail to recognize the effects related to common dependencies hidden by in- dependent redundant services, potentially invalidating these efforts. We propose a novel system to address this pitfall by recommending cloud consumers the most suit- able redundant services based on the consumers’ requirements. We call this system a cloud reliability recommender (CRR). At the heart of a CRR, we leverage fault tree analysis techniques to 1) discover hidden common dependencies in order to generate correlation matrices; 2) calculate the failure probabilities of alternative services; and, 3) enable cloud consumers to specify criteria to optimize their utility, recommending the most suitable services for them. In this paper, we describe the CRR, the aforementioned process, and discuss the challenges inherent to CRR design and practicality."
Resilience Thinking for Common Pool Resource Management - Avoiding Drought Induced Disaster Threats in Indian Rajasthan
(2016) Sultanem, Nicholas
"Drought related problems are a major stress source on the livelihood of communities in several areas of the world. Due to inefficient water resources management people leave their traditional habitat in search for security in larger agglomerations. This creates a big stress on the carrying capacity of urban centers and leaves deserted rural areas incapacitated. Setting Sustainable Development Goals as targets to reach, using Resilience Thinking to provide for resilience, adaptability and transformability, and planning for Integrated Water Resources Management can be a solution to reduce this outmigration. Rajasthan is a state in India where communities have been surviving with very little available water for ages. Contemporaneous implementations in parts of Rajasthan fulfill the framework set for this study. After identifying a promising SES in terms of drought resilience a field investigation was conducted for adequate assessment and model of resilient SES was reverse engineered from the findings. Reading thru this document one can explore the uniqueness of Rajasthan water governance from pasts long gone and to the current date. In the end of the study strategic adaptive planning recommendations can be found for creating a similar SES."
Strengthening the Food Systems Governance Evidence Base: Supporting Commensurability of Research through a Systematic Review of Methods
(2016) Delaney, Aogán; Evans, Tom; McGreevy, John; Blekking, Jordan; Schlachter, Tyler; Korhonen-Kurki, Kaisa; Tamás, Peter A.; Crane, Todd A.; Eakin, Hallie; Förch, Wiebke; Jones, Lindsey; Nelson, Donald R.; Oberlack, Christoph; Purdon, Mark
"Governance of food systems is a poorly understood determinant of food security. Much scholarship on food systems governance is non-empirical, while existing research is often case study-based and theoretically and methodologically incommensurable. This frustrates aggregation of evidence and generalisation. We undertook a systematic review of methods used in food systems governance research with a view to identifying a core set of indicators for future research. We gathered literature through a structured consultation and sampling from recent reviews. Indicators were identified and classified according to the levels and sectors they investigate. We found a concentration of indicators in food production at local to national levels and a sparseness in distribution and consumption. Unsurprisingly, many indicators of institutional structure were found, while agency-related indicators are moderately represented. We call for piloting and validation of these indicators and for methodological development to fill gaps identified. These efforts are expected to support a more consolidated future evidence base and eventual meta-analysis."
International Environmental Law: A Human Rights Oriented Approach
(2016) Scholten, Andrew; Bresson, Julien
"The aim of this This paper discusses the most important approaches to international environmental law observed since 1980. International environmental law becomes an issue of scientific studies for nearly a forty years. This issues resulted in adoption of the biodiversity convention during nineties as well as further development of international environmental law. The issue of international environmental law is strongly interlinked with intergenerational equity. Defined by UNEP to include intergenerational equity--'the right of future generations to enjoy a fair level of the common patrimony'--and intragenerational equity--'the right of all people within the current generation to fair access to the current generation's entitlement to the Earth's natural resources'--environmental equity considers the present generation under an obligation to account for long-term impacts of activities, and to act to sustain the global environment and resource base for future generations. The article presents the most important legal debates concerning international environmental law over the past twenty years."
Transitional Justice in Latin American Coutries: The Case of Brazil
(2016) Scholten Andrew; Bresson, Julien
"The aim of this article is to draw attention on the transitional justice in Brazil with a particular reference on the National Truth Commission. The article presents the most important stages of the debates on transitional justice occurred in Brazil after 2005. From 1964 to 1985 Brazil fell under the influence of a military regime that killed or 'disappeared' political activists and trade unionists and tortured many others. The numbers of those killed and 'disappeared' are smaller than those of neighboring countries like Argentina, which also fell to military dictatorships. Brazil’s military regime ruled Brazil by rotating military presidents, held elections, and kept Congress open. However, in reality, the elections held were heavily manipulated and the military openly threatened Congress if it began to operate against the views and wishes of the regime. In 1979 the Brazilian government passed an amnesty law that allowed all exiled activists to return to Brazil but also protected officials involved in the military regime from any prosecution for human rights violations committed prior to 1979. Because of this law, no military perpetrators of crimes have been tried and convicted for their offenses. As 1985 began to unfold, the regime began to slowly and peacefully transfer governmental power to civilians, avoiding a tumultuous end that might instigate negative feelings about the regime or aggressive prosecution of any leaders of the military. This chapter of Brazil’s past created what researcher Nina Schneider describes as a 'politics of silence', where atrocities and entire decades of Brazil’s history have been swept under the carpet. The article presents the most important aspects of transitional justice in Brazil after 2005."
Social Dilemmas are Only Part of the Story to Explain Overharvesting of Renewable Resources
(2016) Janssen, Marco A.
"We report on experiments with a spatial explicit dynamic resource where individuals make incentivized real-time decisions when and where to harvest the resource units. We test how individuals make decisions when they manage the resource on their own, or share a resource twice the size with another person. We find that most individuals do not harvest resources close to the optimal strategy when they manage the resource individually, and this relates to their understanding of the instructions and their social orientation. Cooperators let resources grow even when there is no social dilemma. In group rounds, there is more overharvesting, especially if participants are selfish and have a low understanding of the instructions. The results show that a better understanding of the motivations of participants is needed to explain the observed behavior."
Legal Aspects of Human Trafficing: Law, Politics, and Society
(2016) Scholten, Andrew
"Presented article is focused on legal and socio-political aspects of the issue of human trafficking worldwide. The growing scale of human trafficking is an issue widely discussed in scientific literature and on international agenda Human trafficking can occur within a country or trans-nationally. Human trafficking is a crime against the person because of the violation of the victim's rights of movement through coercion and because of their commercial exploitation. Human trafficking is the trade in people, and does not necessarily involve the movement of the person from one place to another. A significant part of this article is focused on international humanitarian aspects of human trafficking and human smuggling. Public service announcements have also proved useful for organizations combating human trafficking. In addition to many other endeavors, UNODC works to broadcast these announcements on local television and radio stations across the world. By providing regular access to information regarding human-trafficking, individuals are educated how to protect themselves and their families from being exploited."

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