LGBTQI-identified human rights defenders: courage in the face of adversity at the United Nations

The role of LGBTQI human rights defenders in the international arena at the United Nations (UN) is a particularly risky and insecure one, especially for those who themselves identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, two spirit, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI). This article focuses on the anecdotal experiences of LGBTQI-identified human rights defenders and their work at the UN, observed and noted during a research study examining the degree of recognition and legitimacy LGBTQIs have at the UN. Much courage is required on the part of LGBTQI-identified human rights defenders who, while defending others in their communities, themselves face opposition from those within the UN who hold traditional, religious, and culturally based values, as well as a result of state sovereignty and state-sanctioned criminalisation of their gender and sexual diversity.     

工业劳动力流动、资本创造与经济地理空间均衡

资本创造模型（CC模型）忽视了要素流动对产业空间分布的影响。而发展的新的资本创造模型则认为资本集聚的过程必然伴随着工业劳动力的流动过程。另外，是资本的实际收益而不是名义收益决定资本是否创造。研究结果表明，随着贸易自由度、工业品支出份额及资本贴现率的变大，替代弹性及资本折旧率的变小，将降低对称结构的稳定性，而提高中心-外围结构的稳定性；经济地理空间的产业均衡是集聚力和分散力相互作用的结果。当企业生产工业品的规模报酬递增程度足够显著，或者工业品支出份额很高时，市场拥挤效应将彻底消失，并转化成为促进产业集聚的动力；突破点与持续点的大小比较可以形成不同的关系，这意味着随着贸易自由度的变化，本文发展的资本创造模型可以体现出多样化的产业空间动态演化行为。     

中国国民财富总量、结构及其演进模式研究——基于“自上而下-自下而上”测度范式

“财富-福利等式”表明国民财富与社会福利具有理论等价关系,是评估发展可持续性的最优指示器。我国国民财富研究相对滞后,总量测度与结构分析都亟待深化。本文基于“自上而下-自下而上”范式,依据国情优化关键参数的设定,改进了我国国民财富与分类资本估算,并剖析了省际国民财富结构以识别其演进模式。研究发现:由于资源禀赋与发展阶段有别,省际国民财富结构差异显著;随着经济发展水平提升,国民财富结构先由自然资本主导转向物质资本与人力资本共同主导,进而转变为人力资本主导,最终迈入社会资本主导。各地区应结合自身禀赋与发展阶段做好“投资组合管理”,以此来提升国民财富并优化其结构从而改善经济发展的持续性。     

Linking young individuals' capital to investment intentions: Comparing two cultural backgrounds

By integrating the Entrepreneurial Intentionality Model and the Theory of Planned Behaviour, we explored the effects of human, social and financial capital on young individuals' investment intentions in two groups (97 English and 97 Greeks). Results indicated that human capital is directly and indirectly related to investment intentions via, first, subjective norms and, consequently, personal attitudes and perceived behavioural control, while social capital is only indirectly related to investment intentions via perceived behavioural control. In the individualistic group (English), human capital related directly and positively with investment intentions while social capital related indirectly to investment intentions via its positive relationship to subjective norms. With regard to participants from a collectivistic background (Greeks), human capital related indirectly to investment intentions via, first, subjective norms and, consequently, personal attitudes and perceived behavioural control, while social capital related directly and indirectly to investment intentions via perceived behavioural control. Financial capital was only negatively related to investment intentions in the total and Greek sample.     

Human Agency in Disaster Planning: A Systems Approach

Current approaches to risk management place insufficient emphasis on the system knowledge available to the assessor, particularly in respect of the dynamic behavior of the system under threat, the role of human agents (HAs), and the knowledge available to those agents. In this article, we address the second of these issues. We are concerned with a class of systems containing HAs playing a variety of roles as significant system elements—as decisionmakers, cognitive agents, or implementers—that is, human activity systems. Within this family of HAS, we focus on safety and mission‐critical systems, referring to this subclass as critical human activity systems (CHASs). Identification of the role and contribution of these human elements to a system is a nontrivial problem whether in an engineering context, or, as is the case here, in a wider social and public context. Frequently, they are treated as standing apart from the system in design or policy terms. Regardless of the process of policy definition followed, analysis of the risk and threats to such a CHAS requires a holistic approach, since the effect of undesirable, uninformed, or erroneous actions on the part of the human elements is both potentially significant to the system output and inextricably bound together with the nonhuman elements of the system. We present a procedure for identifying the potential threats and risks emerging from the roles and activity of those HAs, using the 2014 flooding in southwestern England and the Thames Valley as a contemporary example.     

Reform priorities for prosperity of nations: The Legatum Index

We apply a four-stage methodology (i.e., cluster analysis, data mining, partial least square path modeling, and importance-performance analysis) to identify the critical paths to multi-dimensional prosperity of nations. Using the Legatum Prosperity Index across 142 countries as a proxy for prosperity, we find strong evidence of the positive causal mechanisms among dimensions of prosperity. This implies that individual dimensions of prosperity should not be weighted equally in designing policies that support prosperity of nations. In line with human capital theory, we find that education and the pupil to teacher ratio are the key policy drivers of prosperity enhancement.     

I'm Not for Sale: Teaching About Human Trafficking

Even though slavery is illegal in all countries, it is still practiced in the form of human trafficking. In fact, there are about twenty-five million men, women, and children who are victims of human trafficking, a 150-billion-dollar industry that affects every country across the globe. Modern communications, such as the Internet and cell phones, exacerbate the problem of human trafficking and law enforcement faces enormous challenges in detecting, arresting, and prosecuting human traffickers. Victims, fifty percent of whom are children, are sold into prostitution, forced marriages, and forced labor in sweatshops, agriculture, and mining. Additionally, some victims are forced into armed conflicts as children; others are killed and their organs are harvested and sold on the black market. It is estimated that 50,000 victims are brought into the United States annually. Human trafficking is a moral outrage, as well as a violation of American and international law. Social studies education must teach about this egregious human rights violation and encourage students to become involved in stopping this modern-day slavery. By incorporating lessons into their curricula, all teachers can help produce young citizens dedicated to protecting human rights for all people.     

What does Brunei teach us about using Human Development Index rankings as a policy tool?

The Bruneian Government has set an ambitious target to achieve a top 10 ranking on the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI) by 2035. To achieve its objective (described in a national strategy document called the Wawasan 2035), Brunei's economy needs to grow by 6% to 7%. Is setting an HDI target a good way to govern Brunei's policy‐making? Is it a good way to govern any country's policy‐making? In this article, we look at the role of HDI‐rank targets in economic and fiscal policy. We show that such a headline target (much like a profit target in a private company) automatically sets targets for growth in various economic sectors and fiscal policy targets. As such, HDI‐rank targeting may provide a useful mechanism for co‐ordinating development policies and for monitoring progress against a wide range of development goals using only one number.     

A Discourse on the Incorporation of Organizational Factors into Probabilistic Risk Assessment: Key Questions and Categorical Review

This article presents a discourse on the incorporation of organizational factors into probabilistic risk assessment (PRA)/probabilistic safety assessment (PSA), a topic of debate since the 1980s that has spurred discussions among industry, regulatory agencies, and the research community. The main contributions of this article include (1) identifying the four key open questions associated with this topic; (2) framing ongoing debates by considering differing perspectives around each question; (3) offering a categorical review of existing studies on this topic to justify the selection of each question and to analyze the challenges related to each perspective; and (4) highlighting the directions of research required to reach a final resolution for each question. The four key questions are: (I) How significant is the contribution of organizational factors to accidents and incidents? (II) How critical, with respect to improving risk assessment, is the explicit incorporation of organizational factors into PRA? (III) What theoretical bases are needed for explicit incorporation of organizational factors into PRA? (IV) What methodological bases are needed for the explicit incorporation of organizational factors into PRA? Questions I and II mainly analyze PRA literature from the nuclear domain. For Questions III and IV, a broader review and categorization is conducted of those existing cross-disciplinary studies that have evaluated the effects of organizational factors on safety (not solely PRA-based) to shed more light on future research needs.