La politique publique pour le développement durable: l’Amazonie,un cas illustratif

Comment utiliser l’éducation, la science et la technologie pour organiser une politique de développement durable dans l’État d’Amazonas, l’Unité fédérale la plus vaste du Brésil et d’Amazonie, qui compte 70 peuples indigènes ayant leur propre cosmogonie, 10 % de la réserve mondiale d’eau douce de surface, 25°000 kilomètres de fleuves navigables, 6,7 % de la biosphère tropicale mondiale, 72 millions d’hectares de territoires protégés, et 10 % de toutes les réserves forestières des tropiques humides de la planète, réparties sur 96% de son territoire? Cette proposition constitue le programme, ses principes structurels, ses mécanismes opérationnels et un ensemble d’actions visant à l’implantation et à l’organisation de cette politique de développement durable au cours de la période 2003-2015. Comment intégrer processus de la nature et processus culturels à un modèle de développement durable dans l’Amazonie? Telles sont les principales questions abordées par cet article, qui présente une initiative publique pionnière au Brésil pour construire des modèles de développement durable dans l’Amazonie.     

Games and Mechanism Design in Machine Scheduling—An Introduction

We survey different models, techniques, and some recent results to tackle machine scheduling problems within a distributed setting. In traditional optimization, a central authority is asked to solve a (computationally hard) optimization problem. In contrast, in distributed settings there are several agents, possibly equipped with private information that is not publicly known, and these agents must interact to derive a solution to the problem. Usually the agents have their individual preferences, which induces them to behave strategically to manipulate the resulting solution. Nevertheless, one is often interested in the global performance of such systems. The analysis of such distributed settings requires techniques from classical optimization, game theory, and economic theory. The paper therefore briefly introduces the most important of the underlying concepts and gives a selection of typical research questions and recent results, focusing on applications to machine scheduling problems. This includes the study of the so‐called price of anarchy for settings where the agents do not possess private information, as well as the design and analysis of (truthful) mechanisms in settings where the agents do possess private information.     

Challenges in Managing Nonprofit Organizations: A Research Overview

The topic of management and nonprofit organizations (NPOs) continues to fascinate scholars. This paper draws on varying theoretical perspectives to explore their respective contributions to our knowledge of NPOs. The two longstanding and contrasting disciplines of economics and sociology have contributed most, traditionally, to the study of NPOs. However, neither of these disciplines has resolved all the dilemmas associated with NPOs. The standard economic model does not apply well to the distinctive nonmarket situation of NPOs. The sociological perspectives offer interesting insight, but fail to develop plans of action for NPOs. However, both of these traditional perspectives are starting to be eclipsed by the focus on marketing research.     

Nonverbal Emotion Priming: Evidence from the ‘Facial Affect Decision Task’

Affective associations between a speakers voice (emotional prosody) and a facial expression were investigated using a new on-line procedure, the Facial Affect Decision Task (FADT). Faces depicting one of four basic emotions were paired with utterances conveying an emotionally-related or unrelated prosody, followed by a yes/no judgement of the face as a true exemplar of emotion. Results established that prosodic characteristics facilitate the accuracy and speed of decisions about an emotionally congruent target face, supplying empirical support for the idea that information about discrete emotions is shared across major nonverbal channels. The FADT represents a promising tool for future on-line studies of nonverbal processing in both healthy and disordered individuals.The author gratefully acknowledges the service of Elmira Chan, Sarah Addleman, and Marta Fundamenski for running the experiment, and for helpful comments received from M. Harris, K. Scherer and anonymous reviewers of an earlier draft of the paper. This research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.     

Stability of attributes of positive functioning and of developmental assets among African American adolescent male gang and community-based organization members

An analysis is presented of the longitudinal stability over the course of a year of characteristics of positive functioning and of individual and ecological developmental assets, among African American male youth involved in gangs or in community-based organizations (CBOs) serving youth. Evidence is provided for the potential of positive youth development among both groups of adolescents.     

Satisfaction higher for physician executives who treat patients,survey finds

If you're satisfied with your physician executive job, one factor contributing to your happiness may be that you're still seeing some patients. Check out the results of a national survey that examines why some physician executives are more satisfied with their jobs.