Academic literature on the topic 'Direct charge cooperatives'

A distributed nature of a wireless mobile ad hoc network, lack of a single authority, and limited battery resources of participating devices may lead its users to be reluctant to packet relaying duties. This paper investigates potential networking conditions that could lead to a direct reciprocity-based cooperation on packet relaying. Simulation of behaviour of the network is carried out using an evolutionary game-theoretical approach. A game-based model of nodes' interactions coupled with a genetic algorithm is used to find successful relaying strategies for various networking conditions. Computational experiments demonstrate that the reciprocity-based packet relaying is an efficient way to overcome the social dilemma present in such a network. However, in the presence of a large number of unconditionally cooperatives nodes a selfish permanent defection strategy is more efficient than a reciprocal tit-for-tat strategy. Nevertheless the switch from cooperative to selfish behaviour among some users does not change significantly the overall performance of the network as the negative consequences of the switch are compensated by the generous packet relaying contribution of unconditionally cooperative nodes.

<p>Considering the threats from OTT (Over-The-Top) services, this paper examines whether the mobile operator should charge OTT services access fees and how to. By using a dynamic-gaming process, we find that: 1) under non-cooperative strategy, the mobile operator would charge OTT a mobile Internet access fee, which is positively correlated to OTT platform’s future commercial value and the price of direct communication service, and negatively correlated to the indirect communication service price. 2) under cooperative strategy, the OTT service price that the joint venture charges end users is negatively correlated to OTT platform’s future commercial value. 3) despite choosing cooperative or non-cooperative strategy, the pricing of mobile operator’s direct communication service has a negative correlation with OTT platform’s future value and a positive correlation with the platform’s quality; while the pricing of the indirect communication service is positively correlated to platform’s future value and negatively correlated with the platform quality.</p>

Higher education internalization, professional mobility and competitive participation in the international labour market requires the new 21st century competences that involve the transformational change of future teachers, academic staff and the teacher training institution itself. Integrated content and foreign language (CLIL) study programmes create preconditions for such transformational learning based on cooperative learning/teaching, critical thinking, formative assessment and reflection. Simulations, case studies, problem solving, project work, research based learning develop students’ ability to work cooperatively and produce collectively. Pedagogical scaffolding strategies, constructive feedback and formative assessment enable students monitor their progress and plan their further learning. Systematic reflection helps understand better meaningfulness and complexity of the teaching profession, directs one’s transformation and equips students with lifelong learning skills. CLIL study programs prove to have high transformational impact on in-service teachers’ conceptual thinking, procedural skills and encourage reassessing the validity of learning. Ability to direct one’s change empowers future teachers to construct and reconstruct their knowledge based on their experience and needs, critically evaluate educational and work environment, transfer the acquired knowledge and skills to new contexts and actively participate in the reconstruction of the changing society.

ABSTRACT Auto-inhibition is a common transcriptional control mechanism that is well characterized in the regulatory transcription factor Ets-1. Autoinhibition of Ets-1 DNA binding works through an inhibitory module that exists in two conformations. DNA binding requires a change in the inhibitory module from the packed to disrupted conformation. This structural switch provides a mechanism to tightly regulate Ets-1 DNA binding. We report that the Ets-1 partner protein core-binding factor α2 (CBFα2; also known as AML1 or PEBP2) stimulates Ets-1 DNA binding and counteracts auto-inhibition. Support for this conclusion came from three observations. First, the level of cooperative DNA binding (10-fold) was similar to the level of repression by auto-inhibition (10- to 20-fold). Next, a region necessary for cooperative DNA binding mapped to the inhibitory module. Third, an Ets-1 mutant with a constitutively disrupted inhibitory module did not bind DNA cooperatively with CBFα2. Furthermore, two additional lines of evidence indicated that CBFα2 affects the structural switch by direct interactions with Ets-1. First, the retention of cooperative DNA binding on nicked duplexes eliminated a potential role of through-DNA effects. Second, cooperative DNA binding was observed on composite sites with altered spacing or reversed orientation. We suggest that only protein interactions can accommodate this observed flexibility. These findings provide a mechanism by which CBF relieves the auto-inhibition of Ets-1 and illustrates one strategy for the synergistic activity of regulatory transcription factors.

The purpose of the study was to find out the title role of Pesantren believer Cooperative Mandiri Sidoarjo towards economic empowerment and independence employee boarding schools. The research method used is a descriptive qualitative approach to the case study method. Data collection was carried out by interviews and direct observation to informants, namely those in charge of pesantren, cooperative and cooperative employees (santri). And secondary data collection comes from journals, text books and other literature. The result of this study is the Mukmin Mandiri Pesantren Cooperative plays a major role in enhancing the empowerment of cooperative employees (santri) and playing an optimal role in supporting the independence of the cottage. The economic empowerment of pesantren employees conducted by the Mukmin Mandiri Pesantren Cooperative is by making the Cooperative a work field, a place to apply knowledge and a place to increase income. As for the independence of the cottage, that is to become the main source of funding for Islamic boarding schools in carrying out operations and the sustainability of Islamic boarding schools. Going forward, the Cooperative will further optimize the empowerment of union employees (santri) to print better students in the field of entrepreneurship and religion.Keywords: Cooperative Boarding School, Economic Empowerment, Independence of Islamic Boarding Schools

In high-speed mobile Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) cooperative system, direct channel signal presents a step change due to carriage loss, which interferes with signal reception. In the proposed system, spread spectrum is adopted at relay to separate the receiving mixed signals. Subsequently, the fading coefficient threshold of direct channel is obtained by simulating outage probability of direct channel. Finally, separated direct channel signal is selectively received based on the ratio relationship between its current fading coefficient and the obtained threshold. The proposed receiving strategy reduces Bit Error Rate compared with other receiving methods. Moreover, throughput of the proposed system increases when the fading coefficient is higher than threshold.

Decentralized control of cooperative systems captures the operation of a group of decision makers that share a single global objective. The difficulty in solving optimally such problems arises when the agents lack full observability of the global state of the system when they operate. The general problem has been shown to be NEXP-complete. In this paper, we identify classes of decentralized control problems whose complexity ranges between NEXP and P. In particular, we study problems characterized by independent transitions, independent observations, and goal-oriented objective functions. Two algorithms are shown to solve optimally useful classes of goal-oriented decentralized processes in polynomial time. This paper also studies information sharing among the decision-makers, which can improve their performance. We distinguish between three ways in which agents can exchange information: indirect communication, direct communication and sharing state features that are not controlled by the agents. Our analysis shows that for every class of problems we consider, introducing direct or indirect communication does not change the worst-case complexity. The results provide a better understanding of the complexity of decentralized control problems that arise in practice and facilitate the development of planning algorithms for these problems.

Cooperative learning is a pedagogical framework extensively used in educational contexts worldwide, but some scholars warn that we do not know much about how its claimed outcomes are delivered. The aim of this study was to uncover the connections between cooperative learning contexts and students’ task and self-approach goals in physical education. We hypothesized that those students who perceived a stronger cooperative learning context in their classes would also show higher task and self-approach goals. A total of 1328 students (648 females and 680 males) from three different educational stages: primary education (n = 584), secondary education (n = 550) and baccalaureate (n = 194), agreed to participate. Participants’ ages ranged between 10 and 20 years ( M = 13.11; SD = 2.45). An ex-post-facto, cross-sectional research design was followed. Results showed a direct and significant connection between high-perceived cooperative learning contexts and high students’ task and self-approach goals. The odds ratio tests verified this positive association, indicating a 4-times greater probability for students who perceived a strong cooperative learning context in the classroom of having high task and self-approach goals. In the same line, we observed that, as the perception of a cooperative learning context increased, task and self-approach goals also increased. This means that a small change in the class context to make it more cooperative had an impact on the students’ achievement goals. Teachers should try to create class contexts where students perceive a strong cooperative learning climate, because it has been connected to adaptive motivational patterns, task and self-approach goals, and these are associated with positive outcomes.

The development of high speed mobile networks and the widespread use of smartphones have enabled users to easily obtain large data volumes via the Internet. This causes a heavy consumption of network resources, a burden on the available bandwidth. To solve such problems, a data offloading method with a wireless LAN access point has been used to distribute traffic from mobile to fixed networks. However, the method using wireless LAN access points can only change the communication paths but cannot reduce the overall traffic. This paper proposes a local cooperative data offloading system (LoCO) that reduces the overall traffic by sharing data, with direct communication between neighbors based on their location-related information. Moreover, the authors implemented the LoCO system on Android smartphones and clarified its performance in comparison with a traditional client/server system through experiments to download data in a real-world environment.

Au cours des dernières années, le réseau électrique connait une transformation rapide avec la pénétration massive des unités de production renouvelables et distribuées. Le concept de microgrids (micro-réseau électrique) est un élément clés de cette transition énergétique. Ces micro-réseaux sont constitués par un ensemble de plusieurs unités de production distribuées (DGUs), d'unités de stockage (SUs) et de charges interconnectées par des lignes électriques. Un microgrid peut être installé dans plusieurs endroits, par exemple dans des maisons, des hôpitaux, des quartiers, etc. et fonctionne soit en mode connecté au réseau principale, soit en mode isolé (autonome). Les microgrids sont confrontés à plusieurs défis liés à la garantie de la stabilité, la cybersécurité, l'optimisation des coûts énergétiques, la gestion de l'énergie, la qualité de l'énergie, etc. Dans ce travail, nous concentrons notre attention sur le contrôle des microgrids à courant continu en mode de fonctionnement autonome. La principale contribution de cette thèse est l’établissement de lois de commande par retour d’état distribuées assurant un partage de courant proportionnel entre les unités de production, une régulation de la tension moyenne des lignes et un équilibrage simultané des états de charge des éléments de stockage. En partant de l'hypothèse que les agents (DGU ou SU) ont les mêmes paramètres physiques, la preuve de la convergence exponentielle et globale est donnée en l’absence d’une connaissance de la charge présente sur le réseau. La thèse est divisée en trois parties. La première partie présente le concept des microgrids, un état de l’art sur leurs stratégies de contrôle et les préliminaires mathématiques nécessaires tout au long du manuscrit. La deuxième partie constitue la contribution théorique de cette thèse et aborde la synthèse de lois de contrôle distribuées, garantissant les objectifs envisagés en l’absence d’une connaissance de la charge variable sur le réseau et même en cas de perturbation constantes au niveau de l’entrée de commande. Cette garantie est apportée en considérant trois actions intégrales distribuées de type consensus. Dans la troisième partie, les contrôleurs proposés sont évalués dans différents scénarios par le biais de simulation Matlab/Simulink et de tests Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) en temps réel. Les résultats montrent que les objectifs de contrôle sont atteints avec succès, ce qui illustre l'efficacité de la méthodologie de contrôle proposée
In recent years, the power grid has undergone a rapid transformation with the massive penetration of renewable and distributed generation units. The concept of microgrids is a key element of this energy transition. Microgrids are made up of a set of several distributed generation units (DGUs), storage units (SUs) and loads interconnected by power lines. A microgrid can be installed in several locations, for example in houses, hospitals, a neighborhood or village, etc., and operates either in connected mode to the main grid or in isolated (autonomous) mode. Microgrids are facing several challenges related to stability assurance, cyber-security, energy cost optimization, energy management, power quality, etc. In this work, we focus our attention on the control of islanded direct current microgrids. The main contribution is the design of a new distributed control approach to provably achieve current sharing, average voltage regulation and state-of-charge balancing simultaneously with global exponential convergence. The main tools are consensus in multi-agent systems, passivity, Lyapunov stability, linear matrix inequalities, etc. The thesis is divided into three parts. The First part presents the concept of microgrids, a literature review of their control strategies and the mathematical preliminaries required throughout the manuscript. The second part deals with the design of the proposed distributed control approach to achieve the considered objectives. The system is augmented with three distributed consensus-like integral actions, and a distributed-based static state feedback control architecture is proposed. Starting from the assumption that the agents (DGUs or SUs) have the same physical parameters, we provide proof of global exponential convergence. Moreover, the proposed control approach is distributed, i.e., each agent exchange relative information with only its neighbors through sparse communication networks. The proposed controllers do not need any information about the parameters of the power lines neither the topology of the microgrid. The control objectives are reached despite the unknown load variation and constant disturbances. In the third part, the proposed distributed controllers are assessed in different scenarios through Matlab/Simulink simulation and real-time Hardware-in-the-Loop experiment. The results show that the control objectives are successfully achieved, illustrating the effectiveness of the proposed control methodology

Since the 1980s, Spain and South Korea have experienced a dramatic transformation from middle-income to advanced economies. How did Spain and South Korea upgrade? While market liberalization and globalization were important forces for change, and states continue to be central in the organization of the Spanish and Korean economies, the liberal and the developmental state perspectives do not provide an comprehensive explanation of these transformations. Building on a combination of historical institutionalism and international business literatures, this book argues that upgrading was underpinned by cooperative models based on interdependencies and quid pro quo exchanges between national governments and large firms. The negotiated nature of these arrangements opened the door to institutional variation and enabled Spain and Korea to pursue different strategies. Spain adopted an integrational approach based on foreign direct investment, technological outsourcing, and regional integration. Korea pursued a techno-industrial strategy that prioritized self-sufficiency and the development of local technological capacity. These strategies enabled Spanish and Korean firms across multiple complex sectors to reach the efficiency frontier, but resulted in different productive specializations in complex services and manufacturing respectively. Through this comparative study of transformation in Spain and Korea, this book shifts our perspective on the political economy of economic transformation from markets or states to state–firm coordination as a driver for economic transformation, from one to at least two different pathways to upgrading, and from a world divided into emerging economies and world leaders to a more nuanced perspective that recognizes the perspective of new advanced economies.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

This chapter examines the impact of the War on Poverty in rural southern plantation counties and the threat that it posed to the people in power. Direct access to the Office of Economic Opportunity’s grant-making divisions enabled black residents to bypass racist local officials who had previously controlled access to federal assistance, bringing millions of dollars into impoverished areas. Antipoverty initiatives such as the North Bolivar County Farm Cooperative and the Tufts-Delta Health Center provided services and job opportunities for poor people, encouraging displaced laborers to stay in the South and work to improve conditions in their communities. The OEO’s mandate to include representatives of the poor in program planning enabled rural black southerners to directly influence the distribution of resources in their communities for the first time in their lives, threatening the interests of regional elites. Opponents attacked antipoverty programs, using exaggerated charges of corruption and mismanagement to paint the War on Poverty as a waste of taxpayer money and undermine public support for the effort.

The Peru-Cornell Project inthe community of Vicos (1952–1962) was the cooperative effort of Cornell University and the Peruvian Indian Institute. The late professor Allan R. Holmberg took the opportunity to lease the Hacienda Vicos in 1952 in order to direct and study social change, and many social scientists and technical personnel worked with the project over the next ten years. This chapter draws heavily on unpublished field data of members of the Peru-Cornell Project, as well as the published literature on Vicos, to document the changing conditions in women’s and men’s lives. Vicos is not unique in Peru, for much of the country underwent similar land reform a few years later, but it is unique in the conscious way that many changes were introduced and reported by researchers. This makes Vicos particularly appropriate for a study that traces the effect of capitalist development on the fabric of human relations.

Psychological aspects, a great concern of managerial psychology, include emotions, thinking, attitudes, and motivation of the employees in managerial positions, which ramifies the productivity of the organization. Managerial thinking and leadership skills are important components in achieving organizational goals. Organizational productivity is a strong indicator for managers in the growth which has direct relationship with organizational performance. Efficacious leadership skills in managers like interpersonal skills, team building, flexibility, emotional intelligence helps in meeting the goals which simultaneously increases the organization productivity and performance of the employees. Strategic management approaches by the managers to increase productivity at successive levels. An executive manager is an agent of change who lets a subordinate work according to him and then he converts the follower into a leader through team quality management (TQM) programs and effectiveness. The managerial implications are discussed which helps to establish cooperative innovations.

This chapter demonstrates how, as the United States transitioned from an agricultural to an industrial nation, mortgage lenders promoted homeownership as the new measure of independence, success, and virtue. This vision was built into the deep logic of their lending structures, which brought into being a small local community of equals working together to lift themselves up. Lending cooperatives developed in the nation's towns and cities over much of the nineteenth century. On the national level, direct federal government support for urban mortgage credit was delayed until the First World War, when a set of housing crises led to national experiments in the building and financing of urban homes. These programs were temporary, but they helped change how many Americans thought about housing policy, introducing the idea that such policy was an integral part of economic growth and a potentially appropriate site of federal involvement, especially when organized through partnerships and credit support.

This chapter looks at the way Maroons who enjoy either French citizenship or legal residence permits have responded to the rapidly changing opportunities, turning to the production of new art forms (essentially, painting rather than woodcarving). The chapter foregrounds the role of the cooperatives (often directed by Europeans rather than Maroons) that profit from their eligibility for government subsidies and ties with other financial supporters. And it shows how young Maroons, with help from the cooperatives, have created a new narrative of both the meaning and the history of Maroon art that sells well in the context of longstanding Western stereotypes. The greater part of the chapter, then, is concerned with delineating these changes in form and discourse. The final part develops a critique of imposed interpretations of the meanings of symbols. It debunks the claim (by men) that Maroon art transmits messages from the male artist to the female recipient of the finished product, showing how women have never participated in the promotion of this idea and that, in fact, they unanimously deny knowing what meaning any of the motifs might carry.

Earlier, I posed the question of how privileged perspectives are established on the ubiquitous and changeable climate. Enlightenment philosophes based their arguments on the impressions of travelers and colonists. Their perspectives were framed by memory, history, and folklore; their reasoning colored by environmental determinism. Early American writers followed this pattern, adding patriotic hopes to the rhetorical mix. A new approach to the climate issue was developing, however, based on projects that set out to collect large amounts of meteorological data. Thomas Jefferson, who participated vigorously in the great climate debate, was a staunch advocate of widespread, comparative, and long-term meteorological measurements. Inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s suggestion that extensive measurements of the climate would be necessary to resolve the issue, Jefferson advised his correspondents to keep weather diaries and send them to the American Philosophical Society. Throughout his life, Jefferson maintained the belief that human-induced climate change due to settlement would be proved by extensive measurements. He wrote the following to Lewis Beck in 1824: “We want . . . [an index of climate] for all the States, and the work should be repeated once or twice in a century, to show the effect of clearing and culture towards the changes of climate.” In the closing decades of the eighteenth century in Europe, and slightly later in Russia and the United States, serious attempts were made to broaden the geographic coverage of observations, standardize their collection, and publish the results. Individual observers in particular locales dutifully tended to their journals, and networks of cooperative observers gradually extended the meteorological frontiers. Much of the work was state funded and motivated primarily by desires to improve agriculture, answer health-related questions, and provide public storm warnings. Military issues and national pride were also at stake. Most of the projects were motivated, at least in part, by the hope that climatic patterns and their temporal changes would be revealed directly. The development of sytematic data collection networks occurred over several centuries. Its history can be traced to many roots, some more significant than others. Descriptive records of phenomena related to the climate, such as the opening and closing of rivers, the first and last frosts, and the blossoming and harvesting of fruit trees, existed from early times.

Rural and peripheral development is still a matter of concern in several western countries. Depopulation, low density of business activities, younger people emigration and better-qualified individuals feeling that such regions have been abandoned by the government, and incapable of moving on, are among the key indicators to “understand” rural and peripheral areas. Rural tourism has long been understood as an effective catalyst of change in depressed and deprived (of entrepreneurial capacity) areas and to explore a unique set of amenities. Because of funds directed to help private investment projects in rural tourism facilities, most peripheral areas are now relatively well endowed with key infrastructures. Nevertheless, the tourism lead approach produced mixed results due to low levels of demand in some areas and lack of a cooperative behavior among providers to maximize the opportunities offered by the wide range of attractions. In this paper, we investigate to what extent investments in infrastructure helped the rural tourism sector to attract more visitors in Madeira. Based on the panel-data approach, this paper provides insights to analyze the development path of rural tourism in Madeira and to explores how local policy makers may be the “missing link” needed to improve the sector prospects based on tangible and intangible amenities.

Thermodynamic studies provide information that is necessary in order to understand the forces that drive the formation of ligand-macromolecule complexes. Knowledge of the energetics of these interactions is also indispensable for characterization of functionally important structural changes that occur within the studied complexes. Quantitative examination of the equilibrium interactions are designed to provide the answers to the questions: What is the stoichiometry of the formed complexes? How strong or how specific are the interactions? Are there any cooperative interactions among the binding sites and/or the bound ligand molecules? Are the binding sites intrinsically heterogeneous? What are the molecular forces involved in the formation of the studied complexes, or, in other words, how do the equilibrium binding and kinetic parameters depend on solution variables (temperature, pressure, pH, salt concentration, etc.)? Equilibrium isotherms for the binding of a ligand to a macromolecule represent the relationship between the degree of ligand binding (moles of ligands bound per mole of a macromolecule) and the free ligand concentration. A true thermodynamic binding isotherm is model-independent and reflects only this relationship. Only then, when such an isotherm is obtained, can one proceed to extract physically meaningful interaction parameters that characterize the free energies of interaction. This is accomplished by comparing the experimental isotherms to theoretical predictions based on specific binding models that incorporate known molecular aspects, such as intrinsic binding constants, cooperativity parameters, allosteric equilibrium constants, discrete character of the binding sites or overlap of potential binding sites, etc. (see below). Any method used to quantitatively study ligand binding to a macromolecule must relate the extent of the complex formation to the free ligand concentration in solution. Numerous techniques have been developed to study equilibrium properties of specific and non-specific ligand-macromolecule interactions in which binding is directly monitored, including equilibrium dialysis, ultrafiltration, column chromatography, filter binding assay and gel electrophoresis (1-6). These direct methods are very straightforward; however, they are usually time consuming and some, like filter binding or gel shift assays, are non-equilibrium techniques which require many controls before the reliable equilibrium binding data can be obtained.

This chapter places learning into a wider context and suggests three main categories as modes of thinking: the level of facts, the level of interaction and the level of perspectives. In order to provide a fresh view, learning as such is founded on communication (in several possible forms, including non-spatial e-learning). Successful learning from an evolutionary, global view is seen as enabling realities to actually be changed cooperatively. Didactics is seen as training directed at changing perspectives. Building on a concept of space that is generated by communication, and after a survey of historic approaches to space and cognition from Asia and Europe, learning is understood to be a generic result of the manifoldness of views and perspectives. A core suggestion of this text is: “to accelerate time means to facilitate learning” and vice-versa: “learning means to accelerate time”. An approach of “meta-didactics” is proposed to lead to a competence that is capable of bridging all possible standpoints – especially in the fields of globalization, multicultural comprehension and education towards global peace.

Lifelong learning can be broadly defined as purposeful learning that people engage in throughout the lifespan. The proliferation of knowledge, the information society, and the accelerating use of information and communications technologies combine to create a demand for professionals who are flexible, motivated, and self-directed, as well as multiskilled. Recently, there has been an increasing focus on developing generic skills and competencies as part of tertiary learning. Graduates are expected to meet the demands of employers for social communicative and cooperative skills as opposed to abstract disciplinary knowledge, and therefore, the acquisition of lifelong learning skills is imperative if they are to remain productive, competitive, and open minded. As the current information age is characterised by continual dynamic change, graduates need a dynamic set of attributes or competencies. In order to develop as lifelong learners, tertiary learners need to be exposed to activities and tasks that prepare them for the responsibilities that lifelong learning requires. One key strategy for supporting lifelong learning is through pedagogical approaches that recognise that both formal and informal learning have value, and that both forms of learning can be supported in technology-supported learning environments. The raft of social software tools and applications now available offer greater opportunities to support the lifelong building of knowledge and competencies required for learning in the 21st century.

Given the important role of agricultural cooperatives in strengthening competitiveness and market power of farmers in the food chain, it is essential to understand the competitiveness of their own economic activities. The purpose of this article is to summarize the institutional base affecting agricultural cooperation to assess its impact on the economic activity. To reach the goal, the normative documents that affect the agricultural co-operation directly were gathered and studied, and certain institutional obstacles and problems affecting the cooperation of economic activity were highlighted. At the end, conclusions on the institutional framework for economic activity of agricultural cooperatives in Latvia and suggestions on the legislative changes needed to improve the competitiveness of agricultural cooperatives are offered.