Facilitating industrial symbiosis programmes in developing countries: reflections from Gauteng,South Africa

This viewpoint reflects on how to improve the process of introducing facilitated industrial symbiosis programmes (FISPs) to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries. Although FISPs are a long-established industrial practice, their formal introduction to SMEs in developing countries has only recently begun, mostly through support from international development agencies. Based partly on anecdotal evidence from Gauteng, South Africa, we identify six key questions which need to be addressed to improve the process of facilitating FISPs.     

The Final Frontier: China,Taiwan, and the United States in Strategic Competition for Central America

China’s rise as a global power corresponded with a diminution of Taiwanese diplomacy, which has left Central America as the last region to host a continuous bloc of countries that recognize the ROC. In this article, we argue that China’s success in gaining diplomatic recognition from Taiwan’s former allies has largely resulted from China's economic policy, specifically its promises of large-scale infrastructure projects and the integration of Central American economies with Chinese markets. However, there are limits to how far China has advanced in gaining full recognition from the region. The competing political and economic interests of China, Taiwan, the United States, and the Central American countries themselves, continue to influence patterns of diplomatic switching. More specifically, we argue that the threat of punitive measures from the United States combined with a turn in Taiwanese diplomacy toward assistance efforts to combat Covid-19 may deter future switching in the short to medium-term. Our analysis offers case studies of four Central American countries (Costa Rica, Panama, El Salvador and Nicaragua) to illustrate the multi-year processes by which China’s economic strategy leads to diplomatic switching and examine the paths ahead for the remaining holdouts facing the prospect of economic and political penalties by the United States.

     

Assessing the Credibility of Refugee Applicants: A Judicial Perspective

The principal responsibility of refugee decision makers is todetermine those to whom refugee protection is owed. The mannerin which these decisions are to be made in Australia is thesubject of ongoing debate. However, that debate is not the subjectof this paper. The focus of this paper is on the credibilityassessment of refugee applicants and its principal purpose isinstructive. It is my hope that it will enhance the credibilityof credibility assessment within existing processes. Its secondarypurpose is to provide a basis from which policy makers may considerlegislative and other procedural change. It has been suggested that the ‘devil is in the detail’in refugee decision making. Working in a common law country,Australian refugee decision makers are afforded the (often binding)benefit of extensive judicial review of the refugee determinationprocess.¹ Thus, for Australian decision makers, the ‘devilin the detail’ is often to be found in a plethora of bindinglegal precedent. Accordingly, while the first part of this paperdiscusses selected matters which have facilitated the assessmentof the credibility of refugee applicants in Australia, as oneof the most authoritative domestic sources available, the secondpart of this paper principally focuses on the expressed viewsof Australian courts after examining credibility findings indecisions of the Refugee Review Tribunal.²     

Unmasking the Crimes of the Powerful

Even in formally open, liberal, democratic states, a series of barriers exist as obstacles to critical criminologists who wish to conduct research that scrutinises the activities of powerful states and corporations. Much evidence suggests that in the current political climate, the barring of access to sources of data, neo-liberal re-configurations in the funding of research, and the narrowing of publishing and dissemination opportunities to counter-hegemonic voices are severely limiting the ability to conduct critical research. This article reports on recent experiences of researchers concerned with unmasking the crimes of the powerful and argues that, despite the obstacles power sources use to obscure and mystify the illegal and violent practices engaged in by states and corporations, there remains fertile space around research agendas, and in universities, for critical researchers to exploit. To gain insight from the ways in which researchers can, and do, establish alternative agendas, this article seeks to explore some of the principles that might inform and encourage those forms of resistance, and to establish how critical criminologists might continue to subject the powerful to scrutiny. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Industry/University interaction for simulation-based process improvement

This paper describes an effort by industry and university partners to centralize manufacturing decision making through the development of generic simulation tools. This ongoing, cooperative process improvement initiative between the Industrial and Systems Engineering faculty at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and Chrysler’s Huntsville Electronics Division (HED) permits the involved faculty to broaden their experience and technical expertise in electronics fabrication, while the industry partner benefits from the transfer of technical knowledge and advanced analysis methodologies from the university. The focus of the project is the definition of generic electronic manufacturing models that can be easily defined and implemented through common user-oriented interfaces, allowing users who are not familiar with simulation and simulation languages to address the needs of their particular functional areas.     

Tension, compression, and shear: directions, stresses, and outcomes of health care cost control

"Control" of health care costs is often portrayed as a struggle between external, "natural" forces pushing costs up and individuals, groups, and societies trying to resist the inevitable. This picture is false. Control includes strenuous efforts by some to raise costs, and by others to resist those increases, and/or to transfer costs to someone else. But all such forces originate in the purposes and interests of individuals and groups. Health care cost control is a struggle among conflicting interests over the priorities of a society, and claims of "inevitability" are simply part of the political rhetoric of that struggle. International experience supports certain conclusions. First, there is no basis for the claim that limits on expenditure growth must threaten the health of (some members of) a society. Second, there is a substantial variety of experience with cost control. Failure in the United States is often presented as evidence of the impossibility of control, but most other countries have succeeded. Finally, control requires the direct confrontation of interests, with substantial build-up of stress. Advocates of expansion are more successful if they can transform compressive forces into efforts to shift the burden onto someone else. Pressures from providers in every country for "privatization" and/or payment by users reflect this recognition of economic interest.     

Explaining “Pain and Suffering” Awards: The Role of Injury Characteristics and Fault Attributions

The present research explored factors thought to affect compensatory awards for non-economic ham (pain and suffering) in personal injury cases. Experiment 1 showed that the nature and severity of the plaintiffs injury had a strong effect on perceptions of the extent of harm suffered and on award amounts. The parties' relatively active or passive roles in causing the injury affected assessments of their degree of fault, but perceived fault had little influence on awards. Experiment 2 replicated with more varied cases the strong impact of injury severity on harm perception and on awards for pain and suffering. In both studies, the disability and the mental suffering associated with injuries were stronger predictors of awards than were pain and disfigurement.     

Health care in Canada: patterns of funding and regulation

During the 1970s the share of health care expenditure in Canadian GNP remained roughly stable, in the range of 7-71/2 percent of GNP, in marked contrast to its escalation in most other countries (the U.S. in particular) and to previous Canadian experience. The shift to a stable pattern coincided with the completion of the Canadian system of universal comprehensive public hospital and medical care insurance. This paper explores how and why the public insurance system served to contain cost escalation. It then discusses the inadequacy of expenditure experience per se as a basis for health system evaluation--the same data will support claims of both "underfunding" and "spiralling costs." More serious questions involve the influence of alternative patterns of health care funding and delivery on the effectiveness and efficiency of care provision, and the resulting distributional patterns of care and income. A brief sketch is given of the present situation and future possibilities of Canadian health care under these heads.