Homogeneous National Management Policies or Autonomous Choices by Administrative Units? Inter- and Intra-Country Management Tools Use Variations in European Central Government Administrations

ABSTRACT

This article presents an original research on the use of management tools in central government departments and agencies in 16 European countries. It is based on a survey conducted among senior managers (n?=?5,998). The analysis shows that the use of management tools results from a combination of top-down implementation of a list of management tools at the national level, combined with a bottom-up independent selection of tools by administrative units. The variation in management tool use depends on the type of tool. While the uses of a HRM tool, such as performance-related pay, or a financial tool, such as risk management, are heavily influenced by national public management policies, service quality-type tools, such as user surveys or quality management systems, tend to be chosen in a more autonomous manner by different administrative units, especially agencies.     

Nationalism and Cultural Memory in Poland: The European Union Turns East

The eastern expansion of the European Union confronts the process of European integration with the phenomenon of cultural and ethnic nationalism. This paper examines the situation of Poland, using Jan Assmann's theory of cultural memory to reconstruct the historical dimension of Polish nationalism which underlies the current constructions of the Polish nation. Understanding itself as the antemurale Europae christianiae, Poland owns an old tradition of resistance. This tradition allowed this country to survive times of division and oppression but now turns against the European Union.     

Umweltproduktrecht – Konturen,Systematik und praktische Bedeutung

Natur und Recht - Erst der sog. Abgasskandal scheint ein stärkeres Bewusstsein für das Umweltproduktrecht in jüngerer Vergangenheit wieder geweckt zu haben. Dabei existiert diese...     

Classification of firing pin impressions using HOG-SVM

Crimes, such as robbery and murder, often involve firearms. In order to assist with the investigation into the crime, firearm examiners are asked to determine whether cartridge cases found at a crime scene had been fired from a suspect's firearm. This examination is based on a comparison of the marks left on the surfaces of cartridge cases. Firing pin impressions can be one of the most commonly used of these marks. In this study, a total of nine Ruger model 10/22 semiautomatic rifles were used. Fifty cartridges were fired from each rifle. The cartridge cases were collected, and each firing pin impression was then cast and photographed using a comparison microscope. In this paper, we will describe how one may use a computer vision algorithm, the Histogram of Orientated Gradient (HOG), and a machine learning method, Support Vector Machines (SVMs), to classify images of firing pin impressions. Our method achieved a reasonably high accuracy at 93%. This can be used to associate a firearm with a cartridge case recovered from a scene. We also compared our method with other feature extraction algorithms. The comparison results showed that the HOG-SVM method had the highest performance in this classification task.     

Trends in US Imports of Amphibians in Light of the Potential Spread of Chytrid Fungus,Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), and Implications for Conservation

Amphibian populations around the world are declining in part due to diseases from infection with the chytrid fungi Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) and Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bs). While declines in more charismatic megafauna are common sources of public awareness and concern, such as the loss of elephants to poaching or polar bears to climate change, amphibians have been suffering a dramatic decline due to the outbreak of deadly fungal diseases with relatively little public attention. Various amphibian advocacy groups work to raise awareness of the issue, but given the limited funding and resources allocated to this cause, there remains a general lack of momentum to tackle the growing conservation threats to this group of animals and to examine policy weaknesses that may need to be adapted to help ensure their conservation. The international trade in live amphibians certainly contributes towards the global spread of these pathogens, but the true extent of spread remains unknown. To determine the degree to which the importation of amphibians into the United States was correlated with presence of known vectors of Bd spread, we compared US Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife trade records for all commercially traded live animals imported to the US from 2006 to 2014 against known species-level infection susceptibility. Approximately 26,859,034 live amphibians were imported into the US for commercial purposes between January 2006 and December 2014.¹¹ Deanna H. Olson et al., Mapping the Global Emergence of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, the Amphibian Chytrid Fungus, 8 PLOS One, 27 February 2013, e56802, at 11.View all notes^,22 Id.View all notes Of these, 59.8% were specimens of species known to be susceptible to Bd infection and therefore may have introduced Bd into the country. Our findings demonstrate significant declines in the annual import quantities of 14 Bd-susceptible species between 2006 and 2014. These reductions could be due to a variety of factors, ranging from possible increased domestic production and a reduced need for foreign-sourced animals to reduced demand from changing market behaviors to the potential disease-driven decline of wild populations and greater difficulty in supplying these specimens. Our research supports the need for continued implementation of US policy, particularly the Lacey Act, to closely regulate wildlife imports to reduce the spread of highly virulent pathogens that threaten native species. Additionally, a rapid response mechanism is needed to control the introduction and spread of wildlife disease vectors when emergencies arise. Although the impact of the wildlife trade is just one facet of the overall amphibian conservation landscape, the information we present herein provides reason to develop increasingly robust rapid-response policies to protect wild amphibian populations in the midst of an emerging global disease crisis.