Being Good at Doing Good? Quality and Accountability of Humanitarian NGOs

Quality enhancement of humanitarian assistance is far from a technical task. It is interwoven with debates on politics of principles and people are intensely committed to the various outcomes these debates might have. It is a field of strongly competing truths, each with their own rationale and appeal. The last few years have seen a rapid increase in discussions, policy paper and organisational initiatives regarding the quality of humanitarian assistance. This paper takes stock of the present initiatives and of the questions raised with regard to the quality of humanitarian assistance.     

皖南山区特色农业发展研究

皖南山区是我国著名的南方亚热带丘陵山地的重要组成部分。从自然生态环境、社会经济条件、发展基础、科技支撑、发展资金等方面对本区特色农业发展条件进行了深入分析，并指出了皖南山区特色农业的发展必须坚持以市场为导向、发挥比较优势、依靠科技进步、尊重农民意愿、可持续发展的原则，以及皖南山区特色农业的发展重点是茶叶、蚕桑、干鲜果、中药材、蜂产品等的生产与基地建设。从合理布局与科学规划、开拓资金来源渠道、培育和完善市场体系、科技兴农、建立特色农产品原产地保护制度和进行组织创新等方面提出了皖南山区特色农业发展的对策。     

Rehabilitation of a lowland river: Reconciling flood defence with habitat diversity and geomorphological sustainability

Geomorphologically appropriate rehabilitation measures were proposed to enhance the in-stream environment of the lowland River Idle, north Nottinghamshire, UK. However, the River Idle has multi-functional management requirements including those of flood defence so environmental enhancement must be pursued without significantly increasing the flood risk. Hydraulic testing of rehabilitation proposals is complicated because of the stringent assumptions about flow and morphology in ‘traditional’ hydraulic models. While new generation two- and three-dimension hydraulic models may overcome some of these problems, they are extremely data intensive, require advanced modelling capabilities and are, therefore, very expensive to apply. Also, they do not yet predict morphology-flow interactions adequately. As an alternative, several simple hydraulic models were applied to test the rehabilitation proposals, based on a fitness-for-purpose criterion.BENDFLOW was applied to fine tune the optimal siting of measures and to estimate the additional near-bank scour generated by proposed bend re-profiling. HMODEL2 and the FCFA method were used to test the impact on local channel conveyance capacities and HECRAS was applied to simulate the impact of the proposals on regional flood defence. Indicative results from the testing suggested a maximum increase in near-bank scour of 0·15 m in re-profiled bends, a loss of approximately 10% in flood conveyance locally due to deflector installation or reed and tree planting, and a 0·12 m increase in flood stage within the reach for a 15 year flood. The modelling results were acceptable to the management authority as an indication of an acceptable compromise between flood defence and conservation interests, and construction of the measures followed in 1996. It is clearly that it will require the results of post-project monitoring to indicate whether compromises made to the rehabilitation initiatives in order to satisfy flood defence requirements have unduly reduced their environmental enhancement potential but, for assessing the proposed methods, the models are recommended for use other lowland river environments.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Tim Dyson, Population and Food: Global Trends and Future Prospects
R. S. J. Sparks, M. I. Bursik, S. N. Carey, J. S. Gilbert, L. S. Glaze, H. Sigurdsson and A. W. Woods, Volcanic Plumes
Jasper Becker, Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine
Dali L. Yang, Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society and Institutional Change Since the Great Leap Forward     

WTO规则对西部开发的影响、风险及机遇浅析

随着中国加入WTO和西部大开发战略的实施 ,依法治国无疑是改善投资环境、促进西部开发的最有效手段之一。本文根据WTO基本原则与法制经济的相互关系和影响深入浅出地论述了WTO对西部开发的影响、风险及机遇 ,并提出了针对性的策略     

盈余管理的研究

在明析盈余管理概念的基础上，分析了盈余管理产生的内在基础及存在的外部条件．指出应正视盈余管理的客观存在及可能的危害，最后通过对盈余管理的规范化，探讨了其相应的措施与对策．     

Detection of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons using a high performance-single particle aerosol mass spectrometer

The real-time detection of the mixing states of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and nitro-PAHs in ambient particles is of great significance for analyzing the source, aging process, and health effects of PAHs and nitro-PAHs; yet there is still few effective technology to achieve this type of detection. In this study, 11 types of PAH and nitro-PAH standard samples were analyzed using a high performance-single particle aerosol mass spectrometer (HP-SPAMS) in lab studies. The identification principles ‘parent ions’ and ‘mass-to-charge (m/z) = 77’ of each compound were obtained in this study. It was found that different laser energies did not affect the identification of the parent ions. The comparative experiments of ambient atmospheric particles, cooking and biomass burning emitted particles with and without the addition of PAHs were conducted and ruled out the interferences from primary and secondary organics on the identification of PAHs. Besides, the reliability of the characteristic ions extraction method was evaluated through the comparative study of similarity algorithm and deep learning algorithm. In addition, the real PAH-containing particles from vehicle exhaust emissions and ambient particles were also analyzed. This study improves the ability of single particle mass spectrometry technology to detect PAHs and nitro-PAHs, and HP-SPAMS was superior to SPAMS for detecting single particles containing PAHs and nitro-PAHs. This study provides support for subsequent ambient observations to identify the characteristic spectrum of single particles containing PAHs and nitro-PAHs.     

露天采矿过程粉尘产生环节及污染治理措施分析研究

粉尘是露天采矿过程的主要污染物之一,露天采矿中粉尘要达到环保要求,需要从生产过程中的凿岩、爆破、装卸、运输、堆存各环节进行污染控制.采用对上述各生产环节中的粉尘产生原理进行分析的方法,找出各个生产环节粉尘的主要产生点,通过对比前人在各个生产环节粉尘控制的研究成果,找出控制粉尘产生的主要影响因素,总结出露天采矿中各个环节上技术经济上最有效的粉尘防治措施,为露天矿山开采污染防治提供系统的解决方案.通过对前人研究成果的总结,汇总形成一套完善的粉尘控制方案.     

大气边界层中起尘、降尘过程的模拟实验的相似性原则

风洞模拟实验是研究起、降尘过程最有效的手段。前人只研究了低湍流度气流中,平坦表面的实际起尘过程。作者提出一组扩展的相似性原则,用于模拟大气边界层湍流及复杂地形对趋、降尘过程的影响及防尘风障在此条件下的减尘效率,并得到一系列有意义的结果。      

System safety principles: A multidisciplinary engineering perspective

System safety is of particular importance for many industries. Broadly speaking, it refers to the state or objective of striving to sustainably ensure accident prevention through actions on multiple safety levers (technical, organizational, and regulatory). While complementary to risk analysis, it is distinct in one important way: risk analysis is anticipatory rationality examining the possibility of adverse events (or accident scenarios), and the tools of risk analysis support and in some cases quantify various aspects of this analysis effort. The end-objective of risk analysis is to help identify and prioritize risks, inform risk management, and support risk communication. These tools however do not provide design or operational guidelines and principles for eliminating or mitigating risks. Such considerations fall within the purview of system safety.In this work, we propose a set of five safety principles, which are domain-independent, technologically agnostic, and broadly applicable across industries. While there is a proliferation of detailed safety measures (tactics) in specific areas and industries, a synthesis of high-level safety principles or strategies that are independent of any particular instantiation, and from which specific safety measures can be derived or related to, has pedagogical value and fulfills an important role in safety training and education. Such synthesis effort also supports creativity and technical ingenuity in the workforce for deriving specific safety measures, and for implementing these principles and handling specific local or new risks. Our set of safety principles includes: (1) the fail-safe principle; (2) the safety margins principle; (3) the un-graduated response principle (under which we subsume the traditional “inherently safe design” principle); (4) the defense-in-depth principle; and (5) the observability-in-depth principle. We carefully examine each principle and provide examples that illustrate their use and implementation. We relate these principles to the notions of hazard level, accident sequence, and conditional probabilities of further hazard escalation or advancement of an accident sequence. These principles are a useful addition to the intellectual toolkit of engineers, decision-makers, and anyone interested in safety issues, and they provide helpful guidelines during system design and risk management efforts.