The main achievements of the debates on deliberative democracy and democratised science are investigated in order to analyse the reasons, meanings and prospects for a democratisation of global environmental policy. A deliberative systems approach, which emphasises the need to explore how processes in societal spheres interact to shape the deliberative qualities of the system as a whole, is adopted. Although science plays a key role in this, its potential to enhance deliberative capacity has hardly been addressed in deliberative theories. The democratisation of science has potential to contribute to the democratisation of global environmental policy, in that it also shapes the potential of deliberative arrangements in the policy sphere. Deliberative arrangements within the policy sphere may stimulate the democratisation of science to different degrees. 相似文献
The long time scale of the climate change problem and the inherent nature of the carbon cycle bring important implications for present technology development efforts. Even if major technology improvements are achieved for non-carbon-emitting technologies such as energy-intensity improvements, wind, solar, biomass, and nuclear over the course of the 21st century, most examinations of potential future greenhouse emissions conclude that additional technology development will be required to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations. The evelopment of an expanded suite of technologies including carbon capture and disposal, hydrogen systems and biotechnology hold the potential to dramatically reduce the cost of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations. This paper examines these technologies in the context of a global integrated assessment model of energy, agriculture, land-use, economics, and carbon cycle processes. 相似文献
Objective: The present research relies on 2 main objectives. The first is to investigate whether latent model analysis through a structural equation model can be implemented on driving simulator data in order to define an unobserved driving performance variable. Subsequently, the second objective is to investigate and quantify the effect of several risk factors including distraction sources, driver characteristics, and road and traffic environment on the overall driving performance and not in independent driving performance measures.
Methods: For the scope of the present research, 95 participants from all age groups were asked to drive under different types of distraction (conversation with passenger, cell phone use) in urban and rural road environments with low and high traffic volume in a driving simulator experiment. Then, in the framework of the statistical analysis, a correlation table is presented investigating any of a broad class of statistical relationships between driving simulator measures and a structural equation model is developed in which overall driving performance is estimated as a latent variable based on several individual driving simulator measures.
Results: Results confirm the suitability of the structural equation model and indicate that the selection of the specific performance measures that define overall performance should be guided by a rule of representativeness between the selected variables. Moreover, results indicate that conversation with the passenger was not found to have a statistically significant effect, indicating that drivers do not change their performance while conversing with a passenger compared to undistracted driving. On the other hand, results support the hypothesis that cell phone use has a negative effect on driving performance. Furthermore, regarding driver characteristics, age, gender, and experience all have a significant effect on driving performance, indicating that driver-related characteristics play the most crucial role in overall driving performance.
Conclusions: The findings of this study allow a new approach to the investigation of driving behavior in driving simulator experiments and in general. By the successful implementation of the structural equation model, driving behavior can be assessed in terms of overall performance and not through individual performance measures, which allows an important scientific step forward from piecemeal analyses to a sound combined analysis of the interrelationship between several risk factors and overall driving performance. 相似文献
The influence of slash-and-burn agriculture and tree extraction on the spatial and temporal pattern of forest fragmentation
in two municipalities in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico was analyzed. The data series were derived from two subsets of satellite
images taken in 1974 and 1996. The analysis was based on area, edge, shape, core area, and neighbor indices. During the 22
years, the dense forest decreased by 8.9%/yr in Huistán and by 8.6%/yr in Chanal, while open/disturbed forest, secondary vegetation,
and developed area increased in both municipalities. The total number of fragments increased by 1.4%/yr and 2.3%/yr in Huistán
and Chanal, respectively. Dense forest showed the highest increase in the number of fragments (6%/yr in Huistán and 12%/yr
in Chanal), while edge length, core area, and number of dense forest core areas decreased. The larger fragments of dense forest
present in 1974 were divided into smaller fragments in 1996; at the same time, they experienced a process of degradation toward
open/disturbed forest and secondary vegetation. Two different fragmentation patterns could be distinguished based on agricultural
or forestry activities. Forest fragmentation did not occur as a continuous process; the pattern and degree of fragmentation
were functions of land tenure, environmental conditions, and productive activities. The prevalence of rather poor soil conditions,
small-holdings, growing human population densities, increasing poverty, and the absence of alternative economic options will
maintain a high rate of deforestation and forest fragmentation in the studied region. 相似文献