Contemporary State Terrorism: Theory and Practice

This volume aims to 'bring the state back into terrorism studies' and fill the notable gap that currently exists in our understanding of the ways in which states employ terrorism as a political strategy of internal governance or foreign policy. Within this broader context, the volume has a number of specific aims. First, it aims to make the argument that state terrorism is a valid and analytically useful concept which can do much to illuminate our understanding of state repression and governance, and illustrate the varieties of actors, modalities, aims, forms, and outcomes of this form of contemporary political violence. Secondly, by discussing a rich and diverse set of empirical case studies of contemporary state terrorism this volume explores and tests theoretical notions, generates new questions and provides a resource for further research. Thirdly, it contributes to a critical-normative approach to the study of terrorism more broadly and challenges dominant approaches and perspectives which assume that states, particularly Western states, are primarily victims and not perpetrators of terrorism. Given the scarceness of current and past research on state terrorism, this volume will make a genuine contribution to the wider field, particularly in terms of ongoing efforts to generate more critical approaches to the study of political terrorism. This book will be of much interest to students of critical terrorism studies, critical security studies, terrorism and political violence and political theory in general.

The theory and practice on pre-qualification in bidding procedure

资格预审是招标程序中重要环节.通过对投标人的资质和业绩等审查既能保证不符合 要求的投标人尽可能早地退出无谓竞争的行列,避免了大量人力"物力的损失和浪费, 又能促进建筑市场优胜劣汰,提高企业竞争力.同时鉴于目前资格预审和建筑市场存在 的问题,笔者以为通过强化资格预审可以有效推进建筑市场信用体系建设,促进行业健康发展,并且深入探讨了资格预审体系建立的具体对策和措施.

First international workshop on theory and applications of process visualization

The representation of business process models has been a continuing research topic for many years now. However, many process model representations have not developed beyond minimally interactive 2D icon-based representations of directed graphs and networks, with little or no annotation for information over- lays. With the rise of desktop computers and commodity mobile devices capable of supporting rich interactive 3D environments, we believe that much of the research performed in computer human interaction, virtual reality, games and interactive entertainment has much potential in areas of BPM; to engage, pro- vide insight, and to promote collaboration amongst analysts and stakeholders alike. This initial visualization workshop seeks to initiate the development of a high quality international forum to present and discuss research in this field. Via this workshop, we intend to create a community to unify and nurture the development of process visualization topics as a continuing research area.

Benefits and challenges of using restorative justice approaches for victims of crime committed by adults: An exploration of theory and evidence

Book Abstract: Current experimentations with approaches to restorative justice for adult offenders represents a compelling new direction in the criminal justice system. This book examines the values and challenges of restorative justice for adult offenders, victims and communities. The discussion is situated within current debate, available research, and the international literature. In canvassing the structure, content, and delivery of key Australian and New Zealand restorative justice programs for adult offenders, the distinguished authors offer critical analysis of the emergence and impact of program developements for practitioners and professionals. This collection brings together stimulating and informed articles by experienced practitioners, leading academics and new researchers in the field. It also offers valuable insights into emerging restorative justice practice for adult offenders and provides a real alternative to the adversarial justice system.

Multinational contracting into Australia: Developing Dunning's theory and case study design

In response to the need to leverage private finance and the lack of competition in some parts of the Australian public sector infrastructure market, the Australian Federal government has demonstrated its desire to attract new sources of in-bound foreign direct investment (FDI) by multinational contractors. This study aims to update progress towards an investigation into the determinants of multinational contractors’ willingness to bid for Australian public sector major road and bridges. This research deploys Dunning’s eclectic theory for the first time in terms of in-bound FDI by multinational contractors into Australia. Elsewhere, the authors have developed Dunning’s principal hypothesis to suit the context of this research and to address a weakness arising in this hypothesis that is based on a nominal (yes or no) approach to the ownership, location and internalisation factors in Dunning's eclectic framework and which fails to speak to the relative explanatory power of these factors. The authors have completed a first stage test of this development of Dunning's hypothesis based on publically available secondary data, in which it was concluded tentatively that the location factor appears to have the greatest explanatory power. This paper aims to present, for the first time, a further and novel development of the operation of Dunning's eclectic paradigm within the context of multinational contracting, as well as a preview of the design and planned analysis of the next empirical stage in this research concerning case studies. Finally, and beyond the theoretical contributions expected, other expected contributions are mentioned concerning research method and practical implications.

Intellectual property and development : theory and practice

Since the 1960s, many developing countries have introduced IP laws to help them in their social and economic development. Introducing these laws was considered as a civilised act and a precondition of developing countries‘ progress from being =under-developed‘ to becoming =developed‘. In 2004, Brazil and Argentina presented a comprehensive proposal on behalf of developing countries to establish the Development Agenda in the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). They put forward a view that IP laws in their current form are not helping those countries in their development, as is constantly being suggested by developed countries, and that there is a need to rethink the international IP system and the work of WIPO. The research undertaken examines the correlation between IP and social and economic development. It investigates how IP systems in developing countries could work to advance their development, especially in the context of the internet. The research considers the theory and practice of IP and development, and proposes a new IP framework which developing countries could employ to further their social and economic development.

Critical theory and literacy

This handbook chapter explores the relationship between critical theory and seminal studies of literacy which investigate inequities in education. It identifies new research questions to explore the connections between literacy and power, but go beyond promises of emancipation.

Intellectual Property and Development : Theory and Practice

The book examines the correlation between Intellectual Property Law – notably copyright – on the one hand and social and economic development on the other. The main focus of the initial overview is on historical, legal, economic and cultural aspects. Building on that, the work subsequently investigates how intellectual property systems have to be designed in order to foster social and economic growth in developing countries and puts forward theoretical and practical solutions that should be considered and implemented by policy makers, legal experts and the Word Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

A tensor encoding model of word meaning : theory and application to information retrieval

This project was a step forward in developing and evaluating a novel, mathematical model that can deduce the meaning of words based on their use in language. This model can be applied to a wide range of natural language applications, including the information seeking process most of us undertake on a daily basis.

Second international workshop on theory and applications of process visualization

The representation of business process models has been a continuing research topic for many years now. However, many process model representations have not developed beyond minimally interactive 2D icon-based representations of directed graphs and networks, with little or no annotation for information overlays. In addition, very few of these representations have undergone a thorough analysis or design process with reference to psychological theories on data and process visualization. This dearth of visualization research, we believe, has led to problems with BPM uptake in some organizations, as the representations can be difficult for stakeholders to understand, and thus remains an open research question for the BPM community. In addition, business analysts and process modeling experts themselves need visual representations that are able to assist with key BPM life cycle tasks in the process of generating optimal solutions. With the rise of desktop computers and commodity mobile devices capable of supporting rich interactive 3D environments, we believe that much of the research performed in computer human interaction, virtual reality, games and interactive entertainment have much potential in areas of BPM; to engage, provide insight, and to promote collaboration amongst analysts and stakeholders alike. We believe this is a timely topic, with research emerging in a number of places around the globe, relevant to this workshop. This is the second TAProViz workshop being run at BPM. The intention this year is to consolidate on the results of last year's successful workshop by further developing this important topic, identifying the key research topics of interest to the BPM visualization community.

Three-phase model of consumers' behaviours : a synthesis of the theory of planned behaviour, self-determination theory and planning

Using a longitudinal study, an overall behavioural model with three related phases (cognitive, motivational and volitional phase) across three studies was examined to identify the factors that most prominently drive consumer environmental behaviour. This thesis provides empirical evidence to support the behavioural model in an environmental consumption context and shows a new avenue for promoting consumer environmental behaviour.

Relational regulation theory and the role of social support and organisational fairness for nurses in a general acute context

Aims and objectives. To present a novel approach to nurse stress by exploring the demand–control–support model with organisational justice through the lens of relational regulation theory. Background. Nursing is often stressful due to high demands and dissatisfaction with pay, which impacts the mental well-being and productivity of nurses. Design. A cross-sectional design. Methods. A validated questionnaire was sent to the work addresses of all nursing and midwifery staff in a medium-sized general acute hospital in Australia. A total of 190 nurses and midwives returned completed questionnaires for the analyses. Results. The multiple regression analyses demonstrated that the model applies to the prototypical context of a general acute hospital and that job control, supervisor support and outside work support improve the job satisfaction and mental health of nurses. Conclusions. Most importantly, supervisor support was found to buffer the impact of excessive work demands. Fairness of procedures, distribution of resources and the quality and consistency of information are also beneficial. Relational regulation theory is applied to these findings as a novel way to conceptualise the mechanisms of support and fairness in nursing. Relevance to clinical practice. The importance of nurses’ well-being and job satisfaction is a priority for improving clinical outcomes. Practically, this means nurse managers should be encouraging nurses in the pursuit of diverse relational activities both at work and outside work.

The potential of combining phenomenography, variation theory and threshold concepts to inform curriculum design in higher education

This chapter describes an innovative method of curriculum design that is based on combining phenomenographic research, and the associated variation theory of learning, with the notion of disciplinary threshold concepts to focus specialised design attention on the most significant and difficult parts of the curriculum. The method involves three primary stages: (i) identification of disciplinary concepts worthy of intensive curriculum design attention, using the criteria for threshold concepts; (ii) action research into variation in students’ understandings/misunderstandings of those concepts, using phenomenography as the research approach; (iii) design of learning activities to address the poorer understandings identified in the second stage, using variation theory as a guiding framework. The curriculum design method is inherently theory and evidence based. It was developed and trialed during a two-year project funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, using physics and law disciplines as case studies. Disciplinary teachers’ perceptions of the impact of the method on their teaching and understanding of student learning were profound. Attempts to measure the impact on student learning were less conclusive; teachers often unintentionally deviated from the design when putting it into practice for the first time. Suggestions for improved implementation of the method are discussed.

A stochastic thermostat algorithm for coarse-grained thermomechanical modeling of large-scale soft matters : theory and application to microfilaments

As all-atom molecular dynamics method is limited by its enormous computational cost, various coarse-grained strategies have been developed to extend the length scale of soft matters in the modeling of mechanical behaviors. However, the classical thermostat algorithm in highly coarse-grained molecular dynamics method would underestimate the thermodynamic behaviors of soft matters (e.g. microfilaments in cells), which can weaken the ability of materials to overcome local energy traps in granular modeling. Based on all-atom molecular dynamics modeling of microfilament fragments (G-actin clusters), a new stochastic thermostat algorithm is developed to retain the representation of thermodynamic properties of microfilaments at extra coarse-grained level. The accuracy of this stochastic thermostat algorithm is validated by all-atom MD simulation. This new stochastic thermostat algorithm provides an efficient way to investigate the thermomechanical properties of large-scale soft matters.