Economic Incentives to Conserve Wildlife on Private Lands: Analysis and Policy

Some believe that provision of private property rights in wildlife on private land provides a powerful economic incentive for nature conservation because it enables property owners to market such wildlife or its attributes. If such marketing is profitable, private landholders will conserve the wildlife concerned and its required habitat. But land is not always most profitably used for exploitation of wildlife, and many economic values of wildlife (such as non-use economic values) cannot be marketed. The mobility of some wildlife adds to the limitations of the private-property approach. While some species may be conserved by this approach, it is suboptimal as a single policy approach to nature conservation. Nevertheless, it is being experimented with, in the Northern Territory of Australia where landholders had a possibility of harvesting on their properties a quota of eggs and chicks of red-tailed black cockatoos for commercial sale. This scheme was expected to provide an incentive to private landholders to retain hollow trees essential for the nesting of these birds but failed. This case and others are analysed. Despite private-property failures, the long-term survival of some wildlife species depends on their ability to use private lands without severe harassment, either for their migration or to supplement their available resources, for example, the Asian elephant. Nature conservation on private land is often a useful, if not essential, supplement to conservation on public lands. Community and public incentives for such conservation are outlined.

Talking to children: The within-classroom nature of everyday adult language in the early childhood educational environment

Group-size effects, as changes in the adult language when speaking to individual or multiple children in two- and three-year-olds' Australian childcare centre classrooms were investigated. The language addressed to children by 21 staff members was coded for social (e.g., non-verbal, inferential and pragmatic), and linguistic (e.g., morphological, lexical, syntactic and referential) features. In the two-year-olds' classrooms, minimal differences were found between the language used in dyads (addressed to a single child) and polyads (addressed to more than one child). More extensive group-size effects, particularly in syntactic complexity, were found in the three-year-olds' classrooms. Explanations for the constancy of the adult language input in the younger classrooms, and the changes noted in the older rooms will be discussed in terms of plurality (i.e., more than one listener), methodology, and group-size effects that may be specific to the early childhood educational setting.

Relationship of extent and nature of dysfunctional myocardium to brain natriuretic peptide in patients with ischemic left ventricular dysfunction

We studied the relationship between brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) levels and viable myocardium and ischemic myocardium, regional scar and regional contractile function. Fifty-nine patients underwent dobutamine echocardiography and magnetic resonance imaging and resting BNP levels were determined. By magnetic resonance imaging, total extent of dysfunctional myocardium correlated strongest with BNP (r = 0.60, p < 0.0001). The extent of scar, viability and ischemia also correlated. At dobutamine echocardiography, a composite of dysfunctional and ischemic myocardium was the strongest correlate of BNP (r = 0.48, p < 0.0001), with less strong correlations by global parameters. The extent of dysfunctional myocardium, rather than its nature determines BNP levels.

Globalisation and connectedness: A network approach to international business

There have been recent calls for the field of International Business to retool its routines by becoming genuinely interdisciplinary. This paper takes such an approach by using recent advances in the fields of evolutionary economics and applying them to IB. Evolutionary economists are now viewing the economy as an actual network. Consequently, one the key analytical tools in this approach is network analysis. Some of the basic methods in network analysis are reviewed. The paper then looks at how using these tools might be of use in IB studies. In particular, it outlines fruitful research paths in the areas of globalisation and regionalisation, and the measurement of performance in multi-national firms and alliances. In each case, propositions are put forward which can be analytically tested with the use of network analysis. The paper concludes with a brief outline of a research agenda which utilises this approach in International Business studies.

The changing nature of innovation networks in Taiwan: From imitation to innovation?

Taiwan is embarking on a new phase in its approach to building its national innovative capacity, through building the infrastructure for a biotechnology industry. Rather than acting as a “fast follower” of trends developed elsewhere, Taiwan is seeking to evolve the elements of a national innovation system, including upgrading the role of universities in providing fundamental R&D, in providing incubators for new, knowledge-based firms, in developing new funding models, and in establishing new biotech-focused science parks. This paper reviews the progress achieved to date, and the prospects for this new phase in Taiwan’s transition from imitation to innovation