Devolution, the governance of regional development and the Trade Union Congress in the North East region of England

The devolution and regionalisation of political and administrative structures following the election of New Labour in 1997 have changed the nature of the state and territorial development and governance in the UK. A regional and sub-national tier has opened up within the existing multi-layered governance system operating at the supra-national, national and local scales. This ‘new institutional space’ is increasingly open to the participation of social institutions--including trade unions--in economic and social governance. Drawing upon empirical analysis of the experience of the Northern Trade Union Congress (NTUC) in the North East region of England, the paper argues that the NTUC--in contrast to its national organisation--is beginning to engage with the emergent institutional structures but its role is inhibited by the centralised strategy and structure of the TUC nationally, its own need for upgrading, capacity building and greater financial resources and the interaction between the North East’s particular legacy of tripartite corporatism and the more pluralist modes of regional development governance emerging in the English regions. Unless such issues are addressed regional trade union centres--such as the NTUC--risk remaining relatively junior partners in the emergent regional governance structures.     

Privatizing conditions of production: trade agreements as neoliberal environmental governance

Recent multilateral trade agreements are among the major manifestations of neoliberalism. They are also emerging as some of the most important sites of environmental governance in the 21st century. I argue here that these trade agreements, particularly the sweeping new protections they provide for investors, are redefining property rights and environmental governance in fundamental ways. I suggest that in addition to furthering the centuries-long process of the enclosure of nature under capitalism, the neoliberal agenda of NAFTA and similar trade agreements also involves something new: the privatization, or primitive accumulation, of conditions of production as an accumulation strategy. I explore these dynamics through examination of two cases, one in the United States and one in Mexico. I also explore the roles of social movements in these dynamics.     

The neoliberalization of ecosystem services: wetland mitigation banking and problems in environmental governance

Wetland mitigation banking is an American neoliberal environmental policy that has created a functioning market in `ecosystem services', commodities defined using the holistic measures of ecological science. The development of this market is discussed as a project of environmental governance, defined as the nation-state's regulation of ecological relations within its territory towards stabilizing capitalist relations of power and accumulation. I argue that the wetland banking industry serves as a bellwether that presages problems that other strategies of neoliberal environmental governance will experience. Ethnographic, economic and ecological data from the Chicago-area wetland banking industry inform a discussion of two major obstacles to neoliberal strategy: the problem of relying on ecological science to define the unit of trade, and the problem of aligning the somewhat independent relations of law, politics, markets and ecosystems across an array of spatial scales. Theoretical guidance is sought from recent work on `social natures' and from the Regulationist approach to institutional political economics.     

Regions and sustainable development: regional planning matters

This paper looks at how the term 'sustainable development' has been used in the process of regional plan making over the past decade. It emphasizes the differing geographies of these debates within England, in terms of how sustainable development has been used to justify different types of approach in different parts of the country. Both drawing on and challenging recent work on state theory, the paper argues the need to see regional planning as a part of a multi-scalar governance system, whose importance should not be underestimated.     

航天GPS接收机设计

航天GPS接收机为航天器提供航迹、姿态、时问和相对距离等导航信息，提高航天嚣运行的自主性。文中介绍了清华宇航中。航天GPS接收的硬件和软件设计，给出测试结果和分析。     

IGGOS as a potential partner in IGOS

This short note reviews our thinking on how IGGOS can best achieve a high status within the set of global monitoring programmes. If such a high status can be obtained, then the importance of geodetic networks and services will be recognized more widely, and their activities will consequently be better resourced in the long term. One particular aspect concerns how IGGOS can complement the roles of the various IGOS partners within global monitoring. The different ways in which IGGOS can contribute to IGOS are outlined.     

The GGOS as the backbone for global observing and local monitoring: A user driven perspective

A key geodetic contribution to both the three Global Observing Systems and initiatives like the European Global Monitoring for Environment and Security is an accurate, long-term stable, and easily accessible reference frame as the backbone. Many emerging scientific as well as non-scientific high-accuracy applications require access to an unique, technique-independent reference frame decontaminated for short-term fluctuations due to global Earth system processes. Such a reference frame can only be maintained and made available through an observing system such as the Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS), which is currently implemented and expected to provide sufficient information on changes in the Earth figure, its rotation and its gravity field. Based on a number of examples from monitoring of infrastructure, point positioning, maintenance of national references frames to global changes studies, likely future accuracy requirements for a global terrestrial reference frame are set up as function of time scales. Expected accuracy requirements for a large range of high-accuracy applications are less than 5 mm for diurnal and sub-diurnal time scales, 2–3 mm on monthly to seasonal time scales, better than 1 mm/year on decadal to 50 years time scales. Based on these requirements, specifications for a geodetic observing system meeting the accuracy requirements can be derived.     

A detailed receiver function image of the sedimentary structure in the Bohai Bay Basin

If the site at which receiver functions are constructed is filled by sediments, then the waveforms from these receiver functions are dominantly controlled by the sedimentary structures within the first few seconds after the direct P arrival. Based on this observation, waveform data collected at 44 temporary seismic stations have been used to image the sedimentary structure of the Bohai Bay Basin, a major continental petroliferous basin in Eastern China. An adapted hybrid global waveform inversion method was applied to the receiver functions to extract structural information beneath each of the stations. The derived S-velocity structure provides for the first time, a basin-scale seismic image of detailed sedimentary stratification. The sedimentary cover of the basin is about 2-12 km thick, consisting of Cenozoic, Mesozoic, and Paleozoic strata from top to bottom. The structural features presented in the S-velocity image coincide quite well with the depression-uplift type of tectonic system in the Bohai Bay Basin. The reconstructed morphology of the sedimentary layers provides seismological evidence for the two-stage evolution of the intracontinental basin that were caused by an intensive tectonic regime transition in late Mesozoic immediately following the lithospheric reforming of the Eastern China continent.     

On the influence of adequate Weddell Sea characteristics in a large-scale global ocean circulation model

Global ocean circulation models usually lack an adequate consideration of high-latitude processes due to a limited model domain or insufficient resolution. Without the processes in key areas of the global thermohaline circulation, the characteristics and flow of deep and bottom waters cannot be modeled realistically. In this study, a high-resolution (~20 km) ocean model focused on the Weddell Sea sector of the Southern Ocean is combined with a low-resolution (2^° × 2^°) global ocean model applying the state estimation technique. Temperature, salinity, and velocity data on two Weddell Sea sections from the regional model are used as constraints for the large-scale model in addition to satellite altimetry and sea-surface temperatures. The differences between the model with additional constraints and without document that the Weddell Sea circulation exerts significant influence on the course of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current with consequences for Southern Ocean water mass characteristics and the spreading of deep and bottom waters in the South Atlantic. Furthermore, a warming trend in the period 1993–2001 was found in the Weddell Sea and adjacent basins in agreement with float measurements in the upper Southern Ocean. Teleconnections to the North Atlantic are suggested but need further studies to demonstrate their statistical significance.