Service contracts—An instrument of international logistics supply chain: Under United States and European Union regulatory frameworks

Service contracts have emerged as an important instrument to secure a long-term relationship between carriers in the container shipping industry and shippers requiring scheduled services covering a global market. This contract, entered into largely on an individual and confidential basis, continues to enjoy anti-trust immunity under current United States and European Union regulations. It will continue to be in place even after the EC Council Regulation 4056/86 is repealed in October 2008 although it may operate in a modified way because of the absence of the common external conference tariff. This article examines the implications of this instrument on the international supply chain and explores its future role in defining efficiencies in international trade flows.     

GIS-based determination of the mean long-term groundwater recharge in Lower Saxony

This paper presents the findings of a collaborative research project of the Geological Survey of Lower Saxony (NLfB) and the Programme Group Systems Analysis and Technology Evaluation (STE) of Research Centre Jülich on the GIS-based determination of the mean long-term groundwater recharge in Lower Saxony using high-resolution digital data (Dörhöfer and others 2001). The model calculations were performed on the basis of the water-balance model GROWA (Kunkel and Wendland 2002) with a spatial resolution of 100x100 m². The accuracy of the calculated groundwater recharge values for the period 1961–1990 was verified on the basis of data from gauging stations and displayed a good agreement between observed runoff values and model results.     

COUNTERURBANIZATION IN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY*

Since Berry argued in 1976 that counterurbanization had replaced urbanization in the U.S., a debate has ensued as to whether the phenomenon also exists in Western Europe. Proponents of a developmental theory of counterurbanization contend that the phenomenon should be evident in countries which have achieved a very high level of socioeconomic development, including the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). Most of the German and English language literature on the topic suggests the contrary for the FRG. Here urbanization and counterurbanization are restricted to specific geographic meanings, i.e., spatial agglomeration and deglomeration. Results from four interrelated tests show a trend toward counterurbanization evident as early as the 1960s in the post-war regional demographic data of the FRG.     

Oil and gas development exposure and conservation scenarios for Greater sage-grouse: Combining spatially explicit modeling with GIS visualization provides critical information for management decisions

During the last quarter-century, global demand for energy has increased by more than 60%, and a similar increase is anticipated to occur by 2030 (Raymond, Deming, & Nichols, 2007). In the U.S., oil and gas development is projected to continue across western states within sage-grouse habitat. Greater sage-grouse, recently a candidate species for protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), have well documented negative responses to oil and gas disturbance. In this study, we create spatially-explicit oil and gas future development scenarios, baseline and high, and link them to sage-grouse population and habitat maps to quantify future exposure risk within Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (WAFWA) sage-grouse management zones (MZ) I and II. We then analyze recent land use decisions from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along with enacted policy from the State of Wyoming to estimate how these management actions might minimize the exposure risk of sage-grouse to oil and gas development into the future. Our results show that BLM and Wyoming conservation plans could reduce the exposure of sage-grouse to oil and gas development from 15-27% to 11–17% (31–37% reduction) in MZ I and from 15-27% to 5–9% (64–68% reduction) in MZ II. Our estimates of exposure to future oil and gas development, and conservation measures designed to ameliorate those threats, represent the upper and lower extents of potential impacts within scenarios. Our work demonstrates how spatial modeling and GIS visualization can be used by managers to assess likely outcomes of conservation decisions.     

EXPLANATIONS FOR THE INTENSIFICATION OF COUNTERURBANIZATION IN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY *

Evaluating yearly net migration for the Federal Republic of Germany establishes the importance of demographic restructuring and government policies as explanations for the counterurbanization phenomenon. Counterurbanization, the spatial demographic deconcentration of regional population, is measured as an inverse relationship between the net migration rate and population sizes of functional urban regions. A counterurbanization pattern filtered-down from older to younger age-groups of the population, and appears related to an increasing preference for small-sized regions with natural amenities. For foreigners, a counterurbanization direction of movement can be explained by changes in immigration laws. While counterurbanization may be slowing down during the 1980s in certain developed countries, such as the United States, in the Federal Republic the phenomenon intensifies throughout the 1970–84 time period. Based on broad national demographic changes in combination with agespecific patterns of movement, this strong counterurbanization trend should continue well into the future.     

试析综合国力的构成要素

综述了综合国力的构成要素 ,并把它们分为 3种类型 ,即物质性因素、政府性因素和精神性因素 ,尔后分别对其进行实证分析。     

美国“孤立湿地”保护中的“候鸟规则”及对我国湿地保护的启示

在美国,孤立湿地与可通航水域没有水文联系,被认为不属于《清洁水法》中的“水域”,联邦无权管辖。为此,陆军工程兵团制定“候鸟规则”,作为对孤立湿地行使管辖权的依据。美国“孤立湿地”保护中的“候鸟规则”对我国的启示在于:(1)应从水文学角度界定孤立湿地,孤立湿地是指与其它水体缺乏联系、相对孤立的湿地,这更符合我国湿地政策的现状;(2)人工“孤立湿地”受保护,除了需满足一定的水文条件,还须是野生动物事实上的栖息地,不应限于建立“栖息地档案”意义下的野生动物栖息地或纳入野生动物重要栖息地名录的栖息地;(3)孤立的人工湿地如果是国家重点保护野生动物栖息地,其管辖权应由中央行使;(4)国家重点保护野生动物栖息地外的其他孤立湿地,面积达到35 hm2以上,也应由中央管辖。     

马兰黄土的应力-应变本构方程

依据马兰黄土的室内CU试验,运用土力学的相关理论,建议性地提出了马兰黄土的应力-应变本构方程。通过对不同围压下的试验结果(应变小于15%)与理论模型的拟合发现,二者吻合较好。另外,与以往的模型相比,本文的模型参数a和b只需通过一次常规三轴试验即可全部求得,具有参数少、容易确定的优点。