Contemporary Ethiopian is, without question, facing enormous challenges. At the core of these challenges lay a state-building process major constituencies and elite groups were either alienated from, forced to acquiesce to, or coopted into. Unable to derive political legitimacy from democratic participation, successive governments largely relied on coercion and neopatrimonialism,...
This book discusses how cities that have developed through the successive stages of capitalism should transform themselves when adapting to the conditions of the contemporary global age. Since modern times, the capitalist economy has largely defined society, politics, and environment—this has casued the collapse of communities, the crisis of democracy,...
The textbook proceeds with an introduction to theory and concept building, moves to an explanation of causal inference (how do we 'know' whether something is causal?), and then provides a quick introduction to data and hypothesis testing. Following that, each chapter is devoted to a particular research method used within...
This report shows that compensation plans have not met the needs of victims of nuclear disasters for three primary reasons: compensation plans have been devised by unelected officials and without full public knowledge or participation, governments have often capped the liability of the owners of nuclear facilities, which distorts cost-benefit...
Scour is by far the primary cause of bridge failures in the United States. Scour and other hydraulic effects are particularly threatening because the deterioration is often invisible, hidden beneath turbid water. Many scour monitoring methods attempt to measure the development of scour pockets themselves. However, this is difficult due...
Acoustic emission (AE) testing was deployed on details of two large steel Interstate Highway bridges: one cantilever through-truss and one trapezoidal box girder bridge. Quantitative measurements of activity levels at known and suspected crack locations were made by monitoring AE under normal service loads (e.g., live traffic and wind). AE...
The underutilized tropical fruit tree, “cempedak” (Artocarpus integer (Thunb.) Merr. , Moraceae), is a major crop in Malaysia but the distribution of genetic diversity in the crop and its putative wild progenitor, “bangkong” (Artocarpus integer var. silvestris Corner), have not been studied. To investigate the diversity and origins of cempedak,...
Current ecological restoration efforts seek to restore a target community, maximize biodiversity or provide habitat for rare species. In practice, restoration ecology is often initiated and sustained without knowledge or reverence to the belowground ecosystem processes, though these processes often subtend the long-term sustainability of aboveground and belowground ecological communities.
Past efforts to reintroduce the native legume species Desmodium glutinosum and Lespedeza violacea into restored woodlands have not produced self-sustaining populations. Proposed factors preventing reintroduction include herbivory, persistent environmental effects of invasive shrubs, poor performance of commercial Rhizobium inoculants, and competitive displacement associated with elevated nitrogen availability. To address these...