We question Baumard's underlying assumption that humans have a propensity to innovate. Affordable transportation and energy underpinned the Industrial Revolution, making mass production/consumption possible. Although we cannot accept Baumard's thesis on the Industrial Revolution, it may help explain why complexity and innovation increase rapidly in the context of abundant energy.

The EU has launched targets for energy efficiency and the reduction in pollutant emissions in the transport sector. It establishes a framework to foster the promotion and development of a market for clean vehicles. In 2011 the EU passed a “Roadmap to a single European transport area—Towards a competitive and resource efficient transport system”. This roadmap includes 40 concrete initiatives for the next decade to build a competitive transport system that will increase mobility, remove major barriers (...) in key areas and fuel growth and employment. The objectives concern well-functioning passenger and freight links that are vital for European undertakings and citizens. At the same time, the proposals will dramatically reduce Europe’s dependence on imported oil. All in all the EU transport policies aim at fostering clean, safe and efficient travel throughout Europe, which requires innovations in many areas—like safe electric cars—and needs to engage not just the users but the entire transport industry facing drastic structural changes. (shrink)

Urban infrastructures serve as the backbone of modern economies, mediating global exchanges and responding to urban demands. Yet, our comprehension of these complex structures, particularly within diverse socio-political terrain, remains fragmented. In bridging this knowledge gap, this study delves into “boundary objects”—entities enabling diverse stakeholders to collaborate without a comprehensive consensus. Central to our investigation is the hypothesis that oceanic infrastructural developments are instrumental in molding the interface of urban, industrial, and energy sectors within marine contexts. Our lens is directed (...) at the Gulf of Mexico, which is distinguished by its industrial depth and expansive marine grid. We highlight the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway’s (GIWW) paramount role in regional movement and the ecological facets of practices such as dredging, which is vital for transport and coastal conservation. A striking revelation of our study is the transformation of offshore structures in the Gulf into vibrant marine habitats. Emphasizing the intertwined nature of marine infrastructures, we denote oceans as pivotal platforms for impending urban expansion, especially as land resources wane. Our research aspires to validate the role played by oceans as a nexus in the urban–industrial–energy fusion. (shrink)

This paper reports a study of the main key components of influence on the stability of transportation enterprises in the market. A model for evaluating the effectiveness of innovation activity in the transport industry, which takes into account indicators of expenditures on innovations, has been built. It makes it possible to determine the effectiveness of introduced innovations, which indicates the appropriate level of innovation potential and the ways that the enterprise must take to increase it. The main directions (...) of innovative development of transportation enterprises were investigated. The assessment of the economic stability of transportation enterprises in the market has established that the current state of development of enterprises is characterized by a weak level of their innovative activity. A systematic approach to the introduction of innovative technologies by a transportation enterprise in the market has been devised. This approach makes it possible to determine the required level of enterprise stability and to form a relationship between the level of innovative technologies and their stages of implementation under conditions of environmental variability. This makes it possible to increase competitive advantages, improve the efficiency of production and economic activity of enterprises. The practical implementation of the proposed model for evaluating the effectiveness of innovation activity in the transport industry has been carried out, which made it possible to allocate the most important indicators of innovation activity for the enterprise. These include specific efficiency of innovation; unit costs of innovation; innovative potential of the enterprise (defined as the proportion of own innovative developments). According to the study results, it is determined that the specific efficiency of innovations (SEI) exerts the greatest influence, which, with an increase by 1 %, provides an increase in financial stability by 1.48 %. (shrink)

As people’s lives get better and better, more and more people choose to travel and with that comes the demand for more transportation. For now, traditional transportation hubs can temporarily meet people’s travel needs. If driven by big data concepts and methods, the various capabilities of high-speed rail transportation hubs will be sublimated, and the regional economy will be in line with the prosperity of this place. Proportionally, railway hubs are extremely attractive to the rapid growth of the regional economy. (...) This paper takes the high-speed railway hub construction model under big data as the research object and verifies the reliability of the research model and the development of economic regions based on the high-speed railway data in recent years as reference parameters. This article selects the panel data of railway transportation and regional economy in China’s provinces for 10 consecutive years from 2011 to 2020. Among them, seven indicators were selected for railway transportation: passenger volume, freight volume, passenger turnover, cargo turnover, number of railway employees, railway transportation industry fixed asset investment and construction scale, and per capita railway network density. In terms of regional economy, six indicators were selected: regional GDP, per capita GDP, per capita investment in fixed assets, per capita total retail sales of consumer goods, per capita investment in imports and exports, and the proportion of the added value of the tertiary industry in GDP. The experimental results prove that each sample is tested in pairs, the standard error level of the mean is 0.002, which is less than 0.05, and high-speed railway construction can finally achieve economic integration. By improving the development of high-speed railways, continuously shortening the distance between time and space, breaking regional trade barriers, and reducing the cost of commodity circulation, industrial interaction and coordinated development between different regions can be effectively promoted. (shrink)

Freight transportation plays a critical role in improving company performance in the modern manufacturing industry. To reduce costs, companies must take advantage of the use of large vehicles. It caused fewer deliveries, but inventory costs and degradation quality are high. One of the joint economic lot size problems in supply chain is Integrated Single-Vendor Single-Buyer Inventory Problem. This study developed the I-SVSB-IP model that considers raw materials’ exponential quality degradation and transportation costs. The objective function of this research was (...) to maximize the Joint Total Profit. Three decision variables used were inventory cycle time, raw material ordering frequency, and frequency of delivery of finished products to buyers. This study proposed a sophisticated Chimp Optimization Algorithm procedure to solve the I-SVSB-IP problem. A case study on the food industry in Indonesia was presented to optimize the I-SVSB-IP. The results showed that the ChOA procedure had produced an optimal solution compared to the state-of-the-art algorithm. This study also demonstrated a sensitivity analysis of decision and transportation variables to cost, revenue, and JTP. The results show that increasing transport frequency of ordering raw materials and finished products to buyers enhances the total cost and reduces joint total profit. In addition, increasing the rate of quality degradation of raw materials reduces JTP. (shrink)

Local food has become the rising star of the sustainable agriculture movement, in part because of the energy efficiencies thought to be gained when food travels shorter distances. In this essay I critique four key assumptions that underlie this connection between local foods and energy. I then describe two competing conclusions implied by the critique. On the one hand, local food systems may need a more extensive and integrated transportation infrastructure to achieve sustainability. On the other hand, the production, transportation, (...) and consumption of local foods are fundamentally as reliant on fossil fuels as are long distance foods. A more holistic approach to energy use in the food system is needed to determine which particular sociotechnical factors optimize energetic sustainability. (shrink)

Maritime services form an integral part of what regulatory agencies requires for the safe navigation and operation of vessels. Therefore, the maritime industry?s compliance with governmental regulations and international protocols has been essential for maritime safety management. As a basis to this aspect, the preparation of maritime students as the forthcoming maritime officers in the future has been a crucial point by the maritime educators in terms of maritime safety. Although English was adopted as the official language of the (...) maritime industries by the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping (STCW Convention) in 1978, many difficulties remain in the teaching and assessing of Maritime English at maritime schools. Some research has examined these difficulties; however, no successful models for improving. Maritime English have been adopted Parallel to the teaching and assessing problems, there have also been many difficulties in reaching a training and testing proficiency in English communication that meets the international standards of the STCW requirements in the maritime industry. This paper concentrates upon the difficulties of teaching and assessing the outcomes of the teaching of Maritime Transportation English at the member schools of the International Association of Maritime Universities (IAMU) from all over the world. As a first step in the methodology of this study, a survey of techniques used at member schools of the IAMU is conducted to solve some difficulties in assessing the teaching of Maritime English. Then a positioning model is developed to identify and measure the positions of the IAMU member schools in comparison to one another by using a multidimensional scaling technique to analyse the multivariate data received through questionnaires. This information provides the foundation upon which the model of this research is built. Consequently, some strategies based upon the results of the analysis are developed to reduce the problems and difficulties in this context. (shrink)

This paper examines discourses of stakeholders regarding global climate change to assess whether and how they construct industrial animal agriculture as posing a risk. The analysis assesses whether these discourses have shifted since the release of Livestock’s Long Shadow, a report by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which indicated that the industrial animal agriculture sector as a whole contributes more to global climate change than the transportation sector. Using Ulrich Beck’s theorizing of the “risk society,” this paper examines (...) how various animal rights and welfare groups, environmental organizations, meat industry stakeholders, governmental agencies, and newspapers in Canada, the United States, and internationally investigate and construct industrial animal agriculture as a risk, if at all, and how their respective discourses conflict. The findings indicate that while some stakeholders acknowledge industrial animal agriculture’s contribution to global climate change, for the most part the problematization of animal agriculture has not increased since the release of Livestock’s Long Shadow, and the animal agriculture industry has seemingly not lost its power to “rationalize risk.”. (shrink)

I present a comparative and holistic method for qualitatively measuring sound ecological practice in chemistry. I consider chemicals developed and used by man from cradle to grave, that is, from the moment they are extracted from the earth, biomass, water or air, to their transportation, purification, mixing and elaboration in a factory, to their distribution by means of the market, to waste products both from the factory, packaging, transportations and by the consumer. I divide the locations of the ‘life’ of (...) the chemical into four spatio-temporal areas accordingly. I then use the ‘instituional compass’ method to determine a qualitative reading of the ecological soundness of the practice, where practice means the research, the adoption by industry and the distribution at scale on the market. The qualitative reading is in the form of an arrow on a trisected circle. The arrow holistically represents a table of data. The data can be economic, social or environmental. The arrow has a measurement: a degree and a length. The degrees, represent qualities spaning through: harmony, discipline and excitement. The length represents the importance, momentum or amplitude with which the quality is present. We use the compass method to compare the same product over time, or inter-substitutable, chemicals developed in different places, using different equipment or processes. In the conclusion, I discuss objectivity and science as they apply to the compass. (shrink)

Introduction. The fourth industrial revolution significantly changes the structure of economic relations and transforms the importance of factors in the development of territories. The purpose of the article is to identify the most significant factors in the regional development of the Ural macro region in the context of the fourth industrial revolution and to determine the directions of impacts to ensure the competitiveness and long-term growth of territories. Methods. The methodological basis of the study is based on a set of (...) scientific approaches to economic growth, concepts of regional and institutional economics. Research methods include regional, comparative and econometric factor analysis. Scientific novelty of the study. A method for identifying the significance of factors in the development of regions is proposed and the key factors for developing the subjects of the Ural macro region in the context of the fourth industrial revolution are established. The study contributes to the scientific debate on the meaning and management of institutional development factors. Results. The author presents the results of diagnosing the regulatory environment and geographic factors of the subjects of the Ural macro region. An econometric analysis of their impact on economic development has been carried out. The statistical significance for developing the volume of mining and the quality of the legal environment in the regions has been established. Informal institutions (the authors explain the phenomenon by weak differentiation of cultural characteristics and business practices of regions due to their historical connectivity) and transport and geographical location (due to a decrease in spatial influence and an increase in the role of digital technologies in production chains in Industry 4.0). Conclusions. In the Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk regions, it was possible to ensure higher values of GRP per capita due to a favorable regulatory environment. In general, in the Russian regions in the second decade of the 21st century, the raw material orientation remains (among the studied objects, the economies of the Orenburg region and Udmurtia are the most extractive). To ensure the country’s long-term development, it is necessary to create a favorable business climate: improving the legal environment in the areas outlined in the study, increasing the level of trust and reducing the level of corruption. (shrink)

ArgumentWhen Pasteur and Chamberland hastily set up their small biological industry to meet the agricultural demand for the anthrax vaccine, their methods for preparation and production had not yet been stabilized. The process of learning how to standardize biological products was accelerated in 1882 when vaccination accidents required the revision of production norms as the first hypotheses on fixity, inalterability, and transportability of vaccines were invalidated and replaced by procedures for continuous monitoring of the calibration of vaccines and the (...) renewal of vaccine strains. Initially, the incompleteness and ongoing development of production standards justified Pasteur's monopoly on the production of the anthrax vaccine under his immediate supervision. Later on, the Pasteur Institute maintained control of these standards in the framework of a commercial monopoly that it established on the veterinary vaccines first sent and then cultivated abroad by the Société de Vulgarisation du Vaccin Charbonneux Pasteur, founded in 1886. (shrink)

e-commerce has promoted the application of the Internet by traditional enterprises. While this phenomenon has deepened industrial embeddedness, it has also profoundly affected the development of traditional manufacturing and retail industries. Based on the embeddedness theory, this paper takes the e-commerce industrial chain in Xiong’an New Area of China as an example, uses location entropy method and local spatial autocorrelation to analyze its spatial characteristics and influencing factors, and also discusses the features of embeddedness from each dimension of industrial chains. (...) The results show the following: ① The supply chain of industry-dependent e-commerce is dominated by production wholesalers, and suppliers with cost advantages and commercial traditions are embedded in local characteristic industries; the e-commerce value chain is dominated by production and processing activities, and the spatial orientation of the business model is affected by regional industrial functions; the e-commerce enterprise chain is dominated by B2B enterprises, the high-level agglomeration of which reflects the absolute scale advantage provided by the e-commercialization of traditional industry. ② The distribution of the e-commerce industrial chains of Xiong’an New Area is characterized by spatial heterogeneity and has obvious spatial agglomeration. The industrial chains are concentrated in Xiong County, followed by Rongcheng County, and Anxin County has the weakest agglomeration. ③ The main factors that cause the uneven distribution of the e-commerce industrial chains in Xiong’an New Area include three aspects: transportation location advantages, traditional industrial foundation, and government policy regulation. Research can provide a scientific reference for accurately identifying the spatial development characteristics of the industrial chains from various perspectives and promoting the sustainable development and e-commercialization of traditional industries. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe purpose of this essay is revisionist on two counts: first, that the American colonies and early United States republic kept pace with Great Britain in reaching a relatively advanced stage of industrialization by the early nineteenth century and second, that the Middle Atlantic States shared equally with New England the innovative role in creating America's industrial revolution. In both cases the industrial leaders achieved their preeminence by different routes. By concentrating on the importance of the sources of machine (...) power as the defining characteristic of industrialism, scholars have overlooked alternative paths to industrial change. In Britain steam power and the textile industry were the foundations of an industrial revolution. But in American colonies the use of water power and the growth of industries such as woodworking and building led to an equally revolutionary change in the production of machine-made products. Benign geography in colonial America provided abundant wood and water power and an excellent transportation system based on navigable rivers and a hospitable coastline. But the crucial factors were cultural: the compelling urge to do things with less human work, the open reception to new immigration, a younger and more venturesome population, a favorable legal and fiscal environment for enterpreneurs. In the American context the tendency of scholars to emphasize the leadership of New England was largely a result of the greater local availability of manufacturing records. But recent research has demonstrated that Philadelphia, the largest port of entry in the eighteenth century, was quite naturally a center of innovation in construction materials, woodworking machinery and shipbuilding to meet the needs of the expanding agricultural hinterland and the coastal trade. In sum, the values of an expanding, youthful, skilled population replenished by fresh and venturesome sources from abroad helped shape cultural values that were particularly favorable in the geographic environment of North America for alternative paths of rapid industrial growth. (shrink)

Societal concerns dictate the need for animal welfare standards and legislation. The public and livestock producers often differ on their views of livestock welfare, and failure to meet public expectations may threaten the “social license to operate” increasing the cost of production and hampering the success of the industry. This study examined public and producer attitudes toward common practices and animal welfare issues in the Australian red meat industry, knowledge of these practices, and public and producer trust in (...) people working the red meat industry using an Australia-wide survey of both the general public and red meat producers. Public participants were recruited using a random digit dialing telephone survey while the red meat producers were randomly selected within a curated database of Australian red meat producers. After controlling for gender and age, there were marked differences between public and producer respondents in 20 of the 27 attitude, trust and knowledge variables studied. Producers reported more positive beliefs in the conditions provided for sheep and beef cattle during sea and land transport, the husbandry practices used in the red meat industry, and red meat attributes regarding human health, environmental impact, animal use and animal welfare. Both public and producers reported similar levels of trust in conventional and commercial media and had similar beliefs about animal rights, prevention of animal cruelty and balancing the welfare of people and animals. The results indicate a polarization between the public and livestock producers in their attitudes toward animal welfare, knowledge of husbandry practices and trust in livestock people. (shrink)

Our life, by its biological nature, is in an indestructible dependence on energy. At the same time, energy is an important criterion on which we report the progress of humanity. Historically, progress divides our world into distinct stages, called Industrial Revolutions. Each stage has encompassed more fuels, new technologies, inventions, humans behavioural changes and much more worrying environmental issues. Energy techniques, new extractions and transportation improved in nineteenth and during twenty-century energy consumption, especially electricity, rise significantly with, on the one (...) hand, a continuous influx of fossil fuels and, on the other hand, continuous increase of the quantities of toxic waste, visible or not, from the other industrial branches and human activities, consequences of the energetical progress. The purpose of this paper is to point out some aspects regarding ecological footprints of electrical industry and energy industries during their development and to establish connections between the distinct role of energy in each period of industrialization and its impact on the environment, education, science, arts and cultural dimensions of life. (shrink)

We study the impact of COVID-19 on Chinese stock market which can be seen as a complex system. We use the event study method to evaluate its performance change in terms of the return rate, turnover rate, etc. We show that the abnormal return of stock market was significantly negative after the outbreak of COVID-19 and did not turn positive until May 2020. Moreover, the five-factor model is used to estimate the ordinary returns of different industries and show that abnormal (...) returns for medical and food industries were significantly positive, while energy and public utility industries had significantly negative abnormal returns which persisted for a long time. COVID-19 had lag effects on clothes industry, finance industry, transportation industry, and IT industry. We also find that energy and finance industries had negative abnormal turnover rates during the sample period, while other industries, such as healthcare and telecommunications service industries, had positive abnormal turnover rates. (shrink)

This paper investigates the importance of standardising and maintaining the transparency of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) functions nomenclature, designs, and operations in all categories up until fully autonomous vehicles. The aim of this paper is to reveal the discrepancies in ADAS functions across automakers and discuss the underlying issues and potential solutions. In this pilot study, user manuals of various brands are reviewed systematically and critical analyses of common ADAS functions are conducted. The result shows that terminologies used to describe (...) ADAS functions vary widely across manufacturers and sometimes do not reflect their fundamental functions intuitively. Operational conditions and control procedures also vary across the selected models under this study. Due to this lack of consensus across the industry, drivers are not aware or well informed about ADAS functions in their vehicles, leading to a very low utilization rate and may lead to misuse of those functions. This paper provides insightful suggestions for the transport industry, Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts, and regulators to design frameworks and guidelines in governing the naming convention, operating conditions, control procedures, and information disclosure of ADAS. Such guidelines can be the foundations for regulating future AI-based self-driving functions. (shrink)

In this article, we analyze the relationship between the main dimensions of organizational structure (i.e., formalization, centralization, and complexity) and ecological responsiveness in a sample of 109 firms in the European air passenger transport industry. Broadly confirming our hypotheses, the results show that high formalization of routine tasks favors ecological responsiveness. Structures characterized by high decentralization and low complexity also favor ecological responsiveness. Furthermore, decentralization has a significant, positive relationship with ecological responsiveness among firms with low vertical complexity. (...) Overall, the results indicate that organizational structure plays a major role in ecological responsiveness. (shrink)

The global path of capitalist development is continuously transformed as a result of the production and integration of advanced information and communication technologies within various forms of production. The first half of this paper conceptualises ICTs as capital’s appropriation and objectification of the productive forces of the general intellect in ‘the general artificial intellect’, a category that refers to the total processing power of networked ICTs in global society. The second half of the paper analyses Uber’s development of the elements (...) of capital’s artificial intellect as the cybernetic means of real subsumption in its immaterial production process. The paper concludes that Uber’s development of autonomous vehicles is an example of the global trend in transport automation that could raise the organic composition of capital of the transport industry, which I suggest would advance the stage of real subsumption toward a third and final stage of autonomous subsumption. (shrink)

In the United States, screening the urine of employees or job applicants for the presence of drugs has become commonplace. A survey of 794 large- and mediumsized companies, conducted by the American Management Association in January 1994, found that 87 percent of them now test job applicants for drug use. In 1987, a similar survey found that 22 percent screened job applicants. Federally mandated drug testing programs with random testing requirements affect millions of workers in the transportation industry, the (...) nuclear power industry, and the United States civil and military services.As some of these programs pass their fifth anniversary since being instituted, it is important to assess the forces that led to their creation. Whether or not these programs are considered successful depends on what one expects to achieve by such widespread testing. (shrink)

In the United States, screening the urine of employees or job applicants for the presence of drugs has become commonplace. A survey of 794 large- and mediumsized companies, conducted by the American Management Association in January 1994, found that 87 percent of them now test job applicants for drug use. In 1987, a similar survey found that 22 percent screened job applicants. Federally mandated drug testing programs with random testing requirements affect millions of workers in the transportation industry, the (...) nuclear power industry, and the United States civil and military services.As some of these programs pass their fifth anniversary since being instituted, it is important to assess the forces that led to their creation. Whether or not these programs are considered successful depends on what one expects to achieve by such widespread testing. (shrink)

The construction of railways has been one of the symbols of advanced technology and modernity in various societies and is known as a means of expanding and transferring goods, men, and their ideas. During the political-economic circumstances of the second half of the 19th century, the first rail line of Iran was built under the Qajar rule. This was an 8 km railway to connect Tehran to Rey with some small wagons, most local people tended to call it Mashin-Doodi, which (...) translates as Smokey Machine. The railway then appeared in southwest Iran as a means of transport for the oil industry which was booming after oil discoveries in Khuzestan. The intercity railway started to operate in 1923 and was 57 km long, connecting Masjed-i-Soleyman to Dar-i-Kahzineh. It was established for exploitative purposes of foreign states resulting in a few small-scale and temporary projects, but the idea of constructing and expanding rail lines based on national investments finally materialized with the first national railroad. (shrink)

Air transport is playing an increasing role in the world economy every year. This is facilitated by technological development and the latest developments in the aviation industry, globalization. This paper provides an overview of artificial neural network training methods for airfare predicting. The articles for 2017-2019 were analyzed in order to determine the model with the most accurate prediction. The researchers conducted research on open data collected by themselves and set themselves the goal of creating a model that (...) would advise a user the best time to buy a ticket when the price would be the lowest. The review of the papers by similar themes revealed that the Bagging Regression Tree model has the highest results with an accuracy of 88% and the random forest method has an accuracy of 87%. Civil aviation plays an important role in the economy of each country. Aviation is the best way to cover long distances in comfort in the shortest time. Airlines offer customers a variety of opportunities to travel both within the country and abroad. The main problem of interaction between airlines and customers is the airfare: the former want to sell more at the higher price, and the latter want to buy cheaper. Therefore, companies use their own private algorithms for dynamic pricing and constantly monitor the market situation, responsive to changes in demand and the actions of competitors. This behavior allows them to achieve a balance between the desires of airlines and customers. Scientists are trying to invent a way to predict airfare so that air travelers can buy them at the lowest price. The results of the work in this area provide general rules for the best purchase. For example, according to the article thebest day to buy a ticket by expedia.com for a domestic flight on the United States is Sunday, and the best period is 57 days before departure. This article provides an overview of the works, the authors of which compared the models of machine learning. Achievements in this area are limited to direct flights of a certain domestic market and 88% accuracy of the forecast. The Bagging Regression Tree model described in the article can be considered the best result. This trained model can make predictions based only on two parameters: the number of free cargo and the number of days left before departure and has an accuracy of 88%. (shrink)

Industrial production imposes geographical, economic and cultural distances between producers and consumers. The concept of constituting 'missing objects' can help shrink these distances by enabling actors to engage in discourses and practices about contexts beyond what is materially present. Since the mid-1990s, food miles have emerged as an example of missing objects, representing the distance that agricultural products travel from the farm to the dining table, and the environmental effects of transportation. I analyse how consumers, farmers, activists, industry and (...) policy-makers in the United States and Europe are building agency in making and using food miles. (shrink)

The history of brushtail possums in New Zealand is bleak. The colonists who forcibly transported possums from their native Australia to New Zealand in the nineteenth century valued them as economic assets, quickly establishing a profitable fur industry. Over the past 80 or so years, however, New Zealand has increasingly scapegoated possums for the unanticipated negative impact their presence has had on the native environment and wildlife. Now this marsupial—blamed and despised—suffers the most miserable of reputations and is extensively (...) targeted as the nation's number one pest. This paper examines anti-possum rhetoric in New Zealand, identifying the operation of several distinct—yet related—discourses negatively situating the possum as an unwanted foreign invader and a threat to what makes New Zealand unique; the subject of revenge and punishment ; and recognizably “cute, but...” merely a pest and therefore unworthy of compassion. This paper argues that the demonization of possums in New Zealand is overdetermined, extreme, and unhelpfully entangled in notions of patriotism and nationalism. (shrink)

Environmentalists can convince others to adopt nature-friendly policies through appeal to commonly-held values. Efficiency and justice are such values in industrial societies, but these values are often considered at odds with each other and with policies that preserve land and reduce pollution. The present paper analyses the notion of efficiency and argues that transportation policies that environmentalists favour – substitution of intercity rail and urban mass transit for most automotive forms of transport – are both efficient and just.

Representative organizations of employers massively occur in Russian Empire in the post-reform period as a form of protection of the interests of industrialists and businessmen in terms of development of capitalist relations. One of the issues related to the common interests of entrepreneurs in the First World War were rail transportation. Transport problems during the war was most acute for business associations, and became for them some kind a test of the efficiency. Analysis of periodicals and record keeping documentation (...) of representative organizations, "Bulletin" departments of railways show in article representative organizations of employers understanding the causes of the crisis in the Donbass railway during the First World War and shows what is needed and the government measures to overcome the negative effects of transport system. The article shows problems of Donbass rail transport during war years: low capacity and carrying capacity of the network, its lack of branching, shortage of rolling stock, the inefficiency of freight traffic and as a consequence of the rapid deterioration of equipment downtime and freight. Solving these problems entrepreneurs have seen in the additional construction of railways and roads, increasing the capacity of transport engineering factories and repair shops, using captured locomotives and wagons, technical upgrading of the railway network and station management. The paper emphasizes that the inefficiency of transport created a vicious circle of problems in the region - untimely delivery of goods to industrial enterprises of Donbass, deprived railways revenues from transport and fuel, metallurgical and engineering products, without which the operation of highways could not be successful. The article concludes that the war uncovered the underlying socio-economic problems in the country only grew, conflicts between different groups of businessman became deeper, Donbass railway crisis has become one of the most destructive processes in whole economy. (shrink)

Les sociétés démocratiques sont confrontées à l'émergence d'enjeux environnementaux décisifs qui concernent tant les modes de production, d'échange et de consommation que l'habitat, les transports, l'agriculture, l'industrie et même nos modes de vie. La prise en charge de ces enjeux ne saurait s'opérer simplement par des mesures ponctuelles ou locales. Elle doit aujourd'hui être repensée la temporalité de l'action politique, confrontée à une urgence qui ne cessera de s'accroître dans les prochaines années.

Tourism, as an industry, has become one of the most dynamic sectors of the world economy these days and has specific features that are different from other industries. In the tourism industry, production and consumption points occur spatially at the same time. In addition, the tourism industry contributes to the economic growth of developed regions and can simultaneously distribute the wealth created geographically. It is notable that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused many challenges in (...) the tourism industry regarding the presence of tourists in tourism centres and the closing of all tourism service chains, including food, entertainment, transportation and travel services worldwide. Tourism-related businesses, which are considered as invisible export and one of the engines of development and occupation, have been rendered obsolete. In other words, the businesses, as well as multiple units and activities in the related chain, have been damaged and employees of this industry have lost their jobs. This has led to the recession and regressive course of the developing and large industry of tourism in the world. It is worth noting that the tourism industry includes various sections, the most important of which is religious tourism. All religions in the world have different religious places, works, traditions and customs, which have become amongst the most important tourist attractions. Meanwhile, Muslims and the religion of Islam play a significant role in this branch of tourism. The Hajj, pilgrimage to holy places and the existence of mourning ceremonies or religious celebrations of Muslims are amongst the largest religious tourism events in the world. Given the importance of this issue, the present study aimed to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on religious tourism in Iraq in 2021. This field study was conducted on 4500 Muslim managers and staff of restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, clothing stores and souvenir shops around the holy shrines of imams and religious places in Karbala, Najaf, Kufa, Samarra and Kazemi. According to the results, the tourism of Iraq, which is mainly limited to Muslim religious sites in several major Iraqi cities, has also seen a decline in the number of religious tourists. The negative effects of COVID-19 on religious tourism have also been proved statistically by the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), as µ ≥ 3 has been counted in all indices.Contribution: Our findings offered new insights into the impact of COVID-19 on tourism, based on statistical analysis. In this study, the authors showed how COVID-19 affects various aspects of religious tourism, which has not been addressed in previous researches. (shrink)

The aviation industry is one of the most widely used applications in transportation. Due to the limited capacity of aircraft, revenue management in this industry is of high significance. On the other hand, the hub location problem has been considered to facilitate the demands assignment to hubs. This paper presents an integrated p-hub location and revenue management problem under uncertain demand to maximize net revenue and minimize total cost, including hub establishment and transportation costs. A fuzzy programming model (...) and a genetic algorithm are developed to solve the proposed model with different sizes. The mining and petroleum industry is used for case studies. Results show that the proposed algorithm can obtain a suitable solution in a reasonable amount of time. (shrink)

Since 2016, drones have been deployed in various development projects in sub-Saharan Africa, where trials, tests, and studies have been rolled out in countries, including Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi, Ghana, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The use cases of drones vary, ranging from imagery collection to transportation of vaccines, lab samples, blood products, and other medical supplies. A wide range of stakeholders is involved, including governments, international organizations, educational institutions, as well as industry. Based on a field (...) study conducted in 2019, this article investigates how drones are used for medical supply delivery in Malawi-a country where the community is underserved for healthcare and related infrastructure underdeveloped, while airspace is largely open and regulations generally relaxed. The objective of presenting this case study is to contribute to the evidence regarding the rapid deployment of medical cargo drones across the African continent, and to spark critical reflections over the utility, suitability, and impacts of incorporating drones in the existing health supply chain systems in resource-poor settings. The discussion revolves around two aspects: 1) the emergent “African Drone Rise”-is it ok “as it is Africa”? and 2) the normative role of technology in the aid sector-is it “a solution looking for a problem”? In conclusion, a call for more structured guidance for the systematic examination and evaluation of the medical cargo drone case is raised. (shrink)

This book offers a systematic and thorough philosophical analysis of the ways in which driving automation crosses path with ethical values. Upon introducing the different forms of driving automation and examining their relation to human autonomy, it provides readers with in-depth reflections on safety, privacy, moral judgment, control, responsibility, sustainability, and other ethical issues. Driving is undoubtedly a moral activity as a human act. Transferring it to artificial agents such as connected and automated vehicles necessarily raises many philosophical questions. When (...) driving is automated, what happens to its ethical dimensions? Could artificial agents accomplish ethical objectives on our behalf, take moral decisions in our place, and drive us into a more ethical transportation future? In doing so, would they be “moral” as we are or in a way that is similar to, but also remarkably different from, our own? And what role is yet to be played by human responsibility and commitment? The book addresses these questions with the aim of stimulating an interdisciplinary dialogue between different stakeholders. They include automotive engineers, computer scientists, and moral philosophers, as well as industry representatives, policymakers, regulators, transportation experts, and the general public. Indeed, connected and automated vehicles will not take the high road for us . We must drive them there. (shrink)

Between 1909 and 1913, Berlin’s Museum für Naturkunde unearthed more than 225 tons of fossils in former German East Africa and transported them to Berlin. Among them were the bones of Brachiosaurus brancai, which would eventually become the biggest mounted dinosaur in the world. By analyzing the social and communicative strategies that made this expedition possible, this paper aims to reveal several aspects of natural history knowledge production at the end of the long nineteenth century. Using rhetoric, the director of (...) the Geological–Paleontological Museum in Berlin, Wilhelm von Branca, conducted a highly successful campaign to market the dinosaurs in Prussia and to convince public opinion and the Prussian central state of the value of paleontology. He fired the Prussian imagination and took advantage of the competitive urge to emulate American paleontology and industry. This work examines how his public relations strategies shaped the German biological “landscape” of the first decades of the twentieth century. It asks: when and under what conditions did paleontology successfully appeal to the public? How does communication dictate, shape, and constrain the development of a specific epistemic agenda? And what kind of power do the public and money have? (shrink)

A. Two conceptions of moral legitimacy Socialism, understood as the rejection of markets based on private property in favor of comprehensive centralized economic planning, is no longer a serious political option. If the core of capitalism is the organization of the economy primarily through market competition based on private property, then capitalism has certainly defeated socialism. Markets have been accepted—and central planning abandoned—throughout most of the “third world” and the formerly Communist states. In the advanced industrial states of the West, (...) Labor and “democratic socialist” parties have rejected socialism, having deregulated markets and privatized industries, utilities, and transport. The United Kingdom Labour Party’s 1945 manifesto declared it to be a “Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate aim is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain.”1 Today it insists that markets are a given. (shrink)

In 2014, the United States health care industry produced an estimated 480 million metric tons of carbon dioxide ; nearly 8% of the country's total emissions. The importance of sustainability in health care — as a business reliant on fossil fuels for transportation, energy, and operational functioning — is slowly being recognized. These efforts to green health care are incomplete, since they only focus on health care structures. The therapeutic relationship is the essence of health care — not the (...) buildings that contain the practice. As such, this article will first postulate reasons for a lack of environmental sustainability in US health care. Second, the article will focus on current green health care initiatives in the United States in which patients and physicians participate. Third, the rationale for participation in green initiatives will be explained. Fourth, the article will propose that, based on the environmental values of patients and physicians, health care insurance plans and health care insurance companies can be targeted for green health care reform, thereby closing the loop of sustainable health care delivery. (shrink)

This paper examines the ethics of government policies and automobile industry strategies as China rapidly adopts the automobile on a widespread basis. It begins by looking at the context of auto adoption in America in the twentieth century and then contrasts this with the situation in China today. It next analyzes government and auto company strategies along three moral criteria and concludes that current strategies are consistent yet ethically wrongful. In the end, it recommends the abandonment of current antiquated (...) harm-inducing strategies in favor of new approaches incorporating innovative technologies that account for local preferences. (shrink)

In 2005, The International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM) developed four new ethical principles of organic agriculture to guide its future development: the principles of health, ecology, care, and fairness. The key distinctive concept of animal welfare in organic agriculture combines naturalness and human care, and can be linked meaningfully with these principles. In practice, a number of challenges are connected with making organic livestock systems work. These challenges are particularly dominant in immature agro-ecological systems, for example those that (...) are characterized by industrialization and monoculture. Some of the current challenges are partly created by shortages of land and manure, which encourage zero-grazing and other confined systems. Other challenges are created in part by the conditions for farming and the way in which global food distribution systems are organized, e.g., how live animals are transported, how feed is traded and transported all over the globe, and the development of infrastructure and large herds. We find that the overall organic principles should be included when formulating guidelines for practical organic animal farming. This article explores how the special organic conceptions of animal welfare are related to the overall principles of organic agriculture. The aim is to identify potential routes for future development of organic livestock systems in different contexts and with reference to the specific understanding of animal welfare in organic agriculture. We include two contrasting cases represented by organic livestock systems in northwestern Europe and farming systems in tropical low-income countries; we use these cases to explore the widely different challenges of organic livestock systems in different parts of the world. (shrink)

Considerable progress is being made in robotics, with robots being developed for many different areas of life: there are service robots, industrial robots, transport robots, medical robots, household robots, sex robots, exploration robots, military robots, and many more. As robot development advances, an intriguing question arises: should robots also encompass religious functions? Religious robots could be used in religious practices, education, discussions, and ceremonies within religious buildings. This article delves into two pivotal questions, combining perspectives from philosophy and religious (...) studies: can and should robots have religious functions? Section 2 initiates the discourse by introducing and discussing the relationship between robots and religion. The core of the article (developed in Sects. 3 and 4) scrutinizes the fundamental questions: can robots possess religious functions, and should they? After an exhaustive discussion of the arguments, benefits, and potential objections regarding religious robots, Sect. 5 addresses the lingering ethical challenges that demand attention. Section 6 presents a discussion of the findings, outlines the limitations of this study, and ultimately responds to the dual research question. Based on the study’s results, brief criteria for the development and deployment of religious robots are proposed, serving as guidelines for future research. Section 7 concludes by offering insights into the future development of religious robots and potential avenues for further research. (shrink)

Service-Robotic—mainly defined as “non-industrial robotics”—is identified as the next economical success story to be expected after robots have been ubiquitously implemented into industrial production lines. Under the heading of service-robotic, we found a widespread area of applications reaching from robotics in agriculture and in the public transportation system to service robots applied in private homes. We propose for our interdisciplinary perspective of technology assessment to take the human user/worker as common focus. In some cases, the user/worker is the effective subject (...) acting by means of and in cooperation with a service robot; in other cases, the user/worker might become a pure object of the respective robotic system, for example, as a patient in a hospital. In this paper, we present a comprehensive interdisciplinary framework, which allows us to scrutinize some of the most relevant applications of service robotics; we propose to combine technical, economical, legal, philosophical/ethical, and psychological perspectives in order to design a thorough and comprehensive expert-based technology assessment. This allows us to understand the potentials as well as the limits and even the threats connected with the ongoing and the planned implementation of service robots into human lifeworld—particularly of those technical systems displaying increasing grades of autonomy. (shrink)

BackgroundNormally, physicians understand they have a duty to treat patients, and they perform accordingly consistent with codes of medical practice, standards of care, and inner moral motivation. In the case of COVID-19 pandemic in a developing country such as Bangladesh, however, the fact is that some physicians decline either to report for duty or to treat patients presenting with COVID-19 symptoms. At issue ethically is whether such medical practitioners are to be automatically disciplined for dereliction of duty and gross negligence; (...) or, on the contrary, such physicians may legitimately claim a professional right of autonomous judgment, on the basis of which professional right they may justifiably decline to treat patients.MethodsThis ethical issue is examined with a view to providing some guidance and recommendations, insofar as the conditions of medical practice in an under-resourced country such as Bangladesh are vastly different from medical practice in an industrialized nation such as the USA. The concept of moral dilemma as discussed by philosopher Michael Shaw Perry and philosopher Immanuel Kant’s views on moral appeal to “emergency” are considered pertinent to sorting through the moral conundrum of medical care during pandemic.ResultsOur analysis allows for conditional physician discretion in the decision to treat COVID-19 patients, i.e., in the absence of personal protective equipment (PPE) combined with claim of duty to family. Physicians are nonetheless expected to provide a minimum of initial clinical assessment and stabilization of a patient before initiating transfer of a patient to a “designated” COVID-19 hospital. The latter is to be done in coordination with the national center control room that can assure admission of a patient to a referral hospital prior to ambulance transport.ConclusionsThe presence of a moral dilemma (i.e., conflict of obligations) in the pandemic situation of clinical care requires institutional authorities to exercise tolerance of individual physician moral decision about the duty to care. Hospital or government authority should respond to such decisions without introducing immediate sanction, such as suspension from all clinical duties or termination of licensure, and instead arrange for alternative clinical duties consistent with routine medical care. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response 4: The Summer of Our DiscontentCaroline EdwardsI write this response on the eve of another wave of industrial action in the UK in November 2022—the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) “UCU Rising” campaign, the latest in a series of regular disputes over pay and working conditions, the gender and ethnicities pay gap, and casualisation that has been ongoing since 2018. In 2022’s “summer of discontent,” we’ve seen our (...) rail, maritime and transport workers, airport staff, bus drivers, telecommunications workers, postal workers, nurses, refuse workers, and higher and further education staff engage in ongoing industrial disputes with intractable bosses. Even criminal barristers continue with an indefinite, uninterrupted strike after years of government cuts and chronic underinvestment. Everywhere you look, there is a palpable sense of a country on its knees. It’s nearly 100 years since the last General Strike of 1926 and in the UK it’s looking increasingly likely that we will have another General Strike on our hands soon. In “Two Cheers for Blueprints, or, Negative Reasons for Positive Utopianism” Antonis Balasopoulos contextualizes this within the longer economic durée of the shift from Fordist production to so-called flexible accumulation after 1972, writing in this issue that “the turn of capital to the faster and higher [End Page 554] profits involved in financialization rather than infrastructural and industrial investment, form much of the objective, structural ground for what can only be described as the rapid rise of a dystopian structure of feeling in western societies since the early 1970s.” Antonis’s brilliant summary reminds us of the monumental scale of the challenges facing utopian thought and praxis in our current moment. Make no mistake—the “crisis ordinariness” of everyday life under late capitalism that Lauren Berlant identified in Cruel Optimism (2011) has intensified in the years following the Global Financial Crisis (2007–8), the wave of Occupy protests in 2011, and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–). “For some time now,” as Antonis writes, the utopian goals of “happiness, fulfilment, [and] emancipation... have been out of the question altogether.”It’s hard not to agree with this assessment, given the current chaos of life in the UK. Adam Stock’s roundtable contribution “Funding Utopia: Utopian Studies and the Discourse of Academic Excellence” focuses on the academy’s complicity with the neoliberal financialization of what were previously protected as public goods (education, our health service, transport infrastructure, and so on) over the past three decades. As Adam notes, the rhetoric of “excellence” that has come to dominate all areas of university life—teaching, research, public engagement, and the quantifiable “impact” of university research beyond the academy—is really just another way of using competition to mask the market logic of scarcity. Swingeing cuts to publicly funded research have led to a scarcity of resources in scholarly knowledge production, which is legitimated through the discourse of “excellence” and “prestige.” Only a handful of elite research leaders are granted awards and the value of all research becomes judged by its proximity to this distribution (concentration) of wealth within a small number of institutions. Defending education as a public good has long given way to the desperate, existential struggle for survival at UK universities. Numerous institutions are on the brink of bankruptcy, which was the goal all along for the ideologically driven Office for Students (OfS). Market exit, as they euphemistically term it, proves market efficiency.At my own institution, Birkbeck, University of London, the challenge to utopian thinking is all too violently clear. Birkbeck has a special place in the UK higher education system—a university founded nearly 200 years ago in the Crown and Anchor Tavern on the Strand (it was called the London Mechanics’ Institution back then) to offer education to working-class Londoners that [End Page 555] fitted around their busy working lives. As my colleague Joanna Bourke writes in Birkbeck: 200 Years of Radical Learning for Working People (2022), life expectancy in the poorest parts of London was just twenty-nine years; cholera, typhoid, and typhus were major killers; and illiteracy was widespread. At Birkbeck, we are the only university to teach evening classes and offer the requisite support... (shrink)

Synthetic biology is a field of research that concentrates on the design, construction, and modification of new biomolecular parts and metabolic pathways using engineering techniques and computational models. By employing knowledge of operational pathways from engineering and mathematics such as circuits, oscillators, and digital logic gates, it uses these to understand, model, rewire, and reprogram biological networks and modules. Standard biological parts with known functions are catalogued in a number of registries (e.g. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Registry of Standard Biological (...) Parts). Biological parts can then be selected from the catalogue and assembled in a variety of combinations to construct a system or pathway in a microbe. Through the innovative re-engineering of biological circuits and the optimization of certain metabolic pathways, biological modules can be designed to reprogram organisms to produce products or behaviors. Synthetic biology is what is known as a “platform technology”. That is, it generates highly transferrable theoretical models, engineering principles, and know-how that can be applied to create potential products in a wide variety of industries. Proponents suggest that applications of synthetic biology may be able to provide scientific and engineered solutions to a multitude of worldwide problems from health to energy. Synthetic biology research has already been successful in constructing microbial products which promise to offer cheaper pharmaceuticals such as the antimalarial synthetic drug artemisinin, engineered microbes capable of cleaning up oil spills, and the engineering of biosensors that can detect the presence of high concentrations of arsenic in drinking water. One of the potential benefits of synthetic biology research is in its application to biofuel production. It is this application which is the focus of this entry. The term “biofuel” has referred generally to all liquid fuels that are sourced from plant or plant byproducts and are used for energy necessary for transportation vehicles (Thompson 2012). Biofuels that are produced using synthetic biological techniques re-engineer microbes into biofuel factories are a subset of these. (shrink)

Over the last half century, a multijurisdictional, multiscale system of governance has emerged to address concerns associated with toxic chemicals that have the capacity to bioaccumulate in organisms and biomagnify in food chains, leading to fish consumption advisories. Components of this system of governance include international conventions, laws enacted by nation states and their subjurisdictions, and efforts to adaptively manage regional ecosystems. Given that many of these compounds – including mercury, industrial chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls, and pesticides such as (...) toxaphene – circulate throughout the globe through cycles of deposition and reemission, regional efforts to eliminate the need for fish consumption advisories cannot be successful without efforts to reduce emissions everywhere in the world. This paper argues that the scientific community, by monitoring the concentrations of these compounds in the atmosphere and by modeling their fate and transport, play an important role in connecting the various jurisdictional scales of governance. In addition, the monitoring networks that this community of scientists has established can be visualized as a technology of governance essential in an era in which societies have the capacity to produce and release such chemicals on an industrial scale. (shrink)

This work aims to study strategies used in Argentine local development experiences, focussing on industrial design, marketing and entrepreneurship. In order to this purpose, backgrounds are analysed with this approach adding the study of three strategic plans for national and provincial-level that are currently in force. With the analysis of the transport system in the last decade, an accelerated cost increase is evident, resulting in a relatively higher price of distributed products. This situation that was initially perceived as a (...) disadvantage finally set up an opportunity to produce locally. The goal of this paper is to provide tools that contribute to the work shipped by key institutions for local development (public, private and intermediary organisations), and the way these interact with the actors and the territory. In particular, the identification of productive sectors and the selection of goods that can be produced and consumed locally, as a key input for the formulation of projects. (shrink)