Neighboring Countries (neighboring + country)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


A Pride of Museums in the Desert: Saudi Arabia and the "Gift of Friendship" Exhibition

CURATOR THE MUSEUM JOURNAL, Issue 1 2005
John Coppola
ABSTRACT The task of developing and presenting an exhibition at the King Abdul Aziz Historical Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia illustrates the challenges of museum work in a global environment filled with widely differing social, cultural, political, and professional norms. The exhibition, The Gift of Friendship, was largely drawn from the collections of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, in New York State. Saudi Arabia and its neighboring countries view museums as a source of national pride and public engagement, and frequently draw on Western expertise in building them. There are implications for exhibition development and interpretation in a society undergoing rapid modernization, but also one noted for an aversion to social science research. A postscript looks at museum trends in Oman, after 9/11 and the Iraq war. [source]


Fluoride concentrations in antler bone of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) indicate decreasing fluoride pollution in an industrialized area of western Germany

ENVIRONMENTAL TOXICOLOGY & CHEMISTRY, Issue 7 2001
Uwe Kierdorf
Abstract In order to reconstruct temporal changes in ambient fluoride levels in the industrialized Ruhr area (western Germany), we analyzed the bone fluoride content of 167 antlers of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) killed between 1951 and 1999 in the northern part of this region. Individual values ranged between 110 and 8,178 mg F,/kg ash, and there was an overall marked decrease over the sampling period. Average bone fluoride concentrations in antlers from the periods 1980 through 1989 (geometric mean [95% confidence interval]: 1,490 [1,193,1,861] mg/kg ash) and 1990 through 1999 (753 [644,882] mg/kg ash) differed significantly (p < 0.001) and were both significantly (p < 0.001) lower than those from the periods 1951 through 1969 (3,720 [3,227,4,288] mg/kg ash) and 1970 through 1979 (2,573 [2,203,3,006] mg/kg ash). The findings are seen as indicative of a progressively reduced atmospheric fluoride deposition into the study area, caused by effective emission-control measures in Germany and neighboring countries. Because antlers are replaced annually, grow during a fixed period of some months, and are regularly collected and kept as trophies, they are well suited as monitoring units for analyzing temporal trends in environmental pollution by fluoride and other bone-seeking pollutants. [source]


Diffusion and spillover of new technology: a heterogeneous-agent model for cassava in West Africa

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2006
Michael E. Johnson
Positive mathematical programming; Technology adoption; Technical change Abstract Understanding what determines the geographic spread of innovations can help guide the funding and implementation of research and extension programs. Our approach uses household survey data as model parameters, to simulate behavior across the entire surveyed population and avoid the aggregation bias associated with representative-farm models. Such a "heterogeneous agent" approach allows us to infer the distribution of a technology's impacts across one set of households, and predict the potential for spreading to another set that shares similar characteristics with respect to natural resource endowments and farming systems. We apply the technique to new cassava varieties in West Africa, finding a strongly poverty-alleviating impact, with substantial spillover potential from Nigeria to neighboring countries. [source]


How Does Economic Development in Eastern Europe Affect Austria's Regions?

JOURNAL OF REGIONAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2002
A Multiregional General Equilibrium Framework
The paper quantifies regional welfare effects arising from the increasing trade flows between Austria and its Eastern neighbors after the opening up of Eastern Europe. We calibrate a static multiregional Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model with benchmark data from 1994 for Austria, subdivided into nine Federal Provinces. The regions are linked by trade flows with the four Eastern neighboring countries and with the rest of the world. We simulate the effects of the increase of trade interpenetration as observed between 1989 and 1999 in a comparative static analysis. Regional welfare effects under fixed and flexible wages are presented. We also compare national CGE results with estimates obtained in a simple partial equilibrium approach. [source]


Oscillating migration and the epidemics of silicosis, tuberculosis, and HIV infection in South African gold miners ,

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL MEDICINE, Issue 4 2010
David Rees MBBCh, MSc(Med)
Abstract Background Hundreds of thousands of men from rural areas of South Africa and neighboring countries have come to seek work in the gold mines. They are not immigrants in the usual sense as they work for periods in the mines, go home, and then return. This is termed oscillating or circular migration. Today we have serious interrelated epidemics of silicosis, tuberculosis, and HIV infection in the gold mining industry. Methods This article discusses the role of oscillating migration in fuelling these epidemics, by examining the historical, political, social, and economic contexts of these diseases. Results The impact of silicosis, tuberculosis, and HIV infection extends beyond individual miners to their families and communities. Conclusion Failure to control dust and tuberculosis has resulted in serious consequences decades later. The economic and political migrant labor system provided the foundations for the epidemics seen in southern Africa today. Am. J. Ind. Med. 53:398,404, 2010. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]


The Democratic Domino Theory: An Empirical Investigation

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2009
Peter T. Leeson
According to the democratic domino theory, increases or decreases in democracy in one country spread and "infect" neighboring countries, increasing or decreasing their democracy in turn. Using spatial econometrics and panel data that cover over 130 countries between 1850 and 2000, this article empirically investigates the democratic domino theory. We find that democratic dominoes do in fact fall as the theory contends. However, these dominoes fall significantly "lighter" than the importance of this model suggests. Countries "catch" only about 11% of the increases or decreases in their average geographic neighbors' increases or decreases in democracy. This finding has potentially important foreign policy implications. The "lightness" with which democratic dominoes fall suggests that even if foreign military intervention aimed at promoting democracy in undemocratic countries succeeds in democratizing these nations, intervention is likely to have only a small effect on democracy in their broader regions. [source]


INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION/DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS AND INDONESIA

THE DEVELOPING ECONOMIES, Issue 1 2005
Fukunari KIMURA
This study examines the industrialization performance of Indonesia through a comparative evaluation with other East Asian economies. While neighboring countries actively formulated international production/distribution networks, Indonesia fell behind in utilizing the benefits of globalizing corporate activities. International production/distribution networks are supported by new economic thought such as fragmentation, agglomeration, and theories about corporate firm; and a policy package of development strategies should be designed to utilize such opportunities. The design of Indonesia's development strategies and "institutions", however, does not conform to the globalizing world because the presence of network-forming foreign companies is not large enough to make them influential "actors". This author argues that the traditional comparative advantage argument for Indonesia's economic development is possibly misleading. Rather, Indonesia must learn the experience of its neighboring countries and introduce foreign companies as new actors to break the old "structure". [source]


Corynebacterium diphtheriae spoligotyping based on combined use of two CRISPR loci

BIOTECHNOLOGY JOURNAL, Issue 7 2007
Igor Mokrousov Dr.
Abstract A large diphtheria epidemic in the 1990s in Russia and neighboring countries underlined the importance of permanent surveillance of the circulating and emerging clones of Corynebacterium diphtheriae, and hence there is a need for highly discriminatory, simple and portable typing methods. In the complete genome sequence of C. diphtheriae strain NCTC13129, we previously identified in silico two clustered, regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR) loci, and developed a macroarray-based method to study polymorphism in the larger DRB locus. We named this method spoligotyping (spacer oligonucleotide typing), analogously to a similar method of Mycobacterium tuberculosis genotyping. Here, we included in the analysis novel spacers of the other CRISPR locus in C. diphtheriae (DRA); both loci were simultaneously co-amplified and co-hybridized against the membrane with 27 different immobilized spacer-probes. The use of additional DRA spacers improved strain differentiation and discriminated within large DRB clusters. The 156 Russian strains of the epidemic clone were subdivided into 45 combined spoligotypes compared to 35 DRB-spoligotypes and only two ribotypes (,Sankt-Peterburg' and ,Rossija'). The spoligotyping method allows digital presentation of profiles and therefore it is perfectly suitable for interlaboratory comparison and database management; it may become a powerful tool for epidemiological monitoring and phylogenetic analysis of C. diphtheriae. [source]


Clonal dissemination of epidemic methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in Belgium and neighboring countries

CLINICAL MICROBIOLOGY AND INFECTION, Issue 5 2000
A. Deplano
Objectives To determine the diversity of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) types among epidemic strains of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) recovered in Belgium, France, Germany and The Netherlands over the period 1981,94. Methods MRSA strains collected in a multicenter survey in Belgium (n = 171) and from reference laboratories in neighboring countries (n = 102) were characterized by PFGE analysis using the SmaI enzyme. Results In total, 32 PFGE types were found. Epidemic PFGE type 1, first recognized in 1984, accounted for 82% of Belgian strains (87% of hospitals) and 51% of European MRSA strains. Four other internationally epidemic PFGE types (types 8, 10, 11 and 12) were less widely disseminated and more recently detected (1991,94), each recovered from two or three countries. International spread of two PFGE types was linked to transfer of colonized patients to Dutch hospitals from another country where this type was frequently recovered. Conclusions Genotypic analysis indicated widespread distribution of several outbreak-associated MRSA strains over large European regions, which was in some instances related to interhospital patient transfer. These findings underscore the need for standardized international surveillance and control of MRSA transmission between healthcare institutions across Europe. [source]