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Renewed Attention (renewed + attention)
Selected AbstractsPublic-service values and ethics: Dead end or strong foundation?CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION/ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADA, Issue 4 2007Ralph Heintzman This article reconsiders Langford's arguments. It suggests that public-service renewal requires ongoing attention to public-service values but also a widening of perspectives. It is now necessary to give more attention to the organizational, professional and institutional conditions for sound individual behaviour. Renewed attention to public-service values did not seek to supplant traditional approaches to individual decision-making but rather to re-frame them, grounded in the principles without which they cannot make sense of the world. The research literature on values and ethics contradicts the critique's main contentions. The critique is also based on a mistaken premise, false dichotomies, and inadequate and contradictory assumptions about the nature of individual decision-making. Three points that are useful contributions to the ongoing dialogue on public-service values and ethics are noted. But an individual perspective must now be augmented by a focus on organizational performance. Far from being a "dead end," public-service values remain the strong foundation , the only possible foundation , for the public service of the future. Sommaire: Le présent article réexamine celui de John Langford, publié dans le numéro d'hiver 2004, dans lequel il prononqait un verdict négatif sur la préoccupation au sujet des valeurs du service public qui a été un élément de la réforme de la fonction publique au cours de la dernière décennie. Une nouvelle attention portée aux valeurs du service public n'a pas cherchéà remplacer les approches traditionnelles concernant la prise de décisions, mais plutôt à les recadrer, à les faire reposer sur des principes sans lesquels le monde n'a pas de sens. La littérature de recherche sur les valeurs et l'éthique conrredit les principales allégations du critique et est également fondée sur des assomptions erronées et contradictoires au sujet de la nature de la prise de décision individuelle. Trois points qui représentent des contributions utiles au dialogue actuel sur les valeurs et l'éthique du service public sont mentionnés. Mais la perspective individuelle doit aussi avoir pour objectif la performance organisarionnelle. Loin d'être une « voie sans issue », les valeurs du service public restent le fondement solide , et en fait le seul fondement possible , du service public de l'avenir. [source] Prevention of cancer through immunization: Prospects and challenges for the 21st centuryEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF IMMUNOLOGY, Issue S1 2007Abstract Persistent infection by several microbial agents is responsible for at least 15% of cancer globally, including most cancers of the liver, stomach, and cervix. The recent development of vaccines that can prevent infection and premalignant disease caused by human papillomaviruses (HPV), which cause virtually all cases of cervical cancer as well as some other cancers, has focused renewed attention on infection control as a means of reducing the global cancer burden. For vaccines to prevent cancer-causing infection with hepatitis C virus, Helicobacter pylori, or Epstein Barr virus, new vaccine technologies to induce more effective protective responses are required. For the two available cancer control vaccines, designed to prevent infection with HPV and hepatitis B virus, the major challenge is to promote effective vaccine deployment through education programs and increased affordability/accessibility for underserved populations, particularly in the developing world, where the cancer burden attributable to infection by these two viruses is greatest. [source] "SCENOPHOBIA", GEOGRAPHY AND THE AESTHETIC POLITICS OF LANDSCAPEGEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 3 2007Karl Benediktsson ABSTRACT. Recent critiques of the nature,culture dualism, influenced by diverse theoretical stances, have effectively destabilized the "naturalness" of nature and highlighted its pervasive and intricate sociality. Yet the practical, ethical and political effects of this theoretical turn are open to question. In particular, the emphasis on the sociality of nature has not led to reinvigorated environmental or landscape politics. Meanwhile, the need for such politics has if anything increased, as evident when ongoing and, arguably, accelerating landscape transformations are taken into account. These concerns are illustrated in the paper with an example from Iceland. In its uninhabited central highland, serious battles are now being fought over landscape values. Capital and state have joined forces in an investment-driven scramble for hydropower and geothermal resources to facilitate heavy industry, irrevocably transforming landscapes in the process. Dissonant voices arguing for caution and conservation have been sidelined or silenced by the power(ful) alliance. The author argues for renewed attention to the aesthetic, including the visual, if responsible politics of landscape are to be achieved. Aesthetic appreciation is an important part of the everyday experiences of most people. Yet, enthusiastic as they have been in deconstructing conventional narratives of nature, geographers have been rather timid when it comes to analysing aesthetic values of landscape and their significance, let alone in suggesting progressive landscape politics. A political geography of landscape is needed which takes aesthetics seriously, and which acknowledges the merit of engagement and enchantment. [source] Won't Get Fooled Again: The Paranoid Style in the National Security State1GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 4 2003Thomas C. Ellington In meeting the threat posed by terrorism, the democratic state also faces a paradox: those practices best suited to defending the state are often least suited to democracy. Such is the case with official secrecy, which has received renewed attention. Military and intelligence operations frequently depend on secrecy for their success. At the same time, democracy depends on openness, a fact too often neglected by democratic theory. Official secrecy subverts citizen autonomy and in so doing creates fertile ground for paranoid-style thinking. For the United States, a history of secrets and lies has left a legacy of distrust and paranoia. [source] New estimates of exchange rate pass-through in Japanese exports,INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FINANCE & ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2008Craig R. Parsons Abstract Recently, the issue of a decline in exchange rate pass-through has gained much more attention. Taylor conjectures that a worldwide decline in exchange rate pass-through is related to the low and stable inflation in many industrialized countries since the early 1990s. Developments of ,new open-economy macroeconomics' also cast renewed attention on exchange rate pass-through. Theoretical research shows that the choice of an optimal exchange rate regime and the transmission of monetary policy impacts depend crucially on the exporter's price setting behaviour. There are many studies on the pass-through of Japanese exports, yet most studies simply use the industry-breakdown data on export price indices, which is insufficient to assess pass-through patterns in regional trade. Significantly, highly disaggregated (HS 9-digit level) commodity data are used here to evaluate the extent of pass-through by commodity and by destination. We investigate and compare the extent of pass-through to East Asia, Europe, and the US. We also examine whether there is any difference in the degree of pass-through in the pre- and post-Asian crisis era. Results suggest the most pricing-to-market (PTM) occurs in exports to the US market followed by significant, but less PTM in Europe. Virtually no PTM is found in Japanese exports to East Asia. Also, there is no clear evidence of either increasing or decreasing pass-through over time. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Confronting the Johnson Administration at War: The Trial of Dr. Spock and Use of the Courtroom to Effect Political ChangePEACE & CHANGE, Issue 1 2003Michael S. Foley The Johnson administration's 1968 decision to indict Dr. Benjamin Spock and four others for conspiracy to aid and abet draft resisters thrilled the antiwar movement because it demonstrated that the government could no longer ignore the growing number of Americans opposed to the Vietnam War. In the months leading up to the trial, expectations ran high as the antiwar movement looked forward to a courtroom confrontation in which they hoped to see the government's policies put on trial. This article argues that the trial did not live up to its billing, however, because the defendants and their attorneys pursued both political and civil libertarian trial strategies that were, in practice, mutually exclusive. Although the trial disappointed the peace movement, its shortcomings warrant renewed attention for the lessons it offers those who again will seek a courtroom confrontation with their governments during wartime. [source] | |||||||||||||