Highlights the gap between the official rhetoric and the political reality of democratic decentralisation and bottom-up planning using an in-depth study of the metropolitan planning process in Kolkata, India. This book focuses on the dynamic interactions between planners and the operation of the political process that shapes this reality.

Perhaps the most difficult thing that human beings are called upon collectively to do is to run a government. Why do so many fail? There are 196 countries in the world, about 150 of them significant. At least 105 of them, briefly summarized here, are in deep trouble. Deep trouble is defined by wars, insurrections, active internal conflict, serious maldistribution of wealth, deep and widespread poverty, rampant corruption, serious lack of social services and public infrastructure, and an excess of plain old bumbling government incompetence, created and exacerbated by the governments themselves out of greed, viciousness, and an insatiable lust for power. This is the tragic record of government from the top down. It is therefore vital to strengthen the bottom up elements of national activity, and at the same time, people must try to point these stronger elements toward resistance to top-down authority. The new and growing hope is that decent people and organizations all over the world will increasingly rise up in their own defense and bring a new level of moderation and spirit of aid and service from the bottom up to these failing states that are their homes.

You can win at work, and you can have victory on the job if you work to make yourself become important to the business or company. Work doesn't have to be a mundane routine that seems to be at a standstill. Create an exciting adventure out of it, and you will propel yourself into a fantastic journey toward getting the respect you deserve, getting the promotions you've earned, and towards getting from the bottom straight up to the top... and beyond... on your job.

The authors contend that Japanese firms are successful because they are innovative--and not merely masters of imitation as some think--and because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Illustrations.

Crises occur in all societies across world, and can be natural (such as hurricanes, flooding, and earthquakes), man-made (such as wars and economic downturns), or, often, a combination of both (such as famines, the flooding of New Orleans in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina and subsequent levy failures, and the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011). Crises cause fatalities, injuries, and property damages as well as introduce uncertainty and challenges for individuals, societies, and polities. Yet, we see individuals and communities rebounding effectively from crises all the time. How do communities go about returning to normalcy and beginning again the mundane life of every day affairs? This edited volume looks at bottom-up responses to crises. The chapters in this volume will highlight the ingenuity and persistence of individuals and private organizations as well as discuss the possibilities, limitations, and adaptability of bottom-up responses. It argues that there are many ways that local leaders, entrepreneurs, and community members can play a role in their own recovery by examining the capabilities, feedback mechanisms, and network effects of decentralized crisis response and recovery efforts. Chapters will focus on the role of local emergency managers in the disaster management process and offer suggestions for reform and the role of businesses, citizens, and children in providing crisis response and recovery. This book will also consider theories of self-governance and nonviolent action in encouraging and sustaining bottom-up recovery.

Climate change is one of the most pressing problems facing the global community. Although most states agree that climate change is occurring and is at least partly the result of humans’ reliance on fossil fuels, managing a changing global climate is a formidable challenge. Underlying this challenge is the fact that states are sovereign, governed by their own laws and regulations. Sovereignty requires that states address global problems such as climate change on a voluntary basis, by negotiating international agreements. Despite a consensus on the need for global action, many questions remain concerning how a meaningful international climate agreement can be realized. This book brings together leading experts to speak to such questions and to offer promising ideas for the path toward a new climate agreement. Organized in three main parts, it examines the potential for meaningful climate cooperation. Part 1 explores sources of conflict that lead to barriers to an effective climate agreement. Part 2 investigates how different processes influence states’ prospects of resolving their differences and of reaching a climate agreement that is more effective than the current Kyoto Protocol. Finally, part 3 focuses on governance issues, including lessons learned from existing institutional structures. The book is unique in that it brings together the voices of experts from many disciplines, such as economics, political science, international law, and natural science. The authors are academics, practitioners, consultants and advisors. Contributions draw on a variety of methods, and include both theoretical and empirical studies. The book should be of interest to scholars and graduate students in the fields of economics, political science, environmental law, natural resources, earth sciences, sustainability, and many others. It is directly relevant for policy makers, stakeholders and climate change negotiators, offering insights into the role of uncertainty, fairness, policy linkage, burden sharing and alternative institutional designs.

In science, a few areas particularly capture the imagination because of a combination of excitement, substantial technical progress, and implicit significance in affecting the nature and quality of life. Perhaps no area of science exhibits these characteristics more abundantly than that dealing with the brain. Once shrouded in the mystical, studies in modem brain science are dramatically enhancing our understanding of brain function and its impact on learning and memory. It is perhaps the union of pragmatic and mystical aspects that makes this such an exciting arena of science. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) began an intensive effort in 1983 on the topic of the neural basis for learning and memory. This effort was aimed at providing the scientific understanding of how learning takes place. It is the expectation that a neurological understanding of learning processes will lead to the formulation of learning strategies that will significantly enhance performance. This is important in a civilian and military population faced with serious manpower problems requiring a few individuals to be more expert with technologically intensive systems. With these motivations in mind, two of us (EJW and RN) formulated a full-day symposium at the AAAS annual meeting held in New York, May 1984.

The “Natural Problem of Consciousness” is the problem of understanding why there are presently conscious beings at all. Given a non-reductive naturalist framework taking consciousness as an ontologically subjective biological phenomenon, how can we rationally explain the fact that the actual world has turned out to be one where there are presently living beings that can feel, rather than having developed as a zombie-world in which there would be no conscious experiences of any kind? This book introduces the Natural Problem by relating it to central problems in the philosophy of mind (metaphysical mind-body problem, Hard Problem of consciousness) and emphasizing the distinctive interest of its diachronic dimension. Ranging from philosophy to biology and neuroscience, it offers a thorough analysis aimed at better understanding what could explain why phenomenal consciousness has been preserved throughout evolution by natural selection. This is an original, engaging, and thought provoking philosophical study of a neglected but fundamental question regarding the nature and origin of consciousness.

This clearly written textbook introduces the reader to the three styles of programming, examining object-oriented/imperative, functional, and logic programming. The focus of the text moves from highly prescriptive languages to very descriptive languages, demonstrating the many and varied ways in which we can think about programming. Designed for interactive learning both inside and outside of the classroom, each programming paradigm is highlighted through the implementation of a non-trivial programming language, demonstrating when each language may be appropriate for a given problem. Features: includes review questions and solved practice exercises, with supplementary code and support files available from an associated website; provides the foundations for understanding how the syntax of a language is formally defined by a grammar; examines assembly language programming using CoCo; introduces C++, Standard ML, and Prolog; describes the development of a type inference system for the language Small.

Value-added tax (VAT) is a mainstay of revenue systems in more than 160 countries. Because consumption is a more stable revenue base than other tax bases, VAT is less distorting and hence more likely to encourage investment, savings, optimum labor supply decisions, and growth. VAT is not without criticism however, and faces its own specific technical and policy challenges. This book, the first to thoroughly evaluate VAT from a global policy perspective after over 50 years of experience with its intricacies, offers authoritative perspectives on VAT’s full spectrum—from its signal successes to the subtle ways its application can undermine revenue performance and economic neutrality. The contributors—leading tax practitioners and academics—examine the key policy issues and topics that are crucially relevant for measuring the success of the tax in the first part of the book, including: revenue generation and revenue efficiency; single rate versus multiple rates; susceptibility to fraud; exemptions and exceptions; compliance cost for businesses; policy and compliance gaps in revenue collection; adjustment rules caused by the transactional nature of the tax; transfer pricing issues; treatment of vouchers; permanent establishments and holding companies; payment of refunds; cross-border digital transactions; and supplies for free or below cost price. The second part offers six country reports—on New Zealand, Japan, China, Colombia, Ethiopia, and India—to demonstrate the different ways in which VAT operates in a variety of national economies. Whether a government is contemplating the imposition of a general consumption tax for the first time or new rules for applying an existing one, it is important for policymakers to keep central the aim to design a tax that realizes optimal efficiency and causes minimal distortions. This invaluable book serves as an expert guide to VAT policy development in this area. It will be welcomed not only by concerned government officials but also by tax professionals (both lawyers and accountants) and academics in tax law.