Search results

The Mond Division of ICI, P.O. Box 13, The Heath, Runcorn, Cheshire, announce the availability of vinyl acrylic copolymer resins with which paint manufacturers can formulate water‐based paints to protect steel against corrosion.

IN the present paper an attempt has been made to determine the optimum aspect ratio, wing loading and fuel load ratio under certain specified design conditions. Aeroplanes with turbojet as well as with airscrew propulsion have been considered.

In the post-9/11 period, tackling the vertical and horizontal growth of international terrorism has become a major challenge for the international community, more pertinently for the liberal states. About three decades ago, Paul Wilkinson wrote a book entitled Terrorism and the Liberal State in which he made a hypothetical statement that the liberal states in today’s world were more vulnerable to terrorist attacks and threats than any other political system. Totalitarian societies do not provide any space to terrorism in view of the fact that this system does not recognize the importance of civil societies. However, the point to be noted is that in today’s globalized international order, terrorist activities are not only confined within the territory of liberal societies alone, rather it has engulfed many parts of the globe that includes non-liberal societies as well. Therefore, strengthening democratic regimes and values is not the solution to abolish terrorism. In this context, this chapter attempts to test Wilkinson’s propositions that liberal states are more vulnerable to terrorism than any other political system by making a comparative study between democratic and non-democratic regimes to identify the recent trends of terrorism.

The purpose of the study is to analyze the risk of violent conflict with the global conflict risk factors in the Middle East economies by using an integrated fuzzy decision approach. For this purpose, five different dimensions and 24 different criteria are defined by analyzing similar studies in the literature. The dataset is borrowed from the European Commission, and experts appointed for the linguistic evaluation of each dimension and criterion. Additionally, fuzzy Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) methodology is used to weigh dimensions and criteria and Multi-objective Optimization on the basis of Ratio Analysis (MOORA) approach is considered to rank the countries with respect to the conflict risk. Social dimension was concluded to have the highest importance of the Global Conflict Risk Index. Moreover, Syria, Libya, and Saudi Arabia were identified as the countries that have high conflict risk. Because these countries have high risk of facing conflict in the future, it is strongly recommended that they should primarily focus on social factors in order to minimize this risk.

This chapter examines Nigeria’s relationship with her immediate neighboring countries in the fight against terrorism. It probed the challenges of national security following the internationalization of Boko Haram terrorist threats, particularly around the Lake Chad basin, and the responses of countries such as Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. These countries, like Nigeria, share borders around the Lake Chad and are the core contributors to the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF). Nigeria is an English-speaking country (former British colony), while these other neighbors are historically French colonial territories. Hence, their political, cultural, military, and economic affinities are with France. The varying backgrounds have accounted for the challenges in the subregion including the Boko Haram insurgency and the efforts at military cooperation in tackling it. Consequently, these questions are examined: what factors led to the formation of MNJTF and what role has it played in the counterterrorism strategies of the country? In what ways has the nature of Nigeria’s relations with these countries impacted on the operation of the body? What are the roles of external powers such as France with her domineering influence on these countries in the war against terrorism and how has it promoted Nigeria’s national security interest? The chapter relies on documented materials to interrogate the questions and proffer necessary policy recommendations premised on the findings.

This paper investigates the relationship between superstition and self-governance. We argue that at least some superstitions, and perhaps many, support self-governing arrangements. The relationship between such scientifically false beliefs and private institutions is symbiotic and socially productive. This simple but overlooked observation may help explain the emergence and otherwise puzzling persistence of both superstitions and “spontaneous” orders that seem perverse or dysfunctional, as well as why these two phenomena are often found together.

This chapter begins with a comprehensive review of the study on terrorism that has emerged in the last two decades and the consequences of terrorism in terms of economic theory. It aims to highlight the potential influence of terrorism on the distribution of military expenditure among different countries across the world. Moreover, the chapter seeks to shed light on the evolution of economic theories and models for explaining terrorism in a strategic environment to indicate the research gap in this field and presents an attempt to measure the impact of terrorism on the economic growth by considering the connection between the intensity of military expenditure made by a country and the security it faces as impinges by terrorist activities.

This study aims to carry out a critical analysis of the methods used to deal with the regulatory impact assessment while proposing an alternative method to overcome some of the drawbacks of the aforementioned methods.

To achieve the objective of this work, the methods currently used in regulatory impact analysis are presented by highlighting their scope and the problems they may pose during their applications. After that, the adjusted variant of radial measure is suggested as an alternative method to the aforementioned methods while showing its relevance with regard to other methods using pertinent criteria. Finally, for concretization, a case study related to the sanctions against Russia after its invasion of Ukraine is presented.

The findings show that regulations related to the sanctions against Russia are good enough, with a score of 0.846. However, this score is less good in several countries like Germany (0.671), Italy (0.677) and France (0.745) and in the poorest countries.

The originality of this work resides in using a novel method in the regulatory impact analysis field, which is adjusted variant of radial measure. This method increases the effectiveness of the regulatory impact assessment.

The present study investigates the nexus between health performance dynamics and economic growth in 43 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2004–2018.

Four health performance dynamics are used, notably: total life expectancy, male life expectancy, female life expectancy and risk of maternal death. The empirical evidence is based on quantile regressions (QRs) in order to put into perspective the conditional distribution of economic growth.

The following findings are established: (1) total life expectancy and male life expectancy increase economic growth exclusively in the 10th and 90th quantiles of economic growth; (2) female life expectancy boosts economic growth in the 90th quantile of economic growth and (3) the risk of maternal death reduces economic growth in the 75th and 90th quantiles of economic growth. Policy implications are discussed.

The study complements the literature on the nexus between health performance and economic growth by assessing the nexuses throughout the conditional distribution of economic growth.