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IN 1863, a single arc lamp on observatory Hill in Sydney, Australia, was lit to celebrate the marriage of Prince Albert of Wales and Princess Alexandra of Denmark. It was the first use of electricity anywhere in the country. It took 25 years until Australia established its first permanent 240-V electrical grid, in the small country town of Tamworth, New South Wales, in 1888. Two 18-kW, dc, coal-fired generators were supplied by the plentiful Gunnedah black coal basin nearby, and in the same year, on the other side of the continent, C.J. Otte supplied electricity to the Western Australian Government House with a small, 15-kW dynamo. By 1899, a full three-phase 240-V ac grid had been built on the east coast, establishing the foundation of the future power system across the country.

This paper examines the role of international trade for economic prosperity in Pacific island countries (PICs), discusses their comparative advantage, and explores the potential for trade, and tourism in particular, to serve as a locomotive for inclusive economic growth. We find the trade performance in PICs has been generally weak over the past decade, with the exception of resource-rich countries. Small country size and remoteness from global economic centers may have contributed to this relatively poor performance. Using the gravity models to analyze the determinants of merchandise trade and tourism in PICs, we find tourism in these countries faces more favorable conditions for growth than goods exports. Further, we place our analysis in the context of the eastward shift of global economic gravity, focusing on emerging Asia as a source of demand for resource-based goods and services. We argue that the emergence of Asia as a dynamic global economic region presents PICs with an unprecedented opportunity to develop trade, particularly tourism, although traditional markets will remain important for a long time to come. Moreover, if stronger synergies can be established between tourism, agriculture, and fisheries, Pacific island countries stand a better chance to improve broad-based growth.

Lesotho is a small country (30,350 sq.km with about 2.233 million population), completely surrounded by the Republic of South Africa. The people of the Kingdom of Lesotho are referred to as Basotho. This study aimed to investigate the culinary practices with regard to traditional Basotho bread, thus serving as a basis for documenting an aspect of Basotho traditional food knowledge. The study was conducted in five districts of Lesotho using focus groups, each consisting of ten housewives in each district, and face-to-face interviews with 253 women respondents who completed a questionnaire related to their knowledge, preparation and consumption of traditional Basotho bread. Recipes for ten traditional Basotho breads were obtained during five focus group sessions. The survey revealed that most of the respondents (99%) prepare bread at a household level using wheat flour. A few (15%) use maize flour and sorghum flour is used by only (5%). The main preparation steps were identified as sorting, cleaning of grains, dry milling and/or wet milling, mixing ingredients, fermentation and cooking. Bread is used for household consumption and social functions, such as weddings and funerals. This paper documents the culinary practices for ten Basotho breads from maize, wheat and sorghum. Research geared to the improvement of the quality characteristics of maize and sorghum breads should be given the highest priority to encourage the use of local ingredients.

Sri Lanka is a small country with limited resources. Historically, its politics have been dominated by a Sinhalese/Buddhist majority. Non-alignment has been viewed as a matter of principle ...

Tourism is one of the largest and fastest growing economies in the world, which began to develop in the early twentieth century as an activity in which only a small group of property people can enjoy. Today, tourism is gradually becoming a mass phenomenon. Tourism, as a branch, occupies a significant place in the global economy, as its development improves not only the conditions for staying tourists but also the living conditions of the local population. We live in a small country, but it is abundant with too many natural beauties that enable the development of this branch. These beauties are not sufficiently used for tourism promotion of the country in the world (especially the eastern part of the country). Few people are familiar with the magnificent localities, beauties and potentials of the Malesh - Pijanec region, a region that has great potential and capacity for tourism development, local initiatives, events and events that can be recognized locally, nationally and internationally. In addition to the natural treasures of this region that will "restore" your physical strength, the Berovo municipality is the end of the largest number of churches and monasteries that will help you find peace of mind and tranquility. Keywords: rural tourism, economy, monuments, buildings, economic development

This article focuses on the everyday women's life in a parish located in the Northern Andes. Toacazo (Republic of Ecuador) was a small country town characterized by the persistence of the hacienda regime and the textile obrajes as the main basis of the local economy and society. The period studied goes between the ending of the colonial era and the first decades of the new independent Republic and the data that supports this research comes from the population censuses of 1778-84 and 1861. The main items to analyze are demographic behavior, family forms, labor and literacy levels of the female group. Este artículo analiza en profundidad la vida cotidiana de las mujeres en un pueblo-parroquia de los Andes septentrionales (Toacazo, República del Ecuador) caracterizado por la persistencia del régimen de hacienda y de los obrajes textiles como fundamentos de la economía y de la sociedad local. El marco cronológico se sitúa en la transición entre el fin convulso de la época colonial y la primera etapa de la República independiente y los datos que fundamentan el estudio provienen del vaciado nominativo de los censos de población de 1778-84 y de 1861. A partir de estos registros, se analizan aspectos como los comportamientos demográficos, las pautas de organización familiar, las actividades laborales y los niveles de alfabetización del grupo femenino.

Albania is a small country with an area of 28,748 sq km positioned in south-east Europe and in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula.

Brunei Darussalam (henceforth Brunei) is a small country about 5 degrees north of the equator on the northern coast of Borneo, an island it shares with the East Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah and the Indonesian territory of Kalimantan.

Bangladesh is a small country of South Asia which is considered as one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and it is affected by severe weather and climate events. In th...

A small country in Central America offers some interesting ideas on how the insurance industry can handle the COVID‐19 pandemic and crisis.

Is tree mortality increasing? Are recent mortality events related to climate change? Which tree species are the most affected? Many case studies have been published in the last decade, but the necessary large-scale and long-term knowledge is still missing. Here we combined data from forest surveys and satellite imagery, to create the first spatial tree mortality history at the national scale. Israel is a small country with only 7% forest cover, but its large environmental diversity and mosaic of many, small, forest areas makes it a good ‘miniature model’ for the task. Tree mortality events have been increasing significantly since 1991 and correlated well with drought. Among mortality events, 24% of the loss was directly related to drought, and 58% to fire, with 69% of fires occurring over a drought background. Conifers were disproportionally more affected than native broadleaved trees. This is the first national-scale study of tree mortality dynamics, and it confirms the suspected increase in this phenomenon in recent decades, and the dominant role of drought. Our study opens a way to a better, multi-source monitoring future for forest management and ensuring forest sustainability under climate change.

On 4 August 1888, Reefton became the first town in New Zealand to have its own public electricity supply powered by hydrogeneration. In Australia, the first supply of electricity to the public at large was in two small country towns in New South Wales. Tamworth, with a population of 3,000, switched on arc and incandescent street lighting on 9 November 1888. In April 1889, the smaller town of Young switched on its incandescent street lighting and shortly thereafter went on to connect shops, offices, and homes within reach of its lines. However, the history of electricity supply in Australia traces back earlier, with Brisbane as one of the first cities in Australia to use electricity commercially, in 1882. Thus, electricity utilization down under coincided with the history of its emergence among the countries of the Northern Hemisphere.

There is an urgent need for understanding the processes through which investments in transport infrastructure modify the economic geography landscape of a region or country. The “New Economic Geography” (NEG) suggests that the concentration of economic activities is determined by ‘centripetal’ and ‘centrifugal’ forces which in turn determine the balance between the economic and geographical core and periphery regions. Transport can, and should be, understood as the balancing factor between these forces. In order to take a snapshot of core-periphery relation in a country, travel patterns between centre and periphery in Israel in 2007 are analysed using Mobile Phone signal tracking. Results show that despite Israel being a very small country the level of inter-regional travel as a proportion of overall travel is small. Furthermore, despite the clear economic core in Israel (the Metropolitan area of Tel Aviv), the periphery regions seem to remain independent. Yet, analysis of the inter-regional travel that does take place suggests a greater dependence of (travel from) the periphery to the centre than vice versa. This in turn suggests that investments in more long-distance transport infrastructure in Israel would further increase the dependency of the periphery on the centre and could increase core-periphery disparities.

The Commonwealth of Dominica is a small country located between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It is diminutive in comparison to other countries, encompassing only 751 square kilometers ...

Nepal is a small country located in South Asia which is geographically highly diverse and fairly rich in its variety of endangered wild animals. Conservation and monitoring of endangered wildlife is great challenging task in developing country like Nepal. Different body parts of wild animals are used as raw material for making pharmaceutical products, cosmetic, and other purpose; hence their value increased in the international market, as a result poaching and trading activities of endangered wild animals has been increased rapidly at protected areas in Nepal. This review will provide detailed information about different population monitoring techniques being applied for different endangered wild animals in protected areas of Nepal. Techniques like camera trapping, radio collar, noninvasive methods, mobile application, GPS, GIS, direct head count, etc. are commonly used for monitoring wildlife in Nepal. Since conservation of endangered wildlife species has become very much crucial, more advance technologies and social network analysis will be also used to determine the monitoring of wild animals at protected areas in Nepal.

Costa Rica is a small country in Central America with a recent history of fungal research. However, comparative differences with other territories in the Mesoamerican Biodiversity Hotspot region have promoted the study of fungi and the integration of fungal information with natural resource management. Even though there is still a large number of multidisciplinary aspects to cover in Costa Rica for robust incorporation of fungal data in conservation and political and developmental agendas, regional advantages have allowed this country to move towards such goal more rapidly than other countries in this part of the world. Mycoliteracy-centered and citizen science initiatives seem to be the next step in order to normalize disparities in fungal perception across regions within the country and promote social interaction with fungi. However, in general terms, the Costa Rican society seems to be aware of the potential of fungi as a source of food and medicines and their remarkable contribution through ecosystem services. In this manner, fungal conservation and management seem easier to conduct in this territory than in other regions of the world where less information on fungi has reached the general population. Resumen Costa Rica es un país pequeño en la región centroamericana, con una reciente historia de investigación micológica. Sin embargo, algunas diferencias comparativas con otros países de la región biológica mesoamericana han promovido el estudio de los hongos y su integración con el manejo de los recursos naturales. Aun cuando todavía existe un sinnúmero de elementos por cubrir en Costa Rica, para una incorporación robusta de datos micológicos en la conservación y el desarrollo de agendas políticas sobre recursos naturales, algunas ventajas regionales han permitido que este país avance hacia tal objetivo más rápidamente que otros. Iniciativas de micoalfabetización y ciencia popular parecen ser los siguientes pasos para normalizar desequilibrios en la percepción sobre los hongos, que tienen diferentes regiones en Costa Rica, con el propósito de instar interacciones con estos organismos. No obstante, en términos generales, la sociedad costarricense parece estar más atenta al potencial de los hongos como fuente alimenticia y medicinal, al igual que a reconocer el rol de dichos organismos de facilitar servicios ecosistémicos. De esta forma, la conservación de hongos y su manejo parecen ser más fáciles de llevarse a cabo en este territorio que en otras áreas del mundo, donde mucho menos información sobre ellos ha llegado a la población general. Resumo A Costa Rica é um país pequeno localizado na região centro-americana, com uma recente história de pesquisa micológica. Porém, algumas diferenças comparativas com outros países da região biológica mesoamericana têm promovido o estudo dos fungos e sua integração com o manejo dos recursos naturais. Ainda que exista inumeráveis elementos a serem cobertos na Costa Rica para uma incorporação robusta de dados micológicos na conservação e no desenvolvimento de agendas políticas sobre recursos naturais, algumas vantagens regionais têm permitido que este país avance em direção a este objetivo mais rapidamente do que outros. Iniciativas de alfabetização micológica e ciência popular parecem ser os seguintes passos para normalizar desequilíbrios na percepção sobre os fungos existentes em diferentes regiões da Costa Rica, com o propósito de instar interações com estes organismos. Não obstante, em termos gerais, a sociedade costarriquenha parece estar mais atenta ao potencial dos fungos como fonte alimentar e medicinal, assim como ao reconhecimento do papel de estes organismos facilitarem os serviços ecossistêmicos. Desta forma, a conservação de fungos e seu manejo parecem ser mais fáceis de serem levados a cabo neste território do que em outras áreas do mundo, onde muito menos informação sobre eles chegaram à população geral.

Costa Rica es un país privilegiado en cuanto a su abundante flora y fauna la cual alberga en sus ricos nichos ecológicos una exuberante naturaleza de la que nos preciamos a nivel internacional. A pesar de ser un país pequeño en donde realmente en pocas horas, podemos ir de costa a costa y de frontera a frontera, la cantidad de especies de plantas y de animales que poseemos constituyen un verdadero ejemplo de naturaleza viviente. De esto podemos dar fe quienes por razón de nuestros estudios, que luego resumiremos, hemos tenido el privilegio de observar.

In small populations, mortality rates are characterized by a great volatility, the datasets are often available for a few years and suffer from missing data. Therefore, standard mortality models may produce high uncertain and biologically improbable projections. In this paper, we deal with the mortality projections of the Maltese population, a small country with less than 500,000 inhabitants, whose data on exposures and observed deaths suffers from all the typical problems of small populations. We concentrate our analysis on older adult mortality. Starting from some recent suggestions in the literature, we assume that the mortality of a small population can be modeled starting from the mortality of a bigger one (the reference population) adding a spread. The first part of the paper is dedicated to the choice of the reference population, then we test alternative mortality models. Finally, we verify the capacity of the proposed approach to reduce the volatility of the mortality projections. The results obtained show that the model is able to significantly reduce the uncertainty of projected mortality rates and to ensure their coherent and biologically reasonable evolution.

Which is the importance and meaning that has the land to the young beneficiaries of the Programa Nacional de Credito Fundiario - PNCF (“national program for land credit”)? This is the question that this paper seeks to answer when interviewing rural youth who accessed the PNCF in the state of Espirito Santo - Brazil. The theoretical approach adopted in this article and the narratives of young people interviewed allowed perceiving different trajectories and living conditions that guide and give different meanings to their condition to access the land and their possibilities to continue in the countryside. On the other hand, also with the feeling of the meaning attributed the condition of possession and ownership of land, the access to governmental credit (PNCF) fits as strategies of choice and adaptation, or reaction and need. For this research seven rural youth associations in two small country towns were interviewed with the highest number of projects within the seal Nossa Primeira Terra – NPT (“our first land”) of PNCF in the state of Espirito Santo. The interviews showed that access to land is the key factor of young people to remain in the field.

Pop-jihad as a lifestyle’, so the Dutch Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism opined, when expressing his worries about the appeal of jihadist symbols to young Europeans.1 Starting in 2012, many thousands Europeans have travelled to join jihadist groups in Syria, in particular the so called Islamic State (aka ISIL or ISIS). Numbers vary from 3,400 to 5,000. By July 2015, from Belgium alone some 440 individuals have gone to the region (included are the 50 or so who never made it to Syria). But looking into the motivations and backgrounds of this relative large group from a small country might help to shed a light on the journey of Westerners to “a country they do not know, in a culture they are not familiar with, and where a language is spoken that they do not understand.”

The article addresses the origins, characteristics and main manifestations of the Uruguayan “soft power” that tends to be tilted towards its traditionalist, classical model in the Latin American region. The appealing inherent features of this South American country, such as favorable geography and climate, national traditions and folklore, are harmoniously complemented by active and balanced foreign policy, universally recognized progress in the development of democracy and civil freedoms, economy, social peace, as well as achievements in culture, education and sports. The author concludes that the “soft power” of Uruguay is at the stage of its formation and reflection by local elites attempting to give it a touch of national identity – somewhat different from western concepts and their “advanced alternatives” in some developing countries – which increases capabilities and capacities of traditional diplomacy coupled with modern information and communication technologies.

At the start of the 20th century Norway had the fourth largest merchant fleet in the world. The fleet served customers all over the world. Tenold uses three elements to explain the strong Norwegian position in global shipping in 1900: geography, history and culture. Norway has Europe’s longest coastline, and depends on the sea for transport and resources. Experience of difficult local waters was important when the oceans were liberalized after 1850. Norway’s maritime traditions, helped by a trust-based and egalitarian culture, channelled large investments into shipping through part ownerships [partsrederier].

Because of extreme vulnerability to natural disasters, Nepal is considered a disaster hotspot in the world. For a small country with just a little less than 30-million population, the disaster statistics are always frightening. School students of Nepal are also in extreme risk of natural disasters, especially when they are in schools. In this context, a few education programmes for disaster risk reduction (DRR) have already been initiated and the results have also been already documented. However, an evaluation of the real scenario with the help of an independent research is still lacking. Therefore, this research aims to explore benefits of existing education programmes of DRR in Nepal. Altogether, 124 students from 17 districts were interviewed and various questions related to disaster information, disaster knowledge, disaster readiness, disaster awareness, disaster adaptation, and disaster risk perception were asked. Statistical analysis such as histogram analysis, distribution analysis, bivariate correlations, and independent sample t-tests were conducted to examine the relationship between students in disaster education-related programmes and the key DRR issues-related dependent variables. Findings of this independent research confirmed that initiatives taken for disaster education in Nepal are not enough and a major challenge for DRR in a school community for a country like Nepal is implementing methods, especially at the individual level. Likewise, the disaster education should not only be confined within the school students, but it must also be promoted to families and communities, which is very essential to elaborate knowledge of DRR and to contribute to a disaster safe society in the country.

For a small country, only one-tenth the size of the United States, South Africa has long been renowned for its scenery, wildlife and vegetation – a natural legacy that is unique to earth. Nature he...

America’s strategy of containment, designed to confront postwar Soviet aggression, real and perceived, grew out of a series of disparate and seemingly unrelated conflicts. Thus the clash over the future of defeated Germany was direct, immediate and of obvious importance for vital United States interests in Europe and the world. By contrast, the communist insurgency in Greece was originally perceived as a basically domestic affair of a small country in a remote region of little strategic value. Yet the Truman Doctrine, which paved the way for containment’s gradual global implementation—Marshall Plan, Berlin airlift, NATO, wars in Korea and Indochina—was ostensibly focused primarily on Greece. After remaining a benevolent but deliberately passive observer of turmoil and violence in Greece, Washington boldly replaced Britain as the foreign patron of that small and troubled Balkan state. This study documents the transformation of United States policy toward Greece, and the birth of containment. It argues that the change was fundamentally one of perceptions of the nature of Soviet policy itself within the Truman administration, rather than of realities in Greece. In retrospect, Greece was an unlikely springboard for launching the strategy of containing Moscow’s ideology and power. The significance of the communist threat in Greece was more a matter of alarmist assumptions, loose perceptions and questionable symbolism than of hard facts and geostrategic realities. But in human affairs perceptions and symbolism are important, especially if clothed in an aura of success, as was the application of containment in Greece.

Majority of studies on the impact of the sports events on country's development are produced before the events take place and as such are in favour of the bidding process. When comparing these ex ante analyses to the ex post evidence, it has been in most cases obvious that they have been overly optimistic. This paper analyses the ex ante analysis provided by the Croatian bidding committee for the European Football Championship 2012. In addition to that, the ex ante study for the World Handball Championship 2009 in Croatia and (insufficient) data for the handball championships that took place in Serbia were analysed as well. This paper contributes both to the debate on the realistic approach of several failed and won bids, and the debate on the future bids for the other sport events.

The editors of Media and the Portuguese Empire offer in this introduction an overview of the historical circumstances and communication processes which marked the Portuguese expansion into Asia, Brazil and Africa. They provide a concise report on the dynamic processes which allowed a small country on the edge of Western Europe to govern the first of the European world empires to be established and the last to be dismantled, in the aftermath of a long colonial war. This was an empire that extended, by the end of the nineteenth century, from Macau, on the coast of China, to the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores, Madeira, Cape Verde and S. Tome, including Timor and several enclaves on the Indian coast, as well as coastal territory covering lands which today are part of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau.

El término periodismo de datos es un término nuevo que llegó a las redacciones hace algunos años, pero ahora ningún medio quiere quedar afuera. En un país pequeño como Uruguay -a pesar de que en todas las redacciones están al tanto de su existencia y ha habido algunas iniciativas- es una práctica que en el año 2015 todavía no ha encontrado su lugar en los medios. Este trabajo busca esclarecer de qué se habla cuando se habla de periodismo de datos para luego, a través de información recabada de medios, organizaciones no gubernamentales y centros educativos, averiguar cuál es su situación actual en el país, los impulsos que ha tenido, los obstáculos que ha encontrado y el futuro que le espera. ABSTRACT The term “data journalism” arrived to newsrooms some time ago, and now every news media wants be part of it. In a small country like Uruguay -despite the isolated efforts of some companies, NGOs and government agencies- it has still not found its place in the media. This research tries to clarify the concept of data journalism in order to break down the state of the art in Uruguay, through interviews with journalists, members of NGOs and members of the academic staff of the universities where the future journalists are being formed. Thus being able to point out the impulses and obstacles data journalism has encountered in order to foresee its possible future.

Though Saidpur Upazila under Nilphamari district is very small but here pigeonry, goat rearing, herbal treatments, circus team, monkey charmer, horse race and snake charmers are available. Snake charmers are not living well in this modern era. Their kids are not safe at home for snake rearing. In Savar, Dhaka there is a snake market where some tribal people buy it as food. People who are engaged with snake catching and snake-based superstitions go to that market. They support medical science and are waiting to get a good job. Who take snakes as food they say its meat is very hot. Depending on body size its price varies from 1000 to 2000 taka of a poisonous snake. People of the circus team, zoo committee and intersex people collects snakes from the snake charmer. Tradition of snake charming in Bangladesh is very ancient. Once upon a time most of the villagers liked it. Some peoples were considered as bede or tribal people who caught snakes from the jungle. Though Bangladesh is a small country but its 80 species of snakes are remarkable. Within these only cobras, kraits and sea snakes are poisonous and most of the cobras are bicellate type. Common vine snakes, tree snake and rat snakes are very common and nonpoisonous snakes of Bangladesh. After catching a snake, the charmer cuts the poison sac or rubs both fangs of the snakes. As poison of the snakes are digestive juice so that those snakes can suffer digestive ailments and ultimately die. The temperature of Rangpur division of Bangladesh is 350-370F which is suitable for snakes’ survival. There were 30.77% poisonous and 69.23% non poisonous snakes’ in Bangladesh in three families.1 In Bangladesh out of 82 species 28 are venomous and 12 are sea snakes.2 Estimates indicate ˃5 million bites annually by venomous snakes worldwide where ˃12500 deaths.3,4 Some research work have completed on snakes taxonomy, status, distribution and epidemiology of snake bite.5‒7 India has the highest number of snake bites in the world with 35000-50000 annually according to World Health Organization.8,9 In Bangladesh this is 4.3per 100000 an annual incidence and case fatality is 20%.10

Although being a relatively small country, Montenegro is characterized by significant regional disparities. Just recently it has been administratively divided into regions, but no form of regional statistics has been developed yet and no active policy aimed at reducing regional disparities is being followed. This is due to the longstanding sentiment that the entire Montenegro is one micro region and no further division into regions is necessary. This is why the authors set three goals in writing this paper. The first one is to review the adequacy of the proposed division into regions. The second goal is to calculate relevant regional statistical indicators that would subsequently serve for the third goal of proposing economic policy recommendations aimed at diminishing regional differences.

This special issue is about English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) assessment in Taiwan, an oceanic nation located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. Taiwan is a small country with a comple...

New Zealand is a small country of two islands and 4 million people, of which 1 million reside in the South Island. Canterbury Health Laboratories provides laboratory services to the whole of South Island and lower parts of North Island. There are 155 Von Willebrand disease (VWD) patients in our South Island database, of which 17 have type 2 and 3 have type 3 VWD. A brief overview of diagnostic services for VWD being followed in our region is detailed in this article. We strive continually to advance the repertoire of diagnostic tests. We also present an analysis of our experience with a flow-based functional Von Willebrand factor assay. The VWD patients are managed by hemostasis team members, who also provide screening and educational input to affected families. The Haemophilia Foundation of New Zealand is an active patient support group providing education and support both directed individually and in the group setting, through residential educational camps.

Small country in the heart of the North-West of Europe, Belgium covers an area of 30,518 sq. km, with a population of about 10,200,000 inhabitants. Brussels, the capital, is an international city, the seat of the NATO and, above all, this one of the European Commission and of the main European institutions. The Belgian Federal State When it was created in 1831, Belgium was a unified constitutional monarchy, with a simple hierarchical structure on three levels: the national State, with 9 provi...

In this spatial statistical analysis, Hungary, though a small country in size (smaller than most states in the USA), is shown as having significant spatial clustering. On the basis of this spatial clustering, it is demonstrated that a political party, FIDESZ that had previously been associated with a different political bloc has been able, in a relatively short period of time of the 1990s in the post-Communist period, to occupy the vacant space on the ‘right’ and to integrate with the voters of the right-wing bloc.

With nearly two million students and over 100 higher education institutions (HEIs) in a relatively small country, it might be thought that locational issues were not of much significance in English higher education. This paper argues to the contrary, by exploring the distribution of students (full-time and part-time, undergraduate and postgraduate) and HEIs at the level of regions, counties and urban areas. It is concluded that the distribution of higher education opportunities remains skewed and hierarchical. The implications of this for widening participation policy are considered.

Th eW orld Conservation Union (IUCN) published guidelines to apply the criteria developed for global red lists at subglobal levels. So far only a few national red lists have been prepared according to these regional guidelines. We present a procedure based on the regional guidelines that was developed for the most recent red list of breeding birds in Switzerland. Special attention was given to step 2 of the IUCN regional guidelines, which consists of adapting categories according to an assessment of the extent to which extinction risk of the national population is affected by populations in neighboring countries. To avoid subjective assess- ments we formalized this "up- and downgrading" procedure by defining rules to answer the questions asked in the regional guidelines. Some modifications to the assessment procedure were introduced to account for the specific situation of applying it to birds as a very mobile group and Switzerland as a small country. The up- and downgrading procedure resulted in a change in category for 49 of the 195 bird species assessed. Overall, 9 species were upgraded, 21 species were downgraded by one category, and 19 species were downgraded by two categories. Formalizing step 2 allowed consistent application of the regional guidelines for all species and will make future revisions of the national red list and comparisons between different lists easier.

This study is an empirical work based on on-the-spot observation, participation and interview. It also makes use of the studies conducted in Kyrgyzstan on the Gypsies. Kyrgyzstan is a small country with a population of about five million. Yet, the population includes diverse ethnic groups, one of which is the Gypsies. The Gypsies in Kyrgyzstan are dominantly settled to the south of the country. Accordingly, we focus on the Gypsies of southern Kyrgyzstan in this study. Socio-economic characteristics, professions, religious beliefs and marital customs and traditions of the Gypsies of southern Kyrgyzstan were investigated. Moreover, the names under which the Gypsies worldwide are called, their origins and when and how they came to the Central Asia were also discussed.

Newly collected Agyrtidae from the Nepal Himalayas are presented. New species: Apteroloma lagnaense sp. n., Apteroloma sankhaense sp. n., Ipelatesjumlanus sp. n., Ipelates ruzickai sp. n., Ipelates schmidti sp. n. Photographs of all Nepalese species are added and their distribution and altitudinal zonation (1650—4800 m) is mapped. From Nepal now 12 species of Agyrtidae are known, which seems to be a remarkably high number of species for this relatively small country. (© 2005 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) Neu gesammelte Agyrtidae aus dem Nepal Himalaya werden prasentiert. Neue Arten: Apteroloma lagnaense sp. n., Apteroloma sankhaense sp. n., Ipelatesjumlanus sp. n., Ipelates ruzickai sp. n., Ipelates schmidti sp. n.. Fotografien aller nepalischen Arten werden beigefugt und ihre Verbreitung und Hohenzonierung (1650—4800 m) ist auf Karten zusammengefasst. Insgesamt sind aus Nepal jetzt 12 Arten von Agyrtidae bekannt, eine bemerkenswert hohe Zahl fur dieses relativ kleine Land. (© 2005 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

The small country of Cambodia, with an area of 181,035 km2, located in South-East Asia, has 10,716,000 inhabitants. Its capital is Phnom Penh and the whole country enjoys a very humid subtropical climate. This state, after suffering long years of civil wars and foreign occupation, is rebuilding its cultural heritage, which had been set aside, with the help of France (ex-metropolis) and Japan, both coordinated by UNESCO.

Land-borders and the adjacent regions have attracted considerable attention since the early 1980s. However, there has been a neglect of sea-borders and the adjacent coastal regions. This paper has the aim to signal differences in development between land-border and sea-border regions, based on a different historical development of interaction costs in crossborder transport and on differences in the characteristics of land-borders and sea-borders. To this purpose, the focus is on two types of border impacts on border regions, i.e., interaction between adjacent border regions (mainly in transport) and economic development of these regions. Border impacts are illustrated with examples from a small country, the Netherlands, with an almost equal length of land-borders and sea-borders. The paper concludes with a summary and indications of future research.

Vernacular architecture is characterized by a type of formal expression, which has been developed in response to a number of factors – geographic, climatic and economic – characterizing the local area or region. Despite the fact that Portugal is a small country, there are many different architectural approaches and a range of techniques have been employed in different regions to mitigate the effects of climate. These vernacular approaches have the potential for further development and could be adapted in response to contemporary needs. In this paper, a range of different passive solar techniques used in Portuguese vernacular architecture to provide comfort is presented. The specific focus is on the effectiveness of passive cooling strategies (namely, high thermal inertia, use of light colours and courtyards), and the findings of a case study in which the thermal performance during the summer of a vernacular residential building located in the south of Portugal are presented.

Background: Israel is a small country which lies on an area of 22,072 square kilometers and where residential areas and agricultural fields are contiguous. The Israeli Bureau of Statistics found th...

Israel, characterized by various knowledge-intensive entrepreneurial firms, provides an interesting case study for examining sector-based differences and “small country” regional patterns. This chapter has a dual goal of exploring sector and regional differences of knowledge-intensive firms in Israel. The first goal is to depict similarities and differences between firms in three knowledge-intensive sectors: Life Sciences, information technology, and Cleantech. The second goal questions whether the geographical distribution of these firms across regions is associated with different levels of knowledge concentration and organizational homogeneity. Regional and sector-based differences were measured by firm-level network structures, funding patterns, and innovation proxies. One way analysis of variance tests were conducted for attaining these research goals. The main findings show that while most regions exhibit similar patterns of firm and network characteristics, many differences exist on the sector level that are associated with sector-specific attributes. These findings support the notion of a “small country inter-regional homogeneity effect.”

In a small country like Costa Rica, the same climate event can affect neighboring communities in very distinct ways. In the summer of 1998, following an intense El Niño-related drought, I set out to examine how this event had affected small-scale farmers across northern Costa Rica. Surprisingly, there were large differences in coping abilities between farmers of the Caribbean and Pacific regions despite the overall small spatial scale at which my research was conducted.

In addition to the restoration of law and order, economy was a most urgent reason for the accelerated re-establishment of the Land Cadastre in the Czech Republic, a small country in the centre of Europe (approximately 78864 sq km in area, with a population of about 10 million). After the fall of communist regime at the end of 1989, a long-term and difficult process of restoration of law, and liberalisation of the economy and of the whole society was started. This paper describes the basic conditions and first steps leading to the establishment of the “legal cadastre” in the Czech Republic in 1993 uniting both the land cadastre and the land registry in one tool administered by survey authorities. The new cadastral legislation is described together with the progress achieved during five years of this cadastral reform.