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Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) are derived from natural populations of plants or fungi, or farmed in forests. Harvesters and producers often benefit from NTFPs by selling them to generate income. This article explores research on the producers, production, marketing, and sales of NTFPs in the United States, including the continuum of production from wild-harvesting to forest farming of NTFPs, and their costs and benefits. Specific examples are presented, but the concepts and generalizations are broadly applicable to many NTFPs throughout the U.S. and other parts of the world. Integrating NTFPs into forest management can enhance economic opportunities but also will increase complexity, and will entail balancing multiple and potentially conflicting objectives among a diverse community of stakeholders. We identify information gaps including the need for inventories and yield models of NTFPs, understanding the effect of silvicultural activities on NTFP survival and yield, time series and trends in collection of NTFPs by U.S. households, identification of vulnerable and marginalized communities associated with NTFP harvest, and harvesters' motivations and drivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Creating romantic relationships characterized by high-quality, satisfaction, few conflicts, and reasoning strategies to handle conflicts is an important developmental task for adolescents connected to the relational models they receive from their parents. This study examines how parent-adolescent conflicts, attachment, positive parenting, and communication are related to adolescents' romantic relationship quality, satisfaction, conflicts, and management., Method: We interviewed 311 adolescents at two time points (females = 52%, ages 15 and 17) in eight countries (China, Colombia, Italy, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States). Generalized and linear mixed models were run considering the participants' nesting within countries., Results: Adolescents with negative conflicts with their parents reported low romantic relationship quality and satisfaction and high conflicts with their romantic partners. Adolescents experiencing an anxious attachment to their parents reported low romantic relationship quality, while adolescents with positive parenting showed high romantic relationship satisfaction. However, no association between parent-adolescent relationships and conflict management skills involving reasoning with the partner was found. No associations of parent-adolescent communication with romantic relationship dimensions emerged, nor was there any effect of the country on romantic relationship quality or satisfaction., Conclusion: These results stress the relevance of parent-adolescent conflicts and attachment as factors connected to how adolescents experience romantic relationships., (© 2024 Foundation for Professionals in Services to Adolescents.)

Objectives: To examine perceptions of nurses and physicians in regard to ethical decision-making climate in the ICU and to test the hypothesis that the worse the ethical decision-making climate, the greater the discordance between nurses' and physicians' rating of ethical decision-making climate with physicians hypothesized to rate the climate better than the nurses.Design: Prospective observational study.Setting: A total of 68 adult ICUs in 13 European countries and the United States.Subjects: ICU physicians and nurses.Interventions: None.Measurements and Main Results: Perceptions of ethical decision-making climate among clinicians were measured in April-May 2014, using a 35-items self-assessment questionnaire that evaluated seven factors (empowering leadership by physicians, interdisciplinary reflection, not avoiding end-of-life decisions, mutual respect within the interdisciplinary team, involvement of nurses in end-of-life care and decision-making, active decision-making by physicians, and ethical awareness). A total of 2,275 nurses and 717 physicians participated (response rate of 63%). Using cluster analysis, ICUs were categorized according to four ethical decision-making climates: good, average with nurses' involvement at end-of-life, average without nurses' involvement at end-of-life, and poor. Overall, physicians rated ethical decision-making climate more positively than nurses (p < 0.001 for all seven factors). Physicians had more positive perceptions of ethical decision-making climate than nurses in all 13 participating countries and in each individual participating ICU. Compared to ICUs with good or average ethical decision-making climates, ICUs with poor ethical decision-making climates had the greatest discordance between physicians and nurses. Although nurse/physician differences were found in all seven factors of ethical decision-making climate measurement, the factors with greatest discordance were regarding physician leadership, interdisciplinary reflection, and not avoiding end-of-life decisions.Conclusions: Physicians consistently perceived ICU ethical decision-making climate more positively than nurses. ICUs with poor ethical decision-making climates had the largest discrepancies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large river ecosystems (LRE) are important components of global cycles, influence large parts of the earth's surface, and provide many services in support of human civilization. However, understanding their condition, functioning, and trajectory of change is difficult in part due to their scale and diversity of forcing factors but also due to multiple and potentially conflicting human uses. Although these challenges are generally applicable and probably true to some degree for any large river ecosystem, there are also attributes of LRE that foster scientific understanding, can lead to knowledge‐based management, and may catalyse their interaction. The absolute size of LRE means they will be complex, unique and the water quality, physical character, or habitat availability at any particular point may be the result of drivers acting further up the basin or legacies from previous times. On the bright side however, their absolute size also means there will be existing information on many important features, not least land cover and hydrology. Moreover, it is highly likely there will be a sizeable human population in the basin that derives some benefits from the river even if just in a narrow anthropocentric fashion and so there will be some motivation for understanding characteristics and potential change. Large size also suggests that the LRE will be viewed (perhaps with some basis in law) as a national or regional resource making it (at least nominally) worthy of study and management. I provide some examples of how science and management of the Hudson River in New York, USA, have benefitted from some of these perceived difficulties perhaps offering optimism for application in other systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strategic change of United States' arrangement, from the fight against terrorism to the competition with China and Russia, leads to their confrontation in several regions of the globe. In this confrontation, the Great Powers rely on the use of proxy, and this fact will alleviate the potential of a direct conflict among them, but the competition will have profound implications for the nations' stability. A series of states are susceptible to serve as theatres of competition in the energy field, others - as strategic points in the global geography. Conflicts will arise in those countries in which they hadn't existed before, and will deepen in those countries in which they already exist. In both cases, global instability will increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'environment' is a substantively indeterminate concept that has borne different meanings throughout time and translated different visions of the (legal) relationship between Man and Nature. Over the past centuries, the normative concern for environmental protection emanated from distinct legal, cultural and socio-economic narratives. In providing a genealogy of these multiple and overlapping frames, this article not only sharpens our historical understanding of the legal nexus between two proliferating regimes in international law (environmental law and human rights law), but also critically engages with how environmental protection was progressively translated as an anthropocentric conceptual and operational legal framework. Like Narcissus, humans have been obnibulated by their own interests when thinking about environmental protection. The anthropocentric focus has led environmental law to gradually align and intertwine with human rights, resulting in a synergistic conceptualization of their interactions. Through this prism, environmental protection automatically reinforces human rights. This synergistic mantra has allowed environmental protection to gain momentum by associating it with a grander moral scheme. The focus on synergies, however, overshadowed the existence of conflicts inherent to the relationship between environmental protection and human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research is to analyse the conflicts that arise among major stakeholders during the process of disaster management and to suggest policy recommendations for improving disaster management systems. It describes several important conflict cases that have occurred among major stakeholders, such as governments, private-sector entities, and non-governmental organisations, during natural disaster management. In addition, it probes the similarities and the differences between such conflicts in the Republic of Korea and the United States. The differences between them may originate from a range of factors, such as the disaster itself, cultural features, management practices, and government organisation. However, the conflicts also are very similar in some ways, as the motivations and the behaviour of stakeholders during a disaster are alike in both countries. Based on this comparison, the study presents some common and important implications for successful disaster management practices in Korea and the US, as well as in many other nations around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the relationship between foraging ecology and the presence of human-dominated landscapes is important, particularly for American black bears (Ursus americanus), which sometimes move between wildlands and urban areas to forage. The food-related factors influencing this movement have not been explored, but can be important for understanding the benefits and costs to black bear foraging behavior and the fundamental origins of bear conflicts. We tested whether the scarcity of wildland foods or the availability of urban foods can explain when black bears forage near houses, examined the extent to which male bears use urban areas in comparison to females, and identified the most important food items influencing bear movement into urban areas. We monitored 16 collared black bears in and around Missoula, Montana, during 2009 and 2010, while quantifying the rate of change in green vegetation and the availability of 5 native berry-producing species outside the urban area, the rate of change in green vegetation, and the availability of apples and garbage inside the urban area. We used parametric time-to-event models in which an event was a bear location collected within 100 m of a house. We also visited feeding sites located near houses and quantified food items bears had eaten. The probability of a bear being located near a house was 1.6 times higher for males, and increased during apple season and the urban green-up. Fruit trees accounted for most of the forage items at urban feeding sites (49%), whereas wildland foods composed <10%. Black bears foraged on human foods near houses even when wildland foods were available, suggesting that the absence of wildland foods may not influence the probability of bears foraging near houses. Additionally, other attractants, in this case fruit trees, appear to be more important than the availability of garbage in influencing when bears forage near houses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, both the scholarly public and journalists have started to discuss the likelihood of an outburst of new conflicts in the Arctic and an escalation of the existing ones. Interstate disputes such as the dispute of Canada and the USA in the Beaufort Sea over the border delimitation have already lasted for several decades. But an escalation of these conflicts is not inevitable. Nowadays, in terms of the level of institutionalization of the relations and state interdependence, the Arctic is equal to other world regions, and the UNCLOS provides a sufficient framework for non-violent conflict resolution. Also the nature of the existing conflicts, the accessible technology, and the Arctic environment imply a conciliatory solution and promote cooperation between the Arctic states. Even though the current dynamics somewhat increase the conflict potential of the region, its level is definitely not as high as indicated by some authors. Moreover, articles presenting alarmist visions of conflict escalation in the region often count on incomplete and oversimplified data and assumptions and can hardly survive a rigorous verification and a confrontation with the reality of the situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of granting software patents in the United States has a created a rift between the open source community and patent owners. One of the contributing factors causing conflict between the open source community and patent owners is the read granting of software patent applications by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The increasing volume of software patent applications received by the USPTO has strained the patent system and consequently software patent applications are granted without close examination of whether they meet the requirements for a valid patent. The conflict between patent owners and the open source community is exacerbated when alleged patent infringement occurs for software products that circulate in the technology industry that should be open and free to use within the open source community. Subsequently, this issue is complicated when the alleged patent infringement occurs. The threat of litigation is a financial burden that is too great to bear by small and medium enterprises and by developers who unknowingly use software protected by a patent, which results in paying license fees and/royalties to avoid costly litigation. The granting of software patents without scrutiny of prior art by the USPTO is restricting innovation within the information technology sector and hindering developers, programmers, and technology innovators from creating and innovating new and emerging technologies. Further, the granting of software patents without close examination by patent examiners restricts and contradicts the ethos and philosophy behind a grant of patent. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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Copyright of Revista de Relaciones Internacionales, Estrategia y Seguridad is the property of Revista de Relaciones Internacionales, Estrategia y Seguridad and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Foro Internacional is the property of El Colegio de Mexico AC and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The objective was to make a descriptive study of the decision making process in the early stages of project planning as it actually takes place. Data were gathered from 27 managers affiliated with large owners in the USA. Interviewees were questioned about the degree of involvement of client, project manager, project manager's team, and design engineers, in the technical definition, organization and systems, and schedule of the project - once at the conceptual planning stage and again at the engineering design stage. Involvement was assessed also in terms of intensity, relative efforts invested by the parties in the phases of the decision making process, and by type of contract. Other variables studied included extent of disagreement among the parties, degree of interruption during the planning process and sources of uncertainty hindering the decision making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]