Contemporary Issues in Mining


Book Description

Provides case studies, commentary and analysis on the mining sector from international experts in business, across the four key focus areas of strategic, operational, financial and disclosure perspectives on mining. Invaluable to executives, managers and advisers involved in the mining sector, including public and private mining companies.




Contemporary Issues in Exploratory Data Mining in the Behavioral Sciences


Book Description

This book reviews the latest techniques in exploratory data mining (EDM) for the analysis of data in the social and behavioral sciences to help researchers assess the predictive value of different combinations of variables in large data sets. Methodological findings and conceptual models that explain reliable EDM techniques for predicting and understanding various risk mechanisms are integrated throughout. Numerous examples illustrate the use of these techniques in practice. Contributors provide insight through hands-on experiences with their own use of EDM techniques in various settings. Readers are also introduced to the most popular EDM software programs. A related website at http://mephisto.unige.ch/pub/edm-book-supplement/offers color versions of the book’s figures, a supplemental paper to chapter 3, and R commands for some chapters. The results of EDM analyses can be perilous – they are often taken as predictions with little regard for cross-validating the results. This carelessness can be catastrophic in terms of money lost or patients misdiagnosed. This book addresses these concerns and advocates for the development of checks and balances for EDM analyses. Both the promises and the perils of EDM are addressed. Editors McArdle and Ritschard taught the "Exploratory Data Mining" Advanced Training Institute of the American Psychological Association (APA). All contributors are top researchers from the US and Europe. Organized into two parts--methodology and applications, the techniques covered include decision, regression, and SEM tree models, growth mixture modeling, and time based categorical sequential analysis. Some of the applications of EDM (and the corresponding data) explored include: selection to college based on risky prior academic profiles the decline of cognitive abilities in older persons global perceptions of stress in adulthood predicting mortality from demographics and cognitive abilities risk factors during pregnancy and the impact on neonatal development Intended as a reference for researchers, methodologists, and advanced students in the social and behavioral sciences including psychology, sociology, business, econometrics, and medicine, interested in learning to apply the latest exploratory data mining techniques. Prerequisites include a basic class in statistics.




Contemporary Issues in Mining


Book Description

Provides case studies, commentary and analysis on the mining sector from international experts in business, across the four key focus areas of strategic, operational, financial and disclosure perspectives on mining. Invaluable to executives, managers and advisers involved in the mining sector, including public and private mining companies.




Mining and Sustainable Development


Book Description

Mining is a transformative activity which has numerous economic, social and environmental impacts. These impacts can be both positive and adverse, enhancing as well as disrupting economies, ecosystems and communities. The extractive industries have been criticised heavily for their adverse impacts and involvement in significant social and environmental scandals. More recently, these industries have sought to respond to negative perceptions and have embraced the core principles of sustainability. This sector could be regarded as a leader in sustainability initiatives, evident from the various developments and frameworks in mining and sustainability that have emerged over time. This book reviews current topical issues in mining and sustainable development. It addresses the changing role of minerals in society, the social acceptance of mining, due diligence in the mining industry, critical and contemporary debates such as mining and indigenous peoples and transit worker accommodation, corporate sustainability matters such as sustainability reporting and taxation, and sustainability solutions through an emphasis on renewable energy and shared-used infrastructure. Written by experts from Australia, Europe and North America, but including examples from both developed and developing countries, the chapters provide a contemporary understanding of sustainability opportunities and challenges in the mining industry. The book will be of interest to practitioners, government and civil society as well as scholars and students with interests in mining and sustainable development.




Modern Management in the Global Mining Industry


Book Description

This book brings together perspectives from economics, specifically minerals economics, to the management of global mining companies. It covers volatile price forecasting, cost analysis, investment decisions, and the social, environmental, and developmental impacts of mining.




The Socio-Economic Impacts of Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining in Developing Countries


Book Description

The purpose of this book is to examine both the positive and negative socioeconomic impacts of artisanal and small-scale mining in developing countries. In recent years, a number of governments have attempted to formalize this rudimentary sector of industry, recognizing its socioeconomic importance. However, the industry continues to be plagued by




Mining Capitalism


Book Description

Corporations are among the most powerful institutions of our time, but they are also responsible for a wide range of harmful social and environmental impacts. Consequently, political movements and nongovernmental organizations increasingly contest the risks that corporations pose to people and nature. Mining Capitalism examines the strategies through which corporations manage their relationships with these critics and adversaries. By focusing on the conflict over the Ok Tedi copper and gold mine in Papua New Guinea, Stuart Kirsch tells the story of a slow-moving environmental disaster and the international network of indigenous peoples, advocacy groups, and lawyers that sought to protect local rivers and rain forests. Along the way, he analyzes how corporations promote their interests by manipulating science and invoking the discourses of sustainability and social responsibility. Based on two decades of anthropological research, this book is comparative in scope, showing readers how similar dynamics operate in other industries around the world.




Between the Plough and the Pick


Book Description

y global social, agrarian and political changes, whilst underlining the roles that local social political-historical contexts play in shaping mineral extractive processes and practices. It shows that the people who are engaged in these mining practices are often the poorest and most exploited labourers-erstwhile peasants caught in the vortex of global change, who perform the most insecure and dangerous tasks. Although these people are located at the margins of mainstream economic life, they collectively produce enormous amounts of diverse material commodities and find a livelihood (and often a pathway out of oppressive poverty). The contributions to this book bring these people to the forefront of debates on resource politics. The contributors are international scholars and practitioners who explore the complexities in the histories, in labour and production practices, the forces driving such mining, the creative agency and capacities of these miners, as well as the human and environmental costs of ASM. They show how these informal, artisanal and small scale miners are inextricably engaged with, or bound to, global commodity values, are intimately involved in the production of new extractive territories and rural economies, and how their labour reshapes agrarian communities and landscapes of resource access and control. This book drives home the understanding that, collectively, this social and economic milieu redefines our conceptualisation of resource politics, mineral dependent livelihoods, extractive geographies of resources and commodities, and their multiple meanings.




Contemporary Issues in Globalization


Book Description

CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN GLOBALIZATION The world is becoming more globalized, there is no doubt about that. While that sounds promising, the current form of globalization, neoliberalism, free trade and open markets are coming under much criticism. The interests of powerful nations and corporations are shaping the terms of world trade. In democratic countries, they are shaping and affecting the ability of elected leaders to make decisions in the interests of their people. Elsewhere they are promoting narrow political discourse and even supporting dictatorships and the “stability” that it brings for their interests. This is to the detriment of most people in the world, while increasingly fewer people in proportion are prospering. The modern system of free trade, free enterprise and market-based economies, actually emerged around 200 years ago, as one of the main engines of development for the Industrial Revolution. In 1776, British economist Adam Smith in his book, the Wealth of Nations. Suggested that for maximum efficiency, all forms of government interventions in economic issues should be removed and that there should be no restrictions or tariffs on manufacturing and commerce within a nation for it to develop. The book provides readers with of some of the basic principles of this subject. Contents: • Introduction • Globalization: Effects in Asia and Beyond • Globalization and Local Cultures • Globalization and its Fall Out • The WTO, Globalization and a New World Order • Globalization: Myth or Reality • Globalization and Anti-Globalization • Globalization: A Critical Framework for Understanding Contemporary Social Processes • The Impact of Globalization and Liberalisation on Agriculture and Small Farmers • Smallholders, Globalization and Policy Analysis • Globalization in the Fifth Schedule Areas