Geopolitical competition between Russia and the US and EU on the periphery of the former USSR has complicated efforts to resolve lingering conflicts in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Transnistria. Regional and great power rivalries often obscure the distinctive local factors in each of these conflicts, which are ultimately crucial to their resolution. In addition, changes in loc...

This paper analyzes the relative significance of regional Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) in Asia-Pacific. The economy-wide impacts of tariff removals and reductions in non-tariff measures (NTMs) are estimated by using a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model of global trade. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) are shown to c...

The geopolitical importance of the Caspian region does not stem solely from its energy potential. Whether or not the area emerges as a major energy producer, its central geographical location, the considerable potential for regional instability and internal and interstate conflict, and the competition among external powers for influence all suggest that events in the region will shape the balan...

Providing an environment for electronic commerce involves complex, technical questions that need to be addressed and understood by decision making bodies. This paper studies one attempt to support electronic commerce at the national level. It looks at the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill in the UK and focuses on the political actions of those seeking to amend the Bill in Parliament. Afte...

In this article, we provide an overview of three humanoid soccer platforms currently in use at RoboCup: 3D simulation, the humanoid Standard Platform League (SPL), and the Webots-based simulator released with the SPL. Although these platforms trace different historical roots, today they share the same robot model, the Aldebaran Nao. Consequently, they face a similar set of challenges, primary a...

The UT Austin Villa 2003 simulated online soccer coach was a first time entry in the RoboCup Coach Competition. In developing the coach, the main research focus was placed on treating advice-giving as a machine learning problem. Competing against a field of mostly handcoded coaches, the UT Austin Villa coach earned first place in the competition. In this paper, we present the multi-faceted lear...

The flurry of regulatory activity by the outgoing administration of President George W. Bush has raised, once again, the specter of midnight regulation. In contrast to the late-term action of the Clinton Administration, much of the Bush Administration‘s late-term action seems to have been more deregulatory than regulatory, but from a political and legal standpoint, that distinction may not make...