European UnionThe European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of over 448 million. The EU has often been described as a sui generis political entity (without precedent or comparison) combining the characteristics of both a federation and a confederation. Containing 5.
Pareto efficiencyPareto efficiency or Pareto optimality is a situation where no action or allocation is available that makes one individual better off without making another worse off. The concept is named after Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), Italian civil engineer and economist, who used the concept in his studies of economic efficiency and income distribution. The following three concepts are closely related: Given an initial situation, a Pareto improvement is a new situation where some agents will gain, and no agents will lose.
Sustainable livingSustainable living describes a lifestyle that attempts to reduce the use of Earth's natural resources by an individual or society. Its practitioners often attempt to reduce their ecological footprint (including their carbon footprint) by altering their home designs and methods of transportation, energy consumption and diet. Its proponents aim to conduct their lives in ways that are consistent with sustainability, naturally balanced, and respectful of humanity's symbiotic relationship with the Earth's natural ecology.
Cost engineeringCost engineering is "the engineering practice devoted to the management of project cost, involving such activities as estimating, cost control, cost forecasting, investment appraisal and risk analysis". "Cost Engineers budget, plan and monitor investment projects. They seek the optimum balance between cost, quality and time requirements." Skills and knowledge of cost engineers are similar to those of quantity surveyors. In many industries, cost engineering is synonymous with project controls.
Eastern EuropeEastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The region stretches from the Ural Mountains in the east to the borders of Poland and Romania. Most definitions include the countries of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine while less restrictive definitions also include Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia.
Weak and strong sustainabilityAlthough related, sustainable development and sustainability are two different concepts. Weak sustainability is an idea within environmental economics which states that 'human capital' can substitute 'natural capital'. It is based upon the work of Nobel laureate Robert Solow, and John Hartwick. Contrary to weak sustainability, strong sustainability assumes that 'human capital' and 'natural capital' are complementary, but not interchangeable. This idea received more political attention as sustainable development discussions evolved in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Central and Eastern EuropeCentral and Eastern Europe is an American origin geopolitical term encompassing the countries in the Baltics, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Europe (primarily the Balkans), usually meaning former communist states from the Eastern Bloc and Warsaw Pact in Europe, as well as from former Yugoslavia. Scholarly literature often uses the abbreviations CEE or CEEC for this term. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) also uses the term "Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs)" for a group comprising some of these countries.
Objective-CObjective-C is a high-level general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, it was selected by NeXT for its NeXTSTEP operating system. Due to Apple macOS’s direct lineage from NeXTSTEP, Objective-C was the standard programming language used, supported, and promoted by Apple for developing macOS and iOS applications (via their respective APIs, Cocoa and Cocoa Touch) until the introduction of the Swift programming language in 2014.
Cost estimateA cost estimate is the approximation of the cost of a program, project, or operation. The cost estimate is the product of the cost estimating process. The cost estimate has a single total value and may have identifiable component values. A problem with a cost overrun can be avoided with a credible, reliable, and accurate cost estimate. A cost estimator is the professional who prepares cost estimates. There are different types of cost estimators, whose title may be preceded by a modifier, such as building estimator, or electrical estimator, or chief estimator.
Investment fundAn investment fund is a way of investing money alongside other investors in order to benefit from the inherent advantages of working as part of a group such as reducing the risks of the investment by a significant percentage. These advantages include an ability to: hire professional investment managers, who may offer better returns and more adequate risk management; benefit from economies of scale, i.e., lower transaction costs; increase the asset diversification to reduce some unsystematic risk.
