The Indonesian consumer market for clothing: Institutions, firms and organizational behaviours

The clothing industry is widely cited as an industrial sector that is embedded primarily in buyer-driven structures of global commodity chains in which retailers and brand-name companies, rather than manufacturers, are the key driving forces. Analysis of clothing production systems within the commodity chain literature, however, has been predominantly Western-centric, with little emphasis on similarities and/or differences between competitors in different institutional and societal contexts. Therefore, this paper explores the ways in which international and domestic clothing brand-owners compete for market shares within Indonesia. The analytical focus includes important issues such as the influence of the regulatory policy framework on firm-specific behaviour as well as applied marketing strategies within individual fashion segments.     

A Nonlinear Force-Free Magnetic Field Approximation Suitable for Fast Forward-Fitting to Coronal Loops. I. Theory

We derive an analytical approximation of nonlinear force-free magnetic field solutions (NLFFF) that can efficiently be used for fast forward-fitting to solar magnetic data, constrained either by observed line-of-sight magnetograms and stereoscopically triangulated coronal loops, or by 3D vector-magnetograph data. The derived NLFFF solutions provide the magnetic field components B _x (x), B _y (x), B _z (x), the force-free parameter α(x), the electric current density j(x), and are accurate to second-order (of the nonlinear force-free α-parameter). The explicit expressions of a force-free field can easily be applied to modeling or forward-fitting of many coronal phenomena.     

Knowledge-based building reconstruction from terrestrial video sequences

The paper presents an automatic method for the reconstruction of building models from video image sequences. These videos may be recorded using a hand-held camera or a camera mounted on a moving car. Such terrestrial video sequences are economic and flexible. Presenting buildings as geometric models–rather than for instance a representation from a simple meshing of 3D points–enables one to perform a wide range of analyses. However, sparse 3D points and 3D edges do not contain topological relations. Therefore, integrating building structure knowledge into the reconstruction steps plays an important role in our method. First, some rules are applied to reasonably group the extracted features. Then, a suitable outline and normal direction are specified for each surface patch. Based on these surface patches, a hybrid model- and data-driven method is used to recover a building model from both the extracted surface patches and hypothesized parts. Using the building structure knowledge leads to a simple and fast reconstruction method, and also enables one to obtain the main structures of buildings. The results show that this method correctly sets up topological relationships between generated surface patches and also obtains reasonable structure models in occluded areas. Therefore, the reconstructed models satisfy requirements for both visualization and analysis.     

Effects of local drought condition on public opinions about water supply and future climate change

A growing body of research indicates that opinions about long-term climate change and other natural resource issues can be significantly affected by current weather conditions (e.g., outside air temperature) and other highly contingent environmental cues. Although increased severity and frequency of droughts is regarded as a likely consequence of anthropogenic climate change, little previous research has attempted to relate the experience of drought with public attitudes about water supply or water-related climate change issues. For this study, a large set (n?=?3,163) of public survey data collected across nine states of the southern United States was spatio-temporally linked with records of short-term (~12 weeks) and long-term (~5 years) drought condition at the level of each respondent’s zip code. Multivariate ordinal logistic regression models that included numerous other independent variables (environmental ideology, age, gender, education, community size, residency duration, and local annual precipitation) indicated highly significant interactions with long-term drought condition, but showed no significant effect from short-term drought condition. Conversely, attitudes about water-related climate change showed highly significant interactions with short-term drought, with weaker to no effects from long-term drought. While the finding of significant effects from short-term drought condition on opinions about future drought is broadly consistent with previous public opinion research on climate change, the finding of water supply attitudes being more responsive to longer term drought condition is, to our knowledge, a novel result. This study more generally demonstrates the methodological feasibility and applied importance of accounting for local drought condition when public opinion information is used to evaluate outreach programs for water conservation and climate change.     

An earthquake catalogue for Turkey for the interval 1913–1970

An earthquake catalogue has been prepared for the whole area of Turkey (within latitudes 35.5° N to 42.5°N and longitudes 25.5°E to 45.0°E) for the years 1913 to 1970. By computer recalculation of all source parameters and by using a consistent system for magnitude determinations, we have aimed at the highest possible homogeneity and completeness within the limits given.     

More evidence that the Chicxulub impact predates the K/T mass extinction

Abstract Yaxcopoil‐1 (Yax‐1), drilled within the Chicxulub crater, was expected to yield the final proof that this impact occurred precisely 65 Myr ago and caused the mass extinction at the Cretaceous‐Tertiary (K/T) boundary. Instead, contrary evidence was discovered based on five independent proxies (sedimentologic, biostratigraphic, magnetostratigraphic, stable isotopic, and iridium) that revealed that the Chicxulub impact predates the K/T boundary by about 300,000 years and could not have caused the mass extinction. This is demonstrated by the presence of five bioturbated glauconite layers and planktic foraminiferal assemblages of the latest Maastrichtian zone CF1 and is corroborated by magnetostratigraphic chron 29r and characteristic late Maastrichtian stable isotope signals. These results were first presented in Keller et al. (2004). In this study, we present more detailed evidence of the presence of late Maastrichtian planktic foraminifera, sedimentologic, and mineralogic analyses that demonstrate that the Chicxulub impact breccia predates the K/T boundary and that the sediments between the breccia and the K/T boundary were deposited in a normal marine environment during the last 300,000 years of the Cretaceous.     

Tracking Holocene environmental changes in an alpine lake sediment core: application of regional diatom calibration, geochemistry, and pollen

Diatom abundances in the surface sediment samples of 41 mountain lakes in the central Austrian Alps (Niedere Tauern) were related to environmental variables using multi-variate techniques. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) revealed that the pH, date of autumn mixing (A _mix), mean August water temperature (T _Aug), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and relative water depth (Z _rel) made significant contributions to explain the diatom assemblage variation in the lakes of the training set. A weighted averaging partial least square regression and calibration model was used to establish Di-pH (R ² _boot= 0.72, RMSEP_boot= 0.131), and a thermistor measurements-based PLS model for A _mix (R ² _boot= 0.71, RMSEP_boot= 0.006 log₁₀ Julian days). The latter showed a better prediction than T _Aug, and was used in terms of climate change. These transfer functions, together with analyses of loss on ignition (LOI), the total carbon/nitrogen (C/N)-ratios, and selected pollen, were applied to an early to mid-Holocene (11.5–4 cal. ky BP) sediment core section from an Austrian Alpine treeline lake on crystalline bedrock. Additionally, passive sample scores in the CCA of the diatom training set were used to show trends in the variables DOC and Z _rel. During the early Holocene, diatoms indicative of increased pH, extended warm summers, and low water levels dominated. Between 10.2 and 7.6 cal. ky BP it was followed by diatom assemblages that indicated an increase in lake water depth and an earlier A _mix. The multi-proxy data suggest that the A _mix decline is the result of a series of snow-rich summer cool and wet climate fluctuations, which were divided by climate warming at ∼9 cal. ky BP. Increased A _mix, LOI and DOC, and the correspondent decline in the C/N-ratios, show subsequent climate warming between 7.3 and 6 cal. ky BP. The long-term trend in Di-pH indicates the impact of catchment-related processes during the early-Holocene, that were superimposed by climate.     

Comparative analysis of nonparametric change-point detectors commonly used in hydrology

ABSTRACT

Several commonly-used nonparametric change-point detection methods are analysed in terms of power, ability and accuracy of the estimated change-point location. The analysis is performed with synthetic data for different sample sizes, two types of change and different magnitudes of change. The methods studied are the Pettitt method, a method based on the Cramér von Mises (CvM) two-sample test statistic and a variant of the CUSUM method. The methods differ considerably in behaviour. For all methods the spread of estimated change-point location increases significantly for points near one of the ends of the sample. Series of annual maximum runoff for four stations on the Yangtze River in China are used to examine the performance of the methods on real data. It was found that the CvM-based test gave the best results, but all three methods suffer from bias and low detection rates for change points near the ends of the series.     

Analysis of the Major Fe Bearing Mineral Phases in Recent Lake Sediments by EXAFS Spectroscopy

Extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectroscopy and chemical analyses were combined to determine the Fe bearing minerals in recent lake sediments from Baldeggersee (Switzerland). The upper section of a laminated sediment core, deposited under eutrophic conditions, was compared to the lower part from an oligotrophic period. Qualitative analysis of FeK EXAFS agreed well with chemical data: In the oligotrophic section Fe(II)–O and Fe(III)–O specieswere present, whereas a significant fraction of Fe(II)–S sulfides was strongly indicated in the eutrophic part. A statistical analysis was performed by least square fitting of normalized reference spectra. The set of reference minerals included Fe(III) oxides and Fe(II) sulfides, carbonates and phosphates. In the oligotrophic regime no satisfying fit was obtained using the set of reference spectra, indicating that siderite (FeCO₃) was not present in a significant amount in these carbonate-rich sediments. Simulated EXAFS spectra for a(Ca_x, Fe_1-x)CO₃solid solution allowed reconstructing the specificfeatures of the experimental spectra, suggesting that this phase was the dominant Fe carrier in the oligotrophic section of the core. In the eutrophic part, mackinawite was positively identified and represented the dominant Fe(II) sulfide phase. This finding agreed with chemical extraction, which indicated that18–40 mol% of Fe was contained in the acid volatile iron sulfide fraction. EXAFS spectra of the eutrophic section were best fitted by considering the admixture of mackinawite and the Fe–Ca carbonate phase inferred to be predominant in the oligotrophic regime.