Networking,context and firm-level innovation: Cooperation through the regional filter in Norway

The paper assesses the role for innovation of one aspect which has been generally overlooked by evolutionary economic geography: context. It analyses how context shapes the impact of collaboration on firm-level innovation for 1604 firms located in the five largest city regions of Norway. Specifically, the analysis shows how the benefits to firms of collaborating within regional, national, and international innovation networks are affected by the knowledge endowments of the region within which the firm is located. Using a logit regression analysis, we find, first, that only national and international networking have a significant positive impact on the likelihood of innovation (the former only for process innovation), whereas the regional knowledge endowments have no direct effect. Second, regional cooperation is particularly effective in regions with high investments in R&D, whereas international cooperation is important in regions with an educated workforce – and regional and national collaboration may be ineffective in such cases. We conclude that, in the case of Norway, context is essential in determining the capacity of firms to set up networks and innovate. Regions with an educated workforce can use the resulting absorptive capacity to successfully assimilate knowledge being diffused through global pipelines from faraway places. However, this absorptive capacity is likely to be heavily filtered if regional firms mainly rely on internal connections within Norway.     

Social Democracy and Contextual Unemployment: New Zealand Labour in 1990

This paper examines the spatial implications of social-democratic policy transformation. It does so by exploring the political consequences of residential contextual unemployment engendered by a Labour government which had once been dedicated to maintaining full employment. Faced with economic crisis, as Przeworski's model predicts [Capitalism and social democracy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1985)], New Zealand Labour, beginning in 1984, abandoned its traditional social-democratic statist policies, including the maintenance of full employment, and allowed unemployment to skyrocket under its stewardship. This meant subjecting its supporters to significant contextual cross-pressures, since many residential neighbourhoods became characterised by both high concentrations of Labour partisans, and by those recently unemployed by Labour's new market-liberal policies. Using original survey data merged with New Zealand census data, empirical findings show that residual partisan loyalties and a lack of a major party alternative constrained respondents' partisan disaffection, while channelling their disillusionment into both minor party voting and systemic, governmental criticisms - likely fuelling New Zealand's drive for electoral reform and a new system of proportional representation.     

A local model for analysis of pump and treat systems with vertical barrier walls

We present a mathematical model of local, steady groundwater flow near a vertical barrier wall. Flow features represented in the model include an impermeable arc-shaped barrier wall and multiple wells; distant boundary conditions are not included explicitly, but their effects on the local flow field are modelled by specifying a uniform flow at infinity and a constant areal recharge within a local domain. We develop an explicit closed-form solution to the boundary-value problem using the analytic element method. The solution is an extension of a harmonic solution presented by Anderson and Mesa [Anderson EI, Mesa E. The effects of vertical barrier walls on the hydraulic control of contaminated groundwater. Adv Water Resourc 2006;29(1):89–98] which does not include the effects of recharge. We demonstrate that the general solution with recharge consists of the harmonic solution superposed on a special case of the harmonic solution along with two elementary one-dimensional flow solutions. The results are used to investigate the effects of areal recharge on the capture zone envelopes of the pumping wells and on the reduction in discharge that can be achieved by including a barrier wall in a pump and treat design. We find that the benefits of including an open barrier wall in a design, measured as a reduction in the pumping rate required to contain a plume, increase for higher recharge rates. Dimensionless plots of capture zone envelopes are presented for a practical well and barrier wall configuration.     

高邮湖的形成和发展

高邮湖地区古为古潟湖浅洼平原,局部浅洼地段有小湖泊。金明昌五年(1194年)黄河夺淮以后,由于治河者多采用在黄河北岸筑堤南岸分流以保漕为主的政策,把大量黄水引泻到淮河流域的广大地区,使高邮湖诸小湖的湖面不断扩大,曾一度发展到五荡十二湖,到了明代后期,才基本上汇为一湖。     

The interaction triangle as a tool for understanding stakeholder interactions in marine ecosystem based management

Expectations about ecosystem based management (EBM) differ due to diverging perspectives about what EBM should be and how it should work. While EBM by its nature requires trade-offs to be made between ecological, economic and social sustainability criteria, the diversity of cross-sectoral perspectives, values, stakes, and the specificity of each individual situation determine the outcome of these trade-offs. The authors strive to raise awareness of the importance of interaction between three stakeholder groups (decision makers, scientists, and other actors) and argue that choosing appropriate degrees of interaction between them in a transparent way can make EBM more effective in terms of the three effectiveness criteria salience, legitimacy, and credibility. This article therefore presents an interaction triangle in which three crucial dimensions of stakeholder interactions are discussed: (A) between decision makers and scientists, who engage in framing to foster salience of scientific input to decision making, (B) between decision makers and other actors, to shape participation processes to foster legitimacy of EBM processes, and (C) between scientists and other actors, who collaborate to foster credibility of knowledge production. Due to the complexity of EBM, there is not one optimal interaction approach; rather, finding the optimal degrees of interaction for each dimension depends on the context in which EBM is implemented, i.e. the EBM objectives, the EBM initiator’s willingness for transparency and interaction, and other context-specific factors, such as resources, trust, and state of knowledge.     

Capture zone,travel time,and solute-transport predictions using inverse modeling and different geological models

Six regional-scale flow models are compared to gain insight into how different representations of hydraulic-conductivity distributions affect model calibration and predictions. Deterministic geological models were used to define hydraulic-conductivity distributions in two steady-state flow models that were calibrated to heads and baseflow estimates using inverse techniques. Optimized hydraulic-conductivity estimates from the two models were used to calculate layer and model mean hydraulic-conductivity values. Despite differences in the two geological models, inverse calibration produced mean hydraulic-conductivity values for the entire model domain that are quite similar. The layer and model mean hydraulic-conductivity values were used to generate four additional flow models and forward runs were performed. All of the models adequately simulate the observed heads and total baseflow. The six flow models were used to predict the steady-state impact of a proposed well field, and the flow solutions were used in simulating particle tracking and solute transport. Results of the predictive simulations show that, for this example, simple models of heterogeneity produce capture zones similar to more complex models, but with very different travel times and breakthroughs. Inverse modeling combined with different geological models can provide a measure of capture zone and breakthrough reliability.

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Resumen Se compara seis modelos de flujo a escala regional para conocer cómo afecta a la calibración y a la predicción del modelo diversas representaciones de la distribución de la conductividad hidráulica. Se ha utilizado modelos geológicos deterministas para definir las distribuciones de la conductividad hidráulica en dos modelos de flujo permanente, calibrados mediante técnicas inversas con niveles piezométricos y estimaciones del flujo de base. Se ha adoptado estimaciones optimizadas de la conductividad hidráulica de los dos modelos para calcular las cotas de las capas y sus conductividades hidráulicas medias. A pesar de las diferencias entre ambos modelos geológicos, con la calibración inversa se obtiene valores similares de conductividad hidráulica en todo el dominio. Estos valores de las capas y de las conductividades hidráulicas medias han servido para generar cuatro modelos adicionales de flujo y realizar predicciones. Todos los modelos simulan de forma adecuada los niveles observados y los caudales de base. Los seis modelos han sido aplicados a la predicción del impacto estacionario de un campo de pozos, y las soluciones del flujo permiten simular el transporte de partículas y de solutos. Los resultados de estas predicciones muestran que, para este ejemplo, los modelos sencillos de la heterogeneidad dan lugar a zonas de captura similares a las generadas por modelos más complejos, pero aparecen grandes diferencias en los tiempos de tránsito y en las curvas de llegada. Una combinación de modelación inversa y de modelos geológicos diferentes puede proporcionar una medida de la fiabilidad de la zona de captura y de las curvas de llegada.

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Résumé Six modèles d'écoulement à l'échelle régionale sont comparés afin d'avoir un aperçu de la manière dont les différentes représentations de la distribution de la conductivité hydraulique affectent la calibration et les prédictions de modèles. Des modèles géologiques déterministes ont été utilisés pour définir les distributions de la conductivité hydraulique dans deux modèles d'écoulement en régime permanent qui ont été calibrés avec des estimations des charges et des écoulements de base faites par des techniques inverses. Les estimations optimisées de la conductivité hydraulique de ces deux modèles ont servi à calculer les valeurs de conductivité hydraulique moyenne des couches et du modèle. Malgré des différences entre les deux modèles géologiques, la calibration inverse a donné des valeurs de conductivité hydraulique moyenne pour le domaine complet du modèle qui sont complètement semblables. Les valeurs de la conductivité moyenne des couches et du modèle ont été utilisées pour générer quatre modèles d'écoulement supplémentaires et des traitements ont été effectués. Tous les modèles simulent correctement les charges observées et l'écoulement de base total. Les six modèles ont servi à prédire l'impact en régime permanent d'un champ captant projeté et les solutions d'écoulement ont été utilisées dans une simulation par suivi de particules et de transport de soluté. Les résultats de simulations prédictives montrent que, pour cet exemple, de simples modèles d'hétérogénéité fournissent des zones de capture semblables aux modèles plus complexes, mais pour des temps de parcours et des restitutions très différents. Une modélisation inverse combinée à différents modèles géologiques peut assurer une mesure de la zone de capture et une fiabilité de la restitution.

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Evaluating the efficiency of three methods for monitoring of native crayfish in Germany

We compared the capture efficiency of three traditional sampling methods, hand captures at day, hand captures at night and captures by commercial baited traps (“Pirat type”) with a coarse mesh size of 10 × 45 mm, for the native crayfish species Austropotamobius torrentium (stone crayfish) and Astacus astacus (noble crayfish). These capture types are applied regularly in monitoring programs. Additionally, we tested modified traps with fine mesh size to capture stone crayfish. We hypothesized that the capture efficiency of the methods is different between the two species, different sex and size classes and seasons and that modified traps with small mesh size were more effective in capturing juvenile stone crayfish than traps with coarse mesh size. Hand captures at night were found to be the most effective sampling method for both species. It generates the highest relative abundances and is the least biased method in relation to size and sex of crayfish specimen. Hand captures at day result in lower capture rates than hand captures at night. However, there is a tendency to gather more small individuals and females in comparison to the night captures. Baited traps turned out to be completely inappropriate for capturing stone crayfish; even traps modified with small mesh size were not a suitable capture method. For noble crayfish all three methods seem to be suitable, depending on the sampling purposes. The relative differences between the methods did not change significantly during the seasons. However, when capture rates of all three methods were combined, September was found to be the month where the highest capture rates were achieved as both sexes of both species were on the peak of their activity.     

Effect of reciprocating and unidirectional airflow on primary conversion of a pentagonal Backward Bent Duct Buoy

An Oscillating Water Column (OWC) device can output energy through reciprocating or unidirectional airflow. The unidirectional airflow is helpful to utilize a simple and high-efficiency unidirectional air turbine. The pentagonal BBDB proposed by us based on OWC principle can be regarded as a floating Oscillating Body and its Power Take-Off (PTO) consists of a chamber, a water column, a turbine and a generator. The Capture Width Ratio (CWR) of the pentagonal BBDB model with the reciprocating and unidirectional airflow was studied in this paper. The wave flume test results indicate the mean CWR of the pentagonal BBDB model with reciprocating airflow can reach up to 121.91% and the mean CWR of the model with unidirectional airflow could reach 100.94% during the whole wave cycle in regular waves. For irregular waves, the mean CWR of the model with the unidirectional airflow is as high as 62.83% during the whole wave cycle. Hopefully, the combination of the pentagonal BBDB with the check valve to output power during the air exhalation and conventional high-efficiency unidirectional turbine will improve the total efficiency of the BBDB.     

Capture and release zones of permeable reactive barriers under the influence of advective–dispersive transport in the aquifer

The problem of permeable reactive barrier (PRB) capture and release behavior is investigated by means of an approximate analytical approach exploring the invariance of steady-state solutions of the advection–dispersion equation to conformal mapping. PRB configurations considered are doubly-symmetric funnel-and-gate as well as less frequent drain-and-gate systems. The effect of aquifer heterogeneity on contaminant plume spreading is hereby incorporated through an effective transverse macro-dispersion coefficient, which has to be known. Results are normalized and graphically represented in terms of a relative capture efficiency M of contaminant mass or groundwater passing a control plane (transect) at a sufficient distance up-stream of a PRB as to comply with underlying assumptions. Factors of safety FS are given as the ratios of required capture width under advective–dispersive and purely advective transport for achieving equal capture efficiency M. It is found that M also applies to the release behavior down-stream of a PRB, i.e., it describes the spreading and dilution of PRB treated groundwater possibly containing incompletely remediated contamination and/or remediation reaction products. Hypothetical examples are given to demonstrate results.