From the old path of shipbuilding onto the new path of offshore wind energy? The case of northern Germany

Wind energy-related employment has been surging recently in Germany: it rose from 9,200 in 1997 to 90,000 in 2007 and is estimated to be 112,000 in 2020. The industry particularly emerged in coastal, northern Germany. Recently big hopes are particularly set on the offshore wind energy industry. Two recently discussed evolutionary concepts explain the emergence of new industries, such as wind energy, in space in different ways: the windows of locational opportunity concept stresses the locational freedom in the earliest stages of industrial development, whereas path creation emphasises the role of existing industrial development paths, such as shipbuilding, from which new paths, such as wind energy, emerge. The paper aims at analysing whether the new path of offshore wind energy emerged out of existing paths, mainly shipbuilding, in the five states of coastal Germany. It concludes that shipbuilding only indirectly affected the emergence of the new development path of offshore the wind energy industry in northern Germany.

DATA DRIVEN PERFORMANCE EVALUATION IN SHIPBUILDING

Rapid development in data science keeps paving the way for use of data for many purposes in shipbuilding, both for product development and production, such as Industry 4.0 have been developing many industries. Similar to other industries the evaluation of performance in shipbuilding is the key to success which is closely connected to productivity and lowered costs. Data mining and analysis techniques are used to create effective algorithms to evaluate the performance, also by means of cost estimation based on parametric methods. However, it is usually not very clear how data are collected, organised and prepared for analysing and deriving valuable knowledge as well as algorithms. In most of the cases, having this data requires either continuous investment in expensive software or expensive external expertise which are generally not available for small and medium size shipyards. In this study, considering the needs of the small and medium sized shipyards, a step-by-step methodology is proposed which could be easily applied with widely available low budget software. The application is demonstrated with a case to evaluate the performance of early phase structural design with a data driven cost estimation algorithm

Mandating Environmental Liability Insurance

Plant cuticles are extracellular membranes covering aerial organs of plants, whose main functions rely on the protection against water loss, mechanical injury from the environment, attack of microorganism, and also regulation of gas exchange. Among the several constituents of plant cuticles, waxes are those that play an important role in their barrier properties. In order to enhance the mechanical properties of wax, NFC was applied in. In the project, mainly two kinds of methods were used to prepare wax-NFC composites. One way was wax and NFC were dissolved in toluene and casted to be a film, another way was to prepare NFC aerogel firstly, and then, impregnated the aerogel into wax liquid. After pressing it the structure was more compact. In order to characterize the properties of samples, SEM, XRD, TGA, DSC, Contact angle testing, tensile test and oxygen permeability methods were applied in

Fostering global well-being: a new paradigm to revitalize agricultural and rural development

In this paper, David Bathrick describes the almost revolutionary changes that have taken place in the economic arena in recent years. This is a story of paradigm shift, where government-led economic growth through the 1970s gave way to the increasingly market-led growth we see now. The emergence of the market in the context of globalization has meant the reduction of biases against agriculture; an emphasis on flexible responses in the production of goods and services; strengthened links between local, national, and international economies; greater integration of different sectors of the economy; and increased importance of the private sector. Bathrick argues that this demand- driven setting is forcing developing countries to assess their comparative advantages in the global marketplace and make fundamental strategic, institutional, and programmatic shifts. The resulting opportunities for growth are considerable, but so is the effort and financial support required to acquire the skills, experiences, and infrastructure necessary to adjust to the new realities. Knowledge of consumer needs, up-to-date market intelligence, and other informational and material resources that facilitate the market system need to be identified and put in place.Agricultural development Rural areas Developing countries., Economic development Developing countries.,

Emerging East-West corporate networks in Central European border regions: Some theoretical arguments and stylized facts

Economic re-integration after a long period of separation among countries with different levels of development is expected to start in border regions. Enterprises along the borderline can gain a rent due to low transport and transaction costs. They benefit from the fortunate opportunity of tapping the international division of labour on the shortest distance. Therefore, border regions should be predestined to become an economic powerhouse. Despite their great potential, border regions in Central Eastern Europe are far from being an economic entity. The enormous development differences are obviously a source of constraint rather than an impetus to integration. This paper examines the potential for cross-border activities on the German- Polish border. It - first, sketches the theoretical background, - second, presents some facts and figures, and - third, discusses the key policy question of how to overcome the obstacles to closer co-operation. The paper comes to the conclusion that close cross-border co-operation, which can be labelled as a network, is still the exception rather than the rule in the region under consideration. Most of the activities can be ranged in the category of simple subcontracting arrangements in which the German partners exploit the low wage, energy and pollution control costs beyond the border.

The genetic structure of Aedes aegypti populations is driven by boat traffic in the Peruvian Amazon.

In the Americas, as in much of the rest of the world, the dengue virus vector Aedes aegypti is found in close association with human habitations, often leading to high population densities of mosquitoes in urban settings. In the Peruvian Amazon, this vector has been expanding to rural communities over the last 10-15 years, but to date, the population genetic structure of Ae. aegypti in this region has not been characterized. To investigate the relationship between Ae. aegypti gene flow and human transportation networks, we characterized mosquito population structure using a panel of 8 microsatellite markers and linked results to various potential mechanisms for long-distance dispersal. Adult and immature Ae. aegypti (>20 individuals per site) were collected from Iquitos city and from six neighboring riverine communities, i.e., Nauta, Indiana, Mazan, Barrio Florida, Tamshiaco, and Aucayo. FST statistics indicate significant, but low to moderate differentiation for the majority of study site pairs. Population structure of Ae. aegypti is not correlated with the geographic distance between towns, suggesting that human transportation networks provide a reasonable explanation for the high levels of population mixing. Our results indicate that Ae. aegypti gene flow among sub-populations is greatest between locations with heavy boat traffic, such as Iquitos-Tamshiaco and Iquitos-Indiana-Mazan, and lowest between locations with little or no boat/road traffic between them such as Barrio Florida-Iquitos. Bayesian clustering analysis showed ancestral admixture among three genetic clusters; no single cluster was exclusive to any site. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that human transportation networks, particularly riverways, are responsible for the geographic spread of Ae. aegypti in the Peruvian Amazon. Our findings are applicable to other regions of the world characterized by networks of urban islands connected by fluvial transport routes

Temporality of agency in regional development

The temporality of agency plays a fundamental role in regional development but has received little attention in economic geography and regional studies. This paper zooms in on two aspects of temporality: the temporality of intentions and the temporality of consequences. The former refers to actors’ perception and valuation of opportunities in the near and distant future, whereas the latter refers to the short- and long-term consequences of actions. This paper studies the temporality of agency in the context of regional development. It investigates how short- and long-term intentions motivate different types of agency, how different types of agency affect short- and long-term regional development outcomes and which conditions enable or constrain different types of agency. We illustrate our arguments with an in-depth case study covering the regional development of a labour market in Norway over the last 20 years.publishedVersio

Effect of barnacle fouling on ship resistance and powering

Predictions of added resistances and effective powers of ships were made for varying barnacle fouling conditions. A series of towing tests were carried out using flat plates covered with artificial barnacles. The tests were designed to allow the examination of the effects of barnacle height and percent coverage on the resistance and effective power of ships. The drag coefficients and roughness function values were evaluated for the flat plates. Roughness effects of the fouling conditions on the ship frictional resistances were predicted. Added resistance diagrams were then plotted using these predictions, and powering penalties of these ships were calculated using the generated diagrams. The results indicate that the effect of barnacle size is significant, since 10% of the coverage of barnacles, which are 5mm in height, causes a similar level of added power requirements as 50% of the coverage of barnacles, which are 1.25 mm in height