How to Educate Entrepreneurs?

Entrepreneurship education has two purposes: To improve students’ entrepreneurial skills and to provide impetus to those suited to entrepreneurship while discouraging the rest. While entrepreneurship education helps students to make a vocational decision its effects may conflict for those not suited to entrepreneurship. This study shows that vocational and the skill formation effects of entrepreneurship education can be identified empirically by drawing on the Theory of Planned Behavior. This is embedded in a structural equation model which we estimate and test using a robust 2SLS estimator. We find that the attitudinal factors posited by the Theory of Planned Behavior are positively correlated with students’ entrepreneurial intentions. While conflicting effects of vocational and skill directed course content are observed in some individuals, overall these types of content are complements. This finding contradicts previous results in the literature. We reconcile the conflicting findings and discuss implications for the design of entrepreneurship courses

Association of obesity, diabetes and hypertension with cognitive impairment in older age

Background: Age-related cognitive impairment is rising in prevalence but is not yet fully characterized in terms of its epidemiology. Here, we aimed to elucidate the role of obesity, diabetes and hypertension as candidate risk factors. Methods: Original baseline data from 3 studies (OCTOPUS, DECS, SuDoCo) were obtained for secondary analysis of cross-sectional associations of diabetes, hypertension, blood pressure, obesity (body mass index [BMI] ≥30 kg/m²) and BMI with presence of cognitive impairment in log-binomial regression analyses. Cognitive impairment was defined as scoring more than 2 standard deviations below controls on at least one of 5–11 cognitive tests. Underweight participants (BMI<18.5 kg/m2 ) were excluded. Results were pooled across studies in fixed-effects inverse variance models. Results: Analyses totaled 1545 participants with a mean age of 61 years (OCTOPUS) to 70 years (SuDoCo). Cognitive impairment was found in 29.0% of participants in DECS, 8.2% in SuDoCo and 45.6% in OCTOPUS. In pooled analyses, after adjustment for age, sex, diabetes and hypertension, obesity was associated with a 1.29-fold increased prevalence of cognitive impairment (risk ratio [RR] 1.29; 95% CI 0.98, 1.72). Each 1 kg/m² increment in BMI was associated with 3% increased prevalence (RR 1.03; 95% CI 1.00, 1.06). None of the remaining risk factors were associated with impairment. Conclusion: Our results show that older people who are obese have higher prevalence of cognitive impairment compared with normal weight and overweight individuals, and independently of co-morbid hypertension or diabetes. Prospective studies are needed to investigate the temporal relationship of the association

Exploring the relationship between media coverage and participation in entrepreneurship : initial global evidence and research implications

Using a set of variables measured in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) study, our empirical investigation explored the influence of mass media through national culture on national entrepreneurial participation rates in 37 countries over 4 years (2000 to 2003). We found that stories about successful entrepreneurs, conveyed in mass media, were not significantly associated with the rate of nascent (opportunity searching) or the rate of actual (business activities commenced up to 3 months old) start-up activity, but that there was a significant positive association between the volume of entrepreneurship media stories and a nation&rsquo;s volume of people running a young business (that is in GEM terminology, a business aged greater than 3 but less than 42 months old). More particularly, such stories had strong positive association with opportunity oriented operators of young businesses. Together, these findings are compatible with what in the mass communications theory literature may be called the &lsquo;reinforcement model&rsquo;. This argues that mass media are only capable of reinforcing their audience&rsquo;s existing values and choice propensities but are not capable of shaping or changing those values and choices. In the area covered by this paper, policy-makers are committing public resources to media campaigns of doubtful utility in the absence of an evidence base. A main implication drawn from this study is the need for further and more sophisticated investigation into the relationship between media coverage of entrepreneurship, national culture and the rates and nature of people&rsquo;s participation in the various stages of the entrepreneurial process.<br /

Will REDD+ safeguards mitigate corruption? Qualitative evidence from Southeast Asia

High levels of faith and finance are being invested in REDD+ as a promising global climate change mitigation policy. Since its inception in 2007, corruption has been viewed as a potential impediment to the achievement of REDD+ goals, partly motivating ‘safeguards’ rolled out as part of national REDD+ readiness activities. We compare corruption mitigation measures adopted as part of REDD+ safeguards, drawing on qualitative case evidence from three Southeast Asian countries that have recently piloted the scheme: Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. We find that while REDD+ safeguards adopt a conventional principal-agent approach to tackling corruption in the schemes, our case evidence confirms our theoretical expectation that REDD+ corruption risks are perceived to arise not only from principal-agent type problems: they are also linked to embedded pro-corruption social norms. This implies that REDD+ safeguards are likely to be at best partially effective against corruption, and at worst will not mitigate corruption at all

Glycinergic interneurons are functionally integrated into the inspiratory network of mouse medullary slices

Neuronal activity in the respiratory network is functionally dependent on inhibitory synaptic transmission. Using two-photon excitation microscopy, we analyzed the integration of glycinergic neurons in the isolated inspiratory pre-Bötzinger complex-driven network of the rhythmic slice preparation. Inspiratory (96%) and ‘tonic’ expiratory neurons (4%) were identified via an increase or decrease, respectively, of the cytosolic free calcium concentration during the inspiratory-related respiratory burst. Furthermore, in BAC-transgenic mice expressing EGFP under the control of the GlyT2-promoter, 50% of calcium-imaged inspiratory neurons were glycinergic. Inspiratory bursting of glycinergic neurons in the slice was confirmed by whole-cell recording. We also found glycinergic neurons that receive phasic inhibition from other glycinergic neurons. Our calcium imaging data show that glycinergic neurons comprise a large population of inspiratory neurons in the pre-Bötzinger complex-driven network of the rhythmic slice preparation