An institutional perspective on the diffusion of international management system standards : the case of the Environmental management standard ISO 14001.

This paper analyzes how national institutional factors affect the adoption of the intemational environmental management standard ISO 14001, using a panel of 139 countries from 1996 to 2006. The analysis emphasizes that during the emerging phase of the standard, the potentiallack of consensus within the constituents of the national institutional environment conceming the value of a new standard could send mixed signals to firrns about the standard. The resuIts show that in the early phase of adoption, regulative and norrnative forces within the institutional environment can work against each other. Results also show that regulative or coercive forces playa relatively more important role in the early phase of adoption of the standard than in the subsequent phases of diffusion. In the later phases of diffusion of ISO 14001, norrnative forces, such as the diffusion of other management standards, as well as factors related to trade, playa more important role. Because of the similarities between environmental management standards and corporate social responsibility standards, this study can help identify sorne of the challenges for diffusion of ISO management standards in the area of social responsibility.Environmental management standard; ISO 14001;

Deregulation and environmental differentiation in the electric utility industry.

This paper analyzes how economic deregulation impacts firm strategies and environmental quality in the electric utility industry. We find evidence that the deregulation introduced to this historically staid industry has stimulated environmental differentiation. Differentiation is most likely to appear where its point of uniqueness is valued by customers, and we confirm this relationship in our sample. Specifically, utilities that served customers who exhibited higher levels of environmental sensitivity generated more green power. The tendency for firms to differentiate in this way is lessened if they are relatively more dependent on coal-fired generation or relatively more efficient. Thus, there is evidence that firms sort themselves into either differentiation or low-cost strategies as the competitive realities of a deregulated world unfold. Deregulation and the ensuing environmental differentiation illustrate how utilities exploited formerly unmet customer demand for green power. The result has been greater levels of renewable generation and, hence, a cleaner environment.Deregulation; Environmental differentiation; Electric utility; Renewable energy; Productive efficiency;

U.S. state policies for renewable energy : context and effectiveness

Over the past decade, state policies on renewable energy have been on the rise in the U.S., providing states with various options for encouraging the generation of renewable electricity. Two promising policies, the Renewable Portfolio Standard(RPS)and the Mandatory Green Power Option(MGPO), have been implemented in many states but the evidence about their effectiveness is mixed. In this paper,we argue that recognizing the natural, social, and policy context under which MGPO and RPS are adopted is necessary in order to measure their true effectiveness. This is because the context rather than the policy might lead to positive outcomes and there is the possibility for sample bias. When controlling for the context in which the policies are implemented, we find that RPS has a negative impact on investments in renewable capacity. However, we find that investor owned utilities seem to respond more positively to RPS mandates than publicly owned utilities. By contrast, MGPO appears to have a significant effect on installed renewable capacity for all utilities regardless of the context in which it is implemented.Publicad

An institutional perspective on the diffusion of international management system standards : the case of the Environmental management standard ISO 14001

This paper analyzes how national institutional factors affect the adoption of the intemational environmental management standard ISO 14001, using a panel of 139 countries from 1996 to 2006. The analysis emphasizes that during the emerging phase of the standard, the potentiallack of consensus within the constituents of the national institutional environment conceming the value of a new standard could send mixed signals to firrns about the standard. The resuIts show that in the early phase of adoption, regulative and norrnative forces within the institutional environment can work against each other. Results also show that regulative or coercive forces playa relatively more important role in the early phase of adoption of the standard than in the subsequent phases of diffusion. In the later phases of diffusion of ISO 14001, norrnative forces, such as the diffusion of other management standards, as well as factors related to trade, playa more important role. Because of the similarities between environmental management standards and corporate social responsibility standards, this study can help identify sorne of the challenges for diffusion of ISO management standards in the area of social responsibility.Publicad

Feller property and infinitesimal generator of the exploration process

We consider the exploration process associated to the continuous random tree (CRT) built using a Levy process with no negative jumps. This process has been studied by Duquesne, Le Gall and Le Jan. This measure-valued Markov process is a useful tool to study CRT as well as super-Brownian motion with general branching mechanism. In this paper we prove this process is Feller, and we compute its infinitesimal generator on exponential functionals and give the corresponding martingale

Orbital frustration at the origin of the magnetic behavior in LiNiO2

We report on the ESR, magnetization and magnetic susceptibility measurements performed over a large temperature range, from 1.5 to 750 K, on high-quality stoichiometric LiNiO2. We find that this compound displays two distinct temperature regions where its magnetic behavior is anomalous. With the help of a statistical model based on the Kugel'-Khomskii Hamiltonian, we show that below T_of ~ 400 K, an orbitally-frustrated state characteristic of the triangular lattice is established. This then gives a solution to the long-standing controversial problem of the magnetic behavior in LiNiO2.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, RevTex, accepted in PR

Flow injection determination of readily assimilable nitrogen compounds during vinification

A flow injection method for the determination of readily assimilable nitrogen (r.a.n.), i.e. ammonium and aminated nitrogen, is reported. The difference in pH of the sample in the presence and absence of formaldehyde, which blocks the amino function, provides the value of r.a.n. by monitoring the changes in absorbance of bromothymol blue at 616 nm. The detection and quantification limits are 10 and 11.6 mg l-1, respectively; the reproducibility and repeatability are 3.94 mg l-1 and 1.35 mg l-1, respectively; and the sample throughput is 20 samples h-1. The method has been applied to the analysis of 120 samples of must and wine subjected to biological aging. The proposed method also provides good correlation with the reference method used in routine analysis, and it is faster and gives sufficient precision for wineries requirements

DNA damage induces nucleoid compaction via the Mre11-Rad50 complex in the archaeon Haloferax volcanii

In prokaryotes the genome is organized in a dynamic structure called the nucleoid, which is embedded in the cytoplasm. We show here that in the archaeon Haloferax volcanii, compaction and reorganization of the nucleoid is induced by stresses that damage the genome or interfere with its replication. The fraction of cells exhibiting nucleoid compaction was proportional to the dose of the DNA damaging agent, and results obtained in cells defective for nucleotide excision repair suggest that breakage of DNA strands triggers reorganization of the nucleoid. We observed that compaction depends on the Mre11-Rad50 complex, suggesting a link to DNA double-strand break repair. However, compaction was observed in a radA mutant, indicating that the role of Mre11-Rad50 in nucleoid reorganisation is independent of homologous recombination. We therefore propose that nucleoid compaction is part of a DNA damage response that accelerates cell recovery by helping DNA repair proteins to locate their targets, and facilitating the search for intact DNA sequences during homologous recombination

Statistical Analysis When the Data is an Image: Eliciting Student Thinking About Sampling and Variability

Within statistics education, there is a growing interest in understanding students\u27 application of understanding about variability and sampling given the relative lack of research in either area (Shaughnessy, 2007). The task examined in this paper elicited students\u27 knowledge of these concepts within a small-group problem solving task completed by teams of first-year engineering students. In the Nanoroughness task, teams of students designed a procedure for quantifying the roughness of a material surface using digital images generated by atomic force microscopy. The procedure required students to apply statistical methods in order to aggregate the data. The focus of this article is the subsequent analysis of the responses to the task and the questions raised by that analysis. The Nanoroughness task is unique but critical as a statistical modeling task for two reasons. First, the students needed to use statistical measures to develop a measure that would describe a qualitative characteristic (roughness) without any prompting as to what statistical procedures were relevant. There are different ways to conceptualize roughness of a surface. Sandpaper’s roughness depends on the grain size of the sand. A road may be rough if it has randomly occurring large holes but smoother if the bumps are evenly distributed. The challenge in developing quantitative measures to define qualitative characteristics is that different quantitative analyses emphasize different variables and the students needed to both analyze and apply statistical procedures relevant to the context. For instance, determining which member of a set is the most rough or the least rough will depend on what measurements were selected, and how those measures were analyzed. The second unique characteristic of the task is that the students also needed to define a sampling procedure for an image that would facilitate quantifying the variability in the surface portrayed in the digital image. Usually when students need to take measurements of a population, the population is a discrete set of objects. In this case, the data set was a continuous surface. From the data set, the students need to determine the relevant population (e.g., every point on the surface, every peak on the surface, peaks and valleys). Such continuous populations are not unique within engineering and the sciences and occur in a variety of contexts where characteristics need to be measured and operationally defined. The task was implemented in a first-year engineering course that served as an introduction to basic tools of engineering with an emphasis on MatLab® and Excel® as technological tools. The Nanoroughness task was used in the course to introduce students to the real work of engineers who must not only calculate statistics but also analyze and interpret the results. Our research asked a two-part question. First, what is the quality of student responses to the Nanoroughness task? To answer this we looked at the viability of the model they had created and how well they had explained their procedure for comparing the roughness of images. Second, what statistical models were elicited by the task? We specifically looked at the sampling methods students used and then how the students analyzed the data set they had created. In this paper, we describe the quantitative and qualitative analyses we completed of a sample of student responses