A Cross-National Comparison of Corporate Web-Site Communications; An Examination of the Services Sector

Despite the trend toward increased marketing in the electronic medium, there is still a lack of comprehensive research. Especially noteworthy is the lack of research on equivalence of electronic information across both industries and national boundaries. The literature is replete with findings from studies surrounding consumer and B2B goods advertising promoted through print and TV mediums however, this study suggests that previous findings and methods may not be directly transferrable to service advertisers in an electronic medium. The specific design characteristics inherent with the web medium combined with the inherent limitations surrounding cultural indices suggest that new methods and measures are required. This study proposes that a newly developed one-dimensional construct that incorporates socioeconomic, media, and technology variables can be applied to better evaluate differences in web-based information content. It is suggested that this new indicator can support a clearer and more systematic procedure for use in cross-national communication studies than previously used method

A Cross-National Comparison of Corporate Web-Site Communications; An Examination of the Services Sector

Despite the trend toward increased marketing in the electronic medium, there is still a lack of comprehensive research. Especially noteworthy is the lack of research on equivalence of electronic information across both industries and national boundaries. The literature is replete with findings from studies surrounding consumer and B2B goods advertising promoted through print and TV mediums however, this study suggests that previous findings and methods may not be directly transferrable to service advertisers in an electronic medium. The specific design characteristics inherent with the web medium combined with the inherent limitations surrounding cultural indices suggest that new methods and measures are required. This study proposes that a newly developed one-dimensional construct that incorporates socioeconomic, media, and technology variables can be applied to better evaluate differences in web-based information content. It is suggested that this new indicator can support a clearer and more systematic procedure for use in cross-national communication studies than previously used method

A Cross-National Comparison of Corporate Web-Site Communications; An Examination of the Services Sector

Despite the trend toward increased marketing in the electronic medium, there is still a lack of comprehensive research. Especially noteworthy is the lack of research on equivalence of electronic information across both industries and national boundaries. The literature is replete with findings from studies surrounding consumer and B2B goods advertising promoted through print and TV mediums however, this study suggests that previous findings and methods may not be directly transferrable to service advertisers in an electronic medium. The specific design characteristics inherent with the web medium combined with the inherent limitations surrounding cultural indices suggest that new methods and measures are required. This study proposes that a newly developed one-dimensional construct that incorporates socioeconomic, media, and technology variables can be applied to better evaluate differences in web-based information content. It is suggested that this new indicator can support a clearer and more systematic procedure for use in cross-national communication studies than previously used method

Business models for climate services: An analysis

Climate services support mitigation and adaptation to climate change and encourage a science-based and climate-informed policy development. A performing market is vital for supporting uptake of climate services. The diffusion of innovations depends on how business models – meant as firms’ strategic choices to create, capture and share value within a value network – are employed. Innovation in business model, rather than product innovation only, has been proved useful for overcoming bottlenecks associated with development and diffusion of technologies. But only few studies have analysed how business models are used within the context of climate services. We fill this gap by using a sample of 32 climate services provisions at different stage of development. We use an original and revised version the Business Model Canvas as a framework to facilitate the data collection and analysis processes. A quali-quantitative approach is employed to tackle the content of the administered semi-structured interviews and to map them into a connected set of nodes representing concepts as provided by the selected informants. By combining Content and Network Analysis we present how business model aspects interact both within and across components. We find that the Value Network in which climate services operate is crucial for success, while a subscription, online-based infrastructure is a widespread tool in reaching the target users. The creation of partnerships and consortia of organisations allows mutual learning opportunities to happen and boosts the innovation behind these products. We focus on the graph giant component to highlight the role of co-creation approach in generating direct and indirect incremental innovations while delivering seasonal forecasts and tailor-made services. Finally, we call for tighter link between business and climate-related aspects to enhance the importance of financial considerations around climate services provision

On The Origin Of The Gamma Rays From The Galactic Center

The region surrounding the center of the Milky Way is both astrophysically rich and complex, and is predicted to contain very high densities of dark matter. Utilizing three years of data from the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope (and the recently available Pass 7 ultraclean event class), we study the morphology and spectrum of the gamma ray emission from this region and find evidence of a spatially extended component which peaks at energies between 300 MeV and 10 GeV. We compare our results to those reported by other groups and find good agreement. The extended emission could potentially originate from either the annihilations of dark matter particles in the inner galaxy, or from the collisions of high energy protons that are accelerated by the Milky Way's supermassive black hole with gas. If interpreted as dark matter annihilation products, the emission spectrum favors dark matter particles with a mass in the range of 7-12 GeV (if annihilating dominantly to leptons) or 25-45 GeV (if annihilating dominantly to hadronic final states). The intensity of the emission corresponds to a dark matter annihilation cross section consistent with that required to generate the observed cosmological abundance in the early universe (sigma v ~ 3 x 10^-26 cm^3/s). We also present conservative limits on the dark matter annihilation cross section which are at least as stringent as those derived from other observations.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figure

A Constraint on the Organization of the Galactic Center Magnetic Field Using Faraday Rotation

We present new 6 and 20 cm Very Large Array (VLA) observations of polarized continuum emission of roughly 0.5 square degrees of the Galactic center (GC) region. The 6 cm observations detect diffuse linearly-polarized emission throughout the region with a brightness of roughly 1 mJy per 15"x10" beam. The Faraday rotation measure (RM) toward this polarized emission has structure on degree size scales and ranges from roughly +330 rad/m2 east of the dynamical center (Sgr A) to -880 rad/m2 west of the dynamical center. This RM structure is also seen toward several nonthermal radio filaments, which implies that they have a similar magnetic field orientation and constrains models for their origin. Modeling shows that the RM and its change with Galactic longitude are best explained by the high electron density and strong magnetic field of the GC region. Considering the emissivity of the GC plasma shows that while the absolute RM values are indirect measures of the GC magnetic field, the RM longitude structure directly traces the magnetic field in the central kiloparsec of the Galaxy. Combining this result with previous work reveals a larger RM structure covering the central ~2 degrees of the Galaxy. This RM structure is similar to that proposed by Novak and coworkers, but is shifted roughly 50 pc west of the dynamical center of the Galaxy. If this RM structure originates in the GC region, it shows that the GC magnetic field is organized on ~300 pc size scales. The pattern is consistent with a predominantly poloidal field geometry, pointing from south to north, that is perturbed by the motion of gas in the Galactic disk.Comment: Accepted to ApJ. emulateapj style, 14 pages, 15 figure

Finding the right partners? Examining inequalities in the global investment landscape of hydropower

Clean and affordable energy is crucial to achieve a sustainable future. Despite being controversial, hydropower remains the predominant low-cost and reliable source of energy at global level, as it stabilizes the provision of electricity and it bears the power peaks without losing efficiency. However, hydropower requires huge upfront investments and patient functional capital. Under the Paris Agreement, countries committed to direct financial capital flows towards a low-emission pathway in order to enable the transition. Furthermore, private capital strongly engaged with a transition towards a climate-smart economy. The aim of this work is to study the investment system behind hydropower, investors’ behaviour and the optimal allocation of finance to favour the deployment of capital flows. We use Bloomberg Energy Finance database to track public–private investments over the past century (1903–2020). We use network models to represent the hydropower project financing landscape as a network of co-investments. We find that investors are highly localized, with continental players mostly interacting with counterparts in the same area of the world. Powerful exceptions are international organisations and multilateral banks which coinvest across the globe. They also tend to support low-income and fragile countries, meeting their mandate of sustainable development champions. Multilateral banks and international organisations are the most critical actors in enabling public–private co-investments; they activate partnerships with a wider diversity of investors within the network creating more opportunities for blended finance tools. Our results offer a novel perspective on finance for the energy transition: it challenges the idea that more capital invested is better and calls for a more efficient allocation of the available resources

Kemampuan Mengonstruksi Teks Laporan Hasil Observasi Siswa Kelas X SMA Negeri 7 Medan Tahun Pembelajaran 2016/2017

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui dan mendeskripsikan kemampuan mengonstruksi teks laporan hasil observasi oleh siswa kelas X SMA Negeri 7 Medan tahun pembelajaran 2016/2017. Populasi penelitian ini adalah seluruh siswa kelas X SMA Negeri 7 Medan tahun pembelajaran 2016/2017 yang terdiri dari 8 kelas dan berjumlah 309 orang. Sampel penelitian ini diambil dengan cara random sampling. Sampel penelitian diambil 20% dari populasi sehingga sampel penelitian ini adalah 62 orang siswa.Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah metode deskriptif kualitatif, yaitu mendeskripsikan suatu keadaan alamiah mengenai kegiatan mengonstruksi teks laporan hasil observasi siswa kelas X SMA Negeri 7 Medan. Instrumen yang digunakan untuk memperoleh data adalah tes essay. Data penelitian menunjukkan bahwa kemampuan siswa dalam mengonstruksi teks laporan hasil observasi memiliki nilai rata-rata (mean) 78,87 dan berada pada kategori baik. Hal ini dapat dilihat dari rentang nilai 86-100 dengan kategori sangat baik diperoleh sebanyak 15 orang (24,19%), rentang nilai 76-85 dengan kategori baik diperoleh sebanyak 24 orang (38.71%), rentang nilai 56-75 dengan kategori cukup diperoleh sebanyak 20 orang (32,25%), rentang nilai 10-55 dengan kategori kurang diperoleh sebanyak 3 orang (4,83%). Berdasarkan analisis data diatas maka dapat disimpulkan bahwa kemampuan mengonstruksi teks laporan hasil observasi pada siswa kelas X SMA Negeri 7 Medan Tahun Pembelajaran 2016/2017 termasuk dalam kategori baik