110 research outputs found

    Ploughing friction on wet and dry sand

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    The friction for sliding objects over partially water-saturated granular materials is investigated as a function of the water volume fraction. We find that ploughing friction is the main sliding mechanism: The slider leaves a deep trace in the sand after its passage. In line with previous research and everyday experience, we find that the friction force varies nonmonotonically with the water volume fraction. The addition of a small amount of water makes the friction force sharply drop, whereas too much added water causes the friction force to increase again. We present a ploughing model that quantitatively reproduces the nonmonotonic variation of the friction force as a function of water volume fraction without adjustable parameters. In this model, the yield stress of the water-sand mixture controls the depth to which the hemisphere sinks into the sand and the force that is required to plough through the water-sand mixture. We show that the model can also be used for other ploughing friction experiments, such as an ice skate that leaves a ploughing track on ice

    Politics or management? Analysing differences in local implementation performance of the EU Ambient Air Quality directive.

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    As far as local governments are responsible for the practical implementation of many European Union (EU) policies, they co-determine member states’ EU compliance records and the fate of EU legislation. Yet, they do so in remarkably different ways, as exemplified by the variegated implementation of the Ambient Air Quality Directive 2008/50/EC by Dutch municipalities. Taking guidance from the literature on EU compliance, in this article we explain the differences in local implementation performance based on the political and managerial approaches. Understanding which of the two approaches drives different local responses to EU policy bears consequences for the appropriate remedy for non implementation. Four municipalities were purposefully selected along with the two-by-two implementation performance scoring matrix in the realm of air quality. A comparative within-case analysis specifies how political explanations outweigh managerial explanations in accounting for variation in implementation performance and distils ‘policy saliency’ as the driving causal mechanism.The politics and administration of institutional chang

    A framework to move forward on the path to eco-innovation in the construction industry: implications to improve firms´ sustainable orientation

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    This paper examines key aspects in the innovative behavior of the construction firms that determine their environmental orientation while innovating. Structural equation modeling was used and data of 222 firms retrieved from the Spanish Technological Innovation Panel (PITEC) for 2010 to analyse the drivers of environmental orientation of the construction firms during the innovation process. The results show that the environmental orientation is positively affected by the product and process orientation of construction firms during the innovation process. Furthermore, the positive relation between the importance of market information sources and environmental orientation, mediated by process and product orientation, is discussed. Finally, a model that explains these relations is proposed and validated. Results have important managerial implications for those companies worried about their eco-innovative focus as the types of actions and relations within firms most suitable for improving their eco-innovative orientation are highlighted.The authors would like to thank the Spanish Economy and Competitiveness Ministry for its support through the research project (EC02011-27369) and also the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (SP20140647).Segarra Oña, MDV.; Peiró Signes, A.; Cervelló Royo, RE. (2015). A framework to move forward on the path to eco-innovation in the construction industry: implications to improve firms´ sustainable orientation. Science and Engineering Ethics. 21(6):1469-1484. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9620-2S14691484216Amara, N., & Landry, R. (2005). Sources of information as determinants of novelty of innovation in manufacturing firms: evidence from the 1999 statistics Canada innovation survey. Technovation, 25(3), 245–259.Anderson, J. C., & Gerbing, D. W. 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    Blueprints for rural economy: Philip Lowe's work in rural and environmental social science

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    Philip Lowe died in February 2020, and so an academic career spanning five decades in environmental and rural social science and the sociology of knowledge came to an end. A pioneer of the social science of environmentalism since the early 1990s, Philip Lowe had been closely associated with the Centre for Rural Economy at Newcastle University in the UK and had been the intellectual force behind establishing rural economy as both a subject and mode of social science analysis. This article reflects on a career and the evolving concept of ‘rural economy’ as an economic form, a policy realm and a knowledge practice. Through this history, it presents an account of the contribution of Philip Lowe's research and writing that, as a result of his death, now stands as a bounded and complete body of work for the benefit of future generations of scholars
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