4,342 research outputs found
MARYLAND\u27S NEXT SMART GROWTH INITIATIVE: THE NEXT STEPS
This article discusses Maryland\u27s Smart Growth and Neighborhood Conservation Initiative, the nation\u27s first statewide, incentive-based program to reduce the impact of urban sprawl. It has been used as a model by other states and espouses the notions that no growth is bad and the economy and environment are intertwined. Maryland attempts to change the bottom line of development decisions by making it more attractive and less costly to build in designated growth areas. The article identifies the next steps in Maryland\u27s Smart Growth initiative and concludes that Maryland and the United States must be successful in these and similar efforts to avoid a future of environmental and economic harm as a result of sprawl
REVIEW: AMPHIBIAN SURVEYS IN FORESTS AND WOODLANDS
Amphibian surveys provide information on the distribution, abundance and habitat requirements of species, and the environmental variables that control diversity. Such information is needed for effective conservation planning and management of forests and woodlands, including monitoring of amphibian populations in a period of apparent global decline. Amphibian surveys can be time-consuming and expensive, and many issues must be addressed to maximize the reliability of the resulting data. Sampling techniques that are effective in one region or habitat type may be less so in another, and a preliminary study comparing different techniques before undertaking a survey may be necessary. Data collected in poorly designed surveys can be unsuitable for statistical analysis, and may sometimes present a misleading picture of the distribution, abundance and habitat requirements of amphibian species. This review examines issues of survey design, assesses past amphibian surveys in forest and woodland habitats, and provides recommendations for planning an amphibian survey. Firstly, the study area and survey aims should be identifi ed, and proposed sampling techniques assessed using relevant literature or a pilot study. Ethical issues associated with proposed sampling techniques should also be considered. The number, size and arrangement of the survey units (e.g. plots, sites or transects) should be sufficient to address the survey aims. The survey units should be systematically surveyed several times with appropriate sampling techniques
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Enterprise, Innovation and the Enviroment
This report aims to profile the activity of small and medium sized enterprises (SME) operating in the UK's environmental sector. The environmental sector is expected to be critical for the future economic development of the UK supporting a new low carbon economy. As many entrepreneurial and innovative firms require significant funding to support their innovative activities this report specifically investigates the innovation activity and financial requirements UK environmental companies. The survey report highlights the role of a variety of funding sources, including public investment for supporting these firms, particularly those active in R&D. Responding firms show a strong record of performance to date, particularly R&D active companies but also have expectations of additional finance being made available for the future in the form of loans, equity finance and government funding
High growth firms, innovation and competition: the case of the US pharmaceutical industry
Innovation is key to economic growth. But firms, across sectors and regions, are highly skewed in their ability to engage with innovation, and even more skewed in their ability to translate investments in innovation into higher growth. While there was initially much attention on 'small' firms (SMEs), due to the assumption that they are more entrepreneurial and innovative, recent evidence that small firms contribute less to innovation and employment than commonly believed, has caused attention to move towards 'high growth innovative' firms (HGF). There is, however, the risk that this newly emphasized category of firms is also being 'hyped up' given how short a time period 'high growth' lasts, and how 'high growth' appears to only be important when combined with other firm specific conditions. Our paper is dedicated to exploring under what conditions high growth firms matter, in a dynamic setting over the history of the US pharmaceutical industry from 1963-2002. Following Coad and Rao (2008), we use quantile regression techniques to study the R&D-growth relationship in high growth firms compared to low growth firms. We find that the relationship is influenced by a mix of firm level characteristics including R&D intensity, R&D scale and venture capital funding. But more importantly we find that this relationship is sensitive to the changing competitive environment over the industry's history
A rigourous demonstration of the validity of Boltzmann's scenario for the spatial homogenization of a freely expanding gas and the equilibration of the Kac ring
Boltzmann provided a scenario to explain why individual macroscopic systems
composed of a large number of microscopic constituents are inevitably
(i.e., with overwhelming probability) observed to approach a unique macroscopic
state of thermodynamic equilibrium, and why after having done so, they are then
observed to remain in that state, apparently forever. We provide here rigourous
new results that mathematically prove the basic features of Boltzmann's
scenario for two classical models: a simple boundary-free model for the spatial
homogenization of a non-interacting gas of point particles, and the well-known
Kac ring model. Our results, based on concentration inequalities that go back
to Hoeffding, and which focus on the typical behavior of individual macroscopic
systems, improve upon previous results by providing estimates, exponential in
, of probabilities and time scales involved
Tuna-Led Sustainable Developlment in the Pacific
The paper reviews the importance of tuna fisheries in the western and central Pacific Island Countries (PICs) and examines whether current and proposed economically focussed institutional mechanisms, that underpin tuna management, are sufficient to promote appropriate and long term tuna-led development. Substantial potential gains are shown to exist from co-operation in terms of tuna management, but it seems highly unlikely such benefits will be realised in the short or medium term despite the formation in 2004 of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission. Even if gains from co-operation were to be realised, without substantial improvements in the nstitutional quality and capacity of many PICs the tuna fisheries might still fail to sustain the region’s long-term development. The study’s implications are that the twin development priorities in the region should be support for social infrastructure, especially capacity building to increase the effectiveness of the public sector, and the promotion of co-operative approaches to ensure the sustainability and profitable use of the region’s shared fishery resources.
Strengthening America's Best Idea: An Independent Review of the National Park Service's Natural Resource Stewardship and Science Directorate
NRSS requested that an independent panel of the National Academy conduct a review of its effectiveness in five core functions, its relationships with key internal stakeholders, and its performance measurement system. Among other things, the National Park Service's Natural Resource Stewardship and Science Directorate (NRSS) is responsible for providing usable natural and social science information throughout the National Park Service (NPS). NRSS leadership requested this review of the directorate's performance on five core functions, its relationships with key internal NPS stakeholders, and its performance measurement system.Main FindingsThe panel determined that NRSS is a highly regarded organization that provides independent, credible scientific expertise and technical information. The panel also found that NRSS and NPS have additional opportunities to advance natural resource stewardship throughout the Service. If implemented, the panel's eight major recommendations will: (1) help the Service respond to the parks' environmental challenges while raising public awareness about the condition of these special places; (2) strengthen NRSS as an organization; (3) promote scientifically based decision-making at the national, regional, and park levels; and (4) improve the existing performance measurement system
Temporal constraints of the word blindness posthypnotic suggestion on Stroop task performance
The present work investigated possible temporal constraints on the posthypnotic word blindness
suggestion effect. In a completely within-subjects and counterbalanced design 19 highly suggestible
individuals performed the Stroop task both with and without a posthypnotic suggestion that they
would be unable to read the word dimension of the Stroop stimulus, both when response–stimulus
interval (RSI) was short (500 ms) or equivalent to previous studies (3500 ms). The suggestion
reduced Stroop interference in the short RSI condition (54 vs. 6 ms) but not in the long RSI condition
(52 vs. 56 ms), and did not affect Stroop facilitation. Our results suggest that response to the
suggestion involves reactive top-down control processes that persist only if levels of activation can
be maintained
Gated nonlinear transport in organic polymer field effect transistors
We measure hole transport in poly(3-hexylthiophene) field effect transistors
with channel lengths from 3 m down to 200 nm, from room temperature down
to 10 K. Near room temperature effective mobilities inferred from linear regime
transconductance are strongly dependent on temperature, gate voltage, and
source-drain voltage. As is reduced below 200 K and at high source-drain
bias, we find transport becomes highly nonlinear and is very strongly modulated
by the gate. We consider whether this nonlinear transport is contact limited or
a bulk process by examining the length dependence of linear conduction to
extract contact and channel contributions to the source-drain resistance. The
results indicate that these devices are bulk-limited at room temperature, and
remain so as the temperature is lowered. The nonlinear conduction is consistent
with a model of Poole-Frenkel-like hopping mechanism in the space-charge
limited current regime. Further analysis within this model reveals consistency
with a strongly energy dependent density of (localized) valence band states,
and a crossover from thermally activated to nonthermal hopping below 30 K.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures, accepted to J. Appl. Phy
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