From Consumer Resistance to Stakeholder Resistance The case of nanotechnology

The development of emerging technologies encounters resistance among heterogeneous actors. A good understanding of that resistance phenomenon may help leaders to take decisions reflecting multiple interests. In particular, a better understanding of tenants of resistance may help defining strategic choices for further responsible developments of emerging technology. However only resistance of some actors, mainly the consumers, and some social movements have been explored. This research proposes to study the resistance of stakeholders, by exploring the nanotech field. Nanotechnology is today the most scientifically and economically promising technology, but it is subject to high controversy. A better understanding of resistance may help designing a responsible path for further developments in the nanotech field. The main contributions of this article are the fundamentals of the resistance phenomena: the concepts of stakeholder resistance and stakeholder orientation are defined. Crossing this with Henriques and Sadorski (1999), we also define a check-list for managers to systematically consider stakeholders in the resistance contextNanotechnology; Resistance

Seize the Moments: Approximating American Option Prices in the GARCH Framework

This paper proposes an efficient approach to compute the prices of American style options in the GARCH framework. Rubinstein's (1998) Edgeworth tree idea is combined with the analytical formulas for moments of the cumulative return under GARCH developed in Duan et al. (1999, 2002) to yield a simple recombining binomial tree for option valuation in the GARCH context. Since the resulting tree is univariate, the proposed approach represents a convenient approximation of the bivariate GARCH system. Numerical analyses are used to demonstrate the speed and accuracy of the proposed approximation.American Options; Edgeworth binomial tree; Garch process

LARGE PLAYERS IN THE NANOGAME: DEDICATED NANOTECH SUBSIDIARIES OR DISTRIBUTED NANOTECH CAPABILITIES?

Nanotechnologies are reshaping the boundaries between industries, combining two aspects of innovation – both enhancing competences based on cumulative knowledge and experience and destroying competences by forcing the renewal of the firm's knowledge base. To analyze how worldwide R&D leaders adapt to this new technology, we conduct an econometric analysis of about 3,000 subsidiaries of the largest R&D spenders. We find that large groups are creating medium size subsidiary companies to explore nanotechnologies. Knowledge circulates mostly amongst subsidiaries within the same group and scientific clusters do not affect their involvement in nanotechnologies. Nanotechnologies remain marginal within these subsidiaries' knowledge bases and are distributed within corporate groups, stimulating recombination between nanotechnology and other technologiesincumbent; inflexibility; hybridization; nanotechnology; pre-adaptation

L’efficacité d’un email à vocation commerciale : étude de l’influence des caractéristiques socio-démographiques des internautes sur le processus de réponse.

Le premier objectif de cet article est de proposer un cadre conceptuel présentant l’ensemble des facteurs susceptibles d’influencer la réponse de l’internaute lors de la réception d’un email à vocation commerciale. Outre les variables liées à l’email lui-même et aux spécificités de la situation, le modèle proposé distingue les facteurs individuels, propres au destinataire, des facteurs liés à l’expéditeur. Une étude relative à l’impact des caractéristiques individuelles des internautes sur la performance d’une campagne d’emailing est menée. L’analyse des résultats permet d’identifier les facteurs ayant un impact positif sur la réponse et d’élaborer un profil du répondant type à une sollicitation par email. Il s’agirait d’une femme, âgée de plus de 35 ans, inactive, et ayant des enfants. Les apports de l’étude et ses limites sont présentés en conclusion.The first objective of this article is to propose a conceptual framework, presenting the main factors that can have an impact on an internet user’s response to a commercial email. In addition to the variables related to the email itself and to the situation of its reception, the model presented here makes a clear distinction between the individual factors that are specific to the recipient and those factors that concern the sender. This study looks at the impact of the individual characteristics of an internet user on the performance of an emailing campaign. The results show significant effects for certain individual variables. Factors with a positive impact on the reaction to an email are isolated and the profile of a typical respondent to a commercial email is described. This would be a housewife, more than 35 years old, with children. Main contributions of this study, and its limits, are presented in conclusion.Direct marketing; Consumer behavior; French internet users; Email campaigns; Internautes français; Comportement du consommateur; Marketing direct; Campagnes emailing;

Exploring the concept of intensive parenting in a three-country study

There has been growing interest in the concept of intensive parenting in the literature in the recent decade. However this literature is mostly qualitative and based on Anglo-Saxon countries. This raises the question of how best to operationalize the concept in a wider cross-national setting

Climate and juvenile recruitment as drivers of Arctic cod (Boreogadus saida) dynamics in two Canadian Arctic seas

Arctic cod (Boreogadus saida) is the most abundant forage fish species in Arctic seas and plays a pivotal role in the transfer of energy between zooplankton and top predators. The dominance of Arctic cod and the Arctic’s relatively low biodiversity interact such that changing population dynamics of Arctic cod have cascading effects on whole Arctic marine ecosystems. Over the last decades, warming in the Arctic has led to a decline in Arctic cod populations in the Barents Sea, but in the Canadian Arctic these conditions have been correlated with up to a 10-fold higher biomass of age-0 Arctic cod at the end of summer. However, whether this enhanced larval survival with warmer waters endures through age-1þ populations is unknown. A better understanding of spatial variation in the response of Arctic cod populations to environmental conditions is critical to forecast future changes in Arctic ecosystems. Here, we rely on a 17-year time series of acoustic-trawl surveys (2003–2019) to test whether ice-breakup date, sea surface temperature, zooplankton density, and Arctic climate indices during early life stages affect the subsequent recruitment of age-1þ Arctic cod in the Beaufort Sea and Baffin Bay. In the Beaufort Sea, the biomass of age-1þ Arctic cod correlated with both Arctic Oscillation indices and age-0 biomass of the previous year. In Baffin Bay, the biomass of age-1þ Arctic cod correlated with previous-year North Atlantic Oscillation indices and the timing of ice breakup. This study demonstrates that climate and environmental conditions experienced during the early life stages drive the recruitment of the age-1þ Arctic cod population and helps to quantify spatial variation in the main environmental drivers

Four scenarios for urban energy coordination: large companies, local authorities, state intervention and cooperative actors

International audiencePressed by the urgent need to mitigate climate change, renewable energy sources are already replacing fossil fuels. Temporary drops in the spot price of electricity now occur in Europe when peak solar and wind output coincides with slack demand. Management of intermittent energy sources and energy storage are consequently crucial issues for the medium term. Two possible routes are of particular importance: on the one hand, funding of generating capacity – via a market instrument yet to be devised – to cover only periods of peak demand and intermittent supply; on the other temporary demand-side management of end-users. These two routes have been studied in detail by energy actors and encouraged by public-sector sponsorship of research. But they have so far made no allowance for local authorities, resident groups and intermediate bodies, despite the fact that they are playing an increasingly important part in deploying renewables and achieving greater energy efficiency. Being more complex than commercial transactions, the relations between the various actors have given rise to sharply divergent analysis by different disciplines. The socio-technical approach – a current of thought in the social sciences – has largely demonstrated the links between technology and society: the effect of institutional regulation on energy governance (Poupeau, 2013) and the deployment of technical systems (Berkhout et al, 2004; Geels and Schot, 2007); the organization of large technical networks and its subsequent dependence paths (Coutard, 2002); the enmeshing of town planning and networks (Dupuy et al, 2008; Rutherford and Coutard, 2014). Our purpose is not to discuss their findings, simply to illustrate the various forms of interdependency between the political, urban, organizational and technological dimensions of energy in a manner accessible to decision-makers and the general public. To achieve this, we propose four scenarios for coordinating energy in an urban environment between now and 2040. The scenarios are based on research carried out as part of the Ecoquartier Nexus Energie project, funded by Ademe and involving a dozen Grenoble researchers specializing in planning, economics, sociology, management and technology. We present here the broad lines of the Ecoquartier Nexus Energie research action and the method used to script and summarize the four scenarios, centring on four pivotal actors: - Large companies, supplying urban energy systems; - Local authorities, steering territorial planning;- The State, acting as the central power framing rules and regulations; and- Cooperative actors, collectives seeking to regain control over housing and energy

Urban market gardening and rodent-borne pathogenic Leptospira in arid zones: a case study in Niamey, Niger

Leptospirosis essentially affects human following contact with rodent urine-contaminated water. As such, it was mainly found associated with rice culture, recreational activities and flooding. This is also the reason why it has mainly been investigated in temperate as well as warm and humid regions, while arid zones have been only very occasionally monitored for this disease. In particular, data for West African countries are extremely scarce. Here, we took advantage of an extensive survey of urban rodents in Niamey, Niger, in order to look for rodent-borne pathogenic[i] Leptospira[/i] species presence and distribution across the city. To do so, we used high throughput bacterial 16S-based metabarcoding, [i]lipL32[/i] gene-targeting RT-PCR, rrs gene sequencing and VNTR typing as well as GIS-based multivariate spatial analysis. Our results show that leptospires seem absent from the core city where usual [i]Leptospira[/i] reservoir rodent species (namely [i]R. rattus[/i] and [i]M. natalensis[/i]) are yet abundant. On the contrary, [i]L. kirschneri[/i] was detected in [i]Arvicanthis niloticus[/i] and [i]Cricetomys gambianus[/i], two rodent species that are restricted to irrigated cultures within the city. Moreover, the VNTR profiles showed that rodent-borne leptospires in Niamey belong to previously undescribed serovars. Altogether, our study points towards the importance of market gardening in maintain and circulation of leptospirosis within Sahelian cities. In Africa, irrigated urban agriculture constitutes a pivotal source of food supply, especially in the context of the ongoing extensive urbanization of the continent. With this in mind, we speculate that leptospirosis may represent a zoonotic disease of concern also in arid regions that would deserve to be more rigorously surveyed, especially in urban agricultural settings