Where do people want to become entrepreneurs? Mapping entrepreneurship potential across Great Britain

Promoting entrepreneurial activities is crucial for regions to facilitate innovation and economic development. Yet, becoming an entrepreneur is not aspired by all people, and regions may differ considerably in their entrepreneurship potential. Assessing and providing accurate estimates of the entrepreneurship potential across fine-grained spatial scales is thus crucial to inform regional policymakers, but it still remains a major challenge due to data availability. Here we used the lab data set from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) covering 368,364 individuals and providing high-resolution data about their residences to map the entrepreneurship potential across 9271 postcode sectors in Great Britain. We used a novel mapping approach that relies on a spatial smoothing function based on distance weights to utilize the most fine-grained spatial level available in the data. Our detailed maps show substantial difference in entrepreneurship potential across postcode sectors in Great Britain and within the largest cities: London, Birmingham and Manchester

Regional Cultures and the Psychological Geography of Switzerland: Person-Environment-Fit in Personality Predicts Subjective Wellbeing.

The present study extended traditional nation-based research on person-culture-fit to the regional level. First, we examined the geographical distribution of Big Five personality traits in Switzerland. Across the 26 Swiss cantons, unique patterns were observed for all traits. For Extraversion and Neuroticism clear language divides emerged between the French- and Italian-speaking South-West vs. the German-speaking North-East. Second, multilevel modeling demonstrated that person-environment-fit in Big Five, composed of elevation (i.e., mean differences between individual profile and cantonal profile), scatter (differences in mean variances) and shape (Pearson correlations between individual and cantonal profiles across all traits; Furr, 2008, 2010), predicted the development of subjective wellbeing (i.e., life satisfaction, satisfaction with personal relationships, positive affect, negative affect) over a period of 4 years. Unexpectedly, while the effects of shape were in line with the person-environment-fit hypothesis (better fit predicted higher subjective wellbeing), the effects of scatter showed the opposite pattern, while null findings were observed for elevation. Across a series of robustness checks, the patterns for shape and elevation were consistently replicated. While that was mostly the case for scatter as well, the effects of scatter appeared to be somewhat less robust and more sensitive to the specific way fit was modeled when predicting certain outcomes (negative affect, positive affect). Distinguishing between supplementary and complementary fit may help to reconcile these findings and future research should explore whether and if so under which conditions these concepts may be applicable to the respective facets of person-culture-fit

Business Analyse 2017 : eine empirische Untersuchung im deutschsprachigen Raum und Fallbeispiele aus Unternehmen

Der Sammelband Business Analyse 2017 stellt anhand von Befragungsergebnissen und Fallbeispielen die Funktionen und Rollen von Business-Analysten dar

Temperature-dependent benefits of bacterial exposure in embryonic development of Daphnia magna resting eggs

The environments in which animals develop and evolve are profoundly shaped by bacteria, which affect animals both indirectly through their role in biogeochemical processes and directly through antagonistic or beneficial interactions. The outcomes of these activities can differ according to environmental context. In a series of laboratory experiments with diapausing eggs of the water flea Daphnia magna, we manipulated two environmental parameters, temperature and presence of bacteria, and examined their effect on development. At elevated temperatures (≥ 26 °C), resting eggs developing without live bacteria had reduced hatching success and correspondingly higher rates of severe morphological abnormalities compared with eggs with bacteria in their environment. The beneficial effect of bacteria was strongly reduced at 20 °C. Neither temperature nor the presence of bacteria affected directly developing parthenogenetic eggs. The mechanistic basis of this effect of bacteria on development is unclear, but these results highlight the complex interplay of biotic and abiotic factors influencing animal development after diapause

Religious people only live longer in religious cultural contexts: A gravestone analysis.

Religious people live longer than non-religious people according to a staple of social science research. Yet, are those longevity benefits an inherent feature of religiosity? To find out, we coded gravestone inscriptions and imagery in order to assess the religiosity and longevity of 6,400 deceased people from religious and non-religious U.S. counties. We show that in religious cultural contexts, religious people lived 2.2 years longer than did non-religious people. In non-religious cultural contexts, however, religiosity conferred no such longevity benefits. Evidently, a longer life is not an inherent feature of religiosity. Instead, religious people only live longer in religious cultural contexts where religiosity is valued. Our study answers a fundamental question on the nature of religiosity and showcases the scientific potential of gravestone analyses

Big data methods, social media, and the psychology of entrepreneurial regions: capturing cross-county personality traits and their impact on entrepreneurship in the USA

There is increasing interest in the potential of artificial intelligence and Big Data (e.g., generated via social media) to help understand economic outcomes. But can artificial intelligence models based on publicly available Big Data identify geographical differences in entrepreneurial personality or culture? We use a machine learning model based on 1.5 billion tweets by 5.25 million users to estimate the Big Five personality traits and an entrepreneurial personality profile for 1,772 U.S. counties. The Twitter-based personality estimates show substantial relationships to county-level entrepreneurship activity, accounting for 20% (entrepreneurial personality profile) and 32% (Big Five traits) of the variance in local entrepreneurship, even when controlling for other factors that affect entrepreneurship. Whereas more research is clearly needed, our findings have initial implications for research and practice concerned with entrepreneurial regions and eco-systems, and regional economic outcomes interacting with local culture. The results suggest, for example, that social media datasets and artificial intelligence methods have the potential to deliver comparable information on the personality and culture of regions than studies based on millions of questionnaire-based personality tests

Stickstoff- und Schwefelversorgung von Rapsbeständen im Ökologischen Landbau

In this study results of 3 experimental years, 4 locations (2009-2011) and additionally 12 fields in northern and eastern Germany (only in 2011) are presented with regard to the nitrogen and sulphur status of oil seed rape. The nitrogen and sulphur level was often not sufficient, so that the fertilisation regimes have to be optimised

Model-guided metabolic engineering of Pseudomonas taiwanensis VLB120 for the production of methyl ketones

Aliphatic methyl ketones are discussed as promising novel diesel blendstocks because of their favorable cetane numbers. To achieve sustainable production of these compounds, bio-based production in engineered microbes is followed and successful synthesis in Escherichia coli1,2,3 and Pseudomonas putida4 has recently been shown. In this presentation, we report on the metabolic engineering of Pseudomonas taiwanensis VLB1205 for the production of saturated and monounsaturated medium chain methyl ketones (C11, C13, C15, C17). Major arguments for the use of this microbe are its metabolic versatility, high tolerance of organic solvents5 and ease of cultivation. P. taiwanensis VLB120 can grow on various carbon sources besides glucose such as glycerol, an important by-product of biodiesel production, as well as on major components of biomass hydrolysate such as xylose, organic acids and aromatic compounds, e.g., 4-hydroxybenzoate4. Further, its superior redox cofactor regeneration capability6 might benefit the synthesis of the reduced, aliphatic target compounds. The transformation of P. taiwanensis VLB120 into a microbial cell factory for methyl ketone production was achieved by: (i) overproduction of the fatty acyl-CoA synthetase FadB to increase acyl-CoA availability, (ii) oxidation of acyl-CoA to a trans-2-enoyl-CoA by a heterologously expressed acyl-CoA oxidase from Micrococcus luteus, (iii) conversion of this intermediate to β-hydroxyacyl-CoA and further oxidation to a β -ketoacyl-CoA by overexpression of the native fadB gene, (iv) increased thioesterase activity by overexpression of fadM to form free β -keto acids, which spontaneously decarboxylate to methyl ketones. The 1st generation production strain yielded 550 mg L-1aq methyl ketones in a batch fermentation with in situ product extraction into a second organic layer of n-decane. Further strain optimization was guided by metabolic modeling, which suggested an additional deletion of the acyl-CoA thioesterase II (tesB). TesB hydrolyzes acyl-CoA to free fatty acids, hence, reverses the desired FadD reaction. In a simple batch fermentation, the proposed gene deletion resulted in a 2.5-fold increased product titer of 1.4 g L-1aq while 9.4 g L-1aq were reached in fed-batch cultivations. Additional, successful strategies tested in parallel were the deletion of the pha operon, responsible for polyhydroxyalkanoate synthesis and deletion of a fadA homologue in the 1st generation production strain, with the later resulting in an even 4-fold improvement of the product titer. While the production of 9.4 g L-1aq is already the highest reported titer of recombinantly produced methyl ketones so far, consolidation of all successfully tested engineering strategies holds great promise to significantly boost methyl ketone production in P. taiwanensis VLB120 to even higher titers. Overall, the results of this study underline the high potential of P. taiwanensis VLB120 for the production of methyl ketones and highlight model-guided metabolic engineering as a means to rationalize and accelerate strain optimization efforts. 1Dong et al. 2018: doi:10.1101/496497 2Goh et al. 2012: doi: 10.1128/AEM.06785-11 3Goh et al. 2014: doi: 10.1016/j.ymben.2014.09.003. 4Goh et al. 2018: doi: 10.1002/bit.26558. 5Rühl et al. 2009: doi: 10.1128/AEM.00225-09 6Blank et al. 2008: doi: 10.1111/j.1742-4658.2008.06648.x

Correction: Performance of risk prediction scores for cardiovascular mortality in older persons: External validation of the SCORE OP and appraisal

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0231097.