Nurturing small and medium sized enterprises in Europe

Tourism is one of the world’s major industries responsible for economic growth, foreign exchange earnings, employment opportunities and regional balances in individual countries and across regions. This industry generates over 5% of the European Union (EU) gross domestic product and has strong linkages with other economic sectors. In fact, tourism triggers infrastructural developments that are related to the industry such as airports, seaports, parks, roads and rails. Within the EU alone, the tourism sector consists of about 1.8 million businesses. Most of these tourism businesses are small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that employ 5.2% of the total European workforce that translates to approximately 9.7 million jobs, with a significant proportion of young people (EU, 2010). This chapter considers relevant academic literature that differentiates SMEs from their larger counterparts. It maintains that small businesses are often constrained by their size and limited resources. Arguably, the accessibility to finance is one of the most critical factors for the SMEs’ inception and growth. These entities are often viewed by financial institutions as relatively risky when compared to enterprises from other industries. Therefore, this chapter contends that tourism SMEs may easily find themselves in an ‘equity gap’ where it may prove very difficult to raise capital for further investment. Consequently, national governments and other regulatory stakeholders are increasingly stepping in to support micro and small enterprises in many contexts. In this light, the European Union (EU) has reaffirmed its commitment for SMEs. As a matter of fact, the EU has drafted the ‘Small Business Act’ in 2008 and refined it again in 2011. The EU’s commitment is quite evident from their frequent calls for research and training schemes in the subject areas of “SMEs” and “tourism”; where grants are frequently issued under ‘Marie Curie’ and ‘Cordis FP7’ programmes. Therefore, this chapter identifies specific policies and initiatives that are aimed at fostering a climate for job creation and competitiveness for SMEs in Europe. By the end of the chapter you should be able to: • Define small and medium sized enterprises in the European Union context; • Distinguish the differences between small and medium sized enterprises and large firms; • Learn about the European Union measures that are currently supporting the financing needs of small and medium sized enterprises; • Be knowledgeable of crowd-funding as an alternative form of financing.peer-reviewe

Correlation, collocation and cohesion : A corpus-based critical analysis of violent jihadist discourse

This article explores the language of violent jihad, focussing upon lexis encoding concepts from Islam. Through the use of correlation statistics, this article demonstrates that the words encoding such concepts distribute in dependent relationships across different types of texts. The correlation between the words cannot be simply explained in terms of collocation; rather, the correlation is evidence of other forms of cohesion at work in the texts. The variation in patterns of cohesion across a spectrum of texts from those advocating violence to those which do not promote violence demonstrates how these concepts are contested and redefined by violent jihadists and the role that collocation and other forms of cohesion can play in the process. This article concludes that the terms, and their redefinition, are a key part of the symbolic capital used by groups to create identities which licence violence

Identity in research infrastructure and scientific communication: Report from the 1st IRISC workshop, Helsinki Sep 12-13, 2011

Motivation for the IRISC workshop came from the observation that identity and digital identification are increasingly important factors in modern scientific research, especially with the now near-ubiquitous use of the Internet as a global medium for dissemination and debate of scientific knowledge and data, and as a platform for scientific collaborations and large-scale e-science activities.

The 1 1/2 day IRISC2011 workshop sought to explore a series of interrelated topics under two main themes: i) unambiguously identifying authors/creators & attributing their scholarly works, and ii) individual identification and access management in the context of identity federations. Specific aims of the workshop included:

• Raising overall awareness of key technical and non-technical challenges, opportunities and developments.
• Facilitating a dialogue, cross-pollination of ideas, collaboration and coordination between diverse – and largely unconnected – communities.
• Identifying & discussing existing/emerging technologies, best practices and requirements for researcher identification.

This report provides background information on key identification-related concepts & projects, describes workshop proceedings and summarizes key workshop findings

Lower rate of genomic variation identified in the trans-membrane domain of monoamine sub-class of Human G-Protein Coupled Receptors: The Human GPCR-DB Database

BACKGROUND: We have surveyed, compiled and annotated nucleotide variations in 338 human 7-transmembrane receptors (G-protein coupled receptors). In a sample of 32 chromosomes from a Nordic population, we attempted to determine the allele frequencies of 80 non-synonymous SNPs, and found 20 novel polymorphic markers. GPCR receptors of physiological and clinical importance were prioritized for statistical analysis. Natural variation and rare mutation information were merged and presented online in the Human GPCR-DB database . RESULTS: The average number of SNPs per 1000 bases of exonic sequence was found to be twice the average number of SNPs per Kilobase of intronic regions (2.2 versus 1.0). Of the 338 genes, 111 were single exon genes, that is, were intronless. The average number of exonic-SNPs per single-exon gene was 3.5 (n = 395) while that for multi-exon genes was 0.8 (n = 1176). The average number of variations within the different protein domain (N-terminus, internal- and external-loops, trans-membrane region, C-terminus) indicates a lower rate of variation in the trans-membrane region of Monoamine GPCRs, as compared to Chemokine- and Peptide-receptor sub-classes of GPCRs. CONCLUSIONS: Single-exon GPCRs on average have approximately three times the number of SNPs as compared to GPCRs with introns. Among various functional classes of GPCRs, Monoamine GPRCs have lower number of natural variations within the trans-membrane domain indicating evolutionary selection against non-synonymous changes within the membrane-localizing domain of this sub-class of GPCRs

Flow Measurement Using Electron Beam Flourescence

Low density, high-speed flows are of interest to many research areas including, spacecraft thrusters, hypersonic vehicle control, and atmospheric re-entry studies. Measurement of low-density gas flows by traditional methods such as Schlieren Photography or Particle Image Velocimetry is often not possible. In order to yield new information about gas behavior at low densities the technique of electron beam fluorescence is being re-evaluated. By recreating previous electron beam fluorescence setups used to measure density, the experiment operating parameters including beam strength and density ranges are assessed and a foundation can be built for further experimentation. Comparing intensity plots of imaged flows against expected luminosity of fluoresced gases provides correlation data to assess necessary experiment conditions. Future work includes, using spectroscopy to determine gas density, composition, velocity and temperature

Corpus linguistics for indexing

This methodological paper demonstrates how methods from corpus linguistics – a collection of computer-assisted approaches to the analysis of large volumes of text – can be used in the creation of indexes. We begin this article by introducing corpus linguistics, including its main principles and advantages, before demonstrating how corpus methods can be used by indexers, providing a case study in which we create an index for an academic journal article using the established corpus techniques of frequency, keywords, collocation and concordance. This case study shows how when combined with human input and intuition, corpus linguistics methods can provide indexers with new perspectives on the texts they are working on, all the while increasing the systematicity, replicability and objectivity of the indexing process itself

European Bat Lyssavirus Type 2 RNA in Myotis daubentonii

Organ distribution of European bat lyssavirus type 2 viral RNA in its reservoir host, Myotis daubentonii (Daubenton's bat), was measured with a novel quantitative reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction assay. High levels of genomic RNA were found in the brain and were also detectable in the tongue, bladder, and stomach