215 research outputs found
Social-ecological analysis of climate induced changes in biodiversity – outline of a research concept
No full textThe interactions of changes in climate and biodiversity with societal actions, structures and processes are a priority topic within the international scientific debate – and thus, a relevant subject matter for BiKF’s work. This paper outlines a concept for transdisciplinary research within BiKF. It focuses on the analysis of social-ecological systems supporting society with biodiversity driven ecosystem services. Such research is considering different issues: defining sustainable societal adaptations to climate induced biodiversity changes; permitting adequate understanding of the social-ecological reproduction of ecosystem functions, including their conservation and restoration; analysing the societal values and socio-economic utilisation of ecosystem services. Gaining knowledge in these areas provides an improved basis for decision-making in biodiversity and resource management
Creating alternative electronic trading mechanisms in time-sensitive transaction markets.
No full textFairly efficient or efficiently fair: success factors and constraints of payment and reward schemes for environmental services in Asia
No full text Payment for environmental service (PES) is strictly defined as a market-based environmental policy instrument to achieve environmental protection in the most efficient way. However, an increasing body of literature shows that the prescriptive conceptualization of PES cannot be easily generalized and implemented in practice and the commodification of ecosystem services is problematic. To investigate the underlying causes, this PhD study combines a quantitative and qualitative research approach using case studies in Indonesia, the Philippines and Nepal. The empirical observations on emerging PES-mechanisms in the Asian case studies show that interdependency of fairness and efficiency should be the main consideration in designing and implementing a PES scheme in developing countries. Neither fairness nor efficiency alone should be the primary aim but an intermediate PES that is “fairly efficient and efficiently fair” may bridge the gap between PES theory and the practical implementation of PES to increase ES provision and improve livelihoods. </p
ICMS-ecológico um instrumento econômico de apoio à sustentabilidade
No full textTese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia de Produção.A expansão populacional, aliada ao atual modelo de desenvolvimento, é considerada uma das principais causas da crescente pressão que a sociedade exerce sobre os recursos naturais. Buscando garantir a proteção de importantes funções ambientais, essenciais à manutenção da vida na Terra, a humanidade tem criado espaços especialmente protegidos: as unidades de conservação. Elas são vitais para a nossa sustentabilidade, mas impedem que municipalidades gerem recursos fiscais para a sua sobrevivência. Este aspecto dicotômico influencia na forma como a sociedade encara tais unidades; em muitos casos observa-se um estado de hostilidade, entre os dois entes. Para contornar este obstáculo foi proposto um pagamento por serviços ambientais # PSAs - , o ICMS ECOLÓGICO. O presente trabalho tem por objetivo estabelecer o impacto gerado pela inserção do critério ecológico na consolidação do índice de rateio de ICMS para os municípios que possuem unidades de conservação em seus territórios, com vistas a compensá-los dos prejuízos fiscais derivados da observância da lei de preservação ambiental. Para tal, foi concebida a Avaliação de Sustentabilidade de Unidades de Conservação # Asuc -, que busca avaliar a sustentabilidade de uma UC, com base no bemestar de seus ecossistemas e da sociedade que com ela mantém uma interface. A pesquisa constitui um estudo multicaso, com aplicação em oito municipalidades constituintes do Parque Estadual da Serra do Tabuleiro. Os resultados poderão servir como base para determinar a cota-parte de ICMS dos municípios. A avaliação se deu sob a ótica de três cenários diferentes. Estes resultados atenderam aos objetivos da pesquisa e reforçaram o entendimento de que as unidades de conservação fornecem à sociedade serviços ambientais difusos, ficando demonstrado que a inserção destes serviços nas contas das municipalidades aumenta seu volume de receita tributária
De shunt door het foramen ovale onder beademingsomstandigheden
No full textDe kennis over de fysiologie van de circulatie door het hart en de grote vaten (centrale
circulatie), in de periode voor en na de geboorte is voor een groot deel verkregen uit
dierexperimenteel werk van Dawes en medewerkers (1953, 1954, 1955a, l955b), Deze
proeven zijn later met andere meetmethoden bij chronisch geïnstrumenteerde lammeren
herhaald en bevestigd (Assali et al., 1965: Heymann et al, 1973), In dit hoofdstuk
worden die aspecten van de foetale en neonatale circulatie beschreven die van belang
zijn voor een goed begrip van de vraagstelling van het eigen onderzoek
Ralph Erskine
No full textAt a superb location on the Baltic coast near Lisön, Ralph Erskine designed a vacation home in 1955 that also had to be suitable for year-round living. The client, Engström, was the owner of a steel construction company, and he collaborated with Erskine on developing the self-supporting dome construction of the house. The dome is comprised of 16 prefabricated segments of 3-mm-thick steel. It was meant to serve as a prototype for large-scale factory production, which was never realized. The ideas behind it show parallels with Buckminster Fuller’s Wichita Dymaxion House, the production of which also remained limited to a single prototype. For both houses, new techniques that had been developed in the defence and aerospace industries were applied in order to come up with affordable, prefabricated homes that could be placed in different locations.
The dome construction of the Engström house offers the biggest possible interior volume with the smallest exterior surface area. During the winter, the dome is completely covered with snow, which, just like with an igloo, provides good insulation for the interior space. Small window openings are placed on the steel walls like glass ‘gun turrets’, which during the winter poke through the layer of snow. The steel dome stands on a concrete platform that extends from the house and is stepped down towards the water. Inside, the space under the dome is kept as open as possible; the bedrooms and a bathroom are pushed back against the outer wall as separate volumes. The ceilings of these spaces form accessible platforms, connected with one another by means of a walkway around the open centre of the house. A large stove stands in the open centre; its stovepipe sticks right through the top of the 5.5-m-high dome. The interior of the dome is finished with sheet material, painted white, on top of a layer of insulation; the floors are covered with teakwood planks. The dome’s exterior is painted blue, in harmony with the surrounding rocky islands.
The ideas developed for the house can be found on a much larger scale in Erskine’s studies for Arctic architecture, which he presented at th e last CIAM conference in Otterlo in 1959. His drawings of building complexes under large domes on terraced slopes are in fact an enlargement of the Engström house, which with its system of open and closed spaces on different levels beneath an overall dome makes a clear distinction between collective and more private living spaces. In the plans for an Arctic city, this idea was further enlarged upon as a city with buildings and public spaces protected from the bitter cold by a colossal spherical vault.Op een prachtige locatie aan de Baltische kust bij Lisön ontwierp Ralph Erskine in 1955 een vakantiewoning die ook geschikt moest zijn voor permanente bewoning. Opdrachtgever Engström was eigenaar van een staalconstructiebedrijf en ontwikkelde samen met Erskine de zelfdragende koepelconstructie van het huis. De koepel is samengesteld uit 16 geprefabriceerde segmenten van 3 mm dik staal. Het was gedacht als prototype voor een (nooit tot uitvoering gekomen) grootschalige fabrieksmatige productie. De achterliggende ideeën vertonen parallellen met Buckminster Fuller’s Wichita Dymaxion House, waarvan de productie ook beperkt bleef tot een enkel prototype. Voor beide huizen werden nieuwe technieken toegepast, ontwikkeld in de defensie- en vliegtuigindustrie, om tot betaalbare, geprefabriceerde woningen te komen die op verschillende locaties geplaatst konden worden.
De koepelconstructie van het Engström-huis biedt een zo groot mogelijk binnenvolume bij een minimaal buitenoppervlak. Gedurende de winter is de koepel geheel bedekt door sneeuw waardoor, net als in een iglo, een goede isolatie van de binnenruimte bereikt wordt. Kleine raamopeningen zijn als glazen ‘geschutskoepels’ op de stalen wanden geplaatst en prikken ’s winters door de sneeuwlaag. De stalen koepel staat op een betonnen platform dat terrasgewijs aftrapt naar het water. De ruimte onder de koepel is zo open mogelijk gehouden; slaapkamers en een badkamer zijn op de begane grond als losse volumes tegen de buitenwand geschoven. De plafonds van deze ruimten vormen begaanbare platforms die, door middel van een omloop, rond het open midden van het huis met elkaar verbonden zijn. Een grote haard staat in het open midden, het schoorsteenkanaal steekt precies door de top van de 5,5 m hoge koepel. De binnenzijde van de koepel is afgewerkt met witgeschilderd plaatmateriaal op een laag isolatie, de vloeren zijn met teakhouten delen belegd. De buitenzijde van de koepel is blauw geschilderd, in harmonie met de omringende rotseilandjes.
De voor het huis ontwikkelde ideeën zijn op veel grotere schaal terug te vinden in Erskine’s studies voor arctische architectuur, die hij in 1959 op uitnodiging van Team 10 tijdens het CIAM-congres in Otterlo presenteerde. Zijn tekeningen van gebouwencomplexen onder grote koepels op tot terrassen uitgebouwde hellingen zijn in feite een uitvergroting van het Engström-huis. Door het systeem van open en afgesloten ruimten op verschillende niveaus onder een doorgaand koepeldak, is er in het Engström-huis een helder onderscheid tussen collectieve en meer private woonruimten. In de plannen voor een arctische stad is dit idee uitvergroot naar een stad met gebouwen en publieke ruimten die beschermd worden tegen de bittere koude door een kolossaal koepelgewelf
Recognizing costs of maintenance by health care organisations
No full textDit artikel beschrijft de uitkomsten van het onderzoek naar de verwerkingswijze van kosten van groot onderhoud en naar de verwerking van wijzigingen van de grondslagen op dit gebied die als gevolg van wijzigingen in de Richtlijnen voor de jaarverslaggeving zijn doorgevoerd. Het onderzoek richt zich op jaarrekeningen over het boekjaar 2019 van 100 zorginstellingen. Uit het onderzoek blijkt dat steeds meer zorginstellingen kosten van groot onderhoud verwerken volgens de componentenbenadering. Uit het onderzoek blijkt verder dat slechts de helft van de zorginstellingen die een stelselwijziging heeft doorgevoerd van de onderhoudsvoorziening naar de componentenbenadering, deze stelselwijziging juist heeft verwerkt. Tot slot blijkt dat zorginstellingen de toelichtingen van de stelselwijzigingen kunnen verbeteren. Hiertoe worden ook enkele goede voorbeelden uit jaarrekeningen (best practices) besproken en geven we aanbevelingen in de slotparagraaf van deze bijdrage
History of coronavirus naming during the three zoonotic outbreaks in relation to virus taxonomy and diseases caused by these viruses. According to the current international classification of diseases49, MERS and SARS are classified as 1D64 and 1D65, respectively. in The species Severe acute respiratory syndromerelated coronavirus: classifying 2019-nCoV and naming it SARS-CoV-2
No full textHistory of coronavirus naming during the three zoonotic outbreaks in relation to virus taxonomy and diseases caused by these viruses. According to the current international classification of diseases49, MERS and SARS are classified as 1D64 and 1D65, respectively.Published as part of Gorbalenya, Alexander E., Baker, Susan C., Baric, Ralph S., de Groot, Raoul J., Drosten, Christian, Gulyaeva, Anastasia A., Haagmans, Bart L., Lauber, Chris, Leontovich, Andrey M., Neuman, Benjamin W., Penzar, Dmitry, Perlman, Stanley, Poon, Leo L. M., Samborskiy, Dmitry V., Sidorov, Igor A., Sola, Isabel & Ziebuhr, John, 2020, The species Severe acute respiratory syndromerelated coronavirus: classifying 2019-nCoV and naming it SARS-CoV-2, pp. 536-544 in Nature Microbiology 5 on page 537, DOI: 10.1038/s41564-020-0695-z, http://zenodo.org/record/372583
Skew compact semigroups
No full textSkew compact spaces are the best behaving generalization of compact Hausdorff spaces to non-Hausdorff spaces. They are those (X ; τ ) such that there is another topology τ* on X for which τ V τ* is compact and (X; τ ; τ*) is pairwise Hausdorff; under these conditions, τ uniquely determines τ *, and (X; τ*) is also skew compact. Much of the theory of compact T2 semigroups extends to this wider class. We show:
A continuous skew compact semigroup is a semigroup with skew compact topology τ, such that the semigroup operation is continuous τ2→ τ. Each of these contains a unique minimal ideal which is an upper set with respect to the specialization order.
A skew compact semigroup which is a continuous semigroup with respect to both topologies is called a de Groot semigroup. Given one of these, we show:
It is a compact Hausdorff group if either the operation is cancellative, or there is a unique idempotent and S2 = S.
Its topology arises from its subinvariant quasimetrics.
Each *-closed ideal ≠ S is contained in a proper open ideal
Environmental Concern and the theory of planned behaviour: Identifying the green consumer.
No full textSince the 1980's environmentalism has developed into a major worldwide movement with concern for the environment having grown exponentially over the last two decades. With this change in thinking there have been corresponding shifts in consumer attitudes with many stating they are willing to pay more for eco-labelled products and services. With the increase in consumer demands on protection of the environment and businesses becoming aware of their responsibility towards the objective of sustainability, retailers and manufacturers have moved beyond simply addressing environmental regulatory issues and are introducing alternative products that could be classified as ecofriendly. However, at present, businesses find it difficult to predict consumers' reaction towards these products with a degree of accuracy that is necessary to enable the development of new targeting and segmenting strategies. This presumably has contributed towards several failures in green products development (D'Souza et al, 2007). This study tested whether the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB; Ajzen, 1991) explains consumers' intention to purchase eco-friendly products (EFPs). The researcher extended the TPB by including environmental concern in the model. The aim is to test whether this construct directly influences people's attitudes towards the purchase of these products. Furthermore, the study investigates whether consumers' search for information on EFPs and whether their price/quality sensitivity may also affect their intention to purchase these products. The respondent base is then divided by means of demographic segmentation in order to determine whether attitudes towards and intention to purchase EFPs differ between age, income and gender groups. A survey was conducted among 100 customers of a well-known retailer, known for its selection of EFPs. The data obtained was analysed using SPSS software. The results found the TPB to be valid within an environmentally responsible purchase decision framework and that environmental concern does influence consumer attitudes towards the purchase of EFPs. This is in line with the findings of De Groot & Steg (2007) and Bamberg (2003) which also found that ii environmental concern should not be seen as a direct determinant of behaviour, but an important indirect one. The emphasis should thus be on increasing consumers' level of environmental concern and then identify those consumers with favourable attitudes towards EFPs, rather than identify green consumers solely on the basis of environmental concern. Furthermore, the study found that consumers' search for information and trust in product labelling affect their intention to purchase these products. This study suggests that the consumer ought to be educated on the differences between EFPs and regular products by means of advertising and label information. It also emphasises the need for claims made about EFPs to be substantiated. With regards to price and quality sensitivity, the results show that both these constructs affect consumers' attitudes towards and intention to purchase EFPs. Consumers will not readily buy an EFP if it is somewhat more expensive than a regular product and they are even less likely to purchase such a product if it does not meet the same quality standards. With regards to demographic segmentation, the results show that women are more environmentally concerned than men and also have a greater intention to purchase EFPs in future. There is no difference between age groups in terms of their attitudes and intention to purchase EFPs but those aged 41-60 have greater volitional control over the purchase of these products as they are better able to afford them. Similarly, income groups show no difference in attitudes and intention but higher incomes groups have greater volitional control over the purchase of EFPs. Nevertheless, there was no difference found between age and income groups in terms of their price sensitivity. This brings into question the effectiveness of the premium pricing strategy currently employed by many manufacturers of EFPs as it seems that people with higher incomes, even though they are better able to afford EFPs, are not more willing to purchase these products if priced higher than regular products
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