202 research outputs found
Essays on the Effects of Introducing Thresholds for Mandatory Audits in a Fully Regulated Audit Market for Private Limited Liability Firms
Introduction to Provisioning Services
Food provisioning is a prominent feature of marine bivalve production, applicable worldwide since ancient times. Easy accessibility of this food source and high nutritional value make bivalves a possible driver in human evolution. In this section bivalve meat production is addressed, as well as other provisioning services including pearls and bio-active compounds. In both bivalve aquaculture and fisheries, harvest and production for meat provisioning must be balanced against carrying capacity and its implications for other services including water quality maintenance and habitat structure. Provisioning of meat through aquaculture can be improved via hatchery and breeding advances, a necessity in the changing ocean climate.publishedVersio
Comparing career preferences of regionally oriented and internationally oriented students – A mixed methods study
The aim of the study is to gain an insight into the preferences of the future workforce in the region. Through focus group interviews and a survey, we examine the most important factor for students when reflecting upon future workplaces and whether there are differences in these in terms of gender and regionally oriented and internationally oriented students. The findings have important implications for recruitment in regions that are facing issues in terms of brain drain.publishedVersionThis work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Introduction to Regulating Services
Bivalves are foundation species with important regulating functions in the ecosystem. This is due to their function as filter feeders, their capacity to extract particles, to regenerate as well as store nutrients and – for the epibenthic bivalves –, their capacity to form hard structures. These services can be applied in many ways as is exemplified in this section. It seems likely that more applicable functions will emerge from the studies reviewed in this section.publishedVersio
Regulating Services of Bivalve Molluscs in the Context of the Carbon Cycle and Implications for Ecosystem Valuation
The role of marine bivalves in the CO2 cycle has been commonly evaluated as the balance between respiration, shell calcium carbonate sequestration, and CO2 release during biogenic calcification; however, this individual-based approach neglects important ecosystem interactions that occur at the population level, e.g. the interaction with phytoplankton populations and benthic-pelagic coupling, which in turn can significantly alter the CO2 cycle. Therefore, an ecosystem approach that accounts for the trophic interactions of bivalves, including the role of dissolved and particulate organic and inorganic carbon cycling, is needed to provide a rigorous assessment of the role of bivalves as a potential sink of CO2. Conversely, the discussion about this potential role needs to be framed in the context of non-harvested vs. harvested populations, given that harvesting represents a net extraction of matter from the ocean. Accordingly, this chapter describes the main processes that affect CO2 cycling and discuss the role of non-harvested and harvested bivalves in the context of sequestering carbon. A budget for deep-fjord waters is presented as a case study.publishedVersio
The Synergy and Cycle Values in Regional Innovation Systems: The Case of Norway
The innovation capacity of a system can be measured as the synergy in interactions among its parts. Synergy can be considered as a consequence of negative entropies among three parts of the system. We analyze the development of synergy value in the Norwegian innovation system in terms of mutual information among geographical, sectorial, and size distributions of firms. We use three different techniques for the evaluation of the evolution of synergy over time: rescaled range analysis, DFT, and geographical synergy decomposition. The data was provided by Statistics Norway for all Norwegian firms registered in the database between 2002 and 2014. The results suggest that the synergy at the level of both the country and its seven regions show non-chaotic oscillatory behavior which resonates in a set of natural frequencies. The finding of a set of frequencies implies a complex Triple-Helix structure, composed of many elementary triple helices, which can be theorized in terms of a fractal TH manifold.publishedVersionOpen Access, CC-B
Entrepreneurship education as an arena for career reflection: the shift of students' career preferences after a business planning course
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of entrepreneurship education (EE) in the form of a business planning course on students' career intentions and preferences. While there is extensive research in which traditional survey scales have been applied to study students' entrepreneurial intentions, this study takes a novel approach by extending the construct of entrepreneurial intention to include preferences for intrapreneurship and team entrepreneurship. Furthermore, the use of conjoint analysis captures students' unconscious decision-making processes when presented with different career opportunity scenarios, thereby overcoming many of the limitations of self-reported survey measures.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses a quasi-experimental design with a novel application of conjoint analysis in EE research. A two-part survey combining a traditional questionnaire with conjoint analysis was distributed to students enrolled in a business planning course at two campuses of a Norwegian university, resulting in 99 matched pre- and post-test responses.
Findings
Two main findings arise from the study. First, there is a significant decrease in entrepreneurial intention among students in the EE course. Second, the conjoint analysis contributes to a better understanding of this decrease by illustrating how students shift their career preferences from entrepreneurship to employment during the EE course. This suggests that EE provides a space for students' career reflections where they can explore, commit to and reconsider entrepreneurship as a career.
Research limitations/implications
A limitation of the study is that it focuses on a small sample of undergraduate students from two campus locations in Norway. Thus, further investigation is still necessary to establish whether the findings are valid in other contexts. The research has implications for higher educational institutions, policymakers and researchers in the field of EE.
Practical implications
The study contributes with a novel perspective on EE as a trigger for career reflection, a perspective that is important for educators teaching EE courses, as well as for higher education institutions who decide to implement EE in study programmes.
Originality/value
By focusing on the development of students' career preferences through conjoint analysis, the study expands knowledge on the impact of EE on students' careers, while also accentuating the value of the application of conjoint analysis in research on EE.acceptedVersion© 2020. This is the authors' accepted and refereed manuscript to the article. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ET-08-2019-018
Rapid water temperature variations at the northern shelf of the Yellow Sea
During summer, there is great spatial variability in bottom water temperature on the northern shelf of the Yellow Sea. This variability is associated with a thermal front along the shelf. Oscillatory currents from semidiurnal and fortnightly period tides transport water masses laterally, resulting in oscillations of bottom water temperature at fixed positions, sometimes with large amplitudes. Temperature variations, as demonstrated in the present work, can cause damage to bottom-cultured scallops. In particular, in the scallop sea ranching area near Zhangzidao Island, such oscillations are evident in late summer. We constructed a spatial index of aggregated temperature variability from current model results identifying how temporal variability during the summer period varies in space. This information can be useful both in selecting favorable ranching areas and designing laboratory stress experiments on aquaculture candidate species.publishedVersio
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