Opportunities for magnetospheric research using EISCAT/ESR and CLUSTER

The four Cluster spacecraft offer a unique opportunity to study structure and dynamics in the magnetosphere and we discuss four general ways in which ground-based remote-sensing observations of the ionosphere can be used to support the in-situ measurements. The ionosphere over the Svalbard islands will be studied in particular detail, not only by the ESR and EISCAT incoherent scatter radars, but also by optical instruments, magnetometers, imaging riometers and the CUTLASS bistatic HF radar. We present an on-line procedure to plan coordinated measurements by the Cluster spacecraft with these combined ground-based systems. We illustrate the philosophy of the method, using two important examples of the many possible configurations between the Cluster satellites and the ground-based instruments.

The greening of Arabia: multiple opportunities for human occupation of the Arabian peninsula during the Late Pleistocene inferred from an ensemble of climate model simulations

Climate models are potentially useful tools for addressing human dispersals and demographic change. The Arabian Peninsula is becoming increasingly significant in the story of human dispersals out of Africa during the Late Pleistocene. Although characterised largely by arid environments today, emerging climate records indicate that the peninsula was wetter many times in the past, suggesting that the region may have been inhabited considerably more than hitherto thought. Explaining the origins and spatial distribution of increased rainfall is challenging because palaeoenvironmental research in the region is in an early developmental stage. We address environmental oscillations by assembling and analysing an ensemble of five global climate models (CCSM3, COSMOS, HadCM3, KCM, and NorESM). We focus on precipitation, as the variable is key for the development of lakes, rivers and savannas. The climate models generated here were compared with published palaeoenvironmental data such as palaeolakes, speleothems and alluvial fan records as a means of validation. All five models showed, to varying degrees, that the Arabia Peninsula was significantly wetter than today during the Last Interglacial (130 ka and 126/125 ka timeslices), and that the main source of increased rainfall was from the North African summer monsoon rather than the Indian Ocean monsoon or from Mediterranean climate patterns. Where available, 104 ka (MIS 5c), 56 ka (early MIS 3) and 21 ka (LGM) timeslices showed rainfall was present but not as extensive as during the Last Interglacial. The results favour the hypothesis that humans potentially moved out of Africa and into Arabia on multiple occasions during pluvial phases of the Late Pleistocene.

Segmenting the Italian coffee market: marketing opportunities for economic agents working along the international coffee chain

Globalization, either directly or indirectly (e.g. through structural adjustment reforms), has called for profound changes in the previously existing institutional order. Some changes adversely impacted the production and market environment of many coffee producers in developing countries resulting in more risky and less remunerative coffee transactions. This paper focuses on customization of a tropical commodity, fair-trade coffee, as an approach to mitigating the effects of worsened market conditions for small-scale coffee producers in less developed countries. fair-trade labeling is viewed as a form of “de-commodification” of coffee through product differentiation on ethical grounds. This is significant not only as a solution to the market failure caused by pervasive information asymmetries along the supply chain, but also as a means of revitalizing the agricultural-commodity-based trade of less developed countries (LDCs) that has been languishing under globalization. More specifically, fair-trade is an example of how the same strategy adopted by developed countries’ producers/ processors (i.e. the sequence product differentiation - institutional certification - advertisement) can be used by LDC producers to increase the reputation content of their outputs by transforming them from mere commodities into “decommodified” (i.e. customized and more reputed) goods. The resulting segmentation of the world coffee market makes possible to meet the demand by consumers with preference for this “(ethically) customized” coffee and to transfer a share of the accruing economic rents backward to the Fair-trade coffee producers in LDCs. It should however be stressed that this outcome cannot be taken for granted since investments are needed to promote the required institutional innovations. In Italy FTC is a niche market with very few private brands selling this product. However, an increase of FTC market share could be a big commercial opportunity for farmers in LDCs and other economic agents involved along the international coffee chain. Hence, this research explores consumers’ knowledge of labels promoting quality products, consumption coffee habits, brand loyalty, willingness to pay and market segmentation according to the heterogeneity of preferences for coffee products. The latter was assessed developing a D-efficient design where stimuli refinement was tested during two focus groups.

Government intervention or entrepreneurial profit? Explaining innovation in the Korean online gaming industry

The paper examines how and why the Korean online gaming industry gained dominance in the global market despite US and Japanese competition in related gaming sectors.

Entrepreneurial activity across European cities

The importance of entrepreneurship as a driving force in the economic development has been widely recognised. Respectively, a growing number of empirical studies have focused on explaining variation in entrepreneurial activity at various spatial levels with the majority of them taking either a cross-country perspective or looking at the inter-regional differences. More recent studies on entrepreneurship have shifted their focus to examining cross-city variation in entrepreneurship. However, overall, given limited city-level data availability, scarce work has been undertaken so far on cross-city entrepreneurship within the spatially oriented entrepreneurship research. Furthermore, to our best knowledge, no empirical studies exist on entrepreneurship in European cities and our paper aims to fill this gap

Promoting core maths - background, evidence, plans, opportunities, and challenges

This article discusses some of the issues relating to the promotion of Core Maths to students, parents, schools and colleges and their senior leadership teams, and also to employers and higher education (HE). Some challenges are highlighted, and addressed, with suggestions for ways forward to secure the future of Core Maths and widespread adoption by all stakeholders. A summary of the background reports that led to the introduction of Core Maths, and the related educational landscape prior to its introduction, is included.

Like mother, like daughter? Analyzing maternal influences upon women’s entrepreneurial propensity

Within the phenomenon of entrepreneurship, the extant literature suggests that the normative actor is embodied by and through stereotypical masculinized characteristics. In this paper,we contextualize entrepreneurship as self-employment in order to explore how such stereotypical characterizations might influence women’s attitudes toward this activity. However, rather than analyzing the confirmatory effects of stereotypes, we critically evaluate the effect of counterstereotypical characterizations upon women’s propensity for self-employment. Drawing upon life-span data, we explore whether self-employed mothers disconfirm masculinized stereotypes and so act as positive role models for their daughters.As hypothesized, we found that maternal self-employment has a counterstereotypical effect and so positively influences daughters to become self-employed. These data indicate, however, that this effect is tempered by personal stereotypes held by daughters; moreover, it is shaped by significant life events (marriage, parenthood, education, and prior managerial experience). By using a robust data set, this paper contributes to our understanding of how stereotypes and role expectations influence women’s propensity toward entrepreneurial activity.

Asymmetric information, credit market condition, and entrepreneurial finance

The issue of imperfect information plays a much more important role in financing “informationally opaque” small businesses than in financing large companies.1 This chapter examines the asymmetric information issue in entrepreneurial finance from two perspectives: the effects of relationship lending and the impacts of credit market concentration on entrepreneurial financial behavior. These two perspectives are strongly linked to each other via the asymmetric information issue in entrepreneurial finance. Existing literature has recognized the important role played by relationship lending in alleviating the problem of asymmetric information. However, mixed empirical results have been reported. For example, it has been found that the development of relationship lending can improve the availability of finance for small businesses borrowers (Petersen and Rajan, 1994) and reduce the costs of finance (Berger and Udell, 1995). Meanwhile, with monopoly power, banks may extract rents, in terms of charging higher-than-market interest rates, from small businesscustomers who have very concentrated banking relationships (Ongena and Smith, 2001). In addition, both favorable and unfavorable effects of credit market concentration on financing small businesses have been acknowledged. Small business borrowers may have to pay a higher-than-market price on loans (Degryse and Ongena, 2005) and are more likely to be financially constrained (Cetorelli, 2004) than in competitive markets. On the other hand, empirical studies have shown that market concentration create a strong motive for lenders to invest in private information from small business customers, and therefore a concentrated market is more efficient in terms of private information acquisition (Han et al., 2009b). The objective of this chapter is to investigate, by reviewing existing literature, the role played by relationship lending and the effects of market concentration on financing entrepreneurial businesses that are supposed to be informationally opaque. In the first section we review literature on the important role played by asymmetric information in entrepreneurial finance from two perspectives: asymmetric information and relationship lending, and the theoretical modeling of asymmetric information. Then we examine the relationship between capital market conditions and entrepreneurial finance and attempt to answer two questions: Why is the capital market condition important for entrepreneurial finance? and What are the effects of capital market conditions on entrepreneurial financial behavior in terms of discouraged borrowers, cash holding, and the availability and costs of finance?

Experiential learning from entrepreneurial failure

This paper examines the phenomenon of 'entrepreneurial failure' from a UK regionally-based qualitative study, being that of explanations for failure provided by entrepreneurial CEOs. This paper contends that there are valuable lessons to be learned, from explanations provided of failure, that may reduce the very high recorded mortality rates of entrepreneurial businesses, in particular that of nascent entrepreneurs. Our intention is to make nascent entrepreneurs and their advisors more aware of the consequences of the likely personal risks they will be assuming, especially before they embark on their new business ventures. This paper focuses strongly on entrepreneurial 'personality characteristics' which can detrimentally influence the quality of decision-making. We provide data of some 'experiential learning from failure' from our case studies, that were compiled from interviews with the former directors, following their completion of the questionnaire survey. We describe 'failed entrepreneurs' who have successfully restarted their businesses as 'phoenix' entrepreneurs.

The Role of Collateral in Entrepreneurial Finance

Previous research has suggested collateral has the role of sorting entrepreneurs either by observed risk or by private information. In order to test these roles, this paper develops a model which incorporates a signalling process (sorting by observed risk) into the design of an incentivecompatible menu of loan contracts which works as a self-selection mechanism (sorting by private information). It then tests this Sorting by Signalling and Self-Selection Model, using the 1998 US Survey of Small Business Finances. It reports for the first time that: high type entrepreneurs are more likely to pledge collateral and pay a lower interest rate; and entrepreneurs who transfer good signals enjoy better contracts than those transferring bad signals. These findings suggest that the Sorting by Signalling and Self-Selection Model sheds more light on entrepreneurial debt finance than either the sorting-by-observed-risk or the sorting-by-private information paradigms on their own.

Bricks vs clicks: entrepreneurial online banking behaviour and relationship banking

Purpose – Little research has been conducted on the effects of information technology on financing entrepreneurial businesses or small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of entrepreneurial online banking and relationship banking on the severity of financial problems perceived by entrepreneurs and their interactive effect. It also investigates how characteristics of individual businesses and entrepreneurial demographics influence SMEs’ financial situation. Design/methodology/approach – An ordered logistic model is used on a UK dataset to empirically test the hypotheses derived in this paper. The empirical evidence is drawn from the 2004 UK survey of SME finances, which contains a sample of 2,500 firms. Findings – This paper finds that both entrepreneurial online banking behaviour and relationship banking alleviates the severity of financial problems perceived by entrepreneurs. The relationship affect is less evident for entrepreneurs who most frequently use an online approach to communicate with their banks than for those using traditional methods. Business and entrepreneur characteristics also have a strong impact on the severity of the financial problems suffered by SMEs. Originality/value – This paper provides evidence supporting the favourable impacts of the application of information technology on entrepreneurial finance from the perspective of entrepreneur/business. It also identifies a substitute relationship between entrepreneurial online banking behaviour and relationship banking, a relationship which contradicts existing evidence.

Sialic acids in biological and therapeutic processes: opportunities and challenges

It is now well documented that carbohydrates play multiple roles in biological processes, and hence are interesting targets for chemical biology and medicinal chemistry programmes. This review focuses on a subset of carbohydrates, specifically sialic acid containing carbohydrates. It highlights their occurrence and diversity, and presents evidence for their roles in a range of biological pathways. It illustrates that they are targets for novel medicinal chemistry strategies for a range of therapeutic areas, including cancer and immunity. Case studies highlight opportunities and challenges in this area, and sialic acid based drugs that have entered clinical practice, and are promising candidates for future disease intervention schemes, are discussed. The review concludes by highlighting perspectives and emerging roles for these targets.

The interface between organizational learning capability, entrepreneurial orientation, and SME growth

This paper investigates the interface between organizational learning capability, entrepreneurial orientation (EO), and small business performance. It reports on the findings from 350 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in North Cyprus operating in the services and retailing sectors. The findings indicate a positive relationship between EO and sales and market share growth, but not between EO and employment growth. There is also a positive relationship between organizational learning capability and EO. This paper contributes to the small business management literature by providing a holistic analysis of the interface between organizational learning capability, EO, and growth.

Entrepreneurial failure and economic crisis: an historical perspective

This chapter analyses the major UK economic crises that have occurred since the speculative bubbles of the seventeenth century. It integrates insights from economic history and business history to analyse both the general economic conditions and the specific business and financial practices that led to these crises. The analysis suggests a significant reinterpretation of the evidence – one that questions economists’ conventional views.