Do smart grids offer a new incentive for SME carbon reduction?

Collectively small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are significant energy users although many are unregulated by existing policies due to their low carbon emissions. Carbon reduction is often not a priority but smart grids may create a new opportunity. A smart grid will give electricity suppliers a picture of real-time energy flows and the opportunity for consumers to receive financial incentives for engaging in demand side management. As well as creating incentives for local carbon reduction, engaging SMEs with smart grids has potential for contributing to wider grid decarbonisation. Modelling of buildings, business activities and technology solutions is needed to identify opportunities for carbon reduction. The diversity of the SME sector complicates strategy development. SMEs are active in almost every business area and occupy the full range of property types. This paper reviews previous modelling work, exposing valuable data on floor space and energy consumption associated with different business activities. Limitations are seen with the age of this data and an inability to distinguish SME energy use. By modelling SME energy use, electrical loads are identified which could be shifted on demand, in a smart network. Initial analysis of consumption, not constrained by existing policies, identifies heating and cooling in retail and commercial offices as having potential for demand response. Hot water in hotel and catering and retail sectors may also be significant because of the energy storage potential. Areas to consider for energy efficiency schemes are also indicated.

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The role of brand orientation in explaining retail offer advantage

We provide a conceptualisation and operationalisation of brand orientation within the context of retailing. We then empirically test this operationalisation in terms of a retail offer advantage across the dimensions of merchandise, trading format, customer service and customer communication. Our results suggest that the degree to which a retailer values brands and its practices are oriented towards building brand capabilities provides a valuable theoretical framework to explain variations in retailers' advantage over their competitors.

Explaining retail offer adaptation through psychic distance

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine empirically the relationship between psychic distance and adaptation of the retail offer across a range of countries.

Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected using a mail survey of randomly selected non-food retailers that operated stores in at least three foreign countries.

Findings – Findings of this study suggest that a substantial proportion of retail offer adaptation is explained by psychic distance. In particular, differences in market structure, business practices and language between the home and foreign market significantly increase the extent to which retailers adapt their offer.

Research limitations/implications – The research findings may be limited in terms of their generalisability across retail sectors, as the study focused on non-food retailers only.

Practical implications – These results have implications for researchers and managers in suggesting that we need to go beyond consumer behaviour differences to explain fully the degree to which international firms standardise or adapt their strategies in foreign markets.

Originality/value – Much of the existing research into standardisation and adaptation is limited in terms of geographic scope and a focus on the marketing strategies of manufacturing and export firms. Thus, this paper addresses a substantial gap in existing research by empirically examining the relationship between psychic distance and adaptation in a retail context and across a range of countries.

Evidence-based public health: what does it offer developing countries?

The global burden of disease and illness is primarily situated in developing countries. As developing countries have limited resources, it is particularly important to invest in public health and health promotion strategies that are effective. Systematic reviews are central to evidence-based public health and health promotion practice and policy. This paper discusses issues surrounding the relevance of evidence-based public health and systematic reviews to the health of developing countries. It argues that there is a lack of systematic reviews relevant to the health priorities of developing countries; many interventions reviewed can not be implemented in resource-poor situations; and, a limited amount of primary research is conducted in developing countries. The paper further argues that improvements in public health are determined not only by effective health services and interventions, but through an approach that includes other sectors and influences broader structural and systematic barriers to health. Given the social complexity of human development, and the inter-sections amongst different development goals, there is no question that gains in developing country public health are unlikely to emerge from systematic reviews alone, but will require decisions about inter-sectoral collaboration and social policy initiatives. Nonetheless, evidence around intervention effectiveness has an important role to play in addressing health priorities in developing countries and resource-poor areas. The public health evidence base urgently needs strengthening, with dedicated effort towards increasing the relevance of primary evidence and systematic reviews.

Factors affecting the offer of pulmonary rehabilitation to patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease by primary care professionals : a qualitative study

Aim: To explore health professionals’ experiences of barriers and facilitators to referring patients for pulmonary rehabilitation in a primary care setting.

Background: Pulmonary rehabilitation involves a multidisciplinary teamwork approach to improving
the quality of life for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. This study aimed to find out about health care professionals’ experiences when referring patients. Reports suggest that a health care professional’s attitude towards a treatment affects the willingness of patients to accept advice.

Methods: Five focus group interviews were undertaken with 21 health professionals from North Midlands, UK. Data were analysed using a thematic analysis drawing on the techniques of grounded theory.

Findings: Chronic disease management has been delegated to Practice Nurses in many cases leaving some nurses feeling unsupported and some General Practitioners feeling deskilled. Problems with communication, a lack of adequate and timely local service provision, a difficult referral process, time pressures and lack of information were barriers to health care professionals making an offer of pulmonary rehabilitation. An explanatory model is proposed to describe how addressing barriers to referral may improve health care professionals views about pulmonary rehabilitation and therefore may mean that they present it in a more positive manner.

Sindbis virus vectors elicit hemagglutinin-specific humoral and cellular immune responses and offer a dose-sparing strategy for vaccination

We report here on the use of a Sindbis virus-based DNA-launch RNA replicon vector (pSIN-HA) that expresses influenza hemagglutinin (HA) as an immunogen. Immunization of mice with pSIN-HA generated anti-HA antibody and CTL responses and resulted in lower lung viral titers after influenza challenge when compared to controls. Importantly, immunization with a low dose of pSIN-HA mediated significantly reduced lung viral titers following challenge at 43 weeks after the final immunization. In contrast, immunization with a non-replicon DNA vector expressing HA failed to mediate reduced lung viral titer at the same dose. This demonstrated the dose-sparing capacity of the SIN vector system and its ability to stimulate long-term memory responses, properties that are highly desirable in any vaccine formulation.

Asset-selling problem with an uncertain deadline, quitting offer, and search skipping option

This paper presents a discrete-time sequential stochastic asset-selling problem with an infinite planning horizon, where the process of selling the asset may reach a deadline at any point in time with a probability. It is assumed that a quitting offer is available at every point in time and search skipping is permitted. Thus, decisions must be made as to whether or not to accept the quitting offer, to accept an appearing buyer’s offer, and to conduct a search for a buyer. The main purpose of this paper is to clarify the properties of the optimal decision rules in relation to the model’s parameters.

The educative value of values

There appears to be increasing interest among certain educational institutions to include values as a prominent feature of their practice (Buckley & Erricker, 2004). One recent example is the Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority (VCAA) who released a discussion paper earlier this year, which indicates that values are to play a much greater role in government schools. However, endeavouring to promote values as common standards can be criticised to be problematic in our pluralist society, because not all values are necessarily valuable.

This paper reviews the VCAA paper and attempts to respond to Nietzsche’s (1998) challenge to question the value of our values, by offering guidance as to how the educative value of values might be determined. Such an examination is expected to identify a potential tension between a particular civic education and that of a more philosophic and universally educative perspective. In order to do this, a differentiation between a value (noun) as ‘objective fact’ and value (verb) as a ‘subjective relation’ is made. This paper will adopt an existential perspective by drawing upon consequentialism, intentionality and the works of Kierkegaard and Dewey, to argue that emphasis should be placed on the subjective aspects of educative valuing without fostering an objective/subjective divide.

Educative teaching

Not all pedagogy is educative. Indeed those who indoctrinate, either intentionally or unintentionally can be considered to be utilising pedagogies, as do those who instruct and train recruits in terrorist training camps. It is argued in this paper that any pedagogy cannot have educative value in itself. In order to be considered appropriate for schools and universities in Australia, pedagogies must be contextualised within clear understandings of educative criteria held by each professional educator.

How a Deweyan science education further enables ethics education

This paper questions the perceived divide between ‘science’ subject matter and ‘moral’ or ‘ethical’ subject matter. A difficulty that this assumed divide produces is that science teachers often feel that there needs to be ‘special treatment’ given to certain issues which are of an ethical or moral nature and which are ‘brought into’ the science class. The case is made in this article that dealing with ethical issues in the science class should not call for a sensitivity that is beyond the expertise of the science teacher. Indeed it is argued here that science teachers in particular have a great deal to offer in enabling ethics education. To overcome this perceived divide between science and values it needs to be recognised that the educative development of learners is both scientific and moral. I shall be using a Deweyan perspective to make the case that we as science teachers can overcome this apparent divide and significantly contribute to an ethics education of our students.

The educative value of Dewey's religious attitude for spirituality

John Dewey's 'religious attitude' has great potential for the educative development of children's spirituality. This is because it enables their spiritual understandings to become more intelligently composed - not just in a cognitive or hyper-rational sense, but as a way of being. This paper provides an outline of Dewey's approach, which is described as being democratic, inquiry based, and 'scientific'. Such an approach therefore offers a contrast to other more epistemologically focused curricula which attempt to educate a person's spirituality. In order to make the case for the potential educative value of such an attitude, a brief review of Dewey's approach to education shall be offered, in which the notions of inquiry, democracy, and 'science' shall be highlighted to make the case that such attributes might be necessary for spiritual education if the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization's goal of attaining world peace is to ever become possible.

Does the Australian national framework for values education stifle an education for world peace?

This paper aims to offer an evaluation of Australia's National Framework for Values Education in terms of its educative value. The criteria to be employed in this evaluation shall be drawn primarily from the works of UNESCO and John Dewey. In addition to a re-evaluation of values, consideration will also be given to how individual learners are being prepared to participate democratically in the quest for world peace. It will therefore be necessary to determine whether the Australian framework promotes the potential for democratic participation through inquiry or whether through schooling its overtly nationalistic agenda actually stifles the capacity of persons to participate in a pursuit for global understandings and world peace.