A Geração de inovação na carcinicultura do RN: Uma análise a partir da imersão social

This dissertation examines the organizational innovation as a nonlinear process, which occurs in a social and political context and, therefore, socially immersed. Examines the case of shrimp in the state of RN, starting from the following problem: although the norteriograndense shrimp occupies the largest producer of farmed shrimp from Brazil, has a series of bottlenecks concerning the generation of industry innovation, concerning the social relationships and policies between the various actors in the network, whether private or public, and its consequences in terms of opportunity and limits generated for the innovative dynamics. The objective of the research is to understand how the social embeddedness of political actors affects norteriograndense shrimp within the context of structural relations, the industry generation of innovation, throughout its technological trajectory . The approach of social embeddedness balances atomised perspectives, undersocialized and oversocialized, of economic action, considering both the human capacity to act as sources of constraint, whose mechanisms are analyzed the structural and political. In methodological terms this is a case study, analyzed from the research literature, documentary and experimental. Primary data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed in depth by the technique of content analysis. Was adopted a longitudinal approach, seeking to understand the phenomenon from the perspective of the subjects, describing it in an inductive process of investigation. After characterizing the sector and defining their technological trajectory, the analysis of the results followed its four stages: (1) Introduction of Technology: 1973-1980, (2) Intensification of Research: 1981-1991, (3) Technological Adaptation, 1992 -2003, (4) Technological Crisis: 2004-2009. A cross-sectional analysis along the evolutionary trajectory revealed the character of structural changes and policies over time, and implications on the generating process of innovation. Note that, the technological limit to which the sector reached requires changes in technology standards, but is more likely that the potiguar shrimp is entering a new phase of his career in technology rather than a new technological paradigm

A Geração de inovação na carcinicultura do RN: Uma análise a partir da imersão social

This dissertation examines the organizational innovation as a nonlinear process, which occurs in a social and political context and, therefore, socially immersed. Examines the case of shrimp in the state of RN, starting from the following problem: although the norteriograndense shrimp occupies the largest producer of farmed shrimp from Brazil, has a series of bottlenecks concerning the generation of industry innovation, concerning the social relationships and policies between the various actors in the network, whether private or public, and its consequences in terms of opportunity and limits generated for the innovative dynamics. The objective of the research is to understand how the social embeddedness of political actors affects norteriograndense shrimp within the context of structural relations, the industry generation of innovation, throughout its technological trajectory . The approach of social embeddedness balances atomised perspectives, undersocialized and oversocialized, of economic action, considering both the human capacity to act as sources of constraint, whose mechanisms are analyzed the structural and political. In methodological terms this is a case study, analyzed from the research literature, documentary and experimental. Primary data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed in depth by the technique of content analysis. Was adopted a longitudinal approach, seeking to understand the phenomenon from the perspective of the subjects, describing it in an inductive process of investigation. After characterizing the sector and defining their technological trajectory, the analysis of the results followed its four stages: (1) Introduction of Technology: 1973-1980, (2) Intensification of Research: 1981-1991, (3) Technological Adaptation, 1992 -2003, (4) Technological Crisis: 2004-2009. A cross-sectional analysis along the evolutionary trajectory revealed the character of structural changes and policies over time, and implications on the generating process of innovation. Note that, the technological limit to which the sector reached requires changes in technology standards, but is more likely that the potiguar shrimp is entering a new phase of his career in technology rather than a new technological paradigm

A Geração de inovação na carcinicultura do RN: Uma análise a partir da imersão social

This dissertation examines the organizational innovation as a nonlinear process, which occurs in a social and political context and, therefore, socially immersed. Examines the case of shrimp in the state of RN, starting from the following problem: although the norteriograndense shrimp occupies the largest producer of farmed shrimp from Brazil, has a series of bottlenecks concerning the generation of industry innovation, concerning the social relationships and policies between the various actors in the network, whether private or public, and its consequences in terms of opportunity and limits generated for the innovative dynamics. The objective of the research is to understand how the social embeddedness of political actors affects norteriograndense shrimp within the context of structural relations, the industry generation of innovation, throughout its technological trajectory . The approach of social embeddedness balances atomised perspectives, undersocialized and oversocialized, of economic action, considering both the human capacity to act as sources of constraint, whose mechanisms are analyzed the structural and political. In methodological terms this is a case study, analyzed from the research literature, documentary and experimental. Primary data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed in depth by the technique of content analysis. Was adopted a longitudinal approach, seeking to understand the phenomenon from the perspective of the subjects, describing it in an inductive process of investigation. After characterizing the sector and defining their technological trajectory, the analysis of the results followed its four stages: (1) Introduction of Technology: 1973-1980, (2) Intensification of Research: 1981-1991, (3) Technological Adaptation, 1992 -2003, (4) Technological Crisis: 2004-2009. A cross-sectional analysis along the evolutionary trajectory revealed the character of structural changes and policies over time, and implications on the generating process of innovation. Note that, the technological limit to which the sector reached requires changes in technology standards, but is more likely that the potiguar shrimp is entering a new phase of his career in technology rather than a new technological paradigm

Business model adaptation in new ventures: are technology-based firms different?

A firm’s business model (BM) is an important driver of its relative performance. Constructive adaptation to elements of the BM can therefore sustain the position in light of changing conditions. This study takes a configurational approach to understanding drivers of business model adaptation (BMA) in new ventures. We investigate the effect of human capital, social capital, and technological environment on BMA. We find that a universal, direct effects, analysis can provide useful information, but also risks painting a distorted picture. Contingent, two-way interactions add further explanatory power, but configurational models combining elements of all three (internal resource, external activities, environment) are superior.

Climate change adaptation : a decision support framework to encourage environmentally responsible behaviour

Structured Abstract:
Purpose: Very few studies investigate environmentally responsible behaviour (ERB). This paper presents a new 'Awareness Behaviour Intervention Action' (ABIA) Decision Support Framework to sustain ERB.

Design/methodology/approach: Previous ERB programmes have failed to deliver lasting results; they have not appropriately understood and provided systems to address ERB (Costanzo et al., 1986). These programmes were based on assumptions (Moloney et al., 2010), which this paper addresses. The ABIA Framework has been developed through a case study of social housing tenants waiting for low or zero carbon homes.

Findings: The ABIA Framework enables a better understanding of current attitudes to environmental issues and provides support for ERB alongside technological interventions employed to promote and sustain carbon reduction.

Research limitations/implications: The ABIA Framework should be tested on individuals and communities in a variety of socio-economic, political and cultural contexts. This will help unpack how it can impact on the behaviours of individuals and communities including stakeholders.

Practical implications: This type of research and the ABIA Framework developed from it are crucial if the UK pledge to become the first country in the World where all new homes from 2016 are to be zero carbon.

Social implications: The Framework encourages both individual and community discussion and solving of sustainability issues.

Originality/value: There are few, if any, studies that have developed a framework which can be used to support behavioural change for adaptation to sustainable living in low or zero carbon homes.

Technological Neutrality

"The paper speaks about the both positive and negative arguments of the concept of technological neutrality. Technology is the part and parcel of present people's daily life having aesthetic and devil impact on world. The experts and philosophers on interpretation of the influence of technology in life are concerned about the ongoing misuse of technology. The debate is whether technology itself becomes destructive and detrimental to us or the people inventing technology are responsible to make it more harmful for their own greediness. States are preparing to adopt new laws regarding the proper, exact and neutral use of technology in a sense to protect the deviation of technology behavior. The introduction tells about the fundamental impact and effectiveness of technology in life; ""definition of technology"" goes ahead to identify the various aspect of technology development stages; ""autonomous technology"" heading finds out the true characters of technology as against to human power and strength; ""neutral technology"" implies the adaptation of laws for neutral use of technology itself; ""neutrality principle in economy and communication science"" has the notion of impartial rationale of being unbiased for upholding technology neutrality principle in practice; and finally the conclusion ends with summing up the average influences of technology on human being at large."

Technological change and the challenges for regional development: building social capital in less-favoured regions

The relevance of regional policy for less favoured regions (LFRs) reveals itself when policy-makers must reconcile competitiveness with social cohesion through the adaptation of competition or innovation policies. The vast literature in this area generally builds on an overarching concept of ‘social capital’ as the necessary relational infrastructure for collective action diversification and policy integration, in a context much influenced by a dynamic of industrial change and a necessary balance between the creation and diffusion of ‘knowledge’ through learning. This relational infrastructure or ‘social capital’ is centred on people’s willingness to cooperate and ‘envision’ futures as a result of “social organization, such as networks, norms and trust that facilitate action and cooperation for mutual benefit” (Putnam, 1993: 35). Advocates of this interpretation of ‘social capital’ have adopted the ‘new growth’ thinking behind ‘systems of innovation’ and ‘competence building’, arguing that networks have the potential to make both public administration and markets more effective as well as ‘learning’ trajectories more inclusive of the development of society as a whole. This essay aims to better understand the role of ‘social capital’ in the production and reproduction of uneven regional development patterns, and to critically assess the limits of a ‘systems concept’ and an institution-centred approach to comparative studies of regional innovation. These aims are discussed in light of the following two assertions: i) learning behaviour, from an economic point of view, has its determinants, and ii) the positive economic outcomes of ‘social capital’ cannot be taken as a given. It is suggested that an agent-centred approach to comparative research best addresses the ‘learning’ determinants and the consequences of social networks on regional development patterns. A brief discussion of the current debate on innovation surveys has been provided to illustrate this point.

Occupants’ behavioural adaptation in workplaces with non-central heating and cooling systems

Occupants’ behaviour when improving the indoor environment plays a significant role in saving energy in buildings. Therefore the key step to reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions from buildings is to understand how occupants interact with the environment they are exposed to in terms of achieving thermal comfort and well-being; though such interaction is complex. This paper presents a dynamic process of occupant behaviours involving technological, personal and psychological adaptations in response to varied thermal conditions based on the data covering four seasons gathered from the field study in Chongqing, China. It demonstrates that occupants are active players in environmental control and their adaptive responses are driven strongly by ambient thermal stimuli and vary from season to season and from time to time, even on the same day. Positive, dynamic, behavioural adaptation will help save energy used in heating and cooling buildings. However, when environmental parameters cannot fully satisfy occupants’ requirements, negative behaviours could conflict with energy saving. The survey revealed that about 23% of windows are partly open for fresh air when air-conditioners are in operation in summer. This paper addresses the issues how the building and environmental systems should be designed, operated and managed in a way that meets the requirements of energy efficiency without compromising wellbeing and productivity.

An investigation of thermal comfort adaptation behaviour in office buildings in the UK

Around 40% of total energy consumption in the UK is consumed by creating comfortable indoor environment for occupants. Occupants’ behaviour in terms of achieving thermal comfort could have a significant impact on a building’s energy consumption. Therefore, understanding the interactions of occupants with their buildings would be essential to provide a thermal comfort environment that is less reliance on energy-intensive heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems, to meet energysaving and carbon emission targets. This paper presents the findings of a year-long field study conducted in non-air-conditioned office buildings in the UK. Occupants’ adaptive responses in terms of technological and personal dimensions are dynamic processes which could vary with both indoor and outdoor thermal conditions. The adaptive behaviours of occupants in the surveyed building show substantial seasonal and daily variations. Our study shows that non-physical factors such as habit could influence the adaptive responses of occupants. However, occupants sometimes displayed inappropriate adaptive behaviour, which could lead to a misuse of energy. This paper attempts to illustrate how occupants would adapt and interact with their built environment and consequently contribute to development of a guide for future design/refurbishment of buildings and to develop energy management systems for a comfortable built environment.

Distinct mechanisms underlie adaptation of proximal tubule Na+/H+ exchanger isoform 3 in response to chronic metabolic and respiratory acidosis

The Na+/H+ exchanger isoform 3 (NHE3) is essential for HCO3- reabsorption in renal proximal tubules. The expression and function of NHE3 must adapt to acid-base conditions. The goal of this study was to elucidate the mechanisms responsible for higher proton secretion in proximal tubules during acidosis and to evaluate whether there are differences between metabolic and respiratory acidosis with regard to NHE3 modulation and, if so, to identify the relevant parameters that may trigger these distinct adaptive responses. We achieved metabolic acidosis by lowering HCO3- concentration in the cell culture medium and respiratory acidosis by increasing CO2 tension in the incubator chamber. We found that cell-surface NHE3 expression was increased in response to both forms of acidosis. Mild (pH 7.21 +/- 0.02) and severe (6.95 +/- 0.07) metabolic acidosis increased mRNA levels, at least in part due to up-regulation of transcription, whilst mild (7.11 +/- 0.03) and severe (6.86 +/- 0.01) respiratory acidosis did not up-regulate NHE3 expression. Analyses of the Nhe3 promoter region suggested that the regulatory elements sensitive to metabolic acidosis are located between -466 and -153 bp, where two consensus binding sites for SP1, a transcription factor up-regulated in metabolic acidosis, were localised. We conclude that metabolic acidosis induces Nhe3 promoter activation, which results in higher mRNA and total protein level. At the plasma membrane surface, NHE3 expression was increased in metabolic and respiratory acidosis alike, suggesting that low pH is responsible for NHE3 displacement to the cell surface.

Mobile TuCSoN: theoretical and technological requirements for TuCSoN's porting over Android mobile devices

Communication and coordination are two key-aspects in open distributed agent system, being both responsible for the system’s behaviour integrity. An infrastructure capable to handling these issues, like TuCSoN, should to be able to exploit modern technologies and tools provided by fast software engineering contexts. Thesis aims to demonstrate TuCSoN infrastructure’s abilities to cope new possibilities, hardware and software, offered by mobile technology. The scenarios are going to configure, are related to the distributed nature of multi-agent systems where an agent should be located and runned just on a mobile device. We deal new mobile technology frontiers concerned with smartphones using Android operating system by Google. Analysis and deployment of a distributed agent-based system so described go first to impact with quality and quantity considerations about available resources. Engineering issue at the base of our research is to use TuCSoN against to reduced memory and computing capability of a smartphone, without the loss of functionality, efficiency and integrity for the infrastructure. Thesis work is organized on two fronts simultaneously: the former is the rationalization process of the available hardware and software resources, the latter, totally orthogonal, is the adaptation and optimization process about TuCSoN architecture for an ad-hoc client side release.

An Innovation System Perspective on Adaptation Strategies to Climate Variability and Water Management in India

Government policies play a critical role in influencing market conditions, institutions and overall agricultural productivity. The thesis therefore looks into the history of agriculture development in India. Taking a political economy perspective, the historical account looks at significant institutional and technological innovations carried out in pre- independent and post independent India. It further focuses on the Green Revolution in Asia, as forty years after; the agricultural community still faces the task of addressing recurrent issue of food security amidst emerging challenges, such as climate change. It examines the Green Revolution that took place in India during the late 1960s and 70s in a historical perspective, identifying two factors of institutional change and political leadership. Climate change in agriculture development has become a major concern to farmers, researchers and policy makers alike. However, there is little knowledge on the farmers’ perception to climate change and to the extent they coincide with actual climatic data. Using a qualitative approach,it looks into the perceptions of the farmers in four villages in the states of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. While exploring the adaptation strategies, the chapter looks into the dynamics of who can afford a particular technology and who cannot and what leads to a particular adaptation decision thus determining the adaptive capacity in water management. The final section looks into the devolution of authority for natural resource management to local user groups through the Water Users’ Associations as an important approach to overcome the long-standing challenges of centralized state bureaucracies in India. It addresses the knowledge gap of why some local user groups are able to overcome governance challenges such as elite capture, while others-that work under the design principles developed by Elinor Ostrom. It draws conclusions on how local leadership, can be promoted to facilitate participatory irrigation management.