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The Trends in Employment and Labour Productivity in the Pulp and Paper Industry. Despite many challenges, the pulp and paper industry is a dynamically developing branch of industry in the world. It seems that especially growing competition from less developed countries, such as Indonesia, and the falling demand for paper may be reasons for the difficulties of pulp and paper factories, i.e. decreasing profitability of paper production and number of employed in this industry in recent years. From the perspective of the employment volume and related work efficiency, it was interesting to examine and assess employment and the use of human resources in pulp and paper industry, especially in the countries of the Visegrad Group, which economies have been characterized by stable GDP growth in recent years. The paper analyses the value of pulp and paper industry production and its structure in the Visegrad Group countries relative to EU28 countries and employment and age structure of the employed

In recent years, several studies have found indications for data gaps and errors in the forestry production and trade section of the widely used FAOSTAT database. This manuscript focusses on inconsistencies in data on recovered pulp production, which have not yet been investigated in much detail. We develop national wood fiber balances for the pulp and paper sector for eleven countries. Our balances compare the wood fiber input (i.e. virgin and recovered pulp) in the paper and paperboard sector with the output (i.e. paper products) of this sector. By doing so, we are able to identify data gaps and errors and to determine the recovered pulp production as a residual volume in each country. For instance, we calculate a recovered pulp production of about 8.9 million tons for India in 2018. According to FAOSTAT, this production amounted to only 1.2 million tons. This is obviously too low considering that in the same year an apparent consumption of recovered paper of more than 10.1 million tons was reported. Moreover, we calculate ratios between virgin and recycled fibers in the paper production of the investigated countries. Our analysis provides a basis for better understanding of material flows in the pulp and paper sector and for supplements of international statistics.

We examine the efficiency of Brazilian pulp and paper companies in the production of pulp and bioelectricity using an output-oriented data envelopment analysis. We assume that pulpwood volume, energy consumption, installed capacity and number of workers are the inputs to generate pulp and bioelectricity. We conduct this analysis by first determining the traditional efficiency scores, and secondly calculating a composite index of efficiency to rank the performance of pulp and paper companies. We also conduct a post-efficiency analysis to gauge the impacts of externalities and other related variables on the efficiency in pulp and bioelectricity production. Our results suggest that pulp and paper companies are efficient in pulp and bioelectric production, reaching an average efficiency and composite index of efficiency of 0.9776 and 0.8291, respectively. The post-efficiency analysis suggests that pulp and paper companies could minimally decrease their adjusted efficiencies by increasing the total forest area, power capacity, and outsourced employment. On the other hand, the adjusted efficiency in the production of pulp and bioelectricity might not be statistically impacted by higher socioeconomic levels.

This paper discusses the results of a study conducted on a group of undergraduates at the Arab International University. The study has assessed the students’ research skills via a qualitative analysis of their earlier research papers submissions and a questionnaire that determined the weaknesses and difficulties they face while writing a paper. Results showed that undergraduates find it most difficult to use and understand English references, paraphrase paragraphs and use in-text citations. Based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the results, the researcher devised a new course that aimed to enhance students’ practice of the main research skills. This course was based on developing student’s information literacy and assigning multiple focused tasks to practice the main research skills. The post course evaluation of students’ achievement showed a notable improvement in their research practices that aided the production of above average quality English research papers.

I recently attended an international conference on planning in Africa. Here, it was suggested that the colonial era was over and that planners are already well-versed in decolonising theories and practices. Such suggestions came from Northern and Southern scholars alike. By means of this article, I hope to disrupt this privileged position by introducing the idea of resistant texts which are most often found in endogenous systems of knowledge production. I then explain how decoloniality – which calls for an epistemic de-linking from Western knowledges – might assists planners in seeing resistant texts before attempting to arrive at anti-colonial interventions.

Contributions of M. N. Srinivas to the understanding of changing nature of caste, village and politics have been well documented and continue to be under focus several decades after his scholarly formulations on them. This article is an attempt to focus on the nature of changes that are occurring in the realm of his contributions to the field of social science research methods—especially to the tradition of intensive field research whether in rural or urban locales. Not only have the field sites’ amenability to research has undergone a major change, the institutional context in which social research is practised have radically transformed. This article is an attempt to track some such changes in both the contexts and to reflect upon the emerging challenges to social science research in general and the idea of ‘field’ research in particular. One of the questions it raises and attempts to answer is: Is sociology and social anthropology becoming more dependent on secondary data, and the source becoming a web than the field?

The UK government’s ‘Industrial Strategy’ is a product of a Conservative party in power, coming to terms with a particular set of economic and political circumstances. In contrast, international bodies have commended long-term concepts of ‘green growth’ rather than conventional industrial development, whilst individual local authorities in the UK and elsewhere have been working towards economic regeneration policies that are both environmentally aware and also related directly to local communities. Taken together, the UK industrial strategy, the reports of international agencies and the efforts of individual local authorities raise the question as to the possible shape of a national strategy that reflects ideas of green growth and applies these ideas to processes of urban regeneration, urban development and planning. This paper gives a brief outline of such a strategy, suggesting that green growth must deal with towns and cities, both as causes of pollution, carbon emissions and resource consumption and as places where people should be able to enjoy a good quality of life.

The present study aims at investigating the impact of gender and being native and non-native on the use of hedging devices in the discussion part of Applied Linguistics research papers written by native English/non-native (Iranian) male and female research writers. To this end, 60 Applied Linguistic research papers (15 for each group of research writers) were investigated based on Salager-Meyer, Françoise. 1994. Hedges and textual communicative function in medical English written discourse. English for Specific Purposes 13(2). 149–170 taxonomy. The results of Chi-square analyses indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between male and female research writers in terms of the frequency of use of hedging devices adopted in the discussion part of the research papers in the realm of Applied Linguistics. Moreover, the results of the study showed that the discussion parts of Applied Linguistics research papers written by male and female native English research writers were more hedged than those written by their Iranian counterparts. The pedagogical and implications of the findings are dealt with in the discussion and conclusion sections of the study.

In this essay, I undertake a critical analysis of the UN-Habitat publication, The Quito Papers. I begin by unpacking the representation within The Quito Papers of the Charter of Athens of 1941 as an outcome of CIAM IV in 1933. Here, the ways in which the authors centralize the Charter of Athens within their critique of contemporary urbanization is critically analysed. Ultimately, I argue that what emerges is a simplification of the complex intertwining of urbanization and urbanist ideals. Based on this, I situate what is presented in The Quito Papers as alternative imaginaries?centred largely on European ideals of urbanism?within the context of urban change since the 1970s. This includes a discussion of the manner in which these ideals are promoted within urbanist discourse, including the role of the authors themselves in their engagement with UN-Habitat. Finally, I situate some of the arguments contained in The Quito Papers within current debates in urban theory. I contend that the relationship between processes of urbanization and the ideals of modernist urbanism are more genealogical than direct. Furthermore, I argue that it is through this relationship that broader power dynamics and their resultant inequalities can be further examined and challenged.

In psychological assessment, there is a tension between oral and written language. This tension is rarely troubled or even noted in clinical practice. For report writing purposes, psychologists routinely transform oral, socially embedded material into written texts. In this paper, I highlight three points in the psychological assessment process where this transformation occurs: one during testing, the second in the analysis and interpretation phase, and the third while writing the final report. As written language is not oral language put on paper, a conceptual linguistic leap is needed that has the potential to subtly distort how the minds of others are represented and constructed. Furthermore, there are literary aspects of scientific psychological report writing that are often invisible to both writers and readers, which leads to additional distortions. Underlying the above-noted conceptual leap is the assumption that the borderline between oral and written language is porous and the principles and rules of each are interchangeable. Some alternative approaches to psychological assessment are offered that acknowledge the specific nature of oral and written language.

The existing forest economics literature contains relatively few economic contribution studies at the state level in the U.S. While some prior studies have aggregated the economic contribution of forest sector activities at the regional or multi-state level, none have specifically calculated this in a comprehensive, homogeneous manner across all 50 U.S. states. Utilizing aggregation schemes in the existing literature, this research computes the economic contribution of multiple sectors of the commercial logging, forestry products, pulp & paper mills, and paper products for all 50 states. These findings have important implications, as strengthening these primary sectors of commercial logging and pulp & paper can help enhance wood products industry clusters and their individual industry sectors throughout the U.S. and breed strong regional economies.

Every year, World Bank Group (WBG) is conducting assessment for 190 countries and produces a ranking report based on Doing Business performance – an initiative to measure benchmark efficiency on business regulation and their enforcement by a sample study (e.g. for Malaysia is Kuala Lumpur City Hall - DBKL). One of the ranking categories is based on Dealing with Construction Permits (DCP) which made us proud as announce Malaysia ranks for 2019 is #3 (based on 2018 assessment). This achievement was based on continues efforts and studies from the last bottom of #137 (since, 2007), #113 (2012) and continues with positive results (straight improvement) respectively till this year. Maintaining the top three ranks is not an easy task; however, is not impossible either. Lots of study in innovations, suggestions and implementation should be carried out to maintain and improve Malaysian DCP ranks. As per DCP of this year assessment, Work Bank has suggested all countries with 5 new suggestions (new additional marking schema). One of them is to engage Geographic Information System (GIS) for land use, cadastre, water, electricity and sewage related datasets. This paper propose an initial study (concept paper) towards engaging GIS in DCP activity as a response (first action) suggested by World Bank Group; crucial in maintaining DCP rank for 2020 as well as to provide better business regulations and enforcements for DBKL or other local authority. Later, an impact study will be conducted, utilizing new integrated GIS system publishing service (GeoMap) and the output of the study will indicate whether Malaysia Productive Corporation (MPC) should engage or ignore the 5th suggestion by World Bank Group, or to enhance with other initiatives.

Since 2013, the Chinese government has implemented a series of waste paper import regulations with the aim of improving the quality of imported waste paper. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of these new regulations on the quality of imported waste paper. The study analyzed the asymmetric effects and dynamics between China's domestic and imported waste paper prices and between import price and the quality of imported waste paper based on the asymmetric ARDL model. The results revealed that the Chinese and international waste paper markets were integrated and that both long-run and short-run asymmetries were presented in the relationship between these two markets. Furthermore, the results indicated that the quality of imported waste paper reacted differently to the positive and negative changes in import price, and a decrease in import price will lead to an increase in the quality of imported waste paper. China's waste paper import regulations weakened the integration relationship between the Chinese and international waste paper markets and caused the import price to drop. Therefore, it implies that China's new waste paper import regulations promoted the quality of imported waste paper, which is beneficial to the mitigation of environmental contamination.

A couple of years ago my colleague (and former PhD student) Jan Anne Annema told me that he checked why people cited our paper on experiences with the use of Cost–Benefit Analysis (CBA) in the Neth...

Qualitative research involves scientific narratives and the analysis and interpretation of textual or numerical data (or both), mostly from conversations and discussions, to uncover meaningful patterns that describe a particular phenomenon. It is important to know other ways of framing and explaining these nuanced scientific narratives so that they can convey scientific knowledge. A qualitative hypothesis can play this role. The testing of hypotheses in qualitative research&mdash, which does not strictly mean the same thing as testing of hypotheses in quantitative research&mdash, always comes with challenges that provoke concerns. The questions that scholars, especially undergraduate and postgraduate students, have had to deal with are: Is it possible to &ldquo, test&rdquo, hypotheses using a qualitative method? If it is possible, how can this be done? This study deconstructs the concept, notion, and use of the hypotheses. It presents the &ldquo, how-to&rdquo, aspect of hypothesising (in qualitative research and inquiries) by using creative diagramming within post-positivist research, and also contributes to the literature on visual communication and qualitative research. The study is a guide to early career scholars (including undergraduate and post-graduate students) on how to formulate and &ldquo, hypotheses qualitatively using visual or diagrammatical approaches.

The European Union has set a milestone for cutting its carbon emissions by 2030 to levels 40% below the levels of 1990 through domestic reductions, improved energy efficiency and the greater use of renewable energy sources. In parallel, the key challenge of the pulp and paper industry (PPI) is how to achieve a transformation towards a bioeconomy, as well as to realize the necessary new green innovations. Climate change, material resource scarcity and ecosystem decline are among the ten major sustainability megaforces identified by KPMG (2012), globally influencing business environments. However, the relative importance of these megaforces in the context of pulp and paper sector transformation is yet unknown. We therefore investigate the significance of these megaforces and their relation to the drivers of sustainability-related investments in the European pulp and paper sector, and identify threats and opportunities that these business environmental changes may bring about. Our results are based upon a three-round dissensus-based Delphi approach carried out with a sample of 30 high-level European PPI experts collected in 2014. The panelists identified a greater demand for energy, volatility in the fossil fuel markets and increasing material resource scarcity as the most significant sustainability megaforces shaping European PPI over the next 15 years. However, all the megaforces – except for global ecosystem decline and water scarcity – were perceived more as opportunities rather than threats to European PPI business, indicating that designed energy and environmental policies have the potential to advance a paradigm change towards a bioeconomy rather than curbing the future of the European PPI.

Despite the growing interest in innovation in the pulp and paper industry (PPI) from strategic management and institutional standpoints, little empirical research exists on the role of firms' technological capabilities and institutions in shaping particular technological trajectories within the industry. The objective of this article is to examine the relationship among firms' technological capability-building process, indigenous institutions, and the evolution of a particular technological trajectory within the PPI. To meet this objective, this article draws on a case study design based on primary and long-term evidence gathered through extensive fieldwork in Brazil. This article shows that (1) Brazil's PPI began by developing technological capabilities in long-fiber technology led by global leaders; instead of moving on a subsequent path-following trajectory, these firms accumulated innovative capabilities that led to the development of the short-fiber trajectory; (2) these capabilities initially permitted the implementation of incremental changes in forestry and process technologies, which evolved into sophisticated RD and (3) indigenous institutions shaped this trajectory by providing firms with human capital and research support, funding for production and initial innovative capability development, and IPO and entry into export markets. These capabilities and institutions were effective in developing a technological trajectory that enabled Brazil's PPI to achieve an internationally leading position in this industry; however, new capabilities and institutional arrangements are needed to support Brazil's PPI firms' incipient diversification and to mitigate self-reinforcement. This article shows that innovative capability building combined with effective indigenous institutions enable firms—even those from a late-industrializing country—to create a new technological trajectory. Given the innovation opportunities in the PPI, managers and policy makers should not be satisfied with their achievements; rather, they should be alert to innovative new entrants and explore novel technologically advanced paths.

5E learning cycle was suggested as a better option for students’ learning and has brought a positive impact on students learning education, particularly with theory and practice components. These method of learning is a student’s centre oriented learning model which solely prioritize on students own experiences, creates active participation and built creative critical thinking skills. 5E learning cycle consist of engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration, and evaluation. This study is intended to determine students’ perceptions of 5E learning cycles in their learning activity and to explore the impact of 5E learning cycles towards student’s active learning. The discussion is based on the information gauged from an estimated number of 60 undergraduate students who will be enrolling in BPMM3013 Consumer Behaviour Class in UUM. Data will be collected qualitatively from various sources such as students’ reflections, lecturer’s reflections, peer feedback, lecturer’s feedback, and focus group interview. Meanwhile for quantitative method, a survey will be developed through Google form. The data will be analysed using transcribe technique and regression analysis.

In this article I consider David Olson’s account of how literacy produces a new kind of consciousness, one in which a process of metacognition makes possible both knowledge and an understanding of language itself. This, he argues, enables readers and writers to reflect upon language, understand what constitutes reasoning, and recognize any logical flaws embedded in written texts. I then locate Olson within the cognitivist tradition of Jerome Bruner, critically analyzing Bruner’s concept of emotion as well as Olson’s account of experience. While he acknowledges the place of experience in John Dewey’s account of literacy, he tends to regard it as a form of consciousness rather than something more primordial. I go on to argue that experience, rather than consciousness, is a fundamental ingredient in the life of the mind and learning in general, where aesthetic emotions play a significant role. A theory of literacy that fails to take these elements into account is incomplete, however powerful it may appear. In order to make this argument, I utilize the work of John Dewey and Alfred North Whitehead, who afford experience and aesthetic emotions a primordial place in their process philosophies. I also contrast the organic concept of mind advocated by Whitehead and Dewey in their theory of learning with the mechanistic account Olson inherits from Bruner. Furthermore, I analyze the importance Whitehead ascribes to art education, and go on to show why he believes art to be the source of consciousness itself. Once again, this contrasts with Olson’s cognitivist account. I conclude that without experience and aesthetic emotion our capacity to reflect upon them through language would not be possible.

Resource efficiency and circular economy policies aim at reducing resource intensity and use throughout the economy, thereby decreasing environmental impacts. Besides the environmental benefits expected from these policies, potential employment benefits are often emphasised, which would follow the anticipated structural changes in the economy from material-intensive to more labour-intensive activities. However, the size of the employment effect is still unclear and difficult to quantify. To date, the quantitative literature on the employment impacts of the circular economy is still scarce. This study is the first of its kind to review the available studies on this increasingly important policy issue.

Very recently Bordelles, Dai, Heyman, Pan and Shparlinski studied asymptotic behaviour of the quantity $$\begin{aligned} S_f(x) := \sum _{n\leqslant x} f\left( \left[ \frac{x}{n}\right] \right) , \end{aligned}$$and established some asymptotic formulas for $$S_f(x)$$ under three different types of assumptions on f. In this short note we improve some of their results.

Because it is a mature industry, the European pulp and paper industry (PPI) possesses strengths due to its infrastructure, technological know-how, and the availability of biomass. However, the declining trend in the wood-based products sales, coupled with an increasing amount of global attention focused on a bio-based and circular economy, sends a clear signal to the industry, indicating that it needs to transform its business model to increase its profitability while contributing to climate change mitigation. Integrating the biorefinery concept as a value creation business model seems to be the pathway that will reach these objectives. This study was carried out to empirically assess and prioritize factors that affect the diffusion and implementation of the biorefinery concept in the European PPI. For this purpose, a three-phase Delphi study, including a SWOT-Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), was conducted. During the course of this study, the opinions of experts from industry and academia were gathered using both qualitative and quantitative methods. The findings reveal that the political dimension has a significant influence on the ability of individuals to tackle the economic barriers while reinforcing the environmental and social benefits in the macro-environment. At the industry level, the availability of biomass appears to be a strength of the PPI, while the knowledge gap regarding technology and the market represents a crucial barrier for the biorefinery development. The human resources issue is indicated as an important premise behind the identified barriers on a strategic level. Finally, five potential strategies for the biorefinery development in the PPI were derived by logically combining the results of the SWOT-AHP decision-making.

This study aims to describe and test students' perception of scientific learning, students' critical thinking skill level in scientific learning, differences in perception and critical thinking skill level of students based on school differences and gender, and the influence of perception on students' critical thinking skill in scientific approach learning. It involved 206 students from three high schools in Banjarmasin, Indonesia. Quantitative data was obtained from a perception questionnaire and critical thinking skill test. The perception questionnaire refers to Perception of Science Classes Survey (PSCS). The test used refers to indicators of critical thinking skill from Ennis in 2011. Data were analyzed using non parametric statistical tests with the SPSS version 23 application for Windows. The results showed that 1) students' perception of scientific learning were in the medium category, 2) students' critical thinking skill level was in a low category, 3) there were differences in perception and critical thinking skill level based on school, but there are not any differences found based on gender, 4) there was an influence of perception towards students' critical thinking skill in scientific learning approach. Designing innovative learning methods, involving student activity, and providing recommend-ed learning facilities are suggested to do to enhance students' positive perception and critical thinking skill.

Communicability functions quantify the flow of information between two nodes of a network. In this work, we use them to explore the concept of the influence of a paper in a citation network. These functions depend on a parameter. By varying the parameter in a continuous way we explore different definitions of influence. We study six citation networks, three from physics and three from computer science. As a benchmark, we compare our results against two frequently used measures: the number of citations of a paper and the PageRank algorithm. We show that the ranking of the articles in a network can be varied from being equivalent to the ranking obtained from the number of citations to a behaviour tending to the eigenvector centrality, these limits correspond to small and large values of the communicability-function parameter, respectively. At an intermediate value of the parameter a PageRank-like behaviour is recovered. As a test case, we apply communicability functions to two sets of articles, where at least one author of each paper was awarded a Nobel Prize for the research presented in the corresponding article.

This paper assesses the market power of pulpwood mills in different regions of the U.S. We estimated the conjectural elasticity, elasticities of substitution and price elasticities for the delivered price at the mill in Southeast and North U.S. and the stumpage in the Southeast. We assembled data composed of price and quantity of Labor, Energy, Chemical Products and Wood at firms' level from Q4/2016 to Q4/2017, and applied a variety of econometric models that measure the influence of firms and resource characteristics on market competition. The results indicate moderate levels of oligopsony power in all markets, with the highest effect at the mill in the North, and lowest in the stumpage market in the South. Market power in the pulpwood market is strongly driven by industry concentration and local company size, and decreases as the estimated wood procurement radius from a mill increases in size.

This aim of the conceptual paper is to study the relationship between the trust of the society towards Zakat Institution and their compliance on zakat. In other words, it is consider as an early study of conceptual framework to examine the factors that influence the individual trust towards Zakat Institution. Theory of Reasoned Action was applied in the study to investigate the individual’s attitude and their compliance towards paying zakat. There also some recommendations for Zakat Institution to increase their performance and boost up the percentage of Muslim zakat payers to fulfil their obligation.

The aim of the research is to analyze English language scientific articles that have been published in the scientific journal entitled Annals PAAAE from 2009 to 2018 by using tools of text mining and text analysis, measuring how the frequency of key terms has changed, and to conclude the probable change of research focus of authors based on it. The subjects of the research are 393 English language articles that have been issued in the volumes of Annals PAAAE (Polish title is Roczniki Naukowe SERiA) from 2009 to 2018 (from Vol. 11 to Vol. 20), which are ready to download in pdf format on the website of the publishing house. Text mining and text analysis were conducted using own self-adapted routines of samples written in the R language programme. At the hierarchic cluster analysis, the Ward D method was used, and the association of frequency of terms was measured using Pearson’s correlation. It was found that the weight of research concerning the context of the product-production-market has increased, but there was low usage of the term “competitiveness”. What was of key significance was that in the case of clustering articles by author nationality, the role of the origin of the author has decreased as a determinant factor, which could suggest the uniformity of terminology as well as similarity of research topics and the researcher’s interests, which can initialize cooperation and common research. The growth of the number of articles elaborated on by international teams is also a projection of this tendency.

In science and scientific research there is a wide spectre of fields and subfields which are not always strictly confined. Different classifications of sciences are also known. Numerous books have been published regarding scientific research, types of scientific papers and manners in which their results are published. This literature is very detailed and precise within international academic circles, especially the literature that relates to publishing scientific books and doctoral theses. However, there are certain dilemmas and in­consistencies which can confuse a young scientist when writing an original research article. After a brief review of issues pertinent to scientific paper writing, methodology of scientific research and type of papers, this paper shows characteristics and construction of an original research article. It shows a technique of writing a paper in all scientific fields and subfields with special emphasis on natural and engineering sciences and in accordance with international and domestic standards. Wider practical guidelines can be found in the cited literature, so they can be additionally used, if needed. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 36042: Optimizacija arhitektonskog i urbanističkog planiranja i projektovanja u funkciji održivog razvoja Srbije]

Conventional wisdom states that Network-on-Chip router area grows quadratically with the channel width, and this perception has fundamentally shaped the assumptions of thousands of NoC papers that have been written to date, and many chip designs. However, this assumption is not entirely true. Simple analysis and empirical data from this paper shows that, in modern standard cell technology, a router’s standard cell logic area actually grows only linearly; it is solely the wire routing area that grows quadratically.If we think of a NoC as a standalone block as is done in standard hierarchical VLSI design, then the overall area growth is indeed quadratic. But this approach either vastly under-utilizes logic area, or, in designs that match wire and logic area, leads to small network links. At the same time, many standard non-NoC logic blocks like processors or accelerator blocks typically use the standard cell logic area but need only a fraction of available wiring resources.We propose an alternative approach, NoC Symbiosis, in which router logic and the node logic it services are jointly placed together. The router absorbs excess wiring resources from the node logic, and the node logic absorbs excess standard cell area from the router. Current-day automatic place and route (APR) tools already automatically distribute the router logic across the node logic, in order to provide enough space for the wiring resources. With this approach, future SoC’s can leverage vastly larger amounts of wiring bandwidth than ever before, or alternatively, reduce the area overhead of existing routers.We describe how we first encountered this phenomena, perform experiments to demonstrate its behavior, and provide design tips to help teams realize the potential of NoC Symbiosis.

Thredbo 15 is the fifteenth biennial conference of the International Conference on Competition and Ownership in Land Passenger Transport. Since its inception, 620 completed workshop and other papers presented at the conference have been published. A review of features of the papers, how they have changed over time, and the extent to which they have influenced the broader research community finds that: (i) there is a substantial body of evidence that tracks the evolution of concerns and practice over the period; (ii) the extensive citation of published Thredbo papers indicates that they have been useful to a wider audience; (iii) there are positive trends such as the increased use of quantitative methods; (iv) there is extensive evidence from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and South America, but rather less from North America and Asia; (v) the share of papers authored by academics has risen over time; (vi) regarding contracting of public transport, less work has been undertaken on procurement of contractors than the design of contracts, and even less on the management of contracts; and (vii) there has been a shift in the focus of papers away from the original core interest of the conference series. This paper complements the companion Thredbo history review Wong and Hensher (2018).

Purpose Natural resources in contemporary times are mostly managed by a collaborative governance approach which hinges on complex institutional designs (rules, norms and strategies). Many studies have been designed and carried out to assess collaborative governance, and the various institutional designs underpinning them. The purpose of this paper is to unpack the methodological gaps in natural resource governance research (with emphasis on co-management) and to conceptualise the appropriateness of Transdisciplinary (TD) research approach. Design/methodology/approach The paper adopts a critical stage review of relevant theoretical and empirical literature on natural resource governance. It discusses the complexities inherent in natural resource governance and juxtaposes these with the inherent weaknesses in methodologies employed by existing studies on the concept. The authors make a case for a TD research methodology that links scientists, practitioners and society in a joint problem design and solution process. Findings The authors register a “fuzziness” of the collaborative governance phenomenon but observe a methodological gap in existing studies on the concept. This paper discusses the complexities inherent. The paper describes TD as a “tailor-made approach” to solving complex societal issues and makes a case for its adoption in natural resource governance studies. Research limitations/implications This standalone paper is largely conceptual and not linked to any primary data; this notwithstanding, it synthesizes from both empirical and theoretical literature which would help shape future research endeavours in natural resource governance context. Practical implications With TD study oriented towards an epistemologically flexible approach, perspectives from different social and academic actors are integrated in this expanding field of research to address societal problems. Originality/value The paper provides a conceptual framework designating how actors interact in the TD research process as well as a “four-phase” approach in carrying out a TD research.

At present, there are no means for reliably comparing the wood fiber contents of different material streams within the paper industry material chain with each other. The aim of this article is to introduce conversion factors that make it possible to quantify the volume of wood expressed in roundwood equivalent (RWE) values for different paper industry-related materials in the material chain. These conversion factors apply to wood pulp, paper, and recovered paper. European data are used in quantifying the paper industry material streams and calculating the RWE conversion factors. The introduced conversion factors can be used to estimate RWE volumes at a global scale. With assumption that paper recycling did not occur and that paper production volume remained unchanged, an additional volume of 666 million m RWEs would be required globally per annum to produce 167 million tons of virgin wood pulp to replace 222 million tons of recovered paper utilized by the paper industry in 2010. This volume is approximately the same as 1.6 times the total removal of wood in Europe (EU27), or the total annual removal of wood in the USA, Canada, and Brazil combined.3

The number of elderly people as a proportion of the world’s population is growing significantly. Special attention to the accessibility and mobility requirements of this group is needed. The contribution of this paper is a review of travel patterns, mode preferences, infrastructure solutions, accessibility indices, mode choice models and datasets as they relate to elderly mobility. Key findings highlight the role of residential location characteristics in shaping elderly travel patterns, helping to explain why research on elderly travel has largely relied on case studies to date. The review also summarizes a range of indices that have been developed to measure public transport and walking accessibility among the elderly, including distance and time-based methods. Future research should consider the dominance of private transport in facilitating elderly mobility and its implications for cities experiencing an aging population.

Digital signal processors (DSPs) offer cutting-edge energy efficiency for embedded multimedia computations, but writing high-performance DSP code requires expert tuning. Programmers need to work at a low level of abstraction, manually tailoring vendor-specific instructions to enable vector and VLIW parallelism. Diospyros is a synthesizing compiler that searches for optimal data layouts to enable efficient vectorized code on DSPs. Preliminary results show that for small fixed-size matrix multiply and 2D convolution, Diospyros achieves a 6.4--7.6x speedup compared to vendor-provided optimized kernels, and a 6.5--31.3x speedup over loop-based kernels optimized with the vendor's included compiler.

This opinion article addresses the implications of recent EU regulations on alcoholic drinks labeling for regional development. In March 2017, the European Commission released a report requiring the mandatory labeling of ingredients and nutritional information for alcoholic beverages within 1 year, putting an end to the exceptionality of this sector compared to other foodstuffs, and responding to pressing demands by European consumer associations and other actors. Pressure from the alcohol sector had delayed EU legislation on the matter and managed to avoid a mandatory labeling provision, instead generating the possibility of making its own regulation proposal within a year. The Commission will assess this proposal in March 2018 and could review or reject it if found to be unsatisfactory. Here, we want to examine the controversy elicited by this new regulation, analyzing the consequences of labeling (or not) in the particular case of wine regions. It shows how the lack of labeling regulations harms winemakers oriented towards the production of quality wines and generates important information asymmetries that can lead to an overall decrease of wine quality. Ultimately, it highlights the relevance of a regional perspective on EU sectoral policies, as these can have unintended effects and lead to contradictory outcomes. The example of wine regions is used to emphasize this issue by showing the need to harmonize regional cohesion and CAP policies with industrial, environmental and consumer protection policies., This work was supported by the Rede de investigación Novos Enfoques da Análise Territorial (NEDAT), funded by the SUG, Xunta de Galicia 2017.

In 2007, on the cusp of the economic crisis, a paper was published in Growth and Change (June 2007) entitled “Shadow Europe: alternative European financial geographies,” which began to tackle the idea of shadow finance in Europe and the size and inseparability of what was regarded as “shadow” from “normal” financial flows. A number of the observations made have proved remarkably prescient and one particular phrase stands out in the light of the recent revelations about the so-called Panama Papers in 2016: “Strategically important flows of capital derived from complex underground production systems that have seldom been analyzed in detail move through the European financial networks that connect to offshore tax havens (Christensen, 2003). These havens are not a separate and distinct entity from the financial networks that connect world cities but rather a vital counterpart on which the functioning of the cities connected via those networks depends” (2007, p. 319). The revelation of the Panama Papers constitutes a new critical juncture from which to re-visit that 2007 paper and to re-examine the state of knowledge on shadow and formal financial flows.

Geoinformatics deals with spatial and temporal information and its analysis. Research in this field often follows established practices of first developing computational solutions for specific spatiotemporal problems and then publishing the results and insights in a (static) paper, e.g. as a PDF. Not every detail can be included in such a paper, and particularly, the complete set of computational steps are frequently left out. While this approach conveys key knowledge to other researchers it makes it difficult to effectively re-use and reproduce the reported results. In this vision paper, we propose an alternative approach to carry out and report research in Geoinformatics. It is based on (computational) reproducibility, promises to make re-use and reproduction more effective, and creates new opportunities for further research. We report on experiences with executable research compendia (ERCs) as alternatives to classic publications in Geoinformatics, and we discuss how ERCs combined with a supporting research infrastructure can transform how we do research in Geoinformatics. We point out which challenges this idea entails and what new research opportunities emerge, in particular for the COSIT community.

A GAIA special issue will focus on reflections and empirical insights regarding real-world laboratories. In order to bring the growing research community together and to combine empirical evidence, the guest editors hereby invite colleagues to submit papers. A GAIA special issue will focus on reflections and empirical insights regarding real-world laboratories. In order to bring the growing research community together and to combine empirical evidence, the guest editors hereby invite colleagues to submit papers.

Health and well-being have been historically uncommon areas of focus in studies of forced migration within the social sciences, where the focus has more often been focused broadly on identity, liminality, and social suffering. Urban refugees have also been largely excluded from the narrative. Yet, urban refugees represent the majority of the world’s refugees, which means we are effectively excluding the majority of the refugee experience from our research. Health is often a central marker of inequality and marginalization. Understanding the entanglement of forced migration to urban areas and health bears enormous potential for policy and practice. This paper will outline what we know, and set an agenda for the study of urban refugee health.

With the widespread installation of location-enabled devices on public transportation, public vehicles are generating massive amounts of trajectory data in real time. However, using these trajectory data for meaningful analysis requires careful considerations in storing, managing, processing, and visualizing the data. Using the location data of the Los Angeles Metro bus system, along with publicly available bus schedule data, we conduct a data processing and analyses study to measure the performance of the public transportation system in Los Angeles utilizing a number of metrics including travel-time reliability, on-time performance, bus bunching, and travel-time estimation. We demonstrate the visualization of the data analysis results through an interactive web-based application. The developed algorithms and system provide powerful tools to detect issues and improve the efficiency of public transportation systems., Comment: SIGSPATIAL'18, demo paper, 4 pages

India is developing fast in the lines of some of the greatest cities of the world. Graph from the last 20-25 years show that India has majorly borne a paradigm shift in development icons as such Its cities have surpassed even double to its initial infrastructure during this period. Most of these infrastructural icons have a lot to do with the IT industry boom in the country as such most of these cities (e.g. Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, Hyderabad etc.) are further burdened with employable youth, who require transit accommodation in the same city as well. There are some other cities too who used to enjoy the tourist or the pilgrims’ inflow by virtue of some kind of religious, natural or heritage resource attached to it. But, as evident in History, India and the Indians are known to be cultural driven, Pilgrimage friendly people. As such, these Blessings to such cities are continuously turning out to be the sufferings in the light of the number of pilgrims/tourists (floating population) these cities bear on daily basis. Most of these cities lack the sustainable infrastructure to uphold these burdens and to meet the energy demands for the well-being of people and city. These infrastructural additions must contemplate the Energy demands of the built form, people and their activities. One of such vulnerable town due to Paradigm shift in its development priorities is KATRA town, which is continuously getting burdened with more and more buildings, people & loss of Rural Greens as such contemplation of energy requirements is the need of the hour. Katra town is world famous for the rich religious history attached to it as it forms the base town (Camp) of Trikuta Hills upon which (12 kms away from base town) the Holy Shrine of Goddess Maa Vaishno Devi is located. Every year millions of Pilgrims from around the globe visit the shrine & the Katra Town. The Katra town is the major contributor of J&K (Jammu & Kashmir State) economy & India at Large. Pertinently, its being projected as one of the smart cities of India in next few years in the lines of leading smart cities of the world.

‘Landscape’ is relatively underexplored in legal scholarship, notwithstanding its occasional centrality to legal analysis, and the ways in which law contributes to the shaping of landscape. Wind energy is an especially rich area for the exploration of landscape; not only do wind farms consistently raise concerns about landscape, but the existence of climate change complicates the response to local concern. Most of the legal literature on ‘knowledge’ focuses on the ways in which different ‘expert’ knowledges find their way into, and then shape, legal processes and decisions. This article is more concerned with the ways in which the planning system receives different knowledge claims, and validates some of them. The discussion turns around four tentative categories of knowledge claim: expert or technical knowledge claims; lay (or sometimes local) knowledge claims; prior institutional knowledge claims; and professional planning knowledge claims. Knowledge of the complex, dynamic and plural idea of landscape in any particular case is constructed in the process of decision making and reason giving through a careful layering of these different sorts of knowledge claim.

A previous paper on RIS3 assessed its potential to influence growth strategies and their delivery. It held that significant further investment work was needed in tools and techniques, data and intelligence, and innovation in leadership capacity and capabilities. It further asserted that such investment was needed to be part of a commitment to a long-run learning and evaluation process. This paper considers synergies and dissonances between these national approaches to development in England. In particular, it explores how far RIS represents a step change from previous approaches to innovation-led growth. Alternatively, is it more accurately an incremental facelift and rebranding of previous orthodoxies? Does it add value to or detract from national policy for England? What roles might the approach play in the so-called ‘devolution revolution’? Can the (small scale, ‘light touch’) Advisory Hub approach support and promote those roles? What, if anything, might the England experience have for other n...

This paper studies the legal effects of land allocation papers in today's land administration system by focusing on stool lands in Kumasi. Using key informant interviews and review of relevant land legislations, court proceedings and seminar papers, we found out that, land allocation papers in their current form and substance are incapable of conveying title to purported grantees, but may only serve as evidence that an individual or corporate body has purportedly acquired land. The allocation paper is only a step towards acquiring full legal rights over land under customary tenure. This study recommends that grantees of stool lands should make every effort towards completing the other legally required processes such as formalisation and registration of the transaction at the Lands Commission for valid legal title. It is further recommended that preparation of allocation papers by chiefs should be enhanced by incorporating terms of the grant, identities of the transaction parties, consideration and proper description of the land. These enhancements will facilitate the formalisation and registration process, and potentially reduce the cost and time of registering land in Ghana. Particularly, it will challenge state institutions and land administrators to introduce stringent measures or security features that would make land title registrations using allocation papers legally binding.