Breathing Artifacts of Urban BioClimatic Layers for Post-Anthropocene Urban Environment

This article seeks the qualitative synthesis of schools of thought from extreme climate regions that could support urban biodiversity and climate change adaptation through architectural design. It proposes that climate comfort and biodiversity are closely related. This article suggests a possible systemic urban metabolism within a built environment that can support a transition to post-Anthropocene, where humans and other species live together in synergy. This article exemplifies and seeks systemic relations and reflections of gathered field studies documentation of case studies of breathing walls, envelopes, and screens generating bioclimatic layers in the cultural landscape, selected for their penetrability and performance. The samples from diverse study journeys that were codesigned through vernacular cultures and the author’s research by design speculations on the responsive screen ‘Ray’ are investigated and speculated upon through gigamapping (visual complexity mapping). This gigamapping is not to present any hard data model but to relate, inform and speculate on the investigated field that is grounded in research by design on cross-species coliving. This is approached through possible architectures and architectural and urban design parasites, transitioning towards synergetic landscapes of our envisioned colived and cocreated futures.

Challenges and Resilience-Building: A Narrative Inquiry Study on a Mid-Career Chinese EFL Teacher

With a high rate of attrition and burnout of teachers as a global concern, teacher resilience has become a trendy topic in the research of their professional development as one of the pillars of positive psychology (positive character traits). However, the literature reveals that little research has been done on the mid-career teachers in the Chinese context, especially on how resilience may be nurtured, sustained, or eroded over time. Focusing on a mid-career EFL female teacher (the author) in China as a case study, this longitudinal self-reflective study employs a narrative inquiry to investigate the challenges that the experienced teacher was encountered with and to depict her trajectories of resilience-building by fleshing out the interaction between challenges, resources, and coping strategies in her three different scenarios. “Hard data,” such as teaching journals, reflective field notes, and messages with students were collected and analyzed inductively by using thematic analysis, and “soft data,” like memory was also referred to. The findings unfolded challenges confronting the experienced teacher peculiar to the Chinese context and charted a detailed bumpy journey of resilience building in three phases, accompanied by her growing emotional, intellectual, and psychological capacities. Implications are drawn out for teacher resilience building, school leaders, and policymakers.

Competitiveness and Financial Management in SMEs Hotel Businesses in Yucatan, Mexico

Small and medium hotel enterprises in Yucatan represent an important sector for the economic development of the State. However, inadequate financial management leads to reduced profits and a short life expectancy for them. In the case of financial management in hotels, it is necessary to develop an indicator model that facilitates the reading of the results, of the financial situation of the hotels, and of the organization in general. It is necessary to obtain hard data that lead to making quick and forceful decisions in a timely manner. The objective of this study is to explain why a good financial management is a factor that greatly increases the competitiveness of organizations and that hotel financial management indicators are an instrument for measuring the different variables associated with organizational objectives, expressed in terms of some quantitative basis that defines the scope or achievement of the expected results. For this work, a bibliographical review of relevant articles from a range of authors was conducted.

Assessment of Feldstein’s ‘Global Imbalance'

This note is a systematic review of arguments provided by Feldstein (2008) on the necessity for global readjustments, both in the U.S. and in main trading partners. The purpose is to address the main arguments in the scientific and political debate on persistent To date, there has been no publication that challenged the opinions leading to totally wrong forecasts concerning the global imbalance. With a perspective of more than 10 years of post-2008-crisis developments, and together with empirical evidence one can easily see how erroneous were the arguments formulated in 2008. The tasks included a systematic review of all arguments formulated by Martin Feldstein in 2008, and casting them against empirical evidence. The U.S. current account (CA) deficit has continued for many years, since 1982, and has not changed, as foreseen by Feldstein. The primary method is a simple comparative analysis, supported by basic macroeconomic data. They allow to reveal multiple processes leading to further deterioration of the U.S. trade balance. Neither savings rate domestically nor abroad adjusted to give a basis for solving the global imbalance. In the same time, all traditional arguments presented on global imbalances seem undeniable. However, an alternative interpretation of the imbalance does not recognize the CA deficit as “a gift to the U.S. economy”. This paper sheds new light on the “global imbalance”, suggesting that increasing domestic absorption by China may be an important factor in resolving the U.S. problematic and persistent trade deficit. Disaster-scenarios may be not there in the U.S. to experience. Future developments may be far from those announced, and previously expected by Feldstein in his seminal paper. A careful reader may conclude that all coming changes and adjustments will be slow, gradual, and will not cause any major issues in the global economy. Such conclusions seem most justified by hard data and therefore encouraging. As the topic remains central to open economy empirical macroeconomics, continuation of studies on this issue seems natural. The U.S. and China will remain the biggest economies, and, as such, they are central to the global situation.

Forecasting Reserves Replacement Ratio RRR: A Method for Benchmarking the Ability of the Company to Mature Projects and Reduce Uncertainty

Reserves Replacement Ratio (RRR) has been used as a Key Performance Indicator(KPI) for monitoring the ability of IOCs toreplace their reserves through time.It provides valuable information about the expected long-term viability of the company and its ability to move forward with new projects.If this remains an important metric for investors and operators alike, it isworth understanding the key parameters behind this KPI. Howshould we realistically expect the RRR to behave in the futureWhat does it tell about the reserves and resources of the operator The objective of this document is to investigate how a widely underused KPI can be analyzed and forecasted based on previous reserves and business plan submissions. We suggest a methodto provide teams with relevant and realistic RRR, that canbe expected based on the company portfolio. This method was developed by reviewing the Reserves &Resources in hundreds of reservoirs for all projects,including No Further Activity (NFA) cases and all future developmentprojects. Based on the future profiles,the evaluation of the RRRwas forecasted for 10 years. The forecasts are being reviewed year on year to ensure that teams are provided with realistic KPIs based on hard data rather than biased expectations. TheRRR is computed using (i) the amount of reserves added during the year, divided by (ii) the production of the company during the same year. This paper will focus on the reserves changes from one year to another, considering that reserves addition (orreduction), comes from two main sources:

Greatly Exaggerated in Canada: Diverging Data and Media Bailouts

Background: The Canadian government allocated $595 million in subsidies over five years to news media in 2019, but the bailout was based on questionable data. Financial losses were exaggerated; a think tank report was criticized for using data selectively; data from a university research project differed sharply from annual industry counts; and job loss figures were disputed. Analysis: Hard data can diverge markedly from soft data accepted in pursuit of policy outcomes. Conclusions and implications: A second campaign underway on behalf of entertainment industries could yield a bailout several times larger than the first. Closer scrutiny should be exercised of media narratives and offered data. An independent media research centre should collect and verify data for policy purposes.Contexte : En 2019, le gouvernement canadien a octroyé aux médias d’information 595 millions de dollars en subventions étalées sur cinq ans, un montant évalué à partir de données douteuses. En effet, on a surestimé les pertes financières dans le milieu; le rapport influent d’un groupe de réflexion se fondait sur des données sélectionnées pour les besoins de la cause; les données provenant d’un projet de recherche universitaire différaient beaucoup de celles fournies annuellement par l’industrie; et on a exagéré les pertes d’emploi. Analyse : Les données dures peuvent différer énormément des données molles acceptées dans le but d’atteindre certains objectifs politiques. Conclusion et implications : Une seconde campagne menée pour aider les industries du divertissement pourrait bénéficier de subventions encore plus généreuses que les premières. Avant de procéder, il serait judicieux d’examiner de près les narratifs des médias et les données proposées. À cet égard, on devrait créer un centre indépendant pour la recherche sur les médias qui pourrait lui même recueillir et vérifier les données utilisées pour formuler des politiques.

Direct public funding of political parties: Between proxy measures and hard data

This article presents an original dataset of direct public funding (DPF) of political parties across 27 post-communist regimes from the outset of transition until 2020. It represents the first systematic, and detailed account of the actual level of DPF provided to parties outside established democracies in terms of geographical and temporal coverage. The dataset has a panel format and includes information on DPF per registered voter and cast ballot separately and in aggregate for more than 800 country-year observations and more than 200 election campaigns. The analysis unveils substantial cross-national and within-country variation in the level of DPF, as well as between statutory and election financing. Despite an increasing reliance of political parties on the state, no pattern exists regarding the dynamics of access and distribution rules. It also highlights the limitations and risks entailed by the extensive use of various proxies such as dichotomous indicators, composite regulatory indexes, or perception-based measures that do not capture cross-national and within-country variation either in DPF or other dimensions of political financing regime.

Sexual Dysfunction and Gun Ownership in America: When Hard Data Meet a Limp Theory

Although there has been no direct empirical evidence linking sexual dysfunction (SD) with gun ownership, speculation has been widespread and persistent for decades. In this paper, we formally examine the association between SD and gun ownership. Our primary hypothesis, derived from the psychosexual theory of gun ownership, asserts that men experiencing SD are more likely to personally own guns than other men. To test this hypothesis, we used recently collected data from the 2021 Crime, Health, and Politics Survey (CHAPS), a national probability sample of 780 men, and binary logistic regression to model gun ownership as a function of SD. Our key finding is that men experiencing SD are no more likely to own guns than men without SD. This interpretation was supported across several indicators of SD (performance anxiety, erection trouble, and ED medication) and gun ownership (personal gun ownership, purchasing a gun during the pandemic, and keeping a gun in one’s bedroom). To our knowledge, we are the first to have directly tested the association between SD and gun ownership in America. Our findings are important because they contribute to our understanding of factors associated with gun ownership by challenging the belief that phallic symbolism and masculinity somehow drive men with SD to purchase guns. Our results also remind us of the perils of gun culture rhetoric, which, in this case, function to discredit gun owners and to further stigmatize men with ED. We conclude by calling for more evidence-based discussions of SD and guns in society.

Do community citizenship behaviors by leaders enhance team performance? Evidence from the "field"

Due to minimal available findings, Rodell (2016) put out a call for more research on the performance outcomes of community focused behaviors such as volunteering while acknowledging the challenge of connecting “social movements to hard data” (p.79). This study answers that call by evaluating the community citizenship behaviors (CCBs) of leaders and the potential influence on team performance. Based on existing theory and findings, this study argues that leaders who engage in CCB are likely to enhance their leadership skills, inspire their followers and produce prosocial contagion and as a result we hypothesize they will increase their team performance. Using a sample of National Football League teams and players the findings presented here support the hypothesis suggesting that investments in local communities produce a positive outcome for the community, the leader, and even the leader’s team performance.

An Improved Method of Reservoir Facies Modeling Based on Generative Adversarial Networks

As the reservoir and its attribute distribution are obviously controlled by sedimentary facies, the facies modeling is one of the important bases for delineating the area of high-quality reservoir and characterizing the attribute parameter distribution. There are a large number of continental sedimentary reservoirs with strong heterogeneity in China, the geometry and distribution of various sedimentary microfacies are relatively complex. The traditional geostatistics methods which have shortage in characterization of the complex and non-stationary geological patterns, have limitation in facies modeling of continental sedimentary reservoirs. The generative adversarial network (GANs) is a recent state-of-the-art deep learning method, which has capabilities of pattern learning and generation, and is widely used in the domain of image generation. Because of the similarity in content and structure between facies models and specific images (such as fluvial facies and the images of modern rivers), and the various images generated by GANs are often more complex than reservoir facies models, GANs has potential to be used in reservoir facies modeling. Therefore, this paper proposes a reservoir facies modeling method based on GANs: (1) for unconditional modeling, select training images (TIs) based on priori geological knowledge, and use GANs to learn priori geological patterns in TIs, then generate the reservoir facies model by GANs; (2) for conditional modeling, a training method of “unconditional-conditional simulation cooperation” (UCSC) is used to realize the constraint of hard data while learning the priori geological patterns. Testing the method using both synthetic data and actual data from oil field, the results meet perfectly the priori geological patterns and honor the well point hard data, and show that this method can overcome the limitation that traditional geostatistics are difficult to deal with the complex non-stationary patterns and improve the conditional constraint effect of GANs based methods. Given its good performance in facies modeling, the method has a good prospect in practical application.