scholarly journals Productivity and functioning of the beech ecosystem: Ecological Experimental Station – Kremnické vrchy Mts. (Western Carpathians)

2015 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 252-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milan Barna

AbstractAt beginning of the 1980‘s, the National Science Foundation (USA) came up with the initiation of the program for Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER), which is a program based on long-term comprehensive study of the structure and processes of ecosystems. The Ecological Experimental Station (EES) in the Kremnické vrchy Mountains (Western Carpathians, Slovakia, 1986) was founded for similar purposes. The aim of the research at EES was to evaluate the productivity, carrying capacity and functioning of the beech ecosystem. In February 1989, five plots were established. Four plots were subjected to a regeneration cutting of different intensities (clear-cut, strip shelterwood cut: light, medium and heavy). The fifth plot was left without any management treatments as a control. The second cutting was performed in 2004 followed by the final cutting five years later. Currently, the research is carried out on the EES control plot in the stand comprising 115–120 years old beech trees. In the other stands the research is focused on the development of naturally regenerated beech ecosystems established after different cutting interventions. The future of the EES is in addressing some global issues, particularly the impact of climate change on primary production, as well as on its other consequences for the functioning of the affected ecosystems.

Author(s):  
Chris Brewster ◽  
Paul N. Gooderham ◽  
Wolfgang Mayrhofer

Purpose – The dominant focus of HRM research has been that of “strategic HRM”, that is a focus on the impact of HRM on firm performance. The authors argue that not only are the cumulative results of this “dominant research orthodoxy” disappointing in terms of their external validity, but also they are of limited practical value. Further, it has failed not only in terms of its narrow firm performance-oriented agenda, but also the tenets of its agenda have contributed to serious levels of employee dissatisfaction and to the failure to deal with pressing global issues. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – In order to assess the contribution of the dominant research orthodoxy the authors analyse the 16 most cited journal articles in the field of HRM. Findings – The authors find a predominance of US-centric studies and therefore a questionable cross-national generalizability of the dominant research orthodoxy. The use of cross-sectional data means that long-term effects cannot be gauged. The authors observe a lack of consensus on how to operationalize HRM and firm performance. National context is generally absent. Practical implications – The authors show that for HRM to realize its potential for governments, media, or philanthropic agencies, HRM must abandon its restricted scope and mono-dimensional sources of inspiration. Originality/value – The authors not only point to the shortcomings of the dominant research orthodoxy within HRM, but the authors point to how HRM could become significantly more “centre-staged” by addressing the actors searching for contributions to the big questions of the world – the governments, media, and philanthropic agencies.


Author(s):  
Steven McGee ◽  
Jess K. Zimmerman

As the developers of Journey to El Yunque, we have taken a different approach to the process of designing a science curriculum. Rather than start with a specific set of concepts or skills to target as learning outcomes, we started by identifying a specific community of practice to which we sought to connect students. Researchers in the El Yunque rainforest in Puerto Rico have been studying the impact of hurricanes on ecosystem dynamics and have been modeling what the long-term impact would be if changes to the global climate increase the frequency of severe hurricanes. Therefore, hurricane impact became the focal phenomenon for the unit. We modeled the process of investigating hurricane impact after the long-term ecological research practices of researchers in El Yunque. Students begin by investigating the long-term impact of hurricanes on the producers in El Yunque. Next students investigate the long-term impact of hurricanes on various consumers in the rainforest. Finally, students investigate how hurricanes impact the cycling of resources directly as well as indirectly through changes in organisms’ use of those resources in the rainforest. A central tension in the design process is how to coherently represent the spatial relationships between the components of the ecosystem and the temporal dynamics of the individual components. In this paper, we present the evolution of the program as we sought to balance that design tension and build an environment that connects students to the central phenomenon and practices of the community of researchers in El Yunque. 


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-19
Author(s):  
Dipendra Bahadur Singh ◽  
Deepak Kumar Sah

Nepal being a landlocked country is completely dependent on the roadways and airways for means of transportation however, the railway has not been started in Nepal to date. Transportation is interlinked with mobility and due to lockdown every sector related to mobility has been affected. Consequently, the aviation sector has been worst hit as airlines were prohibited to operate. The aviation industry of Nepal has foreseen significant decadence in the mobility of passengers and cargo (international and domestic) which has affected revenue generation. Similarly, the imposed lockdown has influenced the ongoing nation's pride and the long-term investment projects which have been considered as a milestone in the infrastructural development of Nepal and those projects need to be reprogrammed and reprioritized. Moreover, the sharp decrease in import of petroleum products has decreased the revenue paid to the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) which will help to reduce trade loss. The lockdown induced due to COVID-19 has also affected the agricultural sector as the supply chain has been disrupted due to travel restrictions. The overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that the transport and its inter-linked sector contribute has been reduced during lockdown than the preceding years. Identifying the paucity of research in the transportation sector of Nepal this paper is focused on the comprehensive study of the impact of the COVID-19 transportation sector along with its inter-connected areas.


2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beat Meier ◽  
Anja König ◽  
Samuel Parak ◽  
Katharina Henke

This study investigates the impact of thought suppression over a 1-week interval. In two experiments with 80 university students each, we used the think/no-think paradigm in which participants initially learn a list of word pairs (cue-target associations). Then they were presented with some of the cue words again and should either respond with the target word or avoid thinking about it. In the final test phase, their memory for the initially learned cue-target pairs was tested. In Experiment 1, type of memory test was manipulated (i.e., direct vs. indirect). In Experiment 2, type of no-think instructions was manipulated (i.e., suppress vs. substitute). Overall, our results showed poorer memory for no-think and control items compared to think items across all experiments and conditions. Critically, however, more no-think than control items were remembered after the 1-week interval in the direct, but not in the indirect test (Experiment 1) and with thought suppression, but not thought substitution instructions (Experiment 2). We suggest that during thought suppression a brief reactivation of the learned association may lead to reconsolidation of the memory trace and hence to better retrieval of suppressed than control items in the long term.


2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Garate-Serafini ◽  
Jose Mendez ◽  
Patty Arriaga ◽  
Larry Labiak ◽  
Carol Reynolds

2014 ◽  
Vol 75 (S 02) ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten Lund-Johansen ◽  
Øystein Tveiten ◽  
Monica Finnkirk ◽  
Erling Myrseth ◽  
Frederik Goplen ◽  
...  

2018 ◽  
pp. 70-84
Author(s):  
Ph. S. Kartaev ◽  
Yu. I. Yakimova

The paper studies the impact of the transition to the inflation targeting regime on the magnitude of the pass-through effect of the exchange rate to prices. We analyze cross-country panel data on developed and developing countries. It is shown that the transition to this regime of monetary policy contributes to a significant reduction in both the short- and long-term pass-through effects. This decline is stronger in developing countries. We identify the main channels that ensure the influence of the monetary policy regime on the pass-through effect, and examine their performance. In addition, we analyze the data of time series for Russia. It was concluded that even there the transition to inflation targeting led to a decrease in the dependence of the level of inflation on fluctuations in the ruble exchange rate.


2018 ◽  
pp. 125-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. M. Drobyshevsky ◽  
P. V. Trunin ◽  
A. V. Bozhechkova

The paper studies the factors of secular stagnation. Key factors of long-term slowdown in economic growth include the slowdown of technological development, aging population, human capital accumulation limits, high public debt, creative destruction process violation etc. The authors analyze key theoretical aspects of long-term stagnation and study the impact of these factors on Japanies economy. The authors conclude that most of the factors have significant influence on the Japanese economy for recent decades, but they cannot explain all dynamics. For Russia, on the contrary, we do not see any grounds for considering the decline in the economy since 2013 as an episode of secular stagnation.


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