Microloans garnered from crowdfunding provide an important source of financial capital for nascent entrepreneurs. Drawing on cognitive evaluation theory, we assess how linguistic cues known to affect ...underlying motivation can frame entrepreneurial narratives either as a business opportunity or as an opportunity to help others. We examine how this framing affects fundraising outcomes in the context of prosocial lending and conduct our analysis on a sample of microloans made to over 36,000 entrepreneurs in 51 countries via an online crowdfunding platform. We find that lenders respond positively to narratives highlighting the venture as an opportunity to help others, and less positively when the narrative is framed as a business opportunity.
Microlending provides a valuable alternative to traditional financing for entrepreneurs in impoverished countries. Drawing from theory on political rhetoric and the concept of warm-glow giving, we ...examine characteristics of entrepreneurial narratives that are related to how quickly entrepreneurs receive funding. Using a sample of 6051 narratives from entrepreneurs in developing countries, we demonstrate that narratives higher in language indicating blame and present concern lead to more rapid funding, while narratives higher in accomplishment, tenacity, and variety lead to slower funding. Our findings suggest that the presentation of investment profiles should be carefully managed to maximize funding likelihood.
► We examine the effect of political rhetoric on microloan funding speed. ► Narratives high in rhetoric indicating blame and present concern led to faster funding. ► Narratives indicating accomplishment, tenacity, and variety led to slower funding. ► Post-hoc analysis indicates that innovativeness rhetoric led to slower funding.
The statistical analysis of wildfire activity is a critical component of national wildfire planning, operations, and research in the United States (US). However, there are multiple federal, state, ...and local entities with wildfire protection and reporting responsibilities in the US, and no single, unified system of wildfire record keeping exists. To conduct even the most rudimentary interagency analyses of wildfire numbers and area burned from the authoritative systems of record, one must harvest records from dozens of disparate databases with inconsistent information content. The onus is then on the user to check for and purge redundant records of the same fire (i.e., multijurisdictional incidents with responses reported by several agencies or departments) after pooling data from different sources. Here we describe our efforts to acquire, standardize, error-check, compile, scrub, and evaluate the completeness of US federal, state, and local wildfire records from 1992–2011 for the national, interagency Fire Program Analysis (FPA) application. The resulting FPA Fire-Occurrence Database (FPA FOD) includes nearly 1.6 million records from the 20 yr period, with values for at least the following core data elements: location, at least as precise as a Public Land Survey System section (2.6 km2 grid), discovery date, and final fire size. The FPA FOD is publicly available from the Research Data Archive of the US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service (doi:10.2737/RDS-2013-0009). While necessarily incomplete in some aspects, the database is intended to facilitate fairly high-resolution geospatial analysis of US wildfire activity over the past two decades, based on available information from the authoritative systems of record.
We present an alternate deployment of the GrayStarServer (now ChromaStarServer (CSS)) pedagogical stellar atmosphere and spectrum synthesis WWW application, namely ChromaStarDB (CSDB), in which the ...atomic line list used for spectrum synthesis is implemented as an SQL database table rather than as a more conventional byte-data file. This allows for very flexible selection criteria to determine which transitions are extracted from the line list for inclusion in the synthesis, and enables novel pedagogical and research experiments in spectrum synthesis. This line selection flexibility is reflected in the CSDB UI. The database extraction is very fast and would be appropriate for the larger line lists of research-grade modeling codes. We also take the opportunity to present major additions to the ChromaStar and CSS codes that are also reflected in CSDB: (1) TiO band opacity in the JOLA approximation, (2) Metal b − f and Rayleigh scattering opacity, (3) 2D implementation of the flux integral, (4) Improvement of the n e convergence, (5) Expansion of the exo-planet modeling parameters, (6) A red giant template model for the initial guess at the structure, and (7) General improvements to the UI. The applications may be found at the home page of the OpenStar project: http://www.ap.smu.ca/OpenStars/.
Animal protein provides unique sensory and textural properties to foods that are not easily replicated when replaced with plant-based alternatives. Food scientists and researchers are currently ...developing innovative approaches to improve their physical and sensory characteristics in plant-based analogs. In terms of plant-based cheese substitutes (PBCS), soy is the most commonly used plant-based protein but is associated with undesirable sensory attributes (i.e., beany and gritty). In order to determine if the approaches result in a significant improvement in sensory quality and liking, sensory evaluation is employed. The aim of this review is to summarize the original literature (
= 12) relating to 100% PBCS which utilizes sensory evaluation methods. Overall, a major theme identified in this review is the innovative strategies used to increase acceptance of PBCS, whether products are aimed at improving existing non-dairy-based cheese formulations or to more closely mimic a conventional dairy-based cheese product. Studies demonstrate processing and fermentation of soybeans and blending of non-dairy milks are potential ways to improve consumer liking of PBCS. A secondary focus is to discuss the current sensory methodology carried out in the reviewed literature. Future studies should consider using more specific measures of flavor and mouthfeel, integrate evaluation of consumer liking with instrumental textural methods, and use a larger more diverse group of consumers. The outcome of this review is to highlight the importance of integrating sensory science in order to help facilitate the improvement of the sensory and quality attributes of PBCS and streamline product development.
•Realised ES are a product of the potential service and specified beneficiaries.•Natural capital (NC) and human-derived capital (HDC) are both essential for ES.•HDC plays a role even at the stage of ...potential ecosystem services.•It is possible but not always easy to separate the contribution of NC and HDC to ES.•Sustainable management should identify critical NC and HDC for each service.
Display omitted
There is growing interest in the role that natural capital plays in underpinning ecosystem services. Yet, there remain differences and inconsistencies in the conceptualisation of capital and ecosystem services and the role that humans play in their delivery. Using worked examples in a stocks and flows systems approach, we show that both natural capital (NC) and human-derived (produced, human, social, cultural, financial) capital (HDC) are necessary to create ecosystem services at many levels. HDC plays a role at three stages of ecosystem service delivery. Firstly, as essential elements of a combined social-ecological system to create a potential ecosystem service. Secondly, through the beneficiaries in shaping the demand for that service. Thirdly, in the form of additional capital required to realise the ecosystem service flow. We show that it is possible, although not always easy, to separately identify how these forms of capital contribute to ecosystem service flow. We discuss how applying a systems approach can help identify critical natural capital and critical human-derived capital to guide sustainable management of the stocks and flows of all forms of capital which underpin provision of multiple ecosystem services. The amount of realised ecosystem service can be managed in several ways: via the NC & HDC which govern the potential service, and via factors which govern both the demand from the beneficiaries, and the efficiency of use of the potential service by those beneficiaries.
Purpose
Men who are survivors of prostate cancer report a variety of psychological and physical factors contributing to a lower quality of life, and physical activity can assist to mitigate these ...issues. This review aims to provide a summary of physical activity behaviour change trials targeting prostate cancer survivors, assess the feasibility of these interventions and, if possible, identify intervention and study characteristics associated with significant intervention effects.
Method
Four databases (PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO and EMBASE) were systematically searched for randomised controlled trials containing at least one behavioural outcome relating to physical activity published up until July 2016. Forward and backwards, hand, key author citation searching and known research were also considered.
Results
From a total of 13, 828 titles, the search resulted in 12 studies (6 prostate cancer only and 6 mixed cancer interventions), eight of which found positive results most often related immediately to post-intervention aerobic activity. Factors relating to efficacy were not conclusive due to the heterogeneity of studies and lack of cancer-specific data in mixed cancer trials. Future research focusing on intervention reach, maintenance of intervention effects and resistance training outcomes is needed.
Conclusion
There is preliminary evidence to suggest that a variety of physical activity behaviour change interventions targeting men with a history of prostate cancer can be efficacious, at least in the short term. Experimental studies are required to identify key intervention features.
Implications for Cancer Survivors
Physical activity interventions can assist prostate cancer survivors in relation to short-term lifestyle change, though more evidence is required to improve the clarity of factors related to efficacy.
Wildfires in the western United States (US) are increasingly expensive, destructive, and deadly. Reducing wildfire losses is particularly challenging when fires frequently start on one land tenure ...and damage natural or developed assets on other ownerships. Managing wildfire risk in multijurisdictional landscapes has recently become a centerpiece of wildfire strategic planning, legislation, and risk research. However, important empirical knowledge gaps remain regarding cross-boundary fire activity in the western US. Here, we use lands administered by the US Forest Service as a study system to assess the causes, ignition locations, structure loss, and social and biophysical factors associated with cross-boundary fire activity over the past three decades. Results show that cross-boundary fires were primarily caused by humans on private lands. Cross-boundary ignitions, area burned, and structure losses were concentrated in California. Public lands managed by the US Forest Service were not the primary source of fires that destroyed the most structures. Cross-boundary fire activity peaked in moderately populated landscapes with dense road and jurisdictional boundary networks. Fire transmission is increasing, and evidence suggests it will continue to do so in the future. Effective cross-boundary fire risk management will require cross-scale risk co-governance. Focusing on minimizing damages to high-value assets may be more effective than excluding fire from multijurisdictional landscapes.
We describe a unique approach to economizing the solution to the general chemical equilibrium and equation-of-state problem for late-type stars, including diatomic and polyatomic molecules, that is ...fast, accurate, and suitable for responsive approximate data modeling applications, and to more intensive modeling approaches in which the calculation of the gas equilibrium must be expedited to allow other aspects to be treated more realistically. The method, based on a novel economization of Newton’s method of solution of the linearized Saha and conservation equations, has been implemented in Python and made available as a stand-alone package, GASPy, and has been integrated into the interactive Python atmosphere and spectrum modeling code ChromaStarPy. As a result, ChromaStarPy now computes the state of the gas, the number density of absorbers, and the surface flux spectrum, with consistent inclusion of 105 chemical species, including 34 diatomic, and 16 polyatomic, neutral molecules, as well as H− and \({{\rm{H}}}_{2}^{+}\), as well as many neutral and ionized atomic species. The economized method converges very rapidly and greatly improves the code’s relevance to late-type stellar and brown dwarf spectrum modeling. We provide a brief overview of the GAS methodology, and present some illustrative results for the chemical equilibrium and spectrum for an M-type bright giant and dwarf, and a comparison to results of the PHOENIX/PPRESS package. All codes are available from the OpenStars www site: www.ap.smu.ca/OpenStars.
PDF
