In current science policies, competition and output incentives are emphasized as a means of making university systems efficient and productive. By comparing eight countries, this article analyzes how ...funding environments of university research vary across countries and whether more competitive funding systems are more efficient in producing scientific publications. The article shows that there are significant differences in the competitiveness of funding systems, but no straightforward connection between financial incentives and the efficiency of university systems exists. Our results provoke questions about whether financial incentives boost publication productivity, and whether policy-makers should place greater emphasis on other factors relevant to high productivity.
•The literature related to forest harvesting on drained peatlands was reviewed.•Focus on identifying the best practices for mitigation of water quality deterioration.•So far no practices to ...effectively mitigate all harmful consequences concurrently.•So far no practices to mitigate DOC and dissolved organic nutrient exports.•Future studies should focus on assessing the impacts of partial harvestings.
We reviewed the studies on the impacts of forest harvesting on nutrient, sediment, and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) exports from drained peatlands with the aim to identify the best practices for mitigation of detrimental water quality impacts. We concluded that so far there are no such practices that would effectively mitigate all harmful consequences of forest harvestings concurrently. Controlling water levels by executing drainage operations immediately after harvesting may decrease the exports of easily soluble and redox-sensitive elements, but the very intensive drainage necessary to lower water levels in highly decomposed peats, as those that typify peats at the clear-felling phase, would result in large exports of sediments and mineral nitrogen. Establishing a wetland buffer area between a forest harvested peatland and the receiving water course may decrease sediment and inorganic nutrient exports, but restored wetland buffers, in particular, may act as a source of DOC and dissolved organic nutrients to receiving water courses. Whole-tree harvesting might decrease nutrient exports in blanket peat areas, but its practical application is hindered by nutritional and forest harvest technology related aspects. We propose that future studies should focus on assessing the impacts of partial harvestings, which so far have received very limited attention.
Contradictory results for the long-term evolution of nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations in waters discharging from drained peatland forests need reconciliation. We gathered long-term ...(10–29 years) water quality data from 29 forested catchments, 18 forestry-drained and 11 undrained peatlands. Trend analysis of the nitrogen and phosphorus concentration data indicated variable trends from clearly decreasing to considerably increasing temporal trends. While the variations in phosphorus concentration trends over time did not correlate with any of our explanatory factors, trends in nitrogen concentrations correlated positively with tree stand volume in the catchments and temperature sum. A positive correlation of increasing nitrogen concentrations with temperature sum raises concerns of the future evolution of nitrogen dynamics under a warming climate. Furthermore, the correlation with tree stand volume is troublesome due to the generally accepted policy to tackle the climate crisis by enhancing tree growth. However, future research is still needed to assess which are the actual processes related to stand volume and temperature sum that contribute to increasing TN concentrations.
Nutrient export from drained peatland has significant impacts on aquatic environments in Nordic catchments. Spatial information on variations in nutrient concentrations across different landscapes ...and land uses is needed to design measures for achieving the good ecological status of the EU Water Framework Directive. In this study we determined background concentrations in natural peatland-dominated streams and examined effects of peatland use practices on water quality in headwater catchments. We quantified sources for different elements by joint analysis of water chemistry, isotopes, and hydrology for 62 small catchments in North Ostrobothnia, Finland. Concentrations of nutrients and suspended solids were relatively high in catchments containing drained peatland. In particular, dissolved nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations were elevated during baseflow conditions when flow likely originated from deeper soil layers. Total concentrations of nutrients, suspended solids, and loss on ignition also showed elevated values, and changes in the ratio of dissolved and particulate forms, especially the C/N ratio, were observed. Past drainage had a stronger effect on organic matter and nutrients concentrations than local hydroclimate conditions. These results strongly indicate that current water protection methods are not sufficient to capture all seasonal variations in nutrient and suspended solid loads from drained peatland. Thus, more effort and actions are needed for water protection in such areas.
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•Water chemistry, isotopes and hydrology in 62 boreal headwater catchments were studied.•Elevated nutrient concentrations were observed at drained peatland.•Current water protection methods are insufficient to trap all loads from drained peatland.
Recent advances in AI raise questions about its social impacts and implementation. In response, governments and public administrations seek to develop adequate governance frameworks to mitigate risks ...and maximize the potential of AI development and use. Such work largely deals with questions of how challenges and risks should be managed, which values and goals should be pursued, and through which institutional mechanisms and principles these goals could be achieved. In this paper, we conduct a systematic review of the existing literature on the development of AI governance for public administration. The article describes principles and means by which public administrations could guide and steer AI developers and users in adopting ethical and responsible practices. The reviewed literature indicates a need for public administrations to move away from top-down hierarchical governance principles and adopt forms of inclusive policy-making to ensure the actionability of ethical and responsibility principles in the successful governance of AI development and use. By combining the results, we propose a CIIA (Comprehensive, Inclusive, Institutionalized, and Actionable) framework that integrates the key aspects of the proposed development solutions into an ideal typical and comprehensive model for AI governance.
The increasingly pervasive role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in our societies is radically changing the way that social interaction takes place within all fields of knowledge. The obvious ...opportunities in terms of accuracy, speed and originality of research are accompanied by questions about the possible risks and the consequent responsibilities involved in such a disruptive technology. In recent years, this twofold aspect has led to an increase in analyses of the ethical and political implications of AI. As a result, there has been a proliferation of documents that seek to define the strategic objectives of AI together with the ethical precautions required for its acceptable development and deployment. Although the number of documents is certainly significant, doubts remain as to whether they can effectively play a role in safeguarding democratic decision-making processes. Indeed, a common feature of the national strategies and ethical guidelines published in recent years is that they only timidly address how to integrate civil society into the selection of AI objectives. Although scholars are increasingly advocating the necessity to include civil society, it remains unclear which modalities should be selected. If both national strategies and ethics guidelines appear to be neglecting the necessary role of a democratic scrutiny for identifying challenges, objectives, strategies and the appropriate regulatory measures that such a disruptive technology should undergo, the question is then, what measures can we advocate that are able to overcome such limitations? Considering the necessity to operate holistically with AI as a social object, what theoretical framework can we adopt in order to implement a model of governance? What conceptual methodology shall we develop that is able to offer fruitful insights to governance of AI? Drawing on the insights of classical pragmatist scholars, we propose a framework of democratic experimentation based on the method of social inquiry. In this article, we first summarize some of the main points of discussion around the potential societal, ethical and political issues of AI systems. We then identify the main answers and solutions by analyzing current national strategies and ethics guidelines. After showing the theoretical and practical limits of these approaches, we outline an alternative proposal that can help strengthening the active role of society in the discussion about the role and extent of AI systems.
The article proposes a systemic and future-oriented evaluation approach designed to support decision-making in complex socio-technical environments. The approach integrates established methods of ...evaluation, foresight, impact assessment, system dynamic modelling and societal embedding within a single framework to provide versatile information to increase strategic intelligence in decision-making. This generic and flexible framework aims to support decision-making in various policy and decision-making situations. It is designed to meet the challenges of the changing innovation environment.
Financial development shapes export sector performance because exporters need external finance and face credit constraints. Previous empirical research has relied largely on single-country studies. ...The Exporter Dynamics Database (EDD), which features firm-level exports from over 60 countries, reveals differences in the microstructure of the export sector across countries. In this paper, we first provide new evidence that these differences are related to cross-country variation in financial development and structure. Second, we combine the EDD and multidimensional data on financial development with a global database on export diversification. This study is the first to examine how macrolevel export diversification is determined by the microcharacteristics of the export sector. This approach is novel in the empirical literature on export diversification. According to our cross-country analysis, access to domestic financial services positively contributes to export diversification by increasing the number of small exporters, as financial services ease the credit constraints these exporters face.
•This paper examines whether financial development affects export sector performance.•We focus on the cross-country variation in export-sector microcharacteristics.•Countries with more developed banking sectors have a larger number of small exporters.•The number of exporters is positively associated with macrolevel export diversification.•Our findings emphasize banks’ role in both financing and screening new exporters.
Patient experience has become a crucial part of the quality of any healthcare service. Experiences and their structures are not however trivial phenomena that are easy to describe and model. Instead, ...subjective and dynamic experiences seem to escape definitions and measurements. In order to map the dimensions and dynamics of patient experiences of families, i.e. experiences in families where one or more children are or have been seriously ill, we conducted in depth interviews with 17 parents. Both the interview structure and analysis were based on the technology as experience framework, which states that products and services are not just used but lived with. The results of our study describe patient experiences that are rich and complex yet structurally similar in their manifestations and development. Event-based and situational patient experience emerges through meaningful events relating to the patient's illness. The experiences evolve through new events as well as patient's reflections on past events and in the framing of the current situation. The presented situational patient experience model can be utilized to evaluate and design healthcare services.
•Economic theory says that differences in time preferences drive net capital flows.•Our paper is the first empirical study on the above-mentioned theory proposition.•We utilize the first two ...large-scale international surveys on time preferences.•Countries inhabited by patient individuals run current account surpluses.•There is a positive relationship between patience and net foreign asset positions.
This paper is the first to utilize large-scale international surveys on economic preferences to examine the long-run relationships between patience, current accounts and external wealth. We find robust empirical evidence that countries with more patient individuals tend to run persistent current account surpluses, which in turn result in the accumulation of foreign assets. This theoretically plausible but empirically unexplored relationship holds true for euro area current account imbalances, global current account imbalances and net foreign asset positions worldwide. While the existing current account literature concentrates on proximate macroeconomic determinants, this paper’s extension of inferences from deep determinants (i.e., time preferences) to the distribution of external wealth of nations (i.e., net foreign asset positions) makes a unique contribution to the literature. Our finding showing that deep heterogeneities contribute to external imbalances suggests that the pattern of current account imbalances as well as the distribution of external wealth of nations might be very persistent.
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