Analysis of the non-native flora of Ensenada, a fast growing city in northwestern Baja California

Urbanized areas show a high proportion of non-native plants and can work as dispersal points to the surrounding areas. Ensenada is a fast growing city located in the northwestern peninsula of Baja California (Mexico). It is the southern extreme of a bi-national, coastal urban corridor that extends from Los Angeles, California south to Ensenada. This corridor is part of the biodiversity hotspot of the California Floristic Province. The aim of this study was to analyze the composition and distribution of the spontaneous flora in the city of Ensenada. We systematically sampled two differentiated urban environments, vacant lots and arroyos, in 2006 and 2007. We found a total of 158 plant species, 61% of them were non-native species. Arroyo areas showed higher non-native species richness than vacant lots (21.9 vs. 13.6 species/transect) and could be potential dispersal vectors for non-native species to natural areas outside of the city, or in the reverse direction also.     

Waste identification diagrams

Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a very popular tool in lean environments to represent production flows, mapping value stream of a product or family of products, and helps to identify some types of waste. Although very popular, this tool has some limitations as already described in many publications, especially in terms of restrictions in showing most types of waste as well as in its inability to represent various production routes. The purpose of this study is to introduce the waste identification diagram (WID), a new tool to represent production units with its different forms of waste, which overcomes some VSM limitations. The originality of WID comes from the use of its symbols’ dimensions to convey, in a visual and immediate way, relevant information about a production unit. In this paper, WID is applied on a production unit of a lift manufacturer, for testing its performance and comparing it to VSM. The main findings are that WID is in general more effective than VSM in terms of representation of complex production units and in terms of identification of more forms of waste. WID must however overcome some of its limitations such as the lack of information-flow representation and the links to suppliers and clients.     

Speed in the Internationalization Process of the Firm

While firm internationalization processes have been understood as being dynamic, the dimension of speed has rarely been the main focus of research efforts, which, until a decade ago, focused principally on explaining sequences of entry modes and choices of markets. The emergence of the study of international entrepreneurship has enhanced the role of speed, although this has usually been measured in terms of the time lag between a firm's foundation and its initial international action, with little attempt at defining and explaining the speed of the process once it is under way. This study reviews the concept of speed from an internationalization perspective, describes the multidimensional nature of the concept and sets out the different aspects that link timescales with the types of changes – continuous and discontinuous – that take place during internationalizing processes. The paper concludes with a research agenda as a guide for future work on considering the role of speed in the internationalization process.     

Incorporating preference information in interactive reference point methods for multiobjective optimization

In this paper, we introduce new ways of utilizing preference information specified by the decision maker in interactive reference point based methods. A reference point consists of desirable values for each objective function. The idea is to take the desires of the decision maker into account more closely when projecting the reference point onto the set of nondominated solutions. In this way we can support the decision maker in finding the most satisfactory solutions faster. In practice, we adjust the weights in the achievement scalarizing function that projects the reference point. We identify different cases depending on the amount of additional information available and demonstrate the cases with examples. Finally, we summarize results of extensive computational tests that give evidence of the efficiency of the ideas proposed.     

Assessing the Performance of a Classification‐Based Vulnerability Analysis Model

In this article, a classification model based on the majority rule sorting (MR‐Sort) method is employed to evaluate the vulnerability of safety‐critical systems with respect to malevolent intentional acts. The model is built on the basis of a (limited‐size) set of data representing (a priori known) vulnerability classification examples. The empirical construction of the classification model introduces a source of uncertainty into the vulnerability analysis process: a quantitative assessment of the performance of the classification model (in terms of accuracy and confidence in the assignments) is thus in order. Three different app oaches are here considered to this aim: (i) a model–retrieval‐based approach, (ii) the bootstrap method, and (iii) the leave‐one‐out cross‐validation technique. The analyses are presented with reference to an exemplificative case study involving the vulnerability assessment of nuclear power plants.     

Rivalry and strategic groups: what makes a company a rival?

Strategic group literature has generated a significant amount of research over recent decades. However, the rivalry implications of strategic group have remained unclear. This paper analyses rivalry and strategic groups in the house building industry in a small town from a cognitive approach. We consider rivalry as a subjective and directional phenomenon. Estimating rivalry as the direct identification of competitors we try to explain whether similarity affects rivalry and what factors make a company a “rival”. Results show that perceived rivalry is strongly related to size, past performance, subjective similarity and strategic group structure.

Exposure to Traffic and Risk of Hospitalization Due to Injuries

Research on the risk of motor vehicle injuries and their relationship with the amount of travel has been only partially analyzed. The few individual exposure assessments are related to very specific subsets of the driving and traveling populations. This study analyzes the relationship between kilometers traveled and hospitalization due to motor vehicle injuries. Twelve thousand three hundred and sixty nine Spanish university graduates from the Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra multipurpose cohort study were evaluated. They had not been hospitalized due to motor vehicle injuries at baseline and were followed up to eight years. Biannual questionnaires allowed for self‐reporting of kilometers traveled in motor vehicles, together with incidence of hospitalization. Covariates in the Cox regression models included age and gender and baseline use of safety belt while driving, driving a vehicle with driver‐side airbag, driving a motorcycle, and drinking and driving. There were 49,766 participant‐years with an average yearly travel of 7,828 km per person‐year. Thirty‐six subjects reported a first hospitalization event during this time. The adjusted hazard ratio per additional kilometer traveled was 1.00005 (95% confidence interval 1.000013 to 1.000086). Even the smallest of reductions in the amount of kilometers traveled (from an average of 3,250 km per year to 1,000) has a statistically significant protective effect on the likelihood of sustaining hospitalization due to motor vehicle injury (aHR 0.9, 95% CI 0.78 to 0.98). In light of current policies aimed to reduce motorized traffic due to environmental concerns, it may be appropriate to consider the additional health benefit related to reductions in injuries.     

The price of risk with incomplete knowledge on the utility function*

When a risk is exchanged, the exact value for the minimum price (positive or negative) that the purchaser (investor, or insurer) is willing to pay is given by the certainty equivalent wealth level, which in turn depends on his specific utility function. When this utility function is unknown, then only a sufficient condition on the price can ever be found. This paper provides methods for calculating such a sufficient condition, when only limited information on the utility function is known.     

Aggregating Political Dimensions: Of the Feasibility of Political Indicators

Political indicators are widely used in academic writing and decision making, but remain controversial. This paper discusses the problems related to the aggregation functions they use. Almost always, political indicators are aggregated by weighted averages or summations. The use of such functions is based on untenable assumptions (existence of homogeneous substitution rates, total compensation, and strict monotonicity). We show through concrete examples how these hidden assumptions are likely to produce results that are basically an artifact of ad hoc decisions, which additionally contradict very fundamental notions common to all credible political theories. We suggest, also through example, that some—necessarily partial—solutions are possible.