There's more to the picture than meets the eye: Measuring tangible and intangible capital in two marginal communities in rural Denmark

A missing link in economics has been what Veblen in 1908 termed intangible capital. This includes common norms, trust and high levels of cooperative performance. Intangibles are invisible to the eye and not easily measured in quantitative terms. They nevertheless involve visible, socioeconomic outcomes and should therefore rightly be seen as productive, like tangibles. Thus, uneven levels of intangible capital would explain Differential Economic Performance (DEP) between, say, two firms containing exactly the same stock of physical, economic and human capital. Despite this common sense observation, most economists have failed to see that ‘there's more to the picture than meets the eye’, as Neil Young once sang. We use statistical, historical and fieldwork data from two Danish, marginal rural communities both rich on intangible capital. This to show how intangible capital in the form of social, organisational and cultural capital is accumulated and utilised in situ, at the microlevel. We suggest that the difference between these two, very similar communities should be explained in their varying ability to utilise local stocks of tangible and intangible capital. Drawing on seminal ideas from Bourdieu [The forms of capital. In: Richardson, J.G. (Ed.) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Greenwood Press, New York, Westport, CT and London, 1986, pp. 241–58] and the DORA project [Bryden, Differential economic performance in rural areas. In: International Conference on Rural Communities and Identities in the Global Millennium. Malpasino University College, Nainamo, BC, Canada, 2000], we want to develop a ‘total capital’ assessment tool for mapping and measuring socioeconomic development in marginal rural communities. In this way, we hope to count in ‘all’ capital as Schultz [Investment in human capital. In: Kiker, B.F. (Ed.) Investment in Human Capital. Columbia, 1971, pp. 3–21] prophesised. This in order to explain what we term Differential Local Development (DLD), where ‘good’, sustainable development is associated with high economic performance and increase in population.     

Back to nature! Or not? Urban dwellers and their forest in berlin

What type of urban nature do urban dwellers prefer? Contributing to this ongoing discussion, this study presents the results of an internet and on-site field survey on general use and visitation pattern conducted in Grunewald Forest via a questionnaire; this is a 3000 ha area southwest of Berlin, Germany. The questions were developed in close cooperation with the local forestry administration and targeted the uncovering of user-specific needs and climate change-related conflicts. More than 1300 valid answers were analyzed, which made it possible to (1) identify and characterize different visitor groups, (2) identify reasons for an urban forest visit, (3) uncover the needs for infrastructure and information, (4) reflect on the survey methods used. The interesting findings include (I) the reasons for a visit highly coincide with forest-related properties in particular; however, the infrastructure preferences reveal the desire for managed greenspace; and (II) the answers obtained from the field differ significantly from those obtained online in various respects. The differences found suggest that the survey, with both online and on-site answers, is a major advantage for future studies regarding urban green infrastructure use. These results can be fruitfully used to inform urban forest management regarding user needs and create a better forestry information policy in the future.     

A BRANCHING PROCESS MODEL FOR FLOW CYTOMETRY AND BUDDING INDEX MEASUREMENTS IN CELL SYNCHRONY EXPERIMENTS

We present a flexible branching process model for cell population dynamics in synchrony/time-series experiments used to study important cellular processes. Its formulation is constructive, based on an accounting of the unique cohorts in the population as they arise and evolve over time, allowing it to be written in closed form. The model can attribute effects to subsets of the population, providing flexibility not available using the models historically applied to these populations. It provides a tool for in silico synchronization of the population and can be used to deconvolve population-level experimental measurements, such as temporal expression profiles. It also allows for the direct comparison of assay measurements made from multiple experiments. The model can be fit either to budding index or DNA content measurements, or both, and is easily adaptable to new forms of data. The ability to use DNA content data makes the model applicable to almost any organism. We describe the model and illustrate its utility and flexibility in a study of cell cycle progression in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.     

The Measurement of Subjective Probability: Evaluating the Sensitivity and Accuracy of Various Scales

The RISK of an event generally relates to its expected severity and the perceived probability of its occurrence. In RISK research, however, there is no standard measure for subjective probability estimates. In this study, we compared five commonly used measurement formats—two rating scales, a visual analog scale, and two numeric measures—in terms of their ability to assess subjective probability judgments when objective probabilities are available. We varied the probabilities (low vs. moderate) and severity (low vs. high) of the events to be judged as well as the presentation mode of objective probabilities (sequential presentation of singular events vs. graphical presentation of aggregated information). We employed two complementary goodness‐of‐fit criteria: the correlation between objective and subjective probabilities (sensitivity), and the root mean square deviations of subjective probabilities from objective values (accuracy). The numeric formats generally outperformed all other measures. The severity of events had no effect on the performance. Generally, a rise in probability led to decreases in performance. This effect, however, depended on how the objective probabilities were encoded: pictographs ensured perfect information, which improved goodness of fit for all formats and diminished this negative effect on the performance. Differences in performance between scales are thus caused only in part by characteristics of the scales themselves—they also depend on the process of encoding. Consequently, researchers should take the source of probability information into account before selecting a measure.     

How do private entrepreneurs transform local social capital into economic capital? Four case studies from rural Denmark

Bourdieu's (1986) General Theory of the Economy of Practices assumes that people perpetually transform tangible and intangible forms of capital according to certain ‘laws of conversion’. On this background, and combining sociology and micro-economics, we analyze specific strings of capital conversion in time and space. More specifically, we raise the question: How do private entrepreneurs transform local social capital into economic capital? We combine in-depth interviews with four private entrepreneurs in rural Denmark with Prisoner's Dilemma game theory. Thus each of our cases illustrates one of the outcomes in the PD matrix. In this way we explain why only one of the four entrepreneurs succeeds in capitalizing social capital.     

Mapping heat and traffic stress of urban park vegetation based on satellite imagery - A comparison of Bucharest,Romania and Leipzig,Germany

Urban Ecosystems - Large and comparatively compact European cities such as Bucharest and Leipzig struggle with considerable urban heat island (UHI) effects characterized by heat and drought...