Wilfrid Laurier University

Definitions and basic properties of the Voronoi diagram generalizations of the Voronoi diagram algorithms for computing Voronoi diagrams poisson Voronoi diagrams spatial interpolation models of spatial processes point pattern analysis locational optimization through Voronoi diagrams.

It is often claimed that we do not understand the forces driving the global diversity gradient. However, an extensive literature suggests that contemporary climate constrains terrestrial taxonomic richness over broad geographic extents. Here, we review the empirical literature to examine the nature and form of the relationship between climate and richness. Our goals were to document the support for the climatically based energy hypothesis, and within the constraints imposed by correlative analyses, to evaluate two versions of the hypothesis: the productivity and ambient energy hypotheses. Focusing on studies extending over 800 km, we found that measures of energy, water, or water–energy balance explain spatial variation in richness better than other climatic and non-climatic variables in 82 of 85 cases. Even when considered individually and in isolation, water/energy variables explain on average over 60% of the variation in the richness of a wide range of plant and animal groups. Further, water variables usually represent the strongest predictors in the tropics, subtropics, and warm temperate zones, whereas energy variables (for animals) or water–energy variables (for plants) dominate in high latitudes. We conclude that the interaction between water and energy, either directly or indirectly (via plant productivity), provides a strong explanation for globally extensive plant and animal diversity gradients, but for animals there also is a latitudinal shift in the relative importance of ambient energy vs. water moving from the poles to the equator. Although contemporary climate is not the only factor influencing species richness and may not explain the diversity pattern for all taxonomic groups, it is clear that understanding water–energy dynamics is critical to future biodiversity research. Analyses that do not include water–energy variables are missing a key component for explaining broad-scale patterns of diversity.

Plant traits-the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants-determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait-based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits-almost complete coverage for 'plant growth form'. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait-environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives.

We integrate perspectives from the literature on contingency, dynamic capabilities, and the natural resource-based view of the firm to propose how dimensions of the general competitive environment of a business will influence the development of a dynamic, proactive corporate strategy for managing the business–natural environment interface. We also explain how certain characteristics of the general business environment—uncertainty, complexity, and munificence—moderate the relationship between the dynamic capability of a proactive environmental strategy and competitive advantage. We conclude with a discussion of implications for research and practice.

This research investigated the relationship between three elements – core service quality, relational service quality‐ and perceived value – and customer satisfaction and future intentions across four services. The results revealed that core service quality (the promise) and perceived value were the most important drivers of customer satisfaction with relational service quality (the delivery) a significant but less important driver. A direct link between customer satisfaction and future intentions was established. The relative importance of the three drivers of satisfaction varied among services. Specifically, the importance of core service quality and perceived value was reversed depending on the service. A major conclusion was that both perceived value and service quality dimensions should be incorporated into customer satisfaction models to provide a more complete picture of the drivers of satisfaction.

Microring resonators side coupled to signal waveguides provide compact, narrow band, and large free spectral range optical channel dropping filters. Higher order filters with improved passband characteristics and larger out-of-band signal rejection are realized through the coupling of multiple rings. The analysis of these devices is approached by the novel method of coupling of modes in time. The response of filters comprised of an arbitrarily large dumber of resonators may be written down by inspection, as a continued fraction. This approach simplifies both the analysis and filter synthesis aspects of these devices.

Based on a review of 217 refereed articles on family business studies, the literature is organized according to its focus on individual, interpersonal or group, organizational, and societal levels of analyses. An assessment of the status of our current understanding at each level is provided and directions for future research are suggested. A discussion of definitional issues, bases of distinctiveness, and family firm performance is used to help understand the domain or scope of the field. Methodological issues and strategies aimed to enhance the pace at which the field achieves a distinctive legitimate place in organizational studies are presented.

Building trust through collaboration, institutional development, and social learning enhances efforts to foster ecosystem management and resolve multi‐scale society–environment dilemmas. One emerging approach aimed at addressing these dilemmas is adaptive co‐management. This method draws explicit attention to the learning (experiential and experimental) and collaboration (vertical and horizontal) functions necessary to improve our understanding of, and ability to respond to, complex social–ecological systems. Here, we identify and outline the core features of adaptive co‐management, which include innovative institutional arrangements and incentives across spatiotemporal scales and levels, learning through complexity and change, monitoring and assessment of interventions, the role of power, and opportunities to link science with policy.

This article provides a review of important trends in the strategic management approach to studying family firms: convergence in definitions, accumulating evidence that family involvement may affect performance, and the emergence of agency theory and the resource–based view of the firm as the leading theoretical perspectives. We conclude by discussing directions for future research and other promising approaches to inform the inquiry concerning family business.

This article investigates the processes of word of mouth (WOM) within a services purchase decision context. The authors argue that to understand these processes, researchers must examine the role of interpersonal influences in the traditional WOM models based within the noninterpersonal paradigm. As a result of the current investigation, three distinct relations emerge: first, the effect of the noninterpersonal forces (receiver’s expertise, receiver’s perceived risk, and sender’s expertise) on the influence of WOM on service purchase decisions; second, the effect of the interpersonal forces (ties strength and how actively WOM is sought) on the influence of WOM on service purchase decisions; and third, the effects of noninterpersonal forces on interpersonal forces. Managerial implications and avenues for future research are addressed.

Abstract We examined how managers' perceptions of different types of stakeholder influences in the Canadian forestry industry affect the types of sustainability practices that their firms adopt. Both influences involving withholding of resources by social and ecological stakeholders and those involving directed usage of resources from economic stakeholders were found to drive such practices. We found that the industry and its stakeholders have moved beyond a focus on early stages of sustainability performance such as pollution control and eco‐efficiency. However, more advanced practices, such as those involving the redefinition of business and industrial ecosystems where firms locate in a region so that they can exchange and utilize wastes generated by other firms, are in their infancy. Stakeholders and firms in the industry are focused on the intermediate sustainability phases involving recirculation of materials and redesign of processes including sustainable harvesting of lumber. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Although replication is a central tenet of science, direct replications are rare in psychology. This research tested variation in the replicability of 13 classic and contemporary effects across 36 independent samples totaling 6,344 participants. In the aggregate, 10 effects replicated consistently. One effect – imagined contact reducing prejudice – showed weak support for replicability. And two effects – flag priming influencing conservatism and currency priming influencing system justification – did not replicate. We compared whether the conditions such as lab versus online or US versus international sample predicted effect magnitudes. By and large they did not. The results of this small sample of effects suggest that replicability is more dependent on the effect itself than on the sample and setting used to investigate the effect.

La declaración PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses), publicada en 2009, se diseñó para ayudar a los autores de revisiones sistemáticas a documentar de manera transparente el porqué de la revisión, qué hicieron los autores y qué encontraron. Durante la última década, ha habido muchos avances en la metodología y terminología de las revisiones sistemáticas, lo que ha requerido una actualización de esta guía. La declaración prisma 2020 sustituye a la declaración de 2009 e incluye una nueva guía de presentación de las publicaciones que refleja los avances en los métodos para identificar, seleccionar, evaluar y sintetizar estudios. La estructura y la presentación de los ítems ha sido modificada para facilitar su implementación. En este artículo, presentamos la lista de verificación PRISMA 2020 con 27 ítems, y una lista de verificación ampliada que detalla las recomendaciones en la publicación de cada ítem, la lista de verificación del resumen estructurado PRISMA 2020 y el diagrama de flujo revisado para revisiones sistemáticas. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement, published in 2009, was designed to help systematic reviewers transparently report why the review was done, what the authors did, and what they found. Over the past decade, advances in systematic review methodology and terminology have necessitated an update to the guideline. The PRISMA 2020 statement replaces the 2009 statement and includes new reporting guidance that reflects advances in methods to identify, select, appraise, and synthesise studies. The structure and presentation of the items have been modified to facilitate implementation. In this article, we present the PRISMA 2020 27-item checklist, an expanded checklist that details reporting recommendations for each item, the PRISMA 2020 abstract checklist, and the revised flow diagrams for original and updated reviews. Full English text available from:www.revespcardiol.org/en

AbstractThis article proposes an extension to the Engle–Granger testing strategy by permitting asymmetry in the adjustment toward equilibrium in two different ways. We demonstrate that our test has good power and size properties over the Engle–Granger test when there are asymmetric departures from equilibrium. We consider an application—namely, whether there exists cointegration among interest rates for instruments with different maturities. This issue has been widely tested with mixed results. We argue that either cautious policy, or possibly opportunistic behavior on the part of the Federal Reserve implies that an equilibrium relationship between short- and long-term interest rates exists but that adjustments from disequilibrium are asymmetric in nature. Empirical tests using U.S. yields confirm the asymmetric nature of error correction among interest rates of different maturities.KEY WORDS: Asymmetric adjustmentMonte CarloNonlinear autoregression

Hundreds of genetic variants have been associated with Body Mass Index (BMI) through genome-wide association studies (GWAS) using observational cohorts. However, the genetic contribution to efficient weight loss in response to dietary intervention remains unknown. We perform a GWAS in two large low-caloric diet intervention cohorts of obese participants. Two loci close to NKX6.3/MIR486 and RBSG4 are identified in the Canadian discovery cohort (n = 1166) and replicated in the DiOGenes cohort (n = 789). Modulation of HGTX (NKX6.3 ortholog) levels in Drosophila melanogaster leads to significantly altered triglyceride levels. Additional tissue-specific experiments demonstrate an action through the oenocytes, fly hepatocyte-like cells that regulate lipid metabolism. Our results identify genetic variants associated with the efficacy of weight loss in obese subjects and identify a role for NKX6.3 in lipid metabolism, and thereby possibly weight control.

The Transporter Classification Database (TCDB; http://www.tcdb.org) is a freely accessible reference database for transport protein research, which provides structural, functional, mechanistic, evolutionary and disease/medical information about transporters from organisms of all types. TCDB is the only transport protein classification database adopted by the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB). It consists of more than 10,000 non-redundant transport systems with more than 11 000 reference citations, classified into over 1000 transporter families. Transporters in TCDB can be single or multi-component systems, categorized in a functional/phylogenetic hierarchical system of classes, subclasses, families, subfamilies and transport systems. TCDB also includes updated software designed to analyze the distinctive features of transport proteins, extending its usefulness. Here we present a comprehensive update of the database contents and features and summarize recent discoveries recorded in TCDB.

We conducted preregistered replications of 28 classic and contemporary published findings, with protocols that were peer reviewed in advance, to examine variation in effect magnitudes across samples and settings. Each protocol was administered to approximately half of 125 samples that comprised 15,305 participants from 36 countries and territories. Using the conventional criterion of statistical significance ( p < .05), we found that 15 (54%) of the replications provided evidence of a statistically significant effect in the same direction as the original finding. With a strict significance criterion ( p < .0001), 14 (50%) of the replications still provided such evidence, a reflection of the extremely high-powered design. Seven (25%) of the replications yielded effect sizes larger than the original ones, and 21 (75%) yielded effect sizes smaller than the original ones. The median comparable Cohen’s ds were 0.60 for the original findings and 0.15 for the replications. The effect sizes were small (< 0.20) in 16 of the replications (57%), and 9 effects (32%) were in the direction opposite the direction of the original effect. Across settings, the Q statistic indicated significant heterogeneity in 11 (39%) of the replication effects, and most of those were among the findings with the largest overall effect sizes; only 1 effect that was near zero in the aggregate showed significant heterogeneity according to this measure. Only 1 effect had a tau value greater than .20, an indication of moderate heterogeneity. Eight others had tau values near or slightly above .10, an indication of slight heterogeneity. Moderation tests indicated that very little heterogeneity was attributable to the order in which the tasks were performed or whether the tasks were administered in lab versus online. Exploratory comparisons revealed little heterogeneity between Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) cultures and less WEIRD cultures (i.e., cultures with relatively high and low WEIRDness scores, respectively). Cumulatively, variability in the observed effect sizes was attributable more to the effect being studied than to the sample or setting in which it was studied.

Examines the entrepreneurial high‐technology firm′s use of networks for international market development. Multisite case research and a mail survey form the empirical base for the study. Findings indicate that international market choice and mode of entry for small entrepreneurial high‐technology firms are largely shaped by the interest of various network players. Influential network relationships may be both formal (e.g. business contacts) and informal (e.g. family). Early relationships with large firms are particularly influential in the entrepreneurial high‐technology firm′s internationalization process. Networks are used to share some, but not all, international marketing activities. Concludes that network analysis offers a rich perspective on the international development patterns of entrepreneurial firms. Outlines research and managerial implications on the basis of these exploratory findings.

Despite the ubiquity of business planning education in entrepreneurship, there is little evidence that planning leads to success. Following a discussion of the theoretical and historical underpinnings, three pedagogical models are compared, including two alternative experiential methods: simulations and the contingency approach. The contingency model, as introduced, utilizes Piaget's concept of equilibration, and is asserted to provide both cognitive tools and flexibility in accommodating unanticipated environmental factors faced by future entrepreneurs.

Points out that customer satisfaction and retention are critical for retail banks, and investigates the major determinants of customer satisfaction and future intentions in the retail bank sector. Identifies the determinants which include service quality dimensions (e.g. getting it right the first time), service features (e.g. competitive interest rates), service problems, service recovery and products used. Finds, in particular, that service problems and the bank’s service recovery ability have a major impact on customer satisfaction and intentions to switch.