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This study aims to assess the effect of water variation on bioethanol production from cassava peels (CP) using Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast as the ethanologenic agent.

The milled CP was divided into three treatment groups in a small-scale flask experiment where each 20 g CP was subjected to two-stage hydrolysis. Different amount of water was added to the fermentation process of CP. The fermented samples were collected every 24 h for various analyses.

The results of the fermentation revealed that the highest ethanol productivity and fermentation efficiency was obtained at 17.38 ± 0.30% and 0.139 ± 0.003 gL⁻¹ h⁻¹. The study affirmed that ethanol production was increased for the addition of water up to 35% for the CP hydrolysate process.

The finding of this study demonstrates that S. cerevisiae is the key player in industrial ethanol production among a variety of yeasts that produce ethanol through sugar fermentation. In order to design truly sustainable processes, it should be expanded to include a thorough analysis and the gradual scaling-up of this process to an industrial level.

This paper is an original research work dealing with bioethanol production from CP using S. cerevisiae microbe.

1. Hydrolysis of cassava peels using 13.1 M H₂SO₄ at 100 ^oC for 110 min gave high Glucose productivity

2. Highest ethanol production was obtained at 72 h of fermentation using Saccharomyces cerevisiae

3. Optimal bioethanol concentration and yield were obtained at a hydration level of 35% agitation

4. Highest ethanol productivity and fermentation efficiency were 17.3%, 0.139 g.L⁻¹.h⁻¹

Hydrolysis of cassava peels using 13.1 M H₂SO₄ at 100 ^oC for 110 min gave high Glucose productivity

Highest ethanol production was obtained at 72 h of fermentation using Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Optimal bioethanol concentration and yield were obtained at a hydration level of 35% agitation

Highest ethanol productivity and fermentation efficiency were 17.3%, 0.139 g.L⁻¹.h⁻¹

Drawing on the dual process theory and the cultural dimension of power distance, the current research investigates the impact of a specific service clue—the linguistic style of address forms (salutation) in hotel manager letters to guests—on customer satisfaction in a hotel context in Ecuador.

Following an experimental design research approach, this research conducted a series of two studies to examine how customers' cultural values (high vs low power distance), linguistic style of address forms (formal vs casual) and service valence (service success vs service failure) together influenced customer satisfaction. Specifically, Study 1 examined the service success condition, and Study 2 investigated the service failure condition.

The research results show that, in the service success condition, customers follow their distinct cultural orientations (high vs low power distance) when responding to the different linguistic styles (formal vs casual). On the other hand, in the service failure situation, as customers desire for expressions of respect that can be reflected in a formal address form, the level of satisfaction is lower when the casual address form is used in guest communications, regardless of customers' cultural orientations in power distance.

This research adds to existing cross-cultural service research, particularly in terms of service valence, and provides practical implications for enhancing service providers' cultural awareness and sociolinguistic competence to effectively communicate with customers from diverse cultural backgrounds.

The development of the current European economic area maritime cabotage market occurred when, at a policy level, the European Union forced the opening of its member-states cabotage markets to Community shipowners and extended this openness, in 1997, to the european free trade area countries. A two-tier cabotage market emerged, where a European economic area legislative framework co-exists with the legislative acts of each member-state. With such a unique background, this paper aims to investigate both the European economic area member-states and the rest of the world cabotage regimes and identify a list of reasons and policy measures used to implement cabotage policies.

By means of a desk research methodological approach, this paper analyses, from a geographical perspective, different countries’ cabotage policies and classifies them, and identifies in a systematically way a set of reasons and policy instruments that support each of chosen policies approach.

The outcome indicates that only a few countries promote free liberalised cabotage services and that most countries favour protectionist cabotage policies, whose governments can control the number of foreign vessels participating in these trades. Cabotage regimes have been categorised and the reasons behind both policies and respective policy instruments have been identified.

Quite often, researchers only focus on the cabotage policies of the European economic area countries, the USA, Australia, Japan and South Korea. This paper value rests on its ability to incorporate cabotage policies from other African, Asian and Latin American countries and to update existing information on the subject. Overall, this paper paves the way to broaden the cabotage knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an example of best practice towards enhancing employability in the cross-sectoral labour market for doctorate-holders. This was achieved through an Erasmus+ KA2 (Strategic Partnership) skills development project which created a training programme (TRANSPEER) involving a multi-disciplinary cohort of researchers at a range of career stages, drawn from universities in Norway, Portugal, Sweden and the UK.

Research support staff designed and delivered four transnational training events for the cohort, with the overarching theme of enhancing researcher employability. An initial skills awareness survey of the researcher cohort was undertaken prior to the start of the programme; this survey was repeated after each event. An additional aim of the project was the development of the consortium’s research support staff through exposure to the facilitation techniques and methodologies of their international colleagues.

The findings indicate that transnational collaboration in researcher development enhances the learning environment for participating researchers and provides significant professional development opportunities for both researchers and researcher developers. The findings further suggest the benefits of mixing cohorts across career stages and engaging researchers with novel and interactive approaches on themes not typically addressed in academic competence development offerings.

Transversal skills development cooperation between universities – especially transnational cooperation – is rare. Even more so is the professional development of research support staff in a transnational context. This paper outlines the benefits of such collaborative activities.

This chapter looks at the discursive dimension of the working environment in research and higher education organizations; more specifically at neoliberal managerial discourse and at how it participates in shaping the way researchers, teachers and support staff perceive themselves and their experiences. It is based on a multiple case study and combines an intersectional and a socio-clinical approach. The empirical data is constituted by in-depth interviews with women conducted in Ireland and Chile, and includes some observations made in France. A thematic analysis of individual narratives of self-ascribed experiences of being bullied enables to look behind the veil drawn by managerial discourse, thus providing insights into power vectors and power domains contributing to workplace violence. It also shows that workplace bullying may reinforce identification to undervalued social categories. This contribution argues that neoliberal managerial discourse, by encouraging social representations of “neutral” individuals at work, or else celebrating their “diversity,” conceals power relations rooting on different social categories. This process influences one’s perception of one’s experience and its verbalization. At the same time, feeling assigned to one or more of undervalued social category can raise the perception of being bullied or discriminated against. While research has shown that only a minority of incidents of bullying and discrimination are reported within organizations, this contribution suggests that acknowledging the multiplicity and superposition of categories and their influence in shaping power relations could help secure a more collective and caring approach, and thus foster a safer work culture and atmosphere in research organizations.

This paper aims to model the efficiency of labour offices belonging to the public employment services (PESs) in Spain using a stochastic matching frontier approach.

With this aim in mind, the authors apply a random parameter model approach to control for observed and unobserved heterogeneity.

Results indicate that when the information criteria of the estimates are analysed, it improves by controlling both, observed and unobserved heterogeneity in the inefficiency term. Also, results suggest that counsellors improve the productivity of labour offices and that the share of unemployed skilled persons, unemployed persons aged 44 or younger, as well as the share of unemployed persons in the construction sector, all affect the technical efficiency of PESs offices.

The model extends the previous specifications in the matching literature that capture only observed heterogeneity. Moreover, as far as the authors know, it is the first paper that estimates a matching frontier for the Spanish case. Finally, the database they use is at the office level and includes the work carried out by counsellors, which is a novelty in the analysis of this type of studies at the Spanish level.

This paper aims to identify the effect of environmental management systems (EMSs), commitment to stakeholders and gender diversity on corporate environmental performance (CEP) and the extent to which an economic crisis moderates these relationships.

A regression analysis was conducted on a sample of 14,217 observations from 1,933 firms from 26 countries from 2002 to 2010. The estimator used is ordinary least squares with heteroscedastic panel-corrected standard errors (PCSEs), which allows us to obtain consistent results in the presence of heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation.

The results show that EMSs and stakeholder engagement are mechanisms that drive CEP but lose their effectiveness in times of crisis. However, the presence of women on boards has a positive effect on CEP that is not affected by an economic crisis.

The study has some limitations that could be addressed in the future. We present board gender diversity as a governance mechanism because its role is strongly related to non-financial performance. Future studies could focus on other corporate governance mechanisms, such as the presence of institutional or long-term investors. In addition, other mechanisms could be found that can counteract poor environmental performance in times of crisis. Finally, it might be useful to contrast these results with the crisis generated by the coronavirus pandemic.

The results obtained have important practical implications at the corporate and institutional levels. At the corporate level, they highlight, as essential contributions, that environmental management systems and stakeholder orientation are not effective in times of economic crisis, except for with the presence of women on the board.

Following the crisis, the European Commission has promoted gender diversity on boards as a mechanism to improve the governance of entities – improving, among other aspects, sustainability. In this sense, another one of the practical implications of the study is support for the policies that the European Union has implemented over the last two decades.

The paper analyses how a crisis affects the moral and cultural institutional mechanisms that promote CEP. Gender diversity on the board of directors not only promotes environmental performance but also appears to be a governance mechanism that ensures this performance in times of crisis when the other mechanisms lose their effectiveness. The study proposes specific policies that help maintain environmental performance in an economic crisis.