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The purpose of the chapter is to develop methodological recommendations and to determine criteria of measuring “conflict character” of socio-economic system.

Due to large diversity of conflicts of socio-economic systems, the authors compile common methodological recommendations for all economic conflicts, but criteria of measuring “conflict character” of socio-economic system by the example of crisis as a manifestation/example of conflict for which statistical and information bases are available and its precise, objective, and authentic evaluation is possible are offered. The methodological tools of this work are based on the method of systematization, the method of classification, the method of comparative analysis, and the method of formalization of authors’ conclusions and recommendations.

Methodological recommendations and criteria for measuring the “conflict character” of socio-economic system are offered – they allow classifying “conflict” systems. As to the value of the index of conflict character, socio-economic systems with reduced conflict level, moderate conflict level, high conflict level, and very high conflict level are distinguished. They differ as to the capability to oppose internal crises, reaction to external crises, and the model of development of economic conflicts. According to the developed methodological recommendations and offered criteria, “conflict” level of socio-economic systems of developed countries – the USA and Germany, and developing countries – China and Russia is measured in the period of the 2008 global economic crisis.

Based on the offered classification, it is possible to forecast development and management of conflicts of various “conflict” socio-economic systems.

Technology‐based new ventures (TNVs) – which rely on entrepreneurial activities based on science and technology applications in newly created organizations to be successful – are important to current economic growth and innovation. Past research has looked at the importance of networks and social capital to TNV performance. Yet these studies rarely provide theoretical predictions of the attributes of network ties. This paper aims to bring TNV theory up to date with respect to twenty‐first century adaptation and complexity conditions.

The paper draws on new developments in complexity science (specifically scalability and scale‐free theories) and long‐standing first principles of efficacious adaptation to develop TNV‐relevant theory offering an alternative perspective on the impact of network ties on the performance of TNV.

It is argued that TNVs can achieve superior performance by developing and building moderate numbers of short‐term (and thereby weak) network ties. The theorizing calls for a new research agenda pertaining to TNVs, which are delineated. The paper also develops four propositions as part of setting forth an agenda for future research.

The paper updates the entrepreneurship and social network literatures by reshaping them with respect to the nonlinear order‐creation dynamics of complexity theory and scale‐free dynamics of econophysics. It focuses on the aspects of network theory that are especially likely to set in motion the complex adaptive systems dynamics essential to TNV performance. Therefore, the conceptual framework contributes to TNVs as a guide to achieving higher performance, effectiveness, and longevity in a rapidly changing world.

Over the past few years, mathematical and computational models of organizations have attracted a great deal of interest in various fields of scientific research (see Lin & Carley, 1993 for review). The mathematical models have focused on the problem of quantifying the structural (mis)match between organizations and their tasks. The notion of structural congruence has been generalized from the problem of optimizing distributed decision-making in structured decision networks (Pete, Pattipati, Levchuk, & Kleinman, 1998) to the multi-objective optimization problem of designing optimal organizational structures to complete a mission, while minimizing a set of criteria (Levchuk, Pattipati, Curry, & Shakeri, 1996, 1997, 1998). As computational models of decision-making in organizations began to emerge (see Carley & Svoboda, 1996; Carley, 1998; Vincke, 1992), the study of social networks (SSN) continued to focus on examining a network structure and its impact on individual, group, and organizational behavior (Wellman & Berkowitz, 1988). Most models, developed under the SSN, combined formal and informal structures when representing organizations as architectures (e.g., see Levitt et al., 1994; Carley & Svoboda, 1996). In addition, a large number of measures of structure and of the individual positions within the structure have been developed (Roberts, 1979; Scott, 1981; Wasserman & Faust, 1994; Wellman, 1991).

In this paper we investigate the optimal choice of rectangular meshes for the solution of nonlinear dopant diffusion problems in semiconductor process modelling. Firstly we show some results giving better error monitor functions as criteria for obtaining an adapted mesh. Secondly we survey some 1D methods to implement the error equidistribution law and produce the mesh. Finally we implement the new mesh generation strategies in the finite element simulator ASWR of COMPOSITE and report on the full simulation results.

Heavy metal music has had a long relationship with environmental and ecological concerns, one that can be traced as far back as Black Sabbath’s ‘Into the Void’ (1971). Academic work has, however, been slow to recognise the entanglements of metal, environment and ecology in either the global or an Australian context. More recently, however, popular music scholars have begun to acknowledge how the sonic anger of black, death and other genres of extreme metal might be an appropriate medium for social and environmental commentary and protest (Lucas, 2015, p. 555). Therefore, according to Wiebe-Taylor (2009), metal’s ‘darker side is not simply about shock tactics and sensory overload…’, because, ‘metal also makes use of its harsh lyrics, sounds and visual imagery to express critical concerns about human behaviour and decision making and anxieties about the future’ (p. 89). Taking an ecocritical approach, this chapter will map and analyse the environmental concerns and ecological anxieties of Australian metal across a range of different bands and metal genres, as they emerge through three ‘dead-end’ discourses-misanthrophism, apocalypticism, Romanticism – which offer little or no hope of survival.

The authors examine the effect of climate risk on accounting conservatism for a sample of listed companies operating in 26 developing countries.

The authors employ the Climate Risk Index (CRI) developed by Germanwatch to capture the severity of losses due to extreme weather events at the country level. The authors use different approaches to measure firm-level accounting conservatism.

The authors find that greater climate risk leads to a lower level of accounting conservatism. The results hold even after using different estimation methods.

Although the authors' analysis is limited to the period 2007–2016, it could be helpful for standard setters such as International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and International Sustainable Standards Board (ISSB) as they may consider the potential effect of climate risk in their international standards.

The negative impacts of climate risk on the quality of financial reporting as proxied by accounting conservatism could trigger regulators and standard setters to require disclosure of information relating to climate risks and to incorporate climate-related risks in their risk management systems. In addition, for policymakers, incorporating accounting conservatism as a financial quality reporting standard could help promote greater transparency, accuracy and reliability in financial reporting in the context of climate risk.

The authors add to the literature on international differences in accounting conservatism by showing that climate risk significantly affects unconditional and conditional conservatism. The authors' results provide fresh evidence of the dark side of climate change. That is, climate risk is shown to decrease financial reporting quality.

The chapter reviews recent evidence of, and debates about, the integration of art, entertainment, and media in media portrayals (e.g., movies, photographs, theater, music, performance art, museums, story-telling, modifications of an environmental space, social media, painting, comics, dance, videogames, etc.) of climate change based on three sources of data: 1) articles listed in academic reference databases and Google Scholar, 2) online sites, and 3) climate change news images. 1) Retrieved articles discuss both the potential and challenges of communicating about climate change through art, entertainment, and media. However, research is inconsistent on and in some cases is critical of the nature and extent of effects of art-based climate communication. 2) The Internet is a rich and diverse source of websites and videos about climate change. We analyzed 49 sites based on the art medium or form discussed, the primary content related to climate change, and the apparent goal of the site or video. The most frequent goals were promote action, collaboration, raise awareness, climate change communication, discussion, empowerment, reshape public perception, and engagement. 3) Based on the major themes and frames identified through content and cluster analysis of 350 images associated with 200 news articles from 11 US newspaper and magazine sources through late 2009, we summarize the theme of art and mass media representations of the environment, and how those are associated with the other major themes. We conclude by suggesting promising areas for future research on the intersection of art and science in communicating about climate change.

The purpose of this study is to assess the spatiotemporal patterns of future meteorological drought in the Yellow River Basin under different representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios.

Delta method is used to process the future climate data of the global climate models, then analyzed the spatiotemporal variation trend of drought in the Yellow River Basin based on standardized precipitation evaporation index (SPEI) under four RCP scenarios.

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41901239), Soft Science Research Project of Henan Province (212400410077, 192400410085), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFA0602703), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2018M640670) and the special fund of top talents in Henan Agricultural University (30501031).

This study can provide support for future meteorological drought management and prevention in the Yellow River Basin and provide a theoretical basis for water resources management.

Hazard assessment on drought disaster is of great significance for improving drought risk management. Due to the complexity and uncertainty of the drought disaster, the index values have some grey multi-source heterogeneous characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to construct a grey projection incidence model (GPIM) to evaluate the hazard of the drought disaster characterised by the grey heterogeneity information.

First, the index system of the drought hazard risk is established based on the formation mechanism of the drought disaster. Then, the GPIM for the heterogeneous panel data is constructed to assess drought hazard of five cities in Henan Province. Subsequently, based on the assessment results, the grey clustering model is employed for the regional division.

The findings demonstrate that five cities in central Henan Province are divided into three categories, which correspond to three different risk grades, respectively. With respect to different drought risk areas, corresponding countermeasures and suggestions are proposed.

This paper provides a practical and effective new method for the hazard assessment on drought disaster. Meanwhile, these countermeasures and suggestions can help policy makers to improve the efficiency of drought resistance work and reduce the losses caused by drought disasters in Henan Province.

This paper proposes a new GPIM which resolves the assessment problems of the uncertain systems with grey heterogeneous information, such as real numbers, interval grey numbers and three-parameter interval grey numbers. It not only expands the application scope of the grey incidence model, but also enriches the research of panel data.