Opportunity Space Research Articles

Exploring Urban Rewilding Opportunity Spaces Through Identification, Deconstruction and Conservation: A Case Study of the Direct Administration Zone of Tianfu New Area, Sichuan

Exploring Urban Rewilding Opportunity Spaces Through Identification, Deconstruction and Conservation: A Case Study of the Direct Administration Zone of Tianfu New Area, Sichuan

Imagining alternative futures for the Dutch poultry industry

In their quest for sustainable transformation, agricultural industries need to move beyond product and service innovation as well as rivalry between actors toward reconfiguring production and consumption systems. In mature industries like agriculture, envisioning alternatives that require systemic innovation is challenging due to the dominance of existing systems. This study constructs future images, as design tools, to expand the opportunity space for sustainable transformation. Focusing on the Dutch poultry industry, we conducted futures interviews to identify and structure drivers of change and use these to construct future images by identifying values-based themes. We constructed and visualized six coherent future images depicting alternative contexts for this industry: ‘zero-emission policy agenda,’ ‘farmers as entrepreneurial innovators,’ ‘collaborative ecosystem,’ ‘retail as an orchestrator,’ ‘happy animals, healthy humans,’ and ‘living labs in the knowledge economy.’ We discuss how these futures expand the opportunity space for novel production and consumption systems, drawing on distinct sustainability conceptualizations and different actors.

Exploring Women’s Self-Expression and Social Interaction on Social Platforms

With the rapid development of technology, social platforms have become an integral part of people’s daily lives. On these platforms, female users are not only large in number but also highly active, and they actively participate in social interaction through sharing, communication, and expression. Social platforms provide women with unprecedented space for self-expression and opportunities for social interaction, enabling them to connect with others and share their views and experiences across geographical and time constraints. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to explore women’s self-expression and social interaction on new media social platforms. By reviewing relevant literature and selecting some platforms using the case study method to gain a deeper understanding of women’s specific behaviors, feelings, and motivations on these social platforms, the thesis aims to deeply explore women’s self-expression and social interaction behaviors on new media social platforms, analyze how female users present themselves, express their views, and build up their social networks through social media platforms, and explore the challenges and trends facing new media social platforms. It also discusses the challenges and trends of new media social platforms.

The Importance of the Teachers’ Role in Imaginative Play

This study of Norwegian kindergartens investigates how teachers may support imaginative play, drawing on Vygotsky’s approaches to play and teachers’ positioning in play in terms of different roles. For this study, the empirical investigations were organized as both observations and focus group interviews. The sample was two kindergartens with in total 12 teachers and 44 children aged 3-5 years. The study was conducted in November 2021-April 2022. The analyses point to three main findings; firstly, changes according to daily schedule and content may have effect on play, secondly, the teacher’s role may be an obstacle in play, and thirdly, the teacher’s role may be a driving force in play. In the discussion of these findings, questions are raised about traditions and a lack of competence together can lead to children not receiving sufficient support in imaginative play. However, when the teachers are a play partner who both add new fictional elements and support the fiction by »lending« their experiences, the play’s potential and opportunity space is utilized. The conclusion is that the quality of the teachers’ role and involvement will have an impact on children’s cultural expression in play.

Essay Topic: Digital Life: Many Theorists see it as a Space of Limitless Social and Cultural Opportunity. Others See is as a Much More Limited Space Ruled by Commodification and Commercialism. What Do You Think?

Essay Topic: Digital Life: Many Theorists see it as a Space of Limitless Social and Cultural Opportunity. Others See is as a Much More Limited Space Ruled by Commodification and Commercialism. What Do You Think?

Literary cityscape in the sociological topology before 1945 in Việt Nam

When Việt Nam became a French colony in the 20th century, the press created an imagined space of possibilities where urban dwellers could exercise their new power. Attracted by this space of opportunity, literary authors from all over Vietnam came to big cities, like Hà Nội, to make their dreams come true. Depending on their choice of literary genres, authors from rural areas or cities invest their capital in writing. The press then played a key role in creating a cityscape in the literary field. By establishing the link between the hometown, the city of residence, and the choice of literary genre, we strive to understand the investment of capital among writers and the laws regulating the literary landscape in sociological topology.

Mapping a sustainable water future: Private sector opportunities for global water security and resilience

Water security remains a critical global development challenge, compounded by persistent public funding shortfalls. Society urgently needs to identify opportunities for innovative private sector engagement in water security solutions. To identify feasible and impactful solutions, quantitative tools are needed to delineate complex environmental and socioeconomic water challenges and prioritize private sector investment opportunity spaces to address these challenges. We introduce the first global and regional-scale maps showing where threats to water security coincide with private sector opportunities to address them. The successful deployment of water solutions is contingent upon the societal and governance landscape that underpins a nation’s capacity to support sustainable water threat interventions and water-related business activities. By delineating areas with substantial pressures on water resources and assessing nations’ enabling environments to support private sector investments, we find nearly two-thirds of the world’s population could benefit from private sector interventions today, with middle income countries realizing the greatest benefits. In the face of global economic development and climate change, such solutions will become increasingly essential in future decades.

Inclusion of Women Architects into the Cultural Field of Spanish Competitions: Struggling for Professional Recognition from the Periphery (1978-2008)

A retrospective look at the architecture competitions held and reported in Spain between the years of transition to democracy and the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008 allows us to verify, from a sociological and historiographical approach, the progressive inclusion of women into the complex and traditionally patriarchal cultural field of the architecture competition. The end of Franco’s dictatorship, and the growing vitality of the Autonomous Regions prompted the call of numerous open consultations throughout the country. These calls continued throughout the last third of the 20th century, until eventually experiencing a decline in the new millennium. These open and anonymous competitions provided a framework in which many women architects were able to ascend through merit, even attaining important positions within the process: firstly, as recognised participants and later as jury members. Highlighting the value of these women’s contribution to architecture has always been subject to disinterest, hesitancy or even outspoken reticence, typical of an eminently patriarchal structure, to which were added those inherent to any competitive structure where the struggle for the domination of symbolic power is inescapable. On the basis of architectural journal articles and illustrative case studies, this paper reviews the published media conditions of this difficult ascent in which the subordinate territories peripheral to the centres of production of architectural culture—Madrid and Barcelona—proved to be a space of opportunity and competition in which to build professional legitimacy. A great deal of Spanish women architects who were regular contestants achieved their recognition through silent logic, far removed from flashy celebrity, an issue that has left a deep imprint on their ways of approaching the practice of their profession, in general, and of participating in the cultural field of the competition, in particular. From this common thinking, this article aims to pay them a well-deserved tribute.

Explorando la Transición hacia la Sostenibilidad, la Creación de Trayectorias y los Espacios de Oportunidad para la Política de Desarrollo Sostenible

This conceptual literature review explores the nuanced terrain of sustainability transitions, path creation, and opportunity space within the theoretical framework of evolutionary economic geography. Grounded in the foundational principles of this field, which examines the spatial and temporal dynamics of economic evolution, the paper applies a systematic approach to meticulously select and analyze twelve scholarly articles dated from 2010 or after. The methodology involved the creation of a comprehensive database organizing and systematizing the relevant data, so offering a robust foundation for the exploration of theoretical approaches and constructs related to sustainability transitions, path creation, and opportunity space. Drawing from the field of evolutionary economic geography, the paper emphasizes key contributions from this theoretical perspective. A common thread identified across these concepts is the pivotal role of change agency. The paper concludes by underlining the contributions of sustainability transitions, path creation, and opportunity space to sustainable development policy, providing insights into their potential impact on shaping a more sustainable and resilient future.

Dielectric properties of disordered A6B2O17 (A = Zr; B = Nb, Ta) phases

AbstractWe report on the structure and dielectric properties of ternary A6B2O17 (A = Zr; B = Nb, Ta) thin films and ceramics. Thin films are produced via sputter deposition from dense, phase‐homogenous bulk ceramic targets, which are synthesized through a reactive sintering process at 1500°C. Crystal structure, microstructure, chemistry, and dielectric properties are characterized by X‐ray diffraction and reflectivity, atomic force microscopy, X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and capacitance analysis, respectively. We observe relative permittivities approaching 60 and loss tangents <1 × 10−2 across the 103–105 Hz frequency range in the Zr6Nb2O17 and Zr6Ta2O17 phases. These observations create an opportunity space for this novel class of disordered oxide electroceramics.

Mind the border! Agents and functions to shape regional challenge-oriented innovation policy

ABSTRACT This paper explores the operationalization of policy directionality in terms of goal consistency as well as the spatial dimensions of problems and solutions. The study focuses on cross-border regions (CBRs), since they are engaged in cooperation to tackle common challenges. This study employs a comparative analysis across two EU CBRs, drawing on a theoretical framework that integrates the trinity of agency scholarships and the literature on the multiplicity of border functions. By combining these perspectives, we aim to illustrate how agents navigate the opportunity spaces generated within CBRs. This paper aims to shed light on the interplay between agents to navigate the conditions that the presence of international border generates in the EU cross-border regions (CBR)s to tackle Societal Challenges (SC)s. Through this integrated framework, we explore how agents perceive, interpret, and respond to the complex dynamics and possibilities that emerge in CBRs, shedding light on the interplay between structure and agency in these unique spatial settings. The findings show how SC can be framed at different scales with ambivalent results in terms of consistency of policy goals. Framed through the trinity agency framework, actors interacted collectively to generate and transfer knowledge in the CBRs.

Digitalized opportunity space and managerial archetypes: An opportunity-centric perspective on digital innovation and transformation

As proliferating digital literature ignores how digital opportunities are generated in the first place, digital innovation and transformation can be ontologically ungrounded. To fill this gap, following a realist perspective of entrepreneurship, this article examines digital opportunities as profit propensities afforded by a digitalized environment, while treating digital innovation and transformation as the actualization process. To elaborate, first, we coin Digitalized Opportunity Space (DOS) to describe the digitalized environment as a critical intersection of four spaces - resource, utility, digital, and institutional- that muster conditions without which digital opportunities cannot be actualized. Second, we develop four managerial archetypes - resource orchestrators, utility integrators, digital evangelists, and institutional realists- who tend to recognize digital opportunities based on their organizational location and thereby endorse different digital innovations. Third, to facilitate a systemic and balanced approach to digital transformation, we recommend group-level heuristics - the generic density perspective, the ecosystem view of the firm, multi-dimensional network effects, and disciplined imagination- which restore totality from partiality. Taken together, the DOS framework (of opportunity generation), the managerial archetypes (of opportunity recognition), and the group-level heuristics (of opportunity actualization) constitute the opportunity-centric (vs technology-centric or organization-centric) perspective on digital innovation and transformation, thereby materializing the connection between digital literature and entrepreneurship.

Weaving a foundational narrative – place-making and change in an old-industrial town in East Germany

ABSTRACT In light of economic, social and discursive changes, old-industrial towns and regions increasingly apply entrepreneurial strategies to actively shape discourses as part of place-making processes. Foundational narratives play an important role in this regard. They are used by agents to foster cohesion in a local community, to legitimize and anchor their actions and goals and to make sense of complex development processes. Applying the methodology of Critical Narrative Analysis, the present study zooms in such processes of narrative building in Lauchhammer (Germany). Despite having experienced the decline of the most important parts of its industry, local actors still mobilize the industrial past in order to strengthen local identity and attract new businesses and manufacturers. Yet, the paper shows that different agents foreground different aspects of the industrial past and narratives may be contested. At the same time, local, regional and national development strategies are closely interlinked offering ‘opportunity spaces’ for local actors but raising also questions about a potential (de)legitimization of local narratives.

An assessment of future rewilding potential in the United Kingdom.

Restoring ecosystems is an imperative for addressing biodiversity loss and climate change, and achieving the targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. One form of restoration, rewilding, may have particular promise but may also be precluded by requirements for other forms of land use now or in the future. This opportunity space is critical but challenging to assess. We explored the potential area available for rewilding in Great Britain until the year 2080 with a multisectoral land-use model with several distinct climatic and socioeconomic scenarios. By 2080, areas from 5000 to 7000km2 were either unmanaged or managed in ways that could be consistent with rewilding across scenarios without conflicting with the provision of ecosystem services. Beyond these areas, another 24,000-42,000km2 of extensive upland management could provide additional areas for rewilding if current patterns of implementation hold in the future. None of these areas, however, coincided reliably with ecosystems of priority for conservation: peatlands, ancient woodlands, or wetlands. Repeatedly, these ecosystems were found to be vulnerable to conversion. Our results are not based on an assumption of support for or benefits from rewilding and do not account for disadvantages, such as potential losses of cultural landscapes or traditional forms of management, that were beyond the modeled ecosystem services. Nevertheless, potential areas for rewilding emerge in a variety of ways, from intensification elsewhere having a substantial but inadvertent land-sparing effect, popular demand for environmental restoration, or a desire for exclusive recreation among the wealthy elite. Our findings therefore imply substantial opportunities for rewilding in the United Kingdom but also a need for interventions to shape the nature and extent of that rewilding to maintain priority conservation areas and societal objectives.

Ecosystem service multifunctionality and trade-offs in English Green Belt peri-urban planning

Green Belt policies govern peri-urban landscapes globally by restricting built development. Yet, they often have little consideration for the land within them. This is especially the case in England where ecosystem services are poorly accounted for in Green Belt policy, whilst also being viewed as a development obstacle, with few environmental and social benefits; a situation mirrored in peri-urban landscapes globally. Moreover, there is a significant research gap into Green Belts through the socio-ecological lenses of ecosystem services and multifunctionality, which allows populist discourses to go unchallenged. Using modelling and participatory mapping data this paper addresses this gap by quantifying the ecosystem service supply, trade-offs and multifunctionality of the North-East Green Belt, and the wider planning and policy implications. The results show that contrary to claims, Green Belts in England can and do provide multiple benefits to people when studied through these lenses. However, levels of individual ecosystem services and overall multifunctionality differ spatially within Green Belts resulting in opportunity areas as well as potential losses of ecosystem services from development. Areas of deciduous and coniferous woodland as well as key “green wedges” close to urban populations were found to be multifunctionality “hots-spots”, whereas arable and improved grassland provide notable “cold-spots”. Trade-offs were mostly from provisioning services. We argue that Green Belt policies explicitly and holistically accounting for ecosystem services could catalyse a multifunctional opportunity space for climate, nature and people in peri-urban landscapes. Additionally, our study demonstrates the conceptual merits of ecosystem service multifunctionality for planning.

Classrooms in Hospitals as Spaces of Opportunity Towards Inclusive Education

The objective of this research was to determine the specific difficulties that hospitalized students face in accessing inclusive education in hospital classrooms. The technique used is a documentary review; searches were conducted on Google Scholar, Dialnet, and Redalyc using keywords, and 18 documents were selected for thematic analysis. Four dimensions were identified that articulate the complexities of providing inclusive education in hospital classrooms; these are: Educational Barriers, Social and Emotional Aspects, Pedagogical Practices, and Interdisciplinary Collaboration; each contributed to a comprehensive understanding of the obstacles and opportunities to improve the education of hospitalized students, highlighting both the specific difficulties and the effective strategies in use to facilitate an adaptive and comprehensive educational environment. It is concluded that hospital classrooms are redefined as a wellness ecosystem, integrating education and health to fully support the student, proposing to transform education into an essential component of recovery and well-being, using therapeutic methodologies and continuous support networks to adapt learning to the medical and emotional needs of the hospitalized student.

Tantangan dan Peluang Pendidikan Islam di Era Global Village

Education as a role holder in the development process both institutionally, educational materials, teachers as implementers of learning, methods, facilities, and so on from all aspects and supporting factors of the educational process, must be able to look carefully and be able to build a new paradigm in the form of education in the global era which is full of challenges, so that it can provide new space for several opportunities that can provide new perspectives and contribute to the development of the global world. Research on Challenges and Opportunities for Islamic Education in the Global Village Era aims to identify challenges and opportunities for Islamic education in the global world and provide solutions to improve understanding and appreciation of Islam. Research on Challenges and Opportunities for Islamic Education in the Global Village Era can be carried out using a qualitative approach with research methods. bibliography and descriptive. In its development, the global village has had positive and negative impacts on human life. The impact it creates is in line with the process of transforming information that can be accessed more quickly in various parts of the world as the globalization of the world has changed the pattern of life in various aspects and sides. The phenomenon that was awakened by the emergence of the global village era has provided various kinds of problems, both about how information that continues to grow indiscriminately can be absorbed or how to respond to new things that always come and go without any filters to filter them. The era of the global village with its development of information technology can increasingly be felt, with the media in the form of computers, televisions, cellphones and other sophisticated equipment, which have truly become complex things in the transformation of information.

‘Something is dropped out of the journey of life’: perceived spaces of opportunity among people with dementia

Dementia brings forth different kinds of challenges to manage everyday life. Comprehension of the multidimensional nature of the challenges, varying from spatiotemporal disorientation to fears or lack of services gives us tools with which living as a good life as possible with dementia can be supported. The time-geography offers a useful approach to delve into the experiences of people by focusing on what individuals try/want to do in their environment and how they try to manage with growing difficulties. The time-geographic approach acknowledges individually perceived spaces of opportunities as being assembled of several human and non-human elements. This relational approach enhances understanding how the multiple interconnections among elements of disparate dimensions of time–space transform the lives of people with dementia illustrating the possible constraints and incentives they encounter in their activities. In this article, we examine the possible challenges people with dementia experience in their lives by using the time-geographical approach. In doing so, we demonstrate topics such as social relations and spatiotemporal shrinkage affecting the well-being of the participants. Moreover, we stress the need to conceptualize indirect constraints in the time-geographic approach.

Evaluation of enzyme-constrained genome-scale model through metabolic engineering of anaerobic co-production of 2,3-butanediol and glycerol by Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Enzyme-constrained genome-scale models (ecGEMs) have potential to predict phenotypes in a variety of conditions, such as growth rates or carbon sources. This study investigated if ecGEMs can guide metabolic engineering efforts to swap anaerobic redox-neutral ATP-providing pathways in yeast from alcoholic fermentation to equimolar co-production of 2,3-butanediol and glycerol. With proven pathways and low product toxicity, the ecGEM solution space aligned well with observed phenotypes. Since this catabolic pathway provides only one-third of the ATP of alcoholic fermentation (2/3 versus 2 ATP per glucose), the ecGEM predicted a growth decrease from 0.36 h−1 in the reference to 0.175 h−1 in the engineered strain. However, this <3-fold decrease would require the specific glucose consumption rate to increase. Surprisingly, after the pathway swap the engineered strain immediately grew at 0.15 h−1 with a glucose consumption rate of 29 mmol (g CDW)−1 h−1, which was indeed higher than reference (23 mmol (g CDW)−1 h−1) and one of the highest reported for S. cerevisiae. The accompanying 2,3-butanediol- (15.8 mmol (g CDW)−1 h−1) and glycerol (19.6 mmol (g CDW)−1 h−1) production rates were close to predicted values. Proteomics confirmed that this increased consumption rate was facilitated by enzyme reallocation from especially ribosomes (from 25.5 to 18.5 %) towards glycolysis (from 28.7 to 43.5 %). Subsequently, 200 generations of sequential transfer did not improve growth of the engineered strain, showing the use of ecGEMs in predicting opportunity space for laboratory evolution. The observations in this study illustrate both the current potential, as well as future improvements, of ecGEMs as a tool for both metabolic engineering and laboratory evolution.

Characterizing the Opportunity Space for Sustainable Hydrothermal Valorization of Wet Organic Wastes.

Resource recovery from wet organic wastes can support circular economies by creating financial incentives to produce renewable energy and return nutrients to agriculture. In this study, we characterize the potential for hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL)-based resource recovery systems to advance the economic and environmental sustainability of wastewater sludge, FOG (fats, oils, and grease), food waste, green waste, and animal manure management through the production of liquid biofuels (naphtha, diesel), fertilizers (struvite, ammonium sulfate), and power (heat, electricity). From the waste management perspective, median costs range from -193 $·tonne-1 (FOG) to 251 $·tonne-1 (green waste), and median carbon intensities range from 367 kg CO2 eq·tonne-1 (wastewater sludge) to 769 kg CO2 eq·tonne-1 (green waste). From the fuel production perspective, the minimum selling price of renewable diesel blendstocks are within the commercial diesel price range (2.37 to 5.81 $·gal-1) and have a lower carbon intensity than petroleum diesel (101 kg CO2 eq·MMBTU-1). Finally, through uncertainty analysis and Monte Carlo filtering, we set specific targets (i.e., achieve wastewater sludge-to-biocrude yield >0.440) for the future development of hydrothermal waste management system components. Overall, our work demonstrates the potential of HTL-based resource recovery systems to reduce the costs and carbon intensity of resource-rich organic wastes.