Search

Local knowledge is recognised as a critical element of global energy transition and energy justice. This paper explores the roles local knowledge in the formation of a community organisation responsible for monitoring the nuclear facility operations, governance, and public risk communication. Our case study examines a local nuclear oversight organisation in the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa region in Japan, where suggestions have been made to consider nation-wide institutionalisation of organisations similar to French Commissions Locales d'Information (Local Information Commissions). Our findings reveal the critical roles of three forms of local knowledge, with a particular emphasis on the nuanced yet crucial impact of everyday-life knowledge (seikatsu-chi), a facet not extensively explored in existing studies, in facilitating the establishment of the local organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postnuclear land conversion has gained attention as more civilian nuclear power reactors reach their design life. To date, most former nuclear power plant sites have been converted into another power plant or are sitting idle, often with spent nuclear fuel on site. However, a former nuclear power plant site in the town of Haddam, Connecticut, presents an alternative possibility: land conversion into a nature conservation area. We adopt theoretical vantage points of the geographical political economy literature to analyze the evolution of different discourses and actions relating to the former nuclear site, and examine why and how nuclear-to-nature conversion has gained momentum. The study reveals that the nuclear-to-nature proposition emerged as a political leverage to resolve conflicting interests over land reuse and spent nuclear fuel problems, which eventually engendered active local agency for land conservation. We argue that recognizing multiple articulations of space and associated agency is essential to understand the seemingly contradictory juxtaposition of nature and nuclear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent Fukushima disaster has raised policy concerns regarding the resilience of Japan's nuclear host communities. Drawing on concepts from evolutionary economic geography and using a quasi-experimental research design we evaluate how these communities "bounce back," absorb, and adapt to both unanticipated "shocks" and public-private policy interventions. The experience of two nuclear host communities, Kashiwazaki and Kariwa, relative to their "twin" non-host communities of Sanjo and Izumozaki suggests that long-run developmental trajectories were only temporarily shifted during the nuclear power plant construction phase. This raises questions about the economic justification of nuclear power plants made on the ground of long-term structural transformation of host communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature on the videogame industry has to date revealed the importance of pre-existing cultural and technological foundations, firm-level innovation management strategies, interactive innovation with end-users, and uniqueness of national production/innovation systems. There are few theoretically informed empirical studies, however, that investigate geographical dimensions of innovation dynamics, particularly the role of spatial agglomerations, in this ‘hits-based’ cultural industry. This paper focuses on the console videogame industry in Japan, drawing on the extensive research on secondary data, corporate questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews with representatives from videogame firms and organizations in the country. Our premise is that redundancy – a diverse range of often indistinguishably similar outputs, most of which end up as commercial failures – is critically important for innovation in industries that are characterized by fundamental demand uncertainties. We then argue that agglomeration (in the sense of both industrial and urban agglomerations) can play a vital role in accommodating, or ‘tolerating’, such redundancy by allowing constituent firms, whose practice may seem inefficient in the short run, to remain in business. The findings of our study lead us to be cautious about policy initiatives to identify and implement ‘best practices’ for innovation, which may end up replacing critical redundancy with increasing efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) in the United States as a type of agri-tourism and volunteer tourism. WWOOF is an international movement in which host farms provide room and board in exchange for labor by tourist-volunteers. The study examines the supplier side of this phenomenon, investigating the locational characteristics and motivations of WWOOF host farms in the USA. A statistical analysis of WWOOF host locations is complemented by a survey and interviews of WWOOF host farms in upstate New York. The study finds that, of the 1232 WWOOF hosts with available zip codes, WWOOF host distributions are highly skewed spatially, with none in 2533 of continental USA's 3108 counties, but concentrations along the west coast and across Appalachia, plus outlying clusters. It suggests that lifestyle considerations are important factors, with WWOOF host locations in high environmental/scenic quality locations and “bohemian” cultural settings, but few in conventional farm regions, especially those with large farms and dominant “modern” agricultural practices. Potential conflicts between the motivations of WWOOF hosts and guests are revealed. For many hosts, cheap/flexible labor is an undeniable attraction, while WWOOFers may have potentially unrealistic expectations about their stays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the prospects and potential problems of incorporating the resilience concepts into regional development research. A growing interest in regional resilience may be interpreted as a reflection of the rising awareness of increased socio-economic and environmental uncertainties, as well as a reaction to the disproportionate theoretical focus on regional growth in the past regional development research. Regional resilience research is still in its infancy, characterized by lively debates over conceptual definitions, research methodology, theoretical significance and practical utility. The paper first addresses conceptual dimensions of the regional resilience research, and explores how the regional development research may incorporate resilience concepts beyond a metaphor. The panarchy framework is then reviewed as an example of a broad framework, originally developed by ecologists, gaining attention in regional research. The paper then explores opportunities and challenges of empirical assessment of regional resilience. Despite the potentially exciting intellectual cross-fertilization of resilience research across diverse fields, I emphasize that the value of regional resilience research should be ultimately based on whether the explanations and insights from the study can be connected to, and consistent with, the views and experiences of those who are affected locally, rather than its theoretical consistencies with the broader resilience literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines contemporary Japanese overseas tourism from a supplier-side perspective using the concept of production systems. We first outline characteristics of the evolving structure of Japanese overseas tourism, with an emphasis on the global spread of Japanese travel companies. This provides a frame for presenting an empirical account of the transactional relationships in the Japanese package tour production system in Whistler, British Columbia, where Japanese tour operators play a pivotal role. We conclude that the recent expansion of Japanese travel companies is fostering the functional integration of the global tourism production system and exhibits increasing reflexivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using large-scale market survey data from 1989 and 1995, the authors examine the distinguishing characteristics of Japanese package tourists in comparison to nonpackage tourists. While there is a decline in package tourism for Japanese overseas tourists, there are many attributes of the package tourist that suggest the continuing demand for this form of travel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We have measured photoluminescence of the single crystals of symmetric diacetylenes with alkyl end groups. We found that the luminescence bands peaking around 2.6eV are induced irrespective of the type of the end group. The 2.6-eV luminescence are characterized by large Stokes shifts and long decay time constants of 110ms at 6K. These characteristics are analogous to the 2.85-eV luminescence in 5,7-dodecadiyne-1,12-diole bis[phenyl carbamate] (DA-4Ph), in which it has been attributed to the recombination of the triplet self-trapped excitons. The results suggest that the excitons relax into the self-trapped exciton dominantly localized on the triple bonds. The 4.2-eV luminescence, which was tentatively assigned to the recombination luminescence of singlet self-trapped excitons in DA-4Ph, was not observed in the crystals used in the present study. It is inferred that the 4.2-eV luminescence is arising from the relaxed excited state localized at a phenyl ring. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Between 1957 and 1990, nearly 100 nuclear reactors were constructed throughout the U.S., and nuclear power currently accounts for 20 percent of electricity production nationwide. Nuclear plants are often constructed in small communities for which they constitute a large source of employment and income. To date, 24 nuclear reactors have undergone decommissioning, and more are expected in the future, particularly as nuclear reactors age and face increasingly strict regulations. This paper examines the effects of nuclear decommissioning over time at the county-level on measures of employment, income, and population using difference-in-differences regression and propensity score matching. Panel data are obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau, and cover the years 1975-2014. The analysis finds that nuclear decommissioning is associated with positive and statistically significant increases in employment and per capita income over time. Results suggest that nuclear decommissioning may actually be a positive force in regional economic development, and concludes with limitations of the approach and implications for future research. As an emerging area of research, this paper is meant to build on previous work, as well as to provide a basis for further discussion and debate on the economic future of nuclear host communities and regional economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]