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Topic Review
Ecosystem Services
Ecosystem services are the many and varied benefits to humans gifted by the natural environment and from healthy ecosystems. Such ecosystems include, for example, agroecosystems, forest ecosystems, grassland ecosystems and aquatic ecosystems. These ecosystems, functioning in healthy relationship, offer such things like natural pollination of crops, clean air, extreme weather mitigation, human mental and physical well-being. Collectively, these benefits are becoming known as 'ecosystem services', and are often integral to the provisioning of clean drinking water, the decomposition of wastes, and resilience and productivity of food ecosystems. While scientists and environmentalists have discussed ecosystem services implicitly for decades, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) in the early 2000s popularized this concept. There, ecosystem services are grouped into four broad categories: provisioning, such as the production of food and water; regulating, such as the control of climate and disease; supporting, such as nutrient cycles and oxygen production; and cultural, such as spiritual and recreational benefits. To help inform decision-makers, many ecosystem services are being valuated in order to draw equivalent comparisons to human engineered infrastructure and services.
  • 1.8K
  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
GuideStar
GuideStar USA, Inc. is an information service specializing in reporting on U.S. nonprofit companies. In 2016, its database provided information on 2.5 million organizations. GuideStar was one of the first central sources of information on U.S. nonprofits and is the world's largest source of information about nonprofit organizations. GuideStar was founded in Williamsburg, Virginia in September 1994 and received tax-exempt status in 1996, the same year the company began posting nonprofit organizations' financial reports to the World Wide Web. GuideStar also serves to verify that a recipient organization is established and that donated funds go where the donor intended for individuals looking to give in the wake of disasters. In 2013, GuideStar announced major changes to its GuideStar Exchange program, which allows nonprofits to supplement the public information that is available from the IRS. GuideStar Nonprofit Profiles implemented three seals based on the information a nonprofit provides in its profile: Bronze, Silver, and Gold. In 2016, a new seal that allowed nonprofits to share progress and results for their mission, GuideStar Platinum, was introduced.
  • 858
  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Banking Union
The Banking Union in the European Union is the transfer of responsibility for banking policy from the national to the EU level in several countries of the European Union, initiated in 2012 as a response to the Eurozone crisis. The motivation for banking union was the fragility of numerous banks in the Eurozone, and the identification of vicious circle between credit conditions for these banks and the sovereign credit of their respective home countries ("bank-sovereign vicious circle"). In several countries, private debts arising from a property bubble were transferred to sovereign debt as a result of banking system bailouts and government responses to slowing economies post-bubble. Conversely, weakness in sovereign credit resulted in deterioration of the balance sheet position of the banking sector, not least because of high domestic sovereign exposures of the banks. As of mid-2020, the Banking Union mainly consists of two main initiatives, the Single Supervisory Mechanism and Single Resolution Mechanism, which are based upon the EU's "single rulebook" or common financial regulatory framework. The SSM took up its authority on 4 November 2014, and the SRM entered into full force on 1 January 2015. Most accounts of banking union view it as incomplete in the absence of a European deposit insurance. The European Commission made a legislative proposal for a European Deposit Insurance Scheme in November 2015, but it has not been adopted by the EU co-legislators. Also as of mid-2020, the geographical scope of the Banking Union is identical to that of the euro area. In future, other non-euro member states of the EU may join the Banking Union under a procedure known as close cooperation. Bulgaria and Croatia have initiated requests for close cooperation, respectively in July 2018 and May 2019.
  • 363
  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
2015–16 Chinese Stock Market Turbulence
The Chinese stock market turbulence began with the popping of the stock market bubble on 12 June 2015 and ended in early February 2016. A third of the value of A-shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange was lost within one month of the event. Major aftershocks occurred around 27 July and 24 August's "Black Monday". By 8–9 July 2015, the Shanghai stock market had fallen 30 percent over three weeks as 1,400 companies, or more than half listed, filed for a trading halt in an attempt to prevent further losses. Values of Chinese stock markets continued to drop despite efforts by the government to reduce the fall. After three stable weeks the Shanghai index fell again on 24 August by 8.48 percent, marking the largest fall since 2007. At the October 2015 International Monetary Fund (IMF) annual meeting of "finance ministers and central bankers from the Washington-based lender’s 188 member-countries" held in Peru, China's slump dominated discussions with participants asking if "China’s economic downturn [would] trigger a new financial crisis". By the end of December 2015 China's stock market had recovered from the shocks and had outperformed S&P for 2015, though still well below the 12 June highs. By the end of 2015 the Shanghai Composite Index was up 12.6 percent. In January 2016 the Chinese stock market experienced a steep sell-off and trading was halted on 4 and 7 January 2016 after the market fell 7%, the latter within 30 minutes of open. The market meltdown set off a global rout in early 2016. According to 19 January 2016 articles in the Xinhua News Agency, the official press agency of the China , China reported a 6.9 percent GDP growth rate for 2015 and an "economic volume of over ten trillion U.S. dollars". Forbes journalist argues that the "stock market crash does not indicate a blowout of the Chinese physical economy." China is shifting from a focus on manufacturing to service industries and while it has slowed down, it is still growing by 5%. After this last turbulence, as of January 2017 the Shanghai Composite Index has been stable around 3,000 points, 50% less than before the bubble popped.
  • 3.1K
  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Bacterial Resistance in the Finfish  Aquaculture and Alternatives
Significant challenges to worldwide sustainable food production continue to arise from environmental change and consistent population growth. In order to meet increasing demand, fish production industries are encouraged to maintain high growth densities and to rely on antibiotic intervention throughout all stages of development. The inappropriate administering of antibiotics over time introduces selective pressure, allowing the survival of resistant bacterial strains through adaptive pathways involving transferable nucleotide sequences (i.e., plasmids). This is one of the essential mechanisms of antibiotic resistance development in food production systems.The AMR phenomenon has been generally defined as the failure of growth’s inhibition or the killing capacity of an antimicrobial molecule beyond the normal susceptible bacteria.
  • 539
  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Impact of ESG Performance on Firm Value
The integration of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors has attracted a great deal of attention from the business media. The reason for this is that ESG is regarded as a method of increasing firm value and improving financial performance. Companies are gradually recognizing the importance of ESG.
  • 949
  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Earthquake Catastrophe Bond Pricing
The potential for economic losses due to earthquakes keeps increasing due to the development of the socioeconomic system and urbanization. The disaster management funds are insufficient to cover the losses suffered. Therefore, there is a need for an alternative funding mechanism linked to the financial market, such as catastrophe bonds.
  • 475
  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Thomson Reuters Business Classification
The Thomson Reuters Business Classification (TRBC) is an industry classification of global companies, developed in 2004; it is owned and operated by Thomson Reuters and is also the basis for Thomson Reuters Indices.
  • 1.6K
  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Travel Website
A travel website is a website on the world wide web that is dedicated to travel. The site may be focused on travel reviews, trip fares, or a combination of both. Approximately 587.3 million consumers are expected to book travel plans online in 2018.
  • 1.4K
  • 25 Nov 2022
Topic Review
20% Project
The 20% Project is an initiative where company employees are allocated twenty-percent of their paid work time to pursue personal projects. The objective of the program is to inspire innovation in participating employees and ultimately increase company potential. The 20% Project was influenced by a comparable program, launched in 1948, by manufacturing multinational 3M which required employees to have 15% time: to dedicate up to 15 percent of their paid hours to a personal interest. Technology company Google is credited for popularising the 20% concept, with many of their current services being products of employee pet projects. Some schools have also utilized the principles of the 20% Project to foster creativity and boost productivity.
  • 2.0K
  • 25 Nov 2022
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