OnApp (Gibraltar)

ABSTRACT In general, consumers show a growing interest in business activities that go beyond the strictly economic, such as environmental and social initiatives. Thus, implementing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices in companies has gained relevance in recent years. This study analyzed how the perception of CSR affects consumer attitude in the multichannel technology retail sector. A quantitative research approach was employed to analyze primary data, which enabled the testing of hypotheses by estimating a structural equation model. The results confirmed that CSR initiatives have a direct and positive impact on consumer behavior, which contributes to a deeper understanding of the link and guides companies toward implementing CSR policies to improve their outcomes. Additionally, it is identified that consumer skepticism moderates the relationship between perceived CSR and brand attitude, highlighting the importance of transparency and authenticity in communicating information about CSR practices.

Globally, environmental crimes are a major threat to biodiversity and the livelihood of local populations. Community-based protection of natural resources, which involves local people in surveillance and enforcement, is an important complement to the government-led command-and-control policing approach. We examined whether a community-based voluntary patrolling system deterred environmental crimes in Amazonia. We used data on environmental crimes recorded by patrollers over 11years (2003-2013) in 12 independent territorial units in 2 large protected areas (PAs) in Amazonas, Brazil. For comparison, we also analyzed data from government-led enforcement operations outside these PAs from 2002 to 2012. In total, patrollers conducted almost 20,000 surveillance outings (around 150,000h of activity) and recorded the occurrence of 1260 crimes. Of the 772 crimes for which we had data on seized items, most violations were related to fishing (78.24%), 19.04% to hunting, or 2.72% to logging. The occurrence of crimes per outing increased as the number of patrollers and time spent patrolling increased and was greater during outings that were informant led. There was a sharp decrease over time in the occurrence of crimes during patrols across 11 of the 12 territorial units examined. Overall, the occurrence of crimes declined by approximately 80% over the study period. In contrast, the number of crimes detected over time during government-led enforcement operations outside the PAs did not decline. Leadership of local communities in the planning and conducting of patrols contributed to rule conformity and enforcement in the PAs. Our results should be especially useful to managers of PAs and researchers in other parts of the tropics as a model for local patrolling and natural resource protection.

Abstract Invasive non‐native species (INNS) are recognized as a major threat to island biodiversity, ecosystems, and economies globally. Preventing high‐risk INNS from being introduced is the most cost‐effective way to avoid their adverse impacts. We applied a horizon scanning approach to identify potentially INNS in the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (OTs), ranging from Antarctica to the Caribbean, and from the Pacific to the Atlantic. High‐risk species were identified according to their potential for arrival, establishment, and likely impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem function, economies, and human health. Across OTs, 231 taxa were included on high‐risk lists. The highest ranking species were the Asian green mussel ( Perna viridis ), little fire ant ( Wasmannia auropunctata ), brown rat ( Rattus norvegicus ), and mesquite tree ( Prosopis juliflora ). Shipping containers were identified as the introduction pathway associated with the most species. The shared high‐risk species and pathways identified provide a guide for other remote islands and archipelagos to focus ongoing biosecurity and surveillance aimed at preventing future incursions.

Platform-As-A-Service (PaaS) systems offer customers a rich environment in which to build, deploy, and run applications. Today's PaaS offerings are tailored mainly to the needs of web and mobile applications developers, and involve a fairly rigid stack of components and features. The vision of the H2020 5GPPP Phase 2 Next Generation Platform-as-a-Service (NGPaaS) project is to enable "build-to-order" customized PaaSes, tailored to the needs of a wide range of use cases with telco-grade 5G characteristics. This paper sets out the salient and innovative features of NGPaaS and explores the impacts on Operational Support Systems and Business Support Systems (OSS/BSS), moving from fixed centralized stacks to a much more flexible and modular distributed architecture.

The global increase in urbanization is leading to heavier interface between humans and wildlife. Within these anthropogenic landscapes, little is known about ranging patterns, particularly with regard to urban primates. Here we present the results of the first long-term deployment of multiple GPS collars on two species of macaques to investigate the impacts of urbanization on urban primate ranging patterns in Singapore and Gibraltar. Collars data acquisition were excellent with respect to the amount, quality, and accuracy of data collected; however, remote connectivity and drop-off functionality was poor across all deployments. Analyses highlighted high variability in ranging patterns between individuals within each species that aligned with access to human food resources and patterns of tourism. Individuals from troops with less access to human food had much larger home, core, and day ranges relative to those with regular provisioning or raiding opportunities. Almost no temporal range overlap was observed between any focal individuals at either site and spatial overlap was low for all but two troops at each site. We found no relationship between anthropogenic schedules and changes in ranging patterns. Significant seasonal variation existed for daily path length and day range size for both the Singapore long-tailed and the Gibraltar Barbary macaques, with long-tailed macaques increasing their range during the equatorial monsoon season and Barbary macaques increasing their range during drier, summer months. This study highlights how the behavioral plasticity found within the genus Macaca is reflected in ranging pattern variability within urban environments.

Fire has been used freely and widely by both secular and religious authors down the centuries and throughout the world as a conventional image for love and passion. It is often used to convey the i...