How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

Knowledge graph completion aims to perform link prediction between entities. In this paper, we consider the approach of knowledge graph embeddings. Recently, models such as TransE and TransH build entity and relation embeddings by regarding a relation as translation from head entity to tail entity. We note that these models simply put both entities and relations within the same semantic space. In fact, an entity may have multiple aspects and various relations may focus on different aspects of entities, which makes a common space insufficient for modeling. In this paper, we propose TransR to build entity and relation embeddings in separate entity space and relation spaces. Afterwards, we learn embeddings by first projecting entities from entity space to corresponding relation space and then building translations between projected entities. In experiments, we evaluate our models on three tasks including link prediction, triple classification and relational fact extraction. Experimental results show significant and consistent improvements compared to state-of-the-art baselines including TransE and TransH. The source code of this paper can be obtained from https://github.com/mrlyk423/relation_extraction.

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Learning entity and relation embeddings for knowledge graph completion

Better stewardship of land is needed to achieve the Paris Climate Agreement goal of holding warming to below 2 °C; however, confusion persists about the specific set of land stewardship options available and their mitigation potential. To address this, we identify and quantify "natural climate solutions" (NCS): 20 conservation, restoration, and improved land management actions that increase carbon storage and/or avoid greenhouse gas emissions across global forests, wetlands, grasslands, and agricultural lands. We find that the maximum potential of NCS-when constrained by food security, fiber security, and biodiversity conservation-is 23.8 petagrams of CO2 equivalent (PgCO2e) y-1 (95% CI 20.3-37.4). This is ≥30% higher than prior estimates, which did not include the full range of options and safeguards considered here. About half of this maximum (11.3 PgCO2e y-1) represents cost-effective climate mitigation, assuming the social cost of CO2 pollution is ≥100 USD MgCO2e-1 by 2030. Natural climate solutions can provide 37% of cost-effective CO2 mitigation needed through 2030 for a >66% chance of holding warming to below 2 °C. One-third of this cost-effective NCS mitigation can be delivered at or below 10 USD MgCO2-1 Most NCS actions-if effectively implemented-also offer water filtration, flood buffering, soil health, biodiversity habitat, and enhanced climate resilience. Work remains to better constrain uncertainty of NCS mitigation estimates. Nevertheless, existing knowledge reported here provides a robust basis for immediate global action to improve ecosystem stewardship as a major solution to climate change.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/114/44/11645.full.pdf

Natural climate solutions

It has been frequently stated, but without provision of supporting evidence, that the world has lost 50% of its wetlands (or 50% since 1900 AD). This review of 189 reports of change in wetland area finds that the reported long-term loss of natural wetlands averages between 54–57% but loss may have been as high as 87% since 1700 AD. There has been a much (3.7 times) faster rate of wetland loss during the 20th and early 21st centuries, with a loss of 64–71% of wetlands since 1900 AD. Losses have been larger and faster for inland than coastal natural wetlands. Although the rate of wetland loss in Europe has slowed, and in North America has remained low since the 1980s, the rate has remained high in Asia, where large-scale and rapid conversion of coastal and inland natural wetlands is continuing. It is unclear whether the investment by national governments in the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands has influenced these rates of loss. There is a need to improve the knowledge of change in wetland areas worldwide, particularly for Africa, the Neotropics and Oceania, and to improve the consistency of data on change in wetland areas in published papers and reports.

How much wetland has the world lost? Long-term and recent trends in global wetland area

Accurate inventory of tropical peatland is important in order to (a) determine the magnitude of the carbon pool; (b) estimate the scale of transfers of peat-derived greenhouse gases to the atmosphere resulting from land use change; and (c) support carbon emissions reduction policies. We review available information on tropical peatland area and thickness and calculate peat volume and carbon content in order to determine their best estimates and ranges of variation. Our best estimate of tropical peatland area is 441 025 km2 (?11% of global peatland area) of which 247 778 km2 (56%) is in Southeast Asia. We estimate the volume of tropical peat to be 1758 Gm3 (?18–25% of global peat volume) with 1359 Gm3 in Southeast Asia (77% of all tropical peat). This new assessment reveals a larger tropical peatland carbon pool than previous estimates, with a best estimate of 88.6 Gt (range 81.7–91.9 Gt) equal to 15–19% of the global peat carbon pool. Of this, 68.5 Gt (77%) is in Southeast Asia, equal to 11–14% of global peat carbon. A single country, Indonesia, has the largest share of tropical peat carbon (57.4 Gt, 65%), followed by Malaysia (9.1 Gt, 10%). These data are used to provide revised estimates for Indonesian and Malaysian forest soil carbon pools of 77 and 15 Gt, respectively, and total forest carbon pools (biomass plus soil) of 97 and 19 Gt. Peat carbon contributes 60% to the total forest soil carbon pool in Malaysia and 74% in Indonesia. These results emphasize the prominent global and regional roles played by the tropical peat carbon pool and the importance of including this pool in national and regional assessments of terrestrial carbon stocks and the prediction of peat-derived greenhouse gas emissions.

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00599518/document

Global and regional importance of the tropical peatland carbon pool

A collaborative research study on the effectiveness of the water management systems was conducted in two polder areas in the Red River Delta in Vietnam. The project adopted the participatory learning and action approach. The main objective of the study was to match the tacit knowledge of the various local stakeholders (groups) with the explicit scientific knowledge of the researchers in order to: (1) overcome the shortcomings of traditionally validated simulation models; (2) improve the mutual understanding of the complexity of the existing irrigation and drainage system; and (3) reach agreement on the outlines for an integrated action plan. The study started with a series of workshops in which (representatives of ) farmers, communes, local government, unions, NGOs and scientists assessed the problems they face and identified and prioritised their preferences. The workshops were followed up by a participatory pre-investigation to identify and quantify the constraints in the functioning of the water management systems. Next, the drainage system was modelled and computer simulations were used to develop conceptual designs to improve the functioning of these systems. In concluding workshops with the stakeholders recommendations to improve the institutional capacity of the drainage system management were formulated and prioritised. In addition to technical innovations, recommendations to reform the complex institutional setting were formulated. The collaborative modelling approach proved to be a useful tool for tackling the hydrological and social complexity, overcoming the lack of long-term data records and getting a consensus among the stakeholders on the outline of an integrated approach.

Collaborative research to improve the water management in two polders in the Red River Delta in Vietnam

Surface drainage systems.

About one quarter of the world’s tropical peatlands (11 million hectares) occur in Borneo. These peatlands have global ecological significance, being some of the largest remaining areas of lowland rainforest in SE Asia that provide the habitat of many endangered species. In addition, they are large stores of carbon and water and also have an important regional economic role, providing forest products and land for settlement and agricultural development. Owing to a lack of awareness and understanding about sustainable land management practices, however, many peatland development projects fail, resulting in serious environmental degradation and impoverishment of local communities. The PEATWISE project addresses issues of sustainable land management, with particular reference to tropical peatlands, through the development of new university curricula by a multilateral network of South East Asian and European universities. Using innovative educational tools, it will produce and make available course materials and training modules that incorporate up-to-date research results and advice on the wise use of natural resources, thus improving academic provision, enhancing skills and expertise, contributing to the sustainable use of natural resources and improving socio-economic conditions across the peat-covered lowlands of Borneo. In this presentation a description is given how the PeatWise partners cooperate to develop and introduce training modules that fit within their own curricula within the three-year PeatWise project.

http://webdocs.alterra.wur.nl/internet/peatwise/docs/phase3/Papers/New%20education%20tools%20for%20Sustainable%20Management%20of%20Peatlands%20.pdf

New educational tools for sustainable management of peatlands in the humid tropics: the peatwise project

The coastal zone comprises only 3% of the earth’s surface, but contains a disproportionately high amount of its assets. Tidal areas include all those coastal areas where the tidal processes are capable of affecting man’s activity or of being influenced by man. Tidal areas differ greatly depending on their location, geo-physical conditions, climate, tidal range and cultural differences. Throughout the world, tidal areas have been and are being developed. These developments will continue as food production will need to be doubled in the next 25 years. To address questions related to a sustainable development of tidal areas, the International Commission of Irrigation and Drainage established the Working Group on Sustainable Development of Tidal Areas in 2001. The working group has studied these questions and formulated principles and issues for sustainable development of tidal areas based on the relevant international conventions. The aim of this paper is to represent the official position of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) and to support the preparation of the ICID Handbook ‘Towards Sustainable Development of Tidal Area: Some Principles and Experiences’.

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Development of tidal areas: some principles and issues towards sustainability†

Excessive soil erosion hampers the functioning of many irrigation schemes throughout sub-Saharan Africa, increasing management difficulties and operation and maintenance costs. River water is often considered the main source of sedimentation, while overland sediment inflow is overlooked. From 2016 to 2018, participatory research was conducted to assess sediment influx in two irrigation schemes in Ethiopia. Sediment influx was simulated using the revised universal soil loss equation (RUSLE) and compared to the amount of sediment removed during desilting campaigns. The sediment deposition rate was 308 m3/km and 1087 m3/km, respectively, for the Arata-Chufa and Ketar schemes. Spatial soil losses amounts to up to 18 t/ha/yr for the Arata-Chufa scheme and 41 t/ha/yr for the Ketar scheme. Overland sediment inflow contribution was significantly high in the Ketar scheme accounting for 77% of the deposited sediment, while only 4% of the sedimentation at the Arata-Chufa scheme came from overland flow. Feeder canal length and the absence of canal banks increased the sedimentation rate, however, this was overlooked by the stakeholders. We conclude that overland sediment inflow is an often neglected component of canal sedimentation, and this is a major cause of excessive sedimentation and management problems in numerous irrigation schemes in sub-Saharan Africa.

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/13/13/1747/pdf

Henk Ritzema

Papers

Collaborative research to improve the water management in two polders in the Red River Delta in Vietnam

Surface drainage systems.

New educational tools for sustainable management of peatlands in the humid tropics: the peatwise project

Development of tidal areas: some principles and issues towards sustainability†

Sediment Influx and Its Drivers in Farmers’ Managed Irrigation Schemes in Ethiopia