Nowadays, students expect that their university will not only provide a valuable source of practical knowledge for them, but will also be ready to offer appropriate distance learning opportunities both on a daily basis to diversify and enrich the study process experience and during global pandemic crises, which will probably be the reality of their lives in the next decades. The novelty and topicality of this study is justified by the need to assess the COVID-19 pandemic impact on the European Union higher education system and its adaptability to switch from traditional to remote study forms. The objectives of the study were: 1) to analyse the need to improve digital skills in the European Union by investigating the achievements of the Digital Economy and Society Index; 2) to assess the current digital environment of Latvian public universities and conduct an in-depth study of the digital environment of Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies. The research methodology is based on the desk study, social survey, comparative analysis and logical construction research methods. The results of the study revealed the digital gap that still exists between the more developed Nordic European countries and the less developed Southern and Eastern European countries. However, detailed analysis of the situation in Latvia leads to the conclusion that Latvian higher education institutions have significantly increased the amount of digital content in both external and internal communication systems and can offer competitive educational services that comply with the contemporary education requirements.
The change in the concept of urban agriculture has been driven by social, political and economic factors, changing the role of agriculture in the urban environment. From the second half of 20th century topicality and practices of urban agriculture are growing widely not only in social initiatives but also in scientific research (the number of articles in scientific databases has increased 18-30 times since 2000). Growing interest has identified various variations and tendencies in the interpretation of the concept of urban agriculture, having regard to the current United Nations definition that is broad, but in research works and case studies researchers adapt the definitions to the local characteristics and aim of the study, thus creating a number of risks in the interpretation of the concept, including limited possibilities for quantitative comparisons between studies. The aim of the article is to identify the historical development stages of the concept of urban agriculture and to determine the main research tendencies in its application. To achieve this aim, the method of monographic and descriptive analysis was used for theoretical discussion, analysis, synthesis and deduction - for information gathering, logical systematization and classification. As a result of the study, it was identified that the concept of urban agriculture is developed in three different stages - originally associated with the technical solutions of urban planning for providing food for city dwellers, it is currently developing in tendencies of different directions: analysis of agriculture’s role in urban areas (including mitigating climate change risks), classification of types of urban agriculture, opportunities for adapting innovations and technological solutions to urban agriculture, the place and context of urban agriculture for sustainable development in the circumstances of urbanization. Such in-depth research of the experience and impact of urban agriculture on sustainable development could increase dynamically due to environmental considerations, aspect of the circular economy, and new paradigms in planning urban and peri-urban areas.
This article presents preliminary analysis of the Latvian national EV fast - charging network after the first year of operation. The first phase of Latvian national EV fast-charging network was launched in 2018 with 70 charging stations on the TEN-T roads and in the largest towns and cities. The article looks at the initial results, both looking at the total capacity utilization for individual charging stations, determining the hourly charging distribution; and to the utilization of the network as a whole. The results present that there is a very large dispersion of the data, most of the charging events happening in a few charging stations in and around the capital of Latvia. However, there have been charging events in all charging stations, even in the most remote ones. Even more skewed distribution was observed analyzing the charging habits of the EV users, with 10 % of users accounting for more than half of the charging events. This should be taken into account when considering applying the results for the future, expecting larger number of electric vehicles in Latvia.
The development of organic farming is determined by many factors. On the one hand, it is an increase in demand for food produced in this production system, on the other it is a subsidy system for organic farming under the CAP. The purpose of the article is a comparative analysis of the direction of changes in the development of organic farming in Poland and Latvia compared to the EU in the years 2000-2017. Information was analysed on the organic farming i.e. the area of organic crops, the number of certified farms and organic retail sales, based on FIBL data from the years 2000–2017. An analysis of the trend of changes in organic farming in Poland and Latvia indicates that the development of organic farming in both countries has clearly accelerated after their accession to the EU and after covering organic farming by the CAP support system. However, the case of Poland is definitely different from the trend of changes in organic farming in Latvia and in the EU, where both the number of organic farms and their area increased, with the simultaneous development of the organic food market. There are many indications that mistakes were made in the organic farming subsidy system.
The article focuses on developing an operation model, how to decrease the necessary grid connection power for electric vehicle fast charging stations, based on the current electric vehicle (EV) charging tendencies in Latvia. In order to reach the goals of decreasing CO2 emissions in the transportation sector, Latvia has rolled out electric vehicle fast charging infrastructure on the main TENT roads. However, because this infrastructure will not be uniformly used all across Latvia, the maintenance and infrastructure costs are high. This article is examining a possibility of decreasing these costs by introduction of energy storage and renewable energy sources to lower the required grid connection power level. The specific task of the article was development of a model based on the charging data from EV charging sessions to reliably simulate possible charging scenarios as EV use will increase in the future. The model was then validated using Monte Carlo simulations and compared with the empirical results. The possibilities of grid connection power decrease were analysed. The results demonstrated that introduction of energy storage and photovoltaic energy would currently decrease the operational costs for 93 % of the EV charging stations in the Latvian fast charging network.
The disposition effect is the tendency of investors to sell stocks early when the price increases and hold stocks longer when this price decreases. As a consequence, investors may lose opportunities to gain greater profits from a stock winner whose price continues to rise; in contrast, they can suffer greater loss when the stocks continue to decline. The disposition effect is a phenomenon widely studied in behavioral finance. There are two main competing theories attempting to explain this phenomenon: the prospect theory and the regret theory. Although both theories give a fairly comprehensive explanation, they fail to take into account the motivation of investors in making investment decisions. This paper seeks to make a critical review of both of the main theories as well as provide a new explanation related to the motivation of investors from the perspective of the regulatory-focus theory. Regulatory-focus theory explains that individuals can be categorized into two groups, i.e. the prevention group and the promotion group. Regulatory-focus theory adds a more specific explanation that the disposition effect is more likely to occur in the prevention rather than the promotion group. The explanation of the disposition effect based on regulatory-focus -is a novelty in this paper.
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