Environmental learning in regions: a social capital based approach. The case of Latvia

How do people learn about the environment and behave accordingly? What is the cognitive process at the base of this learning mechanism? The present paper is a pilot work investigating the dynamics of individual environmental knowledge on the basis of social capital theory. Using Tsai and Ghoshal’s findings, a well known framework widely accepted in organizational studies which supports the existence of a relationship between structural, relational and cognitive dimensions of social capital, and between social capital and knowledge exchange, these dynamics are then tested in the context of environmental behaviour studies. The quantitative analysis is carried out by means of a structural equation model based on data collected in the Republic of Latvia. Results support main theoretical hypotheses, but several effects are found to be highly sensitive to control variables (residence place dimensions, ethnic affiliation, age, personal income), leading to hypothesise a strong dependency of environmental learning patterns on the socio-demographic, socio-economic and cognitive context.     

Optical fibres for communications

For more than a century telephony has been dependent on elaborate systems of electrically conducting cables. Recently, however, the supremacy of electricity has been challenged by the introduction of glass fibres along which speech is conveyed in the form of modulated optical pulses. This article reviews the technological basis of the method and some typical applications.