Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences (German: Hochschule Rhein-Waal) or HSRW, is a young and fast-growing German public university that first opened for the winter semester of 2009/10. It is known to be the most international-oriented university in Germany and offers the majority of degree programs completely in English. Its two campuses are located in the cities of Kleve and in Kamp-Lintfort.The university is named after the German river Rhine and Dutch river Waal. As of 2018, it offers a variety of both English- and German-languaged study programmes through four faculties: Faculty of Technology & Bionics, Faculty of Life Sciences, Faculty of Society and Economics and Faculty of Communication and Environment.
Contrary to the widely held belief that informal small enterprises underperform and lack growth potential, emerging research suggests that some can be productive and contribute to economic development. The key challenge is identifying these high-potential enterprises and understanding the factors that drive their performance to inform targeted policy interventions. Drawing on firm-level data from 305 informal microenterprises in Malawi’s baobab sector, we employed structural equation modelling to examine the influence of entrepreneurial motivation (necessity versus opportunity) and business practices on firm performance. The results reveal that opportunity motivation has a significant positive effect on firm performance, measured by annual net profit, and that this effect is partly explained by the adoption of business practices such as marketing, financial planning, costing, and record-keeping. In contrast, necessity motivation exhibits no significant relationship with firm performance. These findings contribute to the identification of informal microenterprises with growth potential, offering insights for entrepreneurs and policymakers on factors that enhance performance while advancing literature on entrepreneurial motivation and firm success in the informal sector.
Cover crops (CC) mitigate nitrate leaching through nitrogen (N) uptake and carbon (C) driven microbial immobilisation. These dynamics are heavily modulated by environmental variables, which this four-year field study on a Stagnic Luvisol (Lower Rhine, Germany) quantifies to resolve the plant-soil-microbe N-nexus in intensive arable cropping systems. Annual rotations of CC species and mixtures were evaluated between winter cereals and summer crops. CC above- and below-ground biomass and their C and N content were determined in autumn and, in 2020, also at the end of winter. Further, microbial biomass (MB) C and N at 0–30 cm and inorganic N at 0–30, 30–60 and 60–90 cm depth, were quantified in autumn and end of winter. In addition, soil prokaryotic and fungal gene abundance were determined in the first two experimental years. Regardless of mixture complexity, CC reduced soil inorganic N by 54
This study examines why efforts to establish a comprehensive and sustainable database for returnee migrants in Bangladesh have remained fragmented despite repeated initiatives and extensive data collection. While Bangladesh maintains a well-developed system for monitoring outgoing labour migration, return migration continues to be weakly documented and poorly institutionalized. Drawing on Norman Long’s actor-oriented approach and interface analysis, the study explores how interactions among state agencies, non-governmental organizations, and returnee migrants shape returnee migrant data governance. The analysis is based on 21 qualitative interviews, including 16 key informant interviews with government officials, NGO representatives, international organizations, and experts, and five in-depth interviews with returnee migrants. The findings show that returnee migrant data are produced across multiple institutional sites including security agencies, government bodies, and NGOs but remain fragmented due to overlapping mandates, contested authority, project-based data systems, and limited data-sharing arrangements. NGOs retain significant control over grassroots-level data, government agencies compete over responsibility, and returnee migrants engage selectively with data systems based on trust and perceived risk. The study demonstrates that data governance challenges are primarily institutional and relational rather than technical. It identifies existing institutional interfaces, particularly at local and district levels, that could support a coordinated returnee migrant database if better aligned. By conceptualizing data infrastructures as sites of negotiation, the study contributes to migration governance literature and offers policy-relevant insights for strengthening returnee migrant data systems in Bangladesh.
Organic materials (OM) such as farmyard manure (FYM) and mungbean residue (MR) are used to improve soil nutrient stock and act as an alternative to fertilizers. It was hypothesized that integrating beneficial microbes (BM) with OM will enhance carbon and nitrogen mineralization, offering a novel approach for optimizing soil fertility and nutrient cycling. The experiment was conducted in a completely randomized design (CRD) having factorial combination of five OM sources (control (CON), poultry manure (PM), FYM, compost (COM), and MR at the rate of 120 kg N ha-1) and four levels of BM ( i.e. 0, 100, 200, and 300 L ton-1 of OM) in microcosm for 112 days in airtight vials incubated at 25 °C. Destructive soil samplings were analyzed for total nitrogen (TN), mineral nitrogen (MN), organic carbon (SOC), electrical conductivity (EC), pH, microbial respiration (SMR), and microbial biomass carbon (MBC), while net mineral N release and losses were calculated on a mass basis. The incubation interval had increased the soil TN, SMN, SOC, MBC and SMR by 26, 2, 28, 7 and 82
