الصفحة 28
الصفحة 28
Cost-sharing and Accessibility in Higher Education : A Fairer Deal?
Higher education finances lie at the crossroads in many Western countries. On the one hand, the surging demand of the past three or four decades, driven by a belief in higher education as a principal engine of social and economic advancement, has led to dramatic growth of the higher education systems in these countries. On the other hand, this growth in demand was accompanied by rapidly increasing per-student cost pressures at a time when governments seemed increasingly unable to keep pace with these cost pressures through public revenues. Hence, worldwide, the most common approach to the need for increasing revenue was to use some form or forms of cost sharing, or the shift of some of the higher educational per-student costs from governments and taxpayers to parents and students.
Corporate Performance Management : ARIS in Practice
Corporate Performance Management (CPM) is a basic approach which examines the relationship between corporate performance and process optimization. How to successfully introduce CPM in practice is demonstrated through project reports from E.ON, British Telecom, Credit Suisse and Vodafone among others. The methods and tools presented here guarantee a continuous and automated monitoring of the corporate performance and enable Business Process Excellence to be permanently established in the company by company-internal and company-external benchmarking. The articles in this book focus on the use of the ARIS Controlling Platform developed by IDS Scheer.
Corporate fraud across the globe
It is expected that uncovered corporate fraud negatively affects the public reputation, and financial performance of fraudulent firms. However, what is of more importance for fraudulent firms is how to regain the trust of customers, investors, and other stakeholders, as this impacts the long-term sustainability of businesses. Operational strategies, including reform, provide an effective channel for a fraudulent firm’s business sustainability yet this notion remains unexplored in the literature.
Corporate Entrepreneurship and Venturing
The common theme in Corporate Entrepreneurship and Venturing is how and why corporate entrepreneurship and corporate venturing can contribute to innovation and strategic renewal in large established companies. In particular it explores ways to balance exploitation and exploration in established companies. The issue is how the locus of entrepreneurship affects the way corporate entrepreneurship addresses the exploitation/exploration challenge. One stream of research focuses on the entrepreneurial culture in large companies and how they can create an environment in which intrapreneurs (entrepreneurs within large companies) can blossom. In this view entrepreneurial initiatives can emerge throughout the organization and this type of entrepreneurship has been labelled as ‘dispersed corporate entrepreneurship’. Two related chapters fit into that stream of research. The other three chapters address the challenge of corporate venture capital programs. These programs have funds to invest in start-ups (external ventures) and the corporate parent want to benefit from the technology, new products or new competences developed in these start-ups. In this case they have separated the locus of entrepreneurship from the main line of business operations, which has been labelled ‘focused corporate entrepreneurship’. In this ‘focused corporate entrepreneurship’ stream the issue is not so much the motivational factors and supportive culture to entrepreneurial initiatives, but the creation and development of linkage mechanisms between the start-ups and the parent company in order to create new combinations based on competences from both the start-up and the parent company. Although the challenges in these two streams of literature are different, they both address the strategic issue of balancing exploitation and exploration.
Coping with Water Deficiency : From Research to Policymaking
In line with the Water Framework Directive, this book stresses the need for an Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) approach to balance the competing demands on water-domestic, agricultural, industrial, tourism and environmental/ecological- and promote economically efficient, socially equitable and environmentally sustainable water use in selected regions from Southern Europe, the Mediterranean and the developing world. Results from the research projects covered by this book, demonstrate that effective water management tools and decisions-making practices, are needed in order to complement integrated interventions for increasing the availability of supply and/or managing the growing demand for scarce water supplies. Further, the book attempts to bridge the gap between ideas and actions endorsed at the research-oriented environmental debate, and their translation into policy making structures and programs in developed and developing countries.
Coping With Institutional Order Flow
Handling the large orders of institutional participants presents some of the most complex problems for system design. How well are our current systems operating, and how effective are new facilities on the scene? To what extent is market quality impaired for all participants when institutional trading costs are not properly contained? Can institutional order flow be efficiently integrated with the orders of retail customers, or are separate facilities needed? What are the impediments to market structure change, and how might they best be overcome?
Coordination of Large-Scale Multiagent Systems
Challenges arise when the size of a group of cooperating agents is scaled to hundreds or thousands of members. In domains such as space exploration, military and disaster response, groups of this size (or larger) are required to achieve extremely complex, distributed goals. To effectively and efficiently achieve their goals, members of a group need to cohesively follow a joint course of action while remaining flexible to unforeseen developments in the environment. Coordination of Large-Scale Multiagent Systems provides extensive coverage of the latest research and novel solutions being developed in the field.
Cooperative Information Agents XI ; Matthias Klusch, Koen V. Hindriks, Mike P. Papazoglou, Leon Sterling
In today’s world of ubiquitously connected heterogeneous information systems and computing devices, the intelligent coordination and provision of relevant added-value information at any time, anywhere is of key importance to a va- ety of applications. This challenge is envisioned to be coped with by means of appropriate intelligent and cooperative information agents. An information agent is a computational software entity that has access to one or multiple heterogeneous and geographically dispersed data and infor- tion sources. It pro-actively searches for and maintains information on behalf of its human users, or other agents preferably just in time. In other words, it is managing and overcoming the di?culties associated with information overload in open, pervasive information and service landscapes. Each component of a modern cooperative information system is represented by an appropriate intelligent information agent capable of resolving system and semantic heterogeneities in a given context on demand. Cooperative infor- tion agents are supposed to accomplish both individual and shared joint goals depending on the actual user preferences in line with given or deduced limits of time, budget and resources available.
Control Systems Theory and Applications for Linear Repetitive Processes
After motivating examples, this monograph gives substantial new results on the analysis and control of linear repetitive processes. These include further applications of the abstract model based stability theory which, in particular, shows the critical importance to the dynamics developed of the structure of the initial conditions at the start of each new pass, the development of stability tests and performance bounds in terms of so-called 1D and 2D Lyapunov equations. It presents the development of a major bank of results on the structure and design of control laws, including the case when there is uncertainty in the process model description, together with numerically reliable computational algorithms. Finally, the application of some of these results in the area of iterative learning control is treated --- including experimental results from a chain conveyor system and a gantry robot system.
Control of Turbulent and Magnetohydrodynamic Channel Flows : Boundary Stabilization and State Estimation
This monograph presents new constructive design methods for boundary stabilization and boundary estimation for several classes of benchmark problems in flow control, with potential applications to turbulence control, weather forecasting, and plasma control. The basis of the approach used in the work is the recently developed continuous backstepping method for parabolic partial differential equations, expanding the applicability of boundary controllers for flow systems from low Reynolds numbers to high Reynolds number conditions. Efforts in flow control over the last few years have led to a wide range of developments in many different directions, but most implementable developments thus far have been obtained using discretized versions of the plant models and finite-dimensional control techniques. In contrast, the design methods examined in this book are based on the “continuum” version of the backstepping approach, applied to the PDE model of the flow.
Control of Sandwich Nonlinear Systems Authors
This unique monograph introduces an important new area of control system research and presents some new methods for solving some typical problems in the field of sandwich nonlinear systems. Sandwiched nonsmooth nonlinearities such as dead-zone, hysteresis and backlash between dynamic blocks are presented, as well as continuous-time control designs. A framework for hybrid control is developed that is used to design control schemes for different cases of the control problem with required modifications. Friction compensation is addressed for systems with sandwiched friction along with sandwiched dynamics. An open problem of the control of sandwich nonlinear systems with actuator failures is introduced by a control design for an illustrative case.
Control of Redundant Robot Manipulators : Theory and Experiments
This monograph provides a comprehensive and thorough treatment of the problem of controlling a redundant robot manipulator. It presents the latest research from the field with a good balance between theory and practice. All theoretical developments are verified both via simulation and experimental work on an actual prototype redundant robot manipulator
Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound in Clinical Practice : Liver, Prostate, Pancreas, Kidney and Lymph Nodes
Concomitant with the improvement of contrast agents, different contrast-specific imaging modalities have been developed which, used in combination with USCA and a low mechanical index, allow continuous real-time grey-scale imaging. These recent technical improvements have opened new possibilities in the use of USCA in a variety of indications. Written by internationally renowned experts, the contributions gathered in this book give an overview of current and possible future new applications of USCA in routine and clinical practice.
Content based image retrieval systems
With an advent of technology, huge collection of digital images is formed as repositories on crime prevention, medical diagnosis, military, face finding, satellites and remote sensing. The task of searching for similar images in the repository is difficult. The data is growing enormously which makes it difficult to store and manage. The traditional image retrieval technique is inefficient in retrieving these images. Content-based image retrieval is an approach from data mining community, which provides the solution of managing this huge quantity of data. In this research, a Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) system has been developed using color and texture as retrieval features from the image repository. The system allows the user to search for an image based on any of the two features alone or in combination by assigning weights to the features. The histogram and color moments approach is used to extract the color feature, texture feature is extracted using statistical moments and co-occurrence matrix method and the shape feature is extracted using the morphological operations. The images and the extracted feature vectors are stored in the Pickle file. The system is robust as it provides search based on the multiple features. The performance of the system was evaluated by analyzing the retrieval results using precision and recall.
Contemporary Treatment Techniques in Pediatric Dentistry
This clinical guide acquire a clear understanding of contemporary treatment protocols for primary and young permanent teeth while serving as a guide to integrate these procedures into their private or institutional practice. The background to the book is the emergence in recent years of important paradigm shifts in treatment concepts.
Contemporary endodontics for children and adolescents
Describes pulp therapy from a holistic approach that highlights new developments in the field. Readers will find updates on the formation, structure and function of the dental pulp revealed by the latest single-cell technologies, and discussions on carious lesions and their impact on the pulp. The book examines clinical considerations in the decision to perform pulp treatment and emphasizes the need to integrate pupal diagnostics with patient-dependent factors such as behavior management and pulpal pain mechanisms. The second part of the book includes comprehensive descriptions of current treatments for each type of caries-inflicted tooth damage, from selective caries removal through direct pulp capping, pulpotomy, pulpectomy and root canal therapy for primary dentition to direct pulp capping and endodontic treatment of young permanent teeth.
Consumer psychology : A life span developmental approach
Approaches consumer psychology from a unique perspective - it covers the entire lifespan, from birth to old age. Childhood and youth are not discussed as areas special, different and remote from the rest of consumer research but are integrated into our development as humans. Consumption is viewed as a process by groups and individuals with the cycle continuing through to disposal or ownership and possession. The author discusses how people’s natural lifespan influences their relationship to the things they own, how preferences are developed from childhood and how motivations for purchases change throughout their lives from childhood to old age. This book brings together the most recent findings and theories on child and youth consumption, including children’s understanding of advertising and marketing, teen and youth identities and their consumption tastes.
Consumer perception of food attributes
Objectives of this book is to summarize recent empirical findings from scholarly works on how consumers value food credence attributes. Such knowledge would benefit producers, processors, retailers, and policy makers. Another objective of this book is to discuss the effectiveness of the programs that have been introduced to strengthen the relationship between producers and consumers. Many programs have been developed to more effectively inform consumers regarding food production processes.
Consumer Happiness : Multiple Perspectives
Helps quench the quest of knowledge of academicians, researchers, and others interested in developing a complete and critical understanding of consumer happiness. The relentless search of happiness by humans is sought in different ways. Scientific discussion on happiness for long was considered a forte of Philosophers. Other disciplines seldom delved into this. But today not only science but neuroscience, marketing, and other varied fields have started delving into it and have developed a keen interest. The book has been conceptualized on this line of thinking and thus divided into two parts. The first part is customized towards understanding various perspectives of happiness and the relative importance of knowing the same. The first chapter of this section is on the biological perspective of happiness. The second is titled ‘Behavioural perspective’. The third chapter is an attempt to elucidate the cultural perspective of the concept of happiness. The fourth is on the role of technology in inducing happiness. Fifth and sixth are on theories of happiness and measuring happiness, respectively.
Constructive Negations and Paraconsistency
This book presents the author’s recent investigations of the two main concepts of negation developed in the constructive logic: the negation as reduction to absurdity (L.E.J. Brouwer) and the strong negation (D. Nelson) are studied in the setting of paraconsistent logic. The paraconsistent logics are those, which admit inconsistent but non-trivial theories, i.e., the logics which allow making inferences in non-trivial fashion from an inconsistent set of hypotheses. The study is based on algebraic methods, demonstrates the remarkable regularity and the similarity of structures of both lattices of logics, and gives essential information on the paraconsistent nature of logics Lj and N4.The methods developed in this book can be applied for investigation of other classes of paraconsistent logics.
