Narrow Results

We aim at controlling the biases that exist in every description, in order to give the best possible image of one of the protagonists of an event. Starting from a supposedly complete set of propositions accounting for an event, we develop various argumentative strategies (insinuation, justification, reference to customary norms) to imply the facts that cannot be simply omitted but have the "wrong" orientation w.r.t. the protagonist we defend. By analyzing these different strategies, a contribution of this work is to provide a number of relevant parameters to take into account in developing and evaluating systems aiming at understanding natural language (NL) argumentations. The source of inspiration for this work is a corpus of 160 texts where each text describes a (different) car accident. Its result, for a given accident, is a set of first-order literals representing the essential facts of a description intended to defend one of the protagonists. An implementation in Answer Set Programming is underway. A couple of examples showing how to extract, from the same starting point, a defense for the two opposite sides are provided. Experimental validation of this work is in progress, and its first results are reported.

Problem solvers employ strategies in searching for solutions to given problem instances. Strategies have traditionally been designed by experts using prior knowledge and refined manually using trial and error. Recent attempts to automate these processes have produced strategy-learning systems. This paper shows how various issues in strategy learning are affected by the nature of performance tasks, problem solvers, and learning environments. Surveyed learning systems are grouped by the commonality of their approaches into four general architectures.

Economic growth in the Asia Pacific region has surpassed all expectations. The ‘four Asian dragons’ were the powerhouse at the epicentre of this phenomenal growth. Singapore continues to adopt measures to sustain and build upon this economic growth, and strives to achieve a more competitive international manufacturing and services hub environment with total business capabilities. Singapore’s Economic Development Board has spearheaded this growth with several initiatives. These strategic thrusts are reported in this paper.

The open innovation concept has been discussed for more than a decade. However, there are relatively few studies related to implementation of open innovation. Barriers of implementation have been identified, but they are not related to the external knowledge searched for. This multiple-case study adds to current understanding of implementing open innovation strategies by focusing on the cooperation and coordination challenges when opening up for different types of supplier knowledge. Possible solutions and trade-offs between short-term benefits and long-term goals are presented that take into consideration the character of knowledge and human behavior. By applying theories such as knowledge-based view and transaction cost theories on empirical findings, different explanations are sought that bring new insights into managing open innovation.

Organisational adaptation is the capacity of an organisation to recognise the need to evolve and grasp possibilities in unpredictable circumstances. To position their organisations for flexibility in a world that is becoming more complicated, leadership needs to focus on change, dispersed, and contextual characteristics. A key idea concerning the conditions necessary for organisational adaptation is the theory of dynamic capabilities. This paper intends to highlight the role that leadership plays in mediating the impact of strategy, technology, and complexity on organisational adaptation. Structural equation modelling is used to test the suggested hypothesis. Professionals at a multinational organisation in India participated in the study. This study has a sample number of 252 and employed a simple random sampling technique. The results show that strategies and complexity impact the adaptability rate of an organisation and leadership mediates the relationship between strategies, technology, and complexity of organisational adaptability. In addition, it indicates that strategic adaption also improves business performance positively and effectively.

Policy monitoring and evaluation are important elements of the policy cycle, this help to initiate policy-makers to assess the proper implementation and adjust it as appropriate. This paper aims to evaluate the existing policy, strategies, and institutional arrangement on the development of urban green infrastructure in the three study areas; namely Hawassa, Wolayita Sodo, and Bodity town. Analyzing policy documents, key informant interview, and questionnaire survey were used to collect the required data. Descriptive statistics and policy analysis were also used to analyze the collected data from different sources. The study revealed that different strategies and standards were developed by the federal government, but it is not practically exercised at the regional and local level. The majority of government officials and experts agreed that existing policies and strategies related to UGI is not properly implemented. On the other hand, lack of policy and strategies are the major limitation in the development and management of UGI. Almost majority of the respondents confirmed that weak institutional arrangement has contributed to the poor implementation of UGI development. Lack of attention and awareness, the weak institutional arrangement is the main responsible factors for the absence of proper policy and poor implementation of strategies concerning UGI. Thus, actions needed for all the development of proper policies and strategies to improve UGI development.

The FinTech disruption has affected the global financial industry, which required many countries to cater to this disruption by building the right FinTech Innovation Ecosystems. For these types of ecosystems to succeed, they need to be based on open innovation concept, where multiple players in the ecosystem can work together to ensure FinTech innovation. The FinTech industry itself is formed based on various collaborations between different stakeholders to come up with innovative products. However, on a macro level, for countries to become a global FinTech hub, they need to ensure the existence of nine important components of FinTech Innovation Ecosystem. These components are FinTech Start-ups, Traditional Financial Institutions (FIs), Government, Financial Customers, Technology Providers, Human Capital, Supporting Platforms, Associations, and International Profile. These nine components, using an open innovation concept, can play a major role in establishing the right FinTech Innovation Ecosystems, which shall lead countries to become global FinTech hubs.

This chapter examines the evaluation of economic and financial viability of marketing cooperatives (MCs) and Investor Owned Firms (IOFs). The analysis covers the periods from 1993-98 for MCs and from 1994-98 for IOFs. The data is based on the financial characteristics of 10 MCs and 2 IOFs established and operating in Crete (the largest Greek island) and 8 food processing and marketing companies operating in Greece, but chosen exclusively for their vast familiarity to Greek consumers. The assessment procedure includes data analysis techniques in combination with a multicriteria analysis method (PROMETHEE II). The analysis results in an overall ranking of the examined firms' performance. It further indicates the strengths and weaknesses of the involved firms with regard to their financial behavior, thus contributing to the identification of market imperfections of the examined firms. Therefore, relevant conclusions are drawn concerning the revision of corporate strategies.

This paper introduces and explores some solar energy technologies and strategies for the design of habitable rural houses based on case study of a design work, which was honorable mentioned in the 2015 International Solar Building Design Competition. Firstly, the fundamental climatic conditions of the site of the project are studied. Then, some solar building design strategies applied in the design are introduced and discussed based on analysis of environmental conditions, functional needs, local traditional building styles, as well as the needs for integration of solar building technology and other ecological building technologies in the design. Finally, further researches in the relevant areas are remarked.

This paper aims to demonstrate the visualization strategies in excellent course resources design, development and management. Firstly, define the meaning of visualization according to the literature, summarize relevant data, information, knowledge of the excellent course resources and the application in the field by visualization. To theoretically discusses in design, development and management through visualization and content of the theoretical basis. Visualization should be throughout the whole process of the construction of the curriculum resources. The visualization of the high-quality goods curriculum resources not only improves the individual learning effect, but also guarantees the quality of the scale of the curriculum resources. Finally, the field of the practice of the fine course “computer culture basis” is based on the function of the visualization of high-quality goods curriculum resources optimization, and from the aspects of universality, collaborative and iterative visual strategy is proposed.

Advertising plays a very important role in drawing consumer attention to new-products and in encouraging early adoptions. The problem of drawing optimal advertising plans for innovations have therefore has received a lot of attention from marketing managers and researchers. But there is need for further research on problems pertaining to new-products that are part of technological generations. This chapter deals with the determination of optimal advertising expenditure for two-generation consumer durables. The model considers intergenerational diffusion effect and also introduces a framework for modeling innovation diffusion for two competing generations.

The unmanned aerial vehicle integral impeller is the key part of the turbine machinery. In order to obtain the desired dynamics, integral impeller blades with a large twist angle, root fillet and other structures are used, which increases the difficulty of milling. Therefore, to create an integral impeller consistent with design requirements needs not only a good manufacturing method, but also a good process to guarantee this. In this paper, a detailed processing analysis of the unmanned aerial vehicle integral impeller is made on the 5-axis machining center. The process route of NC machining is formulated by the selection of machine tools, blank, technology datum, cutting tools, tool path, cutting parameters and machining allowance. Therefore, the tool paths of rough machining, semi-finishing, finishing, and clean-up machining are generated by Power Mill software. Finally, the machining scheme is verified by experiment, and the rationality of the processing is proved.