Adaptive Comfort Degree-Days: an index to compare adaptive comfort standards and estimate changes in energy consumption for future UK climates

This paper introduces the concept of the Adaptive Comfort Degree-Day, a temperature difference/time composite metric, as a means of comparing energy savings from Adaptive Comfort Model standards by quantifying the extent to which the temperature limits of the thermal comfort zone of the Predicted Mean Vote Model can be broadened. The Adaptive Comfort Degree-Day has been applied to a series of climates projected for different locations (Edinburgh, Manchester and London) under different emissions scenarios in the United Kingdom for the 2020s, 2030s, 2050s and 2080s. The rate at which energy savings can be achieved by the European adaptive standard EN15251 (Category II) was compared with the ASHRAE 55 adaptive standard (80% acceptability) during the cooling season. Results indicate that the wider applicability of the European standard means that it can realise levels of energy savings which its counterpart ASHRAE adaptive standard would not achieve for decades

Property Is a Two-Way Street: Personal Copyright Use and Implied Authorization

When we use the Internet, we know that copyright law limits our freedom. We know, for example, that downloading popular music is legally risky. Those who want to get moralistic about it argue that illegal downloading violates a property right of the copyright holder. But what about our property rights in our computers? Even if copyright is a form of property, it maintains a parallel existence as an intrusion upon property rights. This intrusion is increasingly a part of daily life, as copyright\u27s literal scope sweeps broadly enough to threaten a range of everyday activities that social norms rega rd as acceptable. These observations form the basis of a moral critique of copyright law, but they do not figure prominently in modern doctrine. This Article looks to the common law property rights of copyright users to develop a framework for limiting copyright\u27s reach. If we take seriously traditional rules governing the interplay between statutes and preexisting common law rights, courts have room to incorporate user property rights into copyright doctrine. First, the common law provides a baseline against which the Copyright Act should be construed. Courts should be reluctant to interpret the statute in a manner that negates longstanding expectations that personal property may be used in conjunction with copyrighted material for personal purposes. Second, the property rights of copyright users offer a new foundation for implied license doctrine. Instead of looking solely to the conduct of the licensor (i.e., the copyright holder) to determine whether an implied license to use copyrighted content exists, courts should appreciate the reasonable expectations of consumers in their control of personal property used to interact with the protected works. Expanding our conception of implied license in this manner would help address the uneasy status of personal uses of copyrighted work s under modern law

Critical Management Education as a Vehicle for Emancipation: Exploring the Philosophy of Jacques Rancière

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on Critical Management Education (CME) by drawing on the work of philosopher, Jacques Rancière, whose thinking provides a means of resolving the dilemma underlying CME. It raises fundamental questions regarding the position of authority and the expertise of the critical educator, while at the same time dispelling the illusion of collaboration and consensus with students and managers. By presenting equality as an assumption to be actualised, Rancière invites us to reject the appropriation harboured by expert knowledge and the assignation of positions that this implies. On this basis, we can restructure the place of management and management education as a fertile ground for the emergence of dissensus in order to politicise what was neutralised and to give voice to those who have no voice.Critical Management Education - Critical Management Studies - Emancipation - Rancière

Engage D1.2 Final Project Results Report

This deliverable summarises the activities and results of Engage, the SESAR 2020 Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN). The KTN initiated and supported multiple activities for SESAR and the European air traffic management (ATM) community, including PhDs, focused catalyst fund projects, thematic workshops, summer schools and the launch of a wiki as the one-stop, go-to source for ATM research and knowledge in Europe. Key throughout was the integration of exploratory and industrial research, thus expediting the innovation pipeline and bringing researchers together. These activities laid valuable foundations for the SESAR Digital Academy

Anticircumvention and Anti-anticircumvention

In today\u27s debate on digital rights management systems, there is a considerable divide between the rights holders, their investors and representatives on the one hand and academics, consumer advocates, and civil libertarians on the other. These two groups often talk past each other, concocting their own doomsday scenarios while arguing for laws and policies that vindicate their positions. Unfortunately, neither side has sufficient empirical evidence to either support its position or disprove its rivals\u27. As the digital economy grows, the debate intensifies, and the divide between the two sides widens. Today, there has emerged an urgent need to find the common ground on this very divisive issue. Published as part of the Inaugural Summit on Intellectual Property and Digital Media, this article begins by examining the positions taken by the proponents and critics of DRM systems and related laws. It then focuses on anticircumvention laws, highlighting their harms at both the domestic and international levels. Contending that an unbalanced international anticircumvention regime is more harmful than its domestic counterpart, this article calls for countries, in particular less developed countries, to be more cautious about the ratification and subsequent implementation of the WIPO Internet Treaties. This article concludes with four observations which provide insight into the development of the next generation of DRM systems and the supporting legal regime

Security issuance and investor information

Although the commoditisation of illiquid asset exposures through securitisation facilitates the disciplining effect of capital markets on the risk management, private information about securitised debt as well as complex transaction structures could possibly impair the fair market valuation. In a simple issue design model without intermediaries we maximise issuer proceeds over a positive measure of issue quality, where a direct revelation mechanism (DRM) by profitable informed investors engages endogenous price discovery through auction-style allocation preference as a continuous function of perceived issue quality. We derive an optimal allocation schedule for maximum issuer payoffs under different pricing regimes if asymmetric information requires underpricing. In particular, we study how the incidence of uninformed investors at varying levels of valuation uncertainty and their function of clearing the market effects profitable informed investment. We find that the issuer optimises own payoffs at each valuation irrespective of the applicable pricing mechanism by awarding informed investors the lowest possible allocation (and attendant underpricing) that still guarantees profitable informed investment. Under uniform pricing the composition of the investor pool ensures that informed investors appropriate higher profit than uninformed types. Any reservation utility by issuers lowers the probability of information disclosure by informed investors and the scope of issuers to curtail profitable informed investment. JEL Classifications: D82, G12, G14, G2

Retail Inventory Control Strategies

Despite using computerized merchandise control systems in retail, the rate of stockouts has remained stagnant. The inability to satisfy customer needs has caused a loss of 4% in potential revenue and resulted in dissatisfied customers. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore cost-effective inventory control strategies used by discount retail managers. The conceptual framework that grounded the study was chaos theory, which helped identify why some business leaders rely on forecasting techniques or other cost-effective strategies as an attempt to prevent stockouts. The target population was comprised of discount retail managers located throughout northeast Jacksonville, Florida. Purposeful sampling led to selecting 6 retail managers who successfully demonstrated cost-effective inventory control strategies for mitigating stockouts. Data were collected through face-to-face semistructured interviews, company websites, and company documents. Analysis included using nodes to identify similar words and axial-coding to categorize the nodes into themes. Transcript evaluation, member checking, and methodological triangulation strengthened the credibility of the findings. Five themes emerged: (a) internal stockout reduction strategies, (b) external stockout reduction strategies, (c) replenishment system strategies, (d) inventory optimization strategies, and (e) best practices for inventory control. This study may contribute to positive social change by improving inventory management, which may reduce demand fluctuations in the supply chain and reduce logistics costs in the transportation of freight thereby leading to improved customer satisfaction

Towards an Architecture of Self-reliance

This research project focuses on how decisions made by practitioners, articulating rural housing in Sub-Sahara Africa, contribute to the decreasing level of self-reliance inhabitants have regarding their housing. Multiple case studies on Mt. Elgon proved that inhabitants have a significantly higher self-reliance level, comparing traditional to modern housing. To study this phenomenon in practice and to articulate suitable design support the Design Research Methodology was chosen. The research clarification pinpointed inhabitant capacities as the key-contributor to self-reliant housing. Household survey outcomes proved that large numbers of rural inhabitant’s desire housing which they have insufficient capacities for. Indicating that the inhabitants experience a disparity between existing and desired housing capacities, moreover an inability to bridge this disparity independently, and consequently require external help. Architect seemed most appropriate to offer this help as it consist of sociocultural, engineering and design tasks. Architects are not trained in inhabitant capacity evaluation and as no suitable design tools existed, this research project developed the required design support, its application requirements and the impact measurements. These were then tested in a pilot project on Mt. Elgon. The findings were used to evaluate the support’s impact and suitability. The support tool users found it suitable to assess and integrate inhabitant capacities into housing solutions. The impact shows that the support group families have sustained their family’s level of self-reliance unlike the control group. The developed technological design, with modifications, could be used not only in rural Kenyan communities, but also help others around the continent