Towards a theory of technological mismatch: 1 - Consumption

In this paper, the relationship between technological change and employment is analysed using private consumption as a means to do so. Technological change will create new and more consumption opportunities by means of product and process innovation. This results in changes in consumption patterns and budget shares of consumer products. As a consequence of technological change and changing tastes, the production structure will be altered and therefore, changes in (the composition) of employment are inevitable. By using a narrow classification of products as well as occupations, it is possible to analyse the dynamics of adjustment and technological change and their impact on the composition of employment in terms of occupations/skills. Furthermore, obsolescence of products and skills, caused by technological change, can be related to each other by using an input-output framework. The decrease in the (real) consumption of industrial consumer goods has for instance lead to a decrease in the employment of industrial occupations. In addition, scientific/professional occupations seems to have replaced industrial occupations between 1980 and 1990 in the Netherlands. The development of information technology may be a reason for the relative decrease in the employment of commercial skills.economics of technology ;

An Evaluation of the Efficacy of Information Technology on the Performance of Selected Banks in Ogbomoso Area of Oyo State, Nigeria.

This paper evaluates the efficacy of information Technology on the performance of some selected banks in Ogbomoso area of Oyo State, Nigeria. Three operating banks were selected whereby 103 customers of Intercontinental Bank, Skye Bank and United Bank for Africa were selected using purposive sampling technique. Both descriptive and inferential statistics of a two tailed test were adopted. The study revealed that customers’ perception on promotion of promptness and efficiency in service delivery by IT does not differ significantly in the selected banks. It was also revealed that IT has been a source of increased productivity for the banks whose have deployed it. This is a direct result of the processing speed of computers and other IT infrastructures, which reduce the time spent in attending to each customer and create new ways through which customer can be served. To this end, it was recommended that Nigerian banks should from time to time invest in IT infrastructure that will enhance their service delivery. This will further enhance productivity and create greater opportunities for profitability. Key Words: Commercial Banks, Information Technology (IT), Performance, Efficacy

Let’s augment the future together!:Augmented reality troubleshooting support for IT/OT rolling stock failures

The railway industry is moving to a socio-technological system that relies on computer-controlled and human-machine interfaces. Opportunities arise for creating new services and commercial business cases by using technological innovations and traffic management systems. The convergence of Information Technology (IT) with Operational Technology (OT) is critical for cost-effective and reliable railway operations. However, this convergence introduces complexities, leading to more intricate rolling stock system failures. Hence, operators necessitate assistance in their troubleshooting and maintenance strategy to simplify the decision-making and action-taking processes. Augmented Reality (AR) emerges as a pivotal tool for troubleshooting within this context. AR enhances the operator’s ability to visualize, contextualize, and understand complex data by overlaying real-time and virtual information onto physical objects. AR supports the identification of IT/OT rolling stock system failures, offers troubleshooting directions, and streamlines maintenance procedures, ultimately enhancing decision-making and action-taking processes. This thesis investigates how AR can support operators in navigating troubleshooting and maintenance challenges posed by IT/OT rolling stock system failures in the railway industry

Intention-oriented programming support for runtime adaptive autonomic cloud-based applications

The continuing high rate of advances in information and communication systems technology creates many new commercial opportunities but also engenders a range of new technical challenges around maximising systems' dependability, availability, adaptability, and auditability. These challenges are under active research, with notable progress made in the support for dependable software design and management. Runtime support, however, is still in its infancy and requires further research. This paper focuses on a requirements model for the runtime execution and control of an intention-oriented Cloud-Based Application. Thus, a novel requirements modelling process referred to as Provision, Assurance and Auditing, and an associated framework are defined and developed where a given system's non/functional requirements are modelled in terms of intentions and encoded in a standard open mark-up language. An autonomic intention-oriented programming model, using the Neptune language, then handles its deployment and execution. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

The changing nature of participation in design : a practice-based study of social technologies in early design research

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.Social technologies put a new emphasis on participation. This thesis investigates the impact of social technologies on how we enable, conceive and manage participation in early design. The research questions in this thesis address how, and in what ways, using social technologies as design tools can support participation in the early stages of design, and how using such tools creates new opportunities for participation in early design when social technologies themselves are the subject of design. It develops and presents concepts and strategies that account for the sharable, social and participatory nature of social technologies and encourages designers to reconsider how notions of participation are currently embedded and framed within existing design methods and models. The questions are explored through a practice-based investigation into the use of social technologies as self-reporting tools. Over the course of two field studies a self-reporting method, Mobile Diaries, was iteratively designed, evaluated and implemented in a specific commercial design context. The analysis demonstrated that using social technologies as design tools enhances the capacity for self-reporting to enable participants to contribute to design from the context of their own lives. This greater integration between the activities of research and everyday life blurs some traditional design research boundaries, with ethical and methodological implications for which we are only beginning to account. In addition, when social technologies are the subject of design, using social technologies as design tools creates an experiential connection between the activities of researching, designing and using. This creates new opportunities for participation through use early in the design process that blur traditional boundaries between the activities of research, design and use. Barriers to embracing these opportunities in commercial contexts include the assumption that the activities of design and use progress consecutively and the value of early participation in design is largely embodied in the tangible outputs of design research. This research extends existing knowledge about the nature of participation in design, and how participation can be supported, through three main contributions: 1. The development of Mobile Diaries, a specific self-reporting method beneficial to early design research and suited to commercial use 2. Conceptual tools that reflect the impact of social technologies on self-reporting and draw attention to the new ethical and methodological implications they introduce 3. Strategies to articulate and support experiences and outcomes important to the early design of social technologies in community settings, through the use of social technologies themselves. This thesis also makes a fourth contribution that is methodological: 4. It is an example of how practice-based design research can be conducted in a commercial context in ways valuable to both practice and research domains

A Study on Developing the Kadazandusun Commercial and Industrial Community (KCIC) in Sabah, Malaysia

The creation of a Bumiputera Commercial and Industrial Community was formulated to achieve the second strategy of the New Economic Policy, which was removing the identification of race with major economic function. Through this concept an exploratory research on the creation of a Kadazandusun Commercial and Industrial Community was made to enable the Kadazandusun community to be at par with other communities by the year 2020. The first two objectives of this study determined the current level of involvement of the Kadazandusun in commercial and industrial activities and identifying current entrepreneurship development programmes. From the secondary data, the Kadazandusun controls less than 17 percent of the 9 economic sectors used as a basis for comparison for current economic performance and were not aware of entrepreneurship development programmes. In accessing the strengths, wealmesses, opportunities and threats facing the community a questionnaire survey was cond ucted . Data processing included both qualitative and quantit.ative method. Five groups representing the cultural community characteristics namely awareness, information: psychological> culture and manpower development were identified through factor analysis and acted as independent variables towards community's information awareness, knowledge regarding available loans, administration and management, networking, market share, manpower development and financial management in the regression analysis. Using situational analysis, Strategic factors Analysis Summary Matrix revealed strategic factors for the development of Kadazandusun community. Strategic strength factors were "Bumiputera Status", "Largest Bumiputera Group" and "Government Development Programmes", while the major weaknesses were "Motivation", "Access to Business Information", and "Management Skills". Whereas opportunities were represented by "Kota Kinabalu Industrial Park", "Access to Loans" and "Government Policies". The threat factors were "Competition from Other Communities", and "poatics".An "lnformation Center" was recommended to be set-up by the Kadazandusun Chamber of Commerce and lndustry to help entrepreneurs in terms of management skills, financial management, information management, quality development, strategic networking, business development, technology development and fulfilling human resources needs. Institutions dealing in business consultancy, entrepreneurship development programme, information technology, training and funding were also recommended in the proposed model. These key factors will- produced genuine entrepreneurs of quality and resilient to challenges, competitive in all potential area of economic growth, able to cultivate entrepreneurship culture, and capable of developing and nurturing the Kadazandusun community's capabilities in businesses and pursue the nation's industrialisation's goals as envisaged in Vision 2020

Hoffman Triangle Neighborhood Condition Analysis

In the Fall of 2011, University of New Orleans (UNO) students enrolled in the MURP 4081/G ― Information Technology for the Planning Profession – led by Dr. Michelle Thompson, partnered with the Associated Neighborhood Development (AND) to evaluate quality of life indicators within Hoffman Triangle. Hoffman Triangle is a neighborhood located in the Central City of New Orleans, LA. The student teams evaluated the neighborhood parcel by parcel, collected primary and secondary information and analyzed data using basic data and spatial analysis primarily within a geographic information system (GIS). Specifically, primary data collection included a parcel condition survey, a commercial property inventory, a property image database, streetlight locating, and identification of tires and trash dumping sites. Secondary data, for Hoffman Triangle only, included US Census 2010 demographics, City of New Orleans property assessments, blight and crimes, as well as, the WhoData.org March 2011 Hoffman Triangle survey. The goal of this project and of the client, AND, is to update and expand data for advocating purposes, increase opportunities for community and economic development, as well as provide the City of New Orleans with a neighborhood profile which informs their placed-based strategies. AND remains committed to revive the Hoffman Triangle neighborhood by increasing homeownership and to identify vacant and substandard properties for targeted revitalization, thereby improving the quality of the neighborhood and residents’ lives

Interconnects for future technology generations - conventional CMOS with copper/low-k and beyond

The limitations of the conventional Cu/low-k interconnect technology for use in future ultra-scaled integrated circuits down to 7 nm in the year 2020 are investigated from the power/performance point of view. Compact models are used to demonstrate the impacts of various interconnect process parameters, for instance, the interconnect barrier/liner bilayer thickness and aspect ratio, on the design and optimization of a multilevel interconnect network. A framework to perform a sensitivity analysis for the circuit behavior to interconnect process parameters is created for future FinFET CMOS technology nodes. Multiple predictive cell libraries down to the 7‒nm technology node are constructed to enable early investigation of the electronic chip performance using commercial electronic design automation (EDA) tools with real chip information. Findings indicated new opportunities that arise for emerging novel interconnect technologies from the materials and process perspectives. These opportunities are evaluated based on potential benefits that are quantified with rigorous circuit-level simulations and requirements for key parameters are underlined. The impacts of various emerging interconnect technologies on the performances of emerging devices are analyzed to quantify the realistic circuit- and system-level benefits that these new switches can offer.Ph.D

towards disruptions in earth observation new earth observation systems and markets evolution possible scenarios and impacts

Abstract This paper reviews the trends in Earth observation (EO) and the possible impacts on markets of the new initiatives, launched either by existing providers of EO data or by new players, privately funded. After a presentation of the existing models, the paper discusses the new approaches, addressing both commercial and institutional markets. New concepts for the very high resolution markets, in Europe and in the US, are the main focus of this analysis. Two complementary perspectives are summarised: on the one hand, the type of system and its operational performance and, on the other, the related business models, concepts of operation and ownership schemes. Until now, Earth observation systems for the most critical institutional needs are mainly dedicated assets owned and operated by governments or public organisations, often at national level. Even in the case of dual use missions, the governmental and commercial operations are in general fully segregated for the very high resolution satellites. Recent evolutions could affect this paradigm. Firstly, the increased performance of commercial satellites has a high degree of convergence with defence needs: 25–30 cm resolution is now the benchmark or at least a very short term target for commercial missions. The second evolution is the development of hybrid procurement schemes, combining proprietary missions and data buy framework contracts, partly triggered by the budgetary constraints of public customers, some failures in the execution of large spy satellites contracts and by the willingness to foster the competitiveness of industry on the export market. New space is another trend, which is more disruptive. This trend begun in the Silicon Valley and spread worldwide, arousing our expectations, sometimes excessively. This new model involves not only start-ups but also big web actors with substantial investment capacity. Both aim to transforming space into a commodity, taking benefit from the convergence between Information technology and EO. Beside the massive constellations for broadband Internet access, some initiatives have been launched for Earth observation markets, targeting high resolution and high revisit. Last but not least, more and more countries, the newcomers, invest in their own EO capacity, confirming the soft power dimension of space but also opening new opportunities for international or regional cooperation. As many unpredictable events may occur, even in a short time frame, the last part of the paper has a prospective dimension. Based on market trends and industrial stakes, it discusses the realism and likelihood of possible scenarios and identifies their impacts on the EO landscape and the main stakeholders involved, in particular in Europe: – The governmental and institutional actors, using Earth observation data for their operational missions, with an evolving balance between sovereign assets and external services. – The commercial operators of very high resolution satellites, with the new market opportunities and the possible emergence of worldwide champions. – The satellite manufacturers and their competitiveness. – The role of nations and space agencies, including the non-dependence or national sovereignty and international cooperation dimensions. Based on the comparison of three "radical" scenarios, the conclusion shows that there are opportunities for service providers and satellite manufacturers. Even without clear answer to the future industrial, technical and political structure of EO systems, relevant indicators to be monitored during the next three-five years are identified. The last section focuses on Europe and the role of institutions in order to support European champions and small and medium companies in the new worldwide competition

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW IN THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: TRADE SECRETS RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES

ABSTRACTIntellectual Property (IP) is increasingly recognised as a paramount intangible asset influencing the value of companies, as well as their corporate strategies and management. This article focuses on the risks and opportunities associated with the implementation of new technologies on the protection of trade secrets. The study concludes that Intellectual Property Law and Contract Law solutions must be underpinned by the business strategy and the business model. In addition, changes to organisational structures are necessary to bring together functions that typically operate in silos in many manufacturing businesses, namely: Engineering, Information Technology, Commercial and Legal departments. The present study was guided by the inductive and hypothetical-deductive methods, using bibliographical research. KEYWORDS: Business Law; Intellectual Property; Industry 4.0; Risks and Opportunities. RESUMOA Propriedade Intelectual (PI) é cada vez mais reconhecida como um ativo intangível primordial que influencia o valor, as estratégias corporativas e a gestão da empresa. Este artigo enfoca os riscos e oportunidades associados à implementação de novas tecnologias na proteção de segredos comerciais. O estudo conclui que o Direto de Propriedade Intelectual e o Direito Contratual devem ser sustentados pela estratégia de negócios e pelo modelo de negócios. Além disso, mudanças nas estruturas organizacionais são necessárias para reunir funções que normalmente operam em silos em muitas empresas, por exemplo: engenharia, tecnologias da informação, departamentos comerciais e jurídicos. O presente estudo foi orientado pelos métodos indutivo e hipotético-dedutivo, utilizando pesquisa bibliográfica. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Direito Empresarial; Propriedade Intelectual; Indústria 4.0; Riscos e Oportunidades