15,665 research outputs found
A European research agenda for lifelong learning
It is a generally accepted truth that without a proper educational system no country will prosper, nor will its inhabitants. With the arrival of the post-industrial society, in Europe and elsewhere, it has become increasingly clear that people should continue learning over their entire life-spans lest they or their society suffer the dire consequences. But what does this future lifelong learning society exactly look like? And how then should education prepare for it? What should people learn and how should they do so? How can we afford to pay for all this, what are the socio-economic constraints of the move towards a lifelong-learning society? And, of course, what role can and should the educational establishment of schools and universities play? This are questions that demand serious research efforts, which is what this paper argues for
A Taxonomy of Data Grids for Distributed Data Sharing, Management and Processing
Data Grids have been adopted as the platform for scientific communities that
need to share, access, transport, process and manage large data collections
distributed worldwide. They combine high-end computing technologies with
high-performance networking and wide-area storage management techniques. In
this paper, we discuss the key concepts behind Data Grids and compare them with
other data sharing and distribution paradigms such as content delivery
networks, peer-to-peer networks and distributed databases. We then provide
comprehensive taxonomies that cover various aspects of architecture, data
transportation, data replication and resource allocation and scheduling.
Finally, we map the proposed taxonomy to various Data Grid systems not only to
validate the taxonomy but also to identify areas for future exploration.
Through this taxonomy, we aim to categorise existing systems to better
understand their goals and their methodology. This would help evaluate their
applicability for solving similar problems. This taxonomy also provides a "gap
analysis" of this area through which researchers can potentially identify new
issues for investigation. Finally, we hope that the proposed taxonomy and
mapping also helps to provide an easy way for new practitioners to understand
this complex area of research.Comment: 46 pages, 16 figures, Technical Repor
Cloud-scale VM Deflation for Running Interactive Applications On Transient Servers
Transient computing has become popular in public cloud environments for
running delay-insensitive batch and data processing applications at low cost.
Since transient cloud servers can be revoked at any time by the cloud provider,
they are considered unsuitable for running interactive application such as web
services. In this paper, we present VM deflation as an alternative mechanism to
server preemption for reclaiming resources from transient cloud servers under
resource pressure. Using real traces from top-tier cloud providers, we show the
feasibility of using VM deflation as a resource reclamation mechanism for
interactive applications in public clouds. We show how current hypervisor
mechanisms can be used to implement VM deflation and present cluster deflation
policies for resource management of transient and on-demand cloud VMs.
Experimental evaluation of our deflation system on a Linux cluster shows that
microservice-based applications can be deflated by up to 50\% with negligible
performance overhead. Our cluster-level deflation policies allow overcommitment
levels as high as 50\%, with less than a 1\% decrease in application
throughput, and can enable cloud platforms to increase revenue by 30\%.Comment: To appear at ACM HPDC 202
Boston Hospitality Review: Fall 2012
Lodging Update: Greater Boston by Rachel Rogisnky and Matthew Arrants -- A Sense of Place by Rachel Black -- Hospitality, Tourism, and Politics by Stephen W. Litvin -- Paris in Boston by photo essay by Jack Dzamba -- The Cradle of American Hospitality by Bradford Hudson -- Thomponâs Spa: The Most Famous Lunch Counter in the World by Peter Szende and Heather Rule -- The Restaurant as Hybrid: Lean Manufacturer and Service Provider by Christopher Mulle
Resource-based view and dynamic capabilities - Achieving competitive advantage through internal resources and competences
Strategy has always been important for success. Whether strategy is applied for military purposes, in large
firms, or even for personal objectives, there are certain key characteristics that every successful strategy
carries on: clear, objective and simple goals; deep knowledge and understanding of the competitive environment;
objective understanding and exploitation of resources; and an effective plan implementation. In this paper, the authorâs attention will be focused on the role of internal resources, routines and processes as the bases of sustained competitive advantage (hereafter SCA) into what is now known as the resourcebased
view of the firm (RBV) and Dynamic Capabilities (DC). First, the relevance of RBV and DC approaches
and the main characteristics of those are briefly mentioned. Second, RBV and DC are examined
as an important piece to achieve SCA. Later on, the author deepens into some examples and the managerâs
importance when using these RBV and DC approaches. Then issues related with complexity and undefined
concepts in RBV and DC are briefly mentioned. Finally, conclusions and personal comments are presented
Consumption, planned obsolescence and waste
In the five decades since Vance Packard published The Waste Makers (1960), planned product obsolescence has developed in many subtle and sophisticated ways. Yet its social and environmental impact remains largely unacknowledged; planned obsolescence continues to be elaborated and to undermine consumer choice, increase costs of owning and using products, accelerating the destruction of useful objects and resulting in higher levels of ecological spoiling. It is a phenomenon widely acknowledged though little discussed. Conceptual and empirical detail will be discussed in relation to i) âin-builtâ technological obsolescence the design; development and incorporation of functionally fragile components leading to premature malfunction, ii) stylistic obsolescence; the styling or fashioning of myriad consumer objects such that they are deemed to have âworn outâ stylistically and aesthetically before they have failed functionally and, iii) the âsuperfluous within the necessaryâ; the over-elaboration of products such that they are functionally âoverprogrammedâ, the specific design of many objects such that they cannot be repaired or adapted for alternate uses and, the way that many products urge and often require the subsequent consumption of extra goods and services simply to maintain them
Dancing on a Pin: Health Planning in Arizona
This publication challenges us to step back and reflect on the past, present and future of health systems. Take a deeper look at planning and how we got here, review the roles of competition and regulation, and learn about the health planning matrix along with the concept of health planning bridges. Discover for yourself if these thoughts and tools help the signal of quality health planning rise more clearly from out of the noise
Easy Innovation and the Iron Cage: Best Practice, Benchmarking, Ranking, and the Management of Organizational Creativity
The use of what came to be known as best practices, benchmarking, and ranking, which took corporate America by storm in the 1980s as a method for managing innovation, has seeped into government and nonprofit organizations in the intervening years. In fact, as H. George Frederickson demonstrates in this Kettering Foundation occasional paper, these practices have proven to be counterproductive both in the business and the public sector. Frederickson suggests, instead, a more flexible, less directive, model he calls "sustained innovation." He offers abundant evidence that this model is more effective in producing organizational effectiveness
Value Capture from Organizational Advantages and Sustainable Value Creation
The impact of firm value capture strategies on the sustainability of the value creation process as a whole has been little discussed in the literature. Despite contributions by leading scholars on issues pertaining to value capture and value creation, moreover, we still lack a systematic framework of their determinants. Our purpose in this paper is to propose a conceptual framework for value creation and value capture, explore their relationship, and discuss pre-requisites for sustainable system-wide value creation. We then derive propositions and explore implications of our analysis on business strategy and public policy.Advantages, Value Creation, Value Capture, Sustainability, Policy
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