Schedules, Calendars and Agendas

Time management instruments such as schedules, calendars and agendas are obvious tools to organise individual and collective action. Besides being of great practical significance in the western world and beyond, these tools are remarkable in that they are rarely questioned by those who are governed by them. Yet, they are tools and as such they can be used by management in organisations. This paper will explore: -why these time instruments are much legs visible than the task itself, -to what extent they are knowingly used by management, and -if their effectiveness is somehow limited to certain activities. It is argued that the unobtrusiveness oftime instruments is related to the natural distinction between content and context. Tasks, intellectual or practical, lead the actors to focus on content. Time management instruments appear to belong to context instead. Hence, they are normally taken for granted, framing the problem.Time; management

The European consumer: United in diversity?.

The ongoing unification which takes place on the European political scene, along with recent advances in consumer mobility and communication technology, raises the question whether the European Union can be treated as a single market to fully exploit the potential synergy effects from pan-European marketing strategies. Previous research, which mostly used domain-specific segmentation bases, has resulted in mixed conclusions. In this paper, a more general segmentation base is adopted, as we consider the homogeneity in the European countries' Consumer Confidence Indicators. Moreover, rather than analyzing more traditional static similarity measures, we adopt the concepts of dynamic correlation and cohesion between countries. The short-run fluctuations in consumer confidence are found to be largely country specific. However, a myopic focus on these fluctuations may inspire management to adopt multi-country strategies, foregoing the potential longer-run benefits from more standardized marketing strategies. Indeed, the Consumer Confidence Indicators become much more homogeneous as the planning horizon is extended. However, this homogeneity is found to remain inversely related to the cultural, economic and geographic distances among the various Member States. Hence, pan-regional rather pan-European strategies are called for.Communication; Consumer confidence; Country; Dynamic correlation; Effects; European unification; European Union; Indicators; Management; Market; Marketing; Planning; Research; Similarity; Strategy; Technology;

Setting an integrated soil monitoring system for Malta : strategy, feasibility and recommendations

Chapter 6Since 2010, MEPA has embarked on a project (which attracted co-funded ERDF assistance) (1) to develop a multi-thematic environment strategy that would lead to updating of its data/ information monitoring capabilities for a number of environmental sectors. The monitoring and continuous evaluation of soil properties is one important sector within this project. Essentially, a multi-criterion assessment of existing available information has been carried out with a view to objectively chart the most appropriate process to carry out a pilot field sampling by testing a pre-agreed set of indicators. The latter were established after taking into consideration all degradation pressures threatening the continued sustainability of this resource. Multi-criterion analysis was carried out by means of a limited set of soil-related datasets published in past editions of Malta’s State of the Environment Report in order to support a number of objectives stipulated within the Project’s ambitious Terms of Reference. Information was derived from earlier attempts to establish a soil information system for Malta. All soil degradation threats, officially determined by the European Commission’s Technical Working Groups, have been taken into consideration within the aforementioned project and its research methodology with a view of establishing a shared GIS environment in accordance with state-of-the-art information dissemination standards.peer-reviewe

Local Motion Planner for Autonomous Navigation in Vineyards with a RGB-D Camera-Based Algorithm and Deep Learning Synergy

With the advent of agriculture 3.0 and 4.0, researchers are increasingly focusing on the development of innovative smart farming and precision agriculture technologies by introducing automation and robotics into the agricultural processes. Autonomous agricultural field machines have been gaining significant attention from farmers and industries to reduce costs, human workload, and required resources. Nevertheless, achieving sufficient autonomous navigation capabilities requires the simultaneous cooperation of different processes; localization, mapping, and path planning are just some of the steps that aim at providing to the machine the right set of skills to operate in semi-structured and unstructured environments. In this context, this study presents a low-cost local motion planner for autonomous navigation in vineyards based only on an RGB-D camera, low range hardware, and a dual layer control algorithm. The first algorithm exploits the disparity map and its depth representation to generate a proportional control for the robotic platform. Concurrently, a second back-up algorithm, based on representations learning and resilient to illumination variations, can take control of the machine in case of a momentaneous failure of the first block. Moreover, due to the double nature of the system, after initial training of the deep learning model with an initial dataset, the strict synergy between the two algorithms opens the possibility of exploiting new automatically labeled data, coming from the field, to extend the existing model knowledge. The machine learning algorithm has been trained and tested, using transfer learning, with acquired images during different field surveys in the North region of Italy and then optimized for on-device inference with model pruning and quantization. Finally, the overall system has been validated with a customized robot platform in the relevant environment

Modeling water resources management at the basin level: review and future directions

Water quality / Water resources development / Agricultural production / River basin development / Mathematical models / Simulation models / Water allocation / Policy / Economic aspects / Hydrology / Reservoir operation / Groundwater management / Drainage / Conjunctive use / Surface water / GIS / Decision support systems / Optimization methods / Water supply

Economic Institutions and Economic Growth in the Former Soviet Union Economies

The aim of this paper is to assess the importance of economic institutions, measured by an index built from the E.B.R.D. (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) indicators, for the pattern of economic growth. Though it focuses on a particular set of transition economies, it is also related to the literature on institutional development and economic growth. Indeed it draws on the literature on the economics of transition, looking at the breakdown of the U.S.S.R. as an extremely powerful “natural” experiment. From an empirical point of view, the study takes into consideration the period between 1991 and 2008 for fifteen countries, namely the Former Soviet Union economies, and is performed by means of a panel model. The first part of the econometric analysis sees our index as the only independent variable. A static model and a dynamic one are specified and different estimation techniques used. The second phase includes other covariates, among which the classical determinants of growth, to test whether the institutional environment, that is to say, the economic institutions index, maintains the magnitude and has a major impact on the pattern of economic growth.economic growth, economic institutions, economic policy, Former Soviet Union economies, static and dynamic models, panel analysis