SAGA: A DSL for Story Management

Video game development is currently a very labour-intensive endeavour. Furthermore it involves multi-disciplinary teams of artistic content creators and programmers, whose typical working patterns are not easily meshed. SAGA is our first effort at augmenting the productivity of such teams. Already convinced of the benefits of DSLs, we set out to analyze the domains present in games in order to find out which would be most amenable to the DSL approach. Based on previous work, we thus sought those sub-parts that already had a partially established vocabulary and at the same time could be well modeled using classical computer science structures. We settled on the 'story' aspect of video games as the best candidate domain, which can be modeled using state transition systems. As we are working with a specific company as the ultimate customer for this work, an additional requirement was that our DSL should produce code that can be used within a pre-existing framework. We developed a full system (SAGA) comprised of a parser for a human-friendly language for 'story events', an internal representation of design patterns for implementing object-oriented state-transitions systems, an instantiator for these patterns for a specific 'story', and three renderers (for C++, C# and Java) for the instantiated abstract code.Comment: In Proceedings DSL 2011, arXiv:1109.032

Cover Story Management

International audienceIn a multilevel database, cover stories are usually managed using the ambiguous technique of polyinstantiation. In this paper, we define a new technique to manage cover stories and propose a formal representation of a multilevel database containing cover stories. Our model aims to be a generic model, that is, it can be interpreted for any kind of database (e.g. relational, object- oriented etc). We then consider the problem of updating a multilevel database containing cover stories managed with our technique

Science-Based Management of America's Ocean Fish: A Growing Success Story

The United States is on the verge of completing a new science-based management system for ocean fish that will ensure sustainable fisheries. Congress should support managers as they achieve this goal, which will deliver an enduring legacy of healthy fish populations and thriving fishing businesses

A Lost Dream: Worker Control at Rath Packing

[Excerpted from Introduction by Gene Daniels] The story of Rath Packing Company of Waterloo, Iowa, is alternately a model of the American Dream and the story of a dream turned nightmare. Started in Iowa in 1891 with a work force of 22, Rath employed 8,000 people at its peak. In 1944, workers at Rath slaughtered 12,000 hogs, cattle and sheep a day. It was the largest and most modern packing house in the world. In the 1950s and early 1960s, however, Rath\u27s management failed to make several strategic moves. They failed to market Rath\u27s products to supermarkets, thinking Mom & Pop stores would remain the backbone of community grocery shopping. Little attention was paid to the growing conglomeration within the meatpacking industry itself And, management failed to re-invest in new machinery and processes and failed to build a new facility like the single-story buildings being constructed by competitors. All these factors combined to provide Rath with short-term prof its and long-term headaches. By the 1970s the company was in deep trouble

Fishing for a Future: Women in Community Based Fisheries Management

This is the story of women in the Community Based Fisheries Management (CBFM) project in Bangladesh. In rural Asia (Southern)-Bangladesh; many women are involved in inland fisheries and fish farming activities, yet annual statistics fail to capture their importance. Year after year these women continue to be essential in improving nutrition, increasing the production and distribution of food and enhancing the living conditions of their families. Yet, fisher-women remain among the poorest and most vulnerable in this part of the world. This is the story of many women, who through CBFM, have improved and will continue to improve the livelihood of their family. They are the women fishers of Bangladesh. This is their story

Hired Hands of Human Resources? Case Studies of HRM Programs and Practices in Early American Industry

[Excerpt] This book is the second volume of a two-volume set on the roots, birth, and early development of the human resource management (HRM) function in American industry. The story starts in the mid-1870s with the emergence of large-scale industry, an urban-based wage-earning workforce, and a growing labor problem heralded by the Great Railway Strike of 1877; it ends in 1932 at the nadir of the Great Depression when the nonunion welfare capitalism movement of the 1920s is in tatters and its New Deal union replacement lies just over the horizon. Between these two end points lies a remarkable half-century evolution in human resource management philosophy and practice that in cumulative form and effect can only be described as a transformation. The first volume, Managing the Human Factor: The Early History of Human Resource Management in American Industry (2008) presents the big picture side of the story with a broad historical account of the people, events, and ideas that together led a small band of innovative, pioneering companies to transform the way they managed their employees. Parading through these pages are the main forces and actors that revolutionized labor management a century ago. Counted in the former, for example, are the welfare, safety, and scientific management movements; the rise of trade unionism and labor law; World War I and the industrial democracy movement, and the invention of the assembly line and mass production; counted among the latter are such big names as Henry Towne, George Patterson, Frederick Taylor, Samuel Gompers, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Meyer Bloomfield, Walter Dill Scott, John Commons, Henry Ford, and Clarence Hicks. At the height of the HRM transformation in the late 1920s, labor management at leading companies in the United States had much greater similarityto what was to follow a half century later (in the 1980s) than to what had already passed a half century earlier (in the 1880s). This volume complements the first by filling in and rounding out the story with a set of fifteen detailed case studies of early HRM programs and practices in individual companies and industries. The time span is exactly the same as the first volume—the mid-1870s to the early 1930s—but is broken into two distinct parts. Part 1 is devoted to nine case studies that extend through the World War I years, and the six case studies of part 2 cover the 1920s and early 1930s

Blessed are the cheesemakers : evidence based policy versus the oral tradition

A paper presented at a special conference to celebrate the work of Brian Perry. Records the story of BLRDD and of research management in the UK from 1985-2000. Covers BLRDD, the Library and Information Commission and BLRIC. Considers the lessons to be drawn in moving from a managed research environment to the present more anarchic situation