Study on needs for a magnetic suspension system operating with a transonic wind tunnel

The U.S. aeronautical industry was surveyed to determine if current and future transonic testing requirements are sufficient to justify continued development work on magnetic suspension and balance systems (MSBS) by NASA. The effort involved preparation of a brief technical description of magnetic suspension and balance systems, design of a survey form asking specific questions about the role of the MSBS in satisfying future testing requirements, selecting nine major aeronautics companies to which the description and survey forms were sent, and visiting the companies and discussing the survey to obtain greater insight to their response to the survey. Evaluation and documentation of the survey responses and recommendations which evolved from the study are presented

Competitiveness Factors of Slovak Companies

This paper examines factors affecting the competitiveness of leading Slovak companies, using results obtained through a questionnaire survey. The results imply that companies are aware of the key role of consumers. By putting emphasis on production modernisation and extensive use of information and communication technologies, the companies are successful in placing their products on foreign markets, but the final customers are beyond their reach. The results confirm that the most important factors of competitiveness are intra-company factors, above all company management and cost reduction. Other factors considered to have a strong impact are the EU membership of Slovakia and energy costs. The planned adoption of the euro in Slovakia was seen as increasing competitiveness. Companies are starting to realise the need for transition to a higher level of competitiveness, one based on innovation. Among the main threats to competitiveness is the potential exacerbation of labour market imbalances.company competitiveness, SWOT analysis, questionnaire survey

Organization of Multi-Agent Systems: An Overview

In complex, open, and heterogeneous environments, agents must be able to reorganize towards the most appropriate organizations to adapt unpredictable environment changes within Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). Types of reorganization can be seen from two different levels. The individual agents level (micro-level) in which an agent changes its behaviors and interactions with other agents to adapt its local environment. And the organizational level (macro-level) in which the whole system changes it structure by adding or removing agents. This chapter is dedicated to overview different aspects of what is called MAS Organization including its motivations, paradigms, models, and techniques adopted for statically or dynamically organizing agents in MAS.Comment: 12 page

Is There a Desirable Rate of Inflation? A Theoretical and Empirical Survey

In this paper, I survey the existing literature and examine three related questions: (1) What inflation rate constitutes the appropriate target for the central bank? (2) What is an operational definition of price stability for the conduct of monetary policy? (3) What is the policy framework for pursuing price stability in practice? In doing so, I emphasize that it is crucially important for a central bank to seek to maintain a price environment that is neither inflationary nor deflationary and is consistent with stability of the economy in the long run. I propose two definitions of price stability, gmeasured price stabilityh and gsustainable price stability.h I argue that g sustainable price stabilityh should be the fundamental goal for monetary policy. Although, from the viewpoint of accountability, gmeasured price stabilityh is important as a quantitative yardstick by which to evaluate policy achievement, it should not be the justification for preventing the central bank from its pursuit of gsustainable price stability.h Since observed changes in price indices are affected by various types of external shocks and measurement errors, it is indeed quite difficult to assess whether the underlying rate of inflation is stable or not. Therefore, even if gmeasured price stabilityh seems to be maintained, a central bank may need to alter interest rates promptly if it judges that the maintenance of gsustainable price stabilityh is at risk. In this sense, it is deemed important to construct a framework for monetary policy designed to maintain policy flexibility with a high degree of transparency by properly ensuring consistency between g measured price stabilityh and gsustainable price stability.h The current policy framework adopted by the Bank of Japan can be viewed as aiming at a kind of gconstrained discretionh by restricting pure discretion under open independence in line with this direction.