An analysis for more equitable revenue and expenditure allocations within Lingnan College

From the triennial 1995-98, the funds allocated from University Grants Committee to universities have decreased. In order to use the limited resources effectively, and to manage their revenue and costs efficiently, universities have to set up a better budgeting system. Therefore, the eight universities in Hong Kong are proposing the Revenue Center Management (RCM) instead of the current budgeting system. The purposes of this project focuses on the analyses of the current budgeting system adopted at Lingnan College, and the proposed RCM budgeting system

Expanding the exergy concept to the urban water cycle

The world is urbanizing fast and this increases the pressure on available resources. In a world of cities, it is therefore crucial to take a new look at the way urban systems function: where do the resources come from and where do the wastes end up? It is essential to find ways to minimize urban impacts on resource depletion and environmental impacts and also to improve cycles within the systems. Energy and water cycles are vital to support urban life. Over the last decades, important advances have been made separately in the field of integrated water management and energy efficiency in urban areas. However, for urban planning purposes a shared framework is required that allows planners to model and understand the dynamics of the broader system to achieve an integrated management of the resources. Natural energy and water cycles are modified by metabolic profiles of the cities. The metabolic profile varies with the local resource availability and the level of technological development. To cope with this complexity, the concept of Exergy, based on Thermodynamic laws, and defined as the non-used fraction of energy, has been used to understand the energy cycle in the built environment. This will lead to new approaches towards urban planning and better resources use. This paper aims to find out if the exergy concept can be expanded to the water cycle defined as the use of the non-used water(-fraction). This way the cycle can be optimized and closed at a high efficiency level. In order to achieve this, we want to study to what extend the energy and water cycles are comparable, and how they can learn from each other in order to optimize their management

The economic ecology of small businesses in Oxfordshire

Report by the Oxfordshire Economic Observatory (OEO) for the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), Oxfordshire Branch

Optimal trajectory generation in ocean flows

In this paper it is shown that Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCS) are useful in determining near optimal trajectories for autonomous underwater gliders in a dynamic ocean environment. This opens the opportunity for optimal path planning of autonomous underwater vehicles by studying the global flow geometry via dynamical systems methods. Optimal glider paths were computed for a 2-dimensional kinematic model of an end-point glider problem. Numerical solutions to the optimal control problem were obtained using Nonlinear Trajectory Generation (NTG) software. The resulting solution is compared to corresponding results on LCS obtained using the Direct Lyapunov Exponent method. The velocity data used for these computations was obtained from measurements taken in August, 2000, by HF-Radar stations located around Monterey Bay, CA

Strategic Marketing Management in the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry:a Theoretical Framework

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on strategic marketing management .. This study adopted a expost facto research methodology to examine the strategic marketing management literature in an attempt to attain their desired level of performance. The overall findings suggest that strategic marketing is a driver of organizational positioning in a dynamic environment, and that it helps to enhance the development of new product/service for existing markets. These findings, along with other interesting findings of the study, are discussed. From the empirical and anecdotal managerial evidence as well as from the literature implications are drawn for the efficient and effective strategic marketing practices in the Nigerian oil and gas industry. Based on the findings of the study, the concepts and principles of total quality management within a holistic framework it is recommended that (i) efforts should be made by organizational marketers towards understanding the relevant economic factors that affect both clients’ behaviour and the strategic options that may be adopted to cope with such behaviours; ((ii) in a constantly changing business environment, firms can adopt different strategic marketing practices since the yardstick is the enhancement of business performance

Learning perceptual schemas to avoid the utility problem

This paper describes principles for representing and organising planning knowledge in a machine learning architecture. One of the difficulties with learning about tasks requiring planning is the utility problem: as more knowledge is acquired by the learner, the utilisation of that knowledge takes on a complexity which overwhelms the mechanisms of the original task. This problem does not, however, occur with human learners: on the contrary, it is usually the case that, the more knowledgeable the learner, the greater the efficiency and accuracy in locating a solution. The reason for this lies in the types of knowledge acquired by the human learner and its organisation. We describe the basic representations which underlie the superior abilities of human experts, and describe algorithms for using equivalent representations in a machine learning architecture

Urban Sprawl and the Finances of State and Local Governments

Concern over the rate of spatial growth of urban areas has become a significant national political issue and a major development issue in many urban areas. An often cited statistic, typically presented as evidence of sprawl, is that between 1960 and 1990 the urban population in the United States increased by 50 percent while the amount of developed land more than doubled (Benefield et al., 1999).While much has been written about the causes and consequences of sprawl, little attention has been paid to the implications of sprawl for the finances of state and local government. There are at least two possible channels for sprawl to affect the finances of state and local governments. First, if the causes of sprawl include market failures or government policies, there may be a role for governmental corrective action. Second, sprawl may affect the costs of and revenue sources for the public provision of goods and services. This paper considers the potential effects that sprawl might have on the finances of state and local governments and the possible policies that might be adopted to address the causes and consequences of sprawl