Mobile applications fostering situated learning opportunities in alternative agro-food networks

Alternative Agro-Food Networks (AAFNS) represent new forms of collaboration between producers and consumers. They provide a space where a variety of information and knowledge might be exchanged during direct interactions among their actors. Nowadays, mobile applications have the potential to support such information/knowledge exchange. The study reports main results from a review of mobile apps oriented to AAFN. It explores their role in increasing and extending situated learning opportunities in AAFNS. Results of the research might be used to conceive of, design and develop mobile services to help AAFNS to scale up by supporting mutual understanding and collaboration among producers and consumers

Analyzing Mobile Services in Alternative Agrifood Networks

Recently, Alternative Agrifood Networks (AAFNs) represent a form of collaborative agrifood networks characterized by a re-connection and close communication among producers and consumers in order to overcome the limits of dominant capital-intensive agribusiness system. In this paper, we propose a framework to analyze and explore the value of the use of mobile information services in an AAFN. The applicability of the framework is shown by presenting some results obtained from an analysis of different types of case studies referring to the use of mobile services in real-world AAFNs

Rethinking tourism destinations: collaborative network models for the tourist 2.0

In the increasingly saturated tourism market, an effective tourism destination management is essential to support competitive and sustainable growth. The topic becomes interesting in light of the spread of the collaborative network (CN) organisational models and the massive diffusion of web 2.0 and mobile technology. The formers have proven to give concrete opportunities of development in many industrial sectors, the latter has been changing the way tourists experience a destination. Even if several case studies of CNs in tourism are known, a comprehensive study of how tourism destinations can benefit of CN models and enabling technologies is not present; especially in the effort to help tourism destinations in setting up services able to actively support each phase of the tourist 2.0 lifecycle. In this paper we highlight how CN models are able to support the tourism destination management in order to gain competitiveness for local areas, to improve flexibility in services provision and to give tourists the possibility to live an augmented tourism experience. Furthermore, a review of the most suitable forms of collaborative network for tourism destination and their ways to actively support the augmented experience of the tourist 2.0 are proposed

Application areas of social media in external B2B transactions - An empirical analysis of Finnish technology industry

Despite the topic popularity, social media research is still limited, and focuses largely on the role of consumer-to-consumer (C2C) and business-to-consumer (B2C) domains. In many parts, the B2C social media practices are not directly useful for inter-organizational and B2B purposes. Main aim of this paper is to help to understand the current application areas of social media especially in external B2B transactions. This is carried out by an extensive survey to companies representing the technology industry, which are operating purely in B2B markets, having only other companies as customers. We wanted to understand how industrial B2B companies currently apply social media in their own inter-organizational applications, which types of potential they see in social media in this context, and what kind of support they experience their companies to need for better adopting social media together with their customers and partners. A population of 2488 Finnish decision-makers were observed from the Federation of Finnish Technology Industries. From the answers of 143 different companies, 125 companies represented wholly (100%) B2B markets, which were chosen as the sample of this study. Researches on social media, especially survey-based studies, have not focused particularly on B2B companies only, especially on the inter-organizational applications of social media in B2B’s. Except for the B2B-marketing oriented study of Michaelidou et al., (2011), and study of social media utilization in B2B-relationships by Pettersson et al. (2014). This study extends the previous studies especially by creating new understanding on the maturity of social media integration to business, organizational business problems that companies perceive that can be solved with social media, and approaches that can support social media adoption in B2B companies. Managerially, the results can be used, for instance, to better understand the various types of possibilities of applying social media in the inter-organizational use in B2Bs, which are currently only superficially understood by a significant part of managers. This can help to support and facilitate external social media use in B2B

Knowledge Management and Emerging Collaborative Networks in Tourism Business Ecosystems

If we critically look at the evolution of the Tourism Industry (TI), we can note that, in the past decade, nothing has changed as much as ICTs and the Internet which caused an extensive transformation of the TI. Both demand and supply of ICT, together with innovation in transportation and international trade agreements, have evolved the tourism sector in operational workflows, management and marketing of new of tourism experiences. The massive use of new technologies has facilitated the rise of new flat organizational models where traditional brokers have disappeared, replaced by direct connections between local providers and tourists, or they have been reconfigured into new forms of dynamic and web-based tourism package providers. The depicted industry evolution shows potential, unthinkable just a few years ago, for local service providers usually marginalized from main tourism flows, due to their small sizes, and who are unable to compete in the globalized market. In many regions characterized by a niche tourism vocation, local tourism operators have started organizing themselves spontaneously in Collaborative Networks in order to create aggregate tourism offers that are able to compete with big tourism operators thus transforming regions with potential and vocation in real tourism destinations. The main socialeffect of instantiating these tourism partnerships, is the stimulus towards Tourism Business Ecosystems (TBEs) giving local tourism service providers a means for economic growth. The aim of this paper is to describe how the organizational paradigm of CNs, applied to the TBEs knowledge management and supported by ICTs, can be the key means for the growth of emerging TBEs. Such models are able to reengineer the tourism destination management model in order to gain much more flexibility in service provision and provide tourists the possibility to live an augmented tourism experience.In this paper we point out that tourism destinations, in an effort to give services able to actively support each phase of the 2.0 tourist lifecycle, can benefit from collaborative network models

CCRI 2017 Year in Review

This book presents an overview of CCRI's research activities during 2017

Penilaian Kinerja Keuangan Koperasi di Kabupaten Pelalawan

This paper describe development and financial performance of cooperative in District Pelalawan among 2007 - 2008. Studies on primary and secondary cooperative in 12 sub-districts. Method in this stady use performance measuring of productivity, efficiency, growth, liquidity, and solvability of cooperative. Productivity of cooperative in Pelalawan was highly but efficiency still low. Profit and income were highly, even liquidity of cooperative very high, and solvability was good

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio

Optimasi Portofolio Resiko Menggunakan Model Markowitz MVO Dikaitkan dengan Keterbatasan Manusia dalam Memprediksi Masa Depan dalam Perspektif Al-Qur`an

Risk portfolio on modern finance has become increasingly technical, requiring the use of sophisticated mathematical tools in both research and practice. Since companies cannot insure themselves completely against risk, as human incompetence in predicting the future precisely that written in Al-Quran surah Luqman verse 34, they have to manage it to yield an optimal portfolio. The objective here is to minimize the variance among all portfolios, or alternatively, to maximize expected return among all portfolios that has at least a certain expected return. Furthermore, this study focuses on optimizing risk portfolio so called Markowitz MVO (Mean-Variance Optimization). Some theoretical frameworks for analysis are arithmetic mean, geometric mean, variance, covariance, linear programming, and quadratic programming. Moreover, finding a minimum variance portfolio produces a convex quadratic programming, that is minimizing the objective function ðð¥with constraintsð ð 𥠥 ðandð´ð¥ = ð. The outcome of this research is the solution of optimal risk portofolio in some investments that could be finished smoothly using MATLAB R2007b software together with its graphic analysis

Juxtaposing BTE and ATE – on the role of the European insurance industry in funding civil litigation

One of the ways in which legal services are financed, and indeed shaped, is through private insurance arrangement. Two contrasting types of legal expenses insurance contracts (LEI) seem to dominate in Europe: before the event (BTE) and after the event (ATE) legal expenses insurance. Notwithstanding institutional differences between different legal systems, BTE and ATE insurance arrangements may be instrumental if government policy is geared towards strengthening a market-oriented system of financing access to justice for individuals and business. At the same time, emphasizing the role of a private industry as a keeper of the gates to justice raises issues of accountability and transparency, not readily reconcilable with demands of competition. Moreover, multiple actors (clients, lawyers, courts, insurers) are involved, causing behavioural dynamics which are not easily predicted or influenced. Against this background, this paper looks into BTE and ATE arrangements by analysing the particularities of BTE and ATE arrangements currently available in some European jurisdictions and by painting a picture of their respective markets and legal contexts. This allows for some reflection on the performance of BTE and ATE providers as both financiers and keepers. Two issues emerge from the analysis that are worthy of some further reflection. Firstly, there is the problematic long-term sustainability of some ATE products. Secondly, the challenges faced by policymakers that would like to nudge consumers into voluntarily taking out BTE LEI