Customer population modelling with residence time structure

In many service industries, companies offer a variety of customer packages, with differing levels of service and associated charges. For example, in the case of cable companies, customers may choose to subscribe to different bundles of channels and may also buy phone and internet services. From time to time, customers will upgrade to a more expensive package, or possibly downgrade or discontinue their contract altogether. Numbercraft asked the Study Group to consider models for how the number of customers on each type of contract will change over time. Such models could be used to forecast companies' future income and also to ensure that marketing campaigns have maximum impact

The Dutch interbank computer network

At the end of 1980, a strategic decision was made by the Dutch banks and savings banks to commence the development of a Data Communications Infrastructure (DCI), to be used for a number of forthcoming interbank applications. It was agreed that this new data communications infrastructure should be based on the emerging Reference Model for Open Systems Interconnection (OSI). The first interbank application using the DCI (i.e. urgent money transfers) was introduced in the second quarter of 1985. Other interbank applications, which will also make use of the functions provided by the DCI, are currently being developed.\ud \ud This paper provides the background to the DCI project, discusses the selection of OSI standards for the network, and gives an overview of the design of the software package, which was developed to support the selected OSI standards

The Cost of Zimbabwe's Continuing Farm Invasions

In the late 1990s, the government of Zimbabwe held a conference on land reform in Zimbabwe. The government, the interested parties (including the farmers), and international aid agencies reached a broad agreement. That agreement, however, was never implemented. In 2000, in an attempt to destroy the opposition, which derived much support from the commercial farmers and their employees, the government began what it eventually called the "Fast Track Land Reform" exercise

Germany's Stephen Lawrence

Campaigners in Germany, protesting at the suspicious death in custody of Oury Jalloh in 2005 and the subsequent cover-up by the criminal justice system, are looking to the Lawrence trial, the Macpherson Report and other British institutional responses to see how Germany could learn from the British experience

Structural and magnetic study of order−disorder behavior in the double perovskites Ba2Nd1−xMnxMoO6

The synthesis and structural and magnetic characterization of the site-ordered double perovskites, Ba2Nd1−xMnxMoO6, 0 0.3, no deviation from the ideal cubic Fm3̅m symmetry is observed. Furthermore, dc-susceptibility measurements confirm that Mn2+ is being doped onto the Nd3+ site, and the associated oxidation of Mo5+ to Mo6+. For all compositions, the Curie−Weiss paramagnetic behavior above 150 K indicates negative Weiss constants that range from −24(2) and −85(2) K. This net antiferromagnetic interaction is weakest when x ≈ 0.5, where the disorder in cation site occupancy and competition with ferromagnetic interactions is the greatest. Despite these strong antiferromagnetic interactions, there is no evidence in the dc-susceptibility of a bulk cancellation of spins for x > 0.05. Low-temperature neutron diffraction measurements indicate that there is no long-range magnetic order for 0.1 ≤ x < 0.9. Ba2Nd0.10Mn0.90MoO6 exhibits additional Bragg scattering at 2 K, indicative of long-range antiferromagnetic ordering of the Mn2+ cations, with a propagation vector k = (1/2, 1/2, 1/2). The scattering intensities can be modeled using a noncollinear magnetic structure with the Mnthe Mn2+ moments orientated antiferromagnetically along the four different 111 directions