Climate change and disaster impact reduction

Based on papers presented at the 'UK - South Asia Young Scientists and Practitioners Seminar on Climate Change and Disaster Impact Reduction' held at Kathmandu, Nepal on 5-6 June, 2008

How a Hamilton fast food restaurant can increase their brand awareness

Brand awareness is one of the most important marketing concepts in present times for gaining competitive advantage in an ever-increasing globalized market. For attracting consumers and increasing their purchase intentions, brand awareness is important as it increases knowledge of product offerings and other associated characteristics amongst consumers. The main intent of this research project is to study different ways in which local pizza stores in New Zealand can increase their brand awareness. For accomplishing this purpose, the research project will include a mixed approach where both qualitative and quantitative research methods have been opted. The qualitative method includes an in-depth interview with the manager of the fast food outlet, while the quantitative method includes utilization of survey questionnaires for attaining required information. As far as structure of the research project report is concerned, it will mainly include background of the research, aim and scope of the research, literature review, research methodology, and analysis of the attained data, collected from pie charts and bar graphs. Recommendations include that local pizza stores should exploit social media channels for increasing brand and product awareness

Performance of DF Incremental Relaying with Energy Harvesting Relays in Underlay CRNs

In this paper, we analyze the throughput performance of incremental relaying using energy harvesting (EH) decode-and-forward (DF) relays in underlay cognitive radio networks (CRNs). The destination combines the direct and relayed signals when the direct link is in outage. From the derived closed-form expressions, we present an expression for the power-splitting parameter of the EH relay that optimizes the throughput performance. We demonstrate that relaying using EH DF relays results in better performance than direct signalling without a relay only when the destination combines the direct signal from the source with the relayed signal. Computer simulations demonstrate accuracy of the derived expressions

A Generic Checkpoint-Restart Mechanism for Virtual Machines

It is common today to deploy complex software inside a virtual machine (VM). Snapshots provide rapid deployment, migration between hosts, dependability (fault tolerance), and security (insulating a guest VM from the host). Yet, for each virtual machine, the code for snapshots is laboriously developed on a per-VM basis. This work demonstrates a generic checkpoint-restart mechanism for virtual machines. The mechanism is based on a plugin on top of an unmodified user-space checkpoint-restart package, DMTCP. Checkpoint-restart is demonstrated for three virtual machines: Lguest, user-space QEMU, and KVM/QEMU. The plugins for Lguest and KVM/QEMU require just 200 lines of code. The Lguest kernel driver API is augmented by 40 lines of code. DMTCP checkpoints user-space QEMU without any new code. KVM/QEMU, user-space QEMU, and DMTCP need no modification. The design benefits from other DMTCP features and plugins. Experiments demonstrate checkpoint and restart in 0.2 seconds using forked checkpointing, mmap-based fast-restart, and incremental Btrfs-based snapshots

Exploring the Behavior of Highly Effective CIOs Using Video Analysis

Although recently several studies have addressed the required skills of effective CIOs, little is known of the actual behavior successful CIOs. In this study, we explore the behavior of highly effective CIOs by video-recording CIOs at work. The two CIOs videotaped were nominated as CIO of the year. We analyze the data in an innovative and systematic way by developing and using a behavioral leadership coding scheme. The analysis indicates that highly effective CIOs are good listeners. They also often verify previously made agreements; structure the conversation; and provide subordinates with factual information. We also compare the behavior of the highly effective CIOs to a sample of 25 highly effective middle managers. Whereas the CIOs spend little time defending themselves against their subordinates and are mostly involved in steering, middle-managers spend much more time defending themselves and show more support for their subordinates. We conclude that our new video observation-and-coding method is viable to analyze and better understand the behavior of CIOs