Decision Support for Innovation Management: Application to the Lighting Industry

Making decisions about resource allocation for future innovations is a challenging task in both planned and market economies. Not only can such decisions not be reversed without considerable loss of efficiency, but the decision maker generally faces a number of conflicting objectives. In this report the authors try to combine two disciplines that have been evolving independently for a long time: innovation theory and decision theory. A decision support system for managing innovations should reflect the multistage nature of the innovation process and should also be suited to multiobjective decision making. At the same time it is necessary to simplify the real situation for the decision maker in order to apply former procedures. A very promising scheme is the decision tree, though it has shortcomings. Application of decision trees is closely connected with the evaluation process. Almost all models for evaluating innovation projects operate with only one objective. However, discussions with decision makers in the lighting industry, which shows classic features of the innovation process, revealed the necessity to include at least three objectives in the evaluation. Therefore, the authors have made use of the possibilities of multiobjective decision making. The decision problem in this work concerns the allocation of resources to innovation projects for the 1981-85 Five-Year Plan in the German Democratic Republic. At present the model for evaluating innovation projects is based upon linear programming and decision trees. It will be improved in close collaboration with decision makers, using the results of goal programming and other aspects of decision theory

Selection and Evaluation of Innovation Projects

This working paper presents the first step of an ongoing research project which will be continued during the next few years at the University of Economic Sciences in Berlin. The subject of this paper is the decision-making process for decisions on innovations. During the past three decades considerable efforts have been devoted to investigating the role and importance of innovations for the growth and prosperity of firms both in market and planned economies. Effective management of innovations is a decisive factor in their development. A certain increase of funds devoted to R&D does not result in an appropriate increase of output in terms of productivity. Problems of an "optimal" management of innovations are investigated in many countries. The study was initiated by decision-makers of a particular industrial branch in the GDR. An analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the decision-making process revealed the necessity of a decision support system. The approach developed is tailored to the case study but is general in several aspects. This paper describes a model for resource allocation in R&D which is well suited for our case study. The choice of the model type was based on an analysis both of the decision-making process in the particular firm and of existing models for this purpose. A combination of innovation theory and economic-mathematical methods for aiding decisions is from our viewpoint a necessary condition for a successful development and implementation of a system we are aiming at. A system of this kind will improve the decision-maker's understanding of the relationship between the long-term development of the firm and the resource allocation in R&D

Forbedring af unges evne til at forudsige potentielle farer i trafikken vha. kørselssimulatortræning

Unge bilister forbliver overrepræsenterede i trafikulykkesstatistikker. Bilisters evne til at identificere potentielle risikosituationer samt til at reagere adækvat i disse situationer forbedres gradvist baseret på erfaring med håndtering af en bred vifte af trafikale situationer. Internationalt betegnes denne evne ofte som hazard perception skills (HPS). Formålet med denne undersøgelse er at afdække, om yngre bilisters HPS i fodgængerrelaterede situationer kan forbedres gennem et specialdesignet træningsforløb, gennemført i en kørselssimulator. Træningsforløbet omfattede en kombination af træningskørsel i en kørselssimulator, en video med et lydspor med ekspertkommentarer vedr. bilkørsel samt en afspilning af deltagernes egen træningskørsel. 30 unge bilister modtog træning og deres resultater blev sammenlignet med 30 utrænede bilister. Sammenligningen blev baseret på deres visuelle fikseringer og køreadfærd i forskellige fodgængerrelaterede situationer af varierende kompleksitet. Resultaterne viste, at trænede bilister reagerede på en af tre skjulte farer ved at reducere hastigheden, mens utrænede bilister ikke gjorde. Analysen af deltageres visuelle fikseringer viste, at de trænede bilister oftere fikserede på steder, hvor farer kunne være skjult. Derudover havde trænede bilister en lavere selvvurderet HPS efter træningen end før træningen. Interventionen havde en positiv effekt med hensyn til at forbedre bilisternes kørehastighed og visuelle fikseringer i potentielt kritiske fodgængerrelaterede situationer, hvilket kræver mere avancerede HPS. Resultaterne tyder på, at interventionen med fordel kan videreudvikles med henblik på at implementere et ekstra modul, som led i den køreskolebaserede køreundervisning, for at sikre nye bilister de bedst mulige HPS, når de får kørekørt

COVID-19 publications: Database coverage, citations, readers, tweets, news, Facebook walls, Reddit posts

© 2020 The Authors. Published by MIT Press. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00066The COVID-19 pandemic requires a fast response from researchers to help address biological, medical and public health issues to minimize its impact. In this rapidly evolving context, scholars, professionals and the public may need to quickly identify important new studies. In response, this paper assesses the coverage of scholarly databases and impact indicators during 21 March to 18 April 2020. The rapidly increasing volume of research, is particularly accessible through Dimensions, and less through Scopus, the Web of Science, and PubMed. Google Scholar’s results included many false matches. A few COVID-19 papers from the 21,395 in Dimensions were already highly cited, with substantial news and social media attention. For this topic, in contrast to previous studies, there seems to be a high degree of convergence between articles shared in the social web and citation counts, at least in the short term. In particular, articles that are extensively tweeted on the day first indexed are likely to be highly read and relatively highly cited three weeks later. Researchers needing wide scope literature searches (rather than health focused PubMed or medRxiv searches) should start with Dimensions (or Google Scholar) and can use tweet and Mendeley reader counts as indicators of likely importance

Particle-drip lines from the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov theory with Skyrme interaction

We calculate positions of one- and two-particle, proton and neutron drip lines within the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov theory using Skyrme interaction. We also determine an approximate $r$-process path defined as a line where the neutron binding energy is equal to 2~MeV. A weakening of the nuclear shell structure at drip lines is found and interpreted as resulting from a coupling with continuum states.Comment: 10 pages REVTEX 3.0, 3 uuencoded postscript figures included, IFT/14/9

On the emergent Semantic Web and overlooked issues

The emergent Semantic Web, despite being in its infancy, has already received a lotof attention from academia and industry. This resulted in an abundance of prototype systems and discussion most of which are centred around the underlying infrastructure. However, when we critically review the work done to date we realise that there is little discussion with respect to the vision of the Semantic Web. In particular, there is an observed dearth of discussion on how to deliver knowledge sharing in an environment such as the Semantic Web in effective and efficient manners. There are a lot of overlooked issues, associated with agents and trust to hidden assumptions made with respect to knowledge representation and robust reasoning in a distributed environment. These issues could potentially hinder further development if not considered at the early stages of designing Semantic Web systems. In this perspectives paper, we aim to help engineers and practitioners of the Semantic Web by raising awareness of these issues

Multiscale air quality with the NMMB/BSC Chemical Transport Model

Presentación realizada para las XXXII Jornadas Científicas de la Asociación Meteorológica Española y 13º Encuentro Hispano-Luso de Meteorología celebrados en Alcobendas (Madrid), del 28 al 30 de mayo de 2012

EPRDF's Revolutionary Democracy and Religious Plurality: Islam and Christianity in post-Derg Ethiopia

In 1991 the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) introduced policies aimed at recognizing the country’s long-standing religious diversity, providing a public arena for religious groups, and maintaining a sharp division between religion and the state. This further roded the traditionally dominant position of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, strengthened Protestant Christian and Muslim communities, and created a more flux and competitive configuration among the religious communities. Seeking to maintain its political power, the EPRDF has at the same time made efforts to monitor and control the different religious communities. Therefore, the last 20 years have been marked by uneven developments, in which the government’s accommodating attitudes have been interlaced with efforts to curtail the influence of the religious communities. This article surveys the intersection and reciprocal influences between EPRDF policies and religious communities over the last 20 years, and discusses how Muslims and Christians (Orthodox and Protestant) have negotiated their roles in relation to politics and public life. These developments have, the article argues, led to the emergence of divergent and competing narratives, reconfiguring self-understanding, political aspirations and views of the religious other. The EPRDF ideology of ‘‘revolutionary democracy’’ has, in this sense, enabled religion to surface as a force for social mobilization and as a point of reference for attempting to define nationhood in Ethiopia

Comparison of Travoprost and Bimatoprost plus timolol fixed combinations in open-angle glaucoma patients previously treated with latanoprost plus timolol fixed combination

To compare the ocular hypotensive effect of bimatoprost plus timolol and travoprost plus timolol fixed combinations in glaucoma patients whose disease was controlled but had not reached their target intraocular pressure (IOP) with the fixed combination of latanoprost plus timolol

On the discovery of doubly-magic 48^{48}Ni

The paper reports on the first observation of doubly-magic Nickel-48 in an experimental at the SISSI/LISE3 facility of GANIL. Four Nickel-48 isotopes were identified. In addition, roughly 100 Nickel-49, 50 Iron-45, and 290 Chromium-42 isotopes were observed. This opens the possibility to search for two-proton emission from these nuclei.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let