Collaborative Environments. Considerations Concerning Some Collaborative Systems

It is obvious, that all collaborative environments (workgroups, communities of practice, collaborative enterprises) are based on knowledge and between collaboration and knowledge management there is a strong interdependence. The evolution of information systems in these collaborative environments led to the sudden necessity to adopt, for maintaining the virtual activities and processes, the latest technologies/systems, which are capable to support integrated collaboration in business services. In these environments, portal-based IT platforms will integrate multi-agent collaborative systems, collaborative tools, different enterprise applications and other useful information systems.collaboration, collaborative environments, knowledge management, collaborative systems, portals, knowledge portals, agile development of portals

A Quantitative Exploration of the Golden Age of European Growth

Income per capita in some Western European countries more than tripled in the two and a half decades that followed World War II. The literature has identified several factors behind this outstanding growth episode, specifically; structural change associated with large migrations from agriculture to nonagricultural sectors, the Marshall Plan combined with the public provision of infrastructure, the surge of intra-European trade, and the reconstruction process that followed the devastation of the war. This paper is an attempt to formalize and quantify the direct contribution of each one of these factors to growth during the European Golden Age. Our results highlight the importance of reconstruction growth and structural change, and point to the limited role of the Marshall Plan, and the late contribution of intra-European trade.Economic Growth, European Economic History 1913-, Computable General Equilibrium Models.

Universal direct tuner for loop control in industry

This paper introduces a direct universal (automatic) tuner for basic loop control in industrial applications. The direct feature refers to the fact that a first-hand model, such as a step response first-order plus dead time approximation, is not required. Instead, a point in the frequency domain and the corresponding slope of the loop frequency response is identified by single test suitable for industrial applications. The proposed method has been shown to overcome pitfalls found in other (automatic) tuning methods and has been validated in a wide range of common and exotic processes in simulation and experimental conditions. The method is very robust to noise, an important feature for real life industrial applications. Comparison is performed with other well-known methods, such as approximate M-constrained integral gain optimization (AMIGO) and Skogestad internal model controller (SIMC), which are indirect methods, i.e., they are based on a first-hand approximation of step response data. The results indicate great similarity between the results, whereas the direct method has the advantage of skipping this intermediate step of identification. The control structure is the most commonly used in industry, i.e., proportional-integral-derivative (PID) type. As the derivative action is often not used in industry due to its difficult choice, in the proposed method, we use a direct relation between the integral and derivative gains. This enables the user to have in the tuning structure the advantages of the derivative action, therefore much improving the potential of good performance in real life control applications

Autotuning method for a fractional order controller for a multivariable 13C isotope separation column

The preferred controller design technique in industrial applications is based on autotuning procedures that do not involve knowledge about an actual mathematical model of the process. In this paper, a novel autotuning method for designing fractional order controllers is addressed. The proposed technique is simple and efficient. Previous research with respect to autotuning methods for fractional order controllers has considered exclusively the case of a single-input single-output process. However, in this paper, a multivariable case study is preferred. The simulation results demonstrate the validity of the design technique

Integration aspects of subsequent EU joiners

This article aims to analyze the economic policy aspects of the European Union adherence requirements within the specific microeconomic framework of the postcommunist Eastern European countries during their transition to a free markets economic system. The authors observe that the framework for integration has not been separated between the member countries which had functioned as free market economies throughout the post World War II years that had initially formed the Union, and the newer entrants which were mostly still in a postcommunist transition on their adherence dates. They argue that the transition of the labor markets in such countries may require special attention as the free market mechanisms have not yet reached equilibrium levels and the degree of absorption for the labor force in those countries is still low compared to more mature market economies, thus central bank inflation targeting in these countries prior to the long term rate of unemployment reaching the natural rate is not the optimal solution

An indirect discretization method for fractional order PID controllers

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