Varieties of Capitalism: National Institutional Explanations of Environmental Product Developments in the Car Industry

Changing the behaviour of firms to take environmental concerns into account is seen as unlikely without effective regulations. However, corporations are increasingly keen to represent themselves as ‘green’, including those in the world’s largest manufacturing sector: the car industry. Given rising concern for the environment and environmental sustainability since the 1990s this thesis asks: what motivates car firms to actually make environmental commitments? Answering this question has implications for whether these commitments are ‘real’ and if so whether they are occurring in response to material factors (e.g. state regulations and consumer demand) versus normative factors (e.g. social attitudes and internal company strategies). In order to answer it, the thesis applies the insights of the institutional varieties of capitalism approach to the German, United States and Japanese car industries, and specific firms within them, in respect of the environmental issue of climate change from 1990 to 2004. Empirical national data is analysed, as well the environmental reporting of individual firms and interviews with key personnel. The main findings are that what leads the car industry to see environmental issues as central to their business interests hinges on the impact of differing national institutional factors. Specifically, it is a matter of whether firms have a liberal market economy (LME) as their home base, in the case of US firms, or a coordinated market economy (CME) as their home base, in the case of German and Japanese firms. US car firms react more to the material imperatives of consumer demand and state regulations. German and Japanese firms are more mindful of normative factors for their initiatives, such as social attitudes (especially for German firms) and internal company strategies (especially for Japanese firms). They have more of a partnership approach with government. Therefore, car firms have very distinct ‘lenses’ through which they see the environmental performance of the cars they produce. As such, the thesis concludes that the variety of capitalism of nations has implications not just for the type of products that economic actors such as car firms produce, and the competitive advantages they develop, but also the way they address related issues arising as a result of their activities, including environmental issues

Varieties of Capitalism: National Institutional Explanations of Environmental Product Developments in the Car Industry

Changing the behaviour of firms to take environmental concerns into account is seen as unlikely without effective regulations. However, corporations are increasingly keen to represent themselves as ‘green’, including those in the world’s largest manufacturing sector: the car industry. Given rising concern for the environment and environmental sustainability since the 1990s this thesis asks: what motivates car firms to actually make environmental commitments? Answering this question has implications for whether these commitments are ‘real’ and if so whether they are occurring in response to material factors (e.g. state regulations and consumer demand) versus normative factors (e.g. social attitudes and internal company strategies). In order to answer it, the thesis applies the insights of the institutional varieties of capitalism approach to the German, United States and Japanese car industries, and specific firms within them, in respect of the environmental issue of climate change from 1990 to 2004. Empirical national data is analysed, as well the environmental reporting of individual firms and interviews with key personnel. The main findings are that what leads the car industry to see environmental issues as central to their business interests hinges on the impact of differing national institutional factors. Specifically, it is a matter of whether firms have a liberal market economy (LME) as their home base, in the case of US firms, or a coordinated market economy (CME) as their home base, in the case of German and Japanese firms. US car firms react more to the material imperatives of consumer demand and state regulations. German and Japanese firms are more mindful of normative factors for their initiatives, such as social attitudes (especially for German firms) and internal company strategies (especially for Japanese firms). They have more of a partnership approach with government. Therefore, car firms have very distinct ‘lenses’ through which they see the environmental performance of the cars they produce. As such, the thesis concludes that the variety of capitalism of nations has implications not just for the type of products that economic actors such as car firms produce, and the competitive advantages they develop, but also the way they address related issues arising as a result of their activities, including environmental issues

A STUDY OF RR LYRAE STARS IN THE GLOBULAR CLUSTER IC 4499

Observations of the globular cluster IC4499 were taken with the 1m telescope at Cerro Tololo and combined with archival data from multiple telescopes. These data were used to study the variable star population using CCD photometry, with observations in the U, B, V, R and I passbands. The period and the magnitudes have been measured for the RR Lyrae stars. We present light curves in all passbands for all 97 RR Lyrae stars. The magnitudes of the RR Lyrae stars are compared with those measured by Walker and Nemec (1996). The distribution of stars on the horizontal branch is compared with estimates from theoretical models, and we confirm the horizontal branch color limits to the instability strip reported by Walker and Nemec

Quo Vadis - a framework for intelligent routing in large communication networks

Modern communication networks contain hundreds if not thousands of interconnected nodes. Traffic management mechanisms must be able to support a cost-effective, responsive, flexible, robust, customer-oriented high speed communication environment while minimizing the overhead associated with management functions. Conventional traffic management mechanisms for routing and congestion control algorithms entail tremendous resource overhead in storage and update of network state information;Quo Vadis is an evolving framework for intelligent traffic management in very large communication networks. It is designed to exploit topological properties of large networks as well as their spatio-temporal dynamics to optimize multiple performance criteria through cooperation among nodes in the network. It employs a distributed representation of network state information using local load measurements supplemented by a less precise global summary. Routing decisions in Quo Vadis are based on parameterized heuristics designed to optimize various performance metrics in an anticipatory or pro-active as well as compensatory or reactive mode and to minimize the overhead associated with traffic management;The complexity of modern networks in terms of the number of entities, their interaction, and the resulting dynamics make an analytical study often impossible. Hence, we have designed and implemented an object oriented simulation toolbox to facilitate the experimental studies of Quo Vadis. Our efforts to design such a simulation environment were driven by the need to evaluate heuristic routing strategies and knowledge representation as employed by Quo Vadis. The results of simulation experiments within a grid network clearly demonstrate the ability of Quo Vadis to avoid congestion and minimize message delay under a variety of network load conditions;In order to provide a theoretical framework for the design and analytical study of decision mechanisms as employed by Quo Vadis, we draw upon concepts from the field of utility theory. Based on the concept of reward and cost incurred by messages in the network, utility functions which bias routing decisions so as to yield routes that circumvent congested areas have been designed. The existence of utility functions which yield minimum cost routes in uniform cost networks with a single congested node has been proven rigorously

Modeling immune response and its effect on infectious disease outbreak dynamics

This article presents a model that incorporates individuals' immune responses to further examine the role of the collective immune response of individuals in a population during an infectious outbreak

MDM Systems for Remote Management of Windows Devices

Táto bakalárska práca sa zaoberá zoznámením sa a porovnaním platforiem pre vzdialenú správu zariadení s operačným systémom Windows. Cieľom práce je porovnanie vybraných riešení z pohľadu efektivity, možností konfigurácie a administrácie. Úlohou teoretickej časti je zoznámiť čitateľa s problematikou vzdialenej správy zariadení. Ďalej nasleduje predstavenie niekoľkých platforiem použiteľných pre správu Windows zariadení ktorými sú SOTI MobiControl, Manageengine MDM, Samsung Knox, Miradore, Safetica a Hexnode MDM. V praktickej časti je popísaný poustup inštalácie, pridanie klientov a administrácia prostredí SOTI MobiControl a Manageengine MDM. Po dôkladnom otestovaní dvoch platforiem nasleduje stručný popis, vlastnosti, konfigurácia, metodika a jednotlivé testy. V závere sa ešte venujem subjektívnemu porovnaniu nástrojov použitých pre správu mobilných zariadení.This bachelor thesis deals with the acquitance and comparrison of platforms for remote device management for operating system Windows. The main goal of this thesis is comparison of selected solutions in terms of efficiency, configuration options and administration. The main purpose of the theoretical part is to introduce the reader to the topic of remote device management. The following is a introduction of several platforms usable for Windows management such as SOTI MobiContol, Manageengine MDM, Samsung Knox, Miradore, Safetica, and Hexnode MDM. The practical part describes the installation process, enrolling clients, and administrating platforms SOTI MobiControl and Manageengine MDM environments. After thorough testing of the two platforms follows a biref description, environment configuration, methodology of features and a few individual tests. At the end is a subjective comparison of tools used for mobile device management.440 - Katedra telekomunikační technikyvýborn

Comparison of container tools

Táto práca sa zaoberá porovnaním kontajnerizačných nástrojov pre lokálne aj serverové nasadenie. Práca sa skladá celkovo z piatich častí. V prvej časti sa nachádza teoretický rozbor kontajnerizácie, jej porovnanie s virtualizáciou a tiež popis ôsmych kontajnerizačných nástrojov, z toho štyroch cloudových a štyroch lokálnych. Druhá časť práce sa zaoberá Inštaláciou a konfiguráciou štyroch lokálnych kontajnerizačných nástrojov, ktorými sú Docker, LXC/LXD, Containerd a PodMan. Táto časť tiež obsahuje sieťovú konfiguráciu pre každý nástroj. V tretej časti sa nachádza porovnanie výkonu jednotlivých nástrojov v dvoch kategóriách, ktorými sú systémové a aplikačné kontajnery. Štvrtá časť sa zaoberá inštaláciou a konfiguráciou jednoduchej verzie nástroja Kubernetes určeného na správu kontajnerov. V tejto časti sa nachádza aj inštalácia a nasadenie monitoringu pomocou aplikácie cAdvisor. Piata časť obsahuje popis možností pre zálohovanie a migráciu kontajnerov vrátane návodu pre každý nástroj. Na konci práce môžeme nájsť stručné zhrnutie testovaných nástrojov a rozcestník. Tento rozcestník má za účel pomôcť potencionálnemu používateľovi s výberom správneho kontajnerizačného nástroja podľa jeho potreby.This thesis is concerned with comparison of containerization tools for local and server deployment. Thesis consists of total five parts. The first part contains a theoretical analysis of containerization, its comparison with virtualization, and also a description of eight containerization tools, of which four are cloud-based and four are local. The second part of the thesis deals with the installation and configuration of four local containerization tools, which are Docker, LXC/LXD, Containerd and PodMan. This section also contains the network configuration for each tool. In the third section, we can find comparison of the performance of individual tools in two categories, which are system and application containers. The fourth part deals with the installation and configuration of a simple version of the Kubernetes container management tool. This section also includes the installation and deployment of monitoring using the cAdvisor application. The fifth part contains a description of options for backing up and migrating containers, including instructions for each tool. At the end of the thesis, we can find a brief summary of the tested tools and a guide. This guide is intended to help a potential user choose the right containerization tool for their needs.440 - Katedra telekomunikační technikyvýborn

Modeling and Simulating Computer Networks Using Formalized Data Flow Diagrams

Formalized Data Flow Diagrams (FDFD\u27s) provide simple and natural abstractions for specifying network behavior. We have augmented FDFD\u27s by providing (i) a notion of asynchronous timing of events, (ii) a convenient mechanism for describing node classes , and (iii) features for specifying network architecture. These extensions will facilitate the modeling of a large computer network (using the langauge NET-SPECS) and the direct generation of a simulator of that network