A Delta Once More: Restoring Riparian and Wetland Habitat in the Colorado River Delta

Outlines the delta's history and current political context, documents recent findings about the delta's partial recovery, and makes recommendations for maintaining existing flows to further benefit and sustain the remnant wetland ecosystems

It Takes at Least a Minute to Protect and Restore the Colorado River Delta [abstract]

2 pages

Taking the Tablet: An Introspective Perspective on Using Pen-Based Computing in the Executive Case Class

The predicament of modern classrooms is that they are usually designed by administrators, architects and technicians, without, or despite the advice of experienced case instructors. By the time the instructor gets to teach in the class it is often too late, and generally too expensive to change anything. While the classrooms are long on technology and aesthetics, they are often very short on teaching comfort and convenience. In this short introspective paper (and here I follow in the tradition of consumer researchers such as Holbrook 1995) I suggest the use of a Tablet PC to overcome most of the problems described above. The paper begins by introducing the innovation, and then describes how the innovation solves the problems. Next, it gives preliminary results and makes some observations that may be useful to those considering adopting the innovation, and also considers some problems that may be encountered. It concludes by reflecting on other possible applications of the technology

Limitation of the excessive extracellular matrix turnover is a major determinant of the beneficial effect of spironolactone on survival in patients with CHF: Insights from the RALES trial

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106131/1/ejhf80350-5.pd

Organizational commitment and users’ perception of ease of use : a study among bank managers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to look at the issue of perceived ease of use of a web-based customer relationship management system and consider the role of organizational commitment as a possible antecedent. Design/methodology/approach – Data for this study were collected from among managers of a major player in the community banking sector within the EU. A total of 274 valid responses were obtained from 398 managers. Findings – Results have been mixed and partially conditioned by service providers’ willingness to leverage the possibilities that the technology can provide. Research limitations/implications – The study was limited to a single organization and consequently the results should be generalized with caution. Replication studies with improved measures, in other countries and contexts are desirable. Practical implications – The results can be useful for management, since Web-based customer relationship management systems have been adopted by many service providers in their quest to offer better one-to-one marketing possibilities to their customers. Originality/value – This paper demonstrates the importance of fostering a sense of organizational commitment amongst key service providers, as this in turn seems to enable them to overcome many impediments pertaining to technology use.peer-reviewe

Social Mpower: An Educational Game for Energy Efficiency

A number of serious games have been developed for energy systems that act as an educational tool and help energy consumers to better understand concepts such as resource allocation, electricity prices and grid sustainability. In such gamified environments, players use technology to solve environmental problems including greener environment, optimised energy and water infrastructure, sustainable resources and reduced energy use. Social Mpower game is a representation of an autonomous energy community for local power generation and distribution in which the participants have to avoid a collective blackout by individually reducing their energy consumption by synchronising and coordinating their actions. Our experimental hypothesis is that collective awareness can be enhanced by appropriate features of the game interface, and therefore to increase the opportunities and prospects for successful collective action (e.g to avoid a blackout)

Development and Validation of a Comprehensive Helicopter Flight Dynamics Code

A comprehensive helicopter flight dynamics code is developed based on the UH-60 helicopter and named Texas A\&M University Rotorcraft Analysis Code (TRAC). This is a complete software package, which could perform trim analysis to autonomous flight simulation and the capability to model any helicopter configuration. Different components of the helicopter such as the main rotor, tail rotor, fuselage, vertical tail, and horizontal tail are modeled individually as different modules in the code and integrated to develop a complete UH-60 model. Since the code is developed on a module basis, it can be easily modified to adopt another component or configure a different helicopter. TRAC can predict the dynamic responses of both the articulated rotor blades and the helicopter fuselage and yields the required pilot control inputs to achieve trim condition for different flight regimes such as hover, forward flight, coordinated turn, climb/descent, etc. These trim results are validated with the test data obtained from the UH-60 flight tests conducted by the US Army. Beyond trim analysis, TRAC can also generate linearized models at various flight conditions based on a first-order Taylor series expansion. The extracted linear models show realistic helicopter dynamic behavior and were used to simulate a fully autonomous flight that involves a UH-60 helicopter approaching a ship and landing on the deck by implementing a Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) optimal controller.Comment: For software package, contact author via [email protected]

Are there excellent service firms, and do they perform well?

While the construct of business excellence, as defined in the very successful hook by Peters and Waterman, had a marked influence on managers in the 1980s, and in all likelihood in the 1990s, it met with some scepticism in academic circles. This was because the construct as conceptualised did not meet the more rigorous requirements of reliability and validity established by critical researchers, and also because many of the so-called excellent firms later showed themselves to be rather ordinary performers at best. Recently, an apparently successful instrument to measure the original Peters and Waterman excellence construct named EXCEL has been developed by Shama et al., in the United States. In this article the authors describe the use of EXCEL in a sample of large UK service firms and comment on its reliability and validity. Links are also established between excellence and overrall business performance in these firms.peer-reviewe