Leveraging the Sales Force with Portal Technology at the American Subsidiary of a Japanese Motor Company Case Series (A), (B) and (C)

Managers understand the need to have information aligned with their businesses - they see and feel its consequences every day. They also understand the goal of technology-based information systems (IS) delivers the right information to the right people at the right time so that both strategic and operational decisions can be made properly and quickly. This was the approach followed by the American subsidiary of a Japanese motor company. The firm implemented a single, unified, Web-based interface to centralize and synchronize data access to 12 stand-alone dealership sales applications. The implementation took less than six months and less than $500,000 was expended. Immediate results were that the sales managers became significantly more efficient with their time, the automobile division recognized a cost savings of$1.4 million through a more efficient use of employee resources, and there was an estimated $10 million savings corporate wide as a result of employee efficiency gains throughout the organization. Despite all of these benefits, the automobile division\u27s chief information officer was faced with the decision of whether or not to return to fix the data integration and timeliness problems that remained among the division\u27s autonomous sales applications. This case study series highlights the objectives, outcomes, and challenges that managers must address while implementing Web-based portals. This case series also provides a better understanding for identifying, leveraging, and improving operational efficiency within a firm

Recovering a collapsed abalone stock through translocation. Seafood CRC Project No. 2011/762

A Roe’s Abalone (Haliotis roei) fishery in Western Australia (Area 8) suffered catastrophic mortality (99.9%) due to an anomalous environmental event in the summer of 2011. During this extreme marine heatwave there was a sustained period of elevated sea surface temperatures that rose to lethal levels for this species and effectively wiped out an entire stock at its northern distribution. Natural recovery within the foreseeable future was considered unlikely, thus providing a unique opportunity to test fishery restoration strategies for abalone. Over the course of this assisted recovery program (5.5 years) no natural recovery was observed in the region most affected by the mortality event

Effects of western classical vocal training on physiological measures during speaking voices

Comunicação apresentada no 20th World Congress of the International Federation of Oto-Rhino-Laryngological Societies, 1-5 junho 2013, Seul, Coreia do Su

Applying machine learning to the problem of choosing a heuristic to select the variable ordering for cylindrical algebraic decomposition

Cylindrical algebraic decomposition(CAD) is a key tool in computational algebraic geometry, particularly for quantifier elimination over real-closed fields. When using CAD, there is often a choice for the ordering placed on the variables. This can be important, with some problems infeasible with one variable ordering but easy with another. Machine learning is the process of fitting a computer model to a complex function based on properties learned from measured data. In this paper we use machine learning (specifically a support vector machine) to select between heuristics for choosing a variable ordering, outperforming each of the separate heuristics.Comment: 16 page

Effects of land markets and land management on ecosystem function: A framework for modelling exurban land-change

This paper presents the conceptual design and application of a new land-change modelling framework that represents geographical, sociological, economic, and ecological aspects of a land system. The framework provides an overarching design that can be extended into specific model implementations to evaluate how policy, land-management preferences, and land-market dynamics affect (and are affected by) land-use and land-cover change patterns and subsequent carbon storage and flux. To demonstrate the framework, we implement a simple integration of a new agent-based model of exurban residential development and land-management decisions with the ecosystem process model BIOME-BGC. Using a stylized scenario, we evaluate the influence of different exurban residential-land-management strategies on carbon storage at the parcel level over a 48-year period from 1958 to 2005, simulating stocks of carbon in soil, litter, vegetation, and net primary productivity. Results show 1) residential parcels with management practices that only provided additions in the form of fertilizer and irrigation to turfgrass stored slightly more carbon than parcels that did not include management practices, 2) conducting no land-management strategy stored more carbon than implementing a strategy that included removals in the form of removing coarse woody debris from dense tree cover and litter from turfgrass, and 3) the removal practices modelled had a larger impact on total parcel carbon storage than our modelled additions. The degree of variation within the evaluated land-management practices was approximately 42,104 kg C storage on a 1.62 ha plot after 48 years, demonstrating the substantial effect that residential land-management practices can have on carbon storag

An Inquiry into the Practice of Proving in Low-Dimensional Topology

The aim of this article is to investigate specific aspects connected with visualization in the practice of a mathematical subfield: low-dimensional topology. Through a case study, it will be established that visualization can play an epistemic role. The background assumption is that the consideration of the actual practice of mathematics is relevant to address epistemological issues. It will be shown that in low-dimensional topology, justifications can be based on sequences of pictures. Three theses will be defended. First, the representations used in the practice are an integral part of the mathematical reasoning. As a matter of fact, they convey in a material form the relevant transitions and thus allow experts to draw inferential connections. Second, in low-dimensional topology experts exploit a particular type of manipulative imagination which is connected to intuition of two- and three-dimensional space and motor agency. This imagination allows recognizing the transformations which connect different pictures in an argument. Third, the epistemic—and inferential—actions performed are permissible only within a specific practice: this form of reasoning is subject-matter dependent. Local criteria of validity are established to assure the soundness of representationally heterogeneous arguments in low-dimensional topology

Optical properties and local structures of Tm³⁺ ions in F co-doped lead-germanate glasses

Rare-earth doped optical fibres have received considerable attention in recent years due to the enhanced performance that optically pumped fibre devices Carl give over bulk glass devices. For many years, however, fabrication of low loss rare-earth doped fibres has been confined to silica-related glasses (lately fluoride-based ZBLAN glass fibres have become available, but their weak mechanical strength and poor chemical durability are problematic in practice). This has caused considerable problem in developing future important fibre devices such as 1.3µm optical amplifiers and long or short wavelength fibre lasers. It is thus absolutely essential that the range of rare-earth doped glasses that can be made into fibre structures is extended, particularly into lower phonon-energy glasses, combining possibly the best properties of both silica (low-loss, high strength etc.) and fluoride-based glasses (low non-radiative relaxation rate, etc.

Virtually abelian K\"ahler and projective groups

We characterise the virtually abelian groups which are fundamental groups of compact K\"ahler manifolds and of smooth projective varieties. We show that a virtually abelian group is K\"ahler if and only if it is projective. In particular, this allows to describe the K\"ahler condition for such groups in terms of integral symplectic representations

Seeing phi meson through the dilepton spectra in heavy-ion collisions

Dilepton spectra from the decay of phi mesons produced in heavy-ion collisions at SIS/GSI energies ($\sim 2$ GeV/nucleon) are studied in the relativistic transport model. We include phi mesons produced from baryon-baryon, pion-baryon, and kaon-antikaon collisions. The cross sections for the first two processes are obtained from an one-boson-exchange model, while that for the last process is taken to be the Breit-Wigner form through the phi meson resonance. For dileptons with invariant mass near the phi meson peak, we also include contributions from neutron-proton bremsstrahlung, pion-pion annihilation, and the decay of rho and omega mesons produced in baryon-baryon and meson-baryon collisions. Effects due to medium modifications of the kaon and vector (rho, omega and phi) meson properties are investigated. We find that the kaon medium effects lead to a broadening of the dilepton spectrum as a result of the increase of phi meson decay width. Furthermore, the dropping of phi meson mass in nuclear medium leads to a shoulder structure in the dilepton spectrum besides the main peak at the bare phi meson mass. The experimental measurement of the dilepton spectra from heavy-ion collisions is expected to provide useful information about the phi meson properties in dense matter.Comment: RevTeX, 18 pages, including 13 postscript figures, submitted to Nuclear Physics