The Measure of Consumption Taxes

The paper explores to which extent teacher unions have been involved in discussions, consultations and negotiations with goverments in relation to initiatives taken to achieve education for all (EFA). The paper deals with three questions: 1) Whether teacher unions were aware of the existence of EFA (Education For All) forums in their countries and if their answers were yes, to which extent they had participated in the National EFA Forums. 2) Whether teacher unions were aware of the existence of National EFA Plans or the active work to establish such a plan. If their answers were yes, in what ways had they participated in consultations on the National EFA Plan. 3) Whether the teacher unions had taken any initiative related to EFA. Based on answers given by teacher unions to a questionnaire it is concluded that many unions have not been involved in the EFA process in an appropriate way

The BFOQ Defense: Title VII’s Concession to Gender Discrimination

Should the BFOQ exception still exist? Because permitting discrimination under Title VII seems fundamentally contrary to the anti-discrimination purpose of the statute, this article questions whether the BFOQ defense is consistent with the aims of Title VII or whether, in actuality, the defense undermines the Act\u27s effectiveness by providing a loophole for employers to participate in the discriminatory practices Title VII seeks to forbid

Closing the Book on Jusen: An Account of the Bad Loan Crisis and a New Chapter for Securitization in Japan

University business incubators (UBIs) are organizations that provide new startup companies with a support environment. However, there are split opinions on the UBIs’ contributions to the startups and the regional economy and, consequently, there are also split opinions on  how to assess UBI performance. According to the resource-based view (RBV), a company’s competitive advantage results from the various resources the company has access to. The biotechnology industry is characterized by high research intensity, weak entrepreneurial and managerial skills of the entrepreneur, huge capital requirements, and long product  evelopment approval processes. Previous research has showed that these characteristics imply certain challenges for new biotech ventures. In this study, these industry specific characteristic and challenges were believed to affect what constitutes successful bioincubation and how bio-incubators’ performance should be assessed. The purpose of this report is, thus, to examine how bio-incubator performance can, and should be, assessed. An existing framework for assessing UBI performance is used as a basis for performing  emistructured interviews with 18 incubator managers in order to examine what performance indicators are perceived as robust for assessing bio-incubator performance. The findings show that the value contributions of bio-incubators mainly include space and network provision, support services, and coaching. The perceived value contributions, in combination with the perceived challenges, imply that it is particularly appropriate to assess bio-incubators performance in terms of Job Creation, Economy Enhancement, Access to Funds, and the Incubator Offer and Internal Environment. However, Job Creation and Economy Enhancement are closely related and are therefore suggested to be merged into a single performance indicator. Hardware and Services, on the other hand, seems to be less relevant for assessing bio-incubator performance as it depends on the incubator’s strategy. The study concludes that there are additional ways of assessing bio-incubator performance, such as shortened time to graduation, links with universities, and the flexibility of the incubator. Further research may include the entrepreneurs’ point of view or use the approach of this study to examine incubator performance in other high-technology industries

A Listing of Current Books

Abstract—We investigate cooperative strategies for relay-aided multi-source multi-destination wireless networks with backhaul support. Each source multicasts information to all destinations using a shared relay. We study cooperative strategies based on different network coding (NC) schemes, namely, finite field NC (FNC), linear NC (LNC), and lattice coding. To further exploit the backhaul connection, we also propose NC-based beam-forming (NBF). We measure the performance in term of achievable rates over Gaussian channels and observe significant gains over a benchmark scheme. The benefit of using backhaul is also clearly demonstrated in most of scenarios. I

Shareholder Voting and the Chicago School: Now Is the Winter of Our Discontent

We have simulated the effect of different parameters in location-aware information sharing policies for crowd-based information exchange systems. The purpose of this simulation was to find out which parameters improved the upload time, battery life and success rate for nodes trying to upload a large file under bad conditions. To test the effect of these parameters on a larger scale, we simulated an area where a large number of nodes were moving around. Our test results showed that nodes greatly improved their battery life and the upload time by limiting the number of nodes they send data to, rather than sharing data with all nodes within reach. However, sending the oldest collected data performed very bad in regards of battery life time and had a relatively high amount of nodes that did not manage to upload their file. We concluded that nodes should not share their data with all available nodes at all times, and be restrictive in the amount of data they share with other nodes to conserve battery

Editor’s Note

Denna studie ämnar att beskriva hur kunskapsintensiva företag hanterar den kunskap som konsulter bidrar med vid introduktion, i det dagliga arbetet och hur de möjliggör för överföring av kunskapen när konsulten lämnar företaget. En fallstudie på två stora internationella företag har genomförts och empiri samlades in genom semistrukturerade intervjuer. Resultatet visar att företagen har likartade introduktioner med fokus på organisatoriska och individuella kunskaper. Vilket syfte konsulten har i företaget påverkar kunskapsintegreringen inom arbetet. Även organisationsstrukturen och konsultens placering inom företaget har effekter för kunskapsintegreringen. Konsulten bidrar med flexibilitet, vilket innebär att företaget bör sträva efter att genomföra integrerande praktiker under arbetets gång, och inte fokusera på överlämningen enbart när konsulten lämnar företaget

EC Maritime Transport Policy and Regulation

When designing robust controllers, H-infinity synthesis is a common tool touse. The controllers that result from these algorithms are typically of very high order, which complicates implementation. However, if a constraint on the maximum order of the controller is set, that is lower than the order of the (augmented) system, the problem becomes nonconvex and it is relatively hard to solve. These problems become very complex, even when the order of the system is low. The approach used in this work is based on formulating the constraint onthe maximum order of the controller as a polynomial (or rational) equation.This equality constraint is added to the optimization problem of minimizingan upper bound on the H-innity norm of the closed loop system subjectto linear matrix inequality (LMI) constraints. The problem is then solvedby reformulating it as a partially augmented Lagrangian problem where theequality constraint is put into the objective function, but where the LMIsare kept as constraints. The proposed method is evaluated together with two well-known methodsfrom the literature. The results indicate that the proposed method hascomparable performance in most cases, especially if the synthesized con-troller has many parameters, which is the case if the system to be controlledhas many input and output signals

The Law of Sports. By John Weistart and Cym Lowell.

This report gives an overview of methods and approaches applicable to the UAV flight path and sensor aiming planning problem for search and track of multiple ground targets. The main focus of the survey is on stochastic optimal control, dynamic programming, partially observable Markov decision processes, sensor scheduling, bearings-only tracking, search and exploration. References to standard texts, as well as more recent research results, are given

Foreword

This paper offers a critical look at how energy security-, food and agriculture-, and climate change-oriented international organizations frame biomass energy production in developing countries, in particular, ethanol production in Brazil. Using the world-economy system as a theoretical lens, the paper raises a concern as to whether the way these global institutions frame bioenergy's role in developing regions manifests energy and ecological inequalities between the core and the periphery, as well as creates internal contradictions that perpetuate unequal exchange embedded in the system. Simultaneously, these organizations frame Brazil as a semi-peripheral state that, while successful in finding a niche concurring with the core's demand for cheap energy and cost-effective decarbonization strategies, is not necessarily a suitable role model for the periphery's socio–economic development.Original Publication: Magdalena Kuchler, Unravelling the argument for bioenergy production in developing countries: A world-economy perspective, 2010, Ecological Economics, (69), 6, 1336-1343. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2010.01.011 Copyright: Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam. http://www.elsevier.com/The Politics of Bioenerg

Takings for Granted: The Convergence and Non-Convergence of Property Law in the People’s Republic of China and the United States

　 Föreliggande rapport är en granskning av det statliga betänkande som görs i samband med de händelser som äger rum vid EU-mötet i Göteborg år 2001. Syftet är att analysera kommitténs slutsatser och förslag utifrån en vetenskaplig studie av dessa händelser de s.k. Göteborgskravallerna som görs på institutionen för beteendevetenskap vid Linköpings Universitetet. I likhet med internationell forskning visar Linköpingsstudien att kravaller kan ses som ett resultat av växelverkande processer mellan polis och demonstranter vilka antingen kan leda till krig eller fred. Demonstranter utgör från början inte en homogen "massa" utan består av många olika grupperingar av vilka s.k. postmoderna demonstranter urskiljer sig som en specifik kategori. Eftersom de skiljer sig från traditionella demonstranter i olika avseenden riskerar de att kategoriseras och behandlas som tillhöriga en fientligt inställd provokatörsgrupp. I rapporten visas bl.a. att kommittén bygger sina förslag på en onyanserad uppdelning av demonstrationer i en fredlig (modern) grupp och en fientlig provokatörsgrupp och därmed missar frågan om hur man kan möta en ny rörelse av politiskt intresserade ungdomar inom ramen för ett demokratiskt samhälle