Suchergebnisse

Telegraphy, the distant ancestor of Internet and GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), was invented by Samuel Morse in 1838. One year later, William Grove invented the fuel cell. Although numerous highly successful innovations stemming from telegraphy may be observed, the development of fuel cells has been insignificant, slow, and erratic and has not yet resulted in notable positive socioeconomic effects. By comparing the modern development of fuel cells and hydrogen technology, that is, a potential radical innovation in energy generation, with some aspects related to the evolution of two highly successful radical innovations, Internet and GSM, the author focuses on the role of innovation regimes and policy in a sectorial system of innovations perspective. In the slow pace in fuel cells and hydrogen technology development, two factors seem to interact negatively: weak and fragmented innovation regimes in the energy sector and the current hegemony of market-oriented R&D policies.

The main question raised in this article is how educational reforms reflect convergence or divergence between the English, the Norwegian and the Swedish educational systems. We claim that the answer depends on how convergence is conceptualised. At the level of decisions on tools, the countries seem more similar than two decades ago. However, to explain policy changes our analytical perspective must be broadened. We demonstrate how values based on different welfare state models, political economies and different types of institutional evolution can explain processes of change in education over the last decades. In paying attention to broader processes of change, a certain degree of variation occurs. The countries seem to develop according to nationally specific trajectories: England has strengthened the liberal and elitist values of education while social democratic values of comprehensiveness and equality have impact on the aims and effects of policy tools in Norway and Sweden.

This study utilises data derived from the responses of 871 manufacturing SMEs between 1995/96 and 1997/98. The firms were segmented according to McMahon's (2001) taxonomy of low, moderate and high growth SMEs and then divided into family and non-family businesses. The study then empirically compares seven characteristics of managerial development across the two groups. The findings indicate there are significant differences in the managerial development of family and non-family businesses. In general, family businesses have more working proprietors, partners or directors; major decision-makers with less tertiary qualifications and are slower to adopt some management practices as they grow. Similarities include the size of their management teams, the practices of comparing performance and budget forecasting, and the evolution process itself. From a methodological perspective the findings indicate that the context of firms sampled needs to be controlled if meaningful comparisons are to be made.

AbstractThis paper deals with the official apology offered by governments to peoples or groups, often a minority of their own nation, who were once victims of a crime against humanity. After staying six months in Alaska with the Unangan people who, in 1988 for the first time in the country's history, received from the American Congress official apologies and financial compensation for their evacuation and internment during WWII, I have returned with a significant amount of data. They tend to show that if such apologies, although considered unanimously as a positive gesture, are not accompanied by certain essential conditions, they are viewed mainly as a political strategy and comedy. Furthermore, if this evolution results directly from recently-acquired historical, legal and political consciousness of peoples, especially of Aboriginal peoples, it represents a new kind of test for individuals and groups in our democracies who are really concerned with common welfare.

AbstractMachine learning algorithms that incorporate misclassification costs have recently received considerable attention. In this paper, we use the principles of evolution to develop and test an evolutionary/genetic algorithm (GA)‐based neural approach that incorporates asymmetric Type I and Type II error costs. Using simulated, real‐world medical and financial data sets, we compare the results of the proposed approach with other statistical, mathematical, and machine learning approaches, which include statistical linear discriminant analysis, back‐propagation artificial neural network, integrated cost preference‐based linear mathematical programming‐based minimize squared deviations, linear integrated cost preference‐based GA, decision trees (C 5.0, and CART), and inexpensive classification with expensive tests algorithm. Our results indicate that the proposed approach incorporating asymmetric error costs results in equal or lower holdout sample misclassification cost when compared with the other statistical, mathematical, and machine learning misclassification cost‐minimizing approaches. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2006.

Growing concerns about anthropology's impact in both academia and the broader social arena have led to calls for more "public" and more relevant anthropology. In this article, we expand on these exhortations, by calling for systematic joining of critical social theory with application and pragmatic engagement with contemporary problems. We argue for the repositioning of applied anthropology as a vital component of the broader discipline and suggest that it should serve as a framework for constructing a more engaged anthropology. In revisiting disciplinary history and critiques of applied anthropology, we demonstrate the central role that application has played throughout anthropology's evolution, address common misconceptions that serve as barriers to disciplinary integration, examine the role of advocacy in relation to greater engagement as well as the relationship of theory to practice, and conclude with an assessment of the diverse work that is subsumed under the inclusive rubric of "anthropology in use."

We survey the theoretical literature on privatization and efficiency by tracing its evolution from the applications of agency theory to recent contributions in the field of political economy. The first ones extend the theory of regulation with incomplete information to address privatization issues, comparing State Owned Entreprises (SOEs) with private regulated firms. The benefits of privatization may either derive from the constraints it places on malevolent agents or to the impossibility of commitment by a benevolent government because of incomplete contracts. Contributions dealing with political economy issues separate privatization from restructuring decisions. They either explore bargaining between managers and politicians or analyze the impact of privatization shaped by political preferences on efficiency. The theoretical results regarding the relation between privatization and efficiency do not lead to any definitive conclusion. Privatization may increase productive efficiency when restructuring takes place whereas its effects on allocative efficiency still remain uncertain.

The effects of the reduction of international trade costs on the internal economic geography of each country have been very scarcely studied in empirical terms. With data for Portugal since its adhesion to the European Union, we test the hypotheses put forward by the new economic geography concerning the evolution of the spatial concentration of the manufacturing industry as a whole and of the different industries individually considered. We consider alternative concentration concepts and data disaggregated both at the level of NUTS III (28 regions) and concelhos (275 regions). Results show a dispersion of total industry as a consequence of the reduction of international trade costs, in line with Krugman and Elizondo (1996)'s prediction. Individual industries show a similar tendency, in contrast with the theoretical hypothesis. ; Financial support provided by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia under SFRH/BD/6412/2001 (supported by the European Social Fund)

We focus on a quantitative assessment of rigid labor markets in an environment of stable monetary policy. We ask how wages and labor market shocks feed into the inflation process and derive monetary policy implications. Towards that aim, we structurally model matching frictions and rigid wages in line with an optimizing rationale in a New Keynesian closed economy DSGE model. We estimate the model using Bayesian techniques for German data from the late 1970s to present. Given the pre-euro heterogeneity in wage bargaining we take this as the first-best approximation at hand for modelling monetary policy in the presence of labor market frictions in the current European regime. In our framework, we find that labor market structure is of prime importance for the evolution of the business cycle, and for monetary policy in particular. Yet shocks originating in the labor market itself may contain only limited information for the conduct of stabilization policy.

In this paper, Martin Votruba traces the evolution of the Jánošík myth. The highwayman Jánošík is a living legend in Czech, Polish, and Slovak cultures. Contrary to common claims, the modern celebratory myth of the brigand hanged in the eighteenth century is at odds with the traditional images of brigandage in the western Carpathians. Folk songs and The Hungarian Simplicissimus of the seventeenth century often anathematize highway robbery. High literature of the mostly Slovak counties of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Habsburg empire similarly cast Jánošík as a criminal. Yet some intellectuals, such as Pavol Jozef Šafárik, inspired by the robber in German literature, singled out Jánošík from among other brigands and reduced that folklore-based opprobrium. Others, such as Ján Kollár, resisted Jánošík's rehabilitation. Subsequent Central European national revivals and ethnic activism prompted the Slovak romantic poets to reinvent Jánošík as a folk rebel against social and ethnic oppression.

During the past ten years the emergence of online information has led to several nation wide tender invitations for creation of a data base. This brings us back to the history of Éducasup, starting with its conception in 1997 to its abandonment in 2003. We intend to show, through a semio-linguistic analysis of the homepages of the Éducasup website during various stages of its evolution, the political and technical choices that led to this program. ; Ces dix dernières années, l'émergence de l'information en ligne a suscité des appels d'offres nationaux visant à la mise en place de bases de données. Nous revenons ici sur l'histoire du programme Éducasup, de sa conception en 1997 à son abandon, fin 2003. À travers une analyse sémio-linguistique des écrans d'accueil de ses différentes chartes graphiques, nous cherchons à montrer les choix politiques et techniques qui ont présidé à l'évolution de ce programme.

We focus on a quantitative assessment of rigid labor markets in an environment of stable monetary policy. We ask how wages and labor market shocks feed into the inflation process and derive monetary policy implications. Towards that aim, we structurally model matching frictions and rigid wages in line with an optimizing rationale in a New Keynesian closed economy DSGE model. We estimate the model using Bayesian techniques for German data from the late 1970s to present. Given the pre-euro heterogeneity in wage bargaining we take this as the first-best approximation at hand for modelling monetary policy in the presence of labor market frictions in the current European regime. In our framework, we find that labor market structure is of prime importance for the evolution of the business cycle, and for monetary policy in particular. Yet shocks originating in the labor market itself may contain only limited information for the conduct of stabilization policy.

During the past ten years the emergence of online information has led to several nation wide tender invitations for creation of a data base. This brings us back to the history of Éducasup, starting with its conception in 1997 to its abandonment in 2003. We intend to show, through a semio-linguistic analysis of the homepages of the Éducasup website during various stages of its evolution, the political and technical choices that led to this program. ; Ces dix dernières années, l'émergence de l'information en ligne a suscité des appels d'offres nationaux visant à la mise en place de bases de données. Nous revenons ici sur l'histoire du programme Éducasup, de sa conception en 1997 à son abandon, fin 2003. À travers une analyse sémio-linguistique des écrans d'accueil de ses différentes chartes graphiques, nous cherchons à montrer les choix politiques et techniques qui ont présidé à l'évolution de ce programme.

In the last decade, critical approaches have substantially reshaped the theoretical landscape of security studies in Europe. Yet, despite an impressive body of literature, there remains fundamental disagreement as to what counts as critical in this context. Scholars are still arguing in terms of 'schools', while there has been an increasing and sustained cross-fertilization among critical approaches. Finally, the boundaries between critical and traditional approaches to security remain blurred. The aim of this article is therefore to assess the evolution of critical views of approaches to security studies in Europe, discuss their theoretical premises, investigate their intellectual ramifications, and examine how they coalesce around different issues (such as a state of exception). The article then assesses the political implications of critical approaches. This is done mainly by analysing processes by which critical approaches to security percolate through a growing number of subjects (such as development, peace research, risk management). Finally, ethical and research implications are explored.

Compliance is a key concept in health care and affects all areas of health care including diabetes. Non‐compliance has previously been a label attached to many patients without much thought having been given to the causes of poor compliance. Over the last few decades there has been a large volume of research focusing on compliance that has exposed the multitude of factors affecting compliance. Even the definition is not clear cut and so comparability between studies is not without difficulties. A better understanding of the factors affecting compliance, including the doctor/patient relationship, has allowed the evolution of "concordance". Concordance views the patient as being the equal of the healthcare provider and as having a right to make informed decisions. In a condition such as diabetes, which has many potential long term complications, it is vital that concordance is embraced in the healthcare system in order to improve care.