Enron's Dabhol power project in India

In the early nineties, Enron USA went to India to set up a $3 billion power plant at the express invitation of the then Indian government. The process and incidents associated with the setting up of the Dabhol Power Company are highly relevant, even in current times, for companies who intend to set up operations in India. The case is a good example of the strategic importance of ethical corporate decision-making and good stakeholder management practices as an inherent part of a company's culture. If a company lacks this understanding, then it is likely to experience stakeholder opposition and stakeholder management disasters that can ultimately have a serious impact on the company's success.

GTES: An optimized game-theoretic demand-side management scheme for smart grid

Demand-side management in smart grids has emerged as a hot topic for optimizing energy consumption. In conventional research works, energy consumption is optimized from the perspective of either the users or the power company. In this paper, we investigate how energy consumption may be optimized by taking into consideration the interaction between both parties. We propose a new energy price model as a function of total energy consumption. Also, we propose a new objective function, which optimizes the difference between the value and cost of energy. The power supplier pulls consumers in a round-robin fashion and provides them with energy price parameter and current consumption summary vector. Each user then optimizes his own schedule and reports it to the supplier, which, in turn, updates its energy price parameter before pulling the next consumers. This interaction between the power company and its consumers is modeled through a two-step centralized game, based on which we propose our game-theoretic energy schedule (GTES) method. The objective of our GTES method is to reduce the peak-to-average power ratio by optimizing the users' energy schedules. The performance of the GTES approach is evaluated through computer-based simulations. © 2014 IEEE.

Pharmaceuticals and the consumer movement: the ambivalences of 'patient power'

Consumer and patient advocacy groups (PAGs) are important participants in the politics of pharmaceuticals. Yet very little is known about the precise nature and extent of their influence. It is argued in this article that PAGs fulfil a mixed role within the health system at national and transnational levels, and that they are at times fully incorporated into economic and political power structures. Their frequent dependence on pharma industry funding is of particular concern. PAGs provide a means of direct industry interaction with the final customer, thereby partially bypassing and putting additional pressure on doctors and regulators. The article presents the case for research to establish a better empirical base for discussions about the role of PAGs within contemporary neo-liberal governance structures.

Sources of poetic power

How powerful are our categories? Some might see these three poets in the categories ``working-class man'', ``indigenous man'', ``educated woman''. But what does this mean? Could they not all be educated, indigenous, working-class? There are sound reasons to think in categories, but poets are implicitly against theory, since each has a peculiar source of poetic power. Even if that turns out to be gender or class or race, it will be more complex than those over-burdened words allow. Poems, like poets, resist classification and gaze back at us like imaginary animals, indifferent to zoology

Governing the working population : knowledge, self and power in workplace health programs

This paper reports a case study of a workplace health programme in an international information technology company. Discourse analysis was used to identify how specific forms of knowledge create understandings of health and influence power relations between employee and organization. These forms of knowledge are shown to make employee health both visible and invisible in particular ways. Workplace health discourse encourages the employee to take responsibility for self-assessment and behaviour adjustment to become healthier employees. This is shown to be an ethical project which results in the alignment of personal and corporate goals.

Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology position stand : the use of instability to train the core in athletic and nonathletic conditioning

The use of instability devices and exercises to train the core musculature is an essential feature of many training centres and programs. It was the intent of this position stand to provide recommendations regarding the role of instability in resistance training programs designed to train the core musculature. The core is defined as the axial skeleton and all soft tissues with a proximal attachment originating on the axial skeleton, regardless of whether the soft tissue terminates on the axial or appendicular skeleton. Core stability can be achieved with a combination of muscle activation and intra-abdominal pressure. Abdominal bracing has been shown to be more effective than abdominal hollowing in optimizing spinal stability. When similar exercises are performed, core and limb muscle activation are reported to be higher under unstable conditions than under stable conditions. However, core muscle activation that is similar to or higher than that achieved in unstable conditions can also be achieved with ground-based free-weight exercises, such as Olympic lifts, squats, and dead lifts. Since the addition of unstable bases to resistance exercises can decrease force, power, velocity, and range of motion, they are not recommended as the primary training mode for athletic conditioning. However, the high muscle activation with the use of lower loads associated with instability resistance training suggests they can play an important role within a periodized training schedule, in rehabilitation programs, and for nonathletic individuals who prefer not to use ground-based free weights to achieve musculoskeletal health benefits.

A tale of 2 diplomats: China’s soft power conundrum

In the past couple of weeks, two foreign ministers have captured the Chinese public imagination. In a widely circulated video clip on the popular Chinese social media WeChat, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, Adel Al-Jubeir, is shown rebuking a Western journalist’s question about the “inherent” connection between the Islamic State (ISIS) and Islam. Another story involves Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s response to a Canadian journalist’s questions about China’s human rights. Both foreign ministers faced tricky questions from Western media (though in Wang Yi’s case, the questions were actually directed at his Canadian counterpart, Stéphane Dion), but that’s probably where their similarities end. The focus of Chinese social media is on the stark contrast between the two foreign ministers’ handling of their respective situations.

The Power of words: Central bank communication and currency markets.

This thesis investigates the effect of central banks communication on exchange rates. It is found that Bank of Canada speeches had a dampening effect on the Canadian dollar exchange rate while Reserve Bank of Australia speeches did not have an impact on the Australian dollar exchange rate.