Excitation of low-profile equilateral-triangular dielectric resonator antenna using a conducting conformal strip

A new configuration that employs a conducting conformal strip to excite the low-profile equilaterial-triangular dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) of very high permittivity is proposed. As compared with the previous aperture-coupling configuration, the new configuration has a wider impedance bandwidth (- 5.5%) and a higher front-to-back radiation ratio. The return loss, radiation patterns, and antenna gain are measured and discussed

Compact dual-polarised square microstrip antenna with triangular slots for wireless communication

Design of a dual linearly-polarised microstrip patch antenna, excited by two orthogonal microstrip feed lines, is presented. A reduction in patch size of 35% is obtained when compared to a square patch operating at the same frequency. The polarisations are oriented at +45 and - 45 with an isolation of more than 36 dB between the ports. Unlike earlier designs, the proposed structure provides better gain.

Comments on Simple and Accurate Formula for the Resonant Frequency of the Equilateral Triangular Microstrip Patch Antenna

Antennas and Propagation, IEEE Transactions on,VOL 48,issue 4,pp 636

Cooperation or Confrontation?

With globalization and increased connectedness, migration has become a political issue. Nevertheless, without citizenship participation in the political system in the host society is limited. Based on a neo-institutionalist approach and referring to political opportunity structure theory, this paper analyzes differences in means of political participation by migrants in two cities, one in the U.S. and one in Germany. Specific focus is put on the welfare state as one factor potentially influencing forms of participation of migrants. From interviews with migrants, local governments, and organizations, this paper establishes that political participation in the German city, Essen, is more institutionalized than in the U.S. city, Newark, NJ, where demonstrations and rallies play a more significant role. Looking at these findings, this paper explains the differences with a variation in the political opportunity structure between the two cities. Whereas in the conservative-corporatist welfare state, ideas of collective bar-gaining and the conferral of social rights to migrants leads to government-created bodies for migrant participation, in the U.S. city, these bodies do not exist and, therefore, migrants use different means of political participation. Through the conferral of social rights on migrants as well, in Germany, the cleavage between migrants and majority society has been pacified. In the U.S. city, where this is not the case, demonstrations and rallies are more common.

Attitudes and behaviour towards food attributes and organic food – a triangular methodological investigation of occasional organic consumers

Organic food is increasingly available in the conventional food retail, where organic products are offered alongside with various other types of products and compete mainly with conventional and the so-called conventional-plus products. The latter are conventional products displaying particular quality attributes on the product packaging, such as ‘no artificial additives’, or ‘from animal welfare husbandry’. Often, these quality attributes also apply to organic products. Occasional organic consumers might prefer such conventional-plus alternatives that are perceived to be ‘between’ organic and conventional products. The overall objective of this PhD thesis was to provide information about the segment of occasional organic consumers. In particular, the thesis focussed on consumer perceptions and attitudes towards the quality of, and preferences for, organic, conventional and conventional-plus products in two countries: Germany and Switzerland. To achieve these objectives, qualitative and quantitative consumer research was combined in order to explore occasional organic consumers’ perceptions and attitudes as well as to observe their preferences and buying behaviour regarding different types of food products: organic, conventional and conventional-plus products. The qualitative research showed that, depending on single criteria, organic production was both positively as well as negatively assessed by consumers. Consumer perception of organic food was found to be highly selective and primarily focussed on the final stage of the particular production process. A major problem is that consumers are still mostly unfamiliar with factors associated with organic production, have a lack of confidence, and often confuse organic with conventional products. Besides this, consumer expectations of organic products are different from the expectations of conventional products. The quantitative research revealed that attitudes strongly determine consumers’ preferences for organic, conventional and conventional-plus products. Consumer attitudes tended to differ more between organic and conventional choices rather than conventional-plus and conventional choices. Furthermore, occasional organic consumers are heterogeneous in their preferences. They can be grouped into two segments: the consumers in one segment were less price sensitive and preferred organic products. The consumers in the other segment were more price sensitive and rather preferred conventional-plus or conventional products. To conclude, given the selective and subjective nature of consumer perception and the strong focus of consumer perception on the final stage of the food production process, specific additional values of organic farming should be communicated in clear and catchy messages. At the same time, these messages should be particularly focussed on the final stage of organic food production. The communication of specific added values in relation with organic products to improve the perceived price-performance-ratio is important since conventional-plus products represent an interesting alternative particularly for price sensitive occasional organic consumers. Besides this, it is important to strengthen affirmative consumer attitudes towards organic production. Therefore, policy support should emphasise on long-term communication campaigns and education programmes to increase the consumer awareness and knowledge of organic food and farming. Since consumers expect that organic food is regionally or at least domestically produced while they less accept organic imports, policy support of domestic and regional producers is a crucial measure to fill the current gap between the increasing consumer demand of organic food and the stagnation of the domestic and regional organic food supply.

Del yo al euro : una propuesta didáctica de cooperación transnacional : educación permanente de adultos. 'From the I to the euro : a didactic proposal for transnational cooperation : permanent adult education'.

La obra se presenta en edición bilingue español/inglés .- Incluye una sección de apéndices en la que aparecen tablas y gráficos que recogen datos estadísticos sobre la experiencia didáctica, así como información general sobre la UE

Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Cooperation

This report addresses the problem of achieving cooperation within small- to medium- sized teams of heterogeneous mobile robots. I describe a software architecture I have developed, called ALLIANCE, that facilitates robust, fault tolerant, reliable, and adaptive cooperative control. In addition, an extended version of ALLIANCE, called L-ALLIANCE, is described, which incorporates a dynamic parameter update mechanism that allows teams of mobile robots to improve the efficiency of their mission performance through learning. A number of experimental results of implementing these architectures on both physical and simulated mobile robot teams are described. In addition, this report presents the results of studies of a number of issues in mobile robot cooperation, including fault tolerant cooperative control, adaptive action selection, distributed control, robot awareness of team member actions, improving efficiency through learning, inter-robot communication, action recognition, and local versus global control.

Red Europea COPASCH (COoperation PArents SCHools).

La red COPASCH tiene como foco temático la relación entre familias y centros escolares y nació con el objetivo de promover la participación de las familias en el desarrollo de la calidad y la mejora del proceso educativo, facilitar el intercambio y la puesta en práctica de nuevos métodos y planteamientos utilizando un sitio web que actúe como portal de información y comunicación, crear un foro de debate común y de cooperación para identificar y promover medidas innovadoras en apoyo de la cooperación entre familias y centros y establecer una red europea de padres y madres, profesorado y alumnado.

Análisis de la Cooperación Internacional del Japón a Colombia de 2003 a 2008, caso de estudio Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)

El trabajo, analiza en impacto de la Cooperación Internacional del Japón a Colombia estudiando la transformación que la Agencia de Cooperación Internacional del Japón (JICA) implementó durante el periodo 2003 - 2008. Para ello, parte del recorrido histórico de la actividad de la Agencia hasta 2003, en su entorno internacional y nacional, para luego determinar los diferentes factores-reto que enfrentó durante el periodo sugerido; su reorganización administrativa y presupuesta, así como los nuevos desafíos internacionales, así como sus respuestas para concluir en el decrecimiento de la ayuda a Colombia, con miras a una mejora en el mediano plazo. Emplea como herramientas teóricas la aproximación a la Cooperación Internacional planteada por Robert Keohane y el modelo básico de acción o cambio organizacional propuesto por Ernst Haas.

The PERINE Project : cooperation between European Education Databases

Resumen basado en el del autor. El nombre del proyecto, PERINE, es el acr??nimo de Pedagogical and Educational Research Information Network for Europe, y fue coordinador del proyecto ante el organismo patrocinador, la Comisi??n Europea

¿De vecinos distantes a socios estratégicos? Análisis de la política exterior brasileña hacia Colombia en materia de seguridad, desde 1995 hasta 2011

Análisis de la política exterior brasileña de Fernando Henrique Cardoso y Luis Inácio Lula da Silva con respecto a la región y cómo esto favoreció la relación con Colombia, permitiendo la Cooperación Sur Sur Horizontal en materia de desarrollo de tecnología militar

La cooperación descentralizada sur-sur como herramienta para el fortalecimiento de la gobernabilidad local en Colombia. Un análisis de Caldono, Pasto y Medellín

La cooperación internacional está redefiniendo una vez más su arquitectura como herramienta de ayuda al desarrollo. Sus procesos y políticas atraviesan un álgido momento de cambio, caracterizado por dos escenarios determinantes: los suscitados debates sobre la eficacia y la calidad de la ayuda y la crisis económica europea, que comienza a evidenciar una reducción fuerte en los recursos destinados a este mismo fin. En este contexto los países en vías de desarrollo como Colombia, comienzan a ser protagonistas de su propio desarrollo, buscando dar a sus territorios condiciones de gobernabilidad deseadas, a través de mecanismos donde el desarrollo humano es un vector importante y encuentra en la participación ciudadana una estrategia vital para instalar capacidades, promover el intercambio de conocimiento y empoderar a los ciudadanos alrededor de las decisiones de lo público. La cooperación descentralizada Sur-Sur se presenta entonces como una herramienta con oportunidades interesante, aunque es un proceso aún incipiente, enfatiza en la necesidad de abrir el paso a prácticas novedosas de asociación y cooperación que permitan aprovechar los recursos disponibles para la promoción del desarrollo. En el caso específico de este trabajo monográfico, Caldono, Cauca; Pasto, Nariño y Medellín, Antioquia, serán municipios a analizar, en la medida en que se identifiquen, en cada uno, procesos de participación ciudadana que canalicen la movilización de las estructuras sociales organizadas que, afectadas por las frustraciones y necesidades, presionan para que se produzcan cambios importantes en la manera como se consagran en las leyes los mecanismos y espacios participativos.

Networks and RegionalCompetitiveness: Towards a Transaction Cost Approach of Small-Scale Cooperation

A preoccupation with competition often dominates the study of governance. A focus on competition often unnecessarily precludes the possibility that regional institutions can suspend competition in certain areas and facilitate cooperation among potential rivals, thereby potentially contributing to their mutual success. In many ways companies cooperating through these types of networks have a greater degree of flexibility than firms which are forced to rely solely on hierarchies or markets for solutions to their problems. In order to fully understand how such networks work, this article first parses out differences in definitions of networks in order to understand how the type of network mentioned above actually differs from other uses of this term. Then it develops a theory of governance that goes beyond hierarchies and markets by demonstrating how this type of network can lead to reductions in transaction costs. This claim is illustrated on hand from examples of alternative forms of organization in Germany and Italy.

Balance de la participación de Colombia en el Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) entre 1987 y 2005

Colombia posee una ubicación geográfica privilegiada, que le da la opción de entablar relaciones a través de los Océanos Atlántico y Pacífico. Hacia el primero de éstos, se orientan la gran mayoría de esfuerzos relacionados con la consecución de mercados, ubicando a Europa y Estados Unidos.