The gas target model for the Visegard 4 Region: conceptual analysis. OSW Report, May 2013

The similarity of issues and geographical proximity have led the Visegrad 4 countries (V4) to undertake closer collaboration in natural gas policy, notably by agreeing on a common security of supply strategy, including regional emergency planning, and a common implementation of the Gas Target Model (GTM) that European regulators have proposed for the medium-long term design of the EU gas market, and which has been endorsed by the Madrid Regulatory Forum. As a contribution to this collaboration, the present paper will analyse how the GTM may be implemented in the V4 region, with a view to maximize the benefits that arise from joint implementation. A most relevant conclusion of the GTM is that markets should be large enough to attract market players and investments, so that sufficient diversity of sources may be reached and market power indicators are kept below dangerous levels. In most cases, this requires physical and/or virtual interconnection of present markets, which is also useful to achieve the required security of supply standards, as envisaged in the Regulation 994/2010/EC.

The Danish Flexicurity Model - a Lesson for the US? ACES Working Paper No. 2, May 2007

Within recent years, increasing international competition has caused an increase in job transitions worldwide. Many countries find it difficult to manage these transitions in a way that ensures a match between labour and demand. One of the countries that seem to manage the transitions in a successful way is Denmark, where unemployment has been dropping dramatically over the last decade without a drop in job quality. This success is ascribed the so-called Danish flexicurity model, where an easy access to hiring and firing employees (flexibility) is combined with extensive active and passive labour market policies (security). The Danish results have gained interest not only among other European countries, where unemployment rates remain high, but also in the US, where job loss is often related to lower job quality. It has, however, been subject to much debate both in Europe and in the US, whether or not countries with distinctively different political-economic settings can learn from one another. Some have argued that cultural differences impose barriers to successful policy transfer, whereas others see it as a perfectly rational calculus to introduce 'best practices' from elsewhere. This paper presents a third strategy. Recent literature on policy transfer suggests that successful cross national policy transfer is possible, even across the Atlantic, but that one must be cautious in choosing the form, content and level of the learning process. By analysing and comparing the labour market policies and their settings in Denmark and the US in detail, this paper addresses the question, what and how the US can learn from the Danish model. Where the US and Denmark share a high degree of flexibility, they differ significantly on the level of security. This also means that the Danish budget for active and passive labour market policies is significantly higher than the American, and it seems unlikely that political support for the introduction of Danish levels of security in the US can be established. However, the paper concludes that there is a learning potential between the US and Demnark in the different local level efficiency of the money already spent. A major reason for the Danish success has been the introduction of tailor made initiatives to the single displaced worker and a stronger coordination between local level actors. Both of which are issues, where a lack of efficiency in the implementation of American active labour market policies has been reported.

The EU-Turkey Customs Union: A model for Future Euro-Med Integration. MEDPRO Technical Report No. 9/March 2012

This paper studying the 1995 EU-Turkey Customs Union (CU) reveals that the CU has been a major instrument of integration of the Turkish economy into the EU and global markets, offering powerful tools to reform the Turkish economy. Turkish producers of industrial goods are protected by tariffs from external competition to exactly the same extent as EU producers, and they face competition from duty-free imports of industrial goods from world-class pan-European firms. In return, Turkish industrial producers have duty-free market access to the European Economic Area, which was recently extended to certain Mediterranean countries. Trade liberalisation achieved through the CU has thus successfully moved the Turkish economy from a government-controlled regime to a market-based one, and Turkish producers of industrial goods have performed remarkably well. The paper further shows that market access conditions for Turkish producers are determined, in addition to tariffs, by standards, conformity assessment procedures, competition policy, industrial property rights and contingent protectionism measures. The CU also offered Turkey the opportunity to establish new institutions, and modernise and upgrade rules and disciplines required for the elimination of technical barriers to trade, and for the implementation of the EU’s competition, industrial property rights, and contingent protectionism policies.

Gestão de processos de negócio em organizações desportivas: um estudo de caso no Comitée Européen de Rink-Hockey

A Gestão de Processos de Negócio (BPM – Business Process Management) é uma abordagem que tem como objetivo melhorar a eficiência nas organizações, através da gestão dos processos, em que se realiza a sua modelação, organização e otimização de uma forma iterativa e contínua. O BPM permite suportar os processos de negócio, através da utilização de métodos, técnicas e software para projetar, representar e analisar processos organizacionais que envolvem, pessoas, organizações, aplicações, documentos e outras fontes de informação (Aalst, Hofstede, & Weske, 2003). Neste estudo é utilizado um Business Process Management System (BPMS) para realizar a modelação dos processos do Comité Européen de Rink-Hockey (CERH), para a inscrição de equipas e atletas, nos eventos realizados sob a responsabilidade deste comité. A modelação é realizada através da utilização do Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). A utilização do BPMS foi realizada considerando as seguintes etapas: (1) desenho do processo; (2) definição do processo; (3) desenvolvimento do processo e (4) administração e utilização de processos. Pretendeu-se, demonstrar a viabilidade e operacionalidade na utilização de uma ferramenta BPMS open-source, numa abordagem BPM, na modelação e implementação de processos, em detrimento de soluções proprietárias de custo elevado. O critério adotado para a seleção da ferramenta baseia-se na análise de relatórios sobre BPMS, que nos permitiu identificar e sustentar a solução adotada (Hill, Cantara, & Kerremans, 2009; Ovum, 2010; Richardson, Moore, Clair, & Vitti, 2010; Sinur & Hill, 2010). O resultado foi o desenvolvimento dos processos na organização, com a sua modelação em BPMN e implementação num BPMS, onde podemos comprovar a abordagem BPM numa organização desportiva.

Application of the Hidden Markov Model for Innovative Projects "Viability" Analysis

This master thesis deals with determining of innovative projects "viability". "Viability" is the probability of innovative project being implemented. Hidden Markov Models are used for evaluation of this factor. The problem of determining parameters of model, which produce given data sequence with the highest probability, are solving in this research. Data about innovative projects contained in reports of Russian programs "UMNIK", "START" and additional data obtained during study are used as input data for determining of model parameters. The Baum-Welch algorithm which is one implementation of expectation-maximization algorithm is used at this research for calculating model parameters. At the end part of the master thesis mathematical basics for practical implementation are given (in particular mathematical description of the algorithm and implementation methods for Markov models).

Early implementation of Generation I of the Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) Initiative : 2007 interim evaluation report /

"ETA Occasional Paper 2008-03."

A Kinetic Vlasov Model for Plasma Simulation Using Discontinuous Galerkin Method on Many-Core Architectures

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-03

Salivary Gland and Tooth Abnormalities Massively Increase Caries Susceptibility in A Mouse Model of Cleft Lip/Palate

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-04

A Dialogue between Treatment Integrity Research and Design-Based Implementation Research

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Implementation of a Self-Management System for Students with Disabilities in General Education Settings

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Comparing Patient-Centered Medical Home Implementation in Urban and Rural VHA Clinics: Results from the Patient Aligned Care Team (PACT) Initiative

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

An Electromechanical Coupled Model of the Probe of a Scanning Fiber Imaging System

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Design and implementation of a windows-based parallel computing environment for large scale optimization

A parallel computing environment to support optimization of large-scale engineering systems is designed and implemented on Windows-based personal computer networks, using the master-worker model and the Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM). It is involved in decomposition of a large engineering system into a number of smaller subsystems optimized in parallel on worker nodes and coordination of subsystem optimization results on the master node. The environment consists of six functional modules, i.e. the master control, the optimization model generator, the optimizer, the data manager, the monitor, and the post processor. Object-oriented design of these modules is presented. The environment supports steps from the generation of optimization models to the solution and the visualization on networks of computers. User-friendly graphical interfaces make it easy to define the problem, and monitor and steer the optimization process. It has been verified by an example of a large space truss optimization. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The impact of organizational culture and reshaping capabilities on change implementation success: The mediating role of readiness for change

It was hypothesized that employees' perceptions of an organizational culture strong in human relations values and open systems values would be associated with heightened levels of readiness for change which, in turn, would be predictive of change implementation success. Similarly, it was predicted that reshaping capabilities would lead to change implementation success, via its effects on employees' perceptions of readiness for change. Using a temporal research design, these propositions were tested for 67 employees working in a state government department who were about to undergo the implementation of a new end-user computing system in their workplace. Change implementation success was operationalized as user satisfaction and system usage. There was evidence to suggest that employees who perceived strong human relations values in their division at Time 1 reported higher levels of readiness for change at pre-implementation which, in turn, predicted system usage at Time 2. In addition, readiness for change mediated the relationship between reshaping capabilities and system usage. Analyses also revealed that pre-implementation levels of readiness for change exerted a positive main effect on employees' satisfaction with the system's accuracy, user friendliness, and formatting functions at post-implementation. These findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical contribution to the readiness for change literature, and in relation to the practical importance of developing positive change attitudes among employees if change initiatives are to be successful.

The AustLit Gateway and Scholarly Bibliography: A Specialist Implementation of the FRBR

This paper discusses how the AustLit: Australian Literature Gateway's interpretation, enhancement, and implementation of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions' Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR Final Report 1998) model is meeting the needs of Australian literature scholars for accurate bibliographic representation of the histories of literary texts. It also explores how the AustLit Gateway's underpinning research principles, which are based on the tradition of scholarly enumerative and descriptive bibliography, with enhancements from analytical bibliography and literary biography, have impacted upon our implementation of the FRBR model. The major enhancement or alteration to the model is the use of enhanced manifestations, which allow the full representation of all agents' contributions to be shown in a highly granular format by enabling creation events to be incorporated at all levels of the Work, Expression, and Manifestation nexus.