Crisis in Japan and the Way Out: A Counterargument to Pessimistic Views

This paper focuses on a review of the present state of, and outlook for the Japanese economy. The paper is composed of three parts. The first describes the interrelation between the crisis-ridden East Asian economies and Japan. I argue that Japan did not cause the Asian currency crisis. The second part describes the current state of the Japanese economy after the bubble burst. I also discuss the medium- and long-term challenges that face the Japanese economy. The third part concentrates on the issue of the "liquidity trap" Japan is experiencing. I argue that the yen's exchange rate is more likely to appreciate than depreciate by pumping liquidity into the economy while interest rates cannot be lowered any further, and therefore a "helicopter money" policy is the only way to induce a positive inflation rate and escape from the liquidity trap.

Firms' use of FTA schemes in exporting and importing : is there a two-way relationship?

In this paper, we examine the roles of firm size in the use of FTA schemes in exporting and importing. Also, it is investigated as to whether FTA users in importing (exporting) are more likely to use FTA schemes in exporting (importing). To do that, we employed a unique survey in which the detailed information on FTA use is available for Japanese affiliates in ASEAN. Our findings are summarized as follows. First, firm size matters in the use of FTA schemes only in exporting, not in importing. Second, the past experience of FTA use in exporting (importing) does not help firms use the FTA schemes in importing (exporting). Thus, it is necessary to assist firms to use FTA schemes in exporting even if they are already using FTA schemes in importing.

An improved way for evaluating competences: A different approach to project management learning .;

This paper presents a formal initiative for monitoring the competence acquisition by a team of students with different backgrounds facing the experience of being working by projects and in a project. These students are inexperienced in the project management field and they play this game on a time-shared manner along with other activities. The goal of this experience is to make some improvements in determining the competence levels acquired by means of how the work is being done. The use of this information, which is out of the scope of this particular work, could make possible to bring additional information to the students involved in terms of their individual competencies and the identification of new opportunities of personal improvement.

Is the concept of a green economy a useful way of framing Policy Discussions and policymaking to promote sustainable development?

In the Viewpoints section, academics, practitioners and experts share their perspectives on policy questions relevant to sustainable development. In this issue, experts address the question: “Is the concept of a green economy a useful way of framing policy discussions and policymaking to promote sustainable development?

A new way of teaching different subjects in a foreign language in the Building Engineering Degree at the Universidad Politécnica.

The European Union has been promoting linguistic diversity for many years as one of its main educational goals. This is an element that facilitates student mobility and student exchanges between different universities and countries and enriches the education of young undergraduates. In particular, a higher degree of competence in the English language is becoming essential for engineers, architects and researchers in general, as English has become the lingua franca that opens up horizons to internationalisation and the transfer of knowledge in today’s world. Many experts point to the Integrated Approach to Contents and Foreign Languages System as being an option that has certain benefits over the traditional method of teaching a second language that is exclusively based on specific subjects. This system advocates teaching the different subjects in the syllabus in a language other than one’s mother tongue, without prioritising knowledge of the language over the subject. This was the idea that in the 2009/10 academic year gave rise to the Second Language Integration Programme (SLI Programme) at the Escuela Arquitectura Técnica in the Universidad Politécnica Madrid (EUATM-UPM), just at the beginning of the tuition of the new Building Engineering Degree, which had been adapted to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) model. This programme is an interdisciplinary initiative for the set of subjects taught during the semester and is coordinated through the Assistant Director Office for Educational Innovation. The SLI Programme has a dual goal; to familiarise students with the specific English terminology of the subject being taught, and at the same time improve their communication skills in English. A total of thirty lecturers are taking part in the teaching of eleven first year subjects and twelve in the second year, with around 120 students who have voluntarily enrolled in a special group in each semester. During the 2010/2011 academic year the degree of acceptance and the results of the SLI Programme have been monitored. Tools have been designed to aid interdisciplinary coordination and to analyse satisfaction, such as coordination records and surveys. The results currently available refer to the first and second year and are divided into specific aspects of the different subjects involved and into general aspects of the ongoing experience.

Multidisciplinary Learning, Another way of Teaching Maths in Engineering

Multidisciplinary training is widely appreciated in industry and business, and nevertheless usually is not addressed in the early stages of most undergraduate programs. We outline here a multidisciplinary course for undergraduates studying engineering in which mathematics would be the common language, the transverse tool. The goal is motivating students to learn more mathematics and as a result, improve the quality of engineering education. The course would be structured around projects in four branches in engineering: mechanical, electrical, civil and bio-tech. The projects would be chosen among a wide variety of topics in engineering practice selected with the guidance of professional engineers. In these projects mathematics should interact with at least two other basic areas of knowledge in engineering: chemistry, computers science, economics, design or physics.

Two way clustering of Microarray Data using a Hybrid Approach

The Microarray technique is rather powerful, as it allows to test up thousands of genes at a time, but this produces an overwhelming set of data files containing huge amounts of data, which is quite difficult to pre-process, separate, classify and correlate for interesting conclusions to be extracted. Modern machine learning, data mining and clustering techniques based on information theory, are needed to read and interpret the information contents buried in those large data sets. Independent Component Analysis method can be used to correct the data affected by corruption processes or to filter the uncorrectable one and then clustering methods can group similar genes or classify samples. In this paper a hybrid approach is used to obtain a two way unsupervised clustering for a corrected microarray data.

The new cloud computing paradigm: the way to IT seen as a utility

In the present competitive environment, companies are wondering how to reduce their IT costs while increasing their efficiency and agility to react when changes in the business processes are required. Cloud Computing is the latest paradigm to optimize the use of IT resources considering ?everything as a service? and receiving these services from the Cloud (Internet) instead of owning and managing hardware and software assets. The benefits from the model are clear. However, there are also concerns and issues to be solved before Cloud Computing spreads across the different industries. This model will allow a pay-per-use model for the IT services and many benefits like cost savings, agility to react when business demands changes and simplicity because there will not be any infrastructure to operate and administrate. It will be comparable to the well known utilities like electricity, water or gas companies. However, this paper underlines several risk factors of the model. Leading technology companies should research on solutions to minimize the risks described in this article. Keywords - Cloud Computing, Utility Computing, Elastic Computing, Enterprise Agility