Increasing the value of household appliances by adding a heat pump system

Historically, domestic tasks such as preparing food and washing and drying clothes and dishes were done by hand. In a modern home many of these chores are taken care of by machines such as washing machines, dishwashers and tumble dryers. When the first such machines came on the market customers were happy that they worked at all! Today, the costs of electricity and customers’ environmental awareness are high, so features such as low electricity, water and detergent use strongly influence which household machine the customer will buy. One way to achieve lower electricity usage for the tumble dryer and the dishwasher is to add a heat pump system. The function of a heat pump system is to extract heat from a lower temperature source (heat source) and reject it to a higher temperature sink (heat sink) at a higher temperature level. Heat pump systems have been used for a long time in refrigerators and freezers, and that industry has driven the development of small, high quality, low price heat pump components. The low price of good quality heat pump components, along with an increased willingness to pay extra for lower electricity usage and environmental impact, make it possible to introduce heat pump systems in other household products. However, there is a high risk of failure with new features. A number of household manufacturers no longer exist because they introduced poorly implemented new features, which resulted in low quality and product performance. A manufacturer must predict whether the future value of a feature is high enough for the customer chain to pay for it. The challenge for the manufacturer is to develop and produce a high-performance heat pump feature in a household product with high quality, predict future willingness to pay for it, and launch it at the right moment in order to succeed. Tumble dryers with heat pump systems have been on the market since 2000. Paper I reports on the development of a transient simulation model of a commercial heat pump tumble dryer. The measured and simulated results were compared with good similarity. The influence of the size of the compressor and the condenser was investigated using the validated simulation model. The results from the simulation model show that increasing the cylinder volume of the compressor by 50% decreases the drying time by 14% without using more electricity.  Paper II is a concept study of adding a heat pump system to a dishwasher in order to decrease the total electricity usage. The dishwasher, dishware and water are heated by the condenser, and the evaporator absorbs the heat from a water tank. The majority of the heat transfer to the evaporator occurs when ice is generated in the water tank. An experimental setup and a transient simulation model of a heat pump dishwasher were developed. The simulation results show a 24% reduction in electricity use compared to a conventional dishwasher heated with an electric element. The simulation model was based on an experimental setup that was not optimised. During the study it became apparent that it is possible to decrease electricity usage even more with the next experimental setup.

Increasing NH4+ retention efficiency of sandy soils by adding a modified kaolin material: Mesolite

Water and ammonium retention by sandy soils may be low and result in leaching of applied fertiliser. To increase water and nutrient retention, zeolite is sometimes applied as a soil ameliorant for high value land uses including turf and horticulture. We have used a new modified kaolin material (MesoLite) as a soil amendment to test the efficiency of NH4+ retention and compared the results with natural zeolite. MesoLite is made by caustic reaction of kaolin at temperature between 80-95°C; although it has a moderate surface area, its cation exchange capacity is very high;(SA=13m2/g,CEC=500meq/100g). A 13cm tall sand column filled with ~450g of sandy soil homogeneously mixed with 1, 2, 4, and 8g of MesoLite or natural zeolite per 1kg of soil was prepared. After saturation with local bore water, concentrated ammonium sulfate solution was injected at the base. Then, bore water was passed from bottom to top through the column at amounts up to 6 pore volumes and at a constant flow rate of 10ml/min using a peristaltic pump. Concentrations of leached NH4+ were determined using an AutoAnalyser. The concentration of NH4+ leached from the column with 0.4% MesoLite was greatly (90%) reduced relative to unamended soil. Under these conditions NH4+ retention by the soil-MesoLite mixture was 11.5 times more efficient than the equivalent soil-natural zeolite mixture. Glasshouse experiments conducted in a separate study show that NH4+ adsorbed by MesoLite is available to plants.

A technology diffusion perspective of Enterprise Resource Planning across European Small and Medium Enterprises: from determinants to Use to Value

Tese apresentada como requisito parcial para obtenção do grau de Doutor em Gestão de Informação

Population Ethics and the Value of Life

Public policies often involve choices of alternatives in which the size and the composition of the population may vary. Examples are the allocation of resources to prenatal care and the design of aid packages to developing countries. In order to assess the corresponding feasible choices on normative grounds, criteria for social evaluation that are capable of performing variable-population comparisons are required. We review several important axioms for welfarist population principles and discuss the link between individual well-being and the desirability of adding a new person to a given society.

Does active management add any value?

The question as to whether active management adds any value above that of the funds investment policy is one of continual interest to investors. In order to investigate this issue in the UK real estate market we examine a number of related questions. First, how much return variability is explained by investment policy? Second, how similar are the policies across funds? Third, how much of a fund’s return is determined by investment policy? Finally, how was this added value achieved? Using data for 19 real estate funds we find that investment policy explains less than half of the variability in returns over time, nothing of the variation across funds and that more than 100% of a level of return is attributed to investment policy. The results also show UK real estate fund focus exclusively on trying to pick winners to add value and that in pursuit of active return fund mangers incur high tracking error risk, consequently, successful active management is very difficult to achieve. In addition, the results are dependent on the benchmark used to represent the investment policy of the fund. Nonetheless, active management can indeed add value to a real estate funds performance. This is the good news. The bad news is adding value is much more difficult to achieve than is generally accepted.

Adapted customer relationship management implementation framework:facilitating value creation in nursing homes

This paper proposes a framework to support Customer Relationship Management (CRM) implementation in nursing homes. The work extends research by Cheng et al. (2005) who conducted in-depth questionnaires to identify critical features (termed value-characteristics), which are areas identified as adding the most value if implemented. Although Cheng et al. did proposed an implementation framework, summary of, and inconsistent inclusion of value-characteristics, limits the practical use of this contribution during implementation. In this paper we adapt the original framework to correct perceived deficiencies. We link the value characteristics to operational, analytical, strategic and/or collaborative CRM solution types, to allow consideration in context of practical implementation solutions. The outcome of this paper shows that, practically, a 'one solution meets all characteristic' approach to CRM implementation within nursing homes is inappropriate. Our framework, however, supports implementers in identifying how value can be gained when implementing a specific CRM solution within nursing homes; which subsequently support project management and expectation management.

Maximum principle, mean value operators and quasi boundedness in non-euclidean settings

This work deals with some classes of linear second order partial differential operators with non-negative characteristic form and underlying non- Euclidean structures. These structures are determined by families of locally Lipschitz-continuous vector fields in RN, generating metric spaces of Carnot- Carath´eodory type. The Carnot-Carath´eodory metric related to a family {Xj}j=1,...,m is the control distance obtained by minimizing the time needed to go from two points along piecewise trajectories of vector fields. We are mainly interested in the causes in which a Sobolev-type inequality holds with respect to the X-gradient, and/or the X-control distance is Doubling with respect to the Lebesgue measure in RN. This study is divided into three parts (each corresponding to a chapter), and the subject of each one is a class of operators that includes the class of the subsequent one. In the first chapter, after recalling “X-ellipticity” and related concepts introduced by Kogoj and Lanconelli in [KL00], we show a Maximum Principle for linear second order differential operators for which we only assume a Sobolev-type inequality together with a lower terms summability. Adding some crucial hypotheses on measure and on vector fields (Doubling property and Poincar´e inequality), we will be able to obtain some Liouville-type results. This chapter is based on the paper [GL03] by Guti´errez and Lanconelli. In the second chapter we treat some ultraparabolic equations on Lie groups. In this case RN is the support of a Lie group, and moreover we require that vector fields satisfy left invariance. After recalling some results of Cinti [Cin07] about this class of operators and associated potential theory, we prove a scalar convexity for mean-value operators of L-subharmonic functions, where L is our differential operator. In the third chapter we prove a necessary and sufficient condition of regularity, for boundary points, for Dirichlet problem on an open subset of RN related to sub-Laplacian. On a Carnot group we give the essential background for this type of operator, and introduce the notion of “quasi-boundedness”. Then we show the strict relationship between this notion, the fundamental solution of the given operator, and the regularity of the boundary points.

The effect of adding features on product attractiveness: the role of product perceived congruity

Technological progress has been enabling companies to add disparate features to their existing products. This research investigates the effect of adding more features on consumers’ evaluation of the product, by examining in particular the role of the congruity of the features added with the base product as a variable the moderates the effect of increasing the number of features. Grounding on schema-congruity theory, I propose that the cognitive elaboration associated with the product congruity of the features added explains consumers’ evaluation as the number of new features increases. In particular, it is shown that consumers perceive a benefit from increasing the number of features only when these features are congruent with the product. The underlying mechanisms that explains this finding predicts that when the number of incongruent features increases the cognitive resources necessary to elaborate such incongruities increase and consumers are not willing to spend such resources. However, I further show that when encouraged to consider the new features thoughtfully, consumers do seem able to infer value from increasing the number of moderately incongruent features. Nonetheless, this finding does not apply for those new features that are extremely incongruent with the product. Further evidence for consumers’ ability to resolve the moderate incongruity associated with adding more features is also shown, by studying the moderating role of temporal construal. I propose that consumers perceive an increase in product evaluation as the number of moderately incongruent features increases when consumers consider purchasing the product in the distant future, whereas such an increase is not predicted for the near future scenario. I verify these effect in three experimental studies. Theoretical and managerial implications, and possible avenues of future research are also suggested.

Strategies for Optimizing Value of Finished Cattle in Value-Based Marketing Grids

Performance and carcass data from 624 steers in three experiments were used to evaluate potential strategies that might be used with incoming feeders to remove animals that produce low value carcasses when cattle are sold in a valuebased grid. Removing 10% of the carcasses with the lowest net value from each group increased the overall average net value of the remaining carcasses $17.50 to $21.09. Carcass weight was found to be the most significant factor determining net value of the carcass. Gain of the steers during the first 3 to 5 weeks of the feeding period was significantly related to average final gain and carcass value, but accounted for a small portion of the overall variation in gain or carcass value. Use of initial gain was successful in identifying ten of the sixty-four carcasses with least net value in a value-based grid. Adding frame score and measurement of initial thickness of backfat along with initial gain did not significantly improve identification of the low-value carcasses. Sorting the steers as feeders based on frame score and initial thickness of backfat resulted in differences in performance and carcass measurements. The low-value carcasses tended to be concentrated in the smaller-framed steers.

Prognostic Value of Secretoneurin in Critically Ill Patients With Infections.

OBJECTIVES Secretoneurin is produced in neuroendocrine cells, and the myocardium and circulating secretoneurin levels provide incremental prognostic information to established risk indices in cardiovascular disease. As myocardial dysfunction contributes to poor outcome in critically ill patients, we wanted to assess the prognostic value of secretoneurin in two cohorts of critically ill patients with infections. DESIGN Two prospective, observational studies. SETTING Twenty-four and twenty-five ICUs in Finland. PATIENTS A total of 232 patients with severe sepsis (cohort #1) and 94 patients with infections and respiratory failure (cohort #2). INTERVENTIONS None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS We measured secretoneurin levels by radioimmunoassay in samples obtained early after ICU admission and compared secretoneurin with other risk indices. In patients with severe sepsis, admission secretoneurin levels (logarithmically transformed) were associated with hospital mortality (odds ratio, 3.17 [95% CI, 1.12-9.00]; p = 0.030) and shock during the hospitalization (odds ratio, 2.17 [1.06-4.46]; p = 0.034) in analyses that adjusted for other risk factors available on ICU admission. Adding secretoneurin levels to age, which was also associated with hospital mortality in the multivariate model, improved the risk prediction as assessed by the category-free net reclassification index: 0.35 (95% CI, 0.06-0.64) (p = 0.02). In contrast, N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide levels were not associated with mortality in the multivariate model that included secretoneurin measurements, and N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide did not improve patient classification on top of age. Secretoneurin levels were also associated with hospital mortality after adjusting for other risk factors and improved patient classification in cohort #2. In both cohorts, the optimal cutoff for secretoneurin levels at ICU admission to predict hospital mortality was ≈ 175 pmol/L, and higher levels were associated with mortality also when adjusting for Simplified Acute Physiology Score II and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment scores. CONCLUSIONS Secretoneurin levels provide incremental information to established risk indices for the prediction of mortality and shock in critically ill patients with severe infections.

The value of a small microkernel for dreamy memory and the RAMpage memory hierarchy

This paper explores potential for the RAMpage memory hierarchy to use a microkernel with a small memory footprint, in a specialized cache-speed static RAM (tightly-coupled memory, TCM). Dreamy memory is DRAM kept in low-power mode, unless referenced. Simulations show that a small microkernel suits RAMpage well, in that it achieves significantly better speed and energy gains than a standard hierarchy from adding TCM. RAMpage, in its best 128KB L2 case, gained 11% speed using TCM, and reduced energy 14%. Equivalent conventional hierarchy gains were under 1%. While 1MB L2 was significantly faster against lower-energy cases for the smaller L2, the larger SRAM's energy does not justify the speed gain. Using a 128KB L2 cache in a conventional architecture resulted in a best-case overall run time of 2.58s, compared with the best dreamy mode run time (RAMpage without context switches on misses) of 3.34s, a speed penalty of 29%. Energy in the fastest 128KB L2 case was 2.18J vs. 1.50J, a reduction of 31%. The same RAMpage configuration without dreamy mode took 2.83s as simulated, and used 2.39J, an acceptable trade-off (penalty under 10%) for being able to switch easily to a lower-energy mode.

Entrepreneurship and innovation through experience:student and employer perspectives of the value of work-based learning in promoting entrepreneurialism

The 'internationalisation' of Business and Management education, reflective of EU enlargement and the unprecedented globalisation of education, has resulted in growing numbers of overseas students adding a diversity and richness to the learning environment within many contemporary European Higher Educational Institutions (Green, 2006, Sliwa & Grandy, 2006). However, cross-national studies analyzing the impact that the internationalisation of business education has on the employability of business and management graduates are rare. Furthermore, there exists a notable gap in research aimed at identifying and conceptualising the generic business skills and competencies required by European employers of business and management graduates. By proposing a conceptual framework based upon a working model of business graduate employability, this goes some way to addressing this gap.

Premium e-grocery:exploring value in logistics integrated service solutions

E-grocery is gradually becoming viable or a necessity for many families. Yet, most e-supermarkets are seen as providers of low value "staple" and bulky goods mainly. While each store has a large number of SKU available, these products are mainly necessity goods with low marginal value for hedonistic consumption. A need to acquire diverse products (e.g., organic), premium priced products (e.g., wine) for special occasions (e.g., anniversary, birthday), or products just for health related reasons (e.g., allergies, diabetes) are yet to be served via one-stop e-tailers. In this paper, we design a mathematical model that takes into account consumers' geo-demographics and multi-product sourcing capacity for creating critical mass and profit. Our mathematical model is a variant of Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (CVRPTW), which we extend by adding intermediate locations for trucks to meet and exchange goods. We illustrate our model for the city of Istanbul using GIS maps, and discuss its various extensions as well as managerial implications.

Value creation for Amorim Turismo through the optimization of its strategy, resources and processes

With the final purpose of adding value to Amorim Turismo, several papers were analysed, key stakeholders were heard, competitors were studied and so was the market. After this evaluation, it was concluded that there is a chance to consolidate the quality of the service offered and it was with this goal in mind that several recommendations were given. However, such recommendations suffer a cost restriction, which was not neglected, and should be considered into further complementary research activity. Risk assessment was also conducted so that future issues can be anticipated and dealt with preventively.

Perpetual debt valuation: the net present value myopia

Would you prefer to receive a fixed rent for a period of 50 years, 75 years or perpetually? Well, if you have chosen the perpetual option, you are absolutely right. However, when considering a mathematical and financial approach, they may all end up roughly the same whenever the Net Present Value (NPV) is approximately identical. It makes common sense to choose the perpetual option even if the NPV exhibits myopia when computing the discount value of a fixed yearly rent. After a certain period, the discount value becomes approximately the same even when adding more yearly fixed rents. Corporations and governments issue perpetual bonds while recognizing these may not represent a very good financing strategy and thus implying that most of these issues are either callable or convertible on the issuer’s request. In approaching the existing perpetual debt related NPV myopia, this paper holds two main goals: firstly, we intend to study the behaviours of perpetual debt yields against other perpetual instruments and, secondly, we consider the financial methods for assessing the value of money before proposing a formula adjustment that might serve to overcome default NPV when evaluating fixed rents in perpetuity.