Multi-objective optimization for multiphase orbital rendezvous missions

A multi-objective optimization approach was proposed for multiphase orbital rendezvous missions and validated by application to a representative numerical problem. By comparing the Pareto fronts obtained using the proposed method, the relationships between the three objectives considered are revealed, and the influences of other mission parameters, such as the sensors' field of view, can also be analyzed effectively. For multiphase orbital rendezvous missions, the tradeoff relationships between the total velocity increment and the trajectory robustness index as well as between the total velocity increment and the time of flight are obvious and clear. However, the tradeoff relationship between the time of flight and the trajectory robustness index is weak, especially for the four- and five-phase missions examined. The proposed approach could be used to reorganize a stable rendezvous profile for an engineering rendezvous mission, when there is a failure that prevents the completion of the nominal mission.

The pursuit of academic excellence and business engagement: Is it irreconcilable?

Universities currently need to satisfy the demands of different audiences. In light of the increasing policy emphasis on "third mission" activities, universities are attempting to incorporate these into their traditional missions of teaching and research. University strategies to accomplishing its traditional missions are well-honed and routinized, but the incorporation of the third mission is posing important strategic and managerial challenges for universities. This study explores the relationship between university-business collaborations and academic excellence in order to examine the extent to which academic institutions can balance these objectives. Based on data from the UK Research Assessment Exercise 2001 at the level of the university department, we find no systematic positive or negative relationship between scientific excellence and engagement with industry. Across the disciplinary fields reported in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise (i. e. engineering, hard sciences, biomedicine, social sciences and the humanities) the relationship between academic excellence and engagement with business is largely contingent on the institutional context of the university department. This paper adds to the growing body of literature on university engagement with business by examining this activity for the social sciences and the humanities. Our findings have important implications for the strategic management of university departments and for higher education policy related to measuring the performance of higher education research institutions. © 2013 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary.

Traversing digital learning landscapes: an Institutional and faculty case study.

Within the UK, there is a growing awareness to better understand what online educational technologies can offer in relation to learning and teaching, and how social technologies are changing communication and collaboration out with formal education. The concept of the ‘digital university’ is being widely debated within the UK Higher education sector (McCluskey and Winter, 2012), becoming embedded in educational policy, and beginning to be explored within many institutions. This session will report on one such institutional initiative, undertaken at Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland. A Digital Futures Working Group was established to: benchmark best practice in key areas including digitally enhanced education and digital literacies development; identify areas for short term action; and to produce a robust ‘digital agenda’ to inform the future direction of the university. Pivotal to this was the recognition to evolve staff digital pedagogical practices and to harness emerging digital opportunities, meet learner expectations, and meet wider expectations for contemporary able citizens. This session will be delivered in two parts. Firstly we will provide an insight into the focus of the project and the rich picture methodology used to consult with staff and students. Secondly we will specify the outcomes produced, and provide a case study of how the Faculty of Health, Life and Social Sciences engaged with the process and the progression of their digitally enabled educational practices.

International Security in the Western Hemisphere: Legal and Institutional Developments

Odello, Marco, 'International Security in the Western Hemisphere: Legal and Institutional Developments', Anuario de Derecho Internacional, (2005) 21, pp.379-411 RAE2008

Constructing Universities as Organizations: University Reforms in Poland in the Light of Institutional Theory

This chapter shows that apart from changes at the systemic and institutional levels, successful reform implementation struggles with a gradual change in academic beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. Currently, visions of the university proposed by the Polish academic community and visions of it proposed by Polish reformers and policymakers (within ongoing reforms) are worlds apart. I shall study recent reforms in the context of specific academic self--protective narratives being produced in the last two decades (at the collective level of the academic profession) and in the context of the Ivory Tower university ideals predominant at the individual level (as studied comparatively through a large--scale European survey of the academic profession). Institutions change both swiftly, radically – and slowly, gradually. Research literature on institutional change until recently was focused almost exclusively on the role of radical changes caused by external shocks, leading to radical institutional reconfigurations. And research literature about the gradual, incremental institutional change have been emergent for about a decade and a half now (Mahoney and Thelen 2010; Streeck and Thelen 2005, 2009; Thelen 2003). Polish higher education provides interesting empirical grounds to test institutional theories. Both types of transformations (radical and gradual) may lead to equally permanent changes in the functioning of institutions, equally deep transformations of their fundamental rules, norms and operating procedures. Questions about institutional change are questions about characteristics of institutions undergoing changes. Endogenous institutional change is as important as exogenous change (Mahoney and Thelen 2010: 3). Moments in which there emerge opportunities of performing deep institutional reforms are short (in Poland these moments occurred in 2009-2012), and between them there are long periods of institutional stasis and stability (Pierson 2004: 134-135). The premises of theories of institutional change can be applied systematically to a system of higher education which shows an unprecedented rate of change and which is exposed to broad, fundamental reform programmes. There are many ways to discuss the Kudrycka reforms - and "constructing Polish universities as organizations" (rather than traditional academic "institutions") is one of more promising. In this account, Polish universities are under construction as organizations, and under siege as institutions. They are being rationalized as organizations, following instrumental rather than institutional logics. Polish academics in their views and attitudes are still following an institutional logic, while Polish reforms are following the new (New Public Management-led) instrumental logics. Both are on a collision course about basic values. Reforms and reformees seem to be worlds apart. I am discussing the the two contrasting visions of the university and describing the Kudrycka reforms as the reistitutionalization of the research mission of Polish universities. The core of reforms is a new level of funding and governance - the intermediary one (and no longer the state one), with four new peer-run institutions, with the KEJN, PKA and NCN in the lead. Poland has been beginning to follow the "global rules of the academic game" since 2009. I am also discussing two academic self-protection modes agains reforms: (Polish) "national academic traditions" and "institutional exceptionalism" (of Polish HE). Both discourses prevailed for two decades, none seems socially (and politically) acceptable any more. Old myths do not seem to fit new realities. In this context I am discussing briefly and through large-scale empirical data the low connectedness to the outside world of Polish HE institutions, low influence of the government on HE policies and the low level of academic entrepreneurialism, as seen through the EUROAC/CAP micro-level data. The conclusion is that the Kudrycka reforms are an imporant first step only - Poland is too slow in reforms, and reforms are both underfunded and inconsistent. Poland is still accumulating disadvantages as public funding and university reforms have not reached a critical point. Ever more efforts lead to ever less results, as macro-level data show. Consequently, it may be useful to construct universities as organizations in Poland to a higher degree than elsewhere in Europe, and especially in Western Europe.

Davis, soldier missionary : a biography of Rev. Jerome D. Davis, D.D., Lieut-Colonel of volunteers and for thirty-nine years a missionary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Japan

http://www.archive.org/details/davissoldiermiss00davirich

Educational missions.

http://www.archive.org/details/educationalmissi008437mbp

Memorial volume of the first fifty years of the American board of commissioners for foreign missions.

http://www.archive.org/details/memorialvolumeof00andeuoft

Christian missions ; their agents, and their results / by T.W.M. Marshall.

http://www.archive.org/details/a592254601marsuoft

Poor Lo! Early Indian missions. A memorial. By Walter N. Wyeth.

http://www.archive.org/details/poorloearlyindia00wyetiala

Historical sketch of the Hawaiian mission : and the missions to Micronesia and the Marquesas Islands / by S.C. Bartlett.

http://www.archive.org/details/historicalsketch00bartiala