ICOMF: Towards a Multi-cloud Ecosystem for Dynamic Resource Composition and Scaling

Modern cloud-based applications and infrastructures may include resources and services (components) from multiple cloud providers, are heterogeneous by nature and require adjustment, composition and integration. The specific application requirements can be met with difficulty by the current static predefined cloud integration architectures and models. In this paper, we propose the Intercloud Operations and Management Framework (ICOMF) as part of the more general Intercloud Architecture Framework (ICAF) that provides a basis for building and operating a dynamically manageable multi-provider cloud ecosystem. The proposed ICOMF enables dynamic resource composition and decomposition, with a main focus on translating business models and objectives to cloud services ensembles. Our model is user-centric and focuses on the specific application execution requirements, by leveraging incubating virtualization techniques. From a cloud provider perspective, the ecosystem provides more insight into how to best customize the offerings of virtualized resources.

Pathways to care in subjects at high risk for psychotic disorders — A European perspective

Evidence-based decisions on indicated prevention in early psychosis require large-scale studies on the pathways to care in high-risk subjects. EPOS (The European Prediction of Psychosis Study), a prospective multi-center, naturalistic field study in four European countries (Finland, Germany, The Netherlands and England), was designed to acquire accurate knowledge about pathways to care and delay in obtaining specialized high risk care. Our high risk sample (n=233) reported on average 2.9 help-seeking contacts, with an average delay between onset of relevant problems to initial help-seeking contact of 72.6 weeks, and between initial help-seeking contact and reaching specialized high risk care of 110.9 weeks. This resulted in a total estimated duration of an unrecognized risk for psychosis of 3 ½ years. Across EPOS EU regions, about 90% of care pathway contacts were within professional health care sectors. Between EPOS regions, differences in the pathways parameters including early detection and health-care systems were often very pronounced. High-risk participants who later made transition to a full psychotic disorder had significantly longer delays between initial help-seeking and receiving appropriate interventions. Our study underlines the need for regionally adapted implementation of early detection and intervention programs within respective mental health and health care networks, including enhancing public awareness of early psychosis.

Multi-Camera very wide baseline feature matching based on view-adaptive junction detection

This paper presents a strategy for solving the feature matching problem in calibrated very wide-baseline camera settings. In this kind of settings, perspective distortion, depth discontinuities and occlusion represent enormous challenges. The proposed strategy addresses them by using geometrical information, specifically by exploiting epipolar-constraints. As a result it provides a sparse number of reliable feature points for which 3D position is accurately recovered. Special features known as junctions are used for robust matching. In particular, a strategy for refinement of junction end-point matching is proposed which enhances usual junction-based approaches. This allows to compute cross-correlation between perfectly aligned plane patches in both images, thus yielding better matching results. Evaluation of experimental results proves the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in very wide-baseline environments.

Is building renovation truly sustainable? The need for applying a multi-criteria assessment through life cycle approach

The aim of the present research is to characterise the international scene in the field of building refurbishment, by thoroughly reviewing the literature relating to building renovation and systematising the results according to the different aspects considered by the authors. Even though there is certain consensus with respect to the criteria for the selection of energy efficiency measures, the assessment criteria differ broadly and widely. The present work highlights the lack of consensus on the assessment criteria and the need of harmonization. A holistic view is required in order to identify the most sustainable strategies in each particular case, considering social, environmental and economic impacts from a life cycle perspective.

A multi-level analysis of innovation diffusion: The case of solar photovoltaic systems in Germany and the disillusion of grid parity

¿Suministrarán las fuentes de energía renovables toda la energía que el mundo necesita algún día? Algunos argumentan que sí, mientras que otros dicen que no. Sin embargo, en algunas regiones del mundo, la producción de electricidad a través de fuentes de energía renovables ya está en una etapa prometedora de desarrollo en la que su costo de generación de electricidad compite con fuentes de electricidad convencionales, como por ejemplo la paridad de red. Este logro ha sido respaldado por el aumento de la eficiencia de la tecnología, la reducción de los costos de producción y, sobre todo, los años de intervenciones políticas de apoyo financiero. La difusión de los sistemas solares fotovoltaicos (PV) en Alemania es un ejemplo relevante. Alemania no sólo es el país líder en términos de capacidad instalada de sistemas fotovoltaicos (PV) en todo el mundo, sino también uno de los países pioneros donde la paridad de red se ha logrado recientemente. No obstante, podría haber una nube en el horizonte. La tasa de difusión ha comenzado a declinar en muchas regiones. Además, las empresas solares locales – que se sabe son importantes impulsores de la difusión – han comenzado a enfrentar dificultades para manejar sus negocios. Estos acontecimientos plantean algunas preguntas importantes: ¿Es ésta una disminución temporal en la difusión? ¿Los adoptantes continuarán instalando sistemas fotovoltaicos? ¿Qué pasa con los modelos de negocio de las empresas solares locales? Con base en el caso de los sistemas fotovoltaicos en Alemania a través de un análisis multinivel y dos revisiones literarias complementarias, esta tesis doctoral extiende el debate proporcionando riqueza múltiple de datos empíricos en un conocimiento de contexto limitado. El primer análisis se basa en la perspectiva del adoptante, que explora el nivel "micro" y el proceso social que subyace a la adopción de los sistemas fotovoltaicos. El segundo análisis es una perspectiva a nivel de empresa, que explora los modelos de negocio de las empresas y sus roles impulsores en la difusión de los sistemas fotovoltaicos. El tercero análisis es una perspectiva regional, la cual explora el nivel "meso", el proceso social que subyace a la adopción de sistemas fotovoltaicos y sus técnicas de modelado. Los resultados incluyen implicaciones tanto para académicos como políticos, no sólo sobre las innovaciones en energía renovable relativas a la paridad de red, sino también, de manera inductiva, sobre las innovaciones ambientales impulsadas por las políticas que logren la competitividad de costes. ABSTRACT Will renewable energy sources supply all of the world energy needs one day? Some argue yes, while others say no. However, in some regions of the world, the electricity production through renewable energy sources is already at a promising stage of development at which their electricity generation costs compete with conventional electricity sources’, i.e., grid parity. This achievement has been underpinned by the increase of technology efficiency, reduction of production costs and, above all, years of policy interventions of providing financial support. The diffusion of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in Germany is an important frontrunner case in point. Germany is not only the top country in terms of installed PV systems’ capacity worldwide but also one of the pioneer countries where the grid parity has recently been achieved. However, there might be a cloud on the horizon. The diffusion rate has started to decline in many regions. In addition, local solar firms – which are known to be important drivers of diffusion – have started to face difficulties to run their businesses. These developments raise some important questions: Is this a temporary decline on diffusion? Will adopters continue to install PV systems? What about the business models of the local solar firms? Based on the case of PV systems in Germany through a multi-level analysis and two complementary literature reviews, this PhD Dissertation extends the debate by providing multiple wealth of empirical details in a context-limited knowledge. The first analysis is based on the adopter perspective, which explores the “micro” level and the social process underlying the adoption of PV systems. The second one is a firm-level perspective, which explores the business models of firms and their driving roles in diffusion of PV systems. The third one is a regional perspective, which explores the “meso” level, i.e., the social process underlying the adoption of PV systems and its modeling techniques. The results include implications for both scholars and policymakers, not only about renewable energy innovations at grid parity, but also in an inductive manner, about policy-driven environmental innovations that achieve the cost competiveness.

Unearthing the roots of degradation of Quercus pyrenaica coppices: an integrative perspective from clonal structure to carbon budgets

Quercus pyrenaica es una especie rebrotadora de raíz intensa e históricamente aprovechada en monte bajo para la obtención de leñas, carbón y pastos. Debido al éxodo rural y a la aparición de nuevas fuentes energéticas, este aprovechamiento fue abandonado en la década de 1970. Desde entonces, las bajas producciones de madera y bellota y el puntisecado de los pies evidencian el generalizado estancamiento de estas masas. Uno de los mayores retos actuales de la selvicultura en el ámbito mediterráneo es encontrar usos alternativos para estos montes abandonados, siendo la conversión a monte alto una de las alternativas preferidas. Se han realizado resalveos de conversión, sin embrago, éstos se aplican sin un conocimiento integral de las causas de la degradación. En esta tesis doctoral, estudiamos un hipotético desequilibrio entre la parte radical y la parte aérea (R:S) de las cepas de rebollo como causa subyacente de su decaimiento. En una parcela experimental, aprovechada al menos desde el siglo XII, se realizaron análisis genéticos a priori para elucidar la estructura genética del rodal, y así estudiar la influencia del tamaño clonal en el funcionamiento de las cepas. Las cepas de mayor tamaño presentaron un menor crecimiento diametral de sus pies, así como mayores tasas de respiración radical, estimadas a partir de flujos internos de CO2 a través del xilema (FT) y de los flujos de CO2 del suelo. Estos resultados sugieren que el desequilibrio R:S aumenta con el tamaño clonal, dado que la eliminación periódica de órganos aéreos, al mismo tiempo que las raíces permanecen intactas, da lugar a un gran desarrollo del sistema radical que consume gran parte de los carbohidratos no estructurales (NSC) en respiración de mantenimiento, comprometiendo así el desarrollo de órganos aéreos. Se excavaron y pesaron dos cepas compuestas por cuatro y ocho pies, las cuales mostraron ratios R:S (0.5 y 1, respectivamente) superiores a los registrados en pies de origen sexual. Al igual que en otras especies rebrotadoras de raíz, se observaron altas concentraciones de NSC en las raíces (> 20% en primavera) y una gran proporción de albura en el sistema radical (52%) que alberga una notable reserva de NSC (87 kg en la cepa de mayor tamaño). En el sistema radical de dicha cepa, estimada mediante dataciones radiocarbónicas en 550 años de edad, se contaron 248 uniones radicales. La persistencia de sistemas radicales grandes, viejos, y altamente interconectados sugiere que la gran cantidad de recursos almacenados y consumidos en las raíces compensan un pobre desarrollo aéreo con una alta resiliencia vegetativa. Para un mejor entendimiento de los balances de carbono y del agotamiento de NSC en las cepas de rebollo, se midieron los flujos internos y externos de CO2 en troncos y los flujos de CO2 del suelo, y se estimó la respiración de órganos aéreos (RS) y subterráneos (RR). Estacionalmente, RS y RR reflejaron las dinámicas de flujo de savia y de crecimiento del tronco, y estuvieron determinadas principalmente por los flujos externos de CO2, dada la escasa contribución de FT a RS y RR (< 10% y < 2%, respectivamente). En una escala circadiana, la contribución de FT a RS aumentó hasta un 25% en momentos de alta transpiración. Las bajas concentraciones de CO2 en el xilema ([CO2] hasta un 0.11%) determinaron comparativamente unos bajos FT, probablemente causados por una limitada respiración del xilema y una baja resistencia a la difusión radial del CO2 impuestos por la sequía estival. Los pulsos de [CO2] observados tras las primeras lluvias de otoño apoyan esta idea. A lo largo del periodo vegetativo, el flujo medio de CO2 procedente del suelo (39 mol CO2 day-1) fue el mayor flujo respiratorio, tres y cuatro veces superior a RS (12 mol CO2 day-1) y RR (8-9 mol CO2 day-1), respectivamente. Ratios RR/RS menores que la unidad evidencian un importante peso de la respiración aérea como sumidero de carbono adicional. Finalmente, se ensayó el zanjado de raíces y el anillamiento de troncos como tratamientos selvícolas alternativos con el objetivo de aumentar las reservas de NSC en los troncos de las cepas. Los resultados preliminares desaconsejan el zanjado de raíces por el alto coste derivado posiblemente de la cicatrización de las heridas. El anillado de troncos imposibilitó el transporte de NSC a las raíces y aumentó la concentración de almidón por encima de la zona anillada, mientras que sistema radical se mantiene por los pies no anillados de la cepa. Son necesarias más mediciones y datos adicionales para comprobar el mantenimiento de esta respuesta positiva a largo plazo. Para concluir, destacamos la necesidad de estudios multidisciplinares que permitan una comprensión integral de la degradación de los rebollares ibéricos para poder aplicar a posteriori una gestión adecuada en estos montes bajos abandonados. ABSTRACT Quercus pyrenaica is a vigorous root-resprouting species intensively and historically coppiced for firewood, charcoal and woody pastures. Due to the rural exodus and the appearance of new energy sources, coppicing was abandoned towards 1970. Since then, tree overaging has resulted in stand stagnation displayed by slow stem growth, branch dieback, and scarce acorn production. The urgent need to find new alternative uses for abandoned coppices is recognized as one of the biggest challenges which currently faces Mediterranean silviculture; conversion into high forest by thinning is one of the preferred alternatives. For this aim, thinning has been broadly applied and seldom tested, although without a comprehensive understanding of the causes of stand stagnation. In this PhD study, we test the hypothesis of an imbalance between above- and below-ground organs, result of long term coppicing, as the underlying cause of Q. pyrenaica decay. In an experimental plot coppiced since at least the 12th century, genetic analyses were performed a priori to elucidate inconspicuous clonal structure of Q. pyrenaica to evaluate how clonal size affects the functioning of these multi-stemmed trees. Clonal size negatively affected diametric stem growth, whereas root respiration rates, measured by internal fluxes of CO2 through xylem (FT) and soil CO2 efflux, increased with clonal size. These results suggest root-to-shoot (R:S) imbalance intensifying with clonal size: periodic removal of aboveground organs whilst belowground organs remain undisturbed may have led to massive root systems which consume a great proportion of non-structural carbohydrates (NSC) for maintenance respiration, thus constraining aboveground performance. Furthermore, excavation of two multi-stemmed trees, composed by four and eight stems, revealed R:S ratios (0.5 and 1, respectively) greater than those reported for sexually regenerated trees. Moreover, as similarly observed in several root-resprouting species, NSC allocation to roots was favored ([NSC] > 20% in spring): a large proportion of sapwood maintained throughout the root system (52%) stored a remarkable NSC pool of 87 kg in the case of the largest clone. In this root system of the eight-stemmed tree, 248 root connections were counted and, by radiocarbon dating, its age was estimated to be 550-years-old. Persistence of massive, old and highly interconnected root systems suggests that enhanced belowground NSC storage and consumption reflects a trade-off between vegetative resilience and aboveground development. For a better understanding of tree carbon budget and the potential role of carbon starvation in Q. pyrenaica decay, internal and external stem CO2 fluxes and soil CO2 effluxes were monitored to evaluate respiratory costs above- and below-ground. On a seasonal scale, stem and root respiration (RS and RR) mirrored sap flow and stem growth dynamics. Respiration was determined to the greatest extent by external fluxes of CO2 to the atmosphere or soil, since FT accounted for a low proportion of RS and RR (< 10% and < 2%, respectively). On a diel scale, the contribution of FT to RS increased up to 25% at high transpiration rates. Comparatively low FT was determined by the low concentration of xylem CO2 registered ([CO2] as low as 0.11%), likely as a consequence of constrained xylem respiration and reduced resistance to CO2 radial diffusion imposed by summer drought. Xylem [CO2] pulses following first autumn rains support this idea. Averaged over the growing season, soil CO2 efflux was the greatest respiratory flux (39 mol CO2 day-1), three and four times greater than RS (12 mol CO2 day-1) and RR (8-9 mol CO2 day-1), respectively. Ratios of RR/RS below one evidence an additional and important weight of aboveground respiration as a tree carbon sink. Finally, root trenching and stem girdling were tested as complimentary treatments to thinning as a means to improve carbon reserves in stems of clonal trees. Preliminary results discouraged root trenching due to the high cost likely incurred for wound closure. Stem girdling successfully blocked NSC translocation downward, increasing starch concentrations above the girdled zone whilst the root system is fed by non-girdled stems within the clone. Further measurements and ancillary data are necessary to verify that this positive effect hold over time. To conclude, the need of multidisciplinary approaches for an integrative understanding on the functioning of abandoned Q pyrenaica coppices is highlighted for an appropriate management of these stands.

Towards automatic tweet generation: A comparative study from the text summarization perspective in the journalism genre

In recent years, Twitter has become one of the most important microblogging services of the Web 2.0. Among the possible uses it allows, it can be employed for communicating and broadcasting information in real time. The goal of this research is to analyze the task of automatic tweet generation from a text summarization perspective in the context of the journalism genre. To achieve this, different state-of-the-art summarizers are selected and employed for producing multi-lingual tweets in two languages (English and Spanish). A wide experimental framework is proposed, comprising the creation of a new corpus, the generation of the automatic tweets, and their assessment through a quantitative and a qualitative evaluation, where informativeness, indicativeness and interest are key criteria that should be ensured in the proposed context. From the results obtained, it was observed that although the original tweets were considered as model tweets with respect to their informativeness, they were not among the most interesting ones from a human viewpoint. Therefore, relying only on these tweets may not be the ideal way to communicate news through Twitter, especially if a more personalized and catchy way of reporting news wants to be performed. In contrast, we showed that recent text summarization techniques may be more appropriate, reflecting a balance between indicativeness and interest, even if their content was different from the tweets delivered by the news providers.

Effects of climate change on fisheries : from a global to a regional perspective

Tese de doutoramento, Biologia (Biologia Marinha e Aquacultura), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2016

Consequences of twenty-first-century policy for multi-millennial climate and sea-level change

Most of the policy debate surrounding the actions needed to mitigate and adapt to anthropogenic climate change has been framed by observations of the past 150 years as well as climate and sea-level projections for the twenty-first century. The focus on this 250-year window, however, obscures some of the most profound problems associated with climate change. Here, we argue that the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a period during which the overwhelming majority of human-caused carbon emissions are likely to occur, need to be placed into a long-term context that includes the past 20 millennia, when the last Ice Age ended and human civilization developed, and the next ten millennia, over which time the projected impacts of anthropogenic climate change will grow and persist. This long-term perspective illustrates that policy decisions made in the next few years to decades will have profound impacts on global climate, ecosystems and human societies — not just for this century, but for the next ten millennia and beyond.

Multi-party risk management helps manage cement plant construction in Thailand

Several parties (stakeholders) are involved in a construction project. The conventional Risk Management Process (RMP) manages risks from a single party perspective, which does not give adequate consideration to the needs of others. The objective of multi-party risk management is to assist decision-makers in managing risk systematically and most efficiently in a multi-party environment. Multi-party Risk Management Processes (MRMP) consist of risk identification, structuring, analysis and developing responses from all party perspectives. The MRMP has been applied to a cement plant construction project in Thailand to demonstrate its effectiveness.

Managing careers and managing fairness : an organisational justice theory perspective on employee evaluations of, and reactions to, organisational career management practices

This thesis presents the results of a multi-method investigation of employee perceptions of fairness in relation to their career management experiences. Organisational justice theory (OJT) was developed as a theoretical framework and data were gathered via 325 quantitative questionnaires, 20 semi-structured interviews and the analysis of a variety of company documents and materials. The results of the questionnaire survey provided strong support for the salience of employee perceptions of justice in regard to their evaluations of organisational career management (OCM) practices, with statistical support emerging for both an agent-systems and interaction model of organisational justice. The qualitative semi-structured interviews provided more detailed analysis of how fairness was experienced in practice, and confirmed the importance of the OJT constructs of fairness within this career management context. Fairness themes to emerge from this analysis included, equity, needs, voice, bias suppression, consistency, ethicality, respect and feedback drawing on many of the central tenants of distributive, procedural, interpersonal and information justice. For the career management literature there is empirical confirmation of a new theoretical framework for understanding employee evaluations of, and reactions to, OCM practices. For the justice literatures a new contextual domain is explored and confirmed, thus extending further the influence and applicability of the theory. For practitioners a new framework for developing, delivering and evaluating their own OCM policies and systems is presented.

A comparative and longitudinal analysis of the evolving relationship between the environment and the strategy, structure and performance of selected organisations in the British carpet industry 1959-1986:a firms in sector perspective of organisational adaptation

Orthodox contingency theory links effective organisational performance to compatible relationships between the environment and organisation strategy and structure and assumes that organisations have the capacity to adapt as the environment changes. Recent contributions to the literature on organisation theory claim that the key to effective performance is effective adaptation which in turn requires the simultaneous reconciliation of efficiency and innovation which is afforded by an unique environment-organisation configuration. The literature on organisation theory recognises the continuing confusion caused by the fragmented and often conflicting results from cross-sectional studies. Although the case is made for longitudinal studies which comprehensively describe the evolving relationship between the environment and the organisation there is little to suggest how such studies should be executed in practice. Typically the choice is between the approaches of the historicised case study and statistical analysis of large populations which examine the relationship between environment and organisation strategy and/or structure and ignore the product-process relationship. This study combines the historicised case study and the multi-variable and ordinal scale approach of statistical analysis to construct an analytical framework which tracks and exposes the environment-organisation-performance relationship over time. The framework examines changes in the environment, strategy and structure and uniquely includes an assessment of the organisation's product-process relationship and its contribution to organisational efficiency and innovation. The analytical framework is applied to examine the evolving environment-organisation relationship of two organisations in the same industry over the same twenty-five year period to provide a sector perspective of organisational adaptation. The findings demonstrate the significance of the environment-organisation configuration to the scope and frequency of adaptation and suggest that the level of sector homogeneity may be linked to the level of product-process standardisation.

Beyond securitisation : Western Mediterranean international relations from a security perspective 1989-2002

Following the end of the Cold War and the ensuing changes to the international landscape, thinking about security has tended to become more discursive and interpretative in nature. What counts as security has increasingly derived from security discourses (that is, 'securitisation') and uncertainty about the multi-faceted future facing various countries and regions. Within this post-Cold War discourse, the Western Mediterranean has emerged as a region fraught with latent and manifest threats in the economic, political, societal and military sectors. Improved access to EU markets for Maghrebi exports; the security of energy supplies to the EU from Algeria and Libya; lack of democracy and the advance of political Islam; the flow of northward migration and worries about law and order in France, Italy and Spain; the growth in military expenditure and weapons proliferation in the Maghreb; all have been central to the securitisation agenda. However, this agenda has often lacked credibility especially when inter-linkages have purportedly been established between economic underdevelopment and political instability, between the advance of political Islam and the threat to energy supplies, or between immigration and the threat to national identity. Such inter-sectoral linkages distract from the credibility of those 'securitisation instances' which correspond to reality; the former linkages have often been exploited by extremist politicians in south-west European countries as well as by regimes in the Maghreb to advance their respective interests. Thus, securitisation may defeat its main purpose; it may generate responses out of keeping with the aims proclaimed at the outset, aims centred on the countering of real threats and the ensuring of greater stability.

Simulating the value of collaboration in multi-actor conservation planning

The loss of habitat and biodiversity worldwide has led to considerable resources being spent for conservation purposes on actions such as the acquisition and management of land, the rehabilitation of degraded habitats, and the purchase of easements from private landowners. Prioritising these actions is challenging due to the complexity of the problem and because there can be multiple actors undertaking conservation actions, often with divergent or partially overlapping objectives. We use a modelling framework to explore this issue with a study involving two agents sequentially purchasing land for conservation. We apply our model to simulated data using distributions taken from real data to simulate the cost of patches and the rarity and co-occurence of species. In our model each agent attempted to implement a conservation network that met its target for the minimum cost using the conservation planning software Marxan. We examine three scenarios where the conservation targets of the agents differ. The first scenario (called NGO-NGO) models the situation where two NGOs are both are targeting different sets of threatened species. The second and third scenarios (called NGO-Gov and Gov-NGO, respectively) represent a case where a government agency attempts to implement a complementary conservation network representing all species, while an NGO is focused on achieving additional protection for the most endangered species. For each of these scenarios we examined three types of interactions between agents: i) acting in isolation where the agents are attempting to achieve their targets solely though their own actions ii) sharing information where each agent is aware of the species representation achieved within the other agent’s conservation network and, iii) pooling resources where agents combine their resources and undertake conservation actions as a single entity. The latter two interactions represent different types of collaborations and in each scenario we determine the cost savings from sharing information or pooling resources. In each case we examined the utility of these interactions from the viewpoint of the combined conservation network resulting from both agents' actions, as well as from each agent’s individual perspective. The costs for each agent to achieve their objectives varied depending on the order in which the agents acted, the type of interaction between agents, and the specific goals of each agent. There were significant cost savings from increased collaboration via sharing information in the NGO-NGO scenario were the agent’s representation goals were mutually exclusive (in terms of specie targeted). In the NGO-Gov and Gov-NGO scenarios, collaboration generated much smaller savings. If the two agents collaborate by pooling resources there are multiple ways the total cost could be shared between both agents. For each scenario we investigate the costs and benefits for all possible cost sharing proportions. We find that there are a range of cost sharing proportions where both agents can benefit in the NGO-NGO scenarios while the NGO-Gov and Gov-NGO scenarios again showed little benefit. Although the model presented here has a range of simplifying assumptions, it demonstrates that the value of collaboration can vary significantly in different situations. In most cases, collaborating would have associated costs and these costs need to be weighed against the potential benefits from collaboration. The model demonstrates a method for determining the range of collaboration costs that would result in collaboration providing an efficient use of scarce conservation resources.

Transferring knowledge of manufacturing techniques within a subsidiary of a multi-national corporation

With the growth of the multi-national corporation (MNCs) has come the need to understand how parent companies transfer knowledge to, and manage the operations of, their subsidiaries. This is of particular interest to manufacturing companies transferring their operations overseas. Japanese companies in particular have been pioneering in the development of techniques such as Kaizen, and elements of the Toyota Production System (TPS) such as Kanban, which can be useful tools for transferring the ethos of Japanese manufacturing and maintaining quality and control in overseas subsidiaries. Much has been written about the process of transferring Japanese manufacturing techniques but much less is understood about how the subsidiaries themselves – which are required to make use of such techniques – actually acquire and incorporate them into their operations. This research therefore takes the perspective of the subsidiary in examining how knowledge of manufacturing techniques is transferred from the parent company within its surrounding (subsidiary). There is clearly a need to take a practice-based view to understanding how the local managers and operatives incorporate this knowledge into their working practices. A particularly relevant theme is how subsidiaries both replicate and adapt knowledge from parents and the circumstances in which replication or adaptation occurs. However, it is shown that there is a lack of research which takes an in-depth look at these processes from the perspective of the participants themselves. This is particularly important as much knowledge literature argues that knowledge is best viewed as enacted and learned in practice – and therefore transferred in person – rather than by the transfer of abstract and de-contextualised information. What is needed, therefore, is further research which makes an in-depth examination of what happens at the subsidiary level for this transfer process to occur. There is clearly a need to take a practice-based view to understanding how the local managers and operatives incorporate knowledge about manufacturing techniques into their working practices. In depth qualitative research was, therefore, conducted in the subsidiary of a Japanese multinational, Gambatte Corporation, involving three main manufacturing initiatives (or philosophies), namely 'TPS‘, 'TPM‘ and 'TS‘. The case data were derived from 52 in-depth interviews with project members, moderate-participant observations, and documentations and presented and analysed in episodes format. This study contributes to our understanding of knowledge transfer in relation to the approaches and circumstances of adaptation and replication of knowledge within the subsidiary, how the whole process is developed, and also how 'innovation‘ takes place. This study further understood that the process of knowledge transfer could be explained as a process of Reciprocal Provider-Learner Exchange that can be linked to the Experiential Learning Theory.