bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
TECHNOLOGICAL COMPETENCIES AND COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IN THE SPANISH ELECTRICITY INDUSTRY: NEW CHALLENGES, NEW TOOLS
Authors: RODRÍGUEZ POMEDA JESÚS , MORCILLO ORTEGA PATRICIO , FERNÁNDEZ DE NAVARRETE FERNANDO CASANI , RODRÍGUEZ ANTÓN JOSÉ MIGUEL 
Published: July 2002

Recently, the electricity industry in Spain has experienced a deep transformation, aimed to improve the degree of concurrence between the operating firms. This change must be explained in the framework of the regional integration of markets with an European scale. The European Union is shaped as a relevant region in the world energy (and specifically, in electricity) market. Facing this change, the Spanish electricity firms must adopt a wider business vision, to cope with all the aspects of the new competitive environment in order to obtain business success. Firms, following the resource-based view, must generate and strengthen the competitive advantage derived from its core competencies. Those competencies, that constitutes the base for the inter-firm heterogeneity, are created (and evolve) from several mechanisms of organisational learning. Our research tries to show what the business vision of the Spanish electricity firms is, based on the efficient management of its personal, technological and organisational competencies. We have focused on technological competencies, because, in a more competitive scheme, they can support the sustained competitive advantage of the firm. So, we develop a model based on the Strategic Matrix of Technological Competencies (SMTC). The model is tested with a sample of 20 Spanish electricity firms (representing 71.25% of the industry total turnover in 1996). That matrix combines, in a dynamic sense, several scenarios and strategic business units in order to determine the critical technological competencies that the firm must master in each economic situation. The empirical analysis developed concludes (for the firms in the sample), among other issues, the existence of statistical relationships between certain technological competencies (as "Clean Use of Coal", "Advanced Technologies for Control and Communication", and "Electricity Transmission Technologies"), and several sources of competitive advantage (as the "The firm must difficult its resources' imitability"). In conclusion, facing the new competitive environment (in Spain and in the EU), technological competencies are considered by those firms as sources of competitive advantage. These competencies evolves using several organisational learning systems adopted by the firm. In this changing environment, the SMTC can be a relevant tool for the strategic management of the firms in the electricity industry.
Functions in databases
Authors: Graham Marc H. 
Published: July 2002

We discuss the objectives of including functional dependencies in the definition of a relational database. We find two distinct objectives. The appearance of a dependency in the definition of a database indicates that the states of the database are to encode a function. A method based on the chase of calculating the function encoded by a particular state is given and compared to methods utilizing derivations of the dependency. A test for deciding whether the states of a schema may encode a nonempty function is presented as is a characterization of the class of schemas which are capable of encoding nonempty functions for all the dependencies in the definition. This class is the class of dependency preserving schemas as defined by Beeri et al. and is strictly larger than the class presented by Bernstein.
The second objective of including a functional dependency in the definition of a database is that the dependency be capable of constraining the states of the database; that is, capable of uncovering input errors made by the users. We show that this capability is weaker than the first objective; thus, even dependencies whose functions are everywhere empty may still act as constraints. Bounds on the requirements for a dependency to act as a constraint are derived.
These results are founded on the notion of a weak instance for a database state, which replaces the universal relation instance assumption and is both intuitively and computationally more nearly acceptable.
The IBM Magnetic Drum Calculator Type 650
Authors: Hamilton F. E. , Kubie E. C. 
Published: July 2002

The IBM Magnetic Drum Calculator Type 650 is an electronic calculator intermediate in speed, capacity and cost. It takes a logical position between the IBM Card Programmed Electronic Calculator and the IBM Electronic Data Processing Machines Type 701. It is a more powerful computing tool as required by those who have “outgrown” the Card Programmed Electronic Calculator. It is also a machine which may be used economically by those who are not as yet ready for a large scale computer such as the 701. It will serve not only to perform their required computing tasks, but it will also result in gaining valuable experience for later use of large scale equipment. The Magnetic Drum Calculator, through its stored program control, comprehensive order list, punched card input-output, self-checking and moderate memory capacity, gains the flexibility required of a computer which is to serve in both the commercial and scientific computing fields.
Approximately 2000 tubes are used in the machine. They are the 5965, 6211, 12AY7, 6AL5, 2D21 and 5687. Types 6211, and 5965 are similar to the 12AV7. These are used because they meet special IBM acceptance tests.
On the Increase of Convergence Rates of Relaxation Procedures for Elliptic Partial Difference Equations
Authors: Juncosa M. L. , Mullikin T. W. 
Published: July 2002

Occasionally in the numerical solution of elliptic partial differential equations the rate of convergence of relaxation methods to the solution is adversely affected by the relative proximity of certain points in the grid. It has been proposed that the removal of the unknown functional values at these points by Gaussian elimination may accelerate the convergence.
By application of the Perron-Frobenius theory of non-negative matrices it is shown that the rates of convergence of the Jacobi-Richardson and Gauss-Seidel iterations are not decreased and could be increased by this elimination. Although this may indicate that the elimination could improve the convergence rate for overrelaxation, it is still strictly an unsolved problem.
Function Evaluation in Unnormalized Arithmetic
Authors: Ashenhurst R. L. 
Published: July 2002

The evaluation of a function of one argument is a standard computational task. When an unnormalized number representation is used, it is appropriate that function evaluation to subject to certain “adjustment” criteria, defined independently of the computing method. In this paper some such criteria are developed, and their application described.
In particular, consideration is given to questions of the extent to which general principles apply (i.e. for large classes of functions of a single argument) and the manner in which particular properties of the functions involved (e.g. the functions evaluated by standard library subroutines) may be invoked. The analysis, although framed in terms of unnormalized arithmetic, gives insight into the general nature of significance propagation through function evaluation, and provides a means for analyzing calculations carried out in the usual normalized arithmetic, particularly in the case where an “index of significance” is employed.
Inversion of Matrices by Partitioning
Authors: Pease Marshall C. 
Published: July 2002

The inversion of nonsingular matrices is considered. A method is developed which starts with an arbitrary partitioning of the given matrix. The separate submatrices are grouped into sets determined by the nonzero entries of some appropriate group,
G
, of permutation matrices. The group structure of
G
then establishes a sequence of operations on these sets of submatrices from which the corresponding representation of the inverse is obtained.

Whether the method described is to be preferred to, say, Gauss's algorithm will depend on the capabilities that are required by other parts of the algorithm that is to be implemented in the special-purpose parallel computer. The basic speed, measured by the count of parallel multiplications and divisions, is comparable to that obtained with Gauss's algorithm and is slightly better under certain conditions. The principal difference is that this method uses primarily matrix multiplication, whereas Gauss's algorithm uses primarily row combinations. When the special-purpose computer under design must supply this capability anyway, the method developed here should be considered.
Application of the process is limited to matrices for which we can set up a partitioning such that we can guarantee, a priori, that certain of the submatrices are nonsingular. Hence the method is not useful for arbitrary nonsingular matrices. However, it can be applied to certain important classes of matrices, notably those that are “dominated by the diagonal.” Noise covariance matrices are of this type; therefore the method can be applied to them. The inversion of a noise covariance matrix is required in some problems of optimal prediction and control. It is for applications of this sort that the method seems particularly attractive.
Tree-Manipulating Systems and Church-Rosser Theorems
Authors: Rosen Barry K. 
Published: July 2002

Subtree replacement systems form a broad class of tree-manipulating systems. Systems with the “Church-Rosser property” are appropriate for evaluation or translation processes: the end result of a complete sequence of applications of the rules does not depend on the order in which the rules were applied. Theoretical and practical advantages of such flexibility are sketched. Values or meanings for trees can be defined by simple mathematical systems and then computed by the cheapest available algorithm, however intricate that algorithm may be.
We derive sufficient conditions for the Church-Rosser property and discuss their applications to recursive definitions, to the lambda calculus, and to parallel programming. Only the first application is treated in detail. We extend McCarthy's recursive calculus by allowing a choice between call-by-value and call-by-name. We show that recursively defined functions are single-valued despite the nondeterminism of the evaluation algorithm. We also show that these functions solve their defining equations in a “canonical” manner.
Computer system design using a hierarchical approach to performance evaluation
Authors: Kumar B. , Davidson E. S. 
Published: July 2002

The concept of a hierarchy of performance models is introduced. It is argued that such a hierarchy should consist of models spanning a wide range of accuracy and cost in order to be a cost-effective tool in the design of computer systems. Judicious use of the hierarchy can satisfy the conflicting needs of high accuracy and low cost of performance evaluation. A system design procedure that uses the hierarchy is developed.
The concepts developed are illustrated by applying them to a case study of system design. The results of optimizations conducted using a two-level performance model hierarchy and a simple cost model are discussed. In almost all the experiments conducted, the optimization procedure converged to a region very close to a locally optimum system. The efficiency of the procedure is shown to be considerably greater than that of the brute force approach to system design.
An anomaly in space-time characteristics of certain programs running in a paging machine
Authors: Belady L. A. , Nelson R. A. , Shedler G. S. 
Published: July 2002

The running time of programs in a paging machine generally increases as the store in which programs are constrained to run decreases. Experiment, however, have revealed cases in which the reverse is true: a decrease in the size of the store is accompanied by a decrease in running time.
An informal discussion of the anomalous behavior is given, and for the case of the FIFO replacement algorithm a formal treatment is presented.
Early stopping in Byzantine agreement
Authors: Dolev Danny , Reischuk Ruediger , Strong H. Raymond 
Published: July 2002

Two different kinds of Byzantine Agreement for distributed systems with processor faults are defined and compared. The first is required when coordinated actions may be performed by each participant at different times. This kind is called Simultaneous Byzantine Agreement (SBA).This paper deals with the number of rounds of message exchange required to reach Byzantine Agreement of either kind (BA). If an algorithm allows its participants to reach Byzantine agreement in every execution in which at mosttparticipants are faulty, then the algorithm is said to toleratetfaults. It is well known that any BA algorithm that toleratestfaults (witht<n- 1 wherendenotes the total number of processors) must run at leastt+ 1 rounds in some execution. However, it might be supposed that in executions where the numberfof actual faults is small compared tot, the number of rounds could be correspondingly small. A corollary of our first result states that (whent<n- 1) any algorithm for SBA must runt+ 1 rounds in some execution where there are no faults. For EBA (witht<n- 1), a lower bound of min(t+ 1,f+ 2) rounds is proved. Finally, an algorithm for EBA is presented that achieves the lower bound, provided thattis on the order of the square root of the total number of processors.
DR. GOTTHOLD STEINER (1886–1961): VERSATILE NEMATOLOGIST
Authors: Esser Robert P. 
Published: July 2002

[Figure: see text] ▪ Abstract  Swiss-born Dr. Gotthold Steiner was a pioneer in formulating the discipline of nematology. He worked with the American nematologist NA Cobb and together they were responsible for acceptance of the concept of nematode phytoparasites. Steiner had special expertise in anatomy, morphology, phytonematology, marine nematodes, nutrition, mermithids, and selected invertebrate taxa. He authored 191 scientific papers, established the ubiquitous phytoparasitic genus Helicotylenchus, described the pinewood nematode, and did significant work with three important economic pests, Ditylenchus dipsaci, Heterodera rostochiensis, and H. schachtii. He was responsible for introducing training programs in nematology in USDA laboratories.
Computer-Based Training of Stimulus Detection Improves Color and Simple Pattern Recognition in the Defective Field of Hemianopic Subjects
Authors: Kasten Erich , Poggel Dorothe A. , Sabel Bernhard A. 
Published: July 2002

Abstract
In a previously conducted randomized placebo-controlled trial, we were able to demonstrate significant visual field enlargement induced by restitution therapy in patients with cerebral lesions [Kasten, E., Wuest, S., Behrens-Bamann, W., & Sabel, B. A. (1998c). Computer-based training for the treatment of partial blindness. Nature Medicine, 4, 1083-1087.]. Visual field training was performed on a computer monitor for 1 hr per day over a period of 6 months. Since the procedure included only stimulation with white light, in the present study we investigated if this simple detection training had a transfer effect on color or form recognition in the trained area (i.e., in the absence of modality specific training). Answering this question would be crucial for planning optimal restitution therapy: In case there is no transfer of training effects to other visual modalities, a specific treatment of each visual function must be performed in order to achieve maximum benefit. Therefore, we analyzed the data from 32 patients with visual field defects who had participated in the original trial and whose form and color recognition had been investigated. The experimental group (n = 19, restitution training) experienced not only an increase of 12.8% correctly detected stimuli (PeriMa program, p &lt; .05), but also an improvement of 5.6% in pattern recognition (PeriForm) and of 6.1% in color perception (PeriColor), respectively. In contrast, the placebo group (n = 13, fixation training) showed no significant changes from baseline to final outcome in any of the visual modalities (PeriMa: 0.3%; PeriForm: -0.3%; PeriColor: 0.4%). Conventional perimetry yielded an increase of 7.8% detected stimuli in the experimental group, but only of 1.2% in the placebo group (p &lt; .05). For form recognition and color perception, the differences between the results of the experimental and the placebo groups narrowly missed significance. However, correlations of diagnostic results showed that mainly those patients who had achieved visual field enlargement also improved in color and form perception: r = .67 (p &lt; .05) between PeriMa and PeriForm and r = .32 between PeriMa and PeriColor. We conclude that visual restitution training using a simple white light stimulus has at least some influence on improving other visual functions such as color and pattern recognition. This result supports the “bottleneck theory” of visual restitution, i.e., training effects can be explained as a process of perceptual learning and increased processing of information by residual structures surviving lesions of the primary visual pathways.
Functional Changes in Brain Activity During Priming in Alzheimer's Disease
Authors: Backman Lars , Almkvist Ove , Nyberg Lars , Andersson Jesper 
Published: July 2002

Abstract
Patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are often impaired on certain forms of implicit memory, such as word-stem completion priming (WSCP). Lesion data suggest that deficient WSCP may be associated with abnormal functioning in the posterior neocortex. Using positron emission tomography (PET), we here provide direct support for this view. Compared with normal old adults, AD patients showed reduced priming on a word-stem completion task. The normal old showed decreased activity in right occipital cortex (area 19), whereas the AD patients showed increased activity in this region during priming. To the extent that decreased activity during priming reflects an experience-dependent reduction of the neuronal population involved, these results indicate that shaping of the relevant neurons is slower in AD, possibly as a result of inadequate initial-stimulus processing.
Color Vision and the Four-Color-Map Problem
Authors: Purves Dale , Lotto Beau , Polger Thomas 
Published: July 2002

Abstract
Four different colors are needed to make maps that avoid adjacent countries of the same color. Because the retinal image is two dimensional, like a map, four dimensions of chromatic experience would also be needed to optimally distinguish regions returning spectrally different light to the eye. We therefore suggest that the organization of human color vision according to four-color classes (reds, greens, blues, and yellows) has arisen as a solution to this logical requirement in topology.
Object Activation in Semantic Memory from Visual Multimodal Feature Input
Authors: Kraut Michael A. , Kremen Sarah , Moo Lauren R. , Segal Jessica B. , Calhoun Vincent , Hart John 
Published: July 2002

Abstract
The human brain's representation of objects has been proposed to exist as a network of coactivated neural regions present in multiple cognitive systems. However, it is not known if there is a region specific to the process of activating an integrated object representation in semantic memory from multimodal feature stimuli (e.g., picture–word). A previous study using word–word feature pairs as stimulus input showed that the left thalamus is integrally involved in object activation (Kraut, Kremen, Segal, et al., this issue). In the present study, participants were presented picture–word pairs that are features of objects, with the task being to decide if together they “activated” an object not explicitly presented (e.g., picture of a candle and the word “icing” activate the internal representation of a “cake”). For picture–word pairs that combine to elicit an object, signal change was detected in the ventral temporo-occipital regions, pre-SMA, left primary somatomotor cortex, both caudate nuclei, and the dorsal thalami bilaterally. These findings suggest that the left thalamus is engaged for either picture or word stimuli, but the right thalamus appears to be involved when picture stimuli are also presented with words in semantic object activation tasks. The somatomotor signal changes are likely secondary to activation of the semantic object representations from multimodal visual stimuli.
Water Resources in Life‐Cycle Impact Assessment: Considerations in Choosing Category Indicators
Authors: Owens J. W. 
Published: July 2002

SummaryWater is one of many resources, wastes, and pollutants considered in life‐cycle assessment (LCA). The widely used indicator for water resources, the total input of water used, is not adequate to assess water resources from a sustainability perspective. More detailed indicators are proposed for water resources in two areas essential to water sustainability: water quantity and water quality. The governing principles for a consideration of water quantity are that (1) the water sources or LCA inputs are renewable and sustainable and (2) the volume of water released or LCA outputs are returned to humans or ecosystems for further use downstream. The governing principle for a consideration of water quality is that the utility of the returned water is not impaired for either humans or ecosystems downstream. Water quantity indicators are defined for water use, consumption, and depletion to reveal the sustainable or nonsustainable nature of the sources. A flexible set of water quality indicators for various factors that may impair water quality are then discussed, including the LCA study choices, technical challenges, and trade‐offs involved with such indicators. Indicator selection from this set involves the underlying concern or endpoint represented by the indicator and the level and accuracy of decision‐making information that the indicator must provide. With significant differences in emissions among systems studied using LCA and different purposes of the LCA studies themselves, a single, default set of water quality indicators applicable to all systems studied with LCA is problematic. The proposed water quantity and quality indicators for LCA studies are also intended to be compatible with environmental management and reporting systems so that data needs are not duplicated and interpretation for one does not contradict or sow confusion for the other.