Iterative Joint Power Control and Partial Crosstalk Cancellation in Upstream VDSL

Crosstalk is the major limiting issue in very high bit-rate digital subscriber line (VDSL) systems in terms of bit-rate or service coverage. At the central office side, joint signal processing accompanied by appropriate power allocation enables complex multiuser processors to provide near capacity rates. Unfortunately complexity grows with the square of the number of lines within a binder, so by taking into account that there are only a few dominant crosstalkers who contribute to main part of crosstalk power, the canceller structure can be simplified which resulted in a much lower run-time complexity. In this paper, a multiuser power control scheme, namely iterative waterfilling, is combined with previously proposed partial crosstalk cancellation approaches to demonstrate the best ever achieved performance which is verified by simulation results.

Comparing Transformational Leadership in Successful and Unsuccessful Companies

In this article, while it is attempted to describe the problem and its importance, transformational leadership is studied by considering leadership theories. Issues such as the definition of transformational leadership and its aspects are compared on the basis of the ideas of various connoisseurs and then it (transformational leadership) is examined in successful and unsuccessful companies. According to the methodology, the method of research, hypotheses, population and statistical sample are investigated and research findings are analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistical methods in the framework of analytical tables. Finally, our conclusion is provided by considering the results of statistical tests. The final result shows that transformational leadership is significantly higher in successful companies than unsuccessful ones P

Relationships between Information Transparency, Corporate Governance and D&O Insurance

This study examines the influence of information transparency and corporate governance on purchase directors and officers liability (D&O) insurance decisions. The results show that companies with greater information transparency have significant demand for D&O insurance. Greater transparency in voluntary disclosures is significantly and positively associated with demand for insurance, indicating that increasing the degree of information disclosure reduces information asymmetry for insurers, which stimulates their willingness to provide greater protection. Analysis of insured and uninsured subsamples indicates that uninsured companies have superior corporate governance compared to insured companies. Although insured companies tend to have weaker corporate governance structures, they appoint Big 4 firms or industry experts to compensate for the weakness of their corporate governance. Empirical results indicate that purchasing D&O insurance can strengthen external corporate governance and increase companies’ willingness to voluntarily provide more transparent information.

Forecasting Foreign Direct Investment with Modified Diffusion Model

Prior research has not effectively investigated how the profitability of Chinese branches affect FDIs in China [1, 2], so this study for the first time incorporates realistic earnings information to systematically investigate effects of innovation, imitation, and profit factors of FDI diffusions from Taiwan to China. Our nonlinear least square (NLS) model, which incorporates earnings factors, forms a nonlinear ordinary differential equation (ODE) in numerical simulation programs. The model parameters are obtained through a genetic algorithms (GA) technique and then optimized with the collected data for the best accuracy. Particularly, Taiwanese regulatory FDI restrictions are also considered in our modified model to meet the realistic conditions. To validate the model-s effectiveness, this investigation compares the prediction accuracy of modified model with the conventional diffusion model, which does not take account of the profitability factors. The results clearly demonstrate the internal influence to be positive, as early FDI adopters- consistent praises of FDI attract potential firms to make the same move. The former erects a behavior model for the latter to imitate their foreign investment decision. Particularly, the results of modified diffusion models show that the earnings from Chinese branches are positively related to the internal influence. In general, the imitating tendency of potential consumers is substantially hindered by the losses in the Chinese branches, and these firms would invest less into China. The FDI inflow extension depends on earnings of Chinese branches, and companies will adjust their FDI strategies based on the returns. Since this research has proved that earning is an influential factor on FDI dynamics, our revised model explicitly performs superior in prediction ability than conventional diffusion model.

The Role of Human Resource System on Crisis Resolve

Within the new world order, the term “crisis" is nowadays familiar to companies. Organizations are experiencing conditions which are surprising, uncertain, often adverse and usually unstable. The companies, who grasp the importance of transformation within the information age, have felt the need to develop modern methods to achieve the ability to thrive despite severe shocks. Through strategically managing human resource and developing appropriate elements of human resource system, companies can be assured for resolving the crisis. In this paper the role of HR system on resolving crisis has been evaluated. To help accomplish this, an insight on previous strategic HRM literature and an introduction to the elements and relationship within HR systems has been presented. It also reviews different attitude around resilience in literature. It continues by reviewing three elements central to developing an organization-s capacity for crisis resolving and it will demonstrate how designing proper elements of HR system can lead the organizations to possess the ability for passing through crisis. Finally it will evaluate an Iranian Insurance organization in case of one of the three central elements (specific cognitive ability) and observe how successful they were on developing an effective HR system to be ready for facing crisis.

Portfolio Simulation in GSM Cellular Telecommunication Industry for Company's Decision and Policies Making

The rising growth of the GSM cellular phone industry has tightening competition level between providers in making strategies enhancing the market shares in Indonesia. Tsel, as one of those companies, has to determine the proper strategy to sustain as well as improve the market share without reducing its operational income level. Portfolio simulation model is designed with a dynamic system approach. The result of this research is a recommendation to the company by optimizing its technological policies, services, and promotions. The tariff policies and the signal quality should not be the main focus because this company has had a large number of customers and a good infrastructural condition.

Enhancement of Essential Oil from Agarwood by Subcritical Water Extraction and Pretreatments on Hydrodistillation

The traditional method for essential oil extraction from agarwood (Aquilaria Crassna) is to soak it in water and follow with hydrodistillation. The effect of various agarwood pretreatments: ethanol, acid, alkaline, enzymes, and ultrasound, and the effect of subcritical water extraction(SWE) was studied to compare with the traditional method. The major compositions of agarwood oil from hydrodistillation were aroma compounds as follow: aristol-9-en-8- one (21.53%), selina-3, 7(11)-diene (12.96%), τ-himachalene (9.28%), β-guaiene (5.79%), hexadecanoic acid (4.90%) and guaia- 3,9-diene (4.21%). Whereas agarwood oil from pretreatments with ethanol and ultrasound, and SWE got fatty acid compounds. Extraction of agarwood oil using these pretreatments could improve the agarwood oil yields up to 2 times that of the traditional method. The components of the pretreated sample with diluted acid (H2SO4) at pH 4 gave quite similar results as the traditional method. Therefore, the enhancement of essential oil from agarwood depends on requirement of type of extracted oil that involved extraction methods.

Underpricing of IPOs during Hot and Cold Market Periods on the South African Stock Exchange (JSE)

Underpricing is one anomaly in initial public offerings (IPO) literature that has been widely observed across different stock markets with different trends emerging over different time periods. This study seeks to determine how IPOs on the JSE performed on the first day, first week and first month over the period of 1996-2011. Underpricing trends are documented for both hot and cold market periods in terms of four main sectors (cyclical, defensive, growth stock and interest rate sensitive stocks). Using a sample of 360 listed companies on the JSE, the empirical findings established that IPOs on the JSE are significantly underpriced with an average market adjusted first day return of 62.9%. It is also established that hot market IPOs on the JSE are more underpriced than the cold market IPOs. Also observed is the fact that as the offer price per share increases above the median price for any given period, the level of underpricing decreases substantially. While significant differences exist in the level of underpricing of IPOs in the four different sectors in the hot and cold market periods, interest rates sensitive stocks showed a different trend from the other sectors and thus require further investigation to uncover this pattern.

Text Summarization for Oil and Gas News Article

Information is increasing in volumes; companies are overloaded with information that they may lose track in getting the intended information. It is a time consuming task to scan through each of the lengthy document. A shorter version of the document which contains only the gist information is more favourable for most information seekers. Therefore, in this paper, we implement a text summarization system to produce a summary that contains gist information of oil and gas news articles. The summarization is intended to provide important information for oil and gas companies to monitor their competitor-s behaviour in enhancing them in formulating business strategies. The system integrated statistical approach with three underlying concepts: keyword occurrences, title of the news article and location of the sentence. The generated summaries were compared with human generated summaries from an oil and gas company. Precision and recall ratio are used to evaluate the accuracy of the generated summary. Based on the experimental results, the system is able to produce an effective summary with the average recall value of 83% at the compression rate of 25%.

Empirical Analyses of Determinants of D.J.S.I.US Mean Returns

This study investigates the relationship between 10 year bond value, Yen/U.S dollar exchange rate, non-farm payrolls (all employs) and crude oil to U.S. Dow Jones Sustainability Index. A GARCH model is used to test these relationships for the period January 1st 1999 to January 31st 2008 using monthly data. Results show that an increase of the 10 year bond and non farm payrolls (all employs) lead to an increase of the D.J.S.I returns. On the contrary the volatility of the Yen/U.S dollar exchange rates as well as the increase of crude oil returns has negative effects on the U.S D.J.S.I returns. This study aims at assisting investors to understand the influences certain macroeconomic indicators have on the companies- stock returns as reported by the D.J.S.I.

Community Innovation in Sustainable Development: A Cross Case Study

Although in sustainable development field, innovative solutions have been sought worldwide by environmental groups, academia, governments and companies for many years, recently, citizens and communities have emerged as a new group and taken more and more active role in this field. Many scholars call for more research on the role of community and community innovation in sustainable development. This paper is to respond to the calls. In this paper, we first summarize a comprehensive set of innovation principles. Then, we do a qualitative cross case study by comparing three community innovation cases in three different areas of sustainable development according to the innovation principles. Finally, we summarize the case comparison and discuss the implications to sustainable development. A unified role model and innovation distribution map of community innovation are developed to better understand community innovation in sustainable development..

A Secure Mobile OTP Authentication Scheme for User Mobility Cloud VDI Environment

Since Cloud environment has appeared as the most powerful keyword in the computing industry, the growth in VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) became remarkable in domestic market. In recent years, with the trend that mobile devices such as smartphones and pads spread so rapidly, the strengths of VDI that allows people to access and perform business on the move along with companies' office needs expedite more rapid spread of VDI. In this paper, mobile OTP (One-Time Password) authentication method is proposed to secure mobile device portability through rapid and secure authentication using mobile devices such as mobile phones or pads, which does not require additional purchase or possession of OTP tokens of users. To facilitate diverse and wide use of Services in the future, service should be continuous and stable, and above all, security should be considered the most important to meet advanced portability and user accessibility, the strengths of VDI.

A Cascaded Fuzzy Inference System for Dynamic Online Portals Customization

In our modern world, more physical transactions are being substituted by electronic transactions (i.e. banking, shopping, and payments), many businesses and companies are performing most of their operations through the internet. Instead of having a physical commerce, internet visitors are now adapting to electronic commerce (e-Commerce). The ability of web users to reach products worldwide can be greatly benefited by creating friendly and personalized online business portals. Internet visitors will return to a particular website when they can find the information they need or want easily. Dealing with this human conceptualization brings the incorporation of Artificial/Computational Intelligence techniques in the creation of customized portals. From these techniques, Fuzzy-Set technologies can make many useful contributions to the development of such a human-centered endeavor as e-Commerce. The main objective of this paper is the implementation of a Paradigm for the Intelligent Design and Operation of Human-Computer interfaces. In particular, the paradigm is quite appropriate for the intelligent design and operation of software modules that display information (such Web Pages, graphic user interfaces GUIs, Multimedia modules) on a computer screen. The human conceptualization of the user personal information is analyzed throughout a Cascaded Fuzzy Inference (decision-making) System to generate the User Ascribe Qualities, which identify the user and that can be used to customize portals with proper Web links.

Municipal Solid Waste Management Problems in Nigeria: Evolving Knowledge Management Solution

The paper attempts a synthesis of problems relating to municipal waste management in Nigeria and proposes a conceptual knowledge management approach for tackling municipal waste problems in cities across Nigeria. The application of knowledge management approach and strategy is crucial for inculcating a change of attitude towards improving the management of waste. The paper is a review of existing literatures, information, policies and data on municipal waste management in Nigeria. The inefficient management of waste by individuals, households, consumers and waste management companies can be attributed to inadequate information on waste management benefits, lack of producers- involvement in waste management as well as poor implementation of government policies. The paper presents an alternative approach providing solutions promoting efficient municipal waste management.

Fracture Toughness Characterization of Carbon-Epoxy Composite using Arcan Specimen

In this study the behavior of interlaminar fracture of carbon-epoxy thermoplastic laminated composite is investigated numerically and experimentally. Tests are performed with Arcan specimens. Testing with Arcan specimen gives the opportunity of utilizing just one kind of specimen for extracting fracture properties for mode I, mode II and different mixed mode ratios of materials with exerting load via different loading angles. Variation of loading angles in range of 0-90° made possible to achieve different mixed mode ratios. Correction factors for various conditions are obtained from ABAQUS 2D finite element models which demonstrate the finite shape of Arcan specimens used in this study. Finally, applying the correction factors to critical loads obtained experimentally, critical interlaminar fracture toughness of this type of carbon- epoxy composite has been attained.

Multiproject Scheduling in Construction Industry

In this paper, supply policy and procurement of shared resources in some kinds of concurrent construction projects are investigated. This could be oriented to the problems of holding construction companies who involve in different projects concurrently and they have to supply limited resources to several projects as well as prevent delays to any project. Limits on transportation vehicles and storage facilities for potential construction materials and also the available resources (such as cash or manpower) are some of the examples which affect considerably on management of all projects over all. The research includes investigation of some real multi-storey buildings during their execution periods and surveying the history of the activities. It is shown that the common resource demand variation curve of the projects may be expanded or displaced to achieve an optimum distribution scheme. Of course, it may cause some delay to some projects, but it has minimum influence on whole execution period of all projects and its influence on procurement cost of the projects is considerable. These observations on investigation of some multistorey building which are built in Iran will be presented in this paper.

The Role of Internal Function of Organization for The Successful Implementation of Good Corporate Governance

The inability to implement the principles of good corporate governance (GCG) as demonstrated in the surveys is due to a number of constraints which can be classified into three; namely internal constraints, external constraints, and constraints coming from the structure of ownership. The issues in the internal constraints mentioned are related to the function of several elements of the company. As a business organization, corporation is unable to achieve its goal to successfully implement GCG principles since it is not support by its internal elements- functions. Two of several numbers of internal elements of a company are ethical work climate and leadership style of the top management. To prove the correlation between internal function of organization (in this case ethical work climate and transformational leadership) and the successful implementation of GCG principles, this study proposes two hypotheses to be empirically tested on thirty surveyed organizations; eleven of which are state-owned companies and nineteen are private companies. These thirty corporations are listed in the Jakarta Stock Exchange. All state-owned companies in the samples are those which have been privatized. The research showed that internal function of organization give support to the successful implementation of GCG principle. In this research we can prove that : (i) ethical work climate has positive significance of correlation with the successful implementation of social awareness principle (one of principles on GCG) and, (ii) only at the state-owned companies, transformational leadership have positive significance effect to forming the ethical work climate.

Experimental Estimation of Mixed-Mode Fracture Properties of Steel Weld

The modified Arcan fixture was used in order to investigate the mixed mode fracture properties of high strength steel butt weld through experimental and numerical analysis. The fixture consisted of a central section with "butterfly-shaped" specimen that had central crack. The specimens were under pure mode I (opening), pure mode II (shearing) and all in plane mixed mode loading angles starting from 0 to 90 degrees. The geometric calibration factors were calculated with the aid of finite element analysis for various loading mode and different crack length (0.45≤ a/w ≤0.55) and the critical fracture loads obtained experimentally. The critical fracture toughness (KIC & KIIC) estimated with experimental and numerical analysis under mixed mode loading conditions.

Can a Development Bank Improve the Governance of Investee Companies? Evidence from BNDES in Brazil

There are many studies in the literature on institutional investors- efforts to improve corporate governance, generally focused on the role of pension funds and private equity firms. There are only a few studies that analyze the influence of development banks in the governance of investee companies. The objective of this research is to examine the role of the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) in the governance of listed companies. Our analysis provides evidence that companies in which BNDES is a shareholder have better governance.

mCRM-s New Opportunities of Customer Satisfaction

This paper aims at a new challenge of customer satisfaction on mobile customer relationship management. In this paper presents a conceptualization of mCRM on its unique characteristics of customer satisfaction. Also, this paper develops an empirical framework in conception of customer satisfaction in mCRM. A single-case study is applied as the methodology. In order to gain an overall view of the empirical case, this paper accesses to invisible and important information of company in this investigation. Interview is the key data source form the main informants of the company through which the issues are identified and the proposed framework is built. It supports the development of customer satisfaction in mCRM; links this theoretical framework into practice; and provides the direction for future research. Therefore, this paper is very useful for the industries as it helps them to understand how customer satisfaction changes the mCRM structure and increase the business competitive advantage. Finally, this paper provides a contribution in practice by linking a theoretical framework in conception of customer satisfaction in mCRM for companies to a practical real case.