Analytical Terms Research Articles

Analysis of the Energy Dependence of the European Union

Abstract The main objective of the research paper is to accomplish a comparative analysis of the energy dependence of the EU member states. This objective is de-composited in several sub-objectives: First, to make a short literature review and a summary of the main ideas concerning energy dependence; Second, to clarify the methodology used for analysis of the energy dependence of the EU. Third, to analyze the nominal energy dependency of the EU, as well as the Union energy dependency by energy types.Fourth, to analyze the energy intensity of the economy of the European Union countries. The research and analytical methods used for the development of the paper involve comparative analysis of the available data on energy security indicators, graphical and table presentation of statistical and empirical data and survey of available legal and analytical research on the topic. Entirely secondary data sources have been used in the research. The research results comprise: - the introduction of two new concepts as a result of the analysis - the nominal energy dependency and the real energy dependency; - the construction of an energy dependency classifying scheme for the European Union member states; - the construction of an classification grid of the energy dependence of the EU member states by energy type. The research results present the author contribution to the research field of energy dependency. They add value not only in analytical terms but also pave the road for formulating further ideas and evidence-based recommendations on policy measures.

Mining temporalities: Future perspectives

In this commentary, I trace how temporal frames are embedded in spatial notions. I want to look into contrasts between ‘old’ mining regions and the newer terrains for resource extraction, and comment upon the recent resurgence of ‘frontier’ as analytical term. Subsequently, I want to focus on future makers, both in the field of planning and development. In both cases I will pay attention to the articulation of multiple temporalities at work within a social context. In analysing the politics of time in development discourse, the focus will be on moralities of money matters and time frames of debt relations. With this commentary, I want to emphasize that we need to analyse how multiple mining temporalities take place: how the making of temporalities is connected to place making; how the making of temporalities is best studied in tangible empirical events that take place; and how future projections are quarantined from, or directly affect social processes actually taking place.

On an equivalent representation of the Green’s function for the Helmholtz problem in a non-absorbing impedance half-plane

The Green’s function associated with the Helmholtz problem in a non-absorbing impedance half-plane can be expressed as an integral form. In the non-absorbing case, the presence of surface waves presents a challenge in order to obtain accurate approximations. In this work, we present an equivalent representation for this Green’s function, expressed as a sum of analytical terms and bounded integrals. The resulting representation is numerically stable and it can be estimated by any well known robust integration rule for bounded intervals. We provide a detailed description of the equivalent representation and we validate it with numerical experimentation.

Analysis of the Energy Dependence of the European Union

The main objective of the research paper is to accomplish a comparative analysis of the energy dependence of the EU member states. This objective is de-composited in several sub-objectives: First, to make a short literature review and a summary of the main ideas concerning energy dependence; Second, to clarify the methodology used for analysis of the energy dependence of the EU. Third, to analyze the nominal energy dependency of the EU, as well as the Union energy dependency by energy types.Fourth, to analyze the energy intensity of the economy of the European Union countries. The research and analytical methods used for the development of the paper involve comparative analysis of the available data on energy security indicators, graphical and table presentation of statistical and empirical data and survey of available legal and analytical research on the topic. Entirely secondary data sources have been used in the research. The research results comprise: - the introduction of two new concepts as a result of the analysis – the nominal energy dependency and the real energy dependency; - the construction of an energy dependency classifying scheme for the European Union member states;- the construction of an classification grid of the energy dependence of the EU member states by energy type. The research results present the author contribution to the research field of energy dependency. They add value not only in analytical terms but also pave the road for formulating further ideas and evidence-based recommendations on policy measures.

Constitutional and post-constitutional problems: Reconsidering the issues of public interest, agonistic pluralism and private property in planning

In the field of planning theory the discussion often seems to assume that all problems – for example, ethical or political ones – pertain to a single level or dimension. In fact, different and clearly separate “levels”, which raise problems of different kinds, can be distinguished. A “multi-level” approach therefore seems necessary. The underlying idea is that it is essential to distinguish more sharply between two analytical levels: the constitutional and post-constitutional levels. These levels are here understood mainly as analytical levels; that is, as standpoints that anyone can – at any time and even only hypothetically – assume to posit certain problems at the appropriate level and treat them by acknowledging the argumentative requirements suited to that level. This article uses such a multi-level approach to address three fundamental and currently much debated problems of planning theory and practice: the issue of “agonistic pluralism”; the issue of “public interest”; the question of “private ownership (of land)”. The contribution of this article falls within the neoinstitutionalist approaches to planning. The belief is that these approaches are shedding new light on planning problems and that research in this direction should be expanded. In this regard, this article attempts to make a contribution to this research perspective especially in analytical and methodological terms.

Internal Controllability for Parabolic Systems Involving Analytic Non-local Terms

We deal with the problem of internal controllability of a system of heat equations posed on a bounded domain with Dirichlet boundary conditions and perturbed with analytic non-local coupling terms. Each component of the system may be controlled in a different subdomain. Assuming that the unperturbed system is controllable-a property that has been recently characterized in terms of a Kalman-like rank condition-, we give a necessary and sufficient condition for the controllability of the coupled system under the form of a unique continuation property for the corresponding elliptic eigenvalue system. The proof relies on a compactness-uniqueness argument, which is quite unusual in the context of parabolic systems, previously developed for scalar parabolic equations. Our general result is illustrated by two simple examples.

Recent Advances and Challenges in Mobile Big Data

The unabated flurry of research activities dedicated to gaining business insights from a flood of data generated by heterogeneous mobile sources, such as the Internet of Vehicles, sensors, and smartphones, has instigated a new research domain called MBD. At the core of this mobile environment, scalability, cost effectiveness, reliability, analytics, and security are important concerns. Coping with these issues in handling MBD requires understanding the challenges associated with it. Mobile computing and big data have been widely studied separately; however, very few studies have explored the convergence of these two domains. In this article, we critically review recent research efforts directed at MBD. We also classify the MBD by devising a thematic taxonomy that is based on source, analytics, applications, characteristics, security, and data type. Furthermore, we discuss the opportunities offered by MBD in terms of analytics. Some potential uses of MBD in healthcare, telecommunication, digital advertising, and transportation are also presented. Several open research challenges are discussed as future research directions.

On question-begging and analytic content

Among contemporary philosophers, there is widespread (but not universal) consensus that begging the question is a grave argumentative flaw. However, there is presently no satisfactory analysis of what this flaw consists of. Here, I defend a notion of question-begging in terms of analyticity. In particular, I argue that an argument begs the question just in case its conclusion is an analytic part of the conjunction of its premises.

Extracting Knowledge from MS Clinical Metabolomic Data: Processing and Analysis Strategies.

Assessing potential alterations of metabolic pathways using large-scale approaches today plays a central role in clinical research. Because several thousands of mass features can be measured for each sample with separation techniques hyphenated to mass spectrometry (MS) detection, adapted strategies should be implemented to detect altered pathways and help to elucidate the mechanisms of pathologies. These procedures include peak detection, sample alignment, normalization, statistical analysis, and metabolite annotation. Interestingly, considerable advances have been made over the last years in terms of analytics, bioinformatics, and chemometrics to help massive and complex metabolomic data to be more adequately handled with automated processing and data analysis workflows. Recent developments and remaining challenges related to MS signal processing, metabolite annotation, and biomarker discovery based on statistical models are illustrated in this chapter considering their application to clinical research.

Imaginarios Geopolíticos en México desde la Gran Guerra de 1917

Si bien han sido pocas las reflexiones hechas, al menos hasta ahora, sobre la interconexión entre los sucesos de la Gran Guerra y los eventos locales, sobre todo en términos económicos; menos aún han sido las reflexiones sobre su impacto en términos simbólicos y culturales. Por nuestra parte consideramos que las relaciones entre EUA y América Latina (particularmente México), a raíz de la Gran Guerra, se tensionaron para siempre dejando huellas culturales indelebles de desconfianza, resentimiento, temor; al tiempo que también, de consideración y seducción entre las dos regiones que han contribuido al establecimiento de percepciones ambivalentes entre las dos regiones a lo largo de cien años, y que han marcado las geopolíticas internacionales hasta ahora. Justamente, en términos analíticos, relacionar procesos culturales-identitarios con eventos históricos específicos, situándolos éstos como disparadores de sentimientos, percepciones colectivamente latentes que nos permiten comprender acciones, reacciones, prácticas cotidianas de un grupo, pueblo o comunidades, es lo que llamamos imaginarios geopolíticos.

'Senses': Assessing a Key Term in David Chidester's Analysis of Religion

The purpose of this article is to illustrate and assess Chidester's use of the 'senses' as an analytical term in his study of religion. Under 'senses' Chidester includes not only the five conventional senses of Aristotle, but also analyzes metaphorical uses of the senses in religious discourse, the visions and dreams of mystics and shamans, and eventually new media as extensions of the human senses. Chidester's analysis of the senses in European Christian discourses on the one hand, and in colonial and postcolonial African indigenous religion and imperial religious studies on the other hand, is compared and assessed. Although he does not offer a systematic comparison of these case studies, I argue that his analysis lends itself to an explicit comparison of the senses as material aspects of religion and show how his contextualized and historically nuanced analysis of the senses in religion and religious studies informs a critical study of religion. Since critical assumes judgment, values need to be explicated in terms of critical theories, which in my view need further elaboration.

Materializing Religion: Essays in Honor of David Chidester

In his recent Religion: Material dynamics, David Chidester (2018) selected a number of key concepts that have preoccupied him during his forty years of studying religion. Having contributed to critiques of the concept of religion as a modern Western imperial and colonial invention, Chidester is intensely aware of the legacy of the term but has nevertheless employed it productively as an analytical term. If the academic study of religion, as heir of a Protestant bias, used to study beliefs, Chidester has been a pioneer in foregrounding material terms as a corrective in the study of religion, crediting Marx as crucial ancestor of this approach for his insight into the material basis of religion. The terms essayed in this book, considered under the title material dynamics, were selected by Chidester for the real, practical consequences they have had in the world, and were grouped under three sections: Categories, formations, and circulations.

Cost-oriented predictive maintenance based on mission reliability state for cyber manufacturing systems

With the advent of Industry 4.0, maintenance strategy faces new demands to avoid the hysteresis of the conventional passive maintenance mode and the non-feasibility of the periodic preventive maintenance model. In view of the inherent polymorphism of manufacturing systems and with the objective of maximizing benefits, a novel cost-oriented predictive maintenance based on mission reliability state for manufacturing systems is proposed. First, the cyber-physical system is adopted to organize and analyze big data in the operational process of manufacturing systems in terms of predictive analytics in cyber manufacturing environment. Second, a new connotation of mission reliability is defined based on the big operational data to comprehensively characterize the dynamic state of the equipment health states and the qualified degree of the production task. Third, the predictive maintenance mode based on mission reliability state is quantified by the comprehensive cost, and the relationship between mission reliability and cost is established. Thereafter, cost-oriented dynamic predictive maintenance strategy is proposed. Finally, a case study on the maintenance decision-making problem of a cylinder head manufacturing system is presented. The final result shows that the comprehensive cost can be further reduced by the proposed method relative to the traditional periodic preventive maintenance strategy.

A Framework for Orchestrating Secure and Dynamic Access of IoT Services in Multi-Cloud Environments

IoT devices have complex requirements but their limitations in terms of storage, network, computing, data analytics, scalability, and big data management require it to be used it with a technology like cloud computing. IoT backend with cloud computing can present new ways to offer services that are massively scalable, can be dynamically configured, and delivered on demand with large scale infrastructure resources. However, a single cloud infrastructure might be unable to deal with the increasing demand of cloud services in which hundreds of users might be accessing cloud resources, leading to a big data problem and the need for efficient frameworks to handle a large number of user requests for IoT services. These challenges require new functional elements and provisioning schemes. To this end, we propose the usage of multi-clouds with IoT which can optimize the user requirements by allowing them to choose best IoT services from many services hosted in various cloud platforms and provide them with more infrastructure and platform resources to meet their requirements. This paper presents a novel framework for dynamic and secure IoT services access across multi-clouds using the cloud on-demand model. To facilitate multi-cloud collaboration, novel protocols are designed and implemented on cloud platforms. The various stages involved in the framework for allowing users access to IoT services in multi-clouds are service matchmaking (i.e., to choose the best service matching user requirements), authentication (i.e., a lightweight mechanism to authenticate users at runtime before granting them service access), and SLA management (including, SLA negotiation, enforcement, and monitoring). SLA management offers benefits like negotiating required service parameters, enforcing mechanisms to ensure that service execution in the external cloud is according to the agreed SLAs and monitoring to verify that the cloud provider complies with those SLAs. The detailed system design to establish secure multi-cloud collaboration has been presented. Moreover, the designed protocols are empirically implemented on two different clouds, including OpenStack and Amazon AWS. Experiments indicate that the proposed system is scalable, authentication protocols result only in a limited overhead compared to standard authentication protocols, and any SLA violation by a cloud provider could be recorded and reported back to the user.

Ta'ifah, Sect and Sectarianism: from the Word and its Changing Implications to the Analytical Sociological Term

Ta'ifah, Sect and Sectarianism: from the Word and its Changing Implications to the Analytical Sociological Term

A Glossary of Behavior Analytic Terms for Speech-Language Pathologists' Considerations for Augmentative and Alternative Communication

At its core, productive collaboration between speech-language pathologists and behavior analysts requires effective communication between both parties. Successful communication can be gained in par...

Indigenous Intellectuals in Contemporary Ecuador: Encounters with “Seven Erroneous Theses about Latin America”

The indigenous intellectuals who were part of the foundation of the Ecuadorean indigenous movement of the 1980s contributed to the theoretical and political grounding of the concept of the plurinational state that is now recognized in the country’s new constitution. This concept constitutes a critique of the idea of nationhood that developed in Latin America throughout the twentieth century. A comparative reading of these intellectuals’ work on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Rodolfo Stavenhagen’s “Seven Erroneous Theses about Latin America” reveals two themes: colonial continuity and historical continuity. Both can be seen as a “settling of scores” with colonialism understood both as a historical period and as an analytical term for understanding the social reality of Latin America. Los intelectuales indígenas que formaron parte de la fundación del movimiento indígena ecuatoriano hacia la década de 1980 contribuyeron a la fundamentación teórica y política de la noción de Estado plurinacional, hoy reconocida por la nueva constitución del Ecuador. Sus principales antecedentes se encuentran en la elaboración de una crítica a la idea de nación tributaria de la corriente de pensamiento que se forjó en Nuestramérica a lo largo del siglo XX. Una lectura comparada de las obras escritas por estos intelectuales indígenas ecuatorianos en el marco de la conmemoración de los cincuenta años de la publicación de las “Siete tesis equivocadas sobre América Latina,” de Rodolfo Stavenhagen, revela dos elementos que aparecen reiteradamente a lo largo de su producción escritural: la idea de “continuidad colonial” y la idea de “continuidad histórica.” Ambas nociones remiten a un tema específico que se relaciona con cierto “ajuste de cuentas” con el colonialismo en tanto hecho histórico y en tanto categoría para el análisis de la realidad social en América Latina.

Aerodynamic noise from rigid trailing edges with finite porous extensions

This paper investigates the effects of finite flat porous extensions to semi-infinite impermeable flat plates in an attempt to control trailing-edge noise through bio-inspired adaptations. Specifically the problem of sound generated by a gust convecting in uniform mean steady flow scattering off the trailing edge and the permeable–impermeable junction is considered. This set-up supposes that any realistic trailing-edge adaptation to a blade would be sufficiently small so that the turbulent boundary layer encapsulates both the porous edge and the permeable–impermeable junction, and therefore the interaction of acoustics generated at these two discontinuous boundaries is important. The acoustic problem is tackled analytically through use of the Wiener–Hopf method. A two-dimensional matrix Wiener–Hopf problem arises due to the two interaction points (the trailing edge and the permeable–impermeable junction). This paper discusses a new iterative method for solving this matrix Wiener–Hopf equation which extends to further two-dimensional problems, in particular those involving analytic terms that exponentially grow in the upper or lower half-planes. This method is an extension of the commonly used ‘pole removal’ technique and avoids the need for full matrix factorisation. Convergence of this iterative method to an exact solution is shown to be particularly fast when terms neglected in the second step are formally smaller than all other terms retained. The new method is validated by comparing the iterative solutions for acoustic scattering by a finite impermeable plate against a known solution (obtained in terms of Mathieu functions). The final acoustic solution highlights the effects of the permeable–impermeable junction on the generated noise, in particular how this junction affects the far-field noise generated by high-frequency gusts by creating an interference to typical trailing-edge scattering. This effect results in partially porous plates predicting a lower noise reduction than fully porous plates when compared to fully impermeable plates.

The use of human resource information systems in two retail organisations in the Western Cape, South Africa

Orientation: The retail industry is the largest contributor to employment and the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Western Cape, South Africa. The management of human resources in this very competitive industry is a high priority for all retailers. The successful implementation, maintenance and use of human resource information systems (HRISs) are an integral part of many retailers.Research purpose: Human resource information systems are difficult to implement and maintain, and as a result, organisations cannot effectively utilise these systems to their benefit. The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors affecting the implementation, maintenance and use of HRISs in two retail organisations in the Western Cape.Motivation of study: Many retailers find it difficult to apply and utilise HRISs to their benefit and to the systems’ full potential. This study explores the challenges retailers are facing when implementing, maintaining and using HRISs.Research design, approach and method: Multiple case studies were used to conduct the research. Data were collected through a semi-structured questionnaire using interviews. Twenty-one interviews were conducted in the two retail companies to gain an understanding of the use of HRISs within these organisations. The data were analysed using a thematic method of analysis. The units of analysis were the Human Resources and the Information Technology departments of both companies. The units of observation were (21) purposively selected employees in the two mentioned departments of both retail organisations.Main findings: This research shows an under-utilisation of the HRIS in both companies as a result of poor data quality, lack of adequate training and the high cost of implementing and maintaining the system. There is a gap in terms of data analytics and report generation. This gap leads to the under-utilisation of the HRISs preventing the retailers to optimise the benefits of the HRIS.Practical and managerial implications: For organisations to reap benefits from HRISs, a change management strategy and a rigorous training programme are needed that will focus on the implemented maintenance and improved usage of these systems.Contribution: The contribution of the study includes proposed guidelines for the effective and efficient use of HRISs. The study further contributes to the body of knowledge in shedding light on the implementation, maintenance and use of HRISs in the retail industry in the Western Cape, South Africa.

Structural Heterogeneity in Capitalism: A View from the Marxist Abstract Labor Theory of Value

This text deals with the analysis of the phenomenon of heterogeneity in capitalist economies with the presence of sectors that are known, in different theoretical traditions, as “informal”, “marginality”, “popular economy”, etc. This is made with Marxist categories and from the “New Approach” paradigm (or the “Abstract Labor Theory of Value”). The node of the analysis is focused in the use of two notions: the coexistence of different “forms of production” in economies dominated by the capitalist mode of production, and the assimilation, in analytical terms, of these alternative non-capitalist forms of production to the Marxist category of Simple Commodity Economy. We analyze the role of simple commodity production in the basic operation of the capitalist economy, especially in the operation of the proletarianization and wage setting: we analyze the conditions of the coexistence of capitalist and petty commodity producers in a same market; and made some exploration on the articulation of the phenomenon of unemployment in an economy that includes both mentioned forms of production.