Global Front Research Articles

Managing the Global front end of NPD: Lessons Learned from the FMCG Industry

New product development (NPD) performance is particularly poor in the global fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry. An important opportunity for improvement lies in the activities that take place at its front end. Studies looking at the front end of NPD in the global FMCG industry are, however, strikingly difficult to find, thereby failing to provide adequate guidance to practicing managers faced with the complexity of the front end. To address this deficit, a four months insider action research project was undertaken to study the process, the management roles, the barriers encountered, and the lessons learned in the management of the global front end within the FMCG context. The findings are particularly insightful and expand the understanding of the uncharted global front end process. Therefore, the study has significant academic and managerial implications; firstly, by adding a new stage to the global front end process, namely the rejected concepts resuscitation stage, secondly, by adding a new management role, the central stage role of the subsidiaries; thirdly, by demonstrating the necessity of introducing formality and detailed guidelines to the global front end process; and finally, by indicating the usefulness of direct modes of communication, in the form of global workshops.

Amnesia and the Myth of Discovery: Lessons from Transnational and Women of Color Communication Scholars

Two concepts that do not receive center stage, yet deserve such position, are amnesia and its fraternal twin the myth of discovery. Amnesia is absolutely essential in the current neoliberal regime, within its spaces of exception and at its core. We could not “discover” new media, new audiences, and new markets without forgetting histories of conquest, technology, and financial debacles. Within critical/cultural studies the deployment of these two concepts is central to an analysis and activism that places global intersectionality front and center.

Perception to the Subjects Learnt in the Undergraduate Nursing Program among Students of a Selected College

The nursing curriculum is consistently revised according to the changing scenario. With globalization and liberalization of the education policy a lot of private colleges have been established. The Indian Nursing Council revised the nursing curriculum to prepare nurses for the global front and the same was implemented since 2005. The objective of the study was to assess the perception of the subjects in the curriculum and the preferred area of work on completion among the B.Sc. Nursing students. Forty three final year students were asked to complete a four point rating scale which had all the subjects. Students also had to rank their preferred area of work and the reason. None of the subjects were perceived to be very difficult by the students. Less than 12% of the students perceived the subjects to be difficult. Majority of the students 35(84.1%) perceived fourth year subjects to be easy. Medical ward was ranked 1 and surgical ward was ranked 2 by majority of the students. The results showed that majority of the subjects in the curriculum were easy and very easy.

Between the Pen and the Sword: The Global Islamic Media Front in the West

This article undertakes a descriptive analysis of the jihadist group, the Global Islamic Media Front. Using information obtained from cells broken up in the West, it argues that, in addition to its propaganda actions in support of terrorism, the group fulfils three additional functions: (a) It serves as an “identity refuge” for individuals wishing to cultivate an identity as fighters of the jihad; (b) It offers a form of “surrogate activism” to those who fail in their attempts to join organisations engaged in terrorist violence; and (c) It is an important source of violent radicalisation for its own members who become increasingly dissatisfied with their propaganda activities.

Job Hopping - A Review of Literature

The problem of job hopping has been researched upon by a number of researchers in diverse fields. In the different sectors, which contribute to form a major chunk of a country’s GDP, and, claims to provide employment to a major part of the workforce, it is pertinent, therefore, to analyze the factors which lead to the employees’ disengagement from these sectors. Further, with the increasing permeability of boundaries on the global front, thanks to neo-liberalisation waves, the cross-occupational and cross-organizational mobility of the employees has witnessed a phenomenal growth. Concurrent with the job hopping of the employees is the attempt by the organizations to bring in practices which might help in the retention of the employees in a bid to offset the damages of the rising attrition. The present paper is one such attempt at reviewing the literature of the concept of job hopping and retention.

India's nuclear energy architecture - global actions and local responses

Post-Fukushima, while some countries decided to shift away from nuclear energy, others like India that continue to pursue their nuclear ambitions have been facing challenges domestically – especially, local-level protests against expansion of nuclear energy. In parallel, India has made significant progress at the global front in civilian nuclear energy ties. While India has attained prominence internationally, the domestic perception of nuclear energy has been mixed resulting in delays affecting the achievement of energy security objectives – a major concern for India. In this context, the paper would comprehensively discuss the role of India’s nuclear energy architecture globally and locally to understand this contrast and its future implications for India’s nuclear energy sector. It would focus on the role of the state and influence of other stakeholders, the key domestic concerns around nuclear energy expansion, besides locating India in the global nuclear energy order post the nuclear agreements.

Immune Optimization Approach for Dynamic Constrained Multi-Objective Multimodal Optimization Problems

This work investigates one immune optimization approach for dynamic constrained multi-objective multimodal optimization in terms of biological immune inspirations and the concept of constraint dominance. Such approach includes mainly three functional modules, environmental detection, population initialization and immune evolution. The first, inspired by the function of immune surveillance, is designed to detect the change of such kind of problem and to decide the type of a new environment; the second generates an initial population for the current environment, relying upon the result of detection; the last evolves two sub-populations along multiple directions and searches those excellent and diverse candidates. Experimental results show that the proposed approach can adaptively track the environmental change and effectively find the global Pareto-optimal front in each environment.

Multi-objective particle swarm optimization based on crossover and mutation

In order to minimize the distance of the Pareto front produced by Particle Swarm Optimization(PSO) with respect to the global Pareto front and maximize the spread of solutions found by PSO,a multi-objective particle swarm optimization based on crossover and mutation(CMMOPSO).In the CMMOPSO,firstly,the number of particle in sparse part of Pareto front was defined and the crossover operator was employed to increase the diversity of the nondominated solutions;next,the mutation operation was used for the particles far away from Pareto front to improve the probability to fly to Pareto front.In benchmark functions,CMMOPSO achieves better solutions than other algorithms.

Indian BSE Market Cap Added 64 Lac Crores in this Decade - Dec, 2010

As we are all set to sign-off the calendar year 2010, in this report we have made one more effort to see how much scale the Indian markets have attained over past decade.Indian capital markets had eventful and exciting times during the past decade. Considering the growing stature of India on the global front, one can expect that the coming decade will also be equally fruitful for India.

Weak Form of Market Efficiency: Evidences from Selected NSE Indices

Stock market efficiency is and important parameter to gauge the efficiency of a financial system. It assumes extreme importance especially in developing countries like India. The efficiency of Indian stock markets, especially the leading stock exchange of India - the NSE, attracts the attention of researchers and analysts in view of recent fluctuations in investments levels and the global financial turmoil. The efficiency tests conducted by the researchers so far have produced contradictory results and it is precisely difficult to comment on Indian stock market efficiency with definitiveness. We found it interesting to examine the impact of various macro economic factors both on Indian and global front on Indian stock markets in relation to the rate and manner of incorporation of information, which is the concern of every economic participant in recent times. This paper therefore, attempts to seek evidence for the weak form efficient market hypothesis using the daily data for stock indices of the National Stock Exchange for the period of 1 January 2000 to 31 Oct 2008. We use Kolmogrov -Smirnov, Unit Root and run test to test weak-form efficiency.

Preface

Cleft lip and palate are congenital deformities, which, because of their frequency and localization to the orofacial region, are of great significance to the oral and maxillofacial surgeon. Although confined to a fairly small anatomic region, the typical cleft deformity requires significant specialized care by many disciplines. Nearly 15 years ago, the American Cleft Palate – Craniofacial Association (ACPCA) proposed parameters of care designed to help standardize the management of cleft patients. The goals of these cleft teams are to carry out periodic assessments and make suggestions regarding timing and sequencing of care. Although mainly a North American phenomenon, the ACPCA guidelines have been taken on a global front and interpreted differently by many countries. The result has been a vast array of management protocols without universal standardization.Because it is neither practical nor desirable to expect all surgeons worldwide to conform to a single surgical technique, I have elected to divide the lip and palate into the 2 most popular techniques for repair. For the primary unilateral cleft lip-nose repair utilizing modified Millard technique, Drs. Costello and Ruiz provide a very detailed and thorough breakdown of this popular technique. Dr. David Precious provides an interesting and eloquent description of the primary unilateral cleft lip-nose repair as well as the bilateral primary cleft lip-nose repair, both utilizing the Delaire technique. The primary bilateral cleft lip-nose repair utilizing the modified Millard technique is also described by the editor. Relative to primary palatal repair, this is divided into the modified Von Langenback technique described by Dr. Kevin Smith and the primary palatoplasty utilizing a Furlow technique described by Dr. Bruce Horswell. The alveolar cleft repair is described in detail by Dr. Bruce Epker. I am indebted to these experienced surgeons for providing their time and efforts to this Atlas. I am hopeful that an overview of these techniques, as provided in this Atlas, will be of value to those practicing oral and maxillofacial surgeons and residents interested in the field of cleft surgery. Cleft lip and palate are congenital deformities, which, because of their frequency and localization to the orofacial region, are of great significance to the oral and maxillofacial surgeon. Although confined to a fairly small anatomic region, the typical cleft deformity requires significant specialized care by many disciplines. Nearly 15 years ago, the American Cleft Palate – Craniofacial Association (ACPCA) proposed parameters of care designed to help standardize the management of cleft patients. The goals of these cleft teams are to carry out periodic assessments and make suggestions regarding timing and sequencing of care. Although mainly a North American phenomenon, the ACPCA guidelines have been taken on a global front and interpreted differently by many countries. The result has been a vast array of management protocols without universal standardization. Because it is neither practical nor desirable to expect all surgeons worldwide to conform to a single surgical technique, I have elected to divide the lip and palate into the 2 most popular techniques for repair. For the primary unilateral cleft lip-nose repair utilizing modified Millard technique, Drs. Costello and Ruiz provide a very detailed and thorough breakdown of this popular technique. Dr. David Precious provides an interesting and eloquent description of the primary unilateral cleft lip-nose repair as well as the bilateral primary cleft lip-nose repair, both utilizing the Delaire technique. The primary bilateral cleft lip-nose repair utilizing the modified Millard technique is also described by the editor. Relative to primary palatal repair, this is divided into the modified Von Langenback technique described by Dr. Kevin Smith and the primary palatoplasty utilizing a Furlow technique described by Dr. Bruce Horswell. The alveolar cleft repair is described in detail by Dr. Bruce Epker. I am indebted to these experienced surgeons for providing their time and efforts to this Atlas. I am hopeful that an overview of these techniques, as provided in this Atlas, will be of value to those practicing oral and maxillofacial surgeons and residents interested in the field of cleft surgery.

An integrated method of multi-objective optimization for complex mechanical structure

An integrated method of multi-objective optimization for complex mechanical structures is presented, which integrates prototype modeling, FEM analysis and optimization. To explore its advantages over traditional methods, optimization of a manipulator in hybrid mode aerial working vehicle (HMAWV) is adopted. The objective is to increase its working domain and decrease the cost under the constraint of enough strength, and the design variables are geometric dimensions. NLPQL and NSGA-II are synthesized to achieve optimal solutions. The results indicated that this integrated method was more efficient than enumerative search algorithm. NSGA-II could approximate the global Pareto front precisely, and the relative error between NLPQL and NSGA-II is trivial. Therefore, this integrated method is effective and shows a potential in engineering applications.

Miscible transfer of solute in different model fractures: From random to multiscale wall roughness

Miscible tracer dispersion measurements in transparent model fractures with different types of wall roughness are reported. The nature (Fickian or not) of dispersion is determined by studying variations of the mixing front as a function of the distance travelled but also as a function of the lateral scale over which the tracer concentration is averaged. The dominant hydrodynamic dispersion mechanisms (velocity profile in the gap, velocity variations in the fracture plane) are established by comparing measurements using Newtonian and shear thinning fluids. For small monodisperse rugosities, front spreading is diffusive with a dominant geometrical dispersion (dispersion coefficient D ∝ Pe or constant dispersivity l d = D/ U) at low Péclet numbers Pe; at higher Pe values, one has either l d ∝ Pe (i.e. Taylor dispersion) for obstacles of height smaller than the gap, or l d ∝ Pe 0.35 for obstacles bridging the gap. For a self-affine multiscale roughness like in actual rocks and a relative shear displacement δ → of complementary walls, the aperture field is channelized in the direction perpendicular to δ → . For a mean velocity U → parallel to the channels, the global front geometry reflects the velocity contrast between them and is predicted from the aperture field. For U → perpendicular to the channels, global front spreading is much reduced. Local spreading of the front thickness remains mostly controlled by Taylor dispersion except in the case of a very strong channelization parallel to U → .

The HPV vaccine controversy: sex, cancer, God, and politics: a guide for parents, women, men, and teenagers

Acknowledgements Author's Note 1.The HPV Vaccine Controversy: Science versus Faith 2. HPV Transmission and Natural History: A Silent Epidemic 3. Risk Factors and Testing: Knowledge is Power 4. Cancers, Warts and HPV: From Head and Neck Lesions to Cervical, Penile, and Anal Diseases 5. Emotional Aspects and Prevention of HPV: Shame, and Blame, and Absence of Cure 6. The New HPV Vaccines: History, Recommendations and Limitations 7. HPV Vaccines for Males: The Unsolved Half of the Equation 8. FAQ's on HPV and the Vaccines: Excerpts from a University Town Hall Meeting 9. Parent's Dilemma to Vaccinate: A Physician Mother's Perspective 10. Vaccines on the Global Front: Unique Challenges and Opportunities Internet Resources References

XXII World Congress of Philosophy and Nepali Representation

This year's XXII World Congress of Philosophy met on July 30-August 05 in Korea under the Congress's theme Rethinking Philosophy Today. This is a congress which meets every five years. Last time it met in 2003 in Turkey and the next time will be in Greece, the homeland of philosophy indeed, in 2013. Philosophers and philosophy teachers from more than eighty-two countries participated in this quintessential philosophy congress. Most of them including myself presented papers at a series of different sessions. Almost all of the rest of the countries except my own country had more than one delegate. I was the single delegate from Nepal. This speaks much about ourselves besides the fact of our economic hardship, because participation from 'poor' countries like Ethiopia, Sudan, and Nigeria included more than a single delegate. Despite some bitter feelings about our backwardness, I represented my country with a high feeling. The XXII Congress was important for us Asians, because it is the first ever of these congresses to have met on Asian soil in the long history of its one hundred and eight years. It was an opportunity to display the beauty and strength of our philosophical systems and traditions to the global communities. The heavy presence of philosophers from China, India, Japan and Korea definitively asserted what was Asian in the congress. Nepali representation at such a historic congress was very crucial for the promotion of the Nepali image in the global intellectual community, and I was very conscious of this fact. Who we are matters in how far we engage in dialogue with the global community. Our long isolationism can no longer help us to define who we are. For the first time in the history of the Nepali philosophical tradition, I stood high in front of a colorful gathering of very distinguished philosophers and spoke in a Nepali voice about our interest in the establishment of a cooperative society for philosophy and humanistic studies in South Asia. I was quite aware that we alone could do nothing unless intellectual colleagues of our neighboring countries extended their helping hands. But I was proud when Professor Bhuvan Chandel, current Secretary of the Centre for Studies in Civilizations in New Delhi, embraced me saying Nepal is our identity! after the gathering. At least we could make our presence and influences known and felt to our own Indian counterparts. Finally, I realized that the global community (although we can question the validity of such a community) is welcoming us to come up with our own voice. They are sympathetic to listening to our voice. How much we want to come out of our 'exotic' hibernation depends on us. Whether we want to maintain same past isolationism in a kind of illusory prelapsarian bliss, or whether we want to come up to the global front is up to us. Keeping the local sovereignty intact and letting it interact with the global is a need of every society today. To initiate a dialogue with the global does not necessarily mean to be westernized. Unfortunately, some of our people still suffer from this common misconception. The truth as it appears to me is that we must properly interact with the global, not only to resist what we are not but also to assert what we are, culturally and socially. …

Indigenous women as entrepreneurs in global front line innovation systems

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate an entrepreneurial process with unusual characteristics, focusing on Sami micro and mezo level entrepreneurial logics and terms.Design/methodology/approach – The case study is a Sami community in Sweden, where a gender equality project developed into involvement with global innovations systems, in advanced networking development. The paper builds on ethnological methodology and an interactive approach. Market signalling theory is applied, uniquely for this paper, to public funding decisions.Findings – The paper found anticipation among Sami of mobile ICT to take over the key role in herding, from the present mechanized and motorized era. The many‐faceted entrepreneurial process contradicts a fundamental split between survival and self expression mode for economic strategy taken for granted in, e.g. Richard Florida's theory on the creative class. Regarding public funding for research and entrepreneurial initiatives, the paper finds that the national lev...

How prepared are nurses and other health professionals to cope in and manage disaster situations?

How prepared are nurses and other health professionals to cope in and manage disaster situations?

The Future of Media Politics

The Future of Media Politics David Michael Ryfe (bio) Framing American Politics. Edited by Karen Callaghan and Frauke Schnell . Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005; pp 237. $27.95. Watching the Watchdog: Bloggers as the Fifth Estate. By Stephen D. Cooper . Spokane,WA: Marquette Books, 2006; pp 357. $59.95. Blogging, Citizenship, and the Future of Media. Edited by Mark Tremayne . London: Routledge, 2007; pp 272. $45.00. The Media Were American: U.S. Media in Decline. By Jeremy Tunstall . New York: Oxford University Press, 2007; pp 455. $82.95. Center Stage: Media and the Performance of American Politics. By Gary C. Woodward . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007; pp 200. $80.00. What is happening to the American news media system and its role in politics? The signs of change are everywhere. Newspapers, especially large urban dailies, are slowly spiraling downward—with declining revenues, declining circulation, and reductions in news staff. Even though Knight Ridder was one of the largest and oldest news chains in the United States, it has been dismantled, with its newspapers sold off to various suitors. Television network news divisions face similar trends: their budgets slashed, staffs cut, foreign bureaus closed, and viewership declining and skewing toward an ever-older demographic.1 Young people in particular seem to have abandoned the news.2 As a now famous Pew survey from 2004 shows, more young people aged 18–24 are getting their news from The Daily Show than from mainstream news outlets.3 [End Page 723] This has happened at a time when political elites are more aggressive than ever in their management of the news, as in the Bush administration's view that the Washington press corps is "just another interest group," to be managed like any other.4 And it has happened at a time when, in the form of citizen journalism, citizens who have not entirely abandoned the news insist on producing it themselves.5 Any one of these developments is of interest. Together they imply that something basic about the news, and its relationship to politics, is changing. What that change portends—for reporters, politicians, and citizens—is a subject of great fascination these days (I know of at least six conferences held in the last two years alone on the issue). However one comes down on the issue, the discussion generally assumes that a fundamental change is under way. Four recently published books invite us to reconsider this assumption. Written on diverse subjects—from blogging to media framing to the performative aspects of political rhetoric—they suggest a degree of stability in the midst of change: political elites still drive mainstream news coverage; mainstream media still exercise inordinate influence in setting and framing public agendas; aggregate public opinion is still largely shaped by the negotiations of newsworthiness undertaken by political and media elites. A fifth volume, The Media Were American—Jeremy Tunstall's revision of an earlier text, The Media Are American (1977)—argues that at least on the global front the American news media no longer loom so large. Even here, however, the evidence is not so clear. American news media may not dominate as they once did, but by most measures they still straddle the globe like no other national media system in the world. The news from these volumes is not all old, of course. All of the texts examine new trends; some, like Tunstall's, make broader arguments for fundamental change. However, together these books do more to confirm than dispel the standard account of media politics that has developed over the past three decades. As I say, Tunstall's book is a revision of an earlier work. From the change in title (The Media Are to The Media Were), one might expect a dramatic alteration in emphasis from the former to the latter. In fact, however, the structure of the two texts is remarkably similar. In both works, Tunstall begins by documenting the extent of American dominance of international media exports. In the earlier text, that dominance was significant. Tunstall shows, for instance, that at mid-century two of the three largest international news agencies were American: the Associated Press and United Press (the other...

Miscible displacement fronts of shear thinning fluids inside rough fractures

The miscible displacement of a shear‐thinning fluid by another fluid with the same rheological properties is studied experimentally in a transparent fracture by an optical technique that images relative concentration distributions. The fracture walls have complementary self‐affine geometries and are shifted laterally in the direction perpendicular to the mean flow velocity U: The flow field is strongly channelized and macrodispersion controls the front structure for Péclet numbers above a few units. The global front width increases therefore linearly with time and reflects the velocity distribution between the different channels. In contrast, at the local scale, front spreading is similar to Taylor dispersion between plane‐parallel surfaces. Both dispersion mechanisms depend strongly on the fluid rheology, which shifts from Newtonian to shear thinning when the flow rate increases. In the latter domain, increasing the concentration enhances the global front width but reduces both Taylor dispersion (due to the flattening of the velocity profile in the gap of the fracture) and the size of medium scale front structures.

Primer Vector Theory Applied to Global Low-Thrust Trade Studies

The low-thrust spacecraft trajectory problem can be reduced to only a few parameters using calculus of variations and the well-known primer vector theory. This low dimensionality combined with the extraordinary speed of modern computers allows for rapid exploration of the parameter space and invites opportunities for global optimization. Accordingly, a general low-thrust trade analysis tool is developed based on a global search for local indirect method solutions. An efficient propagator is implemented with an implicit bang-bang thrusting structure that accommodates an a priori unknown number of switching times. An extension to the standard adjoint control transformation is introduced that provides additional physical insight and control over the anticipated evolution of the thrust profile. The uniformly random search enjoys a perfect linear speedup for parallel implementation. The method is applied specifically on multi revolution transfers in the Jupiter-Europa and Earth-moon restricted three body problems. In both cases, thousands of solutions are found in a single parallel run. The result is a global front of Pareto optimal solutions across the competing objectives of flight time and final mass.