State-of-the-art product configuration enables companies to deliver customized products by selecting and assembling predefined configuration elements based on known relationships. This paper introduces an innovative concept, open configuration, in order to assist companies in configuring products that correspond exactly to what customers want. Superior to product configuration, open configurati...

Agricultural associations of a socio-economic nature have been and continue to be a basic structural feature of the agribusiness sector and rural development in Spain, both in the social and economic and land use spheres. Taking into account the current significance of these entities and the future prospects, in this paper we analyse the Internet presence of the Spanish citrus co-operatives. Th...

The Second Board Market is typical stock market for high tech companies in China. This paper discusses the relationship between trading volume and price changes in the case of high-tech listed companies in the Chinese Second-Board Stock Market. By using the basic concepts proposed by Kim and Verrecchia, and Kandel and Pearson, and contrasting them with ex-post information from earnings releases...

Charles O'Reilly and Jeffrey Pfeffer are both professors at Stanford University's business school. The basic argument of Hidden Value is that great (leading, profitable) organizations are built not by attracting the most talented (e.g., top ten per cent) people but by creating an organization that knows how to unleash the value of "ordinary" people. The argument is made by devoting eight of the...

Observations have established that the diffuse intergalactic medium (IGM) at z ∼ 3 is enriched to ∼ 10 solar metallicity and that the hot gas in large clusters of galaxies (ICM) is enriched to 1/3−1/2Z⊙ at z = 0. Metals in the IGM may have been removed from galaxies (in which they presumably form) during dynamical encounters between galaxies, by ram-pressure stripping, by supernova-driven winds...

This paper examines the effect of TOE (Technology, Organizational and External) factors on the usage of e-government among Jordanian public listed companies. Results reveal that in Jordan, companies that are categorized as basic adopters of e-government mainly used e-government for seeking information and contracts (procurement) and TOE factors are generally found to have insignificant effect o...

To provide the basic information about the release of heavy metals from the pyrite tailings of Huangjiagou pyrite mine, the pyrite tailings were investigated through a series of batch experiments under different initial pH of extractant, temperature, liquid-solid (LS) ratio, and soaking time conditions. Moreover, calcium carbonate was added in the pyrite tailings to determine the reduction effe...

The metal is a chemical element that conducts electricity well and heat, and the nonferrous metals builds cations and ionic bonds. Heavy metals include metals whose density is higher than 5 g/cm(3). The whole range of the metal is in the form of essential trace elements, essential for a number of functions in the human body, and its deficiency results in a lack of occurrence of a serious sympto...