Over the last several years, economists have studied the impact of standards on market dynamics. Recently, there has been increased attention to standards as barriers to free trade. 1 The O ce of Technology Assessment [29] has suggested a variety of policy level concerns, including trade related matters, and suggests that in part the issues may be based on the U.S. approach to funding standards...

Medical operation planning is a substantial element of hospital management. It is characterized by high complexity, which is caused by the uncertainty between the offered capacity and the true demand. As emergency cases occur the planning requirements will change. Therefore, the use of a dialog-based system is preferred against fully manual or fully automated systems, because of the inability o...

The organisational context in which systems engineering is practised is changing. Organisations are becoming increasingly concerned with the flexibility of their processes. Fundamental issues of responsiveness to innovation in product concept, system architecture, component technologies and inter-working relationships are of growing importance. Current developments in management thinking and in...

User participation is still a difficult topic in software development. Based on the results of the Oregon experiment in construction we propose a novel development process – the Oregon Software Development Process. The process focusses on patterns to empower end-users so that they can make well-informed design decisions and tailor their environments. The four core principles of the process – pa...

A short historical view of process automation in China is provided. The development of essential aspects of process automation, including Distributed Control System (DCS), Advanced Process Control (APC) and Manufacturing Execution System (MES), are discussed in detail. The contribution of local process automation companies, i.e. SUPCON, and HOLLYSYS are highlighted.

The production of software is a labour intensive activity. Given the scale of software projects related to current and future HEP experiments, it is worth trying to improve the knowledge of the PEOPLE involved, the organization of the software development PROCESS and the TECHNOLOGY used in the various aspects of this activity. The goal is better systems at lower cost and happier users of the so...

Bis-triazinyl-pyridines (BTPs) have been developed at CEA-Marcoule to separate actinides(III) from lanthanides(III). Although high separation performances were observed in the counter-current hot test carried out in 1999 on a highly active effluent, the extraction and back-extraction yields of actinides(III) were lower than expected from calculation. A strong sensitivity of the extractant towar...

his lifetime included the American Medical Association, the Board of Scientific Directors of the Rockefeller Institute, the Executive Committee of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and the National Academy of Sciences. Fittingly, the last major responsibility he assumed during his life was that of chair of the history of medicine at Johns Hopkins. Fleming does an excellent job of integrat...

Developing game is anymore essentially a personal effort. The game development process is an important issue. In fact, games are becoming more and more complex task, involving multidisciplinary teams composed by member with specialised knowledge and skills. In this paper, we propose a framework, based in the information systems development literature and aplied to game development. This framewo...

Social development undoubtedly requires people participation in different domains. It seems without participation, we cannot achieve a people-centered, inclusive and sustainable social development. In the social development process, all citizens with various ethnic and religious interests are able to affect on all the social phenomena and variables, based on their competencies and mental capaci...