Search results for "local [action]"
showing 10 items of 583 documents
The World Bank's Early Reflections On Development: A Development Institution Or A Bank?
2008
Until the late 1960s, the World Bank presented itself as an institution devoted to making sound and directly productive project loans. Yet, during its early years, discussions took place within the Bank regarding the possibility of issuing different types of loans, namely (i) loans aimed at tackling social issues (‘social loans’), and (ii) loans aimed at providing foreign currency to address disequilibria in the balance of payments (‘impact loans’). This paper brings together historical analysis and theories of organization development to study the housing issue as a case in point. The analysis reveals that the Bank was unwilling to lend for housing programmes not because these were not sou…
Convergence of the finite volume method for a conductive-radiative heat transfer problem
2013
We show that the finite volume method rigorously converges to the solution of a conductive-radiative heat transfer problem with nonlocal and nonlinear boundary conditions. To get this result, we start by proving existence of solutions for a finite volume discretization of the original problem. Then, by obtaining uniform boundedness of discrete solutions and their discrete gradients with respect to mesh size, we finally get L 2type convergence of discrete solutions.
The Role of Firms and Institutional Actors in Developing the Catania Nanotech Network
2009
Obiettivo del lavoro e` quello di esaminare nell`ambito dell sviluppo regionale l`importanza della rete di imprese quale attore istituzionale inserito all`interno delle strutture socioeconomiche locali. In tale ambito si osserva come l`interazione pubblico-privato e` essenziale per supportare le istituzioni locali in aree economiche in ritardo come la Sicilia
Predicting Heuristic Search Performance with PageRank Centrality in Local Optima Networks
2015
Previous studies have used statistical analysis of fitness landscapes such as ruggedness and deceptiveness in order to predict the expected quality of heuristic search methods. Novel approaches for predicting the performance of heuristic search are based on the analysis of local optima networks (LONs). A LON is a compressed stochastic model of a fitness landscape's basin transitions. Recent literature has suggested using various LON network measurements as predictors for local search performance.In this study, we suggest PageRank centrality as a new measure for predicting the performance of heuristic search methods using local search. PageRank centrality is a variant of Eigenvector centrali…
A non-local model of thermal energy transport: The fractional temperature equation
2013
Abstract Non-local models of thermal energy transport have been used in recent physics and engineering applications to describe several “small-scale” and/or high frequency thermodynamic processes as shown in several engineering and physics applications. The aim of this study is to extend a recently proposed fractional-order thermodynamics ( [5] ), where the thermal energy transfer is due to two phenomena: A short-range heat flux ruled by a local transport equation; a long-range thermal energy transfer that represents a ballistic effects among thermal energy propagators. Long-range thermal energy transfer accounts for small-scale effects that are assumed proportional to the product of the in…
Local thermal non-equilibrium effects in the Darcy–Bénard instability of a porous layer heated from below by a uniform flux
2013
Abstract The influence of the lack of thermal equilibrium between the solid phase and the fluid phase on the convective instability in a porous medium is studied. A horizontal layer with parallel and impermeable bounding walls is considered. The lower wall is assumed to be isoflux, and the upper wall isothermal. The basic motionless state is perturbed with small-amplitude disturbances, so that a linear analysis of the instability is carried out with a streamfunction-temperature formulation of the local balance equations. Then, the governing equations are solved for the normal modes, leading to an eigenvalue problem for the neutral stability. This eigenvalue problem is solved analytically, t…
The Contribution of Family Business Groups to the Local Innovation Environment
2018
Family firms and family business groups and their role in the local business community are largely unexplored territory in the field of family business as well in the field of regional innovation systems. The focus of this chapter is in regional innovation system and particularly in how family firms and family business groups are embedded in this system. The main research question is what is the role of family business groups for the regional innovation system? The present study is also among the first to analyse the intellectual property rights (IPRs) filing activity by family business groups. Descriptive empirical analysis indicates that family business groups are among the top regional i…
Deploying Virtual MAC Protocols Over a Shared Access Infrastructure Using MAClets
2013
Network virtualization has been extensively researched in the last years as a key enabler for improving the network performance. However, virtualization in wireless networks pose some unique challenges: first, the usual over-provisioning approach for providing isolation between multiple virtual entities is not viable; second, the partitioning criteria are often ambiguous, since the actual resources perceived by each entity depend on many external (and time-varying) factors. In this demo, we show an effective virtualization solution for wireless local area networks, solving the problem of isolation and flexible resource paritioning, based on the concept of MAClets. MAClets are software progr…
Is the population genetic structure of complex life cycle parasites determined by the geographic range of the most motile host?
2010
Due to their particular way of life, dispersal of parasites is often mediated by their host's biology. Dispersal distance is relevant for parasites because high degree of dispersal leads to high gene flow, which counters the rate of parasite local adaptation in the host populations. Parasites with complex life cycles need to exploit sequentially more than one host species to complete their life cycle. Most trematode parasites have such complex life cycles involving invertebrate and vertebrate hosts. The spatial scales of invertebrate and vertebrate host populations are often different, which may decrease the probability that the parasite cycles locally in the intermediate host population. W…
Interpretable Option Discovery Using Deep Q-Learning and Variational Autoencoders
2021
Deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) is unquestionably a robust framework to train autonomous agents in a wide variety of disciplines. However, traditional deep and shallow model-free RL algorithms suffer from low sample efficiency and inadequate generalization for sparse state spaces. The options framework with temporal abstractions [18] is perhaps the most promising method to solve these problems, but it still has noticeable shortcomings. It only guarantees local convergence, and it is challenging to automate initiation and termination conditions, which in practice are commonly hand-crafted.