High Performance Turboalternator and Associated Hardware. 1 - Design of Turboalternator

Performance of two stage axial flow turbogenerator with gas bearing rotor support syste

Export production under exchange rate uncertainty

Given that a multinational enterprise can react flexibly upon exchange rate movements, international trade flows may be interpreted as an option. An enterprise will opt to export if the profits obtained from exporting under given exchange rate developments are greater than if foreign subsidiary sales were opted. Naturally, given negative exchange rate scenario situations, an enterprise will choose not to export. By virtue of a favorable exchange rate situation it may be more advantageous to implement the flexibility given by the inherent option exercise privilege. Interestingly, even taking account of entrepreneurial risk aversion aspects of enterprises, it is demonstrated that situations characterized by enhanced exchange rate volatility may still lead to greater export trade volumes. --Export,Exchange Rate Volatility,Risk Aversion,Real Option

Die Prinzipal-Agent-Theorie als Erklärungsinstrumentarium von Korruption: Angewendet auf den Praxisfall „Siemens“

Zunehmend wird Korruption aus einem wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Verständnis betrachtet und erklärt. Als besonders ergiebiges Instrumentarium zur Erklärung von Korruptionsfällen hat sich die Prinzipal-Agent-Theorie bewährt. In diesem Artikel wird die Prinzipal-Agent-Theorie allgemein und theoretisch vorgestellt und anschließend auf den Praxisfall Siemens angewendetKorruptionsprävention im Unternehmen, Prinzipal-Agent-Theorie, Neuen Institutionsökonomik, Siemens Konzern

Implementation of a herd management system with wireless sensor networks

This paper investigates an adaptation of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) to cattle monitoring applications. The proposed solution facilitates the requirement for continuously assessing the condition of individual animals, aggregating and reporting this data to the farm manager. There are several existing approaches to achieving animal monitoring, ranging from using a store and forward mechanism to employing GSM-based techniques; these approaches only provide sporadic information and introduce a considerable cost in staffing and physical hardware. The core of this study is to overcome the aforementioned drawbacks by using alternative cheap, low power consumption sensor nodes capable of providing real-time communication at a reasonable hardware cost. In this paper, both the hardware and software has been designed to provide a solution which can obtain real-time data from dairy cattle whilst conforming to the limitations associated with WSNs implementations

Ist Fairer Handel Wirklich Fair?

Organisationen des Fairen Handels verfolgen das Ziel benachteiligten Produzenten in Entwicklungsländern faire Preise für deren Erzeugnisse zu zahlen. Dennoch ist es aus makro- und mikroökonomischer Sicht fraglich, ob die Zahlung eines Preisaufschlags wirklich effektiv für die betroffenen Produzenten ist. Am Beispiel des Bananenmarktes soll anhand einer Kosten-Nutzen-Analyse und der Analyse möglicher negativer Externalitäten des Fairen Handels auf nichtteilnehmende Produzenten die Frage erörtert werden, inwieweit dieses alternative Handelsmodell als „fair“ bezeichnet werden kann.Fairer Handel, Bananenmarkt, Kosten-Nutzen-Analyse, Verteilungsaspekte, negative Externalitäten

Sacred communities: contestations and connections

This article discusses a project whose purpose was to review existing qualitative and quantitative data from two separate studies to provide new insights about everyday religion and belonging. Researchers engaged in knowledge exchange and dialogue with new and former research participants, with other researchers involved in similar research, and with wider academic networks beyond the core disciplines represented here, principally anthropology and geography. Key concluding themes related to the ambivalent nature of ‘faith’, connections over place and time, and the contested nature of community. Implicit in terms like ‘faith’, ‘community’, and ‘life course’ are larger interwoven narratives of space, time, place, corporeality, and emotion. The authors found that understanding how places, communities, and faiths differ and intersect requires an understanding of social relatedness and boundaries

Locating the ‘radical’ in 'Shoot the Messenger'

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below, copyright 2013 @ Edinburgh University Press.The 2006 BBC drama Shoot the Messenger is based on the psychological journey of a Black schoolteacher, Joe Pascale, accused of assaulting a Black male pupil. The allegation triggers Joe's mental breakdown which is articulated, through Joe's first-person narration, as a vindictive loathing of Black people. In turn, a range of common stereotypical characterisations and discourses based on a Black culture of hypocrisy, blame and entitlement is presented. The text is therefore laid wide open to a critique of its neo-conservatism and hegemonic narratives of Black Britishness. However, the drama's presentation of Black mental illness suggests that Shoot the Messenger may also be interpreted as a critique of social inequality and the destabilising effects of living with ethnicised social categories. Through an analysis of issues of representation, the article reclaims this controversial text as a radical drama and examines its implications for and within a critical cultural politics of ‘race’ and representation

Sociology and postcolonialism: another 'missing' revolution?

Sociology is usually represented as having emerged alongside European modernity. The latter is frequently understood as sociology's special object with sociology itself a distinctively modern form of explanation. The period of sociology's disciplinary formation was also the heyday of European colonialism, yet the colonial relationship did not figure in the development of sociological understandings. While the recent emergence of postcolonialism appears to have initiated a reconsideration of understandings of modernity, with the development of theories of multiple modernities, I suggest that this engagement is more an attempt at recuperating the transformative aspect of postcolonialism than engaging with its critiques. In setting out the challenge of postcolonialism to dominant sociological accounts, I also address `missing feminist/queer revolutions', suggesting that by engaging with postcolonialism there is the potential to transform sociological understandings by opening up a dialogue beyond the simple pluralism of identity claims

Syrian Refugees and the Digital Passage to Europe: Smartphone Infrastructures and Affordances

This research examines the role of smartphones in refugees’ journeys. It traces the risks and possibilities afforded by smartphones for facilitating information, communication, and migration flows in the digital passage to Europe. For the Syrian and Iraqi refugee respondents in this France-based qualitative study, smartphones are lifelines, as important as water and food. They afford the planning, navigation, and documentation of journeys, enabling regular contact with family, friends, smugglers, and those who help them. However, refugees are simultaneously exposed to new forms of exploitation and surveillance with smartphones as migrations are financialised by smugglers and criminalized by European policies, and the digital passage is dependent on a contingent range of sociotechnical and material assemblages. Through an infrastructural lens, we capture the dialectical dynamics of opportunity and vulnerability, and the forms of resilience and solidarity, that arise as forced migration and digital connectivity coincide