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This book analyzes the role of small and medium enterprises in the economy of Slovakia at the beginning of new Millennium. The changes of 1989 brought about the changes of society and economy as well. In the period of transformation of the Slovak economy, small and medium enterprises have been often considered to be a critical element of economic revival. The study answers to what extent this expectation has been met. Legal and institutional f...

To how many people customers usually tell about their satisfying or dissatisfying consumption experiences? Is it so that dissatisfied customers are far more active in word-of-mouth than satisfied customers? The purpose of this study was to examine this link between customer satisfaction and word-of-mouth. An experimental research design was employed. In the manipulations of the independent variables, written scenarios about different hotel vis...

The steady growth of digital information as a component of library and archives collections has significant implications for these institutions, none more significant, perhaps, than those related to preservation. There is a tacit assumption that these institutions will preserve the information they create or that is entrusted to their care. Digital technology, however, is fragile and evanescent. From a preservation perspective, it is fraught w...

This book describes research examining how eight New Zealand women kindergarten teachers experienced their lives, personally and professionally, in relation to the restructuring of education that took place in New Zealand between 1984 to 1996. Drawing on life history interviews with the teachers, and using the theoretical ideas of Foucault as a 'tool kit' - an aid to analysis - the teachers' stories highlight how their lives were restructured ...

This book studies two optimization problems, maximum satisfiability and planing of satisfiability. The maximum satisfiability problem (max-SAT) is the optimization counterpart of the satisfiability problem (SAT). The goal of max-SAT is to maximize the number of clauses satisfied. planning as satisfiability is a class of planning aiming to achieve a plan with optimal resource, cost, or makespan by using the SAT approach. We present a mix- SAT f...

Rightsizing has emerged as a critical process in this present era of shrinking space and time, fluid market environment and disappearing borders. It is often adopted by many organizations to help them become more agile and thereby cater to the demands on efficient, parsimonious production, speedy service delivery, improved quality, and lowered costs. Though accepted as a strategic requirement of an organization, the justice aspect is often sub...

This study shows that transactions between hospitals and health insurance companies in a deregulated environment will develop towards more sophisticated coordination mechanisms. A transaction cost analysis shows that ultimately the classic hospital, with a full range of services and products, which contracts health insurance companies for all hospital products will disappear. Economic behaviour of hospitals and health insurance companies in a ...

The phenomenon of all-night-long parties with electronic dance music played by a DJ was a remarkable landmark of the '90s youthscape. For many scholars and commentators, the emergence of rave and club cultures signified a fascinating possibility to test out concepts for analyzing altered states of consciousness which became a trademark of raves and clubbing. Some of the concepts of psychoanalysis (and its polemical versions) happened to be ver...

Vitamin A is essential for all vertebrates. Birth defects may occur with either deficiency or excess vitamin A. High levels of vitamin A occur in some commercial cat foods due to the use of liver. Toxicity, teratogenicity, and metabolism of vitamin A were the focus of the research. The first objective was to define a safe upper level of vitamin A for cats during gestation. It was demonstrated that a high level of vitamin A added to the diets h...

Recent advances in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have led to many new protocols specifically designed for sensor networks where energy awareness is an essential consideration. Much attention has been given to the routing protocols since they might differ depending on the applications and network architectures. This proposed work, LEACH with Maximum Lifetime Routing, is based on the objective of maximizing the system lifetime. In this algorit...

The use of Internet technology to further citizen participation is believed to hold great promise to enhance democratic governance by allowing citizens to access public information and interact with government officials, by promoting better accountability of public officials to citizens, and by producing fertile grounds for reinvigorated civil society. Although the technology is applied in many government organizations to help improve public s...

The advancement of microengineering has enabled the manipulation and analysis of single cells, which is critical in understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying the basic physiological functions from the point of view of modern biologists. Unfortunately, analysis of single cells remains challenging from a technical perspective, mainly because of the miniature nature of the cell and the high throughput requirements of the analysis. Lab-on-...

Most often externally induced local institutions fail as the support is withdrawn. This poses what activates users to continue managing the project support. This book examines organisational structure, function, internal resource and external linkage of project induced watershed management user groups. Collective action with common interest leads to active participation of users in managing group functions including regular operation and maint...

For over centuries, the role of the construction industry has been recognized in enabling social, economic and industrial development. Likewise, the construction in Botswana has been a great pillar in transforming the nation. However, like any human endeavour, various challenges have started diminishing its capacity to efficiently and effectively deliver projects. The book uses findings of a study undertaken in the construction industry of Bot...

Information Technology (IT)revolution is rapidly changing economic and social activities by providing opportunities and challenges for accelerating development in the world. Industrialized Countries (ICs) have changed their planning and other operation systems to benefit from these IT advancements. One of the major activities that have enabled ICs to achieve IT potential was to adopt IT policy. In Developing Countries (DCs), IT is not yet expl...

The aim of the research was to clarify the land tenure relations of an impoverished farming community on a farm called Melkkraal. The farm is co-owned but it is also home to twenty six households of which three are co-owners. The remaining households have occupied the land through a haphazard process of acquiring oral permission from some of the co-owners and non-owning residents. This has led to a tenure conundrum because the way in which the...

In this book I analyse a need to regulate the field of geotechnical engineering explorations to ensure the sustainable use of land and the earth's crust including the resources of natural building materials. The analyses of the mutual impact of processes caused by human activities and natural conditions and processes is an essential prerequisite to environmentally sustainable planning, designing and building. This ensures maximum management of...

Located in the nexus of visual communication and intercultural communication, the research covered visual communication and meaning-making theories, social construction and constructivist theories, theories about cultural differences, and theories concerning communication patterns, in particular communication networks. Integral theory provided the foundation for developing two new models. The data demonstrated that groups' communication patter...

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is caused by the dysfunction of cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR). The predominant mutation found in CF patients (delta F508) results in a mislocalized channel, which is unable to reach the plasma membrane. Rab proteins are small GTPases involved in vesicle transport. The regulation of CFTR by Rab GTPases-4 and 27a was evaluated in multiple cell systems: the colorectal HT-29 cells, bronchial epithe...

Current natural language generation or machine translation systems cannot distinguish among near-synonyms - words that share the same core meaning but vary in their lexical nuances. This is due to a lack of knowledge about differences between near-synonyms in existing computational lexical resources. In this work, I automatically acquired a lexical knowledge-base of near-synonym differences from multiple sources, using an unsupervised decision...