Aviation News, Boeing, Airbus

A new research report claims that 30 countries around the world now have a greater number of mobile phone subscriptions than the size of their population.

The study from Informa Telecoms and Media, a provider of business intelligence and strategic marketing solutions, says that countries including Hong Kong, Kuwait and the Czech Republic have a mobile phone penetration rate of over 100%, while in some markets such as Sweden, the United Kingdom and Italy the penetration rate is over 110%.

This reflects a trend for many users to buy second or third subscriptions.

FOR A MOTOR, “RATED CURrent” means only a couple of clearly defined numbers: full-load amperes, and locked-rotor amperes. Except under certain transient conditions, those are the only two values of importance to the application. With upstream switching, control, and protection devices, however, it’s not so simple.

A motor is an end-of-the-line energy sink. The only current flowing to it is what results from the applied voltage and motor internal impedance. In contrast, a circuit breaker, fuse, or switch -as well as the conductors themselves-is subjected to whatever a downstream load (or a circuit fault) may demand. Hence, such devices can have several different current ratings depending upon the nature of that load.

The basic rating is continuous current, the value of amperes intended to flow through the device. (This is sometimes described as “operational current” or “thermal current.”) When we speak of a “100 ampere fuse,” for example, we mean that a load drawing 100 amperes continuous current is the maximum for which that fuse is intended to provide fault protection. How long is “continuous”? “More than three hours,” according to one definition.

Although we tend to think of “inductive” and “resistive” circuits as two separate entities, the distinction is only one of degree. Whether a-c or d-c, all real circuits contain both resistance and inductance. Opening a current-carrying circuit will therefore always result in an arc across the opening contacts. How intense-and therefore how damaging-that arc may be depends upon the relationship between resistance and inductance, expressed by the circuit power factor.

As long as the current (and therefore the arc intensity) does not exceed a design level, a fuse or circuit breaker will snuff out the arc before too much damage is done. Current at that point is the interrupting capability of the device. Sometimes called the breaking current, it will far exceed the basic “continuous current rating.”

It’s often assumed that this is the amount of current that will actually cause the fuse or breaker to open the circuit. That’s not the case. As the National Electrical Code explains, in Article 100, this rating is “The highest current at rated voltage that a device is intended to interrupt under standard test conditions.” Those test conditions are outlined in UL standards. Suppose a voltage source can theoretically supply 50,000 amperes to a short-circuit. The complete circuit including that fault must have an impedance that includes the connecting wire from the power source to the breaker being tested, and that impedance will reduce the actual current the breaker sees during the test to something less than 50,000 amperes. Thus, there may be no contradiction in applying a circuit breaker tested to “only” 40,000 amperes, for example, in a power system capable of supplying 50,000 short-circuit amperes (see Figure 1 for typical relationship).

Increasingly the world is becoming globalised and the riots at Seattle, Stockholm and Genoa provide some evidence of the power and control of Multinational or Transnational Companies (MNCs/TNCs) and the subsequent backlash against this. The forces that have led to the growth of MNCs/TNCs are manifold but would include the reduction in trade barriers, the development of the global triad trading block system (South East Asia and China, Europe, and North America), the liberalisation and deregulation of markets, the move towards world-wide privatisation, strategic decisions by organisations that wish to dominate world markets as their domestic market growth rates have slowed down, and the increased competition some organisations are finding in their domestic markets. All these factors together have seen the growth almost year-on-year of foreign direct investment (FDI), as organisations seek to take advantage of market and cost saving opportunities both within Europe and in the UK in particular.

Whilst a growing number of econometric and survey-based studies have been published that focus on the key influences which determine inbound FDI at the national level, relatively few studies exist into the forces which affect the distribution of FDI between UK regions. The aim of this paper is to rectify this omission by seeking to identify and analyse a set of factors that influence the attraction of inbound FDI to UK regions.

LOCATIONAL CHOICE OF FDI BY TNCs

Theoretical work by Stopford and Strange (1991) and Dunning (1993) suggests that four main factors determine the national and regional location of FDI by transnational corporations (TNCs). These are: (physical, labour or technological); the search for markets (following customers, suppliers or competitors abroad, seeking increased familiarity with the local business environment or reducing their costs of supplying a foreign market); the search for efficiency (exploiting different factor endowments, cultures, institutional arrangements, economic systems and policies and market structures); and finally the search for strategic assets (enabling them to sustain and advance their international competitive advantages). In addition, national and regional resource endowments; market access and potential; favourable competitive positions; strong consumer demand; and favourable government policies can all help in attracting FDI to specific national and regional locations.

This paper focuses on three main ‘influencers’ of inbound investment: market, resources, and efficiency-seeking FDI. Strategic asset-seeking FDI is excluded from the study, since it proved incapable of measurement using the published UK data available at the time of the preliminary study.

EARLIER STUDIES

Organizations struggle with shrinking or non-existent backup windows, the need to recover quickly, often to a specific point in time, and even meeting compliance or regulatory guidelines. Backing up to tape is no longer adequate; not only is it difficult to administer for backups and recoveries, but it lacks the speed, reliability, flexibility and simplicity IT needs to meet stringent SLAs. Backing up to disk using virtual tape emulation or virtual tape libraries also falls short as the administration of the solution is tape-centric and schedule driven. Add in the explosion of data, along with the challenge of protecting remote offices, and you have the challenge facing many of today’s business–with IT sitting on the front lines of aligning business needs with today’s technology.

As an employee in any type of organization can attest, organizational culture is as prevalent and as varied as individuals themselves. Organizational culture is enduring and complex, and may have both a positive and a negative effect on the staff and the workplace. In many ways culture will determine the survival of an organization over the long term, especially in volatile industries.

Cultures that can be a liability to an organization include those that create barriers to change, create barriers to diversity or barriers to mergers and acquisitions. (Stephen P. Robbins. Organizational Behavior, 8th ed., 602-603.)

Understanding the organizational culture can help you to understand why change does not take place, or why a project fails. It will also help you to determine where to strive to make changes to the culture.

As managers and library leaders, why do we need to get a sense of the prevailing organizational culture? It is essential to understand the organizational culture if you want to make changes to how work is done, what type of work is being done, or at the broadest level, to affect the organization’s standing in its industry. Understanding the culture and, as required, changing it, can mean the difference between attracting and retaining good employees and driving away the best employees with an environment that doesn’t encourage, challenge, or reward them.

The organizational culture assessment that I participated in didn’t provide any surprises regarding the existing culture–most people with any level of sensitivity can get a sense of what type of culture is prevalent in an organization. What was surprising were the results from the survey to determine what type of culture staff would prefer to see the organization develop.

As background, the organization had just gone through a major change. The executive director had departed after 20 years; there had been a period of several months with an acting ED followed by a new, external ED appointment. The assessment took place only a month after the new ED was in position.