New Ways to Cut Telex Costs

In many regions, conventional bicycles and electrically assisted bicycles (e-bikes), are gaining popularity and becoming a commonly used sustainable mode in the urban transportation system. Speed pedelecs are a type of high-speed e-bike with motorized pedal assistance up to a maximum speed of 45 km/h. This relatively new mode is most often used for trips that range from 10 to 40 kilometers, making it a promising mode for promoting drivers to switch to using sustainable and active transportation. The goal of this study is to assess speed pedelec usage in the Netherlands. We set out to understand who the users are, what motivates them, and whether they experience any barriers to speed pedelec usage. Using a factor-cluster analysis we group users based on their attitudes and preferences regarding the physical environment they cycle in, their sociodemographic characteristics, personal attitudes, and social environments. The analysis revealed four primary user groups: Enthusiastic riders, Efficient riders, Concerned riders and Relaxed riders. Across the groups, 85% of the respondents reported using a speed pedelec at least once a week for a trip they would have previously made by car. However, each group has specific travel habits, motivations, and safety concerns. In contrast to previous literature about the use of conventional bicycles, attitudes about competition play an important role for speed pedelec users. Stress reduction and being outside in nature also play an important role for certain segments of speed pedelec users. In addition, believing that other road users have a negative image of speed pedelecs also determines how speed pedelec users use their bicycles. While infrastructure preferences are often cited as being a distinctive factor for users of conventional bicycles, this did not clearly apply to speed pedelec users. However, all user groups reported that on average the cycling infrastructure on their regular routes was insufficiently developed for speed pedelecs. To motivate continued speed pedelec usage, each user groups requires specific policy interventions that are aligned with their personal values related to preference, safety, and image. By understanding the specific needs and desires of different segments it becomes possible to develop effective policy interventions aimed at improving the experiences of all speed pedelec users.

An underwater acoustic multimedia communication (UWAMC) system is proposed with 2400 transmission modes according to time-varying multipath underwater acoustic (UWA) channel conditions. The orthogonal variable spreading factor (OVSF) scheme and Gold sequence (GS) scramble code are integrated into multi-input multi-output UWAMC system based on orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing to achieve the quality of service of multimedia transmission in the UWA channel. Binary phase shift keying (BPSK) and quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) adaptive modulation, direct mapping (DM) or space–time block code (STBC) transmission strategies, convolution channel code with rate 1/2 and 1/3, and a power assignment mechanism were adopted in the proposed system. Simulation results show that the bit error rate (BER) and power saving ratio (PSR) performance of the STBC strategy with transmission diversity is superior to that of the DM strategy without transmission diversity, and the performance of the BERs and PSRs of the transmission scheme with the GS scramble code surpasses that of the scheme without the code. The performance of the BERs and PSRs of BPSK modulation with a channel code rate of 1/3 is better than that of BPSK modulation with a channel code rate of 1/2, and the performances of BERs and PSRs of BPSK modulation with a channel code rate of 1/3 are better than that of QPSK modulation with a channel code rate of 1/3. As the length of the OVSF codes increases, the UWAMC system’s BERs decrease, and its PSRs increase. The UWAMC system can achieve either maximum transmission speed or maximum transmission power efficiency.

This article raises the key question of how our field of international business can regain legitimacy and relevance in a new era, and specifically asks: if not us, who? In order to answer this question, we discuss new international business realities and challenges and raise a number of additional questions that we hope will encourage a fruitful dialogue in our field. We further propose specific, actionable projects that we believe the international business community can implement in order to regain legitimacy and relevance.

This paper presents the experiences and results from the LLP-project PELLIC. The aim of the project was to make full use of the learning potential of practice enterprise methodology for communicative language learning by organizing and supporting virtual international business interaction within a blended learning scenario. “Practice enterprise” is a practical-oriented teaching method with a strong focus on authenticity, which is conceptually related to task-based learning approaches (e.g. Willis and Willis, 2008). Results are based on the project’s piloting phase during which learners in four European countries became “virtual entrepreneurs”. The target language of the course was English, the lingua franca of international business. Learners’ interactions were supported by a customized virtual learning environment (VLE), based on the open source course management system Moodle, enhanced and adapted to suit the pedagogic needs of the scenario by integrating additional collaboration tools (Google Applications, Skype, etc). Along with a range of openly accessible e-learning contents, focus activities and resources, e-learning tasks were developed as “blueprints” to guide educators in adapting, re-purposing and extending materials and methodology for their own teaching. The article highlights the role of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in creating opportunities for learner output, the teacher’s role as a facilitator of the learners' project work, and the function of re-usable e-learning contents and activity formats for authentic autonomous and collaborative language learning.

Based on cellular automaton traffic BML model, one-dimensional traffic Fukui-Ishibashi(FI)model is extended to urban traffic network.The two-dimensional FI model is proposed.Under the conditions of periodic boundary, the relationship of the average speed and the density of the traffic as well as the fundamental diagram of the traffic for size of traffic network and the maximum speed of the vehicle are obtained by simulation.The result shows that the maximum speed has a great impact on traffic congestion under different size of traffic networks, and reveals transition from free flow to local jamming and fully jamming with the increase of density.The transition point to induce traffic congestion is decreased when the maximum velocity increases in the same lattice.The corresponding patterns of traffic in several states confirm these research results further.

“You know Spanish, right?” Most undergraduates with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish or another world language will, sooner or later, have to answer this question or one similar. This is particularly true for students educated in South Carolina, a state that houses over 1,200 international businesses within its borders (“International Presence”) and which has one of the fastest-growing Hispanic populations in the United States (Krogstad and Lopez). In a typically monolingual state (see the Modern Language Association Language Map), those students who do possess a second language are poised to better integrate themselves into this international business community. However, what many monolinguals inaccurately assume is that being bilingual also means that one will be a skillful translator or interpreter, but this is not the case. Possessing a Spanish degree does not indicate proficiency in, for example, metallurgy or emergency medicine, in which it is necessary to provide quality language services. Unless students have been exposed to a variety of subjects relating to law, health care, business, and educational services in both English and Spanish, they will find themselves unprepared for the demand the community will place on them just because they are bilingual. With conversation, composition, literature, and culture classes providing the bulk of the core curriculum for the language major, how do language departments address the communities’ needs for quality translators and interpreters? Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) not only provide a solution for the community, but they also allow connections with other disciplines. LSP is not a new concept, but rather a flashback to when the grammar-translation method was still considered the go-to teaching method. Due to the increased need for Spanish speakers, just being able to speak English and Spanish is not enough for language students to have an impact in their field. Students will find themselves hurled into a new profession, or even one for which they are supposedly prepared. As educators, have we explored every possible option for vocabulary acquisition in order to prepare students to understand the new lexical domains imposed on them by their jobs? As universities decrease, and even eliminate, world language requirements in their general education curriculum, while some are cutting language programs altogether, languages for a specific purpose become even more vital and must begin at the lower levels. First, language departments must identify the most critical needs on their campuses and evaluate their available staffing resources. Genesis of such a program might start with the biggest opponents of world languages on a campus. Once the detracting disciplines are identified, language instructors need to demonstrate the value for these classes. For example, if one can develop a first-year Spanish

Address event representation (AER) is a widely employed asynchronous technique for interchanging "neural spikes" between different hardware elements in neuromorphic systems. Each neuron or cell in a chip or a system is assigned an address (or ID), which is typically communicated through a high-speed digital bus, thus time-multiplexing a high number of neural connections. Conventional AER links use parallel physical wires together with a pair of handshaking signals (request and acknowledge). In this paper, we present a fully serial implementation using bidirectional SATA connectors with a pair of low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS) wires for each direction. The proposed implementation can multiplex a number of conventional parallel AER links for each physical LVDS connection. It uses flow control, clock correction, and byte alignment techniques to transmit 32-bit address events reliably over multiplexed serial connections. The setup has been tested using commercial Spartan6 FPGAs attaining a maximum event transmission speed of 75Meps (Mega events per second) for 32-bit events at a line rate of 3.0Gbps. Full HDL codes (vhdl/verilog) and example demonstration codes for the SpiNNaker platform will be made available.

Address-Event-Representation (AER) is a widely extended asynchronous technique for interchanging “neural spikes” among different hardware elements in Neuromorphic Systems. Conventional AER links use parallel physical wires together with a pair of handshaking signals (Request and Acknowledge). Here we present a fully serial implementation using bidirectional SATA connectors with a pair of LVDS (low voltage differential signaling) wires for each direction. The proposed implementation can multiplex a number of conventional parallel AER links per LVDS physical connection. It uses flow control, clock correction, and byte alignment techniques to transmit 32-bit address events reliably over multiplexed serial connections. The setup has been tested using commercial Spartan6 FPGAs reaching a maximum event transmission speed of 75Meps (Mega Events per second) for 32-bit events at 3.0Gbps line data rate.

A dual-core DMA communication method between DSP and FPGA based on reverse wave analysis was proposed. In high definition and real-time dual-core embedded systems for catadioptric omni-directional imaging, the dual-core DMA communication method was used to provide high speed panoramic data communication between DSP and FPGA. Reverse engineering methods were applied to perform reverse wave analysis on traditional DMA operations, and dual-core DMA communication was accomplished according to the results of wave analysis. Experiments indicate that the proposed dual-core DMA communication method provides a maximum data transmission speed between DSP and FPGA at 4.704Gbps (i.e. 588MBps).

In the actual scenario of international trade, shipping industry is responsible for carrying the largest volume of goods and the liner shipping is the way what provides more stability because of its published and stable rates for long periods. Moreover, it is based on a fixed and published schedule in which vessels operate cyclic routes. This paper introduces a new hub and spoke network structure for regular cyclic vessel routes. The network structure, representing a deap sea operations and short sea operations of liner shipping, is a hierarchical hub and spoke structure that offers alternative paths for flow between nodes through hub-route and sub-route and whose sub-routes could have a sub-hub linking them. A mathematical model which integrates a hub location problem with multiple allocations and with routing problem is presented to optimize the network design global cost.

Although financial planning is a business tool widely used by the international business community, its use by Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) hardly began at the end of the previous decade. For almost fifty years the Mexican Oil Company dealt with volumetric targets and within an administration scheme very similar to any federal agency, instead of an international oil company, as it really is. A deep process of structural change started in 1990, aimed to maximize the assets economic value. Within this context, it became necessary to structure a financial planning scheme to monitor the huges investments of the industry, which projects are undertaken in a long term framework and the capital resources applied for those projects have a very important leverage in the Mexican economy. Despite several limitations that the Mexican Government still applies on PEMEX, mainly regarding budgeting and taxation, the Company has been developing a "sui generis" financial model to enable the top management to design mid and long term financial plans, taking into account the predefined strategies, objectives and targets. Considering that PEMEX is placed among the ten most important worldwide oil industries and also the greater flexibility on federal regulations, the Company is obliged to increase its financial planning efficiency in order to achieve the same operation level of other international oil industries.

Following the economic and financial crisis of 1997, the Korean government has made attempts to move the economy towards a neoclassical economic growth paradigm based on inward foreign direct investment (FDI), and seemingly replacing the old strategic model of state-led development, which has been dominant for over three decades. Notwithstanding the government's significant efforts and the IMF's praise of Korea's financial crisis recovery as ‘remarkable’, the FDI-led globalization strategy and the government behaviour are still often perceived as inconsistent, inefficient, unpredictable and xenophobic by many in the international business community. This article presents insights into those prevailing perceptions through interviews conducted with 47 senior executives of foreign companies and various foreign chambers of commerce in Korea between 2005 and 2006.

This doctoral thesis examines the effect of insolvency proceedings on the conduct of international arbitration and whether legislators, arbitral tribunals and national courts adopt a transnational approach to the interaction of these two fields. By adopting a comparative approach, this thesis considers the law and practice in four jurisdictions, namely, Australia, England, Switzerland and the United States, together with the practice of international arbitral tribunals. It is argued that while there are examples of common approaches across the jurisdictions examined, a transnational approach to the interaction between international arbitration and insolvency proceedings does not presently exist. It is also argued that a transnational approach to this interaction is desirable and would likely produce considerable benefits for legal practitioners, the international business community and society more generally by providing greater certainty and predictability, reduced arbitration, litigation and transaction costs, enhanced transparency and greater confidence in the international legal system.

Global mindset is usually considered as a positive skill or resource that helps individuals and companies succeed internationally. We argue that it is also a collective scheme of thought that brings some actors together and sets others apart. We investigate this perspective through a qualitative study of French MNC managers, internationalisation support providers, and SME owners and managers attempting to create or grow their business in China. We reveal that global mindset is a double‐edged concept: it is not solely an instrument for integration, but also a doxa, a particular viewpoint imposed to identify and reject outsiders through symbolic struggles. This alternative conceptualisation is necessary to rethink the social forces at work in the field of international business. It is also necessary to encourage educators and practitioners to acknowledge the struggles that result from the imposition of certain views and behaviours and to adapt education, support and training programs accordingly.

The importance of financial information for a company is an important element of its integrity, financial autonomy, as well as recognition of its entrepreneurial freedom and sovereignty of economic decisions made. Taking into account the importance of the financial report, the international business community has identified principles for the preparation and presentation of this information, which are mandatory for all participants in the financial activities of the company: relevance, reliability, comprehensibility, materiality, truthful presentation, completeness, transparency. However, due to the increasing role of risk and uncertainty at the present time, business participants are forced to resort to new ways of doing entrepreneurial activity, performing managerial corporate operations, which, on the one hand, should be financially legitimate, and on the other hand, be a management cunning and ingenuity with a positive financial result. That is why interest in derivative financial instruments has increased. There is a contradiction, namely: in the conditions of economic instability, enterprises and participants in economic activity, in order to minimize financial risks, use derivative financial instruments to hedge the assets of the organization, thus acquiring the most risky asset. After all, derivative financial instruments are themselves recognized as the most risky instruments. However, existing accounting practices in the area of ​​derivatives do not meet the growing needs of the business for corporate control and management and financial accounting. Leading a discussion about the accounting of derivatives is not new. Many authors are engaged in developments in accounting for derivatives, such as: Zhitlukhina O.G., Astakhova Yu.A., Tarasova Yu.A., and others. But despite this, and also due to the observed growth in enterprise risk management and the increasing interest in derivatives by company management, this article discusses an important controversial aspect of the recognition of derivatives as financial accounting entities. The work is devoted to improving the definition of derivatives in the aspect of accounting, recognition of their transactions. An analysis of existing developments was also carried out and on the basis of this, the author’s definition was proposed.