The Delphi Method as a Useful Tool to Study Governance and Protected Areas?

The Delphi method is a systematic, interactive, written method, which relies on a panel of experts. This paper seeks to discuss whether the Delphi method is an appropriate method for obtaining information about governance. In this study we used the Delphi method to assemble information from 10 professionals with vast experience in nature conservation, protected areas and governance. The purpose of this study was to get a better understanding of the scientific governance debate. Three rounds of questionnaires were sent to the selected experts. The results of this Delphi Questionnaire reveal that there is a broad common understanding of protected area governance. They also reveal insights into how individual categories of protected areas will develop in the future. However, the study also shows that specialists are not fully agreed on this point.     

Offshore versus domestic: Can EM MNCs reach higher R&D quality abroad?

In the current discourse about the technological development of emerging market multinational companies (EM MNCs), the internationalization of research and development (R&D) activities is increasingly discussed as a strategy for catching-up to established MNCs. EM MNCs attempt to use international R&D to tap into technologically superior resources abroad which are not available to them in their home market. This study compares the performance of domestic and offshore R&D activities to look into EM MNCs’ ability to conduct high-quality R&D abroad. We use the Chinese telecommunication equipment manufacturer Huawei as a best practice case study. To map their worldwide patent quality pattern, we propose a multiple-patent-office-approach to ensure a balanced view on their activities with data from SIPO, USPTO and EPO. We also employ three different measures to capture different dimensions of patent quality. The results of the empirical model support the assumption of higher quality for patents with knowledge from advanced offshore locations.     

The formation of virtual organizations by means of electronic institutions in a 3D e-Tourism environment

In this article we showcase an agent-mediated B2C and B2B e-Marketplace. This e-Marketplace is part of the social and immersive 3D e-Tourism environment “Itchy Feet”. We give an overview of the framework that forms the basis of the e-Marketplace and show how it is used to create B2C-, B2B- and Virtual Organizations that are visualized in a 3D Virtual World. This interface provides users with an intuitive and easy way to interact with humans and software agents by means of a 3D Virtual World. The business logic is realized by autonomous software agents offering services to customers. The e-Marketplace is regulated by Electronic Institutions to ensure that all participants adhere to the rules of the market. The article is concluded with a detailed discussion on bridging the gaps between Multi-Agent Systems and 3D Virtual Worlds and the preliminary results of a conducted usability study of “Itchy Feet”.     

The age prospective memory paradox: Young adults may not give their best outside of the lab.

Previous research has identified the age prospective memory paradox of age-related declines in laboratory settings in contrast to age benefits in naturalistic settings. Various factors are assumed to account for this paradox, yet empirical evidence on this issue is scarce. In 2 experiments, the present study examined the effect of task setting in a laboratory task and the effect of motivation in a naturalistic task on prospective memory performance in young and older adults. For the laboratory task (Experiment 1, n = 40), we used a board game to simulate a week of daily activities and varied features of the prospective memory task (e.g., task regularity). For the naturalistic task (Experiment 2, n = 80), we instructed participants to try to remember to contact the experimenter repeatedly over the course of 1 week. Results from the laboratory prospective memory tasks indicated significant age-related decline for irregular tasks (p = .006) but not for regular and focal tasks. In addition, in the naturalistic task, the age benefit was eliminated when young adults were motivated by incentives (F     

Characterization of coating systems by scanning acoustic microscopy: Debonding,blistering and surface topology

Scanning acoustic microscopy (SAM) has been applied to different commercial coating systems on steel substrates in order to evaluate the potential of the method for fast non-destructive testing during material development: the focus was on defect detection after and during accelerated weathering and corrosion tests. The possibility of detecting hidden defects (e.g., blisters) in an early stage of weathering or corrosion tests has been evaluated for different commercial coating systems. Using different scanning modes 2K polyurethane systems (solvent- and water-borne) have been examined by SAM. Debonding at the polymer/substrate interface and the interface between base coat and top coat has been studied in samples after simulated weathering. The time dependence of “blister nucleation and growth” has been studied during a salt spray test. Furthermore, the surface topography has been investigated for UV-cured acrylic systems with and without antioxidants after simulated weathering.     

Analyzing the Spanish strip cipher by combining combinatorial and statistical methods

According to historical reports, many telegrams that date from the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) still remain undisclosed. It is believed that these telegrams were encrypted with a cryptosystem called the “Spanish Strip Cipher” (SSC).

During this civil war, SSC was the most used cryptographic algorithm. This method corresponds to a homophonic substitution cipher in which a plaintext letter can map to between three and five ciphertext symbols.

By means of cryptanalysis, the authors detect a weakness in the encryption process of the SSC. In this article, they describe how this vulnerability is exploited to efficiently reconstruct a plaintext from a relatively short ciphertext. The attack is based on combinatorial and statistical methods, and it is divided into three phases: homophones-table analysis, letter-frequency analysis, and dictionary search.

The attack was implemented in Java and tested on a laptop with an i7 processor and 4 GB of RAM. The tests were carried out with several real telegrams from the Spanish Civil War. In this article, the authors provide the results of one test that was successfully performed only using the first 201 ciphertext symbols of a Spanish telegram.     

Seamless Integration of Databases in VR for Constructing Virtual Environments

An approach for authoring virtual environments within the virtual environments themselves is presented, integrating a database containing arbitrary components that are used to construct the 3D scene. The issues important to a seamless integration of the database, such as multimedia data storage and database linkage are discussed, with the focus on the human-computer interaction component. A concept for a 3D database interface is described for query, presentation and usage of query results in the virtual environment. Finally, an implementation of the concept using VRML and Java is presented.