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Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) play a crucial role in marine biology research and oceanic natural resources exploration. Since most AUVs are underactuated they require sophisticated trajectory planning and tracking algorithms. The purpose of this paper is to develop a new method that allows an underactuated AUV to track a moving object while constraining the approach to a direction tangent to the path of the target. Furthermore, the distance at which the AUV follows the target is constrained, reducing the probability of detection and unwanted behavior change of the target.

First, a kinematic controller that generates a trajectory tangent to the path of the moving target is designed such that the AUV maintains a prescribed distance and approaches the target from behind. Using a Lyapunov based method the stability of the kinematic controller is proven. Second, a dynamic sliding mode controller is employed to drive the vehicle on the trajectory computed in the first step.

The kinematic and dynamic controllers are shown to be stable and robust against parameter uncertainty in the dynamic model of the vehicle. Results of numerical simulations for equidistant tracking of a target on both smooth and discontinuous derivatives trajectories for a variety of relative initial positions and orientations are shown.

The contribution of this research is development of a new method for path planning and tracking of moving targets for underactuated AUVs in the horizontal plane. The method allows control of both the direction of approach and the distance from a moving object.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine reasons for disproportionately high levels of exclusion from the workplace of adults with Asperger syndrome.

The methodology adopted involves empirical analysis of secondary, qualitative datasets. The twin datasets applied are examined using labour process analysis.

The main findings highlight the role of new and subtle forms of management control, a deficient yet necessary conflict dynamic in the employment relationship, and a reluctance of employers to involve third parties, in the exclusion process.

The study is limited because of the use of secondary datasets. Further research should be based on primary data collection and analysis, particularly in terms of seeking the views of other important parties to the exclusion process.

The problem of exclusion is unlikely to be improved without considering strategies to address the challenging customary social relations between employer and employee.

Improving employment inclusion is likely to reduce mental health problems for adults with Asperger syndrome and reduce the burden on those who play a broader supporting role.

The topic of Asperger syndrome and employment has yet to permeate the academic literature on human resource management, employment relations and organisation studies.

This article seeks to discuss LUZ, a Brazilian energy supplier that has decided to use their network for telecommunication.

This case describes the acquisition‐process from the perspective of the ESCRA sales manager, whose actions are analyzed, evaluated and discussed in class.

LUZ, a Brazilian energy supplier, has decided to use their network for telecommunication. They found a subsidiary named LUZATEL for purchasing the required IT equipment. Four IT companies make it to the short list. One of them is ESCRA. ESCRA is a large Swedish producer of telecommunication equipment, who has recently started to additionally offer IT solutions.

This paper uses a Brazilian energy supplier as a case study.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of globalization and credit market imperfections on child labour.

Analysis is based on cross-country regression framework, incorporating 129 developing countries for the period 1970-2010.

The findings indicate that countries that are more open to trade and having higher foreign direct investment inflow have lower incidence of child labour. As child labour in export-related industries is hard to find, trade sanctions may not have a significant effect on child labour. Further study concludes that income of the bottom quartile of the population is the best representation of the income of the poor when studying child labour.

The study uses the data compiled by International Labour Organization (ILO). Though much of the variation in the data is because of the adjustments made by ILO, this is the only comparable cross-country estimates available. Hence in the absence of the cross-country comparable estimates, many empirical studies have used this data set (e.g. Cigno et al., 2002; Dehejia and Gatti, 2002; Rogers and Swinnerton, 2001). This study acknowledges this limitation but again in the absence of any comparable estimates, the assessment is also based on this data set.

Study contributes in the literature by comparing the effect of export and trade and by exploring the effect of an alternate measure of the income, estimated by using Gini coefficient, on child labour. Further studies exploring the effect of globalization did not explore the presence of imperfect credit market, however, this study has explored the effect of credit market imperfections as well.

The armed forces and the societies they come from, and/or work in are related to one another in a multitude of ways (for the following see Kümmel, 2002). An adequate theoretical framework to capture the relationship between what may be termed the military world and what may be termed the world out there is offered by the systems theory as, for example, put forward in Martin Edmonds’ Armed Services and Society (Edmonds, 1990: especially 113f.). In this vein, the armed services can be conceived as a system that is distinct from its environment and is in its interacting and interdependent component parts operating on specific systems logic. Thus the system (or rather the sub-system) of the armed forces can be analyzed in terms of its relationship with its environment and with other (sub-)systems that are working and operating in this environment. One may distinguish six – to be sure: interdependent and interpenetrated – dimensions to cover the richness of civil–military relations.¹ These are: economy, finances, technology, culture, society, and politics. But the complexity of the theoretical framework has to be advanced even further. Two additional points have to be dealt with. One is that the environment of the military the world out there falls into two different spheres; a national and an international one implying that these very six dimensions have to be seen in a national/domestic as well as in an international context. The second and last point is that these various dimensions of relations between the military and society look quite different depending on the point in time they are looked upon. In other words, the time factor has to be included into the analysis. According to the scheme resulting from this tableau, research issues can be grouped. The following table gives some examples for research topics that fall into the various categories and illustrate that the study of relations between the military and the society is an interdisciplinary undertaking (Table 1).

Conditional cash transfers (CCT) have been adopted in many countries over the last two decades. Although the impacts of these programs have been studied extensively, understanding of the economic mechanisms through which cash and conditions affect household decisions remains incomplete. In particular, relatively little is known about the effects of these programs on intra-household allocation decisions. This chapter uses evidence from a program in Cambodia, where eligibility varied substantially among siblings in the same household, to illustrate these effects. A simple model of schooling decisions highlights three different effects of a child-specific CCT: an income effect, a substitution effect, and a displacement effect. The model predicts that such a CCT should unambiguously increase enrollment for eligible children, but have an ambiguous effect on ineligible siblings. The ambiguity arises from the interaction of a positive income effect with a negative displacement effect. These predictions are shown to be consistent with evidence from Cambodia, where the CESSP Scholarship Program (CSP) makes modest transfers, conditional on school enrollment for children of middle-school age. Scholarship recipients were more than 20 percentage points more likely to be enrolled in school, and 10 percentage points less likely to work for pay. However, the school enrollment and work of ineligible siblings was largely unaffected by the program. A possible fourth effect, operating through non-pecuniary spillovers of the intervention among siblings, remains largely outside the scope of the analysis, although there is some tentative evidence to suggest that it might also be at work.

Purpose: This chapter presents a discussion of the COVID-19 global debt crisis.

Methodology: The chapter uses the discourse analysis method to identify the cause of the COVID-19 global debt crisis and suggests ways to overcome the crisis.

Findings: The chapter argues that the high debt incurred by many countries during the COVID1-19 pandemic, combined with tightening global financial conditions, led to a significant increase in global debt. The author suggests ideas to avert a debt crisis. It was argued that rich countries could forgive the debt owed to them by heavily indebted countries or consider interest repayment holidays, debt-for-green swaps, or other debt-relief options. Heavily indebted countries can consider restructuring their debt, reevaluating their economic policy priorities, and raising taxes. Multilateral organisations can assist heavily indebted countries and engage in debt forgiveness advocacy.

Implication: There is a need for rich countries and creditor organisations to offer some relief to heavily indebted countries to help them meet their debt repayment obligations during and after the pandemic.

Originality: The chapter is one of the first to analyse the global COVID-19 debt situation.

This article describes the interviews the authors conducted in late 2021 with 19 researchers at the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies at the University of Bologna. The main purpose was to shed light on the definition of the word “data” in the humanities domain, as far as FAIR data management practices are concerned, and on what researchers think of the term.

The authors invited one researcher for each of the official disciplinary areas represented within the department and all 19 accepted to participate in the study. Participants were then divided into five main research areas: philology and literary criticism, language and linguistics, history of art, computer science and archival studies. The interviews were transcribed and analysed using a grounded theory approach.

A list of 13 research data types has been compiled thanks to the information collected from participants. The term “data” does not emerge as especially problematic, although a good deal of confusion remains. Looking at current research management practices, methodologies and teamwork appear more central than previously reported.

Our findings confirm that “data” within the FAIR framework should include all types of inputs and outputs humanities research work with, including publications. Also, the participants of this study appear ready for a discussion around making their research data FAIR: they do not find the terminology particularly problematic, while they rely on precise and recognised methodologies, as well as on sharing and collaboration with colleagues.

In this paper we argue that public education in the United States is essentially an industrial process organized to produce a finished product. Rising government spending on public education, and the lack of an established rubric to evaluate school performance or accountability deems our analysis relevant and timely. Viewing education as an industrial process will allow policy-makers to obtain more accurate measures of costs and develop appropriate funding mechanisms. Furthermore, regulators may use managerial accounting concepts, particularly activity based costing, to establish future school performance evaluation rubrics.

Despite its stated intention to be independent, impartial and thorough, the 9-11 Commission was none of the three. The Commission was structurally compromised by bias-inducing connections to subjects of the investigation, and procedurally compromised, among other reasons, by (1) its failure to take up promising lines of inquiry and its failure to try to force the release of key documents that were closely guarded by the Bush administration, the FBI and various intelligence agencies; (2) its distortion of information about pre-9-11 military preparedness, foreknowledge of the attacks or attacks of like-kind; and (3) omissions of information related to the funding of the plot and the specific whereabouts of key officials on the morning of September 11, 2001.

These structural compromises and procedural failings converged to assure that the Commission would not challenge core elements of the “official story” of the 9-11 attacks. This failure was compounded by the Commission's desire to produce a final report that would read as a “historical narrative” rather than as an exhaustive set of findings on the critical unanswered questions that arose after the attacks. The Commission's unquestioning acceptance of the official narrative also meant that it missed a perhaps larger opportunity to challenge key myths associated with American exceptionalism. Thus, the 9-11 Commission ultimately functioned as an instrument of cultural hegemony, extending and deepening the official version of events under the guise of independence and impartiality.