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The purpose of this chapter is twofold. First, to show how the financial power of the fossil fuel industries and the prevalence of religious ideology in Congress are the two major obstacles preventing the U.S. government from taking action to slow down global warming. Then to evaluate various approaches to ‘satisfying our energy needs’, by showing a crucial dynamic behind our insatiable drive to consume energy, and to propose some ways of circumventing the current obstacles.

The approach is through a comprehensive study of the relevant evidence and academic literature, interwoven with philosophical reflections on their significance.

The findings are as follows: a major root of the current problem is the dysfunctional political system in the United States, which is corrupted by vast infusions of money from the fossil fuel industries and the dogmatic religious beliefs of Republicans in key positions on Congressional committees.

The implications are several. The proposed technological solutions to the ‘energy problem’ – nuclear power, carbon sequestration, fracking for natural gas and geo-engineering – only address the symptoms and ignore the dynamic that underlies them, exemplified in the story of Prometheus. If we continue to be driven by the Promethean spirit, we risk being subject to excruciating punishment as a result. The solution to our problems is a transition to clean and renewable sources of energy, accompanied by the kind of reduction in material desires that evidently makes for lives that are more fulfilled.

The value of the philosophical perspective on this topic is that it highlights questions of value that otherwise remain inexplicit.

The purpose of this paper is to improve and facilitate the work of developers and usability evaluators by providing an adaptable and effective support. A well-defined set of criteria and a range of evaluation values for each criterion as well as a complete websites classification, will guide evaluators. A usability percentage and a list of prioritized criteria, adapted to the type of website by a new usability metric, will help developers to improve the website. This improvement will increase the degree of web user satisfaction.

Having established and validated a new usability evaluation framework, several usability tools have been analyzed. None of them totally fulfills the requirements of the evaluation framework. As a result of being unable to customize any of them, a new one has been developed. A study of 42 enterprise websites in an economically depressed region of Europe was performed using the new tool. This study involved 42 evaluators and 118 web users. Users have evaluated the websites before and after the redesign. A end-user computing satisfaction model-based questionary was used to collect data about end-user satisfaction. The results validate the proposal.

The study confirms that the proposed tool provides valuable information during the process of web development, evaluation and redesign. In adittion, it reveals that improving websites usability by ensuring criteria compliance has a positive effect on web users satisfaction.

Unlike previous purposes, the proposed tool allows to evaluate any type of website with a well-defined set of evaluation criteria and specific criteria values. As outcomes, the tool provides the website usability degree and a list of criteria ordered by priority repair. These results are adapted to the specific type of website. This makes easier and more effective the redesign of the evaluated website.

Millions of computer users in the USA have a disability making it difficult to use the Web. The University of Wisconsin System recently required that all System Web pages meet Priority 1 accessibility guidelines as set by the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative (W3C/WAI). Class materials available in online learning management systems should also be accessible to students with disabilities. Four systems, Blackboard 4 and 5, Prometheus 3, and WebCT 3, were assessed against theW3C/WAI guidelines for a numerical statistic of accessibility. Practical accessibility was tested with Lynx, IBM Homepage Reader, and JAWS. Validation was performed with A‐Prompt and the W3C/WAI checklist.

Myth is a story of archetypical personas who behave in ways and with motives that we recognize in ourselves. We use myth as a way of reminding ourselves of the relationship between motives, actions, and consequences. Myths can serve either as inspirational or cautionary tales, and sometimes as both. But “myth” can also mean a fabricated story intended to create a false impression, and to achieve storytellers’ ends when they have decided the truth will not suffice. We apply the myth of Cassandra to the millennium-long recorded history of giant tsunamis in Japan. After each of these catastrophes, survivors sought to warn future generations of their recurrences. But, each time, their progeny eventually lost the memory of these lessons, and lost their lives when the next monster wave overwhelmed them. Only when they kept the lessons as living knowledge in everyday life, could they manage to escape from monster tsunamis. In this chapter, we use the myth of Cassandra in conjunction with the myth of Prometheus, the bringer of fire to humankind, as a metaphor for Japan’s growing reliance on nuclear power. Government and utility companies built powerful but inherently dangerous cauldrons in the nation’s disaster-prone landscapes, assuring the public they could control the fire’s fury and defend it against nature’s. As images of atomic bomb victims were still vivid and widely shared in Japan, they had to overcome the public fear of radioactivity by fabricating a “myth of safety.” The nuclear disaster made the public distrust the government and utility companies, which lingers in the process of reconstruction from the disaster. Myths can either reveal hidden truths or mask hidden lies. The Japanese people must now learn to distinguish one from the other.

A vendor's capabilities are recognized as one of the most important factors for success in outsourcing. However, there is a lack of understanding of how vendors manage their capabilities throughout the outsourcing process. With an aim to contribute to filling this existing gap, the purpose of this paper is to explore how vendors deploy their capabilities in order to win, run and renew the outsourcing contracts.

The research question has been derived by integrating a resource‐based view theory with a model of a vendor's process in outsourcing. A multiple‐case study of three contract electronic manufacturers has been employed to explore the research question.

The results show that for achieving their outsourcing objectives, vendors use different capability mixes: the winning, the running, and the renewing. These mixes are created through utilization of different portfolios of competences (balanced, unit‐dominant, and versatile) and capabilities (permanent and temporary) which need to be deployed in the right combination (deployment strategy) adequate for the stage of the industry dynamics in which vendors operate. The research also indicated the importance of the relationship management capability for the success of outsourcing arrangements in the electronic manufacturing service (EMS) provision industry.

New research involving more case companies would improve the validity of the conclusions made in this paper. Results also suggest that more research into relationship management capability in the context of the EMS industry will be a fruitful area for future studies.

Vendors who seek to advance in the industry's value chain need to expand their portfolio of competences and adapt their deployment strategies to new, more dynamic and volatile environments. The paper proposes three different deployment strategies for three different operational contexts.

In contrast with the existing static approach towards studying vendor's capabilities in outsourcing, the paper's findings show that vendors use different mixes of capabilities throughout the outsourcing process. The authors have been able to show how those capability mixes are formed. In addition, it was found that relationship management is an important capability for consideration when studying and practicing manufacturing outsourcing.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the Irish community pharmacy sector in the context of power relationship theory. Specifically, the paper analyses the relationship between dispensary software vendors and the independent community pharmacist; and explore dominant industry partners' influence on individual pharmacies in terms of technology adoption. The core objective is to ascertain whether the potential for a cooperative construct can be realised in this milieu. Design/methodology/approach – A comprehensive literature review precedes a full investigation and analysis of the Irish community pharmacy sector's competitive environment, in the context of the pre‐mentioned power relationship theory. Findings – This research uncovered a potential alternative to the industry's existing power imbalance in the form of a cooperative construct between a team of independent community pharmacists and an employed software vendor. The purpose of this partnership was to ensure the installed software focused on the pharmacist's strategic needs rather than those of the dominant partners. The paper goes on to discuss the failure of this partnership in the context of independent pharmacist's future competitive survival. Research limitations/implications – Data collection was limited to the community pharmacy sector in the Republic of Ireland. Therefore, care should be taken in making generalisations from this study. Practical implications – In the absence of cooperative constructs, power relationship imbalances will continue to exist in this competitive environment, to the detriment of the small firm. Originality/value – Little research has been completed in the area of small business cooperative constructs as a means of competing successfully in a power relationship scenario. This paper goes some way to redressing this.

To critically compare three future weather year (FWY) downscaling approaches, based on the 2009 UK Climate Projections, used for climate change impact and adaptation analysis in building simulation software.

The validity of these FWYs is assessed through dynamic building simulation modelling to project future overheating risk in typical English homes in 2050s and 2080s.

The modelling results show that the variation in overheating projections is far too significant to consider the tested FWY data sets equally suitable for the task.

It is recommended that future research should consider harmonisation of the downscaling approaches so as to generate a unified data set of FWYs to be used for a given location and climate projection. If FWY are to be used in practice, live projects will need viable and reliable FWY on which to base their adaptation decisions. The difference between the data sets tested could potentially lead to different adaptation priorities specifically with regard to time series and adaptation phasing through the life of a building.

The paper investigates the different results derived from FWY application to building simulation. The outcome and implications are important considerations for research and practice involved in FWY data use in building simulation intended for climate change adaptation modelling.

The ERIC Clearinghouse on Educational Administration at the University of Oregon acquires, indexes and abstracts documents relating to the theory and practice of administration and publishes newsletters, bibliographies and interpretive reviews of research studies. The Clearinghouse is responsible for documents dealing with the leadership, management and structure of public and private educational organizations at the elementary and secondary levels. Attention is paid to documents bearing upon not only educational but also other areas of administration and to relevant publications relating to the humanities and the social and behavioral sciences. In this paper administrators and scholars in the field are advised how to draw on the resources of ERIC Clearinghouse on Educational Administration.