Evidence Based Practice (EBP) is a relatively new approach that professionals are using to cope with the ever-growing body of literature in their fields. The goal of EBP is to effectively use this body of literature to improve professional practice, thus improving the quality of services. A major component of EBP is asking a focused, well-built question, referred to in this paper as an Evidence Based Practice Question (EBPQ). This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study that examines the use an EBPQ to respond to reference questions emailed to a university library reference desk. A purposive sample of 30 randomly selected reference emails was divided into two groups, the EBPQ group and the control group. The professional searcher who conducted the searches used the same approach in responding to each emailed reference question, except that the EBPQ group searches were guided by EBPQs, and the control group’s responses were not. The results indicate that searches guided by using EBPQs are more focused, apply more resources to the search process, and take less time than searches not guided by using EBPQs. These conclusions suggest that EBPQs appear to be useful for improving that search process and that further research is warranted.

Aim: The aim of this research is to formulate India market product strategy for the global multinational corporate Vodafone Inc., Investigate the influence of national cultures in strategy formulation. Applying cultural synthesis in the strategy formulations for target markets.  Method: The main methods of data collection are individual interviews and discussions and group cultural training. A computer online questionnaire is used past the interview for correlation and analysis of responses. Two sets of interviews pre-cultural training and post-cultural training are conducted. The results are presented, analysed, reflected and related to the research. The research is applied to deliver a reformulated product strategy for Vodafone Inc., Result & Conclusion: This research bought out the implications of national cultures in strategy formulation and how strategy can be delivered by infusing culture as one of the parameter in strategy formulation. The end result is strategy that is closer to local market customer needs and wants aligned with organization business objectives. The conclusion is that global multinationals could deliver better strategy that applies globally to each of the local subsidiaries by embedding ethos of the regional markets in the strategy formulation. Suggestions of future research: The research focussed on strengthening strategy formulation by embedding culture as parameter. The theme could be extended to strategy implementation in future research. Contribution of the thesis: This research has added value to the strategy formulation, by proposing a new model, where the strategy team comprehends the national culture value of target markets and blends them as one of the parameters in the information’s and data. Thus the final interpretation of the information and data is a collective reflection of own national culture values and the target market cultural values.

In this thesis study, a fast implicit iteration scheme called Alternating Cell Directions Imp licit method is combined with Approximate Factorization scheme. This application aims to offer a mathematically well defined version of the Alternating Cell Directions Implicit Method and increase the accuracy of the iteration scheme that is being used for the numerical solutions of the partial differential equations. The iteration scheme presented here is tested using unsteady diffusion equation, Laplace equation and advection-diffusion equation. The accuracy, convergence character and the stability character of the scheme compared with suitable iteration schemes for structured and unstructured quadrilateral grids. Besides, it is shown that the proposed scheme is applicable to triangular and hybrid polygonal grids. A transonic full potential solver is generated using the current scheme. The flow around a 2-D cylinder is solved for subcritical and supercritical cases. Axi-symmetric flow around cylinder is selected as a benchmark problem since the potential flow around bodies with a blunt leading edge is a more challenging problem than slender bodies. Besides, it is shown that, the method is naturally appropriate for parallelization using shared memory approach without using domain decomposition applications. The parallelization that is performed here is partially line, partially point parallelization. T he performance of the application is presented for a 3-D unsteady diffusion problem using Cartesian cells and 2-D unsteady diffusion problem using both structured and unstructured quadrilateral cells.

The current problems and possible solutions surrounding United States transfer pricing regulations are discussed and studied. The schemes large multinational companies are implementing to legally evade taxes are uncovered as the financial effects to the United States Treasury and government are becoming material. The benefits for these schemes are financially advantageous for corporations as they are able to report larger profits and higher returns for investors. But this is being done at the expense of our government. Corporations are finding ways to escape the high U.S. corporate tax rate and lower their global tax liabilities by allocating income to lower tax jurisdictions. Tax havens like Ireland or Bermuda are popular to have subsidiaries which hold a corporations intangible property. Five United States Tax Court cases concerning transfer pricing are studied and the outcomes are analyzed. The current problems studied from these cases are, shipping intangible property, valuing intangible property, the arm’s length standard. The possible solutions to these currents problems are by no means easy to solve and no one revision can relieve all the problems. The arm’s length standard is the corner stone to the current problems and if the government can find a way to better enforce the standard or replace it, it will be a large step in the right direction.

This thesis examines the impact that third-party identity and techniques have on mediation outcome. The roles of the OAS and the Carter Center in the negotiations between the Venezuelan government and the opposition (DC), during the period 2002-2003, and the implementation of the agreement in 2004 are compared as representing track I and track II actors and styles. Using a process-tracing methodology, five conflict mappings and stages of conflict are combined with the results of focused interviews to main participants of the negotiation process. The analysis shows a significant impact of third-party identity and strategies on the outcome of mediation. Moreover, the outcome is more likely to be successful when track II actors, actually track I ½, participate as mediators in the actual negotiations. The most effective strategies used by third parties, dependent on the timing of the intervention and the stage of conflict, are communication and formulation strategies.

This research evaluated the reliability and validity of a procedure for identifying and assessing core beliefs, the Core Beliefs Assessment Procedure (CAP). The CAP comprised a semi-structured interview, set of markers, and rating system. Twenty participants were administered the CAP. Participants were clients receiving psychotherapy from a community-based mental health service. Core and peripheral case formulations were developed for each participant. Ten participants completed a second assessment session, with a different interviewer, one week later. The CAP showed strong interviewer reliability. In addition, high inter-rater reliability regarding the intensity of affect (r =.87) and the commonness (r =.96) and vividness (r =.93) of metaphor was achieved. Findings suggested that 8 of 12 markers, proposed in the study, adequately distinguished between core and peripheral self-knowledge. Interviewer ratings showed that core self-representations had significantly higher levels of affect, metaphor, and redundancy (i.e., process markers) than peripheral self-representations. Participant ratings showed that core self-representations had significantly higher levels of self-worth contingency, temporal stability, cross-situational consistency and problem relevance (i.e., content markers) than peripheral self-representations. Significant differences were not observed between core and peripheral self-representations on participant ratings of developmental primacy. The relevance of core and peripheral case formulations to the participants' problems were rated both from the perspective of participants and the participants' therapists in order to determine the validity of the CAP. Core case formulations were rated as being more relevant to the participants' problems and as having more utility for guiding treatment than peripheral case formulations. Therapists may find case formulations derived from the CAP useful for guiding treatment. Future research should test the hypothesis that a therapist following a core case formulation has greater treatment success than a therapist following a peripheral case formulation.

Abstract As a part of the strategic planning process a company has to formulate a marketing strategy before entering a new market. For global marketers, formulation of a global marketing strategy is of big importance since it contributes benefits, including raising the efficacy of new-products launches, cost reduction and improving product quality and market share performance. India is a fast growing subcontinent and it is predicted to be among the top five economies in the world by the year 2025. The driving force in the Indian economy is the growing number of people from the middle class, which currently consists of over 300 million Indians. They are consuming progressively more western brands and more and more foreign companies are establishing in the country. The purpose of this thesis is to get a better understanding of the Indian market in order to formulate a strategy for this market. The thesis aim to identify how a business to business company, with baby products aimed for the upper class segment, should formulate their marketing strategy. To be able to answer our research question we have conducted a number of qualitative interviews, including a focus group interview with potential Indian consumers. The result of our interviews, empirical data along with our collected theory shows that the Indian market is fragmented and diverse. This thesis tells us that a company offering exclusive products should focus on consumers living in urban areas of India. A company should considerate on important aspects when formulating a marketing strategy for the Indian market: Assessment and adjustment of core strategy (choice of competitive strategy), formulation of a global strategy (choice of competitive strategy, choice of segment, marketing in India, the purchase process, culture) and development of global marketing program (degree of standardization).

The thesis asks whether the constrains imposed by complex functional programs and associated design guidance limit the ability to deploy design languages with entail their own precise compositional requirements. The Islip Federal Courthouse designed by Richard Meier under the General Services Administrations Design Excellence Program is chosen as a case study for two reasons: First, the functional constraints are explicitly documented, and their effects can be studied through a comparative analysis of recent Courthouses also built under the same GSA program; Second, Meiers language has received much scholarly attention, is well understood, and can be described with rigor. Both the functional requirements or constraints and the compositional principles associated with the design language are described as formal structures. The thesis shows that, in this instance, all functional constraints can be satisfied without compromising the elaboration of the language. Thus, the thesis contributes to our understanding of design logic and supports the idea that design intentions as well as design considerations can be reconstructed through a systematic study of the designed object

Access to clean drinking water is very important to the health and well-being of the population. Mathematical modeling, optimization, and online estimation are needed to solve challenging problems in water network applications such as the requirement to meet the new dynamic regulations in the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act. This includes providing sufficient capacity to satisfy uncertain and changing water demands, maintaining consistent water quality, and identifying and responding to abnormal events. In most of these applications, reliable knowledge of the water flow velocity is necessary. However, in practice, few measurements are usually available. This work uses a nonlinear optimization framework to estimate the unknown water demands and velocities from limited measurements. The problem is formulated as a constrained nonlinear least squares estimation problem. The constraints represent the basic governing mass and energy conservation laws as well as some operational constraints. Given the limited number of flow measurements, the estimation problem is ill-posed. Non-unique solutions may exist in which many demand profiles can match the limited number of measurements. Offline estimates of the demand patterns based on historical data are used to regularize the problem and force a unique solution. In the first phase of this project, a hydraulic model was developed for water distribution systems. This model showed very good agreement when it was validated against the simulator EPANET using 3 case studies. In the second phase, the estimation formulation was tested using the same 3 case studies with different sensor configurations. In each of the case studies, estimation results are reasonable with fewer sensors than the available degrees of freedom.

Recycle/reuse networks are commonly used in industrial facilities to conserve natural resources, reduce environmental impact, and improve process economics. The design of these networks is a challenging task because of the numerous possibilities of assigning stream (process sources) to units that may potentially employ them (process sinks). Additionally, several fresh streams with different qualities and costs may be used to supplement the recycle of process streams. The selection of the type and flow of these fresh resources is an important step in the design of the recycle/reuse networks. This work introduces systematic approaches to address two new categories in the design of recycle/reuse networks: (a) The incorporation of thermal effects in the network. Two new aspects are introduced: heat of mixing of process sources and temperature constraints imposed on the feed to the process sinks iv (b) Dealing with variation in process sources. Two types of source variability are addressed: flowrate and composition For networks with thermal effects, an assignment optimization formulation is developed. Depending on the functional form of the heat of mixing, the formulation may be a linear or a nonlinear program. The solution of this program provides optimum flowrates of the fresh streams as well as the segregation, mixing, and allocation of the process sources to sinks. For networks with variable sources, a computer code is developed to solve the problem. It is based on discretizing the search space and using the concept of "floating pinch" to insure solution feasibility and optimal targets. Case studies are solved to illustrate the applicability of the new approaches.