Academic researchers in many disciplines are facing difficulties in disseminating their research outputs beyond the academic community. Particularly, Information Systems (IS) academic researchers have been struggling to make their research more relevant to practice. The diversity of IS research means that should be a wide audience within and beyond academia who could benefit from IS research outputs. This audience includes educators, practitioners, patients, etc. How IS relevant to practice is a central dilemma of IS research. Research relevance is classified according to dimensions such as interesting, implementable, current, accessible “Article style” by many IS scholars. These dimensions are important to be investigated as some academic papers are yet to be beneficial to an audience beyond academia. The Accessible dimension is the focus of this study where accessible means the academic papers should be readable and understood in terms of tone, style, structure, and semantics by the potential audience beyond the academic community. This study investigates the barriers that limit academic researchers in disseminating and communicating their research outputs beyond academia. This study aims to design a communication method to assist academic researchers in disseminating and communicating their research outputs beyond academia. This study consists of three phases, in the first phase a qualitative method is applied by interviewing academics in the Information System and Computing Department at Brunel University to gain a better understanding of how and why academics disseminate beyond academia. Based on communication theories a research framework is adapted to analyse and explain the interview data. In the second phase, short videos are recorded of 10 academics where each explains one of their papers. In the third phase, two different groups are interviewed to evaluate the 10 short videos in regards the Information Quality (IQ) dimensions (i.e. appropriate amount of information, format, and timeliness). By using the thematic analysis technique the academics highlighted three barriers that limit them to disseminate and communicate their research outputs beyond academia. The three barriers are the message (i.e. academic structure and language of research papers), channel (i.e. academic journal and conferences), and social system (i.e. lack of Incentives, lack of time, and lack of support). Moreover, academics emphasised the vital role of feedback loop in their communication with target audience beyond academia. The 10 short videos are designed to overcome two of these barriers (i.e. message and channels). Each short video is evaluated by its academic author on one hand and the potential audience/stakeholders of the short video from the other hand (e.g. practitioners). Thus, the academic authors of the video suggest some changes by adjusting the video structure and adding some examples for more explanations of their research papers. Also, authors concerned about format particularly the visual elements of the video which have to be completely matched with the title of the video. However, the opinions of potential audiences vary based on their information need. For example, some practitioners are concerned with the practical information, in other words, practitioners seek the applicable part of the information provided in the short video (i.e. how to apply something); and others watch the short video to increase their awareness of a particular topic. This study will assist academic researchers to focus on how to disseminate their research outputs to audience/stakeholders beyond academia using media tools (i.e. video). Also, it provides a novel method of disseminating and communicating their research outputs beyond the academic community. Moreover, this study helps to create an interaction platform that enables academic researchers to build a collaborative framework and a mutual understanding with the audience beyond academia.

De modo a enfrentar os atuais desafios da competitividade, as organizações têm cada vez mais percebido a importância de agregar valor através da diferenciação de seus produtos e serviços. O caminho trilhado para promover esta mudança de posicionamento baseia-se na indução, desenvolvimento e difusão de inovações de caráter tecnológico, organizacional e de modelos de negócios. Este cenário pode ser ainda mais crítico em setores tradicionalmente não intensivos em inovações e que enfrentam a concorrência por preços de produtos estrangeiros. A indústria têxtil brasileira é um exemplo destes setores em dificuldades e tem se movimentado ou sido alvo de ações por parte de organismos públicos com o foco no desenvolvimento de inovações. Nos últimos anos muitos estudos foram publicados na tentativa de entender os fatores e variáveis que conduzem a inovações com resultados positivos para as empresas. Com o objetivo de contribuir com esses estudos, esta dissertação analisa as relações entre fatores organizacionais, tecnológicos e práticas estratégicas de inovação com o desempenho inovativo das empresas têxteis brasileiras. Para avaliar as proposições estabelecidas, esta pesquisa adotou uma abordagem quantitativa, com um levantamento (survey) junto a 51 (cinquenta e uma) empresas. Para a coleta de dados, foi elaborado um instrumento de pesquisa (questionário) com base em literatura que embasa o tema. Os resultados apontam significância estatística para variáveis que impactam positivamente as empresas têxteis brasileiras: porte por número de funcionários, envolvimento de parceiros externos, ambiente de estímulo à inventividade, foco em requisitos do mercado, rápidos ciclos de desenvolvimento de produtos, obtenção e uso de novas tecnologias. A conclusão revela que as proposições da pesquisa se confirmaram parcialmente, mas não foram encontradas equações explicativas que levassem ao desempenho inovativo sob os cinco aspectos medidos: evolução de market-share; atendimento de necessidades de clientes; faturamento por novos produtos ou processos; produtos e processos sustentáveis; e oferta de preços competitivos. / In order to face actual competition challenges, firms have been noticing the importance of creating value through differentiation of products and services. The way to promote this positioning change is based on induction, development and diffusion of technological, organizational and business modeling innovations. This context can be even more critical when related to traditional industries not intensive in innovations and that face the concurrency of prices with stranger products. Brazilian textile industry is an example of these sectors with difficulties and it has been acting or been objective of public moves towards the developing of innovations. In the last years many studies have been published in attempt to understand the factors and variables that conduct to innovations with positive results to the firms. Focusing on contribution to these studies, this thesis analyses the relations between organizational factors, technological factors and innovation strategic practices with Brazilian textile firms innovative performance. To assess the established propositions, this research has adopted a quantitative approach through a survey conducted with 51 (fifty one) firms. Data collection has been supported by a research instrument (questionnaire) based on the subject literature. The results point to statistical significance on variables that positively impact on Brazilian textile firms: size in terms of number of employees, collaboration with extern partners, creativity stimulating environment, focus on market requirements, quick product development cycles, acquisition and use of new technologies. Conclusions reveals that the research propositions were partially confirmed, but there were not found explicative equations to justify innovative performance related to five measured indicators: market-share evolution; clients needs attendance; revenue based on new products or processes; sustainable products and processes; and offer of competitive prices.

Benchmarking is a technique used by Decision Making Units (DMUs) to enable continuous quality improvement. Benchmarking includes almost any activity that compares a DMU's performance with some standard. Benchmarking offers the possibility of optimizing the DMU's processes, services, outcomes and products through those comparisons. Quite often, benchmarking is understood to be an act of imitating or copying but in reality benchmarking proves to be a concept that helps in innovation rather than imitation. Though benchmarking is not new, it has become popular both as an analytical research instrument and a practical decision-support tool. To some, benchmarking is not a choice; it is a necessity. Indeed, the penalty for neglecting proper benchmarking is loss of competitive edge, which is the key to survival and profitability.Usually, benchmarking involves four distinct phases. Phase I: determine the set of comparison partners. There are three types of benchmarking procedure: internal benchmarking (i.e. the benchmark is chosen within the same organization), functional benchmarking (i.e. the benchmark is chosen regardless of which industry they are) and competitive benchmarking (i.e a competitor is used as the benchmark). Phase II: collect the data. Much information is already in the public domain (financial reports, newspaper reports, analysts' reports) but it is unlikely to provide all the information required for a successful benchmarking exercise. Phase III: analyze the collected information which results in the creation of a model and an identification of performance gaps. The model will have huge influence on the results. It is crucial to motivate all assumptions made in that phase. The model could be specific to the benchmarking exercise. Phase IV: the action phase. Analyzing the reasons for the performance differentials and use the findings to redefine goals, redesign processes, and change expectations regarding the evaluated DMU's own functions and activities.Amongst the models chosen in Phase III, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has received more and more attention in the benchmarking literature. The goal of such analysis is to evaluate the efficiency of a DMU by comparing its input-output performance to that of other DMUs operating in a similar technological environment. The increasing attention for DEA could be explained by two main reasons. On the one hand, DEA does not resort to any unverifiable parametric/functional specifications of the production technology but rather lets the data speak for themselves by reconstructing the production possibilities using the observed inputs and outputs and imposing some technology axioms (such as monotonicity, convexity, returns-to-scale). Consequently, DEA is nonparametric in nature. On the other hand, deviation from efficiency, which is measured as the distance to the reconstructed production possibilities, is very easily computed. Indeed, the computation of the efficiency measures merely requires solving simple linear programming problems.Recently, Cherchye et al (2008, 2013) argued that standard DEA models provide a black-box treatment of efficiency production behavior since they ignore the links between inputs and outputs, i.e. they implicitly assume that all the inputs produce all the outputs simultaneously. This assumption is not plausible in several applications (e.g. employees that are allocated to different productions processes, specific capital which is used to produce only one type of goods). These authors suggested a multi-output nonparametric efficiency measurement technique, based on a cost minimization condition, which uses available information on the allocation of inputs to outputs. The new methodology characterizes each output by its own production technology while accounting for interdependencies between the different output-specific technologies giving rise to scope economies. This methodology provides a more realistic modelling of the production process and has a bigger ability to detect inefficient behavior (i.e. has more discriminatory power) than standard DEA techniques.In this thesis, we extend the method suggested by Cherchye et al (2008, 2013) in several directions. Firstly, we incorporate bad outputs (in contrast to good outputs). This extension deals in a natural way with several limitations of existing DEA approaches to treat undesirable outputs. As demonstrated with our application to the electricity sector. Next, we extend the methodology to allow for output-specific returns-to-scale assumptions. This allows for a more flexible model that does not force the practitioners to choose the same returns-to-scale assumption for all the outputs (as it is the case for the standard DEA model). This simultaneous choice could be difficult to defend in several settings but it is surely the case when undesirable outputs are present in the production process, as demonstrated in our application. Next, we extend the methodology for multi-output producers by considering a dynamic context. We suggest a new productivity index which takes the form of a Malmquist Productivity Index. Finally, we also generalize the method of Cherchye et al (2008, 2013), based on a cost minimization condition, to a profit maximization condition. This establishes a novel DEA toolkit for profit efficiency assessments in situations with multiple inputs and multiple outputs. We apply this new model to the case of electricity plants. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

De modo a enfrentar os atuais desafios da competitividade, as organizações têm cada vez mais percebido a importância de agregar valor através da diferenciação de seus produtos e serviços. O caminho trilhado para promover esta mudança de posicionamento baseia-se na indução, desenvolvimento e difusão de inovações de caráter tecnológico, organizacional e de modelos de negócios. Este cenário pode ser ainda mais crítico em setores tradicionalmente não intensivos em inovações e que enfrentam a concorrência por preços de produtos estrangeiros. A indústria têxtil brasileira é um exemplo destes setores em dificuldades e tem se movimentado ou sido alvo de ações por parte de organismos públicos com o foco no desenvolvimento de inovações. Nos últimos anos muitos estudos foram publicados na tentativa de entender os fatores e variáveis que conduzem a inovações com resultados positivos para as empresas. Com o objetivo de contribuir com esses estudos, esta dissertação analisa as relações entre fatores organizacionais, tecnológicos e práticas estratégicas de inovação com o desempenho inovativo das empresas têxteis brasileiras. Para avaliar as proposições estabelecidas, esta pesquisa adotou uma abordagem quantitativa, com um levantamento (survey) junto a 51 (cinquenta e uma) empresas. Para a coleta de dados, foi elaborado um instrumento de pesquisa (questionário) com base em literatura que embasa o tema. Os resultados apontam significância estatística para variáveis que impactam positivamente as empresas têxteis brasileiras: porte por número de funcionários, envolvimento de parceiros externos, ambiente de estímulo à inventividade, foco em requisitos do mercado, rápidos ciclos de desenvolvimento de produtos, obtenção e uso de novas tecnologias. A conclusão revela que as proposições da pesquisa se confirmaram parcialmente, mas não foram encontradas equações explicativas que levassem ao desempenho inovativo sob os cinco aspectos medidos: evolução de market-share; atendimento de necessidades de clientes; faturamento por novos produtos ou processos; produtos e processos sustentáveis; e oferta de preços competitivos. / In order to face actual competition challenges, firms have been noticing the importance of creating value through differentiation of products and services. The way to promote this positioning change is based on induction, development and diffusion of technological, organizational and business modeling innovations. This context can be even more critical when related to traditional industries not intensive in innovations and that face the concurrency of prices with stranger products. Brazilian textile industry is an example of these sectors with difficulties and it has been acting or been objective of public moves towards the developing of innovations. In the last years many studies have been published in attempt to understand the factors and variables that conduct to innovations with positive results to the firms. Focusing on contribution to these studies, this thesis analyses the relations between organizational factors, technological factors and innovation strategic practices with Brazilian textile firms innovative performance. To assess the established propositions, this research has adopted a quantitative approach through a survey conducted with 51 (fifty one) firms. Data collection has been supported by a research instrument (questionnaire) based on the subject literature. The results point to statistical significance on variables that positively impact on Brazilian textile firms: size in terms of number of employees, collaboration with extern partners, creativity stimulating environment, focus on market requirements, quick product development cycles, acquisition and use of new technologies. Conclusions reveals that the research propositions were partially confirmed, but there were not found explicative equations to justify innovative performance related to five measured indicators: market-share evolution; clients needs attendance; revenue based on new products or processes; sustainable products and processes; and offer of competitive prices.

The objective of this thesis is design of the universal USB measuring module for virtual instrumentation. The module is connected to PC via USB interface. The module have analog inputs and analog outputs. The inputs have some switchable ranges, adjustable high-pass and low-pass fiters. Also the module have the digital input-output unit with 8 channels with configurable data direction and voltage level. Physical layer for digital serial interfaces SPI/UART and I2C is also part of this unit. The module is able to communicate with LabVIEW enviroment. The teoretical part contains survey of the commercial USB modules for data acquisition and generation from various manufacturers with its basic parameters. Some selected modules are described in detail. Furthermore the thesis deals with possibilities of connecting the USB module with the LabVIEW enviroment. The practical part deals with the design of input-output circuits and with design of the module itself. Furthemore, tho communication protocol, utility library and demonstration LabVIEW software are described in this part. At the end of this part, there are results of verification measurements. The result of this thesis is completed universal USB measuring module with utility library and demonstration program.

Title: Assessment of regional climate models performance in simulating present-day climate over the area of the Czech Republic Author: Lenka Crhová Department: Department of Meteorology and Environment Protection Supervisor:doc. RNDr. Jaroslava Kalvová, CSc. Supervisor's e-mail address: Jaroslava.Kalvova@mff.cuni.cz Abstract: Today a great attention is turned to climate changes and their impacts. Since eighties the Regional Climate Models (RCMs) are developed for assessment of future climate at regional scales. But their outputs suffer from many uncertain- ties. Therefore, it is necessary to assess models ability to simulate observed climate characteristics and uncertainties in their outputs before they are applied in consecu- tive studies. In the first chapters of this thesis the sources of uncertainties in climate model outputs and selected methods of climate models performance evaluation are reviewed. Several methods of model performance assessment are then applied to si- mulations of the Czech regional climate model ALADIN-Climate/CZ and selected RCMs from the ENSEMBLES project for the reference period 1961-1990 in the area of the Czech Republic. The attention is paid especially to comparison of simulated and observed spatial and temporal variability of several climatic elements. Within this thesis the...

Title: Diagnostics of didactic competencies of students of UK FTVS. Objectives: The goal of the dissertation was to verify whether the chosen combination of quantitative and qualitative methods is suitable for the diagnostics of the didactic competencies of the students of the UK FTVS in swimming didactics. Methods: The research was supported by a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods. Participating observation was used in direct participation in the didactic outputs of students. Data collection was done by acquiring audio and video recordings of students' didactic outputs within the subject of Theory and Basics of Swimming Didactics at the UK FTVS, by a questionnaire and group interviews with students who were in the role of "pupils" during didactic outputs. Through an uninvolved observation, the analysis of video recordings of students' didactic outputs was made. Coding of individual didactic outputs of students was done through modified analysis of didactic interaction (MADI). Descriptive statistics was used to encode and process data from questionnaires. Then the transcript of group conversations from electronic form to written was done by transcription. From the partial results of the MADI method, questionnaires and group interviews, case studies of five selected...

The diploma thesis "Global cities in the air transport system" is focused on the importance of global cities for the international airline network. The first chapter defines significant clasification of the global cities and subsequently, the operational ranking is created based on the three selected rankings of global cities. Second chapter is dedicated to the system of air transport and also defines the main air transport hubs in particular world regions. Following chapter analyses transportation outputs of the airports of global cities and its growth in years 2004 - 2008 based on the economic level of each state. It also identifies factors that have the highest influence on the air transport outputs within the frame of global cities. In last chapter, the selected global cities are ranked by their connectivity within airline network based on the results of analysis of airline connectivity of global cities. In the conclusions the importance of the global cities for international airline network is summarised.

As technology becomes more prevalent, its application to safety and security in critical systems continues to increase. This leads to an increased dependence on sensors to provide an accurate view of the environment surrounding an application. These sensors can also be exploited by a malicious individual to attack a system and compromise its safety or security. These attacks change the reported value of a sensor so that it doesn't re ect the real situation. The systems in a car can be used as an example of this. Cars can have numerous sensors that measure a variety of things, including the car's distance from an object, if the tires are locking up, or if the gas is low. The use of these sensors makes cars safer and more convenient to use. Using IEMI, an attacker could compromise some of these systems by changing the reported value so that an object appears further away than it actually is or that the tires aren't locking up when they are, possibly causing the car to crash. By doing this, a malicious individual could compromise the safety or security of a car. This work attempts to understand what would be required for a malicious individual to conduct such an attack, thereby allowing for the identification of systems that are vulnerable to such attacks. This understanding would also provide the basis for designing defenses against these attacks, thereby increasing the safety of society at large.

The general practice in performance and production efficiency measurement has been to ignore additional products of most transformation processes that can be classified as "undesirable outputs" — which are a subset of the output set. Without the inclusion of these factors, the efficiency evaluation becomes a purely technical measure of the system alone, and does not account for the interaction of the system with the surrounding environment and the impact of policy decisions on the system. In addition, there are also technological dependencies arising due to the relationships between the desirable and the undesirable outputs. One of the analytical tools normally used in efficiency evaluation is Data Envelopment Analysis, DEA. In the course of addressing these problems, a decision-maker encounters multiple and contradictory objectives with respect to the output set. This motivates the exploration of new arenas of measurement of efficiency to facilitate policy decisions and address technological relationships. This research presents five modifications of the traditional DEA technique to give a more realistic and comprehensive score of production efficiency considering both, desirable and undesirable outputs. The models address the following problems: (i) technological dependency between desirable and undesirable outputs; (ii) decision-maker's preferences over inputs, desirable outputs and undesirable output performance and finally (iii) conflicting production objectives through a formulation that uses Goal Programming in conjunction with DEA, a concept known as GoDEA. / Master of Science