Nowadays, the European airline market is characterized by two major different airline business models; the full service airlines and the low cost airlines. Secondary, appeared for the first time in 1985 in form of the Irish low cost carrier Ryanair. In recent days, the European low cost market stands out through its growth potential and high competitiveness. Therefore, startup companies aiming to join the wave of success as well as insolvency of newly established airlines are part of the daily occurrence. The challenge, that established low cost airlines are faced with, is to create competitive advantages against new entrants and direct competitors under the circumstances of environmental changes. In addition to the described problem a model was developed in order to picture the situation. This paper aims to provide an answer to the specific question: How do low cost airlines use relationship marketing in order to enhance, maintain and attract new customers? The second step is to figure out how those tools affect the airlines generic strategy. The purpose of this study is to find out how low cost airlines in Europe deal with tools of relationship marketing and what are the effects those tools have on generic strategies. This thesis is based on a case study within the European low cost airlines market, with a special focus on three airlines: Ryanair, EasyJet and Air Berlin. These questions are addressed using information obtained in interviews with respondents from the airlines that were recently conducted in Brussels and Bremen by personal interviews and additionally by telephone interviews and email contact. The results show that relationship marketing tools are used in a different extent by the airlines. The authors could not find evidence that using relationship marketing tools is the single solution to compete more successfully than without. It is further argued by the authors that RM is just one aspect strengthening the generic strategy in order to gain sustainable competitive advantage.

Architecture is an act of agency, and a technology that can be learned by anyone for their own purpose. It evolved as a system of organization and a protective shell for our fragile bodies, a vast, complex technology that enables human survival. Yet despite its universal nature, we have artificially limited our control over it, and who has access to it; we limit its potentials, its adaptive capacities, its diversity, and our continued survival. Walled-up in universities, behind certifications and dissertations, we have removed architecture from the public’s mind so that few understand it and use it. The city, in its surging complexity, is ever more opaque; the systems, infrastructure, and regulations that govern its formation are hidden from view, behind doors, walls, and fences. Hack seeks to make the city legible and architecture accessible, by leveraging a growing tide of hacker culture, and its subcultures – makers and DIY drone enthusiasts – and their respective technologies. Since the birth of the computer, Hackers have sought to democratize information technology held by military, government, and corporate interests. In doing so they’ve provided a number of methods, that enable free sharing and collaboration between individuals, distributing problem-solving practices, open-source systems, hands-on education, and free access to tools, all applicable to the challenges and opportunities facing architecture and city building today. Hack bootstraps itself to these ideals with hands-on experiments and reflections on those experiments, reframing architecture as a basic skill, a technology to be used by anyone, democratizing architecture through online communities, and the Hacker culture, in order to define a new active role for the architect. Internalizing the Hacker Ethic, and appropriate existing technologies to build new tools – devices to survey space, architecture and the city. – Hack traces the construction of a kite, a model car, a quadrocopter, and a remote-control airplane, each capable of gathering intimate information about the local environment. Hack concludes by reexamining the role of the aerial view in making cities and exercising power, speculating on the potential to level the fields of perception through online co-operation and these small-scale cartographic technologies.

The Southwest Airlines created the low-cost airline business model in 1970s, after aviation liberalization and opening up policies in the U.S. and European, the booming of low-cost airlines. This makes the people who didn¡¦t use aircraft in the past began to take air travel. Many secondary airports in the area caused the travelers a lot of growth by low-cost airlines flight, and promote the region¡¦s tourism, economy and employment opportunities. In view of this, started the study idea of the influence of low-cost carriers on air travel related industry in Taiwan. The Asia¡¦s largest low-cost airline ¡V AirAsia is the subject of this study. Historical data on the low-cost carriers business were collected. Questions for conducting in-depth interviews with experts in air travel industries were devised from the study of these historical data. In addition, a survey of government¡¦s air, tourism data, the influence of low-cost carriers on air travel related industry was developed finally. The results show, the AirAsia to open Taipei route, on the Taoyuan International Airport, retail, hotels and other travel related industries have brought real benefits. The home base of AirAsia is Malaysia, which people came to Taiwan to engage in substantial growth in tourist numbers and to create a substantial growth in tourism foreign exchange earnings. Finally, the results of this study were compared with historical data. It is hope that the results would be able to provide any other countries planning to develop low-cost carriers, some practical reference in planning their air and tourism industries strategies.

Multimedia workloads have always held an important role in embedded applications. The thesis presents a Multimedia Enhanced MicroController Unit (ME-MCU) for low-cost embedded applications. The main components of ME-MCU include a PIC16C 8-bit MCU core with a 32-bit multimedia extension, an enhanced memory interface fo signal processing, and an embedded In-Circuit Emulator (ICE). The main goal is not only to improve the media performance, but also to keep the small-area benefit of signle-chip microcontrollers. In addition, base on the architecture of ME-MCU, we proposed a reusable MultiMedia Extension SIP (MME SIP) for providing the CPU designers a simple solution to perform the multimedia extension to an exist ISA. A cost-effective multimedia extension to ARM7 microprocessors has been introduced as a case study of MME SIP. The MME SIP is capable of reducing the execution cycle counts by 69% to 81% for several critical loops, with an average speedup of 3.41, while the gate count overhead is kept under 11%.

In embedded system, the system resource is limited. So, small is the most important feature of the embedded system. In this thesis, we propose a fast way to design a 16-bit microprocessor through reducing the 32-bit RISC CPU based on ARM 4vT Instruction set to the 16-bit RISC Thumb microprocessor. And through building the programming model, we can reach to save the design time of developing the compiler and assembler to keep its software environment.

The majority of the UWB radars available on the market today are expensive and often closed forfurther development due to proprietary rights. Therefore it is difficult to fully understand and adaptthe functionality of an available UWB system to fit one’s needs. The consulting-firm Addiva purchasedan UWB radar to be used in a safety system. However, the radar had limitations and the functionalityof it was partly unknown. This master thesis was inspired from this issue to examine the possibilitiesof developing a low-cost UWB radar, with main focus on research of human detection. The systemshould be easy to understand and modify, as well as reporting reliable data from the scanning. Theresults indicate that such a system can be developed. However, further development to the UWB radarneeds to be made in order to have a complete system.

In this project, three separate experiments were conducted to assess heavy metal removal from metal aqueous solutions and synthetic landfill leachate by adsorption using low-cost natural adsorbents. Fundamental batch investigations indicated that the 4.0-4.75 mm crushed mollusk shells and the Sphagnum peat moss were the best adsorbents for cadmium and nickel removal, respectively. Peat moss was also found to have the highest adsorption capacities for manganese and cobalt adsorption. The adsorption capacities of the peat moss and crushed mollusk shells used as natural adsorbents for the adsorption of cadmium and nickel from binary aqueous solutions in fixed-bed columns under continuous flow conditions were investigated. The life expectancy of each adsorbent in the fixed-bed columns was also assessed for different hydraulic loading rates. The flow rate of 1.5 mL/min (surface loading of 27.52 cm3/cm2•day) and bed depth of 15 cm were identified as the better operational conditions from the column testing. The results indicated that 47.9% and 42.7% cadmium and nickel removal efficiencies could obtained under these operational conditions, respectively. Finally, the peat moss and the crushed mollusk shells were packed in bench-scale down-flow fixed-bed columns to evaluate their adsorption capacities as natural low-cost adsorbents for the removal of heavy metals from aerated and non-aerated synthetic landfill leachate. The flow rate applied in this operation was 1.5 mL/min (surface loading of 27.52 cm3/cm2•day). Peat was found to have the best adsorption capacities in columns treating aerated synthetic leachate for cadmium (78.6%) and nickel (83.8%) removal efficiencies. / Thesis (Master, Civil Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2008-01-31 22:37:34.381

The study is based on the context of project management; the discipline which employs skills and knowledge to achieve project goals through various project activities. The study concentrates on project management applications to deliver low cost houses (LCH) in the Metsimaholo Local Municipality (MLM). The main purpose of project management application is to enable project managers to track the progress of a project that they are working on. Institutions working on a very large project require project management applications to give periodic updates on the progress of the work that is being done on a project. By using a project management application, the process is made somewhat easier, in the sense that a project manager can just refer and check on the progress him/herself. Provision of adequate housing for the homeless and others who are inadequately housed in an attempt to reduce poverty and improve quality of people’s life has been a huge challenge to the South African government, particularly in the MLM over the years. Globally, legislators on the physical infrastructure of Parliament are pushing for the urgent construction of LCH by the government. The abovementioned challenge has resulted in an enormous housing backlog with poverty, unemployment, economic stagnation and negative behaviour. Financial constrains are seen to escalate costs and this makes the task even more enormous. The hypothesis for this study indicated that MLM does not possess sufficient institutional capacity to implement project management for the effective delivery of low cost housing. The hypothesis and research objectives of the study were validated by means of literature review and empirical surveys. Thirty-four (34) semi structured questionnaires were used to interview participants in the provision of LCH in MLM. The study is made up of five chapters. The study specifically focused on the application of project management to deliver LCH in the Metsimaholo Local Municipality (MLM). •This study contends that the application of project management in the public service sector to deliver goods and services has not been scientifically applied in a conscience and systematic manner. •In the MLM the national, provincial and the municipality efforts are challenged to provide houses for the homeless. •The increasing population in the MLM has resulted in an enormous housing backlog with poverty, unemployment, and economic stagnation. •The high demand for housing in the MLM brings about financial constrains and makes the task even more enormous. •It is realised through this study that the application of project management is lacking; whereby important pillars of project based outputs such as time, quality and cost are not necessarily the resultant finished products of the community tend to inherit. It is evident from the above that while the MLM has a mandate to provide service delivery it is limited by protocol to take full responsibility in the provision of low cost houses. The provision of LCH requires strengthened co-operative governance in the Free State Province, since the three spheres have important roles to play. In the face of the huge backlogs in housing and human settlement provision, the country urgently needs to develop the technical knowledge and skills necessary to fast track housing delivery. / M, Development and Management, Public Management and Administration, North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2012

Architecture is an act of agency, and a technology that can be learned by anyone for their own purpose. It evolved as a system of organization and a protective shell for our fragile bodies, a vast, complex technology that enables human survival. Yet despite its universal nature, we have artificially limited our control over it, and who has access to it; we limit its potentials, its adaptive capacities, its diversity, and our continued survival. Walled-up in universities, behind certifications and dissertations, we have removed architecture from the public’s mind so that few understand it and use it. The city, in its surging complexity, is ever more opaque; the systems, infrastructure, and regulations that govern its formation are hidden from view, behind doors, walls, and fences. Hack seeks to make the city legible and architecture accessible, by leveraging a growing tide of hacker culture, and its subcultures – makers and DIY drone enthusiasts – and their respective technologies. Since the birth of the computer, Hackers have sought to democratize information technology held by military, government, and corporate interests. In doing so they’ve provided a number of methods, that enable free sharing and collaboration between individuals, distributing problem-solving practices, open-source systems, hands-on education, and free access to tools, all applicable to the challenges and opportunities facing architecture and city building today. Hack bootstraps itself to these ideals with hands-on experiments and reflections on those experiments, reframing architecture as a basic skill, a technology to be used by anyone, democratizing architecture through online communities, and the Hacker culture, in order to define a new active role for the architect. Internalizing the Hacker Ethic, and appropriate existing technologies to build new tools – devices to survey space, architecture and the city. – Hack traces the construction of a kite, a model car, a quadrocopter, and a remote-control airplane, each capable of gathering intimate information about the local environment. Hack concludes by reexamining the role of the aerial view in making cities and exercising power, speculating on the potential to level the fields of perception through online co-operation and these small-scale cartographic technologies.

This thesis presents the design, construction and experiments done on a microcontroller board called 'SMARTY BOARD' targeted at small mobile robot applications. The primary motivation for this work was the lack of commercially available and cheap controller boards that would have all their components including interfaces on a single board. Having a single board simplifies the construction of programmable robots that can be used as platforms for teaching and learning robotics. Reducing the cost of the board as much as possible was one of the main design objectives. The target user groups for this device are the secondary and tertiary students, and hobbyists. Previous studies have shown that equipment cost is one of the major obstacles for teaching robotics in Australia. The other design objectives were robustness, reliability and functionality of the board. Most of the early technological learners such as high school students lack experience and expert knowledge for interfacing a controller board with other components. To prevent the learners from making errors, connectors on our board have been made foolproof (the user cannot damage the components of the board by plugging cables in the wrong sockets). Commercially available designs lack these essential features. After reviewing the commercially available micro-controller boards with respect to their suitability as teaching tools, we concluded that none of the existing microcontroller boards met our requirements. We then designed a new controller board based on previous boards. The main advantage of this new controller board is that it is a single board whereas the other controller boards are multi-board. Moreover, it is more foolproof. The new controller board was demonstrated at high-school seminars. In these demonstrations the new controller board was used for controlling two robots that we built. These robots are available as kits. The response from the high school teachers was very positive. The board has been selected as the platform for a robotic competition.