This book discusses design techniques, layout details and measurements of several key analog building blocks that currently limit the performance of 5G and E-Band transceivers implemented in deep-scaled CMOS. The authors present recent developments in low-noise quadrature VCOs and tunable inductor-less frequency dividers. Moreover, the design of low-loss broadband transformer-based filters that realize inter-stage matching, power division/combining and impedance transformation is discussed in great detail. The design and measurements of a low-noise amplifier, a downconverter and a highly-linear power amplifier that leverage the proposed techniques are shown. All the prototypes were realized in advanced nanometer scaled CMOS technologies without RF thick to metal option.
This book discusses design techniques, layout details and measurements of several key analog building blocks that currently limit the performance of 5G and E-Band transceivers implemented in deep-scaled CMOS. The authors present recent developments in low-noise quadrature VCOs and tunable inductor-less frequency dividers. Moreover, the design of low-loss broadband transformer-based filters that realize inter-stage matching, power division/combining and impedance transformation is discussed in great detail. The design and measurements of a low-noise amplifier, a downconverter and a highly-linear power amplifier that leverage the proposed techniques are shown. All the prototypes were realized in advanced nanometer scaled CMOS technologies without RF thick to metal option.
This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the third International Conference on Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health, ICT4AWE 2017, held in Porto, Portugal in April 2017. The 10 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 32 submissions. The papers aim at contributing to the understanding of relevant trends of current research on ICT for Ageing Well and eHealth including the collection and evaluation of day/night end user behavior patterns through the adoption of wearable technologies.
This work, concerned with the significance of literacy and multiliteracies in the 21st century, examines pedagogy from the perspective of Web 2.0 tools and the potential of social networks to improve the quality of learning. Drawing on five years research in German and Italian universities, the author investigates different scenarios in which technology can support the learning process. The focus is on online interaction and collaboration from the standpoint of Educational Technology. With this approach, key pedagogical issues are analysed in relation to theoretical models as well as to the specific learning context. The resulting LearnWeb2.0 Design Framework provides a systematic and up-to-date reference and guide for teachers, researchers and developers when discussing course design and learning supports.
As future generation information technology (FGIT) becomes specialized and fr- mented, it is easy to lose sight that many topics in FGIT have common threads and, because of this, advances in one discipline may be transmitted to others. Presentation of recent results obtained in different disciplines encourages this interchange for the advancement of FGIT as a whole. Of particular interest are hybrid solutions that c- bine ideas taken from multiple disciplines in order to achieve something more signi- cant than the sum of the individual parts. Through such hybrid philosophy, a new principle can be discovered, which has the propensity to propagate throughout mul- faceted disciplines. FGIT 2009 was the first mega-conference that attempted to follow the above idea of hybridization in FGIT in a form of multiple events related to particular disciplines of IT, conducted by separate scientific committees, but coordinated in order to expose the most important contributions. It included the following international conferences: Advanced Software Engineering and Its Applications (ASEA), Bio-Science and Bio-Technology (BSBT), Control and Automation (CA), Database Theory and Application (DTA), D- aster Recovery and Business Continuity (DRBC; published independently), Future G- eration Communication and Networking (FGCN) that was combined with Advanced Communication and Networking (ACN), Grid and Distributed Computing (GDC), M- timedia, Computer Graphics and Broadcasting (MulGraB), Security Technology (SecTech), Signal Processing, Image Processing and Pattern Recognition (SIP), and u- and e-Service, Science and Technology (UNESST).
Welcome to the proceedings of the 2010 International Conference on u- and e-Service, Science and Technology (UNESST 2010) – one of the partnering events of the Second International Mega-Conference on Future Generation Information Te- nology (FGIT 2010). UNESST brings together researchers from academia and industry as well as prac- tioners to share ideas, problems and solutions relating to the multifaceted aspects of u- and e-services and their applications, with links to computational sciences, mat- matics and information technology. In total, 1,630 papers were submitted to FGIT 2010 from 30 countries, which - cludes 223 papers submitted to UNESST 2010. The submitted papers went through a rigorous reviewing process: 395 of the 1,630 papers were accepted for FGIT 2010, while 50 papers were accepted for UNESST 2010. Of the 50 papers 8 were selected for the special FGIT 2010 volume published by Springer in the LNCS series. 27 papers are published in this volume and 15 papers were withdrawn due to technical reasons. We would like to acknowledge the great effort of the UNESST 2010 International Advisory Board and members of the International Program Committee, as well as all the organizations and individuals who supported the idea of publishing this volume of proceedings, including SERSC and Springer. Also, the success of the conference would not have been possible without the huge support from our sponsors and the work of the Chairs and Organizing Committee.
This volume (1) defines the specific-anticompetitive-intent, lessening-competition, distorting-competition, and exploitative-abuse tests of illegality promulgated by U.S. and/or E.U. antitrust law, (2) compares the efficiency defenses promulgated by U.S. and E.U. antitrust law, (3) compares the conduct-coverage of the various U.S. and E.U. antitrust laws, (4) defines price competition and quality-or-variety-increasing-investment (QV-investment) competition and explains why they should be analyzed separately, (5) defines the components of individualized-pricing and across-the-board-pricing sellers’ price minus marginal cost gaps and analyses each’s determinants, (6) defines the determinants of the intensity of QV-investment competition and explains how they determine that intensity, (7) demonstrates that definitions of both classical and antitrust markets are inevitably arbitrary, not just at their periphery but comprehensively, (8) criticizes the various protocols for market definition recommended/used by scholars, the U.S. antitrust agencies, the European Commission, and U.S. and E.U. courts, (9) explains that a firm’s economic (market) power or dominance depends on its power over both price and QV investment and demonstrates that, even if markets could be defined non-arbitrarily, a firm’s economic power could not be predicted from its market share, (10) articulates a definition of “oligopolistic conduct” that some economists have implicitly used–conduct whose perpetrator-perceived ex ante profitability depended critically on the perpetrator’s belief that its rivals’ responses would be affected by their belief that it could react to their responses, distinguishes two types of such conduct–contrived and natural–by whether it entails anticompetitive threats and/or offers, explains why this distinction is critical under U.S. but not E.U. antitrust law, analyzes the profitability of each kind ofoligopolistic conduct, examines these analyses’ implications for each’s antitrust legality, and criticizes related U.S. and E.U. case-law and doctrine and scholarly positions (e.g., on the evidence that establishes the illegal oligopolistic character of pricing), and (11) executes parallel analyses of predatory conduct--e.g., criticizes various arguments for the inevitable unprofitability of predatory pricing, the various tests that economists/U.S. courts advocate using/use to determine whether pricing is predatory, and two analyses by economists of the conditions under which QV investment and systems rivalry are predatory and examines the conditions under which production-process research, plant-modernization, and long-term full-requirements contracts are predatory.
Volume 2 uses the economic and legal concepts/theories of Volume 1 to (1) analyze the U.S. and E.U. antitrust legality of mergers, joint ventures, and the pricing-technique and contractual/sales-policy distributor-control surrogates for vertical integration and (2) assess related positions of scholars and U.S. and E.U. antitrust officials. Its analysis of horizontal mergers (1) delineates non-market-oriented protocols for determining whether they manifest specific anticompetitive intent, would lessen competition, or are rendered lawful by the efficiencies they would generate, (2) criticizes the U.S. courts’ traditional market-share/market-concentration protocol, the HHI-oriented protocols of the 1992 U.S. DOJ/FTC Guidelines and the European Commission (EC) Guidelines, and the various non-market-oriented protocols the DOJ/FTC have increasingly been using, (3) argues that, although the 2010 U.S. Guidelines and DOJ/FTC officials discuss market definition as if it matters, those Guidelines actually reject market-oriented approaches, and (4) reviews the relevant U.S. and E.U. case-law. Its analysis of conglomerate mergers (1) shows that they can perform the same legitimate and competition-increasing functions as horizontal mergers and can yield illegitimate profits and lessen competition by increasing contrived oligopolistic pricing and retaliation barriers to investment, (2) analyzes the determinants of all these effects, and (3) assesses limit-price theory, the toe-hold-merger doctrine, and U.S. and E.U. case-law. Its analysis of vertical conduct (1) examines the legitimate functions of each type of such conduct, (2) delineates the conditions under which each manifests specific anticompetitive intent and/or lessens competition, and (3) assesses related U.S. and E.U. case-law and DOJ/FTC and EC positions. Its analysis of joint ventures (1) explains that they violate U.S. law only when they manifest specificanticompetitive intent while they violate E.U. law either for this reason or because they lessen competition, (2) discusses the meaning of an “ancillary restraint” and demonstrates that whether a joint-venture agreement would be illegal if it imposed no restraints and whether any restraints imposed are ancillary can be determined only through case-by-case analysis, (3) explains why scholars and officials overestimate the economic efficiency of R&D joint ventures, and (4) discusses related U.S. and E.U. case-law and DOJ/FTC and EC positions. The study’s Conclusion (1) reviews how its analyses justify its innovative conceptual systems and (2) compares U.S. and E.U. antitrust law as written and as applied.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference, UNESST 2011, held as Part of the Future Generation Information Technology Conference, FGIT 2011, Jeju Island, Korea, in December 2011. The papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions and focuse on the various aspects of u- and e-service, science and technology.
Information and communication technology, in particular artificial intelligence, can be used to support economy and commerce using digital means. This book is about agents and multi-agent distributed systems applied to digital economy and e-commerce to meet, improve, and overcome challenges in the digital economy and e-commerce sphere. Agent and multi-agent solutions are applied in implementing real-life, exciting developments associated with the need to eliminate problems of distributed systems. The book presents solutions for both technology and applications, illustrating the possible uses of agents in the enterprise domain, covering design and analytic methods, needed to provide a solid foundation required for practical systems. More specifically, the book provides solutions for the digital economy, e-sourcing clusters in network economy, and knowledge exchange between agents applicable to online trading agents, and security solutions to both digital economy and e-commerce. Furthermore, it offers solutions for e-commerce, such as, mapping and alignment of ontologies for business, negotiation, automated auctions, recommender systems to support traders in business activities, and game simulations.
Information and communication technology, in particular artificial intelligence, can be used to support economy and commerce using digital means. This book is about agents and multi-agent distributed systems applied to digital economy and e-commerce to meet, improve, and overcome challenges in the digital economy and e-commerce sphere. Agent and multi-agent solutions are applied in implementing real-life, exciting developments associated with the need to eliminate problems of distributed systems. The book presents solutions for both technology and applications, illustrating the possible uses of agents in the enterprise domain, covering design and analytic methods, needed to provide a solid foundation required for practical systems. More specifically, the book provides solutions for the digital economy, e-sourcing clusters in network economy, and knowledge exchange between agents applicable to online trading agents, and security solutions to both digital economy and e-commerce. Furthermore, it offers solutions for e-commerce, such as, mapping and alignment of ontologies for business, negotiation, automated auctions, recommender systems to support traders in business activities, and game simulations.
Vol. I (1) operationalizes the specific-anticompetitive-intent and lessening-competition tests of illegality both U.S. and E.U. antitrust law promulgate and the distorting-competition and exploitative-abuse-of-a-dominant-position tests E.U. law promulgates, (2) distinguishes these tests from an economic-inefficiency test of illegality, (3) lists the antitrust licit and illicit categories of profits conduct can yield, (4) develops conceptual systems and theories for analyzing conduct’s impact on price and quality-or-variety-increasing-investment competition, (5) demonstrates that definitions of both economic and antitrust markets are inevitably comprehensively arbitrary, (6) criticizes various market-definition protocols proposed by scholars or used by government officials, (7) explains why no market-oriented approach to measuring a firm’s economic power or conduct’s antitrust illegality can be acceptable, (8) analyzes the profitability of oligopolistic and predatory conduct of all kinds and criticizes various scholarly arguments about their profitability, (9) proposes protocols for determining whether illegal-oligopolistic or predatory conduct has taken place and criticizes various scholarly and official protocols for doing so, and (10) examines the U.S. and E.U. case-law on such conduct and the European Commission’s positions on predatory conduct.Vol. II uses non-market-oriented approaches to analyze (1) the determinants of whether horizontal mergers, conglomerate mergers, vertical mergers, vertical internal growth, the various surrogates for vertical integration, joint ventures, and other sorts of collaborative arrangements violate the specific-anticompetitive-intent or lessening-competition test of illegality--i.e., violate U.S. and E.U. antitrust law, correctlyinterpreted and applied, (2) the determinants of the competitive impact of a rule allowing all members of a set of product rivals to engage in any type of vertical conduct and the legal relevance of such a rule’s competitive impact, (3) the U.S. and E.U. case-law on all the above categories of conduct, and (4) the positions that the U.S. DOJ, FTC, and European Commission have taken on the appropriate way to analyze the legality of each such category of conduct and on the circumstances in which exemplars of each such category of conduct will be illegal. Vol. II concludes by comparing U.S. and E.U. antitrust law both as written and as actually interpreted and applied.
This volume (1) defines the specific-anticompetitive-intent, lessening-competition, distorting-competition, and exploitative-abuse tests of illegality promulgated by U.S. and/or E.U. antitrust law, (2) compares the efficiency defenses promulgated by U.S. and E.U. antitrust law, (3) compares the conduct-coverage of the various U.S. and E.U. antitrust laws, (4) defines price competition and quality-or-variety-increasing-investment (QV-investment) competition and explains why they should be analyzed separately, (5) defines the components of individualized-pricing and across-the-board-pricing sellers’ price minus marginal cost gaps and analyses each’s determinants, (6) defines the determinants of the intensity of QV-investment competition and explains how they determine that intensity, (7) demonstrates that definitions of both classical and antitrust markets are inevitably arbitrary, not just at their periphery but comprehensively, (8) criticizes the various protocols for market definition recommended/used by scholars, the U.S. antitrust agencies, the European Commission, and U.S. and E.U. courts, (9) explains that a firm’s economic (market) power or dominance depends on its power over both price and QV investment and demonstrates that, even if markets could be defined non-arbitrarily, a firm’s economic power could not be predicted from its market share, (10) articulates a definition of “oligopolistic conduct” that some economists have implicitly used–conduct whose perpetrator-perceived ex ante profitability depended critically on the perpetrator’s belief that its rivals’ responses would be affected by their belief that it could react to their responses, distinguishes two types of such conduct–contrived and natural–by whether it entails anticompetitive threats and/or offers, explains why this distinction is critical under U.S. but not E.U. antitrust law, analyzes the profitability of each kind ofoligopolistic conduct, examines these analyses’ implications for each’s antitrust legality, and criticizes related U.S. and E.U. case-law and doctrine and scholarly positions (e.g., on the evidence that establishes the illegal oligopolistic character of pricing), and (11) executes parallel analyses of predatory conduct--e.g., criticizes various arguments for the inevitable unprofitability of predatory pricing, the various tests that economists/U.S. courts advocate using/use to determine whether pricing is predatory, and two analyses by economists of the conditions under which QV investment and systems rivalry are predatory and examines the conditions under which production-process research, plant-modernization, and long-term full-requirements contracts are predatory.
Volume 2 uses the economic and legal concepts/theories of Volume 1 to (1) analyze the U.S. and E.U. antitrust legality of mergers, joint ventures, and the pricing-technique and contractual/sales-policy distributor-control surrogates for vertical integration and (2) assess related positions of scholars and U.S. and E.U. antitrust officials. Its analysis of horizontal mergers (1) delineates non-market-oriented protocols for determining whether they manifest specific anticompetitive intent, would lessen competition, or are rendered lawful by the efficiencies they would generate, (2) criticizes the U.S. courts’ traditional market-share/market-concentration protocol, the HHI-oriented protocols of the 1992 U.S. DOJ/FTC Guidelines and the European Commission (EC) Guidelines, and the various non-market-oriented protocols the DOJ/FTC have increasingly been using, (3) argues that, although the 2010 U.S. Guidelines and DOJ/FTC officials discuss market definition as if it matters, those Guidelines actually reject market-oriented approaches, and (4) reviews the relevant U.S. and E.U. case-law. Its analysis of conglomerate mergers (1) shows that they can perform the same legitimate and competition-increasing functions as horizontal mergers and can yield illegitimate profits and lessen competition by increasing contrived oligopolistic pricing and retaliation barriers to investment, (2) analyzes the determinants of all these effects, and (3) assesses limit-price theory, the toe-hold-merger doctrine, and U.S. and E.U. case-law. Its analysis of vertical conduct (1) examines the legitimate functions of each type of such conduct, (2) delineates the conditions under which each manifests specific anticompetitive intent and/or lessens competition, and (3) assesses related U.S. and E.U. case-law and DOJ/FTC and EC positions. Its analysis of joint ventures (1) explains that they violate U.S. law only when they manifest specificanticompetitive intent while they violate E.U. law either for this reason or because they lessen competition, (2) discusses the meaning of an “ancillary restraint” and demonstrates that whether a joint-venture agreement would be illegal if it imposed no restraints and whether any restraints imposed are ancillary can be determined only through case-by-case analysis, (3) explains why scholars and officials overestimate the economic efficiency of R&D joint ventures, and (4) discusses related U.S. and E.U. case-law and DOJ/FTC and EC positions. The study’s Conclusion (1) reviews how its analyses justify its innovative conceptual systems and (2) compares U.S. and E.U. antitrust law as written and as applied.
This book contains a selection of papers and presentations from the 6th EADiM Academic Network Conference held in Graz in November 2007. The Academic Network originates from the assessment process of the EUROPRIX Multimedia Awards. Many enthusiastic teachers and instructors have encouraged their students and graduates to take part in this competition with their final projects or first products in terms of innovation and added value for users. The network was formally established in 2002 by instructors of award-winning interactive e-content projects. Participants in the network share an interest in identifying successful approaches in teaching and in optimizing their teaching methods. The network has started off a European masters program and a number of other cooperation projects. The Academic Network’s annual conference provides a forum for the exchange of latest experiences, it is a meeting place for nominees and winners from the EUROPRIX Multimedia Awards, and it reflects on the development of e-content technology and industry. Academics, instructors, and professors from all parts of Europe present their new approaches to successful and effective teaching. They discuss methods on how teaching models can better meet the requirements of companies and industry at large. Discussions have been raised how academia can come up to the rapid development of the ICT industries and the fast change of platforms for which content is needed.
Questions such as: Are virtual classrooms our best option to continue with education?, Does the teaching dynamics that our authorities opted for really work?, What is the real problem we have as a country?, Is it only a question of technological modernity, the problem that holds us back from teaching under this new scheme, come to light more frequently even when we have been working under this modality for 18 months at all educational levels in our country.
E-Government emerged with the aim of providing greater integration between government, citizens and organisations through the dissemination of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), particularly the Internet. As a result, the online portals of different public institutions emerged to meet the needs of communication between the Public Administration and society and to provide adequate and timely information to users of public services. In this book, the usability of the online e-Government service is evaluated in order to build an index that will allow it to be improved.
