A method that combines category-based and keyword-based concepts for a better information retrieval system is introduced. To improve document clustering, a document similarity measure based on cosine vector and keywor...A method that combines category-based and keyword-based concepts for a better information retrieval system is introduced. To improve document clustering, a document similarity measure based on cosine vector and keywords frequency in documents is proposed, but also with an input ontology. The ontology is domain specific and includes a list of keywords organized by degree of importance to the categories of the ontology, and by means of semantic knowledge, the ontology can improve the effects of document similarity measure and feedback of information retrieval systems. Two approaches to evaluating the performance of this similarity measure and the comparison with standard cosine vector similarity measure are also described.展开更多
In most existing CP-ABE schemes, there is only one authority in the system and all the public keys and private keys are issued by this authority, which incurs ciphertext size and computation costs in the encryption an...In most existing CP-ABE schemes, there is only one authority in the system and all the public keys and private keys are issued by this authority, which incurs ciphertext size and computation costs in the encryption and decryption operations that depend at least linearly on the number of attributes involved in the access policy. We propose an efficient multi-authority CP-ABE scheme in which the authorities need not interact to generate public information during the system initialization phase. Our scheme has constant ciphertext length and a constant number of pairing computations. Our scheme can be proven CPA-secure in random oracle model under the decision q-BDHE assumption. When user's attributes revocation occurs, the scheme transfers most re-encryption work to the cloud service provider, reducing the data owner's computational cost on the premise of security. Finally the analysis and simulation result show that the schemes proposed in this thesis ensure the privacy and secure access of sensitive data stored in the cloud server, and be able to cope with the dynamic changes of users' access privileges in large-scale systems. Besides, the multi-authority ABE eliminates the key escrow problem, achieves the length of ciphertext optimization and enhances the effi ciency of the encryption and decryption operations.展开更多
The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains (1902) has been considered as one of the masterpieces of American western novels for its successful depiction of cowboys and local customs, which earns Owen Wister the Father...The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains (1902) has been considered as one of the masterpieces of American western novels for its successful depiction of cowboys and local customs, which earns Owen Wister the Father of Western fiction. The paper aims to reveal the relationship between The Virginian and its historical context by applying the doctrines of New Historicism: historicity of texts and textuality of history. By historicity of texts, it points out that the work is the emblem of disappearance of western frontier, and it symbolizes the union of the Wild West and the civilized east. By textuality of history, it detects the change of social class, the development of livestock industry and railway, and their influence on the work at the later part of 19th century.展开更多
Charles Percy Snow declared his influential Rede Lecture, "The Two Cultures", in 1959. In his famous lecture, he told us that the most powerful revolutionary force in the world today is science, science is essential...Charles Percy Snow declared his influential Rede Lecture, "The Two Cultures", in 1959. In his famous lecture, he told us that the most powerful revolutionary force in the world today is science, science is essentially progressive, and the scientific culture is also a newer one. So Snow, after excluding scientific culture from the whole culture, calls the rest of the whole culture traditional culture. In his opinion, science is more important than humanities. All these ideas are faithfully reflected in his earlier literary work The Masters (1972b). Snow's favor toward men of sciences in the novel is self-evident. "The Masters, therefore, may be considered as a political science novel rather than as a political novel". It was the Industrial Revolution which created our sensibility展开更多
Support vector machines have met with significant success in the information retrieval field, especially in handling text classification tasks. Although various performance estimators for SVMs have been proposed, thes...Support vector machines have met with significant success in the information retrieval field, especially in handling text classification tasks. Although various performance estimators for SVMs have been proposed, these only focus on accuracy which is based on the leave-one-out cross validation procedure. Information-retrieval-related performance measures are always neglected in a kernel learning methodology. In this paper, we have proposed a set of information-retrieval-oriented performance estimators for SVMs, which are based on the span bound of the leave-one-out procedure. Experiments have proven that our proposed estimators are both effective and stable.展开更多
The present study constitutes a critical appraisal of the deconstructive reading of Rousseau's Confessions that Derrida undertakes in the second part of Of Grammatology. In this examination, the author will first lis...The present study constitutes a critical appraisal of the deconstructive reading of Rousseau's Confessions that Derrida undertakes in the second part of Of Grammatology. In this examination, the author will first list some of the significations into which Derrida disperses (forced, as he asserts himself, by an "inassimilable residue" in the text itself) the meaning that he has already construed as apparently simple during the first moment of deconstructive reading (i.e., "the doubling commentary"); the author will then go on to enquire into the operations which enable Derrida to arrive at these self-conflicting significations. The main aim of this essay is to demonstrate that it is not language alone that disables the philosophy of Rousseau and enables the philosophy of Derrida. When Derrida attempts to support his philosophy through an analysis of Rousseau's theory of language and the alleged contradictions in Rousseau's texts, he misinterprets basic tenets of these texts in order to make them conform to the presuppositions of the deconstructive approach. The "reversal" and "displacement" of metaphysical conceptuality in the text of the Confessions is made possible after the text has had meanings transposed into it from a plurality of other texts. Derrida attributes to the text significations he discovers by construing, explicating and over-reading passages that occur elsewhere in Rousseau's total oeuvre (especially in the Essay on the Origin of Languages).展开更多
How to teach creative writing at school? If the procedures inherited from writing workshops have undoubtedly proved efficient as regards text production, it is also clear that in Switzerland, as elsewhere in Europe a...How to teach creative writing at school? If the procedures inherited from writing workshops have undoubtedly proved efficient as regards text production, it is also clear that in Switzerland, as elsewhere in Europe and in the Anglo-Saxon world, the present use of evaluation grids with their numerous items prevents secondary school pupils from adopting the stance of an author. Why? Simply because the most innovative and "literary" texts are always surprising: They are "different", and could not possibly result from writing guidelines devised only to facilitate a mechanical evaluation itself conceived for the sake of some illusory objectivity... Now, in our postmodern age with its rejection of models, what is more difficult than assessing the quality of creative writing? In our approach, we suggest restoring confidence in the teacher, an expert reader if any, who, acting as a publisher, dramaturge, or mere aesthete, knows how to take his pupils' texts seriously, acknowledge their aesthetic value, and look at apparent clumsiness as a possible promise of innovation. The teaching of creative writing lies both in this specific reception of budding works and in the teacher's performative utterances that, then and there, make the pupil a writer.展开更多
In many compames, cost management models are abandoned due to their complexity and because of this, the academic literature has experienced a downturn in publications regarding cost management. This paper deepens the ...In many compames, cost management models are abandoned due to their complexity and because of this, the academic literature has experienced a downturn in publications regarding cost management. This paper deepens the understanding regarding the practical usability of cost management models for purchasing decisions, and provides a framework for determining a desired complexity of cost management in different purchasing environments. The complexity is defined along three dimensions identified in literature and the different purchasing environments stem from an adaptation of Kraljic's (1983) matrix.展开更多
Translation, or interpretive and language code conversion of the text, is considered as an independent complex type of speech activity which consists of such stages as perception, understanding and interpretation of t...Translation, or interpretive and language code conversion of the text, is considered as an independent complex type of speech activity which consists of such stages as perception, understanding and interpretation of the foreign-language text and actual translation, that is selection of language means for the expression of the interpretive version of the original. Considerable attention is paid nowadays to the translations of works of such literary genre as literary fairy tale. Fairy tale is a type of prosaic folklore, which is met in the folklore of various peoples. Not only have literary fairy tales grown on the basis of folklore, but they also inherited its genre characteristics, developing and transforming them. Translation as an interpretive conversion of the text is considered within the concept "secondary text". The conspicuous feature of secondary texts is the double reference of the word: to its own culture referent and to a foreign culture referent. The secondary text cannot be completely understood and appreciated without its reference to "the second plane". Subjected to analysis are the problems of preserving original pragrnatics in secondary texts. The challenge of national fairy tales translation lies in the discrepancy of cultural concepts of the two nations and in considerable distinctions between the characters of Russian and British national fairy tales. The traditions of Russian national culture and the consistency of grammatical gender expression in the Russian language lead to gender shifts in the translation of English literary fairy tales.展开更多
The paper proposes to investigate feelings of guilt, love, and forgiveness as Hare's The Reader (2009). It will focus on Hare's selection of detail in his they manifest themselves in David screenplay The Reader; a...The paper proposes to investigate feelings of guilt, love, and forgiveness as Hare's The Reader (2009). It will focus on Hare's selection of detail in his they manifest themselves in David screenplay The Reader; a dramatic adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's novel of 1995. This will involve comparing the novel to the dramatic text for the purpose of showing the movement from narrative to dramatic rendering. The paper aspires to reach the conclusion that Hare's screenplay, The Reader creates a world of signification where the interplay of guilt, love, and forgiveness shape the textual and stage space. Read in light of Shoshana Felman's The Juridical Unconscious (2002), the play investigates the traumatic history of Nazi Germany with scope for analysis of guilt and forgiveness and the possibility of atonement through love and literature. The focus of the paper will be on the ideological and formal structure of the play and its impact on meanings and interpretations.展开更多
Currently, Bachelor thesis of Japanese major's main problems is related to the topics of the irrational, writing both impetuous attitude, which led to poor quality of the article, is worrying. There are many causes o...Currently, Bachelor thesis of Japanese major's main problems is related to the topics of the irrational, writing both impetuous attitude, which led to poor quality of the article, is worrying. There are many causes of the problem, and you can relax from the writing language requirements, the timing of mentor, and guiding additional academic writing courses in a bid to solve them.展开更多
Sharing the environment of English as a foreign language (EFL) in South Korea and China, English text in the authorized English textbooks deserves a cross-country comparison in the same grade level. This research ex...Sharing the environment of English as a foreign language (EFL) in South Korea and China, English text in the authorized English textbooks deserves a cross-country comparison in the same grade level. This research explored the English texts linguistic characteristics in the authorized English textbooks through Coh-Melrix 3.0 and intended to provide implications to EFL English textbook design in the future. The results suggest that there is a need to be aware of the weaknesses and strengths from each other: the South Korean English texts display a diversity in noun, verbs, adjectives, the mean number of words before the main verb of the main clause in sentence, TTR and lexical diversity; the Chinese English texts reveal an overlap in lexical level (content words, noun, and sentences) and semantic level (syntactic patterns).展开更多
Progress and disaster are two sides of the same coin. Text analyzes the two main themes. Firstly, the treatise attempts at a philosophical analysis of the categories--speed and disaster in Paul Virilio dromology. The ...Progress and disaster are two sides of the same coin. Text analyzes the two main themes. Firstly, the treatise attempts at a philosophical analysis of the categories--speed and disaster in Paul Virilio dromology. The development of high technical speeds would thus result in the disappearance of consciousness as the direct perception of phenomena that inform us of our own existence. Dromological research by Paul Virilio presents a critical analysis of the consequences for our perception and logistics caused by polar inertia, inertia of absolute speed. The second part of the study discusses the word--accident. Accident is inseparable from the speed. Virilio's texts deal with the impact of speed, disaster, and accident on the contemporary world. Speed and accident create a new form of uncertainty in society.展开更多
Taiwan Bangzi Opera is a branch of Henan Bangzi Opera in Henan, which was transmitted from China to Taiwan within the armies under a political and historical circumstance around 1947. As the trend of localisation in t...Taiwan Bangzi Opera is a branch of Henan Bangzi Opera in Henan, which was transmitted from China to Taiwan within the armies under a political and historical circumstance around 1947. As the trend of localisation in these ten years becomes obvious, several localised performances are created; however, the composers in China do not understand the music culture in Taiwan, so some interesting phenomenon can be found between an imaginary Taiwan from their viewpoints and the real culture in Taiwan. The Sorceress Bride is a performance which adapted so-called the aboriginal tune in 2012, and it arises several issues for further discussion.展开更多
Distribution patterns of plant species are believed to be impacted by small-scale habitat heterogeneity. However, there have been few comparative studies examining how woody vegetation composition and diversity varies...Distribution patterns of plant species are believed to be impacted by small-scale habitat heterogeneity. However, there have been few comparative studies examining how woody vegetation composition and diversity varies with aspects of different orientations in the Trans-Himalayan region at a local scale. Here, we examined the effects of incoming solar radiation on variation in woody species composition and compared the diversity between the northeast- and southwest-facing slopes in a Trans-Himalayan valley of Nepal. We also examined the implicit interactions between slope orientation and land use in determining the compositional variations between the slopes. We selected two pairs of northeast- and southwest-facing slopes where the first pair has a similar land use and differs in exposure only(Pisang site) while the other pair has clear differences in land use in addition to slope exposure(Braka site). In each site, we sampled 72 plots(36 on each slope) in which the presence and absence of woody species, environmental variables, and disturbance were recorded. Correspondence Analysis(CA) results suggested that the woody species composition significantly varied between northeast- and southwest-facing slopes at both sites, and was significantly correlated with measured environmental variables such as radiation index, altitude, and canopy openness. In the Braka site,mean alpha diversity was significantly higher on southwest-facing slopes. In contrast, beta diversity and gamma diversity were greater on northeast-facing slopes at both sites. Our results suggest that topographic variables(e.g., radiation index) affect species composition between the slopes, likely due to their influence on small scale abiotic environmental variables. However, the effects of land use, such as livestock browsing/grazing may interact with the effects of slope exposure, effectively reducing differences in species composition within slopes but enhancing the differences in beta diversity between contrasting slopes in the Braka. We conclude that slope orientation and land use are important factors in structuring the woody species composition and diversity in the arid Trans-Himalayan region. We suggest that both environmental and land use variables should be taken into consideration in future studies on plant community structure along the cultural landscapes.展开更多
Corporate decisions related to "make or buy" have significantly changed over the last 20 years, since the rush towards concentration on core business of the 1980s has progressively lost grasp. Although long-term all...Corporate decisions related to "make or buy" have significantly changed over the last 20 years, since the rush towards concentration on core business of the 1980s has progressively lost grasp. Although long-term alliances and mega deals are replacing the existing spot contracts, both academic literature and managerial practices still lack appropriate models for coping with such decisions. As a consequence, the traditional accounting approach, extensively based on emerging costs and cost savings, seems to be less and less effective in the governance of such phenomena. On the other hand, the managerial literature still suffers significant gaps in modeling the relations between outsourcing and business performance. The attention paid to the subject in past decades has not been matched by the rigor in assessing the actual impact on business performance. This paper aims to fill some of the existing gaps by presenting an original empirical study based on the analysis of the impact of outsourcing decisions on business performance.展开更多
基金The Young Teachers Scientific Research Foundation (YTSRF) of Nanjing University of Science and Technology in the Year of2005-2006.
文摘A method that combines category-based and keyword-based concepts for a better information retrieval system is introduced. To improve document clustering, a document similarity measure based on cosine vector and keywords frequency in documents is proposed, but also with an input ontology. The ontology is domain specific and includes a list of keywords organized by degree of importance to the categories of the ontology, and by means of semantic knowledge, the ontology can improve the effects of document similarity measure and feedback of information retrieval systems. Two approaches to evaluating the performance of this similarity measure and the comparison with standard cosine vector similarity measure are also described.
基金supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No.60873231Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province under Grant No.BK2009426+1 种基金Major State Basic Research Development Program of China under Grant No.2011CB302903Key University Science Research Project of Jiangsu Province under Grant No.11KJA520002
文摘In most existing CP-ABE schemes, there is only one authority in the system and all the public keys and private keys are issued by this authority, which incurs ciphertext size and computation costs in the encryption and decryption operations that depend at least linearly on the number of attributes involved in the access policy. We propose an efficient multi-authority CP-ABE scheme in which the authorities need not interact to generate public information during the system initialization phase. Our scheme has constant ciphertext length and a constant number of pairing computations. Our scheme can be proven CPA-secure in random oracle model under the decision q-BDHE assumption. When user's attributes revocation occurs, the scheme transfers most re-encryption work to the cloud service provider, reducing the data owner's computational cost on the premise of security. Finally the analysis and simulation result show that the schemes proposed in this thesis ensure the privacy and secure access of sensitive data stored in the cloud server, and be able to cope with the dynamic changes of users' access privileges in large-scale systems. Besides, the multi-authority ABE eliminates the key escrow problem, achieves the length of ciphertext optimization and enhances the effi ciency of the encryption and decryption operations.
文摘The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains (1902) has been considered as one of the masterpieces of American western novels for its successful depiction of cowboys and local customs, which earns Owen Wister the Father of Western fiction. The paper aims to reveal the relationship between The Virginian and its historical context by applying the doctrines of New Historicism: historicity of texts and textuality of history. By historicity of texts, it points out that the work is the emblem of disappearance of western frontier, and it symbolizes the union of the Wild West and the civilized east. By textuality of history, it detects the change of social class, the development of livestock industry and railway, and their influence on the work at the later part of 19th century.
文摘Charles Percy Snow declared his influential Rede Lecture, "The Two Cultures", in 1959. In his famous lecture, he told us that the most powerful revolutionary force in the world today is science, science is essentially progressive, and the scientific culture is also a newer one. So Snow, after excluding scientific culture from the whole culture, calls the rest of the whole culture traditional culture. In his opinion, science is more important than humanities. All these ideas are faithfully reflected in his earlier literary work The Masters (1972b). Snow's favor toward men of sciences in the novel is self-evident. "The Masters, therefore, may be considered as a political science novel rather than as a political novel". It was the Industrial Revolution which created our sensibility
文摘Support vector machines have met with significant success in the information retrieval field, especially in handling text classification tasks. Although various performance estimators for SVMs have been proposed, these only focus on accuracy which is based on the leave-one-out cross validation procedure. Information-retrieval-related performance measures are always neglected in a kernel learning methodology. In this paper, we have proposed a set of information-retrieval-oriented performance estimators for SVMs, which are based on the span bound of the leave-one-out procedure. Experiments have proven that our proposed estimators are both effective and stable.
文摘The present study constitutes a critical appraisal of the deconstructive reading of Rousseau's Confessions that Derrida undertakes in the second part of Of Grammatology. In this examination, the author will first list some of the significations into which Derrida disperses (forced, as he asserts himself, by an "inassimilable residue" in the text itself) the meaning that he has already construed as apparently simple during the first moment of deconstructive reading (i.e., "the doubling commentary"); the author will then go on to enquire into the operations which enable Derrida to arrive at these self-conflicting significations. The main aim of this essay is to demonstrate that it is not language alone that disables the philosophy of Rousseau and enables the philosophy of Derrida. When Derrida attempts to support his philosophy through an analysis of Rousseau's theory of language and the alleged contradictions in Rousseau's texts, he misinterprets basic tenets of these texts in order to make them conform to the presuppositions of the deconstructive approach. The "reversal" and "displacement" of metaphysical conceptuality in the text of the Confessions is made possible after the text has had meanings transposed into it from a plurality of other texts. Derrida attributes to the text significations he discovers by construing, explicating and over-reading passages that occur elsewhere in Rousseau's total oeuvre (especially in the Essay on the Origin of Languages).
文摘How to teach creative writing at school? If the procedures inherited from writing workshops have undoubtedly proved efficient as regards text production, it is also clear that in Switzerland, as elsewhere in Europe and in the Anglo-Saxon world, the present use of evaluation grids with their numerous items prevents secondary school pupils from adopting the stance of an author. Why? Simply because the most innovative and "literary" texts are always surprising: They are "different", and could not possibly result from writing guidelines devised only to facilitate a mechanical evaluation itself conceived for the sake of some illusory objectivity... Now, in our postmodern age with its rejection of models, what is more difficult than assessing the quality of creative writing? In our approach, we suggest restoring confidence in the teacher, an expert reader if any, who, acting as a publisher, dramaturge, or mere aesthete, knows how to take his pupils' texts seriously, acknowledge their aesthetic value, and look at apparent clumsiness as a possible promise of innovation. The teaching of creative writing lies both in this specific reception of budding works and in the teacher's performative utterances that, then and there, make the pupil a writer.
文摘In many compames, cost management models are abandoned due to their complexity and because of this, the academic literature has experienced a downturn in publications regarding cost management. This paper deepens the understanding regarding the practical usability of cost management models for purchasing decisions, and provides a framework for determining a desired complexity of cost management in different purchasing environments. The complexity is defined along three dimensions identified in literature and the different purchasing environments stem from an adaptation of Kraljic's (1983) matrix.
文摘Translation, or interpretive and language code conversion of the text, is considered as an independent complex type of speech activity which consists of such stages as perception, understanding and interpretation of the foreign-language text and actual translation, that is selection of language means for the expression of the interpretive version of the original. Considerable attention is paid nowadays to the translations of works of such literary genre as literary fairy tale. Fairy tale is a type of prosaic folklore, which is met in the folklore of various peoples. Not only have literary fairy tales grown on the basis of folklore, but they also inherited its genre characteristics, developing and transforming them. Translation as an interpretive conversion of the text is considered within the concept "secondary text". The conspicuous feature of secondary texts is the double reference of the word: to its own culture referent and to a foreign culture referent. The secondary text cannot be completely understood and appreciated without its reference to "the second plane". Subjected to analysis are the problems of preserving original pragrnatics in secondary texts. The challenge of national fairy tales translation lies in the discrepancy of cultural concepts of the two nations and in considerable distinctions between the characters of Russian and British national fairy tales. The traditions of Russian national culture and the consistency of grammatical gender expression in the Russian language lead to gender shifts in the translation of English literary fairy tales.
文摘The paper proposes to investigate feelings of guilt, love, and forgiveness as Hare's The Reader (2009). It will focus on Hare's selection of detail in his they manifest themselves in David screenplay The Reader; a dramatic adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's novel of 1995. This will involve comparing the novel to the dramatic text for the purpose of showing the movement from narrative to dramatic rendering. The paper aspires to reach the conclusion that Hare's screenplay, The Reader creates a world of signification where the interplay of guilt, love, and forgiveness shape the textual and stage space. Read in light of Shoshana Felman's The Juridical Unconscious (2002), the play investigates the traumatic history of Nazi Germany with scope for analysis of guilt and forgiveness and the possibility of atonement through love and literature. The focus of the paper will be on the ideological and formal structure of the play and its impact on meanings and interpretations.
文摘Currently, Bachelor thesis of Japanese major's main problems is related to the topics of the irrational, writing both impetuous attitude, which led to poor quality of the article, is worrying. There are many causes of the problem, and you can relax from the writing language requirements, the timing of mentor, and guiding additional academic writing courses in a bid to solve them.
文摘Sharing the environment of English as a foreign language (EFL) in South Korea and China, English text in the authorized English textbooks deserves a cross-country comparison in the same grade level. This research explored the English texts linguistic characteristics in the authorized English textbooks through Coh-Melrix 3.0 and intended to provide implications to EFL English textbook design in the future. The results suggest that there is a need to be aware of the weaknesses and strengths from each other: the South Korean English texts display a diversity in noun, verbs, adjectives, the mean number of words before the main verb of the main clause in sentence, TTR and lexical diversity; the Chinese English texts reveal an overlap in lexical level (content words, noun, and sentences) and semantic level (syntactic patterns).
文摘Progress and disaster are two sides of the same coin. Text analyzes the two main themes. Firstly, the treatise attempts at a philosophical analysis of the categories--speed and disaster in Paul Virilio dromology. The development of high technical speeds would thus result in the disappearance of consciousness as the direct perception of phenomena that inform us of our own existence. Dromological research by Paul Virilio presents a critical analysis of the consequences for our perception and logistics caused by polar inertia, inertia of absolute speed. The second part of the study discusses the word--accident. Accident is inseparable from the speed. Virilio's texts deal with the impact of speed, disaster, and accident on the contemporary world. Speed and accident create a new form of uncertainty in society.
文摘Taiwan Bangzi Opera is a branch of Henan Bangzi Opera in Henan, which was transmitted from China to Taiwan within the armies under a political and historical circumstance around 1947. As the trend of localisation in these ten years becomes obvious, several localised performances are created; however, the composers in China do not understand the music culture in Taiwan, so some interesting phenomenon can be found between an imaginary Taiwan from their viewpoints and the real culture in Taiwan. The Sorceress Bride is a performance which adapted so-called the aboriginal tune in 2012, and it arises several issues for further discussion.
基金Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP)Norwegian State Educational Loan Fund (Lnekassen)+2 种基金Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences,University of Bergen for financingfunded by Norwegian Research Council(project no.148910/730)supported by The Norwegian Council for Higher Education Programme for Development Research and Education(NUFU Project ID:PRO 04/2002)
文摘Distribution patterns of plant species are believed to be impacted by small-scale habitat heterogeneity. However, there have been few comparative studies examining how woody vegetation composition and diversity varies with aspects of different orientations in the Trans-Himalayan region at a local scale. Here, we examined the effects of incoming solar radiation on variation in woody species composition and compared the diversity between the northeast- and southwest-facing slopes in a Trans-Himalayan valley of Nepal. We also examined the implicit interactions between slope orientation and land use in determining the compositional variations between the slopes. We selected two pairs of northeast- and southwest-facing slopes where the first pair has a similar land use and differs in exposure only(Pisang site) while the other pair has clear differences in land use in addition to slope exposure(Braka site). In each site, we sampled 72 plots(36 on each slope) in which the presence and absence of woody species, environmental variables, and disturbance were recorded. Correspondence Analysis(CA) results suggested that the woody species composition significantly varied between northeast- and southwest-facing slopes at both sites, and was significantly correlated with measured environmental variables such as radiation index, altitude, and canopy openness. In the Braka site,mean alpha diversity was significantly higher on southwest-facing slopes. In contrast, beta diversity and gamma diversity were greater on northeast-facing slopes at both sites. Our results suggest that topographic variables(e.g., radiation index) affect species composition between the slopes, likely due to their influence on small scale abiotic environmental variables. However, the effects of land use, such as livestock browsing/grazing may interact with the effects of slope exposure, effectively reducing differences in species composition within slopes but enhancing the differences in beta diversity between contrasting slopes in the Braka. We conclude that slope orientation and land use are important factors in structuring the woody species composition and diversity in the arid Trans-Himalayan region. We suggest that both environmental and land use variables should be taken into consideration in future studies on plant community structure along the cultural landscapes.
文摘Corporate decisions related to "make or buy" have significantly changed over the last 20 years, since the rush towards concentration on core business of the 1980s has progressively lost grasp. Although long-term alliances and mega deals are replacing the existing spot contracts, both academic literature and managerial practices still lack appropriate models for coping with such decisions. As a consequence, the traditional accounting approach, extensively based on emerging costs and cost savings, seems to be less and less effective in the governance of such phenomena. On the other hand, the managerial literature still suffers significant gaps in modeling the relations between outsourcing and business performance. The attention paid to the subject in past decades has not been matched by the rigor in assessing the actual impact on business performance. This paper aims to fill some of the existing gaps by presenting an original empirical study based on the analysis of the impact of outsourcing decisions on business performance.