Database querying by various selection criteria can often confront a major limitation: the difficulty to realize and express precise criteria for locating the information. This happens because people do not always think and speak in precise terms, or they do not have details on the data range. The research community recently proposed a new way to query databases, more expressive and flexible th...

At altitudes of about 1.05 solar radii or more, the corona above quiet solar regions becomes essentially isothermal. This obviates many of the difficulties associated with the inverse problem of determining emission measure distributions, and allows for fairly straightforward relative element abundance measurements. We present new values for the He abundance. The first is based on a reanalysis ...

The use of e-commerce in small medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has become an important topic in information systems research. At present, there is a large number of well-documented benefits derived from ecommerce for small-medium enterprises (SMEs) both in theoretical and practical literature. Despite the enormous attention given to encourage SMEs to adopt e-commerce both by academics as well a...

Aims. In this paper we investigate the dependence of umbral core brightness, as well as the mean umbral and penumbral brightness on the phase of the solar cycle and on the size of the sunspot. Methods. Albregtsen & Maltby (1978) reported an increase in umbral core brightness from the early to the late phase of solar cycle from the analysis of 13 sunspots which cover solar cycles 20 and 21. Here...

This paper examines the factors underlying task discretion from an economist’s perspective. It argues that the key axis for understanding discretion is the trade-off between the positive effects of discretion on potential output per employee and the negative effects of greater leeway on work effort. In empirical analysis using matched employer-employee data it is shown that discretion is strong...

The SOHO Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer (UVCS/SOHO) has observed the extended solar corona between 1 and 10 R for more than two years. We review spectroscopic and polarimetric measurements made in coronal holes, equatorial streamers, and coronal mass ejections, as well as selected non-solar targets. UVCS/SOHO has provided a great amount of empirical information about the physical processe...

This paper presents a look at the concept of Lean Manufacturing as applied to the office environment. Lean Manufacturing, which is often referred to as Lean, is a philosophy of manufacturing process improvement through the elimination of waste. As Lean developed since its origins in the automobile industry, it has been extended to apply to various enterprises and organizations, and has achieved...

The hydrogen Lyman-alpha (Ly−α) plays a dominant role in the radiative energy transport in the lower transition region, and is important for the studies of transition-region structure as well as solar wind origin. We investigate the Ly−α profiles obtained by the Solar Ultraviolet Measurements of Emitted Radiation spectrograph (SUMER) on the SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft i...

We examine the energetics of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) with data from the LASCO coronagraphs on SOHO. The LASCO observations provide fairly direct measurements of the mass, velocity and dimensions of CMEs. Using these basic measurements, we determine the potential and kinetic energies and their evolution for several CMEs that exhibit a flux-rope morphology. Assuming flux conservation, we us...

There is a growing interest in how the digital divide affects the operations of SMEs. The digital divide among businesses is defined as the disparity between the effective use of ICT for gains in productivity (Wielicki, 2008). Often, SMEs are found to be on the wrong side of this divide, with insufficient funds and/or access to ICT as the most cited reasons for falling behind big corporations. ...