The intermittent nature of renewable energy has been discussed in the context of the operational challenges that it brings to electrical grid reliability. Demand Side Management (DSM) with its ability to allow customers to adjust electricity consumption in response to market signals has often been recognized as an efficient way to mitigate the variable effects of renewable energy as well as to ...

As cloud computing becomes widely deployed, more and more cloud services are 8 offered to end users in a pay-as-you-go manner. Today’s increasing number of end user-oriented 9 cloud services are generally operated by SaaS (Software as a Service) providers using rental 10 virtual resources from third-party infrastructure vendors. As far as SaaS providers are concerned, 11 how to process the dyna...

Many organizations are using virtual teams to meet the increasing time and quality expectations of contemporary marketplaces. While virtual teams present advantages for cost control, access to expertise, and serving markets, they also engender practical challenges as a result of the geographic and temporal distribution of members. Previous research has suggested several factors that are critica...

Ever since the early nineties and the advent of affordable and comprehensive 3D-CAD systems, companies have striven to take advantage of cost-effective Virtual Prototyping, gradually moving away from activities involving physical representations of the evolving product. There are, however, aspects of the product development process that are less suitable for virtual exploration. Thus, there are...

OBJECTIVES "Virtual fracture clinics" have been reported as a safe and effective alternative to the traditional fracture clinic. Robust protocols are used to identify cases that do not require further review, with the remainder triaged to the most appropriate subspecialist at the optimum time for review. The objective of this study was to perform a "top-down" analysis of the cost effectiveness ...