eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) presents new opportunities for integrating information flow within communities of diverse organisations thereby significantly enhancing the business information supply chain. Vital to XBRL success, its standardization is proving to be challenging. This paper investigates the phenomena that occur when heterogeneous actors interact in attempts to stan...

Background Wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) consist of sensors and actors connected through wireless medium. In the network, sensors are used to sense complex events in an environment and actors take intelligent decisions and perform actions as required. Sensors are cheap devices which have low power batteries, slow processing capabilities and short communication range as compared to ...

The 21st century global health landscape requires effective global action in the face of globalization of trade, travel, information, human rights, ideas, and disease. The new global health era is more plural, comprising a number of key actors, and requiring more coordination of effort, priorities and investments. The World Health Organization (WHO) plays an essential role in the global governa...

Achieving the Millennium Development Goals has proven to be a real challenge. Providing evidence on cost-effective interventions did not prove to be sufficient to secure the trust of national authorities, health care providers and patients. Introducing change in a health system requires a good understanding of the relationships between the actors of the system. Social network analysis can provi...

most theories of the developmental state assume that industrial transformation requires capable and coherent development bureaucracies that are “autonomous,” in the sense of being insulated from particularistic private interests. these theories however benefit from networks connecting them to relevant private industrial actors. by all scholarly accounts, political factionalism and islamic insti...

Wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) consist of powerful actors and resource constraint sensors that are linked together in wireless networks. They mostly rely on actors to make proper decisions and perform desired coordination to achieve the goals of the entire network. They are usually deployed in critical applications and actor-actor network connectivity is thus vital to their effectiv...

The multilayer methodology involves several concepts for serious game design; it can increase the collaboration between several actors of design, obtaining a more efficient serious game. Although it requires a specific environment to provide an effective assistance and visibility during the development of serious games, it improves on the combination of learning and entertainment fields. In thi...

Integer-Controlled Dataflow (IDF) and its code generation applications in Ptolemy are presented. In IDF graphs, which specify data processing systems, data token flow is controlled by integer control tokens and states of actors at run-time. The firing order of actors (schedule) is determined at compile-time, however, the actors are conditionally activated at run-time. This static schedule contr...

— This article suggests that efforts to study decentralization outcomes would benefit from widening the unit of analysis from the local government administration to the local governance system. Many individual local governments, especially in developing countries, lack the human and physical resources to be effective governors by themselves. It is, thus, useful to recognize the linkages between...

We study the effects of a German national cluster policy on the structure of collaboration networks. The empirical analysis is based on original data that was collected in fall 2011 and late summer 2013 with cluster actors (firms and public research organizations) who received government funding. Our results show that over time the program was effective in initiating new cooperation between clu...