© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014. Creating agents that are capable of emulating similar socio-cultural dynamics to those found in human interaction remains as one of the hardest challenges of artificial intelligence. This problem becomes particularly important when considering embodied …

Silvio Berlusconi was Italy's longest serving Prime Minister since the Second World War. As Prime Minister, he exercised control over the three public television channels in Italy. The combination of a strong political figure that controls large parts of public media and has considerable business interests …

The aim of this thesis is to explore the effects of the Foreign Agents Law on nongovernmental organizations (further mentioned as NGOs) operating in Russia, after its implementation by the State Duma in November of 2012. The Foreign Agents Law amends existing NGO legislation and is the latest in a series …

Objectives: To compare the content of the Fatigue Severity Scale and the subscale "subjective experience of fatigue" of the Checklist Individual Strength, and (ii) to assess the reliability of both questionnaires in polio survivors. Design: Repeated-measures at a 3-week interval. Subjects: Consecutive …

Dit proefschrift heeft als onderwerp de toepassing van agenttechnologie in productie en productondersteuning. Onder een agent verstaan we in deze context een autonoom opererende software entiteit die gemaakt is om een zeker doel te realiseren en daartoe met de omgeving comuniceert en zelfstandig acties …

Spain is a country which at the moment has several economic problems. Therefore, the Spanish Government is offering non-European citizens the possibility of receiving Spanish residential visa when investing more than 500.000 € in real-estate. The purpose of this paper is to help Casamona, a young Spanish …

Rocket Software is an international software organization, divided into various divisions. One of these divisions is known as LegaSuite, which is the division central to this market research. LegaSuite seeks to increase its market share on the German market and the problem statement central to this strategic …

The overall topic of this book is internationalization. It is hard to deny that organizations are increasingly internationalizing in order to remain competitive, to access growth markets and resources and to reduce operating costs. Understanding international business has become imperative for academic …

The ambition to host mega sports events is (or can be) perfectly justifiable with various arguments. The most persistently used argument is the supposed financial or direct economic gain for the host economy, of which the compelling body of evidence is discouraging. This implies that the justification …

In May 2011, Dutch students from the honors program in geosciences of Utrecht University, led by Professor Marca Wolfensberger, engaged in an experimental-learning project in Paris, France, with a group of American students from the honors program of Columbia College, South Carolina, led by Professors …