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Purpose – To provide an overview of the history, evolution, and existing research on continuous improvement Design/methodology/approach – Extensive review of the literature. Findings - This paper provides an overview of continuous improvement, its inception, how it evolved into sophisticated methodologies used in organizations today, and existing research in this field in the literature. Research limitations/implications – It does not provide an exhaustive review of the existing literature, or an exhaustive list of all continuous improvement programs, only the most well known. Originality/value – This paper traces how organizations have used various tools and techniques to address the need for improvement on various levels. The paper also presents research conducted in this field. It should be of value to practitioners of continuous improvement programs and to academics who are interested in how continuous improvement has evolved, and where it is today. To the authors' knowledge, no recent papers have provided an historical perspective of continuous improvement Furthermore, our paper also discusses the existing research in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the conditionally faulty graphs G that each vertex of G is incident with at least m fault-free edges, 2 ≤ m ≤ n - 1. We extend the limitation m ≥ 2 in all previous results of edge-bipancyclicity with faulty edges and faulty vertices. Let fe (respectively, fv) denotes the number of faulty edges (respectively, faulty vertices) in an n-dimensional hypercube Qn. For all m, we show that every fault-free edge of Qn lies on a fault-free cycle of every even length from 4 to |V| - 2fv inclusive provided fe + fv ≤ n - 2. This result is not only optimal, but also improves on the previously best known results reported in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes our recent developments in automatic extraction of translation equivalents from parallel corpora. We describe three increasingly complex algorithms: a simple baseline iterative method, and two non-iterative more elaborated versions. While the baseline algorithm is mainly described for illustrative purposes, the non-iterative algorithms outline the use of different working hypotheses which may be motivated by different kinds of applications and to some extent by the languages concerned. The first two algorithms rely on cross-lingual POS preservation, while with the third one POS invariance is not an extraction condition. The evaluation of the algorithms was conducted on three different corpora and several pairs of languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review bubble measures which are commonly used in the experimental asset market literature. It seems sensible to require that measures of mispricing should (i) relate the fundamental value and price, (ii) be monotone in the difference between fundamental value and price, and (iii) be independent of the total number of periods and the absolute level of fundamental value. We show that none of the measures currently used fulfills all these criteria. To facilitate comparability across different experimental settings with different parameterizations we propose two alternative measures which fulfill all evaluation criteria. The measure for mispricing, RAD (relative absolute deviation), is calculated by averaging absolute differences between the (volume-weighted) mean price and the fundamental value across all periods and normalizing it with the absolute value of the average FV of the market. The measure for overvaluation, RD (relative deviation), is calculated analogously, but uses raw difference between (volume-weighted) mean prices and fundamental values. Hence, it provides information on whether the mispricing stems from over- or undervaluation of the asset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Profiles the works of Manilius, as criticized by Valentinus Acidalius. Publication of the translation of his poem; Explanation of why someone attributed the annotations to Gronovius; Identification of the papers discovered from the library of Gevartius.

Much literature has focused on the influence of the World Bank with regard to policy reform in low-income countries. While this literature has been produced over the course of many decades, the underlying studies have not tended to take a multi-decade approach to examining the way that World Bank influence changes in a given country. Put differently, studies tend to examine specific periods of time rather than looking at influence over time. This article seeks to contribute to scholarship on World Bank influence by looking at a twenty-year period of World Bank engagement in Indonesia. The purpose is (a) to map the nature and influence of the World Bank as it engaged with the government of Indonesia (GOI) around education and development policy, (b) to reflect on how and why that engagement changed over time, and (c) to consider the implications of the study in relation to the broader literature on the evolution and current status of World Bank influence. The focus of this article is in the area of governance, where the World Bank has pushed and experimented with decentralization, community-driven development, and school-based management. While the article focuses on education policy, reforms in this area have been impacted by governance reforms more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers ways of theorising the now, or the contemporary, in South Africa. It seeks a method of reading that offers unexpected and defamiliarising routes through the cultural archive. The article discusses notions of race, class and space both in a general and historical sense and, in the second part, as they relate to new literatures of the city now emerging in South Africa. By focusing on urban `philosophies' of the street it examines city life and city forms in fictional work on Johannesburg in particular. The article attempts to make an overall argument about how we might read the contemporary South African space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After reviewing current opinions about the social function of literature in second-century BCE Rome, I focus on two controversial fragments assigned to Cato the Censor's Origines. In the first, Cato portrays the ancestors in a convivial setting as they sing the praises and the manly deeds of famous men; in the second, he gestures towards the pontifex maximus' specialized use of writing and the functioning of the tabula as a locus of memory. By drawing on the field of performance studies, I identify the performative features inherent in both of these fragments and map out how these features inform the positioning of Cato in relation to the identity politics of his time, professionalism, and writing. The aim of this study is to return the Origines to its immediate socio-cultural purview, but working towards this aim will also entail a shift in perspective and a reassessment of our notions of "poetry" and "prose." In fact, by stressing the performance dimension that underlies the genesis of the Origines as a text, this article will also expose the shortcomings inherent in the hyper-literary approaches that have been so far adopted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the examination of desegregation literature. The article examines the impact of the critique model on the desegregation. The review is divided into two main areas: (a) discussions of the problems in planning and implementing a desegregation program and (b) research on the expected educational outcomes. The review of the examination of desegregation literature indicates that the basic premises underlying it are of questionable and it does not adequately address the critical problems of schooling. The article suggest that other premises should be explored with the idea of redressing unequal schooling.

The article discusses various issues related to humorous literary works of Stephen Butler Leacock. It is stated that Stephen Butler Leacock was a Canadian humorist, short story writer, essayist, biographer, and political economist. It is mentioned that Leacock's inimitable comic style, with its blending of British understatement and American sense of humour and overstatement, made him the most admired humorist writing in English between 1910 and 1925. For many years his literary significance was disregarded by scholars, and some critics considered his work deficient in gravity and intricacy.