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Online education is becoming increasingly popular among both traditional and nontraditional students. Students gravitate to the flexibility of online courses, which allows them to work around jobs, family, and other responsibilities. While online program growth continues, these programs present several new challenges to educational institutions and their successful implementation requires a clear understanding of several factors that are at the root of these challenges. We propose 2 intuitive relational diagrams featuring roles and interaction among faculty, student, technology, and institution that could serve as a conceptual framework for developing successful online education programs.

Byline: Jomon Aliyas Paul, Rajan Batta This paper develops and analyses two basic models for hospital location and capacity allocation. The focus is on an area prone to natural disasters. The first model seeks to locate hospitals and allocate capacities so that the mean travel distance for patients to hospitals is minimised over a variety of disaster scenarios. The second model seeks to reallocate capacity among hospitals so as to maximise the system's effectiveness to the upcoming disaster event. Heuristic solution methods of the two models are investigated, so as to make the approach computationally viable and to gain insight into the location and capacity allocation strategies. A regional planner can use these models in various ways. For earthquake prone areas (where there is little forewarning), the first model's results can be compared to the current hospital locations and capacity allocations. A plan can then be developed to shift capacity between hospitals or in an extreme case to relocate hospitals so as to be better prepared for a disaster event. For hurricane prone areas (where there is considerable forewarning), the second model can be used to develop a plan for reallocation of capacities between hospitals in anticipation of the event. Furthermore, the first model can be used to better locate hospitals and select capacities for an area that is being rebuilt after a large magnitude hurricane has largely destroyed the area (as Hurricane KATRINA did to New Orleans in 2005). The results are illustrated with the help of case studies - one based on earthquake scenario in Northridge, California, and another based on a hurricane scenario in New Orleans.

Does an emergency such as a natural disaster lead to a surge of terrorism? This paper contributes to the emerging literature on this issue. We consider the experience of 129 countries during the period 1998–2012 to determine the effect of a natural disaster on both domestic as well as transnational terrorism. We also control for endogeneity using expenditure on health care and land area in a country as instruments. In contrast to the existing literature, we measure the extent of terrorism by the value of property damage. The results indicate that after natural disasters, (a) transnational terrorism increases with a lag, and (b) a statistically significant impact on domestic terrorism is not observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online education is becoming increasingly popular among both traditional and nontraditional students. Students gravitate to the flexibility of online courses, which allows them to work around jobs, family, and other responsibilities. While online program growth continues, these programs present several new challenges to educational institutions and their successful implementation requires a clear understanding of several factors that are at the root of these challenges. We propose 2 intuitive relational diagrams featuring roles and interaction among faculty, student, technology, and institution that could serve as a conceptual framework for developing successful online education programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As coastal production costs in China rise, producers are moving inland to remain competitive with other Asian countries. As a result, Chinese sea ports are rapidly developing dry (i.e., inland) ports to compete for hinterland access. Yet the growing body of research examining dry ports has yet to analyze China. This article ills this gap by combining practitioner interviews, publicly available data, and industry and academic literature to provide an overview of dry ports in China. The article discusses the recent active development of dry ports in China and summarizes the existing dry port network. Motivations for further dry port development are identified, including port competition, inland production, domestic consumption, logistics costs, and the environment. Challenges with dry port expansion such as rail, inland waterways, and actor coordination are reviewed, and opportunities for further research are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]