Search results for: sustainable business growth

Authors: Joseph Roberson, Carina Kleynhans, Willie Coetzee

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The low entry barriers of the restaurant industry lead to an extremely competitive business environment. In this volatile business sector it is of the utmost importance to implement a strategy of quality differentiation. Vital aspects of a quality differentiation strategy are total quality management, benchmarking and service quality management. Ultimately, restaurant success depends on the continuous support of customers. Customers select restaurants based on their expectations of quality. If the customers' expectations are met, they perceive quality service and will re-patronize the restaurant. The restaurateur can manage perceptions of quality by influencing expectations while ensuring that those expectations are not inflated. The management of expectations can be done by communicating service quality to customers. The aim of this research paper is to describe the development of a grading process for restaurants. An assessment of the extensive body of literature on grading was conducted through content analysis. A standardized method for developing a grading system would assist in successful grading systems that could inform both customers and restaurateurs of restaurant quality.

Keywords: benchmarking, restaurants, grading, service quality, total quality management

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Authors: Ilham Ihoume, Rachid Tadili, Nora Arbaoui

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The use of solar energy is a crucial tactic in the agricultural industry's plan ‎‎to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. This clean source of energy can ‎greatly lower the sector's carbon footprint and make a significant impact in ‎the ‎fight against climate change. In this regard, this study examines the ‎effects ‎of a solar-based heating system, in a north-south oriented agricultural ‎green‎house on the development of strawberry plants during winter. This ‎system ‎relies on the circulation of water as a heat transfer fluid in a closed ‎circuit ‎installed on the greenhouse roof to store heat during the day and ‎release it ‎inside at night. A comparative experimental study was conducted ‎in two ‎greenhouses, one experimental with the solar heating system and the ‎other ‎for control without any heating system. Both greenhouses are located ‎on the ‎terrace of the Solar Energy and Environment Laboratory of the ‎Mohammed ‎V University in Rabat, Morocco. The developed heating system ‎consists of a ‎copper coil inserted in double glazing and placed on the roof of ‎the greenhouse, a water pump circulator, a battery, and a photovoltaic solar ‎panel to ‎power the electrical components. This inexpensive and ‎environmentally ‎friendly system allows the greenhouse to be heated during ‎the winter and ‎improves its microclimate system. This improvement resulted ‎in an increase ‎in the air temperature inside the experimental greenhouse by 6 ‎‎°C and 8 °C, ‎and a reduction in its relative humidity by 23% and 35% ‎compared to the ‎control greenhouse and the ambient air, respectively, ‎throughout the winter. ‎For the agronomic performance, it was observed that ‎the production was 17 ‎days earlier than in the control greenhouse‎.‎

Keywords: sustainability, thermal energy storage, solar energy, agriculture greenhouse

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Authors: Yufei Peng, Zhen Qin, Jianbe Li, Jidong Long

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The thermal cathode is widely used in accelerators, FELs and kinds of vacuum electronics. However, emission nonuniformity exists due to surface profile, material distribution, temperature variation, crystal orientation, etc., which will cause intrinsic emittance growth, brightness decline, envelope size augment, device performance deterioration or even failure. To understand how emittance is manipulated by emission nonuniformity, an intrinsic emittance model consisting of contributions from macro and micro surface nonuniformity is developed analytically based on general thermal emission model at temperature limited regime according to a real 3mm cathode. The model shows relative emittance increased about 50% due to temperature variation, and less than 5% from several kinds of micro surface nonuniformity which is much smaller than other research. Otherwise, we also calculated emittance growth combining with Monte Carlo method and PIC simulation, experiments of emission uniformity and emittance measurement are going to be carried out separately.

Keywords: thermal cathode, electron emission fluctuation, intrinsic emittance, surface nonuniformity, cathode lifetime

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Authors: Emmanuel C. Ngerem

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The ever-increasing depletion of the dominant global form of energy (fossil fuels) calls for the development of sustainable and green alternative energy sources such as bioethanol, biohydrogen, and biodiesel. The production of the major biofuels relies on biomass feedstocks that are mainly derived from edible food crops and some inedible plants. One suitable feedstock with great potential as raw material for biofuel production is microalgal biomass. Despite the tremendous attributes of microalgae as a source of biofuel, their cultivation requires huge volumes of freshwater, thus posing a serious threat to commercial-scale production and utilization of algal biomass. In this study, a multi-media wastewater mixture for microalgae growth was formulated and optimized. Moreover, the obtained microalgae biomass was pre-treated to reduce sugar recovery and was compared with previous studies on microalgae biomass pre-treatment. The formulated and optimized mixed wastewater media for biomass and lipid accumulation was established using the simplex lattice mixture design. Based on the superposition approach of the potential results, numerical optimization was conducted, followed by the analysis of biomass concentration and lipid accumulation. The coefficients of regression (R²) of 0.91 and 0.98 were obtained for biomass concentration and lipid accumulation models, respectively. The developed optimization model predicted optimal biomass concentration and lipid accumulation of 1.17 g/L and 0.39 g/g, respectively. It suggested 64.69% dairy wastewater (DWW) and 35.31% paper and pulp wastewater (PWW) mixture for biomass concentration, 34.21% DWW, and 65.79% PWW for lipid accumulation. Experimental validation generated 0.94 g/L and 0.39 g/g of biomass concentration and lipid accumulation, respectively. The obtained microalgae biomass was pre-treated, enzymatically hydrolysed, and subsequently assessed for reducing sugars. The optimization of microwave pre-treatment of Chlorococcum sp. was achieved using response surface methodology (RSM). Microwave power (100 – 700 W), pre-treatment time (1 – 7 min), and acid-liquid ratio (1 – 5%) were selected as independent variables for RSM optimization. The optimum conditions were achieved at microwave power, pre-treatment time, and acid-liquid ratio of 700 W, 7 min, and 32.33:1, respectively. These conditions provided the highest amount of reducing sugars at 10.73 g/L. Process optimization predicted reducing sugar yields of 11.14 g/L on microwave-assisted pre-treatment of 2.52% HCl for 4.06 min at 700 watts. Experimental validation yielded reducing sugars of 15.67 g/L. These findings demonstrate that dairy wastewater and paper and pulp wastewater that could pose a serious environmental nuisance. They could be blended to form a suitable microalgae growth media, consolidating the potency of microalgae as a viable feedstock for fermentable sugars. Also, the outcome of this study supports the microalgal wastewater biorefinery concept, where wastewater remediation is coupled with bioenergy production.

Keywords: wastewater cultivation, mixture design, lipid, biomass, nutrient removal, microwave, Chlorococcum, raceway pond, fermentable sugar, modelling, optimization

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Authors: Babar Rasheed

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The organizations are in continuous effort to increase their yield and to retain their associates, employees. Technology is considered an integral part of attaining apposite work practices, work environment, and employee engagement. Unconsciously, these advanced practices like work from home, personalized intra-network are disturbing employee work-life balance which ultimately increases psychological pressure on employees. The smart work practice is to develop business models and organizational practices with enhanced employee engagement, minimum trouncing of organization resources with persistent revenue and positive addition in global societies. Need of smart work practices comes from increasing employee turnover rate, global economic recession, unnecessary job pressure, increasing contingent workforce and advancement in technologies. Current practices are not enough elastic to tackle global changing work environment and organizational competitions. Current practices are causing many reciprocal problems among employee and organization mechanically. There is conscious understanding among business sectors smart work practices that will deal with new century challenges with addressing the concerns of relevant issues. It is aimed in this paper to endorse customized and smart work practice tools along knowledge framework to manage the growing concerns of employee engagement, use of technology, orgaization concerns and challenges for the business. This includes a Smart Management Information System to address necessary concerns of employees and combine with a framework to extract the best possible ways to allocate companies resources and re-align only required efforts to adopt the best possible strategy for controlling potential risks.

Keywords: employees engagement, management information system, psychological pressure, current and future HR practices

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Authors: Wang Yongdong, Yeneayehu Fenetahun, You Yuan, Ogbue Chukwuka, Yahaya Ibrahim, Xu Xinwen

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This paper explores an innovative Ethiopian approach to combatting desertification, focusing on the semi-arid savanna grasslands in Southern Ethiopia. The study investigates the multifaceted strategies employed by Ethiopian communities, governmental bodies, and non-governmental organizations to address desertification challenges in the region. Through an analysis of legislative frameworks, community engagement, afforestation programs, and sustainable land management techniques, this research highlights the efficacy of Ethiopia's strategy in reducing the effects of desertification. The results emphasize how crucial it is to build effective measures for halting desertification in fragile ecosystems by utilizing local knowledge, community involvement, and adaptive governance. In addition, this study also addresses how the Ethiopian approach may be applied to other areas with comparable environmental problems. In summary, this research adds significant perspectives to the worldwide conversation about desertification and provides useful guidance for sustainable land use.

Keywords: adaptive governance, community engagement, desertification, policy frameworks

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Authors: Lorena Blasco-Arcas, Francesca Pucciarelli

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Business contexts have become globalised and digitalised, which requires that managers develop a strong sense of cross-cultural intelligence while working in geographically distant teams by means of digital technologies. How to better equip future managers on these kinds of skills has been put forward as a critical issue in Business Schools. In pursuing these goals, higher education is shifting from a passive lecture approach, to more active and experiential learning approaches that are more suitable to learn skills. For example, through the use of case studies, proposing plausible business problem to be solved by students (or teams of students), these institutions have focused for long in fostering learning by doing. Though, case studies are no longer enough as a tool to promote active teamwork and experiential learning. Moreover, digital advancements applied to educational settings have enabled augmented classrooms, expanding the learning experience beyond the class, which increase students’ engagement and experiential learning. Different authors have highlighted the benefits of digital engagement in order to achieve a deeper and longer-lasting learning and comprehension of core marketing concepts. Clickers, computer-based simulations and business games have become fairly popular between instructors, but still are limited by the fact that are fictional experiences. Further exploration of real digital platforms to implement real, live projects in the classroom seem relevant for marketing and business education. Building on this, this paper describes the development of an experiential learning activity in class, in which students developed a communication campaign in teams using the BuzzFeed platform, and subsequently implementing the campaign by using other social media platforms (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter…). The article details the procedure of using the project for a marketing module in a Bachelor program with students located in France, Italy and Spain campuses working on multi-campus groups. Further, this paper describes the project outcomes in terms of students’ engagement and analytics (i.e. visits achieved). the project included a survey in order to analyze and identify main aspects related to how the learning experience is influenced by the cultural competence developed through working in geographically distant and culturally diverse teamwork. Finally, some recommendations to use project-based social media tools while working with virtual teamwork in the classroom are provided.

Keywords: cultural competences, experiential learning, social media, teamwork, virtual group work

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Authors: Nabila Mohamed, Santiago Aparicio, Bahman Tohidi, Mert Atilhan

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Qatar's one of the biggest problem in processing its natural resource, which is natural gas, is the often occurring blockage in the pipelines caused due to uncontrolled gas hydrate formation in the pipelines. Several millions of dollars are being spent at the process site to dehydrate the blockage safely by using chemical inhibitors. We aim to establish national database, which addresses the physical conditions that promotes Qatari natural gas to form gas hydrates in the pipelines. Moreover, we aim to design and test novel hydrate inhibitors that are suitable for Qatari natural gas and its processing facilities. From these perspectives we are aiming to provide more effective and sustainable reservoir utilization and processing of Qatari natural gas. In this work, we present the initial findings of a QNRF funded project, which deals with the natural gas hydrate formation characteristics of Qatari type gas in both experimental (PVTx) and computational (molecular simulations) methods. We present the data from the two fully automated apparatus: a gas hydrate autoclave and a rocking cell. Hydrate equilibrium curves including growth/dissociation conditions for multi-component systems for several gas mixtures that represent Qatari type natural gas with and without the presence of well known kinetic and thermodynamic hydrate inhibitors. Ionic liquids were designed and used for testing their inhibition performance and their DFT and molecular modeling simulation results were also obtained and compared with the experimental results. Results showed significant performance of ionic liquids with up to 0.5 % in volume with up to 2 to 4 0C inhibition at high pressures.

Keywords: gas hydrates, natural gas, ionic liquids, inhibition, thermodynamic inhibitors, kinetic inhibitors

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Authors: Amir Rashid

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Today is the world of innovation and Cloud Computing is becoming a day to day technology with every passing day offering remarkable services and features on the go with rapid elasticity. This platform took business computing into an innovative dimension where clients interact and operate through service provider web portals. Initially, the trust relationship between client and service provider remained a big question but with the invention of several cryptographic paradigms, it is becoming common in everyday business. This research work proposes a solution for building a cloud storage service with respect to Data Security addressing public cloud infrastructure where the trust relationship matters a lot between client and service provider. For the great satisfaction of client regarding high-end Data Security, this research paper propose a layer of cryptographic primitives combining several architectures in order to achieve the goal. A survey has been conducted to determine the benefits for such an architecture would provide to both clients/service providers and recent developments in cryptography specifically by cloud storage.

Keywords: data security in cloud computing, cloud storage architecture, cryptographic developments, token key

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Authors: Kanika Chowdhary, Satyawati Sharma

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Endophytic microbes are hosted inside plants in a symbiotic and hugely benefitting relationship. Exploring agriculturally beneficial endophytes is quite a prospective field of research. In the present work fungal endophytes associated with aromatic plant Ocimum basicilium L. were investigated for biocontrol potential. The anti-plant pathogenic activity of fungal endophytes was tested against causal agent of stem rot Sclerotinia sclerotiorum. 75 endophytic fungi were recovered through culture-dependent approach. Fungal identification was performed both microscopically and by rDNA ITS sequencing. Curvuaria lunata (Sb-6) and Colletotrichum lindemuthianum (Sb-8) inhibited 86% and 72% mycelia growth of S. sclerotinia on Sabouraud dextrose agar medium at 7.4 pH. Small-scale fermentation was carried out on sterilised oatmeal grain medium. In another set of experiment, fungi were grown in oatmeal grain medium amended with certain biostimulants such as aqueous seaweed extract (10% v/w); methanolic seaweed extract (5% v/w); cow urine (20% v/w); biochar (10% w/w) in triplicate along with control of each to ascertain the degree of metabolic difference and anti-plant pathogenic activity induced. Phytochemically extracts of both the fungal isolates showed the presence of flavanoids, phenols, tannins, alkaloids and terpenoids. Ethylacetate extract of C. lunata and C. lindemuthianum suppressed S. sclerotinia conidial germination at IC50 values of 0.514± 0.02 and 0.913± 0.04 mg/ml. Therefore, fungal endophytes of O. basicilium are highly promising bio-resource agent, which can be developed further for sustainable agriculture.

Keywords: endophytic fungi, ocimum basicilium, sclerotinia sclerotiorum, biostimulants

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Authors: Jaime Carpio-García, Elena Blanco-Fernández, Javier González-Fernández, Daniel Castro-Fresno

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Sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) are more often used in order to prevent floods, water treatment, fight against pollution, urban heat island effect, and global warming in applications like green roofs, permeable pavements, and others. Furthermore, geosynthetics are also worldwide used as a part of drainage systems in road construction. Geotextiles are an essential part of both, and one of the main geotextile properties in those applications is permeability, whose behavior is not well established along its service life. In this paper, clogging reduction design factors for an estimated service life of 25 years are experimentally obtained for five different geotextiles used in SUDS and roads combined with two different soils and with two pollutants, motor oil, and lime, in order to evaluate chemical clogging, too. The effect of characteristic opening size and other characteristics of the geosynthetics are also discussed in order to give civil engineers, together with the clogging reduction factors, a better long-time design of geotextiles used in their SUDS and roads.

Keywords: geotextiles, drainage, clogging, reduction factor

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Authors: Kumalbeo Paul Kamani

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Marketing plays a very important role in the success of any firm since it represents the means through which a firm can reach its customers and also promotes its products and services. In fact, marketing aids the firm in identifying customers who the business can competitively serve, and tailoring product offerings, prices, distribution, promotional efforts, and services towards those customers. Unfortunately, in many firms, marketing has been reduced to merely advertisement. For effective marketing, firms must go beyond this often-limited function of advertisement. In the fashion industry in particular, marketing faces challenges due to its peculiar characteristics. Previous research for instance affirms the idiosyncrasy and peculiarities that differentiate the fashion industry from other industrial areas. It has been documented that the fashion industry is characterized seasonal intensity, short product life cycles, the difficulty of competitive differentiation, and long time for companies to reach financial stability. These factors are noted to pose obstacles to the fashion entrepreneur’s endeavours and can be the reasons that explain their low survival rates. In recent times, the fashion industry has been described as a market that is accessible market, has low entry barriers, both in terms of needed capital and skills which have all accounted for the burgeoning nature of startups. Yet as already stated, marketing is particularly challenging in the industry. In particular, areas such as marketing, branding, growth, project planning, financial and relationship management might represent challenges for the fashion entrepreneur but that have not been properly addressed by previous research. It is therefore important to assess marketing strategies of fashion firms and the factors influencing their success. This study generally sought to examine marketing strategies of fashion dealers in Ghana and their critical success factors. The study employed the quantitative survey research approach. A total of 120 fashion dealers were sampled. Questionnaires were used as instrument of data collection. Data collected was analysed using quantitative techniques including descriptive statistics and Relative Importance Index. The study revealed that the marketing strategies used by fashion apparels are text messages using mobile phones, referrals, social media marketing, and direct marketing. Results again show that the factors influencing fashion marketing effectiveness are strategic management, marketing mix (product, price, promotion etc), branding and business development. Policy implications are finally outlined. The study recommends among others that there is a need for the top management executive to craft and adopt marketing strategies that enable that are compatible with the fashion trends and the needs of the customers. This will improve customer satisfaction and hence boost market penetration. The study further recommends that the fashion industry in Ghana should seek to ensure that fashion apparels accommodate the diversity and the cultural setting of different customers to meet their unique needs.

Keywords: marketing, fashion, industry, success factors

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Authors: Fatih Kılıç, Burak Birol, Necmettin Maraşlı

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The directional solidification process is generally used for homogeneous compound production, single crystal growth, and refining (zone refining), etc. processes. The most important two parameters that control eutectic structures are temperature gradient and grain growth rate which are called as solidification parameters The solidification behavior and microstructure characteristics is an interesting topic due to their effects on the properties and performance of the alloys containing eutectic compositions. The solidification behavior of multicomponent and multiphase systems is an important parameter for determining various properties of these materials. The researches have been conducted mostly on the solidification of pure materials or alloys containing two phases. However, there are very few studies on the literature about multiphase reactions and microstructure formation of multicomponent alloys during solidification. Because of this situation, it is important to study the microstructure formation and the thermodynamical, thermophysical and microstructural properties of these alloys. The production process is difficult due to easy oxidation of magnesium and therefore, there is not a comprehensive study concerning alloys containing high Mg (> 30 wt.% Mg). With the increasing amount of Mg inside Al alloys, the specific weight decreases, and the strength shows a slight increase, while due to formation of β-Al8Mg5 phase, ductility lowers. For this reason, production, examination and development of high Mg containing alloys will initiate the production of new advanced engineering materials. The original value of this research can be described as obtaining high Mg containing (> 30% Mg) Al based multicomponent alloys by melting under vacuum; controlled directional solidification with various growth rates at a constant temperature gradient; and establishing relationship between solidification rate and microstructural, mechanical, electrical and thermal properties. Therefore, within the scope of this research, some > 30% Mg containing ternary or quaternary Al alloy compositions were determined, and it was planned to investigate the effects of directional solidification rate on the mechanical, electrical and thermal properties of these alloys. Within the scope of the research, the influence of the growth rate on microstructure parameters, microhardness, tensile strength, electrical conductivity and thermal conductivity of directionally solidified high Mg containing Al-32,2Mg-0,37Si; Al-30Mg-12Zn; Al-32Mg-1,7Ni; Al-32,2Mg-0,37Fe; Al-32Mg-1,7Ni-0,4Si; Al-33,3Mg-0,35Si-0,11Fe (wt.%) alloys with wide range of growth rate (50-2500 µm/s) and fixed temperature gradient, will be investigated. The work can be planned as; (a) directional solidification of Al-Mg based Al-Mg-Si, Al-Mg-Zn, Al-Mg-Ni, Al-Mg-Fe, Al-Mg-Ni-Si, Al-Mg-Si-Fe within wide range of growth rates (50-2500 µm/s) at a constant temperature gradient by Bridgman type solidification system, (b) analysis of microstructure parameters of directionally solidified alloys by using an optical light microscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), (c) measurement of microhardness and tensile strength of directionally solidified alloys, (d) measurement of electrical conductivity by four point probe technique at room temperature (e) measurement of thermal conductivity by linear heat flow method at room temperature.

Keywords: directional solidification, electrical conductivity, high Mg containing multicomponent Al alloys, microhardness, microstructure, tensile strength, thermal conductivity

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Authors: Rania Ajmi, Faiza Allouche Khebour, Aude Nuscia Taibi, Sirine Essasi

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Urban green spaces (UGS) as an important contributor can be a significant part of sustainable development. A spatial method was employed to assess and map the spatial distribution of UGS in five districts in Sousse, Tunisia. Ecological management of UGS is an essential factor for the sustainable development of the city; hence the municipality of Sousse has decided to support the districts according to different green spaces characters. And to implement this policy, (1) a new GIS web application was developed, (2) then the implementation of the various green spaces was carried out, (3) a spatial mapping of UGS using Quantum GIS was realized, and (4) finally a data processing and statistical analysis with RStudio programming language was executed. The intersection of the results of the spatial and statistical analyzes highlighted the presence of an imbalance in terms of the spatial UGS distribution in the study area. The discontinuity between the coast and the city's green spaces was not designed in a spirit of network and connection, hence the lack of a greenway that connects these spaces to the city. Finally, this GIS support will be used to assess and monitor green spaces in the city of Sousse by decision-makers and will contribute to improve the well-being of the local population.

Keywords: distributions, GIS, green space, imbalance, spatial analysis

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Authors: A. Abdulla Khairi Mohamed, Mohamed Gamal Abdelmonem, Gehan Selim

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Walkability in civic and public spaces in Libyan cities is challenging due to the lack of accessibility design, informal merging into car traffic, and the general absence of adequate urban and space planning. The lack of accessible and pedestrian-friendly public spaces in Libyan cities has emerged as a major concern for the government if it is to develop smart and sustainable spaces for the 21st century. A walkable urban space has become a driver for urban development and redistribution of land use to ensure pedestrian and walkable routes between sites of living and workplaces. The characteristics of urban open space in the city centre play a main role in attracting people to walk when attending their daily needs, recreation and daily sports. There is significant gap in the understanding of perceptions, feasibility and capabilities of Libyan urban space to accommodate enhance or support the smart design of a walkable pedestrian-friendly environment that is safe and accessible to everyone. The paper aims to undertake observations of walkability and walkable space in the city of Tripoli as a benchmark for Libyan cities; assess the validity and consistency of the seven principal aspects of smart design, safety, accessibility and 51 factors that affect the walkability in open urban space in Tripoli, through the analysis of 10 local urban spaces experts (town planner, architect, transport engineer and urban designer); and explore user groups’ perceptions of accessibility in walkable spaces in Libyan cities through questionnaires. The study sampled 200 respondents in 2015-16. The results of this study are useful for urban planning, to classify the walkable urban space elements which affect to improve the level of walkability in the Libyan cities and create sustainable and liveable urban spaces.

Keywords: walkability, sustainability, liveability, accessibility

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Authors: Marc Bachelet, Abhijit Kumar Chatterjee, José Manuel Avila

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Data quality is a key component of any data-driven organization. Without data quality, organizations cannot effectively make data-driven decisions, which often leads to poor business performance. Therefore, it is important for an organization to ensure that the data they use is of high quality. This is where the concept of data mesh comes in. Data mesh is an organizational and architectural decentralized approach to data management that can help organizations improve the quality of data. The concept of data mesh was first introduced in 2020. Its purpose is to decentralize data ownership, making it easier for domain experts to manage the data. This can help organizations improve data quality by reducing the reliance on centralized data teams and allowing domain experts to take charge of their data. This paper intends to discuss how a set of elements, including data mesh, are tools capable of increasing data quality. One of the key benefits of data mesh is improved metadata management. In a traditional data architecture, metadata management is typically centralized, which can lead to data silos and poor data quality. With data mesh, metadata is managed in a decentralized manner, ensuring accurate and up-to-date metadata, thereby improving data quality. Another benefit of data mesh is the clarification of roles and responsibilities. In a traditional data architecture, data teams are responsible for managing all aspects of data, which can lead to confusion and ambiguity in responsibilities. With data mesh, domain experts are responsible for managing their own data, which can help provide clarity in roles and responsibilities and improve data quality. Additionally, data mesh can also contribute to a new form of organization that is more agile and adaptable. By decentralizing data ownership, organizations can respond more quickly to changes in their business environment, which in turn can help improve overall performance by allowing better insights into business as an effect of better reports and visualization tools. Monitoring and analytics are also important aspects of data quality. With data mesh, monitoring, and analytics are decentralized, allowing domain experts to monitor and analyze their own data. This will help in identifying and addressing data quality problems in quick time, leading to improved data quality. Data culture is another major aspect of data quality. With data mesh, domain experts are encouraged to take ownership of their data, which can help create a data-driven culture within the organization. This can lead to improved data quality and better business outcomes. Finally, the paper explores the contribution of AI in the coming years. AI can help enhance data quality by automating many data-related tasks, like data cleaning and data validation. By integrating AI into data mesh, organizations can further enhance the quality of their data. The concepts mentioned above are illustrated by AEKIDEN experience feedback. AEKIDEN is an international data-driven consultancy that has successfully implemented a data mesh approach. By sharing their experience, AEKIDEN can help other organizations understand the benefits and challenges of implementing data mesh and improving data quality.

Keywords: data culture, data-driven organization, data mesh, data quality for business success

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Authors: Sara ElElimy, Samir Moustafa

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Mobile network operators start to face many challenges in the digital era, especially with high demands from customers. Since mobile network operators are considered a source of big data, traditional techniques are not effective with new era of big data, Internet of things (IoT) and 5G; as a result, handling effectively different big datasets becomes a vital task for operators with the continuous growth of data and moving from long term evolution (LTE) to 5G. So, there is an urgent need for effective Big data analytics to predict future demands, traffic, and network performance to full fill the requirements of the fifth generation of mobile network technology. In this paper, we introduce data science techniques using machine learning and deep learning algorithms: the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA), Bayesian-based curve fitting, and recurrent neural network (RNN) are employed for a data-driven application to mobile network operators. The main framework included in models are identification parameters of each model, estimation, prediction, and final data-driven application of this prediction from business and network performance applications. These models are applied to Telecom Italia Big Data challenge call detail records (CDRs) datasets. The performance of these models is found out using a specific well-known evaluation criteria shows that ARIMA (machine learning-based model) is more accurate as a predictive model in such a dataset than the RNN (deep learning model).

Keywords: big data analytics, machine learning, CDRs, 5G

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Authors: Michael A. Ifarajimi

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The transition from being a graduate teacher to a highly accomplished teacher has been widely portrayed in literature as challenging. Pre-service teachers are troubled with complex issues such as implementing, assessment, meeting prescribed learning outcomes, taking risks, supporting eco sustainability, etc. This list is not exhaustive as they are further complicated when the concerns extend beyond the classroom into the broader school setting and community. Meanwhile, the pre-service teacher education programme as is currently run in Nigeria, cannot adequately prepare newly trained teachers for the realities of classroom teaching. And there appears to be no formal structure in place for mentoring such teachers by the more seasoned teachers in schools. The central research question of the study, therefore, is which institutional framework can be distinguished for enactment in mentoring practices in teacher education? The study was conducted in five colleges of education in South-West Nigeria, and a sample of 1000 pre-service teachers on their final year practicum was randomly selected from the colleges of education. A pre-service teacher mentorship programme (PTMP) framework was designed and implemented, with a focus on the impact of transformative inquiry on the pre-service teacher support system. The study discovered a significant impact of mentoring on pre-service teacher’s professional transformation. The study concluded that institutionalizing mentorship through transformative inquiry is a means to sustainable teacher education, professional growth, and effective classroom practice. The study recommended that the government should enact policies that will promote mentoring in teacher education and establish a framework for the implementation of mentoring practices in the colleges of education in Nigeria.

Keywords: institutionalization, mentoring, pre-service teachers teacher education, transformative inquiry

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Authors: Dato Surmanidze, Dato Antadze, Tornike Partenadze

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Public online services in Georgia are concentrated on main target segments: public administration, business, population, non-governmental and other interested organizations. Therefore, the strategy of digital Georgia is focused on providing G2C, G2B/B2G, G2NGO and G2G services. In G2C framework sophisticated and high-technological online services have been developed in order to provide passports, identity cards, documentations concerning residence and civil acts (birth, marriage, divorce, child adoption, change of name and surname, death, etc) as well as other services. Websites like my.gov.ge and sda.gov.ge have distance services like electronic application, processing and decision making. In line with international standards automatic services like electronic tenders, product catalogues, invoices and payment have been developed. This creates better investment climate for foreign companies in Georgia in the framework of G2B politics. The website mybusiness.gov.ge creates better conditions for local business. Among electronic services is e-NRMS (electronic system for national resource management) which was introduced by the Ministry of Finance of Georgia. The system was created in order to ensure management of national resources by state and business organizations. It is integrated with bank services and provides G2C, G2B and B2G representatives with electronic services. Also a portal meteo.gov.ge was created which gives electronic services concerning air, geological, environmental and pollution issues. Also worknet.gov.ge should be mentioned which is an electronic hub of information management for employers and employees. The information portal of labor market will facilitate receipt of information, its analysis and delivery to interested people like employers and employees. However, nowadays it’s been two years that only employees portal is activated. Therefore, awareness about the portal, its competitiveness and success is undermined.

Keywords: electronic services, public administration, information technology, information society

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Authors: Tebogo Sethibe, Jabulile Mabuza

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The COVID-19 pandemic has been commonly referred to as a ‘black swan event’; it has changed the world, from how people live, learn, work and socialise. It is believed that the pandemic has fast-tracked the adoption of technology in many organisations to ensure business continuity and business sustainability; broadly said, the pandemic has fast-tracked digital transformation (DT) in different organisations. This paper aims to study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on DT in organisations in South Africa by focusing on the changes in IT capabilities in the DT framework. The research design is qualitative. The data collection was through semi-structured interviews with information communication technology (ICT) leaders representing different organisations in South Africa. The data were analysed using the thematic analysis process. The results from the study show that, in terms of ICT in the organisation, the pandemic had a direct and positive impact on ICT strategy and ICT operations. In terms of IT capability transformation, the pandemic resulted in the optimisation and expansion of existing IT capabilities in the organisation and the building of new IT capabilities to meet emerging business needs. In terms of the focus of activities during the pandemic, there seems to be a split in organisations between the primary focus being on ‘digital IT’ or ‘traditional IT’. Overall, the findings of the study show that the pandemic had a positive and significant impact on DT in organisations. However, a definitive conclusion on this would require expanding the scope of the research to all the components of a comprehensive DT framework. This study is significant because it is one of the first studies to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on organisations, on ICT in the organisation, on IT capability transformation and, to a greater extent, DT. The findings from the study show that in response to the pandemic, there is a need for: (i) agility in organisations; (ii) organisations to execute on their existing strategy; (iii) the future-proofing of IT capabilities; (iv) the adoption of a hybrid working model; and for (v) organisations to take risks and embrace new ideas.

Keywords: digital transformation, COVID-19, bimodal-IT, digital transformation framework

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Authors: Rishi Saxena

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Cyanobacteria is a photosynthetic prokaryote, and these obtain their energy through photosynthesis. In this paper, we studied the effect of iron on metabolic changes in the diazotrophic cyanobacterium Anabaena PCC 7120. Nowadays, metal contamination due to natural and anthropogenic sources is a global environment concern. Iron induced changes in growth, N2-fixation, CO2 fixation and photosynthetic activity were studied in a diazotrophic cyanobacterium Anabaena PCC 7120. Iron at 50 uM concentration supported the maximum growth, heterocyst frequency, CO2 fixation, photosystem I (PS I), photosystem II (PS II) and nitrogenase activities in the organism. Higher concentration of iron inhibited these processes. Chl a and PS II activities were more sensitive to iron than the protein and PS I activity. Here, it is also mentioned that heavy metal induced altered macromolecules metabolism and changes in the central dogma of life (DNA→ mRNA → Protein). And also recent advances have been made in understanding heavy metal-cyanobacteria interaction and their application for metal detoxification.

Keywords: cyanobacterium anabaena 7120, nitrogen fixation, photosystem I (PS I), photosystem II (PS II)

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Authors: Adebayo J. Julius, Oluremi N. Iluyomade

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Livelihood in Nigeria is a paradox of poverty amidst plenty. The Country is endowed with a good climate for agriculture, naturally growing fruit trees and vegetables, and undomesticated water resources. In spite of all its endowment, Nigeria continues to live in poverty year in year out. This thus raises a very important question as to how can there be so much poverty in Nigeria with all its natural endowments. This study focused comparative analysis of the utilization of community informatics for sustainable livelihoods through agriculture. The idea projected in this study is that small strategic changes in the modus operandi of social informatics can have a significant impact on sustainability of livelihoods. This paper carefully explored the theories of community informatics and its efficacies in dealing with sustainability issues. This study identified, described and evaluates the roles of community informatics in some sectors of the economy, different analytical tools to benchmark the influence of social informatics in agriculture against what is obtainable in agricultural sectors of the economy were used. It further employed comparative analysis to build a case model for sustainable livelihood in agriculture through community informatics.

Keywords: informatics , model, rural community, livelihoods sustainability, Nigeria

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Authors: Bruno Vilić Belina, Ivan Župan

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Smart industry concepts and digital transformation are very popular in many industries. They develop their own digital platforms, which have an important role in innovations and transactions. The main idea of smart industry digital platforms is central data collection, industrial data integration, and data usage for smart applications and services. This paper presents the development of a digital platform for building critical infrastructure protection systems in smart industries. Different service contraction modalities in service level agreements (SLAs), customer relationship management (CRM) relations, trends, and changes in business architectures (especially process business architecture) for the purpose of developing infrastructural production and distribution networks, information infrastructure meta-models and generic processes by critical infrastructure owner demanded by critical infrastructure law, satisfying cybersecurity requirements and taking into account hybrid threats are researched.

Keywords: cybersecurity, critical infrastructure, smart industries, digital platform

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Authors: Sepideh Khavarinezhad, Paolo Pietro Biancone

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This paper sheds light on how gender entrepreneurship is influenced by economic freedom in OECD countries. Our study empirically explores the interaction of financial institutions and its effect of both motivations on total entrepreneurial activities (TEA) of women and men in these countries and to discuss the differences between women and men in this field, which is always a hot topic in entrepreneurship. Employing a dynamic method, we conducted panel data analysis in the time frame from 2012-2015. In this regard, we evaluate the relationship between the Index of Economic Freedoms and its three years, and both indicators of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) on supportive financial institutions. We investigate that economic liberalization tends to persuade men and women entrepreneurs to start their businesses or to reduce motivation entrepreneurship. In particular, our paper demonstrates that motivation entrepreneurship seems to benefit from government support and fade barriers in legal structure in business, while we expect to confirm that free trade and economic freedom stimulate the entrepreneur’s motivation and their participation to start own business.

Keywords: economic freedom, gender entrepreneurship, financial institutions, OECD countries

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Authors: Mohammad Tofayel Ahmed, Seung Kook An

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In contemporary research world, focus is more set on sustainable products and innovative processes. The global textile industries are putting tremendous effort to achieve a balance between economic development and ecological protection concurrently. The conservation of water sources and environment have become immensely significant issue in textile dyeing production. Accordingly, an attempt has been taken in this study to develop a process to dye polyester blend cotton without reduction clearing process and any extra wash off chemical by simple modification aiming at cost reduction and sustainability. A widely used combination of 60/40 cotton/polyester (c/p) single jersey knitted fabric of 30’s, 180 g/m² was considered for study. Traditionally, pretreatment is done followed by polyester part dyeing, reduction clearing and cotton part dyeing for c/p blend dyeing. But in this study, polyester part is dyed right away followed by pretreatment process and cotton part dyeing by skipping the reduction clearing process diametrically. The dyed samples of both traditional and modified samples were scrutinized by various color fastness tests, dyeing parameters and by consumption of water, steam, power, process time and total batch cost. The modified process in this study showed no necessity of reduction clearing process for polyester blend cotton dyeing. The key issue contributing to avoid the reduction clearing after polyester part dyeing has been the multifunctional effect of NaOH and H₂O₂ while pretreatment of cotton after polyester part dyeing. The results also revealed that the modified process could reduce the consumption of water, steam, power, time and cost remarkably. The bulk trial of modified process demonstrated the well exploitability to dye polyester blend cotton substrate ensuring all fastness and dyeing properties regardless of dyes category, blend ratio, color, and shade percentage thus making the process sustainable, eco-friendly and economical. Furthermore, the proposed method could be applicable to any cellulosic blend with polyester.

Keywords: cotton, dyeing, economical, polyester

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Authors: Seigo Matsuno, Yasuo Uchida, Shozo Tokinaga

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This paper proposes and empirically tests a model of the relationships between green supply chain management (GSCM) activities and corporate performance. From the literature review, we identified five constructs, namely, environmental commitment, supplier collaboration, supplier assessment, information sharing among suppliers, and business process improvement. These explanatory variables are used to form a structural model explaining the environmental and economic performance. The model was analyzed using the data from a survey of a sample of manufacturing firms in Japan. The results suggest that the degree of supplier collaboration has an influence on the environmental performance directly. While, the impact of supplier assessment on the environmental performance is mediated by the information sharing and/or business process improvement. And the environmental performance has a positive relationship on the economic performance. Academic and managerial implications of our findings are discussed.

Keywords: corporate performance, empirical study, green supply chain management, path modeling

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Authors: Tanka Nath Dahal

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Community-based forestry is seen as a promising instrument for sustainable forest management (SFM) through the purposeful involvement of local communities. Globally, forest area managed by local communities is on the rise. However, transferring management responsibilities to forest users alone cannot guarantee the sustainability of forest management. A monitoring tool, that allows the local communities to track the progress of forest management towards the goal of sustainability, is essential. A case study, including six forest user groups (FUGs), two from each three community-based forestry models—community forestry (CF), buffer zone community forestry (BZCF), and collaborative forest management (CFM) representing three different physiographic regions, was conducted in Nepal. The study explores which community-based forest management model (CF, BZCF or CFM) is doing well in terms of sustainable forest management. The study assesses the overall performance of the three models towards SFM using locally developed criteria (four), indicators (26) and verifiers (60). This paper attempts to quantify the sustainability of the models using sustainability index for individual criteria (SIIC), and overall sustainability index (OSI). In addition, rating to the criteria and scoring of the verifiers by the FUGs were done. Among the four criteria, the FUGs ascribed the highest weightage to institutional framework and governance criterion; followed by economic and social benefits, forest management practices, and extent of forest resources. Similarly, the SIIC was found to be the highest for the institutional framework and governance criterion. The average values of OSI for CFM, CF, and BZCF were 0.48, 0.51 and 0.60 respectively; suggesting that buffer zone community forestry is the more sustainable model among the three. The study also suggested that the SIIC and OSI help local communities to quantify the overall progress of their forestry practices towards sustainability. The indices provided a clear picture of forest management practices to indicate the direction where they are heading in terms of sustainability; and informed the users on issues to pay attention to enhancing the sustainability of their forests.

Keywords: community forestry, collaborative management, overall sustainability, sustainability index for individual criteria

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Authors: Sony Baral, Harald Vacik

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This study analyzes the sustainability of community forest management in two community forests in Terai and Hills of Nepal, representing four forest types: 1) Shorearobusta, 2) Terai hardwood, 3) Schima-Castanopsis, and 4) other Hills. The sustainability goals for this region include maintaining and enhancing the forest stocks. Considering this, we analysed changes in species composition, stand density, growing stock volume, and growth-to-removal ratio at 3-5 year intervals from 2005-2016 within 109 permanent forest plots (57 in the Terai and 52 in the Hills). To complement inventory data, forest users, forest committee members, and forest officials were consulted. The results indicate that the relative representation of economically valuable tree species has increased. Based on trends in stand density, both forests are being sustainably managed. Pole-sized trees dominated the diameter distribution, however, with a limited number of mature trees and declined regeneration. The forests were over-harvested until 2013 but under-harvested in the recent period in the Hills. In contrast, both forest types were under-harvested throughout the inventory period in the Terai. We found that the ecological dimension of sustainable forest management is strongly achieved while the economic dimension is lacking behind the current potential. Thus, we conclude that maintaining a large number of trees in the forest does not necessarily ensure both ecological and economical sustainability. Instead, priority should be given on a rational estimation of the annual harvest rates to enhance forest resource conditions together with regular benefits to the local communities.

Keywords: community forests, diversity, growing stock, forest management, sustainability, nepal

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Authors: O. U. Nwosu, C. O. Osuagwu, N. Nnawugwu, C. T. Amanze

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Phytoremediation is a green and sustainable approach to decontaminate and restore contaminated sites while maintaining the biological activity and physical structure of soils. A pot experiment was conducted for a period of 70 days to evaluate the remediation potentials of Vetiveira zizanioides, Heianthus annuus L., Zea mays, and Glycine max in concurrent removal of anthracene and Pb in co-contaminated soil. Sandy loam soils were polluted with Pb chloride salt and anthracene at three different levels (50mg/kg of Pb, 100mg/kg of Pb, and 100mg/kg of Pb+100mg/kg of anthracene) and laid out in a completely randomized design with three replicates. Shoot dry matter weight was significantly reduced (p≤0.05) in comparison to control treatments by 33%, 32%, 40%, and 6.7% when exposed to 100mg kg⁻¹ of Pb, respectively in G.max, H.annuus, Z.mays, and vetiver. There was 42%, 41%, 48%, and 7.1% growth inhibition of shoot dry matter weight of G.max, H.annuus, Z.mays, and vetiver relative to control treatments when 100 mg Pb kg⁻¹ was mixed with 100 mgkg⁻¹ anthracene. Root and shoot metal concentration in G.max, H.annuus, Z.mays, and vetiver increased with increasing concentration of Pb. Translocation factor (TF < 1) obtained for G.max, Z.mays, and vetiver suggests that these plant species predominantly retain Pb in the root portion, while the TF value (TF≥1) obtained for H.annuus suggests that it predominantly retains Pb in the shoot portion. The extractable anthracene decreased significantly (p ≤ 0.05) in soil planted with G.max, H.annuus, Z.mays, and vetiver, as well as in pots without plants. This accounted for 53% to 71% of anthracene dissipation in planted soil and 40% dissipation in unplanted soil. This result suggested that the plant species used are a promising candidate for phytoremediation.

Keywords: phytoremediation, heavy metals, polyaromatic hydrocarbon, co-contaminated soil

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Authors: Seung-Min Yang, Seong-Han Park, Sang-Hoon Lee, Seung-Wan Yoo, Chan-Soo Kim, Nong-Moon Hwang

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The theory of charged nanoparticles suggested that in many Chemical Vapour Depositions (CVD) processes, Charged Nanoparticles (CNPs) are generated in the gas-phase and become a building block of thin films and nanowires. Recently, the nanoparticle-based crystallization has become a big issue since the growth of nanorods or crystals by the building block of nanoparticles was directly observed by transmission electron microscopy observations in the liquid cell. In an effort to confirm charged gas-phase nuclei, that might be generated under conventional processing conditions of thin films and nanowires during CVD, we performed an in-situ measurement using differential mobility analyser and particle beam mass spectrometer. The size distribution and number density of CNPs were affected by process parameters such as precursor flow rate and working temperature. It was shown that many films and nanostructures, which have been believed to grow by individual atoms or molecules, actually grow by the building blocks of such charged nuclei. The electrostatic interaction between CNPs and the growing surface induces the self-assembly into films and nanowires. In addition, the charge-enhanced atomic diffusion makes CNPs liquid-like quasi solid. As a result, CNPs tend to land epitaxial on the growing surface, which results in the growth of single crystalline nanowires with a smooth surface.

Keywords: chemical vapour deposition, charged nanoparticle, electrostatic force, nanostructure evolution, differential mobility analyser, particle beam mass spectrometer

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