Search results for: software development methodologies

Authors: Sraman Sree Mattananda

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This present article is an analytical research on ‘Buddhism and Innovative Sustainable Development.' The main purpose of researching is to the better understanding of many social science theories both in politics and in economics. And the understanding of both Buddhism and science is complementary in order to enable any individual to live a full and meaningful human life. How people can avoid conflict, socially, economically, politically and spiritually using Buddhist teachings for a sustainable development. The aim of studying is also to comprehend every human to be aware that peoples’ happiness and sorrow depends on the choices that they had taken to do what was perceptional right and wrong. Everything that happens does have a reason. This study will be supported by the supply of environmental knowledge, philosophy, and experience. Within the domestic and international cultures, this knowledge might provide a significant basis for the contemporary and the future world. Happiness and unsatisfactoriness of mind depend on the consequences of what we had already done. This is to give deep sense to adjust the nature of all that exists and desire not to attach to them and to liberate oneself leaving the reality as it is. An implicit of references will be drawn from the primary sources, secondary sources, internet sources, and other Scholar’s diamond writings, to prove the investigation of philosophical and theoretical analysis. After the investigation of philosophical and theoretical analysis, the article will demonstrate about, what Buddha advised the follows to stop over-exploitation and how to eradicate conflicts to gain a peaceful society. This will be a lively awareness in the approach to the understanding of the Buddhist view of reality and adopt with middle path. The last part of the article will concern with the Buddhist Challenge of sustaining the society and how Buddhist contemporary scholars interpret sustainable development issues. Mahatma Gandhi’s emphasize to use Buddhist Non-Violence will be demonstrating to gain peace, freedom, and security. Twelve things that concern us when we want to explore the issues of sustainability, demonstrated by A Little Book of Hope will be cleared. How individual hearts can implicate to the contemporary globe will be demonstrated to obtain healthy and practical environment. Finally, generating new awareness and care by minimizing the negative impact on earth resources will reduce the degradation of the planet which would pose a challenge to sustain Development.

Keywords: Buddhism, economic, sustainable development, Buddhist ethics

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Authors: Mohana Basu, Snehamanju Basu

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Urbanization has an immense impact on the holistic development of a region. In that same context, the level of women empowerment plays a significant role in the development of any region, particularly a region belonging to a developing country. The present study investigates the status of women empowerment in the Asansol Durgapur Planning Area of the state of West Bengal, India by investigating the status of women and their access to various facilities and awareness about the various governmental and non-governmental schemes meant for their elevation. Through this study, an attempt has been to made to understand the perception of the respondents on the context of women's empowerment. The study integrates multiple sources of qualitative and quantitative data collected from various reports, field-based measurements, questionnaire survey and community based participatory appraisals. Results reveal that women of the rural parts of the region are relatively disempowered due to the various restrictions imposed on them and enjoy lower socioeconomic clout than their male counterparts in spite of the several remedial efforts taken by the government and NGOs to elevate their position in the society. A considerable gender gap still exists regarding access to education, employment and decision-making power in the family and significant differences in attitude towards women are observable in the rural and urban areas. Freedom of women primarily vary according to their age group, educational level, employment and income status and also on the degree of urbanization. Asansol Durgapur Planning Area is primarily an industrial region where huge employment generation scope exists. But these disparities are quite alarming and indicate that economic development does not always usher in socially justifiable rights and access to resources for both men and women alike in its awake. In this backdrop, this study will attempt to forward relevant suggestions which can be followed for betterment of the status of women.

Keywords: development, disempowered, economic development, urbanization, women empowerment

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Authors: Abdel-Samad M. Ali, Ali A. Hadi Al-Shawi

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Discrimination against women and girls impairs progress in all domains of development articulated either in the framework of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) or in the Post-2015 Development Agenda. Paper aspires to create greater awareness among researchers and policy makers of the challenges posed by gender gaps and the opportunities created by reducing them within the Arab region. The study reveals how Arab countries are closing in on gender-oriented targets of the third and fifth MDGs. While some countries can claim remarkable achievements particularly in girls’ equality in education, there is still a long way to go to keep Arab’s commitments to current and future generations in other countries and subregions especially in the economic participation or in the political empowerment of women. No country has closed or even expected to close the economic participation gap or the political empowerment gap. This should provide the incentive to keep moving forward in the Post-2015 Agenda. Findings of the study prove that while Arab states have uneven achievements in reducing maternal mortality, Arab women remain at a disadvantage in the labour market. For Arab region especially LDCs, improving maternal health is part of the unmet agenda for the post-2015 period and still calls for intensified efforts and procedures. While antenatal care coverage is improving across the Arab region, progress is marginal in LDCs. To achieve proper realization of gender equality and empowerment of women in the Arab region in the post-2015 agenda, the study presents critical key challenges to be addressed. These challenges include: Negative cultural norms and stereotypes; violence against women and girls; early marriage and child labour; women’s limited control over their own bodies; limited ability of women to generate their own income and control assets and property; gender-based discrimination in law and in practice; women’s unequal participation in private and public decision making autonomy; and limitations in data. However, in all Arab states, gender equality must be integrated as a goal across all issues, particularly those that affect the future of a country.

Keywords: gender, equity, millennium development goals, post-2015 development agenda

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Authors: Érica Lima

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In the digital era, in which we have an avalanche of information, it is not new that the Internet has brought new modes of communication and knowledge access. Characterized by the multiplicity of discourses, opinions, beliefs and cultures, the web is a space of political-ideological dimensions where people (who often do not know each other) interact and create representations, deconstruct stereotypes, and redefine identities. Currently, the translator needs to be able to deal with digital spaces ranging from specific software to social media, which inevitably impact on his professional life. One of the most impactful ways of being seen in cyberspace is the participation in social networking groups. In addition to its ability to disseminate information among participants, social networking groups allow a significant personal and social exposure. Such exposure is due to the visibility of each participant achieved not only on its personal profile page, but also in each comment or post the person makes in the groups. The objective of this paper is to study the representations of translators and translation process on the Internet, more specifically in publications in two Brazilian groups of great influence on the Facebook: "Translators/Interpreters" and "Translators, Interpreters and Curious". These chosen groups represent the changes the network has brought to the profession, including the way translators are seen and see themselves. The analyzed posts allowed a reading of what common sense seems to think about the translator as opposed to what the translators seem to think about themselves as a professional class. The results of the analysis lead to the conclusion that these two positions are antagonistic and sometimes represent conflict of interests: on the one hand, the society in general consider the translator’s work something easy, therefore it is not necessary to be well remunerated; on the other hand, the translators who know how complex a translation process is and how much it takes to be a good professional. The results also reveal that social networking sites such as Facebook provide more visibility, but it takes a more active role from the translator to achieve a greater appreciation of the profession and more recognition of the role of the translator, especially in face of increasingly development of automatic translation programs.

Keywords: Facebook, social representation, translation, translator

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Authors: Mary Cruz

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Founded from 1496 to 1502, Santo Domingo is the oldest European settlement in the Americas, inhabited without any discontinuity and was the first seat of Spanish power in the new world. Capital of the country since 1932.In this text, we discover Santo Domingo as an international tourist center, Urban Structure, Eco-tourism, Contamination and other issues related to tourism and development of this city. Founded from 1496 to 1502, Santo Domingo is the oldest European settlement in the Americas, inhabited without any discontinuity and was the first seat of Spanish power in the new world. Capital of the country since 1932. Encouraged by the United Nations and the World Bank, many Caribbean governments have encouraged tourism from the 1950s to boost their Third World economies. In this text, we discover Santo Domingo as an international tourist center, Urban Structure, Eco-tourism, Contamination and challenges of the first tourist destination in the Caribbean.

Keywords: eco-tourism, urban structure, contamination, development

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Authors: Muhammed Buhary Muhammed Thabith, Nor Asiah Mohamad

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Religious Endowment (RE) (Waqf) has played an essential role in Islamic history and made a significant impact on the society, particularly in terms of socioeconomics. This has been made possible by having appropriate management of the RE propertiesin order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the region of Kinniya, Sri Lanka, is not an exception. However, since the last Religious Endowment Act of 1982, a considerable deterioration has taken place, and cases of dormant properties have increased. This study proposes a conceptual model based on the SDGs initiatives to fill in the gaps. It analyses the application of the current RE properties management and identifies the issues as well as the challenges in the implementation of the RE Act. It adopts a doctrinal analysis involving the primary and secondary data, including statutes, practices, case law, and reports. The findings show that there are various management modes adopted by the stakeholders of RE. Some approaches are in tandem with the rules and practices of the SDGs with emphasis on support and cooperation from the community, private sector, and the government. Several initiatives such as awareness on RE, legal enforcements without fears and favours, as well as accounting and auditing, are recommended to minimize problems in managing the RE towards attaining the SDGs.

Keywords: sustainable development goals (SDGs), management, endowment, Sri Lanka

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Authors: Mohamed Abdalla, Ruixue Cheng, Jianyong Zhang

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In pneumatic conveying, the solids are mixed with air or gas. In industries such as coal fired power stations, blast furnaces for iron making, cement and flour processing, the mass flow rate of solids needs to be monitored or controlled. However the current gas-solids two-phase flow measurement techniques are not as accurate as the flow meters available for the single phase flow. One of the problems that the multi-phase flow meters to face is that the flow profiles vary with measurement locations and conditions of pipe routing, bends, elbows and other restriction devices in conveying system as well as conveying velocity and concentration. To measure solids flow rate or concentration with non-even distribution of solids in gas, a uniform spatial sensitivity is required for a multi-phase flow meter. However, there are not many meters inherently have such property. The circular electrostatic meter is a popular choice for gas-solids flow measurement with its high sensitivity to flow, robust construction, low cost for installation and non-intrusive nature. However such meters have the inherent non-uniform spatial sensitivity. This paper first analyses the spatial sensitivity of circular electrostatic meter in general and then by combining the effect of the sensitivity to a single particle and the sensing volume for a given electrode geometry, the paper reveals first time how a circular electrostatic meter responds to a roping flow stream, which is much more complex than what is believed at present. The paper will provide the recent research findings on spatial sensitivity investigation at the University of Tees side based on Finite element analysis using Ansys Fluent software, including time and frequency domain characteristics and the effect of electrode geometry. The simulation results will be compared tothe experimental results obtained on a large scale (14” diameter) rig. The purpose of this research is paving a way to achieve a uniform spatial sensitivity for the circular electrostatic sensor by mean of compensation so as to improve overall accuracy of gas-solids flow measurement.

Keywords: spatial sensitivity, electrostatic sensor, pneumatic conveying, Ansys Fluent software

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Authors: Yasser F. Hassan

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Social networking involves use of an online platform or website that enables people to communicate, usually for a social purpose, through a variety of services, most of which are web-based and offer opportunities for people to interact over the internet, e.g. via e-mail and ‘instant messaging’, by analyzing the voting behavior and ratings of judges in a popular comments in social networks. While most of the party literature omits the electorate, this paper presents a model where elites and parties are emergent consequences of the behavior and preferences of voters. The research in artificial intelligence and psychology has provided powerful illustrations of the way in which the emergence of intelligent behavior depends on the development of representational structure. As opposed to the classical voting system (one person – one decision – one vote) a new voting system is designed where agents with opposed preferences are endowed with a given number of votes to freely distribute them among some issues. The paper uses ideas from machine learning, artificial intelligence and soft computing to provide a model of the development of voting system response in a simulated agent. The modeled development process involves (simulated) processes of evolution, learning and representation development. The main value of the model is that it provides an illustration of how simple learning processes may lead to the formation of structure. We employ agent-based computer simulation to demonstrate the formation and interaction of coalitions that arise from individual voter preferences. We are interested in coordinating the local behavior of individual agents to provide an appropriate system-level behavior.

Keywords: voting system, rough sets, multi-agent, social networks, emergence, power indices

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Authors: Du T. Tran, Quyen T. L. Hoang

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The role of language learning strategies in second language acquisition has received increased attention across several disciplines in recent years. Language learning strategies have been shown to occur in many studies over the passing years with the aim of improving the efficiency of language learning. Following previous studies, this study endeavors to scrutinize language learning strategies employed by the students at Vo Minh Duc high school and the effect of motivation on students’ learning strategy choices. The responses are examined quantitatively and qualitatively to enhance their validity and reliability. Data are collected from 342 students’ responses to the questionnaire, interviews with ten teachers and fifteen students, and classroom observations. The findings reveal that students’ motivation has an enormous impact on the choice of language learning strategies. The results simultaneously show that students use many language learning strategies to enhance their communicative competence, but the most frequently used ones are cognitive and affective ones. Significant correlations among types of learning strategies and the influence of motivation on the choices of language learning strategies were consistent with previous studies. The study’s results are expected to be beneficial to teachers of English and students in terms of narrowing the gap between the students' language learning strategies and their teaching methodologies preferences and sketching out the best strategies to enhance students’ speaking skills. The implications of these findings and the importance of viewing learners holistically are discussed, and recommendations are made for ongoing research.

Keywords: learning strategies, speaking skills, memorization strategies, cognitive strategies, affective strategies

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Authors: Karan Modi, Rajesh Kumar, Jyoti Katiyar, Shreya Thusoo

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This paper presents Finite Element Method (FEM) for analyzing the internal responses generated in thin rectangular plates with various edge conditions and rigidity conditions. Comparison has been made between the FEM (ANSYS software) results for displacement, stresses and moments generated with and without the consideration of hole in plate and different aspect ratios. In the end comparison for responses in plain and composite square plates has been studied.

Keywords: ANSYS, finite element method, plates, static analysis

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Authors: Wanderson Goncalves e Goncalves, José Alberto Silva de Sá

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Human actions are a threat to the balance and conservation of the Amazon forest. Therefore the environmental monitoring services play an important role as the preservation and maintenance of this environment. This study classified forest types using data from a forest inventory provided by the 'Florestal e da Biodiversidade do Estado do Pará' (IDEFLOR-BIO), located between the municipalities of Santarém, Juruti and Aveiro, in the state of Pará, Brazil, covering an area approximately of 600,000 hectares, Bands 3, 4 and 5 of the TM-Landsat satellite image, and Self - Organizing Maps. The information from the satellite images was extracted using QGIS software 2.8.1 Wien and was used as a database for training the neural network. The midpoints of each sample of forest inventory have been linked to images. Later the Digital Numbers of the pixels have been extracted, composing the database that fed the training process and testing of the classifier. The neural network was trained to classify two forest types: Rain Forest of Lowland Emerging Canopy (Dbe) and Rain Forest of Lowland Emerging Canopy plus Open with palm trees (Dbe + Abp) in the Mamuru Arapiuns glebes of Pará State, and the number of examples in the training data set was 400, 200 examples for each class (Dbe and Dbe + Abp), and the size of the test data set was 100, with 50 examples for each class (Dbe and Dbe + Abp). Therefore, total mass of data consisted of 500 examples. The classifier was compiled in Orange Data Mining 2.7 Software and was evaluated in terms of the confusion matrix indicators. The results of the classifier were considered satisfactory, and being obtained values of the global accuracy equal to 89% and Kappa coefficient equal to 78% and F1 score equal to 0,88. It evaluated also the efficiency of the classifier by the ROC plot (receiver operating characteristics), obtaining results close to ideal ratings, showing it to be a very good classifier, and demonstrating the potential of this methodology to provide ecosystem services, particularly in anthropogenic areas in the Amazon.

Keywords: artificial neural network, computational intelligence, pattern recognition, unsupervised learning

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Authors: Sarojini Imran, Riza Firmansyah, Aula Ramadhan, Chudamul Furqon, Achfriyatama Oktariflandi

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This article delves into the participatory approach in formulating a master plan for the development of pioneer village tourism in Cibubuan, Sumedang. We explore the process of participatory mapping that involves the active participation of the local community in planning and envisioning the future of village tourism. This research considers the positive impact that arises when the community takes an active role in designing a master plan that benefits the local economy while preserving culture and the environment. The results of this research reveal that the participatory approach can create a more accurate and community-responsive mapping that aligns with the aspirations of the people in Cibubuan Village. It also provides a deep insight into how community-developed mapping can guide the development of sustainable tourism. By offering a deeper understanding of the participatory role in village tourism development planning, this article provides essential insights for stakeholders and researchers in this field. We hope this article will inspire more communities to adopt a participatory approach in planning the future of their village tourism.

Keywords: participatory masterplan, pioneer village tourism, sustainable tourism, community engagement, Cibubuan Village

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Authors: Elijah Acquah-Andoh

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The UK has had its fair share of the shale gas revolutionary waves blowing across the global oil and gas industry at present. Although, its exploitation is widely agreed to have been delayed, shale gas was looked upon favorably by the UK Parliament when they recognized it as genuine energy source and granted licenses to industry to search and extract the resource. This, although a significant progress by industry, there yet remains another test the UK fracking resource must pass in order to render shale gas extraction feasible – it must be economically extractible and sustainably so. Developing unconventional resources is much more expensive and risky, and for shale gas wells, producing in commercial volumes is conditional upon drilling horizontal wells and hydraulic fracturing, techniques which increase CAPEX. Meanwhile, investment in shale gas development projects is sensitive to gas price and technical and geological risks. Using a Two-Factor Model, the economics of the Bowland shale wells were analyzed and the operational conditions under which fracking is profitable in the UK was characterized. We find that there is a great degree of flexibility about Opex spending; hence Opex does not pose much threat to the fracking industry in the UK. However, we discover Bowland shale gas wells fail to add value at gas price of $8/ Mmbtu. A minimum gas price of $12/Mmbtu at Opex of no more than $2/ Mcf and no more than $14.95M Capex are required to create value within the present petroleum tax regime, in the UK fracking industry.

Keywords: capex, economical, investment, profitability, shale gas development, sustainable

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Authors: Moquan Gong

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In recent years, with the rapid development of deep learning, pre-training technology for natural language processing has made great progress. The early field of natural language processing has long used word vector methods such as Word2Vec to encode text. These word vector methods can also be regarded as static pre-training techniques. However, this context-free text representation brings very limited improvement to subsequent natural language processing tasks and cannot solve the problem of word polysemy. ELMo proposes a context-sensitive text representation method that can effectively handle polysemy problems. Since then, pre-training language models such as GPT and BERT have been proposed one after another. Among them, the BERT model has significantly improved its performance on many typical downstream tasks, greatly promoting the technological development in the field of natural language processing, and has since entered the field of natural language processing. The era of dynamic pre-training technology. Since then, a large number of pre-trained language models based on BERT and XLNet have continued to emerge, and pre-training technology has become an indispensable mainstream technology in the field of natural language processing. This article first gives an overview of pre-training technology and its development history, and introduces in detail the classic pre-training technology in the field of natural language processing, including early static pre-training technology and classic dynamic pre-training technology; and then briefly sorts out a series of enlightening technologies. Pre-training technology, including improved models based on BERT and XLNet; on this basis, analyze the problems faced by current pre-training technology research; finally, look forward to the future development trend of pre-training technology.

Keywords: natural language processing, pre-training, language model, word vectors

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Authors: Pedram Saadati, Zahra Nazari

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Today, the role and importance of financial technology businesses in Iran have increased significantly. Although, in Iran, there is no Islamic or non-Islamic personal financial planning field of study in the universities or educational centers, the profession of personal financial planning is not defined, and there is no software introduced in this regard for advisors or consumers. The largest sales network of financial services in Iran belongs to the insurance industry, and there is an untapped market for international companies in Iran that can contribute to 130 thousand representatives in the insurance industry and 28 million families by providing training and personal financial advisory software. To the best of the author's knowledge, despite the lack of previous internal studies in this field, the present study investigates the level of readiness of the salesforce of the insurance industry to accept this career and its technology. The statistical population of the research is made up of managers, insurance sales representatives, assistants and heads of sales departments of insurance companies. An 18-minute video was prepared that introduced and taught the job of Islamic personal financial planning and explained its difference from its non-Islamic model. This video was provided to the respondents. The data collection tool was a research-made questionnaire. To investigate the factors affecting technology acceptance and job change, independent T descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation were used, and Friedman's test was used to rank the effective factors. The results indicate the mental perception and very positive attitude of the insurance industry activists towards the usefulness of this job and its technology, and the studied sample confirmed the intention of training in this knowledge. Based on research results, the change in the customer's attitude towards the insurance advisor and the possibility of increasing income are considered as the reasons for accepting. However, Restrictions on using investment opportunities due to Islamic financial services laws and the uncertainty of the position of the central insurance in this regard are considered as the most important obstacles.

Keywords: fintech, insurance, personal financial planning, wealth management

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Authors: S. Pushkar, O. Verbitsky

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Currently, green rating systems are mainly utilized for correctly sizing mechanical and electrical systems, which have short lifetime expectancies. In these systems, passive solar and bio-climatic architecture, which have long lifetime expectancies, are neglected. Urban rating systems consider buildings and services in addition to neighborhoods and public transportation as integral parts of the built environment. The main goal of this study was to develop a more consistent point allocation system for urban building standards by using six different lifetime shearing layers: Site, Structure, Skin, Services, Space, and Stuff, each reflecting distinct environmental damages. This shearing-layer concept was applied to internationally well-known rating systems: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for Neighborhood Development, BRE Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) for Communities, and Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency (CASBEE) for Urban Development. The results showed that LEED for Neighborhood Development and BREEAM for Communities focused on long-lifetime-expectancy building designs, whereas CASBEE for Urban Development gave equal importance to the Building and Service Layers. Moreover, although this rating system was applied using a building-scale assessment, “Urban Area + Buildings” focuses on a short-lifetime-expectancy system design, neglecting to improve the architectural design by considering bio-climatic and passive solar aspects.

Keywords: green rating system, urban community, sustainable design, standardization, shearing-layer concept, passive solar architecture

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Authors: Babak Salekmahdy

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Microfinance is often seen as a means of repairing credit markets and unleashing the potential contribution of impoverished people who rely on self-employment. Since the 1990s, the microfinance industry has expanded rapidly, opening the path for additional kinds of social entrepreneurship and social investment. However, current data indicate relatively few average consumer effects, opposing pushback against microfinance. This research reconsiders microfinance statements, stressing the variety of data on impacts and the essential (but limited) role of reimbursements. The report finishes by explaining a shift in thinking: from microfinance as a strictly defined enterprise finance to microfinance as a more widely defined home finance. Microfinance, under this perspective, provides advantages by providing liquidity for various requirements rather than just by increasing income.

Keywords: microfinance, small business, economic development, credit markets

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Authors: Laila Niklasson

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The aim of the study is to critically discuss how partner schools are engaged during Initial teacher education, ITE. The background is an experiment in Sweden where the practicum organization is reorganized due to a need to enhance quality during practicum. It is a national initiative from the government, supported by the National Agency of Education and lasts 2014-2019. The main features are concentration of students to school with a certain amount of mentors, mentors who have a mentor education and teachers with relevant subject areas and where there could be a mentor team with a leader at the school. An expected outcome is for example that the student teachers should be engaged in peer-learning. The schools should be supported by extra lectures from university teachers during practicum and also extra research projects where the schools should be engaged. A case study of one university based ITE was carried out to explore the consequences for the schools not selected. The result showed that from engaging x schools in a region, x was engaged. The schools are both in urban and rural areas, mainly in the latter. There is also a tendency that private schools are not engaged. On a unit level recruitment is perceived as harder for schools not engaged. In addition they cannot market themselves as ´selected school´ which can affect parent´s selection of school for their children. Also, on unit level, but with consequences for professional development, they are not selected for research project and thereby are not fully supported during school development. The conclusion is that from an earlier inclusive approach concerning professions where all teachers were perceived as possible mentors, there is a change to an exclusive approach where selected schools and selected teachers should be engaged. The change could be perceived as a change in governance mentality, but also in how professions are perceived, and development work is pursued.

Keywords: initial teacher education, practicum schools, profession, quality development

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Authors: Thanduxolo Elford Fana

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Rationale and Purpose: Performance management and development system are central to effective and efficient service delivery, especially in highly labour intensive sectors such as South African public health. Performance management and development systems seek to ensure that good employee performance is rewarded accordingly, while those who underperform are developed so that they can reach their full potential. An effective and efficiently implemented performance management system motivates and improves employee engagement. The purpose of this study is to examine the implementation of the performance management and development system and the challenges that are encountered during its implementation in the Eastern Cape Provincial Department of Health. Methods: A qualitative research approach and a case study design was adopted in this study. The primary data were collected through observations, focus group discussions with employees, a group interview with shop stewards, and in-depth interviews with supervisors and managers, from April 2019 to September 2019. There were 45 study participants. In-depth interviews were held with 10 managers at facility level, which included chief executive officer, chief medical officer, assistant director’s in human resources management, patient admin, operations, finance, and two area manager and two operation managers nursing. A group interview was conducted with five shop stewards and an in-depth interview with one shop steward from the group. Five focus group discussions were conducted with clinical and non-clinical staff. The focus group discussions were supplemented with an in-depth interview with one person from each group in order to counter the group effect. Observations included moderation committee, contracting, and assessment meetings. Findings: The study shows that the performance management and development system was not properly implemented. There was non-compliance to performance management and development system policy guidelines in terms of time lines for contracting, evaluation, payment of incentives to good performers, and management of poor performance. The study revealed that the system is ineffective in raising the performance of employees and unable to assist employees to grow. The performance bonuses were no longer paid to qualifying employees. The study also revealed that lack of capacity and commitment, poor communication, constant policy changes, financial constraints, weak and highly bureaucratic management structures, union interference were challenges that were encountered during the implementation of the performance management and development system. Lastly, employees and supervisors were rating themselves three irrespective of how well or bad they performed. Conclusion: Performance management is regarded as vital to improved performance of the health workforce and healthcare service delivery among populations. Effective implementation of performance management and development system depends on well-capacitated and unbiased management at facility levels. Therefore, there is an urgent need to improve communication, link performance management to rewards, and capacitate staff on performance management and development system, as it is key to improved public health sector outcomes or performance.

Keywords: challenges, implementation, performance management and development system, public hospital

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Authors: M. Nili, S. Tavasoli, A. R. Yazdandoost

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In this paper, an experimental investigation on the effect of Isfahan Ground Granulate Blast Furnace Slag (GGBS) on the compressive strength development of self-consolidating concrete (SCC) and normal concrete (NC) was performed. For this purpose, Portland cement type I was replaced with GGBS in various Portions. For NC and SCC Mixes, 10*10*10 cubic cm specimens were tested in 7, 28 and 91 days. It must be stated that in this research water to cement ratio was 0.44, cement used in cubic meter was 418 Kg/m³ and Superplasticizer (SP) Type III used in SCC based on Poly-Carboxylic acid. The results of experiments have shown that increasing GGBS Percentages in both types of concrete reduce Compressive strength in early ages.

Keywords: compressive strength, GGBS, normal concrete, self-consolidating concrete

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Authors: Patsy Tan, Dana Baltutis

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This presentation demonstrates the effectiveness of music therapy in co-treatment with speech pathology and occupational therapy as an innovative way when working with children and adolescents with complex individual differences to facilitate communication, emotional, motor and social skills development. Each child with special needs and their carer has an individual profile which encompasses their visual-spatial, auditory, language, learning, mental health, family dynamic, sensory-motor, motor planning and sequencing profiles. The most common issues among children with special needs, especially those diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, are in the areas of regulation, communication, and social-emotional development. The ability of children living with challenges to communicate and use language and understand verbal and non-verbal information, as well as move their bodies to explore and interact with their environments in social situations, depends on the children being regulated both internally and externally and trusting their communication partners and understanding what is happening in the moment. For carers, it is about understanding the tempo, rhythm, pacing, and timing of their own individual profile, as well as the profile of the child they are interacting with, and how these can sync together. In this study, music therapy is used in co-treatment sessions with a speech pathologist and/or an occupational therapist using the DIRFloortime approach to facilitate the regulation, attention, engagement, reciprocity and social-emotional capacities of children presenting with complex individual differences. Documented changes in 10 domains of children’s development over a 12-month period using the Individual Music Therapy Assessment Profile (IMTAP) were observed. Children were assessed biannually, and results show significant improvements in the social-emotional, musicality and receptive language domains indicating that co-treatment with a music therapist using the DIRFloortime framework is highly effective. This presentation will highlight strategies that facilitate regulation, social-emotional and communication development for children and adolescents with complex individual profiles.

Keywords: communication, shared attention, regulation, social emotional

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Authors: Idris lawal

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The most recent development in the Nigerian payment system is the venture into “electronic payment system”. Electronic payment system is simply a payment or monetary transaction made over the internet or a network of computers. This study was carried out in order to assess how electronic payment system has impacted on banks service delivery, to examine the efficiency of electronic payment system in Nigeria and to determine the level of customer’s satisfaction as a direct result of the deployment of electronic payment systems. The study was conducted using structured questionnaire distributed to 50 bank officials and customers of Access Bank plc. Chi-square(x2) was adopted for the purpose of data analysis. The result of the study showed that the development of electronic payment system offer great benefit to bank customers including; improved services, reduced turn-around time, ease of banking transaction, significant cost saving etc. The study recommend that customer protection laws should be properly put in place to safeguard the interest of end users of e-payment instruments, the banking industry and government should show strong commitment and effort to educate the populace on the benefit of patronizing e-payment system to facilitate economic development.

Keywords: electronic payment system, service delivery, bank, Nigeria

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Authors: Yingxiao Ye, Christopher Doehring, Angelos Georghiou, Hugh Robinson, Phebe Vayanos

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Human development is a threat to biodiversity, and conservation organizations (COs) are purchasing land to protect areas for biodiversity preservation. However, COs have limited budgets and thus face hard prioritization decisions that are confounded by uncertainty in future human land use. This research proposes a data-driven sequential planning model to help COs choose land parcels that minimize the uncertain human impact on biodiversity. The proposed model is robust to uncertain development, and the sequential decision-making process is adaptive, allowing land purchase decisions to adapt to human land use as it unfolds. The cellular automata model is leveraged to simulate land use development based on climate data, land characteristics, and development threat index from NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center. This simulation is used to model uncertainty in the problem. This research leverages state-of-the-art techniques in the robust optimization literature to propose a computationally tractable reformulation of the model, which can be solved routinely by off-the-shelf solvers like Gurobi or CPLEX. Numerical results based on real data from the Jaguar in Central and South America show that the proposed method reduces conservation loss by 19.46% on average compared to standard approaches such as MARXAN used in practice for biodiversity conservation. Our method may better help guide the decision process in land acquisition and thereby allow conservation organizations to maximize the impact of limited resources.

Keywords: data-driven robust optimization, biodiversity conservation, uncertainty simulation, adaptive sequential planning

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Authors: Eduardo Ruiz-Corzo, Luis Rodrigo Valencia Perez, Jorge Francisco Barragan Lopez

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The article shows the pressing conditions of marginalization prevailing in the Sierra Gorda, in the northern state of Queretaro, so it is essential to identify business options that generate a complementary source of income in a sustainable manner, in accordance with the fact that the area is a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO. In this sense, the study identifies the enormous scenic richness of the area, the growing demand for leisure activities of the urban centers and the multifunctionality that adds, in a complementary way, the traditional activities that up to now have achieved the quality of life levels. From the application of the 43 interviews and 183 surveys, confirms the fact that the post-visit perception exceeds the expectations of the visitors emerges and affirms that the image that has been projected is attractive and timely. In order to understand how the current model of tourism promoted in the region is working, there is a need to evaluate it in a theoretical-methodological framework considering sustainable development assumptions. In order to determine the degree of contribution to business development, strengthening of social capital, and enjoyment and appreciation of cultural and natural heritage in the region.

Keywords: marginalization, rural tourism, multifunctionality, sustainability, revenue

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Authors: CM van der Bank, Marjoné van der Bank

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International and domestic environmental law has evolved quite rapidly in the last few decades. At the international level the Stockholm and Rio Declarations paved the way for a broad based consensus of the international community on environmental issues and principles. At the Domestic level also many states have incorporated environmental protection in their constitutions and even more states are doing the same at least in their domestic legislations. In this process of evolution environmental law has unleashed a number of novel principles such as; the participatory principle, the polluter pays principle, the precautionary principle, the inter-generational and intra-generational principles, the prevention principle, the sustainable development principle and so on.

Keywords: environment, human rights, international law, protection

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Authors: Ekrem Aksoy, Nihat Adar, Selçuk Canbek

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Ambient Computing or Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is emerging area in computer science aiming to create intelligently connected environments and Internet of Things. In this paper, we propose communication middleware architecture for AmI. This middleware architecture addresses problems of communication, networking, and abstraction of applications, although there are other aspects (e.g. HCI and Security) within general AmI framework. Within this middleware architecture, any application developer might address HCI and Security issues with extensibility features of this platform.

Keywords: AmI, ambient computing, middleware, distributed-systems, software-defined networking

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Authors: Obaid Alotaibi

Abstract:

Tourism and recreation have become one of the important and influential sectors in most of the modern economies. This sector has been accepted as one of the alternative sources of national income, employment, and foreign exchange. Kuwait has many potentialities in tourism and recreation, and exploitation of this leads to more diversification of the economy besides augmenting its contribution to the GDP. It is an import-oriented economy; it requires hard currencies (foreign exchange) to meet the import costs as well as to maintain stability in the international market. To compensate for the revenue fall stemmed from fluctuations in oil prices -where the agriculture, fisheries, and industrial sectors are too immune and inelastic- the only alternative solution is the regeneration of the tourism and recreation to surface. This study envisages the characteristics of tourism and recreation, the economic and social importance for the society, the physical and human endowments, as well as the tourist pattern and plans for promoting and sustaining tourism in the country. The study summarizes many recommendations, including the necessity of establishing authority or a council for tourism, linking the planning of tourism development with the comprehensive planning for economic and social development in Kuwait in the shadow of 2035 vision, and to encourage the investors to develop new tourist and recreation projects.

Keywords: Kuwait, public-private, partnership, tourism, 2035 vision

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Authors: Kristina Thorell

Abstract:

Food security has been one of the most important policy issues on the global arena after the Second World War. The overall aim of this presentation is to describe preconditions for a sustainable food supply from a spatial perspective. Special attention is paid to the differences between advanced and less advanced economies around the world. The theoretical framework is based upon models which are explaining complex systems of factors that affect the preconditions for agricultural productions. In additions to this, theories about how population and environmental pollution change through different stages of societal development are explained. The results are based upon data of agricultural practices, population growth, hunger and nutrition levels from different countries around the world. The analysis shows that factors which affect preconditions for agricultural production are dynamic. Factors which support the food security in the near future are a decreasing population growth, technological development and innovation but the environmental crisis is associated to high risks. It is, therefore, important to develop environmental policies and improved methods for organic farming. A final conclusion is that the spatial pattern is clear; the food supply is sufficient within advanced economies but rather complicated in development countries.

Keywords: food security, agricultural geography, demography, advanced economies, population growth, agricultural practices

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Authors: Saleh Alzahrani, Halim Boussabaine

Abstract:

The Public Private Partnership (PPP) contracts are produced taking into account the reason that the configuration, development, operation, and financing of an open undertaking is to be recompensed to a private gathering inside a solitary contractual structure. PPP venture dangers are ordinarily connected with the improvement and development of another resource and in addition its operation for a considerable length of time. Without a doubt, the most genuine outcomes of dangers amid the development period are value and time overwhelms. These occasions are amongst the most extensively utilized situations as a part of worth for cash investigation dangers. The wellsprings of danger change over the life cycle of a PPP venture. In customary acquirement, the general population segment ordinarily needs to cover all value trouble from these dangers. At any rate there is bounty confirmation to recommend that cost pain is a standard in a percentage of the tasks that are conveyed under customary obtainment. This paper means to research the effect of endogenous dangers on expense overwhelm in KSA PPP ventures. The paper displays a brief writing survey on PPP danger evaluating systems, and after that presents an affiliation model between danger occasions and expense invade in KSA. The paper finishes up with considerations for future examination.

Keywords: PPP, risk pricing, impact of risk, Endogenous risks

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Authors: Ruth Shapira

Abstract:

Introduction: The rapid urbanization of the last century confronts planners, regulatory bodies, developers and most of all – the public with seemingly unsolved conflicts regarding values, capital, and wellbeing of the built and un-built urban space. This is reflected in the quality of the urban form and life which has known no significant progress in the last 2-3 decades despite the on-growing urban population. It is the objective of this paper to analyze some of these fundamental issues through the case study of a relatively small town in the center of Israel (Kiryat-Ono, 100,000 inhabitants), unfold the deep structure of qualities versus disruptors, present some cure that we have developed to bridge over and humbly suggest a practice that may be generic for similar cases. Basic Methodologies: The OBJECT, the town of Kiryat Ono, shall be experimented upon in a series of four action processes: De-composition, Re-composition, the Centering process and, finally, Controlled Structural Disintegration. Each stage will be based on facts, analysis of previous multidisciplinary interventions on various layers – and the inevitable reaction of the OBJECT, leading to the conclusion based on innovative theoretical and practical methods that we have developed and that we believe are proper for the open ended network, setting the rules for the contemporary urban society to cluster by. The Study: Kiryat Ono, was founded 70 years ago as an agricultural settlement and rapidly turned into an urban entity. In spite the massive intensification, the original DNA of the old small town was still deeply embedded, mostly in the quality of the public space and in the sense of clustered communities. In the past 20 years, the recent demand for housing has been addressed to on the national level with recent master plans and urban regeneration policies mostly encouraging individual economic initiatives. Unfortunately, due to the obsolete existing planning platform the present urban renewal is characterized by pressure of developers, a dramatic change in building scale and widespread disintegration of the existing urban and social tissue. Our office was commissioned to conceptualize two master plans for the two contradictory processes of Kiryat Ono’s future: intensification and conservation. Following a comprehensive investigation into the deep structures and qualities of the existing town, we developed a new vocabulary of conservation terms thus redefying the sense of PLACE. The main challenge was to create master plans that should offer a regulatory basis to the accelerated and sporadic development providing for the public good and preserving the characteristics of the PLACE consisting of a tool box of design guidelines that will have the ability to reorganize space along the time axis in a coherent way. In Conclusion: The system of rules that we have developed can generate endless possible patterns making sure that at each implementation fragment an event is created, and a better place is revealed. It takes time and perseverance but it seems to be the way to provide a healthy framework for the accelerated urbanization of our chaotic present.

Keywords: housing, architecture, urban qualities, urban regeneration, conservation, intensification

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