Search results for: Sino-Singapore relations

Authors: Efe Mary Isike

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The variety of relationships between migrants and host communities is an enduring theme of migration studies. On one extreme, there are numerous examples of hostility towards ‘strangers’ who are either ejected from society or denied access to jobs, housing, education, healthcare and other aspects of normal life. More moderate treatments of those identified as different include expectations of assimilation in which host communities expect socially marginalized groups to conform to norms that they define. Both exclusion and assimilation attempt to manage the problem of difference by removing it. South Africa experienced great influx of African immigrants who worked in mines and farms under harsh and exploitative conditions before and after the institutionalization of apartheid. Although these labour migrants contributed a great deal to the economic development of South Africa, they were not given citizenship status. The formal democratization in 1994 came with dreams and expectations of a more inclusive South Africa, where black South Africans hoped to maximize their potential in a more free, fair and equal society. In the same vein, it also opened spaces for an influx of especially African immigrants into the country which set the stage for a new form of contest for belonging between South African citizens and African migrant settlers. One major manifestation of this contest was the violent xenophobic attacks against African immigrants which predate that of May 2008 and has continued with lower intensity across the country since then. While it is doubtless possible to find abundant evidence of antagonism in the relations between South Africans and African immigrants, the purpose of this study is to investigate the everyday realities of migrants in ordinary places who interact with a variety of people through their livelihood activities, marriages and social relationships, moving around towns and cities, in their residential areas, in faith-based organizations and other elements of everyday life. Rather than assuming all relations are hostile, this study intends to look at the breadth of everyday relationships within a specific context. Based on the foregoing, the main task of this study is to holistically examine and explain the nature of interactions between African migrants and South African citizens by analysing the social network ties that connect them in the specific case of Umhlathuze municipality. It will also investigate the variety of networks that exists between African migrants and South Africans and examine the nature of the linkages in the various networks identified between these two groups in Umhlathuze Municipality. Apart from a review of relevant literature, policies and other official documents, this paper will employ a purposive sample survey and in-depth interview of African immigrants and South Africans within their networks in selected suburbs in KwaZulu-Natal.

Keywords: migration, networks, development, host communities

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Authors: Alida Sandison, Louise A. Stroud

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Narcissism is a personality configuration which has both normal and pathological personality expressions. Narcissism is highly complex, and is linked to a broad field of research. There are both dimensional and categorical conceptualisations of narcissism, and a variety of theoretical formulations that have been put forward to understand the narcissistic personality configuration. Currently, Kernberg’s Object Relations theory is well supported for this purpose. The complexity and particular defense mechanisms at play in the narcissistic personality make it a difficult personality configuration worth further research. Psychobiography as a methodology allows for the exploration of the lived life, and is thus a useful methodology to surmount these inherent challenges. Narcissism has been a focus of academic interest for a long time, and although there is a lot of research done in this area, to the researchers' knowledge, narcissistic dynamics have never been explored within a psychobiographical format. Thus, the primary aim of the research was to explore and describe narcissism in the life of Howard Hughes, with the objective of gaining further insight into narcissism through the use of this unconventional research approach. Hughes was chosen as subject for the study as he is renowned as an eccentric billionaire who had his revolutionary effect on the world, but was concurrently disturbed within his personal pathologies. Hughes was dynamic in three different sectors, namely motion pictures, aviation and gambling. He became more and more reclusive as he entered into middle age. From his early fifties he was agoraphobic, and the social network of connectivity that could reasonably be expected from someone in the top of their field was notably distorted. Due to his strong narcissistic personality configuration, and the interpersonal difficulties he experienced, Hughes represents an ideal figure to explore narcissism. The study used a single case study design, and purposive sampling to select Hughes. Qualitative data was sampled, using secondary data sources. Given that Hughes was a famous figure, there is a plethora of information on his life, which is primarily autobiographical. This includes books written about his life, and archival material in the form of newspaper articles, interviews and movies. Gathered data were triangulated to avoid the effect of author bias, and increase the credibility of the data used. It was collected using Yin’s guidelines for data collection. Data was analysed using Miles and Huberman strategy of data analysis, which consists of three steps, namely, data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing and verification. Patterns which emerged in the data highlighted the defense mechanisms used by Hughes, in particular that of splitting and projection, in defending his sense of self. These defense mechanisms help us to understand the high levels of entitlement and paranoia experienced by Hughes. Findings provide further insight into his sense of isolation and difference, and the consequent difficulty he experienced in maintaining connections with others. Findings furthermore confirm the effectiveness of Kernberg’s theory in understanding narcissism observing an individual life.

Keywords: Howard Hughes, narcissism, narcissistic defenses, object relations

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Authors: Somkiat Korbuakaew, Bongkoch Puttawong

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This research aims to study the level of e-office system competence of Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University graded by age, education background, position and work experience. Sample of this research is 291 staff at Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University. Data were collected by questionnaire. Statistics used in the research are percentage, mean and standard deviation. The result shows that the overall competence of E-office System of the university staff is at average level. When considered in each aspect, it was found that competency level for creating-forwarding-signing documents is high, while competency level for booking meeting rooms, requesting for transportation service, blackboard system, public relations and making appointment and meeting are average.

Keywords: competence, e-office, education background, work experience

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Authors: Bela Lebedeva

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Characteristics of the Web as a channel of information dissemination - accessibility and openness, interactivity and multimedia news - become wider and cover the audience quickly, positively affecting the perception of content, but blur out the understanding of the journalistic work. As a result audience and advertisers continue migrating to the Internet. Moreover, online targeting allows monetizing not only the audience (as customarily given to traditional media) but also the content and traffic more accurately. While the users identify themselves with the qualitative characteristics of the new market, its actors are formed. Conflict of interests is laid in the base of the economy of their relations, the problem of traffic tax as an example. Meanwhile, content monetization actualizes fiscal interest of the state too. The balance of supply and demand is often violated due to the political risks, particularly in terms of state capitalism, populism and authoritarian methods of governance such social institutions as the media. A unique example of access to journalistic material, limited by monetization of content is a television channel Dozhd' (Rain) in Russian web space. Its liberal-minded audience has a better possibility for discussion. However, the channel could have been much more successful in terms of unlimited free speech. Avoiding state pressure and censorship its management has decided to save at least online performance and monetizing all of the content for the core audience. The study Methodology was primarily based on the analysis of journalistic content, on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the audience. Reconstructing main events and relationships of actors on the market for the last six years researcher has reached some conclusions. First, under the condition of content monetization the capitalization of its quality will always strive to quality characteristics of user, thereby identifying him. Vice versa, the user's demand generates high-quality journalism. The second conclusion follows the previous one. The growth of technology, information noise, new political challenges, the economy volatility and the cultural paradigm change – all these factors form the content paying model for an individual user. This model defines him as a beneficiary of specific knowledge and indicates the constant balance of supply and demand other conditions being equal. As a result, a new economic quality of information is created. This feature is an indicator of the market as a self-regulated system. Monetized information quality is less popular than that of the Public Broadcasting Service, but this audience is able to make decisions. These very users keep the niche sectors which have more potential of technology development, including the content monetization ways. The third point of the study allows develop it in the discourse of media space liberalization. This cultural phenomenon may open opportunities for the development of social and economic relations architecture both locally and regionally.

Keywords: content monetization, state capitalism, media liberalization, media economy, information quality

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Authors: Ayuko Itsuki, Sachiyo Aburatani

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Soil neutral sugar contents in Kasuga-yama Hill Primeval Forest (Nara, Japan) were examined using the Waksman’s approximation analysis to clarify relations with the neutral sugar constituted the soil organic matter and the microbial biomass. Samples were selected from the soil surrounding laurel-leaved (BB-1) and Carpinus japonica (BB-2) trees for analysis. The water and HCl soluble neutral sugars increased microbial biomass of the laurel-leaved forest soil. Arabinose, xylose, and galactose of the HCl soluble fraction were used immediately in comparison with other neutral sugars. Rhamnose, glucose, and fructose of the HCl soluble fraction were re-composed by the microbes.

Keywords: forest soil, neutral sugaras, soil organic matter, Waksman’s approximation analysis

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Authors: Yael Fisher

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Little is known about perceived self-efficacy of public preschool teachers, their perception of preschool excellence, or the relations between the two. There were three purposes for this research: defining the professional self-efficacy of preschool teachers (PTSE); defining preschool teachers' perception of preschool excellence (PTPPE); and investigating the relationship between the two. Scales for PTSE and PTPPE were developed especially for this study. Public preschool teachers (N = 202) participated during the 2013 school year. Structural Equation Modeling was performed to test the fit between the research model and the obtained data. PTPSE scale (α = 0.91) was comprised of three subscales: pedagogy (α=0.84), organization (α = 0.85) and staff (α = 0.72). The PTPPE scale (α = 0.92) is also composed of three subscales: organization and pedagogy (α = 0.88), staff (α = 0.84) and parents (α = 0.83). The goodness of fit measures were RMSEA = 0.045, CFI = 0.97, NFI = 0.89, df = 173, χ²=242.94, p= .000, showing GFI = 1.4 (< 3) as a good fit. Understanding self-efficacy of preschool teachers, preschool could and should lead to better professional development (in-service training) of preschool teachers.

Keywords: self-efficacy, public pre schools, preschool excellence, SEM

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Authors: Yang Jiayue, Liang Junwen

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Case interviews with 12 mothers of hearing-impaired children in Beijing found that families with hard-of-hearing children make all-out efforts for rescue and rehabilitation until they exhaust family resources, they travel to work places, homes, and rehabilitation institutions every day, and social relations gradually shrink inward. In the stigmatized social environment, children with hearing impairment find it difficult to integrate into regular communication and gradually return to a silent world; their parents also suffer from social discrimination and affiliate stigma, and they gradually reduce contact with others. Finally, families with hearing-impaired children become invisible people in society; the "deafness" of children leads families to "loss of voice."

Keywords: family with hearing-impaired children, social retreat, social exclusion, stigma

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Authors: Yi-Wen Chen, Hsueh-Liang Fan

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Evidence shows that start-ups success is positively correlated with innovation speed. However, new ventures are seldom able to acquire abundant resources for new product development (NPD), which means that entrepreneurs may depend on personal creativity instead of physical investments to achieve and accelerate speed of first product launch. This study accentuates the role of entrepreneurial bricolage, which defined as making do by applying combinations of the resources at hand to new problems and opportunities, in the relations of creative self-efficacy and innovation speed. This study uses structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses in a sample of 203 start-ups operating various creative markets. Results reveal that creative self-efficacy is positively and directly associated with innovation speed, whereas entrepreneurial bricolage plays a full mediator. These findings offer important theoretical and practical implications.

Keywords: creative self-efficacy, innovation speed, entrepreneurial bricolage, new ventures

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Authors: Heejin Yun, Juanjuan Zang

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This study aims to analyze the text terms posted on an online community of people from the same hometown and to understand the topic and trend of nostalgia composed online. For this purpose, this study collected 144 writings which the natives of Yeongjong Island, Incheon, South-Korea have posted on an online community. And it analyzed association relations. As a result, online community texts means that just defining nostalgia as ‘a mind longing for hometown’ is not an enough explanation. Second, texts composed online have abstractness rather than persons’ individual stories. This study figured out the relationship that had the most critical and closest mutual association among the terms that constituted nostalgia through literature research and association rule concerning nostalgia. The result of this study has a characteristic that it summed up the core terms and emotions related to nostalgia.

Keywords: nostalgia, cultural memory, data mining, association rule

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Authors: Yaprak Aydin

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The rural is no longer a space of only agricultural activities that gave into the global market demands; or an idyll to return after retirement; or only a reservoir of cultural values, but rather a vision to redefine the future in terms of production and consumption relations. Gulpınar in Turkey and Ashtarak in Armenia are two towns where a new ground of dialogue between two communities has been initiated: ‘energy democracy’, which is a significant driving force in a sense of gathering people of two historically conflicted communities around common future concerns; and in a sense of transforming the accepted knowledge on the rurality and all the social structures it represents. This paper seeks to provoke a discussion of to what extent such a rurality is attainable by contextualizing – through visits and meetings in person – two towns and two communities within a renewable energy project called 'Under the Same Sun' carried out by two local civil society organizations together at two public spaces.

Keywords: civil society, energy democracy, prosumer communities, renewable energy, transnational rurality

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Authors: M. Chňapek, M. Tomka, R. Peroutková, Z. Gálová

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Processes of plant breeding, testing and licensing of new varieties, patent protection in seed production, relations in trade and protection of copyright are dependent on identification, differentiation and characterization of plant genotypes. Therefore, we focused our research on utilization of wheat storage proteins as genetic markers suitable not only for differentiation of individual genotypes, but also for identification and characterization of their considerable properties. We analyzed a collection of 102 genotypes of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), 41 genotypes of spelt wheat (Triticum spelta L.), and 35 genotypes of durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.), in this study. Our results show, that genotypes of bread wheat and durum wheat were homogenous and single line, but spelt wheat genotypes were heterogenous. We observed variability of HMW-GS composition according to environmental factors and level of breeding and predict technological quality on the basis of Glu-score calculation.

Keywords: genotype identification, HMW-GS, wheat quality, polymorphism

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Authors: Vinod Kumar, Arun Kumar, Surjit Angra

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This paper addresses the junction stress analysis of orthogonally intersecting thin walled cylindrical shell and thin walled cylindrical nozzle subjected to external loading on nozzle. Junction stresses have been calculated theoretically by welding research council (WRC) bulletins 107 and 297 for different nozzle loads. WRC bulletins 107 and 297 have been used by design engineers for calculating nozzle-vessel junction stresses since their publication. They give simple empirical relations and easy in application. Also 3D FEA in which material is elastic has been done in ANSYS software with 8 node solid element model and results of FEA have been compared with WRC results. Stress intensities obtained by WRC 297 are generally slightly higher than obtained by WRC 107. Membrane stresses obtained by FEA are much higher than WRC and membrane plus bending stresses obtained by FEA are lower than WRC.

Keywords: FEA, junction stress, solid element, WRC 107, WRC 297

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Authors: Moqbil S. Alenazi, Magdy. M. Elkhateeb

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A comprehensive photometric study and evolutionary state for the newly discovered Beta Lyr systems V0487 Lac, V0566 Hya, and V0666 Lac were carried out by means of their first photometric observations. New times of minima were estimated from the observed light curves, and first (O-C) curves were established for all systems. A windows interface version of the Wilson and Devinney code (W-D) based on model atmospheres and a pass band prescription have been used for the radiative treatment. The accepted models reveal some absolute parameters for the studied systems, which are used in adopting the spectral type of the system's components and their evolutionary status. Distances to each system were calculated, and physical properties were estimated. Locations of the systems on the theoreticalmass–luminosity and mass–radius relations revealed a good fit for all systems components except for the secondary component of the system V0487 Lac.

Keywords: eclipsing binaries, light curve modelling, evolutionary state

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Authors: Matthew McArthur, Margaret Friend

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The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the stability of the home environment for families across the world. Potential disruptions include parent work modality (in-person vs. remote), levels of health anxiety, family routines, and caregiving. These disruptions may have interfered with the processes of early vocabulary acquisition, carrying lasting effects over the life course. Our justification for this research is as follows: First, early, stable, caregiver-child reciprocal interactions, which may have been disrupted during the pandemic, contribute to the development of the brain architecture that supports language, cognitive, and social-emotional development. Second, early vocabulary predicts several cognitive outcomes, such as numeracy, literacy, and executive function. Further, disruption in the home is associated with adverse cognitive, academic, socio-emotional, behavioral, and communication outcomes in young children. We are interested in how disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic are associated with vocabulary acquisition in children born during the first two waves of the pandemic. We are conducting a moderated online experiment to assess this question. Participants are 16 children (10F) ranging in age from 19 to 39 months (M=25.27) and their caregivers. All child participants were screened for language background, health history, and history of language disorders, and were typically developing. Parents completed a modified version of the COVID-19 Family Stressor Scale (CoFaSS), a published measure of COVID-19-related family stressors. Thirteen items from the original scale were replaced to better capture change in family organization and stability specifically related to disruptions in income, anxiety, family relations, and childcare. Following completion of the modified CoFaSS, children completed a Web-Based version of the Computerized Comprehension Task and the Receptive One Word Picture Vocabulary if 24 months or older or the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory if younger than 24 months. We report our preliminary data as a partial correlation analysis controlling for age. Raw vocabulary scores on the CCT, ROWPVT-4, and MCDI were all negatively associated with pandemic-related disruptions related to anxiety (r12=-.321; r1=-.332; r9=-.509), family relations (r12=-.590*; r1=-.155; r9=-.468), and childcare (r12=-.294; r1=-.468; r9=-.177). Although the small sample size for these preliminary data limits our power to detect significance, this trend is in the predicted direction, suggesting that increased pandemic-related disruption across multiple domains is associated with lower vocabulary scores. We anticipate presenting data on a full sample of 50 monolingual English participants. A sample of 50 participants would provide sufficient statistical power to detect a moderate effect size, adhering to a nominal alpha of 0.05 and ensuring a power level of 0.80.

Keywords: COVID-19, early vocabulary, home environment, language acquisition, multiple measures

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Authors: Elisa Santana-Monagas, Juan L. Núñez, Jaime León, Samuel Falcón, Celia Fernández, Rocío P. Solís

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Teaching practices have been widely studied in relation to students' outcomes, positioning themselves as one of their strongest catalysts and influencing students' emotional experiences. In the higher education context, teachers become even more crucial as many students ground their decisions on which courses to enroll in based on opinions and ratings of teachers from other students. Unfortunately, sometimes universities do not provide the personal, social, and academic stimulation students demand to be actively engaged. To evaluate their teachers, universities often rely on students' evaluations of teaching (SET) collected via Likert scale surveys. Despite its usefulness, such a method has been questioned in terms of validity and reliability. Alternatively, researchers can rely on qualitative answers to open-ended questions. However, the unstructured nature of the answers and a large amount of information obtained requires an overwhelming amount of work. The present work presents an alternative approach to analyse such data: sentiment analysis. To the best of our knowledge, no research before has included results from SA into an explanatory model to test how students' sentiments affect their emotional engagement in class. The sample of the present study included a total of 225 university students (Mean age = 26.16, SD = 7.4, 78.7 % women) from the Educational Sciences faculty of a public university in Spain. Data collection took place during the academic year 2021-2022. Students accessed an online questionnaire using a QR code. They were asked to answer the following open-ended question: "If you had to explain to a peer who doesn't know your teacher how he or she communicates in class, what would you tell them?". Sentiment analysis was performed using Microsoft's pre-trained model. The reliability of the measure was estimated between the tool and one of the researchers who coded all answers independently. The Cohen's kappa and the average pairwise percent agreement were estimated with ReCal2. Cohen's kappa was .68, and the agreement reached was 90.8%, both considered satisfactory. To test the hypothesis relations among SA and students' emotional engagement, a structural equation model (SEM) was estimated. Results demonstrated a good fit of the data: RMSEA = .04, SRMR = .03, TLI = .99, CFI = .99. Specifically, the results showed that student’s sentiment regarding their teachers’ teaching positively predicted their emotional engagement (β == .16 [.02, -.30]). In other words, when students' opinion toward their instructors' teaching practices is positive, it is more likely for students to engage emotionally in the subject. Altogether, the results show a promising future for sentiment analysis techniques in the field of education. They suggest the usefulness of this tool when evaluating relations among teaching practices and student outcomes.

Keywords: sentiment analysis, students' evaluation of teaching, structural-equation modelling, emotional engagement

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Authors: Huseyin Cetin, Halil Akmese, Sercan Aras, Vahit Aytekin

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Economic crisis, terrorism, global crisis and the relations between countries are the factors affecting tourism industry and tourism industry is vulnerable against these factors. In our study, there are two dimensions about Russian crisis. The crisis between Russia and Ukraine and decreased oil prices in global market have been entailed Russian economic crisis. This crisis has induced that the ruble, Russian currency, has depreciated against American dollars and consequently the purchasing power of Russian has weakened. This is the first dimension of our study. Second dimension is a political crisis between Turkey and Russia owing to the fact that the Russian Warcraft was brought down by Turkish army. The aim of this study is to explain the impact of the consequences of Russian crisis on Turkish tourism industry. The study has been limited only Antalya province.

Keywords: economic crisis, Turkey-Russian crisis, Turkey's tourism industry, tourism in Turkey

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Authors: Liz Jackson

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Fear is usually considered as a basic emotion. In society, it is normally cast as undesirable, but also as partly unavoidable. Fear can be said to underlie courage or be required for courage, or it can be understood as its foil. Fear is not normally promoted (intentionally) in education, or treated as something that should be cultivated in schools or in society. However, fear is a basic, to some extent unavoidable emotion, related to truly fearsome things in the world. Fear is also understood to underlie anxiety. Fear is seen as basically disruptive to education, while from a psychological view it is an ordinary state. that cannot be avoided altogether. Despite calls to diminish this negative and mixed feeling in education and society, it can be regarded as socially and personally valuable, and psychologically functional in some situations. One should not take for granted the goodness of fear. However, it can be productive to explore its moral worth, and uses and abuses. Such uncomfortable feelings and experiences can be cultivated and explored via educational and other societal influences, in ways that can benefit a person and their relations with others in the world, while they can also be detrimental.

Keywords: virtue ethics, philosophy of education, moral philosophy, fear

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Authors: Ismail Seçer

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The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between school burnout and academic motivation in high school students. The working group of the study consists of 455 students from the high schools in Erzurum city center, selected with appropriate sampling method. School Burnout Scale and Academic Motivation Scale were used in the study to collect data. Correlation analysis and structural equation modeling were used in the analysis of the data collected through the study. As a result of the study, it was determined that there are significant and negative relations between school burnout and academic motivation, and the school burnout has direct and indirect significant effects on the getting over himself, using knowledge and exploration dimension through the latent variable of academic motivation. Lastly, it was determined that school burnout is a significant predictor of academic motivation.

Keywords: school burnout, motivation, structural equation modeling, university

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Authors: Samah Benmerbi, Kamal Amroun, Abdelkamel Tari

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The increasing number of Web service (WS)providers throughout the globe, have produced numerous Web services providing the same or similar functionality. Therefore, there is a need of tools developing the best answer of queries by selecting and composing services with total transparency. This paper reviews various QoS based Web service selection mechanisms and architectures which facilitate qualitatively optimal selection, in other fact Web service composition is required when a request cannot be fulfilled by a single web service. In such cases, it is preferable to integrate existing web services to satisfy user’s request. We introduce an automatic Web service composition method based on hypergraph decomposition using hypertree decomposition method. The problem of selection and the composition of the web services is transformed into a resolution in a hypertree by exploring the relations of dependency between web services to get composite web service via employing an execution order of WS satisfying global request.

Keywords: web service, web service selection, web service composition, QoS, hypergraph decomposition, BE hypergraph decomposition, hypertree resolution

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Authors: Purnomo Yustianto, Robin Doss, Novianto B. Kurniawan Suhardi

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Since its inception, the design activities of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has been guided with aspects from the Service Design Principles (SDP), such as cohesion, granularity, loose coupling, discoverability, and autonomy, etc. The goal of this paper is two folds. The first is to examine the position of SDP within the context of software quality, and the second is to reframe the aspects of SDP into a more concise terms and relations. This paper is divided into four parts, in which after the introduction, a review on related software quality is provided to determine the quality context of SDP. The third part reviews the original SDP and offers a relation model among the SDP aspects. The fourth part explores the design quality metrics available for SOA and proposes a relationship representing the design quality. Among the aspects of design principles, the cohesion and coupling aspect is determined to be the two important aspects for achieving reusability of a service.

Keywords: SOA, software quality, service design principle, reusability, cohesion, coupling

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Authors: Khalil Khanafer

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The objective of this study is to determine if there is a correlation between the biological levels of matrix metalloproteinases and tissue inhibitor of matrix metalloproteinase (TIMP) and the elastic moduli of the ascending aortic wall in patients with ascending thoracic aortic aneurysms (ATAA). Methods: Circumferential specimens from twelve patients with ATAA were obtained from the greater curvature, and their tensile properties (maximum elastic modulus) were tested uniaxially. The levels of MMP2, 3, and 9, as well as TIMP1, were determined in these aortic wall specimens using MMP/TIMP antibodies array. Direct relations were found between MMP2 and the elastic modulus of the ascending aorta wall and between MMP9 and TIMP1.

Keywords: elastic modulus, MMPs/TIMPs levels, Ascending Thoracic Aortic Aneurysm

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Authors: Fahimeh Hooshyar, Seyyed Mojtaba Abtahi

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Democracy which is, in its greek roots, consisted of “Demo” (People) and “Kratic” (people) is referring to governing of the people or governing by the people. in its widest definition it refers to a common lifestyle in which all the people has the equal potentials for social participating. But in political perspective, democracy is looking for the equal participation right of the citizens in political decision-making process. in this viewpoint, the democracy is solely a political construct or a social-political style in which all the values are relative. In this definition of the democracy emphasis is on equality of the people based on the governing rule and the natural social and political rights of every member of humankind. This notion of democracy by no means is a self reliant idea and the need of an ideological basis for approaching to this idea is inevitable. In this paper we are trying to define the inter-relations of democracy and its philosophical basis to Islamic fundamental ideas. Our approach to this topic would be a philosophical ideological one.

Keywords: Islam, democracy, democracy’s philosophical basis, secularism, fundamentalism

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Authors: Michal Lysek, Mike Danilovic, Jasmine Lihua Liu

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HMS Industrial Networks AB has been recognized as one of the most innovative companies in the industrial communication industry worldwide. The creation of their Anybus innovation during the 1990s contributed considerably to the company’s success. From inception, HMS’ employees were innovating for the purpose of creating new business (the creation phase). After the Anybus innovation, they began the process of internationalization (the commercialization phase), which in turn led them to concentrate on cost reduction, product quality, delivery precision, operational efficiency, and increasing growth (the growth phase). As a result of this transformation, performing new radical innovations have become more complicated. The purpose of our research was to explore the dynamics of innovation at HMS from the aspect of key actors, activities, and events, over the three phases, in order to understand what led to the creation of their Anybus innovation, and why it has become increasingly challenging for HMS to create new radical innovations for the future. Our research methodology was based on a longitudinal, retrospective study from the inception of HMS in 1988 to 2014, a single case study inspired by the grounded theory approach. We conducted 47 interviews and collected 1 024 historical documents for our research. Our analysis has revealed that HMS’ success in creating the Anybus, and developing a successful business around the innovation, was based on three main capabilities – cultivating customer relations on different managerial and organizational levels, inspiring business relations, and balancing complementary human assets for the purpose of business creation. The success of HMS has turned the management’s attention away from past activities of key actors, of their behavior, and how they influenced and stimulated the creation of radical innovations. Nowadays, they are rhetorically focusing on creativity and innovation. All the while, their real actions put emphasis on growth, cost reduction, product quality, delivery precision, operational efficiency, and moneymaking. In the process of becoming an international company, HMS gradually refocused. In so doing they became profitable and successful, but they also forgot what made them innovative in the first place. Fortunately, HMS’ management has come to realize that this is the case and they are now in search of recapturing innovation once again. Our analysis indicates that HMS’ management is facing several barriers to innovation related path dependency and other lock-in phenomena. HMS’ management has been captured, trapped in their mindset and actions, by the success of the past. But now their future has to be secured, and they have come to realize that moneymaking is not everything. In recent years, HMS’ management have begun to search for innovation once more, in order to recapture their past capabilities for creating radical innovations. In order to unlock their managerial perceptions of customer needs and their counter-innovation driven activities and events, to utilize the full potential of their employees and capture the innovation opportunity for the future.

Keywords: barriers to innovation, dynamics of innovation, in search of excellence and innovation, radical innovation

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Authors: Cory Cannon

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In the current era of shrinking budgets, increasing amounts of worldwide natural disasters, state and non-state initiated conflicts within the world. The response has involved multinational coalitions to conduct effective military operations. The need for a Knowledge Management strategy when developing these coalitions have been overlooked in the past and the need for developing these accords early on will save time and help shape the way information and knowledge are transferred from the staff and action officers of the coalition to the decision-makers in order to make timely decisions within an ever changing environment. The aim of this paper is to show how Knowledge Management has developed within the United States military and how the transformation of working within a Combined/ Joint environment in both the Middle East and the Far East has improved relations between members of the coalitions as well as being more effective as a military force. These same principles could be applied to multinational corporations when dealing with cultures and decision-making processes.

Keywords: civil-military, culture, joint environment, knowledge management

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Authors: Al-Molhem, Y.

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This work aimed to study the influence of a geotextile material under sprinkler irrigation on the availability of soil moisture content and salinity of 40 cm top soil profile. Field experiment was carried out to measure soil moisture content, soil salinity and water application efficiency under sprinkler irrigation system. The results indicated that, the mats placed at 20 cm depth leads to increasing of the availability of soil moisture content in the root zone. The results further showed increases in water application efficiency because of using the geotextile material. In addition, soil salinity in the root zone decreased because of increasing soil moisture content.

Keywords: geotextile, moisture content, sprinkler irrigation

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Authors: Reza Nasrollahpour, Mohamad Hidayat Bin Jamal, Zulhilmi Bin Ismail

Abstract:

Density currents are generated when the fluid of one density is released into another fluid with a different density. These currents occur in a variety of natural and man-made environments, and this emphasises the importance of studying them. In most practical cases, the density currents flow over the surfaces which are not plane; however, there have been limited investigations in this regard. This study uses laboratory experiments to analyse the influence of bottom roughness on the velocity distribution within these dense underflows. The currents are analysed over a plane surface and three different configurations of beam-roughened beds. The velocity profiles are collected using Acoustic Doppler Velocimetry technique, and the distribution of velocity within these currents is formulated for the tested beds. The results indicate that the empirical power and Gaussian relations can describe the velocity distribution in the inner and outer regions of the profiles, respectively. Moreover, it is found that the bottom roughness is the primary controlling parameter in the inner region.

Keywords: density currents, velocity profiles, Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter, bed roughness

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Authors: Nawal Alawad, Passent Ibrahim Tantawi, Mohamed Abdel Salam Ragheb

Abstract:

Providing customers with quality experiences has been confirmed to be a sustainable, competitive advantage with a distinct financial impact for companies. The success of service providers now relies on their ability to provide customer-centric services. The importance of perceived service quality and customer experience is widely recognized. The focus of this research is in the area of mobile and fixed broadband services. This study is of dual importance both academically and practically. Academically, this research applies a new model investigating the impact of customer experience quality on loyalty based on modifying the multiple-item scale for measuring customers’ service experience in a new area and did not depend on the traditional models. The integrated scale embraces four dimensions: service experience, outcome focus, moments of truth and peace of mind. In addition, it gives a scientific explanation for this relationship so this research fill the gap in such relations in which no one correlate or give explanations for these relations before using such integrated model and this is the first time to apply such modified and integrated new model in telecom field. Practically, this research gives insights to marketers and practitioners to improve customer loyalty through evolving the experience quality of broadband customers which is interpreted to suggested outcomes: purchase, commitment, repeat purchase and word-of-mouth, this approach is one of the emerging topics in service marketing. Data were collected through 412 questionnaires and analyzed by using structural equation modeling.Findings revealed that both outcome focus and moments of truth have a significant impact on loyalty while both service experience and peace of mind have insignificant impact on loyalty.In addition, it was found that 72% of the variation occurring in loyalty is explained by the model. The researcher also measured the net prompters score and gave explanation for the results. Furthermore, assessed customer’s priorities of broadband services. The researcher recommends that the findings of this research will extend to be considered in the future plans of Telecom Egypt Group. In addition, to be applied in the same industry especially in the developing countries that have the same circumstances with similar service settings. This research is a positive contribution in service marketing, particularly in telecom industry for making marketing more reliable as managers can relate investments in service experience directly with the performance closest to income for instance, repurchasing behavior, positive word of mouth and, commitment. Finally, the researcher recommends that future studies should consider this model to explain significant marketing outcomes such as share of wallet and ultimately profitability.

Keywords: broadband services, customer experience quality, loyalty, net promoters score

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Authors: Nadia Degregori

Abstract:

This paper focuses on Peru’s Environmental Impact Assessment’s communication and participation mechanisms, whose rationale is to prevent conflictive situations by –supposedly- providing high-quality information about mining projects and their impacts to affected stakeholders. It is argued that, in fact, these mechanisms enhance citizens’ feelings of fear and/or mistrust towards mining projects and the companies behind them because their design follows a top-down perspective that limits “participation” to a passive reception of information, and which does not address power unbalances between communities and companies or government. As well, the paper contends that this way of managing the social aspects of Environmental Impact Assessments in Peru leads stakeholders who possess less power (typically communities) to incline towards maintaining the status quo and avoiding negotiations with either the central government or mining companies as a defence mechanism for avoiding a bad negotiation.

Keywords: community relations, environmental impact assessments, governance and participation, mining, Peru

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Authors: Mindaugas Kazlauskas

Abstract:

In this paper, it is presupposed that the description of the relationship between animal and human should begin with a description of the direct experience of the animal and how, in this experience, the human experiences itself (a self awareness mode). A human is concerned first and foremost with himself as a human through the experience of another as an animal. The questionsare: In the encounter with an animal, how is the animal constituted in the acts of human experience? How does human-animal interaction influence human behavioral patterns, and how does the human identifies itself in this interaction? The paper will present the results of interpretative phenomenological descriptions (IPA) of the relationship between human and animal in the face of death phenomenon through the experience of pet owners who lost their beloved companions and hunters, veterinatians, and farmers who face animal death. The results of IPA analysis reveal different relations such as the identification with an animal, the alienation experience, the experience of resistance, and an experience of detachment. Within these themes, IPA qualitative research results will be presented by highlighting patterns of human behavior, following Friedrich Schlachermacher's hermeneutics methodological principles, and reflecting on changes in value and attitude within society during daily interaction with the animal.

Keywords: animal human interaction, phenomenology, philosophy, death phenomenon

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Authors: Morinta Rosandini

Abstract:

Bima Tembe is an excellent sample of cultural artifact that many people regard it as: (1) manufactured by a traditional techniques, (2) contained with variety forms and great philosophical motifs, and (3) having valued functions related to women status in the society. This research examined elements of Bima Tembe and their relations and one of the usage of tembe, named Rimpus. The elements include: (1) the traditional techniques of making Bima Tembe, (2) the variety forms (3) and philosophical motifs of Bima Tembe. Rimpu, is a cultural women clothes in Bima, which use Bima Tembe as a main part. From this reseacrh found that the Bima Tembe made by weaving technique using a traditional loom, and has two types of Tembe; Tembe Istana and Tembe Rakyat, with various motif each type. The The usage of Rimpu is as a symbol of the obedience to God and the type of Rimpu indicate the women status in the society.

Keywords: bima, tembe, rimpu, clothes

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