Search results for: survival and development

Authors: Supattra Pranee

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The objectives of this research were to study the product development process to obtain a community standard product certificate and to set a guideline for the product development process to obtain the community product certificate. Focus group discussion was conducted with many experts in the field, local government officials, and representatives from local producers in Bangkontee district. The findings revealed that there were eight important processes to obtain the community product certificate: 1) prepare document, 2) submit the document, 3) set up an appointment for onsite inspection, 4) onsite inspection and sample collections, 5) evaluate samples, 6) obtain test result, and 7) obtain certificate.

Keywords: perceived values, tourist destination, visiting, product development

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Authors: Tris Kee

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As the urban design discipline develops renewed interests in participatory design and collaborative place-making, it becomes critical to review the potential and limitations in current processes to ensure a sustainable method for future development.This paper explores how collaborative design can be a key to future sustainable urban development through two case studies from Asia.The process involves a multi-disciplinary collaboration and an innovative learning process by sharing ideas as well as careful consideration on social, economic and political circumstances among government and district stakeholders.This intrinsic proposition of innovative participatory planning implies interdisciplinary collaboration between professionals and local residents to integrate knowledge into new urban place-making thinking.Design innovation in contemporary society can manifest itself in the discourse sustainable urban development by bottom-up planning and community driven design. This paper examines the emerging design pedagogy which promotes interdisciplinary coalition of professionals and local stakeholders in community development as an innovative design rubric to create a sustainable urban approach.Through two case studies in Hong Kong, this paper reviews and critically evaluates the process of how the notion of sustainable development in contemporary urban planning theory is underpinned by the collaborative design practice.

Keywords: collaborative design, design innovation, sustainable development, urban development

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Authors: Nyussupova Gulnara, Kenespayeva Laura, Kelinbayeva Roza, Aubakirova Gaukhar, Zhumagulov Chingiz, Aidarkhanova Gaukhar

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The article analyzes the development of demographic processes in four regions of the Western region of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Aktobe, Atyrau, West Kazakhstan, and Mangystau) for the period from 2000 to 2022. This study uses theoretical and methodological analysis of scientific literature, methods of comparative, statistical analysis, GIS methods, grouping and systematization, index method and structural analysis. The research identified regional characteristics, development trends, and disproportions in the population of the studied areas within the framework of sustainable demographic development. The population dynamics, the age-sex structure of the population, life expectancy, natural movement of the population, including maternal and infant mortality, are considered as important indicators of the region’s sustainability. The features of migration processes in the Western region of Kazakhstan and the factors that determine them are identified. Conclusions are drawn about the level of sustainable development of the population of the studied region based on demographic processes. The results obtained will provide scientific, methodological and information support in the sectors of economics and science, including the preparation of socio-economic development programs and the development of scientific research using GIS.

Keywords: sustainable development, demographic processes, Western Region, Republic of Kazakhstan, population structure, natural population movement, migration

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Authors: Astrid Tannert, Anuradha Ramoji, Christina Ebert, Frederike Gladigau, Lorena Tuchscherr, Jürgen Popp, Ute Neugebauer

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Staphylococcus aureus is a facultative intracellular pathogen, which by entering host cells may evade immunologic host response as well as antimicrobial treatment. In that way, S. aureus can cause persistent intracellular infections which are difficult to treat. Depending on the strain, S. aureus may persist at different intracellular locations like the phagolysosome. The first barrier invading pathogens from the blood stream that they have to cross are the endothelial cells lining the inner surface of blood and lymphatic vessels. Upon proceeding from an acute to a chronic infection, intracellular pathogens undergo certain biochemical and structural changes including a deceleration of metabolic processes to adopt for long-term intracellular survival and the development of a special phenotype designated as small colony variant. In this study, the endothelial cell line Ea.hy 926 was used as a model for acute and chronic S. aureus infection. To this end, Ea.hy 926 cells were cultured on QIAscout™ Microraft Arrays, a special graded cell culture substrate that contains around 12,000 microrafts of 200 µm edge length. After attachment to the substrate, the endothelial cells were infected with GFP-expressing S. aureus for 3 weeks. The acute infection and the development of persistent bacteria was followed by confocal laser scanning microscopy, scanning the whole Microraft Array for the presence and for detailed determination of the intracellular location of fluorescent intracellular bacteria every second day. After three weeks of infection representative microrafts containing infected cells, cells with protruded infections and cells that did never show any infection were isolated and fixed for Raman micro-spectroscopic investigation. For comparison, also microrafts with acute infection were isolated. The acquired Raman spectra are correlated with the fluorescence microscopic images to give hints about a) the molecular alterations in endothelial cells during acute and chronic infection compared to non-infected cells, and b) metabolic and structural changes within the pathogen when entering a mode of persistence within host cells. We thank Dr. Ruth Kläver from QIAGEN GmbH for her support regarding QIAscout technology. Financial support by the BMBF via the CSCC (FKZ 01EO1502) and from the DFG via the Jena Biophotonic and Imaging Laboratory (JBIL, FKZ PO 633/29-1, BA 1601/10-1) is highly acknowledged.

Keywords: correlative image analysis, intracellular infection, pathogen-host adaption, Raman micro-spectroscopy

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Authors: Nandini Mohan, Thiruvengadam R. B.

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Mahatma Gandhi advocated that the true indicator of modern India lay in the development of its villages. This has been proven with the recent outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic and the surfacing predicament of our urban centers. Developed on the Industrialization model, the current state of the metropolis is of rampant overcrowding, high rates of unemployment, inadequate infrastructure, and resources to cater to the growing population. A majority of each city’s strength composes of the migrant population, demonstrated through the migrant crisis, a direct repercussion of COVID-19. This paper explores the ideology of how rural development can act as a tactic to counter the high rates of rural-urban migration. It establishes the need for a rural push, as India is predominantly an agrarian economy, with a vast disparity between the urban and rural centers due to its urban bias. It seeks to define development in holistic terms. It studies the models of ‘cluster’ as conceptualized by V.K.R.V. Rao, and detailed by Architect Charles Correa in his book, The New Landscape. The paper reexamines the theory of cluster development through existing models proposed by the government of India. Namely, PURA (Provision of Urban Amenities in Rural Areas), DRI (Deendayal Research Institute), and Rurban under Shyama Prasad Mukharjee Rurban Mission. It analyses the models, their strengths, weaknesses, and reasons for their failure and success to derive parameters for the ideation of an archetype model. A model of rural development that talks of the simultaneous development of existing adjacent villages, by the introduction of set unique functions, that may turn into self-sustaining clusters or agglomerations in the future, which could serve as the next step for Indian village development based on the cluster ideology.

Keywords: counter migration, models of rural development, cluster development theory, India

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Authors: Anupam Das

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Although financial liberalization has been one of the most important policy prescriptions of international organizations like the World Bank and the IMF, the effect of financial liberalization on economic growth in developing countries is far from unanimous. Since the '80s, South Asian countries made a significant development in liberalization the financial sector. However, due to unavailability of a sufficient number of time series observations, the relationship between economic growth and financial development has not been investigated adequately. We aim to fill this gap by examining time series data of five developing countries from the South Asian region: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. Applying the cointegration tests and Granger causality within the vector error correction model (VECM), we do not find unanimous evidence of financial development on positive economic growth. These results are helpful for developing countries which have been trying to liberalize the financial sector in recent decades.

Keywords: economic growth, financial development, Granger causality, South Asia

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Authors: Rizgar Abdullah Sabir Jaf, Bayan Sedeeq Azeez Hussin, Dler Moosa Ahmed Karim

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Presently, economic and technological developments are growing faster in an unparalleled way. The result of that is innovative changing a great deal of a great deal of assumption, concepts, transactions, and high of competition between companies all over the world. The title of the thesis is one of the subjects that get large concerns in the financial and business world in the present time. That is because many competitive firms have appeared in the regional and global markets and the rapid changes that covered all fields of life. The subjects of the dissertation have a special importance in making the firm's businesses succeed in general and the industrial firms especially. Thus, the basic purpose of this study is to determine whether target costing is used in the costing application process in their customer expectation, profit margin, cost and price determination, cost reduction and management operations. In today’s intensely competitive and highly volatile business environment, consistent development of low cost and high quality products meeting the functional requirements is a key to a company's survival. Companies continuously strive to reduce the costs while still producing quality products to stay ahead in the competition. Many companies have turned to target costing to achieve this objective. The results indicate that there is a significant positive relationship (at the significance level less than 0.05) between the factors competitive advantage and management accounting techniques in the firm's sample study.

Keywords: strategic information, target cost, competitive advantage, Iraqi soft drink firms

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Authors: Vanessa Kummer, Maik Meusel

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Real estate demand estimates are typically derived from transaction data. However, in regions with excess demand, transactions are driven by supply and therefore do not indicate what people are actually looking for. To estimate the demand for housing in Switzerland, search subscriptions from all important Swiss real estate platforms are used. These data do, however, suffer from missing information—for example, many users do not specify how many rooms they would like or what price they would be willing to pay. In economic analyses, it is often the case that only complete data is used. Usually, however, the proportion of complete data is rather small which leads to most information being neglected. Also, the data might have a strong distortion if it is complete. In addition, the reason that data is missing might itself also contain information, which is however ignored with that approach. An interesting issue is, therefore, if for economic analyses such as the one at hand, there is an added value by using the whole data set with the imputed missing values compared to using the usually small percentage of complete data (baseline). Also, it is interesting to see how different algorithms affect that result. The imputation of the missing data is done using unsupervised learning. Out of the numerous unsupervised learning approaches, the most common ones, such as clustering, principal component analysis, or neural networks techniques are applied. By training the model iteratively on the imputed data and, thereby, including the information of all data into the model, the distortion of the first training set—the complete data—vanishes. In a next step, the performances of the algorithms are measured. This is done by randomly creating missing values in subsets of the data, estimating those values with the relevant algorithms and several parameter combinations, and comparing the estimates to the actual data. After having found the optimal parameter set for each algorithm, the missing values are being imputed. Using the resulting data sets, the next step is to estimate the willingness to pay for real estate. This is done by fitting price distributions for real estate properties with certain characteristics, such as the region or the number of rooms. Based on these distributions, survival functions are computed to obtain the functional relationship between characteristics and selling probabilities. Comparing the survival functions shows that estimates which are based on imputed data sets do not differ significantly from each other; however, the demand estimate that is derived from the baseline data does. This indicates that the baseline data set does not include all available information and is therefore not representative for the entire sample. Also, demand estimates derived from the whole data set are much more accurate than the baseline estimation. Thus, in order to obtain optimal results, it is important to make use of all available data, even though it involves additional procedures such as data imputation.

Keywords: demand estimate, missing-data imputation, real estate, unsupervised learning

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Authors: Intan Azura Mokhtar, Yaacob Ibrahim

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In recent years, learning about sustainable development and sustainability has become an increasingly significant component in universities’ degree programmes and curricula. As the world comes together and races to fulfil the 17 United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs) by the year 2030, our educational curricula and landscapes simultaneously evolve to integrate lessons and opportunities for sustainable development and sustainability to redefine our university education and set the trajectory for our young people to take the lead in co-creating solutions for a better world. In this paper, initiatives and projects that revolved around themes of sustainable development and sustainability in a young university in Singapore are discussed. These initiatives and projects were curated by a new centre in the university that focuses on community leadership, social innovation, and service learning and was led by the university’s academic staff. The university’s undergraduate students were also involved in these initiatives and projects and played an active role in reaching out to and engaging members of different segments of the community – to better understand their needs and concerns and to co-create with them relevant and sustainable solutions that generate positive social impact.

Keywords: singapore, sustainable development, sustainability, undergraduate education

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Authors: Yao Wu

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In the context of financial globalization, China has put forward the policy goal of high-quality development, and the digital economy, with its advantage of information resources, is driving China's export trade to achieve high-quality development. Due to the long-standing financing constraints of small and medium-sized export enterprises, how to expand the export scale of small and medium-sized enterprises has become a major threshold for the development of China's export trade. This paper firstly adopts the hierarchical analysis method to establish the evaluation system of high-quality development of China's export trade; secondly, the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2011 to 2018 are selected for empirical analysis to establish the impact model of digital inclusive finance on the high-quality development of China's export trade; based on the analysis of heterogeneous enterprise trade model, a mediating effect model is established to verify the mediating role of credit constraint in the development of high-quality export trade in China. Based on the above analysis, this paper concludes that inclusive digital finance, with its unique digital and inclusive nature, alleviates the credit constraint problem among SMEs, enhances the binary marginal effect of SMEs' exports, optimizes their export scale and structure, and promotes the high-quality development of regional and even national export trade. Finally, based on the findings of this paper, we propose insights and suggestions for inclusive digital finance to promote the high-quality development of export trade.

Keywords: digital inclusive finance, high-quality development of export trade, fixed effects, binary marginal effects

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Authors: E. K. A. Ogunshile

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This paper is aimed at creating an Automatic Java X-Machine testing tool for software development. The nature of software development is changing; thus, the type of software testing tools required is also changing. Software is growing increasingly complex and, in part due to commercial impetus for faster software releases with new features and value, increasingly in danger of containing faults. These faults can incur huge cost for software development organisations and users; Cambridge Judge Business School’s research estimated the cost of software bugs to the global economy is $312 billion. Beyond the cost, faster software development methodologies and increasing expectations on developers to become testers is driving demand for faster, automated, and effective tools to prevent potential faults as early as possible in the software development lifecycle. Using X-Machine theory, this paper will explore a new tool to address software complexity, changing expectations on developers, faster development pressures and methodologies, with a view to reducing the huge cost of fixing software bugs.

Keywords: conformance testing, finite state machine, software testing, x-machine

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Authors: Sishen Wang

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Chinese rural industry development is the major task currently during rapid urbanization. Development of potentiality assessment, evaluate the overall suitability of each village for further industrial development, could offer reference for policy makers, especially considering the limited data available in Chinese rural regions. The study focuses on 157 official villages in Fuliang County and evaluates their development potentiality by their topography, transportation condition, population, income of villagers, infrastructure and environmental conditions. Land cover changes for Fuliang county and surrounding areas of each village is also investigated for reference. The final development potentiality of each village was calculated by adding different weighted scores of different categories. Besides, inverse distance weighting (IDW) images for both final score of development potentiality and each factor were made and compared to help to understand the final result. The study found that village in the southern and northern regions have higher development potentiality than villages in the eastern and western regions, mainly because of higher income of villagers, good accessibilities and a large amount of population size. In addition, the Fuliang county was divided into five regions based on final result and policy reference for the development of each region were put forward individually. In addition, three suggestions were made for better local development potentiality: Firstly, the transportation accessibility needs to be improved in the northern regions by building more public transit system there. Secondly, the environmental conditions and infrastructure conditions in the eastern region of the county need some improvement. Thirdly, some encouragement and job opportunities should beset up in the western regions to attract labor force to move in and settle down.

Keywords: development potentiality, Fuliang GIS-Based, GIS, official village

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Authors: Débora Ramos Santiago

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Endogenous development usually apresent a deep approach to locational aspects, considering the potential, knowledge and the workforce, as encouragement to articulate the entire productive activity of a community. In the case of communities located around the area of management of the company Precious Wood Amazon (PWA), their endogenous development is subject to the dynamic of this company, which operates a certified way, seeking alternatives to mitigate and compensate the damages caused by its activities. This article soughts to present the socio-economic and environmental challenges to promote of the endogenous development of these communities, identifying the relationship of the PWA in this process. The communities analyzed emerge with poor socioeconomic conditions, futhermore, their ecosystem characteristics differ spatially from each other, which modifies the entire production dynamics. The family agriculture was an important source of income, but needs investment and technical assistance. The participation of PWA in the promotion of the endogenous development of the communities was proved significant, because of the intense sustainable actions practice by PWA. Many are the challenges that exist in these communities, so its fundamental to elaborate public policies to these specific areas.

Keywords: endogenous development, traditional communities, Amazon, PWA

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Authors: Ahmed M. Jihad

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The paper presents the concept of sustainable development, and the role of geographic techniques in the design, planning and presentation of maps of smart cities with geographical vision, and the identification of programs and tools, and models of maps of Arab cities, is the problem of research in how to apply, process and experience these programs? What is the role of geographic techniques in planning and mapping the optimal place for these cities? The paper proposes an addition to the designs of Iraqi cities, as it can be developed in the future to serve as a model for interactive smart cities by developing its services. The importance of this paper stems from the concept of sustainable development dynamic which has become a method of development imposed by the present era in rapid development to achieve social balance and specialized programs in draw paper argues that ensuring sustainable development is achieved through the use of information technology. The paper will follow the theoretical presentation of the importance of the concept of development, design tools and programs. The paper follows the method of analysis of modern systems (System Analysis Approach) through the latest programs will provide results can be said that the new Iraqi cities can be developed with smart technologies, like some of the Arab and European cities that were newly created through the introduction of international investment, and therefore Plans can be made to select the best programs in manufacturing and producing maps and smart cities in the future.

Keywords: geographic techniques, planning the cities, smart cities, sustainable development

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Authors: Inese Trusina, Elita Jermolajeva

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Global challenges require a transition from the existing linear economic model to a model that will consider nature as a life support system for the developmenton the way to social well-being in the frame of the ecological economics paradigm. The article presentsbasic definitions for the development of formalized description of sustainabledevelopment monitoring. It provides examples of calculating the parameters of monitoring for the Baltic Sea region countries and their primary interpretation.

Keywords: sustainability, development, power, ecological economics, regional economic, monitoring

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Authors: Masri Baharom

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The purpose of the study is to identify the age group of children 9 who have experienced delays in gross motor development. Instrument used in this study is Test Gross Motor Development / TGMD-2 (Ulrich, 2000) which was adopted at the international level. Gross motor development data were obtained by video recording (Sony (DRC-SR42 with a 40x optical zoom capability, and software Ultimate Studio 14) on locomotor and manipulative skills. A total n = 192 persons, children of 9 years (9.30 ± .431) at Sekolah Kebangsaan Mutiara Perdana, Bayan Lepas, Penang were involved as subjects. Children age 9 years experienced delays AELS (4.61 ± .69), AEMS (5:52 ± .62) and GMDQ (7.26 ± .2.14). The findings based on descriptive rating indicated that the performance of children age 9 years acquired low levels of AELS, MSS, AEMS and very low in LSS and GMDS.

Keywords: gross motor development score, locomotor standard score, age equivalent locomotor score, manipulative standard score, age equivalent manipulative score

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Authors: Jiří F. Urbánek, Alena Oulehlová, Hana Malachová, Jiří J. Urbánek Jr.

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Crisis situations investigation and modelling are introduced and made within the complex system of energetic critical infrastructure, operating on peril´s environments. Every crisis situations and perils has an origin in the emergency/ crisis event occurrence and they need critical/ crisis interfaces assessment. Here, the emergency events can be expected - then crisis scenarios can be pre-prepared by pertinent organizational crisis management authorities towards their coping; or it may be unexpected - without pre-prepared scenario of event. But the both need operational coping by means of crisis management as well. The operation, forms, characteristics, behaviour and utilization of crisis management have various qualities, depending on real critical infrastructure organization perils, and prevention training processes. An aim is always - better security and continuity of the organization, which successful obtainment needs to find and investigate critical/ crisis zones and functions in critical infrastructure organization models, operating in pertinent perils environment. Our DYVELOP (Dynamic Vector Logistics of Processes) method is disposables for it. Here, it is necessary to derive and create identification algorithm of critical/ crisis interfaces. The locations of critical/ crisis interfaces are the flags of crisis situation in organization of critical infrastructure models. Then, the model of crisis situation will be displayed at real organization of Czech energetic crisis infrastructure subject in real peril environment. These efficient measures are necessary for the infrastructure protection. They will be derived for peril mitigation, crisis situation coping and for environmentally friendly organization survival, continuity and its sustainable development advanced possibilities.

Keywords: algorithms, energetic infrastructure complex system, modelling, peril´s environment

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Authors: Peter Burggräf, Moritz Krunke, Hanno Voet

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Due to shortening product and technology lifecycles, many companies use standardization approaches in product development and factory planning to reduce costs and time to market. Unlike large companies, where modular systems are already widely used, small and medium-sized companies often show a much lower degree of standardization due to lower scale effects and missing capacities for the development of these standards. To overcome these challenges, the development of industry sector specific standards in cooperations or by third parties is an interesting approach. This paper analyzes which branches that are mainly dominated by small or medium-sized companies might be especially interesting for the development of factory standards using the example of the German industry. For this, a key performance indicator based approach was developed that will be presented in detail with its specific results for the German industry structure.

Keywords: factory planning, factory standards, industry sector specific standardization, production planning

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Authors: Kati Skarp, Keijo Varis, Juha Kettunen

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The purpose of this paper is to examine and evaluate the top-down and bottom-up leadership development programs focused on human capital that improve the performance of a company. This study reports on the external top-down leadership development program supported by a consulting company and the internal participatory action research of the bottom-up program. The sickness rate and the lost time incident failure rate decreased and the ideas produced for cost savings improved, leading to increased earnings during the top-down program. The estimated cost savings potential of the bottom-up program was 3.8 million euro based on the cost savings of meeting habits, maintenance practices and the way of working in production. The results of this study are useful for those who plan and evaluate leadership development and human capital productivity consultation programs to improve the performance of a company.

Keywords: leadership, development, human resources, company, indicators, evaluation

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Authors: B. B. van Schalkwyk, C. B. Schoeman, E. J. Cilliers

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High levels of urbanisation and the lingering effects of Apartheid have caused South African municipalities to experience difficulties in planning for sustainability and, more specifically, sustainable community development. Sustainable community development is needed in order to achieve more integrated and sustainable towns and cities with an improved living environment and a higher quality of life. Due to this, sustainable community development is of particular relevance to South Africa. Although policies and legislation exist at international, national and local level, there is a lack of suitable planning instruments to guide sustainable community development. Tlokwe Local Municipality is researched in this paper as study area to test and develop planning instruments for sustainable community development. A comparative assessment matrix of sustainability indicators is linked to Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) and applied to identify the themes and sub-themes applicable to sustainability in which intervention is required to improve the sustainability rating of the municipality. The result of the comparative sustainability assessment is that the Tlokwe Local Municipality is considered to be relatively sustainable, performing overall better than the three spheres of government against which it was measured. It is recommended that municipalities use the comparative assessment matrix method to determine its level of sustainability when developing respective sectorial plans (SDFs, ITPs, EMFs and IDPs). Areas in which there is a lack of sustainability are highlighted and can consequently be addressed through intervention strategies. The comparative assessment matrix method is a valuable planning instrument with which to achieve sustainable community development.

Keywords: sustainable community development, sustainability indicators, comparative sustainability, urbanisation, development planning, urban management

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Authors: Naseem Fatima, A. N. Srivastava, Tasleem Raza, Vijay Kumar

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Introduction: Carcinoma gallbladder is third most common gastrointestinal lethal disease with the highest incidence and mortality rate among women in Northern India. Scientists have found several risk factors that make a person more likely to develop gallbladder cancer; among these risk factors, deregulation of miRNAs has been demonstrated to be one of the most crucial factors. The changes in the expression of specific miRNA genes result in the control of inflammation, cell cycle regulation, stress response, proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis and invasion thus mediate the process in tumorgenesis. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of MiRNA-335 and may as a molecular marker in early detection of gallbladder cancer in suspected cases. Material and Methods: A total of 20 consecutive patients with gallbladder cancer aged between 30-75 years were registered for the study. Total RNA was extracted from tissue by using the mirVANA MiRNA isolation Kit according to the manufacturer’s protocol. The MiRNA- 335 and U6 snRNA-specific cDNA were reverse-transcribed from total RNA using Taqman microRNA reverse-transcription kit according to the manufacturer’s protocol. TaqMan MiRNA probes hsa-miR-335 and Taqman Master Mix without AmpEase UNG, Individual real-time PCR assays were performed in a 20 μL reaction volume on a Real-Time PCR system (Applied Biosystems StepOnePlus™) to detect MiRNA-335 expression in tissue. Relative quantification of target MiRNA expression was evaluated using the comparative cycle threshold (CT) method. The correlation was done in between cycle threshold (CT Value) of target MiRNA in gallbladder cancer with respect to non-cancerous Cholelithiasis gallbladder. Each sample was examined in triplicate. The Newman-Keuls Multiple Comparison Test was used to determine the expression of miR-335. Results: MiRNA335 was found to be significantly downregulated in the gallbladder cancer tissue (P<0.001), when compared with non-cancerous Cholelithiasis gallbladder cases. Out of 20 cases, 75% showed reduced expression of MiRNA335, were at last stage of disease with low overall survival rate and remaining 25% were showed up-regulated expression of MiRNA335 with high survival rate. Conclusion: The present study showed that reduced expression of MiRNA335 is associated with the advancement of the disease, and its deregulation may provide important clues to understanding it as a prognostic marker and opportunities for future research.

Keywords: carcinoma gallbladder, downregulation, MiRNA-335, RT-PCR assay

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Authors: João P. E. De Souza, Rob Dekkers

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Whereas lean product development aims at maximising customer value whilst optimising product and process design, the question arises whether this approach includes sustainability. A systematic literature review reveals that methods associated with this conceptualisation of product development are suitable for including sustainability, but that the criteria for the triple-bottom line need to be included when using these methods; this is particularly the case for social aspects. Thus, the main finding is that not new methods should be developed, but that existing methods should be more inclusive towards all aspects of sustainability and product life-cycle thinking.

Keywords: lean product development, product life-cycle, sustainability, systematic literature review, triple bottom-line

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Authors: Jonathan E. Oghenekohwo

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The return to scale constitutes a significant investment index in the determination of the quantum of resources that is deployed in investment decision on worker’s continuing professional development. Such investment decision is always predicted on the expected outcomes to the individual, institution and the society in context. Several investments in the development of human capacity on the job have been made, but the return to the scale of such seems not to have been correlated positively with the quantum of resources invested in terms of productivity and performance among workers in many universities. This paper thus found out that, despite the commitment and policy instrument to avail workers the right of continuing professional development, the multiplier effects are not evident in diligence, commitment, honesty, dedication, productivity and improved performance on the job among most administrative staff in Nigerian Universities This author, therefore concludes that, given the policy on the right of workers to get trained on-the job, the outcomes of such training must reflect on the overall performance indices, otherwise, institutions should carry out a forensic analysis of the types of continuing professional development programmes that workers participate in, whether or not, they are consistent with the vision and mission of the institutions in terms of economies of scale of workers professional development to the individual, institution and the nation in context.

Keywords: continuing, professional development, economies of scale, worker’s education, administrative staff

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Authors: Karen Boaz, C. R. Charan

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Background: The infiltration of tumour stroma by eosinophils, Tumor-Associated Tissue Eosinophilia (TATE), is known to modulate the progression of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OSCC). Eosinophils have direct tumoricidal activity by release of cytotoxic proteins and indirectly they enhance permeability into tumor cells enabling penetration of tumoricidal cytokines. Also, eosinophils may promote tumor angiogenesis by production of several angiogenic factors. Identification of eosinophils in the inflammatory stroma has been proven to be an important prognosticator in cancers of mouth, oesophagus, larynx, pharynx, breast, lung, and intestine. Therefore, the study aimed to correlate TATE with clinical and histopathological variables, and blood eosinophil count to assess the role of TATE as a prognosticator in Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OSCC). Methods: Seventy two biopsy-proven cases of OSCC formed the study cohort. Blood eosinophil counts and TNM stage were obtained from the medical records. Tissue sections (5µm thick) were stained with Haematoxylin and Eosin. The eosinophils were quantified at invasive tumour front (ITF) in 10HPF (40x magnification) with an ocular grid. Bryne’s grading of ITF was also performed. A subset of thirty cases was also assessed for association of TATE with recurrence, involvement of lymph nodes and surgical margins. Results: 1) No statistically significant correlation was found between TATE and TNM stage, blood eosinophil counts and most parameters of Bryne’s grading system. 2) Statistically significant relation of intense degree of TATE was associated with the absence of distant metastasis, increased lympho-plasmacytic response and increased survival (diseasefree and overall) of OSCC patients. 3) In the subset of 30 cases, tissue eosinophil counts were higher in cases with lymph node involvement, decreased survival, without margin involvement and in cases that did not recur. Conclusion: While the role of eosinophils in mediating immune responses seems ambiguous as eosinophils support cell-mediated tumour immunity in early stages while inhibiting the same in advanced stages, TATE may be used as a surrogate marker for determination of prognosis in oral squamous cell carcinoma.

Keywords: tumour-associated tissue eosinophilia, oral squamous cell carcinoma, prognosticator, tumoral immunity

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Authors: M. Rafiur Rahman, M. Mezbah Uddin, Mohammad Irfan Uddin, M. Moinul Islam

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With a rapid development of offshore renewable energy industry, the research activities in regards of harnessing power from offshore wind and wave energy are increasing day by day. Integration of wind turbines and wave energy converters into one combined semi-submersible platform might be a cost-economy and beneficial option. In this paper, the coupled integrated dynamic analysis in the time domain (TD) of a simplified semi-submersible flap type concept (SFC) is accomplished via state-of-the-art numerical code referred as Simo-Riflex-Aerodyn (SRA). This concept is a combined platform consisting of a semi-submersible floater supporting a 5 MW horizontal axis wind turbine (WT) and three elliptical shaped flap type wave energy converters (WECs) on three pontoons. The main focus is to validate the numerical model of SFC with experimental results and perform the frequency domain (FD) and TD response analysis. The numerical analysis is performed using potential flow theory for hydrodynamics and blade element momentum (BEM) theory for aerodynamics. A variety of environmental conditions encompassing the functional & survival conditions for short-term sea (1-hour simulation) are tested to evaluate the sustainability of the SFC. The numerical analysis is performed in full scale. Finally, the time domain analysis of heave, pitch & surge motions is performed numerically using SRA and compared with the experimental results. Due to the simplification of the model, there are some discrepancies which are discussed in brief.

Keywords: coupled integrated dynamic analysis, SFC, time domain analysis, wave energy converters

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Authors: Daniel R. McDougall, Martin D. de Jonge, Gordon M. Miskelly, Duncan J. McGillivray, Andrew G. Jeffs

Abstract:

The chelating agent ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) is commonly added as a cure-all to seawater in aquaculture hatcheries around the world to reduce heavy metal toxicity, significantly improve the survival of larval shellfish, and to therefore improve the overall production efficiency of the aquaculture industry. However, EDTA is not a biodegradable chemical and is considered to be a persistent organic pollutant, which will accumulate in the environment over time. This makes the use of EDTA unsustainable environmentally, and therefore alternatives should be considered. Ethylenediaminedisuccinic acid (EDDS) is a biodegradable alternative to EDTA with very similar metal chelation properties. This study investigates the effect of EDTA and EDDS at two different concentrations, on metal concentrations found within developing New Zealand green-lipped mussel (Perna canaliculus) larvae. P. canaliculus is New Zealand’s main shellfish aquaculture species, providing a major export for New Zealand’s economy, with excellent potential for increased production in the near future. It is well known that the early stages of bivalve development are the most vulnerable to metal toxicity and P. canaliculus is no exception. The commercially used concentration (12 µmol L⁻¹) of EDTA added to P. canaliculus larval rearing tanks often increases the yield of D-larvae by over 80%. This concentration of EDTA and EDDS will be tested in this study, along with a lower concentration (3 µmol L⁻¹). After 48 hours of larval development, the D-larvae will be analyzed for heavy metal content with Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) and heavy metal distribution with synchrotron X-ray Fluorescence Microscopy (XFM). In this study, we found that EDDS also improves the yield of P. canaliculus larvae and could be a viable alternative to EDTA in aquaculture. Furthermore, results suggest a higher concentration of chelating agent is more effective for improving the yield of developing P. canaliculus larvae. Metals with significant differences in concentration with the addition of EDTA were Cr, Cu, Zn, Cd and Pb (P < 0.05). We observed for the first time to the author’s best knowledge, metal distribution within 100 µm P. canaliculus D-larvae using synchrotron XFM and found changes in the distribution of metals with the addition of EDTA. XFM also has the potential to provide information about the chemical state of the metals within mussel larvae. This research provides greater insight into the reasons for the effectiveness of adding the chelating agent to aquaculture culture water, and a more environmentally conscious alternative to the currently used EDTA, which could be extremely valuable for the aquaculture industry.

Keywords: EDDS, EDTA, heavy metals, P. canaliculus, toxicity, water treatment

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Authors: Maria Komal, Zaineb Khalil, Mehreen Sirshar

Abstract:

Due to the recent technological advancements, Games have become one of the most demanding applications. Gaming industry is rapidly growing and the key to success in this industry is the development of good quality games, which is a highly competitive issue. The ultimate goal of game developers is to provide player’s satisfaction by developing high-quality games. This research is the comprehensive survey of techniques followed by game industries to ensure games quality. After analysis of various techniques, it has been found that quality simulation according to ISO standards and play test methods are used to ensure games quality. Because game development requires cross-disciplined team, an increasing trend towards distributed game development has been observed. This paper evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of current methodologies used in game industry and draws a conclusion. We have also proposed quality parameters which can be used as a heuristic framework to identify those attributes which have high testing priorities.

Keywords: game development, computer games, video games, gaming industry, quality assurance, playability, user experience

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Authors: Min Wei

Abstract:

The green hotel provides the products/services consistent with the full utilization of resources, protecting the ecological environment conducive to customers’ requirements and health. In order to better develop the green hospitality industry, this paper applies the game theory to analyze the intrinsic relationship and balanced interests among the stakeholders including government, hotels, and tourists during green hospitality development. Based on the hypothesis in game theory, this paper tries to construct a linkage mechanism in stakeholders, by which a theoretical basis for the interests’ balance can be realized. By using game theory and constructing a game model including tourists, hotels and government, this paper analyzes the relationship of the various stakeholders involved in the green hospitality development, and subsequently proposes the development model of green hospitality industry. On the one hand, this paper applies game theory to construct a green hotel development model and provides a theoretical basis for the interest balance of stakeholders based on theoretical perspective. On the other hand, the current development of green hospitality industry is still in initial phase, and the outcome of this research tries to guide tourists to form a green awareness and to establish the concept of green consumption for hotel development, so that green hotel products/services are provided. In addition, this paper provides a basis for decision making in the relevant government departments so that the interests of all stakeholders are promoted and cooperative game between stakeholders is established, for which the sustainable development of green hotels is achieved. The findings indicate that the process of achieving green hospitality industry development is to maximize the whole interests of stakeholders.

Keywords: green hospitality, game theory, stakeholders, development model

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Authors: Tomas Mitkus, Vaida Nedzinskaitė-Mitkė

Abstract:

The objective of this study is to identify and explore how adequate is modern innovation support mechanism to developed creative industries. We argue that current development and support strategy for creative industries, although acknowledge high correlation between innovation and creativity, do not seek to improve conditions to promote systematic innovation development in the creative sector. Using the Lithuanian animation industry as a case study, this paper will examine innovation contribution to creativity and, for that matter, the competitiveness of animation enterprises. This paper proposes insights that contribute to theoretical and practical discussions on how creative profile companies build national and international competitiveness through innovations. The conclusions suggest that development of creative industries could greatly benefit if policymakers would implement tools that would encourage creative profile enterprises to invest in to development of innovation at a constant rate.

Keywords: creative industries, innovation policy, innovation, management

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Authors: Javad Moghtader Kargaran

Abstract:

Today, attention to knowledge and management Knowledge as a strategy is very important has taken with economy becoming knowledge-oriented, how and knowing the effective management and integration of different types Knowledge (obvious-implicit) to preserve and create advantage. Competition has become very important. Knowledge is a valuable resource for empowering organizations in the direction of innovation and competition. Due to the importance of human resources in the survival of organizations, extensive efforts are made to empower them. This knowledge can lead to awareness among employees. Employees and the knowledge that is in their minds are very valuable resources for the organization, which must be managed and developed. In fact, the ultimate goal of knowledge management is to increase the intelligence and productivity of employees and the organization.

Keywords: knowledge, management, productivity, human

Procedia PDF Downloads 85