Search results for: household accounting

Authors: Jodie Stevenson, Lisa-Marie Emerson, Abigail Millings

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Mindfulness has been conceptualized as a dispositional trait, which is different across individuals. Previous research has independently identified both adult attachment orientations and emotion regulation abilities as correlates of dispositional mindfulness. Research has also presented a two-factor model of the relationship between these three constructs. The present study aimed to further develop this model and investigated theses relationships in a sample of 186 participants. Participants completed the Five Factor Mindfulness Questionnaire Short Form (FFMQ-SF), the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale for global attachment (ECR), the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERC), and the Adult Disorganized Attachment scale (ADA). Exploratory factor analysis revealed a 3-factor solution accounting for 59% of the variance across scores on these measures. The first factor accounted for 32% of the variance and loaded highly on attachment and mindfulness subscales. The second factor accounted for 15% of the variance with strong loadings on emotion regulation subscales. The third factor accounted for 12% of the variance with strong loadings on disorganized attachment, and the mindfulness observes subscale. The results further confirm the relationship between attachment, mindfulness, and emotion regulation along with the unique addition of disorganized attachment. The extracted factors will then be used to predict well-being outcomes for an undergraduate student population.

Keywords: adult attachment, emotion regulation, mindfulness, well-being

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Authors: Phusit Phukamchanoad

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This research aims to analyze the fundamental factors of the community leader and citizens behind the self-sufficient living in Vientiane, Lao People's Democratic Republic. The data were collected by asking 400 citizens to fill out the questionnaires and having in-depth interviews with 30 community leaders. It was found that the factors which had influenced the practice of the sufficiency economy philosophy were age, occupation, length of time living in Vientiane, education, monthly income, monthly expense, and the sufficiency economy philosophy training. The people who had been trained could practice the sufficiency economy philosophy better at both individual and household level than the people who had not been trained. The people who were older than 36 years old had practiced the sufficiency economy philosophy more than the people who were younger than 35 years old. The people who worked in state-owned enterprises, private businesses, and government officials: teachers, police officers, soldiers, and ministers applied the sufficiency economy philosophy more than the samples who were students. The people who lived in Vientiane for more than 31 years applied the sufficiency economy philosophy more than the samples who lived in Vientiane for not more than 30 years. The people whose incomes exceeded 20,001 baht applied the sufficiency economy philosophy more than the people whose incomes did not exceed 20,000 baht. Both community leaders and citizens had a good relationship with their families and community. The community members supported each other during tough times. There were regular meetings in the community. There was unity within the families. The time to build a bond in the family was the time when everyone was eating together. Also, most community leaders and citizens had at least two jobs per one person.

Keywords: sufficiency economy philosophy, fundamental factors, way of life, Vientiane Lao PDR

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Authors: U. S. Babuga, A. H. Danwanka, A. Garba

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The research was carried out to compare the yield of respondents before and after access to extension services on crop production technologies in the study area. Data were collected from the study area through questionnaires administered to seventy-five randomly selected respondents. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test and regression models. The result disclosed that majority (97%) of the respondent attended one form of school or the other. The majority (78.67%) of the respondents had farm size ranging between 1-3 hectares. The majority of the respondent adopt improved variety of crops, plant spacing, herbicide, fertilizer application, land preparation, crop protection, crop processing and storage of farm produce. The result of the t-test between the yield of respondents before and after access to extension services shows that there was a significant (p<0.001) difference in yield before and after access to extension. It also indicated that farm size was significant (p<0.001) while household size, years of farming experience and extension contact were significant at (p<0.005). The major constraint to adoption of crop production technologies were shortage of extension agents, high cost of technology and lack of access to credit facility. The major pre-requisite for the improvement of extension service are employment of more extension agents or workers and adequate training. Adequate agricultural credit to farmers at low interest rates will enhance their adoption of crop production technologies.

Keywords: comparative, analysis, yield, access, extension

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Authors: Busiswa Madikazi

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This systematic mapping study explores the underrepresentation of women's contributions to farming in the Global South within the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)-based extension methods. Despite women farmers constituting 70% of the agricultural labour force, their productivity is hindered by various constraints, including illiteracy, household commitments, and limited access to credit and markets. A systematic mapping approach was employed with the aim of identifying evidence gaps in existing ICT extension for women farmers. The data collection protocol follows a structured approach, incorporating key criteria for inclusion, exclusion, search strategy, and coding and the PICO strategy (Population, Intervention, Comparator, and Outcome). The results yielded 119 articles that qualified for inclusion. The findings highlight that mobile phone apps (WhatsApp) and radio/television programming are the primary extension methods employed while integrating ICT with training, field visits, and demonstrations are underutilized. Notably, the study emphasizes the inadequate attention to critical issues such as food security, gender equality, and attracting youth to farming within ICT extension efforts. These findings indicate a significant policy and practice gap, neglecting community-driven approaches that cater to women's specific needs and enhance their agricultural production. Map highlights the importance of refocusing ICT extension efforts to address women farmers’ unique challenges, thereby contributing to their empowerment and improving agricultural practices.

Keywords: agricultural extension, ICT, women farmers, smallholders

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Authors: Gurjeet Singh, M. K. Pradhan, Ajay Verma

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The plastic industry plays very important role in the economy of any country. It is generally among the leading share of the economy of the country. Since metals and their alloys are very rarely available on the earth. So to produce plastic products and components, which finds application in many industrial as well as household consumer products is beneficial. Since 50% plastic products are manufactured by injection moulding process. For production of better quality product, we have to control quality characteristics and performance of the product. The process parameters plays a significant role in production of plastic, hence the control of process parameter is essential. In this paper the effect of the parameters selection on injection moulding process has been described. It is to define suitable parameters in producing plastic product. Selecting the process parameter by trial and error is neither desirable nor acceptable, as it is often tends to increase the cost and time. Hence optimization of processing parameter of injection moulding process is essential. The experiments were designed with Taguchi’s orthogonal array to achieve the result with least number of experiments. Here Plastic material polypropylene is studied. Tensile strength test of material is done on universal testing machine, which is produced by injection moulding machine. By using Taguchi technique with the help of MiniTab-14 software the best value of injection pressure, melt temperature, packing pressure and packing time is obtained. We found that process parameter packing pressure contribute more in production of good tensile plastic product.

Keywords: injection moulding, tensile strength, poly-propylene, Taguchi

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Authors: Joseph Mouallem, Seyed Reza Amini Niaki, Norman Chavez-Cussy, Christian Costa Milioli, Fernando Eduardo Milioli

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Sub-grid closures for filtered two-fluid models (fTFM) useful in large scale simulations (LSS) of riser flows can be derived from highly resolved simulations (HRS) with microscopic two-fluid modeling (mTFM). Accurate sub-grid closures require accurate mTFM formulations as well as accurate correlation of relevant filtered parameters to suitable independent variables. This article deals with both of those issues. The accuracy of mTFM is touched by assessing the impact of gas sub-grid turbulence over HRS filtered predictions. A gas turbulence alike effect is artificially inserted by means of a stochastic forcing procedure implemented in the physical space over the momentum conservation equation of the gas phase. The correlation issue is touched by introducing a three-filtered variable correlation analysis (three-marker analysis) performed under a variety of different macro-scale conditions typical or risers. While the more elaborated correlation procedure clearly improved accuracy, accounting for gas sub-grid turbulence had no significant impact over predictions.

Keywords: fluidization, gas-particle flow, two-fluid model, sub-grid models, filtered closures

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Authors: María Molinos-Senante, Giulia Romano

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This paper aims at investigating the effect of ownership in the efficiency assessment of municipal solid waste management. In doing so, the Data Envelopment Analysis meta-frontier approach integrating unsorted waste as undesirable output was applied. Three different clusters of municipalities have been created on the basis of the ownership type of municipal waste operators. In the second stage of analysis, the paper investigates factors affecting efficiency, in order to provide an outlook of levers to be used by policy and decision makers to improve efficiency, taking into account different management models in force. Results show that public waste management firms have better performance than mixed and private ones since their efficiency scores are significantly larger. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that the efficiency of waste management firms is statistically influenced by the age of population, population served, municipal size, population density and tourism rate. It evidences the importance of economies of scale on the cost efficiency of waste management. This issue is relevant for policymakers to define and implement policies aimed to improve the long-term sustainability of waste management in municipalities.

Keywords: data envelopment analysis, efficiency, municipal solid waste, ownership, undesirable output

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Authors: Garba Inuwa Kuta, Mohammed, Adamu, Mohammed Ahmed Emigilati, Ibrahim Ishiaku, Kudu Dangana

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The study sought to identify the problems of solid waste management in General Mohammed InuwaWushishi Housing Estate. The two broad types of data, the secondary and primary data were used in the study. Questionnaires and personal observations were also used to collect some of the data. Factors impeding the effective and efficient solid waste management were identified. The study revealed that sacks disposal method and open dumping are the most commonly used method of disposal, about 30.0% of the respondent use sacks disposal method in the estate while 24.9% dump their refuse on the floor. Wrong attitudes and perceptions of the people about sanitation issues contributed to solid waste management problems of General Mohammed InuwaWushishi Housing Estate. Majority of the households did not educate their members on the need to clean their surroundings and refuse to buy drum for waste disposal from Niger State Environmental Protection Agency (NISEPA) on the basis that the drums are expensive. Virtually, all the people depended on Niger State Environmental Protection Agency (NISEPA) facilities for the disposal of their household refuse. Solid waste management problems were partly the results of NISEPA’s inability to cope with the situation because of lack of equipment. It was recommended that there should be an increase in enlightenment to the people on domestic waste disposal to keep the surroundings clean.

Keywords: housing estate, assessment, solid waste, disposal, management

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Authors: Aparna Radhakrishnan, Jancy Gupta, R. Dileepkumar

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This paper aims at assessing the Socio Economic Vulnerability (SEV) of dairy farmers to Climate Variability and Change (CVC) in 3 states of Western Ghat region in India. For this purpose, a composite SEV index has been developed on the basis of functional relationships amongst sensitivity, exposure and adaptive capacity using 30 indicators related to dairy farming underlying the principles of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Fussel framework for nomenclature of vulnerable situation. Household level data were collected through Participatory Rural Appraisal and personal interviews of 540 dairy farmers of nine taluks, three each from a district selected from Kerala, Karnataka and Maharashtra, complemented by thirty years of gridded weather data. The data were normalized and then combined into three indices for sensitivity, exposure and adaptive capacity, which were then averaged with weights given using principal component analysis, to obtain the overall SEV index. Results indicated that the taluks of Western Ghats are vulnerable to CVC. The dairy farmers of Pulpally taluka were most vulnerable having the SEV score +1.24 and 42.66% farmers under high-level vulnerability category. Even though the taluks are geographically closer, there is wide variation in SEV components. Policies for incentivizing the ‘climate risk adaptation’ costs for small and marginal farmers and livelihood infrastructure for mitigating risks and promoting grass root level innovations are necessary to sustain dairy farming of the region.

Keywords: climate change, dairy, vulnerability, livelihoods, adaptation strategies

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Authors: Babak Safaei, A. M. Fattahi

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In the present study we have investigated axial buckling characteristics of nanocomposite beams reinforced by single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs). Various types of beam theories including Euler-Bernoulli beam theory, Timoshenko beam theory and Reddy beam theory were used to analyze the buckling behavior of carbon nanotube-reinforced composite beams. Generalized differential quadrature (GDQ) method was utilized to discretize the governing differential equations along with four commonly used boundary conditions. The material properties of the nanocomposite beams were obtained using molecular dynamic (MD) simulation corresponding to both short-(10,10) SWCNT and long-(10,10) SWCNT composites which were embedded by amorphous polyethylene matrix. Then the results obtained directly from MD simulations were matched with those calculated by the mixture rule to extract appropriate values of carbon nanotube efficiency parameters accounting for the scale-dependent material properties. The selected numerical results were presented to indicate the influences of nanotube volume fractions and end supports on the critical axial buckling loads of nanocomposite beams relevant to long- and short-nanotube composites.

Keywords: nanocomposites, molecular dynamics simulation, axial buckling, generalized differential quadrature (GDQ)

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Authors: G. K. Awari, Vishwajeet V. Ambade, S. W. Rajurkar

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The field of additive manufacturing is growing, and discoveries are being made. 3D printing machines are also being developed to accommodate a wider range of 3D printing materials, including plastics, metals (metal AM powders), composites, filaments, and other materials. There are numerous printing materials available for industrial additive manufacturing. Such materials have their unique characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages. In order to avoid errors in additive manufacturing, key elements such as 3D printing material type, texture, cost, printing technique and procedure, and so on must be examined. It can be complex to select the best material for a particular job. Polylactic acid (PLA) is made from sugar cane or cornstarch, both of which are renewable resources. "Black plastic" is another name for it. Because it is safe to use and print, it is frequently used in primary and secondary schools. This is also how FDM screen printing is done. PLA is simple to print because of its low warping impact. It's also possible to print it on a cold surface. When opposed to ABS, it allows for sharper edges and features to be printed. This material comes in a wide range of colours. Polylactic acid (PLA) is the most common material used in fused deposition modelling (FDM). PLA can be used to print a wide range of components, including medical implants, household items, and mechanical parts. The mechanical behaviour of the printed item is affected by variations in infill patterns that are subjected to compressive tests in the current investigation to examine their behaviour under compressive stresses.

Keywords: fused deposition modelling, polylactic acid, infill density, infill pattern, compressive strength

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Authors: Mark E. Lokanan, Liz Lee

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This paper aims to examine the role of accountants as gatekeepers in anti-money laundering compliance in real estate transactions. The paper seeks to answer questions on ways in which accountants are involved in real estate transactions and mandatory compliance with regulatory authorities in Canada. The data for the study came from semi-structured interviews with accountants, lawyers, and government officials. Preliminary results reveal that there is a conflict between accountants’ obligation to disclose and loyalty to their clients. Accountants often do not see why they are obligated to disclose their clients' information to government agencies. The importance of the client in terms of the amount of revenue contributed to the accounting firm also plays a significant role in accountants' reporting decision-making process. Although the involvement of accountants in real estate purchase and sale transactions is limited to lawyers or notaries, they are often involved in designing financing schemes, which may involve money laundering activities. The paper is of wider public policy interests to both accountants and regulators. It is hard not to see Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) Canada and government regulators using the findings to better understand the decision-making processes of accountants in their reporting practices to regulatory authorities.

Keywords: money laundering, real estate, disclosure, legislation, compliance

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Authors: Amiraa Ali Mansor, Haslinda Abdullah, Angela Chan Nguk Fong, Norhaida Hanim Binti Ahmad Tajudin, Asnarulkhadi Abu Samah

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Obesity has risen sharply over the past three decades, posing a grave public health concern globally. In Malaysia, it has also emerged as a significant health threat. While the second Sustainable Development Goal, "Zero Hunger", aims to ensure equitable access to nutritious food for all, a key challenge lies in addressing food insecurity. Food insecurity not only pertains to the quantity but also the quality of food, with both dimensions playing a pivotal role in health outcomes. To date, much of the research on food security has focused on household levels. There remains a research gap concerning university students, a population transitioning to independence from parental support and grappling with limited resources. This study seeks to bridge this gap by extending the Food Security Theory to incorporate the psychological dimension of self-esteem. Using a quantitative approach, data was collected from 452 public university students in Malaysia through a cross-sectional research design and a multi-stage cluster sampling technique. The anticipated findings will provide novel insights by linking food security with self-esteem. Such insights have implications for healthcare policy and the framing of preventive strategies against obesity. It is hoped that this research will not only contribute to the academic discourse on Food Security Theory but also serve as a foundation for refining national health policies and programs aimed at fostering a healthier lifestyle.

Keywords: obesity, food security, body image, self-esteem

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Authors: Keshav Raj Acharya, Thakur Silwal, Neelam C. Poudyal

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Buffer zones, the peripheral areas around the national parks and wildlife reserves, are available for the purpose of benefitting the local inhabitants by providing forest products for subsistence needs of basic forest products outside the protected areas. The forest area within the buffer zone has been managed as a buffer zone community forest (BZCF) for the last 25 years after the approval of the buffer zone management regulation 1996. With a case study of select BZCF in Bardia National Park, this study aims to analyze whether the benefit provided by BZCF is equally available to poor users among other socioeconomic classes of the users. The findings are based on the analysis of cross-sectional data involving household surveys (n=305) and key informants’ interviews (n=10) as well as office records available at different 5 buffer zone community forest user groups offices. Results indicate that despite the provisions of subsidized rates for poor; poor households were more deprived due to higher forest products price particularly, the timber price in buffer zone. Evidence also indicate that due to the increased forest coverage, the incidence of wildlife damage has also increased and impacted the poor more due to lack of land ownership as well as limited alternatives. Clear community forest management guidelines with equitable benefit sharing and compensatory mechanisms to the users of poor socioeconomic class have been identified as a solution to increase the benefit to poor users in BZCFUGs.

Keywords: crop depredation, forest products, users, wellbeing ranking

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Authors: Imkongtenla Pongen

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Self Help Groups (SGHs) are socio-commercial instruments in addressing urban poverty and strengthening livelihoods. Being a member of Self Help Group helped in mutual exchanges of ideas, develop risk taking behaviour, learns flexibility in planning of a programme, and interpersonal communication within the group. In the present study, an attempt has been made to examine the functions, characteristics and practices of Self Help Groups and its impact on sustainable development among the Ao Nagas of Alongkima, Nagaland, NorthEast India. They are a tribal group and racially belong to the Mongoloid stock and linguistically to the Tibeto-Burman group. They follow endogamous, patriarchal, and patrilineal system. Major characteristics of Self Help groups in this study are found to be team spirit and group cohesiveness. Such groups are found to be geared towards a number of self-sufficiency based business ventures. The problems faced in normal functioning of the groups are unpunctuality and the inability to attend a meeting by all the members .Participation in such groups has increased women’s influence over the economic resources and decision making in the household, improved self-confidence and living standard, capacity building, self- dependent and self-reliant with no educational and entrepreneurial background, generate savings and hone their skills as motivators and leaders. All these has enhanced her status in every sphere of life in par with the opposite gender. In a nutshell, we can say that what she cannot achieve as an individual, she can achieve as a member of a Self Help Group. Hence, we should try to develop mechanisms to guarantee the sustainability of Self Help Groups which depends on the way they can deal with both internal and external conflicts like globalization and competition from new markets.

Keywords: Ao nagas, microfinance, self help group, women empowerment

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Authors: Shehu Usman Hassan

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Published accounting information in financial statements are required to provide various users - shareholders, employees, suppliers, creditors, financial analysts, stockbrokers and government agencies – with timely and reliable information useful for making prudent, effective and efficient decisions. The widespread failure in the financial information quality has created the need to improve the financial information quality and to strengthen the control of managers by setting up good firms structures. This paper investigates firm attributes from perspective of structure, monitoring, performance elements of listed deposit money banks in Nigeria. The study adopted correlational research design with balanced panel data of 14 banks as sample of the study using multiple regression as a tool of analysis. The result reveals that firms attributes (leverage, profitability, liquidity, bank size and bank growth) has as significant influence on earnings quality of listed deposit money banks in Nigeria after the adoption of IFRS, while the pre period shows that the selected firm attributes has no significant impact on earnings quality. It is therefore concluded that the adoption of IFRS is right and timely.

Keywords: earnings quality, firm attributes, listed deposit money bank, Nigeria

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Authors: Hafsa Raheel

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Background: Adolescents who suffer from depression early in life, have an increase in suicidal tendency, anxiety, conduct disorders, substance abuse, and continue to be depressed, later on in life. This study was conducted to identify the prevalence and correlates of depression among adolescent girls in Riyadh city in order to carry out early intervention. Methods: A cross‑sectional, school‑based survey was conducted among 1028 adolescent girls aged 15–19 years in secondary schools of Riyadh city. Riyadh was divided into clusters and within each cluster, both public and private schools were enrolled. From the selected schools students from grade 10–12 were surveyed. Survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire including the beck depression inventory‑II, and questions exploring the correlates of depression. Results: About 30% of participants were found to be depressed. Depression was more prevalent among female adolescents whose household income was inferior to 12,000 Saudi Riyal/month (odds ratio [OR] 2.17, confidence interval [CI] 0.97–6.84), did not have a good relationship with peers and family members (OR 4.63, CI 2.56–8.41), lived with single parent or alone (OR 1.77, CI 0.97–3.23), had been emotionally abused (OR 3.45, CI 2.56–8.41), and those who had been subjected to physical violence at least once (OR 3.34, CI 1.89–5.91). Conclusions: Strategies need to be developed to identify early signs and symptoms of depression among Saudi female adolescents. Training can be given to groups of students to help their peers, and also to the teachers to identify, and help students identify early signs of depression and provide them with better‑coping strategies to combat progression of depression and anxiety among such adolescents.

Keywords: adolescents, depression, Saudi Arabia, mental health

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Authors: Fayaz Moosavi, Saeid Moradyfard

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One of the methods in avoiding management fraud and increasing the quality of financial information, is the notification of qualitative features of financial information, including conservatism characteristic. Although taking a conservatism approach, while boosting the quality of financial information, is able to reduce the informational risk and the cost of capital stock of commercial department, by presenting an improper image about the situation of the commercial department, raises the risk of failure in returning the main and capital interest, and consequently the cost of capital of the commercial department. In order to know if conservatism finally leads to the increase or decrease of the cost of capital or does not have any influence on it, information regarding accepted companies in Tehran stock exchange is utilized by application of pooling method from 2007 to 2012 and it included 124 companies. The results of the study revealed that there is an opposite and meaningful relationship between conditional conservatism and the cost of capital of the company. In other words, if bad and unsuitable news and signs are reflected sooner than good news in accounting profit, the cost of capital of the company increases. In addition, there is a positive and meaningful relationship between the cost of capital and lack of information asymmetry.

Keywords: conditional conservatism, lack of information asymmetry, the cost of capital, stock exchange

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Authors: Kaushal Kishore

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Immense amount of imported fuels are used in Fiji for electricity generation, transportation and for carrying out miscellaneous household work. To alleviate its dependency on fossil fuel, paramount importance has been given to instigate the utilization of renewable energy sources for power generation and to reduce the environmental dilapidation. Amongst the many renewable energy sources, wind has been considered as one of the best identified renewable sources that are comprehensively available in Fiji. In this study the wind resource assessment for three locations in Rakiraki, Fiji has been carried out. The wind resource estimation at Rokavukavu, Navolau and at Tuvavatu has been analyzed. The average wind speed at 55 m above ground level (a.g.l) at Rokavukavu, Navolau, and Tuvavatu sites are 5.91 m/s, 8.94 m/s and 8.13 m/s with the turbulence intensity of 14.9%, 17.1%, and 11.7% respectively. The moment fitting method has been used to estimate the Weibull parameter and the power density at each sites. A high resolution wind resource map for the three locations has been developed by using Wind Atlas Analysis and Application Program (WAsP). The results obtained from WAsP exhibited good wind potential at Navolau and Tuvavatu sites. A wind farm has been proposed at Navolau and Tuvavatu site that comprises six Vergnet 275 kW wind turbines at each site. The annual energy production (AEP) for each wind farm is estimated and an economic analysis is performed. The economic analysis for the proposed wind farms at Navolau and Tuvavatu sites showed a payback period of 5 and 6 years respectively.

Keywords: annual energy production, Rakiraki Fiji, turbulence intensity, Weibull parameter, wind speed, Wind Atlas Analysis and Application Program

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Authors: Adedoyin Opeyemi Osokoya

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The study assesses the influence of social media on perceived learning outcome of agricultural science students in tertiary institutions in Oyo state, Nigeria. The four-stage sampling procedure was used to select participants. All students in the seven tertiary institutions that offer agriculture science as a course of study in Oyo State was the population. A university, a college of agriculture and a college of education were sampled, and a department from each was randomly selected. Twenty percent of the students’ population in the respective selected department gave a sample size of 165. Questionnaire was used to collect information on respondents’ personal characteristics and information related to access to social media. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, chi-square, correlation, and multiple regression at the 0.05 confidence level. Age and household size were 21.13 ± 2.64 years and 6 ± 2.1 persons respectively. All respondents had access to social media, majority (86.1%) owned Android phone, 57.6% and 52.7% use social media for course work and entertainment respectively, while the commonly visited sites were WhatsApp, Facebook, Google, Opera mini. Over half (53.9%) had an unfavourable attitude towards the use of social media for learning; benefits of the use of social media for learning was high (56.4%). Removal of information barrier created by distance (x̄=1.58) was the most derived benefit, while inadequate power supply (x̄=2.36), was the most severe constraints. Age (β=0.23), sex (β=0.37), ownership of Android phone (β=-1.29), attitude (β=0.37), constraints (β =-0.26) and use of social media (β=0.23) were significant predictors of influence on perceived learning outcomes.

Keywords: use of social media, agricultural science students, undergraduates of tertiary institutions, Oyo State of Nigeria

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Authors: Joanna Kochanska, Dagmara Gornicka, Anna Burduk

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The article examines the process of implementing a new assembly line in a manufacturing enterprise of the household appliances industry area. At the initial stages of the project, a decision was made that one of its foundations should be the concept of lean management. Because of that, eliminating as many errors as possible in the first phases of its functioning was emphasized. During the start-up of the line, there were identified and documented all production losses (from serious machine failures, through any unplanned downtime, to micro-stops and quality defects). During 6 weeks (line start-up period), all errors resulting from problems in various areas were analyzed. These areas were, among the others, production, logistics, quality, and organization. The aim of the work was to analyze the occurrence of production failures during the initial phase of starting up the line and to propose a method for determining their critical level during its full functionality. There was examined the repeatability of the production losses in various areas and at different levels at such an early stage of implementation, by using the methods of statistical process control. Based on the Pareto analysis, there were identified the weakest points in order to focus improvement actions on them. The next step was to examine the effectiveness of the actions undertaken to reduce the level of recorded losses. Based on the obtained results, there was proposed a method for determining the critical failures level in the studied areas. The developed coefficient can be used as an alarm in case of imbalance of the production, which is caused by the increased failures level in production and production support processes in the period of the standardized functioning of the line.

Keywords: production failures, level of production losses, new production line implementation, assembly line, statistical process control

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Authors: Olivia Borgue, Massimo Panarotto, Ola Isaksson

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This article presents a neural networks-based strategy for reducing the need for support structures when designing for additive manufacturing (AM). Additive manufacturing is a relatively new and immature industrial technology, and the information to make confident decisions when designing for AM is limited. This lack of information impacts especially the early stages of engineering design, for instance, it is difficult to actively consider the support structures needed for manufacturing a part. This difficulty is related to the challenge of designing a product geometry accounting for customer requirements, manufacturing constraints and minimization of support structure. The approach presented in this article proposes an automatized geometry modification technique for reducing the use of the support structures while designing for AM. This strategy starts with a neural network-based strategy for shape recognition to achieve product classification, using an STL file of the product as input. Based on the classification, an automatic part geometry modification based on MATLAB© is implemented. At the end of the process, the strategy presents different geometry modification alternatives depending on the type of product to be designed. The geometry alternatives are then evaluated adopting a QFD-like decision support tool.

Keywords: additive manufacturing, engineering design, geometry modification optimization, neural networks

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Authors: Neeta Pokharel

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Cultural beliefs and practices have been shaping indigenous community’s resource use and attitude toward the conservation of natural flora and fauna around them. Understanding these cultural dimensions is vital for identifying effective strategies that align with conservation efforts. This study focused on investigating the wildlife-related cultural beliefs and practices of two indigenous communities: Bote and Musahars. The study applied ethnographic methods that included Key-informant interviews, Focal Group discussion, and Household survey methods. Out of 100 respondents, 51% were male and 49% female. A significant portion (65%) of the respondents confirmed animal worship, with a majority worshipping tigers (81.5%), rhinos (73.8%), crocodiles (66%), and dolphins (40%). Additionally, 16.9% disclosed worshipping Elephants, while 10 % affirmed animal worship without specifying the particular animals. Ritualistic practices often involve the sacrifice of pigs, goats, hens, and pigeons. Their cultural ethics place a significant emphasis on biodiversity conservation, as the result shows 41 % refraining from causing harm to wild animals and 9% doing so for ethical considerations, respectively. Moreover, the majority of the respondents believe that cultural practices could enhance conservation efforts. However, the encroachment of modernization and religious conversion within the community poses a tangible risk of cultural degradation, highlighting the urgent need to preserve the cultural practices. Integrating such indigenous practices into the National Biodiversity Strategy and conservation policies can ensure sustainable conservation of endangered animals with appropriate cultural safeguards.

Keywords: tribal communities, societal belief, wild fauna, “barana”, safeguarding

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Authors: Jongsoo Jurng

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The drive to expand renewable energies is often in direct conflict with sustainable development goals. Thus, it is important that energy policies account for potential trade-offs. We assess the interlinkages between energy, food, water, and land, for two case studies, Suwon and Seoul. We apply a range of assessment methods and study their usefulness as tools to identify trade-offs and to compare the sustainability performance. We calculate cross-sectoral footprints, self-sufficiency ratios and perform a simplified Energy-Water-Food nexus analysis. We use the latter for assessing scenarios to increase energy and food self-sufficiency in Suwon, while we use ecosystem service (ESS) accounting for Seoul. For Suwon, we find that constraints on the energy, food and water sectors urgently call for integrated approaches to energy policy; for Seoul, the further expansion of renewables comes at the expense of cultural and supporting ESS, which could outweigh gains from increased energy exports. We recommend a general upgrade to indicators and visualization methods that look beyond averages and a fostering of infrastructure for data on sustainable development based on harmonized international protocols. We warn against rankings of countries or regions based on benchmarks that are neither theory-driven nor location-specific.

Keywords: ESS, renewable energy, energy-water-food nexus, assessment

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Authors: Suraj Jena, Rabindra Kumar Panda

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The study region of the reported study was in Eastern India, having a sub-humid sub-tropical climate and sandy loam soil. The rainfall in this region has wide temporal and spatial variation. Due to lack of adequate surface water to meet the irrigation and household demands, groundwater is being over exploited in that region leading to continuous depletion of groundwater level. Therefore, there is an obvious urgency in reversing the depleting groundwater level through induced recharge, which becomes more critical under the climate change scenarios. The major goal of the reported study was to investigate the effects of climate change on groundwater recharge and subsequent adaptation strategies. Groundwater recharge was modelled using HELP3, a quasi-two-dimensional, deterministic, water-routing model along with global climate models (GCMs) and three global warming scenarios, to examine the changes in groundwater recharge rates for a 2030 climate under a variety of soil and vegetation covers. The relationship between the changing mean annual recharge and mean annual rainfall was evaluated for every combination of soil and vegetation using sensitivity analysis. The relationship was found to be statistically significant (p<0.05) with a coefficient of determination of 0.81. Vegetation dynamics and water-use affected by the increase in potential evapotranspiration for large climate variability scenario led to significant decrease in recharge from 49–658 mm to 18–179 mm respectively. Therefore, appropriate conjunctive use, irrigation schedule and enhanced recharge practices under the climate variability and land use/land cover change scenarios impacting the groundwater recharge needs to be understood properly for groundwater sustainability.

Keywords: Groundwater recharge, climate variability, Land use/cover, GCM

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Authors: Christelle Tchoupé Makougoum

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In the context of agriculture, differences across localities in term of climate change can create systematic variation among farmers technical efficiency. Failure to account for climate variability could lead to wrong conclusions about farmers’ technical efficiency and also it could bias the ranking of farmers according to their managerial performance. The literature on agricultural productivity has given little attention to this issue whereas it is necessary for establishing to what extent climate affects farmers efficiency. This article contributes to the preview literature by two ways. First, it proposed a new econometric model that accounting for the climate change influences on technical efficiency in the specific area of agriculture. Second it estimates the inefficiency due to climate change and the real managerial performance of Malian farmers. Using the Mali’s data from agricultural census and CRU TS3 climatic database we implemented an adjusted stochastic frontier methodology to account for the impact of environmental factors. The results yield three main findings. First, instability in temperatures and rainfall decreases technical efficiency on average. Second, the climate change modifies the classification of the farmers according to their efficiency scores. Thirdly it is noted that, although climate changes are partly responsible for the deviation from the border, the capacity of farmers to combine inputs into the optimal proportion is more to undermine. The study concluded that improving farmer efficiency should include fostering their resilience to climate change.

Keywords: agriculture, climate change, stochastic production function, technical efficiency

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Authors: Ibrahim Ahmed, Richard Amoateng, Akhil Jain, Mohamed Ahmed

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Alcoholic cardiomyopathy (ACM) is a type of acquired cardiomyopathy caused by chronic alcohol consumption. Frequently ACM is associated with arrhythmias such as atrial flutter. Our aim was to characterize the patient demographics and investigate the effect of atrial flutter (AF) on ACM. This was a retrospective cohort study using the Nationwide Inpatient Sample database to identify admissions in adults with principal and secondary diagnoses of alcoholic cardiomyopathy and atrial flutter from 2019. Multivariate linear and logistic regression models were adjusted for age, gender, race, household income, insurance status, Elixhauser comorbidity score, hospital location, bed size, and teaching status. The primary outcome was all-cause mortality, and secondary outcomes were the length of stay (LOS) and total charge in USD. There was a total of 21,855 admissions with alcoholic cardiomyopathy, of which 1,635 had atrial flutter (AF-ACM). Compared to Non-AF-ACM cohort, AF-ACM cohort had fewer females (4.89% vs 14.54%, p<0.001), were older (58.66 vs 56.13 years, p<0.001), fewer Native Americans (0.61% vs2.67%, p<0.01), had fewer smaller (19.27% vs 22.45%, p<0.01) & medium-sized hospitals (23.24% vs28.98%, p<0.01), but more large-sized hospitals (57.49% vs 48.57%, p<0.01), more Medicare (40.37% vs 34.08%, p<0.05) and fewer Medicaid insured (23.55% vs 33.70%, p=<0.001), fewer hypertension (10.7% vs 15.01%, p<0.05), and more obesity (24.77% vs 16.35%, p<0.001). Compared to Non-AF-ACM cohort, there was no difference in AF-ACM cohort mortality rate (6.13% vs 4.20%, p=0.0998), unadjusted mortality OR 1.49 (95% CI 0.92-2.40, p=0.102), adjusted mortality OR 1.36 (95% CI 0.83-2.24, p=0.221), but there was a difference in LOS 1.23 days (95% CI 0.34-2.13, p<0.01), total charge $28,860.30 (95% CI 11,883.96-45,836.60, p<0.01). In patients admitted with ACM, the presence of AF was not associated with a higher all-cause mortality rate or odds of all-cause mortality; however, it was associated with 1.23 days increase in LOS and a $28,860.30 increase in total hospitalization charge. Native Americans, older age and obesity were risk factors for the presence of AF in ACM.

Keywords: alcoholic cardiomyopathy, atrial flutter, cardiomyopathy, arrhythmia

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Authors: Abdulrazaq O. Raji, Abba Mohammed, Ibrahim D. Mohammed

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This study was conducted to investigate foetal loss among slaughtered livestock species at the Maiduguri abattoir from 2009 to 2013. Record of animals slaughtered monthly and fetuses recovered were collected from the management of the Maiduguri abattoir. Data was subjected to Analysis of Variance using the General Linear Model of SPSS 13.0 with Season, Species and their interaction as fixed factors. Average yearly slaughter at the Maiduguri abattoir was 63,225 animals with cattle, camel, goat and sheep accounting for 19737, 7374, 19281 and 17540 of the total. The corresponding number of those pregnant were 3117, 839, 2281 and 2432 out of a total of 8522 animals. Thus, cattle, camel, goat and sheep accounted for 30.87, 11.53, 30.16 and 27.44%, respectively of the animals slaughtered at the Abattoir and 35.96, 9.68, 26.31 and 28.05% of the foetal loss. The effect of season and species on foetal loss was significant (P < 0.05). The number of pregnant animals slaughtered and foetal loss were higher during wet than dry season. Similarly, foetal loss at the abattoir was higher in the month of May in respect of camel, goat and sheep, and August for cattle. Camel was the least slaughtered animal and had the least number of pregnant females. Foetal loss (%) was higher (P < 0.05) for cattle compared to other species. The interaction showed that camel was the least slaughtered species in both seasons and cattle in the wet season had the highest foetal loss.

Keywords: abattoir, foetal loss, season, species

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Authors: Wiji Wijaya

Abstract:

The aim of this research is to examine the effect of internal control weaknesses and audit opinion on the state’s loss findings of audit compliance to the regulation in public sector. The samples of this research consisted of 175 local government financial statements in the area of Central Java Province at 2009 until 2013. Area sampling design was used to select the financial statements. This study using quantitative descriptive statistical analysis and regression was run for data analysis and hypothesis examination. Result of this study indicated that internal control weaknesses and audit opinion contributes a positive influence which is significant to the state’s loss findings of audit compliance to the regulation. The internal control weaknesses that affect the state's loss finding are weakness control system of accounting and reporting with the value of the critical ratio 0.010 p 2.613 ; weakness budget execution control system with critical ratio value of 3.421 p 0.001 and weaknesses internal control structure with critical ratio value of 2.246 p 0.026 . While the audit opinion with a critical ratio value of 4.401 p 0.000. The implications of this research so that policy makers at the local government should give more attention to the implementation and improvement of internal control system.

Keywords: audit compliance findings, state’s loss, audit opinion, internal control, local government

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Authors: Yongsheng Guo, Mengyu Lu

Abstract:

This study investigates how Chinese SMEs manage financial risks in financing from customers from the perspectives of ethics and national culture. A grounded theory approach is adopted to identify the causal conditions, actions/interactions, and consequences. 32 interviews were conducted, and systematic coding methods were used to identify themes and categories. This study found that Chinese ethical principles, including integrity, friendship, and reciprocity, and cultural traits, including collectivism, acquaintance society, and long-term orientation, provide conditions for financing from customers. The SMEs establish trust-based relationships with customers through personal communications and social networks and reduce financial risk through diversification, frequent operations, and enterprise reputations. Both customers and SMEs can get benefits like financial resources and customer experiences. This study creates a theoretical framework that connects the causal conditions, processes, and outcomes, providing a deeper understanding of financing from customers. A resource and process capability theory of SMEs and a customer capital and customer value model are proposed to connect accounting and finance concepts. Suggestions are proposed for the authorities as more guidance and regulations are needed for this informal finance.

Keywords: CRM, culture, ethics, SME, risk management

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