Search results for: soil-water management practices

Authors: N. Rassoul-ibrahim, E. Siahmed, L. Tadrist

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Water management plays a crucial role in the performance and durability of PEM fuel cells. Whereas the membrane must be hydrated enough, liquid droplets formed by water in excess can block the flow in the gas distribution channels and hinder the fuel cell performance. The main purpose of this work is to increase the understanding of liquid transport and mixing through mini- or micro-channels for various engineering or medical process applications including cool-ing of equipment according to the operations considered. For that purpose and as a first step, a technique was devel-oped to automatically detect and characterize two-phase flow patterns that may appear in such. The investigation, mainly experimental, was conducted on transparent channel with a 1mm x 1mm square cross section and a 0.3mm x 0.3 mm water injection normal to the gas channel. Three main flow patterns were identified liquid slug, bubble flow and annular flow. A flow map has been built accord-ing to the flow rate of both phases. As a sample the follow-ing figures show representative images of the flow struc-tures observed. An analysis and discussion of the flow pattern, in mini-channel, will be provided and compared to the case old micro-channel. . Keywords: Two phase flow, Clean Energy, Minichannels, Fuel Cells. Flow patterns, Maps.

Keywords: two phase flox, T-juncion, Micro and minichannels, clean energy, flow patterns, maps

Procedia PDF Downloads 77

Authors: Sihem Kadem, Ratiba Irinislimane, Naima Belhaneche

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The natural resistance to biodegradation of polymeric materials prepared from petroleum-based source and the management of their wastes in the environment are the driving forces to replace them by other biodegradable materials from renewable resources. For that, in this work new biocomposites materials have been synthesis from sunflower oil (Helianthus annuus) and alfa plants (Stipatenacissima) as natural based resources. The sunflower oil (SFO) was chemically modified via epoxidation then acrylation reactions to obtain acrylated epoxidized sunflower oil resin (AESFO). The AESFO resin was then copolymerized with styrene as co-monomer in the presence of boron trifluoride (BF3) as cationic initiator and cobalt octoate (Co) as catalyst. The alfa fibers were treated with alkali treatment (5% NaOH) before been used as bio-reinforcement. Biocomposites were prepared by mixing the resin with untreated and treated alfa fibers at different percentages. A biodegradation study was carried out for the synthesized biocomposites in a solid medium (burial in the soil) by evaluated, first, the loss of mass, the results obtained were reached between 7.8% and 11% during one year. Then an observation under an optical microscope was carried out, after one year of burial in the soil, microcracks, brown and black spots were appeared on the samples surface. This results shows that the synthesized biocomposites have a great aptitude for biodegradation.

Keywords: alfa fiber, biocomposite, biodegradation, soil, sunflower oil

Procedia PDF Downloads 164

Authors: Mahdi Fakheri, Mohammad Mohsen Mahdizadeh Naeini

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This paper addresses an understudied aspect of U.S. foreign aids between the years 2000 and 2020. Despite a growing body of literature on the impacts of U.S. aids, the question about how the United States uses its foreign aids to change developing countries has remained unanswered. As foreign aid is a tool of the United States' foreign policy, answering this very question can reveal the future that the U.S. prefers for developing countries and that secures its national interest. This paper will explore USAID's official dataset, which includes the data of foreign aids to the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia from 2000 to 2020. Through an empirical analysis, this paper argues that the focus of U.S. foreign aid is evenly divided between institutional and non-institutional (i.e., slight enhancement of status quo) changes. The former is induced by training and education, funding the initiatives and projects, making capacity and increasing the efficiency of human, operational, and management sectors, and enhancing the living condition of the people. Moreover, it will be demonstrated that the political, military, cultural, economic, and judicial are some of the institutions that the U.S. has planned to change in the aforementioned period and regions.

Keywords: USAID, foreign aid, development, developing countries, Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America

Procedia PDF Downloads 191

Authors: M. Cuevas-González, O. Monserrat, A. Barra, C. Reyes-Carmona, R.M. Mateos, J. P. Galve, R. Sarro, M. Cantalejo, E. Peña, M. Martínez-Corbella, J. A. Luque, J. M. Azañón, A. Millares, M. Béjar, J. A. Navarro, L. Solari

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Geohazard prone areas require continuous monitoring to detect risks, understand the phenomena occurring in those regions and prevent disasters. Satellite interferometry (InSAR) has come to be a trustworthy technique for ground movement detection and monitoring in the last few years. InSAR based techniques allow to process large areas providing high number of displacement measurements at low cost. However, the results provided by such techniques are usually not easy to interpret by non-experienced users hampering its use for decision makers. This work presents a set of tools developed in the framework of different projects (Momit, Safety, U-Geohaz, Riskcoast) and an example of their use in the Granada Coastal area (Spain) is shown. The ADA (Active Displacement Areas) tool have been developed with the aim of easing the management, use and interpretation of InSAR based results. It provides a semi-automatic extraction of the most significant ADAs through the application ADAFinder tool. This tool aims to support the exploitation of the European Ground Motion Service (EU-GMS), which will provide consistent, regular and reliable information regarding natural and anthropogenic ground motion phenomena all over Europe.

Keywords: ground displacements, InSAR, natural hazards, satellite imagery

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Authors: Michael Louis Sunaris, Robby Yussac Tallar

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The concept of sustainable river is evolving in Indonesia today. Many rivers condition in Indonesia have decreased by quality and quantity. The degradation of this condition is caused by rapid land use change as a result of increased population growth and human activity. It brings the degradation of the existing watersheds including some types of land use that an important factor in determining the status of river sustainability. Therefore, an evaluation method is required to determine the sustainability status of waterbody within watershed. The purpose of this study is to analyze various types of land use in determining the status of river sustainability. This study takes the watersheds of Citarum Upstream as a study area. The results of the analysis prove the index of sustainability status of the river that changes from good to bad or average in the rivers in the study area. The rapid and uncontrolled changes of land use especially in the upper watersheds area are the main causes that happened over time. It was indicated that the cumulative runoff coefficients were increased significantly. These situations indicated that the damage of watersheds has an impact on the water surplus or deficit problem yearly. Therefore, the rivers in Indonesia should be protected and conserved. The sustainability index of the rivers is an index to indicate the condition of watersheds by defining status of rivers in order to achieve sustainable water resource management.

Keywords: land use change, runoff coefficient, a simple index, sustainable river

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Authors: Aftab Hameed Memon, Shadab Noor, Muhammad Akram Akhund

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Lean construction is a philosophy adopted in the construction industry to increase the value of a project by reducing waste and improving construction productivity. Lean emphasizes on maximizing the value of a project with less expenditure. Globally, lean philosophy has received wider popularity in construction sector. Lean construction has supported the practitioners with several tools and techniques to implement at various stages of a construction project. Following the global trends, this study has investigated the lean practice in Pakistan. The level of implementation of different lean tools and techniques altogether with potential benefits experienced by its implementation in construction projects of Pakistan is analyzed. To achieve the targets, the opinion was sought by the practitioners involved in handling construction projects representing four stakeholders that are a client, consultant, contractors and material suppliers through a structured questionnaire. A total of 34 completed questionnaires were collected and then statistically analyzed. The findings of the analysis have highlighted that pull approach, work standardization, just in time, increase visualization tools, integrated project delivery method and fail-safe for quality are common lean techniques implemented in the local construction industry. While reduction in waste, client’s satisfaction, improved communication, visual control and proper task management are major benefits of the lean construction application.

Keywords: lean construction, lean tools and techniques, lean benefits, waste reduction, Pakistan

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Authors: Huei-Fu Lu

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Hosting international major sports events (MSEs) has become a globalized strategy for many countries. Most modern countries believe that MSEs can bring the hosting countries with substantial and considerable economic and non-economic benefits; so many cities also input a huge of resources to bid for hosting MSEs. Despite the growing importance of MSEs, limited longitudinal analysis has been carried out to understand and explain the long term economic effects of such events. This paper is to continue the focus of previous literature on the economic effects of hosting MSEs. The study periods are from 1950 to 2014 and the secondary macro-economic data are selected from the countries that have hosted the Asian Games and the Olympic Games (including summer and winter) to precede a longitudinal analysis. A comparison of the real economic growth rate, investment, employment and international trade of hosting countries and the duration of these economic effects are also explored and discussed. Based on the countries’ attributes and locating area, aiming to ascertain whether hosting MSEs is economically worthwhile and whether the economic effects from MSEs are realized as anticipated. The results indicate that hosting MSEs to create positive economic effects like GDP growth or long-term employment may be a myth even for developing countries. However, the empirical findings can provide the sport management or authority with longitudinal and comprehensive elaboration for biding or hosting MSEs in the future.

Keywords: Asian Games, economic effects, major sports events (MSEs), olympic games

Procedia PDF Downloads 329

Authors: Y. Fekir, K. Mederbal, M. A. Hammadouche, D. Anteur

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The cultural park of the Tassili, occupying a large area of Algeria, is characterized by a rich vegetative biodiversity to be preserved and managed both in time and space. The management of a large area (case of Tassili), by its complexity, needs large amounts of data, which for the most part, are spatially localized (DEM, satellite images and socio-economic information etc.), where the use of conventional and traditional methods is quite difficult. The remote sensing, by its efficiency in environmental applications, became an indispensable solution for this kind of studies. Multispectral imaging sensors have been very useful in the last decade in very interesting applications of remote sensing. They can aid in several domains such as the de¬tection and identification of diverse surface targets, topographical details, and geological features. In this work, we try to extract vegetative areas using fusion techniques between data acquired from sensor on-board the Earth Observing 1 (EO-1) satellite and Landsat ETM+ and TM sensors. We have used images acquired over the Oasis of Djanet in the National Park of Tassili in the south of Algeria. Fusion technqiues were applied on the obtained image to extract the vegetative fraction of the different classes of land use. We compare the obtained results in vegetation end member extraction with vegetation indices calculated from both Hyperion and other multispectral sensors.

Keywords: Landsat ETM+, EO1, data fusion, vegetation, Tassili, Algeria

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Authors: Elias Kodjo Kekesi

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This study seeks to investigate a critical but neglected area in disaster and emergency management in Ghana. It explores aspects of work within one of the safety-critical work environments that expose workers to psychological, social and physical harm. With much attention to crises’ survivors, deceased and their families, this research attempts to answer a key question: ‘What happens to the rescuer’? Emergency response is associated with immense and unprecedented pressure that puts responders’ physical, mental and social well-being at risk. Despite the negative psychological outcomes, scholars argue that being in a traumatic situation may trigger positive outcomes for some people. Thus, the study also focuses on the positive impact of working in a risky crisis environment. Additionally, people’s interpretation of negative experiences or exposure to adverse conditions differ owing to their personal resources which explains why some people may be negatively affected whiles others are positively impacted. To examine these complex nuances, an exploratory sequential mixed method design is adopted. This paper will highlight the findings of study one, which explores the underlying themes emerging from the Ghanaian disaster and emergency response environment regarding psychosocial hazard exposures and the corresponding outcomes.

Keywords: psychosocial hazards, organisational outcomes, qualitative research, Ghana

Procedia PDF Downloads 81

Authors: Sirimanee Banjong

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This study aimed to 1) develop pre-service teachers’ leadership skills through camp-based learning, and 2) develop pre-service teachers’ teamwork skills through camp-based learning. An applied research methodology was used. The target group was derived from a purposive selection. It involved 32 fourth-year students in Early Childhood Education Program enrolling in a course entitled Seminar in Early Childhood Education provided during the second semester of the academic year 2013. The treatment was camp-based learning activities which applied a PDCA process including four stages: 1) plan, 2) do, 3) check, and 4) act. Research instruments were a learning camp program, a camp-based learning management plan, a 5-level assessment form for leadership skills and a 5-level assessment form for assessing teamwork skills. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results were: 1) pre-service teachers’ leadership skills yielded the before treatment average score at ¯("x" )=3.4, S.D.= 0.62 and the after-treatment average score at ¯("x" ) 4.29, S.D.=0.66 pre-service teachers’ teamwork skills yielded the before-treatment average score at ¯("x" )=3.31, S.D.= 0.60 and the after-treatment average score at ¯("x" )=4.42, S.D.= 0.66. Both differences were statistically significant at the .05 level. Thus, the pre-service teachers’ leadership and teamwork skills were significantly improved through the camp-based learning approach.

Keywords: learning camp, leadership skills, teamwork skills, pre-service teachers

Procedia PDF Downloads 362

Authors: H. K. Ramaraju

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World is in deep trouble and deeper denial. Worse, the denial is now entirely on the side of action. It is well accepted that climate change is a reality. Scientists say we need to cap temperature increases at 2°C to avoid catastrophe, which means capping emissions at 450 ppm .We know global average temperatures have already increased by 0.8°C and there is enough green house gas in the atmosphere to lead to another 0.8°C increase. There is still a window of opportunity, a tiny one, to tackle the crisis. But where is the action? In the 1990’s, when the world did even not understand, let alone accept, the crises, it was more willing to move to tackle climate change. Today we are in reverse in gear. The rich world has realized it is easy to talk big, but tough to take steps to actually reduce emissions. The agreement was that these countries would reduce so that the developing World could increase. Instead, between 1990 and 2006, their carbon dioxide emissions increased by a whopping 14.5 percent, even green countries of Europe are unable to match words with action. Stop deforestation and take a 20 percent advantage in our carbon balance sheet, with out doing anything at home called REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) and push for carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. There are warning signs elsewhere and they need to be read correctly and acted up on , if not the cases like flood –act of nature or manmade disaster. The full length paper orient in proper understanding of the issues and identifying the most appropriate course of action.

Keywords: catastrophe, deforestation, emissions, waste water

Procedia PDF Downloads 288

Authors: Eurico Lima Basto, Ofélia Pinto, Anabela Silva, Amélia Ferreira-Da-Silva

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The purpose if this study is two-fold: on the one hand, to identify the accounting information systems implemented in third sector organizations, as well as its components, its tools and the decisions and control purposes they serve; on the other hand, and by confronting these two theories - institutional theory versus rational choice – we intent to go further by understanding the reasons behind the adoption of the aforementioned tools. Data has been collected from third sector organizations operating in Portugal. Our sample includes all juridical types of organizations such as foundations, cooperative, associations or private institutions of social solidarity. The questionnaire contained sixteen close-ended questions and four open-questions. Results confirm the theoretical perspective of institutionalism. Most third sector organizations operating in Portugal implemented only traditional accounting tools like standard accounting statements, cost accounting, budgeting. Moreover, there is clear evidence that the decisions about the implementation of these tools were coercive oriented. With this study it is intended to contribute to a better understanding of the context of third sector organizations in Portugal, in particular the role that accounting plays in this sector, with a special focus on management accounting tools, and the factors that influence their use and the degree of their usefulness in the process of decision making.

Keywords: third sector, accounting tools, institutional theory, Portugal, descriptive research

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Authors: Ghulam Mustafa Halepota, Zaib Dahar

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Background: Low acceptance of FP services, particularly in hard to reach areas where geographic, economic, or social barriers limit-service uptake. Moreover, limited resources appeared to be a reflection of dismal contraceptive use in Pakistan. People’s Primary Health Care Initiative (PPHI) is a Public Private Partnership Program of Government of Sindh which aims to improve maternal child health through accessible family planning services in far flung areas. In 2015 PPHI launched special family planning camps to have achieved a rapid improvement in CPR. On quarterly basis, these camps focus on Long Acting Reversible Contraceptives (LARC). These camps are arranged at 250 BHU Plus (24/7 MCHCs). The Organization manages 1140 primary health care facilities all over Sindh province and focuses on maternal, newborn and child health which includes antenatal care, labor/delivery, postnatal care, family planning, immunization, nutrition, BEmONC, CEmONC, diagnostic laboratories, ambulance services. Under the FPRH program, the organization launched special family planning camps in far flung areas to achieve a rapid improvement in CPR-committed to FP 2020 goal. Objective: To assess the performance of special FP camps for the improvement of long acting reversible contraceptive in hard to reach areas. Methodology: Outreach camps are organized on quarterly basis in 250 BHUs and maternal and child health centers (available-24/7). Using observational study design, the study reports 2 years data of special FP camps conducted in 23 various districts of Sindh during April 2015-April 2017. These special camps served a range of modern contraceptive methods including IUCDs, implants, condoms, pills, and injections. Moreover, 125 male medical officers are trained across Sindh in LARC and 554 female have been trained in implants and IUCD insertions. MSI Impact calculator was used to determine health and demographic impact of services. Results: This intervention has brought exceptional results, and the response has been overwhelming in time. Total 2048 special camps during 2015 till April 2017 have been carried out. 231796 MWRAs visited camps 91% opted modern FP, of which 45% opted Implants, 6% selected IUCDs from LARC (long term reversible contraceptive) from short term, 17% opted injectable 18% choose pills, and 12% used condoms. This intervention created a high contraceptive impact in rural Sindh an estimated 125048 FP users have been created, of this 111846 LARC users and 13498 are SARC users, through this intervention an estimated 55774 unintended pregnancies, 36299 live births, 9394, 80 maternal deaths, 926 and 6077 unsafe abortion have been averted. Moreover, the intervention created an economic impact and saved 2,409,563 direct health expenditure on each woman with reproductive age. Conclusion: Special FP Camps along with routine services is an effective and acceptable model for increase in provision of long-acting and permanent methods in hard to reach areas. This innovative approach by PHHI-Sindh has also been adopted in other provinces of Pakistan.

Keywords: inequalities, special camps, family planning services, hard to reach areas

Procedia PDF Downloads 187

Authors: Rajeev Kumar, Harishankar Kumar

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Fragmented data silos within enterprises impede the extraction of meaningful insights and hinder efficiency in tasks such as product development, client understanding, and meeting preparation. To address this, we propose a system-agnostic framework that leverages large language models (LLMs) to unify diverse data sources into a cohesive, user-centered knowledge graph. By automating entity extraction, relationship inference, and semantic enrichment, the framework maps interactions, behaviors, and data around the user, enabling intelligent querying and reasoning across various data types, including emails, calendars, chats, documents, and logs. Its domain adaptability supports applications in contextual search, task prioritization, expertise identification, and personalized recommendations, all rooted in user-centric insights. Experimental results demonstrate its effectiveness in generating actionable insights, enhancing workflows such as trip planning, meeting preparation, and daily task management. This work advances the integration of knowledge graphs and LLMs, bridging the gap between fragmented data systems and intelligent, unified enterprise solutions focused on user interactions.

Keywords: knowledge graph, entity extraction, relation extraction, LLM, activity graph, enterprise intelligence

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Authors: Kawser Ahmed, K. Bousson, Milca F. Coelho

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4D flight trajectory optimization is one of the key ingredients to improve flight efficiency and to enhance the air traffic capacity in the current air traffic management (ATM). The present paper explores the iterative dynamic programming (IDP) as a potential numerical optimization method for 4D flight trajectory optimization. IDP is an iterative version of the Dynamic programming (DP) method. Due to the numerical framework, DP is very suitable to deal with nonlinear discrete dynamic systems. The 4D waypoint representation of the flight trajectory is similar to the discretization by a grid system; thus DP is a natural method to deal with the 4D flight trajectory optimization. However, the computational time and space complexity demanded by the DP is enormous due to the immense number of grid points required to find the optimum, which prevents the use of the DP in many practical high dimension problems. On the other hand, the IDP has shown potentials to deal successfully with high dimension optimal control problems even with a few numbers of grid points at each stage, which reduces the computational effort over the traditional DP approach. Although the IDP has been applied successfully in chemical engineering problems, IDP is yet to be validated in 4D flight trajectory optimization problems. In this paper, the IDP has been successfully used to generate minimum length 4D optimal trajectory avoiding any obstacle in its path, such as a no-fly zone or residential areas when flying in low altitude to reduce noise pollution.

Keywords: 4D waypoint navigation, iterative dynamic programming, obstacle avoidance, trajectory optimization

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Authors: Kyonghoon Kim, Wonyoung Park, Taeil Park

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In 1994, Korea experienced a national tragedy of Seongsu Bridge collapse. The accident was severe enough to alert governmental officers to the problem of existing management policy for national infrastructures. As a result, government legislated the ‘Guidelines for the safety inspection and test of infrastructure’ which have been utilized as the primary tool to make decision for the maintenance and rehabilitation of infrastructure for last twenty years. Although it is clear that the guideline established a basics how to evaluate and manage the condition of infrastructures in systematic manner, it is equally clear that the guideline needs improvements in order to obtain reasonable investment decisions for budget allocation. Because its inspection and evaluation procedures mainly focused on the structural condition of infrastructures, it was hard to make decision when the infrastructures were in same level of structural condition. In addition, it did not properly reflect various aspects of infrastructures such as performance, public demand, capacity, etc., which were more valuable to public. Regardless of the importance, these factors were commonly neglected in governmental decision-making process, because there factors were somewhat subjective and difficult to quantify in rational manner. Thus, this study proposes a framework to properly evaluate the serviceability indicators using AHP and Fuzzy approach. The framework is expected to assist governmental agency in establishing effective investment strategies for budget planning.

Keywords: infrastructure, evaluation, serviceability, fuzzy

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Authors: Pedro Esteban

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Today’s electrical networks, including microgrids, are evolving into smart grids. The smart grid concept brings the idea that the power comes from various sources (continuous or intermittent), in various forms (AC or DC, high, medium or low voltage, etc.), and it must be integrated into the electric power system in a smart way to guarantee a continuous and reliable supply that complies with power quality and energy efficiency standards and grid code requirements. This idea brings questions for the different players like how the required power will be generated, what kind of power will be more suitable, how to store exceeding levels for short or long-term usage, and how to combine and distribute all the different generation power sources in an efficient way. To address these issues, there has been lots of development in recent years on the field of on-grid and off-grid hybrid power systems (HPS). These systems usually combine one or more modes of electricity generation together with energy storage to ensure optimal supply reliability and high level of energy security. Hybrid power systems combine power generation and energy storage technologies together with real-time energy management and innovative power quality and energy efficiency improvement functionalities. These systems help customers achieve targets for clean energy generation, they add flexibility to the electrical grid, and they optimize the installation by improving its power quality and energy efficiency.

Keywords: microgrids, hybrid power systems, energy storage, power quality improvement

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Authors: Davit Khachatryan, Shuo Xiang

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Numerous published studies on the use of prazosin in the treatment of PTSD-related sleep disturbances in adult population have resulted in updates to the recommendation for prazosin for nightmares that showed its strength of evidence elevated from C to B in the US Department of Veterans Affairs clinical practice guideline. In addition, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine clinical practice guideline gave prazosin a level-A recommendation for the treatment of PTSD-associated nightmares. The aim of this review is to summarize the available literature for prazosin use for nightmares and other sleep disturbances in children and adolescents with PTSD. Method: A comprehensive search for studies on prazosin use for sleep disturbances in child and adolescent population with PTSD has been performed. We looked at MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, AMED, Scopus, Web of Science, and Cochrane CENTRAL databases. Results: Compared to adult population with similar psychopathology, the available literature in child and adolescent population is scarce. Despite increased interest in prazosin in the management of PTSD, only six studies investigating this medication in children and adolescents have been published. Conclusion: A large randomized control trial on this topic is needed for more definite evidence on the efficacy and safety of prazosin in the treatment of nightmares in children and adolescents with PTSD.

Keywords: guidelines, prazosin, PTSD, sleep disturbance

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Authors: Lichung Jen, Yi Chun Liu, Kuan-Wei Lee

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Fruitful data has been accumulated in database nowadays and is commonly used as support for decision-making. In the healthcare industry, hospital, for instance, ordering pharmacy inventory is one of the key decision. With large drug inventory, the current cost increases and its expiration dates might lead to future issue, such as drug disposal and recycle. In contrast, underestimating demand of the pharmacy inventory, particularly standing drugs, affects the medical treatment and possibly hospital reputation. Prescription behaviour of hospital physicians is one of the critical factor influencing this decision, particularly irregular prescription behaviour. If a drug’s usage amount in the month is irregular and less than the regular usage, it may cause the trend of subsequent stockpiling. On the contrary, if a drug has been prescribed often than expected, it may result in insufficient inventory. We proposed a hierarchical Bayesian mixture model with two components to identify physicians’ regular/irregular prescription patterns with probabilities. Heterogeneity of hospital is considered in our proposed hierarchical Bayes model. The result suggested that modeling the prescription patterns of physician is beneficial for estimating the order quantity of medication and pharmacy inventory management of the hospital. Managerial implication and future research are discussed.

Keywords: hierarchical Bayesian model, poission mixture model, medicines prescription behavior, irregular behavior

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Authors: Ogunremi Beatrice, Oluwole David Adebayo

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Public secondary school students are face with some challenges from the parents, government and teachers in school. Some of the challenges that arises from the parents are lack of attention and adequate communication. From the government are unavailability of useful instructional materials, competent and professionally trained teachers for each subject the students do in school. The challenges that arise from the teachers most often are mismanagement of time, inability to understand the capacity of the student and lack class management and follow up. This study investigated self-regulation, emotional intelligence, self-efficacy and goal orientation as predictors of school engagement among public secondary school students in Ibadan. A structured questionnaire was administered on 258 students from six mixed secondary schools in Ibadan. Pearson Product Moment Correlation method was used for data analysis. Four hypothesis were raised and answered, the results showed there is positive and significant relationships between school engagement among public secondary school students and each of the independent variable: Self-regulation, Emotional intelligence, Self-efficacy, Goal orientation. On the basis of these findings, it was recommended that the parents have to encourage their children on how to be goal oriented ,build their self-efficacy skill, to be self-regulated and emotionally intelligent in order to be effective in school and be able to increase their intellectual ability.

Keywords: emotional intelligence, self-efficacy, goal orientation, school engagement, self-regulation

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Authors: Mina Bakhshi

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Nowadays, issues such as various types of pollution, problems caused by energy consumption, population density, social activities, difficulties related to urban access and communication, transportation, etc., have challenged different communities and become the subject of their discussions. In response to this issue, theories and movements have emerged to achieve sustainable urban development, including the smart growth movement. This theory emphasizes that the physical growth and expansion of cities should serve the community and the environment, aiming to improve the quality of life and promote the use of renewable energy resources for sustainability. The smart city network system not only improves the economic situation of the society and benefits the environment but also enables the achievement of important issues such as sustainable development, continuity, and diversity of energy resources. In this article, we investigate the impact of using renewable energy sources on optimizing energy consumption and reducing pollution caused by fossil fuels with the help of smart city development. The aim of this article is to introduce renewable energy sources and their utilization as a solution to address the energy crisis and reduce environmental pollution. This research has attempted to introduce the smart city and the use of renewable energy sources as a method for solving many urban problems and achieving efficient urban control and management.

Keywords: smart city, renewable energy sources, sustainable development, sustainable city

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Authors: Kwabena Asare, Ezekiel N. N. Nortey, Felix O. Mettle

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Modelling of extreme events has always been of interest in fields such as hydrology and meteorology. However, after the recent global financial crises, appropriate models for modelling of such rare events leading to these crises have become quite essential in the finance and risk management fields. This paper models the extreme values of the Ghana Stock Exchange All-Shares indices (2000-2010) by applying the Extreme Value Theory to fit a model to the tails of the daily stock returns data. A conditional approach of the EVT was preferred and hence an ARMA-GARCH model was fitted to the data to correct for the effects of autocorrelation and conditional heteroscedastic terms present in the returns series, before EVT method was applied. The Peak Over Threshold (POT) approach of the EVT, which fits a Generalized Pareto Distribution (GPD) model to excesses above a certain selected threshold, was employed. Maximum likelihood estimates of the model parameters were obtained and the model’s goodness of fit was assessed graphically using Q-Q, P-P and density plots. The findings indicate that the GPD provides an adequate fit to the data of excesses. The size of the extreme daily Ghanaian stock market movements were then computed using the Value at Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES) risk measures at some high quantiles, based on the fitted GPD model.

Keywords: extreme value theory, expected shortfall, generalized pareto distribution, peak over threshold, value at risk

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Authors: Chales Mumbere Musavandalo, Lucie B. Mugherwa, Gloire Kayitoghera Mulondi, Naanson Bweya, Muyisa Musongora, Francis Lelo Nzuzi

Abstract:

The landscape of the Okapi Wildlife Reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo harbors a large community of Mbuti indigenous peoples, often described as the guardians of nature. Living in and off the forest has long been a sustainable strategy for preserving natural resources. This strategy, seen as a form of eco-responsible citizenship, draws upon ethnobotanical knowledge passed down through generations. However, these indigenous communities are facing socio-cultural upheaval, which impacts their traditional way of life. This study aims to assess the relationship between the Mbuti indigenous people’s way of life and the preservation of the Okapi Wildlife Reserve. The study was conducted under the assumption that, despite socio-cultural upheavals, the forest and its resources remain central to the Mbuti way of life. The study was conducted in six encampments, three of which were located inside the forest and two in the anthropized zone. The methodological approach initially involved group interviews in six Mbuti encampments. The objective of these interviews was to determine how these people perceive the various services provided by the forest and the resources obtained from this habitat. The technique of using pebbles was adopted to adapt the exercise of weighting services and resources to the understanding of these people. Subsequently, the study carried out ethnobotanical surveys to identify the wood resources frequently used by these communities. This survey was completed in third position by a transect inventory of 1000 m length and 25 m width in order to enhance the understanding of the abundance of these resources around the camps. Two transects were installed in each camp to carry out this inventory. Traditionally, the Mbuti communities sustain their livelihood through hunting, fishing, gathering for self-consumption, and basketry. The Manniophyton fulvum-based net remains the main hunting tool. The primary forest and the swamp are two habitats from which these peoples derive the majority of their resources. However, with the arrival of the Bantu people, who introduced agriculture based on cocoa production, the Mbuti communities started providing services to the Bantu in the form of labor and field guarding. This cultural symbiosis between Mbute and Bantu has also led to non-traditional practices, such as the use of hunting rifles instead of nets and fishing nets instead of creels. The socio-economic and ecological environment in which Mbuti communities live is changing rapidly, including the resources they depend on. By incorporating the time factor into their perception of ecosystem services, only their future (p-value = 0, 0,121), the provision of wood for energy (p-value = 0,1976), and construction (p-value = 0,2548) would be closely associated with the forest in their future. For other services, such as food supply, medicine, and hunting, adaptation to Bantu customs is conceivable. Additionally, the abundance of wood used by the Mbuti people has been high around encampments located in intact forests and low in those in anthropized areas. The traditional way of life of the Mbuti communities is influenced by the cultural symbiosis, reflected in their habits and the availability of resources. The land tenure security of Mbuti areas is crucial to preserve their tradition and forest biodiversity. Conservation efforts in the Okapi Wildlife Reserve must consider this cultural dynamism and promote positive values for the flagship species. The oversight of subsistence hunting is imperative to curtail the transition of these communities to poaching.

Keywords: traditional life, conservation, Indigenous people, cultural symbiosis, forest

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Authors: Ariyaratna Athugala

Abstract:

Mass media play a significant role in democratic societies. The Political Economy of the Mass Media postulates that elite media interlock with other institutional sectors in ownership, and editorial management effectively circumscribing their ability to remain analytically detached from other dominant institutional sectors. The production of meaning in news discourse is not valued neutral, but part of a larger process of presenting a hegemonic understanding of the world to audiences as the “production of consent.” The horse race model argues that “the raw material of news” pressures six bands that ultimately shape the news audiences receive. The six bands are as follows: Crown piece (raw material), brow band (professionalism), throat latch (gatekeeper), a bit (construction), nose band (perception), and reins (ownership). dThe horse race model suggests that media ultimately serve to “manufacture consent” for a range of self-serving elite opinion options. These bands determine what events are deemed newsworthy, how they are covered, where they are placed within the media and how much coverage they receive. Highly descriptive in nature, the horse race model of communication is concerned with the question of whether media can be seen to play a hegemonic role in the society oriented towards legitimization, hegemonic pressures and ideological construction.

Keywords: hegemonic pressures, horse race, ideological construction, six bands

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Authors: Theophilius Adekunle Tinuoye

Abstract:

Trade unions are groups formed essentially to promote, articulate and enhance the welfare of workers. They are expected to defend the workers interests and participate actively in workplace exchanges. But for trade unions to function effectively and actualize their lofty aspirations in the context of the current dynamic and ever-changing industrial relations context, they must not only have qualified and competent leaders, but also flexible and effective structure, systems, organograms, constitution, and administrative processes in place to compliment their policies and programmes. An important aspect of industrial relations is the existence of cordial tripartite or bipartite interactions between stakeholders and other social partners that are indispensable to the creation of positive and mutually beneficial exchanges and outcomes. This paper canvassed that unions must be structurally viable and administratively cohesive in order to be effective, pragmatic, functional and remain relevant. It also argued that weak, structurally deficient and less organized unions often find it immensely difficult to actualize workers goals. Finally, it outlined basic principles that will enhance union administration, guarantee that unions will continue to satisfy the yearnings of its members in these trying times and finally foster peaceful industrial relations climate and cordial labor relations between trade unions, employers /management and government.

Keywords: governance, labor relations, trade unions, workers

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Authors: Shizra Waris, Bilal Shoaib, Munib Ahmad

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Background; The using of clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) may recover unceasing disease organization, which requires regular visits to multiple health professionals, treatment monitoring, disease control, and patient behavior modification. The objective of this survey is to determine if these CDSSs improve the processes of unceasing care including diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of diseases. Though artificial intelligence is not a new idea it has been widely documented as a new technology in computer science. Numerous areas such as education business, medical and developed have made use of artificial intelligence Methods: The survey covers articles extracted from relevant databases. It uses search terms related to information technology and viral hepatitis which are published between 2000 and 2016. Results: Overall, 80% of studies asserted the profit provided by information technology (IT); 75% of learning asserted the benefits concerned with medical domain;25% of studies do not clearly define the added benefits due IT. The CDSS current state requires many improvements to hold up the management of liver diseases such as HCV, liver fibrosis, and cirrhosis. Conclusion: We concluded that the planned model gives earlier and more correct calculation of hepatitis B and it works as promising tool for calculating of custom hepatitis B from the clinical laboratory data.

Keywords: detection, hapataties, observation, disesese

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Authors: Y. N. Fung, R. Liu, T. M. Choi

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Over the past decades, previous studies have explored different consumers’ attitudes towards sustainable fashion and how these attitudes affect consumer behaviors. Researchers have attempted to provide solutions for product suppliers (e.g., retailers, designers, developers, and manufacturers) through studying consumers’ attitudes towards sustainable fashion. However, based on the studies of consumer attitudes, investigations on the sales and market share of sustainable sportswear products remain under-explored. Gaps may exist between the consumers’ expectations and the developed sustainable sportswear products. In this study, a novel study has been carried out to examine the attitude gaps existing between the sustainable sportswear suppliers’ (SSSs) and the sustainable sportswear consumers (SSCs). This study firstly identifies the key attitudes towards sustainable sportswear product development. It analyses how sustainable attitudes affect the products being developed, as well as the effects of the attitude’s difference between the SSSs and the SSCs on the consumers’ satisfaction towards sportswear product consumption. A gap analysis research framework is adopted with the use of collected questionnaire survey data. The results indicate that a significant difference exists between SSSs and SSCs’ attitudes towards sustainable design, manufacture, product features, and branding. Based on in-depth interviews, the major causes of the difference in attitudes are studied to provide managerial insights for sustainable sportswear product management and business development.

Keywords: sustainability, sportswear, attitude, gap analysis, suppliers, consumers

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Authors: Rudolph Carl Barrientos, Juwaln Diego Descallar, Rainer James Palmiano

Abstract:

Household Appliance Scheduling Systems (HASS) coupled with a Time-of-Use (TOU) pricing scheme, a form of Demand Side Management (DSM), is not widely utilized in the Philippines’ residential electricity sector. This paper’s goal is to encourage distribution utilities (DUs) to adopt HASS and TOU by analyzing the effect of household schedulers on the electricity price and load profile in a residential environment. To establish this, a city based on an implemented survey is generated using Monte Carlo Analysis (MCA). Then, a Binary Particle Swarm Optimization (BPSO) algorithm-based HASS is developed considering user satisfaction, electricity budget, appliance prioritization, energy storage systems, solar power, and electric vehicles. The simulations were assessed under varying levels of user compliance. Results showed that the average electricity cost, peak demand, and peak-to-average ratio (PAR) of the city load profile were all reduced. Therefore, the deployment of the HASS and TOU pricing scheme is beneficial for both stakeholders.

Keywords: appliance scheduling, DSM, TOU, BPSO, city-wide simulation, electric vehicle, appliance prioritization, energy storage system, solar power

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Authors: Z. I Jeeva

Abstract:

The establishment of municipalities in South Africa has been a long and difficult process; 25 years later, it still appears to be evolving. In 1994, the new democratic government undertook to restructure the country’s racially segregated administrative structure by integrating areas to form cohesive municipal entities that would allow for the more efficient administration management of the regions. It planned to achieve this within a short seven-year period from 1993 to 2000, which was to be divided into three phases, namely, the pre-interim phase from 1994 to1995, the interim phase from 1996 to 1999, and the post-interim phase from 2000 onwards. However, the extensive integrated municipal approach was easier to pen on paper than to implement in practice. This paper seeks to explore the South African spatial reform process from 1993 to 2020, by analyzing policy documents and literature in order to determine how exactly the government attempted to achieve this. The study found that the spatial restructuring process was particularly complex since the democratic government inherited an unequal society located on a fragmented spatial landscape of which there was limited knowledge with many unresolved issues. Furthermore, the study found that there is a lack of literature on the topic from an urban planning perspective and calls for further research to ensure the formation of more efficient administrative regions.

Keywords: categorization, demarcation, municipalities, racial integration, spatial reform

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Authors: Tharsinithevy Kirupananthan, Thivahary Geretharan

Abstract:

Since creation of agricultural enterprises going to reflect the micro and macro level development of Sri Lanka, it is vey important to study the entrepreneurial trends of Agricultural Undergraduates. Likert scale scoring method was used to assess the responses of involvement, Role model effect, aware of demands, confidence and willingness. 37.8% were strongly agreed to do full time business. The average score for to do agriculture businesses were between agree and strongly agree. The average scores for role model effects were less than agree. Average score for aware of needs of society was less than agree. 75.7% of them were able to identify the demands of the society. The demands identified were human capital, self sufficient domestic production, safe and nutritional foods. The confidence of having enough skills score was less than agree. 64.1% of them were owned special skills to carry out entrepreneurial activities. Such skills were possession of different human capitals management skills. The willingness responses scores were more than agree. 61.5% of them were discussed their business plan. Their dream plans were development of new food products, Quality planting materials, harmless method of cultivation and floricultural industry. Those were supported by government policies and other related organizations.

Keywords: agricultural undergraduates, entrepreneurial trends, likert scale Sri Lanka

Procedia PDF Downloads 397