Search results for: public and private universities

Authors: B. Adcock, H. van Rensburg

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Education is ever-changing to keep up with innovative technological development and the rapid acceleration of globalisation. This chapter introduces the historical development and transformation of teaching in distance education from correspondence to on-line learning in Queensland universities. It furthermore investigates changes to the delivery models of distance education that have impacted on teaching at tertiary level in Queensland, and reflects on the social changes that have taken place during the past 100 years. This includes an analysis of the following five different periods in time: Foundation period (1911-1919) including World War I; 1920-1939 including the Great Depression; 1940-1970s, including World War II and the post war reconstruction; and the current technological era (1980s to present). In Queensland, the concept of distance education was begun by the University of Queensland (UQ) in 1911, when it began offering extension courses. The introduction of modern technology, in the form of electronic delivery, dramatically changed tertiary distance education due to political initiatives. The inclusion of electronic delivery in education signifies change at many levels, including policy, pedagogy, curriculum and governance. Changes in delivery not only affect the way study materials are delivered, but also the way courses are be taught and adjustments made by academics to their teaching methods.

Keywords: distance education, innovative technological development, on line education, tertiary education

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Authors: Baharak Mousapour

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Creating public spaces which are tailored for the specific demands of the individuals is one of the challenges for the contemporary interior designers. Improving the general knowledge as well as providing a forum for all walks of life to exploit is one of the objectives of a public library. In this regard, interior design in consistent with the demands of the individuals is of paramount importance. Seemingly, study spaces, in particular, those in close relation to the personalized sector, have proven to be challenging, according to the literature. To address this challenge, attributes of individuals, namely, perception of people from public spaces and their interactions with the so-called spaces, should be analyzed to provide interior designers with something to work on. This paper follows the analytic-descriptive research methodology by outlining case study libraries which have personalized public libraries with the investigation of the type of personalization as its primary objective and (I) recognition of physical schedule and the know-how of the spatial connection in indoor design of a library and (II) analysis of each personalized space in relation to other spaces of the library as its secondary objectives. The significance of the current research lies in the concept of personalization as one of the most recent methods of attracting people to libraries. Previous research exists in this regard, but the lack of data concerning personalization makes this topic worth investigating. Hence, this study aims to put forward approaches through real-case studies for the designers to deal with this concept.

Keywords: interior design, library, library design, personalization

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Authors: Kousar Shaheen

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The electoral process of Pakistan always remains underestimated due to malpractices claimed by the political leaders. The democratic system relies on public decision, selectorial process, transparent arrangements made by public administration, and governance system. Political polarization plays a vital role in any democratic system, which depends upon the way of applying leadership capabilities. In modern societies, public engagement is playing a key role in changing political polarization and implementation of the newest technologies, e-leadership and e-governance to bring e-democracy. The Overseas Pakistanis are unable to cast their votes in the selectorial process of Pakistan. To align this issue with civil society, efforts were made to implement modernized services and facilities by intervening in the Supreme Court. However, the results were found insignificant because of ineffective citizen engagement, IT-based, governance and public administration. which proved that the shifting to advanced society is crucial in Pakistan due to the elected Officials of current democratic system. It is an empirical study to involve Pakistani nationals (overseas) in the democratic process by utilizing the digital facility of vote casting. The role of Government. The role of e-leadership in changing the political polarization for the implementation of e-election will be measured by collecting data from different sources.

Keywords: e-democracy, e-leadership, political polarization, public engagement

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Authors: Sanchayan Banerjee, Peter John

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Nudge plus is a modification of the toolkit of behavioural public policy. It incorporates an element of reflection¾the plus¾into the delivery of a nudge, either blended in or made proximate. Nudge plus builds on recent work combining heuristics and deliberation. It may be used to design pro-social interventions that help preserve the autonomy of the agent. The argument turns on seminal work on dual systems, which presents a subtler relationship between fast and slow thinking than commonly assumed in the classic literature in behavioural public policy. We review classic and recent work on dual processes to show that a hybrid is more plausible than the default interventionist or parallel competitive framework. We define nudge plus, set out what reflection could entail, provide examples, outline causal mechanisms, and draw testable implications.

Keywords: nudge, nudge plus, think, dual process theory

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Authors: Susan Lubbers

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This study applies critical discourse analysis to the language used by educators to frame international students of Asian backgrounds in Anglo-Western universities as quiet, shy, passive and unable to think critically. Emphasis is on the self-promoted ‘internationalised’ Australian tertiary context, where negative stereotypes are commonly voiced not only in the academy but also in the media. Parallels are drawn as well with other Anglo-Western educational contexts. The study critically compares the discourse of these persistent negative stereotypes, with in-class and interview discourses of international students of Asian and Western language, cultural and educational backgrounds enrolled in a Media and Popular Culture unit in an Australian university. The focus of analysis of the student discourse is on their engagement in critical dialogic interactions on the topics of culture and interculturality. The evidence is also drawn from student interviews and focus groups and from observation of whole-class discussion participation rates. The findings of the research project provide evidence that counters the myth of student as problem. They point rather to the widespread lack of intercultural awareness of Western educators and students as being at the heart of the negative perceptions of students of Asian backgrounds. The study suggests the efficacy of an approach to developing intercultural competence that is embedded, or integrated, into tertiary programs. The presentation includes an overview of the main strategies that have been developed by the tertiary educator (author) to support the development of intercultural competence of and among the student cohort. The evidence points to the importance of developing intercultural competence among tertiary educators and students. The failure by educators to ensure that the diverse voices, ideas and perspectives of students from all cultural, educational and language backgrounds are heard in our classrooms means that our universities can hardly be regarded or promoted as genuinely internationalised. They will continue as undemocratic institutions that perpetrate persistent Western educational hegemony.

Keywords: critical discourse analysis, critical thinking, embedding, intercultural competence, interculturality, international student, internationalised education

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Authors: Bashir Tijjani Abubakar

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Capital markets play a very important role in financing of private and public institutions in both developing and developed economies. Unfortunately, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in those economies are yet to fully utilize the markets to finance their long financial needs. This study assesses the factors that influence the decisions of the Muslim Owners/Managers of SMEs in Nigeria and specifically in Kano to seek capital market financing. Logit regression model was used to assess the factors such as control of ownership, perception of the owners/managers on the interest rate charged by commercial banks, educational qualification, size, and age of the SMEs. The study reveals that all the factors have significant positive influence on the willingness of the SMEs Owners/Managers to seek capital market financing. The study recommends educating the Owners/Managers on the operations and products of the markets.

Keywords: capital markets, capital market financing, small and medium enterprise and willingness, size of an enterprise, age of an enterprise and control of ownership

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Authors: Lok Raj Joshi, Naveen Prakash Shah, Sharad Kumar Sharma, I. Ratna Bhattarai, Rajendra Basnet, Deepak Dahal, Bahagwan Maharjan, Seraphine Kaminsa

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Context: Tuberculosis (TB) is a significant health issue in Nepal, a country with a high burden of the disease. Despite efforts to control TB, there is still a gap in the notification of TB cases, which hinders effective control and treatment. This paper aims to address this notification gap and proposes strategies to improve TB control in Nepal. Research Aim: The aim of this research is to understand and address the tuberculosis notification gap in Nepal. The focus is on enhancing the healthcare system, involving the private sector and communities, raising awareness, and addressing social determinants to achieve sustainable TB control. Methodology: The research methodology involved a review of existing epidemiological data and research studies related to TB in Nepal. Additionally, consultation with an expert group from the TB control program in Nepal provided insights into the current state of TB control and challenges in addressing the notification gap. Findings: The findings reveal that only 55% of TB cases were reported in 2022, indicating a significant notification gap. Of the reported cases, only 32% and 19% were referred by the private sector and community, respectively. Furthermore, 20% of diagnosed cases were not treated in the initial phase. The estimated number of cases of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR TB) was 2,800, suggesting a low diagnosis rate. Among the diagnosed MDR TB cases, only 60% were receiving treatment. Additionally, it was observed that 20% of diagnosed MDR TB cases were from India and not enrolling in TB treatment in Nepal, indicating a high rate of defaulters. Theoretical Importance: The study highlights the importance of adopting a holistic strategy to address the notification gap in TB cases in Nepal. It emphasizes the need to enhance healthcare infrastructure, raise awareness, involve the private sector and local communities, establish effective methods to trace initial defaulters, implement TB interventions in border regions, and mitigate the social stigma associated with the disease. Data Collection and Analysis Procedures: Data for this study was collected through a review of existing epidemiological data and research studies. The data were then analyzed to identify patterns, trends, and gaps in TB case notification in Nepal.

Keywords: TB, tuberculosis, private sector, community, migrants, nepal

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Authors: Christopher Manyamba

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Women in Malawi produce perform between 50-70 percent of all agricultural tasks and yet the majority remain food insecure. The aim of his paper is to build on existing mixed evidence that indicates that empowering women in agriculture is conducive to improving food security. The WEAI is used to provide evidence on the relationship between women’s empowerment in agriculture and household food security. A multinomial logistic regression is applied to the Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) components and the Household Hunger Scale. The overall results show that the WEAI can be used to determine household food insecurity; however it has to be contextually adapted. Assets ownership, credit, group membership and leisure time are positively associated with food security. Contrary to other literature, empowerment in having control and decisions on income indicate negative association with household food security. These results could potentially better inform public, private and civil society stakeholders’ dialogues in creating the most effective and sustainable interventions to help women attain long-term food security.

Keywords: food security, gender, empowerment, agriculture index, framework for African food security, household hunger scale

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Authors: Eric Morettin

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Cybersecurity and digital literacy are pressing issues among Canadian citizens, yet formal education does not provide today’s students with the necessary knowledge and skills needed to adapt to these challenging issues within the physical and digital labor-market. Canada’s current education systems do not highlight the importance of these respective fields, aside from using technology for learning management systems and alternative methods of assignment completion. Educators are not properly trained to integrate technology into the compulsory courses within public education, to better prepare their learners in these topics and Canada’s digital economy. ICTC addresses these gaps in education and training through cross-Canadian educational programming in digital literacy and competency, cybersecurity and coding which is bridged with Canada’s provincially regulated K-12 curriculum guidelines. After analyzing Canada’s provincial education, it is apparent that there are gaps in learning related to technology, as well as inconsistent educational outcomes that do not adequately represent the current Canadian and global economies. Presently only New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and British Columbia offer curriculum guidelines for cybersecurity, computer programming, and digital literacy. The remaining provinces do not address these skills in their curriculum guidelines. Moreover, certain courses across some provinces not being updated since the 1990’s. The three territories respectfully take curriculum strands from other provinces and use them as their foundation in education. Yukon uses all British Columbia curriculum. Northwest Territories and Nunavut respectfully use a hybrid of Alberta and Saskatchewan curriculum as their foundation of learning. Education that is provincially regulated does not allow for consistency across the country’s educational outcomes and what Canada’s students will achieve – especially when curriculum outcomes have not been updated to reflect present day society. Through this, ICTC has aligned Canada’s provincially regulated curriculum and created opportunities for focused education in the realm of technology to better serve Canada’s present learners and teachers; while addressing inequalities and applicability within curriculum strands and outcomes across the country. As a result, lessons, units, and formal assessment strategies, have been created to benefit students and teachers in this interdisciplinary, cross-curricular, practice - as well as meeting their compulsory education requirements and developing skills and literacy in cyber education. Teachers can access these lessons and units through ICTC’s website, as well as receive professional development regarding the assessment and implementation of these offerings from ICTC’s education coordinators, whose combines experience exceeds 50 years of teaching in public, private, international, and Indigenous schools. We encourage you to take this opportunity that will benefit students and educators, and will bridge the learning and curriculum gaps in Canadian education to better reflect the ever-changing public, social, and career landscape that all citizens are a part of. Students are the future, and we at ICTC strive to ensure their futures are bright and prosperous.

Keywords: cybersecurity, education, curriculum, teachers

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Authors: Merly Patiño Villanueva, Dubys Villarreal Torres, Eduardo Salazar Araujo, Lezly Ramos Macedo

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The concept of sustainability has been influencing business thinking from the perspective of various economic sectors and their environment, looking for concerns related to the risks associated with the indiscriminate consumption of the planet's resources, which have been widely studied and exposed by different public and private organizations. Tourism is not outsider to this reality; therefore, the concept of sustainable tourism evolves towards the integral management of resources, attending the needs of tourists, host communities and service providers, protecting ecosystems and assuring the conservation of the environment and its biodiversity. Considering the above, the purpose of this paper is to identify trends aimed at promoting sustainable tourism in the destinations of Barranquilla (Colombia) and Nayarit (Mexico). This study is part of the realistic epistemological paradigm, based on the existence of a specific environment for the development of tourism activity and the best sustainability practices associated with this industry, which can be observed and studied, therefore, this research contemplates qualitative research techniques such as the focus group and the interview, applied to 8 experts who are part of the value chain of the sector under study, added to a documentary review taken from the scientific databases Wos and Scopus, as well as statistical information published by official bodies. The data obtained were processed with the qualitative analysis software N-VIVO version 13. As a result, trends and actions to promote tourism are identified for the positioning of the cities of Barranquilla (Colombia) and Nayarit (Mexico) as sustainable destinations: first, the recovery of green areas and environmental spaces, as well as the realization of cultural events; promotion and encouragement of the creative industry and finally the realization of international events. It is concluded that both cities develop activities, projects and investments of public initiative, aimed at positioning them as sustainable tourist destinations.

Keywords: marketing, sustainability, tourism management, policies

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Authors: De Biase Ilaria, Della Rocca Mattia

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Our work aims to highlight the role played by cognitive biases in the reception of environmental information, including scientific communication from expert to the lay public, especially in relationship with environmental data coming from biological and biotechnological recording. Some alternative strategies are suggested in order to maximize public awareness on environmental changes.

Keywords: science communication, environment and psychology, cognitive biases, environmental awareness

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Authors: Koko Wangjam, Naresh Kumar Sharma

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The concern for most public health policies and decision- makers is the equitable distribution of health care resource of the nation. Also, in public health care system, the primary aim is assuaging the burden of the disease. Objective: This paper captures and evaluates some important theories in equity in health with its relevance with the ART program in India. Methodology: The paper is exploratory and descriptive study based on secondary data. The sources of secondary data are published official reports from NACO (National AIDS Control Organisation), United Nations AIDS Program (UNAIDS), World Health Organisation (WHO) etc. Observation: The roll-out of the ART program in 2004 by the Govt. of India made a paradigm shift in HIV/AIDS scenario in the country. Conclusion: There are many theoretical injunctions in most of the principles and approaches in existing theories of health equity. The enervation of HIV infection by taking ART drugs had helped in curbing the prevalence and the fact that it is provided at free of cost has proven this program to be an epitome in distributive justice in public health.

Keywords: art program, burden of the disease, health equity, hiv/aids

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Authors: Bailey Hall, Athena Hoppe, Tevyn Kagele, Anna Nichols, Breeanna Messner

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The Spokane Street Medicine (SSM) Program aims to deliver medical care to people experiencing homelessness in Spokane, Washington. Street medicine is designed to function in a non-traditional setting to help deliver healthcare to a largely underserved population. In this analysis, the SSM Program’s medical charts from street and shelter encounters in early 2021 were reviewed in order to identify illness and diseases in people experiencing homelessness in Spokane. More than half of the prescriptions written during these encounters were for either an antibacterial, an antibiotic, or an antifungal. Estimates of the cost to the local healthcare system are included. Initiating treatment for communicable diseases in people experiencing homelessness via street medicine efforts greatly reduces economic costs while improving health outcomes.

Keywords: ethical issues in public health, equity issues in public health, health economics, health disparities, healthcare costs, medical public health, public health ethics, street medicine

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Authors: Syeda Faiza Gardazi, Syed Ahsan Ali Gardazi, Ajmal Waheed

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The trend of overtime is increasing among workers due to more pressure to perform workloads, job insecurity, and financial issues. Overtime work affects the work-life balance conflict negatively as well positively. Work-life balance conflict has become an important issue as traditional work and family roles have changed. The purpose of the current research was to study the impact of overtime work on work-life balance conflict along with the moderating role of job satisfaction. For this purpose, data is collected from the employees working in different public and private sectors of Pakistan using simple random sampling technique. Descriptive statistics was used for data presentation and analysis. Correlation and regression analysis were used to test four research hypotheses proposed on the basis of research framework. The findings led to the acceptance of four hypotheses. The results show that high working hours and overtime in general lead to high work-life balance conflict. Moreover, job satisfaction moderates the relationship between overtime work and work-life balance conflict.

Keywords: family to work conflict, overtime work, work to family conflict, work-life balance conflict

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Authors: Susana Olmos, Catherine Spencer

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Every year our School in DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology) hosts approximately 80 Erasmus students from partner universities across Europe. Our own students are required to spend a compulsory 3rd year abroad on study and/or work placements. This is an extremely rewarding experience for all of the students, however, it can also be a challenging one. With this in mind, we started a project which aimed to make this transition as easy and productive as possible. The project, which is called MEET: Maximise the Erasmus Experience Together, focuses on the students’ own active engagement in learning and preparation – outside of the classroom –and their own self-directed pursuit of opportunities to develop their confidence and preparedness, which would work as an important foundation for the transformative learning that study abroad implies. We focussed on creating more structured opportunities where Erasmus students from our partner universities (currently studying at DIT) and our second-year students could interact and learn from each other, and in so doing improve both their language and intercultural skills. Our experience so far has been quite positive and we have seen how students taking part in this project have developed as autonomous learners as well as enhanced both their linguistic and intercultural knowledge. As the linguistic element of our project was one of our main priorities, we asked the students to keep a reflective diary on the activities that were organised by the group in the TL. Also, we use questionnaires as well as personal interviews to assess their development. However, there are challenges and proposals we would make to bring this project forward for the near future.

Keywords: erasmus, intercultural competence, linguistic competence, extra curriculum activities

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Authors: Daniela Pellin, Wilson Engelmann

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Brazil has sought to accelerate your development through technology and innovation as a response to the global influences, which has received in internal management practices. For this, it had edited the Brazilian Law of Innovation 13.243/2016. However observing the Law overestimated economic aspects the respective application will not consider the stakeholders and the technological risks because there is no legal treatment. The economic exploitation and the technological risks must be controlled by limits of democratic system to find better social development to contribute with the economics agents for making decision to conform with global directions. The research understands this is a problem to face given the social particularities of the country because there has been the literal import of the North American Triple Helix Theory consolidated in developed countries and the negative consequences when applied in developing countries. Because of this symptomatic scenario, it is necessary to create adjustment to conduct the management of the law besides social democratic interests to increase the country development. For this, therefore, the Government will have to adopt some conducts promoting side by side with universities, civil society and companies, informational transparency, catch of partnerships, create a Confort Letter document for preparation to ensure the operation, joint elaboration of a Manual of Good Practices, make accountability and data dissemination. Also the Universities must promote informational transparency, drawing up partnership contracts and generating revenue, development of information. In addition, the civil society must do data analysis about proposals received for discussing to give opinion related. At the end, companies have to give public and transparent information about investments and economic benefits, risks and innovation manufactured. The research intends as a general objective to demonstrate that the efficiency of the propeller deployment will be possible if the innovative decision-making process goes through the institutional logic. As specific objectives, the American influence must undergo some modifications to better suit the economic-legal incentives to potentiate the development of the social system. The hypothesis points to institutional model for application to the legal system can be elaborated based on emerging characteristics of the country, in such a way that technological risks can be foreseen and there will be global conformity with attention to the full development of society as proposed by the researchers.The method of approach will be the systemic-constructivist with bibliographical review, data collection and analysis with the construction of the institutional and democratic model for the management of the Law.

Keywords: development, governance of law, institutionalization, triple helix

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Authors: Piyanee Khumpao

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Under the Thai Penal Code and Customs Act, sex toys are criminalized and completely prohibited through the legal interpretation as obscene objects by law enforcement, despite there is no explicit legal sanction against them. The purpose of preventing people from accessing sex toys is to preserve public morals. However, sex toys are still available, exposed, and sold publicly in main cities throughout Thailand. They are easily observed by people of any age. This paper argues that sexuality is human nature and human right. Human deserves sexual pleasure as long as getting sexual pleasure does not inflict any harm on others. Using sex toys in private (individually and/or as a couple with mutual consent) does not constitute any harm nor degrade public moral. Therefore, the complete ban of sex toys shall be lifted and decriminalized. Nevertheless, the economic analysis illustrates that criminalization and prohibition of sex toys would lead to its black market – higher price and lower quantity. Although it is socially desirable to have fewer sex toys in the market, there will usually be high demand for them because sexual pleasure is natural and, hence, people have a lower price elasticity of demand for such things, including pornography. Thus, its deterrent effect is not very effective. Moreover, sex toys vendors still always exist because higher price incentivizes them to act illegally and may gain benefits from selling low-quality sex toys. Consequently, consumers do not have a choice to select high-quality sex toys at a reasonable price. Then, they are forced to purchase low quality sex toys at a higher price. They also may suffer from health issues as well as other harms from its dangerous/toxic substances since lower quality products are manufactured poorly to save costs. A law and economics approach supports the decriminalization of sex toys in Thailand. Other measures to control its availability shall be adopted to protect the vulnerable, such as children. Options are i) zoning or regulation on-premises selling sex toys as in Singapore, Japan, and China, ii) regulations of sex toys as medical apparatus like in the state of Alabama, and iii) the prevention of sex toys exposure in the real (physical) appearance (i.e., allowing virtual exposure of sex toys) like in India.

Keywords: human nature, law and economics approach, sex toys, sexual pleasure

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Authors: Pablo Javier Ortega-Rodriguez, Francisco Jose Pozuelos-Estrada

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Recently, there has been a renewed interest in school autonomy in the United Kingdom and its impact on students' outcomes. English principals have a pivotal role in decision-making. The aim of this paper is to explore the correlation between the type of school (public or private) and the considerable responsibilities of English principals which participated in PISA 2015. The final sample consisted of 419 principals. Descriptive data (percentages and means) were generated for the variables related to professional autonomy. Pearson's chi-square test was used to determine if there is an association between the type of school and principals' responsibilities for relevant tasks. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software, version 22. Findings suggest a significant correlation between the type of school and principals' responsibility for firing teachers and formulating the school budget. This study confirms that the type of school is not associated with principals' responsibility for choosing which textbooks are used at school. The present study establishes a quantitative framework for defining four models of professional autonomy and some proposals to improve school autonomy in the United Kingdom.

Keywords: decision making, principals, professional autonomy, school autonomy

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Authors: Francesco Buccafurri, Celeste Romolo

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Nowadays phishing is the most frequent starting point of cyber-attack vectors. Phishing is implemented both via email and social network messages. While a wide scientific literature exists which addresses the problem of contrasting email spam-phishing, no specific countermeasure has been so far proposed for phishing included into private messages of social network platforms. Unfortunately, the problem is severe. This paper proposes an approach against social network phishing, based on a non invasive collaborative information-sharing approach which leverages blockchain. The detection method works by filtering candidate messages, by distilling them by means of a distance-preserving hash function, and by publishing hashes over a public blockchain through a trusted smart contract (thus avoiding denial of service attacks). Phishing detection exploits social information embedded into social network profiles to identify similar messages belonging to disjoint contexts. The main contribution of the paper is to introduce a new approach to contrasting the problem of social network phishing, which, despite its severity, received little attention by both research and industry.

Keywords: phishing, social networks, information sharing, blockchain

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Authors: Hajar Aman Key Yekani, Yusra Mushtaq, Behnaz Farahani, Hamed Abdi

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This study explores associations between parental restriction and children's appetitive traits, putting to test the hypothesis that parental 'restriction' is associated with having a child with stronger food approach tendencies (food enjoyment (FE) and food over-responsiveness (FR)). The participants, from 55 nationalities, targeting 1081 parents of 5- to 11-year-old children from 7 private schools in Dubai, UAE, who completed self-reported questionnaires over the 2011-2012 school year. The questionnaire has been a tailored amalgamation of CEBQ and CFQ in order to measure the children’s appetitive traits and parental restriction, respectively. The findings of this quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional analysis confirmed the hypothesis in that 'parental restriction' was positively associated with child food responsiveness (r, 0.183), food enjoyment (r, 0.102). To conclude, as far as the figures depict, the parents controlling their children’s food intake would seemingly a reverse impact on their eating behaviour in the short term.

Keywords: parental restriction, children, eating behaviour, schools in Dubai

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Authors: Yunyong Guo, Sudhakar Ganti, Bryan Guo

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The swift proliferation of telehealth Internet of Things (IoT) devices has sparked concerns regarding energy consumption and the need for streamlined data processing. This paper presents an energy-efficient model that integrates telehealth IoT devices into a platform based on fog and cloud computing. This integrated system provides a sustainable and robust solution to address the challenges. Our model strategically utilizes fog computing as a localized data processing layer and leverages cloud computing for resource-intensive tasks, resulting in a significant reduction in overall energy consumption. The incorporation of adaptive energy-saving strategies further enhances the efficiency of our approach. Simulation analysis validates the effectiveness of our model in improving energy efficiency for telehealth IoT systems, particularly when integrated with localized fog nodes and both private and public cloud infrastructures. Subsequent research endeavors will concentrate on refining the energy-saving model, exploring additional functional enhancements, and assessing its broader applicability across various healthcare and industry sectors.

Keywords: energy-efficient, fog computing, IoT, telehealth

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Authors: Hanieh Sakha, Nader Nader, Haleh Farzin

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Introduction: Throughout history, pain theories have been supposed by biomedicine, especially regarding its diagnosis and treatment aspects. Therefore, the feeling of pain is not only a personal experience and is affected by social background; therefore, it involves extensive systems of signals. The challenges in emotional and sentimental dimensions of pain originate from scientific medicine (i.e., the dominant theory is also referred to as the specificity theory); however, this theory has accepted some alterations by emerging physiology. Then, Von Frey suggested the theory of cutaneous senses (i.e., Muller’s concept: the common sensation of combined four major skin receptors leading to a proper sensation) 50 years after the specificity theory. The pain pathway was composed of spinothalamic tracts and thalamus with an inhibitory effect on the cortex. Pain is referred to as a series of unique experiences with various reasons and qualities. Despite the gate control theory, the biological aspect overcomes the social aspect. Vrancken provided a more extensive definition of pain and found five approaches: Somatico-technical, dualistic body-oriented, behaviorist, phenomenological, and consciousness approaches. The Western model combined physical, emotional, and existential aspects of the human body. On the other hand, Kotarba felt confused about the basic origins of chronic pain. Freund demonstrated and argued with Durkhemian about the sociological approach to emotions. Lynch provided a piece of evidence about the correlation between cardiovascular disease and emotionally life-threatening occurrences. Helman supposed a distinction between private and public pain. Conclusion: The consideration of the emotional aspect of pain could lead to effective, emotional, and social responses to pain. On the contrary, the theory of embodiment is based on the sociological view of health and illness. Social epidemiology shows an imbalanced distribution of health, illness, and disability among various social groups. The social support and socio-cultural level can result in several types of pain. It means the status of athletes might define their pain experiences. Gender is one of the important contributing factors affecting the type of pain (i.e., females are more likely to seek health services for pain relief.) Chronic non-cancer pain (CNCP) has become a serious public health issue affecting more than 70 million people globally. CNCP is a serious public health issue which is caused by the lack of awareness about chronic pain management among the general population.

Keywords: pain, sociology, sociological, body

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Authors: Kyere Francis, Sun Dongying, Asante Dennis, Nkrumah Nana Kwame Edmund, Naana Yaa Gyamea Kumah

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With a focus on renewable energy to achieve low-carbon transition objectives, there is a greater demand for effective collaborative strategies for planning, strategic decision mechanisms, and long-term policy designs to steer the transitions. Government agencies, NGOs, the private sector, and individual citizens play an important role in sustainable energy production. In Ghana, however, such collaboration is fragile in the fight against climate change. This current study seeks to re-examine the position or potential of network governance in Ghana's renewable energy transition. The study adopted a qualitative approach and employed semi-structured interviews for data gathering. To explore network governance and low carbon transitions in Ghana, we examine key themes such as political environment and impact, actor cooperation and stakeholder interactions, financing and the transition, market design and renewable energy integration, existing regulation and policy gaps for renewable energy transition, clean cooking accessibility, and affordability. The findings reveal the following; Lack of comprehensive consultations with relevant stakeholders leads to lower acceptance of the policy model and sometimes lack of policy awareness. Again, the unavailability and affordability of renewable energy technologies and access to credit facilities is a significant hurdle to long-term renewable transition. Ghana's renewable energy transitions require strong networking and interaction among the public, private, and non-governmental organizations. The study participants believe that the involvement of relevant energy experts and stakeholders devoid of any political biases is instrumental in accelerating renewable energy transitions, as emphasized in the proposed framework. The study recommends that the national renewable energy transition plan be evident to all stakeholders and political administrators. Such policy may encourage renewable energy investment through stable and fixed lending rates by the financial institutions and build a network with international organizations and corporations. These findings could serve as valuable information for the transition-based energy process, primarily aiming to govern sustainability changes through network governance.

Keywords: actors, development, sustainable energy, network governance, renewable energy transition

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Authors: Tayyaba Azim, Bibi Amina

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The increase in the popularity of opinion mining with the rapid growth in the availability of social networks has attracted a lot of opportunities for research in the various domains of Sentiment Analysis and Natural Language Processing (NLP) using Artificial Intelligence approaches. The latest trend allows the public to actively use the internet for analyzing an individual’s opinion and explore the effectiveness of published facts. The main theme of this research is to account the public opinion on the most crucial and extensively discussed development projects, China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), considered as a game changer due to its promise of bringing economic prosperity to the region. So far, to the best of our knowledge, the theme of CPEC has not been analyzed for sentiment determination through the ML approach. This research aims to demonstrate the use of ML approaches to spontaneously analyze the public sentiment on Twitter tweets particularly about CPEC. Support Vector Machine SVM is used for classification task classifying tweets into positive, negative and neutral classes. Word2vec and TF-IDF features are used with the SVM model, a comparison of the trained model on manually labelled tweets and automatically generated lexicon is performed. The contributions of this work are: Development of a sentiment analysis system for public tweets on CPEC subject, construction of an automatic generation of the lexicon of public tweets on CPEC, different themes are identified among tweets and sentiments are assigned to each theme. It is worth noting that the applications of web mining that empower e-democracy by improving political transparency and public participation in decision making via social media have not been explored and practised in Pakistan region on CPEC yet.

Keywords: machine learning, natural language processing, sentiment analysis, support vector machine, Word2vec

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Authors: Taurai T. Chikotie, Bruce W. Watson

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The manifestation of ‘new’ infectious diseases and the re-emergence of ‘old’ infectious diseases now present global problems and Southern Africa has not been spared from such calamity. Although having an organized public health system, countries in this region have failed to leverage on the proliferation in use of Information and Communication Technologies to promote effective disease surveillance. Objective: The objective of this study was to critically review and analyse the crucial variables to consider in the development and implementation of electronic disease surveillance systems in public health within the context of Southern Africa. Methodology: A critical review of literature published in English using, Google Scholar, EBSCOHOST, Science Direct, databases from the Centre for Disease Control (CDC and articles from the World Health Organisation (WHO) was undertaken. Manual reference and grey literature searches were also conducted. Results: Little has been done towards harnessing the potential of information technologies towards disease surveillance and this has been due to several challenges that include, lack of funding, lack of health informatics experts, poor supporting infrastructure, an unstable socio-political and socio-economic ecosystem in the region and archaic policies towards integration of information technologies in public health governance. Conclusion: The Southern African region stands to achieve better health outcomes if they adopt the use of e-disease surveillance systems in public health. However, the dynamics and complexities of the socio-economic, socio-political and technical variables would need addressing to ensure the successful development and implementation of e-disease surveillance systems in the region.

Keywords: critical review, disease surveillance, public health informatics, Southern Africa

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Authors: Gabriel Dolabella, Henrique Rangel, Stella Araújo, Carlos Bolonha, Igor de Lazari

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Public security is a common subject on the Brazilian political agenda. The seventh largest economy in the world has high crime and insecurity rates. Specialists try to explain this social picture based on poverty, inequality or public policies addressed to drug trafficking. This excerpt approaches State measures to handle that picture. Therefore, the public security - law enforcement institutions - is at the core of this paper, particularly the relationship among federal and state law enforcement agencies, mainly ruled by a system of urgency. The problems are informal changes on law enforcement management and public opinion collaboration to these changes. Whenever there were huge international events, Brazilian armed forces occupied streets to assure law enforcement - ensuring the order. This logic, considered in the long time, could impact the federal structure of the country. The post-madisonian theorists verify that urgency is often associated to delegation of powers, which is true for Brazilian law enforcement, but here there is a different delegation: States continuously delegate law enforcement powers to the federal government throughout the use of Armed Forces. Therefore, the hypothesis is: Brazil is under a political process of federalization of public security. The political framework addressed here can be explained by the disrespect of legal constraints and the failure of rule of law theoretical models. The methodology of analysis is based on general criteria. Temporally, this study investigates events from 2003, when discussions about the disarmament statute begun. Geographically, this study is limited to Brazilian borders. Materially, the analysis result from the observation of legal resources and political resources (pronouncements of government officials). The main parameters are based on post-madisonianism and federalization of public security can be assessed through credibility and popularity that allow evaluation of this political process of constitutional change. The objective is to demonstrate how the Military Forces are used in public security, not as a random fact or an isolated political event, in order to understand the political motivations and effects that stem from that use from an institutional perspective.

Keywords: public security, governability, rule of law, federalism

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Authors: Jo-Han Chang, Chung-Jung Wu

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This study involves a design proposal. The objective of is to create a seat arrangement model for public reading spaces that enable free arrangement without disturbing the users. Through a subjective perception scale, this study explored whether distance between seats and direction of seats influence individual subjective perceptions in a public reading space. This study also involves analysis of user subjective perceptions when reading in the settings on 3 seats at different directions and with 5 distances between seats. The results may be applied to public chair design. This study investigated that (a) whether different directions of seats and distances between seats influence individual subjective perceptions and (b) the acceptable personal space between 2 strangers in a public reading space. The results are shown as follows: (a) the directions of seats and distances between seats influenced individual subjective perceptions. (b) subjective evaluation scores were higher for back-to-back seat directions with Distances A (10 cm) and B (62 cm) compared with face-to-face and side-by-side seat directions; however, when the seat distance exceeded 114 cm (Distance C), no difference existed among the directions of seats. (c) regarding reading in public spaces, when the distance between seats is 10 cm only, we recommend arranging the seats in a back-to-back fashion to increase user comfort and arrangement of face-to-face and side- by-side seat directions should be avoided. When the seat arrangement is limited to face-to-face design, the distance between seats should be increased to at least 62 cm. Moreover, the distance between seats should be increased to at least 114 cm for side- by-side seats to elevate user comfort.

Keywords: individual subjective perceptions, personal space, seat arrangement, direction, distances

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Authors: Ebru Cubukcu, Gozde Eksioglu Cetintahra, Burcin Hepguzel Hatip, Mert Cubukcu

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Obesity and overweight cause serious health problems. Public and private organizations aim to encourage walking in various ways in order to cope with the problem of obesity and overweight. This study aims to understand how the spatial characteristics of urban street pattern, connectivity and complexity influence young people’s choice to walk or not. 185 public university students in Izmir, the third largest city in Turkey, participated in the study. Each participant had worn an accelerometer and a global positioning (GPS) device for a week. The accelerometer device records data on the intensity of the participant’s activity at a specified time interval, and the GPS device on the activities’ locations. Combining the two datasets, activity maps are derived. These maps are then used to differentiate the participants’ walk trips and motor vehicle trips. Given that, the frequency of walk and motor vehicle trips are calculated at the street segment level, and the street segments are then categorized into two as ‘preferred by pedestrians’ and ‘preferred by motor vehicles’. Graph Theory-based accessibility indices are calculated to quantify the spatial characteristics of the streets in the sample. Six different indices are used: (I) edge density, (II) edge sinuosity, (III) eta index, (IV) node density, (V) order of a node, and (VI) beta index. T-tests show that the index values for the ‘preferred by pedestrians’ and ‘preferred by motor vehicles’ are significantly different. The findings indicate that the spatial characteristics of the street network have a measurable effect on young people’s choice to walk or not. Policy implications are discussed. This study is funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, Project No: 116K358.

Keywords: graph theory, walkability, accessibility, street network

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Authors: Renato Roda

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With the emergence of the so-called 'Knowledge Society', the implementation of policies to attract, grow and retain talents, in an academic context as well, has become critical –both in the perspective of didactics and research and as far as administration and institutional management are concerned. At the same time, the contemporary philanthropic entities/organizations, which are evolving from traditional types of social support towards new styles of aid, envisaged to go beyond mere monetary donations, face the challenge of brand-new forms of complexity in supporting such specific dynamics of the global human capital market. In this sense, it becomes unavoidable for the philanthropic foundation, while carrying out their daily charitable tasks, to resort to innovative ways to facilitate the acquisition and the promotion of talents by academic and research institutions. In order to deepen such a specific perspective, this paper features the case of Turin, former 'factory city' of Italy’s North West, headquarters -and main reference territory- of Italy’s largest and richest private formerly bank-based philanthropic foundation, the Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo. While it was assessed and classified as 'medium' in the city Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI) of 2020, Turin has nevertheless acquired over the past months status of impact laboratory for a whole series of innovation strategies in the competition for the acquisition of excellence human capital. Leading actors of this new city vision are the foundations with their specifically adjusted financial engagement and a consistent role of stimulus towards innovation for research and education institutions.

Keywords: human capital, post-Fordism, private foundation, war on talents

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Authors: Rati Sandeep Choudhari

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Mobility flows are considered one of the most important elements of urbanisation, with transport infrastructure serving as a backbone of urban fabrics. Although rapid urbanisation and changing land use patterns have led to an increase in urban mobility levels around the globe, mobility, in general, has become an unpleasant experience for city dwellers, making locations around the city inconvenient to access. With public transport featured in almost every sustainable mobility plan in developing countries, the intermodality and integration with appropriate non–motorised transport infrastructure is often neglected. As a result, people choose to use private cars and two-wheelers to travel, rendering public transit systems underutilised, and encroaching onto pedestrian space on streets, thus making urban mobility unsafe and inconvenient for a major section of society. On the other hand, cities in the West, especially in Europe, depend heavily on inter–modal transit systems, allowing people to shift between metros, buses, trams, walking, and cycling to access even the remote locations of the city. Keeping accessibility as the focal point while designing urban mobility plans and policies, these cities have appropriately refined their urban form, optimised urban densities, developed a multimodal transit system, and adopted place-making strategies to foster a sense of place, thus, improving the quality of urban mobility experience in cities. Using a qualitative research approach, the research looks in detail into the existing literature on what kind of strategies can be applied to improve the urban mobility experience for city dwellers. It further studies and draws out a comparative analysis of cities in both developed and developing parts of the world where these strategies have been used to create people-centric mobility systems, fostering a sense of place with respect to urban mobility and how these strategies affected their social, economic, and environmental dynamics. The examples reflect on how different strategies like redefining land use patterns to form close knit neighbourhoods, development of non – motorise transit systems, and their integration with public transport infrastructure and place-making approach has helped in enhancing the quality and experience of mobility infrastructure in cities. The research finally concludes by laying out strategies that can be adopted by cities of the Global South to develop future mobility systems in a people-centric and sustainable way.

Keywords: urban mobility, sustainable transport, strategic planning, people-centric approach

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