Search results for: root economic spectrum

Authors: Hafiz Muhammad Umer Aslam, Mohammad Rafiq Khan

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This techno-economic study reports the feasibility of generating thermoelectric power from municipal solid waste (MSW) of Kasur City by incineration process. The data was gathered from different establishments of Kasur, through appropriate permission from their heads, and processed to design different alternative projects for installation of a thermal power plant in the city of Kasur. A technique of discounted cash flow was used to evaluate alternative projects so that their Benefit to Cost Ratio, Net Present Value, Internal Rate of Return and Payback Period can be determined. The study revealed that Kasur City currently consumes 18MWh electricity and generates 179 tons/day MSW. The generated waste has the ability to produce 2.1MWh electricity at the cost of USD 0.0581/unit with an expenditure of USD 3,907,692 as initial fixed investment of forming about 1/7th of consumption of Kasur. The cost from this source, when compared to current rate of electricity in Pakistan (USD 0.1346), is roughly half.

Keywords: Kasur City, resource recovery, thermoelectric power, waste management

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Authors: F. Sahnoune, M. Madani, M. Zelmat, M. Belhamel

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Home heating and generation of domestic hot water are nowadays important items of expenditure and energy consumption. These are also a major source of pollution and emission of greenhouse gases (GHG). Algeria, like other countries of the southern shore of the Mediterranean has an enormous solar potential (more than 3000 hours of sunshine/year). This potential can be exploited in reducing GHG emissions and contribute to climate change adaptation. This work presents the environmental impact of introduction of solar heating in an individual house in Algerian climate conditions. For this purpose, we determined energy needs for heating and domestic hot water taking into account the thermic heat losses of the no isolated house. Based on these needs, sizing of the solar system was carried out. To compare the performances of solar and classic systems, we conducted also an economic evaluation what is very important for countries like Algeria where conventional energy is subsidized. The study clearly show that environmental and economic benefits are in favor of solar heating development in particular in countries where the thermal insulation of the building and energy efficiency are poorly developed.

Keywords: CO2 mitigation, solar energy, solar heating, environmental impact

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Authors: Shannon Hearney, Jeffrey Hoch

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Pancreatic cancer is a notoriously costly and deadly form of cancer. Many types of treatment centers exist for patients to seek care from, including high-volume centers which have shown promise to provide the highest quality of care. While it may be true that this type of center provides the best care it is unclear if that care is cost-effective. Studies in the US have confirmed that high-volume hospitals do provide higher quality of care but have shown inconsistencies in the cost-effectiveness of that care. Other studies, like those from Finland have shown that high-volume centers had lower mortality and lower costs than low-volume centers. This paper thus seeks to review the current scientific literature to better understand if high-volume centers are cost-effective in delivering care in both a European setting and in the US. A review of major reference databases such as Medline, Embase and PubMed will be conducted for cost-effectiveness studies on the surgical treatment of pancreatic cancer at high-volume centers. Possible MeSH terms to be included, but not limited to, are: “pancreatic cancer”, “cost analysis”, “cost-effectiveness”, “economic evaluation”, “pancreatic neoplasms”, “surgical”, and “high-volume”. Studies must also have been available in the English language. This review will encompass European scientific literature, as well as those in the US. Based on our preliminary findings, we anticipate high-volume hospitals to provide better care at greater costs. We anticipate that high-volume hospitals may be cost-effective in different contexts depending on the national structure of a healthcare system. Countries with more centralized and socialized healthcare may yield results that are more cost-effective. High-volume centers may differ in their cost-effectiveness of the surgical care of pancreatic cancer internationally especially when comparing those in the United States to others throughout Europe.

Keywords: cost-effectiveness analysis, economic evaluation, pancreatic cancer, scientific literature review

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Authors: Christoph Köster

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Supplier selection is one of the key challenges in supply chain management and can be considered a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. In the 1960s, it evolved from considering only economic criteria, such as price, quality, and performance, to including environmental and social criteria nowadays. Although receiving considerable attention from scholars and practitioners over the past decades, existing research has not considered governance criteria so far. This is, however, surprising, as ESG (environmental, social, and governance) criteria have gained considerable attention. In order to complement ESG criteria in the supplier selection process, this study investigates German DAX and MDAX companies and evaluates the impact of governance criteria along their supplier selection process. Moreover, it proposes a set of criteria for the respective process steps. Specifically, eleven criteria for the first process step and five criteria for the second process step are identified. This paper contributes to a better understanding of the supplier selection process by elucidating the relevance of governance criteria in the supplier selection process and providing a set of empirically developed governance criteria. These results can be applied by practitioners to complement the criteria set in the supplier selection process and thus balance economic, environmental, social, and governance targets.

Keywords: ESG, governance, sustainable supplier selection, sustainability

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Authors: Oded Hochman

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We first show that current measures of welfare changes in the whole economy do not apply to an economy with cities. In addition, since such measures are defined over a partial equilibrium, they capture only partially the effect of a welfare change. We then define a unique and additive measure that we term the modified economic surplus (mES) which fully captures the welfare effects caused by a change in the price of a nationally traded good. We show that the price change causes, on the one hand a change of land rents in the economy and, on the other hand, an equal change of mES that can be estimated by measuring areas in the price-quantity national demand and supply plane. We construct for each city a cost function from which we derive a city’s and, after aggregation, an economy-wide demand and supply functions of nationwide prices and of either the unearned incomes (Marshalian functions) or the utility levels (compensated functions).

Keywords: city cost function, welfare measures, modified compensated variation, modified economic surplus, unearned income function, differential land rents, city size

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Authors: Afsaneh Ghanbari Panah, Elyaz Bornak, Shiva Ghadiri Karizi, Amna Ahmad, Burcu Yildirim

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This study explores domestic violence (DV) and coping strategies among married women in Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey. DV is a universal issue characterized by physical, psychological, or economic abuse by male family members towards female partners. The study aims to examine the prevalence of DV and the coping mechanisms employed by women in these three countries. The research highlights the significant impact of DV globally, transcending cultural, social, and economic boundaries. Despite the lack of comprehensive state-sponsored reports on Violence Against Women (VAW) in South Asia, fragmented reports by non-governmental agencies indicate high rates of self-reported intimate partner violence (IPV), including sexual violence, across these regions. The study emphasizes the urgent need for effective measures to address VAW, as existing laws often exclude unregistered and unmarried intimate partners. Coping mechanisms play a crucial role in responding to and managing the consequences of DV. The study defines coping as cognitive and behavioral responses to environmental stressors. Common coping strategies identified in the literature include spirituality, temporary or permanent separation, silence, submission, minimizing violence, denial, and seeking external support. Understanding these coping mechanisms is crucial for developing effective prevention and management strategies. The study presents findings from Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey, indicating varying prevalence rates of different forms of violence. Turkish respondents reported higher rates of emotional, physical, economic, and sexual violence, while Iranian respondents reported high levels of psychological, physical, and sexual violence. In Karachi, Pakistan, physical, sexual, and psychological violence were prevalent among women. The study highlights the importance of cross-cultural research and the need to consider individual and collective coping mechanisms in different societal contexts. Factors such as personal ideologies, political agendas, and economic stability influence societal support and cultural acceptance of IPV. To develop sustainable strategies, an in-depth exploration of coping mechanisms is necessary. In conclusion, this comparative study provides insights into DV and coping strategies among married women in Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey. The findings underscore the urgent need for comprehensive measures to address VAW, considering cultural, social, and economic factors. By understanding the prevalence and coping mechanisms employed by women, policymakers can develop effective interventions to support DV survivors and prevent further violence.

Keywords: domestic violence, coping styles, cultural study, violence against women

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Authors: Raphael Naryongo, Philip Ngare, Anthony Waititu

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This paper deals with numerical simulation of Wishart processes for a single asset risky pricing model whose volatility is described by Wishart affine diffusion processes. The multi-factor specification of volatility will make the model more flexible enough to fit the stock market data for short or long maturities for better returns. The Wishart process is a stochastic process which is a positive semi-definite matrix-valued generalization of the square root process. The aim of the study is to model the log asset stock returns under the double Wishart stochastic volatility model. The solution of the log-asset return dynamics for Bi-Wishart processes will be obtained through Euler-Maruyama discretization schemes. The numerical results on the asset returns are compared to the existing models returns such as Heston stochastic volatility model and double Heston stochastic volatility model

Keywords: euler schemes, log-asset return, infinitesimal generator, wishart diffusion affine processes

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Authors: M. Cardenas-Garcia, P. P. Gonzalez-Perez

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Intercellular communication is a necessary condition for cellular functions and it allows a group of cells to survive as a population. Throughout this interaction, the cells work in a coordinated and collaborative way which facilitates their survival. In the case of cancerous cells, these take advantage of intercellular communication to preserve their malignancy, since through these physical unions they can send signs of malignancy. The Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway plays an important role in the formation of intercellular communications, being also involved in a large number of cellular processes such as proliferation, differentiation, adhesion, cell survival, and cell death. The modeling and simulation of cellular signaling systems have found valuable support in a wide range of modeling approaches, which cover a wide spectrum ranging from mathematical models; e.g., ordinary differential equations, statistical methods, and numerical methods– to computational models; e.g., process algebra for modeling behavior and variation in molecular systems. Based on these models, different simulation tools have been developed from mathematical ones to computational ones. Regarding cellular and molecular processes in cancer, its study has also found a valuable support in different simulation tools that, covering a spectrum as mentioned above, have allowed the in silico experimentation of this phenomenon at the cellular and molecular level. In this work, we simulate and explore the complex interaction patterns of intercellular communication in cancer cells using the Cellulat bioinformatics tool, a computational simulation tool developed by us and motivated by two key elements: 1) a biochemically inspired model of self-organizing coordination in tuple spaces, and 2) the Gillespie’s algorithm, a stochastic simulation algorithm typically used to mimic systems of chemical/biochemical reactions in an efficient and accurate way. The main idea behind the Cellulat simulation tool is to provide an in silico experimentation environment that complements and guides in vitro experimentation in intra and intercellular signaling networks. Unlike most of the cell signaling simulation tools, such as E-Cell, BetaWB and Cell Illustrator which provides abstractions to model only intracellular behavior, Cellulat is appropriate for modeling both intracellular signaling and intercellular communication, providing the abstractions required to model –and as a result, simulate– the interaction mechanisms that involve two or more cells, that is essential in the scenario discussed in this work. During the development of this work we made evident the application of our computational simulation tool (Cellulat) for the modeling and simulation of intercellular communication between normal and cancerous cells, and in this way, propose key molecules that may prevent the arrival of malignant signals to the cells that surround the tumor cells. In this manner, we could identify the significant role that has the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway in cellular communication, and therefore, in the dissemination of cancer cells. We verified, using in silico experiments, how the inhibition of this signaling pathway prevents that the cells that surround a cancerous cell are transformed.

Keywords: cancer cells, in silico approach, intercellular communication, key molecules, modeling and simulation

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Authors: Duran Fiack, Jeremy Cumberbatch, Michael Sutherland, Nadine Zerphey

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Civic leaders have increasingly relied upon local climate adaptation plans to identify vulnerabilities, prioritize goals, and implement actions in order to prepare cities for the present and projected effects of global climate change. The concept of sustainability is central to these efforts, as climate adaptation discussions are often framed within the context of economic resilience, environmental protection, and the distribution of climate change impacts across various socioeconomic groups. For urban centers, the climate change issue presents unique challenges for each of these dimensions; however, its potential impacts on marginalized populations are extensive. This study draws from the ‘just sustainabilities’ framework to perform a qualitative analysis of climate adaptation plans prepared by 22 of the 100 largest U.S. cities and examine whether, and to what extent, such initiatives prioritize social equity improvements. Past research has found that the integration of sustainability in urban policy and planning often produces outcomes that favor environmental and economic objectives over social equity improvements. We find that social equity is a particularly prominent theme in local-level climate adaptation efforts, relative to environmental quality and economic development. The findings contribute to the literature on climate adaptation and sustainability within the urban context and offer practical insight for local-level stakeholders concerning potential obstacles and opportunities for the integration of social equity initiatives into climate adaptation planning. Given the likelihood that climate changes will continue to impose unique challenges for marginalized communities in urban areas, advancing our understanding of how social equity concerns are integrated into adaptation efforts is likely to become an increasingly critical area of inquiry.

Keywords: climate adaptation plan, climate change, social equity, sustainability

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Authors: R. G. Ariyawansa, M. A. N. R. M. Perera

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“House” is a powerful symbol of socio-economic background of individuals and families. In fact, housing provides all types of needs/wants from basic needs to self-actualization needs. This phenomenon can be realized only having analyzed hidden motives of buyers and sellers of the housing market. Hence, the aim of this study is to examine the socio-economic insight of the secondary housing market in Colombo suburbs. This broader aim was achieved via analyzing the general pattern of the secondary housing market, identifying socio-economic motives of sellers of the secondary housing market, and reviewing sellers’ experience of buyer behavior. A purposive sample of 50 sellers from popular residential areas in Colombo such as Maharagama, Kottawa, Piliyandala, Punnipitiya, and Nugegoda was used to collect primary data instead of relevant secondary data from published and unpublished reports. The sample was limited to selling price ranging from Rs15 million to Rs25 million, which apparently falls into middle and upper-middle income houses in the context. Participatory observation and semi-structured interviews were adopted as key data collection tools. Data were descriptively analyzed. This study found that the market is mainly handled by informal agents who are unqualified and unorganized. People such as taxi/tree-wheel drivers, boutique venders, security personals etc. are engaged in housing brokerage as a part time career. Few fulltime and formally organized agents were found but they were also not professionally qualified. As far as housing quality is concerned, it was observed that 90% of houses was poorly maintained and illegally modified. They are situated in poorly maintained neighborhoods as well. Among the observed houses, 2% was moderately maintained and 8% was well maintained and modified. Major socio-economic motives of sellers were “migrating foreign countries for education and employment” (80% and 10% respectively), “family problems” (4%), and “social status” (3%). Other motives were “health” and “environmental/neighborhood problems” (3%). This study further noted that the secondary middle income housing market in the area directly related with the migrants who motivated for education in foreign countries, mainly Australia, UK and USA. As per the literature, families motivated for education tend to migrate Colombo suburbs from remote areas of the country. They are seeking temporary accommodation in lower middle income housing. However, the secondary middle income housing market relates with the migration from Colombo to major global cities. Therefore, final transaction price of this market may depend on migration related dates such as university deadlines, visa and other agreements. Hence, it creates a buyers’ market lowering the selling price. Also it was revealed that the buyers tend to trust more on this market as far as the quality of construction of houses is concerned than brand new houses which are built for selling purpose.

Keywords: informal housing market, hidden motives of buyers and sellers, secondary housing market, socio-economic insight

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Authors: Supattra Pranee

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The purposes of this research are to study the current business of health spa and to study the customers’ level of expectation as well as level of satisfaction of the health spa business in Ranong, Thailand. This paper drew upon data collected from health spa customers by using questionnaire. In addition, an in-depth interview was utilized to collect data from health spa entrepreneurs. The findings revealed that the health spa business is growing very fast and the coming ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) will ameliorate the business growth and increase the customer base. There is a need to improve staff’s ability to communicate in English. However, the economic size of Ranong province is still small which has resulted in the hesitation of investors to increase their investment in this business. The findings also revealed four categories of level of expectation and satisfaction as follows: (1) Service: overall, customers had a high expectation with a mean of 3.80 and 0.873 SD and a high level of satisfaction with a mean of 3.66 and 0.704 SD. (2) Staff: overall, customers had a high expectation with a mean of 3.95 and 0.865 SD and a high level of satisfaction with a mean of 3.84 and 0.783 SD. (3) Product, Equipment, and Tools: overall, customers had a high expectation with a mean of 4.02 and 0.913 SD and a high level of satisfaction with a mean of 3.88 and 0.772 SD. (4) Place, Atmosphere, and Environment: overall, customers had a high expectation with a mean of 3.95 and 0.906 SD and a high level of satisfaction with a mean of 3.86 and 0.785 SD.

Keywords: expectation, health spa business, satisfaction, ranong province

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Authors: Evangelia Gaitanidou, Evangelos Bekiaris

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Considering that resilience implies the ability of a system to adapt continuously in order to respond to its operational goals, a system is considered as more or less resilient depending on the level and time of recovering from disruptive events and/or shocks to its initial state. Regarding transport systems, enhancing resilience is considered imperative for two main reasons: Such systems provide critical support to every socio-economic activity, while being one of the most important economic sectors and, secondly, the paths that convey people, goods and information, are the same through which risks are propagated. RESOLUTE (RESilience management guidelines and Operationalization appLied to Urban Transport Environment) Horizon 2020 research project is answering those needs, by proposing and testing a set of guidelines for resilience management of the urban transport system. The methods and steps towards this goal, through a step-wise methodology, taking into account established models like FRAM (Functional Resonance Analysis Model), and upon gathering existing practices are described in this paper, together with an overview of the produced guidelines. The overall aim is to create a framework which public transport authorities could consult and apply, for rendering their infrastructure resilient against natural disaster and other threats.

Keywords: guidelines, infrastructure, resilience, transport

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Authors: Julio Jesus Salazar, Manuel Andres Jesus De Lama

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There are very few models that serve to analyze the use of water in the socio-economic process. On the supply side, the joint use of groundwater has been considered in addition to the simple limits on the availability of surface water. In addition, we have worked on waterlogging and the effects on water quality (mainly salinity). In this paper, a 'complex' water economy is examined; one in which demands grow differentially not only within but also between sectors, and one in which there are limited opportunities to increase consumptive use. In particular, high-value growth, the growth of the production of irrigated crops of high value within the basins of the case study, together with the rapidly growing urban areas, provides a rich context to examine the general problem of water management at the basin level. At the same time, the long-term aridity of nature has made the eco-environment in the basins located on the coast of Peru very vulnerable, and the exploitation and immediate use of water resources have further deteriorated the situation. The presented methodology is the optimization with embedded simulation. The wide basin simulation of flow and water balances and crop growth are embedded with the optimization of water allocation, reservoir operation, and irrigation scheduling. The modeling framework is developed from a network of river basins that includes multiple nodes of origin (reservoirs, aquifers, water courses, etc.) and multiple demand sites along the river, including places of consumptive use for agricultural, municipal and industrial, and uses of running water on the coast of Peru. The economic benefits associated with water use are evaluated for different demand management instruments, including water rights, based on the production and benefit functions of water use in the urban agricultural and industrial sectors. This work represents a new effort to analyze the use of water at the regional level and to evaluate the modernization of the integrated management of water resources and socio-economic territorial development in Peru. It will also allow the establishment of policies to improve the process of implementation of the integrated management and development of water resources. The input-output analysis is essential to present a theory about the production process, which is based on a particular type of production function. Also, this work presents the Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) version of the economic model for water resource policy analysis, which was specifically designed for analyzing large-scale water management. As to the platform for CGE simulation, GEMPACK, a flexible system for solving CGE models, is used for formulating and solving CGE model through the percentage-change approach. GEMPACK automates the process of translating the model specification into a model solution program.

Keywords: water economy, simulation, modeling, integration

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Authors: Bo Hyun Kim, Sarng Woo Karng

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In constructing a hydrogen refueling station, minimizing the volume and reducing the number of banks enable lessening the construction cost. This study aims at performing the dynamic simulation on 250 kg/day of a refueling station for light-duty vehicles. The primary compressor boosts hydrogen from a tube trailer of 250 to 480 bar and stores it in a medium-pressure bank. Then, additional compression of hydrogen from 480 to 900 bar is carried out and stored in a high-pressure bank. Economic analysis was conducted considering the amount of electricity consumed by compression corresponding to the volume and the number of banks (cascade system) in charging mode. NIST REFPROP was selected as the equation of state on the ASPEN HYSYS for thermodynamic analysis of the tube-trailer, the compressors, the chillers, and the banks. Compared to a single high-pressure bank system of 3000 L, the volume of the cascade high-pressure banks (bank1: 250 L and bank 2: 1850 L) was reduced by 30%, and the power consumption of the chiller for precooling was also decreased by 16%.

Keywords: light-duty vehicles, economic analysis, cascade system, hydrogen refueling station

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Authors: Hanin Suleiman Alqam

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The knowledge-based economy, as its name implies relies on knowledge, information and high levels of skills made available for all economic agents. Delving a bit more deeply, the concept of a knowledge-based economy is showcasing four main pillars, which are: Education and Training, Information and Communication Technology, Economic incentives and Institutional regimes, and Research and Development (R&D) and Innovation system. A good number of researches are showing its positive contribution to economic diversification underpinning sustainable development and growth. The present paper aimed at assessing the role of SMEs in moving Oman’s economy from a traditional economy to a knowledge-based economy. To lay down a groundwork that should lead to future studies, the methodology selected is based on exploratory research. Hence, the interview was conducted as a data collection tool. Based on a purposive sampling technique, seven handpicked experts have partaken in the study as they are working in different key organizations considered to be directly or indirectly the backbone of the Omani national economy. A thematic approach is employed for the purpose of data analysis. Results of the study showed that SMEs are not really contributing in the knowledge-based economy due to a lack of awareness about its importance to the country and to the enterprise within SMEs in Oman. However, it was shown that SMEs owners are interested in innovation and are trying to support innovative individuals by attracting them to their enterprises. On the other hand, the results revealed that SMEs' performance in e-solution is still not up to the level as 32% of SMEs only are using e-solutions in their internal processes and procedures like accounting systems. It is recommended to SMEs owners to use new and modern technologies in marketing and customer relation, encourage creativity, research and development, and allow the youth to have opportunities and facilitate the procedure in terms of innovation so that their role in contributing to the knowledge-based economy could be improved.

Keywords: knowledge-based economy, SMEs, ICT pillars, research and innovation

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Authors: Anwar Ali Abdulla, Thekra Abdulaali Abed Al-Chaabawi, Anwar Kadhim Al-Saffar, Hussein Kadhim Al-Saffar

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Lactic acid bacteria are very significant to human health due to the production of some antimicrobial substances and ability to inhibit pathogenic bacteria. Furthermore, the bacteria are also used as starter culture in the production of various foods. The present study was focused on isolation and characterization of Lactobacillus acidophilus from yogurt and to demonstrate some of probiotic properties of these isolates. All isolates were phenotypically characterized including studying, biochemical, effect of sodium chloride and pH during growth, carbohydrates test and characterizing the antimicrobial activity of Lactobacillus acidophilus against pathogens. The present study demonstrates that Lactobacillus acidophilus produced a bacteriocin- like inhibitory substance with a broad spectrum of antimicrobial activity directed against pathogenic indicator organism suggesting its protective value against enteric pathogens.

Keywords: lactobacillus acidophilus, bacteriocin, antimicrobial activity, probiotic

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Authors: Oris Tom-Lawyer, Michael Thomas

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This paper seeks to analyse the hegemony of the English language in Western Africa through the lens of educational policies and the socio-economic functions of the language. It is based on the premise that there is a positive link between the English language and development contexts. The study aims to fill a gap in the research literature by examining the usefulness of hegemony as a concept to explain the role of English language in the region, thus countering the negative connotations that often accompany it. The study identified four main research questions: i. What are the socio-economic functions of English in Francophone/lusophone countries? ii. What factors promote the hegemony of English in anglophone countries? iii. To what extent is the hegemony of English in West Africa? iv. What are the implications of the non-hegemony of English in Western Africa? Based on a meta-analysis of the research literature between 2003 and 2018, the findings of the study revealed that in francophone/lusophone countries, English functions in the following socio-economic domains; they are peace keeping missions, regional organisations, commercial and industrial sectors, as an unofficial international language and as a foreign language. The factors that promote linguistic hegemony of English in anglophone countries are English as an official language, a medium of instruction, lingua franca, cultural language, language of politics, language of commerce, channel of development and English for media and entertainment. In addition, the extent of the hegemony of English in West Africa can be viewed from the factors that contribute to the non-hegemony of English in the region; they are French language, Portuguese language, the French culture, neo-colonialism, level of poverty, and economic ties of French to its former colonies. Finally, the implications of the non-hegemony of English language in West Africa are industrial backwardness, poverty rate, lack of social mobility, drop out of school rate, growing interest in English, access to limited internet information and lack of extensive career opportunities. The paper concludes that the hegemony of English has resulted in the development of anglophone countries in Western Africa, while in the francophone/lusophone regions of the continent, industrial backwardness and low literacy rates have been consequences of English language marginalisation. In conclusion, the paper makes several recommendations, including the need for the early introduction of English into French curricula as part of a potential solution.

Keywords: developmental tool, English language, linguistic hegemony, West Africa

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Authors: M. Amelsakhi, A. Sohrabi-Bidar, A. Shareghi

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One of the most important issues about the structural damages caused by earthquake is the evaluating of the spectral response of the site on which the construction is built. This fact has demonstrated during many earlier earthquakes and many researchers’ reports have concerned with it. According to these reports, features of the site materials and geometry of the ground surface are considered the main factors. This study concentrates on the specific form of topographies like hills. Assessing of spectral responses of different points on the hills and beside demonstrates considerable differences between 1D and 2D methods of geotechnical analyses. A general trend of amplifications on the top of the hills and de-amplifications near the toe of the hills has been appeared within the acceleration, velocity and displacement response spectrums of horizontal motion. Evaluating of spectral responses of different sizes of the hills revealed that as much as the hill-size enlarges differences between spectral responses of 1D and 2D analyses transfers to longer range of periods and becomes wider.

Keywords: topography effect, amplification ratio, response spectrum, earth resources engineering

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Authors: C. van den Berg, C. Pokpas

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Popular discourse touts entrepreneurship as a universal solution for underdevelopment, unemployment, and poverty. Moreover, claims are made that women and other disadvantaged groups can achieve material and personal success through digital entrepreneurship. This paper examines the potential of digital technology in entrepreneurial ventures to stimulate economic growth for marginalized groups and communities. Although digital entrepreneurship is hailed as a means to empower under-resourced and socially marginalized people, these opportunities still exist within the confines of existing social and cultural practices. The perspectives of female digital entrepreneurs in developing countries are sorely understudied, particularly concerning an understanding of the complex underlying socio-cultural factors impeding women’s entrepreneurial behaviors. This qualitative study, guided by a feminist phenomenological perspective, focused on the experiences of digital female entrepreneurs in the Western Cape of South Africa. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews and analyzed through the interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach to determine the relationships between digital entrepreneurship and structural and agential enabling conditions. Findings show that digital entrepreneurship is not a panacea for economic growth in marginalized groups and communities and highlight the importance of addressing socio-cultural gender inequality to enable successful entrepreneurial activity. The paper concludes with recommendations for specialized training initiatives aimed at female entrepreneurs that address internalized constraints and barriers that keep women subservient and measures to shift gender and power beliefs. The outcome will benefit the stimulation of gender-specific public policies to develop a successful digital start-up ecosystem further.

Keywords: digital innovation, female digital entrepreneurs, feminist phenomenology, gender, marginalised communities

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Authors: Sherine El Sakka

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Most developing countries consider sustainability is a luxury, but El Gouna city at hurghada, Egypt, thought differently and uses sustainability as a tool for branding the place. Branding a place is new approach towards sustainable cities development (SCD); sustainability(S) requires multi-dimensional indicators to show the relationship between economic, social, environmental and cultural aspects. Sustainable development (SD) according to Brundland commission defined as" meeting the needs of current generations without negative impact on the needs of future generation’, branding a place (BP) integrate economic, social, environmental and cultural aspects into the city. In order for a city to be a good brand it must possess distinctive characteristics that can be identified, these include city appearance, people’s experience, people’s belief as well as what the city stands for. The study has found that place branding is a way to promote sustainable initiative; place branding has the potential to shape as a leading tool for the concurrence of more sustainable cities in developing countries, sustainability and green development should turn main priorities to developing countries.

Keywords: sustainable cities development (SCD), sustainability(S), sustainable development (SD), branding a place (BP)

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Authors: Nessreen Y. Ibrahim

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Designing the future according to realistic analytical study for the futuristic market needs can be a milestone strategy to make a huge improvement in developing countries economics. In developing countries, access to high technology and latest science approaches is very limited. The financial problems in low and medium income countries have negative effects on the kind and quality of imported new technologies and application for their markets. Thus, there is a strong need for shifting paradigm thinking in the design process to improve and evolve their development strategy. This paper discusses future possibilities in developing countries, and how they can design their own future according to specific future models FDM (Future Design Models), which established to solve certain economical problems, as well as political and cultural conflicts. FDM is strategic thinking framework provides an improvement in both content and process. The content includes; beliefs, values, mission, purpose, conceptual frameworks, research, and practice, while the process includes; design methodology, design systems, and design managements tools. In this paper the main objective was building an innovative economic model to design a chosen possible futuristic scenario; by understanding the market future needs, analyze real world setting, solve the model questions by future driven design, and finally interpret the results, to discuss to what extent the results can be transferred to the real world. The paper discusses Egypt as a potential case study. Since, Egypt has highly complex economical problems, extra-dynamic political factors, and very rich cultural aspects; we considered Egypt is a very challenging example for applying FDM. The paper results recommended using FDM numerical modeling as a starting point to design the future.

Keywords: developing countries, economic models, future design, possible futures

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Authors: Nichole Patricia Pedrina, Karl Jasper Sumande, Alice Joan Ferrer

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Nogas Island situated in the municipality of Anini-y in the province of Antique is endowed with natural resources especially a thriving marine ecosystem that attracts tourists all year round. But despite its beauty and emerging popularity, the island and its surrounding waters remain vulnerable to degradation brought about by anthropocentric activities. An emphasis on the protection and conservation is paramount in order to ensure environmental sustainability over time. This study was conducted in order to determine the willingness-to-pay (WTP) of the local residents of Anini-y, Antique for the conservation of Nogas Island and its surrounding waters. The Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) was used to determine the WTP of the study participants. In addition, the study also described the socio-demographic and economic characteristics, the level of awareness, knowledge and attitude towards the conservation and the reasons for the willingness to pay off the residents for the conservation of the island and its surrounding waters. A pilot-tested interview schedule was used to collect data from 320 randomly selected study participants in 8 barangays in the municipality of Anini-y from January to December 2017. Binary logit regression was conducted in order to identify factors affecting the study participants’ WTP. The results revealed that 54.69 percent of the study participants were willing to pay (with adjustment to the level of certainty) for the conservation program. The sex, monthly household income, randomly assigned bid price and the knowledge index were the variables that affected the willingness-to-pay of the study participants for both with and without adjustment to the level of certainty. The monthly mean WTP of the study participants with and without adjustment to the level of certainty were P115 and P104.5, respectively. This study can serve as a guide for the municipality of Anini-y in creating a policy or program that aims to conserve and protect Nogas Island and its surrounding waters.

Keywords: economic valuation, environmental conservation, total economic value, willingness to pay

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Authors: Rami El-Hajj Mohamad, Mahmoud Skafi, Ali Massoud Haidar

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Several meteorological parameters were used for the prediction of monthly average daily global solar radiation on horizontal using recurrent neural networks (RNNs). Climatological data and measures, mainly air temperature, humidity, sunshine duration, and wind speed between 1995 and 2007 were used to design and validate a feed forward and recurrent neural network based prediction systems. In this paper we present our reference system based on a feed-forward multilayer perceptron (MLP) as well as the proposed approach based on an RNN model. The obtained results were promising and comparable to those obtained by other existing empirical and neural models. The experimental results showed the advantage of RNNs over simple MLPs when we deal with time series solar radiation predictions based on daily climatological data.

Keywords: recurrent neural networks, global solar radiation, multi-layer perceptron, gradient, root mean square error

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Authors: Carla Silva

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Recent development of information and communication technology enables us to acquire, collect, analyse data in various fields of socioeconomic – technological systems. Along with the increase of economic globalization and the evolution of information technology, data mining has become an important approach for economic data analysis. As a result, there has been a critical need for automated approaches to effective and efficient usage of massive amount of educational data, in order to support institutions to a strategic planning and investment decision-making. In this article, we will address data from several different perspectives and define the applied data to sciences. Many believe that 'big data' will transform business, government, and other aspects of the economy. We discuss how new data may impact educational policy and educational research. Large scale administrative data sets and proprietary private sector data can greatly improve the way we measure, track, and describe educational activity and educational impact. We also consider whether the big data predictive modeling tools that have emerged in statistics and computer science may prove useful in educational and furthermore in economics. Finally, we highlight a number of challenges and opportunities for future research.

Keywords: data mining, research analysis, investment decision-making, educational research

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Authors: Dulal Bhaumik, Fei Jie, Runa Bhaumik, Bikas Sinha

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Human brain is an amazingly complex network. Aberrant activities in this network can lead to various neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and autism. fMRI has emerged as an important tool to delineate the neural networks affected by such diseases, particularly autism. In this paper, we propose mixed-effects models together with an appropriate procedure for controlling false discoveries to detect disrupted connectivities in whole brain studies. Results are illustrated with a large data set known as Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange or ABIDE which includes 361 subjects from 8 medical centers. We believe that our findings have addressed adequately the small sample inference problem, and thus are more reliable for therapeutic target for intervention. In addition, our result can be used for early detection of subjects who are at high risk of developing neurological disorders.

Keywords: ABIDE, autism spectrum disorder, fMRI, mixed-effects model

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Authors: Joanna Konstantinou

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The study is about the challenges faced by entrepreneurs in a crisis context and in turbulent economies. The scope is to determine which factors, if any, are related to the success of a new business venture, such as innovation, access to funding and capital, enhanced digital skills, employment relations and organizational culture as well as a company’s strategic orientation towards international markets. The crisis context has been recorded to have affected the number of SMEs in the Greek economy, the number of people employed as well as the volume of the output produced. Although not all SMEs have been equally impacted by the crisis, which has been identified to affect certain sectors more than others, and although research is not exhaustive in that end, employment relations and patterns, firm’s age, and innovation practices in relation to employees’ learning curve seem to have a positive correlation with the successful survival and resilience of the firm. The aim is to identify important factors that can contribute positively to the success of a startup business, and that will allow businesses to acquire resilience and survive economic adversities, and it will focus on businesses of the Greek economy, the country with the longer lasting economic crisis and the findings will be lessons to learn for other economies.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, innovation, crisis, challenges

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Authors: Siziwe Monica Zuma

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The Expanded Public Works Program (EPWP) is an instrument that the South African Government uses to reduce unemployment and poverty and also stimulate economic growth. However, due to the limited budget and programs in the EPWP, the program has had challenges in reducing unemployment, poverty and stimulating economic growth. The EPWP Vuk’uphile program had positive outcomes in developing Black emerging contractors, in order for them to participate in the main stream economy far better than when the EPWP program was not introduced. The Skills component of the program particularly the EPWP Infrastructure, which is the most funded program under EPWP has had limited success in transferring appropriate skills to ensure labour participants can penetrate the labour market after participating in the EPWP. Education and skills are important attributes that can contribute to labour absorption, however, the EPWP particularly the infrastructure program needs to strengthen skills development over a longer period of time suggested a year with multi skills relevant to the labour market. Longer and more sustained employment provides a safety net and reduces poverty better that short term employment. The EPWP program can be expanded in the infrastructure sector, focusing on rural infrastructure, agricultural infrastructure, infrastructure related components like property, ownership, management, and other services. These can stimulate the Economic sector Infrastructure of EPWP, offer longer term and more sustained employment and rural enterprise development and further employment. The Expanded Public Works Program (EPWP) is an instrument that the South African Government uses to reduce unemployment and poverty and also stimulate economic growth. However, due to the limited budget and programs in the EPWP, the program has had challenges in reducing unemployment, poverty and stimulating economic growth. The EPWP Vuk’uphile program has had positive outcomes in developing Black emerging contractors, in order for them to participate in the main stream economy far better than when the EPWP program was not introduced. The Skills component of the program particularly the EPWP Infrastructure, which is the most funded program under EPWP has had limited success in transferring appropriate skills to ensure labour participants are able to penetrate the labour market after participating in the EPWP. Education and skills are important attributes that can contribute to labour absorption, however, the EPWP particularly the infrastructure program needs to strengthen skills development over a longer period of time suggested a year with multi skills relevant to the labour market. Longer and more sustained employment provides a safety net and reduces poverty better that short term employment. The EPWP program can be expanded in the infrastructure sector, focusing on rural infrastructure, agricultural infrastructure, infrastructure related components like property, ownership, management, and other services. These can stimulate the Economic sector Infrastructure of EPWP, offer longer term and more sustained employment and rural enterprise development and further employment.

Keywords: Expanded Public Works Program (EPWP), VUKÚPHILE, youth, Public Works Programs (PWP), Infrastructure Sector of EPWP (EPWP Infrastructure)

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Authors: Jonathan Olusegun Famoroti, Mathew Ekundayo Rotimi, Mishelle Doorasamy

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This study offers an empirical investigation into some selected macroeconomic drivers of the monetary policy rate in member countries of the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ), considering both internal and external variables. We employed Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) to carry out the investigation between monetary policy and some macroeconomic variables in both the long-run and short-run relationship. The results suggest that the drivers of the policy rate in this zone, in the long run, include, among others, global oil price, exchange rate, inflation rate, and gross domestic product, while in the short run, federal fund rate, trade openness, exchange rate, inflation rate, and gross domestic product are core determinants of the policy rate. Therefore, in order to ensure long-run stability in the policy rate among the members’ states, these drivers should be given closer consideration so that the trajectory for effective structure can be designed and fused into the economic structure and policy frameworks accordingly.

Keywords: monetary policy rate, macroeconomic variables, WAMZ, ARDL

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Authors: Thani R. Said

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There is a wide concern on the academic literatures that the world is on course to experience “severe and pervasive” negative impacts from climate change unless it takes rapid action to slash its greenhouse gas emissions. The big threat however, is more belligerent in the third world countries, small islands states in particular. Most of the academic literatures claims that the livelihoods, economic and ecological landscapes of most of the coastal communities are into serious danger due to the peril of climate change. However, focusing the climate change alone and paying less intention to the surrounding stressors which sometimes are apparent then the climate change its self has now placed at the greater concern on academic debates. The recently studies have begun to question such narrowed assessment of climate change intervening programs from both its methodological and theoretical perspectives as related with livelihoods and the landscapes of the coastal communities. Looking climate as alone as an ostentatious threat doesn't yield the yield an appropriate mechanisms to address the problem in its totality and tend to provide the partially picture of the real problem striking the majority of the peoples living in the coastal areas of small islands states, Zanzibar in particular. By using the multiples human grounded knowledge approaches, the objective of this study is to go beyond the mere climate change by analyzing other multiples stressors that real challenging and treating the livelihoods, economic and ecological landscapes of the coastal communities through dialectic understanding, vulnerability and adaptive mechanisms at their own localities. To be more focus and to capture the full picture on this study special intention will be given to those areas were climate changes intervening programs have been onto place, the study will further compare and contrast between the two islands communities, Unguja and Pemba taking into account their respective diverse economic and geographical landscapes prevailed.

Keywords: climate change, multiple stressors, livelihoods, vulnerability-adaptation

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Authors: Tayyaba Azim, Bibi Amina

Abstract:

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

Procedia PDF Downloads 148