Search results for: budget unity

Authors: Nidhi Patel, Amol Shinde, Amrin Moger

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Mainstream Hindi cinema also known as Bollywood, is the largest film producing industry in India. The Indian film industry underwent a sea change since last few years. The industry adapted to the latest technologies and creative manpower to improve visual and cinematic effects. The changes helped the industry to improve its creative looks and ease on production budget. The research focuses on this very change, i.e. the use of VFX. There has been growing use of VFX in feature films. The primary focus is on how VFX can make a difference in the experience of watching a movie. The research examines the use of CGI/VFX in the narrative, which delivers a visually fulfilling film. It also focuses on the use of CGI/ VFX as a cost cutting tool. The research was exploratory in nature. It studies the industry’s evolvement, increment in its use by filmmakers and their intention to use it in their films. The researcher used qualitative method for data collection as an in-depth interview of 10 artists from VFX studios in Mumbai was conducted. The finding reveals the way VFX is used in Hindi cinema by the directors. The researcher learnt that VFX is majorly used as a tool to enhance creativity and provide the audience with creative viewing experience.

Keywords: Bollywood, Hindi cinema, VFX, CGI, technology, creativity, cost cutting

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Authors: Ansarullah Omari

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This article examines the intercultural sensitivities of ethnic groups (Tajik and Pashtun) in Afghan society. Afghanistan is known as a multi-ethnic society due to its many ethnic groups. Intercultural sensitivities among ethnic groups have been the basis for the formation of conflicts, divisions and discrimination in this country for many years, whose destructive effects include civil wars, immigration and the lack of sustainability of Afghan governments. One of the ways to achieve unity and social interaction with peace and comfort in the multi-ethnic society of Afghanistan is to identify intercultural sensitivities between ethnic groups, especially two large ethnic groups (Tajik and Pashtun) and related factors through intercultural communication. Therefore, the research is conducted with the question of what factors have caused intercultural sensitivities between the Tajik and Pashtun people. And for its scientific understanding, the theory of intercultural sensitivities is used. The current research is participative research that is done with qualitative and quantitative methods. In the qualitative method, by conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews, the components of intercultural sensitivities of the Tajik and Pashtun ethnic groups are identified, and then in the quantitative method, these components are measured in a survey in the society. The expected findings are that the level of intercultural sensitivities among the general public is relatively low, but the most important factors that increase intercultural sensitivities between the Tajik and Pashtun ethnic groups are, firstly, politics, secondly, the self-praise of the Pashtun people and in the language issue.

Keywords: intercultural communication, intercultural sensitivity, Tajik people, Pashtun people, in-depth interview

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Authors: Teten Masduki

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Indonesia is a unitary state which has a wide range of cultures, local languages, religions, ethnicity, race, traditions, and beliefs held by people who are scattered in several islands Indonesia. But with such diversity has the potential to cause various problems in society. Because one of the characteristics of diversity is the difference. Unresolved differences could develop into conflicts or contradictions in society. Pancasila as the philosophy and ideology of the nation was stated in the opening of the 1945 Constitution as an alternative solution to the conflict that occurred in Indonesia. Because the ideology of Pancasila role as a nation and also as an integral tool that upholds humanity, justice, unity, harmony, and balance on the belt by the five precepts. If the values contained in Pancasila can be applied and lived by the public of Indonesia, it will be the creation of a just, peaceful and peace. However, the lack of public awareness in implementing pancsila can lead to conflict within the community itself, such as the existence of separatist movements in Papua who gathered in the Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM) with the active movement that has a lot of casualties. This paper raised the topic of which offer solutions revitalization (reviving) the values of Pancasila as an alternative solution to the conflict in Indonesia is based on a case study of separatist movements in Papua. This paper will also discuss the implementation of strategic steps in the implementation of solutions which are summarized in the conclusions of this paper.

Keywords: Pancasila, separatism, revitalization, democracy

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Authors: Svetlana K. Eden

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Movies and TV shows have long become part of modern culture. We all have our preferred genre, story, actors, and actresses. However, can we objectively discern good acting from the bad? As laymen, we are probably not objective, but what about the Oscar academy members? Are their votes based on objective measures? Oscar academy members are probably also biased due to many factors, including their professional affiliations or advertisement exposure. Heavily advertised films bring more publicity to their cast and are likely to have bigger budgets. Because a bigger budget may also help earn a Best Picture (BP) nomination, we hypothesize that best actor/actress (BA) nominees from BP-nominated movies would have higher chances of winning the award than those BA nominees from non-BP-nominated films. To test this hypothesis, three Bayesian hierarchical models are proposed, and their performance is evaluated. The results from all three models largely support our hypothesis. Depending on the proportion of BP nominations among BA nominees, the odds ratios (estimated over expected) of winning the BA award conditional on BP nomination vary from 2.8 [0.8-7.0] to 4.3 [2.0, 15.8] for actors and from 1.5 [0.0, 12.2] to 5.4 [2.7, 14.2] for actresses.

Keywords: Oscar, best picture, best actor/actress, bias

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Authors: Mohammed Fakehy, Mohammed Haggag

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The problem of test anxiety considered as one of the most important and most complex psychological problems faced by students of King Saud University, where university students in a need to bring their reassurance and psychological comfort, relieves feeling pain and difficulties of the study. Recently, there are programs and science that help human to change, including the science Linguistic Programming this neural science stems from not just the tips of the need to make the effort or continue to work, but provides the keys in which one can be controlled in the internal environment. Even human potential energy is extracted seeking to achieve success and happiness and excellence. Through the work of the researchers as members of the teaching staff at King Saud University and specialists in the field of psychology noticed the suffering of some students of King Saud University, test anxiety. In an attempt by the researchers to mitigate as much as possible of the unity of this concern, students will have a training program in Neuro Linguistic Programming. The main Question of this study is What is the effectiveness of the impact of a training program using NLP to reduce test anxiety by using a biological feedback. Therefore, the results of this study might serve as a good announcement about the usefulness of NLP programs which influence future research to significant effect of NLP on test anxiety.

Keywords: neuro linguistic programming, test anxiety, biological feedback, king saud

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Authors: Arshad Munir, Naseem Akhtar

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The determination of the Sufi is to effort towards unity. His main purpose is to bring humanity, separated as it is into so many different units, closer together in the deeper understanding of life. His mission is to bring about brotherhood among races, nations and faiths and to respect one another's faith, scripture and teacher. Sufi is to confer sympathy on these lives, to impart love, compassion and kindheartedness on all creations. The Sufi message is the resonance of the same Divine message which has always come and will always come to inform humanity. It is the continuation of all the pronounced religions which have come at several times and it is amalgamation of them all, which was the wish of all the prophets. Pakistan, who came into being in the name of Islam unfortunately, have linked with terrorism. It is a disgrace that in contemporary day Pakistan, mullahism and the recent cancer of Talibanisation are gradually eating into what had kept us integral as a society. Terrorism has grown-up to develop a prime safety pressure to the area. The terrorism has deadly caused decrease in overseas and local investment, exports, physical infrastructure, and wealth stock ultimately leading to damage of the socio-economic status of Pakistan. Main reasons are ignorance about the actual teaching of Islam both by Muslim and non-Muslim, exploitation by the religious and political influential, sectarianism and extremism, lack of tolerance and broadmindedness and reaction and retortion by the sufferer. The key treatment and therapy of the abovementioned illnesses exist in the messages of Sufism.

Keywords: sufism, love, Pakistan, terrorism

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Authors: Harold Jideofor

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The application of Project Management (PM) tools and techniques in the public sector is gradually becoming an important issue in developing economies, especially in a country like Nigeria where projects of different size and structures are undertaken. The paper examined the application of the project management practice in the public sector in Nigeria. The PM lifecycles, tools, and techniques were presented. The study was carried out in Lagos because of its metropolitan nature and rapidly growing economy. Twenty-three copies of questionnaire were administered to 23 public institutions in Lagos to generate primary data. The descriptive analysis techniques using percentages and table presentations coupled with the coefficient of correlation were used for data analysis. The study revealed that application of PM tools and techniques is an essential management approach that tends to achieve specified objectives within specific time and budget limits through the optimum use of resources. Furthermore, the study noted that there is a lack of in-depth knowledge of PM tools and techniques in public sector institutions sampled, also a high cost of the application was also observed by the respondents. The study recommended among others that PM tools and techniques should be applied gradually especially in old government institutions where resistance to change is perceived to be high.

Keywords: project management, public sector, practice, Nigeria

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Authors: P. S. Jagadeesh Kumar, S. Meenakshi Sundaram, Wenli Hu, Yang Yung

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In 3D video games, the dominance of production is unceasingly growing with a protruding level of affordability in terms of budget. Afterward, the automation of speech-lip synchronization technique is customarily onerous and has advanced a critical research subject in virtual reality based 3D video games. This paper presents one of these automatic tools, precisely riveted on the synchronization of the speech and the lip movement of the game characters. A robust and precise speech recognition segment that systematized with Algebraic Code Excited Linear Prediction method is developed which unconventionally delivers lip sync results. The Algebraic Code Excited Linear Prediction algorithm is constructed on that used in code-excited linear prediction, but Algebraic Code Excited Linear Prediction codebooks have an explicit algebraic structure levied upon them. This affords a quicker substitute to the software enactments of lip sync algorithms and thus advances the superiority of service factors abridged production cost.

Keywords: algebraic code excited linear prediction, speech-lip synchronization, video games, virtual reality

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Authors: Pau Rausell-Koster, Jordi Sanjuan-Belda

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The economic crisis of 2008 had a special impact on cultural consumption in Spain. It fell by almost 30% in a few years, and its share of total family spending decreased from 3.19% in 2007 to 2.38% in 2015. In 2017, unlike other indicators, cultural consumption levels were still far from recovering their pre-crisis values. In times of economic difficulties, the satisfaction of primary subsistence needs takes priority over that of social, cultural and experiential needs, among which cultural consumption would mostly be framed. However, its evolution cannot be attributed exclusively to macroeconomic trends. In parallel to these, technological advances mainly related to the Internet have been disseminated in recent years, which have a very marked impact on the consumption patterns of some cultural sectors. Thus, the aim of this study is to define the causes of the decline in cultural consumption in Spain in recent years, and analyse what type of products, territories and population profiles suffered it especially. From the data analysis of the Family Budget Survey, the study seeks to improve the understanding of the determinants of cultural consumption and their behaviour in the face of macroeconomic trends, as well as identify and extract some policy implications regarding to the upcoming crisis caused by COVID-19.

Keywords: consume patterns, cultural consumption, economic crisis, economic trends

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Authors: Hwayeon Song

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The long-term purpose of research and development (R&D) programs is to strengthen national competitiveness by developing new knowledge and technologies. Thus, it is important to determine a proper budget for government programs to maintain the vigor of R&D when the total funding is tight due to the national deficit. In this regard, a ripple effect analysis for the budgetary changes in R&D programs is necessary as well as an investigation of the current status. This study proposes a new approach using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) for both tasks. It particularly focuses on R&D programs related to Construction and Transportation (C&T) technology in Korea. First, key factors in C&T technology are explored to draw impact indicators in three areas: economy, society, and science and technology (S&T). Simultaneously, ANN is employed to evaluate the relationship between data variables. From this process, four major components in R&D including research personnel, expenses, management, and equipment are assessed. Then the ripple effect analysis is performed to see the changes in the hypothetical future by modifying current data. Any research findings can offer an alternative strategy about R&D programs as well as a new analysis tool.

Keywords: Artificial Neural Networks, construction and transportation technology, Government Research and Development, Ripple Effect

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Authors: Hafiz Usama Imad, Muhammad Akram Akhund, Tauha Hussain Ali, Ali Raza Khoso, Fida Hussain Siddiqui

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Construction industry plays a significant role in fulfilling the major requirements of the human being. It is one of the major constituents of every developed country. Although the construction industry of both the developing and developed countries encompasses a major part of the economy, and millions of rupees are utilized every year on various kinds of construction projects. But, this industry is facing numerous hurdles in terms of its budget and timely completion. Construction projects generally consist of several phases like planning, designing, execution, and finishing. This research study aims to determine the significant factors of time overrun in pre-construction planning (PCP) phase of construction projects in Pakistan. Questionnaires were distributed by various means and responses of respondents were compiled and collected data were then analyzed through a statistical technique using SPSS version 24. Major causes of time overrun in pre-construction planning phase; which is an extremely important phase of construction projects, were revealed. The research conclusion will provide a pathway for stakeholders to pay attention to the mentioned causes to overcome the major issue of time overrun.

Keywords: construction industry, Pakistan, pre-construction planning phase, time overrun

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Authors: Yanni Chang, Dezhi Dai, Albert Y. Tong

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Piecewise linear interface calculation (PLIC) schemes are widely used in the volume-of-fluid (VOF) method to capture interfaces in numerical simulations of multiphase flows. Dynamic overset meshes can be especially useful in applications involving component motions and complex geometric shapes. In the present study, the VOF value of an acceptor cell is evaluated in a geometric way that transfers the fraction field between the meshes precisely with reconstructed interfaces from the corresponding donor elements. The acceptor cell value is evaluated by using a weighted average of its donors for most of the overset interpolation schemes for continuous flow variables. The weighting factors are obtained by different algebraic methods. Unlike the continuous flow variables, the VOF equation is a step function near the interfaces, which ranges from zero to unity rapidly. A geometric interpolation scheme of the VOF field in overset meshes for the PLIC-VOF method has been proposed in the paper. It has been tested successfully in quadrilateral/hexahedral overset meshes by employing several VOF advection tests with imposed solenoidal velocity fields. The proposed algorithm has been shown to yield higher accuracy in mass conservation and interface reconstruction compared with three other algebraic ones.

Keywords: interpolation scheme, multiphase flows, overset meshes, PLIC-VOF method

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Authors: Michelle Marquard

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The evidence for collaboration technologies (CTs) as a source of business productivity has never been stronger, and grows each day. At the same time, paradoxically, there is an increasingly greater concern about the challenge CTs present to the unity and well-being of the virtual workforce than ever before, but nowhere in the literature has an empirical understanding of these linkages been set out. This study attempted to address by using virtual distance as a measure of the efficacy of CTs to reduce the psychological distance among people. Data from 350 managers and 101 individual contributors across twelve functions in six major industries showed that business value is related to collaboration (r=.84, p < .01), which, in turn, is associated with full spectrum participation (r=.60, p < .01), a summative function of inclusion, integration, and we-intention. Further, virtual distance is negatively related to both collaboration (r=-.54, p < .01) and full spectrum participation (r=-.26, p < .01). Additionally, CIO-CDO relationship is a factor in the degree to which virtual distance is managed in the organization (r=-.26, p < .01). Overall, the results support the positive relationship between business value and collaboration. They also suggest that the extent to which collaboration can be fostered may depend on the degree of full spectrum participation or the level of inclusion, integration, and we-intention among members. Finally, the results indicate that CTs, when managed wisely to lower virtual distance, are a compelling concomitant to collaboration and full spectrum participation. A strategic outcome of this study is an instrumental blueprint of CTs and virtual distance in relation to full spectrum participation that should serve as a shared dashboard for CIOs, CHROs, and CDOs.

Keywords: business value, collaboration, inclusion, integration, we-intention, full spectrum participation, collaboration technologies, virtual distance

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Authors: Muhammad Fairul Azreen bin Mohd Zahid, Melissa Querk, Aimi Nabila bt Anizaim

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For this particular research, the focus is based on the practice as research which will produce a choreography as the outcome. The ideas organically develop as an “epiphany” from the meeting, brainstorming, or situation that revolves around surroundings. In this study, the researchers are approaching the national pillar of Malaysia known as ‘Rukun Negara’ to develop a choreographic idea. The concept theory of Speech Act by J.L Austin is used to compose the choreography alongside with national pillar ‘Rukun Negara’ as a guideline for a contemporary work titled, The Pledge 2.0, besides fostering the spirit of unity. These approaches will offer flexibility in creating a choreography piece. The pledge has crossed the boundaries by using texts and heavy issues in choreography developments. It will emphasize the concept of delivering the speech via verbal and nonverbal body language. Besides using the Theory of Speech Acts, the development process of creating this piece will lay the bare normative structure implicit in performance practice. Converging current issues into the final choreographic piece for this research is vital as this research will explore a few choreography methods from different perspectives. Hence, the audience will be able to see the world of dance that always revolves in line with the diachronic process in many ways. The method used in this research is qualitative, which will be used in finding the movement that fits the given facts.

Keywords: performing arts, speech act, performative, nationalism, choreography, politic in dance

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Authors: Maryam Esfandiari, Bohdan Fridrich

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On December 28, 2017, a wave of protests erupted in several Iranian cities. Protesters demonstrated against the president, Hasan Rohani, and theocratical nature of the regime. Iran has a recent history with protest movements, such as Green Movement responsible for demonstrations after 2009 Iranian presidential election. However, the 2017/2018 protests differ from the previous ones in terms of organization and agenda. The events show little to no central organization and seem as being sparked by grass root movements and by citizens’ fatigue of government corruption, authoritarianism, and economic problems of the country. Social media has played important role in communicating the protests to the outside world and also in general coordination. By using content analyses, this paper analyzes the visual content of Twitter posts published during the protests. It aims to find the correlation between their decentralized nature and nature of the tweets – either emotionally arousing or efficiency-elicit. Pictures are searched by hashtags and coded by their content, such as ‘crowds,’ ‘protest activities,’ ‘symbols of unity,’ ‘violence,’ ‘iconic figures,’ etc. The study determines what type of content prevails and what type is the most impactful in terms of reach. This study contributes to understanding the role of social media both as a tool and a space in protest organization and portrayal in countries with limited Internet access.

Keywords: twitter, Iran, collective action, protest

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Authors: R. Malathy

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High performance concrete is not only characterized by its high strength, workability, and durability but also by its smartness in performance without human care since the first day. If the concrete can cure on its own without external curing without compromising its strength and durability, then it is said to be high performance self-curing concrete. In this paper, an attempt is made on the performance study of internally cured concrete using biomaterials, namely Spinacea pleracea and Calatropis gigantea as self-curing agents, and it is compared with the performance of concrete with existing self-cure chemical, namely polyethylene glycol. The present paper focuses on workability, strength, and durability study on M20, M30, and M40 grade concretes replacing 30% of fly ash for cement. The optimum dosage of Spinacea pleracea, Calatropis gigantea, and polyethylene glycol was taken as 0.6%, 0.24%, and 0.3% by weight of cement from the earlier research studies. From the slump tests performed, it was found that there is a minimum variation between conventional concrete and self-cured concrete. The strength activity index is determined by keeping compressive strength of conventionally cured concrete for 28 days as unity and observed that, for self-cured concrete, it is more than 1 after 28 days and more than 1.15 after 56 days because of secondary reaction of fly ash. The performance study of concretes in aggressive environment like acid attack, sea water attack, and chloride attack was made, and the results are positive and encouraging in bio-self-cured concretes which are ecofriendly, cost effective, and high performance materials.

Keywords: bio materials, Calatropis gigantea, self curing concrete, Spinacea oleracea

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Authors: Chiung-Ju Huang, Yuan-Hong Ho

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This study utilizes the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Fiscal Rules Dataset focusing on four specific fiscal rules such as expenditure rule, revenue rule, budget balance rule, and debt rule and five main characteristics of each fiscal rule those are monitoring, enforcement, coverage, legal basis, and escape clause to construct the Fiscal Rule Index for nine countries in the Asia-Pacific region from 1996 to 2015. After constructing the fiscal rule index for each country, we utilize the Panel Generalized Method of Moments (Panel GMM) by using the constructed fiscal rule index to examine the effectiveness of fiscal rules in reducing procyclicality. Empirical results show that national fiscal rules have a significantly negative impact on procyclicality of government expenditure. Additionally, stricter fiscal rules combined with high government effectiveness are effective in reducing procyclicality of government expenditure. Results of this study indicate that for nine Asia-Pacific countries, policymakers’ use of fiscal rules and government effectiveness to reducing procyclicality of fiscal policy are effective.

Keywords: counter-cyclical policy, fiscal rules, government efficiency, procyclical policy

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Authors: Meilee Shen

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Buddhist nuns in Taiwan have shouldered various responsibilities in educational, cultural, economic, and social aspects that transforms and transcends Chinese Buddhism to a higher level in Taiwan and overseas. In the recent years, Nuns in Taiwan have formed various associations to reach their goals and satisfy their needs. This research will focus on the following: 1. How to distinguish a Buddhist organization from temple? 2. Whether the forming of female Buddhist organizations reveals religious purpose or gender conflict in Buddhism? 3. How can nuns in Taiwan be unified together to establish their identification? This paper will mainly study on the Chinese Buddhist Bhikkhuni Association (CBBA) because they have gained allies together to work for religious causes and social needs since 1996. However, with a mission to promote female practitioners’ role in Buddhist circle, CBBA did not contribute much to the gender issue in Buddhism. The research found that CBBA did not achieve their goal to unite nuns in Taiwan because they failed to support nuns' education and did not recruit young and highly educated ones as CBBA's faculties. In conclusion, the research suggests i) to connect with other Buddhist organizations in order to achieve the dream of unity, ii) to fill the generation gap by overturn hierarchical system in Buddhist community and create a new environment for new generation to grow, iii) to shift financial contribution from social charity to nuns’ education to promote female role in Buddhism in the future.

Keywords: Bhikkhuni in Taiwan, Bhikkhuni population and education, Buddhism in Taiwan, Chinese Buddhist Bhikkhuni Association

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Authors: Nimit Soonsan

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Hotel image is a key business issue in today’s hotel market and has been increasingly been recognized as a valuable and inimitable source of competitive advantage by many hotel. The current study attempted to develop and test a relationship of hotel image, overall satisfaction, and future behavior. Based on the above concepts, this paper hypothesizes the correlations among four constructs, namely, hotel image and overall satisfaction as antecedents of future behavior that positive word-of-mouth and intention to revisit. This study surveyed for a sample of 244 international customers staying budget hotel in Phuket, Thailand and using a structural equation modeling identified relationship between hotel image, overall satisfaction and future behavior. The major finding of structural equation modeling indicates that hotel image directly affects overall satisfaction and indirectly affects future behavior that positive word-of-mouth and intention to revisit. In addition, overall satisfaction had significant influence on future behavior that positive word-of-mouth and intention to revisit, and the mediating role of overall satisfaction is also confirmed in this study. Managerial implications are provided, limitations noted, and future research directions suggested.

Keywords: hotel image, satisfaction, word-of-mouth, revisit

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Authors: Huy Hieu Pham, Houssam Salmane, Louahdi Khoudour, Alain Crouzil, Pablo Zegers, Sergio Velastin

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We present a deep learning-based multitask framework for joint 3D human pose estimation and action recognition from color video sequences. Our approach proceeds along two stages. In the first, we run a real-time 2D pose detector to determine the precise pixel location of important key points of the body. A two-stream neural network is then designed and trained to map detected 2D keypoints into 3D poses. In the second, we deploy the Efficient Neural Architecture Search (ENAS) algorithm to find an optimal network architecture that is used for modeling the Spatio-temporal evolution of the estimated 3D poses via an image-based intermediate representation and performing action recognition. Experiments on Human3.6M, Microsoft Research Redmond (MSR) Action3D, and Stony Brook University (SBU) Kinect Interaction datasets verify the effectiveness of the proposed method on the targeted tasks. Moreover, we show that our method requires a low computational budget for training and inference.

Keywords: human action recognition, pose estimation, D-CNN, deep learning

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Authors: Srikanth Nagarajan, P. Parthasarathy, Frits Lagers

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Lower crude oil prices increased the pressure on oil and gas projects. Being competitive becomes very important and critical for the success in any industry. Increase in size of the project multiplies the magnitude of the issue. Timely completion of projects within the budget and schedule is very important for any project to succeed. A simple idea makes a larger impact on the total cost of the plant. In this robust world, the phases of engineering right from licensing technology, feed, different phases of detail engineering, procurement and construction has been so much compressed that they overlap with each other. Hence constructability techniques have become very important. Here in this paper, the focus will be on how these techniques can be implemented and reduce cost with the help of a case study. Constructability is a process driven by the need to impact project’s construction phase resulting in improved project delivery, costs and schedule. In construction phase of one of our fast-track mega project, it was noticed that there was an opportunity to reduce significant amount of cost and schedule by implementing Constructability study processes. In this case study, the actual methodology adopted during engineering and construction and the way for doing it better by implementing Constructability techniques with collaborative engineering efforts will be explained.

Keywords: being competitive, collaborative engineering, constructability, cost reduction

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Authors: Chi-Hao Yeh

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The aim of this paper is to show how to apply TRIZ to resolve conflicts in management area, which can be readily applied in new product development (NPD) process and Knowledge Management (KM) system in desinging and manfacturing stages. TRIZ has been well-known as a creative and innovative thinking theory in solving engineering and technology contradictions in the last two decades. However, few studies and practical usage were proposed in management area. Conflicts occurring including schedule, budget, and risk plannings at smart phone R&D process are discussed to demonstrate the ideas guided by 39 TRIZ management parameters, 40 TRIZ innovative principles, and contradiction matrix. The results show that TRIZ is able to provide direct, quick and effective alternatives to resolve the management conflicts. In this manner, huge effort and cost can be actually saved and practical experince can be stored in KM system. In this paper, an innovative 3C consuming product such as smart-phone is utilized as a case study to describe the proposed TRIZ-based conflicts-solving approaches in NPD process and Knowledge Management (KM) system.

Keywords: TRIZ, conflicts-solving in managment area, new product development (NPD), knowledge management (KM), smart-phone

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Authors: Ugabi John Ibak, Odey Boniface Ugbem

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Education is considered the bedrock of any meaningful developments and teacher education plays a critical role in this direction. Teacher education is the master keys that can alleviate poverty, promote peace, conserve the environment, improve the quality of life for all and help achieve all round sustain enable development in Nigeria and the world over. This paper X-rays the nature and character of the teaching profession, historical background to teacher education in Nigeria, national policy on education, problems of teacher education in Nigeria and prospects of teacher education for sustainable national development. The study shows that the misfortunes of the teacher education owes much to it historical antecedent. Also majorly, is the failure of government to adequately fund education at the various levels in the country. It was discovered that in the history of the nation no government has budgeted 13% of its annual budget (half of 26% UNESCO minimum) to education. This has resulted to poor infrastructure, inadequate equipment and poorly motivated personnel in all the nations public schools at all levels. Hence, the paper concludes that in spite of these overwhelming challenges, teachers have a lot of prospects both in the teaching profession and outside teaching.

Keywords: teacher education, teaching profession, sustainable national development, education, development

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Authors: Tuğçe Arslan

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In the dark and gloomy times of the Middle Ages, high, majestic, and frightening structures were revealed in the architectural field. Thus, gothic architecture began to find a place for itself in different areas and spread its influence. Gothic has found its place in almost every literary genre and manages to show itself as the dominant genre in the works it enters. It has exploited many concepts, such as a chest full of bad feelings, and creates a gloomy, scary, frightening, and pessimistic mood in the story with these concepts. One of the essential concepts it uses while creating these feelings is the concept of “Doppelganger.” With this concept, the authors make sense of the uncanny; at this point, they allow the spaces to act like characters, just like the uncanny feeling Edgar Allan Poe creates in his story “The Fall of the House of the Usher.” In this story by Edgar Allan Poe, attention should be paid to the symbolic link between the two, as “House of Usher” refers to the family and the building. And indeed, it is possible to see this minor rift as representative of a breakdown in family unity, specifically between Madeline and Roderick. Because although the home is not alive, it has some supernatural features that make it look like a living, breathing being. Therefore, the remainder of this paper will argue that apart from the apparent twins, the house should also qualify as a Doppelganger in the story. This study will first explore the physical and mental disorders of the twins and their journey to complement each other; next, in an attempt to demonstrate how the house as a non-living needs to be considered as a Doppelganger of the twins, a close reading on the house depictions will be scrutinized.

Keywords: Edgar Allan Poe, doppelganger, uncanny, gothic, space, home

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Authors: Siri-orn Champatong

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The purpose of this research was to study factors that were related with travel behaviors of Thai tourists at the Ayothaya Floating Market, Phra Nakhon Sri Ayutthaya. The quantitative research was conducted with 400 samples of Thai tourists traveling to the Ayothaya Floating Market. The Questionnaire was a tool used to collect data, and the statistics used for data analysis were mean and Pearson product moment correlation coefficient. The results found that Thai tourists focused on attraction, easy access and facilities of the tourist spot at a high level. In addition, they gave priority to the marketing mix in the dimension of products, price, and distribution channels at a high level as well. For marketing promotion, it was at the moderate level. The results of hypothesis testing revealed that factors related to the attractions of the tourist destination, easy access to the tourist destination, the facilities of the tourist spot, and product and price of the marketing mix were associated with travel behaviors in the aspect of the number of visits used and the budget on tourism.

Keywords: floating market, marketing mix, tourism attractions, travelling behavior

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Authors: Lam Hong Lan, Gabor Sarlos

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It is hard to search for best practices in promotion for local fashion brands in Vietnam as the industry is still very young. Local fashion start-ups have grown quickly in the last five years, thanks in part to the internet and social media. However, local designer/owners can face a huge challenge when competing with international brands in the Vietnamese market – and few local case studies are available for guidance. In response, this paper studied how local small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) promote to their target customers in order to compete with international brands. Knowledge of both successful and unsuccessful approaches generated by this study is intended to both contribute to the academic literature on local fashion in Vietnam as well as to help local designers to learn from and improve their brand-building strategy. The primary study featured qualitative data collection via semi-structured depth interviews. Transcription and data analysis were conducted manually in order to identify success factors that local brands should consider as part of their promotion strategy. Purposive sampling of SMEs identified five designers in Ho Chi Minh City (the biggest city in Vietnam) and three designers in Hanoi (the second biggest) as interviewees. Participant attributes included: born in the 1980s or 1990s; familiar with internet and social media; designer/owner of a successful local fashion brand in the key middle market and/or mass market segments (which are crucial to the growth of local brands). A secondary study was conducted using social listening software to gather further qualitative data on what were considered to be successful or unsuccessful approaches to local fashion brand promotion on social media. Both the primary and secondary studies indicated that local designers had maximized their promotion budget by using owned media and earned media instead of paid media. Findings from the qualitative interviews indicate that internet and social media have been used as effective promotion platforms by local fashion start-ups. Facebook and Instagram were the most popular social networks used by the SMEs interviewed, and these social platforms were believed to offer a more affordable promotional strategy than traditional media such as TV and/or print advertising. Online stores were considered an important factor in helping the SMEs to reach customers beyond the physical store. Furthermore, a successful online store allowed some SMEs to reduce their business rental costs by maintaining their physical store in a cheaper, less central city area as opposed to a more traditional city center store location. In addition, the small comparative size of the SMEs allowed them to be more attentive to their customers, leading to higher customer satisfaction and rate of return. In conclusion, this study found that these kinds of cost savings helped the SMEs interviewed to focus their scarce resources on producing unique, high-quality collections in order to differentiate themselves from international brands. Facebook and Instagram were the main platforms used for promotion and brand-building. The main challenge to this promotion strategy identified by the SMEs interviewed was to continue to find innovative ways to maximize the impact of a limited marketing budget.

Keywords: Vietnam, SMEs, fashion brands, promotion, marketing, social listening

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Authors: Arash Khosravi, Mohamad Nazir Ahmad

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Today’s economy is a knowledge-based economy in which knowledge is a crucial facilitator to individuals, as well as being an instigator of success. Due to the impact of globalization, universities face new challenges and opportunities. Accordingly, they ought to be more innovative and have their own competitive advantages. One of the most important goals of universities is the promotion of students as professional knowledge workers. Therefore, knowledge sharing and transferring at tertiary level between students and supervisors is vital in universities, as it decreases the budget and provides an affordable way of doing research. Knowledge-sharing impact factors can be categorized into three groups, namely: organizational, individual and technical factors. There are some individual barriers to knowledge sharing, namely: lack of time and trust, lack of communication skills and social networks. IT systems such as e-learning, blogs and portals can increase knowledge sharing capability. However, it must be stated that IT systems are only tools and not solutions. Individuals are still responsible for sharing information and knowledge. This paper proposes new research model to examine the effect of individual factors and organisational factors, namely: learning strategy, trust culture, supervisory support, as well as technological factor on knowledge sharing in a research supervision process at the University of Technology Malaysia.

Keywords: knowledge management, knowledge sharing, research supervision, knowledge transferring

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Authors: Nodelman V.

Abstract:

Despite serious difficulties in the assimilation of the conceptual system of Calculus, software in the educational process is used only occasionally, and even then, mainly for illustration purposes. The following are a few reasons: The non-trivial nature of the studied material, Lack of skills in working with software, Fear of losing time working with software, The variety of the software itself, the corresponding interface, syntax, and the methods of working with the software, The need to find suitable models, and familiarize yourself with working with them, Incomplete compatibility of the found models with the content and teaching methods of the studied material. This paper proposes an active use of the developed non-commercial software VusuMatica, which allows removing these restrictions through Broad support for the studied mathematical material (and not only Calculus). As a result - no need to select the right software, Emphasizing the unity of mathematics, its intrasubject and interdisciplinary relations, User-friendly interface, Absence of special syntax in defining mathematical objects, Ease of building models of the studied material and manipulating them, Unlimited flexibility of models thanks to the ability to redefine objects, which allows exploring objects characteristics, and considering examples and counterexamples of the concepts under study. The construction of models is based on an original approach to the analysis of the structure of the studied concepts. Thanks to the ease of construction, students are able not only to use ready-made models but also to create them on their own and explore the material studied with their help. The presentation includes examples of using VusuMatica in studying the concepts of limit and continuity of a function, its derivative, and integral.

Keywords: counterexamples, limitations and requirements, software, teaching and learning calculus, user-friendly interface and syntax

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Authors: Simeon Karafolas, Maciej Woźniak

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Mostly of public financing programs at national and regional level are funded from European Union sources. EU can participate directly to a national and regional program (example LEADER initiative, URBAN…) or indirectly by funding regional or national funds. Funds from European Union are provided from EU multiannual financial framework form which the annual budget is programmed. The adjusted program 2007-2013 of the EU considered commitments of almost 1 trillion Euros for the EU-28 countries. Provisions of the new program 2014-2020 consider commitments of more than 1 trillion Euros. Sustainable growth, divided to Cohesion and Competitiveness for Growth an Employment, is one of the two principal categories; the other is the preservation and management of natural resources. Through this financing process SMEs benefited of EU and public sources by receiving grants for their investments. Most of the financial instruments are available indirectly through the national financial intermediaries. Part of them is managed by the European Investment Fund. The paper focuses on the public financing to SMEs by examining case studies on divers forms of public help. It tries to distinguish the efficiency of the examined good practices and therefore try to have some conclusions on the possibility of application to other regions.

Keywords: DIFASS, grants, SMEs, public financing

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Authors: Mebarek Boukelkoul, Abdelhalim Haroun

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By means of the first principle calculation, we have investigated the structural, magnetic and magneto-optical properties of the ultra-thin films of Fen/Cu(001) with (n=1, 2, 3). We adopted a relativistic approach using DFT theorem with local spin density approximation (LSDA). The electronic structure is performed within the framework of the Spin-Polarized Relativistic (SPR) Linear Muffin-Tin Orbitals (LMTO) with the Atomic Sphere Approximation (ASA) method. During the variational principle, the crystal wave function is expressed as a linear combination of the Bloch sums of the so-called relativistic muffin-tin orbitals centered on the atomic sites. The crystalline structure is calculated after an atomic relaxation process using the optimization of the total energy with respect to the atomic interplane distance. A body-centered tetragonal (BCT) pseudomorphic crystalline structure with a tetragonality ratio c/a larger than unity is found. The magnetic behaviour is characterized by an enhanced magnetic moment and a ferromagnetic interplane coupling. The polar magneto-optical Kerr effect spectra are given over a photon energy range extended to 15eV and the microscopic origin of the most interesting features are interpreted by interband transitions. Unlike thin layers, the anisotropy in the ultra-thin films is characterized by a perpendicular magnetization which is perpendicular to the film plane.

Keywords: ultrathin films, magnetism, magneto-optics, pseudomorphic structure

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