Search results for: domestic violence

Authors: Mikhail V. Khachaturyan, Inga A. Koryagina, Maria Nikishova

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The study investigates the impact of the ongoing financial crisis, started in the 2^nd half of 2014, on marketing budgets spent by Fast-moving consumer goods companies. In these conditions, special importance is given to efficient possessory risk management systems. The main objective for establishing and developing possessory risk management systems for FMCG companies in a crisis is to analyze the data relating to the external environment and consumer behavior in a crisis. Another important objective for possessory risk management systems of FMCG companies is to develop measures and mechanisms to maintain and stimulate sales. In this regard, analysis of risks and threats which consumers define as the main reasons affecting their level of consumption become important. It is obvious that in crisis conditions the effective risk management systems responsible for development and implementation of strategies for consumer demand stimulation, as well as the identification, analysis, assessment and management of other types of risks of economic security will be the key to sustainability of a company. In terms of financial and economic crisis, the problem of forming and developing possessory risk management systems becomes critical not only in the context of management models of FMCG companies, but for all the companies operating in other sectors of the Russian economy. This study attempts to analyze the specifics of formation and development of company possessory risk management systems. In the modern economy, special importance among all the types of owner’s risks has the risk of reduction in consumer activity. This type of risk is common not only for the consumer goods trade. Study of consumer activity decline is especially important for Russia due to domestic market of consumer goods being still in the development stage, despite its significant growth. In this regard, it is especially important to form and develop possessory risk management systems for FMCG companies. The authors offer their own interpretation of the process of forming and developing possessory risk management systems within owner’s management models of FMCG companies as well as in Russian economy in general. Proposed methods and mechanisms of problem analysis of formation and development of possessory risk management systems in FMCG companies and the results received can be helpful for researchers interested in problems of consumer goods market development in Russia and overseas.

Keywords: FMCG companies, marketing budget, risk management, owner, Russian economy, organization, formation, development, system

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Authors: Jose Luis Solleiro, Rosario Castanon, Laura Elena Martinez

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The State of Mexico is an administrative entity of Mexico, and it is one of the most important territories due to its great economic and social impact for the whole country, especially since it contributes with more than eight of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The State of Mexico has a population of over seventeen million people and host very important business and productive industries such as Automotive, Chemicals, Pharmaceutical, and Agri-food. In 2017, the State Development Plan (Plan Estatal de Desarrollo in Spanish) which is a policy document that rules State's economic actions and integrates the bases for sectoral and regional programs to achieve regional development), raised innovation as a key aspect to boost competitiveness and productivity of the State of Mexico. Therefore, in line with this proposal, in 2018 the Mexican Council for Science and Technology (COMECYT for its acronym in Spanish), an institution in charge of promoting public science and technology policies in the State of Mexico, took actions towards building up the State´s Innovation System. Hence, the main objective of this paper is to review and analyze the process to create RIS in the State of Mexico. We focus on the key elements of the process, the diverse actors that were involved in it, the activities that were carried out and the identification of the challenges, findings, successes, and failures of the intended exercise. The methodology used to analyze the structure of the Innovation System of the State of Mexico is based on two elements: the case study and the research-action approach. The main objective of the paper, the case study was based on semi-structured interviews with key actors who have participated in the process of launching the RIS of the State of Mexico. Additionally, we analyzed the information reports and other documents that were elaborated during the process of shaping the State's innovation system. Finally, the results obtained in the process were also examined. The relevance of this investigation fundamentally rests in two elements: 1) keeping documental record of the process of building a RIS in Mexico; and 2) carrying out the analysis of this case study recognizing the importance of knowledge extraction and dissemination, so that lessons on this matter may be useful for similar experiences in the future. We conclude that in Mexico, documentation and analysis efforts related to the formation of RIS and interaction processes between innovation ecosystem actors are scarce, so documents like are of great importance, especially since it generates a series of findings and recommendations for the building of RIS.

Keywords: regional innovation systems, innovation, development, competitiveness

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Authors: Dipanwita Chakravortty

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Officially, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) follows a policy of 'gender equality and partnership' which institutionalises norms regarding equal duty towards the nation. It reiterates the equality in unbiased opportunities and resources for Jewish men and women to participate in the military as equal citizens. At the same time, as a military institution, the IDF supports gender biases and crystallises the same through various interactions among women soldiers, male soldiers and the institution. These biases are expressed through various stages and processes in the military institution like biased training, discriminatory postings of women soldiers, lack of combat training and acceptance of sexual harassment. The gender-military debates in Israel is largely devoted to female emancipation and converting the militarised women’s experiences into mainstream debates. This critical scholarship, largely female-based and located in Israel, has been consistently critical of the structural policies of the IDF that have led to continued discriminatory practices against women soldiers. This has compelled the military to increase its intake of women soldiers and make its structural policies more gender-friendly. Nonetheless, the continued thriving of gender discrimination in the IDF resulted in scholars looking deep into the failure of these policies in bringing about a change. This article looks into two research objectives, firstly to analyse existing gender relations in the IDF which impact the practices and prejudices in the institution and secondly to look beyond the structural discrimination as part of the gender debates in the IDF. The proposed research uses the structural-functional model as a framework to study the discourses and norms emerging out of the interaction between gender and military as two distinct social institutions. Changing gender-military debates will be discussed in great detail to understanding the in-depth relation between the Israeli society and the military due to the conscription model. The main arguments of the paper deal with the functional aspect of the military service rather than the structural component of the institution. Traditional stereotypes of military institutions along with cultural notions of a female body restrict the complete integration of women soldiers despite favourable legislations and policies. These result in functional discriminations like uneven promotion, sexual violence, restructuring gender identities and creating militarised bodies. The existing prejudices encourage younger women recruits to choose from within the accepted pink-collared jobs in the military rather than ‘breaking the barriers.’ Some women recruits do try to explore new avenues and make a mark for themselves. Most of them face stiff discrimination but they accept it as part of military life. The cyclical logic behind structural norms leading to functional discrimination which then emphasises traditional stereotypes and hampers change in the institutional norms compels the IDF to continue to strive towards gender equality within the institution without practical realisation.

Keywords: women soldiers, Israel Defence Forces, gender-military debates, security studies

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Authors: Venus Torabi

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ISIS, the terrorist organization, modified two videogames, ARMA III and Grand Theft Auto 5 (2013) as means of online recruitment and ideological propaganda. The urge to study the mechanism at work, whether it has been successful or not, derives (Digital) Humanities experts to explore how codes of terror, Islamic ideology and recruitment strategies are incorporated into the ludic mechanics of videogames. Another aspect of the significance lies in the fact that this is a latent problem that has not been fully addressed in an interdisciplinary framework prior to this study, to the best of the researcher’s knowledge. Therefore, due to the complexity of the subject, the present paper entangles with game studies, philosophical and religious poles to form the methodology of conducting the research. As a contextualized epistemology of such exploitation of videogames, the core argument is building on the notion of “Culture Industry” proposed by Theodore W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer in Dialectic of Enlightenment (2002). This article posits that the ideological underpinnings of ISIS’s cause corroborated by the action-bound mechanics of the videogames are in line with adhering to the Islamic Eschatology as a furnishing ground and an excuse in exercising terrorism. It is an account of ISIS’s modification of the videogames, a tool of technological progression to practice online radicalization. Dialectically, this practice is packed up in rhetoric for recognizing a religious myth (the advent of a savior), as a hallmark of regression. The study puts forth that ISIS’s wreaking havoc on the world, both in reality and within action videogames, is negotiating the process of self-assertion in the players of such videogames (by assuming one’s self a member of terrorists) that leads to self-annihilation. It tries to unfold how ludic Mod videogames are misused as tools of mass deception towards ethnic cleansing in reality and line with the distorted Eschatological myth. To conclude, this study posits videogames to be a new avenue of mass deception in the framework of the Culture Industry. Yet, this emerges as a two-edged sword of mass deception in ISIS’s modification of videogames. It shows that ISIS is not only trying to hijack the minds through online/ludic recruitment, it potentially deceives the Muslim communities or those prone to radicalization into believing that it's terrorist practices are preparing the world for the advent of a religious savior based on Islamic Eschatology. This is to claim that the harsh actions of the videogames are potentially breeding minds by seeds of terrorist propaganda and numbing them to violence. The real world becomes an extension of that harsh virtual environment in a ludic/actual continuum, the extension that is contributing to the mass deception mechanism of the terrorists, in a clandestine trend.

Keywords: culture industry, dialectic, ISIS, islamic eschatology, mass deception, video games

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Authors: Sebastian Del Corral Winder, Kiriana Sanchez, Mixalis Poulakis, Samantha Gray

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This paper seeks to explore White privilege and Whiteness. Being White in the U.S. is often perceived as the norm and it brings significant social, economic, educational, and health privileges that often are hidden in social interactions. One quality of Whiteness has been its invisibility given its intrinsic impact on the system, which becomes only visible when paying close attention to White identity and culture and during cross-cultural interactions. The cross-cultural interaction provides an emphasis on differences between the participants and people of color are often viewed as “the other.” These interactions may promote an increased opportunity for discrimination and negative stereotypes against a person of color. Given the recent increase of violence against culturally diverse groups, there has been an increased sense of otherness and division in the country. Furthermore, the accent prestige theory has found that individuals who speak English with a foreign accent are perceived as less educated, competent, friendly, and trustworthy by White individuals in the United States. Using the consensual qualitative research (CQR) methodology, this study explored the cross-cultural dyad from the White individual’s perspective focusing on the psychotherapeutic relationship. The participants were presented with an audio recording of a conversation between a psychotherapist with a Hispanic accent and a patient with an American English accent. Then, the participants completed an interview regarding their perceptions of race, culture, and cross-cultural interactions. The preliminary results suggested that the Hispanic accent alone was enough for the participants to assign stereotypical ethnic and cultural characteristics to the individual with the Hispanic accent. Given the quality of the responses, the authors completed a secondary analysis to explore Whiteness and White privilege in more depth. Participants were found to be on a continuum in their understanding and acknowledgment of systemic racism; while some participants listed examples of inequality, other participants noted: “all people are treated equally.” Most participants noted their feelings of discomfort in discussing topics of cultural diversity and systemic racism by fearing to “say the ‘wrong thing.” Most participants placed the responsibility of discussing cultural differences with the person of color, which has been observed to create further alienation and otherness for culturally diverse individuals. The results indicate the importance of examining racial and cultural biases from White individuals to promote an anti-racist stance. The results emphasize the need for greater systemic changes in education, policies, and individual awareness regarding cultural identity. The results suggest the importance for White individuals to take ownership of their own cultural biases in order to promote equity and engage in cultural humility in a multicultural world. Future research should continue exploring the role of White ethnic identity and education as they appear to moderate White individuals’ attitudes and beliefs regarding other races and cultures.

Keywords: culture, qualitative research, whiteness, white privilege

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Authors: Isabelle Gobatto

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Based on an anthropological approach, this paper explores the medical profession and the construction of medical practices by considering the multiform articulations between structural poverty and the production of care from a low-resource francophone West African country, Burkina Faso. This country is considered in its exemplary dimension of culturally differentiated countries of the African continent that share the same situation of structural poverty. The objective is to expose the effects of structural poverty on the ways of constructing professional knowledge and thinking about the sense of the medical profession. If doctors are trained to have the same capacities in South and West countries, which are to treat and save lives whatever the cultural contexts of the practice of medicine, the ways of investing their role and of dealing with this context of action fracture the homogenization of the medical profession. In the line of anthropology of biomedicine, this paper outlines the complex effects of structural poverty on health care, care relations, and the moral economy of doctors. The materials analyzed are based on an ethnography including two temporalities located thirty years apart (1990-1994 and 2020-2021), based on long-term observations of care practices conducted in healthcare institutions, interviews coupled with the life histories of physicians. The findings reveal that disabilities faced by doctors to deliver care are interpreted as policy gaps, but they are also considered by physicians as constitutive of the social and cultural characteristics of patients, making their capacities and incapacities in terms of accompanying caregivers in the production of care. These perceptions have effects on know-how, structured around the need to act even when diagnoses are not made so as not to see patients desert health structures if the costs of care are too high for them. But these interpretations of highly individualizing dimensions of these difficulties place part of the blame on patients for the difficulties in using learned knowledge and delivering effective care. These situations challenge the ethics of caregivers but also of ethnologists. Firstly because the interpretations of disabilities prevent caregivers from considering vulnerabilities of care as constituting a common condition shared with their patients in these health systems, affecting them in an identical way although in different places in the production of care. Correlatively, these results underline that these professional conceptions prevent the emergence of a figure of victim, which could be shared between patients and caregivers who, together, undergo working and care conditions at the limit of the acceptable. This dimension directly involves politics. Secondly, structural poverty and its effects on care challenge the ethics of the anthropologist who observes caregivers producing, without intent to arm, experiences of care marked by an ordinary violence, by not giving them the care they need. It is worth asking how anthropologists could get doctors to think in this light in west-African societies.

Keywords: Africa, care, ethics, poverty

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Authors: Meriem Taleb, Ghania Tail, Fatma Zohra Kara, Brahim Djedouani, T. Moussa

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Forensic entomology has grown immensely as a discipline in the past thirty years. The main purpose of forensic entomology is to establish the post mortem interval or PMI. Three days after the death, insect evidence is often the most accurate and sometimes the only method of determining elapsed time since death. This work presents the estimation of the PMI in an experiment to test the reliability of the accumulated degree days (ADD) method and the application of this method in a real case. The study was conducted at the Laboratory of Entomology at the National Institute for Criminalistics and Criminology of the National Gendarmerie, Algeria. The domestic rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus L. was selected as the animal model. On 08th July 2012, the animal was killed. Larvae were collected and raised to adulthood. Estimation of oviposition time was calculated by summing up average daily temperatures minus minimum development temperature (also specific to each species). When the sum is reached, it corresponds to the oviposition day. Weather data were obtained from the nearest meteorological station. After rearing was accomplished, three species emerged: Lucilia sericata, Chrysomya albiceps, and Sarcophaga africa. For Chrysomya albiceps species, a cumulation of 186°C is necessary. The emergence of adults occured on 22nd July 2012. A value of 193.4°C is reached on 9th August 2012. Lucilia sericata species require a cumulation of 207°C. The emergence of adults occurred on 23rd, July 2012. A value of 211.35°C is reached on 9th August 2012. We should also consider that oviposition may occur more than 12 hours after death. Thus, the obtained PMI is in agreement with the actual time of death. We illustrate the use of this method during the investigation of a case of a decaying human body found on 03rd March 2015 in Bechar, South West of Algerian desert. Maggots were collected and sent to the Laboratory of Entomology. Lucilia sericata adults were identified on 24th March 2015 after emergence. A sum of 211.6°C was reached on 1st March 2015 which corresponds to the estimated day of oviposition. Therefore, the estimated date of death is 1st March 2015 ± 24 hours. The estimated PMI by accumulated degree days (ADD) method seems to be very precise. Entomological evidence should always be used in homicide investigations when the time of death cannot be determined by other methods.

Keywords: forensic entomology, accumulated degree days, postmortem interval, diptera, Algeria

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Authors: Ava Zarif Sanayei, Sedigheh Sina

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Radiological protection for plants and animals is an area of regulatory importance. Acute doses of 0.1 Gy/d (10 rad/d) or below are highly unlikely to produce permanent, measurable negative effects on populations or communities of plants or animals. The advancement of radio diagnostics for domestic animals, particularly dogs and cats, has gained popularity in veterinary medicine. As pets are considered to be members of the family worldwide, they are entitled to the same care and protection. It is important to have a system of radiological protection for nonhuman organisms that complies with the focus on human health as outlined in ICRP publication 19. The present study attempts to assess surface-skin entrance doses in small pets undergoing abdominal radio diagnostic procedures utilizing a direct measurements technique with a thermoluminescent dosimeter. These measurements allow the determination of the entrance skin dose (ESD) by calculating the amount of radiation absorbed by the skin during exposure. A group of Thirty TLD-100 dosimeters produced by Harshaw Company, each with a repeatability greater than 95% and calibration using ¹³⁷Cs gamma source, were utilized to measure doses to ten small pets, including cats and dogs in the radiological department in a veterinary clinic in Shiraz, Iran. Radiological procedures were performed using a portable imaging unit (Philips Super M100, Philips Medical System, Germany) to acquire images of the abdomen; ten exams of abdomen images of different pets were monitored, measuring the thicknesses of the two projections (lateral and ventrodorsal) and the distance of the X-ray source from the surface of each pet during the exams. A group of two dosimeters was used for each pet which has been stacked on their skin on the abdomen region. The outcome of this study involved medical procedures with the same kVp, mAs, and nearly identical positions for different diagnostic X-ray procedures executed over a period of two months. The result showed the mean ESD value was 260.34±50.06 µGy due to the approximate size of pets. Based on the results, the ESD value is associated with animal size, and larger animals have higher values. If a procedure doesn't require repetition, the dose can be optimized. For smaller animals, the main challenge in veterinary radiology is the dose increase caused by repetitions, which is most noticeable in the ventro-dorsal position due to the difficulty in immobilizing the animal.

Keywords: direct dose measuring, dosimetry, radiation protection, veterinary medicine

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Authors: Jilbert Novelero, Oliver Mariano

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In a world where technological evolution and competition to create innovative products are at its peak, problems on Electronic Waste (E-Waste) are now becoming a global concern. E-waste is said to be any electrical or electronic devices that have reached the terminal of its useful life. The major issue are the volume and the raw materials used in crafting E-waste which is non-biodegradable and contains hazardous substances that are toxic to human health and the environment. The objective of this study is to gather baseline data in terms of the composition of E-waste in the solid waste stream and to determine the top 5 E-waste categories in a highly urbanized city. Recommendations in managing these wastes for its reduction were provided which may serve as a guide for acceptance and implementation in the locality. Pasig City was the chosen beneficiary of the research output and through the collaboration of the City Government of Pasig and its Solid Waste Management Office (SWMO); the researcher successfully conducted the Electronic Waste Analysis and Characterization Study (E-WACS) to achieve the objectives. E-WACS that was conducted on April 2019 showed that E-waste ranked 4th which comprises the 10.39% of the overall solid waste volume. Out of 345, 127.24kg which is the total daily domestic waste generation in the city, E-waste covers 35,858.72kg. Moreover, an average of 40 grams was determined to be the E-waste generation per person per day. The top 5 E-waste categories were then classified after the analysis. The category which ranked first is the office and telecommunications equipment that contained the 63.18% of the total generated E-waste. Second in ranking was the household appliances category with 21.13% composition. Third was the lighting devices category with 8.17%. Fourth on ranking was the consumer electronics and batteries category which was composed of 5.97% and fifth was the wires and cables category where it comprised the 1.41% of the average generated E-waste samples. One of the recommendations provided in this research is the implementation of the Pasig City Waste Advantage Card. The card can be used as a privilege card and earned points can be converted to avail of and enjoy services such as haircut, massage, dental services, medical check-up, and etc. Another recommendation raised is for the LGU to encourage a communication or dialogue with the technology and electronics manufacturers and distributors and international and local companies to plan the retrieval and disposal of the E-wastes in accordance with the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policy where producers are given significant responsibilities for the treatment and disposal of post-consumer products.

Keywords: E-waste, E-WACS, E-waste characterization, electronic waste, electronic waste analysis

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Authors: RAJ KUMAR G.C.

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There are tremendous opportunities to maximize smallholder farmers’ income from small-scale water resource development through micro irrigation and multiple-use water systems (MUS). MUS are an improved water management approach, developed and tested successfully by iDE that pipes water to a community both for domestic use and for agriculture using efficient micro irrigation. Different MUS models address different landscape constraints, water demand, and users’ preferences. MUS are complemented by micro irrigation kits, which were developed by iDE to enable farmers to grow high-value crops year-round and to use limited water resources efficiently. Over the last 15 years, iDE’s promotion of the MUS approach has encouraged government and other key stakeholders to invest in MUS for better planning of scarce water resources. Currently, about 60% of the cost of MUS construction is covered by the government and community. Based on iDE’s experience, a gravity-fed MUS costs approximately $125 USD per household to construct, and it can increase household income by $300 USD per year. A key element of the MUS approach is keeping farmers well linked to input supply systems and local produce collection centers, which helps to ensure that the farmers can produce a sufficient quantity of high-quality produce that earns a fair price. This process in turn creates an enabling environment for smallholders to invest in MUS and micro irrigation. Therefore, MUS should be seen as an integrated package of interventions –the end users, water sources, technologies, and the marketplace– that together enhance technical, financial, and institutional sustainability. Communities are trained to participate in sustainable water resource management as a part of the MUS planning and construction process. The MUS approach is cost-effective, improves community governance of scarce water resources, helps smallholder farmers to improve rural health and livelihoods, and promotes gender equity. MUS systems are simple to maintain and communities are trained to ensure that they can undertake minor maintenance procedures themselves. All in all, the iDE Nepal MUS offers multiple benefits and represents a practical and sustainable model of the MUS approach. Moreover, there is a growing national consensus that rural water supply systems should be designed for multiple uses, acknowledging that substantial work remains in developing national-level and local capacity and policies for scale-up.

Keywords: multiple-use water systems , small scale water resources, rural livelihoods, practical and sustainable model

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Authors: F. Slaven, M. Uys, Y. Erasmus

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The South African National Mental Health Education Programme (SANMHEP) was a National Department of Health (NDoH) initiative to strengthen mental health services in South Africa in collaboration with the Foundation for Professional Development (FPD), SANOFI and the various provincial departments of health. The programme was implemented against the backdrop of a number of challenges in the management of mental health in the country related to staff shortages and infrastructure, the intersection of mental health with the growing burden of non-communicable diseases and various forms of violence, and challenges around substance abuse and its relationship with mental health. The Mental Health Care Act (No. 17 of 2002) prescribes that mental health should be integrated into general health services including primary, secondary and tertiary levels to improve access to services and reduce stigma associated with mental illness. In order for the provisions of the Act to become a reality, and for the journey of mental health patients through the system to improve, sufficient and skilled health care providers are critical. SANMHEP specifically targeted Medical Doctors and Professional Nurses working within the facilities that are listed to conduct 72-hour assessments, as well as District Hospitals. The aim of the programme was to improve the clinical diagnosis and management of mental disorders/conditions and the understanding of and compliance with the Mental Health Care Act and related Regulations and Guidelines in the care, treatment and rehabilitation of mental health care users. The course used a blended-learning approach and trained 1 120 health care providers through 36 workshops between February and November 2019. Of those trained, 689 (61.52%) were Professional Nurses, 337 (30.09%) were Medical Doctors, and 91 (8.13%) indicated their occupation as ‘other’ (of these more than half were psychologists). The pre- and post-evaluation of the face-to-face training sessions indicated a marked improvement in knowledge and confidence level scores (both clinical and legislative) in the care, treatment and rehabilitation of mental health care users by participants in all the training sessions. There was a marked improvement in the knowledge and confidence of participants in performing certain mental health activities (on average the ratings increased by 2.72; or 27%) and in managing certain mental health conditions (on average the ratings increased by 2.55; or 25%). The course also required that participants obtain 70% or higher in their formal assessments as part of the online component. The 337 participants who completed and passed the course scored 90% on average. This illustrates that when participants attempted and completed the course, they did very well. To further assess the effect of the course on the knowledge and behaviour of the trained mental health care practitioners a mixed-method outcome evaluation is currently underway consisting of a survey with participants three months after completion, follow-up interviews with participants, and key informant interviews with department of health officials and course facilitators. This will enable a more detailed assessment of the impact of the training on participants' perceived ability to manage and treat mental health patients.

Keywords: mental health, public health facilities, South Africa, training

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Authors: Safar Ghaedrahmati, Leila Soltani

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Population centralization in urban area and metropolitans, especially in developing countries such as Iran increase metropolitan's problems. For few decades, the population of cities in developing countries, including Iran had a higher growth rate than the total growth rate of countries’ population. While in developed countries, the development of the big cities began decades ago and generally allowed for controlled and planned urban expansion, the opposite is the case in developing countries, where rapid urbanization process is characterized by an unplanned existing urban expansion. The developing metropolitan cities have enormous difficulties in coping both with the natural population growth and the urban physical expansion. Iranian cities are usually the heart of economic and cultural changes that have occurred after the Islamic revolution in 1979. These cities are increasingly having impacts via political–economical arrangement and chiefly by urban management structures. Structural features have led to the population growth of cities and urbanization (in number, population and physical frame) and the main problems in them. On the other hand, the lack of birth control policies and the deceptive attractions of cities, particularly big cities, and the birth rate has shot up, something which has occurred mainly in rural regions and small cities. The population of Iran has increased rapidly since 1956. The 1956 and 1966 decennial censuses counted the population of Iran at 18.9 million and 25.7 million, respectively, with a 3.1% annual growth rate during the 1956–1966 period. The 1976 and 1986 decennial censuses counted Iran’s population at 33.7 and 49.4 million, respectively, a 2.7% and 3.9% annual growth rate during the 1966–1976 and 1976–1986 periods. The 1996 count put Iran’s population at 60 million, a 1.96% annual growth rate from 1986–1996 and the 2006 count put Iran population at 72 million. A recent major policy of urban economic and industrial decentralization is a persistent program of the government. The policy has been identified as a result of the massive growth of Tehran in the recent years, up to 9 million by 2010. Part of the growth of the capitally resulted from the lack of economic opportunities elsewhere and in order to redress the developing primacy of Tehran and the domestic pressures which it is undergoing, the policy of decentralization is to be implemented as quickly as possible. Type of research is applied and method of data collection is documentary and methods of analysis are; population analysis with urban system analysis and urban distribution system

Keywords: population centralization, cities of Iran, urban centralization, urban system

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Authors: Rahul Ranjan

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Using gender as a category to cull out historical analysis, feminist scholars have produced plethora of literature on the sexual symbolics and carnal practices of modern European empires. At a symbolic level, the penetration and conquest of faraway lands was charged with sexual significance and intrigue. The white male’s domination and possession of dark and fertile lands in Africa, Asia and the Americas offered, in Anne McClintock’s words, ‘a fantastic magic lantern of the mind onto which Europe projected its forbidden sexual desires and fears’. The politics of rape were also symbolically a question significant to the politics of empire. To the colonized subject, rape was a fearsome factor, a language that spoke of violent and voracious nature of imperial exploitation. The colonized often looked at rape as an act which colonizers used as tool of oppression. The rape as act of violence got encoded into the legal structure under the helm of Lord Macaulay in the so called ‘Age of Reform’ in 1860 under IPC (Indian penal code). Initially Lord Macaulay formed Indian Law Commission in 1837 in which he drafted a bill and defined the ‘crime of rape as sexual intercourse by a man to a woman against her will and without her consent , except in cases involving girls under nine years of age where consent was immaterial’. The modern English law of rape formulated under the colonial era introduced twofold issues to the forefront. On the one hand it deployed ‘technical experts’ who wrote textbooks of medical jurisprudence that were used as credential citation to make case more ‘objective’, while on the other hand the presumptions about barbaric subjects, the colonized women’s body that was docile which is prone to adultery reflected in cases. The untrustworthiness of native witness also remained an imperative for British jurists to put extra emphasis making ‘objective’ and ‘presumptuous’. This sort of formulation put women down on the pedestrian of justice because it disadvantaged her doubly through British legality and their thinking about the rape. The Imperial morality that acted as vanguards of women’s chastity coincided language of science propagated in the post-enlightenment which not only annulled non-conformist ideas but also made itself a hegemonic language, was often used as a tool and language in encoding of law. The medico-legal understanding of rape in the colonial India has its clear imprints in the post-colonial legality. The onus on the part of rape’s victim was dictated for the longest time and still continues does by widely referred idea that ‘there should signs, marks of resistance on the body of the victim’ otherwise it is likely to be considered consensual. Having said so, this paper looks at the textual continuity that had prolonged the colonial construct of women’s body and the self.

Keywords: body, politics, textual construct, phallocentric

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Authors: Xining Wang

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After-school educational service has been proven that it could benefit children’s academic performance, socio-emotional skills, and physical health level. However, there is little research demonstrating parents’ perspectives on the choice of after-school educational service from a level of cross-cultural backgrounds. China and Ireland are typical representatives of collectivist countries (e.g., estimated individualism score is 20) and individualist countries (e.g., estimated individualism score is 70) according to Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory. Living in countries with distinguished cultural backgrounds, there is an evident discrepancy in parents’ attitudes towards domestic after-school education and parents’ motivations for choosing after-school educational services. Through conducting a semi-structured interview with 15 parents from China and 15 parents from Ireland, using thematic analysis software (ATLAS) to extract the key information, and applying a comparative approach to process data analysis; results present polarization of Chinese and Irish parents' perspectives and motivations on after-school educational service. For example, Chinese parents tend to view after-school education as a complement to school education. It is a service they purchased for their children to acquire extra knowledge and skills so that they could adapt to the highly competitive educational setting. Given the fact that children’s education is a priority for Chinese families, most parents believe that their children would succeed in the future through massive learning. This attitude reflects that Chinese parents are more likely to apply authoritarian parenting methods and having a strong expectations for their children. Conversely, Irish parents' choice of after-school educational service is a consideration that primarily based on their own situation, secondly, for their family. For instance, with the expansion of the labor market, there is a change in household structure. Irish mothers are more likely to seek working opportunities instead of looking after the family. Irish parents view that after-school educational service is an essential need for themselves and a beneficial component for their family due to the external pressure (e.g., the growing work intensity and extended working hours, increasing numbers of separated families, as well as parents’ pursuit of higher education and promotion). These factors are fundamental agents that encourage Irish parents to choose after-school educational services. To conclude, the findings could provide readers with a better understanding of parents’ disparate and contrasting perspectives on after-school educational services from a multi-culture level.

Keywords: after-school, China, family studies, Ireland, parents

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Authors: Irmina Miernicka

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Nowadays, dress codes and widely understood appearance are becoming more important in the workplace. They are often used in the workplace to standardize image of an employer, to communicate a corporate image and ensure that customers can easily identify it. It is also a way to build professionalism of employer. Additionally, in many cases, an employer will introduce a dress code for health and safety reasons. Employers more often oblige employees to follow certain rules concerning their clothing, grooming, make-up, body art or even weight. An important research problem is to find the limits of the employer's interference with the external appearance of employees. They are primarily determined by the two main obligations of the employer, i. e. the obligation to respect the employee's personal rights and the principle of equal treatment and non-discrimination in employment. It should also be remembered that the limits of the employer's interference will be different when certain rules concerning the employee's appearance result directly from the provisions of laws and other acts of universally binding law (workwear, official clothing, and uniform). The analysis of this issue was based on literature and jurisprudence, both domestic and foreign, including the U.S. and European case law, and led the author to put forward a thesis that there are four main principles, which will protect the employer from the allegation of discrimination. First, it is the principle of adequacy - the means requirements regarding dress code must be appropriate to the position and type of work performed by the employee. Secondly, in accordance with the purpose limitation principle, an employer may introduce certain requirements regarding the appearance of employees if there is a legitimate, objective justification for this (such as work safety or type of work performed), not dictated by the employer's subjective feelings and preferences. Thirdly, these requirements must not place an excessive burden on workers and be disproportionate in relation to the employer's objective (principle of proportionality). Fourthly, the employer should also ensure that the requirements imposed in the workplace are equally burdensome and enforceable from all groups of employees. Otherwise, it may expose itself to grounds of discrimination based on sex or age. At the same time, it is also possible to differentiate the situation of some employees if these differences are small and reflect established habits and traditions and if employees are obliged to maintain the same level of professionalism in their positions. Although this subject may seem to be insignificant, frequent application of dress codes and increasing awareness of both employees and employers indicate that its legal aspects need to be thoroughly analyzed. Many legal cases brought before U.S. and European courts show that employees look for legal protection when they consider that their rights are violated by dress code introduced in a workplace.

Keywords: labor law, the appearance of an employee, discrimination in the workplace, dress code in a workplace

Procedia PDF Downloads 98

Authors: Gabriel Acha Ekobi

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Fathers play a crucial role in meeting family needs such as affection, protection, and socio-economic needs of children in the world in general and South Africa in particular. Fathers’ role in children’s lives is important in providing socialization, leadership skills, and teaching societal norms. Fathers influence is very significant for children’s well-being and development as it provides the child with moral lessons, guidance, and economic support. However, there is a paucity of information regarding the effects of fathers on children. In addition, despite legal frameworks such as the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the child (1999) introduced by the African Union to promote child rights nevertheless, it appears maltreatment, abuse, and poor health care continue to face children. Also, the Constitution of 1996 of the Republic of South Africa (Section 28 of the Bill of Rights) and the Children’s Act 38 of 2005 were introduced by the South African government to foster the rights of children. Nevertheless, these legal frameworks remain ineffective as children’s rights are still neglected by resident fathers. This paper explores the impact of resident fathers on children in the Golf View, Alice town of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. A qualitative research method and an exploratory research design were utilized, and 30 participants took part in the study. The participants comprised of single mothers or caregivers of children, resident fathers and social workers. Eighteen (18) single mothers or caregivers, 10 resident fathers, and two (2) social workers participated in the study. Data was collected using semi-structured and unstructured interviews and analysed thematically. Two main themes were identified: the role of fathers on children and the effects of resident fathers on children. The study found that the presence of fathers in the lives of children prevented psychosocial issues such as stress, depression, violence, and substance abuse. A father’s presence in a household was crucial in instilling moral values in children. This allowed them to build positive characters such as respect, kindness, humility, and compassion. Children with more involved fathers tend to have fewer impulse control problems, longer attention spans, and a higher level of sociability. The study concludes that the fathers’ role prevented anxiety, depression, and stress and led to the improvement of children’s education performance. Nevertheless, the absence of a father as a role model to act as a leader by instilling moral values hinders positive behaviours in children. This study recommended that occupational training and life skills programmes should be introduced by the government and other stakeholders to empower the fathers as this might provide the platform for them to bring up their children properly.

Keywords: children, fathering, household, resident, single parent

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Authors: Rozh Abdulrahman Kareem

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The displacement of individuals has become a common interest for international players. Mostly occurs in Islamic states, as religion is considered the most common cause of this form of displacement. Therefore, this thesis aims to depict the reality of the situations of the refugees, particularly in KRI, illustrating how they are treated and protected and if the treatment merits the protection clause as envisaged in the 1951 Refugee Convention. Overall, the aim is to touch on the issue of protection by non-governmental organizations and government towards the refugees here. In light of this, it focused on the adequate protection of refugees in relation to the refugee law. In the Middle East, including Iraq, there have been multiple reports on violations of these refugee laws and human rights. Protection involves providing physical security to the concerned parties, functional administration with legal structures, and infrastructural setup that could help citizens exercise rights. The KRI has provided the refugees with various benefits, including education, access to residency, and employment. It also provided transitionary in various social dimensions like gender-based violence. The Convention on Status of Refugees 1951 tried to resolve this problem, whereby the principle of ‘nonrefoulement’ under Article 33 was passed. The ‘nonrefoulement’, an exceptional reference, was enacted to protect refugees from forcible return to their countries of the original. However, the convention never addressed an unusual scenario regarding the application of this principle, ‘Extradition Treaties.’ Even though some scholarly article exists regarding the problems of refugees, the topic of interplay between Nonrefoulement and Extradition Treaties has never been explained in detail in the available books on refugee laws and practices. Each year, millions of refugees seek protection from foreign countries for fear of being tortured, victimized, or executed. People seeking international protection are susceptible and insecure. The main objective of the prevention is to provide security to citizens susceptible to inhuman treatment, distress, oppression, or other human rights defilements when they arrive back in their own countries. The refugee situation may get worse in the near future. Just like several nations within the Middle East, Iraq is not a signatory to the globally acknowledged legal structure for the protection of refugees. The first law of 1971 in Iraq was issued only for military or political causes. This law also establishes benefits such as the right to education and health services and the right to acquire employment just as the Iraqi nationals. The other legislative instrument is the 21st law from the ministry of migration of Iraq widened the description of an immigrant to incorporate the definition from the refugee resolution. Nonetheless, there is a lack of overall consistency in the protection provided under these legislations regarding rights and entitlement. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed in October 2016 by the UNHCR and the Iraq government to develop the protection of refugees. Under the term of this MoU, the Iraqi Government is obligated to provide identity documents to asylum seekers beside that UNHCR provides more guidance.

Keywords: law, refugee, protection, Kurdistan

Procedia PDF Downloads 46

Authors: Nicholas Fieseler

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The nature of religion implicit in popular culture is relevant both in and out of the university. The traditional rules-based conception of religion and the ethical systems that emerge from them do not necessarily convey the behavior of daily life as it exists apart from spaces deemed sacred. This paper proposes to examine the religion implicit in the popular culture phenomenon of professional wrestling and how that affects the understanding of popular religion. Pro wrestling, while frequently dismissed, offers a unique manner through which to re-examine religion in popular culture. A global phenomenon, pro wrestling occupies a distinct space in numerous countries and presents a legitimate reflection of human behavior cross-culturally on a scale few other phenomena can equal. Given its global viewership of millions, it should be recognized as a significant means of interpreting the human attraction to violence and its association with religion in general. Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theory of Theodrama will be used to interrogate the inchoate religion within pro wrestling. While Balthasar developed theodrama within the confines of Christian theology; theodrama contains remarkable versatility in its potential utility. Since theodrama re-envisions reality as drama, the actions of every human actor on the stage contributes to the play’s development, and all action contains some transcendent value. It is in this sense that even the “low brow” activity of pro wrestling may be understood in religious terms. Moreover, a pro wrestling storyline acts as a play within a play: the struggles in a pro wrestling match reflect the human attitudes toward life as it exists in the sacred and profane realms. The indistinct lines separating traditionally good (face) from traditionally bad (heel)wrestlers mirror the moral ambiguity in which many people interpret life. This blurred distinction between good and bad, and large segments of an audience’s embrace of the heel wrestlers, reveal ethical constraints that guide the everyday values of pro wrestling spectators, a moral ambivalence that is often overlooked by traditional religious systems, and which has hitherto been neglected in the academic literature on pro wrestling. The significance of interpreting the religion implicit in pro wrestling through a the dramatic lens extends beyond pro wrestling specifically and can examine the religion implicit in popular culture in general. The use of theodrama mitigates the rigid separation often ascribed to areas deemed sacred/ profane, ortranscendent / immanent, enabling a re-evaluation of religion and ethical systems as practiced in popular culture. The use of theodrama will be expressed by utilizing the pro wrestling match as a literary text that reflects the society from which it emerges. This analysis will also reveal the complex nature of religion in popular culture and provides new directions for the academic study of religion. This project consciously bridges the academic and popular realms. The goal of the research is not to add only to the academic literature on implicit religion in popular culture but to publish it in a form which speaks to those outside the standard academic audiences for such work.

Keywords: ethics, popular religion, professional wrestling, theodrama

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Authors: Francesco Pisano

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Islam has been an important topic in Turkey’s institutional identity. Since the dawn of the Turkish Republic, at the end of the First World War, the new Turkish leadership was urged to deal with the religious heritage of the Sultanate. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s first President, led the country in a process of internal change, substantially modifying not merely the democratic stance of it, but also the way politics was addressing the Muslim faith. Islam was banned from the public sector of the society and was drastically marginalized to the mere private sphere of citizens’ lives. Headscarves were banned from institutional buildings together with any other religious practice, while the country was proceeding down a path of secularism and Westernization. This issue is demonstrated by the fact that even a new elected Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was initially barred from taking the institutional position, because of allegations that he had read a religious text while campaigning. Over the years, thanks to this initial internal shift, Turkey has often been seen by Western partners as one of the few countries that had managed to find a perfect balance between a democratic stance and an Islamic inherent nature. In the early 2000s, this led many academics to believe that Ankara could eventually have become the next European capital. Since then, the internal and external landscape of Turkey has drastically changed. Today, religion has returned to be an important point of reference for Turkish politics, considering also the failure of the European negotiations and the always more unstable external environment of the country. This paper wants to address this issue, looking at the important role religion has covered in the Turkish society and the way it has been politicized since the early years of the Republic. It will evolve from a more theoretical debate on secularism and the path of political westernization of Turkey under Ataturk’s rule to a more practical analysis of today’s situation, passing through the failure of Ankara’s accession into the EU and the current tense political relation with its traditional NATO allies. The final objective of this research, therefore, is not to offer a meticulous opinion on Turkey’s current international stance. This issue will be left entirely to the personal consideration of the reader. Rather, it will supplement the existing literature with a comprehensive and more structured analysis on the role Islam has played on Turkish politics since the early 1920s up until the political domestic revolution of the early 2000s, after the first electoral win of the Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Keywords: democracy, Islam, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey

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Authors: Abidemi C. Adegboye, Nosakhare Ikponmwosa, Rogers A. Akinsokeji

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For many resource-rich developing countries, fiscal policy has become a key tool used for short-run fiscal management since it is considered as playing a critical role in injecting part of resource rents into the economies. However, given its instability, reliance on revenue from commodity exports renders fiscal management, budgetary planning and the efficient use of public resources difficult. In this study, the linkage between commodity prices and fiscal operations among a sample of commodity-exporting countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is investigated. The main question is whether commodity price fluctuations affects the effectiveness of fiscal policy as a macroeconomic stabilization tool in these countries. Fiscal management effectiveness is considered as the ability of fiscal policy to react countercyclically to output gaps in the economy. Fiscal policy is measured as the ratio of fiscal deficit to GDP and the ratio of government spending to GDP, output gap is measured as a Hodrick-Prescott filter of output growth for each country, while commodity prices are associated with each country based on its main export commodity. Given the dynamic nature of fiscal policy effects on the economy overtime, a dynamic framework is devised for the empirical analysis. The panel cointegration and error correction methodology is used to explain the relationships. In particular, the study employs the panel ECM technique to trace short-term effects of commodity prices on fiscal management and also uses the fully modified OLS (FMOLS) technique to determine the long run relationships. These procedures provide sufficient estimation of the dynamic effects of commodity prices on fiscal policy. Data used cover the period 1992 to 2016 for 11 SSA countries. The study finds that the elasticity of the fiscal policy measures with respect to the output gap is significant and positive, suggesting that fiscal policy is actually procyclical among the countries in the sample. This implies that fiscal management for these countries follows the trend of economic performance. Moreover, it is found that fiscal policy has not performed well in delivering macroeconomic stabilization for these countries. The difficulty in applying fiscal stabilization measures is attributable to the unstable revenue inflows due to the highly volatile nature of commodity prices in the international market. For commodity-exporting countries in SSA to improve fiscal management, therefore, fiscal planning should be largely decoupled from commodity revenues, domestic revenue bases must be improved, and longer period perspectives in fiscal policy management are the critical suggestions in this study.

Keywords: commodity prices, ECM, fiscal policy, fiscal procyclicality, fully modified OLS, sub-saharan africa

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Authors: Philippe Gugler

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The aim of this study is to investigate how home country patterns may influence the competitiveness of EMNEs in international markets and more specifically their ability to invest abroad. The study examines the dynamic relationship between home country specific advantage and firms’ competitiveness. Are EMNEs still driven by strong country specific advantages or are EMNEs increasingly relying on their own firm specific competitiveness? EMNEs are not commonly recognized as a ‘homogeneous group’. Therefore, the approaches to these questions need to be specific while still attempting to extract some common evidence. The aim of the study is to elaborate a framework to investigate this issue in a dynamic context of international business’s strategies. The study focuses on two major research questions. The first one relates to the role of the home-base context in the internationalization process of EMNEs and more specifically the home-base assets’ influence on EMNEs competitiveness. Another question is to investigate the interactions among home-base context, recipient country context and EMNEs competitiveness. The evolution of EMNEs’ competitiveness is shaped by the evolution of the home country’s business environment. The nature of the home-based components in EMNEs’ specific advantages has changed over time due to the increased integration of emerging countries in the world market and the inherent changes related to their institutional, structural and regulatory patterns. The home country offers not only inherited assets but also a productive business environment, allowing firms to innovate, be more productive, create unique value for customers and finally, to face international competition successfully. The more sophisticated the home business environment is, the more opportunities there are for firms to developed exclusive and unique competitive assets. The international expansion of EMNEs is a fascinating but challenging issue. Among the numerous questions raised by the involvement of EMNEs in international competition is the evolving role of the home market. The purpose of this study is to examine some of the theoretical ideas and empirical evidence to allow us to deepen our understanding of the role of emerging home countries in the internationalization process of their domestic firms and more specifically in their ability to compete successfully abroad. How much do home specific assets still influence EMNEs’ foreign investment? Which home country assets provide the main competitive drivers to invest and compete abroad? How do EMNEs combine home country assets and host country assets to strengthen their competitive advantages? These questions as well as various others deserve further examination by the scientific community.

Keywords: competitiveness, emerging countries' multinational enterprises, foreign direct investments, international business

Procedia PDF Downloads 234

Authors: S. M. D. Y. S. A. Wijayarathna, A. C. A. Jayasundera

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Mahaweli River is the longest and largest river in Sri Lanka and it is the major drinking water source for a large portion of 2.5 million inhabitants in the Central Province. The aim of this study was to the determination of water quality and aquatic life health quality in a selected region of Mahaweli River. Six sampling locations (Site 1: 7° 16' 50" N, 80° 40' 00" E; Site 2: 7° 16' 34" N, 80° 40' 27" E; Site 3: 7° 16' 15" N, 80° 41' 28" E; Site 4: 7° 14' 06" N, 80° 44' 36" E; Site 5: 7° 14' 18" N, 80° 44' 39" E; Site 6: 7° 13' 32" N, 80° 46' 11" E) with various anthropogenic activities at bank of the river were selected for a period of three months from Tennekumbura Bridge to Victoria Reservoir. Temperature, pH, Electrical Conductivity (EC), Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), Dissolved Oxygen (DO), 5-day Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD5), Total Suspended Solids (TSS), hardness, the concentration of anions, and metal concentration were measured according to the standard methods, as physicochemical parameters. Planktons were considered as biological parameters. Using a plankton net (20 µm mesh size), surface water samples were collected into acid washed dried vials and were stored in an ice box during transportation. Diversity and abundance of planktons were identified within 4 days of sample collection using standard manuals of plankton identification under the light microscope. Almost all the measured physicochemical parameters were within the CEA standards limits for aquatic life, Sri Lanka Standards (SLS) or World Health Organization’s Guideline for drinking water. Concentration of orthophosphate ranged between 0.232 to 0.708 mg L-1, and it has exceeded the standard limit of aquatic life according to CEA guidelines (0.400 mg L-1) at Site 1 and Site 2, where there is high disturbance by cultivations and close households. According to the Pearson correlation (significant correlation at p < 0.05), it is obvious that some physicochemical parameters (temperature, DO, TDS, TSS, phosphate, sulphate, chloride fluoride, and sodium) were significantly correlated to the distribution of some plankton species such as Aulocoseira, Navicula, Synedra, Pediastrum, Fragilaria, Selenastrum, Oscillataria, Tribonema and Microcystis. Furthermore, species that appear in blooms (Aulocoseira), organic pollutants (Navicula), and phosphate high eutrophic water (Microcystis) were found, indicating deteriorated water quality in Mahaweli River due to agricultural activities, solid waste disposal, and release of domestic effluents. Therefore, it is necessary to improve environmental monitoring and management to control the further deterioration of water quality of the river.

Keywords: bio indicator, environmental variables, planktons, physicochemical parameters, water quality

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Authors: Adejoke Omowumi Adediran

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The commitment of African states to liberalise civil aviation in Africa through the implementation of the Yamoussoukro Decision of 1999 was reiterated in 2015 at the African Union Assembly meeting. A declaration was made by African Heads of government at the meeting to ensure the immediate implementation of the decision towards the establishment of a Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) by 2017. A SAATM will imply among others, a removal of all commercial restrictions for African airlines in Africa; access to any route in Africa by African airlines without any required permit or authorisation; and a common set of regulations for airlines in African member states. As the envisioned 2017 date for launching the SAATM could not be met, a new date of January 2018 has been set. The lack of political will by African States, however, remains a prominent challenge to the realisation of the SAATM. As at June 2017, only twenty-one states had signed the commitment to actualise the decision creating the SAATM. In actualisation of the SAATM, a regulatory framework has been established to efficiently manage the new African airline industry, and regulatory texts have been adopted as part of the legal regime. This legal regime is to regulate both interstate and domestic operations. Airlines in Nigeria are currently faced with certain challenges which ultimately affect their effectiveness and passengers as well do not enjoy utmost customer satisfaction with services rendered by the airlines. Although Nigeria has demonstrated support for the SAATM since 2015, as Nigeria alongside ten other states, signed the initial commitment, whether or not SAATM will eventually be beneficial to airlines and passengers has become an issue in the light of the challenges of the Nigerian airline industry. Remarkably, the benefit of the SAATM is to a large extent ultimately determined by its legal framework. Using doctrinal research, this paper examines the legal implications of the SAATM on airlines and passengers in Nigeria. This paper analyses the legal framework of SAATM and juxtaposes this with the particular issues affecting airlines and passengers in Nigeria such as financial difficulties on the part of airlines and consumer protection as regards passengers. Among others, it can be asserted that the legal regime affords an opportunity for business expansion and creates a fair environment for competition. This is beneficial not only to the airlines but to passengers as well. In addition, in the interest of passengers, consumer rights are prescribed, and the regulations also cater for situations where airlines interrupt their services, as losses arising from these situations will be mitigated. There is indeed no doubt that the SAATM will be of great utility to both airlines and passengers in Nigeria.

Keywords: airlines, civil aviation, competition, consumer protection, passengers, single African air transport market, yamoussoukro decision

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Authors: Rose Hattab

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Women have been an important dynamic in religious context and the state-building process of Arab countries throughout history. During the 1970s as the movement for women’s activism and rights developed, the Iraqi state under the Ba’ath Party began to provide Iraqi women with legal and civil rights. This was done to liberate women from the grasps of social traditions and was a tangible espousing of equality between men and women in the process of nation-building. Whereas women’s rights were stronger and more supported throughout the earliest years of the Ba’ath Regime (1970-1990), the aftermath of the Gulf War and economic sanctions on the conditions of Iraqi society laid the foundation for a division of women’s rights between civil and religious authorities. Personal status codes that were secured in 1959 were being pushed back by amendments made in coordination with religious leaders. Civil laws were present on paper, but religious authority took prominence in practice. The written legal codes were inclusive of women’s rights, but there is not an active or ensured practice of these rights within Iraqi society. This is due to many different factors, such as religious, sectarian, political and conservative reasons that hold back or limit the ability for Iraqi women to have autonomy in aspects such as participation in the workforce, getting married, and ensuring social justice. This paper argues that the Personal Status Code introduced in 1959 – which replaced Sharia-run courts with personal status courts – provided Iraqi women with equality and increased mobility in social and economic dynamics. The statewide crisis felt after the Gulf War and the economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations led to a stark shift in the Ba’ath party’s political ideology. This ideological turn guided the social system to the embracement of social conservatism and religious traditions in the 1990s. The effect of this implementation continued after the establishment of a new Iraqi government during 2003-2005. Consequently, Iraqi women's rights in employment, marriage, and family became divided into paper and practice by religious authorities and civil law from that period to the present day. This paper also contributes to the literature by expanding on the gap between legal codes on paper and in practice, through providing an analysis of Iraqi women’s rights in the Iraqi Constitution of 2005 and Iraq’s Penal Code. The turn to conservative and religious traditions is derived from the multiplicity of identities that make up the Iraqi social fabric. In the aftermath of a totalitarian regime, active wars, and economic sanctions, the Iraqi people attempted to unite together through their different identities to create a sense of security in the midst of violence and chaos. This is not an excuse to diminish the importance of women’s rights, but in the process of building a new nation-state, women were lost from the narrative. Thus, the presence of gender equity is found in the written text but is not practiced and upheld in the social context.

Keywords: civil rights, Iraqi women, nation building, religion and conflict

Procedia PDF Downloads 115

Authors: Abdul Ganiyu Iddrisu

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Digitization is the process of transforming analog material into digital form, especially for storage and use in a computer. Significant development of information and communication technology (ICT) over the past years has encouraged many researchers to investigate its contribution to promoting economic growth, and reducing poverty. Yet compelling empirical evidence on the effects of digitization on economic growth remains weak, particularly in Africa. This is because extant studies that explicitly evaluate digitization and economic growth nexus are mostly reports and desk reviews. This points out an empirical knowledge gap in the literature. Hypothetically, digitization influences financial sector development which in turn influences economic growth. Digitization has changed the financial sector and its operating environment. Obstacles to access to financing, for instance, physical distance, minimum balance requirements, low-income flows among others can be circumvented. Savings have increased, micro-savers have opened bank accounts, and banks are now able to price short-term loans. This has the potential to develop the financial sector, however, empirical evidence on digitization-financial development nexus is dearth. On the other hand, a number of studies maintained that financial sector development greatly influences growth of economies. We therefore argue that financial sector development is one of the transmission mechanisms through which digitization affects economic growth. Employing macro-country-level data from African countries and using fixed effects, random effects and Hausman-Taylor estimation approaches, this paper contributes to the literature by analysing economic growth in Africa focusing on the role of digitization, and financial sector development. First, we assess how digitization influence financial sector development in Africa. From an economic policy perspective, it is important to identify digitization determinants of financial sector development so that action can be taken to reduce the economic shocks associated with financial sector distortions. This nexus is rarely examined empirically in the literature. Secondly, we examine the effect of domestic credit to private sector and stock market capitalization as a percentage of GDP as used to proxy for financial sector development on 2 economic growth. Digitization is represented by the volume of digital/ICT equipment imported and GDP growth is used to proxy economic growth. Finally, we examine the effect of digitization on economic growth in the light of financial sector development. The following key results were found; first, digitalization propels financial sector development in Africa. Second, financial sector development enhances economic growth. Finally, contrary to our expectation, the results also indicate that digitalization conditioned on financial sector development tends to reduce economic growth in Africa. However, results of the net effects suggest that digitalization, overall, improves economic growth in Africa. We, therefore, conclude that, digitalization in Africa does not only develop the financial sector but unconditionally contributes the growth of the continent’s economies.

Keywords: digitalization, economic growth, financial sector development, Africa

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Authors: Delaram Hosseinioun

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In their collections, Shirin Neshat, Mitra Tabrizian, Gohar Dashti and Newsha Tavakolian adopt a hybrid form of narrative to confront the restrictions imposed on women in hegemonic public and private spaces. Focusing on motives such as social marginalisation, crisis of belonging, as well as lack of agency for women, the artists depict the regression of women’s rights in their respective generations. Based on the ideas of Michael Bakhtin, namely his concept of polyphony or the plurality of contradictory voices, the views of Judith Butler on giving an account to oneself and Henri Leverbre’s theories on social space, this study illustrates the artists’ concept of identity in crisis through time and space. The research explores how the artists took their art as a novel dimension to depict and confront the hardships imposed on Iranian women. Henri Lefebvre makes a distinction between complex social structures through which individuals situate, perceive and represent themselves. By adding Bakhtin’s polyphonic view to Lefebvre’s concepts of perceived and lived spaces, the study explores the sense of social fragmentation in the works of Dashti and Tavakolian. One argument is that as the representatives of the contemporary generation of female artists who spend their lives in Iran and faced a higher degree of restrictions, their hyperbolic and theatrical styles stand as a symbolic act of confrontation against restrictive socio-cultural norms imposed on women. Further, the research explores the possibility of reclaiming one's voice and sense of agency through art, corresponding with the Bakhtinian sense of polyphony and Butler’s concept of giving an account to oneself. Works of Neshat and Tabrizian as the representatives of the previous generation who faced exile and diaspora, encompass a higher degree of misplacement, violence and decay of women’s presence. In Their works, the women’s body encompasses Lefebvre’s dismantled temporal and special setting. Notably, the ongoing social conviction and gender-based dogma imposed on women frame some of the concurrent motives among the selected collections of the four artists. By applying an interdisciplinary lens and integrating the conducted interviews with the artists, the study illustrates how the artists seek a transcultural account for themselves and women in their generations. Further, the selected collections manifest the urgency for an authentic and liberal voice and setting for women, resonating with the concurrent Women, Life, Freedom movement in Iran.

Keywords: persian modern female photographers, transcultural studies, shirin neshat, mitra tabrizian, gohar dashti, newsha tavakolian, butler, bakhtin, lefebvre

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Authors: Sophia Liang Zhou

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For investors, businesses, consumers, and governments, an accurate assessment of future housing prices is crucial to critical decisions in resource allocation, policy formation, and investment strategies. Previous studies are contradictory about macroeconomic determinants of housing price and largely focused on one or two areas using point prediction. This study aims to develop data-driven models to accurately predict future housing market trends in different markets. This work studied five different metropolitan areas representing different market trends and compared three-time lagging situations: no lag, 6-month lag, and 12-month lag. Linear regression (LR), random forest (RF), and artificial neural network (ANN) were employed to model the real estate price using datasets with S&P/Case-Shiller home price index and 12 demographic and macroeconomic features, such as gross domestic product (GDP), resident population, personal income, etc. in five metropolitan areas: Boston, Dallas, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. The data from March 2005 to December 2018 were collected from the Federal Reserve Bank, FBI, and Freddie Mac. In the original data, some factors are monthly, some quarterly, and some yearly. Thus, two methods to compensate missing values, backfill or interpolation, were compared. The models were evaluated by accuracy, mean absolute error, and root mean square error. The LR and ANN models outperformed the RF model due to RF’s inherent limitations. Both ANN and LR methods generated predictive models with high accuracy ( > 95%). It was found that personal income, GDP, population, and measures of debt consistently appeared as the most important factors. It also showed that technique to compensate missing values in the dataset and implementation of time lag can have a significant influence on the model performance and require further investigation. The best performing models varied for each area, but the backfilled 12-month lag LR models and the interpolated no lag ANN models showed the best stable performance overall, with accuracies > 95% for each city. This study reveals the influence of input variables in different markets. It also provides evidence to support future studies to identify the optimal time lag and data imputing methods for establishing accurate predictive models.

Keywords: linear regression, random forest, artificial neural network, real estate price prediction

Procedia PDF Downloads 71

Authors: Blanka Havlickova

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In the last ten years, there are growing numbers of troops with machine guns serving on streets of European cities. We can see them around government buildings, major transport hubs, synagogues, galleries and main tourist landmarks. As the main purpose of armed soldier’s presence in European cities authorities declare the prevention of terrorist attacks and psychological support for tourists and domestic population. The main objective of the following study is to find out whether the deployment of armed soldiers in European cities has a calming and reassuring effect on Czech citizens (if the presence at armed soldiers make the Czech population feel more secure) or rather becomes a stress factor (the presence of soldiers standing guard in full military fatigues recalls serious criminality and terrorist attacks which are reflected in the fears and insecurity of Czech population). The initial hypothesis of this study is connected with the priming theory, the idea that when we are exposed to an image (armed soldier), it makes us unconsciously focus on a topic connected with this image (terrorism). This paper is based on a quantitative public survey, which was carried out in the form of electronic questioning among the citizens of the Czech Republic. Respondents answered 14 questions about two European cities – London and Paris. Besides general questions investigating the respondents' awareness of these cities, some of the questions focused on the fear that the respondents had when picturing themselves leaving next Monday for the given city (London or Paris). The questions asking about respondent´s travel fears and concerns were accompanied by different photos. When answering the question about fear some respondents have been presented with a photo of Westminster Palace and the Eiffel with ordinary citizens while other respondents have been presented with a picture of the Westminster Palace, the and Eiffel's tower not only with ordinary citizens, but also with one soldier holding a machine gun. The main goal of this paper is to analyse and compare data about concerns for these two groups of respondents (presented with different pictures) and find out if and how an armed soldier with a machine gun in front of the Westminster Palace or the Eiffel Tower affects the public's concerns about visiting the site. In other words, the aim of this paper is to confirm or rebut the hypothesis that the look at a soldier with a machine gun in front of the Eiffel Tower or the Westminster Palace automatically triggers the association with a terrorist attack leading to an increase in fear and insecurity among Czech population.

Keywords: terrorism, security measures, priming, risk perception

Procedia PDF Downloads 223

Authors: Valeria T. Dilcheva, Svetlozara L. Petkova, Ivelin Vladov

Abstract:

Trichinellosis is a food-borne parasitic disease caused by nematodes of the genus Trichinella which are zoonotic parasites with cosmopolitan distribution and major socio-economic importance. Human infection is acquired through consumption of undercooked meat from domestic or wild animal. Penetration of Trichinella larvae into striated skeletal muscle cells results in ultrastructural and metabolic changes. Migration of larvae causes the typical symptoms and signs of the disease. The severity of the symptoms depends on the number of ingested Trichinella larvae and the immune response of the host. Eosinophilia is present, with few exceptions, in most cases of human trichinellosis, inasmuch as it is the earliest and most important host response. Even in human asymptomatic cases, increases in eosinophilia of up to 15% have been observed. Eosinophilia appears at an early stage of infection between the second and fifth weeks of infection. By 2005 it was considered that only two species of Trichinella genus were found in the country. After routine trichinelloscopy procedure disseminated single muscle larvae in samples of wild boars and badger were PCR-identified as T. pseudospiralis. The study aimed to observed hematological changes occurring during experimentally induced infection with Trichinella spiralis, T. britovi and T. pseudospiralis in mice. We performed hematological blood profile, tracking 15 blood indicators. In statistical analysis made by Two-way ANOVA, there were significant differences of HGB, MCHC, PLT, Lymph%, Gran% in all three types of trichinellosis compared to control animals. Capsule-forming T. spiralis showed statistically significant differences in HGB, MCHC, Lymph% and PLT compared to the other two species. Non capsule-forming T. pseudospiralis showed statistically significant differences in Lymph%, Gran% relative to the control and in Gran% relative to T. spiralis. It appears rather substantial the process of capsule formation for prolonged immune response and retention of high content of percentage of lymphocytes(Lymph%) and low of granulocyte(Gran%) in T. pseudospiralis, which is contrary to studies for T. spiralis and eosinophilia. Studies and analyzes of some specific blood profile parameters can provide additional data in favor of early diagnosis and adequate treatment as well as provide a better understanding of acute and chronic trichinosis.

Keywords: hematological test, T. britovi, T. spiralis, T. pseudospiralis

Procedia PDF Downloads 128

Authors: Anum Rafiq

Abstract:

Adolescence is a vulnerable period for youth across the world. It is a period of new learning with opportunities to understand and develop perspectives on health and well-being. With youth beginning to engage in intimate relationships at an earlier age in the 21st century, concentrating on the learning opportunity they have in school is paramount. The nature of what has been deemed important to teach in schools has changed throughout history, and the focus has shifted from home/family skills to teaching youth how to be competitive in the job market. Amidst this emphasis, opportunities for them exist to learn about building healthy intimate relationships, one of the foundational elements of most people’s lives. Using an Institutional Ethnography (IE), the lived experiences of youth in how they understand intimate relationships and how their learning experience is organized through the high school Health and Physical Education (H&PE) course is explored. An empirical inquiry into how the actual work of teachers and youth are socially organized by a biomedical, employment-related, and efficiency-based discourse is provided. Through thirty-two qualitative interviews with teachers and youth, a control of ruling relations such as institutional accountability circuits, performance reports, and timetabling over the experience of teachers and youth is found. One of the facets of the institutional accountability circuit is through the social organization of teaching and learning about healthy intimate relationships being framed through a biomedical discourse. In addition, the role of a hyper-focus on performance and evaluation is found as paramount in situating healthy intimacy discussions as inferior to neoliberally charged productivity measures such as employment skills. Lastly, due to the nature of institutional policies such as regulatory guidelines, teachers are largely influenced to avoid diving into discussions deemed risky or taboo by society, such as healthy intimacy in adolescence. The findings show how texts such as the H&PE curriculum, the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT) guidelines, Ministry of Education Performance Reports, and the timetable organize the day-to-day activities of teachers and students and reproduce different disjunctures for youth. This disjuncture includes some of their experiences being subordinated, difficulty relating to curriculum, and an experience of healthy living discussions being skimmed over across sites. The findings detail that the experience of youth in learning about healthy intimate relationships is not akin to the espoused vision outlined in policy documents such as the H&PE (2015) curriculum policy. These findings have implications for policymakers, activists, and school administration alike, which call for an investigation into who is in power when it comes to youth’s learning needs, as a pivotal period where youth can be equipped with life-changing knowledge is largely underutilized. A restructuring of existing institutional practices that allow for the social and institutional flexibility required to broach the topic of healthy intimacy in a comprehensive manner is required.

Keywords: health policy, intimate relationships, youth, education, ruling relations, sexual education, violence prevention

Procedia PDF Downloads 38