Search results for: Principles of sustainable development

Authors: Farnaz Nazem

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The aim of sustainable architecture is to design buildings with the least adverse effects on the environment and provide better conditions for people. What building forms make the best use of land? This question was addressed in the late 1960s at the center of Land Use and Built Form Studies in Cambridge. This led to a number of influential papers which had a great influence on the practice of urban design. This paper concentrates on the results of sustainability caused by climatic conditions in Iranian traditional architecture in hot-arid regions. As people spent a significant amount of their time in houses, it was very important to have such houses to fulfill their needs physically and spiritually as well as satisfying their cultural and religious aspects of their lifestyles. In a vast country such as Iran with different climatic zones, traditional builders have presented series of logical solutions for human comfort. These solutions have been able to response to the environmental problems for a long period of time. As a result, by considering the experience in traditional architecture of hot–arid climate in Iran, it is possible to attain sustainable architecture.

Keywords: Hot-arid climate, Iran, sustainable traditional architecture, urban planning.

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Authors: Andrey M. Norov, Denis A. Pagaleshkin, Pavel S. Fedotov, Viacheslav M. Kolpakov, Konstantin G. Gorbovskiy

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The article focuses on the latest research and developments (R&D) aimed at the development of plants for production of complex phosphorus-containing fertilizers which are in line with the principles of the best available techniques (BAT). The advantages of the implemented technical solutions are given. The paper describes developed options of flexible technologies for schemes with DGD (drum granulator dryer) and for schemes with AG-DD (ammoniator-granulator and dryer drum).

Keywords: Ammoniator-granulator and dryer drum, drum granulator dryer, phosphorus-containing fertilizer technology, PK-, NPK-, PKS- and NPKS-fertilizers, wet phosphoric acid.

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Authors: W. Jay Gabbard, Saundra H. Starks, Jeremiah Jaggers, Amy C. Cappiccie

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An ethical mandate of the social work profession in the United States is that BSW and MSW graduates are sufficiently prepared to both understand diverse cultural values and beliefs and offer services that are culturally sensitive and relevant to clients. This skill set is particularly important for social workers in the 21st Century, given the increasing globalization of the U.S. and world. The purpose of this paper is to outline a pedagogical model for teaching cultural competency that resulted in a significant increase in cultural competency for MSW graduates at Western Kentucky University (WKU). More specifically, this model is predicated on five specific culturally sensitive principles and activities that were found to be highly effective in conveying culturally relevant knowledge and skills to MSW students at WKU. Future studies can assess the effectiveness of these principles in other MSW programs across the U.S. and abroad.

Keywords: Cultural Competence, Social Work, Teaching

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Authors: Helen L. Hein, Joachim Schwarte

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As a pillar of sustainable development, ecology has become an important milestone in research community, especially due to global challenges like climate change. The ecological performance of products can be scientifically conducted with life cycle assessments. In the construction sector, significant amounts of CO₂ emissions are assigned to the energy used for building heating purposes. Therefore, sustainable construction materials for insulating purposes are substantial, whereby aerogels have been explored intensively in the last years due to their low thermal conductivity. Therefore, the WALL-ACE project aims to develop an aerogel-based thermal insulating plaster that would achieve minor thermal conductivities. But as in the early stage of development phases, a lot of information is still missing or not yet accessible, the ecological performance of innovative products bases increasingly on uncertain data that can lead to significant deviations in the results. To be able to predict realistically how meaningful the results are and how viable the developed products may be with regard to their corresponding respective market, these deviations however have to be considered. Therefore, a classification method is presented in this study, which may allow comparing the ecological performance of modern products with already established and competitive materials. In order to achieve this, an alternative calculation method was used that allows computing with lower and upper bounds to consider all possible values without precise data. The life cycle analysis of the considered products was conducted with an interval arithmetic based calculation method. The results lead to the conclusion that the interval solutions describing the possible environmental impacts are so wide that the result usability is limited. Nevertheless, a further optimization in reducing environmental impacts of aerogels seems to be needed to become more competitive in the future.

Keywords: Aerogel-based, insulating material, early develop¬ment phase, interval arithmetic.

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Authors: L. Tizzi

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The aim of this contribution is to present the experience of the U.S. secondary school Social Justice High School (SoJo), part of the larger Campus of Little Village Lawndale High School (LVLHS) located in Chicago, Illinois (USA). This experience can be considered a concrete application of the principles of the educational perspective known, in the United States, as Social Justice Education, aimed at ensuring quality education and educational success for students from disadvantaged groups, particularly those characterized by “biculturalism”, i.e. students with a dual cultural and linguistic background. The contribution will retrace the historical and social events that led to the birth of the SoJo, explaining the principles and methods used by the school to achieve its objectives and giving also some statistical data.

Keywords: Biculturalism, educational success, social justice education, social justice high school.

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Authors: E. Rak

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The aim of the paper is to identify some of the specific characteristics of employee development, as observed in the practice of small enterprises in Poland. Results suggest that a sizeable percentage of employers are not interested in improving the development of their employee base. This aspect is often perceived as insignificant. In addition, many employers have no theoretical or practical knowledge of employee development methods. Lack of sufficient financial support is reported as third on the list of the most important barriers to employee development. Employees, on the other hand, typically offload the responsibility of initiating this type of activities onto the employer. Employee development plans are typically flexible and accommodating. The original value offered by this research comes in the form of a detailed characteristics of employee development in small enterprises, accompanied by identification of specificity of human resource development in Polish companies.

Keywords: Employee development specificity, human resources development, small businesses, trainings.

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Authors: L. J. Fei, D. Sujan

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This paper presents the fundamentals of Origami engineering and its application in nowadays as well as future industry. Several main cores of mathematical approaches such as Huzita- Hatori axioms, Maekawa and Kawasaki-s theorems are introduced briefly. Meanwhile flaps and circle packing by Robert Lang is explained to make understood the underlying principles in designing crease pattern. Rigid origami and its corrugation patterns which are potentially applicable for creating transformable or temporary spaces is discussed to show the transition of origami from paper to thick material. Moreover, some innovative applications of origami such as eyeglass, origami stent and high tech origami based on mentioned theories and principles are showcased in section III; while some updated origami technology such as Vacuumatics, self-folding of polymer sheets and programmable matter folding which could greatlyenhance origami structureare demonstrated in Section IV to offer more insight in future origami.

Keywords: Origami, origami application, origami engineering, origami technology, rigid origami.

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Authors: Yongsheng Guo, Mirza Muhammad Naseer, Xiaoxian Zhu

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This study explores the perceptions and conducts of Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa from ethical and cultural perspectives. It offers a better understanding of how ethical and cultural factors affect Chinese investment in Africa and how the investment projects performed in Africa from both Chinese investors and African stakeholders’ perceptions. It adopted a grounded theory approach and conducted 30 in-depth interviews with corporate managers. Grounded theory models are developed to link the ethical and cultural factors, actions, and consequences. Results reveal that some ethical concepts like the unity of humans and nature, benevolence, virtue and responsibility, and cultural traits including propriety, righteousness, sincerity, equilibrium, long-term orientation, and principles affect Chinese investors when making investments in Africa. Most Chinese investors harmonize with local managers, cooperate with each other, and are gentle and courteous to partners. They take stable and steady actions and invest in infrastructure and agriculture projects and adopt a virtue governance system in the organization. This study finds that consequently, Chinese investors and local partners take complementary advantages, make achievements sequentially, and therefore both sides can win. They recognize great potentials and make sustainable development in Africa to achieve the Great Together in the future. This study proposes a Chinese ethics and governance system including economic, social, and political perspectives and compares it with alternative systems. It makes implications to the world island theory and propose suggestions to solve the Clash of Civilizations problem.

Keywords: Foreign Direct Investment, Ethics, National Culture, China, Africa.

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Authors: Gurmeet Kaur, Jyoti Pruthi

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Agile Software development approaches and techniques are being considered as efficient, effective, and popular methods to the development of software. Agile software developments are useful for developing high-quality software that completes client requirements with zero defects, and in short delivery period. In agile software development methodology, quality is related to coding, which means quality, is managed through the use of approaches like refactoring, pair programming, test-driven development, behavior-driven development, acceptance test-driven development, and demand-driven development. The quality of software is measured using metrics like the number of defects during the development and improvement of the software. Usage of the above-mentioned methods or approaches reduces the possibilities of defects in developed software, and hence improves quality. This paper focuses on the study of agile-based quality methods or approaches for software development that ensures improved quality of software as well as reduced cost, and customer satisfaction.

Keywords: Agile software development, ASD, Acceptance test-driven development, ATDD, Behavior-driven development, BDD, Demand-driven development. DDD, Test-driven development, TDD.

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Authors: Abdusalam Gsiea, Ramadan Al-habashi, Mohamed Atumi, Khaled Atmimi

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We present a theoretical investigation on the structural, electronic properties and vibrational mode of nitrogen impurities in ZnO. The atomic structures, formation and transition energies and vibrational modes of (NO3)i interstitial or NO4 substituting on an oxygen site ZnO were computed using ab initio total energy methods. Based on Local density functional theory, our calculations are in agreement with one interpretation of bound-excition photoluminescence for N-doped ZnO. First-principles calculations show that (NO3)i defects interstitial or NO4 substituting on an Oxygen site in ZnO are important suitable impurity for p-type doping in ZnO. However, many experimental efforts have not resulted in reproducible p-type material with N2 and N2O doping. by means of first-principle pseudo-potential calculation we find that the use of NO or NO2 with O gas might help the experimental research to resolve the challenge of achieving p-type ZnO.

Keywords: Density functional theory, nitrogen, p-type, ZnO.

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Authors: Sehijpal Singh Khangura, Jai Inder Preet Singh, Vikas Dhawan

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Global warming, growing awareness of the environment, waste management issues, dwindling fossil resources, and rising oil prices resulted to increase the research in the materials that are friendly to our health and environment. Due to these reasons, green products are increasingly being promoted for sustainable development. In this work, fully biodegradable green composites have been developed using jute fibers as reinforcement and poly lactic acid as matrix material by film stacking technique. The effect of curing temperature during development of composites ranging from 160 °C, 170 °C, 180 °C and 190 °C was investigated for various mechanical properties. Results obtained from various tests indicate that impact strength decreases with an increase in curing temperature, but tensile and flexural strength increases till 180 °C, thereafter both the properties decrease. This study gives an optimum curing temperature for the development of jute/PLA composites.

Keywords: Natural fibers, polymer matrix composites, jute, compression molding, biodegradation.

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Authors: O. J. Olaniran, P. E. D. Love, D. J. Edwards, O. Olatunji, J. Matthews

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Cost overruns are a persistent problem in oil and gas megaprojects. Whilst the extant literature is filled with studies on incidents and causes of cost overruns, underlying theories to explain their emergence in oil and gas megaprojects are few. Yet, a way to contain the syndrome of cost overruns is to understand the bases of ‘how and why’ they occur. Such knowledge will also help to develop pragmatic techniques for better overall management of oil and gas megaprojects. The aim of this paper is to explain the development of cost overruns in hydrocarbon megaprojects through the perspective of chaos theory. The underlying principles of chaos theory and its implications for cost overruns are examined and practical recommendations proposed. In addition, directions for future research in this fertile area provided.

Keywords: Chaos theory, oil and gas, cost overruns, megaprojects.

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Authors: Omar Boutkhoum, Mohamed Hanine, Abdessadek Bendarag

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Sustainable economic growth is nowadays driving firms to extend toward the adoption of many green supply chain management (GSCM) solutions. However, the evaluation and selection of these solutions is a matter of concern that needs very serious decisions, involving complexity owing to the presence of various associated factors. To resolve this problem, a comparative analysis approach based on multi-criteria decision-making methods is proposed for adequate evaluation of sustainable supply chain management solutions. In the present paper, we propose an integrated decision-making model based on FAHP (Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process), TOPSIS (Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) and PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organisation METHod for Enrichment Evaluations) to contribute to a better understanding and development of new sustainable strategies for industrial organizations. Due to the varied importance of the selected criteria, FAHP is used to identify the evaluation criteria and assign the importance weights for each criterion, while TOPSIS and PROMETHEE methods employ these weighted criteria as inputs to evaluate and rank the alternatives. The main objective is to provide a comparative analysis based on TOPSIS and PROMETHEE processes to help make sound and reasoned decisions related to the selection problem of GSCM solution.

Keywords: GSCM solutions, multi-criteria analysis, FAHP, TOPSIS, PROMETHEE, decision support system.

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Authors: Sonia Rebai, Mohamed Naceur Azaiez, Dhafer Saidane

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In this study, we develop a performance evaluation model based on a multi-attribute utility approach aiming at reaching the sustainable banking (SB) status. This model is built accounting for various banks’ stakeholders in a win-win paradigm. In addition, it offers the opportunity for adopting a global measure of performance as an indication of a bank’s sustainability degree. This measure is referred to as banking sustainability performance index (BSPI). This index may constitute a basis for ranking banks. Moreover, it may constitute a bridge between the assessment types of financial and extra-financial rating agencies. A real application is performed on three French banks.

Keywords: Multi-attribute utility theory, Performance, Sustainable banking.

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Authors: Ibrahim A. Al-Sulaihi, Khalid S. Al-Gahtani, Abdullah M. Al-Sugair, Aref A. Abadel

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Achieving environmental sustainability is one of the important issues considered in many countries’ vision. Green/Sustainable building is widely used terminology for describing a friendly environmental construction. Applying sustainable practices has a significant importance in various fields, including construction field that consumes an enormous amount of resource and causes a considerable amount of waste. The need for sustainability is increased in the regions that suffering from the limitation of natural resource and extreme weather conditions such as Saudi Arabia. Since buildings designs are getting sophisticated, the need for tools, which support decision-making for sustainability issues, is increasing, especially in the design and preconstruction stages. In this context, Building Information Modeling (BIM) can aid in performing complex building performance analyses to ensure an optimized sustainable building design. Accordingly, this paper introduces a roadmap towards developing a systematic approach for presenting the sustainability of buildings using BIM. The approach includes set of main processes including; identifying the sustainability parameters that can be used for sustainability assessment in Saudi Arabia, developing sustainability assessment method that fits the special circumstances in the Kingdom, identifying the sustainability requirements and BIM functions that can be used for satisfying these requirements, and integrating these requirements with identified functions. As a result, the sustainability-BIM approach can be developed which helps designers in assessing the sustainability and exploring different design alternatives at the early stage of the construction project.

Keywords: Green buildings, sustainability, BIM, rating systems, environment, Saudi Arabia.

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Authors: Ahmed R. Ismail, Hatem A. El Tawil, Nevin G. Rezk

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Historic paths in today's cities are facing the pressure of the urban development due to the rapid urban growth. Every new development is tearing the old urban fabric and the socio-economic character of the historic paths. Furthermore, in some cases historic paths suffer from negligence and decay. Kom El Dekka historic path was one of those deteriorated paths in the city of Alexandria, Egypt, in spite of its high heritage and socio-economic value. Therefore, there was a need to develop urban regeneration strategies as a part of a wider sustainable development vision, to handle the situation and revitalize the path as a livable space in the heart of the city. This study aims to develop a comprehensive assessment methodology to evaluate the different values of the path and to create community-oriented and economic-based analysis methodology for its socio-economic values. These analysis and assessments provide strategies for any regeneration action plan for Kom El Dekka historic path.

Keywords: Community-oriented, economic-based, syntactical analysis, urban regeneration.

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Authors: S. Yelubayev, V. Ten, B. Albazarov, E. Sarsenbayev, К. Аlipbayev, A. Shamro, Т. Bopeyev, А. Sukhenko

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Much attention is paid to the development of space branch in Kazakhstan at present. Two Earth remote sensing satellites of Kazakhstan have been launched successfully. Many projects related to the development of components for satellite are carried in Kazakhstan, in particular the project related to the development of star tracker experimental model. It is planned to use the results of this project for development of star tracker prototype in the future. This article describes the main stages of development of star tracker experimental model.

Keywords: Development, prototype, satellite, star tracker.

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Authors: Aysin Sev, Meltem Ezel

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Sustainability, being the urgent issue of our time, is closely related with the innovations in technology. Nanotechnology (NT), although not a new science, can be regarded relatively a new science for buildings with brand new materials and applications. This paper tends to give a research review of current and near future applications of nanotechnology (NT) for achieving high-performance and healthy buildings for a sustainable future. In the introduction, the driving forces for the sustainability of construction industry are explained. Then, the term NT is defined, and significance of innovations in NT for a sustainable construction industry is revealed. After presenting the application areas of NT and nanomaterials for buildings with a number of cases, challenges in the adoption of this technology are put forward, and finally the impacts of nanoparticles and nanomaterials on human health and environment are discussed.

Keywords: Nanomaterial, self-healing concrete, self-cleaning sensor, nano sensor, steel, wood, aerogel, flexible solar panel.

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Authors: Ekrem Erdem, Can Tansel Tugcu

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Improved resource efficiency of production is a key requirement for sustainable growth, worldwide. In this regards, by considering the energy and tourism as the extra inputs to the classical Coub-Douglas production function, this study aims at investigating the efficiency changes in the North African countries. To this end, the study uses panel data for the period 1995-2010 and adopts the Malmquist index based on the data envelopment analysis. Results show that tourism increases technical and scale efficiencies, while it decreases technological and total factor productivity changes. On the other hand, when the production function is augmented by the energy input; technical efficiency change decreases, while the technological change, scale efficiency change and total factor productivity change increase. Thus, in order to satisfy the needs for sustainable growth, North African governments should take some measures for increasing the contribution that the tourism makes to economic growth and some others for efficient use of resources in the energy sector.

Keywords: Data envelopment analysis, Economic efficiency, North African countries, Sustainable growth.

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Authors: Mohammad R. M. Abdelaal, Reeman M. R. Hussein

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With the beginning of the new century, man still faces many challenges in how to form and develop his urban environment. To meet these challenges, many cities have tried to develop its visual image. This is by transforming their urban environment into a branded visual image; this is at the level of squares, the main roads, the borders, and the landmarks. In this realm, the paper aims at activating the role of branded urban spaces as an approach for the development of visual image of cities, especially in Egypt. It concludes the need to recognize the importance of developing the visual image in Egypt, through directing the urban planners to the important role of such spaces in achieving sustainability.

Keywords: Urban branded spaces, brand image, sustainable development, Cairo.

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Authors: Ashiquer Rahman

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The paper focuses on the significance of the university's sustainability strategic plan and emphasizes the usefulness of the collaborative platform-based deliberation matrix. It will equip the university's leadership to handle impending tactics and challenges with the sustainability of the university’s strategic plan. The study addresses the significance of a set of reference points that will precede operational activities for multi-stakeholder multi-criteria evaluation on the optimal standards of Sustainable University, as well as potential action for the strategic blueprint of Sustainable University. It makes reference to the university’s sustainability strategy plan’s effectiveness through a collaborative platform and deliberation matrix. The paper outlines the conceptual framing of a sustainable university by implementing a strategic plan over the collaborative platform and deliberation matrix. Optimistically, these will be a milestone in higher education; a pathway to prepare for the University’s upcoming implementation of its sustainability strategy. In fact, the collaborative platform and deliberation matrix both are enhancement needles for institutional cooperation to the completive world.

Keywords: Sustainable strategies, institutional cooperation, multi-stakeholder multi-criteria assessment, collaborative platform, innovative method and tools.

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Authors: M. H. M. Zin, N. L. N. Ibrahim, M. F. M. Zain, M. Jamil

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Located within the tropical belt region, there are certain rules which should implemented in creating a passive sustainable housing design in Malaysia. Traditional Malay house possess a strong character with certain special spaces to create a sustainable house which suit to the tropical climate in Malaysia. One of the special space known as verandah or serambi gantung, create various advantages in solving various issues. However, this special space is not extremely being applied currently which produce major issues in term of social and environmental aspects. Hence, this phenomena create a negative impact to the occupant while Malaysia already has a best housing design previously. Therefore, this paper aims to explore both of the main issues mentioned above and reveal the advantages of implementing verandah into passive sustainable housing design in Malaysia. A systematic literature review is the main methodology in this research to identify the various advantages about verandah.. The study reveals that verandah is the best solution in term of social and environmental issues and should be implemented in current housing design in Malaysia.

Keywords: Tropical climate, traditional Malay house, verandah, passive sustainable housing design

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Authors: Introducing Principles of Land Surveying by Assigning a Practical Project

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A practical project is used in an engineering surveying course to expose sophomore and junior civil engineering students to several important issues related to the use of basic principles of land surveying. The project, which is the design of a two-lane rural highway to connect between two arbitrary points, requires students to draw the profile of the proposed highway along with the existing ground level. Areas of all cross-sections are then computed to enable quantity computations between them. Lastly, Mass-Haul Diagram is drawn with all important parts and features shown on it for clarity. At the beginning, students faced challenges getting started on the project. They had to spend time and effort thinking of the best way to proceed and how the work would flow. It was even more challenging when they had to visualize images of cut, fill and mixed cross sections in three dimensions before they can draw them to complete the necessary computations. These difficulties were then somewhat overcome with the help of the instructor and thorough discussions among team members and/or between different teams. The method of assessment used in this study was a well-prepared-end-of-semester questionnaire distributed to students after the completion of the project and the final exam. The survey contained a wide spectrum of questions from students' learning experience when this course development was implemented to students' satisfaction of the class instructions provided to them and the instructor's competency in presenting the material and helping with the project. It also covered the adequacy of the project to show a sample of a real-life civil engineering application and if there is any excitement added by implementing this idea. At the end of the questionnaire, students had the chance to provide their constructive comments and suggestions for future improvements of the land surveying course. Outcomes will be presented graphically and in a tabular format. Graphs provide visual explanation of the results and tables, on the other hand, summarize numerical values for each student along with some descriptive statistics, such as the mean, standard deviation, and coefficient of variation for each student and each question as well. In addition to gaining experience in teamwork, communications, and customer relations, students felt the benefit of assigning such a project. They noticed the beauty of the practical side of civil engineering work and how theories are utilized in real-life engineering applications. It was even recommended by students that such a project be exercised every time this course is offered so future students can have the same learning opportunity they had.

Keywords: Land surveying, highway project, assessment, evaluation, descriptive statistic.

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Authors: D. Charvatova, Z. Charvat

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This article considers with the influence of selected economic indicators for the development of the Zlin region. Development of the region is mainly influenced by business entities which are located in the region, as well as investors who contribute to the development of regions. For the development of the region it is necessary for skilled workers remain in the region and not to leave these skilled workers. The above-mentioned and other factors are affecting the development of each region.

Keywords: Macroeconomic indicators, population, the overallincrease in population, location and area, territory, Zlin Region.

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Authors: Narong Anurak

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The objectives of this research were to investigate the knowledge and understanding of public relations principles for public relations officials of the office of the faculty of management science in Ratjabhat Suan Sunandha University and to determine the approach of public relations for the Office of Faculty of Management Science.  The questionnaire was utilized as a tool to collect data. Statistics utilized included frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and regression analysis. The results of the research showed that the public relations officials misunderstood on public relations principles. The lack of the perception in media of the target groups both in-house and outside caused the misunderstanding on the roles, mission, and responsibilities. It would be beneficial to public relations division and other divisions of the office of the faculty of management science to be trained and obtained more knowledge and skills on the public relations to support the public relations work for the organization.

Keywords: Faculty of Management Science, Public Relations, Ratjabhat Suan Sunandha University.

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Authors: Kuljit Kaur, Parminder Kaur, Jaspreet Bedi, Hardeep Singh

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Software crisis refers to the situation in which the developers are not able to complete the projects within time and budget constraints and moreover these overscheduled and over budget projects are of low quality as well. Several methodologies have been adopted form time to time to overcome this situation and now in the focus is component based software engineering. In this approach, emphasis is on reuse of already existing software artifacts. But the results can not be achieved just by preaching the principles; they need to be practiced as well. This paper highlights some of the very basic elements of this approach, which has to be in place to get the desired goals of high quality, low cost with shorter time-to-market software products.

Keywords: Component Model, Software Components, SoftwareRepository, Process Models.

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Authors: Mahshid Kakouei, Mina Kakouei, Kumaran Suberamanian, Sabzali Musa Kahn, Afshin Jahangirzadeh, Shatirah Akib

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Human always tried to create a suitable situation for their life according to environmental conditions. In fact, geography has an important role in the shape of our living area. Iran also as a four-season country has different climate type: hot and humid, hot and dry, mid and humid, and cold; therefore, we can find different architecture styles in Iran. Gilan-s traditional architecture is a suitable sample of sustainable construction in Iran. Because the main factors of every dwelling are the climatic, social, economic and cultural effects which demonstrate the interaction between environment and people settlement. This paper was determined the interaction between environmental factors and the rural dwellings in the Gilan province. Also, traditional village (city) of Masouleh as a rare sample of rural and sustainable architecture was introduced.

Keywords: Masouleh, Traditional architecture, vernacular materials, sustainable architecture.

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Authors: Zhizhong Jiang, Peter Naudé

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Effective evaluation of software development effort is an important aspect of successful project management. Based on a large database with 4106 projects ever developed, this study statistically examines the factors that influence development effort. The factors found to be significant for effort are project size, average number of developers that worked on the project, type of development, development language, development platform, and the use of rapid application development. Among these factors, project size is the most critical cost driver. Unsurprisingly, this study found that the use of CASE tools does not necessarily reduce development effort, which adds support to the claim that the use of tools is subtle. As many of the current estimation models are rarely or unsuccessfully used, this study proposes a parsimonious parametric model for the prediction of effort which is both simple and more accurate than previous models.

Keywords: Development effort, function points, team size, development language, CASE tool, rapid application development.

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Authors: K. Adu Michael, K. Alese Boniface

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Developing a reliable and sustainable software products is today a big challenge among up–coming software developers in Nigeria. The inability to develop a comprehensive problem statement needed to execute proper requirements engineering process is missing. The need to describe the ‘what’ of a system in one document, written in a natural language is a major step in the overall process of Software Engineering. Requirements Engineering is a process use to discover, analyze and validate system requirements. This process is needed in reducing software errors at the early stage of the development of software. The importance of each of the steps in Requirements Engineering is clearly explained in the context of using detailed problem statement from client/customer to get an overview of an existing system along with expectations from the new system. This paper elicits inadequate Requirements Engineering principle as the major cause of poor software development in developing nations using a case study of final year computer science students of a tertiary-education institution in Nigeria.

Keywords: Client/Customer, Problem Statement, Requirements Engineering, Software Developers.

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Authors: P. Ahern, D. Collery

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The implementation of lean thinking in the manufacturing industry revolutionized the traditional approach to large-scale production through the process of identifying the waste in each task and putting in place mitigation measures to eliminate the waste in all its forms. The Irish construction industry, however, has been much slower to adopt the principles of lean, opting instead to stick with the traditional approach to construction project delivery which is inherently wasteful. Lean thinking holds the potential to revolutionize the construction industry in a similar manner to the adoption of lean manufacturing. Lean principles present opportunities for reduced project duration, reduced project cost, improved quality, and elimination of re-works and non-value-added activities. This research has been designed to accumulate research data through available literature, electronic surveys, and interviews. The results show an industry reluctant to accept change and an undefined path to successful lean construction implementation.

Keywords: Barriers, lean construction, lean implementation, lean manufacturing, lean philosophy.

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