Search results for: Agriculture sector

Authors: M. El Mousadik, F. Elkandoussi

Abstract:

The concern for increased rigor in social management has led more and more Moroccan business leaders to question the value of applying social audit as an essential tool in the management of human resources. Hotel companies are not excluded; in fact, they are expected to implement such an audit to develop sound and credible human resources management (HRM) policies. The main objective of this paper is to establish the relationship between the practice of social audit as a tool, and its impact on the tourism sector, especially on hotels at one of the Morocco’s first and most popular city for tourism, Agadir. This exploratory study of properties in Agadir has revealed that hotel executives are aware of the importance of social auditing to hone their decisions in the field of HRM.

Keywords: Social audit, hotel companies, human resources management, social piloting.

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Authors: Fatih Kagnici

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Improvement in CAE methods has an important role for shortening of the vehicle product development time. It is provided that validation of the design and improvements in terms of durability can be done without hardware prototype production. In recent years, several different methods have been developed in order to investigate fatigue damage of the vehicle. The intended goal among these methods is prediction of fatigue damage in a short time with reduced costs. This study developed a new fatigue damage prediction method in the automotive sector using power spectrum densities of accelerations. This study also confirmed that the weak region in vehicle can be easily detected with the method developed in this study which results were compared with conventional method.

Keywords: Fatigue damage, Power spectrum density, Vibration induced fatigue, Vehicle development

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Authors: Maria E. Eggink

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Innovation plays an important role in economic growth and development. Evolutionary economics has entrepreneurs at the centre of the innovation system, but includes all other participants as contributors to the performance of the innovation system. Education and training institutions, one of the participants in the innovation system, contributes in different ways to human capital. The gap in literature on the competence building as part of human capital in the analysis of innovation systems is addressed in this paper. The Mpumalanga Province of South Africa is used as a case study. It was found that the absence of a university, the level of education, the quality and performance in the education sector and the condition of the education infrastructure have not been conducive to learning.

Keywords: Education institutions, human capital, innovation systems, Mpumalanga Province.

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Authors: Eddie Soulier, Philippe Calvez, Florie Bugeaud, Francis Rousseaux, Jacky Legrand

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Social, mobility and information aggregation inside business environment need to converge to reach the next step of collaboration to enhance interaction and innovation. The following article is based on the “Assemblage" concept seen as a framework to formalize new user interfaces and applications. The area of research is the Energy Social Business Environment, especially the Energy Smart Grids, which are considered as functional and technical foundations of the revolution of the Energy Sector of tomorrow. The assemblages are modelized by means of mereology and simplicial complexes. Its objective is to offer new central attention and decision-making tools to end-users.

Keywords: Activity Streams, Assemblage, Energy Social Business Environment, Simplicial Complex, Smart Grid

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Authors: Libena Cernohorska, Jan Cernohorsky

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This article aims to evaluate the impact of loans provided within the Czech banking sector on the growth of the Czech economy. The article is based on research of current scientific findings in respect to bank loans and economic development. The paper is based on data taken from the Czech Statistical Office on the development of the gross domestic product and data from the Czech National Bank on the development of loans from the period 2004-2015. Links between selected variables are tested using Granger causality tests. The results calculated confirm the hypothesis of the impact of the loans on economic growth, with a six-month delay. The results thus correspond to the standard economic findings and results of most previous studies.

Keywords: Bank, business cycle, economic growth, loans.

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Authors: Krisada Sungkhamanee

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The objectives of this research are to search the management pattern of Nakhon Pathom lodging entrepreneurs for sufficient economy ways, to know the threat that affects this sector and design fit arrangement model to sustain their business with Nakhon Pathom style. What will happen if they do not use this approach? Will they have a financial crisis? The data and information are collected by informal discussions with 12 managers and 400 questionnaires. A mixed method of both qualitative research and quantitative research are used. Bent Flyvbjerg’s phronesis is utilized for this analysis. Our research will prove that sufficient economy can help small business firms to solve their problems. We think that the results of our research will be a financial model to solve many problems of the entrepreneurs and this way will can be a model for other provinces of Thailand.

Keywords: Nakhon Pathom Province, Lodging Business, Sufficient Economy.

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Authors: Khalid Hassan Abdesamed, Kalsom Abd Wahab

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Economic development and growth are significantly linked to the consistent and sustainable sector of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Banks are the frontrunners in financing and advising SMEs. The main objective of the study is to assess the tendency of SMEs to use the Islamic bank. Model was developed using quantitative method with a hypothetical-deductive testing approach. Model (N = 364) used primary data on the tendency of SMEs to use Islamic banks gathered from questionnaire. It is found by Mann-Whitney test that the tendency to use Islamic bank varies between those firms which consider formal financing with the ones relying on informal financing with the latter tends more to use Islamic bank. This study can serve academic researchers, policy makers, and developing countries as a model of SMEs’ desirability to Islamic banking.

Keywords: Formal financing, informal financing, Islamic bank, SMEs.

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Authors: Xianghan O’Dea

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This article argues an urgent need to better understand the personal experiences of Chinese top-up students studying in the UK since the number of Chinese students taking year-long top-up programmes in the UK has risen rapidly in recent years. This lack of knowledge could potentially have implications for the reputation of some UK institutions and also the attractiveness of the UK higher education sector to future international students. This longitudinal study explored the academic and social experiences of 12 Chinese top-up students in a UK institution in-depth and revealed that the students felt their experiences were influenced significantly by their surrounding contexts at the macro and meso levels, which, however, have been largely overlooked in existing research. This article suggests the importance of improving the communications between the partner institutions in China and the UK, and also providing sufficient pre-departure and after arrival support to Chinese top-up students at the institutional level.

Keywords: Articulation agreements, Chinese top-up students, top-up programmes, U curve.

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Authors: Robert Grzeszczak

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The article deals with one of the most significant issues concerning the functioning of the public sector in the European Union. The objectives of good governance were formulated by the EU itself and also the Scholars in reaction to the discussion that started a decade ago and concerned the role of the government in 21st century, the future of integration processes and globalization challenges in Europe. Currently, the concept of good governance is mainly associated with the improvement of management of public policies in the European Union, concerning both domestic and EU policies. However, it goes beyond the issues of state capacity and effectiveness of management. Good governance relates also to societal participation in the public administration and verification of decisions made in public authorities’ (including public administration). Indirectly, the concept and practice of good governance are connected to societal legitimisation of public bodies in the European Union.

Keywords: Good governance, Government, European law, European Union.

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Authors: Mosses E. Lufuke

Abstract:

This paper attempted to investigate whether there is Granger-causality running from trade to environment as evidenced in the changing climatic condition and land degradation. Using Tanzania as the reference, VAR-Granger-causality test was employed to rationalize the conundrum of causal-effect relationship between trade and environment. The changing climatic condition, as the proxy of both nitrous oxide emissions (in thousand metric tons of CO₂ equivalent) and land degradation measured by the size of arable land were tested against trade using both exports and imports variables. The result indicated that neither of the trade variables Granger-cause the variability on gas emissions and arable land size. This suggests the possibility that all trade concerns in relation to environment to have been internalized in domestic policies to offset any likely negative consequence.

Keywords: Trade, growth, impact, environment.

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Authors: M. Aslan, A. Karaaslan, S. Selcuk

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The research was conducted in order to determine the organizational socialization levels of nurses working in hospitals in the form of a descriptive study. The research population was composed of nurses employed in public and private sector hospitals in the province of Konya with 0-3 years of professional experience in the hospitals (N=1200); and the sample was composed of 495 nurses that accepted to take part in the study voluntarily. Statistical evaluation of data was conducted in SPSS.16 software. The results of the study revealed that the total score taken by nurses at the organizational socialization scale was 262.95; and this was close to the maximum score. Particularly the departmental socialization sub-dimension proved to be higher in comparison to the other two dimensions (organization socialization and task socialization). Statistically meaningful differences were found in the levels of organization socialization in relation to the status of organizational orientation training, level of education and age group.

Keywords: Nurses, Newcomers, Organizational Socialization.

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Authors: Nasser AlShawaaf, Soo Hee Lee

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Arts globalisation represents a different phenomenon than arts commercialisation which was facilitated by local cultural policies. This study examines the causes and effects of globalisation of art museums in France. Building on art literature, we conducted a literature review of cultural policies. Our findings show that the cultural policies of the French government since the 1980s of cultural democratisation, cultural decentralisation, and implementing market principles on the cultural sector are leading to arts globalisation. Although globalisation is producing economic benefits and enhancing cultural reach, however, the damages include artistic values and creativity, cultural heritage and representation, and the museum itself. Art museums and host cities could overcome negative consequences through a hybrid collection display and develop local collections gradually.

Keywords: Cultural policy, cultural decentralisation, cultural globalisation, art museums, contextual analysis, France.

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Authors: Bijaya Krushna Mangaraj, Deepak Kumar Das

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Sustainability in rural production system can only be achieved if it can suitably satisfy the local requirement as well as the outside demand with the changing time. With the increased pressure from the food sector in a globalised world, the agrarian economy needs to re-organise its cultivable land system to be compatible with new management practices as well as the multiple needs of various stakeholders and the changing resource scenario. An attempt has been made to transform this problem into a multi-objective decisionmaking problem considering various objectives, resource constraints and conditional constraints. An interactive fuzzy multi-objective programming approach has been used for such a purpose taking a case study in Indian context to demonstrate the validity of the method.

Keywords: Land re-organisation, Crop planning, Multiobjective Decision-Making, Fuzzy Goal Programming.

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Authors: Iyabosola B. Oronti, Adeoluwawale A. Adewusi, Israel O. Megbowon

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Nigeria is considered as one of the many countries in sub-Saharan Africa with a weak economy and gross deficiencies in technology and engineering. Available data from international monitoring and regulatory organizations show that technology is pivotal to determining the economic strengths of nations all over the world. Education is critical to technology acquisition, development, dissemination and adaptation. Thus, this paper seeks to critically assess and discuss issues and challenges facing technological advancement in Nigeria, particularly in the education sector, and also proffers solutions to resuscitate the Nigerian education system towards achieving national technological and economic sustainability such that Nigeria can compete favourably with other technologicallydriven economies of the world in the not-too-distant future.

Keywords: Economically weak countries, education, globalization and competition, technological advancement.

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Authors: Abdullah Gokhan Yilmaz, Monzur Alam Imteaz, Shirley Gato-Trinidad, Iqbal Hossain

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Climate change leading to global warming affects the earth through many different ways such as weather (temperature, precipitation, humidity and the other parameters of weather), snow coverage and ice melting, sea level rise, hydrological cycles, quality of water, agriculture, forests, ecosystems and health. One of the most affected areas by climate change is hydrology and water resources. Regions where majority of runoff consists of snow melt are more sensitive to climate change. The first step of climate change studies is to establish trends of significant climate variables including precipitation, temperature and flow data to detect any potential climate change impacts already happened. Two popular non-parametric trend analysis methods, Mann-Kendal and Spearman-s Rho were applied to Upper Euphrates Basin (Turkey) to detect trends of precipitation, temperatures (maximum, minimum and average) and streamflow.

Keywords: Climate change, precipitation, snow hydrology, trend analysis and Upper Euphrates Basin

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Authors: Andrew Chimpololo

Abstract:

Open and distance learning is a fairly new concept in Malawi. The major public provider, the Malawi College of Distance Education, rolled out its activities only about 40 years ago. Over the years, the demand for distance education has tremendously increased. The present government has displayed positive political will to uplift ODL as outlined in the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy as well as the National Education Sector Plan. A growing national interest in education coupled with political stability and a booming ICT industry also raise hope for success. However, a fragile economy with a GNI per capita of -US$ 200 over the last decade, poor public funding, erratic power supply and lack of expertise put strain on efforts towards the promotion of ODL initiatives. Despite the challenges, the nation appears determined to go flat out and explore all possible avenues that could revolutionise education access and equity through ODL.

Keywords: challenges, distance education, Malawi, openlearning, prospects.

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Authors: Erika Ruiz, Nestor Ortiz

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Lean philosophy has evolved over time and has been implemented both in manufacturing and services, more recently lean has been integrated in the companies of the health sector. Currently it is important to understand the successful way to implement this philosophy and try to identify barriers and enablers to the sustainability of lean healthcare. The main purpose of this research is to identify the barriers and enablers in the implementation of Lean Healthcare based on case studies of Colombian healthcare centers. In order to do so, we conducted semi-structured interviews based on a maturity model. The main results indicate that the success of Lean implementation depends on its adaptation to contextual factors. In addition, in the Colombian context were identified new factors such as organizational culture, management models, integration of the care and administrative departments and triple helix relationship.

Keywords: Barriers, enablers, implementation, lean healthcare, sustainability.

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Authors: Ikilem Gocek, Senem Kursun, Yesim Iridag Beceren

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The customer satisfaction for textile sector carries great importance like the customer satisfaction for other sectors carry. Especially, if it is considered that gaining new customers create four times more costs than protecting existing customers from leaving, it can be seen that the customer satisfaction plays a great role for the firms. In this study the affecting independent variables of customer satisfaction are chosen as brand image, perceived service quality and perceived product quality. By these independent variables, it is investigated that if any differences exist in perception of customer satisfaction according to the Turkish textile consumers in the view of gender. In data analysis of this research the SPSS program is used.

Keywords: Customer satisfaction, textile industry, brand image, service quality, product quality, gender.

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Authors: Sandra Muizniece-Brasava, Lija Dukalska, Solvita Kampuse, Irisa Murniece, Martins Sabovics, IlonaDabina-Bicka, Emils Kozlinskis, Svetlana Sarvi

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The research object was apple-black currant marmalade candies. Experiments were carried out at the Faculty of Food Technology of the Latvia University of Agriculture. An active packaging in combination with modified atmosphere (MAP, CO2 100%) was examined and compared with traditional packaging in air ambiance. Polymer Multibarrier 60 and paper bags were used. Influence of iron based oxygen absorber in sachets of 500 cc obtained from Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Europe Ageless® was tested on the quality during the shelf of marmalade. Samples of 80±5 g were packaged in polymer pouches (110 mm x 110 mm), hermetically sealed by MULTIVAC C300 vacuum chamber machine, and stored in room temperature +20.0±1.0 °C. The physiochemical properties – weight losses, moisture content, hardness, aw, pH, colour, changes of atmosphere content (CO2 and O2) in headspace of packs, and microbial conditions were analysed before packaging and in the 1st, 3rd , 5th, 8th, 11th and 15th weeks of storage.

Keywords: Active packaging, marmalade candies, shelf life

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Authors: Ali A. Alshatwi, Vaiyapuri S. Periasamy, Jegan Athinarayanan

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Engineered nanoparticles’ usage rapidly increased in various applications in the last decade due to their unusual properties. However, there is an ever increasing concern to understand their toxicological effect in human health. Particularly, metal and metal oxide nanoparticles have been used in various sectors including biomedical, food and agriculture. But their impact on human health is yet to be fully understood. In this present investigation, we assessed the toxic effect of engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) including Ag, MgO and Co3O4 nanoparticles (NPs) on human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSC) adopting cell viability and cellular morphological changes as tools The results suggested that silver NPs are more toxic than MgO and Co3O4NPs. The ENPs induced cytotoxicity and nuclear morphological changes in hMSC depending on dose. The cell viability decreases with increase in concentration of ENPs. The cellular morphology studies revealed that ENPs damaged the cells. These preliminary findings have implications for the use of these nanoparticles in food industry with systematic regulations.

Keywords: Cobalt oxide, Human mesenchymal stem cells, MgO, Silver.

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Authors: Mukesh Singh Boori, Venerando Eustáquio Amaro, Helenice Vital

Abstract:

The present study has been carried out with a view to calculate the coastal vulnerability index (CVI) to know the high and low sensitive areas and area of inundation due to future SLR. Both conventional and remotely sensed data were used and analyzed through the modelling technique. Out of the total study area, 8.26% is very high risk, 14.21% high, 9.36% medium, 22.46% low and 7.35% in the very low vulnerable category, due to costal components. Results of the inundation analysis indicate that 225.2 km² and 397 km² of the land area will be submerged by flooding at 1m and 10m inundation levels. The most severely affected sectors are expected to be the residential, industrial and recreational areas. As this coast is planned for future coastal developmental activities, measures such as industrializations, building regulation, urban growth planning and agriculture, development of an integrated coastal zone management, strict enforcement of the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Act, monitoring of impacts and further research in this regard are recommended for the study area.

Keywords: Coastal planning, land use, satellite data, vulnerability.

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Authors: Ahed Abugabah, Louis Sanzogni

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ERP systems are the largest software applications adopted by universities, along with quite significant investments in their implementation. However, unlike other applications little research has been conducted regarding these systems in a university environment. This paper aims at providing a critical review of previous research in ERP system in higher education with a special focus on higher education in Australia. The research not only forms the basis of an evaluation of previous research and research needs, it also makes inroads in identifying the payoff of ERPs in the sector from different perspectives with particular reference to the user. The paper is divided into two parts, the first part focuses on ERP literature in higher education at large, while the second focuses on ERP literature in higher education in Australia.

Keywords: Enterprise resource planning system, higher education, implementation, user level.

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Authors: Johannes T. Tsoku, Teboho J. Mosikari, Diteboho Xaba, Thatoyaone Modise

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This paper examines the relationship between manufacturing growth and economic growth in South Africa using quarterly data ranging from 2001 to 2014. The paper employed the Johansen cointegration to test the Kaldor’s hypothesis. The Johansen cointegration results revealed that there is a long run relationship between GDP, manufacturing, service and employment. The Granger causality results revealed that there is a unidirectional causality running from manufacturing growth to GDP growth. The overall findings of the study confirm that Kaldor’s first law of growth is applicable in South African economy. Therefore, investment strategies and policies should be alignment towards promoting growth in the manufacturing sector in order to boost the economic growth of South Africa.

Keywords: Cointegration, economic growth, Kaldor’s law, manufacturing growth.

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Authors: M. M. Hossain, M. Z. Hasan, M. Alauddin, S. Akhter

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Climate change has become a major concern across the world as the intensity along with quantity of the rainfall, mean surface temperature and other climatic parameters have been changed not only in Bangladesh but also in the entire globe. Bangladesh has already experienced many natural hazards. Among them changing of rainfall pattern, erratic and heavy rainfalls are very common. But changes of rainfall pattern and its amount is still in question to some extent. This study aimed to unfold how the historical rainfalls varied over time and how would be their future trends. In this context, historical rainfall data (1975-2014) were collected from Bangladesh Metrological Department (BMD) and then a time series model was developed using Box-Jenkins algorithm in IBM SPSS to forecast the future rainfall. From the historical data analysis, this study revealed that the amount of rainfall decreased over the time and shifted to the post monsoons. Forecasted rainfall shows that the pre-monsoon and early monsoon will get drier in future whereas late monsoon and post monsoon will show huge fluctuations in rainfall magnitudes with temporal variations which means Bangladesh will get comparatively drier seasons in future which may be a serious problem for the country as it depends on agriculture.

Keywords: Monsoon, Pre-monsoon, rainfall, pattern, variations, IBM-SPSS.

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Authors: Mukesh Singh Boori, Vít Voženílek

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Olomouc is a unique and complex landmark with widespread forestation and land use. This research work was conducted to assess important and complex land use change trajectories in Olomouc region. Multi-temporal satellite data from 1991, 2001 and 2013 were used to extract land use/cover types by object oriented classification method. To achieve the objectives, three different aspects were used: (1) Calculate the quantity of each transition; (2) Allocate location based landscape pattern (3) Compare land use/cover evaluation procedure. Land cover change trajectories shows that 16.69% agriculture, 54.33% forest and 21.98% other areas (settlement, pasture and water-body) were stable in all three decade. Approximately 30% of the study area maintained as a same land cove type from 1991 to 2013. Here broad scale of political and socioeconomic factors was also affect the rate and direction of landscape changes. Distance from the settlements was the most important predictor of land cover change trajectories. This showed that most of landscape trajectories were caused by socio-economic activities and mainly led to virtuous change on the ecological environment.

Keywords: Remote Sensing, land use/cover, Change trajectories, Image classification.

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Authors: Fardin Boustani, Mohammad Hosein Hojati

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Groundwater is one of the most important water resources in Fars province. Based on this study, 95 percent of the total annual water consumption in Fars is used for agriculture, whereas the percentages for domestic and industrial uses are 4 and 1 percent, respectively. Population growth, urban and industrial growth, and agricultural development in Fars have created a condition of water stress. In this province, farmers and other users are pumping groundwater faster than its natural replenishment rate, causing a continuous drop in groundwater tables and depletion of this resource. In this research variation of groundwater level, their effects and ways to help control groundwater levels in aquifer of the Niriz plains in Fars plain were evaluated .Excessive exploitation of groundwater in this aquifer caused the groundwater levels fall too fast or to unacceptable levels. The average drawdown of the groundwater level in this plain were 9.1 meters during 1997 to 2004. The purpose of this study is to evaluate water level changes in the Niriz Aquifer in the Fars province in order to determine the areas of greatest depletion, the cause of depletion, and predict the remaining life of the aquifer.

Keywords: Aquifer, ground water depletion, water table

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Authors: Anastasia K. Eleftheriadou, Athanasios Sfetsos, Nikolaos Gounaris

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The current paper presents an extensive bottom-up framework for assessing building sector-specific vulnerability to climate change: energy supply and demand. The research focuses on the application of downscaled seasonal models for estimating energy performance of buildings in Greece. The ARW-WRF model has been set-up and suitably parameterized to produce downscaled climatological fields for Greece, forced by the output of the CFSv2 model. The outer domain, D01/Europe, included 345 x 345 cells of horizontal resolution 20 x 20 km2 and the inner domain, D02/Greece, comprised 180 x 180 cells of 5 x 5 km2 horizontal resolution. The model run has been setup for a period with a forecast horizon of 6 months, storing outputs on a six hourly basis.

Keywords: Urban environment, vulnerability, climate change, energy performance, seasonal forecast models.

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Authors: Sandra Muizniece-Brasava, Aija Ruzaike, Lija Dukalska, Ilze Stokmane, Liene Strauta

Abstract:

Experiments have been carried out at the Latvia University of Agriculture Department of Food Technology. The aim of this work was to assess the effect of thermal treatment in flexible retort pouch packaging on the quality of potatoes’ produce during the storage time. Samples were evaluated immediately after retort thermal treatment; and following 1; 2; 3 and 4 storage months at the ambient temperature of +18±2ºC in vacuum packaging from polyamide/polyethylene (PA/PE) and aluminum/polyethylene (Al/PE) film pouches with barrier properties. Experimentally the quality of the potatoes’ produce in dry butter and mushroom dressings was characterized by measuring pH, hardness, color, microbiological properties and sensory evaluation. The sterilization was effective in protecting the produce from physical, chemical, and microbial quality degradation. According to the study of obtained data, it can be argued that the selected product processing technology and packaging materials could be applied to provide the safety and security during four-month storage period.

Keywords: Potatoes’ produce, shelf life, retort thermal treatment and packaging.

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Authors: Kawinphat Lertpongmanee

Abstract:

The development of One Tambon One Product (OTOP) became the policy of the government in 1997 after the former Prime Minister had been in power. The strategy of sections is currently set for the policy. OTOP has become the part of the way of community lives around the country. OTOP may be developed under changing into ASEAN economic community in 2015 because of the flow of capitals, productions, and many workers in the region. All sectors are improved for the change. The purposes of study were to study the strength and weakness of the OTOP-creating process via its policy and to lead to the strategy to be able to apply before changing. The methodology is qualitative to study its policy including document and to interview experienced persons. The findings showed that the effort of improvement of all sectors obviously involves with OTOP development. Particularly, the strategic administration of OTOP is in every level of the state, central sector, region, and community.

Keywords: ASEAN Economic Community – AEC, One Tambon One Product – OTOP.

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Authors: Eduardo F. Arias, William Cooke III, Zhaofei Fan, William Kingery

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During the last decade Panicum virgatum, known as Switchgrass, has been broadly studied because of its remarkable attributes as a substitute pasture and as a functional biofuel source. The objective of this investigation was to establish soil suitability for Switchgrass in the State of Mississippi. A linear weighted additive model was developed to forecast soil suitability. Multicriteria analysis and Sensitivity analysis were utilized to adjust and optimize the model. The model was fit using seven years of field data associated with soils characteristics collected from Natural Resources Conservation System - United States Department of Agriculture (NRCS-USDA). The best model was selected by correlating calculated biomass yield with each model's soils-based output for Switchgrass suitability. Coefficient of determination (r2) was the decisive factor used to establish the 'best' soil suitability model. Coefficients associated with the 'best' model were implemented within a Geographic Information System (GIS) to create a map of relative soil suitability for Switchgrass in Mississippi. A Geodatabase associated with soil parameters was built and is available for future Geographic Information System use.

Keywords: Aptness, GIS, sensitivity analysis, switchgrass, soil.

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