Search results for: organizational and economic structure

Authors: Erika Ann Schaub, Christian J Darken

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Sociological models (e.g., social network analysis, small-group dynamic and gang models) have historically been used to predict the behavior of terrorist groups. However, they may not be the most appropriate method for understanding the behavior of terrorist organizations because the models were not initially intended to incorporate violent behavior of its subjects. Rather, models that incorporate life and death competition between subjects, i.e., models utilized by scientists to examine the behavior of wildlife populations, may provide a more accurate analysis. This paper suggests the use of biological models to attain a more robust method for understanding the behavior of terrorist organizations as compared to traditional methods. This study also describes how a biological population model incorporating predator-prey behavior factors can predict terrorist organizational recruitment behavior for the purpose of understanding the factors that govern the growth and decline of terrorist organizations. The Lotka-Volterra, a biological model that is based on a predator-prey relationship, is applied to a highly suggestive case study, that of the Irish Republican Army. This case study illuminates how a biological model can be utilized to understand the actions of a terrorist organization.

Keywords: Biological Models, Lotka-Volterra Predator-Prey Model, Terrorist Organizational Behavior, Terrorist Recruitment.

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Authors: Shubha P Bhat, Krishnamurthy, T.C.Manjunath, C. Ardil

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In this paper, the effects of the restoring force device on the response of a space frame structure resting on sliding type of bearing with a restoring force device is studied. The NS component of the El - Centro earthquake and harmonic ground acceleration is considered for earthquake excitation. The structure is modeled by considering six-degrees of freedom (three translations and three rotations) at each node. The sliding support is modeled as a fictitious spring with two horizontal degrees of freedom. The response quantities considered for the study are the top floor acceleration, base shear, bending moment and base displacement. It is concluded from the study that the displacement of the structure reduces by the use of the restoring force device. Also, the peak values of acceleration, bending moment and base shear also decreases. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the developed and proposed method.

Keywords: DOF, Space structures, Acceleration, Excitation, Smart structure, Vibration, Isolation, Earthquakes.

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Authors: Abdulqader M. Mohsen, Ahamad Tajudin Khader, Dhanesh Ramachandram, Abdullatif Ghallab

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The physical methods for RNA secondary structure prediction are time consuming and expensive, thus methods for computational prediction will be a proper alternative. Various algorithms have been used for RNA structure prediction including dynamic programming and metaheuristic algorithms. Musician's behaviorinspired harmony search is a recently developed metaheuristic algorithm which has been successful in a wide variety of complex optimization problems. This paper proposes a harmony search algorithm (HSRNAFold) to find RNA secondary structure with minimum free energy and similar to the native structure. HSRNAFold is compared with dynamic programming benchmark mfold and metaheuristic algorithms (RnaPredict, SetPSO and HelixPSO). The results showed that HSRNAFold is comparable to mfold and better than metaheuristics in finding the minimum free energies and the number of correct base pairs.

Keywords: Metaheuristic algorithms, dynamic programming algorithms, harmony search optimization, RNA folding, Minimum free energy.

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Authors: C. A. Corzo, N. Zhang, F. Corzo

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Insider abuse has recently been reported as one of the more frequently occurring security incidents, suggesting that more security is required for detecting and preventing unauthorised financial transactions entered by authorised users. To address the problem, and based on the observation that all authorised interbanking financial transactions trigger or are triggered by other transactions in a workflow, we have developed a security solution based on a redefined understanding of an audit workflow. One audit workflow where there is a log file containing the complete workflow activity of financial transactions directly related to one financial transaction (an electronic deal recorded at an e-trading system). The new security solution contemplates any two parties interacting on the basis of financial transactions recorded by their users in related but distinct automated financial systems. In the new definition interorganizational and intra-organization interactions can be described in one unique audit trail. This concept expands the current ideas of audit trails by adapting them to actual e-trading workflow activity, i.e. intra-organizational and inter-organizational activity. With the above, a security auditing service is designed to detect integrity drifts with and between organizations in order to detect unauthorised financial transactions entered by authorised users.

Keywords: Intrusion Detection and Prevention, Authentica-transtionand Identification.

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Authors: Mihaela Mocanu

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The Romanian multilingual dictionaries – also named polyglot, plurilingual or polylingual dictionaries, have known a slow yet constant development starting with the end of the 17th century, when the first such work is attested, to the present time, when we witness a considerable increase of the number of polyglot dictionaries, especially the terminological ones. This paper aims at analyzing the context in which the first Romanian multilingual dictionaries were issued, as well as and the organization and structure particularities of the first lexicographic works of this type. The irretrievable loss of some of these works as well as the partial conservation of others renders the attempt to retrace the beginnings of Romanian lexicography extremely difficult. The research methodology is part of a descriptive and analytical approach based on two types of sources, subject to contrastive analysis: the notes made by the initiators of lexicographic projects and the testimonies of their contemporaries, respectively, along with the specialized studies regarding the history of the old Romanian lexicography. The analysis of the contents has indicated that these dictionaries lacked a scientific apparatus in the true sense of the phrase, failed to obey unitary organizational criteria, being limited, most of the times, to mere inventories of words, where the Romanian term was assigned its correspondent in other languages. Motivated by practical reasons, the first multilingual dictionaries were aimed at the clerics their purpose being to ensure the translators’ fidelity towards the original religious texts, regarded as sacred.

Keywords: Language, multilingual dictionary, Romanian lexicography, terminology.

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Authors: Ingrid Majerová, Michaela Horúcková

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The concept of competitiveness is currently very frequently used term. However, the interpretation of its essence is different. In this paper, one of the many concepts of competitiveness will be analyzed and that is macroeconomic competitiveness, which is understood as a process, which is based on the productivity growth through the growth of key macroeconomic indicators such as standards of living and employment, where all of these variables must have a sustainable basis. Given the competition is a relative quantity it must be constantly compared with the development of competitiveness in other economies or regions. And this comparison method is also used in the article that compares the macrocompetitiveness of selected economies of the European Economic Area – the Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, Switzerland and Germany. The aim of the paper is to verify the hypothesis concerning the direct correlation between the size of the economy and its competitiveness.

Keywords: Comparison, Competitiveness, European Economic Area, Global Competitiveness Index, Immeasurable Indicators of Competitiveness, Macro-competitiveness.

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Authors: G.B. Nurlikhina, G.N. Azhimetova, R. M. Ashimova

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Currently, one of the main directions is developing of development based on the clustering of economic operations of Kazakhstan, providing for the organization and concentration of production capacity in one region or the most optimal system. In the modern economic literature clustering is regarded as one of the most effective tools to ensure competitive businesses, and improve their business itself.

Keywords: A cluster, food market, innovation cluster.

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Authors: Hui-Chuan Lu

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A perfect secret-sharing scheme is a method to distribute a secret among a set of participants in such a way that only qualified subsets of participants can recover the secret and the joint share of participants in any unqualified subset is statistically independent of the secret. The collection of all qualified subsets is called the access structure of the perfect secret-sharing scheme. In a graph-based access structure, each vertex of a graph G represents a participant and each edge of G represents a minimal qualified subset. The average information ratio of a perfect secret-sharing scheme  realizing the access structure based on G is defined as AR = (Pv2V (G) H(v))/(|V (G)|H(s)), where s is the secret and v is the share of v, both are random variables from  and H is the Shannon entropy. The infimum of the average information ratio of all possible perfect secret-sharing schemes realizing a given access structure is called the optimal average information ratio of that access structure. Most known results about the optimal average information ratio give upper bounds or lower bounds on it. In this present structures based on bipartite graphs and determine the exact values of the optimal average information ratio of some infinite classes of them.

Keywords: secret-sharing scheme, average information ratio, star covering, core sequence.

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Authors: Burja C., Burja V.

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For Romania, the fulfilment of the obligations undertaken as a member state of the European Union in accordance with the Treaty of Accession requires the effective implementation of sustainable development principles and practices, this being the only reasonable development option, which adequately draws in on the economic, social and environment resources. Achieving this objective is based on a profound analysis of the realities in the Romanian economy, which will reflect the existent situation and the action directions for the future. The paper presents an analysis of the Romanian economic performances compared to the EU economy, based on the sustainable value (SV) model. The analysis highlighted the considerable gap between Romania and the EU regarding the sustainable capitalization of resources, the provided information being useful to justify strategic development decisions at a micro and macro levels.

Keywords: Sustainable value, sustainable development, opportunity cost, economic performance.

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Authors: Tejinder Singh

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When earthquakes strike the city it results in great loss of lives. The present paper talks about a new innovative design system (MegEifel) for buildings which has a mechanism to mitigate deaths in case any earthquake strikes the city. If buildings will be designed according to MegEifel design then the occupants of the building will be safe even when they are in sleep or are doing day wise activities during the time earthquake strikes. The core structure is suggested to be designed on the principle that more deep the foundations are, the harder it is to uproot the structure. The buildings will have an Eifel rod dug deep into earth which will help save lives in tall buildings when earthquake strikes. This design takes a leverage of protective shells to save lives.

Keywords: Structure, MegEifel, Save, Life, Earthquake, Design

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Authors: S. V. Yendiyarov

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Pattern discovery from time series is of fundamental importance. Particularly, when information about the structure of a pattern is not complete, an algorithm to discover specific patterns or shapes automatically from the time series data is necessary. The dynamic time warping is a technique that allows local flexibility in aligning time series. Because of this, it is widely used in many fields such as science, medicine, industry, finance and others. However, a major problem of the dynamic time warping is that it is not able to work with structural changes of a pattern. This problem arises when the structure is influenced by noise, which is a common thing in practice for almost every application. This paper addresses this problem by means of developing a novel technique called adaptive dynamic time warping.

Keywords: Pattern recognition, optimal control, quadratic programming, dynamic programming, dynamic time warping, sintering control.

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Authors: C. Slim

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Traditional techniques for analyzing time series are based on the notion of stationarity of phenomena under study, but in reality most economic and financial series do not verify this hypothesis, which implies the implementation of specific tools for the detection of such behavior. In this paper, we study nonstationary non-seasonal time series tests in a non-exhaustive manner. We formalize the problem of nonstationary processes with numerical simulations and take stock of their statistical characteristics. The theoretical aspects of some of the most common unit root tests will be discussed. We detail the specification of the tests, showing the advantages and disadvantages of each. The empirical study focuses on the application of these tests to the exchange rate (USD/TND) and the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in Tunisia, in order to compare the Power of these tests with the characteristics of the series.

Keywords: Stationarity, unit root tests, economic time series.

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Authors: U. Şendurur, B. Nazlıoğlu

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Using Turkish data, in this study it is investigated that whether a firm’s ownership structure has an impact on its stock prices after the crisis. A linear regression model is conducted on the data of non-financial firms that are trading in Istanbul Stock Exchange 100 Index (ISE 100) index. The findings show that, all explanatory variables such as inside ownership, largest ownership, concentrated ownership, foreign shareholders, family controlled and dispersed ownership are not very important to explain stock prices after the crisis. Family controlled firms and concentrated ownership is positively related to stock price, dispersed ownership, largest ownership, foreign shareholders, and inside ownership structures have negative interaction between stock prices, but because of the p value is not under the value of 0.05 this relation is not significant. In addition, the analysis shows that, the shares of firms that have inside, largest and dispersed ownership structure are outperform comparing with the other firms. Furthermore, ownership concentrated firms outperform to family controlled firms.

Keywords: Financial crisis, ISE 100 Index, Ownership structure, Stock price.

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Authors: Carilette Fourie, Chris Cloete

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The occurrence of traditional authorities and tribal land within South Africa results in unique developmental trends and challenges. Tribal communities, typically located in rural environments, are perceived to be severely affected by poverty and poor living conditions relative to their urban counterparts. The exact extent of the socio-economic disparity between tribal and non-tribal communities is addressed in this paper. After adjustment of available census data to correspond with the delineation of tribal and non-tribal land in the Kwazulu-Natal province, seven selected socio-economic indicators were compared. The investigation revealed that although tribal areas are characterised by low employment rates and educational levels, a young population, fairly large household sizes, lower access to basic services and lower income households that are highly dependent on social grants, tribal area populations do have moderate levels of education, access to formal housing and relatively good access to services.

Keywords: KwaZulu-Natal, tribal areas, traditional authority, socio-economic, well-being.

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Authors: Gyula Fülöp, Bettina Hernádi

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This paper deals with current strategic challenges related to the reshaping of the basic conditions of corporate operations. Through the experimental analysis of some domestic corporations, it presents how and to what extent Hungarian corporations are prepared for the current strategic challenges. The study examines how strategic directions and answer opportunities have changed in the following interrelated areas in the past five years: economic globalization, corporate sustainability, IT applications, labor force diversity and ethical competences. The conclusions of the empirical survey give a reliable basis on which economic organizations and enterprises can formulate their strategy.

Keywords: Economic globalization, corporate sustainability, IT applications, labor force diversity, ethical competences.

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Authors: Kalum Priyanath Udagepola, Zuo Decheng, Wu Zhibo, Yang Xiaozong

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Modern spatial database management systems require a unique Spatial Access Method (SAM) in order solve complex spatial quires efficiently. In this case the spatial data structure takes a prominent place in the SAM. Inadequate data structure leads forming poor algorithmic choices and forging deficient understandings of algorithm behavior on the spatial database. A key step in developing a better semantic spatial object data structure is to quantify the performance effects of semantic and outlier detections that are not reflected in the previous tree structures (R-Tree and its variants). This paper explores a novel SSRO-Tree on SAM to the Topo-Semantic approach. The paper shows how to identify and handle the semantic spatial objects with outlier objects during page overflow/underflow, using gain/loss metrics. We introduce a new SSRO-Tree algorithm which facilitates the achievement of better performance in practice over algorithms that are superior in the R*-Tree and RO-Tree by considering selection queries.

Keywords: Outlier, semantic spatial object, spatial objects, SSRO-Tree, topo-semantic.

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Authors: Abdolamir Nekoubin

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The line start permanent magnet motor (LSPMM) combines a permanent magnet rotor for a better motor efficiency during synchronous running with an induction motor squirrel cage rotor to permit the motor starting by direct coupling to power source. In this paper effect of the rotor structure on a line start synchronous permanent magnet motor (LSPMM) is analyzed. LSPMM motor with three different structures for rotor is designed by using RMxprt software; efficiency and line current of LSPMM motor for different structures in full-load condition have been presented. The results indicate that with correct choosing of rotor structure, maximum efficiency can be found.

Keywords: Permanent magnets, LSPMM motor, rotor.

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Authors: Georgi I. Petkov, Ivan I. Vankov, Yolina A. Petrova

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A structure-based model of category learning and categorization at different levels of abstraction is presented. The model compares different structures and expresses their similarity implicitly in the forms of mappings. Based on this similarity, the model can categorize different targets either as members of categories that it already has or creates new categories. The model is novel using two threshold parameters to evaluate the structural correspondence. If the similarity between two structures exceeds the higher threshold, a new sub-ordinate category is created. Vice versa, if the similarity does not exceed the higher threshold but does the lower one, the model creates a new category on higher level of abstraction.

Keywords: Analogy-making, categorization, learning of categories, abstraction, hierarchical structure.

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Authors: Ana-Marija Stjepić, Dalia Suša Vugec

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Today, digital transformation is one of the leading topics that occupy the attention of scientific circles and business experts. Organizational success is most often reflected through the successful managing of business processes. Given the growing market for digital innovations and its ever-increasing impact on business, organizations need to be prepared for organizational changes that come with the digital era. In order to maintain their competitive advantage in the global market, organizations must adapt their processes to new digitalization conditions. The main goal of this study is to point out the link between the digital transformation and the business process management concept. Therefore, in order to contribute to the scientific field that explores the potential relation between business process management concept and digital transformation, a literature review has been conducted. Papers have been searched within the Business Process Management Journal by keywords related to the term digital transformation. Selected papers have been analyzed according to the topic, type of publication, year of publication, keywords, etc. The results reveal a growing number of papers published on the topic of digital transformation to the Business Process Management Journal, but the lack of case studies. This paper contributes to the extension of academic literature in this important, yet insufficiently researched, scientific field that creates the bond between two strong concepts of digital transformation and business process management.

Keywords: Business process management, digital transformation, digitalization, process change.

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Authors: N. Mantalay, N. Chakpitak, W. Janchai, P. Sureepong

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Work-life balance has been acknowledged and promoted for the sake of employee retention. It is essential for a manager to realize the human resources situation within a company to help employees work happily and perform at their best. This paper suggests knowledge management and critical thinking are useful to motivate employees to think about their work-life balance. A qualitative case study is presented, which aimed to discover the meaning of work-life balance-s meaning from the perspective of Thai knowledge workers and how it affects their decision-making towards work resignation. Results found three types of work-life balance dimensions; a work- life balance including a workplace and a private life setting, an organizational working life balance only, and a worklife balance only in a private life setting. These aspects all influenced the decision-making of the employees. Factors within a theme of an organizational work-life balance were involved with systematic administration, fair treatment, employee recognition, challenging assignments to gain working experience, assignment engagement, teamwork, relationship with superiors, and working environment, while factors concerning private life settings were about personal demands such as an increasing their salary or starting their own business.

Keywords: knowledge management, work-life balance, knowledge workers, decision-making, critical thinking, diverse workforce

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Authors: Phichak Phutrakhul

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The purposes of this research were to study concepts and strategies of human resource development in the automotive manufacturers and to articulate the proposals against the government about the human resource development for automotive industry. In the present study, qualitative study was an in-depth interview in which the qualitative data were collected from the executive or the executive of human resource division from five automotive companies - Toyota Motor (Thailand) Co., Ltd., Nissan Motor (Thailand) Co., Ltd., Mitsubishi Motors (Thailand) Co., Ltd., Honda Automobile (Thailand) Co., Ltd., and Suzuki Motor (Thailand) Co., Ltd. Qualitative data analysis was performed by using inter-coder agreement technique. The research findings were as follows: The external factors included the current conditions of the automotive industry, government’s policy related to the automotive industry, technology, labor market and human resource development systems of the country. The internal factors included management, productive management, organizational strategies, leadership, organizational culture and philosophy of human resource development. These factors were affected to the different concept of human resources development -the traditional human resource development and the strategies of human resource development. The organization focuses on human resources as intellectual capital and uses the strategies of human resource development in all development processes. The strategies of human resource development will enhance the ability of human resources in the organization and the country.

Keywords: Human Resource Development Strategy, Automotive industry, Eco-Cars, ASEAN.

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Authors: Abdelrahman Taha, Niloofar Malekghaini, Hamed Ebrahimian, Ramin Motamed

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This paper compares the substructure and direct approaches for soil-structure interaction (SSI) analysis in the time domain. In the substructure approach, the soil domain is replaced by a set of springs and dashpots, also referred to as the impedance function, derived through the study of the behavior of a massless rigid foundation. The impedance function is inherently frequency dependent, i.e., it varies as a function of the frequency content of the structural response. To use the frequency-dependent impedance function for time-domain SSI analysis, the impedance function is approximated at the fundamental frequency of the coupled soil-structure system. To explore the potential limitations of the substructure modeling process, a two-dimensional (2D) reinforced concrete frame structure is modeled and analyzed using the direct and substructure approaches. The results show discrepancy between the simulated responses of the direct and substructure models. It is concluded that the main source of discrepancy is likely attributed to the way the impedance functions are calculated, i.e., assuming a massless rigid foundation without considering the presence of the superstructure. Hence, a refined impedance function, considering the presence of the superstructure, shall alternatively be developed. This refined impedance function is expected to improve the simulation accuracy of the substructure approach.

Keywords: Direct approach, impedance function, massless rigid foundation, soil-structure interaction, substructure approach.

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Authors: Po-Hsieh Lin, Jyi-Tsong Lin

Abstract:

A vertical SOI-based MOSFET with trench body structure operated as 1T DRAM cell at various temperatures has been studied and investigated. Different operation temperatures are assigned for the device for its performance comparison, thus the thermal stability is carefully evaluated for the future memory device applications. Based on the simulation, the vertical SOI-based MOSFET with trench body structure demonstrates the electrical characteristics properly and possess conspicuous kink effect at various operation temperatures. Transient characteristics were also performed to prove that its programming window values and retention time behaviors are acceptable when the new 1T DRAM cell is operated at high operation temperature.

Keywords: SOI, 1T DRAM, thermal stability.

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Authors: Irfah Najihah Basir Malan, Norhana Salamudin, Noryati Ahmad

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Corporate ownership structure is an important factor influencing firm performance. This study aims to answer the question whether pyramid structure has negative effect on firm value. This study is important because the ownership of public listed companies in Malaysia is highly concentrated. The concentrated ownership such as Malaysia, agency conflict is prevalent between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders. Accordingly, the dominant role of shareholders in firms allows the controlling shareholders (including managers) to expropriate the interest of the minority shareholders for their own private advantage. This research is conducted on pyramidal firms in Malaysia. Applying the Attig Model as the underlying statistical test, it is found that firm value is negatively related to pyramid ownership of Malaysian public listed firms due to the mismatch between cash flow rights and control rights. Future research needs to focus on identifying the heterogeneous factors that improve the generalizability of research.

Keywords: Pyramid structure, Cash flow right, Control right, Firm value, Attig model.

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Authors: F. Gurkalo, K. Poutos

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Earthquakes produce some of the most violent loading situations that a structure can be subjected to and if a structure fails under these loads then inevitably human life is put at risk. One of the most common methods by which a structure fails under seismic loading is at the connection of structural elements. The research presented in this paper investigates the interlock systems as a novel method for building structures. The main objective of this experimental study wasto determine the dynamic characteristics and the seismic behaviour of the proposed structures compared to conventional structural systemsduring seismic motions. Results of this study indicate that the interlock mechanism of the panels influences the behaviour of lateral load-resisting systems of the structures during earthquakes, contributing to better structural flexibility and easier maintenance.

Keywords: Watertower, earthquake, seismic, interlocked panels

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Authors: Arash Taheri

Abstract:

In this paper, Lagrangian coherent structure (LCS) concept is applied to wake flows generated in the up/down-stream of a swimming nematode C. elegans in an intermediate Re number range, i.e., 250-1200. It materializes Lagrangian hidden structures depicting flow transport barriers. To pursue the goals, nematode swimming in a quiescent fluid flow environment is numerically simulated by a two-way fluid-structure interaction (FSI) approach with the aid of immersed boundary method (IBM). In this regard, incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, fully-coupled with Lagrangian deformation equations for the immersed body, are solved using IB2d code. For all simulations, nematode’s body is modeled with a parametrized spring-fiber built-in case available in the computational code. Reverse von-Kármán vortex street formation and vortex shedding characteristics are studied and discussed in details via LCS approach, including grid resolution, integration time and Reynolds number effects. Results unveil presence of different flow regions with distinct fluid particle fates in the swimming animal’s wake and formation of so-called ‘mushroom-shaped’ structures in attracting LCS identities.

Keywords: Lagrangian coherent structure, nematode swimming, fluid-structure interaction, immersed boundary method, bionics.

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Authors: Jing Wang, Yong Wang

Abstract:

For organizational development, employee well-being is critical and has been influenced deeply by character strengths. Therefore, investigating the relationship between character strengths and employee well-being and its inner mechanism is crucial. In this study, we explored the features of Chinese employees' character strengths, studied the relationship between character strengths and employees' subjective well-being, work well-being and psychological well-being respectively, and examined the mediating effect of work-family relationship (both enrichment and conflict). An online survey was conducted. The results showed that: (1) The top five character strengths of Chinese employees were gratitude, citizenship, kindness, appreciation of beauty and excellence, justice, while the bottom five ones were creativity, authenticity, bravery, spirituality, open-mindedness. (2) Subjective well-being was significantly correlated to courage, humanity, transcendence and justice. Work well-being was significantly correlated to wisdom, courage, humanity, justice and transcendence. Psychological well-being was significantly correlated to all the above five character strengths and temperance. (3) Wisdom and humanity influenced Chinese employees’ subjective well-being through work-family enrichment. Justice enhanced psychological well-being via work-family enrichment; meanwhile, it also played a positive role in subjective well-being, work well-being, and psychological well-being by decreasing the family-work conflict. At the end of this paper, some theoretical and practical contributions to organizational management were further discussed.

Keywords: Character strengths, work-family conflict, work-family enrichment, employee well-being, work well-being.

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Authors: Spiros Mazarakis, George Matzavinos, Peter P. Groumpos

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Economic models are complex dynamic systems with a lot of uncertainties and fuzzy data. Conventional modeling approaches using well known methods and techniques cannot provide realistic and satisfactory answers to today-s challenging economic problems. Qualitative modeling using fuzzy logic and intelligent system theories can be used to model macroeconomic models. Fuzzy Cognitive maps (FCM) is a new method been used to model the dynamic behavior of complex systems. For the first time FCMs and the Mamdani Model of Intelligent control is used to model macroeconomic models. This new model is referred as the Mamdani Rule-Based Fuzzy Cognitive Map (MBFCM) and provides the academic and research community with a new promising integrated advanced computational model. A new economic model is developed for a qualitative approach to Macroeconomic modeling. Fuzzy Controllers for such models are designed. Simulation results for an economic scenario are provided and extensively discussed

Keywords: Macroeconomic Models, Mamdani Rule Based- FCMs(MBFCMs), Qualitative and Dynamics System, Simulation.

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Authors: E. Ghabouli

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Intermediate cities which also called medium size cities have an important role in the process of globalization. It is argued that, in some cases this type of cities may be depopulated or in otherwise may be transformed as the periphery of metropolitans, so that the personal identity of the city and its local cultural heritage could suffer from its neighbor metropolitan. Over the last decades, the role of tourism in the development process and the cultural heritage has increased. The impact of tourism on socioeconomic growth makes motivation for the study of tourism development in regional and urban planning process. There are evidences that tourism has a positive impact in local development and makes economic motivations for cultural heritage protection. In this study, by considering the role of tourism in local development, especially by its economic and socio-cultural impacts, it is tried to introduce a strategy for tourism development through a method of urban planning for intermediate cities called as Base plan. Damavand is an intermediate city located in Tehran province, Iran with a high potential in tourism by its local specific characteristic like social structure, antiquities and natural attractions. It’s selected as a suitable case study for intended strategy which is a combination of urban planning and tourism development methods. Focusing on recognition of the historical and cultural heritage of Damavand, in this paper through “base plan methodology” a strategy of urban planning toward tourism development is prepared in order to make tourism development as a support for cultural heritage of this city.

Keywords: Urban planning, tourism, cultural heritage, intermediate cities.

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Authors: Mario Gómez, José Carlos Rodríguez

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This paper analyzes the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis to test the causality relationship between economic activity, trade openness and carbon dioxide emissions in Mexico (1971-2011). The results achieved in this research show that there are three long-run relationships between production, trade openness, energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. The EKC hypothesis was not verified in this research. Indeed, it was found evidence of a short-term unidirectional causality from GDP and GDP squared to carbon dioxide emissions, from GDP, GDP squared and TO to EC, and bidirectional causality between TO and GDP. Finally, it was found evidence of long-term unidirectional causality from all variables to carbon emissions. These results suggest that a reduction in energy consumption, economic activity, or an increase in trade openness would reduce pollution.

Keywords: Energy consumption, environmental Kuznets curve, economic growth, causality, co-integration.

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