Search results for: social impact

Authors: T. M. Mousa-Balabel, M. A. Salama

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The effect of shearing date on behaviors and performances of 20 pregnant Rahmani ewes was evaluated in four groups (5each). Ewes were shorn at 70, 100 and 130 days of pregnancy in the first three groups respectively, while the fourth group was maintained unshorn as a control. Some behavioral and physiological data related to ewes in addition, blood cortisol level were recorded. Results revealed a significant increase in the frequencies of comfort and eating behaviors, respiratory rate, pulse rate, lamb birth weight and blood cortisol level in early and mid pregnancy shorn ewes. Also, a slight increase in pregnancy period was observed for those ewes. On the other hand, social behaviors, and core temperature were not affected by shearing. These results conclude that prenatal shearing (early and mid-pregnancy) of ewes increases the frequencies of comfort and eating behaviors, and improves the survival rates of lambs by increasing their birth weights.

Keywords: behavior, blood cortisol, pregnant rahmani ewes, shearing.

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Authors: Shahrina Md Nordin, Zulhamri Abdullah, Yuhanis Abdul Aziz

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The purpose of this paper is to examine the current state of corporate social responsibility statements on corporate websites of Malaysian and Singaporean corporations and analyze how the CSR statements contribute in building a unique corporate identity of corporations. Content analysis is employed to examine the websites of Malaysian and Singaporean consumer corporations. It is believed that generally most companies tend to publish and communicate their CSR statements visibly to general stakeholders. However, there is a significantly different outcome of the articulation of CSR on practices on websites between Malaysian and Singaporean consumer corporations. A number of Singaporean organizations were found less concerned with CSR practices as compared to Malaysian organizations. The findings indicate a need for corporations in Malaysia and Singapore to orchestrate their core competence of CSR activities in order to develop a unique corporate identity in a global business environment.

Keywords: Corporate identity, Corporate Social Responsibility, Asian country.

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Authors: P. Mbecke

Abstract:

The role of the government to tangibly alleviate poverty, improve and sustain the quality of people’s lives remains a “work in progress” twenty-two years after the dawn of democracy in South Africa despite a host of socio-economic programs and pro-poor policies and legislations. This paper assesses the development process and the implementation of the White Paper on Families in South Africa as one of the pro-poor policies intended to curb poverty and redress the imbalances of the apartheid regime. The paper is the result of a qualitative implementation research theory facilitated through in-depth interviews with social work managers complemented by literature and policy review techniques. It investigates the level of basic knowledge and understanding as well as the implementation challenges of the White Paper on Families as causes of its failure. The paper emphasizes the importance of the family-centered approach in the implementation of pro-poor policies. To facilitate the understanding of the White Paper on Families by its users, the Department of Social Development needs take stock of the identified challenges of its implementation so as to facilitate its success in fostering positive family well-being that will directly contributes to the overall socio-economic development of South Africa.

Keywords: Poverty alleviation, pro-poor policy, social development, social welfare, South Africa.

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Authors: Soon-Tai Park, Jong-Whoi Shin, Bog-Ki Min, Ik-Sub Lee, Gang-Shin Lee, Jae-Il Lee

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As the information age matures, major social infrastructures such as communication, finance, military and energy, have become ever more dependent on information communication systems. And since these infrastructures are connected to the Internet, electronic intrusions such as hacking and viruses have become a new security threat. Especially, disturbance or neutralization of a major social infrastructure can result in extensive material damage and social disorder. To address this issue, many nations around the world are researching and developing various techniques and information security policies as a government-wide effort to protect their infrastructures from newly emerging threats. This paper proposes an evaluation method for information security levels of CIIP (Critical Information Infrastructure Protection), which can enhance the security level of critical information infrastructure by checking the current security status and establish security measures accordingly to protect infrastructures effectively.

Keywords: Information Security Evaluation Methodology, Critical Information Infrastructure Protection.

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Authors: F. Pottmeyer, M. Weispfenning, K. A. Weidenmann

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Continuous carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) exhibit a high application potential for lightweight structures due to their outstanding specific mechanical properties. Embedded metal elements, so-called inserts, can be used to join structural CFRP parts. Drilling of the components to be joined can be avoided using inserts. In consequence, no bearing stress is anticipated. This is a distinctive benefit of embedded inserts, since continuous CFRP have low shear and bearing strength. This paper aims at the investigation of the load bearing capacity after preinduced damages from impact tests and thermal-cycling. In addition, characterization of mechanical properties during dynamic high speed pull-out testing under different loading velocities was conducted. It has been shown that the load bearing capacity increases up to 100% for very high velocities (15 m/s) in comparison with quasi-static loading conditions (1.5 mm/min). Residual strength measurements identified the influence of thermal loading and preinduced mechanical damage. For both, the residual strength was evaluated afterwards by quasi-static pull-out tests. Taking into account the DIN EN 6038 a high decrease of force occurs at impact energy of 16 J with significant damage of the laminate. Lower impact energies of 6 J, 9 J, and 12 J do not decrease the measured residual strength, although the laminate is visibly damaged - distinguished by cracks on the rear side. To evaluate the influence of thermal loading, the specimens were placed in a climate chamber and were exposed to various numbers of temperature cycles. One cycle took 1.5 hours from -40 °C to +80 °C. It could be shown that already 10 temperature cycles decrease the load bearing capacity up to 20%. Further reduction of the residual strength with increasing number of thermal cycles was not observed. Thus, it implies that the maximum damage of the composite is already induced after 10 temperature cycles.

Keywords: Composite, joining, inserts, dynamic loading, thermal loading, residual strength, impact.

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Authors: Emilia Nercissians

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The paper attempts to contribute to the largely neglected social and anthropological discussion of technology development on the one hand, and to redirecting the emphasis in anthropology from primitive and exotic societies to problems of high relevance in contemporary era and how technology is used in everyday life. It draws upon multidimensional models of intelligence and ideal type formation. It is argued that the predominance of computational and cognitive cosmovisions have led to technology alienation. Injection of communicative competence in artificially intelligent systems and identity technologies in the coming information society are analyzed

Keywords: convergence, nomadic computing, solidarity, status.

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Authors: Mina Fenercioglu

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This study discusses a Turkish music education model similar to its Venezuelan counterpart El Sistema, in which socialization and human development are the main goals. The Music for Peace (Baris Icin Muzik) model, founded in 2005 by an idealist humanitarian in Istanbul, started as a pilot project with accordion and today makes symphonic music education. The program aims to offer social change through free-of-charge. In such a big city like Istanbul, in a deprived inner city center people have poor economic, social and cultural conditions. In that Edirnekapi district people don’t have opportunities to join the cultural and social life, like music or sports. It is believed that this initiative covered a part of this gap by giving children the opportunities to participate in social and cultural life. In this study it is planned to understand what social changes could music education could make in children’s lives. In the complimentary music lessons children works in groups, which helps them to learn the feelings of solidarity, friendship, communion and sharing. By Music for Peace project children connect with the community, they have the belief to succeed in life because they feel that they are loved by their friends, instructors and families. In short they feel that they are important, thus brings the success in life. Additionally, it is believed that, this program has achieved success. Today approximately 400 children participate in this programs orchestras and choirs. Some of the students get into the conservatories. And the center is not just a place where they get music lessons but also a place where they get socialized. And music education helps children to have strong sense of identity, self-confidence and self-esteem.

Keywords: El Sistema, music education, Music for Peace, socialization.

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Authors: B. Schmid, C. Kexel, E. Djafarova

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Understanding consumers is elementary for practitioners in marketing. Consumers of sports events, the sports spectators, are a particularly complex consumer crowd. In order to identify and define their profiles different segmentation approaches can be found in literature, one of them being multidimensional segmentation. Multidimensional segmentation models correspond to the broad range of attitudes, behaviours, motivations and beliefs of sports spectators, other than earlier models. Moreover, in sports there are some well-researched disciplines (e.g. football or North American sports) where consumer profiles and marketing strategies are elaborate and others where no research at all can be found. For example, there is almost no research on athletics spectators. This paper explores the current state of research on sports spectators segmentation. An in-depth literature review provides the framework for a spectators segmentation in athletics. On this basis, additional potential consumer groups and implications for social media marketing will be explored. The findings are the basis for further research.

Keywords: Multidimensional segmentation, social media, sports marketing, sports spectators segmentation.

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Authors: Petr Mohyla, Ivo Hlavatý, Jiří Hrubý, Lucie Krejčí

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This work is focused on mechanical properties and microstructure of heat affected zone (HAZ) of steel P92. The thermal cycle simulator was used for modeling a fine grained zone of HAZ. Hardness and impact toughness were measured on simulated samples. Microstructural analysis using optical microscopy was performed on selected samples. Achieved results were compared with the values of a real welded joint. The thermal cycle simulator allows transferring the properties of very small HAZ to the sufficiently large sample where the tests of the mechanical properties can be performed. A satisfactory accordance was found when comparing the microstructure and mechanical properties of real welds and simulated samples.

Keywords: Heat affected zone, impact test, thermal cycle simulator and time of tempering.

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Authors: T.G. Basavaraju, Subir Kumar Sarkar, C Puttamadappa

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Mobile Ad hoc Networks is an autonomous system of mobile nodes connected by multi-hop wireless links without centralized infrastructure support. As mobile communication gains popularity, the need for suitable ad hoc routing protocols will continue to grow. Efficient dynamic routing is an important research challenge in such a network. Bandwidth constrained mobile devices use on-demand approach in their routing protocols because of its effectiveness and efficiency. Many researchers have conducted numerous simulations for comparing the performance of these protocols under varying conditions and constraints. Most of them are not aware of MAC Protocols, which will impact the relative performance of routing protocols considered in different network scenarios. In this paper we investigate the choice of MAC protocols affects the relative performance of ad hoc routing protocols under different scenarios. We have evaluated the performance of these protocols using NS2 simulations. Our results show that the performance of routing protocols of ad hoc networks will suffer when run over different MAC Layer protocols.

Keywords: AODV, DSR, DSDV, MAC, MANETs, relativeperformance

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Authors: Gavin J. Baxter, Mark H. Stansfield

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This paper reviews the internal use of blogs and their potential effectiveness as organisational learning tools. Since the emergence of the concept of ‘Enterprise 2.0’ there remains a lack of empirical evidence associated with how organisations are applying social media tools and whether they are effective towards supporting organisational learning. Surprisingly, blogs, one of the more traditional social media tools, still remains under-researched in the context of ‘Enterprise 2.0’ and organisational learning. The aim of this paper is to identify the theoretical linkage between blogs and organisational learning in addition to reviewing prior research on organisational blogging exploring why this area remains underresearched. Through a literature review, one of the principal findings of this paper is that organisational blogs have a mutual compatibility with the interpretivist aspect of organisational learning. This paper further advocates that further empirical work in this subject area is required to substantiate this theoretical assumption.

Keywords: Blogs, Enterprise 2.0, Organisational Learning, Social Media Tools.

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Authors: Eduardo da Silva, Tânia Caetano, Jessica B. Lopes

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Emotion dysregulation has been linked to psychopathology in general and, in particular, to substance abuse and other addiction-related disorders, such as eating disorders, impulsive disorder, and gambling. It has been proposed that a lessening of the difficulties in emotion regulation can have a significant positive impact on the treatment of these disorders. The present study explores the association between the progress in the Change & Grow^® therapeutic model (5 stages of treatment), and the decrease in the difficulties related to emotion regulation. The Change & Grow^® model has five stages of treatment according to the model’s five principles (Truth, Acceptance, Gratitude, Love and Responsibility) and incorporates different therapeutic approaches such as positive psychology, cognitive and behavioral therapy and third generation therapies. The main objective is to understand the impact of the presented therapeutic model on difficulties in emotion regulation in patients with addiction-related disorders. The exploratory study has a cross-sectional design. Participants were 44 (15 women and 29 men) Portuguese patients in the residential Villa Ramadas International Treatment Centre. The instrument used was the Portuguese version of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), which measures six dimensions of emotion regulation (Strategies, Non-acceptance, Awareness, Impulse, Goals, and Clarity). The mean rank scores for both the DERS total score and the Impulse subscale showed statistically significant differences according to Stage of Treatment/Principles. Furthermore, Stage of Treatment/Principles held a negative correlation with the scores of the Non-acceptance and Impulse subscales, as well as the DERS total score. The results indicate that the Change & Grow^® model seems to have an impact in lessening the patient’s difficulties in emotion regulation. The Impulse dimension suffered the greater impact, which supports the well-known relevance of impulse control, or related difficulties, in addiction-related disorders.

Keywords: Addiction, Change & Grow®, emotion regulation, psychopathology.

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Authors: Jooyeon Yook, Wonjun Ko

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As the Social network game(SNG) is rising dramatically worldwide, an interesting aspect has appeared in the demographic analysis. That is the ratio of the game users by gender. Although the ratio of male and female users in online game was 60:40% previously, the ratio of male and female users in SNG stood at 47:53% which shows that the ratio of female users is higher than that of male users. Here, it should be noted that 35% in those 53% female users are the first-time users of game. This fact suggests that women who were not interested in game previously has taken an interest in SNG. Notwithstanding this issue, there have been little studies on the female users of SNG although there are many studies that analyzed the tendency of female users- online game play. This study conducted the analyzed how the game-playing tendency of SNG gamers was manifested in the game by gender. For that, this study will identify the tendency of SNG users by gender based on the preceding studies that analyzed the online game users by gender. The subject of this study was confined to the farm and urban construction simulation games which were offered based on the mobile application platform. Regarding the methodology of study, the first focus group interview(FGI) was conducted with the male and female users who had played games on Social network service(SNS) until recently. Later, the second one-on-one in-depth interview was conducted to gain an insight into the psychological state of the subjects.

Keywords: Social network Game, Gender, Play inclination, Game psychology

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Authors: Nikolaos Georgantzis, Efi Vasileiou

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We present results from experimental price-setting oligopolies in which green firms undertake different levels of energy-saving investments motivated by public subsidies and demand-side advantages. We find that consumers reveal higher willingness to pay for greener sellers’ products. This observation in conjunction to the fact that greener sellers set higher prices is compatible with the use and interpretation of energy-saving behaviour as a differentiation strategy. However, sellers do not exploit the resulting advantage through sufficiently high price-cost margins, because they seem trapped into “run to stay still” competition. Regarding the use of public subsidies to energy-saving sellers we uncover an undesirable crowding-out effect of consumers’ intrinsic tendency to support green manufacturers. Namely, consumers may be less willing to support a green seller whose energy-saving strategy entails a direct financial benefit. Finally, we disentangle two alternative motivations for consumer’s attractions to pro-social firms; first, the self-interested recognition of the firm’s contribution to the public and private welfare and, second, the need to compensate a firm for the cost entailed in each pro-social action. Our results show the prevalence of the former over the latter.

Keywords: Corporate social responsibility, energy savings, public good, experiments, vertical differentiation, altruism.

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Authors: Fu Shiming, Pei Yifei

Abstract:

To study the impact of the inter-module ventilation (IMV) on the space station, the Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) model under the influence of IMV, the mathematical model, boundary conditions and calculation method are established and determined to analyze the influence of IMV on cabin air flow characteristics and velocity distribution firstly; and then an integrated overall thermal mathematical model of the space station is used to consider the impact of IMV on thermal management. The results show that: the IMV has a significant influence on the cabin air flow, the flowrate of IMV within a certain range can effectively improve the air velocity distribution in cabin, if too much may lead to its deterioration; IMV can affect the heat deployment of the different modules in space station, thus affecting its thermal management, the use of IMV can effectively maintain the temperature levels of the different modules and help the space station to dissipate the waste heat.

Keywords: CFD, Environment control and life support, Space station, Thermal management, Thermal mathematical model.

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Authors: Eman AbuKhousa, Marwan Z. Bataineh

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The 21^st century higher education and globalization challenge new faculty members to build effective professional networks and partnership with industry in order to accelerate their growth and success. This creates the need for community of practice (CoP)-oriented development approaches that focus on cognitive apprenticeship while considering individual predisposition and future career needs. This work adopts data mining, clustering analysis, and social networking technologies to present the CoP-Network as a virtual space that connects together similar career-aspiration individuals who are socially influenced to join and engage in a process for domain-related knowledge and practice acquisitions. The CoP-Network model can be integrated into higher education to extend traditional graduate and professional development programs.

Keywords: Clustering analysis, community of practice, data mining, higher education, new faculty challenges, social networks, social influence, professional development.

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Authors: L.Tahmooresnejad, M.A.Shafia, R.Salami

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Technology transfer is a common method for companies to acquire new technology and presents both challenges and substantial benefits. In some cases especially in developing countries, the mere possession of technology does not guarantee a competitive advantage if the appropriate infrastructure is not in place. In this paper, we identify the localization factors needed to provide a better understanding of the conditions necessary for localization in order to benefit from future technology developments. Our theoretical and empirical analyses allow us to identify several factors in the technology transfer process that affect localization and provide leverage in enhancing capabilities and absorptive capacity.The impact factors are categorized within different groups of government, firms, institutes and market, and are verified through the empirical survey of a technology transfer experience. Moreover, statistical analysis has allowed a deeper understanding of the importance of each factor and has enabled each group to prioritize their organizational policies to effectively localize their technology.

Keywords: Absorption Capacity, Adaptation, Technology Transfer, Technology Localization

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Authors: Eui Jun Jeong, Hye Rim Lee

Abstract:

This study examined whether big five personality traits affect game addiction with control of psychological, social, and demographic factors. Specifically, using data from a survey of 789 game users in Korea, we conducted a regression analysis to see the associations of psychological (loneliness/depression), social (activities with family/friends), self-efficacy (game/general), gaming (daily gaming time/perception), demographic (age/gender), and personality traits (extraversion, neuroticism conscientiousness, agreeableness, & openness) with the degree of game addiction. Results showed that neuroticism increase game addiction with no effect of extraversion on the addiction. General self-efficacy negatively affected game addiction, whereas game self-efficacy increased the degree of game addiction. Loneliness enhanced game addiction while depression showed a negative effect on the addiction. Results and implications are discussed.

Keywords: Game addiction, big five personality, social activities, self-efficacy, loneliness, depression.

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Authors: Mikel Niño, Roberto V. Zicari, Todor Ivanov, Kim Hee, Naveed Mushtaq, Marten Rosselli, Concha Sánchez-Ocaña, Karsten Tolle, José Miguel Blanco, Arantza Illarramendi, Jörg Besier, Harry Underwood

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One of the application fields for data analysis techniques and technologies gaining momentum is the area of social good or “common good”, covering cases related to humanitarian crises, global health care, or ecology and environmental issues, among others. The promotion of data-driven projects in this field aims at increasing the efficacy and efficiency of social initiatives, improving the way these actions help humanity in general and people in need in particular. This application field, however, poses its own barriers and challenges when developing data-driven projects, lagging behind in comparison with other scenarios. These challenges derive from aspects such as the scope and scale of the social issue to solve, cultural and political barriers, the skills of main stakeholders and the technological resources available, the motivation to be engaged in such projects, or the ethical and legal issues related to sensitive data. This paper analyzes the application of data projects in the field of social good, reviewing its current state and noteworthy initiatives, and presenting a framework covering the key aspects to analyze in such projects. The goal is to provide guidelines to understand the main challenges and opportunities for this type of data project, as well as identifying the main differential issues compared to “classical” data projects in general. A case study is presented on the initial steps and stakeholder analysis of a data project for the inclusion of refugees in the city of Frankfurt, Germany, in order to empirically confront the framework with a real example.

Keywords: Data-Driven projects, humanitarian operations, personal and sensitive data, social good, stakeholders analysis.

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Authors: Camelia Iuliana Lungu, Chirața Caraiani, Cornelia Dascălu

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The business strategy of any company wanting to be competitive on the market should be designed around the concept of intangibles, with an increasingly decisive role in knowledge transfer of the biggest corporations. Advancing the research in these areas, this study integrates the two approaches, emphasizing the relationships between the components of intellectual capital and corporate social responsibility. The three dimensions of intellectual capital in terms of sustainability requirements are debated. The paper introduces the concept of sustainable intellectual capital and debates it within an assessment model designed on the base of key performance indicators. The results refer to the assessment of possible ways for including the information on intellectual capital and corporate responsibility within the corporate strategy. The conclusions enhance the need for companies to be ready to support the integration of this type of information the knowledge transfer process, in order to develop competitive advantage on the market.

Keywords: Corporate social responsibility, corporate strategy, intellectual capital, sustainability

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Authors: S.A. Alqallaf, S.A. Al-Mawsawi, A. Haider

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In order to evaluate the performance of a unified power flow controller (UPFC), mathematical models for steady state and dynamic analysis are to be developed. The steady state model is mainly concerned with the incorporation of the UPFC in load flow studies. Several load flow models for UPFC have been introduced in literature, and one of the most reliable models is the decoupled UPFC model. In spite of UPFC decoupled load flow model simplicity, it is more robust compared to other UPFC load flow models and it contains unique capabilities. Some shortcoming such as additional set of nonlinear equations are to be solved separately after the load flow solution is obtained. The aim of this study is to investigate the different control strategies that can be realized in the decoupled load flow model (individual control and combined control), and the impact of the location of the UPFC in the network on its control parameters.

Keywords: UPFC, Decoupled model, Load flow.

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Authors: Maya Rupert, Salima Hassas, Carlos Li, John Sherwood

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Online Communities are an example of sociallyaware, self-organising, complex adaptive computing systems. The multi-agent systems (MAS) paradigm coordinated by self-organisation mechanisms has been used as an effective way for the simulation and modeling of such systems. In this paper, we propose a model for simulating an online health community using a situated multi-agent system approach, governed by the co-evolution of the social and spatial organisations of the agents.

Keywords: multi-agent systems, organizations, online communities.

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Authors: Stéphanie Leheis

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To fight against the economic crisis, French Government, like many others in Europe, has decided to give a boost to high-speed line projects. This paper explores the implementation and decision-making process in TGV projects, their evolutions, especially since the Mediterranean TGV-line. This project was probably the most controversial, but paradoxically represents today a huge success for all the actors involved. What kind of lessons we can learn from this experience? How to evaluate the impact of this project on TGV-line planning? How can we characterize this implementation and decision-making process regards to the sustainability challenges? The construction of Mediterranean TGV-line was the occasion to make several innovations: to introduce more dialog into the decisionmaking process, to take into account the environment, to introduce a new project management and technological innovations. That-s why this project appears today as an example in terms of integration of sustainable development. In this paper we examine the different kinds of innovations developed in this project, by using concepts from sociology of innovation to understand how these solutions emerged in a controversial situation. Then we analyze the lessons which were drawn from this decision-making process (in the immediacy and a posteriori) and the way in which procedures evolved: creation of new tools and devices (public consultation, project management...). Finally we try to highlight the impact of this evolution on TGV projects governance. In particular, new methods of implementation and financing involve a reconfiguration of the system of actors. The aim of this paper is to define the impact of this reconfiguration on negotiations between stakeholders.

Keywords: High-speed train, innovation, governance, sustainability.

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Authors: Martin H¨ausl, Maximilian Auch, Johannes Forster, Peter Mandl, Alexander Schill

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In order to survive on the market, companies must constantly develop improved and new products. These products are designed to serve the needs of their customers in the best possible way. The creation of new products is also called innovation and is primarily driven by a company’s internal research and development department. However, a new approach has been taking place for some years now, involving external knowledge in the innovation process. This approach is called open innovation and identifies customer knowledge as the most important source in the innovation process. This paper presents a concept of using social media posts as an external source to support the open innovation approach in its initial phase, the Ideation phase. For this purpose, the social media posts are semantically structured with the help of an ontology and the authors are evaluated using graph-theoretical metrics such as density. For the structuring and evaluation of relevant social media posts, we also use the findings of Natural Language Processing, e. g. Named Entity Recognition, specific dictionaries, Triple Tagger and Part-of-Speech-Tagger. The selection and evaluation of the tools used are discussed in this paper. Using our ontology and metrics to structure social media posts enables users to semantically search these posts for new product ideas and thus gain an improved insight into the external sources such as customer needs.

Keywords: Idea ontology, innovation management, open innovation, semantic search.

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Authors: Satya Ranjan Acharya, Yamini Chandra

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Entrepreneurship through higher education has taken a paradigm shift from traditional classroom lecture series method to a modern approach, which lay emphasis on nurturing competencies, enhancing knowledge, skills, attitudes/abilities (KSA), which has positive impact on the development of core capabilities. The present paper was focused on the analysis of entrepreneurship education as a pedagogical intervention for the post-graduate program offered at the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, Gujarat, India. The study is focused on a model with special emphasis on developing KSA and its effect on nurturing entrepreneurial spirit within students. The findings represent demographic and thematic assessment of the implemented pedagogical model with an outcome of students choosing a career in new venture creation or growth/diversification of family owned businesses. This research will be helpful for academicians, research scholars, potential entrepreneurs, ecosystem enablers and students to infer the effectiveness of nurturing entrepreneurial skills and bringing more changes in personal attitudes by the way of enhancing the knowledge and skills required for the execution of an entrepreneurial career. This research is original in nature as it provides an in-depth insight into an implemented model of curriculum, focused on the development and nurturance of basic skills and its impact on the career choice of students.

Keywords: Attitude, entrepreneurship education, knowledge, new venture creation, pedagogical intervention, skills.

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Authors: Chun-Lang Chang

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According to the statistics, the prevalence of congenital hearing loss in Taiwan is approximately six thousandths; furthermore, one thousandths of infants have severe hearing impairment. Hearing ability during infancy has significant impact in the development of children-s oral expressions, language maturity, cognitive performance, education ability and social behaviors in the future. Although most children born with hearing impairment have sensorineural hearing loss, almost every child more or less still retains some residual hearing. If provided with a hearing aid or cochlear implant (a bionic ear) timely in addition to hearing speech training, even severely hearing-impaired children can still learn to talk. On the other hand, those who failed to be diagnosed and thus unable to begin hearing and speech rehabilitations on a timely manner might lose an important opportunity to live a complete and healthy life. Eventually, the lack of hearing and speaking ability will affect the development of both mental and physical functions, intelligence, and social adaptability. Not only will this problem result in an irreparable regret to the hearing-impaired child for the life time, but also create a heavy burden for the family and society. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a set of computer-assisted predictive model that can accurately detect and help diagnose newborn hearing loss so that early interventions can be provided timely to eliminate waste of medical resources. This study uses information from the neonatal database of the case hospital as the subjects, adopting two different analysis methods of using support vector machine (SVM) for model predictions and using logistic regression to conduct factor screening prior to model predictions in SVM to examine the results. The results indicate that prediction accuracy is as high as 96.43% when the factors are screened and selected through logistic regression. Hence, the model constructed in this study will have real help in clinical diagnosis for the physicians and actually beneficial to the early interventions of newborn hearing impairment.

Keywords: Data mining, Hearing impairment, Logistic regression analysis, Support vector machines

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Authors: Natta Changchutoe

Abstract:

This research aimed to study employees- perceptions and expectations toward their organization-s corporate social responsibility (CSR), to study the differences between employees- personal factors and level of perceptions and expectations toward CSR, and to study the relationship between employees- perceptions and expectations toward CSR. Purposive sampling and questionnaire were applied to collect information from 400 private company employees in Bangkok metropolitan area. The results revealed that employees had “high" level of perceptions and expectations toward CSR, of which the highest level were given on the area of “corporate governance and transparency". It was found that there was different level of expectations of employees with different period of employment, position and employment (by listed and non-listed companies). Employees of different age and period of employment also had different level of expectations. Employees- perceptions were correlated with their expectations toward CSR.

Keywords: Employees, Perceptions, Expectations, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

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Authors: Vasileios Anastopoulos

Abstract:

Cyber threat intelligence assists organisations in understanding the threats they face and helps them make educated decisions on preparing their defences. Sharing of threat intelligence and threat information is increasingly leveraged by organisations and enterprises, and various software solutions are already available, with the open-source malware information sharing platform (MISP) being a popular one. In this work, a methodology for the production of cyber threat intelligence using the threat information stored in MISP is proposed. The methodology leverages the discipline of social network analysis and the diamond model, a model used for intrusion analysis, to produce cyber threat intelligence. The workings of the proposed methodology are demonstrated with a case study on a production MISP instance of a real organisation. The paper concludes with a discussion on the proposed methodology and possible directions for further research.

Keywords: Cyber threat intelligence, diamond model, malware information sharing platform, social network analysis.

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Authors: K. Bokreta, D. Benanaya

Abstract:

The objective of this study is to examine the relative effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policy in Algeria using the econometric modelling techniques of cointegration and vector error correction modelling to analyse and draw policy inferences. The chosen variables of fiscal policy are government expenditure and net taxes on products, while the effect of monetary policy is presented by the inflation rate and the official exchange rate. From the results, we find that in the long-run, the impact of government expenditures is positive, while the effect of taxes is negative on growth. Additionally, we find that the inflation rate is found to have little effect on GDP per capita but the impact of the exchange rate is insignificant. We conclude that fiscal policy is more powerful then monetary policy in promoting economic growth in Algeria.

Keywords: Economic growth, fiscal policy, monetary policy, VECM.

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Authors: Raghav Lakhotia, Sameer Ganu, Anshul Goel, Abhishek Kumar

Abstract:

In the age and times where women’s empowerment is a significant topic of discussion, we aim to analyze the potential gender diversity influence on box office revenues. The following research is carried out by collecting data from 400 Hollywood movies between the years 2014-2017 and performing regression analysis to find a correlation between the presence of female characters in movies and their return on investment (ROI). The paper finds that there is a positive relationship between the performance of the movies (its ROI) and the gender diversity i.e. the more the number of female characters, the higher the revenue generated. Another factor such as Number of Votes also has a direct impact on the revenue of the movie. The research not only takes into consideration the mere presence of women on screen but also the exchange of at least one dialogue among themselves, which is presented by the Bechdel Score of the movie.

Keywords: Bechdel, diversity, Hollywood, return on investment.

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