Search results for: Economic Order Policy

Authors: Klio Monokrousou, Maria Giannopoulou

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Urban areas, as they have been developed and operate today, are areas of accumulation of a significant amount of people and a large number of activities that generate desires and reasons for traveling. The territorial expansion of the cities as well as the need to preserve the importance of the central city areas lead to the continuous increase of transportation needs which in the limited urban space results in creating serious traffic and operational problems. The modern perception of urban planning is directed towards more holistic approaches and integrated policies that make it economically competitive, socially just and more environmentally friendly. Over the last 25 years, the goal of sustainable transport development has been central to the agenda of any plan or policy for the city. The modern planning of urban space takes into account the economic and social aspects of the city and the importance of the environment to sustainable urban development. In this context, the European Union promotes direct or indirect related interventions according to the cohesion and environmental policies; many countries even had the chance to actually test them. This paper explores the methods and processes that have been developed towards this direction and presents a review and systematic presentation of this work. The ultimate purpose of this research is to effectively use this review to create a decision making methodological framework which can be the basis of a useful operational tool for sustainable urban planning.

Keywords: Sustainable urban development, urban mobility, urban regeneration methods.

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Authors: Pradeep Kulshrestha, Maulana Ayoub Ali

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The concept of financial inclusion has been tabled in the whole world where practitioners, academicians, policy makers and economists are working hard to look for the best possible opportunities in order to enable the whole society to be in the banking cycle. The Islamic banking system is considered to be one of the said opportunities. Countries like the United Kingdom, United States of America, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the whole of the United Arab Emirates and many African countries have accommodated the aspect of Islamic banking in the conventional banking system as one of the financial inclusion strategies. This paper tries to analyse the current state of affairs of the Islamic Banking system in Tanzania in order to understand the improvement of the provision of Islamic banking products and services in the said country. The paper discusses the historical background of the banking system in Tanzania, the level of penetration of banking products and services and the coming of the Islamic banking system in the country. Furthermore, the paper discusses banking regulatory bodies, legal instruments governing banking operations as well as number of legal challenges facing Islamic banking operations in the country. Following a critical literature review, the paper discovered that there is no legal instrument which talks about the introduction and provision of Islamic banking system in Tanzania. Furthermore, the Islamic banking system was considered as a banking product which is absolutely incorrect because Islamic banking is considered to be as a banking system of its own. In addition to that, it has been discovered that lack of a proper regulatory system and legal instruments to harmonize the conventional and Islamic banking systems has resulted in the closure of one Islamic window in the country, which in the end affects the credibility of the newly introduced banking system. In its conclusive remarks, the paper suggests that Tanzania should work on all legal challenges affecting the smooth operations of the Islamic banking system. This can be in a way of adopting various Islamic banking legal models which are used in countries like Malaysia and others, or a borrowing legal harmonization process which has been adopted by the UK, Uganda, Nigeria and Kenya.

Keywords: Islamic banking, Islamic Windows, regulations, banks.

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Authors: K. N. Penna, E. J. Hoffman, T. R. Carter

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This paper suggests that cultural landscape management plans in an Indigenous context are more effective if designed by taking into consideration context-related social and cultural aspects, adopting people-centred and cultural-based approaches for instance. In relation to working in Indigenous and mining contexts, we draw upon and contribute to international policies on human rights that promote the development of management plans that are co-designed through genuine engagement processes. We suggest that the production of management plans that are built upon culturally relevant frameworks leads to more inclusive economic development, a greater sense of trust, and shared managerial responsibilities. In this paper, three issues related to Indigenous engagement and cultural landscape management plans will be addressed: (1) the need for effective communication channels between proponents and Traditional Owners (Australian original Aboriginal peoples who inhabited specific regions), (2) the use of a culturally sensitive approach to engage local representatives in the decision-making processes, and (3) how design of new management plans can help in establishing shared management.

Keywords: Culture-Centred Approach, Holons’ Hierarchy, Inclusive Economic Development, Indigenous Engagement.

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Authors: R. Anitha, R. S. Lekshmi

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Graph decompositions are vital in the study of combinatorial design theory. Given two graphs G and H, an H-decomposition of G is a partition of the edge set of G into disjoint isomorphic copies of H. An n-sun is a cycle Cn with an edge terminating in a vertex of degree one attached to each vertex. In this paper we have proved that the complete graph of order 2n, K2n can be decomposed into n-2 n-suns, a Hamilton cycle and a perfect matching, when n is even and for odd case, the decomposition is n-1 n-suns and a perfect matching. For an odd order complete graph K2n+1, delete the star subgraph K1, 2n and the resultant graph K2n is decomposed as in the case of even order. The method of building n-suns uses Walecki's construction for the Hamilton decomposition of complete graphs. A spanning tree decomposition of even order complete graphs is also discussed using the labeling scheme of n-sun decomposition. A complete bipartite graph Kn, n can be decomposed into n/2 n-suns when n/2 is even. When n/2 is odd, Kn, n can be decomposed into (n-2)/2 n-suns and a Hamilton cycle.

Keywords: Hamilton cycle, n-sun decomposition, perfectmatching, spanning tree.

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Authors: Timothy Akinwande, Eddie C. M. Hui

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Housing the urban poor has remained a challenge for many years across the world, especially in developing economies, despite the apparent research attention and policy interventions. It is apt to investigate the prevalent affordable housing (AH) provision challenges using unconventional approaches. It is pragmatic to thoroughly examine housing experts to provide supply-side solutions to AH challenges and investigate informal settlers to deduce solutions from AH demand viewpoints. This study, being the supply-side investigation of an ongoing research, interrogated housing experts to determine significant expert solutions. Focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were conducted with housing experts in Nigeria. Through descriptive, content, and systematic thematic analyses of data, major findings are that deliberate finance models designed for the urban poor are the most significant housing finance solution in developing economies. Other findings are that adequately implemented rent control policies, deliberate Public-Private Partnership (PPP) approaches like inclusionary housing and land-value capture, and urban renewal programs to enlighten and tutor the urban poor on how to earn more, spend wisely, and invest in their own better housing will effectively solve AH finance challenges. Study findings are informative for the best approaches to achieve effective, AH finance for the urban poor in Nigeria, which is indispensable for the achievement of sustainable development goals. This research’s originality lies in the exploration of experts’ opinions in relation to AH finance to produce an equation model of critical solutions to AH finance challenges. Study data are useful resources for future pro-poor housing studies. This study makes housing policy-oriented recommendations toward effective, AH for the urban poor in developing countries.

Keywords: Affordable housing, effective affordable housing, housing policy, housing research, sustainable development, urban poor.

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Authors: James Moir

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The emergence of person-centred discourse based around notions of 'personal development planning- and 'work'life balance' has taken hold in education and the workplace in recent years. This paper examines this discourse with regard to recent developments in higher education as well as the inter-related issue of work-life balance in occupational careers. In both cases there have been national and trans-national policy initiatives directed towards improving both personal opportunities and competitive advantage in a global knowledge-based economy. However, despite an increasing concern with looking outward at this globalised educational and employment marketplace, there is something of a paradox in encouraging people to look inward at themselves in order to become more self-determined. This apparent paradox is considered from a discourse analytic perspective in terms of the ideological effects of an increasing concern with the personal world. Specifically, it is argued that there are tensions that emerge from a concern with an innerdirected process of self-reflection that dissolve any engagement with wider political issues that impact upon educational and career development.

Keywords: Personal development planning, higher education, work-life balance, career.

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Authors: W. Munyoka, F. M. Manzira

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The purpose of this study is to analyze how varying alignment of e-Government policies in four countries in Sub-Saharan Africa Region, namely South Africa, Seychelles, Mauritius and Cape Verde lead to the success or failure of e-Government; and what should be done to ensure positive alignment that lead to e-Government project growth. In addition, the study aims to understand how various governments’ efforts in e-Government awareness campaign strategies, international cooperation, functional literacy and anticipated organizational change can influence implementation.

This study extensively explores contemporary research undertaken in the field of e-Government and explores the actual respective national ICT policies, strategies and implemented e-Government projects for in-depth comprehension of the status core. Data is analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively to reach a conclusion.

The study found that resounding successes in strategic e-Government alignment was achieved in Seychelles, Mauritius, South Africa and Cape Verde - (Ranked number 1 to 4 respectively).

The implications of the study is that policy makers in developing countries should put mechanisms in place for constant monitoring and evaluation of project implementation in line with ICT policies to ensure that e-Government projects reach maturity levels and do not die mid-way implementation as often noticed in many countries. The study recommends that countries within the region should make consented collaborative efforts and synergies with the private sector players and international donor agencies to achieve the implementation part of the set ICT policies.

Keywords: E-Government, ICT-Policy Alignment, Implementation, Sub-Saharan Africa.

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Authors: G. V. Byrd, B. B. Ghaley, E. Hayashi

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In urban farming, research and innovation are taking place at an unprecedented pace, and soilless growing technologies are emerging at different rates motivated by different objectives in various parts of the world. Local food production is ultimately a main objective everywhere, but adoption rates and expressions vary with socio-economic drivers. Herein, the status of hydroponics and aquaponics is summarized for four countries with diverse socio-economic settings: Europe (Denmark), Asia (Japan and Nepal) and North America (US). In Denmark, with a strong environmental ethic, soilless growing is increasing in urban agriculture because it is considered environmentally friendly. In Japan, soil-based farming is being replaced with commercial plant factories using advanced technology such as complete environmental control and computer monitoring. In Nepal, where rapid loss of agricultural land is occurring near cities, dozens of hydroponics and aquaponics systems have been built in the past decade, particularly in “non-traditional” sites such as roof tops to supplement family food. In the US, where there is also strong interest in locally grown fresh food, backyard and commercial systems have proliferated. Nevertheless, soilless growing is still in the research and development and early adopter stages, and the broad contribution of hydroponics and aquaponics to food security is yet to be fully determined. Nevertheless, current adoption of these technologies in diverse environments in different socio-economic settings highlights the potential contribution to food security with social and environmental benefits which contribute to several Sustainable Development Goals.

Keywords: Aquaponics, hydroponics, soilless agriculture, urban agriculture.

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Authors: Muthatakul Metasit, Setthasakko Watchaneeporn

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At present, increased concerns about global environmental problems have magnified the importance of sustainability management. To move towards sustainability, companies need to look at everything from a holistic perspective in order to understand the interconnections between economic growth and environmental and social sustainability. This paper aims to gain an understanding of key determinants that drive sustainability management and barriers that hinder its development. It employs semi-structured interviews with key informants, site observation and documentation. The informants are production, marketing and environmental managers of the leading wine producer, which aims to become an Asia-s leader in wine & wine based products. It is found that corporate image and top management leadership are the primary factors influencing the adoption of sustainability management. Lack of environmental knowledge and inefficient communication are identified as barriers.

Keywords: Environmental, knowledge; Sustainability management; Top management leadership; Wine industry

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Authors: Chiharu Okuma, Jun Murakami, Naoki Yamamoto

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In digital signal processing it is important to approximate multi-dimensional data by the method called rank reduction, in which we reduce the rank of multi-dimensional data from higher to lower. For 2-dimennsional data, singular value decomposition (SVD) is one of the most known rank reduction techniques. Additional, outer product expansion expanded from SVD was proposed and implemented for multi-dimensional data, which has been widely applied to image processing and pattern recognition. However, the multi-dimensional outer product expansion has behavior of great computation complex and has not orthogonally between the expansion terms. Therefore we have proposed an alterative method, Third-order Orthogonal Tensor Product Expansion short for 3-OTPE. 3-OTPE uses the power method instead of nonlinear optimization method for decreasing at computing time. At the same time the group of B. D. Lathauwer proposed Higher-Order SVD (HOSVD) that is also developed with SVD extensions for multi-dimensional data. 3-OTPE and HOSVD are similarly on the rank reduction of multi-dimensional data. Using these two methods we can obtain computation results respectively, some ones are the same while some ones are slight different. In this paper, we compare 3-OTPE to HOSVD in accuracy of calculation and computing time of resolution, and clarify the difference between these two methods.

Keywords: Singular value decomposition (SVD), higher-order SVD (HOSVD), higher-order tensor, outer product expansion, power method.

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Authors: L. Heidari, M. Jalili Ghazizade

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This paper aims to determine the best environmental and economic scenario for Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) management of the Maku city by using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. The functional elements of this study are collection, transportation, and disposal of MSW in Maku city. Waste composition and density, as two key parameters of MSW, have been determined by field sampling, and then, the other important specifications of MSW like chemical formula, thermal energy and water content were calculated. These data beside other information related to collection and disposal facilities are used as a reliable source of data to assess the environmental impacts of different waste management options, including landfills, composting, recycling and energy recovery. The environmental impact of MSW management options has been investigated in 15 different scenarios by Integrated Waste Management (IWM) software. The photochemical smog, greenhouse gases, acid gases, toxic emissions, and energy consumption of each scenario are measured. Then, the environmental indices of each scenario are specified by weighting these parameters. Economic costs of scenarios have been also compared with each other based on literature. As final result, since the organic materials make more than 80% of the waste, compost can be a suitable method. Although the major part of the remaining 20% of waste can be recycled, due to the high cost of necessary equipment, the landfill option has been suggested. Therefore, the scenario with 80% composting and 20% landfilling is selected as superior environmental and economic scenario. This study shows that, to select a scenario with practical applications, simultaneously environmental and economic aspects of different scenarios must be considered.

Keywords: IWM software, life cycle assessment, Maku, municipal solid waste management.

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Authors: Lara F. Horani

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Design is one of the most important stages in the process of product development. Product design has experienced significant changes over the years ranging from concentrating on cost and performance to combining economic, environmental and social considerations in customer requirements. Its evolution is in accordance with rapidly changing technology, economic situations, and climate change and environmental issues, as well as social context. Within product design, sustainability is a concept that balances economic, social and environmental aspects. This research aims to express changes in customer requirements over time from the viewpoint of sustainable design. It does so by systematically reviewing a broad scope of sustainable design literature. There is a need for a model to consider the changes that take place in customer requirements over time to build a successful relationship with customers which has been presented. Today’s literature does very little to even mention it, let alone present any progress in it. Systematic literature reviews are conducted primarily to: summarize the existing literature around a subject, highlight commonalities to build consensus, illuminate differences, identify gaps that can be filled, provide a background to position future research, and build a framework that can help designers meet the challenges of sustainable design.

Keywords: Sustainable design, customer requirements for sustainable design, changing customer requirements for sustainable design, systematic literature reviews.

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Authors: Ebere U. Okolo, Eunice C. Okpalaojiego, Chimaobi V. Okolo

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Some investors prefer to keep their money in the bank rather than invest in Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) due to the high cost of running small and medium scale enterprise in Enugu State. This cost primarily concerns multiple-taxation, enormous tax burdens, levies and charges. This study examines the effect of multiple-taxation on the investments in SMEs. The study used survey design with SME population of 80. Questionnaire was used to collect data. Simple percentages/frequencies were used to analyze the data and the research hypotheses were tested with ANOVA. It was found that multiple taxation has negative effect on SMEs investment. Furthermore, the relationship between SMEs investment and its ability to pay tax is significant. The researcher recommends that government should develop a tax policy that considers the enhancement of SMEs’ capital allowance when imposing taxes. Government should also consider a tax policy that encourages investment in SMEs by consolidating all taxes in one slot and latter disseminate to various government purses rather than having many closely related but different taxes at the same time.

Keywords: Investments, multiple taxation, small and medium enterprises.

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Authors: Marinela Istrate, Ionel Muntele, Alexandru Bănică

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The authors propose the identification, analysis and prognosis of the quantitative and qualitative evolution of the elderly population in the functional urban areas. The present paper takes into account the analysis of some representative indicators (the weight of the elderly population, ageing index, dynamic index of economic ageing of productive population etc.) and the elaboration of an integrated indicator that would help differentiate the population ageing forms in the 48 functional urban areas that were defined based on demographic and social-economic criteria for all large and medium cities in Romania.

Keywords: Ageing, demographic transition, functional urban areas, spatial resilience.

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Authors: Zamri Noranai, Mohammad Zainal Md Yusof

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Sustainable energy usage has been recognized as one of the important measure to increase the competitiveness of the nation globally. Many strong emphases were given in the Ninth Malaysia Plan (RMK9) to improve energy efficient especially to government buildings. With this in view, a project to investigate the potential of energy saving in selected building in Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM) was carried out. In this project, a case study involving electric energy consumption of the academic staff office building was conducted. The scope of the study include to identify energy consumption in a selected building, to study energy saving opportunities, to analyse cost investment in term of economic and to identify users attitude with respect to energy usage. The MS1525:2001, Malaysian Standard -Code of practice on energy efficiency and use of renewable energy for non-residential buildings was used as reference. Several energy efficient measures were considered and their merits and priority were compared. Improving human behavior can reduce energy consumption by 6% while technical measure can reduce energy consumption by 44%. Two economic analysis evaluation methods were applied; they are the payback period method and net present value method.

Keywords: office building, energy, efficiency, economic analyses

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Authors: Rohit Gupta, Ruchika

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In this paper, a PSO based fractional order PID (FOPID) controller is proposed for concentration control of an isothermal Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor (CSTR) problem. CSTR is used to carry out chemical reactions in industries, which possesses complex nonlinear dynamic characteristics. Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm technique, which is an evolutionary optimization technique based on the movement and intelligence of swarm is proposed for tuning of the controller for this system. Comparisons of proposed controller with conventional and fuzzy based controller illustrate the superiority of proposed PSO-FOPID controller.

Keywords: CSTR, Fractional Order PID Controller, Partical Swarm Optimization.

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Authors: O. Miraliyari

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This article attempts to analyze functionally graded beam thermal buckling along with piezoelectric layers applying based on the third order shearing deformation theory considering various boundary conditions. The beam properties are assumed to vary continuously from the lower surface to the upper surface of the beam. The equilibrium equations are derived using the total potential energy equations, Euler equations, piezoelectric material constitutive equations and third order shear deformation theory assumptions. In order to fulfill such an aim, at first functionally graded beam with piezoelectric layers applying the third order shearing deformation theory along with clamped -clamped boundary conditions are thoroughly analyzed, and then following making sure of the correctness of all the equations, the very same beam is analyzed with piezoelectric layers through simply-simply and simply-clamped boundary conditions. In this article buckling critical temperature for functionally graded beam is derived in two different ways, without piezoelectric layer and with piezoelectric layer and the results are compared together. Finally, all the conclusions obtained will be compared and contrasted with the same samples in the same and distinguished conditions through tables and charts. It would be noteworthy that in this article, the software MAPLE has been applied in order to do the numeral calculations.

Keywords: Thermal buckling, functionally graded beam, piezoelectric layer, various boundary conditions.

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Authors: Kenichiro Hida, Shin-Ichi Kuribayashi

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In a conventional network, most network devices, such as routers, are dedicated devices that do not have much variation in capacity. In recent years, a new concept of network functions virtualisation (NFV) has come into use. The intention is to implement a variety of network functions with software on general-purpose servers and this allows the network operator to select their capacities and locations without any constraints. This paper focuses on the allocation of NFV-based routing functions which are one of critical network functions, and presents the virtual routing function allocation algorithm that minimizes the total power consumption. In addition, this study presents the useful allocation policy of virtual routing functions, based on an evaluation with a ladder-shaped network model. This policy takes the ratio of the power consumption of a routing function to that of a circuit and traffic distribution between areas into consideration. Furthermore, the present paper shows that there are cases where the use of NFV-based routing functions makes it possible to reduce the total power consumption dramatically, in comparison to a conventional network, in which it is not economically viable to distribute small-capacity routing functions.

Keywords: Virtual routing function, NFV, resource allocation, minimum power consumption.

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Authors: GangHeok Kim, SungHoon Seo, JooSeok Song

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Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) has been proposed to provide reliable transport of real-time communications. Due to its attractive features, such as multi-streaming and multihoming, the SCTP is often expected to be an alternative protocol for TCP and UDP. In the original SCTP standard, the secondary path is mainly regarded as a redundancy. Recently, most of researches have focused on extending the SCTP to enable a host to send its packets to a destination over multiple paths simultaneously. In order to transfer packets concurrently over the multiple paths, the SCTP should be well designed to avoid unnecessary fast retransmission and the mis-estimation of congestion window size through the paths. Therefore, we propose an Enhanced Cooperative ACK SCTP (ECASCTP) to improve the path recovery efficiency of multi-homed host which is under concurrent multiple transfer mode. We evaluated the performance of our proposed scheme using ns-2 simulation in terms of cwnd variation, path recovery time, and goodput. Our scheme provides better performance in lossy and path asymmetric networks.

Keywords: SCTP, Concurrent Multiple Transfer, CooperativeSack, Dynamic ack policy

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Authors: Sansanee Sansiribhan, Anusorn Rattanathanaophat, Chirapan Nuengchaknin

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The potential feasibility of a 9.5 MW_e capacity rice straw power plant project in Thailand was studied by evaluating the rice straw resource. The result showed that Thailand had a high rice straw biomass potential at the provincial level, especially, the provinces in the central, northeastern and western Thailand, which could feasibly develop plants. The economic feasibility of project was also investigated. The financial feasibility is also evaluated based on two important factors in the project, i.e., NPV ≥ 0 and IRR ≥ 11%. It was found that the rice straw power plant project at 9.5 MW_e was financially feasible with the cost of fuel in the range of 30.6-47.7 USD/t.

Keywords: Power plant, Project feasibility, Rice straw, Thailand.

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Authors: Giani Gradinaru

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Biodiversity crisis is one of the many crises that started at the turn of the millennia. Concrete form of expression is still disputed, but there is a relatively high consensus regarding the high rate of degradation and the urgent need for action. The strategy of action outlines a strong economic component, together with the recognition of market mechanisms as the most effective policies to protect biodiversity. In this context, biodiversity and ecosystem services are natural assets that play a key role in economic strategies and technological development to promote development and prosperity. Developing and strengthening policies for transition to an economy based on efficient use of resources is the way forward. To emphasize the co-viability specific to the connection economyecosystem services, scientific approach aimed on one hand how to implement policies for nature conservation and on the other hand, the concepts underlying the economic expression of ecosystem services- value, in the context of current technology. Following the analysis of business opportunities associated with changes in ecosystem services was concluded that development of market mechanisms for nature conservation is a trend that is increasingly stronger individualized within recent years. Although there are still many controversial issues that have already given rise to an obvious bias, international organizations and national governments have initiated and implemented in cooperation or independently such mechanisms. Consequently, they created the conditions for convergence between private interests and social interests of nature conservation, so there are opportunities for ongoing business development which leads, among other things, the positive effects on biodiversity. Finally, points out that markets fail to quantify the value of most ecosystem services. Existing price signals reflect at best, only a proportion of the total amount corresponding provision of food, water or fuel.

Keywords: ecosystem services, economic evaluation, nature conservation

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Authors: M. Moeinaddini, Z. Asadi-Shekari, Z. Sultan, M. Zaly Shah

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Happiness can be related to everything that can provide a feeling of satisfaction or pleasure. This study tries to consider the relationship between land use factors and feeling of happiness at the neighbourhood level. Land use variables (beautiful and attractive neighbourhood design, availability and quality of shopping centres, sufficient recreational spaces and facilities, and sufficient daily service centres) are used as independent variables and the happiness score is used as the dependent variable in this study. In addition to the land use variables, socio-economic factors (gender, race, marital status, employment status, education, and income) are also considered as independent variables. This study uses the Oxford happiness questionnaire to estimate happiness score of more than 300 people living in six neighbourhoods. The neighbourhoods are selected randomly from Skudai neighbourhoods in Johor, Malaysia. The land use data were obtained by adding related questions to the Oxford happiness questionnaire. The strength of the relationship in this study is found using generalised linear modelling (GLM). The findings of this research indicate that increase in happiness feeling is correlated with an increasing income, more beautiful and attractive neighbourhood design, sufficient shopping centres, recreational spaces, and daily service centres. The results show that all land use factors in this study have significant relationship with happiness but only income, among socio-economic factors, can affect happiness significantly. Therefore, land use factors can affect happiness in Skudai more than socio-economic factors.

Keywords: Neighbourhood land use, neighbourhood design, happiness, socio-economic factors, generalised linear modelling.

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Authors: Nihan Cinar

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Location selection is one of the most important decision making process which requires to consider several criteria based on the mission and the strategy. This study-s object is to provide a decision support model in order to help the bank selecting the most appropriate location for a bank-s branch considering a case study in Turkey. The object of the bank is to select the most appropriate city for opening a branch among six alternatives in the South-Eastern of Turkey. The model in this study was consisted of five main criteria which are Demographic, Socio-Economic, Sectoral Employment, Banking and Trade Potential and twenty one subcriteria which represent the bank-s mission and strategy. Because of the multi-criteria structure of the problem and the fuzziness in the comparisons of the criteria, fuzzy AHP is used and for the ranking of the alternatives, TOPSIS method is used.

Keywords: MCDM, bank branch location, fuzzy AHP, TOPSIS.

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Authors: Javadi Alimohammad, Javadi Maryam

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The purpose of this study attempts to emphasize the factors relating to intra-family relationships (order point of view) on violence against the women, For this purpose a survey technique on the sample size amounted 100 women of married of city of Ilam in country of Iran were considered. For measurement of violence against the women , the CTS scaled has been used .violence against the women be measured in four dimension ( emotional violence, psycho violence, physical violence, neglect violence). highest violence was related to emotional violence and after are as follow respectively : physical violence and neglect violence. The results showed that women have experienced the violence more than once during the last year, degree of order in family is high. Explanation result indicated that the order variables in family including collective thinking, empathy and communal co-circumstance have significant effects on violence against the women. Via multiple regression analysis variables of empathy, religious tenet and education of husband had significant effect on violence against women. In other words relationships among family effect on violence in family.

Keywords: violence, domestic violence, violence against women, family.

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Authors: Wissam B. Fahed

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Entrepreneurship has become an important and extensively researched concept in business studies. Research on foreign direct investment (FDI) has become widespread due to the growth of FDI and its importance in globalization. Most entrepreneurship studies examined the importance and influence of entrepreneurial orientation in a micro-level context. On the other hand, studies and research concerning FDI used statistical techniques to analyze the effect, determinants, and motives of FDI on a macroeconomic level, ignoring empirical studies on other noneconomic determinants. In order to bridge the gap between the theory and empirical evidence on FDI and the theory and research on entrepreneurship, this study examines the impact of entrepreneurship on inward foreign direct investment. The relationship between entrepreneurship and foreign direct investment is investigated through regression analysis of pooled time-series and cross-sectional data. The results suggest that entrepreneurship has a significant effect on FDI.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, foreign direct investment, globalization, economic freedom.

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Authors: Pankaj Kumar Srivastava

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Bringing forth a survey on recent higher order spline techniques for solving boundary value problems in ordinary differential equations. Here we have discussed the summary of the articles since 2000 till date based on higher order splines like Septic, Octic, Nonic, Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth and Thirteenth Degree splines. Comparisons of methods with own critical comments as remarks have been included.

Keywords: Septic spline, Octic spline, Nonic spline, Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth and Thirteenth Degree spline, parametric and non-parametric splines, thermal instability, astrophysics.

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Authors: Andra Costache, Rădiţa Alexe

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The analysis of the spatial disparities of social marginalization is a requirement in the present-day socio-economic and political context of Romania, an East-European state, member of the European Union since 2007, at present faced with the imperatives of the growth of its territorial cohesion. The main objective of this article is to develop a methodology for the assessment of social marginalization, in order to understand the intensity of the marginalization phenomenon at different spatial scales. The article proposes a social marginalization index (SMI), calculated through the integration of ten indicators relevant for the two components of social marginalization: the material component and the symbolical component. The results highlighted a strong connection between the total degree of social marginalization and the dependence on social benefits, unemployment rate, non-inclusion in the compulsory education, criminality rate, and the type of pension insurance.

Keywords: Romania, social marginalization index, territorial disparities.

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Authors: Ting (Grace) Lin, Jianhong (Cecilia) Xia, Todd Robinson

Abstract:

Accessibility analysis, examining people’s ability to access facilities and destinations, is a fundamental assessment for transport planning, policy making, and social exclusion research. Dynamic accessibility which measures accessibility in real-time traffic environment has been an advanced accessibility indicator in transport research. It is also a useful indicator to help travelers to understand travel time daily variability, assists traffic engineers to monitor traffic congestions, and finally develop effective strategies in order to mitigate traffic congestions. This research involved real-time traffic information by collecting travel time data with 15-minute interval via the TomTom^® API. A framework for measuring dynamic accessibility was then developed based on the gravity theory and accessibility dichotomy theory through space and time interpolation. Finally, the dynamic accessibility can be derived at any given time and location under dynamic accessibility spatial analysis framework.

Keywords: Dynamic accessibility, space-time continuum, transport research, TomTom® API.

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Authors: Subramaniam Chandran

Abstract:

This paper explores the features of political economy in the dynamics of representative politics in India. Politics is seen as enhancing economic benefits through acquiring and maintenance of power in the realm of democratic set up. The system of representation is riddled with competitive populism. Emerging leaders and parties are forced to accommodate their ideologies in coping with competitive politics. Electoral politics and voting behaviour reflect series of influences mooted by the politicians. Voters are accustomed to expect benefits outs of state exchequer. The electoral competitors show a changing phase of investment and return policy. Every elector has to spend and realize his costs in his tenure. In the case of defeated electors, even the cost recovery is not possible directly; there are indirect means to recover their costs. The series of case studies show the method of party funding, campaign financing, electoral expenditure, and cost recovery. Regulations could not restrict the level of spending. Several cases of disproportionate accumulation of wealth by the politicians reveal that money played a major part in electoral process. The political economy of representative politics hitherto ignores how a politician spends and recovers his cost and multiples his wealth. To be sure, the acquiring and maintenance of power is to enhance the wealth of the electors.

Keywords: Political economy, representative politics, costrecovery, electoral politics

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Authors: Chiharu Okuma, Naoki Yamamoto, Jun Murakami

Abstract:

As a method of expanding a higher-order tensor data to tensor products of vectors we have proposed the Third-order Orthogonal Tensor Product Expansion (3OTPE) that did similar expansion as Higher-Order Singular Value Decomposition (HOSVD). In this paper we provide a computation algorithm to improve our previous method, in which SVD is applied to the matrix that constituted by the contraction of original tensor data and one of the expansion vector obtained. The residual of the improved method is smaller than the previous method, truncating the expanding tensor products to the same number of terms. Moreover, the residual is smaller than HOSVD when applying to color image data. It is able to be confirmed that the computing time of improved method is the same as the previous method and considerably better than HOSVD.

Keywords: Singular value decomposition (SVD), higher-orderSVD (HOSVD), outer product expansion, power method.

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