Search results for: transition services

Authors: Huda Al Salmi, Hisham Al Kadi, Simone Leao

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Abu Dhabi is one of the fastest developed cities in the region. On top of all the current and future environmental challenges, Abu Dhabi aims to be among the top governments in the world in sustainable development. Abu Dhabi plans to create an attractive, livable and sustainable managed urban environment in which all necessary services and infrastructure are provided in a sustainable and timely manner. Abu Dhabi is engaged in a difficult challenge to develop credible environmental indicators that would assess the ambitious environmental targets. The aim of those indicators is to provide reliable guidance to decision makers and the public concerning key factors that determine the state of urban environment and identify major areas for policy intervention. In order to ensure sustainable development in UAE in general, and of Abu Dhabi City in particular, relevant and contextual environmental indicators need to be carefully considered. These indicators provide a gauge at a national government scale of how close countries are to establish environmental policy goals. The environment indicators assist city decision-making in such areas as identification of significant environmental aspects and observation of environmental performance trends. Those can help to find ways of reducing environmental pollution and in improving eco-efficiency. This paper outlines recent strategies implemented in Abu Dhabi that aims to improve the sustainable performance of the city-s built environment. The paper explores the variety of current and possible indicators at different levels and their roles in the development of the city.

Keywords: Abu Dhabi, Sustainable Development, Indicators, Assessment Methods.

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Authors: Bhavneet Sidhu, Hardeep Singh, Amit Chhabra

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The world of wireless telecommunications is rapidly evolving. Technologies under research and development promise to deliver more services to more users in less time. This paper presents the emerging technologies helping wireless systems grow from where we are today into our visions of the future. This paper will cover the applications and characteristics of emerging wireless technologies: Wireless Local Area Networks (WiFi-802.11n), Wireless Personal Area Networks (ZigBee) and Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks (WiMAX). The purpose of this paper is to explain the impending 802.11n standard and how it will enable WLANs to support emerging media-rich applications. The paper will also detail how 802.11n compares with existing WLAN standards and offer strategies for users considering higher-bandwidth alternatives. The emerging IEEE 802.15.4 (ZigBee) standard aims to provide low data rate wireless communications with high-precision ranging and localization, by employing UWB technologies for a low-power and low cost solution. WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is a standard for wireless data transmission covering a range similar to cellular phone towers. With high performance in both distance and throughput, WiMAX technology could be a boon to current Internet providers seeking to become the leader of next generation wireless Internet access. This paper also explores how these emerging technologies differ from one another.

Keywords: MIMO technology, WiFi, WiMAX, ZigBee.

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Authors: Hamze Torabian, Mohammad Mehrabioun Mohammadi

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Like many other industries, the payment industry has been affected by digital transformation. The importance of digital transformation in the payment industry is very crucial. Because the payment industry is considered a leading industry in digital and emerging technologies, and the digitalization of other industries such as retail, health, and telecommunication, it also depends on the growth rate of digitalized payment systems. One of the technological innovations in service management is Field Service Management (FSM). Despite the widespread use of FSM in various industries such as petrochemical, health, maintenance, etc., this technology can also be recruited in the payment industry, transforming the payment industry into a more agile and efficient one. Accordingly, the present study pays close attention to the application of FSM in the payment industry. Given the importance of merchants' bargaining power in the payment industry, this study aims to use FSM in the digital transformation initiative with a targeted focus on providing real-time services to merchants. The research method consists of three parts. Firstly, conducting the review of past research, applications of FSM in the payment industry are considered. In the next step, merchants' benefits such as emotional, functional, economic, and social benefits in using FSM are identified using in-depth interviews and content analysis methods. The related business model in helping the payment industry transforming into a more agile and efficient industry is considered in the following step. The results revealed the 10 main pillars required to realize the digital transformation of payment systems using FSM.

Keywords: Digital transformation, field service management, merchant support systems, payment industry.

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Authors: Zhou Luchen, Wu Yubing, Burra Venkata Durga Kumar

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As the scale of the network becomes larger and more complex than before, the density of user devices is also increasing. The development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) networks is able to collect and transform data in an efficient way by using software-defined networks (SDN) technology. This paper proposed a three-layer distributed and dynamic cluster architecture to manage UAVs by using an AI-based resource allocation calculation algorithm to address the overloading network problem. Through separating services of each UAV, the UAV hierarchical cluster system performs the main function of reducing the network load and transferring user requests, with three sub-tasks including data collection, communication channel organization, and data relaying. In this cluster, a head node and a vice head node UAV are selected considering the CPU, RAM, and ROM memory of devices, battery charge, and capacity. The vice head node acts as a backup that stores all the data in the head node. The k-means clustering algorithm is used in order to detect high load regions and form the UAV layered clusters. The whole process of detecting high load areas, forming and selecting UAV clusters, and moving the selected UAV cluster to that area is proposed as offloading traffic algorithm.

Keywords: k-means, resource allocation, SDN, UAV network, unmanned aerial vehicles.

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Authors: V. P. Mvungi, J. Mcharo, M. E. Mmbuji, L. E. Mgonja, A. Y. Kitua

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This paper is based on a study conducted in 2006 to assess the impact of computer usage on health of National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) staff. NIMR being a research Institute, most of its staff spend substantial part of their working time on computers. There was notion among NIMR staff on possible prolonged computer usage health hazards. Hence, a study was conducted to establish facts and possible mitigation measures. A total of 144 NIMR staff were involved in the study of whom 63.2% were males and 36.8% females aged between 20 and 59 years. All staff cadres were included in the sample. The functions performed by Institute staff using computers includes; data management, proposal development and report writing, research activities, secretarial duties, accounting and administrative duties, on-line information retrieval and online communication through e-mail services. The interviewed staff had been using computers for 1-8 hours a day and for a period ranging from 1 to 20 years. The study has indicated ergonomic hazards for a significant proportion of interviewees (63%) of various kinds ranging from backache to eyesight related problems. The authors highlighted major issues which are substantially applicable in preventing occurrences of computer related problems and they urged NIMR Management and/or the government of Tanzania opts to adapt their practicability.

Keywords: Computers ergonomic hazards, computer usagehealth hazards.

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Authors: P. S. Hiremath, Siddu P. Algur

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With the explosive growth of information sources available on the World Wide Web, it has become increasingly difficult to identify the relevant pieces of information, since web pages are often cluttered with irrelevant content like advertisements, navigation-panels, copyright notices etc., surrounding the main content of the web page. Hence, tools for the mining of data regions, data records and data items need to be developed in order to provide value-added services. Currently available automatic techniques to mine data regions from web pages are still unsatisfactory because of their poor performance and tag-dependence. In this paper a novel method to extract data items from the web pages automatically is proposed. It comprises of two steps: (1) Identification and Extraction of the data regions based on visual clues information. (2) Identification of data records and extraction of data items from a data region. For step1, a novel and more effective method is proposed based on visual clues, which finds the data regions formed by all types of tags using visual clues. For step2 a more effective method namely, Extraction of Data Items from web Pages (EDIP), is adopted to mine data items. The EDIP technique is a list-based approach in which the list is a linear data structure. The proposed technique is able to mine the non-contiguous data records and can correctly identify data regions, irrespective of the type of tag in which it is bound. Our experimental results show that the proposed technique performs better than the existing techniques.

Keywords: Web data records, web data regions, web mining.

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Authors: Diptoshi Roy, G. Sreevidya Varma, S. Asokan, Chandasree Das

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Germanium Telluride based quaternary thin film switching devices with composition Ge₁₅In₅Te₅₆Ag_24, have been deposited in sandwich geometry on glass substrate with aluminum as top and bottom electrodes. The bulk glassy form of the said composition is prepared by melt quenching technique. In this technique, appropriate quantity of elements with high purity are taken in a quartz ampoule and sealed under a vacuum of 10^-5 mbar. Then, it is allowed to rotate in a horizontal rotary furnace for 36 hours to ensure homogeneity of the melt. After that, the ampoule is quenched into a mixture of ice - water and NaOH to get the bulk ingot of the sample. The sample is then coated on a glass substrate using flash evaporation technique at a vacuum level of 10^-6 mbar. The XRD report reveals the amorphous nature of the thin film sample and Energy - Dispersive X-ray Analysis (EDAX) confirms that the film retains the same chemical composition as that of the base sample. Electrical switching behavior of the device is studied with the help of Keithley (2410^c) source-measure unit interfaced with Lab VIEW 7 (National Instruments). Switching studies, mainly SET (changing the state of the material from amorphous to crystalline) operation is conducted on the thin film form of the sample. This device is found to manifest memory switching as the device remains 'ON' even after the removal of the electric field. Also it is found that amorphous Ge₁₅In₅Te₅₆Ag₂₄ thin film unveils clean memory type of electrical switching behavior which can be justified by the absence of fluctuation in the I-V characteristics. The I-V characteristic also reveals that the switching is faster in this sample as no data points could be seen in the negative resistance region during the transition to on state and this leads to the conclusion of fast phase change during SET process. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) studies are performed on the chosen sample to study the structural changes at the time of switching. SEM studies on the switched Ge₁₅In₅Te₅₆Ag₂₄ sample has shown some morphological changes at the place of switching wherein it can be explained that a conducting crystalline channel is formed in the device when the device switches from high resistance to low resistance state. From these studies it can be concluded that the material may find its application in fast switching Non-Volatile Phase Change Memory (PCM) Devices.

Keywords: Chalcogenides, vapor deposition, electrical switching, PCM.

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Authors: Wafa' S.Al-Sharafat, Reyadh Naoum

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Society has grown to rely on Internet services, and the number of Internet users increases every day. As more and more users become connected to the network, the window of opportunity for malicious users to do their damage becomes very great and lucrative. The objective of this paper is to incorporate different techniques into classier system to detect and classify intrusion from normal network packet. Among several techniques, Steady State Genetic-based Machine Leaning Algorithm (SSGBML) will be used to detect intrusions. Where Steady State Genetic Algorithm (SSGA), Simple Genetic Algorithm (SGA), Modified Genetic Algorithm and Zeroth Level Classifier system are investigated in this research. SSGA is used as a discovery mechanism instead of SGA. SGA replaces all old rules with new produced rule preventing old good rules from participating in the next rule generation. Zeroth Level Classifier System is used to play the role of detector by matching incoming environment message with classifiers to determine whether the current message is normal or intrusion and receiving feedback from environment. Finally, in order to attain the best results, Modified SSGA will enhance our discovery engine by using Fuzzy Logic to optimize crossover and mutation probability. The experiments and evaluations of the proposed method were performed with the KDD 99 intrusion detection dataset.

Keywords: MSSGBML, Network Intrusion Detection, SGA, SSGA.

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Authors: Andrea Tundis, Carlos García Cordero, Rolf Egert, Alfredo Garro, Max Mühlhäuser

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Resilience is an important system property that relies on the ability of a system to automatically recover from a degraded state so as to continue providing its services. Resilient systems have the means of detecting faults and failures with the added capability of automatically restoring their normal operations. Mastering resilience in the domain of Cyber-Physical Systems is challenging due to the interdependence of hybrid hardware and software components, along with physical limitations, laws, regulations and standards, among others. In order to overcome these challenges, this paper presents a modeling approach, based on the concept of Dynamic Cells, tailored to the management of Smart Grids. Additionally, a heuristic algorithm that works on top of the proposed modeling approach, to find resilient configurations, has been defined and implemented. More specifically, the model supports a flexible representation of Smart Grids and the algorithm is able to manage, at different abstraction levels, the resource consumption of individual grid elements on the presence of failures and faults. Finally, the proposal is evaluated in a test scenario where the effectiveness of such approach, when dealing with complex scenarios where adequate solutions are difficult to find, is shown.

Keywords: Cyber-physical systems, energy management, optimization, smart grids, self-healing, resilience, security.

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Authors: Hamzah Jusoh, Azmizam Abdul Rashid

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Malaysia has successfully applied economic planning to guide the development of the country from an economy of agriculture and mining to a largely industrialised one. Now, with its sights set on attaining the economic level of a fully developed nation by 2020, the planning system must be made even more efficient and focused. It must ensure that every investment made in the country, contribute towards creating the desirable objective of a strong, modern, internationally competitive, technologically advanced, post-industrial economy. Cities in Malaysia must also be fully aware of the enormous competition it faces in a region with rapidly expanding and modernising economies, all contending for the same pool of potential international investments. Efficiency of urban governance is also fundamental issue in development characterized by sustainability, subsidiarity, equity, transparency and accountability, civic engagement and citizenship, and security. As described above, city competitiveness is harnessed through 'city marketing and city management'. High technology and high skilled industries, together with finance, transportation, tourism, business, information and professional services shopping and other commercial activities, are the principal components of the nation-s economy, which must be developed to a level well beyond where it is now. In this respect, Kuala Lumpur being the premier city must play the leading role.

Keywords: Economic planning, sustainability, efficiency, urban governance and city competitiveness.

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Authors: Thanasit Suksutdhi

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This survey research aims to study the standard of service quality of food and beverage service staffs in hotel business by studying the service standard of three sample hotels, Siam Kempinski Hotel Bangkok, Four Seasons Resort Chiang Mai, and Banyan Tree Phuket. In order to find the international service standard of food and beverage service, triangular research, i.e. quantitative, qualitative, and survey were employed. In this research, questionnaires and in-depth interview were used for getting the information on the sequences and method of services. There were three parts of modified questionnaires to measure service quality and guest’s satisfaction including service facilities, attentiveness, responsibility, reliability, and circumspection. This study used sample random sampling to derive subjects with the return rate of the questionnaires was 70% or 280. Data were analyzed by SPSS to find arithmetic mean, SD, percentage, and comparison by t-test and One-way ANOVA. The results revealed that the service quality of the three hotels were in the international level which could create high satisfaction to the international customers. Recommendations for research implementations were to maintain the area of good service quality, and to improve some dimensions of service quality such as reliability. Training in service standard, product knowledge, and new technology for employees should be provided. Furthermore, in order to develop the service quality of the industry, training collaboration between hotel organization and educational institutions in food and beverage service should be considered.

Keywords: Service standard, food and beverage department, sequence of service, service method.

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Authors: Angelica S. Valeriani, Lorenzo Biasiolo

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In recent years, the scale of the impact of climate change and its related side effects has become ever more massive and devastating. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), promoted by United Nations, aim to front issues related to climate change, among others. In particular, the project CROWD4SDG focuses on a bunch of SDGs, since it promotes environmental activities and climate-related issues. In this context, we developed a prototype of an application, under advanced development considering web design, that focuses on SDG 13 (SDG on climate action) by providing users with useful instruments to face environmental crises and climate-related disasters. Our prototype is thought and structured for both web and mobile development. The main goal of the application, POLI4SDG, is to help users to get through emergency services. To this extent, an organized overview and classification prove to be very effective and helpful to people in need. A careful analysis of data related to environmental crises prompted us to integrate the user contribution, i.e. exploiting a core principle of Citizen Science, into the realization of a public catalog, available for consulting and organized according to typology and specific features. In addition, gender equality and opportunity features are considered in the prototype, in order to allow women, often the most vulnerable category, to have direct support. The overall description of the application functionalities is detailed. Moreover, implementation features and properties of the prototype are discussed.

Keywords: Crowdsourcing, social media, SDG, climate change, natural disasters, gender equality.

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Authors: Jiaqi Yan, Sherry Sun, Huaiqing Wang, Zhongsheng Hua

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In the highly competitive and rapidly changing global marketplace, independent organizations and enterprises often come together and form a temporary alignment of virtual enterprise in a supply chain to better provide products or service. As firms adopt the systems approach implicit in supply chain management, they must manage the quality from both internal process control and external control of supplier quality and customer requirements. How to incorporate quality management of upstream and downstream supply chain partners into their own quality management system has recently received a great deal of attention from both academic and practice. This paper investigate the collaborative feature and the entities- relationship in a supply chain, and presents an ontology of collaborative supply chain from an approach of aligning service-oriented framework with service-dominant logic. This perspective facilitates the segregation of material flow management from manufacturing capability management, which provides a foundation for the coordination and integration of the business process to measure, analyze, and continually improve the quality of products, services, and process. Further, this approach characterizes the different interests of supply chain partners, providing an innovative approach to analyze the collaborative features of supply chain. Furthermore, this ontology is the foundation to develop quality management system which internalizes the quality management in upstream and downstream supply chain partners and manages the quality in supply chain systematically.

Keywords: Ontology, supply chain quality management, service-oriented architecture, service-dominant logic.

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Authors: Elżbieta Antczak

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Cities offer important opportunities for economic development and for expanding access to basic services, including health care and education, for large numbers of people. Moreover, green areas (as an integral part of sustainable urban development) present a major opportunity for improving urban environments, quality of lives and livelihoods. This paper examines, using spatial concentration and spatial taxonomic measures, regional diversification of greenery in the cities of Poland. The analysis includes location quotients, Lorenz curve, Locational Gini Index, and the synthetic index of greenery and spatial statistics tools: (1) To verify the occurrence of strong concentration or dispersion of the phenomenon in time and space depending on the variable category, and, (2) To study if the level of greenery depends on the spatial autocorrelation. The data includes the greatest Polish cities, categories of the urban greenery (parks, lawns, street greenery, and green areas on housing estates, cemeteries, and forests) and the time span 2004-2015. According to the obtained estimations, most of cites in Poland are already taking measures to become greener. However, in the country there are still many barriers to well-balanced urban greenery development (e.g. uncontrolled urban sprawl, poor management as well as lack of spatial urban planning systems).

Keywords: Greenery, urban areas, regional spatial diversification and concentration, spatial taxonomic measure.

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Authors: Elham S. Hasham, Anthony S. Hasham

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The construction industry is one of Australia’s fastest growing industries and its success is a result of a firm’s client satisfaction with focus on product determinants such as price and quality. Ensuring quality at every phase is a must and building rapport with the client will go a long way. To capitalize on the growing demand for Engineering Consulting Firms (ECFs), it is imperative to stress the implication of customer satisfaction and excellence in standards and performance. Consequently, the emphasis should be on improving employee skills through various training provisions. Clients seek consistency and thus expect that all services should be similar in respect to quality and the ability of the service to meet their needs. This calls for empowerment and comfortable work conditions to motivate employees and give them incentive to deliver quality and excellent output. The methodology utilized is triangulation - a combination of both quantitative and qualitative research. The case study - Australian Consulting Engineers (ACE) - was established in Australia in 1995 and has operations throughout Australia, the Philippines, Europe, UAE, KSA, and with a branch in Lebanon. ACE is affiliated with key agencies and support organizations in the engineering industry with International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certifications in Safety and Quality Management. The objective of this study, conducted in Australia, is significant as it sheds light on employee motivation and client satisfaction as imperative determinants of the success of an organization.

Keywords: Organizational behaviour, leadership, satisfaction, motivation, quality service.

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Authors: Hanadi Mubarak AL-Mubaraki, Michael Busler

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Innovation is the process of making changes, differences, and novelties in the products and services, adding values and business practices to create economic and social benefit. The purpose of this paper is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of innovation programs in developed and developing countries. We used a mixed-methods approach, quantitative as survey and qualitative as a multi-case study to examine innovation best practices in developed and developing countries. In addition, four case studies of innovation organisations based on the best practices and successful implementation in the developed and developing countries are selected for examination. The research findings provide guidance, suggestions, and recommendations for future implementation in developed and developing countries for practitioners such as policy makers, governments, funded organizations, and strategic institutions. In conclusion, innovation programs are vital tools for economic growth, knowledge, and technology transfer based on the several indicators such as creativity, entrepreneurship, role of government, role of university, strategic focus, new products, survival rate, job creation, start-up companies, and number of patents. The authors aim to conduct future research which will include a comparative study of innovation case studies between developed and developing countries for policy implications worldwide. The originality of this study makes a contribution to the current literature about the innovation best practice in developed and developing countries.

Keywords: Economic development, entrepreneurship, developed countries, innovation program.

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Authors: Jerry Szatko, Edan L. Jorgensen, Stacia Jorgensen

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A crucial component to the success of any financial advising relationship is for the financial professional to understand the perceptions, preferences and thought-processes carried by the financial clients they serve. Armed with this information, financial professionals are more quickly able to understand how they can tailor their approach to best match the individual preferences and needs of each personal investor. Our research explores the use of a quantitative assessment tool in the financial services industry to assist in the identification of the personal investor’s consumer behaviors, especially in terms of financial risk tolerance, as it relates to their financial decision making. Through this process, the Unitifi Consumer Insight Tool (UCIT) was created and refined to capture and categorize personal investor financial behavioral categories and the financial personality tendencies of individuals prior to the initiation of a financial advisement relationship. This paper discusses the use of this tool to place individuals in one of four behavior-based financial risk tolerance categories. Our discoveries and research were aided through administration of a web-based survey to a group of over 1,000 individuals. Our findings indicate that it is possible to use a quantitative assessment tool to assist in predicting the behavioral tendencies of personal consumers when faced with consumer financial risk and decisions.

Keywords: Behavior based advising, behavioral finance, financial advising, financial advisor tools, financial risk tolerance.

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Authors: A. Das, L. Hitihamillage, S. Moridpour

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Natural disasters are inevitable to the biodiversity. Disasters such as flood, tsunami and tornadoes could be brutal, harsh and devastating. In Australia, flooding is a major issue experienced by different parts of the country. In such crisis, delays in evacuation could decide the life and death of the people living in those regions. Congestion management could become a mammoth task if there are no steps taken before such situations. In the past to manage congestion in such circumstances, many strategies were utilised such as converting the road shoulders to extra lanes or changing the road geometry by adding more lanes. However, expansion of road to resolving congestion problems is not considered a viable option nowadays. The authorities avoid this option due to many reasons, such as lack of financial support and land space. They tend to focus their attention on optimising the current resources they possess and use traffic signals to overcome congestion problems. Traffic Signal Management strategy was considered a viable option, to alleviate congestion problems in the City of Geelong, Victoria. Arterial road with signalised intersections considered in this paper and the traffic data required for modelling collected from VicRoads. Traffic signalling software SIDRA used to model the roads, and the information gathered from VicRoads. In this paper, various signal parameters utilised to assess and improve the corridor performance to achieve the best possible Level of Services (LOS) for the arterial road.

Keywords: Congestion, constraints, management, LOS.

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Authors: Botshelo R. Sebola

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Unintended pregnancy often results in pregnancy termination. Most countries have legalised the termination of a pregnancy and pregnant adolescents can visit designated clinics without their parents’ consent. In most African and Asian countries, certain cultural practices are performed following any form of childbirth, including abortion, and such practices are ingrained in societies. The aim of this paper was to understand how women who terminated a pregnancy during adolescence coped by embracing cultural practices. A descriptive multiple case study design was adopted for the study. In-depth, semi-structured interviews and reflective diaries were used for data collection. Participants were 13 women aged 20 to 35 years who had terminated a pregnancy in adolescence. Three women kept their soiled sanitary pads, burned them to ash and waited for the rainy season to scatter the ash in a flowing stream. This ritual was performed to appease the ancestors, ask them for forgiveness and as a send-off for the aborted foetus. Five women secretly consulted Sangoma (traditional healers) to perform certain rituals. Three women isolated themselves to perform herbal cleansings, and the last two chose not to engage in any sexual activity for one year, which led to the loss of their partners. This study offers a unique contribution to understanding the solitary journey of women who terminate a pregnancy. The study challenges healthcare professionals who work in clinics that offer pregnancy termination services to look beyond releasing the foetus to advocating and providing women with the necessary care and support in performing cultural practices.

Keywords: Adolescence, case study, cultural rituals, pregnancy.

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Authors: Abraham Undu, Stephen Akuma

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Websites are becoming a major component of an organization’s success in our ever globalizing competitive world. The website symbolizes an organization, interacting or projecting an organization’s principles, culture, values, vision, and perspectives. It is an interface connecting organizations and their clients. The university, as an academic institution, makes use of a website to communicate and offer computing services to its stakeholders (students, staff, host community, university management etc). Unfortunately, website designers often give more consideration to the technology, organizational structure and business objectives of the university than to the usability of the site. Website designers end up designing university websites which do not meet the needs of the primary users. This empirical study investigated the Benue State University website from the point view of students. This research was realized by using a standardized website usability questionnaire based on the five factors of usability defined by WAMMI (Website Analysis and Measurement Inventory): attractiveness, controllability, efficiency, learnability and helpfulness. The result of the investigation showed that the university website (https://portal.bsum.edu.ng/) has neutral usability level because of the usability issues associated with the website. The research recommended feasible solutions to improve the usability of the website from the users’ perspective and also provided a modified usability model that will be used for better evaluation of the Benue State University website.

Keywords: Usability, usability factors, university websites, user’s perspective, WAMMI, modified usability model, Benue State University.

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Authors: Jenny Paola Forero Pachón, Sonia Cristina Gamboa Sarmiento, Luis Carlos Gómez Flórez

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The Colombian government has defined an e-government strategy to take advantage of Information Technologies (IT) in order to contribute to the building of a more efficient, transparent and participative State that provides better services to citizens and businesses. In this regard, the Justice sector is one of the government sectors where IT has generated more expectation considering that the country has a judicial processes backlog. This situation has led to the search for alternative forms of access to justice that speed up the process while providing a low cost for citizens. To this end, the Colombian government has authorized the use of Alternative Dispute Resolution methods (ADR), a remedy where disputes can be resolved more quickly compared to judicial processes while facilitating greater communication between the parties, without recourse to judicial authority. One of these methods is conciliation, which includes a special modality that takes advantage of IT for the development of itself known as virtual conciliation. With this option the conciliation is supported by information systems, applications or platforms and communications are provided through it. This paper evaluates the level of maturity in how the service of virtual conciliation is under the framework of this strategy. This evaluation is carried out considering Shahkooh's 5-phase model for e-government. As a result, it is evident that in the context of conciliation, maturity does not reach the necessary level in the model so that it can be considered as virtual conciliation; therefore, it is necessary to define strategies to maximize the potential of IT in this context.

Keywords: Alternative dispute resolution, e-government, evaluation of maturity, Shahkooh model, virtual conciliation.

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Authors: Habibi Said Mustafa, Hiroko Ono

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Since 2006, Afghanistan is dealing with one of the most dramatic trend of urban movement in its history, cities and towns are expanding in size and number. Kabul is the capital of Afghanistan and as well as the fast-growing city in the Asia. The influx of the returnees from neighbor countries and other provinces of Afghanistan caused high rate of artificial growth which slums increased. As an unwanted consequence of this growth, today informal settlements have covered a vast portion of the city. Land Readjustment (LR) has proved to be an important tool for developing informal settlements and reorganizing urban areas but its implementation always varies from country to country and region to region within the countries. Consequently, to successfully develop the informal settlements in Kabul, we need to define an Afghan model of LR specifically for Afghanistan which needs to incorporate all those factors related to the socio-economic condition of the country. For this purpose, a part of the old city of Kabul has selected as a study area which is located near the Central Business District (CBD). After the further analysis and incorporating all needed factors, the result shows a positive potential for the implementation of an adaptable Land Readjustment model for Kabul city which is more sustainable and socio-economically friendly. It will enhance quality of life and provide better urban services for the residents. Moreover, it will set a vision and criteria by which sustainable developments shall proceed in other similar informal settlements of Kabul.

Keywords: Adaptation, informal settlements, Kabul, land readjustment, preservation.

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Authors: M. L. Yeung

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With the surge of divorce rate and male cancer onset/death rates, the phenomenon of divorced wives in the facing cancer death of their ex-husbands is not uncommon in Hong Kong. Yet, there is a dearth of study on the experiences of bereaved-divorced wives in the Hong Kong cultural context. This project fills the knowledge gap by conducting a qualitative study for having interviewed four bereaved ex-wives, who returned to ex-husbands’ end-of-life caregiving and eventually grieved for the ex-spousal’s death. From the perspectives of attachment theory and disenfranchised grief in the Hong Kong cultural context, a ‘double-loss’ experience is found in which interviewees suffer from the first loss of divorce and the second loss of ex-husbands’ death. Traumatic childhood experiences, attachment needs, role ambiguity, unresolved emotions and unrecognized grief are found significant in their lived experiences which alert the ‘double-loss’ is worthy of attention. Extending a family-centered end-of-life and bereavement care services to divorced couples is called for, in which validation on the attachment needs, ex-couple reconciliation, and acknowledgement on the disenfranchised grief are essential for social work practice on this group of clienteles specifically in Hong Kong cultural context.

Keywords: Changing family, disenfranchised grief, divorce, ex-spousal death, marriage.

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Authors: U. K. Hulihalli, Shantveerayya

Abstract:

Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum Moench) is an annual crop belongs to family Poligonaceae. The cultivated buckwheat species are notable for their exceptional nutritive values. It is an important source of carbohydrates, fibre, macro, and microelements such as K, Ca, Mg, Na and Mn, Zn, Se, and Cu. It also contains rutin, flavonoids, riboflavin, pyridoxine and many amino acids which have beneficial effects on human health, including lowering both blood lipid and sugar levels. Rutin, quercetin and some other polyphenols are potent carcinogens against colon and other cancers. Buckwheat has significant nutritive value and plenty of uses. Cultivation of buckwheat in Sothern part of India is very meager. Hence, a study was planned with an objective to know the performance of buckwheat genotypes to different planting geometries and fertility levels. The field experiment was conducted at Main Agriculture Research Station, University of Agriculture Sciences, Dharwad, India, during 2017 Kharif. The experiment was laid-out in split-plot design with three replications having three planting geometries as main plots, two genotypes as sub plots and three fertility levels as sub-sub plot treatments. The soil of the experimental site was vertisol. The standard procedures are followed to record the observations. The planting geometry of 30*10 cm was recorded significantly higher seed yield (893 kg/ha⁻¹), stover yield (1507 kg ha⁻¹), clusters plant⁻¹ (7.4), seeds clusters⁻¹ (7.9) and 1000 seed weight (26.1 g) as compared to 40*10 cm and 20*10 cm planting geometries. Between the genotypes, significantly higher seed yield (943 kg ha⁻¹) and harvest index (45.1) was observed with genotype IC-79147 as compared to PRB-1 genotype (687 kg ha⁻¹ and 34.2, respectively). However, the genotype PRB-1 recorded significantly higher stover yield (1344 kg ha⁻¹) as compared to genotype IC-79147 (1173 kg ha⁻¹). The genotype IC-79147 was recorded significantly higher clusters plant⁻¹ (7.1), seeds clusters⁻¹ (7.9) and 1000 seed weight (24.5 g) as compared PRB-1 (5.4, 5.8 and 22.3 g, respectively). Among the fertility levels tried, the fertility level of 60:30 NP kg ha⁻¹ recorded significantly higher seed yield (845 kg ha^-1) and stover yield (1359 kg ha⁻¹) as compared to 40:20 NP kg ha^-1 (808 and 1259 kg ha⁻¹ respectively) and 20:10 NP kg ha^-1 (793 and 1144 kg ha⁻¹ respectively). Within the treatment combinations, IC 79147 genotype having 30*10 cm planting geometry with 60:30 NP kg ha⁻¹ recorded significantly higher seed yield (1070 kg ha⁻¹), clusters plant⁻¹ (10.3), seeds clusters⁻¹ (9.9) and 1000 seed weight (27.3 g) compared to other treatment combinations.

Keywords: Buckwheat, fertility levels, genotypes, geometry, polyphenols, rutin.

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Authors: Okolo Chimaobi Valentine

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Commercial banks in Nigeria adopted many strategies to attract fresh deposits including the use of high deposit rate. However, pricing of banking services moved in favor of the banks at the expense of customers, resulting in their seeking other investment alternatives rather than saving their money in the bank. Both deposit and lending rates were greatly influenced by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) decision on interest rate. Therefore, commercial bank effort to attract deposits via manipulation of her rates was greatly limited, otherwise the banks will be giving out more than it earned. The study aimed at examining the relationship between interest rate and fixed fund deposit of commercial banks, how policy-controlled interest rate affected commercial bank’s fixed fund deposit The researcher employed ordinary least square technique, using, multiple linear regression, unrestricted vector auto-regression, correlation matrix test, granger causality and impulse response graph in the analysis. Commercial bank’s interest rates affected commercial bank’s fixed fund deposit significantly while policy-controlled interest rate did not significantly transmit through the commercial bank’s interest rates to affect fixed fund deposit. While commercial banks seek creative ways to expand their fixed fund deposit, policy authorities in Nigeria should better coordinate interest rate fluctuation and induce competition in the entire financial sector.

Keywords: Commercial bank, fixed fund deposit, fluctuation effects, interest rate.

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Authors: Josiel Delgadillo, Johnson Kinyua, Charles Mutigwe

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The purpose of sentiment analysis is to determine the sentiment strength (e.g., positive, negative, neutral) from a textual source for good decision-making. Natural Language Processing (NLP) in domains such as financial markets requires knowledge of domain ontology, and pre-trained language models, such as BERT, have made significant breakthroughs in various NLP tasks by training on large-scale un-labeled generic corpora such as Wikipedia. However, sentiment analysis is a strong domain-dependent task. The rapid growth of social media has given users a platform to share their experiences and views about products, services, and processes, including financial markets. StockTwits and Twitter are social networks that allow the public to express their sentiments in real time. Hence, leveraging the success of unsupervised pre-training and a large amount of financial text available on social media platforms could potentially benefit a wide range of financial applications. This work is focused on sentiment analysis using social media text on platforms such as StockTwits and Twitter. To meet this need, SkyBERT, a domain-specific language model pre-trained and fine-tuned on financial corpora, has been developed. The results show that SkyBERT outperforms current state-of-the-art models in financial sentiment analysis. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of SkyBERT.

Keywords: BERT, financial markets, Twitter, sentiment analysis.

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Authors: Farid Ezanee Mohamed Ghazali

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The Malaysia Highway Authority (MHA) was established by the Government in 1980 for the purpose of designing, constructing and maintaining toll highways in Malaysia that include the North-South Expressway and the Penang Bridge, which were procured using the publicly-funded traditional procurement. However following a recession in the mid 80-s, the operations of these tolledhighways had been privatized to ensure that their operational services continue through private financing as a result of long-term concession agreement concurred between the Malaysian Government and private operators. The change in the contract strategy for highway projects in Malaysia would have a great tendency to dictate a significant risk exposure towards the key parties involved, particularly the Malaysian Government as project principal, unless operational risks are clearly identified and managed via appropriate mitigation measures prior to a contract signing. This research identifies potential operational risks that have a possibility to occur in highway projects in Malaysia from the perspective of public sector clients. Since this research focuses on the operational risks for highway projects in Malaysia, the initial results acquired from literature review on the operational risks of highway projects in some Asian countries are then justified by a number of key individuals from the MHA through interviews. As a result, among key operational risks that have possibility to occur in the highway projects in Malaysia include initial toll-tariff decided by the Government, traffic congestion, change of road network and overloaded freight transportation, which could cause damage to the road surface and hence affecting the operation of a particular highway.

Keywords: Malaysia, operating highway project, operational risk.

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Authors: Lara A. Alshawawreh, R. Sean Smith, John B. Wood

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This study focuses on the sheltering response in the Middle East, specifically through reviewing two Syrian refugee camps in Jordan, involving Zaatari and Azraq. Zaatari camp involved the rapid deployment of tents and shelters over a very short period of time and Azraq was purpose built and pre-planned over a longer period. At present, both camps collectively host more than 133,000 occupants. Field visits were taken to both camps and the main issues and problems in the sheltering response were highlighted through focus group discussions with camp occupants and inspection of shelter habitats. This provided both subjective and objective research data sources. While every case has its own significance and deployment to meet humanitarian needs, there are some common requirements irrespective of geographical region. The results suggest that there is a gap in the suitability of the required habitat needs and what has been provided. It is recommended that the global international response and support could be improved in relation to the habitat form, construction type, layout, function and critically the cultural aspects. Services, health and hygiene are key elements to the shelter habitat provision. The study also identified the amendments to shelters undertaken by the beneficiaries providing insight into their key main requirements. The outcomes from this study could provide an important learning opportunity to develop improved habitat response for future shelters.

Keywords: Culture, post-disaster, refugees, shelters.

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Authors: Yousef Bakhbakhi, Mourad Boumaza

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Only recently have water ethics received focused interest in the international water community. Because water is metabolically basic to life, an ethical dimension persists in every decision related to water. Water ethics at once express human society-s approach to water and act as guidelines for behaviour. Ideas around water are often implicit and embedded as assumptions. They can be entrenched in behaviour and difficult to contest because they are difficult to “see". By explicitly revealing the ethical ideas underlying water-related decisions, human society-s relationship with water, and with natural systems of which water is part, can be contested and shifted or be accepted with conscious intention by human society. In recent decades, improved understanding of water-s importance for ecosystem functioning and ecological services for human survival is moving us beyond this growth-driven, supplyfocused management paradigm. Environmental ethics challenge this paradigm by extending the ethical sphere to the environment and thus water or water Resources management per se. An ethical approach is a legitimate, important, and often ignored approach to effect change in environmental decision making. This qualitative research explores principles of water ethics and examines the underlying ethical precepts of selected water policy examples. The constructed water ethic principles act as a set of criteria against which a policy comparison can be established. This study shows that water Resources management is a progressive issue by embracing full public participation and a new planning model, and knowledgegeneration initiatives.

Keywords: water resources, environmental management, publicparticipation.

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Authors: Patil Ashwini, Archana Thosar

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This paper addresses the mathematical model of wind energy system useful for designing fault tolerant control. To serve the demand of power, large capacity wind energy systems are vital. These systems are installed offshore where non planned service is very costly. Whenever there is a fault in between two planned services, the system may stop working abruptly. This might even lead to the complete failure of the system. To enhance the reliability, the availability and reduce the cost of maintenance of wind turbines, the fault tolerant control systems are very essential. For designing any control system, an appropriate mathematical model is always needed. In this paper, the two-mass model is modified by considering the frequent mechanical faults like misalignments in the drive train, gears and bearings faults. These faults are subject to a wear process and cause frictional losses. This paper addresses these faults in the mathematics of the wind energy system. Further, the work is extended to study the variations of the parameters namely generator inertia constant, spring constant, viscous friction coefficient and gear ratio; on the pole-zero plot which is related with the physical design of the wind turbine. Behavior of the wind turbine during drive train faults are simulated and briefly discussed.

Keywords: Mathematical model of wind energy system, stability analysis, shaft stiffness, viscous friction coefficient, gear ratio, generator inertia, fault tolerant control.

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