Search results for: mobile financial services

Authors: G. Erkomaishvili, R. Gvelesiani, E. Kharaishvili, M. Chavleishvili

Abstract:

The topic reviews the situation existing currently in Georgia in the field of tourism in conditions of globalization: Touristic resources, the paces of development of the tourism infrastructure, tourism policy, possibilities of development of the Wellness industry in Georgia, that is the newest direction of the medical tourism. The factors impeding the development of the industry of tourism, namely – existence of the conflict zones, high rates of the bank credits, deficiencies associated with the tax laws, a level of infrastructural development, quality of services, deficit in the competitive staff, increase of prices in the peak seasons, insufficient promotion of the touristic opportunities of Georgia on the international markets are studied and analyzed. Besides, the level of development of tourism in Georgia according to the World Economic Forum, aspects of cooperation with the European Union, etc., is reviewed. As a result of these studies, a strategy of development of tourism and one of its direction – Wellness industry in Georgia, is introduced with the relevant conclusions, on which basis the recommendations are provided.

Keywords: Tourism, Tourism Policy, Wellness Industry.

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Authors: Nouha Mhimdi, Wahiba Ben Abdessalem Karaa, Henda Ben Ghezala

Abstract:

Many methods are used to collect data like questionnaires, surveys, focus group interviews. Or the collection of poor-quality data resulting, for example, from poorly designed questionnaires, the absence of good translators or interpreters, and the incorrect recording of data allow conclusions to be drawn that are not supported by the data or to focus only on the average effect of the program or policy. There are several solutions to avoid or minimize the most frequent errors, including obtaining expert advice on the design or adaptation of data collection instruments; or use technologies allowing better "anonymity" in the responses. In this context, and to overcome the aforementioned problems, we suggest in this paper an approach to achieve the collection of relevant data, by carrying out a large-scale questionnaire-based survey. We have been able to collect good quality, consistent and practical data on hospital emergencies to improve emergency services in hospitals, especially in the case of epidemics or pandemics.

Keywords: Data collection, survey, database, data analysis, hospital emergencies.

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Authors: Jeffrey A. Dunne, Kevin Ligozio

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In many applications there is a broad variety of information relevant to a focal “object" of interest, and the fusion of such heterogeneous data types is desirable for classification and categorization. While these various data types can sometimes be treated as orthogonal (such as the hull number, superstructure color, and speed of an oil tanker), there are instances where the inference and the correlation between quantities can provide improved fusion capabilities (such as the height, weight, and gender of a person). A service-oriented architecture has been designed and prototyped to support the fusion of information for such “object-centric" situations. It is modular, scalable, and flexible, and designed to support new data sources, fusion algorithms, and computational resources without affecting existing services. The architecture is designed to simplify the incorporation of legacy systems, support exact and probabilistic entity disambiguation, recognize and utilize multiple types of uncertainties, and minimize network bandwidth requirements.

Keywords: Data fusion, distributed computing, service-oriented architecture, SOA

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Authors: Matías Micheletto, Rodrigo Santos, Sergio F. Ochoa

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In developing countries, most roads in rural areas are dirt road. They require frequent maintenance since they are affected by erosive events, such as rain or wind, and the transit of heavy-weight trucks and machinery. Early detection of damages on the road condition is a key aspect, since it allows to reduce the maintenance time and cost, and also the limitations for other vehicles to travel through. Most proposals that help address this problem require the explicit participation of drivers, a permanent internet connection, or important instrumentation in vehicles or roads. These constraints limit the suitability of these proposals when applied into developing regions, like Latin America. This paper proposes an alternative method, based on unattended crowdsensing, to determine the quality of dirt roads in rural areas. This method involves the use of a mobile application that complements the road condition surveys carried out by organizations in charge of the road network maintenance, giving them early warnings about road areas that could be requiring maintenance. Drivers can also take advantage of the early warnings while they move through these roads. The method was evaluated using information from a public dataset. Although they are preliminary, the results indicate the proposal is potentially suitable to provide awareness about dirt roads condition to drivers, transportation authority and road maintenance companies.

Keywords: Dirt roads automatic quality assessment, collaborative system, unattended crowdsensing method, roads quality awareness provision.

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Authors: Ahmad. A. Kardan, Amir Narimani, Foozhan Ataiefard

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Recommender Systems have been developed to provide contents and services compatible to users based on their behaviors and interests. Due to information overload in online discussion forums and users diverse interests, recommending relative topics and threads is considered to be helpful for improving the ease of forum usage. In order to lead learners to find relevant information in educational forums, recommendations are even more needed. We present a hybrid thread recommender system for MOOC forums by applying social network analysis and association rule mining techniques. Initial results indicate that the proposed recommender system performs comparatively well with regard to limited available data from users' previous posts in the forum.

Keywords: Association rule mining, hybrid recommender system, massive open online courses, MOOCs, social network analysis.

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Authors: Heather Wyman-Pain, Yuankai Bian, Furong Li

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The decreasing use of fossil fuel power stations has a negative effect on the stability of the electricity systems in many countries. Nuclear power stations have traditionally provided minimal ancillary services to support the system but this must change in the future as they replace fossil fuel generators. This paper explains the development of the four most popular reactor types still in regular operation across the world which have formed the basis for most reactor development since their commercialisation in the 1950s. The use of nuclear power in four countries with varying levels of capacity provided by nuclear generators is investigated, using the primary frequency response provided by generators as a measure for the electricity networks stability, to assess the need for nuclear generators to provide additional support as their share of the generation capacity increases.

Keywords: Frequency control, nuclear power generation, power system stability, system inertia.

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Authors: Abdelouahab Errida, Bouchra Lotfi, Elalami Semma

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In this paper, we try to address the topic of multiple change management by adopting an engineered research methodology, conducted within a Moroccan company during its implementation of several change projects that aim at improving its supply chain management performance. Firstly, we present the key concepts related to our research, namely change management, multiproject management and supply chain management. Then, we try to assess how the change management and multi-project management are applied in this company. Finally, we try to propose an approach that will help managers in dealing with multiple change projects. This approach proposes to integrate change management, project management and multi-project management for managing change projects according to three organizational levels: executive level, project portfolio level and change project level.

Keywords: Change management, multi-project management, project management, change portfolio, supply chain management.

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Authors: Subarna Ferdous, Mitsuru Ikeda

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For the shrimp companies to remain relevant to its local and international consumers, they must offer new shrimp product and services. It must work actively not just to create value for the consumer, but to involve the consumer in co-creating value for shrimp product innovation in the market. In this theoretical work, we conceptualize the business concept of value co-creation in the context of shrimp products, and propose a framework of value co-creation for shrimp product innovation in shrimp industries. With guidance on value co-creation in in shrimp industry, and shrimp value chain actors mapped to the co-creation cycle, companies can use the framework to offer new shrimp product to consumer communities. Although customer co-creation is known approach in the world, it is not commonly used by the companies in Bangladesh. This paper makes an original contribution by conceptualizing co-creation and set the examples of best co-creation practices in food sector. The results of the study provide management with guidelines for successful co-creation projects with an innovation- and market-oriented approach. The framework also provides a basis for further research in this area.

Keywords: Bangladesh, shrimp industry, shrimp product, value co-creation.

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Authors: Denis Trcek

Abstract:

Trust is essential for further and wider acceptance of contemporary e-services. It was first addressed almost thirty years ago in Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria standard by the US DoD. But this and other proposed approaches of that period were actually solving security. Roughly some ten years ago, methodologies followed that addressed trust phenomenon at its core, and they were based on Bayesian statistics and its derivatives, while some approaches were based on game theory. However, trust is a manifestation of judgment and reasoning processes. It has to be dealt with in accordance with this fact and adequately supported in cyber environment. On the basis of the results in the field of psychology and our own findings, a methodology called qualitative algebra has been developed, which deals with so far overlooked elements of trust phenomenon. It complements existing methodologies and provides a basis for a practical technical solution that supports management of trust in contemporary computing environments. Such solution is also presented at the end of this paper.

Keywords: internet security, trust management, multi-agent systems, reasoning and judgment, modeling and simulation, qualitativealgebra

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Authors: Suwardo, Madzlan B. Napiah, Ibrahim B. Kamaruddin

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Stage bus operated in the mixed traffic might always meet many problems about low quality and reliability of services. The low quality and reliability of bus service can make the system not attractive and directly reduce the interest of using bus service. This paper presents the result of field investigation and analysis of on-time performance and service regularity of stage bus in mixed traffic. Data for analysis was collected from the field by on-board observation along the Ipoh-Lumut corridor in Perak, Malaysia. From analysis and discussion, it can be concluded that on-time performance and service regularity varies depend on station, typical day, time period, operation characteristics of bus and characteristics of traffic. The on-time performance and service regularity of stage bus in mixed traffic can be derived by using data collected by onboard survey. It is clear that on-time performance and service regularity of the existing stage bus system was low.

Keywords: mixed traffic, on-time performance, service regularity, stage bus

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Authors: F. Arıkan, Z. Karakus

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Cancer is a widespread disease in the world and is the third reason of deaths among the chronic diseases. Educating patients and caregivers has a vital role for empowering them in managing disease and treatment's symptoms. Informing of the patients about their disease and treatment process decreases patient's distress and decisional conflicts, improves wellbeing of them, increase success of the treatment and survival. In this era, technological education methods are used for patients that have different chronic disease. Many studies indicated that especially web based patient education such as chronic obstructive lung disease; heart failure is more effective than printed materials. Web based education provide easiness to patients while they are reaching health services. It also has more advantages because of it decreases health cost and requirement of staff. It is thought that web based education may be beneficial method for cancer patient's empowerment in coping with the disease's symptoms. The aim of the study is evaluate the effectiveness of web based education for cancer patients' clinical outcomes.

Keywords: Cancer Patients, E-Learning, Nursing, Web Based Education.

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Authors: Siyuan Jing, Kun She

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Virtualization-based server consolidation has been proven to be an ideal technique to solve the server sprawl problem by consolidating multiple virtualized servers onto a few physical servers leading to improved resource utilization and return on investment. In this paper, we solve this problem by using existing servers, which are heterogeneous and diversely preferred by IT managers. Five practical consolidation rules are introduced, and a decision model is proposed to optimally allocate source services to physical target servers while maximizing the average resource utilization and preference value. Our model can be regarded as a multi-objective multi-dimension bin-packing (MOMDBP) problem with constraints, which is strongly NP-hard. An improved grouping generic algorithm (GGA) is introduced for the problem. Extensive simulations were performed and the results are given.

Keywords: GGA-based Heuristics, Preference, Real-worldConstraints, Resource Utilization, Server Consolidation

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Authors: Mehmet Balci, Sakir Tasdemir, Mustafa Altin, Ozlem Bozok

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Our globalizing world has become almost a small village and everyone can access any information at any time. Everyone lets each other know who does whatever in which place. We can learn which social events occur in which place in the world. From the perspective of education, the course notes that a lecturer use in lessons in a university in any state of America can be examined by a student studying in a city of Africa or the Far East. This dizzying communication we have mentioned happened thanks to fast developments in computer and internet technologies. While these developments occur in the world, Turkey that has a very large young population and whose electronic infrastructure rapidly improves has also been affected by these developments. Nowadays, mobile devices have become common and thus, it causes to increase data traffic in social networks. This study was carried out on students in the different age groups in Selcuk University Vocational School of Technical Sciences, the Department of Computer Technology. Students’ opinions about the use of internet and social media were obtained. The features such as using the Internet and social media skills, purposes, operating frequency, accessing facilities and tools, social life and effects on vocational education and so forth were explored. The positive effects and negative effects of both internet and social media use on the students in this department and findings are evaluated from different perspectives and results are obtained. In addition, relations and differences were found out statistically.

Keywords: Computer technologies, internet use, social network, higher vocational school.

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Authors: S. Kannimuthu, K. Premalatha

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This paper investigates a new data mining capability that entails mining of High Utility Itemsets (HUI) in a distributed environment. Existing research in data mining deals with only presence or absence of an items and do not consider the semantic measures like weight or cost of the items. Thus, HUI mining algorithm has evolved. HUI mining is the one kind of utility mining concept, aims to identify itemsets whose utility satisfies a given threshold. Although, the approach of mining HUIs in a distributed environment and mining of the same from XML data have not explored yet. In this work, a novel approach is proposed to mine HUIs from the XML based data in a distributed environment. This work utilizes Service Oriented Computing (SOC) paradigm which provides Knowledge as a Service (KaaS). The interesting patterns are provided via the web services with the help of knowledge server to answer the queries of the consumers. The performance of the approach is evaluated on various databases using execution time and memory consumption.

Keywords: Data mining, Knowledge as a Service, service oriented computing, utility mining.

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Authors: Abdul Basit Kiani, Maryam Kiani

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The art of web development in new technologies is a dynamic journey, shaped by the constant evolution of tools and platforms. With the emergence of JavaScript frameworks and APIs, web developers are empowered to craft web applications that are not only robust but also highly interactive. The aim is to provide an overview of the developments in the field. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) has opened new horizons in web development. Chatbots, intelligent recommendation systems, and personalization algorithms have become integral components of modern websites. These AI-powered features enhance user engagement, provide personalized experiences, and streamline customer support processes, revolutionizing the way businesses interact with their audiences. Lastly, the emphasis on web security and privacy has been a pivotal area of progress. With the increasing incidents of cyber threats, web developers have implemented robust security measures to safeguard user data and ensure secure transactions. Innovations such as HTTPS protocol, two-factor authentication, and advanced encryption techniques have bolstered the overall security of web applications, fostering trust and confidence among users. Hence, recent progress in web development has propelled the industry forward, enabling developers to craft innovative and immersive digital experiences. From responsive design to AI integration and enhanced security, the landscape of web development continues to evolve, promising a future filled with endless possibilities.

Keywords: Web development, software testing, progressive web apps, web and mobile native application.

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Authors: Adekunle O. Afolabi, Pekka Toivanen

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The world is expected to experience growth in the number of ageing population, and this will bring about high cost of providing care for these valuable citizens. In addition, many of these live with chronic diseases that come with old age. Providing adequate care in the face of rising costs and dwindling personnel can be challenging. However, advances in technologies and emergence of the Internet of Things are providing a way to address these challenges while improving care giving. This study proposes the integration of recommendation systems into homecare to provide real-time recommendations for effective management of people receiving care at home and those living with chronic diseases. Using the simplified Training Logic Concept, stakeholders and requirements were identified. Specific requirements were gathered from people living with cancer. The solution designed has two components namely home and community, to enhance recommendations sharing for effective care giving. The community component of the design was implemented with the development of a mobile app called Recommendations Sharing Community for Aged and Chronically Ill People (ReSCAP). This component has illustrated the possibility of real-time recommendations, improved recommendations sharing among care receivers and between a physician and care receivers. Full implementation will increase access to health data for better care decision making.

Keywords: Recommendation systems, healthcare, internet of things, real-time, homecare.

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Authors: Soe Winn, May Thwe Oo

Abstract:

Business process automation is an important task in an enterprise business environment software development. The requirements of processing acceleration and automation level of enterprises are inherently different from one organization to another. We present a methodology and system for automation of business process management system architecture by multi-agent collaboration based on SOA. Design layer processes are modeled in semantic markup language for web services application. At the core of our system is considering certain types of human tasks to their further automation across over multiple platform environments. An improved abnormality processing with model for automation of BPMS architecture by multi-agent collaboration based on SOA is introduced. Validating system for efficiency of process automation, an application for educational knowledge base instance would also be described.

Keywords: Business process management system, businessprocess automation, multi-agent collaboration, Service OrientedArchitecture, extensible service application

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Authors: A. Khelifi, D. Ahmed, R. Salem, N. Ali

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Large patients’ queues at pharmacies and hospitals are a problem that faces the supposedly smooth and healthy environment in United Arab Emirates. As this sometimes leads to dissatisfaction from visiting patients, we tried to solve this problem with additional beneficial functions by developing the Hospital-Pharmacy Management System. The primary purpose of this research is to develop a system that joins the databases of a hospital and a pharmacy together for a better integrated system that provides a better coherent working environment. Three methods are used to design the system. These methods are detailed literature review, an extensive feasibility study and surveys for doctors, hospital IT managers and End-users. Interviews and surveys with related stakeholders were done to depict system’s requirements; design and prototype. The prototype illustrates system’s features and its client and server architecture. The system has a mobile application for visiting patients to, mainly, keep track of their prescriptions and access to their personal information. The server side allows doctors to submit the prescriptions online to pharmacists who will process them. This system is expected to reduce the long waiting queues of patients and increase their satisfaction while also reducing doctors and pharmacists’ stress and facilitating their work. It will be deployed to users of Android devices only. This limitation will be resolved, as one of main future enhancements, once the system finds acceptance from hospitals and pharmacies in United Arab Emirates.

Keywords: Hospital, Information System, Integration, Pharmacy.

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Authors: Kanyarat Bussaban, Siriporn Poolsuwan

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This study is conducted with the objective to prove how the distorted distribution of welfare affects the quality of school-age children lives differently in the case ofan urban community in Bangkok. 334 samples are households from Suan Oi and Ratchapatubtim communities. The study of sample communities found the difference between two communityareasthatare close. The people of Suan Oi community are economically better off people than the people of the Ratchapatubtim community. They share the benefits of using most services except the welfare of a child’s education.The resulting analysis of the variability in quality of life of the school age children indicate that heads of the households are women looking for quality of life benefits when the compulsory school age is less.A study of the two communities suggests that the inequality in incomedistribution currently affects the quality of life of school-age children.

Keywords: Inequality, Income distribution, Quality of school-age children lives, Welfare state.

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Authors: Suppara Charoenpoom

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This paper was aimed to survey the level of awareness of traditional grocery stores in Bangkok in these categories: location, service quality, risk, shopping, worthwhile, shopping satisfaction, and future shopping intention. The paper was also aimed to survey factors influencing the decision to shop at traditional grocery stores in Bangkok in the future. The findings revealed that consumers had a high level of awareness of traditional grocery stores in Bangkok. Consumers were aware that the price was higher and it was riskier to buy goods and services at traditional grocery stores but they still had a high level of preference to patronage traditional grocery stores. This was due to the reasons that there was a high level of satisfaction from the factors of the friendliness of the owner, the ability to negotiate the price, the ability to buy on credit, free delivery, and the enjoyment to meet with other customers in the same neighborhood.

Keywords: Business Management, Thai Economy, Traditional Grocery Store.

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Authors: Renata Mekovec, Dijana Peras, Ruben Picek

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The advent of the Internet, mobile devices and social media is revolutionizing the experience of retail customers by linking multiple sources through various channels. Omnichannel retailing is a retailing that combines multiple channels to allow customers to seamlessly leverage all the distribution information online and offline while shopping. Therefore, today data are an asset more critical than ever for all organizations. Nonetheless, because of its heterogeneity through platforms, developers are currently facing difficulties in dealing with personal data. Considering the possibilities of omnichannel communication, this paper presents channel categorization that could enhance the customer experience of omnichannel center called hyper center. The purpose of this paper is fundamentally to describe the connection between the omnichannel hyper center and the customer, with particular attention to privacy protection. The first phase was finding the most appropriate channels of communication for hyper center. Consequently, a selection of widely used communication channels has been identified and analyzed with regard to the effect requirements for optimizing user experience. The evaluation criteria are divided into 3 groups: general, user profile and channel options. For each criterion the weight of importance for omnichannel communication was defined. The most important thing was to consider how the hyper center can make user identification while respecting the privacy protection requirements. The study carried out also shows what customer experience across digital networks would look like, based on an omnichannel approach owing to privacy protection principles.

Keywords: Personal data, privacy protection, omnichannel communication, retail.

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Authors: Mami Sugiura, Shinichi Arakawa, Masayuki Murata, Satoshi Imai, Toru Katagiri, Motoyoshi Sekiya

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API (Application Programming Interface) economy, where many participants join/interact and form the economy, is expected to increase collaboration between information services through API, and thereby, it is expected to increase market value from the service collaborations. In this paper, we introduce API evaluators, which are the activator of API economy by reviewing and/or evaluating APIs, and develop a multi-sided API economy model that formulates interactions among platform provider, API developers, consumers, and API evaluators. By obtaining the equilibrium that maximizes utility of all participants, the impact of API evaluators on the utility of participants in the API economy is revealed. Numerical results show that, with the existence of API evaluators, the number of developers and consumers increase by 1.5% and the utility of platformer increases by 2.3%. We also discuss the strategies of platform provider to maximize its utility under the existence of API evaluators.

Keywords: API economy, multi-sided markets, API evaluator, platform, platform provider.

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Authors: Nükhet Konuk, N. Gamze Turan, Yüksel Ardalı

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Cities play a vital role in the social fabric of countries and in national and regional economic growth worldwide; however, the environmental effects of such growth need to be assessed and managed better. The critical and most immediate problems faced by cities of developing countries are the health impacts of urban pollution that derive from inadequate water, sanitation, drainage and solid waste services, poor urban and industrial waste management, and air pollution. As globalization continues, earth's natural processes transform local problems into international issues. The aim of this study is to provide a broad overview of the pollution from urban wastes and emissions in Turkey which is a developing country. It is aimed to underline the significance of reorganizing the institutional tools in a worldwide perspective in order to generate coherent solutions to urban problems, and to enhance urban quality.

Keywords: Environmental pollution, developing countries, environmental degradation, urban environmental problems.

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Authors: Paula Ferreira, Filipa Vieira

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The use of wind energy for electricity generation is growing rapidly across the world and in Portugal. However, the geographical characteristics of the country along with the average wind regime and with the environmental restrictions imposed to these projects create limitations to the exploit of the onshore wind resource. The best onshore wind spots are already committed and the possibility of offshore wind farms in the Portuguese cost is now being considered. This paper aims to make a contribution to the evaluation of offshore wind power projects in Portugal. The technical restrictions are addressed and the strategic, environmental and financial interest of the project is analysed from the private company and public points of view. The results suggest that additional support schemes are required to ensure private investors interest for these projects. Assuming an approach of direct substitution of energy sources for electricity generation, the avoided CO2 equivalent emissions for an offshore wind power project were quantified. Based on the conclusions, future research is proposed to address the environmental and social impacts of these projects.

Keywords: Feed-in tariff, offshore wind power, project evaluation.

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Authors: Wen-Chieh, Hsieh

Abstract:

The purpose of this study is to analyze the islands tourist travel information sources, as well as for the satisfaction of the tourist destination services. This study used questionnaires to the island of Taiwan to the Penghu Islands to engage in tourism activities tourist adopt the designated convenience sampling method, a total of 889 valid questionnaires were collected. After statistical analysis, this study found that: 1. tourists to the Penghu Islands travel information source for “friends and family came to Penghu". 2. Tourists feel the service of the outlying islands of Penghu, the highest feelings of “friendly local residents". 3. There are different demographic variables affect the tourist travel information source and service satisfaction. Based on the findings of this study not only for Penghu's tourism industry with the unit in charge of the proposed operating and suggestions for future research to other researchers.

Keywords: Island tourism, destination, travel information, service satisfaction.

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Authors: Elmamy Ahmedsalem

Abstract:

The world has witnessed the collapse of many corporate giants as a result of unethical behavior in recent decades. This has induced a series of questions by the global community on why such occurrences could happen, even with corporate governance in place. This paper attempts to propose a philosophical approach from an Islamic perspective to be consolidated with current corporate governance in order to confront contemporary dilemmas. In this paper, ethical theories are presented as a discussion followed by their applications to modern cases of financial collapses. Virtue ethics by Aristotle, justice and fairness by John Rawls, deontology by Immanuel Kant, and utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill, are the four theories which can then be contrasted with the paradigm of Muslim scholars. Despite the differences between the fundamental principles of Islamic and Western worldviews, their ethical theories are aimed at making right decisions and solving ethical dilemmas based on what is good for society. Therefore, Islamic principles should be synthesized with Western philosophy to form a more coherent framework. The integration of Islamic and western ethical theories into business is important for sound corporate governance.

Keywords: Business ethics, Islamic philosophy, western philosophy, Western and Islamic Worldview of Ethics.

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Authors: Reem Al-Kaabi

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The concept of e-government has begun to spread among countries. It is based on the use of information communication technology (ICT) to fully utilize government resources, as well as to provide government services to citizens, investors and foreigners. Critical factors are the factors that are determined by the senior management of each organization; the success or failure of the organization depends on the effective implementation of critical factors. These factors vary from one organization to another according to their activity, size and functions. It is very important that organizations identify them in order to avoid the risk of implementing initiatives that may fail to work, while simultaneously exploiting opportunities that may succeed in working. The main focus of this paper is to investigate the majority of critical success factors (CSFs) associated with the implementation of e-government projects. This study concentrates on both technical and nontechnical factors. This paper concludes by listing the majority of CSFs relating to successful e-government implementation in Bahrain.

Keywords: Critical success factors, e-government, ICT, implementation, Kingdom of Bahrain.

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Authors: Mazila Md-Yusuf, Fauziah Mohamad Yunus, Nur Zahraatul Lail Md Supaat

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Capital structure is one of the most important financial decisions in corporate financing strategy. It involves the choice of debt and equity level in financing a company-s operations. This study aims to investigate whether the capital structure choice of Malaysian electrical and electronic manufacturing companies that are listed in the Bursa Malaysia can be explained by factors that have been found by most studies as dominant determinants of capital structure (company size, profitability, asset tangibility, liquidity and growth). Using debt ratio as the proxy for capital structure and applying pooled ordinary least square multiple regression estimation, the results showed that on average, Malaysian electrical and electronic manufacturing companies used less debt in funding their business operations. The findings also showed that size and asset tangibility has a significant positive relationship with debt level, while liquidity has a negative significant relationship with leverage.

Keywords: Capital structure, capital structure theories, leverage, manufacturing companies.

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Authors: Ying-Chuan Chen, Shuen-Tai Wang

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Security is an interesting and significance issue for popular virtual platforms, such as virtualization cluster and cloud platforms. Virtualization is the powerful technology for cloud computing services, there are a lot of benefits by using virtual machine tools which be called hypervisors, such as it can quickly deploy all kinds of virtual Operating Systems in single platform, able to control all virtual system resources effectively, cost down for system platform deployment, ability of customization, high elasticity and high reliability. However, some important security problems need to take care and resolved in virtual platforms that include terrible viruses, evil programs, illegal operations and intrusion behavior. In this paper, we present useful Intrusion Detection Mechanism (IDM) software that not only can auto to analyze all system-s operations with the accounting journal database, but also is able to monitor the system-s state for virtual platforms.

Keywords: security, cluster, cloud, virtualization, virtual machine, virus, intrusion detection

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Authors: Shuen-Tai Wang, Chin-Hung Li, Ying-Chuan Chen

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In recent years there has been renewal of interest in the relation between Green IT and Cloud Computing. The growing use of computers in cloud platform has caused marked energy consumption, putting negative pressure on electricity cost of cloud data center. This paper proposes an effective mechanism to reduce energy utilization in cloud computing environments. We present initial work on the integration of resource and power management that aims at reducing power consumption. Our mechanism relies on recalling virtualization services dynamically according to user-s virtualization request and temporarily shutting down the physical machines after finish in order to conserve energy. Given the estimated energy consumption, this proposed effort has the potential to positively impact power consumption. The results from the experiment concluded that energy indeed can be saved by powering off the idling physical machines in cloud platforms.

Keywords: Green IT, Cloud Computing, virtualization, power consumption.

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