Search results for: Combined Economic Emission Dispatch

Authors: Edison Muzenda, Freeman Ntuli, Tsietsi Jefrey Pilusa

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This paper highlights some interesting facts on South African-s waste situation and management strategies, in particular the Integrated Waste Management. South Africa supports a waste hierarchy by promoting cleaner production, waste minimisation, reuse, recycling and waste treatment with disposal and remediation as the last preferred options in waste management. The drivers for waste management techniques are identified as increased demand for waste service provision; increased demand for waste minimisation; recycling and recovery; land use, physical and environmental limitations; and socio-economic and demographic factors. The South African government recognizes the importance of scientific research as outlined on the white paper on Integrated Pollution and Waste Management (IP and WM) (DEAT, 2000).

Keywords: Cleaner production, demographic factors, environmental quality, integrated waste management, hierarchy, recycling

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Authors: Siska Soesanti, Norihiro Nakai

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Bandung city center can be deemed as economic, social and cultural center. However the city center suffers from deterioration. The retail activities tend to shift outward the city center. Numerous idyllic residences changed into business premises in two villages situated in the north part of the city during 1990s, especially after a new highway and flyover opened. According to space syntax theory, the pattern of spatial integration in the urban grid is a prime determinant of movement patterns in the system. The syntactic analysis results show the flyover has insignificant influence on street network in the city center. However the flyover has been generating a major difference in the new commercial area since it has become relatively as strategic as the city center. Besides street network, local government policy, rapid private motorization and particular condition of each site also played important roles in encouraging the current commercial areas to flourish.

Keywords: City center, commercial area, space syntax, street network.

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Authors: Ismail Guven

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Educational reforms are focused point of different nations. New reform movements generally claim that something is wrong with the current state of affairs, and that the system is deficient in its goals, its accomplishments and it is accused not being adopted into global changes all over the world. It is the same for Turkish education system. It is considered those recent reforms of teacher education in Turkey and the extent to which they reflect a response to global economic pressures. The paper challenges the view that such imposes are inevitable determinants of educational policy and argues that any country will need to develop its own national approach to modernizing teacher education in light of the global context and its particular circumstances. It draws on the idea of reflexive modernization developed by educators and discusses its implications for teacher education policy. The paper deals with four themes teacher education in last decade policy in Turkey; the shift away from the educational disciplines, the shift towards school-based approaches, and the emergence of more centralized forms of accountability of teacher competence.

Keywords: Teacher education, globalization, Turkey.

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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: Saeid Gharechelou, Ryutaro Tateishi

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Earthquake is an inevitable catastrophic natural disaster. The damages of buildings and man-made structures, where most of the human activities occur are the major cause of casualties from earthquakes. A comparison of optical and SAR data is presented in the case of Kathmandu valley which was hardly shaken by 2015-Nepal Earthquake. Though many existing researchers have conducted optical data based estimated or suggested combined use of optical and SAR data for improved accuracy, however finding cloud-free optical images when urgently needed are not assured. Therefore, this research is specializd in developing SAR based technique with the target of rapid and accurate geospatial reporting. Should considers that limited time available in post-disaster situation offering quick computation exclusively based on two pairs of pre-seismic and co-seismic single look complex (SLC) images. The InSAR coherence pre-seismic, co-seismic and post-seismic was used to detect the change in damaged area. In addition, the ground truth data from field applied to optical data by random forest classification for detection of damaged area. The ground truth data collected in the field were used to assess the accuracy of supervised classification approach. Though a higher accuracy obtained from the optical data then integration by optical-SAR data. Limitation of cloud-free images when urgently needed for earthquak evevent are and is not assured, thus further research on improving the SAR based damage detection is suggested. Availability of very accurate damage information is expected for channelling the rescue and emergency operations. It is expected that the quick reporting of the post-disaster damage situation quantified by the rapid earthquake assessment should assist in channeling the rescue and emergency operations, and in informing the public about the scale of damage.

Keywords: Sentinel-1A data, Landsat-8, earthquake damage, InSAR, rapid monitoring, 2015-Nepal earthquake.

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Authors: Mustapha Kamel Mihoubi, Hocine Dahmani

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Over recent years much progress has been achieved in the fields of numerical modeling shoreline processes: waves, currents, waves and current. However, there are still some problems in the existing models to link the on the first, the hydrodynamics of waves and currents and secondly, the sediment transport processes and due to the variability in time, space and interaction and the simultaneous action of wave-current near the shore. This paper is the establishment of a numerical modeling to forecast the sediment transport from development scenarios of harbor structure. It is established on the basis of a numerical simulation of a water-sediment model via a 2D model using a set of codes calculation MIKE 21-DHI software. This is to examine the effect of the sediment transport drivers following the dominant incident wave in the direction to pass input harbor work under different variants planning studies to find the technical and economic limitations to the sediment transport and protection of the harbor structure optimum solution.

Keywords: Swell, current, radiation, stress, mesh, MIKE21, sediment.

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Authors: R. Mehra

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The measurements of 226Ra, 232Th and 40K using gamma spectrometry and radon concentration and exhalation rates measurements using solid state nuclear track (LR-115, Type-II plastic) detectors are used to asses a first order exposure risk for the persons residing in Fatehbad and Hissar districts of Western Haryana, India. The concentration of Radium, Thorium and Potassium in the soil samples varies from 13.37 Bq m-3 to 24.67 Bq m-3, 34.67 Bq m-3 to 67.34 Bq m-3 and 298.78 Bq m-3 to 405.67 Bq m-3 respectively with average values of 18.78, 47.35 and 361.57 Bq m-3 respectively. The radium equivalent activity (Raeq) calculated for the same soil samples varies from 92.72 Bq m-3 to 140.6 Bq m-3 with an average value of 111.80 Bq m-3. The values of absorbed dose and annual effective dose (indoors and outdoors) are found to vary from 44.18 nGy h-1 to 65.23 nGy h-1, 0.22 mSv y-1 to 0.32 mSv y-1 and 0.05 mSv y-1 to 0.08 mSv y-1 respectively. The radon concentration and exhalation rates have also been reported. The radium equivalent activities in all the soil samples were found to be lower than the limit (370 Bq kg-1) set in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report and the value of Hex in all the samples is less than unity.

Keywords: Gamma ray spectrometry, dose, radon, exhalationrate.

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Authors: Volker Lange, Stephanie Moede, Christiane Auffermann

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From an economic standpoint the current and future road traffic situation in urban areas is a cost factor. Traffic jams and congestion prolong journey times and tie up resources in trucks and personnel. Many discussions about imposing charges or tolls for cities in Europe in order to reduce traffic congestion are currently in progress. Both of these effects lead – directly or indirectly - to additional costs for the urban distribution systems in retail companies. One approach towards improving the efficiency of retail distribution systems, and thus towards avoiding negative environmental factors in urban areas, is horizontal collaboration for deliveries to retail outlets – Urban Retail Logistics. This paper presents a classification system to help reveal where cooperation between retail companies is possible and makes sense for deliveries to retail outlets in urban areas.

Keywords: City Logistics, Horizontal Collaboration, Urban Freight Transport, Urban Retail Logistics.

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Authors: So-Jung Kim, Kyoung-Seok Kim, Yeong-Gyeong Choi

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Although there are many theories and discussion of leadership, the necessity of having a new leadership paradigm was emphasized. The existing leadership characteristic of instruction and control revealed its limitations. Market competition becomes fierce and economic recession never ends worldwide. Of the leadership theories, servant leadership was introduced recently and is in line with the environmental changes of the organization. Servant leadership is a combination of two words, 'servant' and 'leader' and can be defined as the role of the leader who focuses on doing voluntary work for others with altruistic ethics, makes members, customers, and local communities a priority, and makes a commitment to satisfying their needs. This leadership received attention as one field of leadership in the late 1990s and secured its legitimacy. This study discusses the existing research trends of leadership, the concept, behavior characteristics, and lower dimensions of servant leadership, compares servant leadership with the existing leadership researches and diagnoses if servant leadership is a useful concept for further leadership researches. Finally, this study criticizes the limitations in the existing researches on servant leadership.

Keywords: Leadership Philosophy, Leadership Theory, Servant Leadership, Traditional Leadership.

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Authors: Bella Llego

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This study on “The relationship between human resource practices and Firm Performance is a speculative investigation research. The purpose of this research are (1) to provide and to understand of HRM history and current HR practices in the Philippines (2) to examine the extent of HRM practice among its Philippine firms effectively; (3) to investigate the relationship between HRM practice and firm performance in the Philippines. The survey was done to 233 companies in the Philippines. The questionnaire is divided into three parts a) to gathers information on the profile of respondent, b) to measures the extent to which human resource practices are being practiced in their organization c) to measure the organizations performance as perceived by human resource managers and top executives as compared with their competitors in the same industry. As a result an interesting finding was that almost 50 percent of firm performance is affected by the extent of implementation of HR practices in the firm. These results show that HR practices that are in line with the organization’s strategic goals are important for future performance.

Keywords: Economic Growth, Firm performance, Human Resource Practices, Management.

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Authors: Tasawar Nawaz

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Promotion of socioeconomic justice through redistribution of wealth is one of the most salient features of Islamic economic system. Islamic financial institutions known as Islamic banks are used to implement this in practice under the guidelines of Islamic Shariah law. Islamic banking systems strive to promote and achieve financial inclusion among the society by offering interest-free banking and risk-sharing financing solutions. Shariah-compliant micro finance is one of the most popular financial instruments used by Islamic banks to enhance access to finance. Benevolent loan (or Qard-al-Hassanah) is one of the popular financial tools used by the Islamic banks to promote financial inclusion. This aspect of Islamic banking is empirically examined in this paper with specific reference to firm’s resources, largely defined here as intellectual capital. The paper finds that Islamic banks promote financial inclusion by exploiting available resources especially, the human intellectual capital.

Keywords: Financial inclusion, intellectual capital, Qard-al-Hassanah, Islamic banking.

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Authors: Samorn Hirunpraditkoon, Nathaporn Tunthong, Anotai Ruangchai, Kamchai Nuithitikul

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The production of activated carbon from low or zero cost of agricultural by-products or wastes has received great attention from academics and practitioners due to its economic and environmental benefits. In the production of bamboo furniture, a significant amount of bamboo waste is inevitably generated. Therefore, this research aimed to prepare activated carbons from bamboo furniture waste by chemical (KOH) activation and determine their properties and adsorption capacities for water treatment. The influence of carbonization time on the properties and adsorption capacities of activated carbons was also investigated. The finding showed that the bamboo-derived activated carbons had microporous characteristics. They exhibited high tendency for the reduction of impurities present in effluent water. Their adsorption capacities were comparable to the adsorption capacity of a commercial activated carbon regarding to the reduction in COD, TDS and turbidity of the effluent water.

Keywords: Activated carbon, Bamboo, Water treatment, Chemical activation.

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Authors: Abdel Aziz, Hadia H.

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Since the 1980s, banks and financial service institutions have been running in an endless race of innovation to cope with the advancing technology, the fierce competition, and the more sophisticated and demanding customers. In order to guide their innovation efforts, several researches were conducted to identify the success and failure factors of new financial services. These mainly included organizational factors, marketplace factors and new service development process factors. They almost all emphasized the importance of customer and market orientation as a response to the highly perceptual and intangible characteristics of financial services. However, they deemphasized the critical characteristics of high involvement of risk and close correlation with the economic conditions, a factor that heavily contributed to the Global financial Crisis of 2008. This paper reviews the success and failure factors of new financial services. It then adds new perspectives emerging from the analysis of the role of innovation in the global financial crisis.

Keywords: Financial innovation, global financial crisis, lessons learned from global financial crisis, success factors in financial innovation.

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Authors: Nor Hafizah S., Salfarina A. G., Intan Hashimah H., Juliana A. W.

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Collective action can be an effective means for local development as well as important strategy to enhance livelihoods especially among rural people. This article explores the level of collective action among members of Fishermen-s Wives Group (KUNITA) in Malaysia. KUNITA was established by the Malaysian Fishery Development Authority (LKIM) with an objective to increase the socio-economic status of fishermen-s families. The members who are mostly the wives and daughters of fishermen are strongly encouraged by LKIM to venture into entrepreneurship activities. The objective of this research was to see the level of collective action among members in KUNITA groups in the state of Selangor. The finding shows that high level of collective action among KUNITA members is strongly based on volunteerism. However, the level of cooperation among members in the group is relatively low. The findings present significant challenges for the group in maintaining the sustainability of KUNITA organization.

Keywords: Collective action, entrepreneurship, fishermen' swives group, LKIM.

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Authors: L. Mota, O. Frausto

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Marine Protected Areas can benefit from nature based tourism, monitoring environmental impacts and also become target for human presence. From more than 3 million tourists visiting Cozumel Island every year, an average of 2,8 million arrive by cruise ship, and 41% are estimated to have motivation for water activities. The destination is relying so much on the tourism activity, that scuba diving and snorkeling in the National Park Reef of Cozumel sustain the major economic activity. In order to achieve the sustainable development indicator designed for regional environmental development, the PNAC offers a training course to tourism providers to access the protected area. This way, the update of the last 5 years of such training is directed to diving staff, boat crew and professionals, making them able to assist in managing the natural resource. Moreover, the case study is an example to be used for raising awareness among tourists visiting protected areas.

Keywords: Education, Marine Protected Area, scuba diving, sustainability, tourism.

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Authors: Tarek Elhasia, Bernd Noche, Lima Zhao

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In recent years, sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) has been widely researched in academic domain. However, due to the traditional operational role and the complexity of supply chain management in the cement industry, a relatively small amount of research has been conducted on cement supply chain simulation integrated with sustainability criteria. This paper analyses the cement supply chain operations using the Push-Pull supply chain frameworks, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology; and proposal integration approach, proposes three supply chain scenarios based on Make-To-Stock (MTS), Pack-To-Order (PTO) and Grind- To-Order (GTO) strategies. A Discrete-Event Simulation (DES) model of SSCM is constructed using Arena software to implement the three-target scenarios. We conclude with the simulation results that (GTO) is the optimal supply chain strategy that demonstrates the best economic, ecological and social performance in the cement industry.

Keywords: Cement industry, simulation, supply chain management (SCM), sustainability.

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Authors: Ilze Stokmane

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Economic processes underway in the country directly and indirectly affect the welfare of the people and the social environment, starting with job security and having a direct impact on the qualitative and safe living environment.

The paper describes existing situation and gives analysis of the regional development policy determination and implementation in the all three Baltic countries. According statistical indicators there are differences between implementation of the regional development activities between all Baltic countries and in regions of inside each country.

It is analyzed more detail differences between regions in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia according possibility to evaluate success of development processes in regions of the Baltic countries. The descriptive analyze of documents, statistical indicators at national level and regional level were used in the research.

Keywords: Baltic countries, city environment, regional development, urban areas.

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Authors: Musa H. Arslan, Murat Ceylan, Tayfun Koyuncu

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In this study, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) analytical method has been developed for analyzing earthquake performances of the Reinforced Concrete (RC) buildings. 66 RC buildings with four to ten storeys were subjected to performance analysis according to the parameters which are the existing material, loading and geometrical characteristics of the buildings. The selected parameters have been thought to be effective on the performance of RC buildings. In the performance analyses stage of the study, level of performance possible to be shown by these buildings in case of an earthquake was determined on the basis of the 4-grade performance levels specified in Turkish Earthquake Code-2007 (TEC-2007). After obtaining the 4-grade performance level, selected 23 parameters of each building have been matched with the performance level. In this stage, ANN-based fast evaluation algorithm mentioned above made an economic and rapid evaluation of four to ten storey RC buildings. According to the study, the prediction accuracy of ANN has been found about 74%.

Keywords: Artificial neural network, earthquake, performance, reinforced concrete.

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Authors: Kati Kõrbe Kaare, Ott Koppel

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Transport and logistics are the lifeblood of societies. There is a strong correlation between overall growth in economic activity and growth of transport. The movement of people and goods has the potential for creating wealth and prosperity, therefore the state of transportation infrastructure and especially the condition of road networks is often a governmental priority. The design, building and maintenance of national roads constitute a substantial share of government budgets. Taking into account the magnitude and importance of these investments, the expedience, efficiency and sustainability of these projects are of great public interest. This paper provides an overview of supply chain management principles applied to road construction. In addition, road construction performance measurement systems and ICT solutions are discussed. Road construction in Estonia is analyzed. The authors propose the development of a national performance measurement system for road construction.

Keywords: ICT in road construction, key performance indicators, quality performance measurement, road construction supply chain.

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Authors: M.K. Bhuyan, Aragala Jagan.

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Current image-based individual human recognition methods, such as fingerprints, face, or iris biometric modalities generally require a cooperative subject, views from certain aspects, and physical contact or close proximity. These methods cannot reliably recognize non-cooperating individuals at a distance in the real world under changing environmental conditions. Gait, which concerns recognizing individuals by the way they walk, is a relatively new biometric without these disadvantages. The inherent gait characteristic of an individual makes it irreplaceable and useful in visual surveillance. In this paper, an efficient gait recognition system for human identification by extracting two features namely width vector of the binary silhouette and the MPEG-7-based region-based shape descriptors is proposed. In the proposed method, foreground objects i.e., human and other moving objects are extracted by estimating background information by a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and subsequently, median filtering operation is performed for removing noises in the background subtracted image. A moving target classification algorithm is used to separate human being (i.e., pedestrian) from other foreground objects (viz., vehicles). Shape and boundary information is used in the moving target classification algorithm. Subsequently, width vector of the outer contour of binary silhouette and the MPEG-7 Angular Radial Transform coefficients are taken as the feature vector. Next, the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is applied to the selected feature vector to reduce its dimensionality. These extracted feature vectors are used to train an Hidden Markov Model (HMM) for identification of some individuals. The proposed system is evaluated using some gait sequences and the experimental results show the efficacy of the proposed algorithm.

Keywords: Gait Recognition, Gaussian Mixture Model, PrincipalComponent Analysis, MPEG-7 Angular Radial Transform.

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Authors: Xu Tao, Yilun Xu, Dingwei Xiang, Yaofei Sun

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The practice of urban planning and construction based on the concept of the “low carbon eco-city” has been universally accepted by the academic community in response to urban issues such as population, resources, environment, and social development. Based on this, the current article first analyzes the concepts of low carbon eco-city, then builds a complex adaptive system (CAS) theory based on Chinese traditional philosophical thinking, and analyzes the adaptive relationship between material and non-material elements. A three-dimensional evaluation model of natural ecology, economic low carbon, and social harmony was constructed. Finally, the construction of a low carbon eco-city index system in Hexi Newtown of Nanjing was used as an example to verify the effectiveness of the research results; this paradigm provides a new way to achieve a low carbon eco-city system.

Keywords: Complex adaptive system, low carbon ecology, index system, model.

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Authors: Dubbale Daniel A., Tsutsumi J., Michael J. Bendewald

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Addis Ababa is a seat of African Union (AU), United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UN-ECA) and hundreds of embassies and consular representatives. Addis Ababa is one of the highest capitals in the world with an average 2400 meters above sea level. It is dichotomous city with a blend of modern high-rise and deteriorating slum quarters. Water supply and sanitation, waste management and housing are continuing to be serious problems. Forest wood based domestic energy use as well as uncontrolled emissions from mobile and fixed sources has endangered the state of the urban environment. Analysis based on satellite imagery has revealed the deteriorating urban environment within the last three decades. The recently restructured city administration has brought improvements in the condition of the urban environment. However, the overwhelming size of the challenges faced by the city dwarfed their fairly good results.

Keywords: Addis Ababa, Urban environment, Slum, Housing, Relocation

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Authors: Efat Lali Dastjerdi, Hassan Sadeghi Naeini, Hadi Sanjari

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One of the important steps in a safety and risk management system is the economical evaluation of occupational accident and diseases costs in order to decrease accidents from reoccurring in the workplace. This study proposed a plausible method for calculating occupational accident costs and illnesses in work place. This method design for cost estimation takes into account both the personnel, organizational level as well as the community level especially intended for an Iranian work place. The research indicates that a using systematic method for calculating costs which also provides risk evaluation can help managers to plan correctly the investment in health and safety measures. Using this method is that not only is it comprehensive, easy and practical and could be applied in practice by a manager within a short period of time but it also shows the importance of accident costs as well as calculates the real cost of an accident and illnesses.

Keywords: ost calculating model, Economics of health and Safety.

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Authors: Dai Zhimei, Hua Chen

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The exploration of urban spatial evolution is an important part of urban development research. Therefore, the evolutionary modern Yangzhou urban spatial texture was taken as the research object, and Spatial Syntax was used as the main research tool, this paper explored Yangzhou spatial evolution law and its driving factors from the urban street network scale, district scale and street scale. The study has concluded that at the urban scale, Yangzhou urban spatial evolution is the result of a variety of causes, including physical and geographical condition, policy and planning factors, and traffic conditions, and the evolution of space also has an impact on social, economic, environmental and cultural factors. At the district and street scales, changes in space will have a profound influence on the history of the city and the activities of people. At the end of the article, the matters needing attention during the evolution of urban space were summarized.

Keywords: Space Syntax, spatial texture, urban space, Yangzhou.

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Authors: Houshmand E. Masoumi

Abstract:

Residential self-selection has gained increasing attention in the Western travel behavior research during the past decade. Many studies in the US, UK, and Germany conclude that the role of individuals’ residential location choice on commute travel behavior is more important than that of the built environment or at least it has considerable effects. However the effectiveness of location choice in many countries and cultures like Iran is unclear. This study examines the self-selections in two neighborhoods in Tehran. As a part of a research about the influences of land use on travel behavior information about people’s location preferences was collected by direct questioning. The findings show that the main reasons for selecting the location of residential units are related to socio-economic factors such as rise of house price and affordability of house prices. Transportation has little impacts on location decisions. Moreover, residential self-selection accounts for only 3 to 7.5 percent of the pedestrian, PT, and car trips.

Keywords: Residential self-selection, Tehran, travel behavior, urban transportation.

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Authors: P. Gudelj, E. Franić, M. Kolega

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Mental health is crucial for personal, social, and socio-economic development, becoming an increasingly relevant topic, especially in the post-global pandemic era. One vulnerable demographic comprises students who, during the pandemic, faced challenges such as adapting to new educational methods, societal or residential changes, heightened stress, responsibilities, and entering the job market. These life challenges proved insurmountable for some individuals during this phase. This research aimed to examine students' attitudes towards individuals seeking psychological help. By gaining a better understanding of young people's perceptions of seeking psychological assistance, a clearer insight into how to make psychological support more accessible and acceptable can be achieved. A questionnaire was completed by 210 students from various disciplines at the University of Zagreb. While the majority of students expressed a positive attitude towards seeking psychological help, a very small percentage reported having sought it. One of the most common obstacles to seeking appropriate help was a lack of financial means, with the most significant motivators being the positive experiences of those who sought help and an affordable cost.

Keywords: Mental health, students, psychological support, attitudes.

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Authors: N. Areerachakul

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In developing countries located in monsoon areas like Thailand where rainwater is currently of no value for urban dwellers due to easily access to piped water supply at each household, studies in rainwater harvesting for domestic use are of low interest. However it is needed to undertake research to find out appropriate rainwater harvesting systems particularly for small urban communities that are recently developed from a full rural structure to urban context. As a matter of fact, in such transitional period, relying on only common water resources is risky. With some specific economic settings, land use patterns, and historical and cultural context that dominate perceptions of water users in the study area, the level of service in this study may certainly be different from megacities or cities located in industrial zone. The overviews of some available technologies and background of rainwater harvesting including alternate resource are included in this paper. Among other sources of water supply, ground water use as the water resource of Thailand and also in the study area.

Keywords: Developing country, water supply, rainwater, ground water.

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Authors: Shatha A. Yousif, Qasim M. Zamil, Hasan Y. Al Muhi, Jamal A. Al Shammari

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Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is one of the major vegetable crops that are grown world –wide because of its economic importance. This experiment investigated the effect of local sands (River Base, Al-Ekader and Karbala) on number and total weight of minitubers. Statistical analysis revealed that there were no significant differences among sand cultures in number of stem/plant, chlorophyll index and tubers dry weight. River Base sand had the highest plant height (74.9 cm), leaf number/plant number (39.3), leaf area (84.4 dcm2⁄plant), dry weight/plant (26.31), tubers number/plant (8.5), tubers weight/plant (635.53 gm) and potato tuber yields/trove (28.60 kg), whereas the Karbala sand had lower performance. All the characters had positive and significant correlation with yields except the traits number of stem and tuber dry weight.

Keywords: Correlation, Potato, Sand Culture, Yield.

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Authors: Alexander Y. Vaninsky

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It is suggested to evaluate environmental performance of energy sector using Data Envelopment Analysis with nondiscretionary factors (DEA-ND) with relative indicators as inputs and outputs. The latter allows for comparison of the objects essentially different in size. Inclusion of non-discretionary factors serves separation of the indicators that are beyond the control of the objects. A virtual perfect object comprised of maximal outputs and minimal inputs was added to the group of actual ones. In this setting, explicit solution of the DEA-ND problem was obtained. Energy sector of the United States was analyzed using suggested approach for the period of 1980 – 2006 with expected values of economic indicators for 2030 used for forming the perfect object. It was obtained that environmental performance has been increasing steadily for the period from 7.7% through 50.0% but still remains well below the prospected level

Keywords: DEA with Non Discretionary Factors, Environmental Performance, Energy Sector, Explicit Solution, Perfect Object.

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Authors: A. Faro, D. Giordano, F. Maiorana

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Data mining uses a variety of techniques each of which is useful for some particular task. It is important to have a deep understanding of each technique and be able to perform sophisticated analysis. In this article we describe a tool built to simulate a variation of the Kohonen network to perform unsupervised clustering and support the entire data mining process up to results visualization. A graphical representation helps the user to find out a strategy to optmize classification by adding, moving or delete a neuron in order to change the number of classes. The tool is also able to automatically suggest a strategy for number of classes optimization.The tool is used to classify macroeconomic data that report the most developed countries? import and export. It is possible to classify the countries based on their economic behaviour and use an ad hoc tool to characterize the commercial behaviour of a country in a selected class from the analysis of positive and negative features that contribute to classes formation.

Keywords: Unsupervised classification, Kohonen networks, macroeconomics, Visual data mining, cluster interpretation.

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