Search results for: Science andtechnology policy

Authors: Tim Engartner

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If science is supposed to gain greater social relevance and acceptance, researchers must not only relate to the broader public, but also promote intercourse within the ivory tower itself. The latter process has been under way successfully for a number of years in the form of transdisciplinary research initiatives. What is still lacking is a broad debate about the necessity to look around properly and face up to opposing views on one and the same topic within our own discipline.

Keywords: Schools of thought, pluralism, openness, value judgements, controversy

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Authors: Yin-Ling, Lin

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This paper suggests a rethinking of the existing research about Genetically Modified (GM) food. Since the first batch of GM food was commercialised in the UK market, GM food rapidly received and lost media attention in the UK. Disagreement on GM food policy between the US and the EU has also drawn scholarly attention to this issue. Much research has been carried out intending to understand people-s views about GM food and the shaping of these views. This paper was based on the data collected in twenty-nine semi-structured interviews, which were examined through Erving Goffman-s idea of self-presentation in interactions to suggest that the existing studies investigating “consumer attitudes" towards GM food have only considered the “front stage" in the dramaturgic metaphor. This paper suggests that the ways in which people choose to present themselves when participating these studies should be taken into account during the data analysis.

Keywords: Boundary work, demarcation of science, GM food, self-presentation

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Authors: Alexandra M. Kriofske Mainella

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This paper will examine the need for more aggressive public policies around bodily, reproductive and sexual health education for young people with disabilities in the United States. This paper will consider the policies around sexuality education for students in the United States and the recommendation for national standards around sexuality education. We will investigate the intersection of these policies and recommendations for students with disabilities and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA): what this means for students with disabilities’ access to comprehensive sexuality education and how it affects their behaviors and outcomes.

Keywords: Disability, sexuality, education, policy.

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Authors: Mohsen Shirani, Shadi Asadzandi, Micaela Demichela

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This paper presents the results of a study to assess crucial aspects and the strength of the scientific basis of a typically interdisciplinary, applied field: food supply chain risk assessment research. Our approach is based on an advanced scientometrics analysis that is a quantitative study of the disciplines of science based on published literature to measure interdisciplinary. This paper aims to describe the quantity and quality of the publication trends in food supply chain risk assessment. The publication under study was composed of 266 articles from database web of science. The results were analyzed based on date of publication, type of document, language of the documents, source of publications, subject areas, authors and their affiliations, and the countries involved in developing the articles.

Keywords: Food Supply Chain, Risk Assessment, Scientometrics, Web of science.

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Authors: Mujeeb Saif Mohsen Al-Absy, Ku Nor Izah Ku Ismail, Sitraselvi Chandren

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This study examines whether corporate governance (CG) mechanisms in firms that have a whistle-blowing policy (WHBLP) are more effective in constraining earnings management (EM), than those without. A sample of 288 Malaysian firms for the years 2013 to 2015, amounting to 864 firm-years were grouped into firms with and without WHBLP. Results show that for firms without WHBLP, the board chairman tenure would minimize EM activities. Meanwhile, for firms with WHBLP, board chairman independence, board chairman tenure, audit committee size, audit committee meeting and women in the audit committees are found to be associated with less EM activities. Further, it is found that ownership concentration and Big 4 auditing firms help to reduce EM activities in firms with WHBLP, while not in firms without WHBLP. Hence, functional and effective governance can be achieved by having a WHBLP, which is in line with agency and resource dependent theories. Therefore, this study suggests that firms should have a WHBLP in place, and policymakers should come up with enhanced criteria to strengthen the mechanisms of WHBLP.

Keywords: Corporate governance, earnings management, whistle-blowing policy, audit committee, board of directors.

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Authors: Ho-Dae Chong, Jong-Kil Kim

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Collaborative research has become more prevalent and important across disciplines because it stimulates innovation and interaction between scholars. Seeing as existing studies relatively disregarded the institutional conditions triggering collaborative research, this work aims to analyze the changing trend in collaborative work patterns among Korean social scientists. The focus of this research is the performance of social scientists who received research grants through the government’s Social Science Korea (SSK) program. Using quantitative statistical methods, collaborative research patterns in a total of 2,354 papers published under the umbrella of the SSK program in peer-reviewed scholarly journals from 2013 to 2016 were examined to identify changing trends and triggering factors in collaborative research. A notable finding is that the share of collaborative research is overwhelmingly higher than that of individual research. In particular, levels of collaborative research surpassed 70%, increasing much quicker compared to other research done in the social sciences. Additionally, the most common composition of collaborative research was for two or three researchers to conduct joint research as coauthors, and this proportion has also increased steadily. Finally, a strong association between international journals and co-authorship patterns was found for the papers published by SSK program researchers from 2013 to 2016. The SSK program can be seen as the driving force behind collaboration between social scientists. Its emphasis on competition through a merit-based financial support system along with a rigorous evaluation process seems to have influenced researchers to cooperate with those who have similar research interests.

Keywords: Co-authorship, collaboration, competition, cooperation, Social Science Korea, policy.

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Authors: Quoc-Nam Tran

Abstract:

The theory of Groebner Bases, which has recently been honored with the ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award, has become a crucial building block to computer algebra, and is widely used in science, engineering, and computer science. It is wellknown that Groebner bases computation is EXP-SPACE in a general polynomial ring setting. However, for many important applications in computer science such as satisfiability and automated verification of hardware and software, computations are performed in a Boolean ring. In this paper, we give an algorithm to show that Groebner bases computation is PSPACE in Boolean rings. We also show that with this discovery, the Groebner bases method can theoretically be as efficient as other methods for automated verification of hardware and software. Additionally, many useful and interesting properties of Groebner bases including the ability to efficiently convert the bases for different orders of variables making Groebner bases a promising method in automated verification.

Keywords: Algorithm, Complexity, Groebner basis, Applications of Computer Science.

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Authors: Chiung-Ju Huang, Yuan-Hong Ho

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This study utilizes the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Fiscal Rules Dataset focusing on four specific fiscal rules such as expenditure rule, revenue rule, budget balance rule, and debt rule and five main characteristics of each fiscal rule those are monitoring, enforcement, coverage, legal basis, and escape clause to construct the Fiscal Rule Index for nine countries in the Asia-Pacific region from 1996 to 2015. After constructing the fiscal rule index for each country, we utilize the Panel Generalized Method of Moments (Panel GMM) by using the constructed fiscal rule index to examine the effectiveness of fiscal rules in reducing procyclicality. Empirical results show that national fiscal rules have a significantly negative impact on procyclicality of government expenditure. Additionally, stricter fiscal rules combined with high government effectiveness are effective in reducing procyclicality of government expenditure. Results of this study indicate that for nine Asia-Pacific countries, policymakers’ use of fiscal rules and government effectiveness to reducing procyclicality of fiscal policy are effective.

Keywords: Counter-cyclical policy, fiscal rules, government effectiveness, procyclical policy.

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Authors: M. S. Indati, H. A. Bekhet

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Global CO₂ emission and increasing fuel consumption to meet energy demand has become a threat in recent decades. Effort to reduce the CO₂ emission is now a matter of priority in most countries of the world including Malaysia. Transportation has been identified as the most intensive sector of carbon-based fuels and achievement of the voluntary target to meet 40% carbon intensity reduction set at the 15^th Conference of the Parties (COP15) means that the emission from the transport sector must be reduced accordingly. This posed a great challenge to Malaysia and effort has to be made to embrace suitable and appropriate energy policy for sustainable energy and emission reduction of this sector. The focus of this paper is to analyze the trends of Malaysia’s energy consumption and emission of four different transport sub-sectors (road, rail, aviation and maritime). Underlying factors influencing the growth of energy consumption and emission trends are discussed. Besides, technology status towards energy efficiency in transportation sub-sectors is presented. By reviewing the existing policies and trends of energy used, the paper highlights prospective policy options towards achieving emission reduction in the transportation sector.

Keywords: CO2 Emission, Energy policy, Fuel consumption, Transportation sector, Malaysia.

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Authors: Sh. E. Jamanbalayeva, G. S. Abdiraiymova, N. Zh. Biyekenova, D. K. Burkhanova

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At present the process of formation of corporate values in Kazakh universities is under the influence of a whole range of socio-economic and cultural changes: on the one hand universities must maintain and transmit traditional cultural values of education, on the other, to improve quality of service and to involve young people to science, providing thus own competitiveness. Thus, this article presents some results of two cycles of sociological research conducted in 2012 and aimed at identifying possible ways to popularize science and readiness to participate of youth in given activities, expectations of young scientists and the prospects of future development of the Kazakh science.

Keywords: Corporate culture, higher education institutions, motivation reforms, young scientists.

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Authors: Juan Sepúlveda

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Energy is a fundamental component in sustainability, the access and use of this resource is related with economic growth, social improvements, and environmental impacts. In this sense, energy efficiency has been studied as a factor that enhances the positive impacts of energy in communities; however, the implementation of efficiency requires strong policy and strategies that usually rely on individual measures focused in independent dimensions. In this paper, the problem of energy efficiency as a multi-objective problem is studied, using scientometric analysis to discover trends and patterns that allow to identify the main variables and study approximations related with a further development of models to integrate energy efficiency and MCA into policy making for small communities.

Keywords: Energy efficiency, MCA, Scientometrics, trends.

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Authors: Subramaniam Chandran

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This paper analyses the structural changes in education sector since the introduction of liberalization policy in India. This paper explains how the so-called non-profit trusts and societies appropriated the liberalization policy and enhanced themselves as new capitalist class in higher education sector. Over the decades, the policy witnessed the role of private sector in terms of maintaining market equilibrium. The state also witnessed the incompatibility of the private sector in inculcating the values of social justice. The most important consequence of the policy is to witness the rise of new capitalist class and academic capitalism. When the state came to realize that it no longer cope up with market demands, it opens the entry of private sector in higher education. Concessions and tax exemptions were provided to the trusts and societies to establish higher education institutions. There is a basic difference between western countries and India in providing higher education by the trusts and societies. In western countries the big business houses contributed their surplus revenues to promote higher education and research as a complementary service to society and nation. In India, several entrepreneurs came up with business motive using education sector. Over the period, they accumulated wealth at the cost of students and concessions from the government. Four major results can now be identified: production of manpower in view of market demands; reduction of standards in higher education; bypassing the values of social justice; and the rise of new capitalist class from the business of education. This paper tries to substantiate these issues with the inputs from case studies.

Keywords: New capitalism, market, social justice, higher education

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Authors: T. Qasim, M. Alqawasmi, M. Hawash, M. Betar, W. Qasim

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Over the last decade, the over population that has happened in urban areas has been reflecting on the services that various local institutions provide to car users in the form of car parks, which is becoming a daily necessity in our lives. This study focuses on car parks at Jordan University of Science and Technology, in Irbid, Jordan, to understand the university parking needs. Data regarding arrival and departure times of cars and the parking utilization were collected, to find various options that the university can implement to solve and develop an efficient car parking system. Arena software was used to simulate a parking model. This model allows measuring the different solutions that solve the parking problem at Jordan University of Science and Technology.

Keywords: Car park, modeling, service time, simulation.

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Authors: Sinchul Back, Sun Ho Kim, Jennifer LaPrade, Ilju Seong

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Due to the advantage of using the Internet, cybercriminals can reach target(s) without border controls. Prior research on criminology and crime science has largely been void of empirical studies on journey-to-cybercrime and crime opportunity. Thus, the purpose of this study is to understand more about cyber offender spatial decision making associated with crime opportunity factors (i.e., co-offending, offender-stranger). Data utilized in this study were derived from 306 U.S. Federal court cases of cybercrime. The findings of this study indicated that there was a positive relationship between co-offending and journey-to-cybercrime, whereas there was no link between offender-stranger and journey-to-cybercrime. Also, the results showed that there was no relationship between cybercriminal sex, age, and journey-to-cybercrime. The policy implications and limitations of this study are discussed.

Keywords: Co-offending, crime opportunity, journey-to-cybercrime, offender-stranger.

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Authors: Mojahid F. Saeed Osman

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Repairable items inventory system is a management tool used to incorporate all information concerning inventory levels and movements for repaired and new items. This paper presents development of an effective simulation model for managing the inventory of repairable items for a production system where production lines send their faulty items to a repair shop considering the stochastic failure behavior and repair times. The developed model imitates the process of handling the on-hand inventory of repaired items and the replenishment of the inventory of new items using Economic Order Quantity and Reorder Point ordering policy in a flexible and risk-free environment. We demonstrate the appropriateness and effectiveness of the proposed simulation model using an illustrative case problem. The developed simulation model can be used as a reliable tool for estimating a healthy on-hand inventory of new and repaired items, backordered items, and downtime due to unavailability of repaired items, and validating and examining Economic Order Quantity and Reorder Point ordering policy, which would further be compared with other ordering strategies as future work.

Keywords: Inventory system, repairable items, simulation, maintenance, economic order quantity, reorder point.

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Authors: Aleksandar Savanović

Abstract:

In this paper, we will analyze the relationship between the neo-liberal concept of property rights and redistribution policy. This issue is back in the focus of interest due to the crisis 2008. The crisis has reaffirmed the influence of the state on the free-market processes. The interference of the state with property relations reopened a classical question: is it legitimate to redistribute resources of a man in favor of another man with taxes? The dominant view is that the neoliberal philosophy of natural rights is incompatible with redistributive measures. In principle, this view can be accepted. However, when we look into the details of the theory of natural rights proposed by some coryphaei of neoliberal philosophy, such as Hayek, Nozick, Buchanan and Rothbard, we can see that it is not such an unequivocal view. 

Keywords: Economic neoliberalism, natural law, property, redistribution

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Authors: Nidhi Gadura

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To ensure student success in a non-majors biology course, a flipped classroom pedagogical approach was developed and implemented. All students were assigned online lectures to listen to before they come to class. A three hour lecture was split into one hour of online component, one hour of in class lecture and one hour of worksheets done by students in the classroom. This deviation from a traditional 3 hour in class lecture has resulted in increased student interest in science as well as better understanding of difficult scientific concepts. A pre and post survey was given to measure the interest in the subject and grades were used to measure the success rates. While the overall grade average did not change dramatically, students reported a much better appreciation of biology. Also, students overwhelmingly like the use of worksheets in class to help them understand the concepts. They liked the fact that they could listen to lectures at their own pace on line and even repeat if needed. The flipped classroom approach turned out to work really well our non-science majors and the author is ready to implement this in other classrooms.

Keywords: Flipped classroom, non-science majors, pedagogy, technological pedagogical model.

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Authors: Raheleh Kholghi, Soheil Behnam Roudsari, Alireza Nemaney Pour

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Spam mails are unwanted mails sent to large number of users. Spam mails not only consume the network resources, but cause security threats as well. This paper proposes an efficient technique to detect, and to prevent spam mail in the sender side rather than the receiver side. This technique is based on a counter set on the sender server. When a mail is transmitted to the server, the mail server checks the number of the recipients based on its counter policy. The counter policy performed by the mail server is based on some pre-defined criteria. When the number of recipients exceeds the counter policy, the mail server discontinues the rest of the process, and sends a failure mail to sender of the mail; otherwise the mail is transmitted through the network. By using this technique, the usage of network resources such as bandwidth, and memory is preserved. The simulation results in real network show that when the counter is set on the sender side, the time required for spam mail detection is 100 times faster than the time the counter is set on the receiver side, and the network resources are preserved largely compared with other anti-spam mail techniques in the receiver side.

Keywords: Anti-spam, Mail server, Sender side, Spam mail

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Authors: Wan-Yu Liu

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To respond to the Kyoto Protocol, the policy of Payment for Environmental Service (PES), which was entitled “Plain Landscape Afforestation Program (PLAP)", was certified by Executive Yuan in Taiwan on 31 August 2001 and has been implementing for six years since 1 January 2002. Although the PLAP has received a lot of positive comments, there are still many difficulties during the process of implementation, such as insufficient technology for afforestation, private landowners- low interests in participating in PLAP, insufficient subsidies, and so on, which are potential threats that hinder the PLAP from moving forward in future. In this paper, selecting Ping-Tung County in Taiwan as a sample region and targeting those private landowners with and without intention to participate in the PLAP, respectively, we conduct an empirical analysis based on the Logit model to investigate the factors that determine whether those private landowners join the PLAP, so as to realize the incentive effects of the PLAP upon the personal decision on afforestation. The possible factors that might determine private landowner-s participation in the PLAP include landowner-s characteristics, cropland characteristics, as well as policy factors. Among them, the policy factors include afforestation subsidy amount (+), duration of afforestation subsidy (+), the rules on adjoining and adjacent areas (+), and so on, which do not reach the remarkable level in statistics though, but the directions of variable signs are consistent with the intuition behind the policy. As for the landowners- characteristics, each of age (+), education level (–), and annual household income (+) variables reaches 10% of the remarkable level in statistics; as for the cropland characteristics, each of cropland area (+), cropland price (–), and the number of cropland parcels (–) reaches 1% of the remarkable level in statistics. In light of the above, the cropland characteristics are the dominate factor that determines the probability of landowner-s participation in the PLAP. In the Logit model established by this paper, the probability of correctly estimating nonparticipants is 98%, the probability of correctly estimating the participants is 71.8%, and the probability for the overall estimation is 95%. In addition, Hosmer-Lemeshow test and omnibus test also revealed that the Logit model in this paper may provide fine goodness of fit and good predictive power in forecasting private landowners- participation in this program. The empirical result of this paper expects to help the implementation of the afforestation programs in Taiwan.

Keywords: Forestry policy, logit, afforestation subsidy, afforestation policy.

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Authors: Jyoti Chaturvedi Gursaran

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Nature conducts its action in a very private manner. To reveal these actions classical science has done a great effort. But classical science can experiment only with the things that can be seen with eyes. Beyond the scope of classical science quantum science works very well. It is based on some postulates like qubit, superposition of two states, entanglement, measurement and evolution of states that are briefly described in the present paper. One of the applications of quantum computing i.e. implementation of a novel quantum evolutionary algorithm(QEA) to automate the time tabling problem of Dayalbagh Educational Institute (Deemed University) is also presented in this paper. Making a good timetable is a scheduling problem. It is NP-hard, multi-constrained, complex and a combinatorial optimization problem. The solution of this problem cannot be obtained in polynomial time. The QEA uses genetic operators on the Q-bit as well as updating operator of quantum gate which is introduced as a variation operator to converge toward better solutions.

Keywords: Quantum computing, qubit, superposition, entanglement, measurement of states, evolution of states, Scheduling problem, hard and soft constraints, evolutionary algorithm, quantum evolutionary algorithm.

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Authors: Lalit Garg, Sally McClean, Maria Barton

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Healthcare issues continue to pose huge problems and incur massive costs. As a result there are many challenging problems still unresolved. In this paper, we will carry out an extensive scientific survey of different areas of management and planning in an attempt to identify where there has already been a substantial contribution from management science methods to healthcare problems and where there is a clear potential for more work to be done. The focus will be on the read-across to the healthcare domain from such approaches applied generally to management and planning and how the methods can be used to improvement patient care. We conclude that, since the healthcare domain significantly differs from traditional areas of management and planning, in some cases there is a need to modify the approaches so as to incorporate the complexities of healthcare, and fully exploit the potential for improvement.

Keywords: Management science, management and planning, transforming services, healthcare.

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Authors: A. Qayed Al-Emadi, C. Schwabenland, B. Czarnecka

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In 2009, the new HRM policy was implemented in Qatar for public sector organisations. The purpose of this research is to examine how Qatar’s 2009 HRM policy was significant in influencing employee retention in public organisations. The conducted study utilised quantitative methodology to analyse the data on employees’ perceptions of such HRM practices as Performance Management, Rewards and Promotion, Training and Development associated with the HRM policy in public organisations in comparison to semi-private organisations. Employees of seven public and semi-private organisations filled in the questionnaire based on the 5-point Likert scale to present quantitative results. The data was analysed with the correlation and multiple regression statistical analyses. It was found that Performance Management had the relationship with Employee Retention, and Rewards and Promotion influenced Job Satisfaction in public organisations. Relationship between Job Satisfaction and Employee Retention was also observed. However, no significant differences were observed in the role of HRM practices in public and semi-private organisations.

Keywords: Performance management, rewards, promotion, training and development, job satisfaction, employee retention, SHRM, configurationally perspective.

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Authors: Alex Hou Hong Ng, Abdul Ghani Farinda, Fock Kui Kan, Ai Ling Lim, Teo Ming Ting

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Poverty is a multi-facet phenomenon in today’s globalised world. It is rooted in various causes and there are also multiple ways to do away with it. This paper begins with a review on the definitions and measurement of poverty and followed by discussing the various causes of poverty. This paper specifically identifies corruption, education, political instability, geographical characteristics, ineffective local governance and government policies as the causes of poverty. It then suggests possible solutions or recommendations to eradicate poverty based on the causes discussed earlier. Some of the suggestions include strengthening democratic transparency and government budget transparency, public awareness, creation of a framework for economic growth and transformation, and ways to increase the ability of the poor to raise their income.

Keywords: Economic Policy, Government Policy, Poverty Eradication, Sustainable Development.

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Authors: Susanna Vanhamäki, Gabor Schneider, Kati Manskinen

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‘Bioeconomy’ is a complex concept that cuts across many sectors and covers several policy areas. To achieve an overall understanding and support a successful bioeconomy, a cross-sectorial approach is necessary. In practice, due to the concept’s wide scope and varying international approaches, fully understanding bioeconomy is challenging on policy level. This paper provides a background of the topic through an analysis of bioeconomy strategies in the Baltic Sea region. Expert interviews and a small survey were conducted to discover the current and intended focuses of these countries’ bioeconomy sectors. The research shows that supporting sustainability is one of the keys in developing the future bioeconomy. The results highlighted that the bioeconomy has to be sustainable and based on circular economy principles. Currently, traditional bioeconomy sectors like food, wood, fish & waters as well as fuel & energy, which are in the core of national bioeconomy strategies, are best known and are considered more relevant than other bioeconomy industries. However, there is increasing potential for novel sectors, such as textiles and pharmaceuticals. The present research indicates that the opportunities presented by these bioeconomy sectors should be recognised and promoted. Education, research and innovation can play key roles in developing transformative and sustainable improvements in primary production and renewable resources. Furthermore, cooperation between businesses and educators is important.

Keywords: Bioeconomy, circular economy, policy, strategy.

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Authors: Ahmed Kiani

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The United Arab Emirates is clearly facing a multitude of challenges in curbing its greenhouse gas emissions to meet its pre-allotted framework of Kyoto protocol and COP21 targets due to its hunger for modernization, industrialization, infrastructure growth, soaring population and oil and gas activity. In this work, we focus on the bonafide zero emission electric vehicles market penetration in the country’s transport industry for emission reduction. We study the global electric vehicle market trends, the complementary battery technologies and the trends by manufacturers, emission standards across borders and prioritized advancements which will ultimately dictate the terms of future conditions for the United Arab Emirate transport industry. Based on our findings and analysis at every stage of current viability and state-of-transport-affairs, we postulate policy recommendations to local governmental entities from a supply and demand perspective covering aspects of technology, infrastructure requirements, change in power dynamics, end user incentives program, market regulators behavior and communications amongst key stakeholders. 

Keywords: Electric vehicles, greenhouse gas emission reductions, market analysis, policy recommendations.

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Authors: A. Abid, F. M. Abbou, H. T. Ewe

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Optical Bursts Switching (OBS) is a relatively new optical switching paradigm. Contention and burst loss in OBS networks are major concerns. To resolve contentions, an interesting alternative to discarding the entire data burst is to partially drop the burst. Partial burst dropping is based on burst segmentation concept that its implementation is constrained by some technical challenges, besides the complexity added to the algorithms and protocols on both edge and core nodes. In this paper, the burst segmentation concept is investigated, and an implementation scheme is proposed and evaluated. An appropriate dropping policy that effectively manages the size of the segmented data bursts is presented. The dropping policy is further supported by a new control packet format that provides constant transmission overhead.

Keywords: Burst length, Burst Segmentation, Optical BurstSwitching.

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Authors: Ayelet Gur

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Background: In recent years we are witnessing a welcome trend in which more children/persons with disabilities are living at home with their families and within their communities. This trend is related to various policy innovations as the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities that reflect a shift from the medical-institutional model to a human rights approach. We also witness the emergence of family centered approaches that perceive the family and not just the individual with the disability as a worthy target of policy planning, implementation and evaluation efforts. The current investigation aims to explore economic, psychological and social factors among households of families of children or adults with intellectual disabilities in Israel and to present policy recommendation. Methods: A national sample of 301 households was recruited through the education and employment settings of persons with intellectual disability. The main caregiver of the person with the disability (a parent) was interviewed. Measurements included the income and expense surveys; assets and debts questionnaire; the questionnaire on resources and stress; the social involvement questionnaire and Personal Wellbeing Index. Results: Findings indicate significant gaps in financial circumstances between households of families of children with intellectual disabilities and households of the general Israeli society. Households of families of children with intellectual disabilities report lower income and higher expenditures and loans than the general society. They experience difficulties in saving and coping with unexpected expenses. Caregivers (the parents) experience high stress, low social participation, low financial support from family, friend and non-governmental organizations and decreased well-being. They are highly dependent on social security allowances which constituted 40% of the household's income. Conclusions: Households' dependency on social security allowances may seem contradictory to the encouragement of persons with intellectual disabilities to favor independent living in light of the human rights approach to disability. New policy should aim at reducing caregivers' stress and enhance their social participation and support, with special emphasis on families of lower socio-economic status. Finally, there is a need to continue monitoring the economic and psycho-social needs of households of families of children with intellectual disabilities and other developmental disabilities.

Keywords: Disability policy, family policy, intellectual and developmental disabilities, Israel, households study, parents of children with disabilities.

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Authors: Hassan Attahiru Gwandu

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This study aims at surveying and analyzing the contribution of Sokoto scholars or Sokoto Caliphate in the development of science and technology in West Africa. Today, it is generally accepted that the 19^th century Islamic revivalism in Hausaland was a very important revolution in the history of Hausa society and beyond. It is therefore, as a result of this movement or Jihad; the Hausaland (West Africa in general) witnessed several changes and transformations. These changes were in different sectors of life from politics, economy to social and religious aspect. It is these changes especially on religion that will be given considerations in this paper. The jihad resulted is the establishment of an Islamic state of Sokoto Caliphate, the revival Islam and development of learning and scholarship. During the existence of this Caliphate, a great deal of scholarship on Islamic laws were revived, written and documented by mostly, the three Jihad leaders; Usmanu Danfodiyo, his brother Abdullahi Fodiyo and his son Muhammad Bello. The trio had written more than one thousand books and made several verdicts on Islamic medicine. This study therefore, seeks to find out the contributions of these scholars or the Sokoto caliphate in the development of science in West Africa.

Keywords: Sokoto Caliphate, scholarship, science and technology, West Africa.

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Authors: Salina Budin, Shaira Ismail

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Students learn effectively in a learning environment with a suitable teaching approach that matches their learning preferences. The main objective of the study is to examine the learning preferences amongst the students in the Science and Technology (S&T), and Social Science (SS) fields of study at the Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), Pulau Pinang. The measurement instrument is based on the Dunn and Dunn Learning Styles which measure five elements of learning styles; environmental, sociological, emotional, physiological and psychological. Questionnaires are distributed amongst undergraduates in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Faculty of Business Management. The respondents comprise of 131 diploma students of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and 111 degree students of the Faculty of Business Management. The results indicate that, both S&T and SS students share a similar learning preferences on the environmental aspect, emotional preferences, motivational level, learning responsibility, persistent level in learning and learning structure. Most of the S&T students are concluded as analytical learners and the majority of SS students are global learners. Both S&T and SS students are concluded as visual learners, preferred to be in an active mobility in a relaxing and enjoying mode with some light of refreshments during the learning process and exhibited reflective characteristics in learning. Obviously, the S&T students are considered as left brain dominant, whereas the SS students are right brain dominant. The findings highlighted that both categories of students exhibited similar learning preferences except on psychological preferences.

Keywords: Learning preferences, Dunn and Dunn learning style, teaching approach, science and technology, social science.

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Authors: Emmanuel Dele Balogun

Abstract:

This paper analyzes, using descriptive statistics and econometrics data which span the period 1981 to 2014 to gauge the effects of trade policy incentives on economic growth in Nigeria. It argues that the provided incentives penalize economic growth during pre-trade liberalization eras, but stimulated a rapid increase in total factor productivity during the post-liberalization period of 2000 to 2014. The trend analysis shows that Nigeria maintained high tariff walls in economic regulation eras which became low in post liberalization era. The protections were in favor of infant industries, which were mainly appendages of multinationals but against imports of competing food and finished consumer products. The trade openness index confirms the undue exposure of Nigeria’s economy to the vagaries of international market shocks; while banking sector recapitalization and new listing of telecommunications companies deepened the financial markets in post-liberalization era. The structure of economic incentives was biased in favor of construction, trade and services, but against the real sector despite protectionist policies. Total Factor Productivity (TFP) estimates show that the Nigerian economy suffered stagnation in pre-liberalization eras, but experienced rapid growth rates in post-liberalization eras. The regression results relating trade policy incentives to TFP growth rate yielded a significant but negative intercept suggesting that a non-interventionist policy could be detrimental to economic progress, while protective tariff which limits imports of competing products could spur productivity gains in domestic import substitutes beyond factor growth with market liberalization. The main constraint to the effectiveness of trade policy incentives is the failure of benefiting industries to leverage on the domestic factor endowments of the nation. This paper concludes that there is the need to review the current economic transformation strategies urgently with a view to provide policymakers with a better understanding of the most viable options that could make for rapid success.

Keywords: Trade Policies, macroeconomic incentives, total factor productivity and economic growth.

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