Search results for: interactive stock markets

Authors: Chong-Yang Qiao

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Mobile augmented reality (MAR) tracking targets from the surroundings and aids operators for interactive data and procedures visualization, potential equipment and system understandably. Operators remotely communicate and coordinate with each other for the continuous tasks, information and data exchange between control room and work-site. In the routine work, distributed control system (DCS) monitoring and work-site manipulation require operators interact in real-time manners. The critical question is the improvement of user experience in cooperative works through applying Augmented Reality in the traditional industrial field. The purpose of this exploratory study is to find the cognitive model for the multiple task performance by MAR. In particular, the focus will be on the comparison between different tasks and environment factors which influence information processing. Three experiments use interface and interaction design, the content of start-up, maintenance and stop embedded in the mobile application. With the evaluation criteria of time demands and human errors, and analysis of the mental process and the behavior action during the multiple tasks, heuristic evaluation was used to find the operators performance with different situation factors, and record the information processing in recognition, interpretation, judgment and reasoning. The research will find the functional properties of MAR and constrain the development of the cognitive model. Conclusions can be drawn that suggest MAR is easy to use and useful for operators in the remote collaborative works.

Keywords: Mobile augmented reality, remote collaboration, user experience, cognitive model.

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Authors: Warunpun Kongsom, Chaiwat Kongsom

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The objective of this study was to investigate the awareness, knowledge and consumer behavior towards organic products in Thailand. For this study, a purposive sampling technique was used to identify a sample group of 2,575 consumers over the age of 20 years who intended or made purchases from 1) green shops; 2) supermarkets with branches; and, 3) green markets. A questionnaire was used for data collection across the country. Descriptive statistics were used for data analysis. The results showed that more than 92% of consumers were aware of organic agriculture, but had less knowledge about it. More than 60% of consumers knew that organic agriculture production and processing did not allow the use of chemicals. And about 40% of consumers were confused between the food safety logo and the certified organic logo, and whether GMO was allowed in organic agriculture practice or not. In addition, most consumers perceived that organic agricultural products, good agricultural practice (GAP) products, agricultural chemicals free products, and hydroponic vegetable products had the same standard. In the view of organic consumers, the organic Thailand label was the most seen and reliable among various organic labels. Less than 3% of consumers thought that the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) Global Organic Mark (GOM) was the most seen and reliable. For the behaviors of organic consumers, they purchased organic products mainly at the supermarket and green shop (55.4%), one to two times per month, and with a total expenditure of about 200 to 400 baht each time. The main reason for buying organic products was safety and free from agricultural chemicals. The considered factors in organic product selection were price (29.5%), convenience (22.4%), and a reliable certification system (21.3%). The demands for organic products were mainly rice, vegetables and fruits. Processed organic products were relatively small in quantity.

Keywords: Consumer behavior, consumer knowledge, organic products, Thailand.

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Authors: Wanda Luen-Wun Siu, Xiaowen Zhang

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This paper offered the primary methodical proof on how Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting related to enterprise earnings in listed firms in China in light of most evidence focusing on cross-sectional data or data in a short span of time. Using full economic and business panel data on China’s publicly listed enterprises from 2006 to 2020 over two decades in the China Stock Market & Accounting Research database, we found initial evidence of significant direct relations between CSR reporting and firm corporate performance in both state-owned and privately-owned firms over this period, supporting the stakeholder theory. Results also revealed that state-owned enterprises performed as well as private enterprises in the current period. But private enterprises performed better than state-owned enterprises in the subsequent years. Moreover, the release of social responsibility reports had the more significant impact on the financial performance of state-owned and private enterprises in the current period than in the subsequent periods. Specifically, CSR release was not significantly associated to the financial performance of state-owned enterprises on the lag of the first, second, and third periods. But it had an impact on the lag of the first, second, and third periods among private enterprises. Such findings suggested that CSR reporting helped improve the corporate financial performance of state-owned and private enterprises in the current period, but this kind of effect was more significant among private enterprises in the lag periods.

Keywords: China’s Listed Firm, CSR reporting, financial performance, panel analysis.

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Authors: K. Ö. Kartal, L. Maul, M. Hägele

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With the development of new technologies come additional opportunities for the founding of companies and new markets to be created. The barriers to entry are lowered and technology makes old business models obsolete. Incumbent companies have to be adaptable to this quickly changing environment. They have to start the process of digital maturation and they have to be able to adapt quickly to new and drastic changes that might arise. One of the biggest barriers for organizations in order to do so is their culture. This paper shows the core elements of a corporate culture that supports the process of digital maturation in incumbent organizations. Furthermore, it is explored how ideation and innovation can be used in a strategy in order to facilitate these core elements of culture that promote digital maturity. Focus areas are identified for the design of ideation strategies, with the aim to make the facilitation and incitation process more effective, short to long term. Therefore, one in-depth case study is conducted with data collection from interviews, observation, document review and surveys. The findings indicate that digital maturity is connected to cultural shift and 11 relevant elements of digital culture are identified which have to be considered. Based on these 11 core elements, five focus areas that need to be regarded in the design of a strategy that uses ideation and innovation to facilitate the cultural shift are identified. These are: Focus topics, rewards and communication, structure and frequency, regions and new online formats.

Keywords: Digital transformation, innovation management, ideation strategy, creativity culture, change.

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Authors: Adenike O. Olatunji-Akioye, Emmanual B Farayola

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In order to improve the animal protein recommended daily intake of Nigerians, there is an upsurge in breeding of hitherto shunned food animals one of which is the rabbit. Radiography and ultrasonography are tools for diagnosing disease and evaluating the anatomical architecture of parts of the body non-invasively. As the rabbit is becoming a more important food animal, to achieve improved breeding of these animals, the best of the species form a breeding stock and will usually depend on breeding soundness which may be evaluated by assessment of the male reproductive organs by these tools. Four male intact rabbits weighing between 1.2 to 1.5 kg were acquired and acclimatized for 2 weeks. Dorsoventral views of the testes were acquired using a digital radiographic machine and a 5 MHz portable ultrasound scanner was used to acquire images of the testes in longitudinal, sagittal and transverse planes. Radiographic images acquired revealed soft tissue images of the testes in all rabbits. The testes lie in individual scrotal sacs sides on both sides of the midline at the level of the caudal vertebrae and thus are superimposed by caudal vertebrae and the caudal limits of the pelvic girdle. The ultrasonographic images revealed mostly homogenously hypoechogenic testes and a hyperechogenic mediastinum testis. The dorsal and ventral poles of the testes were heterogeneously hypoechogenic and correspond to the epididymis and spermatic cord. The rabbit is unique in the ability to retract the testes particularly when stressed and so careful and stressless handling during the procedures is of paramount importance. The imaging of rabbit testes can be safely done using both imaging methods but ultrasonography is a better method of assessment and evaluation of soundness for breeding.

Keywords: Breeding soundness, rabbits, radiography, ultrasonography.

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Authors: Samedin Mehmeti

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The rationale behind this study is considering combating and preventing the phenomenon of trafficking in human beings from a multidisciplinary perspective that involves many layers of the society. Trafficking in human beings is an abhorrent phenomenon highly affecting negatively the victims and their families in both human and material aspect, sometimes causing irreversible damages. The longer term effects of this phenomenon, in countries with a weak economic development and extremely young and dynamic population, such as Kosovo, without proper measures to prevented and control can cause tremendous damages in the society. Given the fact that a complete eradication of this phenomenon is almost impossible, efforts should be concentrated at least on the prevention and controlling aspects. Treating trafficking in human beings based on traditional police tactics, methods and proceedings cannot bring satisfactory results. There is no doubt that a multi-disciplinary approach is an irreplaceable requirement, in other words, a combination of authentic and functional proactive and reactive methods, techniques and tactics. Obviously, police must exercise its role in preventing and combating trafficking in human beings, a role sanctioned by the law, however, police role and contribution cannot by any means considered complete if all segments of the society are not included in these efforts. Naturally, civil society should have an important share in these collaborative and interactive efforts especially in preventive activities such as: awareness on trafficking risks and damages, proactive engagement in drafting appropriate legislation and strategies, law enforcement monitoring and direct or indirect involvement in protective and supporting activities which benefit the victims of trafficking etc.

Keywords: Civil society, cooperation, police, trafficking in human beings.

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Authors: Oluchukwu P. Obioma, Amarachi R. Dike

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Competition law promotes market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by undertakings. There is a need for a third party to regulate the market for efficiency and supervision, since, if the market is left unchecked, it may be skewed against the consumers and the economy. Competition law is geared towards the protection of consumers from economic exploitation. It is the duty of every rational government to optimally manage its economic system by employing the best regulatory practices over the market to ensure it functions effectively and efficiently. The Nigerian government has done this by enacting the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act, 2018 (FCCPA). This is a comprehensive legal framework with the objective of governing competition issues in Nigeria. Prior to its enactment, the competition law regime in Nigeria was grossly inadequate despite Nigeria being the biggest economy in Africa. This latest legislation has become a bold step in the right direction. This study will use the doctrinal methodology in analyzing the FCCPA, 2018 in order to discover the extent to which the Act will guard against anti-competitive practices and promote competitive markets for the benefit of the Nigerian economy and consumers. The study finds that although the FCCPA, 2018 provides for the regulation of competition in Nigeria, there is a need to effectively tackle the challenges to the implementation of the Act and the development of anti-trust jurisprudence in Nigeria. This study concludes that incisive implementation of competition law in Nigeria will help protect consumers and create a conducive environment for economic growth, development, and protection of consumers from obnoxious competition practices.

Keywords: Anti-competitive practices, competition law, competition regulation, consumer protection.

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Authors: Chi-Fang Huang, Yun-Shiow Chen, Yun-Kung Chung

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In the past decade, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been regarded as an instrument for problem-solving and decision-making; indeed, they have already done with a substantial efficiency and effectiveness improvement in industries and businesses. In this paper, the Back-Propagation neural Networks (BPNs) will be modulated to demonstrate the performance of the collaborative forecasting (CF) function of a Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR®) system. CPFR functions the balance between the sufficient product supply and the necessary customer demand in a Supply and Demand Chain (SDC). Several classical standard BPN will be grouped, collaborated and exploited for the easy implementation of the proposed modular ANN framework based on the topology of a SDC. Each individual BPN is applied as a modular tool to perform the task of forecasting SKUs (Stock-Keeping Units) levels that are managed and supervised at a POS (point of sale), a wholesaler, and a manufacturer in an SDC. The proposed modular BPN-based CF system will be exemplified and experimentally verified using lots of datasets of the simulated SDC. The experimental results showed that a complex CF problem can be divided into a group of simpler sub-problems based on the single independent trading partners distributed over SDC, and its SKU forecasting accuracy was satisfied when the system forecasted values compared to the original simulated SDC data. The primary task of implementing an autonomous CF involves the study of supervised ANN learning methodology which aims at making “knowledgeable" decision for the best SKU sales plan and stocks management.

Keywords: CPFR, artificial neural networks, global logistics, supply and demand chain.

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Authors: Hebberly Ahatlan

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The process of digitizing energy systems involves transforming traditional energy infrastructure into interconnected, data-driven systems that enhance efficiency, sustainability, and responsiveness. As smart grids become increasingly integral to the efficient distribution and management of electricity from both fossil and renewable energy sources, the energy industry faces strategic challenges associated with digitalization and interoperability — particularly in the context of modern energy business models, such as virtual power plants (VPPs). The critical challenge in modern smart grids is to seamlessly integrate diverse technologies and systems, including virtualization, grid computing and service-oriented architecture (SOA), across the entire energy ecosystem. Achieving this requires addressing issues like semantic interoperability, Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) convergence, and digital asset scalability, all while ensuring security and risk management. This paper proposes a four-layer digitalization framework to tackle these challenges, encompassing persistent data protection, trusted key management, secure messaging, and authentication of IoT resources. Data assets generated through this framework enable AI systems to derive insights for improving smart grid operations, security, and revenue generation. Furthermore, this paper also proposes a Trusted Energy Interoperability Alliance as a universal guiding standard in the development of this digitalization framework to support more dynamic and interoperable energy markets.

Keywords: Digitalization, IT/OT convergence, semantic interoperability, TEIA alliance, VPP.

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Authors: Huei-Wen Lin, Huei-Fu Lu

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Event sport tourism (EST) has become an especially important economic sector around the world. As the magnitude continues to grow, attracting more tourists, media, and investment for the host community, and many local areas/regions and states have identified the expenditures by visitors as a potential source of economic or employment growth. The main purposes of this study are to investigate stakeholders’ insights into the feature of hosting EST and using them as a regional development strategy. Continuing the focus of previous literature on the regional development and economic benefits by hosting EST, a total of fıve semi-structured interview questions are designed and a thematic analysis is employed to conduct with eight key sport and tourism decision makers in Atlanta during July to August 2016. Through the depth interviews, the study will contribute to a better understanding of stakeholders’ decision-making, identifying benefits and constraints as well as leveraging the impacts of hosting EST. These findings have provided stakeholders’ perspectives of hosting EST and using them as a reference of regional development in emerging sport tourism markets in the US. Additionally, this study examines key considerations and issues that affect and are critical to reliable understanding of the economic impacts of hosting EST on the regional development, and it will be able to benefit future management authorities (i.e. governments and communities) in their sport tourism development endeavors in defining and hosting successful EST. Furthermore, the insights gained from the qualitative analysis could help other cities/regions analyzing the economic impacts of hosting EST and using it as an instrument of city development strategy.

Keywords: Event sport tourism, regional economic development, thematic analysis, stakeholder.

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Authors: Cristian Păuna

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After the widespread release of electronic trading, automated trading systems have become a significant part of the business intelligence system of any modern financial investment company. An important part of the trades is made completely automatically today by computers using mathematical algorithms. The trading decisions are taken almost instantly by logical models and the orders are sent by low-latency automatic systems. This paper will present a real-time price prediction methodology designed especially for algorithmic trading. Based on the price cyclicality function, the methodology revealed will generate price cyclicality bands to predict the optimal levels for the entries and exits. In order to automate the trading decisions, the cyclicality bands will generate automated trading signals. We have found that the model can be used with good results to predict the changes in market behavior. Using these predictions, the model can automatically adapt the trading signals in real-time to maximize the trading results. The paper will reveal the methodology to optimize and implement this model in automated trading systems. After tests, it is proved that this methodology can be applied with good efficiency in different timeframes. Real trading results will be also displayed and analyzed in order to qualify the methodology and to compare it with other models. As a conclusion, it was found that the price prediction model using the price cyclicality function is a reliable trading methodology for algorithmic trading in the financial market.

Keywords: Algorithmic trading, automated trading systems, financial markets, high-frequency trading, price prediction.

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Authors: Ilham Benali, Nasser Hajji, Nawfal Acha

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Given the fact that the pharmaceutical industry is a commonly studied sector in the context of innovation, the majority of innovation research is devoted to the developed markets known by high research and development (R&D) assets and intensive innovation. In contrast, in developing countries where R&D assets are very low, there is relatively little research to mention in the area of pharmaceutical sector innovation, characterized mainly by two principal elements which are the presence of foreign-owned firms and licensed manufacturing agreements between local firms and multinationals. With the scarcity of research in this field, this paper attempts to study the effect of these two elements on the firms’ innovation tendencies. Other traditional factors that influence innovation, which are the age and the size of the firm, the R&D activities and the market structure, revealed in the literature review, will be included in the study in order to try to make this work more exhaustive. The study starts by examining innovation tendency in pharmaceutical firms located in developing countries before analyzing the effect of foreign-owned firms and licensed manufacturing agreements between local firms and multinationals on technological, organizational and marketing innovation. Based on the related work and on the theoretical framework developed, there is a probability that foreign-owned firms and licensed manufacturing agreements between local firms and multinationals have a negative influence on technological innovation. The opposite effect is possible in the case of organizational and marketing innovation.

Keywords: Developing countries, foreign owned firms, innovation, licensed manufacturing agreements, pharmaceutical industry.

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Authors: Rishabh Garg

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Blockchain technology can allow remote, untrusted parties in the banking and financial sector to reach consensus on the state of databases without the involvement of gatekeepers. Like a bookkeeper, it can manage all financial transactions including payments, settlements, fundraising, securities management, loans, credits and trade finance. It can outperform existing systems in terms of identity verification, asset transfers, peer-to-peer transfers, hedge funds, security and auditability. Blockchain-based decentralized finance (DeFi) is a new financial protocol. Being open and programmable, it enables various DeFi use-cases, including asset management, tokenization, tokenized derivatives, decentralized autonomous organizations, data analysis and valuation, payments, lending and borrowing, insurance, margin trading, prediction market, gambling and yield-farming, etc. In addition, it can ease financial transactions, cash-flow, use of programmable currency, no-loss lotteries, etc. This paper aims to assess the potential of decentralized finance by leveraging the blockchain-enabled Ethereum platform as an alternative to traditional finance. The study also aims to find out the impact of decentralized finance on prediction markets, quadratic funding and crowd-funding, together with the potential challenges and solutions associated with its implementation.

Keywords: Advance trading, crowd funding, exchange tokens, fund aggregation, margin trading, quadratic funding, smart contracts, streaming money, token derivatives.

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Authors: Shih-Wen Hsiao, Rong-Qi Chen

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In the field of fashion design, 3D Mannequin is a kind of assisting tool which could rapidly realize the design concepts. While the concept of 3D Mannequin is applied to the computer added fashion design, it will connect with the development and the application of design platform and system. Thus, the situation mentioned above revealed a truth that it is very critical to develop a module of 3D Mannequin which would correspond with the necessity of fashion design. This research proposes a concrete plan that developing and constructing a system of 3D Mannequin with Kinect. In the content, ergonomic measurements of objective human features could be attained real-time through the implement with depth camera of Kinect, and then the mesh morphing can be implemented through transformed the locations of the control-points on the model by inputting those ergonomic data to get an exclusive 3D mannequin model. In the proposed methodology, after the scanned points from the Kinect are revised for accuracy and smoothening, a complete human feature would be reconstructed by the ICP algorithm with the method of image processing. Also, the objective human feature could be recognized to analyze and get real measurements. Furthermore, the data of ergonomic measurements could be applied to shape morphing for the division of 3D Mannequin reconstructed by feature curves. Due to a standardized and customer-oriented 3D Mannequin would be generated by the implement of subdivision, the research could be applied to the fashion design or the presentation and display of 3D virtual clothes. In order to examine the practicality of research structure, a system of 3D Mannequin would be constructed with JAVA program in this study. Through the revision of experiments the practicability-contained research result would come out.

Keywords: 3D Mannequin, kinect scanner, interactive closest point, shape morphing, subdivision.

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Authors: Richard L. Summers

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The advanced computational analysis of biological systems is becoming increasingly dependent upon an understanding of the information-theoretic structure of the materials, energy and interactive processes that comprise those systems. The stability and survival of these living systems is fundamentally contingent upon their ability to acquire and process the meaning of information concerning the physical state of its biological continuum (biocontinuum). The drive for adaptive system reconciliation of a divergence from steady state within this biocontinuum can be described by an information metric-based formulation of the process for actionable knowledge acquisition that incorporates the axiomatic inference of Kullback-Leibler information minimization driven by survival replicator dynamics. If the mathematical expression of this process is the Lagrangian integrand for any change within the biocontinuum then it can also be considered as an action functional for the living system. In the direct method of Lyapunov, such a summarizing mathematical formulation of global system behavior based on the driving forces of energy currents and constraints within the system can serve as a platform for the analysis of stability. As the system evolves in time in response to biocontinuum perturbations, the summarizing function then conveys information about its overall stability. This stability information portends survival and therefore has absolute existential meaning for the living system. The first derivative of the Lyapunov energy information function will have a negative trajectory toward a system steady state if the driving force is dissipating. By contrast, system instability leading to system dissolution will have a positive trajectory. The direction and magnitude of the vector for the trajectory then serves as a quantifiable signature of the meaning associated with the living system’s stability information, homeostasis and survival potential.

Keywords: Semiotic meaning, Shannon information, Lyapunov, living systems.

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Authors: S. S. Rana, C. Janveja, S. K. Soni

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This study is concerned with the optimization of fermentation parameters for the hyper production of mannanase from Fusarium oxysporum SS-25 employing two step statistical strategy and kinetic characterization of crude enzyme preparation. The Plackett-Burman design used to screen out the important factors in the culture medium revealed 20% (w/w) wheat bran, 2% (w/w) each of potato peels, soyabean meal and malt extract, 1% tryptone, 0.14% NH4SO4, 0.2% KH2PO4, 0.0002% ZnSO4, 0.0005% FeSO4, 0.01% MnSO4, 0.012% SDS, 0.03% NH4Cl, 0.1% NaNO3 in brewer’s spent grain based medium with 50% moisture content, inoculated with 2.8×107 spores and incubated at 30oC for 6 days to be the main parameters influencing the enzyme production. Of these factors, four variables including soyabean meal, FeSO4, MnSO4 and NaNO3 were chosen to study the interactive effects and their optimum levels in central composite design of response surface methodology with the final mannanase yield of 193 IU/gds. The kinetic characterization revealed the crude enzyme to be active over broader temperature and pH range. This could result in 26.6% reduction in kappa number with 4.93% higher tear index and 1% increase in brightness when used to treat the wheat straw based kraft pulp. The hydrolytic potential of enzyme was also demonstrated on both locust bean gum and guar gum.

Keywords: Brewer’s Spent Grain, Fusarium oxysporum, Mannanase, Response Surface Methodology.

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Authors: Salam Saudagar, Ankit Kamboj, Niraj Mohan, Satgounda Patil, Nilesh Powar

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Task Assignment and Scheduling is a challenging Operations Research problem when there is a limited number of resources and comparatively higher number of tasks. The Cost Management team at Cummins needs to assign tasks based on a deadline and must prioritize some of the tasks as per business requirements. Moreover, there is a constraint on the resources that assignment of tasks should be done based on an individual skill level, that may vary for different tasks. Another constraint is for scheduling the tasks that should be evenly distributed in terms of number of working hours, which adds further complexity to this problem. The proposed greedy approach to solve assignment and scheduling problem first assigns the task based on management priority and then by the closest deadline. This is followed by an iterative selection of an available resource with the least allocated total working hours for a task, i.e. finding the local optimal choice for each task with the goal of determining the global optimum. The greedy approach task allocation is compared with a variant of Hungarian Algorithm, and it is observed that the proposed approach gives an equal allocation of working hours among the resources. The comparative study of the proposed approach is also done with manual task allocation and it is noted that the visibility of the task timeline has increased from 2 months to 6 months. An interactive dashboard app is created for the greedy assignment and scheduling approach and the tasks with more than 2 months horizon that were waiting in a queue without a delivery date initially are now analyzed effectively by the business with expected timelines for completion.

Keywords: Assignment, deadline, greedy approach, hungarian algorithm, operations research, scheduling.

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Authors: Wafa Ghonaim

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Though quite fast on growth, Islamic financing at large, and its diverse instruments, is a controversial matter among scholars. This is evident from the ongoing debates on its Shariah compliance. Arguments, however, are inciting doubts and concerns among clients about its credibility, which is harming this lucrative sector. The work here investigates, particularly, some issues related to the Tawarruq instrument. The work examines the issues of linking Murabaha and Wakala contracts, the reselling of commodities to same traders, and the transfer of ownerships. The work affirms that a multi-agent smart electronic market design would facilitate Shariah compliance. The smart market exploits the rational decision-making capabilities of autonomous proxy agents that enable the clients, traders, brokers, and the bank buy and sell commodities, and manage transactions and cash flow. The smart electronic market design delivers desirable qualities that terminate the need for Wakala contracts and the reselling of commodities to the same traders. It also resolves the ownership transfer issues by allowing stakeholders to trade independently. The bank administers the smart electronic market and assures reliability of trades, transactions and cash flow. A multi-agent simulation is presented to validate the concept and processes. We anticipate that the multi-agent smart electronic market design would deliver Shariah compliance of personal financing to the aspiration of scholars, banks, traders and potential clients.

Keywords: Islamic finance, Shariah compliance, smart electronic markets design, multi-agent systems.

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Authors: Wanda Luen-Wun Siu, Xiaowen Zhang

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This paper offered the primary methodical proof on how director remuneration related to enterprise earnings in listed firms in China in light of most evidence focusing on cross-sectional data or data in a short span of time. Using full economic and business panel data on China’s publicly listed enterprise from 1999 to 2020 over two decades in the China Stock Market & Accounting Research database, we found statistically significant positive associations between director pay and firm performance in privately owned firms over this period, supporting the agency theory. In contrast, among the state-owned enterprises, there was a reverse relation between director compensation and firm financial performance, contributing to the existing literature. But the results also revealed that state-owned enterprises financially performed as well as private enterprises. Such findings suggested that state ownership might line up officials’ career incentives with party prime concern rather than pecuniary incentives. Also, CEO duality enhanced firm performance. As such, allegiance to the party and possible advancement to an upper-level political position would motivate company directors in state-owned enterprises. On the other hand, directors in privately owned enterprises might be motivated by monetary incentives. In addition, a statistical regression model was proposed and tested to get the results of the performance of state-owned enterprises. Finally, some suggestions were made about how to improve the institutional management of government-owned corporations in China.

Keywords: China’s listed Firm, director compensation, CEO duality, firm performance, panel analysis.

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Authors: Fazıl Gökgöz, Fahrettin Filiz

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Electricity prices have sophisticated features such as high volatility, nonlinearity and high frequency that make forecasting quite difficult. Electricity price has a volatile and non-random character so that, it is possible to identify the patterns based on the historical data. Intelligent decision-making requires accurate price forecasting for market traders, retailers, and generation companies. So far, many shallow-ANN (artificial neural networks) models have been published in the literature and showed adequate forecasting results. During the last years, neural networks with many hidden layers, which are referred to as DNN (deep neural networks) have been using in the machine learning community. The goal of this study is to investigate electricity price forecasting performance of the shallow-ANN and DNN models for the Turkish day-ahead electricity market. The forecasting accuracy of the models has been evaluated with publicly available data from the Turkish day-ahead electricity market. Both shallow-ANN and DNN approach would give successful result in forecasting problems. Historical load, price and weather temperature data are used as the input variables for the models. The data set includes power consumption measurements gathered between January 2016 and December 2017 with one-hour resolution. In this regard, forecasting studies have been carried out comparatively with shallow-ANN and DNN models for Turkish electricity markets in the related time period. The main contribution of this study is the investigation of different shallow-ANN and DNN models in the field of electricity price forecast. All models are compared regarding their MAE (Mean Absolute Error) and MSE (Mean Square) results. DNN models give better forecasting performance compare to shallow-ANN. Best five MAE results for DNN models are 0.346, 0.372, 0.392, 0,402 and 0.409.

Keywords: Deep learning, artificial neural networks, energy price forecasting, Turkey.

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Authors: Amira Abbes Kheriji, Faouzi Bouani, Mekki Ksouri, Mohamed Ben Ahmed

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Model Predictive Control (MPC) is increasingly being proposed for real time applications and embedded systems. However comparing to PID controller, the implementation of the MPC in miniaturized devices like Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) and microcontrollers has historically been very small scale due to its complexity in implementation and its computation time requirement. At the same time, such embedded technologies have become an enabler for future manufacturing enterprises as well as a transformer of organizations and markets. Recently, advances in microelectronics and software allow such technique to be implemented in embedded systems. In this work, we take advantage of these recent advances in this area in the deployment of one of the most studied and applied control technique in the industrial engineering. In fact in this paper, we propose an efficient framework for implementation of Generalized Predictive Control (GPC) in the performed STM32 microcontroller. The STM32 keil starter kit based on a JTAG interface and the STM32 board was used to implement the proposed GPC firmware. Besides the GPC, the PID anti windup algorithm was also implemented using Keil development tools designed for ARM processor-based microcontroller devices and working with C/Cµ langage. A performances comparison study was done between both firmwares. This performances study show good execution speed and low computational burden. These results encourage to develop simple predictive algorithms to be programmed in industrial standard hardware. The main features of the proposed framework are illustrated through two examples and compared with the anti windup PID controller.

Keywords: Embedded systems, Model Predictive Control, microcontroller, Keil tool.

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Authors: Denise Levy

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Nuclear technology is part of our everyday life and its beneficial applications help to improve the quality of our lives. Nevertheless, in Brazil, most often the media and social networks tend to associate radiation to nuclear weapons and major accidents, and there is still great misunderstanding about the peaceful applications of nuclear science. The Educational Portal Radioatividades (Radioactivities) is a corporate social responsibility initiative that takes advantage of the growing impact of Internet to offer high quality scientific information for teachers and students throughout Brazil. This web-based initiative focusses on the positive applications of nuclear technology, presenting the several contributions of ionizing radiation in different contexts, such as nuclear medicine, agriculture techniques, food safety and electric power generation, proving nuclear technology as part of modern life and a must to improve the quality of our lifestyle. This educational project aims to contribute for democratization of scientific education and social inclusion, approaching society to scientific knowledge, promoting critical thinking and inspiring further reflections. The website offers a wide variety of ludic activities such as curiosities, interactive exercises and short courses. Moreover, teachers are offered free web-based material with full instructions to be developed in class. Since year 2013, the project has been developed and improved according to a comprehensive study about the realistic scenario of ICTs infrastructure in Brazilian schools and in full compliance with the best e-learning national and international recommendations.

Keywords: Information and communication technologies, nuclear technology, science communication, society and education.

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Authors: Joel S. Akintayo, Ramat T. Salman

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The stakeholders’ pressure on corporate managers to maintain firm’s profitability has created economic incentives for management to engage in earnings management practices. Therefore, this study examines the effects of audit quality and corporate governance on earnings management of quoted deposit money banks (DMBs) in Nigeria. This study specifically investigates the influence of audit tenure, audit fee, board independence, and board size on earnings management of DMBs. Explanatory research design was employed in carrying out the study while secondary data were sourced from the annual reports and accounts of all the 15 quoted DMBs in Nigerian Stock Exchange as at December 31, 2015 for a period of 10 years covering from 2006 to 2015. The data obtained for the study were analyzed using panel regression analysis approach. The findings reveal that board independence has a negative significant effect on earnings management at a 5% level of significance (p=0.002), while audit fee has a positive significant effect on earnings management at a 5% level of significance (p=0.013) and audit tenure has a negative significant effect on earnings management of DMBs at a 5% level of significance (p=0.003). Surprisingly, board size was statistically not significant at a 5% level of significance (p=0.086). The study concludes that high audit quality and sound corporate governance could improve the earnings quality of DMBs. Hence, the study recommends that the authorities saddled with the responsibility of banking supervision in Nigeria such the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and CBN to advise the National Assembly in Nigeria to pass into law the three years professional requirement for audit tenure.

Keywords: Audit quality, audit tenure, audit fee, board independence, corporate governance, earnings management.

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Authors: Chimaobi V. Okolo, Onyinye S. Ugwuanyi, Kenneth A. Okpala

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This study evaluated the effect of exchange rate volatility on the manufacturing sector of Nigeria. The flow and stock market theories of exchange rate determination was adopted considering macroeconomic determinants such as balance of trade, trade openness, and net international investment. Furthermore, the influence of changes in parallel exchange rate, official exchange rate and real effective exchange rate was modeled on the manufacturing sector output. Vector autoregression techniques and vector error correction mechanism were adopted to explore the macroeconomic determinants of exchange rate fluctuation in Nigeria and to examine the influence of exchange rate volatility on the manufacturing sector output in Nigeria. The exchange rate showed an unstable and volatile movement in Nigeria. Official exchange rate significantly impacted on the manufacturing sector of Nigeria and shock to previous manufacturing sector output caused 60.76% of the fluctuation in the manufacturing sector output in Nigeria. Trade balance, trade openness and net international investments did not significantly determine exchange rate in Nigeria. However, own shock accounted for about 95% of the variation of exchange rate fluctuation in the short-run and long-run. Among other macroeconomic variables, net international investment accounted for about 2.85% variation of the real effective exchange rate fluctuation in the short-run and in the long-run. Monetary authorities should maintain stability of the exchange rates through proper management so as to encourage local production and government should formulate and implement policies that will develop other sectors of the economy as this will widen the country’s revenue base, reduce our over reliance on oil sector for our foreign exchange earnings and in turn reduce the shocks on our domestic economy.

Keywords: Exchange rate volatility, exchange rate determinants, manufacturing sector, official exchange rate, parallel exchange rate, real effective exchange rate.

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Authors: Olugbade Damola, Adekomi Adebimbo, Sofowora Olaniyi Alaba

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One of the major problems facing education in Nigeria is the provision of quality Science and Technology education. Inadequate teaching facilities, non-usage of innovative teaching strategies, ineffective classroom management, lack of students’ motivation and poor integration of ICT has resulted in the increase in percentage of students who failed Basic Science and Technology in Junior Secondary Certification Examination for National Examination Council in Nigeria. To address these challenges, the Federal Government came up with a road map on education. This was with a view of enhancing quality education through integration of modern technology into teaching and learning, enhancing quality assurance through proper monitoring and introduction of innovative methods of teaching. This led the researcher to investigate how MOODLE LMS could be used to enhance students’ learning outcomes in BST. A sample of 120 students was purposively selected from four secondary schools in Ogbomoso. The experimental group was taught using MOODLE LMS, while the control group was taught using the conventional method. Data obtained were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and t-test. The result showed that MOODLE LMS was an effective learning platform in teaching BST in junior secondary schools (t=4.953, P<0.05). Students’ attitudes towards BST was also enhanced through MOODLE LMS (t=15.632, P<0.05). The use of MOODLE LMS significantly enhanced students’ retention (t=6.640, P<0.05). In conclusion, the Federal Government efforts at enhancing quality assurance through integration of modern technology and e-learning in Secondary schools proved to have yielded good result has students found MOODLE LMS to be motivating and interactive. Attendance was improved.

Keywords: MOODLE, learning management system, quality assurance, basic science and technology.

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Authors: F. M. Pisano, M. Ciminello

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Aerospace, mechanical, and civil engineering infrastructures can take advantages from damage detection and identification strategies in terms of maintenance cost reduction and operational life improvements, as well for safety scopes. The challenge is to detect so called “barely visible impact damage” (BVID), due to low/medium energy impacts, that can progressively compromise the structure integrity. The occurrence of any local change in material properties, that can degrade the structure performance, is to be monitored using so called Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems, in charge of comparing the structure states before and after damage occurs. SHM seeks for any "anomalous" response collected by means of sensor networks and then analyzed using appropriate algorithms. Independently of the specific analysis approach adopted for structural damage detection and localization, textual reports, tables and graphs describing possible outlier coordinates and damage severity are usually provided as artifacts to be elaborated for information extraction about the current health conditions of the structure under investigation. Visual Analytics can support the processing of monitored measurements offering data navigation and exploration tools leveraging the native human capabilities of understanding images faster than texts and tables. Herein, a SHM system enrichment by integration of a Visual Analytics component is investigated. Analytical dashboards have been created by combining worksheets, so that a useful Visual Analytics tool is provided to structural analysts for exploring the structure health conditions examined by a Principal Component Analysis based algorithm.

Keywords: Interactive dashboards, optical fibers, structural health monitoring, visual analytics.

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Authors: N. J. M. Yusof, T. Sabir, J. McLoughlin

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The garment manufacturing industry involves sequential processes that are subjected to uncontrollable variations. The industry depends on the skill of labour in handling the varieties of fabrics and accessories, machines, as well as complicated sewing operation. Due to these reasons, garment manufacturers have created systems to monitor and to control the quality of the products on a regular basis by conducting quality approaches to minimize variation. With that, the aim of this research has been to ascertain the quality approaches deployed by Malaysian garment manufacturers in three key areas - quality systems and tools; quality control and types of inspection; as well as sampling procedures chosen for garment inspection. Besides, the focus of this research was to distinguish the quality approaches adopted by companies that supplied finished garments to both domestic and international markets. Feedback from each company representative has been obtained via online survey, which comprised of five sections and 44 questions on the organizational profile and the quality approaches employed in the garment industry. As a result, the response rate was 31%. The results revealed that almost all companies have established their own mechanism of process control by conducting a series of quality inspections for daily production, either it was formally set up or otherwise. In addition, quality inspection has been the predominant quality control activity in the garment manufacturing, while the level of complexity of these activities was substantially dictated by the customers. Moreover, AQL-based sampling was utilized by companies dealing with exports, whilst almost all the companies that only concentrated on the domestic market were comfortable using their own sampling procedures for garment inspection. Hence, this research has provided insights into the implementation of a number of quality approaches that were perceived as important and useful in the garment manufacturing sector, which is truly labour-intensive.

Keywords: Garment manufacturing, quality approaches, quality control, inspection, acceptance quality limit (AQL), and sampling.

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Authors: D. Zare, H. Naderi, A. A. Jafari

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Drying characteristics of rough rice (variety of lenjan) with an initial moisture content of 25% dry basis (db) was studied in a hot air dryer assisted by infrared heating. Three arrival air temperatures (30, 40 and 500C) and four infrared radiation intensities (0, 0.2 , 0.4 and 0.6 W/cm2) and three arrival air speeds (0.1, 0.15 and 0.2 m.s-1) were studied. Bending strength of brown rice kernel, percentage of cracked kernels and time of drying were measured and evaluated. The results showed that increasing the drying arrival air temperature and radiation intensity of infrared resulted decrease in drying time. High bending strength and low percentage of cracked kernel was obtained when paddy was dried by hot air assisted infrared dryer. Between this factors and their interactive effect were a significant difference (p<0.01). An intensity level of 0.2 W/cm2 was found to be optimum for radiation drying. Furthermore, in the present study, the application of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for predicting the moisture content during drying (output parameter for ANN modeling) was investigated. Infrared Radiation intensity, drying air temperature, arrival air speed and drying time were considered as input parameters for the model. An ANN model with two hidden layers with 8 and 14 neurons were selected for studying the influence of transfer functions and training algorithms. The results revealed that a network with the Tansig (hyperbolic tangent sigmoid) transfer function and trainlm (Levenberg-Marquardt) back propagation algorithm made the most accurate predictions for the paddy drying system. Mean square error (MSE) was calculated and found that the random errors were within and acceptable range of ±5% with coefficient of determination (R2) of 99%.

Keywords: Rough rice, Infrared-hot air, Artificial Neural Network

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Authors: M. Feliciano, F. Maia, A. Gonçalves

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Olive oil production sector plays an important role in Portuguese economy. It had a major growth over the last decade, increasing its weight in the overall national exports. International market penetration for Mediterranean traditional products is increasingly more demanding, especially in the Northern European markets, where consumers are looking for more sustainable products. Trying to support this growing demand this study addresses olive oil production under the environmental and eco-efficiency perspectives. The analysis considers two consecutive product life cycle stages: olive trees farming; and olive oil extraction in mills. Addressing olive farming, data collection covered two different organizations: a middle-size farm (~12ha) (F1) and a large-size farm (~100ha) (F2). Results from both farms show that olive collection activities are responsible for the largest amounts of Green House Gases (GHG) emissions. In this activities, estimate for the Carbon Footprint per olive was higher in F2 (188g CO₂e/kg_olive) than in F1 (148g CO₂e/kg_olive). Considering olive oil extraction, two different mills were considered: one using a two-phase system (2P) and other with a three-phase system (3P). Results from the study of two mills show that there is a much higher use of water in 3P. Energy intensity (EI) is similar in both mills. When evaluating the GHG generated, two conditions are evaluated: a biomass neutral condition resulting on a carbon footprint higher in 3P (184g CO₂e/L_{olive oil}) than in 2P (92g CO₂e/L_{olive oil}); and a non-neutral biomass condition in which 2P increase its carbon footprint to 273g CO₂e/L_{olive oil}. When addressing the carbon footprint of possible combinations among studied subsystems, results suggest that olive harvesting is the major source for GHG.

Keywords: Carbon footprint, environmental indicators, farming subsystem, industrial subsystem, olive oil.

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Authors: Giani Gradinaru

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

Keywords: ecosystem services, economic evaluation, nature conservation

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