Abstract: Public procurement is one of the most
important areas in the public sector that introduces a possibility for a
corruption. Due to the volume of the funds that are
allocated through this institution (in the EU countries it is between 10
– 15% of GDP), it has very serious implications for the efficiency of
public expenditures and the overall economic efficiency as
well. Indicators that are usually used for the measurement of the
corruption (such as Corruption Perceptions Index - CPI) show that
the worst situation is in the post-communist countries
and Mediterranean countries.
The presented paper uses the Czech Republic as an example of a
post-communist country and analyses the factors which influence
the scope of corruption in public procurement. Moreover, the
paper discusses indicators that could point at the public procurement
market inefficiency. The presented results show that post-communist
states use the institute of public contracts significantly more than the
old member countries of the continental Europe. It has a very
important implication because it gives more space for corruption.
Furthermore, it appears that the inefficient functioning of public
procurement market is clearly manifested in the low number of bids,
low level of market transparency and an ineffective control
system. Some of the observed indicators are statistically significantly
correlated with the CPI.
Abstract: Building condition assessment is a critical activity in Malaysia-s Comprehensive Asset Management Model. It is closely related to building performance that impact user-s life and decision making. This study focuses on public primary school, one of the most valuable assets for the country. The assessment was carried out based on CSP1 Matrix in Kuching Division of Sarawak, Malaysia. Based on the matrix used, three main criteria of the buildings has successfully evaluate: the number of defects; schools rating; and total schools rating. The analysis carried out on 24 schools found that the overall 4, 725 defects has been identified. Meanwhile, the overall score obtained was 45, 868 and the overall rating is 9.71, which is at the fair condition. This result has been associated with building age to evaluate its impacts on school buildings condition. The findings proved that building condition is closely related to building age and its support the theory that 'the ageing building has more defect than the new one'.
Abstract: Finding suitable non-supersingular elliptic curves for
pairing-based cryptosystems becomes an important issue for the
modern public-key cryptography after the proposition of id-based
encryption scheme and short signature scheme. In previous work
different algorithms have been proposed for finding such elliptic
curves when embedding degree k ∈ {3, 4, 6} and cofactor h ∈ {1, 2, 3,
4, 5}. In this paper a new method is presented to find more
non-supersingular elliptic curves for pairing-based cryptosystems with
general embedding degree k and large values of cofactor h. In
addition, some effective parameters of these non-supersingular elliptic
curves are provided in this paper.
Abstract: Tufting carpet is a very suitable substrate for growing
microorganism such as pathogenic microbes, due to the direct touch
with human body, long washing periods and laying on the floor; in
fact there are 3 major problems: To risk human health, Prepare bad
odors and Destruction of the products.. In the presented research, for
investigation of presence most common microbes on polyester
tufting, first goods laid in a public place (in the corridor fair) for 30
days and the existence of some microbes were investigate on it with
two methods of enrichment in nutrient environments such as
thioglycolate and noutrunt brath, and shake the dust off the polyester
tufting onto cultivation mediums such as blood agar and noutrunt
agar. After the microorganism colonics are grown, the colonies were
separated and six microbial tests such as cataloes and sitrat were
carried out in five phases on the colonics for identifying the varieties
of bacteria. As a result of tests, 5 type of bacteria, such as
Escherichia coli, staphylococcus saprophytic as were identified. Each
of the mentioned bacteria can be seriously harmful for the heath of
human.
Abstract: The purpose of this article is to propose a model designed to achieve Total Knowledge Transfer in the public health sector. The Total Knowledge Transfer Model integrated four essential organizational factors which have been under examined in totality in the literature. The research design was inductive in nature and used a case study for accomplishing the research objectives. The researcher investigated the factors that created a base to design a framework for total knowledge transfer in the public health sector. The results of this study are drawn from a fairly large sample in only two hospitals. A further research can be conducted to cover more responses from a wider health sector. The Total Knowledge Transfer Model is essential to improve the transfer and application of total common health knowledge.
Abstract: Job stress is one of the most important concepts for
the today-s corporate as well as institutional world. The current study
is conducted to identify the causes of faculty stress at Higher
Education in Pakistan. For the purpose, Public & Private Business
Schools of Punjab is selected as representative of Pakistan. A sample
of 300 faculty members (214 males, 86 females) responded to the
survey. Regression analysis shows that the Workload, Student
Related issues and Role Conflicts are the major sources contributing
significantly towards producing stress. The study also revealed that
Private sector faculty members experienced more stress as compared
to faculty in Public sector Business Schools. Moreover, females,
younger ages, lower designation & low qualification faculty
members experience more stress as compared to males, older ages,
higher designation and high qualification. The study yield many
significant results for the policy makers of Business Institutions.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to propose a text mining
approach to evaluate companies- practices on affective management.
Affective management argues that it is critical to take stakeholders-
affects into consideration during decision-making process, along with
the traditional numerical and rational indices. CSR reports published
by companies were collected as source information. Indices were
proposed based on the frequency and collocation of words relevant to
affective management concept using text mining approach to analyze
the text information of CSR reports. In addition, the relationships
between the results obtained using proposed indices and traditional
indicators of business performance were investigated using
correlation analysis. Those correlations were also compared between
manufacturing and non-manufacturing companies. The results of this
study revealed the possibility to evaluate affective management
practices of companies based on publicly available text documents.
Abstract: The management of the health-care wastes is one of
the most important problems in Istanbul, a city with more than 12
million inhabitants, as it is in most of the developing countries.
Negligence in appropriate treatment and final disposal of the healthcare
wastes can lead to adverse impacts to public health and to the
environment. This paper employs a fuzzy multi-criteria group
decision making approach, which is based on the principles of fusion
of fuzzy information, 2-tuple linguistic representation model, and
technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution
(TOPSIS), to evaluate health-care waste (HCW) treatment
alternatives for Istanbul. The evaluation criteria are determined
employing nominal group technique (NGT), which is a method of
systematically developing a consensus of group opinion. The
employed method is apt to manage information assessed using multigranularity
linguistic information in a decision making problem with
multiple information sources. The decision making framework
employs ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator that
encompasses several operators as the aggregation operator since it
can implement different aggregation rules by changing the order
weights. The aggregation process is based on the unification of
information by means of fuzzy sets on a basic linguistic term set
(BLTS). Then, the unified information is transformed into linguistic
2-tuples in a way to rectify the problem of loss information of other
fuzzy linguistic approaches.
Abstract: This paper analysis performance of disbursement
procedure of public works project in Thailand. The results of
research were summarised based on contracts, submitted invoice,
inspection dated, copies of disbursement dated between client and
their main contractor and interviewed with persons involved in
central and local government projects during 1994-2008 in Thailand.
The data collection was to investigate the disbursement procedure
related to performance in disbursement during construction period
(Planned duration of contract against Actual execution date in each
month). A graphical presentation of a duration analysis of the
projects illustrated significant disbursement formation in each
project. It was established that the shortage of staff, the financial
stability of clients, bureaucratic, method of disbursement and
economics situation has play major role on performance of
disbursement to their main contractors.
Abstract: Cities expansion, urban travels increase, the
technology development, the automobile price cheapen, and the
families' income ascending cause the considerable increase in
automobile numbers of the city. This fact has led to the traffic
creation and the automobile parking site shortage in the city. Also in
Esfahan metropolis, the parking lots shortage has been the great
problem of this town; in addition, in designing and constructing of
the parking sites the traditional methods are utilized which do not
have a reasonable and optimized usage of the valuable urban lands. In
this article, by introducing the prefabricate mechanized parking
system which is inexpensive, simple and quick, and occupies very
small space, therefore provides the high content of parking site for
the cities, we can eliminate the parking space shortage difficulty of
the cities. The achieved results of this research represent that an
optimized utilization of the existent urban spaces for parking site
construction has not been accomplished. By employing the new
parking site technologies such as mechanization categorized parking
sites and the capacity prefabricate mechanized of each parking space
have become 8 multiples; in this case, the valuable urban lands can
be used in an optimized way.
Abstract: Electronic banking must be secure and easy to use and
many banks heavily advertise an apparent of 100% secure system
which is contestable in many points. In this work, an alternative
approach to the design of e-banking system, through a new solution
for user authentication and security with digital certificate called
LumaCert is introduced. The certificate applies new algorithm for
asymmetric encryption by utilizing two mathematical operators
called Pentors and UltraPentors. The public and private key in this
algorithm represent a quadruple of parameters which are directly
dependent from the above mentioned operators. The strength of the
algorithm resides in the inability to find the respective Pentor and
UltraPentor operator from the mentioned parameters.
Abstract: Urban planning, in particular on protected landscape
areas, demands an increasing role of public participation within the
frame of the efficiency of sustainable planning process. The
development of urban planning actions in Protected Landscape areas,
as Sintra-Cascais Natural Park, should perform a methodological
process that is structured over distinct sequential stages, providing
the development of a continuous, interactive, integrated and
participative planning. From the start of Malveira da Serra and Janes
Plan process, several public participation actions were promoted, in
order to involve the local agents, stakeholders and the population in
the decision of specific local key issues and define the appropriate
priorities within the goals and strategies previously settled. As a
result, public participation encouraged an innovative process that
guarantees the efficiency of sustainable urban planning and promotes
a sustainable new way of living in community.
Abstract: Language Reforms and potential use of ICTs has been a focal area of Higher Education Commission of Pakistan. Efforts are being accelerated to incorporate fast expanding ICTs to bring qualitative improvement in language instruction in higher education. This paper explores how university teachers are benefitting from ICTs to make their English class effective and what type of problems they face in practicing ICTs during their lectures. An in-depth qualitative study was employed to understand why language teachers tend to use ICTs in their instruction and how they are practicing it. A sample of twenty teachers from five universities located in Islamabad, three from public sector and two from private sector, was selected on non-random (Snowball) sampling basis. An interview with 15 semi-structured items was used as research instruments to collect data. The findings reveal that business English teaching is facilitated and improved through the use of ICTs. The language teachers need special training regarding the practices and implementation of ICTs. It is recommended that initiatives might be taken to equip university language teachers with modern methodology incorporating ICTs as focal area and efforts might be made to remove barriers regarding the training of language teachers and proper usage of ICTs.
Abstract: This paper addresses the fundamental requirements for
starting an online business. It covers the process of ideation,
conceptualization, formulation, and implementation of new venture
ideas on the Web. Using Facebook as an illustrative example, we learn
how to turn an idea into a successful electronic business and to execute
a business plan with IT skills, management expertise, a good
entrepreneurial attitude, and an understanding of Internet culture. The
personality traits and characteristics of a successful e-commerce
entrepreneur are discussed with reference to Facebook-s founder,
Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook is a social and e-commerce success. It
provides a trusted environment of which participants can conduct
business with social experience. People are able to discuss products
before, during the after the sale within the Facebook environment. The
paper also highlights the challenges and opportunities for e-commerce
entrepreneurial startups to go public and of entering the China market.
Abstract: An overview of the important aspects of managing
and controlling industrial effluent discharges to public sewers namely
sampling, characterization, quantification and legislative controls has
been presented. The findings have been validated by means of a case
study covering three industrial sectors namely, tanning, textile
finishing and food processing industries. Industrial effluents
discharges were found to be best monitored by systematic and
automatic sampling and quantified using water meter readings
corrected for evaporative and consumptive losses. Based on the
treatment processes employed in the public owned treatment works
and the chemical oxygen demand and biochemical oxygen demand
levels obtained, the effluent from all the three industrial sectors
studied were found to lie in the toxic zone. Thus, physico-chemical
treatment of these effluents is required to bring them into the
biodegradable zone. KL values (quoted to base e) were greater than
0.50 day-1 compared to 0.39 day-1 for typical municipality
wastewater.
Abstract: In this paper a Public Key Cryptosystem is proposed
using the number theoretic transforms (NTT) over a ring of integer
modulo a composite number. The key agreement is similar to
ElGamal public key algorithm. The security of the system is based on
solution of multivariate linear congruence equations and discrete
logarithm problem. In the proposed cryptosystem only fixed numbers
of multiplications are carried out (constant complexity) and hence the
encryption and decryption can be done easily. At the same time, it is
very difficult to attack the cryptosystem, since the cipher text is a
sequence of integers which are interrelated. The system provides
authentication also. Using Mathematica version 5.0 the proposed
algorithm is justified with a numerical example.
Abstract: An important technique in stability theory for
differential equations is known as the direct method of Lyapunov. In
this work we deal global stability properties of Leptospirosis
transmission model by age group in Thailand. First we consider the
data from Division of Epidemiology Ministry of Public Health,
Thailand between 1997-2011. Then we construct the mathematical
model for leptospirosis transmission by eight age groups. The
Lyapunov functions are used for our model which takes the forms of
an Ordinary Differential Equation system. The globally
asymptotically for equilibrium states are analyzed.
Abstract: Strategic alliances generally mean the cooperation or
collaboration between firms which pursue for a synergy that each
member hopes the benefits from the alliances would be much more
than those from individual efforts. Past researches provide us
sufficient theories and considerations for alliance forming in liner
shipping market. This research reviews important academic journals
for the past decade regarding to the most important reasons to form the
alliances. We would explain the motive of alliances and details of
shipping cooperation in literature review.
The paper also empirically investigates the key service quality
requirements improved through alliances by using quality function
deployment (QFD). Moreover, the research investigates famous
shipping reports, shipping consultant websites and most recent
shipping publications to find out the executive-s viewpoint of several
leading carriers among top 20 to assess current shipping strategic
alliance on Asia/Europe route. These comments provide meaningful
managerial reasons to consider alliance formations and search if there
is any gap between the theories and industrial practice. Analysis of the
empirical investigation and top management-s perspective on current
market situation will contribute us some meaningful managerial
suggestions to evaluate these theories applied to current strategic
alliances.
Abstract: Statistics Canada stated that the wastewater treatment
facilities in most provinces are aging and passes 63% of their useful
life in 2007 the highest ratio among public infrastructure assets.
Currently, there is no standard condition rating system for wastewater
treatment plants that give a specific rating index that describe the
physical integrity of different infrastructure elements in the treatment
plant and its environmental performance. The main objective of this
study is to develop a condition-rating index for wastewater treatment
plants mainly activated sludge systems. The proposed WWTP CRI, is
based on dividing the treatment plant into its three treatment phases;
primary phase, secondary phase and the tertiary phase. The
condition-rating index will reflect the infrastructures state for each
phase, mainly tanks, pipes, blowers and pumps.
Abstract: This article deals with the popularity of candidates for the president of the United States of America. The popularity is assessed according to public comments on the Web 2.0. Social networking, blogging and online forums (collectively Web 2.0) are for common Internet users the easiest way to share their personal opinions, thoughts, and ideas with the entire world. However, the web content diversity, variety of technologies and website structure differences, all of these make the Web 2.0 a network of heterogeneous data, where things are difficult to find for common users. The introductory part of the article describes methodology for gathering and processing data from Web 2.0. The next part of the article is focused on the evaluation and content analysis of obtained information, which write about presidential candidates.