Abstract: The study is aimed to test causal relationship between
growth and unemployment, using time series data for Pakistan from
1972 to 2006. Growth is considered to be a pathway to decrease the
level of unemployment. Unemployment is a social and political
issue. It is a phenomenon where human resources are wasted leading
to deacceleration in growth. Johanson Cointegration shows that there
is long run relationship between growth and unemployment. For
short run dynamics and causality, the study utilizes Vector Error
Correction Model (VECM). The results of VECM indicate that there
is short and long run causal relation between growth and
unemployment including capital, labor and human capital as
explanatory variables.
Abstract: After Apple's first introduction its smart phone, iPhone
in the end of 2009 in Korea, the number of Korean smarphone users
had been rapidly increasing so that the half of Korean population
became smart phone users as of February, 2012. Currently, smart
phones are positioned as a major digital media with powerful
influences in Korea. And, now, Koreans are leaning new information,
enjoying games and communicating other people every time and
everywhere. As smart phone devices' performances increased, the
number of usable services became more while adequate GUI
developments are required to implement various functions with smart
phones. The strategy to provide similar experiences on smart phones
through familiar features based on employment of existing media's
functions mostly contributed to smart phones' popularization in
connection with smart phone devices' iconic GUIs.
The spread of Smart phone increased mobile web accesses.
Therefore, the attempts to implement PC's web in the smart phone's
web are continuously made. The mobile web GUI provides familiar
experiences to users through designs adequately utilizing the smart
phone's GUIs. As the number of users familiarized to smart phones
and mobile web GUIs, opposite to reversed remediation from many
parts of PCs, PCs are starting to adapt smart phone GUIs.
This study defines this phenomenon as the reversed remediation,
and reviews the reversed remediation cases of Smart phone GUI'
characteristics of PCs. For this purpose, the established study issues
are as under:
· what is the reversed remediation?
· what are the smart phone GUI's characteristics?
· what kind of interrelationship exist s between the smart phone and
PC's web site?
It is meaningful in the forecast of the future GUI's change by
understanding of characteristics in the paradigm changes of PC and
smart phone's GUI designs. This also will be helpful to establish
strategies for digital devices' development and design.
Abstract: Due to a high unemployment rate among local people
and a high reliance on expatriate workers, the governments in the
Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries have been implementing
programmes of localisation (replacing foreign workers with GCC
nationals). These programmes have been successful in the public
sector but much less so in the private sector. However, there are now
insufficient jobs for locals in the public sector and the onus to provide
employment has fallen on the private sector. This paper is concerned
with a study, which is a work in progress (certain elements are
complete but not the whole study), investigating the effective
implementation of localisation policies in four- and five-star hotels in
the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates
(UAE). The purpose of the paper is to identify the research gap, and
to present the need for the research. Further, it will explain how this
research was conducted.
Studies of localisation in the GCC countries are under-represented
in scholarly literature. Currently, the hotel sectors in KSA and UAE
play an important part in the countries’ economies. However, the
total proportion of Saudis working in the hotel sector in KSA is
slightly under 8%, and in the UAE, the hotel sector remains highly
reliant on expatriates. There is therefore a need for research on
strategies to enhance the implementation of the localisation policies
in general and in the hotel sector in particular.
Further, despite the importance of the hotel sector to their
economies, there remains a dearth of research into the
implementation of localisation policies in this sector. Indeed, as far as
the researchers are aware, there is no study examining localisation in
the hotel sector in KSA, and few in the UAE. This represents a
considerable research gap.
Regarding how the research was carried out, a multiple case study
strategy was used. The four- and five-star hotel sector in KSA is one
of the cases, while the four- and five-star hotel sector in the UAE is
the other case. Four- and five-star hotels in KSA and the UAE were
chosen as these countries have the longest established localisation
policies of all the GCC states and there are more hotels of these
classifications in these countries than in any of the other Gulf
countries. A literature review was carried out to underpin the
research. The empirical data were gathered in three phases. In order
to gain a pre-understanding of the issues pertaining to the research
context, Phase I involved eight unstructured interviews with officials
from the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (three
interviewees); the Saudi Human Resources Development Fund (one);
the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority (three); and the Abu
Dhabi Development Fund (one).
In Phase II, a questionnaire was administered to 24 managers and
24 employees in four- and five-star hotels in each country to obtain
their beliefs, attitudes, opinions, preferences and practices concerning
localisation.
Unstructured interviews were carried out in Phase III with six
managers in each country in order to allow them to express opinions
that may not have been explored in sufficient depth in the
questionnaire. The interviews in Phases I and III were analysed using
thematic analysis and SPSS will be used to analyse the questionnaire
data.
It is recommended that future research be undertaken on a larger
scale, with a larger sample taken from all over KSA and the UAE
rather than from only four cities (i.e., Riyadh and Jeddah in KSA and
Abu Dhabi and Sharjah in the UAE), as was the case in this research.
Abstract: In this paper we apply an Adaptive Network-Based
Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) with one input, the dependent
variable with one lag, for the forecasting of four macroeconomic
variables of US economy, the Gross Domestic Product, the inflation
rate, six monthly treasury bills interest rates and unemployment rate.
We compare the forecasting performance of ANFIS with those of the
widely used linear autoregressive and nonlinear smoothing transition
autoregressive (STAR) models. The results are greatly in favour of
ANFIS indicating that is an effective tool for macroeconomic
forecasting used in academic research and in research and application
by the governmental and other institutions
Abstract: Does education matter to the quality of our life? The results of extensive studies offer an affirmative answer to this question: high education levels are positively associated with higher income, with more highly qualified professions, with lower risk of unemployment, with better physical health and also, it is said, with more happiness. However, exploring these relationships is far from straightforward. Aside from educational credentials, what properties distinguish functionally literate individuals? How can their personal level of satisfaction be measured? What are the social mechanisms whereby education affects well-being?Using a literacy index and several measures for well-being developed by secondary analysis of the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey database, this investigation examined the relationship between literacy skills and subjective wellbeing in several OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. Special attention was been addressed to Italy, and in particular to two regions representing territorial differences in this country: Piedmont and Campania.
Abstract: Climate change has profound consequences for the agriculture of south-eastern Australia and its climate-induced water shortage in the Murray-Darling Basin. Post Keynesian Economics (PKE) macro-dynamics, along with Kaleckian investment and growth theory, are used to develop an ecological-economic system dynamics model of this complex nonlinear river basin system. The Murray- Darling Basin Simulation Model (MDB-SM) uses the principles of PKE to incorporate the fundamental uncertainty of economic behaviors of farmers regarding the investments they make and the climate change they face, particularly as regards water ecosystem services. MDB-SM provides a framework for macroeconomic policies, especially for long-term fiscal policy and for policy directed at the sustainability of agricultural water, as measured by socio-economic well-being considerations, which include sustainable consumption and investment in the river basin. The model can also reproduce other ecological and economic aspects and, for certain parameters and initial values, exhibit endogenous business cycles and ecological sustainability with realistic characteristics. Most importantly, MDBSM provides a platform for the analysis of alternative economic policy scenarios. These results reveal the importance of understanding water ecosystem adaptation under climate change by integrating a PKE macroeconomic analytical framework with the system dynamics modelling approach. Once parameterised and supplied with historical initial values, MDB-SM should prove to be a practical tool to provide alternative long-term policy simulations of agricultural water and socio-economic well-being.
Abstract: In this era of globalization, the role of the State in all aspects of development is widely debated. Some scholars contend the 'demise' and diminishing role of the State whilst others claim that the State is still “de facto developmental". Clearly, it is vital to ascertain which of these two contentions are reflective of the role of the State as nations ascend their development trajectories. Based on the findings of this paper, the perception that the Malaysian State plays an active and committed role towards distributing equitable educational opportunities and enhancing employability of Malaysian PWDs is actually a myth and not reality. Thus, in order to fulfill the promise of Vision 2020 to transform Malaysia into a caring and socially-inclusive society; this paper calls for a more interventionist and committed role by the Malaysian State to translate the universal rights of education and employment opportunities for PWDs from mere policy rhetoric into inclusive realities.
Abstract: In this paper, we investigate dynamics of 2n almost periodic attractors for Cohen-Grossberg neural networks (CGNNs) with variable and distribute time delays. By imposing some new assumptions on activation functions and system parameters, we split invariant basin of CGNNs into 2n compact convex subsets. Then the existence of 2n almost periodic solutions lying in compact convex subsets is attained due to employment of the theory of exponential dichotomy and Schauder-s fixed point theorem. Meanwhile, we derive some new criteria for the networks to converge toward these 2n almost periodic solutions and exponential attracting domains are also given correspondingly.
Abstract: Metropolitan areas have suffered from traffic problems, which have steadily increased in many monocentric cities. Urban expansion, population growth, and road network development have resulted in a structural shift toward urban sprawl, increasing commuters’ dependence on private modes of transport. This paper aims to model the influence of socioeconomic and land-use factors on mode choice using a multinomial and nested logit model. Land-use patterns—such as residential, commercial, retail, educational and employment related—affect the choice of mode and destination in the short and medium term. Socioeconomic factors—such as age, gender, income, household size, and house type—also affect choice, while residential location is affected in the long term. Riyadh in Saudi Arabia and Melbourne in Australia were chosen as case studies. Riyadh is a car-dependent city with limited public transport, whereas Melbourne has good public transport but an increase in car dependence. Aggregate level land-use data and disaggregate level individual, household, and journey-to-work data are used to determine the effects of land use and socioeconomic factors on mode choice. The model results determined that urban sprawl is the main factor that affects mode choice, income, and house type.
Abstract: This research aimed to study employees- perceptions and expectations toward their organization-s corporate social responsibility (CSR), to study the differences between employees- personal factors and level of perceptions and expectations toward CSR, and to study the relationship between employees- perceptions and expectations toward CSR. Purposive sampling and questionnaire were applied to collect information from 400 private company employees in Bangkok metropolitan area. The results revealed that employees had “high" level of perceptions and expectations toward CSR, of which the highest level were given on the area of “corporate governance and transparency". It was found that there was different level of expectations of employees with different period of employment, position and employment (by listed and non-listed companies). Employees of different age and period of employment also had different level of expectations. Employees- perceptions were correlated with their expectations toward CSR.
Abstract: Location selection is one of the most important
decision making process which requires to consider several criteria
based on the mission and the strategy. This study-s object is to
provide a decision support model in order to help the bank selecting
the most appropriate location for a bank-s branch considering a case
study in Turkey. The object of the bank is to select the most
appropriate city for opening a branch among six alternatives in the
South-Eastern of Turkey. The model in this study was consisted of
five main criteria which are Demographic, Socio-Economic, Sectoral
Employment, Banking and Trade Potential and twenty one subcriteria
which represent the bank-s mission and strategy. Because of
the multi-criteria structure of the problem and the fuzziness in the
comparisons of the criteria, fuzzy AHP is used and for the ranking of
the alternatives, TOPSIS method is used.
Abstract: A personal estimate of a health risk may not
correspond to a scientific assessment of the health risk. Hence, there
is a need to investigate perceived health risks in the public. In this
study, a young, educated and healthy group of people from a tertiary
institute were questioned about their health concerns. Ethics
clearance was obtained and data was collected by means of a
questionnaire. 362 students participated in the study. Tobacco use,
heavy alcohol drinking, illicit drugs, unsafe sex and potential
carcinogens were perceived to be the five greatest threats to health in
this cohort. On the other hand natural health products,
unemployment, unmet contraceptive needs, family violence and
homelessness were felt to be the least perceived health risks.
Nutrition-related health risks as well as health risks due to physical
inactivity and obesity were not perceived as major health threats.
Such a study of health perceptions may guide health promotion
campaigns.
Abstract: According to the interaction of inflation and
unemployment, expectation of the rate of inflation in Croatia is
estimated. The interaction between inflation and unemployment is
shown by model based on three first-order differential i.e. difference
equations: Phillips relation, adaptive expectations equation and
monetary-policy equation. The resulting equation is second order
differential i.e. difference equation which describes the time path of
inflation. The data of the rate of inflation and the rate of
unemployment are used for parameters estimation. On the basis of
the estimated time paths, the stability and convergence analysis is
done for the rate of inflation.
Abstract: Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, is one of the
densely populated cities in the world. Due to rapid urbanization 60%
of its population lives in slum and squatter settlements. The reason
behind this poverty is low economic growth, inequitable distribution
of income, unequal distribution of productive assets, unemployment
and underemployment, high rate of population growth, low level of
human resource development, natural disasters, and limited access to
public services. Along with poverty, creating pressure on urban land,
shelter, plots, open spaces this creates environmental and ecological
degradation. These constraints are mostly resulted from the failures
of the government policies and measures and only Government can
solve this problem. This is now prime time to establish planning and
environmental management policy and sustainable urban
development for the city and for the urban slum dwellers which are
free from eviction, criminals, rent seekers and other miscreants.
Abstract: While service quality is acceptably most valued in the tourism industry, the issue of safety and security plays a key role in sustaining the industry success. Such an issue has been part of Thailand-s tourism development and promotion for several years. Evidently, the Tourist Police Department was set up for this purpose. Its main responsibility is to deal with international tourists- safety and confidence in travelling within Thai territory. However, to strengthen the tourism safety of the country, it is important to better understand international tourists- safety concerns about Thailand. This article seeks to compare international tourists- safety needs and Thai tourist polices- perception towards the tourists- safety concern to determine what measure should be taken to assure the tourist of Thailand-s secure environment. Through the employment of quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches, the tourism safety need of international tourists from Europe, North America and Asia was excavated, how Thai tourist polices and local polices perceived the international tourist-s safety concern was investigated, and opinion and experiences about how the police deal with international tourists- problems in eight touristic areas were also explored. A comparative result reveals a certain degrees of differences in international tourists- safety needs and Thai polices- perception towards their needs. The tourism safety prevention and protection measure and practice are also suggested.
Abstract: Planning of economic activities development has various dimensions one of which determines adequate capacity of economic activities in provinces regarding the government-s goals. Paralleling planning goals of economic activities development including subjects being focused on the view statement is effective to better realize the statement's goals. Current paper presents a native framework for economic activities development in provincial level. Triple steps within the framework are concordant with the view statement-s goals achievement. At first step of the proposed framework, economic activities are being prioritized in terms of employment indices, and secondly economic activities regarding to the province's relative advantages are being recognized. In the third step, desirable capacity of economic activities is determined with regards to the government's goals and effective constraints in economic activities development. Development of economic activities related to the provinces- relative advantages, contributes on regional balance and on equal development of economic activities. Furthermore, results of the framework enable more confident investment, affect employment development and remove unemployment concern as the main goals of the view statement.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to investigate the chemical
degradation of the organophosphorus pesticide of parathion and
carbamate insecticide of methomyl in the aqueous phase through
Fenton process. With the employment of batch Fenton process, the
degradation of the two selected pesticides at different pH, initial
concentration, humic acid concentration, and Fenton reagent dosages
was explored. The Fenton process was found effective to degrade
parathion and methomyl. The optimal dosage of Fenton reagents (i.e.,
molar concentration ratio of H2O2 to Fe2+) at pH 7 for parathion
degradation was equal to 3, which resulted in 50% removal of
parathion. Similarly, the optimal dosage for methomyl degradation
was 1, resulting in 80% removal of methomyl. This study also found
that the presence of humic substances has enhanced pesticide
degradation by Fenton process significantly. The mass spectroscopy
results showed that the hydroxyl free radical may attack the single
bonds with least energy of investigated pesticides to form smaller
molecules which is more easily to degrade either through
physio-chemical or bilolgical processes.
Abstract: Tanzania secondary schools in rural areas are geographically and socially isolated, hence face a number of problems in getting learning materials resulting in poor performance in National examinations. E-learning as defined to be the use of information and communication technology (ICT) for supporting the educational processes has motivated Tanzania to apply ICT in its education system. There has been effort to improve secondary school education using ICT through several projects. ICT for e-learning to Tanzania rural secondary school is one of the research projects conceived by the University of Dar-es-Salaam through its College of Engineering and Technology. The main objective of the project is to develop a tool to enable ICT support rural secondary school. The project is comprehensive with a number of components, one being development of e-learning management system (e-LMS) for Tanzania secondary schools. This paper presents strategies of developing e-LMS. It shows the importance of integrating action research methodology with the modeling methods as presented by model driven architecture (MDA) and the usefulness of Unified Modeling Language (UML) on the issue of modeling. The benefit of MDA will go along with the development based on software development life cycle (SDLC) process, from analysis and requirement phase through design and implementation stages as employed by object oriented system analysis and design approach. The paper also explains the employment of open source code reuse from open source learning platforms for the context sensitive development of the e-LMS for Tanzania secondary schools.
Abstract: Since the late 1980s, the new phenomena of 'employment subcentres' or 'polycentricity' has appeared in the metropolises of North American and Western Europe and it has been an interesting topic for academics and researchers. This paper specifically uses one case study-Guangzhou to explore the development and the mechanism of employment subcentres and polycentricity in Chinese metropolises by spatial analysis method on the basis of the first economic census data. In conclusion, the paper regards that the employment subcentres and polycentricity has existed in Chinese metropolises. And that, the mechanism of them is mainly from the secondary industry instead of the tertiary industry in North American and Western Europe
Abstract: The quality-of-service (QoS) support for wireless
LANs has been a hot research topic during the past few years. In this paper, two QoS provisioning mechanisms are proposed for the employment in 802.11e EDCA MAC scheme. First, the proposed call
admission control mechanism can not only guarantee the QoS for the higher priority existing connections but also provide the minimum reserved bandwidth for traffic flows with lower priority. In addition, the adaptive contention window adjustment mechanism can adjust the
maximum and minimum contention window size dynamically according to the existing connection number of each AC. The collision
probability as well as the packet delay will thus be reduced effectively.
Performance results via simulations have revealed the enhanced QoS property achieved by employing these two mechanisms.