Brokerage Approach Research Articles

Community Perceptions of Arsenic Contaminated Drinking Water and Preferences for Risk Communication in California's San Joaquin Valley.

Due to chronic exposure to elevated levels of arsenic in drinking water, thousands of Californians have increased risk for internal cancers and other adverse health effects. The mortality risk of cancer is 1 in 400 people exposed to above 10 μg/L of arsenic in their drinking water. The purpose of this community assessment was to understand the perceptions and awareness of the residents and public water representatives in rural, unincorporated farming communities of color in San Joaquin Valley, California. In our research, we asked 27 community informants about their (1) available water sources, (2) knowledge about the health impacts of arsenic, and (3) preferences for risk communication and education regarding the health impacts of arsenic-contaminated drinking water. Through our qualitative coding and analysis, we found that most community informants indicated that there was limited community awareness about the health effects of drinking water with elevated arsenic levels. Preferences for risk communication included using in-language, culturally relevant, and health literate health promotion strategies and teaching these topics through the local K-8 schools' science curriculum with a language brokerage approach to transfer student knowledge to family members. Key recommendations include implementing these communication preferences to increase community-wide knowledge about safe drinking water.

Efficiency And Productivity Analysis In Turkish Banking Sector With Data Envelopment Analysis And Malmquist Index

The aim of this study is to analyze the efficiency and productivity of 3 public, 6 private and 6 foreign deposit banks operating in the Turkish banking sector with the help of data envelopment analysis and Malmquist index.For this purpose, the efficiency of 15 deposit banks operating in the Turkish banking sector between 2014 and 2018 was measured and whether the efficiency of Malmquist productivity index changed over the years. In the study, input-oriented Charnes Cooper and Rhodes (CCR) model was used under the assumption of constant return to scale and 4 input 2 output variables were selected. Inputs in efficiency and productivity measurement are defined as; personnel expenses / total assets (%), total loans / total assets (%), equity / total assets (%), total deposits / total assets (%), outputs are defined as; the earning power of assets (net profit / total assets), the earning power of equity (net profit / equity) (%). The Windows Data Envelopment Analysis Program (Win4Deap) package program was used in the analysis and brokerage approach was adopted. While 4 banks were active under the Constant Return to Scale(CRS) assumption between 2014 and 2018, 8 banks were found active under the assumption of Variable Return to Scale (VRS).Inefficient banks; target values were calculated by slacks movement and radial movement values to their original values and it was found that the lambda values calculated by Win4Deap program and which banks are peers. The changes observed in Malmquist total factor productivity, technical efficiency, technological efficiency, pure efficiency, scale efficiency and total factor productivity were analyzed as a whole and decision-making units experienced improvement in the 2016-2017 period.

Trust based Cloud Brokerage Approach using Cryptographic and Weighed Technique

Trust based Cloud Brokerage Approach using Cryptographic and Weighed Technique

Knowledge Upgrade to Wisdom by Using Knowledge Broker Agent for Web Application, Based on Users’ Experiences

Knowledge is an important factor in conduct individual’s life and decision-making process, so decision’s efficiency and power is dependent on knowledge deepen which is possess by individual. The aim of this paper is to build an improved intelligent web application system to provide web service which upgrades and raises knowledge level to wisdom level by aggregate knowledge with experience. The web service is implemented by using the brokerage approach through agent-based knowledge broker web service system, and it related to pre-define field. Java Agent DEvelopment (JADE) platform is used in this system to provide the demand environment for knowledge broker agent to achieve its behaviors. Practical testing by submitting different query belong to the medical field (radiography) demonstrate the system efficiency in retrieving knowledge relevant to submitted query and provide level of knowledge upgraded to wisdom to sustain and support specialist users’ capabilities in making decisions reach wise decisions level.

Assessment of rural development plan measures in Greece

The rural development plan measures of Common Agricultural Policy affect people living in rural areas and have impacts on agricultural income and rural employment. This paper aims to assess the economic, environmental and social impacts of the 'setting up young farmers' measure of the rural development plan in the region of Central Macedonia in Northern Greece. For this reason, a sample of young farmers who have participated in the 'setting up young farmers' measure was selected. For the impact assessment and the simulation of the results, the knowledge brokerage approach was used along with multicriteria analysis. The results show that the 'setting up young farmers' measure achieved its goal to transfer land to young trained farmers when they started farm business whereas the economic, environmental and social impacts vary between the seven prefectures of the region.

Assessment of rural development plan measures in Greece

The rural development plan measures of Common Agricultural Policy affect people living in rural areas and have impacts on agricultural income and rural employment. This paper aims to assess the economic, environmental and social impacts of the 'setting up young farmers' measure of the rural development plan in the region of Central Macedonia in Northern Greece. For this reason, a sample of young farmers who have participated in the 'setting up young farmers' measure was selected. For the impact assessment and the simulation of the results, the knowledge brokerage approach was used along with multicriteria analysis. The results show that the 'setting up young farmers' measure achieved its goal to transfer land to young trained farmers when they started farm business whereas the economic, environmental and social impacts vary between the seven prefectures of the region.

A cloud brokerage approach for solving the resource management problem in multi-cloud environments

Cloud computing is increasingly becoming a mainstream technology-delivery model from which companies and research aim to gain value. As different cloud providers offer cloud services in various forms, there is a huge potential of optimizing the selection of those services to better fulfill user-, i.e., consumer- and application-related requirements. Recently, multi-cloud environments have been introduced thus making it possible to execute applications not only on single-provider resources, but also by using resources from multiple cloud providers. Due to the growing complexity in cloud marketplaces, a cloud brokerage mechanism, interacting on behalf of the consumers with various cloud providers, can be used to provide decision support for consumers. In this paper, we address the Cloud Resource Management Problem in multi-cloud environments that is a recent optimization problem aimed at reducing the monetary cost and the execution time of consumer applications using Infrastructure as a Service of multiple cloud providers. Due to the fact that consumers require real-time and high-quality solutions to economically automate cloud resource management and corresponding deployment processes, we propose an efficient Biased Random-Key Genetic Algorithm. The computational experiments over a large benchmark suite generated based on real cloud market resources indicate that the performance of our approach outperforms the approaches proposed in the literature.

A multicriteria model for the assessment of rural development plans in Greece

In the last decades rural communities face the problems of ageing of population, high share of elder farmers and imbalanced distribution of farmers across age classes. The Rural Development Plans (RDPs) of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in European Union (EU) are the policy instruments that affect agriculture and the people living in rural areas. The RDP measure “Setting up Young Farmers” aims to fight the demographic problems of these areas. This study is an attempt to highlight the role and the impacts of RDPs and especially of the “Setting up Young Farmers” measure in the prefecture of Thessaloniki in Greece. To this end, a multicriteria mathematical programming model was implemented. This methodology was chosen using the Knowledge Brokerage Approach in the context of the LIAISE project, which proposes a set of support modules that are linked to the impact assessment process with a final goal to support future policies and design. The results showed that the “Setting up young farmers” measure achieved its goals to transfer land to young, trained farmers, to offset the set-up costs faced by young people when establishing themselves in farming.

Datastores supporting Services Lifecycle in the framework of Cloud Governance

While adopting the Cloud, the small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) could increase their benefit by embracing some Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions, doubled by a Cloud Governance or Cloud brokerage approach. However, in order to fully exploit the advantages brought by Cloud environments, and enter in real competition with big players from different markets, SMEs must group themselves under the umbrella of a common marketplace, via some Cloud Governance solutions, and expose together complex, tailored and integrated solutions. The implementation of an effective Cloud Governance solution requires a strong support for storing and manipulating data which is relevant for various aspects of applications, both at business and technical level, support which is closely linked to cloud service lifecycle. This paper focuses on analyzing the main requirements related to data storage in an effective Cloud Governance system, details the functionality of the most important datastores and presents various use cases involving the entire storage architecture.

Using knowledge brokering to improve evidence-based policy-making: the need for support structures

Knowledge brokering is a promising strategy to close the "know-do gap" and foster greater use of research findings and evidence in policy-making. It focuses on organizing the interactive process between the producers and users of knowledge so that they can co-produce feasible and research-informed policy options. We describe a recent successful experience with this novel approach in the Netherlands and discuss the requirements for effective institutionalization of knowledge brokering. We also discuss the potential of this approach to assist health policy development in low-income countries based on the experience of developing the Regional East-African Health (REACH)-Policy Initiative. We believe that intermediary organizations, such as regional networks, dedicated institutional mechanisms and funding agencies, can play key roles in supporting knowledge brokering. We recommend the need to support and learn from the brokerage approach to strengthen the relationship between the research and policy communities and hence move towards a stronger culture of evidence-based policy and policy-relevant research.

Ethnicity and Accommodation in the New Brunswick Party System

This paper explores the relationship between New Brunswick’s two ethno-linguistic communities and the province’s Progressive Conservative and Libéral parties. Using data from provincial elections from 1908 to 1999, we examine the strength of electoral support enjoyed by each party in both communities and the degree to which the parties have represented both groups in their decision-making bodies. Results from surveys of party activists are used to examine inter and intra party opinion structures on questions relating to language and ethnicity. We conclude that over the past three decades New Brunswick’s political parties have adopted a brokerage approach and have managed to transcend the province’s ethno-linguistic divide.