Comparative View Research Articles

The specifics of selected agricultural commodities in international trade

Purpose. This paper evaluates the involvement of three selected agricultural commodities (rice, coffee and soya) in international trade. The aim is to analyze the specification of foreign trade in selected commodities and assess their different significance between representations in domestic markets and exports. This article will also assess other contexts related to international trade in these three commodities, including the negative effects on their trade. Based on the set goal, a research question was asked which evaluates the different position of the examined agricultural commodities on world export markets in relation to domestic consumption.
 Methodology / approach. The theoretical anchoring of the issue under study are the approaches taken to international economic relations with the emphasis on the specific features of agricultural trade. The methodological framework of the present study is based on the systematic analysis of the spatial distribution of production capacities, the territorial analysis of exports and imports within the world agricultural market and qualitative evaluation of the specifics of selected export commodities and their role in the economy of countries, including labour market importance and in the possibilities of their use.
 Results. The paper presents the results of the involvement of the rice, coffee and soya in international trade analysis. Most rice production is consumed on domestic markets. Unlike rice, most of the coffee produced is exported and less is consumed within the growing countries themselves. Although domestic coffee consumption is increasing, more than 70% of world production is exported. Soya bean production has increased significantly over the past 50 years as a result of the rising demand for animal feedstuff and biofuels. Almost three quarters of soya bean production is consumed as feedstuff.
 Originality / scientific novelty. The main contribution of the article is in the application level the elaboration of a comparative view of three selected agricultural commodities. At the theoretical level of the study, it represents a contribution to the discussion within the approaches to the organization of global agricultural trade, the interdependence of economic policies of states, trade ties and the impact on labour markets in relation to production. Agricultural commodities remain an important item in world international trade. However, their share in the total volume is gradually declining. They play an important role in the maintenance of individual countries, but at the same time they are of great economic importance, although we can also mention the less positive aspects of their production, including their impact on the environment. At the same time, it is necessary to realize that this sector is essential for human survival and also that agriculture is important from the point of food security for the population, which can contribute to and increase the level of agricultural protectionism (resilience to world market disruptions or uncontrolled import of genetically modified (GM) food and the transmission of animal diseases). Agriculture is one of the most sensitive economic sectors in the world. Nevertheless, agricultural exports have several economic benefits, including stimulating a wide range of agricultural-related industries, transport suppliers, processing and farm inputs.
 Practical value / implications. The production of agricultural commodities is of great importance to the economies of individual states, where it contributes to the creation of direct, indirect and induced jobs. The agrarian sector is a key sector, especially for less developed countries. The analysis confirmed the high tradability of all commodities examined and is documented by their involvement in the international division of labour in the global projection.

Digitization and improvement of the Distance Learning platform at the University of Montenegro during the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper presents the improvements implemented at the University of Montenegro Information System in the Distance Learning (DL) segment during the COVID-19 pandemic. A comparative view of old and new DL system was made. The integration of all parts of DL is presented, with a description of the digital services, their technical characteristics, and the method of implementation. Comparative statistics on the use of the DL platform before and during the pandemic were also presented.

Entrepreneurs’ impact on the wider community: a comparative study of commercial beekeepers through the lens of social role theory

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine how commercial beekeepers operating in two different nations perceive their role towards their community and society. The realms of role theory will be adopted.Design/methodology/approachData among 144 commercial beekeepers operating in both New Zealand and the United Kingdom (UK) were gathered through an online questionnaire. The design of the questionnaire, which allowed extended comments from the participating commercial beekeepers, validated the use of the inductive analysis approach that enabled the emergence of various distinctive themes, and the development of a theoretical framework.FindingsParticipants from both New Zealand and UK recognised similar ways of making a positive impact. Moreover, they agreed that their contribution spanned from pollinating fields and orchards, to improving food production and preserving nature. Nevertheless, the two groups also differed in their views, notably, of the degree of knowledge or awareness among stakeholders concerning beekeepers’ contribution.Originality/valueBy using a comparative view of how commercial beekeepers perceive their role vis-à-vis their wider community, this study addresses a call for rethinking the social value added that emanates from entrepreneurial activities, and how such value can affect society. Furthermore, in adopting social role theory, the study proposes a framework where strong associations between the empirical results and the tenets of social role theory are revealed. This framework affords a lens through which food-producing activities aimed at balancing producers’ commercial and environmental imperatives and their relationship with broader societal expectations could be reflected upon.

The Role of Law in Addressing Poverty and Inequality in High Income Countries: A Comparative View of Menstrual Hygiene Management and Its Impact on Education and Health in the UK and Select High Income Sub-Saharan African Countries

Abstract Agenda 2030 on sustainable development promotes a holistic approach to development and emphasizes the need to leave no one behind. Regarding the rule of law, sustainable development goal (SDG) 16.3 focuses on (promoting the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all by 2030) and the related goals and targets on justice. Changing economic conditions in recent decades have caused stagnating wages and widening economic gaps among individual citizens and regions within developed countries and this is reflected in pockets of poverty and inequality in high income countries and islands of excess wealth in developing or low-income countries, worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper examines the legal aspects of poverty and inequality in the education and health sectors in select high-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa and a Western industrialized country such as the UK, with emphasis on period poverty or poor menstrual health management (MHM) as a barrier to access to education and health due to inability to afford sanitary products. The analytical paper applies the institutionalist legislative theory and methodology (ILTAM) and the general theory of law and development, examines the role of the state in regulating the health and education sectors and concludes with key findings and recommendations on how the institutional and legal frameworks can be utilized to foster sustainable development in high-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF ENGLISH AND UZBEK PUNCTUATION RULES

This article provides a comparative view of the use of punctuation in English and Uzbek, and explores the similarities and differences between them. There are also some ideas on how to use punctuation effectively and correctly. However, given that punctuation is one of the most important aspects of written and spoken speech, it is emphasized that their proper use will provide effective results not only for English linguists, but also for translators and grammar experts.

A comparative view to heavy metal pollution in soil and rainwater in Çanakkale, Turkey

A comparative view to heavy metal pollution in soil and rainwater in Çanakkale, Turkey

Perceived usability of local government (LG) financial statements by local councillors: comparative study of Finland and Germany

PurposeThis paper studies the usability of LG financial statements as perceived by local councillors. By drawing on a comparative view of two countries with different periods of accrual accounting use in the public sector, the authors investigate how local councillors assess the usability of LG financial statements in order to question accounting reform success. Determinants that influence the usability assessment are explored.Design/methodology/approachExploratory design: data were collected from questionnaires with 24 local councillors from five Finnish local governments (LGs) and 30 local councillors from six German LGs. An adjusted variant of the system usability scale was analysed with descriptive statistics and non-parametric group comparisons.FindingsIn both countries, the usability assessment of financial statements seems to be positive, indicating a successful reform process. In Finland, where the accrual government accounting reform has had a longer time to settle in, councillors seem to assess usability only partially better than German councillors. Several determinants of the usability assessment were detected, such as size and debt level of the LG as well as local councillors' gender, political orientation and education. Generally, councillors need more assistance and training in using financial statements.Originality/valueThe study is the first to conduct a quantitative assessment of the usability of LG financial statements as perceived by councillors. The system usability scale was adjusted to a public sector reporting context. The paper adopts a transnational comparative approach.

Arab Women and Feminist Movements in Israel are Between the Hammer of Society and the Anvil of Law

The aim of this research is to reveal the status and image of Arab women and feminist movement in Israel, as it discusses the reality of citizens of Israel and the extent to which they have access to and enjoy their civil, economic, social and political rights. On the one hand, it also analyses women’s rights from the perspective of a society governed by customs and traditions. This is represented by the authority of the male over the female, because the Arab society is a biased society between males and females to some extent, and on the other hand it demonstrates a comparative view with the international law, agreements and treaties that provided for ensuring the protection of women’s rights. Through this study, the researcher believes that Arab women bear the burdens of submitting themselves to nationalism and the Arab minority on the one hand and the burdens of racial discrimination against Arabs in general and against women in particular. In addition, the local authority responsible for Arab regions and cities bears part of the violations of women’s rights in employment that affect their role in the labor market. This is because it does not carry out its responsibility towards the Arab minority as required, and specifically with regard to securing suitable job opportunities for women, securing public transportation, and suitable places for women with children.

I originally wanted to write the title Brethren, but I wrote Brotherhood... Jirásek brotherhood impressions

Abstract The study, dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vincent Blanár, offers a comparative Czech-Slovak view of the lexeme brother (Czech bratr – Slovak brat) in its paradigmatic relations. The analysis is based on a specific textual basis, the novel Bratrstvo (Brotherhood) by the Czech writer Alois Jirásek. The starting point of the comparison is the Czech original and two Slovak translations of this literary text, which shows a remarkably wide range of semantic concretizations of the polysemic word brother. In the Czech-Slovak comparison, various morphosyntactic, lexical-semantic, derivational and collocational differences appear. In a comparative view, the sphere of addressing is particularly interesting.

Feature Extraction and Classification of Segmented ECG Signals Based on Radial Basis Function and Random Forest Methodology

Heart disease is the major cause of death ratio increase in this decade. Nowadays various people of different age sector undergo the high risk of heart problems and miss their precious life all of a sudden. Early detection of heart disease will save many people’s life well in advance. Heart Diseases are predictable and they can be identified in earlier stage. First basic method to identify heart disease is ElectroCardioGram (ECG) which is the basic recording method of electrical activities of a functioning heart. ECG is the cheapest and painless method to detect the basic heart problems. This paper is an attempt to detect and classify heart beat signals which will serve as the basic step to predict basic and serious issues which may affect the functioning of the heart. The raw ECG signals are extracted and preprocessed to remove unwanted noises which will produce effective results. The preprocessed ECG signals are then are utilized to identify the heart beats which comprise of signals such as P,Q,R,S,T and U. After detecting the heart beats, they are segmented to extract the ECG Features. The temporal and spectral features are extracted from the segmented ECG signals for classification purpose. The extracted feature vectors are utilized to classify the signals. Radial Basis function and Random Forest method are commonly used classification methodologies; hence these two methodologies are applied to classify the ECG Signals into five basic classes. Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Beth Israel Hospital (MIT-BIH) Arrhythmia database and Noise Stress database are used for this implementation and the classes are identified based on the given dataset parameters. Performance metrics such as accuracy, specificity and sensitivity are computed to find out the best classification methodology among the applied two methodologies. This performance analysis provides a clear comparative view of both the existing methodologies and specifies that Radial Basis function well suits for the given segmented ECG signals and the extracted features. Hence this performance evaluation paves way for best classification algorithm selection or extension of the best methodology and it can be further optimized for better classification result. The implementation process has been carried out using Matlab software environment.

Argumentation and Legal Interpretation in the Criminal Decisions of the Polish Supreme Court and the German Federal Court of Justice: A Comparative View

Argumentation and Legal Interpretation in the Criminal Decisions of the Polish Supreme Court and the German Federal Court of Justice: A Comparative View

Binding studies of known molecules with acetylcholinesterase and bovine serum albumin: A comparative view

The interactions between selected molecules (piperine, tacrine, curcumin and silibinin) and proteins (acetylcholinesterase and bovine serum albumin) were investigated by Fluorescence spectroscopy, molecular docking, molecular dynamics, free energy calculation and non-covalent interaction analysis. These binding characteristics are of huge interest for understanding pharmacokinetic mechanism of the target molecules. The steady-state emission spectrum results showed that presence of static quenching mode for piperine, tacrine, curcumin, silibinin molecules with BSA and AChE complexes separately and this excitation-emission matrix analysis suggest that formation of ground-state complex between piperine, tacrine, curcumin, silibinin drugs and both BSA, AChE protein molecules. And, the binding model from molecular docking analysis of both BSA and AChE with these molecules clearly displayed non-covalent interactions (hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic interactions) which played a significant role in the binding mechanism. Further, the protein-ligand complexes are subjected to molecular dynamics and binding free energy calculation to confirm the stability of the molecule in the active site of BSA and AChE. The NCI (non-covalent interaction) approach supports to visualize the iso-surface of the reduced density gradient of such interactions between protein and ligands.

Numerosities and Other Magnitudes in the Brains: A Comparative View.

The ability to represent, discriminate, and perform arithmetic operations on discrete quantities (numerosities) has been documented in a variety of species of different taxonomic groups, both vertebrates and invertebrates. We do not know, however, to what extent similarity in behavioral data corresponds to basic similarity in underlying neural mechanisms. Here, we review evidence for magnitude representation, both discrete (countable) and continuous, following the sensory input path from primary sensory systems to associative pallial territories in the vertebrate brains. We also speculate on possible underlying mechanisms in invertebrate brains and on the role played by modeling with artificial neural networks. This may provide a general overview on the nervous system involvement in approximating quantity in different animal species, and a general theoretical framework to future comparative studies on the neurobiology of number cognition.

Education And Digital Ethics: An Interview With Humberto De Faria Santos

The present report represents the content shared by interviewing Humberto de Faria Santos, graduated in Theology and International Relations with a master’s degree in management systems. Mr. Santos has already done Economics and Organizational Ethics course at the University of Harvard. The interview aimed to bring into discussion the relationship between ethics into the technology field. Here, it was approached (i) the role of universities, (ii) key principles and values, (iii) a comparative view between the job market and educational organizations, (iv) the ethical concerns at non-academic training organizations, (v) privacy, ethics, and the digital world, (vi) the creation of solutions avoiding problems to society and finally, (vii) the collaboration of technology to the ethics rise.

Comparative Analysis onVSI and CSI based Solar Photovoltaic Source Fed BLDC Motor Drive with Boost Converter for Water Pumping System

In this paper, analysis of solar power fed Brushless DC motor (BLDC) motor drive with a boost converter is presented for water pumping application in irrigation system. Nowa days, the usage of renewable PV source is increasing gradually, due to the encouragement of eco-friendly energy sources by providing subsidies for the installation in the initial states. In the agricultural sector, the water pump system requires a 3-ϕ power supply, for that we need a separate transmission line and transformers to meet the load demand. In this paper, a solar power fed BLDC motor water pumping system with boost converter and Voltage source Inverter (VSI) is presented which reduces the converter switch stress by increasing the voltage transfer gain ratio. VSI needs a huge dc link capacitor that is inherently unreliable and is one of the most expensive components of a drive.A MPPT controller is required to extract maximum power from the high penetrating renewable PV source and also proposes the Current source inverter (CSI) fed water pumping system is developed and examine with same operating conditions. A comparative analysis view in existing method of system replace the VSI with CSI. The performance of system is analyzed with speed settling times at same operating conditions. The proposed work is carried out in the MATLAB/Simulinksoftware. A comparative analysis is also presented in lucid manner

Comparative Analysis onVSI and CSI based Solar Photovoltaic Source Fed BLDC Motor Drive with Boost Converter for Water Pumping System

In this paper, analysis of solar power fed Brushless DC motor (BLDC) motor drive with a boost converter is presented for water pumping application in irrigation system. Nowa days, the usage of renewable PV source is increasing gradually, due to the encouragement of eco-friendly energy sources by providing subsidies for the installation in the initial states. In the agricultural sector, the water pump system requires a 3-ϕ power supply, for that we need a separate transmission line and transformers to meet the load demand. In this paper, a solar power fed BLDC motor water pumping system with boost converter and Voltage source Inverter (VSI) is presented which reduces the converter switch stress by increasing the voltage transfer gain ratio. VSI needs a huge dc link capacitor that is inherently unreliable and is one of the most expensive components of a drive.A MPPT controller is required to extract maximum power from the high penetrating renewable PV source and also proposes the Current source inverter (CSI) fed water pumping system is developed and examine with same operating conditions. A comparative analysis view in existing method of system replace the VSI with CSI. The performance of system is analyzed with speed settling times at same operating conditions. The proposed work is carried out in the MATLAB/Simulinksoftware. A comparative analysis is also presented in lucid manner.

A Pun Identification Framework for Retrieving Equivocation Terms based on HLSTM Learning Model

The artificial intelligence system is made linguistically intelligent through HLSTM model to identify pun expressions from code mixed text. The text available on social media domain is written in mixed script format and from these content puns word identification is a challenging task in this scenario. The retrieval of pun and its corresponding equivocation terms is very hard to retrieve from the transliterated text. The pun retrieval and its equivocation representation are widely used to present the opinions over the network applications. The work described in the paper gives the comparative view of different learning models and techniques applied in the area of transliteration for pun word retrieval. The rule framed approach is presented which accepts the roman form text as input and as per the defined rules the system is developed to give the equivocation words available in the sentence. The evaluation measures used here to validate the hypothesis is based on statistical measures along with HLSTM learning model. Further the result is validated using the voting technique that can choose appropriate equivocation label which are not identifies by the learning model. The use of voting technique here is to provide an extra edge when the proposed approaches suggest incorrect tag against the pun word. The voting approach enhances the overall result accuracy with high precision value.

Artificial Intelligence based Temporal Material Identification for Improving Qulaity of Service in Communication

The artificial intelligence based learning model helps in identifying temporal material by processing linguistic terms that express time duration in code mixed data. The data available on social media contents are written in mixed script format and from this content temporal material content identification is a challenging task. The retrieval of temporal information and its corresponding time duration expression terms can be identified using artificial intelligence technique based neural learning model. The temporal retrieval and its time duration representation are widely used to present the opinions over the social media. The work described in the paper gives the comparative view of different techniques used in the area of transliteration. The rule framed approach is presented which accepts the roman form text as input and as per the defined rules the system is developed to give the temporal details words available in the sentence. The evaluation measures used here to validate the hypothesis is based on statistical measures along with HLSTM learning model. Further the result is validated using the voting technique that can choose appropriate Temporal label which are not identifies by the learning model. The applied neural learning approach increases the precision value.

Neural Network Pun Material Identifiction Framework based on Artificial Intelligence Learning

The Neural based artificial intelligence system is made linguistically intelligent through simulation model to identify pun material expressions from code mixed text. The text available on social media consist contents which are written in mixed script format and from these content puns word identification is a challenging task in this scenario. The retrieval of pun and its corresponding equivocation terms is very hard to retrieve from the transliterated text. The pun retrieval and its equivocation representation are widely used to present the opinions over the network applications. The work described in the paper gives the comparative view of different neural network and its corresponding learning and simulation techniques applied in the area of transliteration. The rule framed approach is presented which accepts the roman form text as input and as per the defined rules the system is developed to give the equivocation words available in the sentence. The evaluation measures used here to validate the hypothesis is based on statistical measures along with HLSTM learning model. Further the result is validated using the voting technique that can choose appropriate equivocation label which are not identifies by the learning model. The use of voting technique here is to provide an extra edge when the proposed approaches suggest incorrect tag against the pun word. The voting approach enhances the overall result accuracy with high precision value.

Civil–military cooperation in the early response to the COVID-19 pandemic in six European countries

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has presented many countries with significant health system and economic challenges. The role of civil–military cooperation in a health crisis of the magnitude presented by COVID-19 remains...