External Demands Research Articles

Does equity pledge of major shareholders affect investment efficiency?

Using the data of China A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2020 as samples, this paper finds that major shareholders' equity pledge reduces the investment efficiency of the company, and the proportion of major shareholders' equity pledge to the total share capital is significantly negatively correlated with the investment efficiency of the company. In addition, when the company's external financing demand is small and the degree of marketization is low, the damage of major shareholders' equity pledge to investment efficiency is more and more obvious. The above evidence shows that the pledge of major shareholders' equity is a "self-interested tool" rather than a "value creation".

Offshore wind energy prospects for power-to-direct air capture and power-to-gas

Direct air capture of carbon dioxide (CO2) is technically a feasible solution for reducing atmospheric CO2 concentrations at scale, building on decades of global research. However, powering such systems even partially with CO2-intensive fossil fuels results in more CO2 emissions. This paper presents a novel energy management strategy (EMS) to further explore modular offshore wind energy off Canada's West Coast via power-to-direct air capture and power-to-gas systems. The system architecture includes a 15 MW wind turbine paired with a hydrogen energy storage system, i.e. hydrogen production and storage, and direct air capture (DAC) units. Hydrogen production from wind generation is stored and used to offer two key benefits: to deliver the thermal loads of the DAC system, and to meet hydrogen demand for external consumers. The proposed EMS offers an extra degree of freedom to operate the designed system by setting the priority either to maximize the amount of CO2 capture or to maximize the amount of H2 production for external consumers. In particular, the study incorporates dynamic mathematical modeling and constraints formulation for the aforementioned scenarios; DAC priority for CO2 capture and H2 for external hydrogen demand satisfaction. The effectiveness of the proposed EMS is shown through extensive simulations with different seasonal conditions.

Analisis Kasus Gangguan Kepribadian Avoidant Personality Disorder pada Siswa di MTs Nurul Aman

Personality disorder is a mental illness that makes individuals experience mistakes about their own behavior patterns related to interpersonal relationships. This mistake will prevent individuals from adjusting to their internal and external demands. Individuals with this personality disorder feel isolated or unacknowledged by people who are believed to not love them. Types of personality disorders according to Cluster C where individuals with this personality disorder show excessively anxious or fearful behavior include avoidant, dependent, obsessive-compulsive personality disorders. MTs Nurul Aman student with a history of the case of R who has avoidant personality disorder caused by R short or unclear speech that makes him an individual of inferiority. The behavior change that can be made to help this client is to use the Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) approach.

Quick changeover design: a new Lean methodology to support the design of machines in terms of rapid changeover capability

PurposeThis paper presents Quick Changeover Design (QCD), which is a structured methodological approach for Original Equipment Manufacturers to drive and support the design of machines in terms of rapid changeover capability.Design/methodology/approachTo improve the performance in terms of set up time, QCD addresses machine design from a single-minute digit exchange of die (SMED). Although conceived to aid the design of completely new machines, QCD can be adapted to support for simple design upgrades on pre-existing machines. The QCD is structured in three consecutive steps, each supported by specific tools and analysis forms to facilitate and better structure the designers' activities.FindingsQCD helps equipment manufacturers to understand the current and future needs of the manufacturers' customers to: (1) anticipate the requirements for new and different set-up process; (2) prioritize the possible technical solutions; (3) build machines and equipment that are easy and fast to set-up under variable contexts. When applied to a production system consisting of machines subject to frequent or time-consuming set-up processes, QCD enhances both responsiveness to external market demands and internal control of factory operations.Originality/valueThe QCD approach is a support system for the development of completely new machines and is also particularly effective in upgrading existing ones. QCD's practical application is demonstrated using a case study concerning a vertical spindle machine.

Talent Management Development on Government Institutions Regional Civil Service Agency Semarang

The organization's talent needs for the next five years are a translation of the strategy, and a reflection of the organization's vision and mission, taking into account internal demands as well as external demands. Quality aspects included in determining talent needs include knowledge and skills obtained from experience, competence, and personality in terms of organizational culture, it is clearly stated that institutional capacity development has indicators in institutionalizing a productive and positive organizational work culture based on the noble values of the nation's culture. According to the results of research at the Regional Civil Service Agency, Semarang Regency has implemented a value system that is the basis of ethics at work. It can be in the form of politeness, hospitality, communication that shows a noble value of the nation. Thus, from participatory and democratic comes the existence of work motivation that is always growing. By strengthening the value of employee discipline, the development of institutional capacity at the Semarang Regency Regional Civil Service Agency is maximized, this is strengthened by the enactment of PP No. 53 of 2010 concerning Employee Discipline, so that supervision is stricter and punishment is more firm and severe. In the institutional capacity building program at the Regional Civil Service Agency of Semarang Regency, a budget allocation is needed to support the implementation of all organizational activities. In accordance with World Bank theory which emphasizes the attention of talent management to the focus of the organizational environment which leads to financial and budgetary support in realizing all activities and needs of the organization. This type of research is Descriptive research. The approach used is a qualitative approach and a conceptual approach. The data source used is secondary data. Data analysis was carried out in a qualitative descriptive manner. Drawing conclusions is carried out by the deductive method, which is to draw conclusions from general to specific, especially those related to the research topic, namely the development of management talent towards government institutions. Capacity building takes a long time and requires long-term commitment and all parties involved. In the development of talent management of an organization both public and private sectors, Collective Commitments are the basic capital that must be continuously developed and maintained properly. This talent management commitment is not only for power holders, but covers all components in the organization. The influence of mutual commitment is very large, because this factor is the basis of the entire design of activities and goals to be achieved together. It is expected to strengthen and strengthen the budget allocation method in accordance with the vision, mission and objectives of governance as well as the development of regional revenue sources.

External peak demands are not affected by playing venue (home vs away) during official male basketball games

ABSTRACT Aim To quantify and compare the external peak demands (PDs) encountered according to team’s venue (home vs. away) in under-18 years (U18), male basketball players. Methods 12 basketball players had external load variables monitored across 16 official games using inertial movement units (IMUs). PDs were calculated across 1-min and 5-min time windows for PlayerLoad™ (PL). Linear mixed models for repeated measures were used to compare PDs for PL according to playing venue (home vs. away). Results Regarding 1- and 5-min time windows, no significant differences (p > 0.05, small effect size) were apparent between playing venues. Conclusions External PDs remain consistent (small effects) regardless of playing venue in U18, male basketball players. Accordingly, playing venue may not be a key determinant of external PD attained during official games.

Large-scale neural dynamics in a shared low-dimensional state space reflect cognitive and attentional dynamics.

Cognition and attention arise from the adaptive coordination of neural systems in response to external and internal demands. The low-dimensional latent subspace that underlies large-scale neural dynamics and the relationships of these dynamics to cognitive and attentional states, however, are unknown. We conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging as human participants performed attention tasks, watched comedy sitcom episodes and an educational documentary, and rested. Whole-brain dynamics traversed a common set of latent states that spanned canonical gradients of functional brain organization, with global desynchronization among functional networks modulating state transitions. Neural state dynamics were synchronized across people during engaging movie watching and aligned to narrative event structures. Neural state dynamics reflected attention fluctuations such that different states indicated engaged attention in task and naturalistic contexts, whereas a common state indicated attention lapses in both contexts. Together, these results demonstrate that traversals along large-scale gradients of human brain organization reflect cognitive and attentional dynamics.

Centring Teacher Voices in School-Wide Improvement: Possibilities and Challenges of Introducing Change in Complex Systems

ABSTRACTThis study aims to unveil the complexity of introducing and sustaining instructional improvement at a school site by documenting successes and challenges encountered by a research-practice partnership among university researchers, school and district leaders, and a mathematics coordinator from the county office of education. The study answers two questions: How did a research-practice partnership attend to teachers’ voices and craft coherence around a school’s mathematics teaching improvement goals? What characterised the complexity of sustaining the improvement efforts? Data included meeting fieldnotes, teacher survey responses, and transcripts of interviews with teachers, school and district leaders, and the county coordinator. Qualitative thematic analyses revealed several ways in which the team attended to teacher voices and crafted coherence dynamically through interactions supported by tools and activities aimed at surfacing complexity and creating a shared vision. Points of convergence included a focus on adult learning and collaboration. Analyses also unveiled challenges, including the emotional work entailed in instructional change and the necessity to buffer the school from conflicting external demands. Conclusions highlight the importance of deliberate negotiation of tensions and crafting of coherence so that stakeholders can more easily build a shared vision for high-quality classroom teaching and high-quality teacher learning.

The Unique Practice of the Clinical Nurse Specialist.

The Unique Practice of the Clinical Nurse Specialist.

Japan: Weak external demand will weigh on the recovery

Japan: Weak external demand will weigh on the recovery

Histone acetyltransferases and external demands influence task switching in Temnothorax ants.

In social hymenopterans, workers specialize in different tasks. Whether a worker nurses the brood or forages is influenced by the responsiveness for task-related cues which in turn is determined by gene expression. Task choice is dynamic and changes throughout a worker's life, e.g. with age or in response to increased demands for certain tasks. Behavioural switches require the ability to adjust gene expression but the mechanisms regulating such transcriptional adaptations remain elusive. We investigated the role of histone acetylation in task specialization and behavioural flexibility in Temnothorax longispinosus ants. By inhibiting p300/CBP histone acetyltransferases (HAT) and manipulating colony composition, we found that HAT inhibition impairs the ability of older workers to switch to brood care. Yet, HAT inhibition increased the ability of young workers to accelerate their behavioural development and switch to foraging. Our data suggest that HAT in combination with social signals indicating task demands play an important role in modulating behaviour. Elevated HAT activity may contribute to keeping young brood carers from leaving the nest, where they would be exposed to high mortality. These findings shed light on the epigenetic processes underlying behavioural flexibility in animals and provide insight into the mechanisms of task specialization in social insects.

ОЦІНКА ФАКТОРІВ ВПЛИВУ ЗОВНІШНЬОГО БОРГУ НА МАКРОЕКОНОМІЧНИЙ РОЗВИТОК КРАЇНИ

The article evaluates the factors influencing the external debt on the macroeconomic development of the country. Management of the external debt of the state involves a certain process of creation and implementation of a number of specific mechanisms of influence on such debt. It was established that the size of the external state debt depends on many factors, including the main economic indicators. It was determined that the external debt is not a static indicator of changes and can change its size under the influence of many factors: changes in taxation, changes in regulatory policy, changes in the foreign economic situation (for example, changes in the volume of external demand for export goods), changes in the economic situation, etc. When identifying cause-and-effect relationships between macroeconomic indicators, we will consider the ratio of the debt of the general public administration sector to GDP as a key indicator characterizing external public debt. The following indicators were used to find relationships: debt service to the total amount of state budget expenditures; consumer price index; index of the real effective exchange rate of the hryvnia to the US dollar; volume of direct foreign investment; volume of imports; index of political stability. Based on the results of modeling, we obtained the values of the investigated indicators, including their forecasts for the next 5 periods, as well as the range of deviations of the forecasted values. A cause-and-effect relationship between the ratio of the debt of the general public administration sector to the GDP of Ukraine and the selected group of macroeconomic indicators was revealed. Practical verification of the built model in the conditions of hostilities is impossible, which is caused by the catastrophic drop in GDP and the rapid increase in foreign aid of Ukraine's allies.

Facilitating the Management of Protected Areas through Multi-Level Ecosystem Accounting on an Example in West Africa

West Africa, already highly influenced by the negative effects of climate change, is additionally characterized by rapid population growth, endemic poverty, and insecurity. This is affecting the natural capital of its ecosystems and the services they provide. Natural capital accounting (NCA) provides the fundamental evidence base required for informing economics and environmental decisions, thus strengthening the conservation and management of natural resources. The objective of this study is to showcase the development and evaluation of a semi-automated NCA platform (Sys4ENCA) designed to support decision making in the context of protected areas management in a multi-level example in western Africa. The accounting results highlight that simulations at the broader scale using national public data show that the natural capital of ecosystems in western Africa depends strongly on the mean climate and its variability. Evaluating regional datasets, the simulation with the platform shows that pressure on land in combination with weak governance reduces the capability of the ecosystem to deliver the required services in a sustainable manner, i.e., in the eastern part of the Bafing-Falémé landscape, where mining and intensive agriculture are fueling loss of natural capital. The results of Tier-3 accounting using local datasets enhanced the spatial variability and highlighted additional hotspots of degradation compared to the regional results, i.e., the prospective construction of a hydro-electricity dam (Koukoutamba) in the southern part of the Moyen-Bafing National Park located in the Bafing-Falémé landscape. The Sys4ENCA platform, combined with a multi-level approach, showed itself to be a valuable tool to facilitate protected area management as it provides not only consolidated information at a local scale but also the broader context and external pressures, i.e., climate change and demand for land. Given its automatized nature, the platform reduces human errors and increases the efficiency, speed, and harmonisation of computation over long timeframes and spatial scales.

Tourism Demand in Tunisia: A VECM Approach

Abstract This research aimed to study the determinants of tourism demand in Tunisia from 1995 to 2019 with four independent variables: gross domestic product, consumer price index, the real exchange rate, and air transport passengers carried. The research employed the Unit root test, Co-integration test, and Vector Error Correction model (VECM) to examine the variables’ short- and long-run relationship dynamics. The results show that co-integrating relations exist among the variables; all independent variables negatively impact tourism demand except Air transport. Depending on the results obtained, policymakers should be aware of the negative effect of the country’s political instability on the extent of external tourism demand. In this sense, the government must restore political stability to encourage tourists to visit Tunisia. Future studies should consider factors such as the economy’s trade openness and oil prices.

Investigating the use of fuzzy logical data for evaluating the teaching quality of college teachers

The level of education in colleges is career and development-focused compared to that from high schools. Quality education relies on the teachers’ qualifications, knowledge, and experience over the years. However, the demand for technical and knowledge-based education is increasing with the world’s demands. Therefore, assessing the knowledge of teaching professionals to meet external demand becomes mandatory. This article introduces an Acceded Data Evaluation Method (ADEM) using Fuzzy Logic (FL) for teaching quality assessment. The proposed method inputs the teachers’ skills and students’ productivity for evaluation. The teachers’ knowledge and updated skills through training and self-learning are the key features for evaluating the independents’ performance. The impact of the above features on the student qualifying ratio and understandability (through examination) are analyzed periodically. Depending on the qualifications and performance, the teachers’ knowledge update is recommended with the new training programs. In this evaluation process, fuzzy logic is implied for balancing and identifying the maximum validation criteria that satisfy the quality requirements. The recommendations using partial and fulfilled quality constraints are identified using the logical truth over the varying assessments. The proposed method is analyzed using the metrics evaluation rate, quality detection, recommendations, evaluation time, and data balancing.

Long-Term Dynamics of Viticultural Landscape in Cyprus—Four Centuries of Expansion, Contraction and Spatial Displacement

Viticulture has historically been an important part of the social and economic life in the Mediterranean, while wine is reckoned among the oldest documented trades. The aim of the study is to record, evaluate and analyze spatial data from historical sources in order to gain insights into the dynamics of the viticultural landscape from the beginning of the Ottoman period to the present day. The study was based on (a) three historical maps published in 1885, 1942 and 1969, (b) records from historical surveys—two from the Ottoman period (1572 fiscal survey, 1832/33 property survey) and the British agricultural census of 1931, (c) present-day records from the vineyard survey of 2009 carried out by the Republic of Cyprus. In the beginning of the study period the center of viticulture was well established within the area of the southern and eastern slopes of Troodos massif. The vineyards expanded mainly around the same growing area until WW2 when they gradually began to be relocated in southwest direction to lower altitudes. This long-term trajectory of spatial patterns was driven by external demand for the product but also by the interplay of environmental, topographic and cultural factors, as well as by the state’s policy framework which largely reflected long-term Mediterranean-wide patterns.

Interface of resilience with other related concepts in physiological and psychosocial/spiritual domains.

Interface of resilience with other related concepts in physiological and psychosocial/spiritual domains.

El canal de renta real y las depreciaciones contractivas en un modelo de agentes heterogéneos para América Latina

Rationale In Latin America, it is not unusual to see exchange rate depreciations in excess of 20% in a single year. Although depreciation tends to stimulate a country’s net external demand, it does not always lead to increased output. It is worth understanding which channels may explain this outcome. Takeaways •In conventional macroeconomic theory, exchange rate depreciations have expansionary effects on economic activity. However, the empirical evidence shows that, in the case of emerging market economies, devaluing the exchange rate may cause output to contract. •One channel that explains this evidence, known as the real income channel, operates through the erosion of purchasing power as a result of rising prices for imported goods, which can lead to a fall in the real consumption of households with limited access to financial markets. •This article discusses a heterogeneous agent model calibrated for the main Latin American economies that allows the importance of this channel to be measured. The results show that this channel may have a sizable macroeconomic impact, particularly on economies more open to international trade.

Contract farming led by a seed enterprise and incentives to produce high quality: Which contract design performs best?

AbstractMotivated by real‐world practices in China, we consider a three‐level agri‐food supply chain consisting of a seed enterprise, a grower, and a buyer–processor, where the seed enterprise is fully vertically integrated in the seed industry and acts as the leader to coordinate the grower and buyer–processor of the agri‐food supply chain. We call this seed company‐led agri‐food contract farming. First, we develop analytical models to derive optimal solutions under penalty contracts, revenue‐sharing contracts and cost‐sharing contracts. Then, we analytically compare the optimal strategies of the three contracts using data from China's fresh maize industry as the numerical example. Finally, we do the sensitivity analysis of contract parameters. Results demonstrate that: (1) The seed company‐led agri‐food contract farming obtains quality advantages and improves profits by responding quickly to external demand changes and effectively coordinating internal technical capabilities. (2) The penalty contract performs poorly in both quality and profit. (3) The profit of the whole supply chain increases with the increase of the revenue‐sharing proportion from downstream supply chain participants to upstream participants; but the relationship between the proportion of cost‐sharing and the profit of the whole supply chain is nonmonotonic. [EconLit Citations: C79, O13, Q13].

Design of High Specific Power Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

Fuel-Cell Electric-Vehicle demonstrated by PCI was fueled with military-spec F-24/JP-8 and does not require on-board hydrogen storage. An onboard fuel reformer with integrated sulfur trap was used for processing these fuels. The 10-kW electric generator included a SOFC and balance of plant components. It was hybridized with a rechargeable battery for startup, peak loads, and load following. The power produced was sufficient for vehicle propulsion and export power. Both 28-32 VDC and 110 VAC for charging batteries and supporting external load demands were available onboard. Initial off-road demonstrations were successfully conducted at PCI and customer sites. This prototype unit showed the feasibility of utilizing hydrocarbon fuels with on-board reforming and SOFC stack to generate power suitable for mobile applications while the system weight and start-up time still need to be improved. To reduce the system weight and start-up time, we are separately investigating advanced SOFC’s that show potential to address the known limitations of the state-of-the-art technology. These advanced SOFC’s demonstrated potential for fast start-up and high-power density on the cell level at 750-800°C of operating temperatures. By optimizing the configuration and design, the system performance is expected to be further improved.