Good Deal Research Articles

The Persistence of Hierarchy: Paradoxes of Dominance in Nepal and Beyond

MN Srinivas’ concept of ‘the dominant caste’ has rightly been highly influential. The forms that dominance takes have changed a good deal since his day, but inequality and hierarchy have persisted. Modern ideological justifications of dominance are frequently at variance with those of former times, leading to plenty of paradoxes. These paradoxes are illustrated with examples from Nepal, but their application is much wider. Thanks to Nepal’s different political history, the Nepali case can very usefully be contrasted with India and other parts of South Asia to highlight how, and in which contexts, hierarchy as a value persists even when equality is written into numerous constitutional provisions and laws.

The Impact of Relationship Marketing Strategies on Customer Loyalty in the High-End Hair Salon Industry in Auckland

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt; text-indent: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;">The business world is a competitive place, and enterprises must cultivate sustainable relationships with their clients to gain customer loyalty. Concepts of relationship marketing (RM) are becoming vital in the service industry. Different RM strategies are used to attract customers, but some of these strategies do not achieve customer loyalty as easily as predicted due to customers’ changing behaviour patterns. This paper investigates the impact of RM strategies on customer loyalty through relationship qualities (customer satisfaction and trust) by concentrating on the high-end hairdressing sector in Auckland. Additionally, this research investigates the expectations of customers of high-end hair salons formed by RM strategies, which influence their satisfaction, trust, and customer loyalty to their service provider. The results indicate that brand image shows a significant relevance to trust, satisfaction, and customer loyalty claiming that brand image is an essential element of RM. Additionally, this investigations revels that, hair salons in Auckland are looking forward to ascertaining a sustainable relationship with their clients through a spectrum of strategies such as positive brand image, good service quality, reasonable price, and good value deals to earn optimistic relationship quality, which will ultimately escalate to customer loyalty. Findings of this research will be useful in supporting hair salons to gain a greater understanding of their customers by adopting effective RM strategies.</span></p>

Biological transformation of medicine and food homology hawthorn with Monascus ruber to enhance lipid-lowering function

Obesity and hyperlipidemia, chronic diseases resulting from excessive energy intake and abnormal lipid metabolism, respectively, are intricately associated with cardiovascular disease and diabetes and have become global health problems. Monascus ruber (M. ruber), a filamentous fungus with edible properties, produces bio-functional metabolites including a good deal of enzymes. In this study, the effect of the biological transformation of fermented food on obesity and hyperlipidemia, was systematically investigated using the mixture of medicine and food homology (MFH) hawthorn and millet as fermentation substrate. Results showed that fermentation promoted the release of bioactive compounds such as phenolic compounds. Pancreas lipase assay indicated that the inhibition rate and IC50 of free phenolic compounds in fermented MFH food were 70.51% ± 2.59%, and 1.34 mg/mL, respectively. In vitro, the binding rates of free phenolic compounds in fermented MFH food to Sodium cholate (SC), sodium glycinate (SGC) and sodium taurocholate (STC) were 84.99% ± 6.59%, 80.29% ± 6.23%, and 79.68% ± 6.18%. Further, Monascus-fermented hawthorn and millet (MFHM) of fermented MFH food markedly suppressed lipid accumulation in oleic acid (OA)-induced HepG2, with cell triglycerides (TG) and total cholesterol (TC) clearance of 24.31% ± 1.81% and 73.88% ± 2.72%, respectively. These findings implied that the fermentation of a mixture of MFH millet and hawthorn by M. ruber holds promise for reducing obesity and lowering lipid levels, thereby serving as a valuable foundation and reference for future research on the development of multifunctional food products.

Eco, Riffaterre, and a poem by Baudelaire

Abstract In Eco’s work between around 1960 and 1992, “openness” in a modern literary text can mean (a) “permitting more than one interpretation,” and (b) “requiring a good deal of decoding work from the reader,” which is close to my own position. These two aspects of openness are demonstrated using Baudelaire’s Les Chats, in regard to which Eco denies that the text may be cristallin in Lévi-Strauss’s sense, while still requiring constructive effort from the reader. It is apparent that this term is equivalent to Riffaterreʼs textual “monumentality.” Eco does not go into detail about the reader’s work in assembling the text’s global propositional structure. It is left to Riffaterre and myself to detail the various stages of this work, involving comparison of images in order to discover their common underlying generative proposition. In contrast to Riffaterre, I have long suggested that the modern poetic text is built on two such propositions. It is at the stage of relations between text and sociolect that Eco contributes much to modern poetics. Openness (b) seems to be a prerequisite for perceptual change in the reader, produced by contrast between textual structure and its sociolectic context. Riffaterre prefers to remain within the text/intertext/interpretant triad, preventing him from describing the text-sociolect relation, where the propositional innovation of the modernist text takes effect.

Machine learning based software effort estimation using development-centric features for crowdsourcing platform

Crowd-Sourced software development (CSSD) is getting a good deal of attention from the software and research community in recent times. One of the key challenges faced by CSSD platforms is the task selection mechanism which in practice, contains no intelligent scheme. Rather, rule-of-thumb or intuition strategies are employed, leading to biasness and subjectivity. Effort considerations on crowdsourced tasks can offer good foundation for task selection criteria but are not much investigated. Software development effort estimation (SDEE) is quite prevalent domain in software engineering but only investigated for in-house development. For open-sourced or crowdsourced platforms, it is rarely explored. Moreover, Machine learning (ML) techniques are overpowering SDEE with a claim to provide more accurate estimation results. This work aims to conjoin ML-based SDEE to analyze development effort measures on CSSD platform. The purpose is to discover development-oriented features for crowdsourced tasks and analyze performance of ML techniques to find best estimation model on CSSD dataset. TopCoder is selected as target CSSD platform for the study. TopCoder’s development tasks data with development-centric features are extracted, leading to statistical, regression and correlation analysis to justify features’ significance. For effort estimation, 10 ML families with 2 respective techniques are applied to get broader aspect of estimation. Five performance metrices (MSE, RMSE, MMRE, MdMRE, Pred (25) and Welch’s statistical test are incorporated to judge the worth of effort estimation model’s performance. Data analysis results show that selected features of TopCoder pertain reasonable model significance, regression, and correlation measures. Findings of ML effort estimation depicted that best results for TopCoder dataset can be acquired by linear, non-linear regression and SVM family models. To conclude, the study identified the most relevant development features for CSSD platform, confirmed by in-depth data analysis. This reflects careful selection of effort estimation features to offer good basis of accurate ML estimate.

Frances Burney’s A Busy Day; or, an Arrival from India (1800-1802) and the Family Business

Frances Burney (1752-1840) became one of the most famous eighteenth-century English novelists after the publication of her first work Evelina (1778), which was followed by other successful novels that made her a household name in Britain. Though Burney was always very attracted by the stage and there is a close relationship between her narrative and dramatic production, her comedies and tragedies have been considerably less explored and celebrated by eighteenth-century scholars and feminism. This article examines Burney’s comedy A Busy Day; or, an Arrival from India (1800-1802), which was never performed on stage during her lifetime and was one of the author’s last compositions paving the way for her harsh social criticism in The Wanderer (1814). Like all of Burney’s works, A Busy Day contains a good deal of satire and a provoking view of the domestic ideology, colonialism and the economic interests of the family at the turn of the nineteenth century. Burney introduces an insightful analysis of vulgarity and prejudice against the middle class. By drawing on the work of several Burney scholars, gender and theatre studies, I show how gender and colonialism are interrelated in A Busy Day, which showcases an evolution from Burney’s first heroine in Evelina to a more mature woman that would continue up to The Wanderer and it turns out to be Burney’s fiercest dramatic criticism against bias based on class, race and sex.

Support for Affirmative Action in the Workplace: Gender, Race, and Sector Differences

Understanding attitudes toward affirmative action (AA) is important because it plays a critical role in the successful implementation of AA and hence diversity in organizations. The field of public sector human resource management (HRM) places a good deal of attention on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA). The legal tool of affirmative action remains an important tool for achieving DEIA. This study examines gender, race, and sector differences as predictors of gender- and race-based support for AA in the workplace. Using data from the 2000 to 2018 General Social Survey (GSS), this article finds that Blacks and other persons of color offer more support than White men for race-based and gender-based AA. In addition, women offer more support than men for gender-based affirmative action, but only in the private sector. Overall, public sector employees do not support race- or gender-based AA programs more than their private sector counterparts.

The “Gray Zone” Conflicts in China- U.S. Relations: From a Geopolitical Perspective

The “gray zone”, referring to actions below the threshold of war, is also known to as hybrid threats, sharp power, political warfare, malign influence, irregular warfare, and modern deterrence. Recently, there has been a good deal of discussion about China- U.S. “gray zone” conflicts. These conflicts can be best characterized as activity that is coercive and aggressive in nature, but that is deliberately designed to beyond conventional military conflict and open interstate war. Although the United States and China are highly interconnected in many ways, the U.S. government has deployed extensive and diverse gray zone tactics against China, seriously infringing upon China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The United States’ position on the South China Sea, Taiwan, Vietnam, India, Japan and South Korea are best understood as a gray zone conflicts. These conflicts heavily undermine strategic stability, disrupt policy-making, and cause unintended escalation, causing “gray zone challenges” to both China and the United States. However, these challenges are difficult for the two government to address in today’s complex and competitive international environment. Through a geopolitical perspective, this paper aims to offer a deep understanding of the complex gray zone conflicts within China-U.S. relations and provide feasible recommendations for Chinese government to counter U.S. gray zone aggression.

The Analysis of Volvo's Initial Public Offering

To raise money for the transformation of electric cars, the Stockholm Stock Exchange is about to open trading for Volvo shares. Nowadays, more and more companies choose Initial Public Offering (IPO) to excessive their period of financial embarrassment. As a good deal, this research will analyze the main problems and weaknesses of IPO. An in-depth and detailed analysis of the reasons for the rejection can clarify the needs of the capital market on the specific requirements of the listed company, and guide the company to be listed in the listing declaration targeted into the line of rectification. At the same time, it is also for the listed company to compare their own industry conditions. The development stage, business characteristics and profit model, for the company's self-consideration of whether in line with the conditions for listing substantial judgment provides a specific reference basis. Ultimately, the paper found that productivity had a positive development with the help of the IPO. In the paper, the experience of Volvo's IPO showed that IPO was a good method to help companies gain money.

A multimodal grammar of artificial intelligence: Measuring the gains and losses in generative AI

This paper analyzes the scope of Artificial Intelligence (AI) from the perspective of a multimodal grammar. Its focal point is Generative AI, a technology that puts so-called Large Language Models to work. The first part of the paper analyzes Generative AI, based as it is on the statistical probability of one token (a word or part of a word) following another. If the relation of tokens is meaningful, this is circumstantial and no more, because its mechanisms of statistical analysis eschew any theory of meaning. This is the case not only for the written text that Generative AI leverages, but by extension image and multimodal forms of meaning that it can generate. The AI can only work with non-textual forms of meaning after applying language labels, and to that extent is captive not only to the limits of probabilistic statistics but the limits of written language as well. While acknowledging gains arising from the brute statistical power of Generative AI, in its second part the paper goes on to map what is lost in its statistical and text-bound approaches to multimodal meaning-making. Our measure of these gains and losses is guided by the concept of grammar, defined here as a theory of the elemental patterns of meaning in the world—not just written text and speech, but also image, space, object, body, and sound. Ironically, a good deal of what is lost by Generative AI is computable. The third and final part of the paper briefly discusses educational applications of Generative AI. Given both its power and intrinsic limitations, we have been experimenting with the application of Generative AI in educational settings and the ways it might be put to pedagogical use. How does a grammatical analysis help us to identify the scope of worthwhile application? Finally, if more of human experience is computable than can be captured in text-bound AI, how might it be possible at the level of code to create a synthesis in which grammatical and multimodal approaches complement Generative AI?

Evaluating an institutional response to Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI): Applying Kotter’s change model and sharing lessons learned for educational development

Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, there has been a dawning understanding in the higher education sector of ways Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools can challenge the traditional roles of academic teaching staff (e.g., Chan & Tsi, 2023) and support learning by students. For example, Mike Sharples in Sabzalieva and Valentini (2023) identifies ten roles that ChatGPT can play which would all support student learners. Media and sector concern has focused on whether GenAI use by students would disrupt the integrity of degrees and awards and there is a good deal of debate on how to adapt assessment, learning outcomes and curricula to reflect and reward unique human competences associated with a discipline or subject and embrace students’ use of GenAI. Educational development colleagues have been at the vanguard of leading higher education provider reactions and responses to the widespread availability and capabilities of GenAI. This case study reflects on a year of action to lead teaching staff and students as well as institutional policy and practice through a series of steps to enable rapid, proportionate and robust change. We apply Kotter’s (1996) eight stage change model to reflect on the activities, achievements and challenges to date. We do not purport to have finished but rather can see, one year in, that increasingly activity is more embedded into structures, routines, the practice of others, and our work as educational developers. We reflect forward too on the ways we will act next to ‘make change stick’ and on our own personal, professional journeys as educational change leaders, all of whom were new appointments in the educational development centre. We chart how we have been able to innovate and to lead complex educational change at pace.

Formula omitted] containment control for multi-unmanned aerial vehicle systems: A self-triggered control scheme

This paper is concerned with the containment control problem for multi-unmanned aerial vehicle (multi-UAV) systems with data transmission among agents during a limited-bandwidth network. A good deal of data transmitted during a limited-bandwidth network may result in data collision, which brings negative effects on controller design and containment tracking implementation. To reduce the network load during data transmission, a consensus condition and a triggering subsidiary condition are first proposed to realize the containment tracking with H∞ performance by using the triggered states. Then a self-triggered scheme is established under a multi-agent framework, in which the next triggering instant is calculated beforehand by using the past states. Combined with the self-triggered scheme, a containment controller is obtained via solving the derived consensus condition, which ensures that follower UAVs are driven into a convex set surrounded by leader UAVs. Finally, the validity of the self-triggered containment control method is proved through a simulation experience.

Crime and punishment; drama and meaning: lessons from On the Genealogy of Morals II

ABSTRACT This paper takes up Nietzsche’s contrast between a relatively enduring ‘drama’ of punishment, which consists in sequences of procedures, and a congeries of often discrepant meanings and purposes of the drama and contrasts it favorably with the distinction between a definition of punishment and a justification for it which received a good deal of attention in the middle of the twentieth century in anglophone philosophical circles. My chief thesis is that the philosophical lesson to be drawn from the widely acknowledge failure of efforts to further the philosophical understanding of punishment by the latter route is Nietzsche’s: that the concept in question and the practices that fall under it are fundamentally insusceptible to ahistorical methods. I argue for the thesis proper in the first section of the paper, and explore consequences of it for our understanding of the connection between punishment and justice in the second.

Problematizing the ‘problem’ of writing in the NSW curriculum: a call for a (re)turn to practice

AbstractIn a time of curriculum revision in NSW, an “instrumental/technical approach” (Brennan, Curriculum Perspectives 42:85–89, 2022, p. 86) is being (re)affirmed as the dominant understanding of curriculum. Sidelined, deliberately or otherwise, has been an understanding of curriculum as practice—an understanding which could have served as “a necessary counterpoint to current (official) constructions” (Green, Curriculum Perspectives 41:213–225, 2021, p. 215) and representations of the curriculum in a good deal of ‘expert’ media commentary. In the context of the ‘crisis’ messaging being voiced in much of the public discourse, I critically examine the proposed role of a strengthened writing curriculum in remediating what are said to be falling educational standards. Influenced by Carol Bacchi’s (Bacchi, Analysing policy: What’s the problem represented to be?, Pearson Australia, 2016) ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’ approach to policy analysis, I consider the discursive work entailed in propagating a ‘syllabus-ised solution’ to the ‘problem’ of writing in NSW. I highlight the essential and reductive paradox of this ‘solution’: the marginalising of practice. Motivated by Bill Green’s (Green, Curriculum Perspectives 41:213–225, 2021) published version of his Garth Boomer Memorial Address, presented at the 2021 national conference of the Australian Curriculum Studies Association, I draw from Boomer’s thinking on the teaching of writing to propose a practice (re)turn in NSW curriculum considerations and work. Given that the rollout of new syllabuses has been delayed with a change of government, I hope that my reflections might add something generative to curriculum knowledge work in NSW, giving teachers and their practice due accord in the work of teaching students to write as writers do.

The power of social media in Albanian businesses

Abstract The orientation of society towards the so-called “digital age” has had a significant impact on social life and at the same time on economic life. This impact has been accompanied by the constant change of social behavior, orienting society towards a new approach to information technology. ICT and the Internet have helped to eliminate geographical, time and cost barriers, making life more dynamic.The increase in the number of Internet and social media users has affected the restructuring of the relationship between these users, their relationship with businesses, the way of doing business, the way of education, job search, employment, entertainment, etc. The growing popularity of social networks has made it possible to create a new economic environment based on collaboration and communication. Nowadays, social networks have become the most important communication channels. Everywhere in Albania, social networks are used to communicate with acquaintances, to set up business, to communicate with customers and for many other reasons. Social media has come a long way from connecting people only to playing a crucial role in all businesses. People moved online, and they are very social. And brands have noticed the change, of course. Previously, the presence of a business was signed by a physical store and newspaper ad. But in the digital age, the business reputation lives and dies for its position on social media. Social media has the ability to drive buyers to a new product or a good deal. But not only that, social networks create a sense of community and involve people in a way of shopping.

Emotion sensitive analysis of learners’ cognitive state using deep learning

<p class="IndexTerms">The assessment of the state of mind of a student has traditionally been a troublesome task. The advances in deep learning have given analysts new opportunities to try and do therefore. Most state of mind methods focus principally on attention, failing to account for the significance of human emotions. Emotions are significant in laptop vision and a good deal of analysis is conducted exploitation human feelings. Our objective is to propose an emotion-sensitive analysis of individuals’ mental state, specifically focusing on students’ attention levels. This analysis will be carried out in a non-intrusive manner by detecting both head posture and emotions. To achieve this, we employ a multi-task learning approach that utilizes convolutional neural networks (CNNs). These networks are capable of simultaneously identifying facial expressions, locating facial landmarks, and estimating head position, all in real-time. Face alignment is additional assessed by estimating the pinnacle position and face alignment. The estimation of the pinnacle cause and alignment of the face is additional employed by the trainer to live the learner’s span. Experimental results show that the technique will accurately verify students’ emotions with a ninety-four accuracy rate.</p>

A Survey on Yoga Posture Correction

Abstract: Yoga is a holistic practice that combines physical postures, breath control, and meditation to promote physical and mental well-being. Yoga can be learnt by attending classes at a yoga center or through home tutoring. Books, podcasts, and videos can also be used to gain the knowledge. A good deal of people prefer self-learning, but without assistance and feedback, they may find it difficult to identify the inaccurate portions of their yoga poses and could not be able to determine whether they were executed correctly. Poor yoga practice might result in health problems including strokes and nerve damage. In order to help users practice yoga, we have proposed in this study a system that can track the movements of various body parts in yoga positions. By merging the deep learning intelligence with Google is MediaPipe's real-time detection of various human body joint points and the ability to infer the precision of specific postures in yoga from those joint points

Fluid Flow in Helically Coiled Pipes

Helically coiled pipes are widely used in many industrial and engineering applications because of their compactness, larger heat transfer area per unit volume and higher efficiency in heat and mass transfer compared to other pipe geometries. They are commonly encountered in heat exchangers, steam generators in power plants and chemical reactors. The most notable feature of flow in helical pipes is the secondary flow (i.e., the cross-sectional circulatory motion) caused by centrifugal forces due to the curvature. Other important features are the stabilization effects of turbulent flow and the higher Reynolds number at which the transition from a laminar to a turbulent state occurs compared to straight pipes. A survey of the open literature on helical pipe flows shows that a good deal of experimental and theoretical work has been conducted to derive appropriate correlations to predict frictional pressure losses under laminar and turbulent conditions as well as to study the dependence of the flow characteristics and heat transfer capabilities on the Reynolds number, the Nusselt number and the geometrical parameters of the helical pipe. Despite the progress made so far in understanding the flow and heat transfer characteristics of helical pipe flow, there is still much work to be completed to address the more complex problem of multiphase flows and the impact of pipe deformation and corrugation on single- and multiphase flow. The aim of this paper is to provide a review on the state-of-the-art experimental and theoretical research concerning the flow in helically coiled pipes.

Human Resource Accounting Methods And Practices In India - Conceptual Framework

Human resource accounting (HRA) has very high significance not only for the management, but also for analyst and even for employees. It helps management in better utilization, planning management of human resources in the organization while for analyst, Even today, when a good deal of work has been done in this field, it is very much unfortunate that there is not only set pattern or generally accepted method either for valuation of human resource or for their recording in books of accounts or for the disclosure of information by means of different statements. Human resource is one of the most important back office operations of any organization or business. The skills, creativity and ability of human beings cannot be replaced by machines. No machine can ever come up with a unique advertising idea without the human input. Thus companies must learn to recognize and appreciate the value of their employees. This paper highlights the significance of Human resource valuation and methods to measures human assets value. This paper also describes true costs of planning and recruitment and depicts the limitations of human resource accounting.

The fracture toughness and tribological performance of NiAl/Al2O3-40 Wt.% TiO2 coating generated by air plasma spraying

Aluminum titanate ceramic coating materials have great a potential application in the mechanical and metallurgical fields. Al2O3-40 wt%TiO2(AT40) is one of the most substantial ceramic materials, which is extensively used for thermal barrier coating due to its combination of excellent properties like high wear and corrosion resistance, high ductility, and density as well as a good deal of durability against fatigue. However, AT40 ceramic coating still faces some poor mechanical properties, such as low fracture toughness, combined with high hardness and brittleness, which limits to achieving widespread application. The doping of metals in AT40 ceramic composite coating positively affects the mechanical properties of AT40 ceramic coating. In this study, NiAl with different concentrations was doped in AT40 by air plasma spraying (APS) to produce NiAl/Al2O3-40 wt%TiO2 composite coating, and its microstructure and mechanical properties were investigated by employing various characterization techniques. The results showed that a 20 wt% NiAl concentration in AT40 coating improved fracture toughness, strengthened bonding, and reduced 80–85% in crack propagation and porosity in the composite coating. Additionally, the 20 wt% NiAl coating displayed an excellent wear resistance, lower energy release rate, and lower micro hardness, compared to 0 wt% NiAl/AT40 coating.