High-value Items Research Articles

Creative Recycling of Cans and Paper Using Painting Techniques

Every day, people’s appreciation for handmade products is increasing. This is in part due to facilitation from the government of many exhibitions of handmade products that support the development of SME products and provides opportunities for them to stand out. One way to get people’s attention is to raise social issues, including environmental issues. The accumulation of waste left over from human consumption is something that must be considered. The 3R principle (reduce, reuse, recycle) is still a good concept to approach the reduction of waste in the community. The innovation of processing waste into reusable objects helps increase the life of objects. This research focused on creating recycled products with a combination of painting techniques. There were nine stages to the methods used in this research, starting from the collection of raw materials to the documentation of marketing processes. To ensure business continuity, the community was also involved in these efforts through the creation of new habits of waste collection: collecting consumables so that they can be repurposed into high-value items.
 Keywords: recycle, recycle waste, copies

Exploration of effective biorefinery approach to obtain the commercial value-added products from algae

Microalgae are autotrophic microorganisms that exist in a variety of environments, including marine, freshwater, and soil. Microalgae create organic molecules through natural photosynthesis. In recent years, the increased socioeconomic awareness has shifted to renewable and algae-based bioenergy due to the negative repercussions of excessive oil consumption. The development of new integrated methodologies in research and development is essential to address the current bio-economic challenges of generating a variety of high-value items at the same time. Studies on the application of microalgae as a source of physiologically useful products are expanding fast. An emerging notion in this area is the concept of an algal biorefinery. Through this separation process various bioactives are made available easily with single stage process. In this study, biorefinery was used to test an algae-based bio-refining platform to produce energy, foodstuffs & pharmaceutical goods. Using algal biomass to generate a variety of real-worth products as part of a comprehensive microalgae farming technique focused on isolating diverse bioactive substances from biomass to boost algae production efficiency. Furthermore, this study examines current breakthroughs in the use of microalgae biomass for diverse real-worth products.

Rent-seeking Practices in the Housing Development Approval Process

The lengthy, uncertain and onerous planning approval process in various countries around the world has prompted frustrated housing developers to seek influence by paying off approving officials. A research was conducted in Malaysia to investigate in greater detail this rent-seeking phenomenon by asking six fundamental questions. Rich data were obtained by interviewing 22 housing developers and consultants who work for them. Developers engage in rent-seeking behaviours to overcome genuine and artificial hurdles when applying for development approval. All approving agencies, though not all their staff, reciprocate to such behaviours. The monetary value of the payoffs depend on the rank of the public actor and project features. The higher the office holder is, the larger is the expected pay-off. Big and complex development projects in urban centres have a higher pay-off tag. Low value items television sets and car repairs serve to support normal lifestyle whereas high value items such as golfing and holiday trips support lavish lifestyle. Establishing good rapport is a prerequisite to the rent seeking and giving exchange. Elements which help foster reciprocity by state actors to housing developers’ rentseeking behaviours include low civil servant salary and high living cost, and weak punitive action. Common ethnicity facilitates nuanced communication by the latter, but common religion may dampen the former’s enthusiasm to accept any payoffs. Eventually house buyers and the general public are the casualties by virtue of higher house prices and substandard infrastructure. Given the combination of inherent features of the planning system and certain elements that impinge on state actors both of which promote rent-seeking practices, a realistic law enforcement solution is to prioritise illicit market-state exchanges involving grossly distorting rent extraction and pecuniary rewards of significant magnitude rather than total eradication of the practice.

Memory and Reward-Based Learning: A Value-Directed Remembering Perspective

The ability to prioritize valuable information is critical for the efficient use of memory in daily life. When information is important, we engage more effective encoding mechanisms that can better support retrieval. Here, we describe a dual-mechanism framework of value-directed remembering in which both strategic and automatic processes lead to differential encoding of valuable information. Strategic processes rely on metacognitive awareness of effective deep encoding strategies that allow younger and healthy older adults to selectively remember important information. In contrast, some high-value information may also be encoded automatically in the absence of intention to remember, but this may be more impaired in older age. These different mechanisms are subserved by different neural substrates, with left-hemisphere semantic processing regions active during the strategic encoding of high-value items, and automatic enhancement of encoding of high-value items may be supported by activation of midbrain dopaminergic projections to the hippocampal region.

Effects of target value and prevalence on foraging in aging

How do the value and prevalence of targets and the personality of the observer shape visual behavior in younger and older adults? In our hybrid foraging task, younger (18-35 years) and older (65-82 years) observers held four different targets objects in memory. They collected multiple instances of those targets from visual displays containing 60-105 moving objects (20-30% targets). Targets were worth points. Observers were asked to reach a point goal as quickly as possible. In three blocks, the point-value and the prevalence of each target type was independently manipulated. Results: Target-value and prevalence shaped behavior. Replicating prior results, observers favored more rewarding and more common items. While the effect of prevalence was highly consistent across observers, individuals varied in the effects of target value; especially when high value items had low prevalence and low value items were common. This condition mimics some real-world situations, e,g, where you prefer the low prevalence cashews in the trail mix, while the cheap raisins and peanuts are more common. In younger adults, personality measures related to reward-seeking behaviour predicted individual selection preferences. Lower reward-seeking was associated with a preference to pick frequent low-value targets over rare high-value items. Second, contrary to our predictions, we did not find age differences in the responsiveness to target value and prevalence. The effects were strikingly similar across age groups. This finding argues against genuine age-differences in the processing of reward-values. Rather, our results support consistency in the impact of reward on visual processing across the adult lifespan, as long as both younger and older adults can meet the learning requirements of the task.

Social Practice and the Exchange of Metals and Metallurgical Knowledge in 2nd Millennium Central Asia

The current article discusses the Bronze Age metal evidence in Central Asia based on a vast study of metals of Kazakh origin in order to better understand what Chernykh once called the West-Asian-Metallurgical Province (WAMP). Based on typological studies it became obvious that typologies do not sufficiently help to understand the distribution patterns of Bronze Age metals in regard to their social nor their economic background. The authors therefore propose an anthropological and theoretical approach that allows the exploration of the practice of exchange within steppe communities based on provenance studies of metals using elemental and Pb-isotope data. These data have been analysed within a research project carried out with Kazakhstan partners between 2004 and 2014. For the first time, a selection of data are presented that support some of the general interpretations of exchange modes between the Petrovka Early Bronze Age and the Late Bronze Age. Especially during the second millennium, it seems that the exchange pattern of metals had changed from single high valued items to a larger scale trade, which included metal transport as well. It is suggested that although the practice of exchange modes between the steppe communities change to larger scale metal exchange during the 2nd half of the 2nd millennium BC, most of the social background still remained similar in comparison to the earlier periods.

Selective memory disrupted in intra-modal dual-task encoding conditions.

Given natural memory limitations, people can generally attend to and remember high-value over low-value information even when cognitive resources are depleted in older age and under divided attention during encoding, representing an important form of cognitive control. In the current study, we examined whether tasks requiring overlapping processing resources may impair the ability to selectively encode information in dual-task conditions. Participants in the divided-attention conditions of Experiment 1 completed auditory tone-distractor tasks that required them to discriminate between tones of different pitches (audio-nonspatial) or auditory channels (audio-spatial), while studying items in different locations in a grid (visual-spatial) differing in reward value. Results indicated that, while reducing overall memory accuracy, neither cross-modal auditory distractor task influenced participants' ability to selectively encode high-value items relative to a full attention condition, suggesting maintained cognitive control. Participants in Experiment 2 studied the same important visual-spatial information while completing demanding color (visual-nonspatial) or pattern (visual-spatial) discrimination tasks during study. While the cross-modal visual-nonspatial task did not influence memory selectivity, the intra-modal visual-spatial secondary task eliminated participants' sensitivity to item value. These results add novel evidence of conditions of impaired cognitive control, suggesting that the effectiveness of top-down, selective encoding processes is attenuated when concurrent tasks rely on overlapping processing resources.

High-valued seeds are remembered better: evidence for item-based spatial memory of scatter-hoarding rodents

Episodic memory of scatter-hoarding animals involves encoding and storage of memories of cached food items, in conjunction with subsequent retrieval or recovery. Although the reward values mediate the interaction of item memory and source memory, whether nonhuman animals divide their spatial memory resources between cached items of different values has never been tested. Here, we used a unique scatter-hoarder/seed system to test our ‘cache value hypothesis’, which proposes that scatter-hoarding animals will preferentially allocate spatial memory resources towards higher-valued caches. By making Edwards's long-tailed rats, Leopoldamys edwardsi , anosmic, using Triton X-100, we showed that L. edwardsi recovered more caches containing large nuts than those containing small ones, although the two kinds of nuts were equivalently cached. Our results therefore support the hypothesis that scatter-hoarding animals allocate more spatial memory resources to caches containing high-valued items. This is one of the few studies to investigate how item memory regulates source memory (order information) in the context of food storing and recovery by animals, especially by scatter-hoarding rodents. That high-valued items were remembered better than low-valued ones in our study suggests that item memory appears to be contextually associated with order information of items in animal memory processes, which is not in agreement with a previous suggestion that order information is independent of content or item information. • We used a scatter-hoarding rodent to test episodic memory. • Edward's long-tailed rats allocated more memory on high-valued caches. • High-valued items were remembered better than low-valued ones. • The rats know ‘what food’ was cached ‘where’ or ‘when’.

Simultaneous Learning of Perceptual Ambiguity and Expected Value Estimates Alter Preferences, Discrimination Performance, and Choice

The ability to simultaneously learn how to distinguish between visually similar unknown items and their value was tested in three studies conducted across multiple days. In each study, participants took the role of a merchant in a market for obscure fruits. Merchants traded unknown fruits and earned money by identifying ripe ones. The ripe fruits had a fixed positive value, while the unripe ones had varying values at certain unknown probabilities. Participants had to learn that one fruit category (ripe or unripe) was always associated with a fixed monetary gain, whereas another category was associated with a lottery that had either monetary gains or losses. The fruit categories were always perceptually similar. We show that learning the value of items typically leads to (1) improvement in the ability to visually discriminate between high/low-value ones, and (2) a change in subjective preference towards the high-value items. When item values are ambiguous and determined by lotteries, participants do not show preference change. In those ambiguous cases, as the values of items become known, individuals’ risk-tolerance is predictive of item preferences such that a reinforcement learning model can be used to estimate the preferences. Despite the consistent behavior by the participants, their reflections on the decision heuristics typically fail to recognize key drivers of the rational choices. This suggests a discrepancy between the explicit interpretation of the choice heuristics and the intuitive decision practices. We propose a rationale for the behavioral outcomes and ways to use the novel experimental paradigm for further decision theory explorations.

Effects of Age-Related Stereotype Threat on Metacognition.

Previous work has shown that memory performance in older adults is affected by activation of a stereotype of age-related memory decline. In the present experiment, we examined whether stereotype threat would affect metamemory in older adults; that is, whether under stereotype threat they make poorer judgments about what they could remember. We tested older adults (M Age = 66.18 years) on a task in which participants viewed words paired with point values and “bet” on whether they could later recall each word. If they bet on and recalled a word, they gained those points, but if they bet on and failed to recall a word, they lost those points. Thus, this task required participants to monitor how much they could remember and prioritize high value items. Participants performed this task over six lists of items either under stereotype threat about age-related memory decline or not under stereotype threat. Participants from both groups performed similarly on initial lists, but on later lists, participants under stereotype threat showed impaired performance as indicated by a lower average point score and a lower average gamma coefficient. The results suggest that a modest effect of stereotype threat on recall combined with a modest effect on metacognitive judgments to result in a performance deficit. This pattern of results may reflect an effect of stereotype threat on executive control reducing the ability to strategically use memory.

Azure-winged magpies\u2019 decisions to share food are contingent on the presence or absence of food for the recipient

Helping others is a key feature of human behavior. However, recent studies render this feature not uniquely human, and describe discoveries of prosocial behavior in non-human primates, other social mammals, and most recently in some bird species. Nevertheless, the cognitive underpinnings of this prosociality; i.e., whether animals take others’ need for help into account, often remain obscured. In this study, we take a first step in investigating prosociality in azure-winged magpies by presenting them with the opportunity to share highly desired food with their conspecifics i) in a situation in which these conspecifics had no such food, ii) in a situation in which they too had access to that highly desired food, and iii) in an open, base-line, situation where all had equal access to the same food and could move around freely. We find that azure-winged magpies regularly share high-value food items, preferably with, but not restricted to, members of the opposite sex. Most notably, we find that these birds, and specifically the females, seem to differentiate between whether others have food or do not have food, and subsequently cater to that lack. Begging calls by those without food seem to function as cues that elicit the food-sharing, but the response to that begging is condition-dependent. Moreover, analyses on a restricted dataset that excluded those events in which there was begging showed exactly the same patterns, raising the possibility that the azure-winged magpies might truly notice when others have access to fewer resources (even in the absence of vocal cues). This sharing behavior could indicate a high level of social awareness and prosociality that should be further investigated. Further studies are needed to establish the order of intentionality at play in this system, and whether azure-winged magpies might be able to attribute desire states to their conspecifics.

Pemberdayaan Ibu Rumah Tangga dalam Meningkatkan Pendapatan Keluarga Melalui Produksi Ekonomi Kreatif (Studi Pengolahan Pelepah Pisang Pada Mega Souvenir Desa Harapan Makmur Kabupaten Bengkulu Tengah)

This study aims to describe how the process of empowering housewives in Harapan Makmur Village, Central Bengkulu Regency, which has been successfully carried out by Mega Souvenir since 2012 to 2017 through the creative economy, namely processing banana fronds and how housewives' income is due to empowering the stages that must be passed. The researcher used a qualitative approach by observing, interviewing, and documenting as a data collection tool and Miles and Huberman's data analysis techniques which emphasize 3 aspects in processing data obtained in the field. The results showed that the stages of empowerment carried out by Mega Souvenir succeeded in making 10 housewives able to become independent individuals by dividing time between discipline in work and household care. These housewives also have an income through the creative economy in the form of processed banana fronds into high-value items. So that income can support the family economy which has been relying on income from her husband. Even the income of 4 people from 6 housewives in this time period is commensurate with the UMR set by the Bengkulu provincial government.

Training choices toward low value options

AbstractFood decisions are driven by differences in value of choice alternatives such that high value items are preferred over low value items. However, recent research has demonstrated that by implementing the Cue-Approach Training (CAT) the odds of choosing low value items over high value items can be increased. This effect was explained by increased attention to the low value items induced by CAT. Our goal was to replicate the original findings and to address the question of the underlying mechanism by employing eye-tracking during participants’ choice making. During CAT participants were presented with images of food items and were instructed to quickly respond to some of them when an auditory cue was presented (cued items), and not without this cue (uncued items). Next, participants made choices between two food items that differed on whether they were cued during CAT (cued versus uncued) and in pre-training value (high versus low). As predicted, results showed participants were more likely to select a low value food item over a high value food item for consumption when the low value food item had been cued compared to when the low value item had not been cued. Important, and against our hypothesis, there was no significant increase in gaze time for low value cued items compared to low value uncued items. Participants did spend more time fixating on the chosen item compared to the unchosen alternative, thus replicating previous work in this domain. The present research thus establishes the robustness of CAT as means of facilitating choices for low value over high value food but could not demonstrate that this increased preference was due to increased attention for cued low value items. The present research thus raises the question how CAT may increase choices for low value options.

A Cross Layer Protocol for Fast Identification of Blocked Tags in Large-scale RFID Systems

Blocker tag attack is one of the denial-of-service (DoS) attacks that threatens the privacy and security of RFID systems. The attacker interferes with the blocked tag by simulating a fake tag with the same ID, thus causing a collision of message replies. In many practical scenarios, the number of blocked tags may vary, or even be small. For example, the attacker may only block the important customers or high-value items. To avoid the disclosure of privacy and economic losses, it is of great importance to fast pinpoint these blocked ones. However, existing works do not take into account the impact of the number of blocked tags on the execution time and suffer from incomplete identification of blocked tags, long identification time or privacy leakage. To overcome these limits, we propose a cross layer blocked tag identification protocol (CLBI). CLBI consists of multiple rounds, in which it enables multiple unblocked tags to select one time slot and concurrently verify them by using tag estimation in physical layer. Benefiting from the utilization of most collision slots, the execution time can be greatly reduced. Furthermore, for efficient identification of blocked tags under different proportions, we propose a hybrid protocol named adaptive cross layer blocked tag identification protocol (A-CLBI), which estimates the remaining blocked tag in each round and adjusts the identification strategy accordingly. Extensive simulations show that our protocol outperforms state-of-the-art blocked tags identification protocol.

Art, Finance and Logistics: Creative Combination for Economic Development

The research focuses on the setting-up of a free zone strengthening the economic diversification of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Dedicated to storage, handling and trading of high value items and in particular artworks and jewellery, The Luxembourg Freeport was inaugurated in September 2014. Using the Resource-Based View as theoretical framework, the paper aims to show what combinations of resources can have a positive impact on economic activities in connection with the Freeport. The research confirms that these activities go beyond pure logistical and operational sights. The findings highlights a triptych of resources justifying this location in an environment where art, finance and logistics seem to create a virtuous circle benefiting economic development of the country and promoting the rise of clustering effects.

Comparing Application of R-Model over Conventional ABC Analysis in a Pump Manufacturing Organization

Inventory control technique is widely employed in every manufacturing organization and ABC analysis is traditionally used for selective inventory control in a supply chain, or in the production system. The main purpose of ABC analysis is to classify stock keeping units to control the high value, medium value and low value items. ABC analysis concentrates quantities of inventory items and inventory values only. Different criteria such as lead time and criticality of inventory items may be initiated to manage the inventory items in a better way. Since consideration of those criteria is impossible for ABC inventory control technique, different multi criteria based inventory control techniques are applied to manage stock items. In this article, selective ABC inventory control technique has been applied to manage inventory items of a pump manufacturing organization situated in the Eastern region of India. Procurement lead time for a stock item plays an important role in supply chain as well as production also. So, lead time criterion in different inventory control strategies ensures an appropriate inventory management system. An AHP based Multi Criteria Inventory Control (MCIC) technique has been adapted regarding different criteria, such as quantities of inventory items, inventory values and lead time criteria to manage inventory items of the pump manufacturing organization. This MCIC model is a weighted linear optimization technique, termed as ‘R-model’. To evaluate the performance of conventional ABC analysis and R-model, a comparison is drawn based on the safety stock inventory cost and fill rate of the inventory items. The entire investigation is capable to find out the cost effective inventory control technique.

Spatio-temporal variations in agricultural diversification in India

PurposeAgriculture diversification acts as income enhancing as well as distress mitigating strategy. India has witnessed rise in per-capita income which in turn has increased the demand for food particularly high-valued food items but agricultural production has failed to keep pace with the growing demand. The purpose of this paper is to examine spatio-temporal variations in agricultural diversification (AD) in India. Second, the authors try to identify the determinants of AD. Third, the authors examine the convergence hypothesis with reference to agriculture diversification across Indian states.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on the panel data constituting 20 major states of India during 1990–1991 to 2013–2014. It uses Simpson Diversification Index to measure AD. The heteroskedasticity-corrected panel regression model is applied to find out the determinants of AD. The fixed-effects model is used to examineβ-convergence in AD across the sample states. Alternative time series models are applied to examineσ-convergence in AD.FindingsThe rising per-capita income and urbanization are driving dietary diversity towards high-valued crops and providing ample opportunity for AD. But poor and inadequate cold storage facility and rising cost of cultivation are posing major hindrance to it. Small land holding and road length have negatively influenced AD which is contrary to the traditional wisdom. The study found divergence in diversification and rising inequality in diversification.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is based on secondary data. A primary study to complement this could have been better. It is only based on one country.Social implicationsFood inflation has serious adverse effect on the society at large. It is necessary to promote AD for controlling food price inflation. Minimum support price provided by the government should be extended to all crops; otherwise, it will fuel inflation. Given the fact fragmentation of land holding is adversely affecting AD, community based farming and consolidation of farm land should be the way forward to improve farmers’ income as well as reduce risk.Originality/valueTo best of the authors’ study, this is the first study that examines determinants of AD and convergence in AD during the high growth period of India.

Peningkatan derajat kesehatan masyarakat Bagan Sinembah melalui pengelolaan sampah rumah tangga menjadi barang bernilai ekonomi

Sampah rumah tangga bila tidak dikelola dengan baik dapat menimbulkan berbagai masalah kesehatan. Pengelolaan sampah rumah tangga yang baik dapat bernilai ekonomis dan meningkatkan perekonomian masyarakat. Sampah organik dapat diolah menjadi kompos yang berguna bagi lahan pertanian sedangkan sampah non organik dapat didaur ulang menjadi barang-barang bernilai jual tinggi. Permasalahan pengelolaan sampah ini juga terjadi di Kecamatan Bagan Sinembah Kabupaten Rokan Hilir. Melalui kegiatan pengabdian kepada masyarakat Universitas Riau, dilakukan sosialisasi pengelolaan sampah organik dan anorganik serta pelatihan pembuatan kompos dan aplikasi seni decoupage pada barang bekas di rumah tangga. Tingkat keberhasilan kegiatan ini dinilai baik secara kualitas, namun masih kurang secara kuantitas peserta pelatihan. Peningkatan jumlah masyarakat sasaran perlu dilakukan agar upaya pengelolaan sampah di Bagan Sinembah menjadi lebih optimal.

Mining of High Value Item Sets with Negative Utility

The patterns generated by frequent pattern mining aims to find the frequent items without considering the utilities of the different items. The traditional association rule mining treats all items to be of equal utility. This is not always the case for a real world application. Utility based data mining is a new area of research and is complementing the frequency based approach. The main objective of Utility Mining is to identify the item sets with highest utilities, by considering profit, quantity, cost or other user preferences as the Utility of the item. Recent approaches developed so far considers the utilities of items to be same over a particular period of time. In our approach we have proposed that the utility of items vary over a period of time. Our work also proposed that the utility of items may also assume negative values. Our work thus treats the data mining in more realistic manner

The Concept of Mania in Traditional Andean Culture.

The Concept of Mania in Traditional Andean Culture.