Network Project Research Articles

ANALISIS KETERLAMBATAN PROYEK PERUMAHAN GRIYA EMAS KARANGPLOSO MENGGUNAKAN METODE CPM (CRITICHAL PATH METHOD)

The Crashing method that will be used in this research is expected to provide answers to the demands of the optimal duration of the Karangploso Griya Emas Housing development project. The objectives of this study are: 1) Determine the working network or network of Karangploso Griya Emas Housing development projects; 2) Analyzing the optimal time to complete the Karangploso Griya Emas Housing construction project; 3) Analyzing the estimated cost for the Karangploso Griya Emas Housing development project, which will accelerate its completion time. This research uses quantitative research methods, namely research methods with survey methods in the form of data collection through tests or interviews and literature studies by collecting literature in accordance with existing case studies. The information collected is in the form of: housing project specifications, schedule, RAB (Budget Plan), working drawings, number of workers, existing field conditions, number of units built and the progress of activities. The results of this study indicate that: 1) From the results of CPM analysis with the help of Microsoft Project, the work included in critical activities is Soil Galian, 1: 1: 3 River Stone Installation, Sand Foundation Urugan, Inner Soil Urugan, Bata Merah Pair 1 : 3, Plastering Aci and Wall Paint; 2) With CPM Analysis and Crashing method, 40% of workers are added which results in an optimal project duration of 37 days; 3) From the initial cost of the construction project of 1 housing unit, Rp. 37,500,000.00, the total cost obtained after the crash was Rp. 52,650,810.00 with additional costs due to crashing of Rp. 15,150,810.00.

Impacts of building information modelling (BIM) on communication network of the construction project: A social capital perspective.

Building information modelling (BIM) is considered to be significant for organisational communication in construction projects. However, the role of BIM has not been fully shown in practice. To this end, this study examined the impact of BIM on communication network from inter- and intra- organisational relationships in the construction project. First, the structures of the communication networks before and after the use of BIM in a project in China were determined based on the social capital perspective. Then, the social network analysis was adopted to measure the changes in network metrics (i.e., number of ties, density, centrality, centralisation, and clique). Results shows that the connections among nodes are denser, and all the values of the network centralisation decrease after BIM application compared with the situation before BIM use. Nevertheless, results also shows that some construction project participants, who originally have interaction and communication needs, remain unable to establish effective connections among one another even after BIM use. Accordingly, some suggestions were proposed to solve the issues and deficiencies. This research contributes to (a) the state of knowledge by proposing social capital perspective that can identify inter- and intra-organizational relationships of the construction project from social interaction and common cognition to build communication network, and (b) the state of practice by identifying conditions and proposing strategies for strengthening organisational communication and collaboration in BIM-enabled network relationships.

Physical characteristics, management, and performance of newly recognized ‘Kathani cattle’ of Maharashtra state

Kathani cattle is not a registered cattle breed, consequently, these animals are categorized as non-descript animals in the Livestock Census of the Government of India. The population is about 10.51 lakh. Data of 9474 animals spread over 118 villages distributed in 13 tehsils of 3 districts (Chandrapur, Gadchiroli, and Gondia) from the Vidarbha region of eastern Maharashtra was collected under the survey, evaluation, and characterization network project of NBAGR, Karnal, during November 2017 to March 2020 and analyzed to document the physical characteristics, management, and performance of a new cattle breed available/found in Maharashtra state. Qualitative body part characters indicated that almost all animals had black coloured muzzle, eyelid, eyeball, hooves, tail switch. Biometry recorded included eight different body measurements in different age and sex groups. When compared with Gaolao, Kosali, Motu, and Ongole breeds of cattle from adjoining breeding tracts, molecular as well as phenotypic differentiation indicated separate genetic identities of the Kathani cattle. Nearly 96% Kathani cattle owners were found to provide housing to their animals and about 87% of respondents provided shelter during the night only while 7.4% provided both during day and night. Respondents (74.70%) cultivated fodder for their animals and general fodder in the area was leftover (after crop harvest) of paddy locally called Tanis, and soybeans, mung, wheat, cowpea, chickpea, pigeon pea, black gram locally called Kutar. The feed and fodder laboratory analysis revealed that Kathani animals were reared on very low nutritive value content like Tanis and different types of Kutars. Natural service was the preferred breeding method adopted by 94.8% and 5.2% of owners bred their animals through artificial insemination with the semen of exotic breed bulls. Kathani cattle keepers (61.9%) in the survey area experienced incidence of some of the contagious diseases and 72.55% of cattle holders vaccinatad their animals against these contagious diseases. The average age at first ejaculate for Kathani cattle males was 35.84±0.31 months, age at first calving was 54.86±0.05 months, calving interval was 486.85±0.51 days, daily milk yield was 0.55±0.01 litres, lactation length was 237.76±1.82 days and dry period noticed was 245.75±2.28 days. The study results will flag the way for the registration of the population as a new cattle breed and for the formulation of a breeding program for further improvement of this lesser-known cattle population.

Robust consensus-aware network for 3D point registration

Outlier correspondence removal is an important task for feature-based point cloud registration. Given putative correspondences contaminated by outliers between two overlapped scans, we propose a Robust Consensus-Aware Network, which labels the correspondences as inliers or outliers and predicts the rigid transformation to align the point clouds. The proposed method dedicates to mining the global consensus of correct correspondences (inliers). So it can learn distinctive features for each correspondence. Specifically, the proposed network comprises three novel operations. First, by capturing the global consensus information in an attentive manner, the network projects the input correspondences into a discriminative feature space. Next, we exploit the feature similarity among correspondences to establish interactions within inlier or outlier correspondences, and aggregate the features of correct correspondences for outlier removal. Finally, we recover the rigid transformation by mining multi-level context with a motion estimation module. Extensive experiments on real-world datasets demonstrate that our approach achieves high registration accuracy and efficiency.

BDA-SketRet: Bi-level domain adaptation for zero-shot SBIR

The efficacy of zero-shot sketch-based image retrieval (ZS-SBIR) models is governed by two challenges. The immense distributions-gap between the sketches and the images requires a proper domain alignment. Moreover, the fine-grained nature of the task and the high intra-class variance of many categories necessitates a class-wise discriminative mapping among the sketch, image, and the semantic spaces. Under this premise, we propose BDA-SketRet, a novel ZS-SBIR framework performing a bi-level domain adaptation for aligning the spatial and semantic features of the visual data pairs progressively. In order to highlight the shared features and reduce the effects of any sketch or image-specific artifacts, we propose a novel symmetric loss function based on the notion of information bottleneck for aligning the semantic features while a cross-entropy-based adversarial loss is introduced to align the spatial feature maps. Finally, our CNN-based model confirms the discriminativeness of the shared latent space through a novel topology-preserving semantic projection network. Experimental results on the extended Sketchy, TU-Berlin, and QuickDraw datasets exhibit sharp improvements over the literature.

Burden and disparities in cardiovascular mortality rates associated with obesity prevalence in United States: county-level analysis from 2010 to 2019

Abstract Background Obesity is a grave public health threat linked to high morbidity and mortality rates. A significant rise in obesity rates amongst U.S. adults and worldwide has been observed in recent decades. Although associations between obesity and cardiovascular mortality (CVM) are well-known, impact and disparities in CVM attributable to obesity at a nationwide community level, aren't well defined. Purpose At county level, we sought to evaluate the independent impact of adult obesity on CVM in overall population and within different age, sex, and race/ethnic subgroups. Methods Age-adjusted CVM rates (ACVM) between 2010 to 2019, were obtained using Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research tool of Center for Disease Control (CDC). Using the Behavioral risk Factors Surveillance System (BRFSS), obesity rates per county was assessed as the percentage of adult population (age ≥20) that reports a body mass index ≥30 kg/m2. BRFSS, CDC Diabetes Interactive Atlas, census population estimates, environmental public health network and health county ranking project databases, were utilized to acquire county data of demographics, CV risk, socio-environmental, and health care access factors. Poisson multivariate generalized linear mixed models were employed to assess incidence rate ratios (IRR) of ACVM associated with obesity rates. To evaluate the absolute impact of obesity on ACVM, additional yearly deaths (AYD) per 100,000 individuals were calculated. All study analysis were weighted for the relevant county baseline population. Results Among 307,045,647 residents (50% women, 12% non-Hispanic blacks, 24% aged 45–64) lived at 2904 US counties in 2010, total 8,157,571 (2.7%) CV deaths occurred between 2010–2019. In fully adjusted model*, high obesity rates significantly associated with high ACVM (IRR: 1.015; 95% CI: 1.008 to 1.022), that translated to 3.5 AYD per 100,000 individuals. In a subgroup analysis, obesity rates associated with a relatively higher ACVM among overall middle aged adults [45 to 64] (IRR: 1.028; 95% CI: 1.018 to 1.037) versus elderly [≥65] (IRR: 1.013; 95% CI: 1.006 to 1.020), and in males (IRR: 1.018; 95% CI: 1.010 to 1.026) versus females (IRR: 1.014; 95% CI: 1.006 to 1.022), and in Hispanics (IRR: 1.035; 95% CI: 1.005 to 1.065) versus non-Hispanic Whites (IRR: 1.020; 95% CI: 1.012 to 1.027). Interestingly, middle aged adults had higher ACVM IRRs as compared to elderly, among males (IRR: 1.022), females (IRR: 1.039), and non-Hispanic Whites (IRR: 1.044) (Figure). Conclusions Obesity prevalence is independently associated with high ACVM among different age, sex, and race/ethnic groups, and this impact is most pronounced in Hispanics and the middle-aged group of females and non-Hispanic Whites. More research is needed to further uncover the mechanisms leading to these observations a long with community-level interventions to reduce the burden of this ongoing epidemic, in overall and most impacted population groups. Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding sources: None.

9.4 EPINet: A National Approach for Data-Driven Improvement in Early Psychosis Care

Team-based coordinated specialty care (CSC) for early psychosis (EP) is highly effective in promoting recovery. NIH’s Early Psychosis Intervention Network (EPINET) project (https://nationalepinet.org/) seeks to link existing and varied EP programs across the United States to facilitate large-scale harmonized data collection and analysis to promote rapid dissemination of best practices. Eight hubs with 101 affiliated sites were funded. A core assessment battery was created to collect data across sites and contribute to the National Data Archives.

Symposium review: Effective nutritional strategies to mitigate enteric methane in dairy cattle.

Intensive research in the past decade has resulted in a better understanding of factors driving enteric methane (CH4) emissions in ruminants. Meta-analyses of large databases, developed through the GLOBAL NETWORK project, have identified successful strategies for mitigation of CH4 emissions. Methane inhibitors, alternative electron sinks, vegetable oils and oilseeds, and tanniferous forages are among the recommended strategies for mitigating CH4 emissions from dairy and beef cattle and small ruminants. These strategies were also effective in decreasing CH4 emissions yield and intensity. However, a higher inclusion rate of oils may negatively affect feed intake, rumen function, and animal performance, specifically milk components in dairy cows. In the case of nitrates (electron sinks), concerns with animal health may be impeding their adoption in practice, and potential emission trade-offs have to be considered. Tannins and tanniferous forages may have a negative effect on nutrient digestibility, and more research is needed to confirm their effects on overall animal performance in long-term experiments with high-producing animals. A meta-analysis of studies with dairy cows fed the CH4 inhibitor 3-nitrooxypropanol (3-NOP) at the Pennsylvania State University showed (1) a consistent 28 to 32% decrease in daily CH4 emissions or emissions yield and intensity; (2) no effect on dry matter intake, milk production, body weight, or body weight change, and a slight increase in milk fat concentration and yield (0.19 percentage units and 90 g/d, respectively); 3-NOP also appears to increase milk urea nitrogen concentration; (3) an exponential decrease in the mitigation effect of the inhibitor with increasing its dose (from 40 to 200 mg/kg of feed dry matter, corresponding to 3-NOP intake of 1 to 4.8 g/cow per day); and (4) a potential decrease in the efficacy of 3-NOP over time, which needs to be further investigated in long-term, full-lactation or multiple-lactation studies. The red macroalga Asparagopsis taxiformis has a strong CH4 mitigation effect, but studies are needed to determine its feasibility, long-term efficacy, and effects on animal production and health. We concluded that widespread adoption of mitigation strategies with proven effectiveness by the livestock industries will depend on cost, government policies and incentives, and willingness of consumers to pay a higher price for animal products with decreased carbon footprint.

Harbourview: An Irish-Welsh networking initiative

Historic harbours, as infrastructural elements, are neither buildings nor monuments thus typically fall between the remits of heritage designation. Yet they are critical to reading the human occupation of islands historically. Inevitably these routes and points of embarkation and disembarkation were pathways not just for goods, but also for knowledge, beliefs, and broader cultural understanding. The rising sea levels and increased storm activity generated by climate change are endangering the survival of this important coastal heritage on both sides of the Irish Sea. Harbourview, a research alliance between Cardiff University (Wales) and University College Dublin (Ireland) funded by the ESRC and the IRC, is a networking project which aimed to establish new dialogues on the significance of these harbours and the means by which they can be documented and appropriately managed. Through a series of seminars, community workshops and a final symposium, researchers, relevant stakeholders in local and national governments, and local communities in Ireland and Wales participated in activities and discussions on how best to address this compelling coastal heritage. The Harbourview project established the potential of community documentation using newly accessible methods of 3D recording and visualization, and, in tandem with the seminar and final symposium, clarified the critical issues in achieving a comprehensive documentation of this invaluable heritage.

The Effect of Cooperative Network Dynamics of the Scientific Research Project on Project Performance: The Moderating Role of Project Leader’s Network Position

Based on the data of projects initiated from 2013 to 2015 and concluded from 2017 to 2019 supported by the Department of Management Science of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the relevant achievements of scientific research projects are collected. This article explores the influence of the decline, expansion and stability of the cooperative network of each project team on project performance from project initiation to project closure. We also demonstrate the moderating effect of project leader’s network position in the higher-level global project cooperative network, including structural hole and degree centrality, on the relationship between project cooperative network dynamics and project performance. Results show that the decline of the project team cooperative network has a negative impact on project performance, the expansion of the project team cooperative network has an inverted U-shaped impact on project performance, and the stability of the project team cooperative network has a positive impact on project performance. At the same time, the structural hole and degree centrality of the project leaders in the higher-level global project cooperative network influence the effects of project team cooperative network dynamics on project performance. This study is of great significance to guide the construction of the project member network and improve project performance.

Wavelet-fused richer convolution feature for multiphase flow visual monitoring of oil and gas production processes

Multiphase flow monitoring of the oil and gas production process is of great significance to the safety of oil and gas exploitation and production. Electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) is one of the most attractive technologies in the field of multiphase flow measurement due to the advantages of its non-radioactive and non-contact properties, good visualization, and low cost. We propose a reconstruction algorithm based on wavelet and richer convolution feature (W-RCF) for solving the problem of artifacts and edge blurring in ECT imaging. In the algorithm, the two-channel source images of Tikhonov regularization and Landweber are simultaneously decomposed by a three-level wavelet. On this basis, an image fusion rule combining Bayesian decision and maximum entropy threshold is established to optimize the wavelet coefficients at each scale. The rule can reduce image artifacts and compensate for the defects in the source images. Afterward, the fused images are input to the RCF network for training and testing, and ECT reconstructed images with higher quality are obtained. Based on the simulation and experimental results, it can be seen that the image reconstruction quality of W-RCF is significantly better than that of the linear back projection, Tikhonov regularization, Landweber, and convolutional neural network algorithms. Therefore, the W-RCF algorithm has higher accuracy and stronger adaptability for multiphase flow under different flow patterns, which provides an effective method of ECT image reconstruction and is more suitable for visual monitoring of multiphase flow in the oil and gas production process.

Design a personalized additional professional education of teachers: event-positional methodology

Introduction. The relevance of designing the event-positional methodology of personalized additional professional education of teachers in the conditions of a pedagogical university is determined by the following aspects of the modern educational situation: the practical need for the development of additional professional programs of a new type; the need to overcome the backlog of requirements for the modernization of the main professional educational programs for future teachers from the new requirements of professional standards to their professional activities in an educational organization; the growing importance of the idea of education as a national priority; the demand for new norms of positional and professional self-determination of the teacher.Aim. The purpose of the article is to identify the methodological vector of the deployment of special theoretical and design-scientific works on the creation of a model for the formation and implementation of a personalized strategy for the development of a teacher in the process of additional professional education and the cultivation of a special culture of new pedagogical professionalism, which is determined by the presence of abilities for self-education, and thereby for self-development.Materials and Methods. The basis of the scientific search was the synthesis of fundamental provisions on a personalized model of the development of a teacher's reflexive abilities for self-transformation; on new goal-setting, which provides an opportunity for a teacher to learn how to design an educational situation in the dynamics of its development, combining elements of theory and practice to obtain a holistic, new knowledge; on the development of resource anthropological potential and development management; about new andragogic formats and technologies for creating professional communities and managing the personal development of teachers.Results. A thesaurus of event-positional methodology and a methodological scheme for building a new practice of continuous advanced pedagogical education have been developed, acting as a normative-prognostic and practice-oriented basis and a value- meanings reference point for personalized additional professional education of teachers. The trial implementation of the developed methodological scheme within the framework of scientific and methodological support of the activities of project teams of educational organizations - co-executors of the network project of training mentors for the development of the federal innovation platform of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education allowed us to establish the fundamental laws of positional self-determination as an educational result of managing the personalized development of teachers in conditions of additional professional education.Discussion and Conclusions. The scientific novelty of the research results is characterized by its focus on creating a prospective model of personalized additional professional education, the principles, conditions and mechanisms of which are directly focused on the inclusion of teachers in the processes of self-education and self-development with the help of targeted design of productive action technology that determines the mechanisms of activity development and assignment of norms of self-realization and the construction of a new educational reality, in which the person himself is both the subject and the object of transformations and transformations. The event-positional methodology makes it possible to build a unified, continuous and variable system of targeted additional professional education in the conditions of a pedagogical university on the basis of personalized educational tracks designed taking into account the specific needs of a pedagogical worker in the continuous updating of their professional knowledge and the acquisition of new professional skills determined through diagnostic procedures, based on the priority of the practiceoriented (applied) component of the educational process and the use of the possibilities of the digital educational environment.

Multi-project management in inter-organizational contexts

Multi-project management is typically considered an intra-organizational endeavor of implementing strategies through programs, portfolios, or lineages of change and development projects. Inter-organizational multi-project management takes place between project-based firms and other actors in project networks. The multi-project aspects in inter-organizational contexts cause significant management complexity, but their specific requirements are inadequately understood. This article explores the nature and requirements of project-based firms’ multi-project management in inter-organizational contexts. Parallel and sequential inter-organizational multi-project settings are proposed as an expansion to the dominant intra-organizational research. A thematic framework is developed based on stakeholder and agency theories and previous knowledge from portfolio and program management research complemented with an inductive analysis of extant literature. Consequently, we map and report previous research on multi-project management requirements relevant to inter-organizational contexts concerning strategy, resources, governance, and learning. Propositions are developed and future research is recommended in these domains.

Hidden Dangers and Prevention Measures of the Construction Quality of Heating Pipe Network Project

Hidden Dangers and Prevention Measures of the Construction Quality of Heating Pipe Network Project

How the sustainable development goals challenge public management. Action research on the cultural heritage of an Italian smart city

Pressure to face sustainability challenges is encouraging research into the ways in which public managers embed sustainability in their work and implement it. The 2030 Agenda has given a boost to the use of accounting practices to achieve Sustainable Developments Goals. While sustainability, together with accounting and accountability, has been explored, less attention has been paid to the antecedents leading to its embedding in public management practices. To provide a contribution on this matter, this study investigates the organizational processes facilitating public managers in institutionalizing sustainability, accounting and accountability practices. Focusing on the 11th Sustainable Development Goal, “cities” are entrusted with making cultural heritage management sustainable, raising the research question: what challenges does the 11th Sustainable Development Goal pose for the public management of urban cultural heritage? Action Research was carried out to investigate knowledge building within a project—the “Pavia Network Project” (2014–2017)—involving practitioners and researchers. The research findings shed light on the organizational processes that led to the implementation of sustainable accounting and accountability by an Italian smart city. The choice fell on Pavia because of its invaluable cultural heritage, having been, through time, the capital of the Early Medieval Lombard Kingdom, a wealthy Renaissance court and an historical university town. From the discussion of the results, a conceptual model on the antecedents of sustainable accounting and accountability knowledge arose. Besides the limitations of Action Research, this model suggests meaningful insights for both practitioners and researchers into the organizational changes triggered by the 2030 Agenda.

Endogenous PTEN-Induced Kinase 1 Regulates Dendritic Architecture and Spinogenesis.

Mutations in PTEN-induced kinase 1 (PINK1) contribute to autosomal recessive Parkinson's disease with cognitive and neuropsychiatric comorbidities. Disturbances in dendritic and spine architecture are hallmarks of neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric conditions, but little is known of the impact of PINK1 on these structures. We used Pink1 -/- mice to study the role of endogenous PINK1 in regulating dendritic architecture, spine density, and spine maturation. Pink1 -/- cortical neurons of unknown sex showed decreased dendritic arborization, affecting both apical and basal arbors. Dendritic simplification in Pink1 -/- neurons was primarily driven by diminished branching with smaller effects on branch lengths. Pink1 -/- neurons showed reduced spine density with a shift in morphology to favor filopodia at the expense of mushroom spines. Electrophysiology revealed significant reductions in miniature EPSC (mEPSC) frequency in Pink1 -/- neurons, consistent with the observation of decreased spine numbers. Transfecting with human PINK1 rescued changes in dendritic architecture, in thin, stubby, and mushroom spine densities, and in mEPSC frequency. Diminished spine density was also observed in Golgi-Cox stained adult male Pink1 -/- brains. Western blot study of Pink1 -/- brains of either sex revealed reduced phosphorylation of NSFL1 cofactor p47, an indirect target of PINK1. Transfection of Pink1 -/- neurons with a phosphomimetic p47 plasmid rescued dendritic branching and thin/stubby spine density with a partial rescue of mushroom spines, implicating a role for PINK1-regulated p47 phosphorylation in dendrite and spine development. These findings suggest that PINK1-dependent synaptodendritic alterations may contribute to the risk of cognitive and/or neuropsychiatric pathologies observed in PINK1-mutated families.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Loss of PINK1 function has been implicated in both familial and sporadic neurodegenerative diseases. Yet surprisingly little is known of the impact of PINK1 loss on the fine structure of neurons. Neurons receive excitatory synaptic signals along a complex network of projections that form the dendritic tree, largely at tiny protrusions called dendritic spines. We studied cortical neurons and brain tissues from mice lacking PINK1. We discovered that PINK1 deficiency causes striking simplification of dendritic architecture associated with reduced synaptic input and decreased spine density and maturation. These changes are reversed by reintroducing human PINK1 or one of its downstream mediators into PINK1-deficient mouse neurons, indicating a conserved function, whose loss may contribute to neurodegenerative processes.

Memories of the Future: a design technology by scenarios

Scenario Planning allows the investigation of alternative futures being useful in contexts characterized by high volatility and uncertainty. Particularly within the boundaries of Design, the way of thinking through scenarios has been incorporated into design methods to explore future contexts at certain points in the design process. However, we question whether scenario thinking could be an integral approach during the project's lifetime structuring a design technology through comprehensive and systemic mechanisms. Therefore, the present work aimed to share the research of a Design Technology by Scenarios and its application in a design workshop entitled Memories of the Future. The project network was formed by the “Protagonists of the Future,” a group movement orchestrated by the Santa Maria Development Agency supported by UN-Habitat to promote urban development in a sustainable and collaborative way. The results indicate that the co-creation of scenarios as a design technology resignified the actions of the protagonists in the local ecosystem encompassing multiple dimensions: the history and purpose of the project (story); the path necessary to achieve the goals of sustainable development in the city (path); the roles to be performed by the different protagonists involved (actors); and tangible results in the participating communities (evidences).Keywords: design methods, scenario thinking, design-driven innovation, participatory design.

Theory, Concepts and Future of Self Organizing Networks (SON)

: The ever-developing technologies in wireless communication networks have the urge for integrating smartness and automation into these networks. This survey paper presents the literature on the rising field of self-organization as a new concept applied to wireless communication networks over the last two decades. We make an in-depth survey of the current literature, standards as well as projects in self-organizing communication networks. Also, our objective is to show a deep knowledge of this active field of research, by defining a simple taxonomy, algorithms, architectures, routing protocols, and security aspects for the design and implementation of self-organizing techniques. Also, we discuss existing solutions, compare their strength and weakness, point out assessment metrics and measurements, and mention the main research scopes for subsequent evolution. This article may act as a starting point and guidance for anybody who seeks to investigate the researches done on self-organization in the area of wireless communication networks.

Collaborative network of SMEs innovation projects: influence of scientific and technological institutions

Public funding for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) innovation projects in collaboration with Scientific and Technological Institutions is still incipient in less developed Global South regions. Within the context mentioned above, our objective is to show a network analysis of Industry-University-Research Institute (IUR) interactions promoted by a government program, identifying its structure and dynamics and the influences played by these organisational actors. The results point out that the program presents effectiveness in establishing the IUR interaction network. Moreover, the network presents a scale-free structure, strong clustering and short distances between the actors. Universities lead as the most central actors, followed by research institutes. Despite the growth of the network with the significant entry of new SMEs, there is no evidence that this evolution contributes to improving its network metrics. The conclusions suggest that the network structure and dynamics may imply greater redundancy in the innovation process while allowing greater speed in the flow of knowledge and wider dissemination of knowledge among actors. The hubs (four central universities) in the network suggests an influence as generators and disseminators of knowledge and facilitators of interaction, but they can also limit the dynamics of the search for innovation in the network.

Risk factors causing cost overruns in road networks

Cost overrun is a common phenomenon observed in construction projects worldwide. It is one of the biggest challenges experienced in the construction industry that leads to overstretched budgets, and directly affects the country's gross domestic product (GDP). This study aims to identify the factors that significantly contribute to cost overrun for road network projects in Egypt during the implementation phase. A survey was conducted to determine the most critical factors affecting the cost overrun for road network construction projects. Results showed that the main factors causing cost overrun are inaccurate cost estimates, design modifications, quantity changes, variation orders, political interference, inflation, specification changes, and change in the scope of work. This study will help decision-makers identify the factors that may affect the costs of future road projects and provide guidelines to mitigate the adverse effects observed during the implementation stage.