Resource Poverty Research Articles

Empirical Study on the Challenges to Community Reintegration under Mental Healthcare: An Analysis With Reference to SDG 2030

Background: Mental healthcare today has extended beyond treatment at mental hospitals to include community reintegration and rehabilitation. However, beyond the protective walls of institutional care lie neglect, stigma, poverty and lack of resources which often leaves mentally ill patients in a vicious cycle of relapse, re-admissions and discharge from hospitals. This is just tip of the iceberg when it comes to the pitiful plight of mentally ill persons and mental healthcare across the world especially in developing and under-developed economies. Aim: This empirical study was designed to collect data of both quantitative and qualitative nature on the socio-economic background of patients admitted in two state mental health institutions in Maharashtra, India though a review of patient case files. The study also adopted a method of co-operative inquiry and assimilated opinions from psychiatrists and psychiatric social workers to comprehend the challenges to community reintegration of patients and possible solutions. Methods and Materials: Data collection was carried out at Thane and Yerwada Regional Mental Hospitals. 30 case files of discharged or discharge eligible patients were referred for background information on type of illness, instances of relapse, occupation and activities during admission. The sample was picked through random stratified sampling method. The second set of data was collected through questionnaires with open and closed ended questions to seek opinion of psychiatrists and psychiatric social workers on the situation of mental healthcare at the state mental health institution and possible suggestions. Findings: The data collected from the patient case files indicate certain socio-economic patterns and nature of illness as possible barriers to receipt of quality mental healthcare and community reintegration. The data collected from the psychiatrists and psychiatric social workers corroborate the challenges indicated in data collected from patients as they also highlight the issues of socio-economic background of the patients, lack of sufficient counseling due to unavailability of family members, stigma, causes for frequency of relapse among the patients, giving fake address and information by family of the patient, refusal of family to take the patient home post discharge and lack of awareness. The data also suggested introduction of family wards in mental hospitals to improve treatment and process of community reintegration of mentally ill patients. Conclusion: Mental health is a priority under Sustainable Development Goals of 2030 and to achieve it there is imminent need for significant contribution in terms of funds and expertise. Community living for the disabled including mentally ill persons is a right under UNCRPD as well as Mental Healthcare Act of 2017 and therefore it is the responsibility of the state to formulate and enforce measures for adequate treatment and community reintegration of the mentally ill.

Impact of Soil Rejuvenating Scheme on Income of Cotton Farmers – An Evidence from Kalaburagi District of Karnataka

Rainfed areas are not only thirsty but also hungry for nutrients and are hotspots of poverty, malnutrition, and degradation of natural resources. Looking into these aspects, the Government of Karnataka has implemented a mission mode project called “Bhoochetana” meaning “reviving the soils” to benefit dryland farmers for sustainable use of natural resources in Karnataka. This scheme aimed at enhancing the yield level of major dryland crops through integrated crop management (ICM) practices. The study has been conducted in the Kalaburagi District of Karnataka State, where the majority of the area under agriculture is rainfed and cotton is one of the major rainfed crops grown on a large scale. The study revealed that the yield of the main product from cotton production for Bhoochetana beneficiary farmers was higher with 23.18 quintals per hectare compared to non-beneficiary farmers with 21.36 quintals. The results of partial budgeting showed that, a net gain of ₹ 4660 per hectare was obtained by Bhoochetana scheme beneficiaries over non-beneficiary farmers. The study highlighted that, there is a positive significant effect of the scheme on the production of cotton. Therefore, the policies must focus on long-term soil, water, and other natural resource conservation practices to achieve sustainability in agriculture.

Human resource professionals’ human and social capital in SMEs: small firm, big impact

HR professionals have been widely ignored in the Human Resource (HR) management literature pertaining to small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). Given that entrepreneurs may be reluctant to hire HR professionals, it is important to investigate the value that HR people may bring to an SME. Addressing this literature gap, our research draws on resource orchestration theory (ROT) to link the interaction between HR professionals’ human and social capital to firm performance via the use of high-performance work practices (HPWPs). Further, this relationship depends on the SME’s size: in small firms, the link is strengthened because HR professionals’ human and social capital is more likely to create a competitive advantage in a context of resource poverty. We test the research model among a sample of 174 Canadian SMEs with fewer than 250 employees. Our results show that HR professionals’ human and social capital is more closely related to firm performance through the adoption of HPWPs in small SMEs than in large ones. Overall, our study highlights the value that HR professionals bring to small SMEs and advocates for a greater presence of HR professionals in SMEs.

Second Wave of COVID-19 in Pakistan: Our Responsibilities and Challenges as A Nation

The Corona virus (SARS-CoV2) pandemic initiated in late December 2019 in Wuhan city of Hubei, China, which has rapidly progressed involving more than 215 countries of the world. It was caused by novel SARS-COV2 coronavirus with Huanan seafood wholesale market as the possible point of origin. In past two decades, coronaviruses epidemic of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-COV) had 37% mortality rate and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-COV) had 10% affecting more than 10,000 population together. World Health Organization (WHO) declared it as the sixth Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on January 30, 2020 and later on March 11, 2020, the WHO labeled it as a pandemic. The first case of COVID-19 from Pakistan was reported on 26th February, 2020 and has affected over 354,000 people with a mortality of over 7000 patients.Many countries of the world have seen second wave of this pandemic. Government of Pakistan has also declared a second wave on October 28, 2020, after the rise in cases from 500 to 750 per day. Now it has crossed 2000 cases. The data released by the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) shows that the current percent positivity rate is close to 3 compared to the previous figure of lesser than 2 making it a bigger challenge than first wave in Pakistan. The patients now presenting in hospitals are all in critical condition. Lack of a specific vaccine or antiviral drug and non-compliance to the standard preventive measures is the major reason of initiation of a second wave of this viral infection in Pakistan. Being a nation we need to be responsible. Our country may go into economic crisis & our health facilities may choke. We have to understand how to live with this virus till the availability of vaccine or Curative antiviral drug. The Government of Pakistan is creating awareness in the public for the secondwave as the situation of pandemic is getting worse. Smart lock downs are being implemented but people are not following preventive measures that are leading to infection spread at a very alarming speed. At the moment preventive measures are the only way to stop the spread of disease. Preventive measures should be adopted to contain this deadly disease. Wearing masks, using hand sanitizers, washing hands with soap for 20 sec, keeping social distance of 6 feet are mandatory preventivestrategies. Social, political, business, recreational and religious gatherings, should be avoided. Educational institutes should follow strict standard operating procedures. Most of the people in Pakistan are not considering this disease as a matter of serious concern due to unawareness, poverty, beliefs and lack of resources. People should ignore such disbeliefs and should start considering it as a great health concern. They should follow the preventive measures in true sense.

Against the New Normal

Abstract COVID-19 is now part of the resources out of which any future must be made. The temptation is to curl back into private misery and fatalism. The opportunity is to further the design of neonationalist, neoliberal returns to pre-1917 norms of extreme wealth, extreme poverty, and unmitigated exploitation of technical and ecological resources. The challenge is to build a future of public health, wealth, education, and environmental justice.

“Slumification” of Consolidated Informal Settlements: A Largely Unseen Challenge

Today most scholars, policy makers, and low-income “slum” residents themselves eschew the term slum and some argue that it is high time to retire the term altogether. We agree, and yet recent research of consolidated informal settlements in Latin America and the United States suggests that the conventional wisdom of successful self-building trajectories is sometimes severely constrained, or stymied altogether. In this paper we analyze why some types of housing may enter a downward decline of deterioration, into what might constitute the erstwhile term of a slum, after having successfully consolidated over 20 or more years. This paper draws upon a nine-country study through the Latin American Housing Network or LAHN (https://www.lahn.utexas.org/) of low-income housing in Latin America with comparisons to Texas, USA. Examples from the former comprise of different types of consolidated settlements that are located in the “innerburbs” or “first suburbs” today, and where some authors argue there is a need for new policy imperatives of housing and community rehab to overcome deterioration and dilapidation. Despite the apparent success of self-building consolidation since the 1960s and 1970s, we are now beginning to observe evidence of heavy distress to the physical fabric of dwellings and communities, a process that may be considered de facto “slumification”. This process is triggered through structural changes under neoliberalism and the “poverty of resources,” heterogeneity of land access, physical constraints and deterioration, the lack of legal titles and title clouding, densification and stress on the built environment, environmental hazards, and natural and man-made disasters. However, in part, slumification occurs due to the failure of policies to respond to deteriorated housing conditions after years of intensive use. Unless policies addressing the triggers of slumification are addressed, we argue that today’s consolidated informal settlements may very well become the slums of the future.

An analysis of the resource curse hypothesis and poverty in Africa

An analysis of the resource curse hypothesis and poverty in Africa

Co-creation in networks of SMEs: a conceptual model of the co-creation process

The ability to adopt new digital technology is a very challenging endeavour, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), who because of resource poverty are dependent on external input and cooperation with other companies. Recent research has indicated that co-creation among SMEs is a promising way to overcome such limitations. However, there has been very limited research on the co-creation process, and we have little understanding about how SMEs would go about to establish and run a co-creation network. We propose a conceptual model based on our review of the literature and our empirical findings from investigating co-creation in four networks. The results expand our understanding of the process of establishing co-creation networks and contributes to research on co-creation and practice in SMEs.

Migration of existing software systems to mobile computing platforms: a systematic mapping study

Mobile computing has fast emerged as a pervasive technology to replace the old computing paradigms with portable computation and context-aware communication. Existing software systems can be migrated (while preserving their data and logic) to mobile computing platforms that support portability, context-sensitivity, and enhanced usability. In recent years, some research and development efforts have focused on a systematic migration of existing software systems to mobile computing platforms. To investigate the research state-of-the-art on the migration of existing software systems to mobile computing platforms. We aim to analyze the progression and impacts of existing research, highlight challenges and solutions that reflect dimensions of emerging and futuristic research. We followed evidence-based software engineering (EBSE) method to conduct a systematic mapping study (SMS) of the existing research that has progressed over more than a decade (25 studies published from 1996–2017). We have derived a taxonomical classification and a holistic mapping of the existing research to investigate its progress, impacts, and potential areas of futuristic research and development. The SMS has identified three types of migration namely Static, Dynamic, and State-based Migration of existing software systems to mobile computing platforms. Migration to mobile computing platforms enables existing software systems to achieve portability, context-sensitivity,and high connectivity. However, mobile systems may face some challenges such as resource poverty, data security, and privacy. The emerging and futuristic research aims to support patterns and tool support to automate the migration process. The results of this SMS can benefit researchers and practitioners-by highlighting challenges, solutions, and tools, etc., -to conceptualize the state-of-the-art and futuristic trends that support migration of existing software to mobile computing.

Setting Up Ad Hoc Computing as a Service in Mobile Ad Hoc Cloud Computing Environment

Despite the rapid growth in popularity and hardware capacity in mobile devices, they suffer from resource poverty, which limits their ability to meet increasing mobile users' demands. Computation offloading may give a prominent solution. But it relies on the connection to the remote cloud and may fail in situations where there is poor or no connectivity. Cloudlet was introduced to cover this problem, but mobile users miss free mobility when using cloudlets. Offloading to the cloud or cloudlet is not always the preferred solution. An alternative is to utilize the nearby mobile devices as local resource suppliers and pull their capabilities as a mobile device cloud. In this paper, the authors present such an approach known as ad hoc computing as a service (AhCaaS) model for computation offloading in an ad hoc manner by connecting to nearby mobile devices. They define a multi-attribute selection strategy to determine the optimal computation offloadee. They evaluated the proposed model, and the result shows that AhCaaS reduces execution time, battery consumption, and avoids task reassignment.

Teacher Education Freshmen Applicants’ Current State in the New Normal’s Learning Delivery Platforms

The online learning platform (OLS) is currently the new normal learning setting amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Teachers need to look on the other side of the traditional classroom-based learning mode to make teaching and learning in the new normal possible. It aimed to analyze the current state of the teacher education freshmen applicants concerning the new normal learning platforms. This study employed a descriptive method of research and considered a sample of 85 freshmen applicants in the College of Teacher Education in the academic year 2020-2021. The frequencies and percent value was used to analyze the data gathered. The following are the verdicts of the study, the bulk of the respondents belong to low-income families with farming as their family source of income. Most of the respondents have their mobile phones while the great majorities are using mobile data only. All of the respondents do not have any idea about the different platforms in online learning. Based on the findings, the researcher concluded that the freshmen applicants in the College of Teacher Education cannot totally survive and are not yet ready to embrace the new normal learning platforms due to poverty and lack of resources. It is therefore recommended that the University administration needs to open other sources of learning platforms such as the use of printed learning materials of which will be delivered door-to-door to the students. Besides, the College of Teacher Education should plan and initiate on how to make learning flexible and more engaging.

Classification and Mapping of Adaptive Security for Mobile Computing

Context: Mobile computing has emerged as a disruptive technology that has empowered its users with portable, connected and context-aware computation. However, issues such as resource poverty, energy efficiency and specifically data security and privacy represents the critical challenges for mobile computing. Objective: The objective of this work is to systematically identify, taxonomically classify and map the state-of-research on adaptive security (a.k.a. self-protection) for mobile computing. Methodology: We followed evidence based software engineering method to conduct a systematic mapping study of 43 qualitatively selected studies-published from 2003 to 2017-on adaptive security for mobile computing. Results and Conclusions: Classification and mapping of the research highlights three prominent themes that support adaptive security for (i) Mobile Device Data and Resources, (ii) Mobile to Mobile Communication, and (iii) Mobile to Server Communication. Mapping analysis suggests that security of mobile device data and resources is the most researched theme. The mapping study highlights that active and futuristic research trends are primarily focused on security as a service, whereas; the frequent research challenges relate to self-protecting mobile devices, user-driven privacy decisions and context-aware security. The results of the mapping study facilitate knowledge transfer that can benefit researchers and practitioners to understand the role of adaptive and context-aware security in mobile computing environments.

Drought and salinity stress as major threat for sustainable Mung bean production: Emerging challenges and future perspectives

Climate change is a serious concern in the present scenario for the sustainable production of food crops. Insufficient food availability, increasing population, poverty, malnutrition, and depletion of natural resources may lead to a global food crisis. Stable and greater production of nutritious food crops may be an alternative to overcome these difficulties. Mung bean ( Vigna radiata ) is an important food legume with an excellent source of easily digestible protein. It is also recommended for health benefits due to the presence of bioactive compounds. Short life cycle and nitrogen fixing ability makes it suitable for major cropping system. Mung bean is highly sensitive towards various abiotic and biotic stress factors prevailing in the environment. The present review focuses on drought and salinity stress as major abiotic stresses limiting mung bean production. It includes adverse effects, mung bean response, management strategies, and significant efforts made towards these challenges. In this review, the need of addressing the current demand on modern agriculture and food production activities impaired by global climate change has been focused.

An Approach towards Achieving Urban Resilience in Threatened Urban Communities

The ongoing events and risks surrounding cities, whether natural, such as earthquakes, floods or unnatural ones (poverty, unemployment and lack of resources, etc.) have led to the need to examine and resilience of cities to resist such pressures and risks. This research presents the theoretical study of urban resilience and its characteristics and the concept of the resilient city in addition to studying the framework of the city's resilience and its goals and indicators. An analytical study is also undertaken in form of a comparative analysis of three city examples that face similar risks to that of Egypt. Finally, a summary is to have a methodology that is formulated to solve the problems and ways of dealing with them, especially economic and social development (the socio- economic aspects of resilience) in an analytical framework. Through which recommendations are targeting the most important urban elements of the city's poor areas, which can be given to develop and advance them.

GeoSES: A socioeconomic index for health and social research in Brazil.

The individual's socioeconomic conditions are the most relevant to predict the quality of someone's health. However, such information is not usually found in medical records, making studies in the area difficult. Therefore, it is common to use composite indices that characterize a region socioeconomically, such as the Human Development Index (HDI). The main advantage of the HDI is its understanding and adoption on a global scale. However, its applicability is limited for health studies since its longevity dimension presents mathematical redundancy in regression models. Here we introduce the GeoSES, a composite index that summarizes the main dimensions of the Brazilian socioeconomic context for research purposes. We created the index from the 2010 Brazilian Census, whose variables selection was guided by theoretical references for health studies. The proposed index incorporates seven socioeconomic dimensions: education, mobility, poverty, wealth, income, segregation, and deprivation of resources and services. We developed the GeoSES using Principal Component Analysis and evaluated its construct, content, and applicability. GeoSES is defined at three scales: national (GeoSES-BR), Federative Unit (GeoSES-FU), and intra-municipal (GeoSES-IM). GeoSES-BR dimensions showed a good association with HDI-M (correlation above 0.85). The model with the poverty dimension best explained the relative risk of avoidable cause mortality in Brazil. In the intra-municipal scale, the model with GeoSES-IM was the one that best explained the relative risk of mortality from circulatory system diseases. By applying spatial regressions, we demonstrated that GeoSES shows significant explanatory potential in the studied scales, being a compelling complement for future researches in public health.

Factors affecting mobile home prevalence in the United States: Poverty, natural amenities, and employment in natural resources

AbstractMobile home residence in the United States is associated with negative social, economic, and health‐related outcomes. However, although research on mobile home residence at the individual level has been performed, a geographic understanding of mobile home prevalence in the United States remains absent from the literature. Therefore, the purpose of our analysis was to evaluate the county‐level drivers of mobile home prevalence in the continental United States in 2015. The influence of five groups of variables—demographic, economic, housing, industry and occupation, and natural amenities—were assessed in a series of nested ordinary least squares regressions. Additionally, the full model was run as a spatial lag regression to control for spatial autocorrelation. Our results indicate that the primary drivers of mobile home prevalence in U.S. counties were the percent of population in near poverty, the labour force participation rate, and the percent of the population employed in natural resource occupations.

The Global Impact of Exercising Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Over Transnational Corporate Environmental Crimes in Extractive Industries

This article relates to contemporary topic, deals with subsoil use crimes and explores this as a subtype of environmental crimes committed by transnational corporations discussing the importance of choosing proper jurisdiction, and examines crimes in the field of subsoil use as a specific component of environmental crimes committed by transnational corporations involved in resource extraction and mining across the world. Their environmental harm, contribution to poverty and unfair utilization of resources is driven by greed and lure, and has long been heavily protected by legal jurisdictional cover-ups, which are now under scrutiny due to the globally evolving trend of exercising extraterritorial jurisdiction over certain torts committed by extractive industry operators. Appropriate criminological theories and studies of general and green criminology along with environmental justice are reviewed and reflected on. The author refers to unfair correlation of natural wealth and poverty, comes across the Brantinghamian definition of “crime” before turning to Sutherland’s conception of white-collar crime. The article also presents content analysis and case studies of the undergoing litigations, namely the case of Trafigura and Royal Dutch Shell.In concluding notes suggestions are offered for the future of environmental justice and the prevention of environmental crimes in extractive industries and mining.

Higher-Order Learning Outcomes in an Undergraduate IT Project Management Course

Achieving higher order learning outcomes may be normal in developed country higher-education institutions, but it may not so for most of those in developing countries with resource poverty which manifests in high student-teacher ratios for instance. Lecturers in developing countries tend to use less student-centered teaching methods which hamper the achievement of higher order learning outcomes. Unfortunately, this issue has been ignored in the general information systems education literature. This article therefore explores the relationship between teaching methods and the achievement of higher order learning outcomes by presenting and evaluating evidence of changes a lecturer made in delivering an undergraduate IT Project Management course over two academic years in a developing country context. Two lessons emerge. First, lecturers in developing country contexts should focus on turning out graduates with higher order thinking skills. Second, such educators should consider using contextually relevant teaching methods that lead to higher learning outcomes.

Adaptive Security for Self-Protection of Mobile Computing Devices

Mobile computing has emerged as a pervasive technology that empowers its users with portable computation and context-aware communication. Smart systems and infrastructures can exploit portable and context-aware computing technologies to provide any time, any place digitized services on the go. Despite the offered benefits, such as portability, context-sensitivity, and high connectivity, mobile computing also faces some critical challenges. These challenges include resource poverty as well as data security and privacy that need to be addressed to increase the pervasiveness of mobile systems. We propose to provide a self-protection mechanism for mobile devices against the unforeseen security threats that can attack the critical resources of mobile devices. We have unified the concepts of autonomic computing and computer security to develop a framework that enables adaptive security to dynamically configure the security measures of a mobile device. We have developed a framework - an android-based prototype - that supports automation and user decision to protect the critical hardware and software resources of a device. Evaluation results demonstrate (i) framework’s accuracy for runtime detection and minimization of threats, and (ii) framework’s efficiency for device’s resource utilization.

Birleşmiş Milletler ve Sürdürülebilir Kalkınmanın Desteklenmesi

With the dissemination of the use of factories and open market principals in the 18th and 19th centuries, people and states started to reach products easily. Although this process eased life, it affected nature and human life severely. More than half-century international communities, like the UN, tried to find solutions to tackle poverty, environmental problems, and scarcity of resources. In 1987 Brundtland Commission report explained the need for united development and environment which then called sustainable development. In the following years fears from terroristic threats and environmental disasters increased so in 2000 Millenium Development Goals were published by the UN along with 22 non-governmental organizations with the aim of providing decent lives and protecting the environment. However, MDG was not successful in fulfilling its targets so at the concluding of it, set of new goals called Sustainable Development Goals were agreed to be implemented under 2030 Agenda with wider-pattern and human-centred approach. Despite SDGs broad approach to the subject, there are still incontrovertible lacks between targets and policies so the main aim of this article is to analyze the short comparison between the MDGs and the SDGs effectiveness and explain why more concrete policies and decentralized mechanisms are needed to accomplish goals.