Tangible Issues Research Articles

Vertically integrated project: uniting teaching, research, and community in favor of sustainability

Purpose Higher education institutions (HEIs) are crucial in sustainable development. To this end, they must infuse sustainability into all their endeavors. This study aims to delve into the unique vertically integrated project (VIP), a project-based learning approach and its impact on students’ skills and the surrounding community. Design/methodology/approach The research design was collaborative, reflecting the spirit of the VIP. Step 1 involved an action research approach, where students and instructors worked closely with municipal representatives to identify challenges and devise solutions for local economic development. In Step 2, students' voices were heard through a survey. Step 3 encompassed presentations in scientific and nonscientific events, capturing the community’s perception as a valuable feedback loop. Findings The authors identified the most effective policies implemented by municipalities that excelled in indices related to the business environment. VIP enhanced students’ soft skills, including critical thinking, teamwork and community spirit. The outcomes of the VIP were effective in identifying public policies aimed at social transformation. Practical implications This study’s findings offer significant insights for HEI managers, guiding them in adopting interdisciplinary pedagogical practices. These practices, in turn, foster sustainable development within both internal and external communities. Furthermore, the empirical study’s focus on improving local community governance can potentially enhance the local business environment. Originality/value Literature emphasizing the social dimension of sustainability in HEIs is scarce, particularly those practices related to teaching, research and extension linked to projects aimed at community sustainability. This study introduces interdisciplinary practices encouraging student involvement in addressing tangible issues and searching for solutions to community problems.

How Does Perceived Social Support, Mindfulness, and Coping Strategies Influencing Death Anxiety Among Patients With Tuberculosis.

Objective: This study aimed to assess the relationship between coping strategies, social support, mindfulness, and death anxiety among TB survivors. Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional design was used. A convenience sample of 120 adult patients diagnosed with TB were enrolled from public hospital. Results: The patients had moderate death anxiety (M = 45.3, SD = 6.88). However, TB patients reported high perceived coping strategies, great social support, and dispositional mindfulness. The death anxiety was negatively associated with mindfulness (r = -0.211; p < .05) and with perceived social support (r = -0.368, p < .05). Attention awareness to living activity, perceived social support, type of TB, and duration of treatment were predicted the participants' death anxiety. Conclusions: The presence of death anxiety among TB patients is a significant and tangible issue that can significantly impact their overall well-being. Addressing this concern is pivotal for their mental resilience, treatment adherence, and overall recovery.

Holistic Approach for Assessing Buildings’ Environmental Impact and User Comfort from Early Design: A Method Combining Life Cycle Assessment, BIM, and Active House Protocol

Due to our increasing dependence on resources and energy, climate change is among the most tangible issues we are facing today. The construction industry has been identified as a key sector to intervene in, but mitigation strategies must focus on more than just operational energy. As current climate policies recommend, designers should consider the broader framework of environmental impacts characterizing the entire building lifecycle. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) considers the mentioned aspects. Nevertheless, the complexity of LCA and the criticalities of related tools prevent the application of the approach during decisive early stages. Additionally, LCA allows the estimation of environmental issues, but fails to describe other dimensions of sustainability. The article proposes an evaluation method to support decision-making during the design of sustainable buildings. The method exploits the LCA tool and the assessment framework provided by a Green Sustainable Building Certification (Active House) integrated with BIM. The approach was applied and proven through a case study: a residential single-family building in northern Italy, comparing two technological options. The study confirmed the effectiveness of the multicriteria evaluation framework that, from the early design stage, can be used to measure the environmental impact of buildings alongside implications for the final users’ comfort.

« Les montagnes d’ordures enveloppaient de leur puanteur tout ce qui vivait »

According to the anti-Semitic attitudes of the 1930s, and as seen through the lens of social hygienism, Jews were a societal pest on par with lice. This article examines the tangible issues surrounding trash, waste, and collection practices in the Warsaw ghetto in addition to the phenomenon&#8217;s sanitary and epidemiological implications. It also discusses the topic&#8217;s pragmatic importance with respect to the district&#8217;s administration, financial management, and provision of community services.Indeed, the trash taken from the ghetto represented the deadly landscape of the Holocaust itself. This heap of &#8220;dead&#8221; garbage nevertheless produced its own dark energy through a series of relentless biological processes like rot, decomposition, and mold. The Holocaust was a devastating force that consumed human lives and left a void in its wake. However, incredibly, life continued, even if it was only visible from a global and planetary perspective.

Matter and manner: A postcolonial reading of Nol Alembong’s The Passing Wind (1991)

This paper sought to examine the role of Anglophone Cameroonian writers who have had a persistent tendency for political and social commitment and change, in connection to the socio-political events of their society. Initially, Anglophone Cameroon writing was an instrument for celebrating the heroic magnificence of Western figures; later it was used for anti-colonial fight back. Presently, it is being used as an authentic weapon for depicting the postcolonial disillusioned state of the nation and other burning issues. In this paper, an effort is made to examine the way “manner” is used to bring out the blazing “matter[s]” in Cameroon, Africa and the world. In an attempt to examine Nol Alembong’s view, selected poems from his collection titled, The Passing Wind, have been used to bring out tangible issues that have plagued Africa as a whole and Anglophone Cameroon in particular. This article adopts the Socio-Artistic Criticism and Marxism as its theoretical perspectives. This theoretical position is important as it focuses not only on the background from which the poems were written, but also pays close attention to the use of literary and linguistic tools in communicating meaning.

Distribution networks performance improvement by sectorisation and operating pressures reduction – case study: babadag town

Abstract The cumulated effects of climate changes and accelerated urban development, amplified by insufficient funding and/or capacity to implement proactive methods and strategies for monitoring and optimization of water supply systems negatively impact the operation and overall efficiency of these systems, generating considerable problems regarding public comfort and safety and also service costs. Out of all problems, the most tangible issues for the final user are the ones related to the distribution network – the closest system component. In order to address these problems, an integrated analysis of the conditions of each urban area is required, accounting for actual water demand, pressure requirements, network configuration, power consumption and development forecasts. This article presents the set of measures proposed for optimisation of the distribution network of Babadag Town from Romania, consisting of changes intended to improve the hydraulic capacity of the network and also on reducing the water loss based on water balance evaluation and hydraulic modelling of existing and proposed network configurations.

Communicating about Energy Policy in a Resource-Rich Jurisdiction during the Climate Crisis: Lessons from the People of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

There is a high degree of expert consensus that anthropogenic climate change will be catastrophic if urgent and significant measures to reduce carbon emissions are not undertaken worldwide. Australia is a world-leading exporter of coal and gas, and does not have an effective emissions reduction strategy. Though many Australians support action on climate change, this has not affected voting patterns. In this qualitative study, we aimed to explore the attitudes of Australian voters in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia towards potential environmental policies. We approached people in public spaces, and invited them to participate in interviews. Six of the thirty-five interview participants who voted for the two main political parties or were undecided voters agreed with the transition to 100% renewables and/or no new coal mines in Australia. Many thought that renewables were not reliable enough and/or the economy was too dependent on coal to make the transition. There was strong support for political leadership in order to regulate mining and pollution, and for a transition plan for fossil-fuel-dependent communities. Participants were most concerned about tangible environmental issues, such as waste and pollution, and also described needing clear solutions in order to engage with the issues. Some described feeling ‘shouted at’ by protests and messaging about climate change and environmental issues. Our findings suggest that solution-based messaging may increase levels of engagement about climate change, and that waste and pollution can be entry-points for discussions about climate change. It is important to have conversations with people about this important issue.

Integrated Health and Social Care in England: Ten Years On.

Introduction:As part of major policy reforms begun in 2010, England introduced a wave of initiatives to encourage more integrated care between health and social care. These built on previous attempts which sought to achieve similar objectives through a focus on better partnership working. This article provides an overview and critical commentary on integrated care policy in England from 2010–2020 based on reviews by regulators, parliamentary committees and the national audit office.Overview of Policy:Integrated care became a priority through the work of the Future Forum, a group of leading stakeholders established due to concerns about greater competition in public health care. This led to a public statement of shared commitment to integrated care by national health and social care bodies. Early mechanisms included a pooled fund to achieve nationally set objectives, the creation of local authority led partnership boards, and high profile innovation programmes. Later in the 2010’s, new health led partnerships became more dominant vehicles to achieve integrated care at regional level.Impact of Policy:Despite progress within a few local areas, and reduction in delayed discharges from hospital the overall picture from national reviews was that expected improvements were not achieved. Emergency admissions to hospital continued to grow, patients within primary care reported being less involved in their care, and health inequalities worsened. The initial response to COVID-19 was health-centric contributing to outbreaks in care homes and inadequate supplies of protective personal equipment. The ability of leaders to look beyond their organisations’ interests was reported as vital for local progress. National government performance frameworks discouraged system based working and chronic underfunding of social care led to major capacity and workforce challenges.Conclusion:The experience of England suggests that greatest progress is made when integrated care focusses on tangible issues and when there is a clear understanding of how success will be measured. Even with considerable investment and intent progress should be expected to be slow and difficult. Layering of numerous policy initiatives provides confusion and can distract from the important work of relationship building. And ultimately, integrated care cannot by itself address major inadequacies in the underlying resources and structural inequalities.

“Consent Is F#@king Required”: Hashtag Feminism Surrounding Sexual Consent in a Culture of Postfeminist Contradictions

Hashtag feminism exists in a time of postfeminist contradictions marked by the simultaneous existence of popular feminism and popular misogyny. In one such contradiction, popular feminism has led women to expect the successful negotiation of sexual consent, while popular misogyny permits the circulation of traditional sexual scripts that disregard the necessity of consent. In this study, we analyze messages conveyed through digitized narratives of sexual consent posted on Tumblr, a social media site that is popular among feminist activists, to identify the ways that users construct meaning around the dissonance between expectations for consent and the inequalities that inhibit its negotiation. We specifically explore whether hashtag feminism navigates postfeminist contradictions in a way that simultaneously calls out misogyny and calls on feminism. We find that the Tumblr posts in our sample did both, albeit in a manner that failed to offer tangible solutions to the problem at hand. Calls on feminism were largely limited to tagging feminist allies and recirculating existing feminist campaigns. Thus, we argue that the hashtag ultimately became a handoff to a larger feminist abstraction. Future research should explore conditions under which activists link tangible issues, actors, and agendas to an otherwise abstract popular feminism.

A Strong Judiciary as a Crisis for Democracy: A ‘Law and Development’ Study from Pakistan

AbstractBy the late 1990s, international financial institutions prescribed a ‘good governance’ paradigm that sought to empower the judiciary to curb ‘state capture’ by the corrupt political elites of developing countries. Good governance was supposed to act as a midwife to economic development, providing the ‘rule of law’ for the free market reforms of structural adjustment programs that had hitherto failed to provide much success. This article examines the implementation of ‘good governance’ in Pakistan, arguing that empowering the judiciary served to weaken an already weak legislature. The tangible issues of popular political representation and economic redistribution were displaced by the discourses on the control of corruption and the rule of law. Based on this experience, the article encourages a shift in law and developmental theorizing to focus on forms of legislature and democratic rule and a redefined role for the ‘civil society’ within this.

Attitudinal Feedback towards Sub-national Social Policy: A Comparison of Popular Support for Social Health Insurance in Urban China

Policy feedback theory posits that pre-existing policies shape citizens’ policy preferences and attitudes. This attitudinal feedback effect may, in turn, either reinforce or undermine current policies. This study seeks to examine whether attitudinal feedback explains why urban Chinese are motivated to contribute to social health insurance, a highly tangible issue for ordinary Chinese. Empirical data were collected in an original survey of urban inhabitants in three provinces between late 2017 and early 2018. Quantitative results reveal clear attitudinal feedback. Resource effects, interpretive effects, and individual learning effects all appear to shape motivations for contributing to social health insurance.

An authentic learning approach to engage solid waste engineering students

Abstract With solid waste management being such a crucial and tangible issue in the XXIst century, a blended learning environment was fashioned in a solid waste engineering module for graduate students. The emphasis was in creating authentic projects in partnership with the National Environment Agency (NEA) and the Ministry of Education to increase waste awareness and promote the circular economy across various schools in Singapore. The connection between engagement and authentic learning was verified empirically by means of focus group interviews and questionaires, followed by statistical analysis. A Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.86 and linear regression coefficient of 0.73 (p value = 0.093) demonstrated the positive correlation between these two factors. Finally, a Bayesian bootstrap approach helped overcome the small sample size and confirmed the satisfying positive relation found between authentic learning and engagement. From focus group interviews, it appeared that most students found that the authentic projects accurately reflected the real world problems. One student commented: “I particularly found the NEA project meaningful and certainly appreciate the effort put in with NEA and the schools to prepare the class for this project. I’m beginning to look for ways as to how I can reduce solid waste myself!”.

Reassembling the Social in Barcelona through Minimalist Urban Interventions: Visual Poetry and the Rehabilitation of Party Walls (2004–2009)

Recent studies on the effects of globalization on the city of Barcelona have concentrated on criticizing the corresponding urban model. Whilst gentrification and segregation are tangible issues in ...

Youths in Community Development, Poor Market Linkage: A Disastrous Lag for Local Business Flourish in Coast Region, Tanzania

Youths are the pillars of community development; their skills and knowledge can be applied in tangible issues of great stake to individuals and community at large. Youths participation in local business is due to various motives ranging from wealth desire and reduction of income poverty. The current trend of entrepreneurship and business development have attracted youths to engage in local business especially in urban areas where challenges are recordable. Yet, the current study being intrigued by the forgotten drawbacks for business development, revealed that, given the nature of business, capital was always not a problem for business start-up. It was found that youths can still mobilize their own seed capital through means like saving from subsistence funds, fundraising through selling ideas and household contribution. However, the motives for business start-up does define the end results as whether business could be sustainable or otherwise. More importantly, it was revealed that, Youths concern in local business operation are that, market availability and linkages define the level of business flourishment. Lack of information about market availability, undisclosed market operation terms in outer boundaries hinder a linkage search which in turn poses unpleasant effect of business growth and community development at large. The local government in administrative areas should always take the responsibility of ensuring that the market operation terms are predictable and supportive for business growth.

Transforming rural housing land to farmland in Chongqing, China: The land coupon approach and farmers’ complaints

Rapid urbanization in China since 1978 has created enormous pressure on farmland, which is encroached by not only urban expansion but also rural construction of peasant housing and services. As a land-use planning and management response, the Central Government endorsed a policy that bundles the reduction of rural construction land with the increase of urban built-up area, thus making it possible to connect the two seemingly contradictory processes between adding on to and taking off from the farmland bank by reclamation of rural construction sites and urban expansion respectively. This paper contributes to an emerging literature on the study of transformation of rural construction land by examining the land coupon approach and the associated complaints from the participating farmers in Chongqing, China. Data are collected from a government online feedback platform, supplemented by public policy documents. The findings reveal that the land coupon approach is a kaleidoscope that demonstrates a wide range of players in the farmland reclamation process. Farmers go through a lengthy and complicated process shaped by historical inconsistencies of policies, rent-seeking individuals and organizations, and market uncertainties. Their complaints focused on tangible issues especially on compensation payment, but intangible issues such as local and national policy intentions were totally ignored. Farmland reclamation is set to create landless farmers with poor social and financial security, which deserves attention in rethinking the land policies.

Safety Culture Oversight: An Intangible Concept for Tangible Issues within Nuclear Installations

Traced back to the Chernobyl Accident analysis (INSAG-1), the concept of safety culture is regarded as a central phenomenon influencing behaviors and values within high-risk organisations. Many studies have already been conducted on safety culture within nuclear installations. Describing a model designed to capture and assess safety culture observations, this paper intends to highlight the role of safety culture within the overall regulatory nuclear safety oversight, and to show how intangible cultural elements can lead to the identification of tangible safety issues.

Strategic Communication and Violent Extremism: The Importance of State Action

State action is an important form of strategic communication and therefore significant to countering violent extremism (CVE) initiatives on and offline. While non-state actors often use state action (and sometimes inaction) as a motivation to incite and legitimize violence against the state as well as its citizens, generating such negative sentiment does not always require instigation. This is especially so when the action(s) of a state are extremely controversial. As many violent extremists (including lone actors) have been radicalized as a result of state action (or in action), it is necessary for the state to not only carry out positive actions but also have them widely publicized. This is envisaged to counter adverse narratives and address tangible issues that push individuals towards violent extremism.

موجودہ جمہوری سیاسی اضطرابی صورتحال کا جائزہ اور اس کا حل، سیرۃ طیبہﷺ کی روشنی میں

The set of formal legal institutions that collectively constitute a “government”or a “state” form the basis of what we call “Political System”. Democracy, one of the institutions withiun the present day political scenario, is a system of processing conflicts in which the outcomes depend on what the opinion of majority of the participants is. In such a process, no single force or group can control what occurs unless they can prove their majority. The primary problem with the world politics in today’s world is not much different to what it has been over the centuries - it is controlled by people who are generally incapable of envisioning a system of just government that could address the broader problems faced by humanity and that which could think beyond the immediate scene. Nothing about our world will change until we acknowledge this reality and that the quality of life depends on more than a mere establishment of rules by which to live and carry out commerce. It requires an understanding of the universal issues that are not yet considered as a part of the better human condition by most governments of our time. Politicians always have, focussed on the tangible issues of the physical social structure while being oblivious to the fact that such a framework can be no more useful in improving the human condition than is the altruistic value of the foundation on which it is built. In this paper, the existing democratic political system has been thoroughly analyzed in accordance with the seerah of our beloved messengerﷺ.

Marine Debris on Small Islands: Insights from an Educational Outreach Program in the Spermonde Archipelago, Indonesia

Marine debris is a global environmental problem especially apparent on small islands throughout the world. We implemented an educational outreach program to engage primary and secondary students in the scientific process using the tangible issue of marine debris on a typical small island in Indonesia (Barrang Lompo, Spermonde Islands, South Sulawesi). Over a three-year period, students conducted systematic sampling of debris on their island's beaches. They quantified the enormity of the debris problem, discussed data, and compared experiences with partner schools in California. The program inspired a unique, local perspective on marine debris that includes greater awareness of human health impacts as well as a need for realistic solutions to this problem faced by small islands.

Estimating scour below inverted siphon structures using stochastic and soft computing approaches

This paper uses nonlinear regression, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Genetic Programming (GP) approaches for predicting an important tangible issue i.e. scours dimensions downstream of inverted siphon structures. Dimensional analysis and nonlinear regression-based equations was proposed for estimation of maximum scour depth, location of the scour hole, location and height of the dune downstream of the structures. In addition, The GP-based formulation results are compared with experimental results and other accurate equations. The results analysis showed that the equations derived from Forward Stepwise nonlinear regression method have correlation coefficient of R2=0.962 , 0.971 and 0.991 respectively. This correlates the relative parameter of maximum scour depth (s/z) in comparison with the genetic programming (GP) model and artificial neural network (ANN) model. Furthermore, the slope of the fitted line extracted from computations and observations for dimensionless parameters generally presents a new achievement for sediment engineering and scientific community, indicating the superiority of artificial neural network (ANN) model