Type Of Contract Research Articles

Energy storage device sizing and energy management in building‐applied photovoltaic systems considering battery degradation

AbstractThis study aims to develop an optimization strategy for determining the optimal type and capacity of batteries in a building‐applied photovoltaic system, taking into account battery degradation, consumption profiles, and regional solar irradiation. Key performance indicators such as peak shaving, savings, net present value, self‐consumption, return on investment, and payback period are examined. The best trade‐off among these indicators is determined using the fuzzy decision‐making method. A study was conducted using real data from Kpenergy Company, focusing on a building with a 50 kW photovoltaic system located in Stockholm. Three cases were examined in MATLAB software, each categorized based on the type of contract between the utility (Vattenfall Company) and the subscriber. The results of these case studies highlight the effectiveness of the proposed optimization approach. Using the proposed approach, optimal batteries are determined, minimizing subscriber costs while maximizing profit.

Experimental study and comprehensive analysis of leakage characteristics of the casing flange of an aero-engine

Leakage at the casing flange in aero-engines can reduce the engine performance and endanger the normal operation of the whole aircraft. An experimental system is designed in this paper to investigate the influence of loaded parameters and structural parameters on the sealing characteristics of the casing flange in aero-engines. The system includes an experimental table subsystem, a hydraulic subsystem, an inflation and leakage measurement subsystem and an experimental data acquisition subsystem. The results show that the gas pressure has a greater influence compared to the axial force. When the gas pressure rises from 0.2 MPa to 0.5 MPa, the leakage volume increases from about 9 L/min to about 34 L/min. Among the structural parameters, the number of bolts has the greatest influence, followed by the number of layers, and the surface roughness has the least influence, with the three influencing parameters not being mutually exclusive. The benefits of improving the structural parameters to reduce the leakage volume all increase with the rise of gas pressure. The leakage volume of experiment parts with 48 bolts arranged on the 2-layer casing flange with surface roughness 1.6 and 3.2 are taken as two sets of the contract type data and fitted by the nested Genetic Algorithm. The fitted results indicate that increase of surface roughness from 1.6 to 3.2 will result in an increase of 26 L/min in the leakage volume. The conclusions from the paper can provide guidance suggestions for the sealing design of the aero-engine casing.

The characteristics of the contract regarding the payment of the maintenance pension compared to the annuity contract

In the content of this article, I have presented the legal features of the contract regarding the payment of the maintenance pension in a comparative aspect compared to those of the annuity contract. Both in the case of the contract regarding the payment of the maintenance pension and in the case of the annuity, the parties to the contract are natural persons, who have full exercise capacity, parties to the contract are natural persons, who have the capacity to exercise, respectively parties to the annuity contract can also be legal persons. In the first case, the object of the contract is the maintenance of the creditor who is always related to the debtor of the obligation, while in the case of the annuity contract, the relationship is not an essential condition of the legal relationship of maintenance. It should be noted that both types of contracts are regulated in civil law, so that execution, modification, termination and declaration of nullity are carried out in accordance with the provisions of the Civil Code. The selection of the maintenance pension payment contract or the annuity contract is not optional, emerging from the limited circle of subjects regarding the maintenance obligation regulated by the Family Code.

Investigation for the Differences of Futures Trading in China and United States

Futures trading is a financial mechanism whose key role is to allow buyers and sellers to speculate on the future prices of commodities and financial instruments. One of the fascinating aspects of this field is that the attitude and enthusiasm for futures trading varies from country to country. The main thrust of this article is focused on discussing the differences in futures trading between China and the United States. The article will explore the historical, cultural, and most importantly, regulatory aspects of the characteristics with the aim of revealing the reasons behind the relatively low enthusiasm for futures trading in China and the high enthusiasm in the United States. These factors mainly encompass the evolution of futures trading, contract types, duration, trading mechanisms, and regulatory structures. The weakness of this paper is that it does not examine a specific futures market or commodity in detail, but only describes the overall trend between countries, which does not form a tight structure.

부동산 거래에서의 가계약에 관한 연구

In transaction practice, cases where a provisional contract is concluded first in the process of concluding a real estate sale or lease contract are not rare. However, not only is there no law governing provisional contracts, but also neither theories nor precedents have yet provided a consistent explanation of the concept and content of provisional contracts. Therefore, legal issues surrounding provisional contracts are still causing confusions. Diverse problems are occurring in relation to provisional contracts such as the question of when the main contract has been concluded in cases where the main contract has been concluded after the provisional contract had been concluded, whether the legal binding force of provisional contracts can be acknowledged, and whether the provisional contract deposit paid should be refunded when the provisional contract has been canceled by one party unilaterally, for example. In order to solve such problems, various opinions have been asserted such as the argument that the types in which the expression provisional contract is used should be distinguished and the legal principles appropriate for each type should be considered, the argument proposing that a standard provisional contract for concluding a provisional contract should be prepared, presented, and used, and the argument that civil law regulations should be newly established to govern provisional contracts. However, it is difficult to view that such studies have resolved all the complex issues surrounding provisional contracts.
 In practice, there are various types of contracts concluded under the name of provisional contracts. Even cases acknowledged by precedents include ① cases where the provisional contract is a contract that has no difference in substance from the main contract or is a conditional contract; ② cases where the provisional contract has the nature of a reservation that imposes an obligation to conclude the main contract on one or both parties in the future; and ③ cases where the provisional contract was prepared as a basis for future negotiations and has the nature of a matter of consultation that are expected to be revised through future negotiations. These are viewed to be the difficult part of studies on provisional contracts. That is, all the various types of contracts concluded under the name of provisional contracts are recognized as a type of provisional contracts and it is sought to resolve all cases together. However, for legal relationships where the contents of the regulations can already be understood through existing explanations, such as reservations or conditional contracts, for example, it cannot be said that separate regulations are necessary just because the name provisional contract is used. That is, in order to provide effective standards for resolution of disputes related to provisional contracts, it is necessary to limit the concept of provisional contracts to a certain form. In this article, the meaning of provisional contracts in real estate transactions was understood from the perspective as such and then the legal relationship of provisional contracts was analyzed from the perspective that provisional contracts are temporary contracts concluded before the main contracts are concluded.

The Agreements on Mutual Support of Subjects of Family Relations in Uzbekistan

The article analyzes the role, importance, and types of family contracts in the family legislation of the Republic of Uzbekistan. The concept and legal nature of an agreement on the payment of alimony are considered in the system of family contracts. At the same time, proposals are made on the issues of mutual support among family members.

Health Status, Type of Contract and Labour Force Participation.

Health status, type of contract, education and age might affect labour force participation (LFP). We investigated possible factors associated with LFP among European countries. European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data of 149,798 individuals were used and the odds ratios were calculated in logistic regression analyses. LFP rates were higher among those in good health. Self-perceived poor health frequencies were higher in people with temporary contracts than in those with permanent contracts in Bulgaria, Finland, and Hungary, while they were lower in Republic of Serbia. Multivariate analyses revealed that having temporary contract, poor health, oldest age group, and lower educational level were associated with lower probability of being in paid employment in the total study population. Poor health was stronger driver of lower LFP than temporary contracts in Austria, Hungary, Iceland, Netherlands. Temporary contracts were stronger driver of lower LFP than poor health in Greece, Spain, Finland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia and total study population. Both poor health and temporary contracts were associated with lower LFP. The magnitude of these associations varied among countries. Worker's health status differed by type of contract in Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland and Serbia.

Dominant Smart Contracts Based on Major Bargaining Solutions

We consider a situation in which two parties have concluded an efficient contract corresponding to one major bargaining solution. After the parties have agreed on one particular contract, an unanticipated shock may change the contract outcomes in a way that benefits one party but harms the other party. If this happens, they have the option to either stay with the original exchange contract or adjust some contract parameters such as the price. We propose a model to perform such adjustments automatically, to obtain the same bargaining solution as in the initial contract under the restriction that the new contract dominates the outcomes of the original contract. We study several bargaining solutions within this general framework. These bargaining solutions offer various sharing rules to distribute the benefit between the parties. To reflect practical considerations, we only consider adjustments made via one contract parameter (the price), while all other parameters result from the original contract and the random shock. To evaluate the efficiency of the proposed approach, we also compare it to a full re-negotiation scenario, in which all parameters can be modified within the boundaries resulting after the random shock. However, waiting and re-negotiation might be costly compared to the situation when the smart contract executes the adjustment automatically. Therefore, the automatic adjustment might be more efficient compared to the other types of contracts. We present several numerical examples and run large random simulations, which we also check statistically.

Influence of the practice of physical exercise and healthy eating on the Vigour of university lectures

IntroductionVigour at work is characterized by high levels of energy and high desire to make an effort at work. This article is the result of a research carried out with university teachers in Spain whose main objective is to show what type and frequency of physical exercise and diet influence Vigour.MethodsThe sample consisted of 121 subjects, 62% of whom were women and 37.2% men. A questionnaire was administered to collect information on sociodemographic data, physical exercise habits, eating habits and Vigour at work. Cross-tabulations of the dimensions of Vigour with sex, age and type of contract offered were performed. Spearman correlations and Correspondence Analysis are also carried out to provide information on the intensity and type of relationships between the Vigour dimensions. Finally, the influence of the frequency of physical exercise and diet on Total Vigour is investigated.ResultsThe results show that the relationships between the dimensions are very strong (sig = 0.001). In addition, the practice of moderate-high intensity physical exercise and maintaining a good adherence to the Mediterranean Diet is related to high levels of Total Vigour (F = 7.955; sig = 0.006). As for the influence of the sociodemographic variables used, significant differences were only observed in the Physical Strength dimension for sex (X2 = 6.173; p = 0.046) and age (X2 = 9.449; p = 0.051) and, with respect to the type of contract, in Emotional Energy (X2 = 19.487; p < 0.001).Discusión and conclusionsThe main conclusions of our study show that practicing physical exercise of medium-high intensity four hours or more per week and a high adherence to the MD is more related to high Vigour levels than just eating well or just practicing exercise. And more studies are needed on the influence of sociodemographic variables on Vigour and its different dimensions.

Systematic review on contract-based safety assurance and guidance for future research

The safety requirements are often described via specifications called contracts. To verify that the system fulfils certain safety requirements, for instance, in the assume-guarantee contract specification, the key safety indicators are organized, so that if certain assumptions hold then the respective behaviour is guaranteed. Safety contracts provide a means of exposing potential incompatibilities early in the development process, selecting components to reuse, certifying systems, and identifying uncertainty sources during the operational phase. There exist several studies on contract-based safety assurance, however, there is not any systematic study in this field. For this, a first Systematic Literature Review (SLR) is carried out to obtain an overview of the various contract-based safety assurance concepts, problems, proposed solutions, and their usefulness. In our study, the identification and selection of the primary studies were based on a well-planned search strategy. The search process identified a total of 2881 studies published between 1969 and 2021, out of which 66 studies were selected through a multi-stage process according to our predefined SLR protocol. This SLR aims to highlight the state-of-the-art of contract-based safety assurance and identify potential gaps for future research. Based on research topics in selected studies, we identified the following main categories: contract type, analysis techniques for system safety, compliance with standards, development stage, domain, level of automation, type of study and evaluation, and tool support. The findings of the systematic review not only highlight that the contracts are even more important for advanced safety-critical systems but also strategies to exploit their full potential should be considered in future studies. The suggestions revealed for future research include the usage of contracts for adapting new behaviour, defining system boundaries, interacting with other systems, managing risk during operation, dynamic/runtime safety assurance, and integration of safety with security.

Starting flexible, always flexible? The relation of early temporary employment and young workers employment trajectories in the Netherlands

Using register data from Statistics Netherlands (2009–2019), this paper examines whether the first employment contract is related to early career outcomes for a cohort of young workers who entered the Dutch labour market in the period from late 2009–2013. Instead of looking at the timing of isolated transitions between employment states, 6-year-long trajectories are considered to identify differences in early career paths. Applying a Mixture Hidden Markov Model, eight distinct states of employment quality characterized by different contract types and incomes are identified. Transitions between these employment states reveal four early career patterns that differ according to their upward and downward mobility. Our results show that entering the labour market with a permanent contract does not necessarily lead to immediate wage growth, but provides a safeguard against volatile careers with frequent transitions in and out of employment. While entering the labour market with a fixed-term contract facilitates upward mobility, on-call and temporary agency work early in the career may negatively affect long-term labour market integration.

The use of innovative contracts to provide agri-environmental public goods: Comparing attitudes between Ireland and other European countries

Results-based, collective action, value chain, and land tenure contracts are means to improve the management of agri-environmental public goods. The objective of this paper is to assess the understandability, applicability, and perceived economic benefit of each of these contract types by land managers and stakeholders in twelve European countries, with a special emphasis on Ireland. Using survey data, we find that most land managers agree that results-based contracts are understandable, applicable to their farm, and economically beneficial. A lower portion of land managers in Ireland than other European countries agree that value chain and land tenure contracts are understandable or applicable to their farms. The results suggest that greater efforts are required to promote collective action contracts across Europe as they are paramount to the management of public goods. To increase the adoption of innovative contracts, providing financial certainty and autonomy should be prioritized by policymakers, particularly in Ireland.

How Does the Statutory Retirement Age Affect Older workers’ Employment in Relation to Individual and Work‐Related Factors?

ABSTRACT Policies aimed at increasing employment among older people often focus on the statutory retirement age. Taking into account the characteristics of workers and work-related factors, we examine the impact of reaching the statutory retirement age on continuing employment. In addition to the use of survival trees, we propose a novel method to predict the probability of staying in employment based on an ensemble of survival trees. We focus on Poland as an example of a European country with a particularly low share of older workers in the labor force. Moreover, reform was carried out in Poland in 2017, lowering the previously raised pension eligibility age. Like other EU countries, pension eligibility in Poland starts after reaching the statutory retirement age. Our results suggest that the timing of retirement is determined by the statutory retirement age to a limited extent compared to other factors. In the case of women, a match of education and occupation, the employment sector, and holding a managerial position had a greater impact on continuing employment than reaching retirement age. In the case of men, the type of job contract had the greatest impact on continuing employment. Our findings indicate that the policies and initiatives aimed at extending working life should pay more attention to work-related factors and gender differences in employment.

Integrated artificial and deep neural networks with time series to predict the ratio of the low bid to owner estimate

PurposeThe variance between the winning bid and the owner's estimated cost (OEC) is one of the construction management risks in the pre-tendering phase. The study aims to enhance the quality of the owner's estimation for predicting precisely the contract cost at the pre-tendering phase and avoiding future issues that arise through the construction phase.Design/methodology/approachThis paper integrated artificial neural networks (ANN), deep neural networks (DNN) and time series (TS) techniques to estimate the ratio of a low bid to the OEC (R) for different size contracts and three types of contracts (building, electric and mechanic) accurately based on 94 contracts from King Saud University. The ANN and DNN models were evaluated using mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), mean sum square error (MSSE) and root mean sums square error (RMSSE).FindingsThe main finding is that the ANN provides high accuracy with MAPE, MSSE and RMSSE a 2.94%, 0.0015 and 0.039, respectively. The DNN's precision was high, with an RMSSE of 0.15 on average.Practical implicationsThe owner and consultant are expected to use the study's findings to create more accuracy of the owner's estimate and decrease the difference between the owner's estimate and the lowest submitted offer for better decision-making.Originality/valueThis study fills the knowledge gap by developing an ANN model to handle missing TS data and forecasting the difference between a low bid and an OEC at the pre-tendering phase.

Team Size and Composition in Home Healthcare: Quantitative Insights and Six Model-Based Principles.

The aim of this constructive study was to develop model-based principles to provide guidance to managers and policy makers when making decisions about team size and composition in the context of home healthcare. Six model-based principles were developed based on extensive data analysis and in close interaction with practice. In particular, the principles involve insights in capacity planning, travel time, available effective capacity, contract types, and team manageability. The principles are formalized in terms of elementary mathematical models that capture the essence of decision-making. Numerical results based on real-life scenarios reveal that efficiency improves with team size, albeit more prominently for smaller teams due to diminishing returns. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the complexity of managing and coordinating a team becomes increasingly more difficult as team size grows. An estimate for travel time is provided given the size and territory of a team, as well as an upper bound for the fraction of full-time contracts, if split shifts are to be avoided. Overall, it can be concluded that an ideally sized team should serve (at least) around a few hundreds care hours per week.

Non-standard employment and COVID-19 testing in South Korean workers

ObjectivesSARS-CoV-2 testing has been critical in monitoring and containing the COVID-19 pandemic, but there is a dearth of studies on how individuals’ adherence to testing varies according to their working conditions. This study aimed to investigate the association between the type of employment contract and COVID-19 testing among wage workers in South Korea. Study designWe used a nationally representative sample of employees aged 20–65 years collected from March 24 to 31, 2022. To focus on individual responses when the test was recommended, our sample consisted of 1266 participants who had experienced symptoms of COVID-19 or had been exposed to a confirmed case in the household. MethodsWe used multivariate logistic regression to estimate the association between the odds of receiving a PCR test and the type of employment contract while controlling for other potential covariates. ResultsThe percentage of participants who had a SARS-CoV-2 PCR test was 77.8%. After adjusting for all potential covariates, daily workers (OR = 0.35, 95% CI 0.18 to 0.70, P = 0.003) and part-time workers (OR = 0.58, 95% CI 0.39 to 0.86, P = 0.007) had significantly lower odds of being tested relative to standard workers. Other temporary or atypical workers showed no significant differences from standard workers. ConclusionOur findings suggested that individuals in the most vulnerable job positions, with less job security and working hours, exhibited a decreased inclination to undergo COVID-19 testing. More effective job retention and income support policies are required to improve compliance.

Contractor's Responsibility for a Work Contract in a Project Direct Appointment by the Commitment Making Officer (PPK) of the Regional Government Organization (OPD) (Study at the Public Works and Spatial Planning Department of Tanjungbalai City)

The Reformation era was an era of change in national and state life. The reform era began in 1998. The background to the birth of the Reform Era was the dysfunction of the wheels of government in national and state life, especially in the fields of politics, economics and law. So with the Reformation, state administrators want to make radical (fundamental) changes in these three areas. The form of contractor responsibility for a work contract in a Direct Appointment project, where basically the responsibility of the contractor (work implementer) in the work contract in all selection models (whether direct appointment or not) is the same. The cooperation contract system and payment method with contractors and terms and each month which is influenced by the form of contract for the Direct Appointment method is in the form of a Letter of Agreement. Meanwhile, the type of contract can be a Laumpsum Contract, or a Unit Price Contract, or a Combined Unit Price and Laumpsum Contract. Usually using a Combined Unit Price and Laumpsum Contract. Except for emergency work using unit price contracts. Meanwhile, the method or method of payment can be termly or monthly (certificate mountly: based on work performance). The formulation of the problem discussed is how the contractor's responsibilities regarding work contracts in projects are directly appointed by the PPK of the Tanjungbalai City Public Works and Spatial Planning Service

Translating Necessity Modality Verbs in Governmental Contracts Texts from Arabic into English

The present paper goes to discover the notion and types of contracts. Moreover, it tries to find the employment of necessity modality verbs in the governmental contract’s texts. The methodology of analysis employed in this research is Fairclough's (1989) linguistic model, which is used in the analysis and interpretation of the necessity verbs in governmental contracts texts. The Data of this study have been rendered by 15 M.A. students in the department of translation at the College of Arts, University of Tikrit. The translational model suggested by Catford (1965) is also employed.

A Survey and Implementation of Machine Learning Algorithms for Customer Churn Prediction

Estimating customer traffic is an important task for businesses because it helps them identify customers who are most likely to leave and take preventative measures to retain them by improving customer satisfaction and further increasing their own revenue. In this article, we focus on developing a machine-learning model for predicting customer churn using historical customer data We performed engineering operations on the data, addressed the missing digits, coded the categorical variables, and preprocessed the data before evaluating it using a variety of performance indicators, including accuracy, precision, recall, f1 score, and ROC AUC_Score. Our feature significance analysis revealed that monthly fees, customer tenure, contract type, and payment method are the factors that have the most impact on forecasting customer churn. Finally, we conclude the best-performing model, the Soft Voting Classifier, implemented on the four best-performing classifiers with a good accuracy of 0.78 and a relatively better ROC AUC_Score of 0.82.

Comparing time and cost performance of DBB and DB public construction projects in Kuwait

Kuwait is an enormous construction site as many vital public projects are under construction or in preparatory stages to achieve the vision of a New Kuwait by 2035. However, the new Public Tenders Law No. 49 of 2016 authorized the sole operation of the Design-Bid-Build (DBB) method as the delivery system method, preventing the employment of Design-Build (DB). Hence, this research undertook a comparative analysis of cost and time performance of DBB and DB public construction projects in Kuwait for the first time, marking the originality of this study. Moreover, 160 projects were collected from four government entities. Then, the total collected projects were categorized based on contract types and project sizes depending on contract cost. This research has recognized that DB has superior performance compared to DBB regarding cost growth for all collected projects, both contract types, projects of less than 300,000 KD, and projects between 300,000 and 12 million KD. No statistically significant differences between DBB and DB projects regarding schedule growth were found for all collected projects, both contract types and project sizes. Furthermore, the findings indicated that the DBB projects’ construction intensity was faster than that of DB projects with a value between 300,00 KD and 12 million KD. For projects that had a value of more than 12 million KD, the DB projects’ construction intensity was faster than that of DBB projects. Hence, it is concluded that the issue is not with the DB delivery systems themselves, but rather with the deployment of these systems.