Search

With the acceleration of urbanization process in China, the usage of sustainable green buildings is getting a great attention and significance in order to reduce energy consumption. However, there are still challenges for evaluating the performance of green buildings in China due to the lack of unified codes/standards. This paper proposes a method based on cloud model to evaluate the performance of green buildings. This method overcomes the randomness and subjectivity of fuzzy concepts to the maximum extent; on this basis, the system’s indexes including environmental–economic balance, regional social coordination, health, comfort, and green management can be established. The analytic hierarchy process and entropy weight methods are used to calculate the index weight; the cloud model is used to realize the transformation between qualitative and quantitative characteristics; and then, a mathematical evaluation model based on the cloud model is established. Finally, an empirical study is made based on a typical case in Shenzhen city, China. The findings of this research work reveal a performance index for green building created based on expert evaluations and a standard cloud yardstick created in the comprehensive cloud model. Based on the results of this manuscript, the industry can acquire benefits by suggesting effective measures that can be implemented in all stages of green buildings construction where the measurements execution and persuasive components make appraisal models for a green building. This study provides a consistent framework for researchers and other public to evaluate green buildings, and provides a solid foundation for further research and consideration basis on sustainable development and green building operation.

Special education is a natural yardstick to measure a country’s educational level and the whole civilization. China has a massive special education undertaking that develops rapidly and forms a unique system. This study used bibliometric methods to conduct a macroscopic comparative analysis of Chinese and global literature, discuss the existing problems of China’s special education, and put forward relevant recommendations accordingly. The CiteSpace V visual analysis software was used to draw the scientific knowledge map of the Chinese local database CSSCI and the global database SSCI, and the results of the map were discussed. Research conclusions: Firstly, China’s research institutions lack a macro-level cooperation network. Second, there are differences in the focus of special education objects between China and the world. This difference is mainly caused by the definition of special education objects, which may be influenced by the formulation of educational concepts and policies. Thirdly, in the reference co-citation analysis, the focus of Chinese research is narrow and generally focuses on special education teachers. This article provides implications for solving special education problems in China, and its research method provides a reference for future related research for other countries.

Background: COVID-19 has impacted Indian engineering institutions (EIs) enormously. It has tightened its knot around EIs that forced their previous half-shut shades completely down to prevent the risk of spreading COVID-19. In such a situation, fetching new enrollments on EI campuses is a difficult and challenging task, as students’ behavior and family preferences have changed drastically due to mental stress and emotions attached to them. Historically, during crisis situations, institutions have struggled to return to the normal track. Consequently, it becomes a prerequisite to examine the choice characteristics influencing the selection of EI during the COVID-19 pandemic to make it ‘normal’ for ‘new’ enrollments. The purpose of this study is to critically examine choice characteristics that affect students’ choice for EI and consequently to explore relationships between institutions’ characteristics and the suitability of EI during the COVID-19 pandemic across students’ characteristics. Quantitative research, conducted through a self-reported survey composed of a closed-ended structured questionnaire, was purposefully incorporated into the students who recently were enrolled in EIs (batch years 2020-2021) belonging to the North Maharashtra region of India. Results: The findings of this study revealed dissimilarities across students’ characteristics regarding the suitability of EIs under pandemic conditions. Regression analysis revealed that EI characteristics such as proximity, image and reputation, quality education and curriculum delivery have significantly contributed to suitability under COVID-19. At the micro level, multiple relationships were noted between EI characteristics and the suitability of EI under the pandemic across students’ characteristics. Conclusion: Bringing ‘normality’ to ‘new’ enrollments totally depends on EI’s resilience in meeting the needs of diversity in the COVID-19 pandemic situation, which repositions themselves to govern student-centric strategies instituted for the overall suitability of EI under pandemic conditions. The study has successfully demonstrated how choice characteristics can be executed to regulate the ‘suitability’ of EI under the COVID-19 pandemic for the inclusion of diversity. It is useful for policy makers and academicians to reposition EIs that fetch diversity during the pandemic. This study is the first to provide insights into the performance of choice characteristics and their relationship with the suitability of EIs under a pandemic and can be a yardstick in administering new enrollments.

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), there are new requirements for the development of education in China. In view of this, the Party and the State have proposed new opinions on the development of education around the idea of developing education with people-centered approach. In the new era, adhering to the new exposition of education to guide the reform and development of China’s education enlightens us to ensure the modernization of education, serve the major development direction of the country, and assume people’s satisfaction as the yardstick.

While infrastructure investments can have a significant impact on economic growth, they can also have a negative impact on the environmental and social aspects. As a result, there has lately been a strong trend toward assessing infrastructure projects based on their expected sustainability performance. The primary contribution of this paper is the development of a model for assessing the sustainability of infrastructure projects. 100 infrastructure sustainability factors were collected from previous research to cover the various phases of any infrastructure project. These factors were divided into the three main pillars of sustainability: economic, environmental, and social, with percentages of 50%, 30%, and 20%, respectively. A questionnaire of 100 infrastructure development experts from various sectors was conducted to rate the sustainability factors within each of the three main pillars according to their relative importance. The most important 27 factors were chosen. Another questionnaire was conducted for the 27 factors, using the AHP technique to identify the priority vectors in each of the three main pillars, as well as the selected factors within each of them. A recommended scale was created to be used as a yardstick to measure the proposed model’s input factors. For the three main pillars, three sustainability assessment models were developed. As a result, an overall sustainability assessment model was developed. With this model, the proposed infrastructure projects can be evaluated and ranked according to their expected sustainability outcomes. Consequently, decision-makers can successfully plan for the sustainable development of the infrastructure projects within certain specified boundaries and restrictions.

We consider local jurisdictions where rent-seeking administrators undertake identical infrastructure projects, choosing between two contractual arrangements: traditional procurement (TP) and public-private partnership (PPP). A yardstick competition mechanism is triggered through retrospective voters’ electoral decisions. A regime with TP in one jurisdiction and PPP in the other is likely to arise when projects are mildly lucrative and/or jurisdictions have moderate fiscal capacity. In this equilibrium, incumbents provide different levels of public services, face different re-election probabilities, and obtain different rents. By differentiating the project governance, incumbents specialize in rent extraction over time, thus hindering yardstick competition although jurisdictions are otherwise identical.

The objective of research is to understand and to examine how good is the performance of BPR Dinar Pusaka at Sidoarjo based on the use of balanced scorecard approach, especially concerning with the measurement of performance with financial perspective, customer perspective, internal business process perspective, and learning and growth perspective. Method used in this research is quantitative data analysis. Result of calculation and analysis is then used as the base for decision-making or also as the reference in making conclusion whether the performance of bank management is good or not if measured using balanced scorecard approach. This position is supported by Dahlan and Siamat, Tawaf and Tjukria, P, Kaplan and Norton, Yuwono, Sukarno, and Ichsan, Ratnawati, Mulia, Sutrisno Hadi, Husien Umar, Mulyadi, and Suharsimi Arikunto. Pursuant to the result of research, the conclusion is made as following: (1) Financial perspective at BPR Dinar Pusaka is described by the increase of the ratios of asset quality and efficiency and the decline of the ratios of capitalization, rentability and liquidity. (2) Customer perspective at BPR Dinar Pusaka is explained by the increase of customer retention and customer profitability rates and the satisfaction of saving customers and credit customers, but with the decline of customer acquisition. (3) Internal business process perspective at BPR Dinar Pusaka is indicated by the increase of receivable circulation rate, the improved timings for credit service process and saving service process, and the reduced level of uncollected receivable risk. (4) Learning and growth perspective at BPR Dinar Pusaka is reflected by the increase of employee training rate and employee satisfaction rate but with the decline of employee productivity rate.

The primary aim of this paper is to elucidate the general concept of monetary policy under Islamic Economics. Not only does the stability of but also the growth of the economy in a country strongly depends upon monetary policy implemented. Such the phenomenon also prevails in Islamic Economics in which the term is also ruled by the Holy Quran and the Hadith of the Prophet. Moreover, the Prophet issued some regulations regarding monetary, such as to adopt Dinars and as the Islamic currencies. It is noted that, however, the thing distinguishing between Islamic Economics and other economic systems the variable of interest or usury, where either the Holy Quran or the Hadith clearly states that it is banned. Due to using interest as the yardstick, the conventional monetary instruments such as Open Market Operation, Discount Rate and the likes are not considered as the monetary instruments under Islamic Economics. Therefore, Instead of interest, Islamic Economics adopts Profit Loss Sharing (PLS) system, regarded as the important part of monetary policy. Moreover, Islamic Economics has also its specific monetary standard and instruments, which are far from interest or variables, such as certificates and others.

As a traditional Chinese sport, competitive martial arts routines have a long history. The competition rules are the unified norms and standards formulated for sports competitions. They are a yardstick for referees to judge the technical level and competitive ability of athletes and an essential basis for coaches during training. In particular, the new rules increase the difficulty of martial arts routines training and score, improve the balance movement of various groups, highlight the action specifications, increase the proportion of the score, and strengthen the scoring measures for the performance level. Subsequently, this puts higher requirements for the exceptional technical level of routine athletes. Therefore, it is vital to formulate scientific martial arts systematic training methods. This paper considers the above problem and current popular artificial intelligence technology and constructs a neural network algorithm to solve it. In addition, since lactic acid is a good monitoring indicator of the training load intensity and effect of martial arts routine exercises, this article also considers extensive lactate measurement data to construct martial arts systematic training methods. Through simulations, our experimental verification and the obtained results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

The current study aims to reveal the relationship between future concern Self-control in people with HIV and those with no staff In the profession of collecting, classifying and recycling medical waste as you seek To expose the differences between future anxiety and self-control Depending on the degree of injury To achieve these objectives, the comparative, related descriptive approach was used where Use statistical methods —Test "T" —the Pearson correlation coefficient * based on sample (n= 100) Medical waste and recycling workers from a facility Nasser Cairo Using the measure of future concern from the researchers The yardstick of self-control by the researcher The economic, social, and cultural scale, and the Reven IQ test The results of the study have resulted in a negative correlation between future anxiety and self-control, indicating that the more anxiety the future becomes, the less self-insufficiency of medical waste workers and their recycling The differences between future anxiety and the degree of injury are particularly particular The results have resulted in statistically significant differences in The degree of injury to the injured The differences between self-control and degree of injury have been lost The results have resulted in statistically significant differences in degree Injury to the benefit of the uninjured

In this study, we argue that a historical background of the region matters in tax mimicking and yardstick competition as a matter of principle. We seek to determine factors supporting the policy of the high local property tax in the Czech Republic. Based on the statistical and spatial data of 6,258 municipalities between 2009 and 2019, the results show that the municipalities burdened by large industrial facilities, as well as municipalities in the functional urban areas (FUAs), apply the policy of higher property taxation twice frequently than the rest. On the other hand, the industrial stimuli keep enfeebling after 2010, and the number of local governments preferring high property taxation is variegated across different FUAs. The causal analysis based on Granger’s approach concludes an existence of cumulative effects of both industry and the FUAs, which push the municipalities with large industrial facilities located within an FUA to increase the property taxes. From the mimicking point of view, we found that mimicking policy is an important phenomenon among the municipalities of Czech Republic; however, it has different impacts on both stimuli (Industry and FUA). The analysis suggests that it rather incites the municipalities within the FUA to increase the local property taxes. V této studii tvrdíme, že historické zázemí regionu má zásadní význam v daňové politice místních samospráv. Snažíme se určit faktory, které podporují politiku místního zdanění nemovitostí v České republice. Na základě statistických a prostorových údajů 6 258 obcí v letech 2009 až 2019 výsledky ukazují, že obce zatížené velkými průmyslovými zařízeními i obce ve funkčních městských oblastech (FUA) uplatňují politiku vyššího zdanění nemovitostí dvakrát častěji než ostatní. Na druhou stranu průmyslové stimuly po roce 2010 slábnou a počet místních samospráv, které dávají přednost vysokému zdanění nemovitostí, se liší v různých FUA. Analýza kauzality založená na Grangerově přístupu dospívá k závěru o existenci kumulativních účinků jak průmyslu, tak FUA, které tlačí obce s velkými průmyslovými zařízeními nacházejícími se v rámci FUA ke zvýšení majetkových daní. Z hlediska napodobování jsme zjistili, že napodobovací politika je významným fenoménem mezi obcemi České republiky; má však různé dopady na oba podněty (Průmysl a FUA). Analýza naznačuje, že spíše podněcuje obce v rámci FUA ke zvýšení místních daní z nemovitostí.

This paper exploits the political cycle of Italian municipalities to test for the presence of strategic interactions in the collection of local taxation. The revenue from the personal income tax surcharge—a tax tool of low salience—is (positively) plagued by political manipulation and is found to be a strategic complement, but only when mayors run for re-election, a finding consistent with the yardstick competition hypothesis. More salient fiscal tools, such as property tax and user fees and charges, are also (negatively) affected by budget cycles, but they do not appear to be spatially correlated.

PurposeHigher education management institutions play a vibrant role in imparting managerial skills to the students to face the corporate world. Performance evaluation of such institutions is mandate to ensure the outcome quality. To establish this, the present research explored the critical performance indicators of management institutions using the balanced scorecard (BSC) approach.Design/methodology/approachThis research explored the critical performance indicators of public, private and standalone management institutions in India. Data were collected from the representative sample of all the stakeholders in those management institutions. A specific vision was created and a systematic procedure was employed to arrive at the objectives, measures and metrics of the scorecard specific to the vision. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to perform analysis on the collected data. For the objectives and measures that evolved from confirmatory factor analysis, metrics were formulated based on the expert opinion.FindingsThe study resulted in 16 objectives, 46 measures and 54 metrics encompassing all the four perspectives of BSC. This paper has contributed a concrete, concise, comprehensive and context specific framework.Research limitations/implicationsThe nature of the BSC framework paves the way for continuous assessment and eventually helps the institutions to attain sustainable growth. This research contributes to the literature of balanced scorecard and also to the performance assessment of the management institutions.Originality/valueBSC-based benchmarking is a unique contribution to the academia of management education to precisely measure the performance of institutions. The model comprehensively includes the indicators from all the perspectives of stakeholders in terms of objectives, measures and metrics, thus proposing a holistic assessment.

Considering the possibility of finding a gap and a room for improvement, so much have been written about liquidity and performance. Notwithstanding, the emphasis has been on profitability as a yardstick for performance and little has been done on other areas of performance measurement. The emphasis has also been more on various economic sectors with the exception of the manufacturing industry. This paper intends to look at the impact, if any, of liquidity provision and availability on Nigeria’s manufacturing firm’s performance from the perspective of Economic Value Added (EVA). Economic value-adding is beyond just profitability or liquidity. The firm's value to the stakeholders, its sustainability and long-term values are defined. The study would apply liquidity theories, profitability and the economic value-added theories as it applies to a manufacturing firm in a developing economy like Nigeria. On its methodology, the article data is obtained from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators-WDI and then a regression analysis will be run on the data using the SPSS software and then an analysis of the results of the regression. The last section of the article would conclude and make recommendations from the study outcome and the empirical analysis with respect to the theories.

Building their paper around long-standing critics of the EU capital maintenance regime and the distribution rules thereof, the authors consider introducing additional instruments for creditor protection into Croatian company law, where special regard is paid to the ‘solvency test’. Given the scope and aim of the EU Codification Directive, the paper seeks to find out whether and to what extent such a test could be introduced into Croatian law. The paper argues that the EU regime allows the introduction of the solvency test into Croatian law on public limited companies as a distribution test complementary to the two-fold ‘balance sheet test’ leaving, however, entirely to the Croatian legislator to decide about the place of the solvency test in private limited companies. Alongside the examination of legal sources and literature, the authors pursue their research by employing the systematic and teleological analysis of distribution rules under the Croatian Companies’ Act. That act has already introduced the ‘circumstances test’ as a yardstick for the assessment of the validity of the decision to withhold dividend payment. After the introduction, the second part of the paper considers the concept of legal capital and provides an overview of potentially more efficient means of creditor protection. The third part analyses the Croatian legal capital regime, aiming at revisiting it in light of the solvency test. This part examines various solvency tests so as to decide which one could align with the Croatian distribution rules. The fourth part summarizes and concludes the paper.

Cost-effectiveness evaluations play an important role in recommendations for use of pediatric vaccines that are set forth by the US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). The fact that these evaluations are undertaken and accorded weight suggests that a critical value for designating pediatric vaccines as cost-effective (or not) must exist. For recommended pediatric vaccines, however, reported incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) have varied greatly, and there does not appear to be an explicit threshold used by the ACIP to define how much is too much to pay for the prevention of communicable diseases in children. Further complicating this issue is the fact that conventional ICER thresholds-expressed in terms of cost per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) gained-accord value only to length and quality of life and may not reflect our preferences as individuals or a society. For example, risk, an important attribute of many healthcare decisions, is ignored by the QALY model, as is the distribution of health benefits across different members of society. Are we indeed indifferent about risk and do we really believe that the value of disease prevention in children should be measured by the same "yardstick" as that for older adults? Accordingly, do we really believe that "a QALY is a QALY"? These issues, which are reviewed and discussed in this article, are more than just of theoretical interest; the answers impact how public health policy is determined, which impacts the lives and well-being of entire populations as well as the budgets of payers.

Landslides are amongst the most damaging natural hazards in Malaysia. The study of landslides has drawn nationwide attention mainly due to increasing awareness of the socio-economic impact of landslides, as well as the increasing pressure of urbanization. Landslide Hazard Identification (LHI) is part of the process used to evaluate if any particular situation, item, thing, etc. may have the potential to cause harm. The description of LHI should include the location, volume (or area), classification and velocity of the potential landslides and any resultant detached material, and the probability of their occurrence within a given period of time. In this paper, we present the results of the measurement for the subsurface resistivity within by using the pole-dipole electrode array and present the 2D view of each resistivity profile. The result presented successfully detect the dominant layer consists of interbedded sandstone and shale of the Crocker Formation with highly weathered. This both layers have high porosity and potential to contain high water content which can trigger landslide to occur. Besides that, there are several boulders zone (weathered to fresh rock) that can be found at the top of the subsurface profile at about 1.5m to 15m in depth. The bedrock layer was estimated to be found at 4m to 32.5m in depth from the original ground and one possible fault line that had been identified. This fault line believed plays a role in the occurrence of landslide in which rock materials have lower strength compared to surrounding rocks. High density of fault means lower stability. Therefore the faut line have been regarded as a critical factor in triggering landslide in the study area. The results of these study findings are expected to be used as uniform guidelines and principles are very useful and have integrity in providing coordination of standards or policies for each planning activities for new development in the future. As a result of the lack of concern for the developer of the concept of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) or balancing and control of environmental health, the results of this study can also be used as a yardstick to party developers who intend to develop a high ground and hillside in deciding whether to continuing development planning or not.

India is one of the largest countries in terms of geographical size, which requires efficient means for long-distance transportation. Public transport, being the primary mode of transport, remains a powerful yardstick to measure the overall development of a nation. Among the various modes of transport, Railways are one of the biggest modes of passenger transport in the world. The Railway passenger services face long term competitive threats from airlines, luxury buses, personalized transport, and improved public transport. To compete with other modes of transport, it is inevitable for railways to accelerate the growth of passenger’s origination. It is essential for the railway authorities to know the opinion of the passengers regarding the services offered to them to make future policies and provisions. Having this drive in mind, the researchers have undertaken a study about the services provided by the Indian Railways along with its objectives to analyze the passengers’ preferences, satisfaction, limitations, and perceptions towards the same. Every aspect related to railway services like ticket availability, quality of travel, employee behavior, safety, timing, and other relevant aspects is analyzed at different levels of the research. As passenger satisfaction is chosen to be the concept for this research, elements that allow passengers to feel satisfied with offered services are also mentioned in the theoretical part. The scope of this project is limited to passengers of Madurai city.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to compare the classification learning ability of our algorithm based on boosted support vector machine (B-SVM), against other classification techniques in predicting the credit ratings of banks. The key feature of this study is the usage of an imbalanced dataset (in the response variable/rating) with a smaller number of observations (number of banks).Design/methodology/approachIn general, datasets in banking sector are small and imbalanced too. In this study, 23 Scheduled Commercial Banks (SCBs) have been chosen (in India), and their corresponding corporate ratings have been collated from the Indian subsidiary of reputed global rating agency. The top management of the rating agency provided 12 input (quantitative) variables that are considered essential for rating a bank within India. In order to overcome the challenge of dataset being imbalanced and having small number of observations, this study uses an algorithm, namely “Modified Boosted Support Vector Machines” (MBSVMs) proposed by Punniyamoorthy Murugesan and Sundar Rengasamy. This study also compares the classification ability of the aforementioned algorithm against other classification techniques such as multi-class SVM, back propagation neural networks, multi-class linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and k-nearest neighbors (k-NN) classification, on the basis of geometric mean (GM).FindingsThe performances of each algorithm have been compared based on one metric—the geometric mean, also known as GMean (GM). This metric typically indicates the class-wise sensitivity by using the values of products. The findings of the study prove that the proposed MBSVM technique outperforms the other techniques.Research limitations/implicationsThis study provides an algorithm to predict ratings of banks where the dataset is small and imbalanced. One of the limitations of this research study is that subjective factors have not been included in our model; the sole focus is on the results generated by the models (driven by quantitative parameters). In future, studies may be conducted which may include subjective parameters (proxied by relevant and quantifiable variables).Practical implicationsVarious stakeholders such as investors, regulators and central banks can predict the credit ratings of banks by themselves, by inputting appropriate data to the model.Originality/valueIn the process of rating banks, the usage of an imbalanced dataset can lessen the performance of the soft-computing techniques. In order to overcome this, the authors have come up with a novel classification approach based on “MBSVMs”, which can be used as a yardstick for such imbalanced datasets. For this purpose, through primary research, 12 features have been identified that are considered essential by the credit rating agencies.

The Corona pandemic has created a push towards digitization in a number of fields, not least in the public sector including democratic processes. This of course includes an increased interest in e-voting via the Internet. The Council of Europe has a long-standing history of work in the field including two Recommendations – (2004)11 and (2017)5 – which have become the de facto yardstick against which every e-voting system is measured. Rec(2017)5 builds on a decade of experience with e-voting and particularly strengthens two concepts important in any electronic voting system: Voting secrecy and auditability/verifiability. This has distinct implications for the design of e-voting protocols. The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact on what arguably are the most popular voting protocol families, envelope and token protocols. How does the modified Recommendation impact on the viability of protocols and protocol design? The paper first presents the Council of Europe Recommendation and the technical issues it addresses. Then a model is introduced to assess a voting protocol against the Recommendation; a typical envelope and a token protocol are assessed in view of the model and finally the two assessments are compared including policy recommendations for a path to e-voting implementation.

In recent judgments on species protection and waste, the Court of Justice has taken up a very restrictive concept to specify the precautionary principle, which – in this form – it had so far only applied to site protection under the Habitats Directive. According to this concept, certain activities can only be permitted if there is no reasonable scientific doubt that they will not cause harm. This paper will present the respective decisions and then discuss their practical consequences, the context of complex assessments, proportionality and the possible transfer of this line of jurisprudence to other provisions on permits.

Since its inception at the Bath Film Festival 2014, the ‘F-Rating’ has been adopted as a yardstick to foster equitable representation of women in film. The rise of a new sub-genre of Hindi ‘Indie’ cinema (Devasundaram, 2016, 2018) has been augmented by an array of bona fide Female-rated independent films. These films fulfil the triune criteria for F-Rating, featuring women both behind and in front of the camera – as directors, actors and scriptwriters. I argue that these distinct female voices in new independent Hindi cinema have engendered discursive filmic spaces of resistance – alternative articulations that transgress India’s patriarchal national master narrative. Indian cinema thus far has been presided over by Bollywood’s hegemonic bastion of male-dominated discourses. The mainstream industry continues to propagate gender-based wage disparity and hypersexualised representations of the female body via the serialised song and dance spectacle of the ‘item number’. The increasing presence of F-Rated Hindi films on the international film festival circuit and through wider releases, gestures towards these films’ melding of the global and local. Drawing on my curation work with the UK Asian Film Festival (UKAFF) and discursive analyses of seminal F-Rated films, this essay highlights the pivotal role played by F-Rated Hindi Indie films in opening up transdiscursive dimensions and creating national and global conversations around issues of gender inequities in India.

In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany, the integration of product-evaluating certificates and reports ( Gutachten) into advertisements triggered repeated condemnations of “advertisement- Gutachten” ( Reklamegutachten), and scientists and science administrators introduced various restrictions to prevent the appearance of such documents. At the same time, the provision of Gutachten to private individuals and firms seemed crucial to the success of many private and public laboratories. Some chemical and other professionals, moreover, argued that the authoring and use of Reklamegutachten could represent a “scientific” and, therefore, ethical practice. By examining the contested history of the advertisement- Gutachten, this article reveals how a previously tolerated knowledge service lost its legitimacy in a particular place and period of time, and highlights the challenges of eliminating this practice or restoring its legitimacy afterward. The article also explores how professional scientists’ approaches to maintaining a reputation for integrity in the face of commercial and competitive pressures related to the better-known efforts of professionals in other fields, particularly the medical. I emphasize that, in determining whether a Gutachten qualified as scientific, the nature and transparency of the underlying research process was only one of the criteria that were considered, and often not the most significant yardstick. At the same time, however, ideas about the personal and professional/institutional integrity of providers of Gutachten were inextricably connected with assessments of the honesty and objectivity of their research.

Under the impetus of New Public Management (NPM) reforms, a fragile European healthcare union has slowly emerged and commonalities in patients’ rights have appeared across the EU. In the case of Fr...

The ruggedness of emerging single adaptive approach that performs well in all types of operating conditions has led to the development of composite adaptive strategy. In this regard, the fusion of particular decisions of single adaptive schemes through suitable fusion rules can provide a better final detection. Particularly, the fusion of cell-averaging (CA), ordered statistics (OS) and trimmed-mean (TM) procedures can enhance the overall detection performance. Our goal in this paper is to analyze this developed model when the operating environment is heterogeneous. A χ2-distribution with two- and four-degrees of freedom is assumed for the fluctuation of primary and secondary extraneous targets. A closed form processor performance is derived for single pulse detection. The results show that for the non-homogeneous background the new approach is more practical. Particularly in multitarget situations, it exhibits higher robustness as compared to the CA, OS, or TM architectures. Additionally, the novel strategy has a homogeneous performance that surpasses performance of the classical Neyman-Pearson (N-P) detector, which can be employed as a yardstick for the analysis of different techniques in the CFAR world.

The first results of the comparative method application for fixing regulated retail markups of guaranteeing electricity suppliers in Russia have been analyzed. The goal of the comparative method adoption is the improvement of guaranteeing electricity supplier’s effectiveness. Analysis of the legislation displayed, that the comparative method normalizes the guaranteeing electricity supplier’s yardstick revenue rates and limits the retail markups increase factors, mainly by the consumer price index. However, new methodology application during the transition period led to outstripping inflation growth rate of guaranteeing electricity supplier’s retail markups. It has been identified, that in most Russian regions it was caused by the base period costs diminishing and (or) ‘yardstick cost’ limits inflating. It has been assumed, that after transition period expiry default electricity supplier’s retail markups growth ratio will be comparable to the consumer price index rate.

Primary and secondary education, provided by the local governments in China, plays an important role in attracting talented migrants. The race for talent and the education assessment from the top e...

This chapter aims to provide snapshots of Africa’s contributions to world civilization. Africans have contributed significantly to global history, however, much of it has been denied or suppressed by western gatekeepers. Africa’s precolonial history showed the existence of several civilizations. Western achievements in the fields of science and technology became a yardstick to measure civilization. Nevertheless, it is important to emphasize that world civilization is made up of the contributions of the civilizations of all human races. Indeed, through interactions, either peacefully (trade) or violently (wars of conquest) cultures, ideas of state-building and beliefs systems moved around the globe. This chapter discusses some of the intriguing contributions of Black Africans to world civilization in critical areas such as science and technology, education, arts and music, among others. In the areas of science, technology and innovation, Africans have made their mark. Africans continue to contribute to world civilizsation in the twenty-first century and beyond.

With the rapid urbanization in recent decades, resource shortage and environmental damage have hindered the process of urban sustainable development (SD). As a yardstick of sustainable development, the evaluation of resources and environment carrying capacity (RECC) and its decoupling relationship with social comprehensive development index (SCDI) are of great significance. In this paper, RECC and SCDI are taken as research objects to establish resource and environment system evaluation index system and social comprehensive development level evaluation index system, respectively. Then, the RECC and SCDI of 17 cities in Hubei province during 2009–2018 are calculated by the projection pursuit model based on genetic algorithm, and their spatial-temporal variance characteristics are analyzed. On this basis, the RECC-SCDI Tapio decoupling model is constructed to explore the decoupling relationship between RECC and SCDI. The result shows that: (1) The RECC of Hubei shows a V-shaped development trend during 2009–2018. The SCDI of Hubei rose steadily during 2009–2018. (2) RECC in western and eastern Hubei Province is higher than that in central Hubei Province. SCDI in eastern and central Hubei Province is higher than that in the west. (3) 11 of the 17 cities in Hubei Province have got rid of excessive dependence on resources environment for social development. The study could contribute to scientific and effective policies be formulated by government to promote urban sustainable development.

The purpose of the study was to examine the academic performance of students admitted for the Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) program in colleges of education using Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) West African Examinations Council ,( WAEC), National Examinations Council (NECO), and National Business and Technical Examinations Board (NABTEB) as the bases for direct entry admission exercise and compare with the academic performance of students admitted through college remedial exercise in order to ascertain the validity, reliability and usability of a standardized examination, if it is worthy of recommendation for placement evaluation in colleges of education and university system. Four different departments were selected at random, academic status of 284 students from the four departments were extracted and used for the study 116 students from first group being direct entry students and 168 students from the second group being Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) candidates. The mean Cummulative Grand Point Avarage (CGPA) of two groups were compared from the four departments, the results revealed that mean CGPA of the direct entry students falls between 2.0 and 2.5 in all the departments from NCE I to NCE III while that of the pre Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) students were between 2.45 and 3.0 at all levels for the four departments. This implies that students admitted through direct entry scores can be classified as third Class students (Merit) while those admitted through Pre- Nigeria Certificate in Education (pre- NCE) screening can be classified as Second Class Lower Division (Credit) students. The results reveal that standard test is not 100% worthy of consideration as the only criteria for admission into higher institutions of learning as it does not give us the best candidates for admission at most times.

N/A

This paper uses the COVID-19 pandemic as an extreme case to test whether reference points affect how citizens use performance information on effectiveness, cost, and equality. Drawing on the evaluability hypothesis, the paper argues that citizens are more likely to make decisions based on performance information on equality and disregard performance information on effectiveness and costs when no reference points are available to aid interpretation. The paper uses a pre-registered between-subject conjoint survey experiment on 2,025 Danish citizens to test expectations. Respondents were randomly drawn to rate either one fictive government strategy to combat the Coronavirus—with no opportunity to compare performance information between strategies—or two strategies—with the opportunity to compare performance information between strategies. The strategies varied on effectiveness (mortality rate), costs (overall economic costs) and equality (distribution of the economic costs and access to testing). Results show that when respondents are presented with one strategy, only performance information on equality affects ratings. Strategies with lower fatality and lower economic costs are thus not rated higher than strategies with higher fatality and higher economic costs holding other factors constant. In contrast, when respondents are presented with two strategies, performance information on mortality rate and economic cost plays a significant role for citizens’ ratings. Even during a high-information high salience crisis such as COVID-19, citizens are thus more likely to make decisions based on performance information on equality than effectiveness and cost when no ‘yardstick’ is available. Results imply that performance information on effectiveness and cost risk being drown out by other information easier to interpret if not presented with relevant reference points.

During the course of legal proceedings, evidentiary material is analyzed and evaluated in order to make a final judgement whether the responsible party has discharged the onus of proof. The existence of a standard of proof against which the presiding officer can measure the evidence submitted consequently plays a pivotal role. This standard of proof (bewysmaatstaf) represents the standard of guilt in legal science and has also been described as a standard of conviction. The standard of proof does not pertain to the inherent qualities of evidentiary material, but rather to the degrees of conviction of the presiding officer in a particular case. The function of thestandard of proof is furthermore to provide presiding officers with a guideline/yardstick to measure the degree of conviction that the general public believe the presiding officer should have over the correctness of all the factual conclusions in the particular proceedings. In this article, the standard of proof in law will be discussed from a comparative point of view; different standards of proof from different jurisdictions will be considered and juxtaposed against similar standards used in the natural sciences.

Pakistan is one of the developing countries having low literacy rate in contemporary era of technology (Male: 72.5% and Female:51.8% but varies regionally), holding 180th position in the list of 221 big or small countries of the world. Media (social/electronic/print) has replaced parents, therefore, children learn and follow, as they find/listen/watch on it, parents have no more control over their children and consequently their teaching is no more effective. But in the present era of challenges/difficulties where parents find themselves hopeless/helpless, we find some parents have performed or are very successfully performing their duties. The objective of this research study was to discover the techniques used or parenting style followed by those successful parents. For the purpose, through snowball sampling procedure hundred (100) parents were selected. A questionnaire consisting close-ended questions was distributed among the participants and the purpose was to keep selected respondents on required track or provide them technical terms used in the world or to have fixed responses, while open-ended questions were posed to explore the techniques or parenting style adopted by them. The quantitative responses were analyzed using SPSS, while quantitative responses were sorted, labelled and quantified. The results show that parenting style or technique of using yardstick as per nature of a child is the reason behind successful parenting in the parent era.

This study plumbs the limits of US Treasuries (USTs) as a “safe asset” through lenses neglected in the literature on the correlation between bond and equity returns. An asymmetric M-GARCH model confirms a shift from positive to negative correlations in recent decades. However, the variance around bond-stock covariance has increased, consistent with greater not lower covariance premiums. Spectral analysis shows that, like the contribution to overall variance in returns, high-frequency cycles of no longer than a week account for most of the covariance between the yardstick risk-free and risky assets, increasingly so over the years. However, there is no consistent evidence that USTs are better hedges against shorter-lived shocks. Quantile regressions suggest that USTs are not particularly convex hedges, either. Even amid very low yields in recent years, the distribution of 10-year UST returns is wider as well as more negatively skewed conditioned on stock market swoons. TOPICS:Wealth management, equity portfolio management, fixed income and structured finance, performance measurement Key Findings • An asymmetric M-GARCH model confirms a shift from positive to negative correlations between returns on US Treasuries (USTs) and the S&P 500 in recent decades. However, the variance around bond-stock covariance has increased, consistent with greater not lower covariance premiums. • Spectral analysis shows that, like the contribution to overall variance in returns, high-frequency cycles of no longer than a week account for most of the covariance between the yardstick risk-free and risky assets, increasingly so over the years. However, there is no consistent evidence that USTs are better hedges against shorter-lived shocks. • Quantile regressions suggest that USTs are not particularly convex hedges, either. Even amid very low yields in recent years, the distribution of 10-year UST returns is wider, as well as more negatively skewed, conditioned on stock market swoons.

Purpose This study aims to examine the impacts of Shariah-compliant products, value-added benefits, mortgage repayment policy and well-versed bankers on the consumer acceptance of Islamic home financing. These variables, thereafter, are called the “critical success factors” (the CSFs) for Islamic home financing. Design/methodology/approach Guided by the Islamic theory of consumer behaviour (ITCB), this study intends to propose the specific CSFs that ensure consumer acceptance of Islamic home financing a success. The term success refers to consumers’ willingness to take up the facility. A questionnaire survey was conducted to elicit responses pertinent to the level of agreement/disagreement of the CSFs. A total of 460 respondents usable responses were obtained and analysed accordingly. Findings The results obtained indicate that Shariah-compliant products, value-added benefits, mortgage repayment policy and well-versed bankers are instrumental to influence the consumer acceptance of Islamic home financing. Research limitations/implications Like other works, this study has confined its context to capture only a limited geographical area, and the study’s contributions are restrained to the variables analysed to a specific context of Islamic home financing in Malaysia. Practical implications The results obtained can become as a yardstick to measure the consumer acceptance of Islamic home financing. Originality/value New proposed CSFs can help to address the new demand of Islamic home financing accordingly, where a new area of improvement is brought into play. This study also extends the applicability of the ITCB to include Islamic home financing products.

The manifest mistrust between the government and the governed necessitated this study to examine the relationship between accountability and transparency on nation-building, using covid-19 experience as a yardstick. A survey research design was employed in the study. The population of the study consisted of 1174 employees of 5 ministries in Anambra State and the sample size was 298 using Taro Yamani formula. Questionnaire was used in collecting data. The instrument was subjected to face and content validity and was further tested for internal consistency using Cronbach Alpha and an average result obtained was 0.984. Data were analysed using Regression Analysis at 5% level of significance. Findings showed that there is a statistically significant relationship existing between full disclosure and citizens improved trust (r = .984, R2 = .899, F =1874.010, p-value < 0.05), that there is a statistically significant relationship existing between impact reporting and citizens buy-in (r = .947, R2 = .897, F = 1842.355 p-value < 0.05). Consequently, the study concluded that there would be no trust issues between both parties if full disclosure and impact reporting have been the hallmark of government in the past. Therefore, the study recommended among other things that Anambra State Anti-corruption Strategy (ANSACS) as a provider of holistic framework and foundation for a system-driven approach towards the fight against corruption, accountability and transparency needs to do all it can to encourage various government ministries and agency to engage more in full disclosure and impact reporting.

The ‘Growth and Performance Index’ for agricultural productivity has been proposed as an alternative to the currently used growth indicators. We have suggested two Composite Indices, one based on two parameters, namely growth indicator (change in productivity over the year) and performance indicator (initial absolute productivity level) to replace the year on year growth rate and the second one combining stability indicator with growth and performance indicators to replace the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) over a number of years. Our exposition for rice and wheat productivity scenario in India has shown the worthiness of proposed indices in carrying out the comparison of geographical entities on the “productivity growth and performance” yardstick in a more logical and intuitively appealing manner in comparison to currently used growth measures.

I aim to identify the presence of spatial interactions among local governments by exploiting a novel strategy. Specifically, I take advantage of the political cycle of Italian municipalities over the period of 2001–2011 to isolate the effect of the spending decisions of one municipality on neighboring municipalities. The results of this analysis point to the presence of strategic interactions between neighboring municipalities and indicate that such fiscal behavior is more pronounced during electoral years compared to non-electoral ones, when municipalities are governed by coalitions backed by a small majority, and in cities guided by a mayor who can run for re-election. Taken together, these results suggest that the observed spatial dependence in spending decisions seems to be consistent with the yardstick competition hypothesis.

Purpose This paper aims to develop a performance measure for Islamic banks (IBs) by harmonizing related studies. Furthermore, this work uses the developed yardstick to analyze the performance of a sample of 11 IBs from across different countries. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses the mix-mode method. The qualitative approach is engaged first to construct the IBs performance yardstick. Following this, the quantitative approach is applied through the use of the performance yardstick to measure the sample’s performance. Findings This study develops a maqāṣid-based performance yardstick adapted from previous works. The developed model in this study is called an integrated maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah--based performance measure (IMSPM). By using this performance measure, the present paper finds that the sample performed highest on the objective of nafs (self) over the three-year period. In addition, this study identifies the information which best indicates the sample’s performance during the analysis. Research limitations/implications This paper uses the sample’s annual reports. The analysis is thus limited to informational disclosure. Practical implications Islamic banking and financial institutions may use the IMSPM to communicate a measurable report on their promotion of the maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah (objectives of Islamic law). Social implications The evidence from 11 IBs is indicative of their efforts to realize maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah in the banking industry. This point may best challenge the practice of stigmatizing IBs for not being in line with the Sharīʿah (Islamic law) or of imitating conventional banks. Originality/value The novelty of this study lies in two points. First, this study harmonizes previous works to integrate financial and religious measures in a single yardstick. Second, by using the developed standard, this study offers a fresh insight into the global IBs’ performance, represented by 11 IBs worldwide.

The competitive yardstick role of marketing cooperatives refers to the fact that the presence of cooperatives drives the market towards competitiveness. We conduct an empirical study based on panel data from the hog industry in China to examine the existence of competitive yardstick effect of cooperatives. Data including information regarding hog producer cooperatives, farm gate prices of hogs, and other relevant factors in China's 21 provinces in the years 2009–2012 are used. Various methods, including ordinary least squares regression, random‐effect model, and fixed‐effect model, are adopted to predict the effect of cooperatives development on farm gate prices. The results confirm the role of hog producer cooperatives as the competitive yardstick of markets, that is, a positive effect of strength of cooperatives on the farm gate prices received by hog producers with various production sizes. [EconLit classifications: Q13, L16]

Education is one of the drivers of economy and the role of higher education institutions (HEIs) as knowledge contributors to the nation's economy is significant. Educational organisations being service organizations quality of service depends directly on the capability, commitment, and motivation of faculty who provide it and ensuring quality is a challenge for education managers. One method of ensuring quality is by assessing the performance of faculty and ranking them based on their performance against set standards-Academic Performance Indicators. Teachers of modern education system have to carry out multiple tasks- administrative, teaching, research, societal engagement, mentoring, extra-curricular activities and so on. Hence, setting standards for each of these activities and measuring them on the same yardstick may not yield desired results. This is especially true in multidisciplinary institutions wherein faculty have different tasks and roles as per their specialization and discipline. Therefore, conventional assessment criteria may not suffice the decision makers of educational institutions. Principal Component analysis (PCA) is a standard statistical technique that can be used to reduce the dimensionality of a data set by assessing the dimensional structure of a dataset (Dunteman, 1989) and reducing a large number of variables into a smaller set of linear combinations (components). PCA is a variable reduction method that can be used to reduce the multiple variables in the performance appraisal criteria and result in smaller dataset for further analysis. In this study, the faculty performance scores (API) as per UGC format were analysed using PCA and the most important components were identified contributing to the performance of faculty.

The theory of the yardstick competition argues that the voters may compare their administration performance with their jurisdiction neighbors. This paper analyzes the presence of yardstick competition shapes in municipal finances. The competition mechanism prevails the effects of the neighbor’s tax setting, allocation preference, public service provision, and awarded competitive grants to a local government decision. I show these effects by examining the Indonesian municipality’s data from 2000 to 2014 by a spatial economics approach. Later, I test the consistency of the effects of the yardstick competition to the voting results. However, it appears that the neighborhood performance does not have significant impact to the voter gauge.