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Identity structure analysis and teacher mentorship across the context of schools and the individual
No full textThis book examines the benefits of applying the Identity Structure Analysis (ISA) to teacher professional development. At present no government, local authority or school is actively applying Identity Structure Analysis to monitor school improvement: in a profession where turnover is extremely high, ISA is framed as a way for professional development to meet the needs of the specific teacher. Examining idiographic ISA analyses as well as practical advice for implementing professional development programs, the authors scrutinise how ISA can be used in conjunction with mentoring to offset teacher turnover. This practical volume will be of interest and value to scholars and researchers of teacher identity and professional development, as well as researchers and policymakers interested in reducing teacher turnover
Understanding TQM implementation barriers involving construction companies in a difficult environment
Get PDFAt society level, the findings of this study indicate societal problems such as corruption and business environment which require wide level approaches to deal with these barriers. In addition, if TQM applied in road construction projects, the quality of the roads will be improved, this in turn will have direct impact on quality of life in the society, better roads means easier access to hospitals, schools and public places, better transport and movements of goods and services, etc. It can also save money for the country in long run and economic benefits to the society
Dynamic analysis model of a Class E2 Converter for low power wireless charging links
Get PDFA dynamic response analysis model of a Class E2 converter for wireless power transfer applications is presented. The converter operates at 200 kHz and consists of an induction link with its primary coil driven by a class E inverter and the secondary coil with a voltage-driven class E synchronous rectifier. A 7th order linear time invariant state-space model is used to obtain the eigenvalues of the system for the four modes resulting from the operation of the converter switches. A participation factor for the four modes is used to find the actual operating point dominant poles for the system response. A dynamic analysis is carried out to investigate the effect of changing the separation distance between the two coils, based on converter performance and the changes required of some circuit parameters to achieve optimum efficiency and stability. The results show good performance in terms of efficiency (90-98%) and maintenance of constant output voltage with dynamic change of capacitance in the inverter. An experiment with coils of dimension of 53× 43× 6 mm3 operating at a resonance frequency of 200 kHz, was created to verify the proposed mathematical model and both were found to be in excellent agreement
Determinants of women's entrepreneurial attitude across European cultures
No full textThis chapter explores the factors affecting women entrepreneurial attitudes across a range of European cultures. It acknowledges that women's socio-cultural profile across Europe has become an interesting issue to consider. The findings show that getting an insight into the world of women entrepreneurs helps us to understand their roles, expectations, and the factors that influence their entrepreneurial attitudes across different cultures. In addition, gender-based differences and stereotypes are noted as prevalent in the enterprise and entrepreneurship. Despite the challenges, this chapter indicates the women's success in business ventures and why they are perceived as entrepreneurs operating in a European culture. This chapter concludes by calling for a change from the traditional masculinity and femininity validation to the modern perception of women entrepreneurship as the way for innovation and economic growth
Flame Retardancy Index for thermoplastic composites
Get PDFFlame Retardancy Index, FRI, was defined as a simple yet universal dimensionless criterion born out of cone calorimetry data on thermoplastic composites and then put into practice for quantifying the flame retardancy performance of different polymer composites on a set of reliable data. Four types of thermoplastic composites filled with a wide variety of flame retardant additives were chosen for making comparative evaluations regardless of the type and loading level of the additive as well as the irradiance flux. The main features of cone calorimetry including peak of Heat Release Rate (pHRR), Total Heat Release (THR), and Time-To-Ignition (TTI) served to calculate a dimensionless measure that reflects an improvement in the flame retardancy of nominated thermoplastic composites with respect to the neat thermoplastic, quantitatively. A meaningful trend was observed among well-classified ranges of FRI quantities calculated for the studied dataset on thermoplastic composites by which “Poor”, “Good”, and “Excellent” flame retardancy performances were explicitly defined and exhibited on logarithmic scales of FRI axis. The proposed index remains adaptable to thermoplastic systems whatever the polymer or additive is
Enabling peer to peer energy trading in virtual microgrids with LP-WAN
No full textThe increasing interest in distributed energy generation from renewable sources is enabling traditional energy
consumers to become active energy producers. They can be
formed into virtual clusters for easier management and to
reduce costs; the virtual clusters are usually referred to as virtual microgrids (VMG). The VMGs are coordinated by energy trading agents (ETA), a communication hardware or software, which coordinates a population of prosumers of a certain size. We examine the case when prosumers communicate within VMGs via low-power wide area network (LP-WAN) technologies, such as LoRaWAN, whose spreading factor (SF) property affects the coverage distance and, consequently, the size of the served population of prosumers. The SF property enables the transformation of VMGs into dynamic schemes (i.e. varying number of prosumers are seen per trading period). Based on this formulation, we propose two energy trading cost models: one for the energy and one for the LoRaWAN communication system. Results show that the optimal techniques prescribed in this study
can reduce energy trading cost by 52% and energy consumption for the LoRaWAN system by up to 45%. Lastly, we formulate a closed form relationship to demonstrate that bit energy decays with increasing distance for varying SF values
The Attorney General and Contempt of Court – Some political and constitutional questions
No full textIn recent years, a number of UK politicians have made statements, through traditional or new media, that may have amounted to a contempt of court. That is, they potentially created ‘a substantial risk that the course of justice … will be seriously impeded or prejudiced’, as per the Contempt of Court Act 1981. Such statements are problematic because of the central role given by the 1981 Act to the Attorney General to bring or consent to contempt of court proceedings. In brief, any decisions by the Attorney General about whether to bring or consent to contempt proceedings against political allies or opponents may appear to be biased.
In this paper, we will give examples of statements by politicians, including David Cameron, when Prime Minister, and other Ministers, which had the potential to amount to a contempt of court. Some of these were so serious that they resulted in a judicial rebuke. We will argue that the tendency of politicians to make such statements is likely to increase given the recent success of populist politicians and the greater use of social media. We will next detail the Attorney General’s role in bringing or consenting to contempt of court proceedings with respect to such statements. We will consider the legitimacy of his role in contempt cases concerning politicians and consider possible alternatives.
The issues raised in this paper include questions about the rule of law, and the requirement that those in power must act lawfully and be subject to the courts when they do not; questions about the separation of powers and the Law Officers’ role; and questions about the relationship between Government and media. These are central – and, indeed, fundamental – questions about law and about the law’s capacity to govern the behaviour of those in power
Advanced technology integration in food manufacturing supply chain environment: pathway to sustainability and companies’ prosperity
Get PDFThe applicability of trends in industries' production, logistics and supply chain management has increased productivity, efficiency and less adverse environmental impact. Sustainability is one of the trends identified and precept by various researches as what every industry could consider ensuring a better future for the environment and prosperity in most sectors. Meanwhile, the application of different new technologies and the current digitalization is helping in achieving the said sustainability trends within the manufacturing industry. This study, therefore, aims to investigate through literature and a case study how well integration of advanced technology has impacted sustainability and growth within food manufacturing environment. Integration of advanced technology to aid sustainability within food manufacturing and supply chain environment will be investigated through a case study in an agricultural-livestock cooperative company in Andalusia, Spain. Meanwhile, with the combination of the literature review carried out and the explorative research through case study where specialists and experts in sustainability, food manufacturing and supply chain management were interviewed. The research was able to highlight the impacts of the innovations and integration of advanced technology within food manufacturing and supply chain environment with a brief sustainability evaluation using the analysis of the company’s KPI
The impact of IT project management tools and leadership self-efficacy on project success
Get PDFThe present study is concerned with improving IT project outcomes, specifically in relation to the possible effects of Leadership Self-Efficacy (LSE) and the use of Information Technology Project Management (ITPM) tools. Though logically connected to effective project work and outcomes, the literature review on project management, leadership, LSE and tools did not uncover empirical studies raising the questions of the relationship of these factors with project outcomes or studies seeking to determine the direct effect of each of these two factors on project outcomes. The present study focuses on filling this gap in research by addressing these questions and presents a research model that has provided statistically reliable evidence of the positive impact of each of these two factors on the odds of project outcomes at the component level of the project dimension.
The study was designed based on an abbreviated version of an IT project, consisting of four project dimensions: communication management, requirements gathering, risk management, and project support transition, and two dimension-specific ITPM tools for each dimension. Data was collected using 1) a questionnaire to measure each participant’s level of LSE, 2) a survey of tool use and outcomes in the four dimensions for each of ten projects managed by each participant, and 3) recorded personal interviews with twenty-nine highly qualified and experienced IT project management professionals who have cumulatively handled 1,000+ projects in 400+ companies across four industries (high-tech, retail, automotive and logistics).
The data from the LSE questionnaire was used to assess each participant’s level of LSE. The LSE data and the data of each participant’s reports on ten projects was analysed using logistic regression. The results showed that 1) project managers’ possession of LSE and 2) the utilisation of dimension-specific ITPM tools each increased the odds of successful outcomes in each project dimension with statistically significant results with the exception of one tool.
The interview transcripts were analysed qualitatively for trends in these experts’ viewpoints regarding the practical reality of IT project management. With the aim of gleaning insights into the possible relationship of LSE and project managers’ perspectives on success and failure and on tool use, the interview transcripts were further analysed quantitatively with a word to vector text analysis (a Natural Language Processing technique) for word associations regarding concepts of success, failure, ITPM tools, and related project manager activities. The results showed a notable difference in degree of cosine similarity for word associations of selected word pairs found in the transcripts of the group with higher LSE scores compared to those of the group with lower LSE scores, in almost all cases, providing more evidence that the factor of LSE is influential.
This study makes important contributions to the background literature on LSE and project management and offers a reproducible research design that yielded statistically reliable results that confirm the influences of LSE and tools on project dimension outcomes. Furthermore, this study applied a text analysis technique to explore the factor of LSE and word associations regarding IT project dimensions and tools. These contributions, along with insights from the literature review, can be applied to training and development for IT project managers. Besides its immediate applications, this study has taken a step toward empirically and statistically researching factors contributing to IT project outcomes and provides a base study and context for future research in this area