Institutional Repository of Academic Research University of Macedonia
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A Marxist Political Economy Retort to the ‘After the Washington Consensus'
No full textThe dominance of the ‘After the Washington Consensus’ for international development is based on mainstream-neoclassical economics that has been imposed by Washington upon debt-stranded developing and developed countries. Against this tide, the purpose of this paper is to develop an alternative scheme and recommendations for international development, pulling from the Marxist political economy practice. Considering, Marxist political economy as a living tradition, the paper contributes to offering a Marxist political economy perspective to international development in the form of a retort to the ‘After the Washington Consensus’. ‘After the Washington Consensus’ represents an evolution from the Washington Consensus, due to the need for capital to adapt to new forms of exploitation. Students and scholars of international development would benefit from this worthwhile exercise that distinguishes in a succinctly and methodically manner between mainstream-neoclassical and Marxist political economy perspectives on international development. The paper concludes that in contradistinction, a Marxist political economy approach to international development that serves the interests of the working class does not have any commonalities with the ‘After the Washington Consensus’ that serves the interests of international capital.35123126
Analysis of a production system of green products considering single-level trade credit financing via a parametric approach of intervals and meta-heuristic algorithms
No full textThe use of chemicals and preservatives during the production of most daily-used products has increased rapidly over the last few decades. In turn, manufacturers, to improve the sustainability of a manufacturing unit in the current highly competitive market, are obliged to provide various facilities to their customers. However, estimating the best optimal decision for manufacturing companies seems like a daunting task amid highly uncertain market conditions. By shedding more light on these facts and considering the gaps in the existing literature on production inventory, this work aims to incorporate a production model which is concerned with the factors mentioned above, so that it can be beneficial for a manufacturer. This work involves the demonstration of an imperfect green production system under single-layer full-trade credit financing and partial backlog shortages using interval flexibility. Based on the credit period lengths provided by the manufacturer to the consumers, three distinct cases have arisen and for each case, the average profit of the system appears to be an interval valued optimal control problem, and several theorems are evaluated to obtain analytical forms of respective objective functions of each case. Additionally, to test the effect of different credit lengths on optimal policy and to examine the feasibility of each case, a numerical example is solved using the Equilibrium Optimizer (EO) algorithm. Finally, a sensitivity experiment is performed and the results obtained from the simulation are shown graphically to gain some managerial insights.53195321956
Interval Laplace transform and its application in production inventory
No full textThis work demonstrates the Laplace and inverse transforms of interval valued functions with exaggerating its necessary properties under interval flexibility. After proposing the formal definition interval Laplace transform (i.e., Laplace transform of interval valued functions), some of its important properties are derived. Thereafter, the sufficient condition for the existence of interval Laplace transforms is established. Then, some important results regarding switching points of interval Laplace transform are discussed and illustrated with some numerical examples. Finally, the definition of inverse transform of interval valued functions is proposed, and as an application, a production inventory model in interval uncertainty is studied using all of the proposed theoretical results.4643983400
Software vulnerability prediction: A systematic mapping study
No full textContext: Software security is considered a major aspect of software quality as the number of discovered vulnerabilities in software products is growing. Vulnerability prediction is a mechanism that helps engineers to prioritize their inspection efforts focusing on vulnerable parts. Despite the recent advancements, current literature lacks a systematic mapping study on vulnerability prediction. Objective: This paper aims to analyze the state-of-the-art of vulnerability prediction focusing on: (a) the goals of vulnerability prediction-related studies; (b) the data collection processes and the types of datasets that exist in the literature; (c) the mostly examined techniques for the construction of the prediction models and their input features; and (d) the utilized evaluation techniques. Method: We collected 180 primary studies following a broad search methodology across four popular digital libraries. We mapped these studies to the variables of interest and we identified trends and relationships between the studies. Results: The main findings suggest that: (i) there are two major study types, prediction of vulnerable software components and forecasting of the evolution of vulnerabilities in software; (ii) most studies construct their own vulnerability-related dataset retrieving information from vulnerability databases for real-world software; (iii) there is a growing interest for deep learning models along with a trend on textual source code representation; and (iv) F1-score was found to be the most widely used evaluation metric. Conclusions: The results of our study indicate that there are several open challenges in the domain of vulnerability prediction. One of the major conclusions, is the fact that most studies focus on within-project prediction, neglecting the real-world scenario of cross-project prediction.16410730
Optimized UAV-based data collection from MWSNs
No full textIn this paper, we formulate an Energy Efficient (EE) deployment for Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks (MWSNs) that consists of multiple clusters of sensor nodes, one mobile sink in each of them, and an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) for the whole MWSN. The UAV receives the collected sensed data from the mobile sinks wirelessly in order to deliver them to various IoT-based users’ devices. Experimental results show that the proposed model can achieve optimization in terms of energy consumption minimization and network lifetime enhancement.91293
Οδηγός στα Εφαρμοσμένα Μαθηματικά
No full textΟ όρος εφαρμοσμένα μαθηματικά χρησιμοποιείται συχνά για να περιγράψει τον κλάδο των μαθηματικών ο οποίος εστιάζει στην επίλυση προβλημάτων πρακτικού ενδιαφέροντος σε άλλα γνωστικά πεδία, όπως η επιστήμη των υπολογιστών, η οικονομική επιστήμη, οι επιστήμες μηχανικού, και οι θετικές επιστήμες γενικότερα. Ως ιδιαίτερα ευρύ αντικείμενο, τα εφαρμοσμένα μαθηματικά δεν έχουν απολύτως ευδιάκριτα όρια, αλλά εξελίσσονται μέσα από την αλληλεπίδραση του κλάδου τόσο με τα θεωρητικά μαθηματικά όσο και με τα πρακτικά προβλήματα που αναδύονται σε άλλα επιστημονικά πεδία με την πάροδο του χρόνου. 0 Οδηγός στα Εφαρμοσμένα Μαθηματικά παρουσιάζει τα κυριότερα μαθηματικά εφόδια τα οποία διδάσκονται συνήθως ως απαραίτητο υπόβαθρο στα πρώτα έτη ανώτατων σπουδών στις θετικές επιστήμες και άλλα συναφή πεδία. Παρέχει στον αναγνώστη μια λεπτομερή και πλήρη αντιμετώπιση βασικών θεμάτων όπως οι ακολουθίες, οι σειρές, και ο λογισμός μιας μεταβλητής, για να προχωρήσει στη συνέχεια σε θέματα όπως ο λογισμός πολλών μεταβλητών, η πολυμεταβλητή βελτιστοποίηση (χωρίς ή και με περιορισμούς), οι εξισώσεις διαφορών, οι συνήθεις διαφορικές εξισώσεις και τα γραμμικά συστήματα αυτών
Job satisfaction of primary healthcare professionals: a cross-sectional survey in Greece
No full textBackground: The role of job satisfaction is essential for the operation of public Primary Healthcare Centers in Greece. The dimensions of job satisfaction can be used to gauge employees’ engagement and performance. Methods: Job Satisfaction Survey was employed among healthcare professionals in 32 Primary Healthcare Centers, between June 2019 and October 2020. The 36 items of the questionnaire are expressed on a six-point Likert scale divided into 9 aspects: salary, promotion, supervision, fringe benefits, contingent rewards, operating procedures, co-workers, nature of work, and communication. Additional questions were added covering sociodemographic characteristics. Results: A total of 1,007 professionals completed the questionnaire (83.92% response rate), of which 51.04% were nurses, 27.61% physicians, and 21.35% other health-care employees. The average overall job satisfaction score indicates ambivalence (3.63 out of 6). Participants were dissatisfied with salaries (2.38) and promotion (2.84) aspects and ambivalent regarding fringe benefits (3.04), operating procedures (3.23), and contingent rewards (3.30). Moderate satisfaction was reported for the nature of work (4.53), supervision (4.52), co-workers (4.37), and communication (4.22). Nurses by far reported the lower levels of satisfaction in all dimension except communication compared to the other groups. Conclusions: The findings suggest that decreasing administrative workload and the improvement of working conditions, procedures, payment, and provision of better opportunities for the promotion of PHC professionals might be the most effective ways to subsequently improve their subjective well-being and their job satisfaction which in turn will improve their performance. (www.actabiomedica.it).943e202307
One value does not ‘fit’ all: value-laden luxury advertising through the lens of consumer individuality
No full textThis paper investigates how consumers’ individual differences (personal values and characteristics in the adaptations level of personality) affect responses to luxury advertising laden with two opposing values: self-esteem versus image. Drawing on literature from luxury marketing, advertising and psychology, we examine the role of different personality variables in the effect of advertised values on attitudes and perceptions. Studies 1 and 2 show that susceptibility to normative influence and status consumption moderate the effect of advertised value on attitudes. Study 3 demonstrates that “for me” perceptions mediate the effect of advertised value on attitudes. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.12
LoRa-Based IoT Network Assessment in Rural and Urban Scenarios
No full textThe implementation of smart networks has made great progress due to the development of the Internet of Things (IoT). LoRa is one of the most prominent technologies in the Internet of Things industry, primarily due to its ability to achieve long-distance transmission while consuming less power. In this work, we modeled different environments and assessed the performances of networks by observing the effects of various factors and network parameters. The path loss model, the deployment area size, the transmission power, the spreading factor, the number of nodes and gateways, and the antenna gain have a significant effect on the main performance metrics such as the energy consumption and the data extraction rate of a LoRa network. In order to examine these parameters, we performed simulations in OMNeT++ using the open source framework FLoRa. The scenarios which were investigated in this work include the simulation of rural and urban environments and a parking area model. The results indicate that the optimization of the key parameters could have a huge impact on the deployment of smart networks.233169
The impact of Lean adoption on organizational performance in a public service: the case of the Greek citizen’s service centers
No full textPurpose: The purpose of this study is to determine the relationships between Lean adoption and organizational performance in a specific Greek public services subsector, namely, citizen’s service centers (CSCs). Design/methodology/approach: An online structured questionnaire survey was distributed to all the Greek CSCs, and 672 employees responded and fully completed the questionnaire. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were applied to assess the measurement model’s reliability and validity. The relationships between the latent constructs were examined through structural equation modeling. Findings: The study revealed that Greek CSCs adopt at a medium to high extent the following principles: understanding customer needs, establishment of value streams, creating flows within the value streams and value perfection. The data also revealed a valid latent factor reflecting the Lean application, namely, “Lean adoption,” which, according to the findings, contributes to the organizational performance of Greek CSCs. Research limitations/implications: The small percentage of the responding employees of the Greek CSCs, given their large population and the subjective nature of the data collected, constitute the main limitations of the present study. Practical implications: The findings of this research will serve as a reference source for managers and decision-makers of CSCs in order for them to set the foundations for successfully adopting the Lean principles and therefore improve their organizational performance in terms of operational performance and satisfaction with employees and citizens. Originality/value: Building on the public sector literature, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that evaluates the adoption of Lean principles in the Greek CSCs and defines the relationships between Lean adoption and organizational performance.1471544156