1811 research outputs found
Sort by
Codification and Legal Sources in the Albanian Legal System: Comparative Approach to Legal Systems
Get PDFThe civil law system entered the codification path during the 19th century, enabling the creation of uniformity, such as drafting a civil code and building a new (national) identity. The structure of the code suggests that it provides a comprehensive, internally coherent set of rules for private law. The adopted civil codes secure lawyers a systematic and coherent foundation for the legal system and legal reasoning. Codification allowed laws to be in an easily identified document easily. Traditionally, the civil law system has been subject to several codification and consolidation processes during different periods in time, influenced from political, social or economic reforms. In Albania after the proclamation of the Monarchy, work began on the preparation of various codes, with the crucial one being the Civil Code. The first Albanian Civil Code entered in force on the 1st of April 1929. This process was the first step for the Albanian Legislator to compare the secularity of the European legal framework to that of the Ottoman Empire. In 1991, the end of the communist era in Albania was marked by bringing the transformation of the economy into a market-oriented system and the creation of a legal system that protected the right of private property. The Albanian system as a continental system has developed a system based on systematic approach to laws, a procedure known as dogmatic approach. It has created an internal system of laws based on generally codified norms and principles. The purpose of this paper is to explain the impact of political, social or economic reforms in the codification process and the nature of legal sources in Albania
Role and participation of women in the establishment and implementation of international security policies
Get PDFWomen have long been excluded from peace and security processes, which include disarmament, despite being disproportionately affected by weapons. Emphasizing, the role of women in peace and security processes began to gain meaning only after 2000, when the United Nations Resolution, Resolution 1325 entered into force. In order for women to participate equally in such processes, the resolution emphasizes the necessity of women’s participation as agents of positive change and not as weak and powerless victims. Contributing to a society where women can live freely in harmony without being marginalized. The purpose of this paper is to explain the different roles that women have in creating security policies. Further, this paper explains the role of women in initiatives, peacekeeping and peace-building. The paper also explains the international mechanisms that promote the involvement of women in peace and security processes
Interpreting Global Land and Water Grabbing through Two Rival Economic Paradigms
Get PDFThe paper tries to address attention to the recent phenomenon of large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) made by foreign investors in low-income agriculture-based countries. Since 2008, the phenomenon of LSLAs has increased at a very high speed and at a growing scale, although it has assumed different connotations, compared with previous LSLAs, with particular reference to the space concerned (the phenomenon has a global dimension), to the motivations behind it, to the way in which the acquisitions have been made, not to mention the impacts produced on local populations and the environment. The aim of the paper is that of contributing to examine, from the economic theory historic-analytical perspective, some aspects of contemporary LSLAs, global land and water grabbing in particular, which seem passed generally unnoticed. The main thesis will be that the dominant economic theory (neoclassical economics) appears indeed as an invisible though crucial driver of that phenomenon, in so far as it profoundly shapes the ‘vision’ which supposedly lies at the very background of most of the subjects and of the policy makers and institutions involved. It is suggested that an alternative ‘vision’ should be used instead – the contemporary classical economic theory rivaled by Sraffa in the 1960s
The Estrangement of Youth and the Quest for a different Society
Get PDFThe author contends that any contestation or countercultural movement, no matter how generous, is bound to failure unless it develops as a rational project. Violence, as such, might help visibility, but, in the last analysis, it amounts to nothing more than self-gratifying narcissism, incapable to produce positive results, even less to satisfy the request of present day youth for a different, more open society
Urban Regeneration of Underused Industrial Sites in Albania
Get PDFIndustrial heritage can be considered as a significant asset of modern civilization, mostly
epitomizing living patrimony of industrialization process. However, it nowadays represents
under-valuated heritage, as a consequence of massive closure of industrial sites due to
political and economical changes through years.
This thesis focuses on the study and recognition of underused Albanian industrial sites,
mostly constructed during the communist period, and proposes possible regeneration model
based on international examples. The majority of Albanian degraded sites, due to change of
regime and mass closure or harassment of industrial sites, are being seen as high priority
objective from central government and municipalities. At the verge of approval of General
National Plan of the Republic of Albania and most of Local General Plans for country’s
municipalities, it has become a primary requirement the redevelopment of these “silent”
assets, which now have the opportunity to become promotors of cities development.
The study follows with descriptive analysis of international positive cases, reflecting how
these internventions can be appropriately applied for Albanian cases. Consistent reuse
methodologies were proposed based on three pillars: economic and urban, environmental
and heritage.
Lastly, this thesis presents general conclusion for practical application of the above
mentioned methodologies, as a positive approac
A NOVEL METAHEURISTIC ALGORITHM: DYNAMIC VIRTUAL BATS ALGORITHM FOR GLOBAL OPTIMIZATION
Get PDFA novel nature-inspired algorithm called the Dynamic Virtual Bats Algorithm (DVBA)
is presented in this thesis. DVBA is inspired by a bat’s ability to manipulate frequency
and wavelength of the emitted sound waves when hunting. A role based search has been
developed to improve the diversification and intensification capability of standard Bat
Algorithm (BA). Although DVBA is inspired from bats, like BA, it is conceptually very
different from BA. BA needs a huge number of population size; however, DVBA employs
just two bats to handle the ”exploration and exploitation” conflict which is known as a
real challenge for all optimization algorithms.
Firstly, we study bat’s echolocation ability and next, the most known bat-inspired
algorithm and its modified versions are analyzed. The contributions of this thesis start
reading and imitating bat’s hunting strategies with different perspectives. In the DVBA, there are only two bats: explorer and exploiter bat. While the explorer bat explores the
search space, the exploiter bat makes an intensive search of the local with the highest
probability of locating the desired target. Depending on their location, bats exchange the
roles dynamically.
The performance of the DVBA is extensively evaluated on a suite of 30 bound-constrained
optimization problems from Congress of Evolutionary Computation (CEC) 2014 and
compared with 4 classical optimization algorithm, 4 state-of-the-art modified bat
algorithms, and 5 algorithms from a special session at CEC2014. In addition, DVBA
is tested on supply chain cost problem to see its performance on a complicated real world
problem. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed DVBA outperform, or
is comparable to, its competitors in terms of the quality of final solution and its convergence
rates.Epoka Universit
Pragmatism and Evolutionary Epistemology
Get PDFTo understand the significance of a pragmatist stance in this matter we must address a basic question: which kind of evolution are we referring to when talking of “evolutionary epistemology”? If we take evolution to be an undifferentiated concept, such that no useful distinction can be found in it, we are on a wrong track. The evolutionary “pattern” is certainly one, but this should not lead us to assume that the specific characteristics of mankind must be left out of the picture, either because they are not important or because no specifically human characteristic is admitted. Nicholas Rescher’s evolutionary framework, for example, is instead pluralistic and multi-sided. It is worth noting how and why Rescher’s evolutionary epistemology differs from the one delineated in a famous book by Karl Popper. The Austrian-born philosopher based his approach on the “random conjectures and refutation” model. A scientist, for example, faces the problem of explaining nature’s doings by one of the endlessly many hypotheses that he has at his disposal. Subsequently he chooses to endorse a conjecture from this infinite range, and the testing itself, via falsification, furnishes the necessary selection. According to Popper’s picture we have, in sum, a sort of blind and random mechanism: his “trial-and-error” search procedure. Rescher’s opinion about this issue is that, on such Popperian grounds, scientific progress becomes more or less inexplicable. In particular, the success in providing explanatory theories that perform well in prediction and the guidance of applications in a complex world is now an accident of virtually miracolous proportions
The manifestation of disturbing behavior on adolescents as a result of using violent video-games
Get PDFThe use of violent video-games among teenagers is becoming undisputed. The goal of this study is identifying the video-game typology played by teenagers in two most important High Schools in the two most important cities of Albania and present the effect of this video-games. There were twenty-six participants in this study, all students in the tenth grade. Of these selected students, sixteen were boys and ten were girls. For selecting the participants in the study, it was used the accidental sampling method and for the data collection it was used the semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis is used to analyze the data collected. One of the most interesting findings of this study is that the use of violent video-games can cause a remodeling in teenager’s behavior, accompanied by a psychological vitality, which in many cases could be negative, especially when this experience is direct. The study doesn’t have a generalizing character
Pension system in European Union and Albanian Integration
No full textThesis topic is about "Pension Systems." Approximately 25% of the EU citizens are depended on pension income. Pension system is like give and take system, meaning when you are during your working period you make contributions and receive them when you retire. Contributions made at a specified time by working people are directly used to cover the expenses for pensions at that time. Due to low birth rates in EU average age for people is getting higher and higher affecting directly the pension system. However it is projected that public expense on pension system will remain approximately same in the incoming decades.
However, Albania like other countries in transition has experienced an increase in the level of informal labor, which has yielded limited by contributions from salaries, and causing insufficiency to provide pensions for generations of elderly, most of whom recieve full pension. Albania has managed to avoid a financial crisis in the social insurance system by severely compressing benefits and by transferring funds between branches of social security. The compression of benefits has led to other problems, as individuals, choose to declare lower earnings and spend the bulk of their career employment in the informal sector. In the current model of the pension system has major shortcomings, which evolved as patches to fix previous problems
Inflation and Money Growth (Case of Albania and Germany)
Get PDFThe main purpose of the study is to explore the correlation between the money supply and inflation rate for Albania case, within period of time from 2010 to 2015. Monthly observations of inflation and money supply are obtained from International Monetary Fund. Empirical findings indicate that the changes in money supply have significant impact on Inflation starting from second month in Albania. The significant impact found in Germany takes place starting from the first month. For Albania case, one of the first reasons is that its economy is moving slowly and the second reason is because of the informality