222 research outputs found
Family dynamics and culture: An exploration of work-life balance in family-owned hospitality businesses
No full textWork-life balance is one of the buzzwords in today’s business world. Work-life balance is a significant topic related to an organization’s overall productivity and profitability. Work-life balance reduces job turnover and creates an environment where staff feels comfortable and happy about their job responsibility. This results in job satisfaction, which is vital to an organization’s long-term success. Work-life balance is also significant for family-owned businesses as the boundary between work and home is blurred in family-owned businesses. Despite enormous contribution to USA’s national economy and employment, family-owned business is undervalued by national agencies. Moreover, family-owned business is also neglected in academic research. Hence, the purpose of this quantitative study is to examine the relationships of work-life balance in family-owned hospitality businesses based on family dynamics and cultures. For this study’s purpose, the USA-based owners, managers, or staff of family-owned hospitality businesses representing four separate ethnicities, such as Asian-American, African-American, Hispanic-American, and White-American were selected. Three instruments were applied to explore information on cultural traits, work-life balance, and job satisfaction of the representatives of family-owned hospitality businesses in the USA. The online survey questionnaire was distributed to the owners, managers, or staff of family-owned hospitality businesses based in the USA. The survey questionnaire was distributed to 513 participants; among them, 375 responses were selected for analysis after numerous data screening procedures. Geert Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions were applied to build this study’s conceptual model. Texas Tech University, Hasib Hassan Khan Chowdhury, August 2023 viii Descriptive analysis, Kruskal Wallis test, and regression analysis were applied to analyze this study’s data. This study found no differences among four ethnicities based on Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions. Moreover, this study’s results showed that most participants represented four cultural dimensions (low power distance, Individualistic, short-term orientation, low uncertainty avoidance) similar to White-American cultural dimensions. Apart from that, they also represented feminine and restrained cultural dimensions. The participants mostly had better work-life balance and better job satisfaction in their personal life and profession. However, the study participants lacked professional and personal ambition, and perceptions of quality of life.Embargo status: Restricted until 09/2028. To request the author grant access, click on the PDF link
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STABILITY RESULTS AND EXISTENCE THEOREMS FOR NONLINEAR DELAY-FRACTIONAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS WITH phi*(P)-OPERATOR
No full textThe study of delay-fractional differential equations (fractional DEs) have recently attracted a lot of attention from scientists working on many different subjects dealing with mathematically modeling. In the study of fractional DEs the first question one might raise is whether the problem has a solution or not. Also, whether the problem is stable or not? In order to ensure the answer to these questions, we discuss the existence and uniqueness of solutions (EUS) and Hyers-Ulam stability (HUS) for our proposed problem, a nonlinear fractional DE with p-Laplacian operator and a non zero delay tau > 0 of order n - 1 = 3 in Banach space A. We use the Caputo's definition for the fractional differential operators D-nu*, D-epsilon. The assumed fractional DE with p-Laplacian operator is more general and complex than that studied by Khan et al. Eur Phys J Plus, (2018);133:26
Increased Advanced Glycation End Products in Hypertrophied Ligamentum Flavum of Diabetes Mellitus Patients
No full textDecentralised leadership in contemporary jihadism: towards a global social movement
No full textOn October 19th 2003, nearly six months after the outset of the invasion of Iraq by US troops, a video was released by al-Qaeda media arm al-Sahab showing Osama bin Laden directly threatening Spain. In his words, Spain, then governed by Prime Minister José Maria Aznar from the Partido Popular (PP), may face a terrorist attack should Spanish military forces continue to be part of the coalition that invaded Iraq[1] and toppled the Saddam Hussein regime. Less than six months later, on March 11th 2004, Madrid was shaken by coordinated bomb attacks in several commuter trains at peak hours, killing 191 people and wounding thousands. The “first well-known al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist conspiracy in Europe”[2] had been in preparation for years thanks to the long-term presence of radical Islamists on Spanish soil. The first jihadist bombing on this continent since 9/11[3] seemed to have answered Osama bin Laden’s warning call. Those who later claimed responsibility for these attacks pointed out Iraq as their main source of motivation. Symbolically the bombings were carried out a few days before the first anniversary of Iraq’s invasion. On the national scene, because “terrorism is meant to terrify”[4] and affect an audience, terrorists clearly intended to affect the outcome of the national general elections scheduled three days later. The Madrid terrorists were not self-starters, nor were they members of al-Qaeda who had performed an oath of allegiance to bin Laden. Instead, they were mostly first-generation immigrants from Northern Africa or the Near East who had been settled in Spain for years, had decent jobs and for some of them wives and children[5]. The setting up of the Madrid bombings was an illustration of the rising context of the contemporary jihadist movement, targeting a country and blaming it for what was happening thousands of kilometres away. This example is highly valuable to describe the continuously evolving nature of the jihadist movement up to now.Publisher PD
Existence of positive solution and Hyers–Ulam stability for a nonlinear singular-delay-fractional differential equation
No full textAbstract In this article, we consider a study of a general class of nonlinear singular fractional DEs with p-Laplacian for the existence and uniqueness (EU) of a positive solution and the Hyers–Ulam (HU) stability. To proceed, we use classical fixed point theorem and properties of a p-Laplacian operator. The fractional DE is converted into an integral alternative form with the help of the Green’s function. The Green’s function is analyzed as regards its nature and then, with the help of a fixed point approach, the existence of a positive solution and uniqueness are studied. After the EU of a positive solution, the HU-stability and an application are considered. The suggested singular fractional DE with ϕp is more general than the one considered in (Khan et al. in Eur. Phys. J. Plus 133:26, 2018
Policies, Techno-economic Analysis and Future Perspective of Green Diesel
No full textGreen diesel, also known as paraffinic diesel, is a promising next-generation automotive fuel produced from non-edible or waste vegetable oil through alkali catalyzed transesterification, hydrogenation, and supercritical non-catalytic transesterification. The sustainability of green diesel technology relies on robust policy and acceptance among the stakeholders. Further, the economics of green diesel production technologies are strongly affected by the feedstock cost, hydrogen requirement, and the production capacity of green diesel and its by-product yields. Selecting an appropriate manufacturing location would be promising in decreasing the production cost and improving green diesel economics. Integrating a green diesel plant with a petroleum refinery would enable the utilization of process water, hydrogen, heat (for making steam), and other utilities. Further, the production capacity of the green diesel plant must be at least 0.1 million tons/year to avoid negative net return (or annual profit after the tax) and a more extended payback period. Moreover, the sustainability of vegetable waste-to-green diesel technology also needs the policymakers’ fruitful decision on subsidy and tax exemption for green diesel. With the new specification of paraffinic diesel (EN 15940) by European countries, researchers and industries around the globe are looking for the best technological options for a suitable choice for its commercial production.No Full Tex
Calibration results for water flow obtained at six locations in 2015.
No full textLocations: A) Babuganj at the Arial Khan River, B) Bamna at the Bishkhali River, C) Jhalakhathi at the Khairabad River, D) Atharohazar at the Arial Khan River, E) Patuakhali at the Lohalia River and F) Kalapara at the Andharmanik River.</p
Review of "Contemporary Perspectives on Research in Educational Assessment" by M.S. Khine (Ed.).
No full text
Title of the manuscript: Review of "Contemporary Perspectives on Research in Educational Assessment" by M.S. Khine (Ed.).
Reviewed by: Abdul Hasib
Affiliation: Officer on Special Duty (OSD), Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education, Ministry of Education, Dhaka, Bangladesh; Assistant Professor of Chemistry (in-situ), Kazipur Government Mansur Ali College, Kazipur, Sirajgonj, Bangladesh.
Address of correspondence: Abdul Hasib, Assistant Professor of Chemistry (in-situ), Kazipur Government Mansur Ali College, Kazipur-6710, Sirajgonj, Bangladesh. [email protected]
Book details
khine, M. S., (Ed.)
Contemporary Perspectives on Research in Educational Assessment.
USA: Information Age Publishing, Inc.; 2020.
151 pages, ISBN 978-1-64113-937-3 (Paperback)
Keywords
International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs), non-cognitive skills, educational policies, and reforms
Abstract
Apart from searching for, as the work of a reviewer entails, the readability, organization, limitations, and so on, this review of the book “Contemporary Perspectives on Research in Educational Assessment” by M.S. Khine explores, as stipulated there, the present perspectives on educational assessment with the prospects of shaping future educational policies and reforms.
Main text
“Assessment is today’s means of understanding how to modify tomorrow’s instruction” (Tomlinson, 1999). Such a scholastic view, as said in the history, started to develop over time when the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), the pioneer organization in the respective field, embarked on internationalizing educational assessment through the International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs) which culminated with the approaches like the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), and so on. The monograph, Contemporary Perspectives on Research in Educational Assessment, edited by M.S. Khine and written by a cohort of international scholars, fine-tunes its contents based on the newest approaches to educational assessment. It includes the recent trends in ILSA that started anew in 1995 as TIMSS and in 2001 as PIRLS, albeit the IEA “has been conducting international assessments of mathematics and science for nearly 60 years” (Mullis & Martin, 2017). Meanwhile, literacy in the “technology-rich 21st century” adopts new definitions to include “autonomy” as well as “cognitive, metacognitive and affective-motivational dimensions of behavior” (OECD, 2021)- this book under review has discussed all of those.
As a whole, this booklet aims to a broader readership requiring no prior in-depth knowledge of subject matters, as I, from its first chapter, quote verbatim: “this chapter is (written) for a general audience…., (is) also intended for researchers who are looking to conduct trend analysis themselves…., (and) in-depth knowledge of statistics and prior knowledge of ILSAs is not assumed” (p. 2). However, there are exceptions as well, I assume. For example, chapter 7 would require you to have some background knowledge of manipulating statistical data. Some chapters might introduce you to some presumably newer terminologies regarding AI (artificial intelligence), ML (machine learning), non-cognitive skills (chapter 4), and 21st-century skills (chapter 5). In chapter 4, a scholar of ETS (educational testing service) discusses the “motivations, constructs, and methods for the measurement of non-cognitive constructs” (p. 82) based on the CTT (classical test theory) and the IRT (item response theory) (p. 74). It nicely elaborates the aspects of different methodologies for measuring non-cognitive skills. Nevertheless, we find in chapter 5, that while discussing the prospects of AI, automation, and ML, etc. with “automated psychometrics” (p. 101) and “psychometric forensics” (p. 102) in assessment, the author perhaps has condoned the caution associated with them. Such cautions, for example, “AI will amplify good ideas and good practice in the same way as it amplifies bad ideas and bad practice”, claim more emphasis than before when technology is becoming more ubiquitous and its “secured use” is a real challenge in an “increasingly complex, ambiguous and volatile world” (OECD, 2019). Importantly, then; we find; that this book warrants broadening its readability from the general readership to that of the generic one, especially in academia, from a teaching-learning perspective: let’s have a glimpse of what it says in Chapter 8, “assessment is a crucial driver of student learning… it also helps the formation of an accurate judgment… (hence, affects) students’ future career… (it) gives the teacher a say in designing, implementing, and evaluating assessment strategies… when teachers integrate their assessment knowledge with their instruction, students benefit a lot….” (pp.135-137).
Since this book, as its contents require, uses a handsome number of terminologies and abbreviations coined by researchers, organizations, and pioneering scholars, an “index” along with a page dedicated to the “list of abbreviations” seems to be becoming indispensable. Regarding the use of abbreviations, I have some other observations: some abbreviated terms have not been elaborated within the parentheses elsewhere in the text e.g., ATC21S (Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills) (p. 59), and ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) (p. 101), etc. whereas some others have been explained in either the next pages (API, Application Programming Interface: abbreviation and elaboration are in the two separate pages of 96 and 99 respectively) or the earlier ones (IRT: elaboration with an abbreviation is in the page of 95, but only the abbreviation is in the 97 pages). Now, think of a reader who for the first time embraces those abbreviations then, without being perturbed by such a jumble, how his unknowns would reconcile with the common goal that is, to keep the reading track smooth, maintaining a sequence in mind throughout the reading-learning trajectory?
And, while turning over the front pages, any reader would find this book to be started in a much more straightforward way—there is neither a “foreword” nor an “introduction.” Such a start-up, especially without an introduction to the subject matters coming afterward, appears as if an organized (reading) ceremony were in its call for participation for the selected readers but, this time, without an invitation card! And importantly, while the book strives to cover the most recent approaches to educational assessment, many of its readers might not be equally up-to-date with the topics dealt with; hence, to cover the gap in-between them, an “introduction” with some briefings on the chapters could function as a “salt-bridge.”
Finally, given that, it, as a whole, advocated for not only using ILSA data for shaping future educational policies and reforms but also emphasizing the likely shift of educational assessment, from only measuring the cognitive skills to amalgamating that with that of the non-cognitive one: this volume, for sure, would have its appeal, equally to educators, educational policymakers, and researchers as well.
List of abbreviations
IEA International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement
ILSA International Large-Scale Assessments
TIMSS Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study
PIRLS Progress in International Reading Literacy Study
AI Artificial intelligence
ML Machine learning
ETS Educational testing service
CTT Classical test theory
IRT Item response theory
ATC21S Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills
ASCII American Standard Code for Information Interchange
API Application Programming Interface
References
Mullis, I. V. S., & Martin, M. O. (Eds.). (2017). TIMSS 2019 Assessment Frameworks. http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/timss2019/frameworks/
OECD. (2019). PISA 2018 Results (Volume I). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1787/5f07c754-en
OECD. (2021). 21st-Century Readers. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1787/a83d84cb-en
Tomlinson, C. A. (1999). The differentiated classroom : responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.</p
Mazhab Akidah dan Sejarah Perkembangan Tasawuf Ba’lawi
No full textThe people of Ba’lawi or Bani Alawi or whose ancestors came from Hadramaut, Yemen, had a significant influence on Islamic da’wah in the archipelago of Nusantara, where the majority of the population adheres to the Islamic School of Imam Syafi’i. One of that influence can be traced in the aspect of Sufism. The peole of Ba’lawi are descendant of the Prophet Muhammad PBUH-in Indonesia called Habib-which were having quite respectable position among the followers of Imam Syafi’i. In their movement, they have an important role in the internalization of Sufism pattern. Sufism of Ba’lawi has become a ‘fence’ and an effective media of da’wah. As the ‘fence’, the Sufism they called by T{ari>qah Ba> ‘lawi> contains the doctrines of aqidah and amaliyah in order to protect the aqidah of Ahlusunah wal Jama’ah (Aswaja) through a spiritual path. As’ containers’, the simple and modern T{ari>qah Ba> ‘lawi> becomes the main attraction for the Muslims to follow their teaching of aqidah. The approach of morality and mysticism are very interested for residents of the archipelago. Functionally, a number of certain prayers in the t}ari>qah has a specific purpose to protect Ba’lawi descent and Muslims from some teaching of non-Aswaja. However, some accusation related to the relationship between Ba’lawi and Shi’a are quite interesting to discuss. Especially, when the Ba’lawi preachers began to expand their message to the expansion of the archipelago, when the kingdom of Perlak become the main destination. How far are the people of Ba’lawi accused of having relationship with Syi’a? So, how do Muslim researchers react toward this potentially fatal distortion of the facts? This will be the topic of the study written by the author of this paper
Menelusuri Mazhab Walisongo
No full textThe background of this article is the emergence of new studies that argue about the origin of Walisongo and the school of faith (akidah) they adopted. On the other hand, historical writings about Walisongo are still dominated by many tales and legends. Eventhough the history of Walisongo is real, but if it is dominated by tales or legends, then in time it could become vague and full of doubt. Current debates about the identity of Walisongo have begun to enter the territory of academic studies. Orientalists, for instance, have their own perspectives about the subject, together with some historians of Nusantara. Different opinions about the subject are also found among the writers of the history of Nusantara. In this study, the author found that the Orientalist studies of Walisongo which conclude that they were not from Arab had some colonial motives and interests, and also some ideological backgrounds. Orientalists assume that it was the Arab is Islam. Therefore, their studies were directed to the Indian-centric framework. This orientalist politics is called notification. This movement is held by raising local Non-Muslims cultures. For example, by promoting Hindu-Buddhist culture as the national native culture and burying Islamic culture in which it was stigmatized as foreign Arab culture. In the context of this study, most Orientalists refused the fact of the Arab as the origin of Walisongo. They tend to choose the other opinion that stated that Walisongo came from India. Meanwhile, some new studies of Indonesian scholars questioned the school of faith (aqeedah) of Walisongo. Some of their finding that stated that Walisongo were Shia is still based on assumptions. This is the main reason why such studies have to be examined more carefully in this article
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