27 research outputs found
Unpacking choices: a study on food package information use among wellness seekers and those managing long-term illnesses
No full textIntroduction: Nutrition labels were designed to help consumers choose foods according to their health status. Detailed nutritional tagging is essential to help buyer be informed about the component of the food and enabling consumers to make healthy choices according to their health status. Therefore, this study aims to assess and compare usage nutrition labels among healthy individuals and individuals with chronic diseases.
Methodology: A validated questionnaire was used to collect data from the sample of 410 participants through convenient sampling technique. Subjects recruited were healthy individuals and individuals with chronic diseases, aged ≥ 18 years. Version 20 of SPSS was used to analyzed the obtained data. Chi square test (level of significance 0.05) was used to determine the current knowledge and usage of food and nutrition labels among study participants.
Results: The results revealed that majority of the study participants (52%) were healthy, while (48%) are diagnosed with chronic disease. Additionally, results show that 85% individuals with chronic diseases read food and nutrition label. However, on contrary statistically no significant difference was identified (p = 0.192) in usage of nutritional labels among healthy individuals and individuals with chronic diseases.
Conclusion: The usage of food label and nutrition facts information is common among population and the information consumers focus on food and nutrition labels is halal certification and date of expiry.Full Tex
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Microgrids and the Transition Toward Decentralized Energy Systems in the United States: A Multi-Level Perspective
Full text linkThe last decade has seen a drastic interest in microgrids throughout the world. Even though this trend might seem to be just another technological solution in the energy sector, it is a part of a greater transition from a centralized energy system to a more decentralized one. However, unlike most decentralized energy systems which are largely compliant within the current electricity system and utility model, microgrids tend to interact with the centralized grid infrastructure as a parallel, and oftentimes competitive, distribution grid model at the micro scale. Therefore, studying the adoption of microgrids presents an excellent opportunity to study socio-technical transitions in the energy system. In this context, this study aims to explore the drivers, contexts, processes, policies, institutions, and interactions that affect the adoption of microgrids in the United States. Using Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) framework as the overarching theoretical guide, the study relied on quantitative empirical analysis at the country-level as well as qualitative case study analysis at the state-level to comprehensively address the research objectives. For the latter, California and New York were selected as cases that have high microgrid adoption while Oregon was selected as a case with minimal adoption of microgrids. The analysis suggests that disasters act as a key landscape pressure for the adoption of microgrids in the United States. On the other hand, a dominant pro-environment attitude or the presence of energy choice laws in states do not affect the adoption of microgrids. The findings further illustrate that even though the electricity regimes in all three case study states are facing some destabilization due to landscape pressures, the regime stabilization mechanisms are much stronger in Oregon as compared to California and New York, making it harder for niche innovations like microgrids to break in. This is primarily due the availability of cheap, clean, and abundant electricity, and the electricity market structure which is closer to the traditional vertically-integrated monopoly model and limits the opportunities of entry and profit for third-party microgrid developers. Finally, the study also shows that the support for microgrids that the states of California and New York are providing in the form of funding and legislation is crucial. This is why, in the absence of this push from the state of Oregon, the gradual move to facilitate microgrids that seems to be happening is many other states is not apparent. By studying the adoption of microgrids as part of a socio-technical transition in the energy system, this study does not only contribute to the existing literature on the adoption of decentralized energy systems, but also adds to the literature on socio-technical transitions in the energy system by offering an account of why and how a decentralized energy system that challenges the centralized grid regime has made its place in the centralized grid regime in some US states, and what are the factors that have hindered such a shift in other states
Demand Assessment of Solar Electrification in Off-Grid Rural Communities of Pakistan Through Microfinancing of Solar Home Systems
No full textA Multiple Streams Explanation of Pakistan’s Climate Change Policy
No full textDespite having minimal contribution to the global carbon emissions, Pakistanis considered to be one of the most vulnerable countries to the catastrophes ofclimate change. The country experienced back-to-back super floods in 2010and 2011. In 2010 alone, the floods inundated 20 percent of the country anddisplaced some 20 million people, making it the biggest human displacement caused by a single climate-induced event in the history(Ministry of ClimateChange, 2012). In the wake of these disasters, the Government of Pakistanestablished the world’s first full-fledged National Ministry of Climate Change and approved a National Policy on Climate Change in 2012. In this context, this paper applies a Multiple Streams lens to understand the agenda-setting process that prompted the development and approval of this policy. The paper will first discuss Pakistan’s vulnerability to climate change and the relevant literature on climate change agenda setting, and will then explore how various facts and events fit into the three streams of Multiple Streams Framework to account for the agenda-setting process that led to development and approval of the national climate change policy
ajaz Al-Qur’an: Sebuah Diskursus Berfikir Dalam Pendidikan Islam
No full textAbstractUnderstanding the figurative meaning of majaz al-Qur'an in the context of ulum al-Qur'an entails some effort. The author will explore allusions from the majaz in terms of meaning and wisdom. The position of majaz al-Qur'an differs from that of the discourse on proverbs, which deals with concrete examples. Therefore, this study explains how the position of majaz influences the cognitive development of its readers from the perspective of educational psychology. Furthermore, this study also explores the educational value of majaz al-Qur'an. The author employs a qualitative approach with descriptive analysis to address the concern mentioned above. The findings of this study lead to features of the formation of thought in terms of educational psychology in general and the complete meaning of educational values in particular.Keywords: Education; Majaz Al-Qur'an; Psychology; Thinking.AbstrakPembahasan majaz al-Qur’an dalam studi ulum al-Qur’an membutuhkan usaha yang keras dalam memahami makna kiasannya. Kiasan-kiasan dari majaz tersebut akan penulis telusuri makna serta hikmahnya. Posisinya majaz al-Qur’an berbeda dengan diskursus Amsal yang membahas secara kongkrit tentang permisalan. Selanjutnya, untuk mengungkap hal tersebut maka tulisan ini akan memaparkan bagaimana posisi majaz mampu membentuk konstruksi berfikir pembacanya melalui perspektif psikologi pendidikan lalu bagaimana nilai pendidikan yang terkandung dalam majaz al-Qur’an. Kemudian, untuk menjawab kegelisahan diatas maka penulis menggunakan metode kualitatif dengan deksriptif-analisis. Hasil penelitian ini selanjutnya mengarah pada aspek-aspek pembentukan berfikir yang ditinjau dari disiplin psikologi pendidikan secara umum dan secara spesifik terkandung di dalamnya makna yang penuh dengan nilai-nilai pendidikan. Kata Kunci: Berfikir; Majaz Al-Qur’an; Pendidikan; Psikologi.AbstractAs part of the discipline of ulumul al-Qur'an which often has a tendency to rarely get ogled by the majaz al-Qur'an. Majaz al-Qur'an as a science that contains figurative words about various things that are loaded with many meanings and wisdom. Majaz al-Qur'an is the delivery of ideas with language that must be traced and re-examined so that the reader does not get a wrong understanding (misunderstanding). This then becomes a big lesson for people who want to study it. Educators among Islamic scholars can use majaz al-Qur'an as a wasilah to think critically, straightforwardly, and precisely. Furthermore, the method used by the author in this research is descriptive-analysis. The results of this study convey the psychological aspects both in general and specifically Islam and the educational values contained therein.Keywords: Majaz al-Qur'an, Psychology, Thinking, Education AbstrakSebagai bagian dari disiplin ilmu ulumul al-Qur’an yang sering mengalami kecendrungan jarang dilirik majaz al-Qur’an. Majaz al-Qur’an sebagai ilmu yang memuat kata-kata kiasan tentang berbagai hal yang sarat dengan makna dan hikmah yang banyak. Majaz al-Qur’an merupakan penyampaian gagasan-gagasan dengan bahasa yang harus ditelusuri dan ditelik Kembali agar pembaca tidak mendapatkan pemahahaman yang salah (missunderstanding). Hal ini kemudian menjadi pelajaran besar bagi orang yang mau mengkajinya. Para pendidik di kalangan sarjana Islam bisa menjadikan majaz al-Qur’an sebagai wasilah untuk berfikir secara kritis, lugas, dan tepat. Selanjutnya metode yang digunakan penulis dalam penelitian ini adalah deskriptif-analisis. Hasil penelitian ini menyampaikan pada aspek-aspek psikologi baik secara umum maupun spesifik Islam dan nilai-nilai Pendidikan yang terkandung di dalamnya.Keywords: Majaz al-Qur’an, Psikologi, Berfikir, Pendidikan
A visual framework for the empirical analysis of social influencers and influence
Full text linkI SOCIAL MEDIA sono diventati uno strumento pervasivo e ampiamente diffuso, rappresentando cosi una fonte di informazioni preziose. La letteratura sui social media evidenzia una distinzione tra influencer e influence. I primi sono utenti dei social media con un vasto pubblico. Ad esempio, gli influencer possono avere un alto numero di follower su Twitter, un elevato numero di amici su Facebook, o una vasta gamma di connessioni su LinkedIn. Il termine influence viene invece usato per indicare l'impatto sociale dei contenuti condivisi dagli utenti dei social media.
La maggior parte di questi studi si e concentrata sul ruolo degli influenzatori, le cui informazioni condivise hanno una portata molto ampia. La nostra tesi invece, si concentra sul contenuto dei messaggi, che gioca un ruolo critico e puo essere un fattore determinante dell'influenza sociale del messaggio indipendentemente dalla centralita dell'autore. Questa tesi parte dalla constatazione che le reti sociali di influenza seguono una funzione di distribuzione power-law, con pochi nodi hub e con una lunga coda di nodi periferici, coerenti con il cosiddetto fenomeno small-world. Nel contesto dei social media, i nodi hub rappresentano influenzatori sociali, tuttavia il contenuto influente puo essere generato da nodi periferici e diffondersi coi lungo possibili percorsi multi-hop nati in livelli della rete periferica.
Questa tesi fornisce un quadro concettuale e un relativo strumento software al fine di valutare l'influenza e di identificare gli influenzatori. La valutazione di influenza e influenzatori viene eseguita in due fasi. In primo luogo, viene condotta un'analisi empirica per verificare l'ipotesi che il contenuto possa avere un impatto sull'influence. Proponiamo dunque un approccio visivo per la rappresentazione grafica e l'esplorazione di layer periferici e cluster, sfruttando la teoria dell'analisi k-shell decomposition, mentre per quanto riguarda la visualizzazione di local multi-layered neighbourhood cluster intorno ai hub-nodes viene applicato il metodo force-directed modificato e basato sulla distribuzione power-law. Vengono inoltre presentate alcune ipotesi che legano la specificita, la frequenza di tweet e la frequenza di retweet, testate su campioni di dati di circa un milione di tweet. Nel complesso, i risultati evidenziano l'efficacia del nostro approccio, fornendo interessanti spunti visivi su come comprendere la struttura della periferia della rete, mostrando il potenziale dei nodi periferici nel determinare l'inflence e il contenuto relazionale.
In secondo luogo, questa tesi si propone di fornire un innovativo quadro visivo con lo scopo di analizzare, esplorare ed interagire con relazioni di Twitter di tipo ‘Who Follows Who’, navingando visivamente la rete di amici, per identificare gli influencer chiave basati sulla influence effettiva del contenuto che condividono. Come parte di questa ricerca, abbiamo sviluppato NavigTweet, uno nuovo strumento di visualizzazione per l'esplorazione dell'influence-based dei network di Twitter. Il concetto di base del metodo proposto e quello di identificare gli influencer navigando attraverso la rete di amici di un utente. Successivamete, viene applicato un metodo di force-directed modificato e basato sulla distribuzione power-law, con lo scopo di visualizzare in modo chiaro il grafico di rete tramite un approccio multi-layer e multi-cluster. A fine di ottenere conoscenza dall'esperienza degli utenti con il rilascio pilota NavigTweet, abbiamo condotto uno studio pilota qualitativo dell'utente. Diamo un report sullo studio e sui suoi risultati insieme al rilascio caso pilota iniziale.SOCIAL media have become pervasive and ubiquitous and represent a source of valuable information. The literature on social media makes a distinction between influencers and influence. The former are social media users with a broad audience. For example, influencers can have a high number of followers on Twitter, or a multitude of friends on Facebook, or a broad array of connections on LinkedIn. The term influence is instead used to refer to the social impact of the content shared by social media users.
The majority of these studies has focused on the role of influencers. Our claim is that while the information shared by influencers has a broader reach, the content of messages plays a critical role and can be a determinant of the social influence of the message irrespective of the centrality of the message’s author. This thesis starts from the observation that social networks of influence follow a power-law distribution function, with a few hub nodes and a long tail of peripheral nodes, consistent with the so-called small-world phenomenon. In social media, hub nodes represent social influencers, but influential content can be generated by peripheral nodes and spread along possibly multi-hop paths originated in peripheral network layers.
This thesis provides a conceptual framework and related software tool to assess influence and identification of influencers. The assessment of influence and influencers is performed in two steps. First, an empirical analysis is conducted in order to verify the assumption that content can have an impact on influence. We propose a visual approach to the graphical representation and exploration of peripheral layers and clusters by exploiting the theory of k-shell decomposition analysis and power-law based modified force-directed method to clearly display local multi-layered neighborhood clusters around hub nodes. We put forward few hypotheses that tie specificity, frequency of tweets and frequency of retweets and are tested on data samples of roughly one million tweets. Overall, results highlight the effectiveness of our approach, providing interesting visual insights on how unveiling the structure of the periphery of the network can visually show the potential of peripheral nodes in determining influence and content relationship. Secondly, this thesis aims to provide a novel visual framework to analyze, explore and interact with Twitter ‘Who Follows Who’ relationships, by visually browsing the friends’ network to identify the key influencers based upon the actual influence of the content they share. As part of this research, we have developed NavigTweet, a novel visualization tool for the influence-based exploration of Twitter network. The core concept of the proposed approach is to identify influencers by browsing through a user’s friends’ network. Then, a power-law based modified force-directed method is applied to clearly display the network graph in a multi-layered and multi-clustered way. To gather some insight into the user experience with the pilot release of NavigTweet, we have conducted a qualitative pilot user study. We report on the study and its results, with initial pilot release.DIPARTIMENTO DI ELETTRONICA, INFORMAZIONE E BIOINGEGNERIAComputer Science and Engineering28PERNICI, BARBARAFIORINI, CARLO ETTOR
Techno-Economic Framework for Solar Electrification Using Night-time Satellite Imagery in Punjab - Pakistan
No full textImproving financial capability: the mediating role of financial behaviour
Full text linkThis paper investigates the collective impact of financial literacy and inclusion on individuals’ financial capability focusing on the mediating role of financial behaviour. The research is conducted on an individual-level survey. The relationships were examined by using PLS-SEM. Financial capability can be improved by increasing individuals’ financial knowledge, financial behaviour and promoting their inclusion in financial services. Furthermore, the indirect effect of financial knowledge and attitude on financial capability is found to be significant, highlighting the importance of financial behaviour. The results assist policymakers and industry leaders in understanding the most influential factors on financial capability in the context of a post-communist transition country. This enables them to design policies and services aimed at equipping citizens with knowledge and skills to make best use of their financial resources. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.Internal Grant Agency of FaME TBU [IGA/FaME/2019/002
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No full textThe research article is based on PhD research work carried out at the Division of Vegetable Science, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana. The first author of the article is working at ICAR-Central Institute of Temperate Horticulture, SrinagarMarker assisted selection (MAS) using mitochondrial DNA based marker cytochrome b (cob) was integrated with phenotypic evaluation to isolate male sterile and maintainer lines from openpollinated onion varieties adapted to North Indian agro-climatic region. Cytotype (N/S) determination by cob marker followed by morphological and microscopic study of pollen discovered male sterile plants (Smsms) at frequencies of 0.015 in Punjab Naroya, 0.020 in Punjab Selection, and 0.006 in Punjab White. The progeny scoring of test-crosses between male sterile and N-cytoplasmic plants isolated the maintainers (Nmsms) at frequencies of 0.133 in Punjab Naroya, 0.231 in Punjab Selection and 0.182 in Punjab White. As a novel approach, Trait Recovery Programme was demonstrated to reduce the population size required to recover a male sterile plant by 91.08% in Punjab Naroya, 92.99% in Punjab Selection and 97.66% in Punjab White. For recovering a maintainer, 10% reduction in Punjab Naroya and 9.10% in Punjab Selection was calculated. However, no reduction was observed in Punjab White. This analysis also validated that in a randomly mating onion population, frequency of recessive ms allele squared is equal to the frequency of male sterile plants among S-cytotype and frequency of maintainers among N-cytotype (fms2 = fSmsms/fS = fNmsms/fN).Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhian
Author Correction: A cross-country study on the impact of governmental responses to the COVID-19 pandemic on perinatal mental health (Scientific Reports, (2023), 13, 1, (2805), 10.1038/s41598-023-29300-w)
No full textIn the original version of this Article Emma Motrico was incorrectly affiliated with ‘Department of Psychology, School of Philosophy, National and Kapodestrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece’. The correct affiliation is listed below. Psychology Department, Universidad Loyola Andalucia, Sevilla, Spain The original Article has been corrected. © The Author(s) 2023
