Inequality and Growth in Tunisia: New Evidence from Threshold Regression

Social Indicators Research - This paper uses a threshold regression model to test for threshold effect in the relationship between income inequality and growth for Tunisia over the period...     

Attitudes affecting physical dating violence perpetration and victimization: findings from adolescents in a high-risk urban community

This study examines the associations between attitudes supporting physical dating violence against boys hitting girls and girls hitting boys and experiences with physical dating violence perpetration and victimization among youth in a high-risk community. Cross-sectional logistic regression analyses are based on data from the Youth Violence Survey, conducted in 2004, and administered to more than 80% of public school students in grades 7, 9, 11, and 12 (N = 4,131) in an urban school district. Findings show that attitudes supporting physical dating violence against boys and girls are significantly associated with physical dating violence perpetration and victimization. Prevention programs that seek to reduce physical dating violence among adolescents may benefit from including sex-specific attitude modification as part of a comprehensive violence prevention approach.     

The effect of Phase I sample size on the run length performance of control charts for autocorrelated data

Traditional control charts assume independence of observations obtained from the monitored process. However, if the observations are autocorrelated, these charts often do not perform as intended by the design requirements. Recently, several control charts have been proposed to deal with autocorrelated observations. The residual chart, modified Shewhart chart, EWMAST chart, and ARMA chart are such charts widely used for monitoring the occurrence of assignable causes in a process when the process exhibits inherent autocorrelation. Besides autocorrelation, one other issue is the unknown values of true process parameters to be used in the control chart design, which are often estimated from a reference sample of in-control observations. Performances of the above-mentioned control charts for autocorrelated processes are significantly affected by the sample size used in a Phase I study to estimate the control chart parameters. In this study, we investigate the effect of Phase I sample size on the run length performance of these four charts for monitoring the changes in the mean of an autocorrelated process, namely an AR(1) process. A discussion of the practical implications of the results and suggestions on the sample size requirements for effective process monitoring are provided.     

Solid waste collection by the private sector: Households’ perspective—Findings from a study in Dar es Salaam city, Tanzania

The issue of poor solid waste management (SWM) is a challenge throughout the world, in both developed and developing countries. People always generate solid waste through their daily activities. This solid waste needs to be properly managed in a way that minimises risk to the environment and human health, which means storage, collection and proper disposal. At the same time solid waste creates livelihoods for the urban poor in terms of employment and business. This paper looks into one aspect of SWM, namely collection service.The importance of SWM is now recognised at international, national and community level. The Agenda 21 declaration of the United Nations [UN. (1993). The global partnership for environment and development: A guide to agenda 21 (pp. 88–94). New York: United Nations] addresses the issue of environmentally sound management of solid waste, with emphasis on the extension of solid waste service coverage to all urban and rural areas worldwide.SWM is a service for which local governments are usually responsible. However, due to inadequate capacity in the public sector, in many developing countries the private sector has stepped in to fill the gap in service provision. Dar es Salaam (DSM), Tanzania, is one such developing country city in which the private sector has become involved in solid waste collection services. The sector comprises Non-Government Organisations (NGOs), Community-Based Organisations (CBOs), and local private companies [Kassim, S. M., & Ali, S. M. (2003). Private solid waste collection SERVICE, Dar es Salaam Tanzania. In Proceedings of the 29th WEDC international conference: Towards millenium development goals. Abuja Nigeria, Water and Engineering Centre WEDC]. The private sector in solid waste collection in DSM has been promoted by Sustainable DSM Programme (SDP) through Environmental Planning and Management (EPM) [UNCHS. (1994a). Sustainable Human Settlements Development: Implementing Agenda 21; UNCHS. (1994b). UNCHS (Habitat) Activities; New Envoy to UNCHS from the United Republic of Tanzania. Habitat News, 16, 1–3].Contracting out of solid waste collection services to the private sector has emerged to fill the gap in service delivery. In 1991 the city was generating 1400 tonnes of solid waste per day out of which only 5% was being collected. Currently daily solid waste generation is estimated at about 2500 tonnes and approximately 48% of the total waste generated is collected. At present, privatisation covers 44 out of 73 city wards, and 45¹ active registered private companies are involved [Chinamo, E. B. M. (2003). An overview of solid waste management and how solid waste collection benefits the poor in the city of Dar es Salaam. Solid waste collection that benefits the poor, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Collaborating Working Group on Solid Waste Management in Low and Middle -Income Countries (CWG)].This paper presents the findings of a study that explored the households’ perspective on solid waste collection services provided by the private sector. The study showed that the solid waste collection service by the private sector is greatly influenced by households’ attitudes and behaviour. Their participation, demand for service, awareness, satisfaction level and views on cost recovery are important in the sector. The study concludes that the above factors would be superior if customers (households) were more involved in the planning and decision-making.     

Marriage among the Gypsies of Turkey

Despite the fact that Gypsies have always been traveling communities, it is difficult for them to preserve their own customs and traditions forever. In the light of studies and research about Gypsies so far, conclusions could be formed that the first and foremost maintaining factor is marriage that can be idealized and practiced differently among Gypsies around the world. This work introduces the image and practice of marriage of the Gypsies of Turkey. It has been found out that endogamy is especially very common among the Gypsies of Turkey since it is considered to be the only way of protecting their communal life. Within the general concept of the endogamic marriage, these types have been discussed under such headings as “purchasing,” “exchanging,” and “abducting.” Other issues which have been raised in the study, are polygamy and divorce which are also very common among the Turkish Gypsies. Finally, the significance of marriage for the families and having children as a result have been analyzed.     

英语“动词＋定冠词＋名词”习语的变体研究

习语在英语中指结构相对固定的词组或短句,它的意义不是其构成词意义的相加.一般来说,习语不允许发生词汇和句法层面的变体,但事实上习语变体的可能性比预料的要大得多.英语中有许多结构不同的习语,选择“动词＋定冠词＋名词”结构的习语作为研究对象,从词汇和句法层面分析这类习语变体的程度、引起变体的原因以及定冠词“the”在这类习语中的重要性.     

Conceptualising Euro-Islam: managing the societal demand for religious reform

Political, public and academic debates about the need for a ‘Euro-Islam’ as a necessary condition for the full integration of Muslim are widespread and strong. For Muslims and Muslim organisations in particular, Euro-Islam can be understood as subverting the very nature of their religious identity, making change or reform impossible. This raises the question as to how Muslim organisations reject the idea of the need for a Euro-Islam by construing the core of their faith as not being contradictory with Western values, norms and beliefs. The current study examines this question amongst two major Turkish Muslim organisations (Milli Görü? and Fethullah Gülen) in the Netherlands and Germany. The analysis shows that in managing the demand for reform a distinction was made between Islam as a belief system and Muslims as a group of people, between religion and culture as two types of belief systems and between politics and the true nature of the West.     

The Reinvention of Liveability in Public Places: Interaction Mapping Analysis of Central Nottingham’s Improved Walkability

The reinvention of liveability in public places and its integration with social, environmental, cultural, and economic factors of living can be analyzed in detail in urban studies. This is studied in particular here through evaluation of different factors of quality of life and well-being in urban environments, one of which is the convention for encouraging social experience based on the socioeconomic and socioenvironmental values of the public place. This study will also discuss the relation between quality social environments and the socioeconomic values of public places, and how by enhancing the liveability of a place we can increase public expenditure and sociality of a place. Through interaction mapping analysis, and based on both human geography and urban studies, the study evaluates the implications of spatial change (i.e., temporary uses of a place) and walkability on maximizing the potential of a place and its immediate context. This comparison study then elaborates on socioeconomic benefits of walkability for liveability of public places.     

A sustainable supply chain network considering lot sizing with quantity discounts under disruption risks: centralized and decentralized models

This study proposes a framework for the main parties of a sustainable supply chain network considering lot-sizing impact with quantity discounts under disruption risk among the first studies. The proposed problem differs from most studies considering supplier selection and order allocation in this area. First, regarding the concept of the triple bottom line, total cost, environmental emissions, and job opportunities are considered to cover the criteria of sustainability. Second, the application of this supply chain network is transformer production. Third, applying an economic order quantity model lets our model have a smart inventory plan to control the uncertainties. Most significantly, we present both centralized and decentralized optimization models to cope with the considered problem. The proposed centralized model focuses on pricing and inventory decisions of a supply chain network with a focus on supplier selection and order allocation parts. This model is formulated by a scenario-based stochastic mixed-integer non-linear programming approach. Our second model focuses on the competition of suppliers based on the price of products with regard to sustainability. In this regard, a Stackelberg game model is developed. Based on this comparison, we can see that the sum of the costs for both levels is lower than the cost without the bi-level approach. However, the computational time for the bi-level approach is more than for the centralized model. This means that the proposed optimization model can better solve our problem to achieve a better solution than the centralized optimization model. However, obtaining this better answer also requires more processing time. To address both optimization models, a hybrid bio-inspired metaheuristic as the hybrid of imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) is utilized. The proposed algorithm is compared with its individuals. All employed optimizers have been tuned by the Taguchi method and validated by an exact solver in small sizes. Numerical results show that striking similarities are observed between the results of the algorithms, but the standard deviations of PSO and ICA–PSO show better behavior. Furthermore, while PSO consumes less time among the metaheuristics, the proposed hybrid metaheuristic named ICA–PSO shows more time computations in all small instances. Finally, the provided results confirm the efficiency and the performance of the proposed framework and the proposed hybrid metaheuristic algorithm.