Institute for International Studies and Training

Food security is a term defined in 1996 by the World Food Summit as a situation where everyone has both economic and physical access to nutritious and safe food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. This concept also became a priority during the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and later the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aim to combat world hunger by 2030. However, the term ‘food security’ has faced criticism for overlooking indigenous knowledge and practices in addressing the food crisis and for misrepresenting marginalized populations. Because of these limitations, the term ‘food sovereignty’ is increasingly adopted to amplify marginalized voices in tackling the food crisis. Using a qualitative approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with NGO staff and project beneficiaries on the management of grain banks in Mayo Tsanaga, Cameroon. The study highlights how community-managed grain banks, locally adapted farming strategies, and traditional knowledge systems offer a culturally grounded, self-reliant response to food insecurity. Though these practices may not be unique to Cameroon, this case provides a distinct model of grassroots resilience and indigenous governance that challenges top-down development frameworks and offers policy-relevant insights for decolonizing food systems. By sharing this information, we continue the work of endorsing bottom-up, grassroots approaches in surmounting hunger in our different communities.

The bulk of digital payments in the era of Industry 4.0 are done through programmes that are supported by gateways of different payments. Thanks to these diverse payment channels, attackers can engage in destructive activities including hacking into e-wallet accounts, and assaults on payment clearance cycles. For tourism, economic data is kept on a centralised cloud server, which might lead to payment problems during times of high traffic. The issues mentioned above can be resolved by using a decentralised approach like Block-Chain, which enables trust and reputation management across many stakeholders including banks, travel agencies, airports, railroads, cruise ships, hotels, restaurants, and local taxis. In response to the aforementioned discussion, a framework called BeSHMT (Block-Chain Enabled Smart Hospitality Management and Tourism) has been proposed. It enables visitors to interact with key parties through a mono-wallet identification number associated with a Crypto-Currency server to undertake payments. BeSHMT employs an immutable ledger so that travelers can travel without having to worry about producing proofs. The BeSHMT framework also includes a deep-learning enabled by tourism (DLeT) framework that is taught using data from past visitors. It offers potential tourists' ratings for the sites that have recently been visited by other travelers. Finally, we show through case studies that BeSHMT outperforms conventional frameworks in the tourism sector in terms of Return on Investment (ROI).

Halal food fraud, such as fake Halal logos and adulteration, may happen due to irresponsible manufacturers seeking to maximise profit. Furthermore, Halal food fraud has been increasing over the years in Malaysia, and this issue needs to be considered since it is a major threat to Malaysia's reputation as an international Halal hub. One of the effective measures in reducing Halal food fraud is whistleblowing. In order to encourage whistleblowing, governments have established laws and policies to protect whistleblowers, but a lot of people are still unwilling to blow the whistle due to the retaliation that whistleblowers will face. Factors that may influence this ethical behaviour need to be studied. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to conceptually discuss potential factors (ethical climate types, organisation size, tenure, supervisor status, and religious obligation) that influence employees' intention to be involved in whistleblowing. A research model is proposed, followed by the developing of research hypotheses to test the model. In addition, the study's protocol (detailed plan) is later described. The theory of Ethical Climates will be used to guide this study. Data will be collected through convenience sampling by distributing self-administered questionnaires to 300 employees from Halal food companies in Malaysia. The collected data will be tested using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Structural Equation Modelling-Partial Least Square (SEM-PLS). The findings from this study will help Halal food companies improve their whistleblowing practices. In addition, this study is useful for relevant policymakers to support whistleblowing practices.

The purpose of this review was to examine the evolution of halal research across various sectors in the last two decades, identify research gaps, and explore future research directions. This study employed the Scopus database to identify articles with the term “halal” within the publication year of 1996 to 2020. Bibliometric and network analyses were performed on 1770 articles using VOSviewer software 1.6.13. Citation metrics were generated using Publish and Perish v7 software. Halal research themes encompassed different disciplines. Halal authentication was found to be the largest cluster among a total of 10 clusters. Emerging research areas include halal cosmetics, halal food supply chains, and halal tourism. Islamic finance and banking were found to be relevant in the halal ecosystem. Untapped areas include modest fashion, halal media and recreation, halal curriculum, halal science, and interrelationship between halal practice and Islamic faith. Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, technologies surrounding digitisation and the Internet of Things are foreseen to be re-emerging hot areas. This study covers comprehensive halal research topics, including banking and financial aspects. A summary of recent bibliometric studies on halal is included in the discussion. The study also accentuates the keyword analysis that has enabled the identification of mature, emerging, and untapped clusters of halal research. The evolution of halal research was mapped to the Islamic economic sectors of the Global Islamic Economy Report to provide cogent arguments on the halal research landscape.

We examine the dynamical behavior of accretion flow around XTE J1859+226 during the 1999 outburst by analyzing the entire outburst data ($\sim$ 166 days) from RXTE Satellite. Towards this, we study the hysteresis behavior in the hardness intensity diagram (HID) based on the broadband ($3 - 150$ keV) spectral modeling, spectral signature of jet ejection and the evolution of Quasi-periodic Oscillation (QPO) frequencies using the two-component advective flow model around a black hole. We compute the flow parameters, namely Keplerian accretion rate (${\dot m}_d$), sub-Keplerian accretion rate (${\dot m}_h$), shock location ($r_s$) and black hole mass ($M_{bh}$) from the spectral modeling and study their evolution along the q-diagram. Subsequently, the kinetic jet power is computed as $L^{\rm obs}_{\rm jet}\sim 3 - 6 \times 10^{37}$ erg~s$^{-1}$ during one of the observed radio flares which indicates that jet power corresponds to $8-16\%$ mass outflow rate from the disc. This estimate of mass outflow rate is in close agreement with the change in total accretion rate ($\sim 14\%$) required for spectral modeling before and during the flare. Finally, we provide a mass estimate of the source XTE J1859+226 based on the spectral modeling that lies in the range of $5.2 - 7.9 M_{\odot}$ with 90\% confidence.

We present a sample of 34 weak metal line absorbers at $z< 0.3$ complied via the simultaneous detections ($3\sigma$) of the SiII$\lambda1260$ and CII$\lambda1334$ absorption lines, with $W_{r}$(SiII)$<0.2$ \AA\ and $W_{r}$(CII)$<0.3$ \AA, in archival HST/COS spectra. Our sample increases the number of known low-$z$ "weak absorbers" by a factor of $>5$. The column densities of HI and low-ionization metal lines obtained from Voigt profile fitting are used to build simple photoionization models using CLOUDY. The inferred densities and total hydrogen column densities are in the ranges of $-3.3 < \log n_{\rm H}/{\rm cm^{-3}} < -2.4$ and $16.0 < \log N_{\rm H}/{\rm cm^{-2}}<20.3$, respectively. The line of sight thicknesses of the absorbers have a wide range of $\sim$1 pc$-$50 kpc with a median value of $\sim$500 pc. The high-ionization OVI absorption, detected in 12/18 cases, always stems from a different gas-phase. Most importantly, 85% (50%) of these absorbers show a metallicity of $\rm [Si/H] > -1.0$ (0.0). The fraction of systems showing high metallicity (i.e., $\rm [Si/H]>-1.0$) in our sample is significantly higher than the HI-selected sample (Wotta et al. 2016) and the galaxy-selected sample (Prochaska et al. 2017) of absorbers probing the circum-galactic medium (CGM) at similar redshift. A search for galaxies has revealed a significant galaxy-overdensity around these weak absorbers compared to random places with a median impact parameter of 166 kpc to the nearest galaxy. Moreover, we find the presence of multiple galaxies in $\sim80$% of the cases, suggesting group environments. The observed $d\mathcal{N}/dz$ of $0.8\pm0.2$ indicates that such metal-enriched, compact, dense structures are ubiquitous in the halos of low-$z$ galaxies that are in groups. We suggest that these are transient structures that are related to outflows and/or stripping of metal-rich gas from galaxies.

The review of worldwide research trends undertaken as part of the Global 21 project (initiated by IFHTSE in 2005 to inform future research and to promote collaboration to advance basic technology) revealed differences in emphasis among Europe, the USA and Japan. Scientific research is strong in Europe, whereas Japanese activity is focused on practical research, and activity in the USA is rather low, with a tendency to reduced R&D spending. In the present contribution, trends in heat treatment and surface engineering technologies are analysed from a survey of R&D papers and industrial development work published around the world over the period from 1980 to 2010. On the basis of these results, some technical proposals to strengthen joint activities are made. The trends demonstrated by the analysis, in particular those relating to environmentally friendly and economical atmosphere control systems and to distortion control, are summarised.

We present a detailed analysis of a highly ionized, multiphased and collimated outflowing gas detected through O V, O VI, Ne VIII and Mg X absorption associated with the QSO HE 0238 - 1904 (z_em ~ 0.629). Based on the similarities in the absorption line profiles and estimated covering fractions, we find that the O VI and Ne VIII absorption trace the same phase of the absorbing gas. Simple photoionization models can reproduce the observed N(Ne VIII), N(O VI) and N(Mg X) from a single phase whereas the low ionization species (e.g. N III, N IV, O IV) originate from a different phase. The measured N(Ne VIII)/N(O VI) ratio is found to be remarkably similar (within a factor of ~ 2) in several individual absorption components kinematically spread over ~ 1800 km/s. Under photoionization this requires a fine tuning between hydrogen density (nH) and the distance of the absorbing gas from the QSO. Alternatively this can also be explained by collisional ionization in hot gas with T > 10^{5.7} K. Long-term stability favors the absorbing gas being located outside the broad line region (BLR). We speculate that the collimated flow of such a hot gas could possibly be triggered by the radio jet interaction.

Developing countries pay the largest humanitarian price for tax evasion. The time has come for greater international co-operation on taxation, argue David McNair and Dries Lesage. If 2009 signalled the ‘beginning of the end of tax havens’, the time for greater international tax co-operation has finally arrived, write David McNair and Dries Lesage.