Participation in Voting Over Budget Allocations: A Field Experiment

PurposeThe objectives of this paper are to determine the current level of construction time performance of public sector projects; and to identify variables related to project characteristics and variables associated with excusable delay that have significant effects on the construction time performance of public sector civil engineering projects in Malaysia.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopted a quantitative approach. Original contract duration and actual contract duration of 244 projects were collected from project files to assess current level of CTP. Variables related to project characteristics and excusable delays were then regressed against time performance index using multiple regression analysis to identify variables that had significant relationships with construction time performance.FindingsThe construction time performance of the public projects in Malaysia was found to be affected more by variables related to excusable delays than project characteristic variables.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is focused on public sector civil engineering projects limited to irrigation and drainage, road and sewerage projects where building was not included.Practical implicationsExcusable delays were found to be common causes of delay in significant numbers of public projects.Originality/valueThe variables that were found to be significant should be given attention by planners and designers in order to minimize the occurrence of delay in public projects.

A growingly competitive landscape and demands for better quality government services have characterised new issues and challenges arising from various factors in construction project management. The balance and progress of a country based on project development. It can be observed through every budget allocation that focuses heavily on high impact and touch points projects to the people. This applies to the management of a small public construction project, where the project manager is an important factor in determining the success of a project in the field. Therefore, the failure to manage public project development will have a major impact on the effectiveness of national development. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the issues of managing small public construction projects towards achieving project success which often executed in different perspectives governing the work by project managers. The data for this study were supported by previous studies are reported in the journal; statistic report from CIDB; ICU JPM; KKLW; book and internet sources. As such, the analysis and synthesis of the literature on issues and challenges of the small public construction project is utilized as the basis of future research to establish a general guideline that provides information on managing the small public construction project for Malaysian project managers successfully.

We use preference data from the 2015 parliament election in the Austrian federal state of Styria to analyze different voting rules. An exit poll right after the election collected data on ordinal and cardinal preferences from approximately 1000 actual voters. Our analysis is threefold. First, we determine the hypothetical social outcomes under different voting rules; second, we investigate the stability of the outcomes under those rules. Finally, we provide a categorization of different types of parties and analyze the impact of certain voting rules (Plurality Rule, Plurality Run Off, Hare System, Condorcet Method, Approval Voting, Borda Rule, Evaluative Voting, and Majority Judgment) on the performances of parties in those scenarios.

In this study, we performed multivariate analyses on regional economic movements at the prefectural level using data representing regional economies. Various findings were obtained from this study. First, the factors driving regional economies change with the economic and social backgrounds of each period. During a high economic growth period the industrial structure has a significant impact (for example, lower primary and higher secondary/tertiary industry ratios bring a higher economic potential), but the factor is less significant. This may be because the industrial structure largely governs regional economies during the economic growth period, while other factors more strongly affect the economic potential as the economic structure becomes more advanced and complicated with an increase in the service economy. Second, the financial capability index and the academic background index move regional economies consistently to positive growth through the periods. On the other hand, except for a few exceptions, per-head budget allocations from the central and local governments for public works projects negatively affect regional economies. This implies that reliance on the budget allocations does not eventually contribute to the regional economic power. Third, as time advances from the high economic growth period to the modern times, the affect of the Z2-axis, i.e. the axis for employment and living, weighs greater than the Z1-axis, i.e. the axis for economy and finance. This suggests that the factors affecting regional economies are shifting from the industrial to the employment and living structures. Fourth, the gaps between regions have narrowed in the trend. During the shift from the industrial age to the service economy age the gap widened, but the gap appears to gradually narrow as each region takes measures to change the industrial structure. However, regions that rely on public works and a low academic background ratio may face a severe environment. Next we performed a comparative analysis of the interesting regions and the above mentioned affects were demonstrated in each case. This model was shown to be effective to clarify the features of individual regional economies. Therefore, we can analyze the economic structure of individual regions by applying this model to study the local economic measures.JEL Classification: R11

Research has yet to explore the spread of chatbots into the foodservice delivery sector and its impact on the customer’s experience, especially in a moment when the Internet seems to be the tool to meet needs associated with being physically apart. In order to fill this gap, the present study addresses the implications that chatbots’ interaction styles have for younger consumers using this channel for conversational online food delivery (OFD) services. Specifically, this study provides theoretical and practical insights into whether the conversational design of chatbots can influence social, affective, and behavioral intent outcomes. The study adopts an experimental design to investigate the effects of a social- versus task-oriented interaction style chatbot on the level of social presence and trust (social outcomes), perceived enjoyment (affective outcome), and intention to use the conversational OFD service in the future (behavioral intent outcome). Findings from a sample of 171 participants show that the interaction with the chatbot set up with a social-oriented interaction style increased users’ perception of social presence and perceived enjoyment, while it did not have any direct and significant effect on trust and intention to use. The study further supports the role of social presence, trust, and perceived enjoyment as mediators between the chatbot’s interaction style and the intention to use the conversational OFD service.

The existence of poor project planning and implementation culture is an anti-thesis to development. This is because the growth of any nation is essentially dependent on successful execution of critical development projectsand infrastructures. The purpose of thispaper is to explore the current issues around project planning and implementation in Nigeria’s public sector vis-à-vis international best practices. The methodology adopted was a documentary review of past and current literature which enhance critical and contextual analysis of project implementation and execution culture in the country. It was found that the three tiers of government have not really planned, implemented and executed projects with due diligence in accordance with global best practices. Thus there exists a widespread institutional mediocrity in project execution, deficiency of vision, and inadequate budgetary allocations leading to high cost of project financing and corruption in the long run. The paper recommends amongst other things the establishment of National Public Projects Implementation System (NPPIS),public projects governance institutional framework and project management offices (PMOs), in Ministries Departments and Agencies to support processes for better public projects delivery system.

Described are the results of a field experiment carried out in 2010 on studying the impact of artificial aerosol formations on the solar insolation intensity and thermal characteristics of the atmospheric surface layer. The composition of the measuring equipment complex is given and the results of the experiment and its theoretical analysis are presented. It is demonstrated that the solar radiation flux decrease results in rather rapid response of the surface air layer manifesting itself in the considerable decrease in temperature and turbulent heat fluxes. The theoretical estimates corroborate the obtained experimental data. The field experiment is the continuation of researches carried out in 2008 and 2009.

This study investigates the impact of education budget allocations on the gross enrollment rate (GER) in the cities and districts of West Java, Indonesia. Additionally, it explores underlying factors that may be impeding educational transformation in the region. A panel dataset was compiled, covering 27 cities and districts in West Java over a five-year period (2018–2022). The data included annual percentages of education budget allocations and corresponding GER values. The analysis employed the Random Effects Model for panel data regression to evaluate the relationship between the variables. The regression analysis revealed a negative, statistically insignificant relationship between education budget allocation and the gross enrollment rate. The findings suggest that increases in education budgets have not corresponded with improvements in enrollment rates across the region. These results indicate that higher budget allocations alone do not guarantee better educational outcomes. The study raises concerns about inefficiencies in budget utilization and suggests the presence of systemic or structural issues within the education system that may be limiting the impact of increased funding.

BackgroundField translocation experiments (i.e., the introduction of seeds or seedlings of different species into different localities) are commonly used to study habitat associations of species, as well as factors limiting species distributions and local abundances. Species planted or sown in sites where they naturally occur are expected to perform better or equally well compared to sites at which they do not occur or are rare. This, however, contrasts with the predictions of the Janzen-Connell hypothesis and commonly reported intraspecific negative plant-soil feedback. The few previous studies indicating poorer performance of plants at sites where they naturally occur did not explore the mechanisms behind this pattern.Aims and MethodsIn this study, we used field translocation experiments established using both seeds and seedlings to study the determinants of local abundance of four dominant species in grasslands. To explore the possible effects of intraspecific negative plant-soil feedback on our results, we tested the effect of local species abundance on the performance of the plants in the field experiment. In addition, we set up a garden experiment to explore the intensity of intraspecific as well as interspecific feedback between the dominants used in the experiment.Key ResultsIn some cases, the distribution and local abundances of the species were partly driven by habitat conditions at the sites, and species performed better at their own sites. However, the prevailing pattern was that the local dominants performed worse at sites where they naturally occur than at any other sites. Moreover, the success of plants in the field experiment was lower in the case of higher intraspecific abundance prior to experimental setup. In the garden feedback experiment, two of the species performed significantly worse in soils conditioned by their species than in soils conditioned by the other species. In addition, the performance of the plants was significantly correlated between the two experiments, suggesting that plant-soil feedback is a likely explanation of the patterns observed in the field.ConclusionsAll of the results indicate that intraspecific negative plant-soil feedback, either biotic or abiotic, may be a key factor determining the performance of the plants in our field translocation experiment. The possible effects of negative feedback should thus be considered when evaluating results of translocation experiments in future studies.

This paper presents a multimodal face recognition system for profile views in such scenarios as frontal face images are not available. According to the special physiological location relationship and their supplement between face and ear, a framework of multimodal recognition system fusing profile-view face classifier and ear classifier is proposed. In profile-view face classifier, a new feature extraction and recognition algorithm based on Scale Invariant Feature Transform(SIFT)and local binary patterns (LBP) is applied. Firstly, a set of keypoints are extracted from the face image for matching by applying the SIFT algorithm; Secondly, each keypoint is described by the rotation-invariant LBP patterns; Finally,the matching pairs between the two sets of keypoints are determined by using the nearest neighbor distance ratio based matching strategy. Ear classifier is set up based on LDA. Then decision fusion of multimodal face recognition is carried out using the combination methods of Product, Sum, Median and Vote rules according to the Bayesian theory. The results of experiment show that our method improves the recognition performance and provides a new approach of non-intrusive recognition.KeywordsMultimodal recognitionSIFTLBPDecision fusion

Archimedean screw-type hydrokinetic turbine is a design from Jupiter Hydro Inc. that shows promising performance in water tunnel and field experiments. This paper reports on results of field experiments on their second prototype, Energy Cat 3EC42 turbine. Results show an increase in the maximum power coefficient of the screw turbine compared to the first prototype, Delta unit. An instantaneous maximum performance coefficient of 0.50 was obtained in Prony brake torque measurements. Surface roughness appears to increase the efficiency of screw type turbines. It is estimated from results of experiments done on these two prototypes that a screw-type turbine can reach a performance coefficient of 0.45.

To investigate the effect of sleep disturbances on functional and social outcomes after mild traumatic brain injury. Outpatient traumatic brain injury clinic in a tertiary trauma center. A total of 374 mild traumatic brain injury patients were assessed within 3 months of injury and followed up every 3 months for 1 year. Analysis of a historical cohort in a naturalistic clinical setting. At each visit, symptoms of concussion and psychological distress and indices of functional and social outcomes were measured with the Rivermead Postconcussion Questionnaire, 28-item General Health Questionnaire, and Rivermead Head Injury Follow-up Questionnaire, respectively. Changes in outcome scores over time were explored using repeated measures analysis of variance and compared between subjects with persistent (SD) and recovered (SR) sleep disturbances. Predictors of functional/social outcome were determined using linear regression. The percentages of subjects reporting sleep disturbances at each time point were 71.9%, 57.2%, 55.1%, and 53.7%, respectively. For functional and social outcomes, significant effects of time (F3,315 = 9.54; P < .001), group (SD vs SR) F1,317 = 5.32; P = .022, and time X group interaction F3,315 = 4.14; P = .007 were found. Persistent sleep disturbance (P = 0.011) and higher symptom burden at 6 months postinjury (P < .0001) were independent predictors of poorer outcome. Sleep disturbance, independent of psychological distress, is an important prognostic factor of functional and social outcomes after mild traumatic brain injury.

Aging and the Politics of the Welfare State

The Hypervelocity Launcher Product Office of the US Army Space and Strategic Defense Command has completed the first field experiment for the Hypervelocity Weapon System (NVWS). The HVWS is being developed as a cost-effective, bottom-tier element of the overall Theater Missile Defense (TMD) architecture. The HVWS is C-130 transportable and will complement the total spectrum of TMD assets. The objective of the overall field experiment is to assess the suitability of the HVWS technology to meet the requirements for TMD and Air Defense (AD) missions. To achieve this objective, program effort is focused on resolution of four key HVWS issues: interceptor launch survivability, fire control tracking accuracy, interceptor guidance to intercept, and intercept lethality. Intermediate field experiments will assess the launch survivability, guidance and control issues of the D2 interceptor, and the tracking accuracy of the fire control system. The final field experiment is planned to culminate in the intercept of a SCUD-type target as well as other TMD and AD targets. This paper presents a summary of the results of the first field experiment, which was conducted at the US Army Hellfire Range on Eglin AFB, FL. The specific objectives of an approach used for the field experiments are discussed. Descriptions of the HVWS subsystem technologies employed during the FY93 experiments are presented along with discussions of the experimental results in the key HVWS issue areas.

The median voter model is a model of demand aggregation under majority rule. Economists find the market demand for private goods by horizontally summing the demand curves of all individuals in that market; similarly, when individual demands are aggregated through majority rule voting, the demand of the entire group is the demand of the median voter. The idea can be traced back at least to Hotelling (1929), who suggested it in an article on spatial competition. (Black 1948a, Black 1948b, Black 1948c) developed the median voter model in detail, discussed the cyclical majority problem, and used the median voter model to lay the foundation for the development of modern public choice theory.