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In Egypt, there are 12,000 children in residential care; however, this figure is underestimated due to the number of unregistered care homes. Like elsewhere in the world, children raised in residential care in Egypt usually receive inadequate quality of care. Nevertheless, when they reach 18–21 years old, they are abruptly required to leave care and manage all the details of their lives, while often unsupported, unprepared and unequipped to make the move. In addition, they carry the burden of a strong societal stigma, affecting them psychologically and standing in the way of their personal, social and professional well-being. To support youths' transition to independence, Wataneya Society launched the 'Youth Forum' in 2017. To date, the Youth Forum targets youth aged 18 and above with the following objectives: (a) providing a safe space for the youth to exchange their thoughts and experiences; (b) enabling youth to discuss the challenges they face and come up with possible solutions; and (c) empowering youth to communicate their voice to the concerned authorities and equipping them with the needed skills to become agents of change to their cause. Years of regular meetups imprinted the Youth Forum's ripple effects on Wataneya Society's different projects, such as Sanad Conference in 2019, which was the first regional conference on leaving care in the Arab World; the Care Leavers independence programme, which is a programme to develop the after-care system in Egypt; and Mobader (meaning 'being proactive') programme, which is led by the youth to enable them to practise community leadership skills. This article will highlight case studies of two of the Youth Forum's participants to demonstrate: (a) the main challenges children and youth in residential care in Egypt face that affect their transition to independence; (b) how the Youth Forum tackles those challenges through its main objectives, activities and development processes; (c) the main outcomes of the Youth Forum and how it is connected to Wataneya Society's different projects and the reform of the alternative care system in Egypt; and (d) key learned lessons from the process of implementation of the Youth Forum. The article will employ a framework adopted from the World Health Organization (2017).

SOS Children's Villages work to protect and improve the lives of children and young people placed in alternative care system. The goal is to break the cycle of family and social disadvantage within this framework, it is essential to provide tools to professionals to support young people path towards autonomy and social integration as active citizens in civil society. This article aims to present and discuss the preparation and transition into adult life—A guide for professionals recently implemented in SOS Children's Villages, Portugal, within the context of Project PORTA. Educating for autonomy arises as the main concern for the organization, individually and collectively, since it is responsible for the care and support of development needs of children and young people in its programmes. With this aim, this guide helps professionals and young people to promote better practices for developing autonomy skills and preparing transition to adult life, through the explanation of resources and structured intervention individual plans. Thereby, knowledge and practices are shared, expecting to be useful for others as well. A special focus is dedicated to the reinforcement of specific skills, protective factors and social areas, aiming the preparation for autonomy people in close collaboration with all the intervenient and, in particular, with the participation of young people.

COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented human and health crisis and has been affecting lives in many forms. What seemed to be a health crisis eventually became a major ongoing global economic crisis. Sector-wide disruptions are threatening both short- and long-term livelihoods and well-being of millions of youth around the globe, especially youth from vulnerable communities. Business closures threatened the operations and soundness of the enterprises resulting in layoffs and wage losses, affecting a major chunk of youth including the young care leavers of alternative care programmes in Asia. This called for customised interventions and support for such young care leavers. Immediate actions were needed for managing their mental health, for maintaining education continuity and for reskilling of such young care leavers to prepare them to cope with the pandemic. This article is based on the learning and experiences of SOS Children's Villages responses to supporting nearly 1,500 care leavers in various Asian countries. SOS Children's Villages is committed to ensuring quality care and protection of children and youth through its various alternative care programmes in 15 countries in Asia region. SOS Children's villages responded to COVID-19 pandemic by supporting youth and care leavers in SOS family-like care. Primarily, these countries reported that the school closures mandated to combat the spread of the virus affected the education and learning of all the children and youth in their care. All projects in Asia started reaching out to the care leavers and started extending a wide range of support to them with both short- and long-term interventions. This article covers SOS Children's Villages youth programmes, especially from 11 countries of Asia region—Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Mongolia, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.

Widely across the globe, COVID has placed massive strain on various parameters of life, including child protection, health, education and economic systems. Apart from these visible threats, this situation has an ongoing devastating impact on the mental health and psychological well-being of people. The word of the law enforces care and support for children with disadvantages, disabilities and vulnerabilities on caregivers, Managers and Staff, managing Alternative Care programmes, but the spirit of such child protection laws also underlines the importance of caring for caregivers, especially in childcare institutions (CCIs). The well-being of the caregivers is the cornerstone of every well-functioning childcare institution and other residential care spaces. This article is designed to document the mental health status of caregivers (residential staff staying with children), in residential care spaces in the COVID times and to determine how the new stresses impacted them and the coping patterns they acquired in current situation; across different countries of South Asia, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. This exploratory rapid assessment project aimed to reach out to the registered childcare homes/ institutions, across the South Asian region, with the help of different NGOs, as well as Government mechanisms. The data was collected through purposive sampling and analysed quantitatively where the sample included the selected caregivers of participating CCIs across these nations. This study aimed to synthesize the responses of caregivers across the region; develop an analysis, which may help authorities to rethink, reform and strengthen the current practices, in order to develop approach-centred strategies for improving the well-being of caregivers as this has a direct bearing on the well-being of children in their care. Since the start of the COVID pandemic, for the residential caregivers, the access to external resources, including physical support from professional staff, has become restricted to bare minimum, due to lockdown and quarantine measures. Any interventions to prevent, treat and mitigate the effects of COVID among caregivers needed to be taken at the ground level by the care team management.

Widely across the globe, regardless of their country or continent, young people in alternative care and child protection systems as well as care leavers do face similar problems. In 2020, various child care institutions who form the International Care Leavers' Community organised the International Care Leavers Convention which should originally have taken place in India but was, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, moved to an online platform, which created the opportunity for care involved people across the world to participate. During the convention, following a participatory approach, over 140 care leavers from about 25 countries came together for several webinars and discussed the challenges young people with care experience face globally and how the pandemic has enforced these vulnerable situations even more, as well as given suggestions and recommendations to improve this situation. This knowledge about the situation care leavers face amid COVID-19 and beyond was identified, collected and summarised into a transnational declaration, now which constitutes 11 universal gaps: financial security, housing, education, career support and employability, psychosocial support, physical health which includes health, nutrition and hygiene; legislative and policy reforms as well as awareness and identity, participation, the social network and finally, inclusion and social protection. These gaps can be found in a certain amount in all countries around the globe, as different as their care policies may be, and could therefore be seen as universal. By identifying them, this project tried to create a kind of toolkit, which can be used by institutions as well as care leaver communities on a national as well as on international level to reclaim change in these sectors, affirming that these gaps are the same and real for thousands of young people worldwide. This article aims to synthesise the 11 gaps and develop an analysis on how participation and network building can use the declaration to help and support care leaver communities and also care leavers as individual change maker as well as caregivers to better understand the systematic and institutional problems young adults face after leaving care and when starting their independent life as well as the recommendations in response to these universally defined problems.

THIS STUDY OF THE BEHAVIOR OF ZAMBIA'S DECISION MAKERS, CONFRONTED WITH THE IMPLICATIONS OF RHODESIA'S UNILATERAL DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE IN NOVEMBER 1965, FORMS PART OF MICHAEL BRECHER'S INTERNATIONAL CRISIS BEHAVIOR PROJECT & EMPLOYS HIS ICB FRAMEWORK. THE ZAMBIAN CASE IS PUT IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF GENERAL AFRICAN FOREIGN POLICY STUDIES.

6 Figuras.- 1 Tabla ; [EN] Synthetic fuel production from renewable energy sources like biomass is gaining importance driven by the ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Sorption enhanced gasification (SEG) proposes carrying out the gasification of biomass in the presence of a CO2sorbent, which allows producing a syngas with a suitable composition for a subsequent synthetic fuel production step. The Environmental Research Group of ICB-CSIC is involved in the assessment of this enhanced gasification process focused on residual biomass as a feedstock, analysing the influence of the main operating parameters (i.e. temperature, steam excess, residence time, .) in the different products obtained (gas, solids and tar). This work has been initiated in the framework of the EU H2020 Programme project FLEDGED [1] and it is going to be continued throughout the recently assigned WASYNG project, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. In this work, some of the results obtained for one of the feedstocks studied are presented. ; [ES] La producción de biocombustibles sintéticos a partir de energías renovables como la biomasa constituye una de las principales soluciones para conseguir reducir de forma notable las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero a nivel mundial. En concreto, la gasificación indirecta de biomasa con vapor en presencia de un sorbente de CO2 permite producir un gas de síntesis con la composición adecuada para un proceso posterior de síntesis de un biocombustible. El grupo de Investigaciones Medioambientales del ICB-CSIC se encuentra investigando este proceso de gasificación aplicado a biomasas de origen residual, estudiando la influencia de las principales variables de operación (tales como la temperatura, exceso de vapor, tiempo de residencia.) en los principales productos del proceso (gas, sólidos y alquitranes). Esta investigación ha comenzado en el marco del proyecto Europeo FLEDGED del programa H2020 [1] y continuará en el marco del recién asignado proyecto WASYING, financiado por el Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades. En este trabajo se muestran algunos de los resultados obtenidos para una de las biomasas analizadas hasta el momento. ; This work has been carried out as part of the European Commission Horizon 2020 Framework Programme project FLEDGED (Grant agreement No. 727600) and the project WASYNG (No. RTI2018-095575-B-I00) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. Authors thank also the Regional Aragon Government (DGA) for the economic support under the research groups' support program. ; Peer reviewed

Contemplates the importance of territoriality in understanding international conflict, drawing on data from the International Crisis Behavior project (N = 434 international crises, 1918-2001). Focus is on the extent to which territory compels international crises, violence, & war. Three theoretical approaches to the territory-violence relationship are centered on proximity, interactions, & territoriality. In this light, issues & stakes in international crises are defined, & a territory-based typology of international crises outlined. Four distinct types of international crises are compared: territory-dominant, territory-driven, territory-related, & nonterritorial rivalries. The impact of location is examined, highlighting the notion of contiguity to contrast neighbor vs distant state behavior. At issue is whether territorial issues, stakes, & the location of adversaries affect (1) crisis onset, (2) escalation, & (3) de-escalation. Two theoretical propositions are then applied to the ICB data & discussed in terms of crisis trigger, escalation to violence & war, & de-escalation & outcomes. 11 Tables, 41 References. J. Zendejas

This document describes the Israeli Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for the year 2004, developed by the Agricultural and Food Policy Group at the University of Hohenheim. The SAM is a part of a larger research project which aims to analyse several economic, trade, and labour policies in the context of economic integration of agriculture between Israel and the West Bank. Data are obtained from various sources in Israel. Sources include the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS), the Central Bank of Israel (CBI), and the Israeli Tax Authority (ITA). Data from sources outside of Israel are used to fill-in some gaps in the domestic reports. External sources include the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the World Bank. The SAM provides data on 47 sectors with activities separated from commodities, 36 labour force types, 10 household groups, as well as 17 tax accounts in addition to 37 accounts reserved for taxes on production factors. A topdown approach is pursued by first building a balanced macro SAM which is consistent with 2004 national account data. Subsequently, the macro SAM is disaggregated into a micro SAM which is balanced in several steps. ; Dieser Bericht beschreibt die "Social Accounting Matrix" (SAM) für Israel für das Jahr 2004, welche am Fachgebiet für Agrar- und Ernährungspolitik der Universität Hohenheim erstellt wurde. Die israelische SAM ist Teil eines größeren Forschungsprojektes mit dem Ziel verschiedene ökonomische, Handels- und Arbeitsmarktpolitiken im Kontext der ökonomischen Integration von landwirtschaftlichen Märkten zwischen Israel und dem Westjordanland zu analysieren. Es werden Daten von verschiedenen israelischen Quellen verwandt: dem israelischen statistischem Amt (ICBS), der israelischen Zentralbank (BOI) und der israelischen Steuerbehörde (ITA). Diese werde durch nicht-israelische Quellen ergänzt, welche die Welthandelsorganisation (WTO), die Organisation für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (OECD), sowie die Weltbank umfassen. Die SAM differenziert 47 Sektoren, wobei Aktivitäten und Güter unterschieden werden. Ferner beinhaltet die SAM 36 Klassen des Produktionsfaktors Arbeit und 10 unterschiedliche Haushaltsgruppen, die durch 54 verschiedene Steuern (davon 37 auf Produktionsfaktoren) ergänzt werden. Die Erstellung der SAM erfolgt folgendermaßen: zuerst wird eine mit den israelischen volkswirtschaftlichen Daten für 2004 konsistente Makro-SAM erstellt. Diese wird im nächsten Schritt disaggregiert in eine detaillierte Mikro-SAM, welche in mehreren Stufen ausbalanciert wird.

This document describes the Israeli Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for the year 2004, developed by the Agricultural and Food Policy Group at the University of Hohenheim. The SAM is a part of a larger research project which aims to analyse several economic, trade, and labour policies in the context of economic integration of agriculture between Israel and the West Bank. Data are obtained from various sources in Israel. Sources include the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS), the Central Bank of Israel (CBI), and the Israeli Tax Authority (ITA). Data from sources outside of Israel are used to fill-in some gaps in the domestic reports. External sources include the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the World Bank. The SAM provides data on 47 sectors with activities separated from commodities, 36 labour force types, 10 household groups, as well as 17 tax accounts in addition to 37 accounts reserved for taxes on production factors. A topdown approach is pursued by first building a balanced macro SAM which is consistent with 2004 national account data. Subsequently, the macro SAM is disaggregated into a micro SAM which is balanced in several steps.

6 figures, 3 tables.-- Supplementary material under CC-BY license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ; Fuel reformulation through the use of oxygenated compounds e.g. dimethyl carbonate (DMC) is a potential option both to reduce the harmful soot emissions and to overcome the dependence on fossil fuels since many of them are bio-derived fuels. DMC presents a relative high oxygen content as compared with other additives and suitable characteristics to be used in combustion systems. The different fundamental aspects of the DMC combustion process including its oxidation behavior its tendency to produce soot and the role of the NO presence in the reaction system were studied. Experiments were conducted under well controlled conditions using specifically designed flow reactor systems. Results demonstrated the low tendency of DMC to form soot compared to other oxygenates and its capacity to contribute to NO reduction under specific fuel-rich conditions. Modeling calculations successfully reproduce reasonably well the experimental trends observed and emphasized the sensitivity of the results to the thermodynamic data of DMC and DMC derived species. ; Authors acknowledge the Aragón Government and the European Social Fund, GPT group, and MINECO and FEDER (Project CTQ2015-65226-R) for financial support. Dr. M. Abián acknowledges the MINECO and Instituto de Carboquímica (ICB-CSIC) for the post-doctoral grant awarded (FPDI-2013-16172).

The authors would like to acknowledge the comments provided on early versions of this article by Professor Stan Siebert and Prof. Paul Edwards, comments received by attendees at ICBS 2014 and EUROMA 2015 conferences, and three anonymous referees. This research was supported by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Marie Skiodowska-Curie Actions project "MAKERS: Smart Manufacturing for EU Growth and Prosperity" with grant agreement number 691192, the Spanish Government under Grant ECO2014-58472-R, and the Junta de Andalusia under Grant P11-SEJ-7294. ; This study draws on literature at the intersection of servitization, digital business models and supply chain management. Work empirically explores how digital disruption has affected Business-to-Business (B2B) interdependencies. Dematerialization of physical products is transforming the way firms are positioned in the supply chain due to a reduction in production and transport costs and the different ways business engage with customers. Specifically, we propose that these new market conditions can empower downstream firms. We further propose that upstream firms can still capture additional value through digital service if their servitized offer includes difficult to imitate elements. The context of the analysis is the publishing industry. The Payment Card method employed is used to test UK and US consumer's perceptions of digital formats (eBooks) and assess their willingness to pay in relation to printed formats. The method undertaken enables us to elicit aggregated consumer demand for eBooks which in turn identifies optimal pricing strategies for the digital services. Analysis demonstrates that during digital servitization upstream firms should seek to deploy unique resources to ensure their strategic position in the supply chain is not diminished. ; European Commission under the Horizon Marie Skiodowska-Curie Actions project "MAKERS: Smart Manufacturing for EU Growth and Prosperity" 691192 ; Spanish Government ECO2014-58472-R ; Junta de Andalusia P11-SEJ-7294

Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. E. Khoury , B. Vesnicer, J. Franco-Pedroso, R. Violato, Z. Boulkenafet, L.M. Mazaira Fernández, M. Díez, J. Kosmala, H. Khemiri, T. Cipr, R. Saeidi, M. Gunther, J. Zganec-Gros, R. Zazo Candil, F. Simöes, M. Bengherabi, A. Álvarez Marquina, M. Penagarikano, A. Abad, M. Boulayemen, P. Schwarz,, D. Van Leeuwen, J. González-Domínguez, M. Uliani Neto, E. Boutellaa, P. Gómez Vilda, A. Varona, D. Petrovska-Delacretaz, P. Matejka, J. González-Rodríguez, T. Pereira, F. Harizi, L. J. Rodríguez-Fuentes, L. El Shafey, M. Angeloni, G. Bordel, G. Chollet, S. Marcel, "The 2013 speaker recognition evaluation in mobile environment" in International Conference on Biometrics (ICB), Madrid (Spain), 2013, 1-8 ; This paper evaluates the performance of the twelve primary systems submitted to the evaluation on speaker verification in the context of a mobile environment using the MOBIO database. The mobile environment provides a challenging and realistic test-bed for current state-of-the-art speaker verification techniques. Results in terms of equal error rate (EER), half total error rate (HTER) and detection error trade-off (DET) confirm that the best performing systems are based on total variability modeling, and are the fusion of several sub-systems. Nevertheless, the good old UBM-GMM based systems are still competitive. The results also show that the use of additional data for training as well as gender-dependent features can be helpful. ; This evaluation was supported by the European Union under the project BEAT contract no. FP7-284989 , as well as the Swiss National Science Foundation under the LOBI project.

The article is devoted to the definition of modern approaches to the identification and evaluation of quality assurance processes in local government, as a basis for the formation of appropriate local government management systems. It is noted that quality assurance in local government should begin with an intensive study of internal relationships between existing management processes – the implementation of a process approach methodology. To outline approaches to the processes' definition and description that ensure the local government activities and services quality, a relationships' scheme between the basic concepts of DSTU ISO 9000:2015 in relation to processes and results of activities. Emphasis is placed on the fact that the application of ISO 18091:2019 guidelines on adapting the process approach to local government bodies' activities is extremely important in Ukraine, given the need to form a comprehensive control system in the field of administrative services delivery and increase the civil society institutions' participation in relevant public monitoring projects. Adaptation provides by distinguishing of: three groups of processes for integral quality management (management processes; operational processes; support processes); improvement process; processes of citizen participation through Integral Citizen Observatory that facilitate cooperation between government and the community, as well as participate in monitoring processes. The tested approach to process measurement according to the CAF model, which has criterion 5 «Processes», is characterized. It is concluded that the public management mechanisms of the international standards requirements' (ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 18091:2019) and organizational excellence models' (EFQM, CAF, IPMA ICB) implementation need further study as a basis for quality assurance of administrative services provided by local governments. Priority areas include the legal and organizational mechanisms' formation through the development of a national system of administrative ...

This study draws on literature at the intersection of servitization, digital business models and supply chain management. Work empirically explores how digital disruption has affected Business-to-Business (B2B) interdependencies. Dematerialization of physical products is transforming the way firms are positioned in the supply chain due to a reduction in production and transport costs and the different ways business engage with customers. Specifically, we propose that these new market conditions can empower downstream firms. We further propose that upstream firms can still capture additional value through digital service if their servitized offer includes difficult to imitate elements. The context of the analysis is the publishing industry. The Payment Card method employed is used to test UK and US consumer's perceptions of digital formats (eBooks) and assess their willingness to pay in relation to printed formats. The method undertaken enables us to elicit aggregated consumer demand for eBooks which in turn identifies optimal pricing strategies for the digital services. Analysis demonstrates that during digital servitization upstream firms should seek to deploy unique resources to ensure their strategic position in the supply chain is not diminished. ; The authors would like to acknowledge the comments provided on early versions of this article by Professor Stan Siebert and Prof. Paul Edwards, comments received by attendees at ICBS 2014 and EUROMA 2015 conferences, and three anonymous referees. This research was supported by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions project "MAKERS: Smart Manufacturing for EU Growth and Prosperity" with grant agreement number 691192, the Spanish Government under Grant ECO2014-58472-R, and the Junta de Andalusia under Grant P11-SEJ-7294.