Suchergebnisse

The neo-liberal rationale behind REDD programs aims to create a market for common resources, with monetary payment incentives as the most important driver for conservation initiatives. In reality, however, the chain of implementation from UN to village, encompassing numerous processes of design, planning, and practices at distinct levels and contexts, is more institutional and political than economic. This research project follows the planning and implementation process of a REDD+ project in the Kolo Hills, Tanzania. The analysis showed that the project&rsquo ; s main objectives were poorly understood by the men and women of the target group, who interpreted it as yet another top-down postcolonial project. The target group&rsquo ; s interpretations also made them act in accordance with their own cultural rationality and logic of practice and not as the donors and project implementers had assumed. The project objectives of the payment system, consciousness awareness and engagement of the target population, thus, seem to have failed, despite the donors&rsquo ; and implementers&rsquo ; claim of success.

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of financial and non-financial performance measurement practices, including the use of the balanced scorecard (BSC) and the impact of the cultural values on the use of performance measurement systems (PMSs), in multinational companies (MNCs) operating in the Middle East with a special attention to the Saudi Arabian subsidiaries.


Design/methodology/approach
– Data were collected using a survey mailed to 180 randomly selected Saudi manufacturing subsidiaries in different industrial cities to collect data on their PMSs including the use of the BSC.


Findings
– Financial measures are more widely used by most of the companies included in the sample due to the fact they are common, well known, and the most familiar performance measures in the business practice and they are more standardized measures which can be easily understood, implemented, and quantified. Moreover, the use of the non-financial measures was at a very low rate compared with the use of financial measures. The reasons were the difficulty in finding objective measures of the effect of social factors and the avoidance of any disclosure of social problems that are existed in the society.


Research limitations/implications
– Several variables were not included in this study such as corporate culture, use of information technology, the use of mass number of expatriates in the KSA with completely different cultural values, and several other environmental factors, which might have a significant impact on the choice of multiple performance measures.


Practical implications
– From a practical standpoint, this study demonstrates that increasing levels of external environmental factors and exposure to American best practices could act as forces to adapt more updated and sophisticated PMSs in the Middle East. Moreover, it will contribute to the knowledge of PMSs in the emerging countries, particularly in Middle East countries.


Social implications
– Social variables have significant impact on the productivity of employees and they should be incorporated into the performance indictors in objective and practical models.


Originality/value
– This study illustrates how MNCs in the Middle East are adapting and applying the PMS and the effect of culture on the use of non-financial measures.

With the rapid growth and adoption of cloud computing, more sensitive information is centralized onto the cloud every day. For protecting this sensitive information, it must be encrypted before being outsourced. Current search schemes allow the user to query encrypted data using keywords, but these schemes do not guarantee the privacy of queries (i.e., when the user hits query more than once with the same keywords, the server can capture information about the data). This paper focuses on the secure storage and retrieval of ciphered data with preserving query privacy. The proposed scheme deploys the sparse vector space model to represent each query, which focuses on reducing the storage and representation overheads. And the proposed scheme adds a random number to each query vector. Hence, the cloud server cannot distinguish between queries with the same keywords, which ensures the privacy of the query. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme outperforms other relevant state-of-the-art schemes.

In this paper, an inexpensive, simple and well-accurate process of the generation of bimetallic silver Ag//gold Au core//shell is colloidal metal nanoparticles (MNPs). This is achieved via an atmospheric pressure non-thermal plasma glow discharge between two electrodes. One of these electrodes is a capillary tube placing over solution about (1 cm) that acts as the cathode, while the other electrode is a metal disk immersed in the solution and acts as an anode. Glow discharge process carried out at room temperature using a home-made cell with (6 KV) applied voltage and direct current (DC) about (1.8 mA) for different discharge periods. A wide range of bimetallic Ag//Au colloidal MNPs was rapidly synthesized as a result of non-thermal plasma formation between a capillary tube and the surface of AgNO3 solution for (5 min) and a mixture of AgNPs-HAuCl4 solution for (5, 10 and 15 min). Field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM) and X-ray diffraction were used to investigate the structural properties of the bimetallic Ag//Au colloidal MNPs. While optical properties were investigated using a UV-Vis spectrophotometer. Results show that the discharge time plays a crucial role in modifying the bimetallic nanoparticles properties such as grain size, surface area, and optical stability. Moreover, TEM and FE-SEM confirm the formation of Ag//Au core//shell structure with uniform sizes and shapes.

AbstractFactors influencing spice income in Tanzania are assessed, exploring household effects of spice diversification, socio‐economic and land characteristics on spice income. Spice diversification, household size, age and gender of the household head, non‐spice crops and off‐farm activities are factors influencing spice income. Results indicate that successful farmers can negotiate higher prices for most spices. This suggests that policymakers should encourage farmers to diversify production and supplement their income with non‐spice crops. Promoting cooperation among farmers, improving marketing infrastructure and implementing education programs could equip farmers with the necessary knowledge and skills to negotiate prices and reduce income differences among farmers.