Suchergebnisse

This paper incorporates ten measures consisting of four financial condition dimensions in cash, budget, long-run, and service-level solvencies into the application of an evaluation approach-a Fuzzy Rule Based System (FRBS)-to the evaluation of U.S. state governments' overall financial condition during and after the Great Recession of 2008. It introduces a methodology for combining the disparate measures of the system into an overall evaluation of financial condition for state governments. We identify that ten states are in good financial condition, while the majority are in a financial condition that falls somewhere between fair and poor. The evaluation results indicate that some states can do at least a fair job in financial performance; however, there is substantial room for improvement in future financial performance.

Egypt, a country with a harsh natural environment and rapid population growth, is facing difficulty in ensuring its national food security. A novel model developed for assessing food security in Egypt, which applies remote sensing techniques, is presented. By extracting the gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) mean texture features from Sentinel-1 and Landsat-7 images, the arable land used to grow grain crops was first classified and extracted using a support vector machine. In terms of the classified results, meteorological data, and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data, the Carnegie–Ames–Stanford approach (CASA) model was adopted to compute the annual net primary production (NPP). Then, the NPP yield conversion formula was used to forecast the annual grain yield. Finally, a method for evaluating food security, which involves four dimensions, i.e., quantity security, economic security, quality security, and resource security, was established to evaluate food security in Egypt in 2010, 2015, and 2020. Based on the proposed model, a classification accuracy of the crop distribution map, which is above 82%, can be achieved. Moreover, the reliability of yield estimation is verified compared to the result estimated using statistics data provided by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Our evaluation results show that food security in Egypt is declining, the quantity and quality security show large fluctuations, and economic and resource security are relatively stable. This model can satisfy the requirements for estimating grain yield at a wide scale and evaluating food security on a national level. It can be used to provide useful suggestions for governments regarding improving food security.

Abstract
Contributing to existing studies on global circuits of knowledge and labour, this paper presents a case study of Andy – a Chinese doctoral student in the UK – and looks at his transition from higher education to later joining the labour market after returning to China through the lens of personality traits. It draws upon literature on language socialisation and sociolinguistic studies of mobility, focusing on how social actors navigate transnational higher education and the consequences on professional development in a neoliberalising market economy. It aims to investigate how (in)appropriate personhood – as manifested in recurrent personality attributes – is enacted and negotiated in specific learning contexts in Andy's trajectory and the impact on employability, with various types of data consisting of participant observation, interviews, and relevant materials. The analysis suggests that Andy has been trained to engage communicatively with academic tasks in higher education settings. However, Andy considers himself lacking certain personality variables that could align with the criteria of a "good doctoral student" depicted by the institutions, such as being independent, motivated, and self-disciplined. Andy gradually shows disorientation in an academic career, albeit finding his inadequacy to perform the desired professional personhood in a labour market that values working experience and communication skills over education certification. This process explains why sometimes the expected communicative repertories and training acquired in higher education are not transferable into valuable resources that Andy can mobilise to become employed. This paper argues that neoliberal rationality has stratifying effects on individuals primarily due to an emphasis on self-responsibility and constant improvements. In transnational higher education, certain personality traits are considered desirable and lacking such characteristics can have side effects on mobile actors like Andy, who navigate the globalising labour market through uncertainty and precarity.