scholarly journals ANALYSIS OF FEASIBILITY OF BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY FOR INTERNATIONAL TRADE RELATED TO SRI LANKAN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
H.D. Weerakoon ◽  
◽  
H. Chandanie ◽  

Sri Lankan (SL) construction industry has been trading with overseas suppliers to fulfil the need for material and technology. This process faces many issues due to the poor digitalisation of the industry. The financial flow of international trade is dominated by financial institutions (i.e., banks) and the industry faces many issues e.g., delays, additional charges, complexity, lack of information sharing, and requiring legal assistance. Blockchain Technology (BCT) has emerged as a revolutionary digital technology in the past decade. Key features of BCT i.e., immutability, decentralisation, distributed ledgers, enhanced security, consensus, and speed have been identified to provide solutions for issues in the various industries including the supply chain. Hence this paper aims to investigate the feasibility of using BCT to solve existing issues in financial flow with special reference to the barriers to adopt it in the international trade of the Sri Lankan construction industry. As the data collection method, an expert opinion forum was carried out by involving both international trade experts and blockchain specialists in the Sri Lankan construction industry. Key findings present that BCT can solve issues such as transparency issues and poor information sharing between parties, excessive documentation and complexities, payment delays, and financial costs in the international trade of the SL construction industry. Further, findings revealed that the government’s approval, legal requirements, lack of knowledge and technology, and reluctance to change the industry can act as barriers to adopt BCT in Sri Lanka.

Author(s):  
Zsolt Barna

The past few years, the companies of the financial sector focus on the efficiency even better because of an economic crisis which can be experienced in a year. Because of this the many times obsolete benchmarking systems modernization became important. Characteristically at construction industry firms and the IT and the system developed by them is used in a financial sector, but any companies may be useful where it is necessary to accomplish aims for him, it is necessary to work together with others, or there are key competences, which are essential, to the filling of the scope of activities. Now the big part of the enterprises’ employees home office-ban works, the benchmarking is useful in a situation like this. The leaders’ big part suffers from lack of information in connection with his colleagues’ performance, because of this if the leaders have the aims in sight, it they onto the readiness of tasks which can be broken down, the pressing feeling stemming from the isolation decreases then.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Kosala ◽  
◽  
M. Francis ◽  
D. Sirimewan ◽  
◽  
...  

The construction industry is one of the largest industries in any country, contributing significantly to economic growth. A range of researchers explained that the construction industry suffered from numerous issues where financial issues are more critical. Late payments, cash flow issues, and lack of security of the payment are some of them. Blockchain technology shows a potential use for managing financial activities. Therefore, this research tends to investigate the applicability of blockchain technology to manage financial issues in the Sri Lankan construction industry. A comprehensive literature survey was carried out to assess the concept of blockchain technology and identified financial issues in the construction industry. A qualitative expert opinion survey was conducted with eight construction experts who had knowledge of the blockchain technology, selected through purposive sampling to collect data in a Sri Lankan context. The collected data was analysed using the content analysis method. The findings of the expert interviews indicated that faster transactions would help to reduce late payments; removing third parties from the transaction will reduce the involvement of many parties in the transaction process; and trust, security, transparency will help to increase foreign investments. Further, the lack of knowledge in the area, legal and tax issues, low investment, and social issues will be the challenges in adopting blockchain technology to the construction industry. The research finally suggests the ways to overcome such challenges in terms of using pilot projects, government rules and regulation. Thus, the research proposes that use of blockchain technology could minimise a significant number of financial issues in the construction industry.


Author(s):  
Jim Sykes

In the conclusion to The Musical Gift, Jim Sykes discusses Sri Lankan versions of viral music videos over the past decade, particularly Pharrell Williams’ video “Happy.” Sykes notes that several people filming themselves dancing to Williams’ song were stopped by the police, who could not comprehend why people were singing and dancing in public outside of the bounds of an official concert. The Sri Lankan “Happy” videos have also been criticized as depicting upper- and middle-class Sri Lankans and thus obscuring the fact that happiness has not been achieved for many Sri Lankans, including those who suffered greatly from the war. Returning to the concept of “the musical gift,” Sykes argues the promotion of public song and dance from and between various communities has a role to play in forging post-war reconciliation and building a “happiness” that emerges from Sri Lankan aesthetics.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002218562110082
Author(s):  
Eugene Schofield-Georgeson

In 2020, the Federal Morrison Liberal Government scrambled to respond to the effects of the international coronavirus pandemic on the Australian labour market in two key ways. First, through largescale social welfare and economic stimulus (the ‘JobKeeper’ scheme) and second, through significant proposed reform to employment laws as part of a pandemic recovery package (the ‘Omnibus Bill’). Where the first measure was administered by employers, the second was largely designed to suspend and/or redefine labour protections in the interests of employers. In this respect, the message from the Federal Government was clear: that the costs of pandemic recovery should be borne by workers at the discretion of employers. State Labor Governments, by contrast, enacted a range of industrial protections. These included the first Australia ‘wage theft’ or underpayment frameworks on behalf of both employees and contractors in the construction industry. On-trend with state industrial legislation over the past 4 years, these state governments continued to introduce industrial manslaughter offences, increased access to workers’ compensation, labour hire licensing schemes and portable long service leave.


Biomolecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 142
Author(s):  
Mariella Cuomo ◽  
Luca Borrelli ◽  
Rosa Della Monica ◽  
Lorena Coretti ◽  
Giulia De Riso ◽  
...  

The bidirectional microbiota–gut–brain axis has raised increasing interest over the past years in the context of health and disease, but there is a lack of information on molecular mechanisms underlying this connection. We hypothesized that change in microbiota composition may affect brain epigenetics leading to long-lasting effects on specific brain gene regulation. To test this hypothesis, we used Zebrafish (Danio Rerio) as a model system. As previously shown, treatment with high doses of probiotics can modulate behavior in Zebrafish, causing significant changes in the expression of some brain-relevant genes, such as BDNF and Tph1A. Using an ultra-deep targeted analysis, we investigated the methylation state of the BDNF and Tph1A promoter region in the brain and gut of probiotic-treated and untreated Zebrafishes. Thanks to the high resolution power of our analysis, we evaluated cell-to-cell methylation differences. At this resolution level, we found slight DNA methylation changes in probiotic-treated samples, likely related to a subgroup of brain and gut cells, and that specific DNA methylation signatures significantly correlated with specific behavioral scores.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
P. N. R. L. Chandra Sekhar Author ◽  
T. N. Shankar Author

In the era of digital technology, it becomes easy to share photographs and videos using smartphones and social networking sites to their loved ones. On the other hand, many photo editing tools evolved to make it effortless to alter multimedia content. It makes people accustomed to modifying their photographs or videos either for fun or extracting attention from others. This altering brings a questionable validity and integrity to the kind of multimedia content shared over the internet when used as evidence in Journalism and Court of Law. In multimedia forensics, intense research work is underway over the past two decades to bring trustworthiness to the multimedia content. This paper proposes an efficient way of identifying the manipulated region based on Noise Level inconsistencies of spliced mage. The spliced image segmented into irregular objects and extracts the noise features in both pixel and residual domains. The manipulated region is then exposed based on the cosine similarity of noise levels among pairs of individual objects. The experimental results reveal the effectiveness of the proposed method over other state-of-art methods.


Author(s):  
Aly Elgayar ◽  
Salwa Mamoun Beheiry ◽  
Alaa Jabbar ◽  
Hamad Al Ansari

Purpose Over the past decade, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) introduced several green regulatory guidelines, federal decrees, and a considerable number of environmentally friendly initiatives. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the top green materials and systems used currently in the UAE construction industry as per the new laws dictate as well as see if professionals are switching over to incorporate more green materials, systems, and/or designs. Design/methodology/approach The work involved reviewing internationally popular green materials and systems for construction, developing a questionnaire based on the literature review, surveying professionals in the seven UAE emirates, and ranking the findings based on the relative importance index. Findings Findings found the top used green materials and system in the UAE’s construction industry. As well as identified that there is a communication gap between the design and implementation phases that is possibly hindering the use of more green materials and systems. Originality/value This study sets a baseline to measure the UAE’s progress over the coming years in terms of integrating more green construction materials, systems, methodologies, and trends.


2001 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 89-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Drusilla K Brown

During the past decade, universal labor standards have become the focus of intense debate. Advocates argue from humanitarian concerns and the interests of industrialized-country labor, seeking enforcement with WTO sanctions. Opponents regard labor regulation as a matter of national sovereignty, challenge the effectiveness of trade sanctions, and prefer the ILO emphasis on dialogue, monitoring and technical advice. This paper analyzes the labor standards debate, with specific attention to the analytical underpinnings of universal rules; evidence linking weak labor protections in developing countries to industrialized country wages; and the role of labor standards in WTO negotiations.


2000 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 79-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elif Akçetin

The effects of the Great Depression of 1929 on peasants in Turkey is an area of study that has remained neglected, despite the fact that peasants then constituted 75 percent of the population. The reason why the condition of peasants has not attracted much attention is the dramatic change between the economic policies of the 1920s and those of the 1930s. The immediate consequence of the stock-market crash and the sudden drop in prices was the shrinkage of international trade. Governments dealt with the depression by implementing quotas on imports, and liberal economic policies were no longer considered successful. Protectionism became the most popular policy for the management of economies in difficulty. The change in economic policies during this period constituted a break with the past and therefore has been the principal focus of studies on the Great Depression.


Author(s):  
E.S. Ivanova ◽  
◽  
P.V. Petrov ◽  

Currently, there is an active implementation of digital solutions in agriculture, which will reduce the costs of the enterprise and optimize logistics processes. Blockchain is a promising digital technology that is finding more and more applications in various fields of human activity. Its advantage is the control and security of information, with the help of which it is possible to increase transparency, traceability, and ensure the identification of goods in the agricultural market.


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