Heritage Education in Myanmar – developing resilience and sustainability through community engagement | မြန်ြာနိုင်ငံ၏အမြေအနှစ်ဆိုင်ရာပညာမရး ( လူထုအားမြင့် ကြံ့ခိုင်မရးနှ ငမ့် ရရညှ ်တည်တ့နံ ုငိ မ် ရး)

Over the last decade Myanmar has experienced a strong increase in interest in Myanmar’s heritage and a demand for local expertise in heritage management. However, in Myanmar there is no formal education in heritage studies. This is recognised as a significant gap in Myanmar’s abilities to manage and develop world heritage sites, as well as national and local level heritage sites, to international standards. To address this gap a group of researchers are preparing models for Myanmar Heritage Education considering short, medium and long-term goals. The models consider local and national heritage management needs, and ways to up-skill local staff working in heritage fields so course content can be delivered by Myanmar experts and become selfsustaining. Formal government accredited courses of study will take some time to implement. In the current covid-19 environment there is opportunity to focus on the role of community groups in heritage management. This paper will discuss current activities undertaken by community groups in heritage areas, and outline opportunities to engage community more fully in the longterm management of Myanmar’s cultural heritage. The aim is to develop local resources that are resilient and sustainable. မြန်ြာနိုင်ငံ၏ အ မြေအနှစ်ထိန်းသိြ်း မေးလုပ်ငန်းြျားတေင် ဆယ်နှစ်အတေင်း စိတ်ဝင်စားြှု တိူးတက်လာပပီး မပည်တေင်းကျွြ်းကျင်သူြျားစေားေှိေန် လိုအပ်လာပါသည်။ မြန်ြာနိုင်ငံေှိ တက္ကသိုလ်ြျား တေင် ယခု အချနိ ် အထိ အမ ြေအနှစ် ထိန်းသိြ်းမ ေး ပညာေပ်အတေက် ဘေဲ့ မပးနိုင်သည့် အဆင့် ထိ သင်ကကား မပးနိုင်ြှု ြေှိ မသးပါ။ ထို အချက်သည် ကြ္ဘာ အ မြေအနှစ်၊ နိုင်ငံအ မြေအနှစ်နှင့် မေသဆိုင်ော အ မြေအနှစ်ြျားကိုထိန်းသိြ်း မစာင့် မေှာက်ောတေင် မြန်ြာနိုင်ငံ ၏ အ မေးတကကီးလိုအပ်လျက် ေှိမသာကေက်လပ် အမြစ်သတိမပုနိုင်ပါသည်။ ထိုကေက်လပ်ကို မမြေှင်းနိုင်ေန်အတေက် သု မတသနပညာေှင်တစ်စုသည် မြန်ြာ့အ မြေအနှစ်ထိန်းသိြ်း မေးပညာ အတေက် ကာလတို၊ အလယ်အလတ်နှင့် ကာလေှည် ေည်ြှန်းချက်ြျားချြှတ်ပပီး လုပ် မဆာင်နိုင်ြည့်ပုံ စံြျားကိုမပင်ဆင် မနပါသည်။ ထိုလုပ် မဆာင်နိုင်ြည့်ပုံစံြျားတေင် မေသဆိုင်ောနှင့် နိုင်ငံလုံးဆိုင်ော အ မြေအနှစ်ထိန်းသိြ်း မေးလိုအပ်ချက်ြျား၊ နိုင်ငံတေင်းသက်ဆိုင်ော လုပ်ငန်းလုပ် မဆာင် မနသူြျားကို အေည် အ မသေးမြှင့်တင်နိုင်ြည့်နည်းလြ်းြျားကို စဥ်းစားထားပပီး၊ မြန်ြာ ပညာေှင်ြျားက ပို့ချ၍ ကိုယ်တိုင် ေပ်တည်နိုင်ြည့် အ မမခအ မနကိုစဥ်းစားထားပါသည်။ အစိုးေြှ အသိအြှတ်မပု မသာ ပုံြှန် (ဘေဲ့)သင်တန်းြျားြေင့်လှစ်ေန် အချနိ ်ယူေြည် မြစ်ပါသည်။ လတ်တ မ လာ Covid 19 ကူးစက်မပန့်ပေားမ နချနိ ်တေင် အ မြေအနှစ်ထိန်းသိြ်းမ ေး အတေက် လူြှုအြေဲ့အစည်း၏ပါဝင်ြှု အခန်း ကဏ္ဍ ကိုအာရုံစိုက်ေန် အခေင့် အ မေးပင်မြစ်ပါသည်။ ဤစာတြ်းတေင် သက်ဆိုင်ော အ မြေအနှစ်မေသ အသီးသီးြှ လူြှု အြေဲ့ြျား၏ လှုပ်ေှားြှုြျား၊ မြန်ြာ့ယဥ် မကျးြှု အ မြေအနှစ်ြျား မေေှည်ထိန်းသိြ်းြှုတေင် လူြှု အြေဲ့အစည်းြျားြှ ပိုြိုပါဝင်နိုင်ြည့် အခေင့်အလြ်းြျား ချြှတ်မခင်းတို့ပါဝင်ပါသည်။ ခံနိုင်ေည်ေမှိ သာ၊ အနာဂတ်ြျုိးဆက်အတေက်လက်ေှိ စေြ်းအားြျားကို အ မကာင်းအတိုင်းချန်ထားနိုင် မသာ မပည်တေင်းစေြ်းအားစုြျားကို ပိုြို တိုးတက်လာ မအာင် မဆာင်ေွက်ေန်ေည်ေွယ်ပါသည်။

The Dutch research infrastructure EPOS-NL: Access to Earth scientific research facilities and data

<p>In response to the growing geo-societal challenges of our densely populated planet, current research frequently requires convergence of multiple research disciplines, and optimized use of openly available data, research facilities and funds. Such optimization is the main aim of many research infrastructures developing both at the national and international level. In the Netherlands, the European Plate Observing System – Netherlands (EPOS-NL) was formed, as the Dutch research infrastructure for solid Earth sciences. EPOS-NL aims to further develop world-class facilities for research into georesources and hazards, and to provide international access to these facilities and derived data. It is a partnership between Utrecht University, Delft University of Technology and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) and is funded by the Dutch Research Council. EPOS-NL facilities include: 1) The Earth Simulation Lab at Utrecht University, 2) The Groningen gas field seismological network and the ORFEUS Data Center at KNMI, 3) The deep geothermal doublet (DAPwell), to be installed on the Delft university campus, and 4) A distributed facility for multi-scale imaging and tomography (MINT), shared between the Utrecht and Delft universities. EPOS-NL provides financial, technical and scientific support for access to these facilities. To get facility access, researchers can apply to a bi-annual call, with 2021 calls planned in Q1 and Q3. EPOS-NL further works with researchers, data centers and industry to provide access to essential data and models (e.g. pertaining to the seismogenic Groningen gas field) within the framework of the European infrastructure EPOS, conforming to FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) data principles. In that way, EPOS-NL contributes directly to a globally developing trend to make research facilities and data openly accessible to the international community. This supports cost-effective and multi-disciplinary research into the geo-societal challenges faced by our densely populated planet. See www.EPOS-NL.nl for more information.</p>

National Branding Shifting to City Branding

In asset management, the impact of national branding is linked with the capital leverage and the development of resilient and sustain business. Therefore, national branding impacts essential project financing, mainly acting as a driver of interest premium for private market invested capitals. The key objective of this chapter is to present the linkage of national branding with the assets development in critical infrastructures, distribution systems, and large assets such those in transport and energy sector. Adopting a system of system approach, the key areas of the added value to critical infrastructure and assets are presented, and the methodology framework to assess the impact of national branding on assets is depicted. By examples and references to case studies, the need is illustrated to consciously develop world-class brands as part of the overall economic growth and development on a regional scale.

Towards a Sustainable European Research Infrastructures Ecosystem

Research Infrastructures (RIs) are of fundamental strategic importance for Europe’s global competitiveness and remain at the heart of the knowledge triangle of research, education and innovation. Of paramount importance is to coordinate the development and use of top infrastructures for data collection, management, processing and analysing while also ensuring the long-term sustainability of research infrastructures. The following essay touches on some of the key goals and available tools to develop world-class sustainable Research Infrastructures open and accessible to all researchers in Europe and beyond.

Internationalization of higher education: excellence or network building? What do BRICS countries need most?

The article is devoted to discussing international collaboration regarding higher education in the BRICS countries. It starts with the analysis of the radical changes occurred in the global academic world, described as a joint influence of global trends towards massification, globalization and internationalization. We argue that BRICS countries can meet these challenges by means of two main approaches: through building excellence university projects and via developing horizontally structured university networks, such as the BRICS Network University. The goals of the first are creating elite universities and better integration to the global academia, while the second addresses most pressing development issues faced by BRICS’ societies. The conclusion is that while excellence projects do help to develop world-class education, the networks better answer current needs of the BRICS countries.

Complicit Reproductions in the Global South: Courting World Class Universities and Global Rankings

The proliferation of global rankings has led to vigorous debates about the dominance of world-class universities and the encroaching institutional isomorphism in higher education. Specifically, the narrow metrics of rankings celebrate STEM research and institutional reputation at the expense of the humanist roots of higher education: teaching, self-cultivation, and community engagement. This critique on global rankings faces an equally vocal demand that a country must develop world-class universities in order to remain economically competitive in the global era – an instrumental logic that attracts devotees in both advanced economies as well as developing economies. Ironically, policymakers in both contexts simultaneously lament the prevalence of rankings and calibrate strategies to promote success in league tables. Although rankings attract scrutiny in both higher education policymaking and research, the implications of these metrics on higher education in the Global South receive little attention. The discourse is largely focused on top and mid ranking institutions, which are often located in the Global North. In the Global South, global rankings and the concept of world-class universities act through subtle yet powerful mechanisms to shape the contours of higher education. For many institutions and states in the Global South, the fervour is less about creating a world-class university and more about establishing links with well ranked universities (domestically and internationally). Therefore, while the explicit goal is not to build a world-class university, policymakers are nevertheless complicit in reproducing the hegemony of global rankings. This chapter will examine the activities in which global rankings exert tremendous pressure on the Global South: curriculum development, student mobility, faculty recruitment, research partnerships, and strategic planning. In mapping out the mechanisms of reproduction, the goal is to highlight the pervasive influence of global rankings and the complicity in reproduction rather than paint a binary division between the global and local dimensions of higher education.

Progress towards a World-Class Research University status: The case of Nanjing Agricultural University

The concept of “world-class university” has been there for some time, and everyone wants a world-class university, and no country feels it can do without one. This battle to develop world-class universities lies not only in the gained status but also in the symbolic role of such universities. Universities exist mainly for research and dissemination of knowledge, which have become critical drivers of economic growth. For this reason, world-class research universities are recognized as central institutions in the 21st century economies. This recognition comes with pressure for universities to rethink their research activities and with the need to raise their research status to that of internationally accepted world-class universities. However, in order to attain the world-class research status, there is a need to sustain the efforts being put in place at both national and university levels. This study analyzed university data over nine years, from 2008 to 2016. It examined how Nanjing Agricultural University has strived to sustain its efforts towards attaining world-class research status. The results reveal that consistency and sustainability have resulted in excellence in research and increased research production. The conclusion is that the sustainability of the efforts significantly increases research production and excellence.

Halal Tourism Destination in UAE: The Opportunities, Threats and Future Research

This paper aims to discuss the opportunities of Halal tourism destination in the UAE and challenges that impede this industry. It also intends to propose the future research to advance this industry. Halal tourism Has globally become attractive industry due to the demand growth not only from Muslims tourists, non-Muslims as well. Thus, many Muslims and non-Muslims countries have taken an initiative to innovative and diversify their tourism industry through developing Halal tourism that attract tourists’ satisfaction and loyalty. The UAE as a leading and innovative country has taken initiative to support this industry and transform UAE to become the first leading Halal tourism in the world. However, the portfolio of tourism industry and its contribution to GDP still very low fills in 12% only. This put a pressure to the country in how to innovate and diversify the tourism industry in general and Halal tourism to become the most attractive world tourism destination.We found that, as the key driver of this industry is the tourists’ perspective about the motivation factors and since the customersbehaviour is always changing, we argue that understand the motivation factors from tourists’ perspective towards Halal tourism destination is the key driver to develop world Halal tourism destination

Overview of the European framework for online integrated air quality and meteorology modelling (EuMetChem)

The COST Action ES1004 – European framework for online integrated air quality and meteorology modelling (EuMetChem) is focusing on a new generation of online integrated Atmospheric Chemical Transport (ACT) and Meteorology (Numerical Weather Prediction and Climate) models with two-way interactions between different atmospheric processes including chemistry (both gases and aerosols), clouds, radiation, turbulent mixing, emissions, meteorology and climate. Two major application areas of the integrated modelling are considered: (i) improved numerical meteorology and weather prediction (NWP) and chemical weather forecasting (CWF) with short-term feedbacks of aerosols and chemistry on meteorological variables, and (ii) two-way interactions between atmospheric pollution/composition and climate variability/change. The framework consists of 4 working groups namely: 1) Strategy and framework for online integrated modelling; 2) Interactions, parametrizations and feedback mechanisms; 3) Chemical data assimilation in integrated models; and 4) Evaluation, validation, and applications. Establishment of such an European framework (involving also key American experts) enables the EU to develop world class capabilities in integrated ACT/NWP-Climate modelling systems, including research, education and forecasting. This article provides an introduction to the EuMetChem goals and outcomes for this Special Issue "Coupled chemistry–meteorology modelling: status and relevance for numerical weather prediction, air quality and climate communities (SI of EuMetChem COST ES1004)" which collects key scientific papers of EuMetChem and its collaborators from different continents.