The Role of Microfinance in Africa

This chapter examines the role of microfinance in developing countries, particularly Ghana and Nigeria. The chapter begins with an overview of the link between microfinance, poverty, and women empowerment in the chapter introduction. The background to the chapter sets out the main difference between microfinance and microcredit. The role of microfinance in contemporary development finance is then discussed. In this context, existing literature on the role of microfinance in reducing poverty, women empowerment, and microenterprise growth is extensively reviewed. Key solutions and recommendations are then presented next, followed by future research direction and the chapter conclusion.

A Review of Brand Anthropomorphism Marketing Research

Brand anthropomorphism extends and develops the special relationship between consumers and brands by injecting human characteristics, motives, subjective intentions, behaviors and emotions into specific brands. Brand anthropomorphism, as a brand marketing strategy, plays a very important role in brand building and communication. Therefore, the current theoretical circle of brand anthropomorphic marketing is gradually heating up. In this paper, the literature of anthropomorphic brand marketing at home and abroad, the brand personified and anthropomorphic marketing concept, the brand personified the composition of the dimension and measurement, the brand personified as related variables, etc on the existing research results, and on this basis in the field of the future research direction was prospected.

Transformation towards a Smart Maintenance Factory: The Case of a Vessel Maintenance Depot

The conceptualization and framework of smart factories have been intensively studied in previous studies, and the extension to various business areas has been suggested as a future research direction. This paper proposes a method for extending the smart factory concept in the ship building phase to the ship servicing phase through actual examples. In order to expand the study, we identified the differences between manufacturing and maintenance. We proposed a smart transformation procedure, framework, and architecture of a smart maintenance factory. The transformation was a large-scale operation for the entire factory beyond simply applying a single process or specific technology. The transformations were presented through a vessel maintenance depot case and the effects of improvements were discussed.

Artificial Intelligence Technologies for Sign Language

AI technologies can play an important role in breaking down the communication barriers of deaf or hearing-impaired people with other communities, contributing significantly to their social inclusion. Recent advances in both sensing technologies and AI algorithms have paved the way for the development of various applications aiming at fulfilling the needs of deaf and hearing-impaired communities. To this end, this survey aims to provide a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art methods in sign language capturing, recognition, translation and representation, pinpointing their advantages and limitations. In addition, the survey presents a number of applications, while it discusses the main challenges in the field of sign language technologies. Future research direction are also proposed in order to assist prospective researchers towards further advancing the field.

Second generation liquid platelet concentrates: A literature review

: Liquid or injectable platelet rich fibrin (PRF) is a second-generation platelet concentrate which is completely autologous and free of external additives like bovine thrombin and calcium chloride. Additionally, it is the only one to be obtained in a liquid form among the second generation platelet concentrates. This allows for wide applications such as to maximize injections or mixing with biomaterials such as bone grafts or antibiotics. Since it was first introduced in 2015, several modifications of the original protocol have been proposed which aim at maximizing its biological and mechanical properties. This includes changes in centrifugation speed, time, and so on. The aim of this review is to summarize the various modifications of the injectable/liquid formation of PRF as well as to discuss the potential applications and future research direction.

Preserving Cultural Heritage with Mobile Augmented Reality – A survey

A worldwide trend is the inclusion of multimedia in cultural heritage(CH) for preservation. This will increase the user perception as well. So the Mobile Augmented reality(MAR) technology is very much used in this respect. This paper survey the state-of-art of application of MAR in CH(MARCH). Besides, a comparative analysis of the different frameworks is done. Finally, this survey gives future research direction in this field.

HOW GREEN PERFORMANCE STIMULATES TOURIST LOYALTY? EXAMINING THE ROLE OF RELATIONSHIP QUALITY IN VIETNAM

The main purpose of this research is to propose and test a conceptual model that clarifies the relationship between green performance of hotels and customer loyalty with the mediating role of relationship quality. The data collected from 200 homestay tourists in Moc Chau national tourism area, Son La province, Vietnam through questionnaire survey was tested by applying partial least squares wit h SmartPLS software. Analytical results showed that the higher tourists perceive the homestay green performance, the tighter the relationship quality they have towards the homestays, which in turns stimulates their loyalty behavior. The evidence also indicated that relationship quality contributes as the partial mediator in the relationship between green practice and tourist loyalty. The theoretical and managerial contribution, as well as the limitation and future research direction were also discussed in the paper.