Measuring competences for democratic culture: teaching human rights through religious education

This paper aims to present research on measuring competences for democratic culture. It describes the development of a multiple-item scale that measures competences in teaching democratic citizenship and human rights through religious education. A principal component analysis based on the 135 items of the Council of Europe’s Reference framework of competences for democratic culture was carried out in two phases, in order to construct and refine the scale. The result was a 52-item scale divided into six components. This was tested for its reliability, factor structure and validity; firstly on a sample of 123, and secondly on a sample of 403 secondary RE teachers (2018-19). The research scrutinises the concept of democratic competences as being the ability to mobilise and deploy relevant values, attitudes, skills, knowledge and/or understanding. It concludes that these competences are more complex structures than has been assumed.

The Digital Payment Service Automation Attributes Model

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of automation attributes in railway digital ticket payment toward the commuters' satisfaction and retention in railway transportation. Digital payment security is one of the essential qualities which was little discussed in determining public transportation service performance. This study used the partial least square structural equation modeling method study to measure the six effects indicated by the proposed research framework to fill the last research gap. The results showed two automation attributes, reliability and security, significantly influenced commuter satisfaction, supporting the behavioral theory as commuter satisfaction also substantially affected the commuters' retention attitude. This study revealed that the reliability factor was the most significant. The findings communicate important insight for local government in improving its railway transportation's quality of service. The study's scope was to train commuters who live in Jakarta metropolitan area and use the railway as their public or mass transportation.

Exploring Structural Relationships in Attracting and Retaining International Students in STEM for the Sustainable Development of Higher Education

Attracting and retaining international students has been widely discussed in higher education settings. Increasing the number of international students has become an indispensable strategy for national and global competition. This study focuses on effective strategies and international students' issues regarding satisfaction in the most popular STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) programs. We designed a structural equation modeling (SEM) method to determine the effect of institutional mediation between push factors and satisfaction factors for the development of better strategies by which to attract and retain international students. Taking Taiwan as an example, this study employed a self-designed questionnaire to collect data: 485 degree-seeking international students in STEM programs were invited and successfully participated in this study during spring 2021. IBM SPSS 26 and AMOS 26 (Analysis of Moment Structure) were used to carry out the data analysis. We employed reliability, factor, and SEM analyses. This study assumed that the impact of push factors can be modified by institutional situations and result in international students’ satisfaction with their learning and environment and regarding migration policy. The results revealed that the predictors, mediation, and criteria were significant at the 0.05 or 0.01 levels. The findings suggest that push factors impact international students’ satisfaction when using institutional leadership and international strategy. The results of the bootstrap with a generalized least square method showed that the SEM model fit in 2000 bootstrap samples. The effect of institutional mediation can provide useful information for STEM programs to boost their future recruitment and retention strategies. This study provides an innovative approach to the detection of issues among international students in specific programs. These findings can enrich our knowledge regarding attracting and retaining global students in higher education settings.

Preventive maintenance planning considering machines’ reliability using group technology

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop an efficient and effective preventive maintenance (PM) plan that considers machines’ maintenance needs in addition to their reliability factor.Design/methodology/approachSimilarity coefficient method in group technology (GT) philosophy is used. Machines’ reliability factor is considered to develop virtual machine cells based on their need for maintenance according to the type of failures they encounter.FindingsUsing similarity coefficient method in GT philosophy for PM planning results in grouping machines based on their common failures and maintenance needs. Using machines' reliability factor makes the plan more efficient since machines will be maintained at the same time intervals and when their maintenance is due. This helps to schedule a standard and efficient maintenance process where maintenance material, tools and labor are scheduled accordingly.Practical implicationsThe proposed procedure will assist maintenance managers in developing an efficient and effective PM plans. These maintenance plans provide better inventory management for the maintenance materials and tools needed using the developed virtual machine cells.Originality/valueThis paper presents a new procedure to implement PM using the similarity coefficient method in GT. A new similarity coefficient equation that considers machines reliability is developed. Also a clustering algorithm that calculates the similarity between machine groups and form virtual machine cells is developed. A numerical example adopted from the literature is solved to demonstrate the proposed heuristic method.

THE CONCEPT OF EVALUATION OF MAXIMUM ACCEPTABLE RELIABILITY FACTORS OF STATE AVIATION HELICOPTERS

The aim of the study is to develop and determine the maximum acceptable reliability factor of state aviation helicopters based on statistics on malfunctions that occur during the operation of the aviation materiel, taking into account the recommendations of ICAO. The paper defines the general criteria for calculating the limit values of reliability (operational reliability and flight safety). For their implementation it is necessary: to carry out constant monitoring of flight safety and the general reasons which cause emergence of malfunctions of helicopters, their systems and subsystems; to use the proposed combined model on the principle of "traffic light" to determine the level of flight safety indicators at their standard deviation when justifying decisions on the forecast for future periods of operation and establishing certain values of forecast indicators of the "upper control limit" of operational Based on the adopted conceptual approach to determining the dynamics of change in failure rates, quantitative criteria are developed. Proposals to determine the indicators of the technical condition during the military operation of the aircraft will maintain high combat readiness of state aviation at a given level, predict the need for maintenance and repair and predict the timing and direction of modernization of aircraft.

Entrepreneurial Orientation, Innovation and Performance of Value-system Actors

The purpose of this study was to explore entrepreneurial orientation as a cognitive construct attributable to individuals and its relationship with innovation and performance from an industry ecosystem perspective. The study adopted a mixed design approach involving exploration of the factors and a diagnosis of their hypothesized relationships. A mixed sampling of members of a leather industry association and the linked industry institutions was carried out with a 76% response rate achieved. Quantitative data was collected from key decision-makers as informants of firms in Kenya’s leather industry using a questionnaire for guided interviews. The Delphi Technique and a pilot study (Cronbach’s Alpha 0.700 – 0.772) were used to establish instrument reliability. Factor analysis was performed on the study variables using Principal Component Analysis before inferential analysis. Entrepreneurial orientation showed validity as a second-order latent construct comprising three cognitive dimensions, namely vision for growth, opportunity recognition and calculated risk-taking. Entrepreneurial orientation and its antecedents were established as determinants of performance of value-system actors in an industry (R2=0.422, F=13.417, p=0.000). It further showed that this relationship is partially mediated by innovation by the firms (Sobel test Z-value = 3.30449610, p=0.00095147). The study recommends extension of this research to other industries.

Morton Filter-Based Security Mechanism for Healthcare System in Cloud Computing

Electronic health records contain the patient’s sensitive information. If these data are acquired by a malicious user, it will not only cause the pilferage of the patient’s personal data but also affect the diagnosis and treatment. One of the most challenging tasks in cloud-based healthcare systems is to provide security and privacy to electronic health records. Various probabilistic data structures and watermarking techniques were used in the cloud-based healthcare systems to secure patient’s data. Most of the existing studies focus on cuckoo and bloom filters, without considering their throughputs. In this research, a novel cloud security mechanism is introduced, which supersedes the shortcomings of existing approaches. The proposed solution enhances security with methods such as fragile watermark, least significant bit replacement watermarking, class reliability factor, and Morton filters included in the formation of the security mechanism. A Morton filter is an approximate set membership data structure (ASMDS) that proves many improvements to other data structures, such as cuckoo, bloom, semi-sorting cuckoo, and rank and select quotient filters. The Morton filter improves security; it supports insertions, deletions, and lookups operations and improves their respective throughputs by 0.9× to 15.5×, 1.3× to 1.6×, and 1.3× to 2.5×, when compared to cuckoo filters. We used Hadoop version 0.20.3, and the platform was Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6; we executed five experiments, and the average of the results has been taken. The results of the simulation work show that our proposed security mechanism provides an effective solution for secure data storage in cloud-based healthcare systems, with a load factor of 0.9. Furthermore, to aid cloud security in healthcare systems, we presented the motivation, objectives, related works, major research gaps, and materials and methods; we, thus, presented and implemented a cloud security mechanism, in the form of an algorithm and a set of results and conclusions.

An Empirical Study of Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty: An Evidence of Telecom Sector in Pakistan

This research explores key determinants of customer loyalty in a research setting where customer loyalty is a dependent variable and service quality switching costs and switching cost and trust are all independent variables. The research uses a variety of statistical techniques, including reliability factor and regression analysis. As the country is moving fast towards digital financial inclusion. The telecommunication sector in Pakistan has also been impressively keeping up with paced. With the growing fame of digital telecommunications, the evaluation of customer loyalty and satisfaction has become essential for mobile network operators as well as for researchers at the same moment. To define, the variables influencing client satisfaction and loyalty, a comprehensive literature study was conducted. A conceptual research model was created based on a literature review to identify the link between service quality and customer satisfaction, in addition to price switching, customer loyalty and conviction. By using a self-administered questionnaire, the researchers gathered the perceptions of 300 prepaid phone subscribers form four carriers. The findings show that there is a significant direct connection between quality of service and customer satisfaction. Furthermore, the results of the study also demonstrate that customer loyalty is important predictors of quality of service, switching costs, and conviction. Trust is the most crucial determinants of customer loyalty among these three precedents in the context of service-oriented enterprises.

Improvement of energy efficiency of agricultural enterprises through the survey of high-voltage transmission lines using unmanned aerial vehicles

The paper studies the reliability of transmission lines of Michurinsk district electric lines in Tambov Region. It evaluates the quality of overhead power transmission lines in the support-insulator-wire system and determines the reliability factor of overhead lines. The paper proposes methodological approaches to the survey of power transmission lines using unmanned aerial vehicles. Their use seems quite promising and profitable, since the cost of such work is an order of magnitude lower.

Visualization of construction infrastructure objects

Building information modeling provides an integrated three-dimensional environment applied to the management of large-scale engineering projects, allowing you to reduce the cost and time for planning structures and requirements for the reliability of buildings. The purpose of this work is to develop a methodology for changing the layout and reliability factor during the visualization of three-dimensional models to improve the analysis of building plans. This approach will allow you to combine different analytical methods and approaches when planning different structures. The results of this work suggest new directions for future research in the field of information visualization for the construction complex. The system is compatible with portable and scalable mobile devices. The proposed system can also be used for pre-project architecture and augmented visualization, where proprietary developed methods are used to achieve the quality of photorealistic rendering.