Peningkatan Usaha Budidaya Cacing Tanah di Kecamatan Teras Kabupaten Boyolali

<p><em><strong>Increasing of Earthworm Cultivation Business in Teras District Boyolali Regency.</strong> </em>Earthworms are soft-bodied, invertebrates, and have many functions as decomposer organisms, fertilizer producers from organic waste, and animal protein sources. Earthworms have high economic value. This community service aims to increase the capacity of earthworm cultivation through improved feed, use of vermicompost, and improvement of business bookkeeping on partner SMEs. The community service method is socialization, earthworm cultivation training, the introduction of media (feed), bookkeeping management training, and mentoring. Community service activities are earthworm cultivation training, introducing palm dregs and tofu dregs as media (feed), vermicompost as organic fertilizer, simple bookkeeping training, and mentoring. This community service activity can increase earthworms' production capacity by 50 - 70% per two months. SMEs have other alternative media (feed), namely palm dregs and tofu dregs, for worm cultivation. SMEs are already using vermicompost as organic fertilizer. SMEs have simple bookkeeping because they have recorded the financial income and expenditure of earthworm cultivation. Overall, this service activity has provided additional knowledge for SMEs to run a business so that the business is expected to progress and develop.</p>

Bad to All? A Novel Way to Analyze the Effects of Fee-for-Service on Multiple Grades Hospitals Operation Outcomes

It is a consensus that Fee-for-Service (FFS) is a traditional medical insurance payment scheme with significant disadvantages, namely the waste of health care resources. However, the majority of the prior works that draw such conclusions from the perspective of social welfare while analyzing the impacts of FFS on operation outcomes of hospitals still lack attention from the existing literature, considering the fact that the majority of public hospitals are self-founding. Under this motivation, we collected operation data of 301 public hospitals with different grades (grade II and III) in central China. Here, we present a novel statistical evaluation framework on the impact of FFS on hospital operation outcomes from four dimensions (financial income, efficiency, medical service capacity, and sustainability) using fixed-effects multivariate regression. With verification by the robustness test, our results indicate that: (i) The classification of the hospital (COH) significantly affected the impacts of FFS on hospitals’ operations. (ii) For grade III hospitals, FFS leads to higher financial income, medical service capacity (MSC) and longer length-of-stay (LOS). (iii) However, as for grade II hospitals, hospitals with FFS adoptions achieve lower financial income, lower MSC and shorter LOS, which violates the common sense from previous works. (iv) FFS has a significant negative impact on public hospital’s sustainable development; however, there is lack of evidence showing that sustainability would be affected by the interaction effects between FFS and COH. We believe these new findings from the perspective of hospital operation provide insights and could serve as a reference for the healthcare payment hierarchical reform by COH in low and middle-income countries (LMICs), which are going through the primary stage of the healthcare reform.

Social Behavior of University Students in the Educational Sphere in the Rostov Region and the Republic of Crimea: A Comparative Perspective

The present article examines the specificity of social behavior of students of two regions – the Rostov Region and the Republic of Crimea. The notions of education as a terminal and instrumental value, attitudes towards academic mobility practices, the implementation of such practices, and motives are studied as the foundations of differences between the regions. The methodological construct is developed based on the theoretical approaches of A.V. Lubskii on mental programs, the value approach of M. Rokeach, the neo-institutional approach of D. North, and the activity approach in the study of social practices. The comparative analysis of two questionnaires allows concluding that the specificity of social behavior of the citizens of Crimea lies in a lesser focus on high financial income as a result of obtaining education, lower attitudes towards intra-Russian mobility, the awareness of the peninsula’s closedness to international mobility due to the lack of financial capabilities, and high support for classical versus online learning. The number of educational practices realized by students is much lower in Crimea compared to the Rostov Region. This finding shows the need to introduce such opportunities for students in the peninsula’s system of higher education.

Venture creation patterns in academic entrepreneurship: the role of founder motivations

The path to academic entrepreneurship is characterized by a sequence of venture creation activities, which can be classified into operational-, financing- and commercialization activities. Academic entrepreneurship research is concerned with the question how different motives of scientists affect the patterns of these venture creation activities. Using a longitudinal two-period dataset of 165 academic entrepreneurs from 73 universities in Germany, we propose and test a multi-activity-based model that links different types of entrepreneurial motives to venture creation activities. The findings show that founder motives related to self-realization, necessity and an increased financial income increase the likelihood of completing venture creation activities, whereas work-life balance motivations and the drive to make better use of one’s professional knowledge decrease that likelihood. The desire to translate research ideas into practice has no effect. Our results further show that the positive effects of seeking self-realization and an increased financial income are more pronounced for completing commercialization activities than for operational activities. Our study contributes to research on academic entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial motivations and helps university administrators and policymakers to design their entrepreneurship support programs more effectively.

Longitudinal Observational Study of the Effect of Social Isolation on Quality of Life in a Vulnerable Population.

Background: The goal of the present study was to assess the impact of measures imposed by the government due to the pandemic of COVID-19 to guarantee social isolation in the quality of life of people in a situation of social vulnerability. Methods: To this end, we interviewed 63 adults, aged 18 to 59 years, living in a low financial income, 30 days before and 90 days after the start of social isolation and restrictions imposed by the government, using the WHOQOL-bref. Results: All domains of the WHOQOL-bref were negatively affected showing a worsening of the quality of life in the individual evaluated. Conclusion: The results suggest that the isolation period imposed by the pandemic COVID-19 led to a significant reduction in the indicators of quality of life of the population living in a social vulnerability situation.

The Optimization between Physician Satisfaction and Hospital Profit in Cross-Hospital Scheduling—A Case Study of Some Hospitals in Taiwan

In recent years, the majority of the population has preferred to go to large hospitals regardless of the severity of their illnesses, resulting in a waste of medical resources. In view of this situation, the government has proposed a cross-hospital integration plan to promote the integration of medical resources. Hospitals that provide support can not only increase their income but also extend their medical coverage to other regions and get wide access to more patients. While previous studies mainly focused on the internal shift scheduling of hospitals, this study took into account both the internal hospital and the support to branch hospitals and particularly explored the financial benefits generated by the provision of support and the satisfaction of physicians on shift scheduling. Decision makers can give different weight values according to the management needs and then determine the most appropriate physician shift schedule according to the final decision value. The shift-schedule-building system developed in this study could be used to quickly calculate the most appropriate shift schedule according to the actual needs, which could replace the time-consuming method of manual scheduling and improve physician satisfaction and hospital financial income.

Resource Change Representation in the Russian Population after the First Three Months of the COVID-19 Pandemic Outbreak

The 2019 Coronavirus disease outbreak leads to negative psychological outcomes not only for healthcare workers and patients, but also for the general public. S. Hobfoll’s Conservation of Resources theory is one of the most applicable models for conceptualizing and evaluating natural and social catastrophes and their impact. A web-based screening has been conducted at the end of May, 2020. A representation of resource loss, threat of loss, gain, and value data was collected three months after first patient and restrictions. After meeting an inclusion criterion, data of 1100 respondents have been selected for the analysis. Basing on literature review, four comparison groups were formed: COVID-19 patients (N=65); single male respondents aged from 18 to 34 with low financial income (N=42); female respondents aged from 18 to 34 with low financial income who share living space with more than two persons (N=32); a “resourceful” group of male participants aged from 35 to 54 with high income and ongoing relationships (N=54). Descriptive statistics and Cohen’s d criteria are applied. Measures: social-demographic questionnaire and modified COR-E questionnaire. Resource change due to the pandemic circumstances in general population appears to be modest. Threat of resource loss is higher than real resource loss. The COVID-19 situation mostly impacted following resources: Financial Stability, Feeling of Safety, Sense of Control in Life, Sense of Independence, Intimates’ Health, and Work Stability. Comparison groups show significant differences in resource change constellations consistent with similar data from other countries.

Developing Indicators to Assess Financial Income Sustainability of Higher Education Institutions in Vietnam

Under the context of massification and enhanced autonomy of higher education, the trend of higher education institutions to proactively seek new financial income apart from the two traditional ones, i.e. governmental allocation and tuition fee, is inevitable. This, indeed, is paramount and contributes to the sustainable development of higher education institutions. In this study, based on international practices and experiences, indicators were developed to assess sustainability of financial income at higher education institutions in Vietnam. These indicators are composed of two constituents: (i) HHI – an indicator that assesses the relative financial sustainability of a higher education institution; and (ii) RPS – an indicator that assesses the absolute financial sustainability of a higher education institution. These indicators may be employed as a state governance instrument to monitor higher education institutions, or may also be used as an institutional instrument to monitor the sub-units.

Financial Literacy and the Impact of Movement Control Order (MCO) Among the Muslim Mompreneurs: A Qualitative Study

This empirical paper investigates how the mompreneurs manage their businesses during the Covid 19 lockdown and how the pandemic affects their family. The role of a mother in a family encompasses the livelihood of the family members, which extends to the family’s financial standing. A mother’s role in a family ranges from a homemaker and, to a certain extent, a financial provider. In Malaysia, it was reported in 2018 that 60.2% of entrepreneurs are housewives. However, it is believed that many women are working at and from home with high cost of living, especially in urban areas. They become home-based entrepreneurs, especially during this unprecedented pandemic, i.e. Covid-19, and restricted by the Movement Control Order (MCO). This study adopted an exploratory qualitative study whereby six (6) mompreneurs who are operating their businesses from home were interviewed to understand how the pandemic and the lockdown have affected their lives. This paper further examines their coping mechanism to the pandemic and financial income during this crisis. Mompreneurs’ financial literacy is also observed in this paper to explore their financial understanding. This research is an exploratory study, and it only provides general ideas on how a home-based businesswoman survive and cope during the lockdown. The findings from this paper are suitable to be used as a benchmark for an extensive quantitative study in the future to further understand the behaviour of the mompreneurs, especially in Malaysia.

Taxonomy and Translocations of African Mammals: A Plea for a Cautionary Approach

Ecotourism can fuel an important source of financial income for African countries and can therefore help biodiversity policies in the continent. Translocations can be a powerful tool to spread economic benefits among countries and communities; yet, to be positive for biodiversity conservation, they require a basic knowledge of conservation units through appropriate taxonomic research. This is not always the case, as taxonomy was considered an outdated discipline for almost a century, and some plurality in taxonomic approaches is incorrectly considered as a disadvantage for conservation work. As an example, diversity of the genus Giraffa and its recent taxonomic history illustrate the importance of such knowledge for a sound conservation policy that includes translocations. We argue that a fine-grained conservation perspective that prioritizes all remaining populations along the Nile Basin is needed. Translocations are important tools for giraffe diversity conservation, but more discussion is needed, especially for moving new giraffes to regions where the autochthonous taxa/populations are no longer existent. As the current discussion about the giraffe taxonomy is too focused on the number of giraffe species, we argue that the plurality of taxonomic and conservation approaches might be beneficial, i.e., for defining the number of units requiring separate management using a (majority) consensus across different concepts (e.g., MU—management unit, ESU—evolutionary significant unit, and ECU—elemental conservation unit). The taxonomically sensitive translocation policy/strategy would be important for the preservation of current diversity, while also supporting the ecological restoration of some regions within rewilding. A summary table of the main translocation operations of African mammals that have underlying problems is included. Therefore, we call for increased attention toward the taxonomy of African mammals not only as the basis for sound conservation but also as a further opportunity to enlarge the geographic scope of ecotourism in Africa.