23,117 research outputs found
The Metaverse: Survey, Trends, Novel Pipeline Ecosystem & Future Directions
The Metaverse offers a second world beyond reality, where boundaries are
non-existent, and possibilities are endless through engagement and immersive
experiences using the virtual reality (VR) technology. Many disciplines can
benefit from the advancement of the Metaverse when accurately developed,
including the fields of technology, gaming, education, art, and culture.
Nevertheless, developing the Metaverse environment to its full potential is an
ambiguous task that needs proper guidance and directions. Existing surveys on
the Metaverse focus only on a specific aspect and discipline of the Metaverse
and lack a holistic view of the entire process. To this end, a more holistic,
multi-disciplinary, in-depth, and academic and industry-oriented review is
required to provide a thorough study of the Metaverse development pipeline. To
address these issues, we present in this survey a novel multi-layered pipeline
ecosystem composed of (1) the Metaverse computing, networking, communications
and hardware infrastructure, (2) environment digitization, and (3) user
interactions. For every layer, we discuss the components that detail the steps
of its development. Also, for each of these components, we examine the impact
of a set of enabling technologies and empowering domains (e.g., Artificial
Intelligence, Security & Privacy, Blockchain, Business, Ethics, and Social) on
its advancement. In addition, we explain the importance of these technologies
to support decentralization, interoperability, user experiences, interactions,
and monetization. Our presented study highlights the existing challenges for
each component, followed by research directions and potential solutions. To the
best of our knowledge, this survey is the most comprehensive and allows users,
scholars, and entrepreneurs to get an in-depth understanding of the Metaverse
ecosystem to find their opportunities and potentials for contribution
Startup Home-Based Social Media Businesses
Purpose: The objective of this study is to investigate and analyze issues faced by small-business owners while running their businesses via social media sites, and to emphasize the opportunities for conducting business via social media.
Theoretical framework: Small businesses are vital to the success of any economy, through job creation, sparking innovation, and providing opportunities for many people to achieve financial success and independence. In today’s social media-driven environment, it is essential that small business’ owners engage with social media networking sites and understand how social media can play a crucial role in developing their businesses.
Design/methodology/approach: The research focuses on analyzing the day-to-day operations and procedures of small businesses involving social media networking sites. Two questionnaires were developed to analyze and investigate these issues effectively.
Findings: The results reveal the importance of organizing the operations and procedures of social media businesses, also emphasize the opportunities for conducting business via social media sites.
Research, Practical & Social implications: this study was conducted to help business owners to engage with social media sites, as well as to solve issues that they face while running their online businesses.
Originality/value: The results of the first questionnaire indicate issues from customers’ perspectives, while the second questionnaire indicate issues from merchants’ perspectives. The results reveal the importance of organizing the operations and procedures of social media businesses, also emphasize the opportunities for conducting business via social media sites
Prerequisites and Strategies for Women Empowerment in India through Vocational Skill Training
Large pool of skilled women workers is indispensable for attracting local, national and international industrial investment. Skilled women have tremendous potential in guaranteeing sustainable women empowerment. This study demonstrates efforts and explains prerequisites and strategies for women empowerment in India through vocational skill training. The article uses empirical methods, extensive literature review and follows an international case-based approach to assess the elements of strategic interventions required to attain women empowerment. Findings reveal that vocational skill training is a unique form of overall women development and women empowerment. skill training has enormous capacities to support improved employ- ability, entrepreneurship development. skill training encourages women’s empower- ment development culture in a growing number in India. Keywords:Women empowerment, vocational skill development, financial independence,micro-entrepreneurship DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/13-5-03 Publication date:March 31st 202
Corporate Social Responsibility: the institutionalization of ESG
Understanding the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on firm performance as it relates to industries reliant on technological innovation is a complex and perpetually evolving challenge. To thoroughly investigate this topic, this dissertation will adopt an economics-based structure to address three primary hypotheses. This structure allows for each hypothesis to essentially be a standalone empirical paper, unified by an overall analysis of the nature of impact that ESG has on firm performance. The first hypothesis explores the evolution of CSR to the modern quantified iteration of ESG has led to the institutionalization and standardization of the CSR concept. The second hypothesis fills gaps in existing literature testing the relationship between firm performance and ESG by finding that the relationship is significantly positive in long-term, strategic metrics (ROA and ROIC) and that there is no correlation in short-term metrics (ROE and ROS). Finally, the third hypothesis states that if a firm has a long-term strategic ESG plan, as proxied by the publication of CSR reports, then it is more resilience to damage from controversies. This is supported by the finding that pro-ESG firms consistently fared better than their counterparts in both financial and ESG performance, even in the event of a controversy. However, firms with consistent reporting are also held to a higher standard than their nonreporting peers, suggesting a higher risk and higher reward dynamic. These findings support the theory of good management, in that long-term strategic planning is both immediately economically beneficial and serves as a means of risk management and social impact mitigation. Overall, this contributes to the literature by fillings gaps in the nature of impact that ESG has on firm performance, particularly from a management perspective
Platform Economy and Product Liability: Old Rules for New Markets
According to statistics, Amazon is one of the most-used online marketplaces worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns to reduce the spread of the virus have shown how critical online marketplaces are to enable e-commerce and keep commercial transactions alive, especially in such times when regular commerce is disrupted. However, when we buy online, we have no chance of examining whether the product works or whether it is defective. If something goes wrong when we buy a product from a third-party seller through Amazon, as consumers, we then face the challenge of trying to file a claim for the damages that might have arisen due to the defectiveness of the product. This article explores Amazon's position in this scenario, with reference to the case law from both US and EU courts and regulations, not solely from the point of view of Product Liability Law, but also according to the E-Commerce Directive liability
Deep Transfer Learning Applications in Intrusion Detection Systems: A Comprehensive Review
Globally, the external Internet is increasingly being connected to the
contemporary industrial control system. As a result, there is an immediate need
to protect the network from several threats. The key infrastructure of
industrial activity may be protected from harm by using an intrusion detection
system (IDS), a preventive measure mechanism, to recognize new kinds of
dangerous threats and hostile activities. The most recent artificial
intelligence (AI) techniques used to create IDS in many kinds of industrial
control networks are examined in this study, with a particular emphasis on
IDS-based deep transfer learning (DTL). This latter can be seen as a type of
information fusion that merge, and/or adapt knowledge from multiple domains to
enhance the performance of the target task, particularly when the labeled data
in the target domain is scarce. Publications issued after 2015 were taken into
account. These selected publications were divided into three categories:
DTL-only and IDS-only are involved in the introduction and background, and
DTL-based IDS papers are involved in the core papers of this review.
Researchers will be able to have a better grasp of the current state of DTL
approaches used in IDS in many different types of networks by reading this
review paper. Other useful information, such as the datasets used, the sort of
DTL employed, the pre-trained network, IDS techniques, the evaluation metrics
including accuracy/F-score and false alarm rate (FAR), and the improvement
gained, were also covered. The algorithms, and methods used in several studies,
or illustrate deeply and clearly the principle in any DTL-based IDS subcategory
are presented to the reader
Machine Learning Research Trends in Africa: A 30 Years Overview with Bibliometric Analysis Review
In this paper, a critical bibliometric analysis study is conducted, coupled
with an extensive literature survey on recent developments and associated
applications in machine learning research with a perspective on Africa. The
presented bibliometric analysis study consists of 2761 machine learning-related
documents, of which 98% were articles with at least 482 citations published in
903 journals during the past 30 years. Furthermore, the collated documents were
retrieved from the Science Citation Index EXPANDED, comprising research
publications from 54 African countries between 1993 and 2021. The bibliometric
study shows the visualization of the current landscape and future trends in
machine learning research and its application to facilitate future
collaborative research and knowledge exchange among authors from different
research institutions scattered across the African continent
A Decision Support System for Economic Viability and Environmental Impact Assessment of Vertical Farms
Vertical farming (VF) is the practice of growing crops or animals using the vertical dimension via multi-tier racks or vertically inclined surfaces. In this thesis, I focus on the emerging industry of plant-specific VF. Vertical plant farming (VPF) is a promising and relatively novel practice that can be conducted in buildings with environmental control and artificial lighting. However, the nascent sector has experienced challenges in economic viability, standardisation, and environmental sustainability. Practitioners and academics call for a comprehensive financial analysis of VPF, but efforts are stifled by a lack of valid and available data.
A review of economic estimation and horticultural software identifies a need for a decision support system (DSS) that facilitates risk-empowered business planning for vertical farmers. This thesis proposes an open-source DSS framework to evaluate business sustainability through financial risk and environmental impact assessments. Data from the literature, alongside lessons learned from industry practitioners, would be centralised in the proposed DSS using imprecise data techniques. These techniques have been applied in engineering but are seldom used in financial forecasting. This could benefit complex sectors which only have scarce data to predict business viability.
To begin the execution of the DSS framework, VPF practitioners were interviewed using a mixed-methods approach. Learnings from over 19 shuttered and operational VPF projects provide insights into the barriers inhibiting scalability and identifying risks to form a risk taxonomy. Labour was the most commonly reported top challenge. Therefore, research was conducted to explore lean principles to improve productivity.
A probabilistic model representing a spectrum of variables and their associated uncertainty was built according to the DSS framework to evaluate the financial risk for VF projects. This enabled flexible computation without precise production or financial data to improve economic estimation accuracy. The model assessed two VPF cases (one in the UK and another in Japan), demonstrating the first risk and uncertainty quantification of VPF business models in the literature. The results highlighted measures to improve economic viability and the viability of the UK and Japan case.
The environmental impact assessment model was developed, allowing VPF operators to evaluate their carbon footprint compared to traditional agriculture using life-cycle assessment. I explore strategies for net-zero carbon production through sensitivity analysis. Renewable energies, especially solar, geothermal, and tidal power, show promise for reducing the carbon emissions of indoor VPF. Results show that renewably-powered VPF can reduce carbon emissions compared to field-based agriculture when considering the land-use change.
The drivers for DSS adoption have been researched, showing a pathway of compliance and design thinking to overcome the ‘problem of implementation’ and enable commercialisation. Further work is suggested to standardise VF equipment, collect benchmarking data, and characterise risks. This work will reduce risk and uncertainty and accelerate the sector’s emergence
Electric Energy Transmission Processes and the Importance of Integrated System Management and Operation
La energía eléctrica es fundamental en diferentes sectores del desarrollo de una sociedad; dado que se utiliza en todo tipo de industrias y sectores económicos y es fundamental en nuestros hogares, por lo que el acceso a un servicio de energía eléctrica de calidad en la ciudad o en las zonas rurales proporciona un índice de referencia del nivel de desarrollo de un territorio. Por esta razón, la transmisión de energía eléctrica se considera uno de los factores más relevantes para mejorar la calidad de vida de los habitantes de un país con alto índice de pobreza. La energía eléctrica es un servicio que debe transmitirse de manera garantizada con altos estándares de calidad, confiabilidad y disponibilidad. Esto apoya el desarrollo económico de una nación. Esta investigación se enfocó en estudiar la eficiencia de una organización que brinda el servicio de transformación y transporte de energía eléctrica en Colombia y a través de este estudio impactar a profesionales, instituciones de educación superior y empresas para asegurar su presencia en el mercado y en paralelo brindar a las empresas una guía que permita a las organizaciones dedicadas al sector eléctrico en Colombia cumplir con la normativa vigente. Este trabajo destaca la necesidad de realizar procesos mecánicos, eléctricos, instrumentales, operacionales y de gestión con altos estándares para las empresas que brindan servicio de transmisión de energía eléctrica con equipos que operan a tensiones superiores a 220 kV. Adicionalmente, esta investigación tiene como objetivo establecer una guía que permita a las organizaciones dedicadas al sector eléctrico en Colombia cumplir con la normativa vigenteElectric energy is fundamental in different sectors of a society's development; electric
energy is used in all types of industries and economic sectors and is essential in people's homes,
so access to a quality electric energy service in the city or in rural areas provides a reference
index of a territory's level of development. For this reason, electricity transmission is considered
one of the most relevant factors for improving the quality of life of the inhabitants of a country
with a high poverty index. Electric power is a service that must be transmitted in a guaranteed
manner with high standards of quality, reliability, and availability. This supports the economic
development of a nation. This research focused on studying the efficiency of an organization that
provides the service of transformation and transportation of electrical energy in Colombia and
through this study to impact professionals, higher education institutions and companies to ensure
their presence in the market, improving the quality of their graduates in different areas of
knowledge such as physics and engineering and in parallel to provide companies with a guide
that allows organizations dedicated to the electricity sector in Colombia to comply with existing
regulations. This work highlights the need to perform mechanical, electrical, instrumental,
operational and management processes with high standards for companies that provide electric
power transmission service with equipment operating at voltages above 220 kV. Additionally,
this research aims to establish a guide that allows organizations dedicated to the electric sector
in Colombia to comply with current regulations
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