The Middle Eastern Societies:Institutional Trust in Political Turmoil and Stasis

There is a general lack of citizen trust in governmental institutions in the Middle East, especially because of changing of governments and resulting turmoil. Sequential Mixed Methodology was used, in which data from the 2016 Arab Barometer were supplemented with qualitative insights from two professionals knowledgeable about the political climate in the Middle East and content analyses of relevant journalistic accounts. A comparison of North Africa (characterized by political turmoil) and the Levant (political stasis) countries in how government functionality (efficacy, stability, and corruption), as perceived by their citizens, differentially colored trust in governmental institutions was used to illustrate the citizen-government dynamics that resulted in citizens questioning the legitimacy of government authority. Predictions, based on Max Weber’s theory of Political Legitimacy and Gaetano Mosca’s Elite Theory, that, on balance, functional governments will garner more citizen’s trust in the Levant than in North Africa, while corruption will have a more corrosive effect were supported. A trust surplus occurred as a result of governmental functionality, balancing out the trust deficit created by government dysfunctionality. These findings contributed to existing theoretical and empirical literature on the contested relationship between citizens and their governments. Additional research on sectarian and ethnic conflicts and types of government (monarchy, authoritarian, democratic) in the region as they have shaped citizen trust is warranted

“Has he eaten salt?”: communication difficulties in health care

The communication gap can lead to lack of trust, poor diagnoses and ineffectual treatment. Using research in allied fields of applied linguistics and intercultural communication this article demonstrates the problem of considering patients as deficient in their language resources and suggests the use of arts-based methods for bridging the communication gap in minority and Aboriginal community settings

Comparative Analysis Of Balances Of Payments Of Ukraine And Poland In The Post-crisis Economic Environment

The condition of a country’s balance of payments is a crucial factor for effective development in small open economies, such as Poland and Ukraine. Because of their dependence on the climate in international markets, Poland and Ukraine are especially vulnerable to fluctuations in the global situation. Thus it is essential for both national economies to develop effective instruments for adjusting their balance of payments accounts. This necessity in turn requires research into the main mechanisms used for making balance of payments adjustments for developing countries, since not all aspects have been yet explored. A comparative analysis of the balance of payments situations in these countries is conducted in this article, which aims to prove external similarities between both countries and explain why Poland has attained greater success in the process of overcoming the consequences of the global financial crisis. Such conclusions can be used as a roadmap for Ukraine on its way to adjustment of its balance of payments account. The main reason for such exploration is that Ukraine’s balance of payments is still operating in deficit conditions, which negatively affects the overall state of the national economy of the country.Stan bilansu płatniczego kraju stanowi jeden podstawowy miernik efektywnego rozwoju w małych otwartych gospodarkach takich jak Polska I Ukraina. Z powodu ich zależności od klimatu biznesowego na rynkach międzynarodowych, Polska i Ukraina są szczególnie wrażliwe na fluktuacje mające miejsce w skali globalnej. Tak więc dla obu gospodarek narodowych istotny jest rozwój efektywnych instrumentów dla dostosowania ich bilansu rachunków płatniczych. Wymaga to więc prowadzenia badań podstawowych. Konieczność ta wymaga z kolei prowadzenia badań podstawowych głównych mechanizmów wykorzystywanych do dokonania korekty bilansu płatniczego w krajach rozwijających się, ponieważ nie wszystkie aspekty z tym związane zostały już dotychczas dostatecznie zbadane. W niniejszym artykule została przeprowadzona analiza porównawcza sytuacji bilansu płatniczego w badanych obu krajach , która ma na celu wykazanie zewnętrznych podobieństw między nimi w tym zakresie oraz wyjaśnienie, dlaczego Polska osiągnęła większy sukces w procesie przezwyciężania skutków światowego kryzysu finansowego. Wnioski płynące z tej analizy mogą stanowić rodzaj mapy drogowej dla Ukrainy na drodze do korekty bilansu rachunków płatniczych. Głównym powodem podjęcia takich badań jest obserwacja że bilans płatniczy Ukrainy funkcjonuje w warunkach deficytu, co z kolei negatywnie wpływa na ogólny stan gospodarki narodowej tego kraju

Positively Deviant Organizational Performance and the Role of Leadership Values

Cameron cites the infusion of collaborative values and restructuring of relationships as a primary reason for the successful clean up and closure of Rocky Flats, one of U.S.’s most hazardous and controversial toxic dumps. Success was contingent upon mutual trust and respect of and between traditionally adversarial groups by adopting a mutual proactive, sharing orientation and empathetic attitudes. The true leaders in this venture shifted from a profit-first stance to changing organizational culture, ensuring that individuals (especially leaders and influencers) pursued an abundance-based vision

Socially Trusted Collaborative Edge Computing in Ultra Dense Networks

Small cell base stations (SBSs) endowed with cloud-like computing capabilities are considered as a key enabler of edge computing (EC), which provides ultra-low latency and location-awareness for a variety of emerging mobile applications and the Internet of Things. However, due to the limited computation resources of an individual SBS, providing computation services of high quality to its users faces significant challenges when it is overloaded with an excessive amount of computation workload. In this paper, we propose collaborative edge computing among SBSs by forming SBS coalitions to share computation resources with each other, thereby accommodating more computation workload in the edge system and reducing reliance on the remote cloud. A novel SBS coalition formation algorithm is developed based on the coalitional game theory to cope with various new challenges in small-cell-based edge systems, including the co-provisioning of radio access and computing services, cooperation incentives, and potential security risks. To address these challenges, the proposed method (1) allows collaboration at both the user-SBS association stage and the SBS peer offloading stage by exploiting the ultra dense deployment of SBSs, (2) develops a payment-based incentive mechanism that implements proportionally fair utility division to form stable SBS coalitions, and (3) builds a social trust network for managing security risks among SBSs due to collaboration. Systematic simulations in practical scenarios are carried out to evaluate the efficacy and performance of the proposed method, which shows that tremendous edge computing performance improvement can be achieved.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1010.4501 by other author

Capital Flight and Investment Dynamics in Nigeria: A Time Series Analysis (1970-2006)

This study critically examines the implications of capital flight on investment growth in Nigeria between 1970 and 2006, because of the consequential effect it has on economic growth. The time series data properties incorporated were examined using the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) unit root test and the results revealed that Investment, capital flight, interest rate and exchange rate were stationary at levels excluding exchange rate found to be integrated at first difference. The Augmented Engle-Granger (AEG) co-integration test employed to investigate the dynamic relationship between capital flight and investment level in Nigeria, revealed that there exist long-run interaction. Though, capital flight was found to exert positive but insignificant effect on investment growth during the review period. While, the short-run dynamic interaction as a result of the structural instability in the long-run was captured by the Error Correction Mechanism (ECM) model which was found inestimable due to the high collinearity existing among the incorporated variables. Policy recommendations were proffered base on the research findings.Capital flight, Investment behaviour, Long-run, Stationarity, ECM, Cointegration, Nigeria

Towards an analytical framework of science communication models

This chapter reviews the discussion in science communication circles of models for public communication of science and technology (PCST). It questions the claim that there has been a large-scale shift from a ‘deficit model’ of communication to a ‘dialogue model’, and it demonstrates the survival of the deficit model along with the ambiguities of that model. Similar discussions in related fields of communication, including the critique of dialogue, are briefly sketched. Outlining the complex circumstances governing approaches to PCST, the author argues that communications models often perceived to be opposed can, in fact, coexist when the choices are made explicit. To aid this process, the author proposes an analytical framework of communication models based on deficit, dialogue and participation, including variations on each

Government-Business Relations and Catching Up Reforms in the CIS

The paper addresses the problem of similarities and divergence of transition paths at the later stage of transition in the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States. The main aim is to clarify the influence of specifics of government-business relations on economic reforms carried out at the later stage of transition in countries, which have been relatively less successful during the earlier transition. The paper discusses potential channels of influence of institutional organization of government-business relations on economic reforms and compares government-business relation models and paths of transition in Russia, Kazakhstan and UkrainePost-Soviet economies, catching up reforms, institutional trap, government-business relations