The Intercultural Skills Graduates and Businesses in Europe Need Today

It was the aim of the two surveys with European graduates and employers respectively to investigate the importance of intercultural competencies and skills for student employability and business success for European enterprise, now and in the future. The two surveys gave important insights into key factors that support the development of intercultural skills and competencies for graduates and employers across four countries and five different European regions, as well as five distinct universities. Our analysis shows clearly that one of the most important factors is the key role of experience with, and exposure to, people from different cultural backgrounds. Both students and employers scored much higher on important intercultural competencies such as cultural empathy, cognitive flexibility, open-mindedness, and tolerance for ambiguity, if they had frequent interactions with people from other cultures. This was also true for speaking at least one or more foreign languages at an intermediate or advanced level. Foreign language competence is an important intercultural skill not only for communication but also an important way in which cultural empathy and cognitive flexibility are learned and trained. In line with these results, both students and employers who had more exposure to different cultures also felt there was more need to pay attention to intercultural issues and support the development of intercultural skills than those with less experience of different cultures. Furthermore, our results from both the student and the employer surveys seem to reflect differences between more urban/metropolitan centres and more rural areas with smaller towns. London and Bursa are the two largest cities and the most metropolitan areas in our sample with a more multicultural population, whereas Worcester and Leuven are both smaller cities and the regions with the least ethnic diversity. Halmstad falls somewhere in between with a similar size and ethnic composition of the city and region as Worcester and Leuven, but the university itself has a very multicultural and mature student body that is very similar to LSBU in central London. While we cannot directly influence these regional differences in urbanisation and multiculturalism it is certainly important to be aware of them

The Intercultural Skills Graduates and Businesses in Europe Need Today

This ERASMUS+ funded project, “Developing the cross-cultural skills of graduates in response to the needs of European enterprise”, is developed in response to recent research highlighting the importance of intercultural competencies for graduates wanting to work in Europe, the employers’ needs, and the intercultural competencies and skills higher education institutions provide. This project aims to develop the intercultural competencies of graduates in the EU by enhancing the quality and relevance of their knowledge and skills to enable them to be active professionals in the European working environment. Five Higher Education Institutions have participated in this study: University of Worcester (Project lead, UK), London South Bank University (UK), UC Leuven-Limburg (Belgium), Halmstad University (Sweden), and Bursa Uludağ University (Turkey). The diversity of these partners, their respective regional and national contexts, and their experience in working together with regional businesses are central to achieve the project aims. As the first output of the project, this report presents results based on two types of analysis methods and data collected from four European countries (UK, Sweden, Belgium, and Turkey). Firstly, two surveys and the quantitative analysis of data collected from 585 student surveys responses and 403 employer survey responses and secondly, on an analysis of qualitative data collected through 50 interviews with employees in European organizations and 50 interviews with students studying in European universities

Enabling the freight traffic controller for collaborative multi-drop urban logistics: practical and theoretical challenges

There is increasing interest in how horizontal collaboration between parcel carriers might help alleviate problems associated with last-mile logistics in congested urban centers. Through a detailed review of the literature on parcel logistics pertaining to collaboration, along with practical insights from carriers operating in the United Kingdom, this paper examines the challenges that will be faced in optimizing multicarrier, multidrop collection, and delivery schedules. A “freight traffic controller” (FTC) concept is proposed. The FTC would be a trusted third party, assigned to equitably manage the work allocation between collaborating carriers and the passage of vehicles over the last mile when joint benefits to the parties could be achieved. Creating this FTC concept required a combinatorial optimization approach for evaluation of the many combinations of hub locations, network configuration, and routing options for vehicle or walking to find the true value of each potential collaboration. At the same time, the traffic, social, and environmental impacts of these activities had to be considered. Cooperative game theory is a way to investigate the formation of collaborations (or coalitions), and the analysis used in this study identified a significant shortfall in current applications of this theory to last-mile parcel logistics. Application of theory to urban freight logistics has, thus far, failed to account for critical concerns including (a) the mismatch of vehicle parking locations relative to actual delivery addresses; (b) the combination of deliveries with collections, requests for the latter often being received in real time during the round; and (c) the variability in travel times and route options attributable to traffic and road network conditions

An experimental investigation on the impact behavior of hybrid composite plates

In this experimental study, the impact behavior of hybrid composite plates has been investigated. The increasing impact energy was performed on two types of hybrid composite plates (glass-carbon/epoxy) until complete perforation of specimens. An energy profiling method, showing the relationship between impact energy and absorbed energy, was used together with load-deflection curves to determine the penetration and perforation thresholds of hybrid composites. The failure processes of damaged specimens for different impact energies were evaluated by comparing load-deflection curves and images of damaged samples taken from impacted sides and non-impacted sides. Cross-sections of damaged specimens were also inspected visually and discussed to assess the extent of damage, such as fiber fracture in layers, expansion of delaminations between adjacent layers. The perforation threshold of hybrid composite impacted from surface with carbon fibers was found approximately 30% higher than that of surface with glass fibers. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

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Genetic discrimination of two capoeta species in northeastern anatolia, using mitochondrial 16s rrna gene: (Osteichthyes: Cyprinidae)

The genetic discrimination of two species of the genus Capoeta, C. tinca (Heckel, 1843) and C. banarescui Turan et al., 2006, which is represented by many endemic species in Anatolian Turkey, has been investigated by analysing the partial 16S ribosomal DNA gene (525 bp). A total of 85 fish was sampled from two localities in the Marmara basin and 5 localities in the Black Sea basin. The amount of 16S rDNA sequence divergence separating these two taxa (mean 1.19%) is within the range observed for 16S rDNA variation between other species of freshwater fishes. The derived haplotypes (h: 28) were strictly local and were not shared between species or populations within species. Three types of phylogenetic tree (Bayesian, MP and ML) clearly showed C. banarescui and C. tinca as distinct species separated with significant bootstrap values (BI:94, MP:88, ML:81), confirming previous conclusions based on morphometric and meristic characters. Furthermore, four novel SNPs were identified, allowing discrimination between two species. AMOVA tests revealed that populations of Capoeta in Northeastern Anatolia can be divided into two main groups: Coruh River group, including SVS, TRT and ISP populations, and Yesilirmak-Harsit group, consisting of ALC and HRS populations. These results indicate the effectiveness of mitochondrial 16S rDNA gene sequences for both species identification and the phylogenetic analysis of Capoeta species. © Kasparek Verlag, Heidelberg.2011.103.01.2 Karadeniz Teknik Üniversitesi: 2006.111.04.1validity of these diagnostic positions was supported by the geographic distributions of the analysed samples.Acknowledgements. We would like to thank D. TURAN for his technical support and valuable suggestions and the Scientific Research Fund of Karadeniz Technical University (Project No: 2006.111.04.1) and Rize University (Project No: 2011.103.01.2) for financial suppor

An experimental investigation on the impact behaviour of glass/epoxy and hybrid composite plates

In this study, the impact behaviours of glass/epoxy and hybrid (glass-carbon/epoxy) composite plates have been investigated experimentally. The increasing impact energy was performed on composite plates until complete perforation of samples. An energy profiling diagram, showing the relationship between impact energy and absorbed energy, was used together with load-deflection curves to determine the penetration and perforation thresholds of composite plates. The failure processes of damaged specimens for different impact energies were evaluated by comparing load-deflection curves and images of damaged samples taken from impacted sides and non-impacted sides. Cross-sections of damaged specimens for both plates were also inspected visually and discussed to assess the extent of damage, such as fibre fracture in layers, expansion of delaminations between adjacent layers. The perforation threshold of hybrid composite impacted from surface with carbon fibres was found approximately 30% and 15% higher than those of surface with glass fibres of hybrid plates and glass/epoxy plates, respectively

Synthesis and antioxidant properties of some new 3-(4-chlorophenyl)-5- (pyridin-4-yl)-4H-1,2,4-triazole derivatives

A series of new 3-(4-chlorophenyl)-5-(pyridin-4-yl)-4-(arylmethyleneamino)- 4H-1,2,4-triazole derivatives 3 were prepared in good yields by treatment of 4-amino-3-(4-chlorophenyl)-5-(pyridine-4-yl)-4H-1,2,4-triazole (2) with selected aldehydes. Compounds 3 were reduced with NaBH4 to afford the corresponding 3-(4-chlorophenyl)-5-(pyridin-4-yl)-4-(arylmethylamino)-4H-1,2,4- triazole derivatives 4. Eighteen new compounds were synthesized and characterized by elemental analyses, IR, 1H NMR and 13C NMR spectral data. The compounds were screened for their antioxidant and antiradical activities. © 2008 Verlag der Zeitschrift für Naturforschung, Tübingen