Entrepreneurial motives, entrepreneurial success and life satisfaction of refugees venturing in tourism and hospitality

Purpose. A burgeoning stream of tourism and hospitality research highlights the role of entrepreneurship in bringing about positive social and economic outcomes for both refugees themselves and their host countries. Yet little has been done so far both in mainstream entrepreneurship research and tourism scholarship to explore how motivations influence perceived entrepreneurial success of refugees and how this eventually affects their subjective well-being. To address this gap, the present study proposes and empirically tests a conceptual model postulating relationships between contextual and individual entrepreneurial motives, perceptions of entrepreneurial success, and life satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach. The study draws on quantitative data collected through 172 surveys of refugee entrepreneurs venturing in different sub-sectors within tourism and hospitality in Turkey and the UK. A Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to test the proposed theoretical model. Findings. The results reveal that contextual and individual entrepreneurial motives have a significant positive impact on perceived entrepreneurial success. As predicted, perceived entrepreneurial success is found to have a significant positive impact on life satisfaction. A multi-group analysis involving host country (Turkey vs the UK) and mode of entry (founder vs takeover) indicates no significant difference based on host country whereas the strength of relationships for takeovers is relatively greater as compared to founders. Practical implications. The study advocates that the reductionist approach viewing refugees as temporary “outsiders” who are in consistent need of public provision and welfare services should not prevail against their ability to achieve self-efficiency through entrepreneurship. Hence, policies need to be oriented toward supporting refugee entrepreneurial activities over various business stages and modes of entry. More importantly, ensuring high success rates among refugee entrepreneurs should be viewed as a pivotal tool to address the well-being of refugees, their families, and their fellows. Originality/value. While previous research identifies drivers of entrepreneurship success and the potential favorable outcomes, none of these studies empirically models refugee entrepreneurship motives, self-reported entrepreneurial success, and life satisfaction as a distinct and growing cohort of entrepreneurs. The study makes significant theoretical contributions to the corpus of literature on the social outcomes of entrepreneurship and provides timely implications for policy makers to utilize entrepreneurship as a market-based solution to address refugees’ subjective well-being

Improvement the thermal performance of Myristic acid

Paper presented to the 10th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Florida, 14-16 July 2014.This study mainly focus on two aspects; the first one is to increase the thermal conductivity of Myristic acid with graphene additives and the second one is to determine the influence of this increment on the melting duration of a particular encapsulated thermal energy storage system with PCM. As a result, thermal conductivity of composite myristic acid increased by 8%, 18% and 38% after graphene loadings of 0.5%, 1% and 2% into the pure MA, respectively. Besides, one-dimensional spherical computational domain has been considered, and the conduction dominated phase change process simulated with implementing temperature transformation method. Validity of the current code has been revealed by reproducing a numerical work in literature. For this particular case, it is found that the increments of 8%, 18% and 38% in thermal conductivity tend to reduce the total time of melting by 5.6%, 15% and 26%.dc201

DOES BEATING HEART SURGERY TECHNIQUE REDUCE THE MORTALITY AND MORBIDITY AFTER REDO VALVE OPERATIONS?

Aim: The aim of this study was to determine the effect of beating heart technique on mortality and morbidity after redo valve operations. Material and Method: Fifty-two patients who had redo open-heart surgery between May 2005 and November 2006 in Türkiye Yüksek İhtisas Hospital included in this prospective study. All patients had a history of open-heart surgery with median sternotomy. Thirty-two patients who had redo open-heart surgery with beating heart technique were included in Group 1 and 20 patients who had redo open-heart surgery with conventional cardioplegic myocardial arrest technique were included in Group 2. Patients who had any cardiac surgery without median sternotomy were excluded. Results: Functional capacity according to New York Heart Association classification was significantly lower and number of patients with chronic obstructive lung disease was significantly higher in Group 1 (p=0.011 and p=0.003 respectively). There was no significant difference in other preoperative variables. Operation, cardiopulmonary bypass and aortic cross-clamping times were significantly higher in Group 2 (p=0.001, p=0.003, p=0.04 respectively). Mechanical ventilation, inotropic agent support and hospitalization times were significantly higher in Group 2 (p<0.05). Intensive care unit time was significantly longer in Group 1 (p<0.05). Drainage volumes, blood product transfusion volumes, intra-aortic balloon pump support times were not significantly different between the groups. Conclusion: Beating heart technique in redo heart valve operations has better outcomes than the conventional technique

Adaptive state feedback controller design for a rotary series elastic actuator

The design of human assistive systems requires actuators that are capable of producing compliant motions. One key technological development for this compliant actuation is series elastic actuation, which is a challenging design problem, as the load side dynamics of the actuator changes during operation. In this paper, a novel series elastic actuator (SEA) structure using composite beams as series elastic elements and its torque control strategy are presented. We proposed a two-stage controller, a novel adaptive state feedback controller for transient dynamics and a PI controller for eliminating steady-state error. The effect of disturbance torque is studied, together with load dynamics, which is estimated online by a recursive least square method. The performance of the actuator was evaluated in case studies in which the actuator was controlled with various knee torque profiles. The experimental results showed that desired dynamic behaviour of the designed SEA can be obtained with the proposed control algorithm despite the unknown load dynamics

A computer controlled visual system for object classification

Copyright © 2003 IFAC.In this paper the design, implementation and application of a computer controlled camera system foi classification and assortment of various objects is introduced. The system, which consists of a RF-Color Camera, a PC and pneumatically actuated robot manipulator, is configured to operate in real time and on line applications. On the first stage of the work, the captured image (in RGB scale) viewed by the camera, is converted and stored by using a frame grabber card and special software written in C++ into a digital image data in the computer memory for a further segmentation process to recognize the object. In die second stage, the objects are recognized in size or property via camera, which is mounted to a horizontally moved belt driven with a servo stepper motor. The recognized objects are then assorted by a built up, computer controlled electro-pneumatic robot manipulator with four degrees of freedom and a suction-gripper as the end-effector, which is controlled by a PIC to carry out the objects via a predefined trajectory to designated locations. A special control algorithm written in C++, is also used to control the servo stepper belt motor and the electro-pneumatic valves of the manipulator. Successful results are evaluated both in assorting of objects in size or property and in synchronous working of the robot arm in connection with image processing