Middle East - North Africa and the millennium development goals : implications for German development cooperation

          Closed-loop controlled combustion is a promising technique to improve the overall performance of internal combustion engines and Diesel engines in particular. In order for this technique to be implemented some form of feedback from the combustion process is required. The feedback signal is processed and from it combustionrelated parameters are computed. These parameters are then fed to a control process which drives a series of outputs (e.g. injection timing in Diesel engines) to control their values. This paper’s focus lies on the processing and computation that is needed on the feedback signal before this is ready to be fed to the control process as well as on the electronics necessary to support it. A number of feedback alternatives are briefly discussed and for one of them, the in-cylinder pressure sensor, the CA50 (crank angle in which the integrated heat release curve reaches its 50% value) and the IMEP (Indicated Mean Effective Pressure) are identified as two potential control variables. The hardware architecture of a system capable of calculating both of them on-line is proposed and necessary feasibility size and speed considerations are made by implementing critical blocks in VHDL targeting a flash-based Actel ProASIC3 automotive-grade FPGA

Yemen Social Accounting Matrix, 2012

This data study includes Yemen Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for the year 2012. The national SAM is built using the 2012 national accounts, government budgets, balance of payments, and 2007 input-output tables. It provides a detailed representation of Yemen economy. It separates 24 activities and commodities; 10 agricultural sectors, fisheries and forestry, 2 for mining, 4 for manufacturing, 1 for electricity,water, construction and trade and transport, and 3 service sectors. Information on labor is drawn from 2005/06 household budget survey (HBS) and dis-aggregates labor into three categories: unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled. Finally the SAM identifies government investments and foreign accounts. Therefore, this database can be a very good input for undertaking economy wide impact assessments, SAM-based multiplier analysis and computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling

Human Resource Management and Organisational Performance: The Mediating Role of Social Exchange

This study seeks to explore the impact of specific set of HRM practice on organizational performance in a Middle Eastern emerging market. It aims to examine the mediating role of social exchange within the healthcare sector in Jordan, which is presently reeling under pressure from refugee crisis from Syria and neighbouring countries. Both, HR and hospital managers were targeted in all private and public hospitals through two separate questionnaires. We find, as predicted, that recruitment, training, and internal promoting from-within have a positive and significant effect on performance. However, contrary to expectation, we found performance appraisal and rewards and benefits not linked with performance. Notably, whilst researchers argue that a better theoretical understanding of the mechanisms describing the relationship between HRM and performance should be developed, the results indicate that social exchange can play an essential role in explaining the HRM-performance indirect relationship—a result that partly unlocks the elements of so-called ‘black box’ in HR research. The theoretical and applied implications of these findings are explored