Do Companies Adopt Big Data as Determinants of Sustainability: Evidence from Manufacturing Companies in Jordan

Information and communication technology make it easier for managers to gather customer data quickly and efficiently. However, managing, analysing, and utilizing the vast amount of data for sustainability decision are not easy. Therefore, this study aims to examine the readiness of manufacturing firms in adopting big data analytics in sustainable development. Moreover, this study employed the Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) technique and analyses the data collected from 172 respondents working in different organizations in Amman and Jordan. The results reveal that there is a significant relationship between top management support and competitive pressures and intentions to adopt big data analytics. However, the moderating influence of perceived risk on the relationship between intention and actual use of big data has not been proved. The study provides fresh findings on determinants of intention to adopt big data analytics, actual use, and moderating role of perceived risk within the model to develop sustainability. Furthermore, the study has a number of theoretical and practical implications. Our main findings provide a deeper understanding of the enablers of BDA adoption through the development of a framework that includes direct and moderating constructs, as well as recommendations to practitioners on how to enhance BDA adoption based on eight BDA enablers

Seismic Facies Classification And Identification By Competitive Neural Networks

We present an approach based on competitive networks for the classification and identification of reservoir facies from seismic data. This approach can be adapted to perform either classification of the seismic facies based entirely on the characteristics of the seismic response, without requiring the use of any well information, or automatic identification and labeling of the facies where well information is available. The former is of prime use for oil prospecting in new regions, where few or no wells have been drilled, whereas the latter is most useful in development fields, where the information gained at the wells can be conveniently extended to inter-well regions. Cross-validation tests on synthetic and real seismic data demonstrated that the method can be an effective means of mapping the reservoir heterogeneity. For synthetic data, the output of the method showed considerable agreement with the actual geologic model used to generate the seismic data, while for the real data application, the predicted facies accurately matched those observed at the wells. Moreover, the resulting map corroborates our existing understanding of the reservoir and shows substantial similarity to the low frequency geologic model constructed by interpolating the well information, while adding significant detail and enhanced resolution to that model.Saudi AramcoMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Borehole Acoustics and Logging ConsortiumMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Earth Resources Laboratory. Reservoir Delineation Consortiu

Impact of Healthcare Insurance on the Efficiency of Emergency Services in Private-Sector Hospitals in Al-Ahssa, KSA: An Analytical Comparative Study for Insured and Non-Insured Patients

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is in a peculiar situation regarding healthcare; there is the free healthcare provided by the governmental hospitals in addition to that offered by private-sector hospitals for insured and non-insured patients. Aims of the study are to evaluate the level of efficiency of ED services in private-sector hospitals and to compare between insured and non-insured patient regarding their evaluation of efficiency of services provided in ED in private-sector hospitals in Al-Ahssa region, KSA. Research design: descriptive comparative research design. Setting: The study was conducted in three EDs (emergency departments) of three private hospitals in Al-Ahssa region, KSA which are: Al Mana General Hospital, AlMosa Specialist Hospital and AlAhssa Hospital Subjects: convenient sample of 150 patients (97 patients were insured however 53 patients) at the EDs of the three private hospitals were selected. Tools for data collection: Self-administered Patient Evaluation Questionnaire (PEQ). Results: Insured patients have higher means of efficiency of ED services in private hospitals in all axes of efficiency than non-insured. Recommendations: MOH should develop a program of cost share between citizens and MOH to promote parallel access with MOH hospitals for non-insured patients. Also, there should be a continuous monitoring of patients’ experiences of the received healthcare services in private-sector hospitals. Key words: Health Insurance, Efficiency, Emergency Services

Factors affecting managers\u27 intention to adopt green supply chain management practices: evidence from manufacturing firms in Jordan

Global sustainability movement encourages companies to adopt and implement green supply chain management (GSCM) practices across the organization. Moreover, the integration of green practices into traditional supply chain is still to be a difficult task in manufacturing sector. However, empirical studies regarding the identification of influential factors affecting GSCM adoption among supply chain managers in manufacturing sector are under researched. This study assesses the factors affecting GSCM adoption in Jordan manufacturing firms. A well-structured questionnaire was administered for data collection. A valid 376 responses were collected from different manufacturing firms in Jordan. The data were analyzed, and the proposed model was validated using the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. Results reveal that four factors, namely, supplier, environmental, customer, and cost factors significantly influence the intention to adopt GSCM among managers. The firm size had significantly moderated the relationship between market/financial and GSCM adoption, internal factor and GSCM adoption. The study will help the policymakers to understand the drivers of GSCM adoption among managers and assist them in implementing GSCM practices according to the size of the firm. This study is first of its kind to analyze the role of firm size as a moderator on the relationship between market/financial, supplier, governmental, environmental, internal, customers, cost factors, and GSCM in the context of Jordon

Phenomenology of strangeness production at high energies

The strange-quark occupation factor ($\gamma_s$) is determined from the statistical fit of the multiplicity ratio $\mathrm{K}^+/\pi^+$ in a wide range of nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energies ($\sqrt{s_{NN}}$). From this single-strange-quark-subsystem, $\gamma_s(\sqrt{s_{NN}})$ was parametrized as a damped trigonometric functionality and successfully implemented to the hadron resonance gas model, at chemical semi-equilibrium. Various particle ratios including $\mathrm{K}^-/\pi^-$, $\mathrm{\Lambda}/\pi^-$, and $\mathrm{\bar{\Lambda}}/\pi^-$ are well reproduced. The phenomenology of $\gamma_s(\sqrt{s_{NN}})$ suggests that, the hadrons ($\gamma_s$ raises) at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} \simeq 7~$GeV seems to undergo a phase transition to a mixed phase ($\gamma_s$ declines), which is then derived into partons ($\gamma_s$ remains unchanged with increasing $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$), at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} \simeq 20~$GeV.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in EP

The Impact of Good Corporate Governance (GCG) on Manufacturing Financial Performance: Evidence of Listed Companies on the Stock Exchange (IDX)

The purpose: This research is to scrutinize the impact of the board of directors (BoD), the board of commissioners (BoC), the proportion of independent commissioners (PoIC), managerial ownership (MO), and the audit committee (AC) on the company's financial performance manufacturing financial performance from 2015 to 2019.   The theoretical framework: Composition from several variables which are Board of Directors (BoD), Board of Commissioners(BoC), Proportion of Independent Commissioner(PoIC), Managerial Ownership (MO), and Audit Committee (AC).   Design/Methodology/Approach: In this research, secondary data was used with a purposive sampling method to determine the number of samples. The number of samples obtained was 98 company data. Then, this study employed the multiple linear techniques. The tool utilized in this research were the Microsoft excel program and SPSS version 21.   The Findings: research revealed that BoD, BoC, and MO variables significantly influenced the company's financial performance, whereas PoIC and AC did not significantly impact financial performance.   Research, practical and social implications: This study attempted to highlight the impact of excellent corporate governance on company financial performance at (Indonesia stock exchange manufacturing listed companies) in latest years as well as to show things that can be done in improving the quality of the company by improving the financial performance of the company. Therefore,   Originality/value: The value of the study every company is competing to improve the quality of the company to achieve its goals and be able to compete with other companies through the GCG is a rule of good governance for a firm between various participants by managing resources economically, productively, effectively, and efficiently to achieve the organization's goals

Deconfinement and freezeout boundaries in equilibrium thermal models

In different approaches, the temperature-baryon density plane of QCD matter is studied for deconfinement and chemical freezeout boundaries. Results from various heavy-ion experiments are compared with the recent lattice simulations, the effective QCD-like Polyakov linear-sigma model, and the equilibrium thermal models. Along the entire freezeout boundary, there is an excellent agreement between the thermal model calculations and the experiments. Also, the thermal model calculations agree well with the estimations deduced from the Polyakov linear-sigma model (PLSM). At low baryonic density or high energies, both deconfinement and chemical freezeout boundaries are likely coincident and therefore the agreement with the lattice simulations becomes excellent as well, while at large baryonic density, the two boundaries become distinguishable forming a phase where hadrons and quark-gluon plasma likely coexist.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in AHE

Dynamic congestion management system for cloud service broker

This is an open access article licenced under a CC-BY-SA license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/The cloud computing model offers a shared pool of resources and services with diverse models presented to the clients through the internet by an on-demand scalable and dynamic pay-per-use model. The developers have identified the need for an automated system (cloud service broker (CSB)) that can contribute to exploiting the cloud capability, enhancing its functionality, and improving its performance. This research presents a dynamic congestion management (DCM) system which can manage the massive amount of cloud requests while considering the required quality for the clients’ requirements as regulated by the service-level policy. In addition, this research introduces a forwarding policy that can be utilized to choose high-priority calls coming from the cloud service requesters and passes them by the broker to the suitable cloud resources. The policy has made use of one of the mechanisms that are used by Cisco to assist the administration of the congestion that might take place at the broker side. Furthermore, the DCM system is used to help in provisioning and monitoring the works of the cloud providers through the job operation. The proposed DCM system was implemented and evaluated by using the CloudSim tool.Peer reviewe

Chaotic quantization and the mass spectrum of fermions

In order to understand the parameters of the standard model of electroweak and strong interactions, one needs to embed the standard model into some larger theory that accounts for the observed values. This means some additional sector is needed that fixes and stabilizes the values of the fundamental constants of nature. We describe how such a sector can be constructed using the so-called chaotic quantization method applied to a system of coupled map lattices. We restrict ourselves in this short note on verifying how our model correctly yields the numerical values of Yukawa and gravitational coupling constants of a collection of heavy and light fermions using a simple principle, the local minimization of vacuum energy.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures. To appear in Chaos, Solitons and Fractals (2008

Bone mass density estimation: Archimede's principle versus automatic X-ray histogram and edge detection technique in ovariectomized rats treated with germinated brown rice bioactives

Background: Bone mass density is an important parameter used in the estimation of the severity and depth of lesions in osteoporosis. Estimation of bone density using existing methods in experimental models has its advantages as well as drawbacks. Materials and methods: In this study, the X-ray histogram edge detection technique was used to estimate the bone mass density in ovariectomized rats treated orally with germinated brown rice (GBR) bioactives, and the results were compared with estimated results obtained using Archimede’s principle. New bone cell proliferation was assessed by histology and immunohistochemical reaction using polyclonal nuclear antigen. Additionally, serum alkaline phosphatase activity, serum and bone calcium and zinc concentrations were detected using a chemistry analyzer and atomic absorption spectroscopy. Rats were divided into groups of six as follows: sham (nonovariectomized, nontreated); ovariectomized, nontreated; and ovariectomized and treated with estrogen, or Remifemin®, GBR-phenolics, acylated steryl glucosides, gamma oryzanol, and gamma amino-butyric acid extracted from GBR at different doses. Results: Our results indicate a significant increase in alkaline phosphatase activity, serum and bone calcium, and zinc and ash content in the treated groups compared with the ovariectomized nontreated group (P < 0.05). Bone density increased significantly (P < 0.05) in groups treated with estrogen, GBR, Remifemin®, and gamma oryzanol compared to the ovariectomized nontreated group. Histological sections revealed more osteoblasts in the treated groups when compared with the untreated groups. A polyclonal nuclear antigen reaction showing proliferating new cells was observed in groups treated with estrogen, Remifemin®, GBR, acylated steryl glucosides, and gamma oryzanol. There was a good correlation between bone mass densities estimated using Archimede’s principle and the edge detection technique between the treated groups (r2 = 0.737, P = 0.004). Conclusion: Our study shows that GBR bioactives increase bone density, which might be via the activation of zinc formation and increased calcium content, and that X-ray edge detection technique is effective in the measurement of bone density and can be employed effectively in this respect