Globalisation and Shortages of Skilled Labour in Pacific Island Countries: A Case Study of Australia

During the past two decades, the Australian economy has experienced fundamental changes influenced by the increasing propagation of globalisation. Globalising forces have reduced barriers to labour mobility across countries and economies. Concurrently there has been an increase in the importance of the ‘knowledge economy’ and thus the demand for highly skilled workers. The combination of these factors has increased the competition for highly skilled workers across national economies and in particular among Pacific Island countries (such as New Zealand and Fiji) in which the domestic demand for highly skilled labour outstrips the available domestic supply. The primary objective of this article is to analyse the impact of globalisation on the Australian labour market with a focus on shortages of skilled labour in Australia. The paper also examines the implications of shortages of skilled labour for other Pacific Island countries and suggests policy initiatives in this area.

Are Drone Strikes Effective in Afghanistan and Pakistan? On the Dynamics of Violence between the United States and the Taliban

Strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, have been the primary weapon used by the United States to combat the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This paper examines the dynamics of violence involving drone strikes and the Taliban/Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan from January 2007 to December 2010. We find that drone strikes do not have any significant impact on terrorist violence in Afghanistan but that drone strikes do have a significant impact on Taliban/Al-Qaeda violence in Pakistan. We find that our results are robust to examining different time periods and lag structures. We also examine the impact of successful and unsuccessful drone strikes (which did or did not succeed in targeted killing of a militant leader) on terrorist attacks by the Taliban. We find strong negative impacts of unsuccessful drone strikes on Taliban violence in Pakistan, showing the deterrent effects are quite strong, while the incapacitation effects appear to be weak or non-existent.time series models, conflict

Remittances and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence from Bangladesh India and Sri Lanka

In many developing countries, remittance payments from migrant workers are increasingly becoming a significant source of export income. This paper investigates the causal link between remittances and economic growth in three countries, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka, by employing the Granger causality test under a VAR framework (Granger 1988). Using time series data over a 25 year period, we found that growth in remittances does lead to economic growth in Bangladesh. In India, there seems to be no causal relationship between growth in remittances and economic growth; but in Sri Lanka, a two-way directional causality is found; namely economic growth influences growth in remittences and vice-versa. The paper also discusses a number of policy issues arising from the results of the analysis in relation to remittances in association with liberalisation of financial institutions, gender issues, regulation and enforcement, investment and savings schemes, and promotion and education.

PATTERN RECOGNITION IN CLASS IMBALANCED DATASETS

Class imbalanced datasets constitute a significant portion of the machine learning problems of interest, where recog­nizing the ‘rare class’ is the primary objective for most applications. Traditional linear machine learning algorithms are often not effective in recognizing the rare class. In this research work, a specifically optimized feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) is proposed and developed to train from moderate to highly imbalanced datasets. The proposed methodology deals with the difficulty in classification task in multiple stages—by optimizing the training dataset, modifying kernel function to generate the gram matrix and optimizing the NN structure. First, the training dataset is extracted from the available sample set through an iterative process of selective under-sampling. Then, the proposed artificial NN comprises of a kernel function optimizer to specifically enhance class boundaries for imbalanced datasets by conformally transforming the kernel functions. Finally, a single hidden layer weighted neural network structure is proposed to train models from the imbalanced dataset. The proposed NN architecture is derived to effectively classify any binary dataset with even very high imbalance ratio with appropriate parameter tuning and sufficient number of processing elements. Effectiveness of the proposed method is tested on accuracy based performance metrics, achieving close to and above 90%, with several imbalanced datasets of generic nature and compared with state of the art methods. The proposed model is also used for classification of a 25GB computed tomographic colonography database to test its applicability for big data. Also the effectiveness of under-sampling, kernel optimization for training of the NN model from the modified kernel gram matrix representing the imbalanced data distribution is analyzed experimentally. Computation time analysis shows the feasibility of the system for practical purposes. This report is concluded with discussion of prospect of the developed model and suggestion for further development works in this direction

Realization of Quaranic Teleology: An Initiative to Comprehend its Suitability Comparing it with the Modern Philosophies

Why is teleology expected to understand and explain the evolution of human beings and for the ratiocination regarding their destiny s finalization Is it a rational attempt that the pensive minds tried to visualize the sequences of human history through a teleological lens or is it merely an urge of the unsatisfied minds to justify and rationalize their ontology oriented investigation where teleology is an intellectual vessel of self-satisfaction This essay want to answer these questions glancing over both sociophilosophical teleology and faith oriented or religious teleology In understanding the religious or faith oriented teleology the essay will explore the Quaranic teleological arguments comparing with modern socio-philosophy oriented teleology basically Marxism Marx was the only European Social scientist who tried to put forward a holistic sociological approach which has a grand-narrative and a specific teleology and which is capable to project a total trajectory of its deterministic philosophy The essay will investigate the Neoliberal ideology the most dominant ideology of the West today and try to see whether it promotes any teleology or not The essay will also go into the philosophy of Plato who formed the base of the paradigmatic sequences of the Western thinking in the ancient Greece whose impact is still visible and glaring in the Western world The main purpose of this essay is to compare the teleological stand of the holy Koran and that of the all the relevant modern social philosophies from the critical analytical points and fathom out their basic differences Hence the essay will underscore the Shiite cosmology to observe the courses of Islamic teleology The relevant Gnostic philosophical stands will be evaluated in this article especially the Shiite Gnoses As the writer has its own judgment to understand the Islamic teleology the opinions will be established to bring the whole article before that kaleidoscope summarizing all th

Realization of Quaranic Teleology: An Initiative to Comprehend its Suitability Comparing it with the Modern Philosophies

Why is teleology expected to understand and explain the evolution of human beings and for the ratiocination regarding their destiny s finalization Is it a rational attempt that the pensive minds tried to visualize the sequences of human history through a teleological lens or is it merely an urge of the unsatisfied minds to justify and rationalize their ontology oriented investigation where teleology is an intellectual vessel of self-satisfaction This essay want to answer these questions glancing over both sociophilosophical teleology and faith oriented or religious teleology In understanding the religious or faith oriented teleology the essay will explore the Quaranic teleological arguments comparing with modern socio-philosophy oriented teleology basically Marxism Marx was the only European Social scientist who tried to put forward a holistic sociological approach which has a grand-narrative and a specific teleology and which is capable to project a total trajectory of its deterministic philosophy The essay will investigate the Neoliberal ideology the most dominant ideology of the West today and try to see whether it promotes any teleology or not The essay will also go into the philosophy of Plato who formed the base of the paradigmatic sequences of the Western thinking in the ancient Greece whose impact is still visible and glaring in the Western world The main purpose of this essay is to compare the teleological stand of the holy Koran and that of the all the relevant modern social philosophies from the critical analytical points and fathom out their basic differences Hence the essay will underscore the Shiite cosmology to observe the courses of Islamic teleology The relevant Gnostic philosophical stands will be evaluated in this article especially the Shiite Gnoses As the writer has its own judgment to understand the Islamic teleology the opinions will be established to bring the whole article before that kaleidoscope summarizing all th

A qualitative study of success criteria in Norwegian agile software projects from suppliers’ perspective

This paper provides practical insights into the success criteria in agile projects in the Norwegian software industry. We conducted 32 interviews with practitioners working with agile projects. The findings revealed two fundamental differences that distinguish the perception of success in agile projects from that in projects that are based on the waterfall approach. Firstly, the evaluation is carried out on a regular basis after each increment. This regular and continuous measurement of success contributes several advantages, including greater commitment and involvement from the customer and a higher level of mutual trust between the supplier and the customer; and thus leads to better knowledge sharing and reduced task uncertainty. The reduction of task uncertainty provides more predictability about the direction of the project and better grounds for change control; not least, it allows room to consider multiple and subjective assessments by various stakeholders. Secondly, there is a stronger emphasis on customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is measured in terms of how quickly the customer obtains value from the project. The continuous assessment of success at the end of each iteration also has a significant, positive impact on the customer’s evaluation of the project outcome

Internet-based Framework to Support Integration of Customer in the Design of Customizable Products

A necessary element to design and produce customer-centric products is the integration of customers in the design process. Challenges faced during customer integration into the design process include generating models of the customized product, performing analysis of these to determine feasibility, and optimizing to increase the performance. These tasks have to be performed relatively quickly, if not in real time, to provide feedback to the customer. The focus of this article is to present a framework that utilizes CAD, finite element analysis (FEA), and optimization to integrate the customer into the design process via the Internet for delivering user customized products. The design analysis, evaluation, and optimization need to be automated and enhanced to enable operation over the Internet. A product family CAD/FEA template has been developed to perform analysis, along with a general formulation to optimize the customized product. The CAD/FEA template generalizes the geometry building and analysis of each configuration developed using a product platform approach. The proposed setup is demonstrated through the use of a bicycle frame family. In this study, the focus is on the application of optimization and FEA to facilitate the design of customer-centric products.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

The Induction and Evaluation of Productive Semidwarf Mutants of Basmati-370

Dry, uniform seeds of Basmati 370 with about 14% moisture content were exposed to 0, 15,20 and 25kR doses of gamma rays (60Co source). Twenty one semi-dwarf mutants were selected from 36,000 M2 plants originating from about 12,000 Ml plants. The breeding behaviour of these mutants was studied in M3 and consequently 6 mutants were selected. The comparative yield test of mutants with mother cultivar Basmati-370, established the high yield potential and semi-dwarf plant posture of mutant strains. The other plant attributes as well as physico-chemical traits of the mutants and parent cultivar are also presented