Effect of promoting country of origin as an ethnocentric appeal in developing local brands: special reference to telecommunication industry of Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is emerging as service sector driven economy with the GDP penetration of 50%-60% from service sector. After imposing the open economy policy in 1977, local brands had to gear ahead with intensive competition came from international brands. Telecommunication industry of Sri Lanka has been dominated by international brands, but local brands are strategically promoting the concept of country of origin (CO) or being local as a motive for citizens to deliberately purchase locally originated brands. In this context researchers viewed this branding practice, and selected 200 respondents from four geographical areas under the stratified probability sampling method to investigate the effect of country of origin in terms of brand performance. Both descriptive and inferential statistical analysis executed by PCA (principal component analysis) factor analysis accompanied with testing two hypotheses revealed that Country of Origin (CO) or promoting as being local had impacted less significantly on brand awareness and recalled power development of telecommunication brands against the competitive foreign brands. However, it has a significant impact on brand recalling power.Country of origin, ethnocentrism, local brands, telecommunication., Consumer/Household Economics, D12, L96,

Attitudes and Awareness towards Environmental Management and its Impact on Environmental Management Practices (EMPs) of SMEs in Sri Lanka

The main objective of this paper was to investigate whether there is an association amongst SMEs’ attitudes, awareness on environmental issues and their environmental management practices. A questionnaire-based survey was chosen to obtain the information on attitudes, awareness and environmental management practices of SMEs. The questionnaire was developed to find out SMEs’ current environmental management practices as well as their attitudes and awareness on environmental issues. The associations amongst attitudes, awareness and environmental practices for waste, energy, and the environment were investigated by calculating correlation coefficient. These analyses revealed that there is no significant association between attitudes and awareness or attitudes and environmental management practices. Attitudes appear to be remaining positive even where awareness is limited. Managers/owners who expressed rather more positive attitudes appear no more likely introduce environmental management practices for their organizations than managers/owners with less or negative attitude

Electrolyte flow in an external magnetic field: a dimensionless analysis

In this paper, some recent work on the flow induced by an external magnetic fields acting on electrochemical cell is reviewed. Although the influence of the magnetic field on the hydrodynamics has been studied for over 5 decades, the magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) remains relatively unfamiliar to all but a few research groups. There are nearly a countless number of dimensionless parameters in electrolytic flow (bubble induced flow) and MHD, but they have been introduced for convenience by different authors. The similitude parameter proposed by Solheim, Johansen, Rolseth, and Thonstad (1989) and Perron, Kiss, and Poncsák (2006) have been modified to provide a full set of parameters for electrolytic cell operating under external magnetic field. The bubble sliding characteristics underneath an inclined plane are studied using copper sulphate solution (as an electrolyte) in lab-based-scale and discussed

A SUSTAINABLE APPROACH TO IMPROVEMENT OF CORROSION PROTECTION COATINGS FOR STEEL STRUCTURES

            Corrosion is a primary factor compromising the safety and service life of steel structures. Corrosion protection coatings are generally employed for protection of the steel structures that are exposed to different aggressive environments. This research evaluated the use of biobased ion exchangers as a sustainable means of improving corrosion protection coatings. Two base polymer coatings (vinyl and coal-tar epoxy) were considered.  The following types and dosages of biobased ion exchangers were evaluated in these coatings: (i) strong-base ion exchange cellulose in OH, PO4, SiO3, BO3, NO2, SO4 and NO3 forms at 1% by weight of resin; (ii) weak-acid starch citrate ion exchanger in H form at 1 wt.%; and (iii) strong-base ion exchange cellulose in OH form at 2 wt.%. In addition, a strong-base ion exchange resin in OH form was considered at 1 and 2 wt.% as control.  Different coating formulations were evaluated based on the outcomes of salt-fog corrosion, moisture resistance, pull-off strength, and abrasion resistance tests. The introduction of certain biobased ion exchangers in protective coatings was found to be an effective means of achieving improved levels of corrosion resistance, adhesion capacity, moisture stability and abrasion resistance

Dynamics of a sliding bubble in an isothermal viscous liquid

Mr. Weerasiri’s thesis is entitled: Dynamics of a sliding bubble in an isothermal viscous liquid. Mr. Weerasiri investigated the fundamental effects of magnetic field on the behaviour of gas bubbles formed during electrolysis. He demonstrated the dramatic changes through High-speed videography and measured the flow with state-of-the-art PIV techniques

Assessment of Potential Location of High Arsenic Contamination Using Fuzzy Overlay and Spatial Anisotropy Approach in Iron Mine Surrounding Area

Fuzzy overlay approach on three raster maps including land slope, soil type, and distance to stream can be used to identify the most potential locations of high arsenic contamination in soils. Verification of high arsenic contamination was made by collection samples and analysis of arsenic content and interpolation surface by spatial anisotropic method. A total of 51 soil samples were collected at the potential contaminated location clarified by fuzzy overlay approach. At each location, soil samples were taken at the depth of 0.00-1.00 m from the surface ground level. Interpolation surface of the analysed arsenic content using spatial anisotropic would verify the potential arsenic contamination location obtained from fuzzy overlay outputs. Both outputs of the spatial surface anisotropic and the fuzzy overlay mapping were significantly spatially conformed. Three contaminated areas with arsenic concentrations of 7.19±2.86, 6.60±3.04, and 4.90±2.67 mg/kg exceeded the arsenic content of 3.9 mg/kg, the maximum concentration level (MCL) for agricultural soils as designated by Office of National Environment Board of Thailand. It is concluded that fuzzy overlay mapping could be employed for identification of potential contamination area with the verification by surface anisotropic approach including intensive sampling and analysis of the substances of interest

Orchestrator conversation : distributed management of cloud applications

Managing cloud applications is complex, and the current state of the art is not addressing this issue. The ever-growing software ecosystem continues to increase the knowledge required to manage cloud applications at a time when there is already an IT skills shortage. Solving this issue requires capturing IT operation knowledge in software so that this knowledge can be reused by system administrators who do not have it. The presented research tackles this issue by introducing a new and fundamentally different way to approach cloud application management: a hierarchical collection of independent software agents, collectively managing the cloud application. Each agent encapsulates knowledge of how to manage specific parts of the cloud application, is driven by sending and receiving cloud models, and collaborates with other agents by communicating using conversations. The entirety of communication and collaboration in this collection is called the orchestrator conversation. A thorough evaluation shows the orchestrator conversation makes it possible to encapsulate IT operations knowledge that current solutions cannot, reduces the complexity of managing a cloud application, and happens inherently concurrent. The evaluation also shows that the conversation figures out how to deploy a single big data cluster in less than 100 milliseconds, which scales linearly to less than 10 seconds for 100 clusters, resulting in a minimal overhead compared with the deployment time of at least 20 minutes with the state of the art

Learning Management System Built Using the MERN Stack

Web based applications play a main role in our day-to-day life and therefore, it is important to ensure the quality and reliability of web applications. With the sudden increase in use of web based applications for online and distant learning, it is important to address existing issues in current Learning Management Systems (LMS), so that users can benefit from a better, uninterrupted learning experience. This work mainly contributes to understanding how the MERN stack can be efficiently used in building a reliable and secure LMS that will provide its services free of charge so that students are provided with a free and uninterrupted learning experience. An LMS that is equipped with user handling functionality, managing courses and course materials, and maintaining a library, has been the focus of the study that resulted in producing this paper. The work also includes reasoning as to why the MERN stack was selected for developing the proposed system