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Access to affordable energy - for basic needs as well as for national economic development - is a crucial concern for developing countries. Access to modern and sustainable energy services in rural areas, where the majority of the population is living in poverty, is a particularly urgent challenge, and one which has been recognized as crucial within the global development agenda.
The current dominant development model, focused on achieving macro-economic growth, gives priority to large-scale or centralized energy infrastructures for national growth or for meeting the urban demand. Rural areas of poorer countries are often at a disadvantage in terms of access to all types of services – roads, health facilities, markets, information and clean water. The high cost of providing these services in remote areas has led to new approaches being tried, based on self-help and the private sector rather than traditional government-led solutions. The missing access to electricity is primarily the reason for the poor operational environment of entrepreneurship especially in rural areas of developing countries, which poses many barriers to their development and limits their competitiveness. Energy services for household, agriculture and production serve as best examples as sectors exposed to enable entrepreneurship by productive use of renewable energy.
This paper describes the line-up, the challenges and the outcome of a development project in rural Ethiopia to support entrepreneurship based on the usage of renewable energy, in this case mainly photo-voltaic technology. In particular, this study tries to show up key features which are required to enable sustainable energy access and foster implementation challenges of developed business models in practice. Based on this experience, the paper discusses implications and lessons learned for a further development.
The non-farm sector is critical for the socio-economic development of Ghana especially the rural poor. Literature suggest that people engage in non-farm enterprises as a way out of poverty or a survival strategy, perhaps as a substitute for the landless. This paper analyses the determinants of individual participation in non-farm enterprises and the intensity of participation. The paper uses EGC/ISSER Socio-Economic Panel Survey data collected in 2009. The paper estimated the determinants of participation using a probit model and then estimated the intensity of participation using a truncated regression model. The results indicate that majority of women (about 73%) are engaged in non-farm enterprises in rural Ghana. The study found that females tended to participate more in non-farm self-employment and are less likely to participate in non-farm wage employment. The results further showed that individual characteristics such as the gender of the individual, being head of a household, being the spouse of a household head, having formal education, age of the individual, having access to credit, possessing a mobile phone, per capita landing holding and ownership of livestock influenced the participation of individuals in self-and wage employment. Results from truncated regression model for self-employed enterprises showed that having access to mobile phones, owning more livestock and electricity are important in determining the intensity of participation in self-employed enterprises. For wage-employment, being a household head, spouse of household head, having access to mobile phone and owning more livestock increased the number of days working on wage employment. Education is relevant for employment in the non-farm sector especially wage-employment. Government should play a lead role in making formal education accessible to the rural people. Deliberate policies should focus on addressing critical factors such as access to credit, mobile phone, electricity and education which are relevant for increasing participation intensity in rural enterprises.
Over the past decades, growing trends in social media, e-literacy and globalisation have led to the increased use of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) in offices, schools, homes, hospitals and other institutions. Although, there are more efforts at introducing diversity, innovation and increased use of EEE, there had been limited effort at managing the end?of?life of these electronic devices. Evidence from previous research showed that the management of the end of life of electronic waste is highly dominated by Micro, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) in the informal sector who employ more crude technology in their operations. This exploratory study therefore, sought to examine the activities of corporate bodies and MSMEs (formal and informal) in the e-waste sector in the Accra and Kumasi Metropolitan Areas in Ghana. Data was collected via questionnaires and interview from randomly selected respondents in the two metropolises. Results reveal that even though corporate institutions import a lot of electrical and electronic equipment, they do not have any policies on disposal of the e-waste generated. Thus, a high percentage of the e-waste generated is processed by the informal sector. The implications of the results are that policy makers and other stakeholders should encourage MSMEs to formalize their activities, support investment and green business development as well as funding and training for MSMEs operating in the sector.
Media development cooperation has aimed for decades at enhancing free and independent media in developing countries as well as economies in transition. Within this field of activity, the concept of media viability has gained more and more attention in recent years. This is mainly due to a proposal of UNESCO`s intergovernmental Bureau of the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC). The UNESCO, in partnership with DW Akademie, has drafted a list of indicators that delineate the influencing factors of media viability for media organizations in any given country (UNESCO 2015).
As a consequence of the novelty of the media viability concept, the state of scientific research is restricted. It is frequently focused on isolated case studies without providing a scientific basis for comparison. Empirical studies and comparative analyses are limited to certain media sectors such as the print market, as well as for journalism startups and spin-offs in developed economies.
In today’s business, culture plays a vital role or to a high degree influences the attitude, perception and decision making process of an individual. Culture is an unavoidable state of rules and regulations that defines people’s daily life in a particular environment or society. There are plenty examples of business failures or stagnation or failure of joint ventures, on account of the management's inability to recognize cross-cultural challenges and tackle them appropriately.
Entrepreneurship education serves a conduit for new venture creation as it provides the knowledge and skills needed to increase the self-efficacy of individuals to start and run new businesses and to grow existing ones. This study, therefore, sought to assess the relationship between the approaches to the teaching of entrepreneur-ship and entrepreneurial intention on a cohort of 292 respondents consisting of students who have studied entrepreneurship in three selected Universities. A structured questionnaire was used to obtain data randomly from students. The canonical correlation results indicate that education for and through entrepreneurship is the best approach to promoting entrepreneurial intensity among University students, if the aim of teaching entrepreneur-ship is to promote start-up activities. The findings provide valuable insights for institutions of higher learning and policy makers in Ghana with respect to the appropriate methodologies to be adopted in the teaching of entrepreneurship in our universities.
Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are engine of economy both for developed and developing countries. They play a significant role in income generation, job creation, poverty reduction and reducing income inequality. In Burundi, key stakeholders such as policy-makers as well as other international and national actors have made more effort to develop the segment of SMEs. Indeed, many start-ups have been created but are however, exposed to several challenges in their business operations. This paper aimed at investigating main critical barriers to SMEs growth and development in Burundi. The research was based upon a sample survey of small firms in Burundi and 314 small enterprises were surveyed. Rural start-ups’ critical barriers identified are mainly poor management, lack of access to market flow, lack of working capital, inadequate qualified workforce and low selling prices. On the other hand, five severe obstacles for urban SMEs identified are insecurity, access to financing, macroeconomic situation, lack of customers and unfair competition. A better understanding of all these barriers that SMEs are facing is useful to set up best strategies susceptible to increase their growth.
Culture is at the core of any social, economic and business interactions and relationships. The way people perceive the culture of others influences their decision to collaborate socially, politically and economically with them. It is therefore, imperative students appreciate the dynamics of cross-cultural interactions and collaborations, since it exposes them to a wider view of the world. In doing this, it is important they (students) are allowed to explore as much as possible with little interference by their teachers. Using the project students went through real-life experience in a self-directed enquiry. In the process, they were taught to solve problems encountered during the learning process. The focus of the intercultural communication project was to understand how people from different cultures speak, interact and perceive others’ culture. It was found students innovate if allowed to explore a certain phenomenon on their own. Furthermore, face-to-face meetings can be arranged between people in the different countries can be arranged using these Web 2.0 tools. Based on the experience from the project, it was observed that the success of a collaborative international project depends on the understanding of the crosscultural dynamics of partners. For such collaborations, it is imperative to establish personal relationships, be flexible and adaptable to situations and change as well as being swift resolving potential conflict situation.
This study sought to determine the relationship between entrepreneurial education and youth employability and economic development in Kenya. A descriptive cross sectional design was used to collect data, with the main data collection instrument being a semi structured questionnaire. The population of the study comprised the micro, small and medium scale enterprises in Nairobi, Kenya. Out of the 100 questionnaires issued, 93 were completed and returned giving a response rate of 93%. Descriptive analysis (means and standard deviations ) and inferential analysis was used to analyze the data. Regression and correlation analysis was done to test the hypotheses. It was found that several indicators of entrepreneurial education had a significantly positive influence on youth employability. For example, entrepreneurial education enhances opportunity recognition as an indicator of entrepreneurial education was statistically significantly correlated with the statement that entrepreneurship endeavor is an employment alternative as an indicator of youth employability (r = 331**, P = 0.01). Similarly, the statement that entrepreneurial education sharpens competitiveness had a significantly positive influence on the statement that entrepreneurship endevour is an employment alternative (r =.313** P = 0.01). The overall model for entrepreneurial education and youth employability had an R Square value of 0.151, and an F value of 3.086, (p = 0.013 < 0.05), indicating that the influence is significant at the 0.05 level. The study found that most indicators of youth employability had a significantly positive correlation with indicators of economic development. It was found that there was a significant positive correlation between entrepreneurial education enhances new product and service development and entrepreneurial education reduces youth unemployment (r =0.304**, P = 0.01), while entrepreneurial education enhances new product and service development also has a positive correlation with entrepreneurial education reduces youth unemployment (.304** , P = 0.01). The overall model for youth employability and economic development had an R square value of .087 and F value of 2.103, p =0.87 > 0.05, indication that although youth employability is responsible for 8.7% of economic development, the effect is not statistically significant. The implication for this is that entrepreneurial education should be encouraged as a way of enhancing entrepreneurial thinking among the youth, so that they can use this to venture into self employment. However, this study did not find a significant direct link between youth employability and economic development, and this can only be implied. We suggest increased government support for entrepreneurship training and for closer industry university collaboration and partnerships in order to accelerate economic development.
A deployment of the Vehicle-2-Vehicle communication technology according to ETSI is in preparation in Europe. Currently, a policy for a necessary Public Key Infrastructure to enrol cryptographic keys and certificates for vehicles and infrastructure component is in discussion to enable an interoperable Vehicle-2-Vehicle communication. Vehicle-2-Vehicle communication means that vehicles periodically send Cooperative Awareness Messages. These messages contain the current geographic position, driving direction, speed, acceleration, and the current time of a vehicle. To protect privacy (location privacy, “speed privacy”) of vehicles and drivers ETSI provides a specific pseudonym concept. We show that the Vehicle-2-Vehicle communication can be misused by an attacker to plot a trace of sequent Cooperative Awareness Messages and to link this trace to a specific vehicle. Such a trace is non-disputable due to the cryptographic signing of the messages. So, the periodically sending of Cooperative Awareness Messages causes privacy problems even if the pseudonym concept is applied.
The development of fully automated vehicles is becoming more and more present in the social discussion. The image of fully automated cars is determined by automobile manufacturers and placed in the context of individual traffic. In contrast to fully autonomous private cars, fully automated public transport is already operating in some cities and is to be expanded in the future. Autonomous public transport offers great potential for the development and promotion of sustainable mobility concepts. However, the user acceptance is important for the enforcement and widespread use of these technical innovations. An online study on the acceptance of fully automated public transport based on quantitative data of a sample of N = 201 is presented. The results show a high level of familiarity with the topic and a very high level of overall intention to use fully automated public transport in the future.
Power train models are required to simulate hence predict energy consumption of vehicles. Efficiencies for different components in power train are required. Common procedures use digitalised shell models (or maps) to model the efficiency of Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) and manual gearboxes (MG). Errors are connected with these models and affect the accuracy of the calculation. The accuracy depends on the configuration of the simulation, the digitalisation of the data and the data used. This paper evaluates these sources of error. The understanding of the source of error can improve the results of the modelling by more than eight percent.
Universities, Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development in Africa – Conference Proceedings 2016
(2017)
These proceedings are the outcome of the 5th annual joint conference on “Universities Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development in Africa” between the University of Nairobi, Kenya, the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, and Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, Germany, held on 10-11 November 2016 on Campus Sankt Augustin, Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences.
Dare – Democracy and Science
(2017)
These times are very troubled ones. Not only do wars and political unrest seem to prevail in different regions of the world, but, corruption and fraud have reached an incredible dimension, too. It seems that societies have, to a large extent, lost values in which they had formerly believed in. These issues may be the background why at the moment Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a voluntary commitment is discussed in public that intensively. However, one gets the impression that this rather often seems to be superficial. Therefore, it is time to do some in-depth research to identify whether there is real substance behind these discussions or not. Latin America is a big continent with a greater number of countries which are running through difficult times as to corruption and fraud. Consequently, the author studied the policy of the central employers association Consejo Empresarial de America Latina (CEAL) with respect to the role of CSR. On the basis of statements, news and results of studies being regularly published, conclusions were drawn to which extent social and environmental aspects, along the line of ISO 26000, are playing a relevant role.
In order to avoid a too narrow view of the issue, a holistic approach concerning the generalsituation of Latin America has been selected using parameters such as economic growth, increase of population, poverty, inequality, and the global responsibility for environment. Furthermore, apart from the central organization CEAL, regional and national institutions with a specific mission for spreading and implementing CSR and two communal projects were analyzed as well. The conclusion of the paper is that there are some CSR "lighthouses" but an urgent need exists to spread the idea of CSR more intensively across the continent. Corresponding recommendations about how to increase the relevance of CSR in Latin America are given at the end of the paper.
The combination of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) is challenging due to the different natures of both concepts. SDN describes networks with homogeneous, static and centralized controlled topologies. In contrast, a WMN is characterized by a dynamic and distributed network control, and adds new challenges with respect to time-critical operation. However, SDN and WMN are both associated with decreasing the operational costs for communication networks which is especially beneficial for internet provisioning in rural areas. This work surveys the current status for Software-Defined Wireless Mesh Networking. Besides a general overview in the domain of wireless SDN, this work focuses especially on different identified aspects: representing and controlling wireless interfaces, control-plane connection and topology discovery, modulation and coding, routing and load-balancing and client handling. A complete overview of surveyed solutions, open issues and new research directions is provided with regard to each aspect.
In January 2015, German trade and industry announced to support the national animal welfare initiative "Initiative Tierwohl" (ITW) which stands for a more sustainable and animal-friendly meat production. A web content analysis shows that the ITW initiative has been widely picked up and discussed by online media and that user comments are quite heterogeneous. The current study identifies different types of consumers through factor and cluster analysis and is based on an online survey as well as face-to-face interviews. According to our results, the identified consumer groups demonstrate a rather passive comment behaviour on the internet. In fact, the internet was hardly mentioned as an information source for meat production; consumers more frequently referred to brochures, leaflets and personal contacts with sales personnel.
Argentina substantially contributes to the global organic agriculture and food sector due to its large areas of organically managed agricultural land. However, most of the organic production is foreseen for export. Overall, food supply for the domestic organic market is hardly tapped. This study investigates the current importance of organic agriculture and food production as well as its consumption within the country. The novelty of the study also lies in the observation, documentation and analysis of latest stakeholder-driven developments towards organic agriculture and food. The publication allows to make the Argentinian organic market significantly more visible for the international audience.
Food losses occur for many reasons at all stages of supply chains for fruits, vegetables and potatoes. They cause immense economic, environmental and social costs – not only in developing countries but also in developed countries. According to the European Commission, about 90 million tonnes of food are wasted annually in Europe alone. However, particularly for the early stages of supply chains for fruits, vegetables and potatoes there is still a lack of reliable data. Thus, one objective of this study is to contribute to the quantification of food losses between field and retail, where the main focus is set on potatoes, apples, carrots, strawberries and asparagus. Furthermore, neither reasons why products are removed from the supply chains nor their alternative uses are fully examined yet. This is why, the study takes a look on those issues, too. Results are based on data from an online survey among producers of fruits, vegetables and potatoes in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany and on interviews with producers and other supply chain experts. Findings suggest that the products’ size and form, their storage capabilities and food safety issues have big impacts on food losses. Despite a small sample size, these findings are in line with recent studies.
Infection Exposure Promotes ETV6-RUNX1 Precursor B-cell Leukemia via Impaired H3K4 Demethylases
(2017)
ETV6-RUNX1 is associated with the most common subtype of childhood leukemia. As few ETV6-RUNX1 carriers develop precursor B cell acute lymphocytic leukemia (pB-ALL), the underlying genetic basis for development of full-blown leukemia remains to be identified, but the appearance of leukemia cases in time-space clusters keeps infection as a potential causal factor. Here we present in vivo genetic evidence mechanistically connecting preleukemic ETV6-RUNX1 expression in hematopoetic stem cells/peripheral cells (HSC/PC) and postnatal infections for human-like pB-ALL. In our model, ETV6-RUNX1 conferred a low risk of developing pB-ALL after exposure to common pathogens, corroborating the low incidence observed in humans. Murine preleukemic ETV6-RUNX1 pro/preB cells showed high Rag1/2 expression, known for human ETV6-RUNX1 pB-ALL. Murine and human ETV6-RUNX1 pB-ALL revealed recurrent genomic alterations, with a relevant proportion affecting genes of the lysine demethylase (KDM) family. KDM5C loss-of-function resulted in increased levels of H3K4me3, which co-precipitated with RAG2 in a human cell line model, laying the molecular basis for recombination activity. We conclude that alterations of KDM family members represent a disease-driving mechanism and an explanation for RAG off-target cleavage observed in humans. Our results explain the genetic basis for clonal evolution of an ETV6-RUNX1 preleukemic clone to pB-ALL after infection exposure and offer the possibility of novel therapeutic approaches.
Environment monitoring using multiple observation cameras is increasingly popular. Different techniques exist to visualize the incoming video streams, but only few evaluations are available to find the best suitable one for a given task and context. This article compares three techniques for browsing video feeds from cameras that are located around the user in an unstructured manner. The techniques allow mobile users to gain extra information about the surroundings, the objects and the actors in the environment by observing a site from different perspectives. The techniques relate local and remote cameras topologically, via a tunnel, or via bird's eye viewpoint. Their common goal is to enhance spatial awareness of the viewer, without relying on a model or previous knowledge of the environment. We introduce several factors of spatial awareness inherent to multi-camera systems, and present a comparative evaluation of the proposed techniques with respect to spatial understanding and workload.
In this paper, we report on four generations of display-sensor platforms for handheld augmented reality. The paper is organized as a compendium of requirements that guided the design and construction of each generation of the handheld platforms. The first generation, reported in [17]), was a result of various studies on ergonomics and human factors. Thereafter, each following iteration in the design-production process was guided by experiences and evaluations that resulted in new guidelines for future versions. We describe the evolution of hardware for handheld augmented reality, the requirements and guidelines that motivated its construction.
Recent studies have shown that through a careful combination of multiple sensory channels, so called multisensory binding effects can be achieved that can be beneficial for collision detection and texture recognition feedback. During the design of a new pen-input device called Tactylus, specific focus was put on exploring multisensory effects of audiotactile cues to create a new, but effective way to interact in virtual environments with the purpose to overcome several of the problems noticed in current devices.
3D User Interfaces
(2005)
This report presents an approach on a quadrotor dynamics stabilization based on ICP SLAM. Because the quadrotor lacks sensory information to detect its horizontal drift an additional sensor as Hokuyo-UTM has been used to perform on-line ICP-based SLAM. The obtained position estimates were used in control loops to maintain desired position and orientation of the vehicle. Such attitude parameters as height, yaw and position in space were controlled based on the laser data. As a result the quadrotor demonstrated two significant for autonomous navigation capabilities: performance of on-line SLAMon a flying vehicle and maintaining desired position in 3D space. Visual approach on optical flow based on Pyramid Lucas-Kanade algorithm has been touched and tested in different environmental conditions though hasn't been implemented in the control loop. Also the performance of the Hokuyo laser scanner and the related to it ICP SLAM algorithm have been tested in different environmental conditions indoors, outdoors and in presence of smoke. Results are presented and discussed. The requirement of performing on-line SLAM algorithm and to carry quite heavy equipment for it forced to seek a solution to increase the payload of the quadrotor with its computational power. A new hardware and distributed software architectures are therefore presented in the report.
In order to help journalists investigate inside large audiovisual archives, as maintained by news broadcast agencies, the multimedia data must be indexed by text-based search engies. By automatically creating a transcript through automatic speech recognition (ASR), the spoken word becomes accessible to text search, and queries for keywords are made possible. But stil, important contextual information like the identity of the speaker is not captured. Especially when gathering original footage in the political domain, the identity of the speaker can be the most important query constraint, although this name may not be prominent in the words spoken. It is thus desireable to have this information provided explicitely to the search engine. To provide this information, the archive must be an alyzed by automatic Speaker Identification (SID). While this research topic has seen substantial gains in accuracy and robustness over last years, it has not yet established itself as a helpful, large-scale tool outside the research community. This thesis sets out to establish a workflow to provide automatic speaker identification. Its application is to help journalists searching on speeches given in the German parliament (Bundestag). This is a contribution to the News-Stream 3.0 project, a BMBF funded research project that addresses accessibility of various data sources for journalists.
This work extends the affordance-inspired robot control architecture introduced in the MACS project [35] and especially its approach to integrate symbolic planning systems given in [24] by providing methods to automated abstraction of affordances to high-level operators. It discusses how symbolic planning instances can be generated automatically based on these operators and introduces an instantiation method to execute the resulting plans. Preconditions and effects of agent behaviour are learned and represented in Gärdenfors conceptual spaces framework. Its notion of similarity is used to group behaviours to abstract operators based on the affordance-inspired, function-centred view on the environment. Ways on how the capabilities of conceptual spaces to map subsymbolic to symbolic representations to generate PDDL planning domains including affordance-based operators are discussed. During plan execution, affordance-based operators are instantiated by agent behaviour based on the situation directly before its execution. The current situation is compared to past ones and the behaviour that has been most successful in the past is applied. Execution failures can be repaired by action substitution. The concept of using contexts to dynamically change dimension salience as introduced by Gärdenfors is realized by using techniques from the field of feature selection. The approach is evaluated using a 3D simulation environment and implementations of several object manipulation behaviours.