Search results

This paper presents a Monotonic Unbounded Schemes Transformer (MUST) approach to bound/monotonize (remove undershoots and overshoots) unbounded spatial differencing schemes automatically, and naturally. Automatically means the approach (1) captures the critical cell Peclet number when an unbounded scheme starts to produce physically unrealistic solution automatically, and (2) removes the undershoots and overshoots as part of the formulation without requiring human interventions. Naturally implies, all the terms in the discretization equation of the unbounded spatial differencing scheme are retained.

The authors do not formulate new higher-order scheme. MUST transforms an unbounded higher-order scheme into a bounded higher-order scheme.

The solutions obtained with MUST are identical to those without MUST when the cell Peclet number is smaller than the critical cell Peclet number. For cell Peclet numbers larger than the critical cell Peclet numbers, MUST sets the nodal values to the limiter value which can be derived for the problem at-hand. The authors propose a way to derive the limiter value. The authors tested MUST on the central differencing scheme, the second-order upwind differencing scheme and the QUICK differencing scheme. In all cases tested, MUST is able to (1) capture the critical cell Peclet numbers; the exact locations when overshoots and undershoots occur, and (2) limit the nodal value to the value of the limiter values. These are achieved by retaining all the discretization terms of the respective differencing schemes naturally and accomplished automatically as part of the discretization process. The authors demonstrated MUST using one-dimensional problems. Results for a two-dimensional convection–diffusion problem are shown in Appendix to show generality of MUST.

The authors present an original approach to convert any unbounded scheme to bounded scheme while retaining all the terms in the original discretization equation.

The objective of the study is to develop a methodology to strategically rank store locations using criteria such as population, store site characteristics, economic considerations, competition and so on to select the most optimal retail convenience store location.

A case of National Capital Region, India, for a 24-h convenience store was considered for the study and the major criteria that affect the performance of a convenience store are identified, such as population characteristics, economic criteria, competition, consumer accessibility, store size, total cost, site attractiveness and security. Fuzzy AHP is utilized to find the weightage for each criteria and a combination of fuzzy TOPSIS and grey relational analysis (GRA) is applied to rank the alternative using these criteria weight. Further, results obtained are compared with results from fuzzy TOPSIS and fuzzy VIKOR methods. Sensitivity analysis is also performed for ensuring the robustness of the framework.

It is observed that outcomes do not change under various settling coefficient values, demonstrating that the methodology is very robust. The developed framework will be quite useful to diverse retailers looking to expand and generate substantial profits.

A large sample size of number of locations encourages generalization of results. Strategic ranking of the selected locations is carried out on a few selected criteria. The study was limited by the designated geographical area.

The study contributes to the few available articles on convenience store selection using combination of fuzzy AHP, fuzzy TOPSIS and GRA for a developing country.

Assessment of complex clinical skills and abilities is a challenge in mental health education. In the present study, an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) was adapted to psychology and implemented in a Master in Psychology program. The purpose of the present study was to examine aspects of validity of this OSCE.

A total of 55 students enrolled in the Master in the Psychology program at Umeå University, Sweden, participated in two OSCE occasions. In addition to OSCE data, questionnaires were administered immediately after the OSCE to students (n = 18) and examiners (n = 13) to examine their perceptions of the OSCE.

The results provided support for different aspects of validity. The level of internal consistency was close to acceptable, and there was a good correspondence between global ratings and checklist scores for many stations. However, adding an additional category to the global rating scale and reviewing some of the station checklists might improve the assessment further. The present cut-score of the OSCE was comparable to a cut-score set by the borderline regression model. In general, students and examiners perceived the OSCE as a high-quality examination, although examiners raised some issues that could improve the OSCE further.

In conclusion, OSCE is a promising assessment in psychology, both from a psychometric perspective and from a test-taker and examiner perspective. The present study is an important contribution to the field as there are only a few examples where OSCE has been used in clinical psychology, and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to evaluate the validity of such an assessment.

This study aims to cover issues regarding traveling to a tourist destination which has seen war and terrorism. These problems can be addressed altogether, as they are interrelated. Based on tourists’ opinions, this paper aims to focus on measures or steps that can be taken to ensure changing their perceptions about a certain destination.

This study targets tourism experts for their opinions regarding the measures most necessary to change the perceptions of tourists. Their opinions were extracted through a questionnaire based on three criteria with four alternatives. Furthermore, raw data extracted are studied using the Fuzzy-VIKOR technique to rank the alternatives in order of importance. Moreover, the questionnaire also aims to know the perception of participants by asking them what would make them trust a destination with a history of terrorism.

The problems captivate the attention of government, guiding them to ensure that they need to focus more on physical security of tourists if they expect tourism industry to thrive. It was found that the steps needed to be taken are in the areas of international trade, cultural exchange programs and social media advertising.

Research based on improving tourist perception of Pakistan to develop Pakistan as a tourist destination is scarce. The study takes four different alternatives into account for image recovery and based on those alternatives, it provides a unique solution to the government in this regard with the necessary steps they need to take and attempts to help the government ensure tourism expansion in the country.

Since the 1980s the economic development of countries in East Asia has had a marked impact on the world port community, particularly in container transport. This paper analyses changes in the competitive environment of the world container port sector using some standard tools of market concentration. Initially, this paper reviews the competitive position of world container port system and then examines the East Asian economic environment. Both ordinal and cardinal measures of port system inequality are used to demonstrate both the rankings and levels of container throughput have been diverging in the world's major economic blocs. Conversely, East Asian countries during the 1990s have shown a trend towards convergence. Measures of dispersion suggest that ports in East Asian countries have become more competitive in their levels of container throughput.

The purpose of this study is to show that closure-based classification and regression models provide both high accuracy and interpretability.

Pattern structures allow one to approach the knowledge extraction problem in case of partially ordered descriptions. They provide a way to apply techniques based on closed descriptions to non-binary data. To provide scalability of the approach, the author introduced a lazy (query-based) classification algorithm.

The experiments support the hypothesis that closure-based classification and regression allow one to both achieve higher accuracy in scoring models as compared to results obtained with classical banking models and retain interpretability of model results, whereas black-box methods grant better accuracy for the cost of losing interpretability.

This is an original research showing the advantage of closure-based classification and regression models in the banking sphere.

This paper aims to show that tourism is one of the most perfect creations of the capitalist mode of production insofar as not only does it consume places and territories and perpetuate dependency relations, but in the expressive dimension, it also produces feelings and meanings and generates a new relationship of the past with the present and future (chronotope).

The study was carried out using a socio-anthropological approach with participant observation over several decades.

The modes of time are described and how the tourism chronotope shapes the historic centre of a consolidated tourist destination. The case study, analysed with the model of the “conversion of place through the mediation of tourism space”, illustrates the prevalence of instrumental and commercial values over one’s own aesthetic-expressive values in tourism contexts. This fact encourages the emergence of local political projects and the incorporation of uniformities outside the local place. These processes end up uprooting the anchors from collective memory. The definition of territories according to visitors’ imaginaries and expectations encourages the abusive occupation of public space and the adoption of new aesthetic attributes of urban space.

Because of the chosen research approach and methodologies, the research results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test both the model and the propositions further.

This study approaches the relationship of the idea Tourism with the idea Development based on the anchors of memory.

The importance of container transportation has increased due to the globalization of the world economy. The purpose of this research is at proposing a framework to enhance the container terminals performance through evaluating efficiency and competitiveness.

The researchers used data envelopment analysis to assess the efficiency and fuzzy analytic hierarchy process to measure competitiveness of container terminals. The proposed framework captures key performance indicators to evaluate the container terminals' performance and identify areas that need improvement. It was applied to the Egyptian container terminals from the period of 2015–2019 as an empirical study.

Findings highlights the highest utilization of resources of Alexandria port while more attention should be given to the level of service provided. On the other hand, El-Sokhna should focus on more utilization of the available resources. The performance evaluation showed that the rest of Egyptian terminal ports should improve both competitiveness and efficiency at different levels based on their performance ranking.

The developed framework can be used as an evaluation tool to evaluate the performance of container terminals in other countries, and can be utilized as a performance benchmark tool to compare the performance of container terminals of competing ports.

The developed framework can help policymakers to assess efficiency and competitiveness based on both quantitative data and experts' judgement in order to help in formulating government logistics strategy.

The research provides a comprehensive framework to measure and evaluate competitiveness and efficiency of container terminals based on both quantitative data and experts' judgement.

Employees facing challenges in their careers – i.e. female, migrant, elderly and lower-educated employees – might expect job searches to have a low likelihood of success and might therefore more often stay in unsatisfactory positions. The goal of this study is to discover inequalities in job mobility for these employees.

We rely on a large sample of Dutch public sector employees (N = 30,709) and study whether employees with challenges in their careers are hampered in translating job dissatisfaction into job searches. Additionally, we assess whether this is due to their perceptions of labor market alternatives.

Findings show that non-Western migrant, elderly and lower-educated employees are less likely to act on job dissatisfaction than their advantaged counterparts, whereas women are more likely than men to do so. Additionally, we find that although they perceive labor market opportunities as limited, this does not affect their propensity to search for different jobs.

This paper is novel in discovering inequalities in job mobility by analyzing whether employees facing challenges in their careers are less likely to act on job dissatisfaction and therefore more likely to remain in unsatisfactory positions.

This study aims to investigate the effects of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on Italian hospitality sector. The investigation attempts to explain whether hotel performance drops when the perceived economic uncertainty increases in the period 2018–2022.

The study examines the impact of EPU on hotel performance in a sample of 661 Italian luxury hotels. To establish the relationship between EPU and hotel performance, we employ the generalized estimating equations (GEE) technique on 3,305 hotel-year observations.

The results show that EPU has a negative impact on hotel performance. More specifically, the analysis reveals that EPU is negatively and significantly related to the revenue per available room (REVPAR), average daily rate (ADR) and hotel occupancy (OCCR). We also look at the role of hotel brand chain affiliation and the moderating effect of conference space and hotel wellness services on the relationship between EPU and hotel performance.

Results provide new evidence for academics to critically evaluate the behavior of luxury hotels under uncertain economic conditions. The investigation offers valuable information also for government, tourism policymakers, tourist hotel owners, hoteliers and tourism managers in their decision-making.

This study provides strategic implications for practitioners and operators in hospitality industry to evaluate the factors ensuring hotel profitability in periods of EPU.

This paper provides interesting insights into the characteristics and practices of profitable hotels in Italy. Few econometric studies empirically explored the effects of EPU in the hospitality field so far and no prior study investigated this topic in the Italian hospitality sector. Therefore, this paper tries to close an important gap in the existing literature improving the understanding of EPU in the Italian hospitality industry.