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Describes a unique experiment in safety management which has led to a significant improvement in the safety performance of work groups at the smelter of INCO Ltd in Sudbury, Canada.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a simple heuristic model that provides diagnostic capabilities and prevention insights.

The paper brings together findings from previous research including injury statistics from several industries to illustrate that the model's predicted results can be found in practice. This is a conceptual paper that applies a simple heuristic model to existing data. The model leads to an equation with four parameters: a rate of improvement reflecting prevention, a rate of deterioration reflecting obsolescence and lapsing of procedures and practices, an intrinsic limit reflecting technological capability, and a “viscosity” that adds the impact of management system malfunction to the technological limits and normal delays.

The model says that, on the average, injury rates decrease with time if the rate of rejection is greater than the rate of mortality. If “r”<“m” injury rates increase exponentially with time, and drastic results can follow. When “r”=”m” the model produces a constant rate of failure that will continue until something is done to increase “r” or decrease “m”. A constant rate of failure means that an apparent safety limit has been reached. Unless this corresponds to the technological limit, a constant rate means that some preventable failures are recurring with regularity: they risk being accepted as “hazards of the job”. Stable periods may be normal, but they can lead to complacency.

The heuristic power of the model is evident in that parameters and insights from applying it can help define prevention activities to reduce the rate of injury and, by implication, to lengthen operational periods between consecutive injuries.

The drum model can help managers understand the separate but related effects of technology and management on injury rates. The model can be used to seek prevention possibilities hidden in the aggregate data, and it can help the manager to use period data to identify areas or groups in need of help.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the enhancement of the performance of bubble absorber using hybrid nanofluid as a cooled NH₃/H₂O absorption system to reduce their size and to find the best fitting model. A numerical model for ammonia-water bubble absorber was developed to show the influence of operating conditions and design parameters on the absorber performance.

A finite difference numerical method is used to solve the numerical model. The model is subjected to the inlet conditions of liquid, vapor and coolant flow regimes. The absorber modeling was divided into small elements along the absorber length.

The model proposed is validated with previously published works. Then agreement between the both is considered as good.

Numerical results/The use of hybrid nanofluids.

The results showed that the hybrid nanofluid is the best cooling medium. Very high heat transfer rates are obtained because of the high thermal conductivity and specific heat of hybrid nanofluid, and consequently, the absorber size decreases. It was also found that the absorber thermal load and the mass absorption flux increase with increasing of solid volume fraction. Also, the existence of an optimal absorber length was revealed, required for complete absorption when using hybrid nanofluid as a cooling medium. It is recommended that using hybrid nanofluid to remove the heat from the absorber is the best candidate for NH₃/H₂O absorption performance enhancement.

This chapter aims to identify the impact of misbelief and heuristics on the engagement of giggers and customers with gigging organisations. This is of value due to the plethora of gigging opportunities and our lack of knowledge about how and why people choose to take up these opportunities. In addition, the gigs may frequently go unrecorded with payments made through systems such as PayPal which can allow international payments to be made without remittances. This chapter utilises some of the primary evolutionary theories to explore the efficacy and conflict in communications between gigging organisations, their customers and providers (giggers). Those selected are: misbelief in the conscious mind; and heuristics, such as the availability and confirmatory heuristics in the unconscious mind. Misbelief is addressed as a spandrel, and heuristics are discussed through the lens of fast and frugal approaches. Through a text analysis of 77 international gigging organisations, the messages conveyed are assessed against both evolutionary theory and prior research into the gig economy. The findings are that evolutionary psychology provides a useful framework for analysing these messages, as well as aiding understanding of gigging behaviours. HRM practitioners could make use of this form of analysis to support their design of interactions with giggers to ensure clarity on both sides.

In recent years, there have been calls on African countries to develop disaster governance system that recognises the complex nature of disaster events and reflects how their impact can prevent governments from achieving their development objectives. This chapter examines Ghana’s response to the calls by exhuming disaster management policies and the missing links in their implementation. This research was approached by comprehensively reviewing literature related to the subject. The review was supported by field-based interviews involving key stakeholders, some of whom are directly involved with disaster policy planning and implementation. The results show that even though there are several disaster management policies, they are fragmented and found within several institutions, a situation that has created some missing links in their implementation. For instance, poor collaboration and coordination among disaster management institutions hampered efforts towards disaster risk prevention, preparedness and mitigation which are viewed as cross-cutting themes in disaster management. Even more intriguing, critical stakeholders such as community groups who often play important roles in rescue and recovery operations and continue to render humanitarian services after official operations have ended are excluded from the everyday decision-making processes. Empirically, this chapter draws attention to how endogenous interventions that are deeply rooted in the culture of the people that could support well-crafted disaster legislations are often ignored. This chapter concludes that these missing links need to be addressed in order to make Ghana resilient to disaster.

Our hypothesis about the failure of SRI as the new mainstream a series of profound misunderstandings about CSR and SRI among the various stakeholders, that is ‘responsible’ companies that are practitioners of CSR, academic theorists, asset management companies, SRI finance professionals, rating agencies and non-financial analysts.

This chapter presents a ‘bottom-up’ approach that reintroduces the long-term horizon in investment decisions and focus on the adaptability and innovation capacities of the firms (and States) in front of the unprecedented challenges of the century.

The severity of the repeated financial crises and the challenges associated with global sustainability call urgently for responsible finance. Despite praise from institutional investors, SRI is far from the norm and has met very limited success with private investors and retail networks.

To truly reconcile finance and sustainability we first need to go beyond the traditional dilemma between ethics and performance which considers any non-financial criteria as a severe constraint and foster a contributive conception of sustainable prosperity, for public and private agent as well.

This paper probes into the relationship between Neighbourhood Parks and their efficiency as a potential stress reliever from the outdoor environment. It consists of the introduction to the relationship between stress and outdoor environment, background research on recent issues of Neighbourhood Park and it then continues with the context of perceiving Neighbourhood Park as a stress reliever. This paper looks into the previous studies that employed observations, survey, interviews and instruments as methods in proving Neighbourhood Parks as a potential stress reliever. Relevant findings were highlighted and recommendations for improving the design and planning were suggested to generate more quality living environment in the future.

The purpose of this paper is to predict news intent by exploring contextual and temporal features directly mined from a general search engine query log.

First, a ground-truth data set with correctly marked news and non-news queries was built. Second, a detailed analysis of the search goals and topics distribution of news/non-news queries was conducted. Third, three news features, that is, the relationship between entity and contextual words extended from query sessions, topical similarity among clicked results and temporal burst point were obtained. Finally, to understand the utilities of the new features and prior features, extensive prediction experiments on SogouQ (a Chinese search engine query log) were conducted.

News intent can be predicted with high accuracy by using the proposed contextual and temporal features, and the macro average F1 of classification is around 0.8677. Contextual features are more effective than temporal features. All the three new features are useful and significant in improving the accuracy of news intent prediction.

This paper provides a new and different perspective in recognizing queries with news intent without use of such large corpora as social media (e.g. Wikipedia, Twitter and blogs) and news data sets. The research will be helpful for general-purpose search engines to address search intents for news events. In addition, the authors believe that the approaches described here in this paper are general enough to apply to other verticals with dynamic content and interest, such as blog or financial data.

Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insight and analysis into E-commerce in China and how it has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society. Split into four distinct sections, the book first lays out the theoretical foundations and fundamental concepts of E-Business before moving on to look at internet+ innovation models and their applications in different industries such as agriculture, finance and commerce. The book then provides a comprehensive analysis of E-business platforms and their applications in China before finishing with four comprehensive case studies of major E-business projects, providing readers with successful examples of implementing E-Business entrepreneurship projects.

Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insights and analysis into how E-commerce has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society in China.

Agriculture and related businesses in Ghana for the past decades have been the preserve for the smallholder, aged and illiterate farmers. Meanwhile, hundreds of students graduate in Agricultural Sciences from the universities over the years. This study seeks to investigate potential determinants of the entrepreneurial spirit of agricultural students to do self-employed businesses in the agricultural sector. A survey of 165 undergraduate students of agriculture in the University of Cape Coast, Ghana was undertaken to examine factors that influence their decision to enter into agribusiness as a self-employment venture after graduation. The results show that the majority of the students were males (87%) and approximately, 67% were willing to enter into agribusiness after school. The factors that students perceived to be hindrance to entering into agribusiness was the market competition of agro-products with imported products, unstable prices of agro-products, absence of insurance policy for agribusiness and unfavourable land tenure arrangement in Ghana. Correlation analysis showed negative and significant relationship between students’ willingness to enter agribusiness as a self-employment venture and the following personal characteristics: (1) level of education of mother, (2) level of education of guardian other than parents, (3) students who live in farming communities and (4) students who undertake farming activities at home. There were also positive and significant relationships between students’ willingness to enter agribusiness and the following: (1) availability of market for agro-products, (2) accessibility of market for agro-products and (3) accessibility of transportation facilities for agribusiness. Regression analysis showed that (1) level of education of mother, (2) students living in farming communities, (3) accessibility of transportation facilities for agribusiness and (4) accessibility of market for agro-product were the factors that best predict undergraduate agricultural students’ willingness to enter into agribusiness as a self-employment venture after graduation. To motivate students to take agribusiness as self-employment after graduation, the study suggests the development of comprehensive and sustainable long-term policy to inspire and attract the youth into agribusiness; creation of conducive environment to minimise risk and constraints associated with agribusiness in Ghana.