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This study aims to assess how small check dams built across rivers in India’s drylands can revitalize rivers during dry season and mitigate local climate change consequences. The surface- and groundwater resources are increasingly under pressure throughout India. The imminent climate change consequences will further aggravate the crisis and this paper has addressed this difficult issue.

This study was conducted in India’s dryland districts, namely, Dahod in Gujarat and Jhalawar and Banswara in Rajasthan state, to assess the impacts of small dams. Data on dams, sustainability, groundwater levels and benefits to farmers were systematically collected to analyze advantages offered by check dams with reference to climate change mitigation.

The study shows that 356 check dams built during 1990-2012 across the tribal drylands of India, with a cost of USD 17 million, benefited over one million people from farming communities. The dams also increased groundwater levels in villages, revived rivers during dry season and increased forest growth along rivers, ultimately mitigating local climate change-imposed negative consequences.

Data on small dams are limited in India, as public have no access to such data because the work is done mainly by local contractors.

The check dams, the role of which is highlighted here, are simple, eco-friendly and cost-effective. If it is adopted across the vast drylands of India and elsewhere, it has the potential to increase agricultural output; guarantee food security; enhance groundwater resources; and, above all, mitigate local climate change consequences.

If check dams are built in large numbers across India, it has the potential to increase agricultural output; guarantee food security; enhance groundwater resources; and, above all, mitigate climate change.

The highlighted results and discussion will guide scientists, politicians and policymakers to make informed decisions to combat India

s future climate change consequences.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the mediating effect of learning capacity in the relationship between the social media usage by the construction of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their business performance in Nigeria.

A quantitative survey technique was used to collect data from the owner/manager of construction SMEs in Nigeria. The partial least square structural equation modeling was used in the assessment of the measurement model and structural model to assess the validity and reliability of the measures and to evaluate the hypotheses proposed in the conceptual model.

Empirical findings indicated a significant positive relationship between learning capacity and performance of SMEs. Similarly, the use of social media is significantly and positively associated to the business performance of SMEs. It has also been shown that learning capacity is a mediator of the relationship between social media and SME performance.

The data for the study is are all from a single industry and a related line of business, so it could be more interesting to include more companies across sectors or industries. The finding contributes to the ongoing debate on the effect of social media on business performance. It also defined the need for the owner/manager of SMEs to understand and appreciate the effect of social media through the organization's learning potential to gain a sustainable competitive advantage.

There are a number of theoretical and practical implications for academics and practitioners who are interested in further studies of organizational social media. The research presents a quantitative study on the effect of social media adoption on the organizational performance of the construction industry. This study confirms the mediating role of learning capability in the relationship between the use of social media and performance of SMEs operating in the construction industry.

This study empirically examined the relationship between social media adoption and the SMEs learning capability and business performance by evaluating a hypothesized conceptual framework to establish the relationships.

Many construction businesses are currently building and keeping social media pages for their enterprises to be visible to the public to improve their social interaction, promote business interest, build trust and relationships with their targeted audience on social media. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of social mediausage on performance of construction businesses (CBs) in Abuja, Nigeria.

This study used a quantitative research approach by identifying constructs that reveal three aspects of organisation’s physiognomies that impact the process of espousing, implementing and using technological innovations in conducting businesses. Well-structured questionnaire was used to obtain data from 113 purposively sampled building materials’ merchant operating in Dei-Dei Market, Abuja, Nigeria. This study used partial least squares structural equation modelling technique to establish the relationship among the constructs.

The results of this study indicated that technology has significant relationship with social media adoption, whereas social media adoption has a very strong positive impact on organisation’s performance (P < 0.001) with respect to improved customer relations and services and enhanced information accessibility.

This study has implications for CBs that wish to adopt social media to promote their businesses by presenting to them the opportunity to understand the impact of technology, environment and organisational potential in improving business performance. This study is cross-sectional in nature, and this calls for caution in interpreting the results.

This paper developed and tested a conceptual framework presented to understand the interrelationships amongst the constructs, which would be of great significance to business owners in developing their social interaction and promote business interest via social media. The outcome of this research is beneficial to researchers to further study how the different social media tools could help in influencing business decisions.

This paper presents a new algorithm for detecting and characterizing potholes and bumps directly from noisy signals acquired using an Accelerometer. A wavelet transformation based filter was used to decompose the signals into multiple scales. These coefficients were correlated across adjacent scales and filtered using a spatial filter. Road anomalies were then detected based on a fixed threshold system, while characterization was achieved using unique features extracted from the filtered wavelet coefficients. Our analyses show that the proposed algorithm detects and characterizes road anomalies with high levels of accuracy, precision and low false alarm rates.

The construction industry is frequently scrutinised by the public for a variety of issues, including waste, inefficiency, narrow profit margins, scheduling setbacks, budget overruns, quality concerns, trust deficits, transparency issues, coordination challenges, communication issues and fraud. The purpose of this paper is to assess the effect of blockchain technology adoption on the construction supply chain.

This study used a quantitative research approach through a questionnaire survey that was conducted among professionals in the Nigerian construction industry using the snowball sampling method, which resulted in a selection of 155 respondents. The collected data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling, enabling a thorough assessment of the proposed relationships and offering valuable insights specific to the construction industry.

The study’s findings validated the conceptual framework established. The results indicated that implementing blockchain across all stages of the construction supply chain has the potential to improve the construction process. The study also revealed that blockchain technology will significantly affect the construction supply chain in a positive manner.

This research was carried out in the South-western region which is one of the six geo-political zones in Nigeria using a cross-sectional survey method. The study holds implications not only for local construction practices but will also contribute to the broader discourse on national construction sector challenges and possible solutions.

The findings of this study will be immensely beneficial to both professionals, practitioners and stakeholders in the Nigerian construction industry in learning about the potential of blockchain technology application in improving the construction supply chain.

The study in this paper constructed and evaluated a conceptual framework by exploring the connections between the variables. The results have significant implications for the construction sector, as they provide avenues for enhancing the construction process and the overall supply chain. These findings are valuable for researchers examining the potential effects of blockchain technology on the construction supply chain.

Digital transformation in nursing education is crucial for enhancing pedagogical practices and preparing future healthcare professionals for the rapidly evolving healthcare landscape. This chapter explores how the integration of digital technologies in higher education has revolutionising teaching methodologies and offered new opportunities to enhance learning experiences. It identifies gaps in digital learning modalities for undergraduate and postgraduate nursing students and discusses strategies to strengthen online literacy preparation and transition into the healthcare sector's digital transformation landscape and the 4th industrial era economy. The chapter examines best practices and challenges in digital transformation in nursing education such as blended learning environments, simulation and virtual reality, mobile learning applications and gamification strategies. Additionally, it addresses challenges in curriculum development including insufficient technological infrastructure, faculty training and development, assessment strategies and resistance to change among faculty and students. This chapter aims to provide insights and recommendations for educators, curriculum developers and policymakers in implementing successful digital transformation in nursing education.

This case looks at a new start-up company, d.light Design, as it was seeking to go to market in India with its solar-powered LED lamps in 2009. Sam Goldman, founder and chief customer officer of d.light, was in New Delhi, India; his business-school friend and co-founder Ned Tozun was in China, the site of the company's manufacturing plant.

One of the key decisions Goldman and Tozun needed to make was whether d.light should focus on just one distribution channel in India, or multiple channels. The startup had limited capital, so it needed to get the distribution question right to generate revenue quickly.

The case thus combines an entrepreneurial problem with an emerging-market, or bottom-of-the-pyramid, channel design challenge. This case does not focus on product design or manufacturing challenges but rather on questions of:

• The constraints d.light faced in creating an aligned distribution channel. These constraints can have legal, environmental, and/or managerial foundations

• Demand-side misalignments in the channel structure that will occur if d.light chooses one or another of the considered channels in the case, namely, (a) the RE (rural entrepreneur) channel, (b) the village retailer channel, or (c) the centralized shops channel

• • What mix of channels—or what single channel—d.light should focus on in the Indian market

• • The financial return possible based on d.light's current cost structure and overhead expenditures in India

The constraints d.light faced in creating an aligned distribution channel. These constraints can have legal, environmental, and/or managerial foundations

Demand-side misalignments in the channel structure that will occur if d.light chooses one or another of the considered channels in the case, namely, (a) the RE (rural entrepreneur) channel, (b) the village retailer channel, or (c) the centralized shops channel

• What mix of channels—or what single channel—d.light should focus on in the Indian market

• The financial return possible based on d.light's current cost structure and overhead expenditures in India

• Assess channel benefit demand intensities for chosen target market segments

• Assess channel alignment constraints that can limit the channel designer's ability to optimize the channel to meet identified end-user demands for channel benefits

• Use these ideas to defend a choice of one or more possible channel structures as appropriate parts of a company's overall channel system

• Analyze financial opportunity in this situation, given cost parameters and possible market penetration estimates

Assess channel benefit demand intensities for chosen target market segments

Assess channel alignment constraints that can limit the channel designer's ability to optimize the channel to meet identified end-user demands for channel benefits

Use these ideas to defend a choice of one or more possible channel structures as appropriate parts of a company's overall channel system

Analyze financial opportunity in this situation, given cost parameters and possible market penetration estimates

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether it is useful to tease apart the intimately related propositions of social production and social construction to guide thinking in the multidisciplinary study of disasters.

The authors address our question by reviewing literature on disasters in the social sciences to disambiguate the concepts of social production and social construction.

The authors have found that entertaining the distinction between social production and social construct can inform both thinking and action on disasters by facilitating critical exercises in reframing that facilitate dialog across difference. The authors present a series of arguments on the social production and construction of disaster and advocate putting these constructs in dialog with vulnerability frameworks of the social production of disasters.

This commentary contributes to disambiguating important theoretical and practical concepts in disaster studies. The reframing approach can inform both research and more inclusive disaster management and risk reduction efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of social media adoption on the performance of construction small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Construction SMEs owners and managers in Nigeria were surveyed using questionnaires to gather data. Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed to assess measurement reliability and validity, as well as the hypothesized paths provided in the conceptual model that formed part of the final conclusions.

The empirical finding showed that social media usage increased knowledge accessibility, reduced costs and improved customer relations and service for organizations. Overall, social media adoption was significantly and positively related to SMEs business performance. Also, the paper revealed that learning capability mediates the relationship between social media and SMEs performance.

Data for the study came from only one industry and one related line of business; thus, including more companies from different sectors or industries could be more interesting. The study's findings contributed to the growing body of knowledge about the impact of social media on the efficiency of businesses. Small and medium-sized businesses also need to understand and recognize the impact of social media on the organization's performance in order to achieve a long-term competitive edge from the adoption of social media.

According to the findings, small construction firms can benefit from marketing the brands through social media channels and improved learning capability. In terms of accessibility, cost savings and improved relationships with customers, research shows that social media promotion can be beneficial to businesses. A study like this has the potential to show how social media can help striving small businesses interact cost-effectively with customers all over the world, opening new doors for sales and continuous improvement.

The relationship between SME performance in Nigeria and the use of social media has received very little attention despite social media's promising potentials, particularly for small businesses. The authors hoped that this study will fill a gap in the authors' understanding of how social media affects the performance of small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in the construction industry.

Basic capturing of emotion on user experience of web applications and browsing is important in many ways. Quite often, online user experience is studied via tangible measures such as task completion time, surveys and comprehensive tests from which data attributes are generated. Prediction of users’ emotion and behaviour in some of these cases depends mostly on task completion time and number of clicks per given time interval. However, such approaches are generally subjective and rely heavily on distributional assumptions making the results prone to recording errors. This paper aims to propose a novel method – a window dynamic control system – that addresses the foregoing issues.

Primary data were obtained from laboratory experiments during which 44 volunteers had their synchronized physiological readings – skin conductance response, skin temperature, eye movement behaviour and users activity attributes taken by biosensors. The window-based dynamic control system (PHYCOB I) is integrated to the biosensor which collects secondary data attributes from these synchronized physiological readings and uses them for two purposes: for detection of both optimal emotional responses and users’ stress levels. The method’s novelty derives from its ability to integrate physiological readings and eye movement records to identify hidden correlates on a webpage.

The results from the analyses show that the control system detects basic emotions and outperforms other conventional models in terms of both accuracy and reliability, when subjected to model comparison – that is, the average recoverable natural structures for the three models with respect to accuracy and reliability are more consistent within the window-based control system environment than with the conventional methods.

Graphical simulation and an example scenario are only provided for the control’s system design.

The novelty of the proposed model is its strained resistance to overfitting and its ability to automatically assess user emotion while dealing with specific web contents. The procedure can be used to predict which contents of webpages cause stress-induced emotions to users.