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This paper aims to compare the performance, emission and combustion characteristics of E20 biodiesel with diesel-water emulsion and eucalyptus water emulsion.

This research expounds the trans-esterification process apparently. Various biodiesel blends were made to go through the trans-esterification process to make it suitable for feeding them into the low heat rejection (LHR) engine. E20 biodiesel – 20% of eucalyptus oil by volume with diesel was chosen to carry out the research as it was found to be the best blend with diesel. The volume of water content in diesel water emulsions was varied by 5, 10 and 15% in DWM1 (Diesel Water Mixture1), DWM2 (Diesel Water Mixture2) and DWM3 (Diesel Water Mixture3), respectively. Similarly, the volume of water content in eucalyptus water emulsions was varied with emulsification ratio of E20 biodiesel. Partially stabilized zirconia was coated over top surface of the piston and valve facing of the LHR engine.

From the researches carried out, DWM3 (Diesel Water Mixture3) was found to be superior when compared with other diesel-water emulsions in LHR engine. The overall efficiency was found to be higher for EWM3 than other biofuels tested the in LHR engine.

This investigational experiment can be further extended to multi-cylinder engine and to improve the cetane number, Di ethyl ester (DEE) fuel additives can be added.

The purpose is to assess the patient safety culture perceived by healthcare and administrative staff in a Brazilian hospital and examine whether education and experience are related to positive perceptions.

A descriptive–analytical case study was carried out at Ernesto Dornelles Hospital, a private Brazilian institution. The Brazilian version of the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture was used to assess the perceptions of 618 participants, of whom 315 worked in healthcare assistance and 303 in administrative services. The main outcome was the percentage of positive responses, and the independent variables included the type of work, schooling and length of experience.

None of the twelve dimensions was strengthened. The percentage of positive responses was the highest for “Hospital management support for patient safety” (67.5%), and the lowest was for “Nonpunitive response to error” (29%). The healthcare staff had a slightly higher average than the administrative staff. The percentage of positive responses from professionals with undergraduate or graduate degrees was higher for the eight dimensions of safety culture. The length of hospital experience was not associated with any dimensions.

This study explored the influence of education and professional experience on the perception of patient safety in healthcare and administrative staff from a private institution. These approaches allow to know with greater depth and clarity factors that are related to the patient safety culture and, thus, have more consistent evidence to support interventions in specific needs.

To explore the perceptions of surgical team members in a tertiary hospital in Jordan toward the factors influencing patient safety culture (PSC).

This was a qualitative descriptive study intended to characterize the factors that influence PSC. Interviews were conducted with health-care providers in the operation room (OR) in a tertiary Jordanian hospital. Participants included surgeons, anesthetists, nurses and senior surgical residents who had worked for three years minimum in the OR. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data.

A total of 33 interviews were conducted. Thematic analysis of the content yielded four major themes: (1) operational factors, (2) organizational factors, (3) health-care professionals factors and (4) patient factors. The respondents emphasized the role of the physical layout of the OR, implementing new techniques and new equipment, and management support to establish a safety culture in the operating room setting.

The present research study will have implications for hospitals and health-care providers in Jordan for developing organizational strategies to eliminate or decrease the occurrence of adverse events and improve patient safety in the OR.

This study, conducted in a large public sector undertaking in India that had undergone a major change recently, examines the influence of personality factors on employees ability of coping with organizational change in the Indian context. The role of personality factors—self‐esteem, optimism, perceived control, and change self‐efficacy—on influencing employees for coping with organizational change has been examined. Further, the role of demographic variables on the employee's ability of coping with organizational change has also been studied. Results that these personality factors—perceived control, optimism and change self‐efficacy—indicate a significant relationship with coping with organizational change. Contrary to expectations, self‐esteem has not been significantly associated with coping with organizational change. Demographic variables—seniority and education—indicate a significant relationship with the outcome variable.

This chapter reviews graphical modeling techniques for estimating large covariance matrices and their inverse. The chapter provides a selective survey of different models and estimators proposed by the graphical modeling literature and offers some practical examples where these methods could be applied in the area of health economics.

This paper aims to understand the differing impacts of wealth distribution on human capital accumulation and skilled-unskilled labour generation under three educational paradigms as follows: private, public and a system of mixed education.

The authors use an overlapping generations model.

The wealth dynamics show that both in the private education system and public education system, there are two possible outcomes- stagnation and steady growth depending on the efficiency of the education system, skill premium and other parameters. The choice of the education system through voting is discussed. It is found that skilled workers would always vote for private education whilst unskilled workers vote for private education if public education expenditure of the economy is low.

The study is subject to several limitations. This paper considers the rate of interest and wage rate to be exogenously given, and thus ignores the general equilibrium effects. The authors do not consider the labour-leisure choice. The introduction of labour leisure choice in the model would alter many of the results. The authors do not consider heterogeneous ability across individuals. The analysis of the differential efficiency of the different education systems needs further, rigorous research. Also, this paper does not consider other occupations such as entrepreneurship and self-employment. This paper considers the labour demand function to be perfectly elastic, and hence, does not consider any demand constraint. What happens if bequests are taxed? What happens if parents are not altruistic? These questions may be addressed in future research.

If the proportion of tax paying skilled labour is low in any country, pure public education may not be able to generate sustained human capital growth. For countries with a sufficiently large proportion of skilled labour, the public education system would be successful. On the other hand, if skill premium is low or the education system is poorly managed private education system may fail too.

Whilst investigating the effects of public vs private education on growth and development in the presence of unequal wealth distribution, The authors have tried to address a few questions. First, why the public education system has been successful in skill accumulation in developed countries whilst it has failed to do so in less developed countries? Second, why do some countries with mostly privately run educational institutions perform much better in human capital production whilst others do not? Third, in an economy with unequal wealth distribution, what are the factors that result in public or private education as a voting equilibrium outcome?

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the causal link between religion and the formation of human capital. It takes into consideration that, though religion may transmit a system of values that positively affect children’s education, it can also be characterized by a traditionalist dimension. The latter may hamper children’s self-determination and their educational achievements. Nevertheless, religious values may adapt to the cultural changes due to economic development and modernization and become less conservative.

The above aspects are investigated through an overlapping generations model with human capital where parents’ human capital and the religion in which individuals have been raised, characterize family background.

The model’s predictions point to the crucial role that development may play in promoting education. For instance, if a moderate responsiveness of religious institutions to economic and cultural changes is associated with low development, conservative attitudes prevail in society. This undermines individual confidence in improving one’s socio-economic status through education and negatively affects children’s education. Whereas, a development level sufficiently high counterbalances the effects of a low ability of religious institutions to adjust to changes and fosters education.

Though the empirical literature widely acknowledges that religion affects economic growth, the hypothesis that the link between religion and economic performance may also pass through education has been overlooked. In this respect, the paper investigates on this relationship by taking religion as a force reactive to economic processes.

The current world is characterized by VUCAT (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity, and Technology). These elements provoke in workers a need for leadership that must be addressed continuously (Deepika & Chitranshi, 2021). Companies must dedicate efforts to leading their employees in a homogeneous way for team integration (Contreras et al., 2020; Sandeep & Latasri, 2021). It should be noted that remote work is a permanent feature for more organizations. Despite the difficulties that workers at all levels have had to adapt to remote work, an adaptation has been achieved in general terms based on communication technology. However, in many cases, it has altered the traditional performance of resources in companies, which makes the leading global and local institutions design new rules in favor of the health of workers and, at the same time, contribute to their better performance. For that, managers in the areas of Human Resources, Finance, and Information Technology (IT) must be able to propose strategies to take care of the human capital of companies in all their departments. For the process to work efficiently, leadership is necessary. The transition of workers from the Asia Pacific region to teleworking, the influence of leadership, and the impact on job satisfaction, which is a measure that shows the optimal management of this new way of working in companies, are described. The organizational models related to business management, the barriers in the first steps of teleworking, the strategies used, the legislation created, and the results achieved by the company are described.

This study aims to examine the influence of digital financial literacy (DFL) on the financial well-being (FWB) of students in Andhra Pradesh, specifically exploring the factors of impulsivity and self-control. Both DFL and FWB are treated as multi-dimensional constructs in the study. The research delves into the impact of DFL dimensions, viz. digital financial knowledge, digital financial experience and digital financial skills, on both impulsivity and self-control. Subsequently, the study assesses the effects of impulsivity and self-control on financial well-being.

To gather data, a questionnaire-based survey method was employed, reaching 475 university students through purposive sampling. The study utilizes confirmatory factor analysis for scale validation and structural equation modeling for hypothesis testing.

The results reveal a significantly negative influence of digital financial knowledge (DFK), digital financial experience (DFE) and digital financial skills (DFS) on impulsivity, while demonstrating a significantly positive impact on self-control. Additionally, the study finds that impulsivity negatively affects financial well-being, whereas self-control has a positive impact. Focusing on higher education institutions in Andhra Pradesh, the research highlights students’ limited concern for long-term financial planning.

This study underscores the relevance of understanding the crucial role of digital financial literacy in enhancing their financial well-being. The implications of these research findings are substantial and can be utilized to shape educational programs for students in higher education institutions. Such programs can guide institutions in imparting knowledge and skills related to personal finance management, particularly in the context of the increasing digitalization of financial transactions.

The implementation of lean production in small manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) harbors a great deal of barriers on practical, theoretical, financial and organizational sides. In view of this, the purpose of this paper is to explore and prioritize the solutions to overcome these barriers and pitfalls in order to identify a list of the most feasible and efficient solutions on which SMEs must focus to success their lean journey.

First, a review of the published articles along with the interview of some lean experts have allowed to identify 20 barriers grouped into five categories along with 17 solutions proposed to overcome these barriers. Afterwards, an integrated fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process-Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (AHP-TOPSIS) was proposed to evaluate and rank the solutions of lean implementation in SMEs and overcome its barriers. The AHP is used to determine weights of the barriers as criteria, and the fuzzy TOPSIS method is used to determine the final ranking of the solutions of lean adoption in SMEs.

The top five barriers of lean implementation in SMEs were found to be: lack of management involvement, lack of adapted methodology of lean implementation, short-term vision, fear and resistance to change and lack of understanding of lean. Moreover, the top five solutions to overcome the barriers of lean adoption in SMEs are as follows: commitment and participation of management, adoption of simple measurement and KPIs, development of organizational learning culture, early deployment of lean culture through training and allocation of sufficient time and resources for change.

The findings of this study can provide a basis for researchers and practitioners in order to understand the real reasons of lean failure in SMEs and develop improvement plans to increase its success rate. Moreover, it proposes a more reliable, robust and systematic decision support tool for stepwise implementation of the solutions of lean adoption in SMEs since they lack sufficient resources to address all the solutions simultaneously.