Explore the vast range of titles available.

To get rid of the development dilemma of green credit, we constructed a stochastic evolutionary game model of local government, commercial banks, and loan enterprises. We gave sufficient conditions for the stability of strategy based on the stability discriminant theorem of Ito^'s stochastic differential equation (SDE). Then, we discussed the impacts of incentive and penalty parameters on green credit. Through the above analysis, we got the following conclusions: (1) rewards and punishments always benefit green production and green credit, but increasing incentives is not conducive to the governments’ performance of regulatory duties; (2) punishments can better improve the convergence rate of players’ strategy than rewards; and (3) both rewards and punishments can exert an obvious effect in improving the changing degree of players’ strategy. Finally, we put forward some suggestions to optimize the green credit mechanism.

The current work aims to modify carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) with copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO NPs) to obtain new nanocomposites of CMC, PVP, and CuO NPs (CMC/PVP/CuO NPs) with distinguished properties. The interaction between the components of the nanocomposites was suggested and supported by using Gaussian 09W 07 Software and the average particle size was manually determined from TEM images using ImageJ software developed at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The preparation methods were optimized, and the obtained nanocomposites were characterized with suitable techniques to explore their characteristics and to help expect or predict the suitable fields of applications.

Superintendents play a vital role in the districts and communities they serve, which is especially true in many rural contexts that function not only as a site for PreK–12 education but also as a community hub for a range of supports and services. Instability in the role can be threatening to district improvement, but research on the topic has been limited and too often focused exclusively on large districts and relying only on large longitudinal datasets. Our explanatory, sequential mixed methods study begins with an examination of demographics and turnover trends across 600 rural Texas school districts to investigate the realities of turnover in Texas rural superintendency. However, we also identified and interviewed a sample of rural superintendents we classified as “leavers” or stayers” to examine how unique personal factors influence decisions to stay or go. Findings illuminate the multifaceted and idiosyncratic factors that contribute to rural superintendent turnover with implications for policy and leadership preparation and development.

Generally, human and machine-based query operations can be modified with the use of crowdsourcing. Location-based queries are classified into range and k -nearest neighbor (KNN) queries. Space and point of interest (POI) information can be obtained from both range and KNN queries. In this paper, we expose the trust stage computation of range and KNN query answers with the help of the whale optimization algorithm (WOA). The system chooses either parallel or serial processing, and the experiments are carried out using real-time crowdsourcing. The effectiveness of the proposed concept is evaluated through various consequences such as gang dimension, POI information, space information, and range and KNN query consequences. Each of these effects produces an optimal and reliable result. Finally, the computation time and communication overhead performance of serial and parallel processing are analyzed by examining consequences and production of optimal outcomes.

This conceptual paper tries to encompass the development of open innovation concept from 2003 till now. Open innovation is one of hottest and most debated topic in the field of innovation management. In last decade, since the publication of the book “open innovation” by Chesbrough, the idea of open innovation has received extensive interest of scholars as well as the practitioners. The progression of thought process has been heighted in brief. Enablers of open innovation are also discussed along with the process for implementing open innovation as mentioned in the literature. Discussion on future prospects of the field along with future perspectives for the research is most significant part of the paper. Few research areas are highlighted that remained untapped in the previous decade and demands for an urgent inquiry.

This article is a comparison of two works of fiction, a film and a novel, that both address the question of how people deal with intense memories of tragic events from their past. Both works are characterized by crucial references to religious phenomena. In the Belgian cult horror film Calvaire and the bestselling Dutch novel These Are The Names, stories are told about the desire to restore what was lost. In order to deal with past realities, the characters in these works of fiction impose the past, in an imaginative form, upon the present, which inevitably seems to create violence and conflict. The introduction of violence, and the way this violence destroys identities as a means to restore a lost world, calls the possibility and credibility of restoration into question. In order to explore the phenomenon of restoration, we introduce a concept of substitution (inspired by René Girard) to investigate the power of violence in these two narratives. In Calvaire, violence leads to the perversion of identity, ultimately leading to the latter’s destruction, yet at the same time it can be understood to result in love and absolution. In These Are The Names, sacrificing acts first seem to bring a new beginning but in the end redemption is substituted by accusations of severe crimes. However, in this novel the past is also present in such a way that lost identities could be restored. How both stories look at the relation between past and present and in which way they present the possibility of restoring painful events, will be our main questions.

Contemporary discussions of populism elide important distinctions between the ways in which populist leaders and movements respond to the failures of elites to follow through on the promises associated with international social welfare constitutionalism. After laying out the political economy of populisms’ origins, this Article describes the relation between populisms and varieties of liberalism, and specifically the relation between populisms and judicial independence understood as a “veto point” occupied by the elites that populists challenge. It then distinguishes left-wing populisms’ acceptance of the social welfare commitments of late twentieth century liberalism and its rejection of some settled constitutional arrangements that, in populists’ views, obstruct the accomplishment of those commitments. It concludes with a description of the core ethnonationalism of right-wing populism, which sometimes contingently appears in left-wing populisms but is not one the latter’s core components.

The Paradise Parrot, Psephotellus pulcherrimus, was a charismatic Australian bird that became extinct around 1928. While many extrinsic factors have been proposed to explain its disappearance, it remains unclear as to what extent genetic erosion might have contributed to the species’ demise. In this study, we use whole-genome resequencing to reconstruct a 15x coverage genome based on a historical museum specimen and shed further light on the evolutionary history that preceded the extinction of the Paradise Parrot. By comparing the genetic diversity of this genome with genomes from extant endangered birds, we show that during the species’ dramatic decline in the second half of the 19th century, the Paradise Parrot was genetically more diverse than individuals from species that are currently classified as endangered. Furthermore, demographic analyses suggest that the population size of the Paradise Parrot changed with temperature fluctuations during the last glacial cycle. We also confirm that the Golden-shouldered Parrot, Psephotellus chrysopterygius, is the closest living relative of this extinct parrot. Overall, our study highlights the importance of museum collections as repositories of biodiversity across time and demonstrates how historical specimens can provide a broader context on the circumstances that lead to species extinctions.

This article begins by explaining how income-based increases in Medicare premiums produce dramatic increases in marginal tax rates for retirees with relatively high levels of income. It then explains how the taxation of Social Security benefits causes most lower- and middle-income households to have marginal tax rates for a wide range of income after Social Security benefits begin that are either 150% or 185% of their tax bracket. By combining these two factors, the authors show that most retirees will have marginal tax rates in retirement that rise and fall frequently and sharply as their income increases. This article then explains how this rising and falling pattern of marginal tax rates should affect retired households’ withdrawal strategies from their financial portfolio, where withdrawal strategy is defined broadly to include Roth conversions. TOPICS: Wealth management, retirement, social security Key Findings • Due to income-based increases in Medicare premiums and the taxation of Social Security benefits, most retirees face marginal tax rates that rise and fall sharply as their income rises. • The marginal tax rates for retired households receiving Social Security benefits fall sharply when their income places them beyond the income level where 85% of Social Security benefits is taxable. • We encourage these single and married households to make Roth conversions to take advantage of the relatively low marginal tax rates that exist beyond this income level. However, the amount of funds that can be converted at these relatively low tax rates depends upon whether the household has begun Social Security benefits and whether it will be on Medicare 2 years hence.

Despite his empirical view, I am not sure that Schaeffer would share Paul Churchland's view, as cited in Curie's book on 'Aesthetics and Cognitive Science' that \"we would not be observing the sky reddening at sunset\", but \"the wavelength distribution of incoming solar radiation shift towards the longer wavelengths\".3 Still, I defend the view that aesthetic experience, that is to say, the transcendental aesthetic, has a role to play in bringing us to a closer understanding of ourselves and our place in the world: there is a secular case for aesthetic experience that transcends scientific demonstration. According to Kant, aesthetic experience is based on the feeling of pleasure associated with our appropriately attending to objects in the sense that it is disinterested: it is not dependent on desire and it is not guided by mere sensual experience, contextual or practical morality. Along these lines we ought to better understand the psychological and biological elements that explain the interrelations between different levels of complexity that characterize human beings.8 In L'Expérience Esthétique, he provides an explanatory framework for historical and cultural variations as well as the subjectivism of aesthetic experience based on empirical research that combines sub-personal processes with lived, first personal experience. [...]Schaeffer's conditions include a form of attentional experience that finds its source in basic phenomenological experience, to which hedonic pleasure or displeasure and emotional response are bound.