Community policing has emerged as a vital instrument for combatting crime and enhancing public safety in South Africa. As a result, it has the capacity to go beyond traditional law enforcement functions as a mediator in disputes, fostering improved relationships between the police and the communities where they work. This paper analyses the implementation of community policing strategies by the South African police with the purpose of resolving conflicts. This study aims to address social crime prevention-related concerns through community policing methods in the Galeshewe police area within the Francis Baard policing regions of the Sol Plaatje Municipality, South Africa. The paper examines the tactics that community police employ to enforce the law, avoid social issues, and manage conflict resolution in the communities. A qualitative method and descriptive design were employed. Comprehensive document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and observations were employed as data collection strategies. An inductive reasoning model was used to analysis data. The findings of the study demonstrated that community policing plays an important role in optimizing problem mapping and it increases public knowledge of the importance of upholding security and order in the different police operations that support the community policing program.

Purpose: This review mainly aims to identify the lean practice conducted in hospitals, determining what problems lean practice can be helpful to solve in the hospitals. Data sources: Four electronic databases (Scopus, Web of science, Medline, and PubMed) were conducted for searching related literature in this review. Study selection: These studies in the hospitals that related lean healthcare practice and contained outcome variables were included. Data extraction: Related information such as research design, countries, lean tools, outcome variables, results were extracted. Results of data synthesis: 20 eligible articles were identified in this review. There was 20% lean practice being conducted in emergency department of hospitals in this review. Six cases have implemented lean in Brazilian hospitals. There were 12 cases implemented lean practice through Value Stream Mapping. Conclusion: Lean practices were highly valued in Brazilian hospitals, and it was frequently implemented in hospital emergency department. Value Stream Mapping and process mapping were the most commonly used lean tool. Waiting time, lead time and Length of Hospital Stay (LOS) were the primary indicators reflecting improvements in this review.

Electoral contestation in recent Indonesian election periods is faced with the challenge of polarization linked to identity politics, where initially assigned identity is leveraged as tools for political competition. This is a qualitative research, using interviews, observations, and direct group discussion methods to collect data from five different regions in Indonesia. The research focused on the presence of governing regulations and how they develop in complex dynamics. The results showed that identity politics was prevalent in all regions due to mobilization through identity manipulation to gain electoral political advantage. Furthermore, electoral characteristics showed a growing tendency toward polarization, primarily in terms of religion and ethnicity, with some issues related to regionalism, gender, religious affiliations, and family history networks. It was also found that weak regulations on identity manipulation led to increasing permissiveness among political actors, the state, and voters. This made identity issues become natural electoral problems, despite weakening the developing democracy in Indonesia. In this context, future contests in Indonesia are expected to consistently intensify identity politics, with the lack of regulations, permissiveness, and social media serving as the main driving factors.

We report on the measurement of the response of Rhodamine 6G (R6G) dye to enhanced local surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) using a plasmonic-active nanostructured thin gold film (PANTF) sensor. This sensor features an active area of approximately ≈ 2.5 × 10¹³ nm² and is immobilized with gold nanourchins (GNU) on a thin gold film substrate (TGFS). The hexane-functionalized TGFS was immobilized with a 90 nm diameter GNU via the strong sulfhydryl group (SH) thiol bond and excited by a 637 nm Raman probe. To collect both Raman and SERS spectra, 10 μL of R6G was used at concentrations of 1 μM (6 × 10¹² molecules) and 10 mM (600 × 10¹⁴ molecules), respectively. FT-NIR showed a higher reflectivity of PANTF than TGFS. SERS was performed three times at three different laser powers for TGFS and PANTF with R6G. Two PANTF substrates were prepared at different GNU incubation times of 10 and 60 min for the purpose of comparison. The code for processing the data was written in Python. The data was filtered using the filtfilt filter from scipy.signals, and baseline corrected using the Improved Asymmetric Least Squares (ISALS) function from the pybaselines.Whittaker library. The results were then normalized using the minmax_scale function from sklearn.preprocessing. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to capture the topography of the substrates. Signals exhibited a stochastic fluctuation in intensity and shape. An average corresponding enhancement factor (EF) of 0.3 × 10⁵ and 0.14 × 10⁵ was determinedforPANTFincubated at 10 and 60 min, respectively.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, academic research has primarily focused on the challenges posed by flexible working arrangements. However, there has been a lack of exploration into managers’ intentions to either promote or reject remote work. This paper utilizes a TAM analysis to examine managers’ attitudes and motivations towards implementing telework in a sample of European companies. Our findings reveal that this intention is largely influenced by their perception of its usefulness. Additionally, telework is more likely to be accepted when managerial teams believe that those who hold significance to them also support the implementation of flexible work practices in their companies. Our research contributes to the existing literature by considering the impact of job performance, quality of output, and digital skills on telework adoption. The results confirm that skills related to communication and team building are crucial competencies for successfully implementing telework. The ability of leaders to effectively build, motivate, recognize, and hold accountable teams in virtual environments can make all the difference.

Payment for forest ecosystem services (PFES) policy is a prevalent strategy designed to establish a marketplace where users compensate providers for forest ecosystem services. This research endeavours to scrutinise the impact of PFES on households’ perceptions of forest values and their behaviour towards forest conservation, in conjunction with their socio-economic circumstances and their communal involvement in forest management. By incorporating the social-ecological system framework and the theory of human behaviours in environmental conservation, this study employs a structural equations model to analyse the factors influencing individuals’ perceptions and behaviours towards forest conservation. The findings indicate that the payment of PFES significantly increases forest protection behaviour at the household level and has achieved partial success in activating community mechanisms to guide human behaviour towards forest conservation. Furthermore, it has effectively leveraged the role of state-led social organisations to alter local individuals’ perceptions and behaviours towards forest protection.