Concession agreements (CAs) in the port sector are designed to establish mutually beneficial arrangements for involved parties. They serve as catalysts, enabling ports to attract adept private investors and secure requisite funding to enhance port infrastructure, superstructure, and service quality. Concurrently, the imperative to mitigate negative externalities and promote sustainable practices in port organization and development remains paramount. In this context, the paper explores the nuanced landscape of CAs, specifically focusing on the urgent need for an innovative framework that integrates sustainability within port organization, operations and development. Drawing from existing academic discourse and field evidence, it systematically identifies, examines, and analyzes fundamental requirements and key factors that should be considered in CAs, in line with sustainable development and proposes a reference framework for an ideal Concession Agreement model. Despite evident strengthening of sustainability implications in port concessions, significant room for improvement persists. Nevertheless, dynamics in the field create a certain optimism for the future.
This research explores the advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) across high-risk industries, highlighting its pivotal role in mitigating the global incidence of occupational incidents and diseases, which result in approximately 2.3 million fatalities annually. Traditional OHS practices often fall short in completely preventing workplace incidents, primarily due to limitations in human-operated risk assessments and management. The integration of AI technologies has been instrumental in automating hazardous tasks, enhancing real-time monitoring, and improving decision-making through comprehensive data analysis. Specific AI applications discussed include drones and robots for risky operations, computer vision for environmental monitoring, and predictive analytics to pre-empt potential hazards. Additionally, AI-driven simulations are enhancing training protocols, significantly improving both the safety and efficiency of workers. Various studies supporting the effectiveness of these AI applications indicate marked improvements in risk management and incident prevention. By transitioning from reactive to proactive safety measures, the implementation of AI in OHS represents a transformative approach, aiming to substantially reduce the global burden of occupational injuries and fatalities in high-risk sectors.
The global climate governance process will have a profound impact on geopolitical relations, and, at the same time, these will determine the direction of cooperation in international climate governance. The European Union and the United States are the most important players in the global governance of climate change, and their competing policy orientations and dynamics have a major impact on trends in this field. In this context, Africa is the region most vulnerable to climate change, and the climate issue in Africa has become one of the frontiers of competition between major powers. Indeed, major powers are increasingly competing in Africa, primarily in the areas of climate leadership, program provision, and capacity building. The study is based on the review of articles and research works regarding the global climate change strategies, especially in AFRICA (2020–2024); it also collected information and statistics from the websites and reports of world banks. In the future, the European Union and Africa should work together to build a new era of strategic partnerships to fight climate change. To do this, they should strengthen their strategic collaboration in global climate governance, look for new ways to work together in old ways, and make their cooperation more effective and efficient.
This study systematically examines the literature of electric vehicle (EV) purchase intention and consumer behavior using a bibliometric method to unveil three main research questions: 1) identifying influential publications, authors, and journals; 2) analyzing the thematic evolution of research over time; and 3) identifying emerging research directions. The main objective is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the current state of knowledge and to guide future research in this evolving field. A comprehensive bibliometric analysis was conducted, using Scopus statistics analysis, R-Studio Biblioshiny and VOSviewer, comprising 687 publications authored by 1743 researchers representing 34 different countries with the dataset sourced from the Scopus database from 2010 to 2023. To achieve a nuanced understanding of the research landscape, a multifaceted approach was adopted, including detailed citation analysis, author co-citation analysis, keyword analysis, and thematic mapping. Through meticulous analysis, this study identifies the most influential publications, authors, and journals in the domain of EV purchase intentions and consumer behaviors. It also traces the evolution of themes over time and identifies emerging research directions, providing valuable insights into the trajectory and future avenues of inquiry within this field. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the dynamics shaping research in the realm of EVs. The insights gained contribute significantly to advancing knowledge in this crucial domain, offering theoretical insights and practical implications for policymakers, businesses, manufacturers, and academics.
Educational quality policies are a basic principle that every Peruvian university educational institution pursues in accordance with Law No. 30220, with the objective of training highly competent professionals who contribute to the development of the country. This study to analyzes educational quality policies with the student’s satisfaction of public and private universities in Peru, according to social variables. The study was descriptive-comparative, quantitative, non-experimental, and cross-sectional. One thousand (1000) students from two Peruvian universities, one public (n = 500) and one private (n = 500), were purposively selected by quota using the SERVQUALing instrument. The findings indicate a moderate level of satisfaction reported by 49.2% of participants, with a notable tendency towards high satisfaction observed in 40.9% of respondents. These results suggest that most students perceive that the actual state of service quality policies are in a developmental stage. The results, therefore, indicate that regulatory measures, including university laws, licensing, and accreditation, significantly influence outcomes. These measures are essential for the effective functioning of universities. In addition, the analysis revealed that female and male students at private universities showed higher levels of satisfaction with the educational services offered. It is concluded that educational quality policies in Peru are still being executed, because the implementation of the University Law is in process, according to the satisfaction of the student, this must be improved in central aspects such as optimizing human resources, infrastructure, equipment, curricular plans that differ from the public to the private university, In addition, this should lead to improving and redefining current policies on educational quality and the economic policies that finance the educational service.
The heat extraction from the conventional channels under two-phase flow boiling conditions with water as the coolant is investigated numerically in this work. The numerical investigation was carried out by using ANSYS Fluent 2022R1 commercial software by selecting the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) wall heat flux partitioning approach by employing the Eulerian-Eulerian two-phase model. A three-dimensional computational domain was used for the simulation to understand the fluid boiling inside the conventional channel under steady state conditions, focusing on the effect of aspect ratio (AR) on the vapor volume fraction. The simulations were performed for a constant mass flux of 150.46 kg/m2-s with the heat flux value ranging from 10-100 kW/m2 and at the inlet subcooled temperatures of 303K, 313K and 323K. The temperature of the channel bottom surface and the heat transfer coefficient (HTC) obtained numerically were compared with the experimental results and it was found that the results matched well. The volume of vapor fraction increased with the increase in heat flux for all values of inlet subcooled temperature considered in this study for all the test sections. At low inlet subcooled temperature, the volume of vapor fraction decreased with an increase in AR at all heat fluxes. However, there was no observable trend at higher heat flux and high inlet subcooled temperature.
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