Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are mostly presented as a means to introduce efficient procurement methods and better value for money to taxpayers. However, the complexity of the PPP mechanism, their lack of transparency, accounting rules and implicit liabilities make it often impossible to perceive the amount of public expenditure involved and the long-run impact on taxpayers, providing room for fiscal illusion, i.e., the illusion that PPPs are much less expensive than traditional public investments. This psaper, thanks to a systematic review of the literature on the EU countries experience, tries to unveil the sources of this illusion by looking at the reasons behind the PPPs’ choice, their real costs, and the sources of fiscal risks. The literature suggests that PPPs are more costly than public funding, especially when contingent liabilities are not taken into account, and are employed as mechanisms to circumvent budgetary restrictions and to spend off-balance. The paper concludes that the public sector should share more risks with private sectors by reducing the amount of guarantees, and should prevent governments from operating through a sleight of hand that deflects attention away from off-balance financing, by applying a neutral fiscal recording system.

Sustainable leadership matters, spreads and lasts. It is shared responsibility, that does not unduly deplete human or financial resources, and that cares for avoids exerting negative damage on the surrounding educational and community environment. In fact, sustainability does not simply mean whether something can last. It addresses how particular initiatives can be developed without compromising the development of others in the surrounding environment, now and in the future. Sustainable leadership is one of the most valued characteristics that employers and stakeholders are looking for, especially in this new fast changing market. Having a good Leadership sense is essential for the success of a company and for its collaborative working environment. Leadership is usually linked with sustained learning, success, diversity, capacity and maintaining a continuous development of other team members and coworkers. However, various authors are debating and discussing how we define good and sustainable leadership and what we expect from a leader to do, but few of them are raising the question how we can build and create leaders?. We present in this paper an overview of leadership definition and the challenges set by this important and complex concept. We propose a vision based on four pillars to create an adequate environment to build leaders. We present and describe our perspective on what we need to provide and establish as a company or a community in order to create an effective team of leaders in the perspective of the new requirements of the market and the expectations of companies.

The present article reports the applications of Caputo-Fabrizio time-fractional derivatives. This article generalizes the idea of unsteady MHD free convective flow in a Walters.-B fluid with heat and mass transfer study over an exponential isothermal vertical plate embedded in a porous medium. The governing equations are converted into dimensionless form and extended to fractional model. The generalized Walters-B fluid model has been solved analytically using the Laplace transform technique. From the general solutions we reduce limiting solutions when to the similar motion for Newtonian fluid. The corresponding expressions for and Nusselt and Sherwood numbers are also assessed. Numerical results for velocity, temperature and concentration are demonstrated graphically for various factors of interest and discussed. As a result, we have plotted the influence of fractional parameter on fluid flow and drawn comparison between fractional Walters’-B and fractional Newtonian fluid and found that fractional Newtonian fluid is faster than fractional Walters’-B fluids.

Six Sigma is an organized and systematic method for strategic process improvement that relies on statistical and scientific methods to reduce the defect rates and achieve significant quality up-gradation. Six Sigma is also a business philosophy to improve customer satisfaction, a tool for eliminating process variation and errors and a metric of world class companies allowing for process comparisons. Six Sigma is one of the most effective advanced improvement strategies which has direct impact on operational excellence of an organization. Six Sigma may also be defined as the powerful business strategies, which have helped to improve quality initiatives in many industries around the world. With the use of Six Sigma in casting industries, rejection rate is reduced, customer satisfaction is improved and financial benefits also increased. Six Sigma management uses statistical process control to relentlessly and rigorously pursue the reduction of variation in all critical processes to achieve continuous and breakthrough improvements that impact the bottom-line and/or top-line of the organization and increase customer satisfaction. In this paper author reviewed some of the significant previous published papers and focused on the general overview of publication in casting industries.

Nanocomposites are high performance materials which reveal rare properties. Nanocomposites have an estimated annual growth rate of 25% and fastest demand to be in engineering plastics and elastomers. Their prospective is so prominent that they are valuable in numerous areas ranging from packaging to biomedical applications. In this review, the various types of matrix nanocomposites are discussed highlighting the need for these materials, their processing approaches and some recent results on structure, properties and potential applications. Perspectives include need for such future materials and other interesting applications. Being environmentally friendly, applications of nanocomposites propose new technology and business opportunities for several sectors of the aerospace, automotive, electronics and biotechnology industries.

The Nevado de Toluca Flora and Fauna Protection Area presents a constant fragmentation of its forests. The objective of the research was to identify the processes of forest deterioration and the role of local stakeholders in its conservation. Geographic information systems were used as a basis for the generation of thematic maps, in addition to the application of a flow diagram that defines the problems of the forest and another that describes and analyzes them for the search of solutions. The results show that the main factors affecting deterioration are forest fires, immoderate logging, pests and diseases. Finally, strategies and scenarios for forest management are proposed based on the articulation of local stakeholders.