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The purpose of this paper is to focus on the analysis of an understudied problem in the economic literature. It proposes a valuation methodology for inputs that come from biodiversity-rich ecosystems/habitats and are used in agro-food production at zero input cost because there is not a market for such inputs.

Following Onofri et al. (2017), the authors computed the value of the marginal productivity of different inputs in three selected case studies (Angola, Mozambique and Brazil). Results are theory based and rigorous but show a strong contingency, case based, relative dimension that is captured, in the framework, by the “relativity ratio.” The ratio expresses the relative weight of the value generated by the input that comes from biodiversity-rich ecosystems/habitats in the per capita monthly available income of the farmer and aims at conveying additional insights to the economic valuation.

In this paper, the assessment of agricultural inputs value (price) in the absence of inputs markets is done, with an application to three different case studies. The inputs are peculiar since they come from habitats and ecosystems that are very biodiversity-rich.

The paper proposes a practical, though rigorous, methodology for the assessment of the value (price) of agricultural inputs in absence of inputs markets. Markets do not exist since the inputs come from biodiversity-rich habitats and ecosystems.

This paper aims to present a theoretical framework which reveals the relationship between job evaluation (JE) and the development of fair wage structure from the organizational justice (OJ) perspective. It focuses on analyzing the dimensions of job-based pay structure and the use of multifaceted construct of OJ (procedures, distribution and interaction) to determine how the perceived justice of JE's multi-levels construct contributes to achieve the fairness of wage structure.

This paper adopts an analytical descriptive approach in terms of explaining the perspectives and viewpoints related to the analysis. This paper is based on examining a theoretical framework provided by the authors based on a theoretical review of literature and a set of empirical evidences.

The design of a hierarchical wage structure counts on the multidimensional approach of JE which consists of three dimensions (processes, outcomes and social system). In addition, the determination of wage structure fairness is dependent on the assessment of the perceived justice of: JE's procedures, wages distribution and management's treatment with its employees.

This study provides a new theoretical contribution in studying the relationship between JE and the design of fair wage structure. This contribution can be regarded as a theoretical foundation for conducting some empirical and comparative studies in the future. The study affords directive mechanisms to policymakers in order to enhance the fairness of the wage structure across the state.

The purpose of this paper is to study the Bertotti–Kasner space-time and its geometric properties.

This paper is based on the features of λ-tensor and the technique of six-dimensional formalism introduced by Pirani and followed by W. Borgiel, Z. Ahsan et al. and H.M. Manjunatha et al. This technique helps to describe both the geometric properties and the nature of the gravitational field of the space-times in the Segre characteristic.

The Gaussian curvature quantities specify the curvature of Bertotti–Kasner space-time. They are expressed in terms of invariants of the curvature tensor. The Petrov canonical form and the Weyl invariants have also been obtained.

The findings are revealed to be both physically and geometrically interesting for the description of the gravitational field of the cylindrical universe of Bertotti–Kasner type as far as the literature is concerned. Given the technique of six-dimensional formalism, the authors have defined the Weyl conformal λW-tensor and discussed the canonical form of the Weyl tensor and the Petrov scalars. To the best of the literature survey, this idea is found to be modern. The results deliver new insight into the geometry of the nonstatic cylindrical vacuum solution of Einstein's field equations.

In this paper some characterizations for the existence of warped product pointwise semi-slant submanifolds of cosymplectic space forms are obtained. Moreover, a sharp estimate for the squared norm of the second fundamental form is investigated, the equality case is also discussed. By the application of derived inequality, we compute an expression for Dirichlet energy of the involved warping function. Finally, we also proved some classifications for these warped product submanifolds in terms of Ricci solitons and Ricci curvature. A non-trivial example of these warped product submanifolds is provided.

A “living” wage (LW) is conventionally defined as enabling meaningful participation in society above subsistence through, for example, recreation, supporting a family, and savings. There is increasing debate over LWs due to growing inequality, rising living costs and welfare reform but this remains largely framed by the econometric cost-benefit parameters that apply to minimum wage regulation. The capabilities approach advocated by Sen (1999) offers a different perspective that is inclusive of choice, contingencies and the inter-connections between quality of (paid) work and private life. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The paper adopts this framework and utilises a qualitative exploration of the narratives of 606 New Zealand employees to understand perceived wage effectiveness. The results suggest that a focus on a specific LW rate might be conceptually limiting, in comparison to a LW range.

First, the findings indicate that there is a pivot range in which people move from self-assessed “survival” to “decent” income. Second, a LW may have more than a simply monetary effect in better meeting employees’ living costs; it can also improve well-being through subjective perceptions of valued freedoms to do with job satisfaction, equity and security.

The results thus draw attention to a wider notion of a LW in terms of personal and family well-being, utilising a capabilities approach, with implications for organisational practice, policy and theory concerning sustainable livelihood and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

This article couples organizational theory with practice with the union of action learning and the ambidextrous organization. It aims to show how action learning contributes to the creation and sustainment of an ambidextrous (learning) organization.

A side-by-side comparison of action learning and the ambidextrous organization was used.

Action learning “teaches” and promotes the framework and processes of ambidexterity and the practical creation of learning organizations. An action learning team in action performs like an ambidextrous organization to the extent that “acting” is synonymous with exploitation and “learning” with exploration.

Action learning is a powerful tool for the ambidextrous organization, serving as a template for the practitioner to create a learning organization.

This paper extends the literature on organizational structure, leadership, culture and change as it relates to ambidexterity, learning organizations and action learning. It integrates learning theory through action learning with the practice of the ambidextrous organization. A synergistic theory/practice circle is created through the combination of the processes of “theory informing theory” from academia and “practice informing practice” from industry, creating a “theory informing practice and practice validating and updating better theory” circle.

In recent years, the proliferation of free trade agreements (FTA) has led to rapid economic boons and political security among nations. This study investigates whether the percentage of expats or permanent foreign residents plays a role in deciding which countries to partner with in bi-lateral FTAs. Previously, the reasons for FTA formation were believed to be primarily based upon economic, geographic, and political reasons. However, through the use of social network analysis, a larger picture can be mapped which allows for a more comprehensive understanding of key players in the current state of FTA formation in relation to the immigrant network that they share between them. More specifically, through computerized social network analysis, centrality can be calculated to determine the key players and the most central immigrant populations. When analyzing both the immigrant centrality in relation to FTA centrality, it becomes evident that there is a high correlation between the two factors. Thus, the findings highlight that immigration trends can be used as a predictor of FTA formation. As a result, it emphasizes the weight of immigration policy on the formation of bi-lateral FTAs.

Perception has been identified as the main cause underlying most autonomous vehicle related accidents. As the key technology in perception, deep learning (DL) based computer vision models are generally considered to be black boxes due to poor interpretability. These have exacerbated user distrust and further forestalled their widespread deployment in practical usage. This paper aims to develop explainable DL models for autonomous driving by jointly predicting potential driving actions with corresponding explanations. The explainable DL models can not only boost user trust in autonomy but also serve as a diagnostic approach to identify any model deficiencies or limitations during the system development phase.

This paper proposes an explainable end-to-end autonomous driving system based on “Transformer,” a state-of-the-art self-attention (SA) based model. The model maps visual features from images collected by onboard cameras to guide potential driving actions with corresponding explanations, and aims to achieve soft attention over the image’s global features.

The results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed model as it exhibits superior performance (in terms of correct prediction of actions and explanations) compared to the benchmark model by a significant margin with much lower computational cost on a public data set (BDD-OIA). From the ablation studies, the proposed SA module also outperforms other attention mechanisms in feature fusion and can generate meaningful representations for downstream prediction.

In the contexts of situational awareness and driver assistance, the proposed model can perform as a driving alarm system for both human-driven vehicles and autonomous vehicles because it is capable of quickly understanding/characterizing the environment and identifying any infeasible driving actions. In addition, the extra explanation head of the proposed model provides an extra channel for sanity checks to guarantee that the model learns the ideal causal relationships. This provision is critical in the development of autonomous systems.

The purpose of this commentary paper is to analyze the burst of joy experienced by global football fans when England lost the final match during the Euro 2020 against Italy.

The author worked with netnography (Internet ethnography), gathering material from the internet.

The author would consider the emotional explosion as a creative expression that was possible to happen through football. Football is not only a part of popular culture, it also creates it. It acted as a platform allowing for emotional engagement and covering different issues connected to global politics.

It is just a small study based on very limited material (Internet sources). However, it highlights every-day use of Internet and the possible amplification of certain sentiments if allowed.

Methodologically, it shows how Internet sources might be used when connected to football. It also provides an insight how Internet users can exchange opinions using sports (e.g. football) as a background.

This text highlights that football can be used as a platform do express/discuss difficult issues and that average citizens can be heard just because the platform is football.

To the author’s knowledge there is no academic text with this issue in focus yet.