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This paper provides a political analysis of legal pluralism from a “new institutionalist” perspective. In response to question of why states recognize and incorporate non-state normative orderings into their legal systems, it is hypothesized that the decision of incorporation is made to enhance the capacities of postcolonial states with “rational” calculations. In this respect, two new categories of legal pluralism are introduced: capacity-enhancing recognition and capacity-diminishing recognition. The paper lastly assesses the implications of legal pluralism upon the state-society relations and individual rights and liberties of citizens in the case of Israel.

Compliant mechanism has been receiving a great interest in precision engineering. However, analytical methods involving their behavior analysis is still a challenge because there are unclear kinematic behaviors. Especially, design optimization for compliant mechanisms becomes an important task when the problem is more and more complex. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to design a new hybrid computational method. The hybridized method is an integration of statistics, numerical method, computational intelligence and optimization.

A tensural bistable compliant mechanism is used to clarify the efficiency of the developed method. A pseudo model of the mechanism is designed and simulations are planned to retrieve the data sets. Main contributions of design variables are analyzed by analysis of variance to initialize several new populations. Next, objective functions are transformed into the desirability, which are inputs of the fuzzy inference system (FIS). The FIS modeling is aimed to initialize a single-combined objective function (SCOF). Subsequently, adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system is developed to modeling a relation of the main geometrical parameters and the SCOF. Finally, the SCOF is maximized by lightning attachment procedure optimization algorithm to yield a global optimality.

The results prove that the present method is better than a combination of fuzzy logic and Taguchi. The present method is also superior to other algorithms by conducting non-parameter tests. The proposed computational method is a usefully systematic method that can be applied to compliant mechanisms with complex structures and multiple-constrained optimization problems.

The novelty of this work is to make a new approach by combining statistical techniques, numerical method, computational intelligence and metaheuristic algorithm. The feasibility of the method is capable of solving a multi-objective optimization problem for compliant mechanisms with nonlinear complexity.

Presence of refugees in our world is very common and historically admitted also. Refugees are heterogeneous as a group, many asylum seekers are relatively young, the vast majority is of working age, and increasingly more people come from countries considered crisis accumulated or unsafe. Refugee crisis is recently hindering the developmental paths of several emerging economies across the globe and therefore generates curiosity among both economists and political scientists. Under such a backdrop, findings of any substantive plausible economic reasons behind such hitherto commonly ascribed issue become crucial from the angle of policy making. Broadly speaking, here we want to examine the major cause of refugee formation and how it will affect the size of the so-called potential refugees owing to eco-political instability. To perform this, here we have used a hybrid model which entails the flavours of both dynamic game theory and rational expectations theory of macroeconomics. From such a setup and under the presence of rational expectations, we have shown that a movement from a regime of REPE to non-REPE may lead to an increase in the level of nuisance or uncertainty in the South, which in turn raises the cost of life associated with high-quality quality-differentiated product of the South and thereby increases the number of potential refugees.

The preservation of social structure in slow cities has not been adequately examined in the literature. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine social change perceptions of local people in a slow city. Whether the dimensions of social change differ according to gender and inhabitancy was investigated.

Multivariate analysis of variances was used for data analysis. Data were collected from 399 participants in Seferihisar.

Results showed that the perception of local people related to social change differs according to their gender and duration of stay in Seferihisar. Differences were also examined for each sub-dimension of social change.

The preservation of social structure in slow cities has not been adequately examined in the literature. Accordingly, this study explores social change with five sub-dimensions in the context of Cittaslow.

Purpose: Mentioning a criminal’s country of origin in crime news is a divisive and much-discussed issue among both journalists and members of society. Scholars assume that mentioning a criminal’s foreign origin could develop and maintain prejudices against individuals with a migrant background among news recipients. However, until now, no attention has been paid to what increases the likelihood that a journalist does or does not mention a criminal’s country of origin when reporting on crimes. Methodology/approach: One possible explanation is that the frequency and intensity of specific news factors could lead to mentioning a criminal’s origin, since increased importance of a news story is usually assigned when many high-intensity news factors occur. Even though numerous studies have determined the frequency of specific news factors in (crime) news, the explanation hypothesized in this chapter has not yet been examined. To investigate this supposition empirically, a quantitative content analysis of four German prime newscasts (n = 290), including public and private broadcasts, was conducted in the current study. Findings: The findings indicate that mentioning criminals’ origins is still common practice in journalism; furthermore, criminals with foreign origins are explicitly represented as foreign almost ten times more often than German-origin criminals are explicitly mentioned as German. News factors such as personalization, location, and influence show some effects of positively predicting journalistic mentioning of a criminal’s country of origin.

Mobile health (mHealth) service is an Australian Government initiative aiming to improve the quality of health-care services. However, little is known about Australian health consumers’ willingness to adopt mHealth. The purpose of this paper is to study the usage behavior of mHealth service users in Australia. While various factors may impact users’ willingness to accept mHealth, this research investigates factors influencing the mHealth adoption decisions of the Australian health-care consumers, and the moderating impact of demographic factors on the usage behavior (UB) of mHealth services which has been rarely addressed in an Australian setting in the past.

The theoretical framework is based on the technology acceptance model (TAM). Data were collected from residents of the Australian Capital Territory using a survey questionnaire and examined using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The proposed mHealth usage model demonstrated a good fit and indicated that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, social influence, service quality and government influence are critical issues shaping mHealth UB. The moderation analysis revealed that users’ demographics, namely, gender, age and education are instrumental in broadening the understanding of UB of mHealth service in Australia.

The findings will inform health-care service providers about the critical importance of the key factors driving the usage of mHealth services. Health-care providers and relevant authorities can develop targeted communication strategies that maximize the acceptance of mHealth services. Furthermore, deeper understanding of users’ demographic profiles would enable health-care service providers to promote their services to the right clients.

The above findings on the factors and user demographics informing the usage of mHealth services have unique practical, contextual and theoretical implications.

The purpose of this paper is to design a parallel finite element (FE) algorithm based on fully overlapping domain decomposition for solving the nonstationary incompressible magnetohydrodynamics (MHD).

The fully discrete Euler implicit/explicit FE subproblems, which are defined in the whole domain with vast majority of the degrees of freedom associated with the particular subdomain, are solved in parallel. In each subproblem, the linear term is treated by implicit scheme and the nonlinear term is solved by explicit one.

For the algorithm, the almost unconditional convergence with optimal orders is validated by numerical tests. Some interesting phenomena are presented.

The proposed algorithm is effective, easy to realize with low communication costs and preferred for solving the strong nonlinear MHD system.