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An Analysis of the effectiveness of HIV and AIDS policy implementation in teacher training colleges in zimbabwe
The study analyzed the effectiveness of implementation of the HIV and AIDS Policy for teachers colleges. The policy was enacted by the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education in 2004 and implemented by teacher training colleges in Zimbabwe. Teacher training colleges were a ready captive audience for the young people with the potential to newlineinfluence behaviour change among student teachers, with a snowball effect to pupils in primary and secondary schools. Despite the newlinedevelopment of the policy, incidences of sexually transmitted infections continued to increase. The objectives of the study were to determine to what extent the HIV and AIDS Policy has been operationalized and its newlineeffects on the sexual and reproductive health of students. Literature reviewed explored the HIV and AIDS policy implementation and quality assurance practices in teaching of HIV and AIDS in the colleges. Effective implementation was discussed within the context of the reproductive health challenges faced by students and access to quality newlineservices. Pragmatism philosophical paradigm was used for the study, since it combines quantitative and qualitative research techniques, methods and approaches into a single study. The population, sample and sampling procedure for the study were defined. Selection of the colleges was newlinepurposive and stratified according to location (urban or rural); administrative authorities (government and church-related colleges). While research questions guided the collection of qualitative data from newlineinterviews and focus group discussions for college authorities and stakeholders, hypotheses guided quantitative data collected from questionnaires completed by male and female third year students and Lecturers. Key informants were selected based on their role in policy implementation at the colleges. Validity and reliability of both qualitative newlineand quantitative data collecting instruments was assured. -
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AN ANALYSIS OF THE PORTRAYAL OF INDIAN CHARACTERS IN HOLLYWOOD MOVIES - A CASE STUDY OF FOUR HOLLYWOOD MOVIES
The medium of film has been one of the most influential communication tools to the masses since its emergence. Life is reflected in cinema and many a times our perspective of life is manipulated by what we see in the media. There have been various studies conducted of various cultures (including African American, Asians in general, etc) being represented in a stereotypical way in Hollywood movies. However, there have not been studies about how Indians are portrayed in Hollywood movies. This study aims to find how Hollywood has portrayed Indians and Indian culture in their movies, also, to see if and how they are stereotyped. -
AN ANALYSIS ON IF PRESENTATION STYLE ATTRACTS READERS TO READ AN ARTICLE
This study is to analyse if readers read an article they come across, due to its presentation style (writing style, graphic designs, layout and topic). Readers pick a magazine based on their interest and the magazines may contain what they already know, something additional to the knowledge they already have and also from the areas that they are ignorant about. They may or may not read all the articles from that particular magazine and if at all they read there can be a solid reason behind it. The researcher wants to analyze if it is because of their interest or due to the presentation style. There have been studies done in this particular field but not with any particular point of view. They have also not stressed much on the contrast of presentations style and content. This study can be a means through which many magazines or other print media can reach up to the audience and make them read the articles or even view a website. The researcher prefers qualitative study as an analysis on why they read an article has to be done. It is by means of a questionnaire that the researcher is going to do the qualitative study. The questions in the questionnaires are not going to be in- depth but are going to, mainly, depend on a number of closed ended questions and a few open ended questions as the analysis is steadily depending on a perspective of the respondents, though their opinions might differ, and the sample the researcher chose are readers of magazine or newspapers or both. The researcher will be distributing the questionnaire among 75 readers and the samples are going to be picked randomly. -
An analysis on if presentation style attracts readers to read an article /
This study is to analyse if readers read an article due to the presentation style of an article (writing style, graphic designs, layout and topic) they come across. Readers pick a magazine based on their interest and the magazines may contain what they already know, something additional to the knowledge they already have and also from the areas that they are ignorant about. They may or may not read all the articles from that particular magazine and if at all they read there can be a solid reason behind it. I want to analyze if it is because of their interest or due to the presentation style. There have been studies done in this particular field but not on any particular point of view. They have also not stressed much on the contrast of presentations style and content. This study can be a means through which many magazines or other print media can reach up to the audience and make them read the articles. The researcher prefers qualitative study as analyze on why they read an article has to be done. It is by means of a questionnaire that I am going to do the qualitative study. -
AN ANALYSIS ON THE PORTRAYAL OF INDIA BY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
The research is an analysis on how the magazine ??National Geographic has portrayed India over the years and whether or how it has changed. National Geographic being an all American historical magazine might have its own ways of portraying particular nations. India being known for festivals, colors, superstition and snake charmers has always been portrayed countless number of times as only the above mentioned stereotypical explanation. May it be in movies, cartoons, books, etc., National Geographic being a credible magazine has never failed to bring forth to the world all historical aspects of any country. Bollywood, Spicy food, Religion etc. has been a hot topic for both Nat Geo magazine and television. The researcher wishes to find out if the magazine has portrayed India differently over the years. -
An analysis on the portrayal of India by national geographic magazine /
The research is an analysis on how the magazine National Geographic has portrayed India over the years and whether or how it has changed. National Geographic being an all American historical magazine might have its own ways of portraying particular nations. India being known for festivals, colors, superstition and snake charmers has always been portrayed countless number of times as only the above mentioned stereotypical explanation. May it be in movies, cartoons, books, etc., National Geographic being a credible magazine has never failed to bring forth to the world all historical aspects of any country. Bollywood, Spicy food, Religion etc. has been a hot topic for both Nat Geo magazine and television. The researcher wishes to find out if the magazine has portrayed India differently over the years. -
An Anthropologically comprehensive model of education
The educational realm we find ourselves in owes much to the work of philosophers. Educational policy and practice have evolved and progressed across the centuries through their influence, some of which have been through great social travails. Humanity has sifted and accepted them through careful consideration. However, not all philosophies are entirely beneficial. Some are given to aberrations. This doctoral dissertation is a systematic look at some of these philosophies, which on critical evaluation, reveal fault lines in our educational enterprise. newlineThe contemporary educational scenario is dominated by idealism and consumerism and, as such, falls short of promoting the comprehensive welfare of the anthropos or the human person. We present a thesis newlinestatement and employ the historico-critical methodology to examine these issues and use logical, ethical and moral arguments, besides, supporting texts, aphorisms and thought experiments to argue for our position. Jean-Paul Sartre had stated that philosophical anthropology is the study of the essence of the human being and the human condition. With its roots planted there, we present a conceptual model of the anthropos that could serve as the starting point for educational policy. We put forward five dimensions to be catered to by any educational program and call it the newlineAnthropo-Centered Model of Education or ACME. That completes Part I of the dissertation. newlineIn Part II, we explore the five dimensions. The attempt has been to zero in on the underlying issues and elucidate them. At some places, we use analysis, at others, speculation and close synthetically as we integrate our model. The dissertation ends with the prospectus of a high school, newlineenvisioned on the basis of this research, to come up in the city of Bangalore. -
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An Autonomic Systems approach to Online Retail Systems
In 2003, IBM released a document presenting its vision of autonomic computing. In this article, the author observes that the ever increasing complexity of computing systems will cross the borders of human capabilities, leading to systems that are too complex to be administrated by human beings. System administrators will no longer be able to install, configure, maintain and optimize these computing systems of the future. The solution to this problem is developing a technology that allows computing systems to manage themselves. This solution is referred to as autonomic computing. In today??s economic scenario, Online Retail Systems are gaining prominence and day by day increasing in size, leading to complexities difficult to be managed by human beings. E-Commerce Shops with thousands of articles are becoming the rule of the day. With hundreds of articles being added everyday, the administration required for efficient management of these articles, especially display selection, rejection etc are becoming a mind boggling task for human beings to manage. Parallel developments in study of buying behaviors based on various techniques like data mining, decision trees, neural networks etc are gaining significant practical ground, which also increases the complexity to be managed. The basic idea is lay foundation for creation of autonomic systems based on the outputs from behavioral study, inventory management, etc to autonomically handle management of display, inventory predictions etc. The efficiencies achieved should in turn result in higher revenue as well as profits. In short, the study intends to explore the feasibility of applying autonomic techniques for efficient display organization in online retail contexts by borrowing the intelligence from techniques evolving from data mining, artificial intelligence. This paper will address the development of a taxonomy, a model framework for ??autonomic online retail?? systems and the application of related standards. It will also delve into the theoretical background of specific techniques, which can be applied in this scenario. A basic model of the framework is also implemented. The complete implementation of the framework and measurement of the efficiency gains and other effects will be continued in the doctoral research. The design of the framework and also the measurement framework is being discussed in this document. -
An efficient framework for scientific article recommendation system
Excess data makes it challenging to extract information that is relevant to a domain of study or research. Existing state-of-the-art systems focus majorly on the selection of highly connected, prestigious and cited articles, regardless of the relevance of papers. To improve quality of findings, recommender systems which are a subclass of information filtration systems are used. They filter out relevant information over prestigious data from an existing repository of information. There are various sub-domains under recommender systems. This study focuses on citation recommendation. Citations are an integral part of any scientific paper, academic dissertation or projects. Finding appropriate citations for any work is a scholar's most time-consuming task. Thus, a well-defined citation recommendation system provides fulfillment and completeness for citing the giants works. The thesis aims to study existing frameworks for citation recommendation systems and identify the best dataset to work on graph- based recommender systems. A framework that recommends the most similar and relevant article to the user rather than prestigious authors or papers is here by proposed. The study explores various machine learning and deep learning techniques and methods which can be used effectively in recommending loosely connected yet highly relevant articles. -
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An Empirical Analysis of Consumer's Environmental Attitude and Purchasing Behavior of Green Product with Special Reference to Bangalore City
This study examines the consumers attitude and purchasing behavior of green product of Indian consumers. To meet this objective, a structured questionnaire has been used to collect the data samples of 300 respondents. The survey results obtained from Bangalore City provide reasonable support for the validity of the proposed model. The collected data has been filtered and found 261 valid data to carry out the data analysis to find the result and conclusion of this research study. The result of this study, consumers who have positive attitude about the environment are giving more importance to buy eco-friendly product (Green Product) and it is clearly observed that there is a positive relationship between the consumers environmental attitude and purchasing behavior of the green product. This study also outlines the green product categories and examines which category is more preference by the consumers with regards to their gender, age, occupation and income. The green product categories are Grocery Items, Health and Beauty, Apparel, Produce, Cleaning and Households, Pet Products, Meat/Fish and Poultry, Paper Products and Electronics and Appliances. Despite the age, gender, occupation and income differences, it is found that majority of the consumer preference to buy Electronics and Appliances and Health and Beauty products out of those green product categories. Even though they also buy other category of the green product but the counts are minimal as compare to Electronics and Appliances and Health and Beauty Products. Furthermore, this study also discusses the different factors that impact on buying decision taken by the consumers. This study specifically studied with three main factors that influence the purchasing decision of the consumer regarding the eco- friendly product. These are constant factor such as Price and Quality; Brand and Environmental Factors. -
An Empirical Analysis of Price Discovery in Spot and Futures Market of Gold in India
The broadest classification of the Indian financial market can be made in terms of commodity market, stock and security markets and foreign exchange market. Commodity markets are markets where raw or primary products are exchanged. These raw commodities are traded on regulated commodity exchanges, in which they are bought and sold in standardized contracts. Gold is a commodity which has been undergoing very serious price fluctuations in recent years. It has had its own impact on commodity trading too. Price discovery process of gold has always been a matter of wide discussion among researchers and policy makers. In this context this study aims at analyzing the price discovery process of Gold in Indian commodity market. It also looks into the volatility impact of futures price on spot price as well as the volatility impact of spot price on futures price. The study is completely based on the secondary data collected from the official website of NCDEX. The data extend for a period ranging from 23rd April 2009 to 29th December 2011. The daily data of spot and futures prices of gold during the period is taken into account. Various econometric tools are employed to test the hypotheses set. The VAR model result confirms the unidirectional relationship runs from the spot market to the futures market of gold in India. It reveals co integration and dynamic relationship between spot and futures markets of gold. The result of GARCH model implies that both futures as well as spot markets do have significant impact in the price volatility of gold in India. The result of VECM tells that spot market is dominant in the price discovery process which is a clear indication of the fact that spot market of gold is information efficient in India. The result is of great significance for the investors who wish to improve portfolio performance. With regard to policy making, a better understanding of the interconnectedness of these markets would be useful for the policy makers who coordinate the stability of financial markets. For marketers, it provides a reliable forecast of spot prices in the future to allow them to effectively manage their risks in the production or marketing process. The unprecedented uptrend in the price of gold and high volatility in recent years provides room for some important social implications. -
An Empirical Study on the psychographic factors influencing financial decisions of informed individual investors, with special reference to Bangalore financial market
Behavioural finance has been emerging as a significant discipline in academia as it speaks about the irrational behaviour of investors. Behavioural finance is the combination of classic economics and finance with psychology and decision making sciences. It is the study of how investors systematically make errors in judgment, or mental mistakes.Specifically, behavioral finance has two blocks: cognitive psychology and the limits to arbitrage. Cognitive refers to how people think. There is a huge psychology literature documenting that people make systematic errors in the way they think: they are over confident they put too much weight on recent experience etc. Their preference may also create distortions. Behavioural finance uses this body of knowledge, rather than taking arrogant approach that it should be ignored. Limits to arbitrage refer to in what circumstances arbitrage force will be effective, and they wont be. An Empirical Study on the psychographic factors influencing financial decisions of informed individual investors, with special reference to Bangalore financial market, has done with the objective of identifying the effect of three major anomalies namely over confidence, fear of loss, and effect of information and media and relationship of age and fear of loss on the investment decisions. Primary Data collection has been done with the help of questionnaire and had a sample size of 242. The above three aspects have studied and proved using various statistical tools like chi square, one sample t test, ANOVA and correlation. From the study it was proved that investors are overconfident but at the same time there is high fear of loss as well. Study shows that effect of information and news stories plays a major role in investment decisions. Age and fear of loss also have a significant relationship. Only 3 Anomalies has been considered for the study, considering the remaining will give further scope of research. -
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An evaluation of workplace HIV and AIDS programme development in zimbabwe stock exchange listed companies based in harare zimbabwe
The study explores the state of workplace HIV and AIDS interventions in Zimbabwe with specific reference to programming interventions in Zimbabwe Stock Exchange newlinelisted Companies in the Harare Metropolitan Province. The scientific knowledge domain-location of the study involves Strategic Human Resource management, Human Resource Management, Business (Corporate) planning and Labour administration (integrated occupation health and safety, employee welfare and newlinewellness) and Policy development and implementation. The key consideration is that newlinethe company has an enlightened self-interest to facilitate workplace HIV and AIDS because it leads to employee welfare, wellness and longevity which translate to increased productivity in the context of in Zimbabwe Stock Exchange-listed Companies. In this background, Zimbabwe Workplace HIV and AIDS programmes are generally considered to be fragile, fragmented, under-developed, weak and unsustainable in both design and management by a wide range of stakeholders despite close to two decades of implementation since promulgation and establishment. The study tries to identify key determinants of workplace HIV and AIDS program development in Harare, assesses the current state of workplace HIV and AIDS newlineprogramme development in Harare, tries to establish the significance of senior newlinemanagement commitment on workplace HIV programme development, ascertains the newlinerelationship between having a Comprehensive Staff Welfare Program (CSWP) and workplace HIV and AIDS program development and evaluates the extent to which companies comply with workplace HIV program development standards. The study was conducted using mixed methods and data was collected using a survey questionnaire and focus group discussions. Based on the study it was found that the general state of the Workplace HIV and AIDS Programme Development is in a state newlineof serious underdevelopment. -
