This paper addresses innovative actions and steps taken by hotels in Vhembe District Municipality of the Limpopo Province in South Africa, in order to offset the negative impacts which furthers global warming exerted on the environment by the hotel industry. The study was conducted on a qualitative and quantitative approach. An open ended and closed ended questionnaire was used together with voice recorders for interviews. The sample was selected using a simple random sampling technique. Content analysis and IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Professional edition were used in the analysis of data. In our findings, we identified a trailing pace in effective participation towards fighting global warming. The use of paperless technology, conducting energy audits, recycling, waste reduction, water management, renewable energy sources, energy saving systems, education of staff and guests on global warming were the activities among others mostly mentioned by the respondents in their effort to combat global warming. Costs incurred in pursuing innovative means and lack of knowledge by management were the main aspects hindering effective implementation of actions to combat global warming. Practically, hotels would have to invest in management development. Collaborating with organisations such as Green Star South Africa would achieve management development. This would improve on cost saving as expenses can be reduced through effective management of expenditure. Thus, directing the savings to environmentally friendly practices. Tourists are becoming acquainted to environmentally friendly practices, therefore they are patronising hotels investing in environmentally responsible activities.

This paper deals with the modernization specificity in the aspect of the social and political activation of the modern youth, reveals the peculiarities of its influence on the formation of the young people’s civil identity. The authors interpret different approaches to the formation of the young people’s civic-mindedness in accordance with the state and political systems, their character and degree of stability. The article emphasizes the role of the technological approach in the process of the development of the Citizen’s self-consciousness, points out the distinctive features of social technologies.

The mediaeval Arabo-Islamic civilization with a high degree of certainty may be considered as a manuscript culture. Today the Arabo graphic manuscripts and historical documents are among major sources of the history of Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. In spite of their importance, most of these documents are unpublished and unstudied yet. Besides, the Arabic manuscript libraries are often nothing but set of volumes of heterogeneous texts of different geographic and chronological origin where various and separated fragments may be bundled under one cover. In this paper we highlight the possibilities of implementation of new tools and methods in Arabic manuscript processing, aimed at improvement of the teaching and research process as well as we explore the role of new methodologies in shaping the picture of Arabic mediaeval manuscripts as a cultural, historical and linguistic phenomena. Although multidisciplinary approach to Arabic manuscript processing represent rather new cluster in digital humanities, introduction of new computational technologies and Internet and their combination with traditional methods of investigation have opened new horizons for researchers. All this may help understanding of the historical and cultural contexts surrounding the textual data, and as a result will broaden the entire perception of Arabic texts. Since texts of the Arabic manuscripts have high degree of ambiguity, it is necessary to implement combination of approaches in text processing, rather than rely on any one method alone. In other words, the use of digital humanities forces to bring together specialists from different fields of knowledge. All this will allow to make retrieval and processing of textual metadata, to perform quantitative and qualitative comparisons between one text and another, as well as between groups of texts, to reveal their similarities and differences.

The Local Productive System is a tool for the development of tourism through the integration of the regional government in its system and the mobilization of other economic activities at the local level. Thinking about the introduction of the Local Productive System in the tourism sector is crucial given the objectives of local stakeholders and socio-economic impacts, while remaining subject to the control in reference to some measurable indicators. This reflection is significant when it comes from the regional government and the professionals of the tourism sector in order to link these activities to the territory and the other economic activities. What is the application of this concept? How it is organized in tourism activity in the field of this study? Asrir village in the province of Guelmim (south Morocco) gives some example of Local Productive System in tourism. The case study is a modest experience implementing the concept in a rural touristic area. Such an experience involves several more economic activities for the collective sharing of socio-economic interests at the very local level.

The fire-rating of a building can significantly affect the choice of filler blocks that requires to be used. SABS0100-1 dictates that all structural elements satisfy three conditions with respect to fire, namely: retention of structural strength, resistance to penetration by flames and resistance to heat transmission. A 40 to 70 mm thick structural topping is typically used in beam and block slab systems. Its narrow thickness raises doubts about the fire endurance. Using concrete masonry filler blocks could increase the time it takes the fire to reach the structural topping directly above the filler blocks. With a growing demand of using this flooring system in different categories of structures, manufacturers desired a logical method to demonstrate to the users of beam and block slab systems the minimum time it requires the fire to penetrate through the concrete masonry rebated filler blocks and reach the portion of the structural topping directly above the filler blocks. Hence, a method based on the equivalent thickness and type of aggregates used to manufacture a filler block was adopted following a literature review to demonstrate the effectiveness of concrete masonry filler blocks in fire endurance over other types of filler blocks. The fire resistance rating of concrete masonry rebated filler blocks to resist fire or shield flames through the structural topping directly above it, can be determined by the equivalent thickness method. Manufactures can utilise the method to demonstrate to the users of the filler blocks the efficiency to shield fire and protect the structural topping as well as improve the design of filler blocks to provide better fire resisting capability through improving equivalent thickness of the filler block and utilizing better fire endurance aggregates.

Beam and block slab systems rely on composite action between the top surface of precast ribs and cast in-situ concrete. The codes as noted in the South African National Standards SABS 0100-1 provide various surface types suitable for this application. However, no details about the surface quality such as the roughness frequency are specified. The permissible variations of that surface quality as well as their effect on the structural integrity are not addressed. The code simply provides a construction method or a tool used to produce the surface type and the design’s ultimate horizontal shear stresses at the interface. Manufacturers of the rib and block slab systems require a grading method for precast ribs with the intention to develop a mutual understanding between themselves and the clients/designers with regards to the interpretation of the surface roughness quality. This paper examines this concern. A literature review undertaken, revealed fundamental issues such as the variation in roughening uniformity, frequency, and amplitude are not addressed by the South African codes. Hence, a grading method defining the character of each grade was developed. A visual examination of the samples from two sites was undertaken using the proposed qualitative grading method. It revealed that quality factors such as the variation in surface uniformity and frequency does affect the surface quality. This paper therefore advances that manufacturers adopt the grading system to access the roughness quality of precast ribs they produce. In addition, clients and designers could specify the level of quality they require. Further studies, to investigate the effect that the variation of surface frequency and variation in uniformity has on the ability of the roughened surface to develop full composite action are essential.

The construction industry is concurred a positive relationship with the cyclical economic fluctuations. Thus, the adverse economic conditions associated with the recession directly affect the construction industry. In response to the recession, the construction practitioners adopt various strategies, but many survival strategies have become reactive, which only consider the short-term economic perspectives. Therefore, the need arises for proactive strategies which focus on the long termism, while the ad-hoc selection of strategies during recession is inappropriate. Therefore, the aim of this research is to map the proactive sustainable responses to the adverse recessionary effects and the scope of the study is limited to the Sri Lankan context. The current research study follows a pragmatic knowledge claim which uses pluralistic approaches to focus on the research problem. In the preceding study, a questionnaire survey was conducted among a sample of 35. The sample size can be generalised due to the time constraint while non-probabilistic snowballing sampling technique is used due to the unknown population. In order to accomplish the aim of this research paper, the authors conducted an expert interview survey from approximately one third (12/35) of the respondents in the questionnaire survey. The purpose of conducting a qualitative study among a known sample is to elaborate their perspective in the subject area which further explores the findings generated from the closed structured questionnaire box.The results revealed critical adverse effects and sustainable responses during recessions. A recession responses map illustrated that the sustainable responses can be used to gain an advantage over recession. „Risk analysis and Contingency planning‟ proactively mitigates most of the adverse effects. The recession responses have been mainly focused on two adverse effects: „Liquidity of firms unstable‟ and „Worsened profitability of construction firms‟. Moreover, the attitude of accepting the risk was eliminated with null consideration. The findings of this research are relevant to all the stakeholders in preparing themselves for market volatility during recession.

Chronic diseases are considered as the Black Plague of the 21st century. Therefore, it is imperative to enforce the current infrastructure of healthcare by administering self-initiated health management technologies for healthcare consumers and healthcare professionals, as well as at healthcare institutes.It is necessary to develop an efficient (optimal) healthcare service model with the Disruptive Innovation, which is a method well-suited for the Information Intelligent Smart Society, to solve the healthcare problems that require a shift in healthcare paradigm.The goal of this research is to design the future of healthcare from the perspectives of the healthcare consumers by utilizing collective knowledge and operational fluidity.The primary objective of this research is to develop the Information Strategic Planning of the system called My Health Zone (which will be referred to as “the Z”) that adopts the “Do-It-Yourself” approach to health management as its core concept. The final product of this research is the development and full implementation of “the Z” which is the Personal Health Management Platform that culminates the Digital Health Avatar, Gamified Health Management Platform, and Health Big Data, to ultimately combine self-initiated healthcare modeling and Game-care.