Search results for: management algorithm

Authors: Kefaya Qaddoum

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The aim of this study is to predict breast cancer and to construct a supportive model that will stimulate a more reliable prediction as a factor that is fundamental for public health. In this study, we utilize general regression neural networks (GRNN) to replace the normal predictions with prediction periods to achieve a reasonable percentage of confidence. The mechanism employed here utilises a machine learning system called conformal prediction (CP), in order to assign consistent confidence measures to predictions, which are combined with GRNN. We apply the resulting algorithm to the problem of breast cancer diagnosis. The results show that the prediction constructed by this method is reasonable and could be useful in practice.

Keywords: neural network, conformal prediction, cancer classification, regression

Procedia PDF Downloads 282

Authors: Michaela Vašková, Jiří Barta, Otakar J. Mika, Jan Hrdlička, Josef Kellner

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The paper is focused on the method to solutions the crisis situation in the Czech Republic associated with the mass methanol poisoning. The emphasis is put on tasks of individual state bodies and of Integrated Rescue System during the handling of the crisis. The theoretical part describes poisonings, ways of intoxication, types of intoxicants and cases of mass poisoning by dangerous substances in the world. The practical part describes the development, causes and solutions of extraordinary event, mass methanol poisoning in the Czech Republic. The main emphasis was put on the crisis management of the Czech Republic in solving this situation.

Keywords: crisis management, poisoning, methanol, hazardous substances, extraordinary event

Procedia PDF Downloads 444

Authors: Bolin Hua

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In city governance, various data are involved, including city component data, demographic data, housing data and all kinds of business data. These data reflects different aspects of people, events and activities. Data generated from various systems are different in form and data source are different because they may come from different sectors. In order to reflect one or several facets of an event or rule, data from multiple sources need fusion together. Data from different sources using different ways of collection raised several issues which need to be resolved. Problem of data fusion include data update and synchronization, data exchange and sharing, file parsing and entry, duplicate data and its comparison, resource catalogue construction. Governments adopt statistical analysis, time series analysis, extrapolation, monitoring analysis, value mining, scenario prediction in order to achieve pattern discovery, law verification, root cause analysis and public opinion monitoring. The result of Multi-source data fusion is to form a uniform central database, which includes people data, location data, object data, and institution data, business data and space data. We need to use meta data to be referred to and read when application needs to access, manipulate and display the data. A uniform meta data management ensures effectiveness and consistency of data in the process of data exchange, data modeling, data cleansing, data loading, data storing, data analysis, data search and data delivery.

Keywords: multi-source data fusion, urban comprehensive management, information fusion, government data

Procedia PDF Downloads 386

Authors: James Skon, Irina Beshentseva, Michelle Polak

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Wifi solutions come in two major classes. Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) WiFi, characterized by inexpensive WiFi routers, with one or two service set identifiers (SSIDs), and a single shared passphrase. These access points provide no significant user management or monitoring, and no aggregation of monitoring and control for multiple routers. The other solution class is managed enterprise WiFi solutions, which involve expensive Access Points (APs), along with (also costly) local or cloud based management components. These solutions typically provide portal based login, per user virtual local area networks (VLANs), and sophisticated monitoring and control across a large group of APs. The cost for deploying and managing such managed enterprise solutions is typically about 10 fold that of inexpensive consumer APs. Low revenue organizations, such as schools, non-profits, non-government organizations (NGO's), small businesses, and even homes cannot easily afford quality enterprise WiFi solutions, though they may need to provide quality WiFi access to their population. Using available lower cost Wifi solutions can significantly reduce their ability to provide reliable, secure network access. This project explored and created a new approach for providing secured managed enterprise WiFi based on low cost hardware combined with both new and existing (but modified) open source software. The solution provides a cloud based management interface which allows organizations to aggregate the configuration and management of small, medium and large WiFi solutions. It utilizes a novel approach for user management, giving each user a unique passphrase. It provides unlimited SSID's across an unlimited number of WiFI zones, and the ability to place each user (and all their devices) on their own VLAN. With proper configuration it can even provide user local services. It also allows for users' usage and quality of service to be monitored, and for users to be added, enabled, and disabled at will. As inferred above, the ultimate goal is to free organizations with limited resources from the expense of a commercial enterprise WiFi, while providing them with most of the qualities of such a more expensive managed solution at a fraction of the cost.

Keywords: wifi, enterprise, cloud, managed

Procedia PDF Downloads 93

Authors: Qingxin Chen, Liben Jiang, Andrew Smith, Karim Hadjri

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Since 2007, the Chinese food industry has undergone serious food contamination in the baby dairy industry, especially milk powder contamination. One of the milk powder products was found to contain melamine and a significant number (294,000) of babies were affected by kidney stones. Due to growing concerns among consumers about food safety and protection, and high pressure from central government, companies must take radical action to ensure food quality protection through the use of an appropriate quality management system. Previously, though researchers have investigated the health and safety aspects of food industries and products, quality issues concerning food products in China have been largely over-looked. Issues associated with baby dairy products and their quality issues have not been discussed in depth. This paper investigates the impact of quality management systems on the Chinese baby dairy product industry. A literature review was carried out to analyse the use of quality management systems within the Chinese milk power market. Moreover, quality concepts, relevant standards, laws, regulations and special issues (such as Melamine, Flavacin M1 contamination) have been analysed in detail. A qualitative research approach is employed, whereby preliminary analysis was conducted by interview, and data analysis based on interview responses from four selected Chinese baby dairy product companies was carried out. Through the analysis of literature review and data findings, it has been revealed that for quality management system that has been designed by many practitioners, many theories, models, conceptualisation, and systems are present. These standards and procedures should be followed in order to provide quality products to consumers, but the implementation is lacking in the Chinese baby dairy industry. Quality management systems have been applied by the selected companies but the implementation still needs improvement. For instance, the companies have to take measures to improve their processes and procedures with relevant standards. The government need to make more interventions and take a greater supervisory role in the production process. In general, this research presents implications for the regulatory bodies, Chinese Government and dairy food companies. There are food safety laws prevalent in China but they have not been widely practiced by companies. Regulatory bodies must take a greater role in ensuring compliance with laws and regulations. The Chinese government must also play a special role in urging companies to implement relevant quality control processes. The baby dairy companies not only have to accept the interventions from the regulatory bodies and government, they also need to ensure that production, storage, distribution and other processes will follow the relevant rules and standards.

Keywords: baby dairy product, food quality, milk powder contamination, quality management system

Procedia PDF Downloads 469

Authors: Rosa Tsegaye Aga, Xuan Jiang, Pavel Vazquez Faci, Siqing Liu, Simon Rayner, Endalkachew Alemu, Markos Abebe

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Tuberculosis (TB) is a major cause of disease globally. In most cases, TB is treatable and curable, but only with the proper treatment. There is a time when drug-resistant TB occurs when bacteria become resistant to the drugs that are used to treat TB. Current strategies to identify drug-resistant TB bacteria are laboratory-based, and it takes a longer time to identify the drug-resistant bacteria and treat the patient accordingly. But machine learning (ML) and data science approaches can offer new approaches to the problem. In this study, we propose to develop an ML-based model to predict the antibiotic resistance phenotypes of TB isolates in minutes and give the right treatment to the patient immediately. The study has been using the whole genome sequence (WGS) of TB isolates as training data that have been extracted from the NCBI repository and contain different countries’ samples to build the ML models. The reason that different countries’ samples have been included is to generalize the large group of TB isolates from different regions in the world. This supports the model to train different behaviors of the TB bacteria and makes the model robust. The model training has been considering three pieces of information that have been extracted from the WGS data to train the model. These are all variants that have been found within the candidate genes (F1), predetermined resistance-associated variants (F2), and only resistance-associated gene information for the particular drug. Two major datasets have been constructed using these three information. F1 and F2 information have been considered as two independent datasets, and the third information is used as a class to label the two datasets. Five machine learning algorithms have been considered to train the model. These are Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random forest (RF), Logistic regression (LR), Gradient Boosting, and Ada boost algorithms. The models have been trained on the datasets F1, F2, and F1F2 that is the F1 and the F2 dataset merged. Additionally, an ensemble approach has been used to train the model. The ensemble approach has been considered to run F1 and F2 datasets on gradient boosting algorithm and use the output as one dataset that is called F1F2 ensemble dataset and train a model using this dataset on the five algorithms. As the experiment shows, the ensemble approach model that has been trained on the Gradient Boosting algorithm outperformed the rest of the models. In conclusion, this study suggests the ensemble approach, that is, the RF + Gradient boosting model, to predict the antibiotic resistance phenotypes of TB isolates by outperforming the rest of the models.

Keywords: machine learning, MTB, WGS, drug resistant TB

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Authors: Mansoureh Ghiasabadi Farahani, Samira Kalantary, Sara Taghi-Pour, Mahboubeh Shamsi

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Nowadays, the development of computers technology and its recent applications provide access to new types of data, which have not been considered by the traditional data analysts. Two particularly interesting characteristics of such data sets include their huge size and streaming nature .Incremental learning techniques have been used extensively to address the data stream classification problem. This paper presents a concise survey on the obstacles and the requirements issues classifying data streams with using decision tree. The most important issue is to maintain a balance between accuracy and efficiency, the algorithm should provide good classification performance with a reasonable time response.

Keywords: big data, data streams, classification, decision tree

Procedia PDF Downloads 517

Authors: A. S. Adegoke, O. N. Popoola

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The central purpose of management in any organization is that of coordinating the efforts of people towards the achievement of its goal. Effective and productive management is the function of leadership. Leadership plays a critical role in helping groups, organizations and societies to achieve their goals. Factors considered to make leadership to be effective are intelligence, social maturity, inner motivation and achievement drives and lastly, human relations attitudes. The factors affecting leadership style and effectiveness were examined. Also, the study examined which of the various leadership style best befits an organization and discussed the ways in which the style was determined. In order to meet the objectives of this study, different types of methods of data gathering were carried out. The methods include data from primary and secondary sources. The primary sources include personal interview, personal observation, and questionnaire while data from secondary sources were derived from various books, journal write up and other documentary records. Data were collected from respondents through questionnaire, and the field research carried out through oral interview to test each of the related hypotheses. From the data analysed it was determined that 45% strongly agreed that leadership traits are inborn not acquired and 28.3% agreed that leadership traits are inborn, while 11.7% and 10% strongly disagreed and disagreed respectively and 5% were undecided. 48.4% strongly agreed, and 43.3% agreed that environmental factors determined the appropriate style of leadership to be employed while 3.3% strongly disagreed, 1.7% disagreed and 3.3% were undecided. From the study, no single style of leadership is appropriate in any situation instead of concentrating on single leadership style; leader can vary approaches depending on forces in the leaders, characteristic of the subordinates, situational forces of the organization, lastly the expectations and behaviour of superior.

Keywords: hypothesis, leadership, management, organization

Procedia PDF Downloads 139

Authors: Pilly Joseph Kagosi

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The study aims at assessing challenges observed during the implementation of participatory irrigation management (PIM) approach for food security in semi-arid areas of Tanzania. Data were collected through questionnaire, PRA tools, key informants discussion, Focus Group Discussion (FGD), participant observation, and literature review. Data collected from the questionnaire was analysed using SPSS while PRA data was analysed with the help of local communities during PRA exercise. Data from other methods were analysed using content analysis. The study revealed that PIM approach has a contribution in improved food security at household level due to the involvement of communities in water management activities and decision making which enhanced the availability of water for irrigation and increased crop production. However, there were challenges observed during the implementation of the approach including; minimum participation of beneficiaries in decision-making during planning and designing stages, meaning inadequate devolution of power among scheme owners. Inadequate and lack of transparency on income expenditure in Water Utilization Associations’ (WUAs), water conflict among WUAs members, conflict between farmers and livestock keepers and conflict between WUAs leaders and village government regarding training opportunities and status; WUAs rules and regulation are not legally recognized by the National court and few farmers involved in planting trees around water sources. However, it was realized that some of the mentioned challenges were rectified by farmers themselves facilitated by government officials. The study recommends that the identified challenges need to be rectified for farmers to realize impotence of PIM approach as it was realized by other Asian countries.

Keywords: challenges, participatory approach, irrigation management, food security, semi arid areas

Procedia PDF Downloads 322

Authors: Aniko Babits, Ahmad Daoud

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Introduction: The beach chair position (BCP) is a good approach to almost all types of shoulder procedures. However, moving an anaesthetized patient from the supine to sitting position may pose a risk of cerebral hypoperfusion and potential cerebral ischaemia as a result of significant reductions in blood pressure and cardiac output. Hypocapnia in ventilated patients and impaired blood flow to the vertebral artery due to hyperextension, rotation, or tilt of the head may have an impact too. Co-morbidities that may increase the risk of cerebral ischaemia in the BCP include diabetes with autonomic neuropathy, cerebrovascular disease, cardiac disease, severe hypertension, generalized vascular disease, history of fainting, and febrile conditions. Beach chair surgery requires a careful anaesthetic and surgical management to optimize patient safety and minimize the risk of adverse outcomes. Methods: We describe the necessary steps for optimal patient positioning and the aims of intraoperative management, including anaesthetic techniques to ensure patient safety in the BCP. Results: Regardless of the anaesthetic technique, adequate patient positioning is paramount in the BCP. The key steps to BCP are aimed at optimizing surgical success and minimizing the risk of severe neurovascular complications. The primary aim of anaesthetic management is to maintain cardiac output and mean arterial pressure (MAP) to protect cerebral perfusion. Blood pressure management includes treating a fall in MAP of more than 25% from baseline or a MAP less than 70 mmHg. This can be achieved by using intravenous fluids or vasopressors. A number of anaesthetic techniques could also improve cerebral oxygenation, including avoidance of intermittent positive pressure ventilation (IPPV) with general anaesthesia (GA), using regional anaesthesia, maintaining normocapnia and normothermia, and the application of compression stockings. Conclusions: In summary, BCP is a reliable and effective position to perform shoulder procedures. Simple steps to patient positioning and careful anaesthetic management could maximize patient safety and avoid unwanted adverse outcomes in patients undergoing surgery in BCP.

Keywords: beach chair position, cerebral oxygenation, cerebral perfusion, sitting position

Procedia PDF Downloads 86

Authors: O. Nkwonta, B. Dzwairo, F. Otieno, J. Adeyemo

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The effective management of water resources is of great importance to ensure the supply of water resources to support changing water requirements over a selected planning horizon and in a sustainable and cost-effective way. Essentially, the purpose of the water resources planning process is to balance the available water resources in a system with the water requirements and losses to which the system is subjected. In such situations, water resources yield and planning model can be used to solve those difficulties. It has an advantage over other models by managing model runs, developing a representative system network, modelling incremental sub-catchments, creating a variety of standard system features, special modelling features, and run result output options.

Keywords: complex, water resources, planning, cost effective, management

Procedia PDF Downloads 447

Authors: Seyed Vahid Kamal Alavi

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Italy has experienced a notable quantity and impact of disasters due to natural hazards and technological accidents caused by diverse risk sources on its physical, technological, and human/sociological infrastructures during past decade. This study discusses the frequency and impacts of the most three physical devastating natural hazards in Italy for the period 2000–2013. The approach examines the reliability of a range of open source WebGIS techniques versus a proposed multi-hazard risk management methodology. Spatial and attribute data which include USGS publically available hazard data and thirteen years Munich RE recorded data for Italy with different severities have been processed, visualized in a GIS (Geographic Information System) framework. Comparison of results from the study showed that the multi-hazard risk maps generated using open source techniques do not provide a reliable system to analyze the infrastructures losses in respect to national risk sources while they can be adopted for general international risk management purposes. Additionally, this study establishes the possibility to critically examine and calibrate different integrated techniques in evaluating what better protection measures can be taken in an area.

Keywords: multi-hazard risk mapping, risk management, GIS, Italy

Procedia PDF Downloads 367

Authors: C. Nathanailides, S. Anastasiou, P. Logothetis, G. Kanlis

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Production parameters of gilt head sea bream fish farm such as feeding regimes, mortalities, fish densities were used to calculate the economic efficiency of six different aquaculture sites from West Greece. Samples of farmed sea bream were collected and lipid content, microbial load and filleting yield of the samples were used as quality criteria. The results indicate that Lipid content, filleting yield and microbial load of fish originating from different fish farms varied significantly with improved quality exhibited in fish farms which exhibited improved Feed conversion rates and lower mortalities. Changes in feeding management practices such as feed quality and feeding regimes have a significant impact on the financial performance of sea bass farms. Fish farms which exhibited improved feeding conversion rates also exhibited increased profitability. Improvements in the FCR explained about 13.4 % of the difference in profitability of the different aquaculture sites. Lower mortality and higher growth rates were also exhibited by the fish farms which exhibited improved FCR. It is concluded that best feeding management practices resulted in improved product quality and profitability.

Keywords: aquaculture economics, gilt head sea, production fish, feeding management

Procedia PDF Downloads 498

Authors: Penn P. Wu, Jeannie Jo

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Blockchain technology has rapidly gained popularity in industry. This paper attempts to assist academia to answer four questions. First, should community colleges begin offering education to nurture blockchain-literate students for the job market? Second, what are the appropriate topical areas to cover? Third, should it be an individual course? And forth, should it be a technical or management course? This paper starts with identifying the knowledge domains of blockchain technology and the topical areas each domain has, and continues with placing them in appropriate academic territories (Computer Sciences vs. Business) and subjects (programming, management, marketing, and laws), and then develops an evaluation model to determine the appropriate topical area for community colleges to teach. The evaluation is based on seven factors: maturity of technology, impacts on management, real-world applications, subject classification, knowledge prerequisites, textbook readiness, and recommended pedagogies. The evaluation results point to an interesting direction that offering an introductory course is an ideal option to guide students through the learning journey of what blockchain is and how it applies to business. Such an introductory course does not need to engage students in the discussions of mathematics and sciences that make blockchain technologies possible. While it is inevitable to brief technical topics to help students build a solid knowledge foundation of blockchain technologies, community colleges should avoid offering students a course centered on the discussion of developing blockchain applications.

Keywords: blockchain, pedagogies, blockchain technologies, blockchain course, blockchain pedagogies

Procedia PDF Downloads 126

Authors: U. Yavas, M. Gokasan

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Control of diesel engine’s air path has drawn a lot of attention due to its multi input-multi output, closed coupled, non-linear relation. Today, precise control of amount of air to be combusted is a must in order to meet with tight emission limits and performance targets. In this study, passenger car size diesel engine is modeled by AVL Boost RT, and then simulated with standard, industry level PID controllers. Finally, linear model predictive control is designed and simulated. This study shows the importance of modeling and control of diesel engines with flexible algorithm development in computer based systems.

Keywords: predictive control, engine control, engine modeling, PID control, feedforward compensation

Procedia PDF Downloads 631

Authors: Milind D. Meshram

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Ascarids are the most frequent worm parasite of dogs and cats. There are two species that commonly infect dogs: Toxocara canis and Toxascaris leonina. Adult roundworms live in the stomach and intestines and can grow to 7 inches (18 cm) long. A female may lay 200,000 eggs in a day. The eggs are protected by a hard shell. They are extremely hardy and can live for months or years in the soil. A dog aged about 6 years, from Satara was referred to Teaching Veterinary Clinical Complex (TVCC) with a complaint of abdominal pain, anorexia, loss of condition and dull body coat with mucous pale membrane. The clinical examination revealed Anaemia, palpation of abdomen revealed enlargement of liver, slimy feel of the intestine loop, diarrhea.

Keywords: therapeutic management, Toxocara canis, induced hepatitis, dogs

Procedia PDF Downloads 588

Authors: Zheng Ruoyuan

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With the rapid development of economic globalization and increasingly fierce international competition, multinational companies have carried out investment strategy shifts and innovations, and actively promoted localization strategies. Localization strategies have become the main trend in the development of multinational companies. Large-scale entry of multinational companies China has a history of more than 20 years. With the sustained and steady growth of China's economy and the optimization of the investment environment, multinational companies' investment in China has expanded rapidly, which has also had an important impact on the Chinese economy: promoting employment, foreign exchange reserves, and improving the system. etc., has brought a lot of high-tech and advanced management experience; but it has also brought challenges and survival pressure to China's local enterprises. In recent years, multinational companies have gradually regarded China as an important part of their global strategies and began to invest in China. Actively promote localization strategies, including production, marketing, scientific research and development, etc. Many multinational companies have achieved good results in localized operations in China. Not only have their benefits continued to improve, but they have also established a good corporate image and brand in China. image, which has greatly improved their competitiveness in the international market. However, there are also some multinational companies that have difficulties in localized operations in China. This article will closely follow the background of economic globalization and comprehensively use the theory of multinational companies and strategic management theory and business management theory, using data and facts as the entry point, combined with typical cases of representative significance for analysis, to conduct a systematic study of the localized operations of multinational companies in China. At the same time, for each specific link of the operation of multinational companies, we provide multinational enterprises with some inspirations and references.

Keywords: localization, business management, multinational, marketing

Procedia PDF Downloads 45

Authors: Jana Gebhartova, Tomas Duda, Ivan Benes

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World is characterized by constantly emerging new links, increasing complexity and speed of processes in the society. The globalized world needs (except political and financial mechanisms and institutions) functional supply chains. Transport and supply chains can be interrupted in case of natural disasters, conflicts and civil disorders, sudden demand shocks, export/import restrictions, terrorism. Long-term interruption of crucial services for human existence can results in breakdown of the whole society. If global supply chains can be interrupted, the ability to survive a crisis situation depends on local self-sufficiency, it means ensuring water, food and energy. In the world of 21st century, new way of thinking (based on the concept of resilience) is needed. Planning for self-sufficiency and resilience must be part of the agenda of local governments. The paper presents first results of research project VF20112015518 “Security of population – crisis management” that deals with issue of critical infrastructure, ensuring regional self-sufficiency in crisis situations and issues related to population protection and water, energy and food security. The project is being solved within Security Research of Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic in 2011-2015.

Keywords: crisis management, resilience, indicators of self-sufficiency, continuity of supplies

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Authors: M. Altekin, R. F. Yükseler

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Geometrically nonlinear axisymmetric bending of a shallow spherical shell with a point support at the apex under linearly varying axisymmetric load was investigated numerically. The edge of the shell was assumed to be simply supported or clamped. The solution was obtained by the finite difference and the Newton-Raphson methods. The thickness of the shell was considered to be uniform and the material was assumed to be homogeneous and isotropic. Sensitivity analysis was made for two geometrical parameters. The accuracy of the algorithm was checked by comparing the deflection with the solution of point supported circular plates and good agreement was obtained.

Keywords: Bending, Nonlinear, Plate, Point support, Shell.

Procedia PDF Downloads 258

Authors: Dilini Bodhinayaka, Aunsha Sajeewanie Rubasinghe

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The library of the University of Kelaniya plays a significant role in supporting the academic work of the university. As at July, 2016 the library of the University of Kelaniya comprised of 250301 printed books, 2157 CD-ROMs, 1203 theses and 800 non-book materials. Furthermore, the library is subscribed to about 60 local journals, access to over 12,500 full text academic journals and around 100,000 e-books. The library provides the services and resources that support in teaching, doing research and learning. On the other hand, undergraduate students have adopted and continued to use the online information retrieval for their academic and research work. This study aims to compare the usage of internet and the usage of library among undergraduates in the faculties of Humanities, Social Sciences, Science and Commerce & Management in the University of Kelaniya. Also, the research attempts to determine the factors of enthusiasm or the disinterest in the students in using library and Internet. All the undergraduate students in the University (8440 students at the time of the study) were taken as the population of the study and the sample of 15% was selected out of the population using stratified sampling method. A total of 1266 questionnaires were distributed among undergraduates of the above mentioned faculties. The qualitative data were analyzed using Descriptive Statistical Method. Findings, of the study indicated that undergraduate students of the faculties of Humanities, Social Sciences, Science and Commerce & Management use both the library and the internet to fulfill their information needs. But, the students in the faculty of Science and Commerce & Management use the internet sources more than the library. The undergraduates in the faculties of Humanities and Social Sciences frequently use the university library than the internet. Although, majority agreed that the internet is the most preferred source of information they have no an adequate awareness about the available internet resources in the E-library of the University of Kelaniya.

Keywords: university libraries, University of Kelaniya, online resources, undergraduates in Sri Lanka

Procedia PDF Downloads 237

Authors: Shola Haruna Adeosun, Ajoke F. Adebiyi

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Business organizations in Nigeria have failed to realize the role of a good corporate image policy in business dealings. This is probably because they do not understand the concept of corporate image and the necessary tools for promoting it. Corporate image goes beyond attractive products or rendering quality services, advertising and paying good salary. It pervades every aspect of business concern, from the least worker’s personality to the dealings within the organization and with the large society. In the face of the societal dynamics, especially in the business world, brought by technology, companies are faced with stiff competition that maintaining a competitive edge requires aggressive strategies. One of such strategies in effective corporate image management is promotion. This study investigates the strategies that could be deployed in order to build and promote the effective corporate image, as well as enhance profit margins of an organization, using Phinomar Nigeria Limited, Ngwo as case study. The study reveals that Phinomar Nigeria Limited has a laid down corporate image policy but not effectively managed; and that, strategies deployed to promote corporate image are limited; while responses to Phinomar products are fairly high. It, therefore, suggests profitable products but requires periodical improvement in the employee's welfare and work environment; as well as, the need to increase the scope of Phinomar’s social responsibility.

Keywords: corporate image, effective, enhancing, management, profitability, strategy

Procedia PDF Downloads 309

Authors: N. Ali, S. Nakayama, H. Yamaguchi, M. Nadeem

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Traffic congestion is a matter of prime concern in developing countries. This can be primarily attributed due to poor design practices and biased allocation of resources based on political will neglecting the technical feasibilities in infrastructure design. During the last decade, Lahore has expanded at an unprecedented rate as compared to surrounding cities due to more funding and resource allocation by the previous governments. As a result of this, people from surrounding cities and areas moved to the Lahore city for better opportunities and quality of life. This migration inflow inherited the city with an increased population yielding the inefficiency of the existing infrastructure to accommodate enhanced traffic demand. This leads to traffic congestion on major arterial roads of the city. In this simulation study, a major arterial road was selected to evaluate the performance of the five intersections by changing the geometry of the intersections or signal control type. Simulations were done in two software; Highway Capacity Software (HCS) and Synchro Studio and Sim Traffic Software. Some of the traffic management strategies that were employed include actuated-signal control, semi-actuated signal control, fixed-time signal control, and roundabout. The most feasible solution for each intersection in the above-mentioned traffic management techniques was selected with the least delay time (seconds) and improved Level of Service (LOS). The results showed that Jinnah Hospital Intersection and Akbar Chowk Intersection improved 92.97% and 92.67% in delay time reduction, respectively. These results can be used by traffic planners and policy makers for decision making for the expansion of these intersections keeping in mind the traffic demand in future years.

Keywords: traffic congestion, traffic simulation, traffic management, congestion problems

Procedia PDF Downloads 468

Authors: Minh Huynh, Aaron Heuser, Luke Patterson, Chris Zhang, Mason Miller, Daniel Wang, Sandeep Shetty, Mike Trinh, Abigail Miller, Adaeze Enekwechi, Tenille Daniels, Lu Huynh

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Machine learning and text analytics have been used to analyze child abuse, cyberbullying, domestic abuse and domestic violence, and hate speech. However, to the authors’ knowledge, no research to date has used these methods to study elder abuse in nursing homes or skilled nursing facilities from field inspection reports. We used machine learning and text analytics methods to analyze 356,000 inspection reports, which have been extracted from CMS Form-2567 field inspections of US nursing homes and skilled nursing facilities between 2016 and 2021. Our algorithm detected occurrences of the various types of abuse, including physical abuse, psychological abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, and passive and active neglect. For example, to detect physical abuse, our algorithms search for combinations or phrases and words suggesting willful infliction of damage (hitting, pinching or burning, tethering, tying), or consciously ignoring an emergency. To detect occurrences of elder neglect, our algorithm looks for combinations or phrases and words suggesting both passive neglect (neglecting vital needs, allowing malnutrition and dehydration, allowing decubiti, deprivation of information, limitation of freedom, negligence toward safety precautions) and active neglect (intimidation and name-calling, tying the victim up to prevent falls without consent, consciously ignoring an emergency, not calling a physician in spite of indication, stopping important treatments, failure to provide essential care, deprivation of nourishment, leaving a person alone for an inappropriate amount of time, excessive demands in a situation of care). We further compare the prevalence of abuse before and after Covid-19 related restrictions on nursing home visits. We also identified the facilities with the most number of cases of abuse with no abuse facilities within a 25-mile radius as most likely candidates for additional inspections. We also built an interactive display to visualize the location of these facilities.

Keywords: machine learning, text analytics, elder abuse, elder neglect, nursing home abuse

Procedia PDF Downloads 140

Authors: Johannes Atug, Andreas Radke, Mitchell Tseng, Gunther Reinhart

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In modern supply chains, large numbers of SKU (Stock-Keeping-Unit) need to be timely managed, and any delays in noticing disruptions of items often limit the ability to defer the impact on customer order fulfillment. However, in supply chains of IoT-connected enterprises, the ERP (Enterprise-Resource-Planning), the MES (Manufacturing-Execution-System) and the SCADA (Supervisory-Control-and-Data-Acquisition) systems generate large amounts of data, which generally glean much earlier notice of deviations in the business process steps. That is, analyzing these streams of data with process mining techniques allows the monitoring of the supply chain business processes and thus identification of items that deviate from the standard order fulfillment process. In this paper, a framework to enable event-based SCM (Supply-Chain-Management) processes including an overview of core enabling technologies are presented, which is based on the RAMI (Reference-Architecture-Model for Industrie 4.0) architecture. The application of this framework in the industry is presented, and implications for SCM in industry 4.0 and further research are outlined.

Keywords: cyber-physical production systems, event-based monitoring, supply chain management, RAMI (Reference-Architecture-Model for Industrie 4.0)

Procedia PDF Downloads 234

Authors: Kirstin Griffin

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During a period of increased anxiety and stress, communication became the essential tool to help the public stay informed and feel prepared during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, certain groups of patients were not feeling as reassured. The news and media blasted the message that patients with diabetes were “high-risk" in regards to contracting the Covid-19 infection. Routine clinics were being cancelled, GP practices were closing their doors, and patients with type 1 diabetes were understandably scared. The influx of calls to diabetes specialists nurses from concerned patients highlighted the need for better and more specialised information. An Application specifically for patients with type 1 diabetes was created to deliver this information, and it proved to be the essential communication tool that was desperately needed. The Application for patients with type 1 diabetes aimed to deliver specialist information to patients in regards to their diagnosis, management, and ongoing follow-up commitments. The Application gives practical advice on multiple areas of diabetes management, including sick-day rules and diabetic emergencies, as well as up-to-date information on technology, including setting up Libre devices and downloading glucose meters to facilitate attending virtual clinics. Delivery of this information in an easy-to-understand and comprehensive way is intended to improve patient engagement with diabetes services and ultimately empower patients in the control of their own disease. The application also offers a messaging service to allow the diabetes team to send out alerts to patient groups on specific issues, such as changes to clinics, or respond to recent news updates regarding Covid-19. The App was launched in NHS Fife in June 2020 and has amassed 800 active users so far. There is growing engagement with the App since its launch, with over 1000 user interactions in the last month alone. Feedback shows that 100% of users like the App and have found it useful in the management of their diabetes. The App has proven to be an essential tool in communication with one of the most vulnerable groups during the Covid-19 pandemic, and its ongoing development will continue to increase patient engagement and improve glycaemic control for patients with type 1 diabetes. The future of chronic disease management should involve digital solutions such as apps to further empower patients in their healthcare.

Keywords: diabetes, endocrinology, digital healthcare, medical apps

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Authors: Wei-Kuang Liu, Ya-Hsu Chiang

Abstract:

In the coming of an aging society, the issues of living quality, health care, and social security for the elderly have been gradually taken seriously. In order to maintain favorable living condition, urban societies are also facing the challenge of disasters caused by extreme climate change. However, in the practice of disaster prevention, elderly people are always weak due to their physiological conditions. That is to say, in the planning of resilient urbanism, the aging society is relatively in need of more care. Thus, this research aims to map areas where have high-density elderly population and fragile environmental condition in Taiwan, and to understand the actual situation of disaster prevention management in these areas, so as to provide suggestions for the development of intellectual resilient urban management. The research takes the cities of Taoyuan and Taichung as examples for explorations. According to GIS mapping of areas with high aging index, high-density population and high flooding potential, the communities of Sihai and Fuyuan in Taoyuan and the communities of Taichang and Nanshih in Taichung are highlighted. In these communities, it can be found that there are more elderly population and less labor population with high-density living condition. In addition, they are located in the areas where they have experienced severe flooding in the recent past. Based on a series of interviews with community organizations, there is only one community out of the four using flood information mobile app and Line messages for the management of disaster prevention, and the others still rely on the traditional approaches that manage the works of disaster prevention by their community security patrol teams and community volunteers. The interview outcome shows that most elderly people are not interested in learning the use of intellectual devices. Therefore, this research suggests to keep doing the GIS mapping of areas with high aging index, high-density population and high flooding potential for grasping the high-risk communities and to help develop smart monitor and forecast systems for disaster prevention practice in these areas. Based on case-study explorations, the research also advises that it is important to develop easy-to-use bottom-up and two-way immediate communication mechanism for the management of aging society’s disaster prevention.

Keywords: aging society, disaster prevention, GIS, resilient, Taiwan

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Authors: Keneilwe Maremi, Marlien Herselman, Adele Botha

Abstract:

The main purpose and focus of this paper are to determine the Interoperability Maturity Models to consider when using School Management Systems (SMS). The importance of this is to inform and help schools with knowing which Interoperability Maturity Model is best suited for their SMS. To address the purpose, this paper will apply a scoping review to ensure that all aspects are provided. The scoping review will include papers written from 2012-2019 and a comparison of the different types of Interoperability Maturity Models will be discussed in detail, which includes the background information, the levels of interoperability, and area for consideration in each Maturity Model. The literature was obtained from the following databases: IEEE Xplore and Scopus, the following search engines were used: Harzings, and Google Scholar. The topic of the paper was used as a search term for the literature and the term ‘Interoperability Maturity Models’ was used as a keyword. The data were analyzed in terms of the definition of Interoperability, Interoperability Maturity Models, and levels of interoperability. The results provide a table that shows the focus area of concern for each Maturity Model (based on the scoping review where only 24 papers were found to be best suited for the paper out of 740 publications initially identified in the field). This resulted in the most discussed Interoperability Maturity Model for consideration (Information Systems Interoperability Maturity Model (ISIMM) and Organizational Interoperability Maturity Model for C2 (OIM)).

Keywords: interoperability, interoperability maturity model, school management system, scoping review

Procedia PDF Downloads 204

Authors: Reyhaneh Saeedi

Abstract:

Iran is one of the regions which are most prone for earthquakes annually having a large number of financial and mortality and financial losses. Every year around the world, a large number of people lose their home and life due to natural disasters such as earthquakes. It is necessary to provide and specify some suitable places for settling the homeless people before the occurrence of the earthquake, one of the most important factors in crisis planning and management. Some of the natural disasters can be Modeling and shown by Geospatial Information System (GIS). By using GIS, it would be possible to manage the spatial data and reach several goals by making use of the analyses existing in it. GIS has a determining role in disaster management because it can determine the best places for temporary resettling after such a disaster. In this research QuantumGIS software is used that It is an OpenSource software so that easy to access codes and It is also free. In this system, AHP method is used as decision model and to locate the best places for temporary resettling, is done based on the related organizations criteria with their weights and buffers. Also in this research are made the buffer layers of criteria and change them to the raster layers. Later on, the raster layers are multiplied on desired weights then, the results are added together. Eventually, there are suitable places for resettling of victims by desired criteria by different colors with their optimum rate in QuantumGIS platform.

Keywords: disaster management, temporary resettlement, earthquake, QuantumGIS

Procedia PDF Downloads 395

Authors: Chukwuka Justus Iwegbu

Abstract:

Background: A major concern facing the world is providing senior citizens, individuals with disabilities, and other vulnerable groups with high-quality care. This issue is more serious in Nigeria's North Eastern area, where the burden of disease and disability is heavy, and access to care is constrained. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring the roles, challenges and support needs of caregivers, care home management, funding and administration in challenged communities in North Eastern Nigeria. The study will also provide a comprehensive understanding of the current situation and identify opportunities for improving the quality of care and support for caregivers and care recipients in these communities. Methods: A mixed-methods design, including both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods, will be used, and it will be guided by the stress process model of caregiving. The qualitative stage approach will comprise a survey, In-depth interviews, observations, and focus group discussion and the quantitative analysis will be used in order to comprehend the variations between caregiver's roles and care home management. A review of relevant documents, such as care home policies and funding reports, would be used to gather quantitative data on the administrative and financial aspects of care. The data collected will be analyzed using both descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. A sample size of around 200-300 participants, including caregivers, care recipients, care home managers and administrators, policymakers and health care providers, would be recruited. Findings: The study revealed that caregivers in challenged communities in North Eastern Nigeria face significant challenges, including lack of training and support, limited access to funding and resources, and high levels of burnout. Care home management and administration were also found to be inadequate, with a lack of clear policies and procedures and limited oversight and accountability. Conclusion: There is a need for increased investment in training and support for caregivers, as well as a need for improved care home management and administration in challenged communities in North Eastern Nigeria. It also highlights the importance of involving community members in decision-making and planning processes related to care homes and services. The study would contribute to the existing body of knowledge by providing a detailed understanding of the challenges faced by caregivers, care home managers and administrators.

Keywords: caregivers, care home management, funding, administration, challenge communities, North Eastern Nigeria

Procedia PDF Downloads 101

Authors: Ahmed Al-Adaileh

Abstract:

Renewable energy sources, domestic storage systems, controllable loads and machine learning technologies will be key components of future smart homes management systems. An energy management scheme that uses a Deep Learning (DL) approach to support the smart home management systems, which consist of a standalone photovoltaic system, storage unit, heating ventilation air-conditioning system and a set of conventional and smart appliances, is presented. The objective of the proposed scheme is to apply DL-based machine learning to predict various running parameters within a smart home's environment to achieve maximum comfort levels for occupants, reduced electricity bills, and less dependency on the public grid. The problem is using Reinforcement learning, where decisions are taken based on applying the Continuous-time Markov Decision Process. The main contribution of this research is the proposed framework that applies DL to enhance the system's supervised dataset to offer unlimited chances to effectively support smart home systems. A case study involving a set of conventional and smart appliances with dedicated processing units in an inhabited building can demonstrate the validity of the proposed framework. A visualization graph can show "before" and "after" results.

Keywords: smart homes systems, machine learning, deep learning, Markov Decision Process

Procedia PDF Downloads 190