Search results for: concerns theory

Authors: Renu Pattanshetty

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The aim of this narrative review is to highlight the impact of menopause on osteoporosis and weight gain. The review also aims to summarize physiotherapeutic strategies to combat the same.A thorough literature search was conducted using electronic databases like MEDline, PUBmed, Highwire Press, PUBmed Central for English language studies that included search terms like menopause, osteoporosis, obesity, weight gain, exercises, physical activity, physiotherapy strategies from the year 2000 till date. Out of 157 studies that included metanalyses, critical reviews and randomized clinical trials, a total of 84 were selected that met the inclusion criteria. Prevalence of obesity is increasing world - wide and is reaching epidemic proportions even in the menopausal women. Prevalence of abdominal obesity is almost double than that general obesity with rates in the US with 65.5% in women ages 40-59 years and 73.8 in women aged 60 years or more. Physical activities and exercises play a vital role in prevention and treatment of osteoporosis and weight gain related to menopause that aim to boost the general well-being and any symptoms brought about by natural body changes. Endurance exercises lasting about 30 minutes /day for 5 days/ week has shown to decrease weight and prevent weight gain. In addition, strength training with at least 8 exercises of 8-12 repetitions working for whole body and for large muscle groups has shown to result positive outcomes. Hot flashes can be combatted through yogic breathing and relaxation exercises. Prevention of fall strategies and resistance training are key to treat diagnosed cases of osteoporosis related to menopause. One to three sets with five to eight repetitions of four to six weight bearing exercises have shown positive results. Menopause marks an important time for women to evaluate their risk of obesity and osteoporosis. It is known fact that bone benefit from exercises are lost when training is stopped, hence, practicing bone smart habits and strict adherence to recommended physical activity programs are recommended which are enjoyable, safe and effective.

Keywords: menopause, osteoporosis, obesity, weight gain, exercises, physical activity, physiotherapy strategies

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Authors: Shimhanda M. N., Mogomotsi P. K., Thakadu O. T., Rutina L. P.

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Wildlife tourism (WT) in communal conservancies has the potential to contribute significantly to sustainable rural development. However, understanding local perceptions, promoting participation, and addressing stakeholder concerns are all required for sustainability. This study looks at stakeholder perceptions of WT in conservancies near protected areas in Namibia's Zambezi region, specifically the Mudumu North Complex. A mixed-methods approach was employed to collect data from 356 households using stratified sampling. Qualitative data was gathered through six focus group discussions and 22 key informant interviews. Quantitative analysis, using descriptive statistics and Spearman correlation, investigated socio-demographic influences on WT perceptions, while qualitative data were subjected to thematic analysis to identify key themes. Results revealed high awareness and generally positive perceptions of WT, particularly in Mashi Conservancy, which benefits from diverse tourism activities and joint ventures with lodges. Kwandu and Kyaramacan, which rely heavily on consumptive tourism, had lower awareness and perceived benefits. Human-wildlife conflict emerged as a persistent issue, especially in Kwandu and Mashi, where crop damage and wildlife interference undermined community support for WT. Younger, more educated, and employed individuals held more positive attitudes towards WT. The study highlights the importance of recognising community heterogeneity and tailoring WT strategies to meet diverse needs, including HWC mitigation. Policy implications include increasing community engagement, ensuring equitable benefit distribution, and implementing inclusive tourism strategies that promote long-term sustainability. These findings are critical for developing long-term WT models that address local challenges, encourage community participation, and contribute to socioeconomic development and conservation goals.

Keywords: sustainable tourism, stakeholder perceptions, community involvement, socio-economic development

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Authors: Xin-Hua Zhao

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In recent years, the growth rate of social responsibility reports disclosed by Chinese corporations has grown rapidly. The economic effects of the growing corporate social responsibility reports have become a hot topic. The article takes the chemical listed engineering corporations that disclose social responsibility reports in China as a sample, and based on the information asymmetry theory, examines the economic effect generated by corporate social responsibility disclosure with the method of ordinary least squares. The research is conducted from the perspective of analysts’ earnings forecasts and studies the impact of corporate social responsibility information disclosure on improving the accuracy of analysts' earnings forecasts. The results show that there is a statistically significant negative correlation between corporate social responsibility disclosure index and analysts’ earnings forecast error. The conclusions confirm that enterprises can reduce the asymmetry of social and environmental information by disclosing social responsibility reports, and thus improve the accuracy of analysts’ earnings forecasts. It can promote the effective allocation of resources in the market.

Keywords: analysts' earnings forecasts, corporate social responsibility disclosure, economic effect, information asymmetry

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Authors: Mohammad Abu-Taleb

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The final report of the Royal Commission into Australian financial services misconduct, released in February 2019, has had a significant impact on the financial advice industry. The recommendations released in the Commissioner’s final report include changes to ongoing fee arrangements, a new disciplinary system for financial advisers, and mandatory reporting of compliance concerns. This thesis aims to explore the impact of the Royal Commission’s recommendations on the operating model of financial advice firms in terms of advice products, processes, delivery models, and customer segments. Also, this research seeks to investigate whether the Royal Commission’s outcome has accelerated the use of enhanced technology solutions within the operating model of financial advice firms. And to identify the key challenges confronting financial advice firms whilst implementing the Commissioner’s recommendations across their operating models. In order to achieve the objectives of this thesis, a qualitative research design has been adopted through semi-structured in-depth interviews with 24 financial advisers and managers who are engaged in the operation of financial advice services. The study used the thematic analysis approach to interpret the qualitative data collected from the interviews. The findings of this thesis reveal that customer-centric operating models will become more prominent across the financial advice industry in response to the Commissioner’s final report. And the Royal Commission’s outcome has accelerated the use of advice technology solutions within the operating model of financial advice firms. In addition, financial advice firms have started more than before using simpler and more automated web-based advice services, which enable financial advisers to provide simple advice in a greater scale, and also to accelerate the use of robo-advice models and digital delivery to mass customers in the long term. Furthermore, the study identifies process and technology changes as, long with technical and interpersonal skills development, as the key challenges encountered financial advice firms whilst implementing the Commissioner’s recommendations across their operating models.

Keywords: hayne royal commission, financial planning advice, operating model, advice products, advice processes, delivery models, customer segments, digital advice solutions

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Authors: Hamidreza Bagheri, Alireza Shariati

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There are many difficulties in the purification of raw components and products. However, researchers are seeking better ways for purification. One of the recent methods is extraction using supercritical fluids. In this study, the phase equilibria of benzoic acid-supercritical carbon dioxide system were investigated. Regarding the phase equilibria of this system, the modeling of solid-supercritical fluid behavior was performed using the Perturbed-Chain Statistical Association Fluid Theory (PC-SAFT) and Peng-Robinson equations of state (PR EoS). For this purpose, five PC-SAFT EoS parameters for pure benzoic acid were obtained using its experimental vapor pressure. Benzoic acid has association sites and the behavior of the benzoic acid-supercritical fluid system was well-predicted using both equations of state, while the binary interaction parameter values for PR EoS were negative. Genetic algorithm, which is one of the most accurate global optimization algorithms, was also used to optimize the pure benzoic acid parameters and the binary interaction parameters. The AAD% value for the PC-SAFT EoS, were 0.22 for the carbon dioxide-benzoic acid system.

Keywords: supercritical fluids, solubility, solid, PC-SAFT EoS, genetic algorithm

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Authors: Jong-Hyo Park, Eunyoung Choi, Jae-Yeon Lim, Seon-Suk Lee, Yeong-Rong Koo, Ji-Ung Kwon, Kyung-Sung Kim, Jong-Ik Lee, Juhan Park, Hyun-Kyu Lee, Won-Kyoung Oh, Jisang Lee, Jiwon Choe

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Due to COVID-19, cyber violence among youths has soared as they spend more time online than before. In contrast to the deepening concerns, measurement tools that can assess the vulnerability of cyber violence in individual youths still need to be supplemented. The measurement tools lack consideration of various factors related to cyber violence among youths. Most of the tools are self-report questionnaires, and these adolescents' self-report questionnaire forms can underestimate the harmful behavior and overestimate the damage experience. Therefore, this study aims to develop a multi-report measurement tool for youths that can reliably measure individuals' ecological factors related to cyber violence. The literature review explored factors related to cyber violence, and the questions were constructed. The face validity of the questions was confirmed by conducting focus group interviews. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (N=671) were also conducted for statistical validation. This study developed a multi-report measurement tool for cyber violence with 161 questions, consisting of six domains: online behavior, cyber violence awareness, victimization-perpetration-witness experience, coping efficacy (individuals, peers, teachers, and parents), psychological characteristics, and pro-social capabilities. In addition to self-report from a youth respondent, this measurement tool includes peers, teachers, and parents reporting for the respondent. It is possible to reliably measure the ecological factors of individual youths who are vulnerable or highly resistant to cyber violence. In schools, teachers could refer to the measurement results for guiding students, better understanding their cyber violence conditions, and assessing their pro-social capabilities. With the measurement results, teachers and police officers could detect perpetrators or victims and intervene immediately. In addition, this measurement tool could analyze the effects of the prevention and intervention programs for cyber violence and draw appropriate suggestions.

Keywords: adolescents, cyber violence, cyber violence measurement tool, measurement tool, multi-report measurement tool, youths

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Authors: Abhijith Asok

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This paper presents a generalized approach for the simple linear data transformation, Y=bX, through an integration of multidimensional coordinate geometry, vector space theory and polygonal geometry. The scaling is performed by adding an additional ’Dummy Dimension’ to the n-dimensional data, which helps plot two dimensional component-wise straight lines on pairs of dimensions. The end result is a set of scaled extensions of observations in any of the 2n spatial divisions, where n is the total number of applicable dimensions/dataset variables, created by shifting the n-dimensional plane along the ’Dummy Axis’. The derived scaling factor was found to be dependent on the coordinates of the common point of origin for diverging straight lines and the plane of extension, chosen on and perpendicular to the ’Dummy Axis’, respectively. This result indicates the geometrical interpretation of a linear data transformation and hence, opportunities for a more informed choice of the factor ’b’, based on a better choice of these coordinate values. The paper follows on to identify the effect of this transformation on certain popular distance metrics, wherein for many, the distance metric retained the same scaling factor as that of the features.

Keywords: data transformation, dummy dimension, linear transformation, scaling

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Authors: S. Nickolas, Shobha K.

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The treatment of incomplete data is an important step in the data pre-processing. Missing values creates a noisy environment in all applications and it is an unavoidable problem in big data management and analysis. Numerous techniques likes discarding rows with missing values, mean imputation, expectation maximization, neural networks with evolutionary algorithms or optimized techniques and hot deck imputation have been introduced by researchers for handling missing data. Among these, imputation techniques plays a positive role in filling missing values when it is necessary to use all records in the data and not to discard records with missing values. In this paper we propose a novel artificial neural network based clustering algorithm, Adaptive Resonance Theory-2(ART2) for imputation of missing values in mixed attribute data sets. The process of ART2 can recognize learned models fast and be adapted to new objects rapidly. It carries out model-based clustering by using competitive learning and self-steady mechanism in dynamic environment without supervision. The proposed approach not only imputes the missing values but also provides information about handling the outliers.

Keywords: ART2, data imputation, clustering, missing data, neural network, pre-processing

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Authors: Abigail Amoako Kayser, Brian Kayser

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This study aimed to examine Ghana's 6th-grade Basic School history curriculum to determine how Ghanaian history is taught. We used qualitative methods and document analysis. The document analysis served two primary purposes: (1) To gain insight into what the curriculum materials covered and from whom's perspectives, and (2) To triangulate with teacher interview data. Documents obtained included: (1) Textbooks used by 6th-grade students, (2) Teacher pacing guide provided by the Department of Education in Ghana, and (3) Student work samples. This study was guided through Post-colonial theory and criticisms to explore the remnants of colonial power and hegemony that persist in history curricula used in public schools in Ghana. We also applied African Feminist Thought and Black Feminist Thought to unpack the extent to which issues of patriarchy, race, traditions, underdevelopment, and sexuality impact how we see the experiences of people on the continent. The findings indicated that the remnant of colonial rule persisted in the contents of the history curriculum, and the atrocities of slavery were overlooked or eliminated from the curriculum. The findings also indicated that Ghana's history centered on men's experiences.

Keywords: history, curriculum, decolonialization, culturally relevant pedagogy

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Authors: Altaf Hussain, Norashidah Hashim

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An important aspect needed for promoting entrepreneurship is to encourage individuals for becoming entrepreneurs by endowing them with the required skills and knowledge for identifying the opportunities and turning these opportunities into successful ventures. Literature has recognized entrepreneurship education has significant role in motivating individual’s intention to become an entrepreneurs. Developing upon the insights based on dynamic view of human capital theory, this conceptual paper explores the role of entrepreneurial alertness in a linkage between entrepreneurial education and intentions to become an entrepreneur. Prior knowledge which can be acquired through entrepreneurship education and or experience is an antecedent for developing specific human capital of alertness for identifying the opportunities which impact on individual intentions. This suggests cause & effect relationship between entrepreneurship education and intentions through entrepreneurial alertness by impacting on the attitude, social norms and perceived behavioral control of an individual which can motivate individual intention of becoming an entrepreneur. Thus, alertness skill acquired through entrepreneurship education for identifying the profitable opportunities mediates the relationship between entrepreneurship education and intentions.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education, alertness, intentions, human capital

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Authors: Wafa Nouari

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This study compares four novels written in English by Algerian writers: Donkey Heart Monkey Mind by Djaffar Chetouane, Pebble in the River by Noufel Bouzeboudja, Sophia in the White City by Belkacem Mezghouchene, and The Inner Light of Darkness by Iheb Kharab. It applies comparative research methods and cultural studies as the literary theory to analyze how these novels depict Algeria’s culture, history, and identity through their genre, style, tone, perspective, and structure. It identifies some common themes shared by them, such as the quest for freedom and dignity in a context of oppression and colonialism and the use of storytelling, imagination, and creativity as coping mechanisms for trauma and adversity. It also highlights their differences in terms of style, genre, setting, period, and perspectives. It concludes that these novels offer rich and diverse insights into Algeria and its multifaceted reality. It also discusses some limitations and challenges related to Algerian literature in English and suggests some directions for future research.

Keywords: Algeri an literature in English, comparative research methods, cultural studies, diversity and complexity

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Authors: Mariana T. Teixeira, Joana P. Luz

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This paper is based on assumptions of psycholinguistics and investigates the processing of ambiguous sentences in Brazilian Portuguese. Specifically, it aims to verify if there is a difference in processing time between sentences with lexical ambiguity and sentences with structural (or syntactic) ambiguity. We hypothesize, based on the Garden Path Theory, that the two types of ambiguity entail different cognitive efforts, since sentences with structural ambiguity require that two structures be processed, whereas ambiguous phrases whose root of ambiguity is in a word require the processing of a single structure, which admits a variation of punctual meaning, within the scope of only one lexical item. In order to test this hypothesis, 25 undergraduate students, whose average age was 27.66 years, native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, performed a self-monitoring reading task of ambiguous sentences, which had lexical and structural ambiguity. The results suggest that unambiguous sentence processing is faster than ambiguous sentence processing, whether it has lexical or structural ambiguity. In addition, participants presented a mean reading time greater for sentences with syntactic ambiguity than for sentences with lexical ambiguity, evidencing a greater cognitive effort in sentence processing with structural ambiguity.

Keywords: Brazilian portuguese, lexical ambiguity, sentence processing, syntactic ambiguity

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Authors: Laurie Prange-Martin, Romeo Turcan, Norman Fraser

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The aim of this study is to identify the conditions required and describe the process of emergence for a new economic sector created from new or established businesses. A systematic literature review of English-language studies published from 1983 to 2016 was conducted using the following databases: ABI/INFORM Complete; Business Source Premiere; Google Scholar; Scopus; and Web of Science. The two main terms of business sector and emergence were used in the systematic literature search, along with another seventeen synonyms for each these main terms. From the search results, 65 publications met the requirements of an empirical study discussing and reporting the conditions of new sector emergence. A meta-analysis of the literature examined suggest that there are six favourable conditions and five key individuals or groups required for new sector emergence. In addition, the results from the meta-analysis showed that there are eighteen theories used in the literature to explain the phenomenon of new sector emergence, which can be grouped in three study disciplines. With such diversity in theoretical frameworks used in the 65 empirical studies, the authors of this paper propose the development of a new theory of sector emergence.

Keywords: economic geography, new sector emergence, economic diversification, regional economies

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Authors: Dawood Al Chanti, Alice Caplier

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Sparse representations of signals have received a great deal of attention in recent years. In this paper, the interest of using sparse representation as a mean for performing sparse discriminative analysis between spontaneous facial expressions is demonstrated. An automatic facial expressions recognition system is presented. It uses a KSVD-SVM approach which is made of three main stages: A pre-processing and feature extraction stage, which solves the problem of shared subspace distribution based on the random projection theory, to obtain low dimensional discriminative and reconstructive features; A dictionary learning and sparse coding stage, which uses the KSVD model to learn discriminative under or over dictionaries for sparse coding; Finally a classification stage, which uses a SVM classifier for facial expressions recognition. Our main concern is to be able to recognize non-basic affective states and non-acted expressions. Extensive experiments on the JAFFE static acted facial expressions database but also on the DynEmo dynamic spontaneous facial expressions database exhibit very good recognition rates.

Keywords: dictionary learning, random projection, pose and spontaneous facial expression, sparse representation

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Authors: Javad Khazaei, Rick Blum

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Distributed control is an efficient and flexible approach for coordination of multi-agent systems. One of the main challenges in designing a distributed controller is identifying the governing dynamics of the dynamical systems. Data-driven system identification is currently undergoing a revolution. With the availability of high-fidelity measurements and historical data, model-free identification of dynamical systems can facilitate the control design without tedious modeling of high-dimensional and/or nonlinear systems. This paper develops a distributed control design using consensus theory for linear and nonlinear dynamical systems using sparse identification of system dynamics. Compared with existing consensus designs that heavily rely on knowing the detailed system dynamics, the proposed model-free design can accurately capture the dynamics of the system with available measurements and input data and provide guaranteed performance in consensus and tracking problems. Heterogeneous damped oscillators are chosen as examples of dynamical system for validation purposes.

Keywords: consensus tracking, distributed control, model-free control, sparse identification of dynamical systems

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Authors: Zahid Ullah, Atlas Khan

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The presented research is dedicated to an extensive examination of the regularity properties associated with a specific class of equations, namely extremely degenerate elliptic equations. This study holds significance in unraveling the complexities inherent in these equations and understanding the smoothness of their solutions. The focus is on analyzing the regularity of results, aiming to contribute to the broader field of mathematical theory. By delving into the intricacies of extremely degenerate elliptic equations, the research seeks to advance our understanding beyond conventional analyses, addressing challenges posed by degeneracy and pushing the boundaries of classical analytical methods. The motivation for this exploration lies in the practical applicability of mathematical models, particularly in real-world scenarios where physical phenomena exhibit characteristics that challenge traditional mathematical modeling. The research aspires to fill gaps in the current understanding of regularity properties within solutions to extremely degenerate elliptic equations, ultimately contributing to both theoretical foundations and practical applications in diverse scientific fields.

Keywords: investigating smoothness, extremely degenerate elliptic equations, regularity properties, mathematical analysis, complexity solutions

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Authors: Sibo Lu, Zhongkai Qian, Haotian Zhang

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This article examines the phenomenon of micro-sovereignty in the context of property management and its implications for biopolitics and urban governance in mainland China. It explores the transformation of urban spaces into privatized communities managed by property companies, leading to the reterritorialization of urban areas and the segmentation of urban populations. Drawing on legal frameworks, we analyze how commercial real estate development and property management have reshaped the urban landscape, placing nearly all urban residents within service areas of property management firms, thus establishing micro-sovereign entities that exercise control over residential spaces. Through a critique of property management's sovereign effects on social organization and the exploration of autonomous, democratic alternatives in community governance, this article contributes to the broader discourse on sovereignty, governance, and resistance within the urban milieu of contemporary China. It underscores the urgent need for more democratic forms of community management that can transcend the capitalist logic of property management companies and foster genuine participatory governance at the grassroots level.

Keywords: biopolitic, critical theory, political sociology, political philosophy

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Authors: Julie De Pril, Cécile Godfroid

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Nowadays, achieving double bottom line has become a widely recognized objective for microfinance institutions (MFIs). They would like to be financially sustainable or even profitable while continuing to focus on their social mission. In order to rise their financial performance, MFIs tend to grant financial bonuses to loan officers so that they increase their performance and efficiency. However, as argued by motivation crowding theory, monetary rewards may not have only positive effects but can also erode intrinsic motivation. Since MFIs pursue social objectives in addition to their financial ones, their employees’ intrinsic motivations may include the willingness to help others, like in many non-profit organizations. This is called pro-social motivation in the psychology literature. Particularly, this type of motivation should be highly reflected among microfinance loan officers as a part of their role consists in improving clients’ welfare. Therefore, it seems to be crucial for MFIs to find an equilibrium between the efficiency benefits obtained thanks to the granting of financial incentives and the deterioration of social performance that may result from the reduction of the loan officers’ pro-social motivation. This paper attempts to suggest, with a mathematical model, an optimal incentive scheme MFIs could rely on.

Keywords: loan officers, microfinance, prosocial motivation, rewards

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Authors: Redouane Tlemsani, Abdelkader Benyettou

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Work is in on line Arabic character recognition and the principal motivation is to study the Arab manuscript with on line technology. This system is a Markovian system, which one can see as like a Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN). One of the major interests of these systems resides in the complete models training (topology and parameters) starting from training data. Our approach is based on the dynamic Bayesian Networks formalism. The DBNs theory is a Bayesians networks generalization to the dynamic processes. Among our objective, amounts finding better parameters, which represent the links (dependences) between dynamic network variables. In applications in pattern recognition, one will carry out the fixing of the structure, which obliges us to admit some strong assumptions (for example independence between some variables). Our application will relate to the Arabic isolated characters on line recognition using our laboratory database: NOUN. A neural tester proposed for DBN external optimization. The DBN scores and DBN mixed are respectively 70.24% and 62.50%, which lets predict their further development; other approaches taking account time were considered and implemented until obtaining a significant recognition rate 94.79%.

Keywords: Arabic on line character recognition, dynamic Bayesian network, pattern recognition, computer vision

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Authors: Phoenix W. Y. Lam

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As one of the most important service-oriented industries in contemporary society, tourism has increasingly seen the influence of the Internet on all aspects of travelling. Travellers nowadays habitually research online before making travel-related decisions. One platform on which such research is conducted is destination forums. The emergence of such online destination forums in the last decade has allowed tourists to share their travel experiences quickly and easily with a large number of online users around the world. As such, these destination forums also provide invaluable data for tourism bodies to better understand travellers’ views on their destinations. Collecting posts from the Hong Kong travel forum on the world’s largest travel website TripAdvisor®, the present study identifies the top questions asked by TripAdvisor users about Hong Kong through a corpus-based discourse analytic approach. Based on questions posted on the forum and their associated meta-data gathered in a one-year period, the study examines the top questions asked by travellers around the world to identify the key geographical locations in which users have shown the greatest interest in the city. Questions raised by travellers from different geographical locations are also compared to see if traveller communities by location vary in terms of their areas of interest. This analysis involves the study of key words and concordance of frequently-occurring items and a close reading of representative examples in context. Findings from the present study show that travellers who asked the most questions about Hong Kong are from North America and Asia, and that travellers from different locations have different concerns and interests, which are clearly reflected in the language of the questions asked on the travel forum. These findings can therefore provide tourism organisations with useful information about the key markets that should be targeted for promotional purposes, and can also allow such organisations to design advertising campaigns which better address the specific needs of such markets. The present study thus demonstrates the value of applying linguistic knowledge and methodologies to the domain of tourism to address practical issues.

Keywords: corpus, hong kong, online travel forum, tourism, TripAdvisor

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Authors: Samhita Mummadi, Sree Divya Nagalli, Harshini Vemuri, Saketh Charan Nakka, Sumesh K. J.

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One of the most significant challenges faced by people in today’s digital era is an alarming increase in fraudulent activities on online platforms. The fascination with online shopping to avoid long queues in shopping malls, the availability of a variety of products, and home delivery of goods have paved the way for a rapid increase in vast online shopping platforms. This has had a major impact on increasing fraudulent activities as well. This loop of online shopping and transactions has paved the way for fraudulent users to commit fraud. For instance, consider a store that orders thousands of products all at once, but what’s fishy about this is the massive number of items purchased and their transactions turning out to be fraud, leading to a huge loss for the seller. Considering scenarios like these underscores the urgent need to introduce machine learning approaches to combat fraud in online shopping. By leveraging robust algorithms, namely KNN, Decision Trees, and Random Forest, which are highly effective in generating accurate results, this research endeavors to discern patterns indicative of fraudulent behavior within transactional data. Introducing a comprehensive solution to this problem in order to empower e-commerce administrators in timely fraud detection and prevention is the primary motive and the main focus. In addition to that, sentiment analysis is harnessed in the model so that the e-commerce admin can tailor to the customer’s and consumer’s concerns, feedback, and comments, allowing the admin to improve the user’s experience. The ultimate objective of this study is to ramp up online shopping platforms against fraud and ensure a safer shopping experience. This paper underscores a model accuracy of 84%. All the findings and observations that were noted during our work lay the groundwork for future advancements in the development of more resilient and adaptive fraud detection systems, which will become crucial as technologies continue to evolve.

Keywords: behavior analysis, feature selection, Fraudulent pattern recognition, imbalanced classification, transactional anomalies

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Authors: Joy Aworo-Okoroh

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Literary texts are mirrors of a real-life situation. Thus, authors choose the linguistic items that would best encode their intended meanings and messages. However, words mean more than they seem. The meaning of words is not static rather, it is dynamic as they constantly enter into relationships within a context. Literary texts can only be meaningful if all pragmatic cues are identified and interpreted. Drawing upon Teun Van Djik's theory of local pragmatic coherence, it is established that words enter into relations in a text and these relations account for sequential speech acts in the texts. Comprehension of the text is dependent on the interpretation of these relations.To show the relevance of pragmatic coherence in literary text analysis, ten conversations were selected in Americanah in order to give a clear idea of the pragmatic relations used. The conversations were analysed, identifying the speech act and epistemic relations inherent in them. A subtle analysis of the structure of the conversations was also carried out. It was discovered that justification is the most commonly used relation and the meaning of the text is dependent on the interpretation of these instances' pragmatic coherence. The study concludes that to effectively teach literature in English, pragmatic coherence should be incorporated as words mean more than they say.

Keywords: pragmatic coherence, epistemic coherence, speech act, Americanah

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Authors: Parisa Toloue Hayat Azar

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Businesses have been playing an important role in the economic growth and social welfare of cities; however, they generally have negative reputations regarding their impact on environmental issues regarding sustainability. However, some believe that by incorporating strategic Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities, businesses will be able to solve problems in society, including environmental ones. Besides economic, social and environmental aspects, governance is another essential pillar for creating sustainable communities and cities. Governance plays a key role in the success of sustainable projects or creating long lasting legacies; an example of this can be creating circular supply chain with collaboration between different businesses, which in the end results in positive economic, social and environmental outcomes for everyone. Governance is a very important parameter in creating the legacy of low carbon and environmentally friendly city due to the fact that, besides building energy efficient buildings and infrastructure, citizens who are also part of the success of this system should know about how to behave and collaborate with others to make the system work. By deploying the philosophy of cultural historical activity theory, this paper explains how influential businesses have been and can be still used as a mediating tool for governance purposes, and succeed in creating shared value and lasting legacy within society.

Keywords: business, governance, CSR, sustainability

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Authors: Herjuno Bagus Wicaksono, Emma Almira Fauni, Salma Amelia Dina

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The Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) states that, in an efficient capital market, price fully reflects the information available in the market. This theory has influenced many investors behavior in trading in the stock market. Advanced researches have been conducted to test the efficiency of the stock market in particular countries. Indonesia, as one of the emerging countries, has performed substantial growth in the past years. Hence, this paper aims to examine the efficiency of Islamic stock market in Indonesia in its weak form. The daily stock price data from Indonesia Sharia Stock Index (ISSI) for the period October 2015 to October 2016 were used to do the statistical tests: Run Test and Serial Correlation Test. The results show that there is no serial correlation between the current price with the past prices and the market follows the random walk. This research concludes that Indonesia Islamic stock market is weak form efficient.

Keywords: efficient market hypothesis, Indonesia sharia stock index, random walk, weak form efficiency

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Authors: Nady Farag Faragalla Hanna

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In the car dealership industry in Japan, the sales specialist is a key factor in the success of the company. I hypothesize that when a company understands the characteristics of sales professionals in its industry, it is easier to recruit and train salespeople effectively. Lean human resources management ensures the economic success and performance of companies, especially small and medium-sized companies.The purpose of the article is to determine the characteristics of sales specialists for small and medium-sized car dealerships using the chi-square test and the proximate variable model. Accordingly, the results show that career change experience, learning ability and product knowledge are important, while university education, career building through internal transfer, leadership experience and people development are not important for becoming a sales professional. I also show that the characteristics of sales specialists are perseverance, humility, improvisation and passion for business.

Keywords: electronics engineering, marketing, sales, E-commerce digitalization, interactive systems, sales process ARIMA models, sales demand forecasting, time series, R codetraits of sales professionals, variable precision rough sets theory, sales professional, sales professionals

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Authors: Rama Debbarma

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The present study deals with the performance of Linear base isolation system to mitigate seismic response of structures characterized by random system parameters. This involves optimization of the tuning ratio and damping properties of the base isolation system considering uncertain system parameters. However, the efficiency of base isolator may reduce if it is not tuned to the vibrating mode it is designed to suppress due to unavoidable presence of system parameters uncertainty. With the aid of matrix perturbation theory and first order Taylor series expansion, the total probability concept is used to evaluate the unconditional response of the primary structures considering random system parameters. For this, the conditional second order information of the response quantities are obtained in random vibration framework using state space formulation. Subsequently, the maximum unconditional root mean square displacement of the primary structures is used as the objective function to obtain optimum damping parameters Numerical study is performed to elucidate the effect of parameters uncertainties on the optimization of parameters of linear base isolator and system performance.

Keywords: linear base isolator, earthquake, optimization, uncertain parameters

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Authors: Sepideh Jabbari Behnam, Zahrasadat Saide Zarabadi

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A city is an intertwined texture from the relationship of different components in a whole which is united in a one, so designing the whole complex and its planning is not an easy matter. By considering that a city is a complex system with infinite components and communications, providing flexible layouts that can respond to the unpredictable character of the city, which is a result of its complexity, is inevitable. Parametric design approach as a new approach can produce flexible and transformative layouts in any stage of design. This study aimed to introduce parametric design as a modern approach to respond to complex urban issues by using descriptive and analytical methods. This paper firstly introduces complex systems and then giving a brief characteristic of complex systems. The flexible design and layout flexibility is another matter in response and simulation of complex urban systems that should be considered in design, which is discussed in this study. In this regard, after describing the nature of the parametric approach as a flexible approach, as well as a tool and appropriate way to respond to features such as limited predictability, reciprocating nature, complex communications, and being sensitive to initial conditions and hierarchy, this paper introduces parametric design.

Keywords: complexity theory, complex system, flexibility, parametric design

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Authors: Bar Shapira-Youngster, Sima Amram-Vaknin, Yuliya Lipshits-Braziler

Abstract:

The study examined how 811 Israelis experienced and coped with the COVID-19 lockdown. Stress, uncertainty, and loss of control were reported as common emotional experiences. Two main difficulties were reported: Loneliness and health and emotional concerns. Frequent explanations for the virus's emergence were: scientific or faith reasoning. The most prevalent coping strategies were distraction activities and acceptance. Reducing the use of maladaptive coping strategies has important implications for mental health outcomes. Objectives: COVID-19 has been recognized as a collective, continuous traumatic stressor. The present study examined how individuals experienced, perceived, and coped with this traumatic event during the lockdown in Israel in April 2020. Method: 811 Israelis (71.3% were women; mean age 43.7, SD=13.3)completed an online semi-structured questionnaire consisting two sections: In the first section, participants were asked to report background information. In the second section, they were asked to answer 8 open-ended questions about their experience, perception, and coping with the covid-19 lockdown. Participation was voluntary, and anonymity was assured, they were not offered compensation of any kind. The data were subjected to qualitative content analysis that seeks to classify the participants` answers into an effective number of categories that represent similar meanings. Our content analysis of participants’ answers extended far beyond simple word counts; our objective was to try to identify recurrent categories that characterized participants’ responses to each question. We sought to ensure that the categories regarding the different questions are as mutually exclusive and exhaustive as possible. To ensure robust analysis, the data were initially analyzed by the first author, and a second opinion was then sought from research colleagues. Contribution: The present research expands our knowledge of individuals' experiences, perceptions, and coping mechanisms with continuous traumatic events. Reducing the use of maladaptive coping strategies has important implications for mental health outcomes.

Keywords: Covid-19, emotional distress, coping, continuous traumatic event

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Authors: Isadora Bugarin, Taygoara F. de Oliveira

Abstract:

Multiphase flows have currently been placed as a key solution for technological advances in energy and thermal sciences. The comprehension of droplet motion and behavior on non-isothermal flows is, however, rather limited. The present work consists of an investigation of a 2D droplet migration on natural convection inside a square enclosure with differentially heated walls. The investigation in question concerns the effects on drop motion of imposing different combinations of Prandtl and Rayleigh numbers while defining the drop on distinct initial positions. The finite differences method was used to compute the Navier-Stokes and energy equations for a laminar flow, considering the Boussinesq approximation. Also, a high order level set method was applied to simulate the two-phase flow. A previous analysis developed by the authors had shown that for fixed values of Rayleigh and Prandtl, the variation of the droplet initial position at the beginning of the simulation delivered different patterns of motion, in which for Ra≥10⁴ the droplet presents two very specific behaviors: it can travel through a helical path towards the center or define cyclic circular paths resulting in closed paths when reaching the stationary regime. Now, when varying the Prandtl number for different Rayleigh regimes, it was observed that this particular parameter also affects the migration of the droplet, altering the motion patterns as its value is increased. On higher Prandtl values, the drop performs wider paths with larger amplitudes, traveling closer to the walls and taking longer time periods to finally reach the stationary regime. It is important to highlight that drastic drop behavior changes on the stationary regime were not yet observed, but the path traveled from the begging of the simulation until the stationary regime was significantly altered, resulting in distinct turning over frequencies. The flow’s unsteady Nusselt number is also registered for each case studied, enabling a discussion on the overall effects on heat transfer variations.

Keywords: droplet migration, level set method, multiphase flow, natural convection in enclosure, Prandtl number

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Authors: Rajani Vishal, C. P. Mishra

Abstract:

Background: Self-perception of an individual about own body has a strong influence on their food preference and thereby on their nutritional status. Body image is gaining importance in social theory. Globally, women in particular seem to be favour of one ideal body type (Viz A slim, tall and perfectly proportionate body). Beauty and body image ideals among research scholars can play a significant influence on their own actions. Objectives: 1) To assess perception of study subjects about body image; 2)To analyze the relationship between body image and residential status of study subjects. Material and Method: 176 female research scholars of Banaras Hindu University were selected through multistage sampling. They were interviewed with pre designed and pre-tested proforma about area of residence and perception about body image. Result: As much as 86.4% subjects were happy with the way they looked whereas 83.0% subjects considered themselves as attractive. In case of 13.6%, 27.3%, 31.8%, 14.2% and 13.1% subjects, best-described body shapes were thin, normal, curvy, athletic and overweight, respectively. Area of residence was significantly (p< o.o5) associated with perception of attractiveness and description of body shape. Conclusion: In spite of varied description of body image, majority of subjects had positive perception about their body image.

Keywords: attractiveness, body image, body shape, nutritional status

Procedia PDF Downloads 266