Search results for: frequency features

Authors: Sayed Hessam Bahmani, Rolsndo P. Orense

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From an engineering point of view, pumice particles are problematic because of their crushability and compressibility due to their vesicular nature. Currently, information on the geotechnical characteristics of pumice sands is limited. While extensive empirical and laboratory tests can be implemented to characterize their behavior, these are generally time-consuming and expensive. These drawbacks have motivated attempts to study the effects of particle breakage of pumice sand through the Discrete Element Method (DEM). This method provides insights into the behavior of crushable granular material at both the micro and macro-level. In this paper, the results of single-particle crushing tests conducted in the laboratory are simulated using DEM through the open-source code YADE. This is done to better understand the parameters necessary to represent the pumice microstructure that governs its crushing features, and to examine how the resulting microstructure evolution affects a particle’s properties. The DEM particle model is then used to simulate the behavior of pumice sand during consolidated drained triaxial tests. The results indicate the importance of incorporating particle porosity and unique surface textures in the material characterization and show that interlocking between the crushed particles significantly influences the drained behavior of the pumice specimen.

Keywords: pumice sand, triaxial compression, simulation, particle breakage

Procedia PDF Downloads 237

Authors: Tingke Wu, Yaping Huang

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Many cities in China have been experiencing serious urban sprawl since the 1980s, which pose great challenges to a country with scare cultivated land and huge population. Because of different social and economic context and development stage, driving forces of urban sprawl in China are quite different from developed countries. Therefore, it is of great importance to probe into urban sprawl driving mechanism in Chinese context. By a comparison study of the background and features of urban sprawl between China and developed countries, this research establishes an analytical framework for sprawl dynamic mechanism in China. By literature review and analyzing data from national statistical yearbook, it then probes into the driving mechanism and the primary cause of urban sprawl. The results suggest that population increase, economic growth, traffic and information technology development lead to rapid expansion of urban space; defects of land institution and lack of effective guidance give rise to low efficiency of urban land use. Moreover, urban sprawl is ultimately attributed to imperfections of policy and institution. On this basis, this research puts forward several sprawl control strategies in Chinese context.

Keywords: China, driving forces, driving mechanism, land institution, urban expansion, urban sprawl

Procedia PDF Downloads 172

Authors: M. El-Eraki, A. A. Mohamed, A. A. El-Kenawy, M. S. Toni, S. I. Mustafa

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The aim of this paper is to study the ground vibrations using Nakamura technique to evaluate the relation between the ground conditions and the earthquake characteristics. Microtremor measurements were carried out at 55 sites in and around Zagazig city. The signals were processed using horizontal to vertical spectral ratio (HVSR) technique to estimate the fundamental frequencies of the soil deposits and its corresponding H/V amplitude. Seismic measurements were acquired at nine sites for recording the surface waves. The recorded waveforms were processed using the multi-channel analysis of surface waves (MASW) method to infer the shear wave velocity profile. The obtained fundamental frequencies were found to be ranging from 0.7 to 1.7 Hz and the maximum H/V amplitude reached 6.4. These results together with the average shear wave velocity in the surface layers were used for the estimation of the thickness of the upper most soft cover layers (depth to bedrock). The sediment thickness generally increases at the northeastern and southwestern parts of the area, which is in good agreement with the local geological structure. The results of this work showed the zones of higher potential damage in the event of an earthquake in the study area.

Keywords: ambient vibrations, fundamental frequency, surface waves, zagazig

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Authors: Babatunde Kasim Oladele

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This current study investigated students’ characteristics as factors that influence Mathematics Achievement of junior secondary school students. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. The population of the study was one hundred and twenty-three (123) JSS students of secondary schools in Ibadan North Local Government in Oyo State. A Mathematics achievement test and three questionnaires on student’s self-efficacy belief, attitude, and learning style were the instruments used. Prior to the administration of the constructed mathematics achievement test, 100-item mathematics was subjected to the expert review, and items analysis was carried out. Fifty items were retained. The Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficients of the instruments were 0.71, 0.76, and 0.83, respectively. Collected data were analysed using the frequency count, percentages, mean, standard deviation, and Path Analysis in Amos SPSS Version 20. Students characteristics: gender, age, self-efficacy, attitude and learning style had positive direct effects on students’ achievement in Mathematics as indicated by their respective beta weights (β = 0.36, 0.203, 0.92, 0.079, 0.69 p < 0.05). Consequently, the study concluded that student’s characteristics (Age, gender, and learning style) explained a significant part of the variability in students’ achievement in Mathematics.

Keywords: mathematics achievement, students’ characteristics, junior secondary school, Ibadan

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Authors: Sandeep Kumar, Mahesh Kumar Jat, Rajib Sarkar

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Soil reinforced with randomly distributed fibers is an attractive means to improve the performance of soil in a cost effective manner. Static and dynamic characterization of fiber reinforced soil have become important to evaluate adequate performance for all classes of geotechnical engineering problems. Present study investigates the behaviour of fiber reinforced cohesionless soil through numerical simulation of triaxial specimen. The numerical model has been validated with the existing literature of laboratory triaxial compression testing. A parametric study has been done to find out optimum fiber content for shear resistance. Cyclic triaxial testing has been simulated and the stress-strain response of fiber-reinforced sand has been examined considering different combination of fiber contents. Shear modulus values and damping values of fiber-reinforced sand are evaluated. It has been observed from results that for 1.0 percent fiber content shear modulus increased 2.28 times and damping ratio decreased 4.6 times. The influence of amplitude of cyclic strain, confining pressure and frequency of loading on the dynamic properties of fiber reinforced sand has been investigated and presented.

Keywords: damping, fiber reinforced soil, numerical modelling, shear modulus

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Authors: Nasiruddin Khan, Saud Iqbal

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Arabian Gulf region has undergone enormous development due to oil boom resulting in overwhelming changes in the lifestyle of the population over the past few decades. This study focused on food consumption patterns of Omani university students. Information, on anthropometric measurements, dietary intakes (measured by a food frequency questionnaire) of students was recorded. Anthropometric data revealed 62.5% of the subjects to be of normal weight and approximately 25% being overweight. Female students appeared to be more weight conscious than males. Dietary intakes in terms of servings (Mean ± S.D) per day among normal weight (BMI 18.5 – 24.9) males vs. females were approximately; cereals (7.5 ± 5.9 vs. 4.9 ± 2.9 servings), meat and alternatives (1.9 ± 0.9 vs. 1.5 ± 0.9 servings), dairy foods (0.9 ± 0.8 vs. 1.1 ± 0.9 servings) per day, respectively. Overall 55.3% of both males (average 1.9 servings) as well as females (average 1.7 servings) had severely inadequate intakes of vegetables on a daily basis as per the food guide pyramid recommendations. Only the fruit group intakes were adequate in about 70% of the population. Adequate intakes of dairy and meat and alternatives group were found in only 22% and 32% of the subjects, respectively. These results indicate a significant influence of a modern lifestyle on dietary habits and food selection of the target population.

Keywords: dietary pattern, food guide pyramid, lifestyle, Oman

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Authors: Shashank Mukkoti, Mainak Majumder, Srinivasan Venkatraman

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Owing to the land scarcity in the modern-day, most of the construction activities are carried out closed to the existing buildings. Most of the high-rise buildings are constructed on pile foundations to transfer the design loads to a strong stratum below the ground surface. Due to the proximity of the new and existing structures, noise disturbances are prominent during the pile installation. Installation of vibratory piles is most suitable in urban areas. The ground vibrations developed due to the vibratory pile driving may cause many detrimental effects on the surrounding structures based on the proximity of the sources and nature of the structures. In the present study, an attempt has been made to study the severity of ground vibrations induced by vibratory pile driving. For this purpose, a three-dimensional finite element model has been developed in the ABAQUS/ Explicit finite element program. The couple finite/infinite element method has been employed for the capturing of propagating waves due to the pile installation. The geometry of the pile foundations, frequency of the pile driving, length of the pile has been considered for the parametric study. The results show that vibrations generated due to the vibratory pile installation are either very close or more than the thresholds tolerance limits set by different guidelines.

Keywords: FE model, pile driving, free field vibrations, wave propagation

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Authors: Nihad Karim Chowdhury, Mohammad Sanaullah Chowdhury, Muhammed Jamshed Alam Patwary, Rubel Biswas

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In content-based 3D shape retrieval system, achieving high search performance has become an important research problem. A challenging aspect of this problem is to find an effective shape descriptor which can discriminate similar shapes adequately. To address this problem, we propose a new shape descriptor for 3D shape models by combining multi-resolution with multi-block center-symmetric local binary pattern operator. Given an arbitrary 3D shape, we first apply pose normalization, and generate a set of multi-viewed 2D rendered images. Second, we apply Gaussian multi-resolution filter to generate several levels of images from each of 2D rendered image. Then, overlapped sub-images are computed for each image level of a multi-resolution image. Our unique multi-block CS-LBP comes next. It allows the center to be composed of m-by-n rectangular pixels, instead of a single pixel. This process is repeated for all the 2D rendered images, derived from both ‘depth-buffer’ and ‘silhouette’ rendering. Finally, we concatenate all the features vectors into one dimensional histogram as our proposed 3D shape descriptor. Through several experiments, we demonstrate that our proposed 3D shape descriptor outperform the previous methods by using a benchmark dataset.

Keywords: 3D shape retrieval, 3D shape descriptor, CS-LBP, overlapped sub-images

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Authors: Rylyne Mande Nchu, Robertson Tengeh, Chux Iwu

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Blended learning is a global phenomenon and is essential to many institutes of learning as an additional method of teaching that complements more traditional methods of learning. In this paper, the lack of practice of a blended learning approach to entrepreneurship education and how it impacts learners' perception of being entrepreneurial. E-learning is in its infancy within the secondary and high school sectors in South Africa. The conceptual framework of the study is based on theoretical aspects of systemic-constructivist learning implemented in an interactive online learning environment in an entrepreneurship education subject. The formative evaluation research was conducted implementing mixed methods of research (quantitative and qualitative) and it comprised a survey of high school learners and informant interviewing with entrepreneurs. Theoretical analysis of literature provides features necessary for creating interactive blended learning environments to be used in entrepreneurship education subject. Findings of the study show that learners do not always objectively evaluate their capacities. Special attention has to be paid to the development of learners’ computer literacy as well as to the activities that would bring online learning to practical training. Needs analysis shows that incorporating blended learning in entrepreneurship education may have a positive perception of entrepreneurship.

Keywords: blended learning, entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurship intention, entrepreneurial skills

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Authors: Zoe Lynch, Kirsty Zieschank

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There are several factors that compromise the utility and wide-spread use of existing emotional and behavioural distress screening instruments. Some of these factors include lengthy administration times, high costs, feasibility issues, and a lack of self-report options for children under 12 years of age. This animation-based resource was developed to overcome as many of these factors as possible. Developed for educators and medical and mental health professionals, this resource offers children a self-guided mechanism for reporting any current emotional and behavioural distress. An avatar assistant, selected by the child, accompanies them through each stage of the screening process, offering further instruction if prompted. Children enter their age and gender before viewing comparative animations conveying common childhood emotional and behavioural difficulties. The child then selects the most relatable animations, along with the frequency with which they experience the depicted emotions. From a perspective of intellectual development, an engaging, animated format means that outcomes will not be constrained by children’s reading, writing, cognitive, or verbal expression abilities. Having been user-tested with children aged 6 to 12, this resource shows promising results as a self-guided screening instrument.

Keywords: animation-based screening instrument, mental health, primary-aged children, self-guided

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Authors: Aliya Grig, Konstantin Sokolov, Igor Shatalin

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The report describes the methodology for collecting data and building an ML model for determining the personality psychotype using profiling and personality traits methods based on several short messages of a user communicating on an arbitrary topic with a chitchat bot. In the course of the experiments, the minimum amount of text was revealed to confidently determine aspects of personality. Model accuracy - 85%. Users' language of communication is English. AI for a personalized communication with a user based on his mood, personality, and current emotional state. Features investigated during the research: personalized communication; providing empathy; adaptation to a user; predictive analytics. In the report, we describe the processes that captures both structured and unstructured data pertaining to a user in large quantities and diverse forms. This data is then effectively processed through ML tools to construct a knowledge graph and draw inferences regarding users of text messages in a comprehensive manner. Specifically, the system analyzes users' behavioral patterns and predicts future scenarios based on this analysis. As a result of the experiments, we provide for further research on training AI models to be empathetic, creating personalized communication for a user

Keywords: AI, empathetic, chatbot, AI models

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Authors: Chidambaram Thamaraiselvan, Carlos Dosoretz

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This work will explore the influence of low voltage electric field, both alternating (AC) and direct (DC) currents, on biofouling control to highly electrically conductive self-supporting carbon nanotubes (CNT) membranes at conditions which encourage bacterial growth. A mutant strain of Pseudomonas putida S12 was used a model bacterium. The antibiofouling studies were performed with flow-through mode connecting an electric circuit in resistive mode. Major emphasis was placed on AC due to its ability of repulsing and inactivating bacteria. The observations indicate that an AC potential >1500 mV, 1 kHz frequency, 100 Ω external resistance on ground side and pulse wave above the offset (+0.45) almost completely prevented attachment of bacteria (>98.5%) and bacterial inactivation (95.3±2.5%). Findings suggest that at the conditions applied, direct electron transfer might be dominant in a decrease of cell viability. AC resulted more effective than DC, both in terms of biofouling reduction compared to cathodic DC and in terms of cell inactivation compared to anodic DC. This electrically polarized CNT membranes offer a viable antibiofouling strategy to hinder biofouling and simplify membrane care during filtration.

Keywords: bacterial attachment, biofouling control, low electric potential, water treatment

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Authors: Jörg Lenhardt, Wolfram Schiffmann, Jörg Keller

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While the feature sizes of recent Complementary Metal Oxid Semiconductor (CMOS) devices decrease the influence of static power prevails their energy consumption. Thus, power savings that benefit from Dynamic Frequency and Voltage Scaling (DVFS) are diminishing and temporal shutdown of cores or other microchip components become more worthwhile. A consequence of powering off unused parts of a chip is that the relative difference between idle and fully loaded power consumption is increased. That means, future chips and whole server systems gain more power saving potential through power-aware load balancing, whereas in former times this power saving approach had only limited effect, and thus, was not widely adopted. While powering off complete servers was used to save energy, it will be superfluous in many cases when cores can be powered down. An important advantage that comes with that is a largely reduced time to respond to increased computational demand. We include the above developments in a server power model and quantify the advantage. Our conclusion is that strategies from datacenters when to power off server systems might be used in the future on core level, while load balancing mechanisms previously used at core level might be used in the future at server level.

Keywords: power efficiency, static power consumption, dynamic power consumption, CMOS

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Authors: Thepnarintra Praphanphat

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The purposes of this study were to: 1) investigate operation conditions of SME automotive part industry in Bangkok and vicinity and 2) to compare operation problem levels of SME automotive part industry in Bangkok and vicinity according to the sizes of the enterprises. Samples in this study included 196 entrepreneurs of SME automotive part industry in Bangkok and vicinity derived from simple random sampling and calculation from R. V. Krejcie and D. W. Morgan’s tables. Research statistics included frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and T-test. The results revealed that in general the problem levels of SME automotive part industry in Bangkok and vicinity were high. When considering in details, it was found that the problem levels were high at every aspect, i.e. personal, production, export, finance, and marketing respectively. The comparison of the problem levels according to the sizes of the enterprises revealed statistically significant differences at .05. When considering on each aspect, it was found that the aspect with the statistical difference at .05 included 5 aspects, i.e. production, marketing, finance, personal, and export. The findings also showed that small enterprises faced more severe problems than those of medium enterprises.

Keywords: automotive part industry, operation problems, SME, Perimeter

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Authors: Jonas Volungevicius, Kristina Amaleviciute, Rimantas Vaisvalavicius, Alvyra Slepetiene, Darijus Veteikis

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Lithuanian territory is characterized by landscape with prevailing morain hills and clayey lowlands. The largest part of it has endured agrogenization of various degrees which was the cause of changes both in the structure of landscape and soil cover, transformations of soil profile and degradation of natural background soils. These changes influence negatively geoecological potential of landscape and soil and contribute to the weakening of the sustainability of agroecosystems. Research objective: to reveal the landscape agrogenization induced alterations of catenae and their appendant soil profiles in Lithuanian morain hills and clayey lowlands. Methods: Soil cover analysis and catenae charting was conducted using landscape profiling; soil morphology detected and soil type identified following WRB 2014. Granulometric composition of soil profiles was obtained by laser diffraction method (lazer diffractometer Mastersizer 2000). pH was measured in H2O extraction using potentiometric titration; SOC was determined by the Tyurin method modified by Nikitin, measuring with spectrometer Cary 50 (VARIAN) in 590 nm wavelength using glucose standards. Results: analysis showed that the decrease of forest vegetation and the other natural landscape components following the agrogenization of the research area influenced differently but significantly the structural alterations in soil cover and vertical soil profile. The research detected that due to landscape agrogenization, the suppression of zone-specific processes and the intensification of inter-zone processes determined by agrogenic factors take place in Lithuanian agroecosystems. In forested hills historically prevailing Retisols and Histosols territorial complex is transforming into the territorial complex of Regosols, Deluvial soils and drained Histosols. Processes taking place are simplification of vertical profile structure, intensive rejuvenation of profile, disappearance of the features of zone-specific soil-forming processes (podzolization, lessivage, gley formation). Erosion and deluvial processes manifest more intensively and weakly accumulating organic material more intensively spread in a vertical soil profile. The territorial soil complex of Gleyic Luvisols and Gleysols dominating in forested clayey lowlands subjected to agrogenization is transformed into the catena of drained Luvisols and pseudo Cambisols. The best expressed are their changes in moisture regime (morphological features of gley and stagnic properties are on decline) together with alterations of pH and distribution and intensity of accumulation of organic matter in profile. A specific horizon, antraquic, uncharacteristic to natural soil formation is appearing. Important to note that due to deep ploughing and other agrotechnical measures, the natural vertical differentiation of clay particles in a soil profile is destroyed which leads not only to alterations of physical qualities of soil, but also encumbers the identification of Luvisols by creating presumptions to misidentify them as Cambisols. The latter have never developed in these ecosystems under the present climatic conditions. Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the National Science Program: The effect of long-term, different-intensity management of resources on the soils of different genesis and on other components of the agro-ecosystems [grant number SIT-9/2015] funded by the Research Council of Lithuania.

Keywords: agroecosystems, landscape agrogenization, luvisols, retisols, transformation of soil profile

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Authors: Daliyah S. Aljutaili, Redna A. Almutlaq, Suha A. Alharbi, Dina M. Ibrahim

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All currencies around the world look very different from each other. For instance, the size, color, and pattern of the paper are different. With the development of modern banking services, automatic methods for paper currency recognition become important in many applications like vending machines. One of the currency recognition architecture’s phases is Feature detection and description. There are many algorithms that are used for this phase, but they still have some disadvantages. This paper proposes a feature detection algorithm, which merges the advantages given in the current SIFT and SURF algorithms, which we call, Speeded up Robust Scale-Invariant Feature Transform (SR-SIFT) algorithm. Our proposed SR-SIFT algorithm overcomes the problems of both the SIFT and SURF algorithms. The proposed algorithm aims to speed up the SIFT feature detection algorithm and keep it robust. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed SR-SIFT algorithm decreases the average response time, especially in small and minimum number of best key points, increases the distribution of the number of best key points on the surface of the currency. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm increases the accuracy of the true best point distribution inside the currency edge than the other two algorithms.

Keywords: currency recognition, feature detection and description, SIFT algorithm, SURF algorithm, speeded up and robust features

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Authors: Ilaisa Kacivakanadina, Samson Viulu, Brad Carte, Katy Soapi

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Two bioactive compounds namely Vulgamycin (also known as enterocin A) and 5-deoxyenterocin were purified from a marine bacterial strain 1903. Strain 1903 was isolated from marine sediments collected from the Solomon Islands. Morphological features of strain 1903 showed that it belongs to the genus Streptomyces. The two secondary metabolites were extracted using EtOAc and purified by chromatographic methods using EtOAc and hexane solvents. Mass spectrum and NMR data of pure compounds were used to elucidate the chemical structures. In this study, results showed that both compounds were strongly active against Wild Type Staphylococcus aureus (WTSA) (MIC < 1 µg/mL) and in Brine shrimp assays (BSA) (MIC < 1 µg/mL). 5-deoxyenterocin was also active against Rifamycin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (RRSA) (MIC, 250 µg/mL) while vulgamycin showed bioactivity against Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) (MIC 250 µg/mL). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that showed the bio-activity of 5-deoxyenterocin. This is also the first time that Vulgamycin has been reported to be active in a BSA. There has not been any mechanism of action studies for these two compounds against pathogens. This warrants further studies on their mechanism of action against microbial pathogens.

Keywords: 5-deoxyenterocin, bioactivity, brine shrimp assay (BSA), vulgamycin

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Authors: Budoor Al Abid

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Educational systems are increasingly provided as open online services, providing guidance and support for individual learners. To adapt the learning systems, a proper evaluation must be made. This paper builds the evaluation model Fuzzy C Means Adaptive System (FCMAS) based on data mining techniques to assess the difficulty of the questions. The following steps are implemented; first using a dataset from an online international learning system called (slepemapy.cz) the dataset contains over 1300000 records with 9 features for students, questions and answers information with feedback evaluation. Next, a normalization process as preprocessing step was applied. Then FCM clustering algorithms are used to adaptive the difficulty of the questions. The result is three cluster labeled data depending on the higher Wight (easy, Intermediate, difficult). The FCM algorithm gives a label to all the questions one by one. Then Random Forest (RF) Classifier model is constructed on the clustered dataset uses 70% of the dataset for training and 30% for testing; the result of the model is a 99.9% accuracy rate. This approach improves the Adaptive E-learning system because it depends on the student behavior and gives accurate results in the evaluation process more than the evaluation system that depends on feedback only.

Keywords: machine learning, adaptive, fuzzy logic, data mining

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Authors: Merve Ozer, Tolga Gokkurt, Yasemen Gokkurt, Ezgi Bozbey

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In this study, we investigated the recovery of Polyethylene terephthalate/Polypropylene (PET/PP)-containing automotive textile waste from post-product and post-consumer phases in the automotive sector according to the upcycling technique and the methods of formulation and production that would allow these wastes to be substituted as PP/PET alloys instead of original PP raw materials used in plastic edge band production. The laminated structure of the stated wastes makes it impossible to separate the incompatible PP and PET phases in content and thus produce a quality raw material or product as a result of recycling. Within the scope of a two-stage production process, a comprehensive process was examined using block copolymers and maleic grafted copolymers with different features to ensure that these two incompatible phases are compatible. The mechanical, thermal, and morphological properties of the plastic raw materials, which will be referred to as PP/PET blends obtained as a result of the process, were examined in detail and discussed their substitutability instead of the original raw materials.

Keywords: mechanical recycling, melt blending, plastic blends, polyethylene, polypropylene, recycling of plastics, terephthalate, twin screw extruders

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Authors: Hsin-Yang Wang, K. M. A. Salam, Ying-Jia Lin, Daniel Tan, Tzu-Hsuan Chou, Hung-Yu Kao

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Detecting user intent from natural language expression has a wide variety of use cases in different natural language processing applications. Recently few-shot training has a spike of usage on commercial domains. Due to the lack of significant sample features, the downstream task performance has been limited or leads to an unstable result across different domains. As a state-of-the-art method, the pre-trained BERT model gathering the sentence-level information from a large text corpus shows improvement on several NLP benchmarks. In this research, we are proposing a method to change multi-class classification tasks into binary classification tasks, then use the confidence score to rank the results. As a language model, BERT performs well on sequence data. In our experiment, we change the objective from predicting labels into finding the relations between words in sequence data. Our proposed method achieved 71.0% accuracy in the internal intent detection dataset and 63.9% accuracy in the HuffPost dataset. Acknowledgment: This work was supported by NCKU-B109-K003, which is the collaboration between National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, and SoftBank Corp., Tokyo.

Keywords: OSML, BERT, text classification, one shot

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Authors: Godwin A. Otogo, Sansanee Wangvoralak, Graham J. Pierce, Lee C. Hastie, Beth Scott

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The squid Loligo forbesii is suspected to be an important species in marine food webs, as it can strongly impact its prey and be impacted upon by predation, competition, fishing and/or climate variability. To quantify these impacts in the food web, the measurement of its trophic position and ecological role within well-studied ecosystems is essential. An Ecopath model was balanced and run for the Moray Firth ecosystem and was used to investigate the significance of this squid’s trophic roles. The network analysis routine included in Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) was used to estimate trophic interaction, system indicators (health condition and developmental stage) and food web features. Results indicated that within the Moray Firth squid occupy a top trophic position in the food web and also a major prey item for many other species. Results from Omnivory Index (OI) showed that squid is a generalized feeder transferring energy across wide trophic levels and is more important as a predator than that as a prey in the Moray Firth ecosystem. The results highlight the importance of taking squid into account in the management of Europe’s living marine resources.

Keywords: Squid, Loligo forbesii, Ecopath, Moray Firth, Trophic level

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Authors: Veselin Konstantinov Hristov

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In recent years, the lease contract has become more and more applicable and occupies a key place in commercial relations and business. In Bulgaria, the legal regulation of the leasing contract is relatively new and imperfectly developed. There are many legal loopholes and it is they that determine the need for a comparative legal analysis. The purpose of the study is to analyze the various European legislations regarding the leasing contract and to find effective solutions for the legal system of Bulgaria. First of all, are examined the concept of the leasing contract, which originated in the United States of America around the 1950s and spread in Europe, and the etymology of the term "leasing". After that, the main types of lease contracts – financial and operational – are examined and analyzed in detail. Their features and characteristics were studied, as well as a comparative analysis was made between them. Next, in the research, a comparative-legal analysis of the leasing contract in different European countries was made in terms of its development and distribution, as well as its legal characteristics. The mechanism of action and functioning of the leasing contract in several European countries is analyzed. Conclusions are made regarding the legal framework under which the lease contract is most effective. Types of leasing contracts specific only to certain European countries and their advantages are examined. In conclusion, recommendations are made to improve the legal framework of the leasing contract in Bulgaria.

Keywords: alternative financing, leasing contract, financing instruments, innovation

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Authors: Sudhanshu Kumar, Raghvendra Chandrakar, Arun Chakraborty

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In the ocean, the temperature extremes have the potential to devastate marine habitats, ecosystems together with ensuing socioeconomic consequences. In recent years, these extreme events are more frequent and intense globally and their increasing trend is expected to continue in the upcoming decades. It recently attracted public interest, as well as scientific researchers, which motivates us to analyze the current marine heatwave (MHW) events in the Bay of Bengal region. we have isolated 107 MHW events (above 90th percentile threshold) in this region of the Indian Ocean and investigated the variation in duration, intensity, and frequency of MHW events during our test period (1982-2021). Our study reveals that in the study region the average of three MHW events per year with an increasing linear trend of 1.11 MHW events per decade. In the analysis, we found the longest MHW event which lasted about 99 days, which is far greater than an average MHW event duration. The maximum intensity was 5.29°C (above the climatology-mean), while the mean intensity was 2.03°C. In addition, we observed net heat flux accompanied by anticyclonic eddies to be the primary cause of these events. Moreover, we concluded that these events affect sea surface height and oceanic productivity, highlighting the adverse impact of MHWs on marine ecosystems.

Keywords: marine heatwaves, global warming, climate change, sea surface temperature, marine ecosystem

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Authors: Sebastião Milton Pinheiro da Silva, Michele Barbosa da Rocha, Ana Lúcia Fernandes Campos, Miquéias Rildo de Souza Silva

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Water is an essential natural resource for life on Earth. Rivers, lakes, lagoons and dams are the main sources of water storage for human consumption. The costs of extracting and using these water sources are lower than those of exploiting groundwater on transition zones to semi-arid terrains. However, the volume of surface water has decreased over time, with the depletion of first-order drainage and the disappearance of springs, phenomena which are easily observed in the field. Climate change worsens water scarcity, compromising supply and hydric security for rural populations. To minimize the expected impacts, producing and storing water through watershed management planning requires detailed cartographic information on the relief and topography, and updated data on the stage and intensity of catchment basin environmental degradation problems. The cartography available of the Brazilian northeastern territory dates to the 70s, with topographic maps, printed, at a scale of 1:100,000 which does not meet the requirements to execute this project. Exceptionally, there are topographic maps at scales of 1:50,000 and 1:25,000 of some coastal regions in northeastern Brazil. Still, due to scale limitations and outdatedness, they are products of little utility for mapping low-order watersheds drainage and springs. Remote sensing data and geographic information systems can contribute to guiding the process of mapping and environmental recovery by integrating detailed relief and topographic data besides social and other environmental information in the Guajiru River Basin, located on the east coast of Rio Grande do Norte, on the Northeast region of Brazil. This study aimed to recognize and map catchment basin, springs and low-order drainage features along estimating morphometric parameters. Alos PALSAR and Copernicus DEM digital elevation models were evaluated and provided regional drainage features and the watersheds limits extracted with Terraview/Terrahidro 5.0 software. CBERS 4A satellite images with 2 m spatial resolution, processed with ESA SNAP Toolbox, allowed generating land use land cover map of Guajiru River. A Mappir Survey 3 multiespectral camera onboard of a DJI Phantom 4, a Mavic 2 Pro PPK Drone and an X91 GNSS receiver to collect the precised position of selected points were employed to detail mapping. Satellite images enabled a first knowledge approach of watershed areas on a more regional scale, yet very current, and drone images were essential in mapping details of catchment basins. The drone multispectral image mosaics, the digital elevation model, the contour lines and geomorphometric parameters were generated using OpenDroneMap/ODM and QGis softwares. The drone images generated facilitated the location, understanding and mapping of watersheds, recharge areas and first-order ephemeral watercourses on an adequate scale and will be used in the following project’s phases: watershed management planning, recovery and environmental protection of Rio's springs Guajiru. Environmental degradation is being analyzed from the perspective of the availability and quality of surface water supply.

Keywords: imaging, relief, UAV, water

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Authors: Maryam Zahedifard, Fadhil Lafta Faraj, Nazia Abdul Majid, Hapipah Mohd Ali, Mahmood Ameen Abdulla

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The new quinazoline Schiff bases have been synthesized through condensation reaction of 2-aminobenzhydrazide with 5-bromosalicylaldehyde and 3-methoxy-5-bromosalicylaldehyde. The compound was investigated for anticancer activity against MCF-7 human breast cancer cell line. It demonstrated a remarkable antiproliferative effect, with an IC50 value of 3.41±0.34, after 72 hours of treatment. Most apoptosis morphological features in treated MCF-7 cells were observed by AO/PI staining. The results of cell cycle analysis indicate that compounds did not induce S and M phase arrest in cell after 24 hours of treatment. Furthermore, MCF-7 cells treated with compound subjected to apoptosis death, as exhibited by perturbation of mitochondrial membrane potential and cytochrome C release as well as increase in ROS generation. We also found activation of caspases 3/7 and -9. Moreover, acute toxicity results demonstrated the nontoxic nature of the compounds in mice. Our results showed the selected compound significantly induce apoptosis in MCF-7 cells via intrinsic pathway, which might be considered as a potential candidate for further in vivo and clinical breast cancer studies.

Keywords: quinazoline Schiff base, apoptosis, MCF-7, caspase, cell cycle, acute toxicity

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Authors: Kamalendu Pal

Abstract:

This paper describes the main features of a knowledge-based system evaluation method. System evaluation is placed in the context of a hybrid legal decision-support system, Advisory Support for Home Settlement in Divorce (ASHSD). Legal knowledge for ASHSD is represented in two forms, as rules and previously decided cases. Besides distinguishing the two different forms of knowledge representation, the paper outlines the actual use of these forms in a computational framework that is designed to generate a plausible solution for a given case, by using rule-based reasoning (RBR) and case-based reasoning (CBR) in an integrated environment. The nature of suitability assessment of a solution has been considered as a multiple criteria decision making process in ASHAD evaluation. The evaluation was performed by a combination of discussions and questionnaires with different user groups. The answers to questionnaires used in this evaluations method have been measured as a combination of linguistic variables, fuzzy numbers, and by using defuzzification process. The results show that the designed evaluation method creates suitable mechanism in order to improve the performance of the knowledge-based system.

Keywords: case-based reasoning, fuzzy number, legal decision-support system, linguistic variable, rule-based reasoning, system evaluation

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Authors: Amartya Hatua, Trung Nguyen, Andrew Sung

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In this paper, we study the information diffusion process on Twitter as a multivariate time series problem. Our model concerns three measures (volume, network influence, and sentiment of tweets) based on 10 features, and we collected 27 million tweets to build our information diffusion time series dataset for analysis. Then, different time series clustering techniques with Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) distance were used to identify different patterns of information diffusion. Finally, we built the information diffusion prediction models for new hashtags which comprise two phrases: The first phrase is recognizing the pattern using k-NN with DTW distance; the second phrase is building the forecasting model using the traditional Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model and the non-linear recurrent neural network of Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM). Preliminary results of performance evaluation between different forecasting models show that LSTM with clustering information notably outperforms other models. Therefore, our approach can be applied in real-world applications to analyze and predict the information diffusion characteristics of selected topics or memes (hashtags) in Twitter.

Keywords: ARIMA, DTW, information diffusion, LSTM, RNN, time series clustering, time series forecasting, Twitter

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Authors: Upal Barua

Abstract:

Crash risk at intersections is a critical safety issue. This paper examines the effectiveness of removing an existing off-set at an intersection by realignment, in reducing crashes. Empirical Bayes method was applied to conduct a before-and-after study to assess the effect of this safety improvement. The Transportation Safety Improvement Program in Austin Transportation Department completed several safety improvement projects at high crash intersections with a view to reducing crashes. One of the common safety improvement techniques applied was the realignment of intersection approaches removing an existing off-set. This paper illustrates how this safety improvement technique is applied at a high crash intersection from inception to completion. This paper also highlights the significant crash reductions achieved from this safety improvement technique applying Empirical Bayes method in a before-and-after study. The result showed that realignment of intersection approaches removing an existing off-set can reduce crashes by 53%. This paper also features the state of the art techniques applied in planning, engineering, designing and construction of this safety improvement, key factors driving the success, and lessons learned in the process.

Keywords: crash risk, intersection, off-set, safety improvement technique, before-and-after study, empirical Bayes method

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Authors: Michael Alsop, Hannah Heitz, Prathiba Natesan Batley, Marion Hambrick, Jason Immekus

Abstract:

The impacts of cultural engagement on individuals’ health and well-being have been well documented. The purposes of this study were to create an instrument to measure wellbeing constructs, including cultural wellbeing, and explore the relationships between cultural wellbeing and other wellbeing constructs (e.g., emotional, social, physical, spiritual). A sample of 358 participants attending concerts performed by a civic orchestra in the southeastern United States completed a questionnaire designed to measure eight wellbeing constructs. Split-half exploratory, confirmatory factor analyses resulted in the retention of four wellbeing constructs: general, emotional, financial, and cultural. Structural equation modeling showed statistically significant relationships between cultural wellbeing and other wellbeing constructs. In addition to the indirect effect of financial wellbeing on emotional and general wellbeing through cultural wellbeing, there were also direct statistically significant relationships (i.e., moderator). This highlights the importance of removing financial barriers to cultural engagement and the relationship between cultural wellbeing on emotional and general wellbeing. Additionally, the retained cultural wellbeing items focused primarily on community features, indicating the value of community-based cultural engagement opportunities.

Keywords: cultural wellbeing, cultural engagement, factor analysis, structural equation modeling

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Authors: Tayaba Dastgeer, Farhan Rasheed, Muhammad Saeed, Maqsood Ahmad, Zia Ashraf, Abdul Waheed, Muhammad Kamran, Mohsin Khurshid

Abstract:

Objectives: The study aimed to determine the efficacy of linezolid against clinical isolates of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Methodology: This cross-sectional study was conducted in the microbiology department of Allama Iqbal Medical College Lahore from August 2017 to September 2019. Isolates were confirmed as MRSA via the presence of the mec-A gene. Confirmed MRSA isolates were processed for susceptibility testing against different antimicrobials, especially linezolid, via the disc diffusion method. Zone sizes were interpreted according to CLSI guidelines. Results: Various types of clinical samples were included in the study; however, the highest frequency of MRSA isolates was found in pus samples, followed by other clinical samples. Among hospitalized patients, most MRSA isolates were obtained from patients in the surgical ward. Of 243 mec-A gene detected isolates, Vancomycin and linezolid showed 100% susceptibility, chloramphenicol showed declining resistance 78 (32.09%), and emerging sensitivity 165 (67.90%) against MRSA. Conclusion: Linezolid is a very efficient drug against MRSA, but the use of this novel drug must be conserved for vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or when more resistant pathogens are suspected.

Keywords: MRSA, chloramphenicol, linezolid, nosocomial infections

Procedia PDF Downloads 91