Search results for: time workflow network

Authors: Birgit A. A. Solem, Kristin Bentsen

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Scholarly attention in entrepreneurship is currently directed towards understanding entrepreneurial venture creation as a process -the journey of new economic activities from nonexistence to existence often studied through flow- or network models. To complement existing research on entrepreneurial venture creation with more interactivity-based research of organized activities, this study examines two pop-up stores as anchor events involving on-site activities of fifteen participating entrepreneurs launching their new ventures. The pop-up stores were arranged in two middle-sized Norwegian cities and contained different brand stores that brought together actors of sub-networks and communities executing venture creation activities. The pop-up stores became on-site arenas for the entrepreneurs to create, maintain, and rejuvenate their networks, at the same time as becoming venues for temporal coordination of activities involving existing and potential customers in their venture creation. In this work, we apply a conceptual framework based on frequently addressed dilemmas within entrepreneurship theory (discovery/creation, causation/effectuation) to further shed light on the broad aspect of on-site anchor event activities and their venture creation outcomes. The dilemma-based concepts are applied as an analytic toolkit to pursue answers regarding the nature of anchor event activities typically found within entrepreneurial venture creation and how these anchor event activities affect entrepreneurial venture creation outcomes. Our study combines researcher participation with 200 hours of observation and twenty in-depth interviews. Data analysis followed established guidelines for hermeneutic analysis and was intimately intertwined with ongoing data collection. Data was coded and categorized in NVivo 12 software, and iterated several times as patterns were steadily developing. Our findings suggest that core anchor event activities typically found within entrepreneurial venture creation are; a concept- and product experimentation with visitors, arrangements to socialize (evening specials, auctions, and exhibitions), store-in-store concepts, arranged meeting places for peers and close connection with municipality and property owners. Further, this work points to four main entrepreneurial venture creation outcomes derived from the core anchor event activities; (1) venture attention, (2) venture idea-realization, (3) venture collaboration, and (4) venture extension. Our findings show that, depending on which anchor event activities are applied, the outcomes vary. Theoretically, this study offers two main implications. First, anchor event activities are both discovered and created, following the logic of causation, at the same time as being experimental, based on “learning by doing” principles of effectuation during the execution. Second, our research enriches prior studies on venture creation as a process. In this work, entrepreneurial venture creation activities and outcomes are understood through pop-up stores as on-site anchor event arenas, particularly suitable for interactivity-based research requested by the entrepreneurship field. This study also reveals important managerial implications, such as that entrepreneurs should allow themselves to find creative physical venture creation arenas (e.g., pop-up stores, showrooms), as well as collaborate with partners when discovering and creating concepts and activities based on new ideas. In this way, they allow themselves to both strategically plan for- and continually experiment with their venture.

Keywords: anchor event, interactivity-based research, pop-up store, entrepreneurial venture creation

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Authors: Lena Emamjomeh, Sohrab Imani

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Nowadays, the use of encapsulation technology of pesticides causes an increase in the efficiency and controlled release of these substances. Controlled release by nanoencapsulated formulations allows the essential oil to be used more effectively over a given time interval, suitability to the mode of application and minimization of environmental damage. The essential oil from Eucalyptus globulus exhibited an average yield of 1.19% and presented 1,8-cineol (59.08%) as the major component. Nanoemulsion essential oil was carried out by the method of gum - maltodextrin using homogenization and morphology and size were determined by TEM. Several concentrations were prepared, and then third instar larvae of E.kuehniella were introduced into each treatment. Then, repellent activity was determined after 1, 3 and 24 h from commencement. This study reveals that at a concentration of 1.5 ppm, the nanoemulsion of E. globulus essential oil on the flour disc was shown here to possess more repellent activity (85%) than E.kuehniella compared to natural essential oil (5%) before formulation after 24h. The repellent activity varied with application method concentrations and exposure time. The results showed higher repellent rates in nanoemulsion than in essential oil due to controlled-release formulations allowing smaller quantities of essential oil to be used more effectively over a given time interval. Findings led to the conclusion that encapsulated technology of essential oils can enhance their control release and persistence under controlled conditions.

Keywords: nanoemulsion, eucalyptus globulus, ephestia kuehniella, TEM

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Authors: Mohsen Bahrami, Banafsheh Nikmehr, Yueqiang Song, Anuradha Koduru, Ayse K. Vuruskan, Hongkun Lu, Tamer M. Yalcinkaya

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In recent years, we have witnessed an explosion of studies aimed at using a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and time-lapse imaging data on embryos to improve IVF outcomes. However, despite promising results, no study has used a matched cohort of transferred embryos which only differ in pregnancy outcome, i.e., embryos from a single clinic which are similar in parameters, such as: morphokinetic condition, patient age, and overall clinic and lab performance. Here, we used time-lapse data on embryos with known pregnancy outcomes to see if the rich spatiotemporal information embedded in this data would allow the prediction of the pregnancy outcome regardless of such critical parameters. Methodology—We did a retrospective analysis of time-lapse data from our IVF clinic utilizing Embryoscope 100% of the time for embryo culture to blastocyst stage with known clinical outcomes, including live birth vs nonpregnant (embryos with spontaneous abortion outcomes were excluded). We used time-lapse data from 200 elective single transfer embryos randomly selected from January 2019 to June 2021. Our sample included 100 embryos in each group with no significant difference in patient age (P=0.9550) and morphokinetic scores (P=0.4032). Data from all patients were combined to make a 4th order tensor, and feature extraction were subsequently carried out by a tensor decomposition methodology. The features were then used in a machine learning classifier to classify the two groups. Major Findings—The performance of the model was evaluated using 100 random subsampling cross validation (train (80%) - test (20%)). The prediction accuracy, averaged across 100 permutations, exceeded 80%. We also did a random grouping analysis, in which labels (live birth, nonpregnant) were randomly assigned to embryos, which yielded 50% accuracy. Conclusion—The high accuracy in the main analysis and the low accuracy in random grouping analysis suggest a consistent spatiotemporal pattern which is associated with pregnancy outcomes, regardless of patient age and embryo morphokinetic condition, and beyond already known parameters, such as: early cleavage or early blastulation. Despite small samples size, this ongoing analysis is the first to show the potential of AI methods in capturing the complex morphokinetic changes embedded in embryo time-lapse data, which contribute to successful pregnancy outcomes, regardless of already known parameters. The results on a larger sample size with complementary analysis on prediction of other key outcomes, such as: euploidy and aneuploidy of embryos will be presented at the meeting.

Keywords: IVF, embryo, machine learning, time-lapse imaging data

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Authors: Kishor P. Kadam

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Foreign direct investment policy (FDI) is defined as an investment involving a long term relationship and reflecting a long duration interest and control of a resident entity in the home country (foreign direct investor or parent firm) in the host country. India has been one of the most translucent and open-minded FDI regimes among the emerging and developing economies. There is clear cut mentioned about the sectoral caps for foreign investment. The policy problems that have been identified by time to time surveys as acting as additional hurdles for FDI are laws, regulatory systems and government monopolies that do not have contemporary relevance. Foreign investment policies in the post-reforms period have emphasized greater encouragement and mobilization of non-debt creating private inflows for plunging reliance on debt flows. This paper will focus on how foreign direct investment policy changed from 1990-91 up to now. A time series data of 25 years is used for analysing the policy changes. It is observed that India has more liberal policy. The growth in number of Greenfield investments in India has been more impressive than the number of M&A deals whereas equity capital for incorporated bodies FDI inflows has been increased continuously 2014-15. India has made major changes in FDI Policy, and it has positive impact on economic development.

Keywords: FDI, India, economic development, government

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Authors: Getaye Fisseha Gelaw

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the key physical and physiological characteristics of 16 elite male Ethiopian national team distance runners, who have an average age of 28.1±4.3 years, a height of 175.0 ±5.6 cm, a weight of 59.1 ±3.9 kg, a BMI of 19.6 ±1.5, and training age of 10.1 ±5.1 yrs. The average weekly distance is 196.3±13.8 km, the average 10,000m time is 27:14±0.5 min sec, the average half marathon time is 59:30±0.6 min sec, the average marathon time is 2hr 03min 39sec±0.02. In addition, the average Cooper test (12-minute run test) is 4525.4±139.7 meters, and the average VO2 max is 90.8±3.1ml/kg/m. All athletes have a high profile and compete on the international label, and according to the World Athletics athletes' ranking system in 2021, 56.3% of the 16 participants were platinum label status, while the remaining 43.7 % were gold label status-completed an incremental treadmill test for the assessment of VO2peak, submaximal running, lactate threshold and test during which they ran continuously at 21 km/h. The laboratory determined VO2peak was 91.4 ± 1.7 mL/kg/min with anaerobic threshold of 74.2±1.6 mL/min/Kg and VO2max 81%. The speed at the AT is 15.9 ±0.6 Kmh and the altitude is 4,0%. The respiratory compensation RC point was reached at 88.7±1.1 mL/min/Kg and 97% of VO2 max. On RCP, the speed is 17.6 ±0.4 km/h and the altitude/slope are 5.5% percent, and the speed at Maximum effort is 19.5 ±1.5 and the elevation is 6.0%. The data also suggest that Ethiopian distance top athletes have considerably higher VO2 max values than those found in earlier research.

Keywords: long-distance running, Ethiopians, VO2 max, world athletics, anthropometric

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Authors: Cyrus Addy, Venkata Sriram Siddhardh Nadendla, Kwame Awuah-Offei

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Surface robots in modern underground mine rescue operations suffer from several limitations in enabling a prompt self-rescue. Therefore, the possibility of designing and deploying in-mine robots to expedite miner self-rescue can have a transformative impact on miner safety. These in-mine robots for miner self-rescue can be envisioned to carry out diverse tasks such as object detection, autonomous navigation, and payload delivery. Specifically, this paper investigates the challenges in the design of object detection algorithms for in-mine robots using thermal images, especially to detect people in real-time. A total of 125 thermal images were collected in the Missouri S&T Experimental Mine with the help of student volunteers using the FLIR TG 297 infrared camera, which were pre-processed into training and validation datasets with 100 and 25 images, respectively. Three state-of-the-art, pre-trained real-time object detection models, namely YOLOv5, YOLO-FIRI, and YOLOv8, were considered and re-trained using transfer learning techniques on the training dataset. On the validation dataset, the re-trained YOLOv8 outperforms the re-trained versions of both YOLOv5, and YOLO-FIRI.

Keywords: miner self-rescue, object detection, underground mine, YOLO

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Authors: Ibrahim Mostafa El-Mongy, Abdelmegid Allam

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In this article analysis and investigation of the effect of loading a horn antenna with frequency selective surface (FSS) of crossed dipoles of finite size is presented. It is fabricated on Rogers RO4350 (lossy) of relative permittivity 3.33, thickness 1.524 mm and loss tangent 0.004. Basically it is applied for filtering and minimizing the interference and noise in the desired band. The filtration is carried out using a finite FSS of crossed dipoles of overall dimensions 98x58 mm2. The filtration is shown by limiting the transmission bandwidth from 4 GHz (8–12 GHz) to 0.25 GHz (10.75–11 GHz). It is simulated using CST MWS and measured using network analyzer. There is a good agreement between the simulated and measured results.

Keywords: antenna, filtenna, frequency selective surface (FSS), horn

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Authors: Kayne Uriel K. Rodrigo, Jerriane Hillary Heart S. Marcial, Samuel C. Brillo

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Rice leaf diseases significantly impact yield production in rice-dependent countries, affecting their agricultural sectors. As part of precision agriculture, early and accurate detection of these diseases is crucial for effective mitigation practices and minimizing crop losses. Hence, this study proposes an enhancement to the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), a widely-used method for Rice Leaf Disease Image Classification, by incorporating MobileViTV2—a recently advanced architecture that combines CNN and Vision Transformer models while maintaining fewer parameters, making it suitable for broader deployment on edge devices. Our methodology utilizes a publicly available rice disease image dataset from Kaggle, which was validated by a university structural biologist following the guidelines provided by the Philippine Rice Institute (PhilRice). Modifications to the dataset include renaming certain disease categories and augmenting the rice leaf image data through rotation, scaling, and flipping. The enhanced dataset was then used to train the MobileViTV2 model using the Timm library. The results of our approach are as follows: the model achieved notable performance, with 98% accuracy in both training and validation, 6% training and validation loss, and a Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve ranging from 95% to 100% for each label. Additionally, the F1 score was 97%. These metrics demonstrate a significant improvement compared to a conventional CNN-based approach, which, in a previous 2022 study, achieved only 78% accuracy after using 5 convolutional layers and 2 dense layers. Thus, it can be concluded that MobileViTV2, with its fewer parameters, outperforms traditional CNN models, particularly when applied to Rice Leaf Disease Image Identification. For future work, we recommend extending this model to include datasets validated by international rice experts and broadening the scope to accommodate biotic factors such as rice pest classification, as well as abiotic stressors such as climate, soil quality, and geographic information, which could improve the accuracy of disease prediction.

Keywords: convolutional neural network, MobileViTV2, rice leaf disease, precision agriculture, image classification, vision transformer

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Authors: Salah Ghamari

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In this study, the ability of self organizing map artificial (SOM) neural networks in clustering the wheat seeds varieties according to morphological properties of them was considered. The SOM is one type of unsupervised competitive learning. Experimentally, five morphological features of 300 seeds (including three varieties: gaskozhen, Md and sardari) were obtained using image processing technique. The results show that the artificial neural network has a good performance (90.33% accuracy) in classification of the wheat varieties despite of high similarity in them. The highest classification accuracy (100%) was achieved for sardari.

Keywords: artificial neural networks, clustering, self organizing map, wheat variety

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Authors: Surangrat Srisurapanon, Chatchawal Wongjitrat, Navin Horthongkham, Ruengpung Sutthent

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HBV infection causes a potential serious public health problem. The ability to detect the HBV DNA concentration is of the importance and improved continuously. By using quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (qPCR), several factors in standardized; source of material, calibration standard curve and PCR efficiency are inconsistent. Digital PCR (dPCR) is an alternative PCR-based technique for absolute quantification using Poisson's statistics without requiring a standard curve. Therefore, the aim of this study is to compare the data set of HBV DNA generated between dPCR and qPCR methods. All samples were quantified by Abbott’s real time PCR and 54 samples with 2 -6 log10 HBV DNA were selected for comparison with dPCR. Of these 54 samples, there were two outlier samples defined as negative by dPCR. Of these two, samples were defined as negative by dPCR, whereas 52 samples were positive by both the tests. The difference between the two assays was less than 0.25 log IU/mL in 24/52 samples (46%) of paired samples; less than 0.5 log IU/mL in 46/52 samples (88%) and less than 1 log in 50/52 samples (96%). The correlation coefficient was r=0.788 and P-value <0.0001. Comparison to qPCR, data generated by dPCR tend to be the overestimation in the sample with low HBV DNA concentration and underestimated in the sample with high viral load. The variation in DNA by dPCR measurement might be due to the pre-amplification bias, template. Moreover, a minor drawback of dPCR is the large quantity of DNA had to be used when compare to the qPCR. Since the technology is relatively new, the limitations of this assay will be improved.

Keywords: hepatitis B virus, real time PCR, digital PCR, DNA quantification

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Authors: Cosmas Pandit Pagwiwoko, Ammar Khaled Abdelaziz Abdelsamia

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Flutter as a phenomenon of flow-induced and self-excited vibration has to be recognized considering its harmful effect on the structure especially in a stage of aircraft design. This phenomenon is also important for a wind energy harvester based on the fluttering surface due to its effective operational velocity range. This multi-physics occurrence can be presented by two governing equations in both fluid and structure simultaneously in respecting certain boundary conditions on the surface of the body. In this work, the equations are resolved separately by two distinct solvers, one-time step of each domain. The modelling and simulation of this flow-structure interaction in ANSYS show the effectiveness of this loosely coupled method in representing flutter phenomenon however the process is time-consuming for design purposes. Therefore, another technique using the same weak coupled aero-structure is proposed by using system dynamics approach. In this technique, the aerodynamic forces were calculated using singularity function for a range of frequencies and certain natural mode shapes are transformed into time domain by employing an approximation model of fraction rational function in Laplace variable. The representation of structure in a multi-degree-of-freedom coupled with a transfer function of aerodynamic forces can then be simulated in time domain on a block-diagram platform such as Simulink MATLAB. The dynamic response of flutter at certain velocity can be evaluated with another established flutter calculation in frequency domain k-method. In this method, a parameter of artificial structural damping is inserted in the equation of motion to assure the energy balance of flow and vibrating structure. The simulation in time domain is particularly interested as it enables to apply the structural non-linear factors accurately. Experimental tests on a fluttering airfoil in the wind tunnel are also conducted to validate the method.

Keywords: flutter, flow-induced vibration, flow-structure interaction, non-linear structure

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Authors: Moise Alin Ionuț Cornel

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In a pilot lesson of prevention of consumption drugs in a classroom of teenager`s where the school want them to know how to manage their thoughts and emotions to protect themself an to be strong in an possible environment of drugs consumption. At this classroom was applied the RAIN(Recognize, Accept, Investigation,Non-identify) spiritual method and the balance model from positive and transcultural psychotherapy (PPT) in a manner of a game play for them to understand the methods in an individual experience. The balance model from PPT with his 4 parts and used in 3 ways, and the RAIN spiritual method was used to see how the teenager`s can bring clarity about theirs individual self and how they spend the time and energy in the daily life. The 3 ways of how they can used this model was explained like a analogy with the 3 periods of the SAKURA (Japanese cherry) flourish (kaika, mankai and chiru). The teenager`s received a new perspective and in the same time new tools from the spiritual point of view combined with the psychotherapeutic point of view to manage their thoughts, emotions, time and energy in the form of a psychoeducational game to be able to prevent the use of drugs.

Keywords: addiction, drugs consumption prevention education, psychotherapy, Self, Spirituality, teenagers

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Authors: Andrei Pomana, Graham Brewer

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Autism is a lifelong developmental disorder that affects verbal and non-verbal communication, behaviour and sensory processing. As a result, people on the autism spectrum have a difficult time when confronted with environments that have high levels of sensory stimulation. This is often compounded by the inability to properly communicate their wants and needs to caregivers. The capacity for people with autism to integrate depends on their ability to at least tolerate highly stimulating public environments for short periods of time. The overall challenges that people on the spectrum and their caregivers face need to be established in order to properly create and assess methods to mitigate the effects of high stimulus public spaces. The paper aims to identify the challenges that people on the autism spectrum and their caregivers face in typical public environments. Nine experienced autism therapists have participated in a semi-structured interview regarding the challenges that people with autism and their caregivers face in public environments. The qualitative data shows that the unpredictability of events and the high sensory stimulation present in public environments, especially auditory, are the two biggest contributors to the difficulties that people on the spectrum face. If the stimuli are not removed in a short period of time, uncontrollable behaviours or 'meltdowns' can occur, which leave the person incapacitated and unable to respond to any outside input. Possible solutions to increase integration in public spaces for people with autism revolve around removing unwanted sensory stimulus, creating personalized barriers for certain stimuli, equipping people with autism with better tools to communicate their needs or to orient themselves to a safe location and providing a predictable pattern of events that would prepare individuals for tasks ahead of time.

Keywords: autism, built environment, meltdown, public environment, sensory processing disorders

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Authors: Jing Zhang, Daniel Nikovski

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We propose an approximation algorithm called LINKUMP to compute the Pan Matrix Profile (PMP) under the unnormalized l∞ distance (useful for value-based similarity search) using double-ended queue and linear interpolation. The algorithm has comparable time/space complexities as the state-of-the-art algorithm for typical PMP computation under the normalized l₂ distance (useful for shape-based similarity search). We validate its efficiency and effectiveness through extensive numerical experiments and a real-world anomaly detection application.

Keywords: pan matrix profile, unnormalized euclidean distance, double-ended queue, discord discovery, anomaly detection

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Authors: Nelvin Joseph, K. Krishna Milan Rao, Praveen Dwarakanath

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The explosive growth of Smart phones around the world has led to the shift of the primary engagement tool for entertainment from traditional consoles and music players to an all integrated device. Augmented Reality is the next big shift in bringing in a new dimension to the play. The paper explores the construct and working of the community engine in Delta T – an Augmented Reality game that allows users to evolve rules in the game basis collective bargaining mirroring democracy even in a gaming world.

Keywords: augmented reality, artificial neural networks, mobile application, human computer interaction, community engine

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Authors: André Luis Messias Dos Santos Duque, Daniela Polessa Paula, Rosane Harter Griep

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The intensity of physical activity (PA) over time is essential for health promotion. However, there are few studies that have analyzed the practice of different intensities of PA longitudinally. The objective was to identify PA intensity trajectories in men and women from a Brazilian multicentric cohort and their associated factors. Data from 10,367 participants (5,777 women and 4,590 men) aged 35 to 74 years from the baseline and two follow-up visits (2012-2014 and 2017-2019) of the Longitudinal Study of Adult Health (ELSA-Brasil) were analyzed. PA intensity (low, moderate, or high) was assessed using the leisure-time PA module of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ), and sociodemographic, behavioral, and clinical variables were included. Chi-square and T-student tests were used, considering a significant level of 5%. Four intensity trajectories were identified: low, moderate, high, and no pattern. Most participants (82.5% of women and 75.7% of men) had low PA intensity trajectories, and only 2% of women and 4.8% of men had high PA intensity trajectories. For both sexes, a significant difference (p<0.05) was found for age group, education level, income, smoking, type 2 diabetes, obesity, hypertriglyceridemia, and hypertension. Actions that promote the practice of high-intensity PA over time and consider sociodemographic, clinical, and behavioral factors are necessary.

Keywords: lifestyle, longterm effects, physical activity, socioeconomic factors

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Authors: Femi Elegbeleye, Omobayo Esan, Muienge Mbodila, Patrick Bowe

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This paper focused on cost effective storage architecture using fog and cloud data storage gateway and presented the design of the framework for the data privacy model and data analytics framework on a real-time analysis when using machine learning method. The paper began with the system analysis, system architecture and its component design, as well as the overall system operations. The several results obtained from this study on data privacy model shows that when two or more data privacy model is combined we tend to have a more stronger privacy to our data, and when fog storage gateway have several advantages over using the traditional cloud storage, from our result shows fog has reduced latency/delay, low bandwidth consumption, and energy usage when been compare with cloud storage, therefore, fog storage will help to lessen excessive cost. This paper dwelt more on the system descriptions, the researchers focused on the research design and framework design for the data privacy model, data storage, and real-time analytics. This paper also shows the major system components and their framework specification. And lastly, the overall research system architecture was shown, its structure, and its interrelationships.

Keywords: IoT, fog, cloud, data analysis, data privacy

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Authors: Hanee Ryu

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The former president Lee Myung-bak's administration of Korea presented “green growth” as a catchphrase from 2008. He declared “low-carbon, green growth” the nation's vision for the next decade according to United Nation Framework on Climate Change. The government designed omnidirectional policy for low-carbon and green growth with concentrating all effort of departments. The structural change was expected because this slogan is the identity of the government, which is strongly driven with the whole department. After his administration ends, the purpose of this paper is to quantify the policy effect and to compare with the value of the other OECD countries. The major target values under direct policy objectives were suggested, but it could not capture the entire landscape on which the policy makes changes. This paper figures out the policy impacts through comparing the value of ex-ante between the one of ex-post. Furthermore, each index level of Korea’s low-carbon and green growth comparing with the value of the other OECD countries. To measure the policy effect, indicators international organizations have developed are considered. Environmental Sustainable Index (ESI) and Environmental Performance Index (EPI) have been developed by Yale University’s Center for Environmental Law and Policy and Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and Joint Research Center of European Commission. It has been widely used to assess the level of natural resource endowments, pollution level, environmental management efforts and society’s capacity to improve its environmental performance over time. Recently OCED publish the Green Growth Indicator for monitoring progress towards green growth based on internationally comparable data. They build up the conceptual framework and select indicators according to well specified criteria: economic activities, natural asset base, environmental dimension of quality of life and economic opportunities and policy response. It considers the socio-economic context and reflects the characteristic of growth. Some selected indicators are used for measuring the level of changes the green growth policies have induced in this paper. As results, the CO2 productivity and energy productivity show trends of declination. It means that policy intended industry structure shift for achieving carbon emission target affects weakly in the short-term. Increasing green technologies patents might result from the investment of previous period. The increasing of official development aids which can be immediately embarked by political decision with no time lag present only in 2008-2009. It means international collaboration and investment to developing countries via ODA has not succeeded since the initial stage of his administration. The green growth framework makes the public expect structural change, but it shows sporadic effect. It needs organization to manage it in terms of the long-range perspectives. Energy, climate change and green growth are not the issue to be handled in the one period of the administration. The policy mechanism to transfer cost problem to value creation should be developed consistently.

Keywords: comparing ex-ante between ex-post indicator, green growth indicator, implication for green growth policy, measuring policy effect

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Authors: An-Shik Yang, Chin-Ting Kuo, Yung-Chun Yang, Wen-Hsin Hsieh, Chiang-Ho Cheng

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Optical biosensors have become a powerful detection and analysis tool for wide-ranging applications in biomedical research, pharmaceuticals and environmental monitoring. This study carried out the computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-based simulations to explore the dispersion phenomenon in the microchannel of a optical biosensor. The predicted time sequences of concentration contours were utilized to better understand the dispersion development occurred in different geometric shapes of microchannels. The simulation results showed the surface concentrations at the sensing probe (with the best performance of a grating coupler) in respect of time to appraise the dispersion effect and therefore identify the design configurations resulting in minimum dispersion.

Keywords: CFD simulations, dispersion, microfluidic, optical waveguide sensors

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Authors: Shian Wan, Yi-Chang Wang, Yu-Chien Lin

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This research discussed the various theories of service design, the importance of service design methodology, and the development of transformative service design framework. In this study, transformative service design is applied while building a new brand community service for women, children and infants retailing business. The goal is to enhance the brand recognition and customer loyalty, effectively increase the brand community engagement by embedding the brand community in social network and ultimately, strengthen the impact and the value of the company brand.

Keywords: service design, transformative service design, brand community, innovation

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Authors: Gabriel Andrade

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Background: Ramadan is a time of intense religious salience in the Islamic world. Apart from ritual engagement, it is also a time for reflection on devotion and shared humanity. This prompts the issue if Ramadan has an effect on moral integrity and decision-making. Methods: The present study seeks to answer that question. A group of Muslim students in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were assessed on moral integrity both during and after Ramadan. Results: Results came out showing that Ramadan has no significant effect on participants’ moral integrity. Conclusion: It is concluded that Ramadan has no effect on participants’ moral behavior, and this is potentially explained by the UAE’s increased secularization in recent decades.

Keywords: Ramadan, United Arab Emirates, moral integrity, secularization, trolley dilemmas

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Authors: Sara Fine-Meltzer

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An obvious, but ill-addressed hindrance to reading comprehension in academic English is poor vocabulary. Unfortunately, dealing with the problem is usually delayed until university entrance. It is the contention of this paper that the chore should be confronted much earlier and by using a very old-fashioned method. This presentation is accompanied by vocabulary lists for advanced level university students with explanations concerning the content and justification for the 500-word lists: how they change over time in accordance with evolving styles of academic writing. There are also sample quizzes and methods to ensure that the words are “absorbed” over time. There is a discussion of other vocabulary acquisition methods and conclusions drawn from the drawbacks of such methods. The paper concludes with the rationale for beginning the study of “academic” vocabulary earlier than is generally acceptable.

Keywords: academic vocabulary, old-fashioned methods, quizzes, vocabulary lists

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Authors: Sulaem Musaddiq Laskar, Sudip Talukdar

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Sustainable supplementary cementitious material is the prime need in the construction industry. Geopolymer has strong potential for replacing the conventional Portland cement used in mortar and concrete in the industry. This study deals with experimental investigations performed on geopolymer mixes prepared from both ultra-fine ground granulated blast furnace slag and fly ash in a certain proportion. Geopolymer mixes were prepared with alkali activator composed of sodium hydroxide solution and varying amount of superplasticizer. The mixes were tested to study fresh and hardened state properties such as setting time, workability and compressive strength. Influence of concentration of alkali activator on effectiveness of superplasticizer in modifying the properties of geopolymer mixes was also investigated. Results indicated that addition of superplasticizer to ultra-fine slag-fly ash based geopolymer is advantageous in terms of setting time, workability and strength performance but up to certain dosage level. Higher concentration of alkali activator renders ineffectiveness in superplasticizer in improving the fresh and hardened state properties of geopolymer mixes.

Keywords: ultra-fine slag, fly ash, superplasticizer, setting time, workability, compressive strength

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Authors: Hend Alrasheed

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Due to their different properties that have led to avoid several limitations of classic client/server systems, there has been a great interest in the development and the improvement of different peer to peer systems. Understanding the properties of complex peer to peer networks is essential for their future improvements. It was shown that the performances of peer to peer protocols are directly related to their underlying topologies. Therefore, multiple efforts have analyzed the topologies of different peer to peer systems. This study presents an overview of major findings of close experimental analyses to different topologies of three unstructured peer to peer systems: BitTorrent, Gnutella, and FreeNet.

Keywords: peer to peer networks, network topology, graph diameter, clustering coefficient, small-world property, random graph, degree distribution

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Authors: A. I. A. Rahman, Sh-Hussain Salleh, K. Ahmad, K. Anuar

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Analysis of vocal fold vibration is essential for understanding the mechanism of voice production and for improving clinical assessment of voice disorders. This paper presents a Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) based approach to analyze and objectively classify vocal fold vibration patterns. The proposed technique was designed and implemented on a Glottal Area Waveform (GAW) extracted from high-speed laryngeal images by delineating the glottal edges for each image frame. Feature extraction from the GAW was performed using Linear Predictive Coding (LPC). Several types of voice reference templates from simulations of clear, breathy, fry, pressed and hyperfunctional voice productions were used. The patterns of the reference templates were first verified using the analytical signal generated through Hilbert transformation of the GAW. Samples from normal speakers’ voice recordings were then used to evaluate and test the effectiveness of this approach. The classification of the voice patterns using the technique of LPC and DTW gave the accuracy of 81%.

Keywords: dynamic time warping, glottal area waveform, linear predictive coding, high-speed laryngeal images, Hilbert transform

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Authors: John Hardy

Abstract:

Over the last decade, the increasing utility of extremist narratives to the operational effectiveness of terrorist organizations has been evidenced by the proliferation of inspired or affiliated attacks across the world. Famous examples such as regional al-Qaeda affiliates and the self-styled “Islamic State” demonstrate the effectiveness of leveraging communication technologies to disseminate propaganda, recruit members, and orchestrate attacks. Terrorist organizations with the capacity to harness the communicative power offered by digital communication technologies and effective political narratives have held an advantage over their targets in recent years. Terrorists have leveraged the perceived legitimacy of grass-roots actors to appeal to a global audience of potential supporters and enemies alike, and have wielded a proficiency in profile-raising which remains unmatched by counter terrorism narratives around the world. In contrast, many attempts at propagating official counter-narratives have been received by target audiences as illegitimate, top-down and impersonally bureaucratic. However, the benefits provided by widespread communication and extremist narratives have come at an operational cost. Terrorist organizations now face a significant challenge in protecting their access to communications technologies and authority over the content they create and endorse. The dissemination of effective narratives has emerged as a core function of terrorist organizations with international reach via inspired or affiliated attacks. As such, it has become a critical function which can be targeted by intelligence and security forces. This study applies network targeting principles which have been used by coalition forces against a range of non-state actors in the Middle East and South Asia to the communicative function of terrorist organizations. This illustrates both a conceptual link between functional targeting and operational disruption in the abstract and a tangible impact on the operational effectiveness of terrorists by degrading communicative ability and legitimacy. Two case studies highlight the utility of applying functional targeting against terrorist organizations. The first case is the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda propagandist who crafted a permissive narrative and effective propaganda videos to attract recruits who committed inspired terrorist attacks in the US and overseas. The second is a series of operations against Islamic State propagandists in Syria, including the capture or deaths of a cadre of high profile Islamic State members, including Junaid Hussain, Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, Neil Prakash, and Rachid Kassim. The group of Islamic State propagandists were linked to a significant rise in affiliated and enabled terrorist attacks and were subsequently targeted by law enforcement and military agencies. In both cases, the disruption of communication between the terrorist organization and recruits degraded both communicative and operational functions. Effective functional targeting on member recruitment and operational tempo suggests that narratives are a critical function which can be leveraged against terrorist organizations. Further application of network targeting methods to terrorist narratives may enhance the efficacy of a range of counter terrorism techniques employed by security and intelligence agencies.

Keywords: countering violent extremism, counter terrorism, intelligence, terrorism, violent extremism

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Authors: Abhishek Srivastava, Jeevesh Nandan, Manish Kumar

Abstract:

The study was taken to analyse the alternative source of traffic system for effective and more convenient traffic flow by reducing points of conflicts as well as angle of conflict and keeping in view to minimize the problem of unnecessarily long waiting time, delays, congestion, traffic jam and geometric delays due to intersection between circular and straight lanes. It is a twin kidney-spine type structure system with special allowance for Highway users for quicker passes. Thus reduction in number and intensity of accidents, significance reduction in traffic jam, conservation of valuable time.

Keywords: traffic system, collision reduction of vehicles, smooth flow of vehicles, traffic jam

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Authors: A. R. Alesaadi

Abstract:

Flexible AC transmission system (FACTS) devices have an important rule on expended electrical transmission networks. These devices can provide control of one or more AC transmission system parameters to enhance controllability and increase power transfer capability. In this paper the effect of these devices on reliability of electrical networks is studied and it is shown that using of FACTS devices can improve the reliability of power networks and power quality in electrical networks, significantly.

Keywords: FACTS devices, power networks, power quality, STATCOM

Procedia PDF Downloads 668

Authors: Kamil Ganaev, Elina Vlasova, Andrei Shiryaev, Renat Akchurin

Abstract:

De novo atrial fibrillation (AF) after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) is a common complication. To date, there are no data on the possible effect of diffuse lesions of coronary arteries on the incidence of postoperative AF complications. Methods. Patients operated on-pump under hypothermic conditions during the calendar year (2020) were studied. Inclusion criteria - isolated CABG and achievement of complete myocardial revascularization. Patients with a history of AF moderate and severe valve dysfunction, hormonal thyroid pathology, initial CHF(Congestive heart failure), as well as patients with developed perioperative complications (IM, acute heart failure, massive blood loss) and deceased were excluded. Thus 227 patients were included; mean age 65±9 years; 69% were men. 89% of patients had a 3-vessel lesion of the coronary artery; the remainder had a 2-vessel lesion. Mean LV size: 3.9±0.3 cm, indexed LV volume: 29.4±5.3 mL/m2. Two groups were considered: D (n=98), patients with diffuse coronary heart disease, and L (n=129), patients with local coronary heart disease. Clinical and demographic characteristics in the groups were comparable. Rhythm assessment: continuous bedside ECG monitoring up to 5 days; ECG CT at 5-7 days after CABG; daily routine ECG registration. Follow-up period - postoperative hospital period. Results. The Median follow-up period was 9 (7;11) days. POFP (Postoperative atrial fibrillation) was detected in 61/227 (27%) patients: 34/98 (35%) in group D versus 27/129 (21%) in group L; p<0.05. Moreover, the values of revascularization index in groups D and L (3.9±0.7 and 3.8±0.5, respectively) were equal, and the mean time Cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) (107±27 and 80±13min), as well as the mean ischemic time (67±17 and 55±11min) were significantly longer in group D (p<0.05). However, a separate analysis of these parameters in patients with and without developed AF did not reveal any significant differences in group D (CPB time 99±21.2 min, ischemic time 63±12.2 min), or in group L (CPB time 88±13.1 min, ischemic time 58.7±13.2 min). Conclusion. With the diffuse nature of coronary lesions, the incidence of AF in the hospital period after isolated CABG definitely increases. To better understand the role of severe coronary atherosclerosis in the development of POAF, it is necessary to distinguish the influence of organic features of atrial and ventricular myocardium (as a consequence of chronic coronary disease) from the features of surgical correction in diffuse coronary lesions.

Keywords: atrial fibrillation, diffuse coronary artery disease, coronary artery bypass grafting, local coronary artery disease

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Authors: Ali Alshumrani, Nathan Clarke, Bogdan Ghite, Stavros Shiaeles

Abstract:

Digital forensics has become an essential tool in the investigation of cyber and computer-assisted crime. Arguably, given the prevalence of technology and the subsequent digital footprints that exist, it could have a significant role across almost all crimes. However, the variety of technology platforms (such as computers, mobiles, Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV), Internet of Things (IoT), databases, drones, cloud computing services), heterogeneity and volume of data, forensic tool capability, and the investigative cost make investigations both technically challenging and prohibitively expensive. Forensic tools also tend to be siloed into specific technologies, e.g., File System Forensic Analysis Tools (FS-FAT) and Network Forensic Analysis Tools (N-FAT), and a good deal of data sources has little to no specialist forensic tools. Increasingly it also becomes essential to compare and correlate evidence across data sources and to do so in an efficient and effective manner enabling an investigator to answer high-level questions of the data in a timely manner without having to trawl through data and perform the correlation manually. This paper proposes a Unified Forensic Analysis Tool (U-FAT), which aims to establish a common language for electronic information and permit multi-source forensic analysis. Core to this approach is the identification and development of forensic analyses that automate complex data correlations, enabling investigators to investigate cases more efficiently. The paper presents a systematic analysis of major crime categories and identifies what forensic analyses could be used. For example, in a child abduction, an investigation team might have evidence from a range of sources including computing devices (mobile phone, PC), CCTV (potentially a large number), ISP records, and mobile network cell tower data, in addition to third party databases such as the National Sex Offender registry and tax records, with the desire to auto-correlate and across sources and visualize in a cognitively effective manner. U-FAT provides a holistic, flexible, and extensible approach to providing digital forensics in technology, application, and data-agnostic manner, providing powerful and automated forensic analysis.

Keywords: digital forensics, evidence correlation, heterogeneous data, forensics tool

Procedia PDF Downloads 196