Search results for: echocardiographic view detection

Authors: Chitralekha Ngangbam, Aniruddha Mondal, Naorem Khelchand Singh

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Aluminium (Al) doped In2O3 (Indium Oxide) nanocolumn array was synthesized by glancing angle deposition (GLAD) technique on Si (n-type) substrate for photodetector application. The sample was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The average diameter of the nanocolumn was calculated from the top view of the SEM image and found to be ∼80 nm. The length of the nanocolumn (~500 nm) was calculated from cross sectional SEM image and it shows that the nanocolumns are perpendicular to the substrate. The EDX analysis confirmed the presence of Al (Aluminium), In (Indium), O (Oxygen) elements in the samples. The XRD patterns of the Al-doped In2O3 nanocolumn show the presence of different phases of the Al doped In2O3 nanocolumn i.e. (222) and (622). Three different peaks were observed from the PL analysis of Al doped In2O3 nanocolumn at 365 nm, 415 nm and 435 nm respectively. The peak at PL emission at 365 nm can be attributed to the near band gap transition of In2O3 whereas the peaks at 415 nm and 435 nm can be attributed to the trap state emissions due to oxygen vacancies and oxygen–indium vacancy centre in Al doped In2O3 nanocolumn. The current-voltage (I–V) characteristics of the Al doped In2O3 nanocolumn based detector was measured through the Au Schottky contact. The devices were then examined under the halogen light (20 W) illumination for photocurrent measurement. The Al-doped In2O3 nanocolumn based optical detector showed high conductivity and low turn on voltage at 0.69 V under white light illumination. A maximum photoresponsivity of 82 A/W at 380 nm was observed for the device. The device shows a high internal gain of ~267 at UV region (380 nm) and ∼127 at visible region (760 nm). Also the rise time and fall time for the device at 650 nm is 0.15 and 0.16 sec respectively which makes it suitable for fast response detector.

Keywords: glancing angle deposition, nanocolumn, semiconductor, photodetector, indium oxide

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Authors: Floris Burgers, Arjan Verschoor

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Poor farmers in developing countries typically do not have the resources or access to institutions to protect themselves against all kinds of income shocks, which makes their farm income highly sensitive to weather and crop price fluctuations, and various other intervening forces. Consequently, the relationship between farming effort and farming outcomes can be noisy, potentially resulting in a situation in which farmers perceive little personal control over the outcomes of their farming efforts. This perceived lack of control can result in learned helplessness in some farmers, who would then be less motivated to invest in their farm. This paper presents the results of a household survey and controlled field experiment conducted in ten villages in a farming area in eastern Uganda with a view to examining the link between learned helplessness and agricultural investment. The results show that (I) farmers with a more pessimistic attributional style for negative life events invest less in their farm, (II) an experience of uncontrollability over income in a priming task increases investment in the farm in a subsequent task if losses in the priming task are small, and decreases investment in the subsequent task if losses are moderate or big, and (III) the relationship between the number of income shocks experienced in the past two years and investment in the farm is more negative among farmers with a more pessimistic attributional style. These results are in line with the reformulated learned helplessness theory underlying this research, which leads this paper to conclude that learned helplessness can cause agricultural underinvestment in a developing country context, potentially contributing to a poverty trap.

Keywords: agricultural investment, attributional style, farmers, learned helplessness, poverty, income shocks

Procedia PDF Downloads 203

Authors: Mst Ilme Faridatul, Bo Wu

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Multi-temporal urban land cover mapping is of paramount importance for monitoring urban sprawl and managing the ecological environment. For diversified urban activities, it is challenging to map land covers in a complex urban environment. Spectral indices have proved to be effective for mapping urban land covers. To improve multi-temporal urban land cover classification and mapping, we evaluate the performance of three spectral indices, e.g. modified normalized difference bare-land index (MNDBI), tasseled cap water and vegetation index (TCWVI) and shadow index (ShDI). The MNDBI is developed to evaluate its performance of enhancing urban impervious areas by separating bare lands. A tasseled cap index, TCWVI is developed to evaluate its competence to detect vegetation and water simultaneously. The ShDI is developed to maximize the spectral difference between shadows of skyscrapers and water and enhance water detection. First, this paper presents a comparative analysis of three spectral indices using Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM), Thematic Mapper (TM) and Operational Land Imager (OLI) data. Second, optimized thresholds of the spectral indices are imputed to classify land covers, and finally, their performance of enhancing multi-temporal urban land cover mapping is assessed. The results indicate that the spectral indices are competent to enhance multi-temporal urban land cover mapping and achieves an overall classification accuracy of 93-96%.

Keywords: land cover, mapping, multi-temporal, spectral indices

Procedia PDF Downloads 139

Authors: Arab M., Ait Abdallah M., Zeraoulia N., Boumaza H., Aoutia M., Griene L., Ait Abdelkader B.,

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breast and ovarian cancer are respectively the first and fourth leading causes of cancer among women in Algeria. A family story of cancer in the most important risk factor, and in most cases of families with breast and /or ovarian cancer, the pattern of cancer family can be attributed to mutation in BRCA1/2genes. objectibes: the aim of our study in to investigate the spectrum of BRCA1/2 germiline mutation in familial breast and /or ovarian cancer and to determine the prevalence and the nature of BRCA1/2mutation in Algeria methods: we deremined the prevalence of BRCA1/2 mutation within a cohort of 161 probands selected according the eisinger score double stranded sanger sequencing of all coding exons of BRCA1/2including flanking intronic region were performed results: we identified a total of 23 distinct deleterious mutations (class5) 12 differents mutations in BRCA1(52%) and 11 in BRCA2(48%). 78% (18/23) were protein truncating and 22%(5/23) missens mutations.3 novel deleterious mutations have been identified, which have not been described in public mutation database. one new mutation were found in two unrelated patients. the overall mutation detection rate in our study is 28,5%(46/161).more over, an UVS c7783 located in BRCA2 is found in two unrelated probands and segregate in the 02 families/ conclusion: our results sugget of large spectrum of BRCA1/2 mutation in Algerian breast/ovarian cancer family. The nature and prevalence of BRCA1/2mutation in algerian families are ongoing in a larger study, 80 probands are to day under investigation. This study which may therefore identify the genetic particularity of Algerian breast /ovarian cancer.

Keywords: BRCA1/2 mutations, hereditary breast cancer, algerian women, prvalence

Procedia PDF Downloads 166

Authors: Oleg Redkin, Olga Bernikova

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It is commonly accepted that every language is both pure linguistic phenomenon as well as socially significant communicative system, which exists on the basis of certain society - its collective 'native speaker'. Therefore the language evolution and features besides its own linguistic rules and regulations are also defined by the influence of a number of extra-linguistic factors. The above mentioned statement may be illustrated by the example of the Arabic language which may be characterized by the following peculiarities: - the inner logic of the Arabic language - the 'algebraicity' of its morphological paradigms and grammar rules; - association of the Arabic language with the sacred texts of Islam, its close ties with the pre-Islamic and Islamic cultural heritage - the pre-Islamic poetry and Islamic literature and science; - territorial distribution, which in recent years went far beyond the boundaries of its traditional realm due to the development of new technologies and the spread of mass media, and what is more important, migration processes; - association of the Arabic language with the so called 'Renaissance of Islam'. These peculiarities should be remembered while considering the status of the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) language or the Classical Arabic (CA) language as well as the Modern Arabic (MA) dialects in synchrony or from the diachronic point of view. Continuity of any system in diachrony on the one hand depends on the level of its ability to adapt itself to changing environment and by its internal ties on the other. Structural durability of language is characterized by its inner logic, hierarchy of paradigms and its grammar rules, as well as continuity of their implementation in acts of everyday communication. Since the Arabic language is both linguistic and social phenomenon the process of the Arabic language acquisition and study should not be focused only on the knowledge about linguistic features or development of communicative skills alone, but must be supplied with the information related to culture, history and religion of peoples of certain region that will expand and enrich competences of the target audience.

Keywords: Arabic, culture, Islam, language

Procedia PDF Downloads 269

Authors: C. Salis, D. Zedda, M. F. Wilson

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The IDEA project was conceived for teachers who are interested in enhancing their capacity to effectively implement the use of specific technologies in their teaching practice. Participating teachers are coached and supported as they explore technologies applied to the educational context. They access tools such as the technological platform developed by our team. Among the platform functionalities, teachers access an instructional systems design (ISD) tool (learning designer) that was adapted to the needs of our project. The tool is accessible from computers or mobile devices and used in association with other technologies to create new, meaningful learning environments. The objective of an instructional systems design is to guarantee the quality and effectiveness of education and to enhance learning. This goal involves both teachers who want to become more efficient in transferring knowledge or skills and students as the final recipient of their teaching. The use of Blooms’s taxonomy enables teachers to classify the learning objectives into levels of complexity and specificity, thus making it possible to highlight the kind of knowledge teachers would like their students to reach. The fact that the instructional design features can be visualized through the IDEA platform is a guarantee for those who are looking for specific educational materials to be used in their lessons. Despite the benefits offered, a number of teachers are reluctant to use ISD because the preparatory work of having to thoroughly analyze the teaching/learning objectives, the planning of learning material, assessment activities, etc., is long and felt to be time-consuming. This drawback is minimized using a learning designer, as the tool facilitates to reuse of the didactic contents having a clear view of the processes of analysis, planning, and production of educational or testing materials uploaded on our platform. In this paper, we shall present the feedback of the teachers who used our tool in their didactic.

Keywords: educational benefits, educational quality, educational technology, ISD tool

Procedia PDF Downloads 177

Authors: Soukaina Ounss, Hamid Mounir, Abdellatif El Marjani

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Sandwich materials with composite reinforced skins are mostly required in advanced construction applications with a view to ensure resistant structures. Their lightweight, their high flexural stiffness and their optimal thermal insulation make them a suitable solution to obtain efficient structures with performing rigidity and optimal energy safety. In this paper, the mechanical behavior of a sandwich beam with composite skins reinforced by unidirectional carbon fibers is investigated numerically through analyzing the impact of reinforcements specifications on the longitudinal elastic modulus in order to select the adequate sandwich configuration that has an interesting rigidity and an accurate convergence to the analytical approach which is proposed to verify performed numerical simulations. Therefore, concerned study starts by testing flexion performances of skins with various fibers orientations and volume fractions to determine those to use in sandwich beam. For that, the combination of a reinforcement inclination of 30° and a volume ratio of 60% is selected with the one with 60° of fibers orientation and 40% of volume fraction, this last guarantees to chosen skins an important rigidity with an optimal fibers concentration and a great enhance in convergence to analytical results in the sandwich model for the reason of the crucial core role as transverse shear absorber. Thus, a resistant sandwich beam is elaborated from a face-sheet constituted from two layers of previous skins with fibers oriented in 60° and an epoxy core; concerned beam has a longitudinal elastic modulus of 54 Gpa (gigapascal) that equals to the analytical value by a negligible error of 2%.

Keywords: fibers orientation, fibers volume ratio, longitudinal elastic modulus, sandwich beam

Procedia PDF Downloads 147

Authors: Md Ruhul Amin

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This study was conducted in the experimental field of the Department of Entomology, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University, Gazipur, Bangladesh during November 2017 to May 2018 with a view to understanding the seasonal abundance of the major sucking pests namely thrips, aphid and red spider mite on rose. The findings showed that the thrips started to build up their population from the middle of January with abundance 1.0 leaf⁻¹, increased continuously, reached to the peak level (2.6 leaf⁻¹) in the middle of February and then declined. Aphid started to build up their population from the second week of November with abundance 6.0 leaf⁻¹, increased continuously, reached to the peak level (8.4 leaf⁻¹) in the last week of December and then declined. Mite started to build up their population from the first week of December with abundance 0.8 leaf⁻¹, increased continuously, reached to the peak level (8.2 leaf⁻¹) in the second week of March and then declined. Thrips and mite prevailed until the last week of April, and aphid showed their abundance till last week of May. The daily mean temperature, relative humidity, and rainfall had an insignificant negative correlation with thrips and significant negative correlation with aphid abundance. The daily mean temperature had significant positive, relative humidity had an insignificant positive, and rainfall had an insignificant negative correlation with mite abundance. The multiple linear regression analysis showed that the weather parameters together contributed 38.1, 41.0 and 8.9% abundance on thrips, aphid and mite on rose, respectively and the equations were insignificant.

Keywords: aphid, mite, thrips, weather factors

Procedia PDF Downloads 152

Authors: Md. Moniruzzaman, Thirayoot Limanond

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Being the most visible indicator, the transport system of a city points out how developed the city is. Dhaka megacity holds a mixed composition of motorized and non-motorized modes of transport and the number of vehicle figure is escalating over times. And this obviously poses associated environmental costs like air pollution, noise etc. which is degrading the quality of life in the city. Eventually sustainable transport or more importantly green transport from environmental point of view has become a prime choice to the transport professionals in order to cope up the crisis. Currently the city authority is planning to execute such sustainable transport systems that could serve the pressing demand of the present and meet the future needs effectively. This study focuses on the selection and evaluation of green transportation systems among potential alternatives on a priority basis. In this paper, Fuzzy TOPSIS - a multi-criteria decision method is presented to find out the most prioritized alternative. In the first step, Twenty-one individual specific criteria for sustainability assessment are selected. In the following step, experts provide linguistic ratings to the potential alternatives with respect to the selected criteria. The approach is used to generate aggregate scores for sustainability assessment and selection of the best alternative. In the third step, a sensitivity analysis is performed to understand the influence of criteria weights on the decision making process. The key strength of fuzzy TOPSIS approach is its practical applicability having a generation of good quality solution even under uncertainty.

Keywords: green transport, multi-criteria decision approach, urban transportation system, sustainability assessment, fuzzy theory, uncertainty

Procedia PDF Downloads 277

Authors: P. S. Jain, K. D. Bobade, S. J. Surana

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A simple, selective, precise and Stability-indicating High-performance thin-layer chromatographic method for analysis of Naftopidil both in a bulk and in pharmaceutical formulation has been developed and validated. The method employed, HPTLC aluminium plates precoated with silica gel as the stationary phase. The solvent system consisted of hexane: ethyl acetate: glacial acetic acid (4:4:2 v/v). The system was found to give compact spot for Naftopidil (Rf value of 0.43±0.02). Densitometric analysis of Naftopidil was carried out in the absorbance mode at 253 nm. The linear regression analysis data for the calibration plots showed good linear relationship with r2=0.999±0.0001 with respect to peak area in the concentration range 200-1200 ng per spot. The method was validated for precision, recovery and robustness. The limits of detection and quantification were 20.35 and 61.68 ng per spot, respectively. Naftopidil was subjected to acid and alkali hydrolysis, oxidation and thermal degradation. The drug undergoes degradation under acidic, basic, oxidation and thermal conditions. This indicates that the drug is susceptible to acid, base, oxidation and thermal conditions. The degraded product was well resolved from the pure drug with significantly different Rf value. Statistical analysis proves that the method is repeatable, selective and accurate for the estimation of investigated drug. The proposed developed HPTLC method can be applied for identification and quantitative determination of Naftopidil in bulk drug and pharmaceutical formulation.

Keywords: naftopidil, HPTLC, validation, stability, degradation

Procedia PDF Downloads 388

Authors: Beier Zhu, Rui Zhang, Qi Song

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Text contained within fixed-layout documents can be of great semantic value and so requires a high localization accuracy, such as ID cards, invoices, cheques, and passports. Recently, algorithms based on deep convolutional networks achieve high performance on text detection tasks. However, for text localization in fixed-layout documents, such algorithms detect word bounding boxes individually, which ignores the layout information. This paper presents a novel architecture built on convolutional neural networks (CNNs). A global text localization network and a regional bounding-box regression network are introduced to tackle the problem in a coarse-to-fine manner. The text localization network simultaneously locates word bounding points, which takes the layout information into account. The bounding-box regression network inputs the features pooled from arbitrarily sized RoIs and refine the localizations. These two networks share their convolutional features and are trained jointly. A typical type of fixed-layout documents: ID cards, is selected to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed system. These networks are trained on data cropped from nature scene images, and synthetic data produced by a synthetic text generation engine. Experiments show that our approach locates high accuracy word bounding boxes and achieves state-of-the-art performance.

Keywords: bounding box regression, convolutional networks, fixed-layout documents, text localization

Procedia PDF Downloads 181

Authors: Davie G. Dave, Prisca H. Mugabe, Tonderai Mutibvu

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Globally, HWCs are on the rise. Such is the case with urban areas in Zimbabwe, yet little has been documented about it. This study was done to provide insights into the occurrence of human-wildlife conflicts in urban areas. The study was carried out in Harare, Bindura, Masvingo, Beitbridge, and Chiredzi to determine the cause, nature, extent, and frequency of occurrence of HWC, to determine the key wildlife species involved in conflicts and management practices done to combat wildlife conflicts in these areas. Several sampling techniques encompassing multi-stage sampling, stratified random, purposive, and simple random sampling were employed for placing residential areas into three strata according to population density, selecting residential areas, and selecting actual participants. Data were collected through a semi-structured questionnaire and key informant interviews. The results revealed that property destruction and crop damage were the most prevalent conflicts. Of the 15 animals that were cited, snakes, baboons, and monkeys were associated with the most conflicts. The occurrence of HWCs was mainly attributed to the increase in both animal and human populations. To curtail these HWCs, the local people mainly used non-lethal methods, whilst lethal methods were used by authorities for some of the reported cases. The majority of the conflicts were seasonal and less severe. There were growing concerns by respondents on the issues of wildlife conflicts, especially in those areas that had primates, such as Warren Park in Harare and Limpopo View in Beitbridge. There are HWCs hotspots in urban areas, and to ameliorate this, suggestions are that there is a need for a multi-action approach that includes general awareness campaigns on HWCs and land use planning that involves the creation of green spaces to ease wildlife management.

Keywords: human-wildlife conflicts, mitigation measures, residential areas, types of conflicts, urban areas

Procedia PDF Downloads 52

Authors: Alexander Wachtel, Michael T. Franzen, Walter F. Tichy

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Programming requires years of training. With natural language and end user development methods, programming could become available to everyone. It enables end users to program their own devices and extend the functionality of the existing system without any knowledge of programming languages. In this paper, we describe an Interactive Spreadsheet Processing Module (ISPM), a natural language interface to spreadsheets that allows users to address ranges within the spreadsheet based on inferred table schema. Using the ISPM, end users are able to search for values in the schema of the table and to address the data in spreadsheets implicitly. Furthermore, it enables them to select and sort the spreadsheet data by using natural language. ISPM uses a machine learning technique to automatically infer areas within a spreadsheet, including different kinds of headers and data ranges. Since ranges can be identified from natural language queries, the end users can query the data using natural language. During the evaluation 12 undergraduate students were asked to perform operations (sum, sort, group and select) using the system and also Excel without ISPM interface, and the time taken for task completion was compared across the two systems. Only for the selection task did users take less time in Excel (since they directly selected the cells using the mouse) than in ISPM, by using natural language for end user software engineering, to overcome the present bottleneck of professional developers.

Keywords: natural language processing, natural language interfaces, human computer interaction, end user development, dialog systems, data recognition, spreadsheet

Procedia PDF Downloads 292

Authors: Jaturong Som-ard

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The heavy rainfall from 3rd to 22th January 2017 had swamped much area of Ranot district in southern Thailand. Due to heavy rainfall, the district was flooded which had a lot of effects on economy and social loss. The major objective of this study is to detect flooding extent using Sentinel-1A data and identify a number of damaged buildings over there. The data were collected in two stages as pre-flooding and during flood event. Calibration, speckle filtering, geometric correction, and histogram thresholding were performed with the data, based on intensity spectral values to classify thematic maps. The maps were used to identify flooding extent using change detection, along with the buildings digitized and collected on JOSM desktop. The numbers of damaged buildings were counted within the flooding extent with respect to building data. The total flooded areas were observed as 181.45 sq.km. These areas were mostly occurred at Ban khao, Ranot, Takhria, and Phang Yang sub-districts, respectively. The Ban khao sub-district had more occurrence than the others because this area is located at lower altitude and close to Thale Noi and Thale Luang lakes than others. The numbers of damaged buildings were high in Khlong Daen (726 features), Tha Bon (645 features), and Ranot sub-district (604 features), respectively. The final flood extent map might be very useful for the plan, prevention and management of flood occurrence area. The map of building damage can be used for the quick response, recovery and mitigation to the affected areas for different concern organization.

Keywords: flooding extent, Sentinel-1A data, JOSM desktop, damaged buildings

Procedia PDF Downloads 178

Authors: Jumana Majdi Qutub

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Rationale: Cloud computing has rapidly developed the past few years. Because of the importance of providing protection for personal data used in cloud computing, the role of data protection in promoting trust and confidence in users’ data has become an important policy priority. This research examines key regulatory challenges rose by the growing use and importance of cloud computing with focusing on protection of individuals personal data. Methodology: Describing and analyzing governance challenges facing policymakers and industry in Saudi Arabia, with an account of anticipated governance responses. The aim of the research is to describe and define the regulatory challenges on cloud computing for policy making in Saudi Arabia and comparing it with potential complied issues rose in respect of transported data to EU member state. In addition, it discusses information privacy issues. Finally, the research proposes policy recommendation that would resolve concerns surrounds the privacy and effectiveness of clouds computing frameworks for data protection. Results: There are still no clear regulation in Saudi Arabia specialized in legalizing cloud computing and specialty regulations in transferring data internationally and locally. Decision makers need to review the applicable law in Saudi Arabia that protect information in cloud computing. This should be from an international and a local view in order to identify all requirements surrounding this area. It is important to educate cloud computing users about their information value and rights before putting it in the cloud to avoid further legal complications, such as making an educational program to prevent giving personal information to a bank employee. Therefore, with many kinds of cloud computing services, it is important to have it covered by the law in all aspects.

Keywords: cloud computing, cyber crime, data protection, privacy

Procedia PDF Downloads 246

Authors: Christolyn Raj, Lewis Levitz

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Introduction: Two cases of late presentation ( > five years ) of bilateral pseudophakic macula edema related to oral tyrosine kinase inhibitors are described. These cases are the first of their type in the published literature. A review of ocular inflammatory complications of tyrosine kinase inhibitors in the current literature is explored. Case Presentations(s): Case 1 is an 83-year-old female who has been stable on Ibrutinib (Imbruvica ®) for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). She presented with bilateral blurred vision from severe cystoid macula edema seven years following routine cataract surgery. She was treated with intravitreal steroids with complete resolution without relapse. Case 2 is a 76-year-old female who was on therapy for polycythemia vera with Ruxolitinib (Jakafi®). She presented with bilateral blurred vision from mild cystoid macula edema six years following routine cataract surgery. She responded well to topical steroids without relapse. In both cases, oral tyrosine kinase inhibitor agents were presumed to be the underlying cause and were ceased. Over the last five years, there have been increasing reports in the literature of the inflammatory effects of tyrosine kinase inhibitors on the retina, uvea and optic nerve. Conclusion: Late presentation of pseudophakic macula edema following routine cataract surgery is rare. Such presentations should prompt investigation of the chronic use of systemic medications, especially oral kinase inhibitors. Patients who must remain on these agents require ongoing ophthalmologic assessment in view of their long-term inflammatory side effects.

Keywords: macula edema, oral kinase inhibitors, retinal toxicity, pseudo-phakia

Procedia PDF Downloads 79

Authors: Upasana Bhumbla

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Background: Hepatitis C virus is a major cause of chronic hepatitis, which can further lead to cirrhosis of the liver and hepatocellular carcinoma. Worldwide the burden of Hepatitis C infection has become a serious threat to the human race. Hepatitis C virus (HCV) has population-specific genotypes and provides valuable epidemiological and therapeutic information. Genotyping and assessment of viral load in HCV patients are important for planning the therapeutic strategies. The aim of the study is to study the changing trends of prevalence and genotypic distribution of hepatitis C virus in a tertiary care hospital in Western India. Methods: It is a retrospective study; blood samples were collected and tested for anti HCV antibodies by ELISA in Dept. of Microbiology. In seropositive Hepatitis C patients, quantification of HCV-RNA was done by real-time PCR and in HCV-RNA positive samples, genotyping was conducted. Results: A total of 114 patients who were seropositive for Anti HCV were recruited in the study, out of which 79 (69.29%) were HCV-RNA positive. Out of these positive samples, 54 were further subjected to genotype determination using real-time PCR. Genotype was not detected in 24 samples due to low viral load; 30 samples were positive for genotype. Conclusion: Knowledge of genotype is crucial for the management of HCV infection and prediction of prognosis. Patients infected with HCV genotype 1 and 4 will have to receive Interferon and Ribavirin for 48 weeks. Patients with these genotypes show a poor sustained viral response when tested 24 weeks after completion of therapy. On the contrary, patients infected with HCV genotype 2 and 3 are reported to have a better response to therapy.

Keywords: hepatocellular, genotype, ribavarin, seropositive

Procedia PDF Downloads 118

Authors: Shalini Rankawat, Mansi Rankawat, Rahul Dubey, Mazad Zaveri

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Physiological signals such as electrocardiogram (ECG) and arterial blood pressure (ABP) in the intensive care unit (ICU) are often seriously corrupted by noise, artifacts, and missing data, which lead to errors in the estimation of heart rate (HR) and incidences of false alarm from ICU monitors. Clinical support in ICU requires most reliable heart rate estimation. Cardiac activity, because of its relatively high electrical energy, may introduce artifacts in Electroencephalogram (EEG), Electrooculogram (EOG), and Electromyogram (EMG) recordings. This paper presents a robust heart rate estimation method by detection of R-peaks of ECG artifacts in EEG, EMG & EOG signals, using energy-based function and a novel Signal Quality Index (SQI) assessment technique. SQIs of physiological signals (EEG, EMG, & EOG) were obtained by correlation of nonlinear energy operator (teager energy) of these signals with either ECG or ABP signal. HR is estimated from ECG, ABP, EEG, EMG, and EOG signals from separate Kalman filter based upon individual SQIs. Data fusion of each HR estimate was then performed by weighing each estimate by the Kalman filters’ SQI modified innovations. The fused signal HR estimate is more accurate and robust than any of the individual HR estimate. This method was evaluated on MIMIC II data base of PhysioNet from bedside monitors of ICU patients. The method provides an accurate HR estimate even in the presence of noise and artifacts.

Keywords: ECG, ABP, EEG, EMG, EOG, ECG artifacts, Teager-Kaiser energy, heart rate, signal quality index, Kalman filter, data fusion

Procedia PDF Downloads 684

Authors: Chiang-Lead Woo

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In reply to serious environmental problems, the Taiwan government quickly adjusted some articles to suit the needs of environmental protection recently, such as the amendment to article 190-1 of the Taiwan Criminal Code. The transfer of legislation comes as an improvement which canceled the limitation of ‘endangering public safety’. At the same time, the article 190-1 goes from accumulative concrete offense to abstract crime of danger. Thus, the public looks forward to whether environmental crime following the imposition of fines or penalties works efficiently in anti-pollution by the deterrent effects. However, according to the addition to article 38-2 of the Taiwan Criminal Code, the confiscation system seems controversial legislation to restrain ill-gotten gains. Most prior studies focused on comparisons with the Administrative Penalty Law and the Criminal Code in environmental issue in Taiwan; recently, more and more studies emphasize calculations on ill-gotten gains. Hence, this paper try to examine the deterrent effect in environmental crime by economic analysis of law and environmental economics perspective. This analysis shows that only if there is an extremely high probability (equal to 100 percent) of an environmental crime case being prosecuted criminally by Taiwan Environmental Protection Agency, the deterrent effects will work. Therefore, this paper suggests deliberating the confiscation system from supplementing the System of Environmental and Economic Accounting, reasonable deterrent fines, input management, real-time system for detection of pollution, and whistleblower system, environmental education, and modernization of law.

Keywords: confiscation, ecosystem services, environmental crime, ill-gotten gains, the deterrent effect, the system of environmental and economic accounting

Procedia PDF Downloads 156

Authors: Azizollah Khodakaram- Tafti, Ali Mohammadi, Ghasem Farjanikish

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Bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) is one of the most important viral pathogens of cattle worldwide caused by Pestivirus genus, Flaviviridae family.The aim of the present study was to comparison several diagnostic methods and determine the prevalence of BVDV infection for the first time in dairy herds of Fars province, Iran. For initial screening, a total of 400 blood samples were randomly collected from 12 industrial dairy herds and analyzed using reverse transcription (RT)-PCR on the buffy coat. In the second step, blood samples and also ear notch biopsies were collected from 100 cattle of infected farms and tested by antigen capture ELISA (ACE), RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry (IHC). The results of nested RT-PCR (outer primers 0I100/1400R and inner primers BD1/BD2) was successful in 16 out of 400 buffy coat samples (4%) as acute infection in initial screening. Also, 8 out of 100 samples (2%) were positive as persistent infection (PI) by all of the diagnostic tests similarly including RT-PCR, ACE and IHC on buffy coat, serum and skin samples, respectively. Immunoreactivity for bovine BVDV antigen as brown, coarsely to finely granular was observed within the cytoplasm of epithelial cells of epidermis and hair follicles and also subcutaneous stromal cells. These findings confirm the importance of monitoring BVDV infection in cattle of this region and suggest detection and elimination of PI calves for controlling and eradication of this disease.

Keywords: antigen capture ELISA, bovine viral diarrhea virus, immunohistochemistry, RT-PCR, cattle

Procedia PDF Downloads 349

Authors: Tauhidur Rahman, Kasturi Bhuyan

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In the present paper, Ground Response Analysis at the Rukni irrigation project has been thoroughly investigated. Surface level seismic hazard is mainly used by the practical Engineers for designing the important structures. Surface level seismic hazard can be obtained accounting the soil factor. Structures on soft soil will show more ground shaking than the structure located on a hard soil. The Surface level ground motion depends on the type of soil. Density and shear wave velocity is different for different types of soil. The intensity of the soil amplification depends on the density and shear wave velocity of the soil. Rukni irrigation project is located in the North Eastern region of India, near the Dauki fault (550 Km length) which has already produced earthquakes of magnitude (Mw= 8.5) in the past. There is a probability of a similar type of earthquake occuring in the future. There are several faults also located around the project site. There are 765 recorded strong ground motion time histories available for the region. These data are used to determine the soil amplification factor by incorporation of the engineering properties of soil. With this in view, three of soil bore holes have been studied at the project site up to a depth of 30 m. It has been observed that in Soil bore hole 1, the shear wave velocity vary from 99.44 m/s to 239.28 m/s. For Soil Bore Hole No 2 and 3, shear wave velocity vary from 93.24 m/s to 241.39 m/s and 93.24m/s to 243.01 m/s. In the present work, surface level seismic hazard at the project site has been calculated based on the Probabilistic seismic hazard approach accounting the soil factor.

Keywords: Ground Response Analysis, shear wave velocity, soil amplification, surface level seismic hazard

Procedia PDF Downloads 544

Authors: Mina Ganji Morad, Maziar Azadisoleimanieh, Sina Ganji Morad

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A green roof is formed by green plants alive and has many positive impacts in the regional climatic, as well as indoor. Green roof system to prevent solar radiation plays a role in the cooling space. The cooling is done by reducing thermal fluctuations on the exterior of the roof and by increasing the roof heat capacity which cause to keep the space under the roof cool in the summer and heating rate increases during the winter. A roof garden is one of the recommended ways to reduce energy consumption in large cities. Despite the scale of the city green roofs have effective functions, such as beautiful view of city and decontaminating the urban landscape and reduce mental stress, and in an exchange of energy and heat from outside to inside spaces. This article is based on a review of 20 articles and 10 books and valid survey results on the positive effects of green roofs to prevent energy waste in the building. According to these publications, three of the conventional roof, green roof typical and green roof with certain administrative details (layers of glass) and the use of resistant plants and shrubs have been analyzed and compared their heat transfer. The results of these studies showed that one of the best green roof systems for mountainous climate is tree and shrub system that in addition to being resistant to climate change in mountainous regions, will benefit from the other advantages of green roof. Due to the severity of climate change in mountainous areas it is essential to prevent the waste of buildings heating and cooling energy. Proper climate design can greatly help to reduce energy.

Keywords: green roof, heat transfer, reducing energy consumption, mountainous areas, sustainable architecture

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Authors: Bogoro Audu Gani, Tobi Nzelibe Ajiji Haruna

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Women have both knowledge and expertise, whose recognition can lead to more efficient, effective, sustainable, and fair waste management operations. Studies have shown that the failure to take cognizance of the traditional role of women in the management of urban environments results in a serious loss of efficiency and productivity. However, urban managers in developing countries are yet to identify and integrate those critical roles of women into urban environmental management. This research is motivated not only due the poor solid waste management but also by the total neglect of the role of women in solid waste management in the Bauchi metropolis. Systematic random sampling technique was adopted for the selection of the samples and 4% of the study population was taken as the sample size. The major instruments used for data collection were questionnaires, interviews and direct measurement of household solid waste at source and the data is presented in tables and charts. It is found that over 95% of sweeping, cooking and food preparation are exclusively reserved for women in the study area. Women dominate the generation, storage and collection of household solid waste with 81%, 96% and 91%, respectively, within the study area. It is also discovered that segregation can be 95% effectively carried out by women that have free time. However, urban managers in the Bauchi metropolis are yet to identify the role of women with a view to integrating them into solid waste management in order to achieve a healthy and clean living environment in the Bauchi metropolis. Among other suggestions, the paper recommends that the role of women should be identified and integrated into developing policies and programs for a clean and healthy living urban environment; this will not only improve the environmental quality but would also increase the income base of the family.

Keywords: women, solid waste, integration, segregation

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Authors: Ezgiamn Abraha Hagos

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Higher education is important for college students to develop their authentic identity by means of getting exposure to diverse ideas and experiences. However, current college students are not successfully achieving a satisfying sense of meaning and purpose in their lives, which often places them in a state of existential vacuum. Thus, this study uncovers the existential concerns of youth in higher education by means of assessing their view on meaningful life and integration of it as a guide into their lives and challenges faced in doing so. Data were procured from thirty undergraduate students of Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia via interview, naïve sketch method, and content analysis of selected magazines and newspapers. Data were analyzed using organization, immersion, generating themes, coding, offering interpretation as well as checking the data. Relationship, education, and belief were found to be main sources of meaning. But, many of the study participants failed to articulate their meaning in life explicitly and identified to be in a state of drifting. Moreover, hopelessness, economic problems and quality of training impinge their sense of meaning in life negatively. The content analysis principally embodied the youth in higher education as a group of people confronted with rafts of challenges such as debauchery, moral crisis, self-destructive behaviors and hankering for support and direction. Thus, crafting the asset-based approach and counseling services that will prepare the youth for the future and develop holistically in terms of body and mind are tremendously vital.

Keywords: higher education institutions; meaning in life; youth

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Authors: Prakash Singh, Thembinkosi Twalo

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The sustainability of the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality (BCMM), in South Africa, is being threatened by the reported cases of poor administration, weak management of resources, inappropriate job performance, and inappropriate job behaviour of some of the workers. Since the structural-functionalists assume that formal education is a solution to societal challenges, it therefore means that the BCMM should not be experiencing this threat since many of its workers have various levels of formal education. Consequently, this study using the mixed method research approach, set out to investigate the paradoxical co-existence of inappropriate job behaviour and performance with formal education at the BCMM. Considering the impact of human factors in the labour process, this study draws attention to the divergent objectives of skill and skill bearer, with the application of knowledge subject to the knowledge bearer’s motives, will, attitudes, ethics and values. Consequently, inappropriate job behaviour and performance practices could be due to numerous factors such as lack of the necessary capabilities or refusal to apply what has been learnt due to racial or other prejudices. The role of the human factor in the labour process is a serious omission in human capital theory, which regards schooling as the only factor contributing to the ability to do a job. For this reason this study’s theoretical framework is an amalgamation of the four theories - human capital, social capital, cultural capital, and reputation capital – in an effort to obtain a broader view of the factors that shape job behaviour and performance. Since it has been established that human nature plays a crucial role in how workers undertake their responsibilities, it is important that this be taken into consideration in the BCMM’s monitoring and evaluation of the workers’ job performance practices. Hence, this exploratory study brings to the fore, the effects of poor job performance practices on the job satisfaction of workers.

Keywords: human capital, poor job performance practices, service delivery, workers’ job satisfaction

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Authors: Phang Moon Leng

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Automated Early Warning Scores is a newly developed clinical decision tool that is used to streamline and improve the process of obtaining a patient’s vital signs so a clinical decision can be made at an earlier stage to prevent the patient from further deterioration. This technology provides immediate update on the score and clinical decision to be taken based on the outcome. This paper aims to study the use of an automated early warning score system on whether the technology has assisted the hospital in early detection and escalation of clinical condition and improve patient outcome. The hospital adopted the Modified Early Warning Scores (MEWS) Scoring System and MEWS Clinical Response into Philips IntelliVue Guardian Automated Early Warning Score equipment and studied whether the process has been leaned, whether the use of technology improved the usage & experience of the nurses, and whether the technology has improved patient care and outcome. It was found the steps required to obtain vital signs has been significantly reduced and is used more frequently to obtain patient vital signs. The number of deaths, and length of stay has significantly decreased as clinical decisions can be made and escalated more quickly with the Automated EWS. The automated early warning score equipment has helped improve work efficiency by removing the need for documenting into patient’s EMR. The technology streamlines clinical decision-making and allows faster care and intervention to be carried out and improves overall patient outcome which translates to better care for patient.

Keywords: automated early warning score, clinical quality and safety, patient safety, medical technology

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Authors: Humera Malik

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Gender inequality, as a societal issue, is prevalent in all spheres of life in Pakistan. It is world-wide understood that gender equality is a basic right of every human being as well as the source of development and prosperity for the whole country. In fact, many countries endeavor to ensure equal opportunities for men and women which will, in turn, help to attain sustainable growth in every field. Most of the women in Pakistan live their life under the societal pressure which is exerted by centuries old traditions. This archaic setup restricts women to stay at home because their survival is conditional to their total subjugation to the male member of the family. This patriarchal structure confers men the right to deal women as their property. It is not wrong to say that women endure severe discrimination in their whole life. No doubt, women are confronted with multifaceted discrimination in the field of education, health, politics, social status, etc. The main theme of this research is to ascertain the present condition of gender inequality in the field of economy in Pakistan. Pakistan’s poor ranking in Global Gender Gap Index, 2016 clearly depicts that women are deprived of fundamental rights as well as equal opportunities of development. This very state of affairs depicts the real picture of government’s commitment to women empowerment and gender equality. The nature of this research is descriptive which helps to determine the status of women in Pakistan on the basis of labour force participation, wage gap, estimated incomes, and ratio of high ranking positions secured by women. It is an endeavor to understand the reasons of economic inequality by following qualitative method of research. Moreover, few recommendations will be suggested to get rid of this issue.

Keywords: dismal, discrimination, feudal, patriarchal, wage gap

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Authors: Ankit Sinha, Soham Banerjee, Pratik Chattopadhyay

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Automated product recognition in retail stores is an important real-world application in the domain of Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. In this paper, we consider the problem of automatically identifying the classes of the products placed on racks in retail stores from an image of the rack and information about the query/product images. We improve upon the existing approaches in terms of effectiveness and memory requirement by developing a two-stage object detection and recognition pipeline comprising of a Faster-RCNN-based object localizer that detects the object regions in the rack image and a ResNet-18-based image encoder that classifies the detected regions into the appropriate classes. Each of the models is fine-tuned using appropriate data sets for better prediction and data augmentation is performed on each query image to prepare an extensive gallery set for fine-tuning the ResNet-18-based product recognition model. This encoder is trained using a triplet loss function following the strategy of online-hard-negative-mining for improved prediction. The proposed models are lightweight and can be connected in an end-to-end manner during deployment to automatically identify each product object placed in a rack image. Extensive experiments using Grozi-32k and GP-180 data sets verify the effectiveness of the proposed model.

Keywords: retail stores, faster-RCNN, object localization, ResNet-18, triplet loss, data augmentation, product recognition

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Authors: Yingyi Luo

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Cross-border commercial surrogacy, where Australians travel overseas to access reproduction through a surrogate mother, is an increasing phenomenon. This paper focuses on the role of Australian surrogacy facilitators, including lawyers, non-for-profit agents, fertility counselors, who act as intermediaries managing cross-border surrogacy arrangements in Australia. It explores the extent to which surrogacy facilitators are concerned with the human rights of children born through cross-border surrogacy, surrogate mothers in developing countries, and intended parents. Commercial surrogacy is a matter that is often cast in the language of human rights. This paper will contribute to an in-depth understanding of the dynamics between intended parents, surrogates, and surrogacy facilitators by adopting a human rights framework to inform data analysis regarding the role of facilitators. The purpose of this research is to inform debate and discussion on law reform related to surrogacy. This paper presented here centers on interviews with surrogacy facilitators in Australia and non-participant observations in Australia to generate thick, empirical data about the fertility industry. The data showed that the process of facilitating surrogacy arrangements had prompted facilitators to form a view on human rights as they applied to their works. Although facilitators claimed that the right of intended parents, surrogate mothers, and children were all taken into consideration, the researcher observed that the commercial surrogacy contracts described by these facilitators favored the interests of intended parents with the baby acting as their unique selling point. The interests and needs of surrogate mothers were not prioritized in the views or actions of facilitators. The result was a commercial transaction that entailed the purchase, through cross-border surrogacy, of a child, as a commodity, by relatively affluent intended parents from disadvantaged surrogate mothers through unfair contracts.

Keywords: cross-border surrogacy, facilitators, human rights, surrogacy

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Authors: Mhd. Zakiul Fikri, M. Agus Maulidi

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Indonesia is a constitutional state. As the constitutional state, Indonesia is not only using a single legal system, but also adopting three legal systems consist of: The European continental legal system or positive law of Indonesia, adat law system, and legal system of religion. This study will discuss Marosok tradition in the process of buying and selling cattle in Payakumbuh: a comparative study between adat law and positive law of Indonesia. The objectives of this research are: First, to find the meaning of the philosophical of Marosok tradition in Payakumbuh. Second, to find the legal implications of the Marosok tradition reviewed aspects of adat law and positive law of Indonesia. Third, to find legal procedure in arbitrating the dispute wich is potentially appear in the post-process of buying and selling cattle based on positive law and adat law adopted in Indonesia. This research is empirical legal research that using two model approaches which are statute approach and conceptual approach. Data was obtained through interviews, observations, and documents or books. Then a method of data analysis used is inductive analysis. Finally, this study found that: First, tradition of Marosok contains the meaning of harmonization of social life that keep people from negative debate, envy, and arrogant. Second, Marosok tradition is one of the adat law in Indonesia; it is one of contract law in the process of buying and selling. If the comparison between the practice Marosok tradition as adat law with the provisions of Article 1320 book of civil code about the terms of the validity of a contract, the elements contained in the provisions of these regulations are met in practice Marosok. Thus, the practice of Marosok in buying and selling cattle process in Payakumbuh justified in view of the positive law of Indonesia. Last of all, all kinds of disputes arising due to contracts made by Marosok tradition can be resolved by positive law and adat law of Indonesia.

Keywords: Adat law, contract, Indonesia, Marosok

Procedia PDF Downloads 303