Search results for: Content analysis

Authors: Gagnesh Kumar, Nitin Gupta

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Ternary Content Addressable Memory cells are mainly popular in network routers for packet forwarding and packet classification, but they are also useful in a variety of other applications that require high-speed table look-up. The main TCAM-design challenge is to decrease the power consumption associated with the large amount of parallel active circuitry, without compromising with speed or memory density. Furthermore, when the channel length decreases, leakage power becomes more significant, and it can even dominate dynamic power at lower technologies. In this paper, we propose a TCAM-design technique, called Virtual Power Supply technique that reduces the leakage by a substantial amount.

Keywords: match line (ML), search line (SL), ternary content addressable memory (TCAM), Leakage power (LP)

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Authors: Venkataraman Sankaranarayanan, Sougata Ray

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While extant research has examined many aspects of differential corporate environmental outcomes and behavior, a holistic and integrated view of heterogeneity in corporate environment sustainability (CES) practices remains a puzzle to be fully unraveled – its extent and nature, its relationship to macro or micro level influences, or strategic orientations. Such a perspective would be meaningful for the field given notable strides in CES practices and the corporate social responsibility agenda over the last two decades, in the backdrop of altered global socio-political sensitivities and technological advances. To partly address this gap, this exploratory research adopted a content analysis approach to code patterns in the sustainability disclosures of the 160 largest global firms spread over 8 years. The sample of firms spanned seven industries, nine countries and three continents thereby presenting data rich and diverse enough in several dimensions to be representative of global heterogeneity in CES practices. Through a factor analysis of the coded data, four strategic CES orientations were extracted through the analysis, that effectively straddles most of the variation observed in current CES practices – one that seeks to reduce environmental damage on account of the firm’s operations, another that prioritizes minimalism, a third that focuses on broader ecological status quo, and a final one that champions the ‘business of green’, extending the CES agenda beyond the firm’s boundaries. These environment sustainability strategy orientations are further examined to elicit prominent patterns and explore plausible antecedents.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility, corporate sustainability, environmental management, heterogeneity, strategic orientation

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Authors: Yasin Akgul, Fazil Husem, Memis Isik

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In this study, effect of content of chromium (III) oxide on production of Al/Cr203 alloys were investigated. Experimental procedure was started with mixturing of powders in the presence of absolute ethanol, vacuum distillation technique was used for evaporation, by ultrasonic bath and mechanic stirrer. Pressing procedure was achieved by hydrolic press that has 100 tons forcing for production of 25 mm diameter compact green billets. Green bodies were sintered at 600 °C in argon atmosphere. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis for characterization of microstructure, compression test for determination of strength and Vickers test for measuring of hardness of sintered billets were done. End of the study is concluded that, enhancement of physical and mechanical properties is observed by increasing content of chromium (III) oxide.

Keywords: aluminium, chromium (III) oxide, powder metallurgy, sintering

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Authors: Manvender Kaur Sarjit Singh

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There is a crucial mismatch between classroom written language tasks and real world written language requirements. Realizing the importance of reducing the gap between the professional needs of the legal practitioners and the higher learning institutions that offer the legislative education in Malaysia, it is deemed necessary to develop a framework that integrates real-life written communication with the teaching of content-based legislative discourse to future legal practitioners. By highlighting the actual needs of the legal practitioners in the country, the present teaching practices will be enhanced and aligned with the actual needs of the learners thus realizing the vision and aspirations of the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025 and Legal Profession Qualifying Board. The need to focus future education according to the actual needs of the learners can be realized by developing a teaching framework which is designed within the prospective requirements of its real-life context. This paper presents the steps taken to develop a specific teaching framework that fulfills the fundamental real-life context of the prospective legal practitioners. The teaching framework was developed based on real-life written communication from the legal profession in Malaysia, using the specific genre analysis approach which integrates a corpus-based approach and a structural linguistics analysis. This approach was adopted due to its fundamental nature of intensive exploration of the real-life written communication according to the established strategies used. The findings showed the use of specific moves and parts-of-speech by the legal practitioners, in order to prepare the selected genre. The teaching framework is hoped to enhance the teachings of content-based law courses offered at present in the higher learning institutions in Malaysia.

Keywords: linguistics analysis, corpus analysis, genre analysis, legislative discourse

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Authors: A. Buruzs, M. F. Hatwágner, A. Torma, L. T. Kóczy

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The development, operation and maintenance of Integrated Waste Management Systems (IWMS) affects essentially the sustainable concern of every region. The features of such systems have great influence on all of the components of sustainability. In order to reach the optimal way of processes, a comprehensive mapping of the variables affecting the future efficiency of the system is needed such as analysis of the interconnections among the components and modelling of their interactions. The planning of a IWMS is based fundamentally on technical and economical opportunities and the legal framework. Modelling the sustainability and operation effectiveness of a certain IWMS is not in the scope of the present research. The complexity of the systems and the large number of the variables require the utilization of a complex approach to model the outcomes and future risks. This complex method should be able to evaluate the logical framework of the factors composing the system and the interconnections between them. The authors of this paper studied the usability of the Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM) approach modelling the future operation of IWMS’s. The approach requires two input data set. One is the connection matrix containing all the factors affecting the system in focus with all the interconnections. The other input data set is the time series, a retrospective reconstruction of the weights and roles of the factors. This paper introduces a novel method to develop time series by content analysis.

Keywords: content analysis, factors, integrated waste management system, time series

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Authors: Janya Sainui

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As a rapid growth of digital videos and data communications, video summarization that provides a shorter version of the video for fast video browsing and retrieval is necessary. Key frame extraction is one of the mechanisms to generate video summary. In general, the extracted key frames should both represent the entire video content and contain minimum redundancy. However, most of the existing approaches heuristically select key frames; hence, the selected key frames may not be the most different frames and/or not cover the entire content of a video. In this paper, we propose a method of video summarization which provides the reasonable objective functions for selecting key frames. In particular, we apply a statistical dependency measure called quadratic mutual informaion as our objective functions for maximizing the coverage of the entire video content as well as minimizing the redundancy among selected key frames. The proposed key frame extraction algorithm finds key frames as an optimization problem. Through experiments, we demonstrate the success of the proposed video summarization approach that produces video summary with better coverage of the entire video content while less redundancy among key frames comparing to the state-of-the-art approaches.

Keywords: video summarization, key frame extraction, dependency measure, quadratic mutual information

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Authors: Robert Rusinek, Marek Gancarz, Jolanta Wawrzyniak, Marzena Gawrysiak-Witulska, Dariusz Wiącek, Agnieszka Nawrocka

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Investigations were performed to examine the possibility of using an electronic nose to monitor the development of fungal microflora during the first eighteen days of rapeseed storage. The Cyranose 320 device with polymer-composite sensors was used. Each sample of infected material was divided into three parts, and the degree of spoilage was measured in three ways: analysis of colony forming units (CFU), determination of ergosterol content (ERG), and measurement with the eNose. Principal component analysis (PCA) was performed on the generated patterns of signals, and six groups of different spoilage levels were isolated. The electronic nose with polymer-composite sensors under laboratory conditions distinguished between species of spoiled and unspoiled seeds with 100% accuracy. Despite some minor differences in the CFU and ergosterol content, the electronic nose provided responses correctly corresponding to the level of spoilage with 85% accuracy. Therefore, the main conclusion from the study is that the electronic nose is a promising tool for quick and non-destructive detection of the level of oil seed spoilage. The research was supported by the National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR), Grant No. PBS2/A8/22/2013.

Keywords: colony forming units, electronic nose, ergosterol, rapeseed

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Authors: Dita Aviana Dewi, Heri Muji, Dian Nur Amalia, Nanung Agus Fitriyanto

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Utilization of cow feces as a source of alternative energy can be done with turn it as briquettes. Cow feces generate heat around 4000 Cal/g and the methane gas (CH4) are quite high. Methane gas is one of the essential elements in briquettes which serve as the ignition, so that is resulting briquettes combustible. This study aims to know the difference of the composition of the constituents of briquette moisture content and density. Dairy cattle feces used as the main ingredient with additional material from the waste of the agricultural industry in the form of husk. This study was conducted with three treatments, namely T0= feces 1: husk 1, T1= feces 2: husk 1, and T2= feces 3: husk 1. Each treatment was replicated three times. The experimental design used was Complete Random Design Pattern in line with testing of Dunnet. The observed variables are moisture content and density of the briquettes. Results of this study showed an average moisture content of T0 is 31,17%, T1 is 28,14%, and T2 is 49.95%. The average density of briquettes at T0 is 1,0787 g/cm3, T1 is 1,1448 g/cm3, and T2 is 1,1133 g/cm3. Summary of the study is to take the difference of the composition of the feces and the husk do not have significant effects on moisture content and density of briquettes (p < 0.05).

Keywords: dairy cattle feces, briquette, moisture, density

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Authors: Feng Tao, Ma Jing, Guo Xian, Wang Jing

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Named Data Networking (NDN) replaces IP address of traditional network with data name, and adopts dynamic cache mechanism. In the existing mechanism, however, only one-to-one search can be achieved because every data has a unique name corresponding to it. There is a certain mapping relationship between data content and data name, so if the data name is intercepted by an adversary, the privacy of the data content and user’s interest can hardly be guaranteed. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes a one-to-many fuzzy search scheme based on order-preserving encryption to reduce the query overhead by optimizing the caching strategy. In this scheme, we use hash value to ensure the user’s query safe from each node in the process of search, so does the privacy of the requiring data content.

Keywords: NDN, order-preserving encryption, fuzzy search, privacy

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Authors: Chady El Hachem, Pan Ye, Kamilia Abahri, Rachid Bennacer

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Considered as a building construction material, and regarding its environmental benefits, wood fiber insulation is the material of interest in this work. The definition of adequate elementary representative volume that guarantees reliable understanding of the hygrothermal macroscopic phenomena is very critical. At the microscopic scale, when subjected to hygric solicitations, fibers undergo local dimensionless variations. It is therefore necessary to master this behavior, which affects the global response of the material. This study consists of an experimental procedure using the non-destructive method, X-ray tomography, followed by morphological post-processing analysis using ImageJ software. A refine investigation took place in order to identify the representative elementary volume and the sufficient resolution for accurate structural analysis. The second part of this work was to evaluate the microscopic hygric behavior of the studied material. Many parameters were taken into consideration, like the evolution of the fiber diameters, distribution along the sorption cycle and the porosity, and the water content evolution. In addition, heat transfer simulations based on the energy equation resolution were achieved on the real structure. Further, the problematic of representative elementary volume was elaborated for such heterogeneous material. Moreover, the material’s porosity and its fibers’ thicknesses show very big correlation with the water content. These results provide the literature with very good understanding of wood fiber insulation’s behavior.

Keywords: hygric behavior, morphological characterization, wood fiber insulation material, x-ray tomography

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Authors: Layan Moussa, Darine Salam, Samir Mustapha

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Heavy metal contamination in agricultural soils in Lebanon poses serious environmental and health problems. Intensive efforts are employed to improve existing quantification methods of heavy metals in contaminated environments since conventional detection techniques have shown to be time-consuming, tedious, and costly. The implication of hyperspectral remote sensing in this field is possible and promising. However, factors impacting the efficiency of hyperspectral imaging in detecting and quantifying heavy metals in agricultural soils were not thoroughly studied. This study proposes to assess the use of hyperspectral imaging for the detection of Ni in agricultural clay soil collected from the Bekaa Valley, a major agricultural area in Lebanon, under different contamination levels and soil moisture content. Soil samples were contaminated with Ni, with concentrations ranging from 150 mg/kg to 4000 mg/kg. On the other hand, soil with background contamination was subjected to increased moisture levels varying from 5 to 75%. Hyperspectral imaging was used to detect and quantify Ni contamination in the soil at different contamination levels and moisture content. IBM SPSS statistical software was used to develop models that predict the concentration of Ni and moisture content in agricultural soil. The models were constructed using linear regression algorithms. The spectral curves obtained reflected an inverse correlation between both Ni concentration and moisture content with respect to reflectance. On the other hand, the models developed resulted in high values of predicted R2 of 0.763 for Ni concentration and 0.854 for moisture content. Those predictions stated that Ni presence was well expressed near 2200 nm and that of moisture was at 1900 nm. The results from this study would allow us to define the potential of using the hyperspectral imaging (HSI) technique as a reliable and cost-effective alternative for heavy metal pollution detection in contaminated soils and soil moisture prediction.

Keywords: heavy metals, hyperspectral imaging, moisture content, soil contamination

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Authors: Evren C. Eroglu, Ridvan Arslan

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Over the course of herbal production, various pretreatments are performed and some of which have serious effect on the bioactive properties. Especially in the production of herbal tea from fresh herbals, it is considered that elapsed time from blending to last product may affect the bioactive properties and antioxidant contents. Herbal infusion is basically prepared by mixing herbs with hot water for 10-20 min. During the brewing of these herbs, it is supposed to be significant decrease in the antioxidant and phenolics content. The first aim of this study was to evaluate the changes of vitamin C (VitC), total phenolic content (TPC) and antioxidant contents (AO) of two brassica varieties (brussel sprouts and white head cabbage) with different holding time after blending. Second aim of this study was to understand the effect of herbal infusion on VitC, TPC and AO contents. In this study, fresh samples were subjected to 0-30 min holding time after blending. Then, samples was immediately taken to -80 °C and freeze drying process was performed. Herbal infusion was performed for 20 minutes. According to results, VitC contents in brussel sprouts was not changed significantly (p=0.12). However, there was a significant decreasing of VitC content in cabbage sample (p=0.034). 20 min of brewing caused a significant decrement in VitC of brussel sprouts by approximately 76% (1071 ppm dw), while decline in cabbage VitC content was 87% (531 ppm dw). AO and TPC values of unprocessed cabbage control sample (13791.87 ppm FeSO4·7H2O eq. dw and 5301.85 ppm gallic acid eq. dw) were higher than brussel sprouts control samples (11571.75 ppm FeSO4·7H2O dw and 5202.76 ppm, respectively). The change in AO and TPC of both brussel sprouts and cabbage samples were not statistically significant at the end of 30 minutes holding time (p=0.24 and p=0.38). After 20 minutes of brewing, AO content in brussel sprouts significantly decreased by 44% (p ˂0.05). Although, the decreasing of AO in white head cabbage was statistically important (p=0.034), decreasing was just 8%. TPC values were found to decrease by 54% in cabbage, while it was 35% in brussel sprouts after herbal infusion. It was observed that 30 min holding time had no statistically important effect on TPC values of both cabbage and brussel sprouts. As a conclusion, herbal infusion has more or less effect on VitC, TPC and AO contents of samples. Therefore, it is important to decrease brewing time. Another result was that there were no significant differences in TPC and AO content of both samples when holding samples 30 min outside after blending. However, this process had significant effect on VitC content of white head cabbage.

Keywords: Antioxidant content, brussel sprouts, herbal infusion, total phenolic content, white head cabbage, vitamin c

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Authors: Trisha Malhotra

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Sentiment analysis is a recent field of study that computationally assesses the emotional nature of a body of text. To assess its test-validity, sentiment analysis was carried out on the emotional corpus of text from a personal 15-day mood diary. Self-reported mood scores varied more or less accurately with daily mood evaluation score given by the software. On further assessment, it was found that while sentiment analysis was good at assessing ‘global’ mood, it was not able to ‘locally’ identify and differentially score synonyms of various emotional words. It is further critiqued for treating the intensity of an emotion as universal across cultures. Finally, the software is shown not to account for emotional complexity in sentences by treating emotions as strictly positive or negative. Hence, it is posited that a better output could be two (positive and negative) affect scores for the same body of text.

Keywords: analysis, data, diary, emotions, mood, sentiment

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Authors: Sarthak Deshpande, Akshay Patil, Pradip Pandhare, Nikhil Wankhede, Rushali Deshmukh

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Among the highly significant duties for any language most effective is the sentiment analysis, which is also a key area of NLP, that recently made impressive strides. There are several models and datasets available for those tasks in popular and commonly used languages like English, Russian, and Spanish. While sentiment analysis research is performed extensively, however it is lagging behind for the regional languages having few resources such as Hindi, Marathi. Marathi is one of the languages that included in the Indian Constitution’s 8th schedule and is the third most widely spoken language in the country and primarily spoken in the Deccan region, which encompasses Maharashtra and Goa. There isn’t sufficient study on sentiment analysis methods based on Marathi text due to lack of available resources, information. Therefore, this project proposes the use of different ML/NLP models for the analysis of Marathi data from the comments below YouTube content, tweets or Instagram posts. We aim to achieve a short and precise analysis and summary of the related data using our dataset (Dates, names, root words) and lexicons to locate exact information.

Keywords: multilingual sentiment analysis, Marathi, natural language processing, text summarization, lexicon-based approaches

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Authors: Amar Boukerrou, Ouerdia Belhadj, Dalila Hammiche, Jean Francois Gerard, Jannick Rumeau

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The main goal of this study is the investigation of alfa fiber content, treated with alkali treatment, on the thermal and mechanical properties of epoxy-amine matrix-based composites. The fibers were treated with 5% of sodium hydroxide solution and varied between 10% to 30% weight fractions. The tensile, flexural, and hardness tests are carried out to investigate the mechanical properties of composites. The results show those composites’ mechanical properties are higher than the neat epoxy-amine. It was noticed that the alkali treatment is more effective in the case of the tensile and flexural modulus than the tensile and flexural strength. The decline of both the tensile and flexural behavior of all composites with the increasing of the filler content was due probably to the random dispersion of the fibers in the epoxy resin The Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) was employed to analyze the chemical structure of epoxy resin before and after curing with amine hardener. FTIR and DSC analysis confirmed that epoxy resin was completely cured with amine hardener at room temperature. SEM analysis has highlighted the microstructure of epoxy matrix and its composites.

Keywords: alfa fiber, epoxy resin, alkali treatment, mechanical properties

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Authors: James Banda, Jupiter Simbeye, Essau Chisale, Geoffrey Kanyerere, Kings Kamtambe

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Improved solar tent dryers for processing small fish species were designed to reduce post-harvest fish losses and improve supply of quality fish products in the southern part of Lake Malawi under CultiAF project. A comparative analysis of the quality of Diplotaxodon (Ndunduma) from Lake Malawi processed in solar tent dryer and open sun drying was conducted using proximate analysis, microbial analysis and sensory evaluation. Proximates for solar tent dried fish and open sun dried fish in terms of proteins, fats, moisture and ash were 63.3±0.15% and 63.3±0.34%, 19.6±0.09% and 19.9±0.25%, 8.3±0.12% and 17.0±0.01%, and 15.6±0.61% and 21.9±0.91% respectively. Crude protein and crude fat showed non-significant differences (p = 0.05), while moisture and ash content were significantly different (p = 001). Open sun dried fish had significantly higher numbers of viable bacteria counts (5.2×10⁶ CFU) than solar tent dried fish (3.9×10² CFU). Most isolated bacteria from solar tent dried and open sun dried fish were 1.0×10¹ and 7.2×10³ for Total coliform, 0 and 4.5 × 10³ for Escherishia coli, 0 and 7.5 × 10³ for Salmonella, 0 and 5.7×10² for shigella, 4.0×10¹ and 6.1×10³ for Staphylococcus, 1.0×10¹ and 7.0×10² for vibrio. Qualitative evaluation of sensory properties showed higher acceptability of 3.8 for solar tent dried fish than 1.7 for open sun dried fish. It is concluded that promotion of solar tent drying in processing small fish species in Malawi would support small-scale fish processors to produce quality fish in terms of nutritive value, reduced microbial contamination, sensory acceptability and reduced moisture content.

Keywords: diplotaxodon, Malawi, open sun drying, solar tent drying

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Authors: Bourmatte Nadjoua, Houari Hacène

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The effect of replacement of fine aggregates with recycled glass on the fresh and hardened properties of concrete and mortar is studied. Percentages of replacement are 0–25% and 50% of aggregates with fine waste glass to produce concrete and percentage of replacement of 100% to produce mortar. As a result of the conducted study, the slump flow increased with the increase of recycled glass content. On the other hand, the compressive strength and tensile strength of recycled glass mixtures were decreased with the increase in the recycled glass content. The results showed that recycled glass aggregate can successfully be used with limited level for producing concrete. Mortar based on glass shows a compressive strength with 50% lower than that of control mortar.

Keywords: compressive strength, concrete, mortar, recycled glass

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Authors: Mohammad Saberian, Reza Porhoseini, Mohammad Ali Rahgozar

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Peat is a partially carbonized vegetable tissue which is formed in wet conditions by decomposition of various plants, mosses and animal remains. This restricted definition, including only materials which are entirely of vegetative origin, conflicts with several established soil classification systems. Peat soils are usually defined as soils having more than 75 percent organic matter. Due to this composition, the structure of peat soil is highly different from the mineral soils such as silt, clay and sand. Peat has high compressibility, high moisture content, low shear strength and low bearing capacity, so it is considered to be in the category of problematic. Since this kind of soil is generally found in many countries and various zones, except for desert and polar zones, recognizing this soil is inevitably significant. The objective of this paper is to review the classification of peats based on various properties of peat soils such as organic contents, water content, color, odor, and decomposition, scholars offer various classification systems which Von Post classification system is one of the most well-known and efficient system.

Keywords: peat soil, degree of decomposition, organic content, water content, Von Post classification

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Authors: Eylem G. Cengiz, Ersin Çilek, Gözde Başkaya, Havva Nur Taş

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It is possible to define the abuse and neglect of the child as a social problem. Such adverse experiences of the child are witnessed by wider social circles as well as his or her immediate environment. The most effective institution among these social circles is the school. The awareness of teachers, administrators, and even auxiliary personnel on this issue can act as a protective and preventive buffer because teachers have the opportunity to be with children every day and constantly observe them; therefore, they can notice the physical and mental changes in students. Furthermore, school administrators have an undeniable role in recognizing and responding to the risk of neglect and abuse. This study aims to evaluate the awareness of school administrators on the risk factors, clues, and ways of intervention towards abuse and neglect through the scenarios given to them. Data were collected from 37 primary, secondary, and high school administrators working in various provinces of Turkey through descriptive and scenario-based questions to determine their general knowledge of the concepts of neglect and abuse and their general tendencies towards practice. Descriptive questions were evaluated with content analysis, and scenario-based questions were evaluated with numerical qualitative data analysis. Concepts and themes were tried to be reached by content analysis from the descriptive data collected. When the results are evaluated in general, it is striking that the concept of child abuse means only sexual abuse for some school administrators. There is an important uncertainty for school administrators in the content of the idea of neglect. When the views on the causes of neglect and abuse are examined, the family factor was seen as the primary source of both neglect and abuse. In addition, among the prevention strategies applied by school administrators, intervention for the family -interviewing and informing- was recommended by only 9 (29%) out of 31 administrators. When the responses to the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse scenarios are examined, it is revealed that the administrators generally realize the abuse but fail to develop an appropriate/whole intervention method. The research results show that school administrators' awareness should be increased. Although administrators have sensitivity towards children, they should be empowered to recognize all types of neglect and abuse and develop appropriate intervention tools.

Keywords: assessment child abuse and neglect, child abuse, child neglect, school administrators

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Authors: W. Thongwat, B. Terakulsatit

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The study area is Kham Sakaesaeng District in Nakhon Ratchasima Province, the south section of Northeastern Thailand, located in the Lower Khorat-Ubol Basin. This region is the one of saline soil area, located in a dry plateau and regularly experience standing with periods of floods and alternating with periods of drought. Especially, the drought in the summer season causes the major saline soil and saline water problems of this region. The general cause of dry land salting resulted from salting on irrigated land, and an excess of water leading to the rising water table in the aquifer. The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship of physical and chemical properties between the soil and groundwater. The soil and groundwater samples were collected in both rainy and summer seasons. The content of pH, electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solids (TDS), chloride and salinity were investigated. The experimental result of soil and groundwater samples show the slightly pH less than 7, EC (186 to 8,156 us/cm and 960 to 10,712 us/cm), TDS (93 to 3,940 ppm and 480 to 5,356 ppm), chloride content (45.58 to 4,177,015 mg/l and 227.90 to 9,216,736 mg/l), and salinity (0.07 to 4.82 ppt and 0.24 to 14.46 ppt) in the rainy and summer seasons, respectively. The distribution of chloride content and salinity content were interpolated and displayed as a map by using ArcMap 10.3 program, according to the season. The result of saline soil and brined groundwater in the study area were related to the low-lying topography, drought area, and salt-source exposure. Especially, the Rock Salt Member of Maha Sarakham Formation was exposed or lies near the ground surface in this study area. During the rainy season, salt was eroded or weathered from the salt-source rock formation and transported by surface flow or leached into the groundwater. In the dry season, the ground surface is dry enough resulting salt precipitates from the brined surface water or rises from the brined groundwater influencing the increasing content of chloride and salinity in the ground surface and groundwater.

Keywords: environmental geology, soil salinity, geochemistry, groundwater hydrology

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Authors: Mara Simons

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There are many ways to define what 'diaspora' is in a global world as the term has become more and more fluid in the way it is understood and implemented. The main focus of the research has been on the definition of diaspora – arguments against and for the wider and inclusive definition versus the narrower and excluding one. Who can belong and who are supposed to be left out, who is 'ours' and who is 'other' – those struggles have been observed and researched in the content analysis of Latvia’s mass media, audio recordings from the Foreign Affairs Commission of the parliament of Latvia and official letters from the Ministries, deputies and NGO’s. Latvia’s case is interesting from the point of view of cultural studies as it has been a real struggle to define the term 'diaspora' and it's content in Latvia’s Diaspora law. Those in favour of a narrow definition warned of political risks for Latvia (such as voting demographics). The side arguing for a wide definition argued that anyone with a felt ‘connection’ should be eligible. This identity-based debate is still on-going in spite of the inclusive definition of diaspora being integrated into the law.

Keywords: belonging, cultural studies, diaspora, Latvia

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Authors: Jiang Xu, Daoping Wang, Yinghong Pan

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The jointing-booting stage is a critical period of both vegetative growth and reproductive growth in rice. Therefore, the proteomic analysis of the mutant Osbri1, whose corresponding gene OsBRI1 encodes the putative BRs receptor OsBRI1, at jointing-booting stage is very important for understanding the effects of BRs on vegetative and reproductive growth. In this study, the proteomes of leaves from an allelic mutant of the DWARF 61 (D61, OsBRI1) gene, Fn189 (dwarf54, d54) and its wild-type variety T65 (Taichung 65) at jointing-booting stage were analysed by using a Q Exactive plus orbitrap mass spectrometer, and more than 3,100 proteins were identified in each sample. Ontology analysis showed that these proteins distribute in various space of the cells, such as the chloroplast, mitochondrion, and nucleus, they functioned as structural components and/or catalytic enzymes and involved in many physiological processes. Moreover, quantitative analysis displayed that 266 proteins were differentially expressed in two samples, among them, 77 proteins decreased and 189 increased more than two times in Fn189 compared with T65, the proteins whose content decreased in Fn189 including b5-like Heme/Steroid binding domain containing protein, putative retrotransposon protein, putative glutaminyl-tRNA synthetase, and higher content proteins such as mTERF, putative Oligopeptidase homologue, zinc knuckle protein, and so on. A former study founded that the transcription level of a mTERF was up-regulated in the leaves of maize seedling after EBR treatment. In our experiments, it was interesting that one mTERF protein increased, but another mTERF decreased in leaves of Fn189 at jointing-booting stage, which suggested that BRs may have differential regulation mechanisms on the expression of various mTERF proteins. The relationship between other differential proteins with BRs is still unclear, and the effects of BRs on rice protein contents and its regulation mechanisms still need further research.

Keywords: bri1 mutant, jointing-booting stage, proteomic analysis, rice

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Authors: Abdulmagid A. Khattabi, Ahmed A. Hablous, Mofied M. Elnemry

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The carbon steel is of one of the most common mineral materials used in engineering and industrial applications in order to have access to the required mechanical properties, especially after the change of carbon ratio, but this may lead to stimulate corrosion. It has been used in models of solids with different carbon ratios such as 0.05% C, 0.2% C, 0.35% C, 0.5% C, and 0.65% C and have been studied using three testing durations which are 4 weeks, 6 weeks, and 8 weeks and among different corrosion environments such as atmosphere, fresh water, and salt water. This research is for the purpose of finding the effect of the carbon content on the corrosion resistance of steels in different corrosion medium by using the weight loss technique as a function of the corrosion resistance. The results that have been obtained through this research shows that a correlation can be made between corrosion rates and steel's carbon content, and the corrosion resistance decreases with the increase in carbon content.

Keywords: proportion of carbon in the steel, corrosion rate, erosion, corrosion resistance in carbon-steel

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Authors: Eno Jah Tabogo

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The aim of this research is to identify and examine current deficiencies in entrepreneurial training in improving the performance of small businesses in sub Saharan Africa economies. This research achieves this by examining the course content, training methods, and profiles of trainers and trainees of small business service providers in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) to identify training deficiencies in improving small businesses. Data was for the analysis was collected from a sample of four entrepreneurial training providers in SSA. These four providers served an average of 1,500 trainees. Questionnaire was used to collect data via face to face and through telephone. Face validity was determined by distributing the questionnaire among a group of colleagues, followed by a group discussion to strengthen the validity of the questionnaire. Interviews were also held with managers of training programs. Content and descriptive statistics was used to analyse the data collected. The results indicated only 25% of the training content were entrepreneurial. In terms of service provided, both business, entrepreneurial, technical and after-care services were identified. It was also discovered that owners of training firms had no formal entrepreneurship background. The paper contributes by advocating for a comprehensive entrepreneurship-training program for successful small business enterprises. Recommendations that could help sustain emerging small business enterprises and direction for further research are presented.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, emerging markets, small business, training

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Authors: Kelechi E. Ezeji

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The inclusion of relevant content in curricula of architecture schools is vital for attainment of Computer Aided Design (CAD) proficiency by graduates. Implementing this content involves, among other variables, the presence of competent tutors. Consequently, this study sought to investigate the importance of personnel recruitment for inclusion of content vital to the implementation of CAD in the curriculum for architecture education. This was with a view to developing a framework for appropriate implementation of CAD curriculum. It was focused on departments of architecture in universities in south-east Nigeria which have been accredited by National Universities Commission. Survey research design was employed. Data were obtained from sources within the study area using questionnaires, personal interviews, physical observation/enumeration and examination of institutional documents. A multi-stage stratified random sampling method was adopted. The first stage of stratification involved random sampling by balloting of the departments. The second stage involved obtaining respondents’ population from the number of staff and students of sample population. Chi Square analysis tool for nominal variables and Pearson’s product moment correlation test for interval variables were used for data analysis. With ρ < 0.5, the study found significant correlation between the number of CAD literate academic staff and use of CAD in design studio/assignments; that increase in the overall number of teaching staff significantly affected total CAD credit units in the curriculum of the department. The implications of these findings were that for successful implementation leading to attainment of CAD proficiency to occur, CAD-literacy should be a factor in the recruitment of staff and a policy of in-house training should be pursued.

Keywords: computer-aided design, education, personnel recruitment, curriculum

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Authors: J. Bertrandt, A. Kłos, R. Waszkowski, T. Nowicki, R. Pytlak, E. Stęzycka, A. Gazdzinska

Abstract:

The aim of the work was estimation of copper intake with the daily food rations used for alimentation of students of military high schools and soldiers doing compulsory military service in the Polish Army. An average planned copper content in daily food rations used for alimentation of students and soldiers amounted to 2.49±0.35 mg, and 2.44±0.25 mg respectively. The copper content in the daily food ration given for consumption to students amounted from 1.81±0.14 mg to 2.58±0.44 mg while daily food rations served to soldiers delivered from 2.06±0.45 mg to 2.13±0.33 mg. The copper content in the rations planned for students and soldiers’ alimentation was within the limits of the norms obligatory in Poland. Daily food rations given for consumption, except rations served for students, were within the limits of the recommended norms, but food rations really eaten by examined men didn’t cover the requirements for copper.

Keywords: copper, daily food ration, military service, food security, nutrition

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Authors: Bongjae Lee, Beom Goo Hwang, Hye Mi Park

Abstract:

CO₂ capture products manufactured through Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU) Plant that collect CO₂ directly from power plants require accurate measurements of the amount of CO₂ captured. For this purpose, two tests were carried out on the weight loss test. And one was analyzed using a carbon dioxide quantification device. First, the ignition loss analysis was performed by measuring the weight of the sample at 550°C after the first conversation and then confirming the loss when ignited at 950°C. Second, in the thermogravimetric analysis, the sample was divided into two sections of 40 to 500°C and 500 to 800°C to confirm the reduction. The results of thermal weight loss analysis and thermogravimetric analysis were confirmed to be almost similar. However, the temperature of the ignition loss analysis method was 950°C, which was 150°C higher than that of the thermogravimetric method at a temperature of 800°C, so that the difference in the amount of weight loss was 3 to 4% higher by the heat loss analysis method. In addition, the tendency that the CO₂ content increases as the reaction time become longer is similarly confirmed. Third, the results of the wet titration method through the carbon dioxide quantification device were found to be significantly lower than the weight loss method. Therefore, based on the results obtained through the above three analysis methods, we will establish a method to analyze the accurate amount of CO₂. Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and planning (No. 20152010201850).

Keywords: carbon capture and utilization, CCU, CO2, CO2 capture products, analysis method

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Authors: Nurul Izzati Abd Karim, Samira Albati Kamaruddin, Rozaimi Che Hasan

Abstract:

The appropriate petrophysical relationship is needed for Soil Water Content (SWC) estimation especially when using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR). Ground penetrating radar is a geophysical tool that provides indirectly the parameter of SWC. This paper examines the performance of few published petrophysical relationships to obtain SWC estimates from in-situ GPR common- offset survey measurements with gravimetric measurements at peat soil area. Gravimetric measurements were conducted to support of GPR measurements for the accuracy assessment. Further, GPR with dual frequencies (250MHhz and 700MHz) were used in the survey measurements to obtain the dielectric permittivity. Three empirical equations (i.e., Roth’s equation, Schaap’s equation and Idi’s equation) were selected for the study, used to compute the soil water content from dielectric permittivity of the GPR profile. The results indicate that Schaap’s equation provides strong correlation with SWC as measured by GPR data sets and gravimetric measurements.

Keywords: common-offset measurements, ground penetrating radar, petrophysical relationship, soil water content

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Authors: Varsha V. Rohini, P. R. Shreya, B. Renukadevi

Abstract:

In the web analytics the information delivery and the web usage is optimized and the analysis of data is done. The analytics is the measurement, collection and analysis of webpage data. Page statistics and user metrics are the important factor in most of the web analytics tool. This is the limitation of the existing tools. It does not provide design inputs for the optimization of information. This paper aims at providing an extension for the scope of web analytics to provide analysis and statistics of each segment of a webpage. The number of click count is calculated and the concentration of links in a web page is obtained. Its user metrics are used to help in proper design of the displayed content in a webpage by Vision Based Page Segmentation (VIPS) algorithm. When the algorithm is applied on the web page it divides the entire web page into the visual block tree. The visual block tree generated will further divide the web page into visual blocks or segments which help us to understand the usage of each segment in a page and its content. The dynamic web pages and deep web pages are used to extend the scope of web page segment analytics. Space optimization concept is used with the help of the output obtained from the Vision Based Page Segmentation (VIPS) algorithm. This technique provides us the visibility of the user interaction with the WebPages and helps us to place the important links in the appropriate segments of the webpage and effectively manage space in a page and the concentration of links.

Keywords: analytics, design optimization, visual block trees, vision based technology

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Authors: Varun Mittal, Shishir Sinha

Abstract:

The present experimental study focused on the hardness behavior of bagasse fiber-epoxy composites. The relationship between bagasse fiber content and effect of chemical treatment on bagasse fiber as a function of Brinell hardness of bagasse fiber epoxy was investigated. Bagasse fiber was treated with sodium hydroxide followed by acrylic acid before they were reinforced with epoxy resin. Compared hardness properties with the untreated bagasse filled epoxy composites. It was observed that Brinell hardness increased up to 15 wt% fiber content and further decreases, however, chemical treatment also improved the hardness properties of composites.

Keywords: bagasse fiber, composite, hardness, sodium hydroxide

Procedia PDF Downloads 286