Search results for: usage patterns

Authors: Maturos Chongchaikit, Sitthikorn Sumalee, Nopphawan Chimroylarp, Nongluck Manowaluilou, Thapanee Thammetha

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The 2015 Kasetsart University Research Plan, which was funded by the National Research Institutes: TRF – NRCT, comprises four sub-research projects on the development of three OER websites and on their usage study by students in international programs. The goals were to develop the open educational resources (OER) in the form of websites that will promote three key skills of quality learning and achievement: Academic English, Educational Research, and ICT Literacy, to graduate students in international programs of Thailand. The statistics from the Office of Higher Education showed that the number of foreign students who come to study in international higher education of Thailand has increased respectively by 25 percent per year, proving that the international education system and institutes of Thailand have been already recognized regionally and globally as meeting the standards. The output of the plan: the OER websites and their materials, and the outcome: students’ learning improvement due to lecturers’ readiness for open educational media, will ultimately lead the country to higher business capabilities for international education services in ASEAN Community in the future. The OER innovation is aimed at sharing quality knowledge to the world, with the adoption of Creative Commons Licenses that makes sharing be able to do freely (5Rs openness), without charge and leading to self and life-long learning. The research has brought the problems on the low usage of existing OER in the English language to develop the OER on three specific skills and try them out with the sample of 100 students randomly selected from the international graduate programs of top 10 Thai universities, according to QS Asia University Rankings 2014. The R&D process was used for product evaluation in 2 stages: the development stage and the usage study stage. The research tools were the questionnaires for content and OER experts, the questionnaires for the sample group and the open-ended interviews for the focus group discussions. The data were analyzed using frequency, percentage, mean and SD. The findings revealed that the developed websites were fully qualified as OERs by the experts. The students’ opinions and satisfaction were at the highest levels for both the content and the technology used for presentation. The usage manual and self-assessment guide were finalized during the focus group discussions. The direct participation according to the concept of 5Rs Openness Activities through the provided tools of OER models like MERLOT and OER COMMONS, as well as the development of usage manual and self-assessment guide, were revealed as a key approach to further extend the output widely and sustainably to the network of users in various higher education institutions.

Keywords: open educational resources, international education services business, academic English, educational research, ICT literacy, international graduate program, OER

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Authors: Mindaugas Kazlauskas

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In this paper, it is presupposed that the description of the relationship between animal and human should begin with a description of the direct experience of the animal and how, in this experience, the human experiences itself (a self awareness mode). A human is concerned first and foremost with himself as a human through the experience of another as an animal. The questionsare: In the encounter with an animal, how is the animal constituted in the acts of human experience? How does human-animal interaction influence human behavioral patterns, and how does the human identifies itself in this interaction? The paper will present the results of interpretative phenomenological descriptions (IPA) of the relationship between human and animal in the face of death phenomenon through the experience of pet owners who lost their beloved companions and hunters, veterinatians, and farmers who face animal death. The results of IPA analysis reveal different relations such as the identification with an animal, the alienation experience, the experience of resistance, and an experience of detachment. Within these themes, IPA qualitative research results will be presented by highlighting patterns of human behavior, following Friedrich Schlachermacher's hermeneutics methodological principles, and reflecting on changes in value and attitude within society during daily interaction with the animal.

Keywords: animal human interaction, phenomenology, philosophy, death phenomenon

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Authors: Muhammad Jahangeer Munir, Liaqat Ali Qureshi, Junaid Ahmed

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This paper presents the investigation regarding use of glass fibers in structural concrete members and determining the behavior of normal PCC, GFRC and retrofitted GFRC under different tests performed in the laboratory. Effect of retrofitting on the GFRC & PCC was investigated by using three patterns of CFRP wrapping. Properties like compressive, split tensile and flexural strength of normal GFRC and retrofitted GFRC were investigated and compared with their PCC counterparts. It was found that GFRC has more compressive strength as compared to PCC. At lower confinement pressures PCC behaves better than GFRC. Confinement efficiency was lower in GFRC as compared to PCC in terms of Split tensile strength. In case of GFRC all the patterns of wrapped CFRP strips showed more strength than their PCC counterparts.

Keywords: carbon fiber reinforced polymers, confinement, glass fibers, retrofitting

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Authors: Kate Jonathan

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This article presents the findings of a qualitative study into parenting practices in families of Pakistani origin in the North of England. It focuses on the involvement of fathers in childrearing within the Pakistani community. Data was generated from thirty parents’ in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation of parent-child relationships. The data was analyzed by an initial coding, identifying themes, a grouping of patterns, and arriving at a meaningful understanding. The study shows that the traditional role of fathers as breadwinners, providing discipline and protection, was still prominent in most of the Pakistani families who took part in the study. However, few men were becoming pragmatic and would engage in more childrearing chores, as their wives. The findings indicate that previous general portrayal of fatherhood as the primary, and sometimes, only, breadwinner is changing to encompass a lot more in Pakistani communities. Nowadays, some fathers are more involved in caregiving and are increasingly become co-contributors in the development of their children. However, the change is slower in some families than others and varied within this community.

Keywords: caregiving, childrearing, fathers, Pakistani families

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Authors: Jianan Sun, Ziwen Ye

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Multidimensional computerized adaptive testing (MCAT) is a popular research topic in psychometrics. It is important for practitioners to clearly know the item-trait patterns of administered items when a test like MCAT is operated. Item-trait pattern recognition refers to detecting which latent traits in a psychological test are measured by each of the specified items. If the item-trait patterns of the replenished items in MCAT item pool are well detected, the interpretability of the items can be improved, which can further promote the abilities of the examinees who attending the MCAT to be accurately estimated. This research explores to solve the item-trait pattern recognition problem of the replenished items in MCAT item pool from the perspective of statistical variable selection. The popular multidimensional item response theory model, multidimensional two-parameter logistic model, is assumed to fit the response data of MCAT. The proposed method uses the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) to detect item-trait patterns of replenished items based on the essential information of item responses and ability estimates of examinees collected from a designed MCAT procedure. Several advantages of the proposed method are outlined. First, the proposed method does not strictly depend on the relative order between the replenished items and the selected operational items, so it allows the replenished items to be mixed into the operational items in reasonable order such as considering content constraints or other test requirements. Second, the LASSO used in this research improves the interpretability of the multidimensional replenished items in MCAT. Third, the proposed method can exert the advantage of shrinkage method idea for variable selection, so it can help to check item quality and key dimension features of replenished items and saves more costs of time and labors in response data collection than traditional factor analysis method. Moreover, the proposed method makes sure the dimensions of replenished items are recognized to be consistent with the dimensions of operational items in MCAT item pool. Simulation studies are conducted to investigate the performance of the proposed method under different conditions for varying dimensionality of item pool, latent trait correlation, item discrimination, test lengths and item selection criteria in MCAT. Results show that the proposed method can accurately detect the item-trait patterns of the replenished items in the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional item pool. Selecting enough operational items from the item pool consisting of high discriminating items by Bayesian A-optimality in MCAT can improve the recognition accuracy of item-trait patterns of replenished items for the proposed method. The pattern recognition accuracy for the conditions with correlated traits is better than those with independent traits especially for the item pool consisting of comparatively low discriminating items. To sum up, the proposed data-driven method based on the LASSO can accurately and efficiently detect the item-trait patterns of replenished items in MCAT.

Keywords: item-trait pattern recognition, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator, multidimensional computerized adaptive testing, variable selection

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Authors: Aurelio Palacardo, Giulio Mangano, Alberto De Marco

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Nowadays, the global economic framework is extremely competitive, and it consequently requires an efficient deployment of the resources provided by EU. In this context, Project management practices are intended to be one of the levers for increasing such an efficiency. The objective of this work is to explore the usage of Project Management methodologies and good practices in the European-wide research program “Horizon2020” and establish whether their maturity might impact the project's success. This allows to identify strengths in terms of application of PM methodologies and good practices and, in turn, to provide feedback and opportunities for improvements to be implemented in future programs. In order to achieve this objective, the present research makes use of a survey-based data retrieval and correlation analysis to investigate the level of perceived PM maturity in H2020 projects and the correlation of maturity with project success. The results show the Project Managers involved in H2020 to hold a high level of PM maturity, confirming PM standards, which are imposed by the EU commission as a binding process, are effectively enforced.

Keywords: project management, project management maturity, maturity models, project success

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Authors: Nazanin Ahmadi Daryakenari

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Background: Diabetes significantly influences the risk of heart failure. The interplay between distinct types of diabetes, heart failure, and their distribution across various age groups remains an area of active exploration. This study endeavors to scrutinize the age group distribution in publications addressing Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes and heart failure on PubMed while also examining the evolving publication trends. Methods: We leveraged E-utilities and RegEx to search and extract publication data from PubMed using various mesh terms. Subsequently, we conducted descriptive statistics and t-tests to discern the differences between the two diabetes types and the distribution across age groups. Finally, we analyzed the temporal trends of publications concerning both types of diabetes and heart failure. Results: Our findings revealed a divergence in the age group distribution between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes within heart failure publications. Publications discussing Type 2 diabetes and heart failure were more predominant among older age groups, whereas those addressing Type 1 diabetes and heart failure displayed a more balanced distribution across all age groups. The t-test revealed no significant difference in the means between the two diabetes types. However, the number of publications exploring the relationship between Type 2 diabetes and heart failure has seen a steady increase over time, suggesting an escalating interest in this area. Conclusion: The dissection of publication patterns on PubMed uncovers a pronounced association between Type 2 diabetes and heart failure within older age groups. This highlights the critical need to comprehend the distinct age group differences when examining diabetes and heart failure to inform and refine targeted prevention and treatment strategies.

Keywords: Type 1 diabetes, Type 2 diabetes, heart failure, age groups, publication patterns, PubMed

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Authors: Nhac Thanh Huong

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New teaching methods have led to the changes in the teachers’ roles in an English class, in which teachers’ error correction is an integral part. Language error and corrective feedback have been the interest of many researchers in foreign language teaching. However, the techniques and the effectiveness of teachers’ feedback have been a question of much controversy. This present case study has been carried out with a view to finding out the patterns of teachers’ corrective feedback and their impact on students’ uptake in English speaking lessons of legal English major students at Hanoi Law University. In order to achieve those aims, the study makes use of classroom observations as the main method of data collection to seeks answers to the two following questions: 1. What patterns of corrective feedback occur in English speaking lessons for second- year legal English major students in Hanoi Law University?; 2. To what extent does that corrective feedback lead to students’ uptake? The study provided some important findings, among which was a close relationship between corrective feedback and uptake. In particular, recast was the most commonly used feedback type, yet it was the least effective in terms of students’ uptake and repair, while the most successful feedback, namely meta-linguistic feedback, clarification requests and elicitation, which led to students’ generated repair, was used at a much lower rate by teachers. Furthermore, it revealed that different types of errors needed different types of feedback. Also, the use of feedback depended on the students’ English proficiency level. In the light of findings, a number of pedagogical implications have been drawn in the hope of enhancing the effectiveness of teachers’ corrective feedback to students’ uptake in foreign language acquisition process.

Keywords: corrective feedback, error, uptake, speaking English lesson

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Authors: D. Pranav

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Pesticides are a class of Biocide, whose use in agriculture has led to a momentous increase in the yield of crops, fruits and vegetables all over the word and its effective use has also been the pillars of success for the Green Revolution. However, the incessant use of pesticides has now reached alarming levels. In 2007 alone, the world used an estimated 2.4 million tons of pesticides. Despite its tremendous benefits for agriculture, pesticide has been one of the major reasons for degradation of the natural environment and undesirable effects on human beings. It has not only caused damage to human health, but has also threatened the survival of few birds and animal species. In India, the sale and usage of banned pesticide, increased usage of pesticides and its inadequate labeling has caused Bio magnification, which is causing deleterious effects on child development, resulting in stunted mental and physical growth. This paper aims to bring to shed light on major loopholes in the current pesticide regulations such as the Insecticide Act of 1968. It further discusses loopholes in the yet to be tabled Pesticides Management Bill of 2008. It discusses and arrives at potential amendments to the laws and regulations concerning pesticides; that cannot only be applied to the Indian subcontinent but other developing countries as well.

Keywords: pesticides, India, human health, environment, regulations, reform

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Authors: Afshin J. Ghajar, Swanand M. Bhagwat

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The main purpose of this work is to experimentally investigate the effect of pipe orientation on two phase flow phenomenon. Flow pattern, void fraction and two phase pressure drop is measured in a polycarbonate pipe with an inside diameter of 12.7mm for inclination angles ranging from -20° to +20° using air-water fluid combination. The experimental data covers all flow patterns and the entire range of void fraction typically observed in two phase flow. The effect of pipe orientation on void fraction and two phase pressure drop is justified with reference to the change in flow structure and two phase flow behavior. In addition to this, the top performing void fraction and two phase pressure drop correlations available in the literature are presented and their performance is assessed against the experimental data in the present study and that available in the literature.

Keywords: flow patterns, inclined two phase flow, pressure drop, void fraction

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Authors: Ali Abbas

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This paper presents a descriptive model of organizational misconduct based on observed patterns that occur before and after an ethical collapse. The patterns were classified by categorizing media articles in both "for-profit" and "not-for-profit" organizations. Based on the model parameters, the paper provides a descriptive model of various organizational deflection strategies under numerous scenarios, including situations where ethical complaints build-up, situations under which whistleblowers become more prevalent, situations where large scandals that relate to leadership occur, and strategies by which organizations deflect blame when pressure builds up or when media finds out. The model parameters start with the premise of a tolerance to double standards in unethical acts when conducted by leadership or by members of corporate governance. Following this premise, the model explains how organizations engage in discursive strategies to cover up the potential conflicts that arise, including secret agreements and weakening stakeholders who may oppose the organizational acts. Deflection strategies include "preemptive" and "post-complaint" secret agreements, absence of (or vague) documented procedures, engaging in blame and scapegoating, remaining silent on complaints until the media finds out, as well as being slow (if at all) to acknowledge misconduct and fast to cover it up. The results of this paper may be used to guide organizational leaders into the implications of such shortsighted strategies toward unethical acts, even if they are deemed legal. Validation of the model assumptions through numerous media articles is provided.

Keywords: ethical decision making, prediction, scandals, organizational strategies

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Authors: Bin Liu

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Protein remote homology detection and fold recognition are two most important tasks in protein sequence analysis, which is critical for protein structure and function studies. In this study, we combined the profile-based features with various string kernels, and constructed several computational predictors for protein remote homology detection and fold recognition. Experimental results on two widely used benchmark datasets showed that these methods outperformed the competing methods, indicating that these predictors are useful computational tools for protein sequence analysis. By analyzing the discriminative features of the training models, some interesting patterns were discovered, reflecting the characteristics of protein superfamilies and folds, which are important for the researchers who are interested in finding the patterns of protein folds.

Keywords: protein remote homology detection, protein fold recognition, profile-based features, Support Vector Machines (SVMs)

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Authors: Mohammed Al-Shalabi, Alaa Obeidat

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In any food stores, some items will be expired or destroyed because the demand on these items is infrequent, so we need a system that can help the decision maker to make an offer on such items to improve the demand on the items by putting them with some other frequent item and decrease the price to avoid losses. The system generates hundreds or thousands of patterns (offers) for each low demand item, then it uses the association rules (support, confidence) to find the interesting patterns (the best offer to achieve the lowest losses). In this paper, we propose a data mining method for determining the best offer by merging the data mining techniques with the e-commerce strategy. The task is to build a model to predict the best offer. The goal is to maximize the profits of a store and avoid the loss of products. The idea in this paper is the using of the association rules in marketing with a combination with e-commerce.

Keywords: data mining, association rules, confidence, online stores

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Authors: Maryum Nawaz

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Purpose: To determine the frequency of refractive errors in squinting eyes of children from 4 to 16 years presenting at tertiary care hospital. Study Design: A descriptive cross-sectional study was done. Place and Duration: The study was conducted in Pediatric Ophthalmology, Hayatabad Medical Complex, Peshawar. Materials and Methods: The sample size was 146 keeping 41.45%5 proportion of refractive errors in children with squinting eyes, 95% confidence interval and 8% margin of error under WHO sample size calculations. Non-probability consecutive sampling was done. Result: Mean age was 8.57±2.66 years. Male were 89 (61.0%) and female were 57 (39.0%). Refractive error was present in 56 (38.4%) and was not present in 90 (61.6%) of patients. There was no association of gender, age, parent refractive errors, or early usage of electric equipment with the refractive errors. Conclusion: There is a high prevalence of refractive errors in a patient with strabismus. There is no association of age, gender, parent refractive errors, or early usage of electric equipment in the occurrence of refractive errors. Further studies are recommended for confirmation of these.

Keywords: strabismus, refractive error, myopia, hypermetropia, astigmatism

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Authors: Gabriele Borg, Alexei De Bono, Charlie Abela

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There on a constant rise in the availability of high volumes of data gathered from multiple sources, resulting in an abundance of unprocessed information that can be used to monitor patterns and trends in user behaviour. Similarly, year after year, Malta is also constantly experiencing ongoing population growth and an increase in mobilization demand. This research takes advantage of data which is continuously being sourced and converting it into useful information related to the traffic problem on the Maltese roads. The scope of this paper is to provide a methodology to create a custom dataset (MalTra - Malta Traffic) compiled from multiple participants from various locations across the island to identify the most common routes taken to expose the main areas of activity. This use of big data is seen being used in various technologies and is referred to as ITSs (Intelligent Transportation Systems), which has been concluded that there is significant potential in utilising such sources of data on a nationwide scale.

Keywords: Big Data, vehicular traffic, traffic management, mobile data patterns

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Authors: Gargi Phadke, Mugdha Joshi, Shamal Salunkhe

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Facial sketches are used as a crucial clue by criminal investigators for identification of suspects when the description of eyewitness or victims are only available as evidence. A forensic artist develops a sketch as per the verbal description is given by an eyewitness that shows the facial look of the culprit. In this paper, the fusion of Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) and multiscale local binary patterns (MLBP) are proposed as a feature to recognize a forensic face sketch images from a gallery of mugshot photos. This work focuses on comparative analysis of proposed scheme with existing algorithms in different challenges like illumination change and rotation condition. Experimental results show that proposed scheme can lead to better performance for the defined problem.

Keywords: SIFT feature, MLBP, PCA, face sketch

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Authors: Domenica Bona

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Colin Chant and David Goodman argue that historians of Chinese pre-industrial cities tend to underestimate revolutions and overestimate cyclic patterns: periods of peace and prosperity in the earl part of each d nast , followed b peasants’ rebellions and upheavals. Boyd described these cyclic patterns as part of the background of Chinese town planning and architecture. Thus old ideals of city planning-square plan, southward orientation and a palace along the central axis - are revived again and again in the ascendant phases of several d nastic c cles (e.g. Chang’an, Kaifen, and Beijing). Along this line of thought, m paper questions the relationship between the “magic square rule” and modern Chinese urban- planning. As a matter of fact, the classical theme of “cosmic Taoist urbanism” is still a reference for planning cities and new urban developments, whenever there is the intention to express nationalist ideals and “cultural straightforwardness.” Besides, some case studies can be related to “modern d nasties”: the first Republic under the Kuo Min Tang, the red People’s Republic and the post-Maoist open country of Deng Xiao Ping. Considering the project for the new capital of Nanjing in the Thirties, Beijing’s Tianan Men area in the ifties, and Shenzhen’s utian CBD in late 20th century, I argue that cyclic patterns are still in place, though with deformations related to westernization, private interests and lack of spirituality. How far new Chinese cities are - or simply seem to be - westernized? Symbolism, invisible frameworks, repeating features and behavioural patterns make urban China just “superficiall” western. This can be well noticed in cities previousl occupied b foreigners, like Hong Kong, or in newly founded ones, like Shenzhen, where both Asians and non-Asian people can feel the gender-shift from New-York-like landscapes to something else. Current planning in main metropolitan areas shows a blurred relationship between public policies and private investments: two levels of decisions and actions, one addressing the larger scale and infrastructures, the other concerning the micro scale and development of single plots. While zoning is instrumental in this process, master plans are often laid out over a very poor cartography, so much that any relation between the formal characters of new cities and the centuries-old structure of the related territory gets lost.

Keywords: China, contemporary cities, cultural heritage, shenzhen, urban planning

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Authors: Adriane Orenha-Ottaiano

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Collocations are conventionalized, recurrent and arbitrary lexical combinations. Due to the fact that they are highly specific for a particular language and may be contextually restricted, collocations pose a problem to EFL/ESL learners with regard to production or encoding. Taking that into account, the compilation of monolingual and bilingual collocations dictionaries for the referred audience is highly crucial and significant. Thus, the aim of this paper is to discuss the importance of the compilation of an Online Corpus-based Bilingual Collocations Dictionary, in the English-Portuguese and Portuguese-English directions. On a first phase, with the use of WordSmith Tools, the collocations were extracted from a Translation Learner Corpus (TLC), a parallel corpus made up of university students’ translations in the Portuguese-English direction, with approximately 100,000 words. In a second stage, based on the keywords analyzed from the TLC, more collocational patterns were extracted using the Sketch Engine. In order to include more collocations as well as to ensure dictionary users will have access to more frequent and recurrent collocations, we also use the frequency list from The Corpus of Contemporary American English, with the purpose of extracting more patterns. The dictionary focuses on all types of collocations (verbal, noun, adjectival and adverbial collocations), in order to help the referred audience use them more accurately and productively – so far the dictionary has more than 330 entries, and more than 3,500 collocations extracted. The idea of having the proposed dictionary in online format may allow to incorporate more qualitatively and quantitatively collocational information. Besides, more examples may be included, different from conventional printed collocations dictionaries. Being the first bilingual collocations dictionary in the aforementioned directions, it is hoped to achieve the challenge of meeting learners’ collocational needs as the collocations have been selected according to learners’ difficulties regarding the use of collocations.

Keywords: Corpus-Based Collocations Dictionary, Collocations , Bilingual Collocations Dictionary, Collocational Patterns

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Authors: A. Amidah Amrawaty, M. Saleh S. Ali, Darmawan Salman

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The aim of this study was to identify local and non local knowledge in Bali cattle development, to analyze the contestation between local and non-local knowledge. The paradigm used was constructivism paradigm with a qualitative approach. descriptive type of research using case study method. The study was conducted in four villages subjected to Agropolitan Program, i.e. Palakka, Tompo, Galung and Anabanua in Barru District, province of South Sulawesi. The results indicated that the local knowledge of the farmers were: a) knowledge of animal housing, b) knowledge of the prevention and control disease, c) knowledge of the feed, d) knowledge of breed selection, e) knowledge of sharing arrangement, f) knowledge of marketing, Generally, there are three patterns of knowledge contestation namely coexistence, ‘zero sum game’ and hybridization but in this research only coexistence and zero sum game patterns took place, while the pattern of hybridization did not occur.

Keywords: contestation, local knowledge, non-local knowledge, developing of Bali cattle

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Authors: S. Nakayama

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For non-native English speakers, using English modal auxiliary verbs appropriately can be among the most challenging tasks. This research sought to identify differences in modal verb usage between Japanese non-native English speakers (JNNS) and native speakers (NS) from two different perspectives: frequency of use and distribution of verb phrase structures (VPS) where modal verbs occur. This study can contribute to the identification of JNNSs' interlanguage with regard to modal verbs; the main aim is to make a suggestion for the improvement of teaching materials as well as to help language teachers to be able to teach modal verbs in a way that is helpful for learners. To address the primary question in this study, usage of nine central modals (‘can’, ‘could’, ‘may’, ‘might’, ‘shall’, ‘should’, ‘will’, ‘would’, and ‘must’) by JNNS was compared with that by NSs in the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English (ICNALE). This corpus is one of the largest freely-available corpora focusing on Asian English learners’ language use. The ICNALE corpus consists of four modules: ‘Spoken Monologue’, ‘Spoken Dialogue’, ‘Written Essays’, and ‘Edited Essays’. Among these, this research adopted the ‘Written Essays’ module only, which is the set of 200-300 word essays and contains approximately 1.3 million words in total. Frequency analysis revealed gaps as well as similarities in frequency order. Specifically, both JNNSs and NSs used ‘can’ with the most frequency, followed by ‘should’ and ‘will’; however, usage of all the other modals except for ‘shall’ was not identical to each other. A log-likelihood test uncovered JNNSs’ overuse of ‘can’ and ‘must’ as well as their underuse of ‘will’ and ‘would’. VPS analysis revealed that JNNSs used modal verbs in a relatively narrow range of VPSs as compared to NSs. Results showed that JNNSs used most of the modals with bare infinitives or the passive voice only whereas NSs used the modals in a wide range of VPSs including the progressive construction and the perfect aspect, both of which were the structures where JNNSs rarely used the modals. Results of frequency analysis suggest that language teachers or teaching materials should explain other modality items so that learners can avoid relying heavily on certain modals and have a wide range of lexical items to reflect their feelings more accurately. Besides, the underused modals should be more stressed in the classroom because they are members of epistemic modals, which allow us to not only interject our views into propositions but also build a relationship with readers. As for VPSs, teaching materials should present more examples of the modals occurring in a wide range of VPSs to help learners to be able to express their opinions from a variety of viewpoints.

Keywords: corpus linguistics, Japanese learners of English, modal auxiliary verbs, International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English

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Authors: Patrick Mkhanyiseli Zimu

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A sedentary lifestyle and insufficient physical activity (PA) increases the risk of developing chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Knowing the PA levels and patterns of adolescents from different socio-economic backgrounds is important to direct programs at schools and in communities to prevent NCDs risk factors, which can have long-term effects on the health of the adolescents. The study aimed to investigate adolescent PA levels, patterns, and influencing factors (age, gender, socio-economic status). The 353 participants (203 females and 150 males) from eight low socio-economic (LSES) and middle socio-economic (MSES) public secondary schools completed a Physical Activity Questionnaire for Adolescents (PAQ-A). The PAQ-A is a seven day recall instrument that assesses general estimates of PA levels and patterns for high school learners in Grades 9-12 and provides a summary of physical activity scores derived from seven items, each scored on a 5-point Likert scale. The seven items were PA during spare time and five domains (during physical education, lunch break, after school, in the evenings, on the weekend) and selecting one statement that described participant’s physical activity behaviour. The PA Levels (x̄=2.61, SD=.74) were below the international PA cut-off points of x̄=2.75. Physical education (PE) showed the highest PA score (x̄=3.05, SD=1.21) and lunch break showed the lowest PA score (x̄=2.09, SD=1.14). Positive correlations occurred between PA levels and SES (r=.122, p=0.022), and PA and gender (r=.223, p= 0.0001). LSES participant’s PA score was significantly lower (x̄=2.52; SD=.73) than those from MSES (x̄=2.70; SD=.74, p=0.022). Adolescents from low and middle socio-economic status communities are not sufficiently active. Their average PA score of 2.61 is below the PAQ-A global criterion referenced cut-off points of 2.75, which is considered sufficiently physically active for adolescents to ensure both short- and long-term health benefits. As adolescents are not sufficiently active, collaborative school and community PA programs need to be implemented to supplement physical education in order to prevent short- and long-term health problems.

Keywords: adolescents, health promotion, physical activity, physical education

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Authors: Vangelis Drosos, Dimitrios Tsoukalos, Dimitrios Tsolis

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We present a simple algorithm for capturing a 3D scene (focused on the usage of mobile device cameras in the context of augmented/mixed reality) by using a floating origin camera solution and storing the resulting information in a linear voxel octree. Data is derived from cloud points captured by a mobile device camera. For the purposes of this paper, we assume a scene of fixed size (known to us or determined beforehand) and a fixed voxel resolution. The resulting data is stored in a linear voxel octree using a hashtable. We commence by briefly discussing the logic behind floating origin approaches and the usage of linear voxel octrees for efficient storage. Following that, we present the algorithm for translating captured feature points into voxel data in the context of a fixed origin world and storing them. Finally, we discuss potential applications and areas of future development and improvement to the efficiency of our solution.

Keywords: voxel, octree, computer vision, XR, floating origin

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Authors: Renuka G. Oka

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From chowks to streets to verandahs to courtyards; residential open spaces are very significantly placed in traditional urban neighborhoods of India. At various levels of intersection, the open spaces with their attributes like juxtaposition with the built fabric, scale, climate sensitivity and response, multi-functionality, etc. reflect and respond to the patterns of human interactions. Also, these spaces tend to be quite well utilized. On the other hand, it is a common specter to see an imbalanced utilization of open spaces in newly/recently planned residential clusters. This is maybe due to lack of activity generators around or wrong locations or excess provisions or improper incorporation of aforementioned design attributes. These casual observations suggest the necessity for a systematic study of current residential open spaces. The exploratory study thus attempts to draw lessons through a structured inspection of residential open spaces to understand the effective environment as revealed through their use patterns. Here, residential open spaces are considered in a wider sense to incorporate all the un-built fabric around. These thus, include both use spaces and access space. For the study, open spaces in ten exemplary housing clusters/societies built during the last ten years across India are studied. A threefold inquiry is attempted in this direction. The first relates to identifying and determining the effects of various physical functions like space organization, size, hierarchy, thermal and optical comfort, etc. on the performance of residential open spaces. The second part sets out to understand socio-cultural variations in values, lifestyle, and beliefs which determine activity choices and behavioral preferences of users for respective residential open spaces. The third inquiry further observes the application of these research findings to the design process to derive meaningful and qualitative design advice. However, the study also emphasizes to develop a suitable framework of analysis and to carve out appropriate methods and approaches to probe into these aspects of the inquiry. Given this emphasis, a considerable portion of the research details out the conceptual framework for the study. This framework is supported by an in-depth search of available literature. The findings are worked out for design solutions which integrate the open space systems with the overall design process for residential clusters. The open spaces in residential areas present great complexities both in terms of their use patterns and determinants of their functional responses. The broad aim of the study is, therefore, to arrive at reconsideration of standards and qualitative parameters used by designers – on the basis of more substantial inquiry into the use patterns of open spaces in residential areas.

Keywords: open spaces, physical and social determinants, residential clusters, use patterns

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Authors: Khyamling Parane, B. M. Prabhu Prasad, Basavaraj Talawar

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Fast simulations are critical in reducing time to market in CMPs and SoCs. Several simulators have been used to evaluate the performance and power consumed by Network-on-Chips. Researchers and designers rely upon these simulators for design space exploration of NoC architectures. Our experiments show that simulating large NoC topologies take hours to several days for completion. To speed up the simulations, it is necessary to investigate and optimize the hotspots in simulator source code. Among several simulators available, we choose Booksim2.0, as it is being extensively used in the NoC community. In this paper, we analyze the cache and memory system behaviour of Booksim2.0 to accurately monitor input dependent performance bottlenecks. Our measurements show that cache and memory usage patterns vary widely based on the input parameters given to Booksim2.0. Based on these measurements, the cache configuration having least misses has been identified. To further reduce the cache misses, we use software optimization techniques such as removal of unused functions, loop interchanging and replacing post-increment operator with pre-increment operator for non-primitive data types. The cache misses were reduced by 18.52%, 5.34% and 3.91% by employing above technology respectively. We also employ thread parallelization and vectorization to improve the overall performance of Booksim2.0. The OpenMP programming model and SIMD are used for parallelizing and vectorizing the more time-consuming portions of Booksim2.0. Speedups of 2.93x and 3.97x were observed for the Mesh topology with 30 × 30 network size by employing thread parallelization and vectorization respectively.

Keywords: cache behaviour, network-on-chip, performance profiling, vectorization

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Authors: Silvia Boschetti, Jakub Binter, Robin Kopecký, Lenka PříPlatová, Jaroslav Flegr

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A strict dichotomy was present between religion and science, but recently, cognitive science focusses on the impact of supernatural beliefs on cognitive processes such as pattern recognition. It has been hypothesized that cognitive and perceptual processes have been under evolutionary pressures that ensured amplified perception of patterns, especially when in stressful and harsh conditions. The pattern detection in religious and non-religious individuals after induction of negative, anxious mood shall constitute a cornerstone of the general role of anxiety, cognitive bias, leading towards or against the by-product hypothesis, one of the main theories on the evolutionary studies of religion. The apophenia (tendencies to perceive connection and meaning on unrelated events) and perception of visual patterns (or pateidolia) are of utmost interest. To capture the impact of culture and upbringing, a comparative study of two European countries, the Czech Republic (low organized religion participation, high esoteric belief) and Italy (high organized religion participation, low esoteric belief), are currently in the data collection phase. Outcomes will be presented at the conference. A battery of standardized questionnaires followed by pattern recognition tasks (the patterns involve color, shape, and are of artificial and natural origin) using an experimental method involving the conditioning of (controlled, laboratory-induced) stress is taking place. We hypothesize to find a difference between organized religious belief and personal (esoteric) belief that will be alike in both of the cultural environments.

Keywords: culture, esoteric belief, pattern perception, religiosity

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Authors: Kübra Aktaş, Nermin Bilgiçli, Tayyibe Erten, Perihan Kübra Çiçek

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In this research, different wheat-legume flour blends were used in Turkish noodle preparation with the aid of some gums (xanthan and guar). Chickpea, common bean and soy flours were used in noodle formulation at 20% level with and without gum (1%) addition. Some physical, chemical and sensory properties of noodles were determined. Water uptake, volume increase and cooking loss values of the noodles changed between 92.03-116.37%, 125.0-187.23% and 4.88-8.10%, respectively. Xanthan or guar gam addition decreased cooking loss values of legume fortified noodles. Both legume flour and gum addition significantly (p<0.05) affected the color values of the noodles. The lowest lightness (L*), redness (a*) and the highest yellowness (b*) values were obtained with soy flour usage in noodle formulation. Protein and ash values of noodles ranged between 15.14 and 21.82%; 1.62 and 2.50%, respectively, and the highest values were obtained with soy flour usage in noodle formulation. As a result of sensory evaluation, noodles containing chickpea flour and guar gum were rated with higher taste, odor, appearance and texture scores compared to other noodle samples.

Keywords: noodle, legume, soy, chickpea, common bean, gum

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Authors: Xianming Chen, Yu Lei, Meinan Wang

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The dikaryotic basidiomycete fungus, Puccinia striiformis, causes stripe rust, one of the most important diseases of wheat and barley worldwide. The pathogen is largely reproduced asexually, and asexual recombination has been hypothesized to be one of the mechanisms for the pathogen variations. To test the hypothesis and understand the genetic process of asexual recombination, somatic recombinant isolates were obtained under controlled conditions by inoculating susceptible host plants with a mixture of equal quantity of urediniospores of isolates with different virulence patterns and selecting through a series of inoculation on host plants with different genes for resistance to one of the parental isolates. The potential recombinant isolates were phenotypically characterized by virulence testing on the set of 18 wheat lines used to differentiate races of the wheat stripe rust pathogen, P. striiformis f. sp. tritici (Pst), for the combinations of Pst isolates; or on both sets of the wheat differentials and 12 barley differentials for identifying races of the barley stripe rust pathogen, P. striiformis f. sp. hordei (Psh) for combinations of a Pst isolate and a Psh isolate. The progeny and parental isolates were also genotypically characterized with 51 simple sequence repeat and 90 single-nucleotide polymorphism markers. From nine combinations of parental isolates, 68 potential recombinant isolates were obtained, of which 33 (48.5%) had similar virulence patterns to one of the parental isolates, and 35 (51.5%) had virulence patterns distinct from either of the parental isolates. Of the 35 isolates of distinct virulence patterns, 11 were identified as races that had been previously detected from natural collections and 24 were identified as new races. The molecular marker data confirmed 66 of the 68 isolates as recombinants. The percentages of parental marker alleles ranged from 0.9% to 98.9% and were significantly different from equal proportions in the recombinant isolates. Except for a couple of combinations, the greater or less contribution was not specific to any particular parental isolates as the same parental isolates contributed more to some of the progeny isolates but less to the other progeny isolates in the same combination. The unequal contributions by parental isolates appear to be a general role in somatic recombination for the stripe rust fungus, which may be used to distinguish asexual recombination from sexual recombination in studying the evolutionary mechanisms of the highly variable fungal pathogen.

Keywords: molecular markers, Puccinia striiformis, somatic recombination, stripe rust

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Authors: Tagore Sai Priya Nunna, Ankhi Banerjee

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The rapid growth of the tourism industry in India in the last few years after the economic crisis in 2009 has been one of the significant causes that led to the Land Use Land Cover change (LULC) of most tourism destinations. The tourist regions are subjected to significant increase in built-up due to increased construction activities for developing accommodation facilities further boosting tourism demand. This research attempts to analyse the changing LULC and the growth pattern of the built-up area within tourist destinations. Four popular tourist destinations, which promises various types of tourism activity and which are significantly dependent on tourism for economic growth, are selected for the study. The study uses remotely sensed data for analysis of land use change through supervised segmentation into five broad classes. Further, the landuse map is reclassified into binary classes to extract the built-up area. The growth patterns of the built-up are analysed in terms of size, shape, direction and form of growth, through a set of spatial metrics. Additionally, a detailed analysis of the existing development pattern corresponding to planned development zones was performed to identify unplanned growth spots in the study regions. The findings of the study provide insights into how tourism has contributed to significant changes in LULC around tourist sites. Also, the study highlights the growth pattern of built-up areas with respect to the type of tourism activity and geographical characteristics. The research attempts to address the need of integrating spatial metrics for the development of sustainable tourism plans as part of the goals of sustainable development.

Keywords: built-up, growth, patterns, tourism, sustainable

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Authors: Ahmed Hammed, Wady Naanaa

Abstract:

In this paper, we propose a general approach to deal with the problem of a convolutive mixture of images. We use a direct blind source separation method by adding only one non-statistical justified constraint describing the relationships between different mixing matrix at the aim to make its resolution easy. This method can be applied, provided that this constraint is known, to degraded document affected by the overlapping of text-patterns and images. This is due to chemical and physical reactions of the materials (paper, inks,...) occurring during the documents aging, and other unpredictable causes such as humidity, microorganism infestation, human handling, etc. We will demonstrate that this problem corresponds to a convolutive mixture of images. Subsequently, we will show how the validation of our method through numerical examples. We can so obtain clear images from unreadable ones which can be caused by pages superposition, a phenomenon similar to that we find every often in archival documents.

Keywords: blind source separation, convoluted mixture, degraded documents, text-patterns overlapping

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Authors: Muhamad Azani Yahya, Umi Nadiah Nor Ali, Mohammed Alias Yusof, Norazman Mohamad Nor, Vikneswaran Munikanan

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In construction, concrete is one of the materials that can commonly be used as for structural elements. Concrete consists of cement, sand, aggregate and water. Concrete can be added with admixture in the wet condition to suit the design purpose such as to prolong the setting time to improve workability. For strength improvement, concrete is being added with other hybrid materials to increase strength; this is because the tensile strength of concrete is very low in comparison to the compressive strength. This paper shows the usage of a waterproofing agent in concrete to enhance the tensile strength. High tensile concrete is expensive because the concrete mix needs fiber and also high cement content to be incorporated in the mix. High tensile concrete being used for structures that are being imposed by high impact dynamic load such as blast loading that hit the structure. High tensile concrete can be defined as a concrete mix design that achieved 30%-40% tensile strength compared to its compression strength. This research evaluates the usage of a waterproofing agent in a concrete mix as an element of reinforcement to enhance the tensile strength. According to the compression and tensile test, it shows that the concrete mix with a waterproofing agent enhanced the mechanical properties of the concrete. It is also show that the composite concrete with waterproofing is a high tensile concrete; this is because of the tensile is between 30% and 40% of the compression strength. This mix is economical because it can produce high tensile concrete with low cost.

Keywords: high tensile concrete, waterproofing agent, concrete, rheology

Procedia PDF Downloads 306