Search results for: restructuringbuilding information modeling

Authors: D. E. Egirani, J. E. Andrews, A. R. Baker

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This study investigates sorption of Cu and Zn contained in natural mine wastewater, using mixed mineral systems in sulfidic-anoxic condition. The mine wastewater was obtained from disused mine workings at Cwmheidol in Wales, United Kingdom. These contaminants flow into water courses. These water courses include River Rheidol. In this River fishing activities exist. In an attempt to reduce Cu-Zn levels of fish intake in the watercourses, single mineral systems and 1:1 mixed mineral systems of clay and goethite were tested with the mine waste water for copper and zinc removal at variable pH. Modelling of hydroxyl complexes was carried out using phreeqc method. Reactions using batch mode technique was conducted at room temperature. There was significant differences in the behaviour of copper and zinc removal using mixed mineral systems when compared  to single mineral systems. All mixed mineral systems sorb more Cu than Zn when tested with mine wastewater.

Keywords: Cu- Zn, hydroxyl complexes, kinetics, mixed mineral systems, reactivity

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Authors: Farah Kanani

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Blue Tide Environmental is a company focused on developing a network of used motor oil recycling facilities across the U.S. They initiated the redesign of its recycling plant in Texas, and aimed to establish an updated carbon footprint of re-refined used motor oils compared to an equivalent product derived from virgin stock that is not re-refined. The aim was to quantify emissions savings of a circular alternative to conventional end-of-life combustion of used motor oil (UMO). To do so, they mandated an ISO-compliant carbon footprint, utilizing complex models requiring geographical and temporal accuracy to accommodate the U.S. refinery market. The quantification of linear and circular flows, proxies for fuel substitution and system expansion for multi-product outputs were all critical methodological choices and were tested through sensitivity analyses. The re-refined system consisted of continuous recycling of UMO and thus, end-of-life is considered non-existent. The unique perspective to this topic will be from a life cycle i.e. holistic one and essentially demonstrate using this example of how a cradle-to-cradle model can be used to quantify a comparative carbon footprint. The intended audience is lubricant manufacturers as the consumers, motor oil industry professionals and other industry members interested in performing a cradle-to-cradle modeling.

Keywords: circularity, used motor oil, re-refining, systems expansion

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Authors: Tam Nguyen

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Self-leadership is strongly tied to the ability to be resilient in the face of adversity. This study aims to demonstrate how a strategy based on a culturally relevant "bamboo metaphor" enables Asian students to cross cultural boundaries and to engage in online discussions to unlock their self-leadership potential. Asian students are influenced to varying degrees by the Confucian heritage culture, which educates students to respect authority, maintain harmony, and avoid public confrontations. This has a significant impact on the cultural readiness of Asian students to express their development as self-leaders. In this research project, researchers as mentors individually assist students, cultivate cognitive progress, encourage and personally ask students to join a process of mentorship program. This study analyzes and interprets the data from a large online seminar in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where students were trained in self-leadership skills. Focus-group interviews were implemented among 90 students in the program. Findings reveal the emotional needs of Asian students and suggest a cognitive model for developing students' self-awareness, self-confidence, and self-efficacy. The research results are anticipated to be applicable to a broader Asian population with a comparable cultural environment to Vietnam.

Keywords: self-leadership, bamboo resilience, cognitive modeling, Asian culture

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Authors: Hamed Najafi, Ghasem Nikjou

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Nowadays, there is an increasing attention to the resources scarcity issues. Because of failure in present patterns in the field of the allocation of exhaustible resources between generations and the challenges related to economic justice supply, it is supposed, to present a pattern from the Islamic perspective in this essay. By using content analysis of religious texts, we conclude that governments should remove the gap which is exists between the per capita income of the poor and their minimum consumption (necessary consumption). In order to preserve the exhaustible resources for poor people) not for all), between all generations, government should invest exhaustible resources on endless resources according to Hartwick’s criteria and should spend these benefits for poor people. But, if benefits did not cover the gap between minimum consumption and per capita income of poor levels in one generation, in this case, the government is responsible for covering this gap through the direct consumption of exhaustible resources. For an exact answer to this question, ‘how much of exhaustible resources should expense to maintain justice between generations?’ The theoretical and mathematical modeling has been used and proper function has been provided. The consumption pattern is presented for economic policy makers in Muslim countries, and non-Muslim even, it can be useful.

Keywords: exhaustible resources, Islamic justice, intergenerational justice, distribution of resources, Hartwick criteria

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Authors: Maria David, Tunde A. Tasko, Katalin Hejja-Nagy, Laszlo Dorner

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The authors have been concerned with research on learning since 1998. Recently, the focus of our interest is how prevalent use of information and communication technology (ICT) influences students' learning abilities, skills of self-regulated learning and learning efficiency. Nowadays, there are three dominant theories about the psychic effects of ICT use: According to social optimists, modern ICT devices have a positive effect on thinking. As to social pessimists, this effect is rather negative. And, regarding the views of biological optimists, the change is obvious, but these changes can fit into the mankind's evolved neurological system as did writing long ago. Mentality of 'digital natives' differ from that of elder people. They process information coming from the outside world in an other way, and different experiences result in different cerebral conformation. In this regard, researchers report about both positive and negative effects of ICT use. According to several studies, it has a positive effect on cognitive skills, intelligence, school efficiency, development of self-regulated learning, and self-esteem regarding learning. It is also proven, that computers improve skills of visual intelligence such as spacial orientation, iconic skills and visual attention. Among negative effects of frequent ICT use, researchers mention the decrease of critical thinking, as permanent flow of information does not give scope for deeper cognitive processing. Aims of our present study were to uncover developmental characteristics of self-regulated learning in different age groups and to study correlations of learning efficiency, the level of self-regulated learning and frequency of use of computers. Our subjects (N=1600) were primary and secondary school students and university students. We studied four age groups (age 10, 14, 18, 22), 400 subjects of each. We used the following methods: the research team developed a questionnaire for measuring level of self-regulated learning and a questionnaire for measuring ICT use, and we used documentary analysis to gain information about grade point average (GPA) and results of competence-measures. Finally, we used computer tasks to measure cognitive abilities. Data is currently under analysis, but as to our preliminary results, frequent use of computers results in shorter response time regarding every age groups. Our results show that an ordinary extent of ICT use tend to increase reading competence, and had a positive effect on students' abilities, though it didn't show relationship with school marks (GPA). As time passes, GPA gets worse along with the learning material getting more and more difficult. This phenomenon draws attention to the fact that students are unable to switch from guided to independent learning, so it is important to consciously develop skills of self-regulated learning.

Keywords: digital natives, ICT, learning efficiency, reading competence, self-regulated learning

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Authors: Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee

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With the growing importance of intangible assets recently, the impact of patent infringement on the business of a company has become more evident. Accordingly, it is essential for firms to estimate the risk of patent infringement risk before developing a technology and create new technology ideas to avoid the risk. Recognizing the needs, several attempts have been made to help develop new technology opportunities and most of them have focused on identifying emerging vacant technologies from patent analysis. In these studies, the IPC (International Patent Classification) system or keywords from text-mining application to patent documents was generally used to define vacant technologies. Unlike those studies, this study adopted F-term, which classifies patent documents according to the technical features of the inventions described in them. Since the technical features are analyzed by various perspectives by F-term, F-term provides more detailed information about technologies compared to IPC while more systematic information compared to keywords. Therefore, if well utilized, it can be a useful guideline to create a new technology idea. Recognizing the potential of F-term, this paper aims to suggest a novel approach to developing new technology ideas to avoid patent infringement based on F-term. For this purpose, we firstly collected data about F-term and then applied text-mining to the descriptions about classification criteria and attributes. From the text-mining results, we could identify other technologies with similar technical features of the existing one, the patented technology. Finally, we compare the technologies and extract the technical features that are commonly used in other technologies but have not been used in the existing one. These features are presented in terms of “purpose”, “function”, “structure”, “material”, “method”, “processing and operation procedure” and “control means” and so are useful for creating new technology ideas that help avoid infringing patent rights of other companies. Theoretically, this is one of the earliest attempts to adopt F-term to patent analysis; the proposed methodology can show how to best take advantage of F-term with the wealth of technical information. In practice, the proposed methodology can be valuable in the ideation process for successful product and service innovation without infringing the patents of other companies.

Keywords: patent infringement, new technology ideas, patent analysis, F-term

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Authors: Halima Akhtar, Abhijeet Chandra

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The paper attempts to analyze the factors that influence the Consumer Behavior to purchase apparel through the internet. The intentions to buy apparels online were based on in terms of user style, orientation, size and reputation of the merchant, social influence, perceived information utility, perceived ease of use, perceived pleasure and attractiveness and perceived trust and risk. The basic framework used was Technology acceptance model to explain apparels acceptance. A survey was conducted to gather the data from 200 people. The measures and hypotheses were analyzed using Correlation testing and would be further validated by the Structural Equation Modelling. The implications of the findings for theory and practice could be used by marketers of online apparel websites. Based on the values obtained, we can conclude that the factors such as social influence, Perceived information utility, attractiveness and trust influence the decision for a user to buy apparels online. The major factors which are found to influence an online apparel buying decision are ease of use, attractiveness that a website can offer and the trust factor which a user shares with the website.

Keywords: E-tailers, consumer behaviour, technology acceptance model, structural modelling

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Authors: Ayesha Akbar

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Public service delivery has witnessed a significant improvement with the integration of information communication technology (ICT). It not only improves management structure with advanced technology for surveillance of service delivery but also provides evidence for informed decisions and policy. Pakistan’s public sector organizations have not been able to produce some good results to ensure service delivery. Notwithstanding, some of the public sector organizations in Pakistan has diffused modern technology and proved their credence by providing better service delivery standards. These good indicators provide sound basis to integrate technology in public sector organizations and shift of policy towards evidence based policy making. Rescue-1122 is a public sector organization which provides emergency services and proved to be a successful model for the provision of service delivery to save human lives and to ensure human development in Pakistan. The information about the organization has been received by employing qualitative research methodology. The information is broadly based on primary and secondary sources which includes Rescue-1122 website, official reports of organizations; UNDP (United Nation Development Program), WHO (World Health Organization) and by conducting 10 in-depth interviews with the high administrative staff of organizations who work in the Lahore offices. The information received has been incorporated with the study for the better understanding of the organization and their management procedures. Rescue-1122 represents a successful model in delivering the services in an efficient way to deal with the disaster management. The management of Rescue has strategized the policies and procedures in such a way to develop a comprehensive model with the integration of technology. This model provides efficient service delivery as well as maintains the standards of the organization. The service delivery model of rescue-1122 works on two fronts; front-office interface and the back-office interface. Back-office defines the procedures of operations and assures the compliance of the staff whereas, front-office equipped with the latest technology and good infrastructure handles the emergency calls. Both ends are integrated with satellite based vehicle tracking, wireless system, fleet monitoring system and IP camera which monitors every move of the staff to provide better services and to pinpoint the distortions in the services. The standard time of reaching to the emergency spot is 7 minutes, and during entertaining the case; driver‘s behavior, traffic volume and the technical assistance being provided to the emergency case is being monitored by front-office. Then the whole information get uploaded to the main dashboard of Lahore headquarter from the provincial offices. The latest technology is being materialized by Rescue-1122 for delivering the efficient services, investigating the flaws; if found, and to develop data to make informed decision making. The other public sector organizations of Pakistan can also develop such models to integrate technology for improving service delivery and to develop evidence for informed decisions and policy making.

Keywords: data, e-governance, evidence, policy

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Authors: Mansour N. Jadid

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This paper describes the implementation of a GIS to provide decision support for successfully monitoring the movements and storage of materials, hence ensuring that finished products travel from the point of origin to the destination construction site through the supply-chain management (SCM) system. This system ensures the efficient operation of suppliers, manufacturers, and distributors by determining the shortest path from the point of origin to the final destination to reduce construction costs, minimize time, and enhance productivity. These systems are essential to the construction industry because they reduce costs and save time, thereby improve productivity and effectiveness. This study describes a typical supply-chain model and a geographical information system (GIS)-based SCM that focuses on implementing an electronic document management system, which maps the application framework to integrate geodetic support with the supply-chain system. This process provides guidance for locating the nearest suppliers to fill the information needs of project members in different locations. Moreover, this study illustrates the use of a GIS-based SCM as a collaborative tool in innovative methods for implementing Web mapping services, as well as aspects of their integration by generating an interactive GIS for the construction industry platform.

Keywords: construction, coordinate, engineering, GIS, management, map

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Authors: Farzaneh Badinlou, Reza Kormi-Nouri, Monika Knopf

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Studies of adults' episodic memory have found that enacted encoding not only improve recall performance but also retrieve faster during the recall period. The current study focused on exploring the temporal progression of different encoding conditions in younger and older school children. 204 students from two age group of 8 and 14 participated in this study. During the study phase, we studied action encoding in two forms; participants performed the phrases by themselves (SPT), and observed the performance of the experimenter (EPT), which were compared with verbal encoding; participants listened to verbal action phrases (VT). At test phase, we used immediate and delayed free recall tests. We observed significant differences in memory performance as function of age group, and encoding conditions in both immediate and delayed free recall tests. Moreover, temporal progression of recall was faster in older children when compared with younger ones. The interaction of age-group and encoding condition was only significant in delayed recall displaying that younger children performed better in EPT whereas older children outperformed in SPT. It was proposed that enactment effect in form of SPT enhances item-specific processing, whereas EPT improves relational information processing and this differential processes are responsible for the results achieved in younger and older children. The role of memory strategies and information processing methods in younger and older children were considered in this study. Moreover, the temporal progression of recall was faster in action encoding in the form of SPT and EPT compared with verbal encoding in both immediate and delayed free recall and size of enactment effect was constantly increased throughout the recall period. The results of the present study provide further evidence that the action memory is explained with an emphasis on the notion of information processing and strategic views. These results also reveal the temporal progression of recall as a new dimension of episodic memory in children.

Keywords: action memory, enactment effect, episodic memory, school-aged children, temporal progression

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Authors: Jigg Pelayo, Ricardo Villar

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The Philippines is long considered as a valuable producer of high value crops globally. The country’s employment and economy have been dependent on agriculture, thus increasing its demand for the efficient agricultural mechanism. Remote sensing and geographic information technology have proven to effectively provide applications for precision agriculture through image-processing technique considering the development of the aerial scanning technology in the country. Accurate information concerning the spatial correlation within the field is very important for precision farming of high value crops, especially. The availability of height information and high spatial resolution images obtained from aerial scanning together with the development of new image analysis methods are offering relevant influence to precision agriculture techniques and applications. In this study, an algorithm was developed and implemented to detect and count high value crops simultaneously through adaptive scaling of support vector machine (SVM) algorithm subjected to object-oriented approach combining watershed transformation and local maxima filter in enhancing tree counting and detection. The methodology is compared to cutting-edge template matching algorithm procedures to demonstrate its effectiveness on a demanding tree is counting recognition and delineation problem. Since common data and image processing techniques are utilized, thus can be easily implemented in production processes to cover large agricultural areas. The algorithm is tested on high value crops like Palm, Mango and Coconut located in Misamis Oriental, Philippines - showing a good performance in particular for young adult and adult trees, significantly 90% above. The s inventories or database updating, allowing for the reduction of field work and manual interpretation tasks.

Keywords: high value crop, LiDAR, OBIA, precision agriculture

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Authors: Hesam Sedaghat Nejad, Navid Hosseini, Arash Nikvar Hassani

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Determination of the optimum block size with high profitability is one of the significant parameters in designation of the building stone mines. The aim of this study was to determine the optimum dimensions of building stone blocks in Delichai travertine mine of Damavand in Tehran province through combining the effective parameters proven in determination of the optimum dimensions in building stones such as the spacing of joints and gaps, extraction tools constraints with the help of modeling by Gemcom software. To this end, following simulation of the topography of the mine, the block model was prepared and then in order to use spacing joints and discontinuities as a limiting factor, the existing joints set was added to the model. Since only one almost horizontal joint set with a slope of 5 degrees was available, this factor was effective only in determining the optimum height of the block, and thus to determine the longitudinal and transverse optimum dimensions of the extracted block, the power of available loader in the mine was considered as the secondary limiting factor. According to the aforementioned factors, the optimal block size in this mine was measured as 3.4×4×7 meter.

Keywords: building stone, optimum block size, Delichay travertine mine, loader power

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Authors: Nirere Martine

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Purpose –The purpose of this study aims to understand the intention of customers to adopt sustainable packaging and the impact of sustainable packaging on customers’ willingness to buy a product using sustainable packaging. Design/methodology/approach – A new research model based on the technology acceptance model (TAM) and structural equation modeling are used to examine causality and test relationship based on the data collected from 251 Rwanda samples. Findings – The findings indicated that perceived ease of use positively affects perceived usefulness. However, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use positively affect the intention to adopt sustainable packaging. However, perceived risk and perceived cost negatively affect the intention to adopt sustainable packaging. The intention to adopt sustainable packaging positively affects the willingness to buy a product using sustainable packaging. Originality/value – Many researchers have investigated the issue of a consumers’ behavior to purchase a product. In particular, they have examined whether customers are willing to pay extra for a packaging product. There has been no study that has examined the impact of sustainable packaging on customers’ willingness to buy. The results of this study can help manufacturers form a better understanding of customers’ willingness to purchase a product using sustainable packaging.

Keywords: consumers’ behavioral, sustainable packaging, TAM, Rwanda

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Authors: Mohammed Salahat, Steve Wade

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This paper presents and compares the SSDDD “Systematic Soft Domain Driven Design Framework” to DDD “Domain Driven Design Framework” as a soft system approach of information systems development. The framework use SSM as a guiding methodology within which we have embedded a sequence of design tasks based on the UML leading to the implementation of a software system using the Naked Objects framework. This framework has been used in action research projects that have involved the investigation and modelling of business processes using object-oriented domain models and the implementation of software systems based on those domain models. Within this framework, Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is used as a guiding methodology to explore the problem situation and to develop the domain model using UML for the given business domain. The framework is proposed and evaluated in our previous works, a comparison between SSDDD and DDD is presented in this paper, to show how SSDDD improved DDD as an approach to modelling and implementing business domain perspectives for Information Systems Development. The comparison process, the results, and the improvements are presented in the following sections of this paper.

Keywords: domain-driven design, soft domain-driven design, naked objects, soft language

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Authors: Mohammadreza Mohebbi, Masoumeh Sanagou

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The ability to predict clinical outcomes is of great importance to physicians and clinicians. A number of different methods have been used in an effort to accurately predict these outcomes. These methods include the development of scoring systems based on multivariate statistical modelling, and models involving the use of classification and regression trees. The process usually consists of two consecutive phases, namely model development and external validation. The model development phase consists of building a multivariate model and evaluating its predictive performance by examining calibration and discrimination, and internal validation. External validation tests the predictive performance of a model by assessing its calibration and discrimination in different but plausibly related patients. A motivate example focuses on prediction modeling using a sample of patients undergone coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) has been used for illustrative purpose and a set of primary considerations for evaluating prediction model studies using specific quality indicators as criteria to help stakeholders evaluate the quality of a prediction model study has been proposed.

Keywords: clinical prediction models, clinical decision rule, prognosis, external validation, model calibration, biostatistics

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Authors: Ritesh Watharkar, Sourabh Chakraborty, Brijesh Srivastava

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Reduction of water from the fruits and vegetables using different drying techniques is widely employed to prolong the shelf life of these food commodities. Heat transfer occurs inside the sample by conduction and mass transfer takes place by diffusion in accordance with temperature and moisture concentration gradient respectively during drying. This study was undertaken to study and model the thin layer drying behavior of Bhimkol pulp. The drying was conducted in a tray drier at 500c temperature with 5, 10 and 15 % concentrations of added maltodextrin. The drying experiments were performed at 5mm thickness of the thin layer and the constant air velocity of 0.5 m/s.Drying data were fitted to different thin layer drying models found in the literature. Comparison of fitted models was based on highest R2(0.9917), lowest RMSE (0.03201), and lowest SSE (0.01537) revealed Middle equation as the best-fitted model for thin layer drying with 10% concentration of maltodextrin. The effective diffusivity was estimated based on the solution of Fick’s law of diffusion which is found in the range of 3.0396 x10-09 to 5.0661 x 10-09. There was a reduction in drying time with the addition of maltodextrin as compare to the raw pulp.

Keywords: Bhimkol, diffusivity, maltodextrine, Midilli model

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Authors: Laidi Maamar, Achwak Madani, Abdellah El Ahdj Abdellah

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The aim of this work is to use Support Vector regression (SVR) combined with dragonfly, firefly, Bee Colony and particle swarm Optimization algorithm to predict global solar radiation on horizontal surfaces in some cities in Algeria. Combining these optimization algorithms with SVR aims principally to enhance accuracy by fine-tuning the parameters, speeding up the convergence of the SVR model, and exploring a larger search space efficiently; these parameters are the regularization parameter (C), kernel parameters, and epsilon parameter. By doing so, the aim is to improve the generalization and predictive accuracy of the SVR model. Overall, the aim is to leverage the strengths of both SVR and optimization algorithms to create a more powerful and effective regression model for various cities and under different climate conditions. Results demonstrate close agreement between predicted and measured data in terms of different metrics. In summary, SVM has proven to be a valuable tool in modeling global solar radiation, offering accurate predictions and demonstrating versatility when combined with other algorithms or used in hybrid forecasting models.

Keywords: support vector regression (SVR), optimization algorithms, global solar radiation prediction, hybrid forecasting models

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Authors: Tehrrie Konig, Cassiano Bortolozo, Daniel Metodiev, Rodolfo Mendes, Marcio Andrade, Marcio Moraes

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Gravitational mass movements are recurrent events in Brazil, usually triggered by intense rainfall. When these events occur in urban areas, they end up becoming disasters due to the economic damage, social impact, and loss of human life. To identify the landslide-susceptible areas, it is important to know the geotechnical parameters of the soil, such as cohesion, internal friction angle, unit weight, hydraulic conductivity, and hydraulic diffusivity. The measurement of these parameters is made by collecting soil samples to analyze in the laboratory and by using geophysical methodologies, such as Vertical Electrical Survey (VES). The geophysical surveys analyze the soil properties with minimal impact in its initial structure. Statistical analysis and mathematical models of physical basis are used to model and calculate the Factor of Safety for steep slope areas. In general, such mathematical models work from the combination of slope stability models and hydrological models. One example is the mathematical model TRIGRS (Transient Rainfall Infiltration and Grid-based Regional Slope- Stability Model) which calculates the variation of the Factor of Safety of a determined study area. The model relies on changes in pore-pressure and soil moisture during a rainfall event. TRIGRS was written in the Fortran programming language and associates the hydrological model, which is based on the Richards Equation, with the stability model based on the principle of equilibrium limit. Therefore, the aims of this work are modeling the slope stability of Campos do Jordão with TRIGRS, using geotechnical and geophysical methodologies to acquire the soil properties. The study area is located at southern-east of Sao Paulo State in the Mantiqueira Mountains and has a historic landslide register. During the fieldwork, soil samples were collected, and the VES method applied. These procedures provide the soil properties, which were used as input data in the TRIGRS model. The hydrological data (infiltration rate and initial water table height) and rainfall duration and intensity, were acquired from the eight rain gauges installed by Cemaden in the study area. A very high spatial resolution digital terrain model was used to identify the slopes declivity. The analyzed period is from March 6th to March 8th of 2017. As results, the TRIGRS model calculates the variation of the Factor of Safety within a 72-hour period in which two heavy rainfall events stroke the area and six landslides were registered. After each rainfall, the Factor of Safety declined, as expected. The landslides happened in areas identified by the model with low values of Factor of Safety, proving its efficiency on the identification of landslides susceptible areas. This study presents a critical threshold for landslides, in which an accumulated rainfall higher than 80mm/m² in 72 hours might trigger landslides in urban and natural slopes. The geotechnical and geophysics methods are shown to be very useful to identify the soil properties and provide the geological characteristics of the area. Therefore, the combine geotechnical and geophysical methods for soil characterization and the modeling of landslides susceptible areas with TRIGRS are useful for urban planning. Furthermore, early warning systems can be developed by combining the TRIGRS model and weather forecast, to prevent disasters in urban slopes.

Keywords: landslides, susceptibility, TRIGRS, vertical electrical survey

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Authors: Mostafa Jafarian Abyaneh, Khashayar Jafari, Vahab Toufigh

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The cost of experiments on different types of concrete has raised the demand for prediction of their behavior with numerical analysis. In this research, an advanced numerical model has been presented to predict the complete elastic-plastic behavior of polymer concrete (PC), high-strength concrete (HSC), high performance concrete (HPC) along with different steel fiber contents under uniaxial compression. The accuracy of the numerical response was satisfactory as compared to other conventional simple models such as Mohr-Coulomb and Drucker-Prager. In order to predict the complete elastic-plastic behavior of specimens including softening behavior, disturbed state concept (DSC) was implemented by nonlinear finite element analysis (NFEA) and hierarchical single surface (HISS) failure criterion, which is a failure surface without any singularity.

Keywords: disturbed state concept (DSC), hierarchical single surface (HISS) failure criterion, high performance concrete (HPC), high-strength concrete (HSC), nonlinear finite element analysis (NFEA), polymer concrete (PC), steel fibers, uniaxial compression test

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Authors: Olga Kononova, Sergey Lyapin

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Global information society requirements are transparency and reliability of data, as well as ability to manage information resources independently; particularly to search, to analyze, to evaluate information, thereby obtaining new expertise. Moreover, it is satisfying the society information needs that increases the efficiency of the enterprise management and public administration. The study of structurally organized thematic and semantic contexts of different types, automatically extracted from unstructured data, is one of the important tasks for the application of information technologies in education, science, culture, governance and business. The objectives of this study are the contextual knowledge typologization, selection or creation of effective tools for extracting and analyzing contextual knowledge. Explication of various kinds and forms of the contextual knowledge involves the development and use full-text search information systems. For the implementation purposes, the authors use an e-library 'Humanitariana' services such as the contextual search, different types of queries (paragraph-oriented query, frequency-ranked query), automatic extraction of knowledge from the scientific texts. The multifunctional e-library «Humanitariana» is realized in the Internet-architecture in WWS-configuration (Web-browser / Web-server / SQL-server). Advantage of use 'Humanitariana' is in the possibility of combining the resources of several organizations. Scholars and research groups may work in a local network mode and in distributed IT environments with ability to appeal to resources of any participating organizations servers. Paper discusses some specific cases of the contextual knowledge explication with the use of the e-library services and focuses on possibilities of new types of the contextual knowledge. Experimental research base are science texts about 'e-government' and 'computer games'. An analysis of the subject-themed texts trends allowed to propose the content analysis methodology, that combines a full-text search with automatic construction of 'terminogramma' and expert analysis of the selected contexts. 'Terminogramma' is made out as a table that contains a column with a frequency-ranked list of words (nouns), as well as columns with an indication of the absolute frequency (number) and the relative frequency of occurrence of the word (in %% ppm). The analysis of 'e-government' materials showed, that the state takes a dominant position in the processes of the electronic interaction between the authorities and society in modern Russia. The media credited the main role in these processes to the government, which provided public services through specialized portals. Factor analysis revealed two factors statistically describing the used terms: human interaction (the user) and the state (government, processes organizer); interaction management (public officer, processes performer) and technology (infrastructure). Isolation of these factors will lead to changes in the model of electronic interaction between government and society. In this study, the dominant social problems and the prevalence of different categories of subjects of computer gaming in science papers from 2005 to 2015 were identified. Therefore, there is an evident identification of several types of contextual knowledge: micro context; macro context; dynamic context; thematic collection of queries (interactive contextual knowledge expanding a composition of e-library information resources); multimodal context (functional integration of iconographic and full-text resources through hybrid quasi-semantic algorithm of search). Further studies can be pursued both in terms of expanding the resource base on which they are held, and in terms of the development of appropriate tools.

Keywords: contextual knowledge, contextual search, e-library services, frequency-ranked query, paragraph-oriented query, technologies of the contextual knowledge extraction

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Authors: Homa Ghave, Parmis Shahmaleki

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This paper presents a new multi-criteria stochastic mathematical model for a single machine scheduling with outsourcing allowed. There are multiple jobs processing in batch. For each batch, all of job or a quantity of it can be outsourced. The jobs have stochastic processing time and lead time and deterministic due dates arrive randomly. Because of the stochastic inherent of processing time and lead time, we use the chance constrained programming for modeling the problem. First, the problem is formulated in form of stochastic programming and then prepared in a form of deterministic mixed integer linear programming. The objectives are considered in the model to minimize the maximum tardiness and outsourcing cost simultaneously. Several procedures have been developed to deal with the multi-criteria problem. In this paper, we utilize the concept of satisfaction functions to increases the manager’s preference. The proposed approach is tested on instances where the random variables are normally distributed.

Keywords: single machine scheduling, multi-criteria mathematical model, outsourcing strategy, uncertain lead times and processing times, chance constrained programming, satisfaction function

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Authors: Ben Chater, Jingbang Pan, Mark Evernden, Jie Wang

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Traditional structural steel manufacturing routes normally produce prismatic members with flat plate elements. In these members, plate instability in the lowest buckling mode often dominates failure. It is proposed in the current study to use a new technology of metal 3D printing to print steel-plated elements with predefined imperfection patterns that can lead to higher modes of failure with increased buckling resistances. To this end, a numerical modeling program is carried out to explore various combinations of predefined buckling waves with different amplitudes in stainless steel square hollow section stub columns. Their stiffness, strength, and material consumption against the traditional structural steel members with the same nominal dimensions are assessed. It is found that depending on the slenderness of the plate elements; it is possible for an ‘imperfect’ steel member to achieve up to a 30% increase in strength with just a 3% increase in the material consumption. The obtained results shed some light on the significant potential of the new metal 3D printing technology in achieving unprecedented material efficiency and economical design in the future steel construction industry.

Keywords: 3D printing, additive manufacturing, buckling resistance, steel plate buckling, structural optimisation

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Authors: Zhuang Yiwen

Abstract:

The paper examines the challenges facing the Singapore healthcare system related to the tracking and traceability of medical devices. One of the major challenges identified is the lack of a standard coding system for medical devices, which makes it difficult to track them effectively. The paper suggests the use of the Unique Device Identifier (UDI) as a single standard for medical devices to improve tracking and reduce errors. The paper also explores the use of barcoding and image recognition to identify and document medical devices in nursing practices. In nursing practices, the use of barcodes for identifying medical devices is common. However, the information contained in these barcodes is often inconsistent, making it challenging to identify which segment contains the model identifier. Moreover, the use of barcodes may be improved with the use of UDI, but many subsidized accessories may still lack barcodes. The paper suggests that the readiness for UDI and barcode standardization requires standardized information, fields, and logic in electronic medical record (EMR), operating theatre (OT), and billing systems, as well as barcode scanners that can read various formats and selectively parse barcode segments. Nursing workflow and data flow also need to be taken into account. The paper also explores the use of image recognition, specifically the Tesseract OCR engine, to identify and document implants in public hospitals due to limitations in barcode scanning. The study found that the solution requires an implant information database and checking output against the database. The solution also requires customization of the algorithm, cropping out objects affecting text recognition, and applying adjustments. The solution requires additional resources and costs for a mobile/hardware device, which may pose space constraints and require maintenance of sterile criteria. The integration with EMR is also necessary, and the solution require changes in the user's workflow. The paper suggests that the long-term use of Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT) as a supporting terminology to improve clinical documentation and data exchange in healthcare. SNOMED CT provides a standardized way of documenting and sharing clinical information with respect to procedure, patient and device documentation, which can facilitate interoperability and data exchange. In conclusion, the paper highlights the challenges facing the Singapore healthcare system related to the tracking and traceability of medical devices. The paper suggests the use of UDI and barcode standardization to improve tracking and reduce errors. It also explores the use of image recognition to identify and document medical devices in nursing practices. The paper emphasizes the importance of standardized information, fields, and logic in EMR, OT, and billing systems, as well as barcode scanners that can read various formats and selectively parse barcode segments. These recommendations could help the Singapore healthcare system to improve tracking and traceability of medical devices and ultimately enhance patient safety.

Keywords: medical device tracking, unique device identifier, barcoding and image recognition, systematized nomenclature of medicine clinical terms

Procedia PDF Downloads 64

Authors: Lucas Barbosa Da Silva, Jun Okamoto Jr.

Abstract:

Precision Agriculture has long being benefited from crop fields’ aerial imagery. This important tool has allowed identifying patterns in crop fields, generating useful information to the production management. Reflectance intensity data in different ranges from the electromagnetic spectrum may indicate presence or absence of nutrients in the soil of an area. Different relations between the different light bands may generate even more detailed information. The knowledge of the nutrients content in the soil or in the crop during its growth is a valuable asset to the farmer that seeks to optimize its yield. However, small farmers in Brazil often lack the resources to access this kind information, and, even when they do, it is not presented in a comprehensive and/or objective way. So, the challenges of implementing this technology ranges from the sampling of the imagery, using aerial platforms, building of a mosaic with the images to cover the entire crop field, extracting the reflectance information from it and analyzing its relationship with the parameters of interest, to the display of the results in a manner that the farmer may take the necessary decisions more objectively. In this work, it’s proposed an analysis of soil nutrient contents based on image processing of satellite imagery and comparing its outtakes with commercial laboratory’s chemical analysis. Also, sources of satellite imagery are compared, to assess the feasibility of using Google Earth data in this application, and the impacts of doing so, versus the application of imagery from satellites like Landsat-8 and Pleiades. Furthermore, an algorithm for building mosaics is implemented using Google Earth imagery and finally, the possibility of using unmanned aerial vehicles is analyzed. From the data obtained, some soil parameters are estimated, namely, the content of Potassium, Phosphorus, Boron, Manganese, among others. The suitability of Google Earth Imagery for this application is verified within a reasonable margin, when compared to Pleiades Satellite imagery and to the current commercial model. It is also verified that the mosaic construction method has little or no influence on the estimation results. Variability maps are created over the covered area and the impacts of the image resolution and sample time frame are discussed, allowing easy assessments of the results. The final results show that easy and cheaper remote sensing and analysis methods are possible and feasible alternatives for the small farmer, with little access to technological and/or financial resources, to make more accurate decisions about soil nutrient management.

Keywords: remote sensing, precision agriculture, mosaic, soil, nutrient content, satellite imagery, aerial imagery

Procedia PDF Downloads 161

Authors: Sachin, Shantanu Arya, Gunjan Mehta, Md. Shamim Ansari

Abstract:

The cross-modal influence of visual information on speech perception can be illustrated by the McGurk effect which is an illusion of hearing of syllable /ta/ when a listener listens one syllable, e.g.: /pa/ while watching a synchronized video recording of syllable, /ka/. The McGurk effect is an excellent tool to investigate multisensory integration in speech perception in both normal hearing and hearing impaired populations. As the visual cue is unaffected by noise, individuals with hearing impairment rely more than normal listeners on the visual cues.However, when non congruent visual and auditory cues are processed together, audiovisual interaction seems to occur differently in normal and persons with hearing impairment. Therefore, this study aims to observe the audiovisual interaction in speech perception in Cochlear Implant users compares the same with normal hearing children. Auditory stimuli was routed through calibrated Clinical audiometer in sound field condition, and visual stimuli were presented on laptop screen placed at a distance of 1m at 0 degree azimuth. Out of 4 presentations, if 3 responses were a fusion, then McGurk effect was considered to be present. The congruent audiovisual stimuli /pa/ /pa/ and /ka/ /ka/ were perceived correctly as ‘‘pa’’ and ‘‘ka,’’ respectively by both the groups. For the non- congruent stimuli /da/ /pa/, 23 children out of 35 with normal hearing and 9 children out of 35 with cochlear implant had a fusion of sounds i.e. McGurk effect was present. For the non-congruent stimulus /pa/ /ka/, 25 children out of 35 with normal hearing and 8 children out of 35 with cochlear implant had fusion of sounds.The children who used cochlear implants for less than three years did not exhibit fusion of sound i.e. McGurk effect was absent in this group of children. To conclude, the results demonstrate that consistent fusion of visual with auditory information for speech perception is shaped by experience with bimodal spoken language during early life. When auditory experience with speech is mediated by cochlear implant, the likelihood of acquiring bimodal fusion is increased and it greatly depends on the age of implantation. All the above results strongly support the need for screening children for hearing capabilities and providing cochlear implants and aural rehabilitation as early as possible.

Keywords: cochlear implant, congruent stimuli, mcgurk effect, non-congruent stimuli

Procedia PDF Downloads 291

Authors: Jarosław Milewski, Rafał Bernat

Abstract:

This paper presents an analysis of using cryogenic separation unit for recovering fuel from anode off gas of molten carbonate fuel cells (MCFCs) in order to upgrade the efficiently of the unit. In the proposed solution, the CSU is used for condensing water and carbon dioxide from anode off gas, and re-cycling the rest of the stream to the anode, saving certain amount of fuel (at least 30%). The resulting system efficiency is increased considerably. CSU, virtually consumes power, thus this solution has energy penalty as well, on the other hand, MCFC generates large amount of heat at elevated temperature, thus part of the CSU can be based on absorption chiller. In all cases, a high amount of fuel is obtained after condensation of water and carbon dioxide and re-cycled to the anode inlet. Based on mathematical modeling done previously, the concept and guidelines for forthcoming experimental investigations are presented in this paper. During planned experiments, an existing single cell laboratory stand will be equipped with re-cycle device (a fan, a peristaltic pump, etc.). Parallel, a mixture of anode off gas will be cooled down for determining the proper temperature for the separation of water and carbon dioxide.

Keywords: cryogenic separation, experiments, fuel cells, molten carbonate fuel cells

Procedia PDF Downloads 234

Authors: Jiwon Lee, Si-hwan Jang, Sanghyun Joo

Abstract:

The popularity of emoticons are on the rise since the mobile messengers are generalized. At the same time, few problems of emoticons are also occurred due to innate characteristics of emoticons. Too many emoticons make difficult people to select one which is well-suited for user's intention. On the contrary to this, sometimes user cannot find the emoticon which expresses user's exact intention. Poor information delivery of emoticon is another problem due to a major part of current emoticons are focused on emotion delivery. In this situation, we propose a new concept of emoticons, editable emoticons, to solve above drawbacks of emoticons. User can edit the components inside the proposed editable emoticon and send it to express his exact intention. By doing so, the number of editable emoticons can be maintained reasonable, and it can express user's exact intention. Further, editable emoticons can be used as information deliverer according to user's intention and editing skills. In this paper, we propose the concept of editable emoticons and schema based editable emoticon description method. The proposed description method is 200 times superior to the compared screen capturing method in the view of transmission bandwidth. Further, the description method is designed to have compatibility since it follows MPEG-UD international standard. The proposed editable emoticons can be exploited not only mobile applications, but also various fields such as education and medical field.

Keywords: description schema, editable emoticon, emoticon transmission, mobile applications

Procedia PDF Downloads 285

Authors: Suranath Chomcheon, Nathnarong Khajohnsaksumeth, Benchawan Wiwatanapataphee

Abstract:

Carbon monoxide is one of the harmful gases which have colorless, odorless, and tasteless. Too much carbon monoxide taken into the human body causes the reduction of oxygen transportation within human body cells leading to many symptoms including headache, nausea, vomiting, loss of consciousness, and death. Carbon monoxide is considered as one of the air pollution indicators. It is mainly released as soot from the exhaust pipe of the incomplete combustion of the vehicle engine. Nowadays, the increase in vehicle usage and the slowly moving of the vehicle struck by the traffic jam has created a large amount of carbon monoxide, which accumulated in the street canyon area. In this research, we study the effect of parameters such as wind speed and aspect ratio of the height building affecting the ventilation. We consider the model of the pollutant under the Bangkok Transit System (BTS) stations in a two-dimensional geometrical domain. The convention-diffusion equation and Reynolds-averaged Navier-stokes equation is used to describe the concentration and the turbulent flow of carbon monoxide. The finite element method is applied to obtain the numerical result. The result shows that our model can describe the dispersion patterns of carbon monoxide for different wind speeds.

Keywords: air pollution, carbon monoxide, finite element, street canyon

Procedia PDF Downloads 114

Authors: Ş. Karabulut, A. Güllü, A. Güldaş, R. Gürbüz

Abstract:

This study investigates the effects of the lead angle and chip thickness variation on surface roughness during the machining of compacted graphite iron using ceramic cutting tools under dry cutting conditions. Analytical models were developed for predicting the surface roughness values of the specimens after the face milling process. Experimental data was collected and imported to the artificial neural network model. A multilayer perceptron model was used with the back propagation algorithm employing the input parameters of lead angle, cutting speed and feed rate in connection with chip thickness. Furthermore, analysis of variance was employed to determine the effects of the cutting parameters on surface roughness. Artificial neural network and regression analysis were used to predict surface roughness. The values thus predicted were compared with the collected experimental data, and the corresponding percentage error was computed. Analysis results revealed that the lead angle is the dominant factor affecting surface roughness. Experimental results indicated an improvement in the surface roughness value with decreasing lead angle value from 88° to 45°.

Keywords: CGI, milling, surface roughness, ANN, regression, modeling, analysis

Procedia PDF Downloads 439

Authors: Danielle M. Barna, Kolbjørn Engeland, Thordis Thorarinsdottir, Chong-Yu Xu

Abstract:

Design flood values give estimates of flood magnitude within a given return period and are essential to making adaptive decisions around land use planning, infrastructure design, and disaster mitigation. Often design flood values are needed at locations with insufficient data. Additionally, in hydrologic applications where flood retention is important (e.g., floodplain management and reservoir design), design flood values are required at different flood durations. A statistical approach to this problem is a development of a regression model for extremes where some of the parameters are dependent on flood duration in addition to being covariate-dependent. In hydrology, this is called a regional flood-duration-frequency (regional-QDF) model. Typically, the underlying statistical distribution is chosen to be the Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution. However, as the support of the GEV distribution depends on both its parameters and the range of the data, special care must be taken with the development of the regional model. In particular, we find that the GEV is problematic when developing a GAMLSS-type analysis due to the difficulty of proposing a link function that is independent of the unknown parameters and the observed data. We discuss these challenges in the context of developing a regional QDF model for Norway.

Keywords: design flood values, bayesian statistics, regression modeling of extremes, extreme value analysis, GEV

Procedia PDF Downloads 62