Search results for: the traditional color scheme

Authors: Jacqueline Rose T. Alipo-on, Francesca Isabelle F. Escobar, Myles Joshua T. Tan, Hezerul Abdul Karim, Nouar Al Dahoul

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Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal analysis and processing are crucial in the diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases, which are considered one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide. However, the traditional rule-based analysis of large volumes of ECG data is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and prone to human errors. With the advancement of the programming paradigm, algorithms such as machine learning have been increasingly used to perform an analysis of ECG signals. In this paper, various deep learning algorithms were adapted to classify five classes of heartbeat types. The dataset used in this work is the synthetic MIT-BIH Arrhythmia dataset produced from generative adversarial networks (GANs). Various deep learning models such as ResNet-50 convolutional neural network (CNN), 1-D CNN, and long short-term memory (LSTM) were evaluated and compared. ResNet-50 was found to outperform other models in terms of recall and F1 score using a five-fold average score of 98.88% and 98.87%, respectively. 1-D CNN, on the other hand, was found to have the highest average precision of 98.93%.

Keywords: heartbeat classification, convolutional neural network, electrocardiogram signals, generative adversarial networks, long short-term memory, ResNet-50

Procedia PDF Downloads 128

Authors: Turk Ayman, Ahn Jong Hoon, Khalife K. Hala, Gali-Muhtasib Hala, Lee Mi Kyeong

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Laurus nobilis is an aromatic plant widely distributed in the Mediterranean region. The leaves of this plant are frequently used as a spice and as a traditional medicine for several diseases. In our present study, the methanolic extract of L. nobilis leaves showed antioxidant activity. Chromatographic separations of the EtOAc fraction which had the highest antioxidant activity led to the isolation of 12 compounds. Among them, there was a new phenylpropanoid derivative, which was identified by 1D and 2D NMR experiments, as well as high resolution mass spectrometry. In addition, two major compounds, catechin and epicatechin, which showed strong antioxidant activity may be responsible for the antioxidant activity of L. nobilis leaves. Since different plant parts may contain different types of constituents which contribute to the biological activities, we investigated the antioxidant activity of different parts of L. nobilis such as leaves, stems and fruits. Stems of L. nobilis showed the most potent antioxidant activity, followed by leaves. Further quantitation of total phenol and flavonoids contents revealed a positive correlation between the content of these compounds and antioxidant activity. Taken together, phenolic compounds including flavonoids are responsible for antioxidant activity of L. nobilis. In addition, stem parts of L. nobilis are suggested as good sources for antioxidant activity. Conclusively, L. nobilis might be effective in several free radical mediated diseases.

Keywords: antioxidant activity, different parts, Laurus nobilis, phenolic compound

Procedia PDF Downloads 307

Authors: Sonia Perez-Gamboa, Qingquan Sun, Yan Zhang

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Non-intrusive sensor-based human activity recognition (HAR) is utilized in a spectrum of applications, including fitness tracking devices, gaming, health care monitoring, and smartphone applications. Deep learning models such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and long short term memory (LSTM) recurrent neural networks (RNNs) provide a way to achieve HAR accurately and effectively. In this paper, we design a multi-layer hybrid architecture with CNN and LSTM and explore a variety of multi-layer combinations. Based on the exploration, we present a lightweight, hybrid, and multi-layer model, which can improve the recognition performance by integrating local features and scale-invariant with dependencies of activities. The experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed model, which can achieve a 94.7% activity recognition rate on a benchmark human activity dataset. This model outperforms traditional machine learning and other deep learning methods. Additionally, our implementation achieves a balance between recognition rate and training time consumption.

Keywords: deep learning, LSTM, CNN, human activity recognition, inertial sensor

Procedia PDF Downloads 150

Authors: Najmuddin Najmuddin

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The purpose of this study is to determine whether media usage and change of citizenship norms influence political participation. The focus of this study is to examine citizenship norms in the context of the development of information, and communication technology and how it will impact political participation in the context of Indonesia's transition to democracy. The study use survey method. The main theoretical framework is media and political participation. The results of this study reveal that gender, age and educational background of the respondents did not influence significantly media usage and citizenship norms. The Results also show that educational background is not a factor that distinguishes media usage but it becomes differentiating factor in citizenship norms. The results further show that the media usage has a significant correlation with citizenship norms and citizenship norms has a significant relationship with political participation. In addition, media usage and citizenship norms impact significantly to political participation. The sub-dimensions of citizenship norms (compliance, duty, and engaged citizen) provides a significant contribution to the sub-dimensions of political participation (traditional political participation, modern political participation, civic political participation). Based on the findings it can be concluded that the political euphoria in the era of transition to democracy has changed pattern media usage and citizenship norms of among the young generation.

Keywords: media, citizenship, norms, political, participation, democracy

Procedia PDF Downloads 363

Authors: Leah Ghebreberhan, Liya Abraham, John Issac, Atul Kaushik

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Medicinal plants are used for various indications in Eritrea according to traditional systems of medicine. Safety concerns, however, are dubious since some medicinal plants have toxic effects indeed. The medicinal plants under study (Commicarpus pedunculosis, Steganotaenia araliaceae, Boscia angustifolia, Solanum incanum, and Calpurnia aurea) are used in the treatment of various diseases. Thus, safety studies must be performed prior to usage since they are rich in phytoconstituents like saponins. Saponns are natural glycosides with several pharmacologic activities including hemolysis. The study was done to assess the level of saponin and toxic effects (hemolysis) of medicinal plants used in folk medicine. The plant extracts were subject to phytochemical analysis, foam test, and hemolytic assay. Regarding the Fh value, Solanam incanum consisted highest Fh value (20mm), whereas Boscia angustifolia showed the lowest Fh value (10mm). The level of hemolysis of all the plant extracts ranged between 9.0 to 20.2 %. All the plant extracts were suitable for treatment with respect to saponin level since they exhibited minimal hemolytic effect against erythrocytes.

Keywords: Boscia angustifolia, Calpurnia aurea, Commicarpus pedunculosis, hemolysis, saponin, Solanum incanum, Steganotaenia araliaceae

Procedia PDF Downloads 254

Authors: Marthella Rivera Roidatua

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Since the release of Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2006, disability became a mainstreamed global issue. Many developed countries have shown the continuous effort to improve their disability employment policy, for example, the US and the UK with their integrated support system through disability benefits. Relative little recent research on developing country is available. Surprisingly, Indonesia, just enacted the Law No.8/2016 on Disability that bravely highlighted on integrating disabled people into the workforce. It shows a positive progress shifting traditional perspective to what Tom Shakespeare’s concept of a social model of disability. But, the main question is how can this law support the disabled people to access and maintain paid work. Thus, besides the earlier literature reviews, interviews with leading sectors, Ministry of Social Affairs and Ministry of Manpower, was conducted to examine government’s attitude towards the disabled worker. Insights from two local social enterprises on disability were also engaged in building better perspective. The various source of data was triangulated then analysed with a thematic approach. Results were encouraging the Indonesian government to have a better collaboration with other impactful local organisations in promoting the disability employment. In the end, this paper also recommends the government to make a reasonable adjustment and practical guideline for companies in hiring disabled.

Keywords: disability, employment, policy, Indonesia, collaboration, guidelines

Procedia PDF Downloads 241

Authors: Goutam Kumar Ghorai, Sandip Sadhukhan, Arpita Sarkar, Debprasad Sinha, G. Sarkar, Ashis K. Dhara

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Diabetes mellitus is one of the most common chronic diseases in all countries and continues to increase in numbers significantly. Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is damage to the retina that occurs with long-term diabetes. DR is a major cause of blindness in the Indian population. Therefore, its early diagnosis is of utmost importance towards preventing progression towards imminent irreversible loss of vision, particularly in the huge population across rural India. The barriers to eye examination of all diabetic patients are socioeconomic factors, lack of referrals, poor access to the healthcare system, lack of knowledge, insufficient number of ophthalmologists, and lack of networking between physicians, diabetologists and ophthalmologists. A few diabetic patients often visit a healthcare facility for their general checkup, but their eye condition remains largely undetected until the patient is symptomatic. This work aims to focus on the design and development of a fully automated intelligent decision system for screening retinal fundus images towards detection of the pathophysiology caused by microaneurysm in the early stage of the diseases. Automated detection of microaneurysm is a challenging problem due to the variation in color and the variation introduced by the field of view, inhomogeneous illumination, and pathological abnormalities. We have developed aconvolutional neural network for efficient detection of microaneurysm. A loss function is also developed to handle severe class imbalance due to very small size of microaneurysms compared to background. The network is able to locate the salient region containing microaneurysms in case of noisy images captured by non-mydriatic cameras. The ground truth of microaneurysms is created by expert ophthalmologists for MESSIDOR database as well as private database, collected from Indian patients. The network is trained from scratch using the fundus images of MESSIDOR database. The proposed method is evaluated on DIARETDB1 and the private database. The method is successful in detection of microaneurysms for dilated and non-dilated types of fundus images acquired from different medical centres. The proposed algorithm could be used for development of AI based affordable and accessible system, to provide service at grass root-level primary healthcare units spread across the country to cater to the need of the rural people unaware of the severe impact of DR.

Keywords: retinal fundus image, deep convolutional neural network, early detection of microaneurysms, screening of diabetic retinopathy

Procedia PDF Downloads 141

Authors: Shivam Dwivedi, Sumit Prakash Gupta, Durga Toshniwal

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It is a challenging task in today’s date to keep defence forces in the highest state of combat readiness with budgetary constraints. A huge amount of time and money is squandered in the unnecessary and expensive traditional maintenance activities. To overcome this limitation Defence Intelligent Mission Readiness and Maintenance Scheduling System has been proposed, which ameliorates the maintenance system by diagnosing the condition and predicting the maintenance requirements. Based on new data mining algorithms, this system intelligently optimises mission readiness for imminent operations and maintenance scheduling in repair echelons. With modified data mining algorithms such as Weighted Feature Ranking Genetic Algorithm and SVM-Random Forest Linear ensemble, it improves the reliability, availability and safety, alongside reducing maintenance cost and Equipment Out of Action (EOA) time. The results clearly conclude that the introduced algorithms have an edge over the conventional data mining algorithms. The system utilizing the intelligent condition-based maintenance approach improves the operational and maintenance decision strategy of the defence force.

Keywords: condition based maintenance, data mining, defence maintenance, ensemble, genetic algorithms, maintenance scheduling, mission capability

Procedia PDF Downloads 297

Authors: Subodh Kumar, Amit Varde

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Typical on-premises high-performance computing (HPC) environments consist of a fixed number and a fixed set of computing hardware. During the design of the HPC environment, the hardware components, including but not limited to CPU, Memory, GPU, and networking, are carefully chosen from select vendors for optimal performance. High capital cost for building the environment is a prime factor influencing the design environment. A class of software called “Job Schedulers” are critical to maximizing these resources and running multiple workloads to extract the maximum value for the high capital cost. In principle, schedulers work by preventing workloads and users from monopolizing the finite hardware resources by queuing jobs in a workload. A cloud-based HPC environment does not have the limitations of fixed (type of and quantity of) hardware resources. In theory, users and workloads could spin up any number and type of hardware resource. This paper discusses the limitations of using traditional scheduling algorithms for cloud-based HPC workloads. It proposes a new set of features, called “HPC optimizers,” for maximizing the benefits of the elasticity and scalability of the cloud with the goal of cost-performance optimization of the workload.

Keywords: high performance computing, HPC, cloud computing, optimization, schedulers

Procedia PDF Downloads 93

Authors: Jiemiao Chen, Shuoxun Xu

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The main goal of our research is to apply the Vine copula measuring dependency between price, temperature, and precipitation indices to calculate a fair crop insurance premium. This research is focused on Worth, Iowa, United States, over the period from 2000 to 2020, where the farmers are dependent on precipitation and average temperature during the growth period of corn. Our proposed insurance considers both the natural risk and the price risk in agricultural production. We first estimate the distributions of crops using parametric methods based on Goodness of Fit tests, and then Vine Copula is applied to model dependence between yield price, crop yield, and weather indices. Once the vine structure and its parameters are determined based on AIC/BIC criteria and forecasting price and yield are obtained from the ARIMA model, we calculate this crop insurance premium using the simulation data generated from the vine copula by the Monte Carlo Simulation method. It is shown that, compared with traditional crop insurance, our proposed insurance is more fair and thus less costly for the farmers and government.

Keywords: vine copula, weather index, crop insurance premium, insurance risk management, Monte Carlo simulation

Procedia PDF Downloads 201

Authors: Nani Manvelishvili

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Soviet propaganda tried to shape common public opinion through Soviet Press. The activation of propaganda gained special importance to increase the fighting ability of the military and people behind the front During the Great Patriotic war (1941-1945). The state propaganda used unnecessary intervention in Press and created characters who were supposed to be role models for society. The new female role models were identified, which were supported by the authorities. The representation of the mother, warrior woman, working woman, victim, feminine woman, etc., in the works aimed to raise the fighting ability of the Soviet citizen and incite patriotism. This paper analyzes the soviet Press (The newspaper “Komunisti”) that was written and published during the Great Patriotic war in Soviet Georgia. The study aims to find propagandistic content in Press that used Soviet ideology during the Great Patriotic war. We analyzed the Soviet Newspaper "Komunisti," published during wartime. Soviet Press had the most significant impact on the formation of public opinion. The Soviet government actively used this resource to increase combat capability. While at the beginning of the war, women were supposed to replace men, propaganda by the end of the war moved to reassert conservative gender politics. Women returned to their traditional roles.

Keywords: Great Patriotic War, Soviet Georgia, women in war, women's history, Soviet press

Procedia PDF Downloads 98

Authors: Akshay Paranjape, Nils Plettenberg, Robert Schmitt

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Traditional optimization methods like evolutionary algorithms are widely used in production processes to find an optimal or near-optimal solution of control parameters based on the simulated environment space of a process. These algorithms are computationally intensive and therefore do not provide the opportunity for real-time optimization. This paper utilizes the Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) framework to find an optimal or near-optimal solution for control parameters. A model based on maximum a posteriori policy optimization (Hybrid-MPO) that can handle both numerical and categorical parameters is used as a benchmark for comparison. A comparative study shows that DRL can find optimal solutions of similar quality as compared to evolutionary algorithms while requiring significantly less time making them preferable for real-time optimization. The results are confirmed in a large-scale validation study on datasets from production and other fields. A trained XGBoost model is used as a surrogate for process simulation. Finally, multiple ways to improve the model are discussed.

Keywords: reinforcement learning, evolutionary algorithms, production process optimization, real-time optimization, hybrid-MPO

Procedia PDF Downloads 112

Authors: Ondrej Lufinka, Jan Kaderabek, Juraj Prstek, Jiri Skala, Kamil Kosturik

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This paper deals with the problem of using Autonomous Robotic Platforms (ARP) for the ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) testing in automotive. There are different possibilities of the testing already in development, and lately, the autonomous robotic platforms are beginning to be used more and more widely. Autonomous Robotic Platform discussed in this paper explores the hardware and software design possibilities related to the field of embedded systems. The paper focuses on its chapters on the introduction of the problem in general; then, it describes the proposed prototype concept and its principles from the embedded HW and SW point of view. It talks about the key features that can be used for the innovation of these platforms (e.g., modularity, omnidirectional movement, common and non-traditional sensors used for localization, synchronization of more platforms and cars together, or safety mechanisms). In the end, the future possible development of the project is discussed as well.

Keywords: advanced driver assistance systems, ADAS, autonomous robotic platform, embedded systems, hardware, localization, modularity, multiple robots synchronization, omnidirectional movement, safety mechanisms, software

Procedia PDF Downloads 143

Authors: Elizelle Juanee Cilliers

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Recent planning thinking has laid the foundations for a general sense of best practice that aims to enhance the quality of life, suggesting an open and participatory process. It is accepted that integration of top-down and bottom-up approaches may lead to efficient action in environments and sustainable planning and development, although it is also accepted that such an integrated approach has various challenges of implementation. A flexible framework in which the strengths of both the top-down and bottom-up approaches were explored in this research, based on the EU Interreg VALUE Added project and five case studies where student education and student involvement played a crucial role within the participation process of the redesign of the urban environment. It was found that international student workshops were an effective tool to integrate bottom-up and top-down structures, as it acted as catalyst for communication, interaction, creative design, quick transformation from planning to implementation, building social cohesion, finding mutual ground between stakeholders and thus enhancing overall quality of life and quality of environments. It offered a good alternative to traditional participation modes and created a platform for an integrative planning approach. The role and importance of education and integration within the urban environment were emphasized.

Keywords: top-down, bottom-up, flexible, student involvement

Procedia PDF Downloads 210

Authors: Deniz Alca

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This research aims to study the themes of autonomy, democracy and the legitimacy of power under the headline of Arab Spring. After the first wave of Arab Spring, among the frequently mentioned ideals of self-recognition, awakening, democracy, autonomy, freedom etc. main concern of the border neighbors and the western governments was to see a “legitimate power.” Although the metaphor of spring was still pointing at emancipation, the principal focus was mostly not on the people but on the governments. So the question of what makes a government legitimate has come to the forefront. However, democracy and freedom, seems to be the main subject matters of the discussions, this rush about establishment of “legitimate governments” lead other countries, to indulge or worse endorse armed oppositionists. So essence of “power” changed from legitimate to rulership. It seems that the civil initiative or autonomy and clearly democracy are still far away from us. The need to a savior is overpowering. This cultural and traditional and almost hereditary miss orientation of the people, both the ones who are playing the role of god and the ones who believed the inevitable need to be freed by someone else, seems to be leading the Arabs to a new autocracy or worse. Middle East is waiting for the ex machina to operate. But what it gets is a spreading warfare. This darkness falling down on Middle East under the concept of spring may be explained by the confrontation of the concepts of emancipation and liberation. So the question is, if the era of emancipation really over or is there still a chance for autonomy and grassroots democracy operating as constituent power?

Keywords: autonomy, awakening, civil initiative, democracy, emancipation, legitimacy, liberation

Procedia PDF Downloads 405

Authors: Tien Wei Daniel Hwang

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The computer program inventors, particularly in Fintech, are unwilling to apply for patents in Taiwan after 2014. Passing the ‘statutory subject matter eligibility’ test and becoming the system patent are not the only cause to the reduction in the number of application. Taiwanese court needs to resolve whether the defendants had ‘used’ that software patent in patent direct infringement suit. Both 35 U.S.C. § 271(a) and article 58 paragraph 2 of Taiwan Patent Law don’t define the meaning of ‘use’ in the statutes. Centillion Data Sys., LLC v. Qwest Commc’ns Int’l, Inc. reconsidered the meaning of ‘use’ in system patent infringement, and held that ‘a party must put the invention into service, i.e., control the system as a whole and obtain benefit from it.’ In Taiwan, Intellectual Property Office, Ministry of Economic Affairs, has explained that ‘using’ the patent is ‘achieving the technical effect of the patent.’ Nonetheless, this definition is too broad to apply to not only the software patent but also the traditional patent. To supply the friendly environment for Fintech corporations, this article aims to let Taiwanese court realize why and how United States District Court, S.D. Indiana, Indianapolis Division and United States Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit defined the meaning of ‘use’ in 35 U.S.C. § 271(a). However, this definition is so lax and confuses many defendants in United States. Accordingly, this article indicates the elements in Taiwan Patent Law are different with 35 U.S.C. § 271(a), so Taiwanese court can follow the interpretation of ‘use’ in Centillion Data case without the same obstacle.

Keywords: direct infringement, FinTech, software patent, use

Procedia PDF Downloads 301

Authors: Wesam El Bana

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The current research aimed at designing a training program for improving specific muscular strength through using the especial strength and identifying its effects on the performance level skills of hockey players. The researcher used the quasi-experimental approach (two – group design) with pre- and post-measurements. Sample: (n= 35) was purposefully chosen from sharkia sports club. Five hockey player were excluded due to their non-punctuality. The rest were divided into two equal groups (experimental and control). The researcher concluded the following: The traditional training program had a positive effect on improving the physical variables under investigation as it led to increasing the improvement percentages of the physical variables and the performance level skills of the control group between the pre- and post-measurement. The recommended training program had a positive effect on improving the physical variables under investigation as it led to increasing the improvement percentages of the physical variable and the performance level skills of the experimental group between the pre- and post-measurements. Exercises using the especial strength training had a positive effect on the post-measurement of the experimental group.

Keywords: hockey, especial strength, performance skills

Procedia PDF Downloads 241

Authors: Habtamu Garoma Debela, Gemechis File Duressa

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In this work, our primary interest is to provide ε-uniformly convergent numerical techniques for solving singularly perturbed semilinear boundary value problems with non-local boundary condition. These singular perturbation problems are described by differential equations in which the highest-order derivative is multiplied by an arbitrarily small parameter ε (say) known as singular perturbation parameter. This leads to the existence of boundary layers, which are basically narrow regions in the neighborhood of the boundary of the domain, where the gradient of the solution becomes steep as the perturbation parameter tends to zero. Due to the appearance of the layer phenomena, it is a challenging task to provide ε-uniform numerical methods. The term 'ε-uniform' refers to identify those numerical methods in which the approximate solution converges to the corresponding exact solution (measured to the supremum norm) independently with respect to the perturbation parameter ε. Thus, the purpose of this work is to develop, analyze, and improve the ε-uniform numerical methods for solving singularly perturbed problems. These methods are based on nonstandard fitted finite difference method. The basic idea behind the fitted operator, finite difference method, is to replace the denominator functions of the classical derivatives with positive functions derived in such a way that they capture some notable properties of the governing differential equation. A uniformly convergent numerical method is constructed via nonstandard fitted operator numerical method and numerical integration methods to solve the problem. The non-local boundary condition is treated using numerical integration techniques. Additionally, Richardson extrapolation technique, which improves the first-order accuracy of the standard scheme to second-order convergence, is applied for singularly perturbed convection-diffusion problems using the proposed numerical method. Maximum absolute errors and rates of convergence for different values of perturbation parameter and mesh sizes are tabulated for the numerical example considered. The method is shown to be ε-uniformly convergent. Finally, extensive numerical experiments are conducted which support all of our theoretical findings. A concise conclusion is provided at the end of this work.

Keywords: nonlocal boundary condition, nonstandard fitted operator, semilinear problem, singular perturbation, uniformly convergent

Procedia PDF Downloads 143

Authors: Trevor Kroeger, Hayden Williams, Edward Holzinger, David Coleman, Brian Haberman

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The network connectivity of medical devices is increasing at a rapid rate. Many medical devices, such as vital sign monitors, share information via wireless or wired connections. However, these connectivity options suffer from a variety of well-known limitations. Wireless connectivity, especially in the unlicensed radio frequency bands, can be disrupted. Such disruption could be due to benign reasons, such as a crowded spectrum, or to malicious intent. While wired connections are less susceptible to interference, they inhibit the mobility of the medical devices, which could be critical in a variety of scenarios. This work explores the application of Light Fidelity (Li-Fi) communication to enhance the security, performance, and mobility of medical devices in connected healthcare scenarios. A simple bridge for connected devices serves as an avenue to connect traditional medical devices to the Li-Fi network. This bridge was utilized to conduct bandwidth tests on a small Li-Fi network installed into a Mock-ICU setting with a backend enterprise network similar to that of a hospital. Mobile and stationary tests were conducted to replicate various different situations that might occur within a hospital setting. Results show that in room Li-Fi connectivity provides reasonable bandwidth and latency within a hospital like setting.

Keywords: hospital, light fidelity, Li-Fi, medical devices, security

Procedia PDF Downloads 102

Authors: Sara Rankohi, Lloyd Waugh

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Construction sites are information saturated. Digitalization is hitting construction sites to meet the incredible demand of knowledge sharing and information documentations. From flying drones, 3D Lasers scanners, pocket mobile applications, to augmented reality glasses and smart helmet, visualization technologies help real-time information imposed straight onto construction professional’s field of vision. Although these technologies are very applicable and can have the direct impact on project cost and productivity, experience shows that only a minority of construction professionals quickly adapt themselves to benefit from them in practice. The majority of construction managers still tend to apply traditional construction management methods. This paper investigates a) current applications of visualization technologies in construction projects management, b) the direct effect of these technologies on productivity improvement and cost saving of a multi-residential building project via a case study on Mac Taggart Senior Care project located in Edmonton, Alberta. The research shows the imaged based technologies have a direct impact on improving project productivity and cost savings.

Keywords: image-based technologies, project management, cost, productivity improvement

Procedia PDF Downloads 360

Authors: Melody Mandevere, Roselyn Cheruiyot

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Through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), organizations contribute to a stable environment that leads to a predictable climate for investment and trade. Organizations are now deviating from traditional CSR, where it was believed that the only responsibility of an organization is to meet its shareholder's needs. Organizations and society now believe that an organization has many stakeholders that it must satisfy for it to be viable. The function of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) is not profit making but providing service and accomplishing public policy objectives. SOEs demand consideration in the current economic climate because they represent an important part of the economies of many countries. Given the importance and complex relationship of the stakeholders in SOE, the paper seeks to examine how full name first Zimra is implementing its CSR activities. SOE managers are responsible for CSR implementation and stakeholder engagement. ZIMRA is one of the parastatals that plays a crucial role in the Zimbabwean economy. It is, therefore, important to understand how Zimra is implementing CSR. Qualitative research was used for the research. Interviews were contacted with Zimra managers to understand how they are implementing CSR. Although Zimra managers understand the CSR concept, the organization does not have a CSR strategy that includes their stakeholders, which may have a negative impact on stakeholder perception and the organization's reputation. The funding of the CSR strategy is also not sustainable.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility, managers, stakeholders, state-owned enterprises

Procedia PDF Downloads 91

Authors: Aniket Ganvir, Ritarani Sahu, Suchismita Chinara

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The rapid digitization of various aspects of life is leading to the creation of smart IoT ecosystems, where interconnected devices generate significant amounts of valuable data. However, these IoT devices face constraints such as limited computational resources and bandwidth. Cloud computing emerges as a solution by offering ample resources for offloading tasks efficiently despite introducing latency issues, especially for time-sensitive applications like fog computing. Fog computing (FC) addresses latency concerns by bringing computation and storage closer to the network edge, minimizing data travel distance, and enhancing efficiency. Offloading tasks to fog nodes or the cloud can conserve energy and extend IoT device lifespan. The offloading process is intricate, with tasks categorized as full or partial, and its optimization presents an NP-hard problem. Traditional greedy search methods struggle to address the complexity of task offloading efficiently. To overcome this, the efficient crow search algorithm (ECSA) has been proposed as a meta-heuristic optimization algorithm. ECSA aims to effectively optimize computation offloading, providing solutions to this challenging problem.

Keywords: IoT, fog computing, task offloading, efficient crow search algorithm

Procedia PDF Downloads 58

Authors: Guo Yan

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Clothing recycling bin is a traditional way to collect textile waste in many areas. In the clothing recycling business, the transportation cost normally takes over 50% of total costs. This case gives a good way to reduce transportation cost by reverse logistics system. In this reverse logistics system, there are offline strategic alliance partners, such as transport firms, convenience stores, laundries, and post office which are integrated onto the mobile APP. Offline strategic alliance partners provide the service of textile waste collection, and transportation by their vacant vehicles return journey from convenience stores, laundries and post offices to sorting centers. The results of the case study provide the strategic alliance with a valuable and light - asset business model by using the logistics of offline memberships. The company in this case just focuses on textile waste sorting, reuse, recycling etc. The research method of this paper is a case study of a clothing recycling company in Chengdu by field research and interview; the analysis is based on the theory of the reverse logistics system.

Keywords: closed-loop recycles system, clothing recycling, end-of-life clothing, sharing economy, strategic alliance, reverse logistics.

Procedia PDF Downloads 147

Authors: Hammad T. Janjuhah, Josep Sanjuan, Mohamed K. Salah

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Biological and chemical activities in carbonates are responsible for the complexity of the pore system. Primary porosity is generally of natural origin while secondary porosity is subject to chemical reactivity through diagenetic processes. To understand the integrated part of hydrocarbon exploration, it is necessary to understand the carbonate pore system. However, the current porosity classification scheme is limited to adequately predict the petrophysical properties of different reservoirs having various origins and depositional environments. Rock classification provides a descriptive method for explaining the lithofacies but makes no significant contribution to the application of porosity and permeability (poro-perm) correlation. The Central Luconia carbonate system (Malaysia) represents a good example of pore complexity (in terms of nature and origin) mainly related to diagenetic processes which have altered the original reservoir. For quantitative analysis, 32 high-resolution images of each thin section were taken using transmitted light microscopy. The quantification of grains, matrix, cement, and macroporosity (pore types) was achieved using a petrographic analysis of thin sections and FESEM images. The point counting technique was used to estimate the amount of macroporosity from thin section, which was then subtracted from the total porosity to derive the microporosity. The quantitative observation of thin sections revealed that the mouldic porosity (macroporosity) is the dominant porosity type present, whereas the microporosity seems to correspond to a sum of 40 to 50% of the total porosity. It has been proven that these Miocene carbonates contain a significant amount of microporosity, which significantly complicates the estimation and production of hydrocarbons. Neglecting its impact can increase uncertainty about estimating hydrocarbon reserves. Due to the diversity of geological parameters, the application of existing porosity classifications does not allow a better understanding of the poro-perm relationship. However, the classification can be improved by including the pore types and pore structures where they can be divided into macro- and microporosity. Such studies of microporosity identification/classification represent now a major concern in limestone reservoirs around the world.

Keywords: overview of porosity classification, reservoir characterization, microporosity, carbonate reservoir

Procedia PDF Downloads 154

Authors: Junjie Zhong, Kai Hong, Lei Wang

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Passage Retrieval (PR) plays an important role in many Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks. Traditional efficient retrieval models relying on exact term-matching, such as TF-IDF or BM25, have nowadays been exceeded by pre-trained language models which match by semantics. Though they gain effectiveness, deep language models often require large memory as well as time cost. To tackle the trade-off between efficiency and effectiveness in PR, this paper proposes Graph Passage Retriever (GraphPR), a graph-based model inspired by the development of graph learning techniques. Different from existing works, GraphPR is end-to-end and integrates both term-matching information and semantics. GraphPR constructs a passage-level graph from BM25 retrieval results and trains a GCN-like model on the graph with graph-based objectives. Passages were regarded as nodes in the constructed graph and were embedded in dense vectors. PR can then be implemented using embeddings and a fast vector-similarity search. Experiments on a variety of real-world retrieval datasets show that the proposed model outperforms related models in several evaluation metrics (e.g., mean reciprocal rank, accuracy, F1-scores) while maintaining a relatively low query latency and memory usage.

Keywords: efficiency, effectiveness, graph learning, language model, passage retrieval, term-matching model

Procedia PDF Downloads 148

Authors: Han Longxiang

Abstract:

In the process of treating industrial oily wastewater with complex components, the traditional treatment methods (flotation, coagulation, microwave heating, etc.) often produce high operating costs, secondary pollution, and other problems. In order to solve these problems, the materials with high flux and stability applied to surfactant-stabilized emulsions separation have gained huge attention in the treatment of oily wastewater. Nevertheless, four stable oil-in-water emulsions can be formed due to different surfactants (surfactant-free, anionic surfactant, cationic surfactant, and non-ionic surfactant), and the previous advanced materials can only separate one or several of them, cannot effectively separate in one step. Herein, a facile synthesis method of graphene-based multilevel filter materials (GMFM) which can efficiently separate the oil-in-water emulsions stabilized with different surfactants only through its gravity. The prepared materials with high stability of 20 cycles show a high flux of ~ 5000 L m-2 h-1 with a high separation efficiency of > 99.9 %. GMFM can effectively separate the emulsion stabilized by mixed surfactants and oily wastewater from factories. The results indicate that the GMFM have a wide range of applications in oil-in-water emulsions separation in industry and environmental science.

Keywords: emulsion, filtration, graphene, one-step

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Authors: Nermin A. Morsy, Amany N. Beshay

Abstract:

The tourism industry has seen considerable transformations due to the emergency of e-commerce. For instance, airlines are increasingly dependent on achieving online sales instead of their traditional platform. Online travel agencies’ (OTAs) websites have been able to reach a broader range of customers and generate more revenue. Therefore, website quality plays an important role in attaining website effectiveness. It is now considered as a critical factor in attracting customers' attention and build loyalty. Customers are more likely to visit and purchase at websites that exhibit highly desirable qualities. A user-friendly website can help tourists find their target information easily and make decisions quickly. This research focuses on analyzing the impact of airline and OTAs’ websites quality on the actual customer usage and purchase intentions. An online survey was distributed among internet users to assess the various dimensions of website quality in the context of online booking and their effect on customer’s usage and purchase intentions. The data from the survey was analyzed statistically using correlation, t-tests and other statistical tests. Results revealed the direct impact of website quality on customer usage and purchase intentions.

Keywords: airlines, OTAs, purchasing intention, website quality

Procedia PDF Downloads 179

Authors: Alireza Taghdiri, Sara Ghanbarzade Ghomi

Abstract:

With the gravity load reduction in the structural and non-structural components, the lightweight construction will be achieved as well as the improvement of efficiency and functional specifications. The advantages of lightweight construction can be examined in two levels. The first is the mass reduction of load bearing structure which results in increasing internal useful space and the other one is the mass reduction of building which decreases the effects of seismic load as a result. In order to achieve this goal, the essential building materials specifications and also optimum load bearing geometry of structural systems and elements have to be considered, so lightweight materials selection particularly with lightweight aggregate for building components will be the first step of lightweight construction. In the next step, in addition to selecting the prominent samples of Iran's traditional architecture, the process of these works improvement is analyzed through the viewpoints of structural efficiency and lightweighting and also the practical methods of lightweight construction have been extracted. The optimum design of load bearing geometry of structural system has to be considered not only in the structural system elements, but also in their composition and the selection of dimensions, proportions, forms and optimum orientations, can lead to get a maximum materials efficiency for loads and stresses bearing.

Keywords: gravity load, light-weighting structural system, load bearing geometry, seismic behavior

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Authors: Wei Liu, Shuquan Wang, Yang Gao

Abstract:

Microgravity Science Experiment Rack (MSER) will be onboard TianHe (TH) spacecraft planned to be launched in 2018. TH is one module of Chinese Space Station. Microgravity Vibration Isolation System (MVIS), which is MSER’s core part, is used to isolate disturbance from TH and provide high-level microgravity for science experiment payload. MVIS is two stage vibration isolation system, consisting of Follow Unit (FU) and Experiment Support Unit (ESU). FU is linked to MSER by umbilical cables, and ESU suspends within FU and without physical connection. The FU’s position and attitude relative to TH is measured by binocular vision measuring system, and the acceleration and angular velocity is measured by accelerometers and gyroscopes. Air-jet thrusters are used to generate force and moment to control FU’s motion. Measurement module on ESU contains a set of Position-Sense-Detectors (PSD) sensing the ESU’s position and attitude relative to FU, accelerometers and gyroscopes sensing ESU’s acceleration and angular velocity. Electro-magnetic actuators are used to control ESU’s motion. Firstly, the linearized equations of FU’s motion relative to TH and ESU’s motion relative to FU are derived, laying the foundation for control system design and simulation analysis. Subsequently, two control schemes are proposed. One control scheme is that ESU tracks FU and FU tracks TH, shorten as E-F-T. The other one is that FU tracks ESU and ESU tracks TH, shorten as F-E-T. In addition, motion spaces are constrained within ±15 mm、±2° between FU and ESU, and within ±300 mm between FU and TH or between ESU and TH. A Proportional-Integrate-Differentiate (PID) controller is designed to control FU’s position and attitude. ESU’s controller includes an acceleration feedback loop and a relative position feedback loop. A Proportional-Integrate (PI) controller is designed in the acceleration feedback loop to reduce the ESU’s acceleration level, and a PID controller in the relative position feedback loop is used to avoid collision. Finally, simulations of E-F-T and F-E-T are performed considering variety uncertainties, disturbances and motion space constrains. The simulation results of E-T-H showed that control performance was from 0 to -20 dB for vibration frequency from 0.01 to 0.1 Hz, and vibration was attenuated 40 dB per ten octave above 0.1Hz. The simulation results of T-E-H showed that vibration was attenuated 20 dB per ten octave at the beginning of 0.01Hz.

Keywords: microgravity science experiment rack, microgravity vibration isolation system, PID control, vibration isolation performance

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Authors: Menelaos N. Katsantonis, Athanasios Manikas, Alexandros Chatzis, Stavros Doropoulos, Anastasios Avramis, Ioannis Mavridis

Abstract:

Museums enhance their potential by adopting new technologies and techniques to appeal to more visitors and engage them in creative and joyful activities. In this study, the Haptic Cycle is presented, a cycle of museum activities proposed for the development of museum learning approaches with optimized effectiveness and engagement. Haptic Cycle envisages the improvement of the museum’s services by offering a wide range of activities. Haptic Cycle activities make the museum’s exhibitions more approachable by bringing them closer to the visitors. Visitors can interact with the museum’s artifacts and explore them haptically and sonically. Haptic Cycle proposes constructivist learning activities in which visitors actively construct their knowledge by exploring the artifacts, experimenting with them and realizing their importance. Based on the Haptic Cycle, we developed the HapticSOUND system, an innovative virtual reality system that includes an advanced user interface that employs gesture-based technology. HapticSOUND’s interface utilizes the leap motion gesture recognition controller and a 3D-printed traditional Cretan lute, utilized by visitors to perform various activities such as exploring the lute and playing notes and songs.

Keywords: haptic cycle, HapticSOUND, museum learning, gesture-based, leap motion

Procedia PDF Downloads 91