Search results for: time delay neural network

Authors: Srna Jenko Miholic, Marta Borovec, Josipa Persun

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The constant expansion of technology has further accelerated the development of media and vice versa. Although its promotion includes all kinds of interesting and positive sides, the poor functioning of the media is still being researched and proven. Young people, as well as children from the earliest age, resort to the media the most, so it is necessary to defend the role of adults as it were parents, teachers, and environment against virtual co-educators such as the media. The research aim of this study was to determine the time consumption of using electronic media by primary school children as well as their involvement in certain physical activities. Furthermore, to determine what is happening when parents restrict their children's access to electronic media and encourage them to participate in alternative contents during their leisure time. Result reveals a higher percentage of parents restrict their children's access to electronic media and then encourage children to socialize with family and friends, spend time outdoors, engage in physical activity, read books or learn something unrelated to school content even though it would not be children's favorite activity. The results highlight the importance of parental control when it comes to children's use of electronic media and the positive effects that parental control has in terms of encouraging children to be useful, socially desirable, physically active, and healthy activities.

Keywords: elementary school, digital media, leisure time, parents, physical engagement

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Authors: Fadime Eroglu

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Acanthamoeba genus belongs to kingdom protozoa, and it is known as free-living amoebae. Acanthamoeba genus has been isolated from human bodies, swimming pools, bottled mineral water, contact lens solutions, dust, and soil. The members of the genus Acanthamoeba causes Acanthamoeba Keratitis which is a painful sight-threatening disease of the eyes. In recent years, the prevalence of Acanthamoeba keratitis has been high rate reported. The eight different Acanthamoeba species are known to be effective in Acanthamoeba keratitis. These species are Acanthamoeba castellanii, Acanthamoeba polyphaga, Acanthamoeba griffini, Acanthamoeba hatchetti, Acanthamoeba culbertsoni and Acanhtamoeba rhysodes. The conventional diagnosis of Acanthamoeba Keratitis has relied on cytological preparations and growth of Acanthamoeba in culture. However molecular methods such as real-time PCR has been found to be more sensitive. The real-time PCR has now emerged as an effective method for more rapid testing for the diagnosis of infectious disease in decade. Therefore, a real-time PCR assay for the detection of Acanthamoeba keratitis and Acanthamoeba species have been developed in this study. The 18S rRNA sequences from Acanthamoeba species were obtained from National Center for Biotechnology Information and sequences were aligned with MEGA 6 programme. Primers and probe were designed using Custom Primers-OligoPerfectTMDesigner (ThermoFisherScientific, Waltham, MA, USA). They were also assayed for hairpin formation and degree of primer-dimer formation with Multiple Primer Analyzer ( ThermoFisherScientific, Watham, MA, USA). The eight different ATCC Acanthamoeba species were obtained, and DNA was extracted using the Qiagen Mini DNA extraction kit (Qiagen, Hilden, Germany). The DNA of Acanthamoeba species were analyzed using newly designed primer and probe set in real-time PCR assay. The early definitive laboratory diagnosis of Acanthamoeba Keratitis and the rapid initiation of suitable therapy is necessary for clinical prognosis. The results of the study have been showed that new primer and probes could be used for detection and distinguish for Acanthamoeba species. These new developing methods are helpful for diagnosis of Acanthamoeba Keratitis.

Keywords: Acathamoeba Keratitis, Acanthamoeba species, fast diagnosis, Real-Time PCR

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Authors: Omid Shahmirzadi, Adam Lugowski, Kenneth Younge

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Automatic measurement of semantic text similarity is an important task in natural language processing. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of different vector space models to perform this task. We address the real-world problem of modeling patent-to-patent similarity and compare TFIDF (and related extensions), topic models (e.g., latent semantic indexing), and neural models (e.g., paragraph vectors). Contrary to expectations, the added computational cost of text embedding methods is justified only when: 1) the target text is condensed; and 2) the similarity comparison is trivial. Otherwise, TFIDF performs surprisingly well in other cases: in particular for longer and more technical texts or for making finer-grained distinctions between nearest neighbors. Unexpectedly, extensions to the TFIDF method, such as adding noun phrases or calculating term weights incrementally, were not helpful in our context.

Keywords: big data, patent, text embedding, text similarity, vector space model

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Authors: Frodouard Minani

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Since last decade, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been used in many areas like health care, agriculture, defense, military, disaster hit areas and so on. Wireless Sensor Networks consist of a Base Station (BS) and more number of wireless sensors in order to monitor temperature, pressure, motion in different environment conditions. The key parameter that plays a major role in designing a protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks is energy efficiency which is a scarcest resource of sensor nodes and it determines the lifetime of sensor nodes. Maximizing sensor node’s lifetime is an important issue in the design of applications and protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks. Clustering sensor nodes mechanism is an effective topology control approach for helping to achieve the goal of this research. In this paper, the researcher presents an energy efficiency protocol to prolong the network lifetime based on Energy efficient clustering algorithm. The Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) is a routing protocol for clusters which is used to lower the energy consumption and also to improve the lifetime of the Wireless Sensor Networks. Maximizing energy dissipation and network lifetime are important matters in the design of applications and protocols for wireless sensor networks. Proposed system is to maximize the lifetime of the Wireless Sensor Networks by choosing the farthest cluster head (CH) instead of the closest CH and forming the cluster by considering the following parameter metrics such as Node’s density, residual-energy and distance between clusters (inter-cluster distance). In this paper, comparisons between the proposed protocol and comparative protocols in different scenarios have been done and the simulation results showed that the proposed protocol performs well over other comparative protocols in various scenarios.

Keywords: base station, clustering algorithm, energy efficient, sensors, wireless sensor networks

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Authors: Ali Mohammadi

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Forming and equipping the surveyors team for construction projects such as dams, roads, and tunnels is always one of the first challenges and hiring surveyors who are proficient in reading maps and controlling structures, purchasing appropriate surveying equipment that the employer can find Also, using methods that can save time, in the bigger the project, the more these challenges show themselves. Finding a surveyor engineer who can lead the teams and train surveyors of the collection and buy TOTAL STATION according to the company's budget and the surveyors' ability to use them and the time available to each team In the following, we will introduce a surveying app and examine how to use it, which shows how useful it can be for surveyors in projects.

Keywords: DTM CUTFILL, datatransfer, section, tunnel, traverse

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Authors: Emma Carr, Jennifer Morrison, Peter Walker

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Background: Due to COVID-19, there was a significant reduction in the number of children being treated under general anaesthetic (GA) within the health board, which led to a backlog of referrals. The referrals were being triaged and added to a waiting list in order of priority -determined by the information given. By implementing a checklist, it is anticipated that at least 70% of referrals will have the majority of the information required to effectively prioritise patients. The gold standard, as defined in ‘Guidelines For The Management Of Children Referred For Dental Extractions Under General Anaesthesia’, indicates that all referrals should mention: (i) Inability of the child to cooperate, (ii) Previously tried anxiety management techniques, (iii) Existence of psychological disorders, (iv) Presence of acute dental infection, (v) Requirement for extractions in multiple quadrants. Method: 130 referrals were examined over three months and compared to the recommended standard. A letter was emailed to referring dentists within Ayrshire & Arran outlining the recommended information to be included within the referral. The second round of data collection was then carried out, which involved an examination of 105 referrals. Results: The first round revealed that only 28% of referrals mentioned at least four defined standards outlined above. Following issuing a checklist to all dentists, this increased to 72%. Conclusion: As many of the children referred for extractions under GA have suffered pain and infection because of dental caries, it is important that delay of treatment is minimised, where possible. The implementation of a standardised checklist has enabled more effective prioritisation of patients.

Keywords: caries, dentistry, general anaesthetic, paediatrics

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Authors: Mohammad Amin Hamedirad, Seyed Javad Vaziri Kang Olyaei

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Project planning and control are one of the most critical issues in the management of construction projects. Traditional methods of project planning and control, such as the critical path method or Gantt chart, are not widely used for planning projects with discrete and repetitive activities, and one of the problems of project managers is planning the implementation process and optimal allocation of its resources. Massive concreting projects is also a project with discrete and repetitive activities. This study uses the concept of simulating discrete events to manage resources, which includes finding the optimal number of resources considering various limitations such as limitations of machinery, equipment, human resources and even technical, time and implementation limitations using analysis of resource consumption rate, project completion time and critical points analysis of the implementation process. For this purpose, the concept of discrete-event simulation has been used to model different stages of implementation. After reviewing the various scenarios, the optimal number of allocations for each resource is finally determined to reach the maximum utilization rate and also to reduce the project completion time or reduce its cost according to the existing constraints. The results showed that with the optimal allocation of resources, the project completion time could be reduced by 90%, and the resulting costs can be reduced by up to 49%. Thus, allocating the optimal number of project resources using this method will reduce its time and cost.

Keywords: simulation, massive concreting, discrete event simulation, resource management

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Authors: Isaac Cassar, Trevor Davis, Yi-Kai Lo, Wentai Liu

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Retinal prostheses have been successful in eliciting visual responses in implanted subjects. As these prostheses progress, one of their major limitations is the need for increased resolution. As an alternative to increasing the number of electrodes, virtual electrodes may be used to increase the effective resolution of current electrode arrays. This paper presents a virtual electrode technique based upon time-offsets between stimuli. Two adjacent electrodes are stimulated with identical pulses with too short of pulse widths to activate a neuron, but one has a time offset of one pulse width. A virtual electrode of twice the pulse width was then shown to appear in the center, with a total width capable of activating a neuron. This can be used in retinal implants by stimulating electrodes with pulse widths short enough to not elicit responses in neurons, but with their combined pulse width adequate to activate a neuron in between them.

Keywords: electrical stimulation, neuroprosthesis, retinal implant, retinal prosthesis, virtual electrode

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Authors: Roberta Mugellesi Dow

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As the climate crisis becomes unignorable, it is imperative that new services are developed addressing not only the needs of customers but also taking into account its impact on the environment. The Telecommunication and Integrated Application (TIA) Directorate of ESA is supporting the green transition with particular attention to the sustainable mobility.“Accelerating the shift to sustainable and smart mobility” is at the core of the European Green Deal strategy, which seeks a 90% reduction in related emissions by 2050 . Transforming the way that people and goods move is essential to increasing mobility while decreasing environmental impact, and transport must be considered holistically to produce a shared vision of green intermodal mobility. The use of space technologies, integrated with terrestrial technologies, is an enabler of smarter traffic management and increased transport efficiency for automated and connected multimodal mobility. Satellite connectivity, including future 5G networks, and digital technologies such as Digital Twin, AI, Machine Learning, and cloud-based applications are key enablers of sustainable mobility.SatCom is essential to ensure that connectivity is ubiquitously available, even in remote and rural areas, or in case of a failure, by the convergence of terrestrial and SatCom connectivity networks, This is especially crucial when there are risks of network failures or cyber-attacks targeting terrestrial communication. SatCom ensures communication network robustness and resilience. The combination of terrestrial and satellite communication networks is making possible intelligent and ubiquitous V2X systems and PNT services with significantly enhanced reliability and security, hyper-fast wireless access, as well as much seamless communication coverage. SatNav is essential in providing accurate tracking and tracing capabilities for automated vehicles and in guiding them to target locations. SatNav can also enable location-based services like car sharing applications, parking assistance, and fare payment. In addition to GNSS receivers, wireless connections, radar, lidar, and other installed sensors can enable automated vehicles to monitor surroundings, to ‘talk to each other’ and with infrastructure in real-time, and to respond to changes instantaneously. SatEO can be used to provide the maps required by the traffic management, as well as evaluate the conditions on the ground, assess changes and provide key data for monitoring and forecasting air pollution and other important parameters. Earth Observation derived data are used to provide meteorological information such as wind speed and direction, humidity, and others that must be considered into models contributing to traffic management services. The paper will provide examples of services and applications that have been developed aiming to identify innovative solutions and new business models that are allowed by new digital technologies engaging space and non space ecosystem together to deliver value and providing innovative, greener solutions in the mobility sector. Examples include Connected Autonomous Vehicles, electric vehicles, green logistics, and others. For the technologies relevant are the hybrid satcom and 5G providing ubiquitous coverage, IoT integration with non space technologies, as well as navigation, PNT technology, and other space data.

Keywords: sustainability, connectivity, mobility, satellites

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Authors: Tahir Majeed, Michael Handschuh, René Meier

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Rheumatoid arthritis patients have swelling and pain at the joints of the hand. The regions where the patient feels pain also show increased body temperature. Thermal cameras can be used to detect the rise in temperature of the affected regions. To monitor the disease progression of rheumatoid arthritis patients, they must visit the clinic regularly for scanning and examination. After scanning and evaluation, the dosage of the medicine is regulated accordingly. To monitor the disease progression over time, the correlation between the images between different visits must be established. It has been observed that by using low-cost thermal cameras, the thermal measurements do not remain the same over time, even within a single scanning. In some situations, temperatures can vary as much as 2°C within the same scanning sequence. In this paper, it has been shown that although the absolute temperature varies over time, the relative difference between the different regions remains similar. Results have been computed over four scanning sequences and are presented.

Keywords: relative thermal difference, rheumatoid arthritis, thermal imaging, thermal sensors

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Authors: Jeng-Shin Sheu, Qi-Xun Zheng

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This paper mainly discusses a method of separating speech when using a microphone array without knowing the number and direction of sound sources. In recent years, there have been many studies on the method of separating signals by using masking, but most of the separation methods must be operated under the condition of a known number of sound sources. Such methods cannot be used for real-time applications. In our method, this paper uses Circular-Integrated-Cross-Spectrum to estimate the statistical histogram distribution of the direction of arrival (DOA) to obtain the number of sound sources and sound in the mixed-signal Source direction. In calculating the relevant parameters of the ring integrated cross-spectrum, the phase (Phase of the Cross-Power Spectrum) and phase rotation factors (Phase Rotation Factors) calculated by the cross power spectrum of each microphone pair are used. In the part of separating speech, it uses the DOA weighting and shielding separation method to calculate the sound source direction (DOA) according to each T-F unit (time-frequency point). The weight corresponding to each T-F unit can be used to strengthen the intensity of each sound source from the T-F unit and reduce the influence of the remaining sound sources, thereby achieving voice separation.

Keywords: real-time, spectrum analysis, sound source localization, sound source separation

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Authors: Shrikant Randhavane, Anjali Khambete

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Use of Pesticides is vital in attaining food security and protection from harmful pests and insects in living environment. Chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate pesticide is widely used worldwide for various purposes. Due to its wide use and applications, its residues are found in environmental matrices and persist in nature for long duration of time. This has an adverse effect on human, aquatic and living bodies. Use of different methodologies is need of an hour to treat such type of recalcitrant compound. The paper focuses on Hydrodynamic Cavitation (HC), a hybrid Advanced Oxidation Potential (AOP) method to degrade Chlorpyrifos in aqueous water. Obtained results show that optimum inlet pressure of 5 bars gave maximum degradation of 99.25% for lower concentration and 87.14% for higher concentration Chlorpyrifos solution in 1 hour treatment time. Also, with known initial concentrations, comparing treatment time with optimum pressure of 5 bars, degradation efficiency increases with Hydrodynamic Cavitation. The potential application of HC in removal of Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) from real effluent with venturi as cavitating device reveals around 40% COD removal with 1 hour of treatment time.

Keywords: advanced oxidation potential, cavitation, chlorpyrifos, COD

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Authors: M. F. Haroun, T. A. Gulliver

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In this paper, an encryption algorithm is proposed for real-time image encryption. The scheme employs a dual chaotic generator based on a three dimensional (3D) discrete Lorenz attractor. Encryption is achieved using non-autonomous modulation where the data is injected into the dynamics of the master chaotic generator. The second generator is used to permute the dynamics of the master generator using the same approach. Since the data stream can be regarded as a random source, the resulting permutations of the generator dynamics greatly increase the security of the transmitted signal. In addition, a technique is proposed to mitigate the error propagation due to the finite precision arithmetic of digital hardware. In particular, truncation and rounding errors are eliminated by employing an integer representation of the data which can easily be implemented. The simple hardware architecture of the algorithm makes it suitable for secure real-time applications.

Keywords: chaotic systems, image encryption, non-autonomous modulation, FPGA

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Authors: Maryam Kiani

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In order to enhance the efficiency and stability of an electrocatalyst for formic acid electro-oxidation reaction (FAOR), we developed a method to create Pt/Ni nanoparticles with carbon black. These nanoparticles were prepared using a simple impregnation reduction technique. During the observation, it was found that the nanoparticles had a spherical shape. Additionally, the average particle size remained consistent, falling within the range of about 4 nm. This approach aimed to obtain a loaded Pt-based electrocatalyst that would exhibit improved performance and stability when used in FAOR applications. By utilizing the impregnation reduction method and incorporating Ni nanoparticles along with Pt, we sought to enhance the catalytic properties of the material. By incorporating Ni atoms into the Pt structure, the electronic properties of Pt are modified, resulting in a delay in the chemisorption of harmful CO intermediate species. This modification also promotes the dehydrogenation pathway of the formic acid oxidation reaction (FAOR). Through electrochemical analysis, it has been observed that the Pt3Ni-C catalyst exhibits enhanced performance in FAOR compared to traditional Pt catalysts. This means that the addition of Ni atoms improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the Pt3Ni-C catalyst in facilitating the FAOR process. Overall, the utilization of these alloy nanoparticles as electrocatalysts represents a significant advancement in fuel cell technology.

Keywords: electrocatalyst, impregnation reduction method, formic acid electro-oxidation reaction, fuel cells

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Authors: Farshad Amini, Kejun Wen

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The formation of reflective cracking of pavement overlays has confronted highway engineers for many years. Stress-relieving interlayers, such as paving fabrics, have been used in an attempt to reduce or delay reflective cracking. The effectiveness of paving fabrics in reducing reflection cracking is related to joint or crack movement in the underlying pavement, crack width, overlay thickness, subgrade conditions, climate, and traffic volume. The nonwoven geotextiles are installed between the old and new asphalt layers. Paving fabrics enhance performance through two mechanisms: stress relief and waterproofing. Several factors including proper installation, remedial work performed before overlay, overlay thickness, variability of pavement strength, existing pavement condition, base/subgrade support condition, and traffic volume affect the performance. The primary objective of this study was to conduct a long-term monitoring of the paving fabric interlayer systems to evaluate its effectiveness and performance. A comprehensive testing, monitoring, and analysis program were undertaken, where twelve 500-ft pavement sections of a four-lane highway were rehabilitated, and then monitored for seven years. A comparison between the performance of paving fabric treatment systems and control sections is reported. Lessons learned, and the various factors are discussed.

Keywords: monitoring, paving fabrics, performance, reflective cracking

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Authors: Javad Taherahmadi, Mohammad Jafarian, Mohammad Naser Asefi

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The global capacity of wind power has dramatically increased in recent years. Therefore, improving the technology of wind turbines to take different advantages of this enormous potential in the power grid, could be interesting subject for scientists. The doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG) wind turbine is a popular system due to its many advantages such as the improved power quality, high energy efficiency and controllability, etc. With an increase in wind power penetration in the network and with regard to the flexible control of wind turbines, the use of wind turbine systems to improve the dynamic stability of power systems has been of significance importance for researchers. Subsynchronous oscillations are one of the important issues in the stability of power systems. Damping subsynchronous oscillations by using wind turbines has been studied in various research efforts, mainly by adding an auxiliary control loop to the control structure of the wind turbine. In most of the studies, this control loop is composed of linear blocks. In this paper, simple adaptive control is used for this purpose. In order to use an adaptive controller, the convergence of the controller should be verified. Since adaptive control parameters tend to optimum values in order to obtain optimum control performance, using this controller will help the wind turbines to have positive contribution in damping the network subsynchronous oscillations at different wind speeds and system operating points. In this paper, the application of simple adaptive control in DFIG wind turbine systems to improve the dynamic stability of power systems is studied and the essential condition for using this controller is considered. It is also shown that this controller has an insignificant effect on the dynamic stability of the wind turbine, itself.

Keywords: almost strictly positive real (ASPR), doubly-fed induction generator (DIFG), simple adaptive control (SAC), subsynchronous oscillations, wind turbine

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Authors: Jossitt Williams Vargas Cruz, Aura Jazmín Pérez Ríos

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The variations of solar dynamics have become a relevant topic of study due to the effects of climate changes generated on the earth. One of the most disconcerting aspects is the variability that the sun has on the climate is the role played by sunspots (extra-atmospheric variable) in the modulation of the Cosmic Rays CR (extra-atmospheric variable). CRs influence the earth's climate by affecting cloud formation (atmospheric variable), and solar cycle influence is associated with the presence of solar storms, and the magnetic activity is greater, resulting in less CR entering the earth's atmosphere. The different methods of climate prediction in Colombia do not take into account the extra-atmospheric variables. Therefore, correlations between atmospheric and extra-atmospheric variables were studied in order to implement a Python code based on neural networks to make the prediction of the extra-atmospheric variable with the highest correlation.

Keywords: correlations, cosmic rays, sun, sunspots and variations.

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Authors: Linhang Zhu, Hongyu Zhu, Jiahe Liu

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This paper investigated a method of indoor real-time positioning and mapping based on the Manhattan world assumption. In indoor environments, relying solely on feature matching techniques or other geometric algorithms for sensor pose estimation inevitably resulted in cumulative errors, posing a significant challenge to indoor positioning. To address this issue, we adopt the Manhattan world hypothesis to optimize the camera pose algorithm based on feature matching, which improves the accuracy of camera pose estimation. A special processing method was applied to image data frames that conformed to the Manhattan world assumption. When similar data frames appeared subsequently, this could be used to eliminate drift in sensor pose estimation, thereby reducing cumulative errors in estimation and optimizing mapping and positioning. Through experimental verification, it is found that our method achieves high-precision real-time positioning in indoor environments and successfully generates maps of indoor environments. This provides effective technical support for applications such as indoor navigation and robot control.

Keywords: Manhattan world hypothesis, real-time positioning and mapping, feature matching, loopback detection

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Authors: Rama Debbarma, Debanjan Das

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The performance of multiple tuned mass dampers to mitigate the seismic vibration of structures considering real time history data is investigated in this paper. Three different real earthquake time history data like Kobe, Imperial Valley and Mammoth Lake are taken in the present study. The multiple tuned mass dampers (MTMD) are distributed at each storey. For comparative study, single tuned mass damper (STMD) is installed at top of the similar structure. This study is conducted for a fixed mass ratio (5%) and fixed damping ratio (5%) of structures. Numerical study is performed to evaluate the effectiveness of MTMDs and overall system performance. The displacement, acceleration, base shear and storey drift are obtained for both combined system (structure with MTMD and structure with STMD) for all earthquakes. The same responses are also obtained for structure without damper system. From obtained results, it is investigated that the MTMD configuration is more effective for controlling the seismic response of the primary system with compare to STMD configuration.

Keywords: Earthquake, multiple tuned mass dampers, single tuned mass damper, Time history.

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Authors: Anteneh Berhane Yeyi, Tefera Belachew

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Any woman who could become pregnant is at risk of having a baby with neural tube defects (NTDs). A spontaneous aborted women with immediately preceding pregnancy may have an increased risk of develop NTDs. Ethiopia has one of the highest rates of micronutrient deficiencies, including folate and iron deficiency. Currently, in Ethiopia, NTDs is emerged as a public health concern. Even if Ethiopia, has implement different strategies for reducing maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidity, there is no room in the health care system and lack of integration for preventing the risk of NTDs for those women who aborted spontaneously and women who discontinue long acting contraception to become pregnant. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of preconception picture-based nutrition education on knowledge and adherence to iron-folic acid supplement (IFAS) intake to reduce the risk of developing neural tube defects (NTDs) and iron deficiency anemia (IDA) among women who had a planned to pregnancy in Ethiopia, a country with a high burden of NTDs. Methodology: This study was conducted in Eastern Ethiopia. A double blinded parallel randomized controlled trial design was employed among women in the age group of 18-45 years who requested to interrupt modern contraceptive who have an intention to be pregnant and women with spontaneous abortion who refused to take a contraceptive. The interventional arm (n=122) received a preconception picture-based nutrition education with iron-folic acid supplement, and the control arm (n=122) received only preconception IFAS. In this study male partners were participated. Result: After three months of intervention the proportion of adherence to IFAS was 23% (n=56). With regard to adherence within the groups, 42.6% (n=52) in the intervention group and 3.3% (n=4) in the control group and the intervention group were significantly higher than in control group. In the intervention group the proportion of adherence to IFAS intake among participants increased by 40.1% and there were statistically difference (P<0.0001). The difference in difference between the two groups of adherence to IFAS intake was 37.6% and there were a statistical significance (P<0.0001). Level of knowledge between the groups did differ before and after intervention (P= 0.87 Vs P<0.0001). The overall the mean change in knowledge Mean (+SE) between group was 0.9 (+3.04 SE) and there were significant differences between two groups (P<0.001). Conclusion: In general this intervention is effective toward adherence to IFAS and a critical milestone to improve maternal health and reduce the neonate mortality due to NTDs and other advert effect of pregnancy and birth outcomes. This intervention is very short, simple, and cost effective and has potential for adaptation, feasible development to large-scale implementation in the existing health care system. Furthermore, this type of interventional approach has the potential to reduce the country's ANC program dropout rates and increase male partner’s participation on reproductive health.

Keywords: NTDs, IFAS, WRA, Ethiopia

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Authors: Niroshan K. Walgama Wellalage, Tieling Zhang, Richard Dwight

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State-based Markov deterioration models (SMDM) sometimes fail to find accurate transition probability matrix (TPM) values, and hence lead to invalid future condition prediction or incorrect average deterioration rates mainly due to drawbacks of existing nonlinear optimization-based algorithms and/or subjective function types used for regression analysis. Furthermore, a set of separate functions for each condition state with age cannot be directly derived by using Markov model for a given bridge element group, which however is of interest to industrial partners. This paper presents a new approach for generating Homogeneous SMDM model output, namely, the Modified Weibull approach, which consists of a set of appropriate functions to describe the percentage condition prediction of bridge elements in each state. These functions are combined with Bayesian approach and Metropolis Hasting Algorithm (MHA) based Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation technique for quantifying the uncertainty in model parameter estimates. In this study, factors contributing to rail bridge deterioration were identified. The inspection data for 1,000 Australian railway bridges over 15 years were reviewed and filtered accordingly based on the real operational experience. Network level deterioration model for a typical bridge element group was developed using the proposed Modified Weibull approach. The condition state predictions obtained from this method were validated using statistical hypothesis tests with a test data set. Results show that the proposed model is able to not only predict the conditions in network-level accurately but also capture the model uncertainties with given confidence interval.

Keywords: bridge deterioration modelling, modified weibull approach, MCMC, metropolis-hasting algorithm, bayesian approach, Markov deterioration models

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Authors: Kunya Bowornchockchai

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The objective of this research is to forecast the monthly exchange rate between Thai baht and the US dollar and to compare two forecasting methods. The methods are Box-Jenkins’ method and Holt’s method. Results show that the Box-Jenkins’ method is the most suitable method for the monthly Exchange Rate between Thai Baht and the US Dollar. The suitable forecasting model is ARIMA (1,1,0)  without constant and the forecasting equation is Y_t = Y_t-1 + 0.3691 (Y_t-1 - Y_t-2) When Y_t  is the time series data at time t, respectively.

Keywords: Box–Jenkins method, Holt’s method, mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), exchange rate

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Authors: Malay Bhattacharyya, Saparya Suresh

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The Correlation Structure associated with a portfolio is subjected to vary across time. Studying the structural breaks in the time-dependent Correlation matrix associated with a collection had been a subject of interest for a better understanding of the market movements, portfolio selection, etc. The current paper proposes a methodology for testing the change in the time-dependent correlation structure of a portfolio in the high dimensional data using the techniques of generalized inverse, singular valued decomposition and multivariate distribution theory which has not been addressed so far. The asymptotic properties of the proposed test are derived. Also, the performance and the validity of the method is tested on a real data set. The proposed test performs well for detecting the change in the dependence of global markets in the context of high dimensional data.

Keywords: correlation structure, high dimensional data, multivariate distribution theory, singular valued decomposition

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Authors: Hong Kai, Zhong Jun Jie, Chen Lin Qi, Wang Chen Guang

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There are inefficient global scheduling parallelism and local scheduling parallelism prone to processor starvation in current scheduling algorithms. Regarding this issue, this paper proposed a load-aware queue partitioning scheduling strategy by first allocating the queues according to the number of processor cores, calculating the load factor to specify the load queue capacity, and it assigned the awaiting nodes to the appropriate perceptual queues through the precursor nodes and the communication computation overhead. At the same time, real-time computation of the load factor could effectively prevent the processor from being starved for a long time. Experimental comparison with two classical algorithms shows that there is a certain improvement in both performance metrics of scheduling length and task speedup ratio.

Keywords: load-aware, scheduling algorithm, perceptual queue, heterogeneous multi-core

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Authors: Elham Taghizadeh, Mostafa Abedzadeh, Mostafa Setak

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Logistics network is expected that opened facilities work continuously for a long time horizon without any failure; but in real world problems, facilities may face disruptions. This paper studies a reliable joint inventory location problem to optimize cost of facility locations, customers’ assignment, and inventory management decisions when facilities face failure risks and doesn’t work. In our model we assume when a facility is out of work, its customers may be reassigned to other operational facilities otherwise they must endure high penalty costs associated with losing service. For defining the model closer to real world problems, the model is proposed based on p-median problem and the facilities are considered to have limited capacities. We define a new binary variable (Z_is) for showing that customers are not assigned to any facilities. Our problem involve a bi-objective model; the first one minimizes the sum of facility construction costs and expected inventory holding costs, the second one function that mention for the first one is minimizes maximum expected customer costs under normal and failure scenarios. For solving this model we use NSGAII and MOSS algorithms have been applied to find the pareto- archive solution. Also Response Surface Methodology (RSM) is applied for optimizing the NSGAII Algorithm Parameters. We compare performance of two algorithms with three metrics and the results show NSGAII is more suitable for our model.

Keywords: joint inventory-location problem, facility location, NSGAII, MOSS

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Authors: Rayanne Branco Dos Santos Lima, Lorena Pinheiro Barbosa, Kamila Ferreira Lima, Victor Manuel Tegoma Ruiz, Monyka Brito Lima Dos Santos, Maria Wendiane Gueiros Gaspar, Luzia Camila Coelho Ferreira, Leandro Cardozo Dos Santos Brito, Deyse Maria Alves Rocha

Abstract:

Introduction: The lack of regulation of the baby's sleep-wake pattern in the first years of life affects the health of thousands of women. Maternal sleep deprivation can trigger or aggravate psychosomatic problems such as depression, anxiety and stress that can directly influence maternal safety, with consequences for the baby's and mother's sleep. Such conditions can affect the family's quality of life and child development. Objective: To correlate maternal security with maternal state anxiety scores and the mother's and baby's total sleep time. Method: Cross-sectional study carried out with 96 mothers of babies aged 10 to 24 months, accompanied by nursing professionals linked to a Federal University in Northeast Brazil. Study variables were maternal security, maternal state anxiety scores, infant latency and sleep time, and total nocturnal sleep time of mother and infant. Maternal safety was calculated using a four-point Likert scale (1=not at all safe, 2=somewhat safe, 3=very safe, 4=completely safe). Maternal anxiety was measured by State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, state-anxiety subscale whose scores vary from 20 to 80 points, and the higher the score, the higher the anxiety levels. Scores below 33 are considered mild; from 33 to 49, moderate and above 49, high. As for the total nocturnal sleep time, values between 7-9 hours of sleep were considered adequate for mothers, and values between 9-12 hours for the baby, according to the guidelines of the National Sleep Foundation. For the sleep latency time, a time equal to or less than 20 min was considered adequate. It is noteworthy that the latency time and the time of night sleep of the mother and the baby were obtained by the mother's subjective report. To correlate the data, Spearman's correlation was used in the statistical package R version 3.6.3. Results: 96 women and babies participated, aged 22 to 38 years (mean 30.8) and 10 to 24 months (mean 14.7), respectively. The average of maternal security was 2.89 (unsafe); Mean maternal state anxiety scores were 43.75 (moderate anxiety). The babies' average sleep latency time was 39.6 min (>20 min). The mean sleep times of the mother and baby were, respectively, 6h and 42min and 8h and 19min, both less than the recommended nocturnal sleep time. Maternal security was positively correlated with maternal state anxiety scores (rh=266, p=0.009) and negatively correlated with infant sleep latency (rh= -0.30. P=0.003). Baby sleep time was positively correlated with maternal sleep time. (rh 0.46, p<0.001). Conclusion: The more secure the mothers considered themselves, the higher the anxiety scores and the shorter the baby's sleep latency. Also, the longer the baby sleeps, the longer the mother sleeps. Thus, interventions are needed to promote the quality and efficiency of sleep for both mother and baby.

Keywords: sleep, anxiety, infant, mother-child relations

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Authors: Melanie Redding

Abstract:

Historic widespread nitrate contamination of the Lower Yakima Valley aquifer in Washington State initiated a community-based effort to reduce nitrate concentrations to below-drinking water standards. This group commissioned studies on characterizing local nitrogen sources, deep soil assessments, drinking water, and assessing nitrate concentrations at the water table. Nitrate is the most prevalent groundwater contaminant with common sources from animal and human waste, fertilizers, plants and precipitation. It is challenging to address groundwater contamination when common sources, such as agriculture, on-site sewage systems, and animal production, are widespread. Remediation is not possible, so mitigation is essential. The Lower Yakima Valley is located over 175,000 acres, with a population of 56,000 residents. Approximately 25% of the population do not have access to safe, clean drinking water, and 20% of the population is at or below the poverty level. Agriculture is the primary economic land-use activity. Irrigated agriculture and livestock production make up the largest percentage of acreage and nitrogen load. Commodities include apples, grapes, hops, dairy, silage corn, triticale, alfalfa and cherries. These commodities are important to the economic viability of the residents of the Lower Yakima Valley, as well as Washington State. Mitigation of nitrate in groundwater is challenging. The goal is to ensure everyone has safe drinking water. There are no easy remedies due to the extensive and pervasiveness of the contamination. Monitoring at the water table indicates that 45% of the 30 spatially distributed monitoring wells exceeded the drinking water standard. This indicates that there are multiple sources that are impacting water quality. Washington State has several areas which have extensive groundwater nitrate contamination. The groundwater in these areas continues to degrade over time. However, the Lower Yakima Valley is being successful in addressing this health issue because of the following reasons: the community is engaged and committed; there is one common goal; there has been extensive public education and outreach to citizens; and generating credible data using sound scientific methods. Work in this area is continuing as an ambient groundwater monitoring network is established to assess the condition of the aquifer over time. Nitrate samples are being collected from 170 wells, spatially distributed across the aquifer. This research entails quarterly sampling for two years to characterize seasonal variability and then continue annually afterward. This assessment will provide the data to statistically determine trends in nitrate concentrations across the aquifer, over time. Thirty-three of these wells are monitoring wells that are screened across the aquifer. The water quality from these wells are indicative of activities at the land surface. Additional work is being conducted to identify land use management practices that are effective in limiting nitrate migration through the soil column. Tracking nitrate in the soil column every season is an important component of bridging land-use practices with the fate and transport of nitrate through the subsurface. Patience, tenacity, and the ability to think outside the box are essential for dealing with widespread nitrate contamination of groundwater.

Keywords: community, groundwater, monitoring, nitrate

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Authors: Feng Tao, Han Ye, Shaoyi Liao

Abstract:

City constructions collapse after earthquake and people will be buried under ruins. Search and rescue should be conducted as soon as possible to save them. Therefore, according to the complicated environment, irregular aftershocks and rescue allow of no delay, a kind of target localization method based on RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indication) is proposed in this article. The target localization technology based on RSSI with the features of low cost and low complexity has been widely applied to nodes localization in WSN (Wireless Sensor Networks). Based on the theory of RSSI transmission and the environment impact to RSSI, this article conducts the experiments in five scenes, and multiple filtering algorithms are applied to original RSSI value in order to establish the signal propagation model with minimum test error respectively. Target location can be calculated from the distance, which can be estimated from signal propagation model, through improved centroid algorithm. Result shows that the localization technology based on RSSI is suitable for large-scale nodes localization. Among filtering algorithms, mixed filtering algorithm (average of average, median and Gaussian filtering) performs better than any other single filtering algorithm, and by using the signal propagation model, the minimum error of distance between known nodes and target node in the five scene is about 3.06m.

Keywords: signal propagation model, centroid algorithm, localization, mixed filtering, RSSI

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Authors: Namugenyi Ephrance Eunice, Julianne Sansa Otim, Marco Zennaro, Stephen D. Wolthusen

Abstract:

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of connected data processing devices, mechanical and digital machinery, items, animals, or people that may send data across a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. Each component has sensors that can pick up on specific phenomena, as well as processing software and other technologies that can link to and communicate with other systems and/or devices over the Internet or other communication networks and exchange data with them. IoT is increasingly being used in fields other than consumer electronics, such as public safety, emergency response, industrial automation, autonomous vehicles, the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), and general environmental monitoring. Consumer-based IoT applications, like smart home gadgets and wearables, are also becoming more prevalent. This paper presents the main IoT deployment areas for environmental monitoring in developing regions and the backhaul options suitable for them. A detailed review of each of the list of papers selected for the study is included in section III of this document. The study includes an overview of existing IoT deployments, the underlying communication architectures, protocols, and technologies that support them. This overview shows that Low Power Wireless Area Networks (LPWANs), as summarized in Table 1, are very well suited for monitoring environment architectures designed for remote locations. LoRa technology, particularly the LoRaWAN protocol, has an advantage over other technologies due to its low power consumption, adaptability, and suitable communication range. The prevailing challenges of the different architectures are discussed and summarized in Table 3 of the IV section, where the main problem is the obstruction of communication paths by buildings, trees, hills, etc.

Keywords: communication technologies, environmental monitoring, Internet of Things, IoT deployment challenges

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Authors: Nadir Atayev, Mehman Hasanov

Abstract:

Future spacecraft will require a structural change in the way data is transmitted due to the increase in the volume of data required for space communication. Current radio frequency communication systems are already facing a bottleneck in the volume of data sent to the ground segment due to their technological and regulatory characteristics. To overcome these issues, free space optics communication plays an important role in the integrated terrestrial space network due to its advantages such as significantly improved data rate compared to traditional RF technology, low cost, improved security, and inter-satellite free space communication, as well as uses a laser beam, which is an optical signal carrier to establish satellite-ground & ground-to-satellite links. In this approach, there is a need for high-speed and energy-efficient systems as a base platform for sending high-volume video & audio data. Nano Satellite and its branch CubeSat platforms have more technical functionality than large satellites, wheres cover an important part of the space sector, with their Low-Earth-Orbit application area with low-cost design and technical functionality for building networks using different communication topologies. Along the research theme developed in this regard, the output parameter indicators for the FSO of the optical communication transceiver subsystem on the existing CubeSat platforms, and in the direction of improving the mentioned parameters of this communication methodology, 3D optical switch and laser beam controlled optical transponder with 2U CubeSat structural subsystems and application in the Low Earth Orbit satellite network topology, as well as its functional performance and structural parameters, has been studied accordingly.

Keywords: cubesat, free space optics, nano satellite, optical laser communication.

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