Search results for: internal attention

Authors: Ekaterina A. Redkina

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The necessity and importance of teaching professionally oriented content in English needs no proof nowadays. Consequently, the ability to share personal ESP teaching experience seems of great importance. This paper is based on the 8-year ESP and EFL teaching experience at the Moscow State Linguistic University, Moscow, Russia, and presents theoretical analysis of specifics, possible problems, and perspectives of teaching Psychology in English to Russian psychology-students. The paper concerns different issues that are common for different ESP classrooms, and familiar to different teachers. Among them are: designing ESP curriculum (for psychologists in this case), finding the balance between content and language in the classroom, main teaching principles (the 4 C’s), the choice of assessment techniques and teaching material. The main objective of teaching psychology in English to Russian psychology students is developing knowledge and skills essential for professional psychologists. Belonging to international professional community presupposes high-level content-specific knowledge and skills, high level of linguistic skills and cross-cultural linguistic ability and finally high level of professional etiquette. Thus, teaching psychology in English pursues 3 main outcomes, such as content, language and professional skills. The paper provides explanation of each of the outcomes. Examples are also given. Particular attention is paid to the lesson structure, its objectives and the difference between a typical EFL and ESP lesson. There is also made an attempt to find commonalities between teaching ESP and CLIL. There is an approach that states that CLIL is more common for schools, while ESP is more common for higher education. The paper argues that CLIL methodology can be successfully used in ESP teaching and that many CLIL activities are also well adapted for professional purposes. The research paper provides insights into the process of teaching psychologists in Russia, real teaching experience and teaching techniques that have proved efficient over time.

Keywords: ESP, CLIL, content, language, psychology in English, Russian students

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Authors: Magu Raam Prasaad R., Venkatramani Jagadish

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Recent studies in the literature have shown that randomly fluctuating wind flows can give rise to a distinct regime of pre-flutter oscillations called intermittency. Intermittency is characterized by the presence of sporadic bursts of high amplitude oscillations interspersed amidst low-amplitude aperiodic fluctuations. The focus of this study is on investigating the energy harvesting potential of these intermittent oscillations. Available literature has by and large devoted its attention on extracting energy from flutter oscillations. The possibility of harvesting energy from pre-flutter regimes have remained largely unexplored. However, extracting energy from violent flutter oscillations can be severely detrimental to the structural integrity of airfoil structures. Consequently, investigating the relatively stable pre-flutter responses for energy extraction applications is of practical importance. The present study is devoted towards addressing these concerns. A pitch-plunge airfoil with cubic hardening nonlinearity in the plunge and pitch degree of freedom is considered. The input flow fluctuations are modelled using a sinusoidal term with randomly perturbed frequencies. An electromagnetic coupling is provided to the pitch-plunge equations, such that, energy from the wind induced vibrations of the structural response are extracted. With the mean flow speed as the bifurcation parameter, a fourth order Runge-Kutta based time marching algorithm is used to solve the governing aeroelastic equations with electro-magnetic coupling. The harnessed energy from the intermittency regime is presented and the results are discussed in comparison to that obtained from the flutter regime. The insights from this study could be useful in health monitoring of aeroelastic structures.

Keywords: aeroelasticity, energy harvesting, intermittency, randomly fluctuating flows

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Authors: Bao Trang Thi Nguyen, Stephen Moore

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A large number of Vietnamese lecturers leave their home institutions every year to pursue an education in Australia and in other countries and most of whom return home to careers back in the Vietnamese work context. However, to the authors’ best knowledge, there is little empirical knowledge about these Vietnamese returnees. Much less is about how these overseas-trained returnees continue doing research while taking a lecturing role, though research has recently received growing heightened attention in Vietnamese Higher Education institutions and returnees are an important source of human resources. The research is mixed-methods in nature with questionnaires and interviews as the main instruments of data collection. Seven-six Vietnamese returnees working from a broad range of disciplines from different higher education institutions in central Vietnam completed a questionnaire on their perceived constraints and affordances in teaching and continuing doing research upon return from their overseas education. Twenty-five of these returnees took part in a subsequent in-depth interview which lasted from 30 minutes to an hour, which further seeks understanding of their lived individual experiences and stories. The overall results show that time constraint, heavy teaching loads, and varied administrative and familial roles are among inhibiting factors. However, these factors were more constraining for some returnees more than others. Their motivations to do research varied, from passion to work pressure and self-perceived responsibilities. Above all, these were mediated by personal, institutional and disciplinary contexts. The paper argues for a nuanced understanding of returnee academics’ life as complex and layered with the multiple identities they associated themselves with and the differing trajectories they embarked on as to what they perceived important as a university lecturer. Implications for Higher Education management and administration and professional development are addressed.

Keywords: Vietnamese overseas-trained returnees, higher education, teaching, doing research, constraints, affordances

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Authors: Claudia Pimentel, Nuno Resende, Maria Fatima Lambert

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In the present time, catastrophe seems to be inevitable, and individuals are permanently overwhelmed with challenges that test one’s ability to cope with reality. Undoubtedly, photography surpassed the barrier of efficient communication in a world filled with omnifarious narratives. It wandered an outing shorter than words and younger than other sciences but became, nowadays, imperative in the context of several fields of knowledge, namely Heritage studies. Heritage and photography thus emerge as unapologetically related concepts, a fact that makes them equally relevant in today's society. Political, economic, social and humanitarian challenges alter the way in which the relationship with the past is managed and the way in which identities and ideas for the future are constructed. Ruins and destruction have become part of aesthetics discourse since the 18th century and are an area of interest when we discuss cultural heritage preservation. The image proves to be a unique way of revealing the event details when we refer to a catastrophic situation, whether it be anthropic, social or climatic. Like poetry, which has a challenging connection with silence, image is capable of creating spaces of sound and silence, and it is often these “pseudo-voids” that capture the attention of the spectator, of the one who sees/observes/contacts with the photography. The way we look at the catastrophe, how we describe it, and the images we keep in our memory will determine the record/capture/news of the event. We, thus, have a visual record, a document that will contribute to the creation of individual and collective identity, in a jigsaw puzzle of memories, pseudo memories and post memories. Based on photographic records in the Portuguese press, we intend to rethink the earthquake at Angra do Heroísmo – Azores in 1980, exploring the viewer´s perspective on the catastrophe’s iconography under the perspective of aesthetics and genealogy of the catastrophe.

Keywords: photography, aesthetics, catastrophe, Portugal

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Authors: Mazwane S., Makhura M. N., Ginege A.

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Digitalization in South Africa has received considerable attention from policymakers. The support for the development of the digital economy by the South African government has been demonstrated through the enactment of various national policies and strategies. This study sought to develop an index for agricultural digitalization by applying composite confirmatory analysis (CCA). Another aim was to determine the factors that affect the development of digitalization in PLAS farms. Data on the indicators of the three dimensions of digitalization were collected from 300 Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (PLAS) farms in South Africa using semi-structured questionnaires. Confirmatory composite analysis (CCA) was employed to reduce the items into three digitalization dimensions and ultimately to a digitalization index. Standardized digitalization index scores were extracted and fitted to a linear regression model to determine the factors affecting digitalization development. The results revealed that the model shows practical validity and can be used to measure digitalization development as measures of fit (geodesic distance, standardized root mean square residual, and squared Euclidean distance) were all below their respective 95%quantiles of bootstrap discrepancies (HI95 values). Therefore, digitalization is an emergent variable that can be measured using CCA. The average level of digitalization in PLAS farms was 0.2 and varied significantly across provinces. The factors that significantly influence digitalization development in PLAS land reform farms were age, gender, farm type, network type, and cellular data type. This should enable researchers and policymakers to understand the level of digitalization and patterns of development, as well as correctly attribute digitalization development to the contributing factors.

Keywords: agriculture, digitalization, confirmatory composite model, land reform, proactive land acquisition strategy, South Africa

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Authors: Emad A. S. Abu-Ayyash

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Cohesive devices, the linguistic tools that are usually employed to hold the different parts of the text together, have been the focus of a significant number of discourse analysis studies. These linguistic tools have grabbed the attention of researchers since the inception of the first and most comprehensive model of cohesion in 1976. However, it was noticed that some cohesive devices (e.g., endophoric reference, conjunctions, ellipsis, substitution, and lexical ties) – being thought of as more popular than others (e.g., exophoric reference) – were over-researched. The present paper explores the usage of two cohesive devices that have been evidently almost absent from discourse analysis studies. These cohesive devices are exophoric and homophoric references, the linguistic items that can be interpreted in terms of the physical and cultural contexts of discourse. The significance of the current paper, therefore, stems from the fact that it attempts to fill a gap in the research conducted so far on cohesive devices. This study provides an explanation of the concepts of the cohesive devices that have been employed in a plethora of research on cohesion and elucidates the relevant context-related concepts. The paper also identifies the gap in cohesive devices research. Exophora and homophora, the least visited cohesive devices in previous studies, were qualitatively and quantitatively explored in six opinion articles, four produced by eight postgraduate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students in a university in the United Arab Emirates and two by professional NS writers in the Independent and the Guardian. The six pieces were about the United Kingdom Independent Party (UKIP) leader’s call to ban the burqa in the UK and were analysed vis-a-vis the employment and function of homophora and exophora. The study found that both EFL students and native speakers employed exophora and homophora considerably in their writing to serve a variety of functions, including building assumptions, supporting main ideas, and involving the readers among others.

Keywords: cohesive devices, context, culture, exophoric reference, homophoric reference

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Authors: Dana Alina Magdas, Nicoleta Simona Vedeanu, Ioana Feher, Rares Stiufiuc

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Food and beverages authentication using rapid and non-expensive analytical tools represents nowadays an important challenge. In this regard, the potential of vibrational techniques in food authentication has gained an increased attention during the last years. For wines discrimination, Raman spectroscopy appears more feasible to be used as compared with IR (infrared) spectroscopy, because of the relatively weak water bending mode in the vibrational spectroscopy fingerprint range. Despite this, the use of Raman technique in wine discrimination is in an early stage. Taking this into consideration, the wine discrimination potential of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) technique is reported in the present work. The novelty of this study, compared with the previously reported studies, concerning the application of vibrational techniques in wine discrimination consists in the fact that the present work presents the wines differentiation based on the individual signals obtained from deconvoluted spectra. In order to achieve wines classification with respect to variety, geographical origin and vintage, the peaks intensities obtained after spectra deconvolution were compared using supervised chemometric methods like Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA). For this purpose, a set of 20 white Romanian wines from different viticultural Romanian regions four varieties, was considered. Chemometric methods applied directly to row SERS experimental spectra proved their efficiency, but discrimination markers identification found to be very difficult due to the overlapped signals as well as for the band shifts. By using this approach, a better general view related to the differences that appear among the wines in terms of compositional differentiation could be reached.

Keywords: chemometry, SERS, variety, wines discrimination

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Authors: Tabussam Tufail

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Purpose: The core purpose of the current review article is to elaborate the phytochemicals present in turnip (brassica rapus l.) and also allied health claims. Plant-based foods contain a significant amount of bioactive compounds which provide desirable health benefits beyond the basic nutrition. Epidemiological evidence suggests that consumption of a diet rich in vegetables and fruits has positive implications for human health. Design: Potential of turnip peroxidase (TP) for the treatment of phenolic-contaminated solutions has been reviewed. However, issues of taste along with behavioral nutrition ought to be considered. So in the last decades, special attention has been paid towards edible plants, especially those that are rich in secondary metabolites (frequently called phytochemicals) and nowadays, there is an increasing interest in the antioxidant activity of such phytochemicals present in the diet. These chemicals favor nutritional and phytotherapy that is emerging as new concepts of health aid in recent years. Turnip is rich in these valuable ingredients though it can be employed as having health promoting and healing properties. Findings: Numerous bioactive components i.e. organic acids, phenolic compounds, turnip peroxidase, kaempeferol, vitamin-K, etc. are present in turnip. The review focused on the significance of plant derived (especially turnip) phenolic compounds as a source of certain beneficial compounds for human health. Owing to the presence of bioactive moieties, the turnip has high antioxidant activity, positive role in blood clotting, effectual in phenobarbital-induced sleeping time, effective against hepatic injury in diabetics and also have a good hepatoprotective role. Strong recommendations for consumption of nutraceuticals from turnip have become progressively popular to improve health, and to prevent from diseases.

Keywords: phytochemicals, turnip, antioxidants, health benefits

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Authors: Nayak Amar, Turner Naomi, Gobina Edward

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The Scottish Higher Education Institutes must report their scope 1 & 2 emissions, whereas reporting scope 3 is optional. Scope 3 is indirect emissions which embodies a significant component of total carbon footprint and therefore it is important to record, measure and report it accurately. Robert Gordon University (RGU) reported only business travel, grid transmission and distribution, water supply and transport, and recycling scope 3 emissions. This study estimates the RGUs total scope 3 emissions by comparing it with a similar HEI in scale. The scope 3 emission reporting of sixteen Scottish HEI was studied. Glasgow Caledonian University was identified as the nearest neighbour by comparing its students' full time equivalent, staff full time equivalent, research-teaching split, budget, and foundation year. Apart from the peer, data was also collected from the Higher Education Statistics Agency database. RGU reported emissions from business travel, grid transmission and distribution, water supply, and transport and recycling. This study estimated RGUs scope 3 emissions from procurement, student-staff commute, and international student trip. The result showed that RGU covered only 11% of the scope 3 emissions. The major contributor to scope 3 emissions were procurement (48%), student commute (21%), international student trip (16%), and staff commute (4%). The estimated scope 3 emission was more than 14 times the reported emissions. This study has shown the relative importance of each scope 3 emissions source, which gives a guideline for the HEIs, on where to focus their attention to capture maximum scope 3 emissions. Moreover, it has demonstrated that it is possible to estimate the scope 3 emissions with limited data.

Keywords: HEI, university, emission calculations, scope 3 emissions, emissions reporting

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Authors: Murtala Gada Abubakar, Aliyu T. Umar

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A substantial part of Nigeria is part of semi-arid areas of the world, underlain by basement complex (hard) rocks which are very poor in both transmission and storage of appreciable quantity of water. Recently, a growing attention is being paid on the need to develop water resources in these areas largely due to concerns about increasing droughts and the need to maintain water security challenges. While there is ample body of knowledge that captures the hydrological behaviours of the sedimentary part, reported research which unambiguously illustrates water distribution in the basement complex of the Sokoto basin remains sparse. Considering the growing need to meet the water requirements of those living in this region necessitated the call for accurate water balance estimations that can inform a sustainable planning and development to address water security challenges for the area. To meet this task, a one-dimensional soil water balance model was developed and utilised to assess the state of water distribution within the Sokoto basin basement complex using measured meteorological variables and information about different landscapes within the complex. The model simulated the soil water storage and rates of input and output of water in response to climate and irrigation where applicable using data from 2001 to 2010 inclusive. The results revealed areas within the Sokoto basin basement complex that are rich and deficient in groundwater resource. The high potential areas identified includes the fadama, the fractured rocks and the cultivated lands, while the low potential areas are the sealed surfaces and non-fractured rocks. This study concludes that the modelling approach is a useful tool for assessing the hydrological behaviour and for better understanding the water resource availability within a basement complex.

Keywords: basement complex, hydrological processes, Sokoto Basin, water security

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Authors: Sakulsri Srisaracam

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Social media has become an important source of information for the public and the media profession. Some social issues raised on social media are picked up by journalists to report on other platforms. This relationship between social media and mainstream media can sometimes drive public debate or stimulate social movements. The question to examine is in what situations can social media conversations raise awareness and stimulate change on public issues. This study addresses the communication patterns of social media conversations driving covert issues into mainstream media and leading to social advocacy movements. In methodological terms, the study findings are based on a content analysis of Facebook, Twitter, news websites and television media reports on three different case studies – saving Bryde’s whale, protests against a government proposal to downsize the Office of Knowledge Management and Development in Thailand, and a dengue fever campaign. These case studies were chosen because they represent issues that most members of the public do not pay much attention to but social media conversations stimulated public debate and calls to action. This study found: 1) Collective social media conversations can stimulate public debate and encourage change at three levels – awareness, public debate, and action of policy and social change. The level depends on the communication patterns of online users and media coverage. 2) Patterns of communication have to be designed to combine social media conversations, online opinion leaders, mainstream media coverage and call to both online and offline action to motivate social change. Thus, this result suggests that social media is a powerful platform for collective communication and setting the agenda on public issues for mainstream media. However, for social change to succeed, social media should be used to mobilize online movements to move offline too.

Keywords: public issues, mainstream media, social media, social movement

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Authors: Mostafa Mjahed

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This paper concerns the control of a nonlinear system using two different methods, reference model and genetic algorithm. The quadcopter is a nonlinear unstable system, which is a part of aerial robots. It is constituted by four rotors placed at the end of a cross. The center of this cross is occupied by the control circuit. Its motions are governed by six degrees of freedom: three rotations around 3 axes (roll, pitch and yaw) and the three spatial translations. The control of such system is complex, because of nonlinearity of its dynamic representation and the number of parameters, which it involves. Numerous studies have been developed to model and stabilize such systems. The classical PID and LQ correction methods are widely used. If the latter represent the advantage to be simple because they are linear, they reveal the drawback to require the presence of a linear model to synthesize. It also implies the complexity of the established laws of command because the latter must be widened on all the domain of flight of these quadcopter. Note that, if the classical design methods are widely used to control aeronautical systems, the Artificial Intelligence methods as genetic algorithms technique receives little attention. In this paper, we suggest comparing two PID design methods. Firstly, the parameters of the PID are calculated according to the reference model. In a second phase, these parameters are established using genetic algorithms. By reference model, we mean that the corrected system behaves according to a reference system, imposed by some specifications: settling time, zero overshoot etc. Inspired from the natural evolution of Darwin's theory advocating the survival of the best, John Holland developed this evolutionary algorithm. Genetic algorithm (GA) possesses three basic operators: selection, crossover and mutation. We start iterations with an initial population. Each member of this population is evaluated through a fitness function. Our purpose is to correct the behavior of the quadcopter around three axes (roll, pitch and yaw) with 3 PD controllers. For the altitude, we adopt a PID controller.

Keywords: quadcopter, genetic algorithm, PID, fitness, model, control, nonlinear system

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Authors: Mahshid Asadollahi, Mohammad Akbari Asl

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The restaurant industry is highly competitive, and restaurants are constantly looking for ways to attract new customers and retain their existing ones. Nonverbal communication is an important factor in creating a positive customer experience and can play a significant role in attracting customers to restaurants. Nonverbal communication can include body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, and physical proximity, among other things. The present study aimed to investigate the impact of nonverbal communication between restaurant employees and customers on attracting customers in food courts in Tehran. The research method was descriptive-correlational, and the statistical population of this study included all customers of food court restaurants in Tehran, which was about 30 restaurants. The research sample was selected through probability sampling, and 440 customers completed emotional response, customer satisfaction, and nonverbal communication questionnaires in person. The data obtained were analyzed using multiple regression analysis. The results showed that vocal language, employee proximity, physical appearance, and speech movements, as components of nonverbal communication of restaurant employees, had an impact on attracting customers. Additionally, positive and negative emotions of customers have a significant relationship with customer attraction in Food Court restaurants. The study shows that various nonverbal communication factors can play a significant role in attracting customers, and that positive and negative customer emotions can affect customer satisfaction. Therefore, restaurant owners and managers should pay attention to nonverbal communication and train their employees accordingly to create a positive and welcoming atmosphere for customers.

Keywords: verbal language, proximity of employees, physical appearance, speech gestures, nonverbal communication, customer emotions, customer attraction

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Authors: Sylvester Akpah, Selasi Vondee

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Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) as they are also known, drones have attracted increasing attention in recent years due to their ubiquitous nature and boundless applications in the areas of communication, surveying, aerial photography, weather forecasting, medical delivery, surveillance amongst others. Operated remotely in real-time or pre-programmed, drones can fly autonomously or on pre-defined routes. The application of these aerial vehicles has successfully penetrated the world due to technological evolution, thus a lot more businesses are utilizing their capabilities. Unfortunately, while drones are replete with the benefits stated supra, they are riddled with some problems, mainly attributed to the complexities in learning how to master drone flights, collision avoidance and enterprise security. Additional challenges, such as the analysis of flight data recorded by sensors attached to the drone may take time and require expert help to analyse and understand. This paper presents an autonomous drone control system using a chatbot. The system allows for easy control of drones using conversations with the aid of Natural Language Processing, thus to reduce the workload needed to set up, deploy, control, and monitor drone flight missions. The results obtained at the end of the study revealed that the drone connected to the chatbot was able to initiate flight missions with just text and voice commands, enable conversation and give real-time feedback from data and requests made to the chatbot. The results further revealed that the system was able to process natural language and produced human-like conversational abilities using Artificial Intelligence (Natural Language Understanding). It is recommended that radio signal adapters be used instead of wireless connections thus to increase the range of communication with the aerial vehicle.

Keywords: artificial ntelligence, chatbot, natural language processing, unmanned aerial vehicle

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Authors: Shelley Harrington

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As a result of increasingly dynamic business environments, the creation and fostering of dynamic capabilities, [those capabilities that enable sustained competitive success despite of dynamism through the awareness and reconfiguration of internal and external competencies], supported by organisational learning [a dynamic capability] has gained increased and prevalent momentum in the research arena. Presenting findings funded by the Economic Social Research Council, this paper investigates the extent to which Senior Management Team (SMT) personality (at the trait and facet level) is associated with the creation of dynamic managerial capabilities at the team level, and effective organisational learning/knowledge sharing within the firm. In doing so, this research highlights the importance of micro-foundations in organisational psychology and specifically dynamic capabilities, a field which to date has largely ignored the importance of psychology in understanding these important and necessary capabilities. Using a direct measure of personality (NEO PI-3) at the trait and facet level across 32 high technology and finance firms in the UK, their CEOs (N=32) and their complete SMTs [N=212], a new measure of dynamic managerial capabilities at the team level was created and statistically validated for use within the work. A quantitative methodology was employed with regression and gap analysis being used to show the empirical foundations of personality being positioned as a micro-foundation of dynamic capabilities. The results of this study found that personality homogeneity within the SMT was required to strengthen the dynamic managerial capabilities of sensing, seizing and transforming, something which was required to reflect strong organisational learning at middle management level [N=533]. In particular, it was found that the greater the difference [t-score gaps] between the personality profiles of a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and their complete, collective SMT, the lower the resulting self-reported nature of dynamic managerial capabilities. For example; the larger the difference between a CEOs level of dutifulness, a facet contributing to the definition of conscientiousness, and their SMT’s level of dutifulness, the lower the reported level of transforming, a capability fundamental to strategic change in a dynamic business environment. This in turn directly questions recent trends, particularly in upper echelons research highlighting the need for heterogeneity within teams. In doing so, it successfully positions personality as a micro-foundation of dynamic capabilities, thus contributing to recent discussions from within the strategic management field calling for the need to empirically explore dynamic capabilities at such a level.

Keywords: dynamic managerial capabilities, senior management teams, personality, dynamism

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Authors: J. Iwaro, A. Mwasha, K. Ramsubhag

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Global warming has become a threat of our time. It poses challenges to the existence of beings on earth, the built environment, natural environment and has made a clear impact on the level of energy and water consumption. As such, increase in the ambient temperature increases indoor and outdoor temperature level of the buildings which brings about the use of more energy and mechanical air conditioning systems. In addition, in view of the increased modernization and economic growth in the developing countries, a significant amount of energy is being used, especially those with hot climatic conditions. Since modernization in developing countries is rising rapidly, more pressure is being placed on the buildings and energy resources to satisfy the indoor comfort requirements. This paper presents a sustainable passive roof solution as a means of reducing energy cooling loads for satisfying human comfort requirements in a hot climate. As such, the study based on the field study data discusses indoor thermal roof design strategies for a hot climate by investigating the impacts of roof thermal performance on indoor thermal comfort in naturally ventilated building envelope small scaled structures. In this respect, the traditional concrete flat roof, corrugated galvanised iron roof and pre-painted standing seam roof were used. The experiment made used of three identical small scale physical models constructed and sited on the roof of a building at the University of the West Indies. The results show that the utilization of insulation in traditional roofing systems will significantly reduce heat transfer between the internal and ambient environment, thus reducing the energy demand of the structure and the relative carbon footprint of a structure per unit area over its lifetime. Also, the application of flat slab concrete roofing system showed the best performance as opposed to the metal roof sheeting alternative systems. In addition, it has been shown experimentally through this study that a sustainable passive roof solution such as insulated flat concrete roof in hot dry climate has a better cooling strength that can provide building occupant with a better thermal comfort, conducive indoor conditions and energy efficiency.

Keywords: building envelope, roof, energy consumption, thermal comfort

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Authors: Mohannad Mayyas, Farshid Pahlevani, Veena Sahajwalla

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Automotive shredder residue (ASR) is an industrial waste, generated during the recycling process of End-of-life vehicles. The large increasing production volumes of ASR and its hazardous content have raised concerns worldwide, leading some countries to impose more restrictions on ASR waste disposal and encouraging researchers to find efficient solutions for ASR processing. Although a great deal of research work has been carried out, all proposed solutions, to our knowledge, remain commercially and technically unproven. While the volume of waste materials continues to increase, the production of materials from new sustainable sources has become of great importance. Advanced ceramic materials such as nitrides, carbides and borides are widely used in a variety of applications. Among these ceramics, a great deal of attention has been recently paid to Titanium nitride (TiN) owing to its unique characteristics. In our study, we propose a new sustainable approach for ASR management where TiN nanoparticles with ideal particle size ranging from 200 to 315 nm can be synthesized as a by-product. In this approach, TiN is thermally synthesized by nitriding pressed mixture of automotive shredder residue (ASR) incorporated with titanium oxide (TiO2). Results indicated that TiO2 influences and catalyses degradation reactions of ASR and helps to achieve fast and full decomposition. In addition, the process resulted in titanium nitride (TiN) ceramic with several unique structures (porous nanostructured, polycrystalline, micro-spherical and nano-sized structures) that were simply obtained by tuning the ratio of TiO2 to ASR, and a product with appreciable TiN content of around 85% was achieved after only one hour nitridation at 1550 °C.

Keywords: automotive shredder residue, nano-ceramics, waste treatment, titanium nitride, thermal conversion

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Authors: Paolo Guzzini, Emad Samuel M. Ebeid

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Bridges and Railways are critical infrastructures. Ensuring safety for transports using such assets is a primary goal as it directly impacts the lives of people. By the way, improving safety could require increased investments in O&M, and therefore optimizing resource usage for asset maintenance becomes crucial. Drones4Safety (D4S), a European project funded under the H2020 Research and Innovation Action (RIA) program, aims to increase the safety of the European civil transport by building a system that relies on 3 main pillars: • Drones operating autonomously in swarm mode; • Drones able to recharge themselves using inductive phenomena produced by transmission lines in the nearby of bridges and railways assets to be inspected; • Data acquired that are analyzed with AI-empowered algorithms for defect detection This paper describes the business model behind this disruptive project. The Business Model is structured in 2 parts: • The first part is focused on the design of the business model Canvas, to explain the value provided by the Drone4safety project; • The second part aims at defining a detailed financial analysis, with the target of calculating the IRR (Internal Return rate) and the NPV (Net Present Value) of the investment in a 7 years plan (2 years to run the project + 5 years post-implementation). As to the financial analysis 2 different points of view are assumed: • Point of view of the Drones4safety company in charge of designing, producing, and selling the new system; • Point of view of the Utility company that will adopt the new system in its O&M practices; Assuming the point of view of the Drones4safety company 3 scenarios were considered: • Selling the drones > revenues will be produced by the drones’ sales; • Renting the drones > revenues will be produced by the rental of the drones (with a time-based model); • Selling the data acquisition service > revenues will be produced by the sales of pictures acquired by drones; Assuming the point of view of a utility adopting the D4S system, a 4th scenario was analyzed taking into account the decremental costs related to the change of operation and maintenance practices. The paper will show, for both companies, what are the key parameters affecting most of the business model and which are the sustainable scenarios.

Keywords: a swarm of drones, AI, bridges, railways, drones4safety company, utility companies

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Authors: Yulan Wu

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With the rapid development of social media, the issue of fake news has gained considerable prominence, drawing the attention of both the public and governments. The widespread dissemination of false information poses a tangible threat across multiple domains of society, including politics, economy, and health. However, much research has concentrated on supervised training models within specific domains, their effectiveness diminishes when applied to identify fake news across multiple domains. To solve this problem, some approaches based on domain labels have been proposed. By segmenting news to their specific area in advance, judges in the corresponding field may be more accurate on fake news. However, these approaches disregard the fact that news records can pertain to multiple domains, resulting in a significant loss of valuable information. In addition, the datasets used for training must all be domain-labeled, which creates unnecessary complexity. To solve these problems, an unsupervised domain knowledge discovery framework for fake news detection is proposed. Firstly, to effectively retain the multidomain knowledge of the text, a low-dimensional vector for each news text to capture domain embeddings is generated. Subsequently, a feature extraction module utilizing the unsupervisedly discovered domain embeddings is used to extract the comprehensive features of news. Finally, a classifier is employed to determine the authenticity of the news. To verify the proposed framework, a test is conducted on the existing widely used datasets, and the experimental results demonstrate that this method is able to improve the detection performance for fake news across multiple domains. Moreover, even in datasets that lack domain labels, this method can still effectively transfer domain knowledge, which can educe the time consumed by tagging without sacrificing the detection accuracy.

Keywords: fake news, deep learning, natural language processing, multiple domains

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Authors: Sarah Almuhayya, Andrew Mcbain, Gavin Humphreys

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Background. The microbiome of the upper respiratory tract (URT) has received less research attention than other body sites. This study aims to investigate the microbial ecology of the human URT with a focus on the antagonism between the corynebacteria and staphylococci. Methods. Mucosal swabs were collected from the anterior nares and nasal turbinates of 20 healthy adult subjects. Genomic DNA amplification targeting the (V4) of the 16Sr RNA gene was conducted and analyzed using QIIME. Nasal swab isolates were cultured and identified using near full-length sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. Isolates identified as corynebacteria or staphylococci were typed using (rep-PCR). Antagonism was determined using an agar-based inhibition assay. Results. Four major bacterial phyla (Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, and Proteobacteria) were identified from all volunteers. The typing of cultured staphylococci and corynebacteria suggested that intra-individual strain diversity was limited. Analysis of generated nasal microbiota profiles suggested an inverse correlation in terms of relative abundance between staphylococci and corynebacteria. Despite the apparent antagonism between these genera, it was limited when investigated on agar. Of 1000 pairwise interactions, observable zones of inhibition were only reported between a single strain of C.pseudodiphtheriticum and S.aureus. Imaging under EM revealed this effect to be bactericidal with clear lytic effects on staphylococcal cell morphology. Conclusion. Nasal microbiota is complex, but culturable staphylococci and corynebacteria were limited in terms of clone type. Analysis of generated nasal microbiota profiles suggested an inverse correlation in terms of relative abundance between these genera suggesting an antagonism or competition between these taxonomic groups.

Keywords: nasal, microbiota, S.aureus, microbioal interaction

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Authors: Chen-Ya Juan

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In recent years, the increasing number of children with special needs has brought a lot of attention by many scholars and experts in education, which enforced the preschool teachers face the harsh challenge in the classroom. To protect the right of equal education for all children, enhance the quality of children learning, and take care of the needs of children with special needs, the special education paraprofessional becomes one of the future employment trends for students of the department of the early childhood care and education. Problem-based learning is a problem-oriented instruction, which is different from traditional instruction. The instructor first designed an ambiguous problem direction, following the basic knowledge of early intervention, students had to find clues to solve the problem defined by themselves. In the class, the total instruction included 20 hours, two hours per week. The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship of student academic scores, self-awareness, learning motivation, learning attitudes, and early intervention knowledge. A total of 105 college students participated in this study and 97 questionnaires were effective. The effective response rate was 90%. The student participants included 95 females and two males. The average age of the participants was 19 years old. The questionnaires included 125 questions divided into four major dimensions: (1) Self-awareness, (2) learning motivation, (3) learning attitudes, and (4) early intervention knowledge. The results indicated (1) the scores of self-awareness were 58%; the scores of the learning motivations was 64.9%; the scores of the learning attitudes was 55.3%. (2) After the instruction, the early intervention knowledge has been increased to 64.2% from 38.4%. (3) Student’s academic performance has positive relationship with self-awareness (p < 0.05; R = 0.506), learning motivation (p < 0.05; R = 0.487), learning attitudes (p < 0.05; R = 0.527). The results implied that although students had gained early intervention knowledge by using PBL instruction, students had medium scores on self-awareness and learning attitudes, medium high in learning motivations.

Keywords: college students, children with special needs, problem-based learning, learning motivation

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Authors: Imad Abdelhamid El-Haci, Wissame Mazari, Fayçal Hassani, Fawzia Atik Bekkara

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Much attention has been paid to the antioxidants, which are expected to prevent food and living systems from peroxidative damage. Incorporation of synthetic antioxidants in food products is under strict regulation due to the potential health hazards caused by such compounds. The use of plants as traditional health remedies is very popular and important for 80% of the world’s population in African, Asian, Latin America and Middle Eastern Countries. Their use is reported to have minimal side effects. In recent years, pharmaceutical companies have spent considerable time and money in developing therapeutics based upon natural products extracted from plants. In other part, due to the continuous emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains there is continual demand for new antibiotics. Chemical compounds from medicinal plant especially are targeted by many researches. In this light, genus Polygonum (Polygonaceae), comprising about 45 genera (300 species), is distributed worldwide, mostly in north temperate regions. They have been reported to have uses in traditional medicine, such as anti-inflammation, promoting blood circulation, dysentery, diuretic, haemorrhage and many other uses. In our study, Polygonum maritimum (from Algerian coast) was extracted with 80% methanol to obtain a crude extract. P. maritimum extract (PME) had a very high content of total phenol, which was 352.49 ± 18.03 mg/g dry weight, expressed as gallic acid equivalent. PME exhibited excellent antioxidant activity, as measured using DPPH and H2O2 scavenging assays. It also showed a high antibacterial activity against gram positive bacterial strains: Bacillus cereus, Bacillus subtilis and Staphylococcus aureus with an MIC 0,12 mg/mL.

Keywords: Polygonum maritimum, crude extract, antioxidant activity, antibacterial activity

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Authors: Vipin Kumar Verma, Neeta Sehgal, Om Prakash

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Cyprinus carpio has a wide spread occurrence in the lakes and rivers of Europe and Asia. Heavy losses in natural environment due to anthropogenic activities, including pollution as well as pathogenic diseases have landed this fish in IUCN red list of vulnerable species. The significance of a suitable diet in preserving the health status of fish is widely recognized. In present study, artificial feed supplemented with leaves of two weed plants, Eichhornia crassipes and Ricinus communis were evaluated for their role on the fish immune system. To achieve this objective fish were acclimatized to laboratory conditions (25 ± 1 °C; 12 L: 12D) for 10 days prior to start of experiment and divided into 4 groups: non-challenged (negative control= A), challenged [positive control (B) and experimental (C & D)]. Group A, B were fed with non-supplemented feed while group C & D were fed with feed supplemented with 5% Eichhornia crassipes and 5% Ricinus communis respectively. Supplemented feeds were evaluated for their effect on growth, health, immune system and disease resistance in fish when challenged with Vibrio harveyi. Fingerlings of C. carpio (weight, 2.0±0.5 g) were exposed with fresh overnight culture of V. harveyi through bath immunization (concentration 2 Χ 105) for 2 hours on 10 days interval for 40 days. The growth was monitored through increase in their relative weight. The rate of mortality due to bacterial infection as well as due to effect of feed was recorded accordingly. Immune response of fish was analyzed through differential leucocyte count, percentage phagocytosis and phagocytic index. The effect of V. harveyi on fish organs were examined through histo-pathological examination of internal organs like spleen, liver and kidney. The change in the immune response was also observed through gene expression analysis. The antioxidant potential of plant extracts was measured through DPPH and FRAP assay and amount of total phenols and flavonoids were calculates through biochemical analysis. The chemical composition of plant’s methanol extracts was determined by GC-MS analysis, which showed presence of various secondary metabolites and other compounds. Investigation revealed immuno-modulatory effect of plants, when supplemented with the artificial feed of fish.

Keywords: immuno-modulation, gc-ms, Cyprinus carpio, Eichhornia crassipes, Ricinus communis

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Authors: Sujit Kumar Sinha, Madan Lal Regar

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Sewing thread plays an important role in the transformation of a two-dimensional fabric into a three-dimensional garment. The interaction of the sewing thread with the fabric at the seam not only influences the appearance of a garment but also its performance. Careful selection of sewing thread and associated parameters can only help in improvement. Over the years, ring spinning has been dominating the yarn market. In the pursuit of improvement to challenge its dominance alternative technology has also been developed. But no real challenge has been posed by the any of the developed spinning systems. Eli-Twist spinning system can be a new method of yarn manufacture to provide a product with improved mechanical and physical properties with respect to the conventional ring spun yarn. The system, patented by Suessen has gained considerable attention in the recent times. The process of produces a two-ply compact yarn with improved fiber utilization. It produces a novel structure combining all advantages of condensing and doubling. In the present study, sewing threads of three different counts each from cotton, polyester and polyester/cotton (50/50) blend were produced on a ring and Eli-Twist systems. A twist multiplier of 4.2 was used to produce all the yarns. A comparison of hairiness, tensile strength and coefficient of friction with conventional ring yarn was made. Eli-Twist yarn has shown better frictional characteristics, better tensile strength and less hairiness. The performance of the Eli-Twist sewing thread has also been found to be better than the conventional 2-ply sewing thread. The performance was estimated through seam strength, seam elongation and seam efficiency of sewn fabric. Eli-Twist sewing thread has shown less friction, less hairiness, and higher tensile strength. Eli-Twist sewing thread resulted in better seam characteristics in comparison to conventional 2-ply sewing thread.

Keywords: ring spun yarn, Eli-Twist yarn, sewing thread, seam strength, seam elongation, seam efficiency

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Authors: Vishnu V. Pillai, Sunil P. Lonkar, Akhil M. Abraham, Saeed M. Alhassan

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An effectual technology for wastewater treatment is a great demand now in order to encounter the water pollution caused by organic pollutants. Photocatalytic oxidation technology is widely used in removal of such unsafe contaminants. Among the semi-conducting metal oxides, robust and thermally stable TiO2 has emerged as a fascinating material for photocatalysis. Enhanced catalytic activity was observed for nanostructured TiO2 due to its higher surface, chemical stability and higher oxidation ability. However, higher charge carrier recombination and wide band gap of TiO2 limits its use as a photocatalyst in the UV region. It is desirable to develop a photocatalyst that can efficiently absorb the visible light, which occupies the main part of the solar spectrum. Hence, in order to extend its photocatalytic efficiency under visible light, TiO2 nanoparticles are often doped with metallic or non-metallic elements. Non-metallic doping of TiO2 has attracted much attention due to the low thermal stability and enhanced recombination of charge carriers endowed by metallic doping of TiO2. Amongst, sulfur doped TiO2 is most widely used photocatalyst in environmental purification. However, the most of S-TiO2 synthesis technique uses toxic chemicals and complex procedures. Hence, a facile, scalable and environmentally benign preparation process for S-TiO2 is highly desirable. In present work, we have demonstrated new and facile solid-state reaction method for S-TiO2 synthesis that uses abundant elemental sulfur as S source and moderate temperatures. The resulting nano-sized S-TiO2 has been successfully employed as visible light photocatalyst in methylene blue dye removal from aqueous media.

Keywords: ecofriendly, nanomaterials, methylene blue, photocatalysts

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Authors: Naim Izet Kajtazi

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Context: Although rare, glomus tumor (i.e., nonchromaffin chemodectomas and paragan¬gliomas) is the most common middle ear tumor, with female predominance. Pre-operative embolization is often required to devascularize the hypervascular tumor for better surgical outcomes. Process: A 35-year-old female presented with episodes of frequent dizziness, ear fullness, and right ear tinnitus for 12 months. Head imaging revealed a right glomus tympanicum tumor. She underwent pre-operative endovascular embolization of the glomus tympanicum tumor with surgical, cyanoacrylate-based glue. Immediately after the procedure, she developed drowsiness and severe pain in the right temporal region. Further investigations revealed a right cerebellar stroke in the posterior inferior cerebellar artery territory. She was treated with intravenous heparin, followed by one year of oral anticoagulation. With rehabilitation, she significantly recovered from her post embolization stroke. However, the tumor was resected at another institution. Ten years later, follow-up imaging indicated a gradual increase in the size of the glomus jugulare tumor, compressing the nearby critical vascular structures. She subsequently received radiation therapy to treat the residual tumor. Outcome: Currently, she has no neurological deficit, but her mild dizziness, right ear tinnitus, and hearing impairment persist. Relevance: This case highlights the complex nature of these tumors, which often bring challenges to the patients as well as treatment teams. The multi-disciplinary team approach is necessary to tailor the management plan for individual tumors. Although embolization is a safe procedure, careful attention and thoughtful anatomic knowledge regarding dangerous anastomosis are essential to avoid devastating complications. Complications occur due to encountered vessel anomalies and new anastomoses formed during the gluing and changes in hemodynamics.

Keywords: stroke, embolization, MRI brain, cerebral angiogram

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Authors: Timothy Akinwande, Eddie C. M. Hui

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Housing the urban poor has remained a challenge for many years across the world, especially in developing economies, despite the apparent research attention and policy interventions. It is apt to investigate the prevalent affordable housing (AH) provision challenges using unconventional approaches. It is pragmatic to thoroughly examine housing experts to provide supply-side solutions to AH challenges and investigate informal settlers to deduce solutions from AH demand viewpoints. This study being the supply-side investigation of an ongoing research, interrogated housing experts to determine significant expert solutions. Focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were conducted with housing experts in Nigeria. Through descriptive, content, and systematic thematic analyses of data, major findings are that deliberate finance models designed for the urban poor are the most significant housing finance solution in developing economies. Other findings are that adequately implemented rent control policies, deliberate PPP approaches like inclusionary housing and land-value capture, and urban renewal programmes to enlighten and tutor the urban poor on how to earn more, spend wisely, and invest in their own better housing will effectively solve AH finance challenges. Study findings are informative for the best approaches to achieve effective, affordable housing finance for the urban poor in Nigeria, which is indispensable for the achievement of sustainable development goals. This research’s originality lies in the exploration of experts’ opinions in relation to AH finance to produce an equation model of critical solutions to AH finance challenges. Study data are useful resources for future pro-poor housing studies. This study makes housing policy-oriented recommendations toward effective, affordable housing for the urban poor in developing countries.

Keywords: affordable housing, effective affordable housing, housing policy, housing research, sustainable development, urban poor

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Authors: Ruphi Naz, Altaf Ahmad, Mohammad Anis

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Sialic acid (5-Acetylneuraminic acid, Neu5Ac) is a common sugar found as a terminal residue on glycoconjugates in many animals. Humans brain and the central nervous system contain the highest concentration of sialic acid (as N-acetylneuraminic acid) where these acids play an important role in neural transmission and ganglioside structure in synaptogenesis. Due to its important biological function, sialic acid is attracting increasing attention. To understand metabolic networks, fluxes and regulation, it is essential to be able to determine the cellular and subcellular levels of metabolites. Genetically-encoded fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) sensors represent a promising technology for measuring metabolite levels and corresponding rate changes in live cells. Taking this, we developed a genetically encoded FRET (fluorescence resonance energy transfer) based nanosensor to analyse the sialic acid level in living cells. Sialic acid periplasmic binding protein (sia P) from Haemophilus influenzae was taken and ligated between the FRET pair, the cyan fluorescent protein (eCFP) and Venus. The chimeric sensor protein was expressed in E. coli BL21 (DE3) and purified by affinity chromatography. Conformational changes in the binding protein clearly confirmed the changes in FRET efficiency. So any change in the concentration of sialic acid is associated with the change in FRET ratio. This sensor is very specific to sialic acid and found stable with the different range of pH. This nanosensor successfully reported the intracellular level of sialic acid in bacterial cell. The data suggest that the nanosensors may be a versatile tool for studying the in vivo dynamics of sialic acid level non-invasively in living cells

Keywords: nanosensor, FRET, Haemophilus influenzae, metabolic networks

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Authors: Gaurav Bhanjana, Ganga Ram Chaudhary, Sandeep Kumar, Neeraj Dilbaghi

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Main sources of endocrine disrupting compounds in the ecosystem are hormones, pesticides, phthalates, flame retardants, dioxins, personal-care products, coplanar polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), bisphenol A, and parabens. These endocrine disrupting compounds are responsible for learning disabilities, brain development problems, deformations of the body, cancer, reproductive abnormalities in females and decreased sperm count in human males. Although discharge of these chemical compounds into the environment cannot be stopped, yet their amount can be retarded through proper evaluation and detection techniques. The available techniques for determination of these endocrine disrupting compounds mainly include high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), mass spectroscopy (MS) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS). These techniques are accurate and reliable but have certain limitations like need of skilled personnel, time consuming, interference and requirement of pretreatment steps. Moreover, these techniques are laboratory bound and sample is required in large amount for analysis. In view of above facts, new methods for detection of endocrine disrupting compounds should be devised that promise high specificity, ultra sensitivity, cost effective, efficient and easy-to-operate procedure. Nowadays, electrochemical sensors/biosensors modified with nanomaterials are gaining high attention among researchers. Bioelement present in this system makes the developed sensors selective towards analyte of interest. Nanomaterials provide large surface area, high electron communication feature, enhanced catalytic activity and possibilities of chemical modifications. In most of the cases, nanomaterials also serve as an electron mediator or electrocatalyst for some analytes.

Keywords: electrochemical, endocrine disruptors, microscopy, nanoparticles, sensors

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Authors: Nuha Mansour Alhazmi, Magda Mohamed Aly, Fardus M. Bokhari, Ahmed Bahieldin, Sherif Edris

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Out of 30 fungal isolates, 2 new isolates were proven to degrade poly-β-hydroxybutyrate (PHB). Enzyme assay for these isolates indicated the optimal environmental conditions required for depolymerase enzyme to induce the highest level of biopolymer degradation. The two isolates were basically characterized at the morphological level as Trichoderma asperellum (isolate S1), and Aspergillus fumigates (isolate S2) using standard approaches. The aim of the present study was to characterize these two isolates at the molecular level based on the highly diverged rRNA gene(s). Within this gene, two domains of the ribosome large subunit (LSU) namely internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and 26S were utilized in the analysis. The first domain comprises the ITS1/5.8S/ITS2 regions ( > 500 bp), while the second domain comprises the D1/D2/D3 regions ( > 1200 bp). Sanger sequencing was conducted at Macrogen (Inc.) for the two isolates using primers ITS1/ITS4 for the first domain, while primers LROR/LR7 for the second domain. Sizes of the first domain ranged between 594-602 bp for S1 isolate and 581-594 bp for S2 isolate, while those of the second domain ranged between 1228-1238 bp for S1 isolate and 1156-1291 for S2 isolate. BLAST analysis indicated 99% identities of the first domain of S1 isolate with T. asperellum isolates XP22 (ID: KX664456.1), CTCCSJ-G-HB40564 (ID: KY750349.1), CTCCSJ-F-ZY40590 (ID: KY750362.1) and TV (ID: KU341015.1). BLAST of the first domain of S2 isolate indicated 100% identities with A. fumigatus isolate YNCA0338 (ID: KP068684.1) and strain MEF-Cr-6 (ID: KU597198.1), while 99% identities with A. fumigatus isolate CCA101 (ID: KT877346.1) and strain CD1621 (ID: JX092088.1). Large numbers of other T. asperellum and A. fumigatus isolates and strains showed high level of identities with S1 and S2 isolates, respectively, based on the diversity of the first domain. BLAST of the second domain of S1 isolate indicated 99 and 100% identities with only two strains of T. asperellum namely TR 3 (ID: HM466685.1) and G (ID: KF723005.1), respectively. However, other T. species (ex., atroviride, hamatum, deliquescens, harzianum, etc.) also showed high level of identities. BLAST of the second domain of S2 isolate indicated 100% identities with A. fumigatus isolate YNCA0338 (ID: KP068684.1) and strain MEF-Cr-6 (ID: KU597198.1), while 99% identities with A. fumigatus isolate CCA101 (ID: KT877346.1) and strain CD1621 (ID: JX092088.1). Large numbers of other A. fumigatus isolates and strains showed high level of identities with S2 isolate. Overall, the results of molecular characterization based on rRNA diversity for the two isolates of T. asperellum and A. fumigatus matched those obtained by morphological characterization. In addition, ITS domain proved to be more sensitive than 26S domain in diversity profiling of fungi at the species level.

Keywords: Aspergillus fumigates, Trichoderma asperellum, PHB, degradation, BLAST, ITS, 26S, rRNA

Procedia PDF Downloads 159