Search results for: sharing bike usage

Authors: Anusha M., V. Srikanth

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Maximizing spectrum usage and numerous applications of the wireless communication networks have forced to a high interest of available spectrum. Cognitive Radio control its receiver and transmitter features exactly so that they can utilize the vacant approved spectrum without impacting the functionality of the principal licensed users. The Use of various channels assists to address interferences thereby improves the whole network efficiency. The MAC protocol in cognitive radio network explains the spectrum usage by interacting with multiple channels among the users. In this paper we studied about the architecture of cognitive wireless mesh network and traditional TDMA dependent MAC method to allocate channels dynamically. The majority of the MAC protocols suggested in the research are operated on Common-Control-Channel (CCC) to handle the services between Cognitive Radio secondary users. In this paper, an extensive study of Multi-Channel Multi-Radios or frequency range channel allotment and continually synchronized TDMA scheduling are shown in summarized way.

Keywords: TDMA, MAC, multi-channel, multi-radio, WMN’S, cognitive radios

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Authors: Somayyeh Naeemi, Ezhar Tamam

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In most of the countries, Facebook allocated high rank of usage among other social network sites. Several studies have examined the effect of Facebook intensity on individuals’ psychological well-being. However, few studies have investigated its effect on eudaimonic well-being. The current study explored how emotional dependency to Facebook relates to psychological well-being in terms of eudaimonic well-being. The number of 402 adolescents 13-16 years old who studied in upper secondary school in Malaysia participated in this study. It was expected to find out a negative association between emotional dependency to Facebook and time spent on Facebook and psychological well-being. It also was examined the moderation effects of self-efficacy on psychological well-being. The results by Structural Equation Modeling revealed that emotional dependency to Facebook has a negative effect on adolescents’ psychological well-being. Surprisingly self-efficacy did not have moderation effect on the relationship between emotional dependency to Facebook and psychological well-being. Lastly, the emotional dependency to Facebook and not the time spent on Facebook lessen adolescents’ psychological well-being, suggesting the value of investigating Facebook usage among college students in future studies.

Keywords: emotional dependency to facebook, psychological well-being, eudaimonic well-being, self-efficacy, adolescent

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Authors: Zhuo Jing-Schmidt, Jun Lang

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Numeral classifiers are common in Asian languages. Research on numeral classifiers primarily focuses on noun classifiers that quantify and individuate nominal referents. There is a scarcity of research on event quantification using verb classifiers. This study aims to understand the semantic and conceptual basis of event quantification in Chinese. From a usage-based Construction Grammar perspective, this study presents a corpus analysis of event quantification in Chinese. Drawing on a large balanced corpus of contemporary Chinese, we analyze 667 NOUN col-lexemes totaling 31136 tokens of a productive numeral classifier construction in Chinese. Using collostructional analysis of the collexemes, the results show that the construction quantifies and classifies dramatic events using a theater-based conceptual metaphor. We argue that the usage patterns reflect the cultural entrenchment of theater as in Chinese conceptualization and the construal of theatricality in linguistic expression. The study has implications for cognitive semantics and construction grammar.

Keywords: event quantification, classifier, corpus, metaphor

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Authors: Jung Lee

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This study identifies how the cultivation capabilities of social capital influence the overall attitudes of social media users and how these influences differ across user groups. First, the cultivation capabilities of social capital are identified from three aspects, namely, social capital accessibility, potentiality and sensitivity. These three types of social capital acquisition capabilities collectively represent how the social media users perceive the social media environment in terms of possibilities for social capital creation. These three capabilities are hypothesized to influence social media satisfaction and continuing use intention. Next, two essential activities in social media are identified, namely, posting and replying, to categorise social media users based on behavioral patterns. Various social media activities consist of the combinations of these two basic activities. Posting represents the broadcasting aspect of social media, whereas replying represents the communicative aspect of social media. We categorize users into four from communicators to observers by using these two behaviors to develop usage pattern matrix. By applying the usage pattern matrix to the capability model, we argue that posting behavior generally has a positive moderating effect on the attitudes of social media users, whereas replying behavior occasionally exhibits the negative moderating effect. These different moderating effects of posting and replying behavior are explained based on the different levels of social capital sensitivity and expectation of individuals. When a person is highly expecting social capital from social media, he or she would post actively. However, when one is highly sensitive to social capital, he or she would actively respond and reply to postings of other people because such an act would create a longer and more interactive relationship. A total of 512 social media users are invited to answer the survey. They were asked about their attitudes toward the social media and how they expect social capital through this practice. They were asked to check their general social media usage pattern for user categorization. Result confirmed that most of the hypotheses were supported. Three types of social capital cultivation capabilities are significant determinants of social media attitudes, and two social media activities (i.e., posting and replying) exhibited different moderating effects on attitudes. This study provides following discussions. First, three types of social capital cultivation capabilities were identified. Despite the numerous concerns about social media, such as whether it is a decent and real environment that produces social capital, this study confirms that people explicitly expect and experience social capital values from social media. Second, posting and replying activities are two building blocks of social media activities. These two activities are useful in explaining different the attitudes of social media users and predict future usage.

Keywords: social media, social capital, social media satisfaction, social media use intention

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Authors: Duangkamol Thitivesa

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This paper focuses on the use of project work as a pretext for applying the conventions of writing, or the correctness of mechanics, usage, and sentence formation, in a content-based class in a Rajabhat University. Its aim was to explore to what extent the student teachers’ academic achievement of the basic writing features against the 70% attainment target after the use of project is. The organization of work around an agreed theme in which the students reproduce language provided by texts and instructors is expected to enhance students’ correct writing conventions. The sample of the study comprised of 38 fourth-year English major students. The data was collected by means of achievement test and student writing works. The scores in the summative achievement test were analyzed by mean score, standard deviation, and percentage. It was found that the student teachers do more achieve of practicing mechanics and usage, and less in sentence formation. The students benefited from the exposure to texts during conducting the project; however, their automaticity of how and when to form phrases and clauses into simple/complex sentences had room for improvement.

Keywords: project-based learning, project work, writing conventions, academic achievement

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Authors: Sihana Ahmeti Lika, Merita Dauti, Ledjan Malaj

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The objective of this study is to analyze the prophylactic usage of low molecular weight heparine (LMWH) along pregnancy and the correlation between their usage and month/week of pregnancy, in the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, at Clinical Hospital in Tetovo. A retrospective study was undertaken during 01 January–31 December 2012. Over of one year, the total number of patients was 4636. Among the 1447 (32.21%) pregnant women, 298 (20.59%) of them were prescribed LMWH. The majority of patients given LMWH, 119 (39.93%) were diagnosed hypercoagulable. The age group with the highest attendance was 25-35, 141 patients (47.32%). For 195 (65.44%) patients, this was their first pregnancy. Earliest stage of using LMWH was the second month of pregnancy 4 (1.34%) cases. The most common patients, were 70 women along the seventh month (23.49%), followed by 68 in the ninth month of pregnancy (22.81%). Women in the 28th gestational week, were found to be the most affected, a total of 55 (78.57%) were in that week. Clexane 2000 and Fraxiparine 0.3 were the most common for which low molecular weight heparine was prescribed. The number of patients which received Clexane 2000 was 84 (28.19%), followed by those with Fraxiparine 0.3 81 (27.18%). The administration of LMWH is associated with long hospitalization (median 14,6 days).

Keywords: hypercoagulable state, low moleculare weight heparine, month of pregnancy, pregnant women

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Authors: Eitan Elaad

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The present study's purpose was to examine lyingand pretend fairness by police interrogators in sharing situations. Forty police officers and 40 laypeople from the community, all males, self-assessed their lie-telling ability, rated the frequency of their lies, evaluated the acceptability of lying, and indicated using rational and intuitive thinking while lying. Next, according to the ultimatum game procedure, participants were asked to share 100 points with a virtual target, either a male police interrogator or a male layman. Participantsallocated points to the target person bearing in mind that the other person must accept their offer. Participants' goal was to retain as many points as possible, and to this end, they could tell the target person that fewer than 100 points were available for distribution. The difference between the available 100 points and the sum of points designated for sharing defines lying. The ratio of offered and designated points defines pretend fairness. Results indicate that those police officers lied more than laypeople. Similar results emergedeven when the target person was a police interrogator. However, police interrogators presented higher pretend fairness than laypeople. The higher pretend fairness may be in line with interrogation tactics of persuasion used in the criminal interrogation. Higher-lying frequency reported by police interrogators compared with laypeople support the present results. Finally, lie acceptability predicted lying in the ultimatum game. Specifically, participants who rated lying as more acceptable tended to lie more than low acceptability raters.

Keywords: lying, police interrogators, lie acceptability, ultimatum game, pretend fairness

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Authors: Sixing Chen, Shuai Yang

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Online celebrity business, also known as Internet celebrity business (or Wanghong business in Chinese), is an emerging relational C2C business model, and an alternative to traditional C2C transactional business models. There are already millions of these consumers, and this number is growing. In this model, consumer purchase decisions are driven by recommendations and endorsements in videos posted online by celebrities. The purpose of this paper is to determine the relational constructs within consumer relationships in the Internet celebrity business model and to investigate relationships between the constructs and consumer purchase intention. A questionnaire-based study was conducted with consumers who had an awareness of, or prior purchase experience with online celebrities. The results of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and multiple regression analysis revealed three valid relational constructs: product experience sharing, lifestyle association, and real-time interaction. This study indicated that these constructs had the direct effect on consumer preference and purchase intention. The findings of this study provide insight into a business model in which online shopping is driven by celebrities. They suggest that online celebrities should pay more attention to product experience sharing, life style association and real-time interaction for managing their product promotions. These are the most salient factors with respect to the relational constructs identified in this study.

Keywords: customer relationship, customer to customer, Internet celebrity, online celebrity, online marketing, purchase intention

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Authors: Isaac Kofi Mensah

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E-government has been adopted and used by many governments/countries around the world including Ghana to provide citizens and businesses with more accurate, real-time, and high quality services and information. The objective of this paper is to present an overview of the Government of Ghana’s (GoG) adoption and implement of e-government and its usage by the Ministries, Departments and its agencies (MDAs) as well as other public sector institutions to deliver efficient public service to the general public i.e. citizens, business etc. Government implementation of e-government focused on facilitating effective delivery of government service to the public and ultimately to provide efficient government-wide electronic means of sharing information and knowledge through a network infrastructure developed to connect all major towns and cities, Ministries, Departments and Agencies and other public sector organizations in Ghana. One aim for the Government of Ghana use of ICT in public administration is to improve productivity in government administration and service by facilitating the exchange of information to enable better interaction and coordination of work among MDAs, citizens and private businesses. The study was prepared using secondary sources of data from government policy documents, national and international published reports, journal articles, and web sources. This study indicates that through the e-government initiative, currently citizens and businesses can access and pay for services such as renewal of driving license, business registration, payment of taxes, acquisition of marriage and birth certificates as well as application for passport through the GoG electronic service (eservice) and electronic payment (epay) portal. Further, this study shows that there is an enormous commitment from GoG to adopt and implement e-government as a tool not only to transform the business of government but also to bring efficiency in public services delivered by the MDAs. To ascertain this, a further study need to be carried out to determine if the use of e-government has brought about the anticipated improvements and efficiency in service delivery of MDAs and other state institutions in Ghana.

Keywords: electronic government, electronic services, electronic pay, MDAs

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Authors: Abrar Al-Hasan

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Objectives: There is ongoing discourse regarding the potential risks to health professionals' reputations and credibility arising from their personal social media use. However, the specific impacts on professional credibility and the health professional-client relationship remain largely unexplored. This study aims to investigate the type and frequency of the content posted by health professionals on their Instagram accounts and its influence on their credibility and the professional-client relationship. Methodology: In a controlled field study, participants reviewed randomly assigned mock Instagram profiles of health professionals. Mock profiles were constructed according to gender (female/male), social media usage (high/low), and social media richness (high/ low), with richness increasing from posts to stories to reels and personal content type (high /low). Participants then rated the profile owners’ credibility on a visual analog scale. An analysis of variance compared these ratings, and mediation analyses assessed the influence of credibility ratings on participants' willingness to become clients of the mock health professional. Results: Results from 315 participants showed that health professionals with personal Instagram profiles displaying high social media richness were perceived as more credible than those with lower social media richness. Low social media usage is perceived as more credible than high social media usage. Personal content type is perceived as less credible as compared to those with low personal content type. Contributions: These findings provide initial evidence of the impact of health professionals' personal online disclosures on credibility and the health professional-client relationship. Understanding public perceptions of professionalism and credibility is essential for informing e-professionalism guidelines and promoting best practices in social media use among health professionals.

Keywords: credibility, consumer behavior, social media, media richness, healthcare professionals

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Authors: A. A. Balkhi, G. M. Mir, Javid A. Sheikh

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To cater the demands of increasing traffic with new applications the cellular mobile networks face new changes in deployment in infrastructure for making cellular networks heterogeneous. To reduce overhead processing the densely deployed cells require smart behavior with self-organizing capabilities with high adaptation to the neighborhood. We propose self-organization of unused resources usually excessive unused channels of neighbouring cells with densely populated cells to reduce handover failure rates. The neighboring cells share unused channels after fulfilling some conditional candidature criterion using threshold values so that they are not suffered themselves for starvation of channels in case of any abrupt change in traffic pattern. The cells are classified as ‘red’, ‘yellow’, or ‘green’, as per the available channels in cell which is governed by traffic pattern and thresholds. To combat the deficiency of channels in red cell, migration of unused channels from under-loaded cells, hierarchically from the qualified candidate neighboring cells is explored. The resources are returned back when the congested cell is capable of self-contained traffic management. In either of the cases conditional sharing of resources is executed for enhanced traffic management so that User Equipment (UE) is provided uninterrupted services with high Quality of Service (QoS). The fuzzy logic-based simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is efficiently in coincidence with improved successful handoffs.

Keywords: candidate cell, channel sharing, fuzzy logic, handover, small cells

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Authors: Zerrin Erginkaya, Gözde Konuray

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Microbial degradation of foods is defined as a decrease of food safety due to microorganism activity. Organic acids, sulfur dioxide, sulfide, nitrate, nitrite, dimethyl dicarbonate and several preservative gases have been used as chemical preservatives in foods as well as natural preservatives which are indigenous in foods. It is determined that usage of herbal preservatives such as blueberry, dried grape, prune, garlic, mustard, spices inhibited several microorganisms. Moreover, it is determined that animal origin preservatives such as whey, honey, lysosomes of duck egg and chicken egg, chitosan have antimicrobial effect. Other than indigenous antimicrobials in foods, antimicrobial agents produced by microorganisms could be used as natural preservatives. The antimicrobial feature of preservatives depends on the antimicrobial spectrum, chemical and physical features of material, concentration, mode of action, components of food, process conditions, and pH and storage temperature. In this review, studies about antimicrobial components which are indigenous in food (such as herbal and animal origin antimicrobial agents), antimicrobial materials synthesized by microorganisms, and their usage as an antimicrobial agent to preserve foods are discussed.

Keywords: animal origin preservatives, antimicrobial, chemical preservatives, herbal preservatives

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Authors: Dilini Bodhinayaka, Aunsha Sajeewanie Rubasinghe

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The library of the University of Kelaniya plays a significant role in supporting the academic work of the university. As at July, 2016 the library of the University of Kelaniya comprised of 250301 printed books, 2157 CD-ROMs, 1203 theses and 800 non-book materials. Furthermore, the library is subscribed to about 60 local journals, access to over 12,500 full text academic journals and around 100,000 e-books. The library provides the services and resources that support in teaching, doing research and learning. On the other hand, undergraduate students have adopted and continued to use the online information retrieval for their academic and research work. This study aims to compare the usage of internet and the usage of library among undergraduates in the faculties of Humanities, Social Sciences, Science and Commerce & Management in the University of Kelaniya. Also, the research attempts to determine the factors of enthusiasm or the disinterest in the students in using library and Internet. All the undergraduate students in the University (8440 students at the time of the study) were taken as the population of the study and the sample of 15% was selected out of the population using stratified sampling method. A total of 1266 questionnaires were distributed among undergraduates of the above mentioned faculties. The qualitative data were analyzed using Descriptive Statistical Method. Findings, of the study indicated that undergraduate students of the faculties of Humanities, Social Sciences, Science and Commerce & Management use both the library and the internet to fulfill their information needs. But, the students in the faculty of Science and Commerce & Management use the internet sources more than the library. The undergraduates in the faculties of Humanities and Social Sciences frequently use the university library than the internet. Although, majority agreed that the internet is the most preferred source of information they have no an adequate awareness about the available internet resources in the E-library of the University of Kelaniya.

Keywords: university libraries, University of Kelaniya, online resources, undergraduates in Sri Lanka

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Authors: Smiso Buthelezi, Petros Dlamini, Dennis Ocholla

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The study assesses the University of Zululand's practices for documenting, sharing, and accessing indigenous knowledge. Two research objectives guided it: to determine how indigenous knowledge (IK) is developed at the University of Zululand and how indigenous knowledge (IK) is documented at the University of Zululand. The study adopted both interpretive and positivist research paradigms. Ultimately, qualitative and quantitative research methods were used. The qualitative research approach collected data from academic and non-academic staff members. Interviews were conducted with 18 academic staff members and 5 with support staff members. The quantitative research approach was used to collect data from indigenous knowledge (IK) theses and dissertations from the University of Zululand Institutional Repository between 2009-2019. The study results revealed that many departments across the University of Zululand were involved in creating indigenous knowledge (IK)-related content. The department of African Languages was noted to be more involved in creating IK-related content. Moreover, the documentation of the content related to indigenous knowledge (IK) at the University of Zululand is done frequently but is not readily known. It was found that the creation and documentation of indigenous knowledge by different departments faced several challenges. The common challenges are a lack of interest among indigenous knowledge (IK) owners in sharing their knowledge, the local language as a barrier, and a shortage of proper tools for recording and capturing indigenous knowledge (IK). One of the study recommendations is the need for an indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) policy to be in place at the University of Zululand.

Keywords: knowledge creation, SECI model, information and communication technology., indigenous knowledge

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Authors: Dengyu You, Alireza Kashani

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This study explores the potential of 3D concrete printing in manufacturing prefabricated staircases. The applications of 3D concrete printing in large-scale construction could enhance the industry’s implementation of the Industry 4.0 concept. In addition, the current global challenge is to achieve Net Zero Emissions by 2050. Innovation in the construction industry could potentially speed up achieving this target. The 3D printing technology offers a possible solution that reduces cement usage, minimises framework wastes, and is capable of manufacturing complex structures. The performance of the 3D concrete printed lightweight staircase needs to be evaluated. In this study, the staircase is designed using computer-aided technologies, fabricated by 3D concrete printing technologies, and tested with Australian Standard (AS 1657-2018 Fixed platforms, walkways, stairways, and ladders – design, construction, and installation) under a laboratory environment. The experiment results will be further compared with the FEM analysis. The results indicate that 3D concrete printing is capable of fast production, reducing material usage, and is highly automotive, which meets the industry’s future development goal.

Keywords: concrete 3D printing, staircase, sustainability, automation

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Authors: Mladen Milicevic

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This paper explores how the explosion of computer technologies has allowed for the democratization of many aspects of human activities, which were in the past only available through the institutionalized channels of production and distribution. We will going to use as an example the music recording industries, just to illustrate this process, but the analogies to other activities and aspects of human life can easily be extrapolated from it.

Keywords: aura, democratization, music industry, music sharing, paradigm-shift

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Authors: Nirit Gavish, Rotem Halutz, Liad Neta

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Nowadays, chatbots are gaining more and more attention due to the advent of large language models. One of the important considerations in chatbot design is how to create an interface to achieve high user satisfaction, trust, and acceptance. Since WhatsApp conversations sometimes substitute for face-to-face communication, we studied whether WhatsAppization of the chatbot -making the conversation resemble a WhatsApp conversation more- will improve user satisfaction, trust, and acceptance, or whether the opposite will occur due to the Uncanny Valley (UV) effect. The task was a drive-sharing task, in which participants communicated with a textual chatbot via WhatsApp and could decide whether to participate in a ride to college with a driver suggested by the chatbot. WhatsAppization of the chatbot was done in two ways: By a dialog-style conversation (Dialog versus No Dialog), and by adding WhatsApp indicators – “Last Seen”, “Connected”, “Read Receipts”, and “Typing…” (Indicators versus No Indicators). Our 120 participants were randomly assigned to one of the four 2 by 2 design groups, with 30 participants in each. They interacted with the WhatsApp chatbot and then filled out a questionnaire. The results demonstrated that, as expected from the manipulation, the interaction with the chatbot was longer for the dialog condition compared to the no dialog. This extra interaction, however, did not lead to higher acceptance -quite the opposite, since participants in the dialog condition were less willing to implement the decision made at the end of the conversation with the chatbot and continue the interaction with the driver they chose. The results are even more striking when considering the Indicators condition. Both for the satisfaction measures and the trust measures, participants’ ratings were lower in the Indicators condition compared to the No Indicators. Participants in the Indicators condition felt that the ride search process was harder to operate, and slower (even though the actual interaction time was similar). They were less convinced that the chatbot suggested real trips and they trusted the person offering the ride and referred to them by the chatbot less. These effects were more evident for participants who preferred to share their rides using WhatsApp compared to participants who preferred chatbots for that purpose. Considering our findings, we can say that the WhatsAppization of the chatbot was detrimental. This is true for the both chatbot WhatsAppization methods – by making the conversation more a dialog and adding WhatsApp indicators. For the chosen drive-sharing task, the results were, in addition to lower satisfaction, less trust in the chatbot’s suggestion and even in the driver suggested by the chatbot, and lower willingness to actually undertake the suggested ride. In addition, it seems that the most problematic WhatsAppization method was using WhatsApp’s indicators during the interaction with the chatbot. The current study suggests that a conversation with an artificial agent should also not imitate a WhatsApp conversation very closely. With the proliferation of WhatsApp use, the emotional and social aspect of face-to face commination are moving to WhatsApp communication. Based on the current study’s findings, it is possible that the UV effect also occurs in WhatsAppization, and not only in humanization, of the chatbot, with a similar feeling of eeriness, and is more pronounced for people who prefer to use WhatsApp over chatbots. The current research can serve as a starting point to study the very interesting and important topic of chatbots WhatsAppization. More methods of WhatsAppization and other tasks could be the focus of further studies.

Keywords: chatbot, WhatsApp, humanization, Uncanny Valley, drive sharing

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Authors: Aurelio Palacardo, Giulio Mangano, Alberto De Marco

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

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

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Authors: D. Pranav

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

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

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Authors: Maryum Nawaz

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

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

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Authors: Akanksha Lohmore, Devanshu Arya, Preeti Kapur

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Rarely does the human mind look at the positive fallout of highly negative events. Positive psychology attempts to emphasize on the strengths and positives for human well-being. The present study examines the underpinning socio-cognitive factors of the protest movements regarding the gang rape case of December 16th, 2012 through the lens of positive psychology. A gamut of negative emotions came to the forum globally: of anger, shame, hatred, violence, death penalty for the perpetrators, amongst other equally strong. In relation to this incident, a number of questions can be raised. Can such a heinous crime have some positive inputs for contemporary society? What is it that has held people to protests for long even when they see faded lines of success in view? This paper explains the constant feeding of protests and continuation of movements by the robust model of Collective Hope by Snyder, a phenomenon unexplored by social psychologists. In this paper, mixed method approach was undertaken. Results confirmed the interaction of various socio-psychological factors that imitated the Snyders model of collective hope. Emergence of major themes was: Sense of Agency, Sense of Worthiness, Social Sharing and Common Grievances and Hope of Collective Efficacy. Statistical analysis (correlation and regression) showed significant relationship between media usage and occurrence of these themes among participants. Media-communication processes and educational theories for development of citizenship behavior can find implications from these results. Theory development as indicated by theorists working in the area of Social Psychology of Protests can be furthered by the direction of research.

Keywords: agency, collective, hope, positive psychology, protest, social media

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Authors: S. Nakayama

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

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

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Authors: Vangelis Drosos, Dimitrios Tsoukalos, Dimitrios Tsolis

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

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

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

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

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

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Authors: Runlian Miao, Wei Xie, Hong Zhang

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In China, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei is regarded as a strategically important region because itenjoys highest development in economic development, opening up, innovative capacity and andpopulation. Integrated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is increasingly emphasized by the government recently years. In 2014, it has ascended to one of the national great development strategies by Chinese central government. In 2015, Coordinated Development Planning Compendium for Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region was approved. Such decisions signify Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region would lead innovation-driven economic development in China. As an essential factor to achieve national innovation-driven development and significant part of regional industry chain, the optimization of science and technology resources allocation will exert great influence to regional economic transformation and upgrading and innovation-driven development. However, unbalanced distribution, poor sharing of resources and existence of information isolated islands have contributed to different interior innovation capability, vitality and efficiency, which impeded innovation and growth of the whole region. Under such a background, to integrate and vitalize regional science and technology resources and then establish high-end, fast-responding and precise innovation service system basing on regional resources, would be of great significance for integrated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and even handling of unbalanced and insufficient development problem in China. This research uses the method of literature review and field investigation and applies related theories prevailing home and abroad, centering service path of science and technology resources for innovation. Based on the status quo and problems of regional development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, theoretically, the author proposed to combine regional economics and new economic geography to explore solution to problem of low resource allocation efficiency. Further, the author puts forward to applying digital map into resource management and building a platform for information co-building and sharing. At last, the author presents the thought to establish a specific service mode of ‘science and technology plus digital map plus intelligence research plus platform service’ and suggestion on co-building and sharing mechanism of 3 (Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei ) plus 11 (important cities in Hebei Province).

Keywords: Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, science and technology resources, innovation service, digital platform

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Authors: Zahra Ali Abbasi, Syed Muhammad Saqib Saleem

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This research explores the relationship between social media and awareness about climate change amongst the university students of Lahore, Pakistan. The aim is to understand how the people of Pakistan perceive climate change, especially on the social media. A deductive and quantitative method is applied on the research to find out the awareness of climate change in the people using social media. For this purpose, a survey method is used, to analyze the response from 167 online respondents through stratified random sampling technique. The relation between multiple variables including awareness about important climatic events like Paris agreement, GreenTube, Smog in Lahore, Floods in Pakistan and other eminent incidents of climate change and social media are calculated by analyzing social media as a source to impart information about climate change. The results show that as people get aware of climate change, they post about different national and international events/incidents of climate which reveal a significant relationship between respondents' awareness about climate change and their posting and sharing of content about climate change. Another test indicates that respondents’ post/share/comment (impart) information about climate change when there is a shift in the climate both globally and nationally. However, the significance of both these correlations has been found to be negligible. Social media being an independent platform holds greater influencing power, hence, as consumers of the environment the users hold the responsibility of producing and sharing content at a global platform about climate. However, matters of politics, economy and religion seem to have overshadowed the significance of climate.

Keywords: climate change, diffusion of innovation, environment, social media, Pakistan

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

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

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

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Authors: J. O. Ayinde, S. O. Olatunji

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This study assessed rural youth adoption of cassava production technologies in Southwestern, Nigeria. Specifically, it examine the level of awareness and adoption of cassava production technologies by rural youth, determined the extent of usage of cassava production technologies available to the rural youth, examined constrains to the adoption of cassava production technologies by youth and suggested possible solutions. Multistage sampling procedure was adopted for the study. In the first stage, two states were purposively selected in southwest, Nigeria which are Osun and Oyo states due to high level of cassava production and access to cassava production technology in the areas. In the second stage, purposive sampling technique was used to select two local governments each from the states selected which are Ibarapa central (Igbo-Ora) and Ibarapa East (Eruwa) Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Oyo state; and Ife North (Ipetumodu) and Ede South (Oke Ireesi) LGAs in Osun State. In the third stage, proportionate sampling technique was used to randomly select five, four, six and four communities from the selected LGAs respectively representing 20 percent of the rural communities in them, in all 19 communities were selected. In the fourth stage, Snow ball sampling technique was used to select about 7 rural youths in each community selected to make a total of 133 respondents. Validated structured interview schedule was used to elicit information from the respondents. The data collected were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics to summarize and test the hypotheses of the study. The results show that the average age of rural youths participating in cassava production in the study area is 29 ± 2.6 years and 60 percent aged between 30 and 35 years. Also, more male (67.4 %) were involved in cassava production than females (32.6 %). The result also reveals that the average size of farm land of the respondents is 2.5 ± 0.3 hectares. Also, more male (67.4 %) were involved in cassava production than females (32.6 %). Also, extent of usage of the technologies (r = 0.363, p ≤ 0.01) shows significant relationship with level of adoption of the technologies. Household size (b = 0.183; P ≤ 0.01) and membership of social organizations were significant at 0.01 (b = 0.331; P ≤ 0.01) while age was significant at 0.10 (b = 0.097; P ≤ 0.05). On the other hand 0.01, years of residence (b = - 0.063; P ≤ 0.01) and income (b = - 0.204; P ≤ 0.01) had negative values and implies that a unit increase in each of these variables would decrease extent of usage of the Cassava production technologies. It was concluded that the extent of usage of the technologies in the communities will affect the rate of adoption positively and this will change the negative perception of youths on cassava production thereby ensure food security in the study area.

Keywords: assessment, rural youths’, Cassava production technologies, agricultural production, food security

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Authors: Taoues Hadour

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Twitter has become a popular means of communication used in a variety of fields, such as politics, journalism, and academia. This widely used online platform has an impact on the way people express themselves and is changing language usage worldwide at an unprecedented pace. The language used online reflects the linguistic battle that has been going on for several decades in French society. This study enables a deeper understanding of users' linguistic behavior online. The implications are important and allow for a rise in awareness of intercultural and cross-language exchanges. This project investigates the mixing of French-English language usage among French users of Twitter using a topic analysis approach. This analysis draws on Gumperz's theory of conversational switching. In order to collect tweets at a large scale, the data was collected in R using the rtweet package to access and retrieve French tweets data through Twitter’s REST and stream APIs (Application Program Interface) using the software RStudio, the integrated development environment for R. The dataset was filtered manually and certain repetitions of themes were observed. A total of nine topic categories were identified and analyzed in this study: entertainment, internet/social media, events/community, politics/news, sports, sex/pornography, innovation/technology, fashion/make up, and business. The study reveals that entertainment is the most frequent topic discussed on Twitter. Entertainment includes movies, music, games, and books. Anglicisms such as trailer, spoil, and live are identified in the data. Change in language usage is inevitable and is a natural result of linguistic interactions. The use of different languages online is just an example of what the real world would look like without linguistic regulations. Social media reveals a multicultural and multilinguistic richness which can deepen and expand our understanding of contemporary human attitudes.

Keywords: code-switching, French, sociolinguistics, Twitter

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Authors: Payel Datta, Abhishek Das, Abhishek Roychoudhury, Dhiman Chattopadhyay, Tanushyam Chattopadhyay

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Machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) is most predominantly used in image/video processing, natural language processing (NLP), audio and speech recognition but not that much used in system performance evaluation. In this paper, authors are going to describe the architecture of an abstraction layer constructed using ML/DL to detect the system failure. This proposed system is used to detect the system failure by evaluating the performance metrics of an IoT service deployment under constrained infrastructure environment. This system has been tested on the manually annotated data set containing different metrics of the system, like number of threads, throughput, average response time, CPU usage, memory usage, network input/output captured in different hardware environments like edge (atom based gateway) and cloud (AWS EC2). The main challenge of developing such system is that the accuracy of classification should be 100% as the error in the system has an impact on the degradation of the service performance and thus consequently affect the reliability and high availability which is mandatory for an IoT system. Proposed ML/DL classifiers work with 100% accuracy for the data set of nearly 4,000 samples captured within the organization.

Keywords: machine learning, system performance, performance metrics, IoT, edge

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