Search results for: community detection

Authors: L. Malic, X. Zhang, D. Brassard, L. Clime, J. Daoud, C. Luebbert, V. Barrere, A. Boutin, S. Bidawid, N. Corneau, J. Farber, T. Veres

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The incidence of infections caused by foodborne pathogens such as Listeria monocytogenes (L. monocytogenes) poses a great potential threat to public health and safety. These issues are further exacerbated by legal repercussions due to “zero tolerance” food safety standards adopted in developed countries. Unfortunately, a large number of related disease outbreaks are caused by pathogens present in extremely low counts currently undetectable by available techniques. The development of highly sensitive and rapid detection of foodborne pathogens is therefore crucial, and requires robust and efficient pre-analytical sample preparation. Immunomagnetic separation is a popular approach to sample preparation. Microfluidic chips combined with external magnets have emerged as viable high throughput methods. However, external magnets alone are not suitable for the capture of nanoparticles, as very strong magnetic fields are required. Devices that incorporate externally applied magnetic field and microstructures of a soft magnetic material have thus been used for local field amplification. Unfortunately, very complex and costly fabrication processes used for integration of soft magnetic materials in the reported proof-of-concept devices would prohibit their use as disposable tools for food and water safety or diagnostic applications. We present a sample preparation magnetic microfluidic device implemented in low-cost thermoplastic polymers using fabrication techniques suitable for mass-production. The developed magnetic capture chip (M-chip) was employed for rapid capture and release of L. monocytogenes conjugated to immunomagnetic nanoparticles (IMNs) in buffer and beef filtrate. The M-chip relies on a dense array of Nickel-coated high-aspect ratio pillars for capture with controlled magnetic field distribution and a microfluidic channel network for sample delivery, waste, wash and recovery. The developed Nickel-coating process and passivation allows generation of switchable local perturbations within the uniform magnetic field generated with a pair of permanent magnets placed at the opposite edges of the chip. This leads to strong and reversible trapping force, wherein high local magnetic field gradients allow efficient capture of IMNs conjugated to L. monocytogenes flowing through the microfluidic chamber. The experimental optimization of the M-chip was performed using commercially available magnetic microparticles and fabricated silica-coated iron-oxide nanoparticles. The fabricated nanoparticles were optimized to achieve the desired magnetic moment and surface functionalization was tailored to allow efficient capture antibody immobilization. The integration, validation and further optimization of the capture and release protocol is demonstrated using both, dead and live L. monocytogenes through fluorescence microscopy and plate- culture method. The capture efficiency of the chip was found to vary as function of listeria to nanoparticle concentration ratio. The maximum capture efficiency of 30% was obtained and the 24-hour plate-culture method allowed the detection of initial sample concentration of only 16 cfu/ml. The device was also very efficient in concentrating the sample from a 10 ml initial volume. Specifically, 280% concentration efficiency was achieved in 17 minutes only, demonstrating the suitability of the system for food safety applications. In addition, flexible design and low-cost fabrication process will allow rapid sample preparation for applications beyond food and water safety, including point-of-care diagnosis.

Keywords: array of pillars, bacteria isolation, immunomagnetic sample preparation, polymer microfluidic device

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Authors: Azam Fazelpour, Saeed R. Dehghani, Vlastimil Masek, Yuri S. Muzychka

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This study employs a method based on image analyses and structure information to detect accumulated ice on known structures. The icing of marine vessels and offshore structures causes significant reductions in their efficiency and creates unsafe working conditions. Image processing methods are used to measure ice loads automatically. Most image processing methods are developed based on captured image analyses. In this method, ice loads on structures are calculated by defining structure coordinates and processing captured images. A pyramidal structure is designed with nine cylindrical bars as the known structure of experimental setup. Unsymmetrical ice accumulated on the structure in a cold room represents the actual case of experiments. Camera intrinsic and extrinsic parameters are used to define structure coordinates in the image coordinate system according to the camera location and angle. The thresholding method is applied to capture images and detect iced structures in a binary image. The ice thickness of each element is calculated by combining the information from the binary image and the structure coordinate. Averaging ice diameters from different camera views obtains ice thicknesses of structure elements. Comparison between ice load measurements using this method and the actual ice loads shows positive correlations with an acceptable range of error. The method can be applied to complex structures defining structure and camera coordinates.

Keywords: camera calibration, ice detection, ice load measurements, image processing

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Authors: S. Ishak, M. G. Nasuruddin

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Traditional Malay performances are carried out for both entertainment and curing purposes. In curing rituals, the men and women serving as shamans, communicates with the spirits and beings from the nether world to facilitate the curing process. The dependency on engaging with these other-worldly beings however, have raised religious issues of being syirik, namely practicing in rituals which are religiously forbidden. This study aims to observe how ritual leaders attempt to negotiate the fine balance between what has been religiously forbidden and the psychological and sociological needs of the patient. Two curing rituals, the main peteri and the malibobou were chosen to exemplify the communication between the physical and spiritual realities. In both rituals, the healers engaged in procedures of curing as they attempted to diagnose sicknesses and proffer cures with the help of the spirits. The main peteri was conducted by a male shaman, the tuk teri whereas the malibobou was conducted by a female ritual specialist, the bobohizan. Main peteri and the malibobou both ended with ritually thanking and sending off the spirits back to their nether, invisible domains. These curing rituals heal not only the sick individual, but by extension, the village community. Therefore, there is a need to reconcile these rituals with religious tenets, beliefs and sociological-political-cultural dimensions.

Keywords: traditional healing, trance, spirits, main peteri, bobohizan

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Authors: Dorsaf Ben Malek

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The function of culture in language teaching changed because of globalization and the latest technologies. English became a lingua franca which resulted in altering the teaching objectives. The re-evaluation of cultural awareness is one of them. Business English teaching has also been subject to all these changes. It is therefore a wrong idea if we try to consider it as a diffusion of unlimited listing of lexis, diagrams, charts, and statistics. In fact, business students’ future career will require business terminology together with intercultural communicative competence (ICC) to handle different multicultural encounters and contribute to the international community. The first part of this paper is dedicated to the necessity of empowering business students with intercultural communicative competence and the second turns around the potential of multicultural literature in implementing ICC in business English teaching. This was proved through a qualitative action research done on a group of Tunisian MA business students. It was an opportunity to discover the potential of multicultural literature together with inquiry-based learning in enhancing business students’ intercultural communicative competence. Data were collected through classroom observations, journals and semi-structured interviews. Results were in favour of using multicultural literature to enhance business students’ ICC. In addition, the short story may be a motivating tool to read literature, and inquiry-based learning can be an effective approach to teaching literature.

Keywords: intercultural communicative competence, multicultural literature, short stories, inquiry-based learning

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Authors: Karima Afif, Jacinthe Clouthier, Marie-Ève Gaboury-Bonhomme, Véronique Provencher, Morgane Leclercq

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This paper investigates how food banks have secured and improved their supply chain resilience to pursue their mission during COVID-19. More specifically, the implications of the COVID-19 outbreak on the food aid needs, donations, operations, and mission of food banks are explored. To develop an in-depth understanding of the reactions and actions that they have been taken, a qualitative approach has been adopted using a multiple case study design. Data from two focus groups, 12 semi-structured interviews with key informants covering all supply chain levels, and field notes from 7 workplace observations in donation points, food bank facilities, and community-based organizations in Québec (Canada) are triangulated. The results highlight that the pandemic has significantly and unpredictably increased the number of food aid demands, causing significant operational challenges for the food banks supply chain, as well as an unprecedented shortage of donations to food banks. Besides, the sanitary measures have required several adaptative strategies. These implications have caused food banks to enhance their operational flexibility, optimize their logistics operations, enhance their human resources management, and expand collaboration within their supply chain.

Keywords: supply chain resilience, food banks, food donations, food aid, COVID-19

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Authors: Yu-Hsiu Lin, Wen-Chun Lin, Yen-Chang Cheng, Chia-Ju Yeh, Yu-Chuan Chen, Tai-You Li

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Demand-Side Management (DSM) has the potential to reduce electricity costs and carbon emission, which are associated with electricity used in the modern society. A home Energy Management System (EMS) commonly used by residential consumers in a down-stream sector of a smart grid to monitor, control, and optimize energy efficiency to domestic appliances is a system of computer-aided functionalities as an energy audit for residential DSM. Implementing fault detection and classification to domestic appliances monitored, controlled, and optimized is one of the most important steps to realize preventive maintenance, such as residential air conditioning and heating preventative maintenance in residential/industrial DSM. In this study, a cloud intelligence-based green EMS that comes up with an Internet of Things (IoT) technology stack for residential DSM is developed. In the EMS, Arduino MEGA Ethernet communication-based smart sockets that module a Real Time Clock chip to keep track of current time as timestamps via Network Time Protocol are designed and implemented for readings of load phenomena reflecting on voltage and current signals sensed. Also, a Network-Attached Storage providing data access to a heterogeneous group of IoT clients via Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) methods is configured to data stores of parsed sensor readings. Lastly, a desktop computer with a WAMP software bundle (the Microsoft® Windows operating system, Apache HTTP Server, MySQL relational database management system, and PHP programming language) serves as a data science analytics engine for dynamic Web APP/REpresentational State Transfer-ful web service of the residential DSM having globally-Advanced Internet of Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Computational Intelligence. Where, an abstract computing machine, Java Virtual Machine, enables the desktop computer to run Java programs, and a mash-up of Java, R language, and Python is well-suited and -configured for AI in this study. Having the ability of sending real-time push notifications to IoT clients, the desktop computer implements Google-maintained Firebase Cloud Messaging to engage IoT clients across Android/iOS devices and provide mobile notification service to residential/industrial DSM. In this study, in order to realize edge intelligence that edge devices avoiding network latency and much-needed connectivity of Internet connections for Internet of Services can support secure access to data stores and provide immediate analytical and real-time actionable insights at the edge of the network, we upgrade the designed and implemented smart sockets to be embedded AI Arduino ones (called embedded AIduino). With the realization of edge analytics by the proposed embedded AIduino for data analytics, an Arduino Ethernet shield WizNet W5100 having a micro SD card connector is conducted and used. The SD library is included for reading parsed data from and writing parsed data to an SD card. And, an Artificial Neural Network library, ArduinoANN, for Arduino MEGA is imported and used for locally-embedded AI implementation. The embedded AIduino in this study can be developed for further applications in manufacturing industry energy management and sustainable energy management, wherein in sustainable energy management rotating machinery diagnostics works to identify energy loss from gross misalignment and unbalance of rotating machines in power plants as an example.

Keywords: demand-side management, edge intelligence, energy management system, fault detection and classification

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Authors: Jennifer Natalya Fink

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Since the racial reckoning of 2020, almost every major educational institution has incorporated diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) principles into its administrative, hiring, and pedagogical practices. Yet these DEI principles rarely incorporate explicit language or critical thinking about disability. Despite the fact that according to the World Health Organization, one in five people worldwide is disabled, making disabled people the larger minority group in the world, disability remains the neglected stepchild of DEI. Drawing on disability studies and crip theory frameworks, the underlying causes of this exclusion of disability from DEI, such as stigma, shame, invisible disabilities, institutionalization/segregation/delineation from family, and competing models and definitions of disability are examined. This paper explores both the ideological and practical shifts necessary to include disability in university DEI initiatives. It offers positive examples as well as conceptual frameworks such as 'divers ability' for so doing. Using Georgetown University’s 2020-2022 DEI initiatives as a case study, this paper describes how curricular infusion, accessibility, identity, community, and diversity administration infused one university’s DEI initiatives with concrete disability-inclusive measures. It concludes with a consideration of how the very framework of DEI itself might be challenged and transformed if disability were to be included.

Keywords: diversity, equity, inclusion, disability, crip theory, accessibility

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Authors: Peerawat Khongkliang, Prawit Kongjan, Tsuyoshi Imai, Poonsuk Prasertsan, Sompong O-Thong

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A two-stage thermophilic fermentation and electrohydrogenesis process was used to convert cassava starch processing wastewater into hydrogen gas. Maximum hydrogen yield from fermentation stage by Thermoanaerobacterium thermosaccharolyticum PSU-2 was 248 mL H2/g-COD at optimal pH of 6.5. Optimum hydrogen production rate of 820 mL/L/d and yield of 200 mL/g COD was obtained at HRT of 2 days in fermentation stage. Cassava starch processing wastewater fermentation effluent consisted of acetic acid, butyric acid and propionic acid. The effluent from fermentation stage was used as feedstock to generate hydrogen production by microbial electrolysis cell (MECs) at an applied voltage of 0.6 V in second stage with additional 657 mL H2/g-COD was produced. Energy efficiencies based on electricity needed for the MEC were 330 % with COD removals of 95 %. The overall hydrogen yield was 800-900 mL H2/g-COD. Microbial community analysis of electrohydrogenesis by DGGE shows that exoelectrogens belong to Acidiphilium sp., Geobacter sulfurreducens and Thermincola sp. were dominated at anode. These results show two-stage thermophilic fermentation, and electrohydrogenesis process improved hydrogen production performance with high hydrogen yields, high gas production rates and high COD removal efficiency.

Keywords: cassava starch processing wastewater, biohydrogen, thermophilic fermentation, microbial electrolysis cell

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Authors: Nurul Aini Abdul Wahab, Nor Syamim Halidin, Sayidatina Aisah Masnan, Nur Izzati Romli

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There are many applications of principle component method for reducing the large set of variables in various fields. Fisher’s Discriminant function is also a popular tool for classification. In this research, the researcher focuses on studying the performance of Principle Component-Fisher’s Discriminant function in helping to classify rice kernels to their defined classes. The data were collected on the smells or odour of the rice kernel using odour-detection sensor, Cyranose. 32 variables were captured by this electronic nose (e-nose). The objective of this research is to measure how well a combination model, between principle component and linear discriminant, to be as a classification model. Principle component method was used to reduce all 32 variables to a smaller and manageable set of components. Then, the reduced components were used to develop the Fisher’s Discriminant function. In this research, there are 4 defined classes of rice kernel which are Aromatic, Brown, Ordinary and Others. Based on the output from principle component method, the 32 variables were reduced to only 2 components. Based on the output of classification table from the discriminant analysis, 40.76% from the total observations were correctly classified into their classes by the PC-Discriminant function. Indirectly, it gives an idea that the classification model developed has committed to more than 50% of misclassifying the observations. As a conclusion, the Fisher’s Discriminant function that was built on a 2-component from PCA (2-PC-D) is not satisfying to classify the rice kernels into its defined classes.

Keywords: classification model, discriminant function, principle component analysis, variable reduction

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Authors: Eriba Christopher Inyila, Godwin Egena Oga

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Statecraft appears to be one of the greatest cultural achievements in the history of man’s civilization. The state itself is often portrayed as the supreme community of the citizen’s collective goodness and will. However, history experience reveals that the state has often been held in captivity permanently in the hand of the political class to almost a total exclusion of the labouring class of workers, artisans and peasants. Consequently, the hallmark of the Nigerian state and society in contemporary era is state of permanent crisis characterized by poverty, unemployment and profound insecurity. A lasting solution to this state of anomie is often touted in terms of ethnic, religious and regional integration which border on non-material perception of realities. A neglected aspect of the approach to the study of recurrent problems in contemporary is the materialist conception of realties through class perspectives of the society. The cutting edge of the approach is found in the attempt to reconcile the contradiction between the productive forces and the social relation of production. In other words, the contemporary state is skewed in favour of ownership of properties/commanding height of economy predominantly in the hands of the few monopoly companies to the total exclusion of majority of Nigerian population classified as peasant, workers and artisan. The lopsided situation creates economic and social disequilibria.

Keywords: national development, class, the state, Nigeria

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Authors: Megan E. Davies

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As substance use become an increasing prevalent occurrence amongst young people, prevention programs designed specifically for children and adolescents are required to protect against associated cognitive, psychological, and behavioural issues. Further, young people from marginalized backgrounds would highly benefit from culturally adapted substance use prevention programs. The first and second phase of the Life Skills Training (LST) program, the Maskwacis Life Skills Training (MLST) program, the Bii-Zin-Da-De-Da (BZDDD; “Listening to One Another”), and a culturally sensitive smoking prevention program, all of which have been adapted to Canadian Indigenous cultures and are applied within the school and family settings, are discussed. Additionally, comorbid disorders, at-risk personality types, and motivating factors associated with substance use amongst Canadian children and adolescents, specifically Indigenous youth, are explored through the application of a biopsychosocial model. Requital efforts being made in Canada towards Indigenous communities are described within a historical context, and substance use prevention programs targeting Indigenous children and adolescents are compared. Through this lens, suggestions are presented for future research on preventative interventions directed towards substance use within minority groups.

Keywords: early intervention, cultural appropriateness, life skills training, smoking prevention, drug and alcohol prevention

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Authors: Harith Mohammed Benbouali

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The concept of sustainable development is becoming increasingly important in our society. The efforts of specialized agencies, cleverly portrayed in the media, allow a widespread environmental awareness. Far from the old environmental movement in the backward-looking nostalgia, the environment is combined with today's progress. Many areas now include these concerns in their efforts, this in order to try to reduce the negative impact of human activities on the environment. The quantitative dimension of development has given way to the quality aspect. However, this feature is not common, and the initial target was abandoned in favor of economic considerations. Specialists in the field of building and construction have constantly sought to further integrate the environmental dimension, creating a seal of high environmental quality buildings. The pursuit of well-being of neighborhood residents and the quality of buildings are also a hot topic in planning. Quality of life is considered so on, since financial concerns dominate to the detriment of the environment and the welfare of the occupants. This work concerns the development of an analytical method based on multiple indicators of objectives across the district. The quantification of indicators related to objectives allows the construction professional, the developer or the community, to quantify and compare different alternatives for development of a neighborhood. This quantification is based on the use of simulation tools and a multi-criteria aggregation.

Keywords: sustainable development, environment, district, indicators, multi-criteria analysis, evaluation

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Authors: Ummi Sholihah Pertiwi Abidin, Khusnul Hajar Nuansari

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Human resource is one of the most important components that can not be separated from communication fields, either in a large community like a mass or narrow ones such as an institution, office, group and even family. Human resource is an asset which is often used as a tool to achieve certain goals. Therefore, development of human resources is essential for improving skills and character of a person especially at the time that has entered globalization era. People are required to be able to compete both in the local and international arena, no matter what. This paper raised topic related to human resource development solution by a unique educational leadership and communication skill improvement through a linguistic approach. Here the authors want to go by form of public speaking method applied in Modern Islamic Boarding School Darussalam Gontor as the extracurricular activity that is using three languages, they are: Indonesian as the mother language or the nation language of the students, Arabic and English as the second language and Gontor’s mean to supply its students to be able to conquer the globalization needs. This implementation produced the establishment of great leaders through confidence growing to speak in public by adjusting the listener context. In linguistic term, it will help enhancing verbal and nonverbal communication skills and so forth in owning a lot of vocabulary.

Keywords: public speaking, Gontor, language, leadership

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Authors: M. R. Mogarekar, Shraddha V. More, Pankaj Kumar

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Gastroenteritis, the third leading killer of children in India today is responsible for 13% of all deaths in children <5 years of age and kills an estimated 300,000 children in India each year. We decided to investigate parameters which can help in early disease detection and prompt treatment. Serum paraoxonase is calcium dependent esterase which is widely distributed among tissues such as liver, kidney, and intestine and is located in the chromosomal region 7q21.3 22.1. Studies show the presence of excessive reactive oxygen metabolites and antioxidant imbalance in the gastrointestinal tract leading to oxidative stress in gastroenteritis. To our knowledge, this is the first ever study done. The objective of present study is to investigate the role of paraoxonase 1 (PON 1) status i.e arylesterase and lactonase activities and Q192R polymorphism and conjugated dienes, in gastroenteritis of paediatric population. The study and control group consists of 40 paediatric patients with and without gastroenteritis. Paraoxonase arylesterase and lactonase activities were assessed and phenotyping was determined. Conjugated dienes were also assessed. PON 1 arylesterase activities in cases (61.494±13.220) and controls (70.942±15.385) and lactonase activities in cases (15.702±1.036) and controls (17.434±1.176) were significantly decreased (p<0.05). There is no significant difference of phenotypic distribution in cases and controls. Conjugated dienes were found significantly increased in patients (0.086±0.024) than the control group (0.064±0.019) (p<0.05). Paraoxonase 1 activities (arylesterase and lactonase) and conjugated dienes may be useful in risk assessment and management in gastroenteritis in paediatric population.

Keywords: paraoxonase 1 polymorphism, arylesterase, lactonase, conjugated dienes, p-nitrophenylacetate, DHC

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Authors: Ikediobi Lottanna Samuel

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Days are gone when perpetrators of core international crimes hide under the cloak of sovereignty to go with impunity. The principle of international criminal responsibility is a reality. This move to end impunity for violation of human rights has led to the creation of international and hybrid tribunals, a permanent international criminal court, and increased prosecution of human rights violations in domestic courts. This article examines the attempts by the international community to bring perpetrators of heinous crimes to book. The work reveals the inadequacy of the current international mechanism for prosecuting core international crimes in order to end the culture of impunity and entrench the culture of accountability. It also identifies that ad hoc international criminal tribunals and the international criminal court face similar challenges ranging from lack of cooperation by nation states, non-existence of hierarchy of crimes, lack of effective enforcement mechanism, limited prosecutorial capacity and agenda, difficulty in apprehending suspects, difficulty in blending different legal tradition, absence of a coherent sentencing guideline, distant location of courts, selective indictment, etc. These challenges adversely affect the functioning of these courts. It is suggested that a more helpful way to end impunity would be to have a more robust and synergistic relationship between national, regional, and international approaches to prosecuting core international crimes.

Keywords: prosecution, criminal, international, tribunal, justice, ad hoc

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Authors: Pascual García, Francisco Ochoa, Jessica Ordoñez

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The links between migration and development have been widely written and analyzed from different perspectives. However, the nexus between entrepreneurship and migration is of recent interest. The different studies related to this have focused on the ventures of ethnic enclaves, or on transnational businesses, which link the community of origin and destination. Beyond this perspective, this work analyzes the return migration, (a few studies until now, but forming part of a theoretical body of migration). As a result of the European crisis started between 2007-2008. Many Ecuadorians who lived in Europe, decided to return to their place of origin. The rise of the price of the oil and commodities presented a better panorama in Ecuador than in Europe. Faced with the magnitude of returnees, the opportunities for entrepreneurship in Ecuador increased (Accumulation of human capital, social capital, learned skills and capital). Thus there is an interest in the possibility of returned migrants in the country to start a business in their place of origin. The following study is the result of this. A survey of 110 returned migrants was carried out in the south of Ecuador and, using a Probit econometric model, we determined that the variables specified as geographic area, sex, education level are not significant, so they are not determinant when undertaking. However, time abroad and skills learned, if they were significant at the time of the decision to start a business.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, development, migration, returned migration

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Authors: Robert Saputra, Tomas Havlicek

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This study discusses the design of collaborative rural governance strategies to enhance the rural economy through Village-owned Enterprises (VOE) in Riau Province, Indonesia. Using Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) combined with Textual Network Analysis (TNA) in the Rich Picture stage of SSM, we investigated the current state of VOE management. Significant obstacles identified include insufficient business feasibility analyses, lack of managerial skills, misalignment between strategy and practice, and inadequate oversight. To address these challenges, we propose a collaborative strategy involving regional governments, academic institutions, NGOs, and the private sector. This strategy emphasizes community needs assessments, efficient resource mobilization, and targeted training programs. A dedicated working group will ensure continuous monitoring and iterative improvements. Our research highlights the novel integration of SSM with TNA, providing a robust framework for improving VOE management and demonstrating the potential of collaborative efforts in driving rural economic development.

Keywords: village-owned enterprises (VOE), rural economic development, soft system methodology (SSM), textual network analysis (TNA), collaborative governance

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Authors: N. Mehrotra, V. Ahuja, N. Sridharan

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Resilience is an all hazard and a proactive approach, require a multidisciplinary input in the inter related variables of the city system. This research based to identify and operationalize indicators for assessment in domain of institutions, infrastructure and knowledge, all three operating in task oriented community networks. This paper gives a brief account of the methodology developed for assessment of Urban Resilience and its prioritized components for a target population within a newly planned urban complex integrating Surajpur and Kasna village as nodes. People’s perception of Urban Resilience has been examined by conducting questionnaire survey among the target population of Greater Noida. As defined by experts, Urban Resilience of a place is considered to be both a product and process of operation to regain normalcy after an event of disturbance of certain level. Based on this methodology, six indicators are identified that contribute to perception of urban resilience both as in the process of evolution and as an outcome. The relative significance of 6 R’ has also been identified. The dependency factor of various resilience indicators have been explored in this paper, which helps in generating new perspective for future research in disaster management. Based on the stated factors this methodology can be applied to assess urban resilience requirements of a well planned town, which is not an end in itself, but calls for new beginnings.

Keywords: disaster, resilience, system, urban

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Authors: Belgherbi Aicha, Hadjidj Ismahen, Bessaid Abdelhafid

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Interpretation of medical images benefits from anatomical and physiological priors to optimize computer-aided diagnosis applications. Segmentation of liver, spleen and kidneys is regarded as a major primary step in the computer-aided diagnosis of abdominal organ diseases. In this paper, a semi-automated method for medical image data is presented for the abdominal organ segmentation data using mathematical morphology. Our proposed method is based on hierarchical segmentation and watershed algorithm. In our approach, a powerful technique has been designed to suppress over-segmentation based on mosaic image and on the computation of the watershed transform. Our algorithm is currency in two parts. In the first, we seek to improve the quality of the gradient-mosaic image. In this step, we propose a method for improving the gradient-mosaic image by applying the anisotropic diffusion filter followed by the morphological filters. Thereafter, we proceed to the hierarchical segmentation of the liver, spleen and kidney. To validate the segmentation technique proposed, we have tested it on several images. Our segmentation approach is evaluated by comparing our results with the manual segmentation performed by an expert. The experimental results are described in the last part of this work.

Keywords: anisotropic diffusion filter, CT images, morphological filter, mosaic image, simultaneous organ segmentation, the watershed algorithm

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Authors: Shaira L. Kee, Michael Aaron G. Sy, Myles Joshua T. Tan, Hezerul Abdul Karim, Nouar AlDahoul

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Skin diseases are considered the fourth most common disease, with melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer as the most common type of cancer in Caucasians. The alarming increase in Skin Cancer cases shows an urgent need for further research to improve diagnostic methods, as early diagnosis can significantly improve the 5-year survival rate. Machine Learning algorithms for image pattern analysis in diagnosing skin lesions can dramatically increase the accuracy rate of detection and decrease possible human errors. Several studies have shown the diagnostic performance of computer algorithms outperformed dermatologists. However, existing methods still need improvements to reduce diagnostic errors and generate efficient and accurate results. Our paper proposes an ensemble method to classify dermoscopic images into benign and malignant skin lesions. The experiments were conducted using the International Skin Imaging Collaboration (ISIC) image samples. The dataset contains 3,297 dermoscopic images with benign and malignant categories. The results show improvement in performance with an accuracy of 88% and an F1 score of 87%, outperforming other existing models such as support vector machine (SVM), Residual network (ResNet50), EfficientNetB0, EfficientNetB4, and VGG16.

Keywords: deep learning - VGG16 - efficientNet - CNN – ensemble – dermoscopic images - melanoma

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Authors: Xiaoying Guo, Xiangyun Wang, Chunhua Jia

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Web page has been one of the most important way of knowing the world. Humans catch a lot of information from it everyday. Thus, understanding where human looks when they surfing the web pages is rather important. In normal scenes, the down-top features and top-down tasks significantly affect humans’ eye movement. In this paper, we investigated if the conventional visual salience algorithm can properly predict humans’ visual attractive region when they viewing the web pages. First, we obtained the eye movement data when the participants viewing the web pages using an eye tracker. By the analysis of eye movement data, we studied the influence of visual saliency and thinking way on eye-movement pattern. The analysis result showed that thinking way affect human’ eye-movement pattern much more than visual saliency. Second, we compared the results of web page visual salience region extracted by Itti model and Spectral Residual (SR) model. The results showed that Spectral Residual (SR) model performs superior than Itti model by comparison with the heat map from eye movements. Considering the influence of mind habit on humans’ visual region of interest, we introduced one of the most important cue in mind habit-fixation position to improved the SR model. The result showed that the improved SR model can better predict the human visual region of interest in web pages.

Keywords: web page salience region, eye-tracker, spectral residual, visual salience

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Authors: Candra Irawan, David Yudianto, Ahsanu Nadiyya, Dewi Anna Br Sitepu, Hanafi, Erna Styani

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Jelly drink was produced from a combination of both natural and synthetic materials, such as acesulfame potassium (acesulfame-K) as synthetic sweetener material. Acesulfame-K content in jelly drink could be determined by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), but this method needed validation due to having a change on the reagent addition step which skips the carrez addition and comparison of mix mobile phase (potassium dihydrogen phosphate and acetonitrile) with ratio from 75:25 to 90:10 to be more efficient and cheap. This study was conducted to evaluate the performance of determination method for acesulfame-K content in the jelly drink by HPLC. The method referred to Deutsches Institut fur Normung European Standard International Organization for Standardization (DIN EN ISO):12856 (1999) about Foodstuffs, Determination of acesulfame-K, aspartame and saccharin. The result of the correlation coefficient value (r) on the linearity test was 0.9987 at concentration range 5-100 mg/L. Detection limit value was 0.9153 ppm, while the quantitation limit value was 1.1932 ppm. The recovery (%) value on accuracy test for sample concentration by spiking 100 mg/L was 102-105%. Relative Standard Deviation (RSD) value for precision and homogenization tests were 2.815% and 4.978%, respectively. Meanwhile, the comparative and stability tests were tstat (0.136) < ttable (2.101) and |µ1-µ2| (1.502) ≤ 0.3×CV Horwitz. Obstinacy test value was tstat < ttable. It can be concluded that the HPLC  method for the determination of acesulfame-K in jelly drink product by HPLC has been valid and can be used for analysis with good performance.

Keywords: acesulfame-K, jelly drink, HPLC, validation

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Authors: Boy Subirosa Sabarguna, Aria Kekalih, Irzan Nurman

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Introduction: Software in the form of Clinical Decision Support System could help students in understanding the mind set of decision-making in diagnosis and treatment at the stage of general practitioners. This could accelerate and ease the learning process which previously took place by using books and experience. Method: Gather 1000 members of the National Medical Multimedia Digital Community (NM2DC) who use the “flowchart of diagnosis and treatment” software, and analyse factors related to: display, speed in learning, convenience in learning, helpfulness and usefulness in the learning process, by using the Likert Scale through online questionnaire which will further be processed using percentage. Results and Discussions: Out of the 1000 members of NM2DC, apparently: 97.0% of the members use the software and 87.5% of them are students. In terms of the analysed factors related to: display, speed in learning, convenience in learning, helpfulness and usefulness of the software’s usage, the results indicate a 90.7% of fairly good performance. Therefore, the “Flowchart of Diagnosis and Treatment” software has helped students in understanding the decision-making of diagnosis and treatment. Conclusion: the use of “Flowchart of Diagnosis and Treatment” software indicates a positive role in helping students understand decision-making of diagnosis and treatment.

Keywords: usage, software, diagnosis and treatment, medical education

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Authors: Mónika Garai-Fodor, Nikoett Huszak

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In the present study, we investigate the cognitive aspects of conscious consumer behaviour among Generation Z members. In our view, conscious consumption can greatly help to foster social responsibility, environmental and health-conscious behaviour, and ethical consumerism. We believe that it is an important educational task to promote and reinforce consumer behaviour among young people that increases and creates community value. In this study, we analysed the dimensions of young people's conscious consumer behaviour and its manifestation in concrete forms of behaviour, purchasing, and consumer decisions. As a result of a survey conducted through a snowball sampling procedure, the responses of 200 respondents who are members of Generation Z were analysed. The research analysed young people's perceptions and opinions of conscious living and their perceptions of self-conscious consumer behaviour. The primary research used a pre-tested standardised online questionnaire. Data were evaluated using bivariate and multivariate analyses in addition to descriptive statistics. The research presents results that are valid for the sample, and we plan to continue with a larger sample survey and extend it to other generations. Our main objective is to analyse what conscious living means to young people, what behavioural elements they associate with it, and what activities they themselves undertake in this context.

Keywords: generation Z, conscious consumption, primary research, sustainability

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Authors: Tanzil Ansari

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A dictionary is often considered as a list of words, arranged in alphabetical orders, providing information on a language or languages and it informs us about the spelling, the pronunciation, the origin, the gender and the grammatical functions of new and unknown words. In other words, it is first and foremost a linguistic tool. But, the research across the world in the field of linguistic and lexicography proved that a dictionary is not only a linguistic tool but also a cultural product through which a lexicographer transmits the culture of a country or a linguistic community from his or her ideology. It means, a dictionary does not present only language and its metalinguistic functions but also its culture. Every language consists of some words and expressions which depict the culture of its language. In this way, it is impossible to disassociate language from its culture. There is always an ideology that plays an important role in the depiction of any culture. Using the orientalism theory of Edward Said to represent the east, the objective of the present research is to study the representation of Indian culture through the lexicographical discourse of Hindi-French Dictionary of Federica Boschetti, a French lexicographer. The results show that the Indian culture is stereotypical and monolithic. It also shows India as male oriented country where women are exploited by male-dominated society. The study is focused on Hindi-French dictionary, but its line of argument can be compared to dictionaries produced in other languages.

Keywords: culture, dictionary, lexicographical discourse, stereotype image

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Authors: Panisa Panyalert

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This research aims to study the difference between Thailand and China in using English language in the homestay business, and also promoting using English language in the Thai community for developing employees in the tourism business. Then, the two provinces which are Samut Songkram province, Thailand and Yangzhou province, China where English is not the official language can be occurred more problems and difficulties in the communication to foreign tourists. The study uses the questionnaire for collecting the data by distributing the questionnaire to the homestay’s staff both in Samut Songkram province, Thailand and Yangzhou province, China. The sample group is 100 homestays for each province. The method of participant as observer role is required to play during visiting each homestay. Due to the comparative of the research between Samut Songkram and Yangzhou homestays, there are two hypotheses, hypothesis one: there will be relationships between English using and the profit of a homestay, probability because if the homestay staff can speak English, there will be more travelers, especially foreigners come for staying, and hypothesis two: managers in Thailand may know more English than the Chinese homestay staff. The questionnaire is separated into three parts to answer the two hypotheses. The first part is about the general information of the informant, the second part is mainly concerned with the homestay business characteristics, and the third part is English language using. As a result, the research is clearly answered the second hypothesis which is Thai homestay is using more English language than Chinese homestay.

Keywords: English language, guesthouse, homestay, using English

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Authors: Hankyu Lee, Seoung Bum Kim

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The issue with imbalance and overlapping in the class distribution becomes important in various applications of data mining. The imbalanced dataset is a special case in classification problems in which the number of observations of one class (i.e., major class) heavily exceeds the number of observations of the other class (i.e., minor class). Overlapped dataset is the case where many observations are shared together between the two classes. Imbalanced and overlapped data can be frequently found in many real examples including fraud and abuse patients in healthcare, quality prediction in manufacturing, text classification, oil spill detection, remote sensing, and so on. The class imbalance and overlap problem is the challenging issue because this situation degrades the performance of most of the standard classification algorithms. In this study, we propose a classification procedure that can effectively handle imbalanced and overlapped datasets by splitting data space into three parts: nonoverlapping, light overlapping, and severe overlapping and applying the classification algorithm in each part. These three parts were determined based on the Hausdorff distance and the margin of the modified support vector machine. An experiments study was conducted to examine the properties of the proposed method and compared it with other classification algorithms. The results showed that the proposed method outperformed the competitors under various imbalanced and overlapped situations. Moreover, the applicability of the proposed method was demonstrated through the experiment with real data.

Keywords: classification, imbalanced data with class overlap, split data space, support vector machine

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Authors: Raghunandan Gurumurthy, Aricson Pereira, Sandeep Patil

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The escalating adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) across the globe has underscored the critical importance of advancing battery system technologies. This has catalyzed a shift towards the design and development of battery systems that not only exhibit higher energy efficiency but also boast enhanced thermal performance and sophisticated multi-material enclosures. A significant leap in this domain has been the incorporation of simulation-based design optimization for battery packs and Battery Management Systems (BMS), a move further enriched by integrating artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) approaches. These strategies are pivotal in refining the design, manufacturing, and operational processes for electric vehicles and energy storage systems. By leveraging AI/ML, stakeholders can now predict battery performance metrics—such as State of Health, State of Charge, and State of Power—with unprecedented accuracy. Furthermore, as Li-ion batteries (LIBs) become more prevalent in urban settings, the imperative for bolstering thermal and fire resilience has intensified. This has propelled Battery Thermal Management Systems (BTMs) to the forefront of energy storage research, highlighting the role of machine learning and AI not just as tools for enhanced safety management through accurate temperature forecasts and diagnostics but also as indispensable allies in the early detection and warning of potential battery fires.

Keywords: electric vehicles, battery thermal management, industrial engineering, machine learning, artificial intelligence, manufacturing

Procedia PDF Downloads 100

Authors: Umm-E-Hani, Faiza Babar, Hanif Durad

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Malware-detecting approaches suffer many limitations, due to which all anti-malware solutions have failed to be reliable enough for detecting zero-day malware. Signature-based solutions depend upon the signatures that can be generated only when malware surfaces at least once in the cyber world. Another approach that works by detecting the anomalies caused in the environment can easily be defeated by diligently and intelligently written malware. Solutions that have been trained to observe the behavior for detecting malicious files have failed to cater to the malware capable of detecting the sandboxed or protected environment. Machine learning and deep learning-based approaches greatly suffer in training their models with either an imbalanced dataset or an inadequate number of samples. AI-based anti-malware solutions that have been trained with enough samples targeted a selected feature vector, thus ignoring the input of leftover features in the maliciousness of malware just to cope with the lack of underlying hardware processing power. Our research focuses on producing an anti-malware solution for detecting malicious PE files by circumventing the earlier-mentioned shortcomings. Our proposed framework, which is based on automated feature engineering through autoencoders, trains the model over a fairly large dataset. It focuses on the visual patterns of malware samples to automatically extract the meaningful part of the visual pattern. Our experiment has successfully produced a state-of-the-art accuracy of 99.54 % over test data.

Keywords: malware, auto encoders, automated feature engineering, classification

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Authors: Ki-Yeo Kim

Abstract:

Trends in genetics are transforming in order to identify differential coexpressions of correlated gene expression rather than the significant individual gene. Moreover, it is known that a combined biomarker pattern improves the discrimination of a specific cancer. The identification of the combined biomarker is also necessary for the early detection of invasive oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). To identify the combined biomarker that could improve the discrimination of OSCC, we explored an appropriate number of genes in a combined gene set in order to attain the highest level of accuracy. After detecting a significant gene set, including the pre-defined number of genes, a combined expression was identified using the weights of genes in a gene set. We used the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for the weight calculation. In this process, we used three public microarray datasets. One dataset was used for identifying the combined biomarker, and the other two datasets were used for validation. The discrimination accuracy was measured by the out-of-bag (OOB) error. There was no relation between the significance and the discrimination accuracy in each individual gene. The identified gene set included both significant and insignificant genes. One of the most significant gene sets in the classification of normal and OSCC included MMP1, SOCS3 and ACOX1. Furthermore, in the case of oral dysplasia and OSCC discrimination, two combined biomarkers were identified. The combined genomic expression achieved better performance in the discrimination of different conditions than in a single significant gene. Therefore, it could be expected that accurate diagnosis for cancer could be possible with a combined biomarker.

Keywords: oral squamous cell carcinoma, combined biomarker, microarray dataset, correlated genes

Procedia PDF Downloads 427