Search results for: online social media networks

Authors: Vadim Kulikov

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The classical Stroop effect is the phenomenon that it takes more time to name the ink color of a printed word if the word denotes a conflicting color than if it denotes the same color. Over the last 80 years, there have been many variations of the experiment revealing various mechanisms behind semantic, attentional, behavioral and perceptual processing. The Stroop task is known to exhibit asymmetry. Reading the words out loud is hardly dependent on the ink color, but naming the ink color is significantly influenced by the incongruent words. This asymmetry is reversed, if instead of naming the color, one has to point at a corresponding color patch. Another debated aspects are the notions of automaticity and how much of the effect is due to semantic and how much due to response stage interference. Is automaticity a continuous or an all-or-none phenomenon? There are many models and theories in the literature tackling these questions which will be discussed in the presentation. None of them, however, seems to capture all the findings at once. A computational model is proposed which is based on the philosophical idea developed by the author that the mind operates as a collection of different information processing modalities such as different sensory and descriptive modalities, which produce emergent phenomena through mutual interaction and coherence. This is the framework theory where ‘framework’ attempts to generalize the concepts of modality, perspective and ‘point of view’. The architecture of this computational model consists of blocks of neurons, each block corresponding to one framework. In the simplest case there are four: visual color processing, text reading, speech production and attention selection modalities. In experiments where button pressing or pointing is required, a corresponding block is added. In the beginning, the weights of the neural connections are mostly set to zero. The network is trained using Hebbian learning to establish connections (corresponding to ‘coherence’ in framework theory) between these different modalities. The amount of data fed into the network is supposed to mimic the amount of practice a human encounters, in particular it is assumed that converting written text into spoken words is a more practiced skill than converting visually perceived colors to spoken color-names. After the training, the network performs the Stroop task. The RT’s are measured in a canonical way, as these are continuous time recurrent neural networks (CTRNN). The above-described aspects of the Stroop phenomenon along with many others are replicated. The model is similar to some existing connectionist models but as will be discussed in the presentation, has many advantages: it predicts more data, the architecture is simpler and biologically more plausible.

Keywords: connectionism, Hebbian learning, artificial neural networks, philosophy of mind, Stroop

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Authors: Heba Abdelmotaal

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This paper explores the impact of the extent of a company's environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure on credit rating and capital structure. The analysis is based on a sample of 202 firms from the 350 FTSE firms over the period of 2008-2013. ESG disclosure score is measured using Proprietary Bloomberg score based on the extent of a company's Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosure. The credit rating is measured by The QuiScore, which is a measure of the likelihood that a company will become bankrupt in the twelve months following the date of calculation. The Capital Structure is measured by long term debt ratio. Two hypotheses are test using panel data regression. The results suggested that the higher degree of ESG disclosure leads to better credit rating. There is significant negative relationship between ESG disclosure and the long term debit percentage. The paper includes implications for the transparency which is resulting of the ESG disclosure could support the Monitoring Function. The monitoring role of disclosure is the increasing in the transparency of the credit rating agencies, also it could affect on managers’ actions. This study provides empirical evidence on the material of ESG disclosure on credit ratings changes and the firms’ capital decision making.

Keywords: capital structure, credit rating agencies, ESG disclosure, panel data regression

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Authors: Satyajit Kalita

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Assam from an early period has gone through various religious transformations and has witnessed its impact in different period. One of such epoch is the epoch of Srimanta Shankardeva. Srimanta Shankareva is regarded, as the greatest religious preacher and social reformer in the history of Assam. It was Shankardeva, who brought the faith of vaisnavite movement that prevailed in other parts of India. Before and during his time, the people of Assam were followers of Sakta worship, the worshipping of different gods and goddesses. People worshiped idols and offered sacrifices. Srimanta Shankardeva under the faith neo-vaishnavism and propagated the Eka-Saran-Naam-Dharm, through which spread the splendor of one and only Lord Vishnu or Krishna and abolished offering sacrifices. With the help of Eka-Saran-Naam-Dharma, Srimanta Shankardeva tries to vanish the superstitious beliefs and irrational practices of Assamese society. The NeoVaishnavite faith developed a democratic outlook which permeates the entire teachings and practices in Assamese people. His contributions not only made the foundations of Assamese literature, culture, and social structure but also established the super structures the upon. It is understood that all contributions of Srimanta Shankardeva bear his marks distinctively. Religion is said to be biggest and the most influential aspect in bringing about change in the society. In Assam, with the essence of neo-vaishnavism by Shankardeva and the emergence of the Eka-Saran-Naam-Dharma came into a huge Change to the region. The movement of religion brought about a social mobility to all sections of society. This paper is a mere initiative to look into the organizational structure of Srimanta Shankardeva Sangha and its maintenance of the ideology and principles without failure. It is aimed to examine the assimilation of different groups and communities of people under the fold of Srimanta Shankardeva Sangha.

Keywords: Neo-Vaishnavism, Srimanta Shankardeva, Srimanta Shankardeva Shangha, Eka-Saran-Naam-Dharma

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Authors: Nazeema Ahmed

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Mental health in higher education has received increasing attention over the past few decades. The high academic demands of the engineering degree, coupled with students’ mental health challenges, have led to higher education institutions offering psychotherapeutic services to students. This paper discusses an evaluation of the psychotherapy service at the University of Cape Town. The aim was to determine (i) the efficacy of the service; and (ii) the impact of race, gender, and language of the therapist on the students’ therapeutic process. An online survey was sent to 109 students who attended psychotherapy. The majority expressed favorable experiences of psychotherapy, with reports of increased capacity to engage with their academic work. Most students did not experience the gender, race, or language of the psychologists to be barriers to their therapy. The findings point to a need for ongoing psychological support for students.

Keywords: psychotherapy, efficacy, engineering, education

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Authors: Sandra Figueiredo, Alexandra Pereira, Ana Oliveira, Idia Brito, Ivaniltan Jones, Joana Moreira, Madalena Silva, Maria Paraíba, Milene Silva, Tânia Pinho

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In the present society, we are facing behaviours mainly in young individuals that might be considered trends of culture or psychopathology. Both contexts are challenges for Education, Psychology and Health. This paper examines nine case studies specifically in Educational Psychology with the main goal to identify and define phenomena contexts in school culture, the psychopathology involved and to present a psychological intervention for each case. The research was conducted by university students in the period of March 2017-June 2017, in Portugal, and the childhood was focused. The case studies explored the cyberbullying; the bullying - victims and bullies’ perspectives; the obsessive compulsive disorder; perception and inclusion of children from homoparental families; inclusion of foreign students in the higher education system; blindness and the inclusion in physical curricular activities; influence of doc-reality and media in attitudes and self-esteem; and the morningness and eveningness types learning in the same school timetables. The university students were supervised during their research analysis and two methods were available for the intervention research study: the meta-analysis and the empirical study. In the second phase, the pedagogical intervention was designed for the different educational contexts in analysis, especially concerning the school environments. The evidence of literature and the empirical studies showed new trends of school’ behaviours and educational disturbances that require further research and effective (and adequate to age, gender, nationality and culture) pedagogical instruments. Respecting the instruments, on the one hand, to identify behaviors, habits or pathologies and highlight the role and training of teachers, psychologists and health professionals, on the other hand, to promote the early intervention and to enhance healthy child development and orientation of the families. To respond to both milestones, this paper present nine pedagogical techniques and measures that will be discussed on their impact concerning advances for the psychological and educational intervention, centered in the individual and in the new generations of family’ cultures.

Keywords: behaviour, culture trends, educational intervention, psychopathology, obsessive compulsive disorder, cyberbullying, bullying, homoparental families, sleep influence, blindness and sports at school, inclusion of foreign students, media influence in behaviour

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Authors: Marthella Rivera Roidatua

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

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

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Authors: Zouhour Neji Ben Salem

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Microscopic evacuation focuses on the evacuee behavior and way of search of safety place in an egress situation. In recent years, several models handled microscopic evacuation problem. Among them, we have proposed Artificial Neural Network (ANN) as an alternative to mathematical models that can deal with such problem. In this paper, we present two ANN models: SOM map and Hopfield Network used to predict the evacuee behavior in a disaster situation. These models are tested in a real case, the second floor of Tunisian children hospital evacuation in case of fire. The two models are studied and compared in order to evaluate their performance.

Keywords: artificial neural networks, self-organization map, hopfield network, microscopic evacuation, fire building evacuation

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Authors: M. Kang'ethe Simon, Nomngcoyiya Thanduxolo

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The aim of this article is to explore the role of selected cultural practices and assess how they can be a panacea in mitigating the state of social vices in South Africa. The article uses a review of literature methodology. Findings indicate that Africans were hoodwinked by white people to abandon their cultures for western based cultures. African cultures continue to weaken as they succumb to forces of westernization, eurocentrism, modernization, civilization, and globalization. Africans have realised that their cultures abandoned such as virginity testing, sexual mores and taboos and circumcision could be a panacea in mitigating some of the societal ills such as moral decadence and HIV/AIDS. The article urges for a resuscitation of cultural practices such as virginity testing, thigh sex (ukumetsha), circumcision and teachings that accompanied initiation schools; and societies to undergo an attitudinal and cultural paradigm shift that will consider the invaluable aspects of cultures that can effectuate and facilitate mitigation of social ills in African countries such as South Africa.

Keywords: virginity testing (reed dance), circumcision, initiation schools, African Renaissance, thigh sex, moral decadence, cultural custodians, state of anomie

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Authors: Chenchieh Chang

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Objectives: This study had two objectives. First, it used affective events theory to investigate the relationship between workplace bullying and the intention to resign in nurses, a topic rarely explored in previous studies. Second, according to the conservation of resource theory, individuals encountering work incidents will utilize resources that are at their disposal to strengthen or weaken the effects of the incidents on them. Such resources include social support that comes from their bosses, colleagues, family, and friends. To answer the question of whether different social supports exert distinct effects on alleviating stress experienced by nurses, this study examined the moderating effects of different social supports on the relationship between workplace bullying and nurses’ intention to resign. Method: This study was approved by an institutional review board (code number: 105070) and adopted purposive sampling to survey 911, full-time nurses. Results: Work-related bullying exerted a significant and positive effect on the intention to resign, whereas bullying pertaining to interpersonal relationships and body-related bullying nonsignificantly affected intention to resign. Support from supervisors enhanced the effect of work-related bullying on an intention to resign, whereas support from colleagues and family did not moderate said effect. Research Limitations/Implications: The self-reporting method and cross-sectional research　design adopted in this study might have resulted in common method variance and limited the ability to make causal inferences. This study suggests future studies to obtain measures of predictor and criterion variables from different sources or ensure a temporal, proximal, or psychological separation between predictor and criterion in the collection of data to avoid the common method bias. Practical Implications: First, businesses should establish a friendly work environment and prevent employees from encountering workplace bullying. Second, because social support cannot diminish the effect of workplace bullying on employees’ intention to resign, businesses should offer other means of assistance. For example, business managers may introduce confidential systems for employees to report workplace bullying; or they may establish consultation centers where employees can properly express their thoughts and feelings when encountering workplace bullying.

Keywords: workplace bullying, intention to occupation leave, social supports, nurses

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Authors: Do-Jin Jang, Sung-Ah Kim

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In designing a kinetic façade, it is hard for the designer to make digital models due to its complex geometry with motion. This paper aims to present a methodology of converting a point cloud of a physical model into a single digital model with a certain topology and motion. The method uses a Microsoft Kinect sensor, and color markers were defined and applied to three paper folding-inspired designs. Although the resulted digital model cannot represent the whole folding range of the physical model, the method supports the designer to conduct a performance-oriented design process with the rough physical model in the reduced folding range.

Keywords: design media, kinetic facades, tangible user interface, 3D scanning

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Authors: Christopher Reichstein, Ralf-Christian Härting, Martina Häußler

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With a continuously increasing speed of information exchange on the World Wide Web, retailers in the E-Commerce sector are faced with immense possibilities regarding different online purchase processes like dynamic price settings. By use of Dynamic Pricing, retailers are able to set short time price changes in order to optimize producer surplus. The empirical research illustrates the basics of Dynamic Pricing and identifies six influencing factors of Dynamic Pricing. The results of a structural equation modeling approach show five main drivers increasing the potential of dynamic price settings in the E-Commerce. Influencing factors are the knowledge of customers’ individual willingness to pay, rising sales, the possibility of customization, the data volume and the information about competitors’ pricing strategy.

Keywords: e-commerce, empirical research, experts, dynamic pricing (DP), influencing factors, potentials

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Authors: Abongile Zweni, Grate Moyo, Ricardo Peters, Bingwen Yan

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Budgets are one of the most important tools that organisations, big or small, need to use as management tools. When organisations, particularly Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs), do not use budgets, they are bound to fail in their infancy stage. The aim of this study was to assess whether or not SMMEs in South Africa used budgets as an effective management tool during the COVID-19 pandemic. For the purposes of this study, data was collected using an online questionnaire (survey). This study used the quantitative research approach. The study used descriptive statistics to analyse the research question. The study found that most SMMEs did not use budgets during the COVID-19 pandemic; one of the reasons, amongst others, was that most of them had to close down during the lockdown, and some of them did not even qualify for government bailout or government grants.

Keywords: budget management, SMMEs, COVID-19, South Africa

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Authors: Shabnam Dadparvar, Laijin Shen, Farzad Ravanbod

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Nowadays, the political phenomenon of terrorism is considered as an effective factor on political, social, and economic changes. It has replaced the recognized political phenomena such as revolutions, wars (total war among two or more political units with distinct identities in the form of national states), coups d’état, insurgencies and etc. and has challenged political life in all its levels (sub national, national, and international political groups). In this paper by using descriptive-analytical method, the authors try to explain the spread of this political phenomenon across the world, its definition and types, also analyze different approaches to understand it. The authors believe that the Logical-Rational approach is the best way to explain and understand this phenomenon.

Keywords: logical approach, psychological- social approach, religious approach, terrorism

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Authors: Feng-Sheng Wang, Chao-Ting Cheng

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Developing a drug from conception to launch is costly and time-consuming. Computer-aided methods can reduce research costs and accelerate the development process during the early drug discovery and development stages. This study developed a fuzzy multi-objective hierarchical optimization framework for identifying potential anticancer targets in a metabolic model. First, RNA-seq expression data of colorectal cancer samples and their healthy counterparts were used to reconstruct tissue-specific genome-scale metabolic models. The aim of the optimization framework was to identify anticancer targets that lead to cancer cell death and evaluate metabolic flux perturbations in normal cells that have been caused by cancer treatment. Four objectives were established in the optimization framework to evaluate the mortality of cancer cells for treatment and to minimize side effects causing toxicity-induced tumorigenesis on normal cells and smaller metabolic perturbations. Through fuzzy set theory, a multiobjective optimization problem was converted into a trilevel maximizing decision-making (MDM) problem. The applied nested hybrid differential evolution was applied to solve the trilevel MDM problem using two nutrient media to identify anticancer targets in the genome-scale metabolic model of colorectal cancer, respectively. Using Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle Medium (DMEM), the computational results reveal that the identified anticancer targets were mostly involved in cholesterol biosynthesis, pyrimidine and purine metabolisms, glycerophospholipid biosynthetic pathway and sphingolipid pathway. However, using Ham’s medium, the genes involved in cholesterol biosynthesis were unidentifiable. A comparison of the uptake reactions for the DMEM and Ham’s medium revealed that no cholesterol uptake reaction was included in DMEM. Two additional media, i.e., a cholesterol uptake reaction was included in DMEM and excluded in HAM, were respectively used to investigate the relationship of tumor cell growth with nutrient components and anticancer target genes. The genes involved in the cholesterol biosynthesis were also revealed to be determinable if a cholesterol uptake reaction was not induced when the cells were in the culture medium. However, the genes involved in cholesterol biosynthesis became unidentifiable if such a reaction was induced.

Keywords: Cancer metabolism, genome-scale metabolic model, constraint-based model, multilevel optimization, fuzzy optimization, hybrid differential evolution

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Authors: Małgorzata Cichy

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Afghanistan is a source of conflicts that affect security on a global scale. The role of ethnic and national determinants in the peacebuilding process in this country remains an extremely important factor in this respect. Research methods include literature and data analysis (scientific literature, documents of governmental and non-governmental organizations, statistical data and media reports), institutional and legal analysis, as well as decision-making method. The main objective of the research is a comprehensive answer to the question of how ethnic and national factors affect the process of building peace in Afghanistan after 2021 and what impact it has on international security.

Keywords: Afghanistan, pashtuns, peace, taliban

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Authors: Panprae Bunyapukkna

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This study investigated figures of speech used in fragrance advertising captions on the Internet. The objectives of the study were to find out the frequencies of figures of speech in fragrance advertising captions and the types of figures of speech most commonly applied in captions. The relation between figures of speech and fragrance was also examined in order to analyze how figures of speech were used to represent fragrance. Thirty-five fragrance advertisements were randomly selected from the Internet. Content analysis was applied in order to consider the relation between figures of speech and fragrance. The results showed that figures of speech were found in almost every fragrance advertisement except one advertisement of Lancôme. Thirty-four fragrance advertising captions used at least one kind of figure of speech. Metaphor was most frequently found and also most frequently applied in fragrance advertising captions, followed by alliteration, rhyme, simile and personification, and hyperbole respectively.

Keywords: advertising speech, fragrance advertisements, figures of speech, metaphor

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Authors: Vassilios Moussas, Dimos N. Pantazis, Panagioths Stratakis

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The aim of this paper is to present the optimization methodology developed in the frame of a Coastal Transport Information System. The system will be used for the effective design of coastal transportation lines and incorporates subsystems that implement models, tools and techniques that may support the design of improved networks. The role of the optimization and decision subsystem is to provide the user with better and optimal scenarios that will best fulfill any constrains, goals or requirements posed. The complexity of the problem and the large number of parameters and objectives involved led to the adoption of an evolutionary method (Genetic Algorithms). The problem model and the subsystem structure are presented in detail, and, its support for simulation is also discussed.

Keywords: coastal transport, modeling, optimization

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Authors: Samai'la Abdullahi

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A graph is a pair of two set and so that a graph is a pictorial representation of a system using two basic element nodes and edges. A node is represented by a circle (either hallo shade) and edge is represented by a line segment connecting two nodes together. In this paper, we present a circuit network in the concept of graph theory application and also circuit models of graph are represented in logical connection method were we formulate matrix method of adjacency and incidence of matrix and application of truth table.

Keywords: euler circuit and path, graph representation of circuit networks, representation of graph models, representation of circuit network using logical truth table

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Authors: André Lages, Victor Dmitriev, Juliano Bazzo, Gianni Portela

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This work evaluates the feasibility of the graphene application to perform as a wideband reconfigurable material for lens antennas in 5G/6G and satellite applications. Based on transformation optics principles, the electromagnetic waves can be efficiently guided by modifying the effective refractive index. Graphene behavior can range between a lossy dielectric and a good conductor due to the variation of its chemical potential bias, thus arising as a promising solution for electromagnetic devices. The graphene properties and a lens antenna comprising multiples layers and periodic arrangements of graphene patches were analyzed using full-wave simulations. A dipole directivity was improved from 7 to 18.5 dBi at 29 GHz. In addition, the realized gain was enhanced 7 dB across a 14 GHz bandwidth within the Ka/5G band.

Keywords: 5G/6G, graphene, lens, reconfigurable, satellite

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Authors: Shashank Gupta, Carlos Cid, William John Munro

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Quantum distillation is the task of concentrating quantum correlations present in N imperfect copies to M perfect copies (M < N) using free operations by involving all P the parties sharing the quantum correlation. We present a threshold quantum distillation task where the same objective is achieved but using lesser number of parties (K < P). In particular, we give an exact local filtering operations by the participating parties sharing high dimension multipartite entangled state to distill the perfect quantum correlation. Later, we bridge a connection between threshold quantum entanglement distillation and quantum steering distillation and show that threshold distillation might work in the scenario where general distillation protocol like DEJMPS does not work.

Keywords: quantum networks, quantum distillation, quantum key distribution, entanglement distillation

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Authors: Yujun Liu, Maosheng Ran

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Background: Chinese rural-to-urban migrant workers’ mental health problems raise attentions from different social sectors. However, situation of present mental health services provided to this population has not been discovered. This study attempts to describe the current mental health service situation, identify the gaps and give the future directions based on the quantitative data. Methods: Questionnaire surveys were conducted among 2017 rural-to-urban migrant workers in 13 cities and 100 social work service organizations in 5 cities in 2014. Data was collected by face-to-face structured interview by trained interviewers. Findings: Migrant workers’ mental health status was not good. Compared to the severity of mental distress, mental health service for this population was lacking and insufficient, which accounted for only 14.4% of all services in our sample. And the group work and case work were the most frequently-used methods. By estimating a series of regression models, we revealed that life experiences and working conditions were significantly associated with migrant workers’ mental health status. Therefore, the macro social work practices aimed at this whole group were advocated to promote their mental wellbeing. That is, practitioners should not only focus on the improvement of migrant workers’ emotion management capacity, but also pay attention to raise awareness and improve their living and working condition; not only concentrate on the solving of individuals’ dilemma, but also promote gradual reformation of present labor regime and hukou system in China.

Keywords: Chinese rural-to-urban migrant workers, macro social work practice, mental health service needs, mental health status

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Authors: Yaou Zhang

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Background: Relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to the production of Benjamin Britten’s chamber opera The Turn of the Screw. As one of Britten’s most remarkable operas. The story of the libretto was from Henry James’s novella of the same name. The novella was created in 1898 and one of the primary questions addressed to people in the story is “how real the ghosts are,” which leads the story to a huge ambiguity in readers’ minds. Aims: This research focuses on the experience of seeing the opera on stage over several decades. This study of opera productions over time not only provides insight into how stage performances can alter audience members' perceptions of the opera in the present but also reveals a landscape of shifting aesthetics and receptions. Methods: To examine the hypotheses in interpretation and reception, the qualitative analysis is used to examine the figures of ghosts in different productions across the time from 1954 to 2021 in the UK: by accessing recordings, newspapers, and reviews for the productions that are sourced from online and physical archives. For instance, the field research is conducted on the topic by arranging interviews with the creative team and visiting Opera North in Leeds and Britten-Pears Foundation. The collected data reveals the “hidden identity” in creative teams’ interpretations, social preferences, and rediscover that have previously remained unseen. Results: This research presents an angle of Britten’s Screw by using the third position; it shows how the attention moved from the stage of “do the ghosts really exist” to “traumatised children.” Discussion: Critics and audiences have debated whether the governess hallucinates the ghosts in the opera for decades. While, in recent years, directors of new productions have given themselves the opportunity to go deeper into Britten's musical structure and offer the opera more space to be interpreted, rather than debating if "ghosts actually exist" or "the psychological problems of the governess." One can consider and reflect that the questionable actions of the children are because they are suffering from trauma, whether the trauma comes from the ghosts, the hallucinating governess, or some prior experiences: various interpretations cause one result that children are the recipients of trauma. Arguably, the role of the supernatural is neither simply one of the elements of a ghost story nor simply one of the parts of the ambiguity between the supernatural and the hallucination of the governess; rather, the ghosts and the hallucinating governess can exist at the same time - the combination of the supernatural’s and the governess’s behaviours on stage generates a sharper and more serious angle that draws our attention to the traumatized children.

Keywords: benjamin britten, chamber opera, production, reception, staging, the turn of the screw

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Authors: Jiahao Cui

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In the past centuries, due to climate change and intense whaling, the global whale population has dramatically declined. Among the various whale species, the fin whale experienced the most drastic drop in number due to its popularity in whaling. Under this background, identifying fin whale calls could be immensely beneficial to the preservation of the species. This paper uses feature extraction to process the input audio signal, then a network based on AlexNet and three networks based on the ResNet model was constructed to classify fin whale calls. A mixture of the DOSITS database and the Watkins database was used during training. The results demonstrate that a modified ResNet network has the best performance considering precision and network complexity.

Keywords: convolutional neural network, ResNet, AlexNet, fin whale preservation, feature extraction

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Authors: Kuay Hue San, Muaz Haqim Shaharum, Nasir Yusoff

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Gender plays a big role in psychosocial development. This study aimed to investigate whether gender moderates the relationship between moral identity (internalization and symbolization) and risk-smoking behavior. An online cross-sectional study was carried out on 388 (61% female) youths who fulfilled the study’s inclusion and exclusion criteria. While viewing images of smoking behavior, participants rated their emotional state, which ranged from unpleasant to pleasant. Participants were also asked to fill out the eight-item Moral Identity Scale and provide their socio-demographic information. Gender significantly moderated the relationship between symbolization and smoking behavior. However, the moderation effect was not shown by internalization Finding highlights the implication of gender on moral identity and smoking behavior and the importance of considering this in the public health intervention and program.

Keywords: smoking behaviour, gender, emotion, moral identity

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Authors: Melody Mandevere, Roselyn Cheruiyot

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

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

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Authors: Nassima Sotehi

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This article presents experimental and numerical results concerning the thermal properties of the porous materials used as heat insulator in the buildings sector. Initially, the thermal conductivity of three types of studied walls (classic concrete, concrete with cork aggregate and polystyrene concrete) was measured in experiments by the method of the boxes. Then a numerical modeling of the heat and mass transfers which occur within porous materials was applied to these walls. This work shows the influence of the presence of water in building materials on their thermophysical properties, as well as influence of the nature of materials and dosage of fibers introduced within these materials on the thermal and mass transfers.

Keywords: modeling, porous media, thermal materials, thermal properties

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Authors: Mohammad Mahdi Namdari, Hosein Torki

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Security as an abstract concept, has involved human being from the beginning of creation to the present, and certainly to the future. Accordingly, battles, conflicts, challenges, legal proceedings, crimes and all issues related to human kind are associated with this concept. Today by interviewing people about their life, the security of societies and Social crimes are interviewed too. Along with the security as an infrastructure and vital concept, the economy and related issues e.g. welfare, per capita income, total government revenue, export, import and etc. is considered another infrastructure and vital concept. These two vital concepts (Security and Economic) have linked together complexly and significantly. The present study employs analytical-descriptive research method using documents and Statistics of official sources. Discovery and explanation of this mutual connection are comprising a profound and extensive research; so management, development and reform in system and relationships of the scope of this two concepts are complex and difficult. Tourism and its position in today's economy is one of the main pillars of the economy of the 21st century that maybe associate with the security and social crimes more than other pillars. Like all human activities, economy of societies and partially tourism dependent on security especially in the public and social security. On the other hand, the true economic development (generally) and the growth of the tourism industry (dedicated) are a security generating and supporting for it, because a dynamic economic infrastructure prevents the formation of centers of crime and illegal activities by providing a context for socio-economic development for all segments of society in a fair and humane. This relationship is a formula of the complexity between the two concept of economy and security. Police as a revealed or people-oriented organization in the field of security directly has linked with the economy of a community and is very effective In the face of the tourism industry. The relationship between security and national crime index, and economic indicators especially ones related to tourism is confirming above discussion that is notable. According to understanding processes about security and economic as two key and vital concepts are necessary and significant for sovereignty of governments.

Keywords: economic, police, tourism, social security

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Authors: Carolina Gutierrez-Cortes, Hector Suarez, Gustavo Buitrago

Abstract:

Bacteriocins are antimicrobial peptides produced by bacteria as a competitive strategy for substrate and habitat. Those peptides have a potential use as food biopreservatives due to their antimicrobial activity against foodborne pathogens, avoiding the use of additives that can be harmful to consumers. The industrial production of bacteriocins is currently expensive; one of the options to be competitive is the development of economic culture media, for example, with the use of agro-industrial wastes such as whey. This study evaluated the growth and production of bacteriocins from four strains: Pediococcus pentosaceus 63, Pediococcus pentosaceus 145, Pediococcus pentosaceus 146 and Pediococcus pentosaceus 147 isolated from ‘minas cheese’ (artisanal cheese made from raw milk in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil) in order to select a strain with growth at high rates and higher antimicrobial activity against Listeria monocytogenes 104 after incubation on the culture medium designed with whey and other components. The media used were: MRS broth, modified MRS broth (using different sources of carbon and nitrogen and different amounts of micronutrients) and a culture medium designed by a factorial design using whey and other components. The final biomass concentrations of the four strains in MRS broth after 24 hours of incubation were very similar 9.25, 9.33, 9.25 and 9.22 (log CFU/mL) for P. pentosaceus 63, P. pentosaceus 145, P. pentosaceus 146 and P. pentosaceus 147 respectively. In the same assays, antimicrobial activity of 3200 AU/mL for the first three and of 12800 AU/mL for P. pentosaceus 147 were obtained. Culture of P. pentosaceus 63 on modified MRS broth, showed the effect of some sources of carbon on the activity of bacteriocin, obtaining 12800 AU/mL with dextrose and 25600 AU/mL with maltose. Cultures of P. pentosaceus 145, 146 and 147 with these same sugars presented activity of 12800 AU/mL. It was observed that the modified MRS medium using whey increased the antimicrobial activity of the strains at 16000, 6400, 16000 and 19200 AU/mL for each strain respectively, keeping the biomass at values close to 9 log units. About nitrogen sources, it was observed that the combination of peptone (10 g /L), meat extract (10 g/L) and yeast extract (5 g/L) promoted the highest activity (12800 AU/mL), and in all cases MgSO4, MnSO4, K2HPO4 and ammonium citrate at low concentrations adversely affected bacteriocin production. Because P. pentosaceus 147 showed the highest antimicrobial activity in the presence of whey, it was used to evaluate the culture medium (peptone (10 g/L), meat extract (8 g/L), yeast extract (2 g/L), Tween® 80 (1 g/L), ammonium citrate (2 g/L), sodium acetate (5 g/L), MgSO4 (0.2 g/L), MnSO4 (0.04 g/L)). With the designed medium added with whey, 9.34 log units of biomass concentration and 19200 AU/mL were achieved for P. pentosaceus 147. The above suggest that the new medium promotes the antimicrobial activity of P. pentosaceus 147 allowing the use of an economic medium using whey.

Keywords: antimicrobial activity, bacteriocins, pediococcus, whey

Procedia PDF Downloads 214

Authors: Kumar Divyendra

Abstract:

Underwater Sensor Networks (UWSNs) have wide applications in areas such as water quality monitoring, marine wildlife management etc. A typical UWSN system consists of a set of sensors deployed randomly underwater which communicate with each other using acoustic links. RF communication doesn't work underwater, and GPS too isn't available underwater. Additionally Automated Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are deployed to collect data from some special nodes called Cluster Heads (CHs). These CHs aggregate data from their neighboring nodes and forward them to the AUVs using optical links when an AUV is in range. This helps reduce the number of hops covered by data packets and helps conserve energy. We consider the three-dimensional model of the UWSN. Nodes are initially deployed randomly underwater. They attach themselves to the surface using a rod and can only move upwards or downwards using a pump and bladder mechanism. We use graph theory concepts to maximize the coverage volume while every node maintaining connectivity with at least one surface node. We treat the surface nodes as landmarks and each node finds out its hop distance from every surface node. We treat these hop-distances as coordinates and use them for AUV navigation. An AUV intending to move closer to a node with given coordinates moves hop by hop through nodes that are closest to it in terms of these coordinates. In absence of GPS, multiple different approaches like Inertial Navigation System (INS), Doppler Velocity Log (DVL), computer vision-based navigation, etc., have been proposed. These systems have their own drawbacks. INS accumulates error with time, vision techniques require prior information about the environment. We propose a method that makes use of the earth's magnetic field values for navigation and combines it with other methods that simultaneously increase the coverage volume under the UWSN. The AUVs are fitted with magnetometers that measure the magnetic intensity (I), horizontal inclination (H), and Declination (D). The International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF) is a mathematical model of the earth's magnetic field, which provides the field values for the geographical coordinateson earth. Researchers have developed an inverse deep learning model that takes the magnetic field values and predicts the location coordinates. We make use of this model within our work. We combine this with with the hop-by-hop movement described earlier so that the AUVs move in such a sequence that the deep learning predictor gets trained as quickly and precisely as possible We run simulations in MATLAB to prove the effectiveness of our model with respect to other methods described in the literature.

Keywords: clustering, deep learning, network backbone, parallel computing

Procedia PDF Downloads 83

Authors: Nicole Marella G. Tan, Al Joseph R. Molina, Raisa Celine R. Rosete, Soraya Elisse E. Escandor, Blythe N. Ke, Veronica Marie E. Ramos, Apolinario Ericson B. Berberabe, Jose Jonas D. del Rosario, Regina Pascua-Berba, Eileen Liesl A. Cubillan, Winlove P. Mojica

Abstract:

Emergency risk and health communications play a vital role in any pandemic response. However, the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) lacked a system of information delivery that could effectively fulfill the hospital’s communication needs as a COVID-19 referral hospital. This study aimed to describe the establishment of a communication framework for information dissemination within a tertiary government hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic and evaluated the perceived usefulness of its outputs. This is a mixed quantitative-qualitative study with two phases. Phase 1 documented the formation and responsibilities of the Information Education Communication (IEC) Committee. Phase 2 evaluated its output and outcomes through a hospital-wide survey of 528 healthcare workers (HCWs) using a pre-tested questionnaire. In-depth explanations were obtained from five focused group discussions (FGD) amongst various HCW subgroups. Descriptive analysis was done using STATA 16 while qualitative data were synthesized thematically. Communication practices in PGH were loosely structured at the beginning of the pandemic until the establishment of the IEC Committee. The IEC Committee was well-represented by concerned stakeholders. Nine types of infographics tackled different aspects of the hospital’s health operations after thorough inputs from concerned offices. Internal and external feedback mechanisms ensured accurate infographics. Majority of the survey respondents (98.67%) perceived these as useful in their work or daily lives. FGD participants cited the relevance of infographics to their occupations, suggested improvements, and hoped that these efforts would be continued in the future. Sustainability and comprehensive reach were the main concerns in this undertaking. The PGH COVID-19 IEC framework was developed through trial and testing as there were no existing formal structures to communicate health risks and to properly direct the HCWs in the chaotic time of a pandemic. It is a continuously evolving framework which is perceived as useful by HCWs and is hoped to be sustained in the future.

Keywords: COVID-19, pandemic, health communication, infographics, social media

Procedia PDF Downloads 110