Search results for: language class anxiety

Authors: Reem Alsager, James Milton

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Coxhead’s (2000) Academic Word List (AWL) believed to be essential for students pursuing higher education and helps differentiate English for Academic Purposes (EAP) from General English as a course of study, and it is thought to be important for comprehending English academic texts. It has been described that AWL is an infrequent, discrete set of vocabulary items unreachable from general language. On the other hand, it has been known for a period of time that general vocabulary knowledge is a good predictor of academic achievement. This study, however, is an attempt to measure and compare the contribution of academic knowledge and general vocabulary knowledge to learners’ GPA and examine what knowledge is a better predictor of academic achievement and investigate whether AWL as a specialised list of infrequent words relates to the frequency effect. The participants were comprised of 44 international postgraduate students in Swansea University, all from the School of Management, following the taught MSc (Master of Science). The study employed the Academic Vocabulary Size Test (AVST) and the XK_Lex vocabulary size test. The findings indicate that AWL is a list based on word frequency rather than a discrete and unique word list and that the AWL performs the same function as general vocabulary, with tests of each found to measure largely the same quality of knowledge. The findings also suggest that the contribution that AWL knowledge provides for academic success is not sufficient and that general vocabulary knowledge is better in predicting academic achievement. Furthermore, the contribution that academic knowledge added above the contribution of general vocabulary knowledge when combined is really small and noteworthy. This study’s results are in line with the argument and suggest that it is the development of general vocabulary size is an essential quality for academic success and acquiring the words of the AWL will form part of this process. The AWL by itself does not provide sufficient coverage, and is probably not specialised enough, for knowledge of this list to influence this general process. It can be concluded that AWL as an academic word list epitomizes only a fraction of words that are actually needed for academic success in English and that knowledge of academic vocabulary combined with general vocabulary knowledge above the most frequent 3000 words is what matters most to ultimate academic success.

Keywords: academic achievement, academic vocabulary, general vocabulary, vocabulary size

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Authors: Yuan-Jye Tseng, Jia-Shu Li

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To design a product with the given product requirement and design objective, there can be alternative ways to propose the detailed design specifications of the product. In the design modeling stage, alternative design cases with detailed specifications can be modeled to fulfill the product requirement and design objective. Therefore, in the design evaluation stage, it is required to perform an evaluation of the alternative design cases for deciding the final design. The purpose of this research is to develop a product evaluation model for evaluating the alternative design cases by integrated evaluating the criteria of functional design, Kansei design, and design for supply chain. The criteria in the functional design group include primary function, expansion function, improved function, and new function. The criteria in the Kansei group include geometric shape, dimension, surface finish, and layout. The criteria in the design for supply chain group include material, manufacturing process, assembly, and supply chain operation. From the point of view of value and cost, the criteria in the functional design group and Kansei design group represent the design value of the product. The criteria in the design for supply chain group represent the supply chain and manufacturing cost of the product. It is required to evaluate the design value and the supply chain cost to determine the final design. For the purpose of evaluating the criteria in the three criteria groups, a fuzzy analytic network process (FANP) method is presented to evaluate a weighted index by calculating the total relational values among the three groups. A method using the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) is used to compare and rank the design alternative cases according to the weighted index using the total relational values of the criteria. The final decision of a design case can be determined by using the ordered ranking. For example, the design case with the top ranking can be selected as the final design case. Based on the criteria in the evaluation, the design objective can be achieved with a combined and weighted effect of the design value and manufacturing cost. An example product is demonstrated and illustrated in the presentation. It shows that the design evaluation model is useful for integrated evaluation of functional design, Kansei design, and design for supply chain to determine the best design case and achieve the design objective.

Keywords: design for supply chain, design evaluation, functional design, Kansei design, fuzzy analytic network process, technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution

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Authors: M. Invigorito, G. Elia, M. Panelli

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Hybrid propulsion combines beneficial properties of both solid and liquid rockets, such as multiple restarts, throttability as well as simplicity and reduced costs. A nitrous oxide (N2O)/paraffin-based hybrid rocket engine demonstrator is currently under development at the Italian Aerospace Research Center (CIRA) within the national research program HYPROB, funded by the Italian Ministry of Research. Nitrous oxide belongs to the class of self-pressurizing propellants that exhibit a high vapor pressure at standard ambient temperature. This peculiar feature makes those fluids very attractive for space rocket applications because it avoids the use of complex pressurization systems, leading to great benefits in terms of weight savings and reliability. To avoid feed-system-coupled instabilities, the phase change is required to occur through the injectors. In this regard, the oxidizer is stored in liquid condition while target chamber pressures are designed to lie below vapor pressure. The consequent cavitation and flash vaporization constitute a remarkably complex phenomenology that arises great modelling challenges. Thus, it is clear that the design of the injection system is fundamental for the full exploitation of hybrid rocket engine throttability. The Analytical Hierarchy Process has been used to select the injection architecture as best compromise among different design criteria such as functionality, technology innovation and cost. The impossibility to use engineering simplified relations for the dimensioning of the injectors led to the needs of applying a numerical approach based on OpenFOAM®. The numerical tool has been validated with selected experimental data from literature. Quantitative, as well as qualitative comparisons are performed in terms of mass flow rate and pressure drop across the injector for several operating conditions. The results show satisfactory agreement with the experimental data. Modeling assumptions, together with their impact on numerical predictions are discussed in the paper. Once assessed the reliability of the numerical tool, the injection plate has been designed and sized to guarantee the required amount of oxidizer in the combustion chamber and therefore to assure high combustion efficiency. To this purpose, the plate has been designed with multiple injectors whose number and diameter have been selected in order to reach the requested mass flow rate for the two operating conditions of maximum and minimum thrust. The overall design has been finally verified through three-dimensional computations in cavitating non-reacting conditions and it has been verified that the proposed design solution is able to guarantee the requested values of mass flow rates.

Keywords: hybrid rocket, injection system design, OpenFOAM®, cavitation

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Authors: Mark Andrew

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Geopolitical tensions are at a thirty-year high, and the pace of technological innovation is driving asymmetry in force capabilities between nation states and between non-state actors. Technology futures are a vital component of defence capability growth, and investments in technology futures need to be informed by accurate and reliable forecasts of the options for ‘systems of systems’ innovation, development, and deployment. This paper describes a method for forecasting technology futures developed through an analysis of four key systems’ development stages, namely: technology domain categorisation, scanning results examining novel systems’ signals and signs, potential system-of systems’ implications in warfare theatres, and political ramifications in terms of funding and development priorities. The method has been applied to several technology domains, including physical systems (e.g., nano weapons, loitering munitions, inflight charging, and hypersonic missiles), biological systems (e.g., molecular virus weaponry, genetic engineering, brain-computer interfaces, and trans-human augmentation), and information systems (e.g., sensor technologies supporting situation awareness, cyber-driven social attacks, and goal-specification challenges to proliferation and alliance testing). Although the current application of the method has been team-centred using paper-based rapid prototyping and iteration, the application of autonomous language models (such as GPT-3) is anticipated as a next-stage operating platform. The importance of forecasting accuracy and reliability is considered a vital element in guiding technology development to afford stronger contingencies as ideological changes are forecast to expand threats to ecology and earth systems, possibly eclipsing the traditional vulnerabilities of nation states. The early results from the method will be subjected to ground truthing using longitudinal investigation.

Keywords: forecasting, technology futures, uncertainty, complexity

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Authors: Michael Lekan-Kehinde, Abimbola Asojo, Bonnie Sanborn

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Good acoustic performance has been identified as one of the critical Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) factors for student learning and development by the National Research Council. Childhood presents the opportunity for children to develop lifelong skills that will support them throughout their adult lives. Acoustic performance of a space has been identified as a factor that can impact language acquisition, concentration, information retention, and general comfort within the environment. Increasingly, students learn by communication between both teachers and fellow students, making speaking and listening crucial. Neurodiversity - while initially coined to describe individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) - widely describes anyone with a different brain process. As the understanding from cognitive and neurosciences increases, the number of people identified as neurodiversity is nearly 30% of the population. This research looks at guidelines and standard for spaces with good acoustical quality and relates it with the experiences of students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), their parents, teachers, and educators through a mixed methods approach, including selected case studies interviews, and mixed surveys. The information obtained from these sources is used to determine if selected materials, especially properties relating to sound absorption and reverberation reduction, are equally useful in small, medium sized, and large learning spaces and methodologically approaching. The results describe the potential impact of acoustics on Neurodiverse students, considering factors that determine the complexity of sound in relation to the auditory processing capabilities of ASD students. In conclusion, this research extends the knowledge of how materials selection influences the better development of acoustical environments for autism students.

Keywords: acoustics, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), children, education, learning, learning spaces, materials, neurodiversity, sound

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Authors: Hushyar Azari

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Aim and background: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is regarded as an important therapeutic choice for Parkinson's disease (PD). The two most common targets for DBS are the subthalamic nucleus (STN) and globus pallidus (GPi). This review was conducted to compare the clinical effectiveness of these two targets. Methods: A systematic literature search in electronic databases: Embase, Cochrane Library and PubMed were restricted to English language publications 2010 to 2021. Specified MeSH terms were searched in all databases. Studies which evaluated the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) III were selected by meeting the following criteria: (1) compared both GPi and STN DBS; (2) had at least three months follow-up period; (3)at least five participants in each group; (4)conducted after 2010. Study quality assessment was performed using the Modified Jadad Scale. Results: 3577 potentially relevant articles were identified, of these, 3569 were excluded based on title and abstract, duplicate and unsuitable article removal. Eight articles satisfied the inclusion criteria and were scrutinized (458 PD patients). According to Modified Jadad Scale, the majority of included studies had low evidence quality which was a limitation of this review. 5 studies reported no statistically significant between-group difference for improvements in UPDRS ш scores. At the same time, there were some results in terms of pain, action tremor, rigidity, and urinary symptoms, which indicated that STN DBS might be a better choice. Regarding the adverse effects, GPi was superior. Conclusion: It is clear that other larger randomized clinical trials with longer follow-up periods and control groups are needed to decide which target is more efficient for deep brain stimulation in Parkinson’s disease and imposes fewer adverse effects on the patients. Meanwhile, STN seems more reasonable according to the results of this systematic review.

Keywords: brain stimulation, globus pallidus, Parkinson's disease, subthalamic nucleus

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Authors: Giacoma Pace

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The research seeks to evaluate whether students with impairments can achieve enhanced academic progress by actively engaging in collaborative problem-solving activities with teachers and peers, to overcome the obstacles rooted in socio-economic disparities. Furthermore, the research underscores the significance of fostering students' self-awareness regarding their learning process and encourages teachers to adopt a more interactive teaching approach. The research also posits that reducing conventional face-to-face lessons can motivate students to explore alternative learning methods, such as collaborative teamwork and peer education within the classroom. To address socio-cultural barriers it is imperative to assess their internet access and possession of technological devices, as these factors can contribute to a digital divide. The research features a case study of a Flipped Classroom Learning Unit, administered to six third-year high school classes: Scientific Lyceum, Technical School, and Vocational School, within the city of Turin, Italy. Data are about teachers and the students involved in the case study, some impaired students in each class, level of entry, students’ performance and attitude before using Flipped Classrooms, level of motivation, family’s involvement level, teachers’ attitude towards Flipped Classroom, goal obtained, the pros and cons of such activities, technology availability. The selected schools were contacted; meetings for the English teachers to gather information about their attitude and knowledge of the Flipped Classroom approach. Questionnaires to teachers and IT staff were administered. The information gathered, was used to outline the profile of the subjects involved in the study and was further compared with the second step of the study made up of a study conducted with the classes of the selected schools. The learning unit is the same, structure and content are decided together with the English colleagues of the classes involved. The pacing and content are matched in every lesson and all the classes participate in the same labs, use the same materials, homework, same assessment by summative and formative testing. Each step follows a precise scheme, in order to be as reliable as possible. The outcome of the case study will be statistically organised. The case study is accompanied by a study on the literature concerning EFL approaches and the Flipped Classroom. Document analysis method was employed, i.e. a qualitative research method in which printed and/or electronic documents containing information about the research subject are reviewed and evaluated with a systematic procedure. Articles in the Web of Science Core Collection, Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Scopus and Science Direct databases were searched in order to determine the documents to be examined (years considered 2000-2022).

Keywords: flipped classroom, impaired, inclusivity, peer instruction

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Authors: Kalliopi Kanaki, Michael Kalogiannakis

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Nowadays, in the digital era, the early acquisition of basic programming skills and knowledge is encouraged, as it facilitates students’ exposure to computational thinking and empowers their creativity, problem-solving skills, and cognitive development. More and more researchers and educators investigate the introduction of computational thinking in K-12 since it is expected to be a fundamental skill for everyone by the middle of the 21st century, just like reading, writing and arithmetic are at the moment. In this paper, a doctoral research in the process is presented, which investigates the infusion of computational thinking into science curriculum in early childhood education. The whole attempt aims to develop young children’s computational thinking by introducing them to the fundamental concepts of object-oriented programming in an enjoyable, yet educational framework. The backbone of the research is the digital environment PhysGramming (an abbreviation of Physical Science Programming), which provides children the opportunity to create their own digital games, turning them from passive consumers to active creators of technology. PhysGramming deploys an innovative hybrid schema of visual and text-based programming techniques, with emphasis on object-orientation. Through PhysGramming, young students are familiarized with basic object-oriented programming concepts, such as classes, objects, and attributes, while, at the same time, get a view of object-oriented programming syntax. Nevertheless, the most noteworthy feature of PhysGramming is that children create their own digital games within the context of physical science courses, in a way that provides familiarization with the basic principles of object-oriented programming and computational thinking, even though no specific reference is made to these principles. Attuned to the ethical guidelines of educational research, interventions were conducted in two classes of second grade. The interventions were designed with respect to the thematic units of the curriculum of physical science courses, as a part of the learning activities of the class. PhysGramming was integrated into the classroom, after short introductory sessions. During the interventions, 6-7 years old children worked in pairs on computers and created their own digital games (group games, matching games, and puzzles). The authors participated in these interventions as observers in order to achieve a realistic evaluation of the proposed educational framework concerning its applicability in the classroom and its educational and pedagogical perspectives. To better examine if the objectives of the research are met, the investigation was focused on six criteria; the educational value of PhysGramming, its engaging and enjoyable characteristics, its child-friendliness, its appropriateness for the purpose that is proposed, its ability to monitor the user’s progress and its individualizing features. In this paper, the functionality of PhysGramming and the philosophy of its integration in the classroom are both described in detail. Information about the implemented interventions and the results obtained is also provided. Finally, several limitations of the research conducted that deserve attention are denoted.

Keywords: computational thinking, early childhood education, object-oriented programming, physical science courses

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Authors: Md. S. Sabuz

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Bangladesh, a South Asian developing country, has achieved a remarkable breakthrough in health indicators during the last four decades despite immense income inequality. This phenomenon results in the mystical exclusion of marginalized people from obtaining health care facilities. However, the persistence of exclusion of the disadvantaged remains troubling. Exclusion occurs from occupational inferiority, pay and wage differences, educational backwardness, gender disparity to urban-rural complexity and eliminate the unprivileged from seeking and availing the health services. Evidence from Bangladesh shows that many sick people prefer to die at home without securing medical services because in previous times they were not treated well, not because the medical facilities were inadequate or antediluvian but the socio-economic class allows them to receive obdurate treatment. Furthermore, government and policymakers have given enormous emphasis on infrastructural development and achieving health indicators instead of ensuring quality services and inclusiveness of people from all spheres. Therefore, it is high time to address the issues concerning this and highlight the impact of economic status on health status in a sociological perspective. The objective of this study is to consider ways of assessing and exploring the impact of economic status for instance: occupational status, pay and wage variable, on health status in the context of Bangladesh. The hypotheses are that there are a significant number of factors affecting economic status which are impactful for health status eventually, but acute income inequality is a prominent factor. Illiteracy, gender disparity, remoteness, incredibility on services, superior costs, superstition etc. are the dominant indicators behind the economic factors influencing the health status. The chosen methodologies are a qualitative and quantitative approaches to accomplish the research objectives. Secondary sources of data will be used to conduct the study. Surveys will be conducted on the people who have ever been through the health care facilities and people from the different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. Focus group discussions will be conducted to acquire the data from different cultural and regional citizens. The findings show that 48% of people who are from disadvantaged communities have been deprived of proper health care facilities. The general reasons behind this are the higher cost of medicines and other equipment. A significant number of people are unaware of the appropriate facilities. It was found that the socio-economic variables are the main influential factors that work as the driving force for both economic dimension and health status. Above all regional variables and gender, dimensions have an enormous effect on determining the health status of an individual or community. Amidst many positive achievements for example decrease in the child mortality rate, an increase in the immunization programs of the child etc., the inclusiveness of all classes of people in health care facilities has been overshadowed in Bangladesh. However, this phenomenon along with the socio-economic and cultural phenomena significantly demolishes the quality and inclusiveness of the health status of people.

Keywords: cultural context of health, economic status, gender and health, rural health care

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Authors: Ofelia Loani Elvir Lazo, Roya Yumul, Sevan Komshian, Ruby Wang, Jun Tang

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Background: Monitoring the anti-nociceptive drug effect is useful because a sudden and strong nociceptive stimulus may result in untoward autonomic responses and muscular reflex movements. Monitoring the anti-nociceptive effects of perioperative medications has long been desiredas a way to provide anesthesiologists information regarding a patient’s level of antinociception and preclude any untoward autonomic responses and reflexive muscular movements from painful stimuli intraoperatively.To this end, electroencephalogram (EEG) based tools includingBIS and qCON were designed to provide information about the depth of sedation whileqNOXwas produced to informon the degree of antinociception.The goal of this study was to compare the reliability of qCON/qNOX to BIS asspecific indicators of response to nociceptive stimulation. Methods: Sixty-two patients undergoing general anesthesia with LMA were included in this study. Institutional Review Board(IRB) approval was obtained, and informed consent was acquired prior to patient enrollment. Inclusion criteria included American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) class I-III, 18 to 80 years of age, and either gender. Exclusion criteria included the inability to consent. Withdrawal criteria included conversion to endotracheal tube and EEG malfunction. BIS and qCON/qNOX electrodes were simultaneously placed o62n all patientsprior to induction of anesthesia and were monitored throughout the case, along with other perioperative data, including patient response to noxious stimuli. All intraoperative decisions were made by the primary anesthesiologist without influence from qCON/qNOX. Student’s t-distribution, prediction probability (PK), and ANOVA were used to statistically compare the relative ability to detect nociceptive stimuli for each index. Twenty patients were included for the preliminary analysis. Results: A comparison of overall intraoperative BIS, qCON and qNOX indices demonstrated no significant difference between the three measures (N=62, p> 0.05). Meanwhile, index values for qNOX (62±18) were significantly higher than those for BIS (46±14) and qCON (54±19) immediately preceding patient responses to nociceptive stimulation in a preliminary analysis (N=20, * p= 0.0408). Notably, certain hemodynamic measurements demonstrated a significant increase in response to painful stimuli (MAP increased from74±13 mm Hg at baseline to 84± 18 mm Hg during noxious stimuli [p= 0.032] and HR from 76±12 BPM at baseline to 80±13BPM during noxious stimuli[p=0.078] respectively). Conclusion: In this observational study, BIS and qCON/qNOX provided comparable information on patients’ level of sedation throughout the course of an anesthetic. Meanwhile, increases in qNOX values demonstrated a superior correlation to an imminent response to stimulation relative to all other indices.

Keywords: antinociception, bispectral index (BIS), general anesthesia, laryngeal mask airway, qCON/qNOX

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Authors: Tunde Puskas, Anita Andersson

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In Swedish early childhood education research, the issues related to religious identifications and practices have often been marginalized or relegated either to the realm of diversity and multiculturalism or to the realm of national traditions. This paper is part of a research project about whether religion is considered as part of Swedish cultural heritage in Swedish preschools. Our aim in this paper is to explore how a Swedish preschool balance between keeping the education non-confessional and at the same time introducing the traditions associated with advent and Christmas. Christmas was chosen because of the religious background of the holiday and because it is a tradition widely celebrated in Swedish preschools. In Swedish education system, the concept of freedom of religion is understood in the sense that education is declared to be non-confessional. Nevertheless, as the major state holidays in Sweden are tied to Lutheran Christian traditions, and according to the curriculum preschool educators, are given the task to pass on a cultural heritage, defined in terms of values, traditions, history, language, and knowledge, it is the preschool teams or individual preschool teachers who determine whether and to what extent religious considerations are/ought to be seen as part of the cultural heritage the preschool passes on. The data consists of ten video taped observations from two preschools. The video data was transcribed and the transcripts were thereafter analysed through content analysis. In the analysis, we draw on the concept of banal religiosity that has helped us to draw attention to the workings of religious considerations that are so familiar that they rarely are noticed as religious and on Ninian Smart’s theory on the dimensions of religion. The analysis shows that what the adults actually do with religion fulfils six of seven dimensions common to religious traditions as outlined by Smart. At the same time, Christmas is performed as a lived tradition within which the commercial and religious rituals intersect and result in a banal, national religiosity.

Keywords: secular advent, banal religiosity, dimensions of religion, rites

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Authors: Fangfei Li

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Studies on teacher feedback have produced a wide range of findings in aspects of characteristics of good feedback, factors influencing the quality of feedback and teachers’ perspectives on teacher feedback. However, perspectives from students on how they perceive and respond to teacher feedback are still under scrutiny. Especially for Chinese overseas students who come from a feedback-sparse educational context in China, they might have different experiences when engaging with teacher feedback in the UK Higher Education. Therefore, the research aims to investigate and shed some new light on how Chinese students engage with teacher feedback in the UK higher education and how teacher feedback could enhance their learning. Research questions of this study are 1) What are Chinese overseas students’ perceptions of teacher feedback in courses of the UK higher education? 2) How do they respond to the teacher feedback they obtained? 3) What factors might influence their’ engagement with teacher feedback? Qualitative case studies of five Chinese postgraduate students in a UK university have been conducted by employing various types of interviews, such as background interviews, scenario-based interviews, stimulated recall interviews and retrospective interviews to address the research inquiries. Data collection lasted seven months, covering two phases – the pre-sessional language programme and the first semester of the Master’s degree programme. Research findings until now indicate that some factors, such as tutors’ handwriting, implicit instruction and value comments, influence students understanding and internalizing tutor feedback. Except for difficulties in understanding tutor feedback, students’ responses to tutor feedback are also influenced by quantity and quality of tutor-student communication, time constraints and trust to tutor feedback, etc. Findings also reveal that tutor feedback is able to improve students’ learning in aspects of promoting reflection on professional knowledge, promoting students’ communication with peers and tutors, increasing problem awareness and writing with the reader in mind. This paper will mainly introduce the research topic, the methodological procedure and research findings gained until now.

Keywords: Chinese students, students’ perceptions, teacher feedback, the UK higher education

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Authors: Pankaj Dhiman, Simranjeet Kaur

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This research paper presents a comprehensive sentiment analysis of social media responses to videos on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram during the 2024 Indian general elections. The study focuses on the sentiment patterns of voters towards the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) on these platforms. The analysis aims to understand the impact of social media on voter sentiment and its correlation with the election outcome. The study employed a mixed-methods approach, combining both quantitative and qualitative methods. With a total of 200 posts analysed during general election-2024 final phase, the sentiment analysis was conducted using natural language processing (NLP) techniques, including sentiment dictionaries and machine learning algorithms. The results show that NDA received significantly more positive sentiment responses across all platforms, with a positive sentiment score of 47% compared to INDIA's score of 38.98 %. The analysis also revealed that Twitter and YouTube were the most influential platforms in shaping voter sentiment, with 60% of the total sentiment score coming from these two platforms. The study's findings suggest that social media sentiment analysis can be a valuable tool for understanding voter sentiment and predicting election outcomes. The results also highlight the importance of social media in shaping public opinion and the need for political parties to engage effectively with voters on these platforms. The study's implications are significant, as they indicate that social media can be a key factor in determining the outcome of elections. The findings also underscore the need for political parties to develop effective social media strategies to engage with voters and shape public opinion.

Keywords: Indian Elections-2024, NDA, INDIA, sentiment analysis, social media, democracy

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Authors: Kayum Fokoue Carole

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This paper aims at verifying the effectiveness of reaching target populations while paying attention to their cultural background when communicating new knowledge, ideas or technology in a multicultural world. Our case study is an experiment on the communication of knowledge on breast cancer in three sub-Saharan countries (Ghana, Tchad, and Cameroon health). The methodology consisted of submitting a semi-structured questionnaire to local populations in some localities in these target countries in order to determine the cultural barriers hindering the effective communication of knowledge on breast cancer. Once this done, sensitization documents on breast cancer were translated into Ewe (Ghana), Mbaye (Tchad), Ghomala’, Ewondo, and Fufulde (Cameroon). In each locality, a sensitization programme was organised for two groups. For one group, the cultural barriers discovered were taken into consideration while communicating during the programme whereas in the other group, they were not. Another questionnaire was disseminated after three months to verify the level of appropriation of those who attended the campaign based on Chumbow’s appropriation theory. This paper, therefore, discusses some spiritual beliefs, representations and practices in the target African communities hindering effective communication of issues on breast cancer in the target localities. Findings reveal that only 38% of respondents in the group of those for whom cultural barriers were not taken into account during the programme had a high level of appropriation while for the other group, 86% had a high level of appropriation. This is evidence that the communication of issues on breast cancer can be more effective by reaching different populations in a language they best master while paying attention to their culture. Therefore, international communication of new knowledge should be culturally contextualised. Suggestions at the end of the paper are directed towards the achievement of these goals. The present work promotes international partnership in addressing and resolving global health preoccupations since research findings from one community/country can be mutualized in partnership with other communities and countries.

Keywords: cultural barriers, communication, health, breast cancer

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Authors: Avanika Gupta

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Education plays a significant and remedial role in balancing the socio-economic fabric of a country. Inclusive education is considered as the most appropriate mode of teaching students with hearing impairment (SwHI) by various national and international legislations. But inclusive education is still an evolving concept among the disability studies scholars and policy makers in India. The study aimed to examine accessibility of SwHI in mainstream schools if there are special provisions for SwHI. The study also intended to identify if the provisions are same for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Using stratified random sampling technique, a school was selected from each of the six administrative zones of Nagpur city. All the selected schools had primary and secondary level education and were co-educational in nature. Interview with principals of these schools and focused-group- observation method showcased lack of accessibility for SwHI in attending schools. Not even a single school had a hearing impaired student, either deaf or hard-of-hearing depicting the double marginalization of SwHI. This is despite the fact that the right to education is a fundamental right in India, and national legislation on disability has special provisions for ensuring educational opportunities to SwHI. None of the schools even had an Indian Sign Language (ISL) instructor. Both observations seemed cause and effect of one another. One of the principals informed that they have seats for all students with disabilities but they usually lie vacant due to lack of awareness among the parents. One school had 2 students with locomotive impairment while another had a student with visual impairment. Principals of two special schools were also interviewed to understand the reason behind the low enrollment rate of SwHI in mainstream schools. Guardian preference, homogeneity, relatable faculty, familiar environment were some of the chief reasons mentioned. Few suggestions for the policymakers, teachers, guardians and the students are also recommended so that Indian education system could become inclusive in true sense.

Keywords: deaf, hard-of-hearing, inclusive education, India, Nagpur, students with hearing impairment

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Authors: Iuliana-Erika Köpeczi

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‘Language is no longer regarded as peripheral to our grasp of the world we live in, but as central to it. Words are not mere vocal labels or communicational adjuncts superimposed upon an already given order of things. They are collective products of social interaction, essential instruments through which human beings constitute and articulate their world’, said Roy Harris. If we were to accept the above-mentioned premise, then we surely must accept that discourse, generally, - and political discourse, specifically -, bears a crucial importance to one’s perception of reality. The way in which political rhetoric constructs reality changes the relationship between the voter and his/her view of the world, which, in turn, influences greatly the future trends of political participation. In this context, our inquiry focuses on the role of populist discourses in the post 9/11 political rhetoric, and how this led to the formation, construction and reconstruction of identity within the ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ dichotomy. It is our hypothesis that anti-intellectualistic elements played a significant role in the manner in which identity construction had been carried out on a discursive level. By adopting a comparative approach, we intend to identify the similarities and differences between the use of such anti-intellectualist elements in the United States of America on one hand – within the discourse of Rick Santorum, – and France on the other – with Marine le Pen’s discourse. Our methodological approach uses close textual analysis of primary source material (discourse analysis); historical contextualization of both primary documents and broader socio-political and cultural framework through archival research and secondary sources; as well as interpretation of primary texts through theoretical frameworks (qualitative research). We hope that the output of our endeavor will be useful in better understanding the different correlations that exist between anti-intellectualism and populism and how the interactions between these two elements aids in political identity construction through discourse.

Keywords: anti-intellectualism, discourse theory, France, identity construction, populism, United States of America

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Authors: Francesca Radice

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Domestic and sexual violence provokes, on average in Australia, one female death per week due to intimate violence behaviours. 83% of couples meet online, and intercepting domestic and sexual violence at this level would be beneficial. It has been observed that violent or coercive behaviour has been apparent from initial conversations on dating apps like Tinder. Child pornography, stalking, and coercive control are some criminal offences from dating apps, including women murdered after finding partners through Tinder. Police databases and predictive policing are novel approaches taken to prevent crime before harm is done. This research will investigate how police databases can be used in a privacy-preserving way to characterise users in terms of their potential for violent crime. Using the COPS database of NSW Police, we will explore how the past criminal record can be interpreted to yield a category of potential danger for each dating app user. It is up to the judgement of each subscriber on what degree of the potential danger they are prepared to enter into. Sentiment analysis is an area where research into natural language processing has made great progress over the last decade. This research will investigate how sentiment analysis can be used to interpret interchanges between dating app users to detect manipulative or coercive sentiments. These can be used to alert law enforcement if continued for a defined number of communications. One of the potential problems of this approach is the potential prejudice a categorisation can cause. Another drawback is the possibility of misinterpreting communications and involving law enforcement without reason. The approach will be thoroughly tested with cross-checks by human readers who verify both the level of danger predicted by the interpretation of the criminal record and the sentiment detected from personal messages. Even if only a few violent crimes can be prevented, the approach will have a tangible value for real people.

Keywords: sentiment analysis, data mining, predictive policing, virtual manipulation

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Authors: Fabiha Tanzeem

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BACKGROUND: Osteoporosis is a skeletal disease that is associated with a reduction in bone mass and microstructures of the bone and deterioration of bone tissue. Fragility fracture due to osteoporosis is the most significant complication of osteoporosis. The increasing prevalence of fragility fractures presents a growing burden on the global economy. There is a rapidly evolving need to improve awareness of the costs associated with these types of fractures and to review current policies and practices for the prevention and management of the disease. This systematic review will identify and describe the direct and indirect costs associated with osteoporotic fragility fractures from a global perspective from the included studies. The review will also find out whether the costs required for the treatment of fragility fractures due to osteoporosis impose an economic burden on the global healthcare system. METHODS: Four major databases were systematically searched for direct and indirect costs of osteoporotic fragility fracture studies in the English Language. PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase and Google Scholar were searched for suitable articles published between 1990 and July 2020. RESULTS: The original search yielded 1166 papers; from these, 27 articles were selected for this review according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. In the 27 studies, the highest direct costs were associated with the treatment of pelvic fractures, with the majority of the expenditure due to hospitalization and surgical treatments. It is also observed that most of the articles are from developed countries. CONCLUSION: This review indicates the significance of the economic burden of osteoporosis globally, although more research needs to be done in developing countries. In the treatment of fragility fractures, direct costs were the main reported expenditure in this review. The healthcare costs incurred globally can be significantly reduced by implementing measures to effectively prevent the disease. Raising awareness in children and adults by improving the quality of the information available and standardising policies and planning of services requires further research.

Keywords: systematic review, osteoporosis, cost of illness

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Authors: Timea Harmath-Tánczos

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Drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE) is defined as the persistence of seizures despite at least two syndrome-adapted antiseizure drugs (ASD) used at efficacious daily doses. About a third of patients with epilepsy suffer from drug resistance. Cognitive assessment has a crucial role in the diagnosis and clinical management of epilepsy. Previous studies have addressed the clinical targets and indications for measuring neuropsychological functions; best to our knowledge, no studies have examined it in a Hungarian therapy-resistant population. To fill this gap, we investigated the Hungarian diagnostic protocol between 18 and 65 years of age. This study aimed to describe and analyze neuropsychological functions in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy and identify factors associated with neuropsychology deficits. We perform a prospective case-control study comparing neuropsychological performances in 50 adult patients and 50 healthy individuals between March 2023 and July 2023. Neuropsychological functions were examined in both patients and controls using a full set of specific tests (general performance level, motor functions, attention, executive facts., verbal and visual memory, language, and visual-spatial functions). Potential risk factors for neuropsychological deficit were assessed in the patient group using a multivariate analysis. The two groups did not differ in age, sex, dominant hand and level of education. Compared with the control group, patients with drug-resistant epilepsy showed worse performance on motor functions and visuospatial memory, sustained attention, inhibition and verbal memory. Neuropsychological deficits could therefore be systematically detected in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy in order to provide neuropsychological therapy and improve quality of life. The analysis of the classical and complex indices of the special neuropsychological tasks presented in the presentation can help in the investigation of normal and disrupted memory and executive functions in the DRE.

Keywords: drug-resistant epilepsy, Hungarian diagnostic protocol, memory, executive functions, cognitive neuropsychology

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Authors: Kuo-Chun Chien, Chia-Hui Chang, Ren-Der Sun

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Legal Judgment Prediction (LJP) is a subtask for legal AI. Its main purpose is to use the facts of a case to predict the judgment result. In Taiwan's criminal procedure, when prosecutors complete the investigation of the case, they will decide whether to prosecute the suspect and which article of criminal law should be used based on the facts and evidence of the case. In this study, we collected 305,240 indictments from the public inquiry system of the procuratorate of the Ministry of Justice, which included 169 charges and 317 articles from 21 laws. We take the crime facts in the indictments as the main input to jointly learn the prediction model for law source, article, and charge simultaneously based on the pre-trained Bert model. For single article cases where the frequency of the charge and article are greater than 50, the prediction performance of law sources, articles, and charges reach 97.66, 92.22, and 60.52 macro-f1, respectively. To understand the big performance gap between articles and charges, we used a bipartite graph to visualize the relationship between the articles and charges, and found that the reason for the poor prediction performance was actually due to the wording precision. Some charges use the simplest words, while others may include the perpetrator or the result to make the charges more specific. For example, Article 284 of the Criminal Law may be indicted as “negligent injury”, "negligent death”, "business injury", "driving business injury", or "non-driving business injury". As another example, Article 10 of the Drug Hazard Control Regulations can be charged as “Drug Control Regulations” or “Drug Hazard Control Regulations”. In order to solve the above problems and more accurately predict the article and charge, we plan to include the article content or charge names in the input, and use the sentence-pair classification method for question-answer problems in the BERT model to improve the performance. We will also consider a sequence-to-sequence approach to charge prediction.

Keywords: legal judgment prediction, deep learning, natural language processing, BERT, data visualization

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Authors: Claudiu Mazilu, Ion Robu, Radu Deju

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At the end of 2011 worldwide there were 124 power reactors shut down, from which: 16 fully decommissioned, 50 power reactors in a decommissioning process, 49 reactors in “safe enclosure mode”, 3 reactors “entombed”, for other 6 reactors it was not yet have specified the decommissioning strategy. The concrete radioactive waste that will be generated from dismantled structures of VVR-S nuclear research reactor from Magurele (e.g.: biological shield of the reactor core and hot cells) represents an estimated amount of about 70 tons. Until now the solid low activity radioactive waste (LLW) was pre-placed in containers and cementation with mortar made from cement and natural fine aggregates, providing a fill ratio of the container of approximately 50 vol. % for concrete. In this paper is presented an innovative technology in which radioactive concrete is crushed and the mortar made from recycled radioactive sand, cement, water and superplasticizer agent is poured in container with radioactive rubble (that is pre-placed in container) for cimentation. Is achieved a radioactive waste package in which the degree of filling of radioactive waste increases substantially. The tests were carried out on non-radioactive material because the radioactive concrete was not available in a good time. Waste concrete with maximum size of 350 mm were crushed in the first stage with a Liebhher type jaw crusher, adjusted to nominal size of 50 mm. Crushed concrete less than 50 mm was sieved in order to obtain useful sort for preplacement, 10 to 50 mm. The rest of the screening > 50 mm obtained from primary crushing of concrete was crushed in the second stage, with different working principles crushers at size < 2.5 mm, in order to produce recycled fine aggregate (sand) for the filler mortar and which fulfills the technical specifications proposed: –jaw crusher, Retsch type, model BB 100; –hammer crusher, Buffalo Shuttle model WA-12-H; presented a series of characteristics of recycled concrete aggregates by predefined class (the granulosity, the granule shape, the absorption of water, behavior to the Los Angeles test, the content of attached mortar etc.), most in comparison with characteristics of natural aggregates. Various mortar recipes were used in order to identify those that meet the proposed specification (flow-rate: 16-50s, no bleeding, min. 30N/mm2 compressive strength of the mortar after 28 days, the proportion of recycled sand used in mortar: min. 900kg/m3) and allow obtaining of the highest fill ratio for mortar. In order to optimize the mortars following compositional factors were varied: aggregate nature, water/cement (W/C) ratio, sand/cement (S/C) ratio, nature and proportion of additive. To confirm the results obtained on a small scale, it made an attempt to fill the mortar in a container that simulates the final storage drums. Was measured the mortar fill ratio (98.9%) compared with the results of laboratory tests and targets set out in the proposed specification. Although fill ratio obtained on the mock-up is lower by 0.8 vol. % compared to that obtained in the laboratory tests (99.7%), the result meets the specification criteria.

Keywords: characteristics, radioactive recycled concrete aggregate, mortars, fill ratio

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Authors: Sanjay Ranade

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Traditional film theory assumes the cinema audience in a darkened room where cinema is projected on to a white screen, and the audience suspends their sense of reality. Shifts in audiences due to changes in cultural tastes or trends have been studied for decades. In the past two decades, however, the audience, especially the youth, has shifted to digital media for the consumption of cinema. As a result, not only are audiences watching cinema on different devices, they are also consuming cinema in places and ways never imagined before. Public transport often crowded to the brim with a lot of ambient content, and a variety of workplaces have become sites for cinema viewing. Cinema is watched piecemeal and at different times of the day. Audiences use devices such as mobile phones and tablets to watch cinema. The cinema viewing experience is getting redesigned by the user. The emerging design allows the spectator to not only consume images and narratives but also produce, reproduce, and manipulate existing images and narratives, thereby participating in the process and influencing it. Spectatorship studies stress on the importance of subjectivity when dealing with the structure of the film text and the cultural and psychological implications in the engagement between the spectator and the film text. Indian cinema has been booming and contributing to global movie production significantly. In 2005 film production was 1000 films a year and doubled to 2000 by 2016. Digital technology helped push this growth in 2012. Film studies in India have had a decided Euro-American bias. The studies have chiefly analysed the content for ideological leanings or myth or as reflections of society, societal changes, or articulation of identity or presented retrospectives of directors, actors, music directors, etc. The one factor relegated to the background has been the spectator. If they have been addressed, they are treated as a collective of class or gender. India has a performative tradition going back several centuries. How Indians receive cinema is an important aspect to study with respect to film studies. This exploratory and descriptive study looked at 162 young media students studying cinema at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The students, speaking as many as 20 languages amongst them, were drawn from across the country’s media schools. The study looked at nine film societies registered with the Federation of Film Societies of India. A structured questionnaire was made and distributed online through media teachers for the students. The film societies were approached through the regional office of the FFSI in Mumbai. Lastly, group discussions were held in Mumbai with students and teachers of media. A group consisted of between five and twelve student participants, along with one or two teachers. All the respondents looked at themselves as spectators and shared their experiences of spectators of cinema, providing a very rich insight into Indian conditions of viewing cinema and challenges for cinema ahead.

Keywords: audience, digital, film studies, reception, reception spectatorship

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Authors: Nicholas Anderson, Steven Petersen, Tom Bates, Val Anderson

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Under the multiple-use management regime established in the United States for federally owned lands, government agencies have come under pressure from commercial apiaries to grant permits for the summer pasturing of honeybees on government lands. Federal agencies have struggled to integrate honeybees into their management plans and have little information to make regulations that resolve how many colonies should be allowed in a single location and at what distance sets of hives should be placed. Many conservation groups have voiced their concerns regarding the introduction of honeybees to these natural lands, as they may outcompete and displace native pollinating species. Assessing the quality of an area in regard to its floral resources, pollen, and nectar can be important when attempting to create regulations for the integration of commercial honeybee operations into a native ecosystem. Areas with greater floral resources may be able to support larger numbers of honeybee colonies, while poorer resource areas may be less resilient to introduced disturbances. Attempts are made in this study to determine flower cover using high resolution drone imagery to help assess the floral resource availability to pollinators in high elevation, tall forb communities. This knowledge will help in determining the potential that different areas may have for honeybee pasturing and honey production. Roughly 700 images were captured at 23m above ground level using a drone equipped with a Sony QX1 RGB 20-megapixel camera. These images were stitched together using Pix4D, resulting in a 60m diameter high-resolution mosaic of a tall forb meadow. Using the program ENVI, a supervised maximum likelihood classification was conducted to calculate the percentage of total flower cover and flower cover by color (blue, white, and yellow). A complete vegetation inventory was taken on site, and the major flowers contributing to each color class were noted. An accuracy assessment was performed on the classification yielding an 89% overall accuracy and a Kappa Statistic of 0.855. With this level of accuracy, drones provide an affordable and time efficient method for the assessment of floral cover in large areas. The proximal step of this project will now be to determine the average pollen and nectar loads carried by each flower species. The addition of this knowledge will result in a quantifiable method of measuring pollen and nectar resources of entire landscapes. This information will not only help land managers determine stocking rates for honeybees on public lands but also has applications in the agricultural setting, aiding producers in the determination of the number of honeybee colonies necessary for proper pollination of fruit and nut crops.

Keywords: honeybee, flower, pollinator, remote sensing

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Authors: Rose A. Yemson, Ping Jiang, Oyedeji L. Inumoh

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The deployment of wireless sensor network has rapidly increased, however with the increased capacity and diversity of sensors, and applications ranging from biological, environmental, military etc. generates tremendous volume of data’s where more attention is placed on the distributed sensing and little on how to manage, analyze, retrieve and understand the data generated. This makes it more quite difficult to process live sensor data, run concurrent control and update because sensor data are either heavyweight, complex, and slow. This work will focus on developing a web service platform for automatic detection of sensors, acquisition of sensor data, storage of sensor data into a database, processing of sensor data using reconfigurable software components. This work will also create a web service based sensor data management system to monitor physical movement of an individual wearing wireless network sensor technology (SunSPOT). The sensor will detect movement of that individual by sensing the acceleration in the direction of X, Y and Z axes accordingly and then send the sensed reading to a database that will be interfaced with an internet platform. The collected sensed data will determine the posture of the person such as standing, sitting and lying down. The system is designed using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and implemented using Java, JavaScript, html and MySQL. This system allows real time monitoring an individual closely and obtain their physical activity details without been physically presence for in-situ measurement which enables you to work remotely instead of the time consuming check of an individual. These details can help in evaluating an individual’s physical activity and generate feedback on medication. It can also help in keeping track of any mandatory physical activities required to be done by the individuals. These evaluations and feedback can help in maintaining a better health status of the individual and providing improved health care.

Keywords: HTML, java, javascript, MySQL, sunspot, UML, web-based, wireless network sensor

Procedia PDF Downloads 198

Authors: Thiago Spilborghs Bueno Meyer, Plinio Thomaz Aquino Junior

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Through speech, which privileges the functional and interactive nature of the text, it is possible to ascertain the spatiotemporal circumstances, the conditions of production and reception of the discourse, the explicit purposes such as informing, explaining, convincing, etc. These conditions allow bringing the interaction between humans closer to the human-robot interaction, making it natural and sensitive to information. However, it is not enough to understand what is said; it is necessary to recognize emotions for the desired interaction. The validity of the use of neural networks for feature selection and emotion recognition was verified. For this purpose, it is proposed the use of neural networks and comparison of models, such as recurrent neural networks and deep neural networks, in order to carry out the classification of emotions through speech signals to verify the quality of recognition. It is expected to enable the implementation of robots in a domestic environment, such as the HERA robot from the RoboFEI@Home team, which focuses on autonomous service robots for the domestic environment. Tests were performed using only the Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients, as well as tests with several characteristics of Delta-MFCC, spectral contrast, and the Mel spectrogram. To carry out the training, validation and testing of the neural networks, the eNTERFACE’05 database was used, which has 42 speakers from 14 different nationalities speaking the English language. The data from the chosen database are videos that, for use in neural networks, were converted into audios. It was found as a result, a classification of 51,969% of correct answers when using the deep neural network, when the use of the recurrent neural network was verified, with the classification with accuracy equal to 44.09%. The results are more accurate when only the Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients are used for the classification, using the classifier with the deep neural network, and in only one case, it is possible to observe a greater accuracy by the recurrent neural network, which occurs in the use of various features and setting 73 for batch size and 100 training epochs.

Keywords: emotion recognition, speech, deep learning, human-robot interaction, neural networks

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Authors: W. S. Barber, S. L. King

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This paper is a qualitative case study analysis of the development of a fully online learning community of graduate students through arts-based community building activities. With increasing numbers and types of online learning spaces, it is incumbent upon educators to continue to push the edge of what best practices look like in digital learning environments. In digital learning spaces, instructors can no longer be seen as purveyors of content knowledge to be examined at the end of a set course by a final test or exam. The rapid and fluid dissemination of information via Web 3.0 demands that we reshape our approach to teaching and learning, from one that is content-focused to one that is process-driven. Rather than having instructors as formal leaders, today’s digital learning environments require us to share expertise, as it is the collective experiences and knowledge of all students together with the instructors that help to create a very different kind of learning community. This paper focuses on innovations pursued in a 36 hour 12 week graduate course in higher education entitled “Critical and Reflective Practice”. The authors chronicle their journey to developing a fully online learning community (FOLC) by emphasizing the elements of social, cognitive, emotional and digital spaces that form a moving interplay through the community. In this way, students embrace anywhere anytime learning and often take the learning, as well as the relationships they build and skills they acquire, beyond the digital class into real world situations. We argue that in order to increase student online engagement, pedagogical approaches need to stem from two primary elements, both creativity and critical reflection, that are essential pillars upon which instructors can co-design learning environments with students. The theoretical framework for the paper is based on the interaction and interdependence of Creativity, Intuition, Critical Reflection, Social Constructivism and FOLCs. By leveraging students’ embedded familiarity with a wide variety of technologies, this case study of a graduate level course on critical reflection in education, examines how relationships, quality of work produced, and student engagement can improve by using creative and imaginative pedagogical strategies. The authors examine their professional pedagogical strategies through the lens that the teacher acts as facilitator, guide and co-designer. In a world where students can easily search for and organize information as self-directed processes, creativity and connection can at times be lost in the digitized course environment. The paper concludes by posing further questions as to how institutions of higher education may be challenged to restructure their credit granting courses into more flexible modules, and how students need to be considered an important part of assessment and evaluation strategies. By introducing creativity and critical reflection as central features of the digital learning spaces, notions of best practices in digital teaching and learning emerge.

Keywords: online, pedagogy, learning, communities

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Authors: Ashish Sinha, Pushpend Agrawal

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Background: Patients with undiagnosed pulmonary TB predominantly act as reservoirs for its transmission through 10-15 secondary infections in the next 1-5 Yrs. Delays in the diagnosis and treatment may worsen the disease with increase the risk of death. Factors responsible for such delays by tracking patient pathways to treatment may help in planning better interventions. The provision of ‘free diagnosis and treatment’ forms the cornerstone of the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (NTEP). OOPE is defined as the money spent by the patient during TB care other than public health facilities. Free TB care at all health facilities could reduce out-of-pocket expenses to the minimum possible levels. Material and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among randomly selected 252 TB patients from Nov – Oct 2022 by taking in-depth interviews following informed verbal consent. We documented their journey from initial symptoms until they reached the public health facility, along with their ‘out-of-pocket expenditure’ (OOPE) pertaining to TB care. Results: Total treatment delay was 91±72 days on average (median: 77days, IQR: 45-104 days), while the isolated patient delay was 31±45 days (median: 15 days, IQR: 0 days to 43 days); diagnostic delay; 57±60 days (median: 42days, IQR 14-78 days), treatment delay 19 ± 18 days (median: 15days, IQR: 11-19 days). A patient delay (> 30 days) was significantly associated with ignorance about classic symptoms of pulmonary TB, adoption of self-medication, illiteracy, and middle and lower social class. Diagnostic delay was significantly higher among those who contacted private health facilities, were unaware of signs and symptoms, had >2 consultations, and not getting an appropriate referral for TB care. Most (97%) of the study participants interviewed claimed to have incurred some expenditure.Median total expenses were 6155(IQR: 2625-15175) rupees. More than half 141 (56%) of the study participants had expenses >5000 rupees. Median transport expenses were 525(IQR: 200-1012) rupees; Median consultation expenses were 700(IQR: 200-1600) rupees; Median investigation expenses were 1000(IQR: 0-3025) rupees and the Median medicine expenses were 3350(IQR: 1300-7525).OOPE for consultation, investigation, and medicine was observed to be significantly higher among patients who ignored classical signs& symptoms of TB, repeated visits to private health facilities, and due to self-medication practices. Transport expenses and delays in seeking care at facilities were observed to have an upward trend with OOP Expenses (r =1). Conclusion: Delay in TB care due to low awareness about signs and symptoms of TB and poor seeking care, lack of proper consultation, and appropriate referrals reported by the study subjects indicate the areas which need proper attention by the program managers. Despite a centrally sponsored programme, the financial burden on TB patients is still in the unacceptable range. OOPE could be reduced as low as possible by addressing the responsible factors linked to it.

Keywords: patient pathway, delay, pulmonary tuberculosis, out of pocket expenses

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Authors: Malak Alasli

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Hungarians come to use geographic names that are foreign to their environment and language in diverse settings, hence the aim of trying to adapt them to their own linguistic context. The Maghreb region (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia) uses both Arabic and French in presenting the place names. Consequently, the lexicographical treatment of the toponym will, therefore, consist of both the presentation of the toponymic term and the pronunciation of the entries. The motivation behind this approach is the need for a better identification of the place in question by avoiding ambiguities, and for more respect to the heritage by conforming to the right use of toponyms both in written as well as in oral practice. The goal is to provide Hungarians with a set of data by attempting a system of transliteration from French/Arabic to Hungarian, where the place names of the Maghreb are transliterated for more efficient usage. To examine the importance of toponyms’ pronunciation, the latter were collected from several 20th and 21st Hungarian school atlases. Most people meet, for the first time, foreign place names in school, hence the choice of solely extracting place names from school atlases as sample data. Interviews targeted university students, where they were asked to pronounce the place names collected. Results revealed the intricacy behind the pronunciation. Two main conclusions emerged; Hungarian students encountered challenges reading the toponyms, and Arabic speakers could not identify the names either, which causes a cut in communication. Ergo, the importance of elaborating on the pronunciation of toponyms. Concordance is where you find variants of a name. Therefore, a chart was put forward including all the name variants obtained from various references with their Arabic transcription indicating any changes that may have occurred, and the origin of the denomination (Roman, Berber, etc.). A case will also be added for comments and observations. This work embraces a dual purpose. It will provide information to Hungarians on the official names of foreign places in case of occurring changes; for instance, 'El-goléa, Algeria' (used in a latest edition of a school atlas) has now the official name of 'El Ménia'. It will also serve as a reference for knowing the correct and precise forms of place names’ pronunciation.

Keywords: concordance, onomastics, settlement names, school atlases

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Authors: Emre Ipekci Cetin, Ebru Tarcan Icigen

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Personnel selection process is considered as one of the most important and most difficult issues in human resources management. At the stage of personnel selection, the applicants are handled according to certain criteria, the candidates are dealt with, and efforts are made to select the most appropriate candidate. However, this process can be more complicated in terms of the managers who will carry out the staff selection process. Candidates should be evaluated according to different criteria such as work experience, education, foreign language level etc. It is crucial that a rational selection process is carried out by considering all the criteria in an integrated structure. In this study, the problem of choosing the front office manager of a 5 star accommodation enterprise operating in Antalya is addressed by using multi-criteria decision-making methods. In this context, SWARA (Step-wise weight assessment ratio analysis) and MOORA (Multi-Objective Optimization on the basis of ratio analysis) methods, which have relatively few applications when compared with other methods, have been used together. Firstly SWARA method was used to calculate the weights of the criteria and subcriteria that were determined by the business. After the weights of the criteria were obtained, the MOORA method was used to rank the candidates using the ratio system and the reference point approach. Recruitment processes differ from sector to sector, from operation to operation. There are a number of criteria that must be taken into consideration by businesses in accordance with the structure of each sector. It is of utmost importance that all candidates are evaluated objectively in the framework of these criteria, after these criteria have been carefully selected in the selection of suitable candidates for employment. In the study, staff selection process was handled by using SWARA and MOORA methods together.

Keywords: accommodation establishments, human resource management, multi-objective optimization on the basis of ratio analysis, multi-criteria decision making, step-wise weight assessment ratio analysis

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Authors: Vahid Ebrahimipour

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Word representation and context meaning of text-based documents play an essential role in knowledge modeling. Business procedures written in natural language are meant to store technical and engineering information, management decision and operation experience during the production system life cycle. Context meaning representation is highly dependent upon word sense, lexical relativity, and sematic features of the argument. This paper proposes a method for lexical semantic analysis and context meaning representation of maintenance activity in a mass production system. Our approach constructs a straightforward lexical semantic approach to analyze facilitates semantic and syntactic features of context structure of maintenance report to facilitate translation, interpretation, and conversion of human-readable interpretation into computer-readable representation and understandable with less heterogeneity and ambiguity. The methodology will enable users to obtain a representation format that maximizes shareability and accessibility for multi-purpose usage. It provides a contextualized structure to obtain a generic context model that can be utilized during the system life cycle. At first, it employs a co-occurrence-based clustering framework to recognize a group of highly frequent contextual features that correspond to a maintenance report text. Then the keywords are identified for syntactic and semantic extraction analysis. The analysis exercises causality-driven logic of keywords’ senses to divulge the structural and meaning dependency relationships between the words in a context. The output is a word contextualized representation of maintenance activity accommodating computer-based representation and inference using OWL/RDF.

Keywords: lexical semantic analysis, metadata modeling, contextual meaning extraction, ontology modeling, knowledge representation

Procedia PDF Downloads 94