Search results for: information systems failure

Authors: Ambuj Kumar Gautam, V. Vasu

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This paper introduces a head movement based Human Machine Interface (HMI) that uses the right and left movements of head to control a robot motion. Here we present an approach for making an effective technique for real-time face orientation information system, to control a robot which can be efficiently used for Electrical Powered Wheelchair (EPW). Basically this project aims at application related to HMI. The system (machine) identifies the orientation of the face movement with respect to the pixel values of image in a certain areas. Initially we take an image and divide that whole image into three parts on the basis of its number of columns. On the basis of orientation of face, maximum pixel value of approximate same range of (R, G, and B value of a pixel) lie in one of divided parts of image. This information we transfer to the microcontroller through serial communication port and control the motion of robot like forward motion, left and right turn and stop in real time by using head movements.

Keywords: electrical powered wheelchair (EPW), human machine interface (HMI), robotics, microcontroller

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Authors: Ahmet Parlak, Celalettin Bilgen

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In order to create an effective early warning system, Identification of the risks, preparation and carrying out risk modeling of risk scenarios, taking into account the shortcomings of the old disaster scenarios should be used to improve the system. In the light of this, the importance of risk modeling in creating an effective early warning system is understood. In the scope of TAFRISK project risk modeling trend analysis report on risk modeling developed and a demonstration was conducted for Risk Modeling for flood and mass movements. For risk modeling R&D, studies have been conducted to determine the information, and source of the information, to be gathered, to develop algorithms and to adapt the current algorithms to Turkey’s conditions for determining the risk score in the high disaster risk areas. For each type of the disaster; Disaster Deficit Index (DDI), Local Disaster Index (LDI), Prevalent Vulnerability Index (PVI), Risk Management Index (RMI) have been developed as disaster indices taking danger, sensitivity, fragility, and vulnerability, the physical and economic damage into account in the appropriate scale of the respective type.

Keywords: disaster, hazard, risk modeling, sensor

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Authors: Sun-Young Jang, Sung-Ah Kim, Dongyoun Shin

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The Intelligent transportation system is essential to build smarter cities. Machine learning based transportation prediction could be highly promising approach by delivering invisible aspect visible. In this context, this research aims to make a prototype model that predicts transportation network by using big data and machine learning technology. In detail, among urban transportation systems this research chooses bus system.  The research problem that existing headway model cannot response dynamic transportation conditions. Thus, bus delay problem is often occurred. To overcome this problem, a prediction model is presented to fine patterns of bus delay by using a machine learning implementing the following data sets; traffics, weathers, and bus statues. This research presents a flexible headway model to predict bus delay and analyze the result. The prototyping model is composed by real-time data of buses. The data are gathered through public data portals and real time Application Program Interface (API) by the government. These data are fundamental resources to organize interval pattern models of bus operations as traffic environment factors (road speeds, station conditions, weathers, and bus information of operating in real-time). The prototyping model is designed by the machine learning tool (RapidMiner Studio) and conducted tests for bus delays prediction. This research presents experiments to increase prediction accuracy for bus headway by analyzing the urban big data. The big data analysis is important to predict the future and to find correlations by processing huge amount of data. Therefore, based on the analysis method, this research represents an effective use of the machine learning and urban big data to understand urban dynamics.

Keywords: big data, machine learning, smart city, social cost, transportation network

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Authors: Silvina Caíno-Lores, Jesús Carretero

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Large scale computing infrastructures have been widely developed with the core objective of providing a suitable platform for high-performance and high-throughput computing. These systems are designed to support resource-intensive and complex applications, which can be found in many scientific and industrial areas. Currently, large scale data-intensive applications are hindered by the high latencies that result from the access to vastly distributed data. Recent works have suggested that improving data locality is key to move towards exascale infrastructures efficiently, as solutions to this problem aim to reduce the bandwidth consumed in data transfers, and the overheads that arise from them. There are several techniques that attempt to move computations closer to the data. In this survey we analyse the different mechanisms that have been proposed to provide data locality for large scale high-performance and high-throughput systems. This survey intends to assist scientific computing community in understanding the various technical aspects and strategies that have been reported in recent literature regarding data locality. As a result, we present an overview of locality-oriented techniques, which are grouped in four main categories: application development, task scheduling, in-memory computing and storage platforms. Finally, the authors include a discussion on future research lines and synergies among the former techniques.

Keywords: data locality, data-centric computing, large scale infrastructures, cloud computing

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Authors: Salim Ahmad, Ahamed Sani Kazaure, Haruna Musa

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Outsourcing had been the contractual relationship in which the responsibility for a function or task is handed over to an outside firm for a fixed period of time which is not the same as contracting where a specific one-off task is allocated to an external business; therefore in information technology a specialist area such as maintenance of web servers is controlled by an outside firm or if the department is not a critical factor the whole IT section may be outsourced. Organisation contracts is frequently a major area in successful outsourcing relationship, whereby the contracts specify the right, liability and expectation of the vendor and contracts are mostly of high value and last for very long. Therefore, in this research one particular project that is been outsourced for the financial industry (Guarantee Trust Assurance PlC) is been discussed along with the approach used and the various problems encountered, though Outsourcing is not necessarily a perfect and easy way out for business. It is extremely critical for a company to look at all the aspect of outsourcing before deciding to use it as an instrument for development. Moreover, critical analysis of the management issues encountered while implementing the outsourcing project have been fully discussed in the paper.

Keywords: outsourcing, techniques used in outsourcing, challenges of outsourcing implementation, management issues during implementation of outsourcing project

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Authors: Carmen Viñas Arrebola, Antonio Rodriguez Sanchez, Sheila Varela Lujan, Mariano Gonzalez Cortina, Cesar Porras Amores

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The research group TEMA from the School of Building (UPM) is working in the line of energy efficiency and comfort in building. The need to reduce energy consumption in the building construction implies designing new constructive systems. These systems help to reduce both consumption and energy losses in order to achieve adequate thermal comfort for people in any type of building. In existing buildings the best option is the rehabilitation focused on thermal insulation. The aim of this paper is to design, monitor and analyze the first results of thermal behavior of the ETICS system in façades. This retrofitting solution consists of adding thermal insulation on the outside of the building, helping to create a continuous envelope on the façades. The analysis is done by comparing a rehabilitated part of the building with ETICS system and another part which has not been rehabilitated, and it is taken as reference. Both of them have the same characteristics. Temperature measurements were taken with type K thermocouples according to the previous design of the monitoring and in the same period of time. The pilot building of the study is situated in Benimamet Street, in San Cristobal de Los Ángeles, in the south of Madrid. It was built in the late 50s. The 51st entrance hall, which is restored, and the 47th entrance hall, in original conditions, have been studied.

Keywords: comfort in building, energy efficiency in building, ETICS, thermal properties

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Authors: M. Amrita, R. R. Srikant, A. V. Sita Rama Raju

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Water miscible cutting fluids are conventionally used to lubricate and cool the machining zone. But issues related to health hazards, maintenance and disposal costs have limited their usage, leading to application of Minimum Quantity Lubrication (MQL). To increase the effectiveness of MQL, nanocutting fluids are proposed. In the present work, water miscible nanographite cutting fluids of varying concentration are applied at cutting zone by two systems A and B. System A utilizes high pressure air and supplies cutting fluid at a flow rate of 1ml/min. System B uses low pressure air and supplies cutting fluid at a flow rate of 5ml/min. Their performance in machining is evaluated by measuring cutting temperatures, tool wear, cutting forces and surface roughness and compared with dry machining and flood machining. Application of nano cutting fluid using both systems showed better performance than dry machining. Cutting temperatures and cutting forces obtained by both techniques are more than flood machining. But tool wear and surface roughness showed improvement compared to flood machining. Economic analysis has been carried out in all the cases to decide the applicability of the techniques.

Keywords: economic analysis, machining, minimum quantity lubrication, nanofluid

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Authors: Lucas Viani, Benedetta Mennucci, Soo Young Park, Johannes Gierschner

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Organic semiconductors have attracted the attention of the scientific community in the past decades due to their unique physicochemical properties, allowing new designs and alternative device fabrication methods. Until today, organic electronic devices are largely based on conjugated polymers mainly due to their easy processability. In the recent years, due to moderate ET and CT efficiencies and the ill-defined nature of polymeric systems the focus has been shifting to small conjugated molecules with well-defined chemical structure, easier control of intermolecular packing, and enhanced CT and ET properties. It has led to the synthesis of new small molecules, followed by the growth of their crystalline structure and ultimately by the device preparation. This workflow is commonly followed without a clear knowledge of the ET and CT properties related mainly to the macroscopic systems, which may lead to financial and time losses, since not all materials will deliver the properties and efficiencies demanded by the current standards. In this work, we present a theoretical workflow designed to predict the key properties of ET of these new materials prior synthesis, thus speeding up the discovery of new promising materials. It is based on quantum mechanical, hybrid, and classical methodologies, starting from a single molecule structure, finishing with the prediction of its packing structure, and prediction of properties of interest such as static and averaged excitonic couplings, and exciton diffusion length.

Keywords: organic semiconductor, organic crystals, energy transport, excitonic couplings

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Authors: Sahar Al-Qahtani, Rabeeh Ayaz Abbasi, Naif Radi Aljohani

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Many universities use social media platforms as new communication channels to disseminate information and promptly communicate with their audience. As Twitter is one of the widely used social media platforms, this research aims to explore the adaption and utilization of Twitter by universities. We propose a framework called 'Social Network Analysis for Universities on Twitter' (SNAUT) to analyze the usage of Twitter by universities and to measure their interaction with public. The study includes a sample of around 110,000 tweets from 36 Saudi universities, including both public and private universities. Using SNAUT, we can (1) investigate the purpose of using Twitter by universities, (2) determine the broad topics discussed by them, and (3) identify the groups closely associated with the universities. The results show that most of the Saudi universities (whether public or private) actively use Twitter. Results also reveal that public universities respond to public queries more frequently, but private universities stand out more in terms of information dissemination using retweets and diverse hashtags. Finally, we develop a ranking mechanism in SNAUT for ranking universities based on their social interaction with the public on Twitter.

Keywords: social media, twitter, social network analysis, universities, higher education, Saudi Arabia

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Authors: Siddharth Krishnaswamy

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Problem Statement: Currently, when analyzing household food security, the most commonly studied food access indicators are household income and expenditure. Larger studies do take into account other indices such as credit and employment. But these are baselines studies and by definition are conducted infrequently. Food security analysis for access is usually dedicated to analyzing income and expenditure indicators. And both these indicators are notoriously inconsistent. Yet this data can very often end up being the basis on which household food access is calculated; and by extension, be used for decision making. Objectives: This paper argues that along with income and expenditure, credit and debit information should be collected so that an accurate analysis of household food security (and in particular) food access can be determined. The lack of collection and analysis of this information routinely means that there is often a “masking” of the actual situation; a household’s food access and food availability patterns may be adequate mainly as a result of borrowing and may even be due to a long- term dependency (a debt cycle). In other words, such a household is, in reality, worse off than it appears a factor masked by its performance on basic access indicators. Procedures/methodologies/approaches: Existing food security data sets collected in 2005 in Azerbaijan, 2010 across Myanmar and 2014-15 across Uganda were used to support the theory that analyzing income and expenditure of a HHs and analyzing the same in addition to data on credit & borrowing patterns will result in an entirely different scenario of food access of the household. Furthermore, the data analyzed depicts food consumption patterns across groups of households and then relates this to the extent of dependency on credit, i.e. households borrowing money in order to meet food needs. Finally, response options that were based on analyzing only income and expenditure; and response options based on income, expenditure, credit, and borrowing – from the same geographical area of operation are studied and discussed. Results: The purpose of this work was to see if existing methods of household food security analysis could be improved. It is hoped that food security analysts will collect household level information on credit and debit and analyze them against income, expenditure and consumption patterns. This will help determine if a household’s food access and availability are dependent on unsustainable strategies such as borrowing money for food or undertaking sustained debts. Conclusions: The results clearly show the amount of relevant information that is missing in Food Access analysis if debit and borrowing of the household is not analyzed along with the typical Food Access indicators that are usually analyzed. And the serious repercussions this has on Programmatic response and interventions.

Keywords: analysis, food security indicators, response, resilience analysis

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Authors: Pedro Esteban

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Most installations nowadays are exposed to many power quality problems, and they also face numerous challenges to comply with grid code and energy efficiency requirements. The reason behind this is that they are not designed to support nonlinear, non-balanced, and variable loads and generators that make up a large percentage of modern electric power systems. These problems and challenges become especially critical when designing green buildings and smart cities. These problems and challenges are caused by equipment that can be typically found in these installations like variable speed drives (VSD), transformers, lighting, battery chargers, double-conversion UPS (uninterruptible power supply) systems, highly dynamic loads, single-phase loads, fossil fuel generators and renewable generation sources, to name a few. Moreover, events like capacitor switching (from existing capacitor banks or passive harmonic filters), auto-reclose operations of transmission and distribution lines, or the starting of large motors also contribute to these problems and challenges. Active power filters (APF) are one of the fastest-growing power electronics technologies for solving power quality problems and meeting grid code and energy efficiency requirements for a wide range of segments and applications. They are a high performance, flexible, compact, modular, and cost-effective type of power electronics solutions that provide an instantaneous and effective response in low or high voltage electric power systems. They enable longer equipment lifetime, higher process reliability, improved power system capacity and stability, and reduced energy losses, complying with most demanding power quality and energy efficiency standards and grid codes. There can be found several types of active power filters, including active harmonic filters (AHF), static var generators (SVG), active load balancers (ALB), hybrid var compensators (HVC), and low harmonic drives (LHD) nowadays. All these devices can be used in applications in Smart Cities bringing several technical and economic benefits.

Keywords: power quality improvement, energy efficiency, grid code compliance, green buildings, smart cities

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Authors: Marie Taylor, Catriona Murphy

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The aim of this paper is to identify the factors of success in community based heritage tourism initiatives. Heritage and community are central to many tourism initiatives with heritage tourism having the potential to act as a catalyst for community development. This paper presents the findings of research that examined the relationship between heritage tourism and community development. The findings recognised that heritage tourism had economic, social and cultural benefits for a community as well as a role in strengthening concepts such as sense of identity, place, and authenticity. In addition, this paper proposes an assessment framework for sustainable community based heritage tourism to identify factors and contextual influences involved in their success or failure. In evaluating the sustainability of such initiatives, a number of issues are investigated including the continued role of stakeholders, the role of funding, the influence of collaboration and the changing role of rural development and its impact on community engagement. The research is descriptive, evaluative and explanatory research, exploring and analysing issues such as the development of community structures in community based heritage tourism. Thus, it will contribute to the development of potential tourism and community development policies and strategies at a local, national and international level. An interpretative and inductive approach is utilised, and a mixed method approach followed as it encapsulates the best of quantitative and qualitative research methods. The case studies focus on social enterprises in relation to tourism and community based tourism cooperatives as there are limited study and knowledge of these. Consequently, this research will contribute to the discourse on community based heritage tourism as an aspect of community development.

Keywords: collaboration, community-based heritage tourism, stakeholders, sustainable tourism

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Authors: Emad Amar, Tawfik Khattab, Fatma Zada

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Predicting earthquakes is an important issue in the study of geography. Accurate prediction of earthquakes can help people to take effective measures to minimize the loss of personal and economic damage, such as large casualties, destruction of buildings and broken of traffic, occurred within a few seconds. United States Geological Survey (USGS) science organization provides reliable scientific information of Earthquake Existed throughout history & Preliminary database from the National Center Earthquake Information (NEIC) show some useful factors to predict an earthquake in a seismic area like Aleutian Arc in the U.S. state of Alaska. The main advantage of this prediction method that it does not require any assumption, it makes prediction according to the future evolution of object's time series. The article compares between simulation data result from trained BP and RBF neural network versus actual output result from the system calculations. Therefore, this article focuses on analysis of data relating to real earthquakes. Evaluation results show better accuracy and higher speed by using radial basis functions (RBF) neural network.

Keywords: BP neural network, prediction, RBF neural network, earthquake

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Authors: Ibrahim Abdel Gadir Malik, Dafalla Siddig Dafalla, Abdelazim Ibrahim

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Jabal Omar is located in the western side of Makkah city in Saudi Arabia. The proposed Jabal Omar Development project includes several multi-storey buildings, roads, bridges and below ground structures founded at various depths. In this study, geological mapping and site inspection which covered pre-selected areas were carried out within the easily accessed parts. Geological features; including rock types, structures, degree of weathering, and geotechnical hazards were observed and analyzed with specified software and also were documented in form of photographs. The presence of joints and fractures in the area made the rock blocks small and weak. The site is full of jointing; it was observed that, the northern side consists of 3 to 4 jointing systems with 2 random fractures associated with dykes. The southern part is affected by 2 to 3 jointing systems with minor fault and shear zones. From the field measurements and observations, it was concluded that, the Jabal Omar intruded by andesitic and basaltic dykes of different thickness and orientation. These dykes made the outcrop weak, highly deformed and made the rock masses sensitive to weathering.

Keywords: rock, slope, stabilization, protection, Makkah

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Authors: Niklas Panten, Eberhard Abele

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This paper presents a novel approach for real-time and near-optimal control of industrial smart grids by deep reinforcement learning (DRL). To achieve highly energy-efficient factory systems, the energetic linkage of machines, technical building equipment and the building itself is desirable. However, the increased complexity of the interacting sub-systems, multiple time-variant target values and stochastic influences by the production environment, weather and energy markets make it difficult to efficiently control the energy production, storage and consumption in the hybrid industrial smart grids. The studied deep reinforcement learning approach allows to explore the solution space for proper control policies which minimize a cost function. The deep neural network of the DRL agent is based on a multilayer perceptron (MLP), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and convolutional layers. The agent is trained within multiple Modelica-based factory simulation environments by the Advantage Actor Critic algorithm (A2C). The DRL controller is evaluated by means of the simulation and then compared to a conventional, rule-based approach. Finally, the results indicate that the DRL approach is able to improve the control performance and significantly reduce energy respectively operating costs of industrial smart grids.

Keywords: industrial smart grids, energy efficiency, deep reinforcement learning, optimal control

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Authors: Kyu Jin Kim, Byung Kwan Oh, Hyo Seon Park

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The seismic responses-based structural health monitoring system has been performed to prevent seismic damage. Structural seismic damage of building is caused by the instantaneous stress concentration which is related with dynamic characteristic of earthquake. Meanwhile, seismic response analysis to estimate the dynamic responses of building demands significantly high computational cost. To prevent the failure of structural members from the characteristic of the earthquake and the significantly high computational cost for seismic response analysis, this paper presents an artificial neural network (ANN) based prediction model for dynamic responses of building considering specific time length. Through the measured dynamic responses, input and output node of the ANN are formed by the length of specific time, and adopted for the training. In the model, evolutionary radial basis function neural network (ERBFNN), that radial basis function network (RBFN) is integrated with evolutionary optimization algorithm to find variables in RBF, is implemented. The effectiveness of the proposed model is verified through an analytical study applying responses from dynamic analysis for multi-degree of freedom system to training data in ERBFNN.

Keywords: structural health monitoring, dynamic response, artificial neural network, radial basis function network, genetic algorithm

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Authors: Mohsen Yaghmoor, Sima Radmanesh, Ameneh Gholami

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Cities are the principal ground for manifestation of an information society. To create an entrepreneurial city, it is required that just and equal access to opportunities are provided for all segments of the city and technologies are intelligently employed. Furthermore, it is necessary for us to be electronically ready in all political, economic, social, cultural, and technological aspects. Also e-city creates enormous potentials and opportunities for development of the entrepreneurial city. After improvement of e-readiness for establishment of entrepreneurial e-city, potentials, and capitals of the city become productive and more suitable opportunities are offered to citizens, state sectors, and private sectors in order to become entrepreneurs. To create and develop an entrepreneurial city, we need to have readiness to detection and creation of entrepreneurial opportunities and finally exploitation of these opportunities which, in turn, lead to use of entrepreneurial events and their quality in the city. In this model, the quality of entrepreneurial events, the productivity of activities, the necessity of reducing the digital gap, positive and active attendance in information society and compatibility and aligning with the global society are emphasized. In an entrepreneurial city, citizens are not help seekers, private sector is not passive, and the government is entrepreneurial.

Keywords: e-city, e-readiness, entrepreneurial city, entrepreneurial events, technological entrepreneurship

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Authors: Muhammad Younis Laghari

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Microbial communities play the most important role in aquatic ecosystems. These microbes have a great role in fish growth and aquaculture production. Unfortunately, the farmers are unaware of these useful creatures. Nowadays, the trend of fish farming is developed to re-circulatory aquaculture system (RAS) to increase production and reduce the investment/management cost to increase the profit. However, sometimes, it has been observed that even the growth of fish is decreased in RAS without apparent changes in water quality. There is a great importance of microorganisms in aquaculture, where they occur naturally. However, they can be added artificially by applying different roles. Even these microbes play an important role in the degradation of organic matter and recycling nutrients, along with nutritional support to fish. Even some microorganisms may protect fish and larvae against diseases. But if not managed/utilized properly, they may cause to infect or kill the fish and their larvae. However, manipulating the microbes and monitoring them in aquaculture systems hold great potential to assess and improve the water quality as well as to control the development of microbial infections. While there is an utmost need for research to determine the microbiomes of healthy aquaculture systems, we also need to develop authentic methods for the successful manipulation of microbes as well as engineer these microbiomes. Hence, we should develop a plan to utilize and get full advantage from these microbial interactions for the successful management of aquaculture through advanced research and technology.

Keywords: aquaculture, ecology system, degradation, microbes, nutrient recycling, water quality

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Authors: Muhammad Afzal Malik

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Traditional Learning & Distance based learning are the two systems prevailing in Pakistan. These systems affect the level of education standard. The purpose of this study was to compare the traditional classroom learning and distance learning in Pakistan: (a) To explore the effectiveness of the traditional to Distance learning in Pakistan; (b) To identify the factors that affect traditional and distance learning. This review found that, on average, students in traditional classroom conditions performed better than those receiving education in and distance learning. The difference between student outcomes for traditional Classroom and distance learning classes —measured as the difference between treatment and control means, divided by the pooled standard deviation— was larger in those studies contrasting conditions that blended elements of online and face-to-face instruction with conditions taught entirely face-to-face. This research was conducted to highlight the impact of distance learning education system on education standard. The education standards were institutional support, course development, learning process, student support, faculty support, evaluation and assessment. A well developed questionnaire was administered and distributed among 26 faculty members of GCET, H-9 and Virtual University of Pakistan from each. Data was analyzed through correlation and regression analysis. Results confirmed that there is a significant relationship and impact of DLE system on education standards. This will also provide baseline for future research. It will add value to the existing body of knowledge.

Keywords: distance learning education, higher education, education standards, student performance

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Authors: Gabriela D. Silva, Rodrigo L. O. R. Cunha, Mauricio D. Coutinho-Neto

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In the last four decades the biological activities of selenium compounds has received great attention, particularly for hypervalent derivates from selenium (IV) used as enzyme inhibitors. The unregulated activity of cysteine proteases are related to the development of several pathologies, such as neurological disorders, cardiovascular diseases, obesity, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer and parasitic infections. These enzymes are therefore a valuable target for designing new small molecule inhibitors such as selenuranes. Even tough there has been advances in the synthesis and design of new selenuranes based inhibitors, little is known about their mechanism of action. It is a given that inhibition occurs through the reaction between the thiol group of the enzyme and the chalcogen atom. However, several open questions remain about the nature of the mechanism (associative vs. dissociative) and about the nature of the reactive species in solution under physiological conditions. In this work we performed a theoretical investigation on model systems to study the possible routes of substitution reactions. Nucleophiles may be present in biological systems, our interest is centered in the thiol groups from the cysteine proteases and the hydroxyls from the aqueous environment. We therefore expect this study to clarify the possibility of a route reaction in two stages, the first consisting of the substitution of chloro atoms by hydroxyl groups and then replacing these hydroxyl groups per thiol groups in selenuranes. The structures of selenuranes and nucleophiles were optimized using density function theory along the B3LYP functional and a 6-311+G(d) basis set. Solvent was treated using the IEFPCM method as implemented in the Gaussian 09 code. Our results indicate that hydrolysis from water react preferably with selenuranes, and then, they are replaced by the thiol group. It show the energy values of -106,0730423 kcal/mol for dople substituition by hydroxyl group and 96,63078511 kcal/mol for thiol group. The solvatation and pH reduction promotes this route, increasing the energy value for reaction with hydroxil group to -50,75637672 kcal/mol and decreasing the energy value for thiol to 7,917767189 kcal/mol. Alternative ways were analyzed for monosubstitution (considering the competition between Cl, OH and SH groups) and they suggest the same route. Similar results were obtained for aliphatic and aromatic selenuranes studied.

Keywords: chalcogenes, computational study, cysteine proteases, enzyme inhibitors

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Authors: Özden Kuşcu, Yağmur Kuşcu, Zeynep Çetintaş, S. Sunay Yildirim Doğru

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The purpose of this work is to evaluate the effect of the subjects “personal safety” and “protection from dangers” included in primary school curriculum on the students’ levels of knowledge about safety and protection from social dangers. The study group included 469 students between 5–11 years old with 231 preschoolers and 238 primary school students and their parents and teachers. Instruments used to collect data were “Personal Safety Interview Form” for children, “Parent Interview Form” and “Teacher Interview Form”. Forms included 15 open-ended questions about personal safety. The researchers collected the research data through one-on-one interviews with children. Results of the study revealed that preschoolers and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders did not know their home addresses and telephone numbers and their families were not aware of that. The study also showed that those who had this information were unsure as to who to share this information with. Accordingly, more should be done to increase the levels of knowledge of preschoolers and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders about personal safety and protection from dangers.

Keywords: security, social danger, elementary school, preschool

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Authors: Sarthak Deshpande, Akshay Patil, Pradip Pandhare, Nikhil Wankhede, Rushali Deshmukh

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Among the highly significant duties for any language most effective is the sentiment analysis, which is also a key area of NLP, that recently made impressive strides. There are several models and datasets available for those tasks in popular and commonly used languages like English, Russian, and Spanish. While sentiment analysis research is performed extensively, however it is lagging behind for the regional languages having few resources such as Hindi, Marathi. Marathi is one of the languages that included in the Indian Constitution’s 8th schedule and is the third most widely spoken language in the country and primarily spoken in the Deccan region, which encompasses Maharashtra and Goa. There isn’t sufficient study on sentiment analysis methods based on Marathi text due to lack of available resources, information. Therefore, this project proposes the use of different ML/NLP models for the analysis of Marathi data from the comments below YouTube content, tweets or Instagram posts. We aim to achieve a short and precise analysis and summary of the related data using our dataset (Dates, names, root words) and lexicons to locate exact information.

Keywords: multilingual sentiment analysis, Marathi, natural language processing, text summarization, lexicon-based approaches

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Authors: Valerii Dudin

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With the continuous increase in quantity and importance of the information surrounding our daily lives, it has become crucial to understand what makes information stand out and affect our point of view, regardless of the accuracy of the facts involved. Alaa Al-Aswany’s numerous works have been an inspiration for millions of his readers in Egypt and all across the Arab World. While highly factual, the author’s political essays are both lexically and stylistically rich; they also implement descriptive allusions and proverbs to support the presented opinions. We have undertaken an effort to explore the impact on the individual perception through these political works of the author. In this study, we have overviewed previously made research on similar subjects and through contextual, intertextual, linguistic and corpus analyses we have come to realize the presence of suggestive themes in these works, capable of shaping the reader’s perception regarding a certain topic, specifically targeting the reader’s emotional bias. The findings presented in the study will reveal an overview of such examples of suggestive elements used in the author’s works, as well as various new insights on what can be considered suggestive in the context of modern Arabic printed press.

Keywords: Alaa al-Aswany, cognitive linguistics, political essays, suggestion

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Authors: Sultan Al Shafian, Mozaher Ul Kabir, Khondoker Istiak Ahmad, Masnun Abrar, Mahfuza Khanum, Hossain M. Shahin

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For structural evaluation of shallow foundation, the modulus of subgrade reaction is one of the most widely used and accepted parameter for its ease of calculations. To determine this parameter, one of the most common field method is Plate Load test method. In this field test method, the subgrade modulus is considered for a specific location and according to its application, it is assumed that the displacement occurred in one place does not affect other adjacent locations. For this kind of assumptions, the modulus of subgrade reaction sometimes forced the engineers to overdesign the underground structure, which eventually results in increasing the cost of the construction and sometimes failure of the structure. In the present study, the settlement of a shallow foundation has been analyzed using both conventional and numerical analysis. Around 25 plate load tests were conducted on a sand fill site in Bangladesh to determine the Modulus of Subgrade reaction of ground which is later used to design a shallow foundation considering different depth. After the collection of the field data, the field condition was appropriately simulated in a finite element software. Finally results obtained from both the conventional and numerical approach has been compared. A significant difference has been observed in the case of settlement while comparing the results. A proper correlation has also been proposed at the end of this research work between the two methods of in order to provide the most efficient way to calculate the subgrade modulus of the ground for designing the shallow foundation.

Keywords: modulus of subgrade reaction, shallow foundation, finite element analysis, settlement, plate load test

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Authors: Ram Manohar Singh, Meenakshi Gupta

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Various terms such as ‘learning style’, ‘cognitive style’, ‘conceptual style’, ‘thinking style’, ‘intellectual style’ are used in literature to refer to an individual’s characteristic and consistent approach to organizing and processing information. However, style concepts are criticized for mutually overlapping definitions and confusing classification. This confusion should be addressed at the conceptual as well as empirical level. This paper is an attempt to bridge this gap in literature by proposing a new concept: expansive-restrictive intellectual style based on phenomenological analysis of an auto-ethnography and interview of 26 information technology (IT) professionals working in knowledge intensive organizations (KIOs) in India. Expansive style is an individual’s preference to expand his/her horizon of knowledge and understanding by gaining real meaning and structure of his/her work. On the contrary restrictive style is characterized by an individual’s preference to take minimalist approach at work reflected in executing a job efficiently without an attempt to understand the real meaning and structure of the work. The analysis suggests that expansive-restrictive style has three dimensions: (1) field dependence-independence (2) cognitive involvement and (3) epistemological beliefs.

Keywords: expansive, knowledge workers, restrictive, style

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Authors: David L. Olson, Stephen B. H. Bruder, Adam S. Watkins, Cleon E. Davis

Abstract:

In global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), denied settings such as indoor environments, autonomous mobile robots are often limited to dead-reckoning navigation techniques to determine their position, velocity, and attitude (PVA). Localization is typically accomplished by employing an inertial measurement unit (IMU), which, while precise in nature, accumulates errors rapidly and severely degrades the localization solution. Standard sensor fusion methods, such as Kalman filtering, aim to fuse precise IMU measurements with accurate aiding sensors to establish a precise and accurate solution. In indoor environments, where GNSS and no other a priori information is known about the environment, effective sensor fusion is difficult to achieve, as accurate aiding sensor choices are sparse. However, an opportunity arises by employing a depth camera in the indoor environment. A depth camera can capture point clouds of the surrounding floors and walls. Extracting attitude from these surfaces can serve as an accurate aiding source, which directly combats errors that arise due to gyroscope imperfections. This configuration for sensor fusion leads to a dramatic reduction of PVA error compared to traditional aiding sensor configurations. This paper provides the theoretical basis for the depth camera aiding sensor method, initial expectations of performance benefit via simulation, and hardware implementation, thus verifying its veracity. Hardware implementation is performed on the Quanser Qbot 2™ mobile robot, with a Vector-Nav VN-200™ IMU and Kinect™ camera from Microsoft.

Keywords: autonomous mobile robotics, dead reckoning, depth camera, inertial navigation, Kalman filtering, localization, sensor fusion

Procedia PDF Downloads 193

Authors: Rui Pedro de Sousa Guimarães Ferreira, Carlos Alberto Maia Domínguez

Abstract:

Despite the ambitions to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, to fulfill the Paris Agreement's goals, the building and construction sector remains one of the most resource-intensive and greenhouse gas-emitting industries in the world, accounting for 40% of worldwide CO ₂ emissions. Over the past few decades, globalization and population growth have led to an exponential rise in demand in the housing market and, by extension, in the building industry. Considering this housing crisis, it is obvious that we will not stop building in the near future. However, the transition, which has already started, is challenging and complex because it calls for the worldwide participation of numerous organizations in altering how building systems, which have been a part of our everyday existence for over a century, are used. Wood is one of the alternatives that is most frequently used nowadays (under responsible forestry conditions) because of its physical qualities and, most importantly, because it produces fewer carbon emissions during manufacturing than steel or concrete. Furthermore, as wood retains its capacity to store CO ₂ after application and throughout the life of the building, working as a natural carbon filter, it helps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. After a century-long focus on other materials, in the last few decades, technological advancements have made it possible to innovate systems centered around the use of wood. However, there are still some questions that require further exploration. It is necessary to standardize production and manufacturing processes based on prefabrication and modularization principles to achieve greater precision and optimization of the solutions, decreasing building time, prices, and waste from raw materials. In addition, this approach will make it possible to develop new architectural solutions to solve the rigidity and irreversibility of buildings, two of the most important issues facing housing today. Most current models are still created as inflexible, fixed, monofunctional structures that discourage any kind of regeneration, based on matrices that sustain the conventional family's traditional model and are founded on rigid, impenetrable compartmentalization. Adaptability and flexibility in housing are, and always have been, necessities and key components of architecture. People today need to constantly adapt to their surroundings and themselves because of the fast-paced, disposable, and quickly obsolescent nature of modern items. Migrations on a global scale, different kinds of co-housing, or even personal changes are some of the new questions that buildings have to answer. Designing with the reversibility of construction systems and materials in mind not only allows for the concept of "looping" in construction, with environmental advantages that enable the development of a circular economy in the sector but also unleashes multiple social benefits. In this sense, it is imperative to develop prefabricated and modular construction systems able to address the formalization of a reversible proposition that adjusts to the scale of time and its multiple reformulations, many of which are unpredictable. We must allow buildings to change, grow, or shrink over their lifetime, respecting their nature and, finally, the nature of the people living in them. It´s the ability to anticipate the unexpected, adapt to social factors, and take account of demographic shifts in society to stabilize communities, the foundation of real innovative sustainability.

Keywords: modular, timber, flexibility, housing

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Authors: Praniil Nagaraj

Abstract:

This paper proposes a method to collect homeless data using crowdsourcing and presents an approach to analyze the data, demonstrating its potential to strengthen existing and future policies aimed at promoting socio-economic equilibrium. The 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress highlighted alarming statistics, emphasizing the need for effective decision-making and budget allocation within local planning bodies known as Continuums of Care (CoC). This paper's contributions can be categorized into three main areas. Firstly, a unique method for collecting homeless data is introduced, utilizing a user-friendly smartphone app (currently available for Android). The app enables the general public to quickly record information about homeless individuals, including the number of people and details about their living conditions. The collected data, including date, time, and location, is anonymized and securely transmitted to the cloud. It is anticipated that an increasing number of users motivated to contribute to society will adopt the app, thus expanding the data collection efforts. Duplicate data is addressed through simple classification methods, and historical data is utilized to fill in missing information. The second contribution of this paper is the description of data analysis techniques applied to the collected data. By combining this new data with existing information, statistical regression analysis is employed to gain insights into various aspects, such as distinguishing between unsheltered and sheltered homeless populations, as well as examining their correlation with factors like unemployment rates, housing affordability, and labor demand. Initial data is collected in San Francisco, while pre-existing information is drawn from three cities: San Francisco, New York City, and Washington D.C., facilitating the conduction of simulations. The third contribution focuses on demonstrating the practical implications of the data processing results. The challenges faced by key stakeholders, including charitable organizations and local city governments, are taken into consideration. Two case studies are presented as examples. The first case study explores improving the efficiency of food and necessities distribution, as well as medical assistance, driven by charitable organizations. The second case study examines the correlation between micro-geographic budget expenditure by local city governments and homeless information to justify budget allocation and expenditures. The ultimate objective of this endeavor is to enable the continuous enhancement of the quality of life for the underprivileged. It is hoped that through increased crowdsourcing of data from the public, the Generosity Curve and the Need Curve will intersect, leading to a better world for all.

Keywords: crowdsourcing, homelessness, socio-economic policies, statistical analysis

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Authors: Patricia M. Boechler, Heather M. Gautreau

Abstract:

In this research study, postsecondary students completed an information learning task in an avatar-based 3D virtual learning environment. Three factors were of interest in relation to learning; 1) the influence of collaborative vs. independent conditions, 2) the influence of the spatial arrangement of the virtual environment (linear, random and clustered), and 3) the relationship of individual differences such as spatial skill, general computer experience and video game experience to learning. Students completed pretest measures of prior computer experience and prior spatial skill. Following the premeasure administration, students were given instruction to move through the virtual environment and study all the material within 10 information stations. In the collaborative condition, students proceeded in randomly assigned pairs, while in the independent condition they proceeded alone. After this learning phase, all students individually completed a multiple choice test to determine information retention. The overall results indicated that students in pairs did not perform any better or worse than independent students. As far as individual differences, only spatial ability predicted the performance of students. General computer experience and video game experience did not. Taking a closer look at the pairs and spatial ability, comparisons were made on pairs high/matched spatial ability, pairs low/matched spatial ability and pairs that were mismatched on spatial ability. The results showed that both high/matched pairs and mismatched pairs outperformed low/matched pairs. That is, if a pair had even one individual with strong spatial ability they would perform better than pairs with only low spatial ability individuals. This suggests that, in virtual environments, the specific individuals that are paired together are important for performance outcomes. The paper also includes a discussion of trends within the data that have implications for virtual environment education.

Keywords: avatar-based, virtual environment, paired learning, individual differences

Procedia PDF Downloads 98

Authors: Haytam Kasem

Abstract:

The problem of quick and easy reversible attachment has become of great importance in different fields of technology. For the reason, during the last decade, a new emerging field of adhesion science has been developed. Essentially inspired by some animals and insects, which during their natural evolution have developed fantastic biological attachment systems allowing them to adhere and run on walls and ceilings of uneven surfaces. Potential applications of engineering bio-inspired solutions include climbing robots, handling systems for wafers in nanofabrication facilities, and mobile sensor platforms, to name a few. However, despite the efforts provided to apply bio-inspired patterned adhesive-surfaces to the biomedical field, they are still in the early stages compared with their conventional uses in other industries mentioned above. In fact, there are some critical issues that still need to be addressed for the wide usage of the bio-inspired patterned surfaces as advanced biomedical platforms. For example, surface durability and long-term stability of surfaces with high adhesive capacity should be improved, but also the friction and adhesion capacities of these bio-inspired microstructures when contacting rough surfaces. One of the well-known prototypes for bio-inspired attachment systems is biomimetic wall-shaped hierarchical microstructure for gecko-like attachments. Although physical background of these attachment systems is widely understood, the influence of counter-face roughness and its relationship with the friction force generated when sliding against wall-shaped hierarchical microstructure have yet to be fully analyzed and understood. To elucidate the effect of the counter-face roughness on the friction of biomimetic wall-shaped hierarchical microstructure we have replicated the isotropic topography of 12 different surfaces using replicas made of the same epoxy material. The different counter-faces were fully characterized under 3D optical profilometer to measure roughness parameters. The friction forces generated by spatula-shaped microstructure in contact with the tested counter-faces were measured on a home-made tribometer and compared with the friction forces generated by the spatulae in contact with a smooth reference. It was found that classical roughness parameters, such as average roughness Ra and others, could not be utilized to explain topography-related variation in friction force. This has led us to the development of an integrated roughness parameter obtained by combining different parameters which are the mean asperity radius of curvature (R), the asperity density (η), the deviation of asperities high (σ) and the mean asperities angle (SDQ). This new integrated parameter is capable of explaining the variation of results of friction measurements. Based on the experimental results, we developed and validated an analytical model to predict the variation of the friction force as a function of roughness parameters of the counter-face and the applied normal load, as well.

Keywords: friction, bio-mimetic micro-structure, counter-face roughness, analytical model

Procedia PDF Downloads 226