Search results for: modern method

Authors: M. Nadeem, Y. K. Chang, C. Diallo, U. Venkatadri, P. Havard, T. Nguyen-Quang

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Uniform distribution of agro-chemicals is highly important because there is a significant loss of agro-chemicals, for example from pesticide, during spraying due to non-uniformity of droplet and off-target drift. Improving the efficiency of spray pattern for different cropping systems would reduce energy, costs and to minimize environmental pollution. In this paper, we examine the water jet patterns in order to study the performance and uniformity of water distribution during the spraying process. We present a method to quantify the water amount from a sprayer jet by using the Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) system. The results of the study will be used to optimize sprayer or nozzles design for chemical application. For this study, ten sets of images were acquired by using the following PIV system settings: double frame mode, trigger rate is 4 Hz, and time between pulsed signals is 500 µs. Each set of images contained different numbers of double-framed images: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and 100 at eight different pressures 25, 50, 75, 100, 125, 150, 175 and 200 kPa. The PIV images obtained were analysed using custom-made image processing software for droplets and volume calculations. The results showed good agreement of both manual and PIV measurements and suggested that the PIV technique coupled with image processing can be used for a precise quantification of flow through nozzles. The results also revealed that the method of measuring fluid flow through PIV is reliable and accurate for sprayer patterns.

Keywords: image processing, PIV, quantifying the water volume from nozzle, spraying pattern

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Authors: M. Eskandarighadi, C. R. McGann

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It is observed from past experiences of earthquakes that local site conditions can significantly affect the strong ground motion characteristicssuch as frequency content, amplitude, and duration of seismic waves. The most common method for investigating site response is one-dimensional seismic site response analysis. The infinite horizontal length of the model and the homogeneous characteristic of the soil are crucial assumptions of this method. One boundary condition that can be used in the sides is tying the sides horizontally for vertical 1D wave propagation. However, 1D analysis cannot account for the 2D nature of wave propagation in the condition where the soil profile is not fully horizontal or has heterogeneity within layers. Therefore, 2D seismic site response analysis can be used to take all of these limitations into account for a better understanding of local site conditions. Different types of boundary conditions can be appliedin 2D site response models, such as tied boundary condition, massive columns, and free-field boundary condition. The tied boundary condition has been used in 1D analysis, which is useful for 1D wave propagation. Employing two massive columns at the sides is another approach for capturing the 2D nature of wave propagation. Free-field boundary condition can simulate the free-field motion that would exist far from the domain of interest. The goal for free-field boundary condition is to minimize the unwanted reflection from sides. This research focuses on the comparison between these methods with examples and discusses the details and limitations of each of these boundary conditions.

Keywords: boundary condition, free-field, massive columns, opensees, site response analysis, wave propagation

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Authors: Berit Johannessen

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Introduction: Depression and dementia are the two most common psychiatric disorders of older people. The use of antidepressants does not always have the desired effect and serious side effects are common. Aroma therapists claim that the essential oil of Bergamot has an antidepressant effect. Aromatherapy is defined as holistic or complementary medicine and is rarely used in the Norwegian public health service, but in recent years, there has been an increasing interest in, and use of complementary and alternative therapies (CAM) in the Norwegian population, and aromatherapy is one of the most widely used. Focus for this study: How do nurses experience the use of Bergamot essential oil for patients suffering from dementia and depression? Method: Action research study including 12 patients and 8 nurses. The patients were strategically selected by the nurses and were given Bergamot in a fan diffuser every day for 12 weeks. The patients' mood and behavior patterns were reported daily and the nurse`s experiences were reported weekly. Individual interviews with the nurses were conducted at the end of the project. Results: The nurses reported that bergamot had positive impact on patients mood and wellbeing, and was considered as an effective method for six patients, four had uncertain effect and two had no effect. They also reported less use of medication and that the fan diffusers were easy and pleasant to administer. They found the use of natural remedies as Bergamot inspiring and wanted to learn more about aromatherapy and its use in nursing. Some were disturbed by the smell and some had to deal with critical and negative colleagues. Conclusion: Nurses experienced aromatherapy using bergamot oil in fan diffusers as a simple and useful procedure for patients suffering from dementia and depression. The effects were varying. Further research is needed.

Keywords: aromatherapy, bergamot, dementia, depression

Procedia PDF Downloads 238

Authors: Mohammad Zakir, Saamia Shams

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Background: Provision of quality family planning services remarkably contribute towards increased uptake of modern contraceptive methods and have important implications on reducing fertility rates. The quality of care in family planning has beneficial impact on reproductive health of women, yet little empirical evidence is present to show the relationship between the impact of adequate training of Community Mid Wives (CMW) and quality family planning services. Aim: This study aimed to enhance the knowledge and counseling skills of CMWs in improving the access to quality client-centered family planning services in Pakistan. Methodology: A quasi-experimental longitudinal study using Initial Quality Assurance Scores-Training-Post Training Quality Assurance Scores design with a non- equivalent control group was adopted to compare a set of experimental CMWs that received four days training package including Family Planning Methods, Counselling, Communication skills and Practical training on IUCD insertion with a set of comparison CMWs that did not receive any intervention. A sample size of 100 CMW from Suraj Social Franchise (SSF) private providers was recruited from both urban and rural Pakistan. Results: Significant improvement in the family planning knowledge and counseling skills (p< 0.001) of the CMWs was evident in the experimental group as compared to comparison group with p > 0.05. Non- significant association between pre-test level family planning knowledge and counseling skills was observed in both the groups (p>0.05). Conclusion: The findings demonstrate that adequate training is an important determinant of quality of family planning services received by clients. Provider level training increases the likelihood of contraceptives uptake and decreases the likelihood of both unintended and unwanted pregnancies. Enhancing quality of family planning services may significantly help reduce the fertility and improve the reproductive health indicators of women in Pakistan.

Keywords: community mid wives, family planning services, quality of care, training

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Authors: Awais Ahmed, Javed Iqbal

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Pakistan has been for many years facing extreme challenges in energy deficit due to the shortage of power generation compared to increasing demand. A part of this energy deficit is also contributed by the power lost in transmission and distribution network. Unfortunately, distribution companies are not equipped with modern technologies and methods to identify and eliminate these losses. According to estimate, total energy lost in early 2000 was between 20 to 26 percent. To address this issue the present research study was designed with the objectives of developing a standalone GIS application for distribution companies having the capability of loss calculation as well as identification of overloaded transformers. For this purpose, Hilal Road feeder in Faisalabad Electric Supply Company (FESCO) was selected as study area. An extensive GPS survey was conducted to identify each consumer, linking it to the secondary pole of the transformer, geo-referencing equipment and documenting conductor sizes. To identify overloaded transformer, accumulative kWH reading of consumer on transformer was compared with threshold kWH. Technical losses of 11kV and 220V lines were calculated using the data from substation and resistance of the network calculated from the geo-database. To automate the process a standalone GIS application was developed using ArcObjects with engineering analysis capabilities. The application uses GIS database developed for 11kV and 220V lines to display and query spatial data and present results in the form of graphs. The result shows that about 14% of the technical loss on both high tension (HT) and low tension (LT) network while about 4 out of 15 general duty transformers were found overloaded. The study shows that GIS can be a very effective tool for distribution companies in management and planning of their distribution network.

Keywords: geographical information system, GIS, power distribution, distribution transformers, technical losses, GPS, SDSS, spatial decision support system

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Authors: Kamélia Bouderbala, Hichem Nouira, Etienne Videcoq, Manuel Girault, Daniel Petit

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Thermal drifts caused by the power dissipated by the mechanical guiding systems constitute the main limit to enhance the accuracy of an ultra-high precision cylindricity measuring machine. For this reason, a high precision compact prototype has been designed to simulate the behaviour of the instrument. It ensures in situ calibration of four capacitive displacement probes by comparison with four laser interferometers. The set-up includes three heating wires for simulating the powers dissipated by the mechanical guiding systems, four additional heating wires located between each laser interferometer head and its respective holder, 19 Platinum resistance thermometers (Pt100) to observe the temperature evolution inside the set-up and four Pt100 sensors to monitor the ambient temperature. Both a Reduced Model (RM), based on the Modal Identification Method (MIM) was developed and optimized by comparison with the experimental results. Thereafter, time dependent tests were performed under several conditions to measure the temperature variation at 19 fixed positions in the system and compared to the calculated RM results. The RM results show good agreement with experiment and reproduce as well the temperature variations, revealing the importance of the RM proposed for the evaluation of the thermal behaviour of the system.

Keywords: modal identification method (MIM), thermal behavior and drift, dimensional metrology, measurement

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Authors: Jian-Na Zhang, Xiao-Li Chen, Si-Jian Li

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Objective: In order to investigate current status on knowledge of disaster prevention and reduction in rural pupils, to explore education method on disaster prevention and reduction for rural pupils. Method: A questionnaire was designed based on literature review. Convenient sampling was used in the survey. The questionnaire survey was conducted among 180 students from Huodehong town central primary school which located in Ludian county of Zhaotong city in Yunnan province, where 6.5 magnitude earthquake happened in 2014. The result indicated that the pupils’ knowledge and skills on disaster prevention and reduction relevant poor. The source for them to obtain the knowledge of disaster prevention and reduction included TV (68.9%), followed by their parents (43.9%), while only 24.4% of knowledge is from the teachers. The scores about different natural disaster are ranking in descending order: earthquake (5.39 ±1.27), floods (3.77 ±1.17); debris flow (2.81 ±1.05), family fire (2.16± 0.96). And the disaster experience did not help the pupils enhance the knowledge reserves. There is no statistical significance (P > 0.05) in knowledge scores of disaster prevention and reduction between experienced and non-experienced group. Conclusion: The local disaster experiences did not draw the attention of parents and schools. Knowledge popularization of disaster for local pupils is extremely urgent. It is necessary to take advantage of more mediums to popularize the knowledge and skills about disaster prevention and reduction, for example, family education, school education, newspapers, brochures, etc. The training courses on disaster prevention and reduction which are based on the characteristics of the local rural pupils and the characteristics of the local disasters would be useful.

Keywords: rural, pupils, disaster prevention and reduction knowledge, popularization

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Authors: Rimzhim Gupta, Bhanupriya Boruah, Jayant M. Modak, Giridhar Madras

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Microbial contamination is one of the major concerns in the field of water treatment. AOP (advanced oxidation processes) is well-established method to resolve the issue of removal of contaminants in water. A Z-scheme composite g-C₃N₄/CuWO₄ was synthesized by sol-gel method for the photocatalytic inactivation of a mixed population of Gram-positive bacteria (S. aureus) and Gram-negative bacteria (E. coli). The photoinactivation was observed for different types of bacteria in the same medium together and individually in the absence of the nutrients. The lattice structures and phase purities were determined by X-ray diffraction. For morphological and topographical features, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy analyses were carried out. The band edges of the semiconductor (valence band and conduction band) were determined by ultraviolet photoelectron microscopy. The lifetime of the charge carriers and band gap of the semiconductors were determined by time resolved florescence spectroscopy and diffused reflectance spectroscopy, respectively. The effect of weight ratio of C₃N₄ and CuWO₄ was observed by performing photocatalytic experiments. To investigate the exact mechanism and major responsible radicals for photocatalysis, scavenger studies were performed. The rate constants and order of the inactivation reactions were obtained by power law kinetics. For E. coli and S. aureus, the order of reaction and rate constants are 1.15, 0.9 and 1.39 ± 0.03 (CFU/mL)⁻⁰.¹⁵ h⁻¹, 47.95 ± 1.2 (CFU/mL)⁰.¹ h⁻¹, respectively.

Keywords: z-scheme, E. coli, S. aureus, sol-gel

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Authors: Muhammad Arshad, Ghulam Hussain Bhatti, Abdul Qayyum

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Zinc-doped silica oxide nanoparticles having size 7.93nm were synthesized by the deposition precipitation method by using different solvents (acetonitrile, n-hexane, isoamylalchol). Biological potential such as antibacterial activities against Bacillussubtilusand Escherichia coli, and antifungal activities against Candida parapsilosis and Aspergilusniger were also investigated by Disc diffusion method. Different characterizations techniques including Fournier Transmission Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), Thermo-gravimeteric Analysis (TGA), Atomic forced microscopy (AFM), and Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) were used. FT-IR characterization confirmed the presence of metal oxide bond (SiO2) while XRD showed the hexagonal structure. SEM and TEM characterization showed the morphology of nanoparticles. AFM study showed good particle size distribution as depicted by a histogram. DLS study showed the gradual decease in the size of nanoparticles from 24.86nm to 13.24 nm. Highest antibacterial activities revealed by acetonitrile solvents (6%and 4.5%) followed by isoamylalchol (3% and 2.4%) while n-hexane solvent showed the lowest activity (2%and 1%) respectively. Higher antifungal activities exhibited by n-hexane (0.34 % and 0.43%) followed by isoamylalchol (0.27% and 0.19%) solvent while acetonitrile (0.21% and 0.17%) showed least activity respectively. Statistical analysis by using one-way ANOVA also indicated the significant results of both biological activities.

Keywords: nanoparticles, precipitation methods, antibacterial, antifungal, characterizations

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Authors: Assem M. F. Sallam, Ah. El-S. Makled

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In this paper, there is an implementation, verification, and graphical demonstration of a software application, which can be used swiftly over different preliminary orbit determination methods. A passive orbit determination method is used in this study to determine the location of a satellite or a flying body. It is named a passive orbit determination because it depends on observation without the use of any aids (radio and laser) installed on satellite. In order to understand how these methods work and how their output is accurate when compared with available verification data, the built models help in knowing the different inputs used with each method. Output from the different orbit determination methods (Gibbs, Lambert, and Gauss) will be compared with each other and verified by the data obtained from Satellite Tool Kit (STK) application. A modified model including all of the orbit determination methods using the same input will be introduced to investigate different models output (orbital parameters) for the same input (azimuth, elevation, and time). Simulation software is implemented using MATLAB. A Graphical User Interface (GUI) application named OrDet is produced using the GUI of MATLAB. It includes all the available used inputs and it outputs the current Classical Orbital Elements (COE) of satellite under observation. Produced COE are then used to propagate for a complete revolution and plotted on a 3-D view. Modified model which uses an adapter to allow same input parameters, passes these parameters to the preliminary orbit determination methods under study. Result from all orbit determination methods yield exactly the same COE output, which shows the equality of concept in determination of satellite’s location, but with different numerical methods.

Keywords: orbit determination, STK, Matlab-GUI, satellite tracking

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Authors: Angelina A. Tzacheva, Jaishree Ranganathan

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Interest in (STEM) Science Technology Engineering Mathematics education especially Computer Science education has seen a drastic increase across the country. This fuels effort towards recruiting and admitting a diverse population of students. Thus the changing conditions in terms of the student population, diversity and the expected teaching and learning outcomes give the platform for use of Innovative Teaching models and technologies. It is necessary that these methods adapted should also concentrate on raising quality of such innovations and have positive impact on student learning. Light-Weight Team is an Active Learning Pedagogy, which is considered to be low-stake activity and has very little or no direct impact on student grades. Emotion plays a major role in student’s motivation to learning. In this work we use the student feedback data with emotion classification using surveys at a public research institution in the United States. We use Actionable Pattern Discovery method for this purpose. Actionable patterns are patterns that provide suggestions in the form of rules to help the user achieve better outcomes. The proposed method provides meaningful insight in terms of changes that can be incorporated in the Light-Weight team activities, resources utilized in the course. The results suggest how to enhance student emotions to a more positive state, in particular focuses on the emotions ‘Trust’ and ‘Joy’.

Keywords: actionable pattern discovery, education, emotion, data mining

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Authors: Alireza Pishgahi, Mohammad Rahbar, Javad Shokri, Shahla Dareshiri, Yaghoub Salekzamani, Fariba Eslamian

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Background and Objectives: Hypertrophic scars are one of the complications following a burn injury. Intralesional corticosteroid injection is an invasive method for treatment of this complication. We had design a single blinded randomized control trial to deliver dexamethasone by phonophoresis and evaluate its efficacy on hypertrophic burn scars characteristics. Material and Methods: 56 cases of hypertrophic burn scar due to burn injury allocated randomly to dexamethasone and control group. Individuals in case group received 10 sessions of dexamethasone 0.4% phonophoresis. Patients in control group had placebo phonophoresis (ultrasound with normal routine aquatic gel without any dexamethasone) with the same protocol. At the beginning of study and one week after last session, hypertrophic scar characteristics and pruritus were measured by ‘Vancouver Scar Scale’, and ‘5-D Pruritus Scale’ respectively in both groups. Results: Despite mild improvement in Vancouver Scar Scale score one week after intervention in dexamethasone phonophoresis group in comparison to control subjects, but this difference was not significant (p=0.08). Pruritus score perceived subjectively were significantly lower one week after intervention in dexamethasone groups in comparison to control subjects (p=0.00). Conclusion: Dexamethasone phonophoresis is a safe and effective treatment method for burn hypertrophic scar pruritus, but its efficacy for scar characteristics improvement needs to be evaluated by larger studies with long-term follow-up period.

Keywords: dexamethasone, hypertrophic scar, phonophoresis, pruritus

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Authors: Siti Sofo Ismail, Siti Noraina Wahida Mohd Alwi, Mohamad Hafiz Ameran, Masrudin M. Yusoff

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Locating clandestine cadaver is crucially important in forensic investigations. However, it requires a lot of man power, costly and time consuming. Therefore, the development of a new method to locate the clandestine graves is urgently needed as the cases involve burial of cadaver in different types of soils under tropical climates are still not well explored. This study focused on the burial in mangrove and oil palm plantation soils, comparing the fatty acid distributions in different soil acidities. A stimulated burial experiment was conducted using domestic pig (Sus scrofa) to substitute human tissues. Approximately 20g of pig fatty flesh was allowed to decompose in mangrove and oil palm plantation soils, mimicking burial in a shallow grave. The associated soils were collected at different designated sampling points, corresponding different decomposition stages. Modified Bligh-Dyer Extraction method was applied to extract the soil free fatty acids. Then, the obtained free fatty acids were analyzed with gas chromatography-flame ionization (GC-FID). A similar fatty acid distribution was observed for both mangrove and oil palm plantations soils. Palmitic acid (C₁₆) was the most abundance of free fatty acid, followed by stearic acid (C₁₈). However, the concentration of palmitic acid (C₁₆) higher in oil palm plantation compare to mangrove soils. Conclusion, the decomposition rate of cadaver can be affected by different type of soils.

Keywords: clandestine grave, burial, soils, free fatty acid

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Authors: Majid Eslami

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Functionally graded materials (FGMs) exhibit heterogeneous microstructures in which the composition and properties gently change in specified directions. The common type of FGMs consist of a metal in which ceramic particles are distributed with a graded concentration. There are many processing routes for FGMs. An important group of these methods is casting techniques (gravity or centrifugal). However, the main problem of casting molten metal slurry with dispersed ceramic particles is a destructive chemical reaction between these two phases which deteriorates the properties of the materials. In order to overcome this problem, in the present investigation a suspension of 6061 aluminum and alumina powders in a liquid polymer was used as the starting material and subjected to centrifugal force for making FGMs. The size rang of these powders was 45-63 and 106-125 μm. The volume percent of alumina in the Al/Al2O3 powder mixture was in the range of 5 to 20%. PMMA (Plexiglas) in different concentrations (20-50 g/lit) was dissolved in toluene and used as the suspension liquid. The glass mold contaning the suspension of Al/Al2O3 powders in the mentioned liquid was rotated at 1700 rpm for different times (4-40 min) while the arm length was kept constant (10 cm) for all the experiments. After curing the polymer, burning out the binder, cold pressing and sintering , cylindrical samples (φ=22 mm h=20 mm) were produced. The density of samples before and after sintering was quantified by Archimedes method. The results indicated that by using the same sized alumina and aluminum powders particles, FGM sample can be produced by rotation times exceeding 7 min. However, by using coarse alumina and fine alumina powders the sample exhibits step concentration. On the other hand, using fine alumina and coarse alumina results in a relatively uniform concentration of Al2O3 along the sample height. These results are attributed to the effects of size and density of different powders on the centrifugal force induced on the powders during rotation. The PMMA concentration and the vol.% of alumina in the suspension did not have any considerable effect on the distribution of alumina particles in the samples. The hardness profiles along the height of samples were affected by both the alumina vol.% and porosity content. The presence of alumina particles increased the hardness while increased porosity reduced the hardness. Therefore, the hardness values did not show the expected gradient in same sample. The sintering resulted in decreased porosity for all the samples investigated.

Keywords: FGM, powder metallurgy, centrifugal method, polymeric suspension

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Authors: Sanda-Maria Ardeleanu, Ana Crăciunescu

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This paper is sustained by our previous research on discursive strategies, whichdemonstrated that tourismhas developed and employed apromotional languageper se. We have studied this concept within the framework of audio-visual advertising by analyzing its discursive structures at the level of three main strategies (textual, visual, and both textual and visual) and confirmed the applicability of the promotional language per se within the field. Tourism, at large, represents a largely potential interdisplinary field, which allowed us to use qualitative methods of research such as Discourse Analysis (DA). Due to further research which showed that in the third phase of qualitative research methodologies, scholars in tourism recognized semiotics and DA as potential paths to follow, but which were insufficiently explored at the time, we soon realized that the natural next step to take is to bring together common qualitative methodologies for both fields, such as the method of observation, the triangulation, Discourse Analysis, etc. Therefore and in the light of fast transformations of the medium that intermediates the message, in this paper, we are going to focus on the manifestations of the promotional language in social media texts, which advertise for the urban industry of accommodation in Romania. We shall constitute a corpus of study as the basis for our research methodology and, through the empirical method of observation and DA, we propose to recognize or discover new patterns developed at textual (mainly) and visual level or the mix of the two, known as strategies of the promotional language of tourism.

Keywords: discourse analysis, promotional language of tourism, social media, urban accommodation industry, tourism

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Authors: Karen V. Lee

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The background and significance of this study involve communication in education by a faculty advisor exploring story and music that informs others about a disabled teacher. Social issues draw deep reflection about the emotional turmoil. As a musician becoming a teacher is a passionate yet complex endeavor, the faculty advisor shares a poetic but painful story about a disabled teacher being inducted into the teaching profession. The qualitative research method as theoretical framework draws on autoethnography of music and story where the faculty advisor approaches a professor for advice. His musicianship shifts her forward, backward, and sideways through feelings that evoke and provoke curriculum to remove communication barriers in education. They discover they do not transfer knowledge from educational method classes. Instead, the autoethnography embeds musical language as a metaphorical conduit for removing communication barriers in teacher education. Sub-themes involve communication barriers and educational technologies to ensure teachers receive social, emotional, physical, spiritual, and intervention disability resources that evoke visceral, emotional responses from the audience. Major findings of the study discover how autoethnography of music and story bring the authors to understand wider political issues of the practicum internship for teachers with disabilities. An epiphany reveals the irony of living in a culture of both uniformity and diversity. They explore the constructs of secrecy, ideology, abnormality, and marginalization by evoking visceral and emotional responses from the audience. As the voices harmonize plot, climax, characterization, and denouement, they dramatize meaning that is episodic yet incomplete to highlight the circumstances surrounding the disabled protagonist’s life. In conclusion, the qualitative research method argues for embracing storied experiences that depict communication in education. Scholarly significance embraces personal thoughts and feelings as a way of understanding social phenomena while highlighting the importance of removing communication barriers in education. The circumstance about a teacher with a disability is not uncommon in society. Thus, the authors resolve to removing barriers in education by using stories to transform the personal and cultural influences that provoke new ways of thinking about the curriculum for a disabled teacher.

Keywords: communication in education, communication barriers, autoethnography, teaching

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Authors: Jingjie Li, Wenjie Hu

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Phraseological units in academic English texts have been a central focus in recent corpus linguistic research. A wide variety of phraseological units have been explored, including collocations, chunks, lexical bundles, patterns, semantic sequences, etc. This paper describes a special category of clause-level phraseological units, namely, Characteristic Sentence Stems (CSSs), with a view to describing their defining criteria and extraction method. CSSs are contiguous lexico-grammatical sequences which contain a subject-predicate structure and which are frame expressions characteristic of academic writing. The extraction of CSSs consists of six steps: Part-of-speech tagging, n-gram segmentation, structure identification, significance of occurrence calculation, text range calculation, and overlapping sequence reduction. Significance of occurrence calculation is the crux of this study. It includes the computing of both the internal association and the boundary independence of a CSS and tests the occurring significance of the CSS from both inside and outside perspectives. A new normalization algorithm is also introduced into the calculation of LocalMaxs for reducing overlapping sequences. It is argued that many sentence stems are so recurrent in academic texts that the most typical of them have become the habitual ways of making meaning in academic writing. Therefore, studies of CSSs could have potential implications and reference value for academic discourse analysis, English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teaching and writing.

Keywords: characteristic sentence stem, extraction method, phraseological unit, the statistical measure

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Authors: Ahmad Afif, Teuku Yuri M. Zagloel

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Sustainable supply chain management is a new pattern that has emerged recently in industry and companies. The procurement process is one of the key factors for efficiency in supply chain management practices. Partnership is one of the procurement strategies for strategic items. The success factors of the partnership must be determined to avoid things that endanger the financial and operational status of the company. The current supplier partnership research focuses on the selection of general criteria and sustainable supplier selection. Currently, there is still limited research on the success factors of supplier partnerships that focus on strategic items in the coal mining industry. Meanwhile, the procurement of coal mining has its own characteristics, and there are regulations related to the procurement of goods. Therefore, this research was conducted to determine the categories of goods that are included in the strategic items and to design the success factors of supplier partnerships. The main factors studied are general, financial, production, reputation, synergies, and sustainable. The research was conducted using the Kraljic method to determine the categories of goods that are included in the strategic items. To design a supplier partnership success factor using the Hybrid Multi Criteria Decision Making method. Integrated Fuzzy AHP-Fuzzy TOPSIS is used to determine the weight of the success factors of supplier partnerships and to rank suppliers on the factors used.

Keywords: supplier, partnership, strategic item, success factors, and coal mining industry

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Authors: Aya M. Aboudesouky

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Covid-19 has changed and affected the whole world dramatically in a new way that the entire world, even scientists, have not imagined before. The educational institutions around the world have been fighting since Covid-19 hit the world last December to keep the educational process unchanged for all students. E-learning was a must for almost all US universities during the pandemic. It was specifically more challenging to use online case-based learning instead of regular classes among nursing students who take practical education. This study aims to examine the difference in performance and satisfaction between nursing students taking traditional education and those who take virtual case-based education during their practical study. This study enrolls 40 last-year nursing undergraduates from a mid-sized university in Western Pennsylvania. The study uses a convenient sample. Students will be divided into two groups; a control group that is exposed to traditional teaching strategy and a treatment group that is exposed to a case-based teaching strategy. The module designed for this study is a total parenteral nutrition (TPN) module that will be taught for one month. The treatment group (n=20) utilizes the virtual simulation of the CBL method, while the control group (n=20) uses the traditional lecture-based teaching method. Student evaluations are collected after a month by using the survey to attain the students’ learning satisfaction and self-evaluation of the course. The post-test is used to assess the end of the course performance.

Keywords: virtual case-based learning, traditional education, nursing education, Covid-19 crisis, online practical education

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Authors: Ana Londral, Burcu Demiray, Marcus Cheetham

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Speech recording is a methodology used in many different studies related to cognitive and behaviour research. Modern advances in digital equipment brought the possibility of continuously recording hours of speech in naturalistic environments and building rich sets of sound files. Speech analysis can then extract from these files multiple features for different scopes of research in Language and Communication. However, tools for analysing a large set of sound files and automatically extract relevant features from these files are often inaccessible to researchers that are not familiar with programming languages. Manual analysis is a common alternative, with a high time and efficiency cost. In the analysis of long sound files, the first step is the voice segmentation, i.e. to detect and label segments containing speech. We present a comprehensive methodology aiming to support researchers on voice segmentation, as the first step for data analysis of a big set of sound files. Praat, an open source software, is suggested as a tool to run a voice detection algorithm, label segments and files and extract other quantitative features on a structure of folders containing a large number of sound files. We present the validation of our methodology with a set of 5000 sound files that were collected in the daily life of a group of voluntary participants with age over 65. A smartphone device was used to collect sound using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR): an app programmed to record 30-second sound samples that were randomly distributed throughout the day. Results demonstrated that automatic segmentation and labelling of files containing speech segments was 74% faster when compared to a manual analysis performed with two independent coders. Furthermore, the methodology presented allows manual adjustments of voiced segments with visualisation of the sound signal and the automatic extraction of quantitative information on speech. In conclusion, we propose a comprehensive methodology for voice segmentation, to be used by researchers that have to work with large sets of sound files and are not familiar with programming tools.

Keywords: automatic speech analysis, behavior analysis, naturalistic environments, voice segmentation

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Authors: Mohamed Abdullahi Gure, Farhia Ali Abdi

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There is almost a complete certainty among educators that parental involvement is the remedy for many of the problems facing schools. It is also widely acknowledged that school administrators and teachers have important roles in promoting parental involvement in children’s education. This work aims at examining the views of parents and teachers on school-partnership practices for promoting parental involvement in education in selected primary schools in Mogadishu-Somalia. The method, which has been employed in this study, is a mixed-method approach; data were collected from parents as well as from teachers of the selected schools using survey questionnaires and interviews. A sample size of 377 parents and 214 teachers participated in this study. This study used an instrument that has been developed by Epstein and Salinas (1993) to assess the perceptions of parents and teachers about parental involvement. Furthermore, data was collected qualitatively through interviews with parents and teachers of the selected schools. The findings of this study show that parents and teachers had similar positive perceptions towards school practices for parental involvement. This study is significant for several reasons. It contributes to the limited information on parental involvement in Somalia and therefore, filling a gap in the existing empirical literature. It offers information to educators as well as to parents, which will help them understand the issues that relate to parental involvement in education. It is hoped that information from this study will facilitate parents and teachers to understand each other’s ideas on parental involvement and develop positive working relations to support children to become successful in their education.

Keywords: Mogadishu, parents, school-partnership, practices, teachers

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Authors: S. Abd Rahim, F. A. Rahman, E. M. Nasir, N. A. Ramle

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Co-crystal is believed to improve the solubility and dissolution rates and thus, enhanced the bioavailability of poor water soluble drugs particularly during the oral route of administration. With the existing of poorly soluble drugs in pharmaceutical industry, the screening of co-crystal formation using carbamazepine (CBZ) as a model drug compound with dicarboxylic acids co-crystal formers (CCF) namely fumaric (FA) and succinic (SA) acids in ethanol has been studied. The co-crystal formations were studied by varying the mol ratio values of CCF to CBZ to access the effect of CCF concentration on the formation of the co-crystal. Solvent evaporation, slurry, and cooling crystallisations which representing the solution based method co-crystal screening were used. The product crystal from the screening was characterized using X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD). The XRPD pattern profile analysis has shown that the CBZ co-crystals with FA and SA were successfully formed for all ratios studied. The findings revealed that CBZ-FA co-crystal were formed in two different polymorphs. It was found that CBZ-FA form A and form B were formed from evaporation and slurry crystallisation methods respectively. On the other hand, in cooling crystallisation method, CBZ-FA form A was formed at lower mol ratio of CCF to CBZ and vice versa. This study disclosed that different methods and mol ratios during the co-crystal screening can affect the outcome of co-crystal produced such as polymorphic forms of co-crystal and thereof. Thus, it was suggested that careful attentions is needed during the screening since the co-crystal formation is currently one of the promising approach to be considered in research and development for pharmaceutical industry to improve the poorly soluble drugs.

Keywords: co-crystal, dicarboxylic acid, carbamazepine, industry

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Authors: Sedigheh Kalantari, Yaping Huang

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The historic area of cities has experienced different phases of transformation. The beginning of the twentieth century, modernism, and modern development changed the integrated pattern of change and the historic urban quarter were regarded as subject comprehensive redevelopment. In this respect, historic area of Iranian cities have not been safe from these changes and affected by widespread evolutions; in particular after Islamic Revolution eras (1978) cities have traveled through an evolution in conservation and development policies and practices. Moreover, moving toward a specific approach and specific attention paid to the regeneration of the historical urban centers in Iran has started since the 1990s. This reveals the great importance attached to the historical centers of cities. This paper is an approach to examine an experience on urban regeneration in Iran through a case study. The study relies on multiple source of evidence. The use of multiple sources of evidence can help substantially improve the validity and reliability of the research. The empirical core of this research, therefore, rests in the process of urban revitalization of the old square in Isfahan. Isfahan is one of the oldest city of Persia. The historic area of city encompasses a large number of valuable buildings and monuments. One of the cultural and historical region of Isfahan is Atiq Square (Old Square). It has been the backbone node of the city that in course of time has being ignored more and more and transformed negatively. The complex had suffered from insufficiencies especially with respect to social and spatial aspects. Therefore, reorganization of that complex as the main and most important urban center of Isfahan became an inevitable issue; So this paper except from reminding the value of such historic-cultural heritage and review of its transformation, focused on an experience of urban revitalization project in this heritage site. The outcome of this research shows that situated in different socio-economic political and historical contexts and in face of different urban regeneration issues, Iran have displayed significant differences in the way of urban regeneration.

Keywords: historic area, Iran, urban regeneration, revitalization

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Authors: Vu H. N. Khue, Marian Pavelka, Georg Jocher, Jiří Dušek, Le T. Son, Bui T. An, Ho Q. Bang, Pham Q. Huong

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Agriculture is an important economic sector of Vietnam, the most popular of which is wet rice cultivation. These activities are also known as the main contributor to the national greenhouse gas. In order to understand more about greenhouse gas exchange in these activities and to investigate the factors influencing carbon cycling and sequestration in these types of ecosystems, since 2019, the first eddy covariance station has been installed in a paddy field in Long An province, Mekong Delta. The station was equipped with state-of-the-art equipment for CO₂ and CH₄ gas exchange and micrometeorology measurements. In this study, data from the station was processed following the ICOS recommendations (Integrated Carbon Observation System) standards for CO₂, while CH₄ was manually processed and gap-filled using a random forest model from methane-gapfill-ml, a machine learning package, as there is no standard method for CH₄ flux gap-filling yet. Finally, the carbon equivalent (Ce) balance based on CO₂ and CH₄ fluxes was estimated. The results show that in 2020, even though a new water management practice - alternate wetting and drying - was applied to reduce methane emissions, the paddy field released 928 g Cₑ.m⁻².yr⁻¹, and in 2021, it was reduced to 707 g Cₑ.m⁻².yr⁻¹. On a provincial level, rice cultivation activities in Long An, with a total area of 498,293 ha, released 4.6 million tons of Cₑ in 2020 and 3.5 million tons of Cₑ in 2021.

Keywords: eddy covariance, greenhouse gas, methane, rice cultivation, Mekong Delta

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Authors: Mohammed Khalil Ur Rahman, Khanita Aammatullh

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Rasayana is one of the eight clinical specialities of classical Ayurveda The disease preventive and health promotive approach of ‘Ayurveda’, which takes into consideration the whole body, mind and spirit while dealing with the maintenance of health, promotion of health and treating ailments is holistic and finds increasing acceptability in many regions of the world. Ancient Ayurvedic physicians had developed certain dietary and therapeutic measures to arrest/delay ageing and rejuvenating whole functional dynamics of the body system. This revitalization and rejuvenation is known as the ‘Rasayan chikitsa’ (rejuvenation therapy). Traditionally, Rasayana drugs are used against a plethora of seemingly diverse disorders with no pathophysiological connections according to modern medicine. Though, this group of plants generally possesses strong antioxidant activity, only a few have been investigated in detail. Over about 100 disorders like rheumatoid arthritis, hemorrhagic shock, CVS disorders, cystic fibrosis, metabolic disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, gastrointestinal ulcerogenesis and AIDS have been reported as reactive oxygen species mediated. In this review, the role of free radicals in these diseases has been briefly reviewed. ‘Rasayana’ plants with potent antioxidant activity have been reviewed for their traditional uses, and mechanism of antioxidant action. Fifteen such plants have been dealt with in detail and some more plants with less work have also been reviewed briefly The Rasayanas are rejuvenators, nutritional supplements and possess strong antioxidant activity. They also have antagonistic actions on the oxidative stressors, which give rise to the formation of different free radicals. Ocimum sanctum, Tinospora cordifolia, Emblica officinalis, Convolvulus pluricaulis, Centella asiatica, Bacopa monniera, Withania somnifera, Triphala rasayana, Chyawanprash, Brahma rasayana are very important rasayanas which are described in ayurveda and proved by new researches.

Keywords: rasayana, antioxidant activity, Bacopa monniera, Withania somnifera Triphala, chyawanprash

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Authors: Olivier Delage, Thierry Portafaix, Hassan Bencherif, Guillaume Guimbretiere

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Most observation data sequences in geophysics can be interpreted as resulting from the interaction of several physical processes at several time and space scales. As a consequence, measurements time series in geophysics have often characteristics of non-linearity and non-stationarity and thereby exhibit strong fluctuations at all time-scales and require a time-frequency representation to analyze their variability. Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) is a relatively new technic as part of a more general signal processing method called the Hilbert-Huang transform. This analysis method turns out to be particularly suitable for non-linear and non-stationary signals and consists in decomposing a signal in an auto adaptive way into a sum of oscillating components named IMFs (Intrinsic Mode Functions), and thereby acts as a bank of bandpass filters. The advantages of the EMD technic are to be entirely data driven and to provide the principal variability modes of the dynamics represented by the original time series. However, the main limiting factor is the frequency resolution that may give rise to the mode mixing phenomenon where the spectral contents of some IMFs overlap each other. To overcome this problem, J. Gilles proposed an alternative entitled “Empirical Wavelet Transform” (EWT) which consists in building from the segmentation of the original signal Fourier spectrum, a bank of filters. The method used is based on the idea utilized in the construction of both Littlewood-Paley and Meyer’s wavelets. The heart of the method lies in the segmentation of the Fourier spectrum based on the local maxima detection in order to obtain a set of non-overlapping segments. Because linked to the Fourier spectrum, the frequency resolution provided by EWT is higher than that provided by EMD and therefore allows to overcome the mode-mixing problem. On the other hand, if the EWT technique is able to detect the frequencies involved in the original time series fluctuations, EWT does not allow to associate the detected frequencies to a specific mode of variability as in the EMD technic. Because EMD is closer to the observation of physical phenomena than EWT, we propose here a new technic called EAWD (Empirical Adaptive Wavelet Decomposition) based on the coupling of the EMD and EWT technics by using the IMFs density spectral content to optimize the segmentation of the Fourier spectrum required by EWT. In this study, EMD and EWT technics are described, then EAWD technic is presented. Comparison of results obtained respectively by EMD, EWT and EAWD technics on time series of ozone total columns recorded at Reunion island over [1978-2019] period is discussed. This study was carried out as part of the SOLSTYCE project dedicated to the characterization and modeling of the underlying dynamics of time series issued from complex systems in atmospheric sciences

Keywords: adaptive filtering, empirical mode decomposition, empirical wavelet transform, filter banks, mode-mixing, non-linear and non-stationary time series, wavelet

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Authors: Hassan Gomar, Shahin Bagheri, Nader Keyvan, Mozhdeh Shirinzadeh

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Air-Cooled Condenser (ACC) platform structures are the most complicated and principal structures in power plants and other industrial parts which need to condense the low-pressure steam in the cycle. Providing large spans for this structure has great merit as there would be more space for other subordinate buildings and pertinent equipment. Moreover, applying methods to reduce the overall cost of construction while maintaining its strength against severe seismic loading is of high significance. Tabular spatial structures and composite frames have been widely used in recent years to satisfy the need for higher strength at a reasonable price. In this research program, three different structural systems have been regarded for ACC steel platform using Special Concentrate Braced Frames (SCBF), which is the most common system (first scheme), modular spatial frames (second scheme) and finally, a modified method applying Concrete Filled Steel Tabular (CFST) columns (third scheme). The finite element method using Sap2000 and Etabs software was conducted to investigate the behavior of the structures and make a precise comparison between the models. According to the results, the total weight of the steel structure in the second scheme decreases by 13% compared to the first scheme and applying CFST columns in the third scheme causes a 3% reduction in the total weight of the structure in comparison with the second scheme while all the lateral displacements and P-M interaction ratios are in the admissible limit.

Keywords: ACC, SCBF frames, spatial structures, CFST frames

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Authors: M. N. Nwodo, Y. P. Cheng, N. H. Minh

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In the process of recovering oil in weak sandstone formations, the strength of sandstones around the wellbore is weakened due to the increase of effective stress/load from the completion activities around the cavity. The weakened and de-bonded sandstone may be eroded away by the produced fluid, which is termed sand production. It is one of the major trending subjects in the petroleum industry because of its significant negative impacts, as well as some observed positive impacts. For efficient sand management therefore, there has been need for a reliable study tool to understand the mechanism of sanding. One method of studying sand production is the use of the widely recognized Discrete Element Method (DEM), Particle Flow Code (PFC3D) which represents sands as granular individual elements bonded together at contact points. However, there is limited knowledge of the particle-scale behavior of the weak sandstone, and the parameters that affect sanding. This paper aims to investigate the reliability of using PFC3D and a simple Darcy flow in understanding the sand production behavior of a weak sandstone. An isotropic tri-axial test on a weak oil sandstone sample was first simulated at a confining stress of 1MPa to calibrate and validate the parallel bond models of PFC3D using a 10m height and 10m diameter solid cylindrical model. The effect of the confining stress on the number of bonds failure was studied using this cylindrical model. With the calibrated data and sample material properties obtained from the tri-axial test, simulations without and with fluid flow were carried out to check on the effect of Darcy flow on bonds failure using the same model geometry. The fluid flow network comprised of every four particles connected with tetrahedral flow pipes with a central pore or flow domain. Parametric studies included the effects of confining stress, and fluid pressure; as well as validating flow rate – permeability relationship to verify Darcy’s fluid flow law. The effect of model size scaling on sanding was also investigated using 4m height, 2m diameter model. The parallel bond model successfully calibrated the sample’s strength of 4.4MPa, showing a sharp peak strength before strain-softening, similar to the behavior of real cemented sandstones. There seems to be an exponential increasing relationship for the bigger model, but a curvilinear shape for the smaller model. The presence of the Darcy flow induced tensile forces and increased the number of broken bonds. For the parametric studies, flow rate has a linear relationship with permeability at constant pressure head. The higher the fluid flow pressure, the higher the number of broken bonds/sanding. The DEM PFC3D is a promising tool to studying the micromechanical behavior of cemented sandstones.

Keywords: discrete element method, fluid flow, parametric study, sand production/bonds failure

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Authors: G. Alex Ambrose, Melissa Paulsen, Abrar Fitwi, Masud Akbari

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In 2016, a U.S. business college was awarded a sub grant to work with FHI360, a nonprofit human development organization, to support a university in Afghanistan funded by the State Department’s U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). A newly designed Master’s Degree in Finance and Accounting is being implemented to support Afghanistan’s goal of 20% females in higher education and industry by 2020 and to use finance and accounting international standards to attract capital investment for economic development. This paper will present a case study to describe the co-construction of an approach to an International Flipped Faculty Development Model grounded in blended learning theory. Like education in general, faculty development is also evolving from the traditional face to face environment and interactions to the fully online and now to a best of both blends. Flipped faculty development is both a means and a model for careful integration of the strengths of the synchronous and asynchronous dynamics and technologies with the combination of intentional sequencing to pre-online interactions that prepares and enhances the face to face faculty development and mentorship residencies with follow-up post-online support. Initial benefits from this model include giving the Afghan faculty an opportunity to experience and apply modern teaching and learning strategies with technology in their own classroom. Furthermore, beyond the technological and pedagogical affordances, the reciprocal benefits gained from the mentor-mentee, face-to-face relationship will be explored. Evidence to support this model includes: empirical findings from pre- and post-Faculty Mentor/ Mentee survey results, Faculty Mentorship group debriefs, Faculty Mentorship contact logs, and student early/end of semester feedback. In addition to presenting and evaluating this model, practical challenges and recommendations for replicating international flipped faculty development partnerships will be provided.

Keywords: educational development, faculty development, international development, flipped learning

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Authors: Abdolmajid Mosleh, Afzal Ghasimi

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The purpose of this research is to investigate and identify effective factors that can improve the quality of personal performance in industrial companies. In the present study, it was assumed that the hidden variables of talent management could be explained by an important part of the variance in improving the quality of employee performance. This research is targeted in terms of applied research. The statistical population of the research is SAIPA automobile company with a number (N=10291); the sample of 380 people was selected based on the Cochran formula in a random sampling method among employed people. The measurement tool in this research was a questionnaire of 33 items with a control questionnaire that included two talent management departments (talent identification and talent exploitation) and improvements in staff performance (enhancement of technical and specialized capabilities, managerial capability, organizational interaction, and communication). The reliability of the internal consistency method was confirmed by the Cronbach's alpha coefficient and the two half-ways. In order to determine the validity of the questionnaire structure, confirmatory factor analysis was used. Based on the results of the data analysis, the effect of talent management on improving the quality of staff performance was confirmed. Based on the results of inferential statistics and structural equations of the proposed model, it had high fitness.

Keywords: employee performance, talent management, performance improvement, SAIPA automobile manufacturing company

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