Search results for: third party monitoring software

Authors: Carlos A. Garcia-Mogollon, Juan C. Quintero-Diaz, Claudio Avignone-Rossa

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Clostridium saccharoperbutylacetonicum 1-4N (Csb 1-4N) is an industrial reference strain for Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol (ABE) fermentation. Csb 1-4N is a solventogenic clostridium and H₂ producer with a metabolic profile that makes it a good candidate for Bioelectrosynthesis System (BES). The aim of this study was to evaluate the electroactivity of Csb 1-4N by cyclic voltammetry technique (CV). The Bioelectrosynthesis fermentation (BES) started in a Triptone-Yeast extract (TY) medium with trace elements and vitamins, Complex Nitrogen Source (CNS), and bicarbonate (NaHCO₃, 4g/L) as a carbon source, run at -600mVAg/AgCl and adding 200uM NADH. The six BES batches were performed with different media composition with and without NADH, CNS, HCO₃⁻ , and applied potential. The CV was performed as three-electrode system: platinum slice working electrode (WE), nickel contra electrode (CE) and reference electrode Ag/AgCl (ER). CVs were run in a potential range of -0.7V to 0.7V vs. VAg/AgCl at a scan rate 10mV/s. A CV recorded using different NaHCO₃ concentrations (0.25; 0.5; 1.0; 4g/L) were obtained. BES fermentation samples were centrifuged (3000 rpm, 5min, 4C), and supernatant (7mL) was used. CVs were obtained for Csb1-4N BES culture cell-free supernatant at 0h, 24h, and 48h. The electrochemical analysis was carried out with a PalmSens 4.0 potentiostat/galvanostat controlled with the PStrace 5.7 software, and CVs curves were characterized by reduction and oxidation currents and reduction and oxidation peaks. The CVs obtained for NaHCO₃ solutions showed that the reduction current and oxidation current decreased as the NaHCO₃ concentration was decreased. All reduction and oxidation currents decreased until exponential growth stop (24h), independence of initial cathodic current, except in medium with trace elements, vitamins, and NaHCO3, in which reduction current was around half at 24h and followed decreasing at 48. In this medium, Csb1-4N did not grow, but pH was increased, indicating that NaHCO₃ was reduced as the reduction current decreased. In general, at 48h reduction currents did not present important changes between different mediums in BES cultures. In terms of intensities in the peaks (Ip) did not present important variations; except with Ipa and Ipc in BES culture with NaHCO₃ and NADH added are higher than peaks in other cultures. Based on results, cathodic and anodic currents changes were induced by NaHCO₃ reduction reactions during Csb1-4N metabolic activity in different BES experiments.

Keywords: clostridium saccharoperbutylacetonicum 1-4N, bioelectrosynthesis, carbon dioxide fixation, cyclic voltammetry

Procedia PDF Downloads 134

Authors: Abigail Ekeigwe, Bethany McGowan, Loran C. Parker, Stephen Byrn, Kari L. Clase

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There are growing calls in the literature to develop and implement competency-based regulatory sciences education (CBRSE) in sub-Saharan Africa to expand and create a pipeline of a competent workforce of regulatory scientists. A defined competence framework is an essential component in developing competency-based education. However, such a competence framework is not available for regulatory scientists in sub-Saharan Africa. The purpose of this research is to identify entry-level competencies for inclusion in a competency framework for regulatory scientists in sub-Saharan Africa as a first step in developing CBRSE. The team systematically reviewed the literature following the PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews and based on a pre-registered protocol on Open Science Framework (OSF). The protocol has the search strategy and the inclusion and exclusion criteria for publications. All included publications were coded to identify entry-level competencies for regulatory scientists. The team deductively coded the publications included in the study using the 'framework synthesis' model for systematic literature review. The World Health Organization’s conceptualization of competence guided the review and thematic synthesis. Topic and thematic codings were done using NVivo 12™ software. Based on the search strategy in the protocol, 2345 publications were retrieved. Twenty-two (n=22) of the retrieved publications met all the inclusion criteria for the research. Topic and thematic coding of the publications yielded three main domains of competence: knowledge, skills, and enabling behaviors. The knowledge domain has three sub-domains: administrative, regulatory governance/framework, and scientific knowledge. The skills domain has two sub-domains: functional and technical skills. Identification of competencies is the primal step that serves as a bedrock for curriculum development and competency-based education. The competencies identified in this research will help policymakers, educators, institutions, and international development partners design and implement competence-based regulatory science education in sub-Saharan Africa, ultimately leading to access to safe, quality, and effective medical products.

Keywords: competence-based regulatory science education, competencies, systematic review, sub-Saharan Africa

Procedia PDF Downloads 194

Authors: Ali Showail Ali Alasmari

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Introduction: Cataract is the loss of transparency of the lens inside the eye. It is the most common cause of visual loss and blindness worldwide. This study provides a systemic review of the recent findings on the association of vitamin D, and vitamin B12, and their possible role in preventing cataracts in senile (S) and diabetic mellitus (DM) patient groups. Objective: This study was intended to establish and investigate if there is any role between vitamin D and vitamin B12? Secondly, the connection between serum level of vitamin D and vitamin B12 in cataract incidence senile (s) vs. diabetic mellitus (DM) cataract patient groups. Furthermore, to evaluate and analyze cataract occurrence regarding vitamin D and vitamin B12 levels with other risk factors. Finally, to evaluate lens opacities pre and post treatment with vitamin D and vitaminB12 linked to age and visual acuity loss in both senile(S) and diabetic mellitus (DM) cataract patients’ groups. Methods: This study conducted at the ophthalmology clinic at Muhyail General Hospital. Select a prospective case-control to study the effect of vitamin D and Vit B12 on senile(S) cataracts that caused by age and diabetic mellitus (DM)cataract patients; then we compare these two groups. This study prospectively enrolled a total of 50 samples, 25 with senile cataract and 25 with diabetic cataract, from ophthalmology clinic at Muhyail General Hospital. Measuring 25-hydroxy vitamin D and vitamin B12 level concentrations in the assigned samples. Analyses were performed using SAS (statistical analysis software) program. Results: The most important finding in this study was that the senile(s) cataract patients’ group greatly benefited by the combination therapy of vitamin D, and Vitamin B12 reached (28.5±1.50 and 521.1±21.10) respectively; on the contrary, the diabetic cataract patient group hardly shows any significant improvement (21.5 ± 1.00 and 197.2 ± 7.20) respectively. This is because of the Metformin, the first line drug for treating diabetes, has been reported to potentially decrease vitamin B-12 status. This epigenetic modification was correlated with the diabetic mellitus (DM) cataract patients’ group not responding. Vitamin B12 deficiency also leads to an impairment of the conversion of methylmalonyl-CoA to succinyl-CoA, which has been associated with insulin resistance. There was no significant difference between the age, body mass index (BMI), the mean of Vit-D pre-treatments, and the mean values of Hemoglobin A1C of both senile (S) and diabetic mellitus (DM) cataract patient groups. On other hand, there was a highly significant difference between the mean values of glucose levels in both senile (S) and diabetic mellitus (DM) cataract patient groups. Conclusion: Here we conclude that diabetic mellitus (DM) cataract patient group hardly benefited from this combination therapy vitamin D and vitamin B12; on the other hand senile patient group (s) benefited a lot from the therapy.

Keywords: cataract patients, senile, diabetes mellitus, vitamin B12, vitamin D, Muhyail General Hospital, Saudi Arabia

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Authors: Sylvie Michel, Emmanuelle Gagnou, Joanne Hamet

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New major ethical dilemmas are posed by artificial intelligence. This article identifies an existing gap between the ethical questions that AI/robotics researchers grapple with in their research practice and those identified by literature review. The objective is to understand which ethical dilemmas are identified or concern AI researchers in order to compare them with the existing literature. This will enable to conduct training and awareness initiatives for AI researchers, encouraging them to consider these questions during the development of AI. Qualitative analyses were conducted based on direct observation of an AI/Robotics research team focused on collaborative robotics over several months. Subsequently, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 members of the team. The entire process took place during the first semester of 2023. The observations were analyzed using an analytical framework, and the interviews were thematically analyzed using Nvivo software. While the literature identifies three primary ethical concerns regarding AI—transparency, bias, and responsibility—the results firstly demonstrate that AI researchers are primarily concerned with the publication and valorization of their work, with the initial ethical concerns revolving around this matter. Questions arise regarding the extent to which to "market" publications and the usefulness of some publications. Research ethics are a central consideration for these teams. Secondly, another result shows that the researchers studied adopt a consequentialist ethics (though not explicitly formulated as such). They ponder the consequences of their development in terms of safety (for humans in relation to Robots/AI), worker autonomy in relation to the robot, and the role of work in society (can robots take over jobs?). Lastly, results indicate that the ethical dilemmas highlighted in the literature (responsibility, transparency, bias) do not explicitly appear in AI/Robotics research. AI/robotics researchers raise specific and pragmatic ethical questions, primarily concerning publications initially and consequentialist considerations afterward. Results demonstrate that these concerns are distant from the existing literature. However, the dilemmas highlighted in the literature also deserve to be explicitly contemplated by researchers. This article proposes that the journals these researchers target should mandate ethical reflection for all presented works. Furthermore, results suggest offering awareness programs in the form of short educational sessions for researchers.

Keywords: ethics, artificial intelligence, research, robotics

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Authors: William Waddington, M. Jahir Rizvi

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Sail used to propel a vessel functions in a similar way to an aircraft wing. Traditionally, cloth and ropes were used to produce sails. However, there is one major problem with traditional sail design, the increase in turbulence and flow separation when compared to that of an aircraft wing with the same camber. This has led to the development of the solid wing sail focusing mainly on the sail shape. Traditional cloth sails are manufactured as a single element whereas solid wing sail is made of two segments. To the authors’ best knowledge, the phenomena behind the performances of this type of sail at various angles of wind direction with respect to a sailing vessel’s direction (known as the angle of attack) is still an area of mystery. Hence, in this study, the thrusts of a sailing vessel produced by wing sails constructed with various angles (22°, 24°, 26° and 28°) between the two segments have been compared to that of a traditional cloth sail made of carbon-fiber material. The reason for using carbon-fiber material is to achieve the correct and the exact shape of a commercially available mainsail. NACA 0024 and NACA 0016 foils have been used to generate two-segment wing sail shape which incorporates a flap between the first and the second segments. Both the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional sail models designed in commercial CAD software Solidworks have been analyzed through Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques using Ansys CFX considering an apparent wind speed of 20.55 knots with an apparent wind angle of 31°. The results indicate that the thrust from traditional sail increases from 8.18 N to 8.26 N when the angle of attack is increased from 5° to 7°. However, the thrust value decreases if the angle of attack is further increased. A solid wing sail which possesses 20° angle between its two segments, produces thrusts from 7.61 N to 7.74 N with an increase in the angle of attack from 7° to 8°. The thrust remains steady up to 9° angle of attack and drops dramatically beyond 9°. The highest thrust values that can be obtained for the solid wing sails with 22°, 24°, 26° and 28° angle respectively between the two segments are 8.75 N, 9.10 N, 9.29 N and 9.19 N respectively. The optimum angle of attack for each of the solid wing sails is identified as 7° at which these thrust values are obtained. Therefore, it can be concluded that all the thrust values predicted for the solid wing sails of angles between the two segments above 20° are higher compared to the thrust predicted for the traditional sail. However, the best performance from a solid wing sail is expected when the sail is created with an angle between the two segments above 20° but below or equal to 26°. In addition, 1/29th scale models in the wind tunnel have been tested to observe the flow behaviors around the sails. The experimental results support the numerical observations as the flow behaviors are exactly the same.

Keywords: CFD, drag, sailing vessel, thrust, traditional sail, wing sail

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Authors: Margot Whitfield, Andrea Ducent, Marie Catherine Rombaut, Katia Iassinovskaia, Deborah Fels

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Learning how to create inclusive media, such as closed captioning (CC) and audio description (AD), in North America is restricted to the private sector, proprietary company-based training. We are delivering (through synchronous and asynchronous online learning) the first Canadian post-secondary, practice-based continuing education course package in inclusive media for broadcast production and processes. Despite the prevalence of CC and AD taught within the field of translation studies in Europe, North America has no comparable field of study. This novel approach to audio visual translation (AVT) education develops evidence-based methodology innovations, stemming from user study research with blind/low vision and Deaf/hard of hearing audiences for television and theatre, undertaken at Ryerson University. Knowledge outcomes from the courses include a) Understanding how CC/AD fit within disability/regulatory frameworks in Canada. b) Knowledge of how CC/AD could be employed in the initial stages of production development within broadcasting. c) Writing and/or speaking techniques designed for media. d) Hands-on practice in captioning re-speaking techniques and open source technologies, or in AD techniques. e) Understanding of audio production technologies and editing techniques. The case study of the curriculum development and deployment, involving first-time online course delivery from academic and practitioner-based instructors in introductory Captioning and Audio Description courses (CDIM 101 and 102), will compare two different instructors' approaches to learning design, including the ratio of synchronous and asynchronous classroom time and technological engagement tools on meeting software platform such as breakout rooms and polling. Student reception of these two different approaches will be analysed using qualitative thematic and quantitative survey analysis. Thus far, anecdotal conversations with students suggests that they prefer synchronous compared with asynchronous learning within our hands-on online course delivery method.

Keywords: inclusive media theory, broadcasting practices, AVT post secondary education, respeaking, audio description, learning design, virtual education

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Authors: Amaia Martinez Martinez, Martin Turek, Carlos Ventura, Jay Drew

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This study aims to assess the seismic performance of arch and dome structural systems made from easy to assemble precast blocks of recycled concrete. These systems have been developed by Lock Block Ltd. Company from Vancouver, Canada, as an extension of their currently used retaining wall system. The characterization of the seismic behavior of these structures is performed by a combination of experimental static and dynamic testing, and analytical modeling. For the experimental testing, several tilt tests, as well as a program of shake table testing were undertaken using small scale arch models. A suite of earthquakes with different characteristics from important past events are chosen and scaled properly for the dynamic testing. Shake table testing applying the ground motions in just one direction (in the weak direction of the arch) and in the three directions were conducted and compared. The models were tested with increasing intensity until collapse occurred; which determines the failure level for each earthquake. Since the failure intensity varied with type of earthquake, a sensitivity analysis of the different parameters was performed, being impulses the dominant factor. For all cases, the arches exhibited the typical four-hinge failure mechanism, which was also shown in the analytical model. Experimental testing was also performed reinforcing the arches using a steel band over the structures anchored at both ends of the arch. The models were tested with different pretension levels. The bands were instrumented with strain gauges to measure the force produced by the shaking. These forces were used to develop engineering guidelines for the design of the reinforcement needed for these systems. In addition, an analytical discrete element model was created using 3DEC software. The blocks were designed as rigid blocks, assigning all the properties to the joints including also the contribution of the interlocking shear key between blocks. The model is calibrated to the experimental static tests and validated with the obtained results from the dynamic tests. Then the model can be used to scale up the results to the full scale structure and expanding it to different configurations and boundary conditions.

Keywords: arch, discrete element model, seismic assessment, shake-table testing

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Authors: Guler Duru Asiret, Cemile Kutmec Yilmaz, Gulcan Bagcivan, Tugce Turten Kaymaz

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This descriptive study was conducted to determine the relationship between caregiver burden and life satisfaction who give home care to elderly individuals. The sample was recruited from the internal medicine unit and palliative unit of a state hospital located in Turkey on June 2016-2017. The study sample consisted of 231 primary caregiver family member, who met the eligibility criteria and agreed to participate in the study. The inclusion criteria were as follows: inpatient’s caregiver, primary caregiver for at least 3 months, at least 18 years of age, no communication problem or mental disorder. Data were gathered using an Information Form prepared by the researchers based on previous literature, the Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI), and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS). The data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics software version 20.0 (SPSS, Chicago, IL). The descriptive characteristics of the participant were analyzed using number, percentage, mean and standard deviation. The suitability of normal distribution of scale scores was analyzed using Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk test. Relationships between scales were analyzed using Spearman’s rank-correlation coefficient. P values less than 0.05 were considered to be significant. The average age of the caregivers was 50.11±13.46 (mean±SD) years. Of the caregivers, 76.2% were women, 45% were primary school graduates, 89.2% were married, 38.1% were the daughters of their patients. Among these, 52.4% evaluated their income level to be good. Of them, 53.6% had been giving care less than 2 years. The patients’ average age was 77.1±8.0 years. Of the patients, 55.8% were women, 56.3% were illeterate, 70.6% were married, and 97.4% had at least one chronic disease. The mean Zarit Burden Interview score was 35.4±1.5 and the Satisfaction with Life Scale score was 20.6±6.8. A negative relationship was found between the patients’ score average on the ZBI, and on the SWLS (r= -0.438, p=0.000). The present study determined that the caregivers have a moderate caregiver burden and the life satisfaction. And the life satisfaction of caregivers decreased as their caregiver burden increase. In line with the results obtained from the research, it is recommended that to increase the effectiveness of discharge training, to arrange training and counseling programs for caregivers to cope with the problems they experienced, to monitor the caregivers at regular intervals and to provide necessary institutional support.

Keywords: caregiver burden, family caregivers, nurses, satisfaction

Procedia PDF Downloads 173

Authors: Lindsay Foreman

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Introduction: Goals have become synonymous with the quest for the good life and the pursuit of happiness, with coaching and positive psychology gaining popularity as an approach in recent decades. And yet mental health is on the rise and the leading cause of disability, wellbeing is on the decline, stress is leading to 50-60% of workday absences and the need for action is indisputable and urgent. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to better understand two things we cannot see, but that play the most significant role in these outcomes - what we think and how we feel. With many working on the assumption that positive thinking and an optimistic outlook are necessary or valuable components of goal pursuit, this study uncovers the reality of the ‘inner-game’ from the coachees perspective. Method: With a mixed methods design using a Q Method study of subjectivity to ‘make the unseen seen’. First, a wide-ranging universe of subjective thoughts and feelings experienced during goal pursuit are explored.. These are generated from literature and a Qualtrics survey to create a Q-Set of 40 statements. Then 19 participants in professional and organisational settings offer their perspectives on these 40 Q-Set statements. Each rank them in a semi-forced distribution from ‘most like me’ to ‘least like me’ using Q-Sort software. From these individual perspectives, clusters of perspectives are identified using factor analysis and four distinct viewpoints, have emerged. Findings: These Goal Pursuit Viewpoints offer insight into the states and self-talk experienced by coachees and may not reflect the assumption of positive thinking associated with achieving goals. The four Viewpoints are 1) the Positive View, 2) the Realistic View 3) The Dreamer View and 4) The Conflicted View. With only a quarter of the Dreamer View, and a third of the Positive view going on to achieve their goals, these assumptions need review. And with all the Realistic View going on to achieve their goals, the role of self-doubt, overwhelm and anxiousness in goal achievement cannot be overlooked. Contribution: This study offers greater insight and understanding of people's inner experiences as they pursue goals and highlights the necessary and normal negative states associated with goal achievement. It also offers a practical tool of 40 ‘Clarity Card’ Q-set statements to help coaches and coachees explore the current state and help navigate the journey towards goal achievement. It calls into question whether goals should always be part of coaching, and if values, identity, and purpose may play a greater role than goals

Keywords: self-talk, mental health, inner critic, inner coach

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Authors: Rafael Alexandre Dos Reis

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Research has shown a substantial increase in the participation of Conventionally Fuelled Vehicles (CFVs) in the urban transport modal split. The reasons for this unsustainable reality are multiple, from economic interventions to individual behaviour. The development and delivery of positive incentives for the adoption of more environmental-friendly modes of transport is an emerging strategy to help in tackling the problem of excessive use of conventionally fuelled vehicles. The efficiency of this approach, like other information-based schemes, can benefit from the knowledge of their potential impacts in theoretical constructs of multiple behaviour change theories. The goal of this research is to critically analyse theories of behaviour that are relevant to transport research and the impacts of positive incentives on the theoretical determinants of behaviour, strengthening the current body of evidence about the benefits of this approach. The main method to investigate this will involve a literature review on two main topics: the current theories of behaviour that have empirical support in transport research and the past or ongoing positive incentives programs that had an impact on car use reduction. The reviewed programs of positive incentives were the following: The TravelSmart®; Spitsmijden®; Incentives for Singapore Commuters® (INSINC); COMMUTEGREENER®; MOVESMARTER®; STREETLIFE®; SUPERHUB®; SUNSET® and the EMPOWER® project. The theories analysed were the heory of Planned Behaviour (TPB); The Norm Activation Theory (NAM); Social Learning Theory (SLT); The Theory of Interpersonal Behaviour (TIB); The Goal-Setting Theory (GST) and The Value-Belief-Norm Theory (VBN). After the revisions of the theoretical constructs of each of the theories and their influence on car use, it can be concluded that positive incentives schemes impact on behaviour change in the following manners: -Changing individual’s attitudes through informational incentives; -Increasing feelings of moral obligations to reduce the use of CFVs; -Increase the perceived social pressure to engage in more sustainable mobility behaviours through the use of comparison mechanisms in social media, for example; -Increase the perceived control of behaviour through informational incentives and training incentives; -Increasing personal norms with reinforcing information; -Providing tools for self-monitoring and self-evaluation; -Providing real experiences in alternative modes to the car; -Making the observation of others’ car use reduction possible; -Informing about consequences of behaviour and emphasizing the individual’s responsibility with society and the environment; -Increasing the perception of the consequences of car use to an individual’s valued objects; -Increasing the perceived ability to reduce threats to environment; -Help establishing goals to reduce car use; - iving personalized feedback on the goal; -Increase feelings of commitment to the goal; -Reducing the perceived complexity of the use of alternatives to the car. It is notable that the emerging technique of delivering positive incentives are systematically connected to causal determinants of travel behaviour. The preliminary results of the reviewed programs evidence how positive incentives might strengthen these determinants and help in the process of behaviour change.

Keywords: positive incentives, private car use reduction, sustainable behaviour, voluntary travel behaviour change

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Authors: Jiaying Zhang, Xin Mu, Chang Ni, Jeff L. Zhang

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Magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) non-invasively assesses tissue elastic properties, such as shear modulus, by measuring tissue’s displacement in response to mechanical waves. The estimated metrics on tissue elasticity or stiffness have been shown to be valuable for monitoring physiologic or pathophysiologic status of tissue, such as a tumor or fatty liver. To quantify tissue shear modulus from MRE-acquired displacements (essentially an inverse problem), multiple approaches have been proposed, including Local Frequency Estimation (LFE) and Direct Inversion (DI). However, one common problem with these methods is that the estimates are severely noise-sensitive due to either the inverse-problem nature or noise propagation in the pixel-by-pixel process. With the advent of deep learning (DL) and its promise in solving inverse problems, a few groups in the field of MRE have explored the feasibility of using DL methods for quantifying shear modulus from MRE data. Most of the groups chose to use real MRE data for DL model training and to cut training images into smaller patches, which enriches feature characteristics of training data but inevitably increases computation time and results in outcomes with patched patterns. In this study, simulated wave images generated by Finite Differential Time Domain (FDTD) simulation are used for network training, and U-Net is used to extract features from each training image without cutting it into patches. The use of simulated data for model training has the flexibility of customizing training datasets to match specific applications. The proposed method aimed to estimate tissue shear modulus from MRE data with high robustness to noise and high model-training efficiency. Specifically, a set of 3000 maps of shear modulus (with a range of 1 kPa to 15 kPa) containing randomly positioned objects were simulated, and their corresponding wave images were generated. The two types of data were fed into the training of a U-Net model as its output and input, respectively. For an independently simulated set of 1000 images, the performance of the proposed method against DI and LFE was compared by the relative errors (root mean square error or RMSE divided by averaged shear modulus) between the true shear modulus map and the estimated ones. The results showed that the estimated shear modulus by the proposed method achieved a relative error of 4.91%±0.66%, substantially lower than 78.20%±1.11% by LFE. Using simulated data, the proposed method significantly outperformed LFE and DI in resilience to increasing noise levels and in resolving fine changes of shear modulus. The feasibility of the proposed method was also tested on MRE data acquired from phantoms and from human calf muscles, resulting in maps of shear modulus with low noise. In future work, the method’s performance on phantom and its repeatability on human data will be tested in a more quantitative manner. In conclusion, the proposed method showed much promise in quantifying tissue shear modulus from MRE with high robustness and efficiency.

Keywords: deep learning, magnetic resonance elastography, magnetic resonance imaging, shear modulus estimation

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Authors: Abbas Sheikhtaheri, Nasim Hashemi

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Health information systems have great benefits for clinical and managerial processes of health care organizations. However, identifying and removing constraints and barriers of implementing and using health information systems before any implementation is essential. Physicians are one of the main users of health information systems, therefore, identifying the causes of their resistance and concerns about the barriers of the implementation of these systems is very important. So the purpose of this study was to determine the barriers of the development and implementation of health information systems in terms of the Iranian physicians’ perspectives. In this study conducted in 8 selected hospitals affiliated to Tehran and Iran Universities of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran in 2014, physicians (GPs, residents, interns, specialists) in these hospitals were surveyed. In order to collect data, a research made questionnaire was used (Cronbach’s α = 0.95). The instrument included 25 about organizational (9), personal (4), moral and legal (3) and technical barriers (9). Participants were asked to answer the questions using 5 point scale Likert (completely disagree=1 to completely agree=5). By using a simple random sampling method, 200 physicians (from 600) were invited to study that eventually 163 questionnaires were returned. We used mean score and t-test and ANOVA to analyze the data using SPSS software version 17. 52.1% of respondents were female. The mean age was 30.18 ± 7.29. The work experience years for most of them were between 1 to 5 years (80.4 percent). The most important barriers were organizational ones (3.4 ± 0.89), followed by ethical (3.18 ± 0.98), technical (3.06 ± 0.8) and personal (3.04 ± 1.2). Lack of easy access to a fast Internet (3.67±1.91) and the lack of exchanging information (3.61±1.2) were the most important technical barriers. Among organizational barriers, the lack of efficient planning for the development and implementation systems (3.56±1.32) and was the most important ones. Lack of awareness and knowledge of health care providers about the health information systems features (3.33±1.28) and the lack of physician participation in planning phase (3.27±1.2) as well as concerns regarding the security and confidentiality of health information (3.15 ± 1.31) were the most important personal and ethical barriers, respectively. Women (P = 0.02) and those with less experience (P = 0.002) were more concerned about personal barriers. GPs also were more concerned about technical barriers (P = 0.02). According to the study, technical and ethics barriers were considered as the most important barriers however, lack of awareness in target population is also considered as one of the main barriers. Ignoring issues such as personal and ethical barriers, even if the necessary infrastructure and technical requirements were provided, may result in failure. Therefore, along with the creating infrastructure and resolving organizational barriers, special attention to education and awareness of physicians and providing solution for ethics concerns are necessary.

Keywords: barriers, development health information systems, implementation, physicians

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Authors: Diriba T. Balcha, Boris Kulig, Oliver Hensel, Eyassu Woldesenbet

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Enset fiber is agricultural waste and available in a surplus amount in Ethiopia. However, the hypothesized variation in properties of this fiber due to diversity of its plant source breed, fiber position within plant stem and chemical treatment duration had not proven that its application for the development of composite products is problematic. Currently, limited data are known on the functional properties of the fiber as a potential functional fiber. Thus, an effort is made in this study to narrow the knowledge gaps by characterizing it. The experimental design was conducted using Design-Expert software and the tensile test was conducted on Enset fiber from 10 breeds: Dego, Dirbo, Gishera, Itine, Siskela, Neciho, Yesherkinke, Tuzuma, Ankogena, and Kucharkia. The effects of 5% Na-OH surface treatment duration and fiber location along and across the plant pseudostem was also investigated. The test result shows that the rupture stress variation is not significant among the fibers from 10 Enset breeds. However, strain variation is significant among the fibers from 10 Enset breeds that breed Dego fiber has the highest strain before failure. Surface treated fibers showed improved rupture strength and elastic modulus per 24 hours of treatment duration. Also, the result showed that chemical treatment can deteriorate the load-bearing capacity of the fiber. The raw fiber has the higher load-bearing capacity than the treated fiber. And, it was noted that both the rupture stress and strain increase in the top to bottom gradient, whereas there is no significant variation across the stem. Elastic modulus variation both along and across the stem was insignificant. The rupture stress, elastic modulus, and strain result of Enset fiber are 360.11 ± 181.86 MPa, 12.80 ± 6.85 GPa and 0.04 ± 0.02 mm/mm, respectively. These results show that Enset fiber is comparable to other natural fibers such as abaca, banana, and sisal fibers and can be used as alternatives natural fiber for composites application. Besides, the insignificant variation of properties among breeds and across stem is essential for all breeds and all leaf sheath of the Enset fiber plant for fiber extraction. The use of short natural fiber over the long is preferable to reduce the significant variation of properties along the stem or fiber direction. In conclusion, Enset fiber application for composite product design and development is mechanically feasible.

Keywords: Agricultural waste, Chemical treatment, Fiber characteristics, Natural fiber

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Authors: Mohamed Aljarallah, Mohamed Nurullah, George Saridakis

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This paper aims and objectives are to investigate how the structural change of the financial regulatory bodies affect the financial supervision and how the regulators can design such a structure with taking into account; the Central Bank, the conduct of business and the prudential regulators, it will also consider looking at the structure of the international regulatory bodies and what barriers are found. There will be five questions to be answered; should conduct of business and prudential regulation be separated? Should the financial supervision and financial stability be separated? Should the financial supervision be under the Central Bank? To what extent the politician should intervene in changing the regulatory and supervisory structure? What should be the regulatory and supervisory structure when there is financial conglomerate? Semi structure interview design will be applied. This research sample selection contains a collective of financial regulators and supervisors from the emerged and emerging countries. Moreover, financial regulators and supervisors must be at a senior level at their organisations. Additionally, senior financial regulators and supervisors would come from different authorities and from around the world. For instance, one of the participants comes from the International Bank Settlements, others come from European Central Bank, and an additional one will come from Hong Kong Monetary Authority and others. Such a variety aims to fulfil the aims and objectives of the research and cover the research questions. The analysis process starts with transcription of the interview, using Nvivo software for coding, applying thematic interview to generate the main themes. The major findings of the study are as follow. First, organisational structure changes quite frequently if the mandates are not clear. Second, measuring structural change is difficult, which makes the whole process unclear. Third, effective coordination and communication are what regulators looking for when they change the structure and that requires; openness, trust, and incentive. In addition to that, issues appear during the event of crisis tend to be the reason why the structure change. Also, the development of the market sometime causes a change in the regulatory structure. And, some structural change occurs simply because of the international trend, fashion, or other countries' experiences. Furthermore, when the top management change the structure tends to change. Moreover, the structure change due to the political change, or politicians try to show they are doing something. Finally, fear of being blamed can be a driver of structural change. In conclusion, this research aims to provide an insight from the senior regulators and supervisors from fifty different countries to have a clear understanding of why the regulatory structure keeps changing from time to time through a qualitative approach, namely, semi-structure interview.

Keywords: financial regulation bodies, financial regulatory structure, global financial regulation, financial crisis

Procedia PDF Downloads 141

Authors: Sabrina N. Rabelo, Tiago de F. Paulino, Willian M. Duarte, Samer Sawalha, Luiz Machado

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Energy use is one of the main indicators for the economic and social development of a country, reflecting directly in the quality of life of the population. The expansion of energy use together with the depletion of fossil resources and the poor efficiency of energy systems have led many countries in recent years to invest in renewable energy sources. In this context, solar-assisted heat pump has become very important in energy industry, since it can transfer heat energy from the sun to water or another absorbing source. The direct-expansion solar assisted heat pump (DX-SAHP) water heater system operates by receiving solar energy incident in a solar collector, which serves as an evaporator in a refrigeration cycle, and the energy reject by the condenser is used for water heating. In this paper, a DX-SAHP using carbon dioxide as refrigerant (R744) was assembled, and the influence of the variation of the water mass flow rate in the system was analyzed. The parameters such as high pressure, water outlet temperature, gas cooler outlet temperature, evaporator temperature, and the coefficient of performance were studied. The mainly components used to assemble the heat pump were a reciprocating compressor, a gas cooler which is a countercurrent concentric tube heat exchanger, a needle-valve, and an evaporator that is a copper bare flat plate solar collector designed to capture direct and diffuse radiation. Routines were developed in the LabVIEW and CoolProp through MATLAB software’s, respectively, to collect data and calculate the thermodynamics properties. The range of coefficient of performance measured was from 3.2 to 5.34. It was noticed that, with the higher water mass flow rate, the water outlet temperature decreased, and consequently, the coefficient of performance of the system increases since the heat transfer in the gas cooler is higher. In addition, the high pressure of the system and the CO₂ gas cooler outlet temperature decreased. The heat pump using carbon dioxide as a refrigerant, especially operating with solar radiation has been proven to be a renewable source in an efficient system for heating residential water compared to electrical heaters reaching temperatures between 40 °C and 80 °C.

Keywords: water mass flow rate, R-744, heat pump, solar evaporator, water heater

Procedia PDF Downloads 174

Authors: Pi Hsia Liang

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The rise of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks significantly changes in interconnections between people, enhancing the process of information dissemination and amplify the influence of that information. Therefore, to develop informational efficiency or signaling equilibrium type of information environment among social networks, without adverse selection effects, becomes an important issue. Thus, someone may post a piece of intentional information in relation to personal interest for trying to create marginal influence. Therefore, economists are seeking to establish theories of informational efficiency under social network environment in order to resolve adverse selection issues. Reputation could be one of the important factors in the process of creating informational efficiency. Additionally, investors how to process green information, or information of corporate social responsibility is a very important study. This study essentially employs experimental study for examining how investors use stock relevant green information in Facebook and various Taiwan local networks. Facebook, and blogs of Money DJ, Technews and cnYES, respectively, are the primary sites for this examination that also allow to differentiate effects between Facebook and other local social networks. Questionnaire is developed for such an experimental testing. Note that questionnaire allows this study to group, for example, decision frequency and length of time duration focusing on social networks that are used for discriminating investor type and competence of informed investor. This study selects 500 investors that can be separated into two respective 250 samples as the control group and 250 samples in such an experimental. The quantity of sample investor sufficiently results in statistic significance of this experimental study. The empirical results of this study can be used for explaining how financial information in relation to corporate social responsibility would be disseminated in social websites. Therefore, we can lead to better interpretation of price/earnings relationship type of study and empirical studies of green information usefulness or informational efficiency Note that the above mentioned empirical studies did not exist any social network and annual report of corporate social responsibility. This study expects to find the results that both network degree and network cluster significantly affected green information dissemination frequency. In other words, investors with more connections and with high clustered connections might exert a greater influence on their green information dissemination process. The preferred users of financial social networks could make better stock decision that could amplify effects of green information. In addition, Facebook would be more influential than other local Taiwan financial social networks, although Facebook is not a specialized financial social network. In other words, the popularity and reputation effects of Facebook significantly contribute to usefulness of green information and influence of green information. Third, it has a better chance to find rumor or cheating information in local Taiwan financial social networks than Facebook. In other words, Facebook possesses reputation effect, or a better informational efficiency. Or, even though Taiwan local financial social networks have marginal informational effects on stock price, because of shortage of informational efficiency or monitoring system, information could be a tool for those whom owning superior information.

Keywords: network effect on financial services, informational efficiency theory, social networks, social websites

Procedia PDF Downloads 245

Authors: Shubham Kumar, Chaitanya Goswami, Sudipto Sarkar

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Pseudoplastic (n < 1, n being the power index) fluid flow can be found in food, pharmaceutical and process industries and has very complex flow nature. To our knowledge, inadequate research work has been done in this kind of flow even at very low Reynolds numbers. Here, in the present computation, we have considered unsteady laminar flow over a square cylinder in pseudoplastic flow environment. For Newtonian fluid flow, this laminar vortex shedding range lies between Re = 47-180. In this problem, we consider Re = 100 (Re = U∞ a/ ν, U∞ is the free stream velocity of the flow, a is the side of the cylinder and ν is the kinematic viscosity of the fluid). The pseudoplastic fluid range has been chosen from close to the Newtonian fluid (n = 0.8) to very high pseudoplasticity (n = 0.1). The flow domain is constituted using Gambit 2.2.30 and this software is also used to generate mesh and to impose the boundary conditions. For all places, the domain size is considered as 36a × 16a with 280 ×192 grid point in the streamwise and flow normal directions respectively. The domain and the grid points are selected after a thorough grid independent study at n = 1.0. Fine and equal grid spacing is used close to the square cylinder to capture the upper and lower shear layers shed from the cylinder. Away from the cylinder the grid is unequal in size and stretched out in all direction. Velocity inlet (u = U∞), pressure outlet (Neumann condition), symmetry (free-slip boundary condition du/dy = 0, v = 0) at upper and lower domain boundary conditions are used for this simulation. Wall boundary (u = v = 0) is considered on the square cylinder surface. Fully conservative 2-D unsteady Navier-Stokes equations are discretized and then solved by Ansys Fluent 14.5 to understand the flow nature. SIMPLE algorithm written in finite volume method is selected for this purpose which is the default solver in scripted in Fluent. The result obtained for Newtonian fluid flow agrees well with previous work supporting Fluent’s usefulness in academic research. A minute analysis of instantaneous and time averaged flow field is obtained both for Newtonian and pseudoplastic fluid flow. It has been observed that drag coefficient increases continuously with the reduced value of n. Also, the vortex shedding phenomenon changes at n = 0.4 due to flow instability. These are some of the remarkable findings for laminar periodic vortex shedding regime in pseudoplastic flow environment.

Keywords: Ansys Fluent, CFD, periodic vortex shedding, pseudoplastic fluid flow

Procedia PDF Downloads 203

Authors: M. Y. Maila, H. P. Makhubele

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Roasting is one of the oldest preservation method used in foods such as nuts and seeds. It is a process by which heat is applied to dry foodstuffs without the use of oil or water as a carrier. Groundnut seeds, also known as peanuts when sun dried or roasted, are among the oldest oil crops that are mostly consumed as a snack, after roasting in many parts of South Africa. However, roasting can denature proteins, destroy amino acids, decrease nutritive value and induce undesirable chemical changes in the final product. The aim of this study, therefore, was to evaluate the effect of various roasting times on the food value of the runner groundnut seeds. A constant temperature of 160 °C and various time-intervals (20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 min) were used for roasting groundnut seeds in an oven. Roasted groundnut seeds were then cooled and milled to flour. The milled sundried, raw groundnuts served as reference. The proximate analysis (moisture, energy and crude fats) was performed and the results were determined using standard methods. The antioxidant content was determined using HPLC. Mineral (cobalt, chromium, silicon and iron) contents were determined by first digesting the ash of sundried and roasted seed samples in 3M Hydrochloric acid and then determined by Atomic Absorption Spectrometry. All results were subjected to ANOVA through SAS software. Relative to the reference, roasting time significantly (p ≤ 0.05) reduced moisture (71%–88%), energy (74%) and crude fat (5%–64%) of the runner groundnut seeds, whereas the antioxidant content was significantly (p ≤ 0.05) increased (35%–72%) with increasing roasting time. Similarly, the tested mineral contents of the roasted runner groundnut seeds were also significantly (p ≤ 0.05) reduced at all roasting times: cobalt (21%–83%), chromium (48%–106%) and silicon (58%–77%). However, the iron content was significantly (p ≤ 0.05) unaffected. Generally, the tested runner groundnut seeds had higher food value in the raw state than in the roasted state, except for the antioxidant content. Moisture is a critical factor affecting the shelf life, texture and flavor of the final product. Loss of moisture ensures prolonged shelf life, which contribute to the stability of the roasted peanuts. Also, increased antioxidant content in roasted groundnuts is essential in other health-promoting compounds. In conclusion, the overall reduction in the proximate and mineral contents of the runner groundnuts seeds due to roasting is sufficient to suggest influences of roasting time on the food value of the final product and shelf life.

Keywords: dry roasting, legume, oil source, peanuts

Procedia PDF Downloads 285

Authors: Erfan Abdeldaim Mohamed Ahmed Abdalla

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The era of the knowledge explosion in which we live requires us to develop educational curricula quantitatively and qualitatively to adapt to the twenty-first-century skills of critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, cooperation, creativity, and innovation. The process of developing the curriculum is as significant as building it; in fact, the development of curricula may be more difficult than building them. And curriculum development includes analyzing needs, setting goals, designing the content and educational materials, creating language programs, developing teachers, applying for programmes in schools, monitoring and feedback, and then evaluating the language programme resulting from these processes. When we look back at the history of language teaching during the twentieth century, we find that developing the delivery method is the most crucial aspect of change in language teaching doctrines. The concept of delivery method in teaching is a systematic set of teaching practices based on a specific theory of language acquisition. This is a key consideration, as the process of development must include all the curriculum elements in its comprehensive sense: linguistically and non-linguistically. The various Arabic curricula provide the student with a set of units, each unit consisting of a set of linguistic elements. These elements are often not logically arranged, and more importantly, they neglect essential points and highlight other less important ones. Moreover, the educational curricula entail a great deal of monotony in the presentation of content, which makes it hard for the teacher to select adequate content; so that the teacher often navigates among diverse references to prepare a lesson and hardly finds the suitable one. Similarly, the student often gets bored when learning the Arabic language and fails to fulfill considerable progress in it. Therefore, the problem is not related to the lack of curricula, but the problem is the development of the curriculum with all its linguistic and non-linguistic elements in accordance with contemporary challenges and standards for teaching foreign languages. The Arabic library suffers from a lack of references for curriculum development. In this paper, the researcher investigates the elements of development, such as the teacher, content, methods, objectives, evaluation, and activities. Hence, a set of general guidelines in the field of educational development were reached. The paper highlights the need to identify weaknesses in educational curricula, decide the twenty-first-century skills that must be employed in Arabic education curricula, and the employment of foreign language teaching standards in current Arabic Curricula. The researcher assumes that the series of teaching Arabic to speakers of other languages in regular schools do not address the skills of the twenty-first century, which is what the researcher tries to apply in the proposed unit. The experimental method is the method of this study. It is based on two groups: experimental and control. The development of an educational unit will help build suitable educational series for students of the Arabic language in regular schools, in which twenty-first-century skills and standards for teaching foreign languages will be addressed and be more useful and attractive to students.

Keywords: curriculum, development, Arabic language, non-native, skills

Procedia PDF Downloads 84

Authors: Sanjay Rathee, Arti Kashyap

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Extraction of useful information from large datasets is one of the most important research problems. Association rule mining is one of the best methods for this purpose. Finding possible associations between items in large transaction based datasets (finding frequent patterns) is most important part of the association rule mining. There exist many algorithms to find frequent patterns but Apriori algorithm always remains a preferred choice due to its ease of implementation and natural tendency to be parallelized. Many single-machine based Apriori variants exist but massive amount of data available these days is above capacity of a single machine. Therefore, to meet the demands of this ever-growing huge data, there is a need of multiple machines based Apriori algorithm. For these types of distributed applications, MapReduce is a popular fault-tolerant framework. Hadoop is one of the best open-source software frameworks with MapReduce approach for distributed storage and distributed processing of huge datasets using clusters built from commodity hardware. However, heavy disk I/O operation at each iteration of a highly iterative algorithm like Apriori makes Hadoop inefficient. A number of MapReduce-based platforms are being developed for parallel computing in recent years. Among them, two platforms, namely, Spark and Flink have attracted a lot of attention because of their inbuilt support to distributed computations. Earlier we proposed a reduced- Apriori algorithm on Spark platform which outperforms parallel Apriori, one because of use of Spark and secondly because of the improvement we proposed in standard Apriori. Therefore, this work is a natural sequel of our work and targets on implementing, testing and benchmarking Apriori and Reduced-Apriori and our new algorithm ReducedAll-Apriori on Apache Flink and compares it with Spark implementation. Flink, a streaming dataflow engine, overcomes disk I/O bottlenecks in MapReduce, providing an ideal platform for distributed Apriori. Flink's pipelining based structure allows starting a next iteration as soon as partial results of earlier iteration are available. Therefore, there is no need to wait for all reducers result to start a next iteration. We conduct in-depth experiments to gain insight into the effectiveness, efficiency and scalability of the Apriori and RA-Apriori algorithm on Flink.

Keywords: apriori, apache flink, Mapreduce, spark, Hadoop, R-Apriori, frequent itemset mining

Procedia PDF Downloads 294

Authors: Shahida Mohd Sharif, Norsidah Ujang

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Recent research has shown that many of the urban population in Kuala Lumpur, especially from the lower-income group, suffer from socio-psychological problems. They are reported as experiencing anxiety, depression, and stress, which is made worst by the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Much of the population was forced to observe the Movement Control Order (MCO), which is part of pandemic mitigation measures, pushing them to live in isolation as the new normal. The study finds the need to strategize for a better approach to help these people coping with the socio-psychological condition, especially the population from the lower-income group. In Kuala Lumpur, as part of the Local Agenda 21 programme, the Kuala Lumpur City Hall has introduced Green Initiative: Urban Farming, which among the approaches is the community garden. The local authority promotes the engagement to be capable of improving the social environment of the participants. Research has demonstrated that social interaction within community gardens can help the members improve their socio-psychological conditions. Therefore, the study explores the residents’ experience from low-cost flats participating in the community gardening initiative from a social attachment perspective. The study will utilise semi-structured interviews to collect the participants’ experience with community gardening and how the social interaction exchange between the members' forms and develop their ties and trust. For a context, the low-cost flats are part of the government social housing program (Program Perumahan Rakyat dan Perumahan Awam). Meanwhile, the community gardening initiative (Projek Kebun Kejiranan Bandar LA21 KL) is part of the local authority initiative to address the participants’ social, environmental, and economic issues. The study will conduct thematic analysis on the collected data and use the ATLAS.ti software for data organization and management purposes. The findings could help other researchers and stakeholders understand the social interaction experience within community gardens and its relation to ties and trusts. The findings could shed some light on how the participants could improve their social environment, and its report could provide the local authority with evidence-based documentation.

Keywords: community gardening participation, lower-income population, social attachment, social interaction

Procedia PDF Downloads 135

Authors: Araya Yordchim, Rosjana Chandhasa, Suwaree Yordchim

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This research aims to study guidelines on the development of management process for research journals in order to develop Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University to international standards. This research investigated affecting elements ranging from the format of the article, evaluation form for research article quality, the process of creating a scholarly journal, satisfaction level of those with knowledge and competency to conduct research, arisen problems, and solutions. Drawing upon the sample size of 40 persons who had knowledge and competency in conducting research and creating scholarly journal articles at an international level, the data for this research were collected using questionnaires as a tool. Through the usage of computer software, data were analyzed by using the statistics in the forms of frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and multiple regression analysis. The majority of participants were civil servants with a doctorate degree, followed by civil servants with a master's degree. Among them, the suitability of the article format was rated at a good level while the evaluation form for research articles quality was assessed at a good level. Based on participants' viewpoints, the process of creating scholarly journals was at a good level, while the satisfaction of those who had knowledge and competency in conducting research was at a satisfactory level. The problems encountered were the difficulty in accessing the website. The solution to the problem was to develop a website with user-friendly accessibility, including setting up a Google scholar profile for the purpose of references counting and the articles being used for reference in real-time. Research article format influenced the level of satisfaction of those who had the knowledge and competency to conduct research with statistical significance at the 0.01 level. The research article quality assessment form (preface section, research article writing section, preparation for research article manuscripts section, and the original article evaluation form for the author) affected the satisfaction of those with knowledge and competency to conduct research with the statistical significance at the level of 0.01. The process of establishing journals had an impact on the satisfaction of those with knowledge and ability to conduct research with statistical significance at the level of .05

Keywords: guidelines, development of management, research journals, international standards

Procedia PDF Downloads 123

Authors: M. Humayun Kabir, Mahamuda Afroze, K. Maudood Elahi

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Since the late 1900s, unplanned and rapid urbanization processes have drastically altered the land, reduced water bodies, and decreased vegetation cover in the capital city of Bangladesh, Dhaka. The capitalist modes of urbanization results in the encroachment of the surface water bodies in this city. The main goal of this study is to investigate the change detection of water bodies in Dhaka city, analyzing spatial distribution of water bodies and calculating the changing rate of it. This effort aims to influence public policy for environmental justice initiatives around protecting water bodies for ensuring proper function of the urban ecosystem. This study accomplishes research goal by compiling satellite imageries into GIS software to understand the changes of water bodies in Dhaka city. The work focuses on the late 20th century to early 21st century to analyze this city before and after major infrastructural changes occurred in unplanned manner. The land use of the study area has been classified into four categories, and the areas of the different land use have been calculated using MS Excel and SPSS. The results reveal that the urbanization expanded from central to northern part and major encroachment occurred at the western and eastern part of the city. It has also been found that, in 1988, the total area of water bodies was 8935.38 hectares, and it gradually decreased, and in 1998, 2008, 2017, the total areas of water bodies reached 6065.73, 4853.32, 2077.56 hectares, respectively. Rapid population growth, unplanned urbanization, and industrialization have generated pressure to change the land use pattern in Dhaka city. These expansion processes are engulfing wetland, water bodies, and vegetation cover without considering environmental impact. In order to regain the wetland and surface water bodies, the concern authorities must implement laws and act as a legal instrument in this regard and take action against the violators of it. This research is the synthesis of time series data that provides a complete picture of the water body’s status of Dhaka city that might help to make plans and policies for water body conservation.

Keywords: ecosystem, GIS, industrialization, land use, remote sensing, urbanization

Procedia PDF Downloads 151

Authors: Hye-Hyun Lee, Hyo-Kon Chun, Kyung-Hee Kim Kim, Mi-Hee Kim, Saet-Byul Chu, Sang-Jong Lee, Seung-Hyeop Lee, Seung-Won Yi

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Some chemicals such as malachite green, methylene blue, and copper sulfate had been used frequently as disinfectants controlling fungal infection in aquaculture. However, their carcinogenicity, mutagenicity and teratogenicity were reported in mammals. After their accumulation in food fish and its consumers was confirmed, concerns about public health has resulted in enhanced monitoring and increased demand for eco-friendly treatments. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate safety to fish and efficacy of sulfur solution processed by effective microorganisms (EM-PSS) against Saprolegnia parasitica, for use of a potential aquatic fungicidal disinfectant. The natural sulfur purchased from Kawah Ijen volcano, East Java, Indonesia was processed by the liquid mixture consisting of following twelve effective microorganisms (Rapha-el®; Lbiotech, Jeonnam, Korea), Lactobacillus parafarraginis, L. paracasei, L. harbinensis, L. buchneri, L. perolens, L. rhamnosus, L. vaccinostercus, Acetobacter lovaniensis, A. peroxydans, Pichia fermentans, Candida ethanolica, Saccharomycopsis schoenii isolated from fermentation process of oriental medicinal herbs including green tea, privet, and puer tea. The material was applied to in vitro antifungal activity test for Saprolegnia parasitica using agar dilution method. In addition, an acute toxicity test was performed on carp (Cyprinus carpio), eel (Anguilla japonica), and mud fish (Misgurnus mizolepis) for 96 hours. After three species of fish (n=15) were accustomed to experimental water environment for three days, the EM-PSS was added to each tank as final concentrations to be 0 to 500 ppm. The fish were taken into necropsy, and the histological sections of the gill, liver, and spleen were counter-stained with hematoxylin and eosin (H-E). And hence, no observed effect concentration (NOEC) of the solution was used for taking a medicinal bath for mudfish infected by Saprolegnia parasitica in practice. The result of in vitro antifungal activity test showed the growth inhibition of the fungus at 100 ppm, which and the lower concentrations occurred no fatal case in any fish species tested until the end of the examination. The 125 ppm of the solution, however, resulted in 13.3 %, 13.3 %, and 6.3 % of mortality in carp, eel, and mudfish, respectively. But both 250 and 500 ppm of the solution leaded lethality to all population of each fish species within 24 hours. Besides, H-E staining also showed no specific evidence for toxicity in fish at lesser than 100 ppm of EM-PSS. On the other hand, as a result of field application of the solution, no growth of fungal mycelium was found in fish bodies from gross observation 5 days post treatment. In conclusion, 100ppm of EM-PSS resulted in inhibition and treatment of Saprolegnia parasitica infection. In addition, the use of EM-PSS lower than 100 ppm is safe for fish. Therefore, EM-PSS could be used as aquatic fungicide, and also may be possible to be a potential eco-friendly disinfectant in aquaculture.

Keywords: antifungal activity, effective microorganism, toxicity, saprolegnia, processed sulfur solution

Procedia PDF Downloads 254

Authors: Brock Buckingham, Zhe Lin, Wenxuan Guo

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Accurate elevation data is critical in deriving topographic attributes for the precision management of crop inputs, especially water and nutrients. Traditional ground-based elevation data acquisition is time consuming, labor intensive, and often inconvenient at the field scale. Various unmanned aerial systems (UAS) provide the capability of generating digital elevation data from high-resolution images. The objective of this study was to compare the performance of two UAS with different global positioning system (GPS) receivers in determining elevation at the field scale. A DJI Phantom 4 Pro and a DJI Phantom 4 RTK(real-time kinematic) were applied to acquire images at three heights, including 40m, 80m, and 120m above ground. Forty ground control panels were placed in the field, and their geographic coordinates were determined using an RTK GPS survey unit. For each image acquisition using a UAS at a particular height, two elevation datasets were generated using the Pix4D stitching software: a calibrated dataset using the surveyed coordinates of the ground control panels and an uncalibrated dataset without using the surveyed coordinates of the ground control panels. Elevation values for each panel derived from the elevation model of each dataset were compared to the corresponding coordinates of the ground control panels. The coefficient of the determination (R²) and the root mean squared error (RMSE) were used as evaluation metrics to assess the performance of each image acquisition scenario. RMSE values for the uncalibrated elevation dataset were 26.613 m, 31.141 m, and 25.135 m for images acquired at 120 m, 80 m, and 40 m, respectively, using the Phantom 4 Pro UAS. With calibration for the same UAS, the accuracies were significantly improved with RMSE values of 0.161 m, 0.165, and 0.030 m, respectively. The best results showed an RMSE of 0.032 m and an R² of 0.998 for calibrated dataset generated using the Phantom 4 RTK UAS at 40m height. The accuracy of elevation determination decreased as the flight height increased for both UAS, with RMSE values greater than 0.160 m for the datasets acquired at 80 m and 160 m. The results of this study show that calibration with ground control panels improves the accuracy of elevation determination, especially for the UAS with a regular GPS receiver. The Phantom 4 Pro provides accurate elevation data with substantial surveyed ground control panels for the 40 m dataset. The Phantom 4 Pro RTK UAS provides accurate elevation at 40 m without calibration for practical precision agriculture applications. This study provides valuable information on selecting appropriate UAS and flight heights in determining elevation for precision agriculture applications.

Keywords: unmanned aerial system, elevation, precision agriculture, real-time kinematic (RTK)

Procedia PDF Downloads 162

Authors: Nuno Biga

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Continuous processes’ improvement is a permanent challenge for managers of any organization. Lean management means that efficiency gains can be obtained through a systematic framework able to explore synergies between processes, eliminate waste of time, and other resources. Leaderships in organizations determine the efficiency of the teams through their influence on collaborators, their motivation, and consolidation of ownership (group) feeling. The “organization health” depends on the leadership style, which is directly influenced by the intrinsic characteristics of each personality and leadership ability (leadership competencies). Therefore, it’s important that managers can correct in advance any deviation from expected leadership exercises. Top management teams must assume themselves as regulatory agents of leadership within the organization, ensuring monitoring of actions and the alignment of managers in accordance with the humanist standards anchored in a visible Code of Ethics and Conduct. This article is built around an innovative model of “Business Interactive Games” (BI GAMES) that simulates a real-life management environment. It shows that the strategic management of operations depends on a complex set of endogenous and exogenous variables to the intervening agents that require specific skills and a set of critical processes to monitor. BI GAMES are designed for each management reality and have already been applied successfully in several contexts over the last five years comprising the educational and enterprise ones. Results from these experiences are used to demonstrate how serious games in working living labs contributed to improve the organizational environment by focusing on the evaluation of players’ (agents’) skills, empower its capabilities, and the critical factors that create value in each context. The implementation of the BI GAMES simulator highlights that leadership skills are decisive for the performance of teams, regardless of the sector of activity and the specificities of each organization whose operation is intended to simulate. The players in the BI GAMES can be managers or employees of different roles in the organization or students in the learning context. They interact with each other and are asked to decide/make choices in the presence of several options for the follow-up operation, for example, when the costs and benefits are not fully known but depend on the actions of external parties (e.g., subcontracted enterprises and actions of regulatory bodies). Each team must evaluate resources used/needed in each operation, identify bottlenecks in the system of operations, assess the performance of the system through a set of key performance indicators, and set a coherent strategy to improve efficiency. Through the gamification and the serious games approach, organizational managers will be able to confront the scientific approach in strategic decision-making versus their real-life approach based on experiences undertaken. Considering that each BI GAME’s team has a leader (chosen by draw), the performance of this player has a direct impact on the results obtained. Leadership skills are thus put to the test during the simulation of the functioning of each organization, allowing conclusions to be drawn at the end of the simulation, including its discussion amongst participants.

Keywords: business interactive games, gamification, management empowerment skills, simulation living labs

Procedia PDF Downloads 110

Authors: Ana Elvira Ojanguren Lopez, Javier Martin Arista

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The aims of this paper are to present the automatisation procedure adopted in the implementation of a parallel corpus of Old English, as well as, to assess the progress of automatisation with respect to tagging, annotation, and lemmatisation. The corpus consists of an aligned parallel text with word-for-word comparison Old English-English that provides the Old English segment with inflectional form tagging (gloss, lemma, category, and inflection) and lemma annotation (spelling, meaning, inflectional class, paradigm, word-formation and secondary sources). This parallel corpus is intended to fill a gap in the field of Old English, in which no parallel and/or lemmatised corpora are available, while the average amount of corpus annotation is low. With this background, this presentation has two main parts. The first part, which focuses on tagging and annotation, selects the layouts and fields of lexical databases that are relevant for these tasks. Most information used for the annotation of the corpus can be retrieved from the lexical and morphological database Nerthus and the database of secondary sources Freya. These are the sources of linguistic and metalinguistic information that will be used for the annotation of the lemmas of the corpus, including morphological and semantic aspects as well as the references to the secondary sources that deal with the lemmas in question. Although substantially adapted and re-interpreted, the lemmatised part of these databases draws on the standard dictionaries of Old English, including The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, and A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. The second part of this paper deals with lemmatisation. It presents the lemmatiser Norna, which has been implemented on Filemaker software. It is based on a concordance and an index to the Dictionary of Old English Corpus, which comprises around three thousand texts and three million words. In its present state, the lemmatiser Norna can assign lemma to around 80% of textual forms on an automatic basis, by searching the index and the concordance for prefixes, stems and inflectional endings. The conclusions of this presentation insist on the limits of the automatisation of dictionary-based annotation in a parallel corpus. While the tagging and annotation are largely automatic even at the present stage, the automatisation of alignment is pending for future research. Lemmatisation and morphological tagging are expected to be fully automatic in the near future, once the database of secondary sources Freya and the lemmatiser Norna have been completed.

Keywords: corpus linguistics, historical linguistics, old English, parallel corpus

Procedia PDF Downloads 210

Authors: Ogunmefun Folorunsho Muyideen, Aluko Tolulope Evelyn

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One of the trending menaces faced in the world today is centered on the porosity of borders and proliferation of illegal weapons among the state members without the state authorizations. The proliferation of weapons along porous borders remains a germane and unsolvable question among developed and developing nations due to crisis degenerated from the menace (loss of lives, properties, traumatization, civil unrest and retrogressive economic development). A mixed method was adopted while the survey method was used for communities’ selection (Oke-Odan, Ajilete, Illaise, Lanlate) at Ipokia Local Government as a sample frame. Multi-stage sampling was employed to break down the site into wards, streets, and different house numbers before randomizing administration of the questionnaires using face to face method, while purposive sampling was used for collecting verbal information through an in-depth interviews method. The population size for the site is 150.398, while 399 was the sample size derived from the use of Yamane sample size formula. After retrieval of structured questionnaires, 346 were found useful, while 10 percent (399) of the quantitative instruments was summed to 30 participants that were interviewed using the in-depth interviews technique. The result of the first hypothesis shows a composite relationship between the variables tested (independents and dependent). The result indicated that the porosity of the border, illegal possession of guns, and limited security staff jointly predispose insecurity among the residents of the selected study site. The result of the second hypothesis deciphers that the illegal gun possession (independent) variable predict business outcome among the residents of the study site because sporadic gun shoot will regress the business activities in the study area. The result of third result indicated that the independent (porosity of borders) variable predict social bonding network because a high level of insecurity will destroy the level of trust in the communication among the residents of the study area. The last questions give comprehensive meaning to one of the recommendations derived using content systematic analysis, which explains that out of 30 participants interviewed, 18 submitted individual involvement in monitoring communities will solve the problem, 7 out of 30 opines that governmental agents are to be trained for effective combat, 3 participants out 30 submits that the fight is for both government and the citizens while 2 participants out of 30 claimed that there must be an agreement between Nigerian and neighbouring countries on border security. International donors must totally control the sales of weapons to unauthorized personalities. Criminal cases must be treated with deterrence measures and target hardened procedures through decoying and blending, stakeout, and sting tactics.

Keywords: human security, illegal weapons, porous borders, development

Procedia PDF Downloads 177

Authors: Huiling Feng, Jihong Liang, Xiaodong Gong, Yongjun Xu

Abstract:

Recording history is a tradition in ancient China. A record of a dynasty makes a dynastic history; a record of a locality makes a chorography, and a record of a clan makes a genealogy – the three combined together depicts a complete national history of China both macroscopically and microscopically, with genealogy serving as the foundation. Genealogy in ancient China traces back to a family tree or pedigrees in the early and medieval historical times. After Song Dynasty, the civilian society gradually emerged, and the Emperor had to allow people from the same clan to live together and hold the ancestor worship activities, thence compilation of genealogy became popular in the society. Since then, genealogies, regarded as important as ancestor and religious temples in a traditional villages even today, have played a primary role in identification of a clan and maintain local social order. Chinese genealogies are rich in their documentary materials. Take the Genealogy of Wu Clan in Gaoqian as an example. Gaoqian is a small village in Xianju County of Zhejiang Province. The Genealogy of Wu Clan in Gaoqian is composed of a whole set of materials from Foreword to Family Trees, Family Rules, Family Rituals, Family Graces and Glories, Ode to An ancestor’s Portrait, Manual for the Ancestor Temple, documents for great men in the clan, works written by learned men in the clan, the contracts concerning landed property, even notes on tombs and so on. Literally speaking, the genealogy, with detailed information from every aspect recorded in stylistic rules, is indeed the carrier of the entire culture of a clan. However, due to their scarcity in number and difficulties in reading, genealogies seldom fall into the horizons of common people. This paper, focusing on the case of the Genealogy of Wu Clan in the Village of Gaoqian, intends to reproduce a digital Genealogy by use of ICTs, through an in-depth interpretation of the literature and field investigation in Gaoqian Village. Based on this, the paper goes further to explore the general methods in transferring physical genealogies to digital ones and ways in visualizing the clanism culture embedded in the genealogies with a combination of digital technologies such as software in family trees, multimedia narratives, animation design, GIS application and e-book creators.

Keywords: clanism culture, multimedia narratives, genealogy of Wu Clan, GIS

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Authors: Vilma Zydziunaite, Simona Kersiene

Abstract:

The concept of focused leadership means that the leader gathers the entire community in various ways to communicate and cooperate with each other, to share their knowledge and responsibility, to get involved in problem-solving, to create a safe and trusting environment and to satisfy the needs and interests of each community member. The study's aim is to analyze the teamwork of teachers working in kindergartens and schools and its CEOs by implementing confused leadership. A mixed research design was used for the research study. Quantitative research used the teamwork test "Team-Puls" (2003). Data is processed by the IBM SPSS version 29.0 software package. Semi-structured interviews were used for data collection, and qualitative content analysis was applied for data analysis. The results of quantitative research show that there is no statistically significant difference between the evaluation averages of kindergarten and school teachers. Likewise, the effectiveness and evaluation of teacher teamwork in educational institutions depend on different characteristics and processes, such as the number of participating teachers, the involvement of the institution's administration or the stages of team formation. In the qualitative research, the components of the focused leadership categories applied by the kindergarten and school CEOs emerged. The categories reflect the components of shared leadership. In the study, the sharing of responsibilities and cooperation among teachers and the sharing of knowledge among themselves is distinguished. This shows that the action takes place between the teachers when they participate in the processes voluntarily, according to their wishes or for certain reasons. Distributed leadership components occurs when leadership responsibility is extended beyond the school CEO. The components of servant leadership are expressed when the CEO achieves organizational goals in the service of others. Servant leadership is helping and striving for others, creating a safe environment. The level of the educational institution does not affect working teachers in the evaluation of working in a team. Giving freedom to teachers, the role of the CEO is dividing responsibilities and creating cooperation between teachers as well as ensuring teachers' interests, needs, emotional well-being and professional development.

Keywords: teamwork, school, teacher, school CEO, school environment, mixed research, Team-Puls test, semi-structured interview, questioning survey, qualitative content analysis, focused leadership, teacher leadership

Procedia PDF Downloads 58