Search results for: theoretical computer science

Authors: Terrell Strayhorn

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The lack of diversity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is a persistent and concerning issue. One contributing factor to the underrepresentation of minority groups in STEM fields is a lack of sense of belonging, which can lead to lower levels of academic engagement, motivation, and achievement. In particular, Black students have been shown to experience lower levels of sense of belonging in STEM compared to their white peers. This study aimed to explore the effects of a psychological intervention on Black students' sense of belonging in physics and math courses at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and predominantly white institutions (PWIs). The study used a randomized controlled trial design and included 305 Black undergraduate students enrolled in physics or math courses at HBCUs and PWIs in the United States. Participants were randomly assigned to either an intervention group or a control group. The intervention consisted of a brief psychological, video-based intervention designed to enhance sense of belonging, which was delivered in a single session. The control group received no intervention. The primary outcome measure was sense of belonging in physics and math courses, as assessed by a validated self-report measure. Other outcomes included academic engagement, motivation, and achievement as measured by physics and math (course) grades. Preliminary results show that the intervention has a significant positive effect on Black students' sense of belonging in physics and math courses, with a moderate effect size. The intervention also had a significant positive effect on academic engagement and motivation, but not on academic achievement. Importantly, the effects of the intervention were larger for Black students enrolled at PWIs compared to those enrolled at HBCUs. Findings, at present, suggest that a brief psychological web-based intervention can enhance Black students' sense of belonging in physics and math courses, and that the effects may be particularly strong for Black students enrolled at PWIs, although they are not negligible for Black students at HBCUs. This is an important finding given the persistent underrepresentation of Black students in STEM fields, the growing number of Black students at PWIs, and the potential for enhancing sense of belonging to improve academic outcomes and increase diversity in these fields. The study has several limitations, including a relatively small sample size and a lack of long-term follow-up. Future research could explore the generalizability of these findings to other minority groups and other STEM fields, as well as the potential for longer-term interventions to sustain and enhance the effects observed in this study. Overall, this study highlights the potential for psychological interventions to enhance sense of belonging and improve academic outcomes for Black students in STEM courses, and underscores the importance of addressing sense of belonging as a key factor in promoting diversity and equity in STEM fields.

Keywords: sense of belonging, achievement, racial equity, postsecondary education, intervention

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Authors: Isabelle Lorge, Napoleon Katsos

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BACKGROUND: Children growing up in a multilingual environment face challenges related to the need to monitor the speaker’s linguistic abilities, more frequent communication failures, and having to acquire a large number of words in a limited amount of time compared to monolinguals. As a result, bilingual learners may develop different word learning strategies, rely more on some strategies than others, and engage cognitive resources such as theory of mind and attention skills in different ways. HYPOTHESIS: The goal of our study is to investigate whether multilingual exposure leads to improvements in the ability to use pragmatic inference for word learning, i.e., to use speaker cues to derive their referring intentions, often by overcoming lower level salience effects. The speaker cues we identified as relevant are (a) use of a modifier with or without stress (‘the WET dax’ prompting the choice of the referent which has a dry counterpart), (b) referent extension (‘this is a kitten with a fep’ prompting the choice of the unique rather than shared object), (c) referent novelty (choosing novel action rather than novel object which has been manipulated already), (d) teacher versus random sampling (assuming the choice of specific examples for a novel word to be relevant to the extension of that new category), and finally (e) emotional affect (‘look at the figoo’ uttered in a sad or happy voice) . METHOD: To this end, we implemented on a touchscreen computer a task corresponding to each of the cues above, where the child had to pick the referent of a novel word. These word learning tasks (a), (b), (c), (d) and (e) were adapted from previous word learning studies. 113 children have been tested (54 reception and 59 year 1, ranging from 4 to 6 years old) in a London primary school. Bilingual or monolingual status and other relevant information (age of onset, proficiency, literacy for bilinguals) is ascertained through language questionnaires from parents (34 out of 113 received to date). While we do not yet have the data that will allow us to test for effect of bilingualism, we can already see that performances are far from approaching ceiling in any of the tasks. In some cases the children’s performances radically differ from adults’ in a qualitative way, which means that there is scope for quantitative and qualitative effects to arise between language groups. The findings should contribute to explain the puzzling speed and efficiency that bilinguals demonstrate in acquiring competence in two languages.

Keywords: bilingualism, pragmatics, word learning, attention

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Authors: Faith O. Olanrewaju

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Internal displacement and the vulnerability of women are two critical aspects of forced migration that have dominated both global and local discourses. Statistics show that in November 2021, there were over 2.1 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Nigeria. Literature also states that displaced women and girls are more vulnerable than displaced men. They are susceptible to adversative experiences, including various forms of sexual violence and rape. As a result, the displaced women and girls are faced with psychological and physical traumas, including HIV/AIDS as well as unexpected or poorly spaced pregnancies. In addition, the poor condition of living of internally displaced women in IDP camps affects their reproductive health, pregnancy outcomes, and maternal mortality levels. Incontrovertibly, internally displaced women constitute an imperative contributor to the ills of Nigeria's maternal health status, which is the second worse globally and the worst in Africa. World Health Organisation statistics showed that approximately 536,000 girls and women die from pregnancy-related causes globally, and Nigeria accounts for 14% of the global maternal deaths. Undeniably, this supports the claims that maternal mortality remains a challenge in Nigeria and can be exacerbated by internal displacement crises. Therefore, maternal mortality remains a critical impediment to the actualisation of the 3.1 SDG target. Owing to this, concerns arise about the quality of the policy in Nigeria’s health sector. More specifically, this study is concerned with the maternal health care services displaced women receive in IDP camps in the three states affected by internal displacement in north-central Nigeria, an understudied area. The novelty of the study also lies in its comparative investigation of maternal healthcare service delivery in three different camp structures (faith-based, government, and informal IDP camps), a pattern that is absent in literature. Therefore, this study will investigate how the camp structures affect access to maternal health services in the study areas; analyse the successes and challenges in the delivery of maternal health care services to displaced women in the various camps; and recommendation and strategies for reducing maternal healthcare disparities/gaps across IDP camps in Nigeria (should they exist). It will adopt a mixed-method approach and multi-stage sampling technique. A total of 1,152 copies of the study questionnaire will be distributed to displaced pregnant and nursing mothers (PNM); nine focus group discussions will also be held with the displaced PNM; in-depth interviews will be conducted with humanitarian actors, policymakers, and health professionals. The quantitative and qualitative data will be analysed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) 21.0 and thematic analysis, respectively. The findings of the study will be used to develop a model of care that will address the fragmentations in Nigeria's healthcare system. The findings will also inform the development of best policies and practices in the maternal health of displaced women.

Keywords: forced displacement, internally displaced women, maternal healthcare, maternal mortality

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Authors: Mir Ahmad Lashteh Neshaei, Hamed Afsoos Biria, Ata Ghabraei, Mir Abdolhamid Mehrdad

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Awareness of effective land using issues in coastal area including protection of natural ecosystems and coastal environment due to the increasing of human life along the coast is of great importance. There are numerous valuable structures and heritages which are located in defence sites and waterfront area. Marine structures such as groins, sea walls and detached breakwaters are constructed in coast to improve the coast stability against bed erosion due to changing wave and climate pattern. Marine mechanisms and interaction with the shore protection structures need to be intensively studied. Groins are one of the most prominent structures that are used in shore protection to create a safe environment for coastal area by maintaining the land against progressive coastal erosion. The main structural function of a groin is to control the long shore current and littoral sediment transport. This structure can be submerged and provide the necessary beach protection without negative environmental impact. However, for submerged structures adopted for beach protection, the shoreline response to these structures is not well understood at present. Nowadays, modelling and computer simulation are used to assess beach morphology in the vicinity of marine structures to reduce their environmental impact. The objective of this study is to predict the beach morphology in the vicinity of submerged groins and comparison with non-submerged groins with focus on a part of the coast located in Dahane sar Sefidrood, Guilan province, Iran where serious coast erosion has occurred recently. The simulations were obtained using a one-line model which can be used as a first approximation of shoreline prediction in the vicinity of groins. The results of the proposed model are compared with field measurements to determine the shape of the coast. Finally, the results of the present study show that using submerged groins can have a good efficiency to control the beach erosion without causing severe environmental impact to the coast. The important outcome from this study can be employed in optimum designing of defence sites in the coastal cities to improve their efficiency in terms of re-using the heritage lands.

Keywords: submerged structures, groin, shore protective structures, coastal cities

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Authors: Sardorbek Numonov, Hyohun Kim, Dongwha Shin, Yeonseok Kim, Ji-Su Ahn, Dongeun Choi, Byung-Woo Hong

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The detection of curvilinear structures often plays an important role in the analysis of images. In particular, it is considered as a crucial step for the diagnosis of chronic respiratory diseases to localize the fissures in chest CT imagery where the lung is divided into five lobes by the fissures that are characterized by linear features in appearance. However, the characteristic linear features for the fissures are often shown to be subtle due to the high intensity variability, pathological deformation or image noise involved in the imaging procedure, which leads to the uncertainty in the quantification of anatomical or functional properties of the lung. Thus, it is desired to enhance the linear features present in the chest CT images so that the distinctiveness in the delineation of the lobe is improved. We propose a recursive diffusion process that prefers coherent features based on the analysis of structure tensor in an anisotropic manner. The local image features associated with certain scales and directions can be characterized by the eigenanalysis of the structure tensor that is often regularized via isotropic diffusion filters. However, the isotropic diffusion filters involved in the computation of the structure tensor generally blur geometrically significant structure of the features leading to the degradation of the characteristic power in the feature space. Thus, it is required to take into consideration of local structure of the feature in scale and direction when computing the structure tensor. We apply an anisotropic diffusion in consideration of scale and direction of the features in the computation of the structure tensor that subsequently provides the geometrical structure of the features by its eigenanalysis that determines the shape of the anisotropic diffusion kernel. The recursive application of the anisotropic diffusion with the kernel the shape of which is derived from the structure tensor leading to the anisotropic scale-space where the geometrical features are preserved via the eigenanalysis of the structure tensor computed from the diffused image. The recursive interaction between the anisotropic diffusion based on the geometry-driven kernels and the computation of the structure tensor that determines the shape of the diffusion kernels yields a scale-space where geometrical properties of the image structure are effectively characterized. We apply our recursive anisotropic diffusion algorithm to the detection of curvilinear structure in the chest CT imagery where the fissures present curvilinear features and define the boundary of lobes. It is shown that our algorithm yields precise detection of the fissures while overcoming the subtlety in defining the characteristic linear features. The quantitative evaluation demonstrates the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm for the detection of fissures in the chest CT in terms of the false positive and the true positive measures. The receiver operating characteristic curves indicate the potential of our algorithm as a segmentation tool in the clinical environment. This work was supported by the MISP(Ministry of Science and ICT), Korea, under the National Program for Excellence in SW (20170001000011001) supervised by the IITP(Institute for Information and Communications Technology Promotion).

Keywords: anisotropic diffusion, chest CT imagery, chronic respiratory disease, curvilinear structure, fissure detection, structure tensor

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Authors: Boudjelal Amel

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Arisarum vulgare, a member of the Araceae family, is an herbaceous perennial widely distributed in the Mediterranean region. A. vulgare is recognized for its medicinal properties and holds significant traditional importance in Algeria for the treatment of various human ailments, including pain, infections, inflammation, digestive disorders, skin problems, eczema, cancer, wounds, burns and gynecological diseases. Despite its extensive traditional use, scientific exploration of A. vulgare remains limited. The study aims to investigate for the first time the therapeutic potential of A. vulgare ethanolic extract obtained by ultrasound-assisted extraction. The chemical composition of the extract was determined by LC-MS/MS analysis. For in vitro phytopharmacological evaluation, several assays, including DPPH, ABTS, FRAP and reducing power, were employed to evaluate the antioxidant activity. The antibacterial activity was assessed againt Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhimurium, Staphylococus aureus, Enterococcus feacium by disk diffusion and microdilution methods. The possible inhibitory activity of ethanolic extract was analyzed against the cholinesterases enzymes (AChE and BChE). The DNA protection activity of A. vulgare ethanolic extract was estimated using the agarose gel electrophoresis method. The capacities of the extract to protect plasmid DNA (pBR322) from the oxidizing effects of H2O2 and UV treatment were evaluated by their DNA-breaking forms. The in vivo wound healing potential of a traditional ointment containing 5% of A. vulgare ethanolic extract was also investigated. The LC-MS/MS profiling of the extract revealed the presence of various bioactive compounds, including naringenin, chlorogenic, vanillic, cafeic, coumaric acids, trans-cinnamic and trans ferrulic acids. The plant extract presented considerable antioxidant potential, being the most active for Reducing power (0,07326±0.001 mg/ml) and DPPH (0.14±0.004 mg/ml). The extract showed the highest inhibition zone diameter against Enterococcus feacium (36±0.1 mm). The ethanolic extract of A. vulgare suppressed the growth of Staphylococus aureus, Escherichia coli and Salmonella typhimurium according to the MIC values. The extract of the plant significantly inhibited both AChE and BChE enzymes. DNA protection activity of the A. vulgare extract was determined as 90.41% for form I and 51.92% for form II. The in vivo experiments showed that 5% ethanolic extract ointment accelerated the wound healing process. The topical application of the traditional formulation enhanced wound closure (95,36±0,6 %) and improved histological parameters in the treated group compared to the control groups. The promising biological properties of Arisarum vulgare revealed that the plant could be appraised as a potential origin of bioactive molecules having multifunctional medicinal uses.

Keywords: arisarum vulgare, LC-MS/MS, antioxidant activity, antimicrobial activity, cholinesterases enzymes inhibition, dna-damage activity, in vivo wound healing

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Authors: Mohamed Mounir Tellache, Hiroyuki Kambara, Yasuharu Koike, Makoto Miyakoshi, Natsue Yoshimura

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This study explores the practicality of using electroencephalographic (EEG) independent components to predict eight-direction finger movements in pseudo-real-time. Six healthy participants with individual-head MRI images performed finger movements in eight directions with two different arm configurations. The analysis was performed in two stages. The first stage consisted of using independent component analysis (ICA) to separate the signals representing brain activity from non-brain activity signals and to obtain the unmixing matrix. The resulting independent components (ICs) were checked, and those reflecting brain-activity were selected. Finally, the time series of the selected ICs were used to predict eight finger-movement directions using Sparse Logistic Regression (SLR). The second stage consisted of using the previously obtained unmixing matrix, the selected ICs, and the model obtained by applying SLR to classify a different EEG dataset. This method was applied to two different settings, namely the single-participant level and the group-level. For the single-participant level, the EEG dataset used in the first stage and the EEG dataset used in the second stage originated from the same participant. For the group-level, the EEG datasets used in the first stage were constructed by temporally concatenating each combination without repetition of the EEG datasets of five participants out of six, whereas the EEG dataset used in the second stage originated from the remaining participants. The average test classification results across datasets (mean ± S.D.) were 38.62 ± 8.36% for the single-participant, which was significantly higher than the chance level (12.50 ± 0.01%), and 27.26 ± 4.39% for the group-level which was also significantly higher than the chance level (12.49% ± 0.01%). The classification accuracy within [–45°, 45°] of the true direction is 70.03 ± 8.14% for single-participant and 62.63 ± 6.07% for group-level which may be promising for some real-life applications. Clustering and contribution analyses further revealed the brain regions involved in finger movement and the temporal aspect of their contribution to the classification. These results showed the possibility of using the ICA-based method in combination with other methods to build a real-time system to control prostheses.

Keywords: brain-computer interface, electroencephalography, finger motion decoding, independent component analysis, pseudo real-time motion decoding

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Authors: Mario Sandro F. Rocha, Carlos S. Ande, Anderson A. Oliveira, Felipe M. Bersotti, Lucas O. Venzel

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The inertial motion capture systems (mocap) are among the most suitable tools for quantitative clinical analysis in rehabilitation and sports medicine. The inertial measuring units (IMUs), composed by accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers, are able to measure spatial orientations and calculate displacements with sufficient precision for applications in biomechanical analysis of movement. Furthermore, this type of system is relatively affordable and has the advantages of portability and independence from external references. In this work, we present the last version of our inertial motion capture system, based on the foregoing technology, with a unity interface designed for rehabilitation and sports. In our hardware architecture, only one serial port is required. First, the board client must be connected to the computer by a USB cable. Next, an available serial port is configured and opened to establish the communication between the client and the application, and then the client starts scanning for the active MOCAP_S servers around. The servers play the role of the inertial measuring units that capture the movements of the body and send the data to the client, which in turn create a package composed by the ID of the server, the current timestamp, and the motion capture data defined in the client pre-configuration of the capture session. In the current version, we can measure the game rotation vector (grv) and linear acceleration (lacc), and we also have a step detector that can be abled or disabled. The grv data are processed and directly linked to the bones of the 3D model, and, along with the data of lacc and step detector, they are also used to perform the calculations of displacements and other variables shown on the graphical user interface. Our user interface was designed to calculate and present variables that are important for rehabilitation and sports, such as cadence, speed, total gait cycle, gait cycle length, obliquity and rotation, and center of gravity displacement. Our goal is to present a low-cost portable and wearable system with a friendly interface for application in biomechanics and sports, which also performs as a product of high precision and low consumption of energy.

Keywords: biomechanics, inertial sensors, motion capture, rehabilitation

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Authors: Roberto Rosenhaim, Marcos Antonio Crus Moreira, Robson da Cunha, Gerson Gomes Cunha

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This work provides details on the wind speed behavior within cities of Arraial do Cabo and São Pedro da Aldeia located in the Lakes Region of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This region has one of the best potentials for wind power generation. In interurban layer, wind conditions are very complex and depend on physical geography, size and orientation of buildings and constructions around, population density, and land use. In the same context, the fundamental surface parameter that governs the production of flow turbulence in urban canyons is the surface roughness. Such factors can influence the potential for power generation from the wind within the cities. Moreover, the use of wind on a small scale is not fully utilized due to complexity of wind flow measurement inside the cities. It is difficult to accurately predict this type of resource. This study demonstrates how fuzzy logic can facilitate the assessment of the complexity of the wind potential inside the cities. It presents a decision support tool and its ability to deal with inaccurate information using linguistic variables created by the heuristic method. It relies on the already published studies about the variables that influence the wind speed in the urban environment. These variables were turned into the verbal expressions that are used in computer system, which facilitated the establishment of rules for fuzzy inference and integration with an application for smartphones used in the research. In the first part of the study, challenges of the sustainable development which are described are followed by incentive policies to the use of renewable energy in Brazil. The next chapter follows the study area characteristics and the concepts of fuzzy logic. Data were collected in field experiment by using qualitative and quantitative methods for assessment. As a result, a map of the various points is presented within the cities studied with its wind viability evaluated by a system of decision support using the method multivariate classification based on fuzzy logic.

Keywords: behavior of winds, wind power, fuzzy logic, sustainable development

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Authors: Rehan Ullah

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The primary purpose of the study is to observe the relationship that exists between the organizational information technology (IT) capabilities and the organizational performance in China and Pakistan. Nations like China and Pakistan utilize modern techno-how to enhance their production endeavors. Therefore, making a wide-ranging comparison of the manufacturing services between China and Pakistan was chosen due to numerous reasons. One reason for carrying out this comparison is to determine how IT of the two countries enhances organizational competency on small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs). The study hypothesized that organizational IT capabilities (IT infrastructure, IT competence) have a positive influence on organizational performance and the strategic benefits of IT have a mediating effect on the relationship between IT capability and organizational performance. To investigate the relationship between IT capabilities and organizational performance, surveys were sent to managers of small, medium-sized manufacturing organizations located in the southwestern region, Sichuan province of China, and Pakistani companies, which are located in Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi. These cities were selected as typical representatives of each country. Organizational performance has been measured in terms of profitability, organizational success, growth, market share, and innovativeness. Out of 400 surveys distributed to different manufacturing organizations, 303 usable and valid responses were received that are analyzed in this research. The data were examined using SPSS and Smart PLS computer software. The results of the study, including the descriptive statistics of each variable, are used. The outer model has been measured with considerations to content validity, discriminant validity, and convergent validity. The path coefficients among the constructs were also computed when analyzing the structural model using the bootstrapping technique. The analysis of data from both China and Pakistan yields an identical but unique result. The results show that IT infrastructure, IT competence, strategic benefits of IT are all correlated to the performance of the organizations. Moreover, strategic benefits of IT have been proved to mediate the relationship between IT capabilities and organization performance. The author, concerning the role of IT on the performance of an organization, highlights the different aspects as well as its benefits in an organization. The overall study concludes several implications for both managers and academicians. It also provides the limitations of the study and offers recommendations for future studies and practice.

Keywords: organizational performance, IT capabilities, IT infrastructure, IT competence, strategic benefits of IT, China, Pakistan

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Authors: A. Schander, T. Tessmann, H. Stemmann, S. Strokov, A. Kreiter, W. Lang

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For the chronic application of neural prostheses and other brain-computer interfaces, long-term stable microelectrodes for electrical stimulation are essential. In recent years many developments were done to investigate different appropriate materials for these electrodes. One of these materials is the electrical conductive polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT), which has lower impedance and higher charge injection capacity compared to noble metals like gold and platinum. However the long-term stability of this polymer is still unclear. Thus this paper reports on the in-vitro evaluation of the long-term stability of PEDOT coated gold microelectrodes. For this purpose a highly flexible electrocorticography (ECoG) electrode array, based on the polymer polyimide, is used. This array consists of circular gold electrodes with a diameter of 560 µm (0.25 mm2). In total 25 electrodes of this array were coated simultaneously with the polymer PEDOT:PSS in a cleanroom environment using a galvanostatic electropolymerization process. After the coating the array is additionally sterilized using a steam sterilization process (121°C, 1 bar, 20.5 min) to simulate autoclaving prior to the implantation of such an electrode array. The long-term measurements were performed in phosphate-buffered saline solution (PBS, pH 7.4) at the constant body temperature of 37°C. For the in-vitro electrical stimulation a one channel bipolar current stimulator is used. The stimulation protocol consists of a bipolar current amplitude of 5 mA (cathodal phase first), a pulse duration of 100 µs per phase, a pulse pause of 50 µs and a frequency of 1 kHz. A PEDOT:PSS coated gold electrode with an area of 1 cm2 serves as the counter electrode. The electrical stimulation is performed continuously with a total amount of 86.4 million bipolar current pulses per day. The condition of the PEDOT coated electrodes is monitored in between with electrical impedance spectroscopy measurements. The results of this study demonstrate that the PEDOT coated electrodes are stable for more than 3.6 billion bipolar current pulses. Also the unstimulated electrodes show currently no degradation after the time period of 5 months. These results indicate an appropriate long-term stability of this electrode coating for chronic recording and electrical stimulation. The long-term measurements are still continuing to investigate the life limit of this electrode coating.

Keywords: chronic recording, electrical stimulation, long-term stability, microelectrodes, PEDOT

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Authors: Vinko Lešić, Mario Vašak, Anita Martinčević, Marko Gulin, Antonio Starčić, Hrvoje Novak

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With 40% of total world energy consumption, building systems are developing into technically complex large energy consumers suitable for application of sophisticated power management approaches to largely increase the energy efficiency and even make them active energy market participants. Centralized control system of building heating and cooling managed by economically-optimal model predictive control shows promising results with estimated 30% of energy efficiency increase. The research is focused on implementation of such a method on a case study performed on two floors of our faculty building with corresponding sensors wireless data acquisition, remote heating/cooling units and central climate controller. Building walls are mathematically modeled with corresponding material types, surface shapes and sizes. Models are then exploited to predict thermal characteristics and changes in different building zones. Exterior influences such as environmental conditions and weather forecast, people behavior and comfort demands are all taken into account for deriving price-optimal climate control. Finally, a DC microgrid with photovoltaics, wind turbine, supercapacitor, batteries and fuel cell stacks is added to make the building a unit capable of active participation in a price-varying energy market. Computational burden of applying model predictive control on such a complex system is relaxed through a hierarchical decomposition of the microgrid and climate control, where the former is designed as higher hierarchical level with pre-calculated price-optimal power flows control, and latter is designed as lower level control responsible to ensure thermal comfort and exploit the optimal supply conditions enabled by microgrid energy flows management. Such an approach is expected to enable the inclusion of more complex building subsystems into consideration in order to further increase the energy efficiency.

Keywords: price-optimal building climate control, Microgrid power flow optimisation, hierarchical model predictive control, energy efficient buildings, energy market participation

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Authors: Epameinondas Xanthakis, Erik Kaunisto, Alain Le-Bail, Lilia Ahrné

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Fruits and vegetables are characterized as perishable food matrices due to their short shelf life as several deterioration mechanisms are being involved. Prior to the common preservation methods like freezing or canning, fruits and vegetables are being blanched in order to inactivate deteriorative enzymes. Both conventional blanching pretreatments and conventional freezing methods hide drawbacks behind their beneficial impacts on the preservation of those matrices. Conventional blanching methods may require longer processing times, leaching of minerals and nutrients due to the contact with the warm water which in turn leads to effluent production with large BOD. An important issue of freezing technologies is the size of the formed ice crystals which is also critical for the final quality of the frozen food as it can cause irreversible damage to the cellular structure and subsequently to degrade the texture and the colour of the product. Herein, the developed microwave blanching methodology and the results regarding quality aspects and enzyme inactivation will be presented. Moreover, heat transfer phenomena, mass balance, temperature distribution, and enzyme inactivation (such as Pectin Methyl Esterase and Ascorbic Acid Oxidase) of our microwave blanching approach will be evaluated based on measurements and computer modelling. The present work is part of the COLDμWAVE project which aims to the development of an innovative environmentally sustainable process for blanching and freezing of fruits and vegetables with improved textural and nutritional quality. In this context, COLDµWAVE will develop tailored equipment for MW blanching of vegetables that has very high energy efficiency and no water consumption. Furthermore, the next steps of this project regarding the development of innovative pathways in MW assisted freezing to improve the quality of frozen vegetables, by exploring in depth previous results acquired by the authors, will be presented. The application of MW assisted freezing process on fruits and vegetables it is expected to lead to improved quality characteristics compared to the conventional freezing. Acknowledgments: COLDμWAVE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grand agreement No 660067.

Keywords: blanching, freezing, fruits, microwave blanching, microwave

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Authors: E. A. Krasikov

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As the service life of an operating nuclear power plant (NPP) increases, the potential misunderstanding of the degradation of aging components must receive more attention. Integrity assurance analysis contributes to the effective maintenance of adequate plant safety margins. In essence, the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) is the key structural component determining the NPP lifetime. Environmentally induced cracking in the stainless steel corrosion-preventing cladding of RPV’s has been recognized to be one of the technical problems in the maintenance and development of light-water reactors. Extensive cracking leading to failure of the cladding was found after 13000 net hours of operation in JPDR (Japan Power Demonstration Reactor). Some of the cracks have reached the base metal and further penetrated into the RPV in the form of localized corrosion. Failures of reactor internal components in both boiling water reactors and pressurized water reactors have increased after the accumulation of relatively high neutron fluences (5´1020 cm–2, E>0,5MeV). Therefore, in the case of cladding failure, the problem arises of hydrogen (as a corrosion product) embrittlement of irradiated RPV steel because of exposure to the coolant. At present when notable progress in plasma physics has been obtained practical energy utilization from fusion reactors (FR) is determined by the state of material science problems. The last includes not only the routine problems of nuclear engineering but also a number of entirely new problems connected with extreme conditions of materials operation – irradiation environment, hydrogenation, thermocycling, etc. Limiting data suggest that the combined effect of these factors is more severe than any one of them alone. To clarify the possible influence of the in-service synergistic phenomena on the FR structural materials properties we have studied hydrogen-irradiated steel interaction including alternating hydrogenation and heat treatment (annealing). Available information indicates that the life of the first wall could be expanded by means of periodic in-place annealing. The effects of neutron fluence and irradiation temperature on steel/hydrogen interactions (adsorption, desorption, diffusion, mechanical properties at different loading velocities, post-irradiation annealing) were studied. Experiments clearly reveal that the higher the neutron fluence and the lower the irradiation temperature, the more hydrogen-radiation defects occur, with corresponding effects on the steel mechanical properties. Hydrogen accumulation analyses and thermal desorption investigations were performed to prove the evidence of hydrogen trapping at irradiation defects. Extremely high susceptibility to hydrogen embrittlement was observed with specimens which had been irradiated at relatively low temperature. However, the susceptibility decreases with increasing irradiation temperature. To evaluate methods for the RPV’s residual lifetime evaluation and prediction, more work should be done on the irradiated metal–hydrogen interaction in order to monitor more reliably the status of irradiated materials.

Keywords: hydrogen, radiation, stability, structural steel

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Authors: Petra Gruber, Ariana Rupp, Peter Niewiarowski

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This paper presents a concept for a biomimetic fablab as a physical space for education, research and development of innovation inspired by nature. Biomimetics as a discipline finds increasing recognition in academia and has started to be institutionalized at universities in programs and centers. The Biomimicry Research and Innovation Center was founded in 2012 at the University of Akron as an interdisciplinary venture for the advancement of innovation inspired by nature and is part of a larger community fostering the approach of bioimimicry in the Great Lakes region of the US. With 30 faculty members the center has representatives from Colleges of Arts and Sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, geoscience, and philosophy) Engineering (e.g., mechanical, civil, and biomedical), Polymer Science, and Myers School of Arts. A platform for training PhDs in Biomimicry (17 students currently enrolled) is co-funded by educational institutions and industry partners. Research at the center touches on many areas but is also currently biased towards materials and structures, with highlights being materials based on principles found in spider silk and gecko attachment mechanisms. As biomimetics is also a novel scientific discipline, there is little standardisation in programming and the equipment of research facilities. As a field targeting innovation, design and prototyping processes are fundamental parts of the developments. For experimental design and prototyping, MIT's maker space concept seems to fit well to the requirements, but facilities need to be more specialised in terms of accessing biological systems and knowledge, specific research, production or conservation requirements. For the education and research facility BRIC we conceptualize the concept of a biomimicry fablab, that ties into the existing maker space concept and creates the setting for interdisciplinary research and development carried out in the program. The concept takes on the process of biomimetics as a guideline to define core activities that shall be enhanced by the allocation of specific spaces and tools. The limitations of such a facility and the intersections to further specialised labs housed in the classical departments are of special interest. As a preliminary proof of concept two biomimetic design courses carried out in 2016 are investigated in terms of needed tools and infrastructure. The spring course was a problem based biomimetic design challenge in collaboration with an innovation company interested in product design for assisted living and medical devices. The fall course was a solution based biomimetic design course focusing on order and hierarchy in nature with the goal of finding meaningful translations into art and technology. The paper describes the background of the BRIC center, identifies and discusses the process of biomimetics, evaluates the classical maker space concept and explores how these elements can shape the proposed research facility of a biomimetic fablab by examining two examples of design courses held in 2016.

Keywords: biomimetics, biomimicry, design, biomimetic fablab

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Authors: Anastasia Tsakiridi

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Geographic information systems (GIS) have been utilized in numerous spatial problems, such as site research, land suitability, and demographic analysis. Besides, GIS has been applied in scientific fields like geography, health, and economics. In business studies, GIS has been used to provide insights and spatial perspectives in demographic trends, spending indicators, and network analysis. To date, the information regarding the available usages of GIS in supply chain management (SCM) and how these analyses can benefit businesses is limited. A systematic literature review (SLR) of the last 5-year peer-reviewed academic literature was conducted, aiming to explore the existing usages of GIS in SCM. The searches were performed in 3 databases (Web of Science, ProQuest, and Business Source Premier) and reported using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology. The analysis resulted in 79 papers. The results indicate that the existing GIS applications used in SCM were in the following domains: a) network/ transportation analysis (in 53 of the papers), b) location – allocation site search/ selection (multiple-criteria decision analysis) (in 45 papers), c) spatial analysis (demographic or physical) (in 34 papers), d) combination of GIS and supply chain/network optimization tools (in 32 papers), and e) visualization/ monitoring or building information modeling applications (in 8 papers). An additional categorization of the literature was conducted by examining the usage of GIS in the supply chain (SC) by the business sectors, as indicated by the volume of the papers. The results showed that GIS is mainly being applied in the SC of the biomass biofuel/wood industry (33 papers). Other industries that are currently utilizing GIS in their SC were the logistics industry (22 papers), the humanitarian/emergency/health care sector (10 papers), the food/agro-industry sector (5 papers), the petroleum/ coal/ shale gas sector (3 papers), the faecal sludge sector (2 papers), the recycle and product footprint industry (2 papers), and the construction sector (2 papers). The results were also presented by the geography of the included studies and the GIS software used to provide critical business insights and suggestions for future research. The results showed that research case studies of GIS in SCM were conducted in 26 countries (mainly in the USA) and that the most prominent GIS software provider was the Environmental Systems Research Institute’s ArcGIS (in 51 of the papers). This study is a systematic literature review of the usage of GIS in SCM. The results showed that the GIS capabilities could offer substantial benefits in SCM decision-making by providing key insights to cost minimization, supplier selection, facility location, SC network configuration, and asset management. However, as presented in the results, only eight industries/sectors are currently using GIS in their SCM activities. These findings may offer essential tools to SC managers who seek to optimize the SC activities and/or minimize logistic costs and to consultants and business owners that want to make strategic SC decisions. Furthermore, the findings may be of interest to researchers aiming to investigate unexplored research areas where GIS may improve SCM.

Keywords: supply chain management, logistics, systematic literature review, GIS

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Authors: Areej Al-Khabbaz, Swapna Goerge, Majedah Abdul-Rasoul

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Introduction: The most prevalent periodontal disease among children is gingivitis, and it usually becomes more severe in adolescence. A number of intervention studies suggested that resolution of periodontal inflammation can improve metabolic control in patients diagnosed with diabetes mellitus. Aim: to assess the effect of non-surgical periodontal therapy on glycemic control of children diagnosed with diabetes mellitus. Method: Twenty-eight children diagnosed with diabetes mellitus were recruited with established diagnosis diabetes for at least 1 year. Informed consent and child assent form were obtained from children and parents prior to enrolment. The dental examination for the participants was performed on the same week directly following their annual medical assessment. All patients had their glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c%) test one week prior to their annual medical and dental visit and 3 months following non-surgical periodontal therapy. All patients received a comprehensive periodontal examination The periodontal assessment included clinical attachment loss, bleeding on probing, plaque score, plaque index and gingival index. All patients were referred for non-surgical periodontal therapy, which included oral hygiene instruction and motivation followed by supra-gingival and subg-ingival scaling using ultrasonic and hand instruments. Statistical Analysis: Data were entered and analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science software (SPSS, Chicago, USA), version 18. Statistical analysis of clinical findings was performed to detect differences between the two groups in term of periodontal findings and HbA1c%. Binary logistic regression analysis was performed in order to examine which factors were significant in multivariate analysis after adjusting for confounding between effects. The regression model used the dependent variable ‘Improved glycemic control’, and the independent variables entered in the model were plaque index, gingival index, bleeding %, plaque Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05. Result: A total of 28 children. The mean age of the participants was 13.3±1.92 years. The study participants were divided into two groups; Compliant group (received dental scaling) and non-complaints group (received oral hygiene instructions only). No statistical difference was found between compliant and non-compliant group in age, gender distribution, oral hygiene practice and the level of diabetes control. There was a significant difference between compliant and non-compliant group in term of improvement of HBa1c before and after periodontal therapy. Mean gingival index was the only significant variable associated with improved glycemic control level. In conclusion, this study has demonstrated that non-surgical mechanical periodontal therapy can improve HbA1c% control. The result of this study confirmed that children with diabetes mellitus who are compliant to dental care and have routine professional scaling may have better metabolic control compared to diabetic children who are erratic with dental care.

Keywords: children, diabetes, metabolic control, periodontal therapy

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Authors: Shuang Luo, Er-Xiang Song

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Many problems in geotechnical engineering, such as foundation deformation, groundwater seepage, seismic wave propagation and geothermal transfer problems, may involve analysis in the ground which can be seen as extending to infinity. To that end, consideration has to be given regarding how to deal with the unbounded domain to be analyzed by using numerical methods, such as finite element method (FEM), finite difference method (FDM) or finite volume method (FVM). A simple artificial boundary approach derived from the analytical solutions for transient radial seepage problems, is introduced. It should be noted, however, that the analytical solutions used to derive the artificial boundary are particular solutions under certain boundary conditions, such as constant hydraulic head at the origin or constant pumping rate of the well. When dealing with unbounded domains with unsteady boundary conditions, a more sophisticated artificial boundary approach to deal with the infinity of the domain is presented. By applying Laplace transforms and introducing some specially defined auxiliary variables, the global artificial boundary conditions (ABCs) are simplified to local ones so that the computational efficiency is enhanced significantly. The introduced two local ABCs are implemented in a finite element computer program so that various seepage problems can be calculated. The two approaches are first verified by the computation of a one-dimensional radial flow problem, and then tentatively applied to more general two-dimensional cylindrical problems and plane problems. Numerical calculations show that the local ABCs can not only give good results for one-dimensional axisymmetric transient flow, but also applicable for more general problems, such as axisymmetric two-dimensional cylindrical problems, and even more general planar two-dimensional flow problems for well doublet and well groups. An important advantage of the latter local boundary is its applicability for seepage under rapidly changing unsteady boundary conditions, and even the computational results on the truncated boundary are usually quite satisfactory. In this aspect, it is superior over the former local boundary. Simulation of relatively long operational time demonstrates to certain extents the numerical stability of the local boundary. The solutions of the two local ABCs are compared with each other and with those obtained by using large element mesh, which proves the satisfactory performance and obvious superiority over the large mesh model.

Keywords: transient seepage, unbounded domain, artificial boundary condition, numerical simulation

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Authors: Hyppolite Aignon, Souleymane Yorou, Martin Ryberg, Anneli Svanholm

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Climate change and human actions cause the extinction of wild mushrooms. In Benin, the diversity of fungi is large and may still contain species new to science but the inventory effort remains low and focuses on particularly edible species (Russula, Lactarius, Lactifluus, and also Amanita). In addition, inventories have started recently and some groups of fungi are not sufficiently sampled, however, the degradation of fungal habitat continues to increase and some species are already disappearing. (Yorou and De Kesel, 2011), however, the degradation of fungi habitat continues to increase and some species may disappear without being known. This genus (Inocybe) overlooked has a worldwide distribution and includes more than 700 species with many undiscovered or poorly known species worldwide and particularly in tropical Africa. It is therefore important to orient the inventory to other genera or important families such as Inocybe (Fungi, Agaricales) in order to highlight their diversity and also to know their phylogenetic positions with a combined approach of gene regions. This study aims to evaluate the species richness and phylogenetic position of Inocybe species and affiliated taxa in West Africa. Thus, in North Benin, we visited the Forest Reserve of Ouémé Supérieur, the Okpara forest and the Alibori Supérieur Forest Reserve. In the center, we targeted the Forest Reserve of Toui-Kilibo. The surveys have been carried during the raining season in the study area meaning from June to October. A total of 24 taxa were collected, photographed and described. The DNA was extracted, the Polymerase Chain Reaction was carried out using primers (ITS1-F, ITS4-B) for Internal transcribed spacer (ITS), (LROR, LWRB, LR7, LR5) for nuclear ribosomal (LSU), (RPB2-f5F, RPB2-b6F, RPB2- b6R2, RPB2-b7R) for RNA polymerase II gene (RPB2) and sequenced. The ITS sequences of the 24 collections of Inocybaceae were edited in Staden and all the sequences were aligned and edited with Aliview v1.17. The sequences were examined by eye for sufficient similarity to be considered the same species. 13 different species were present in the collections. In addition, sequences similar to the ITS sequences of the thirteen final species were searched using BLAST. The nLSU and RPB2 markers for these species have been inserted in a complete alignment, where species from all major Inocybaceae clades as well as from all continents except Antarctica are present. Our new sequences for nLSU and RPB2 have been manually aligned in this dataset. Phylogenetic analysis was performed using the RAxML v7.2.6 maximum likelihood software. Bootstrap replications have been set to 100 and no partitioning of the dataset has been performed. The resulting tree was viewed and edited with FigTree v1.4.3. The preliminary tree resulting from the analysis of maximum likelihood shows us that these species coming from Benin are much diversified and are distributed in four different clades (Inosperma, Inocybe, Mallocybe and Pseudosperma) on the seven clades of Inocybaceae but the phylogeny position of 7 is currently known. This study marks the diversity of Inocybe in Benin and the investigations will continue and a protection plan will be developed in the coming years.

Keywords: Benin, diversity, Inocybe, phylogeny placement

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Authors: Raúl Jiménez Vilches

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Native (L1) speakers can mark prosodically one part of an utterance and make it more relevant as opposed to the rest of the constituents. Conversely, non-native (L2) speakers encounter problems when it comes to marking prosodically information structure in English. In fact, the L2 speaker’s choice for the prosodic realization of focus is not so clear and often obscures the intended pragmatic meaning and the communicative value in general. This paper reports some of the findings obtained in an L2 prosodic training course for Spanish learners of English within the context of public speaking. More specifically, it analyses the effects of the course experiment in relation to the non-native production of the tonic syllable to mark focus and compares it with the public speeches delivered by native English speakers. The whole experimental training was executed throughout eighteen input sessions (1,440 minutes total time) and all the sessions took place in the classroom. In particular, the first part of the course provided explicit instruction on the recognition and production of the tonic syllable and how the tonic syllable is used to express focus. The non-native and native oral presentations were acoustically analyzed using Praat software for speech analysis (7,356 words in total). The investigation adopted mixed and embedded methodologies. Quantitative information is needed when measuring acoustically the phonetic realization of focus. Qualitative data such as questionnaires, interviews, and observations were also used to interpret the quantitative data. The embedded experiment design was implemented through the analysis of the public speeches before and after the intervention. Results indicate that, even after the L2 prosodic training course, Spanish learners of English still show some major inconsistencies in marking focus effectively. Although there was occasional improvement regarding the choice for location and word classes, Spanish learners were, in general, far from achieving similar results to the ones obtained by the English native speakers in the two types of focus. The prosodic realization of focus seems to be one of the hardest areas of the English prosodic system to be mastered by Spanish learners. A funded research project is in the process of moving the present classroom-based experiment to an online environment (mobile app) and determining whether there is a more effective focus usage through CAPT (Computer-Assisted Pronunciation) tools.

Keywords: focus, prosody, public speaking, Spanish learners of English

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Authors: Filip Varga, Nina Jeran, Martina Biosic, Zlatko Satovic, Martina Grdisa

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Dalmatian pyrethrum (Tanacetum cinerariifolium /Trevir./ Sch. Bip.), a species endemic to the eastern Adriatic coastline, is the source of natural insecticide pyrethrin. Pyrethrin is a mixture of six compounds (pyrethrin I and II, cinerin I and II, jasmolin I and II) that exhibits high insecticidal activity with no detrimental effects to the environment. A recently optimized matrix-solid phase dispersion method (MSPD), using florisil as the sorbent, acetone-ethyl acetate (1:1, v/v) as the elution solvent, and sodium sulfate anhydrous as the drying agent was utilized to extract the pyrethrins from 10 wild populations (20 individuals per population) distributed along the Croatian coast. All six components in the extracts were qualitatively and quantitatively determined by high-performance liquid chromatography with a diode array detector (HPLC-DAD). Pearson’s correlation index was calculated between pyrethrin compounds, and differences between the populations using the analysis of variance were tested. Additionally, the correlation of each pyrethrin component with spatio-ecological variables (bioclimate, soil properties, elevation, solar radiation, and distance from the coastline) was calculated. Total pyrethrin content ranged from 0.10% to 1.35% of dry flower weight, averaging 0.58% across all individuals. Analysis of variance revealed significant differences between populations based on all six pyrethrin compounds and total pyrethrin content. On average, the lowest total pyrethrin content was found in the population from Pelješac peninsula (0.22% of dry flower weight) in which total pyrethrin content lower than 0.18% was detected in 55% of the individuals. The highest average total pyrethrin content was observed in the population from island Zlarin (0.87% of dry flower weight), in which total pyrethrin content higher than 1.00% was recorded in only 30% of the individuals. Pyrethrin I/pyrethrin II ratio as a measure of extract quality ranged from 0.21 (population from the island Čiovo) to 5.88 (population from island Mali Lošinj) with an average of 1.77 across all individuals. By far, the lowest quality of extracts was found in the population from Mt. Biokovo (pyrethrin I/II ratio lower than 0.72 in 40% of individuals) due to the high pyrethrin II content typical for this population. Pearson’s correlation index revealed a highly significant positive correlation between pyrethrin I content and total pyrethrin content and a strong negative correlation between pyrethrin I and pyrethrin II. The results of this research clearly indicate high intra- and interpopulation diversity of Dalmatian pyrethrum with regards to pyrethrin content and composition. The information obtained has potential use in plant genetic resources conservation and biodiversity monitoring. Possibly the largest potential lies in designing breeding programs aimed at increasing pyrethrin content in commercial breeding lines and reintroduction in agriculture in Croatia. Acknowledgment: This work has been fully supported by the Croatian Science Foundation under the project ‘Genetic background of Dalmatian pyrethrum (Tanacetum cinerariifolium /Trevir/ Sch. Bip.) insecticidal potential’ - (PyrDiv) (IP-06-2016-9034).

Keywords: Dalmatian pyrethrum, HPLC, MSPD, pyrethrin

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Authors: Armen Grigoryan, Milena Arakelyan

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The idea of smart logistics is still quite a complicated one. It can be used to market products to a large number of customers or to acquire raw materials of the highest quality at the lowest cost in geographically dispersed areas. The use of smart contracts in logistics and supply chain management has the potential to revolutionize the way that goods are tracked, transported, and managed. Smart contracts are simply computer programs written in one of the blockchain programming languages (Solidity, Rust, Vyper), which are capable of self-execution once the predetermined conditions are met. They can be used to automate and streamline many of the traditional manual processes that are currently used in logistics and supply chain management, including the tracking and movement of goods, the management of inventory, and the facilitation of payments and settlements between different parties in the supply chain. Currently, logistics is a core area for companies which is concerned with transporting products between parties. Still, the problem of this sector is that its scale may lead to detainments and defaults in the delivery of goods, as well as other issues. Moreover, large distributors require a large number of workers to meet all the needs of their stores. All this may contribute to big detainments in order processing and increases the potentiality of losing orders. In an attempt to break this problem, companies have automated all their procedures, contributing to a significant augmentation in the number of businesses and distributors in the logistics sector. Hence, blockchain technology and smart contracted legal agreements seem to be suitable concepts to redesign and optimize collaborative business processes and supply chains. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the scope of blockchain technology and smart contracts in the field of logistics and supply chain management. This study discusses the research question of how and to which extent smart contracts and blockchain technology can facilitate and improve the implementation of collaborative business structures for sustainable entrepreneurial activities in smart supply chains. The intention is to provide a comprehensive overview of the existing research on the use of smart contracts in logistics and supply chain management and to identify any gaps or limitations in the current knowledge on this topic. This review aims to provide a summary and evaluation of the key findings and themes that emerge from the research, as well as to suggest potential directions for future research on the use of smart contracts in logistics and supply chain management.

Keywords: smart contracts, smart logistics, smart supply chain management, blockchain and smart contracts in logistics, smart contracts for controlling supply chain management

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Authors: Constanza Levicán, Andrés Aparicio, Rodrigo F. Cádiz

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The artistic usage of Brain-computer interfaces (BCI), initially intended for medical purposes, has increased in the past few years as they become more affordable and available for the general population. One interesting question that arises from this practice is whether it is possible to compose or perform music by using only the brain as a musical instrument. In order to approach this question, we propose a BCI for musical composition, based on the representation of some mental states as the musician thinks about sounds. We developed software, called Insight2OSC, that allows the usage of the Emotiv Insight device as a musical instrument, by sending the EEG data to audio processing software such as MaxMSP through the OSC protocol. We provide two compositional applications bundled with the software, which we call Mapping your Mental State and Thinking On. The signals produced by the brain have different frequencies (or rhythms) depending on the level of activity, and they are classified as one of the following waves: delta (0.5-4 Hz), theta (4-8 Hz), alpha (8-13 Hz), beta (13-30 Hz), gamma (30-50 Hz). These rhythms have been found to be related to some recognizable mental states. For example, the delta rhythm is predominant in a deep sleep, while beta and gamma rhythms have higher amplitudes when the person is awake and very concentrated. Our first application (Mapping your Mental State) produces different sounds representing the mental state of the person: focused, active, relaxed or in a state similar to a deep sleep by the selection of the dominants rhythms provided by the EEG device. The second application relies on the physiology of the brain, which is divided into several lobes: frontal, temporal, parietal and occipital. The frontal lobe is related to abstract thinking and high-level functions, the parietal lobe conveys the stimulus of the body senses, the occipital lobe contains the primary visual cortex and processes visual stimulus, the temporal lobe processes auditory information and it is important for memory tasks. In consequence, our second application (Thinking On) processes the audio output depending on the users’ brain activity as it activates a specific area of the brain that can be measured using the Insight device.

Keywords: BCI, music composition, emotiv insight, OSC

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Authors: Christopher Benedikt Jakob

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In our current society, there is no need to take a look at the wristwatch to know the exact time. Smartphones, the watch in the car or the computer watch, inform us about the time too. Over hundreds of years, luxury watches have held a fascination for human beings. Consumers buy watches that cost thousands of euros, although they could buy much cheaper watches which also fulfill the function to indicate the correct time. This shows that the functional value has got a minor meaning with reference to the buying-reasons as regards luxury watches. For a few years, people have an increased demand to track data like their walking distance per day or to track their sleep for example. Smart watches enable consumers to get information about these data. There exists a trend that people intend to optimise parts of their social life, and thus they get the impression that they are able to optimise themselves as human beings. With the help of smart watches, they are able to optimise parts of their productivity and to realise their targets at the same time. These smart watches are also offered as luxury models, and the question is: how will customers of traditional luxury watches react? Therefore this study has the intention to give answers to the question why people are willing to spend an enormous amount of money on the consumption of luxury watches. The self-expression model, the relationship basis model, the functional benefit representation model and the means-end-theory are chosen as an appropriate methodology to find reasons why human beings purchase specific luxury watches and luxury smart watches. This evaluative approach further discusses these strategies concerning for example if consumers buy luxury watches/smart watches to express the current self or the ideal self and if human beings make decisions on expected results. The research critically evaluates that relationships are compared on the basis of their advantages. Luxury brands offer socio-emotional advantages like social functions of identification and that the strong brand personality of luxury watches and luxury smart watches helps customers to structure and retrieve brand awareness which simplifies the process of decision-making. One of the goals is to identify if customers know why they like specific luxury watches and dislike others although they are produced in the same country and cost comparable prices. It is very obvious that the market for luxury watches especially for luxury smart watches is changing way faster than it has been in the past. Therefore the research examines the market changing parameters in detail.

Keywords: buying-behaviour, brand management, consumer, luxury watch, smart watch

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Authors: Gabriela Wyszogrodzka, Przemyslaw Dorozynski, Barbara Gil, Maciej Strzempek, Bartosz Marszalek, Piotr Kulinowski, Wladyslaw Piotr Weglarz, Elzbieta Menaszek

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MOFs (Metal-Organic Frameworks) belong to a new group of porous materials with a hybrid organic-inorganic construction. Their structure is a network consisting of metal cations or clusters (acting as metallic centers, nodes) and the organic linkers between nodes. The interest in MOFs is primarily associated with the use of their well-developed surface and large porous. Possibility to build MOFs of biocompatible components let to use them as potential drug carriers. Furthermore, forming MOFs structure from cations possessing paramagnetic properties (e.g. iron cations) allows to use them as MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) contrast agents. The concept of formation of particles that combine the ability to transfer active substance with imaging properties has been called theranostic (from words combination therapy and diagnostics). By building MOF structure from iron cations it is possible to use them as theranostic agents and monitoring the distribution of the active substance after administration in real time. In the study iron-MOF: Fe-MIL-101-NH2 was chosen, consisting of iron cluster in nodes of the structure and amino-terephthalic acid as a linker. The aim of the study was to investigate the possibility of applying Fe-MIL-101-NH2 as inhalable theranostic particulate system for the first-line anti-tuberculosis antibiotic – isoniazid. The drug content incorporated into Fe-MIL-101-NH2 was evaluated by dissolution study using spectrophotometric method. Results showed isoniazid encapsulation efficiency – ca. 12.5% wt. Possibility of Fe-MIL-101-NH2 application as the MRI contrast agent was demonstrated by magnetic resonance tomography. FeMIL-101-NH2 effectively shortening T1 and T2 relaxation times (increasing R1 and R2 relaxation rates) linearly with the concentrations of suspended material. Images obtained using multi-echo magnetic resonance imaging sequence revealed possibility to use FeMIL-101-NH2 as positive and negative contrasts depending on applied repetition time. MOFs micronization via ultrasound was evaluated by XRD, nitrogen adsorption, FTIR, SEM imaging and did not influence their crystal shape and size. Ultrasonication let to break the aggregates and achieve very homogeneously looking SEM images. MOFs cytotoxicity was evaluated in in vitro test with a highly sensitive resazurin based reagent PrestoBlue™ on L929 fibroblast cell line. After 24h no inhibition of cell proliferation was observed. All results proved potential possibility of application of ironMOFs as an isoniazid carrier and as MRI contrast agent in inhalatory treatment of tuberculosis. Acknowledgments: Authors gratefully acknowledge the National Science Center Poland for providing financial support, grant no 2014/15/B/ST5/04498.

Keywords: imaging agents, metal-organic frameworks, theranostics, tuberculosis

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Authors: Alexandra Tucaliuc, Alexandra C. Blaga, Anca I. Galaction, Lenuta Kloetzer, Dan Cascaval

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Ergosterol (ergosta-5,7,22-trien-3β-ol), also known as provitamin D2, is the precursor of vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol), because it is converted under UV radiation to this vitamin. The natural sources of ergosterol are mainly the yeasts (Saccharomyces sp., Candida sp.), but it can be also found in fungus (Claviceps sp.) or plants (orchids). In the yeasts cells, ergosterol is accumulated in membranes, especially in free form in the plasma membrane, but also as esters with fatty acids in membrane lipids. The chemical synthesis of ergosterol does not represent an efficient method for its production, in these circumstances, the most attractive alternative for producing ergosterol at larger-scale remains the aerobic fermentation using S. cerevisiae on glucose or by-products from agriculture of food industry as substrates, in batch or fed-batch operating systems. The aim of this work is to analyze comparatively the influence of aeration efficiency on ergosterol production by S. cerevisiae in batch and fed-batch fermentations, by considering different levels of mixing intensity, aeration rate, and n-dodecane concentration. The effects of the studied factors are quantitatively described by means of the mathematical correlations proposed for each of the two fermentation systems, valid both for the absence and presence of oxygen-vector inside the broth. The experiments were carried out in a laboratory stirred bioreactor, provided with computer-controlled and recorded parameters. n-Dodecane was used as oxygen-vector and the ergosterol content inside the yeasts cells has been considered at the fermentation moment related to the maximum concentration of ergosterol, 9 hrs for batch process and 20 hrs for fed-batch one. Ergosterol biosynthesis is strongly dependent on the dissolved oxygen concentration. The hydrocarbon concentration exhibits a significant influence on ergosterol production mainly by accelerating the oxygen transfer rate. Regardless of n-dodecane addition, by maintaining the glucose concentration at a constant level in the fed-batch process, the amount of ergosterol accumulated into the yeasts cells has been almost tripled. In the presence of hydrocarbon, the ergosterol concentration increased by over 50%. The value of oxygen-vector concentration corresponding to the maximum level of ergosterol depends mainly on biomass concentration, due to its negative influences on broth viscosity and interfacial phenomena of air bubbles blockage through the adsorption of hydrocarbon droplets–yeast cells associations. Therefore, for the batch process, the maximum ergosterol amount was reached for 5% vol. n-dodecane, while for the fed-batch process for 10% vol. hydrocarbon.

Keywords: bioreactors, ergosterol, fermentation, oxygen-vector

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Authors: Shunyi Yang, Jingjing Yan, Siyu Dong, Xiangguo Cui

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Current architectural façade design practices incorporate various daylighting and solar radiation analysis methods. These emphasize the impact of geometry on façade design. There is scope to extend this knowledge into methods that address material translucency, porosity, and form. Such approaches can also achieve these conditions through adaptive robotic manufacturing approaches that exploit material dynamics within the design, and alleviate fabrication waste from molds, ultimately accelerating the autonomous manufacturing system. Besides analyzing the environmental solar radiant in building facade design, there is also a vacancy research area of how lighting effects can be precisely controlled by engaging the instant real-time data-driven robot control and manipulating the material properties. Ceramics carries a wide range of transmittance and deformation potentials for robotics control with the research of its material property. This paper presents one semi-autonomous system that engages with real-time data-driven robotics control, hardware kit design, environmental building studies, human interaction, and exploratory research and experiments. Our objectives are to investigate the relationship between different clay bodies or ceramics’ physio-material properties and their transmittance; to explore the feedback system of instant lighting data in robotic fabrication to achieve precise lighting effect; to design the sufficient end effector and robot behaviors for different stages of deformation. We experiment with architectural clay, as the material of the façade that is potentially translucent at a certain stage can respond to light. Studying the relationship between form, material properties, and porosity can help create different interior and exterior light effects and provide façade solutions for specific architectural functions. The key idea is to maximize the utilization of in-progress robotics fabrication and ceramics materiality to create a highly integrated autonomous system for lighting facade design and manufacture.

Keywords: light transmittance, data-driven fabrication, computational design, computer vision, gamification for manufacturing

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Authors: Jonathan Sohn

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Deep neural networks (DNNs) have shown state-of-the-art performance for many applications, including computer vision, natural language processing, and speech recognition. Recently, adversarial attacks have been studied in the context of deep neural networks, which aim to alter the results of deep neural networks by modifying the inputs slightly. For example, an adversarial attack on a DNN used for object detection can cause the DNN to miss certain objects. As a result, the reliability of DNNs is undermined by their lack of robustness against adversarial attacks, raising concerns about their use in safety-critical applications such as autonomous driving. In this paper, we focus on studying the adversarial attacks and defenses on DNNs for image classification. There are two types of adversarial attacks studied which are fast gradient sign method (FGSM) attack and projected gradient descent (PGD) attack. A DNN forms decision boundaries that separate the input images into different categories. The adversarial attack slightly alters the image to move over the decision boundary, causing the DNN to misclassify the image. FGSM attack obtains the gradient with respect to the image and updates the image once based on the gradients to cross the decision boundary. PGD attack, instead of taking one big step, repeatedly modifies the input image with multiple small steps. There is also another type of attack called the target attack. This adversarial attack is designed to make the machine classify an image to a class chosen by the attacker. We can defend against adversarial attacks by incorporating adversarial examples in training. Specifically, instead of training the neural network with clean examples, we can explicitly let the neural network learn from the adversarial examples. In our experiments, the digit recognition accuracy on the MNIST dataset drops from 97.81% to 39.50% and 34.01% when the DNN is attacked by FGSM and PGD attacks, respectively. If we utilize FGSM training as a defense method, the classification accuracy greatly improves from 39.50% to 92.31% for FGSM attacks and from 34.01% to 75.63% for PGD attacks. To further improve the classification accuracy under adversarial attacks, we can also use a stronger PGD training method. PGD training improves the accuracy by 2.7% under FGSM attacks and 18.4% under PGD attacks over FGSM training. It is worth mentioning that both FGSM and PGD training do not affect the accuracy of clean images. In summary, we find that PGD attacks can greatly degrade the performance of DNNs, and PGD training is a very effective way to defend against such attacks. PGD attacks and defence are overall significantly more effective than FGSM methods.

Keywords: deep neural network, adversarial attack, adversarial defense, adversarial machine learning

Procedia PDF Downloads 174

Authors: Olarinde Olaniran, Oluyomi A. Sowemimo

Abstract:

Toxoplasmosis is frequently misdiagnosed or underdiagnosed, and it is the third most common cause of hospitalization due to food-borne infection. Intra-uterine infection with Toxoplasma gondii due to active parasitaemia during pregnancy can cause severe and often fatal cerebral damage, abortion, and stillbirth of a fetus. The aim of the study was to investigate the prevalence of T. gondii infection in women of childbearing age in selected communities of Osun State with a view to determining the risk factors which predispose to the T. gondii infection. Five (5) ml of blood was collected by venopuncture into a plain blood collection tube by a medical laboratory scientist. Serum samples were separated by centrifuging the blood samples at 3000 rpm for 5 mins. The sera were collected with Eppendorf tubes and stored at -20°C analysis for the presence of IgG and IgM antibodies against T. gondii by commercially available enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit (Demeditec Diagnostics GmbH, Germany) conducted according to the manufacturer’s instructions. The optical densities of wells were measured by a photometer at a wavelength of 450 nm. Data collected were analysed using appropriate computer software. The overall seroprevalence of T. gondii among the women of child-bearing age in selected seven communities in Osun state was 76.3%. Out of 76.3% positive for Toxoplasma gondii infection, 70.0% were positive for anti- T. gondii IgG, and 32.3% were positive for IgM, and 26.7% for both IgG and IgM. The prevalence of T. gondii was lowest (58.9%) among women from Ile Ife, a peri-urban community, and highest (100%) in women residing in Alajue, a rural community. The prevalence of infection was significantly higher (P= 0.000) among Islamic women (87.5%) than in Christian women (70.8%). The highest prevalence (86.3%) was recorded in women with primary education, while the lowest (61.2%) was recorded in women with tertiary education (p =0.016). The highest prevalence (79.7%) was recorded in women that reside in rural areas, and the lowest (70.1%) was recorded in women that reside in peri-urban area (p=0.025). The prevalence of T. gondii infection was highest (81.4%) in women with one miscarriage, while the prevalence was lowest in women with no miscarriages (75.9%). The age of the women (p=0.042), Islamic religion (p=0.001), the residence of the women (p=0.001), and water source were all positively associated with T. gondii infection. The study concluded that there was a high seroprevalence of T. gondii recorded among women of child-bearing age in the study area. Hence, there is a need for health education and create awareness of the disease and its transmission to women of reproductive age group in general and pregnant women in particular to reduce the risk of T. gondii in pregnant women.

Keywords: seroepidemiology, Toxoplasma gondii, women, child-bearing, age, communities, Ile -Ife, Nigeria

Procedia PDF Downloads 164

Authors: Sultan Samah A. Alenezi

Abstract:

Many EFL teachers are eager to look into the best way to suit the needs of their students in EFL writing courses. Numerous studies suggest that online blogging may present a social interaction opportunity for EFL writing students. Additionally, it can foster peer collaboration and social support in the form of scaffolding, which, when viewed from the perspective of socio-cultural theory, can boost social support and foster the development of students' writing abilities. This idea is based on Vygotsky's theories, which emphasize how collaboration and social interaction facilitate effective learning. In Saudi Arabia, students are taught to write using conventional methods that are totally under the teacher's control. Without any peer contact or cooperation, students are spoon-fed in a passive environment. This study included the cognitive processes of the genre-process approach into the EFL writing classroom to facilitate the use of internet blogging in EFL writing education. Thirty second-year undergraduate students from the Department of Languages and Translation at a Saudi college participated in this study. This study employed an action research project that blended qualitative and quantitative methodologies to comprehend Saudi students' perceptions and experiences with internet blogging in an EFL process-genre writing classroom. It also looked at the advantages and challenges people faced when blogging. They included a poll, interviews, and blog postings made by students. The intervention's outcomes showed that merging genre-process procedures with blogging was a successful tactic, and the Saudi students' perceptions of this method of online blogging for EFL writing were quite positive. The socio-cultural theory constructs that Vygotsky advocates, such as scaffolding, collaboration, and social interaction, were also improved by blogging. These elements demonstrated the improvement in the students' written, reading, social, and collaborative thinking skills, as well as their positive attitudes toward English-language writing. But the students encountered a variety of problems that made blogging difficult for them. These problems ranged from technological ones, such sluggish internet connections, to learner inadequacies, like a lack of computer know-how and ineffective time management.

Keywords: blogging, process-gnere approach, saudi learenrs, writing quality

Procedia PDF Downloads 94