Search results for: local knowledge

Authors: G. Tamanza, A. Bossoni

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84 deaf students (from primary school to college) and their families participated in this inclusion project in cooperation with numerous institutions in northern Italy (Brescia-Lombardy). Participants were either congenitally deaf or their deafness was related to other pathologies. This research promoted the integration of deaf students as they pass from primary school to high school to college. Learning methods and processes were studied that focused on encour­aging individual autonomy and socialization. The research team and its collaborators included school teachers, speech ther­apists, psychologists and home tutors, as well as teaching assistants, child neuropsychiatrists and other external authorities involved with deaf persons social inclusion programs. Deaf children and their families were supported, in terms of inclusion, and were made aware of the research team that focused on the Bisogni Educativi Speciali (BES or Special Educational Needs) (L.170/2010 - DM 5669/2011). This project included a diagnostic and evaluative phase as well as an operational one. Results demonstrated that deaf children were highly satisfied and confident; academic performance improved and collaboration in school increased. Deaf children felt that they had access to high school and college. Empowerment for the families of deaf children in terms of networking among local services that deal with the deaf also improved while family satisfaction also improved. We found that teachers and those who gave support to deaf children increased their professional skills. Achieving autonomy, instrumental, communicative and relational abilities were also found to be crucial. Project success was determined by temporal continuity, clear theoretical methodology, strong alliance for the project direction and a resilient team response.

Keywords: autonomy, inclusion, skills, well-being

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Authors: Ahmed Al Khamisi

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The Disaster Preparedness Standard (DPS) is one of the elements that is evaluated by the Accreditation Canada International (ACI). ACI emphasizes to train and educate all staff, including service providers and senior leaders, on emergency and disaster preparedness upon the orientation and annually thereafter. Lack of awareness and deficit of knowledge among the healthcare providers about DPS have been noticed in a tertiary hospital where ACI standards were implemented. Therefore, this paper aims to introduce a video-based e-learning (VB-EL) module that explains the hospital’s disaster plan in a simple language which will be easily accessible to all healthcare providers through the hospital’s website. The healthcare disaster preparedness coordinator in the targeted hospital will be responsible to ensure that VB-EL is ready by 25 April 2019. This module will be developed based on the Kirkpatrick evaluation method. In fact, VB-EL combines different data forms such as images, motion, sounds, text in a complementary fashion which will suit diverse learning styles and individual learning pace of healthcare providers. Moreover, the module can be adjusted easily than other tools to control the information that healthcare providers receive. It will enable healthcare providers to stop, rewind, fast-forward, and replay content as many times as needed. Some anticipated limitations in the development of this module include challenges of preparing VB-EL content and resistance from healthcare providers.

Keywords: Accreditation Canada International, Disaster Preparedness Standard, Kirkpatrick evaluation method, video-based e-learning

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Authors: Barbara Polo Martin

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During the 18th century, the border between Spain and France underwent various changes, primarily due to territorial agreements, wars, and treaties between the two nations and other European powers. For studying these changes, the Cassini maps remain valuable historical documents, offering a glimpse into the landscape and geography of 18th-century France and its neighboring regions, including the border between Spain and France. However, it's essential to recognize that these maps may not reflect modern political boundaries or territorial changes that have occurred since their creation. The project was initiated by King Louis XV in 1744 and continued by his successor, Louis XVI. The primary objective was to produce accurate maps of France, which would serve various purposes, including military, administrative, and scientific. The Cassini maps were groundbreaking for their time, as they were among the earliest attempts to create topographic maps on a national scale. They covered the entirety of France and were based on meticulous surveying and cartographic techniques. The maps featured precise geographic details, including elevation contours, rivers, roads, forests, and settlements. This study aims to analyze this rich and unknown cartography of France, study the rich place names it offers, as well as the accuracy of delimitations created over time between both empires in a historical way but also through a Geographical Information System. This study will offer a deeper knowledge about the cartography that supposes the beginning of topography in Europe.

Keywords: cartography, engineering, borders, Spain, France, Cassini

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Authors: Sarayu Agarwal

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This paper aims to teach English (secondary language) by bridging the understanding between the Regional language (primary language) and the English Language (secondary language). Here primary language is the one a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, while secondary language would be any other language one learns or speaks. The paper also focuses on evolving old teaching methods to a contemporary participatory model of learning and teaching. Pilot studies were conducted to gauge an understanding of student’s knowledge of the English language. Teachers and students were interviewed and their academic curriculum was assessed as a part of the initial study. Extensive literature study and design thinking principles were used to devise a solution to the problem. The objective is met using a holistic learning kit/card game to teach children word recognition, word pronunciation, word spelling and writing words. Implication of the paper is a noticeable improvement in the understanding and grasping of English language. With increasing usage and applicability of English as a second language (ESL) world over, the paper becomes relevant due to its easy replicability to any other primary or secondary language. Future scope of this paper would be transforming the idea of participatory learning into self-regulated learning methods. With the upcoming govt. learning centres in rural areas and provision of smart devices such as tablets, the development of the card games into digital applications seems very feasible.

Keywords: English as a second language, vocabulary-building card games, learning through gamification, rural education

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Authors: D. Calogine, O. Chau, S. Dotti, O. Ramiarinjanahary, P. Rasoavonjy, F. Tovondahiniriko

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Mafate is a natural circus in the north-western part of Reunion Island, without an electrical grid and road network. A micro-grid concept is being experimented in this area, composed of a photovoltaic production combined with electrochemical batteries, in order to meet the local population for self-consumption of electricity demands. This work develops a discrete model as well as a stochastic model in order to reach an optimal equilibrium between production and consumptions for a cluster of houses. The management of the energy power leads to a large linearized programming system, where the time interval of interest is 24 hours The experimental data are solar production, storage energy, and the parameters of the different electrical devices and batteries. The unknown variables to evaluate are the consumptions of the various electrical services, the energy drawn from and stored in the batteries, and the inhabitants’ planning wishes. The objective is to fit the solar production to the electrical consumption of the inhabitants, with an optimal use of the energies in the batteries by satisfying as widely as possible the users' planning requirements. In the discrete model, the different parameters and solutions of the linear programming system are deterministic scalars. Whereas in the stochastic approach, the data parameters and the linear programming solutions become random variables, then the distributions of which could be imposed or established by estimation from samples of real observations or from samples of optimal discrete equilibrium solutions.

Keywords: photovoltaic production, power consumption, battery storage resources, random variables, stochastic modeling, estimations of probability distributions, mixed integer linear programming, smart micro-grid, self-consumption of electricity.

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Authors: Pooja Kumbhare

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Water is an important resource for the survival of life. The inadequate availability of surface water makes people depend on ground water for fulfilling their needs. However, ground water is generally too hard to satisfy the requirements for domestic as well as industrial applications. Removal of hardness involves various techniques such as lime soda process, ion exchange, reverse osmosis, nano-filtration, distillation, and, evaporation, etc. These techniques have individual problems such as high annual operating cost, sediment formation on membrane, sludge disposal problem, etc. Electrocoagulation (EC) is being explored as modern and cost-effective technology to cope up with the growing demand of high water quality at the consumer end. In general, earlier studies on electrocoagulation for hardness removal are found to deploy batch processes. As batch processes are always inappropriate to deal with large volume of water to be treated, it is essential to develop continuous flow EC process. So, in the present study, an attempt is made to investigate continuous flow EC process for decreasing excessive hardness of bore-well water. The experimental study has been conducted using 12 aluminum electrodes (25cm*10cm, 1cm thick) provided in EC reactor with volume of 8 L. Bore well water sample, collected from a local bore-well (i.e. at – Vishrambag, Sangli; Maharashtra) having average initial hardness of 680 mg/l (Range: 650 – 700 mg/l), was used for the study. Continuous flow electrocoagulation experiments were carried out by varying operating parameters specifically reaction time (Range: 10 – 60 min), voltage (Range: 5 – 20 V), current (Range: 1 – 5A). Based on the experimental study, it is found that hardness removal to the desired extent could be achieved even for continuous flow EC reactor, so the use of it is found promising.

Keywords: hardness, continuous flow EC process, aluminum electrode, optimal operating parameters

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Authors: Ben Haines, Li Bai

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Patch based reconstruction methods have been and still are one of the top performing approaches to 3D reconstruction to date. Their local approach to refining the position and orientation of a patch, free of global minimisation and independent of surface smoothness, make patch based methods extremely powerful in recovering fine grained detail of an objects surface. However, patch based approaches still fail to faithfully reconstruct textureless or highly occluded surface regions thus though performing well under lab conditions, deteriorate in industrial or real world situations. They are also computationally expensive. Current patch based methods generate point clouds with holes in texturesless or occluded regions that require expensive energy minimisation techniques to fill and interpolate a high fidelity reconstruction. Such shortcomings hinder the adaptation of the methods for industrial applications where object surfaces are often highly textureless and the speed of reconstruction is an important factor. This paper presents on-going work towards a multi-resolution approach to address the problems, utilizing particle swarm optimisation to reconstruct high fidelity geometry, and increasing robustness to textureless features through an adapted approach to the normalised cross correlation. The work also aims to speed up the reconstruction using advances in GPU technologies and remove the need for costly initialization and expansion. Through the combination of these enhancements, it is the intention of this work to create denser patch clouds even in textureless regions within a reasonable time. Initial results show the potential of such an approach to construct denser point clouds with a comparable accuracy to that of the current top-performing algorithms.

Keywords: 3D reconstruction, multiview stereo, particle swarm optimisation, photo consistency

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Authors: Bahia Braktia, S. Anna Marcela Montenegro, Imene Abdessemed

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Adult education is still considered a crucial area of education. In a developing framework, it is regarded as a practical approach for social inclusion and poverty reduction. They are also perceived as a way to serve adults who did not have the chance to education in their early ages by providing them knowledge, skills and values. Non-formal adult education and trainings are critical means in a society to break poverty and unemployment, and to decrease the social inequality. This paper investigates the perception of women trainees about a series of workshops in natural beauty products, held in Algeria and Costa Rica and organized by a non-profit educational organization, to improve their socio-economic status. This research seeks to explore ways of empowering women by assessing their needs and providing them with skills to start their own business. A questionnaire is administered before the workshops and focus groups are held at the end. A qualitative research method is employed to analyze the data. Preliminary results show that the trainees aspire to create their businesses with the objectives of poverty reduction and social inclusion. The findings also reveal the need for small business funding programs and entrepreneurial training programs.

Keywords: adult education, non-formal education, socio-economic status, women empowerment

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Authors: Daniel Pyle, Nicole Pyle, Ben Lignugaris-Kraft, Lawrence Maheady

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Students with disabilities are not included in general education at the same rate as their peers without disabilities. There are multiple reasons cited for why inclusion rates vary, such as teachers' lack of knowledge of the successful delivery of inclusive practices to students with the most extensive support needs. However, decades of research document effective inclusive practices associated with benefits across domains for students with disabilities. One effective inclusive practice that teachers use to improve outcomes for students with disabilities is flexible grouping. Teachers can use flexible grouping to facilitate students working collaboratively by using peer-mediated interventions (PMIs). This article describes PMIs as a flexible grouping of High Leverage Practices (HLP). There are variations of PMIs to select from when using flexible grouping. PMIs are described by varied grouping arrangements and different instructional procedures to clarify the flexibility of grouping students and students’ roles within those groupings. In support of teachers’ use of flexible grouping in inclusive general education classrooms, we identify different PMI formats teachers can use depending on the preferred grouping arrangement, explain the distinctive characteristics of PMI models to distinguish expected procedures with peers, highlight outcomes associated with PMIs, and provide an overview of evaluating PMIs effectiveness.

Keywords: peer-mediated interventions, high leverage practices, flexible grouping, general education, special education

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Authors: Nguyen Thi Kim Thoa

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Vietnam currently has about two million five hundred deaf/hard of hearing people. Although the issue of Vietnamese Sign Language (VSL) education has received attention from the State, there are still many issues that need to be resolved, such as policies, teacher training in both knowledge and teaching methods, education programs, and textbook compilation. Furthermore, the issue of research on VSL has not yet attracted the attention of linguists. Using the quantitative description method, the article will analyze, synthesize, and compare to find methods to create signed words in VSL, such as based on external shape characteristics, operational characteristics, operating methods, and basic meanings, from which we can see the special nature of signed words, the division of word types and the morphological meaning of creating new words through sign methods. From the results of this research, the aspect of ‘visual culture’ will be clarified in Vietnamese Deaf Culture. Through that, we also develop a number of vocabulary teaching methods (such as teaching vocabulary through a group of methods of forming signed words, teaching vocabulary using mind maps, and teaching vocabulary through culture...), with the aim of further improving the effectiveness of teaching and learning VSL in Vietnam. The research results also provide deaf people in Vietnam with a scientific and effective method of learning vocabulary, helping them quickly integrate into the community. The article will be a useful reference for linguists who want to research VSL.

Keywords: Vietnamese sign language (VSL), signed word, teaching, method

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Authors: Rachel Shukrun, Szilvia Baron, Victoria Fidel, Anna Shusterman, Osnat Sher, Netanya Kollender, Dror Levin, Yair Peled, Yair Gortzak, Yoav Ben-Shahar, Revital Caspi, Sagi Gordon, Michal Manisterski, Ronit Elhasid

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Ewing sarcoma (EWS) is a highly aggressive cancer with a survival rate of 70–80% for patients with localized disease and under 30% for those with metastatic disease. Tumor-infiltrating neutrophils (TIN) can generate extracellular net-like DNA structures known as neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). However, little is known about the presence and prognostic significance of tumor-infiltrating NETs in EWS. Herein, we investigated 46 patients diagnosed with EWS and treated in the Tel Aviv Medical Center between 2010 and 2021. TINs and NETs were identified in diagnostic biopsies of EWS by immunofluorescent. In addition, NETs were investigated in neutrophils isolated from peripheral blood samples of EWS patients at diagnosis and following neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The relationships between the presence of TINs and NETs, pathological and clinical features, and outcomes were analyzed. Our results demonstrate that TIN and NETs at diagnosis were higher in EWS patients with metastatic disease compared to those with local disease. High NETs formation at diagnosis predicted poor response to neo-adjuvant chemotherapy, relapse, and death from disease (P < .05). NETs formation in peripheral blood samples at diagnosis was significantly elevated among patients with EWS compared to pediatric controls and decreased significantly following neoadjuvant chemotherapy. In conclusion, NETs formation seems to have a role in the EWS immune microenvironment. Their presence can refine risk stratification, predict chemotherapy resistance and survival, and serve as a therapeutic target in patients with EWS.

Keywords: Ewing sarcoma, tumor microenvironment, neutrophil, neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), prognosis

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Authors: Ken Hampshire, Thomas Mazzuchi, Shahram Sarkani

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As a subset of metaheuristics, nature-inspired optimization algorithms such as particle swarm optimization (PSO) have shown promise both in solving intractable problems and in their extensibility to novel problem formulations due to their general approach requiring few assumptions. Unfortunately, single instantiations of algorithms require detailed tuning of parameters and cannot be proven to be best suited to a particular illustrative problem on account of the “no free lunch” (NFL) theorem. Using these algorithms in real-world problems requires exquisite knowledge of the many techniques and is not conducive to reconciling the various approaches to given classes of problems. This research aims to present a unified view of PSO-based approaches from the perspective of relevant systems engineering problems, with the express purpose of then eliciting the best solution for any problem formulation in an ensemble learning bucket of models approach. The central hypothesis of the research is that extending the PSO algorithms found in the literature to real-world optimization problems requires a general ensemble-based method for all problem formulations but a specific implementation and solution for any instance. The main results are a problem-based literature survey and a general method to find more globally optimal solutions for any systems engineering optimization problem.

Keywords: particle swarm optimization, nature-inspired optimization, metaheuristics, systems engineering, ensemble learning

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Authors: Malathi Balakrishnan, Gananathan M. Nadarajah, Saraswathy Vellasamy, Evelyn Gnanam William George

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The purpose of the study is to explore how the fun game-learning approach enhances teacher trainers’ higher order thinking skills. Two-day fun filled fun game learning-approach was introduced to teacher trainers as a Continuous Professional Development Program (CPD). 26 teacher trainers participated in this Transformation of Teaching and Learning Fun Way Program, organized by Institute of Teacher Education Malaysia. Qualitative research technique was adopted as the researchers observed the participants’ higher order thinking skills developed during the program. Data were collected from observational checklist; interview transcriptions of four participants and participants’ reflection notes. All the data were later analyzed with NVivo data analysis process. The finding of this study presented five main themes, which are critical thinking, hands on activities, creating, application and use of technology. The studies showed that the teacher trainers’ higher order thinking skills were enhanced after the two-day CPD program. Therefore, Institute of Teacher Education will have more success using the fun way game-learning approach to develop higher order thinking skills among its teacher trainers who can implement these skills to their trainee teachers in future. This study also added knowledge to Constructivism learning theory, which will further highlight the prominence of the fun way learning approach to enhance higher order thinking skills.

Keywords: constructivism, game-learning approach, higher order thinking skill, teacher trainer

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Authors: Sujata Gupta Kedar, J. N. Tulika

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Early researchers suggested that imprisonment had negative psychological and physical effects on its inmates, leading to psychological deterioration. The term “prisons” in the Consensus Statement of WHO is intended to denote, as those institutions which hold people who have been sentenced to a period of imprisonment by the courts for offences against the law. Thus “prisons” if local circumstances justify it, may also be taken to include secure institutions holding on a compulsory basis on any of the following categories of people: remand prisoners; civil prisoners; juvenile detainees; immigration detainees; some categories of mentally disordered patients; asylum seekers; refugees; people detained pending expulsion, deportation, exile, exclusion or any other form of compulsory transfer to other countries or areas of the country; people detained in police cells; and any other compulsorily detained group. Prisons are aimed to cure the criminal and their behavior but their records are not encouraging. Instead the imprisonment affects all prisoners in different way. From withstanding the shock of entry to the new culture, which is very different from their own, prisoners must try to determine how to spend the time in prison, since the hours appears to be endless in prisons. There is also the fear of deterioration. This article aims to provide an overview of the psychological well being of female prisoners in the prison environment in five areas- satisfaction, efficiency, sociability, mental health and interpersonal relations. Research was done on two different types of imprisonment- under trial prisoner and convict. Total sample included 22 female prisoners of Nagaon Special Jail of Assam. The instrument used for the study was based on Psychological Well Being Scale. Statistical analysis was done with t-test and one way anova test. The result demonstrated that there is no significant difference in the psychological wellbeing of female prisoners in the prison and that there is no significant difference in the psychological well being of different types of female prisoners involved in different crimes but there is significant difference in the mental health of the female prisoners in prison.

Keywords: psychological effect, female prisoners, prison, well being of prisoners

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Authors: Ayesha Murtza

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Controlling images develop misinformed behaviors about impoverished Muslim Pakistani women that add to the oppression these Pakistani women endure their whole lives. Meanwhile, patriarchal and stereotypical societies provide an ideological justification for gender, class, and racial oppression, especially for women. Cojoining the concepts of controlling images by Patricia Hill Collins (1990) and binary thinking by Barbara Christian (1987), this paper discusses the ways in which various controlling images of urban and rural women are being presented in Pakistani dramas. These images reinforce an interlocking system of oppression for women in Pakistan. This paper further explores how these controlling images of intersecting components like class, gender, religion, ethnicity, physical appearance, color, and caste normalize hegemonic gendered oppression in society and how men have the same attitude towards women of their family whether they belong to the rural or urban class since they are the product of the same society. It further sheds light on how these matrixes of domination are an inevitable part of Pakistani women’s everyday lives and how these women reinforce survival strategies for coping with all these forms of oppression. By employing the feminist interactional framework, this paper elucidates the role of masculinity, femininity, feminist activism, and traditional knowledge against a monolithic image of Pakistani women. By highlighting these, this paper complicates the role of descriptive and visual images, religion, women’s rights, and the stereotypical role of women in Pakistani dramas.

Keywords: controlling images, oppression, women, Pakistan

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Authors: Samuel Quashie

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PhDs in Construction Management often designs their methods based on those established in social sciences using theoretical models, to collect, gather and analysis data to answer research questions. Work aim is to apply qualitative and quantitative as a data analysis method, and as part of the theoretical framework - descriptive theory. To improve the ability to replicate the contribution to knowledge the research. Using practical triangulation approach, which covers, interviews and observations, literature review and (archival) document studies, project-based case studies, questionnaires surveys and review of integrated systems used in, construction and construction related industries. The clarification of organisational context and management delivery that influences organizational performance and quality of product and measures are achieved. Results illustrate improved reliability in this research approach when interpreting real world phenomena; cumulative results of research can be applied with confidence under similar environments. Assisted validity of the PhD research outcomes and strengthens the confidence to apply cumulative results of research under similar conditions in the Built Environment research systems, which have been criticised for the lack of reliability in approaches when interpreting real world phenomena.

Keywords: case studies, descriptive theory, theoretical framework, qualitative and quantitative research

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Authors: Segun Jacob Ogunkunle

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The study examined the moderating effects of future career interest in science and gender on achievement in basic science of students taught in a simulated laboratory and enriched laboratory guide material environments. It adopted the pretest-posttest control group quasi experimental design with a 3x2x2 factorial matrix. A total of 277 (130 males, 147 females; ± 17 years) junior secondary three students randomly selected from six purposively selected secondary schools based on availability of functional computer and physics laboratories participated in the study. Data were collected using achievement test in basic science (r=0.87) and future career interest in science (r=0.99) while analysis of covariance and estimated marginal means were used to test three hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study show that future career interest in science had significant effect on students’ achievement in basic science whereas gender did not. The interaction effect of future career interest in science and gender on students’ achievement in basic science was not significant. It is therefore recommended that prior knowledge of students’ future career interest in science could be used to improve participation in basic science practical in order to enhance achievement in biology, chemistry, and physics at the post-basic education level in Nigeria.

Keywords: future career interest in science, basic science, simulated laboratory, enriched laboratory guide materials, achievement in science

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Authors: Kamarul Fairuz Hassim, Sharifah Fatimah Syed-Ahmad

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New managerialism has become the current trend in managing public sector which emphasizes on efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability. Public universities are not exempted from experiencing this new system. This study tries to explore the direct impact of new managerialism towards work performance of the employees in a public university in Malaysia and the indirect impact through a mediating factor – Organizational Commitment. Feedback were gathered from 204 respondents comprises of academics and non-academics managers in the University of Malaya using a 39 items, self-administered questionnaire. Respondents’ views were asked in the aspects of managerialism level of the university, their organizational commitment, and self-rated work performance level. The findings exhibit that there is a direct impact of new managerialism towards employees’ work performance in a positive way. This is contradicting to the established Hypotheses of this study. Furthermore, there is no significant finding on the role of all three components of organizational commitment – affective, normative, and continuance as the mediating factors in new managerialism approach that gave impact towards work performance. Consequently these insignificant found failed to corroborate the remaining six hypotheses in this study. On another note, findings gathered from this study show some contradiction to the original research conducted earlier by Smeenk et al. in 2009. Therefore, results obtained from this study do contribute to the existing pool of knowledge as previous studies on this topic are scarce especially in the Malaysia’s context.

Keywords: new managerialism, Malaysia public universities, organizational commitment, work performance

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Authors: Jakub Zembrzuski, Bartosz Sobczyk, Mikołaj MIśkiewicz

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Besides designing new constructions, engineers all over the world must face another problem – maintenance, repairs, and assessment of the technical condition of existing bridges. To solve more complex issues, it is necessary to be familiar with the theory of finite element method and to have access to the software that provides sufficient tools which to enable create of sometimes significantly advanced numerical models. The paper includes a brief assessment of the technical condition, a description of the in situ non-destructive testing carried out and the FEM models created for global and local analysis. In situ testing was performed using strain gauges and displacement sensors. Numerical models were created using various software and numerical modeling techniques. Particularly noteworthy is the method of modeling riveted joints of the crossbeam of the viaduct. It is a simplified method that consists of the use of only basic numerical tools such as beam and shell finite elements, constraints, and simplified boundary conditions (fixed support and symmetry). The results of the numerical analyses were presented and discussed. It is clearly explained why the structure did not fail, despite the fact that the weld of the deck plate completely failed. A further research problem that was solved was to determine the cause of the rapid increase in values on the stress diagram in the cross-section of the transverse section. The problems were solved using the solely mentioned, simplified method of modeling riveted joints, which demonstrates that it is possible to solve such problems without access to sophisticated software that enables to performance of the advanced nonlinear analysis. Moreover, the obtained results are of great importance in the field of assessing the operation of bridge structures with an orthotropic plate.

Keywords: bridge, diagnostics, FEM simulations, failure, NDT, in situ testing

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Authors: M. Bonopera, N. Tullini, C. C. Chen, T. K. Lin, K. C. Chang

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This paper presents the extension of a static method for the axial load identifications in prismatic beam-columns with uncertain length and unknown boundary conditions belonging to generic space structures, such as columns of space frames or struts and ties of space trusses. The non-destructive method requires the knowledge of the beam-column flexural rigidity only. Flexural displacements are measured at five cross sections along the beam-column subjected to an additional vertical load at the mid-span. Unlike analogous dynamic methods, any set of experimental data may be used in the identification procedure. The method is verified by means of many numerical and experimental tests on beam-columns having unknown boundary conditions and different slenderness belonging to three different space prototypes in small-scale. Excellent estimates of the tensile and compressive forces are obtained for the elements with higher slenderness and when the greatest possible distance between sensors is adopted. Moreover, the application of larger values of the vertical load and very accurate displacement measurements are required. The method could be an efficacious technique in-situ, considering that safety inspections will become increasingly important in the near future, especially because of the improvement of the material properties that allowed designing space structures composed of beam-columns with higher slenderness.

Keywords: force identification, in-situ test, space structure, static test

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Authors: David Tanujaya Kurniawan

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Background: Liver injury caused by paracetamol is marked by increased serum transaminase levels. Turmeric is a local herb that is available in large quantities and inexpensive in contradiction to its substantial benefits, including its potency to increase glutathione production and regenerate hepatocyte into normal condition. Aim: The aim of this study was to analyze the potencial treatment effect of turmeric rhizome extract to reduce serum transaminase level on paracetamol induced liver toxicity in rats. Methods: This study was a laboratory experimental research with post-test only controlled group design. A group of 24 Wistar white male rats was induced with paracetamol 360 mg/kg body weight for 10 days. The group was then separated into four groups: the first and the second was treated with 100 mg/kg body weight and 150 mg/kg body weight of turmeric rhizome extract, subsequently, the third as positive control was given 27 mg/kg body weight of lesichol, while the fourth as negative control was given CMC-Na 1%. Each of this treatment was given for seven days. At the end of the study, the blood samples were taken to measure SGOT and SGPT levels. The one-way Anova test revealed significant difference in mean of SGPT level (p=0,001). The LSD test showed significant differences of SGPT levels in both treatment groups and negative control group. However, there was no sgnificant difference between positive control and both treatment groups. Conclusion: Curcuma domestica Val. rhizome extract could not reduce SGOT level, but it reduced SGPT level significantly.

Keywords: Curcuma domestica val., SGOT, SGPT, paracetamol, liver toxicity

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Authors: M. S. Wickramarachchi, L. S. Nawarathna, C. M. B. Dematawewa

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Hatchery performance is critical for the profitability of poultry breeder operations. Some extrinsic parameters of eggs and breeders cause to increase or decrease the hatchability. This study aims to identify the affecting extrinsic parameters on the commercial hatchability of local chicken's eggs and determine the most efficient classification model with a hatchability rate greater than 90%. In this study, seven extrinsic parameters were considered: egg weight, moisture loss, breeders age, number of fertilised eggs, shell width, shell length, and shell thickness. Multiple linear regression was performed to determine the most influencing variable on hatchability. First, the correlation between each parameter and hatchability were checked. Then a multiple regression model was developed, and the accuracy of the fitted model was evaluated. Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Classification and Regression Trees (CART), k-Nearest Neighbors (kNN), Support Vector Machines (SVM) with a linear kernel, and Random Forest (RF) algorithms were applied to classify the hatchability. This grouping process was conducted using binary classification techniques. Hatchability was negatively correlated with egg weight, breeders' age, shell width, shell length, and positive correlations were identified with moisture loss, number of fertilised eggs, and shell thickness. Multiple linear regression models were more accurate than single linear models regarding the highest coefficient of determination (R²) with 94% and minimum AIC and BIC values. According to the classification results, RF, CART, and kNN had performed the highest accuracy values 0.99, 0.975, and 0.972, respectively, for the commercial hatchery process. Therefore, the RF is the most appropriate machine learning algorithm for classifying the breeder outcomes, which are economically profitable or not, in a commercial hatchery.

Keywords: classification models, egg weight, fertilised eggs, multiple linear regression

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Authors: Md. Obidul Haque, Abbasi Khanm

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Port city Chittagong, the commercial capital of Bangladesh, is flourished with fascinating topography and climatic context along with basic resources for livelihood; both shape this city and become living archives of its ecologies. Chittagong has been witnessing numerous urban development measures being taken by city development authority, though some of those seem incomplete because of lack of proper planning. Due to this unplanned trail, the blessings of nature have become the reason of sufferings for city dwellers. One of which is the water clogging due to heavy rainfall, seepage, high tide, absence of well-knit underground drainage system, and so on. The problem has reached such an extent that the first monsoon rain is enough to shut down the entire city and causing immense sufferings to livestock, specially most vulnerable groups such as children and office going people. Study shows that total discharge is higher than present drainage capacity of the canals, thus, resulting in overflow, as major channels are clogged up by dumping waste or illegal encroachment, which are supposed to flush out rain water. This paper aims to address natural and manmade causes behind urban water clogging, adverse socio-environmental hazardous effects, possibilities for probable solutions on basis of local people’s experience and rational urban planning and landscape architectural proposals such as facilitating well planned drainage system, along with waste management policies etc. which can be able to intervene in these movements to activate the mighty port city’s unfulfilled potentials.

Keywords: drainage, high-tide, urban storm water logging (USWL), urban planning, water management

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Authors: Omotoke Omosalewa Owolowo

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Mass literacy adult and non-formal education are part of the provisions of Nigeria’s National policy on Education. The advent of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), especially in this era of industrial revolution, calls for approaching these literacy and adult education in different perspective for community development. There is dire need of Needs Assessment for effective training of rural dwellers to actualize the policy requirement and for the purpose of aligning with the Sustainable Development Goals in South - West Nigeria. The present study is a preliminary survey designed to determine level of awareness, use and familiarity of community dwellers of social media. Adult dwellers from 24 communities from four states in Southern Nigeria constitute the sample, a total of 578 adults (380 females, 198 males) with age range between 21 and 52 years. The survey shows that 68% are aware of SMS, 21% of WhatsApp, 14% of Facebook while the remaining could not say precisely what social medium is their favorite. However, most of them (80%) could not see how their phones can be used to boost their status, improve their vacations or be used to develop them in their respective community. The study is expected to lead to a more elaborate training program on assessment of knowledge acquisition, participation and attitude of adult literate and non- literate members in communities for empowerment and to integrate ICT techniques. The results of this study provides a database for the larger study.

Keywords: mass literacy, community development, information and communication technology, adult learners

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Authors: Ntokozo C. Mthembu

Abstract:

The notion of sustainable chemistry has become significant in the discourse for a global post-colonial era, including South Africa, especially when it comes to access to the general health system and related policies in relation to disease or ease of human life. In view of the stubborn vestiges of coloniality in the daily lives of indigenous African people in general, the fundamentals of present Western medical and traditional medicine systems and related policies in the democratic era were examined in this study. The situation of traditional healers in relation to current policy was also reviewed. The advent of democracy in South Africa brought about a variety of development opportunities and limitations, particularly with respect to indigenous African knowledge systems such as traditional medicine. There were high hopes that the limitations of previous narrow cultural perspectives would be rectified in the democratic era through development interventions, but some sections of society, such as traditional healers, remain marginalised. The Afrocentric perspective was explored in dissecting government interventions related to traditional medicine. This article highlights that multiple medical systems should be adopted and that health policies should be aligned in order to guarantee mutual respect and to address the remnants of colonialism in South Africa, Africa and the broader global community.

Keywords: traditional healing system, healers, pluralist healthcare system, post-colonial era

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Authors: Gulfam Hasan, Ijaz Ashraf, Saleem Ashraf, Muhammad Rafay Muzammil, Salman Asghar, Shafiq-Ur-Rehman Zia

Abstract:

The word “climate change” has become the most popular term when anyone observes any uncertain climate variation in their respective region. Asian countries are more prone to the impact of this phenomenon, and Pakistan is the leading affected country. Last few years, governments all over the world have been trying to cater to this issue for the best entrust of their population, especially agriculture. Now the farmers in Pakistan are fully aware of the term “climate change” and are more concerned about its solutions. On the other hand, developed countries like the USA are setting a benchmark for developing countries in every sphere of life. Based on cultural and other variations, the research was carried out to identify the behavior of farmers regarding the same issue. Cross-sectional survey research was designed for an in-depth study of relevant research questions. Face-to-face interviews were conducted in Pakistan, while virtual and face-to-face interviews were conducted in the Indiana State of the USA. The results of the present study and the responses of farmers were very interesting. The common climate change mitigation strategies suggested by farmers of both countries were less use of motor vehicles (replacement with bicycles in the circle of 10 Km), less dependency on chemical fertilizers (increased use of Manure, Bio-fertilizer, Compost), and plantation of the tree. The difference of opinion was in less government interest, lack of farmers’ education, political instability (views of Pakistani farmers), awareness of local communities, self-satisfaction, and economic disparities (views of USA farmers). Based on the given evidence, it was recommended that there is a dire need to address the climate change issue all over the world without discrimination of race, color, region, or religion. Because it will affect not only agriculture but also the real effect will be on HUMANITY.

Keywords: climate change, mitigation strategies, forests, biodiversity

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Authors: B. V. Murlimanju, P. J. Jiji, Latha V. Prabhu, Mangala M. Pai

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Background: The scaphoid is the most commonly fractured bone of the wrist. The fracture may disrupt the vessels and end up as the avascular necrosis of the bone. The objective of the present study was to investigate the morphology and number of the nutrient foramina in the cadaveric dried scaphoid bones of the Indian population. Methods: The present study included 46 scaphoid bones (26 right sided and 20 left sided) which were obtained from the gross anatomy laboratory of our institution. The bones were macroscopically observed for the nutrient foramina and the data was collected with respect to their number. The tabulation of the data and analysis were done. Results: All of our specimens (100%) exhibited the nutrient foramina over the non-articular surfaces. The foramina were observed only over the palmar and dorsal surfaces of the scaphoid bones. The foramina were observed both proximal and distal to the mid waist of the scaphoid bone. The foramen ranged between 9 and 54 in each scaphoid bone. The foramina over the palmar surface ranged between, 2-24 in number. The foramina over the dorsal surface ranged between, 7-36 in number. The foramina proximal to the waist ranged between 2 and 24 in number and distal to the waist ranged between 3 and 39. Conclusion: We believe that the present study has provided additional data about the nutrient foramina of the scaphoid bones. The data is enlightening to the orthopedic surgeon and would help in the hand surgeries. The morphological knowledge of the vasculature, their foramina of entry and their number is required to understand the concepts in the avascular necrosis of the proximal scaphoid and non-union of the fracture at the waist of the scaphoid.

Keywords: avascular necrosis, nutrient, scaphoid, vascular

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Authors: Abdul Manan, Choudhary Muhammad Ayyub, Rashid Ahmad, Muhammad Adnan Bukhari

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A project was designed to investigate the effect of foliar application of methyl jasmonate (MeJA) on physiological, biochemical and ionic attributes of salinity stressed and normal tomato plants at different stages. Salinity stress at every stage markedly reduced the net photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance, transpiration rate, water relations parameters, protein contents, total free aminoacids and potassium (K+) contents. While, antioxidant enzymes (peroxidase (POX) and catalase (CAT)), sodium (Na+) contents and proline contents were increased substantially. Foliar application of MeJA ameliorated the drastic effects of salinity regime by recovery of physiological and biochemical attributes by enhanced production of antioxidant enzymes and osmoprotectants. The efficacy of MeJA at very initial stage (15 days after sowing (15 DAS)).proved effective for attenuating the deleterious effects of salinity stress than other stages (15 days after transplanting (15 DAT) and 30 days after transplanting (30 DAT)). To the best of our knowledge, different times of foliar feeding of MeJA was observed first time for amelioration of salinity stress in tomato plants that would be of pivotal significance for scientist to better understand the dynamics of physiological and biochemical processes in tomato.

Keywords: methyl jasmonate, osmoregulation, salinity stress, stress tolerance, tomato

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Authors: Hajer Chaker Ben Hadj Kacem, Thouraya Slama, Néjiba El Yetim Zribi

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This paper analyzes the effects of gender, affiliation, prior work experience, social work, and vicarious learning through family role models on entrepreneurial skills development by students when they have learned through the entrepreneurship method in Tunisia. Authors suggest that these variables enhance the development of students’ entrepreneurial skills when combined with teaching through entrepreneurship. The article assesses the impact of these combinations by comparing their effects on the development of thirteen students’ entrepreneurial competencies, namely entrepreneurial mindset, core self-evaluation, entrepreneurial attitude, entrepreneurial knowledge, creativity, financial literacy, managing ambiguity, marshaling of resources, planning, teaching methods, entrepreneurial teachers, innovative employee, and Entrepreneurial intention. Authors use a two-sample independent t-test to make the comparison, and the results indicate that, when combined with teaching through the entrepreneurship method, students with prior work experience developed better six entrepreneurial skills; students with social work developed better three entrepreneurial skills, men developed better four entrepreneurial skills than women. However, all students developed their entrepreneurial skills through this practical method regardless of their affiliation and their vicarious learning through family role models.

Keywords: affiliation, entrepreneurial skills, gender, role models, social work, teaching through entrepreneurship, vicarious learning, work experience

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Authors: Sharifah Mousli, Sona Taheri, Jiayuan He

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Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex developmental condition involving persistent difficulties with social communication, restricted interests, and repetitive behavior. The challenges associated with ASD can interfere with an affected individual’s ability to function in social, academic, and employment settings. Although there is no effective medication known to treat ASD, to our best knowledge, early intervention can significantly improve an affected individual’s overall development. Hence, an accurate diagnosis of ASD at an early phase is essential. The use of machine learning approaches improves and speeds up the diagnosis of ASD. In this paper, we focus on the application of unsupervised clustering methods in ASD as a large volume of ASD data generated through hospitals, therapy centers, and mobile applications has no pre-existing labels. We conduct a comparative analysis using seven clustering approaches such as K-means, agglomerative hierarchical, model-based, fuzzy-C-means, affinity propagation, self organizing maps, linear vector quantisation – as well as the recently developed optimization-based clustering (COMSEP-Clust) approach. We evaluate the performances of the clustering methods extensively on real-world ASD datasets encompassing different age groups: toddlers, children, adolescents, and adults. Our experimental results suggest that the COMSEP-Clust approach outperforms the other seven methods in recognizing ASD with well-separated clusters.

Keywords: autism spectrum disorder, clustering, optimization, unsupervised machine learning

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