Search results for: unethical work behavior

Authors: Dogan Cetin, Omar Hamdi Jasim

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Using some additives is very common method to improve the soil properties such as shear strength, bearing capacity; and to reduce the settlement and lateral deformation. Soil reinforcement with natural materials is an attractive method to improve the soil properties because of their low cost. However, the studies conducted by using natural additive are very limited. This paper presents the results of an investigation on the immediate and long-term effects of the sawdust on the shear strength behavior of a clayey silt soil obtained in Arnavutkoy in Istanbul with sawdust. Firstly, compaction tests were conducted to be able to optimum moisture content for every percentage of sawdust. The samples were obtained from compacted soil at optimum moisture content. UU Triaxial Tests were conducted to evaluate the response of randomly distributed sawdust on the strength of low plasticity clayey silt soil. The specimens were tested with 1%, 2% and 3% content of sawdust. It was found that the undrained shear strength of clay soil with 1%, 2% and 3% sawdust were increased respectively 4.65%, 27.9% and 39.5% higher than the soil without additive. At 5%, shear strength of clay soil decreased by 3.8%. After 90 days cure period, the shear strength of the soil with 1%, 2%, 3% and %5 increased respectively 251%, 302%, 260% and 153%. It can be said that the effect of the sawdust usage has a remarkable effect on the undrained shear strength of the soil. Besides the increasing undrained shear strength, it was also found that the sawdust decreases the liquid limit, plastic limit and plasticity index by 5.5%, 2.9 and 10.9% respectively.

Keywords: compaction test, sawdust, shear strength, UU Triaxial Test

Procedia PDF Downloads 346

Authors: A. Giwa, S. M. Jung, W. Fang, J. Kong, S. W. Hasan

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MnO₂ nanowires were developed as filtration media for wastewater treatment that uniquely combines several advantages. The resulting material demonstrated strong capability to remove the pollution of heavy metal ions and organic contents in water. In addition, the manufacture process of such material is practical and economical. In this work, MnO₂ nanowires were integrated with the state-of-art bio-electrochemical system for wastewater treatment, to overcome problems currently encountered with organic, inorganic, heavy metal, and microbe removal, and to minimize the unit footprint (land/space occupation) at low cost. Results showed that coupling the bio-electrochemical with MnO₂ resulted in very encouraging results with higher removal efficiencies of such pollutants.

Keywords: bio-electrochemical, nanowires, novel, wastewater

Procedia PDF Downloads 381

Authors: Aldilla Damayanti Purnama Ratri, Hendri Subakti, Buldan Muslim

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Ionosphere’s anomalies as an effect of earthquake activity is a phenomenon that is now being studied in seismo-ionospheric coupling. Generally, variation in the ionosphere caused by earthquake activity is weaker than the interference generated by different source, such as geomagnetic storms. However, disturbances of geomagnetic storms show a more global behavior, while the seismo-ionospheric anomalies occur only locally in the area which is largely determined by magnitude of the earthquake. It show that the earthquake activity is unique and because of its uniqueness it has been much research done thus expected to give clues as early warning before earthquake. One of the research that has been developed at this time is the approach of seismo-ionospheric-coupling. This study related the state in the lithosphere-atmosphere and ionosphere before and when earthquake occur. This paper choose the total electron content in a vertical (VTEC) in the ionosphere as a parameter. Total Electron Content (TEC) is defined as the amount of electron in vertical column (cylinder) with cross-section of 1m2 along GPS signal trajectory in ionosphere at around 350 km of height. Based on the analysis of data obtained from the LAPAN agency to identify abnormal signals by statistical methods, obtained that there are an anomaly in the ionosphere is characterized by decreasing of electron content of the ionosphere at 1 TECU before the earthquake occurred. Decreasing of VTEC is not associated with magnetic storm that is indicated as an earthquake precursor. This is supported by the Dst index showed no magnetic interference.

Keywords: earthquake, DST Index, ionosphere, seismoionospheric coupling, VTEC

Procedia PDF Downloads 581

Authors: Anuradha Chug, Sunali Gandhi

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Regression Testing is a very expensive and time-consuming process carried out to ensure the validity of modified software. Due to the availability of insufficient resources to re-execute all the test cases in time constrained environment, efforts are going on to generate test data automatically without human efforts. Many search based techniques have been proposed to generate efficient, effective as well as optimized test data, so that the overall cost of the software testing can be minimized. The generated test data should be able to uncover all potential lapses that exist in the software or product. Inspired from the natural behavior of bat for searching her food sources, current study employed a meta-heuristic, search-based bat algorithm for optimizing the test data on the basis certain parameters without compromising their effectiveness. Mathematical functions are also applied that can effectively filter out the redundant test data. As many as 50 Java programs are used to check the effectiveness of proposed test data generation and it has been found that 86% saving in testing efforts can be achieved using bat algorithm while covering 100% of the software code for testing. Bat algorithm was found to be more efficient in terms of simplicity and flexibility when the results were compared with another nature inspired algorithms such as Firefly Algorithm (FA), Hill Climbing Algorithm (HC) and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). The output of this study would be useful to testers as they can achieve 100% path coverage for testing with minimum number of test cases.

Keywords: regression testing, test case selection, test case prioritization, genetic algorithm, bat algorithm

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Authors: Rafael Iliasov, Alessandro Golkar

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Object detection based on event vision has been a dynamically growing field in computer vision for the last 16 years. In this work, we create multiple channels from a single event camera and propose an event fusion method (EFM) to enhance object detection in event-based vision systems. Each channel uses a different accumulation buffer to collect events from the event camera. We implement YOLOv7 for object detection, followed by a fusion algorithm. Our multichannel approach outperforms single-channel-based object detection by 0.7% in mean Average Precision (mAP) for detection overlapping ground truth with IOU = 0.5.

Keywords: event camera, object detection with multimodal inputs, multichannel fusion, computer vision

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Authors: Gabriel G. Gaft, Xayvinay Xiong, Amanda Sunday

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The emergent pandemic from COVID-19 virus has forced people to adjust to major changes. These changes include all elements of family and work life and required people to engage in novel behaviors. For many people, the social norms to which they have been accustomed no longer prevail. Not surprisingly, such enormous changes in daily life have been associated with greater problems in mental health; and research regarding ways in which mental health professionals can support people is more necessary than ever before. It is often useful to assess people’s reactions through surveys and utilize quantitative data to answer questions about coping strategies etc. It is also likely, however, that a host of individual factors are going to contribute to what might be considered 'good' or 'bad' coping mechanisms to a worldwide pandemic. To this end, qualitative studies—where the individual’s subjective experience is highlighted—are likely to provide more vital information for mental health professionals interested in supporting the particular person in front of them. This study reports on qualitative data, where X participants were asked questions about social distancing, coping strategies, and general attitudes towards social changes resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Informal interviews were conducted during the months of June-July 2020. Data were analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analyses. Themes were identified first for each participant and then compared across different individual participants. Several findings emerged. First, all participants understood major health messages being imparted by governing bodies such as the CDC and WHO. The researchers feel this finding is important as it suggests health messages are at least being effectively communicated. Second, there was a clear trend for themes which highlighted the conflicting emotions participants felt about the changes they were expected to endure: positive and negative elements were identified, although a participant who had pre-existing conditions placed greater emphasis on the negative elements. One participant who was particularly interested in impression management also exclusively emphasized negative emotions. Third, participants who were able to reevaluate priorities—what Lazarus might call secondary appraisals—experienced social distancing as a positive rather than negative phenomenon. Finally, participants who were able to develop specific strategies—such as boundaries for work and self-care—reported themes of adjustment and contentment. Taken together, these findings suggest mental health practitioners can assist people to adjust more positively through specific techniques focusing on re-evaluation of life priorities and strategic coping skills.

Keywords: COVID-19, pandemic, phenomenology, virus

Procedia PDF Downloads 117

Authors: Hilal Uslu, Salih Eroglu, Betul Ozkan, Ozcan Bulantekin, Alper Kuscu

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In this study, the strawberry (Fragaria L.) fruits, which were pretreated with ultrasound (US), were worked on in the microwave by using 90W power. Then mathematical modelling was applied to dried fruits by using different experimental thin layer models. The sliced fruits were subjected to ultrasound treatment at a frequency of 40 kHz for 10, 20, and 30 minutes, in an ultrasonic water bath, with a ratio of 1:4 to fruit/water. They are then dried in the microwave (90W). The drying process continued until the product moisture was below 10%. By analyzing the moisture change of the products at a certain time, eight different thin-layer drying models, (Newton, page, modified page, Midilli, Henderson and Pabis, logarithmic, two-term, Wang and Singh) were tested for verification of experimental data. MATLAB R2015a statistical program was used for the modelling, and the best suitable model was determined with R²adj (coefficient of determination of compatibility), and root mean square error (RMSE) values. According to analysis, the drying model that best describes the drying behavior for both drying conditions was determined as the Midilli model by high R²adj and low RMSE values. Control, 10, 20, and 30 min US for groups R²adj and RMSE values was established as respectively; 0,9997- 0,005298; 0,9998- 0,004735; 0,9995- 0,007031; 0,9917-0,02773. In addition, effective diffusion coefficients were calculated for each group and were determined as 3,80x 10⁻⁸, 3,71 x 10⁻⁸, 3,26 x10⁻⁸ ve 3,5 x 10⁻⁸ m/s, respectively.

Keywords: mathematical modelling, microwave drying, strawberry, ultrasound

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Authors: Maxime A. J. Kuitche, Ruxandra M. Botez, Arthur Guillemin

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As the Unmanned Aerial Systems have found diverse utilities in both military and civil aviation, the necessity to obtain an accurate aerodynamic model has shown an enormous growth of interest. Recent modeling techniques are procedures using optimization algorithms and statistics that require many flight tests and are therefore extremely demanding in terms of costs. This paper presents a procedure to estimate the aerodynamic behavior of an unmanned aerial system from a numerical approach using computational fluid dynamic analysis. The study was performed using an unstructured mesh obtained from a grid convergence analysis at a Mach number of 0.14, and at an angle of attack of 0°. The flow around the aircraft was described using a standard k-ω turbulence model. Thus, the Reynold Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations were solved using ANSYS FLUENT software. The method was applied on the UAS-S45 designed and manufactured by Hydra Technologies in Mexico. The lift, the drag, and the pitching moment coefficients were obtained at different angles of attack for several flight conditions defined in terms of altitudes and Mach numbers. The results obtained from the Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis were compared with the results obtained by using the DATCOM semi-empirical procedure. This comparison has indicated that our approach is highly accurate and that the aerodynamic model obtained could be useful to estimate the flight dynamics of the UAS-S45.

Keywords: aerodynamic modelling, CFD Analysis, ANSYS FLUENT, UAS-S45

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Authors: Andrea Knezevic, Padmini Pai, Julaine Allan, Katarzyna Olcoń, Louisa Smith

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Healthcare staff are on the frontline during times of disaster and are required to support the health and wellbeing of communities despite any personal adversity and trauma they are experiencing as a result of the disaster. This study explored the experiences of healthcare staff trained as ‘Wellness Warriors’ following the 2019-2020 Australian bushfires. The findings indicated that healthcare staff developed interpersonal skills around deep listening and connecting with others which allowed them to feel differently about work and restored their faith in healthcare leadership.

Keywords: Australian bushfires, burnout, health care providers, mental health, occupational trauma, post-disaster, wellbeing, workplace wellness

Procedia PDF Downloads 129

Authors: Milagros Jaén-Vargas, Javier García Martínez, Karla Miriam Reyes Leiva, María Fernanda Trujillo-Guerrero, Francisco Fernandes, Sérgio Barroso Gonçalves, Miguel Tavares Silva, Daniel Simões Lopes, José Javier Serrano Olmedo

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Human Activity Recognition (HAR) is having a growing impact in creating new applications and is responsible for emerging new technologies. Also, the use of wearable sensors is an important key to exploring the human body's behavior when performing activities. Hence, the use of these dispositive is less invasive and the person is more comfortable. In this study, a database that includes three activities is used. The activities were acquired from inertial measurement unit sensors (IMU) and motion capture systems (MOCAP). The main objective is differentiating the performance from four Deep Learning (DL) models: Deep Neural Network (DNN), Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) and hybrid model Convolutional Neural Network-Long Short-Term Memory (CNN-LSTM), when considering acceleration, velocity and position and evaluate if integrating the IMU acceleration to obtain velocity and position represent an increment in performance when it works as input to the DL models. Moreover, compared with the same type of data provided by the MOCAP system. Despite the acceleration data is cleaned when integrating, results show a minimal increase in accuracy for the integrated signals.

Keywords: HAR, IMU, MOCAP, acceleration, velocity, position, feature maps

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Authors: L. F. Tamele Jr., G. Buonocore, H. F. Muiambo

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Asphalt binders play an essential role in the performance and properties of asphalt mixtures. The increase in heavy loads, greater traffic volume, and high tire pressure, combined with a substantial variation in daily and seasonal pavement temperatures, are the main responsible for the failure of asphalt pavements. To avoid or mitigate these failures, the present research proposes the use of thermoplastic polymers, HDPE and LLDPE, and nanoclay Dellite 43B for modification of asphalt in order to improve its thermomechanical and rheological properties. The nanocomposites were prepared by the solution intercalation method in a high shear mixer for a mixing time of 2 h, at 180℃ and 5000 rpm. The addition of Dellite 43B improved the physical, rheological, and thermal properties of asphalt, either separated or in the form of polymer/bitumen blends. The results of the physical characterization showed a decrease in penetration and an increase in softening point, thermal susceptibility, viscosity, and stiffness. On the other hand, thermal characterization showed that the nanocomposites have greater stability at higher temperatures by exhibiting greater amounts of residues and improved initial and final decomposition temperatures. Thus, the modification of asphalt by polymers and nanoclays seems to be a suitable solution for road pavement in countries which experiment with high temperatures combined with long heavy rain seasons.

Keywords: asphalt, nanoclay dellite 43B, polymer modified asphalt, thermal and rheological properties

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Authors: M. J. Ponnambalam

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Physics Outreach in Jamaica has nearly tripled the number of students doing Introductory Calculus-based Physics at the University of the West Indies (UWI, Mona) within 5 years, and thus has shown the importance of Physics Teaching & Learning in Informal Settings. In 1899, the first president of the American Physical Society called Physics, “the science above all sciences.” Sure enough, exactly one hundred years later, Time magazine proclaims Albert Einstein, “Person of the Century.” Unfortunately, Physics seems to be losing that glow in this century. Many countries, big and small, are finding it difficult to attract bright young minds to pursue Physics. At UWI, Mona, the number of students in first year Physics dropped to an all-time low of 81 in 2006, from more than 200 in the nineteen eighties, spelling disaster for the Physics Department! The author of this paper launched an aggressive Physics Outreach that same year, aimed at conveying to the students and the general public the following messages: i) Physics is an exciting intellectual enterprise, full of fun and delight. ii) Physics is very helpful in understanding how things like TV, CD player, car, computer, X-ray, CT scan, MRI, etc. work. iii) The critical and analytical thinking developed in the study of Physics is of inestimable value in almost any field. iv) Physics is the core subject for Science and Technology, and hence of national development. Science Literacy is a ‘must’ for any nation in the 21st century. Hence, the Physics Outreach aims at reaching out to every person, through every possible means. The Outreach work is split into the following target groups: i) Universities, ii) High Schools iii) Middle Schools, iv) Primary Schools, v) General Public, and vi) Physics teachers in High Schools. The programmes, tools and best practices are adjusted to suit each target group. The feedback from each group is highly positive. e.g. In February 2014, the author conducted in 3 Primary Schools the Interactive Show on ‘Science Is Fun’ to stimulate 290 students’ interest in Science – with lively and interesting demonstrations and experiments in a highly interactive way, using dramatization, story-telling and dancing. The feedback: 47% found the Show ‘Exciting’ and 51% found it ‘Interesting’ – totaling an impressive 98%. When asked to describe the Show in their own words, the leading 4 responses were: ‘Fun’ (26%), ‘Interesting’ (20%), ‘Exciting’ (14%) and ‘Educational’ (10%) – confirming that ‘fun’ & ‘education’ can go together. The success of Physics Outreach in Jamaica verifies the following words of Chodos, Associate Executive Officer of the American Physical Society: “If we could get members to go to K-12 schools and levitate a magnet or something, we really think these efforts would bring great rewards.”

Keywords: physics education, physics popularization, UWI, Jamaica

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Authors: Erzen Muharemi, Emmanuel De Jaeger, Jos Knockaert

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The work presented here investigates the modeling of power electronics converters in terms of their harmonic production. Specifically, it addresses high-frequency emissions in the range of 2-150 kHz, referred to as supraharmonics. This paper models a conventional converter, namely the boost converter used as an active power factor corrector (APFC). Furthermore, the modeling is extended to the case of the interleaved boost converter, which offers advantages such as halving the emissions. Finally, a comparison between the theoretical, numerical, and experimental results will be provided.

Keywords: APFC, boost converter, converter modeling, double fourier series, supraharmonics

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Authors: Lydia Ouma Radoli

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The paradox of documenting history through visuals that objectify gruesome images to depict the prominence of stories intrigues media researchers. In East Africa, the topic has been captured in a variety of media frames, but scantly in scholarly work. This paper adopts Visual Rhetoric and Framing Theories to tease out the drivers behind the criteria for the selection of violent visuals. The paper projects that quantitative and qualitative literature regarding journalists’ personal and work-related exposure to PSTD will give insights into the concept of trauma journalism - reporting of horrific events, e.g., violent crime and terror. The data will be collected through methods such as document analysis (photographs and videos) and in-depth interviews to summarize the informational contents with respect to the research objectives and questions. The study is hinged on the background that the criterion for news production is constructed from the idea that ‘if there’s violence, conflict, and death involved, the story gets top priority.’ The anticipated outcome is to establish trauma experiences of visual rhetors, suggest mitigations, and address gaps in academic research. The findings of the study will sustain the critical role of visual rhetors. Further, media practitioners may find the study useful in assessing the effects and values of visual witnessing. Historically, the criterion for visual news production has been that if there’s violence, conflict, and death involved, the story gets top priority. To capture the goriness of the images, media theorists and sociologists have used the expression: “If it bleeds, it leads.” The statement assumes that audiences are attracted to pictures that show violent images. Further, research on visual aspects of Television news has shown its ability to hold viewers’ attention and cause aggression. This paper samples images and narratives from Journalists who have covered trauma-related events. The samples are indicative of the problem under study, which depicts journalists exposed to traumatic events as not receiving any Psycho-social support within newsrooms. It is hoped that the study could inform policy and practice within developing countries through the interpretations of theoretical and empirical explanations of existing trauma phenomena among journalists.

Keywords: visual-witnessing, media culture, visual rhetoric, imaging violence in East Africa

Procedia PDF Downloads 114

Authors: M. De Iuliis, O. Kammouh, G. P. Cimellaro, S. Tesfamariam

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Community Resilience has gained a significant attention due to the recent unexpected natural and man-made disasters. Resilience is the process of maintaining livable conditions in the event of interruptions in normally available services. Estimating the resilience of systems, ranging from individuals to communities, is a formidable task due to the complexity involved in the process. The most challenging parameter involved in the resilience assessment is the 'downtime'. Downtime is the time needed for a system to recover its services following a disaster event. Estimating the exact downtime of a system requires a lot of inputs and resources that are not always obtainable. The uncertainties in the downtime estimation are usually handled using probabilistic methods, which necessitates acquiring large historical data. The estimation process also involves ignorance, imprecision, vagueness, and subjective judgment. In this paper, a fuzzy-based approach to estimate the downtime of building structures following earthquake events is proposed. Fuzzy logic can integrate descriptive (linguistic) knowledge and numerical data into the fuzzy system. This ability allows the use of walk down surveys, which collect data in a linguistic or a numerical form. The use of fuzzy logic permits a fast and economical estimation of parameters that involve uncertainties. The first step of the method is to determine the building’s vulnerability. A rapid visual screening is designed to acquire information about the analyzed building (e.g. year of construction, structural system, site seismicity, etc.). Then, a fuzzy logic is implemented using a hierarchical scheme to determine the building damageability, which is the main ingredient to estimate the downtime. Generally, the downtime can be divided into three main components: downtime due to the actual damage (DT1); downtime caused by rational and irrational delays (DT2); and downtime due to utilities disruption (DT3). In this work, DT1 is computed by relating the building damageability results obtained from the visual screening to some already-defined components repair times available in the literature. DT2 and DT3 are estimated using the REDITM Guidelines. The Downtime of the building is finally obtained by combining the three components. The proposed method also allows identifying the downtime corresponding to each of the three recovery states: re-occupancy; functional recovery; and full recovery. Future work is aimed at improving the current methodology to pass from the downtime to the resilience of buildings. This will provide a simple tool that can be used by the authorities for decision making.

Keywords: resilience, restoration, downtime, community resilience, fuzzy logic, recovery, damage, built environment

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Authors: Mohammed Abubakar Mawoli

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Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) is a useful tool for predicting entrepreneurial intentions among individuals or groups of people. In view of the Nigerian government’s renewed educational policies and programs to prepare Nigerian undergraduates towards self-reliance and employers of labor after graduation, it becomes pertinent to empirically examine and predict the undergraduate’s entrepreneurial intentions at graduation. Thus, this study primarily examines the undergraduates entrepreneurial intentions using TPB, which includes perceived desirability, perceived social norm, and perceived feasibility factors. In so doing, a questionnaire research method was adopted in which 219 copies of a questionnaire distributed to final year undergraduates were belonging to five departments with a total population of 487 students. A combination of relative frequency, mean standard deviation and multiple regression statistical tools were employed for data analysis. The study found that TPB components exert a significant composite effect on undergraduate’s entrepreneurial intentions. Based on individual contribution of the independent variables, Perceived Desirability is the strongest predictor of the undergraduate’s entrepreneurial intentions, while Perceived Social Norm is a strong predictor of the undergraduate’s entrepreneurial intentions. However, Perceived Feasibility is not a strong predictor of student’s entrepreneurial intentions. The study therefore, recommends that the Perceived desirability, which is formed and shaped by ones level of education and skills acquisition, be improved upon to create the expected positive impact on graduates entrepreneurial intentions and possible venture creation.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial intentions, planned behaviour, prediction, Nigeria

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Authors: Csaba I. Hencz, István Á. Harmati

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Nowadays the significance of road transport is gradually increasing. All transport companies are working in the same external environment where the speed of transport is defined by traffic rules. The main objective is to accelerate the speed of service and it is only dependent on the individual abilities of the managing members. These operational control units make decisions quickly (in a typically experiential and/or intuitive way). For this reason, support for these decisions is an important task. Our goal is to create a decision support model based on fuzzy signatures that can assist the work of operational management automatically. If the model sets parameters properly, the management of transport could be more economical and efficient.

Keywords: freight transport, decision support, information handling, fuzzy methods

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Authors: Sakshi Gupta, Anupam Agrawal, Ekta Singla

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An exoskeleton design for rehabilitation purpose encounters many challenges, including ergonomically acceptable wearing technology, architectural design human-motion compatibility, actuation type, human-robot interaction, etc. In this paper, a passive architecture for upper limb exoskeleton is proposed for assisting in rehabilitation tasks. Kinematic modelling is detailed for task-based kinematic synthesis of the wearable exoskeleton for self-feeding tasks. The exoskeleton architecture possesses expansion and torsional springs which are able to store and redistribute energy over the human arm joints. The elastic characteristics of the springs have been optimized to minimize the mechanical work of the human arm joints. The concept of hybrid combination of a 4-bar parallelogram linkage and a serial linkage were chosen, where the 4-bar parallelogram linkage with expansion spring acts as a rigid structure which is used to provide the rotational degree-of-freedom (DOF) required for lowering and raising of the arm. The single linkage with torsional spring allows for the rotational DOF required for elbow movement. The focus of the paper is kinematic modelling, analysis and task-based synthesis framework for the proposed architecture, keeping in considerations the essential tasks of self-feeding and self-exercising during rehabilitation of partially healthy person. Rehabilitation of primary functional movements (activities of daily life, i.e., ADL) is routine activities that people tend to every day such as cleaning, dressing, feeding. We are focusing on the feeding process to make people independent in respect of the feeding tasks. The tasks are focused to post-surgery patients under rehabilitation with less than 40% weakness. The challenges addressed in work are ensuring to emulate the natural movement of the human arm. Human motion data is extracted through motion-sensors for targeted tasks of feeding and specific exercises. Task-based synthesis procedure framework will be discussed for the proposed architecture. The results include the simulation of the architectural concept for tracking the human-arm movements while displaying the kinematic and static study parameters for standard human weight. D-H parameters are used for kinematic modelling of the hybrid-mechanism, and the model is used while performing task-based optimal synthesis utilizing evolutionary algorithm.

Keywords: passive mechanism, task-based synthesis, emulating human-motion, exoskeleton

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Authors: Rana Mohamed

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Despite youth in Egypt were away from political life for a long time; they are able to make a tangible difference in political status. Purpose: This exploratory study aims to determine whether and how much the prevailing political culture influence participatory behavior with a special focus on political awareness factors among university students in Egypt. Methodology: The study employed several data collection methods to ensure the validity of the results, quantitative and qualitative, verifying the positive relationships between the levels of political awareness and political participation and between political values in society and the level of political participation among university students. For achieving the objectives of the paper in the light of the pool of available literature and data, the study adopts system analysis method to apply input-output and conversions associated with the phenomena of political participation to analyze the different factors that have an effect upon the prevailing political culture and the patterns of values in Egyptian society. Findings: The result reveals that the level of political awareness and political participation for students were low, with a statistically significant relationship. In addition, the patterns of values in Egyptian culture significantly influence the levels of student participation. Therefore, the study recommends formulating policies that aim to increase awareness levels and integrate youth into the political process. Originality/Value: The importance of the academic study stems from addressing one of the central issues in political science; this study measures the change in the Egyptian patterns of culture and values among university students.

Keywords: political awareness, political participation, civic culture, citizenship, Egyptian universities, political knowledge

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Authors: Ikhlas Ahmed, Jamillah Zamoon

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The human receptor for advanced glycation end product is a plasma membrane receptor with an intrinsically disordered region. The protein consists of three extracellular domains, a single membrane spanning transmembrane domain, and a cytosolic domain which is intrinsically disordered and responsible for signaling. The disordered nature of the cytosolic domain allows it to be dynamic in solution. This receptor self-associates to higher forms. The association is triggered by ligand, metal or by the extracellular domain. Fluorescence spectroscopy technique is used to test the self-association of the different concentrations of the cytosolic domain. This work has concluded that the cytosolic domain of this receptor also self-associates. Moreover, the self-association does not require ligand or metal.

Keywords: fluorescence spectroscopy, hRAGE, IDP, Self-association

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Authors: Elizabeth Spink

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The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 6 sets a target for safe and affordable drinking water for all. Developing country governments aiming to achieve this goal often face significant challenges when trying to service last mile customers, particularly those in peri-urban and rural areas. Expansion of water networks often requires high connection fees from households, and demand for connections may be low if there are cheaper substitute sources of water available. This research studies the effect of the availability of substitute sources of water on demand for individual water connections in Livingstone, Zambia, using an event study analysis of metering campaigns. Metering campaigns reduce the share of a household's neighbors that can provide free water to the household if their water connection becomes disconnected due to nonpayment. The results show that household payments in newly metered regions increase by 10 percentage points in the months following metering events, with a decrease in disconnections of 6 percentage points for low-income households. To isolate the effect of changes in a household's substitution possibilities, a similar analysis is conducted among households that neighbor the metered region. These results show mixed evidence of the impact of substitutes on payment behavior and disconnections. The results suggest that metering may be effective in increasing household demand for individual water connections primarily through a lower monthly cost burden for newly metered households.

Keywords: piped-water access, water demand, water utilities, water sharing

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Authors: Omar Said Almushyt

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Quality management, in all countries all over the world, has become recently necessary to face challenges among companies. Software companies in KSA suffer from two problems, namely, low customer satisfaction, and low product quality. Implementation of quality management for a software company can solve these problems, by improving the quality of products and enhancing customer satisfaction. This will lead the company to be competitive. Introducing quality management system onto system analysis followed by system design and finally implementing that system can achieve these goals. Results of the present work showed that the proposed method can increase both the product quality by 10 % and the customer satisfaction by 20 %.

Keywords: quality, management, software, information engineering

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Authors: Yulii D. Shikhmurzaev

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The modelling of the non-isothermal free-surface flows coupled with the solidification process has become the topic of intensive research with the advent of additive manufacturing, where complex 3-dimensional structures are produced by successive deposition and solidification of microscopic droplets of different materials. The issue is that both the spreading of liquids over solids and the propagation of the solidification front into the fluid and along the solid substrate pose fundamental difficulties for their mathematical modelling. The first of these processes, known as ‘dynamic wetting’, leads to the well-known ‘moving contact-line problem’ where, as shown recently both experimentally and theoretically, the contact angle formed by the free surfac with the solid substrate is not a function of the contact-line speed but is rather a functional of the flow field. The modelling of the propagating solidification front requires generalization of the classical Stefan problem, which would be able to describe the onset of the process and the non-equilibrium regime of solidification. Furthermore, given that both dynamic wetting and solification occur concurrently and interactively, they should be described within the same conceptual framework. The present work addresses this formidable problem and presents a mathematical model capable of describing the key element of additive manufacturing in a self-consistent and singularity-free way. The model is illustrated simple examples highlighting its main features. The main idea of the work is that both dynamic wetting and solidification, as well as some other fluid flows, are particular cases in a general class of flows where interfaces form and/or disappear. This conceptual framework allows one to derive a mathematical model from first principles using the methods of irreversible thermodynamics. Crucially, the interfaces are not considered as zero-mass entities introduced using Gibbsian ‘dividing surface’ but the 2-dimensional surface phases produced by the continuum limit in which the thickness of what physically is an interfacial layer vanishes, and its properties are characterized by ‘surface’ parameters (surface tension, surface density, etc). This approach allows for the mass exchange between the surface and bulk phases, which is the essence of the interface formation. As shown numerically, the onset of solidification is preceded by the pure interface formation stage, whilst the Stefan regime is the final stage where the temperature at the solidification front asymptotically approaches the solidification temperature. The developed model can also be applied to the flow with the substrate melting as well as a complex flow where both types of phase transition take place.

Keywords: dynamic wetting, interface formation, phase transition, solidification

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Authors: Rahma Souli-Jbali, Minyar Sassi Hidri, Rahma Ben Ayed

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Grid of computing nodes has emerged as a representative means of connecting distributed computers or resources scattered all over the world for the purpose of computing and distributed storage. Since fault tolerance becomes complex due to the availability of resources in decentralized grid environment, it can be used in connection with replication in data grids. The objective of our work is to present fault tolerance in data grids with data replication-driven model based on clustering. The performance of the protocol is evaluated with Omnet++ simulator. The computational results show the efficiency of our protocol in terms of recovery time and the number of process in rollbacks.

Keywords: data grids, fault tolerance, clustering, chandy-lamport

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Authors: Berit Johannessen

Abstract:

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

Keywords: aromatherapy, bergamot, dementia, depression

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Authors: H. Achache, Y. Madani, A. Benzerdjeb

Abstract:

The present study is based on the three-dimensional digital analysis by the finite elements method of the mechanical loading effect on the delamination of unidirectional and multidirectional stratified composites. The aim of this work is the determination of the release energy rate G in mode I and the Von Mises equivalent constraint distribution along the damaged area under the influence of several parameters such as the applied load and the delamination size. The results obtained in this study show that the unidirectional composite laminates have better mechanical resistance one the loading line than the multidirectional composite laminates.

Keywords: delamination, release energy rate, stratified composite, finite element method, ply

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

Abstract:

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

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

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Authors: Jaypraksh Show, Pooja Rawat

Abstract:

Experiences are the fundamental aspects of understanding of ourslves and the world around, leading to wisdom. In the path of wisdom, explorative reflection is the process through which we integrate our experiences, weave them into autobiographical narratives. Further, Neisser, a psychologist, and philosopher, thinks ‘ourselves’ is the wide web of different concepts which help us to understand the world, he called it the conceptual self. The conceptual self, as the storehouse of experiences and different concepts, develops a wiser individual narrative. Thus, Wisdom can be conceived as the expression of the Self. Drawing from this, the current work explores the autobiographies of young adults, focusing on their narrative self and foundations of wisdom through narrative analysis. Using the corresponding interview data, we will shed light on the way they exploratively reflect on challenging situations and use their narrative experiences and conceptual understanding. The aim of this study is to understand the ‘conceptual wiser-self’.

Keywords: wisdom, self, conceptual self, narrative self, autobiography, narrative analysis

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Authors: Allen B. Baylosis

Abstract:

Chamber Theatre has been one of the least articulated staging devices in the field of theatre and performance studies. This creative exploratory-descriptive study responds to this gap by employing the staging technique in a Chamber Theatre production based on Nick Joaquin’s The Summer Solstice. Specifically, this study opts to understand three processes involved in the Chamber Theatre creative thesis production of The Summer Solstice as performance: performance of the theatre-maker, performance of the spect-actors, and performance of the spectators. For this purpose, the theatre-maker describes the creative process of transforming The Summer Solstice text to a Chamber Theatre production—from text to staging. The theatre-maker also analyzes the performers’ experiences and the spectators’ responses as they participate in a Chamber Theatre performance. In doing so, the theatre-maker collects qualitative data from seventeen (17) performers and qualitative feedback from twenty (20) spectators. For the mode of data analysis, this study employed Ranciere’s concept on the Emancipated Spectator (2008) and Schechner’s Performance Theory (1988). The study’s findings examine how the theatre-maker, the performers, and the spectators become distant viewers of their respective restored behavior performances. Through these viewed performances, this study implies that it is possible to ascertain a reasonable definition of purpose for Chamber Theatre. Hence, despite the existence of other modern staging devices in the field of theatre and performance studies, this study concludes that Chamber Theatre remains to be a relevant staging technique.

Keywords: adaptation of text, chamber theatre, experimental theater, oral interpretation

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Authors: Sabahat Nadeem, Farman Ali Khan

Abstract:

Emotions are considered as a vital factor affecting the process of information handling, level of attention, memory capacity and decision making. Latest e-Learning systems are therefore taking into consideration the effective state of learners to make the learning process more effective and enjoyable. One such use of user’s affective information is in the systems that tend to regulate users’ emotions to a state optimally desirable for learning. So for, this objective has been tried to be achieved with the help of teaching strategies, background music, guided imagery, video clips and odors. Nevertheless, we know that colors can affect human emotions. Relationship between color and emotions has a strong influence on how we perceive our environment. Similarly, the colors of the interface can also affect the user positively as well as negatively. This affective behavior of color and its use as emotion regulation agent is not yet exploited. Therefore, this research proposes a Color-based Emotion Regulation Model (CERM), a new framework that can automatically adapt its colors according to user’s emotional state and her personality type and can help in producing a desirable emotional effect, aiming at providing an unobtrusive emotional support to the users of e-learning environment. The evaluation of CERM is carried out by comparing it with classical non-adaptive, static colored learning management system. Results indicate that colors of the interface, when carefully selected has significant positive impact on learner’s emotions.

Keywords: effective learning, e-learning, emotion regulation, emotional design

Procedia PDF Downloads 302