Search results for: management system

Authors: Getaneh Berie Tarekegn

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A precise localization system is crucial for many artificial intelligence Internet of Things (AI-IoT) applications in the era of smart cities. Their applications include traffic monitoring, emergency alarming, environmental monitoring, location-based advertising, intelligent transportation, and smart health care. The most common method for providing continuous positioning services in outdoor environments is by using a global navigation satellite system (GNSS). Due to nonline-of-sight, multipath, and weather conditions, GNSS systems do not perform well in dense urban, urban, and suburban areas.This paper proposes a generative AI-based positioning scheme for large-scale wireless settings using fingerprinting techniques. In this article, we presented a novel semi-supervised deep convolutional generative adversarial network (S-DCGAN)-based radio map construction method for real-time device localization. We also employed a reliable signal fingerprint feature extraction method with t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE), which extracts dominant features while eliminating noise from hybrid WLAN and long-term evolution (LTE) fingerprints. The proposed scheme reduced the workload of site surveying required to build the fingerprint database by up to 78.5% and significantly improved positioning accuracy. The results show that the average positioning error of GAILoc is less than 39 cm, and more than 90% of the errors are less than 82 cm. That is, numerical results proved that, in comparison to traditional methods, the proposed SRCLoc method can significantly improve positioning performance and reduce radio map construction costs.

Keywords: location-aware services, feature extraction technique, generative adversarial network, long short-term memory, support vector machine

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Authors: Ola Jon Mork, Irina Emily Hansen

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The European Growth Strategy Program calls for more efficient methods for knowledge creation and innovation. This study contributes with new insights into the Singapore Innovation System; more precisely how knowledge processes are facilitated. The research material is collected by visiting the different innovation locations in Singapore and depth interview with key persons. The different innovation actors web sites and brochures have been studied. Governmental reports and figures have also been studied. The findings show that facilitation of Knowledge Processes in the Singapore Innovation System has a basic structure with three processes, which is 1) Idea capturing – 2)Technology and Business Execution – 3)Idea Realization. Dedicated innovation parks work with the most promising entrepreneurs; more precisely: finding the persons with the motivation to 'change the world'. The innovation park will facilitate these entrepreneurs for 100 days, where they also will be connected to a global network of venture capital. And, the entrepreneurs will have access to mentors from these venture companies. Research institutes parks work with the development of world leading technology. To facilitate knowledge development they connect with industrial companies which are the most promising applicators of their technology. Knowledge facilitation is the main purpose, but this cooperation/testing is also serving as a platform for funding. Probably this is cooperation is also attractive for world leading companies. Dedicated innovation parks work with facilitation of innovators of new applications and perfection of products for the end- user. These parks can be specialized in special areas, like health products and life science products. Another example of this is automotive companies giving research call for these parks to develop and innovate new products and services upon their technology. Common characteristics for the knowledge facilitation in the Singapore Innovation System are a short trial period for promising actors, normally 100 days. It is also a strong focus on training of the entrepreneurs. Presentations and diffusion of knowledge is an important part of the facilitation. Funding will be available for the most successful entrepreneurs and innovators.

Keywords: knowledge processes, facilitation, innovation, Singapore innovation web

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Authors: Maryam Alimardani, Kazuo Hiraki

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This study presents a framework for development of a new generation of therapy robots that can interact with users by monitoring their physiological and mental states. Here, we focused on one of the controversial methods of therapy, hypnotherapy. Hypnosis has shown to be useful in treatment of many clinical conditions. But, even for healthy people, it can be used as an effective technique for relaxation or enhancement of memory and concentration. Our aim is to develop a robot that collects information about user’s mental and physical states using electroencephalogram (EEG) and electromyography (EMG) signals and performs costeffective hypnosis at the comfort of user’s house. The presented framework consists of three main steps: (1) Find the EEG-correlates of mind state before, during, and after hypnosis and establish a cognitive model for state changes, (2) Develop a system that can track the changes in EEG and EMG activities in real time and determines if the user is ready for suggestion, and (3) Implement our system in a humanoid robot that will talk and conduct hypnosis on users based on their mental states. This paper presents a pilot study in regard to the first stage, detection of EEG and EMG features during hypnosis.

Keywords: hypnosis, EEG, robotherapy, brain-computer interface (BCI)

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Authors: Phatu William Mashela, Pontsho Edmund Tseke, Kgabo Martha Pofu

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‘Inconsistent results’ in nematode suppression post-application of botanical-based products created credibility concerns. Relative to untreated control, sampling for nematodes post-application of botanical-based products suggested significant increases in nematode population densities. ‘Inconsistent results’ were confirmed in Tylenchulus semipenetrans on Citrus jambhiri seedlings when sampling was carried out at 120 days post-application of a granular Nemarioc-AG phytonematicide. The objective of this study was to determine post-application effects of untreated control, Nemarioc-AG phytonematicide and aldicarb to T. semipenetrans population densities on C. jambhiri seedlings. Two hundred and ten seedlings were each inoculated with 10000 T. semipenetrans eggs and second-stage juveniles (J2) in plastic pots containing 2700 ml growing mixture. A week after inoculation, seedlings were equally split and subjected to once-off treatment of 2 g aldicarb, 2 g Nemarioc-AG phytonematicide and untreated control. Five seedlings from each group were randomly placed on greenhouse benches to serve as a sampling block, with a total of 14 blocks. The entire block was sampled weekly and assessed for final nematode population density (Pf). After the final assessment, post-regression of untreated Pf to increasing sampling intervals exhibited positive quadratic relations, with the model explaining 90% associations, with optimum Pf of 13804 eggs and J2 at six weeks post-application. In contrast, treated Pf and increasing sampling interval exhibited negative quadratic relations, with the model explaining 95% and 92% associations in phytonematicide and aldicarb, respectively. In the phytonematicide, Pf was 974 eggs and J2, whereas that in aldicarb was 2205 eggs and J2 at six weeks. In conclusion, temporal cyclic nematode population growth provided an empirically-based explanation of ‘inconsistent results’ in nematode suppression post-application of the two nematode management strategies.

Keywords: nematode management, residual effect, slow decline of citrus, the citrus nematode

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Authors: Ayuko Itsuki, Sachiyo Aburatani

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In recent years, pollutions of the environment by toxic substances become a serious problem. While there are many methods of environmental clean-up, the methods by microorganisms are considered to be reasonable and safety for environment. Compost is known that it catabolize the meladorous substancess in its production process, however the mechanism of its catabolizing system is not known yet. In the catabolization process, organic matters turn into inorganic by the released enzymes from lots of microorganisms which live in compost. In other words, the cooperative of activated enzymes in the compost decomposes malodorous substances. Thus, clarifying the interaction among enzymes is important for revealing the catabolizing system of meladorous substance in compost. In this study, we utilized statistical method to infer the interaction among enzymes. We developed a method which combined partial correlation with cross correlation to estimate the relevance between enzymes especially from time series data of few variables. Because of using cross correlation, we can estimate not only the associative structure but also the reaction pathway. We applied the developed method to the enzyme measured data and estimated an interaction among the enzymes in decomposition mechanism of toluene.

Keywords: enzyme activities, comparative analysis, compost, toluene

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Authors: Diego Adrian Cardenas Jorge, Gerardo Mirando Guisado, Alfredo Barrientos Padilla

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A system based on Affective Computing can detect and interpret human information like voice, facial expressions and body movement to detect emotions and execute a corresponding response. This data is important due to the fact that a person can communicate more effectively with emotions than can be possible with words. This information can be processed through technological components like Facial Recognition, Gait Recognition or Gesture Recognition. As of now, solutions proposed using this technology only consider one component at a given moment. This research investigation proposes two solutions based on Affective Computing taking into account more than one component for emotion detection. The proposals reflect the levels of dependency between hardware devices and software, as well as the interaction process between the system and the user which implies the development of scenarios where both proposals will be put to the test in a live environment. Both solutions are to be developed in code by software engineers to prove the feasibility. To validate the impact on society and business interest, interviews with stakeholders are conducted with an investment mind set where each solution is labeled on a scale of 1 through 5, being one a minimum possible investment and 5 the maximum.

Keywords: affective computing, emotions, emotion detection, face recognition, gait recognition

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Authors: Ming-Juei Chang, Hui-Ing Ma, Tsung-Hsueh Lu

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Introduction: Because of the advance of medical care (e.g., ventilation techniques and gastrostomy feeding), more and more children with CP can live to adulthood. However, little is known about the use of health care services from children to adults who have CP. The patterns of utilization of ambulatory care are heavily influenced by insurance coverage and primary care gatekeeper regulation. The purpose of this study was to examine patterns of ambulatory care utilization among individuals with CP in Taiwan, a country with universal coverage and no gatekeeper regulation. Methods: A representative sample of one million patients (about 1/23 of total population) covered by Taiwan’s National Health Insurance was used to analyze the ambulatory care utilization in individuals with CP. Data were analyzed by 3 different age groups (children, youth and adults) during 2000 to 2003. Participants were identified by the presence of CP diagnosis made by pediatricians or physicians of physical and rehabilitation medicine and stated at least three times in claims data. Results: Annual rates of outpatient physician visits were 31680 for children, 16492 for youth, and 28617 for adults with CP (per 1000 persons). Individuals with CP received over 50% of their outpatient care from hospital outpatient department. Higher use of specialist physician services was found in children (54.7%) than in the other two age groups (28.4% in youth and 18.8% in adults). Diseases of respiratory system were the most frequent diagnoses for visits in both children and youth with CP. Diseases of the circulatory system were the main reasons (24.3%) that adults with CP visited hospital outpatient care department or clinics. Conclusion: This study showed different patterns of ambulatory care utilization among different age groups. It appears that youth and adults with CP continue to have complex health issues and rely heavily on the health care system. Additional studies are needed to determine the factors which influence ambulatory care utilization among individuals with CP.

Keywords: cerebral palsy, health services, lifespan, universal coverage

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Authors: Farhood Rismanchian, Seong Hyeon Park, Young Hoon Lee

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This paper proposes a method to optimize the layout of an emergency department (ED) based on real executions of care processes by considering several planning objectives simultaneously. Recently, demand for healthcare services has been dramatically increased. As the demand for healthcare services increases, so do the need for new healthcare buildings as well as the need for redesign and renovating existing ones. The importance of implementation of a standard set of engineering facilities planning and design techniques has been already proved in both manufacturing and service industry with many significant functional efficiencies. However, high complexity of care processes remains a major challenge to apply these methods in healthcare environments. Process mining techniques applied in this study to tackle the problem of complexity and to enhance care process analysis. Process related information such as clinical pathways extracted from the information system of an ED. A 0-1 goal programming approach is then proposed to find a single layout that simultaneously satisfies several goals. The proposed model solved by optimization software CPLEX 12. The solution reached using the proposed method has 42.2% improvement in terms of walking distance of normal patients and 47.6% improvement in walking distance of critical patients at minimum cost of relocation. It has been observed that lots of patients must unnecessarily walk long distances during their visit to the emergency department because of an inefficient design. A carefully designed layout can significantly decrease patient walking distance and related complications.

Keywords: healthcare operation management, goal programming, facility layout problem, process mining, clinical processes

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Authors: Simrat Kaur, Fatema Diwan, Brad Reddersen

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The unsustainable and injudicious use of natural renewable resources beyond the self-replenishment limits of our planet has proved catastrophic. Most of the Earth’s resources, including land, water, minerals, and biodiversity, have been overexploited. Owing to this, there is a steep rise in the global events of natural calamities of contrasting nature, such as torrential rains, storms, heat waves, rising sea levels, and megadroughts. These are all interconnected through common elements, namely oceanic currents and land’s the green cover. The deforestation fueled by the ‘economic elites’ or the global players have already cleared massive forests and ecological biomes in every region of the globe, including the Amazon. These were the natural carbon sinks prevailing and performing CO2 sequestration for millions of years. The forest biomes have been turned into mono cultivation farms to produce feedstock crops such as soybean, maize, and sugarcane; which are one of the biggest green house gas emitters. Such unsustainable agriculture practices only provide feedstock for livestock and food processing industries with huge carbon and water footprints. These are two main factors that have ‘cause and effect’ relationships in the context of climate change. In contrast to organic and sustainable farming, the mono-cultivation practices to produce food, fuel, and feedstock using chemicals devoid of the soil of its fertility, abstract surface, and ground waters beyond the limits of replenishment, emit green house gases, and destroy biodiversity. There are numerous cases across the planet where due to overuse; the levels of surface water reservoir such as the Lake Mead in Southwestern USA and ground water such as in Punjab, India, have deeply shrunk. Unlike the rain fed food production system on which the poor communities of the world relies; the blue water (surface and ground water) dependent mono-cropping for industrial and processed food create water deficit which put the burden on the domestic users. Excessive abstraction of both surface and ground waters for high water demanding feedstock (soybean, maize, sugarcane), cereal crops (wheat, rice), and cash crops (cotton) have a dual and synergistic impact on the global green house gas emissions and prevalence of megadroughts. Both these factors have elevated global temperatures, which caused cascading events such as soil water deficits, flash fires, and unprecedented burning of the woods, creating megafires in multiple continents, namely USA, South America, Europe, and Australia. Therefore, it is imperative to reduce the green and blue water footprints of agriculture and industrial sectors through recycling of black and gray waters. This paper explores various opportunities for successful implementation of wastewater management for drought preparedness in high risk communities.

Keywords: wastewater, drought, biodiversity, water footprint, nutrient recovery, algae

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Authors: O. A. Ajigini, E. N. Mwim

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Cybersecurity is the protection of computers, programs, networks, and data from attack, damage, unauthorised, unintended access, change, or destruction. Organisations collect, process and store their confidential and sensitive information on computers and transmit this data across networks to other computers. Moreover, the advent of internet technologies has led to various cyberattacks resulting in dangerous consequences for organisations. Therefore, with the increase in the volume and sophistication of cyberattacks, there is a need to develop models and make recommendations for the management of cybersecurity threats in organisations. This paper reports on various threats that cause malicious damage to organisations in cyberspace and provides measures on how these threats can be eliminated or reduced. The paper explores various aspects of protection measures against cybersecurity threats such as handling of sensitive data, network security, protection of information assets and cybersecurity awareness. The paper posits a model and recommendations on how to manage cybersecurity threats in organisations effectively. The model and the recommendations can then be utilised by organisations to manage the threats affecting their cyberspace. The paper provides valuable information to assist organisations in managing their cybersecurity threats and hence protect their computers, programs, networks and data in cyberspace. The paper aims to assist organisations to protect their information assets and data from cyberthreats as part of the contributions toward community engagement.

Keywords: confidential information, cyberattacks, cybersecurity, cyberspace, sensitive information

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Authors: Priscila Ribeiro dos Santos, Luiz Antonio Daniel

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Inadequate access to clean water and sanitation has become one of the most widespread problems affecting people throughout the developing world, leading to an unceasing need for low-cost and sustainable wastewater treatment systems. The UASB technology has been widely employed as a suitable and economical option for the treatment of sewage in developing countries, which involves low initial investment, low energy requirements, low operation and maintenance costs, high loading capacity, short hydraulic retention times, long solids retention times and low sludge production. Whereas dissolved air flotation process is a good option for the post-treatment of anaerobic effluents, being capable of producing high quality effluents in terms of total suspended solids, chemical oxygen demand, phosphorus, and even pathogens. This work presents an evaluation and monitoring, over a period of 6 months, of one compact full-scale system with this configuration, UASB reactors followed by dissolved air flotation units (DAF), operating in Brazil. It was verified as a successful treatment system, and an issue of relevance since dissolved air flotation process treating UASB reactor effluents is not widely encompassed in the literature. The study covered the removal and behavior of several variables, such as turbidity, total suspend solids (TSS), chemical oxygen demand (COD), Escherichia coli, total coliforms and Clostridium perfringens. The physicochemical variables were analyzed according to the protocols established by the Standard Methods for Examination of Water and Wastewater. For microbiological variables, such as Escherichia coli and total coliforms, it was used the “pour plate” technique with Chromocult Coliform Agar (Merk Cat. No.1.10426) serving as the culture medium, while the microorganism Clostridium perfringens was analyzed through the filtering membrane technique, with the Ágar m-CP (Oxoid Ltda, England) serving as the culture medium. Approximately 74% of total COD was removed in the UASB reactor, and the complementary removal done during the flotation process resulted in 88% of COD removal from the raw sewage, thus the initial concentration of COD of 729 mg.L-1 decreased to 87 mg.L-1. Whereas, in terms of particulate COD, the overall removal efficiency for the whole system was about 94%, decreasing from 375 mg.L-1 in raw sewage to 29 mg.L-1 in final effluent. The UASB reactor removed on average 77% of the TSS from raw sewage. While the dissolved air flotation process did not work as expected, removing only 30% of TSS from the anaerobic effluent. The final effluent presented an average concentration of 38 mg.L-1 of TSS. The turbidity was significantly reduced, leading to an overall efficiency removal of 80% and a final turbidity of 28 NTU.The treated effluent still presented a high concentration of fecal pollution indicators (E. coli, total coliforms, and Clostridium perfringens), showing that the system did not present a good performance in removing pathogens. Clostridium perfringens was the organism which suffered the higher removal by the treatment system. The results can be considered satisfactory for the physicochemical variables, taking into account the simplicity of the system, besides that, it is necessary a post-treatment to improve the microbiological quality of the final effluent.

Keywords: dissolved air flotation, municipal sewage, UASB reactor, treatment

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Authors: Yvonne A. Unrau

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Social work education is a competency-based curriculum that relies mostly on cognitive frameworks and problem-solving models. Absent from the curriculum is knowledge and skills that draw from an embodiment perspective, especially somatic practice methods. Embodiment broadly encompasses the understanding that biological, political, historical, and social factors impact human development via changes to the nervous system. In the past 20 years, research has well-established that unresolved traumatic events, especially during childhood, negatively impacts long-term health and well-being. Furthermore, traumatic stress compromises cognitive processing and activates reflexive action such as ‘fight’ or ‘flight,’ which are the focus of somatic methods. The main objective of this paper is to show how embodiment perspectives and somatic methods can enhance social work practice overall. Using an exploratory approach, the author shares a decade-long journey that involved creating an education-support program for college students who exited the state foster care system. Personal experience, program outcomes and case study narratives revealed that ‘classical’ social work methods were insufficient to fully address the complex needs of college students who were living with complex traumatic stressors. The paper chronicles select case study scenarios and key program development milestones over a 10-year period to show the benefit of incorporating embodiment perspectives in social work practice. The lessons reveal that there is an immediate need for social work curriculum to include embodiment perspectives so that social workers may be equipped to respond competently to their many clients who live with unresolved trauma.

Keywords: social work practice, social work curriculum, embodiment, traumatic stress

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Authors: Omid Allan

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The advent of ultra-narrow diameter implants initially offered an alternative to wider conventional implants. However, their design limitations have restricted their applicability primarily to overdentures and cement-retained fixed prostheses, often with unpredictable long-term outcomes. The introduction of the new Miniature Implants has revolutionized the field of implant dentistry, leading to a more streamlined approach. The utilization of Miniature Implants has emerged as a promising alternative to the traditional approach that entails the traumatic sequential bone drilling procedures and the use of conventional implants for full and partial arch restorations. The innovative "BioMiniatures Implant System serves as a groundbreaking bridge connecting mini implants with standard implant systems. This system allows practitioners to harness the advantages of ultra-small implants, enabling minimally invasive insertion and facilitating the application of fixed screw-retained prostheses, which were only available to conventional wider implant systems. This approach streamlines full and partial arch rehabilitation with minimal or even no bone drilling, significantly reducing surgical risks and complications for clinicians while minimizing patient morbidity. The ultra-narrow diameter and self-advancing features of these implants eliminate the need for invasive and technically complex procedures such as bone augmentation and guided bone regeneration (GBR), particularly in cases involving thin alveolar ridges. Furthermore, the absence of a microcap between the implant and abutment eliminates the potential for micro-leakage and micro-pumping effects, effectively mitigating the risk of marginal bone loss and future peri-implantitis. The cumulative experience of restoring over 50 full and partial arch edentulous cases with this system has yielded an outstanding success rate exceeding 97%. The long-term success with a stable marginal bone level in the study firmly establishes these implants as a dependable alternative to conventional implants, especially for full arch rehabilitation cases. Full arch rehabilitation with these implants holds the promise of providing a simplified solution for edentulous patients who typically present with atrophic narrow alveolar ridges, eliminating the need for extensive GBR and bone augmentation to restore their dentition with fixed prostheses.

Keywords: mini-implant, biominiatures, miniature implants, minimally invasive dentistry, full arch rehabilitation

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Authors: M. I. Youssef, A. E. Emam, M. Abd Elghany

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This paper evaluates the bit error rate (BER) performance of MIMO-OFDM communication system. MIMO system uses multiple transmitting and receiving antennas with different coding techniques to either enhance the transmission diversity or spatial multiplexing gain. Utilizing alamouti algorithm were the same information transmitted over multiple antennas at different time intervals and then collected again at the receivers to minimize the probability of error, combat fading and thus improve the received signal to noise ratio. While utilizing V-BLAST algorithm, the transmitted signals are divided into different transmitting channels and transferred over the channel to be received by different receiving antennas to increase the transmitted data rate and achieve higher throughput. The paper provides a study of different diversity gain coding schemes and spatial multiplexing coding for MIMO systems. A comparison of various channels' estimation and equalization techniques are given. The simulation is implemented using MATLAB, and the results had shown the performance of transmission models under different channel environments.

Keywords: MIMO communication, BER, space codes, channels, alamouti, V-BLAST

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Authors: Endrick Barnacin, Jean-Luc Henry, Jack Molinié, Jimmy Nagau, Hélène Delatte, Gérard Lebreton

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Palynology is a field of interest for many disciplines. It has multiple applications such as chronological dating, climatology, allergy treatment, and even honey characterization. Unfortunately, the analysis of a pollen slide is a complicated and time-consuming task that requires the intervention of experts in the field, which is becoming increasingly rare due to economic and social conditions. So, the automation of this task is a necessity. Pollen slides analysis is mainly a visual process as it is carried out with the naked eye. That is the reason why a primary method to automate palynology is the use of digital image processing. This method presents the lowest cost and has relatively good accuracy in pollen retrieval. In this work, we propose a system combining recognition and grouping of pollen. It consists of using a Logistic Model Tree to classify pollen already known by the proposed system while detecting any unknown species. Then, the unknown pollen species are divided using a cluster-based approach. Success rates for the recognition of known species have been achieved, and automated clustering seems to be a promising approach.

Keywords: pollen recognition, logistic model tree, expectation-maximization, local binary pattern

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Authors: Md Shafiqul Bari, Md Shafiqul Islam Sikdar

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This paper summarizes the current knowledge on Agroforestry practices in the Barind tract of Bangladesh. The part of greater Rajshahi, Dinajpur, Rangpur and Bogra district of Bangladesh is geographically identified as the Barind tract. The hard red soil of these areas is very significant in comparison to that of the other parts of the country. A typical dry climate with comparatively high temperature prevails in the Barind area. Scanty rainfall and excessive extraction of groundwater have created an alarming situation among the Barind people and others about irrigation to the rice field. In addition, the situation may cause an adverse impact on the people whose livelihood largely depends on agriculture. The groundwater table has been declined by at least 10 to 15 meters in some areas of the Barind tract during the last 20 years. Due to absent of forestland in the Barind tract, the soil organic carbon content can decrease more rapidly because of the higher rate of decomposition. The Barind soils are largely carbon depleted but can be brought back to carbon-carrying capacity by bringing under suitable Agroforestry systems. Agroforestry has tremendous potential for carbon sequestration not only in above C biomass but also root C biomass in deeper soil depths. Agroforestry systems habitually conserve soil organic carbon and maintain a great natural nutrient pool. Cultivation of trees with arable crops under Agroforestry systems help in improving soil organic carbon content and sequestration carbon, particularly in the highly degraded Barind lands. Agroforestry systems are a way of securing the growth of cash crops that may constitute an alternative source of income in moments of crisis. Besides being a source of fuel wood, a greater presence of trees in cropping system contributes to decreasing temperatures and to increasing rainfall, thus contrasting the negative environmental impact of climate changes. In order to fulfill the objectives of this study, two experiments were conducted. The first experiment was survey on the impact of existing agroforestry system on the livelihood security in the Barind tract of Bangladesh and the second one was the role of agroforestry system on the improvement of soil properties in a multilayered coconut orchard. Agroforestry systems have been generated a lot of employment opportunities in the Barind area. More crops mean involvement of more people in various activities like involvements in dairying, sericulture, apiculture and additional associated agro-based interventions. Successful adoption of Agroforestry practices in the Barind area has shown that the Agroforestry practitioners of this area were very sound positioned economically, and had added social status too. However, from the findings of the present study, it may be concluded that the majority rural farmers of the Barind tract of Bangladesh had a very good knowledge and medium extension contact related to agroforestry production system. It was also observed that 85 per cent farmers followed agroforestry production system and received benefits to a higher extent. Again, from the research study on orchard based mutistoried agroforestry cropping system, it was evident that there was an important effect of agroforestry cropping systems on the improvement of soil chemical properties. As a result, the agroforestry systems may be helpful to attain the development objectives and preserve the biosphere core.

Keywords: agroforestry systems, Barind tract, carbon sequestration, climate changes

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Authors: Awais Ali, Hesham Ali

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The absence of teeth through either premature loss or developmental absence is a common condition with potentially severe impact on affected individuals. Management of these cases presents a clinical challenge which may be difficult to resolve given the effects of tooth loss or hypodontia over the course of a patient’s lifetime. Treatment of such cases is often best provided by a multi-disciplinary team, where the patient’s expectations and care delivery can be optimally managed. Orthodontic treatment is often used to prepare the dentition in advance of restorative replacement of missing teeth. Conversely, the placement of implants may precede the delivery of orthodontic treatment and indeed may function as an adjunctive orthodontic procedure. We discuss the use of both approaches here and illustrate their clinical implementation with two case reports. The first case demonstrates the use of fixed appliances to prepare the mouth for an opposing implant-retained complete denture. A second case demonstrates the use of implant-retained crowns to provide orthodontic anchorage in a partially dentate patient. We propose that complex cases such as these should always be planned and treated by a multi-disciplinary team in order to optimise the delivery of care, patient experience, and treatment outcome. The presented cases add to the body of evidence in this area.

Keywords: orthodontics, dental implantology, hypodontia, multi-disciplinary

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Authors: Wern-Yarng Shieh, Chao Qian, Bingnan Pei

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A design of communication area for infrared electronic-toll-collection systems to provide an extended communication interval in the vehicle traveling direction and regular boundary between contiguous traffic lanes is proposed. By utilizing two typical low-cost commercial infrared LEDs with different half-intensity angles Φ1/2 = 22° and 10°, the radiation pattern of the emitter is designed to properly adjust the spatial distribution of the signal power. The aforementioned purpose can be achieved with an LED array in a three-piece structure with appropriate mounting angles. With this emitter, the influence of the mounting parameters, including the mounting height and mounting angles of the on-board unit and road-side unit, on the system performance in terms of the received signal strength and communication area are investigated. The results reveal that, for our emitter proposed in this paper, the ideal "long-and-narrow" characteristic of the communication area is very little affected by these mounting parameters. An optimum mounting configuration is also suggested.

Keywords: dedicated short-range communication (DSRC), electronic toll collection (ETC), infrared communication, intelligent transportation system (ITS), multilane free flow

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Authors: Tingwei Shu, Dong Zhou, Chengjun Guo

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Semantic communication is an emerging form of communication that realize intelligent communication by extracting semantic information of data at the source and transmitting it, and recovering the data at the receiving end. It can effectively solve the problem of data transmission under the situation of large data volume, low SNR and restricted bandwidth. With the development of Deep Learning, semantic communication further matures and is gradually applied in the fields of the Internet of Things, Uumanned Air Vehicle cluster communication, remote sensing scenarios, etc. We propose an improved semantic communication system for the situation where the data volume is huge and the spectrum resources are limited during the transmission of remote sensing images. At the transmitting, we need to extract the semantic information of remote sensing images, but there are some problems. The traditional semantic communication system based on Convolutional Neural Network cannot take into account the global semantic information and local semantic information of the image, which results in less-than-ideal image recovery at the receiving end. Therefore, we adopt the improved vision-Transformer-based structure as the semantic encoder instead of the mainstream one using CNN to extract the image semantic features. In this paper, we first perform pre-processing operations on remote sensing images to improve the resolution of the images in order to obtain images with more semantic information. We use wavelet transform to decompose the image into high-frequency and low-frequency components, perform bilinear interpolation on the high-frequency components and bicubic interpolation on the low-frequency components, and finally perform wavelet inverse transform to obtain the preprocessed image. We adopt the improved Vision-Transformer structure as the semantic coder to extract and transmit the semantic information of remote sensing images. The Vision-Transformer structure can better train the huge data volume and extract better image semantic features, and adopt the multi-layer self-attention mechanism to better capture the correlation between semantic features and reduce redundant features. Secondly, to improve the coding efficiency, we reduce the quadratic complexity of the self-attentive mechanism itself to linear so as to improve the image data processing speed of the model. We conducted experimental simulations on the RSOD dataset and compared the designed system with a semantic communication system based on CNN and image coding methods such as BGP and JPEG to verify that the method can effectively alleviate the problem of excessive data volume and improve the performance of image data communication.

Keywords: semantic communication, transformer, wavelet transform, data processing

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Authors: Zhou Mo, Dennis Chow

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In the dynamic positioning system (DPS) for vessels, the reliable information transmission between each note basically relies on the wireless protocols. From the perspective of cluster-based routing pro-tocols for wireless sensor networks, the data fusion technology based on the sleep scheduling mechanism and remaining energy in network layer is proposed, which applies the sleep scheduling mechanism to the routing protocols, considering the remaining energy of node and location information when selecting cluster-head. The problem of uneven distribution of nodes in each cluster is solved by the Equilibrium. At the same time, Classified Forwarding Mechanism as well as Redelivery Policy strategy is adopted to avoid congestion in the transmission of huge amount of data, reduce the delay in data delivery and enhance the real-time response. In this paper, a simulation test is conducted to improve the routing protocols, which turns out to reduce the energy consumption of nodes and increase the efficiency of data delivery.

Keywords: DPS for vessel, wireless sensor network, data fusion, routing protocols

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Authors: Sonia Anand Knowlton

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With the rise of artificial intelligence, computer science is becoming increasingly integrated in virtually every area of life. Of course, the law is no exception. Through argumentation frameworks (AFs), computer scientists have used abstract algebra to structure the legal reasoning process in a way that allows conclusions to be drawn from a formalized system of arguments. In AFs, arguments compete against each other for logical success and are related to one another through the binary operation of the attack. The prevailing arguments make up the preferred extension of the given argumentation framework, telling us what set of arguments must be accepted from a logical standpoint. There have been several developments of AFs since its original conception in the early 90’s in efforts to make them more aligned with the human reasoning process. Generally, these developments have sought to add nuance to the factors that influence the logical success of competing arguments (e.g., giving an argument more logical strength based on the underlying value it promotes). The most cogent development was that of the Extended Argumentation Framework (EAF), in which attacks can themselves be attacked by other arguments, and the promotion of different competing values can be formalized within the system. This article applies the logical structure of EAFs to current theoretical understandings of judicial reasoning to contribute to theories of judging and to the evolution of AFs simultaneously. The argument is that the main limitation of EAFs, when applied to judicial reasoning, is that they require judges to themselves assign values to different arguments and then lexically order these values to determine the given framework’s preferred extension. Drawing on John Rawls’ Theory of Justice, the examination that follows is whether values are lexical and commensurable to this extent. The analysis that follows then suggests a potential extension of the EAF system with an approach that formalizes different “planes of attack” for competing arguments that promote lexically ordered values. This article concludes with a summary of how these insights contribute to theories of judging and of legal reasoning more broadly, specifically in indeterminate cases where judges must turn to value-based approaches.

Keywords: computer science, mathematics, law, legal theory, judging

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Authors: Aditi Madan, Jayant Kumar Routray

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Purpose: Over the years flood related risks have compounded due to increasing vulnerability caused by rapid urbanisation and growing population. This increase is an indication of the need for enhancing the preparedness of institutions to respond to floods. The study describes disaster management structure and its linkages with institutions involved in managing disasters. It addresses issues and challenges associated with readiness of disaster management institutions to respond to floods. It suggests policy options for enhancing the current state of readiness of institutions to respond by considering factors like institutional, manpower, financial, technical, leadership & networking, training and awareness programs, monitoring and evaluation. Methodology: The study is based on qualitative data with statements and outputs from primary and secondary sources to understand the institutional framework for disaster management in India. Primary data included field visits, interviews with officials from institutions managing disasters and the affected community to identify the challenges faced in engaging national, state, district and local level institutions in managing disasters. For focus group discussions, meetings were held with district project officers and coordinators, local officials, community based organisation, civil defence volunteers and community heads. These discussions were held to identify the challenges associated with preparedness to respond of institutions to floods. Findings: Results show that disasters are handled by district authority and the role of local institutions is limited to a reactive role during disaster. Data also indicates that although the existing institutional setup is well coordinated at the district level but needs improvement at the local level. Wide variations exist in awareness and perception among the officials engaged in managing disasters. Additionally, their roles and responsibilities need to be clearly defined with adequate budget and dedicated permanent staff for managing disasters. Institutions need to utilise the existing manpower through proper delegation of work. Originality: The study suggests that disaster risk reduction needs to focus more towards inclusivity of the local urban bodies. Wide variations exist in awareness and perception among the officials engaged in managing disasters. In order to ensure community participation, it is important to address their social and economic problems since such issues can overshadow attempts made for reducing risks. Thus, this paper suggests development of direct linkages among institutions and community for enhancing preparedness to respond to floods.

Keywords: preparedness, response, disaster, flood, community, institution

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Authors: Barbara Urasinska-Wojcik, Neil Chilton, Peter Todd, Christopher Elsworthy, Gregory J. Gibbons

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The recent increase in the application of Additive Manufacturing (AM) of products has resulted in new demands on capability. The ability to integrate both form and function within printed objects is the next frontier in the 3D printing area. To move beyond prototyping into low volume production, we demonstrate a UK-designed and built AM hybrid system that combines polymer based structural deposition with digital deposition of electrically conductive elements. This hybrid manufacturing system is based on a multi-planar build approach to improve on many of the limitations associated with AM, such as poor surface finish, low geometric tolerance, and poor robustness. Specifically, the approach involves a multi-planar Material Extrusion (ME) process in which separated build stations with up to 5 axes of motion replace traditional horizontally-sliced layer modeling. The construction of multi-material architectures also involved using multiple print systems in order to combine both ME and digital deposition of conductive material. To demonstrate multi-material 3D printing, three thermoplastics, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), polyamide 6,6/6 copolymers (CoPA) and polyamide 12 (PA) were used to print specimens, on top of which our high viscosity Ag-particulate ink was printed in a non-contact process, during which drop characteristics such as shape, velocity, and volume were assessed using a drop watching system. Spectroscopic analysis of these 3D printed materials in the IR region helped to determine the optimum in-situ curing system for implementation into the AM system to achieve improved adhesion and surface refinement. Thermal Analyses were performed to determine the printed materials glass transition temperature (Tg), stability and degradation behavior to find the optimum annealing conditions post printing. Electrical analysis of printed conductive tracks on polymer surfaces during mechanical testing (static tensile and 3-point bending and dynamic fatigue) was performed to assess the robustness of the electrical circuits. The tracks on CoPA, ABS, and PA exhibited low electrical resistance, and in case of PA resistance values of tracks remained unchanged across hundreds of repeated tensile cycles up to 0.5% strain amplitude. Our developed AM printer has the ability to fabricate fully functional objects in one build, including complex electronics. It enables product designers and manufacturers to produce functional saleable electronic products from a small format modular platform. It will make 3D printing better, faster and stronger.

Keywords: additive manufacturing, conductive tracks, hybrid 3D printer, integrated manufacture

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Authors: K. Shiba, T. Kaburagi, Y. Kurihara

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With global aging, people who require care, such as people with dementia (PwD), are increasing within many developed countries. And PwDs may wander and unconsciously set foot outdoors, it may lead serious accidents, such as, traffic accidents. Here, round-the-clock monitoring by caregivers is necessary, which can be a burden for the caregivers. Therefore, an automatic wandering detection system is required when an elderly person wanders outdoors, in which case the detection system transmits a ‘moving’ followed by an ‘absence’ state. In this paper, we focus on the transition from the ‘resting’ to the ‘absence’ state, via the ‘moving’ state as one of the wandering transitions. To capture the transition of the three states, our method based on the hidden Markov model (HMM) is built. Using our method, the restraint where the ‘resting’ state and ‘absence’ state cannot be transmitted to each other is applied. To validate our method, we conducted the experiment with 10 subjects. Our results show that the method can classify three states with 0.92 accuracy.

Keywords: wander, microwave Doppler sensor, respiratory frequency band, the state transition, hidden Markov model (HMM).

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Authors: Chun-Min Lin, Yuh-Jen Wu, Ching-Ting Chung

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The formulation of tourism policies requires objective academic research and evidence as support, especially research from local academia. Taiwan is a small island, and its economic growth relies heavily on tourism revenue. Taiwanese government has been devoting to the promotion of the tourism industry over the past few decades. Scientific research outcomes by Taiwanese scholars may and will help lay the foundations for drafting future tourism policy by the government. In this study, a total of 120 full journal articles published between 2008 and 2016 from the Journal of Tourism and Leisure Studies (JTSL) were examined to explore the scientific research trend of tourism study in Taiwan. JTSL is one of the most important Taiwanese journals in the tourism discipline which focuses on tourism-related issues and uses traditional Chinese as the study language. The method of co-word analysis from bibliometrics approaches was employed for semantic analysis in this study. When analyzing Chinese words and phrases, word segmentation analysis is a crucial step. It must be carried out initially and precisely in order to obtain meaningful word or word chunks for further frequency calculation. A word segmentation system basing on N-gram algorithm was developed in this study to conduct semantic analysis, and 100 groups of meaningful phrases with the highest recurrent rates were located. Subsequently, co-word analysis was employed for semantic classification. The results showed that the themes of tourism research in Taiwan in recent years cover the scope of tourism education, environmental protection, hotel management, information technology, and senior tourism. The results can give insight on the related issues and serve as a reference for tourism-related policy making and follow-up research.

Keywords: bibliometrics, co-word analysis, word segmentation, tourism research, policy

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Authors: Taner Izzet Acarer, Ece Ceylan Baba

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This paper examines green building certification systems and their current processes in comparison with anticipatory systems. Rapid growth of human population and depletion of natural resources are causing irreparable damage to urban and natural environment. In this context, the concept of ‘sustainable architecture’ has emerged in the 20th century so as to establish and maintain standards for livable urban spaces, to improve quality of urban life, and to preserve natural resources for future generations. The construction industry is responsible for a large part of the resource consumption and it is believed that the ‘green building’ designs that emerge in construction industry can reduce environmental problems and contribute to sustainable development around the world. A building must meet a specific set of criteria, set forth through various certification systems, in order to be eligible for designation as a green building. It is disputable whether methods used by green building certification systems today truly serve the purposes of creating a sustainable world. Accordingly, this study will investigate the sets of rating systems used by the most popular green building certification programs, including LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), BREEAM (Building Research Establishment's Environmental Assessment Methods), DGNB (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nachhaltiges Bauen System), in terms of ‘Anticipatory Systems’ in accordance with the certification processes and their goals, while discussing their contribution to architecture. The basic methodology of the study is as follows. Firstly analyzes of brief historical and literature review of green buildings and certificate systems will be stated. Secondly, processes of green building certificate systems will be disputed by the help of anticipatory systems. Anticipatory Systems is a set of systems designed to generate action-oriented projections and to forecast potential side effects using the most current data. Anticipatory Systems pull the future into the present and take action based on future predictions. Although they do not have a claim to see into the future, they can provide foresight data. When shaping the foresight data, Anticipatory Systems use feedforward instead of feedback, enabling them to forecast the system’s behavior and potential side effects by establishing a correlation between the system’s present/past behavior and projected results. This study indicates the goals and current status of LEED, BREEAM and DGNB rating systems that created by using the feedback technique will be examined and presented in a chart. In addition, by examining these rating systems with the anticipatory system that using the feedforward method, the negative influences of the potential side effects on the purpose and current status of the rating systems will be shown in another chart. By comparing the two obtained data, the findings will be shown that rating systems are used for different goals than the purposes they are aiming for. In conclusion, the side effects of green building certification systems will be stated by using anticipatory system models.

Keywords: anticipatory systems, BREEAM, certificate systems, DGNB, green buildings, LEED

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Authors: Ali Borhani Manesh, Sirus Mohammadi

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Harmonic distortion is caused by nonlinear devices in the power system. A nonlinear device is one in which the current is not proportional to the applied voltage. Harmonic distortion is present to some degree on all power systems. Proactive monitoring of power quality disturbance levels by electricity utilities is vital to allow cost-effective mitigation when disturbances are perceived to be approaching planning levels and also to protect the security of customer installations. Ensuring that disturbance levels are within limits at the HV and EHV points of supply of the network is essential if satisfactory levels downstream are to be maintained. This paper presents discussion on a power quality monitoring campaign performed at the sub-transmission point of supply of a distribution network with the objective of benchmarking background disturbance levels prior to modifications to the substation and to ensure emissions from HV customers and the downstream MV networks are within acceptable levels. Some discussion on the difficulties involved in such a study is presented. This paper presents a survey of voltage and current harmonic distortion levels at transmission system in Kohgiloye and Boyrahmad. The effects of harmonics on capacitors and power transformers are discussed.

Keywords: power quality, harmonics, flicker, measurement, substation

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Authors: Tasir Khan, Yejuan Wang

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The study of extreme rainfall events is very important for flood management in river basins and the design of water conservancy infrastructure. Evaluation of quantiles of annual maximum rainfall (AMRF) is required in different environmental fields, agriculture operations, renewable energy sources, climatology, and the design of different structures. Therefore, the annual maximum rainfall (AMRF) was performed at different stations in Pakistan. Multiple probability distributions, log normal (LN), generalized extreme value (GEV), Gumbel (max), and Pearson type3 (P3) were used to find out the most appropriate distributions in different stations. The L moments method was used to evaluate the distribution parameters. Anderson darling test, Kolmogorov- Smirnov test, and chi-square test showed that two distributions, namely GUM (max) and LN, were the best appropriate distributions. The quantile estimate of a multi-parameter PD offers extreme rainfall through a specific location and is therefore important for decision-makers and planners who design and construct different structures. This result provides an indication of these multi-parameter distribution consequences for the study of sites and peak flow prediction and the design of hydrological maps. Therefore, this discovery can support hydraulic structure and flood management.

Keywords: RAMSE, multiple frequency analysis, annual maximum rainfall, L-moments

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Authors: Sultanbayeva Gulmira Serikbayevna, Golovchun Aleftina Anatolyevna

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The development of any nation is directly related to the development of human capital in it. A human development is an increase its intellectual potential, its compliance with the requirements of time, present and future society. Demands of globalization cannot limit the processes of national traditions. The education system must be formed on the basis of international practice of cultural development. In Kazakhstan, where modernization changes are rapidly developing, the education system should be formed in two ways: first, on a national basis, and secondly, based on global best practices. There is the need to recognize and promote the importance of education as a value. The world community considers the problem of spiritual values. Along with individual values, spiritual values are also universal values. Formation of values such as the presence in young people a sense of respect for their homeland, social responsibility, respect the culture and traditions of its people is the most important task than the possession of material goods. When forming the intellectual nation, values in the field of education and science become investments for the development of the society, as well as education and science today transformed into the most important capital.

Keywords: human capital, humanitarian technology, intangible assets, intelligent nation, society of knowledge

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Authors: Chandni Rani, S. D. Tiwari

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Ferrihydrite is one of the distinct minerals in the family of oxides, hydroxides and oxyhydroxides of iron. It is a nanocrystalline material. It occurs naturally in different sediments, soil systems and also found in the core of ferritin, an iron storage protien. This material can also be synthesized by suitable chemical methods in laboratories. This is known as less crystalline Iron (III) Oxyhydroxide. Due to its poor crystallinity, there are very broad peaks in x-ray diffraction. Depending on the number of peaks in x-ray diffraction pattern, it is classified as two lines and six lines ferrihydrite. The average crystallite size for these two forms is found to be about 2nm to 5nm. The exact crystal structure of this system is still under debate. Out of these two forms, the six lines ferrihydrite is more ordered in comparison to two lines ferrihydrite. The magnetic behavior of two lines ferrihydrite nanoparticles is somewhat well studied. But the magnetic behavior of six lines ferrihydrite nanoparticles could not attract the attention of researchers much. This motivated us to work on the magnetic properties of six lines ferrihydrite nanoparticles. In this work, we present synthesis, structural characterization and magnetic behavior of 5 nm six lines ferrihydrite nanoparticles. X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscope are used for structural characterization of this system. Magnetization measurements are performed to fit the data at different temperatures. Then the effect of magnetic moment distribution is also found. All these observations are discussed in detail.

Keywords: nanoparticles, magnetism, superparamagnetism, magnetic anisotropy

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