Search results for: social skill training

Authors: Zulfiqar Ali

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The current survey reports and data demonstrate a declining trend of admissions in instructor-led synchronous diploma programs in Canadian public higher education institutes. A significant impact can also be seen on various Information Technology (IT) related diploma programs in prominent Canadian higher education institutes across the country. The significant external factors that impact the students’ interests in admission in instructor-led synchronous Information Technology related diploma programs include but not limited to easy access to online learning materials provided by external competitors. The high involvement of the IT giants like Microsoft, Cisco, Google, AWS, Linux in training and certification programs through their Learning Management Systems (LMS) came with their academy’s establishment. They offer and provide very scientific advanced kind of learning and teaching resources embedded with cloud and artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, techniques and design. The other external factor is the best fit of rate of change of technology (velocity) in business vis-à-vis the rate of change of adoption and transformation of could-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Canadian public higher education institutes for diploma programs. The significant internal factors may include but are not limited to the legacy type of curriculum design, tools, techniques, style, and delivery. The other major contribution in declining admission trend in Canadian public higher education institute’s IT related programs.is the diversity of learning and teaching styles comes from existing hiring and immigration processes. The proposed research addresses the major contribution of both internal and external factors in declining admission trend in instructor-led synchronous diploma programs in Canadian public higher education institutes. The research approaches to be adopted for the proposed work include collecting data, filtering data, quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis and mixed approach. The focal point of this research is the contribution of major internal factors in declining admission trend including curriculum design, delivery methods, academic integrity, velocity, cloud-based AI tools, techniques and integration with existing learning management system. Finally, the research results come up with analysis-based recommendations and design to cope with challenge of declining admission trend in Canadian public higher education institutes diploma programs vis-à-vis internal and external factors.

Keywords: advanced curriculum design, analysis of internal educational factors, analysis of external educational factors, educational technology

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Authors: Yaprak Aydin

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The rural is no longer a space of only agricultural activities that gave into the global market demands; or an idyll to return after retirement; or only a reservoir of cultural values, but rather a vision to redefine the future in terms of production and consumption relations. Gulpınar in Turkey and Ashtarak in Armenia are two towns where a new ground of dialogue between two communities has been initiated: ‘energy democracy’, which is a significant driving force in a sense of gathering people of two historically conflicted communities around common future concerns; and in a sense of transforming the accepted knowledge on the rurality and all the social structures it represents. This paper seeks to provoke a discussion of to what extent such a rurality is attainable by contextualizing – through visits and meetings in person – two towns and two communities within a renewable energy project called 'Under the Same Sun' carried out by two local civil society organizations together at two public spaces.

Keywords: civil society, energy democracy, prosumer communities, renewable energy, transnational rurality

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Authors: Henry Okechukwu Onyeiwu

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Nigeria, with its rich tapestry of ethnicities, cultures, and religions, serves as a critical case study in understanding how law influences and shapes collective identities. This abstract delves into the historical context of legal systems in Nigeria, examining the colonial legacies that have influenced contemporary laws and how these laws interact with traditional practices and beliefs. This study examines the critical role of law in shaping and transforming collective identities in Nigeria, a nation characterized by its rich tapestry of ethnicities, cultures, and religions. The legal framework in Nigeria has evolved in response to historical, social, and political dynamics, influencing the way communities perceive themselves and interact with one another. This research highlights the interplay between law and collective identity, exploring how legal instruments, such as constitutions, statutes, and judicial rulings, have contributed to the formation, negotiation, and reformation of group identities over time. Moreover, contemporary legal debates surrounding issues such as citizenship, resource allocation, and communal conflicts further illustrate the law's role in identity formation. The legal recognition of different ethnic groups fosters a sense of belonging and collective identity among these groups, yet it simultaneously raises questions about inclusivity and equality. Laws concerning indigenous rights and affirmative action are essential in this discourse, as they reflect the necessity of balancing majority rule with minority rights—a challenge that Nigeria continues to navigate. By employing a multidisciplinary approach that integrates legal studies, sociology, and anthropology, the study analyses key historical milestones, such as colonial legal legacies, post-independence constitutional developments, and ongoing debates surrounding federalism and ethnic rights. It also investigates how laws affect social cohesion and conflict among Nigeria's diverse ethnic groups, as well as the role of law in promoting inclusivity and recognizing minority rights. Case studies are utilized to illustrate practical examples of legal transformations and their impact on collective identities in various Nigerian contexts, including land rights, religious freedoms, and ethnic representation in government. The findings reveal that while the law has the potential to unify disparate groups under a national identity, it can also exacerbate divisions when applied inequitably or favouring particular groups over others. Ultimately, this study aims to shed light on the dual nature of law as both a tool for transformation and a potential source of conflict in the evolution of collective identities in Nigeria. By understanding these dynamics, policymakers and legal practitioners can develop strategies to foster unity and respect for diversity in a complex societal landscape.

Keywords: law, collective identity, Nigeria, ethnicity, conflict, inclusion, legal framework, transformation

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Authors: Flavio Araujo, Julio Lima, Paulo Scalize, Antonio Albuquerque

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Water treatment residues (WTR) are produced during water treatment and have recently been seen as a reusable material. The aim of this research was to perform characterizations of the residue generated in the Meia-Ponte Water Treatment Plant, in Goiania, Brazil, seeking to obtain normative parameters and consider sustainable alternatives for reincorporation of the residues in the productive chain for manufacturing various materials construction. In order to reduce the environmental liabilities generated by sanitation companies and discontinue unsustainable forms of disposal. The analyzes performed: Granulometry, Scanning Electron Microscopy, and X-Ray Diffraction demonstrated the potential application of residues to replace the soil and sand, because it has characteristics compatible with small aggregate and can be used as feed stock for the manufacture of materials as ceramic and soil-cement bricks, mortars, interlocking floors and concrete artifacts.

Keywords: residue, sustainable, water treatment plants, WTR

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Authors: Majed A. Alsalem

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Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is common theme in education across the US and an influential model and framework that enables students in general and particularly students who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) to access the general education curriculum. UDL helps teachers determine how information will be presented to students and how to keep students engaged. Moreover, UDL helps students to express their understanding and knowledge to others. UDL relies on technology to promote students' interaction with content and their communication of knowledge. This study included 120 DHH students who received daily instruction based on UDL principles. This study presents the results of the study and discusses its implications for the integration of UDL in day-to-day practice as well as in the country's education policy. UDL is a Western concept that began and grew in the US, and it has just begun to transfer to other countries such as Saudi Arabia. It will be very important to researchers, practitioners, and educators to see how UDL is being implemented in a new place with a different culture. UDL is a framework that is built to provide multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression that should be part of curricula and lessons for all students. The purpose of this study is to investigate the variables associated with the implementation of UDL in Saudi Arabian schools and identify the barriers that could prevent the implementation of UDL. Therefore, this study used a mixed methods design that use both quantitative and qualitative methods. More insights will be gained by including both quantitative and qualitative rather than using a single method. By having methods that different concepts and approaches, the databases will be enriched. This study uses levels of collecting date through two stages in order to insure that the data comes from multiple ways to mitigate validity threats and establishing trustworthiness in the findings. The rationale and significance of this study is that it will be the first known research that targets UDL in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, it will deal with UDL in depth to set the path for further studies in the Middle East. From a perspective of content, this study considers teachers’ implementation knowledge, skills, and concerns of implementation. This study deals with effective instructional designs that have not been presented in any conferences, workshops, teacher preparation and professional development programs in Saudi Arabia. Specifically, Saudi Arabian schools are challenged to design inclusive schools and practices as well as to support all students’ academic skills development. The total participants in stage one were 336 teachers of DHH students. The results of the intervention indicated significant differences among teachers before and after taking the training sessions associated with their understanding and level of concern. Teachers have indicated interest in knowing more about UDL and adopting it into their practices; they reported that UDL has benefits that will enhance their performance for supporting student learning.

Keywords: deaf and hard of hearing, professional development, Saudi Arabia, universal design for learning

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Authors: Megan E. Davies

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The effects of climate change impact the environment and our physical health but also demonstrate a growing risk factor for Canadians’ individual and collective mental health. Past research and expert predictions are discussed while exploring the connection between mental health concerns and climate change consequences, resulting in a call to action for psychological sciences to be integrated into solution planning. With the direct and indirect effects of climate change steadily increasing, political and legal aspects of sustainability, as well as the repercussions for mental health being seen in Canada regarding climate change, are investigated. An interdisciplinary perspective for reviewing the challenges of climate change is applied in order to propose a realistic plan for how policymakers and mental health professionals can work together moving forward in applying interventions that mediate against the effects of climate change on Canadians’ mental health.

Keywords: climate change, mental health, policy change, solution planning, sustainability

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Authors: Lumindu Dilumka, Ranaweera I. D., Sudusinghe S. P., Sanduni Kanchana A. M. K.

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This study was motivated by the challenges experienced by parents and guardians in ensuring the safety of children in cyberspace. In the last two or three years, online education has become very popular all over the world due to the Covid 19 pandemic. Therefore, parents, guardians and teachers must ensure the safety of children in cyberspace. Children are more likely to go astray and there are plenty of online programs are waiting to get them on the wrong track and also, children who are engaging in the online education can be distracted at any moment. Therefore, parents should keep a close check on their children's online activity. Apart from that, due to the unawareness of children, they tempt to share their sensitive information, causing a chance of being a victim of phishing attacks from outsiders. These problems can be overcome through the proposed web-based system. We use feature extraction, web tracking and analysis mechanisms, image processing and name entity recognition to implement this web-based system.

Keywords: online education, cyber bullying, social media, face recognition, web tracker, privacy data

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Authors: Jennifer Jackson

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Critical care nurses are at risk for burnout when confronted with sustained workplace adversity, which stems from a variety of social, structural, and environmental factors. Researchers have suggested that nurses can become resilient and overcome workplace adversity to achieve positive outcomes. The purpose of this study is to learn more about critical care nurses’ experiences with workplace adversity, and their process of becoming resilient. The research question will be: what is the process of critical care nursing resilience in workplace adversity? In-depth interviews with critical care nurses will provide the data to inductively generate the grounded theory. The resultant grounded theory will provide a framework to inform nurses and managers in developing interventions to support critical care nurses in their workplace. By enhancing nursing resilience, burnout may be avoided, and nurse satisfaction and overall quality of care may be improved.

Keywords: nursing, resilience, burnout, critical care

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Authors: Athanase Gahungu, Karen Freeman

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Different groups of stakeholders expect the evaluation of an international, grant-funded program to inform them of the worth of the program - the funder, the agency operating the program and its community, and the citizens of the country where the program is implemented. This paper summarizes the challenges that intercultural teams of researchers faced as they crisscrossed a host country while evaluating a teaching and learning materials program, and offers useful tips for effective collaboration. Firstly, was recommended that the teams be representative of the cultures involved, and have the required research and program evaluation skills. Secondly, cultures involved must consistently establish and maintain a shared performance system. Thirdly, successful team members must be self-aware, inter-culturally knowledgeable, not just in communication, but in conceptualizing the political and social context of international grant-funded projects.

Keywords: program evaluation, international collaboration, intercultural, shared performance

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Authors: Zohre Shahhosseini, Mehdi Pourasghar, AliReza Khalilian, Fariba Salehi

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Objective: The prevalence of anxiety during pregnancy, particularly in developing countries, and its adverse effects on mother and baby, can make pregnancy unpleasant for pregnant women. The effect of anxiety during pregnancy on birth outcomes and children can be a justification for screening of anxious pregnant women in periodic pregnancy care and helping them. In this study, researchers have investigated effects and comparison of group counseling (Cognitive therapy) and interactive lectures on anxiety during pregnancy of primiparas. Methods: The population studied in this semi-experimental trail was nulliparous pregnant women with backgrounds in health care centers in Sari city .They were studied during a period of 3 months from early March to end May 2016. Sample size in this study was 91 patients, who were randomly assigned to three groups: group counseling, interactive lecture, and control group. Demographic questionnaire and Speilberger State –Trait Anxiety Inventory (SPAI) was completed for all three groups after obtaining letter of consent and completing the initial checklist. Then interventions included 4 sessions for group counseling and 4 sessions for interactive lecture which were implemented in two sessions a week. 4 weeks after interventions, Speilberger State – Trait Anxiety Inventory (SPAI), completed by both group counseling and interactive lectures groups again. In control group, the second questionnaire was also completed 4 weeks after completing the initial questionnaire. Data analysis was performed using spss software version 18. At first, the Kalmogorov-Smiranov test was carried out and then chi square tests, Independent t-test, paired t-test, ANOVA test, and Dunnett's post hoc test were applied. Results: Findings show that group counseling and interactive lecture with reducing state and trait anxiety in significant level of P=0/000 contribute to reduction of anxiety in nulliparous pregnant mothers. However, in this study, group counseling was more effective than an interactive lecture in reducing participants' anxiety, but this difference was not significant (P≥0/05). Conclusions: According to the results of this study, it is suggested that by screening of psychological - mental problems of pregnant women in periodic care during pregnancy be considered by revised prenatal care plans and creation of counseling and training units at health centers. Besides owing to the fact that both interactive lecture and group counseling method were effective in reducing anxiety, these methods should be used proportionate to situations and facilities.

Keywords: anxiety, group counseling, cognitive therapy, interactive lecture, nulliparous

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Authors: Kacper Tomasz Kröber-Mulawa

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This paper will address the topic of data ownership from an economic perspective, and examples of economic limitations of data property rights will be provided, which have been identified using methods and approaches of economic analysis of law. To properly build a background for the economic focus, in the beginning a short perspective of data and data ownership in the EU’s legal system will be provided. It will include a short introduction to its political and social importance and highlight relevant viewpoints. This will stress the importance of a Single Market for data but also far-reaching regulations of data governance and privacy (including the distinction of personal and non-personal data, data held by public bodies and private businesses). The main discussion of this paper will build upon the briefly referred to legal basis as well as methods and approaches of economic analysis of law.

Keywords: antitrust, data, data ownership, digital economy, property rights

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Authors: Chizzoniti Domenico, Beggiora Klizia, Cattani Letizia, Moscatelli Monica

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This paper concerns the study of sustainable construction materials applied on the "Health Post", a prototype for the primary health care situated in alienated areas of the world. It's suitable for social and climatic Sub-Saharan context; however, it could be moved in other countries of the world with similar urgent needs. The idea is to create a Health Post with local construction materials that have a low environmental impact and promote the local workforce allowing reuse of traditional building techniques lowering production costs and transport. The aim of Primary Health Care Centre is to be a flexible and expandable structure identifying a modular form that can be repeated several times to expand its existing functions. In this way it could be not only a health care centre but also a socio-cultural facility.

Keywords: low costs building, sustainable construction materials, green construction system, prototype, health care, emergency

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Authors: Szymon Rutkowski, Tomasz Korbak

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We present a reinforcement-learning-based method of training neural machine translation models without parallel corpora. The standard encoder-decoder approach to machine translation suffers from two problems we aim to address. First, it needs parallel corpora, which are scarce, especially for low-resource languages. Second, it lacks psychological plausibility of learning procedure: learning a foreign language is about learning to communicate useful information, not merely learning to transduce from one language’s 'encoding' to another. We instead pose the problem of learning to translate as learning a policy in a communication game between two agents: the translator and the classifier. The classifier is trained beforehand on a natural language inference task (determining the entailment relation between a premise and a hypothesis) in the target language. The translator produces a sequence of actions that correspond to generating translations of both the hypothesis and premise, which are then passed to the classifier. The translator is rewarded for classifier’s performance on determining entailment between sentences translated by the translator to disciple’s native language. Translator’s performance thus reflects its ability to communicate useful information to the classifier. In effect, we train a machine translation model without the need for parallel corpora altogether. While similar reinforcement learning formulations for zero-shot translation were proposed before, there is a number of improvements we introduce. While prior research aimed at grounding the translation task in the physical world by evaluating agents on an image captioning task, we found that using a linguistic task is more sample-efficient. Natural language inference (also known as recognizing textual entailment) captures semantic properties of sentence pairs that are poorly correlated with semantic similarity, thus enforcing basic understanding of the role played by compositionality. It has been shown that models trained recognizing textual entailment produce high-quality general-purpose sentence embeddings transferrable to other tasks. We use stanford natural language inference (SNLI) dataset as well as its analogous datasets for French (XNLI) and Polish (CDSCorpus). Textual entailment corpora can be obtained relatively easily for any language, which makes our approach more extensible to low-resource languages than traditional approaches based on parallel corpora. We evaluated a number of reinforcement learning algorithms (including policy gradients and actor-critic) to solve the problem of translator’s policy optimization and found that our attempts yield some promising improvements over previous approaches to reinforcement-learning based zero-shot machine translation.

Keywords: agent-based language learning, low-resource translation, natural language inference, neural machine translation, reinforcement learning

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Authors: Ashley Venerable, Rosario Tatlonghari

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This study identified how college deaf students of Bartimaeus Center for Alternative Learning in Tiaong, Quezon, Philippines view development using visual communication techniques and generating themes from responses. Complete enumeration was employed. Guided by Constructivist Theory of Perception, past experiences and stored information influenced perception. These themes of development emerged: social development; pleasant environment; interpersonal relationships; availability of resources; employment; infrastructure development; values; and peace and security. Using the National Economic and Development Authority development indicators, findings showed the deaf students’ views on development were similar from the mainstream views. Responses also became more meaningful through visual communication techniques.

Keywords: deaf, development, perception, development indicators, visual communication

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Authors: Yunos Zahri, Ariffin Aswami

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Cyber terrorism represents the convergence of two worlds: virtual and physical. The virtual world is a place in which computer programs function and data move, whereas the physical world is where people live and function. The merging of these two domains is the interface being targeted in the incidence of cyber terrorism. To better understand why cyber terrorism acts are committed, this study presents the context of cyber terrorism from motivational perspectives. Motivational forces behind cyber terrorism can be social, political, ideological and economic. In this research, data are analyzed using a qualitative method. A semi-structured interview with purposive sampling was used for data collection. With the growing interconnectedness between critical infrastructures and Information & Communication Technology (ICT), selecting targets that facilitate maximum disruption can significantly influence terrorists. This work provides a baseline for defining the concept of cyber terrorism from motivational perspectives.

Keywords: cyber terrorism, terrorism, motivation, qualitative analysis

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Authors: Tayfun Salihoğlu

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Following the Law No: 6306 on Transformation of Disaster Risk Areas, urban transformation in Turkey found its legal basis. In the best practices all over the World, the urban transformation was shaped as part of comprehensive social programs through the discourses of renewing the economic, social and physical degraded parts of the city, producing spaces resistant to earthquakes and other possible disasters and creating a livable environment. In Turkish practice, a contradictory process is observed. In this study, it is aimed to develop a method for better understanding of the urban space in terms of disaster risks in order to constitute a basis for decisions in Kocaeli Urban Transformation Master Plan, which is being prepared by Kocaeli Metropolitan Municipality. The spatial unit used in the study is the 50x50 meter grids. In order to reflect the multidimensionality of urban transformation, three basic components that have spatial data in Kocaeli were identified. These components were named as 'Problems in Built-up Areas', 'Disaster Risks arising from Geological Conditions of the Ground and Problems of Buildings', and 'Inadequacy of Urban Services'. Each component was weighted and scored for each grid. In order to delimitate urban transformation zones Optimized Outlier Analysis (Local Moran I) in the ArcGIS 10.6.1 was conducted to test the type of distribution (clustered or scattered) and its significance on the grids by assuming the weighted total score of the grid as Input Features. As a result of this analysis, it was found that the weighted total scores were not significantly clustering at all grids in urban space. The grids which the input feature is clustered significantly were exported as the new database to use in further mappings. Total Score Map reflects the significant clusters in terms of weighted total scores of 'Problems in Built-up Areas', 'Disaster Risks arising from Geological Conditions of the Ground and Problems of Buildings' and 'Inadequacy of Urban Services'. Resulting grids with the highest scores are the most likely candidates for urban transformation in this citywide study. To categorize urban space in terms of urban transformation, Grouping Analysis in ArcGIS 10.6.1 was conducted to data that includes each component scores in significantly clustered grids. Due to Pseudo Statistics and Box Plots, 6 groups with the highest F stats were extracted. As a result of the mapping of the groups, it can be said that 6 groups can be interpreted in a more meaningful manner in relation to the urban space. The method presented in this study can be magnified due to the availability of more spatial data. By integrating with other data to be obtained during the planning process, this method can contribute to the continuation of research and decision-making processes of urban transformation master plans on a more consistent basis.

Keywords: urban transformation, GIS, disaster risk assessment, Kocaeli

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Authors: Okunola Oluseye Ademola

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The study investigated various socio-cultural factors influencing adherence to antiretroviral drugs among people living with HIV in a University Teaching Hospital in South-western Nigeria. The objectives are to examine the perception of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospitals Complex, Ile-Ife, investigate the influence of socio-cultural factors on adherence of PLWHA to treatment regimen in the study area and assess the prevalence of adherence to ART among PLWHA in the study area. It was a cross-sectional where both qualitative and quantitative research methods were adopted. The participants were HIV diagnosed patients attending clinic at the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospitals Complex in Ile-Ife between the ages of 18 and 60 years. Also three healthcare delivery personnel working in the clinic were interviewed. Out of the 3007 patients receiving treatment, using Fischer’s formula of sampling technique, 336 patients living with HIV/AIDS were selected for the study. These participants had been on antiretroviral drugs for more than six months prior to the study and were selected using simple random sampling technique. Two focus group discussion sessions comprising of 10 male and 10 female living with HIV and currently on ART were conducted. These groups were purposively selected based on their being on ART for more than one year. Also in-depth interviews were conducted among three purposively selected healthcare givers (an experienced nurse, a doctor and a pharmacist) who are working in this clinic. All the participants were interviewed at the clinic on the various clinic days. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire, an interview guide and tape-recorder. The quantitative data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Content analysis was employed to analyse responses from IDI and FGD sessions. The findings from the study revealed a very positive perception to ART among PLWHA which was about 86.3% while the level of adherence to ART was 89.0% among the respondents. There was a very strong relationship between social and family supports and the degree of adherence to ART in the PLWHA. Nutrition, polygamy, difficulty in financing transportation fare to the clinic, unemployment, drug hawkers, religion, excuse duty from work and waking up very early were highlighted as socio-cultural barriers to adherence to ART. Fear of death, strong family support, religion belief, not seeking alternative treatment, absence of rituals and perceived improved health status were identified as very strong facilitators to adherence. The study concluded that to achieve a very optimal outcome in the management of HIV among PLWHA, various social and cultural contexts should be taken into consideration as this study was able to ascertain the influence of various socio-cultural factors militating and facilitating adherence to ART.

Keywords: ART, HIV, PLWHA, socio-cultural

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Authors: Geng-Gui Wang, Chia-Hao Chang, Jee-Cheng Wu

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A shoreline is a line where a body of water and the shore meet. It provides economic and social security to coastal habitations. However, shorelines face multiple threats due to both natural processes and man-made effects because of disasters, rapid urbanization, industrialization, and sand deposition and erosion, etc. In this study, we analyzed multi-temporal satellite images of the Yilan coast, Taiwan from 1978 to 2016, using the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS), weather information (as rainfall records and typhoon routes), and man-made construction project data to explore the causes of shoreline changes. The results showed that the shoreline at Yilan coast is greatly influenced by typhoons and anthropogenic interventions.

Keywords: shoreline change, multi-temporal satellite, digital shoreline analysis system, DSAS, Yi-Lan coast

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Authors: Tsega Asresa, Getahun Tigistu, Melaku Bayih

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Computer vision is a subfield of artificial intelligence that allows computers and systems to extract meaning from digital images and video. It is used in a wide range of fields of study, including self-driving cars, video surveillance, medical diagnosis, manufacturing, law, agriculture, quality control, health care, facial recognition, and military applications. Aromatic medicinal plants are botanical raw materials used in cosmetics, medicines, health foods, essential oils, decoration, cleaning, and other natural health products for therapeutic and Aromatic culinary purposes. These plants and their products not only serve as a valuable source of income for farmers and entrepreneurs but also going to export for valuable foreign currency exchange. In Ethiopia, there is a lack of technologies for the classification and identification of Aromatic medicinal plant parts and disease type cured by aromatic medicinal plants. Farmers, industry personnel, academicians, and pharmacists find it difficult to identify plant parts and disease types cured by plants before ingredient extraction in the laboratory. Manual plant identification is a time-consuming, labor-intensive, and lengthy process. To alleviate these challenges, few studies have been conducted in the area to address these issues. One way to overcome these problems is to develop a deep learning model for efficient identification of Aromatic medicinal plant parts with their corresponding disease type. The objective of the proposed study is to identify the aromatic medicinal plant parts and their disease type classification using computer vision technology. Therefore, this research initiated a model for the classification of aromatic medicinal plant parts and their disease type by exploring computer vision technology. Morphological characteristics are still the most important tools for the identification of plants. Leaves are the most widely used parts of plants besides roots, flowers, fruits, and latex. For this study, the researcher used RGB leaf images with a size of 128x128 x3. In this study, the researchers trained five cutting-edge models: convolutional neural network, Inception V3, Residual Neural Network, Mobile Network, and Visual Geometry Group. Those models were chosen after a comprehensive review of the best-performing models. The 80/20 percentage split is used to evaluate the model, and classification metrics are used to compare models. The pre-trained Inception V3 model outperforms well, with training and validation accuracy of 99.8% and 98.7%, respectively.

Keywords: aromatic medicinal plant, computer vision, convolutional neural network, deep learning, plant classification, residual neural network

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Authors: Tahmina Huq

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This paper presents the findings of an action research study that aimed to investigate the efficacy of a visual dialogue strategy in assisting autistic students with intellectual disabilities in managing their immediate emotions and improving their academic achievements. The research sought to explore the effectiveness of teaching self-regulation techniques as an alternative to traditional approaches involving segregation. The study identified visual dialogue as a valuable tool for promoting self-regulation in this specific student population. Action research was chosen as the methodology due to its suitability for immediate implementation of the findings in the classroom. Autistic students with intellectual disabilities often face challenges in controlling their emotions, which can disrupt their learning and academic progress. Conventional methods of intervention, such as isolation and psychologist-assisted approaches, may result in missed classes and hindered academic development. This study introduces the utilization of visual dialogue between students and teachers as an effective self-regulation strategy, addressing the limitations of traditional approaches. Action research was employed as the methodology for this study, allowing for the direct application of the findings in the classroom. The study observed two 15-year-old autistic students with intellectual disabilities who exhibited difficulties in emotional regulation and displayed aggressive behaviors. The research question focused on the effectiveness of visual dialogue in managing the emotions of these students and its impact on their learning outcomes. Data collection methods included personal observations, log sheets, personal reflections, and visual documentation. The study revealed that the implementation of visual dialogue as a self-regulation strategy enabled the students to regulate their emotions within a short timeframe (10 to 30 minutes). Through visual dialogue, they were able to express their feelings and needs in socially appropriate ways. This finding underscores the significance of visual dialogue as a tool for promoting emotional regulation and facilitating active participation in classroom activities. As a result, the students' learning outcomes and social interactions were positively impacted. The findings of this study hold significant implications for educators working with autistic students with intellectual disabilities. The use of visual dialogue as a self-regulation strategy can enhance emotional regulation skills and improve overall academic progress. The action research approach outlined in this paper provides practical guidance for educators in effectively implementing self-regulation strategies within classroom settings. In conclusion, the study demonstrates that visual dialogue is an effective strategy for enhancing emotional regulation in autistic students with intellectual disabilities. By employing visual communication, students can successfully regulate their emotions and actively engage in classroom activities, leading to improved learning outcomes and social interactions. This paper underscores the importance of implementing self-regulation strategies in educational settings to cater to the unique needs of autistic students.

Keywords: action research, self-regulation, autism, visual communication

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Authors: Akanle Florence Foluso, Richard Oni, Ola Tolulo, Lani Ofie

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Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Society’s attitude to mental health and primary prevention is the key instrument in a better understanding of the mental illness. This paper attempted to investigate the effect of community education and early intervention and rehabilitation in minimizing the impact of mental illness. The study involved 50 adolescents who were randomly selected and assigned to two groups, the control and the experimental. Subjects in the experimental group were exposed to treatment, while those in the control group were not. The subject exposed to treatment had an increased understanding of what mental illness is. Those with mental illness were better understood, less feared, less discriminated against, and tertiary prevention strategies were reported to minimize the impact of mental illness when it occurs

Keywords: community, health, improve, status

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Authors: J-C. Leneveu, A. Chereau, L. Mansart, T. Mesbah, M. Wyka

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Extracting and interpreting information from Big Data represent a stake for years to come in several sectors such as finance. Currently, numerous methods are used (such as Technical Analysis) to try to understand and to anticipate market behavior, with mixed results because it still seems impossible to exactly predict a financial trend. The increase of available data on Internet and their diversity represent a great opportunity for the financial world. Indeed, it is possible, along with these standard financial data, to focus on exogenous data to take into account more macroeconomic factors. Coupling the interpretation of these data with standard methods could allow obtaining more precise trend predictions. In this paper, in order to observe the influence of exogenous data price independent of other usual effects occurring in classical markets, behaviors of Bitcoin users are introduced in a model reconstituting Bitcoin value, which is elaborated and tested for prediction purposes.

Keywords: big data, bitcoin, data mining, social network, financial trends, exogenous data, global economy, behavioral finance

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Authors: Hai L. Tran

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Previous research on agenda setting effects has often focused on the top-down influence of the media at the aggregate level, while overlooking the capacity of audience members to select media and content to fit their individual dispositions. The decentralized characteristics of online communication and digital news create more choices and greater user control, thereby enabling each audience member to seek out a unique blend of media sources, issues, and elements of messages and to mix them into a coherent individual picture of the world. This study examines how audiences use media differently depending on their prior dispositions, thereby making sense of the world in ways that are congruent with their preferences and cognitions. The current undertaking is informed by theoretical frameworks from two distinct lines of scholarship. According to the ideological migration hypothesis, individuals choose to live in communities with ideologies like their own to satisfy their need to belong. One tends to move away from Zip codes that are incongruent and toward those that are more aligned with one’s ideological orientation. This geographical division along ideological lines has been documented in social psychology research. As an extension of agenda setting, the agendamelding hypothesis argues that audiences seek out information in attractive media and blend them into a coherent narrative that fits with a common agenda shared by others, who think as they do and communicate with them about issues of public. In other words, individuals, through their media use, identify themselves with a group/community that they want to join. Accordingly, the present study hypothesizes that because ideology plays a role in pushing people toward a physical community that fits their need to belong, it also leads individuals to receive an idiosyncratic blend of media and be influenced by such selective exposure in deciding what issues are more relevant. Consequently, the individualized focus of media choices impacts how audiences perceive political news coverage and what they know about political issues. The research project utilizes recent data from The American Trends Panel survey conducted by Pew Research Center to explore the nuanced nature of agenda setting at the individual level and amid heightened polarization. Hypothesis testing is performed with both nonparametric and parametric procedures, including regression and path analysis. This research attempts to explore the media-public relationship from a bottom-up approach, considering the ability of active audience members to select among media in a larger process that entails agenda setting. It helps encourage agenda-setting scholars to further examine effects at the individual, rather than aggregate, level. In addition to theoretical contributions, the study’s findings are useful for media professionals in building and maintaining relationships with the audience considering changes in market share due to the spread of digital and social media.

Keywords: agenda setting, agendamelding, audience fragmentation, ideological migration, partisanship, polarization

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Authors: T. Thein, S. Kalyar Myo

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Human uses visual information for understanding the speech contents in noisy conditions or in situations where the audio signal is not available. The primary advantage of visual information is that it is not affected by the acoustic noise and cross talk among speakers. Using visual information from the lip movements can improve the accuracy and robustness of automatic speech recognition. However, a major challenge with most automatic lip reading system is to find a robust and efficient method for extracting the linguistically relevant speech information from a lip image sequence. This is a difficult task due to variation caused by different speakers, illumination, camera setting and the inherent low luminance and chrominance contrast between lip and non-lip region. Several researchers have been developing methods to overcome these problems; the one is lip reading. Moreover, it is well known that visual information about speech through lip reading is very useful for human speech recognition system. Lip reading is the technique of a comprehensive understanding of underlying speech by processing on the movement of lips. Therefore, lip reading system is one of the different supportive technologies for hearing impaired or elderly people, and it is an active research area. The need for lip reading system is ever increasing for every language. This research aims to develop a visual teaching method system for the hearing impaired persons in Myanmar, how to pronounce words precisely by identifying the features of lip movement. The proposed research will work a lip reading system for Myanmar Consonants, one syllable consonants (င (Nga)၊ ည (Nya)၊ မ (Ma)၊ လ (La)၊ ၀ (Wa)၊ သ (Tha)၊ ဟ (Ha)၊ အ (Ah) ) and two syllable consonants ( က(Ka Gyi)၊ ခ (Kha Gway)၊ ဂ (Ga Nge)၊ ဃ (Ga Gyi)၊ စ (Sa Lone)၊ ဆ (Sa Lain)၊ ဇ (Za Gwe) ၊ ဒ (Da Dway)၊ ဏ (Na Gyi)၊ န (Na Nge)၊ ပ (Pa Saug)၊ ဘ (Ba Gone)၊ ရ (Ya Gaug)၊ ဠ (La Gyi) ). In the proposed system, there are three subsystems, the first one is the lip localization system, which localizes the lips in the digital inputs. The next one is the feature extraction system, which extracts features of lip movement suitable for visual speech recognition. And the final one is the classification system. In the proposed research, Two Dimensional Discrete Cosine Transform (2D-DCT) and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) with Active Contour Model (ACM) will be used for lip movement features extraction. Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier is used for finding class parameter and class number in training set and testing set. Then, experiments will be carried out for the recognition accuracy of Myanmar consonants using the only visual information on lip movements which are useful for visual speech of Myanmar languages. The result will show the effectiveness of the lip movement recognition for Myanmar Consonants. This system will help the hearing impaired persons to use as the language learning application. This system can also be useful for normal hearing persons in noisy environments or conditions where they can find out what was said by other people without hearing voice.

Keywords: feature extraction, lip reading, lip localization, Active Contour Model (ACM), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Two Dimensional Discrete Cosine Transform (2D-DCT)

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Authors: F. A. Thomas, M. Schrafl-Altermatt, R. Treier, S. Kaufmann

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Stroke is the main cause of adult disability. Especially upper limb function is affected in most patients. Recently, cooperative hand movements have been shown to be a promising type of upper limb training in stroke rehabilitation. In these movements, which are frequently found in activities of daily living (e.g. opening a bottle, winding up a blind), the force of one upper limb has to be equally counteracted by the other limb to successfully accomplish a task. The use of standardized and reliable clinical assessments is essential to evaluate the efficacy of therapy and the functional outcome of a patient. Many assessments for upper limb function or impairment are available. However, the evaluation of cooperative hand movement tasks are rarely included in those. Thus, the aim of this study was (i) to develop a novel clinical assessment (CASA - Cooperative Activity Stroke Assessment) for the evaluation of patients’ capacity to perform cooperative hand movements and (ii) to test its inter- and interrater reliability. Furthermore, CASA scores were compared to current gold standard assessments for upper extremity in stroke patients (i.e. Fugl-Meyer Assessment, Box & Blocks Test). The CASA consists of five cooperative activities of daily living including (1) opening a jar, (2) opening a bottle, (3) open and closing of a zip, (4) unscrew a nut and (5) opening a clipbox. Here, the goal is to accomplish the tasks as fast as possible. In addition to the quantitative rating (i.e. time) which is converted to a 7-point scale, also the quality of the movement is rated in a 4-point scale. To test the reliability of CASA, fifteen stroke subjects were tested within a week twice by the same two raters. Intra-and interrater reliability was calculated using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for total CASA score and single items. Furthermore, Pearson-correlation was used to compare the CASA scores to the scores of Fugl-Meyer upper limb assessment and the box and blocks test, which were assessed in every patient additionally to the CASA. ICC scores of the total CASA score indicated an excellent- and single items established a good to excellent inter- and interrater reliability. Furthermore, the CASA score was significantly correlated to the Fugl-Meyer and Box & Blocks score. The CASA provides a reliable assessment for cooperative hand movements which are crucial for many activities of daily living. Due to its non-costly setup, easy and fast implementation, we suggest it to be well suitable for clinical application. In conclusion, the CASA is a useful tool in assessing the functional status and therapy related recovery in cooperative hand movement capacity in stroke patients.

Keywords: activitites of daily living, clinical assessment, cooperative hand movements, reliability, stroke

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Authors: Emily Cherono Sawe, Elisha Ondieki Makori

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Knowledge and digital economies have brought challenges and potential opportunities for universities to innovate and improve the quality of learning. Disruption technologies and information dynamics continue to transform and change the landscape in teaching, scholarship, and research activities across universities. Digital literacy is a fundamental and imperative element in higher education and training, as witnessed during the new norm. COVID-19 caused unprecedented disruption in universities, where teaching and learning depended on digital innovations and applications. Academic services and activities were provided online, including library information services. Information professionals were forced to adopt various digital platforms in order to provide information services to patrons. University libraries’ roles in fulfilling educational responsibilities continue to evolve in response to changes in pedagogy, technology, economy, society, policies, and strategies of parent institutions. Libraries are currently undergoing considerable transformational change as a result of the inclusion of a digital environment. Academic libraries have been at the forefront of providing online learning resources and online information services, as well as supporting students and staff to develop digital literacy skills via online courses, tutorials, and workshops. Digital literacy transformation and information staff are crucial elements reminiscent of the prioritization of skills and knowledge for lifelong learning. The purpose of this baseline research is to assess the implications of digital literacy transformation in institutions of higher learning in Kenya and share appropriate strategies to leverage and sustain teaching and research. Objectives include examining the leverage and preparedness of the digital literacy environment in streamlining learning in the universities, exploring and benchmarking imperative digital competence for information professionals, establishing the perception of information professionals towards digital literacy skills, and determining lessons, best practices, and strategies to accelerate digital literacy transformation for effective research and learning in the universities. The study will adopt a descriptive research design using questionnaires and document analysis as the instruments for data collection. The targeted population is librarians and information professionals, as well as academics in public and private universities teaching information literacy programmes. Data and information are to be collected through an online structured questionnaire and digital face-to-face interviews. Findings and results will provide promising lessons together with best practices and strategies to transform and change digital literacies in university libraries in Kenya.

Keywords: digital literacy, digital innovations, information professionals, librarians, higher education, university libraries, digital information literacy

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Authors: Alyaa Farouk Ibrahim, Gehan ElSayed, Ola Mamdouh, Nazek AbdelGhany

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Background: Primary health care (PHC) can be considered the first contact between the patient and the health care system. It includes all the basic health care services to be provided to the community. Patient's satisfaction regarding health care has often improved the provision of care, also considered as one of the most important measures for evaluating the health care. Objective: This study aims to identify patient’s satisfaction with services provided at the primary health care settings in Alexandria. Setting: Seven primary health care settings representing the seven zones of Alexandria governorate were selected randomly and included in the study. Subjects: The study comprised 386 patients attended the previously selected settings at least twice before the time of the study. Tools: Two tools were utilized for data collection; sociodemographic characteristics and health status structured interview schedule and patient satisfaction scale. Reliability test for the scale was done using Cronbach's Alpha test, the result of the test ranged between 0.717 and 0.967. The overall satisfaction was computed and divided into high, medium, and low satisfaction. Results: Age of the studied sample ranged between 19 and 62 years, more than half (54.2%) of them aged 40 to less than 60 years. More than half (52.8%) of the patients included in the study were diabetics, 39.1% of them were hypertensive, 19.2% had cardiovascular diseases, the rest of the sample had tumor, liver diseases, and orthopedic/neurological disorders (6.5%, 5.2% & 3.2%, respectively). The vast majority of the study group mentioned high satisfaction with overall service cost, environmental conditions, medical staff attitude and health education given at the PHC settings (87.8%, 90.7%, 86.3% & 90.9%, respectively), however, medium satisfaction was mostly reported concerning medical checkup procedures, follow-up data and referral system (41.2%, 28.5% & 28.9%, respectively). Score level of patient satisfaction with health services provided at the assessed Primary health care settings proved to be significantly associated with patients’ social status (P=0.003, X²=14.2), occupation (P=0.011, X²=11.2), and monthly income (P=0.039, X²=6.50). In addition, a significant association was observed between score level of satisfaction and type of illness (P=0.007, X²=9.366), type of medication (P=0.014, X²=9.033), prior knowledge about the health center (P=0.050, X²=3.346), and highly significant with the administrative zone (P=0.001, X²=55.294). Conclusion: The current study revealed that overall service cost, environmental conditions, staff attitude and health education at the assessed primary health care settings gained high patient satisfaction level, while, medical checkup procedures, follow-up, and referral system caused a medium level of satisfaction among assessed patients. Nevertheless, social status, occupation, monthly income, type of illness, type of medication and administrative zones are all factors influencing patient satisfaction with services provided at the health facilities.

Keywords: patient satisfaction, chronic illness, quality of health service, quality of service indicators

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Authors: María Luisa Gonzalez-SanJose, Mihaela Mihnea, Vicente Gomez-Miguel

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The zoning methodology currently recommended by the OIVV as official methodology to carry out viticulture zoning studies and to define and delimit the ‘terroirs’ has been applied in this study. This methodology has been successfully applied on the most significant an important Spanish Oenological D.O. regions, such as Ribera de Duero, Rioja, Rueda and Toro, but also it have been applied around the world in Portugal, different countries of South America, and so on. This is a complex methodology that uses edaphoclimatic data but also other corresponding to vineyards and other soils’ uses The methodology is useful to determine Homogeneous Soil Units (HSU) to different scale depending on the interest of each study, and has been applied from viticulture regions to particular vineyards. It seems that this methodology is an appropriate method to delimit correctly the medium in order to enhance its uses and to obtain the best viticulture and oenological products. The present work is focused on the comparison of volatile composition of wines made from grapes grown in different HSU that coexist in a particular viticulture region of Castile-Lion cited near to Burgos. Three different HSU were selected for this study. They represented around of 50% of the global area of vineyards of the studied region. Five different vineyards on each HSU under study were chosen. To reduce variability factors, other criteria were also considered as grape variety, clone, rootstocks, vineyard’s age, training systems and cultural practices. This study was carried out during three consecutive years, then wine from three different vintage were made and analysed. Different red wines were made from grapes harvested in the different vineyards under study. Grapes were harvested to ‘Technological maturity’, which are correlated with adequate levels of sugar, acidity, phenolic content (nowadays named phenolic maturity), good sanitary stages and adequate levels of aroma precursors. Results of the volatile profile of the wines produced from grapes of each HSU showed significant differences among them pointing out a direct effect of the edaphoclimatic characteristic of each UHT on the composition of the grapes and then on the volatile composition of the wines. Variability induced by HSU co-existed with the well-known inter-annual variability correlated mainly with the specific climatic conditions of each vintage, however was most intense, so the wine of each HSU were perfectly differenced. A discriminant analysis allowed to define the volatiles with discriminant capacities which were 21 of the 74 volatiles analysed. Detected discriminant volatiles were chemical different, although .most of them were esters, followed by were superior alcohols and fatty acid of short chain. Only one lactone and two aldehydes were selected as discriminant variable, and no varietal aroma compounds were selected, which agree with the fact that all the wine were made from the same grape variety.

Keywords: viticulture zoning, terroir, wine, volatile profile

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Authors: Natanya Meyer, Johann Landsberg

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Globally, many women are still disadvantaged when it comes to business opportunities. Entrepreneurship development programs, specifically designed to assist women entrepreneurs, are assisting in solving this problem to a certain extent. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors that motivate females to start their own business. Females, from three different groups (2013, 2014, and 2015), who were all enrolled in a short learning program specifically designed for women in early start-up stage or intending to start a business, were asked what motivated them to start a business. The results indicated that, from all three groups, the majority of the women wanted to start a business to be independent and have freedom and to add towards a social goal. The results further indicated that, in general, women would enter into entrepreneurship activity due to pull factors rather than push factors.

Keywords: entrepreneurship programs, female entrepreneur-ship, motivational factors, South Africa

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Authors: Marielle Hanley, Brandon Takahashi, Gerry Hanley, Gabriella Hancock

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Safety harnesses and their protocols are very common within the construction industry, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has provided extensive guidelines with protocols being constantly updated to ensure the highest level of safety within construction sites. There is also extensive research on harnesses that are meant to keep people in place in moving vehicles, such as seatbelts. Though this research is comprehensive in these areas, the findings and recommendations are not generally applicable to other industry sectors where harnesses are used, such as the entertainment industry. The focus of this case study is on the design and use of harnesses used by theme park employees wearing elaborate costumes in parades and performances. The key factors of posture, kinesthetic factors, and harness engineering interact in significantly different ways when the user is performing repetitive choreography with 20 to 40 lbs. of apparatus connected to harnesses that need to be hidden from the audience’s view. Human factors and ergonomic analysis take into account the required performers’ behaviors, the physical and mental preparation and posture of the performer, the design of the harness-embedded costume, and the environmental conditions during the performance (e.g., wind) that can determine the physical stresses placed on the harness and performer. The uniqueness and expense of elaborate costumes frequently result in one or two costumes created for production, and a variety of different performers need to fit into the same costume. Consequently, the harnesses should be adjustable if they are to minimize the physical and cognitive loads on the performer, but they are frequently more a “one-size fits all”. The complexity of human and technology interactions produces a range of detrimental outcomes, from muscle strains to nerve damage, mental and physical fatigue, and reduced motivation to perform at peak levels. Based on observations conducted over four years for this case study, a number of recommendations to institutionalize the human factors and ergonomic analyses can significantly improve the safety, reliability, and quality of performances with harness-embedded costumes in the entertainment industry. Human factors and ergonomic analyses can be integrated into the engineering design of the performance costumes with embedded harnesses, the conditioning and training of the performers using the costumes, the choreography of the performances within the staged setting and the maintenance of the harness-embedded costumes. By applying human factors and ergonomic methodologies in the entertainment industry, the industry management and support staff can significantly reduce the risks of injury, improve the longevity of unique performers, increase the longevity of the harness-embedded costumes, and produce the desired entertainment value for audiences.

Keywords: ergonomics in entertainment industry, harness-embedded costumes, performer safety, injury prevention

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