Search results for: uranium mining
253 The “Bright Side” of COVID-19: Effects of Livestream Affordances on Consumer Purchase Willingness: Explicit IT Affordances Perspective
Authors: Isaac Owusu Asante, Yushi Jiang, Hailin Tao
Abstract:
Live streaming marketing, the new electronic commerce element, became an optional marketing channel following the COVID-19 pandemic. Many sellers have leveraged the features presented by live streaming to increase sales. Studies on live streaming have focused on gaming and consumers’ loyalty to brands through live streaming, using interview questionnaires. This study, however, was conducted to measure real-time observable interactions between consumers and sellers. Based on the affordance theory, this study conceptualized constructs representing the interactive features and examined how they drive consumers’ purchase willingness during live streaming sessions using 1238 datasets from Amazon Live, following the manual observation of transaction records. Using structural equation modeling, the ordinary least square regression suggests that live viewers, new followers, live chats, and likes positively affect purchase willingness. The Sobel and Monte Carlo tests show that new followers, live chats, and likes significantly mediate the relationship between live viewers and purchase willingness. The study introduces a new way of measuring interactions in live streaming commerce and proposes a way to manually gather data on consumer behaviors in live streaming platforms when the application programming interface (API) of such platforms does not support data mining algorithms.Keywords: livestreaming marketing, live chats, live viewers, likes, new followers, purchase willingness
Procedia PDF Downloads 83252 A Supervised Approach for Detection of Singleton Spam Reviews
Authors: Atefeh Heydari, Mohammadali Tavakoli, Naomie Salim
Abstract:
In recent years, we have witnessed that online reviews are the most important source of customers’ opinion. They are progressively more used by individuals and organisations to make purchase and business decisions. Unfortunately, for the reason of profit or fame, frauds produce deceptive reviews to hoodwink potential customers. Their activities mislead not only potential customers to make appropriate purchasing decisions and organisations to reshape their business, but also opinion mining techniques by preventing them from reaching accurate results. Spam reviews could be divided into two main groups, i.e. multiple and singleton spam reviews. Detecting a singleton spam review that is the only review written by a user ID is extremely challenging due to lack of clue for detection purposes. Singleton spam reviews are very harmful and various features and proofs used in multiple spam reviews detection are not applicable in this case. Current research aims to propose a novel supervised technique to detect singleton spam reviews. To achieve this, various features are proposed in this study and are to be combined with the most appropriate features extracted from literature and employed in a classifier. In order to compare the performance of different classifiers, SVM and naive Bayes classification algorithms were used for model building. The results revealed that SVM was more accurate than naive Bayes and our proposed technique is capable to detect singleton spam reviews effectively.Keywords: classification algorithms, Naïve Bayes, opinion review spam detection, singleton review spam detection, support vector machine
Procedia PDF Downloads 309251 Developing a Place-Name Gazetteer for Singapore by Mining Historical Planning Archives and Selective Crowd-Sourcing
Authors: Kevin F. Hsu, Alvin Chua, Sarah X. Lin
Abstract:
As a multilingual society, Singaporean names for different parts of the city have changed over time. Residents included Indigenous Malays, dialect-speakers from China, European settler-colonists, and Tamil-speakers from South India. Each group would name locations in their own languages. Today, as ancestral tongues are increasingly supplanted by English, contemporary Singaporeans’ understanding of once-common place names is disappearing. After demolition or redevelopment, some urban places will only exist in archival records or in human memory. United Nations conferences on the standardization of geographic names have called attention to how place names relate to identity, well-being, and a sense of belonging. The Singapore Place-Naming Project responds to these imperatives by capturing past and present place names through digitizing historical maps, mining archival records, and applying selective crowd-sourcing to trace the evolution of place names throughout the city. The project ensures that both formal and vernacular geographical names remain accessible to historians, city planners, and the public. The project is compiling a gazetteer, a geospatial archive of placenames, with streets, buildings, landmarks, and other points of interest (POI) appearing in the historic maps and planning documents of Singapore, currently held by the National Archives of Singapore, the National Library Board, university departments, and the Urban Redevelopment Authority. To create a spatial layer of information, the project links each place name to either a geo-referenced point, line segment, or polygon, along with the original source material in which the name appears. This record is supplemented by crowd-sourced contributions from civil service officers and heritage specialists, drawing from their collective memory to (1) define geospatial boundaries of historic places that appear in past documents, but maybe unfamiliar to users today, and (2) identify and record vernacular place names not captured in formal planning documents. An intuitive interface allows participants to demarcate feature classes, vernacular phrasings, time periods, and other knowledge related to historical or forgotten spaces. Participants are stratified into age bands and ethnicity to improve representativeness. Future iterations could allow additional public contributions. Names reveal meanings that communities assign to each place. While existing historical maps of Singapore allow users to toggle between present-day and historical raster files, this project goes a step further by adding layers of social understanding and planning documents. Tracking place names illuminates linguistic, cultural, commercial, and demographic shifts in Singapore, in the context of transformations of the urban environment. The project also demonstrates how a moderated, selectively crowd-sourced effort can solicit useful geospatial data at scale, sourced from different generations, and at higher granularity than traditional surveys, while mitigating negative impacts of unmoderated crowd-sourcing. Stakeholder agencies believe the project will achieve several objectives, including Supporting heritage conservation and public education; Safeguarding intangible cultural heritage; Providing historical context for street, place or development-renaming requests; Enhancing place-making with deeper historical knowledge; Facilitating emergency and social services by tagging legal addresses to vernacular place names; Encouraging public engagement with heritage by eliciting multi-stakeholder input.Keywords: collective memory, crowd-sourced, digital heritage, geospatial, geographical names, linguistic heritage, place-naming, Singapore, Southeast Asia
Procedia PDF Downloads 130250 Characterization of Aluminosilicates and Verification of Their Impact on Quality of Ceramic Proppants Intended for Shale Gas Output
Authors: Joanna Szymanska, Paulina Wawulska-Marek, Jaroslaw Mizera
Abstract:
Nowadays, the rapid growth of global energy consumption and uncontrolled depletion of natural resources become a serious problem. Shale rocks are the largest and potential global basins containing hydrocarbons, trapped in closed pores of the shale matrix. Regardless of the shales origin, mining conditions are extremely unfavourable due to high reservoir pressure, great depths, increased clay minerals content and limited permeability (nanoDarcy) of the rocks. Taking into consideration such geomechanical barriers, effective extraction of natural gas from shales with plastic zones demands effective operations. Actually, hydraulic fracturing is the most developed technique based on the injection of pressurized fluid into a wellbore, to initiate fractures propagation. However, a rapid drop of pressure after fluid suction to the ground induces a fracture closure and conductivity reduction. In order to minimize this risk, proppants should be applied. They are solid granules transported with hydraulic fluids to locate inside the rock. Proppants act as a prop for the closing fracture, thus gas migration to a borehole is effective. Quartz sands are commonly applied proppants only at shallow deposits (USA). Whereas, ceramic proppants are designed to meet rigorous downhole conditions to intensify output. Ceramic granules predominate with higher mechanical strength, stability in strong acidic environment, spherical shape and homogeneity as well. Quality of ceramic proppants is conditioned by raw materials selection. Aim of this study was to obtain the proppants from aluminosilicates (the kaolinite subgroup) and mix of minerals with a high alumina content. These loamy minerals contain a tubular and platy morphology that improves mechanical properties and reduces their specific weight. Moreover, they are distinguished by well-developed surface area, high porosity, fine particle size, superb dispersion and nontoxic properties - very crucial for particles consolidation into spherical and crush-resistant granules in mechanical granulation process. The aluminosilicates were mixed with water and natural organic binder to improve liquid-bridges and pores formation between particles. Afterward, the green proppants were subjected to sintering at high temperatures. Evaluation of the minerals utility was based on their particle size distribution (laser diffraction study) and thermal stability (thermogravimetry). Scanning Electron Microscopy was useful for morphology and shape identification combined with specific surface area measurement (BET). Chemical composition was verified by Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy and X-ray Fluorescence. Moreover, bulk density and specific weight were measured. Such comprehensive characterization of loamy materials confirmed their favourable impact on the proppants granulation. The sintered granules were analyzed by SEM to verify the surface topography and phase transitions after sintering. Pores distribution was identified by X-Ray Tomography. This method enabled also the simulation of proppants settlement in a fracture, while measurement of bulk density was essential to predict their amount to fill a well. Roundness coefficient was also evaluated, whereas impact on mining environment was identified by turbidity and solubility in acid - to indicate risk of the material decay in a well. The obtained outcomes confirmed a positive influence of the loamy minerals on ceramic proppants properties with respect to the strict norms. This research is perspective for higher quality proppants production with costs reduction.Keywords: aluminosilicates, ceramic proppants, mechanical granulation, shale gas
Procedia PDF Downloads 163249 Comparative Evaluation of Accuracy of Selected Machine Learning Classification Techniques for Diagnosis of Cancer: A Data Mining Approach
Authors: Rajvir Kaur, Jeewani Anupama Ginige
Abstract:
With recent trends in Big Data and advancements in Information and Communication Technologies, the healthcare industry is at the stage of its transition from clinician oriented to technology oriented. Many people around the world die of cancer because the diagnosis of disease was not done at an early stage. Nowadays, the computational methods in the form of Machine Learning (ML) are used to develop automated decision support systems that can diagnose cancer with high confidence in a timely manner. This paper aims to carry out the comparative evaluation of a selected set of ML classifiers on two existing datasets: breast cancer and cervical cancer. The ML classifiers compared in this study are Decision Tree (DT), Support Vector Machine (SVM), k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN), Logistic Regression, Ensemble (Bagged Tree) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). The evaluation is carried out based on standard evaluation metrics Precision (P), Recall (R), F1-score and Accuracy. The experimental results based on the evaluation metrics show that ANN showed the highest-level accuracy (99.4%) when tested with breast cancer dataset. On the other hand, when these ML classifiers are tested with the cervical cancer dataset, Ensemble (Bagged Tree) technique gave better accuracy (93.1%) in comparison to other classifiers.Keywords: artificial neural networks, breast cancer, classifiers, cervical cancer, f-score, machine learning, precision, recall
Procedia PDF Downloads 278248 Pattern Discovery from Student Feedback: Identifying Factors to Improve Student Emotions in Learning
Authors: Angelina A. Tzacheva, Jaishree Ranganathan
Abstract:
Interest in (STEM) Science Technology Engineering Mathematics education especially Computer Science education has seen a drastic increase across the country. This fuels effort towards recruiting and admitting a diverse population of students. Thus the changing conditions in terms of the student population, diversity and the expected teaching and learning outcomes give the platform for use of Innovative Teaching models and technologies. It is necessary that these methods adapted should also concentrate on raising quality of such innovations and have positive impact on student learning. Light-Weight Team is an Active Learning Pedagogy, which is considered to be low-stake activity and has very little or no direct impact on student grades. Emotion plays a major role in student’s motivation to learning. In this work we use the student feedback data with emotion classification using surveys at a public research institution in the United States. We use Actionable Pattern Discovery method for this purpose. Actionable patterns are patterns that provide suggestions in the form of rules to help the user achieve better outcomes. The proposed method provides meaningful insight in terms of changes that can be incorporated in the Light-Weight team activities, resources utilized in the course. The results suggest how to enhance student emotions to a more positive state, in particular focuses on the emotions ‘Trust’ and ‘Joy’.Keywords: actionable pattern discovery, education, emotion, data mining
Procedia PDF Downloads 99247 Health and Safety Risk Assesment with Electromagnetic Field Exposure for Call Center Workers
Authors: Dilsad Akal
Abstract:
Aim: Companies communicate with each other and with their costumers via call centers. Call centers are defined as stressful because of their uncertain working hours, inadequate relief time, performance based system and heavy workload. In literature, this sector is defined as risky as mining sector by means of health and safety. The aim of this research is to enlight the relatively dark area. Subject and Methods: The collection of data for this study completed during April-May 2015 for the two selected call centers in different parts of Turkey. The applied question mostly investigated the health conditions of call center workers. Electromagnetic field measurements were completed at the same time with applying the question poll. The ratio of employee accessibility noted as 73% for the first call center and 87% for the second. Results: The results of electromagnetic field measurements were as between 371 V/m-32 V/m for the first location and between 370 V/m-61 V/m for the second. The general complaints of the employees for both workplaces can be counted as; inadequate relief time, inadequate air conditioning, disturbance, poor thermal conditions, inadequate or extreme lighting. Furthermore, musculoskeletal discomfort, stress, ear and eye discomfort are main health problems of employees. Conclusion: The measured values and the responses to the question poll were found parallel with the other similar research results in literature. At the end of this survey, a risk map of workplace was prepared in terms of safety and health at work in general and some suggestions for resolution were provided.Keywords: call center, health and safety, electromagnetic field, risk map
Procedia PDF Downloads 181246 Design and Fabrication of a Smart Quadruped Robot
Authors: Shivani Verma, Amit Agrawal, Pankaj Kumar Meena, Ashish B. Deoghare
Abstract:
Over the decade robotics has been a major area of interest among the researchers and scientists in reducing human efforts. The need for robots to replace human work in different dangerous fields such as underground mining, nuclear power station and war against terrorist attack has gained huge attention. Most of the robot design is based on human structure popularly known as humanoid robots. However, the problems encountered in humanoid robots includes low speed of movement, misbalancing in structure, poor load carrying capacity, etc. The simplification and adaptation of the fundamental design principles seen in animals have led to the creation of bio-inspired robots. But the major challenges observed in naturally inspired robot include complexity in structure, several degrees of freedom and energy storage problem. The present work focuses on design and fabrication of a bionic quadruped walking robot which is based on different joint of quadruped mammals like a dog, cheetah, etc. The design focuses on the structure of the robot body which consists of four legs having three degrees of freedom per leg and the electronics system involved in it. The robot is built using readily available plastics and metals. The proposed robot is simple in construction and is able to move through uneven terrain, detect and locate obstacles and take images while carrying additional loads which may include hardware and sensors. The robot will find possible application in the artificial intelligence sector.Keywords: artificial intelligence, bionic, quadruped robot, degree of freedom
Procedia PDF Downloads 216245 Identification of Workplace Hazards of Underground Coal Mines
Authors: Madiha Ijaz, Muhammad Akram, Sima Mir
Abstract:
Underground mining of coal is carried out manually in Pakistan. Exposure to ergonomic hazards (musculoskeletal disorders) are very common among the coal cutters of these mines. Cutting coal in narrow spaces poses a great threat to both upper and lower limbs of these workers. To observe the prevalence of such hazards, a thorough study was conducted on 600 workers from 30 mines (20 workers from 1 mine), located in two districts of province Punjab, Pakistan. Rapid Upper Limb Assessment sheet and Rapid Entire Body Assessment sheet were used for the study along with a standard Nordic Musculoskeleton disorder questionnaire. SPSS, 25, software was used for data analysis on upper and lower limb disorders, and regression analysis models were run for upper and lower back pain. According to the results obtained, it was found that work stages (drilling & blasting, coal cutting, timbering & supporting, etc.), wok experience and number of repetitions performed/minute were significant (with p-value 0.00,0.004 and 0.009, respectively) for discomfort in upper and lower limb. Age got p vale 0.00 for upper limb and 0.012 for lower limb disorder. The task of coal cutting was strongly associated with the pain in upper back (with odd ratios13.21, 95% confidence interval (CI)14.0-21.64)) and lower back pain (3.7, 95% confidence interval 1.3-4.2). scored on RULA and REBA sheets, every work-stage was ranked at 7-highest level of risk involved. Workers were young (mean value of age= 28.7 years) with mean BMI 28.1 kg/m2Keywords: workplace hazards, ergonomic disorders, limb disorders, MSDs.
Procedia PDF Downloads 85244 Applying Theory of Inventive Problem Solving to Develop Innovative Solutions: A Case Study
Authors: Y. H. Wang, C. C. Hsieh
Abstract:
Good service design can increase organization revenue and consumer satisfaction while reducing labor and time costs. The problems facing consumers in the original serve model for eyewear and optical industry includes the following issues: 1. Insufficient information on eyewear products 2. Passively dependent on recommendations, insufficient selection 3. Incomplete records on progression of vision conditions 4. Lack of complete customer records. This study investigates the case of Kobayashi Optical, applying the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) to develop innovative solutions for eyewear and optical industry. Analysis results raise the following conclusions and management implications: In order to provide customers with improved professional information and recommendations, Kobayashi Optical is suggested to establish customer purchasing records. Overall service efficiency can be enhanced by applying data mining techniques to analyze past consumer preferences and purchase histories. Furthermore, Kobayashi Optical should continue to develop a 3D virtual trial service which can allow customers for easy browsing of different frame styles and colors. This 3D virtual trial service will save customer waiting times in during peak service times at stores.Keywords: theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ), service design, augmented reality (AR), eyewear and optical industry
Procedia PDF Downloads 279243 Determination of Safe Ore Extraction Methodology beneath Permanent Extraction in a Lead Zinc Mine with the Help of FLAC3D Numerical Model
Authors: Ayan Giri, Lukaranjan Phukan, Shantanu Karmakar
Abstract:
Structure and tectonics play a vital role in ore genesis and deposition. The existence of a swelling structure below the current level of a mine leads to the discovery of ores below some permeant developments of the mine. The discovery and the extraction of the ore body are very critical to sustain the business requirement of the mine. The challenge was to extract the ore without hampering the global stability of the mine. In order to do so, different mining options were considered and analysed by numerical modelling in FLAC3d software. The constitutive model prepared for this simulation is the improved unified constitutive model, which can better and more accurately predict the stress-strain relationships in a continuum model. The IUCM employs the Hoek-Brown criterion to determine the instantaneous Mohr-Coulomb parameters cohesion (c) and friction (ɸ) at each level of confining stress. The extra swelled part can be dimensioned as north-south strike width 50m, east-west strike width 50m. On the north side, already a stope (P1) is excavated of the dimension of 25m NS width. The different options considered were (a) Open stoping of extraction of southern part (P0) of 50m to the full extent, (b) Extraction of the southern part of 25m, then filling of both the primaries and extraction of secondary (S0) 25m in between. (c) Extraction of the southern part (P0) completely, preceded by backfill and modify the design of the secondary (S0) for the overall stability of the permanent excavation above the stoping.Keywords: extraction, IUCM, FLAC 3D, stoping, tectonics
Procedia PDF Downloads 214242 Using Geospatial Analysis to Reconstruct the Thunderstorm Climatology for the Washington DC Metropolitan Region
Authors: Mace Bentley, Zhuojun Duan, Tobias Gerken, Dudley Bonsal, Henry Way, Endre Szakal, Mia Pham, Hunter Donaldson, Chelsea Lang, Hayden Abbott, Leah Wilcynzski
Abstract:
Air pollution has the potential to modify the lifespan and intensity of thunderstorms and the properties of lightning. Using data mining and geovisualization, we investigate how background climate and weather conditions shape variability in urban air pollution and how this, in turn, shapes thunderstorms as measured by the intensity, distribution, and frequency of cloud-to-ground lightning. A spatiotemporal analysis was conducted in order to identify thunderstorms using high-resolution lightning detection network data. Over seven million lightning flashes were used to identify more than 196,000 thunderstorms that occurred between 2006 - 2020 in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Region. Each lightning flash in the dataset was grouped into thunderstorm events by means of a temporal and spatial clustering algorithm. Once the thunderstorm event database was constructed, hourly wind direction, wind speed, and atmospheric thermodynamic data were added to the initiation and dissipation times and locations for the 196,000 identified thunderstorms. Hourly aerosol and air quality data for the thunderstorm initiation times and locations were also incorporated into the dataset. Developing thunderstorm climatologies using a lightning tracking algorithm and lightning detection network data was found to be useful for visualizing the spatial and temporal distribution of urban augmented thunderstorms in the region.Keywords: lightning, urbanization, thunderstorms, climatology
Procedia PDF Downloads 76241 Fuzzy Optimization Multi-Objective Clustering Ensemble Model for Multi-Source Data Analysis
Authors: C. B. Le, V. N. Pham
Abstract:
In modern data analysis, multi-source data appears more and more in real applications. Multi-source data clustering has emerged as a important issue in the data mining and machine learning community. Different data sources provide information about different data. Therefore, multi-source data linking is essential to improve clustering performance. However, in practice multi-source data is often heterogeneous, uncertain, and large. This issue is considered a major challenge from multi-source data. Ensemble is a versatile machine learning model in which learning techniques can work in parallel, with big data. Clustering ensemble has been shown to outperform any standard clustering algorithm in terms of accuracy and robustness. However, most of the traditional clustering ensemble approaches are based on single-objective function and single-source data. This paper proposes a new clustering ensemble method for multi-source data analysis. The fuzzy optimized multi-objective clustering ensemble method is called FOMOCE. Firstly, a clustering ensemble mathematical model based on the structure of multi-objective clustering function, multi-source data, and dark knowledge is introduced. Then, rules for extracting dark knowledge from the input data, clustering algorithms, and base clusterings are designed and applied. Finally, a clustering ensemble algorithm is proposed for multi-source data analysis. The experiments were performed on the standard sample data set. The experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of the FOMOCE method compared to the existing clustering ensemble methods and multi-source clustering methods.Keywords: clustering ensemble, multi-source, multi-objective, fuzzy clustering
Procedia PDF Downloads 191240 Lipidomic Response to Neoadjuvant Chemoradiotherapy in Rectal Cancer
Authors: Patricia O. Carvalho, Marcia C. F. Messias, Salvador Sanchez Vinces, Caroline F. A. Gatinoni, Vitor P. Iordanu, Carlos A. R. Martinez
Abstract:
Lipidomics methods are widely used in the identification and validation of disease-specific biomarkers and therapy response evaluation. The present study aimed to identify a panel of potential lipid biomarkers to evaluate response to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy in rectal adenocarcinoma (RAC). Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-MS)-based untargeted lipidomic was used to profile human serum samples from patients with clinical stage T2 or T3 resectable RAC, after and before chemoradiotherapy treatment. A total of 28 blood plasma samples were collected from 14 patients with RAC who recruited at the São Francisco University Hospital (HUSF/USF). The study was approved by the ethics committee (CAAE 14958819.8.0000.5514). Univariate and multivariate statistical analyses were applied to explore dysregulated metabolic pathways using untargeted lipidic profiling and data mining approaches. A total of 36 statistically significant altered lipids were identified and the subsequent partial least-squares discriminant analysis model was both cross validated (R2, Q2) and permutated. Lisophosphatidyl-choline (LPC) plasmalogens containing palmitoleic and oleic acids, with high variable importance in projection score, showed a tendency to be lower after completion of chemoradiotherapy. Chemoradiotherapy seems to change plasmanyl-phospholipids levels, indicating that these lipids play an important role in the RAC pathogenesis.Keywords: lipidomics, neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy, plasmalogens, rectal adenocarcinoma
Procedia PDF Downloads 131239 A Methodology for Automatic Diversification of Document Categories
Authors: Dasom Kim, Chen Liu, Myungsu Lim, Su-Hyeon Jeon, ByeoungKug Jeon, Kee-Young Kwahk, Namgyu Kim
Abstract:
Recently, numerous documents including unstructured data and text have been created due to the rapid increase in the usage of social media and the Internet. Each document is usually provided with a specific category for the convenience of the users. In the past, the categorization was performed manually. However, in the case of manual categorization, not only can the accuracy of the categorization be not guaranteed but the categorization also requires a large amount of time and huge costs. Many studies have been conducted towards the automatic creation of categories to solve the limitations of manual categorization. Unfortunately, most of these methods cannot be applied to categorizing complex documents with multiple topics because the methods work by assuming that one document can be categorized into one category only. In order to overcome this limitation, some studies have attempted to categorize each document into multiple categories. However, they are also limited in that their learning process involves training using a multi-categorized document set. These methods therefore cannot be applied to multi-categorization of most documents unless multi-categorized training sets are provided. To overcome the limitation of the requirement of a multi-categorized training set by traditional multi-categorization algorithms, we previously proposed a new methodology that can extend a category of a single-categorized document to multiple categorizes by analyzing relationships among categories, topics, and documents. In this paper, we design a survey-based verification scenario for estimating the accuracy of our automatic categorization methodology.Keywords: big data analysis, document classification, multi-category, text mining, topic analysis
Procedia PDF Downloads 273238 Children and Migration in Ghana: Unveiling the Realities of Vulnerability and Social Exclusion
Authors: Thomas Yeboah
Abstract:
In contemporary times, the incessant movement of northern children especially girls to southern Ghana at the detriment of their education is worrisome. Due to the misplaced mindset of the migrants concerning southern Ghana, majority of them move without an idea of where to stay and what to do exposing them to hash conditions of living. Majority find menial work in cocoa farms, illegal mining and head porterage business. This study was conducted in the Kumasi Metropolis to ascertain the major causes of child migration from the northern part of Ghana to the south and their living conditions. Both qualitative and quantitative tools of data collection and analysis were employed. The purposive sampling technique was used to select 90 migrants below 18 years. Specifically, interviews, focus group discussions and questionnaires were used to elicit responses from the units of analysis. The study revealed that the major cause of child migration from northern Ghana to the south is poverty. It was evident that respondents were vulnerable to the new environment in which they lived. They are exposed to harsh environmental conditions; sexual, verbal and physical assault; and harassment from arm robbers. The paper recommends that policy decisions should be able to create an enabling environment for the labour force in the north to ameliorate the compelling effects poverty has on child migration. Efforts should also be made to create a proper psychological climate in the minds of the children regarding their destination areas through sensitization and education.Keywords: child migration, vulnerability, social exclusion, child labour, Ghana
Procedia PDF Downloads 445237 Petrology Investigation of Apatite Minerals in the Esfordi Mine
Authors: Haleh Rezaei Zanjirabadi, Fatemeh Saberi, Bahman Rahimzadeh, Fariborz Masoudi, Mohammad Rahgosha
Abstract:
In this study, apatite minerals from the iron-phosphate deposit of Yazd have been investigated within the microcontinent zone of Iran in the Zagros structural zone. The geological units in the Esfordi area belong to the pre-Cambrian to lower-Cambrian age, consisting of a succession of carbonate rocks (dolomite), shale, tuff, sandstone, and volcanic rocks. In addition to the mentioned sedimentary and volcanic rocks, the granitoid mass of Bahabad, which is the largest intrusive mass in the region, has intruded into the eastern part of this series and has caused its metamorphism and alteration. After collecting the available data, various samples of Esfordi’s apatite were prepared, and their mineralogy and crystallography were investigated using laboratory methods such as petrographic microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, EDS, and SEM. In non-destructive Raman spectroscopy, the molecular structure of apatite minerals was revealed in four distinct spectral ranges. Initially, the spectra of phosphate and aluminum bonds with O2HO, OH, were observed, followed by the identification of Cl, OH, Al, Na, Ca and hydroxyl units depending on the type of apatite mineral family. In SEM analysis, based on various shapes and different phases of apatites, their constituent major elements were identified through EDS, indicating that the samples from the Esfordi mining area exhibit a dense and coherent texture with smooth surfaces. Based on the elemental analysis results by EDS, the apatites in the Esfordi area are classified into the calcic apatite group.Keywords: petrology, apatite, Esfordi, EDS, SEM, Raman spectroscopy
Procedia PDF Downloads 61236 Graph-Based Semantical Extractive Text Analysis
Authors: Mina Samizadeh
Abstract:
In the past few decades, there has been an explosion in the amount of available data produced from various sources with different topics. The availability of this enormous data necessitates us to adopt effective computational tools to explore the data. This leads to an intense growing interest in the research community to develop computational methods focused on processing this text data. A line of study focused on condensing the text so that we are able to get a higher level of understanding in a shorter time. The two important tasks to do this are keyword extraction and text summarization. In keyword extraction, we are interested in finding the key important words from a text. This makes us familiar with the general topic of a text. In text summarization, we are interested in producing a short-length text which includes important information about the document. The TextRank algorithm, an unsupervised learning method that is an extension of the PageRank (algorithm which is the base algorithm of Google search engine for searching pages and ranking them), has shown its efficacy in large-scale text mining, especially for text summarization and keyword extraction. This algorithm can automatically extract the important parts of a text (keywords or sentences) and declare them as a result. However, this algorithm neglects the semantic similarity between the different parts. In this work, we improved the results of the TextRank algorithm by incorporating the semantic similarity between parts of the text. Aside from keyword extraction and text summarization, we develop a topic clustering algorithm based on our framework, which can be used individually or as a part of generating the summary to overcome coverage problems.Keywords: keyword extraction, n-gram extraction, text summarization, topic clustering, semantic analysis
Procedia PDF Downloads 72235 Mitigation Measures for the Acid Mine Drainage Emanating from the Sabie Goldfield: Case Study of the Nestor Mine
Authors: Rudzani Lusunzi, Frans Waanders, Elvis Fosso-Kankeu, Robert Khashane Netshitungulwana
Abstract:
The Sabie Goldfield has a history of gold mining dating back more than a century. Acid mine drainage (AMD) from the Nestor mine tailings storage facility (MTSF) poses a serious threat to the nearby ecosystem, specifically the Sabie River system. This study aims at developing mitigation measures for the AMD emanating from the Nestor MTSF using materials from the Glynns Lydenburg MTSF. The Nestor MTSF (NM) and the Glynns Lydenburg MTSF (GM) each provided about 20 kg of bulk composite samples. Using samples from the Nestor MTSF and the Glynns Lydenburg MTSF, two mixtures were created. MIX-A is a mixture that contains 25% weight percent (GM) and 75% weight percent (NM). MIX-B is the name given to the second mixture, which contains 50% AN and 50% AG. The same static test, i.e., acid–base accounting (ABA), net acid generation (NAG), and acid buffering characteristics curve (ABCC) was used to estimate the acid-generating probabilities of samples NM and GM for MIX-A and MIX-B. Furthermore, the mineralogy of the Nestor MTSF samples consists of the primary acid-producing mineral pyrite as well as the secondary minerals ferricopiapite and jarosite, which are common in acidic conditions. The Glynns Lydenburg MTSF samples, on the other hand, contain primary acid-neutralizing minerals calcite and dolomite. Based on the assessment conducted, materials from the Glynns Lydenburg are capable of neutralizing AMD from Nestor MTSF. Therefore, the alkaline tailings materials from the Glynns Lydenburg MTSF can be used to rehabilitate the acidic Nestor MTSF.Keywords: Nestor Mine, acid mine drainage, mitigation, Sabie River system
Procedia PDF Downloads 87234 Light-Weight Network for Real-Time Pose Estimation
Authors: Jianghao Hu, Hongyu Wang
Abstract:
The effective and efficient human pose estimation algorithm is an important task for real-time human pose estimation on mobile devices. This paper proposes a light-weight human key points detection algorithm, Light-Weight Network for Real-Time Pose Estimation (LWPE). LWPE uses light-weight backbone network and depthwise separable convolutions to reduce parameters and lower latency. LWPE uses the feature pyramid network (FPN) to fuse the high-resolution, semantically weak features with the low-resolution, semantically strong features. In the meantime, with multi-scale prediction, the predicted result by the low-resolution feature map is stacked to the adjacent higher-resolution feature map to intermediately monitor the network and continuously refine the results. At the last step, the key point coordinates predicted in the highest-resolution are used as the final output of the network. For the key-points that are difficult to predict, LWPE adopts the online hard key points mining strategy to focus on the key points that hard predicting. The proposed algorithm achieves excellent performance in the single-person dataset selected in the AI (artificial intelligence) challenge dataset. The algorithm maintains high-precision performance even though the model only contains 3.9M parameters, and it can run at 225 frames per second (FPS) on the generic graphics processing unit (GPU).Keywords: depthwise separable convolutions, feature pyramid network, human pose estimation, light-weight backbone
Procedia PDF Downloads 154233 Assessment of the Effect of Cu and Zn on the Growth of Two Chlorophytic Microalgae
Authors: Medina O. Kadiri, John E. Gabriel
Abstract:
Heavy metals are metallic elements with a relatively high density, at least five times greater compared to water. The sources of heavy metal pollution in the environment include industrial, medical, agricultural, pharmaceutical, domestic effluents, and atmospheric sources, mining, foundries, smelting, and any heavy metal-based operation. Although some heavy metals in trace quantities are required for biological metabolism, their higher concentrations elicit toxicities. Others are distinctly toxic and are of no biological functions. Microalgae are the primary producers of aquatic ecosystems and, therefore, the foundation of the aquatic food chain. A study investigating the effects of copper and zinc on the two chlorophytes-Chlorella vulgaris and Dictyosphaerium pulchellum was done in the laboratory, under different concentrations of 0mg/l, 2mg/l, 4mg/l, 6mg/l, 8mg/l, 10mg/l, and 20mg/l. The growth of the test microalgae was determined every two days for 14 days. The results showed that the effects of the test heavy metals were concentration-dependent. From the two microalgae species tested, Chlorella vulgaris showed appreciable growth up to 8mg/l concentration of zinc. Dictyoshphaerium pulchellum had only minimal growth at different copper concentrations except for 2mg/l, which seemed to have relatively higher growth. The growth of the control was remarkably higher than in other concentrations. Generally, the growth of both test algae was consistently inhibited by heavy metals. Comparatively, copper generally inhibited the growth of both algae than zinc. Chlorella vulgaris can be used for bioremediation of high concentrations of zinc. The potential of many microalgae in heavy metal bioremediation can be explored.Keywords: heavy metals, green algae, microalgae, pollution
Procedia PDF Downloads 195232 An Automated Approach to the Nozzle Configuration of Polycrystalline Diamond Compact Drill Bits for Effective Cuttings Removal
Authors: R. Suresh, Pavan Kumar Nimmagadda, Ming Zo Tan, Shane Hart, Sharp Ugwuocha
Abstract:
Polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) drill bits are extensively used in the oil and gas industry as well as the mining industry. Industry engineers continually improve upon PDC drill bit designs and hydraulic conditions. Optimized injection nozzles play a key role in improving the drilling performance and efficiency of these ever changing PDC drill bits. In the first part of this study, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling is performed to investigate the hydrodynamic characteristics of drilling fluid flow around the PDC drill bit. An Open-source CFD software – OpenFOAM simulates the flow around the drill bit, based on the field input data. A specifically developed console application integrates the entire CFD process including, domain extraction, meshing, and solving governing equations and post-processing. The results from the OpenFOAM solver are then compared with that of the ANSYS Fluent software. The data from both software programs agree. The second part of the paper describes the parametric study of the PDC drill bit nozzle to determine the effect of parameters such as number of nozzles, nozzle velocity, nozzle radial position and orientations on the flow field characteristics and bit washing patterns. After analyzing a series of nozzle configurations, the best configuration is identified and recommendations are made for modifying the PDC bit design.Keywords: ANSYS Fluent, computational fluid dynamics, nozzle configuration, OpenFOAM, PDC dill bit
Procedia PDF Downloads 424231 Cultivation of High-value Patent from the Perspective of Knowledge Diffusion: A Case Study of the Power Semiconductor Field
Authors: Lin Qing
Abstract:
[Objective/Significance] The cultivation of high-value patents is the focus and difficulty of patent work, which is of great significance to the construction of a powerful country with intellectual property rights. This work should not only pay attention to the existing patent applications, but also start from the pre-application to explore the high-value technical solutions as the core of high-value patents. [Methods/processes] Comply with the principle of scientific and technological knowledge diffusion, this study studies the top academic conference papers and their cited patent applications, taking the power semiconductor field as an example, using facts date show the feasibility and rationality of mining technology solutions from high quality research results to foster high value patents, stating the actual benefits of these achievements to the industry, giving patent protection suggestions for Chinese applicants comparative with field situation. [Results/Conclusion] The research shows that the quality of citation applications of ISPSD papers is significantly higher than the field average level, and the ability of Chinese applicants to use patent protection related achievements needs to be improved. This study provides a practical and highly targeted reference idea for patent administrators and researchers, and also makes a positive exploration for the practice of the spirit of breaking the five rules.Keywords: high-value patents cultivation, technical solutions, knowledge diffusion, top academic conference papers, intellectual property information analysis
Procedia PDF Downloads 132230 Big Data in Construction Project Management: The Colombian Northeast Case
Authors: Sergio Zabala-Vargas, Miguel Jiménez-Barrera, Luz VArgas-Sánchez
Abstract:
In recent years, information related to project management in organizations has been increasing exponentially. Performance data, management statistics, indicator results have forced the collection, analysis, traceability, and dissemination of project managers to be essential. In this sense, there are current trends to facilitate efficient decision-making in emerging technology projects, such as: Machine Learning, Data Analytics, Data Mining, and Big Data. The latter is the most interesting in this project. This research is part of the thematic line Construction methods and project management. Many authors present the relevance that the use of emerging technologies, such as Big Data, has taken in recent years in project management in the construction sector. The main focus is the optimization of time, scope, budget, and in general mitigating risks. This research was developed in the northeastern region of Colombia-South America. The first phase was aimed at diagnosing the use of emerging technologies (Big-Data) in the construction sector. In Colombia, the construction sector represents more than 50% of the productive system, and more than 2 million people participate in this economic segment. The quantitative approach was used. A survey was applied to a sample of 91 companies in the construction sector. Preliminary results indicate that the use of Big Data and other emerging technologies is very low and also that there is interest in modernizing project management. There is evidence of a correlation between the interest in using new data management technologies and the incorporation of Building Information Modeling BIM. The next phase of the research will allow the generation of guidelines and strategies for the incorporation of technological tools in the construction sector in Colombia.Keywords: big data, building information modeling, tecnology, project manamegent
Procedia PDF Downloads 129229 Valence and Arousal-Based Sentiment Analysis: A Comparative Study
Authors: Usama Shahid, Muhammad Zunnurain Hussain
Abstract:
This research paper presents a comprehensive analysis of a sentiment analysis approach that employs valence and arousal as its foundational pillars, in comparison to traditional techniques. Sentiment analysis is an indispensable task in natural language processing that involves the extraction of opinions and emotions from textual data. The valence and arousal dimensions, representing the intensity and positivity/negativity of emotions, respectively, enable the creation of four quadrants, each representing a specific emotional state. The study seeks to determine the impact of utilizing these quadrants to identify distinct emotional states on the accuracy and efficiency of sentiment analysis, in comparison to traditional techniques. The results reveal that the valence and arousal-based approach outperforms other approaches, particularly in identifying nuanced emotions that may be missed by conventional methods. The study's findings are crucial for applications such as social media monitoring and market research, where the accurate classification of emotions and opinions is paramount. Overall, this research highlights the potential of using valence and arousal as a framework for sentiment analysis and offers invaluable insights into the benefits of incorporating specific types of emotions into the analysis. These findings have significant implications for researchers and practitioners in the field of natural language processing, as they provide a basis for the development of more accurate and effective sentiment analysis tools.Keywords: sentiment analysis, valence and arousal, emotional states, natural language processing, machine learning, text analysis, sentiment classification, opinion mining
Procedia PDF Downloads 102228 Smart in Performance: More to Practical Life than Hardware and Software
Authors: Faten Hatem
Abstract:
This paper promotes the importance of focusing on spatial aspects and affective factors that impact smart urbanism. This helps to better inform city governance, spatial planning, and policymaking to focus on what Smart does and what it can achieve for cities in terms of performance rather than on using the notion for prestige in a worldwide trend towards becoming a smart city. By illustrating how this style of practice compromises the social aspects and related elements of space making through an interdisciplinary comparative approach, the paper clarifies the impact of this compromise on the overall smart city performance. In response, this paper recognizes the importance of establishing a new meaning for urban progress by moving beyond improving basic services of the city to enhance the actual human experience which is essential for the development of authentic smart cities. The topic is presented under five overlooked areas that discuss the relation between smart cities’ potential and efficiency paradox, the social aspect, connectedness with nature, the human factor, and untapped resources. However, these themes are not meant to be discussed in silos, instead, they are presented to collectively examine smart cities in performance, arguing there is more to the practical life of smart cities than software and hardware inventions. The study is based on a case study approach, presenting Milton Keynes as a living example to learn from while engaging with various methods for data collection including multi-disciplinary semi-structured interviews, field observations, and data mining.Keywords: smart design, the human in the city, human needs and urban planning, sustainability, smart cities, smart
Procedia PDF Downloads 107227 Effective Stacking of Deep Neural Models for Automated Object Recognition in Retail Stores
Authors: Ankit Sinha, Soham Banerjee, Pratik Chattopadhyay
Abstract:
Automated product recognition in retail stores is an important real-world application in the domain of Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. In this paper, we consider the problem of automatically identifying the classes of the products placed on racks in retail stores from an image of the rack and information about the query/product images. We improve upon the existing approaches in terms of effectiveness and memory requirement by developing a two-stage object detection and recognition pipeline comprising of a Faster-RCNN-based object localizer that detects the object regions in the rack image and a ResNet-18-based image encoder that classifies the detected regions into the appropriate classes. Each of the models is fine-tuned using appropriate data sets for better prediction and data augmentation is performed on each query image to prepare an extensive gallery set for fine-tuning the ResNet-18-based product recognition model. This encoder is trained using a triplet loss function following the strategy of online-hard-negative-mining for improved prediction. The proposed models are lightweight and can be connected in an end-to-end manner during deployment to automatically identify each product object placed in a rack image. Extensive experiments using Grozi-32k and GP-180 data sets verify the effectiveness of the proposed model.Keywords: retail stores, faster-RCNN, object localization, ResNet-18, triplet loss, data augmentation, product recognition
Procedia PDF Downloads 157226 Consequential Effects of Coal Utilization on Urban Water Supply Sources – a Study of Ajali River in Enugu State Nigeria
Authors: Enebe Christian Chukwudi
Abstract:
Water bodies around the world notably underground water, ground water, rivers, streams, and seas, face degradation of their water quality as a result of activities associated with coal utilization including coal mining, coal processing, coal burning, waste storage and thermal pollution from coal plants which tend to contaminate these water bodies. This contamination results from heavy metals, presence of sulphate and iron, dissolved solids, mercury and other toxins contained in coal ash, sludge, and coal waste. These wastes sometimes find their way to sources of urban water supply and contaminate them. A major problem encountered in the supply of potable water to Enugu municipality is the contamination of Ajali River, the source of water supply to Enugu municipal by coal waste. Hydro geochemical analysis of Ajali water samples indicate high sulphate and iron content, high total dissolved solids(TDS), low pH (acidity values) and significant hardness in addition to presence of heavy metals, mercury, and other toxins. This is indicative of the following remedial measures: I. Proper disposal of mine wastes at designated disposal sites that are suitably prepared. II. Proper water treatment and III. Reduction of coal related contaminants taking advantage of clean coal technology.Keywords: effects, coal, utilization, water quality, sources, waste, contamination, treatment
Procedia PDF Downloads 424225 Hydrological Insights: Rock Cover Performance in Wanagon Overburden
Authors: Rasa Sundana, Rusmawan Suwarman
Abstract:
Following the cessation of mining activities at the Grasberg open-pit mine in Papua, Indonesia, in January 2020, PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI) has shifted its focus to mine closure operations, including the stabilization of overburden, infrastructure dismantling, and reclamation efforts. The Wanagon overburden stabilization project aims to enhance slope stability and mitigate erosion by re-grading the land to a 2:1 slope and reinforcing it with an Engineered Rock Cover (ERC). This study assesses the effectiveness of the ERC under simulated rainfall conditions. Two test plots, each measuring 75 m by 30 m with a 2H:1V slope, were established near the Lower Wanagon Overburden System. Test Plot #1 utilized Run-of-Mine material, while Test Plot #2 featured a two-meter-thick ERC. Both plots were equipped with collection ditches leading to a Parshall flume for runoff measurement. Rainfall simulations were conducted using seven sprinkler lines and rain gauges placed at the top and bottom of each plot, replicating 100-year return period storm events lasting 15 and 60 minutes. Results from six tests revealed that Test Plot #1 (without ERC) experienced higher peak runoff compared to Test Plot #2 (with ERC). Additionally, Test Plot #2 demonstrated a longer hydrograph recession limb, indicative of greater water retention. Further tests focusing on rainfall application to the upper or lower halves of Test Plot #2 indicated that the majority of runoff originated from the lower half.Keywords: engineered rock cover, simulated rainfall events, surface runoff, Wanagon overburden stabilization
Procedia PDF Downloads 6224 Comparative Study Using WEKA for Red Blood Cells Classification
Authors: Jameela Ali, Hamid A. Jalab, Loay E. George, Abdul Rahim Ahmad, Azizah Suliman, Karim Al-Jashamy
Abstract:
Red blood cells (RBC) are the most common types of blood cells and are the most intensively studied in cell biology. The lack of RBCs is a condition in which the amount of hemoglobin level is lower than normal and is referred to as “anemia”. Abnormalities in RBCs will affect the exchange of oxygen. This paper presents a comparative study for various techniques for classifying the RBCs as normal, or abnormal (anemic) using WEKA. WEKA is an open source consists of different machine learning algorithms for data mining applications. The algorithm tested are Radial Basis Function neural network, Support vector machine, and K-Nearest Neighbors algorithm. Two sets of combined features were utilized for classification of blood cells images. The first set, exclusively consist of geometrical features, was used to identify whether the tested blood cell has a spherical shape or non-spherical cells. While the second set, consist mainly of textural features was used to recognize the types of the spherical cells. We have provided an evaluation based on applying these classification methods to our RBCs image dataset which were obtained from Serdang Hospital-alaysia, and measuring the accuracy of test results. The best achieved classification rates are 97%, 98%, and 79% for Support vector machines, Radial Basis Function neural network, and K-Nearest Neighbors algorithm respectively.Keywords: K-nearest neighbors algorithm, radial basis function neural network, red blood cells, support vector machine
Procedia PDF Downloads 411