Search results for: students with learning disabilities
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 10448

Search results for: students with learning disabilities

728 Women in Higher Education in Nigeria: A Panacea for Developmental Growth

Authors: Lucy Adesomon Okukpon, Margaret Omolara Akerele

Abstract:

Higher Education in Nigeria is sought after by women, they believe that the economic power and growth lies in the attainment and pursuit of higher Education. No nation in the world can boast of developmental growth when the women are not fully empowered educationally. The attainment of higher education spurs women to contribute meaningfully towards the growth and development of the Nigerian workforce. Recent innovations and trends reveal that over fifty per cent of Nigerian women have attained higher education within and outside the country. Women in Nigeria have expressed their growing concern of what becomes of the remaining 50 per cent who are unable to attain basic education. This concern has brought about the issue of funding which is a practical challenge towards the attainment of education for these vulnerable women. Another challenging factor is that most women often seek the permission of their husbands, brothers, fathers and uncles to enable them attain educational pursuit, especially when the institution is miles away from their place of abode. The solution to this problems from research findings reveal that the umbrella body which co-ordinates education for women in Nigeria (The National Council of Women Societies, NCWS) have taken it upon itself to provide educational learning centres in all the states of the Federation including Abuja the Nations capital city. This is to stem the ugly trend and enable women gain access to educational facilities provided for their growth and development. This positive stride has brought succour to women who hitherto have no hope of attaining any form of education. Moreover, awareness creation concerning higher education is translated into different Nigerian languages so that the women at the grassroots can benefit immensely and contribute towards the growth and development of the Nation. Their educational progress attest to the fact that Nigerian Women are happy for the educational opportunities provided and have vowed to attain greater heights particularly where higher education is concerned.

Keywords: developmental growth, educational attainment, higher education, women in higher education, Nigeria

Procedia PDF Downloads 486
727 The University-Industry Relationships in Sweden and Iran: A Critical Comparative Study

Authors: Sepideh Nikounejad, Mostafa Ghaderi, Nematollah Azizi, Per-Olof Thang, Mohamad Reza Neyestani

Abstract:

From an educational perspective, an effective and efficient relationship between university and industry can be considered as an important means by which not only both sides are improved but also it brings many advantages and benefits for both parties. It means more specifically, mutual collaboration between universities and industry can not only reduce youth unemployment, but it can improve the quality of teaching and learning in higher education settings while providing more qualified people to industrial enterprises. Indeed the lack of effective interaction between Iranian universities and industry has confronted the country and created many challenges include in increasing number of unskillful and unemployed graduates. However, in order to suggest appropriate practical strategies, it is very important to see how this issue has been tackled by Swedish universities, which have had a good background in this collaboration and how they are connected to the industry in particular and labour market in general. The research aims to study and compare the mechanisms, processes, and policies of the current model in the relationships between university and industry in Iran and Sweden. As a qualitative study, grounded theory was applied. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews. Participants were selected purposefully and by the snowball sampling method. The findings indicate that despite reported needs from both sides for close collaborations between universities and industries in Iran, current policies and practices, including internship, laboratory, and financial support, need to be revised critically. However, in light of our findings on the Swedish policies and practices for linking universities and industries, some practical strategies will be suggested for the Iranian higher education context. In conclusion, cooperation models between universities and industries in Iran and Sweden will be described.

Keywords: cooperation, higher education, industry, comparative

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726 Digital Twin for Retail Store Security

Authors: Rishi Agarwal

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Digital twins are emerging as a strong technology used to imitate and monitor physical objects digitally in real time across sectors. It is not only dealing with the digital space, but it is also actuating responses in the physical space in response to the digital space processing like storage, modeling, learning, simulation, and prediction. This paper explores the application of digital twins for enhancing physical security in retail stores. The retail sector still relies on outdated physical security practices like manual monitoring and metal detectors, which are insufficient for modern needs. There is a lack of real-time data and system integration, leading to ineffective emergency response and preventative measures. As retail automation increases, new digital frameworks must control safety without human intervention. To address this, the paper proposes implementing an intelligent digital twin framework. This collects diverse data streams from in-store sensors, surveillance, external sources, and customer devices and then Advanced analytics and simulations enable real-time monitoring, incident prediction, automated emergency procedures, and stakeholder coordination. Overall, the digital twin improves physical security through automation, adaptability, and comprehensive data sharing. The paper also analyzes the pros and cons of implementation of this technology through an Emerging Technology Analysis Canvas that analyzes different aspects of this technology through both narrow and wide lenses to help decision makers in their decision of implementing this technology. On a broader scale, this showcases the value of digital twins in transforming legacy systems across sectors and how data sharing can create a safer world for both retail store customers and owners.

Keywords: digital twin, retail store safety, digital twin in retail, digital twin for physical safety

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725 Real-World Vehicle to Grid: Case Study on School Buses in New England

Authors: Aaron Huber, Manoj Karwa

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Floods, heat waves, drought, wildfires, tornadoes and other environmental disasters are a snapshot of looming national problems that can create increasing demands on the national grid. With nearly 500,000 school buses on the road and the environmental protection agency (EPA) providing nearly $1B for electric school buses, there is a solution for this national issue. Bidirectional batteries in electric school buses enable a future proof solution to sustain the power grid during adverse environmental conditions and other periods of high demand. School buses have larger batteries than standard electric vehicles. When they are not transporting students, these buses can spend peak solar hours parked and plugged into bi-directional direct current fast chargers (DCFC). A partnership with Highland Electric, Proterra and Rhombus enabled over 7 MWh of energy servicing Massachusetts and Vermont grids. The buses were part of a vehicle to grid (V2G) program with National Grid and Green Mountain Power that can charge an average American home for one month with a single bus. V2G infrastructure enables school systems to future proof their charging strategies, strengthen their local grids and can create additional revenue streams with their EV fleets. A bidirectional ecosystem with Highland, Proterra and Rhombus can enable grid resiliency or the ability to withstand power outages caused by excessive demands, natural disasters or rogue nation's attacks with no loss of service. A fleet of school buses is a standalone resilient asset that can be accessed across a city to keep its citizens safe without having any toxic fumes. Nearly 95% of all school buses across USA are powered by diesel internal combustion engines. Diesel exhaust has been classified as a human carcinogen, and it can lead to and exacerbate respiratory conditions. Bidirectional school buses and chargers enable energy justice by providing backup power in case of emergencies or high demand for marginalized communities and aim to make energy more accessible, affordable, clean, and democratically managed.

Keywords: V2G, vehicle to grid, electric buses, eBuses, DC fast chargers, DCFC

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724 A Life History of a Female Counselor Participated in Sewol Ferry Disaster Counseling Korea: Based on Qualitative Analysis of Mandelbaum's Life History

Authors: Donghun Lee, Jiyoung Shin, Youjin Kim, Jin Joo Kim

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The sinking of Sewol ferry occurred in Korea on the morning of 16 April 2014 while carrying 476 people. In all, 304 passengers, mostly secondary school students from Danwon High School in Ansan City died in the disaster. The sinking of Sewol ferry has resulted in widespread social and political turmoil within South Korea. Many criticize the actions of the captain and crews of the ferry as well as the ferry operator and the regulators who oversaw its operations. However, huge criticism has been directed at the South Korean government for its national disaster response system. This disaster has made Korean government build up a new disaster management and psychological support system. The purpose of this study was to understand developmental and change process of a female counselor in her late fifties participated in Sewol ferry disaster counseling for a year. She has participated in providing as a counselor counseling and psychological support for the victims' families of Sewol ferry disaster, additionally as a director of community youth counseling center operated by local government by establishing governmental psychological supports plan for recovering collective trauma in the community, through which she have gotten self-reflection of whole her life. For in-depth interview data analysis, Mandelbaum’s three conceptual frameworks were employed; dimensions, turnings, and adaptation. The result of the study indicates extracted categories of life dimension, turning point and adaptation. The details of these categories are ‘having a self-image in youth’, ‘marriage in fairy-tale’, ‘unexpected death of husband’, ‘taking a step forward from darkness’, the way of counselor’, nice grown child’, ‘Sewol ferry disaster’ in life dimension, ‘death in front of life’, ‘milestone in life, counseling’ in turning points, ‘before Sewol ferry disaster’, ‘after Sewol ferry disaster’ in adaptation. Life history methods revealed the counselor’s internal developmental process by analyzing what Sewol ferry disaster influenced on an individual life, especially a counselor's one, what changes she went through, and how she adapted herself to that. Based on the results, discussions and suggestions are provided.

Keywords: development and change, disaster counseling, identity of female counselor, Mandelbaum’s life history, Sewol ferry

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723 Child Abuse: Emotional, Physical, Neglect, Sexual and the Psychological Effects: A Case Scenario in Lagos State

Authors: Aminu Ololade Matilda

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Child abuse is a significant issue worldwide, affecting the socio-development and mental and physical health of young individuals. It is the maltreatment of a child by an adult or a child. This paper focuses on child abuse in Communities in Lagos State. The aim of this study is to investigate the extent of child abuse and its impact on the mood, social activities, self-worth, concentration, and academic performance of children in Communities in Lagos State. The primary research instrument used in this study was the interview (Forensic), which consisted of two sections. The first section gathered data on the details of the child and the forms and impacts of abuse experienced, while the second section focused on parental style. The study found that children who experienced various forms of abuse, such as emotional, neglect, physical, or sexual abuse, were hesitant to report it out of fear of threats or even death from the abuser. These abused children displayed withdrawn behaviour, depression, and low self-worth and underperformed academically compared to their peers who did not experience abuse. The findings align with socio-learning and intergenerational transmission of violence theories, which suggest that parents and caregivers who engage in child abuse often do so because they themselves experienced or witnessed abuse as children, thereby normalizing violence. The study highlights the prevalent issue of child abuse in Lagos State and emphasizes the need for advocacy programs and capacity building to raise awareness about child abuse and prevention. The distribution of the Child’s Rights Act in various sectors is also recommended to underscore the importance of protecting the rights of children. Additionally, the inclusion of courses on child abuse in the school curriculum is proposed to ensure children are educated on recognizing and reporting abuse.

Keywords: abuse, child, awareness, effects, emotional, neglect, physical, psychological, sexual, recognize, reporting, right

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722 Development of a Regression Based Model to Predict Subjective Perception of Squeak and Rattle Noise

Authors: Ramkumar R., Gaurav Shinde, Pratik Shroff, Sachin Kumar Jain, Nagesh Walke

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Advancements in electric vehicles have significantly reduced the powertrain noise and moving components of vehicles. As a result, in-cab noises have become more noticeable to passengers inside the car. To ensure a comfortable ride for drivers and other passengers, it has become crucial to eliminate undesirable component noises during the development phase. Standard practices are followed to identify the severity of noises based on subjective ratings, but it can be a tedious process to identify the severity of each development sample and make changes to reduce it. Additionally, the severity rating can vary from jury to jury, making it challenging to arrive at a definitive conclusion. To address this, an automotive component was identified to evaluate squeak and rattle noise issue. Physical tests were carried out for random and sine excitation profiles. Aim was to subjectively assess the noise using jury rating method and objectively evaluate the same by measuring the noise. Suitable jury evaluation method was selected for the said activity, and recorded sounds were replayed for jury rating. Objective data sound quality metrics viz., loudness, sharpness, roughness, fluctuation strength and overall Sound Pressure Level (SPL) were measured. Based on this, correlation co-efficients was established to identify the most relevant sound quality metrics that are contributing to particular identified noise issue. Regression analysis was then performed to establish the correlation between subjective and objective data. Mathematical model was prepared using artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithm. The developed model was able to predict the subjective rating with good accuracy.

Keywords: BSR, noise, correlation, regression

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721 Magnitude and Determinants of Overweight and Obesity among High School Adolescents in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Authors: Mulugeta Shegaze, Mekitie Wondafrash, Alemayehu A. Alemayehu, Shikur Mohammed, Zewdu Shewangezaw, Mukerem Abdo, Gebresilasea Gendisha

Abstract:

Background: The 2004 World Health Assembly called for specific actions to halt the overweight and obesity epidemic that is currently penetrating urban populations in the developing world. Adolescents require particular attention due to their vulnerability to develop obesity and the fact that adolescent weight tracks strongly into adulthood. However, there is scarcity of information on the modifiable risk factors to be targeted for primary intervention among urban adolescents in Ethiopia. This study was aimed at determining the magnitude and risk factors of overweight and obesity among high school adolescents in Addis Ababa. Methods: An institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted in February and March 2014 on 456 randomly selected adolescents from 20 high schools in Addis Ababa city.  Demographic data and other risk factors of overweight and obesity were collected using self-administered structured questionnaire, whereas anthropometric measurements of weight and height were taken using calibrated equipment and standardized techniques. The WHO STEPS instrument for chronic disease risk was applied to assess dietary habit and physical activity. Overweight and obesity status was determined based on BMI-for-age percentiles of WHO 2007 reference population. Results: The prevalence rates of overweight, obesity, and overall overweight/ obesity among high school adolescents in Addis Ababa were 9.7% (95%CI = 6.9-12.4%), 4.2% (95%CI = 2.3-6.0%), and 13.9% (95%CI = 10.6-17.1%), respectively. Overweight/obesity prevalence was highest among female adolescents, in private schools, and in the higher wealth category. In multivariable regression model, being female [AOR(95%CI) = 5.4(2.5,12.1)], being from private school [AOR(95%CI) = 3.0(1.4,6.2)], having >3 regular meals [AOR(95%CI) = 4.0(1.3,13.0)], consumption of sweet foods [AOR(95%CI) = 5.0(2.4,10.3)] and spending >3 hours/day sitting [AOR(95%CI) = 3.5(1.7,7.2)] were found to increase overweight/ obesity risk, whereas high Total Physical Activity level [AOR(95%CI) = 0.21(0.08,0.57)] and better nutrition knowledge [AOR(95%CI) = 0.160.07,0.37)] were found protective. Conclusions: More than one in ten of the high school adolescents were affected by overweight/obesity with dietary habit and physical activity are important modifiable risk factors. Well-tailored nutrition education program targeting lifestyle change should be initiated with more emphasis to female adolescents and students in private schools.

Keywords: adolescents, NCDs, overweight, obesity

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720 Impulsivity Leads to Compromise Effect

Authors: Sana Maidullah, Ankita Sharma

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The present study takes naturalistic decision-making approach to examine the role of personality in information processing in consumer decision making. In the technological era, most of the information comes in form of HTML or similar language via the internet; processing of this situation could be ambiguous, laborious and painful. The present study explores the role of impulsivity in creating an extreme effect on consumer decision making. Specifically, the study explores the role of impulsivity in extreme effect, i.e., extremeness avoidance (compromise effect) and extremeness seeking; the role of demographic variables, i.e. age and gender, in the relation between impulsivity and extreme effect. The study was conducted with the help of a questionnaire and two experiments. The experiment was designed in the form of two shopping websites with two product types: Hotel choice and Mobile choice. Both experimental interfaces were created with the Xampp software, the frontend of interfaces was HTML CSS JAVASCRIPT and backend was PHP MySQL. The mobile experiment was designed to measure the extreme effect and hotel experiment was designed to measure extreme effect with alignability of attributes. To observe the possibilities of the combined effect of individual difference and context effects, the manipulation of price, a number of alignable attributes and number of the non-alignable attributes is done. The study was conducted on 100 undergraduate and post-graduate engineering students within the age range of 18-35. The familiarity and level of use of internet and shopping website were assessed and controlled in the analysis. The analysis was done by using a t-test, ANOVA and regression analysis. The results indicated that the impulsivity leads to compromise effect and at the same time it also increases the relationship between alignability of attribute among choices and the compromise effect. The demographic variables were found to play a significant role in the relationship. The subcomponents of impulsivity were significantly influencing compromise effect, but the cognitive impulsivity was significant for women, and motor impulsivity was significant for males only. The impulsivity was significantly positively predicted by age, though there were no significant gender differences in impulsivity. The results clearly indicate the importance of individual factors in decision making. The present study, with precise and direct results, provides a significant suggestion for market analyst and business providers.

Keywords: impulsivity, extreme effect, personality, alignability, consumer decision making

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719 Applying Resilience Engineering to improve Safety Management in a Construction Site: Design and Validation of a Questionnaire

Authors: M. C. Pardo-Ferreira, J. C. Rubio-Romero, M. Martínez-Rojas

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Resilience Engineering is a new paradigm of safety management that proposes to change the way of managing the safety to focus on the things that go well instead of the things that go wrong. Many complex and high-risk sectors such as air traffic control, health care, nuclear power plants, railways or emergencies, have applied this new vision of safety and have obtained very positive results. In the construction sector, safety management continues to be a problem as indicated by the statistics of occupational injuries worldwide. Therefore, it is important to improve safety management in this sector. For this reason, it is proposed to apply Resilience Engineering to the construction sector. The Construction Phase Health and Safety Plan emerges as a key element for the planning of safety management. One of the key tools of Resilience Engineering is the Resilience Assessment Grid that allows measuring the four essential abilities (respond, monitor, learn and anticipate) for resilient performance. The purpose of this paper is to develop a questionnaire based on the Resilience Assessment Grid, specifically on the ability to learn, to assess whether a Construction Phase Health and Safety Plans helps companies in a construction site to implement this ability. The research process was divided into four stages: (i) initial design of a questionnaire, (ii) validation of the content of the questionnaire, (iii) redesign of the questionnaire and (iii) application of the Delphi method. The questionnaire obtained could be used as a tool to help construction companies to evolve from Safety-I to Safety-II. In this way, companies could begin to develop the ability to learn, which will serve as a basis for the development of the other abilities necessary for resilient performance. The following steps in this research are intended to develop other questions that allow evaluating the rest of abilities for resilient performance such as monitoring, learning and anticipating.

Keywords: resilience engineering, construction sector, resilience assessment grid, construction phase health and safety plan

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718 Improving Fake News Detection Using K-means and Support Vector Machine Approaches

Authors: Kasra Majbouri Yazdi, Adel Majbouri Yazdi, Saeid Khodayi, Jingyu Hou, Wanlei Zhou, Saeed Saedy

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Fake news and false information are big challenges of all types of media, especially social media. There is a lot of false information, fake likes, views and duplicated accounts as big social networks such as Facebook and Twitter admitted. Most information appearing on social media is doubtful and in some cases misleading. They need to be detected as soon as possible to avoid a negative impact on society. The dimensions of the fake news datasets are growing rapidly, so to obtain a better result of detecting false information with less computation time and complexity, the dimensions need to be reduced. One of the best techniques of reducing data size is using feature selection method. The aim of this technique is to choose a feature subset from the original set to improve the classification performance. In this paper, a feature selection method is proposed with the integration of K-means clustering and Support Vector Machine (SVM) approaches which work in four steps. First, the similarities between all features are calculated. Then, features are divided into several clusters. Next, the final feature set is selected from all clusters, and finally, fake news is classified based on the final feature subset using the SVM method. The proposed method was evaluated by comparing its performance with other state-of-the-art methods on several specific benchmark datasets and the outcome showed a better classification of false information for our work. The detection performance was improved in two aspects. On the one hand, the detection runtime process decreased, and on the other hand, the classification accuracy increased because of the elimination of redundant features and the reduction of datasets dimensions.

Keywords: clustering, fake news detection, feature selection, machine learning, social media, support vector machine

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717 Story of Sexual Violence: Curriculum as Intervention

Authors: Karen V. Lee

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The background and significance of this study involves autoethnographic research about a music teacher learning how education and curriculum planning can help her overcome harmful and lasting career consequences from sexual violence. Curriculum surrounding intervention resources from education helps her cope with consequences influencing her career as music teacher. Basic methodology involves the qualitative method of research as theoretical framework where the author is drawn into a deep storied reflection about political issues surrounding teachers who need to overcome social, psychological, and health risk behaviors from violence. Sub-themes involve counseling, curriculum, adult education to ensure teachers receive social, emotional, physical, spiritual, and intervention resources that evoke visceral, emotional responses from the audience. Major findings share how stories provide helpful resources to teachers who have been victims of violence. It is hoped the research dramatizes an episodic yet incomplete story that highlights the circumstances surrounding the protagonist’s life as teacher with previous sexual violence. In conclusion, the research has a reflexive storied framework with video and music from curriculum planning that embraces harmful and lasting consequences from sexual violence. The reflexive story of the sensory experience critically seeks verisimilitude by evoking lifelike and believable feelings from others. Thus, the scholarly importance of using education and curriculum as intervention resources to accompany storied research can provide transformative aspects that can contribute to social change. Overall, the circumstance surrounding the story about sexual violence is not uncommon in society. Thus, continued education and curriculum that supports the moral mission to help teachers overcome sexual violence that socially impacts their professional lives as victims.

Keywords: education, curriculum, sexual violence, storied autoethnography

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716 Knowledge Management Strategies within a Corporate Environment of Papers

Authors: Daniel J. Glauber

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Knowledge transfer between personnel could benefit an organization’s improved competitive advantage in the marketplace from a strategic approach to knowledge management. The lack of information sharing between personnel could create knowledge transfer gaps while restricting the decision-making processes. Knowledge transfer between personnel can potentially improve information sharing based on an implemented knowledge management strategy. An organization’s capacity to gain more knowledge is aligned with the organization’s prior or existing captured knowledge. This case study attempted to understand the overall influence of a KMS within the corporate environment and knowledge exchange between personnel. The significance of this study was to help understand how organizations can improve the Return on Investment (ROI) of a knowledge management strategy within a knowledge-centric organization. A qualitative descriptive case study was the research design selected for this study. The lack of information sharing between personnel may create knowledge transfer gaps while restricting the decision-making processes. Developing a knowledge management strategy acceptable at all levels of the organization requires cooperation in support of a common organizational goal. Working with management and executive members to develop a protocol where knowledge transfer becomes a standard practice in multiple tiers of the organization. The knowledge transfer process could be measurable when focusing on specific elements of the organizational process, including personnel transition to help reduce time required understanding the job. The organization studied in this research acknowledged the need for improved knowledge management activities within the organization to help organize, retain, and distribute information throughout the workforce. Data produced from the study indicate three main themes including information management, organizational culture, and knowledge sharing within the workforce by the participants. These themes indicate a possible connection between an organizations KMS, the organizations culture, knowledge sharing, and knowledge transfer.

Keywords: knowledge transfer, management, knowledge management strategies, organizational learning, codification

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715 A Novel Method for Face Detection

Authors: H. Abas Nejad, A. R. Teymoori

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Facial expression recognition is one of the open problems in computer vision. Robust neutral face recognition in real time is a major challenge for various supervised learning based facial expression recognition methods. This is due to the fact that supervised methods cannot accommodate all appearance variability across the faces with respect to race, pose, lighting, facial biases, etc. in the limited amount of training data. Moreover, processing each and every frame to classify emotions is not required, as the user stays neutral for the majority of the time in usual applications like video chat or photo album/web browsing. Detecting neutral state at an early stage, thereby bypassing those frames from emotion classification would save the computational power. In this work, we propose a light-weight neutral vs. emotion classification engine, which acts as a preprocessor to the traditional supervised emotion classification approaches. It dynamically learns neutral appearance at Key Emotion (KE) points using a textural statistical model, constructed by a set of reference neutral frames for each user. The proposed method is made robust to various types of user head motions by accounting for affine distortions based on a textural statistical model. Robustness to dynamic shift of KE points is achieved by evaluating the similarities on a subset of neighborhood patches around each KE point using the prior information regarding the directionality of specific facial action units acting on the respective KE point. The proposed method, as a result, improves ER accuracy and simultaneously reduces the computational complexity of ER system, as validated on multiple databases.

Keywords: neutral vs. emotion classification, Constrained Local Model, procrustes analysis, Local Binary Pattern Histogram, statistical model

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714 Implementing Effective Mathematical-Discussion Programme for Mathematical Competences in Primary School Classroom in South Korea

Authors: Saeyoung Lee

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As the enthusiasm for education in Korea is too much high, it is well known by others that children in Korea get good scores in Mathematics. However, behind of this good reputation, children in Korea are easy to get lose self-confidence, tend to complaint and rarely participate in the class because of too much competition which leads to lack of competences. In this regard, the main goals of this paper are, by applying the programme based on peer-communication on Mathematics education field, it would like to improve self-managemental competence to make children gain self-confidence, communicative competence to make them deal with complaint and communitive competence to make them participated in the class for the age of 10 children to solve this problem. 14 children the age of 10 in one primary school in Gangnam, Seoul, Korea had participated in the research from March 2018 to October 2018. They were under the programme based on peer-communication during the period. Every Mathematics class maintained the same way. Firstly a problem was given to children. Secondly, children were asked to find many ways to solve the problem as much as they could by themselves. Thirdly all ways to solve the problem by children were posted on the board and three of the children made a group to distinguish the ways from valid to invalid. Lastly, all children made a discuss to find one way which is the most efficient among valid ways. Pre-test was carried out by the questionnaire based on Likert scale before applying the programme. The result of the pre-test was 3.89 for self-managemental competence, 3.91 for communicative competence and 4.19 for communitive competence. Post-test was carried out by the same questionnaire after applying the programme. The result of the post-test was 3.93 for self-managemental competence, 4.23 for communicative competence and 4.20 for communitive competence. That means by applying the programme based on peer-communication on Mathematics education field, the age of 10 children in Korea could improve self-managemental, communicative and communitive competence. Especially it works very well on communicative competence by increasing 0.32 points as it marked. Considering this research, Korean Mathematics education based on competition which leads to lack of competences should be changed to cooperative structure to make students more competent rather than just getting good scores. In conclusion, innovative teaching methods which are focused on improving competences such as the programme based on peer-communication which was applied in this research are strongly required to be studied and widely used.

Keywords: competences, mathematics education, peer-communication, primary education

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713 Gender Bias in Natural Language Processing: Machines Reflect Misogyny in Society

Authors: Irene Yi

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Machine learning, natural language processing, and neural network models of language are becoming more and more prevalent in the fields of technology and linguistics today. Training data for machines are at best, large corpora of human literature and at worst, a reflection of the ugliness in society. Machines have been trained on millions of human books, only to find that in the course of human history, derogatory and sexist adjectives are used significantly more frequently when describing females in history and literature than when describing males. This is extremely problematic, both as training data, and as the outcome of natural language processing. As machines start to handle more responsibilities, it is crucial to ensure that they do not take with them historical sexist and misogynistic notions. This paper gathers data and algorithms from neural network models of language having to deal with syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, and text classification. Results are significant in showing the existing intentional and unintentional misogynistic notions used to train machines, as well as in developing better technologies that take into account the semantics and syntax of text to be more mindful and reflect gender equality. Further, this paper deals with the idea of non-binary gender pronouns and how machines can process these pronouns correctly, given its semantic and syntactic context. This paper also delves into the implications of gendered grammar and its effect, cross-linguistically, on natural language processing. Languages such as French or Spanish not only have rigid gendered grammar rules, but also historically patriarchal societies. The progression of society comes hand in hand with not only its language, but how machines process those natural languages. These ideas are all extremely vital to the development of natural language models in technology, and they must be taken into account immediately.

Keywords: gendered grammar, misogynistic language, natural language processing, neural networks

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712 Redefining "Dedhee" in Terms of Knowledge Gathering and Conserving Hazara Literature

Authors: Urooj Shafique, Salman Jamil

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In the context of an urban human life, city requires to meeting some standards which, at a glance are called the standards of a quality life. Measuring the quality of life according to particular social, economic and cultural conditions of a country and also the emphasis of a country twenty years visions on this issue has special importance. Cultural gathering spaces improve social and economic vitality on one side and on the other side provide favorable conditions for citizen leisure. But unfortunately these cultural gathering spaces in our society are losing their meaning and importance with time. Like coffee houses and libraries. Dedhee was the most prominent place among the cultural gathering spaces in Hazara division. People used to visit them in order to get something out of these spaces. At present they lie in our cities as places of no interest. Libraries are converted into storage houses where books lie untouched for years and years. The aim of my project is to create unique space that engage community members in the learning and creation process, where people can share their knowledge with others as well as enjoy their personal space. The spaces are flexible enough to accommodate people of different moods and interests, with the purpose of helping communities to become aware of their own cultures and to be socially engaged. The site for this specific project has been selected near Cantonment Park Abbottabad, Pakistan. The city of Abbottabad is famous for its writers, poets and storytellers. The site is selected next to the Cantonment Park, at a central location in the whole city so that it can attract users from almost every point of the city. The project provides a cultural gathering space for the people of the city where they can sit and discuss their ideas within a creative and expressive environment, which can represent the cultures of a community.

Keywords: cultural gathering space, Dedhee, Hazara literature, intellectuals’ hub

Procedia PDF Downloads 382
711 Manodharmam: A Scientific Methodology for Improvisation and Cognition in Carnatic Music

Authors: Raghavi Janaswamy, Saraswathi K. Vasudev

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Music is ubiquitous in human lives. Ever since the fetus hears the sound inside the mother’s womb and later upon birth, the baby experiences alluring sounds, the curiosity of learning emanates and evokes exploration. Music is an education than mere entertainment. The intricate balance between music, education, and entertainment has well been recognized by the scientific community and is being explored as a viable tool to understand and improve human cognition. There are seven basic swaras (notes) Sa, Ri, Ga, Ma, Pa, Da, and Ni in the Carnatic music system that are analogous to C, D, E, F, G, A, and B of the western system. The Carnatic music builds on the conscious use of microtones, gamakams (oscillation), and rendering styles that evolved over centuries and established its stance. The complex but erudite raga system has been designed with elaborate experiments on srutis (musical sounds) and human perception abilities. In parallel, ‘rasa’- the emotions evoked by certain srutis and hence the ragas been solidified along with the power of language in combination with the musical sounds. The Carnatic music branches out as Kalpita sangeetam (pre-composed music) and Manodharma sangeetam (improvised music). This article explores the Manodharma sangeetam and its subdivisions such as raga alapana, swara kalpana, neraval, and ragam-tanam-pallavi (RTP). The intrinsic mathematical strategies in it’s practice methods toward improvising the music have been explored in detail with concert examples. The techniques on swara weaving for swara kalpana rendering and methods on the alapana development are also discussed at length with an emphasis on the impact on the human cognitive abilities. The articulation of the outlined conscious practice methods not only helps to leave a long-lasting melodic impression on the listeners but also onsets cognitive developments.

Keywords: Carnatic, Manodharmam, music cognition, Alapana

Procedia PDF Downloads 192
710 Evaluation of Cultural Landscape Perception in Waterfront Historic Districts Based on Multi-source Data - Taking Venice and Suzhou as Examples

Authors: Shuyu Zhang

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The waterfront historical district, as a type of historical districts on the verge of waters such as the sea, lake, and river, have a relatively special urban form. In the past preservation and renewal of traditional historic districts, there have been many discussions on the land range, and the waterfront and marginal spaces are easily overlooked. However, the waterfront space of the historic districts, as a cultural landscape heritage combining historical buildings and landscape elements, has strong ecological and sustainable values. At the same time, Suzhou and Venice, as sister water cities in history, have more waterfront spaces that can be compared in urban form and other levels. Therefore, this paper focuses on the waterfront historic districts in Venice and Suzhou, establishes quantitative evaluation indicators for environmental perception, makes analogies, and promotes the renewal and activation of the entire historical district by improving the spatial quality and vitality of the waterfront area. First, this paper uses multi-source data for analysis, such as Baidu Maps and Google Maps API to crawl the street view of the waterfront historic districts, uses machine learning algorithms to analyze the proportion of cultural landscape elements such as green viewing rate in the street view pictures, and uses space syntax software to make quantitative selectivity analysis, so as to establish environmental perception evaluation indicators for the waterfront historic districts. Finally, by comparing and summarizing the waterfront historic districts in Venice and Suzhou, it reveals their similarities and differences, characteristics and conclusions, and hopes to provide a reference for the heritage preservation and renewal of other waterfront historic districts.

Keywords: waterfront historical district, cultural landscape, perception, multi-source Data

Procedia PDF Downloads 182
709 European Prosecutor's Office: Chances and Threats; Brief to Polish Perspective

Authors: Katarzyna Stoklosa

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Introduction: European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) is an independent office in European Union which was established under the article 86 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union by the Treaty of Lisbon following the method of enhanced cooperation. EPPO is aimed at combating crimes against the EU’s financial interest et fraud against the EU budgets on the one hand, EPPO will give a chance to effective fight with organized criminality, on the other it seems to be a threat for member-states which bound with justice the problem of sovereignty. It is a new institution that will become effective from 2020, which is why it requires prior analysis. Methodology: The author uses statistical and comparative methods by collecting and analyzing the work of current institutions such as Europol, Eurojust, as well as the future impact of EPPO on detection and prosecution of crimes. The author will also conduct questionnaire among students and academic staff involved in the perception of EU institutions and the need to create new entities dealing with inter-agency cooperation in criminal matters. Thanks to these research the author will draw up present ways of cooperation between member-states and changes in fighting with financial crimes which will grow up under new regulation. Major Finding of the Study: Analysis and research show that EPPO is an institution based on the principle of mutual recognition, which often does not work in cooperation between Member States. Distrust and problems with the recognition of judgments of other EU Member States may significantly affect the functioning of EPPO. Poland is not part of the EPPO, because arguments have been raised that the European Public Prosecutor's Office interferes too much with the Member States’ pro-active sovereignty and duplicates competences. The research and analyzes carried out by the author show that EPPO has completely new competences, for example, it may file indictments against perpetrators of financial crimes. However, according to the research carried out by the author, such competences may undermine the sovereignty and the principle of protecting the public order of the EU. Conclusion: After the analysis, it will be possible to set following thesis: EPPO is only possible way to effective fight with organized financial criminality. However in conclusion Polish doubts should not be criticized at all. Institutions as EPPO must properly respect sovereignty of member-states. Even instruments like that cannot provoke political contraventions, because there are no other ways to effective resolving of international criminality problem.

Keywords: criminal trial, economic crimes, European Public Prosecutor's Office, European Union

Procedia PDF Downloads 155
708 A Statistical Approach to Predict and Classify the Commercial Hatchability of Chickens Using Extrinsic Parameters of Breeders and Eggs

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

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

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

Procedia PDF Downloads 79
707 Level of Understanding of the Catholic Doctrines in Relation to the Way of Life of Ignatian Graduates

Authors: Maria Wendy Mendoza-Solomo

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The study assessed the level of understanding of catholic doctrines in relation to the way of life of Ignatian graduates of Ateneo de Naga University (ADNU). It was conducted to find out if ADNU is successful in leading their students to a deeper moral understanding of the world centered on Jesus Christ through their curriculum, academic programs, activities and practices. This study further evaluated if their graduates live out their Catholic commitment to Christ in their current way of life. It also determined the factors that affected their level of understanding of Catholic doctrines and their current way of life. The descriptive, qualitative, evaluative and correlational analyses determined the level of understanding of the Catholic doctrines and the current way of life of 390 graduates. It also correlated the level of understanding to moral life and worship. The factors that affected the graduates’ level of understanding and their current way of life were measured. A researcher-made instrument was distributed to the respondents either using the traditional way or the online survey to reach out graduates across the globe. Major findings were (1) The weighted mean of graduates’ level of understanding of Catholic doctrines was 4.63. (2) Along moral life, 4.07 while along worship, 3.83. (3) The Catholic doctrines and moral life had Pearson r value of 0.79. The doctrines and worship, 0.87; and worship and moral life, 0.89. (4) The understanding of the doctrines was affected highly by the teacher factor with 4.09 mean. The moral life and worship were affected highly by the teacher and technological factors both ranked 1.5 (4.04). (5) Along Catholic doctrines, the teacher factor had 0.90 r value; and environmental, -0.40. Along moral life, teacher had r value of -0.30; technological (-0.92), socio-economic (-0.93), political (-0.83), and environmental (-0.90). Along worship, the teacher had 0.36 Pearson r value, technological and socio-economic (-0.78), political (-0.73) and environmental (-0.72). Major conclusions were: (1) Graduates had very high level of understanding of the Catholic doctrines as summarized in the Creed which is grounded in the Sacred Scriptures. (2) They live out this Catholic commitment to Christ by obeying the Commandments very extensively but needed more participation in religious and parish activities. They have overwhelming spirituality and religiosity in terms of receiving of sacraments and sacramental practices except reading the Bible and reflecting on its passages. (3) The graduates’ level of understanding of the Catholic doctrines had very strong correlation with their current way of life. (4) Teacher, socio-economic, technological, environmental, and political factors significantly affected their understanding of the Catholic doctrines and their current way of life. (5) The teacher factor had very strong relationship with the doctrines; technological and political, weak; environmental, moderate; and socio-economic, very weak relationship. The teacher factor had weak relationship but the other factors had very strong relationship with moral life and strong relationship with worship.

Keywords: Catholic doctrines, Ignatian graduates, relationship, way of life

Procedia PDF Downloads 338
706 Local Directional Encoded Derivative Binary Pattern Based Coral Image Classification Using Weighted Distance Gray Wolf Optimization Algorithm

Authors: Annalakshmi G., Sakthivel Murugan S.

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This paper presents a local directional encoded derivative binary pattern (LDEDBP) feature extraction method that can be applied for the classification of submarine coral reef images. The classification of coral reef images using texture features is difficult due to the dissimilarities in class samples. In coral reef image classification, texture features are extracted using the proposed method called local directional encoded derivative binary pattern (LDEDBP). The proposed approach extracts the complete structural arrangement of the local region using local binary batten (LBP) and also extracts the edge information using local directional pattern (LDP) from the edge response available in a particular region, thereby achieving extra discriminative feature value. Typically the LDP extracts the edge details in all eight directions. The process of integrating edge responses along with the local binary pattern achieves a more robust texture descriptor than the other descriptors used in texture feature extraction methods. Finally, the proposed technique is applied to an extreme learning machine (ELM) method with a meta-heuristic algorithm known as weighted distance grey wolf optimizer (GWO) to optimize the input weight and biases of single-hidden-layer feed-forward neural networks (SLFN). In the empirical results, ELM-WDGWO demonstrated their better performance in terms of accuracy on all coral datasets, namely RSMAS, EILAT, EILAT2, and MLC, compared with other state-of-the-art algorithms. The proposed method achieves the highest overall classification accuracy of 94% compared to the other state of art methods.

Keywords: feature extraction, local directional pattern, ELM classifier, GWO optimization

Procedia PDF Downloads 149
705 Efficacy of the Use of Different Teaching Approaches of Math Teachers

Authors: Nilda San Miguel, Elymar Pascual

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The main focus of this study is exploring the effective approaches in teaching Mathematics that is being applied in public schools, s.y. 2018-2019. This research was written as connected output to the district-wide School Learning Action Cell (DISLAC) on Math teaching approaches which was recently conducted in Victoria, Laguna. Fifty-four math teachers coming from 17 schools in Victoria became the respondents of this study. Qualitative method of doing research was applied. Teachers’ responses to the following concerns were gathered, analyzed and interpreted: (1) evaluation of the recently conducted DISLAC, (2) status of the use of different approaches, (3) perception on the effective use of approaches, (4) preference of approach to explore in classroom sessions, (5) factors affecting the choice of approach, (6) difficulties encountered, (7) and perceived benefit to learners. Results showed that the conduct of DISLAC was very highly satisfactory (mean 4.41). Teachers looked at collaborative approach as very highly effective (mean 4.74). Fifty-two percent of the teachers is using collaborative approach, 17% constructivist, 11% integrative, 11% inquiry-based, and 9% reflective. Reflective approach was chosen to be explored by most of the respondents (29%) in future sessions. The difficulties encountered by teachers in using the different approaches are: (1) learners’ difficulty in following instructions, (2) lack of focus, (3) lack of willingness and cooperation, (4) teachers’ lack of mastery in using different approaches, and (5) lack of time of doing visual aids because of time mismanagement. Teachers deemed the use of various teaching approaches can help the learners to have (1) mastery of competency, (2) increased communication, (3) improved confidence, (4) facility in comprehension, and (5) better academic output. The result obtained from this study can be used as an input for SLACs. Recommendations at the end of the study were given to school/district heads and future researchers.

Keywords: approaches, collaborative, constructivism, inquiry-based, integrative, reflective

Procedia PDF Downloads 266
704 Controlling Drone Flight Missions through Natural Language Processors Using Artificial Intelligence

Authors: Sylvester Akpah, Selasi Vondee

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Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) as they are also known, drones have attracted increasing attention in recent years due to their ubiquitous nature and boundless applications in the areas of communication, surveying, aerial photography, weather forecasting, medical delivery, surveillance amongst others. Operated remotely in real-time or pre-programmed, drones can fly autonomously or on pre-defined routes. The application of these aerial vehicles has successfully penetrated the world due to technological evolution, thus a lot more businesses are utilizing their capabilities. Unfortunately, while drones are replete with the benefits stated supra, they are riddled with some problems, mainly attributed to the complexities in learning how to master drone flights, collision avoidance and enterprise security. Additional challenges, such as the analysis of flight data recorded by sensors attached to the drone may take time and require expert help to analyse and understand. This paper presents an autonomous drone control system using a chatbot. The system allows for easy control of drones using conversations with the aid of Natural Language Processing, thus to reduce the workload needed to set up, deploy, control, and monitor drone flight missions. The results obtained at the end of the study revealed that the drone connected to the chatbot was able to initiate flight missions with just text and voice commands, enable conversation and give real-time feedback from data and requests made to the chatbot. The results further revealed that the system was able to process natural language and produced human-like conversational abilities using Artificial Intelligence (Natural Language Understanding). It is recommended that radio signal adapters be used instead of wireless connections thus to increase the range of communication with the aerial vehicle.

Keywords: artificial ntelligence, chatbot, natural language processing, unmanned aerial vehicle

Procedia PDF Downloads 131
703 Stature and Gender Estimation Using Foot Measurements in South Indian Population

Authors: Jagadish Rao Padubidri, Mehak Bhandary, Sowmya J. Rao

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Introduction: The significance of the human foot and its measurements in identifying an individual has been proved a lot of times by different studies in different geographical areas and its association to the stature and gender of the individual has been justified by many researches. In our study we have used different foot measurements including the length, width, malleol height and navicular height for establishing its association to stature and gender and to find out its accuracy. The purpose of this study is to show the relation of foot measurements with stature and gender, and to derive Multiple and Logistic regression equations for stature and gender estimation in South Indian population. Materials and Methods: The subjects for this study were 200 South Indian students out of which 100 were females and 100 were males, aged between 18 to 24 years. The data for the present study included the stature, foot length, foot breath, foot malleol height, foot navicular height of both right and left foot. Descriptive statistics, T-test and Pearson correlation coefficients were derived between stature, gender and foot measurements. The stature was estimated from right and left foot measurements for both male and female South Indian population using multiple regression analysis and logistic regression analysis for gender estimation. Results: The means, standard deviation, stature, right and left foot measurements and T-test in male population were higher than in females. LFL (Left foot length) is more than RFL (Right Foot length) in male groups, but in female groups the length of both foot are almost equal [RFL=226.6, LFL=227.1]. There is not much of difference in means of RFW (Right foot width) and LFW (Left foot width) in both the genders. Significant difference were seen in mean values of malleol and navicular height of right and left feet in male gender. No such difference was seen in female subjects. Conclusions: The study has successfully demonstrated the correlation of foot length in stature estimation in all the three study groups in both right and left foot. Next in parameters are Foot width and malleol height in estimating stature among male and female groups. Navicular height of both right and left foot showed poor relationship with stature estimation in both male and female groups. Multiple regression equations for both right and left foot measurements to estimate stature were derived with standard error ranging from 11-12 cm in males and 10-11 cm in females. The SEE was 5.8 when both male and female groups were pooled together. The logistic regression model which was derived to determine gender showed 85% accuracy and 92.5% accuracy using right and left foot measurements respectively. We believe that stature and gender can be estimated with foot measurements in South Indian population.

Keywords: foot length, gender, stature, South Indian

Procedia PDF Downloads 324
702 An Unsupervised Domain-Knowledge Discovery Framework for Fake News Detection

Authors: Yulan Wu

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With the rapid development of social media, the issue of fake news has gained considerable prominence, drawing the attention of both the public and governments. The widespread dissemination of false information poses a tangible threat across multiple domains of society, including politics, economy, and health. However, much research has concentrated on supervised training models within specific domains, their effectiveness diminishes when applied to identify fake news across multiple domains. To solve this problem, some approaches based on domain labels have been proposed. By segmenting news to their specific area in advance, judges in the corresponding field may be more accurate on fake news. However, these approaches disregard the fact that news records can pertain to multiple domains, resulting in a significant loss of valuable information. In addition, the datasets used for training must all be domain-labeled, which creates unnecessary complexity. To solve these problems, an unsupervised domain knowledge discovery framework for fake news detection is proposed. Firstly, to effectively retain the multidomain knowledge of the text, a low-dimensional vector for each news text to capture domain embeddings is generated. Subsequently, a feature extraction module utilizing the unsupervisedly discovered domain embeddings is used to extract the comprehensive features of news. Finally, a classifier is employed to determine the authenticity of the news. To verify the proposed framework, a test is conducted on the existing widely used datasets, and the experimental results demonstrate that this method is able to improve the detection performance for fake news across multiple domains. Moreover, even in datasets that lack domain labels, this method can still effectively transfer domain knowledge, which can educe the time consumed by tagging without sacrificing the detection accuracy.

Keywords: fake news, deep learning, natural language processing, multiple domains

Procedia PDF Downloads 74
701 The Effect of Speech-Shaped Noise and Speaker’s Voice Quality on First-Grade Children’s Speech Perception and Listening Comprehension

Authors: I. Schiller, D. Morsomme, A. Remacle

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Children’s ability to process spoken language develops until the late teenage years. At school, where efficient spoken language processing is key to academic achievement, listening conditions are often unfavorable. High background noise and poor teacher’s voice represent typical sources of interference. It can be assumed that these factors particularly affect primary school children, because their language and literacy skills are still low. While it is generally accepted that background noise and impaired voice impede spoken language processing, there is an increasing need for analyzing impacts within specific linguistic areas. Against this background, the aim of the study was to investigate the effect of speech-shaped noise and imitated dysphonic voice on first-grade primary school children’s speech perception and sentence comprehension. Via headphones, 5 to 6-year-old children, recruited within the French-speaking community of Belgium, listened to and performed a minimal-pair discrimination task and a sentence-picture matching task. Stimuli were randomly presented according to four experimental conditions: (1) normal voice / no noise, (2) normal voice / noise, (3) impaired voice / no noise, and (4) impaired voice / noise. The primary outcome measure was task score. How did performance vary with respect to listening condition? Preliminary results will be presented with respect to speech perception and sentence comprehension and carefully interpreted in the light of past findings. This study helps to support our understanding of children’s language processing skills under adverse conditions. Results shall serve as a starting point for probing new measures to optimize children’s learning environment.

Keywords: impaired voice, sentence comprehension, speech perception, speech-shaped noise, spoken language processing

Procedia PDF Downloads 175
700 Developing a DNN Model for the Production of Biogas From a Hybrid BO-TPE System in an Anaerobic Wastewater Treatment Plant

Authors: Hadjer Sadoune, Liza Lamini, Scherazade Krim, Amel Djouadi, Rachida Rihani

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Deep neural networks are highly regarded for their accuracy in predicting intricate fermentation processes. Their ability to learn from a large amount of datasets through artificial intelligence makes them particularly effective models. The primary obstacle in improving the performance of these models is to carefully choose the suitable hyperparameters, including the neural network architecture (number of hidden layers and hidden units), activation function, optimizer, learning rate, and other relevant factors. This study predicts biogas production from real wastewater treatment plant data using a sophisticated approach: hybrid Bayesian optimization with a tree-structured Parzen estimator (BO-TPE) for an optimised deep neural network (DNN) model. The plant utilizes an Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) digester that treats industrial wastewater from soft drinks and breweries. The digester has a working volume of 1574 m3 and a total volume of 1914 m3. Its internal diameter and height were 19 and 7.14 m, respectively. The data preprocessing was conducted with meticulous attention to preserving data quality while avoiding data reduction. Three normalization techniques were applied to the pre-processed data (MinMaxScaler, RobustScaler and StandardScaler) and compared with the Non-Normalized data. The RobustScaler approach has strong predictive ability for estimating the volume of biogas produced. The highest predicted biogas volume was 2236.105 Nm³/d, with coefficient of determination (R2), mean absolute error (MAE), and root mean square error (RMSE) values of 0.712, 164.610, and 223.429, respectively.

Keywords: anaerobic digestion, biogas production, deep neural network, hybrid bo-tpe, hyperparameters tuning

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699 Effects of Mental Skill Training Programme on Direct Free Kick of Grassroot Footballers in Lagos, Nigeria

Authors: Mayowa Adeyeye, Kehinde Adeyemo

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The direct free kick is considered a great opportunity to score a goal but this is not always the case amidst Nigerian and other elite footballers. This study, therefore, examined the extent to which an 8 weeks mental skill training programme is effective for improving accuracy in direct free kick in football. Sixty (n-60) students of Pepsi Football Academy participated in the study. They were randomly distributed into two groups of positive self-talk group (intervention n-30) and control group (n-30). The instrument used in the collection of data include a standard football goal post while the research materials include a dummy soccer wall, a cord, an improvised vanishing spray, a clipboard, writing materials, a recording sheet, a self-talk log book, six standard 5 football, cones, an audiotape and a compact disc. The Weinberge and Gould (2011) mental skills training manual was used. The reliability coefficient of the apparatus following a pilot study stood at 0.72. Before the commencement of the mental skills training programme, the participants were asked to take six simulated direct free kick. At the end of each physical skills training session after the pre-test, the researcher spent at least 15 minutes with the groups exposing them to the intervention. The mental skills training programme alongside physical skills training took place in two different locations for the different groups under study, these included Agege Stadium Main bowl Football Pitch (Imagery Group), and Ogba Ijaye (Control Group). The mental skills training programme lasted for eight weeks. After the completion of the mental skills training programme, all the participants were asked to take another six simulated direct free kick attempts using the same field used for the pre-test to determine the efficacy of the treatments. The pre-test and post-test data were analysed using inferential statistics of t-test, while the alpha level was set at 0.05. The result revealed significant differences in t-test for positive self-talk and control group. Based on the findings, it is recommended that athletes should be exposed to positive self-talk alongside their normal physical skills training for quality delivery of accurate direct free kick during training and competition.

Keywords: accuracy, direct free kick, pepsi football academy, positive self-talk

Procedia PDF Downloads 335