Search results for: memory duration
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 2676

Search results for: memory duration

1536 Detection of Arterial Stiffness in Diabetes Using Photoplethysmograph

Authors: Neelamshobha Nirala, R. Periyasamy, Awanish Kumar

Abstract:

Diabetes is a metabolic disorder and with the increase of global prevalence of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and mortality related to diabetes has also increased. Diabetes causes the increase of arterial stiffness by elusive hormonal and metabolic abnormalities. We used photoplethysmograph (PPG), a simple non-invasive method to study the change in arterial stiffness due to diabetes. Toe PPG signals were taken from 29 diabetic subjects with mean age of (65±8.4) years and 21 non-diabetic subjects of mean age of (49±14) years. Mean duration of diabetes is 12±8 years for diabetic group. Rise-time (RT) and area under rise time (AUR) were calculated from the PPG signal of each subject and Welch’s t-test is used to find the significant difference between two groups. We obtained a significant difference of (p-value) 0.0005 and 0.03 for RT and AUR respectively between diabetic and non-diabetic subjects. Average value of RT and AUR is 0.298±0.003 msec and 14.4±4.2 arbitrary units respectively for diabetic subject compared to 0.277±0.0005 msec and 13.66±2.3 a.u respectively for non-diabetic subjects. In conclusion, this study support that arterial stiffness is increased in diabetes and can be detected early using PPG.

Keywords: area under rise-time, AUR, arterial stiffness, diabetes, photoplethysmograph, PPG, rise-time (RT)

Procedia PDF Downloads 259
1535 Physical Interaction Mappings: Utilizing Cognitive Load Theory in Order to Enhance Physical Product Interaction

Authors: Bryan Young, Andrew Wodehouse, Marion Sheridan

Abstract:

The availability of working memory has long been identified as a critical aspect of an instructional design. Many conventional instructional procedures impose irrelevant or unrelated cognitive loads on the learner due to the fact that they were created without contemplation, or understanding, of cognitive work load. Learning to physically operate traditional products can be viewed as a learning process akin to any other. As such, many of today's products, such as cars, boats, and planes, which have traditional controls that predate modern user-centered design techniques may be imposing irrelevant or unrelated cognitive loads on their operators. The goal of the research was to investigate the fundamental relationships between physical inputs, resulting actions, and learnability. The results showed that individuals can quickly adapt to input/output reversals across dimensions, however, individuals struggle to cope with the input/output when the dimensions are rotated due to the resulting increase in cognitive load.

Keywords: cognitive load theory, instructional design, physical product interactions, usability design

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1534 Curriculum Based Measurement and Precision Teaching in Writing Empowerment Enhancement: Results from an Italian Learning Center

Authors: I. Pelizzoni, C. Cavallini, I. Salvaderi, F. Cavallini

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We present the improvement in writing skills obtained by 94 participants (aged between six and 10 years) with special educational needs through a writing enhancement program based on fluency principles. The study was planned and conducted with a single-subject experimental plan for each of the participants, in order to confirm the results in the literature. These results were obtained using precision teaching (PT) methodology to increase the number of written graphemes per minute in the pre- and post-test, by curriculum based measurement (CBM). Results indicated an increase in the number of written graphemes for all participants. The average overall duration of the intervention is 144 minutes in five months of treatment. These considerations have been analyzed taking account of the complexity of the implementation of measurement systems in real operational contexts (an Italian learning center) and important aspects of replicability and cost-effectiveness of such interventions.

Keywords: curriculum based measurement, precision teaching, writing skill, Italian learning center

Procedia PDF Downloads 128
1533 Long-Persistent Luminescent MAl2O4:Eu;Dy Phoshors Synthesized by Combustion

Authors: Yusuf Ziya Halefoğlu

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Phosphorescence, classically, excitation effects (radiation, electron beam, electric field, temperature, etc.) is the name given after the elimination of materials that glow in the visible region. This event continues to glow after the elimination of the effect of excitation is called phosphorescence. In this study were synthesized by the method of the combustion lanthanide doped alkaline earth aluminates. High temperature and long reaction time required and the sol-gel method of combustion according to the methods of solid state synthesis temperature lower than the short reaction time, a small particle size, convenience, and is superior in terms of being secured. Their microstructures and its effect on the photoluminescence properties were studied. Phosphorescence is derived in the dark when produced materials are held in sunlight or under ultraviolet light typically at 365-520 nm wavelength range. In this study, the optimal ratio of rare earth elements, in terms of brightness and glow duration was examined by SEM, XRD and photoluminescence analysis.

Keywords: persistence luminescence, phosphorescence, trap depth, combustion method

Procedia PDF Downloads 240
1532 Design and Development of Real-Time Optimal Energy Management System for Hybrid Electric Vehicles

Authors: Masood Roohi, Amir Taghavipour

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This paper describes a strategy to develop an energy management system (EMS) for a charge-sustaining power-split hybrid electric vehicle. This kind of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) benefit from the advantages of both parallel and series architecture. However, it gets relatively more complicated to manage power flow between the battery and the engine optimally. The applied strategy in this paper is based on nonlinear model predictive control approach. First of all, an appropriate control-oriented model which was accurate enough and simple was derived. Towards utilization of this controller in real-time, the problem was solved off-line for a vast area of reference signals and initial conditions and stored the computed manipulated variables inside look-up tables. Look-up tables take a little amount of memory. Also, the computational load dramatically decreased, because to find required manipulated variables the controller just needed a simple interpolation between tables.

Keywords: hybrid electric vehicles, energy management system, nonlinear model predictive control, real-time

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1531 Traditional Herbal Medicine Used to Treat Infertility in Women by Traditional Practitioner of Malwa Region of Madhya Pradesh, India

Authors: Shweta Shriwas, Sumeet Dwivedi

Abstract:

Knowledge of use of traditional medicine is as old as human civilization in almost every system of medicine. Traditional practitioner viz., vaidhayas, ojha, hakim have their own herbal therapy in the treatment of infertility among women’s. Infertility is very common in developed and developing countries due to busy life style of women’s. The present study was initiated with an aim to identify medicinal plants resources from traditional practitioners of Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh to treat infertility. An ethnomedicinal study of Malwa region viz., Indore, Dewas, Ratlam, Ujjain, Dhar, Mandsour and Neemuch of Madhya Pradesh, India comprising fifty-seven study site was conducted during Jan-217 to June-2017. During the course of present investigation, the traditional use of medicinal plants for infertility in women was revealed by traditional practitioner. The botanical name, family, local name, part used, habit along with mode of their administration and dose duration were enumerated.

Keywords: herbal medicine, infertility, traditional, Malwa, Madhya Pradesh

Procedia PDF Downloads 436
1530 Demand for Domestic Marine and Coastal Tourism and Day Trips on an Island Nation

Authors: John Deely, Stephen Hynes, Mary Cawley, Sarah Hogan

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Domestic marine and coastal tourism have increased in importance over the last number of years due to the impacts of international travel, environmental concerns, associated health benefits and COVID-19 related travel restrictions. Consequently, this paper conceptualizes domestic marine and coastal tourism within an economic framework. Two logit models examine the factors that influence participation in the coastal day trips and overnight stays markets, respectively. Two truncated travel cost models are employed to explore trip duration, one analyzing the number of day trips taken and the other examining the number of nights spent in marine and coastal areas. Although a range of variables predicts participation, no one variable had a significant and consistent effect on every model. A division in access to domestic marine and coastal tourism is also observed based on variation in household income. The results also indicate a vibrant day trip market and large consumer surpluses.

Keywords: domestic marine and coastal tourism, day tripper, participation models, truncated travel cost model

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1529 Numerical Modeling of the Seismic Site Response in the Firenze Metropolitan Area

Authors: Najmeh Ayoqi, Emanuele Marchetti

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OpenSWPC was used to model 2D and 3D seismic waveforms produced by various earthquakes in the Firenze metropolitan area. OpenSWPC is an Opens source code for simulation of seismic wave by using the finite difference method (FDM) in Message Passing Interface (MPI) environment. it considered both earthquake sources, with variable magnitude and location, as well as a pulse source in the modeling domain, which is optimal to simulate local seismic amplification effects. Multiple tests were performed to evaluate the dependence of the frequency content of output modeled waveforms on the model grid size and time steps . Moreover the effect of the velocity structure and absorbing boundary condition on waveform features (amplitude, duration and frequency content) where analysed. Eventually model results are compared with real waveform and Horizontal-to-Vertical spectral Ratio (HVSR) , showing that seismic wave modeling can provide important information on seismic assessment in the city.

Keywords: openSWPC, earthquake, firenze, HVSR, seismic wave

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1528 Quantum Entangled States and Image Processing

Authors: Sanjay Singh, Sushil Kumar, Rashmi Jain

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Quantum registering is another pattern in computational hypothesis and a quantum mechanical framework has a few helpful properties like Entanglement. We plan to store data concerning the structure and substance of a basic picture in a quantum framework. Consider a variety of n qubits which we propose to use as our memory stockpiling. In recent years classical processing is switched to quantum image processing. Quantum image processing is an elegant approach to overcome the problems of its classical counter parts. Image storage, retrieval and its processing on quantum machines is an emerging area. Although quantum machines do not exist in physical reality but theoretical algorithms developed based on quantum entangled states gives new insights to process the classical images in quantum domain. Here in the present work, we give the brief overview, such that how entangled states can be useful for quantum image storage and retrieval. We discuss the properties of tripartite Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger and W states and their usefulness to store the shapes which may consist three vertices. We also propose the techniques to store shapes having more than three vertices.

Keywords: Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger, image storage and retrieval, quantum entanglement, W states

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1527 Multimodal Convolutional Neural Network for Musical Instrument Recognition

Authors: Yagya Raj Pandeya, Joonwhoan Lee

Abstract:

The dynamic behavior of music and video makes it difficult to evaluate musical instrument playing in a video by computer system. Any television or film video clip with music information are rich sources for analyzing musical instruments using modern machine learning technologies. In this research, we integrate the audio and video information sources using convolutional neural network (CNN) and pass network learned features through recurrent neural network (RNN) to preserve the dynamic behaviors of audio and video. We use different pre-trained CNN for music and video feature extraction and then fine tune each model. The music network use 2D convolutional network and video network use 3D convolution (C3D). Finally, we concatenate each music and video feature by preserving the time varying features. The long short term memory (LSTM) network is used for long-term dynamic feature characterization and then use late fusion with generalized mean. The proposed network performs better performance to recognize the musical instrument using audio-video multimodal neural network.

Keywords: multimodal, 3D convolution, music-video feature extraction, generalized mean

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1526 Book Exchange System with a Hybrid Recommendation Engine

Authors: Nilki Upathissa, Torin Wirasinghe

Abstract:

This solution addresses the challenges faced by traditional bookstores and the limitations of digital media, striking a balance between the tactile experience of printed books and the convenience of modern technology. The book exchange system offers a sustainable alternative, empowering users to access a diverse range of books while promoting community engagement. The user-friendly interfaces incorporated into the book exchange system ensure a seamless and enjoyable experience for users. Intuitive features for book management, search, and messaging facilitate effortless exchanges and interactions between users. By streamlining the process, the system encourages readers to explore new books aligned with their interests, enhancing the overall reading experience. Central to the system's success is the hybrid recommendation engine, which leverages advanced technologies such as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) models. By analyzing user input, the engine accurately predicts genre preferences, enabling personalized book recommendations. The hybrid approach integrates multiple technologies, including user interfaces, machine learning models, and recommendation algorithms, to ensure the accuracy and diversity of the recommendations. The evaluation of the book exchange system with the hybrid recommendation engine demonstrated exceptional performance across key metrics. The high accuracy score of 0.97 highlights the system's ability to provide relevant recommendations, enhancing users' chances of discovering books that resonate with their interests. The commendable precision, recall, and F1score scores further validate the system's efficacy in offering appropriate book suggestions. Additionally, the curve classifications substantiate the system's effectiveness in distinguishing positive and negative recommendations. This metric provides confidence in the system's ability to navigate the vast landscape of book choices and deliver recommendations that align with users' preferences. Furthermore, the implementation of this book exchange system with a hybrid recommendation engine has the potential to revolutionize the way readers interact with printed books. By facilitating book exchanges and providing personalized recommendations, the system encourages a sense of community and exploration within the reading community. Moreover, the emphasis on sustainability aligns with the growing global consciousness towards eco-friendly practices. With its robust technical approach and promising evaluation results, this solution paves the way for a more inclusive, accessible, and enjoyable reading experience for book lovers worldwide. In conclusion, the developed book exchange system with a hybrid recommendation engine represents a progressive solution to the challenges faced by traditional bookstores and the limitations of digital media. By promoting sustainability, widening access to printed books, and fostering engagement with reading, this system addresses the evolving needs of book enthusiasts. The integration of user-friendly interfaces, advanced machine learning models, and recommendation algorithms ensure accurate and diverse book recommendations, enriching the reading experience for users.

Keywords: recommendation systems, hybrid recommendation systems, machine learning, data science, long short-term memory, recurrent neural network

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1525 Predicting Global Solar Radiation Using Recurrent Neural Networks and Climatological Parameters

Authors: Rami El-Hajj Mohamad, Mahmoud Skafi, Ali Massoud Haidar

Abstract:

Several meteorological parameters were used for the prediction of monthly average daily global solar radiation on horizontal using recurrent neural networks (RNNs). Climatological data and measures, mainly air temperature, humidity, sunshine duration, and wind speed between 1995 and 2007 were used to design and validate a feed forward and recurrent neural network based prediction systems. In this paper we present our reference system based on a feed-forward multilayer perceptron (MLP) as well as the proposed approach based on an RNN model. The obtained results were promising and comparable to those obtained by other existing empirical and neural models. The experimental results showed the advantage of RNNs over simple MLPs when we deal with time series solar radiation predictions based on daily climatological data.

Keywords: recurrent neural networks, global solar radiation, multi-layer perceptron, gradient, root mean square error

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1524 Spatiotemporal Neural Network for Video-Based Pose Estimation

Authors: Bin Ji, Kai Xu, Shunyu Yao, Jingjing Liu, Ye Pan

Abstract:

Human pose estimation is a popular research area in computer vision for its important application in human-machine interface. In recent years, 2D human pose estimation based on convolution neural network has got great progress and development. However, in more and more practical applications, people often need to deal with tasks based on video. It’s not far-fetched for us to consider how to combine the spatial and temporal information together to achieve a balance between computing cost and accuracy. To address this issue, this study proposes a new spatiotemporal model, namely Spatiotemporal Net (STNet) to combine both temporal and spatial information more rationally. As a result, the predicted keypoints heatmap is potentially more accurate and spatially more precise. Under the condition of ensuring the recognition accuracy, the algorithm deal with spatiotemporal series in a decoupled way, which greatly reduces the computation of the model, thus reducing the resource consumption. This study demonstrate the effectiveness of our network over the Penn Action Dataset, and the results indicate superior performance of our network over the existing methods.

Keywords: convolutional long short-term memory, deep learning, human pose estimation, spatiotemporal series

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1523 The Effects of Music and Gender on Recall Ability on College Students: A Study in Students from Universitas Indonesia

Authors: Hestika D. Waraningrum, Indriani N. Khairunnisa, Nabila Isnandini, Nadine Yasminah, Sekar A. Winesa

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Each individual’s ability to recall, whether they are male or female, is allegedly influenced by the environmental circumstances during the recalling process. The presence of a distraction is one of the environmental variables that affect recall ability in its capacity in the Short Term Memory. This study was made to see the difference in number of words that was successfully recalled by male participants and female participants with the presence of music as a distraction and also without music as a distraction. Data was taken using an experimental procedure from 75 female and male undergraduate students of Universitas Indonesia. The study design used was a 2x2 Factorial ANOVA, which aimed to see the difference between two variables, which were gender (male vs female) and the presence of a distraction (music serving as a distraction vs absence of music). The results indicated that there were no significant mean differences in the ability to recall between male and female participants. There are no significant mean differences between the presence and the absence of music as a distraction, but a significant interaction was found between gender and distraction with the ability to recall.

Keywords: college, gender, music, recall

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1522 Operating System Based Virtualization Models in Cloud Computing

Authors: Dev Ras Pandey, Bharat Mishra, S. K. Tripathi

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Cloud computing is ready to transform the structure of businesses and learning through supplying the real-time applications and provide an immediate help for small to medium sized businesses. The ability to run a hypervisor inside a virtual machine is important feature of virtualization and it is called nested virtualization. In today’s growing field of information technology, many of the virtualization models are available, that provide a convenient approach to implement, but decision for a single model selection is difficult. This paper explains the applications of operating system based virtualization in cloud computing with an appropriate/suitable model with their different specifications and user’s requirements. In the present paper, most popular models are selected, and the selection was based on container and hypervisor based virtualization. Selected models were compared with a wide range of user’s requirements as number of CPUs, memory size, nested virtualization supports, live migration and commercial supports, etc. and we identified a most suitable model of virtualization.

Keywords: virtualization, OS based virtualization, container based virtualization, hypervisor based virtualization

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1521 Impact of Stack Caches: Locality Awareness and Cost Effectiveness

Authors: Abdulrahman K. Alshegaifi, Chun-Hsi Huang

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Treating data based on its location in memory has received much attention in recent years due to its different properties, which offer important aspects for cache utilization. Stack data and non-stack data may interfere with each other’s locality in the data cache. One of the important aspects of stack data is that it has high spatial and temporal locality. In this work, we simulate non-unified cache design that split data cache into stack and non-stack caches in order to maintain stack data and non-stack data separate in different caches. We observe that the overall hit rate of non-unified cache design is sensitive to the size of non-stack cache. Then, we investigate the appropriate size and associativity for stack cache to achieve high hit ratio especially when over 99% of accesses are directed to stack cache. The result shows that on average more than 99% of stack cache accuracy is achieved by using 2KB of capacity and 1-way associativity. Further, we analyze the improvement in hit rate when adding small, fixed, size of stack cache at level1 to unified cache architecture. The result shows that the overall hit rate of unified cache design with adding 1KB of stack cache is improved by approximately, on average, 3.9% for Rijndael benchmark. The stack cache is simulated by using SimpleScalar toolset.

Keywords: hit rate, locality of program, stack cache, stack data

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1520 Design of Advanced Materials for Alternative Cooling Devices

Authors: Emilia Olivos, R. Arroyave, A. Vargas-Calderon, J. E. Dominguez-Herrera

Abstract:

More efficient cooling systems are needed to reduce building energy consumption and environmental impact. At present researchers focus mainly on environmentally-friendly magnetic materials and the potential application in cooling devices. The magnetic materials presented in this project belong to a group known as Heusler alloys. These compounds are characterized by a strong coupling between their structure and magnetic properties. Usually, a change in one of them can alter the other, which implies changes in other electronic or structural properties, such as, shape magnetic memory response or the magnetocaloric effect. Those properties and its dependence with external fields make these materials interesting, both from a fundamental point of view, as well as on their different possible applications. In this work, first principles and Monte Carlo simulations have been used to calculate exchange couplings and magnetic properties as a function of an applied magnetic field on Heusler alloys. As a result, we found a large dependence of the magnetic susceptibility, entropy and heat capacity, indicating that the magnetic field can be used in experiments to trigger particular magnetic properties in materials, which are necessary to develop solid-state refrigeration devices.

Keywords: ferromagnetic materials, magnetocaloric effect, materials design, solid state refrigeration

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1519 General Purpose Graphic Processing Units Based Real Time Video Tracking System

Authors: Mallikarjuna Rao Gundavarapu, Ch. Mallikarjuna Rao, K. Anuradha Bai

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Real Time Video Tracking is a challenging task for computing professionals. The performance of video tracking techniques is greatly affected by background detection and elimination process. Local regions of the image frame contain vital information of background and foreground. However, pixel-level processing of local regions consumes a good amount of computational time and memory space by traditional approaches. In our approach we have explored the concurrent computational ability of General Purpose Graphic Processing Units (GPGPU) to address this problem. The Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) with adaptive weighted kernels is used for detecting the background. The weights of the kernel are influenced by local regions and are updated by inter-frame variations of these corresponding regions. The proposed system has been tested with GPU devices such as GeForce GTX 280, GeForce GTX 280 and Quadro K2000. The results are encouraging with maximum speed up 10X compared to sequential approach.

Keywords: connected components, embrace threads, local weighted kernel, structuring elements

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1518 Performance Analysis of Elliptic Curve Cryptography Using Onion Routing to Enhance the Privacy and Anonymity in Grid Computing

Authors: H. Parveen Begam, M. A. Maluk Mohamed

Abstract:

Grid computing is an environment that allows sharing and coordinated use of diverse resources in dynamic, heterogeneous and distributed environment using Virtual Organization (VO). Security is a critical issue due to the open nature of the wireless channels in the grid computing which requires three fundamental services: authentication, authorization, and encryption. The privacy and anonymity are considered as an important factor while communicating over publicly spanned network like web. To ensure a high level of security we explored an extension of onion routing, which has been used with dynamic token exchange along with protection of privacy and anonymity of individual identity. To improve the performance of encrypting the layers, the elliptic curve cryptography is used. Compared to traditional cryptosystems like RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adelman), ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptosystem) offers equivalent security with smaller key sizes which result in faster computations, lower power consumption, as well as memory and bandwidth savings. This paper presents the estimation of the performance improvements of onion routing using ECC as well as the comparison graph between performance level of RSA and ECC.

Keywords: grid computing, privacy, anonymity, onion routing, ECC, RSA

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1517 Use of Thermosonication to Obtain Minimally Processed Mosambi Juice

Authors: Ruby Siwach, Manish Kumar, Raman Seth

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Extent of inactivation of pectin methylesterase (PME) in mosambi juice during thermal and thermosonication treatments was studied to obtain a minimally processed product. Effect of both treatments on cloud value, pH, titratable acidity, oBrix, and sensory attributes (flavour and taste) was studied. Thermal treatments (HT) were carried out at three temperatures 60, 70, and 80°C in a serological water bath for 5, 10, 15, and 20 min at each temperature. Thermosonication treatments (TS) were also given for same time-temperature combinations in water bath of a thermosonicator. Treated samples were stored in a deep freezer at 18°C for PME assay. PME activity of untreated sample was also assayed and residual PME activity and % loss in PME activity was calculated at each time-temperature combination. The extent of inactivation of PME increased with increase in treatment temperature and duration. Thermosonication treatments were found far more effective than thermal treatments of same time temperature combination in PME inactivation and retention of sensory attributes.

Keywords: pectin methylesterase, heat inactivation kinetics, thermosonication, thermal treatment

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1516 Wireless Based System for Continuous Electrocardiography Monitoring during Surgery

Authors: K. Bensafia, A. Mansour, G. Le Maillot, B. Clement, O. Reynet, P. Ariès, S. Haddab

Abstract:

This paper presents a system designed for wireless acquisition, the recording of electrocardiogram (ECG) signals and the monitoring of the heart’s health during surgery. This wireless recording system allows us to visualize and monitor the state of the heart’s health during a surgery, even if the patient is moved from the operating theater to post anesthesia care unit. The acquired signal is transmitted via a Bluetooth unit to a PC where the data are displayed, stored and processed. To test the reliability of our system, a comparison between ECG signals processed by a conventional ECG monitoring system (Datex-Ohmeda) and by our wireless system is made. The comparison is based on the shape of the ECG signal, the duration of the QRS complex, the P and T waves, as well as the position of the ST segments with respect to the isoelectric line. The proposed system is presented and discussed. The results have confirmed that the use of Bluetooth during surgery does not affect the devices used and vice versa. Pre- and post-processing steps are briefly discussed. Experimental results are also provided.

Keywords: electrocardiography, monitoring, surgery, wireless system

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1515 Organizational Climate being Knowledge Sharing Oriented: A Fuzzy-Set Analysis

Authors: Paulo Lopes Henriques, Carla Curado

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According to literature, knowledge sharing behaviors are influenced by organizational values and structures, namely organizational climate. The manuscript examines the antecedents of the knowledge sharing oriented organizational climate. According to theoretical expectations the study adopts the following explanatory conditions: knowledge sharing costs, knowledge sharing incentives, perceptions of knowledge sharing contributing to performance and tenure. The study confronts results considering two groups of firms: nondigital (firms without intranet) vs digital (firms with intranet). The paper applies fsQCA technique to analyze data by using fsQCA 2.5 software (www.fsqca.com) testing several conditional arguments to explain the outcome variable. Main results strengthen claims on the relevancy of the contribution of knowledge sharing to performance. Secondly, evidence brings tenure - an explanatory condition that is associated to organizational memory – to the spotlight. The study provides an original contribution not previously addressed in literature, since it identifies the sufficient conditions sets to knowledge sharing oriented organizational climate using fsQCA, which is, to our knowledge, a novel application of the technique.

Keywords: fsQCA, knowledge sharing oriented organizational climate, knowledge sharing costs, knowledge sharing incentives

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1514 The Temporal Dimension of Narratives: A Construct of Qualitative Time

Authors: Ani Thomas

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Every narrative is a temporal construct. Every narrative creates a qualitative experience of time for the viewer. The paper argues for the concept of a qualified time that emerges from the interaction between the narrative and the audience. The paper also challenges the conventional understanding of narrative time as either story time, real time or discourse time. Looking at narratives through the medium of Cinema, the study examines how narratives create and manipulate duration or durée, the qualitative experience of time as theorized by Henri Bergson. The paper further analyzes how Cinema and, by extension, narratives are nothing but Durée and the filmmaker, the artist of durée, who shape and manipulate the perception and emotions of the viewer through the manipulation and construction of durée. The paper draws on cinematic works to look at the techniques to demonstrate how filmmakers use, for example, editing, sound, compositional and production narratives etc., to create various modes of durée that challenge, amplify or unsettle the viewer’s sense of time. Bringing together the Viewer’s durée and exploring its interaction with the narrative construct, the paper explores the emergence of the new qualitative time, the narrative durée, that defines the audience experience.

Keywords: cinema, time, bergson, duree

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1513 Researches on Attractive Flowered Natural Woody Plants of Bursa Flora in Terms of Landscape Design

Authors: Elvan Ender, Murat Zencirkıran

Abstract:

One of the most important criteria that increase the success of design in landscape architecture is the visual effect. The characteristics that affect visual appearance in plant design vary depending on the phenological periods of the plants. In plants, although different effects are observed in different periods of the year, this effect is felt most prominently in flowering periods. For this reason, knowing the flowering time, duration and flower characteristics should be considered as a factor increasing the success of plant design. In this study, flower characteristics of natural woody plants with attractive flowers have been examined. Because of the variability of these characteristics of plants in the region, consideration of these criteria in the planting design processes in the region may increase the success of the design. At the same time, when species selection is made considering the obtained data, visuality and sustainability of natural species can be possible in Bursa city with planting design.

Keywords: Bursa, flower characteristics, natural plants, planting design

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1512 Hong Kong Chinese-Speaking Adolescents Diagnosed with Dyslexia: What Is and Is Not Improved?

Authors: Kevin Kien Hoa Chung

Abstract:

The present study was to investigate cognitive-linguistic skills that might distinguish the improved dyslexics from the non-improved dyslexics. Twenty-eight improved dyslexics and 28 non-improved dyslexics were selected from a pool of 254 students diagnosed as dyslexics in Grade 1 to 2. These students were administered measures: morphological skills, visual-orthographic skills, rapid naming skills, working memory, reading comprehension, writing, word reading, word dictation, and one-minute word reading. Findings showed that the improved dyslexics performed better than the non-improved dyslexics in visual-orthographic skills, word reading, one-minute reading, writing, and reading comprehension. Furthermore, the improved dyslexics showed fewer cognitive-linguistic deficits compared with the non-improved dyslexics. Among the 4 cognitive-linguistic measures, morphological skills and visual-orthographic skills showed the greatest power in discriminating the improved and non-improved dyslexics. Results underscore the importance of cognitive-linguistic skills underlying the manifestations of the improved and non-improved dyslexia in Chinese adolescents.

Keywords: adolescents, chinese language, improved dyslexics, non-improved dyslexics

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1511 Monitoring System for Electronic Procurement Systems

Authors: Abdulah Fajar

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Electronic Procurement System has been implemented at government institution in Indonesia. This system has been developed centrally at Institution of National Procurement Policy (LKPP) and implemented autonomously at either local or national government institution. The lack of competency at many institution on Information Technology Management arise several major problems. The main concern of LKPP to local administrator is assured that the system is running normally and always be able to serve the needs of its users. Monitoring system has been identified as the one of solution to prevent the problems appeared. Monitoring system is developed using Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and implemented at LKPP. There are two modules; Main Dashboard and Local Agent. Main Dashboard is intended for LKPP and Local Agent is intended to implement at local autonomous e-procurement system (LPSE). There are several resources that must be monitored such as computation, memory and network traffic. Agile paradigm is applied to this project to assure user and system requirement is met. The length of project is the one of reason why agile paradigm has been chosen. The system has been successfully delivered to LKPP.

Keywords: procurement system, SNMP, LKPP, LPSE

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1510 The Environmental Impact of Geothermal Energy and Opportunities for Its Utilization in Hungary

Authors: András Medve, Katalin Szabad, István Patkó

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According to the International Energy Association the previous principles of the energy sector should be reassessed, in which renewable energy sources have a significant role. We might witness the exchange of roles of countries from importer to exporter, which look for the main resources of market needs. According to the World Energy Outlook 2013, the duration of high oil prices is exceptionally long in the history of the energy market. Forecasts also point at the expected great differences between the regional prices of gas and electric energy. The energy need of the world will grow by its third. two thirds of which will appear in China, India, and South-East Asia, while only 4 per cent of which will be related to OECD countries. Current trends also forecast the growth of the price of energy sources and the emission of glasshouse gases. As a reflection of these forecasts alternative energy sources will gain value, of which geothermic energy is one of the cheapest and most economical. Hungary possesses outstanding resources of geothermic energy. The aim of the study is to research the environmental effects of geothermic energy and the opportunities of its exploitation in Hungary, related to „Horizon 2020” project.

Keywords: sustainable energy, renewable energy, development of geothermic energy in Hungary

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1509 Statistical Description of Counterpoise Effective Length Based on Regressive Formulas

Authors: Petar Sarajcev, Josip Vasilj, Damir Jakus

Abstract:

This paper presents a novel statistical description of the counterpoise effective length due to lightning surges, where the (impulse) effective length had been obtained by means of regressive formulas applied to the transient simulation results. The effective length is described in terms of a statistical distribution function, from which median, mean, variance, and other parameters of interest could be readily obtained. The influence of lightning current amplitude, lightning front duration, and soil resistivity on the effective length has been accounted for, assuming statistical nature of these parameters. A method for determining the optimal counterpoise length, in terms of the statistical impulse effective length, is also presented. It is based on estimating the number of dangerous events associated with lightning strikes. Proposed statistical description and the associated method provide valuable information which could aid the design engineer in optimising physical lengths of counterpoises in different grounding arrangements and soil resistivity situations.

Keywords: counterpoise, grounding conductor, effective length, lightning, Monte Carlo method, statistical distribution

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1508 Return to Work Following Knee Arthroplasty: A Retrospective Review in Urban Asian Population

Authors: Fiona Tan, Cheryl Tan, Thomas Wong, Remesh

Abstract:

Background: An increasing number of working adults undergo knee arthroplasty in Singapore. There is limited data concerning Southeast Asian patients returning to work (RTW) following knee replacement surgery. Our aim was to identify and study factors influencing patients' RTW following total knee arthroplasty (TKA) or unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA). Methods: Patients who underwent TKA or UKA between August 2017 to March 2020 in our center were included in this study. Outcomes include RTW and duration prior to RTW. Results: 441 patients underwent TKA (295 women, 146 men, mean age 67.3 years), and 69 underwent UKA (48 women, 21 men, mean age 61.1 years). Patients who underwent TKA returned to work earlier (mean 83.7 ± 27.1 days) compared to UKA (mean 94.4 ± 42.3 days). 90.0% of TKA patients RTW compared to 95.5% who underwent UKA. Of patients who RTW, 94.3% of the TKA group returned to employment of the same nature compared to 92.9% of UKA patients. Patients who RTW were of a younger age (p = 0.03), white-collared workers (p = 0.04), and had independent preoperative ambulatory status (p <0.01). Conclusion: Younger and independently ambulating patients may have a better capacity for rehabilitation and RTW post-arthroplasty surgery.

Keywords: return to work, total knee arthroplasty, unilateral knee arthroplasty, employment

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1507 Effects on Inflammatory Biomarkers and Respiratory Mechanics in Laparoscopic Bariatric Surgery: Desflurane vs. Total Intravenous Anaesthesia with Propofol

Authors: L. Kashyap, S. Jha, D. Shende, V. K. Mohan, P. Khanna, A. Aravindan, S. Kashyap, L. Singh, S. Aggarwal

Abstract:

Obesity is associated with a chronic inflammatory state. During surgery, there is an interplay between anaesthetic and surgical stress vis-a-vis the already present complex immune state. Moreover, the postoperative period is dictated by inflammation, which is crucial for wound healing and regeneration. An excess of inflammatory response might hamper recovery besides increasing the risk for infection and complications. There is definite evidence of the immunosuppressive role of inhaled anaesthetic agents. This immune modulation may be brought into effect directly by influencing the innate and adaptive immunity cells. The effects of propofol on immune mechanisms in has been widely elucidated because of its popularity. It reduces superoxide generation, elastase release, and chemotaxis. However, there is no unequivocal proof of one’s superiority over the other. Hence, an anaesthetic regimen with lesser inflammatory potential and specific to the obese patient is needed. OBESITA trial protocol (2019) by Sousa and co-workers in progress aims to test the hypothesis that anaesthesia with sevoflurane results in a weaker proinflammatory response compared to propofol, as evidenced by lower IL-6 and other biomarkers and an increased macrophage differentiation into M2 phenotype in adipose tissue. IL-6 was used as the objective parameter to evaluate inflammation as it is regulated by both surgery and anesthesia. It is the most sensitive marker of the inflammatory response to tissue damage since it is released within minutes by blood leukocytes. We hypothesized that maintenance of anaesthesia with propofol would lead to less inflammation than that with desflurane. Aims: The effect of two anaesthetic techniques, total intravenous anaesthesia (TIVA) with propofol and desflurane, on surgical stress response was evaluated. The primary objective was to compare serum interleukin-6 (IL-6) levels before and after surgery. Methods: In this prospective single-blinded randomized controlled trial undertaken, 30 obese patients (BMI>30 kg/m2) undergoing laparoscopic bariatric surgery under general anaesthesia were recruited. Patients were randomized to receive desflurane or TIVA using a target-controlled infusion for maintenance of anaesthesia. As a marker of inflammation, pre-and post-surgery IL-6 levels were compared. Results: After surgery, IL-6 levels increased significantly in both groups. The rise in IL-6 was less with TIVA than with desflurane; however, it did not reach significance. IL-6 rise post-surgery correlated positively with the complexity of procedure and duration of surgery and anaesthesia, rather than anaesthetic technique. Both groups did not differ in terms of intra-operative hemodynamic and respiratory variables, time to awakening, postoperative pulmonary complications, and duration of hospital stay. The incidence of nausea was significantly higher with desflurane than with TIVA. Conclusion: Inflammatory response did not differ as a function of anaesthetic technique when propofol and desflurane were compared. Also, patient and surgical variables dictated post-operative inflammation more than the anaesthetic factors. Further, larger sample size is needed to confirm or refute these findings.

Keywords: bariatric, biomarkers, inflammation, laparoscopy

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