Search results for: new great game

Authors: Jiewei Li, Hongyan Cui, Chunqi Chang, Yong Hu

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It was expected to benefit patient with hemiparesis after stroke by extensive arm rehabilitation, to partially regain forearm and hand function. This paper propose a robotic rehabilitation arm in assisting the hemiparetic patient to learn new ways of using and moving their weak arms. In this study, the robotic arm was driven by a somatosensory stimulated brain computer interface (BCI), which is a new modality BCI. The use of somatosensory stimulation is not only an input for BCI, but also a electrical stimulation for treatment of hemiparesis to strengthen the arm and improve its range of motion. A trial of this robotic rehabilitation arm was performed in a stroke patient with pure motor hemiparesis. The initial trial showed a promising result from the patient with great motivation and function improvement. It suggests that robotic rehabilitation arm driven by somatosensory BCI can enhance the rehabilitation performance and progress for hemiparetic patients after stroke.

Keywords: robotic rehabilitation arm, brain computer interface (BCI), hemiparesis, stroke, somatosensory stimulation

Procedia PDF Downloads 385

Authors: Nilay Tanrıver, Birgül Benli, Nilgün Kızılcan

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Polysulfone (PSU) is a specialty engineering polymer having various industrial applications. PSU is especially used in waste water treatment membranes due to its good mechanical properties, structural and chemical stability. But it is a hydrophobic material and therefore its surface aim to pollute easily. In order to resolve this problem and extend the properties of membrane, PSU surface is rendered hydrophilic by addition of the sepiolite nanofibers. Sepiolite is one of the natural clays, which is a hydrate magnesium silicate fiber, also one of the well known layered clays of the montmorillonites where has several unique channels and pores within. It has also moisture durability, strength and low price. Sepiolite channels give great capacity of absorption and good surface properties. In this study, nanocomposites of commercial PSU and Sepiolite were prepared by solvent mixing method. Different organic solvents and their mixtures were used. Rheological characteristics of PSU-Sepiolite solvent mixtures were analyzed, the solubility of nanocomposite content in those mixtures were studied.

Keywords: nanocomposite, polysulfone, rheology, sepiolite, solution mixing

Procedia PDF Downloads 420

Authors: Safwat E. Musa, Nuha E. Mohamed, Nuha A. Bagi

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In this study, several crossplots of the P-impedance with the lithology logs (gamma ray, neutron porosity, deep resistivity, water saturation and Vp/Vs curves) were made in three available wells, which were drilled in central part of the Blue Nile basin in depths varies from 1460 m to 1600 m. These crossplots were successful to discriminate between sand and shale when using P-Impedance values, and between the wet sand and the pay sand when using both P-impedance and Vp/Vs together. Also, some impedance sections were converted to porosity sections using linear formula to characterize the reservoir in terms of porosity. The used crossplots were created on log resolution, while the seismic resolution can identify only the reservoir, unless a 3D seismic angle stacks were available; then it would be easier to identify the pay sand with great confidence; through high resolution seismic inversion and geostatistical approach when using P-impedance and Vp/Vs volumes.

Keywords: basin, Blue Nile, inversion, seismic

Procedia PDF Downloads 425

Authors: Asma Ben Abdallah

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Language has a powerful influence over people and their actions. The language of advertising has a very great impact on the consumer. It makes use of different features from the linguistic continuum. The present paper attempts to apply the theories of stylistics to the analysis of advertising texts. In order to decipher the stylistic features of the advertising discourse, 30 advertising text samples designed by MA Business students have been selected. These samples have been analyzed at the level of design and content. The study brings insights into the use of stylistic devices in advertising, and it reveals that both linguistic and non-linguistic features of advertisements are frequently employed to develop a well-thought-out design and content. The practical significance of the study is to highlight the specificities of the advertising genre so that people interested in the language of advertising (Business students and ESP teachers) will have a better understanding of the nature of the language used and the techniques of writing and designing ads. Similarly, those working in the advertising sphere (ad designers) will appreciate the specificities of the advertising discourse.

Keywords: the language of advertising, advertising discourse, ad design, stylistic features

Procedia PDF Downloads 231

Authors: Ting-Ting Wen, Jung-Ruey Tsai

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This paper reports a method for the replication of micro-scale structures. By using electromagnetic force-assisted imprinting system with magnetic soft stamp written square-microlens cavity, a photopolymer square-microlens structures can be rapidly fabricated. Under the proper processing conditions, the polymeric square-microlens structures with feature size of width 100.3um and height 15.2um across a large area can be successfully fabricated. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and surface profiler observations confirm that the micro-scale polymer structures are produced without defects or distortion and with good pattern fidelity over a 60x60mm2 area. This technique shows great potential for the efficient replication of the micro-scale structure array at room temperature and with high productivity and low cost.

Keywords: square-microlens structures, electromagnetic force-assisted imprinting, magnetic soft stamp

Procedia PDF Downloads 324

Authors: Nesrine Bouzaher, Okba Necira

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The financial aspect of the Algerian economy is part of all sectors that have undergone great changes these two last decades; the goal is to enable economic mechanisms for real growth. Insurance is an indispensable tool for stabilizing these mechanisms. Therefore the national economy needs to develop the insurance market in order to support the investments, externally and internally; it turns out that reinsurance is one of the area which could prove their performance in several markets mainly emerging ones. The expansion of reinsurance in the domestic market is the preoccupation of this work, focusing on factors that could enhance the demand of reinsurance in the Algerian market. This work will be based on an analytical research of the economic contribution of the reinsurance and it’s collusion with insurance; market, then it will be necessary to provide an overview of the product in the national emerging market, finally we will try to investigate on the factors that could enhance the demand in the national reinsurance market so as to determine the potential of Algeria in this area.

Keywords: Algerian reinsurance data, demand trend of Algerian reinsurance, reinsurance, reinsurance market

Procedia PDF Downloads 371

Authors: Hassan Kian

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The future of millions of people and consequently, the future of societies and humanity is threatened by a great threat which is called wasted human resources. Perhaps Pasteur, Beethoven and Avicenna, Lavoisier and Einstein and millions of genius individuals and thinkers may have never been discovered and could not found a chance of being known due to various reasons such as poverty or social status, and other problems. So without being able to serve humanity, their talents are fully wasted. While, if a global mechanism exists to discover their talents in different countries and provide to them the right direction, during less than a generation, human society will face to a profound transformation and sustainable social justice will be formed as the basis of sustainable development of human resources. Therefore, the situation of the institution which organizes the affair of discovering and guiding talents was vacant at the level of the international community and its necessity has been felt. So in this plan, the establishment and development of such an organization have been suggested in the international context.

Keywords: talent identification, comparative advantage, sustainable justice, sustainable development

Procedia PDF Downloads 219

Authors: Tunahan Sapmaz, Harun Etçi, İbrahim Şenol, Yasemin Öner

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Rotor bar dimensions have a great influence on the air-gap magnetic flux density. Therefore, poor selection of this parameter during the machine design phase causes the air-gap magnetic flux density to be distorted. Thus, it causes noise, torque fluctuation, and losses in the induction motor. On the other hand, the change in rotor bar dimensions will change the resistance of the conductor, so the current will be affected. Therefore, the increase and decrease of rotor bar current affect operation, starting torque, and efficiency. The aim of this study is to examine the effect of rotor bar dimensions on the electromagnetic performance criteria of the induction motor. Modeling of the induction motor is done by the finite element method (FEM), which is a very powerful tool. In FEM, the results generally focus on performance criteria such as torque, torque fluctuation, efficiency, and current.

Keywords: induction motor, finite element method, optimization, rotor bar

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Authors: Amani A. Saad, Ahmed A. El-Farag, El-Sayed A. Helali

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Cloud computing is an important and promising field in the recent decade. Cloud computing allows sharing resources, services and information among the people of the whole world. Although the advantages of using clouds are great, but there are many risks in a cloud. The data security is the most important and critical problem of cloud computing. In this research a new security model for cloud computing is proposed for ensuring secure communication system, hiding information from other users and saving the user's times. In this proposed model Blowfish encryption algorithm is used for exchanging information or data, and SHA-2 cryptographic hash algorithm is used for data integrity. For user authentication process a user-name and password is used, the password uses SHA-2 for one way encryption. The proposed system shows an improvement of the processing time of uploading and downloading files on the cloud in secure form.

Keywords: cloud Ccomputing, data security, SAAS, PAAS, IAAS, Blowfish

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Authors: Kooshina Koosha, Sima Habibi, Azam Talebian

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Electrospinning is a simple, versatile and widely accepted technique to produce ultra-fine fibers ranging from nanometer to micron. Recently there has been great interest in developing this technique to produce nanofibers with novel properties and functionalities. The electrospinning field is extremely broad, and consequently there have been many useful reviews discussing various aspects from detailed fiber formation mechanism to the formation of nanofibers and to discussion on a wide range of applications. On the other hand, the focus of this study is quite narrow, highlighting electrospinning parameters. This work will briefly cover the solution and processing parameters (for instance; concentration, solvent type, voltage, flow rate, distance between the collector and the tip of the needle) impacting the morphological characteristics of nanofibers, such as diameter. In this paper, a comprehensive work would be presented on the research of producing nanofibers from natural polymer entitled Gelatin.

Keywords: electrospinning, solution parameters, process parameters, natural fiber

Procedia PDF Downloads 266

Authors: Zihao He

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The majority of existing studies on the Taiping Movement (1851-1864) viewed their anti-Manchu attitudes as nationalist agendas: Taiping was aimed at revolting against the Manchu government and establishing a new political regime. To explain these aggressive and violent attitudes towards Manchu, these studies mainly found socio-economic factors and stressed the status of “being deprived”. Even the ‘demon-slaying’ narrative of the Taiping to dehumanize the Manchu tends to be viewed as a “religious tool” to achieve their political, nationalist aim. This paper argues that these studies on Taiping’s anti-Manchu attitudes and behaviors are analyzed from an external angle and have two major problems. Firstly, they distinguished “religion” from “nationalist” or “political”, focusing on the “political” nature of the movement. “Religion” and the religious experience within Taiping were largely ignored. This paper argues that there was no separable and independent “religion” in the Taiping Movement, as opposed to secular, nationalist politics. Secondly, these analyses held an external perspective on Taiping’s anti-Manchu agenda. Demonizing and killing Manchu were viewed as purely political actions. On the contrary, this paper focuses on the internal perspective of anti-Manchu narratives in the Taiping Movement. The method of this paper is mainly textual analysis, focusing on the official documents, edicts, and proclamations of the Taiping movement. It views the writing of the Taiping as a coherent narrative and rhetoric, which was attractive and convincing for its followers. In terms of the main findings, firstly, internal and external perspectives on anti-Manchu violence are different. Externally, violence was viewed as a tool and necessary process to achieve the political goal. However, internally speaking, in Taiping’s writing, violence was a result of Godlessness, which would be solved as far as the faith in God is restored in China. Having a framework of universal love among human beings as sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father and killing was forbidden, the Taiping excluded Manchus from the family of human beings and demonized them. “Demon-slaying” was not violence. It was constructed as a necessary process to achieve the Great Peace. Moreover, Taiping’s anti-Manchu violence was not merely “political.” Rather, the category “religion” and its binary opposition, “secular,” is not suitable for Taiping. A key point related to this argument is the revolutionary violence against the Manchu government, which inherited the traditional “Heavenly Mandate” model. From an internal, theological perspective, anti-Manchu was ordained and commanded by the Heavenly Father. Manchu, as a regime, was standing as a hindrance in the path toward God. Besides, Manchu was not only viewed as a regime, but they were also “demons.” Therefore, the paper examines how Manchus were dehumanized in Taiping’s writings and were situated outside of the consideration of nonviolent and love. Manchu as a regime and Manchu as demons are in a dynamic relationship. As a regime, the Manchu government was preventing Chinese people from worshipping the Heavenly Father, so they were demonized. As they were demons, killing Manchus during the revolt was justified and not viewed as being contradicted the universal love among human beings.

Keywords: anti-manchu, demon-slaying, heavenly mandate, religion and violence, the taiping movement.

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Authors: Adeep Hande, Shubham Agarwal

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This paper presents a study on identifying sexism in online texts using various state-of-the-art deep learning models based on BERT. We experimented with different feature sets and model architectures and evaluated their performance using precision, recall, F1 score, and accuracy metrics. We also explored the use of pseudolabeling technique to improve model performance. Our experiments show that the best-performing models were based on BERT, and their multilingual model achieved an F1 score of 0.83. Furthermore, the use of pseudolabeling significantly improved the performance of the BERT-based models, with the best results achieved using the pseudolabeling technique. Our findings suggest that BERT-based models with pseudolabeling hold great promise for identifying sexism in online texts with high accuracy.

Keywords: large language models, semi-supervised learning, sexism detection, data sparsity

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Authors: Wei-Hao Lee, Ta-Wui Cheng, Yung-Chin Ding, Tai-Tien Wang

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The purpose of this study is trying to use marble wastes as the raw material to fabricate geopolymer green mortar / concrete. Experiment results show that using marble to make geopolymer mortar and concrete, the compressive strength after 28 days curing can reach 35 MPa and 25 MPa, respectively. The characteristics of marble-based geopolymer green mortar and concrete will keep testing for a long term in order to understand the effect parameters. The study is based on resource recovery and recycling. Its basic characteristics are low consumption, low carbon dioxide emission and high efficiency that meet the international tendency 'Circular Economy.' By comparing with Portland cement mortar and concrete, production 1 ton of marble-based geopolymer mortar and concrete, they can be saved around 50.3% and 49.6% carbon dioxide emission, respectively. Production 1 m3 of marble-based geopolymer concrete costs about 62 USD that cheaper than that of traditional Portland concrete. It is proved that the marble-based geopolymer concrete has great potential for further engineering development.

Keywords: marble, geopolymer, geopolymer concrete, CO₂ emission

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Authors: Radia Guerza

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Tutoring at the Algerian University has been an issue of great controversy and debate. Henceforth, the current paper is an attempt to shed light on the issue of tutoring at Algerian University. It aims to set a plan for tutoring that might meet the student's needs and challenges. It endeavors to explore the following query: “what is the role of tutoring in the Algerian university between “The CAN DO” and “The HAVE TO”? To equate with the addressed research question, an exploratory small-scale study has been carried out at Batna 2 University using questionnaires and interviews with fifty (50) teachers. Results indicate that Algerian University is still lagging behind because of the huge lack of infrastructure means, human resources, and even pedagogical resources. In addition, the majority of our teachers are reluctant to adhere to the tutorial policy due to the lack of incentives; next to that, the increasing yearly number of students and students high ratio would hardly permit any tutoring sessions. Finally, this paper is the first attempt, to our best knowledge, towards raising the awareness of our institution, staff members, teachers, and students towards the importance of tutoring and how to adopt it.

Keywords: attitudes, higher education, perceptions, tutoring

Procedia PDF Downloads 54

Authors: Shahnaz Piroozfar, Seyed Arash Halajzadeh, Abouzar Ilkhani

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Nowadays, in unpredictable business environments, enterprises face a great challenge to meet customer’s requirements. The performance of an enterprise has a significant impact on its activities and has to be evaluated continuously. One of the most important indicators to evaluate performance is named ‘innovation’. There are various indicators of innovation in the product/service sectors. These cause different innovation types to emerge, in product sectors. Additionally there are basic enablers to these innovation types, including an innovative culture, a customer oriented organizational culture, etc. Also one of these enablers is called enterprise system, which includes: SCM, CRM, ERP, KM etc. Knowledge management as a solution is a necessity in a competitive world. Implementation solutions such as KM are expensive, so enterprises need to answer how KM systems affect different performance indicators like innovation. This paper aims to develop a model to evaluate the impact of KM on innovation in SMEs.

Keywords: innovation, knowledge management, SMEs, enterprise

Procedia PDF Downloads 691

Authors: Innocent Felix Idoko

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The development of indigenous entrepreneurship is critical to the achievement of sustainable development in the internationalized economy. Sustainable development implies a continuous stimulus of growth and improvement of an economy in a fairly stable manner. The paradigms of a globalization are numerous to mention. However, to a great extent, these are trade-offs and dilemmas for indigenous entrepreneurship, particularly in the developing economies with infant industries that are essentially crucial to development. This paper analyses the pros and cons of globalization as relates to the complementary role of both foreign and indigenous entrepreneurs, the conflict of values between globalization and protectionism for local entrepreneurship. Using analytical and descriptive approach, the views of academicians, research fellows, literature reviews and both the theories of the mercantilists and those of free trade mainstream economists, and the G20, the paper concludes that there is a legitimate need for protectionism for domestic entrepreneurship in the developing economies as doing otherwise amount to stifling them.

Keywords: developing countries, entrepreneurship, globalization, infant-industries, protectionism, sustainable development

Procedia PDF Downloads 438

Authors: Štěpán Hýsek, Petra Gajdačová, Milan Podlena

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Annual plants are becoming more and more popular source of lignin and cellulose. In those days a lot of research is carried out in order to evaluate the possibility of utilization of fibres and particles from these plants in composite materials production. These lingo-cellulosic materials seem to be a great alternative to wood, however, due to waxy and silica layers on the surface of these stalks, one additional technological step is needed–erosion of the layers for the purpose of achieving better adhesion between particle and adhesive. In this research, we used several kinds of particle pre-treatment, in order to modify surface properties of these particles. Further, an adhesive was applied to the particles using laboratory blender and board were produced using laboratory press. Both physical and mechanical properties of boards were observed. It was found out that the surface modification of particles had statistically significant effect on properties of produced boards.

Keywords: annual plant, composites, mechanical properties, particleboard

Procedia PDF Downloads 193

Authors: Ben Main Piotr Ozieranski

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State government spending on pharmaceuticals stands at 1 trillion USD globally, promoting criticism of the pharmaceutical industry's monetization of drug efficacy, product cost overvaluation, and health injustice. This paper elucidates the mechanisms behind a state-institutional response to this problem through the sociological lens of the strategic relational approach to state power. To do so, 30 expert interviews, legal and policy documents are drawn on to explain how state elites in New Zealand have successfully contested a 30-year “pharmaceutical spending containment policy”. Proceeding from Jessop's notion of strategic “selectivity”, encompassing analyses of the enabling features of state actors' ability to harness state structures, a theoretical explanation is advanced. First, a strategic context is described that consists of dynamics around pharmaceutical dealmaking between the state bureaucracy, pharmaceutical pricing strategies (and their effects), and the industry. Centrally, the pricing strategy of "bundling" -deals for packages of drugs that combine older and newer patented products- reflect how state managers have instigated an “incentivization game” that is played by state and industry actors, including HTA professionals, over pharmaceutical products (both current and in development). Second, a protective context is described that is comprised of successive legislative-judicial responses to the strategic context and characterized by the regulation and the societalisation of commercial law. Third, within the policy, the achievement of increased pharmaceutical coverage (pharmaceutical “mix”) alongside contained spending is conceptualized as a state defence of a "social profit". As such, in contrast to scholarly expectations that political and economic cultures of neo-liberalism drive pharmaceutical policy-making processes, New Zealand's state elites' approach is shown to be antipathetic to neo-liberals within an overall capitalist economy. The paper contributes an analysis of state pricing strategies and how they are embedded in state regulatory structures. Additionally, through an analysis of the interconnections of state power and pharmaceutical value Abrahams's neo-liberal corporate bias model for pharmaceutical policy analysis is problematised.

Keywords: pharmaceutical governance, pharmaceutical bureaucracy, pricing strategies, state power, value theory

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Authors: Alexander Pesin, Denis Pustovoytov, Mikhail Sverdlik

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Materials with ultrafine-grained structure and unique physical and mechanical properties can be obtained by methods of severe plastic deformation, which include processes of asymmetric rolling (AR). Asymmetric rolling is a very effective way to create ultrafine-grained structures of metals and alloys. Since the asymmetric rolling is a continuous process, it has great potential for industrial production of ultrafine-grained structure sheets. Basic principles of asymmetric rolling are described in detail in scientific literature. In this work finite element modeling of asymmetric rolling and metal forming processes in multiroll gauge was performed. Parameters of the processes which allow achieving significant values of shear strain were defined. The results of the study will be useful for the research of the evolution of ultra-fine metal structure in asymmetric rolling.

Keywords: asymmetric rolling, equivalent strain, FEM, multiroll gauge, profile, severe plastic deformation, shear strain, sheet

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Authors: Omar Alomoush

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This paper examines the Armenian language in the linguistic landscape of Jordanian cities. The results indicate that Armenian is chiefly marginalised in the LL. By quantitative and qualitative methods, the current study attempts to identify the main reasons behind this marginalisation. In the light of the fact that Armenian is completely absent from the commercial streets of major Jordanian cities, all monolingual and multilingual signs in Armenian Neighbourhood in Amman city are photographed to identify them according to function and language. To provide plausible explanations for the marginalisation of the Armenian language in the LL, the current study builds upon issues of language maintenance and underlying language policy. According to the UNESCO Endangerment Framework, it can be assumed that Armenian is a vulnerable language, even though the Armenian Church exerted great efforts to revitalise Armenian in all social settings, including the LL. It was found that language policies enacted by the state of Jordan, language shift, language hostility, voluntary migration and economic pressures are among the reasons behind this marginalisation.

Keywords: linguistic landscape, multilingualism, Armenian, marginalisation and revitalisation

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Authors: Pianpian Zhang, Qingping Luo

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Currently, there is a great tendency that more and more villages in China are trying to increase income by development of tourism. Especially in Zhejiang Province, 'Beautiful Rural Construction' provides an excellent opportunity for the development of tourism. In this context, development orientation, transportation routes and tourism service facilities are analyzed under the perspective of water resources protection and regional integration based on the development tourism industry of the six villages in Pujiang County, Zhejiang Province as a research object. In the program, the biggest issue is the contradiction between the ecological protection of the water and the development of economy. How to deal with the relationship between protection and development is the key to the design of this case. Furthermore, the six villages are regarded as a whole, connecting to each other by the system of five-path and the landscape along the lake. Every village has its own features, but cannot develop without one another. The article is actively exploring for suggestions and countermeasures to promote the development premised on protection and based on a regional view.

Keywords: development, integration, protection, rural tourism

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Authors: Lingmao Xu, Hui Zhou

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Ge film is widely used in infrared optical systems. Because of the special requirements of space application, it is usually used in low temperature. The refractive index of Ge film is always changed with the temperature which has a great effect on the manufacture of high precision infrared optical film. Specimens of Ge single film were deposited at ZnSe substrates by EB-PVD method. During temperature range 80K ~ 300K, the transmittance of Ge single film within 2 ~ 15 μm were measured every 20K by PerkinElmer FTIR cryogenic testing system. By the full spectrum inversion method fitting, the relationship between refractive index and wavelength within 2 ~ 12μm at different temperatures was received. It can be seen the relationship consistent with the formula Cauchy, which can be fitted. Then the relationship between refractive index of the Ge film and temperature/wavelength was obtained by fitting method based on formula Cauchy. Finally, the designed value obtained by the formula and the measured spectrum were compared to verify the accuracy of the formula.

Keywords: infrared optical film, low temperature, thermal refractive coefficient, Ge film

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Authors: Necira Okba, Nesrine Bouzaher

Abstract:

The financial aspect of the Algerian economy is part of all sectors that have undergone great changes these two last decades; the goal is to enable economic mechanisms for real growth. Insurance is an indispensable tool for stabilizing these mechanisms. Therefore, the national economy needs to develop the insurance market in order to support the investments, externally and intern ally; it turns out that reinsurance is one of the area which could prove their performance in several markets mainly emerging ones. The expansion of reinsurance in the domestic market is the preoccupation of this work, focusing on factors that could enhance the demand of reinsurance in the Algerian market. This work will be based on an analytical research of the economic contribution of the reinsurance and it’s collusion with insurance market, then it will be necessary to provide an overview of the product in the national emerging market, finally we will try to investigate on the factors that could enhance the demand in the national reinsurance market so as to determine the potential of Algeria in this area.

Keywords: Algerian reinsurance data, demand trend of Algerian reinsurance, reinsurance, reinsurance market

Procedia PDF Downloads 335

Authors: Soumya Rajan

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While delving into the heart of any organization, the structural pre-requisites which form the framework of its system, allures and sometimes invokes great interest. In an attempt to understand the ecosystem of Knowledge that existed in organizations with diverse ownership and legal blueprints, Cooperative Societies, which form a crucial part of the neo-liberal movement in India, was studied. The exploration surprisingly led to the re-designing of at least a set of premises of the researcher on the drivers of engagement in an otherwise structured trade environment. The liberal organizational structure of Cooperative Societies has been empowered with certain terminologies: Voluntary, Democratic, Equality and Distributive Justice. To condense in Hubert Calvert’ words, ‘Co-operation is a form of organization wherein persons voluntarily associated together as human beings on the basis of equality for the promotion of the economic interest of themselves.’ In India, largely the institutions which work under this principle is registered under Cooperative Societies Act of the Central or State laws. A Worker Cooperative Society which originated as a movement in the state of Kerala and spread its wings across the country - Indian Coffee House was chosen as the enterprise for further inquiry for it being a living example and a highly successful working model in the designated space. The exploratory study reached out to employees and key stakeholders of Indian Coffee House to understand the nuances of the structure and the scope it provides for engagement. The key questions which formed shape in the mind of researcher while engaging in the inquiry were: How has the organization sustained despite its principle of accepting employees with no skills into employment and later training and empowering them? How can a system which has pre-independence and post-independence (independence here means the colonial independence from Great Britain) existence seek to engage employees within the premise of equality? How was the value of socialism ingrained in a commercial enterprise which has a turnover of several hundreds of Crores each year? How did the vision of a flat structure, way back in the 1940’s find its way into the organizational structure and has continued to remain as the way of life? These questions were addressed by the Case study research that ensued and placing Knowledge as the key premise, the possibilities of engagement of the organization man was pictured. Understanding that although the macro or holistic unit of analysis is the organization, it is pivotal to understand the structures and processes which best reflect on the actors. The embedded design which was adopted in this study delivered insights from the different stakeholder actors from diverse departments. While moving through variables which define and sometimes defy bounds in rationality, the study brought to light the inherent features of the organization structure and how it influences the actors who form a crucial part of the scheme of things. The research brought forth the key enablers for engagement and specifically explored the standpoint of knowledge in the larger structure of the Cooperative Society.

Keywords: knowledge, organizational structure, engagement, worker cooperative

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Authors: Miljan B. Petrović, Dušan B. Petrović, Goran S. Nikolić

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This paper describes a method for AWGN (Additive White Gaussian Noise) variance estimation in noisy stochastic signals, referred to as Multiplicative-Noising Variance Estimation (MNVE). The aim was to develop an estimation algorithm with minimal number of assumptions on the original signal structure. The provided MATLAB simulation and results analysis of the method applied on speech signals showed more accuracy than standardized AR (autoregressive) modeling noise estimation technique. In addition, great performance was observed on very low signal-to-noise ratios, which in general represents the worst case scenario for signal denoising methods. High execution time appears to be the only disadvantage of MNVE. After close examination of all the observed features of the proposed algorithm, it was concluded it is worth of exploring and that with some further adjustments and improvements can be enviably powerful.

Keywords: noise, signal-to-noise ratio, stochastic signals, variance estimation

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Authors: Michiko Miyamoto

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This paper empirically investigates whether information technology (IT) strategies, business strategies, and divisions are aligned to meet overall business goals for Korean Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), based on structure based Strategic Alignment Model, and make comparison with those of Japanese SMEs. Using 2,869 valid responses of Korean Human Capital Corporate Panel survey, a result of this study suggests that Korean human resources (HR) departments have a major influence over IT strategy, which is the same as Japanese SMEs, even though their management styles are quite different. As for IT strategy, it is not related to other departments at all for Korean SMEs. The Korean management seems to possess a great power over each division, such as Sales/Service, Research and Development/Technical Experts, HR, and Production.

Keywords: IT-business alignment, structured based strategic alignment model, structural equation model, human resources department

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Authors: J. H. Lv, W. Z. Wang, S.W. Liu

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The major concern in the aviation industry is the flight safety. Although great effort has been put onto the development of material and system reliability, the failure cases of fatal accidents still occur nowadays. Due to the complexity of the aviation system, and the interaction among the failure components, the failure analysis of the related equipment is a little difficult. This study focuses on surveying the failure cases in aviation, which are extracted from failure analysis journals, including Engineering Failure Analysis and Case studies in Engineering Failure Analysis, in order to obtain the failure sensitive factors or failure sensitive parts. The analytical results show that, among the failure cases, fatigue failure is the largest in number of occurrence. The most failed components are the disk, blade, landing gear, bearing, and fastener. The frequently failed materials consist of steel, aluminum alloy, superalloy, and titanium alloy. Therefore, in order to assure the safety in aviation, more attention should be paid to the fatigue failures.

Keywords: aerospace, disk, failure analysis, fatigue

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Authors: Samart Rungjarean, Benchalak Muangmeesri, Dechrit Maneetham

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Monks' and Novices' chimes may have some restrictions, such as during the rain when a structure or location chimes or at a certain period. Alternately, certain temple bells may be found atop a tall, difficult-to-reach bell tower. As a result, the concept of designing a brass bell for use with a mobile phone over great distances was proposed. The Internet of Things (IoT) system will be used to regulate the bell by testing each of the three beatings with a wooden head. A stone-beating head and a steel beater. The sound resonates nicely, with the distance and rhythm of the hit contributing to this. An ESP8266 microcontroller is used by the control system to manage its operations and will communicate with the pneumatic system to convey a signal. Additionally, a mobile phone will be used to operate the entire system. In order to precisely direct and regulate the rhythm, There is a resonance of roughly 50 dB for this test, and the operating distance can be adjusted. Timing and accuracy were both good.

Keywords: automatic ring-bell, microcontroller, ring-bell, iot

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Authors: Jooyoung Park, Junkyeong Kim, Aoqi Zhang, Seunghee Park

Abstract:

Non-destructive testing on cable is in great demand due to safety accidents at sites where many equipments using cables are installed. In this paper, the quantitative change of the obtained signal was analyzed using a magnetic flux leakage (MFL) method. A two-dimensional simulation was conducted with a FEM model replicating real elevator cables. The simulation data were compared for three parameters (depth of defect, width of defect and inspection velocity). Then, an experiment on same conditions was carried out to verify the results of the simulation. Signals obtained from both the simulation and the experiment were transformed to characterize the properties of the damage. Throughout the results, a cable damage detection based on an MFL method was confirmed to be feasible. In further study, it is expected that the MFL signals of an entire specimen will be gained and visualized as well.

Keywords: magnetic flux leakage (mfl), cable damage detection, non-destructive testing, numerical simulation

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Authors: Dilek Zorlu Kaya, Sena Çenesiz, Utku Duran

Abstract:

Infectious pancreatic necrosis virus is a disease of great concern in aquaculture, causing mortality of 80 - 90% of the stocks in salmonid production. We aimed to investigate the efficacy of quercetin on oxidant and antioxidant parameters of infectious pancreatic necrosis virus, which is important for fish farming and economy in vitro. Quercetin experimental model was used in the cell culture of Oncorhynchus mykiss infected with infectious pancreatic necrosis virus. Malondialdehyde, ceruloplasmin, total oxidant capacity, total antioxidant levels, and glutathione-peroxidase were measured in the samples. As a result of the study, it was observed that quercetin can minimize the damage caused by scavenging free radicals in cells infected with infectious pancreatic necrosis virus. Thus, we think that an important development can be achieved for fish farming and the economy.

Keywords: IPNV, oncorhynchus mykiss, TAS, TOS, quercetin

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