Search results for: global thresholding transform

Authors: Fagner Luiz P. Salles, Janaina C. Oliveira, Ivair P. Cesar

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Statement of the Problem: Auriculotherapy (AT) is a TCM technique, which uses seeds instead of needles, based physiologically on the mechanical stimulation of the cranial nerves. In the context of understanding the new concept of health of the WHO, the AT is an integrative approach for achieving Global Health Care so as to achieve the global health care concerns. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of auriculotherapy on pain and sleep quality in patients with chronic pain. Methodology and Theoretical Orientation: This study was performed between February and March 2017 at the Faculdade Estácio de Sá de Vitória, Brazil. The pain evaluation was through VAS in 4 periods: maximum, minimum, average and at the time of evaluation; the evaluation of sleep quality was used the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. Socio-demographic data included: gender, age, use of medication and BMI. All data are presented as mean (standard deviation), Teste Mann-Whitney and T-student with P-values < 0.05 were regarded as significant. Findings: Participated in this study thirty-two individuals with age (M = 43.18, SD = 17.86), the time with pain in years (M = 3.67, SD = 3.68), 81.7% were female, 75% of the individuals used medication and BMI (M = 26.67; SD = 6.20). The pain presented improvement in the maximum level and the average of the pain and sleep quality before did not have statistically significant results. Conclusion and Significance: This study showed that TA is efficacy for reduction levels of pain. However, AT was not effective in improving sleep quality.

Keywords: auriculotherapy, chronic pain, sleep quality, integrative approach

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Authors: Tracey Jean Boisseau

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Recently, the rise of concerted right-wing and authoritarian movements has put feminists as well as women, queer, trans, and non-binary folk, immigrants, refugees, the global poor, and people of color in their crosshairs. The U.S. is seeing unprecedented attacks on liberal democratic institutions, escalating “culture wars,” and increased anti-intellectual vitriol specifically targeting feminist and anti-racist educators and scholars. Such vitriol has fueled new legislation curtailing or outright banning of “gender studies” for its ideological commitment to theorizing gender identity as a cultural construct and an inherently political project rather than a “natural” binary that can not be contested or interrogated. At the same time, across the globe—in Afghanistan, Argentina, Brazil, France, Haiti, Hungary, Kenya, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Sweden, Turkey, Uganda, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere—emergent anti-feminist, nativist, and white-supremacist political parties, as well as established autocratic and authoritarian regimes, have instituted blatantly misogynistic, anti-queer, and anti-trans legislation, often accompanied by governmental and extra-governmental policies explicitly intended to marginalize, erase, suppress, or extinguish gender studies as a legitimate academic discipline, topic of research, and teaching field. This paper considers the origins and effects of such legislation -as well as the strategies exhibited by practitioners of gender studies to counter these effects and resist erasure- from a cross-cultural perspective. The research underpinning this paper’s conclusions includes a survey of nearly 2000 gender studies programs in the U.S. and interviews with dozens of gender studies scholars and administrative leaders of gender-studies programs located worldwide. The goal of this paper is to illuminate distinctions, continuities, and global connections between anti-gender studies legislation that emanates from within national borders but arises from rightwing movements that supercede those borders, and that, ultimately, require globalist responses.

Keywords: anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQ, legislation, criminalization, authoritarianism, globalization

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Authors: A. Giniatoulline

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A model of the mathematical fluid dynamics which describes the motion of a three-dimensional viscous rotating fluid in a homogeneous gravitational field with the consideration of the salinity and heat transfer is considered in a vertical finite layer. The model is a generalization of the linearized Navier-Stokes system with the addition of the Coriolis parameter and the equations for changeable density, salinity, and heat transfer. An explicit solution is constructed and the proof of the existence and uniqueness theorems is given. The localization and the structure of the spectrum of inner waves is also investigated. The results may be used, in particular, for constructing stable numerical algorithms for solutions of the considered models of fluid dynamics of the Atmosphere and the Ocean.

Keywords: Fourier transform, generalized solutions, Navier-Stokes equations, stratified fluid

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Authors: Manoj Gupta, Nirmendra Singh Bhadauria

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Most of the applications in image processing require high spatial and high spectral resolution in a single image. For example satellite image system, the traffic monitoring system, and long range sensor fusion system all use image processing. However, most of the available equipment is not capable of providing this type of data. The sensor in the surveillance system can only cover the view of a small area for a particular focus, yet the demanding application of this system requires a view with a high coverage of the field. Image fusion provides the possibility of combining different sources of information. In this paper, we have decomposed the image using DTCWT and then fused using average and hybrid of (maxima and average) pixel level techniques and then compared quality of both the images using PSNR.

Keywords: image fusion, DWT, DT-CWT, PSNR, average image fusion, hybrid image fusion

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Authors: Victoria Appatova

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internal and external, that are largely shaped by the student’s perceptions. Since 2006, the ELE concept has been studied by an international group of scholars through the creation of an ELE survey which was administered in nine countries and translated into five languages. The survey compares students’ perceptions of their learning environments and self-efficacy across A student’s effective learning environment (ELE) is comprised of multiple factors, both cultures as well as distinguishes similarities and differences in the students’ needs related to their learning. The main objectives of this international project include the following: Determine a system of components constituting ELE from the perspective of students and other academic populations Analyze students’ expectations, and their chances to succeed in college based on their expectations Conceptualize a comprehensive approach for assessing the effectiveness of a learning environment Compare the actualization of the ELE concept in American schools versus other national educational systems Compare student perceptions of ELE with those of faculty, administrators, and professional staff Four major factors influencing student learning across cultures and various national educational systems were determined: students’ initiative in using support services; learning skills; external comfort; and curriculum. Recent changes in the students’ perceptions, resulting from technology advances and a rapid shift to online learning, are being explored. The findings call for administrative and pedagogical actions which would cultivate more equitable education systems.

Keywords: learning environment, student perception, global perspectives, self-efficacy

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Authors: Ábrám Zoltán

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Introduction: Climate change is now a major health risk, and its environmental and health effects have become frequently discussed topics. The consequences of climate change are clearly visible in natural disasters and excess deaths caused by extreme weather conditions. Global warming and the increasingly frequent extreme weather events have direct, immediate effects or long-term, indirect effects on health. For this reason, it is a need to teach the health effects of climate change in medical schools. Material and methods: We looked for various surveys, studies, and reports on the main pathways through which global warming affects health. Medical schools face the challenge of teaching the health implications of climate change and integrating knowledge about the health effects of climate change into medical training. For this purpose, there were organised World Café workshops for three target groups: medical students, academic staff, and practising medical doctors. Results: Among the goals of the research is the development of a detailed curriculum for medical students, which serves to expand their knowledge in basic education. At the same time, the project promotes the increase of teacher motivation and the development of methodological guidelines for university teachers; it also provides further training for practicing doctors. The planned teaching materials will be developed in a format suitable for traditional face-to-face teaching, as well as e-learning teaching materials. CLIMATEMED is a project based on the cooperation of six universities and institutions from four countries, the aim of which is to improve the curriculum and expand knowledge about the health effects of climate change at medical universities. Conclusions: In order to assess the needs, summarize the proposals, to develop the necessary strategy, World Café type, one-and-a-half to two-hour round table discussions will take place separately for medical students, academic staff, and practicing doctors. The CLIMATEMED project can facilitate the integration of knowledge about the health effects of climate change into curricula and can promote practical use. The avoidance of the unwanted effects of global warming and climate change is not only a public matter, but it is also a challenge to change our own lifestyle. It is the responsibility of all of us to protect the Earth's ecosystem and the physical and mental health of ourselves and future generations.

Keywords: climate change, health effects, medical schools, World Café, medical students

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Authors: Rasaq Kareem, Jacob Gbadeyan

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In this study, analysis of the entropy generation of an unsteady reactive hydromagnetic generalized couette fluid flow of a two-step exothermic chemical reaction through a channel with isothermal wall temperature under the influence of different chemical kinetics namely: Sensitized, Arrhenius and Bimolecular kinetics was investigated. The modelled nonlinear dimensionless equations governing the fluid flow were simplified and solved using the combined Laplace Differential Transform Method (LDTM). The effects of fluid parameters associated with the problem on the fluid temperature, entropy generation rate and Bejan number were discussed and presented through graphs.

Keywords: couette, entropy, exothermic, unsteady

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Authors: T. Thein, S. Kalyar Myo

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

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

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Authors: Emily Cherono Sawe, Elisha Ondieki Makori

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

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

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Authors: C. C. Castro, T. Senechal, D. Lahem, A. L. Hantson

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Formaldehyde is one of the most representative volatile organic compounds present in the indoor air of residential units and workplaces. Increased attention has been given to this toxic compound because of its carcinogenic effect in health. Biological or enzymatic transformation is being explored to degrade this pollutant. Pseudomonas putida is a bacteria able to synthesize formaldehyde dehydrogenase, an enzyme known to use formaldehyde as a substrate and transform it into less toxic compounds. The immobilization of bacterial cells in the surface of different supports through spraying or dip-coating is herein proposed. The determination of the enzymatic activity on the coated surfaces was performed as well as the study of its effect on formaldehyde degradation in an isolated chamber. Results show that the incorporation of microbial cells able to synthesize depolluting enzymes can be an innovative, low-cost, effective and environmentally friendly solution for indoor air depollution.

Keywords: cells encapsulation, formaldehyde, formaldehyde dehydrogenase, indoor air depollution

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Authors: Dino Carpentras, Alejandro Dinkelberg, Michael Quayle

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Within agent-based modeling, opinion dynamics is the field that focuses on modeling people's opinions. In this prolific field, most of the literature is dedicated to the exploration of the two 'degrees of freedom' and how they impact the model’s properties (e.g., the average final opinion, the number of final clusters, etc.). These degrees of freedom are (1) the interaction rule, which determines how agents update their own opinion, and (2) the network topology, which defines the possible interaction among agents. In this work, we show that the third degree of freedom exists. This can be used to change a model's output up to 100% of its initial value or to transform two models (both from the literature) into each other. Since opinion dynamics models are representations of the real world, it is fundamental to understand how people’s opinions can be measured. Even for abstract models (i.e., not intended for the fitting of real-world data), it is important to understand if the way of numerically representing opinions is unique; and, if this is not the case, how the model dynamics would change by using different representations. The process of measuring opinions is non-trivial as it requires transforming real-world opinion (e.g., supporting most of the liberal ideals) to a number. Such a process is usually not discussed in opinion dynamics literature, but it has been intensively studied in a subfield of psychology called psychometrics. In psychometrics, opinion scales can be converted into each other, similarly to how meters can be converted to feet. Indeed, psychometrics routinely uses both linear and non-linear transformations of opinion scales. Here, we analyze how this transformation affects opinion dynamics models. We analyze this effect by using mathematical modeling and then validating our analysis with agent-based simulations. Firstly, we study the case of perfect scales. In this way, we show that scale transformations affect the model’s dynamics up to a qualitative level. This means that if two researchers use the same opinion dynamics model and even the same dataset, they could make totally different predictions just because they followed different renormalization processes. A similar situation appears if two different scales are used to measure opinions even on the same population. This effect may be as strong as providing an uncertainty of 100% on the simulation’s output (i.e., all results are possible). Still, by using perfect scales, we show that scales transformations can be used to perfectly transform one model to another. We test this using two models from the standard literature. Finally, we test the effect of scale transformation in the case of finite precision using a 7-points Likert scale. In this way, we show how a relatively small-scale transformation introduces both changes at the qualitative level (i.e., the most shared opinion at the end of the simulation) and in the number of opinion clusters. Thus, scale transformation appears to be a third degree of freedom of opinion dynamics models. This result deeply impacts both theoretical research on models' properties and on the application of models on real-world data.

Keywords: degrees of freedom, empirical validation, opinion scale, opinion dynamics

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Authors: Mohammad Borhani, Ahmad Jamshidzaei, Mehdi Koohsari

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The study of climate has captivated human interest throughout history. In response to this fascination, individuals historically organized their daily activities in alignment with prevailing climatic conditions and seasonal variations. Understanding the elements and specific climatic parameters of each region, such as precipitation, which directly impacts human life, is essential because, in recent years, there has been a significant increase in heavy rainfall in various parts of the world attributed to the effects of climate change. Climate prediction models suggest a future scenario characterized by an increase in severe precipitation events and related floods on a global scale. This is a result of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions causing changes in the natural precipitation patterns. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported global warming in 2001. The average global temperature has shown an increasing trend since 1861. In the 20th century, this increase has been between (0/2 ± 0/6) °C. The present study focused on examining the trend of monthly, seasonal, and annual precipitation in Sistan and Baluchestan provinces. The study employed data obtained from 13 precipitation measurement stations managed by the Iran Water Resources Management Company, encompassing daily precipitation records spanning the period from 1997 to 2016. The results indicated that the total monthly precipitation at the studied stations in Sistan and Baluchestan province follows a sinusoidal trend. The highest intense precipitation was observed in January, February, and March, while the lowest occurred in September, October, and then November. The investigation of the trend of seasonal precipitation in this province showed that precipitation follows an upward trend in the autumn season, reaching its peak in winter, and then shows a decreasing trend in spring and summer. Also, the examination of average precipitation indicated that the highest yearly precipitation occurred in 1997 and then in 2004, while the lowest annual precipitation took place between 1999 and 2001. The analysis of the annual precipitation trend demonstrates a decrease in precipitation from 1997 to 2016 in Sistan and Baluchestan province.

Keywords: climate change, extreme precipitation, greenhouse gas, trend analysis

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Authors: Nnedum Obiajuru Anthony Ugochukwu, Ezechukwu Emmanuel Ntomchukwu

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The research investigated the importance of marketing and customer relationship management in post-consolidated banks in achieving success and survival in the face of intense competition and global economic meltdown. The problem lies in the fact that during the pre-consolidation era in the banking industry in Nigeria, banks were comfortable transacting their businesses from their armchairs. Little attention was paid to marketing by banks as a veritable means of achieving and consolidating their profit position. This situation, no doubt sustained because banks were more or less currency exchange centers where customers buy and sell foreign exchange which was highly demanded, but in very short supply. Today, deregulation and consolidation of banks in Nigeria have tremendously increased the tempo of activities in the banking industry, and competition has become very severe among banks. The weak link in the success of post-consolidated banks in Nigeria is the utter neglect, and light or unserious consideration of customer relationship marketing by banks. Armchair banking which banks have been practicing has no regard for marketing as a means to survival. However, in order to survive, post-consolidated banks must take relationship marketing and customer relationship management seriously especially in the face of the current global economic crisis. This paper aims at exploring the role of marketing in building and managing customer relationships as a means to survival in post-consolidation banking in Nigeria.

Keywords: marketing, customer relationships, banking sector, Nigeria

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Authors: Muthana A. M. Jamel Al-Gburi

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Elimination of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas from our atmosphere is very important but complicated, and since there is always an increase in the gas amounts of the other greenhouse ones in our atmosphere, causes by both some of the human activities and the burning of the fossil fuels, which leads to the Global Warming phenomena i.e., increasing the earth temperature to a higher level, creates desertification, tornadoes and storms. In our present research project, we constructed our own system to extract carbon dioxide directly from the atmospheric air at the room conditions and investigated how to convert the gas into a useful mineral or Nano scale fibers made of carbon by using several chemical processes and chemical reactions leading to a valuable building material and also to mitigate the environmental negative change. In the present water pool system (Carbone Dioxide Domestic Extractor), the ocean-sea water was used to dissolve the CO2 gas from the room and converted into carbonate minerals by using a number of additives like shampoo, clay and MgO. Note that the atmospheric air includes CO2 gas has circulated within the sea water by air pump connected to a perforated tubes fixed deep on the pool base. Those chemical agents were mixed with the ocean-sea water to convert the formed acid from the water-CO2 reaction into a useful mineral. After we successfully constructed the system, we did intense experiments and investigations on the CO2 gas reduction level and found which is the optimum active chemical agent to work in the atmospheric conditions.

Keywords: global warming, CO₂ gas, ocean-sea water, additives, solubility level

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Authors: Helene Jacobson Pettersson, Linda Lill

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Research that combines educational science, social work and migration studies shows that ethnic relations tend to be represented from various angles and with different content. As studied here, it is found in steering documents, literature, and teaching that the construction of ethnic relations related to social work varies in education over time. The study has its actuality in changed preconditions to social work education caused by the demographic development and the on-going globalization in the Swedish society. In this presentation we will explore strategies and experiences of teaching ethnic relations at social work educations in Sweden. The purpose is to investigate the strategies that are used and what content is given to ethnic relations in the social work education. University teachers are interviewed concerning their interpretation of steering documents related to the content and how they transform this in their teaching. Even though there has been a tradition to include aspects as intercultural relations and ethnicity, the norms of the welfare state has continued to be the basis for how to conceptualize people’s way of living and social problems. Additionally, the contemporary migration situation with a large number of refugees coming to Sweden peaking in 2015, dramatically changes the conditions for social work as a practice field. Increasing economic and social tensions in Sweden, becomes a challenge for the universities to support the students to achieve theoretical and critical knowledge and skills needed to work for social change, human rights and equality in the ethnic diverse Swedish society. The study raises questions about how teachers interpret the goals of the social work programs in terms of ethnic relations. How do they transform this into teaching? How are ethnic relations in social work described and problematized in lectures, cases and examinations? The empirical material is based on interviews with teachers involved in the social work education at four Swedish universities. The interviewees were key persons in the sense that they could influence the course content, and they were drawn from different semesters of the program. In depth interviews are made on the themes; personal entrance, description and understanding of ethnic relations in social work, teachers’ conception of students understanding of ethnic relations, and the content, form and strategies for teaching used by the teachers. The analysis is thematic and inspired from narrative analysis. The results show that the subject is relatively invisible in steering documents. The interviewees have experienced changes in the teaching over time, with less focus on intercultural relations and specific cultural competence. Instead ethnic relations are treated more contextually and interacting with categories as gender, class and age. The need of theoretical and critical knowledge of migration and ethnic relations in a broad sense but also for specific professional use is emphasized.

Keywords: ethnic relations, social work education, social change, human rights, equality, ethnic diversity in Sweden

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Authors: K. Suganya Devi, P. Srinivasan, M. P. Vaishnave, G. Arutperumjothi

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Today’s internet world is highly prone to various online attacks, of which the most harmful attack is phishing. The attackers host the fake websites which are very similar and look alike. We propose an image based authentication using steganography and visual cryptography to prevent phishing. This paper presents a secure steganographic technique for true color (RGB) images and uses Discrete Cosine Transform to compress the images. The proposed method hides the secret data inside the cover image. The use of visual cryptography is to preserve the privacy of an image by decomposing the original image into two shares. Original image can be identified only when both qualified shares are simultaneously available. Individual share does not reveal the identity of the original image. Thus, the existence of the secret message is hard to be detected by the RS steganalysis.

Keywords: image security, random LSB, steganography, visual cryptography

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Authors: Susan E Orlovich

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Ongoing, effective teacher professional learning is acknowledged as a critical influence on teacher practice. However, it is unclear whether the elements of effective professional learning result in transformed teacher practice in the classroom. This research project is interested in 4C teacher professional learning. The professional learning practices to assist teachers in transforming their practice to integrate the 4C capabilities seldom feature in the academic literature. The 4Cs are a shorthand way of representing the concepts of communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical reflection and refer to the capabilities needed for deeper learning, personal growth, and effective participation in society. The New South Wales curriculum review (2020) acknowledges that identifying, teaching, and assessing the 4C capabilities are areas of challenge for teachers. However, it also recognises that it is essential for teachers to build the confidence and capacity to understand, teach and assess the capabilities necessary for learners to thrive in the 21st century. This qualitative research project explores the professional learning experiences of sixteen teachers in four different primaries (K-6) settings in Sydney, Australia, who are learning to integrate, teach and assess the 4Cs. The project draws on the Theory of Practice Architecture as a framework to analyse and interpret teachers' experiences in each site. The sixteen participants in the study are teachers from four primary settings and include early career, experienced, and teachers in leadership roles (including the principal). In addition, some of the participants are also teachers who are learning within a Community of Practice (CoP) as their school setting is engaged in a 4C professional learning, Community of Practice. Qualitative and arts-informed research methods are utilised to examine the cultural-discursive, social-political, and material-economic practice arrangements of the site, explore how these arrangements may have shaped the professional learning experiences of teachers, and in turn, influence the teaching practices of the 4Cs in the setting. The research is in the data analysis stage (October 2022), with preliminary findings pending. The research objective is to investigate the elements of the professional learning experiences undertaken by teachers to teach the 4Cs in the primary setting. The lens of practice architectures theory is used to identify the influence of the practice architectures on critical praxis in each site and examine how the practice arrangements enable or constrain the teaching of 4C capabilities. This research aims to offer deep insight into the practice arrangements which may enable or constrain teacher professional learning in the 4Cs. Such insight from this study may contribute to a better understanding of the practices that enable teachers to transform their practice to achieve the integration, teaching, and assessment of the 4C capabilities.

Keywords: 4Cs, communication, collaboration, creativity, critical reflection, teacher professional learning

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Authors: Edilene Machado, Carolina Karoly, Amanda Britz, Luciane Salvi, Claudineia Brazil

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Climate teleconnections refer to the climatic relationships between geographically distant regions, where changes in one location can influence weather patterns in another. These connections can occur through atmospheric and oceanic processes, leading to variations in temperature, precipitation, and other climatic elements. Studying teleconnections is crucial for better understanding the mechanisms that govern global climate and the potential consequences of climate change. A notable example of a teleconnection is the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which involves the interaction between the Equatorial Pacific Ocean and the atmosphere. During El Niño episodes, there is anomalous warming of the surface waters in the Equatorial Pacific, resulting in significant changes in global climate patterns. These changes can affect rainfall distribution, wind patterns, and temperatures in different parts of the world. The cold phase of ENSO, known as La Niña, is often associated with reduced precipitation and below-average temperatures in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Therefore, the objective of this research is to identify patterns between El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events in their different phases and dengue transmission. Meteorological data and dengue case records for the city of Porto Alegre, in the southern region of Brazil, were used for the development of this research. The study highlighted that the highest incidence of dengue cases occurred during the cold phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

Keywords: climate patterns, climate teleconnections, climate variability, dengue, El Niño-Southern oscillation

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Authors: Priya Saha, Sourav Dey Roy Jr., Debotosh Bhattacharjee, Mita Nasipuri, Barin Kumar De, Mrinal Kanti Bhowmik

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Biometric face recognition technology (FRT) has gained a lot of attention due to its extensive variety of applications in both security and non-security perspectives. It has come into view to provide a secure solution in identification and verification of person identity. Although other biometric based methods like fingerprint scans, iris scans are available, FRT is verified as an efficient technology for its user-friendliness and contact freeness. Accurate facial feature localization plays an important role for many facial analysis applications including biometrics and emotion recognition. But, there are certain factors, which make facial feature localization a challenging task. On human face, expressions can be seen from the subtle movements of facial muscles and influenced by internal emotional states. These non-rigid facial movements cause noticeable alterations in locations of facial landmarks, their usual shapes, which sometimes create occlusions in facial feature areas making face recognition as a difficult problem. The paper proposes a new hybrid based technique for automatic landmark detection in both neutral and expressive frontal and near frontal face images. The method uses the concept of thresholding, sequential searching and other image processing techniques for locating the landmark points on the face. Also, a Graphical User Interface (GUI) based software is designed that could automatically detect 16 landmark points around eyes, nose and mouth that are mostly affected by the changes in facial muscles. The proposed system has been tested on widely used JAFFE and Cohn Kanade database. Also, the system is tested on DeitY-TU face database which is created in the Biometrics Laboratory of Tripura University under the research project funded by Department of Electronics & Information Technology, Govt. of India. The performance of the proposed method has been done in terms of error measure and accuracy. The method has detection rate of 98.82% on JAFFE database, 91.27% on Cohn Kanade database and 93.05% on DeitY-TU database. Also, we have done comparative study of our proposed method with other techniques developed by other researchers. This paper will put into focus emotion-oriented systems through AU detection in future based on the located features.

Keywords: biometrics, face recognition, facial landmarks, image processing

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Authors: Wendy Maddison

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This paper describes an Action Research project which was undertaken to inform professional practice in order to develop a newly created Centre for Student Success in the specific context of transnational medical and nursing education in the Middle East. The objectives were to enhance the academic performance, persistence, integration and personal and professional development of a multinational study body, in particular in relation to preclinical medical students, and to establish a comfortable, friendly and student-driven environment within an Irish medical university recently established in Bahrain. Expatriating a new part of itself into a corner of the world and within a context which could be perceived as the antithesis of itself, in particular in terms of traditional cultural and organisational values, the university has had to innovate in the range of services, programmes and other offerings which engages and supports the academic success of medical and nursing students as they “encounter the world in the classroom” in the context of an Arab Islamic culture but within a European institution of transnational education, engaging with a global learning environment locally. The outcomes of the project resulted in the development of a specific student success ‘signature’ for this particular transnational higher education context.

Keywords: transnational higher education, medical education, action research, student success, Middle Eastern context, student persistence in the global-local, student support mechanisms

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Authors: Ammar Z. Alshemary, Yi-Fan Goh, Rafaqat Hussain

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Magnesium (Mg2+), strontium (Sr2+) and sulphate ions (SO42-) were successfully substituted into hydroxyapatite (Ca10-x-y MgxSry(PO4)6-z(SO4)zOH2-z) structure through ion exchange process at cationic and anionic sites. Mg2+and Sr2+ ions concentrations were varied between (0.00-0.10), keeping concentration of SO42- ions at z=0.05. [Mg (NO3)2], [Sr (NO3)2] and (Na2SO4) were used as Mg2+, Sr2+, and SO42- sources respectively. The synthesized white precipitate were subjected to heat treatment at 500ºC and finally characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier Transform infra-red spectroscopy (FTIR). The results showed that the substitution of Mg2+, Sr2+ and SO42- ions into the HA lattice resulted in an increase in the broadness and reduction of XRD peaks. This confirmed that the crystallinity was reduced due to the substitution of ions. Similarly, FTIR result showed the effect of substitution on phosphate bands as well as exchange of hydroxyl group by SO42- ions to balance the charges on HA surface.

Keywords: hydroxyapatite, substitution, characterization, XRD, FTIR

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Authors: Juliane Spaak

Abstract:

A life-cycle assessment was performed, looking at seven retrofit projects in New Zealand using LCAQuickV3.5. The study found that retrofits save up to 80% of embodied carbon emissions for the structural elements compared to a new building. In other words, it is only a 20% carbon investment to transform and extend a building’s life. In addition, the systems were evaluated by looking at environmental impacts over the design life of these buildings and resilience using FEMA P58 and PACT software. With the increasing interest in Zero Carbon targets, significant changes in the building and construction sector are required. Emissions for buildings arise from both embodied carbon and operations. Based on the significant advancements in building energy technology, the focus is moving more toward embodied carbon, a large portion of which is associated with the structure. Since older buildings make up most of the real estate stock of our cities around the world, their reuse through structural retrofit and wider refurbishment plays an important role in extending the life of a building’s embodied carbon. New Zealand’s building owners and engineers have learned a lot about seismic issues following a decade of significant earthquakes. Recent earthquakes have brought to light the necessity to move away from constructing code-minimum structures that are designed for life safety but are frequently ‘disposable’ after a moderate earthquake event, especially in relation to a structure’s ability to minimize damage. This means weaker buildings sit as ‘carbon liabilities’, with considerably more carbon likely to be expended remediating damage after a shake. Renovating and retrofitting older assets plays a big part in reducing the carbon profile of the buildings sector, as breathing new life into a building’s structure is vastly more sustainable than the highest quality ‘green’ new builds, which are inherently more carbon-intensive. The demolition of viable older buildings (often including heritage buildings) is increasingly at odds with society’s desire for a lower carbon economy. Bringing seismic resilience and carbon best practice together in decision-making can open the door to commercially attractive outcomes, with retrofits that include structural and sustainability upgrades transforming the asset’s revenue generation. Across the global real estate market, tenants are increasingly demanding the buildings they occupy be resilient and aligned with their own climate targets. The relationship between seismic performance and ‘sustainable design’ has yet to fully mature, yet in a wider context is of profound consequence. A whole-of-life carbon perspective on a building means designing for the likely natural hazards within the asset’s expected lifespan, be that earthquake, storms, damage, bushfires, fires, and so on, ¬with financial mitigation (e.g., insurance) part, but not all, of the picture.

Keywords: retrofit, sustainability, earthquake, reuse, carbon, resilient

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Authors: Suheyla Kocaman, Gulnare Ahmetli

Abstract:

In this study, acrylated soybean oil (AESO) was used as modifying agent for DGEBF-type epoxy resin (ER). AESO was used as a co-matrix in 50 wt % with ER. Composites with eco-friendly natural fillers-banana bark and seashell were prepared. MNA was used as a hardener. Effect of banana peel (BP) and seashell (SSh) fillers on mechanical properties, such as tensile strength, elongation at break, and hardness of M-ERs were investigated. The structure epoxy resins (M-ERs) cured with MNA and sebacic acid (SAc) hardeners were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). Tensile test results show that Young’s (elastic) modulus, tensile strength and hardness of SSh particles reinforced with M-ERs were higher than the M-ERs reinforced with banana bark.

Keywords: biobased composite, epoxy resin, mechanical properties, natural fillers

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Authors: Rameez Ahmad, Aqib Mehmood, Imran Khan

Abstract:

Self-directed car (SDC) that can drive itself from one fact to another without support from a driver. Certain trust that self-directed car obligate the probable to transform the transportation manufacturing while essentially removing coincidences, and cleaning up the environment. This study realizes the effects that SDC (also called a self-driving, driver or robotic) vehicle travel demands and ride scheme is likely to have. Without the typical obstacles that allows detection of a audio vision based hardware and software construction (It (SDC) and cost benefits, the vehicle technologies, Gold (Generic Obstacle and Lane Detection) to a knowledge-based system to predict their potential and consider the shape, color, or balance) and an organized environment with colored lane patterns, lane position ban. Discovery the problematic consequence of (SDC) on GT (grand trunk road) road and brand the car further effectual.

Keywords: SDC, gold, GT, knowledge-based system

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Authors: Selina Doncevic, Lisa Perla, Angela Kindvall

Abstract:

The Global War on Terror which began after September 11, 2011, increased survivability of severe injuries requiring varying trajectories of rehabilitation and recovery. The costs encompass physiologic, functional, social, emotional, psychological, vocational and scholastic domains of life. The purpose of this poster is to inform private sector health care practitioners and clinicians at various levels of the unique and long term dynamics of healthcare recovery for polytrauma, and traumatic brain injured service members and veterans in the United States of America. Challenges include care delivery between the private sector, the department of defense, and veterans affairs healthcare systems while simultaneously supporting the dynamics of acute as well as latent complications associated with severe injury and illness. Clinical relevance, subtleties of protracted recovery, and overwhelmed systems of care are discussed in the context of lessons learned and in reflection on previous wars. Additional concerns for consideration and discussion include: the cost of protracted healthcare, various U.S. healthcare payer systems, lingering community reintegration challenges, ongoing care giver support, the rise of veterans support groups and the development of private sector clinical partnerships.

Keywords: brain injury, future, polytrauma, rehabilitation

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Authors: Mohammad Abotalib, Hamid Alhamadi

Abstract:

In Kuwait, electricity is generated from two primary sources that are heavy fuel combustion and natural gas combustion. As Kuwait relies mainly on petroleum-based products for electricity generation, identifying and understanding the environmental trade-off of such operations should be carefully investigated. The life cycle assessment (LCA) tool is applied to identify the potential environmental impact of electricity generation under three scenarios by considering the material flow in various stages involved, such as raw-material extraction, transportation, operations, and waste disposal. The three scenarios investigated represent current and futuristic electricity grid mixes. The analysis targets six environmental impact categories: (1) global warming potential (GWP), (2) acidification potential (AP), (3) water depletion (WD), (4) acidification potential (AP), (4) eutrophication potential (EP), (5) human health particulate matter (HHPM), and (6) smog air (SA) per one kWh of electricity generated. Results indicate that one kWh of electricity generated would have a GWP (881-1030) g CO₂-eq, mainly from the fuel combustion process, water depletion (0.07-0.1) m³ of water, about 68% from cooling processes, AP (15.3-17.9) g SO₂-eq, EP (0.12-0.14) g N eq., HHPA (1.13- 1.33)g PM₂.₅ eq., and SA (64.8-75.8) g O₃ eq. The variation in results depend on the scenario investigated. It can be observed from the analysis that introducing solar photovoltaic and wind to the electricity grid mix improves the performance of scenarios 2 and 3 where 15% of the electricity comes from renewables correspond to a further decrease in LCA results.

Keywords: energy, functional uni, global warming potential, life cycle assessment, energy, functional unit

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Authors: Ntokozo C. Mthembu

Abstract:

The notion of sustainable chemistry has become significant in the discourse for a global post-colonial era, including South Africa, especially when it comes to access to the general health system and related policies in relation to disease or ease of human life. In view of the stubborn vestiges of coloniality in the daily lives of indigenous African people in general, the fundamentals of present Western medical and traditional medicine systems and related policies in the democratic era were examined in this study. The situation of traditional healers in relation to current policy was also reviewed. The advent of democracy in South Africa brought about a variety of development opportunities and limitations, particularly with respect to indigenous African knowledge systems such as traditional medicine. There were high hopes that the limitations of previous narrow cultural perspectives would be rectified in the democratic era through development interventions, but some sections of society, such as traditional healers, remain marginalised. The Afrocentric perspective was explored in dissecting government interventions related to traditional medicine. This article highlights that multiple medical systems should be adopted and that health policies should be aligned in order to guarantee mutual respect and to address the remnants of colonialism in South Africa, Africa and the broader global community.

Keywords: traditional healing system, healers, pluralist healthcare system, post-colonial era

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Authors: G. S. Sudha, Smita Mohanty, S. K. Nayak

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Epoxidized oils can replace petroleum derived materials in numerous industrial applications, because of their respectable oxirane oxygen content and high reactivity of oxirane ring. Epoxidized castor oil (ECO) has synthesized in the presence of a sulphonated polystyrene type cation exchange resin. The formation of the oxirane ring was confirmed by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis. The epoxidation reaction was evaluated by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) studies. ECO is used as a toughening phase to increase the toughness of petroleum-based epoxy resin.

Keywords: epoxy resin, epoxidized castor oil, sulphonated polystyrene type cation exchange resin, petroleum derived materials

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Authors: T. Davitashvili

Abstract:

At present impact of global climate change on the territory of Georgia is evident at least on the background of the Caucasus glaciers melting which during the last century have decreased to half their size. Glaciers are early indicators of ongoing global and regional climate change. Knowledge of the Caucasus glaciers fluctuation (melting) is an extremely necessary tool for planning hydro-electric stations and water reservoir, for development tourism and agriculture, for provision of population with drinking water and for prediction of water supplies in more arid regions of Georgia. Otherwise, the activity of anthropogenic factors has resulted in decreasing of the mowing, arable, unused lands, water resources, shrubs and forests, owing to increasing the production and building. Transformation of one type structural unit into another one has resulted in local climate change and its directly or indirectly impacts on different components of water resources on the territory of Georgia. In the present paper, some hydrological specifications of Georgian water resources and its potential pollutants on the background of regional climate change are presented. Some results of Georgian’s glaciers pollution and its melting process are given. The possibility of surface and subsurface water pollution owing to accidents at oil pipelines or railway routes are discussed. The specific properties of regional climate warming process in the eastern Georgia are studied by statistical methods. The effect of the eastern Georgian climate change upon water resources is investigated.

Keywords: climate, droughts, pollution, water resources

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Authors: Parisa Mansour

Abstract:

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was discovered and rapidly spread to various countries around the world since the end of 2019. Computed tomography (CT) images have been used as an important alternative to the time-consuming RT. PCR test. However, manual segmentation of CT images alone is a major challenge as the number of suspected cases increases. Thus, accurate and automatic segmentation of COVID-19 infections is urgently needed. Because the imaging features of the COVID-19 infection are different and similar to the background, existing medical image segmentation methods cannot achieve satisfactory performance. In this work, we try to build a deep convolutional neural network adapted for the segmentation of chest CT images with COVID-19 infections. First, we maintain a large and novel chest CT image database containing 165,667 annotated chest CT images from 861 patients with confirmed COVID-19. Inspired by the observation that the boundary of an infected lung can be improved by global intensity adjustment, we introduce a feature variable block into the proposed deep CNN, which adjusts the global features of features to segment the COVID-19 infection. The proposed PV array can effectively and adaptively improve the performance of functions in different cases. We combine features of different scales by proposing a progressive atrocious space pyramid fusion scheme to deal with advanced infection regions with various aspects and shapes. We conducted experiments on data collected in China and Germany and showed that the proposed deep CNN can effectively produce impressive performance.

Keywords: chest, COVID-19, chest Image, coronavirus, CT image, chest CT

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