Search results for: temporal reference

Authors: Ali Dehgan Moroozeh, B. Farhadi Bansouleh

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Evapotranspiration is one of the most important components of the hydrological cycle. Evapotranspiration (ETo) is an important variable in water and energy balances on the earth’s surface, and knowledge of the distribution of ET is a key factor in hydrology, climatology, agronomy and ecology studies. Many researchers have a valid relationship, which is a function of climate factors, to estimate the potential evapotranspiration presented to the plant water stress or water loss, prevent. The FAO-Penman method (PM) had been recommended as a standard method. This method requires many data and these data are not available in every area of world. So, other methods should be evaluated for these conditions. When sufficient or reliable data to solve the PM equation are not available then Hargreaves equation can be used. The Hargreaves equation (HG) requires only daily mean, maximum and minimum air temperature extraterrestrial radiation .In this study, Hargreaves method (HG) were evaluated in 12 stations in the North West region of Iran. Results of HG and M.HG methods were compared with results of PM method. Statistical analysis of this comparison showed that calibration process has had significant effect on efficiency of Hargreaves method.

Keywords: evapotranspiration, hargreaves, equation, FAO-Penman method

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Authors: Cheuk Wing Lee, Kit Lun Yick, Sun Pui Ng, Joanne Yip

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Daily activities and exercise may result in large displacements of the breasts, which lead to breast pain and discomfort. Therefore, a proper bra design and fit can help to control excessive breast motion to prevent the over-stretching of the connective tissues. Nevertheless, bra fit problems, such as excessively high tension of the shoulder straps and a tight underband could have substantially negative effects on the wear comfort and health of the wearer. The purpose of this study is to, therefore, examine the effects of bra band tension on breast displacement. Usually, human wear trials are carried out, but there are inconsistencies during testing. Therefore, a soft manikin torso is used to examine breast displacement at walking speeds of 2.30 km/h and 4.08 km/h. The breast displacement itself is determined by using a VICON motion capture system. The 3D geometric changes of the underwire bra band tension and the corresponding control of breast movement are also analyzed by using a 3D handheld scanner along with Rapidform software. The results indicate that an appropriate bra band tension can help to reduce breast displacement and provide a comfortable angle for the underwire. The findings can be used by designers and bra engineers as a reference source to advance bra design and development.

Keywords: bra band, bra features, breast displacement, underwire angle

Procedia PDF Downloads 249

Authors: Dhruv Mehta, Alexander van Zuijlen, Hester Bijl

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Large Eddy Simulation (LES) numerically resolves the large energy-containing eddies of a turbulent flow, while modelling the small dissipative eddies. On a wind farm, these large scales carry the energy wind turbines extracts and are also responsible for transporting the turbines’ wakes, which may interact with downstream turbines and certainly with the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). In this situation, it is important to conserve the energy that these wake’s carry and which could be altered artificially through numerical dissipation brought about by the schemes used for the spatial discretisation and temporal integration. Numerical dissipation has been reported to cause the premature recovery of turbine wakes, leading to an over prediction in the power produced by wind farms.An energy-conserving scheme is free from numerical dissipation and ensures that the energy of the wakes is increased or decreased only by the action of molecular viscosity or the action of wind turbines (body forces). The aim is to create an LES package with energy-conserving schemes to simulate wind turbine wakes correctly to gain insight into power-production, wake meandering etc. Such knowledge will be useful in designing more efficient wind farms with minimal wake interaction, which if unchecked could lead to major losses in energy production per unit area of the wind farm. For their research, the authors intend to use the Energy-Conserving Navier-Stokes code developed by the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands.

Keywords: energy-conserving schemes, modelling turbulence, Large Eddy Simulation, atmospheric boundary layer

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Authors: Petr Homola, Roman Růžek

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Laser beam micro-drilling (LBMD) is one of the most important non-contact machining processes of materials that are difficult to machine by means oeqf conventional machining methods used in various industries. The paper is focused on LBMD knock-down effect on Ti-6Al-4V (Grade 5) titanium alloy sheets properties. Two various process configurations were verified with a focus on laser damages in back-structure parts affected by the process. The effects of the LBMD on the material properties were assessed by means of tensile and fatigue tests and fracture surface analyses. Fatigue limit of LBMD configurations reached a significantly lower value between 15% and 30% of the static strength as compared to the reference raw material with 58% value. The farther back-structure configuration gives a two-fold fatigue life as compared to the closer LBMD configuration at a given stress applied.

Keywords: fatigue, fracture surface, laser beam micro-drilling, titanium alloy

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Authors: Jie Yin, Jun Zhang

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Measuring the growth performance and critical supersaturation of particle group have a high reference value for constructing a supersaturated water vapor environment that can improve the removal efficiency of the high-concentration particle group. The critical supersaturation and the variation of the growth performance with supersaturation for high-concentration particles were measured by a flow cloud chamber. Findings suggest that the influence of particle concentration on the growth performance will reduce with the increase of supersaturation. Reducing residence time and increasing particle concentration have similar effects on the growth performance of the high-concentration particle group. Increasing particle concentration and shortening residence time will increase the critical supersaturation of the particle group. The critical supersaturation required to activate a high-concentration particle group is lower than that of the single-particle when the minimum particle size in the particle group is the same as that of a single particle.

Keywords: sub-micron particles, heterogeneous condensation, critical supersaturation, nucleation

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Authors: Abdelkader Hachemi & Boualem Remini

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Seawater intrusion is a significant challenge faced by coastal aquifers in the Mediterranean basin. This study aims to determine the position of the sharp interface between seawater and freshwater in the aquifer of Wadi Nador, located in the Wilaya of Tipaza, Algeria. A numerical areal sharp interface model using the finite element method is developed to investigate the spatial and temporal behavior of seawater intrusion. The aquifer is assumed to be homogeneous and isotropic. The simulation results are compared with geophysical prospection data obtained through electrical methods in 2011 to validate the model. The simulation results demonstrate a good agreement with the geophysical prospection data, confirming the accuracy of the sharp interface model. The position of the sharp interface in the aquifer is found to be approximately 1617 meters from the sea. Two scenarios are proposed to predict the interface position for the year 2024: one without pumping and the other with pumping. The results indicate a noticeable retreat of the sharp interface position in the first scenario, while a slight decline is observed in the second scenario. The findings of this study provide valuable insights into the dynamics of seawater intrusion in the Wadi Nador aquifer. The predicted changes in the sharp interface position highlight the potential impact of pumping activities on the aquifer's vulnerability to seawater intrusion. This study emphasizes the importance of implementing measures to manage and mitigate seawater intrusion in coastal aquifers. The sharp interface model developed in this research can serve as a valuable tool for assessing and monitoring the vulnerability of aquifers to seawater intrusion.

Keywords: seawater, intrusion, sharp interface, Algeria

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Authors: Djalal Hamed

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The aim of this paper is to perform an analytic solution of steady state natural convection in a narrow rectangular channel between two vertical parallel MTR-type fuel plates, imposed under a cosine shape heat flux to determine the margin of the nuclear core power at which the natural convection cooling mode can ensure a safe core cooling, where the cladding temperature should not be reach the specific safety limits (90 °C). For this purpose, a simple computer program is developed to determine the principal parameter related to the nuclear core safety such as the temperature distribution in the fuel plate and in the coolant (light water) as a function of the reactor power. Our results are validated throughout a comparison against the results of another published work, which is considered like a reference of this study.

Keywords: buoyancy force, friction force, natural convection, thermal hydraulic analysis, vertical heated rectangular channel

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

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

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

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Authors: Deng Tingting

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The coordinated and integrated development of regions is an inevitable requirement for China to move towards high-quality, sustainable development. As one of the regions with the best economic foundation and the strongest economic strength in western China, it is a typical area with national importance and strong network connection characteristics in terms of the comprehensive effect of linking the inland hinterland and connecting the western and national urban networks. The integrated development of the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle is of great strategic significance for the rapid and high-quality development of the western region. In the context of new urbanization, this paper takes 16 urban units within the economic circle as the research object, based on the 5-year panel data of population, regional economy, and spatial construction and development from 2016 to 2020, using the entropy method and Theil index to analyze the three target layers, and cause analysis. The research shows that there are temporal and spatial differences in the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle, and there are significant differences between the core city and the surrounding cities. Therefore, by reforming and innovating the regional coordinated development mechanism, breaking administrative barriers, and strengthening the "polar nucleus" radiation function to release the driving force for economic development, especially in the gully areas of economic development belts, not only promote the coordinated development of internal regions but also promote the coordinated and sustainable development of the western region and take a high-quality development path.

Keywords: Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle, new urbanization, coordinated regional development, Theil Index

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Authors: U. Datta

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The main objective of this study is to find a suitable approach to monitor the land infrastructure growth over a period of time using multispectral satellite images. Bi-temporal change detection method is unable to indicate the continuous change occurring over a long period of time. To achieve this objective, the approach used here estimates a statistical model from series of multispectral image data over a long period of time, assuming there is no considerable change during that time period and then compare it with the multispectral image data obtained at a later time. The change is estimated pixel-wise. Statistical composite hypothesis technique is used for estimating pixel based change detection in a defined region. The generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) is used to detect the changed pixel from probabilistic estimated model of the corresponding pixel. The changed pixel is detected assuming that the images have been co-registered prior to estimation. To minimize error due to co-registration, 8-neighborhood pixels around the pixel under test are also considered. The multispectral images from Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 from 2015 to 2018 are used for this purpose. There are different challenges in this method. First and foremost challenge is to get quite a large number of datasets for multivariate distribution modelling. A large number of images are always discarded due to cloud coverage. Due to imperfect modelling there will be high probability of false alarm. Overall conclusion that can be drawn from this work is that the probabilistic method described in this paper has given some promising results, which need to be pursued further.

Keywords: co-registration, GLRT, infrastructure growth, multispectral, multitemporal, pixel-based change detection

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Authors: M. Yilmaz, I. Yilmaz, M. Uysal

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The Earth system generates different phenomena that are observable at the surface of the Earth such as mass deformations and displacements leading to plate tectonics, earthquakes, and volcanism. The dynamic processes associated with the interior, surface, and atmosphere of the Earth affect the three pillars of geodesy: shape of the Earth, its gravity field, and its rotation. Geodesy establishes a characteristic structure in order to define, monitor, and predict of the whole Earth system. The traditional and new instruments, observables, and techniques in geodesy are related to the gravity field. Therefore, the geodesy monitors the gravity field and its temporal variability in order to transform the geodetic observations made on the physical surface of the Earth into the geometrical surface in which positions are mathematically defined. In this paper, the main components of the gravity field modeling, (Free-air and Bouguer) gravity anomalies are calculated via recent global models (EGM2008, EIGEN6C4, and GECO) over a selected study area. The model-based gravity anomalies are compared with the corresponding terrestrial gravity data in terms of standard deviation (SD) and root mean square error (RMSE) for determining the best fit global model in the study area at a regional scale in Turkey. The least SD (13.63 mGal) and RMSE (15.71 mGal) were obtained by EGM2008 for the Free-air gravity anomaly residuals. For the Bouguer gravity anomaly residuals, EIGEN6C4 provides the least SD (8.05 mGal) and RMSE (8.12 mGal). The results indicated that EIGEN6C4 can be a useful tool for modeling the gravity field of the Earth over the study area.

Keywords: free-air gravity anomaly, Bouguer gravity anomaly, global model, land gravity

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Authors: Sisi Xia, Dezhuan Tao, Junyan Yang, Weiting Xiong

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Under the background of Chinese urbanization changing from incremental development to stock development, the completion of urban public service facilities is essential to urban spatial quality. As public services facilities is a huge and complicated system, clarifying the various types of internal rules associated with the land market price is key to optimizing spatial layout. This paper takes Wuxi City as a representative sample location and establishes the digital analysis platform using urban price and several high-precision big data acquisition methods. On this basis, it analyzes the coupling relationship between different public service categories and land price, summarizing the coupling patterns of urban public facilities distribution and urban land price fluctuations. Finally, the internal mechanism within each of the two elements is explored, providing the reference of the optimum layout of urban planning and public service facilities.

Keywords: public service facilities, land price, urban spatial morphology, big data

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Authors: Hadi Shamoradifar, Behzad Teimuri, Parviz Parvaresh, Saeed Mohammadi

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One of the experimental facilities of the heavy water research reactor is the central test loop (C.T.L). It is located along the central axial line of the vessel, and therefore will highly affect the neutronic parameters of the reactor, so from the neutronics point of view, C.T.L is the most important facility. It is mainly designed for fuel testing, thought other applications such as radioisotope production and neutron activation, can be imagine for it. All of the simulations were performed by MCNPX2.6. As a first step towards C.T.L analysis, the effect of D2O-filled, H2O-filled, and He-filled C.T.L on the effective multiplication factor (Keff.), have been evaluated. According to results, H2O-filled C.T.L has a higher thermal neutron, while He-filled C.T.L includes more resonance neutrons. In the next step thermal and total axial neutron fluxes, were calculated and used as the comparison parameters. The core without C.T.L (C.T.L replaced by heavy water) is selected as the reference case, and the effect of all other cases is calculated according to that.

Keywords: heavy water reactor, neutronic calculations, central test loop, neutron activation

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Authors: Yin Rui, Yin Ming, Wang Yang

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For a rotational reference frame of the theory of special relativity, the critical radius is defined as the distance from the axis to the point where the tangential velocity is equal to the speed of light, and the critical cylinder as the set of all points separated from the axis by this critical radius. Based on these terms, two relativistic effects of rotation are discovered: (i) the tangential velocity in the region of Outside Critical Cylinder (OCC) is not superluminal due to the existence of space-time exchange; (ii) some of the physical quantities of the rotational body have an opposite mathematic sign at OCC versus those at Inside Critical Cylinder (ICC), which is termed as the Critical Cylindrical Effect (CCE). The laboratory experiments demonstrate that the repulsive force exerted on an anion by electrons will change to an attractive force by the electrons in precession while the anion is at OCC of the precession. Thirty-six screenshots from four experimental videos are provided. Theoretical proofs for both space-time exchange and CCE are then presented. The CCEs of field force are also discussed.

Keywords: critical radius, critical cylindrical effect, special relativity, space-time exchange

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Authors: Vedat Acar, Osman Eralp Çolakoğlu

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In this research, with reference to specialization of travel agencies being an important part of tourism industry, a project has been presented about a small-scale enterprise, called as Zeytinseli, contributing actively from the beginning to the end of the production process of olive and olive oil within the context of rural tourism. For this purpose in the research done, firstly, conceptual framework has been formed about travel agency, tour operatorship, specialized travel agency and rural tourism and the necessity of specialization on tourism has been emphasized in today's world. Afterwards, "olive", having an important role in both mythology and divine religions, has been handled within the scope of rural tourism. The cost of accommodation units about Zeytinseli operating in Didim, being a district of Aydın, has been calculated within the context of the project and a fifteen-day's tour to this enterprise has been presented at the end of this project. The research may be said to be an original research on account of embodying not only ecotourism, agro tourism but also cultural tourism and special interest tourism.

Keywords: agro tourism, rural tourism, specialization of travel agency, special interest tourism

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Authors: L. Arumuru

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The paper investigates computer anxiety and the use of computerized library system by university librarians in Delta State University library, Abraka, Nigeria. Some of the root causes of computer anxiety among university librarians such as lack of exposure to computers at early age, inadequate computer skills, inadequate computer training, fear at the sight of a computer, lack of understanding of how computers work, etc. were pin-pointed in the study. Also, the different services rendered in the university libraries with the aid of computers such as reference services, circulation services, acquisition services, cataloguing and classification services, etc. were identified. The study employed the descriptive survey research design through the expo-facto method, with a population of 56 librarians, while the simple percentage and frequency counts were used to analyze the data generated from the administered copies of the questionnaire. Based on the aforementioned root causes of computer anxiety and the resultant effect on computerized library system, recommendations were proffered in the study.

Keywords: computer anxiety, computerized library system, library services, university librarians

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Authors: Lamia Bourdache, Amar Djema

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The effect of non-Newtonian property (power law index n) on traveling waves of thin layer of power law fluid flowing over an inclined plane is investigated. For this, a simplified second-order two-equation model (SM) is used. The complete model is second-order four-equation (CM). It is derived by combining the weighted residual integral method and the lubrication theory. This is due to the fact that at the beginning of the instability waves, a very small number of waves is observed. Using a suitable set of test functions, second order terms are eliminated from the calculus so that the model is still accurate to the second order approximation. Linear, spatial, and temporal stabilities are studied. For travelling waves, a particular type of wave form that is steady in a moving frame, i.e., that travels at a constant celerity without changing its shape is studied. This type of solutions which are characterized by their celerity exists under suitable conditions, when the widening due to dispersion is balanced exactly by the narrowing effect due to the nonlinearity. Changing the parameter of celerity in some range allows exploring the entire spectrum of asymptotic behavior of these traveling waves. The (SM) model is converted into a three dimensional dynamical system. The result is that the model exhibits bifurcation scenarios such as heteroclinic, homoclinic, Hopf, and period-doubling bifurcations for different values of the power law index n. The influence of the non-Newtonian parameter on the nonlinear development of these travelling waves is discussed. It is found at the end that the qualitative characters of bifurcation scenarios are insensitive to the variation of the power law index.

Keywords: inclined plane, nonlinear stability, non-Newtonian, thin film

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Authors: Mouataz Zreika, Maria Estela Varua

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Stock investment decisions are often made based on current events of the global economy and the analysis of historical data. Conversely, visual representation could assist investors’ gain deeper understanding and better insight on stock market trends more efficiently. The trend analysis is based on long-term data collection. The study adopts a hybrid method that combines the Clustering algorithm and Force-directed algorithm to overcome the scalability problem when visualizing large data. This method exemplifies the potential relationships between each stock, as well as determining the degree of strength and connectivity, which will provide investors another understanding of the stock relationship for reference. Information derived from visualization will also help them make an informed decision. The results of the experiments show that the proposed method is able to produced visualized data aesthetically by providing clearer views for connectivity and edge weights.

Keywords: clustering, force-directed, graph drawing, stock investment analysis

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Authors: Emmanuel Dada, Adebayo-Victoria Tobi Dada

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The study evaluates land use and land cover changes in the cocoa belt of Ondo state to quantify its effect on the expanse of land occupied by cocoa plantation as the most suitable region for cocoa raisin in Nigeria. Time series of satellite imagery from Landsat-7 ETM+ and Landsat-8 TIRS covering years 2000 and 2015 respectively were used. The study area was classified into six land use themes of cocoa plantation, settlement, water body, light forest and grassland, forest, and bar surface and rock outcrop. The analyses revealed that out of total land area of 997714 hectares of land of the study area, cocoa plantation land use increased by 10.3% in 2015 from 312260.6 ha in 2000. Forest land use also increased by 6.3% in 2015 from 152144.1 ha in the year 2000, water body reduced from 2954.5 ha in the year 2000 by 0.1% in 2015, settlement land use increased by 3% in 2015 from 15194.6 ha in 2000, light forest and grassland area reduced by 10.4% between 2000 and 2015 and 9.1% reduction in bar surface and rock outcrop land use between the year 2000 and 2015 respectively. The reasons for different ranges in the changes observed in the land use and land cover in the study area could be due to increase in the incentive to cocoa farmers from both government and non-governmental organizations, developed new cocoa breed that thrive better in the light forest, rapid increased in the population of cocoa farmers’ settlements, and government promulgation of forest reserve law.

Keywords: satellite imagery, land use and land cover change, area of land

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Authors: Hima Elizabeth Mathew, V. VijayalakshmI

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All of us know what it is like to experience humor. Humor and laughter are universal aspects of human experience, occurring in all cultures and virtually in all individuals throughout the world. For people today, the workplace is associated more with the cubicles they sit, than with the co-workers around them. With reference to the current generation and the work context, the paper aims to understand the concept of humor at the workplace and its influence on team creativity in organizations. Humor is a multi-disciplinary topic that has been investigated for many years by researchers from fields such as anthropology, psychology, physiology and linguistics but significantly less thoroughly by management researchers. Researchers in the field of creativity also had their initial focus on the individual differences leading to creativity. Although the studies yielded some important findings regarding creative people, it provided the little help to practitioners in helping people develop creativity and almost ignored the role of social environment in enhancing creativity. After a review the relevant literature of the key variables, a theoretical framework is proposed linking workplace humor, emotional contagion, and team creativity. The findings of the study are expected to help academicians gain clarity on Workplace Humor for future research.

Keywords: emotional contagion, humor, team creativity, workplace humor

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Authors: Risanda Alirastra Budiantoro, Riesanda Najmi Sasmita, Sri Herianingrum

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Allah has given the guidance in the form of Islam for Muslim to take and lead all the aspects of life including the economic activity. The Islamic economic system is believed to be the answer to the economic problems that exist at this time. The goal is to achieve falah in kaffah by not doing some economic activities that are in violation as prescribed by Islam. An example for this is riba. Discourse on riba can be said ‘classical’ both in the development of Islamic thought and in Islamic civilization because riba often occurs in all aspects of public life, especially economic transactions (in Islam called muamalah). Riba is an additional retrieval, either in a sale and purchase transaction or lending in a false or contrary to the principle of muamalah in Islam. Prohibition of riba is obtained from various sources by the Qur'an and Hadith Rasulullah SAW, so the scholars firmly and clearly defined the prohibition of riba because there are exploitative elements that can harm the others. So, this study is aimed to identify Islamic economic system and the prohibition of riba in historical perspective. From the results of this study, it is expected to be a good reference for the reader to understand the Islamic economic system and riba in the future.

Keywords: economics system, riba, historical perspective, economy

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Authors: Ahmad Javid Zia, Abdulkerim Ilgun, Suleyman Kamil Akin, Mustafa Altin

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Curing conditions that help concrete, which is one of the most widely used building materials in construction sector, gain strength today is one the important issues. In this study the varying concrete strength depending on water temperature at curing stage is investigated through tests at laboratory. At laboratory the curing conditions has been determined according to both TS EN 12390-2 and regular construction site while performing the experiments on specimens. Five samples have been taken from concrete and cured under five different curing conditions and the compressive strength results of concrete specimens have been compared. One of these five curing conditions has been prepared accordance with TS EN 12390-2, the sample cured at 20 ± 2 ˚C and accepted as reference samples. Two of the remaining sample groups have been cured in 5 ± 2 ˚C and 15 ± 2 ˚C and the other two have been cured outside of the laboratory. One group of the samples which have been cured outside has been watered twice a day and the other group has not been watered at all. The experiments have been carried out on 150x150x150 mm cube samples of C20 (200 kg/cm2) and C25 (250 kg/cm2). 7 and 28 days compressive strength of specimens have been measured and compared.

Keywords: concrete curing, curing conditions, water temperature, concrete compressive strength

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Authors: Oh Hyeon Jeon, WooYoung Jung

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In this study, seepage analysis was performed by the level difference between upstream and downstream of weir structure for safety evaluation of weir structure against flooding. Monte Carlo Simulation method was employed by considering the probability distribution of the adjacent ground parameter, i.e., permeability coefficient of weir structure. Moreover, by using a commercially available finite element program (ABAQUS), modeling of the weir structure is carried out. Based on this model, the characteristic of water seepage during flooding was determined at each water level with consideration of the uncertainty of their corresponding permeability coefficient. Subsequently, fragility function could be constructed based on this response from numerical analysis; this fragility function results could be used to determine the weakness of weir structure subjected to flooding disaster. They can also be used as a reference data that can comprehensively predict the probability of failur,e and the degree of damage of a weir structure.

Keywords: weir structure, seepage, flood disaster fragility, probabilistic risk assessment, Monte-Carlo simulation, permeability coefficient

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Authors: Hélène Knoerr

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In an increasingly global world, more and more international students attend academic courses and programs in a second or foreign language, and local students register in language learning classes in order to improve their employability. These students need to quickly become proficient in the new language. How can we, as administrators, curriculum developers and teachers, make sure that they have the tools they need in order to develop their language skills in an academic context? This paper will describe the development and implementation of a new course, Learning to learn, as part of the Major in French/English as a Second Language at the University of Ottawa. This academic program was recently completely overhauled in order to reflect the current approaches in language learning (more specifically, the action-oriented approach as embodied in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, and the concept of life-long autonomous learning). The course itself is based on research on language learning strategies, with a particular focus on the characteristics of the “good language learner”. We will present the methodological and pedagogical foundations, describe the course objectives and learning outcomes, the language learning strategies, and the classroom activities. The paper will conclude with students’ feedback and suggest avenues for further exploration.

Keywords: curriculum development, language learning, learning strategies, second language

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Authors: Serge Tshibangu, Turgay Celik, Zenzo Ncube

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Road crashes kill nearly over a million people every year, and leave millions more injured or permanently disabled. Various annual reports reveal that the percentage of fatal crashes due to fatigue/driver falling asleep comes directly after the percentage of fatal crashes due to intoxicated drivers. This percentage is higher than the combined percentage of fatal crashes due to illegal/Un-Safe U-turn and illegal/Un-Safe reversing. Although a relatively small percentage of police reports on road accidents highlights drowsiness and fatigue, the importance of these factors is greater than we might think, hidden by the undercounting of their events. Some scenarios show that these factors are significant in accidents with killed and injured people. Thus the need for an automatic drivers fatigue detection system in order to considerably reduce the number of accidents owing to fatigue.This research approaches the drivers fatigue detection problem in an innovative way by combining cues collected from both temporal analysis of drivers’ faces and environment. Monotony in driving environment is inter-related with visual symptoms of fatigue on drivers’ faces to achieve fatigue detection. Optical and infrared (IR) sensors are used to analyse the monotony in driving environment and to detect the visual symptoms of fatigue on human face. Internal cues from drivers faces and external cues from environment are combined together using machine learning algorithms to automatically detect fatigue.

Keywords: intelligent transportation systems, bayesian networks, yawning computing, machine learning algorithms

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Authors: Zhou Hong, Gu Xiao-Qing, Lıu Hong-Jiao, Leng Jing

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Seamless learning is becoming a research hotspot in recent years, and the emerging of micro-lectures, flipped classroom has strengthened the development of seamless learning. Based on the characteristics of the seamless learning across time and space and the course structure of the flipped classroom, and the theories of language learning, we put forward the language learning model which can support ‘seamless flipped’ environment (abbreviated as ‘S-F’). Meanwhile, the characteristics of the ‘S-F’ learning environment, the corresponding framework construction and the activity design of diversified corpora were introduced. Moreover, a language learning app named ‘Daily Speaking’ was developed to facilitate the practice of the language learning model in ‘S-F’ environment. In virtue of the learning case of Shanghai language, the rationality and feasibility of this framework were examined, expecting to provide a reference for the design of ‘S-F’ learning in different situations.

Keywords: seamless learning, flipped classroom, seamless-flipped environment, language learning model

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Authors: Qusay Alghazali, Tibor Cinkler, Abdulhalim Fayad

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In modern optical networks, the flex grid spectrum usage is most widespread, where higher bit rate streams get larger spectrum slices while lower bit rate traffic streams get smaller spectrum slices. To our practice, under the ITU-T recommendation, G.694.1, spectrum slices of 50, 75, and 100 GHz are being used with central frequency at 193.1 THz. However, when these spectrum slices are not sufficient, multiple spectrum slices can use either one next to another or anywhere in the optical wavelength. In this paper, we propose the analysis of the wavelength assignment problem. We compare different algorithms for this spectrum assignment with and without protection. As a reference for comparisons, we concluded that the Integer Linear Programming (ILP) provides the global optimum for all cases. The most scalable algorithm is the greedy one, which yields results in subsequent ranges even for more significant network instances. The algorithms’ benchmark implemented using the LEMON C++ optimization library and simulation runs based on a minimum number of spectrum slices assigned to lightpaths and their execution time.

Keywords: spectrum assignment, integer linear programming, greedy algorithm, international telecommunication union, library for efficient modeling and optimization in networks

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Authors: Balogun R. Ayodeji, Adefisan E. Adesanya, Adeyewa Z. Debo, E. C. Okogbue

Abstract:

Deep convective systems during active periods of the West African monsoon season have not been properly investigated over better temporal and spatial resolution in West Africa. Deep convective systems are investigated over seven climatic zones of the West African sub-region, which are; west-coast rainforest, dry rainforest, Nigeria-Cameroon rainforest, Nigeria savannah, Central African and South Sudan (CASS) Savannah, Sudano-Sahel, and Sahel, using data from Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) Precipitation Feature (PF) database. The vertical structure of the convective systems indicated by the presence of at least one 40 dBZ and reaching (attaining) at least 1km in the atmosphere showed strong core (highest frequency (%)) of reflectivity values around 2 km which is below the freezing level (4-5km) for all the zones. Echoes are detected above the 15km altitude much more frequently in the rainforest and Savannah zones than the Sudano and Sahel zones during active periods in March-May (MAM), whereas during active periods in June-September (JJAS) the savannahs, Sudano and Sahel zones convections tend to reach higher altitude more frequently than the rainforest zones. The percentage frequencies of deep convection indicated that the occurrences of the systems are within the range of 2.3-2.8% during both March-May (MAM) and June-September (JJAS) active periods in the rainforest and savannah zones. On the contrary, the percentage frequencies were found to be less than 2% in the Sudano and Sahel zones, except during the active-JJAS period in the Sudano zone.

Keywords: active periods, convective system, frequency, reflectivity

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Authors: Suraj Jena, Rabindra Kumar Panda

Abstract:

The study region of the reported study was in Eastern India, having a sub-humid sub-tropical climate and sandy loam soil. The rainfall in this region has wide temporal and spatial variation. Due to lack of adequate surface water to meet the irrigation and household demands, groundwater is being over exploited in that region leading to continuous depletion of groundwater level. Therefore, there is an obvious urgency in reversing the depleting groundwater level through induced recharge, which becomes more critical under the climate change scenarios. The major goal of the reported study was to investigate the effects of climate change on groundwater recharge and subsequent adaptation strategies. Groundwater recharge was modelled using HELP3, a quasi-two-dimensional, deterministic, water-routing model along with global climate models (GCMs) and three global warming scenarios, to examine the changes in groundwater recharge rates for a 2030 climate under a variety of soil and vegetation covers. The relationship between the changing mean annual recharge and mean annual rainfall was evaluated for every combination of soil and vegetation using sensitivity analysis. The relationship was found to be statistically significant (p<0.05) with a coefficient of determination of 0.81. Vegetation dynamics and water-use affected by the increase in potential evapotranspiration for large climate variability scenario led to significant decrease in recharge from 49–658 mm to 18–179 mm respectively. Therefore, appropriate conjunctive use, irrigation schedule and enhanced recharge practices under the climate variability and land use/land cover change scenarios impacting the groundwater recharge needs to be understood properly for groundwater sustainability.

Keywords: Groundwater recharge, climate variability, Land use/cover, GCM

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Authors: Soumya Kedia, Puja Agarwala, Mahesh Tirumkudulu

Abstract:

Linear stability analysis is performed for a radially expanding liquid sheet in the presence of a gas medium. A liquid sheet can break up because of the aerodynamic effect as well as its thinning. However, the study of the aforementioned effects is usually done separately as the formulation becomes complicated and is difficult to solve. Present work combines both, aerodynamic effect and thinning effect, ignoring the non-linearity in the system. This is done by taking into account the formation of the gas boundary layer whilst neglecting viscosity in the liquid phase. Axisymmetric flow is assumed for simplicity. Base state analysis results in a Blasius-type system which can be solved numerically. Perturbation theory is then applied to study the stability of the liquid sheet, where the gas-liquid interface is subjected to small deformations. The linear model derived here can be applied to investigate the instability for sinuous as well as varicose modes, where the former represents displacement in the centerline of the sheet and the latter represents modulation in sheet thickness. Temporal instability analysis is performed for sinuous modes, which are significantly more unstable than varicose modes, for a fixed radial distance implying local stability analysis. The growth rates, measured for fixed wavenumbers, predicated by the present model are significantly lower than those obtained by the inviscid Kelvin-Helmholtz instability and compare better with experimental results. Thus, the present theory gives better insight into understanding the stability of a thin liquid sheet.

Keywords: boundary layer, gas-liquid interface, linear stability, thin liquid sheet

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