Search results for: location based alarm

Authors: N. Ghatwary, A. Ahmed, H. Jalab

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In this paper, an approach for the liver tumor detection in computed tomography (CT) images is represented. The detection process is based on classifying the features of target liver cell to either tumor or non-tumor. Fractional differential (FD) is applied for enhancement of Liver CT images, with the aim of enhancing texture and edge features. Later on, a fusion method is applied to merge between the various enhanced images and produce a variety of feature improvement, which will increase the accuracy of classification. Each image is divided into NxN non-overlapping blocks, to extract the desired features. Support vector machines (SVM) classifier is trained later on a supplied dataset different from the tested one. Finally, the block cells are identified whether they are classified as tumor or not. Our approach is validated on a group of patients’ CT liver tumor datasets. The experiment results demonstrated the efficiency of detection in the proposed technique.

Keywords: fractional differential (FD), computed tomography (CT), fusion, aplha, texture features.

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Authors: R. Bennai, M. Nebab, H. Ait Atmane, B. Ayache, H. Fourn

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In this work, a study of the stability of a functionally graduated sandwiches beam using a refined theory of hyperbolic shear deformation of a beam was developed. The effects of transverse shear strains and the transverse normal deformation are considered. The constituent materials of the beam are supposed gradually variable depending on the height direction based on a simple power distribution law in terms of the volume fractions of the constituents; the two materials with which we worked are metals and ceramics. In order to examine the present model, illustrative examples are presented to show the effects of changes in different parameters such as the material graduation, the stretching effect of the thickness and thickness ratio –length on the buckling of FGM sandwich beams.

Keywords: FGM materials, refined shear deformation theory, stretching effect, buckling, boundary conditions

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Authors: Pei-Chun Lee, Sheng-Shih Wang

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This paper presents a route guidance system for car owners to find their cars in parking garages. The presents system comprises a positioning-assisting subsystem and a car-finding mobile app. The positioning-assisting subsystem mainly uses the iBeacon technology for indoor positioning. The car-finding mobile app guides car owners to their cars based on a non-map navigation strategy. This study also designs a virtual coordinate system to support identifying the locations of parking spaces and iBeacon devices. We use Arduino and Android as the platforms to implement the proposed positioning-assisting subsystem and car-finding mobile app, respectively. We have also deployed the system in a parking garage in our campus for testing. Experimental results verify that our system can efficiently and correctly guide car owners to the parking spaces of their cars.

Keywords: guidance, iBeacon, mobile app, navigation

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Authors: Mariam Wagih Nagib Eskandar

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The engineering design process is the activities formulation, to help an engineer raising a plan with a specified goal and performance. The engineering design process is a multi-stage course of action including the conceptualization, research, feasibility studies, establishment of design parameters, preliminary and finally the detailed design. It is a progression from the abstract to the concrete; starting with probably abstract ideas about need, and thereafter elaborating detailed specifications of the object that would satisfy the needs, identified. Engineering design issues, problems, and solutions are discussed in this paper using qualitative approach from an information structure perspective. The objective is to identify the problems, to analyze them and propose solutions by integrating; innovation, practical experience, time and resource management, communications skills, isolating the problem in coordination with all stakeholders. Consequently, this would be beneficial for the engineering community to improve the Engineering design practices.

Keywords: education, engineering, math, performanceengineering design, architectural engineering, team-based learning, construction safetyrequirement engineering, models, practices, organizations

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Authors: Kaviyarasan D., Satish Kumar S. R.

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India being vast in area and population with great scope of international business, roadways and railways network connection within the country is expected to have a big growth. There are numerous rail-cum-road bridges constructed across many major rivers in India and few are getting very old. So there is more possibility of repairing or coming up with such new bridges in India. Analysis and design of such bridges are practiced through conventional procedure and end up with heavy and uneconomical sections. Such heavy class steel bridges when subjected to high seismic shaking has more chance to fail by stability because the members are too much rigid and stocky rather than being flexible to dissipate the energy. This work is the collective study of the researches done in the truss bridge and steel concrete composite truss bridges presenting the method of analysis, tools for numerical and analytical modeling which evaluates its seismic behaviour and collapse mechanisms. To ascertain the inelastic and nonlinear behaviour of the structure, generally at research level static pushover analysis is adopted. Though the static pushover analysis is now extensively used for the framed steel and concrete buildings to study its lateral action behaviour, those findings by pushover analysis done for the buildings cannot directly be used for the bridges as such, because the bridges have completely a different performance requirement, behaviour and typology as compared to that of the buildings. Long span steel bridges are mostly the truss bridges. Truss bridges being formed by many members and connections, the failure of the system does not happen suddenly with single event or failure of one member. Failure usually initiates from one member and progresses gradually to the next member and so on when subjected to further loading. This kind of progressive collapse of the truss bridge structure is dependent on many factors, in which the live load distribution and span to length ratio are most significant. The ultimate collapse is anyhow by the buckling of the compression members only. For regular bridges, single step pushover analysis gives results closer to that of the non-linear dynamic analysis. But for a complicated bridge like heavy class steel bridge or the skewed bridges or complicated dynamic behaviour bridges, nonlinear analysis capturing the progressive yielding and collapse pattern is mandatory. With the knowledge of the postelastic behaviour of the bridge and advancements in the computational facility, the current level of analysis and design of bridges has moved to state of ascertaining the performance levels of the bridges based on the damage caused by seismic shaking. This is because the buildings performance levels deals much with the life safety and collapse prevention levels, whereas the bridges mostly deal with the extent damages and how quick it can be repaired with or without disturbing the traffic after a strong earthquake event. The paper would compile the wide spectrum of modeling to analysis of the steel concrete composite truss bridges in general.

Keywords: bridge engineering, performance based design of steel truss bridge, seismic design of composite bridge, steel-concrete composite bridge

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Authors: Christoph Ramsauer, Jaydeep Karandikar, Tony Schmitz, Friedrich Bleicher

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Machining stability is an important limitation to discrete part machining. In this work, a networked implementation of milling stability optimization with Bayesian learning is presented. The milling process was monitored with a wireless sensory tool holder instrumented with an accelerometer at the Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria. The recorded data from a milling test cut is used to classify the cut as stable or unstable based on the frequency analysis. The test cut result is fed to a Bayesian stability learning algorithm at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. The algorithm calculates the probability of stability as a function of axial depth of cut and spindle speed and recommends the parameters for the next test cut. The iterative process between two transatlantic locations repeats until convergence to a stable optimal process parameter set is achieved.

Keywords: machining stability, machine learning, sensor, optimization

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Authors: Zabihullah Mahdi, Mahdi Nayab, Sadaf Jalal, Navid Seddiqi

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Hydrocarbons represent an important natural resource for the rehabilitation and sustainable development of Afghanistan. In this paper, the use of waterflooding is demonstrated for the petroleum reservoirs of the Kashkari oil field in northern Afghanistan. The technique is based on the Buckley–Leverett frontal-displacement theory, which enables computation of the progress of the waterfront in the reservoir. The relative permeabilities of oil and water, the residual oil saturation, and the irreducible water saturation are obtained from a laboratory experiment. The technique is applied to the laboratory plane-reservoir model to investigate the displacement mechanism and is then compared with the theoretical calculation. Lastly, the technique is applied to the Kashkari oil field to predict the feasible amount of oil that could be produced from this reservoir.

Keywords: Buckley–Leverett, waterflooding, petroleum reservoir engineering, two-phase flow, immiscible displacement, porous media, relative permeability

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Authors: H. Samadiyeh, R. Khajavi

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A new FD-based procedure, modal finite difference method (MFDM), is proposed for seismic wave propagation modeling, in which simulation is dealt with in the modal space. The method employs eigenvalues of a characteristic matrix formed by appropriate time-space FD stencils. Since MFD runs for different modes are totally independent of each other, MFDM can easily be parallelized while considerable simplicity in parallel-algorithm is also achieved. There is no requirement to any domain-decomposition procedure and inter-core data exchange. More important is the possibility to skip processing of less-significant modes, which enables one to adjust the procedure up to the level of accuracy needed. Thus, in addition to considerable ease of parallel programming, computation and storage costs are significantly reduced. The method is qualified for its efficiency by some numerical examples.

Keywords: Finite Difference Method, Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), Message Passing Interface (MPI), Modal, Wave propagation

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Authors: M. Debieche, F. Kaoua

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This paper deals with the use two locals materials abundant in our country, with the view to use a mixture in the waterproofing the landfills. Our interest comes from the necessity to the environment protection, which has recently considerably grown. The site's waterproofing technique, in the landfills sites, is nowadays a very necessary condition to protect the environment, which requires the use of appropriate materials. To this end, an optimal mixture ensuring good performance in terms of hydraulic conductivity, durability and shear strength, mixtures based of sand at different concentrations of sodium bentonite, at compact state are prepared and studied. This study showed that a low permeability of mixture (sand / bentonite) can be achieved 6% of sodium bentonite. This mixture confers also good mechanical behavior, expressed by the recorded, reduction of friction (φ) and the increase of the cohesion (C). Thus, the selected formulation represents an optimal mixture for waterproofing systems. It guarantees an economical and ecological advantages.

Keywords: hydraulic conductivity, sand, sodium bentonite, sustainability

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Authors: Naser Charkhsaz, Ashraf Sadat Mousavi, Navvab Shamspour

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This study aimed to evaluate the role of state education in increasing public awareness through mass media (with emphasis on newspapers and TV) coping with possible earthquake in Tehran. All residents aged 15 to 65 who live in the five regions of Tehran (North, South, East, West and Center) during the plan implementation were selected and studied. The required sample size in each region was calculated based on the Cochran formula (n=380). In order to collect and analyze the data, a questionnaire with reliability (82%) and a one-sample t-test has been used, respectively. The results showed that warnings related to the Tehran earthquake affected people in the pre-contemplation stage, while public education through mass media did not promote public awareness about prevention, preparedness and rehabilitation.

Keywords: media, disaster, knowledge, Iranian Red Crescent society

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Authors: Mohadeseh Salari Sardari

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As Muslims conquered Iran, their first impression was to show their power over others. They needed mosques for their multiple needs like prayer, tax collecting, law-making, hearing of law cases, and most important of all, as a seat of government. Sometimes they did not have time to build mosques and only began to build them after years of ruling. Many religious buildings with pre-Islamic past survived in Iran, most of the fire temples in cities were destroyed or changed radically, but some deserted temples outside of cities survived, and based on these surviving buildings, we can trace changes in fire temples inside cities and discover how they were adapted and expanded to be mosques. In addition, there are some other buildings with doubts about their date of construction. These buildings might be transitional buildings between two different historical eras or might be an old building with a slight change. One of these interesting buildings is Tarikhaneh, a small, simple yet striking building. By tracing Tarikhaneh’s roots in other buildings like fire temples and secular buildings existed before Arab invasion, it can be better understood how the original form of Tatikhaneh was.

Keywords: iranian architecture, early mosques, fire temples, adaptation and reuse

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Authors: Badr A. Al-Jehani

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Nowadays, contractor selection is a critical activity of the project owner. Selecting the right contractor is essential to the project manager for the success of the project, and this cab happens by using the proper selecting method. Traditionally, the contractor is being selected based on his offered bid price. This approach focuses only on the price factor and forgetting other essential factors for the success of the project. In this research paper, the Analytic Network Process (ANP) method is used as a decision tool model to select the most appropriate contractor. This decision-making method can help the clients who work in the construction industry to identify contractors who are capable of delivering satisfactory outcomes. Moreover, this research paper provides a case study of selecting the proper contractor among three contractors by using ANP method. The case study identifies and computes the relative weight of the eight criteria and eleven sub-criteria using a questionnaire.

Keywords: contractor selection, project management, decision-making, bidding

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Authors: Leping Chen, Daoxiang An, Xiaotao Huang

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Automatic vehicle detection using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image has been widely researched, as well as using optical remote sensing images. However, most researches treat the detection as an independent problem, failing to make full use of SAR data information. In circular SAR (CSAR), the two long borders of vehicle will shrink if the imaging surface is set higher than the reference one. Based on above variance, an automatic vehicle detection using CSAR image is proposed to enhance detection ability under complex environment, such as vehicles’ closely packing, which confuses the detector. The detection method uses the multiple images generated by different height plane to obtain an energy-concentrated image for detecting and then uses the maximally stable extremal regions method (MSER) to detect vehicles. A result of vehicles’ detection is given to verify the effectiveness and correctness of proposed method.

Keywords: circular SAR, vehicle detection, automatic, imaging

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Authors: Alex Ellery

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Solar power satellites (SPS), despite their promise as a clean energy source, have been relegated out of consideration due to their enormous cost and technological challenge. It has been suggested that for solar power satellites to become economically feasible, launch costs must decrease from their current $20,000/kg to < $200/kg. Even with the advent of single-stage-to-orbit launchers which propose launch costs dropping to $2,000/kg, this will not be realized. Yet, the advantages of solar power satellites are many. Here, I present a novel approach to reduce the specific cost of solar power satellites to ~$1/kg by leveraging two enabling technologies – in-situ resource utilization and 3D printing. The power of such technologies will open up enormous possibilities for providing additional options for combating climate change whilst meeting demands for global energy. From the constraints imposed by in-situ resource utilization, a novel approach to solar energy conversion in SPS may be realized.

Keywords: clean energy sources, in-situ resource utilisation, solar power satellites, thermionic emission

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Authors: Toru Shionoya, Yosuke Kurihara, Takashi Kaburagi, Kajiro Watanabe

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Mass-produced bidirectional microphones have attractive characteristics. They work as a microphone as well as a sensor with high gain over a wide frequency range; they are also highly reliable and economical. We present novel multiple functional uses of the microphones. A mathematical model for explaining the high-pass-filtering characteristics of bidirectional microphones was presented. Based on the model, the characteristics of the microphone were investigated, and a novel use for the microphone as a sensor with a wide frequency range was presented. In this study, applications for using the microphone as a security sensor and a human biosensor were introduced. The mathematical model was validated through experiments, and the feasibility of the abovementioned applications for security monitoring and the biosignal monitoring were examined through experiments.

Keywords: bidirectional microphone, low-frequency, mathematical model, frequency response

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Authors: Samane Sharifi Monfared, Lavdie Rada

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Nowadays, autonomous vehicles are developing rapidly toward facilitating human car driving. One of the main issues is road lane detection for a suitable guidance direction and car accident prevention. This paper aims to improve and optimize road line detection based on a combination of camera calibration, the Hough transform, and Canny edge detection. The video processing is implemented using the Open CV library with the novelty of having a scale able region masking. The aim of the study is to introduce automatic road lane detection techniques with the user’s minimum manual intervention.

Keywords: hough transform, canny edge detection, optimisation, scaleable masking, camera calibration, improving the quality of image, image processing, video processing

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Authors: Tugce Talay, Kadir Erkan

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In this study, the necessary steps for the design of axial flow permanent magnet motors are shown. The design and analysis of the engine were carried out based on ANSYS Maxwell program. The design parameters of the ANSYS Maxwell program and the artificial neural network system were established in MATLAB and the most efficient design parameters were found with the trained neural network. The results of the Maxwell program and the results of the artificial neural networks are compared and optimal working design parameters are found. The most efficient design parameters were submitted to the ANSYS Maxwell 3D design and the cogging torque was examined and design studies were carried out to reduce the cogging torque.

Keywords: AFPM, ANSYS Maxwell, cogging torque, design optimisation, efficiency, NNTOOL

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Authors: P. Sawatnatee, S. Udomsuk, K-N. Areerak, K-L. Areerak, A. Srikaew

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The paper presents how to design the indirect vector control of three-phase induction motor drive systems using the artificial intelligence technique called the adaptive tabu search. The results from the simulation and the experiment show that the drive system with the controller designed from the proposed method can provide the best output speed response compared with those of the conventional method. The controller design using the proposed technique can be used to create the software package for engineers to achieve the optimal controller design of the induction motor speed control based on the indirect vector concept.

Keywords: indirect vector control, induction motor, adaptive tabu search, control design, artificial intelligence

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Authors: Amy Matharu

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Existing literature on older athletes in competitive sports is often male-dominated and limited. This study explores how age and gender impact the experiences of older female bodybuilders in Canada using the social theories of deviance and intersectionality. Qualitative, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 Canadian female bodybuilders over the age of 45. Interviews were transcribed, coded, and thematically analysed. This study was approached from a phenomenological perspective. The participants deviated from their perceived social norms of women their age. They exhibited deviance with their actions, such as prioritising themselves and following extreme dieting practices, and with their aesthetics, such as maintaining a muscular appearance. Participants received both positive and negative reactions from society resulting in both admiration and stigmatisation. These reactions varied based on the environment, audience, and context of the situation. Overall, the intersection of age and gender results in a unique position for older female bodybuilders within society and within the sport.

Keywords: age, bodybuilding, gender, females

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Authors: Lolade Siyonbola

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Nigerians are often celebrated as being the most educated cultural group in America. The cultural values and history that have led to this reality are particular to a generation that came of age post colonialism. Many of these cultural values have been passed down from post-colonial parent to millennial child, but most have not. This study, based on interviews and surveys of Nigerian millennials and their parents in the United States, explores the degree to which identity has been eroded in the millennial generation due to a lack of imparted cultural values and knowledge from the previous generation. Most of the subjects do not speak their native language or identify with their cultural heritage sufficiently to build ties with their native land. Most are experiencing some degree of identity crisis, and therefore limited self-actualization, with little to no support; as there are few successful tools available to this population. If governmental programs to reverse these trends are not implemented within this generation, the implications to the individual, family and home nation (Nigeria), will be felt for generations to come.

Keywords: identity, culture, self-actualization, social identity theory, migration, transnationalism, value systems

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Authors: Luiza Toschi

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This work presents part of an empirical and theoretical master's degree meta-research that is interested in the relationship between the disciplinary area of Social Communication, to be investigated with the characteristics of the Bourdieusian scientific field, and the emergence of public interest in Nonviolent Communication (NVC) in Brazil and the world. To this end, the state of the art of this conceptual and practical relationship is investigated based on scientific productions available in spaces of academic credibility, such as conferences and scientific journals renowned in the field. From there, agents and the sociological aspects that make them contribute or not to scientific production in Brazil and the world are mapped. In this work, a brief dive into the international context is presented to understand if and how nonviolent communication permeates scientific production in communication in a systematic way. Using three accessible articles published between 2013 and 2022 in the 117 magazines classified as Quartiles Q1 in the Journal Ranking of Communication, the international production on the subject is compared with the Brazilian one from its context. The social conditions of the international circulation of ideas are thus discussed. Science is a product of its social environment, arising from relations of interest and power that compete in the political dimension at the same time as in the epistemological dimension. In this way, scientific choices are linked to the resources mobilized from or through the prestige and recognition of peers. In this sense, an object of interest stands out to a scientist for its academic value, but also and inseparably that which has a social interest within the collective, their social stratification, and the context of legitimacy created in their surroundings, influenced by cultural universalism. In Brazil, three published articles were found in congresses and journals that mention NVC in their abstract or keywords. All were written by Public Relations undergraduate students. Between the most experienced researchers who guided or validated the publications, it is possible to find two professionals who are interested in the Culture of Peace and Dialogy. Likewise, internationally, only three of the articles found mention the term in their abstract or title. Two analyze journalistic coverage based on the principles of NVC and Journalism for Peace. The third is from one of the Brazilian researchers identified as interested in dialogic practices, who analyses audiovisual material and promotes epistemological reflections. If, on the one hand, some characteristics inside and outside Brazil are similar: small samples, relationship with peace studies, and female researchers, two of whom are Brazilian, on the other hand, differences are obvious. If within the country, the subject is mostly Organizational Communication, outside this intersection, it is not presented explicitly. Furthermore, internationally, there is an interest in analyzing from the perspective of NVC, which has not been found so far in publications in Brazil. Up to the present moment, it is possible to presume that, universally, the legitimacy of the topic is sought by its association with conflict conciliation research and communication for peace.

Keywords: academic field sociology, international circulation of ideas, meta research in communication, nonviolent communication

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Authors: Radwan Hussien Alkebsee

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Under the argument that reputational costs deter firms from engaging in tax avoidance activities, this paper investigates the relationship between tax avoidance and forced CEO turnover. This study is based on a broad sample of Chinese listed companies spanning the period 2011 to 2018. The findings reveal that tax avoidance is positively associated with forced CEO turnover. This suggests that firms that engage in tax avoidance experience a high rate of leadership replacement. The findings also reveal that the positive association between tax avoidance and forced CEO turnover is pronounced for state-owned firms, firms with no political connections, and firms located in “more developed” regions with extensive tax enforcement action, while it is not for private firms, firms with political connections, and firms located in “less developed” regions with weak tax enforcement actions. The baseline results remain consistent and robust for endogeneity concerns.

Keywords: tax avoidance, CEO turnover, political connections, regional tax enforcement, China

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Authors: M. R. Al-Rashidi, K. M. El-Naggar, M. F. Al-Hajri

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The fuel cost function describes the electric power generation-cost relationship in thermal plants, hence, it sheds light on economical aspects of power industry. Different models have been proposed to describe this relationship with the quadratic function model being the most popular one. Parameters of second order fuel cost function are estimated in this paper using cuckoo search algorithm. It is a new population based meta-heuristic optimization technique that has been used in this study primarily as an accurate estimation tool. Its main features are flexibility, simplicity, and effectiveness when compared to other estimation techniques. The parameter estimation problem is formulated as an optimization one with the goal being minimizing the error associated with the estimated parameters. A case study is considered in this paper to illustrate cuckoo search promising potential as a valuable estimation and optimization technique.

Keywords: cuckoo search, parameters estimation, fuel cost function, economic dispatch

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Authors: Walid Cherif

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Data mining has, over recent years, seen big advances because of the spread of internet, which generates everyday a tremendous volume of data, and also the immense advances in technologies which facilitate the analysis of these data. In particular, classification techniques are a subdomain of Data Mining which determines in which group each data instance is related within a given dataset. It is used to classify data into different classes according to desired criteria. Generally, a classification technique is either statistical or machine learning. Each type of these techniques has its own limits. Nowadays, current data are becoming increasingly heterogeneous; consequently, current classification techniques are encountering many difficulties. This paper defines new measure functions to quantify the resemblance between instances and then combines them in a new approach which is different from actual algorithms by its reliability computations. Results of the proposed approach exceeded most common classification techniques with an f-measure exceeding 97% on the IRIS Dataset.

Keywords: data mining, knowledge discovery, machine learning, similarity measurement, supervised classification

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Authors: Monika Singh

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A carbon nanotube thin film coated on dielectric interface is employed to produce THz surface plasma wave (SPW). The carbon nanotube has its plasmon frequency in the THz range. The SPW field falls off away from the metal film both inside the dielectric as well as in free space. An amplitude modulated laser pulse normally incident, from free space on slow wave structure, exert a modulation frequency ponderomotive force on the free electrons of the CNT film and resonantly excite the THz surface plasma wave at the modulation frequency. Carbon nanotube based plasmonic nano-structure materials provides potentially more versatile approach to tightly confined surface modes in the THz range in comparison to noble metals.

Keywords: surface plasmons, surface waves, thin films, THz radiation

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Authors: Fahad Suleiman

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Queuing, in medical system is the process of moving patients in a specific sequence to a specific service according to the patients’ nature of illness. The term scheduling stands for the process of computing a schedule. This may be done by a queuing based scheduler. This paper focuses on the medical consultancy system, the different queuing algorithms that are used in healthcare system to serve the patients, and the average waiting time. The aim of this paper is to build automatic queuing system for organizing the medical queuing system that can analyses the queue status and take decision which patient to serve. The new queuing architecture model can switch between different scheduling algorithms according to the testing results and the factor of the average waiting time. The main innovation of this work concerns the modeling of the average waiting time is taken into processing, in addition with the process of switching to the scheduling algorithm that gives the best average waiting time.

Keywords: queuing systems, queuing system models, scheduling algorithms, patients

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Authors: Naim Karasekreter, Ugur Fidan, Fatih Basciftci

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Wireless sensor networks are networks in which more than one sensor node is organized among themselves. The working principle is based on the transfer of the sensed data over the other nodes in the network to the central station. Wireless sensor networks concentrate on routing algorithms, energy efficiency and clustering algorithms. In the clustering method, the nodes in the network are divided into clusters using different parameters and the most suitable cluster head is selected from among them. The data to be sent to the center is sent per cluster, and the cluster head is transmitted to the center. With this method, the network traffic is reduced and the energy efficiency of the nodes is increased. In this study, clustering algorithms were examined in terms of clustering performances and cluster head selection characteristics to try to identify weak and strong sides. This work is supported by the Project 17.Kariyer.123 of Afyon Kocatepe University BAP Commission.

Keywords: wireless sensor networks (WSN), clustering algorithm, cluster head, clustering

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Authors: Jiexiu Chen

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This research aims to examine several vital issues relating to the foreign scholars’ cross-cultural adaptation in China, including how they perceive about the adaptation process, what the affecting factors are in the adaptation, and which strategies they will apply to deal with perceived cultural differences. The target population of this research is academics regularly working or long-term visiting in these joint colleges, and semi-structured interviews are used in data collection. Moreover, the theoretical perspectives mainly include Ward’s sociocultural and psychological adaptation theory, Berry’s adaptation strategies and Black and his colleague’s expatriate’s adjustment model. This research offers an in-depth profile as well as theory-based analysis about this unique group, and the results of this research are profound in offering directory suggestions for foreign scholars to facilitate their adaptation in China better and for the Chinese universities to eliminate intercultural obstacles, and optimize the international cooperation programs in China.

Keywords: cross-cultural adaptation, foreign scholars, expatriates

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Authors: Patrizia Barroero, Saliha Yagoubi

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Mindfulness meditation practices in the context of higher education are becoming more and more common. Some of the reported benefits of mediation interventions and workshops include: improved focus, general well-being, diminished stress, and even increased resilience and grit. A series of workshops free to students, faculty, and staff was offered twice a week over two semesters at Hudson County Community College, New Jersey. The results of an exploratory study based on participants’ subjective reactions to these workshops will be presented. A qualitative approach was used to collect and analyze the data and a hermeneutic phenomenological perspective served as a framework for the research design and data collection and analysis. The data collected includes three recorded videos of semi-structured interviews and several written surveys submitted by volunteer participants.

Keywords: mindfulness meditation practices, stress reduction, resilience, grit, higher education success, qualitative research

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Authors: Chryssi Vitsilaki, Apostolos Kostas, Ilias Efthymiou

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This paper presents selected best practices on online learning and teaching derived from a novel and innovating Lifelong Learning program through e-Learning, which has during the last five years been set up at the University of the Aegean in Greece. The university, capitalizing on an award-winning, decade-long experience in e-learning and blended learning in undergraduate and postgraduate studies, recently expanded into continuous education and vocational training programs in various cutting-edge fields. So, in this article we present: (a) the academic structure/infrastructure which has been developed for the administrative, organizational and educational support of the e-Learning process, including training the trainers, (b) the mode of design and implementation based on a sound pedagogical framework of open and distance education, and (c) the key results of the assessment of the e-learning process by the participants, as they are used to feedback on continuous organizational and teaching improvement and quality control.

Keywords: distance education, e-learning, life-long programs, synchronous/asynchronous learning

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