Search results for: distributed memory

Authors: Nader H. Ghareeb, Mohamed S. Gaith, Sayed M. Soleimani

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In modern engineering, weight optimization has a priority during the design of structures. However, optimizing the weight can result in lower stiffness and less internal damping, causing the structure to become excessively prone to vibration. To overcome this problem, active or smart materials are implemented. The coupled electromechanical properties of smart materials, used in the form of piezoelectric ceramics in this work, make these materials well-suited for being implemented as distributed sensors and actuators to control the structural response. The smart structure proposed in this paper is composed of a cantilevered steel beam, an adhesive or bonding layer, and a piezoelectric actuator. The static deflection of the structure is derived as function of the piezoelectric voltage, and the outcome is compared to theoretical and experimental results from literature. The relation between the voltage and the piezoelectric moment at both ends of the actuator is also investigated and a reduced finite element model of the smart structure is created and verified. Finally, a linear controller is implemented and its ability to attenuate the vibration due to the first natural frequency is demonstrated.

Keywords: active linear control, lyapunov stability theorem, piezoelectricity, smart structure, static deflection

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Authors: Bhawna Devi, Girishwar Misra, Rajni Sahni

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Menarche and menstruation is a nearly universal experience in adolescent girls’ lives, yet based on several observations it has been found that it is rarely explicitly talked about, and remains poorly understood. By menarche, girls are likely to have been influenced not only by cultural stereotypes about menstruation, but also by information acquired through significant others. Their own expectations about menstruation are likely to influence their reports of menarcheal experience. The aim of this study is to examine how girls construct meaning around menarche and menstruation in social interactions and specific contexts along with conceptualized experiences which is ‘owned’ by individual girls. Twenty adolescent girls from New Delhi (India), between the ages of 12 to 19 years (mean age = 15.1) participated in the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to capture the nuances of menarche and menstrual experiences of these twenty adolescent girls. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. From the detailed analysis of transcribed data main themes that emerged were- Menarche: A Trammeled Sky to Fly, Menarche as Flashbulb Memory, Hidden Secret: Shame and Fear, Hallmark of Womanhood, Menarche as Illness. Therefore, the finding unfolds that menarche and menstruation were largely constructed as embarrassing, shameful and something to be hidden, specifically within the school context and in general when they are outside of their home. Menstruation was also constructed as illness that programmed ‘feeling of weaknesses’ into them. The production and perpetuation of gender-related difference narratives was also evident. Implications for individuals, as well as for the subjugation of girls and women, are discussed, and it is argued that current negative representations of, and practices in relation to, menarche and menstruation need to be challenged.

Keywords: embarrassment, gender-related difference, hidden secret, illness, menarche and menstruation

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Authors: Mohammad Bagher Heidari, Hefzollah Mohammadian

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TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) is a digital radio communication standard, which has been implemented in several different parts of the gas refinery ninth (phase 12th) by South Pars Gas Complex. Studies on possible impacts on the users' health considering different exposure conditions are missing. Objectives: To investigate possible acute effects of electromagnetic fields (EMF) of two different levels of TETRA hand-held transmitter signals on cognitive function and well-being in healthy young males. Methods: In the present double-blind cross-over study possible effects of short-term (2.5 h) EMF exposure of handset-like signals of TETRA (450 - 470 MHz) were studied in 30 healthy male participants (mean ± SD: 25.4 ±2.6 years). Individuals were tested on nine study days, on which they were exposed to three different exposure conditions (Sham, TETRA 1.5 W/kg and TETRA 10.0 W/kg) in a randomly assigned and balanced order. Participants were tested in the afternoon at a fixed timeframe. Results: Attention remained unchanged in two out of three tasks. In the working memory, significant changes were observed in two out of four subtasks. Significant results were found in 5 out of 35 tested parameters, four of them led to an improvement in performance. Mood, well-being and subjective somatic complaints were not affected by TETRA exposure. Conclusions: The results of the present study do not indicate a negative impact of a short-term EMF- effect of TETRA on cognitive function and well-being in healthy young men.

Keywords: TETRA (terrestrial trunked radio), electromagnetic fields (EMF), mobile telecommunication health research (MTHR), antenna

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Authors: Shreya Banerjee, Prasanta K. Panigrahi

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The three-way distributive entanglement is shown to be related to the parallelism of vectors. Using a measurement-based approach a set of 2−dimensional vectors is formed, representing the post-measurement states of one of the parties. These vectors originate at the same point and have an angular distance between them. The area spanned by a pair of such vectors is a measure of the entanglement of formation. This leads to a geometrical manifestation of the 3−tangle in 2−dimensions, from inequality in the area which generalizes for n− qubits to reveal that the n− tangle also has a planar structure. Quantifying the genuine n−party entanglement in every 1|(n − 1) bi-partition it is shown that the genuine n−way entanglement does not manifest in n− tangle. A new quantity geometrically similar to 3−tangle is then introduced that represents the genuine n− way entanglement. Extending the formalism to 3− qutrits, the nonlocality without entanglement can be seen to arise from a condition under which the post-measurement state vectors of a separable state show parallelism. A connection to nontrivial sum uncertainty relation analogous to Maccone and Pati uncertainty relation is then presented using decomposition of post-measurement state vectors along parallel and perpendicular direction of the pre-measurement state vectors. This study opens a novel way to understand multiparty entanglement in qubit and qudit systems.

Keywords: Geometry of quantum entanglement, Multipartite and distributive entanglement, Parallelism of vectors , Tangle

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Authors: Atya Nur Aisha, Pamoedji Hardjomidjojo, Yassierli

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Motivation is an important aspect which affects employee behavior to achieve performance. Working motivation tend to be unstable, it easily changing. This condition could be affected by individual factors, namely working ability, and organizational factors, such as working condition and incentives system. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of individual and organizational factors on non-academic staff motivation. A questionnaire was designed and distributed to 150 non-academic staff of a university in Indonesia. Regression analysis was used to identify the relationship. Results revealed that individual working ability and incentives system had a positive impact on non-academic staff motivation (sig 0.001). This study provides information about practical implication for university authorities and theoretical implications for researchers who interested in exploring motivational and employee performance in a higher education context. It was proposed to increase productivity and work motivation of non-academic staff, university authorities should maintain equality and feasibility of incentives system and design a human resource development to improve employee ability.

Keywords: motivation, incentives, working ability, non-academic staff

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Authors: Mona M. Marzouk, Ahmed Elkhateeb, Mona Elshabrawy, Mai M. Farid, Salwa A. Kawashty, EL-Sayed S. Abdel-Hameed, Sameh R. Hussein

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The genus Farsetia Turra belongs to the family Brassicaceae and has approximately 30 accepted species distributed worldwide. Amongst them, Farsetia aegyptia Turra and Farsetia longisiliqua Decne. are two common species characteristic to the Egyptian flora. The present study considers the first characterization of the chemical constituents of F. longisiliqua, aiming to compare with those identified from the medicinal species (F. aegyptia). Additionally, the chemosystematic relationships between the two studied species were evaluated and highlight the medicinal importance for F. longisiliqua. The chemical profiling of their aqueous methanol extracts were carried out using the LC-ESI-MS technique and afforded 54 compounds belonging to different chemical groups. Flavonoids are the major constituents and are represented by 32 compounds (two C-glycosyl flavone, four flavones, and 26 flavonols). Their structural variations and common constituents confirmed the chemosystematic significance of the two species. Moreover, the flavonoid profiles showed major common constituents between the two investigated species, which predicted the medicinal importance of F. longisiliqua.

Keywords: brassicaceae, chemosystematics, farsetia, flavonoids, glucosinolates, LC-ESI-MS

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Authors: S. H. Iranmanesh, L. Aliabadi, A. Mollajan

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Integrated resilience engineering (IRE) is capable of returning banking systems to the normal state in extensive economic circumstances. In this study, information system of a large bank (with several branches) is assessed and optimized under severe economic conditions. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) models are employed to achieve the objective of this study. Nine IRE factors are considered to be the outputs, and a dummy variable is defined as the input of the DEA models. A standard questionnaire is designed and distributed among executive managers to be considered as the decision-making units (DMUs). Reliability and validity of the questionnaire is examined based on Cronbach's alpha and t-test. The most appropriate DEA model is determined based on average efficiency and normality test. It is shown that the proposed integrated design provides higher efficiency than the conventional RE design. Results of sensitivity and perturbation analysis indicate that self-organization, fault tolerance, and reporting culture respectively compose about 50 percent of total weight.

Keywords: banking system, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Integrated Resilience Engineering (IRE), performance evaluation, perturbation analysis

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Authors: Ying Zhao, Xingyan Bin

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Semi-supervised clustering algorithms have been shown effective to improve clustering process with even limited supervision. However, semi-supervised hierarchical clustering remains challenging due to the complexities of expressing constraints for agglomerative clustering algorithms. This paper proposes novel semi-supervised agglomerative clustering algorithms to build a hierarchy based on a known reference tree. We prove that by enforcing distance constraints defined by a reference tree during the process of hierarchical clustering, the resultant tree is guaranteed to be consistent with the reference tree. We also propose a framework that allows the hierarchical tree generation be aware of levels of levels of the agglomerative tree under creation, so that metric weights can be learned and adopted at each level in a recursive fashion. The experimental evaluation shows that the additional cost of our contraint-based semi-supervised hierarchical clustering algorithm (HAC) is negligible, and our combined semi-supervised HAC algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithms on real-world datasets. The experiments also show that our proposed methods can improve clustering performance even with a small number of unevenly distributed labeled data.

Keywords: semi-supervised clustering, hierarchical agglomerative clustering, reference trees, distance constraints

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Authors: Kamal Upadhyay, Zhou Hua, Yu Rui

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This paper aims to improve the streamline linked with the flow field and cavitation on the valve sleeve. We observed that local pressure fluctuation produces a low-pressure zone, central to the formation of vapor volume fraction within the valve chamber led to air-bubbles (or cavities). Thus, it allows simultaneously to a severe negative impact on the inner surface and lifespan of the valve sleeves. Cavitation reduction is a vitally important issue to pressure control valves. The optimization of the flow field is proposed in this paper to reduce the cavitation of valve sleeves. In this method, the inner wall of the valve sleeve is changed from a cylindrical surface to the conical surface, leading to the decline of the fluid flow velocity and the rise of the outlet pressure. Besides, the streamline is distributed inside the sleeve uniformly. Thus, the bubble generation is lessened. The fluid models are built and analysis of flow field distribution, pressure, vapor volume and velocity was carried out using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and numerical technique. The results indicate that this structure can suppress the cavitation of valve sleeves effectively.

Keywords: streamline, cavitation, optimization, computational fluid dynamics

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Authors: Liu Szu Yin

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The center of urban development lies in commercial transactions and folk religious activities. In Taipei City, temples serve as crucial urban spaces and centers for civic activities and religious beliefs. The appearance of local temples can be influenced by the prosperity of the surrounding communities. Apart from being centers of religious worship, Taipei's temples also host festival celebrations, allowing people to gather in front of the temples and form collective urban memories. The spatial attributes for hosting festival activities include streets, squares, parks, and buildings. In Taipei, many traditional festivals take place on the streets, either as round-trip routes or linear routes with a single starting and ending point. Given the processions and parades involving palanquins and other ceremonial objects during traditional festival activities, street spaces are frequently utilized. Therefore, this study analyzes the historical context and street spaces of three traditional festivals in Taipei City, including Qingshan Temple in Monga, Xiahai City God Temple in Dadaocheng, and Baoan Temple in Dalongdong, through on-site research. Most urban festival planners need to understand the characteristics of the city's streets in order to effectively utilize street spaces for festival planning. Taipei's traditional festivals not only preserve Chinese traditional culture but also incorporate modern elements, ensuring the transmission of culture and faith and allowing the city to become characterized by sustainable culture and unique urban memories.

Keywords: festival space, urban festival, taipei, urban memory

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Authors: Rui de Abrantes, André Luiz Silva Forcetto

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Air pollution is a big problem in many cities around the world. Brazilian big cities also have this problem, where millions of people are exposed daily to pollutants levels above the recommended by WHO. Brazil has taken several actions to reduce air pollution, among others, controlling the atmospheric emissions from vehicles, non-road mobile machinery, and motorcycles, but on the other side, there are no emissions controls for locomotives, which are exposing the population to tons of pollutants annually. The rail network is not homogeneously distributed in the national territory; it is denser near the big cities, and this way, the population is more exposed to pollutants; apart from that, the government intends to increase the rail network as one of the strategies for greenhouse gas mitigation, complying with the international agreements against the climate changes. This paper initially presents the estimated emissions from locomotive fleets with no emission control and with emission control equivalent to US Tier 3 from 2028 and for the next 20 years. However, we realized that a program equivalent to phase Tier 3 would not be effective, so we proposed a program in two steps that will avoid the release of more than 2.4 million tons of CO and 531,000 tons of hydrocarbons, 3.7 million tons of nitrogen oxides, and 102,000 tons of particulate matter in 20 years.

Keywords: locomotives, emission control, air pollution, pollutants emission

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Authors: M. R. Dahmardeh Ghaleno, M. Nohtani, S. Khaledi

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Flood simulation and prediction is one of the most active research areas in surface water management. WetSpa is a distributed, continuous, and physical model with daily or hourly time step that explains precipitation, runoff, and evapotranspiration processes for both simple and complex contexts. This model uses a modified rational method for runoff calculation. In this model, runoff is routed along the flow path using Diffusion-Wave equation which depends on the slope, velocity, and flow route characteristics. Golestan Dam Basin is located in Golestan province in Iran and it is passing over coordinates 55° 16´ 50" to 56° 4´ 25" E and 37° 19´ 39" to 37° 49´ 28"N. The area of the catchment is about 224 km², and elevations in the catchment range from 414 to 2856 m at the outlet, with average slope of 29.78%. Results of the simulations show a good agreement between calculated and measured hydrographs at the outlet of the basin. Drawing upon Nash-Sutcliffe model efficiency coefficient for calibration periodic model estimated daily hydrographs and maximum flow rate with an accuracy up to 59% and 80.18%, respectively.

Keywords: watershed simulation, WetSpa, stream flow, flood prediction

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Authors: Tülin Koldaş, Özlem Çetin Erdoğan, Ahmet Beyarslan

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Brachistinae Föerster, 1862 is a subfamily of the family Braconidae (order Hymenoptera) with about 410 species distributed all around the world. Brachistinae includes the genera, Eubazus Nees von Esenbeck 1814, Foersteria Szépligeti 1896, Chelostes van Achterberg 1990, Triaspis Haliday 1835 and Schizoprymnus Förster 1862. Members of the subfamily live as parasitoids on the families Curculionidae and Apionidae (Coleoptera), which also include very important agricultural pests.  In generally, members of the genus Triaspis are poorly known biologically. The genus is represented by 37 species in the West Palearctic region and 118 species worldwide. Adult specimens of Triaspis were collected from as wide a range of habitats as possible at different altitudes in different parts of Turkey between 1982 and 2010. Samples collected from short plants using standard insect sweeping nets were transferred into tubes containing 70% ethanol and labelled following their preparations according to museum techniques. Seven Triaspis species have been reported from Turkey in this study. Five of these species are new to the fauna of Turkey.

Keywords: Triaspis, Braconidae, Hymenoptera, Turkey, fauna

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Authors: John Chau, Tzvi Aviv

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Cardiometabolic conditions (hypertension, diabetes, and hyperlipidemia) are major public health concerns. Analysis of all prescription records from about 10 million patients at the largest network of pharmacies in Canada reveals small year-over-year increases in the treatment prevalence of cardiometabolic diseases prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Cardiometabolic treatment rates increase with age and are higher in males than females. Hypertension treatment rates were 24% in males and 19% in females in 2021. Diabetes treatment rates were 10% in males and 7% in females in 2021. Geospatial analysis using patient addresses reveals interesting differences among provinces and neighborhoods in Canada. Using digital surveys distributed among 8,504 Canadian adults, an increase in hypertension awareness with age and female gender was observed. However, 7% of seniors and 6% of middle-aged Canadians reported uncontrolled blood pressure (>140/90 mmHg). In addition, elevated blood pressure (130-139/80-89 mmHg) was reported by 20% of seniors and 14% of middle-aged Canadians.

Keywords: cardiometabolic conditions, diabetes, hypertension, precision public health

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Authors: Sadullah Rahmani

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Legends, stories, beliefs and traditions in every nation represent the collective dreams, secrets and aspirations of a nation and on the other hand, the foundation of their collective memory; What generally forms the foundation of the culture of any nation has undergone changes and transformations due to the passage of time and changes in political, religious and social conditions. Afghanistan is one of the richest countries in terms of cultural diversity. This country is home to people of different languages, ethnicities and religions. The purpose of this article is to analyze the contrasts and cultural commonalities between two ethnic groups in Afghanistan, namely the Hazara and Uzbek peoples. This research was done with qualitative method and structured interview tool. The method of data analysis is content analysis. In order to explain the intercultural sensitivities of the two groups, Milton Bennett's intercultural sensitivities measures have been used. Based on the theory of intercultural sensitivities, the development of communication is an important factor in reducing intercultural sensitivities. In this research, 8 people from the Hazara and Uzbek tribes were interviewed. Various factors such as customs and manners, music, language, art, lifestyle, etc. have been examined in the article. These factors can contribute to cultural differences and commonalities between the Hazara and Uzbek peoples. The results of this research show that according to Bennett's theory, there are less cultural sensitivities between the Hazara and Uzbek peoples of Afghanistan, especially in matters of marriage, language, economic poverty, being discriminated against, and work relationships; But cultural sensitivities are more in many other cases such as education, religion and the formation of cultural communities.

Keywords: Keywords: Uzbek, language, culture, religion, Hazara.

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Authors: Nasreen Basoudan, Andrea Tales, Frederic Boy

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Non-clinical anxiety may be comprised of state anxiety - temporarily experienced anxiety related to a specific situation, and trait anxiety - a longer lasting response or a general disposition to anxiety. While temporary and occasional anxiety whether as a mood state or personality dimension is normal, nonclinical anxiety may influence many more components of information processing than previously recognized. In ageing and dementia-related research, disease characterization now involves attempts to understand a much wider range of brain function such as loss of inhibitory control, as against the more common focus on memory and cognition. However, in many studies, the tendency has been to include individuals with clinical anxiety disorders while excluding persons with lower levels of state or trait anxiety. Loss of inhibitory cognitive control can lead to behaviors such as aggression, reduced sensitivity to others, sociopathic thoughts and actions. Anxiety has also been linked to inhibitory control, with research suggesting that people with anxiety are less capable of inhibiting their emotions than the average person. This study investigates the relationship between anxiety and loss of inhibitory control in younger and older adults, using a variety of questionnaires and computers-based tests. Based on the premise that irrespective of classification, anxiety is associated with a wide range of physical, affective, and cognitive responses, this study explores evidence indicative of the potential influence anxiety per se on loss of inhibitory control, in order to contribute to discussion and appropriate consideration of anxiety-related factors in methodological practice.

Keywords: anxiety, ageing, dementia, inhibitory control

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Authors: Shakirat Abimbola Adesola, Shuaib Akintunde Asifat, Jelili Olalekan Amoo

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This paper presented the impact of students’ emotions on learning when receiving lectures and when taking tests. It was observed that students experience different types of emotions during the study, and this was found to have a significant effect on their academic performance. A total of one thousand six hundred and seventy-five (1675) students from the department of Computer Science in two Colleges of Education in South-West Nigeria took part in this study. The students were randomly selected for the research. Sample comprises of 968 males representing 58%, and 707 females representing 42%. A structured questionnaire, of Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) was distributed to the participants to obtain their opinions. Data gathered were analyzed using the IBM SPSS 20 to obtain ANOVA, descriptive analysis, stepwise regression, and reliability tests. The results revealed that emotion moderately shape students’ motivation and engagement in learning; and that self-regulation and self-determination do have significant impact on academic performance. It was further revealed that test anxiety has a significant correlation with academic performance.

Keywords: motivation, self-determination, test anxiety, academic performance, and academic engagement

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Authors: Wei-Han Wang, Hsiang-Yu Yu, Mau-Sun Hua

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Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the ability to infer another’s mental state. With appropriate ToM, one can behave well in social interactions. A growing body of evidence has demonstrated that patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) may have damaged ToM due to impact on regions of the underlying neural network of ToM. However, the question of whether there is cerebral laterality for ToM functions remains open. This study aimed to examine whether there is cerebral lateralization for ToM abilities in TLE patients. Sixty-seven adult TLE patients and 30 matched healthy controls (HC) were recruited. Patients were classified into right (RTLE), left (LTLE), and bilateral (BTLE) TLE groups on the basis of a consensus panel review of their seizure semiology, EEG findings, and brain imaging results. All participants completed an intellectual test and four tasks measuring basic and advanced ToM. The results showed that, on all ToM tasks; (1)each patient group performed worse than HC; (2)there were no significant differences between LTLE and RTLE groups; (3)the BTLE group performed the worst. It appears that the neural network responsible for ToM is distributed evenly between the cerebral hemispheres.

Keywords: cerebral lateralization, social cognition, temporal lobe epilepsy, theory of mind

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Authors: Alexander Hempfing

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The desire to understand business cycle fluctuations, trade interdependencies and co-movement has a long tradition in economic thinking. From input-output economics to business cycle theory, researchers aimed to find appropriate answers from an empirical as well as a theoretical perspective. This paper empirically analyses how the production structure of the global economy and several states developed over time, what their distributional properties are and if there are network specific metrics that allow identifying structurally important nodes, on a global, national and sectoral scale. For this, the World Input-Output Database was used, and different statistical methods were applied. Empirical evidence is provided that the importance of the Eastern hemisphere in the global production network has increased significantly between 2000 and 2014. Moreover, it was possible to show that the sectoral eigenvector centrality indices on a global level are power-law distributed, providing evidence that specific national sectors exist which are more critical to the world economy than others while serving as a hub within the global production network. However, further findings suggest, that global production cannot be characterized as a scale-free network.

Keywords: economic integration, industrial organization, input-output economics, network economics, production networks

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Authors: Sang Hee Shin

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The technical improving project is for using the domestic construction technology in the weak soil condition. The improved technology is applied directly under local construction site at OOO, OOO. Existing anchor technology was developed for the case of soft ground as N value 10 or less. In case of soft ground and heavy load, the attachment site per one strand is shortened due to the distributed interval so that the installation site is increased relatively and being economically infeasible. In addition, in case of high tensile load, adhesion phenomenon between wedge and block occurs. To solve these problems, it strengthens the function of the attached strands to treat a ‘bulbing’ on the strands. In the solution for minimizing the internal damage and strengthening the removal function, it induces lubricating action using the film and the attached film, and it makes the buffer structure using wedge lubricating structure and the spring. The technology is performed such as in-house testing and the field testing. The project can improve the reliability of the standardized quality technique. As a result, it intended to give the technical competitiveness.

Keywords: anchor, improving technology, removal anchor, soil reinforcement, weak soil

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Authors: Cynthia Mahadi, Norhafezah Kasmuri

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Water scarcity is a growing issue these days. As a result, saltwater is being considered a limitless supply of fresh water through the desalination process, which is likely to address the worldwide water crisis, including in Malaysia. This study aims to offer the best management practice for controlling brine discharge in Malaysia by comparing environmental regulations on brine waste management in other countries. Then, a survey was distributed to the public to acquire further information about their level of awareness of the harmful effects of brine waste and to find out their perspective on the proposed solutions to ensure the effectiveness of the measures. As a result, it has been revealed that Malaysia still lacks regulations regarding the disposal of brine waste. Thus, a recommendation based on practices in other nations has been put forth by this study. This study suggests that the government and Malaysia's environmental regulatory body should govern brine waste disposal in the Environmental Quality Act 1974. Also, to add the construction of a desalination plant in Schedule 1 of prescribed activities was necessary. Because desalination plants can harm the environment during both construction and operation, every proposal for the construction of a desalination plant should involve the submission of an environmental impact assessment (EIA).

Keywords: seawater desalination, brine waste, environmental impact assessment, fuzzy Delphi method

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Authors: Ankit Sinha, Soham Banerjee, Pratik Chattopadhyay

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Automated product recognition in retail stores is an important real-world application in the domain of Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. In this paper, we consider the problem of automatically identifying the classes of the products placed on racks in retail stores from an image of the rack and information about the query/product images. We improve upon the existing approaches in terms of effectiveness and memory requirement by developing a two-stage object detection and recognition pipeline comprising of a Faster-RCNN-based object localizer that detects the object regions in the rack image and a ResNet-18-based image encoder that classifies the detected regions into the appropriate classes. Each of the models is fine-tuned using appropriate data sets for better prediction and data augmentation is performed on each query image to prepare an extensive gallery set for fine-tuning the ResNet-18-based product recognition model. This encoder is trained using a triplet loss function following the strategy of online-hard-negative-mining for improved prediction. The proposed models are lightweight and can be connected in an end-to-end manner during deployment to automatically identify each product object placed in a rack image. Extensive experiments using Grozi-32k and GP-180 data sets verify the effectiveness of the proposed model.

Keywords: retail stores, faster-RCNN, object localization, ResNet-18, triplet loss, data augmentation, product recognition

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Authors: Joy Shihyi Huang

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This paper discusses the concept of community in Anna Deavere Smith’s performance, one that challenges and explores existing notions of justice and the other. In contrast to unwavering assumptions of essentialism that have helped to propel a discourse on moral agency within the black community, Smith employs postmodern ideas in which the theatrical attributes of doubling and repetition are conceptualized as part of what Marvin Carlson coined as a ‘memory machine.’ Her dismissal of the need for linear time, such as that regulated by Aristotle’s The Poetics and its concomitant ethics, values, and emotions as a primary ontological and epistemological construct produced by the existing African American historiography, demonstrates an urgency to produce an alternative communal self to override metanarratives in which the African Americans’ lives are contained and sublated by specific historical confines. Drawing on Emmanuel Levinas’ theories in ethics, specifically his notion of ‘proximity’ and ‘the third,’ the paper argues that Smith enacts a new model of ethics by launching an acting method that eliminates the boundary of self and other. Defying psychological realism, Smith conceptualizes an approach to acting that surpasses the mere mimetic value of invoking a ‘likeness’ of an actor to a character, which as such, resembles the mere attribution of various racial or sexual attributes in identity politics. Such acting, she contends, reduces the other to a representation of, at best, an ultimate rendering of me/my experience. She instead appreciates ‘unlikeness,’ recognizes the unavoidable actor/character gap as a power that humbles the self, whose irreversible journey to the other carves out its own image.

Keywords: Anna Deavere Smith, Emmanuel Levinas, other, performance

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Authors: Hassan Gana Abdullahi, Michael A. Fullen, David Oloke

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Drought poses an enormous global threat to sustainable development and is expected to increase with global climate change. Drought and desertification are major problems in Yobe State (north-east Nigeria). This investigation aims to develop a workable framework and management tool for drought mitigation in Yobe State. Mixed methods were employed during the study and additional qualitative information was gathered through Focus Group Discussions (FGD). Data on socio-economic impacts of drought were thus collected via both questionnaire surveys and FGD. In all, 1,040 questionnaires were distributed to farmers in the State and 721 were completed, representing a return rate of 69.3%. Data analysis showed that 97.9% of respondents considered themselves to be drought victims, whilst 69.3% of the respondents were unemployed and had no other means of income, except through rain-fed farming. Developing a viable and holistic approach to drought mitigation is crucial, to arrest and hopefully reverse environment degradation. Analysed data will be used to develop an integrated framework for drought mitigation and management in Yobe State. This paper introduces the socio-economic and environmental effects of drought in Yobe State.

Keywords: drought, climate change, mitigation, management, Yobe State

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Authors: Asma Mehan

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Under the thrust of technological changes, population growth and vehicular traffic, Iranian historical squares have lost their significance and they are no longer the main social nodes of the society. This research focuses on how historical public squares can inspire designers to enhance social interactions among citizens in Iranian urban context. Moreover, the recent master plan of Tehran demonstrates the lack of public spaces designed for the purpose of people’s social gatherings. For filling this gap, first the current situation of 7 selected primary historical public squares in Tehran including Sabze Meydan, Arg, Topkhaneh, Baherstan, Mokhber-al-dole, Rah Ahan and Hassan Abad have been compared. Later, the influencing elements on social interactions of the public squares such as subjective factors (human relationships and memories) and objective factors (natural and built environment) have been investigated. As a conclusion, some strategies are proposed for improving social interactions in historical public squares like; holding cultural, national, athletic and religious events, defining different and new functions in public squares’ surrounding, increasing pedestrian routs, reviving the collective memory, demonstrating the historical importance of square, eliminating visual obstacles across the square, organization the natural elements of the square, appropriate pavement for social activities. Finally, it is argued that the combination of all influencing factors which are: human interactions, natural elements and built environment criteria will lead to enhance the historical public squares’ potential for social interaction.

Keywords: historical square, Iranian public square, social interaction, Tehran

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Authors: Evangelia-Chrysanthi Kouklari, Stella Tsermentseli, Claire P. Monks

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Executive function (EF) refers to a set of future-oriented and goal-directed cognitive skills that are crucial for problem solving and social behaviour, as well as the ability to organise oneself. It has been suggested that EF could be conceptualised as two distinct but interrelated constructs, one emotional (hot) and one cognitive (cool), as it facilitates both affective and cognitive regulation. Cool EF has been found to be strongly related to Theory of Mind (ToM) that is the ability to infer mental states, but research has not taken into account the association between hot EF and ToM in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to date. The present study investigates the associations between both hot and cool EF and ToM in school-aged children with ASD. This cross-sectional study assesses 79 school-aged children with ASD (7-15 years) and 91 controls matched for age and IQ, on tasks tapping cool EF (working memory, inhibition, planning), hot EF (effective decision making, delay discounting), and ToM (emotional understanding and false/no false belief). Significant group differences in each EF measure support a global executive dysfunction in ASD. Strong associations between hot EF and ToM in ASD are reported for the first time (i.e. ToM emotional understanding and delay discounting). These findings highlight that hot EF also makes a unique contribution to the developmental profile of ASD. Considering the role of both hot and cool EF in association with ToM in individuals with ASD may aid in gaining a greater understanding not just of how these complex multifaceted cognitive abilities relate to one another, but their joint role in the distinct developmental pathway followed in ASD.

Keywords: ASD, executive function, school age, theory of mind

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Authors: Azzeddine Atibi, Khadija El Kababi, Salim Ahmed, Mohamed Radid

Abstract:

The primary aim of the present study is to undertake an extensive comparative examination of distance learning and blended learning modalities, with a particular focus on assessing their efficacy during the period of confinement imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This investigation is grounded in the firsthand experiences of educators at the high school and secondary levels across both private and public educational institutions. To gather the necessary data, we designed and distributed a meticulously crafted survey to these educators, soliciting detailed accounts of their professional experiences throughout this challenging period. The survey's objectives include elucidating the specific difficulties faced by teachers, as well as highlighting the innovative pedagogical strategies they developed in response to these challenges. By synthesizing the insights gained from this survey, we aim to foster an exchange of experiences among educators and to generate informed recommendations that will guide future educational reforms. Ultimately, this study aspires to contribute to the ongoing discourse on optimizing educational practices in the face of unprecedented disruptions.

Keywords: distance learning, blended learning, covid 19, secondary/ high school, teachingperformance, evaluation

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Authors: J. S. Dhillon, K. K. Dhaliwal

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In almost all the digital filtering applications the digital infinite impulse response (IIR) filters are preferred over finite impulse response (FIR) filters because they provide much better performance, less computational cost and have smaller memory requirements for similar magnitude specifications. However, the digital IIR filters are generally multimodal with respect to the filter coefficients and therefore, reliable methods that can provide global optimal solutions are required. The artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is one such recently introduced meta-heuristic optimization algorithm. But in some cases it shows insufficiency while searching the solution space resulting in a weak exchange of information and hence is not able to return better solutions. To overcome this deficiency, the opposition based learning strategy is incorporated in ABC and hence a modified version called oppositional artificial bee colony (OABC) algorithm is proposed in this paper. Duplication of members is avoided during the run which also augments the exploration ability. The developed algorithm is then applied for the design of optimal and stable digital IIR filter structure where design of low-pass (LP) and high-pass (HP) filters is carried out. Fuzzy theory is applied to achieve maximize satisfaction of minimum magnitude error and stability constraints. To check the effectiveness of OABC, the results are compared with some well established filter design techniques and it is observed that in most cases OABC returns better or atleast comparable results.

Keywords: digital infinite impulse response filter, artificial bee colony optimization, opposition based learning, digital filter design, multi-parameter optimization

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Authors: Sher Muhammad, Mirza Muhammad Waqar

Abstract:

It is necessary to monitor and identify mangroves types and spatial extent near coastal areas because it plays an important role in coastal ecosystem and environmental protection. This research aims at identifying and mapping mangroves types along Karachi coast ranging from 24.79 to 24.85 degree in latitude and 66.91 to 66.97 degree in longitude using hyperspectral remote sensing data and techniques. Image acquired during February, 2012 through Hyperion sensor have been used for this research. Image preprocessing includes geometric and radiometric correction followed by Minimum Noise Fraction (MNF) and Pixel Purity Index (PPI). The output of MNF and PPI has been analyzed by visualizing it in n-dimensions for end-member extraction. Well-distributed clusters on the n-dimensional scatter plot have been selected with the region of interest (ROI) tool as end members. These end members have been used as an input for classification techniques applied to identify and map mangroves species including Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM), Spectral Feature Fitting (SFF), and Spectral Information Diversion (SID). Only two types of mangroves namely Avicennia Marina (white mangroves) and Avicennia Germinans (black mangroves) have been observed throughout the study area.

Keywords: mangrove, hyperspectral, hyperion, SAM, SFF, SID

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Authors: Robert Höttger, Lukas Krawczyk, Burkhard Igel

Abstract:

This paper introduces novel approaches to partitioning and mapping in terms of model-based embedded multicore system engineering and further discusses benefits, industrial relevance and features in common with existing approaches. In order to assess and evaluate results, both approaches have been applied to a real industrial application as well as to various prototypical demonstrative applications, that have been developed and implemented for different purposes. Evaluations show, that such applications improve significantly according to performance, energy efficiency, meeting timing constraints and covering maintaining issues by using the AMALTHEA platform and the implemented approaches. Further- more, the model-based design provides an open, expandable, platform independent and scalable exchange format between OEMs, suppliers and developers on different levels. Our proposed mechanisms provide meaningful multicore system utilization since load balancing by means of partitioning and mapping is effectively performed with regard to the modeled systems including hardware, software, operating system, scheduling, constraints, configuration and more data.

Keywords: partitioning, mapping, distributed systems, scheduling, embedded multicore systems, model-based, system analysis

Procedia PDF Downloads 620