Search results for: medium sized enterprises

Authors: Márcia Aparecida Teixeira

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Sports, in particular football, boosts considerably the financial market of a certain locality, be it city or even a country. The financial transactions involving this medium stand out from other existing businesses, such as small industries. Strategically, social networks are inserted in this sporting environment, in order to promote and attract new fans of this modality. The present study analyzes the use of social networks in Sports Marketing with a focus on football. For the object of this study, it was chosen a specific club, the Club Atlético Mineiro, a Brazilian club of great national notoriety. The social networks on focus will be: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It will be analyzed the content and frequency of the posts, reception of the target public in relation to the content made available and its feedback.

Keywords: social network, sport, strategy, marketing

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Authors: Ma. Junithesmer, D. Rosales

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The study is a baseline description of students’ attitude and interests about L2 reading in a state university in the Philippines that uses distance education as a delivery mode. Most research conducted on this area dealt with the analysis of reading in a traditional school set-up. For this reason, this research was written to discover if there are implications as regards students’ preferences, interests and attitude reveal about L2 reading in a non-traditional set-up. To form the corpus of this study, it included the literature and studies about reading, preferred technological devices, titles of books and authors, reading medium traditional/ print and electronic books that juxtapose with students’ interest and feelings when reading at home and in school; and their views about their strengths and weaknesses as readers.

Keywords: distance education, L2 reading, reading, reading attitude

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Authors: Ira V. Stancheva, Ely G. Zayova, Maria P. Geneva, Marieta G. Hristozkova, Lyudmila I. Dimitrova, Maria I. Petrova

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The study describes a highly efficient and low-cost protocol for rapid and mass in vitro propagation of medicinal and aromatic plant species (Hyssopus officinalis L., Lamiaceae). Hyssop is an important aromatic herb used for its medicinal values because of its antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties. The protocol for large-scale multiplication of this aromatic plant was developed using young stem tips explants. The explants were sterilized with 0.04% mercuric chloride (HgCl₂) solution for 20 minutes and washing three times with sterile distilled water in 15 minutes. The cultural media was full and half strength Murashige and Skoog medium containing indole-3-butyric acid. Full and ½ Murashige and Skoog media without auxin were used as controls. For each variant 20 glass tubes with two plants were used. In each tube two tip and nodal explants were inoculated. Maximum shoot and root number were obtained on ½ Murashige and Skoog medium supplemented with 0.1 mg L-1 indole-3-butyric acid at the same time after four weeks of culture. The number of shoots per explant and shoot height were considered. The data on rooting percentage, the number of roots per plant and root length were collected after the same cultural period. The highest percentage of survival 85% for this medicinal plant was recorded in mixture of soil, sand and perlite (2:1:1 v/v/v). This mixture was most suitable for acclimatization of all propagated plants. Ex vitro acclimatization was carried out at 24±1 °C and 70% relative humidity under 16 h illuminations (50 μmol m⁻²s⁻¹). After adaptation period, the all plants were transferred to the field. The plants flowered within three months after transplantation. Phenotypic variations in the acclimatized plants were not observed. An average of 90% of the acclimatized plants survived after transferring into the field. All the in vitro propagated plants displayed normal development under the field conditions. Developed in vitro techniques could provide a promising alternative tool for large-scale propagation that increases the number of homologous plants for field cultivation. Acknowledgments: This study was conducted with financial support from National Science Fund at the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science, Project DN06/7 17.12.16.

Keywords: Hyssopus officinalis L., in vitro culture, micro propagation, acclimatization

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Authors: Icaro V. Soares, Guilherme L. F. Brandao, Ursula D. C. Resende, Glaucio L. Siqueira

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Electrical energy can be wirelessly transmitted through resonant coupled coils that operate in the near-field region. Once in this region, the field has evanescent character, the efficiency of Resonant Wireless Power Transfer (RWPT) systems decreases proportionally with the inverse cube of distance between the transmitter and receiver coils. The commercially available RWPT systems are restricted to short and mid-range applications in which the distance between coils is lesser or equal to the coil size. An alternative to overcome this limitation is applying metamaterial structures to enhance the coupling between coils, thus reducing the field decay along the distance between them. Metamaterials can be conceived as composite materials with periodic or non-periodic structure whose unconventional electromagnetic behaviour is due to its unit cell disposition and chemical composition. This new kind of material has been used in frequency selective surfaces, invisibility cloaks, leaky-wave antennas, among other applications. However, for RWPT it is mainly applied as superlenses which are lenses that can overcome the optical limitation and are made of left-handed media, that is, a medium with negative magnetic permeability and electric permittivity. As RWPT systems usually operate at wavelengths of hundreds of meters, the metamaterial unit cell size is much smaller than the wavelength. In this case, electric and magnetic field are decoupled, therefore the double negative condition for superlenses are not required and the negative magnetic permeability is enough to produce an artificial magnetic medium. In this work, the influence of the magnetic permeability of a metamaterial slab inserted between two loosely coupled coils is studied in order to find the condition that leads to the maximum transmission efficiency. The metamaterial used is formed by a subwavelength unit cell that consist of a capacitor-loaded split ring with an inner spiral that is designed and optimized using the software Computer Simulation Technology. The unit cell permeability is experimentally characterized by the ratio of the transmission parameters between coils measured with and without the presence of the metamaterial slab. Early measurements results show that the transmission coefficient at the resonant frequency after the inclusion of the metamaterial is about three times higher than with just the two coils, which confirms the enhancement that this structure brings to RWPT systems.

Keywords: electromagnetic lens, loosely coupled coils, magnetic permeability, metamaterials, resonant wireless power transfer, subwavelength unit cells

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Authors: Ghaneshree Moonsamy, Nodumo N. Zulu, Rajesh Lalloo, Suren Singh, Santosh O. Ramchuran

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The abalone industry of South Africa is under severe pressure due to illegal harvesting and poaching of this seafood delicacy. These abalones are harvested excessively; as a result, these animals do not have a chance to replace themselves in their habitats, ensuing in a drastic decrease in natural stocks of abalone. Abalone has an extremely slow growth rate and takes approximately four years to reach a size that is market acceptable; therefore, it was imperative to investigate methods to boost the overall growth rate and immunity of the animal. The University of Cape Town (UCT) began to research, which resulted in the isolation of two microorganisms, a yeast isolate Debaryomyces hansenii and a bacterial isolate Vibrio midae, from the gut of the abalone and characterised them for their probiotic abilities. This work resulted in an internationally competitive concept technology that was patented. The next stage of research was to develop a suitable bioprocess to enable commercial production. Numerous steps were taken to develop an efficient production process for V. midae, one of the isolates found by UCT. The initial stages of research involved the development of a stable and robust inoculum and the optimization of physiological growth parameters such as temperature and pH. A range of temperature and pH conditions were evaluated, and data obtained revealed an optimum growth temperature of 30ᵒC and a pH of 6.5. Once these critical growth parameters were established further media optimization studies were performed. Corn steep liquor (CSL) and high test molasses (HTM) were selected as suitable alternatives to more expensive, conventionally used growth medium additives. The optimization of CSL (6.4 g.l⁻¹) and HTM (24 g.l⁻¹) concentrations in the growth medium resulted in a 180% increase in cell concentration, a 5716-fold increase in cell productivity and a 97.2% decrease in the material cost of production in comparison to conventional growth conditions and parameters used at the onset of the study. In addition, a stable market-ready liquid probiotic product, encompassing the viable but not culturable (VBNC) state of Vibrio midae cells, was developed during the downstream processing aspect of the study. The demonstration of this technology at a full manufacturing scale has further enhanced the attractiveness and commercial feasibility of this production process.

Keywords: probiotics, abalone aquaculture, bioprocess technology, manufacturing scale technology development

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Authors: F. Hadjaj, A. Belghachi, A. Halmaoui, M. Belhadj, H. Mazouz

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A laser is essentially an optical oscillator consisting of a resonant cavity, an amplifying medium and a pumping source. In semiconductor diode lasers, the cavity is created by the boundary between the cleaved face of the semiconductor crystal and air and also has reflective properties as a result of the differing refractive indices of the two media. For a GaAs-air interface a reflectance of 0.3 is typical and therefore the length of the semiconductor junction forms the resonant cavity. To prevent light, being emitted in unwanted directions from the junction and Sides perpendicular to the required direction are roughened. The objective of this work is to simulate the optical resonator Fabry-Perot and explore its main characteristics, such as FSR, Finesse, Linewidth, Transmission and so on that describe the performance of resonator.

Keywords: Fabry-Perot Resonator, laser diod, reflectance, semiconductor

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Authors: Mallikarjun Vaddenkeri, Suresh Jange

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This research study reports results of information behaviour by members of faculty and research scholars of various departments of social sciences working at universities with a sample of 300 and Members of Legislative Assembly and Council with 216 samples in Karnataka State, India. The results reveal that 29.3% and 20.3% of Social Scientists indicated medium and high level of awareness of primary sources - Primary Journals are found to be at scale level 5 and 9. The usage of primary journals by social scientists is found to be 28% at level 4, 24% of the respondent’s opined use of primary Conference Proceedings at level 5 as medium level of use. Similarly, the use of Secondary Information Sources at scale 8 and 9 particularly in case of Dictionaries (31.0% and 5.0%), Encyclopaedias (22.3% and 6.3%), Indexing Periodicals (7.0% and 15.3%) and Abstracting Periodicals (5.7% and 20.7%). For searching information from Journals Literature available in CD-ROM version, Keywords (43.7%) followed by Keywords with logical operators (39.7%) have been used for finding the required information. Statistical inference reveals rejection of null hypothesis `there is no association between designation of the respondents and awareness of primary information resources’. On the other hand, educational qualification possessed by Legislative members, more than half of them possess graduate degree as their academic qualification (57.4%) and just 16.7% of the respondents possess graduate degree while only 26.8% of the respondents possess degree in law and just 1.8% possess post-graduate degree in law. About 42.6% indicated the importance of information required to discharge their duties and responsibilities as a Policy Maker in the scale 8, as a Scholar (27.8%) on a scale 6, as a politician (64.8%) on a scale 10 and as a Councillor (51.9%) on a scale 8. The most preferred information agencies/sources very often contacted for obtaining useful information are by means of contacting the people of Karnataka State Legislative Library, listening Radio programmes, viewing Television programmes and reading the newspapers. The methods adopted for obtaining needed information quite often by means of sending their assistants to libraries to gather information (35.2%) and personally visiting the information source (64.8%). The null hypotheses `There is no association between Members of Legislature and Opinion on the usefulness of the resources of the Karnataka State Legislature Library’ is accepted using F ANOVA test. The studies conclude with a note revamp the existing library system in its structure and adopt latest technologies and educate and train social scientists and Legislators in using these resources in the interest of academic, government policies and decision making of the country.

Keywords: information use behaviour, government information, searching behaviour, policy makers

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Authors: N. Chahmana, I. Zerroual

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The aim of our work is the contribution to the improvement of the performances of the positive plate of the lead acid battery. For that, we synthesized two varieties of PbO2 used in industry, alpha and beta PbO2 by electrochemical way starting from the not formed industrial plates. We studied the kinetics of reduction of the alpha varieties and PbO2 beta on electrode with microcavity in sulphuric medium. The electrochemical study of the powders of α and β-PbO2 was made by cyclic voltamperometry with sweeping of potential by using a traditional assembly with three electrodes. Values of the coefficient of diffusion of the proton in α and β-PbO2 are respectively equal to 0.498*10-8cm2 /s and 0.793*10-8 cm2 /s. During the cycling of the two varieties of PbO2, we obtain a clear increase in the capacity.

Keywords: lead accumulator, α and β - PbO2, synthesis, kinetics, cyclic voltametry, coefficient of diffusion

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Authors: Khwaja Bahman Qaderi, Noorullah Rafiqee

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Background: With today's increasing Internet users, e-commerce has become a viable model for strengthening relationships between sellers, entrepreneurs, and consumers due to its speed, efficiency, and cost reduction. Agriculture is the economic backbone for 80 percent of the Afghan population. According to MCIT statistics, there are currently around 10 million internet users in Afghanistan. With this data, it was expected that Afghan people should have utilized e-commerce in their agricultural aspects, although it appears to be less used. Objective: This study examines the scope of e-commerce in Afghanistan's agriculture enterprises, how they harness the potential of internet users, and what obstacles they face in implementing e-commerce in their businesses. Method: The study distributed a 39-question questionnaire to agribusinesses in five different zones of Afghanistan. After extracting the responses and excluding the incomplete questionnaires, 280 were included in the analysis step to perform a non-parametric sign test. Result: E-commerce in Afghanistan faces four major political, economic, Internet, and technological obstacles, and no company in the country has implemented e-commerce. In addition, e-commerce is still in its infancy among agricultural companies in the country. Internet use is still primarily limited to email and sharing product images on Facebook & Instagram for advertising purposes. There are no companies that conduct international transactions via the Internet. Conclusion: This study contributes to knowing the challenges and barriers that the agriculture e-commerce faces in Afghanistan to find the effective solutions to use the capacity of internet users in the country and increase the sales rate of agricultural products through the Internet.

Keywords: E-commerce, barriers and challenges, agriculture companies, Afghanistan

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Authors: Sharifullah Ahmed, Sarwar Jahan Md. Yasin

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Shallow foundations on unimproved soft natural soils can undergo a high consolidation and secondary settlement. For low and medium rise building projects on such soil condition, pile foundation may not be cost effective. In such cases an alternative to pile foundations may be shallow strip footings placed on a double layered improved soil system soil. The upper layer of this system is untreated or cement treated compacted sand and underlying layer is natural soft clay. This system will reduce the settlement to an allowable limit. The current research has been conducted with the settlement of a rigid plane-strain strip footing of 2.5 m width placed on the surface of a soil consisting of an untreated or cement treated sand layer overlying a bed of homogeneous soft clay. The settlement of the mentioned shallow foundation has been studied considering both cases with the thicknesses of the sand layer are 0.3 to 0.9 times the width of footing. The response of the clay layer is assumed as undrained for plastic loading stages and drained during consolidation stages. The response of the sand layer is drained during all loading stages. FEM analysis was done using PLAXIS 2D Version 8.0. A natural clay deposit of 15 m thickness and 18 m width has been modeled using Hardening Soil Model, Soft Soil Model, Soft Soil Creep Model, and upper improvement layer has been modeled using only Hardening Soil Model. The groundwater level is at the top level of the clay deposit that made the system fully saturated. Parametric study has been conducted to determine the effect of thickness, density, cementation of the sand mat and density, shear strength of the soft clay layer on the settlement of strip foundation under the uniformly distributed vertical load of varying value. A set of the chart has been established for designing shallow strip footing on the sand mat over thick, soft clay deposit through obtaining the particular thickness of sand mat for particular subsoil parameter to ensure no punching shear failure and no settlement beyond allowable level. Design guideline in the form of non-dimensional charts has been developed for footing pressure equivalent to medium-rise residential or commercial building foundation with strip footing on soft inorganic Normally Consolidated (NC) soil of Bangladesh having void ratio from 1.0 to 1.45.

Keywords: design charts, ground improvement, PLAXIS 2D, primary and secondary settlement, sand mat, soft clay

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Authors: Hanouf A. S. Al Nuwaysir, Nadine Moubayed, Abir Ben Bacha, Islem Abid

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Consumption of waste water continues to cause significant problems for human health in both developed and developing countries. Many regulations have been implied by different world authorities controlling water quality for the presence of coliforms used as standard indicators of water quality deterioration and historically leading health protection concept. In this study, the European directive for the detection of Escherichia coli, ISO 9308-1, was applied to examine and monitor coliforms in water samples collected from Wadi Hanifa and neighboring wells, Riyadh governorate, kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is used for irrigation and industrial purposes. Samples were taken from different locations for 8 months consecutively, chlorine concentration ranging from 0.1- 0.4 mg/l, was determined using the DPD FREE CHLORINE HACH kit. Water samples were then analyzed following the ISO protocol which relies on the membrane filtration technique (0.45µm, pore size membrane filter) and a chromogenic medium TTC, a lactose based medium used for the detection and enumeration of total coliforms and E.coli. Data showed that the number of bacterial isolates ranged from 60 to 300 colonies/100ml for well and surface water samples respectively; where higher numbers were attributed to the surface samples. Organisms which apparently ferment lactose on TTC agar plates, appearing as orange colonies, were selected and additionally cultured on EMB and MacConkey agar for a further differentiation among E.coli and coliform bacteria. Two additional biochemical tests (Cytochrome oxidase and indole from tryptophan) were also investigated to detect and differentiate the presence of E.coli from other coliforms, E. coli was identified in an average of 5 to 7colonies among 25 selected colonies.On the other hand, a more rapid, specific and sensitive analytical molecular detection namely single colony PCR was also performed targeting hha gene to sensitively detect E.coli, giving more accurate and time consuming identification of colonies considered presumptively as E.coli. Comparative methodologies, such as ultrafiltration and direct DNA extraction from membrane filters (MoBio, Grermany) were also applied; however, results were not as accurate as the membrane filtration, making it a technique of choice for the detection and enumeration of water coliforms, followed by sufficiently specific enzymatic confirmatory stage.

Keywords: coliform, cytochrome oxidase, hha primer, membrane filtration, single colony PCR

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Authors: Mina Boroujerdi, Javad Tavakoli

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Hydrogels are extensively studied as matrices for the controlled release of drugs. To evaluate the mobility of embedded molecules, these drug delivery systems are usually characterized by release studies. In this contribution, an electronic device for swelling pressure measurement during drug release from hydrogel network was developed. Also, poly acrylic acid micro particles were prepared for prolonged and sustained controlled acetaminophen release. Effect of swelling pressure on drug release from micro particles studied under different environment pH in order to predict release profile in gastro-intestine medium. Swelling ratio and swelling pressure were measured in different pH.

Keywords: swelling pressure, drug delivery, hydrogel, polyelectrolyte

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Authors: Patrick J. Kerpan, Ryan C. Koop, Margaret M. Walker, Chris P. Swan

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The User Datagram Protocol (UDP) multicast is a vital part of data center networking that is being left out of major cloud computing providers' network infrastructure. Enterprise users rely on multicast, and particularly UDP multicast to create and connect vital business operations. For example, UPD makes a variety of business functions possible from simultaneous content media updates, High-Performance Computing (HPC) grids, and video call routing for massive open online courses (MOOCs). Essentially, UDP multicast's technological slight is causing a huge effect on whether companies choose to use (or not to use) public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Allowing the ‘chatty’ UDP multicast protocol inside a cloud network could have a serious impact on the performance of the cloud as a whole. Cloud IaaS providers solve the issue by disallowing all UDP multicast. But what about enterprise use cases for multicast applications in organizations that want to move to the cloud? To re-allow multicast traffic, enterprises can build a layer 3 - 7 network over the top of a data center, private cloud, or public cloud. An overlay network simply creates a private, sealed network on top of the existing network. Overlays give complete control of the network back to enterprise cloud users the freedom to manage their network beyond the control of the cloud provider’s firewall conditions. The same logic applies if for users who wish to use IPsec or BGP network protocols inside or connected into an overlay network in cloud IaaS.

Keywords: cloud computing, protocols, UDP multicast, virtualization

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Authors: A. Bahmanpour, I. Eames, C. Klettner, A. Dimakopoulos

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We develop a new set of diagnostic tools to analyze inundation into a model district using three-dimensional CFD simulations, with a view to generating a database against which to test simpler models. A three-dimensional model of Oregon city with different-sized groups of building next to the coastline is used to run calculations of the movement of a long period wave on the shore. The initial and boundary conditions of the off-shore water are set using a nonlinear inverse method based on Eulerian spatial information matching experimental Eulerian time series measurements of water height. The water movement is followed in time, and this enables the pressure distribution on every surface of each building to be followed in a temporal manner. The three-dimensional numerical data set is validated against published experimental work. In the first instance, we use the dataset as a basis to understand the success of reduced models - including 2D shallow water model and reduced 1D models - to predict water heights, flow velocity and forces. This is because models based on the shallow water equations are known to underestimate drag forces after the initial surge of water. The second component is to identify critical flow features, such as hydraulic jumps and choked states, which are flow regions where dissipation occurs and drag forces are large. Finally, we describe how future tsunami inundation models should be modified to account for the complex effects of buildings through drag and blocking.Financial support from UCL and HR Wallingford is greatly appreciated. The authors would like to thank Professor Daniel Cox and Dr. Hyoungsu Park for providing the data on the Seaside Oregon experiment.

Keywords: computational fluid dynamics, extreme events, loading, tsunami

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Authors: Maxat Bokambayev, Bella Tussupova, Aisha Mamyrova, Erlan Izbasarov

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Optimization of business processes in trading companies is reviewed in the report. There is the presentation of the “Wholesale Customer Order Handling Process” business process model applicable for small and medium businesses. It is proposed to apply the algorithm for automation of the customer order processing which will significantly reduce labor costs and time expenditures and increase the profitability of companies. An optimized business process is an element of the information system of accounting of spare parts trading network activity. The considered algorithm may find application in the trading industry as well.

Keywords: business processes, discrete-event simulation, management, trading industry

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Authors: Woosik Jang, Seung Heon Han, Seung Won Baek

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Natural gas (NG) is an energy resource in a few countries, and most NG producers do business in politically unstable countries. In addition, as 90% of the LNG market is controlled by a small number of international oil companies (IOCs) and national oil companies (NOCs), entry of latecomers into the market is extremely limited. To meet these challenges, project viability needs to be assessed based on limited information from a project screening perspective. However, the early stages of the project have the following difficulties: (1) What are the factors to consider? (2) How many professionals do you need to decide? (3) How to make the best decision with limited information? To address this problem, this study proposes a model for evaluating LNG project viability based on the Dempster-Shafer theory (DST). A total of 11 indicators for analyzing the gas field, reflecting the characteristics of the LNG industry, and 23 indicators for analyzing the market environment, were identified. The proposed model also evaluates the LNG project based on the survey and provides uncertainty of the results based on DST as well as quantified results. Thus, the proposed model is expected to be able to support the decision-making process of the gas field project using quantitative results as a systematic framework, and it was developed as a stand-alone system to improve its usefulness in practice. Consequently, the amount of information and the mathematical approach are expected to improve the quality and opportunity of decision making for LNG projects for enterprises.

Keywords: project screen, energy enterprise, decision support system, Dempster-Shafer theory

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Authors: Michiko Miyamoto

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The market for "functional foods" and "foods with functional claims" that are effective in maintaining and improving health, has expanded year by year due to the entry of major food and beverage manufacturers following the introduction of the specified health food system in 1991 in Japan. To bring health claims related products or services to the market, it is necessary to let consumers to learn about these products or services; an effective marketing through advertising are important. This research proposes a framework for an effective advertisement medium for the food supplement industry by using survey data of 2,500 people.

Keywords: functional foods, dietary supplements, marketing strategy, structural equation modeling

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Authors: Andrus Pedai, Igor Astrov

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The focus of this paper is to compare common approaches for Systems of Innovation (SI) and identify proactive alternatives for driving the innovation. Proactive approaches will also consider short and medium term perspectives with developments in the field of Computer Technology and Artificial Intelligence. Concerning computer technology and large connected information systems, it is reasonable to predict that during current or the next century, intelligence and innovation will be separated from the constraints of human-driven management. After this happens, humans will no longer be driving the innovation and there is possibility that SI for new intelligent systems will set its own targets and exclude humans. Over long time scale, these developments could result in a scenario, which will lead to the development of larger, cross galactic (universal) proactive SI and Intelligence.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, DARPA, Moore’s law, proactive innovation, singularity, systems of innovation

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Authors: Benjamin Kuester, Bjoern Eilert, Malte Stonis, Ludger Overmeyer

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Increasing quality requirements make reliable and effective quality management indispensable. This includes the complaint handling in which the 8D method is widely used. The 8D report as a written documentation of the 8D method is one of the key quality documents as it internally secures the quality standards and acts as a communication medium to the customer. In practice, however, the 8D report is mostly faulty and of poor quality. There is no quality control of 8D reports today. This paper describes the use of natural language processing for the automated evaluation of 8D reports. Based on semantic analysis and text-mining algorithms the presented system is able to uncover content and formal quality deficiencies and thus increases the quality of the complaint processing in the long term.

Keywords: 8D report, complaint management, evaluation system, text-mining

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Authors: Januar Parlaungan Siregar, Davindra Brabu Mathivanan, Dandi Bachtiar, Mohd Ruzaimi Mat Rejab, Tezara Cionita

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Natural fibres play a significant role in mass industries such as automotive, construction and sports. Many researchers have found that the natural fibres are the best replacement for the synthetic fibres in terms of cost, safety, and degradability due to the shortage of landfill and ingestion of non biodegradable plastic by animals. This study mainly revolved around pineapple leaf fibre (PALF) which is available abundantly in tropical countries and with excellent mechanical properties. The composite formed in this study is highly biodegradable as both fibre and matrix are both derived from natural based products. The matrix which is polylactic acid (PLA) is made from corn starch which gives the upper hand as both material are renewable resources are easier to degrade by bacteria or enzyme. The PALF is treated with different alkaline solution to remove excessive moisture in the fibre to provide better interfacial bonding with PLA. Thereafter the PALF is washed with distilled water several times before placing in vacuum oven at 80°C for 48 hours. The dried PALF later were mixed with PLA using extrusion method using fibre in percentage of 30 by weight. The temperature for all zone were maintained at 160°C with the screw speed of 50 rpm for better bonding and afterwards the products of the mixture were pelletized using pelletizer. The pellets were placed in the specimen-sized mould for hot compression under the temperature of 170°C at 5 MPa for 5 min and subsequently were cold pressed under room temperature at 5 MPa for 5 min. The specimen were tested for tensile and flexure strength according to American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) D638 and D790 respectively. The effect of surface modification on PALF with different alkali solution will be investigated and compared.

Keywords: natural fibre, PALF, PLA, composite

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Authors: Hiba Taim

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This abstract falls within the scope of entrepreneurship and regulates cultural and creative entrepreneurship. It tackles the topic of "The Ecosystem in Cultural and Creative Entrepreneurship in North Africa". This piece of work deals with the problem of the absence of the ecosystem in cultural and creative enterprises in North Africa, meaning the absence of a clear structure of the ecosystem in the field of cultural and creative entrepreneurship in North Africa. The aim of this research is to create an integrated ecosystem that brings together all those involved in cultural and creative entrepreneurship in North Africa: from training, financial support, continuing, international organizations, government banks, and means of communication. This study is significant not only because it suggests some activities to develop this system but also because it provides all of the information to cultural and creative entrepreneurs in order for them to create project opportunities and activate the entrepreneurship process. It will also enable the creation of opportunities to work among them and formulate common cultural policies to develop the quality of cultural and creative services in North Africa. This research paper uses a qualitative approach to gather information of good quality about the problem being tackled, as well as studying and analyzing different documents and conducting interviews with cultural entrepreneurs, which will help to collect all the information on the state of the ecosystem in North Africa. For the moment, this paperwork is at the stage of collecting preliminary data regarding the problem and developing appropriate schedules for all the phases of the research in order to be productive and deliver this study in the coming months.

Keywords: cultural innovation, design innovation, design thinking, cultural entrepreneurship

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Authors: Claudio Lamilla, Andrés Santos, Vicente Llanquinao, Jocelyn Hermosilla, Leticia Barrientos

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The industry in general is very interested in improving and optimizing industrial processes in order to reduce the costs involved in obtaining raw materials and production. Thus, an interesting and cost-effective alternative is the incorporation of bioactive metabolites in such processes, being an example of this enzymes which catalyze efficiently a large number of enzymatic reactions of industrial and biotechnological interest. In the search for new sources of these active metabolites, Antarctica is one of the least explored places on our planet where the most drastic cold conditions, salinity, UVA-UVB and liquid water available are present, features that have shaped all life in this very harsh environment, especially bacteria that live in different Antarctic ecosystems, which have had to develop different strategies to adapt to these conditions, producing unique biochemical strategies. In this work the production of cellulolytic enzymes of seven bacterial strains isolated from marine sediments at different sites in the Antarctic was evaluated. Isolation of the strains was performed using serial dilutions in the culture medium at M115°C. The identification of the strains was performed using universal primers (27F and 1492R). The enzyme activity assays were performed on R2A medium, carboxy methyl cellulose (CMC)was added as substrate. Degradation of the substrate was revealed by adding Lugol. The results show that four of the tested strains produce enzymes which degrade CMC substrate. The molecular identifications, showed that these bacteria belong to the genus Streptomyces and Pseudoalteromonas, being Streptomyces strain who showed the highest activity. Only some bacteria in marine sediments have the ability to produce these enzymes, perhaps due to their greater adaptability to degrade at temperatures bordering zero degrees Celsius, some algae that are abundant in this environment and have cellulose as the main structure. The discovery of new enzymes adapted to cold is of great industrial interest, especially for paper, textiles, detergents, biofuels, food and agriculture. These enzymes represent 8% of industrial demand worldwide and is expected to increase their demand in the coming years. Mainly in the paper and food industry are required in extraction processes starch, protein and juices, as well as the animal feed industry where treating vegetables and grains helps improve the nutritional value of the food, all this clearly puts Antarctic microorganisms and their enzymes specifically as a potential contribution to industry and the novel biotechnological applications.

Keywords: antarctic, bacteria, biotechnological, cellulolytic enzymes

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Authors: Bovornluck Kuosuwan, Kevin Wongleedee

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The purposes of this research was to study the level of satisfaction of international tourists in five important areas: satisfaction on visiting tourist destinations, satisfaction on tourist images, satisfaction on value for money, satisfaction on service quality, and satisfaction when compared with their expectation. A probability random sampling of 200 inbound tourists was utilized. A questionnaire was used to collect the data and small in-depth interviews were also used to get their opinions about their positive and negative evaluations of their experience travelling in Thailand. The findings revealed that the majority of respondents had a medium level of satisfaction. When examined in detail, the level of satisfaction can be ranked from highest to lowest according to the mean average as follows: visiting tourist destinations, expectations, service quality, tourist image, and value for money.

Keywords: inbound tourists, satisfaction, Thailand, international tourists

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Authors: Mona Hassan Aburahma, Alaa Hamed Salama

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Ufasomes “unsaturated fatty acids liposomes” are unique nano-sized self-assembled bilayered vesicles that can be easily created from the readily available unsaturated fatty acid. Ufasomes are formed due to weak associative interaction of the fully ionized and unionized fatty acids into bilayers structures. In the ufasomes constructs, the fatty acid molecules are oriented with their hydrocarbon tails directed toward the membrane interior and the carboxyl groups are in contact with water. Although ufasomes can be employed as a safe vesicular carrier for drugs, the extreme instability of their aqueous dispersions hinders their effective use in drug delivery field. Accordingly, in our study, lyophilized gels containing ufasomes were prepared using a simple assembling technique form the readily available oleic acid to overcome the colloidal instability of the ufasomes dispersions and convert them into accurate unit dosage forms. The influence of changing cholesterol percentage relative to oleic acid on the ufasomes vesicles were investigated using factorial design. The optimized oleic acid ufasomes comprised nanoscaled spherical vesicles. Scanning electron micrographs of the lyophilized gels revealed that the included ufasomes were intact, non-aggregating, and preserved their spherical morphology. Rheological characterization (viscosity and shear stress versus shear rate) of reconstituted ufasomal lyophilized gel ensured the ease of application. The capability of the ufasomes, included in the gel, to penetrate deep through the mucosa layers was illustrated using ex-vivo confocal laser imaging, thereby, highlighting the feasibility of stabilizing ufasomes using lyophilized gel platforms.

Keywords: ufasomes, lyophilized gel, confocal scanning microscopy, rheological characterization, oleic acid

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Authors: A. Mulry, C. Kealey, D. B. Brady

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Planktonic bacteria can form biofilms which are microbial aggregates embedded within a matrix of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS). They can be found attached to abiotic or biotic surfaces. Biofilms are responsible for oral diseases such as dental caries, gingivitis and the progression of periodontal disease. Biofilms can resist 500 to 1000 times the concentration of biocides and antibiotics used to kill planktonic bacteria. Biofilm development on oral surfaces involves four stages, initial attachment, early development, maturation and dispersal of planktonic cells. The Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) was determined using a range of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids using the resazurin assay, followed by serial dilution and spot plating on BHI agar plates to establish the Minimum Bactericidal Concentration (MBC). Log reduction of bacteria was also evaluated for each fatty acid. The Minimum Biofilm Inhibition Concentration (MBIC) was determined using crystal violet assay in 96 well plates on forming and pre-formed S. mutans biofilms using BHI supplemented with 1% sucrose. Saturated medium-chain fatty acids Octanoic (C8.0), Decanoic (C10.0) and Undecanoic acid (C11.0) do not display strong antibiofilm properties; however, Lauric (C12.0) and Myristic (C14.0) display moderate antibiofilm properties with 97.83% and 97.5% biofilm inhibition with 1000 µM respectively. Monounsaturated, Oleic acid (C18.1) and polyunsaturated large chain fatty acids, Linoleic acid (C18.2) display potent antibiofilm properties with biofilm inhibition of 99.73% at 125 µM and 100% at 65.5 µM, respectively. Long-chain polyunsaturated Omega-3 fatty acids α-Linoleic (C18.3), Eicosapentaenoic Acid (EPA) (C20.5), Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA) (C22.6) have displayed strong antibiofilm efficacy from concentrations ranging from 31.25-250µg/ml. DHA is the most promising antibiofilm agent with an MBIC of 99.73% with 15.625µg/ml. This may be due to the presence of six double bonds and the structural orientation of the fatty acid. To conclude, fatty acids displaying the most antimicrobial activity appear to be medium or long-chain unsaturated fatty acids containing one or more double bonds. Most promising agents include Omega-3-fatty acids Linoleic, α-Linoleic, EPA and DHA, as well as Omega-9 fatty acid Oleic acid. These results indicate that fatty acids have the potential to be used as antimicrobials and antibiofilm agents against S. mutans. Future work involves further screening of the most potent fatty acids against a range of bacteria, including Gram-positive and Gram-negative oral pathogens. Future work will involve incorporating the most effective fatty acids onto dental implant devices to prevent biofilm formation.

Keywords: antibiofilm, biofilm, fatty acids, S. mutans

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Authors: Tingting Zhou

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The partial privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is a dynamic process. The main features of this process lie in not only gradual and sequential privatizations, but also privatized shares transfer. For partially privatized SOEs, the introduction of private sector ownership is not the end of the story because the previously introduced private owners may choose to leave the SOEs by transferring the privatized shares after privatization, a process that is called “privatized shares transfer”. This paper investigates the determinants of privatized shares transfer from the perspective of large shareholders’ control rights. The results captures the fact that the higher control rights of large shareholders lead to more privatized shares transfer. After exploring the impacts of excessive control rights, the results provide evidence supporting the idea that firms with excessive numbers of directors, senior managers or supervisors who also have positions in the largest controlling shareholder’s entity are more likely to transfer privatized shares owned by private owners. In addition, the largest shareholders’ ownership also plays a role in privatized shares transfer. This evidence suggests that the large shareholders’ control rights should be limited to an appropriate range during the process of privatization, thereby giving private shareholders more opportunity to participate in the operation of firms, strengthen the state and enhance the competitiveness of state capital.

Keywords: control rights of large shareholders, partial privatization, privatized shares transfer, state-owned listed companies

Procedia PDF Downloads 284

Authors: K. J. Keerthi, Vasundhara Kamineni, A. Ravi Shanker, T. Rammurthy, A. Vijaya Lakshmi, Q. Hasan

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Pancreatic β-cells are the predominant insulin-producing cell types within the Islets of Langerhans and insulin is the primary hormone which regulates carbohydrate and fat metabolism. Apoptosis of β-cells or insufficient insulin production leads to Diabetes Mellitus (DM). Current therapy for diabetes includes either medical management or insulin replacement and regular monitoring. Replacement of β- cells is an attractive treatment option for both Type-1 and Type-2 DM in view of the recent paper which indicates that β-cells apoptosis is the common underlying cause for both the Types of DM. With the development of Edmonton protocol, pancreatic β-cells allo-transplantation became possible, but this is still not considered as standard of care due to subsequent requirement of lifelong immunosuppression and the scarcity of suitable healthy organs to retrieve pancreatic β-cell. Fetal pancreatic cells from abortuses were developed as a possible therapeutic option for Diabetes, however, this posed several ethical issues. Hence, in the present study Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) were differentiated into insulin producing cells which were isolated from Human Umbilical cord (HUC) tissue. MSCs have already made their mark in the growing field of regenerative medicine, and their therapeutic worth has already been validated for a number of conditions. HUC samples were collected with prior informed consent as approved by the Institutional ethical committee. HUC (n=26) were processed using a combination of both mechanical and enzymatic (collagenase-II, 100 U/ml, Gibco ) methods to obtain MSCs which were cultured in-vitro in L-DMEM (Low glucose Dulbecco's Modified Eagle's Medium, Sigma, 4.5 mM glucose/L), 10% FBS in 5% CO2 incubator at 37°C. After reaching 80-90% confluency, MSCs were characterized with Flowcytometry and Immunocytochemistry for specific cell surface antigens. Cells expressed CD90+, CD73+, CD105+, CD34-, CD45-, HLA-DR-/Low and Vimentin+. These cells were differentiated to β-cells by using H-DMEM (High glucose Dulbecco's Modified Eagle's Medium,25 mM glucose/L, Gibco), β-Mercaptoethanol (0.1mM, Hi-Media), basic Fibroblast growth factor (10 µg /L,Gibco), and Nicotinamide (10 mmol/L, Hi-Media). Pancreatic β-cells were confirmed by positive Dithizone staining and were found to be functionally active as they released 8 IU/ml insulin on glucose stimulation. Isolating MSCs from usually discarded, abundantly available HUC tissue, expanding and differentiating to β-cells may be the most feasible cell therapy option for the millions of people suffering from DM globally.

Keywords: diabetes mellitus, human umbilical cord, mesenchymal stem cells, differentiation

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Authors: Jutta Ransmayr

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The digital age has long arrived at Austrian schools, so both society and educationalists demand that digital means should be integrated accordingly to day-to-day school routines. Therefore, the Austrian school-leaving exam (A-levels) can now be written either by hand or by using a computer. However, the choice of writing medium (pen and paper or computer) for written examination papers, which are considered 'high-stakes' exams, raises a number of questions that have not yet been adequately investigated and answered until recently, such as: What effects do the different conditions of text production in the written German A-levels have on the component of normative linguistic accuracy? How do the spelling skills of German A-level papers written with a pen differ from those that the students wrote on the computer? And how is the teacher's assessment related to this? Which practical desiderata for German didactics can be derived from this? In a trilateral pilot project of the Austrian Center for Digital Humanities (ACDH) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna in cooperation with the Austrian Ministry of Education and the Council for German Orthography, these questions were investigated. A representative Austrian learner corpus, consisting of around 530 German A-level papers from all over Austria (pen and computer written), was set up in order to subject it to a quantitative (corpus-linguistic and statistical) and qualitative investigation with regard to the spelling and punctuation performance of the high school graduates and the differences between pen- and computer-written papers and their assessments. Relevant studies are currently available mainly from the Anglophone world. These have shown that writing on the computer increases the motivation to write, has positive effects on the length of the text, and, in some cases, also on the quality of the text. Depending on the writing situation and other technical aids, better results in terms of spelling and punctuation could also be found in the computer-written texts as compared to the handwritten ones. Studies also point towards a tendency among teachers to rate handwritten texts better than computer-written texts. In this paper, the first comparable results from the German-speaking area are to be presented. Research results have shown that, on the one hand, there are significant differences between handwritten and computer-written work with regard to performance in orthography and punctuation. On the other hand, the corpus linguistic investigation and the subsequent statistical analysis made it clear that not only the teachers' assessments of the students’ spelling performance vary enormously but also the overall assessments of the exam papers – the factor of the production medium (pen and paper or computer) also seems to play a decisive role.

Keywords: exam paper assessment, pen and paper or computer, learner corpora, linguistics

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Authors: F. Bosca, F. Foglietta, F. Turci, E. Calcio Gaudino, S. Mana, F. Dosio, R. Canaparo, L. Serpe, A. Barge

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In recent years, medical science has improved chemotherapy, radiation therapy and adjuvant therapy and has developed newer targeted therapies as well as refining surgical techniques for removing cancer. However, the chances of surviving the disease depend greatly on the type and location of the cancer and the extent of the disease at the start of treatment. Moreover, mainstream forms of cancer treatment have side effects which range from the unpleasant to the fatal. Therefore, the continuation of progress in anti-cancer therapy may depend on placing emphasis on other existing but less thoroughly investigated therapeutic approaches such as Sonodynamic Therapy (SDT). SDT is based on the local activation of a so called 'sonosensitizer', a molecule able to be excited by ultrasound, the radical production as a consequence of its relaxation processes and cell death due to different mechanisms induced by radical production. The present work deals with synthesis, characterization and preliminary in vitro test of Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes (SWCNT) decorated with porphyrins and biological vectors. The SWCNT’s surface was modified exploiting 1, 3-dipolar cycloaddition or Dies Alder reactions. For this purpose, different porphyrins scaffolds were ad-hoc synthesized using also non-conventional techniques. To increase cellular specificity of porphyrin-conjugated SWCNTs and to improve their ability to be suspended in aqueous solution, the modified nano-tubes were grafted with suitable glutamine or hyaluronic acid derivatives. These nano-sized sonosensitizers were characterized by several methodologies and tested in vitro on different cancer cell lines.

Keywords: sonodynamic therapy, porphyrins synthesis and modification, SWNCT grafting, hyaluronic acid, anti-cancer treatment

Procedia PDF Downloads 390

Authors: Moses Joseph

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Language is a veritable tool in the hands of politicians. They use it to shape social realities; create new meanings and ultimately to acquire, exercise and sustain power in the society. Language and politics both share a symbiotic relationship. The former is the medium through which members of the society communicate and cohabitate while the later is used to gain and exercise power in the society. Language therefore is the epicenter of every human activity and politicians explore, deploy and manipulate it to advance their personal interests. This paper examines the ideological use of language in Okediran’s Tenants of the House. The study further shows that language is used as an instrument of political domination and manipulation through the display of emotiveness. The study concludes that politicians do not innocently use language but deliberately employ them to foreground their ideological position.

Keywords: language, ideology, political domination, manipulation

Procedia PDF Downloads 309