Search results for: frequent itemset mining

Authors: Mohammad Nazri Mustafa, Sh Norliza Sy Salim, Pedram Hatami Abdullah

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Civil and structural assets normally have an average of more than 30 years of design life. Adding to this advantage, the assets are normally subjected to slow degradation process. Due to the fact that repair and strengthening work for these assets are normally not dependent on plant shut down, the maintenance and integrity restoration of these assets are mostly done based on “as required” and “run to failure” basis. However unlike other industries, the exposure in oil and gas environment is harsher as the result of corrosive soil and groundwater, chemical spill, frequent wetting and drying, icing and de-icing, steam and heat, etc. Due to this type of exposure and the increasing level of structural defects and rectification in line with the increasing age of plants, assets integrity assessment requires a more defined scope and procedures that needs to be based on risk and assets criticality. This leads to the establishment of risk based inspection and proactive maintenance procedure for civil and structural assets. To date there is hardly any procedure and guideline as far as integrity assessment and systematic inspection and maintenance of civil and structural assets (onshore) are concerned. Group Technical Solutions has developed a procedure and guideline that takes into consideration credible failure scenario, assets risk and criticality from process safety and structural engineering perspective, structural importance, modeling and analysis among others. Detailed inspection that includes destructive and non-destructive tests (DT & NDT) and structural monitoring is also being performed to quantify defects, assess severity and impact on integrity as well as identify the timeline for integrity restoration. Each defect and its credible failure scenario is assessed against the risk on people, environment, reputation and production loss. This technical paper is intended to share on the established procedure and guideline and their execution in oil & gas plants. In line with the overall roadmap, the procedure and guideline will form part of specialized solutions to increase production and to meet the “Operational Excellence” target while extending service life of civil and structural assets. As the result of implementation, the management of civil and structural assets is now more systematically done and the “fire-fighting” mode of maintenance is being gradually phased out and replaced by a proactive and preventive approach. This technical paper will also set the criteria and pose the challenge to the industry for innovative repair and strengthening methods for civil & structural assets in oil & gas environment, in line with safety, constructability and continuous modification and revamp of plant facilities to meet production demand.

Keywords: assets criticality, credible failure scenario, proactive and preventive maintenance, risk based inspection

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Authors: Olga Santesteban, Glorisa Canino, Hector R. Bird, Cristiane S. Duarte

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Objective: To address whether harsh discipline is associated with disruptive behavior disorders (DBD) in Puerto Rican children over time. Background: Both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies report that rates of DBD vary by gender, age and other demographics, being more frequent among boys, later in life and among those who live in urban areas. Also, the literature supports the direct, positive association between harsh discipline and externalizing behaviors. Nevertheless, scholars have underscored the important role of race and ethnicity in understanding discipline effects on children. The impact of harsh discipline in a Puerto Rican population remains to be studied. Methods: Sample: This is a secondary analysis of the Boricua Youth Study which assessed yearly (3 times) Puerto Rican children aged 5-15 in two different sites: San Juan (Puerto Rico) and the South Bronx (NY), N=2951. Participants that did not have scores of harsh discipline in the 3 waves were excluded for this analysis (N=2091). Main Measures: a) Harsh Discipline (Parent report) was measured using 6 items from the “Parental Discipline Scale” that measures various forms of punishment, including physical and verbal abuse, and withholding affection; b) Disruptive Behavior Disorder (Parent report): Parent version of the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children-IV (DISC-IV) was used to asses children’s conduct disorders; c) Demographic factors: Child gender, child age, family income, marital status; d) Parental factors: parental psychopathology, parental monitoring, familism, parent support; e) Children characteristics: Controlling for any diagnostic at wave 1 (internalizing or externalizing). Data Analysis: Logistic regression was carried out relating the likelihood of DBD to harsh discipline along waves controlling for potential confounders as demographics, child and parent characteristics. Results: There were no significant differences in harsh discipline by site in wave 1 and wave 2 but there was a significant difference in wave 3. Also, there were no significant differences in DBD by site in wave 1 and wave 2 but there was a significant difference in wave 3. There was a significant difference of discipline by gender and age in all the waves. We calculated unadjusted (OR) and adjusted (AOD) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) showing the relation between harsh discipline at wave 1 and the presence of child disruptive behavior disorder at wave 3 for both South Bronx and Puerto Rico. There was an association between harsh discipline and the likelihood of having DBD in The Bronx (AOR=1.76; 95%CI=1.13-2.74, p.013) and in Puerto Rico (AOR=2.17; 95%CI=1.28-3.67, p.004) having controlled for demographic, parental and individual factors. Conclusions: Context may be an important differential factor shaping the potential risk of harsh discipline toward DBD for Puerto Rican children.

Keywords: disruptive behavior disorders, harsh discipline, puerto rican, psychological education

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Authors: Jacob Lewis Watts, Adam F. A. Pellegrini

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Prairies, grasslands, and forests cover an expansive portion of the world’s surface and contribute significantly to Earth’s carbon cycle. The largest driver of carbon dynamics in some of these ecosystems is fire. As the global climate changes, most fire-dominated ecosystems will experience increased fire frequency and intensity, leading to increased carbon flux into the atmosphere and soil nutrient depletion. The plant communities associated with different fire regimes are important for reassimilation of carbon lost during fire and soil recovery. More frequent fires promote conservative plant functional traits aboveground; however, belowground fine root traits are poorly explored and arguably more important drivers of ecosystem function as the primary interface between the soil and plant. The root economic spectrum (RES) hypothesis describes single-dimensional covariation between important fine-root traits along a range of plant strategies from acquisitive to conservative – parallel to the well-established leaf economic spectrum (LES). However, because of the paucity of root trait data, the complex nature of the rhizosphere, and the phylogenetic conservatism of root traits, it is unknown whether the RES hypothesis accurately describes plant nutrient and water acquisition strategies. This project utilizesplants grown in common garden conditions in the Cambridge University Botanic Garden and a meta-analysis of long-term fire manipulation experiments to examine the belowground physiological traits of fire-adapted and non-fire-adapted herbaceous species to 1) test the RES hypothesis and 2) describe the effect of fire regimes on fine root functional traits – which in turn affect carbon and nutrient cycling. A suite of morphological, chemical, and biological root traits (e.g. root diameter, specific root length, percent N, percent mycorrhizal colonization, etc.) of 50 herbaceous species were measuredand tested for phylogenetic conservatism and RES dimensionality. Fire-adapted and non-fire-adapted plants traits were compared using phylogenetic PCA techniques. Preliminary evidence suggests that phylogenetic conservatism may weaken the single-dimensionality of the RES, suggesting that there may not be a single way that plants optimize nutrient and water acquisition and storage in the complex rhizosphere; additionally, fire-adapted species are expected to be more conservative than non-fire-adapted species, which may be indicative of slower carbon cycling with increasing fire frequency and intensity.

Keywords: climate change, fire regimes, root economic spectrum, fine roots

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Authors: Priyanka Bhowmik, Subrata Majumdar, Debprasad Chattopadhyay

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Background: Cervical cancer is the third major cause of cancer in women and the second most frequent cause of cancer related deaths causing 300,000 deaths annually worldwide. Evasion of immune response by Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), the key contributing factor behind cancer and pre-cancerous lesions of the uterine cervix, makes immunotherapy a necessity to treat this disease. Objective: A Heat killed fraction of Mycobacterium indicus pranii (MIP), a non-pathogenic Mycobacterium has been shown to exhibit cytotoxic effects on different cancer cells, including human cervical carcinoma cell line HeLa. However, the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. The aim of this study is to decipher the mechanism of MIP induced HeLa cell death. Methods: The cytotoxicity of Mycobacterium indicus pranii against HeLa cells was evaluated by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. Apoptosis was detected by annexin V and Propidium iodide (PI) staining. The assessment of reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation and cell cycle analysis were measured by flow cytometry. The expression of apoptosis associated genes was analyzed by real time PCR. Result: MIP could inhibit the proliferation of HeLa cell in a time and dose dependent manner but caused minor damage to normal cells. The induction of apoptosis was confirmed by the cell surface presentation of phosphatidyl serine, DNA fragmentation, and mitochondrial damage. MIP caused very early (as early as 30 minutes) transcriptional activation of p53, followed by a higher activation (32 fold) at 24 hours suggesting prime importance of p53 in MIP-induced apoptosis in HeLa cell. The up regulation of p53 dependent pro-apoptotic genes Bax, Bak, PUMA, and Noxa followed a lag phase that was required for the transcriptional p53 program. MIP also caused the transcriptional up regulation of Toll like receptor 2 and 4 after 30 minutes of MIP treatment suggesting recognition of MIP by toll like receptors. Moreover, MIP caused the inhibition of expression of HPV anti apoptotic gene E6, which is known to interfere with p53/PUMA/Bax apoptotic cascade. This inhibition might have played a role in transcriptional up regulation of PUMA and subsequently apoptosis. ROS was generated transiently which was concomitant with the highest transcription activation of p53 suggesting a plausible feedback loop network of p53 and ROS in the apoptosis of HeLa cells. Scavenger of ROS, such as N-acetyl-L-cysteine, decreased apoptosis suggesting ROS is an important effector of MIP induced apoptosis. Conclusion: Taken together, MIP possesses full potential to be a novel therapeutic agent in the clinical treatment of cervical cancer.

Keywords: cancer, mycobacterium, immunity, immunotherapy.

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Authors: Francesca Radice

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Domestic and sexual violence provokes, on average in Australia, one female death per week due to intimate violence behaviours. 83% of couples meet online, and intercepting domestic and sexual violence at this level would be beneficial. It has been observed that violent or coercive behaviour has been apparent from initial conversations on dating apps like Tinder. Child pornography, stalking, and coercive control are some criminal offences from dating apps, including women murdered after finding partners through Tinder. Police databases and predictive policing are novel approaches taken to prevent crime before harm is done. This research will investigate how police databases can be used in a privacy-preserving way to characterise users in terms of their potential for violent crime. Using the COPS database of NSW Police, we will explore how the past criminal record can be interpreted to yield a category of potential danger for each dating app user. It is up to the judgement of each subscriber on what degree of the potential danger they are prepared to enter into. Sentiment analysis is an area where research into natural language processing has made great progress over the last decade. This research will investigate how sentiment analysis can be used to interpret interchanges between dating app users to detect manipulative or coercive sentiments. These can be used to alert law enforcement if continued for a defined number of communications. One of the potential problems of this approach is the potential prejudice a categorisation can cause. Another drawback is the possibility of misinterpreting communications and involving law enforcement without reason. The approach will be thoroughly tested with cross-checks by human readers who verify both the level of danger predicted by the interpretation of the criminal record and the sentiment detected from personal messages. Even if only a few violent crimes can be prevented, the approach will have a tangible value for real people.

Keywords: sentiment analysis, data mining, predictive policing, virtual manipulation

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Authors: Olga Shuvaeva, Tamara Romanova, Sergey Volynkin, Valentina Podolinnaya

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Green chemistry concept is focused on the prevention of environmental pollution caused by human activity. However, there are a lot of contaminated areas in the world which pose a serious threat to ecosystems in terms of their conservation. Therefore in accordance with the principles of green chemistry, it should not be forgotten about the need to clean these areas. Furthermore, the waste material often contains the valuable components, the extraction of which by traditional wet chemical technologies is inefficient both from the economic and environmental protection standpoint. Wherein, the plants may be successfully used to ‘scavenge’ a range of metals from polluted land sites in an approach allowing to carry out both of these processes – phytoremediation and phytomining in conjunction. The goal of the present work was to study bioaccumulation ability of floating macrophytes such as water hyacinth and pondweed toward Hg, Ba, Cd, Mo and Pb as pollutants in aquatic medium and terrestrial plants (birch, reed, and cane) towards gold and silver as valuable components. The peculiarity of ongoing research was that the plants grew under extreme conditions (pH of drainage and pore waters was about 2.5). The study was conducted at the territory of Ursk tailings (Southwestern Siberia, Russia) formed as a result of primary polymetallic ores cyanidation. The waste material is mainly presented (~80%) by pyrite (FeS₂) and barite (BaSO₄), the raw minerals included FeAsS, HgS, PbS, Ag₂S as minor ones. It has been shown that water hyacinth demonstrates high ability to accumulate different metals, and what is especially important – to remove mercury from polluted waters with BCF value more than 1000. As for the gold, its concentrations in reed and cane growing near the waste material were estimated as 500 and 900 μg∙kg⁻¹ respectively. It was also found that the plants can survive under extreme conditions of acidic environment and hence we can assume that there is a principal opportunity to use them for the valuable substances extraction from an area of the mining waste dumps burial.

Keywords: bioaccumulation, gold, heavy metals, mine tailing

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Authors: Jamuna Loganath

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Education is the key to the development of any individual’s personality. Today’s students will be tomorrow’s citizens of the global society. The education of the student is the edifice on which his/her future will be built. Schools therefore should provide an all-round development of students so as to foster a healthy society. The behaviors and the attitude of the students in school play an essential role for the success of the education process. Frequent reports of misbehaviors such as clowning, harassing classmates, verbal insults are becoming common in schools today. If this issue is left unattended, it may develop a negative attitude and increase the delinquent behavior. So, the need of the hour is to find a solution to this problem. To solve this issue, it is important to monitor the students’ behaviors in school and give necessary feedback and mentor them to develop a positive attitude and help them to become a successful grownup. Nevertheless, measuring students’ behavior and attitude is extremely challenging. None of the present technology has proven to be effective in this measurement process because actions, reactions, interactions, response of the students are rarely used in the course of the data due to complexity. The purpose of this proposal is to recommend an effective supervising system after carrying out a feasibility study by measuring the behavior of the Students. This can be achieved by equipping schools with CCTV cameras. These CCTV cameras installed in various schools of the world capture the facial expressions and interactions of the students inside and outside their classroom. The real time raw videos captured from the CCTV can be uploaded to the cloud with the help of a network. The video feeds get scooped into various nodes in the same rack or on the different racks in the same cluster in Hadoop HDFS. The video feeds are converted into small frames and analyzed using various Pattern recognition algorithms and MapReduce algorithm. Then, the video frames are compared with the bench marking database (good behavior). When misbehavior is detected, an alert message can be sent to the counseling department which helps them in mentoring the students. This will help in improving the effectiveness of the education process. As Video feeds come from multiple geographical areas (schools from different parts of the world), BIG DATA helps in real time analysis as it analyzes computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations, especially relating to human behavior and interactions. It also analyzes data that can’t be analyzed by traditional software applications such as RDBMS, OODBMS. It has also proven successful in handling human reactions with ease. Therefore, BIG DATA could certainly play a vital role in handling this issue. Thus, effectiveness of the education process can be enhanced with the help of video analytics using the latest BIG DATA technology.

Keywords: big data, cloud, CCTV, education process

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Authors: Siah Koka, Rony Swennen

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Arumeru district is located in Arusha region in Upper Pangani basin in Tanzania. Economically it is dominated with agricultural activities. Banana, coffee, maize, beans, tomatoes, and cassava are the most important food and cash crops. This paper characterized the banana-based farming system of Arumeru district, evaluates its sustainability as well as research needs. The household questionnaire was performed on-site and on farm observation. Transect walk also involved to identify different agro- ecological zones. Results show that farm holdings (home gardens) are smaller than a hectare (0.7 ha) and continue to fragment as population continues to grow. Banana cultivation is the backbone of the farming systems present both in the upland and plains. In the upper belt banana found their place in the forest, which form the home garden structure typical to East African highland banana production systems. However, in the plains, cultivation is done in monoculture and depends heavily on irrigation. We found slightly less cultivars present and hypothetically more pest and disease pressure. This was mainly seen for Fusarium oxysporum species, which eradicates susceptible cultivars such as Mchare cultivars rapidly given the method of irrigation. The smaller permanent upland home garden plots provide thus a more suitable environment where banana perform better. It should be noted that findings indicated good performance to occur in the less suitable plains too. Good management is believed to be the most influencing factor, although our survey failed in identifying them. Population pressure is currently pushing the sustainable system in the uplands to its boundaries. Nutrient mining, deforestation and changing rain patterns threat production not only on Mt. Meru but on a global scale.

Keywords: Arumeru district, banana-based farming system, Tanzania, Arumeru district

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Authors: Emily Warren

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Despite the growing body of research on Japanese food history, little has been written about the attitudes and perspectives premodern Japanese people held about their food, even on special celebratory days. In fact, the overall image that arises from the literature is one of ambivalence: that the medieval nobility of the Heian and Kamakura periods (795-1333) did not much care about what they ate and for that reason, food seems relatively scarce in certain historical records. This study challenges this perspective by analyzing the manuals written to guide palace management and feast preparation for royals, introducing two of the sources into English for the first time. This research is primarily based on three manuals that address different aspects of royal food culture and preparation. The Chujiruiki, or Record of the Palace Kitchens (1295), is a fragmentary manual written by a bureaucrat in charge of the main palace kitchen office. This document collection details the utensils, furnishing, and courses that officials organized for the royals’ two daily meals in the morning (asagarei gozen) and in the afternoon (hiru gozen) when they enjoyed seven courses, each one carefully cooked and plated. The orchestration of daily meals and frequent banquets would have been complicated affairs for those preparing the tableware and food, thus requiring texts like the Chûjiruiki, as well as another manual, the Nicchûgyôji (11th c.), or The Daily Functions. Because of the complex coordination between various kitchen-related bureaucratic offices, kitchen officials endeavored to standardize the menus and place settings depending on the time of year, religious abstinence days, and available ingredients flowing into the capital as taxes. For the most important annual banquets and rites celebrating deities and the royal family, kitchen officials would likely refer to the Engi Shiki (927), or Protocols of the Engi Era, for details on offerings, servant payments, and menus. This study proposes that many of the great feast events, and indeed even daily meals at the palace, were so standardized and carefully planned for repetition that there would have been little need for the contents of such feasts to be detailed in diaries or novels—places where historians have noted a lack of the mention of food descriptions. These descriptions were not included for lack of interest on the part of the nobility, but rather because knowledge of what would be served at banquets and feasts would be considered a matter-of-course in the same way that a modern American would likely not need to state the menu of a traditional Thanksgiving meal to an American audience. Where food was concerned, novelty more so than tradition prompted a response in personal records, like diaries.

Keywords: banquets, bureaucracy, Engi shiki, Japanese food

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Authors: Gilda Santos, Rita Marques, Francisca Marques, João Ribeiro, André Fonseca, João M. Miranda, João B. L. M. Campos, Soraia F. Neves

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Every year, an unacceptable number of firefighters are seriously burned during firefighting operations, with some of them eventually losing their life. Although thermal protective clothing research and development has been searching solutions to minimize firefighters heat load and skin burns, currently commercially available solutions focus in solving isolated problems, for example, radiant heat or water-vapor resistance. Therefore, episodes of severe burns and heat strokes are still frequent. Taking this into account, a consortium composed by Portuguese entities has joined synergies to develop an innovative protective clothing system by following a procedure based on the application of numerical models to optimize the design and using a combinationof protective clothing components disposed in different layers. Recently, it has been shown that Phase Change Materials (PCMs) can contribute to the reduction of potential heat hazards in fire extinguish operations, and consequently, their incorporation into firefighting protective clothing has advantages. The greatest challenge is to integrate these materials without compromising garments ergonomics and, at the same time, accomplishing the International Standard of protective clothing for firefighters – laboratory test methods and performance requirements for wildland firefighting clothing. The incorporation of PCMs into the firefighter's protective jacket will result in the absorption of heat from the fire and consequently increase the time that the firefighter can be exposed to it. According to the project studies and developments, to favor a higher use of the PCM storage capacityand to take advantage of its high thermal inertia more efficiently, the PCM layer should be closer to the external heat source. Therefore, in this stage, to integrate PCMs in firefighting clothing, a mock-up of a vest specially designed to protect the torso (back, chest and abdomen) and to be worn over a fire-resistant jacketwas envisaged. Different configurations of PCMs, as well as multilayer approaches, were studied using suitable joining technologies such as bonding, ultrasound, and radiofrequency. Concerning firefighter’s protective clothing, it is important to balance heat protection and flame resistance with comfort parameters, namely, thermaland water-vapor resistances. The impact of the most promising solutions regarding thermal comfort was evaluated to refine the performance of the global solutions. Results obtained with experimental bench scale model and numerical simulation regarding the integration of PCMs in a vest designed as protective clothing for firefighters will be presented.

Keywords: firefighters, multilayer system, phase change material, thermal protective clothing

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Authors: Xue Wang, Liwei Fan

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Renewable energy technology innovation is an important way to realize the energy transformation. Our government has issued a series of policies to guide and support the development of renewable energy. The implementation of these policies will affect the further development, utilization and technological innovation of renewable energy. In this context, it is of great significance to systematically sort out and evaluate the renewable energy technology innovation policy for improving the existing policy system. Taking the 190 renewable energy technology innovation policies issued during 2005-2021 as a sample, from the perspectives of policy issuing departments and policy keywords, it uses text mining and content analysis methods to analyze the current situation of the policies and conduct a semantic network analysis to identify the core issuing departments and core policy topic words; A PMC (Policy Modeling Consistency) index model is built to quantitatively evaluate the selected policies, analyze the overall pros and cons of the policy through its PMC index, and reflect the PMC value of the model's secondary index The core departments publish policies and the performance of each dimension of the policies related to the core topic headings. The research results show that Renewable energy technology innovation policies focus on synergy between multiple departments, while the distribution of the issuers is uneven in terms of promulgation time; policies related to different topics have their own emphasis in terms of policy types, fields, functions, and support measures, but It still needs to be improved, such as the lack of policy forecasting and supervision functions, the lack of attention to product promotion, and the relatively single support measures. Finally, this research puts forward policy optimization suggestions in terms of promoting joint policy release, strengthening policy coherence and timeliness, enhancing the comprehensiveness of policy functions, and enriching incentive measures for renewable energy technology innovation.

Keywords: renewable energy technology innovation, content analysis, policy evaluation, PMC index model

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Authors: Ibrahim Musa, Mohammed Abdul-Aziz Mabrouk, Yusuf Tanko

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Introduction: Long term physical training affect the performance of athletes especially the females. Soccer which is a team sport, played in an outdoor field, require adequate oxygen transport system for the maximal aerobic power during exercise in order to complete 90 minutes of competitive play. Suboptimal haematological status has often been recorded in athletes with intensive physical activity. It may be due to the iron depletion caused by hemolysis or haemodilution results from plasma volume expansion. There is lack of data regarding the dynamics of red blood cell variables, in male football players. We hypothesized that, a long competitive season involving frequent matches and intense training could influence red blood cell variables, as a consequence of applying repeated physical loads when compared with sedentary. Methods: This cross sectional study was carried on 40 adult males (20 athletes and 20 non athletes) between 18-25 years of age. The 20 apparently healthy male non athletes were taken as sedentary and 20 male footballers comprise the study group. The university institutional review board (ABUTH/HREC/TRG/36) gave approval for all procedures in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Red blood cell (RBC) concentration, packed cell volume (PCV), and plasma volume were measured in fasting state and immediately after exercise. Statistical analysis was done by using SPSS/ win.20.0 for comparison within and between the groups, using student’s paired and unpaired “t” test respectively. Results: The finding from our study shows that, immediately after termination of exercise, the mean RBC counts and PCV significantly (p<0.005) decreased with significant increased (p<0.005) in plasma volume when compared with pre-exercised values in both group. In addition the post exercise RBC was significantly higher in untrained (261.10±8.5) when compared with trained (255.20±4.5). However, there was no significant differences in the post exercise hematocrit and plasma volume parameters between the sedentary and the footballers. Moreover, beside changes in pre-exercise values among the sedentary and the football players, the resting red blood cell counts and Plasma volume (PV %) was significantly (p < 0.05) higher in the sedentary group (306.30±10.05 x 104 /mm3; 58.40±0.54%) when compared with football players (293.70±4.65 x 104 /mm3; 55.60±1.18%). On the other hand, the sedentary group exhibited significant (p < 0.05) decrease in PCV (41.60±0.54%) when compared with the football players (44.40±1.18%). Conclusions: It is therefore proposed that the acute football exercise induced reduction in RBC and PCV is entirely due to plasma volume expansion, and not of red blood cell hemolysis. In addition, the training status also influenced haematological indices of male football players differently from the sedentary at rest due to adaptive response. This is novel.

Keywords: Haematological Indices, Performance Status, Sedentary, Male Football Players

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Authors: Mahmoud B. Rokaya

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The study of opinion mining and sentiment analysis includes analysis of opinions, sentiments, evaluations, attitudes, and emotions. The rapid growth of social media, social networks, reviews, forum discussions, microblogs, and Twitter, leads to a parallel growth in the field of sentiment analysis. The field of sentiment analysis tries to develop effective tools to make it possible to capture the trends of people. There are two approaches in the field, lexicon-based and corpus-based methods. A lexicon-based method uses a sentiment lexicon which includes sentiment words and phrases with assigned numeric scores. These scores reveal if sentiment phrases are positive or negative, their intensity, and/or their emotional orientations. Creation of manual lexicons is hard. This brings the need for adaptive automated methods for generating a lexicon. The proposed method generates dynamic lexicons based on the corpus and then classifies text using these lexicons. In the proposed method, different approaches are combined to generate lexicons from text. The proposed method classifies the tweets into 5 classes instead of +ve or –ve classes. The sentiment classification problem is written as an optimization problem, finding optimum sentiment lexicons are the goal of the optimization process. The solution was produced based on mathematical programming approaches to find the best lexicon to classify texts. A genetic algorithm was written to find the optimal lexicon. Then, extraction of a meta-level feature was done based on the optimal lexicon. The experiments were conducted on several datasets. Results, in terms of accuracy, recall and F measure, outperformed the state-of-the-art methods proposed in the literature in some of the datasets. A better understanding of the Arabic language and culture of Arab Twitter users and sentiment orientation of words in different contexts can be achieved based on the sentiment lexicons proposed by the algorithm.

Keywords: social media, Twitter sentiment, sentiment analysis, lexicon, genetic algorithm, evolutionary computation

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Authors: Emiel Caron

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Patent databases contain patent related data, organized in a relational data model, and are used to produce various patent statistics. These databases store raw data about scientific references cited by patents. For example, Patstat holds references to tens of millions of scientific journal publications and conference proceedings. These references might be used to connect patent databases with bibliographic databases, e.g. to study to the relation between science, technology, and innovation in various domains. Problematic in such studies is the low data quality of the references, i.e. they are often ambiguous, unstructured, and incomplete. Moreover, a complete bibliographic reference is stored in only one attribute. Therefore, a computerized cleaning and disambiguation method for large patent databases is developed in this work. The method uses rule-based scoring and clustering. The rules are based on bibliographic metadata, retrieved from the raw data by regular expressions, and are transparent and adaptable. The rules in combination with string similarity measures are used to detect pairs of records that are potential duplicates. Due to the scoring, different rules can be combined, to join scientific references, i.e. the rules reinforce each other. The scores are based on expert knowledge and initial method evaluation. After the scoring, pairs of scientific references that are above a certain threshold, are clustered by means of single-linkage clustering algorithm to form connected components. The method is designed to disambiguate all the scientific references in the Patstat database. The performance evaluation of the clustering method, on a large golden set with highly cited papers, shows on average a 99% precision and a 95% recall. The method is therefore accurate but careful, i.e. it weighs precision over recall. Consequently, separate clusters of high precision are sometimes formed, when there is not enough evidence for connecting scientific references, e.g. in the case of missing year and journal information for a reference. The clusters produced by the method can be used to directly link the Patstat database with bibliographic databases as the Web of Science or Scopus.

Keywords: clustering, data cleaning, data disambiguation, data mining, patent analysis, scientometrics

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Authors: Danish Gadda

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Kashmir has been a bleeding-spot in the South Asian politics since 1947 when the subcontinent was bifurcated into Hindu, India and Muslim Pakistan by the departing British colonisers. Kashmir couldn’t accede to either of the two new-born, sovereign nations until tribal invasion from Pakistan forced an unfortunate change of events. India, driven by conditional accession signed by the Kashmir’s last monarch, sent its army to defend Kashmir Valley, with a promise, made subsequently, that the region’s fate would be decided by the natives through an internationally-monitored plebiscite. The country, however, broke its promise, choosing not to withdraw its military to allow the plebiscite, and, instead, strengthened its claim over Kashmir, which it later started describing as her integral part. War, fought in the shape of three and a half bloody battles, ensued between India and Pakistan, even as the United Nations’ intervention managed a ceasefire as early as in the 1950s, though not before Kashmir had come to be divided into its India-controlled and Pakistan-controlled halves. Prolonged, the dispute over Kashmir took a violent turn in 1989-90 with the start of an anti-India armed rebellion. Kashmiris have been fighting for their right to self-determination, and bringing their own life to a grinding halt has been one of their preferred forms of protest against the Indian rule. This form of resistance is locally called ‘Hartals’, and recognised as shutdowns, which have often been prolonged and violent. Since 1989-90, the shutdowns have become only more frequent and forceful, and there are marked days on which Kashmir shuts down in protest every year, like a ritual. This paper is based on a study of how the Indian and Kashmir press covered the shutdowns observed in the troubled valley on four such days: January 26 (Indian Republic Day), February 11 (the day on which India executed a prominent Kashmiri resistance leader), August 15 (India’s Independence Day), and October 27 (the day on which the Indian military has landed in Kashmir). The coverage given by the Indian and Kashmiri press to the shutdowns observed on these days has been studied using the multi-tier content analysis approach: 1) Difference in the number of shutdowns covered by the two section is looked at, 2) the placement of the stories in the two section of the press is analysed, 3) the discourse highlighted by the two section of the press is compared, and 4) the editorials written by the two section of the press about the shutdowns are analysed. The findings show the Indian and the local press have been focussing on the two, predictable extremes of the situation: the Indian press has favoured the state, while the Kashmir or the local press has focussed on the narrative opposing the state’s. The difference is noticed in the quantitative as well as the qualitative aspects of their coverage.

Keywords: Indo-Pak tension, Kashmir conflict, protest shutdowns, South-Asian politics

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Authors: Mohamed Adel Ahmed, Warda Youssef Morsy , Hanaa Ali El Feky

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Background: Literature review cited that sleep is absolutely essential for surviving and reclamation of the quality of life. Critically ill patients often have poor sleep quality with prolonged sleep latency, sleep fragmentation, decreased sleep efficiency and frequent arousals. Nurses have a unique role for the early diagnosis of sleep disorders, decreasing stressors levels and providing the necessary environmental regulations to create a therapeutic ambiance. The aim of the study: to assess perceived sleep quality and identify factors affecting sleep quality among adult critically ill patients At El Manial University Hospital. Research Design: A descriptive exploratory design was utilized. Research questions: a) how do adult critically ill patients perceive sleep quality in the Critical Care Department of El Manial University Hospital? b) What are the factors affecting sleep quality among adult critically ill patients at El Manial University Hospital? Setting: selected critical and cardiac care units at El Manial University Hospital. Sample: A samples of convenience consisting of 100 adult male and female patients were included in the study. Tools of data collection: tool 1: Socio-demographic and Medical Data Sheet, tool 2: Modified St Mary's Hospital Sleep Questionnaire tool 3: Factors Affecting Sleep Quality Questionnaire among ICU Patients Results: The current study revealed that 76.0% of the studied sample had lack of sleep disturbance before hospitalization. However, 84 % had sleep disturbances during ICU stay, of these more than two-thirds (67 %) had moderate sleep disturbance. Presence of strange and bad odors, noise, having pain, fear of death and a loud voice produced by the ICU personnel had the most significant negative impact on patients’ sleep in percentage of 52.4, 50, 61.9, 45.2, 52.4, respectively. Conclusion: Sleep disturbances in the ICU are multifactorial, and ICU patients’ perceived degrees of sleep disturbance as a moderate. Recommendations: Based on findings of the present study, the following are recommended to be done by ICU nurses; create a healing ICU environment that should incorporate noise, light and temperature controls; decrease stimuli during night time hours to promote regulation of the circadian rhythm, allow usage of sleeping aids such as relaxing music, eye patches and earplugs into their daily nursing practice; cluster nursing activities and eliminate non-essential treatments during night time hours to allow uninterrupted sleep periods of at least 90 minutes to complete one sleep cycle , and minimize staff conversation, alarm noise and light during the quiet night time hours.

Keywords: sleep quality, critically ill, patients, perception

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Authors: Yulna Yulnafatmawita, Syafrimen Yasin, Lusi Maira

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Irrigation source is one of the factors affecting physical properties of rice field. This research was aimed to determine the impact of polluted irrigation wáter on soil physical properties of rice field. The study site was located in Koto Nan IV, Dharmasraya Regency, West Sumatra, Indonesia. The rice field was irrigated with wáter from Momongan river in which people do gold mining. The soil was sampled vertically from the top to 100 cm depth with 20 cm increment of soil profile from 2 year-fallowed rice field, as well as from the top 20 cm of cultivated rice field from the terrace-1 (the highest terrace) to terrace-5 (the lowest terrace) position. Soil samples were analysed in laboratory. For comparison, rice field receiving irrigation wáter from non-polluted source was also sampled at the top 20 cm and anaysed for the physical properties. The result showed that there was a change in soil physical properties of rice field after 9 years of getting irrigation from the river. Based on laboratory analyses, the total suspended solid (TSS) in the tailing reached 10,736 mg/L. The texture of rice field at polluted rice field (PRF) was dominated (>55%) by sand particles at the top 100 cm soil depth, and it tended to linearly decrease (R2=0.65) from the top 20 cm to 100 cm depth. Likewise, the sand particles also linearly decreased (R2=0.83), but clay particles linearly increased (R2=0.74) horizontally as the distance from the wáter input (terrace-1) was fartherst. Compared to nonpolluted rice field (NPRF), percentage of sand was higher, and clay was lower at PRF. This sandy texture of soil in PRF increased soil hydraulic conductivity (up to 19.1 times), soil bulk density (by 38%), and sharply decreased SOM (by 88.5 %), as well as soil total pore (by 22.1%) compared to the NPRF at the top 20 cm soil. The rice field was suggested to be reclaimed before reusing it. Otherwise the soil characteristics requirement, especially soil wáter retention, for rice field could not be fulfilled.

Keywords: gold mine tailing, polluted irrigation, rice field, soil physical properties

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Authors: Pushp Lata Sankhwar

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INTRODUCTION: Maternal Hypothyroidism is the most frequent endocrine disorder in pregnancy and varies from 2.5% in the west to 11.0% in India. Maternal Hypothyroidism can have detrimental maternal effects like increased risk of preterm labor, PPROM leading to increased maternal morbidity and also on the neonate in the form of prematurity and its complications, prolonged hospital stay, neurological developmental problems, delayed milestones and mental retardation etc. Henceforth, the study was planned to evaluate the role of Hypothyroidism in preterm labor and its effect on neonates. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To Correlate Overt Hypothyroidism, Subclinical Hypothyroidism and Isolated Hypothyroxinemia With Preterm Labor and the neonatal outcome. Material and Methods: A case-control study of singleton pregnancy was performed over a year, in which a total of 500 patients presenting in the emergency with preterm labor were enrolled. The thyroid profile of these patients was sent at the time of admission, on the basis of which they were divided into Cases – Hypothyroidic mothers and Controls – Euthyroid mothers. The cases were further divided into subclinical, overt Hypothyroidism and isolated hypothyroxinemia. The neonatal outcome of these groups was also compared on the basis of the incidence and severity of neonatal morbidity, neonatal respiratory distress, the incidence of neonatal Hypothyroidism and early complications. The feto-maternal data was collected and analysed. RESULTS: In the study, a total of 500 antenatal patients with a history of preterm labor were enrolled, out of which 67 (13.8%) patients were found to be hypothyroid. The majority of the mothers had Subclinical Hypothyroidism (12.2%), followed by Overt Hypothyroidism seen in 1% of the mothers and isolated hypothyroxinemia in 0.6% of cases. The neonates of hypothyroid mothers had higher levels of cord blood TSH, and the mean cord blood TSH levels were highest in the case of neonates of mothers with Overt Hypothyroidism. The need for resuscitation of the neonates at the time of birth was higher in the case of neonates of hypothyroid mothers, especially with Subclinical Hypothyroidism. Also, it was found that the requirement of oxygen therapy in the form of oxygen by nasal prongs, oxygen by a hood, CPAP, CPAP along with surfactant therapy and mechanical ventilation along with surfactant therapy was significantly higher in the case of neonates of hypothyroid mothers. CONCLUSION: The results of our study imply that uncontrolled and untreated maternal Hypothyroidism may also lead to preterm delivery. The neonates of mothers with Hypothyroidism have higher cord blood TSH levels. The study also shows that there is an increased incidence and severity of respiratory distress in the neonates of hypothyroid mothers with untreated subclinical Hypothyroidism. Hence, we propose that routine screening for thyroid dysfunction in pregnant women should be done to prevent thyroid-related feto-maternal complications.

Keywords: high-risk pregnancy, thyroid, dysfunction, hypothyroidism, Preterm labor

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Authors: Shih-Ting Yang, Chih-Yun Lin, Ming-Yu Li, Jhong-Ting Syue, Wei-Ming Huang

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Global positioning system (GPS) has become increasing precise in recent years, and the location-based service (LBS) has developed rapidly. Take the example of finding a parking lot (such as Parking apps). The location-based service can offer immediate information about a nearby parking lot, including the information about remaining parking spaces. However, it cannot provide expected search results according to the requirement situations of users. For that reason, this paper develops a “Location-based Search Approach according to Users’ Application Scenario” according to the location-based search and demand determination to help users obtain the information consistent with their requirements. The “Location-based Search Approach based on Users’ Application Scenario” of this paper consists of one mechanism and three kernel modules. First, in the Information Pre-processing Mechanism (IPM), this paper uses the cosine theorem to categorize the locations of users. Then, in the Information Category Evaluation Module (ICEM), the kNN (k-Nearest Neighbor) is employed to classify the browsing records of users. After that, in the Information Volume Level Determination Module (IVLDM), this paper makes a comparison between the number of users’ clicking the information at different locations and the average number of users’ clicking the information at a specific location, so as to evaluate the urgency of demand; then, the two-dimensional space is used to estimate the application situations of users. For the last step, in the Location-based Search Module (LBSM), this paper compares all search results and the average number of characters of the search results, categorizes the search results with the Manhattan Distance, and selects the results according to the application scenario of users. Additionally, this paper develops a Web-based system according to the methodology to demonstrate practical application of this paper. The application scenario-based estimate and the location-based search are used to evaluate the type and abundance of the information expected by the public at specific location, so that information demanders can obtain the information consistent with their application situations at specific location.

Keywords: data mining, knowledge management, location-based service, user application scenario

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Authors: Domingos Viegas, Miguel Almeida, Carmen Rocha, Ilda Novo, Yolanda Luna

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Forest fires along the more than 1200km of the Spanish-Portuguese border are more and more frequent, currently achieving around 2000 fire events per year. Some of these events develop to large international wildfire requiring concerted operations based on shared information between the two countries. The fire event of Valencia de Alcantara (2003) causing several fatalities and more than 13000ha burnt, is a reference example of these international events. Currently, Portugal and Spain have a specific cross-border cooperation protocol on wildfires response for a strip of about 30km (15 km for each side). It is recognized by public authorities the successfulness of this collaboration however it is also assumed that this cooperation should include more functionalities such as the development of a common risk information system for transboundary fire events. Since Portuguese and Spanish authorities use different approaches to determine the fire risk indexes inputs and different methodologies to assess the fire risk, sometimes the conjoint firefighting operations are jeopardized since the information is not harmonized and the understanding of the situation by the civil protection agents from both countries is not unique. Thus, a methodology aiming the harmonization of the fire risk calculation and perception by Portuguese and Spanish Civil protection authorities is hereby presented. The final results are presented as well. The fire risk index used in this work is the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI), which is based on meteorological data. The FWI is limited on its application as it does not take into account other important factors with great effect on the fire appearance and development. The combination of these factors is very complex since, besides the meteorology, it addresses several parameters of different topics, namely: sociology, topography, vegetation and soil cover. Therefore, the meaning of FWI values is different from region to region, according the specific characteristics of each region. In this work, a methodology for FWI calibration based on the number of fire occurrences and on the burnt area in the transboundary regions of Portugal and Spain, in order to assess the fire risk based on calibrated FWI values, is proposed. As previously mentioned, the cooperative firefighting operations require a common perception of the information shared. Therefore, a common classification of the fire risk for the fire events occurred in the transboundary strip is proposed with the objective of harmonizing this type of information. This work is integrated in the ECHO project SpitFire - Spanish-Portuguese Meteorological Information System for Transboundary Operations in Forest Fires, which aims the development of a web platform for the sharing of information and supporting decision tools to be used in international fire events involving Portugal and Spain.

Keywords: data harmonization, FWI, international collaboration, transboundary wildfires

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Authors: Sara Mosallanejad, Bogdan Z. Dlugogorski, Jeff Gore, Mohammednoor Altarawneh

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Ammonium nitrate (NH­₄NO₃, AN) is commonly used as the main component of AN emulsion and fuel oil (ANFO) explosives, that use extensively in civilian and mining operations for underground development and tunneling applications. The emulsion formulation and wettability of AN prills, which affect the physical stability and detonation of ANFO, highly depend on the surface tension, density, viscosity of the used liquid. Therefore, for engineering applications of this material, the determination of density and surface tension of concentrated aqueous solutions of AN is essential. The molecular dynamics (MD) simulation method have been used to investigate the density and the surface tension of high concentrated ammonium nitrate solutions; up to its solubility limit in water. Non-polarisable models for water and ions have carried out the simulations, and the electronic continuum correction model (ECC) uses a scaling of the charges of the ions to apply the polarisation implicitly into the non-polarisable model. The results of calculated density and the surface tension of the solutions have been compared to available experimental values. Our MD simulations show that the non-polarisable model with full-charge ions overestimates the experimental results while the reduce-charge model for the ions fits very well with the experimental data. Ions in the solutions show repulsion from the interface using the non-polarisable force fields. However, when charges of the ions in the original model are scaled in line with the scaling factor of the ECC model, the ions create a double ionic layer near the interface by the migration of anions toward the interface while cations stay in the bulk of the solutions. Similar ions orientations near the interface were observed when polarisable models were used in simulations. In conclusion, applying the ECC model to the non-polarisable force field yields the density and surface tension of the AN solutions with high accuracy in comparison to the experimental measurements.

Keywords: ammonium nitrate, electronic continuum correction, non-polarisable force field, surface tension

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Authors: James Ladzekpo

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Background: The urgent need to identify new pharmacological targets for diabetes treatment and prevention has been amplified by the disease's extensive impact on individuals and healthcare systems. A deeper insight into the biological underpinnings of diabetes is crucial for the creation of therapeutic strategies aimed at these biological processes. Current predictive models based on genetic variations fall short of accurately forecasting diabetes. Objectives: Our study aims to pinpoint key epigenetic factors that predispose individuals to diabetes. These factors will inform the development of an advanced predictive model that estimates diabetes risk from genetic profiles, utilizing state-of-the-art statistical and data mining methods. Methodology: We have implemented a recursive feature elimination with cross-validation using the support vector machine (SVM) approach for refined feature selection. Building on this, we developed six machine learning models, including logistic regression, k-Nearest Neighbors (k-NN), Naive Bayes, Random Forest, Gradient Boosting, and Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network, to evaluate their performance. Findings: The Gradient Boosting Classifier excelled, achieving a median recall of 92.17% and outstanding metrics such as area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC) with a median of 68%, alongside median accuracy and precision scores of 76%. Through our machine learning analysis, we identified 31 genes significantly associated with diabetes traits, highlighting their potential as biomarkers and targets for diabetes management strategies. Conclusion: Particularly noteworthy were the Gradient Boosting Classifier and Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network, which demonstrated potential in diabetes outcome prediction. We recommend future investigations to incorporate larger cohorts and a wider array of predictive variables to enhance the models' predictive capabilities.

Keywords: diabetes, machine learning, prediction, biomarkers

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Authors: Haidy Weliam Megaly Gouda

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Dermatology is often a neglected specialty in low-resource settings despite the high morbidity associated with skin disease. This becomes even more significant when associated with HIV infection, as dermatological conditions are more common and aggressive in HIV-positive patients. African countries have the highest HIV infection rates, and skin conditions are frequently misdiagnosed and mismanaged because of a lack of dermatological training and educational material. The frequent lack of diagnostic tests in the African setting renders basic clinical skills all the more vital. This project aimed to improve the diagnosis and treatment of skin disease in the HIV population in a district hospital in Malawi. A basic dermatological clinical tool was developed and produced in collaboration with local staff and based on available literature and data collected from clinics. The aim was to improve diagnostic accuracy and provide guidance for the treatment of skin disease in HIV-positive patients. A literature search within Embassy, Medline and Google Scholar was performed and supplemented through data obtained from attending 5 Antiretroviral clinics. From the literature, conditions were selected for inclusion in the resource if they were described as specific, more prevalent, or extensive in the HIV population or have more adverse outcomes if they develop in HIV patients. Resource-appropriate treatment options were decided using Malawian Ministry of Health guidelines and textbooks specific to African dermatology. After the collection of data and discussion with local clinical and pharmacy staff, a list of 15 skin conditions was included, and a booklet was created using the simple layout of a picture, a diagnostic description of the disease and treatment options. Clinical photographs were collected from local clinics (with full consent of the patient) or from the book ‘Common Skin Diseases in Africa’ (permission granted if fully acknowledged and used in a not-for-profit capacity). This tool was evaluated by the local staff alongside an educational teaching session on skin disease. This project aimed to reduce uncertainty in diagnosis and provide guidance for appropriate treatment in HIV patients by gathering information into one practical and manageable resource. To further this project, we hope to review the effectiveness of the tool in practice.

Keywords: prevalence and pattern of skin diseases, impact on quality of life, rural Nepal, interventions, quality switched ruby laser, skin color river blindness, clinical signs, circularity index, grey level run length matrix, grey level co-occurrence matrix, local binary pattern, object detection, ring detection, shape identification

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Authors: Adhimoolam Saravana Kumar, K. N. Govindarajan, B. Devanand, R. Rajakumar

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The quality of Computed Tomography (CT) procedures has improved in recent years due to technological developments and increased diagnostic ability of CT scanners. Due to the fact that CT doses are the peak among diagnostic radiology practices, it is of great significance to be aware of patient’s CT radiation dose whenever a CT examination is preferred. CT radiation dose delivered to patients in the form of volume CT dose index (CTDIvol) values, is displayed on scanner monitors at the end of each examination and it is an important fact to assure that this information is accurate. The objective of this study was to estimate the CTDIvol values for great number of patients during the most frequent CT examinations, to study the comparison between CT dose monitor values and measured ones, as well as to highlight the fluctuation of CTDIvol values for the same CT examination at different centres and scanner models. The output CT dose indices measurements were carried out on single and multislice scanners for available kV, 5 mm slice thickness, 100 mA and FOV combination used. The 100 CT scanners were involved in this study. Data with regard to 15,000 examinations in patients, who underwent routine head, chest and abdomen CT were collected using a questionnaire sent to a large number of hospitals. Out of the 15,000 examinations, 5000 were head CT examinations, 5000 were chest CT examinations and 5000 were abdominal CT examinations. Comprehensive quality assurance (QA) was performed for all the machines involved in this work. Followed by QA, CT phantom dose measurements were carried out in South India using actual scanning parameters used clinically by the hospitals. From this study, we have measured the mean divergence between the measured and displayed CTDIvol values were 5.2, 8.4, and -5.7 for selected head, chest and abdomen procedures for protocols as mentioned above, respectively. Thus, this investigation revealed an observable change in CT practices, with a much wider range of studies being performed currently in South India. This reflects the improved capacity of CT scanners to scan longer scan lengths and at finer resolutions as permitted by helical and multislice technology. Also, some of the CT scanners have used smaller slice thickness for routine CT procedures to achieve better resolution and image quality. It leads to an increase in the patient radiation dose as well as the measured CTDIv, so it is suggested that such CT scanners should select appropriate slice thickness and scanning parameters in order to reduce the patient dose. If these routine scan parameters for head, chest and abdomen procedures are optimized than the dose indices would be optimal and lead to the lowering of the CT doses. In South Indian region all the CT machines were routinely tested for QA once in a year as per AERB requirements.

Keywords: CT dose index, weighted CTDI, volumetric CTDI, radiation dose

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Authors: Soledad Natalia M. Dalisay, Mylene De Guzman

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In archipelagic countries like the Philippines, many communities thrive along coastal areas. The sea is the community members’ main source of livelihood and the site of many cultural activities. For these communities, the sea is their life and livelihood. Nevertheless, the sea also poses a hazard during the rainy season when typhoons frequent their communities. Coastal communities often encounter threats from storm surges and flooding that are common when there are typhoons. During such periods, disaster evacuation programs are implemented. However, in many instances, evacuation has been the bane of local government officials implementing such programs in their communities as resistance from community members is often encountered. Such resistance is often viewed by program implementers as due to the fact that people were hard headed and ignorant of the potential impacts of living in hazard prone areas. This paper argues that it is not for these reasons that people refused to evacuate. Drawing from data collected from fieldwork done in three sites in Central Philippines affected by super typhoon Haiyan, this study aimed to provide a contextualized understanding of peoples’ refusal to heed disaster evacuation warnings. This study utilized the multi-sited ethnography approach with in-depth episodic interviews, focus group discussions, participatory risk mapping and key informant interviews in gathering data on peoples’ experiences and insights specifically on evacuation during typhoon Haiyan. This study showed that people have priorities and considerations vital in their social lives that they are protecting in their refusal to leave their homes for pre-emptive evacuation. It is not that they are not aware of the risks when the face the hazard. It is more that they had faith in the local knowledge and strategies that they have developed since the time of their ancestors as a result of living and engaging with hazards in their areas for as long as they could remember. The study also revealed that risk in encounters with hazards was gendered. Furthermore, previous engagement with local government officials and the manner in which the pre-emptive evacuation programs were implemented had cast doubt on the value of such programs in saving their lives. Life in the designated evacuation areas can be as dangerous if not more compared with living in their coastal homes. There seems to be the impression that in the evacuation program of the government, people were being moved from hazard zones to death zones. Thus, this paper ends with several recommendations that may contribute to building more responsive evacuation programs that aim to build people’s resilience while taking into consideration the local moral world in communities in identified hazard zones.

Keywords: coastal communities, disaster evacuation, disaster risk perception, social and cultural responses to hazards

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Authors: Ranjit Kumar Sahu, Ramakar Jha

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Urban Water Management is the practice of managing freshwater, waste water, and storm water as components of a basin-wide management plan. It builds on existing water supply and sanitation considerations within an urban settlement by incorporating urban water management within the scope of the entire river basin. The pervasive problems generated by urban development have prompted, in the present work, to study the spatial extent of urbanization in Golden Triangle of Odisha connecting the cities Bhubaneswar (20.2700° N, 85.8400° E), Puri (19.8106° N, 85.8314° E) and Konark (19.9000° N, 86.1200° E)., and patterns of periodic changes in urban development (systematic/random) in order to develop future plans for (i) urbanization promotion areas, and (ii) urbanization control areas. Remote Sensing, using USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) Landsat8 maps, supervised classification of the Urban Sprawl has been done for during 1980 - 2014, specifically after 2000. This Work presents the following: (i) Time series analysis of Hydrological data (ground water and rainfall), (ii) Application of SWMM (Storm Water Management Model) and other soft computing techniques for Urban Water Management, and (iii) Uncertainty analysis of model parameters (Urban Sprawl and correlation analysis). The outcome of the study shows drastic growth results in urbanization and depletion of ground water levels in the area that has been discussed briefly. Other relative outcomes like declining trend of rainfall and rise of sand mining in local vicinity has been also discussed. Research on this kind of work will (i) improve water supply and consumption efficiency (ii) Upgrade drinking water quality and waste water treatment (iii) Increase economic efficiency of services to sustain operations and investments for water, waste water, and storm water management, and (iv) engage communities to reflect their needs and knowledge for water management.

Keywords: Storm Water Management Model (SWMM), uncertainty analysis, urban sprawl, land use change

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Authors: Hui-Chen Tsai, Chien-Jen Ho, Bo-Wei Power Liang, Ying Shen, Yi-Hsin Lai

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Former Taiwan Metal Mining Corporation and its associated 3 wasted flue gas tunnels, hereinafter referred to as 'TMMC', was contaminated with heavy metals, Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons (TPHs) in soil. Since the contamination had been exposed and unmanaged in the environment for more than 40 years, the extent of the contamination area is estimated to be more than 25 acres. Additionally, TMMC is located in a remote, mountainous area where almost no residents are residing in the 1-km radius area. Thus, it was deemed necessary to conduct an ecological risk assessment in order to evaluate the details of future contaminated site management plan. According to the winter and summer, ecological investigation results, one type of endangered, multiple vulnerable and near threaten plant was discovered, as well as numerous other protected species, such as Crested Serpent Eagle, Crested Goshawk, Black Kite, Brown Shrike, Taiwan Blue Magpie were observed. Ecological soil screening level (Eco-SSLs) developed by USEPA was adopted as a reference to conduct screening assessment. Since all the protected species observed surrounding TMMC site were birds, screening ecological risk assessment was conducted on birds only. The assessment was assessed mainly based on the chemical evaluation, which the contamination in different environmental media was compared directly with the ecological impact levels (EIL) of each evaluation endpoints and the respective hazard quotient (HQ) and hazard index (HI) could be obtained. The preliminary ecological risk assessment results indicated HI is greater than 1. In other words, the biological stressors (birds) were exposed to the contamination, which was already exceeded the dosage that could cause unacceptable impacts to the ecological system. This result was mainly due to the high concentration of arsenic, metal and lead; thus it was suggested the above mention contaminants should be remediated as soon as possible or proper risk management measures should be taken.

Keywords: screening, ecological risk assessment, ecological impact levels, risk management

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Authors: Anshu Gupta, Charu Gupta

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Background: Adolescence is the transitional period between puberty and adulthood. It is marked by immense turmoil in emotional and behavioral spheres. Adolescents are at risk of an array of behavioral and emotional problems, resulting in social, academic and vocational function impairments. Conflicts in the family and inability of the parents to cope with the changing demands of an adolescent have a negative impact on the overall development of the child. This augers ill for the individual’s future, resulting in depression, delinquency and suicides among other problems. Aim: The aim of the study was to compare the prevalence of behavioral and emotional problems in school going adolescents aged 13 to 15 years residing in Ludhiana city. Method: A total of 1380 school children in the age group of 13 to 15 years were assessed by the adolescent health screening questionnaire (FAPS) and Youth Self-Report (2001) questionnaire. Statistical significance was ascertained by t-test, chi-square test (x²) and ANOVA, as appropriate. Results: A considerably high prevalence of behavioral and emotional problems was found in school going adolescents (26.5%), more in girls (31.7%) than in boys (24.4%). In case of boys, the maximum problem was in the 13 year age group, i.e., 28.2%, followed by a significant decline by the age of 14 years, i.e., 24.2% and 15 years, i.e., 19.6%. In case of girls also, the maximum problem was in the 13 year age group, i.e., 32.4% followed by a marginal decline in the 14 years i.e., 31.8% and 15 year age group, i.e., 30.2%. Demographic factors were non contributory. Internalizing syndrome (22.4%) was the most common problem followed by the neither internalizing nor externalizing (17.6%) group. In internalizing group, most (26.5%) of the students were observed to be anxious/ depressed. Social problem was observed to be the most frequent (10.6%) among neither internalizing nor externalizing group. Aggressive behavior was the commonest (8.4%) among externalizing group. Internalizing problems, mainly anxiety and depression, were commoner in females (30.6%) than males (24.6%). More boys (16%) than girls (13.4%) were reported to suffer from externalizing disorders. A critical review of the data showed that most of the adolescents had poor knowledge about reproductive health. Almost 36% reported that the source of their information on sexual and reproductive health being friends and the electronic media. There was a high percentage of adolescents who reported being worried about sexual abuse (20.2%) with majority of them being girls (93.6%) reflecting poorly on the social setup in the country. About 41% of adolescents reported being concerned about body weight and most of them being girls (92.4%). Up to 14.5% reported having thoughts of using alcohol or drugs perhaps due to the easy availability of substances of abuse in this part of the country. 12.8% (mostly girls) reported suicidal thoughts. Summary/conclusion: There is a high prevalence of emotional and behavioral problems among school-going adolescents. Resolution of these problems during adolescence is essential for attaining a healthy adulthood. The need of the hour is to spread awareness among caregivers and formulation of effective management strategies including school mental health programme.

Keywords: adolescence, behavioral, emotional, internalizing problem

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Authors: King Kumire

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The Outer Space Treaty and the Moon Treaty have been the backbone of space law. However, scientists, engineers, and policymakers have been silent about how human settlement on celestial bodies would change the legal dimensions of space law. Indeed, these legal space regimes should have a prescription on how galactic courts should deal with the aspect of space property ownership. On this planet earth, one can vindicate his own assets. In extraterrestrial environments, this is not the case because space law is fatigued by terrestrial body sovereignty, which must be upheld. However, the recent commercialization of microgravity environments requires property ownership laws to be enacted. Space activities have mutated to the extent that it is almost possible to build communities in space. The discussions on the moon village concept will be mentioned as well to give clarity on the subject to the audience. It should be stated that launchers can now explore the cosmos with space tourists. The world is also busy doing feasibility studies on how to implement space mining projects. These activities indisputably show that the research is important because it will not only expose how the cosmic world is constrained by existing legal frameworks, but it will provide a remedy for how the inevitable dilemma of property rights can be resolved through the formulation of multilateral and all-inclusive policies. The discussion will model various aspects of terrestrial property rights and the associated remedies against what can be applicable and customized for use in extraterrestrial environments. Transfer of ownership in space is also another area of interest as the researcher shall try to distinguish between envisaged personal and real rights in the new frontier vis-a-vis mainland transfer transactions. The writer imagines the extent to which the concepts of servitudes, accession, prescription and commixes, and other property templates can act as a starting point when cosmic probers move forward with the revision of orbital law. The article seeks to reconcile these ownership constraints by working towards the development of a living space common law which is elastic and embroidered by sustainable recommendations. A balance between transplanting terrestrial laws to the galactic arena and the need to enact new ones which will complement the existing space treaties will be meticulously pivoted.

Keywords: rights, commercialisation, ownership, sovereignty

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Authors: Gayathri Nagarajan, L. D. Dhinesh Babu

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Health care is one of the prominent industries that generate voluminous data thereby finding the need of machine learning techniques with big data solutions for efficient processing and prediction. Missing data, incomplete data, real time streaming data, sensitive data, privacy, heterogeneity are few of the common challenges to be addressed for efficient processing and mining of health care data. In comparison with other applications, accuracy and fast processing are of higher importance for health care applications as they are related to the human life directly. Though there are many machine learning techniques and big data solutions used for efficient processing and prediction in health care data, different techniques and different frameworks are proved to be effective for different applications largely depending on the characteristics of the datasets. In this paper, we present a framework that uses ensemble machine learning technique gradient boosted trees for data classification in health care big data. The framework is built on Spark platform which is fast in comparison with other traditional frameworks. Unlike other works that focus on a single technique, our work presents a comparison of six different machine learning techniques along with gradient boosted trees on datasets of different characteristics. Five benchmark health care datasets are considered for experimentation, and the results of different machine learning techniques are discussed in comparison with gradient boosted trees. The metric chosen for comparison is misclassification error rate and the run time of the algorithms. The goal of this paper is to i) Compare the performance of gradient boosted trees with other machine learning techniques in Spark platform specifically for health care big data and ii) Discuss the results from the experiments conducted on datasets of different characteristics thereby drawing inference and conclusion. The experimental results show that the accuracy is largely dependent on the characteristics of the datasets for other machine learning techniques whereas gradient boosting trees yields reasonably stable results in terms of accuracy without largely depending on the dataset characteristics.

Keywords: big data analytics, ensemble machine learning, gradient boosted trees, Spark platform

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