Search results for: local innovation systems

Authors: E Tambo, O. O. Olalubi, E. C. Ugwu, J. Y. Ngogang

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Despite the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of international health emergency concern, the status quo of responses and efforts to stem the worst-recorded Ebola epidemic Ebola outbreak is still precariously inadequate in most of the affected in West. Mining natural resources have been shown to play a key role in both motivating and fuelling ethnic, civil and armed conflicts that have plagued a number of African countries over the last decade. Revenues from the exploitation of natural resources are not only used in sustaining the national economy but also armies, personal enrichment and building political support. Little is documented on the mining and ecological impact on the emergence and geographical distribution of Ebola in Africa over time and space. We aimed to provide a better understanding of the interconnectedness among issues of mining natural, resource management, mining conflict and post-conflict on Ebola outbreak and how wealth generated from abundant natural resources could be better managed in promoting research and development towards strengthening environmental, socioeconomic and health systems sustainability on Ebola outbreak and other emerging diseases surveillance and responses systems prevention and control, early warning alert, durable peace and sustainable development rather than to fuel conflicts, resurgence and emerging diseases epidemics in the perspective of community and national/regional approach. Our results showed the first assessment of systematic impact of all major minerals conflict events diffusion over space and time and mining activities on nine Ebola genesis and geo-distribution in affected countries across Africa. We demonstrate how, where and when mining activities in Africa increase ecological degradation, conflicts at the local level and then spreads violence across territory and time by enhancing the financial capacities of fighting groups/ethnics and diseases onset. In addition, led process of developing minimum standards for natural resource governance; improving governmental and civil society capacity for natural resource management, including the strengthening of monitoring and enforcement mechanisms; understanding the post-mining and conflicts community or national reconstruction and rehabilitation programmes in strengthening or developing community health systems and regulatory mechanisms. In addition the quest for the control over these resources and illegal mining across the landscape forest incursion provided increase environmental and ecological instability and displacement and disequilibrium, therefore affecting the intensity and duration of mining and conflict/wars and episode of Ebola outbreaks over time and space. We highlight the key findings and lessons learnt in promoting country or community-led process in transforming natural resource wealth from a peace liability to a peace asset. The imperative necessity for advocacy and through facilitating intergovernmental deliberations on critical issues and challenges affecting Africa community transforming exploitation of natural resources from a peace liability to outbreak prevention and control. The vital role of mining in increasing government revenues and expenditures, equitable distribution of wealth and health to all stakeholders, in particular local communities requires coordination, cooperative leadership and partnership in fostering sustainable developmental initiatives from mining context to outbreak and other infectious diseases surveillance responses systems in prevention and control, and judicious resource management.

Keywords: mining, mining conflicts, mines, ecological, Ebola, outbreak, mining companies, miners, impact

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Authors: Syed Asif Hassan, Tabrej Khan

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The use of traditional medicines for the treatment of various diseases as well as maintaining a healthy lifestyle has gained a significant acceptance across the globe. The increasing popularity of Herbal Medicine can be owed to the fact that is relatively inexpensive and has lesser side effects as compared to general medicines. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a rich heritage of herbal medicine for overages. However, the information about essential traditional herbs of Arabian origin and their implication in the treatment of various diseases are not well documented in an organized manner. Therefore, the requirement of a local platform (database system) for herbal medicines of Arab origin is the need of the day. In this context, various questionnaire and surveys were conducted over a period of 6 months. The surveys were targeted to identify a range of herbal remedies used by the communities of Saudi Arabia e.g., pharmacists and local people. The survey leads us to identify many of the mysterious local medicinal herbs used for the treatment of various ailments and thus reveals a unique insight into the natural herbal resource of Saudi Arabia. The information of the herbal medicines will be further used to develop a Saudi herbal database system using the principles of waterfall method. An interactive dynamic electronic web portal of the herbal database system will be built using MySQL and PHP for accessing the information available in the Saudi herbal database system. The web portal will be a step forward in creating awareness among the Arab nationals of their rich herbal heritage.

Keywords: Saudi herbal medicine, community survey, database system and design, MySQL, PHP

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Authors: Iyad Muslih, Azzah Alkhalailah, Ali Merdji

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Photovoltaic efficiency is highly affected by dust accumulation; the dust particles prevent direct solar radiation from reaching the panel surface; therefore a reduction in output power will occur. A study of dust and soiling accumulation effect on the output power of PV panels was conducted for different periods of time from May to October in three countries of the MENA region, Jordan, Egypt, and Algeria, under local weather conditions. This study leads to build a more realistic equation to estimate the power reduction as a function of time. This logarithmic function shows the high reduction in power in the first days with 10% reduction in output power compared to the reference system, where it reaches a steady state value after 60 days to reach a maximum value of 30%.

Keywords: solar energy, PV system, soiling, MENA

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Authors: T. C. Ng, R. Radzi, T. K. Ng, H. C. Chen

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The analgesic effects of lidocaine-bupivacaine block in cats undergoing routine orchiectomy were determined in this controlled, randomized, and blinded study. Twelve cats were randomly assigned to two groups. Cats in local block group received subcutaneous infiltration of 1 mg/kg of 2% lidocaine and 1 mg/kg of 0.5% bupivacaine into the scrotal sac. Cats in control group received equivolume of saline. Both groups were induced with mixture of ketamine (15 mg/kg) and acepromazine (0.1 mg/kg) intramuscularly and maintained on sevoflurane via facemask. Non-invasive blood pressures (BP), heart (HR), and respiratory rate (RR) were measured intra-operatively at specific events. Post-operatively, all cats received meloxicam, 0.2 mg/kg subcutaneously. Pain scores were determined at 4, 8, and 24 hours postoperatively. Mechanical pressure thresholds (MPT) at the perineum and metatarsus were determined at 2, 4, 8, and 24 hours postoperatively. Intra-operatively, the BP and HR tended to be higher in the control group. The increment in HR peaked during traction and autoligation of the spermatic cord in the control group. There was no treatment difference in RR. Post-operatively, pain scores in the group given local blocks were lower than the control group at 4 hour post-operation. There was no treatment difference in the post-operative HR, RR, BP and MPT values. In conclusion, subcutaneous infiltration of lidocaine-bupivacaine into the scrotal sac before orchiectomy improved intra-operative hemodynamic stability and provided better analgesia up to 4 hours post-surgery.

Keywords: analgesia, bupivacaine, cat, lidocaine, local block, orchiectomy

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Authors: Pablo Cardozo Herrera

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In a dynamic market of Information Technology (IT) Service and with high quality demands and high performance requirements in decreasing costs, it is imperative that IT companies invest organizational effort in order to increase the effectiveness of their Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) processes through the improvement of ITSM project management and through solid support to the strategic decision-making process of IT directors. In this article, the author presents an analysis of common issues of IT companies around the world, with strategic needs of information unmet that provoke their ITSM processes and projects management that do not achieve the effectiveness and efficiency expected of their results. In response to the issues raised, the author proposes a framework consisting of an innovative theoretical framework model of ITSM management and a technological solution aligned to the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) good practices guidance and ISO/IEC 20000-1 requirements. The article describes a research that proves the proposed framework is able to integrate, manage and coordinate in a holistic way, measurable and auditable, all ITSM processes and projects of IT organization and utilize the effectiveness assessment achieved for their strategic decision-making process increasing the process maturity level and improving the capacity of an efficient management.

Keywords: innovation in IT services, ITSM processes, ITIL and ISO/IEC 20000-1, IT service management, IT service excellence

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Authors: Selda Uzal Seyfi

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Goat and sheep milk is quite significant in human nutrition. It is considered as more important day by day. This study was carried out in order to determine applied manure management system and their possibilities of improvement in goat and sheep farm in between 2012 and 2013 years. In the study, it was investigated manure management systems of 25 pieces of sheep and goat farms. It was analyzed the manure collecting, storage and treatment features of farms and whether or not they are suitable for animal breeding. As a result of the study, it was determined that the applied manure management systems in the farm were insufficient. Planning the manure management systems in goat and sheep breeding is appropriate technical criteria is useful in respect of the animal welfare, animal health, the health of workers in the barn and environmental pollution.

Keywords: goat farm, sheep farm, manure storage, manure management

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Authors: Raimo P. Hämäläinen, Juha Törmänen, Esa Saarinen

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Systems thinking has been acknowledged as an important approach in the strategy and management literature ever since the seminal works of Ackhoff in the 1970´s and Senge in the 1990´s. The early literature was very much focused on structures and organizational dynamics. Understanding systems is important but making improvements also needs ways to understand human behavior in systems. Peter Senge´s book The Fifth Discipline gave the inspiration to the development of the concept of Systems Intelligence. The concept integrates the concepts of personal mastery and systems thinking. SI refers to intelligent behavior in the context of complex systems involving interaction and feedback. It is a competence related to the skills needed in strategy and the environment of modern industrial engineering and management where people skills and systems are in an increasingly important role. The eight factors of Systems Intelligence have been identified from extensive surveys and the factors relate to perceiving, attitude, thinking and acting. The personal self-evaluation test developed consists of 32 items which can also be applied in a peer evaluation mode. The concept and test extend to organizations too. One can talk about organizational systems intelligence. This paper reports the results of an extensive survey based on peer evaluation. The results show that systems intelligence correlates positively with professional performance. People in a managerial role score higher in SI than others. Age improves the SI score but there is no gender difference. Top organizations score higher in all SI factors than lower ranked ones. The SI-tests can also be used as leadership and management development tools helping self-reflection and learning. Finding ways of enhancing learning organizational development is important. Today gamification is a new promising approach. The items in the SI test have been used to develop an interactive card game following the Topaasia game approach. It is an easy way of engaging people in a process which both helps participants see and approach problems in their organization. It also helps individuals in identifying challenges in their own behavior and in improving in their SI.

Keywords: gamification, management competence, organizational learning, systems thinking

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Authors: Mlk. Khouadjia, B. Mezghiche

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The environment protection has led to a growing interest in the use of crushed sand, which is not correctly exploited due to the high rate of fine particles that it contains and which affect concrete properties. This study will examine the variation of the compressive strength of concrete with several local areas of sand exposed to freeze-thaw cycles and chemical solutions. The experiments have been realized on crushed, river, and dune sands. We use software (MATLAB) to find the coefficient of particle shape. Finally, we have found a relationship between the reference concrete without modification and concrete modified with river and dune sands to predict the variations of resistance after curing in different environments. The results showed that the behavior of concrete is different according to the types of sand and the environment of exposition.

Keywords: crushed sand, compressive strength, freeze-thaw, MATLAB, dune sand, river sand

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Authors: Fuad H. Veliev

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Negative pressure phenomenon appears in many thermodynamic, geophysical and biophysical processes in the Nature and technological systems. For more than 100 years of the laboratory researches beginning from F. M. Donny’s tests, the great values of negative pressure have been achieved. But this phenomenon has not been practically applied, being only a nice lab toy due to the special demands for the purity and homogeneity of the liquids for its appearance. The possibility of creation of direct wave of negative pressure in real heterogeneous liquid systems was confirmed experimentally under the certain kinetic and hydraulic conditions. The negative pressure can be considered as the factor of both useful and destroying energies. The new approach to generation of the negative pressure waves in impure, unclean fluids has allowed the creation of principally new energy saving technologies and installations to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of different production processes. It was proved that the negative pressure is one of the main factors causing hard troubles in some technological and natural processes. Received results emphasize the necessity to take into account the role of the negative pressure as an energy factor in evaluation of many transient thermohydrodynamic processes in the Nature and production systems.

Keywords: liquid systems, negative pressure, temperature, wave, metastable state

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Authors: Bharti Bhandari, Bharati Mehta, Sabyasachi Sircar

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Medical education is advancing in India, with its advancement newer innovations are being incorporated in teaching and assessment methodology. Our study focusses on a teaching innovation that is more student-centric than teacher-centric and is the need of the day. The teaching innovation was carried out in 1st year MBBS students of our institute. Students were assigned control and test groups. Priming was done for the students in the test group with an open-book MCQ based test in a particular topic before delivering formal didactic lecture on that topic. The control group was not assigned any such exercise. This was followed by formal didactic lecture on the same topic. Thereafter, both groups were assessed on the same topic. The marks were compiled and analysed using appropriate statistical tests. Students were also given questionnaire to elicit their views on the benefits of “self-priming”. The mean marks scored in theory assessment by the test group were statistically higher than the marks scored by the controls. According to students’ feedback, the ‘self-priming “process was interesting, helped in better orientation during class-room lectures and better understanding of the topic. They want it to be repeated for other topics with moderate difficulty level. Better performance of the students in the primed group validates the combination of student-centric priming model and didactic lecture as superior to the conventional, teacher-centric methods alone. If this system is successfully followed, the present teacher-centric pedagogy should increasingly give way to student-centric activities where the teacher is only a facilitator.

Keywords: medical education, open-book test, pedagogy, priming

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Authors: R. W. C. Devindi, S. M. Buddika Harshanath

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E-learning is a widely used technology for learning in the modern world. With the pandemic situation the popularity of using e-learning has been increased in a larger capacity. The e-learning educational systems require software resources as well as hardware usually but it is hard for most of the education institutions to afford those resources. Also with the massive user load e-learning has to broaden the server side resources as well. Therefore, in the present cloud computing was implemented in order to make the e – learning systems more efficient. The researcher has analyzed the quality of the e-learning systems on the perception of the learners and the teachers with the aid of hypothesis and has given the analyzed results and the discussion in this report. Therefore, the future research will be able to get some steps to increase the quality of the online learning systems furthermore. In the case of e-learning, quality assurance and cost effectiveness are essential. A complex quality assurance system is used in the stated project. There are no well-defined standard evaluation measures in this field. As a result, accurately assessing the e-learning system's overall quality is challenging. The researcher has done the analysis with the aid of standard methods and software.

Keywords: LMS–learning management system, SPSS–statistical package for social sciences (software), eigen value, hypothesis

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Authors: Davina Von Hagt, Genevieve Gibbons, Matt Henderson, Tom Bowles

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Purpose: Food bolus obstructions are common emergency surgical presentations, but there is no established management guideline in a rural setting. Intervention usually involves endoscopic removal after initial medical management has failed. Within a rural setting, this falls upon the general surgeon. There are varied endoscopic techniques that may be used. Methodology: A review of the past fifty cases of food bolus obstruction managed at Albany Health Campus was retrospectively reviewed to assess endoscopic findings and techniques. Operation notes, histopathology, imaging, and patient notes were reviewed. Results: 50 patients underwent gastroscopy for food bolus obstruction from August 2017 to March 2021. Ages ranged from 11 months to 95 years, with the majority of patients aged between 30-70 years. 88% of patients were male. Meat was the most common bolus (20% unspecified, 20% steak, 10% chicken, 6% lamb, 4% sausage, 2% pork). At endoscopy, 12% were found not to have a food bolus obstruction. Two patients were found to have oesophageal cancer, and four patients had a stricture and required dilatation. A variety of methods were used to relieve oesophageal obstruction ranging from pushing through to stomach (24 patients), using an overtube (10 patients), raptor (13 patients), and less common instruments such as Roth net, basket, guidewire, and pronged grasper. One patient had an unsuccessful endoscopic retrieval and required theatre for laparoscopic assisted removal with rendezvous endoscopic piecemeal removal via oesophagus and gastrostomy. Conclusion: Food bolus obstruction is a common emergency presentation. Within the rural setting, management requires innovation and teamwork within the safety of the local experience.

Keywords: food bolus obstruction, regional hospital, surgical management, innovative surgical treatment

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Authors: Christos N. Tsironis, Loanna Mitaftsi

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Currently, the various forms of tours and touristic visits to destinations associated with the “dark” facets of the past constitute one of the most dynamic fields of touristic initiatives and economic development. This analysis focuses on the potential development of urban dark routes. It aims a) to shed light to touristic, social, and ethical considerations and to describe some of the trends and links combining heritage and dark tourism in post-pandemic societies and b) to explore the possibilities of developing a new and polymorphic form of dark tourism in Thessaloniki, Greece, a distinctive heritage destination. The analysis concludes with a detailed dark route designed to serve a new, polymorphic and sustainable touristic product that describes a dark past with places, sights, and monuments and narrates stories and events stigmatized by death, disaster, and violence throughout the city’s history.

Keywords: dark tourism, dark urban route, local development, polymorphic tourism

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Authors: Omar A. Shaneb, Adell S. Amer

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Reduction of CO2 emissions has become a priority for several countries due to increasing concerns about global warming and climate change, especially in the developed countries. Residential sector is considered one of the most important sectors for considerable reduction of CO2 emissions since it represents a significant amount of the total consumed energy in those countries. A significant CO2 reduction cannot be achieved unless some initiatives have been adopted in the policy of these countries. Introducing micro combined heat and power (µCHP) systems into residential energy systems is one of these initiatives, since such a technology offers several advantages. Moreover, µCHP technology has the opportunity to be operated not only by natural gas but it could also be operated by renewable fuels. However, this technology can be operated by different operation strategies. Each strategy has some advantages and disadvantages. This paper provides a review of different operation strategies of such a technology used for residential energy systems, especially for single dwellings. The review summarizes key points that outline the trend of previous research carried out in this field.

Keywords: energy management, µCHP systems, residential energy systems, sustainable houses, operation strategy.

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Authors: Iin Mayasari

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This study aims at exploring the influence of aspects of entrepreneurial marketing on a firm’s performance. Entrepreneurs are not only supported by resources control to obtain sustainable competitive advantage, but it should also be supported by intangible resources. Entrepreneurial marketing provides the opportunity for entrepreneurs to proactively find better ways to create value for desired customers, to create innovation, and to build customer equity. Entrepreneurial marketing has the medium between entrepreneurship and marketing, and serves as an umbrella for many of the emergent perspectives on marketing. It has eight underlying dimensions. They are proactiveness, calculated risk-taking, innovativeness, an opportunity focus, entrepreneurial orientation, resource leveraging, customer intensity, and value creating. The research method of the study was a qualitative study by having an interview with 8 small companies in Kudus Region, the Central Java, Indonesia. The interviewees were the owner and the manager of the company that had the scope work of small business enterprise in wood crafting industry. The interview was related to the implementation of the elements of the entrepreneurial marketing. The result showed that the small business enterprises had implemented the elements of entrepreneurial marketing in supporting their daily activities. The understanding based on the theoretical implementation was well executed by the owner and managers. The problems in managing small business enterprises were related to the full support by the government and the branding management. Furthermore, the innovation process should be improved especially the use of internet to promote the product, to expand the market and to increase the firm’s performance.

Keywords: entrepreneurial marketing, innovativeness, risk taking, opportunity focus

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Authors: Kourosh Modarresi

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The Netflix problem has brought the topic of “Recommendation Systems” into the mainstream of computer science, mathematics, and statistics. Though much progress has been made, the available algorithms do not obtain satisfactory results. The success of these algorithms is rarely above 5%. This work is based on the belief that the main challenge is to come up with “scalable personalization” models. This paper uses an adaptive regularization of inverse singular value decomposition (SVD) that applies adaptive penalization on the singular vectors. The results show far better matching for recommender systems when compared to the ones from the state of the art models in the industry.

Keywords: convex optimization, LASSO, regression, recommender systems, singular value decomposition, low rank approximation

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Authors: Emmanuel Olasope Bamigboye, Ismail Oladeji Oladosu

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Local people of south-western Nigeria like in other climes, continue to be confronted with the vagaries of changing environments. Through the modification of existing practice and shifting resource base, their strategies for coping with change have enabled them to successfully negotiate the shifts in climate change and the environment. This article analyses indigenous adaptation strategies for climate change with a view to enhancing sustainable crop farming in south –western Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select 340 respondents from the two major ecological zones (Forest and Derived Savannah) for good geographical spread. The article draws on mixed methods of qualitative research, literature review, field observations, informal interview and multinomial logit regression to capture choice probabilities across the various options of climate change adaptation options among arable crop farmers. The study revealed that most 85.0% of the arable crop farmers were males. It also showed that the use of local climate change adaptation strategies had no relationship with the educational level of the respondents as 77.3% had educational experiences at varying levels. Furthermore, the findings showed that seven local adaptation strategies were commonly utilized by arable crop farmers. Nonetheless, crop diversification, consultation with rainmakers and involvement in non-agricultural ventures were prioritized in the order of 1-3, respectively. Also, multinomial logit analysis result showed that at p ≤ 0.05 level of significance, household size (P<0.08), sex (p<0.06), access to loan(p<0.16), age(p<0.07), educational level (P<0.17) and functional extension contact (P<0.28) were all important in explaining the indigenous climate change adaptation utilized by the arable crops farmers in south-western Nigeria. The study concluded that all the identified local adaptation strategies need to be integrated into the development process for sustainable climate change adaptation.

Keywords: crop diversification, climate change, adaptation option, sustainable, small farmers

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Authors: Rosa Nadine Danenberg

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In recent years, bottom-up urban development has started growing as an alternative to conventional top-down planning. In large proportions, citizens and communities initiate small-scale interventions; suddenly seeming to form a trend. As a result, more and more cities are witnessing not only the growth of but also an interest in these initiatives, as they bear the potential to reshape urban spaces. Such alternative city-making efforts cause new dynamics in urban governance, with inevitable consequences for the controlled city planning and its administration. The emergence of enabling relationships between top-down and bottom-up actors signals an increasingly common urban practice. Various case studies show that an enabling relationship is possible, yet, how it can be optimally realized stays rather underexamined. Therefore, the seemingly growing worldwide phenomenon of ‘municipal bottom-up urban development’ necessitates an adequate governance structure. As such, the aim of this research is to contribute knowledge to how municipalities can enable citizen-led urban initiatives from a governance innovation perspective. Empirical case-study research in Stockholm and Istanbul, derived from interviews with founders of four citizen-led urban initiatives and one municipal representative in each city, provided valuable insights to possibilities and constraints for enabling practices. On the one hand, diverging outcomes emphasize the extreme oppositional features of both cases (Stockholm and Istanbul). Firstly, both cities’ characteristics are drastically different. Secondly, the ideologies and motifs for the initiatives to emerge vary widely. Thirdly, the major constraints for citizen-led urban initiatives to relate to the municipality are considerably different. Two types of municipality’s organizational structures produce different underlying mechanisms which demonstrate the constraints. The first municipal organizational structure is steered by bureaucracy (Stockholm). It produces an administrative division that brings up constraints such as the lack of responsibility, transparency and continuity by municipal representatives. The second structure is dominated by municipal politics and governmental hierarchy (Istanbul). It produces informality, lack of transparency and a fragmented civil society. In order to cope with the constraints produced by both types of organizational structures, the initiatives have adjusted their organization to the municipality’s underlying structures. On the other hand, this paper has in fact also come to a rather unifying conclusion. Interestingly, the suggested possibilities for an enabling relationship underline converging new urban governance arrangements. This could imply that for the two varying types of municipality’s organizational structures there is an accurate governance structure. Namely, the combination of a neighborhood council with a municipal guide, with allowance for the initiatives to adopt a politicizing attitude is found as coinciding. Especially its combination appears key to redeem varying constraints. A municipal guide steers the initiatives through bureaucratic struggles, is supported by coproduction methods, while it balances out municipal politics. Next, a neighborhood council, that is politically neutral and run by local citizens, can function as an umbrella for citizen-led urban initiatives. What is crucial is that it should cater for a more entangled relationship between municipalities and initiatives with enhanced involvement of the initiatives in decision-making processes and limited involvement of prevailing constraints pointed out in this research.

Keywords: bottom-up urban development, governance innovation, Istanbul, Stockholm

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Authors: Ioanna Garefi, Irene Kalemaki

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Education is not solely about preparing young people for the world of work but also about equipping them with competences that will enable them to become socially proactive, empowered, responsible, and engaged citizens who will collectively contribute to and benefit from an inclusive and sustainable future. Hence, progress assessment towards competence development is an ongoing process where continuous efforts are needed. This paper abstract presents the work of the H2020 NEMESIS project that aims to investigate, experiment and co-create together with schools a model for introducing and embedding social innovation education (SIE henceforth) in European primary and secondary schools. All in all, during the 2018-2019 academic year, 8 schools from 5 European countries involving 56 teachers, 1030 students, and 80 external stakeholders, experimented with different methodologies for embedding SIE in their contexts. This paper captures briefly the impact of these efforts towards the cultivation and progression of students’ social innovation (SI henceforth) competences. As part of the model, 14 SI competences, whose progress was evaluated, have been introduced falling under 3 interrelated categories: competences for identifying opportunities for social and collective value creation, competences for developing collaborations and building meaningful relations and competences for taking action both on an individual and collective level. Methodologically wise, the evaluation strategy employed was informed by a realist approach, enabling the researchers to go beyond synthesizing 'what happened' and towards understanding 'why it happened', delving into ‘what works, for whom and in what circumstances’. The reason for choosing such an approach was because it goes beyond attempting to answer the basic yes or no question of evaluation and focus on an ‘explanatory quest’ tracing the limits of when and where intervention is effective. A rich mix of sources of evidence have been employed, from focus groups with 80 people from the 5 EU countries to an online survey to 206 students, classroom observations, students’ narratives granting them with the opportunity to freely express their opinions, short stories letting students express their feelings through their imagination and also, drawings so that younger children can express their perception of reality. All these evidences offered insights on the impact of SIE on the development of students’ competences. Research findings showed that students progressed in all 14 SI competences through their involvement in the different activities. This positive progression is attributed to the model’s three core principles: 1) the student-centered approach, rendering students active and self-determined producers of their own learning, 2) the co-creation process fostering intergenerational interactions, empowering thus students by making their voices heard and valued and also, 3) the transformative social action whereby through their projects, students are able to witness the impact they are bringing about with their actions. Concluding, these initial findings, together with the forthcoming evaluation research to a pool of 30 schools around Europe, have the potential to raise the dynamics of the under-investigated field of SIE and encourage its embeddedness in more schools around Europe.

Keywords: competence development, education, social innovation, students

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Authors: Chatcai Tangsri, Onjaree Na-Takuatoong

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This paper aims to present the key factors that support the decision to use the technology and to present the knowledge transformation flow of visually impaired students after the use of virtual knowledge system as proposed as a new service innovation to universities in Thailand. Correspondents of 27 visually impaired students are involved in this research. Total of 25 students are selected from the University that mainly conducts non-classroom teaching environment; while another 2 visually impaired students are selected from classroom teaching environment. All of them are fully involved in the study along 8 weeks duration. All correspondents are classified into 5 small groups in various conditions. The research results revealed that the involvement from knowledge facilitator can push out for the behavioral actual use of the virtual knowledge system although there is no any developed intention to use behaviors. Secondly, the situations that the visually impaired students inadequate of the knowledge sources that usually provided by assistants i.e. peers, audio files etc. In this case, they will use the virtual knowledge system for both knowledge access and knowledge transfer request. With this evidence, the need of knowledge would play a stronger role than all technology acceptance factors. Finally, this paper revealed that the knowledge transfer in the normal method that students have a chance to physically meet up is still confirmed as their preference method. In term of other aspects of technology acceptance, it will be discussed together with challenges and recommendations at the end of this paper.

Keywords: knowledge system, visually impaired students, higher education, knowledge management enable technology, synchronous/asynchronous knowledge access, synchronous/asynchronous knowledge transfer

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Authors: Kirsten Hoeper, Maike Kriependorf

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This paper firstly discusses the initial situation and problems. Afterward, it defines professional bureaucracies and shows their impact for the OR-work. The OR-center and its actors are shown. Finally, the paper provides the empiric design for detecting the target systems of the different work groups within the OR, the quality criteria in qualitative research and empirical results. It is shown that different groups have different targets in their daily work and that helps for a better understanding. More precisely, by detecting the target systems of these experts, we can ‘bridge’ the different points of view to create a common basis for the work in the OR. One of the aims was to find bridges to overcome separating factors. This paper describes the situation in Germany focusing the Hannover Medical School. It can be assumed that the results can be transferred to other countries using the DRG-System (Diagnosis Related Groups).

Keywords: hospital, OR, professional bureaucracies, target systems

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Authors: Surbhi Rani, Sunita Gakkhar

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The four-dimensional food web system consisting of two prey species for a generalist middle predator and a top predator is proposed and investigated. The middle predator is predating both the prey species with a modified Holling type-II functional response. The food web model is found to be well-posed, bounded, and dissipative. The proposed model's essential dynamical features are studied in terms of local stability. The four species' survival is explored, and persistence conditions are established. The numerical simulations reveal the persistence in the form of a chaotic attractor or stable focus. The conclusion is that providing additional food to the middle predator may help to control the food chain's chaos.

Keywords: predator-prey model, existence of equilibrium points, local stability, chaos, numerical simulations

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Authors: Mir Shahriar Emami

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Although it is fully impossible to ensure that a software system is quite secure, developing an acceptable secure software system in a convenient platform is not unreachable. In this paper, we attempt to analyze software development life cycle (SDLC) models from the hardware systems and circuits point of view. To date, the SDLC models pay merely attention to the software security from the software perspectives. In this paper, we present new features for SDLC stages to emphasize the role of systems and circuits in developing secure software system through the software development stages, the point that has not been considered previously in the SDLC models.

Keywords: SDLC, SSDLC, software security, software process engineering, hardware systems and circuits security

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Authors: Yasser Mahmoudi, Nader Karimi

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The present work investigates numerically the effect of thermal radiation from the solid phase on the rate of heat transfer inside a porous medium. Forced convection heat transfer process within a pipe filled with a porous media is considered. The Darcy-Brinkman-Forchheimer model is utilized to represent the fluid transport within the porous medium. A local thermal non-equilibrium (LTNE), two-equation model is used to represent the energy transport for the solid and fluid phases. The radiative heat transfer equation is solved by discrete ordinate method (DOM) to compute the radiative heat flux in the porous medium. Two primary approaches (models A and B) are used to represent the boundary conditions for constant wall heat flux. The effects of radiative heat transfer on the Nusselt numbers of the two phases are examined by comparing the results obtained by the application of models A and B. The fluid Nusselt numbers calculated by the application of models A and B show that the Nusselt number obtained by model A for the radiative case is higher than those predicted for the non-radiative case. However, for model B the fluid Nusselt numbers obtained for the radiative and non-radiative cases are similar.

Keywords: porous media, local thermal non-equilibrium, forced convection heat transfer, thermal radiation, Discrete Ordinate Method (DOM)

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Authors: Desmond Okorie, Emmanuel Prince

Abstract:

Availability of portable water has been a global challenge especially to the developing continents/nations such as Africa/Nigeria. The World Health Organization WHO has produced the guideline for drinking water quality GDWQ which aims at ensuring water safety from source to consumer. Portable water parameters test include physical (colour, odour, temperature, turbidity), chemical (PH, dissolved solids) biological (algae, plytoplankton). This paper discusses the use of wireless sensor networks to monitor water quality using efficient and effective sensors that have the ability to sense, process and transmit sensed data. The integration of wireless sensor network to a portable sensing device offers the feasibility of sensing distribution capability, on site data measurements and remote sensing abilities. The current water quality tests that are performed in government water quality institutions in Benue State Nigeria are carried out in problematic locations that require taking manual water samples to the institution laboratory for examination, to automate the entire process based on wireless sensor network, a system was designed. The system consists of sensor node containing one PH sensor, one temperature sensor, a microcontroller, a zigbee radio and a base station composed by a zigbee radio and a PC. Due to the advancement of wireless sensor network technology, unexpected contamination events in water environments can be observed continuously. local area network (LAN) wireless local area network (WLAN) and internet web-based also commonly used as a gateway unit for data communication via local base computer using standard global system for mobile communication (GSM). The improvement made on this development show a water quality monitoring system and prospect for more robust and reliable system in the future.

Keywords: local area network, Ph measurement, wireless sensor network, zigbee

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Authors: Navdeep Singh Randhawa, Shally Sharma

Abstract:

Wireless Sensor Network is an autonomous technology emanating in the current scenario at a fast pace. This technology faces a number of defiance’s and energy management is one of them, which has a huge impact on the network lifetime. To sustain energy the different types of routing protocols have been flourished. The classical routing protocols are no more compatible to perform in complicated environments. Hence, in the field of routing the intelligent algorithms based on nature systems is a turning point in Wireless Sensor Network. These nature-based algorithms are quite efficient to handle the challenges of the WSN as they are capable of achieving local and global best optimization solutions for the complex environments. So, the main attention of this paper is to develop a routing algorithm based on some swarm intelligent technique to enhance the performance of Wireless Sensor Network.

Keywords: wireless sensor network, routing, swarm intelligence, MPRSO

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Authors: Malinwo Estone Ayikpa

Abstract:

With the rapid increase of grid-connected PV systems over the last decades, genuine challenges have arisen for engineers and professionals of energy field in the planning and operation of existing distribution networks with the integration of new generation sources. However, the conventional distribution network, in its design was not expected to receive other generation outside the main power supply. The tools generally used to analyze the networks become inefficient and cannot take into account all the constraints related to the operation of grid-connected PV systems. Some of these constraints are voltage control difficulty, reverse power flow, and especially voltage unbalance which could be due to the poor distribution of single-phase PV systems in the network. In order to analyze the impact of the connection of small and large number of PV systems to the distribution networks, this paper presents an efficient optimization tool that minimizes voltage unbalance in three-phase distribution networks with active and reactive power injections from the allocation of single-phase and three-phase PV plants. Reactive power can be generated or absorbed using the available capacity and the adjustable power factor of the inverter. Good reduction of voltage unbalance can be achieved by reactive power control of the PV systems. The presented tool is based on the three-phase current injection method and the PV systems are modeled via an equivalent circuit. The primal-dual interior point method is used to obtain the optimal operating points for the systems.

Keywords: Photovoltaic system, Primal-dual interior point method, Three-phase optimal power flow, Voltage unbalance

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Authors: Tuisem Shimrah

Abstract:

One general agreement on climate change is that its causes may be local but the effects are global. Indigenous people are subscribed to “low-carbon” traditional ways of life and as such they have contributed little to causes of climate change. On the contrary they are the most adversely affected by climate change due to their dependence on surrounding rich biological wealth as a source of their livelihood, health care, entertainment and cultural activities This paper deals with the results of the investigation of various adaptation strategies adopted to combat climate change by traditional community. The result shows effective ways of application of traditional knowledge and wisdom applied by Tangkhul traditional community at local and community level in remote areas in Northeast India. Four adaptation measures are being presented in this paper.

Keywords: adaptation, climate change, Northeast India, Tangkhul, traditional community

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Authors: Chizzoniti Domenico, Beggiora Klizia, Cattani Letizia, Moscatelli Monica

Abstract:

This paper concerns the study of sustainable construction materials applied on the "Health Post", a prototype for the primary health care situated in alienated areas of the world. It's suitable for social and climatic Sub-Saharan context; however, it could be moved in other countries of the world with similar urgent needs. The idea is to create a Health Post with local construction materials that have a low environmental impact and promote the local workforce allowing reuse of traditional building techniques lowering production costs and transport. The aim of Primary Health Care Centre is to be a flexible and expandable structure identifying a modular form that can be repeated several times to expand its existing functions. In this way it could be not only a health care centre but also a socio-cultural facility.

Keywords: low costs building, sustainable construction materials, green construction system, prototype, health care, emergency

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Authors: Abdelhalim. N. Mohammed, Mohammed. Y. Esmail

Abstract:

In the course of recent decades, medical imaging has been dominated by the use of costly film media for review and archival of medical investigation, however due to developments in networks technologies and common acceptance of a standard digital imaging and communication in medicine (DICOM) another approach in light of World Wide Web was produced. Web technologies successfully used in telemedicine applications, the combination of web technologies together with DICOM used to design a web-based and open source DICOM viewer. The Web server allowance to inquiry and recovery of images and the images viewed/manipulated inside a Web browser without need for any preinstalling software. The dynamic site page for medical images visualization and processing created by using JavaScript and HTML5 advancements. The XAMPP ‘apache server’ is used to create a local web server for testing and deployment of the dynamic site. The web-based viewer connected to multiples devices through local area network (LAN) to distribute the images inside healthcare facilities. The system offers a few focal points over ordinary picture archiving and communication systems (PACS): easy to introduce, maintain and independently platforms that allow images to display and manipulated efficiently, the system also user-friendly and easy to integrate with an existing system that have already been making use of web technologies. The wavelet-based image compression technique on which 2-D discrete wavelet transform used to decompose the image then wavelet coefficients are transmitted by entropy encoding after threshold to decrease transmission time, stockpiling cost and capacity. The performance of compression was estimated by using images quality metrics such as mean square error ‘MSE’, peak signal to noise ratio ‘PSNR’ and compression ratio ‘CR’ that achieved (83.86%) when ‘coif3’ wavelet filter is used.

Keywords: DICOM, discrete wavelet transform, PACS, HIS, LAN

Procedia PDF Downloads 160