Search results for: access to space

Authors: Getiye Dejenu Kibret, Daniel Demant, Andrew Hayen

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Introduction: In Ethiopia, more than half of newborn babies do not have access to Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care (EmONC) services. Understanding the effect of distance to health facilities on service use and neonatal survival is crucial to recommend policymakers and improve resource distribution. We aimed to investigate the effect of distance to health services on maternal service use and neonatal mortality. Methods: We implemented a data linkage method based on geographic coordinates and calculated straight-line (Euclidean) distances from the Ethiopian 2016 demographic and health survey clusters to the closest health facility. We computed the distance in ESRI ArcGIS Version 10.3 using the geographic coordinates of DHS clusters and health facilities. Generalised Structural Equation Modelling (GSEM) was used to estimate the effect of distance on neonatal mortality. Results: Poor geographic accessibility to health facilities affects maternal service usage and increases the risk of newborn mortality. For every ten kilometres (km) increase in distance to a health facility, the odds of neonatal mortality increased by 1.33% (95% CI: 1.06% to 1.67%). Distance also negatively affected antenatal care, facility delivery and postnatal counselling service use. Conclusions: A lack of geographical access to health facilities decreases the likelihood of newborns surviving their first month of life and affects health services use during pregnancy and immediately after birth. The study also showed that antenatal care use was positively associated with facility delivery service use and that both positively influenced postnatal care use, demonstrating the interconnectedness of the continuum of care for maternal and neonatal care services. Policymakers can leverage the findings from this study to improve accessibility barriers to health services.

Keywords: acessibility, distance, maternal health service, neonatal mortality

Procedia PDF Downloads 109

Authors: B. Shahzamanian, S. Varga, D. C. Alarcón-Padilla

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Desalination is considered the primary alternative to increase water supply for domestic, agricultural and industrial use. Sustainable desalination is only possible in places where renewable energy resources are available. Solar energy is the most relevant type of renewable energy to driving desalination systems since most of the areas suffering from water scarcity are characterized by a high amount of available solar radiation during the year. Multi-Effect Desalination (MED) technology integrated with solar thermal concentrators is a suitable combination for heat-driven desalination. It can also be coupled with thermal vapour compressors or absorption heat pumps to boost overall system performance. The most interesting advantage of MED is the suitability to be used with a transient source of energy like solar. An experimental study was carried out to assess the performance of the most important life-size multi-effect desalination plant driven by solar energy located in the Plataforma Solar de Almería (PSA). The MED plant is used as a reference in many studies regarding multi-effect distillation. The system consists of a 14-effect MED plant coupled with a double-effect absorption heat pump. The required thermal energy to run the desalination system is supplied by means of hot water generated from 60 static flat-plate solar collectors with a total aperture area of 606 m2. In order to compensate for the solar energy variation, a thermal storage system with two interconnected tanks and an overall volume of 40 m3 is coupled to the MED unit. The multi-effect distillation unit is built in a forward feed configuration, and the last effect is connected to a double-effect LiBr-H2O absorption heat pump. The heat pump requires steam at 180 ºC (10 bar a) that is supplied by a small-aperture parabolic trough solar field with a total aperture area of 230 m2. When needed, a gas boiler is used as an auxiliary heat source for operating the heat pump and the MED plant when solar energy is not available. A set of experiments was carried out for evaluating the impact of the heating water temperature (Th), top brine temperature (TBT) and temperature difference between effects (ΔT) on the performance ratio of the MED plant. The considered range for variation of Th, TBT and ΔT was 60-70°C, 54-63°C and 1.1-1.6°C, respectively. The performance ratio (PR), defined as kg of distillate produced for every 2326 kJ of thermal energy supplied to the MED system, was almost independent of the applied variables with a variation of less than 5% for all the cases. The maximum recorded PR was 12.4. The results indicated that the system demonstrated robustness for the whole range of operating conditions considered. Author gratitude is expressed to the PSA for providing access to its installations, the support of its scientific and technical staff, and the financial support of the SFERA-III project (Grant Agreement No 823802). Special thanks to the access provider staff members who ensured the access support.

Keywords: multi-effect distillation, performance ratio, robustness, solar energy

Procedia PDF Downloads 182

Authors: T. Obateru, Samuel Olaniran

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In an era when the new media is affording easy access to packaging and dissemination of information, the social media have become a popular avenue for sharing information for good or ill. It is evident that the traditional role of journalists as ‘news breakers’ is fast being eroded. People now share information on happenings via the social media like Facebook, Twitter and the rest, such that journalists themselves now get leads on happenings from such sources. Beyond the access to information provided by the new media is the erosion of the gatekeeping role of journalists who by their training and calling, are supposed to handle information with responsibility. Thus, sensitive information that journalists would normally filter is randomly shared by social media activists. This was the experience of journalists in Jos, Plateau State in January 2010 when another of the recurring ethnoreligious crisis that engulfed the state resulted in another widespread killing, vandalism, looting, and displacements. Considered as one of the high points of crises in the state, journalists who had the duty of covering the crisis also relied on some of these sources to get their bearing on the violence. This paper examined the role of Facebook in the work of journalists who covered the 2010 crisis. Taking the gatekeeping perspective, it interrogated the extent to which Facebook impacted their professional duty positively or negatively vis-à-vis the peace journalism model. It employed survey to elicit information from 50 journalists who covered the crisis using questionnaire as instrument. The paper revealed that the dissemination of hate information via mobile phones and social media, especially Facebook, aggravated the crisis situation. Journalists became news followers rather than news breakers because a lot of them were put on their toes by information (many of which were inaccurate or false) circulated on Facebook. It recommended that journalists must remain true to their calling by upholding their ‘gatekeeping’ role of disseminating only accurate and responsible information if they would remain the main source of credible information on which their audience rely.

Keywords: crisis, ethnoreligious, Facebook, journalists

Procedia PDF Downloads 289

Authors: Sayantan Saha, Sambit Supriya Dash, Vinayak Malhotra

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Efficient propulsive systems development is an area of major interest and concern in aerospace industry. Combustion forms the most reliable and basic form of propulsion for ground and space applications. The generation of large amount of energy from a small volume relates mostly to the flaming combustion. This study deals with instabilities associated with flaming combustion. Combustion is always accompanied by acoustics be it external or internal. Chemical propulsion oriented rockets and space systems are well known to encounter acoustic instabilities. Acoustic brings in changes in inter-energy conversion and alter the reaction rates. The modified heat fluxes, owing to wall temperature, reaction rates, and non-linear heat transfer are observed. The thermoacoustic instabilities significantly result in reduced combustion efficiency leading to uncontrolled liquid rocket engine performance, serious hazards to systems, assisted testing facilities, enormous loss of resources and every year a substantial amount of money is spent to prevent them. Present work attempts to fundamentally understand the mechanisms governing the thermoacoustic combustion in liquid rocket engine using a simplified experimental setup comprising a butane cylinder and an impinging acoustic source. Rocket engine produces sound pressure level in excess of 153 Db. The RL-10 engine generates noise of 180 Db at its base. Systematic studies are carried out for varying fuel flow rates, acoustic levels and observations are made on the flames. The work is expected to yield a good physical insight into the development of acoustic devices that when coupled with the present propulsive devices could effectively enhance combustion efficiency leading to better and safer missions. The results would be utilized to develop impinging acoustic devices that impinge sound on the combustion chambers leading to stable combustion thus, improving specific fuel consumption, specific impulse, reducing emissions, enhanced performance and fire safety. The results can be effectively applied to terrestrial and space application.

Keywords: combustion instability, fire safety, improved performance, liquid rocket engines, thermoacoustics

Procedia PDF Downloads 140

Authors: Harish Krishnamurthy, Anna Lafontant, Ren Yi

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Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) have been an interesting topic for most enthusiasts and hence people all over the United States report such findings online at the National UFO Report Center (NUFORC). Some of these reports are a hoax and among those that seem legitimate, our task is not to establish that these events confirm that they indeed are events related to flying objects from aliens in outer space. Rather, we intend to identify if the report was a hoax as was identified by the UFO database team with their existing curation criterion. However, the database provides a wealth of information that can be exploited to provide various analyses and insights such as social reporting, identifying real-time spatial events and much more. We perform analysis to localize these time-series geospatial events and correlate with known real-time events. This paper does not confirm any legitimacy of alien activity, but rather attempts to gather information from likely legitimate reports of UFOs by studying the online reports. These events happen in geospatial clusters and also are time-based. We look at cluster density and data visualization to search the space of various cluster realizations to decide best probable clusters that provide us information about the proximity of such activity. A random forest classifier is also presented that is used to identify true events and hoax events, using the best possible features available such as region, week, time-period and duration. Lastly, we show the performance of the scheme on various days and correlate with real-time events where one of the UFO reports strongly correlates to a missile test conducted in the United States.

Keywords: time-series clustering, feature extraction, hoax prediction, geospatial events

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Authors: Atousa Ataieyan, Salvador A. Gomez-Lopera, Gennaro Sepede

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Today, due to the growing urban population and consequently, the increasing water demand in cities, the amount of contaminants entering the water resources is increasing. This can impose harmful effects on the quality of the downstream water. Therefore, predicting the concentration of discharged pollutants at different times and distances of the interested area is of high importance in order to carry out preventative and controlling measures, as well as to avoid consuming the contaminated water. In this paper, the concentration distribution of an injected conservative pollutant in a square reservoir containing four symmetric blocks and three sources using Finite Volume Method (FVM) is simulated. For this purpose, after estimating the flow velocity, classical Advection-Diffusion Equation (ADE) has been discretized over the studying domain by Backward Time- Backward Space (BTBS) scheme. Then, the discretized equations for each node have been derived according to the initial condition, boundary conditions and point contaminant sources. Finally, taking into account the appropriate time step and space step, a computational code was set up in MATLAB. Contaminant concentration was then obtained at different times and distances. Simulation results show how using BTBS differentiating scheme and FVM as a numerical method for solving the partial differential equation of transport is an appropriate approach in the case of two-dimensional contaminant transfer in an advective-diffusive flow.

Keywords: BTBS differentiating scheme, contaminant concentration, finite volume, mass transfer, water pollution

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Authors: Antonella Poce, Deborah Seid Howes, Maria Rosaria Re, Mara Valente

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The Creative Industries education contexts, Museum Education in particular, generally presents a low emphasis on the use of new digital technologies, digital abilities and transversal skills development. The spread of the Covid-19 pandemic has underlined the importance of these abilities and skills in cultural heritage education contexts: gaining digital skills, museum professionals will improve their career opportunities with access to new distribution markets through internet access and e-commerce, new entrepreneurial tools, or adding new forms of digital expression to their work. However, the use of web, mobile, social, and analytical tools is becoming more and more essential in the Heritage field, and museums, in particular, to face the challenges posed by the current worldwide health emergency. Recent studies highlight the need for stronger partnerships between the cultural and creative sectors, social partners and education and training providers in order to provide these sectors with the combination of skills needed for creative entrepreneurship in a rapidly changing environment. Considering the above conditions, the paper presents different examples of digital learning experiences carried out in Italian and USA contexts with the aim of promoting digital skills in museum professionals. In particular, a quali-quantitative research study has been conducted on two international Postgraduate courses, “Advanced Studies in Museum Education” (2 years) and “Museum Education” (1 year), in order to identify the educational effectiveness of the online learning strategies used (e.g., OBL, Digital Storytelling, peer evaluation) for the development of digital skills and the acquisition of specific content. More than 50 museum professionals participating in the mentioned educational pathways took part in the learning activity, providing evaluation data useful for research purposes.

Keywords: digital skills, museum professionals, technology, education

Procedia PDF Downloads 172

Authors: Mustafa Sengul, Enes Sahin, Sertac Arslan

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Pumpjets are one of the marine propulsion systems frequently used in underwater vehicles nowadays. The reasons for frequent use of pumpjet as a propulsion system are that it has higher relative efficiency at high speeds, better cavitation, and acoustic performance than its rivals. Pumpjets are composed of rotor, stator, and duct, and there are two different types of pumpjet configurations depending on the desired hydrodynamic characteristic, which are with accelerating and decelerating duct. Pumpjet with an accelerating channel is used at cargo ships where it works at low speeds and high loading conditions. The working principle of this type of pumpjet is to maximize the thrust by reducing the pressure of the fluid through the channel and throwing the fluid out from the channel with high momentum. On the other hand, for decelerating ducted pumpjets, the main consideration is to prevent the occurrence of the cavitation phenomenon by increasing the pressure of the fluid about the rotor region. By postponing the cavitation, acoustic noise naturally falls down, so decelerating ducted systems are used at noise-sensitive vehicle systems where acoustic performance is vital. Therefore, duct design becomes a crucial step during pumpjet design. This study, it is aimed to optimize the duct geometry of a decelerating ducted pumpjet for a highly speed underwater vehicle by using proper optimization tools. The target output of this optimization process is to obtain a duct design that maximizes fluid pressure around the rotor region to prevent from cavitation and minimizes drag force. There are two main optimization techniques that could be utilized for this process which are parameter-based optimization and gradient-based optimization. While parameter-based algorithm offers more major changes in interested geometry, which makes user to get close desired geometry, gradient-based algorithm deals with minor local changes in geometry. In parameter-based optimization, the geometry should be parameterized first. Then, by defining upper and lower limits for these parameters, design space is created. Finally, by proper optimization code and analysis, optimum geometry is obtained from this design space. For this duct optimization study, a commercial codedparameter-based optimization algorithm is used. To parameterize the geometry, duct is represented with b-spline curves and control points. These control points have x and y coordinates limits. By regarding these limits, design space is generated.

Keywords: pumpjet, decelerating duct design, optimization, underwater vehicles, cavitation, drag minimization

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Authors: Jakub Zembrzuski, Bartosz Sobczyk, Mikołaj MIśkiewicz

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Besides designing new constructions, engineers all over the world must face another problem – maintenance, repairs, and assessment of the technical condition of existing bridges. To solve more complex issues, it is necessary to be familiar with the theory of finite element method and to have access to the software that provides sufficient tools which to enable create of sometimes significantly advanced numerical models. The paper includes a brief assessment of the technical condition, a description of the in situ non-destructive testing carried out and the FEM models created for global and local analysis. In situ testing was performed using strain gauges and displacement sensors. Numerical models were created using various software and numerical modeling techniques. Particularly noteworthy is the method of modeling riveted joints of the crossbeam of the viaduct. It is a simplified method that consists of the use of only basic numerical tools such as beam and shell finite elements, constraints, and simplified boundary conditions (fixed support and symmetry). The results of the numerical analyses were presented and discussed. It is clearly explained why the structure did not fail, despite the fact that the weld of the deck plate completely failed. A further research problem that was solved was to determine the cause of the rapid increase in values on the stress diagram in the cross-section of the transverse section. The problems were solved using the solely mentioned, simplified method of modeling riveted joints, which demonstrates that it is possible to solve such problems without access to sophisticated software that enables to performance of the advanced nonlinear analysis. Moreover, the obtained results are of great importance in the field of assessing the operation of bridge structures with an orthotropic plate.

Keywords: bridge, diagnostics, FEM simulations, failure, NDT, in situ testing

Procedia PDF Downloads 66

Authors: Wasantha Pushpakumara Hitihami Mudiyanselage

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Since recent past, Sri Lanka is highly vulnerable to reoccurring climate shocks that severely impact the food security, loss of human & animal lives, destructions of human settlements, displacement of people and damaging properties. Hence, the Government of Sri Lanka has taken important steps towards strengthening legal and institutional arrangements for Disaster Risks management in the country in May 2005. Puttalam administrative district is one of the disaster prone districts in Sri Lanka which constantly face the devastating consequences of the increasing natural disasters annually. Therefore disaster risk management will be a timely intervention in the area to minimize the adverse impacts of the disasters. The few functioning Disaster Risk management networks do not take children’s specific needs and vulnerabilities during emergencies into account. The most affected children and their families were evacuated to the government schools and temples and it was observed that children were left to roaming around as their parents were busy queuing up for relief goods and other priorities. In this sense, VOICE understands that the community has vital role that has to be played in facing challenges of disaster management in the area. During and after the disaster, it was viewed that some children were having psychological disorders which could be impacted negatively to children well–being. Need of child friendly space at emergency is a must action in the area to turn away negative impact coming from the hazards. VOICE with the support of national & international communities have established safer places for the children (Child Centered Spaces – CCS) and their families at emergencies. Village religious venues and schools were selected and equipped with necessary materials to be used for the children at emergency. Materials such as tools, stationeries, play materials, which couldn’t be easily found in surrounding environment, were provided for CCS centers. Village animators, youth and elders were given comprehensive training on Disaster management and their role at CCS. They did the facilitation in keeping children without fear and stress at flooding occurred in 2015 as well as they were able to improve their skills when working with children. Flooding in 2016, the government agencies have taken service of these village animators at early stage of flooding to make all disaster-related recovery actions productively & efficiently. This mechanism is sustained at village level that can be used for disaster events.

Keywords: child centered space, impacts, psychological disorders, village animators

Procedia PDF Downloads 127

Authors: Rubin Dan, Xingcai Wang, Ziyang Chen

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A chaotic time series noise reduction method based on the fusion of the local projection method, wavelet transform, and particle swarm algorithm (referred to as the LW-PSO method) is proposed to address the problem of false recognition due to noise in the recognition process of chaotic time series containing noise. The method first uses phase space reconstruction to recover the original dynamical system characteristics and removes the noise subspace by selecting the neighborhood radius; then it uses wavelet transform to remove D1-D3 high-frequency components to maximize the retention of signal information while least-squares optimization is performed by the particle swarm algorithm. The Lorenz system containing 30% Gaussian white noise is simulated and verified, and the phase space, SNR value, RMSE value, and K value of the 0-1 test method before and after noise reduction of the Schreiber method, local projection method, wavelet transform method, and LW-PSO method are compared and analyzed, which proves that the LW-PSO method has a better noise reduction effect compared with the other three common methods. The method is also applied to the classical system to evaluate the noise reduction effect of the four methods and the original system identification effect, which further verifies the superiority of the LW-PSO method. Finally, it is applied to the Chengdu rainfall chaotic sequence for research, and the results prove that the LW-PSO method can effectively reduce the noise and improve the chaos recognition rate.

Keywords: Schreiber noise reduction, wavelet transform, particle swarm optimization, 0-1 test method, chaotic sequence denoising

Procedia PDF Downloads 191

Authors: Haniyeh Okhovat, Mahmood Hosseini, Omid Kaveh Ahangari, Mona Zaryoun

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Shavadoon is a type of underground living space, formerly used in urban residences of Dezful and Shooshtar cities in southwestern Iran. In spite of their high efficiency in creating cool spaces for hot summers of that area, Shavadoons were abandoned, like many other components of vernacular architecture, as a result of the modernism movement. However, Shavadoons were used by the local people as shelters during the 8-year Iran-Iraq war, and although several cases of bombardment happened during those years, no case of damage was reported in those two cities. On this basis, and regarding the high seismicity of Iran, the use of Shavadoons as post-disasters shelters can be considered as a good issue for research. This paper presents the results of a thorough study conducted on these spaces and their seismic behavior. First, the architectural aspects of Shavadoon and their construction technique are presented. Then, the results of seismic evaluation of a sample Shavadoon, conducted by a series of time history analyses, using Plaxis software and a set of selected earthquakes, are briefly explained. These results show that Shavadoons have good stability against seismic excitations. This stability is mainly because of the high strength of conglomerate materials inside which the Shavadoons have been excavated. On this basis, and considering other merits of this components of vernacular architecture in southwest of Iran, it is recommended that the revival of these components is seriously reconsidered by both architects and civil engineers.

Keywords: Shavadoon, Iran high seismicity, Conglomerate, Modeling in Plaxis, Vernacular sustainable architecture

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Authors: Amadou Fall Dia, Maurras Ulbricht Togbe, Aliou Boly, Zakia Kazi Aoul, Elisabeth Metais

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Existing RDF (Resource Description Framework) Stream Processing (RSP) systems allow continuous processing of RDF data issued from different application domains such as weather station measuring phenomena, geolocation, IoT applications, drinking water distribution management, and so on. However, processing window phase often expires before finishing the entire session and RSP systems immediately delete data streams after each processed window. Such mechanism does not allow optimized exploitation of the RDF data streams as the most relevant and pertinent information of the data is often not used in a due time and almost impossible to be exploited for further analyzes. It should be better to keep the most informative part of data within streams while minimizing the memory storage space. In this work, we propose an RDF graph summarization system based on an explicit and implicit expressed needs through three main approaches: (1) an approach for user queries (SPARQL) in order to extract their needs and group them into a more global query, (2) an extension of the closeness centrality measure issued from Social Network Analysis (SNA) to determine the most informative parts of the graph and (3) an RDF graph summarization technique combining extracted user query needs and the extended centrality measure. Experiments and evaluations show efficient results in terms of memory space storage and the most expected approximate query results on summarized graphs compared to the source ones.

Keywords: centrality measures, RDF graphs summary, RDF graphs stream, SPARQL query

Procedia PDF Downloads 195

Authors: Fareena Alladin

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In the Caribbean, issues of food security, health and taste are intricately linked, seen most clearly in the increasing incidence of lifestyle diseases among children coupled with a taste for high calorie and Westernized diets. In order to fully appreciate this link, the role of nutrition environments must be examined. To this end, the present study incorporates tenets of Bourdieu’s social constructivist theory with the Community Nutrition Environment Model. The aim of this study was to examine the relationships between availability of and access to healthy/unhealthy foods within nutrition environments, namely the household and school, and the development of taste preferences for healthy/unhealthy foods among primary school children in a selected educational district in Trinidad and Tobago. A cross-sectional survey of 400 children between the ages of 9 and 11 years was conducted. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS 24. Results indicated that availability of healthy food at home was positively correlated with preference for vegetables, and negatively correlated with preference for salty snacks and fast food. The availability of unhealthy food within the home was found to be negatively correlated with preference for vegetables and positively correlated with preference for salty snacks. Access to unhealthy foods at school had a positive correlation with preference for fast food. These findings highlight the role of the food environment in shaping taste preferences, and point to the need for interrogating the centrality of food security concerns in emerging health concerns of Caribbean countries. Such interrogations are a necessary part of the development of research agendas, and policy formulation and implementation.

Keywords: food security, nutrition environment, taste preference, Trinidad and Tobago

Procedia PDF Downloads 129

Authors: Syed Jawad Hussain, Abir Touati, Farid Touati

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Free-Space Optics (FSO) is a wireless technology that enables the optical transmission of data though the air. FSO is emerging as a promising alternative or complementary technology to fiber optic and wireless radio-frequency (RF) links due to its high-bandwidth, robustness to EMI, and operation in unregulated spectrum. These systems are envisioned to be an essential part of future generation heterogeneous communication networks. Despite the vibrant advantages of FSO technology and the variety of its applications, its widespread adoption has been hampered by rather disappointing link reliability for long-range links due to atmospheric turbulence-induced fading and sensitivity to detrimental climate conditions. Qatar, with modest cloud coverage, high concentrations of airborne dust and high relative humidity particularly lies in virtually rainless sunny belt with a typical daily average solar radiation exceeding 6 kWh/m2 and 80-90% clear skies throughout the year. The specific objective of this work is to study for the first time in Qatar the effect of solar irradiation on the deliverability of the FSO Link. In order to analyze the transport media, we have ported Embedded Linux kernel on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and designed a network sniffer application that can run into FPGA. We installed new FSO terminals and configure and align them successively. In the reporting period, we carry out measurement and relate them to weather conditions.

Keywords: free space optics, solar irradiation, field programmable gate array, FSO outage

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Authors: Mustafa Alhamdi

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Industrial application to classify gamma rays and neutron events is investigated in this study using deep machine learning. The identification using a convolutional neural network and recursive neural network showed a significant improvement in predication accuracy in a variety of applications. The ability to identify the isotope type and activity from spectral information depends on feature extraction methods, followed by classification. The features extracted from the spectrum profiles try to find patterns and relationships to present the actual spectrum energy in low dimensional space. Increasing the level of separation between classes in feature space improves the possibility to enhance classification accuracy. The nonlinear nature to extract features by neural network contains a variety of transformation and mathematical optimization, while principal component analysis depends on linear transformations to extract features and subsequently improve the classification accuracy. In this paper, the isotope spectrum information has been preprocessed by finding the frequencies components relative to time and using them as a training dataset. Fourier transform implementation to extract frequencies component has been optimized by a suitable windowing function. Training and validation samples of different isotope profiles interacted with CdTe crystal have been simulated using Geant4. The readout electronic noise has been simulated by optimizing the mean and variance of normal distribution. Ensemble learning by combing voting of many models managed to improve the classification accuracy of neural networks. The ability to discriminate gamma and neutron events in a single predication approach using deep machine learning has shown high accuracy using deep learning. The paper findings show the ability to improve the classification accuracy by applying the spectrogram preprocessing stage to the gamma and neutron spectrums of different isotopes. Tuning deep machine learning models by hyperparameter optimization of neural network models enhanced the separation in the latent space and provided the ability to extend the number of detected isotopes in the training database. Ensemble learning contributed significantly to improve the final prediction.

Keywords: machine learning, nuclear physics, Monte Carlo simulation, noise estimation, feature extraction, classification

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Authors: Irokanulo I. Emmanuel

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The idea of ‘Oshinowoism’ is a representational school, which is a concept based on pure and rustic energy in painting. It is described as any painting that depicts the actions of significant through simple illusions. The idea is never to replicate a photographic resemblance with paint but to create an affinity between what one sees and what one artistically intends to create as a representation of that which one beholds in society as an illusion of reality, not as a reality in itself, but as subjective analysis of reality. The disciples of ‘Oshinowoism’ pursue their art from a representational point of view, creating material realities within feels of colours, forms and space, not trying to confuse the art as a substitute for reality nor reality as a substitute for art, but giving each its space and materialism to exist. The depictions of Oshinowo are the constant reminders or perhaps interpretations of those developments that emerged in contemporary African societies because of neocolonialism. This essay has three objectives. First, it examines the misconception around the development of this thought. Secondly, it contextualizes the later contemporary development of painting as art and craft in present-day Lagos, and third, it constructs the misconception and misconstruction of the concept of ‘Oshinowoism’ and offers a correct ideology of this thought with the body of Oshinowo’s work to give the existence to this philosophy. This study looks at the students of Kolade Oshinowo, especially those students who share similar elements and an affinity with the master painting skills, as a way of reconstructing and addressing the misconception in his style. The early works of Olaku, Edosa, and Lara Ige Jacks are plausible evidence of the existential essence of Oshinowo’s artistic philosophy. To this end, therefore, this study would explore the quality of their pictorial techniques and skills in painting as a way of preserving their master’s philosophy.

Keywords: Oshinowoism, colour scheme, drawing, philosophy, representations

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Authors: Magdalena Zabrocka

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The terror of women throughout the governance of the current populist ruling party in Poland, PiS, has been a subject of a heated debate alongside the issues of minorities’ rights, the rule of law, and democracy in the country. The challenges that women and other vulnerable groups are currently facing, however, come down to more than just a lack of comprehensive equality laws, severely limited reproductive rights, hateful slogans, and messages propagated by the central authority and its sympathisers, or a common disregard for women’s fundamental rights. Many sources and media reports are available only in Polish, while international rapporteurs fail to acknowledge the whole picture of the tragedy happening in the country and the variety of factors affecting it. Starting with the authorities’ and Polish catholic church’s propaganda concerning CEDAW and the Istanbul Convention Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence by spreading strategic disinformation that it codifies ‘gender ideology’ and ‘anti-Christian values’ in order to convince the electorate that the legal instruments should be ‘abandoned’. Alongside severely restricted abortion rights, bullying medical professionals helping women exercise their reproductive rights, violating women’s privacy by introducing a mandatory registry of pregnancies (so that one’s pregnancy or its ‘loss’ can be tracked and traced), restricting access to the ‘day after pill’ and real sex education at schools (most schools have a subject of ‘knowledge of living in a family’), introducing prison punishment for teachers accused of spreading ‘sex education’, and many other, the current tyrant government, has now decided to target the youngest with its misinformation and indoctrination, via strategically designed textbooks and curriculum. Biology books have seen a big restriction on the size of the chapters devoted to evolution, reproductive system, and sexual health. Approved religion books (which are taught 2-3 times a week as compared to 1 a week sciences) now cover false information about Darwin’s theory and arguments ‘against it’. Most recently, however, the public spoke up against the absurd messages contained in the politically rewritten history books, where the material about some figures not liked by the governing party has already been manipulated. In the recently approved changes to the history textbook, one can find a variety of strongly biased and politically-charged views representative of the conservatives in the states, most notably, equating the ‘gender ideology’ and feminism with Nazism. Thus, this work, by employing a human rights approach, would focus on the right to education and development as well as the considerate obstacles to access to scientific information by the youth.

Keywords: Poland, right to education, right to development, authoritarianism, access to information

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Authors: Preeti Sharma

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This paper deals with the Stancu type generalization of Lupaş-Durrmeyer operators. We establish some direct results in the polynomial weighted space of continuous functions defined on the interval [0, 1]. Also, Voronovskaja type theorem is studied.

Keywords: Lupas-Durrmeyer operators, polya distribution, weighted approximation, rate of convergence, modulus of continuity

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Authors: Jubril Olatunbosun Akinde

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Unplanned population growth are mostly attributed to a lack of infrastructural facilities and poor economic condition in the rural dwellings and the incidence of rural-urban migration, which has resulted in severe housing deficiency in the urban centre, with a resultant pressure on housing delivery in the cities. Affordable housing does not only encompass environmental factors that make living acceptable and comfortable, which include good access routes, ventilation, sanitation and access to other basic human needs, which include water and safety. The research assessed the housing affordability and safety measures in the varied residential area of lagos by examining the demographic and socioeconomic attributes of residents; examining the existing residential safety measures; by examining the residential quality in terms of safety; the researcher therefore examined if relationship between housing affordability and safety in the varied residential areas. The research adopted the bartlett, kotrlik and higgins (2001) method of t-test to determine the sample size which specifies different populations at different levels of significance (α). The researcher adopted primary data which was sourced from a field survey where the sample population was simply randomly selected to give a member of the population an equal chance of being selected, therefore, the sample size for the field survey was two hundred (200) respondents, and subjected to necessary testing. The research come to conclusion that housing safety and security is the responsibility of every resident, the landlords/landladies possess a better sense of security in their neighbourhood than renters in the community, therefore they need to be aware of their responsibility of ensuring the safety of lives and property.

Keywords: housing, housing affordability, housing security, residential, residential quality

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Authors: Kwanele Shishane

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Numerous countries are faced with challenges such as disease, poverty and other social ills and inadequate government support to meet the needs of the entire population. In developing countries, the concept of child-headed households has become a ubiquitous phenomenon and lived experience. As such, migration of children is common in these countries. This study aims to explore the lived experiences of unaccompanied adolescent migrant, with regards to the utilization of health care in South Africa. The objectives of the study are to examine the lived experiences of health care utilization by unaccompanied adolescent migrants; examine the predisposing, enabling and need factors influencing utilization of health care among unaccompanied adolescent migrants; examine the social and cultural influences on health care utilization among unaccompanied adolescent migrants; and identify the health system barriers to utilization of health care by unaccompanied adolescent migrants. Andersen and Newman’s Model of Health Care Utilization (1995) which explains factors determining the utilization of healthcare will provide the theoretical framework for the empirical investigation of this study. The target population for this study is unaccompanied adolescent migrants, seeking to access services from migrant service organizations in four provinces in South Africa (Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal, Free State, and Gauteng). Participants will be selected using a purposive sampling procedure. A qualitative research approach utilizing a descriptive phenomenological epistemology will be utilized in this study. Data will be collected through conducting in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with unaccompanied migrant adolescents, to explore their lived experiences related to access and utilization of health care, as an unaccompanied migrant in SA. The qualitative data will be analysed using Tech’s (1990) thematic analytical approach.

Keywords: health care utilisation, unaccompanied migrant youth, South Africa, lived experiences

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Authors: Anton Andreev

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With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the collapse of a large part of the socialist regimes, left-wing parties all over the world entered the space of crisis, of problems with ideology, identity, with the definition of its goals and objectives. First of all, we can say that the communist parties actually lost their foundation. In 1992, despite the victory of left-wing forces, a Broad Front in which was the winner in the struggle against dictatorship plunged into a deep crisis, the nature of which is looking for a new platform, a new foundation, new goals. Thus, in the late 20th century, the party has revised theoretical beliefs and positions. Radical communist ideology was moderated to social reformism. Modern leftist movement in Uruguay is a movement of moderate reform. Left forces suggest going through successive changes. Changes in ideology and ideas have influenced to the understanding of foreign policy. After the collapse of the Soviet Union Broad Front has changed the direction of its diplomacy from the orientation to the Soviet state to support the USA policy. Government formed by Broad Front, supported the integration processes in the South America. Uruguay was developing the cooperation in the framework of MERCOSUR and began to create relationship with the new centers of power in world political space. Uruguay in the early 21st century is a country that starts to play important role in the international arena. Elections of 26 October 2014 should answer the question of support of internal policy of a Broad Front, as well as of the support of the diplomatic work of the "Left" governments of the country.

Keywords: Uruguay, broad front, Vazquez, international dimensions

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Authors: Elisabeth Unterfrauner, Christian Voigt

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Since the foundation of the first Fab Lab by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about 17 years ago, the Maker movement has spread globally with the foundation of maker spaces and Fab Labs worldwide. In these workshops, citizens have access to digital fabrication technologies such as 3D printers and laser cutters to develop and test their own ideas and prototypes, which makes it an attractive place for start-up companies. Know-How is shared not only in the physical space but also online in diverse communities. According to the Horizon report, the Maker movement, however, will also have an impact on educational settings in the following years. The European project ‘DOIT - Entrepreneurial skills for young social innovators in an open digital world’ has incorporated key elements of making to develop an early entrepreneurial education program for children between the age of six and 16. The Maker pedagogy builds on constructive learning approaches, learning by doing principles, learning in collaborative and interdisciplinary teams and learning through trial and error where mistakes are acknowledged as learning opportunities. The DOIT program consists of seven consecutive elements. It starts with a motivation phase where students get motivated by envisioning the scope of their possibilities. The second step is about Co-design: Students are asked to collect and select potential ideas for innovations. In the Co-creation phase students gather in teams and develop first prototypes of their ideas. In the iteration phase, the prototype is continuously improved and in the next step, in the reflection phase, feedback on the prototypes is exchanged between the teams. In the last two steps, scaling and reaching out, the robustness of the prototype is tested with a bigger group of users outside of the educational setting and finally students will share their projects with a wider public. The DOIT program involves 1,000 children in two pilot phases at 11 pilot sites in ten different European countries. The comprehensive evaluation design is based on a mixed method approach with a theoretical backbone on Lackeus’ model of entrepreneurship education, which distinguishes between entrepreneurial attitudes, entrepreneurial skills and entrepreneurial knowledge. A pre-post-test with quantitative measures as well as qualitative data from interviews with facilitators, students and workshop protocols will reveal the effectiveness of the program. The evaluation results will be presented at the conference.

Keywords: early entrepreneurial education, Fab Lab, maker education, Maker movement

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Authors: Brady, Imelda Katherine, Da Cunha Fanego, Iria

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Today's university students are considered digital natives and the use of Information Technologies (ITs) forms a large part of their study and learning. In the context of language studies, applications that help with revisions of grammar or vocabulary are particularly useful, especially if they are open access. There are studies that show the effectiveness of this type of application in the learning of English as a foreign language and that using IT can help learners become more autonomous in foreign language acquisition, given that these applications can enhance awareness of the learning process; this means that learners are less dependent on the teacher for corrective feedback. We also propose that the exploitation of these technologies also enhances the work of the language instructor wishing to incorporate IT into his/her practice. In this context, the aim of this paper is to present the creation of a repository of tools that provide support in the writing and correction of texts in English and the assessment of their usefulness on behalf of university students enrolled in the English Studies Degree. The project seeks to encourage the development of autonomous learning through the acquisition of skills linked to the self-correction of written work in English. To comply with the above, our methodology follows five phases. First of all, a selection of the main open-access online applications available for the correction of written texts in English is made: AutoCrit, Hemingway, Grammarly, LanguageTool, OutWrite, PaperRater, ProWritingAid, Reverso, Slick Write, Spell Check Plus and Virtual Writing Tutor. Secondly, the functionalities of each of these tools (spelling, grammar, style correction, etc.) are analyzed. Thirdly, explanatory materials (texts and video tutorials) are prepared on each tool. Fourth, these materials are uploaded into a repository of our university in the form of an institutional blog, which is made available to students and the general public. Finally, a survey was designed to collect students’ feedback. The survey aimed to analyse the usefulness of the blog and the quality of the explanatory materials as well as the degree of usefulness that students assigned to each of the tools offered. In this paper, we present the results of the analysis of data received from 33 students in the 1st semester of the 21-22 academic year. One result we highlight in our paper is that the students have rated this resource very highly, in addition to offering very valuable information on the perceived usefulness of the applications provided for them to review. Our work, carried out within the framework of a teaching innovation project funded by our university, emphasizes that teachers need to design methodological strategies that help their students improve the quality of their productions written in English and, by extension, to improve their linguistic competence.

Keywords: academic blog, open access tools, online self-correction, written production in English, university learning

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Authors: Belayneh Yohannes

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In Ethiopia, onion production is increasing from time to time mainly due to its high profitability per unit area. Onion has a significant contribution to generating cash income for farmers in the Raya Azebo district. Therefore, enhancing onion producers’ access to the market and improving market linkage is an essential issue. Hence, this study aimed to analyze structure-conduct-performance of onion market and identifying factors affecting the market supply of onion producers. Data were collected from both primary and secondary sources. Primary data were collected from 150 farm households and 20 traders. Four onion marketing channels were identified in the study area. The highest total gross margin is 27.6 in channel IV. The highest gross marketing margin of producers of the onion market is 88% in channel II. The result from the analysis of market concentration indicated that the onion market is characterized by a strong oligopolistic market structure, with the buyers’ concentration ratio of 88.7 in Maichew town and 82.7 in Mekelle town. Lack of capital, licensing problems, and seasonal supply was identified as the major entry barrier to onion marketing. Market conduct shows that the price of onion is set by traders while producers are price takers. Multiple linear regression model results indicated that family size in adult equivalent, irrigated land size, access to information, frequency of extension contact, and ownership of transport significantly determined the quantity of onion supplied to the market. It is recommended that strengthening and diversifying extension services in information, marketing, post-harvest handling, irrigation application, and water harvest technology is highly important.

Keywords: oligopoly, onion, market chain, multiple linear regression

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Authors: Mine Tanaç Zeren

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The traditional architectural style or the vernacular architecture can be considered modern and permanent in terms of reflecting the community’s lifestyle, reasonable interpretation of the material and the structure, and the building and the environment relationship’s integrity. When vernacular architecture is examined, it is seen that sustainable building design approaches are achieved at the very beginning by adapting to climate conditions. The aim of the sustainable design approach is to maintain to adapt to the characteristics of the topography of the land and to the climatic conditions, minimizing the energy use by the building material and structural elements. Traditional Turkish House, as one of the representatives of the traditional and vernacular architecture in Anatolia, has a sustainable building design approach as well, which can be read both from the space organization, the section, the volume, and the building components and building details. The only effective factor that human beings cannot change and have to adapt their constructions and settlements to is climate. The vernacular settlements of vernacular architecture in Anatolia, “Traditional Turkish Houses,” are generally formed as concentric settlements in desert conditions and climates or separate and dependently formations according to the wind and the sun in moist areas. They obtain the sustainable building design criteria. This paper aims to put forward the sustainable building design approaches of vernacular architecture in Anatolia. There are four main different climatic conditions depending on the regional differentiations in Anatolia. Taking these different climatic and topographic conditions into account, it has been seen that the vernacular housing features shape and differentiate from each other due to the changing conditions. What is differentiating is the space organization, design of the shelter of the building, material, and structural system used. In this paper, the sustainable building design approaches of Anatolian vernacular architecture will be examined within these four different vernacular settlements located in Aegean Region, Marmara Region, Black Sea Region, and Eastern Region. These differentiated features and how these features differentiate in order to maintain the sustainability criteria will be the main discussion part of the paper. The methodology of this paper will briefly define these differentiations and the sustainable design criteria. The sustainable design approaches and these differentiated items will be read through the design criteria of the shelter of the building and the material selection criteria according to climatic conditions. The methods of preventing energy loss will be examined. At the end of this research, it is going to be seen that the houses located in different parts of Anatolia, depending on climate and topographic conditions to be able to adapt to the environment and maintain sustainability, differ from each other in terms of space organization, structural system, and material use, design of the shelter of the building

Keywords: sustainability of vernacular architecture, sustainable design criteria of traditional Turkish houses, Turkish houses, vernacular architecture

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Authors: Yasemin Ilkay

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Urban spatial pattern interacts with the minds and bodies of citizens and influences their perception and attitudes, which leads to a two-folded map of the same space: physical and Psychogeographic maps. Psychogeography is a field of inquiry (rooted in literature and fiction) investigating how the environment affects the feelings and behaviors of individuals. This term was posed by Situationist International Movement in the 1950s by Guy Debord; in the course of time, the artistic framework evolved into a political issue, especially with the term Dérive, which indicates ‘deviation’ and ‘resistance’ to the existing spatial reality. The term Dérive appeared on the track of Flânéur after one hundred years; and turned out to be a political tool to transform everyday urban life. The three main concepts of psychogeography [walking, dérive, and palimpsest] construct the epistemological framework for a psychogeographic spatial analysis. Mental representations investigating this framework would provide a designer to capture the invisible layers of the gap between ‘how a space is conceived’ and ‘how the same space is perceived and experienced.’ This gap is a neglected but critical issue to discuss in the planning discipline, and psychogeography provides methodological inputs to cover the interrelation among top-down designs of urban patterning and bottom-up reproductions of ‘the soul’ of urban space at the intersection of geography and psychology. City centers and university campuses exemplify opposite poles of spatial organization and walking practice, which may result in differentiated spatial appropriation forms. There is a traditional city center in Van, located at the core of the city with a dense population and several activities, but not connected to Van Lake, which is the largest lake in the country. On the other hand, the university campus is located at the periphery, and although it has a promenade along the lake’s coast and a regional hospital, it presents a limited walking experience with ambiguous forms of spatial appropriation. The city center draws a vivid urban everyday life; however, the campus presents a relatively natural life far away from the center. This paper aims to reveal the differentiated psychogeographic maps of spatial appropriation at the city center vs. the university campus, which is located at the periphery of the city and along the coast of the largest lake in Turkey. The main question of the paper is, “how do the psychogeographic maps of spatial appropriation differentiate at the city center and university campus in Van within the walking experience with reference to the two-folded map assumption.” The experiential maps of a core group of 15 planning students will be created with the techniques of mental mapping, photographing, and narratives through attentive walks conducted together on selected routes; in addition to these attentive walks, 30 more in-depth interviews will be conducted by the core group. The narrative of psychogeographic mapping of spatial appropriation at the two spatial poles would display the conflicting soul of the city with reference to sub-behavioural regions of walking, differentiated forms of derive and layers of palimpsest.

Keywords: attentive walk, body, cognitive geography, derive, experiential maps, psychogeography, Van, Turkey

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Authors: Mario M. J. Musonda

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Access to health care is a human right, which includes having timely access to affordable and quality essential medicines at the right place and in sufficient quantity. However, inefficient public sector supply chain management contributes to constant shortages of essential medicines at health facilities. Literature review involved a desktop study of published research studies and reports on risk management, supply chain management of essential medicines and their integration to increase the efficiency of the latter. The research was conducted on a sample population of offices under Ministry of Health Headquarters, Lusaka Provincial and District Offices, selected health facilities in Lusaka, Medical Stores Limited, Zambia Medicines Regulatory Authority and Cooperating Partners. Individuals involved in study were selected judgmentally by their functions under selection and quantification, regulation, procurement, storage, distribution, quality assurance, and dispensing of essential medicines. Structured interviews and discussions were held with selected experts and self-administered questionnaires were distributed. Collected and analysed data of 35 returned and usable questionnaires from the 50 distributed. The highest prioritised risks were; inadequate and inconsistent fund disbursements, weak information management systems, weak quality management systems and insufficient resources (HR and infrastructure) among others. The results for this research can be used to increase the efficiency of the public sector supply chain of essential medicines and other pharmaceuticals. The results of the study showed that there is need to implement effective risk management systems by participating institutions and organisations to increase the efficiency of the entire supply chain in order to avoid and/or reduce shortages of essential medicines at health facilities.

Keywords: essential medicine, risk assessment, risk management, supply chain, supply chain risk management

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Authors: Lucie Jirotková, Daniel Macek, Andrea Palazzo, Veronika Malinová

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Currently, the implementation of 3D models in the construction industry is gaining popularity. Countries around the world are developing their own modelling standards and implement the use of 3D models into their individual permitting processes. Another theme that needs to be addressed are public building spaces and their subsequent maintenance, where the usage of BIM methodology is directly offered. The significant benefit of the implementation of Building Information Management is the information transfer. The 3D model contains not only the spatial representation of the item shapes but also various parameters that are assigned to the individual elements, which are easily traceable, mainly because they are all stored in one place in the BIM model. However, it is important to keep the data in the models up to date to achieve useability of the model throughout the life cycle of the building. It is now becoming standard practice to use BIM models in the construction of buildings, however, the building environment is very often neglected. Especially in large-scale development projects, the public space of buildings is often forwarded to municipalities, which obtains the ownership and are in charge of its maintenance. A 3D model of the building surroundings would include both the above-ground visible elements of the development as well as the underground parts, such as the technological facilities of water features, electricity lines for public lighting, etc. The paper shows the possibilities of a model in the field of information for the handover of premises, the following maintenance and decision making. The attributes and spatial representation of the individual elements make the model a reliable foundation for the creation of "Smart Cities". The paper analyses the current use of the BIM methodology and presents the state-of-the-art possibilities of development.

Keywords: BIM model, urban space, BIM methodology, facility management

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Authors: T. Nozu, K. Hibi, T. Nishiie

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This paper discusses the applicability of the numerical model for a damage prediction method of the accidental hydrogen explosion occurring in a hydrogen facility. The numerical model was based on an unstructured finite volume method (FVM) code “NuFD/FrontFlowRed”. For simulating unsteady turbulent combustion of leaked hydrogen gas, a combination of Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and a combustion model were used. The combustion model was based on a two scalar flamelet approach, where a G-equation model and a conserved scalar model expressed a propagation of premixed flame surface and a diffusion combustion process, respectively. For validation of this numerical model, we have simulated the previous two types of hydrogen explosion tests. One is open-space explosion test, and the source was a prismatic 5.27 m3 volume with 30% of hydrogen-air mixture. A reinforced concrete wall was set 4 m away from the front surface of the source. The source was ignited at the bottom center by a spark. The other is vented enclosure explosion test, and the chamber was 4.6 m × 4.6 m × 3.0 m with a vent opening on one side. Vent area of 5.4 m2 was used. Test was performed with ignition at the center of the wall opposite the vent. Hydrogen-air mixtures with hydrogen concentrations close to 18% vol. were used in the tests. The results from the numerical simulations are compared with the previous experimental data for the accuracy of the numerical model, and we have verified that the simulated overpressures and flame time-of-arrival data were in good agreement with the results of the previous two explosion tests.

Keywords: deflagration, large eddy simulation, turbulent combustion, vented enclosure

Procedia PDF Downloads 237