Search results for: geographical factor

Authors: Dianne Williams

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This study examined the peer/individual domain of the Risk Factor Prevention Paradigm (RFPP) to assess the risk and protective factors that impact criminal gang involvement among at-risk males residing in a juvenile home in Trinidad and Tobago. The RFPP allows for the identification of both risk and protective factors in a single, holistic framework to identify the relationship between risk factors, protective factors, and criminal gang involvement among at-risk male adolescents. Findings showed that having anti-social peers was the most significant risk factor associated with criminal gang involvement, while the most significant protective factor was having a positive social attitude. Moreover, while 65% of the boys reported never having been in a gang, 70% reported having hit, struck or used a weapon against someone, while 52% reported being involved in other violent incidents on more than two occasions. This suggests that while involvement with criminal gangs may not be common among this population, predisposing behavioral patterns are present. Results are expected to assist in the development of targeted strategies to reduce the attractiveness of gang membership.

Keywords: risk factor prevention paradigm, risk factors, protective factors, peer/individual domain, gang involvement, at-risk youth, trinidad and tobago, juvenile home

Procedia PDF Downloads 583

Authors: Magdi M. E. Zumrawi, Mohamed Awad

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Determination of Resilient Modulus (M_R) is quite important for characterizing materials in pavement design and evaluation. The main focus of this study is to develop a correlation that predict the resilient modulus of subgrade soils from simple and easy measured soil index properties. To achieve this objective, three subgrade soils representing typical Khartoum soils were selected and tested in the laboratory for measuring resilient modulus. Other basic laboratory tests were conducted on the soils to determine their physical properties. Several soil samples were prepared and compacted at different moisture contents and dry densities and then tested using resilient modulus testing machine. Based on experimental results, linear relationship of M_R with the consistency factor ‘F_c’ which is a combination of dry density, void ratio and consistency index had been developed. The results revealed that very good linear relationship found between the M_R and the consistency factor with a coefficient of linearity (R²) more than 0.9. The consistency factor could be used for the prediction of the M_R of compacted subgrade soils with precise and reliable results.

Keywords: Consistency factor, resilient modulus, subgrade soil, properties

Procedia PDF Downloads 167

Authors: Muhammad Naeem, Amina Zubari, Abdus Salam, Syed Ali Ayub Bukhari, Naveed Ahmad Khan

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Seventy three wild Labeo bata of different body sizes, ranging from 8.20-16.00 cm total length and 7.4-86.19 g body weight, were studied for the analysis of body composition parameters (Water content, ash content, fat content, protein content) in relation to body size and condition factor. Mean percentage is found as for water 77.71 %, ash 3.42 %, fat 2.20 % and protein content 16.65 % in whole wet body weight. Highly significant positive correlations were observed between condition factor and body weight (r = 0.243). Protein contents, organic content and ash (% wet body weight) increase with increasing percent water contents for Labeo bata while these constituents (% dry body weight) and fat contents (% wet and dry body weight) have no influence on percent water. It was observed that variations in the body constituents have no association to body weight or length.

Keywords: Labeo bata, body size, body composition, condition factor

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Authors: Masoud Sheidaei, Fahimeh Koohdar

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Date palms are economically important tree plants with high nutrition and medicinal values. More than 400 date palm cultivars are cultivated in many regions of Iran, but no report is available on landscape genetics and species distribution modeling of these trees from the country. Therefore, the present study provides a detailed insight into the genetic diversity and structure of date palm populations in Iran and investigates the effects of geographical and climatic variables on the structuring of genetic diversity in them. We used different computational methods in the study like, spatial principal components analysis (sPCA), redundancy analysis (RDA), latent factor mixed model (LFMM), and Maxent and Dismo models of species distribution modeling. We used a combination of different molecular markers for this study. The results showed that both global and local spatial features play an important role in the genetic structuring of date palms, and the genetic regions associated with local adaptation and climatic variables were identified. The effects of climatic change on the distribution of these taxa and the genetic regions adaptive to these changes will be discussed.

Keywords: adaptive genetic regions, genetic diversity, isolation by distance, populations divergence

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Authors: Wei Wang, Yilun Xu

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With the development of knowledge economy era, deepening the mechanism of cooperation and adhering to sharing and win-win cooperation has become new direction of urban development nowadays. In recent years, innovative collaborations between cities are becoming more and more frequent, whose influence on urban network space has aroused many scholars' attention. Taking 46 cities in China as the research object, the paper builds the connectivity of innovative network between cities and the linkages of urban external innovation using patent cooperation data among cities, and explores urban network space in China by the application of GIS, which is a beneficial exploration to the study of social network space in China in the era of information network. The result shows that the urban innovative network space and geographical entity space exist differences, and the linkages of external innovation are not entirely related to the city innovative capacity and the level of economy development. However, urban innovative network space and geographical entity space are similar in hierarchical clustering. They have both formed Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta three metropolitan areas and Beijing-Shenzhen-Shanghai-Hangzhou four core cities, which lead the development of innovative network space in China.

Keywords: innovative collaboration, urban network space, the connectivity of innovative network, the linkages of external innovation

Procedia PDF Downloads 156

Authors: S. Shahrooi, A. Talavari

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Numeral study on the crack and discontinuity using element-free methods has been widely spread in recent years. In this study, for stress intensity factor calculation of the cracked axis under torsional loading has been used from a new element-free method as MLPG method. Region range is discretized by some dispersed nodal points. From method of moving least square (MLS) utilized to create the functions using these nodal points. Then, results of meshless method and finite element method (FEM) were compared. The results is shown which the element-free method was of good accuracy.

Keywords: stress intensity factor, crack, torsional loading, meshless method

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Authors: Theodore Grosch, Felipe Koji Godinho Hoshino

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In wireless communications, 3GPP LTE is one of the solutions to meet the greater transmission data rate demand. One issue inherent to this technology is the PAPR (Peak-to-Average Power Ratio) of OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) modulation. This high PAPR affects the efficiency of power amplifiers. One approach to mitigate this effect is the Crest Factor Reduction (CFR) technique. In this work, we simulate the impact of Hard Limited Clipping Crest Factor Reduction technique on BER (Bit Error Rate) in OFDM based Systems. In general, the results showed that CFR has more effects on higher digital modulation schemes, as expected. More importantly, we show the worst-case degradation due to CFR on QPSK, 16QAM, and 64QAM signals in a linear system. For example, hard clipping of 9 dB results in a 2 dB increase in signal to noise energy at a 1% BER for 64-QAM modulation.

Keywords: bit error rate, crest factor reduction, OFDM, physical layer simulation

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Authors: Wei Zhang, Lifen Zhao

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The present study aims to translate and validate the Career Motivation Scale among Chinese university and vocational college teachers. Exploratory factor analysis supported a three-factor structure that was consistent with the original structure of career motivation: career insight, career identity, and career resilience. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that a second-order three-factor model with correlated measurement errors best fit the data. Configural, metric, and scalar invariance models were tested, demonstrating that the Chinese version of the Career Motivation Scale did not differ across groups of school type, educational level, and working years in current institutions. The concurrent validity of the Chinese Career Motivation Scale was confirmed by its significant correlations with work engagement, career adaptability, career satisfaction, job crafting, and intention to quit. The results of the study indicated that the Chinese Career Motivation Scale was a valid and reliable measure of career motivation among university and vocational college teachers in China.

Keywords: career motivation scale, Chinese University, vocational college teachers, measurement invariance, validation

Procedia PDF Downloads 111

Authors: Lisa J. Piergallini

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This project uses panel regression analyses to investigate the relationships between geography, institutions, and economic development, as guided by the theories of the 18^th century French philosopher Montesquieu. Contemporary scholars of political economy perpetually misinterpret Montesquieu’s theories on climate, and in doing so they miss what could be the key to resolving the geography vs. institutions debate. There is a conspicuous gap in this literature, in that it does not consider whether geography and institutors might have an interactive, dynamic effect on economic development. This project seeks to bridge that gap. Data are used for all available countries over the years 1980-2013. Two interaction terms between geographic and institutional variables are employed within the empirical analyses, and these offer a unique contribution to the ongoing geography vs. institutions debate within the political economy literature. This study finds that there is indeed an interactive effect between geography and institutions, and that this interaction has a statistically significant effect on economic development. Democracy (as measured by Polity score) and rule of law and property rights (as measured by the Fraser index) have positive effects on economic development (as measured by GDP per capita), yet the magnitude of these effects are stronger in contexts where a low percent of the national population lives in the geographical tropics. This has implications for promoting economic development, and it highlights the importance of understanding geographical context.

Keywords: Montesquieu, institutions, geography, economic development, political philosophy, political economy

Procedia PDF Downloads 235

Authors: Vakhtang Geladze, Nana Bolashvili, Nino Machavariani, Tamazi Karalashvili, Nino Chikhradze, Davit Kartvelishvili

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Fresh water deficit is one of the most important global problems today. In the countries with scarce water resources, they often become a reason of armed conflicts. The peaceful settlement of relations connected with management and water consumption issues within and beyond the frontiers of the country is an important guarantee of the region stability. The said problem is urgent in Georgia as well because of its water objects are located at the borders and the transit run-off that is 12% of the total one. Fresh water resources are the major natural resources of Georgia. Despite of this, water supply of population at its Eastern part is an acute issue. Southeastern part of the country has been selected to carry out the research. This region is notable for deficiency of water resources in the country. The region tends to desertification which aggravates fresh water problem even more and presumably may lead to migration of local population from the area. The purpose of study was creation geographical information system (GIS) of water resources. GIS contains almost all layers of different content (water resources, springs, channels, hydrological stations, population water supply, etc.). The results of work provide an opportunity to identify the resource potential of the mentioned region, control and manage it, carry out monitoring and plan regional economy.

Keywords: desertification, GIS, irrigation, water resources

Procedia PDF Downloads 671

Authors: Norzaliza Md. Nor, Sh-Hussain Salleh, Mahyar Hamedi, Hadrina Hussain, Wahab Abdul Rahman

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Motivational factor is mainly the students’ desire to involve in learning process. However, it also depends on the goal towards their involvement or non-involvement in academic activity. Even though, the students’ motivation might be in the same level, but the basis of their motivation may differ. In this study, it focuses on the intrinsic motivational factor which student enjoy learning or feeling of accomplishment the activity or study for its own sake. The intrinsic motivational factor of students in learning mathematics and science has found as difficult to be achieved because it depends on students’ interest. In the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) for mathematics and science, Malaysia is ranked as third lowest. The main problem in Malaysian educational system, students tend to have extrinsic motivation which they have to score in exam in order to achieve a good result and enrolled as university students. The use of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals has found to be scarce especially to identify the students’ intrinsic motivational factor in learning science and mathematics. In this research study, we are identifying the correlation between precursor emotion and its dynamic emotion to verify the intrinsic motivational factor of students in learning mathematics and science. The 2-D Affective Space Model (ASM) was used in this research in order to identify the relationship of precursor emotion and its dynamic emotion based on the four basic emotions, happy, calm, fear and sad. These four basic emotions are required to be used as reference stimuli. Then, in order to capture the brain waves, EEG device was used, while Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (MFCC) was adopted to be used for extracting the features before it will be feed to Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) to classify the valence and arousal axes for the ASM. The results show that the precursor emotion had an influence the dynamic emotions and it identifies that most students have no interest in mathematics and science according to the negative emotion (sad and fear) appear in the EEG signals. We hope that these results can help us further relate the behavior and intrinsic motivational factor of students towards learning of mathematics and science.

Keywords: EEG, MLP, MFCC, intrinsic motivational factor

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Authors: Behnam Zahednejad, Saeed Kosari

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Widespread deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) has raised security and privacy issues in this environment. Designing a secure two-factor authentication scheme between the user and server is still a challenging task. In this paper, we focus on Cancelable Biometric (CB) as an authentication factor in IoT. We show that previous CB-based scheme fail to provide real two-factor security, Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) and suffer database attacks and traceability of the user. Then we propose our improved scheme based on CB and Physically Unclonable Functions (PUF), which can provide real two-factor security, PFS, user’s unlinkability, and resistance to database attack. In addition, Key Compromise Impersonation (KCI) resilience is achieved in our scheme. We also prove the security of our proposed scheme formally using both Real-Or-Random (RoR) model and the ProVerif analysis tool. For the usability of our scheme, we conducted a performance analysis and showed that our scheme has the least communication cost compared to the previous CB-based scheme. The computational cost of our scheme is also acceptable for the IoT environment.

Keywords: IoT, two-factor security, cancelable biometric, key compromise impersonation resilience, perfect forward secrecy, database attack, real-or-random model, ProVerif

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Authors: Hoda Zolfagharnejad, Behnam Kamkar, Omid Abdi

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Crop coefficient (Kc) is an important factor contributing to estimation of evapotranspiration, and is also used to determine the irrigation schedule. This study investigated and determined the monthly Kc of winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) using five vegetation indices (VIs): Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Difference Vegetation Index (DVI), Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI), Infrared Percentage Vegetation Index (IPVI), and Ratio Vegetation Index (RVI) of four basins in Golestan province, Iran. 14 Landsat-8 images according to crop growth stage were used to estimate monthly Kc of wheat. VIs were calculated based on infrared and near infrared bands of Landsat 8 images using Geographical Information System (GIS) software. The best VIs were chosen after establishing a regression relationship among these VIs with FAO Kc and Kc that was modified for the study area by the previous research based on R² and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE). The result showed that local modified SAVI with R²= 0.767 and RMSE= 0.174 was the best index to produce monthly wheat Kc maps.

Keywords: crop coefficient, remote sensing, vegetation indices, wheat

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Authors: Kyung Min Kang, Peng Mou, Dong Xiang, Gang Shen

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For planetary gear system, Planet pin-hole position accuracy is one of most influential factor to efficiency and reliability of planetary gear system. This study considers planet pin-hole position error as a main input error for model and build multi body dynamic simulation model of planetary gear including planet pin-hole position error using MSC. ADAMS. From this model, the mesh load results between meshing gears in each pin-hole position error cases are obtained and based on these results, planet load sharing factor which reflect equilibrium state of mesh load sharing between whole meshing gear pair is calculated. Analysis result indicates that the pin-hole position error of tangential direction cause profound influence to mesh load and load sharing factor between meshing gear pair.

Keywords: planetary gear, load sharing factor, multibody dynamics, pin-hole position error

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Authors: Anusha P. Wijesundara, Dulap I. Rathnayake, Nihal D. Perera

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Bathymetric information is fundamental importance to coastal and marine planning and management, nautical navigation, and scientific studies of marine environments. Satellite-derived bathymetry data provide detailed information in areas where conventional sounding data is lacking and conventional surveys are inaccessible. The two empirical approaches of log-linear bathymetric inversion model and non-linear bathymetric inversion model are applied for deriving bathymetry from high-resolution multispectral satellite imagery. This study compares these two approaches by means of geographical error analysis for the site Kankesanturai using WorldView-2 satellite imagery. Based on the Levenberg-Marquardt method calibrated the parameters of non-linear inversion model and the multiple-linear regression model was applied to calibrate the log-linear inversion model. In order to calibrate both models, Single Beam Echo Sounding (SBES) data in this study area were used as reference points. Residuals were calculated as the difference between the derived depth values and the validation echo sounder bathymetry data and the geographical distribution of model residuals was mapped. The spatial autocorrelation was calculated by comparing the performance of the bathymetric models and the results showing the geographic errors for both models. A spatial error model was constructed from the initial bathymetry estimates and the estimates of autocorrelation. This spatial error model is used to generate more reliable estimates of bathymetry by quantifying autocorrelation of model error and incorporating this into an improved regression model. Log-linear model (R²=0.846) performs better than the non- linear model (R²=0.692). Finally, the spatial error models improved bathymetric estimates derived from linear and non-linear models up to R²=0.854 and R²=0.704 respectively. The Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) was calculated for all reference points in various depth ranges. The magnitude of the prediction error increases with depth for both the log-linear and the non-linear inversion models. Overall RMSE for log-linear and the non-linear inversion models were ±1.532 m and ±2.089 m, respectively.

Keywords: log-linear model, multi spectral, residuals, spatial error model

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Authors: A. Bardey, P. James

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With the rise of fast-fashion, over consumerism and overproduction, the fashion industry is believed to be one of the most polluting industry. It is a matter of importance today to further understand the factors involved in green consumerism to enhance sustainable fashion. One of the critical issues in also evaluating green consumerism, particularly in fashion, is the attitude-behaviour gap. Indeed, many consumers report a positive attitude towards sustainable fashion consumerism, but this attitude is not always actioned into behaviour. This study aims to further investigate the attitude-behaviour gap in sustainable fashion consumerism. S triangulation of qualitative and quantitative methods was used. Focus groups were used to gain opinions and understanding of the barriers to sustainable fashion consumption. A quantitative online questionnaire was then used to quantify the barriers identified in Study 1 and measure their influence on the attitude-behaviour gap. The results suggest that knowledge about sustainable fashion is the key factor in the attitude-behaviour gap in sustainable fashion consumerism. Accessibility was also identified as a factor, but this relationship is more complex. It is suggested that knowledge is the main factor in the attitude-behaviour gap and that once knowledge is controlled for, accessibility will become a main factor. The present study is the first one to identify the factors involved in sustainable fashion consumerism.

Keywords: fashion, consumer behaviour, sustainable consumerism, attitude-behavioural gap

Procedia PDF Downloads 159

Authors: Faycal Benyahia, Abdelmohsen Albedah, Bel Abbes Bachir Bouiadjra

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In this paper, the finite element analysis is applied to study the performance of the bonded composite reinforcement or repair for reducing stress concentration at a semi-circular lateral notch and repairing cracks emanating from this kind of notch. The effects of the adhesive properties on the variation of the stress intensity factor at the crack tip were highlighted. The obtained results show that the stress concentration factor at the notch tip is reduced about 30% and the maximal reduction of the stress intensity factor is about 80%. The adhesive properties must be optimized in order to increase the performance of the patch repair or reinforcement.

Keywords: bonded repair, notch, crack, adhesive, composite

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Authors: Qin Xia

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’National New District’ as a regional overall promotion of strategic thinking has become increasingly mature, but its spatial expansion is still chaotic and disorderly, so it is urgent to summarize the complex and unique driving mechanism contained in its spatial expansion to formulate sustainable urban expansion plan. Under the understanding of the general laws of the driving mechanism of China's space expansion, it is found that the existing research on the driving mechanism of the space expansion of national new districts is insufficient. The research area focuses on the research of the driving mechanism of the space expansion of a single new area. In terms of research methods, qualitative description is the main focus. In terms of research content, it is limited to the expansion speed, intensity, and area of the new district itself and does not involve the expansion and utilization efficiency of space and the spillover efficiency to surrounding cities. The specific connotations of social, economic, political, and geographical categories are not thoroughly explored. It is often a general explanation that a certain factor has promoted it. The logic is not rigorous and convincing, and the description is relatively static, with different time and space. There is less literature on scale interaction. Through the reflection on the key and difficult points of the drive mechanism of the space expansion of the national new area, it is clear that the existing research on the drive mechanism of the space expansion of the national new area should be continued to drive the sustainable expansion of space.

Keywords: national new district, space expansion, driving mechanism, existing research

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Authors: Ikram Slamani, Hicheme Ferdjani

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This study focuses on analyzing a Griffith crack situated at the center of an infinite strip. The problem is reformulated as a hyper-singular integral equation and solved numerically using second-order Chebyshev polynomials. The primary objective is to calculate the stress intensity factor in mode 1, denoted as K1. The obtained results reveal the influence of the strip width and crack length on the stress intensity factor, assuming stress-free edges. Additionally, a comparison is made with relevant literature to validate the findings.

Keywords: center crack, Chebyshev polynomial, hyper singular integral equation, Griffith, infinite strip, stress intensity factor

Procedia PDF Downloads 118

Authors: Jeries J. Abou-Hanna, Bradley Storm

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This paper looks to reduce the complexity of determining stress intensity factors while maintaining high levels of accuracy by the use of a linearized layering approach. Many techniques for stress intensity factor determination exist, but they can be limited by conservative results, requiring too many user parameters, or by being too computationally intensive. Multiple notch geometries with various crack lengths were investigated in this study to better understand the effectiveness of the proposed method. By linearizing the average stresses in radial layers around the crack tip, stress intensity factors were found to have error ranging from -10.03% to 8.94% when compared to analytically exact solutions. This approach proved to be a robust and efficient method of accurately determining stress intensity factors.

Keywords: fracture mechanics, finite element method, stress intensity factor, stress linearization

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Authors: Mohsen Shirani, Micaela Demichela

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During the last decades, a number of food crises such as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), Mad-Cow disease, Dioxin in chicken food, Food-and-Mouth Disease (FMD), have certainly inflicted the reliability of the food industry. Consequently, the trend in applying different scientific methods of risk assessment in food safety has obtained more attentions in the academic and practice. However, lack of practical approach considering entire food supply chain is tangible in the academic literature. In this regard, this paper aims to apply risk assessment tool (FMEA) with integration of Human Factor along the entire supply chain of food production and test the method in a case study of Diary production, and analyze its results.

Keywords: FMEA, food supply chain, risk assessment, human factor

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Authors: Masoud Sheidaei, Melica Tabasi, Fahimeh Koohdar, Mona Sheidaei

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Juglans regia L. is an economically important species of edible nuts. Iran is known as a center of origin of genetically rich walnut germplasm and expected to be found a large diversity within Iranian walnut populations. A detailed population genetic of local populations is useful for developing an optimal strategy for in situ conservation and can assist the breeders in crop improvement programs. Different phylogenetic studies have been carried out in this genus, but none has been concerned with genetic changes associated with geographical divergence and the identification of adaptive SNPs. Therefore, we carried out the present study to identify discriminating ITS nucleotides among Juglans species and also reveal association between ITS SNPs and geographical variables. We used different computations approaches like DAPC, CCA, and RDA analyses for the above-mentioned tasks. We also performed population genetics analyses for population effective size changes associated with the species expansion. The results obtained suggest that latitudinal distribution has a more profound effect on the species genetic changes. Similarly, multiple analytical approaches utilized for the identification of both discriminating DNA nucleotides/ SNPs almost produced congruent results. The SNPs with different phylogenetic importance were also identified by using a parsimony approach.

Keywords: Persian walnut, adaptive SNPs, data analyses, genetic diversity

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Authors: Bella Llego

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This study aims to investigate the motivating and de-motivating factors that affect the learning ability of students attending the English Learning Center in Thailand. The subjects of this research were 20 students from the Hana Semiconductor Co., Limited. The data were collected by using questionnaire and analyzed using the SPSS program for the percentage, mean and standard deviation. The research results show that the main motivating factor in learning English at Hana Semiconductor Co., Ltd. is that it would help the employees to communicate with foreign customers and managers. Other reasons include the need to read and write e-mails, and reports in English, as well as to increase overall general knowledge. The main de-motivating factor is that there is a lot of vocabulary to remember when learning English. Another de-motivating factor is that when homework is given, the students have no time to complete the tasks required of them at the end of the working day.

Keywords: de-motivating, English learning center, motivating, student communicate

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Authors: Peng Li, Chuanri Li, Tao Li

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Reliability allocation is quite important during early design and development stages for a system to apportion its specified reliability goal to subsystems. This paper improves the reliability fuzzy allocation method and gives concrete processes on determining the factor set, the factor weight set, judgment set, and multi-grade fuzzy comprehensive evaluation. To determine the weight of factor set, the modified trapezoidal numbers are proposed to reduce errors caused by subjective factors. To decrease the fuzziness in the fuzzy division, an approximation method based on linear programming is employed. To compute the explicit values of fuzzy numbers, centroid method of defuzzification is considered. An example is provided to illustrate the application of the proposed reliability allocation method based on fuzzy arithmetic.

Keywords: reliability allocation, fuzzy arithmetic, allocation weight, linear programming

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Authors: Austyn Snowden

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Aim: To examine the construct validity of the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire Short form. Background: Emotional intelligence involves the identification and regulation of our own emotions and the emotions of others. It is therefore a potentially useful construct in the investigation of recruitment and retention in nursing and many questionnaires have been constructed to measure it. Design: Secondary analysis of existing dataset of responses to TEIQue-SF using concurrent application of Rasch analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Method: First year undergraduate nursing and computing students completed Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire-Short Form. Responses were analysed by synthesising results of Rasch analysis and confirmatory factor analysis.

Keywords: emotional intelligence, rasch analysis, factor analysis, nurse recruiters

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Authors: Haseen Siddiqui, Sanjay M. Mahajani

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Various important reactions in chemical and metallurgical industries fall in the category of gas-solid reactions. These reactions can be categorized as catalytic and non-catalytic gas-solid reactions. In gas-solid reaction systems, heat and mass transfer limitations put an appreciable influence on the rate of the reaction. The consequences can be unavoidable for overlooking such effects while collecting the reaction rate data for the design of the reactor. Pyrolysis reaction comes in this category that involves the production of gases due to the interaction of heat and solid substance. Pyrolysis is also an important step in the gasification process and therefore, the gasification reactivity majorly influenced by the pyrolysis process that produces the char, as a feed for the gasification process. Therefore, in the present study, a non-isothermal transient 1-D model is developed for a single biomass pellet to investigate the effect of heat and mass transfer limitations on the rate of pyrolysis reaction. The obtained set of partial differential equations are firstly discretized using the concept of ‘method of lines’ to obtain a set of ordinary differential equation with respect to time. These equations are solved, then, using MATLAB ode solver ode15s. The model is capable of incorporating structural changes, porosity variation, variation in various thermal properties and various pellet shapes. The model is used to analyze the effectiveness factor for different values of Lewis number and heat of reaction (G factor). Lewis number includes the effect of thermal conductivity of the solid pellet. Higher the Lewis number, the higher will be the thermal conductivity of the solid. The effectiveness factor was found to be decreasing with decreasing Lewis number due to the fact that smaller Lewis numbers retard the rate of heat transfer inside the pellet owing to a lower rate of pyrolysis reaction. G factor includes the effect of the heat of reaction. Since the pyrolysis reaction is endothermic in nature, the G factor takes negative values. The more the negative value higher will be endothermic nature of the pyrolysis reaction. The effectiveness factor was found to be decreasing with more negative values of the G factor. This behavior can be attributed to the fact that more negative value of G factor would result in more energy consumption by the reaction owing to a larger temperature gradient inside the pellet. Further, the analytical expressions are also derived for gas and solid concentrations and effectiveness factor for two limiting cases of the general model developed. The two limiting cases of the model are categorized as the homogeneous model and unreacted shrinking core model.

Keywords: effectiveness factor, G-factor, homogeneous model, lewis number, non-catalytic, shrinking core model

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Authors: Manana Kvetenadze, Dali Nikolaishvili

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The study revealed the territorial changes of Georgia before the Soviet and Post-Soviet periods. This includes the estimation of the country's borders, its administrative-territorial arrangement change as well as the establishment of territorial losses. Georgia’s old and new borders marked on the map are of great interest. The new boundary shows the condition of 1922 year, following the Soviet period. Neither on this map nor in other works Ivane Javakhishvili talks about what he implies in the old borders, though it is evident that this is the Pre-Soviet boundary until 1921 – i.e., before the period when historical Tao, Zaqatala, Lore, Karaia represented the parts of Georgia. According to cartometric-geographical terms, the work presents detailed analysis of Georgia’s borders, along with this the comparison of research results has been carried out: 1) At the boundary line on Soviet topographic maps, the maps of 100,000; 50,000 and 25,000 scales are used; 2) According to Ivane Javakhishvili’s work ('The borders of Georgia in terms of historical and contemporary issues'). During that research, we used multi-disciplined methodology and software. We used Arc GIS for Georeferencing maps, and after that, we compare all post-Soviet Union maps, in order to determine how the borders have changed. During this work, we also use many historical data. The features of the spatial distribution of the territorial administrative units of Georgia, as well as the distribution of administrative-territorial units of the objects depicted on the map, have been established. The results obtained are presented in the forms of thematic maps and diagrams.

Keywords: border, GIS, georgia, historical cartography, old maps

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Authors: Mehravar Javid, James Sexton, Farzaneh Amani, Kainaz Patravala

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Self-expansion is a procedure through which people expand the dimensions of their self-concept by incorporating novel content into their sense and experience of identity. Greater self-expansion predicts positive consequences for individuals and romantic relationships. The self-expansion questionnaire (SEQ) originally developed by Lewandowski & Aron (2002) assumes that self-expansion is constituted of key components from the self-expansion model. This study aimed to confirm the factor structure of SEQ and adapt the questions of the scale to the Iranian culture. The sample included 190 participants who responded to 14 items and were selected by simple random sampling. Using Amos-21 and SPSS-21, descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were calculated. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for total SEQ items was 0.92. Results of CFA supported the factor structure SEQ [RMSEA=0.08, GFI=0.88 and CFI=0.92] that showed the model has a good fit and also all the items of SEQ, have a high correlation and have a direct and significant relationship. So, the SEQ demonstrated acceptable psychometric properties in Tehran University students. Looking forward, it would be interesting and exciting to see the implications of the scale as applied to romantic relationships.

Keywords: validity, reliability, confirmatory factor analysis, self-expansion questionnaire

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Authors: Sari F. Alkhatib, Chang Je Park, Gyuhong Roh, Daeseong Jo

Abstract:

The iterative scheme which is used to treat buildup factors for stratified shields of three-layers or more is being investigated here using the layer-splitting technique. The second layer in a double-layer shield was split into two equivalent layers and the scheme was implemented on the new 'three-layer' shield configuration. The results of such manipulation for water-lead and water-iron shields combinations are presented here for 1 MeV photons. It was found that splitting the second layer introduces some deviation on the overall buildup factor. This expected deviation appeared to be higher in the case of low Z layer followed by high Z. However, the iterative scheme showed a great consistency and strong coherence with the introduced changes.

Keywords: build-up factor, iterative scheme, stratified shields, radiation protection

Procedia PDF Downloads 555

Authors: M. Marsadek, A. Mohamed

Abstract:

Power system security analysis is the most time demanding process due to large number of possible contingencies that need to be analyzed.  In a power system, any contingency resulting in security violation such as line overload or low voltage may occur for a number of reasons at any time.  To efficiently rank a contingency, both probability and the extent of security violation must be considered so as not to underestimate the risk associated with the contingency. This paper proposed a contingency ranking method that take into account the probabilistic nature of power system and the severity of contingency by using a newly developed method based on risk factor.  The proposed technique is implemented on IEEE 24-bus system.

Keywords: line overload, low voltage, probability, risk factor, severity

Procedia PDF Downloads 526