Search results for: classification quality

Authors: Nizar Ghali, Bernard Fortin, Guy Lacroix

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In Quebec, colonoscopies volumes have continued to rise in recent years in the absence of effective monitoring mechanism for the appropriateness and the quality of these exams. In 2010, November, Quebec Government introduced the colorectal cancer-screening program in the objective to control for volume and cost imperfection. This program is based on clinical standards and was initiated for first group of institutions. One year later, Government adds financial incentives for participants institutions. In this analysis, we want to assess for the causal effect of the two components of this program: clinical pathways and financial incentives. Especially we assess for the reform effect on healthcare quality and population health in the context that medical remuneration is not directly dependent on this additional funding offered by the program. We have data on admissions episodes and deaths for 8 years. We use multistate model analog to difference in difference approach to estimate reform effect on the transition probability between different states for each patient. Our results show that the reform reduced length of stay without deterioration in hospital mortality or readmission rate. In the other hand, the program contributed to decrease the hospitalization rate and a less invasive treatment approach for colorectal surgeries. This is a sign of healthcare quality and population health improvement. We demonstrate in this analysis that physicians’ behavior can be affected by both clinical standards and financial incentives even if offered to facilities.

Keywords: multi-state and multi-episode transition model, healthcare quality, length of stay, transition probability, difference in difference

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Authors: Devadrita Dey Sarkar

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Regardless of the many technologic advances in the past decade, increased training and experience, and the obvious benefits of uniform standards, the false-negative rate in screening mammography remains unacceptably high .A computer aided neural network classification of regions of suspicion (ROS) on digitized mammograms is presented in this abstract which employs features extracted by a new technique based on independent component analysis. CAD is a concept established by taking into account equally the roles of physicians and computers, whereas automated computer diagnosis is a concept based on computer algorithms only. With CAD, the performance by computers does not have to be comparable to or better than that by physicians, but needs to be complementary to that by physicians. In fact, a large number of CAD systems have been employed for assisting physicians in the early detection of breast cancers on mammograms. A CAD scheme that makes use of lateral breast images has the potential to improve the overall performance in the detection of breast lumps. Because breast lumps can be detected reliably by computer on lateral breast mammographs, radiologists’ accuracy in the detection of breast lumps would be improved by the use of CAD, and thus early diagnosis of breast cancer would become possible. In the future, many CAD schemes could be assembled as packages and implemented as a part of PACS. For example, the package for breast CAD may include the computerized detection of breast nodules, as well as the computerized classification of benign and malignant nodules. In order to assist in the differential diagnosis, it would be possible to search for and retrieve images (or lesions) with these CAD systems, which would be reliable and useful method for quantifying the similarity of a pair of images for visual comparison by radiologists.

Keywords: CAD(computer-aided design), lesions, neural network, ROS(region of suspicion)

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Authors: Funmilayo L. Amao

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As a result of the high cost of housing, the increasing population is forced to live in substandard housing and unhealthy conditions giving rise to poor residential neighborhoods. The paper examines the causes and characteristics of poor residential neighborhood. The paper finds the problems that have influence poor neighborhoods to; poverty, growth of informal sector and housing shortage. The paper asserts that poor residential neighborhoods have adverse effects on the people. The secondary data was obtained from books, journals and seminar papers while primary data relating to building and environmental quality from structured questionnaire administered on sample of 500 household heads, from sampling frame of 5000 housing units. The study reveals that majority of the respondents are poor and employed in informal sector. The paper suggests urban renewal and slum upgrading programs as methods in dealing with the situation and an improvement in the socio-economic circumstances of the inhabitants.

Keywords: environmental degeneration, housing, poverty, quality of life, urban upgrading

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Authors: Ru-Yin Yang, Chi Wu, Cheng-Yu Tsai, Yin-Tzu Lin, Wen-Te Liu

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Background: Sleep breathing disorder (SDB) is a condition demonstrated by recurrent episodes of the airway obstruction leading to intermittent hypoxia and quality fragmentation during sleep time. However, the procedures for SDB severity examination remain complicated and costly. Objective: The objective of this study is to establish a simplified examination method for SDB by the respiratory impendence pattern sensor combining the signal processing and machine learning model. Methodologies: We records heart rate variability by the electrocardiogram and respiratory pattern by impendence. After the polysomnography (PSG) been done with the diagnosis of SDB by the apnea and hypopnea index (AHI), we calculate the episodes with the absence of flow and arousal index (AI) from device record. Subjects were divided into training and testing groups. Neuron network was used to establish a prediction model to classify the severity of the SDB by the AI, episodes, and body profiles. The performance was evaluated by classification in the testing group compared with PSG. Results: In this study, we enrolled 66 subjects (Male/Female: 37/29; Age:49.9±13.2) with the diagnosis of SDB in a sleep center in Taipei city, Taiwan, from 2015 to 2016. The accuracy from the confusion matrix on the test group by NN is 71.94 %. Conclusion: Based on the models, we established a prediction model for SDB by means of the wearable sensor. With more cases incoming and training, this system may be used to rapidly and automatically screen the risk of SDB in the future.

Keywords: sleep breathing disorder, apnea and hypopnea index, body parameters, neuron network

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Authors: Ghassan Al-Dulaimi

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This paper studied the biochemical parameter (BOD5) and (DO) for the Thames River (Canada-Ontario). Water samples have been collected from Thames River along different points between Chatham to Woodstock and were analysed for various water quality parameters during the low flow season (April). The study involves the application of the stream water quality model QUAL2K model to simulate and predict the dissolved oxygen (DO) and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5) profiles for Thames River in a stretch of 251 kilometers. The model output showed that DO in the entire river was within the limit of not less than 4 mg/L. For Carbonaceous Biochemical Oxygen Demand CBOD, the entire river may be divided into two main reaches; the first one is extended from Chatham City (0 km) to London (150 km) and has a CBOD concentration of 2 mg/L, and the second reach has CBOD range (2–4) mg/L in which begins from London city and extend to near Woodstock city (73km).

Keywords: biochemical oxygen demand, dissolved oxygen, Thames river, QUAL2K model

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Authors: Sana Mohammad Jafar

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Salmonella is one of the major causes of foodborne diseases throughout the world. Shrimp are an important commodity in world fishery trade. The microbiological quality of shrimp must be evaluated for assurance of shrimp. The aim of this study was to evaluate the microbiological quality and to determine the prevalence of Salmonella in shrimp sold in Khuzestan province. In this study, a total of 245 samples of shrimp sold in Khuzestan province were tested for Salmonella prevalence and total microbial population. The mean aerobic bacterial count in 50.2% of samples was 2200, in 29.8% of samples was 13,600, in 20% of samples was 36,700, and the mean aerobic bacterial count in the total samples was 20,000. (20,000 cfu/cc). Of the total samples, 33 samples were positive for Salmonella and the prevalence of Salmonella was determined 13.4%. These results indicate the possibility that shrimp contribute to foodborne infections. The improvement of shrimp quality is an important issue, and shrimp before consuming should be washed with water containing chlorine, with the aim of increasing safety. In addition, it should be avoided to eat shrimp as raw or not cooked properly.

Keywords: determination, total microbial, Salmonella, shrimp

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Authors: Alicja Zapolnik-Plachetka

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The paper examines the impact of the Members’ of the European Parliament (MEPs) language choice on the linguistic quality of their political discourse as delivered by the interpreters. The study, designed by the author, who is an EU interpreter herself, consisted of three phases. First, a number of speeches of Polish and Spanish MEPs were analyzed to determine whether the incidence of use of certain figures of speech depending on whether the speech had been delivered in English or their respective mother tongue. Then the use of figures of speech was also analyzed based on speeches by some British MEPs, in order to determine what was the incidence for the native users of English. Subsequently, the speeches were compared with their interpretations to find out whether the interpreters managed to convey accurately the means of oratory used by the MEPs. The final result shows that in case of institutional environments dependant on simultaneous interpretation the speakers’ choices can, in fact, influence the linguistic quality of the political communication.

Keywords: content accuracy, European Parliament, political discourse, simultaneous interpreting

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Authors: Shao Bo Cheng, Yong-Jin Han, Se Young Park, Seong-Bae Park

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Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) E-commerce has been growing at a very high speed in recent years. Since identical or nearly-same kinds of products compete one another by relying on keyword search in C2C E-commerce, some sellers describe their products with spam keywords that are popular but are not related to their products. Though such products get more chances to be retrieved and selected by consumers than those without spam keywords, the spam keywords mislead the consumers and waste their time. This problem has been reported in many commercial services like e-bay and taobao, but there have been little research to solve this problem. As a solution to this problem, this paper proposes a method to classify whether keywords of a product are spam or not. The proposed method assumes that a keyword for a given product is more reliable if the keyword is observed commonly in specifications of products which are the same or the same kind as the given product. This is because that a hierarchical category of a product in general determined precisely by a seller of the product and so is the specification of the product. Since higher layers of the hierarchical category represent more general kinds of products, a reliable degree is differently determined according to the layers. Hence, reliable degrees from different layers of a hierarchical category become features for keywords and they are used together with features only from specifications for classification of the keywords. Support Vector Machines are adopted as a basic classifier using the features, since it is powerful, and widely used in many classification tasks. In the experiments, the proposed method is evaluated with a golden standard dataset from Yi-han-wang, a Chinese C2C e-commerce, and is compared with a baseline method that does not consider the hierarchical category. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the baseline in F1-measure, which proves that spam keywords are effectively identified by a hierarchical category in C2C e-commerce.

Keywords: spam keyword, e-commerce, keyword features, spam filtering

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Authors: Amin Adeli, Maryam Zarei

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Background and purpose: Royal jelly (RJ) is a natural product with anti-hyperlipidemic and antioxidant properties. In ovo administration of RJ may improve lipid profile and antioxidant properties. This study was conducted to evaluate, for first time, the effects of in ovo injection of the RJ on hatchability, one-day old chick quality, total antioxidant status and blood lipoproteins. Methods: 400 incubating eggs produced by Ross 308 strain (52 weeks of age in first stage of production) were prepared and assigned into 4 groups (n=100) and 4 replications per group (n=25). These 4 groups were injected by the following pattern: 1) 0.1 ml normal saline (control), 2) 0.1 mg RJ+0.1 ml normal saline, 3) 0.2 mg RJ+0.1 ml normal saline, and 4) 0.3 mg RJ+0.1 ml normal saline. Injections were performed using a laminar flow system Lipid profile, antioxidant properties, hatchability, and one-day old chicken quality were assessed. Results: The administration of RJ at concentration of 0.1increased the percentage of hatchability compared to concentration of 0.2 and control, significant differences have not been observed among groups for quality scores (P>0.05). The results showed that in ovo injection of the RJ did not have any significant effects on lipid profile; but administration of the RJ only decreased High-density lipoprotein (HDL cholesterol, HDL-C) (P<0.05). The results showed that injection of the RJ at concentration of 0.3 increased total antioxidant capacity (TAC) compared to control group (p<0.05). Injection of the RJ progressively increased gluthation peroxidase (GPx) activity (p<0.05). The results showed that injection of the RJ decreased superoxide dismutase (SOD) compared to control group (p<0.05). Conclusion: In ovo injection of the RJ at the highest concentration increased TAC and GPx, but it did not have significant effects on lipid profile. Future studies are needed to investigate the effects of the RJ on the above-mentioned mechanisms.

Keywords: antioxidant enzymes, chicken quality, hatchability, royal jelly

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Authors: Bikash Ranjan Mishra, Lopamudra D. Satpathy

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In the wake of the phenomenal surge in international business in the last decades or more, both the developed and developing economies around the world are in massive competition to attract more and more FDI flows. While the developed countries have marched ahead in the race, the developing countries, especially those of Asian economies, have followed them at a rapid pace. While most of the previous studies have analysed the role of institutional quality in the promotion of FDI flows in developing countries, very few studies have taken an integrated approach of examining the comprehensive impact of institutional quality, globalization pattern and domestic financial development on FDI flows. In this context, the paper contributes to the literature in two important ways. Firstly, two composite indices of institutional quality and domestic financial development for the Asian countries are constructed in comparison to earlier studies that resort to a single variable for indicating the institutional quality and domestic financial development. Secondly, the impact of these variables on FDI flows through their interaction with geographical region is investigated. The study uses panel data covering the time period of 1996 to 2012 by selecting twenty Asian developing countries by emphasizing the quality of institutions from the geographical regions of eastern, south-eastern, southern and western Asia. Control of corruption, better rule of law, regulatory quality, effectiveness of the government, political stability and voice and accountability are used as indicators of institutional quality. Besides these, the study takes into account the domestic credits in the hands of public, private sectors and in stock markets as domestic financial indicators. First in the specification of model, a factor analysis is performed to reduce the vast determinants, which are highly correlated with each other, to a manageable size. Afterwards, a reduced version of the model is estimated with the extracted factors in the form of index as independent variables along with a set of control variables. It is found that the institutional quality index and index of globalization exert a significant effect on FDI inflows of the host countries; in contrast, the domestic financial index does not seem to play much worthy role. Finally, some robustness tests are performed to make sure that the results are not sensitive to temporal and spatial unobserved heterogeneity. On the basis of the above study, one general inference can be drawn from the policy prescription point of view that the government of these developing countries should strengthen their domestic institution, both financial and non-financial. In addition to these, welfare policies should also target for rapid globalization. If the financial and non-financial institutions of these developing countries become sound and grow more globalized in the economic, social and political domain, then they can appeal to more amounts of FDI inflows that will subsequently result in advancement of these economies.

Keywords: Asian developing economies, FDI, institutional quality, panel data

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Authors: Maryam Fallahpoor, Biswajeet Pradhan

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Background: Artificial intelligence (AI) serves as a valuable tool in mitigating the scarcity of human resources required for the evaluation and categorization of vast quantities of medical imaging data. When AI operates with optimal precision, it minimizes the demand for human interpretations and, thereby, reduces the burden on radiologists. Among various AI approaches, deep learning (DL) stands out as it obviates the need for feature extraction, a process that can impede classification, especially with intricate datasets. The advent of DL models has ushered in a new era in medical imaging, particularly in the context of COVID-19 detection. Traditional 2D imaging techniques exhibit limitations when applied to volumetric data, such as Computed Tomography (CT) scans. Medical images predominantly exist in one of two formats: neuroimaging informatics technology initiative (NIfTI) and digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM). Purpose: This study aims to employ DL for the classification of COVID-19-infected pulmonary patients and normal cases based on 3D CT scans while investigating the impact of image format. Material and Methods: The dataset used for model training and testing consisted of 1245 patients from IranMehr Hospital. All scans shared a matrix size of 512 × 512, although they exhibited varying slice numbers. Consequently, after loading the DICOM CT scans, image resampling and interpolation were performed to standardize the slice count. All images underwent cropping and resampling, resulting in uniform dimensions of 128 × 128 × 60. Resolution uniformity was achieved through resampling to 1 mm × 1 mm × 1 mm, and image intensities were confined to the range of (−1000, 400) Hounsfield units (HU). For classification purposes, positive pulmonary COVID-19 involvement was designated as 1, while normal images were assigned a value of 0. Subsequently, a U-net-based lung segmentation module was applied to obtain 3D segmented lung regions. The pre-processing stage included normalization, zero-centering, and shuffling. Four distinct 3D CNN models (ResNet152, ResNet50, DensNet169, and DensNet201) were employed in this study. Results: The findings revealed that the segmentation technique yielded superior results for DICOM images, which could be attributed to the potential loss of information during the conversion of original DICOM images to NIFTI format. Notably, ResNet152 and ResNet50 exhibited the highest accuracy at 90.0%, and the same models achieved the best F1 score at 87%. ResNet152 also secured the highest Area under the Curve (AUC) at 0.932. Regarding sensitivity and specificity, DensNet201 achieved the highest values at 93% and 96%, respectively. Conclusion: This study underscores the capacity of deep learning to classify COVID-19 pulmonary involvement using real 3D hospital data. The results underscore the significance of employing DICOM format 3D CT images alongside appropriate pre-processing techniques when training DL models for COVID-19 detection. This approach enhances the accuracy and reliability of diagnostic systems for COVID-19 detection.

Keywords: deep learning, COVID-19 detection, NIFTI format, DICOM format

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Authors: Begzod Nishanov, Farhod Karimov

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Globalization and the internet have completely changed the way in which businesses operate as well as has equipped customers with endless potential. Today, consumers’ product choice is not only affected by branding, price and quality of the product, but also by the country-of-origin information. Precisely, ‘Made In’ label is considered as one of the driving factors which directly impact on consumers’ preferences. Generally, it is obvious that products manufactured in less developed countries are considered to be of lower quality and riskier compared to the products made in developed countries. In this regard, it is worth to note that this phenomenon is mainly applicable to western developed countries. However, there is a lack of empirical research on underlying the influence of country-of-origin phenomenon in emerging economies such as Uzbekistan. Today, Uzbek market is being dominated by growing number of foreign made products. Uzbek manufacturers are facing intense competition not only from local producers but also from the availability of foreign goods suppliers. Consequently, consumers are given wider choice of products than ever before. In this regard, it is important to define the importance of country-of-origin information in order to understand Uzbek consumers’ preference. The methodology of the research is formulated based on the methodology of previous papers. A total 527 online questionnaires were completed. Data analysis was conducted using factor analysis and analysis of variance test (ANOVA). Findings of the research support the view that Uzbek consumers attach great importance to the country-of-origin information of products. Precisely, it can be stated that Uzbek people perceive product quality by its ‘Made in...’ label, especially when buying high involvement goods such as car or refrigerator. Another findings of the paper show that products manufactured in developed countries including Germany, Japan and USA are found to be of high quality, while products manufactured in less developed countries are considered to be of lower quality. Marketers can use this information for segmentation purposes. For example, products manufactured in less developed countries can be targeted for low-to-middle income families while goods manufactured in developed countries can be targeted for higher income families. In conclusion, it can be stated that perceived product quality of products that are made in Uzbekistan has slightly increased since 18 years. It implies that nowadays products under ‘Made in Uzbekistan’ label is continually becoming available to many consumers in foreign markets, especially among Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries. Therefore, conducting further research to explore the phenomenon of country-of-origin information and perceived product quality in emerging markets is of paramount importance.

Keywords: country-of-origin, consumer behavior, product evaluation, perceived quality

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Authors: Desmond Okorie, Emmanuel Prince

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

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

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Authors: H. S. Aljabeili, E. A. Abd El-Hady, M. M. Abd El-Razik, M. Abd Elgadir

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The aim of the study is determining the quality characteristics of produced curing and dried camel meat contained some medicinal plants of thyme, rosemary, clove and ginger as natural preservatives. Camel meat samples were sliced and divided into five batches, one batch recorded as control sample was treated by the curing mixture (2.5%) contained the following ingredients: black pepper 1 gm, cumin 0.4 gm, spices mixture 0.5 gm, dried onion 3 gm, dried garlic 0.5 gm and salt 2 gm. To evaluate the effect of different natural preservatives sources of thyme, rosemary, clove and ginger, 3.0% of the aforementioned natural preservatives was mixed with the aforementioned curing mixture and used for curing the four batches of sliced camel meat. After curing process, cured sliced camel meat (control and treated with the natural preservatives) were conducting to drying process at 35 ± 3 °C for 36 h in a drying cabinet. The quality characteristics of prepared dried camel meat were evaluated such as chemical composition, microbiological characteristics and sensory characteristics. Based on the microbiological and sensory characteristics, it could be suggested that the selected medicinal plants specially thyme and rosemary could be used as natural preservatives for preparing semi dry camel meat without negative effects.

Keywords: curing, dried camel meat, medicinal plants, natural preservatives, quality characteristics

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Authors: Sadiah Baharom, Che Nidzam Che Ahmad, Saipol Barin Ramli, Asmayati Yahaya, Sopia Md Yassin

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The early childhood care and education (ECCE) in Malaysia aspire to develop children who are intellectually, emotionally, physically and spiritually balanced. This aspiration can only materialise if the early childhood program developed comprehensive and is of high quality comparable to international standards. As such, there is a pressing need to assess the quality of the program in an all-encompassing manner. The overall research project aims at developing a comprehensive and integrated model of high-quality Malaysian ECCE. One of the major objectives of this project is to assess and evaluate the scope and quality of the existing ECCE programs in Malaysia. To this end, a specific aspect of this objective is to develop and validate an instrument to assess and evaluate the ECCE curriculum of the country. Thus this paper describes the development and validation of an instrument to explore the quality of early childhood care and education curriculum currently implemented in the country’s ECCE centres. The generation of the constructs and items were based on a set of criteria mapped against existing ECCE practice, document analyses, expert interviews and panel discussions. The items went through expert validation and were field tested on 597 ECCE teachers. The data obtained went through an exploratory factor analysis to validate the constructs of the instrument followed by reliability studies on internal consistency based on the Cronbach Alpha values. The final set of items for the ECCE curriculum instrument, earmarked for the main study, consists of four constructs namely philosophy and core values, curriculum content, curriculum review and unique features. Each construct consists of between 21 to 3 items with a total of 36 items in all. The reliability coefficients for each construct range from 0.65 to 0.961. These values are within the acceptable limits for a reliable instrument to be used in the main study.

Keywords: early childhood and care education, instrument development, reliability studies, validity studies

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Authors: Ravneet Kaur

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The concept of Agile Requirements Engineering and Management is not new. However, the struggle to figure out how traditional Requirements Management Process fits within an Agile framework remains complex. This paper talks about a process that can merge the organization’s traditional Requirements Management Process nicely into the Agile Software Development Process. This process provides Traceability of the Product Backlog to the external documents on one hand and User Stories on the other hand. It also gives sufficient evidence that the system will deliver the right functionality with good quality in the form of various statistics and reports. In the nutshell, by overlaying a process on top of Agile, without disturbing the Agility, we are able to get synergic benefits in terms of productivity, profitability, its reporting, and end to end visibility to all Stakeholders. The framework can be used for just-in-time requirements definition or to build a repository of requirements for future use. The goal is to make sure that the business (specifically, the product owner) can clearly articulate what needs to be built and define what is of high quality. To accomplish this, the requirements cycle follows a Scrum-like process that mirrors the development cycle but stays two to three steps ahead. The goal is to create a process by which requirements can be thoroughly vetted, organized, and communicated in a manner that is iterative, timely, and quality-focused. Agile is quickly becoming the most popular way of developing software because it fosters continuous improvement, time-boxed development cycles, and more quickly delivering value to the end users. That value will be driven to a large extent by the quality and clarity of requirements that feed the software development process. An agile, lean, and timely approach to requirements as the starting point will help to ensure that the process is optimized.

Keywords: requirements management, Agile

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Authors: Chigbo Emmanuel Ikechukwu

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Constructed wetlands are seen as a potential means of ameliorating the poor quality water that derives from coal and gold mining operations. However, the processes whereby a wetland environment is able to improve water quality are not well understood and techniques for optimising their performance poorly developed. A parameter that may be manipulated in order to improve the treatment capacity of a wetland is the substrate in which the aquatic plants are rooted. This substrate can provide an environment wherein sulphate reducing bacteria, which contribute to the removal of contaminants from the water, are able to flourish. The bacteria require an energy source which is largely provided by carbon in the substrate. This paper discusses the form in which carbon is most suitable for the bacteria and describes the results of a series of experiments in which different materials were used as substrate. Synthetic acid mine drainage was passed through an anaerobic bioreactor that contained either compost or cow manure. The effluent water quality was monitored with respect to time and the effect of the substrate composition discussed.

Keywords: constructed wetland, bacteria, carbon, acid mine drainage, sulphate

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Authors: Juan Pedro Aznar Alarcon, Josep Maria Sayeras Maspera

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Airbnb and other similar platforms are offering a near substitute to the traditional accommodation service supplied by the hotel sector. In this context, hotels can try to compete by offering higher quality and additional services, which imply the need for new investments or try to compete by reducing prices. The theoretical model presented in this paper analyzes the best response using a sequential game theory model. The main conclusion is that due to the financial constraints that small and medium hotels have these hotels have reduced prices whereas hotels that belong to international groups or have an easy access to financial resources have increased their investment to increase the quality of the service provided. To check the validity of the theoretical model financial data from Barcelona, London and Paris hotels have been used analyzing profitability, quality of the service provided, the investment propensity and the evolution of the gross profit. The model and the empirical data provide the base for some industrial policy in the hospitality industry. To address the extra cost that small hotels in Europe have to face compared by bigger firms would help to improve the level of quality provided and to some extent have positive externalities in terms of job creation and an increasing added value for the industry.

Keywords: Airbnb, profitability, hospitality industry, game theory

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Authors: Abhishek N. Srivastava, Rahul Singh, Sumedha Chakma

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The rapid urbanization in the developing countries is generating an enormous amount of waste leading to the creation of unregulated landfill sites at various places at its disposal. The liquid waste, known as leachate, produced from these landfills sites is severely affecting the surrounding water quality. The water quality in the proximity areas of the landfill is found affected by various physico-chemical parameters of leachate such as pH, alkalinity, total hardness, conductivity, chloride, total dissolved solids (TDS), total suspended solids (TSS), sulphate, nitrate, phosphate, fluoride, sodium and potassium, biological parameters such as biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), Faecal coliform, and heavy metals such as cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), iron (Fe), mercury (Hg), arsenic (As), cobalt (Co), manganese (Mn), zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni). However, all these parameters are distributive in leachate that produced according to the nature of waste being dumped at various landfill sites, therefore, it becomes very difficult to predict the main responsible parameter of leachate for water quality contamination. The present study is endeavour the comparative analysis of the physical, chemical and biological parameters of various landfills in India viz. Okhla landfill, Ghazipur landfill, Bhalswa ladfill in NCR Delhi, Deonar landfill in Mumbai, Dhapa landfill in Kolkata and Kodungayaiyur landfill, Perungudi landfill in Chennai. The statistical analysis of the parameters was carried out using the Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and LandSim 2.5 model to simulate the long term effect of various parameters on different time scale. Further, the uncertainties characterization of various input parameters has also been analysed using fuzzy alpha cut (FAC) technique to check the sensitivity of various water quality parameters at the proximity of numerous landfill sites. Finally, the study would help to suggest the best method for the prevention of pollution migration from the landfill sites on priority basis.

Keywords: landfill leachate, water quality, LandSim, fuzzy alpha cut

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Authors: Amani Abdallah, Isam Shahrour

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The quality of drinking water is a major concern of public health. The control of this quality is generally performed in the laboratory, which requires a long time. This type of control is not adapted for accidental pollution from sudden events, which can have serious consequences on population health. Therefore, it is of major interest to develop real-time innovative solutions for the detection of accidental contamination in drinking water systems This paper presents researches conducted within the SunRise Demonstrator for ‘Smart and Sustainable Cities’ with a particular focus on the supervision of the water quality. This work aims at (i) implementing a smart water system in a large water network (Campus of the University Lille1) including innovative equipment for real-time detection of abnormal events, such as those related to the contamination of drinking water and (ii) develop a numerical modeling of the contamination diffusion in the water distribution system. The first step included verification of the water quality sensors and their effectiveness on a network prototype of 50m length. This part included the evaluation of the efficiency of these sensors in the detection both bacterial and chemical contamination events in drinking water distribution systems. An on-line optical sensor integral with a laboratory-scale distribution system (LDS) was shown to respond rapidly to changes in refractive index induced by injected loads of chemical (cadmium, mercury) and biological contaminations (Escherichia coli). All injected substances were detected by the sensor; the magnitude of the response depends on the type of contaminant introduced and it is proportional to the injected substance concentration.

Keywords: distribution system, drinking water, refraction index, sensor, real-time

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Authors: M. Sanjarani, A. Danehkar, A. Mashincheyan, A. H. Javid, S. M. R. Fatemi

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The oil spill in marine water has direct impact on coastal resources and community. Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI) map is the first step to assess the potential impact of an oil spill and minimize the damage of coastal resources. In order to create Environmental Sensitivity Maps for the Chabahar bay (Iran), information has been collected in three different layers (Shoreline Classification, Biological and Human- uses resources) by means of field observations and measurements of beach morphology, personal interviews with professionals of different areas and the collection of bibliographic information. In this paper an attempt made to prepare an ESI map for sensitivity to oil spills of Chabahar bay coast. The Chabahar bay is subjected to high threaten to oil spill because of port, dense mangrove forest,only coral spot in Oman Sea and many industrial activities. Mapping the coastal resources, shoreline and coastal structures was carried out using Satellite images and GIS technology. The coastal features classified into three major categories as: Shoreline Classification, Biological and Human uses resources. The important resources classified into mangrove, Exposed tidal flats, sandy beach, etc. The sensitivity of shore was ranked as low to high (1 = low sensitivity,10 = high sensitivity) based on geomorphology of Chabahar bay coast using NOAA standards (sensitivity to oil, ease of clean up, etc). Eight ESI types were found in the area namely; ESI 1A, 1C, 3A, 6B, 7, 8B,9A and 10D. Therefore, in the study area, 50% were defined as High sensitivity, less than 1% as Medium, and 49% as low sensitivity areas. The ESI maps are useful to the oil spill responders, coastal managers and contingency planners. The overall ESI mapping product can provide a valuable management tool not only for oil spill response but for better integrated coastal zone management.

Keywords: ESI, oil spill, GIS, Chabahar Bay, Iran

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Authors: Danijela Vuković, Radovan Čobanović, Milorad Plačkić

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The expansion of population imposes increase in usage of animal meat, on whose quality directly affects the quality of the feed that the animals are fed with. The selection of raw materials, hygiene during the technological process, various hydrothermal treatments, methods of mixing etc. have an influence on the quality of feed. Monitoring of the feed is very important to obtain information about the quality of feed and the possible prevention of animal diseases which can lead to different human diseases outbreaks. In this study parameters of feed safety were monitored. According to the mentioned, the goal of this study was to evaluate microbiological safety of feed (feedstuffs and complete mixtures). Total number of analyzed samples was 4399. Analyzed feed samples were collected in various retail shops and feed factories during the period of 44 months (from January 2013 untill September 2017). Samples were analyzed on Salmonella spp. and Clostridium perfringens in quantity of 50g according to Serbian regulation. All microorganisms were tested according to ISO methodology: Salmonella spp. ISO 6579:2002 and Clostridium perfringens ISO 7937:2004. Out of 4399 analyzed feed samples 97,5% were satisfactory and 2,5% unsatisfactory concerning Salmonella spp. As far as Clostridium perfringens is concerned 100% of analyzed samples were satisfactory. The obtained results suggest that technological processing of feed in Serbia is at high level when it comes to safety and hygiene of the products, but there are still possibilities for progress and improvement which only can be reached trough the permanent monitoring of feed.

Keywords: microbiology, safety, hygiene, feed

Procedia PDF Downloads 280

Authors: P. K. Telengech, K. Monjero, J. Maling’a, A. Nyende, S. Gichuki

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There is need to identify an efficient protocol for use in extraction of high quality DNA for purposes of molecular work. Cassava roots are known for their high starch content, polyphenols and other secondary metabolites which interfere with the quality of the DNA. These factors have negative interference on the various methodologies for DNA extraction. There is need to develop a simple, fast and inexpensive protocol that yields high quality DNA. In this improved Dellaporta method, the storage roots are lyophilized to reduce the water content; the extraction buffer is modified to eliminate the high polyphenols, starch and wax. This simple protocol was compared to other protocols intended for plants with similar secondary metabolites. The method gave high yield (300-950ng) and pure DNA for use in PCR analysis. This improved Dellaporta protocol allows isolation of pure DNA from starchy cassava storage roots.

Keywords: cassava storage roots, dellaporta, DNA extraction, lyophilisation, polyphenols secondary metabolites

Procedia PDF Downloads 337

Authors: Awais Ahmad, Mudssar Ali

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Berseem is the major fodder crop grown in Pakistan and is highly preferred by cattle farmers due to its multicut nature and nutritious value. The quality seed production in berseem is largely dependent upon the activities of insect pollinators, particularly bees. In order to determine the effectiveness of native bee species in quality seed production of berseem, an experiment was conducted in the research field of MNS-University of Agriculture, Multan, Pakistan. The pollinator community of berseem was composed of four bees, three syrphid fly, and two butterfly species. Pesudapis sp. was the most abundant insect visitor, followed by Apis mellifera and A. dorsata. The visitation rate of A. mellifera was found highest, followed by Pesudapis sp. and A. dorsata. Moreover, single-visit efficacy in terms of seed per head and 1000 seed weight proved A. mellifera and Pesudapis sp as the most effective pollinators. Conserving these bee species may lead to sustainable berseem seed production in Pakistan.

Keywords: honey bees, syrphid fly, visitation rate, single visit

Procedia PDF Downloads 112

Authors: Jui-Chen Huang

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The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of telecare on preventing and delaying the quality of disability care in elderly people with portable comfort Bluetooth brainwave devices with remote healthcare functions. Through the teaching videos and remotely teaching the elderly, which had ever learned the care courses of the prevent and delay disability, these elderly did muscle strength training. Then this paper explores the effect of training with the data by SPSS 18.0 statistical software. The data is collected with pre-test, post-test and analyze data from the measure of the Bluetooth brain wave equipment including the pressure index, relaxation index, attention and fatigue index of the elderly. In this study, 30 elderly people who had taken preventive and delayed disability care courses were studied to explore the effect of their care quality improvement. The results showed that the pressure index, relaxation index, attention, and fatigue index of the elderly had statistically significant differences in two months. It can be seen that elderly people who have been treated to prevent and delay disability care courses can significantly improve their care quality if they continue to receive intensive training to prevent and delay disability through remote mode. This telecare is applied to the elderly program that has been used to prevent and delay disability care courses. It is worth continuing to promote, and it is recommended that follow-up studies be conducted in a longer-term manner to explore long-term benefits. It can solve the current insufficiency of long-term care resources, but the demand is urgent.

Keywords: telecare, bluetooth brainwave equipment, prevention and delay of disability, the elderly, care quality

Procedia PDF Downloads 131

Authors: Metrek Almetrek, Naser Alqahtani, Eisa Ghazwani, Mona Asiri, Mohammed Alqahtani, Magboolah Balobaid

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Background: Advocacy of potential for community coalitions to positively address social determinants of health and quality of life, little is known about the views of stakeholders involved in such efforts. This study sought to assess the provinces leaders’ perspectives about social determinants related to the Health Neighborhood Initiative (HNI), a new county effort to support community coalitions. Method and Subjects: We used a descriptive, qualitative study using personal interviews in 2022. We conducted it in the community coalition's “main cities committees” set across service planning areas that serve vulnerable groups located in the seven registered healthy cities to WHO (Abha, Tareeb, Muhayel, Balqarn, Alharajah, Alamwah, and Bisha). We conducted key informant interviews with 76 governmental, profit, non-profit, and community leaders to understand their perspectives about the HNI. As part of a larger project, this study focused on leaders’ views about social determinants of health related to the HNI. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. An inductive approach to coding was used, with text segments grouped by social determinant categories. Results: Provinces leaders described multiple social determinants of health and quality of life that were relevant to the HNI community coalitions: housing and safety, community violence, economic stability, city services coordination and employment and education. Leaders discussed how social determinants were interconnected with each other and the need for efforts to address multiple social determinants simultaneously to effectively improve health and quality of life. Conclusions: Community coalitions have an opportunity to address multiple social determinants of health and quality of life to meet the social needs of vulnerable groups. Future research should examine how community coalitions, like those in the HNI, can actively engage with community members to identify needs and then deliver evidence-based care.

Keywords: social determinants, health and quality of life, vulnerable groups, qualitative research

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Authors: Ahd Aljarf, Saad Amin

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Images are important source of information used as evidence during any investigation process. Their clarity and accuracy is essential and of the utmost importance for any investigation. Images are vulnerable to losing blocks and having noise added to them either after alteration or when the image was taken initially, therefore, having a high performance image processing system and it is implementation is very important in a forensic point of view. This paper focuses on improving the quality of the forensic images. For different reasons packets that store data can be affected, harmed or even lost because of noise. For example, sending the image through a wireless channel can cause loss of bits. These types of errors might give difficulties generally for the visual display quality of the forensic images. Two of the images problems: noise and losing blocks are covered. However, information which gets transmitted through any way of communication may suffer alteration from its original state or even lose important data due to the channel noise. Therefore, a developed system is introduced to improve the quality and clarity of the forensic images.

Keywords: image filtering, image reconstruction, image processing, forensic images

Procedia PDF Downloads 348

Authors: Emel Sonmezer, Hayri Baran Yosmaoglu

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The negative impact of chronic pain syndromes on sexual function has been reported in several studies; however, the influences of treatment strategies on sexual dysfunction have not been evaluated widely. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of pelvic floor exercise on sexual dysfunction in female patients with chronic low back pain. Forty-two patient with chronic low back pain were enrolled this study. Subjects were divided into two groups. Group 1 received conventional physiotherapy consist of heat therapy, ergonomic education, William flexion exercise during 6 weeks. Group 2 received pelvic floor exercises in addition to conventional physiotherapy. Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) was used for the assessment of sexual function. Pain intensity was assessed with Visual Analogue Scale. Quality of life was assessed with World Health Organization Quality of Life Scale. All measurements were taken before and after treatment. In conventional physiotherapy group; there were significant improvement in pain intensity (p= 0,003), physical health (p=0,011), psychological health (p=0,042) subscales of quality of life scale, arousal (p=0,042), lubrication (p=0,028) and pain (p= 0,034) subscales of FSFI. In additional pelvic floor exercise group; there were significant improvement in pain intensity (p= 0,005), physical health (p=0,012) psychological health (p=0,039) subscales of quality of life scale, arousal (p=0,024), lubrication (p=0,011), orgasm (p=0,035) and pain (p= 0,015) subscales and total score (p=0,016) of FSFI. Total FSFI score (p=0,025) and orgasm (p=0,017) subscale of FSFI were significantly higher for the additional pelvic floor exercise group than the conventional physiotherapy group.The outcome of this study suggested that conventional physiotherapy may contribute to improve pain, quality of life and some parameters of the sexual function in patients with low back pain. Although additional pelvic floor exercise did not reveal more treatment effect in terms of quality of life and pain intensity, it caused significant improvement in sexual function. It is recommended that pelvic floor exercise should be added to treatment programs in order to manage sexual dysfunction more effectively in patients with chronic low back pain.

Keywords: physiotherapy, chronic pain, sexual dysfunction, pelvic floor

Procedia PDF Downloads 249

Authors: Moulana Mohammed

Abstract:

Topic models are widely used in building clusters of documents for more than a decade, yet problems occurring in choosing optimal number of topics. The main problem is the lack of a stable metric of the quality of topics obtained during the construction of topic models. The authors analyzed from previous works, most of the models used in determining the number of topics are non-parametric and quality of topics determined by using perplexity and coherence measures and concluded that they are not applicable in solving this problem. In this paper, we used the parametric method, which is an extension of the traditional topic model with visual access tendency for visualization of the number of topics (clusters) to complement clustering and to choose optimal number of topics based on results of cluster validity indices. Developed hybrid topic models are demonstrated with different Twitter datasets on various topics in obtaining the optimal number of topics and in measuring the quality of clusters. The experimental results showed that the Visual Non-negative Matrix Factorization (VNMF) topic model performs well in determining the optimal number of topics with interactive visualization and in performance measure of the quality of clusters with validity indices.

Keywords: interactive visualization, visual mon-negative matrix factorization model, optimal number of topics, cluster validity indices, Twitter data clustering

Procedia PDF Downloads 117

Authors: Praveen Chandramenon, Andrew Gascoyne, Fideline Tchuenbou-Magaia

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Aquaponics offers a simple conclusive solution to the food and environmental crisis of the world. This approach combines the idea of Aquaculture (growing fish) to Hydroponics (growing vegetables and plants in a soilless method). Smart Aquaponics explores the use of smart technology including artificial intelligence and IoT, to assist farmers with better decision making and online monitoring and control of the system. Identification of different growth stages of Swiss Chard plants and predicting its harvest time is found to be important in Aquaponic yield management. This paper brings out the comparative analysis of a standard Aquaponics with a Vermiponics (Aquaponics with worms), which was grown in the controlled environment, by implementing IoT and deep learning-based growth stage segregation and harvest time prediction of Swiss Chards before and after applying an optimal freshwater replenishment. Data collection, Growth stage classification and Harvest Time prediction has been performed with and without water replenishment. The paper discusses the experimental design, IoT and sensor communication with architecture, data collection process, image segmentation, various regression and classification models and error estimation used in the project. The paper concludes with the results comparison, including best models that performs growth stage segregation and harvest time prediction of the Aquaponic and Vermiponic testbed with and without freshwater replenishment.

Keywords: aquaponics, deep learning, internet of things, vermiponics

Procedia PDF Downloads 52