Search results for: the finale results

Authors: Mila Radovanovic, Jovana Jestrovic, Ivana Mihic

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Deciding whether to have a child is a complex psychological process, and the child's birth is an everlasting change in the life of the family. Researchers from all over the world have been recognized the importance of the motivation for parenthood in latter family life, but there is no very clear picture of factors which make the difference in this motivation. One of these factors can be the method of conception and results of the earlier studies are different- some showed the differences, but the others did not. The aim of this study was to determine the type and intensity of motivation for parenting among women in Serbia and to examine whether there are differences in motivation depend on the method of conception. The total sample consisted of 94 women- 57 pregnant women who conceive naturally and the same number of women in the process of in vitro fertilization, who still haven’t known the final result of the process- are they pregnant or no. The Child Study Inventory, which estimates four types of motivation for parenthood- altruistic, instrumental, narcissistic and fatalistic-was used for this purpose. Multivariate analysis of variance was used to answer the main question of the study. The results indicate that there is no statistically significant difference between the two groups of women, while the most common is the altruistic motivation that emphasizes the psychological value of the child, and sees the motivation for parenting as a desire to give love to the child. The results are encouraging because altruistic motivation is intrinsic one and the protective factor for latter family relations and care about child and sensitivity of parents. Altruistic motivation is showed like a good predictor in developing stable emotional relationship between mother and her baby but also is correlated with the higher satisfaction with marriage.

Keywords: development of parental role, in vitro fertilization, motivation for parenthood, pregnancy

Procedia PDF Downloads 213

Authors: A. W. Zularisam, Lakhveer Singh, Mimi Sakinah Abdul Munaim

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In this study, the optimization of hydrogen production using polyethylene glycol (PEG) immobilized sludge was investigated in batch tests. Palm oil mill effluent (POME) is used as a substrate that can act as a carbon source. Experiment focus on the effect of some important affecting factors on fermentative hydrogen production. Results showed that immobilized sludge demonstrated the maximum hydrogen production rate of 340 mL/L-POME/h under follow optimal condition: amount of biomass 10 mg VSS/ g bead, PEG concentration 10%, and cell age 24 h or 40 h. More importantly, immobilized sludge not only enhanced hydrogen production but can also tolerate the harsh environment and produce hydrogen at the wide ranges of pH. The present results indicate the potential of PEG-immobilized sludge for large-scale operations as well; these factors play an important role in stable and continuous hydrogen production.

Keywords: bioydrogen, immobilization, polyethylene glycol, palm oil mill effluent, dark fermentation

Procedia PDF Downloads 339

Authors: R. Behrooz, D. Jahanfar, D. Reza

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Organic farming is a fundamental principle in sustainable agriculture. Preventing excessive contamination of water and soil with pesticides and chemical fertilizers is important in order to produce healthy food. For this purpose, two potato cultivars (Sante and Marfona) and seven levels of fertilizer (non-fertilizer, chemical fertilizer, granulated chicken manure, common manure, compost, vermicompost and tea compost) were evaluated by factorial experiment based on randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. According to the results, the effect of different manure was significant on number of tubers per plant, tuber weight per plant and tuber yield. The highest value of these traits was obtained by using of chicken manure which was significantly superior to other treatments. However, there was no significant difference between the two varieties. According to the results, the use of chicken manure has produced the highest potato yield even in comparison with the use of chemical fertilizer.

Keywords: organic farming, organic manure, potato, tuber yield

Procedia PDF Downloads 151

Authors: Mona Rezaei, Habib Honari, Mehrzad Hamidi, Fatemeh Kiani

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Make strong brands has become a priority for many organizations in marketing. Brand is an important indicator of marketing status. Brand Strength is in kept customer, profit, brand development and gain competitive advantage and In fact it is a concept that was created from a consumer perspective. It is assumed that the creation of a strong brand is creating numerous marketing benefits. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric characteristics of the questionnaire the most strong sports brands in the consumer society. Questionnaire was conducted to a sample of 340 customers of sports brands. Psychometric parameters were determined by using appropriate statistical methods. The results of the factor analysis and Varimax rotation revealed five factors of strong brands. The results confirms that questionnaire structure have acceptable associated to the data and confirmed all indicators of the model. Reliability (859/0) was satisfactory. According to calculated psychometric indices, this questionnaire could be appropriate to assess the most strong sports brands.

Keywords: reliability, strong brand, sport brands, psychometric

Procedia PDF Downloads 352

Authors: Abhinandan Singh Gill, Gurbir Kaur Jawanda

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Since the introduction of self-consolidating concrete (SCC) in Japan during the late 1980’s, acceptance and usage of this concrete in the construction industry has been steadily gaining momentum. In the United States, the usage of SCC has been spearheaded by the precast concrete industry. Good SCC must possess the following key fresh properties: filling ability, passing ability, and resistance to segregation. Self-compacting concrete is one of 'the most revolutionary developments' in concrete research; this concrete is able to flow and to fill the most restocked places of the form work without vibration. There are several methods for testing its properties. In the fresh state: the most frequently used are slump flow test, L box and V-funnel. This work presents properties of self-compacting concrete, mixed with fly ash. The test results for acceptance characteristics of self-compacting concrete such as slump flow; V-funnel and L-Box are presented. Further, the compressive strength at the ages of 7, 28 days was also determined and results are included here.

Keywords: compressive strength, fly ash, self-compacting concrete, slump flow test, super plasticizer

Procedia PDF Downloads 408

Authors: Raquel Ramos López, Anissa El-Khattabi, Ana Lucila Sandoval Orozco, Luis Javier García Villalba

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An increasing number of mobile devices with integrated cameras has meant that most digital video comes from these devices. These digital videos can be made anytime, anywhere and for different purposes. They can also be shared on the Internet in a short period of time and may sometimes contain recordings of illegal acts. The need to reliably trace the origin becomes evident when these videos are used for forensic purposes. This work proposes an algorithm to identify the brand and model of mobile device which generated the video. Its procedure is as follows: after obtaining the relevant video information, a classification algorithm based on sensor noise and Wavelet Transform performs the aforementioned identification process. We also present experimental results that support the validity of the techniques used and show promising results.

Keywords: digital video, forensics analysis, key frame, mobile device, PRNU, sensor noise, source identification

Procedia PDF Downloads 424

Authors: Leonore Robieux, Franck Zenasni, Marc Pocard, Clarisse Eveno

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Empirical data in health psychology studies show the necessity to consider the doctor-patient communication and its positive impact on outcomes such as patients’ satisfaction, treatment adherence, physical and psychological wellbeing. In this line, the present research aims to define the role and determinants of an effective doctor–patient communication during the treatment of patients with serious illness (peritoneal carcinomatosis). We carried out a prospective longitudinal study including patients treated for peritoneal carcinomatosis of various origins. From November 2016, to date, data were collected using validated questionnaires at two times of evaluation: one month before the surgery (T0) and one month after (T1). Thus, patients reported their (a) anxiety and depression levels, (b) standardized and individualized quality of life and (c) how they perceived communication, attitude and empathy of the surgeon. 105 volunteer patients (Mean age = 58.18 years, SD = 10.24, 62.2% female) participated to the study. PC arose from rare diseases (14%), colorectal (38%), eso-gastric (24%) and ovarian (8%) cancer. Three groups are defined according to the severity of their pathology and the treatment offered to them: (1) important surgical treatment with the goal of healing (53%), (2) repeated palliative surgical treatment (17%), and (3) the patients recused for surgical treatment, only palliative approach (30%). Results are presented according to Baron and Kenny recommendations. The regressions analyses show that only depression and anxiety are sensitive to the communication and empathy of surgeon. The main results show that a good communication and high level of empathy at T0 and T1 limit depression and anxiety of the patients in T1. Results also indicate that the severity of the disease modulates this positive impact of communication: better is the communication the less are the level of depression and anxiety of the patients. This effect is higher for patients treated for the more severe disease. These results confirm that, even in the case severe disease a good communication between patient and physician remains a significant factor in promoting the well-being of patients. More specific training need to be developed to promote empathic care.

Keywords: clinical empathy, determinants, healthcare, psychological wellbeing

Procedia PDF Downloads 118

Authors: R. M. Shabbir Ahmed, Mohamed Haneef, A. R. Anwar Khan

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Analysis of stresses plays important role in the optimization of structures. Prior stress estimation helps in better design of the products. Composites find wide usage in the industrial and home applications due to its strength to weight ratio. Especially in the air craft industry, the usage of composites is more due to its advantages over the conventional materials. Composites are mainly made of orthotropic materials having unequal strength in the different directions. Composite materials have the drawback of delamination and debonding due to the weaker bond materials compared to the parent materials. So proper analysis should be done to the composite joints before using it in the practical conditions. In the present work, a composite plate with elastic pin is considered for analysis using finite element software Ansys. Basically the geometry is built using Ansys software using top down approach with different Boolean operations. The modelled object is meshed with three dimensional layered element solid46 for composite plate and solid element (Solid45) for pin material. Various combinations are considered to find the strength of the composite joint under uniaxial loading conditions. Due to symmetry of the problem, only quarter geometry is built and results are presented for full model using Ansys expansion options. The results show effect of pin diameter on the joint strength. Here the deflection and load sharing of the pin are increasing and other parameters like overall stress, pin stress and contact pressure are reducing due to lesser load on the plate material. Further material effect shows, higher young modulus material has little deflection, but other parameters are increasing. Interference analysis shows increasing of overall stress, pin stress, contact stress along with pin bearing load. This increase should be understood properly for increasing the load carrying capacity of the joint. Generally every structure is preloaded to increase the compressive stress in the joint to increase the load carrying capacity. But the stress increase should be properly analysed for composite due to its delamination and debonding effects due to failure of the bond materials. When results for an isotropic combination is compared with composite joint, isotropic joint shows uniformity of the results with lesser values for all parameters. This is mainly due to applied layer angle combinations. All the results are represented with necessasary pictorial plots.

Keywords: bearing force, frictional force, finite element analysis, ANSYS

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Authors: Muhammad Taimoor Hassan, Kausar Abbas

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The Islamic Banking Services is one of the growing businesses in financial sector around the globe with 15 to 18 percent growth all over the world and 10-12 percent growth rate in Pakistan. This research study is aimed at measuring the impact of religiosity on the customer loyalty of Islamic Banking in Pakistan. The study has utilized cause and effect research design to assess the impact of religiosity on Islamic Banking. Data from 350 respondents have been collected to meet the purpose of the study. The results revealed that the religiosity has a significant impact on the customer loyalty of Islamic Banking through the customer attitude and customer trust on the sequential model. The results suggest that the religiosity, customer attitude, and customer trust are the interconnected variables which lead to customer loyalty in Islamic Banking of Pakistan. The study is useful in the setting of Pakistan to further increase the customer loyalty for Islamic Banks.

Keywords: Islamic banks, customer loyalty, attitude, Pakistan

Procedia PDF Downloads 279

Authors: Semih Sözer

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One of the most common issues in economic systems is understanding characteristics of economic activities in cities and regions. Although there are critics to economic base models in conceptual and empirical aspects, these models are useful tools to examining the economic structure of a nation, regions or cities. This paper uses one of the methodologies of economic base models namely the location quotients model. Data for this model includes employment numbers of provinces and NUTS II regions in Turkey. Time series of data covers the years of 1990, 2000, 2003, and 2009. Aim of this study is finding which sectors are export-base and which sectors are import-base in provinces and regions. Model results show that big provinces or powerful regions (population, size etc.) mostly have basic sectors in their economic system. However, interesting facts came from different sectors in different provinces and regions in the model results.

Keywords: economic base, location quotients model, regional economics, regional development

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Authors: Artion Kashuri, Rozana Liko

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In this paper, the authors establish an integral identity using delta differentiable functions. By applying this identity, some new results via a general class of convex functions with respect to two nonnegative functions on a time scale are given. Also, for suitable choices of nonnegative functions, some special cases are deduced. Finally, in order to illustrate the efficiency of our main results, some applications to special means are obtained as well. We hope that current work using our idea and technique will attract the attention of researchers working in mathematical analysis, mathematical inequalities, numerical analysis, special functions, fractional calculus, quantum mechanics, quantum calculus, physics, probability and statistics, differential and difference equations, optimization theory, and other related fields in pure and applied sciences.

Keywords: convex functions, Hermite-Hadamard inequality, special means, time scale

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Authors: Hsiu Tan Liu, Chun Jung Liu

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It has multiple purposes to develop a sign language receptive skills test. For example, this test can be used to be an important tool for education and to understand the sign language ability of deaf children. There is no available test for these purposes in Taiwan. Through the discussion of experts and the references of standardized Taiwanese Sign Language Receptive Test for adults and adolescents, the frame of Taiwanese Sign Language Receptive Skills Test (TSL-RST) for deaf children was developed, and the items were further designed. After multiple times of pre-trials, discussions and corrections, TSL-RST is finally developed which can be conducted and scored online. There were 33 deaf children who agreed to be tested from all three deaf schools in Taiwan. Through item analysis, the items were picked out that have good discrimination index and fair difficulty index. Moreover, psychometric indexes of reliability and validity were established. Then, derived the regression formula was derived which can predict the sign language receptive skills of deaf children. The main results of this study are as follows. (1). TSL-RST includes three sub-test of vocabulary comprehension, syntax comprehension and paragraph comprehension. There are 21, 20, and 9 items in vocabulary comprehension, syntax comprehension, and paragraph comprehension, respectively. (2). TSL-RST can be conducted individually online. The sign language ability of deaf students can be calculated fast and objectively, so that they can get the feedback and results immediately. This can also contribute to both teaching and research. The most subjects can complete the test within 25 minutes. While the test procedure, they can answer the test questions without relying on their reading ability or memory capacity. (3). The sub-test of the vocabulary comprehension is the easiest one, syntax comprehension is harder than vocabulary comprehension and the paragraph comprehension is the hardest. Each of the three sub-test and the whole test are good in item discrimination index. (4). The psychometric indices are good, including the internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s α coefficient), test-retest reliability, split-half reliability, and content validity. The sign language ability are significantly related to non-verbal IQ, the teachers’ rating to the students’ sign language ability and students’ self-rating to their own sign language ability. The results showed that the higher grade students have better performance than the lower grade students, and students with deaf parent perform better than those with hearing parent. These results made TLS-RST have great discriminant validity. (5). The predictors of sign language ability of primary deaf students are age and years of starting to learn sign language. The results of this study suggested that TSL-RST can effectively assess deaf student’s sign language ability. This study also proposed a model to develop a sign language tests.

Keywords: comprehension test, elementary school, sign language, Taiwan sign language

Procedia PDF Downloads 185

Authors: Hyun Ji Hyun, Hyo Sun Suh, Min Kook Kim, Yong Chan Kwon, Byung-Mu Lee

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Scope: This study is focused on the effect of myristic acid on LPS-induced inflammation in RAW 264.7 macrophage cells. Methods and results: For the experiment, RAW 264.7 mouse macrophage cell line was used. Results showed that treatment with myristic acid can attenuate LPS-induced inflammation. Moreover, myristic acid significantly suppressed expression of inflammatory mediators and down-regulating UVB-induced intracellular ROS generation. Furthermore, myristic acid reduced the expression of NF-κB by inhibiting degradation of IκB-α and ERK, JNK, and p38 pathways by inhibiting phosphorylation in RAW 264.7 macrophage cells. Conclusion: Overall, these data suggest that the myristic acid could reduce LPS-induced inflammation. Acknowledgment: This research was supported by the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy(MOTIE), Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology(KIAT) through the Encouragement Program for The Industries of Economic Cooperation Region

Keywords: anti-inflammation, myristic acid, ROS, ultraviolet light

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Authors: Kerryn Krige, Kerrin Myers

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Social entrepreneurship offers the opportunity to simultaneously address both social and economic inequality in South Africa. Its appeal across racial groups, its attractiveness to young people, its applicability in rural and peri-urban markets, and its acceleration in middle income, large-business economies suits the South African context. However, the potential to deliver much-needed developmental benefits has not been realised because the social entrepreneurship debate lacks evidence as to who social entrepreneurs are, their goals and operations and the socio-economic results they achieve. As a result, policy development has been stunted, and legislative barriers and red tape remain. Social entrepreneurs are isolated from the mainstream economy, and struggle to access funding because of limitations in legislative and organisational structures. The objective of the study is to strengthen the ecosystem for social entrepreneurship in South Africa by producing robust, policy-rich information from and about social enterprises currently in operation across the country. The study employs a quantitative survey methodology, using online and telephonic data collection methods. A purposive sample of 1000 social enterprises was included in the first large-scale study of social entrepreneurship in South Africa. The results offer deep insight into the characteristics of social enterprises; the activities they undertake and the markets they serve; their modes of operation and funding sources as well as key challenges and support systems. The results contribute towards developing a model of social enterprise in the African context.

Keywords: social enterprise, key characteristics, challenges and enablers, towards an African model

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Authors: Hyun Kyu Lee, Won Zin Oh, June Hyun Kim, Jin Hee Kim, Sang June Choi, Hak Soo Kim

Abstract:

The oxidative dissolution of chromium oxide by manganese oxides including permanganate have been widely studied not only for the chemical decontamination of nuclear power plant, but also for the environmental control of the toxic chromate caused by naturally occurring manganese dioxide. However, little attention has been made for the spontaneous reductive decomposition of permanganate in the water, which is a competing reaction with the oxidation of the chromium oxide by permanganate. The objective of this study is to investigate the spontaneous reductive decomposition behavior of permanganate in the water, depending on the variation of acidity, temperature and concentration. Results of the experiments showed that the permanganate reductive decomposition product is manganese dioxide, and this reaction accompanies with the same molar amount of hydrogen ion consumption. Therefore, at the neutral condition (ex. potassium permanganate solution without acidic chemicals), the permanganate do not reduce by itself at any condition of temperature, concentration within the experimental range. From the results, we confirmed that the oxidation reaction for the permanganate reduction is the water oxidation that is accompanying the oxygen evolution. The experimental results on the reductive decomposition behavior of permanganate in the water also showed that the degree and rate of permanganate reduction increases with the temperature, acidity and concentration. The spontaneous decomposition of the permanganates obtained in the studies would become a good reference to select the operational condition, such as temperature, acidity and concentration, for the chemical decontamination of nuclear power plants.

Keywords: permanganate reduction, spontaneous decomposition, water oxidation, acidity, temperature, permanganate concentration, chemical decontamination, nuclear power plant

Procedia PDF Downloads 338

Authors: Jae Young Park, Hwansu Jung, Jong Tae Kim

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Whether the data has been well parallelized is an important factor in the Solid-State-Drive (SSD) performance. SSD parallelization is affected by allocation scheme and it is directly connected to SSD performance. There are dynamic allocation and static allocation in representative allocation schemes. Dynamic allocation is more adaptive in exploiting write operation parallelism, while static allocation is better in read operation parallelism. Therefore, it is hard to select the appropriate allocation scheme when the workload is mixed read and write operations. We simulated conditions on a few mixed data patterns and analyzed the results to help the right choice for better performance. As the results, if data arrival interval is long enough prior operations to be finished and continuous read intensive data environment static allocation is more suitable. Dynamic allocation performs the best on write performance and random data patterns.

Keywords: dynamic allocation, NAND flash based SSD, SSD parallelism, static allocation

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Authors: Sobar M. Johari, Ida Putri Anjarsari

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In the transmission of monetary instrument towards real sector of the economy, Bank Indonesia as monetary authority has developed Islamic Bank Indonesia Certificate (abbreviated as SBIS) as an instrument in Islamic open market operation. One of the monetary transmission channels could take place through financing channel from which the fund is used as the source of banking financing. This study aims to analyse the impact of Islamic monetary instrument towards output or economic growth. Data used in this research is taken from Bank Indonesia and Central Board of Statistics for the period of January 2008 until December 2015. The study employs Granger Causality Test, Vector Error Correction Model (VECM), Impulse Response Function (IRF) technique and Forecast Error Variance Decomposition (FEVD) as its analytical methods. The results show that, first, the transmission mechanism of banking financing channel are not linked to output. Second, estimation results of VECM show that SBIS, PUAS, and FIN have significant impact in the long term towards output. When there is monetary shock, output or economic growth could be recovered and stabilized in the short term. FEVD results show that Islamic banking financing contributes 1.33 percent to increase economic growth.

Keywords: Islamic monetary instrument, Islamic banking financing channel, economic growth, Vector Error Correction Model (VECM)

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Authors: Herlina Abdul Rahim, Javad Abbaszadeh, Ruzairi Abdul Rahim

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In this research, the non-invasive ultrasonic transmission tomography is investigated. In order to model the ultrasonic wave scattering for different thickness of metal pipes, two-dimensional (2D) finite element modeling (FEM) has been utilized. The wall thickness variation of the metal pipe and its influence on propagation of the ultrasonic pressure wave are explored in this paper, includes frequency analysing in order to find the maximum applicable frequency. The simulation results have been compared to experimental data and are shown to provide key insight for this well-defined experimental case by explaining the achieved reconstructed images from experimental setup. Finally, the experimental results which are useful for further investigation for the application of ultrasonic transmission tomography in industry are illustrated.

Keywords: ultrasonic transmission tomography, ultrasonic sensors, ultrasonic wave, non-invasive tomography, metal pipe

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Authors: Vera Jancurova

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People are, in general, exposed to behavioral biases, however, the degree and impact are affected by experience, knowledge, and other characteristics. The purpose of this article is to study two of defined behavioral biases, the overconfidence and self-attribution bias, and its impact on economic and non-economic students at different stage of the study. The research method used for the purpose of this study is a controlled field study that contains questions on perception of own confidence and self-attribution and estimation of limits to analyse actual abilities. The results of the research show that economic students seem to be more overconfident than their non–economic colleagues, which seems to be caused by the fact the questionnaire was asking for predicting economic indexes and own knowledge and abilities in financial environment. Surprisingly, the most overconfidence was detected by the students at the beginning of their study (1st-semester students). However, the estimations of real numbers do not point out, that economic students have better results by the prediction itself. The study confirmed the presence of self-attribution bias at all of the respondents.

Keywords: behavioral finance, overconfidence, self-attribution, heuristics and biases

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Authors: J. Nesleha, H. Florianova

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The goal of the study is to provide results of a conducted study devoted to financial literacy in the Czech Republic and to introduce a project related to financial education in the Czech Republic. Financial education has become an important part of education in the country, yet it is still neglected on the lowest level of formal education–primary schools. The project is based on investigation of financial literacy on primary schools in the Czech Republic. Consequently, the authors aim to formulate possible amendments related to this type of education. The gained dataset is intended to be used for analysis concerning financial education in the Czech Republic. With regard to used methods, the most important one is regression analysis for disclosure of predictors causing different levels of financial literacy. Furthermore, comparison of different groups is planned, for which t-tests are intended to be used. The study also employs descriptive statistics to introduce basic relationship in the data file.

Keywords: Czech Republic, financial education, financial literacy, primary school

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Authors: S. Baississe, S. Godbane, A. Lekbir

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The objective of our work is to develop an ice cream from a fermented cream, skim milk and other ingredients and follow the evolution of its physicochemical properties, biochemical and microstructure of the products obtained. Our cream is aerated with the manufacturing steps start with a homogenizing follow different ingredients by heating to 40°C emulsion, the preparation is then subjected to a heat treatment at 65°C for 30 min, before being stored in the cold at 4°C for a few hours. This conservation promotes crystallization of the material during the globular stage of maturation of the cream. The emulsifying agent moves gradually absorbed on the surface of fat globules homogeneous, which results in reduced protein stability. During the expansion, the collusion of destabilizing fat globules in the aqueous phase favours their coalescence. During the expansion, the collusion of destabilized fat globules in the aqueous phase favours their coalescence. The stabilizing agent increases the viscosity of the aqueous phase and the drainage limit interaction with the proteins of the aqueous phase and the protein absorbed on fat globules. The cutting improved organoleptic property of our cream is made by the use of three dyes and aromas. The products obtained undergo physicochemical analyses (pH, conductivity and acidity), biochemical (moisture, % dry matter and fat in %), and finally in the microscopic observation of the microstructure and the results obtained by analysis of the image processing software. The results show a remarkable evolution of physicochemical properties (pH, conductivity and acidity), biochemical (moisture, fat and non-fat) and microstructure of the products developed in relation to the raw material (skim milk) and the intermediate product (fermented cream).

Keywords: ice cream, sour cream, physicochemical, biochemical, microstructure

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Authors: S. Oudjemia, F. Alim, S. Seddiki

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This paper shows the application of multifractal analysis for additional help in cancer diagnosis. The medical image processing is a very important discipline in which many existing methods are in search of solutions to real problems of medicine. In this work, we present results of multifractal analysis of brain MRI images. The purpose of this analysis was to separate between healthy and cancerous tissue of the brain. A nonlinear method based on multifractal detrending moving average (MFDMA) which is a generalization of the detrending fluctuations analysis (DFA) is used for the detection of abnormalities in these images. The proposed method could make separation of the two types of brain tissue with success. It is very important to note that the choice of this non-linear method is due to the complexity and irregularity of tumor tissue that linear and classical nonlinear methods seem difficult to characterize completely. In order to show the performance of this method, we compared its results with those of the conventional method box-counting.

Keywords: irregularity, nonlinearity, MRI brain images, multifractal analysis, brain tumor

Procedia PDF Downloads 441

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

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

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

Procedia PDF Downloads 302

Authors: Jooyoung Park, Junkyeong Kim, Aoqi Zhang, Seunghee Park

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Non-destructive testing on cable is in great demand due to safety accidents at sites where many equipments using cables are installed. In this paper, the quantitative change of the obtained signal was analyzed using a magnetic flux leakage (MFL) method. A two-dimensional simulation was conducted with a FEM model replicating real elevator cables. The simulation data were compared for three parameters (depth of defect, width of defect and inspection velocity). Then, an experiment on same conditions was carried out to verify the results of the simulation. Signals obtained from both the simulation and the experiment were transformed to characterize the properties of the damage. Throughout the results, a cable damage detection based on an MFL method was confirmed to be feasible. In further study, it is expected that the MFL signals of an entire specimen will be gained and visualized as well.

Keywords: magnetic flux leakage (mfl), cable damage detection, non-destructive testing, numerical simulation

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Authors: Mohamed A. Almoghalis, Osman M. Hegazy, Ibrahim F. Imam, Ali H. Elbastawessy

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This paper presents a new hyperspectral image segmentation scheme with respect to both spatial and spectral contexts. The scheme uses the 8-pixels spatial pattern to build a weight structure that holds the number of outlier bands for each pixel among its neighborhood windows in different directions. The number of outlier bands for a pixel is obtained using bands quartile box plots profile among spatial 8-pixels pattern windows. The quartile box plot weight structure represents the spatial-spectral context in the image. Instead of starting segmentation process by single pixels, the proposed methodology starts by pixels groups that proved to share the same spectral features with respect to their spatial context. As a result, the segmentation scheme starts with Jigsaw pieces that build a mosaic image. The following step builds a model for each Jigsaw piece in the mosaic image. Each Jigsaw piece will be merged with another Jigsaw piece using KNN applied to their bands' quartile box plots profiles. The scheme iterates till required number of segments reached. Experiments use two data sets obtained from Earth Observer 1 (EO-1) sensor for Egypt and France. Initial results qualitative analysis showed encouraging results compared with ground truth. Quantitative analysis for the results will be included in the final paper.

Keywords: hyperspectral image segmentation, image processing, remote sensing, box plot

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Authors: Yuanyuan Liu, Yuanqing Wang, Di Li

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Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions mitigation from road construction activities is one of the potential pathways to deal with climate change due to its higher use of materials, machinery energy consumption, and high quantity of vehicle and equipment fuels for transportation and on-site construction activities. Aiming to assess the environmental impact of the road infrastructure construction activities and to identify hotspots of emissions sources, this study developed a life-cycle CO2 emissions assessment framework covering three stages of material production, to-site and on-site transportation under the guidance of the principle of LCA ISO14040. Then streamlined inventory analysis on sub-processes of each stage was conducted based on the budget files from cases of highway projects in China. The calculation results were normalized into functional unit represented as ton per km per lane. Then a comparison between the amount of emissions from each stage, and sub-process was made to identify the major contributor in the whole highway lifecycle. In addition, the calculating results were used to be compared with results in other countries for understanding the level of CO2 emissions associated with Chinese road infrastructure in the world. The results showed that materials production stage produces the most of the CO2 emissions (for more than 80%), and the production of cement and steel accounts for large quantities of carbon emissions. Life cycle CO2 emissions of fuel and electric energy associated with to-site and on-site transportation vehicle and equipment are a minor component of total life cycle CO2 emissions from highway project construction activities. Bridges and tunnels are dominant large carbon contributor compared to the road segments. The life cycle CO2 emissions of road segment in highway project in China are slightly higher than the estimation results of highways in European countries and USA, about 1500 ton per km per lane. In particularly, the life cycle CO2 emissions of road pavement in majority cities all over the world are about 500 ton per km per lane. However, there is obvious difference between the cities when the estimation on life cycle CO2 emissions of highway projects included bridge and tunnel. The findings of the study could offer decision makers a more comprehensive reference to understand the contribution of road infrastructure to climate change, especially understand the contribution from road infrastructure construction activities in China. In addition, the identified hotspots of emissions sources provide the insights of how to reduce road carbon emissions for development of sustainable transportation.

Keywords: carbon dioxide emissions, construction activities, highway, life cycle assessment

Procedia PDF Downloads 264

Authors: Mingming Guo, Xiaozan Wang

Abstract:

Introduction: The purpose of this study is to examine the correlation between the physical fitness of Chinese college students and their daily running habits (RH). Methods: A total of 718 college students from East China Normal University participated in this study (385 boys and 333 girls). Each participant participated in the Chinese Students’ Physical Fitness Test during the 2018-2019 school year. In addition, each student is also required to use the app to record all their running results during each run during the 2018-2019 school year. Researchers can query and export all running records through the app's management platform. Results: (1) The total number of kilometers run by the students showed a significant negative correlation with their vital capacity (VC), sitting body flexion (SBF), and long jump (LJ) (rᵥ

Keywords: college students, physical fitness, running habits, data mining

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Authors: Bouabdellah Abed, Mohamed Bouzit, Lakhdar Bouarbi

Abstract:

The objective of this study is to investigate numerically the effect of roof shaped on wind flow and pollutant dispersion in a street canyon with one row of trees of pore volume, Pvol = 96%. A three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model for evaluating air flow and pollutant dispersion within an urban street canyon using Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations and the k-Epsilon EARSM turbulence model as close of the equation system. The numerical model is performed with ANSYS-CFX code. Vehicle emissions were simulated as double line sources along the street. The numerical model was validated against the wind tunnel experiment. Having established this, the wind flow and pollutant dispersion in urban street canyons of six roof shapes are simulated. The numerical simulation agrees reasonably with the wind tunnel data. The results obtained in this work, indicate that the flow in 3D domain is more complicated, this complexity is increased with presence of tree and variability of the roof shapes. The results also indicated that the largest pollutant concentration level for two walls (leeward and windward wall) is observed with the upwind wedge-shaped roof. But the smallest pollutant concentration level is observed with the dome roof-shaped. The results also indicated that the corners eddies provide additional ventilation and lead to lower traffic pollutant concentrations at the street canyon ends.

Keywords: street canyon, pollutant dispersion, trees, building configuration, numerical simulation, k-Epsilon EARSM

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Authors: Laicheng Cao, Xiangqian Su, Youxiao Wu

Abstract:

Feature selection is one of the important problems in network security, pattern recognition, data mining and other fields. In order to remove redundant features, effectively improve the detection speed of intrusion detection system, proposes a new feature selection method, which is based on the invasive weed optimization (IWO) algorithm and tabu search algorithm(TS). Use IWO as a global search, tabu search algorithm for local search, to improve the results of IWO algorithm. The experimental results show that the feature selection method can effectively remove the redundant features of network data information in feature selection, reduction time, and to guarantee accurate detection rate, effectively improve the speed of detection system.

Keywords: intrusion detection, feature selection, iwo, tabu search

Procedia PDF Downloads 525

Authors: Abdelkader Hachemi & Boualem Remini

Abstract:

Seawater intrusion is a significant challenge faced by coastal aquifers in the Mediterranean basin. This study aims to determine the position of the sharp interface between seawater and freshwater in the aquifer of Wadi Nador, located in the Wilaya of Tipaza, Algeria. A numerical areal sharp interface model using the finite element method is developed to investigate the spatial and temporal behavior of seawater intrusion. The aquifer is assumed to be homogeneous and isotropic. The simulation results are compared with geophysical prospection data obtained through electrical methods in 2011 to validate the model. The simulation results demonstrate a good agreement with the geophysical prospection data, confirming the accuracy of the sharp interface model. The position of the sharp interface in the aquifer is found to be approximately 1617 meters from the sea. Two scenarios are proposed to predict the interface position for the year 2024: one without pumping and the other with pumping. The results indicate a noticeable retreat of the sharp interface position in the first scenario, while a slight decline is observed in the second scenario. The findings of this study provide valuable insights into the dynamics of seawater intrusion in the Wadi Nador aquifer. The predicted changes in the sharp interface position highlight the potential impact of pumping activities on the aquifer's vulnerability to seawater intrusion. This study emphasizes the importance of implementing measures to manage and mitigate seawater intrusion in coastal aquifers. The sharp interface model developed in this research can serve as a valuable tool for assessing and monitoring the vulnerability of aquifers to seawater intrusion.

Keywords: seawater, intrusion, sharp interface, Algeria

Procedia PDF Downloads 71