Search results for: information management system

Authors: Reenu Yadav, Vidhi Guha, Udit N. Soni, Jay Ram Patel

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Chewing gums are mobile novel drug delivery systems, with a potential for administering drugs either for local action or for systemic absorption via the buccal route. An antimicrobial chewing gum delivery system of the methanolic extracts of Beatea monosperma (barks and twigs), Cordia obliqua (leaves and seeds) and Cuminun cyminum (seeds) against periodontal diseases caused by some oral pathogens, was designed and characterized on various parameters.The results of the study support the traditional application of the plants and suggest, plant extracts possess compounds with antimicrobial properties that can be used as potential antimicrobial agents and gums can be a good carrier of herbal extracts. Developed formulation will cure/protect from various periodontal diseases. Further development and evaluations chewing gums including the isolated compounds on the commercial scale and their clinical and toxicological studies are the future challenges.

Keywords: periodontal diseases, herbal chewing gum, herbal extracts, novel drug delivery systems

Procedia PDF Downloads 396

Authors: Ruoyu Mao

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Exploring the relationship between urban green development and regional integration level is of great significance for realising regional high quality and sustainable development. Based on the Tapio decoupling model and the theoretical framework of urban green development and regional integration, this paper builds an analysis system, makes a quantitative analysis of urban green development and regional integration level in a certain period, and discusses the relationship between the two. It also takes China's Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration as an example to study the degree of decoupling, the type of decoupling, and the trend of the evolution of the spatio-temporal pattern of decoupling between the level of urban green development and the level of regional integration in the period of 2014-2021, with the aim of providing a useful reference for the future development of the region.

Keywords: regional integration, urban green development, Tapio decoupling model, Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration

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Authors: Sandhya Armoogum

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In distributed systems and in open systems such as the Internet, often mobile code has to run on unknown and potentially hostile hosts. Mobile code such as a mobile agent is vulnerable when executing on remote hosts. The mobile agent may be subjected to various attacks such as tampering, inspection, and replay attack by a malicious host. Much research has been done to provide solutions for various security problems, such as authentication of mobile agent and hosts, integrity and confidentiality of the data carried by the mobile agent. Many of such proposed solutions in literature are not suitable for open systems whereby the mobile code arrives and executes on a host which is not known and trusted by the mobile agent owner. In this paper, we propose the adoption of the reference monitor by hosts in an open system for providing trust and security for mobile code execution. A secure protocol for the distribution of the reference monitor entity is described. This reference monitor entity on the remote host may also provide several security services such as authentication and integrity to the mobile code.

Keywords: security, mobile agents, reference monitor, trust

Procedia PDF Downloads 442

Authors: A. K. Tekile, I. L. Kim, J. Y. Lee

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Human activities put freshwater quality under risk, mainly due to expansion of agriculture and industries, damming, diversion and discharge of inadequately treated wastewaters. The rapid human population growth and climate change escalated the problem. External controlling actions on point and non-point pollution sources are long-term solution to manage water quality. To have a holistic approach, these mechanisms should be coupled with the in-water control strategies. The available in-lake or river methods are either costly or they have some adverse effect on the ecological system that the search for an alternative and effective solution with a reasonable balance is still going on. This study aimed at the physical and chemical water quality improvement in a stagnant Yeo-cheon River reach (Korea), which has recently shown sign of water quality problems such as scum formation and fish death. The river water quality was monitored, for the duration of three months by operating only water flow generator in the first two weeks and then ultrasonic irradiation device was coupled to the flow unit for the remaining duration of the experiment. In addition to assessing the water quality improvement, the correlation among the parameters was analyzed to explain the contribution of the ultra-sonication. Generally, the combined strategy showed localized improvement of water quality in terms of dissolved oxygen, Chlorophyll-a and dissolved reactive phosphate. At locations under limited influence of the system operation, chlorophyll-a was highly increased, but within 25 m of operation the low initial value was maintained. The inverse correlation coefficient between dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll-a decreased from 0.51 to 0.37 when ultrasonic irradiation unit was used with the flow, showing that ultrasonic treatment reduced chlorophyll-a concentration and it inhibited photosynthesis. The relationship between dissolved oxygen and reactive phosphate also indicated that influence of ultra-sonication was higher than flow on the reactive phosphate concentration. Even though flow increased turbidity by suspending sediments, ultrasonic waves canceled out the effect due to the agglomeration of suspended particles and the follow-up settling out. There has also been variation of interaction in the water column as the decrease of pH and dissolved oxygen from surface to the bottom played a role in phosphorus release into the water column. The variation of nitrogen and dissolved organic carbon concentrations showed mixed trend probably due to the complex chemical reactions subsequent to the operation. Besides, the intensive rainfall and strong wind around the end of the field trial had apparent impact on the result. The combined effect of water flow and ultrasonic irradiation was a cumulative water quality improvement and it maintained the dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll-a requirement of the river for healthy ecological interaction. However, the overall improvement of water quality is not guaranteed as effectiveness of ultrasonic technology requires long-term monitoring of water quality before, during and after treatment. Even though, the short duration of the study conducted here has limited nutrient pattern realization, the use of ultrasound at field scale to improve water quality is promising.

Keywords: stagnant, ultrasonic irradiation, water flow, water quality

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Authors: Orathai Pornsunthorntawee, Wareerom Polrut, Nopphawan Phonthammachai

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In the present work, the effects of additives, including contents of the added antioxidants and type of the selected metallic stearates (either calcium stearate (CaSt) or zinc stearate (ZnSt)), on the thermal stabilities of carbon black (CB)/high density polyethylene (HDPE) compounds were studied. The results showed that the AO contents played a key role in the thermal stabilities of the CB/HDPE compounds—the higher the AO content, the higher the thermal stabilities. Although the CaSt-containing compounds were slightly superior to those with ZnSt in terms of the thermal stabilities, the remaining solid residue of CaSt after heated to the temperature of 600 °C (mainly calcium carbonate (CaCO3) as characterized by the X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique) seemed to catalyze the decomposition of CB in the HDPE-based compounds. Hence, the quantification of CB in the CaSt-containing compounds with a muffle furnace gave an inaccurate CB content—much lower than actual value. However, this phenomenon was negligible in the ZnSt-containing system.

Keywords: antioxidant, stearate, carbon black, polyethylene

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Authors: Evren Aysev Denec

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As an urban settlement dating as early as 8000 years and the capital for Byzantine and Ottoman empires; İstanbul has been a significant global city throughout history. The most drastic changes in the macro form of Istanbul have taken place in the last seven decades; starting from 1950’s with rapid industrialization and population growth; pacing up after the 1980’s with the efforts of integration to the global capitalist system; reaching to a climax in the 2000’s with the adaptation of a neoliberal urban regime. Today, the rate of urbanization together with land speculation and real estate investment has been growing enormously. Every inch of urban land is conceptualized as a commodity to be capitalized. This neoliberal mindset has many controversial implementations, from the privatization of public land to the urban transformation of historic neighbourhoods and consumption of natural resources. The planning decisions concerning the city have been mainly top down initiations; conceptualising historical, cultural and natural heritage as commodities to be capitalised and consumed in favour of creating rent value. One of the most crucial implementations of this neoliberal urban regime is the project of establishing a ‘new city’ around northern Istanbul; together with a number of large-scale infrastructural projects such as the Third Bosporus Bridge; a new highway system, a Third Airport Project and a secondary Bosporus project called the ‘Canal Istanbul’. Urbanizing northern Istanbul is highly controversial as this area consists of major natural resources of the city; being the northern forests, water supplies and wildlife; which are bound to be destroyed to a great extent following the implementations. The construction of the third bridge and the third airport has begun in 2013, despite environmental objections and protests. Over five hundred thousand trees are planned be cut for solely the construction of the bridge and the Northern Marmara Motorway. Yet the real damage will be the urbanization of the forest area; irreversibly corrupting the natural resources and attracting millions of additional population towards Istanbul. Furthermore, these projects lack an integrated planning scope as the plans prepared for Istanbul are constantly subjected to alterations forced by the central government. Urban interventions mentioned above are executed despite the rulings of Istanbul Environmental plan, due to top down planning decisions. Instead of an integrated action plan that prepares for the future of the city, Istanbul is governed by partial plans and projects that are issued by a profit based agenda; supported by legal alterations and laws issued by the central government. This paper aims to discuss the ongoing implementations with regards to northern Istanbul; claiming that they are not merely infrastructural interventions but parts of a greater neoliberal urbanization strategy. In the course of the study, firstly a brief account on the northern forests of Istanbul will be presented. Then, the projects will be discussed in detail, addressing how the current planning schemes deal with the natural heritage of the city. Lastly, concluding remarks on how the implementations could affect the future of Istanbul will be presented.

Keywords: Istanbul, urban design, urban planning, natural resources

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Authors: Béchir Wanassi, Béchir Azzouz, Taher Halimi, Mohamed Ben Hassen

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Mechanical recycling of post-industrial cotton yarn wastes, as well as the effects of passage number on the properties of reclaimed fibers, have been investigated. A new Modified Fiber Quality Index (MFQI) and Spinning Consistency Index (MSCI) for the characterization of the quality are presented. This index gives the real potential of spinnability according to its physical properties. The best quality of reclaimed fibers (after 7th passage) was used to produce rotor yarns. 100% recycling cotton yarns were produced in open-end spinning system with different rotor speed (i.e. 65000, 70000, and 80000 rpm), opening roller speed (i.e. 7700, 8200, and 8700 rpm) and twist factor (i.e. 137, 165, and 183). The effects of spinning parameters were investigated to evaluate a 100% recycling cotton yarns quality (TQI, hairiness, thin places, and thick places) using DOE method.

Keywords: cotton wastes, DOE, mechanical recycling, rotor spinning

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Authors: Shoeb A. Adeel, Shashant Anand, Vivek Paul, Dinesh, Suraj, Roshan

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The paper presents a study of micro air vehicles (MAVs) with wingspans of 20 Cm with two different airfoil configurations. MAVs have vast potential applications in both military and civilian areas. These MAVs are fully autonomous and supply real-time data. The paper focuses on two different designs of the MAVs one being N22 airfoil and the other a flat plate with similar dimension. As designed, the MAV would fly in a low Reynolds-number regime at airspeeds of 15 & 20 m/sec. Propulsion would be provided by an electric motor with an advanced lithium. Because of the close coupling between vehicle elements, system integration would be a significant challenge, requiring tight packaging and multifunction components to meet mass limitations and Centre of Gravity (C.G) balancing. These MAVs are feasible and within a couple of years of technology development in key areas including sensors, propulsion, Aerodynamics, and packaging these would be easily available to the users at affordable prices. The paper finally compares the flight performance of the two configurations.

Keywords: airfoil, CFD, MAV, flight performance, endurance, climb, lift, drag

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Authors: Gi-Ryun Park, Gye-Wan Moon, Dong-Hoon Yang

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This study aims to explore the positive effects of self-leadership and innovative behavior that'd been proven in the existing researches proactively and understand the regulation effects of smartphone addiction which has recently become an issue in Korea. This study conducted a convenient sampling of college students attending the four colleges located at Daegu. A total of 210 questionnaires in 5-point Likert scale were distributed to college students. Among which, a total of 200 questionnaires were collected for our final analysis data. Both correlation analysis and regression analysis were carried out to verify those questionnaires through SPSS 20.0. As a result, college students' self-leadership had a significantly positive impact on innovative behavior (B= .210, P= .003). In addition, it is found that the relationship between self-leadership and innovative behavior can be adjusted depending on the degree of smartphone addiction in college students (B= .264, P= .000). This study could first understand the negative effects of smartphone addiction and find that if students' self-leadership is improved in terms of self-management and unnecessary use of smartphone is controlled properly, innovative behavior can be improved. In addition, this study is significant in that it attempts to identify a new impact of smartphone addiction with the recent environmental changes, unlike the existing researches that'd been carried out from the perspective of organizational behavior theory.

Keywords: innovative behavior, revolutionary behavior, self-leadership, smartphone addiction

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Authors: Obaid Algahtani

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An interval may be defined as a convex combination as follows: I=[a,b]={x_α=(1-α)a+αb: α∈[0,1]}. Consequently, we may adopt interval operations by applying the scalar operation point-wise to the corresponding interval points: I ∙J={x_α∙y_α ∶ αϵ[0,1],x_α ϵI ,y_α ϵJ}, With the usual restriction 0∉J if ∙ = ÷. These operations are associative: I+( J+K)=(I+J)+ K, I*( J*K)=( I*J )* K. These two properties, which are missing in the usual interval operations, will enable the extension of the usual linear system concepts to the interval setting in a seamless manner. The arithmetic introduced here avoids such vague terms as ”interval extension”, ”inclusion function”, determinants which we encounter in the engineering literature that deal with interval linear systems. On the other hand, these definitions were motivated by our attempt to arrive at a definition of interval random variables and investigate the corresponding statistical properties. We feel that they are the natural ones to handle interval systems. We will enable the extension of many results from usual state space models to interval state space models. The interval state space model we will consider here is one of the form X_((t+1) )=AX_t+ W_t, Y_t=HX_t+ V_t, t≥0, where A∈ 〖IR〗^(k×k), H ∈ 〖IR〗^(p×k) are interval matrices and 〖W 〗_t ∈ 〖IR〗^k,V_t ∈〖IR〗^p are zero – mean Gaussian white-noise interval processes. This feeling is reassured by the numerical results we obtained in a simulation examples.

Keywords: interval analysis, interval matrices, state space model, Kalman Filter

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Authors: Toufik Bensana, Medkour Mihoub, Slimane Mekhilef

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The use of vibration analysis has been established as the most common and reliable method of analysis in the field of condition monitoring and diagnostics of rotating machinery. Rolling bearings cover a broad range of rotary machines and plays a crucial role in the modern manufacturing industry. Unfortunately, the vibration signals collected from a faulty bearing are generally nonstationary, nonlinear and with strong noise interference, so it is essential to obtain the fault features correctly. In this paper, a novel numerical analysis method based on local mean decomposition (LMD) is proposed. LMD decompose the signal into a series of product functions (PFs), each of which is the product of an envelope signal and a purely frequency modulated FM signal. The envelope of a PF is the instantaneous amplitude (IA), and the derivative of the unwrapped phase of a purely flat frequency demodulated (FM) signal is the IF. After that, the fault characteristic frequency of the roller bearing can be extracted by performing spectrum analysis to the instantaneous amplitude of PF component containing dominant fault information. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed technique in fault detection and diagnosis of rolling element bearing.

Keywords: fault diagnosis, rolling element bearing, local mean decomposition, condition monitoring

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Authors: Josephine Wanja Nyatia

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The relationship between vegetation and soil erosion deserves attention due to its scientific importance and practical applications. A great deal of information is available about the mechanisms and benefits of vegetation in the control of soil erosion, but the effects of soil erosion on vegetation development and succession is poorly documented. Research shows that soil erosion is the most important driving force for the degradation of upland and mountain ecosystems. Soil erosion interferes with the process of plant community development and vegetation succession, commencing with seed formation and impacting throughout the whole growth phase and affecting seed availability, dispersal, germination and establishment, plant community structure and spatial distribution. There have been almost no studies on the effects of soil erosion on seed development and availability, of surface flows on seed movement and redistribution, and their influences on soil seed bank and on vegetation establishment and distribution. However, these effects may be the main cause of low vegetation cover in regions of high soil erosion activity, and these issues need to be investigated. Moreover, soil erosion is not only a negative influence on vegetation succession and restoration but also a driving force of plant adaptation and evolution. Consequently, we need to study the effects of soil erosion on ecological processes and on development and regulation of vegetation succession from the points of view of pedology and vegetation, plant and seed ecology, and to establish an integrated theory and technology for deriving practical solutions to soil erosion problems

Keywords: soil erosion, vegetation, development, seed availability

Procedia PDF Downloads 87

Authors: Maria M. Calheiros, Carla Silva, Eunice Magalhães

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Professionals working in child protection services (CPS) need to have common and clear criteria to identify cases of maltreatment and to differentiate levels of severity in order to determine when CPS intervention is required, its nature and urgency, and, in most countries, the service that will be in charge of the case (community or specialized CPS). Actually, decision-making process is complex in CPS, and, for that reason, such criteria are particularly important for who significantly contribute to that decision-making in child maltreatment cases. The main objective of this presentation is to describe the Maltreatment Severity Assessment Questionnaire (MSQ), specifically designed to be used by professionals in the CPS, which adopts a multidimensional approach and uses a scale of severity within subtypes. Specifically, we aim to provide evidence of validity and reliability of this tool, in order to improve the quality and validity of assessment processes and, consequently, the decision making in CPS. The total sample was composed of 1000 children and/or adolescents (51.1% boys), aged between 0 and 18 years old (M = 9.47; DP = 4.51). All the participants were referred to official institutions of the children and youth protective system. Children and adolescents maltreatment (abuse, neglect experiences and sexual abuse) were assessed with 21 items of the Maltreatment Severity Questionnaire (MSQ), by professionals of CPS. Each item (sub-type) was composed of four descriptors of increasing severity. Professionals rated the level of severity, using a 4-point scale (1= minimally severe; 2= moderately severe; 3= highly severe; 4= extremely severe). The construct validity of the Maltreatment Severity Questionnaire was assessed with a holdout method, performing an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) followed by a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). The final solution comprised 18 items organized in three factors 47.3% of variance explained. ‘Physical neglect’ (eight items) was defined by parental omissions concerning the insurance and monitoring of the child’s physical well-being and health, namely in terms of clothing, hygiene, housing conditions and contextual environmental security. ‘Physical and Psychological Abuse’ (four items) described abusive physical and psychological actions, namely, coercive/punitive disciplinary methods, physically violent methods or verbal interactions that offend and denigrate the child, with the potential to disrupt psychological attributes (e.g., self-esteem). ‘Psychological neglect’ (six items) involved omissions related to children emotional development, mental health monitoring, school attendance, development needs, as well as inappropriate relationship patterns with attachment figures. Results indicated a good reliability of all the factors. The assessment of child maltreatment cases with MSQ could have a set of practical and research implications: a) It is a valid and reliable multidimensional instrument to measure child maltreatment, b) It is an instrument integrating the co-occurrence of various types of maltreatment and a within-subtypes scale of severity; c) Specifically designed for professionals, it may assist them in decision-making processes; d) More than using case file reports to evaluate maltreatment experiences, researchers could guide more appropriately their research about determinants and consequences of maltreatment.

Keywords: assessment, maltreatment, children and youth, decision-making

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Authors: Veerpaul Maan, Gaurav Mishra

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The evolution of omnichannel has revolutionized the supply chain of the organizations by enhancing customer shopping experience. For these organizations need to develop well-integrated multiple distribution channels to leverage the benefits of omnichannel. To adopt an omnichannel system in the supply chain has resulted in structuring and reconfiguring the practices of the traditional supply chain distribution network. In this paper a multiple distribution supply chain network (MDSCN) have been proposed which integrates online giants with a local retailers distribution network in uncertain environment followed by sustainability. To incorporate sustainability, an additional objective function is added to reduce the carbon content through minimizing the travel distance of the product. Through this proposed model, customers are free to access product and services as per their choice of channels which increases their convenience, reach and satisfaction. Further, a numerical illustration is being shown along with interpretation of results to validate the proposed model.

Keywords: sustainable supply chain network, omnichannel, multiple distribution supply chain network, integrate multiple distribution channels

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Authors: Hasti Ebrahimi

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This study sheds light on the challenges and difficulties caused by the Iranian clerical system’s intervention in the country’s school education during the COVID-19 pandemic, when schools remained closed for almost two years. The pandemic brought Iranian elementary school education to a standstill for almost 6 months before the country developed a nationwide learning platform – a customized television network. While the initiative seemed to have been welcomed by the majority of Iranian parents, it resented some of the more traditional strata of the society, including the influential Friday Prayer Leaders who found the televised version of the elementary education ‘less spiritual’ and ‘more ‘material’ or science-based. That prompted the Iranian Channel of Education, the specialized television network that had been chosen to serve as a nationally televised school during the pandemic, to try to redefine much of its online elementary school educational content within the religious ideology of the Islamic Republic of Iran. As a result, young clergies appeared on the television screen as preachers of Islamic morality, religious themes and even sociology, history, and arts. The present research delves into the consequences of such an intervention, how it might have impacted the infrastructure of Iranian elementary education and whether or not the new ideology-infused curricula would withstand the opposition of students and mainstream teachers. The main methodology used in this study is Critical Discourse Analysis with a cognitive approach. It systematically finds and analyzes the alternative ideological structures of discourse in the Iranian Channel of Education from September 2021 to July 2022, when the clergy ‘teachers’ replaced ‘regular’ history and arts teachers on the television screen for the first time. It has aimed to assess how the various uses of the alternative ideological discourse in elementary school content have influenced the processes of learning: the acquisition of knowledge, beliefs, opinions, attitudes, abilities, and other cognitive and emotional changes, which are the goals of institutional education. This study has been an effort aimed at understanding and perhaps clarifying the relationships between the traditional textual structures and processing on the one hand and socio-cultural contexts created by the clergy teachers on the other. This analysis shows how the clerical portion of elementary education on the Channel of Education that seemed to have dominated the entire televised teaching and learning process faded away as the pandemic was contained and mainstream classes were restored. It nevertheless reflects the deep ideological rifts between the clerical approach to school education and the mainstream teaching process in Iranian schools. The semantic macrostructures of social content in the current Iranian elementary school education, this study suggests, have remained intact despite the temporary ideological intervention of the ruling clerical elite in their formulation and presentation. Finally, using thematic and schematic frameworks, the essay suggests that the ‘clerical’ social content taught on the Channel of Education during the pandemic cannot have been accepted cognitively by the channel’s target audience, including students and mainstream teachers.

Keywords: televised elementary school learning, Covid 19, critical discourse analysis, Iranian clerical ideology

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Authors: Takele Nemomsa, Girma Mamo, Tesfaye Balemi

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Climate change refers to a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g. using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or variance of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. In Ethiopia; Maize production in relation to climate change at regional and sub- regional scales have not been studied in detail. Thus, this study was aimed to analyse the impact of climate change on maize yield in Ambo Districts, Central Ethiopia. To this effect, weather data, soil data and maize experimental data for Arganne hybrid were used. APSIM software was used to investigate the response of maize (Zea mays) yield to different agronomic management practices using current and future (2020s–2080s) climate data. The climate change projections data which were downscaled using SDSM were used as input of climate data for the impact analysis. Compared to agronomic practices the impact of climate change on Arganne in Central Ethiopia is minute. However, within 2020s-2080s in Ambo area; the yield of Arganne hybrid is projected to reduce by 1.06% to 2.02%, and in 2050s it is projected to reduce by 1.56 While in 2080s; it is projected to increase by 1.03% to 2.07%. Thus, to adapt to the changing climate; farmers should consider increasing plant density and fertilizer rate per hectare.

Keywords: APSIM, downscaling, response, SDSM

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Authors: Eki Devung, Eka Tyastutik, Indha Annisa, Digdaya Anoraga, Jamaluddin Arsyad

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Plant medicine is a whole species of plants are known to have medicinal properties. Bogor Agricultural University has high biodiversity, one of which flora potential as a drug. This study was conducted from 19 September to 10 October 2016 at Bogor Agricultural University using literature study and field observation. There are 85 species of medicinal plants which include a medicinal plant cultivation and wild plants. Family herbs most commonly found in Cikabayan that while the Euphorbiaceae, family which is found in the Tropical Medicinal Plant Conservation Laboratory is the family of Achantaceae. Species of medicinal plants is dominated by herbs and shrubs. Part herbs most widely used are the leaves. The diversity of diseases that can be treated with medicine plants include digestive system diseases and metabolic disorder.

Keywords: benefits, biodiversity, Bogor Agricultural University, medicinal plants

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Authors: Nitin Dwivedi, Jigna Shah

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Brain tumor is metastatic neoplasm of central nervous system, in most of cases it is life threatening disease with low survival rate. Despite of enormous efforts in the development of therapeutics and diagnostic tools, the treatment of brain tumors and gliomas remain a considerable challenge in the area of neuro-oncology. The most reason behind of this the presence of physiological barriers including blood brain barrier and blood brain tumor barrier, lead to insufficient reach ability of therapeutic agents at the site of tumor, result of inadequate destruction of gliomas. So there is an indeed need empowerment of brain tumor imaging for better characterization and delineation of tumors, visualization of malignant tissue during surgery, and tracking of response to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Multifunctional different generations of dendrimer offer an improved effort for potentiate drug delivery at the site of brain tumor and gliomas. So this article emphasizes the innovative dendrimer approaches in tumor targeting, tumor imaging and delivery of therapeutic agent.

Keywords: blood brain barrier, dendrimer, gliomas, nanotechnology

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Authors: Esra Öztürk, Erkul Karacaoglu

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Pyrochlores, having compounds of the general formula, A2B2O7 (A and B are metals/rare earths) are important class of materials thanks to having technological applications like in luminescence, ionic conductivity, nuclear waste immobilization etc. The rare earths included pyrochlore compounds have also potential photoluminescence characteristics. In this context, Er3+-activated Lu2Ti2O7 pyrochlore was chosen and synthesized through a high-temperature solid-state reaction route that was sintered under the open atmosphere in this study. The optimal reaction conditions to obtain expected single phase system, the thermal analysis (DTA/TG) were carried out. The X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) was used to determine phase properties of the sample. The photoluminescence (PL) results were done to obtain excitation, emission and decay time properties by a PL spectrometer under room temperature. According to the PL, there are excitation bands at 352 nm, 388 nm, 423 nm and 453 nm that are due to 4I15/2 → 2G7/2, 4I15/2 → 4G11/2 and 4I15/2 → 4F5/2 transitions of Er3+ ions, respectively. The emission bands are placed at 582 nm, 677 nm and 762 nm that are associated with 2H11/2, 4S3/2 → 4I15/2, 4F9/2 → 4I15/2, 4I9/2 → 4I15/2 transitions of Er3+ ions, respectively.

Keywords: Er3+, Lu2Ti2O7, photoluminescence, pyrochlore, rare-earths

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Authors: Yijie Wang, Tianyue Wang

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In the past two decades, there has been a great ‘piano lesson frenzy’ among Chinese middle-class families, with a large number of parents adding piano training to children’s extra-curriculum lists. Superficially, the frenzy reflects a rather ‘leisurely’ attitude: parents typically claim that pianos lessons are ‘just for fun’ and will hopefully render children’s life more exciting. However, a closer scrutiny reveals that there is great social-status anxiety hidden beneath this ‘leisurely’ surface. Based on pre-interviews of six Chinese middle-class parents who have enthusiastically signed their children up for piano lessons, several tentative analysis are made: 1. Owing to a series of historical and social factors, the Chinese middle-class have yet to establish their cultural norms in the past few decades, resulting in great confusion concerning how to cultivate cultural tastes in their offspring. And partly due to the fact that the middle-class status of the past Chinese generation is mostly self-acquired rather than inherited, parents are much less confident about their cultural resources—which require long-time accumulation—than material ones. Both factors combine to lead to a sort of blind, overcompensating enthusiasm in culture-related education, and the piano frenzy is but a demonstration. 2. The piano has been chosen to be the object of the frenzy partly because of its inherent characteristics as well as socially-constructed ones. Costly, large in size, imported from another culture and so forth, the piano has acquired the meaning of being exclusive, high-end and exotic, which renders it a token of top-tier status among Chinese people, and piano lessons for offspring have therefore become parents’ paths towards a kind of ‘symbolic elevation’. A child playing piano is an exhibition as well as psychological assurance of the families’ middle-class status. 3. A closer look at children’s piano training process reveals that there is much more anxiety than leisurely elements involved. Despite parents’ claim that ‘piano is mainly for kids to have fun,’ the whole process is evidently of a rather ‘ascetic’ nature, with the demands of diligence and senses of time urgency throughout, and techniques rather than flair or styles are emphasized. This either means that the apparent ‘piano-for-fun’ stance is unauthentic and is only other motives in disguise, or that the Chinese middle-class parents are not yet capable of shaking off the sense of anxiety even if they sincerely intend to. 4. When viewed in relation to Chinese formal school system as well as the job market at large, it can be said that by signing children up for piano lessons, parents are consciously or unconsciously seeking to prepare for, or reduce the risks of, their children’s future social mobility. In face of possible failures in the highly-crucial, highly-competitive formal school system, piano-playing as an extra-curriculum activity may be conveniently transferred into an alternative career path. Besides, in contemporary China, as the occupational structure goes through change, and the school-related certificates decline in value, aspects such as a person’s overall deportment, which can be gained or proved by piano-learning, have been gaining in significance.

Keywords: extra-curriculum activities, middle class, piano lesson frenzy, status anxiety

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Authors: Ibrahim Rabiu Darazo

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The research has been conducted on the impact of E-banking on the operational efficiency of Banks in Nigeria, A case of some selected banks (Diamond Bank Plc, GTBankPlc, and Fidelity Bank Plc) in Nigeria. The research is a quantitative research which uses both primary and secondary sources of data collection. Questionnaire were used to obtained accurate data, where 150 Questionnaire were distributed among staff and customers of the three Banks , and the data collected where analysed using chi-square, whereas the secondary data where obtained from relevant text books, journals and relevant web sites. It is clear from the findings that, the use of e-banking by the banks has improved the efficiency of these banks, in terms of providing efficient services to customers electronically, using Internet Banking, Telephone Banking ATMs, reducing time taking to serve customers, e-banking allow new customers to open an account online, customers have access to their account at all the time 24/7.E-banking provide access to customers information from the data base and cost of check and postage were eliminated using e-banking. The recommendation at the end of the research include; the Banks should try to update their electronic gadgets, e-fraud(internal & external) should also be controlled, Banks shall employ qualified man power, Biometric ATMs shall be introduce to reduce fraud using ATM Cards, as it is use in other countries like USA.

Keywords: banks, electronic banking, operational efficiency of banks, biometric ATMs

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Authors: Fatemeh Nejati, Farah Habib, Sayeh Goudarzi

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Architecture and structure have always been closely interrelated so that they should be integrated into a unified, coherent and beautiful universe, while in the contemporary era, both structures and architecture proceed separately. The purpose of architecture is the art of creating form and space and order for human service, and the goal of the structural engineer is the transfer of loads to the structure, too. This research seeks to achieve the goal by looking at the relationship between the form of architecture and structure from its inception to the present day to the Global Identification and Management Plan. Finally, by identifying the main components of the design of the structure in interaction with the architectural form, an effective step is conducted in the Professional training direction and solutions to professionals. Therefore, after reviewing the evolution of structural and architectural coordination in various historical periods as well as how to reach the form of the structure in different times and places, components are required to test the components and present the final theory that one hundred to be tested in this regard. Finally, this research indicates the fact that the form of architecture and structure has an aesthetic link, which is influenced by a number of components that could be edited and has a regular order throughout history that could be regular. The research methodology is analytic, and it is comparative using analytical and matrix diagrams and diagrams and tools for conducting library research and interviewing.

Keywords: architecture, structural form, structural and architectural coordination, effective components, aesthetics

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Authors: Tsediso Makoelle

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South Africa like in other parts of the world has acknowledged the prevalence of the phenomenon of homosexuality in the society. Due to the number of homosexuality cases in the South African society, questions have been asked about the impact of homosexuality in schools and how teachers and learners deal with homosexuality within the context of an emerging inclusive education system. This qualitative study analysis the experiences of teachers and learners in selected secondary schools in relation to prevalence of transgender in schools. Interviews were conducted with principals, teachers and focus group of learners in schools were cases homosexuality have been reported. Data was analysed using an inductive analysis framework. Among the findings was that homosexuality is still viewed as a taboo in Black-African dominated school communities and that the need to create all-embracing and inclusive environment was evident. The study suggests a needs to open communications in communities about homosexuality in order to develop an all-inclusive environment for all learners regardless of their sexual orientation.

Keywords: homosexuality, inclusive education, sexual orientation, transgender

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Authors: Chamseddine Barki, Salam Labidi, Hanen Boussi Rahmouni

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In this article, we present the principle and suitable methodology for the design of a medical ontology that highlights the radiological and dosimetric knowledge, applied in diagnostic radiology and radiation-therapy. Our ontology, which we named «Onto.Rap», is the subject of radiation protection in medical and radiology centers by providing a standardized regulatory oversight. Thanks to its added values of knowledge-sharing, reuse and the ease of maintenance, this ontology tends to solve many problems. Of which we name the confusion between radiological procedures a practitioner might face while performing a patient radiological exam. Adding to it, the difficulties they might have in interpreting applicable patient radioprotection standards. Here, the ontology, thanks to its concepts simplification and expressiveness capabilities, can ensure an efficient classification of radiological procedures. It also provides an explicit representation of the relations between the different components of the studied concept. In fact, an ontology based-radioprotection expert system, when used in radiological center, could implement systematic radioprotection best practices during patient exam and a regulatory compliance service auditing afterwards.

Keywords: knowledge, ontology, radiation protection, radiology

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Authors: Zuoji Huang, Haiming Qian, Chunlin Wang, Jinyan Sun, Nan Xu

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In this paper, the strategy to extract double road edge lines from acquired road stripe image was explored. The workflow is as follows: the road stripes are acquired by probabilistic boosting tree algorithm and morphological algorithm immediately, and road centerlines are detected by thinning algorithm, so the initial road edge lines can be acquired along the road centerlines. Then we refine the results with big variation of local curvature of centerlines. Specifically, the energy function of edge line is constructed by gradient feature and spectral information, and Dijkstra algorithm is used to optimize the initial road edge lines. The Snake model is constructed to solve the fracture problem of intersection, and the discrete dynamic programming algorithm is used to solve the model. After that, we could get the final road network. Experiment results show that the strategy proposed in this paper can be used to extract the continuous and smooth road edge lines from high-resolution remote sensing images with an accuracy of 88% in our study area.

Keywords: road edge lines extraction, energy function, intersection fracture, Snake model

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Authors: Lianzhong Zhang, Chao Huang

Abstract:

Sea-land segmentation is a basic step in many tasks such as sea surface monitoring and ship detection. The existing sea-land segmentation algorithms have poor segmentation accuracy, and the parameter adjustments are cumbersome and difficult to meet actual needs. Also, the current sea-land segmentation adopts traditional deep learning models that use Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN). At present, the transformer architecture has achieved great success in the field of natural images, but its application in the field of radar images is less studied. Therefore, this paper proposes a sea-land segmentation method based on the transformer architecture to strengthen edge supervision. It uses a self-attention mechanism with a gating strategy to better learn relative position bias. Meanwhile, an additional edge supervision branch is introduced. The decoder stage allows the feature information of the two branches to interact, thereby improving the edge precision of the sea-land segmentation. Based on the Gaofen-3 satellite image dataset, the experimental results show that the method proposed in this paper can effectively improve the accuracy of sea-land segmentation, especially the accuracy of sea-land edges. The mean IoU (Intersection over Union), edge precision, overall precision, and F1 scores respectively reach 96.36%, 84.54%, 99.74%, and 98.05%, which are superior to those of the mainstream segmentation models and have high practical application values.

Keywords: SAR, sea-land segmentation, deep learning, transformer

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Authors: Göksel Şimşek

Abstract:

Celebrities are admired, appreciated and imitated all over the world. As a natural result of this, today many brands choose to work with celebrities for their advertisements. It can be said that the more the brands include celebrities in their marketing communication strategies, the tougher the competition in this field becomes and they allocate a large portion of their marketing budget to this. Brands invest in celebrities who will represent them in order to build the image they want to create. This study aimed to bring under spotlight the perceptions of Turkish customers regarding the use of celebrities in advertisements and marketing communication and try to understand their possible effects on subsequent purchasing decisions. In addition, consumers’ reactions and perceptions were investigated in the context of the product-celebrity match, to what extent the celebrity conforms to the concept of the advertisement and the celebrity-target audience match. In order to achieve this purpose, a quantitative research was conducted as a case study concerning Mavi Jeans (textile company). Information was obtained through survey. The results from this case study are supported by relevant theories concerning the main subject. The most valuable result would be that instead of creating an advertisement around a celebrity in demand at the time, using a celebrity that fits the concept of the advertisement and feeds the concept rather than replaces it, that is celebrity endorsement, will lead to more striking and positive results.

Keywords: celebrity endorsement, product-celebrity match, advertising, social sciences

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Authors: Shweta Shriwas, Sumeet Dwivedi

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Knowledge of use of traditional medicine is as old as human civilization in almost every system of medicine. Traditional practitioner viz., vaidhayas, ojha, hakim have their own herbal therapy in the treatment of infertility among women’s. Infertility is very common in developed and developing countries due to busy life style of women’s. The present study was initiated with an aim to identify medicinal plants resources from traditional practitioners of Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh to treat infertility. An ethnomedicinal study of Malwa region viz., Indore, Dewas, Ratlam, Ujjain, Dhar, Mandsour and Neemuch of Madhya Pradesh, India comprising fifty-seven study site was conducted during Jan-217 to June-2017. During the course of present investigation, the traditional use of medicinal plants for infertility in women was revealed by traditional practitioner. The botanical name, family, local name, part used, habit along with mode of their administration and dose duration were enumerated.

Keywords: herbal medicine, infertility, traditional, Malwa, Madhya Pradesh

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Authors: Ngozi Claribelle Nwogu, Mohammed Nasir Kajama, Oyoh Kechinyere, Edward Gobina

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Atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions are considered as the greatest environmental challenge the world is facing today. The challenges to control the emissions include the recovery of CO2 from flue gas. This concern has been improved due to recent advances in materials process engineering resulting in the development of inorganic gas separation membranes with excellent thermal and mechanical stability required for most gas separations. This paper therefore evaluates the performance of a highly selective inorganic membrane for CO2 recovery applications. Analysis of results obtained is in agreement with experimental literature data. Further results show the prediction performance of the membranes for gas separation and the future direction of research. The materials selection and the membrane preparation techniques are discussed. Method of improving the interface defects in the membrane and its effect on the separation performance has also been reviewed and in addition advances to totally exploit the potential usage of this innovative membrane.

Keywords: carbon dioxide, gas separation, inorganic ceramic membrane, permselectivity

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Authors: Maletsema Alina Mofokeng, Hussein Shimelis, Mark Laing, Pangirayi Tongoona

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Sorghum is one of the most important cereal crops grown for food, feed and bioenergy. Knowledge of genetic diversity is important for conservation of genetic resources and improvement of crop plants through breeding. The objective of this study was to assess the level of genetic diversity among sorghum genotypes using microsatellite markers. A total of 103 accessions of sorghum genotypes obtained from the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the African Centre for Crop Improvement and Agricultural Research Council-Grain Crops Institute collections in South Africa were estimated using 30 microsatellite markers. For all the loci analysed, 306 polymorphic alleles were detected with a mean value of 6.4 per locus. The polymorphic information content had an average value of 0.50 with heterozygosity mean value of 0.55 suggesting an important genetic diversity within the sorghum genotypes used. The unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean clustering based on Euclidian coefficients revealed two major distinct groups without allocating genotypes based on the source of collection or origin. The genotypes 4154.1.1.1, 2055.1.1.1, 4441.1.1.1, 4442.1.1.1, 4722.1.1.1, and 4606.1.1.1 were the most diverse. The sorghum genotypes with high genetic diversity could serve as important sources of novel alleles for breeding and strategic genetic conservation.

Keywords: Genetic Diversity, Genotypes, Microsatellites, Sorghum

Procedia PDF Downloads 376