Search results for: peridynamic theory

Authors: Rokeshia Renné Ashley

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The purpose of this study is to understand the perception of historical figure Saartjie 'Sara/Sarah' Baartman from a cross cultural perspective of black women in the United States and black women in South Africa. Semi-structured interviews (n = 30) uncover that many women in both countries did not have an accurate representation, recollection, or have been exposed to the story of Baartman. Nonetheless, those who were familiar with Baartman’s story, those participants compared her to modern examples of black women who are showcased in a contemporary familiarity. The women are described by participants as women who reveal their bodies in a sexualized manner and have the curves that are similar to Baartman’s historic figure. This comparison emphasized a connection to popular images of black women who represent the curvaceous ideal. Findings contribute to social comparison theory by providing a lens for examining black women’s body image.

Keywords: black women, body modification, media, South Africa

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Authors: Ahmad Forouzantabar, Mohammad Azadi, Alireza Alesaadi

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This paper describes a sliding mode controller for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). The dynamic of AUV model is highly nonlinear because of many factors, such as hydrodynamic drag, damping, and lift forces, Coriolis and centripetal forces, gravity and buoyancy forces, as well as forces from thruster. To address these difficulties, a nonlinear sliding mode controller is designed to approximate the nonlinear dynamics of AUV and improve trajectory tracking. Moreover, the proposed controller can profoundly attenuate the effects of uncertainties and external disturbances in the closed-loop system. Using the Lyapunov theory the boundedness of AUV tracking errors and the stability of the proposed control system are also guaranteed. Numerical simulation studies of an AUV are included to illustrate the effectiveness of the presented approach.

Keywords: lyapunov stability, autonomous underwater vehicle, sliding mode controller, electronics engineering

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Authors: Dr. Luigi Iannacci

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This research critically explores the current educational landscape with respect to special education and dominant deficit/medical model discourses that continue to forward unresponsive problematic approaches to teaching students with disabilities. Asset-oriented perspectives and social/critical models of disability are defined and explicated in order to offer alternatives to these dominant discourses. To that end, a framework that draws on Brian Camborne’s conditions of learning and applications of his work in relation to instruction conceptualize learning conditions and their significance to students with special needs. Methodologically, the research is designed as Critical Narrative Inquiry (CNI). Critical incidents, interviews, documents, artefacts etc. are drawn on and narratively constructed to explore how disability is presently configured in language, discourses, pedagogies and interactions with students deemed disabled. This data was collected using ethnographic methods and as such, through participant-observer field work that occurred directly in classrooms. This narrative approach aims to make sense of complex classroom interactions and ways of reconceptualizing approaches to students with special needs. CNI is situated in the critical paradigm and primarily concerned with culture, language and participation as issues of power in need of critique with the intent of change in the direction of social justice. Research findings highlight the ways in which Cambourne’s learning conditions, such as demonstration, approximation, engagement, responsibility, immersion, expectation, employment (transfer, use), provide a clear understanding of what is central to and constitutes a responsive and inclusive this instructional frame. Examples of what each of these conditions look like in practice are therefore offered in order to concretely demonstrate the ways in which various pedagogical choices and questions can enable classroom spaces to be responsive to the assets and challenges students with special needs have and experience. These particular approaches are also illustrated through an exploration of multiliteracies theory and pedagogy and what this research and approach allows educators to draw on, facilitate and foster in terms of the ways in which students with special needs can make sense of and demonstrate their understanding of skills, content and knowledge. The contextual information, theory, research and instructional frame focused on throughout this inquiry ultimately demonstrate what inclusive classroom spaces and practice can look like. These perspectives and conceptualizations are in stark contrast to dominant deficit driven approaches that ensure current pedagogically impoverished teaching focused on narrow, limited and limiting understandings of special needs learners and their ways of knowing and acquiring/demonstrating knowledge.

Keywords: asset-oriented approach, social/critical model of disability, conditions for learning and teaching, students with special needs

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Authors: Sumei Cai, Hong Li

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Either during water or gas injection into reservoir, in order to understand the areal flow pressure distribution underground, associated bounding deformation is prevalently monitored by ground or downhole tiltmeters. In this paper, an inverse solution to elastic response of far field displacements induced by reservoir pressure change due to flow injection was studied. Furthermore, the fundamental theory on inverse solution to elastic problem as well as its spatial smoothing approach is presented. Taking advantage of source code development based on Boundary Element Method, numerical analysis on the monitoring data of ground surface displacements to further understand the behavior of reservoir process was developed. Numerical examples were also conducted to verify the effectiveness.

Keywords: remote displacement, inverse problem, boundary element method, BEM, reservoir process

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Authors: Hande Burcu Deniz

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People in the U.S. spend a considerable portion of their time indoors. This makes it crucial to provide environments that support the well-being of people. Restorative environments aim to help people recover their cognitive resources that were spent due to intensive use of directed attention. Spending time in nature and taking a nap are two of the best ways to restore these resources. However, they are not possible to do most of the time. The problem is that many studies have revealed how nature and spending time in natural contexts can help boost restoration, but there are fewer studies conducted to understand how cognitive resources can be restored in interior settings. This study aims to explore the answer to this question: which qualities of interiors increase the restorativeness of an interior setting and how do they mediate restorativeness of an interior. To do this, a phenomenological qualitative study was conducted. The study was interested in the definition of attention restoration and the experiences of the phenomena. As the themes emerged, they were analyzed to match with Attention Restoration Theory components (being away, extent, fascination, compatibility) to examine how interior design elements mediate the restorativeness of an interior. The data was gathered from semi-structured interviews with international residents of Minnesota. The interviewees represent young professionals who work in Minnesota and often experience mental fatigue. Also, they have less emotional connections with places in Minnesota, which enabled data to be based on the physical qualities of a space rather than emotional connections. In the interviews, participants were asked about where they prefer to be when they experience mental fatigue. Next, they were asked to describe the physical qualities of the places they prefer to be with reasons. Four themes were derived from the analysis of interviews. The themes are in order according to their frequency. The first, and most common, the theme was “connection to outside”. The analysis showed that people need to be either physically or visually connected to recover from mental fatigue. Direct connection to nature was reported as preferable, whereas urban settings were the secondary preference along with interiors. The second theme emerged from the analysis was “the presence of the artwork,” which was experienced differently by the interviewees. The third theme was “amenities”. Interviews pointed out that people prefer to have the amenities that support desired activity during recovery from mental fatigue. The last theme was “aesthetics.” Interviewees stated that they prefer places that are pleasing to their eyes. Additionally, they could not get rid of the feeling of being worn out in places that are not well-designed. When we matched the themes with the four art components (being away, extent, fascination, compatibility), some of the interior qualities showed overlapping since they were experienced differently by the interviewees. In conclusion, this study showed that interior settings have restorative potential, and they are multidimensional in their experience.

Keywords: attention restoration, fatigue, interior design, qualitative study, restorative environments

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Authors: Barbara Behre, Verolien Cauberghe, Dieneke Van de Sompel

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Sustainable consumption is on the rise, yet it has still not entered the mainstream in several industries, such as the fashion industry. In online fashion contexts, sustainability cues have been used to signal the sustainable benefits of certain garments to promote sustainable consumption. These sustainable cues may focus on the ecological or social dimension of sustainability. Since sustainability, in general, relates to distant, abstract benefits, the current study aims to examine if and how psychological distance may mediate the effects of exposure to different sustainability cues on consumption outcomes. Following the framework of Construal Level Theory of Psychological Distance, reduced psychological distance renders the construal level more concrete, which may influence attitudes and subsequent behavior in situations like fashion shopping. Most studies investigated sustainability as a composite, failing to differentiate between ecological and societal aspects of sustainability. The few studies examining sustainability more in detail uncovered that environmental sustainability is rather perceived in abstract cognitive construal, whereas social sustainability is linked to concrete construal. However, the construal level affiliation of the sustainability dimensions likely is not universally applicable to different domains and stages of consumption, which further suggest a need to clarify the relationships between environmental and social sustainability dimensions and the construal level of psychological distance within fashion brand consumption. While psychological distance and construal level have been examined in the context of sustainability, these studies yielded mixed results. The inconsistent findings of past studies might be due to the context-dependence of psychological distance as inducing construal differently in diverse situations. Especially in a hedonic consumption context like online fashion shopping, the role of visual processing of information could determine behavioural outcomes as linked to situational construal. Given the influence of the mode of processing on psychological distance and construal level, the current study examines the moderating role of verbal versus non-verbal presentation of the sustainability cues. In a 3 (environmental sustainability vs. social sustainability vs. control) x 2 (non-verbal message vs. verbal message) between subjects experiment, the present study thus examines how consumers evaluate sustainable brands in online shopping contexts in terms of psychological distance and construal level, as well as the impact on brand attitudes and buying intentions. The results among 246 participants verify the differential impact of the sustainability dimensions on fashion brand purchase intent as mediated by construal level and perceived psychological distance. The ecological sustainability cue is perceived as more concrete, which might be explained by consumer bias induced by the predominance of pro-environmental sustainability messages. The verbal versus non-verbal presentation of the sustainability cue neither had a significant influence on distance perceptions and construal level nor on buying intentions. This study offers valuable contributions to the sustainable consumption literature, as well as a theoretical basis for construal-level framing as applied in sustainable fashion branding.

Keywords: construal level theory, environmental vs social sustainability, online fashion shopping, sustainable fashion

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Authors: G. Saxena, M. Kaushik

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In the present investigation, we have employed RMF+BCS (relativistic mean-field plus BCS) approach to carry out a systematic study for the ground state properties of the entire chains of even-even neutron magic nuclei represented by isotones of traditional neutron magic numbers N = 8, 20, 40, 50, 82, and 126. The main body of the results of our calculations includes the binding energy, deformation, two proton separation energies, rms radii of the proton and neutron distributions as well as the proton and neutron density profiles etc. Several of these results have been given in the form of a series of graphs for a ready reference. In addition, the possible locations of the proton and neutron drip-lines as well as the (Z,N) values for the shell closures as suggested by the detailed analyzes of the single particle spectra, and the two proton and two-neutron separation energies for the different isotonic chains are also discussed in detail.

Keywords: relativistic mean field theory, neutron magic nuclei, shell closure, separation energy, deformation

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Authors: Esam Jassim

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Supersonic nozzles are commonly used to purify natural gas in gas processing technology. As an innovated technology, it is employed to overcome the deficit of the traditional method, related to gas dynamics, thermodynamics and fluid dynamics theory. An indoor test rig is built to study the dehumidification process of moisture fluid. Humid air was chosen for the study. The working fluid was circulating in an open loop, which had provision for filtering, metering, and humidifying. A stainless steel supersonic separator is constructed together with the C-D nozzle system. The result shows that dehumidification enhances as NPR increases. This is due to the high intensity in the turbulence caused by the shock formation in the divergent section. Such disturbance strengthens the centrifugal force, pushing more particles toward the near-wall region. In return return, the pressure recovery factor, defined as the ratio of the outlet static pressure of the fluid to its inlet value, decreases with NPR.

Keywords: supersonic nozzle, dehumidification, particle separation, nozzle geometry

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Authors: Wen Po Cheng, Chen Zhao Feng, Ruey Fang Yu, Lin Jia Jun, Lin Ji Ye, Chen Yuan Wei

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Humic acid was used as the removal target for evaluating the coagulation efficiency in this study. When the coagulant ions mix with a humic acid solution, a Fluorescence quenching effect may be observed conditionally. This effect can be described by Stern-Volmer linear equation which can be used for quantifying the quenching value (Kq) of the Fluorescence quenching effect. In addition, a Complex-Formation Titration (CFT) theory was conducted and the result was used to explain the electron-neutralization capability of the coagulant (AlCl₃) at different pH. The results indicated that when pH of the ACl₃ solution was between 6 and 8, fluorescence quenching effect obviously occurred. The maximum Kq value was found to be 102,524 at pH 6. It means that the higher the Kq value is, the better complex reaction between a humic acid and aluminum salts will be. Through the Kq value study, the optimum pH can be quantified when the humic acid solution is coagulated with aluminum ions.

Keywords: humic acid, fluorescence quenching effect, complex reaction, titration

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Authors: Fazl E. Ahad, Shi Dongyan, Anees Ur Rehman

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Plates are one of the most important structural components used in many industries like aerospace, marine and various other engineering fields and thus motivate designers and engineers to study the vibrational characteristics of these structures. This paper is a review of existing literature on vibration analysis of plates. Focus has been kept on prominent studies related to isotropic plates based on Mindlin plate theory; however few citations on orthotropic plates and higher order shear deformation theories have also been included. All citations are in English language. This review is aimed to provide contemporarily relevant survey of papers on vibrational characteristics of thick plates and will be useful for scientists, designers and researchers to locate important and relevant literature/research quickly.

Keywords: mindlin plates, vibrations, arbitrary boundary conditions, mode shapes, natural frequency

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Authors: Bingqing Chen

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The Opium War unlocked the gate of China. Since then, modern western culture has been imported strongly and spread throughout this Asian country. The monologue of traditional Chinese culture in the past has been replaced by the hustle and bustle of multiculturalism. In the field of music, starting from school music, China, a country without the concept of composition, was deeply influenced by western culture and professional music composition, and entered the era of professional music composition. Recognizing the importance of national culture, a group of insightful artists began to try to add ‘China’ to musical composition. However, due to the special historical origin of Chinese professional musical composition and the three times of cultural nihilism in China, professional musical composition at this time failed to interpret the deep language structure of local culture within Chinese traditional culture, but only regarded Chinese traditional music as a ‘melody material library.’ At this time, the cross-cultural composition still takes Western music as its ‘norm,’ while our own music culture only exists as the sound of the contrast of Western music. However, after reading scores extensively, watching video performances, and interviewing several active composers, we found that at least in the past 30 years, China has created some works that can be called intercultural music. In these kinds of music, composers put Chinese and Western, traditional and modern in an almost equal position to have a dialogue based on their deep understanding and respect for the two cultures. This kind of music connects two music worlds, and links the two cultural and ideological worlds behind it, and communicates and grows together. This paper chose the works of three composers with different educational backgrounds, and pay attention to how composers can make a dialogue at the organizational structure level of their works. Based on the strategies adopted by composers in structuring their works, this paper expounds on how the composer's music procedure shows intercultural in terms of whole sound effects and cultural symbols. By actively participating in this intercultural practice, composers resorting to various musical and extra-musical procedures to arrive at the so-called ‘innovation within tradition.’ Through the dialogue, we can activate the space of creative thinking and explore the potential contained in culture. This interdisciplinary research promotes the rethinking of the possibility of innovation in contemporary Chinese intercultural music composition, spanning the fields of sound studies, dialogue theory, cultural research, music theory, and so on. Recently, China is calling for actively promoting 'the construction of Chinese music canonization,’ expecting to form a particular music style to show national-cultural identity. In the era of globalization, it is possible to form a brand-new Chinese music style through intercultural composition, but it is a question about talents, and the key lies in how composers do it. There is no recipe for the formation of the Chinese music style, only the composers constantly trying and tries to solve problems in their works.

Keywords: dialogism, intercultural music, national-cultural identity, organization/structure, sound

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Authors: Silmy A. Humaira'

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There is an issue about Asian students including Indonesian students that tend to behave passively in the classroom and depend on the teachers’ instruction. Regarding this statement, this study attempts to address the Indonesian high school students’ attitudes on whether they have initiative and be responsible for their learning out of the classroom and if so, why. Therefore, 30 high school students were asked to fill out the questionnaires and interviewed in order to figure out their attitudes towards self-directed learning. The descriptive qualitative research analysis adapted Knowles’s theory (1975) about Self-directed learning (SDL) to analyze the data. The findings show that the students have a potential to possess self-directed learning through ICT, but they have difficulties in choosing appropriate learning strategy, doing self-assessment and conducting self-reflection. Therefore, this study supports the teacher to promote self-directed learning instruction for successful learning by assisting students in dealing with those aforementioned problems. Furthermore, it is expected to be a beneficial reference which gives new insights on the self-directed learning practice in specific context.

Keywords: ICT, learning autonomy, students’ attitudes, self-directed learning

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Authors: Himanshu Dehra

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This paper presents a paradigm for characterization and checking of human noise behavior. The definitions of ‘Noise’ and ‘Noise Behavior’ are devised. The concept of characterization and examining of Noise Behavior is obtained from the proposed paradigm of Psychoacoustics. The measurement of human noise behavior is discussed through definitions of noise sources and noise measurements. The noise sources, noise measurement equations and noise filters are further illustrated through examples. The theory and significance of solar energy acoustics is presented for life and its activities. Human comfort and health are correlated with human brain through physiological responses and noise protection. Examples of heat stress, intense heat, sweating and evaporation are also enumerated.

Keywords: human brain, noise behavior, noise characterization, noise filters, physiological responses, psychoacoustics

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Authors: Zhihan Li

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Nowadays, most universities use the course enrollment system considering students’ registration orders. However, the students’ preference level to certain courses is also one important factor to consider. In this research, the possibility of applying a preference-first system has been discussed and analyzed compared to the order-first system. A bipartite graph is applied to resemble the relationship between students and courses they tend to register. With the graph set up, we apply Ford-Fulkerson (F.F.) Algorithm to maximize parings between two sets of nodes, in our case, students and courses. Two models are proposed in this paper: the one considered students’ order first, and the one considered students’ preference first. By comparing and contrasting the two models, we highlight the usability of models which potentially leads to better designs for school course registration systems.

Keywords: bipartite graph, Ford-Fulkerson (F.F.) algorithm, graph theory, maximum matching

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Authors: Asghar Ali, Narjis Khatoon

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This study focuses on the presence of wage differentials in Pakistan and also on the determinants that originate it. Since there are a smaller number of studies that are conducted on this topic in Pakistan, the current study aims to contribute in bridging the existing gap in this particular research genre. Hence, this study not only generates the desired results specific focus but it also contributes to the overall empirical work on the Pakistan economy. The preceding works which have been done to research wage determinants and wage differentials have used numerous different theories and approaches to reach their goals. The current study, in order to analyze the determinants of wage differentials in the developing economy, deals with the study of a number of such theories and approaches that are supposed as being beneficial for the purpose. This study undertakes the explanation of wage differentials in Pakistan by focusing on wage differentials in public and private sectors, formal and informal sectors, and major occupational groups. The study uses 'Wage Theory' to examine wage differentials among male and female employees in public and private sectors on varied levels of working conditions. This study also uses 'Segmented Labor Market Theory' to determine the wage differential in both public and private sectors, formal and informal, and major occupational groups in Pakistan. So the author has used various econometric techniques in order to explain and test these theories and to find out the required results. This study has employed seven different cross-sectional Labour Force Surveys for the time period between 2006-07 to 2012-13. Gender equality is not only a policy reform agenda for developing countries but also an important goal of Millennium Development Goals. This study investigates the nexus between wage inequality and economic growth and detects co-integration between gender wage differential and economic growth using ARDL bound test. It is confirmed from the empirical results that there exists long-run relationship between economic growth and wage differential. Our study indicated that half of the total female employees from fourteen major cities of Pakistan were employed in the public sector. Out of total female employees in private sector, 66 percent are employed in the formal sector, and 33 percent are working in the informal sector. Results also indicated that both men and women were paid more in the public sector compared to the private sector counterparts. Among the total female employees, only 9 percent had received any formal training, 52% were married and average years of schooling were 11 years. Further, our findings regarding wage differential between genders indicate that wage gap is lower in public sector as compared to private sector. In proportion, gender wage ratio was found to be 0.96, 0.62 and 0.66 in public, formal private and informal private sectors respectively. This suggests that in this case, private sector female employees with the same pay structure are compensated at a lower endowments rate as then public sector workers as compared to their counter parts.

Keywords: wage differentials, formal, informal, economic growth

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Authors: Ibrahim Sani

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This paper examines the use of English discourse markers with the aim of investigating their communicative functions on Facebook as used by UMYUK members of academic staff. The paper uses the qualitative approach and relevance theory by Sperber and Wilson (1995) to highlight and examine DMs in different communicative contexts. In the course of data collection, five (5) academic staff from the five faculties of the university who are already Facebook friends of the researcher are used as the participants with their consent. The paper examines the communicative functions of English DMs among UMYUK academic staff on Facebook and reveals a number of communicative functions used in different contexts. One of the major findings indicates that 'contrastive markers' such as 'but', 'however', 'although' etc. are the dominant communicative functions employed by UMYUK academic staff on Facebook with 42% occurrence; it also shows that a single DM can function differently in the same linguistic environment.

Keywords: role, communicative, discourse markers, facebook, academic staff

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Authors: Fazeelat Duran, Darren Bishopp, Jessica Woodhams

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Psychological contract refers to the perceptions of an employee and their employer regarding their mutual obligations towards each other. The rationale for applying the psychological contract theory in UK policing was to investigate its impact on their wellbeing because the psychological contract is a useful tool in identifying factors having a negative effect on the wellbeing of employees. The paper will report on a study, which examined how occupational stressors and psychological contract violation may influence the wellbeing (e.g. Physical Stress and General Health) of a sample of police officers (N=127). The design of the study was cross-sectional and based on data collected through a self-report survey. The results of hierarchical regression analyses and structural equation model, suggest that occupational stressors and psychological contract violation play a critical role in both physical and psychological health. The implications of these findings and the utility of considering the psychological contract will be discussed.

Keywords: police officers, psychological contract, occupational stressors, wellbeing

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Authors: Boukhris Lahouari, Bouchetara Mostefa

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The active safety of a vehicle is mainly influenced by the properties of the installed braking system. With the increase in road traffic density and travel speeds, increasingly stringent requirements are placed on the vehicle's behaviour during braking. The achievable decelerations are limited by the physical aspect characterized by the coefficient of friction between the tires and the ground. As a result, it follows that an optimized distribution of braking forces becomes necessary for a better use of friction coefficients. This objective could only be achieved if sufficient knowledge is available on the theory of vehicle dynamics during braking and on current standards for the approval of braking systems. This will facilitate the development of a braking force calculation algorithm that will enable an optimized distribution of braking forces to be achieved. Operating safety is conditioned by the requirements of efficiency, progressiveness, regularity or fidelity of a braking system without obviously neglecting the recommendations imposed by the legislator.

Keywords: brake force distribution, distribution diagram, friction coefficient, brake by wire

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Authors: Muna Tabuni

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The paper contains an investigation of the notion of Q algebras. A brief introduction to quantum mechanics is given, in that systems the state defined by a vector in a complex vector space H which have Hermitian inner product property. H may be finite or infinite-dimensional. In quantum mechanics, operators must be hermitian. These facts are saved by Lie algebra operators but not by those of quantum algebras. A Hilbert space H consists of a set of vectors and a set of scalars. Lie group is a differentiable topological space with group laws given by differentiable maps. A Lie algebra has been introduced. Q-algebra has been defined. A brief introduction to BCI-algebra is given. A BCI sub algebra is introduced. A brief introduction to BCK=BCH-algebra is given. Every BCI-algebra is a BCH-algebra. Homomorphism maps meanings are introduced. Homomorphism maps between two BCK algebras are defined. The mathematical formulations of quantum mechanics can be expressed using the theory of unitary group representations. A generalization of Q algebras has been introduced, and their properties have been considered. The Q- quantum algebra has been studied, and various examples have been given.

Keywords: Q-algebras, BCI, BCK, BCH-algebra, quantum mechanics

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Authors: Thanawit Buafai, Siyathorn Khunon

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This paper aims to explore the satisfaction levels of tourism product components on the island of Samui by studying the cultural dimension relationships of Hofsted’s classic theory. Both the six Hofsted cultural dimensions and tourism production satisfaction measures have been of interest worldwide. Therefore, the challenge of this study is to re-confirm previous research results in the ever-changing current contexts of the modern globalized business era. Self-rated questionnaires were employed to collect data from six nationalities of tourists in Samui, totaling 386 samples. The reliability of this research methodology was 0.967. Correlation was applied to analyze the relationships. The results indicate that Masculinity is significantly related to tourism destination satisfaction for every factor, while the other five cultural dimensions are related to some factors of tourism satisfaction. Surprisingly, tourist satisfaction toward the bar/restaurant factor is significantly correlated with all six cultural dimensions.

Keywords: cultural dimensions, tourism products, Samui, Thailand

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Authors: Astrid de Leeuw, Pierre Valois

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Environmental education is the key to enhancing or changing students’ ways of thinking and acting in order to create an environmentally robust future for all. The present study investigates the beliefs of 812 primary school students, which merit consideration when developing educational interventions. Results of multiple regression analyses reveal that educational interventions should focus on promoting students’ feelings of control over pro-environmental behaviors (PEB). For example, schools could provide recycling bins on the premises. Furthermore, it is critical to develop positive attitudes in students by stressing the various benefits of PEB for keeping our planet clean and protecting wildlife. Unfortunately, our results indicate that students believe that PEB is boring and annoying. Suggestions are offered for making PEB more interesting and relevant. Further research is needed to test the effectiveness of interventions based on the present results.

Keywords: pro-environmental behavior, primary school students, theory of planned behavior, beliefs, educational interventions

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Authors: Anton Stadler, Thorsten Ike

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In this paper, we present a video based smoke detection algorithm based on TVL1 optical flow estimation. The main part of the algorithm is an accumulating system for motion angles and upward motion speed of the flow field. We optimized the usage of TVL1 flow estimation for the detection of smoke with very low smoke density. Therefore, we use adapted flow parameters and estimate the flow field on difference images. We show in theory and in evaluation that this improves the performance of smoke detection significantly. We evaluate the smoke algorithm using videos with different smoke densities and different backgrounds. We show that smoke detection is very reliable in varying scenarios. Further we verify that our algorithm is very robust towards crowded scenes disturbance videos.

Keywords: low density, optical flow, upward smoke motion, video based smoke detection

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Authors: Matodzi Rapalalani

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In context with Spencer's (2018) classic labelling theory, labels influence the perceptions of both the individual and other members of society. That is, once labelled, the individual act in ways that confirm the stereotypes attached to the label. This study, therefore, investigates the understanding of gendered labelling and its effects on Vhavenda women. Gender socialization and patriarchy have been viewed as the core causes of the problem. The literature presented the development of gendered labelling, forms of it, and other aspects. A qualitative method of data collection was used in this study, and semi-structural interviews were conducted. A total of 6 participants were used as it is easy to deal with a small sample. Thematic analysis was used as the data was interpreted and analyzed. Ethical issues such as confidentiality, informed consent, and voluntary participation were considered. Through the analysis and data interpretation, causes such as lack of Christian values, insecurities, and lust were mentioned as well as some of the effects such as frustrations, increased divorce, and low self-esteem.

Keywords: gender, naming, Venda, women, African culture

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Authors: Ashley Venerable, Rosario Tatlonghari

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This study identified how college deaf students of Bartimaeus Center for Alternative Learning in Tiaong, Quezon, Philippines view development using visual communication techniques and generating themes from responses. Complete enumeration was employed. Guided by Constructivist Theory of Perception, past experiences and stored information influenced perception. These themes of development emerged: social development; pleasant environment; interpersonal relationships; availability of resources; employment; infrastructure development; values; and peace and security. Using the National Economic and Development Authority development indicators, findings showed the deaf students’ views on development were similar from the mainstream views. Responses also became more meaningful through visual communication techniques.

Keywords: deaf, development, perception, development indicators, visual communication

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Authors: Dao Phuong Nam, Do Trong Tan, Pham Tam Thanh, Le Duy Tung, Tran Hoang Anh

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This paper considers the problem of cascade control system for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Due to the complicated modelling technique of UAV, it is necessary to separate them into two subsystems. The proposed cascade control structure is a hierarchical scheme including a robust control for inner subsystem based on H infinity theory and trajectory generator using genetic algorithm (GA), outer loop control law based on multi-parametric programming (MPP) technique to overcome the disadvantage of a big amount of calculations. Simulation results are presented to show that the equivalent path has been found and obtained by proposed cascade control scheme.

Keywords: genetic algorithm, GA, H infinity, multi-parametric programming, MPP, unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs

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Authors: S. Alina Wang

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A Gibsonian approach is used to understand the existential dimensions of the human ecological niche. Then, this existential-Gibsonian framework is applied to rethinking Hacking’s historical analysis of multiple personality disorder. This research culminates in a generalized account of psychiatric illness from an enactivist lens. In conclusion, reflections on the implications of this account on approaches to psychiatric treatment are mentioned. J.J. Gibson’s theory of affordances centered on affordances of sensorimotor varieties, which guide basic behaviors relative to organisms’ vital needs and physiological capacities (1979). Later theorists, notably Neisser (1988) and Rietveld (2014), expanded on the theory of affordances to account for uniquely human activities relative to the emotional, intersubjective, cultural, and narrative aspects of the human ecological niche. This research shows that these affordances are structured by what Haugeland (1998) calls existential commitments, which draws on Heidegger’s notion of dasein (1927) and Merleau-Ponty’s account of existential freedom (1945). These commitments organize the existential affordances that fill an individual’s environment and guide their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. This system of a priori existential commitments and a posteriori affordances is called existential enactivism. For humans, affordances do not only elicit motor responses and appear as objects with instrumental significance. Affordances also, and possibly primarily, determine so-called affective and cognitive activities and structure the wide range of kinds (e.g., instrumental, aesthetic, ethical) of significances of objects found in the world. Then existential enactivism is applied to understanding the psychiatric phenomenon of multiple personality disorder (precursor of the current diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder). A reinterpretation of Hacking’s (1998) insights into the history of this particular disorder and his generalizations on the constructed nature of most psychiatric illness is taken on. Enactivist approaches sensitive to existential phenomenology can provide a deeper understanding of these matters. Conceptualizing psychiatric illness as strictly a disorder in the head (whether parsed as a disorder of brain chemicals or meaning-making capacities encoded in psychological modules) is incomplete. Rather, psychiatric illness must also be understood as a disorder in the world, or in the interconnected networks of existential affordances that regulate one’s emotional, intersubjective, and narrative capacities. All of this suggests that an adequate account of psychiatric illness must involve (1) the affordances that are the sources of existential hindrance, (2) the existential commitments structuring these affordances, and (3) the conditions of these existential commitments. Approaches to treatment of psychiatric illness would be more effective by centering on the interruption of normalized behaviors corresponding to affordances targeted as sources of hindrance, the development of new existential commitments, and the practice of new behaviors that erect affordances relative to these reformed commitments.

Keywords: affordance, enaction, phenomenology, psychiatry, psychopathology

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Authors: Susie Pryor, Palak Sadhwani

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The purpose of this research is to provide the foundations for a broad research agenda examining the role loneliness plays in entrepreneurship. While qualitative research in entrepreneurship incidentally captures the existence of loneliness as a part of the lived reality of entrepreneurs, to the authors’ knowledge, no academic work has to date explored this construct in this context. Moreover, many individuals reporting high levels of loneliness (women, ethnic minorities, immigrants, low income, low education) reflect those who are currently driving small business growth in the United States. Loneliness is a persistent state of emotional distress which results from feelings of estrangement and rejection or develops in the absence of social relationships and interactions. Empirical work finds links between loneliness and depression, suicide and suicide ideation, anxiety, hostility and passiveness, lack of communication and adaptability, shyness, poor social skills and unrealistic social perceptions, self-doubts, fear of rejection, and negative self-evaluation. Lonely individuals have been found to exhibit lower levels of self-esteem, higher levels of introversion, lower affiliative tendencies, less assertiveness, higher sensitivity to rejection, a heightened external locus of control, intensified feelings of regret and guilt over past events and rigid and overly idealistic goals concerning the future. These characteristics are likely to impact entrepreneurs and their work. Research identifies some key dangers of loneliness. Loneliness damages human love and intimacy, can disturb and distract individuals from channeling creative and effective energies in a meaningful way, may result in the formation of premature, poorly thought out and at times even irresponsible decisions, and produce hard and desensitized individuals, with compromised health and quality of life concerns. The current study utilizes meta-analysis and text analytics to distinguish loneliness from other related constructs (e.g., social isolation) and categorize antecedents and effects of loneliness across subpopulations. This work has the potential to materially contribute to the field of entrepreneurship by cleanly defining constructs and providing foundational background for future research. It offers a richer understanding of the evolution of loneliness and related constructs over the life cycle of entrepreneurial start-up and development. Further, it suggests preliminary avenues for exploration and methods of discovery that will result in knowledge useful to the field of entrepreneurship. It is useful to both entrepreneurs and those work with them as well as academics interested in the topics of loneliness and entrepreneurship. It adopts a grounded theory approach.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, grounded theory, loneliness, meta-analysis

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Authors: Merve Uzuner Sahin, Kumru D. Atalay, Berna Dengiz

Abstract:

In today’s competitive market, there are many alternative products that can be used in similar manner and purpose. Therefore, the utility of the product is an important issue for the preferability of the brand. This utility could be measured in terms of its functionality, durability, reliability. These all are affected by the system capabilities. Reliability is an important system design criteria for the manufacturers to be able to have high availability. Availability is the probability that a system (or a component) is operating properly to its function at a specific point in time or a specific period of times. System availability provides valuable input to estimate the production rate for the company to realize the production plan. When considering only the corrective maintenance downtime of the system, mean time between failure (MTBF) and mean time to repair (MTTR) are used to obtain system availability. Also, the MTBF and MTTR values are important measures to improve system performance by adopting suitable maintenance strategies for reliability engineers and practitioners working in a system. Failure and repair time probability distributions of each component in the system should be known for the conventional availability analysis. However, generally, companies do not have statistics or quality control departments to store such a large amount of data. Real events or situations are defined deterministically instead of using stochastic data for the complete description of real systems. A fuzzy set is an alternative theory which is used to analyze the uncertainty and vagueness in real systems. The aim of this study is to present a novel approach to compute system availability using representation of MTBF and MTTR in fuzzy numbers. Based on the experience in the system, it is decided to choose 3 different spread of MTBF and MTTR such as 15%, 20% and 25% to obtain lower and upper limits of the fuzzy numbers. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed method is the first application that is used fuzzy MTBF and fuzzy MTTR for fuzzy system availability estimation. This method is easy to apply in any repairable production system by practitioners working in industry. It is provided that the reliability engineers/managers/practitioners could analyze the system performance in a more consistent and logical manner based on fuzzy availability. This paper presents a real case study of a repairable multi-stage production line in lead-acid battery production factory in Turkey. The following is focusing on the considered wet-charging battery process which has a higher production level than the other types of battery. In this system, system components could exist only in two states, working or failed, and it is assumed that when a component in the system fails, it becomes as good as new after repair. Instead of classical methods, using fuzzy set theory and obtaining intervals for these measures would be very useful for system managers, practitioners to analyze system qualifications to find better results for their working conditions. Thus, much more detailed information about system characteristics is obtained.

Keywords: availability analysis, battery production system, fuzzy sets, triangular fuzzy numbers (TFNs)

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Authors: Sadiq Aminu, Ahmed Lamido

Abstract:

This research studies Barack Obama’s second inaugural speech using Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG). SFG is a text grammar which describes how language is used, so that the meaning of the text can be better understood. The primary source of data in this research work is Barack Obama’s second inaugural speech which was obtained from the internet. The analysis of the speech was based on the ideational and textual metafunctions of Systemic Functional Grammar. Specifically, the researcher analyses the Process Types and Participants (ideational) and the Theme/Rheme (textual). It was found that material process (process of doing) was the most frequently used ‘Process type’ and ‘We’ which refers to the people of America was the frequently used ‘Theme’. Application of the SFG theory, therefore, gives a better meaning to Barack Obama’s speech.

Keywords: ideational, metafunction, rheme, textual, theme

Procedia PDF Downloads 159

Authors: César Garza

Abstract:

In supervised binary classification and regression problems, it is well-known that learnability is equivalent to a uniform convergence of the hypothesis class, and if a problem is learnable, it is learnable by empirical risk minimization. For the general learning setting of unsupervised learning tasks, there are non-trivial learning problems where uniform convergence does not hold. We present here the task of learning centers of mass with an extra feature that “activates” some of the coordinates over the unit ball in a Hilbert space. We show that the learning problem is learnable under a stable RLM rule. We introduce a family of distributions over the domain space with some mild restrictions for which the sample complexity of uniform convergence for these problems must grow logarithmically with the dimension of the Hilbert space. If we take this dimension to infinity, we obtain a learnable problem for which the uniform convergence property fails for a vast family of distributions.

Keywords: statistical learning theory, learnability, uniform convergence, stability, regularized loss minimization

Procedia PDF Downloads 130