Search results for: gender based violence

Authors: Tesfaye Alamirew, Delele Worku, Solomon W. Fanta, Nigus Gabbiye

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Recently graphen based nanocomposites are become an emerging research areas for fabrication of enzymatic biosensors due to their property of large surface area, conductivity and biocompatibility. This review summarizes recent research reports of graphen based nanocomposites for the fabrication of glucose and ethanol enzymatic biosensors. The newly fabricated enzyme free microwave treated nitrogen doped graphen (MN-d-GR) had provided highest sensitivity towards glucose and GCE/rGO/AuNPs/ADH composite had provided far highest sensitivity towards ethanol compared to other reported graphen based nanocomposites. The MWCNT/GO/GOx and GCE/ErGO/PTH/ADH nanocomposites had also enhanced wide linear range for glucose and ethanol detection respectively. Generally, graphen based nanocomposite enzymatic biosensors had fast direct electron transfer rate, highest sensitivity and wide linear detection ranges during glucose and ethanol sensing.

Keywords: glucose, ethanol, enzymatic biosensor, graphen, nanocomposite

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Authors: Szerena Vajkovszki

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Our worldwide aging society, especially in developed countries, including members of EU, raise sophisticated sociological and economic issues and challenges to be met. As declining fertility has outstanding influence underlying this trend, numerous studies have attempted to identify, describe, measure and interpret contributing factors of the fertility rate, out of which relatively few revealed the impact of religion. Identified, examined and influential factors affecting birth rate as stated by the present scientific publications are more than a dozen out of which religious beliefs, traditions, and cultural norms were examined first with a special focus on abortion and forms of birth control. Nevertheless, connected to religion, not only these topics are crucial regarding fertility, but many others as well. Among many religious guidelines, we can separate two major categories: direct and indirect. The aim of this research was to understand what are the most crucial identified (family values, gender related behaviors, religious sentiments) and not yet identified most influential contributing religious factors. Above identifying these direct or indirect factors, it is also important to understand to what extent and how do they influence fertility, which requires a wider (inter-discipline) perspective. As proved by previous studies religion has also an influential role on health, mental state, well-being, working activity and many other components that are also related to fertility rates. All these components are inter-related. Hence direct and indirect religious effects can only be well understood if we figure out all necessary fields and their interaction. With the help of semi-structured opened interviews taking place in different countries, it was showed that indeed Buddhism has significant direct and indirect effect on fertility. Hence the initial hypothesis was proved. However, the interviews showed an overall positive effect; the results could only serve for a general understanding of how Buddhism affects fertility. Evolution of Buddhism’s direct and indirect influence may vary in different nations and circumstances according to their specific environmental attributes. According to the local patterns, with special regard to women’s position and role in the society, outstandingly indirect influences could show diversifications. So it is advisory to investigate more for a deeper and clearer understanding of how Buddhism function in different socioeconomic circumstances. For this purpose, a specific and detailed analysis was developed from recent related researches about women’s position (including family roles and economic activity) in Hungary with the intention to be able to have a complex vision of crucial socioeconomic factors influencing fertility. Further interviews and investigations are to be done in order to show a complex vision of Buddhism’s direct and indirect effect on fertility in Hungary to be able to support recommendations and policies pointing to higher fertility rates in the field of social policies. The present research could serve as a general starting point or a common basis for further specific national investigations.

Keywords: Buddhism, children, fertility, gender roles, religion, women

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Authors: Joel Zapata

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Chicana/o Activism in the Southern Plains Through Time and Space, a digital history project available at PlainsMovement.com, helps reveal an understudied portion of the Chicana/o Civil Rights Movement: the way it unfolded on the Southern Plains. The project centers around an approachable interactive map and timeline along with a curated collection of materials. Therefore, the project provides a digital museum experience that has not emerged within the region’s museums. That is, this digital history project takes scholarly research to the wider public, making it is also a publicly facing history project. In this way, the project adds to both scholarly and socially significant conversations, showing that the region was home to a burgeoning wing of the Chicana/o Movement and that instances of police brutality largely spurred this wing of the social justice movement. Moreover, the curated collection of materials demonstrates that police brutality united the plains’ Mexican population across political ideology, a largely overlooked aspect within the study of Mexican American civil rights movements. Such a finding can be of use today since contemporary Latina/o social justice organizations generally ignore policing issues even amid a rise in national awareness regarding police abuse. In making history accessible to Mexican origin and Latina/o communities, these same communities may in-turn use the knowledge gained from historical research towards the betterment of their social positions—the foundational goal of Chicana/o history and the related field of Chicana/o Studies. Ultimately, this digital history project is intended to draw visitors to further explore the Chicana/o Civil Rights Movement within and beyond the plains.

Keywords: Chicana/o Movement, digital history, police brutality, newspapers, protests, student activism

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Authors: Nkatow Mafany Christian

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No other period in human history has offered such great opportunities for grievances not only to last long but also to be manifested across international boundaries. This state of affairs is likely a common feature of the advent of social media. The Anglophone Question in Cameroon has been a problem of poor constitutional arrangements that can be traced to 1961 when the former French Cameroon reunified with former British Southern Cameroons following a plebiscite in which the latter overwhelmingly voted to reunify with the former. Though Southern/Anglophone Cameroons complained of perceived marginalization and an attempt by the majority French section to assimilate them, the manifestation was subtle and took place only through protests, petitions, strikes movements and demonstrations. However, with the advent of social media, a new cream of leaders emerged in the diaspora, including the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, to champion the manifestations leading to violence and conflicts that have bedeviled the region since 2017. The feeling of political subjugation, economic exploitation, social suppression and cultural assimilation among Anglophone Cameroonians united them under diaspora leaders against the government of Cameroon, calling for the creation of a separate state for Anglophones. This paper draws from this lead-up to analyze the current Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon in the light of the Grievance Theory and Transnationalism. The paper makes an appeal to field experience, interviews, official sources, documentation, and the internet to succor its central thesis. From the fertility of its sources, the paper submits that social media is a potent source of conflicts and makes nonsense of the principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity by its capacity to promote the transnational manifestation of grievances.

Keywords: grievance, transnationalism, anglophone crisis, Cameroon, crisis and social media

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Authors: Safa Lazzem, Faouzi Jilani

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The aim of this research is to investigate the impact of diversification strategy on the nature of the relationship between leverage and accrual-based earnings management through panel-estimation techniques based on a sample of 162 nonfinancial French firms indexed in CAC All-Tradable during the period from 2006 to 2012. The empirical results show that leverage increases encourage managers to manipulate earnings management. Our findings prove that the diversification strategy provides the needed context for this accounting practice to be possible in highly diversified firms. In addition, the results indicate that diversification moderates the relationship between leverage and accrual-based earnings management by changing the nature and the sign of this relationship.

Keywords: diversification, earnings management, leverage, panel-estimation techniques

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Authors: Arsalan Hassan Pour, Mansoureh Jeihani, Samira Ahangari

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Distracted driving has been one of the most integral concerns surrounding our daily use of vehicles since the invention of the automobile. While much attention has been recently given to cell phones related distraction, commercial billboards along roads are also candidates for drivers' visual and cognitive distractions, as they may take drivers’ eyes from the road and their minds off the driving task to see, perceive and think about the billboard’s content. Using a driving simulator and a head-mounted eye-tracking system, speed change, acceleration, deceleration, throttle response, collision, lane changing, and offset from the center of the lane data along with gaze fixation duration and frequency data were collected in this study. Some 92 participants from a fairly diverse sociodemographic background drove on a simulated freeway in Baltimore, Maryland area and were exposed to three different billboards to investigate the effects of billboards on drivers’ behavior. Participants glanced at the billboards several times with different frequencies, the maximum of which occurred on the billboard with the highest cognitive load. About 74% of the participants didn’t look at billboards for more than two seconds at each glance except for the billboard with a short visible area. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to find the variations in driving behavior when they are invisible, readable, and post billboards area. The results show a slight difference in speed, throttle, brake, steering velocity, and lane changing, among different areas. Brake force and deviation from the center of the lane increased in the readable area in comparison with the visible area, and speed increased right after each billboard. The results indicated that billboards have a significant effect on driving performance and visual attention based on their content and visibility status. Generalized linear model (GLM) analysis showed no connection between participants’ age and driving experience with gaze duration. However, the visible distance of the billboard, gender, and billboard content had a significant effect on gaze duration.

Keywords: ANOVA, billboards, distracted driving, drivers' behavior, driving simulator, eye-Tracking system, GLM

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Authors: El Asnaoui Khalid, Aksasse Brahim, Ouanan Mohammed

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In this paper, we are interested in the problem of finding similar images in a large database. For this purpose we propose a new algorithm based on a combination of the 2-D histogram intersection in the HSV space and statistical moments. The proposed histogram is based on a 3x3 window and not only on the intensity of the pixel. This approach can overcome the drawback of the conventional 1-D histogram which is ignoring the spatial distribution of pixels in the image, while the statistical moments are used to escape the effects of the discretisation of the color space which is intrinsic to the use of histograms. We compare the performance of our new algorithm to various methods of the state of the art and we show that it has several advantages. It is fast, consumes little memory and requires no learning. To validate our results, we apply this algorithm to search for similar images in different image databases.

Keywords: 2-D histogram, statistical moments, indexing, similarity distance, histograms intersection

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Authors: Ali Naghshineh, Ashutosh Bagchi

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Performance-based seismic design concepts are increasingly being adopted in various jurisdictions. While the National Building Code of Canada (NBCC) is not fully performance-based, it provides some features of a performance-based code, such as displacement control and objective-based solutions. Performance evaluation is an important part of a performance-based design. In this paper, the seismic performance of a set of code-designed 4, 8 and 12 story moment resisting concrete frames located in Victoria, BC, in the western part of Canada at different hazard levels namely, SLE (Service Level Event), DLE (Design Level Event) and MCE (Maximum Considered Event) has been studied. The seismic performance of these buildings has been evaluated based on FEMA 356 and ATC 72 procedures, and the nonlinear time history analysis. Pushover analysis has been used to investigate the different performance levels of these buildings and adjust their design based on the corresponding target displacements. Since pushover analysis ignores the higher mode effects, nonlinear dynamic time history using a set of ground motion records has been performed. Different types of ground motion records, such as crustal and subduction earthquake records have been used for the dynamic analysis to determine their effects. Results obtained from push over analysis on inter-story drift, displacement, shear and overturning moment are compared to those from the dynamic analysis.

Keywords: seismic performance., performance-based design, concrete moment resisting frame, crustal earthquakes, subduction earthquakes

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Authors: Mark K. Johnson

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Arvo Pärt has composed over 80 text-based compositions based on nine different languages. But prior to 2015, it was not publicly known what texts the composer used in composing a number of his non-vocal works, nor the language of those texts. Because of this lack of information, few if any musical scholars have illustrated in any detail how textual structure applies to any of Pärt’s instrumental compositions. However, in early 2015, the Arvo Pärt Centre in Estonia published In Principio, a compendium of the texts Pärt has used to derive many of the parameters of his text-based compositions. This paper provides the first detailed analysis of the relationship between structural aspects of the Church Slavonic Eastern Orthodox text of Psalm 112 and the musical parameters that Pärt used when composing the string orchestral work Psalom. It demonstrates that Pärt’s text-based compositions are carefully crafted works, and that evidence of the presence of the ‘invisible’ hand of the composer can be found within every aspect of the underpinning structures, at the more elaborate middle ground level, and even within surface aspects of these works. Based on the analysis of Psalom, it is evident that the text Pärt selected for Psalom informed many of his decisions regarding the musical structures, parameters and processes that he deployed in composing this non-vocal text-based work. Many of these composerly decisions in relation to these various aspects cannot be fathomed without access to, and an understanding of, the text associated with the work.

Keywords: Arvo Pärt, minimalism, psalom, text-based process music

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Authors: Leah Wilck

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Eyewitness identification is arguably one of the most utilized practices within our legal system; however, exoneration cases indicate that this practice may lead to accuracy and conviction errors. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the cross-race effect, the phenomena in which people are able to more easily and accurately identify faces from within their racial category, on the accuracy of eyewitness identification. Participants watched three separate videos of a perpetrator trying to steal a bicycle. In each video, the perpetrator was of a different race and gender. Participants watched a video where the perpetrator was a Black male, a White male, and a White female. Following the completion of watching each video, participants were asked to recall everything they could about the perpetrator they witnessed. The initial results of the study did not find the expected cross-race effect impacted the eyewitness identification accuracy. These surprising results are discussed in terms of cross-race bias and recognition theory as well as applied implications.

Keywords: cross race effect, eyewitness identification, own-race bias, racial profiling

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Authors: Imen Elleuch, Wael Ouarda, Gargouri Bilel

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We proposes in this paper a Deep Learning based approach to classify text in order to enrich an Arabic ontology based on the objects classes of Gaston Gross. Those object classes are defined by taking into account the syntactic and semantic features of the treated language. Thus, our proposed approach is a hybrid one. In fact, it is based on the one hand on the object classes that represents a knowledge based-approach on classification of text and in the other hand it uses the deep learning approach that use the word embedding-based-approach to classify text. We have applied our proposed approach on a corpus constructed from an Arabic dictionary. The obtained semantic classification of text will enrich the Arabic objects classes ontology. In fact, new classes can be added to the ontology or an expansion of the features that characterizes each object class can be updated. The obtained results are compared to a similar work that treats the same object with a classical linguistic approach for the semantic classification of text. This comparison highlight our hybrid proposed approach that can be ameliorated by broaden the dataset used in the deep learning process.

Keywords: deep-learning approach, object-classes, semantic classification, Arabic

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Authors: Okike Benjamin

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Terrorism is the use of violence and threat to intimidate or coerce a person, group, society or even government especially for political purposes. Terrorism may be a way of resisting government by some group who may feel marginalized. It could also be a way of expressing displeasure over the activities of government. On 26th December, 2009, US placed Nigeria as a terrorist nation. Recently, the occurrences of terrorism in Nigeria have increased considerably. In Jos, Plateau state, Nigeria, there was a bomb blast which claimed many lives on the eve of 2010 Christmas. Similarly, there was another bomb blast in Mugadishi (Sani Abacha) Barracks Mammy market on the eve of 2011 New Year. For some time now, it is no longer news that bomb exploded in some Northern part of Nigeria. About 25 years ago, stopping terrorism in America by the Americans relied on old-fashioned tools such as strict physical security at vulnerable places, intelligence gathering by government agents, or individuals, vigilance on the part of all citizens, and a sense of community in which citizens do what could be done to protect each other. Just as technology has virtually been used to better the way many other things are done, so also this powerful new weapon called computer technology can be used to detect and prevent terrorism not only in Nigeria, but all over the world. This paper will x-ray the possible causes and effects of bomb blast, which is an act of terrorism and suggest ways in which Explosive Detection Devices (EDDs) and computer software technology could be deployed to reduce the occurrences of terrorism in Nigeria. This become necessary with the abduction of over 200 schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno State from their hostel by members of Boko Haram sect members on 14th April, 2014. Presently, Barrack Obama and other world leaders have sent some of their military personnel to help rescue those innocent schoolgirls whose offence is simply seeking to acquire western education which the sect strongly believe is forbidden.

Keywords: terrorism, bomb blast, computer technology, explosive detection devices, Nigeria

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Authors: Hanan Mikhael Dawood, Haider Salim, Jafar Al-Wash

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This paper presents Proportional-Integral (PI) controller to improve the system performance which gives better torque and flux response. In addition, it reduces the undesirable torque ripple. The conventional DTC controller approach for induction machines, based on an improved torque and stator flux estimator, is implemented using Xilinx System Generator (XSG) for MATLAB/Simulink environment through Xilinx blocksets. The design was achieved in VHDL which is based on a MATLAB/Simulink simulation model. The hardware in the loop results are obtained considering the implementation of the proposed model on the Xilinx NEXYS2 Spartan 3E1200 FG320 Kit.

Keywords: induction motor, Direct Torque Control (DTC), Xilinx FPGA, motor drive

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Authors: Mohammed Arif, Abdessalam Kifouche

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Speech is a very convenient way of communication between people and machines. It conveys information about the identity of the talker. Since speaker recognition technology is increasingly securing our everyday lives, the objective of this paper is to develop two automatic text-independent speaker verification systems (TI SV) using low-level spectral features and machine learning methods. (i) The first system is based on a support vector machine (SVM), which was widely used in voice signal processing with the aim of speaker recognition involving verifying the identity of the speaker based on its voice characteristics, and (ii) the second is based on Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and Universal Background Model (UBM) to combine different functions from different resources to implement the SVM based.

Keywords: speaker verification, text-independent, support vector machine, Gaussian mixture model, cepstral analysis

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Authors: Minsun Kim, Ki-Sun Choi, Hyun-Jee Lee, Young-Chan You

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There is no reinforcement example for the renovation of the vertical and horizontal extension to existing building structures which is a shear wall type in apartment units in Korea. Among these existing structures, the structures which are shear wall type are rare overseas, while Korea has many shear wall apartment units. Recently, in Korea, a few researchers are trying to confirm the possibility of the vertical extension in existing building with shear walls. This study evaluates the possibility of the renovation by applying performance-based seismic design to existing buildings with shear walls in the analysis phase of the structure. In addition, force-based seismic design, used by general structural engineers in Korea, is carried out to compare the amount of reinforcement of walls, which is a main component of wall structure. As a result, we suggest that performance-based design obtains more economical advantages than force-based seismic design.

Keywords: design for extension, performance-based design, remodeling, shear wall frame, structural analysis

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Authors: Khalid Salhi, El Miloud Jaara, Mohammed Talibi Alaoui

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In this paper, we present a neural approach for unsupervised natural color-texture image segmentation, which is based on both Kohonen maps and mathematical morphology, using a combination of the texture and the image color information of the image, namely, the fractal features based on fractal dimension are selected to present the information texture, and the color features presented in RGB color space. These features are then used to train the network Kohonen, which will be represented by the underlying probability density function, the segmentation of this map is made by morphological watershed transformation. The performance of our color-texture segmentation approach is compared first, to color-based methods or texture-based methods only, and then to k-means method.

Keywords: segmentation, color-texture, neural networks, fractal, watershed

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Authors: Cristina Giosuè, Federica Biondo, Sergio Vitale

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In the last years, the consumers' awareness for environmental concerns has been increasing, and seafood eco-labels are considered as a possible instrument to improve both seafood markets and sustainable fishing management. In this direction, the aim of this study was to carry out a meta-analysis on consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for eco-labeled wild seafood, by a meta-regression. Therefore, only papers published on ISI journals were searched on “Web of Knowledge” and “SciVerse Scopus” platforms, using the combinations of the following key words: seafood, ecolabel, eco-label, willingness, WTP and premium. The dataset was built considering: paper’s and survey’s codes, year of publication, first author’s nationality, species’ taxa and family, sample size, survey’s continent and country, data collection (where and how), gender and age of consumers, brand and ΔWTP. From analysis the interest on eco labeled seafood emerged clearly, in particular in developed countries. In general, consumers declared greater willingness to pay than that actually applied for eco-label products, with difference related to taxa and brand.

Keywords: eco label, meta regression, seafood, willingness to pay

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Authors: Zane Turner, Kevin Labille, Susan Gauch

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Sentiment analysis is a broad and expanding field that aims to extract and classify opinions from textual data. Lexicon-based approaches are based on the use of a sentiment lexicon, i.e., a list of words each mapped to a sentiment score, to rate the sentiment of a text chunk. Our work focuses on predicting stock price change using a sentiment lexicon built from financial conference call logs. We present a method to generate a sentiment lexicon based upon an existing probabilistic approach. By using a domain-specific lexicon, we outperform traditional techniques and demonstrate that domain-specific sentiment lexicons provide higher accuracy than generic sentiment lexicons when predicting stock price change.

Keywords: computational finance, sentiment analysis, sentiment lexicon, stock movement prediction

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Authors: Zane Turner, Kevin Labille, Susan Gauch

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Sentiment analysis is a broad and expanding field that aims to extract and classify opinions from textual data. Lexicon-based approaches are based on the use of a sentiment lexicon, i.e., a list of words each mapped to a sentiment score, to rate the sentiment of a text chunk. Our work focuses on predicting stock price change using a sentiment lexicon built from financial conference call logs. We introduce a method to generate a sentiment lexicon based upon an existing probabilistic approach. By using a domain-specific lexicon, we outperform traditional techniques and demonstrate that domain-specific sentiment lexicons provide higher accuracy than generic sentiment lexicons when predicting stock price change.

Keywords: computational finance, sentiment analysis, sentiment lexicon, stock movement prediction

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Authors: P. K. Guha Thakurta, Shouvik Roy, Bhawana Raj

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A congestion control scheme in mobile networks is proposed in this paper through a verification based model. The model proposed in this work is represented through performance metric like buffer Occupancy, latency and packet loss rate. Based on pre-defined values, each of the metric is introduced in terms of three different states. A Markov chain based model for the proposed work is introduced to monitor the occurrence of the corresponding state transitions. Thus, the estimation of the network status is obtained in terms of performance metric. In addition, the improved performance of our proposed model over existing works is shown with experimental results.

Keywords: congestion, mobile networks, buffer, delay, call drop, markov chain

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Authors: Hanan Badr, Fahad Manee, Rao Shashidhar, Omar Bayoumy

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Introduction: Hypertension is the major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases and stroke and a universe leading cause of disability-adjusted life years and mortality. Adopting an unhealthy lifestyle is thought to be associated with developing hypertension regardless of predisposing genetic factors. This study aimed to examine the association between recreational physical activity (RPA), and sedentary behaviors with a risk of hypertension among ministry employees, where there is no role for occupational physical activity (PA), and to scrutinize participants’ time spent in RPA and sedentary behaviors on the working and weekend days. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among randomly selected 2562 employees working at ten randomly selected ministries in Kuwait. To have a representative sample, the proportional allocation technique was used to define the number of participants in each ministry. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data about participants' socio-demographic characteristics, health status, and their 24 hours’ time use during a regular working day and a weekend day. The time use covered a list of 20 different activities practiced by a person daily. The New Zealand Physical Activity Questionnaire-Short Form (NZPAQ-SF) was used to assess the level of RPA. The scale generates three categories according to the number of hours spent in RPA/week: relatively inactive, relatively active, and highly active. Gender-matched trained nurses performed anthropometric measurements (weight and height) and measuring blood pressure (two readings) using an automatic blood pressure monitor (95% accuracy level compared to a calibrated mercury sphygmomanometer). Results: Participants’ mean age was 35.3±8.4 years, with almost equal gender distribution. About 13% of the participants were smokers, and 75% were overweight. Almost 10% reported doctor-diagnosed hypertension. Among those who did not, the mean systolic blood pressure was 119.9±14.2 and the mean diastolic blood pressure was 80.9±7.3. Moreover, 73.9% of participants were relatively physically inactive and 18% were highly active. Mean systolic and diastolic blood pressure showed a significant inverse association with the level of RPA (means of blood pressure measures were: 123.3/82.8 among relatively inactive, 119.7/80.4 among relatively active, and 116.6/79.6 among highly active). Furthermore, RPA occupied 1.6% and 1.8% of working and weekend days, respectively, while sedentary behaviors (watching TV, using electronics for social media or entertaining, etc.) occupied 11.2% and 13.1%, respectively. Sedentary behaviors were significantly associated with high levels of systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Binary logistic regression revealed that physical inactivity (OR=3.13, 95% CI: 2.25-4.35) and sedentary behaviors (OR=2.25, CI: 1.45-3.17) were independent risk factors for high systolic and diastolic blood pressure after adjustment for other covariates. Conclusions: Physical inactivity and sedentary lifestyle were associated with a high risk of hypertension. Further research to examine the independent role of RPA in improving blood pressure levels and cultural and occupational barriers for practicing RPA are recommended. Policies should be enacted in promoting PA in the workplace that might help in decreasing the risk of hypertension among sedentary occupation workers.

Keywords: physical activity, sedentary behaviors, hypertension, workplace

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Authors: Amer Momani, Tarek Al-Hawari, Abdallah Alakayleh

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This study explains how to construct an actionable activity-based costing and management system to accurately track and account the total costs of architectural aluminum projects. Two ABC models were proposed to accomplish this purpose. First, the learning and development model was introduced to examine how to apply an ABC model in an architectural aluminum firm for the first time and to be familiar with ABC concepts. Second, an actual ABC model was built on the basis of the results of the previous model to accurately trace the actual costs incurred on each project in a year, and to be able to provide a quote with the best trade-off between competitiveness and profitability. The validity of the proposed model was verified on a local architectural aluminum company.

Keywords: activity-based costing, activity-based management, construction, architectural aluminum

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Authors: Diljan C. K.

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Every location on the planet has a history and culture that give it its own identity and character, making it distinct from others. urbanised world, it is fashionable to remould its original character and impression in a contemporary style. The new character and impression of places show a complete detachment from their roots. The heritage and cultural values of the place are replaced by new impressions, and as a result, they eventually lose their identity and character and never have sustenance. In this situation, form-based coding acts as a tool in the urban design process, helping to come up with solutions that strongly bind individuals to their neighbourhood and are closely related to culture through the physical spaces they are associated with. Form-based code was made by pioneers of new urbanism in 1987 in the United States of America. Since then, it has been used in various projects inside and outside the USA with varied scales, from the design of a single building to the design of a whole community. This research makes an effort to interpret the form-based code in historic corridors to establish the association of physical form and space with the public realm to uphold the context and culture. Many of the historic corridors are undergoing a tremendous transformation in their physical form, avoiding their culture and context. This will lead to it losing its identity in form and function. If the case of Valiyashala in Trivandrum is taken as the case, which is transforming its form and will lead to the loss of its identity, the form-based code will be a suitable tool to strengthen its historical value. The study concludes by analysing the existing code (KMBR) of Valiyashala and form-based code to find the requirements in form-based code for Valiyashala.

Keywords: form based code, urban conservation, heritage, historic corridor

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Authors: Hatam H. Ali, Mohd Shahrizal Sunar, Hoshang Kolivand, Mohd Azhar Bin M. Arsad

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Rendering light shafts is one of the important topics in computer gaming and interactive applications. The methods and models that are used to generate light shafts play crucial role to make a scene more realistic in computer graphics. This article discusses the image-based shadows and geometric-based shadows that contribute in generating volumetric shadows and light shafts, depending on ray tracing, radiosity, and ray marching technique. The main aim of this study is to provide researchers with background on a progress of light scattering methods so as to make it available for them to determine the technique best suited to their goals. It is also hoped that our classification helps researchers find solutions to the shortcomings of each method.

Keywords: shaft of lights, realistic images, image-based, and geometric-based

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Authors: Paul Narh Doku

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The relationship between parental HIV/AIDS status or death and child mental health is well known, although the role of child maltreatment as a confounder or mediator in this relationship remains uncertain. This study examined the potential path mechanism through child maltreatment mediating the link between HIV/AIDS family dysfunction trajectories and psychosocial problems. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in the Lower Manya Municipal Assembly of Ghana. A questionnaire which consisted of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), Social and Health Assessment (SAHA), Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), and the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) was completed by 291 adolescents. Controlling for relevant sociodemographic confounders, mediation analyses using linear regression were fitted to examine whether the association between family dysfunction and psychosocial problems is mediated by child maltreatment. The results indicate that, among adolescents, child maltreatment fully mediated the association between being orphaned by AIDS and self-esteem, delinquency and risky behaviours, and peer problems. Similarly, child maltreatment fully mediated the association between living with an HIV/AIDS-infected parent and self-esteem, delinquency and risky behaviours, depression/emotional problems, and peer problems. Partial mediation was found for hyperactivity. Child maltreatment mediates the association between the family dysfunction trajectories of parental HIV/AIDS or death and psychosocial problems among adolescents. This implies that efforts to address child maltreatment among families affected by HIV/AIDS may be helpful in the prevention of psychosocial problems among these children, thus enhancing their well-being. The findings, therefore, underscore the need for comprehensive psychosocial interventions that address both the unique negative exposures of HIV/AIDS and maltreatment for children affected by HIV.

Keywords: child maltreatment, child abuse, mental health, psychosocial problems, domestic violence, HIV/AIDS, adolescents

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Authors: Monia Hassan Abdulrahman

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Resource-based view is built on many theories in addition to diverse perspectives, we extend this view placing emphasis on human resources addressing the tools required to sustain competitive advantage. Highlighting on several theories and judgments, assumptions were established to clearly reach if resource possession alone suffices for the sustainability of competitive advantage, or necessary accommodation are required for better performance. New practices were indicated in terms of resources used in firms, these practices were implemented on the human resources in particular, and results were developed in compliance to the mentioned assumptions. Such results drew attention to the significance of practices that provide enhancement of human resources that have a core responsibility of maintaining resource-based view for an organization to lead the way to gaining competitive advantage.

Keywords: competitive advantage, resource based value, human resources, strategic management

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Authors: Eun-Jun Yoon

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Deniable authentication protocol is a new security authentication mechanism which can enable a receiver to identify the true source of a given message, but not to prove the identity of the sender to a third party. In 2013, Kar proposed a secure ID-based deniable authentication protocol whose security is based on computational infeasibility of solving Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman Problem (ECDHP). Kar claimed that the proposed protocol achieves properties of deniable authentication, mutual authentication, and message confidentiality. However, this paper points out that Kar's protocol still suffers from sender spoofing attack and message modification attack unlike its claims.

Keywords: deniable authentication, elliptic curve cryptography, Diffie-Hellman problem, cryptanalysis

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Authors: Khalil Ullah Khan

Abstract:

Linguistic abilities in students with hearing impairment yet remain a concern for educationists. The emerging technological support and provisions in the recent era vow to have addressed the situation and claim significant contributions in terms of linguistic repertoire. Being a descriptive and quantitative paradigm of study, the purpose of this research set forth was to assess the linguistic competencies of students with hearing impairment in the English language. The goals were further broken down to identify the level of reading abilities in the subject population. The population involved students with HI studying at a higher secondary level in Lahore. A simple random sampling technique was used to choose a sample of fifty students. A purposive curriculum-based assessment was designed in line with the accelerated learning program by the Punjab Government to assess Linguistic competence among the sample. Further to it, an Informal Reading Inventory (IRI) corresponding to reading levels was also developed by researchers duly validated and piloted before the final use. Descriptive and inferential statistics were utilized to reach the findings. Spearman’s correlation was used to find out the relationship between the degree of hearing loss, grade level, gender and type of amplification device. An Independent sample t-test was used to compare means among groups. Major findings of the study revealed that students with hearing impairment exhibit significant deviation from the mean scores when compared in terms of grades, severity and amplification device. The study divulged that respective students with HI have yet failed to qualify for an independent level of reading according to their grades, as the majority fall at the frustration level of word recognition and passage comprehension. The poorer performance can be attributed to lower linguistic competence, as it is shown in the frustration levels of reading, writing and comprehension. The correlation analysis did reflect an improved performance grade. Wise. However, scores could only correspond to frustration level, and independent levels were never achieved. Reported achievements at the instructional level of the subject population may further to linguistic skills if practiced purposively.

Keywords: linguistic competence, hearing impairment, reading levels, educationist

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Authors: Sydelle Barreto

Abstract:

Sexual liberation has been thought of as a movement, an idea, and an antithesis of material oppression. Within feminism it has consistently resisted definition - different feminist schools of thought had entirely different constructions of what liberated feminine sexuality could look like and how we might get there. This paper will critique the current definition of sexual liberation as being limited and carceral in its perspectives of sexual assault and extremely reductive in its imaginings of sexual liberation. The ultimate goal of this assessment is to potentially outline what true sexual liberation might look like in a way that is inclusive but not ignorant of the realities of the patriarchy. The first critique of sexual liberation included in the paper centers around the limits of consent, carceral feminism and sexual subjectivity. The argument will build off the traditionally sex-negative critiques of consent as being limited in scope by explaining how a lack of nuance is even more dangerous to victims of sexual violations. The discussion will also expand an interrogant of consent to an interrogation of wantedness and desire. If we understand that critiquing the conditions of consent is important, we must also critique the way patriarchy and compulsory sexuality have affected desire. Using the aforementioned concept of compulsory sexuality, the paper will argue that while sexual liberation has begun to include queer and transgender individuals, it is still overwhelmingly allonormative. Sex positivity and its opponents both fail to include asexuality. This ultimately leads to a conflation of sexual liberation with genuine material liberation. Just as we cannot divorce our constructions of sexual liberation from the realities of the patriarchy and rape culture, we should consider compulsory sexuality as its own system of social regulation. The conclusion will begin to construct an alternative vision of sexual liberation, leveraging concepts of sexual subjectivity, including a rejection of carceral feminism as a response to sexual violence, and finally, leading to the beginnings of a deconstruction of compulsory sexuality. The paper concludes with a vision of sexual liberation that does not confuse itself with material liberation or mere sexual oppression, but rather a key way stops on the road to constructing our most authentic sexual selves.

Keywords: feminism, sexual assault, sexual liberation, consent

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Authors: Ilona Buchem, Carolin Gellner

Abstract:

The call for the support of senior learners in the development of digital literacy has become prevalent in recent years, especially in view of the aging societies paired with advances in digitalization in all spheres of life, including e-health. The goal has been to create opportunities for learning that incorporate the use of context in a reflective and dialogical way. Contextual learning has focused on developing skills through the application of authentic problems. While major research efforts in supporting senior learners in developing digital literacy have been invested so far in e-learning, focusing on knowledge acquisition and cognitive tasks, little research exists in reflective mentoring and coaching with the help of pedagogical agents and addressing the contextual dimensions of learning. This paper describes an approach to creating opportunities for senior learners to improve their digital literacy in the authentic context of the electronic health record (EHR) with the support of an intelligent virtual learning coach. The paper focuses on the design of the virtual coach as part of an e-learning system, which was developed in the EPA-Coach project founded by the German Ministry of Education and Research. The paper starts with the theoretical underpinnings of contextual learning and the related design considerations for a virtual learning coach based on previous studies. Since previous research in the area was mostly designed to cater to the needs of younger audiences, the results had to be adapted to the specific needs of senior learners. Next, the paper outlines the stages in the design of the virtual coach, which included the adaptation of the design requirements, the iterative development of the prototypes, the results of the two evaluation studies and how these results were used to improve the design of the virtual coach. The paper then presents the four prototypes of a senior-friendly virtual learning coach, which were designed to represent different preferences related to the visual appearance, the communication and social interaction styles, and the pedagogical roles. The first evaluation of the virtual coach design was an exploratory, qualitative study, which was carried out in October 2020 with eight seniors aged 64 to 78 and included a range of questions about the preferences of senior learners related to the visual design, gender, age, communication and role. Based on the results of the first evaluation, the design was adapted to the preferences of the senior learners and the new versions of prototypes were created to represent two male and two female options of the virtual coach. The second evaluation followed a quantitative approach with an online questionnaire and was conducted in May 2021 with 41 seniors aged 66 to 93 years. Following three research questions, the survey asked about (1) the intention to use, (2) the perceived characteristics, and (3) the preferred communication/interaction style of the virtual coach, i. e. task-oriented, relationship-oriented, or a mix. This paper follows with the discussion of the results of the design process and ends with conclusions and next steps in the development of the virtual coach including recommendations for further research.

Keywords: virtual learning coach, virtual mentor, pedagogical agent, senior learners, digital literacy, electronic health records

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