Search results for: image quality metrics

Authors: Khaled Harrar, Rachid Jennane

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The purpose of this study is the discrimination of 28 postmenopausal with osteoporotic femoral fractures from an age-matched control group of 28 women using texture analysis based on fractals. Two pre-processing approaches are applied on radiographic images; these techniques are compared to highlight the choice of the pre-processing method. Furthermore, the values of the fractal dimension are compared to those of the fractal signature in terms of the classification of the two populations. In a second analysis, the BMD measure at proximal femur was compared to the fractal analysis, the latter, which is a non-invasive technique, allowed a better discrimination; the results confirm that the fractal analysis of texture on calcaneus radiographs is able to discriminate osteoporotic patients with femoral fracture from controls. This discrimination was efficient compared to that obtained by BMD alone. It was also present in comparing subgroups with overlapping values of BMD.

Keywords: osteoporosis, fractal dimension, fractal signature, bone mineral density

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Authors: Şefik Surhan Tabakoğlu, Hipolito Fernández-Palacios, Dominique Schuchardt, Mahmut Ali Gökçe, Celal Erbaş, Oğuz Taşbozan

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This study aimed to clarify some sperm quality parameters such as volumetric sperm quantity, motility, motility duration, sperm density, total number of spermatozoa and pH of meagre (Argyrosomus regius ASSO, 1801) individuals kept in farming conditions and caught from wild (las palmas, gran canary). The sperm was collected in glass tubes graded in millimetres and sperm volume registered immediately following collection by abdominal massage. The sperm quality parameters including motility, total number of spermatozoa and spermatozoa density were determined with computer assisted sperm analysis (CASA) program. The duration of spermatozoa movement was assessed using a sensitive chronometer (1/100s) that was started simultaneously with the addition of activation solution into the sample. Sperm pH was measured with standard pH electrodes within five minutes of sampling. At the end of the study, while amount of sperm (5.20±0.33 ml), duration of motility (7.23±0.7 m) and total number of spermatozoa (131.40±12.22 x10^9) were different statistically (p < 0,05), motility (% 81.03±6.59), pH (7.30±0.08), sperm density (25.27±9.42 x10^9/ml) and morphologic parameters were not significantly different between the two groups. According to our results, amount of sperm, duration of motility and total number of spermatozoa were better in farmed group than that of the other group.

Keywords: Seriola rivoliana, meagre, sperm quality, motility, motility duration

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Authors: Aarohi Surya

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The number of mobile banking users continues to climb across the world due to its increasing popularity, and UAE is no exception. This type of banking is part of the core strategy of most of the financial institutions that allows its customers to conduct a range of financial transactions through mobile apps to cash in the high demand from the bankers. This study aims at evaluating service quality of online banking in Dubai, one of the swiftly growing cities of Middle East. The paper mainly compares online banking services of Multinational bank and National Bank with special reference to Citibank and Emirates NBD. A structured questionnaire survey is conducted among various target groups. The research has been focused on mainly 4 significant areas of online banking, i.e. Privacy, Responsiveness, Reliability, and Efficiency of customer data. Information was analyzed statistically on SPSS to investigate the service quality of e-banking.

Keywords: customer satisfaction, service quality, responsiveness, online banking

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Authors: Rafael Feldmann Farias, Fernando Tobal Berssaneti

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Since its emergence in 1998, ISO 10014 has been developed as a response to the need to demonstrate the economic and financial benefits that an organization can obtain from the implementation of a quality management system. With the publication of the new edition in 2021, this article aims to identify how this standard has been addressed through a literature review. Among the results, it was found that, of the 282 documents identified, only 0.7% of the publications used the standard and 1.4% of the publications cited it. This low adherence seems to be linked to the highly technical nature of the content of the standard.

Keywords: quality management system, ISO 10014, economical benefits, financial benefits

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Authors: N. Yang, R. Linforth, I. Fisk

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The influence of food processing and choice of flavour solvent was investigated using biscuits prepared with vanillin flavour as an example. Powder vanillin either was added directly into the dough or dissolved into flavour solvent then mixed into the dough. The impact of two commonly used flavour solvents on food quality was compared: propylene glycol (PG) or triacetin (TA). The analytical approach for vanillin detection was developed by chromatography (HPLC-PDA), and the standard extraction method for vanillin was also established. The results indicated the impact of solvent choice on vanillin level during biscuit preparation. After baking, TA as a more heat resistant solvent retained more vanillin than PG, so TA is a better solvent for products that undergo a heating process. The results also illustrated the impact of mixing and baking on vanillin stability in the matrices. The average loss of vanillin was 33% during mixing and 13% during baking, which indicated that the binding of vanillin to fat or flour before baking might cause larger loss than evaporation loss during baking.

Keywords: biscuit, flavour stability, food quality, vanillin

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Authors: Chia-Jung Chang, Sheng-Che Chen, Ming-Long Yeh, Chih-Wei Wang, Chih-Han Chang

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Introduction and Motivation: In recent years, magnesium alloy is used to be a kind of medical biodegradable materials. Magnesium is an essential element in the body and is efficiently excreted by the kidneys. Furthermore, the mechanical properties of magnesium alloy is closest to human bone. However, in some cases magnesium alloy corrodes so quickly that it would release hydrogen on surface of implant. The other product is hydroxide ion, it can significantly increase the local pH value. The above situations may have adverse effects on local cell functions. On the other hand, nowadays magnesium alloy corrode too fast to maintain the function of implant until the healing of tissue. Therefore, much recent research about magnesium alloy has focused on controlling the corrosion rate. The in vitro corrosion behavior of magnesium alloys is affected by many factors, and pH value is one of factors. In this study, we will study on the influence of pH value on the corrosion behavior of magnesium alloy by the Micro-CT (micro computed tomography) and other instruments.Material and methods: In the first step, we make some guiding plates for specimens of magnesium alloy AZ91 by Rapid Prototyping. The guiding plates are able to be a standard for the degradation of specimen, so that we can use it to make sure the position of specimens in the CT image. We can also simplify the conditions of degradation by the guiding plates.In the next step, we prepare the solution with different pH value. And then we put the specimens into the solution to start the corrosion test. The CT image, surface photographs and weigh are measured on every twelve hours. Results: In the primary results of the test, we make sure that CT image can be a way to quantify the corrosion behavior of magnesium alloy. Moreover we can observe the phenomenon that corrosion always start from some erosion point. It’s possibly based on some defect like dislocations and the voids with high strain energy in the materials. We will deal with the raw data into Mass Loss (ML) and corrosion rate by CT image, surface photographs and weigh in the near future. Having a simple prediction, the pH value and degradation rate will be negatively correlated. And we want to find out the equation of the pH value and corrosion rate. We also have a simple test to simulate the change of the pH value in the local region. In this test the pH value will rise to 10 in a short time. Conclusion: As a biodegradable implant for the area with stagnating body fluid flow in the human body, magnesium alloy can cause the increase of local pH values and release the hydrogen. Those may damage the human cell. The purpose of this study is finding out the equation of the pH value and corrosion rate. After that we will try to find the ways to overcome the limitations of medical magnesium alloy.

Keywords: magnesium alloy, biodegradable materials, corrosion, micro-CT

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Authors: Hillary Onyeka Abugu, Valentine Chinakwugwo Ezea, Janefrances Ngozi Ihedioha, Nwachukwu Romanus Ekere

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The study assessed the spring water quality in Igbo-Etiti, Nigeria, for drinking and irrigation application using Physico-chemical parameters, water quality index, mineral and trace elements, pollution indices and risk assessment. Standard methods were used to determine the physicochemical properties of the spring water in rainy and dry seasons. Trace metals such as Pb, Cd, Zn and Cu were determined with atomic absorption spectrophotometer. The results showed that most of the physicochemical properties studied were within the guideline values set by Nigeria Standard for Drinking Water Quality (NSDWQ), WHO and US EPA for drinking water purposes. However, pH of all the spring water (4.27- 4.73; and 4.95- 5.73), lead (Pb) (0.01-1.08 mg/L) and cadmium (Cd) (0.01-0.15 mg/L) concentrations were above the guideline values in both seasons. This could be attributed to the lithography of the study area, which is the Nsukka formation. Leaching of lead and sulphides from the embedded coal deposits could have led to the increased lead levels and made the water acidic. Two-way ANOVA showed significant differences in most of the parameters studied in dry and rainy seasons. Pearson correlation analysis and cluster analysis showed strong significant positive and negative correlations in some of the parameters studied in both seasons. The water quality index showed that none of the spring water had excellent water status. However, one spring (Iyi Ase) had poor water status in dry season and is considered unsafe for drinking. Iyi Ase was also considered not suitable for irrigation application as predicted by most of the pollution indices, while others were generally considered suitable for irrigation application. Probable cancer and non-cancer risk assessment revealed a probable risk associated with the consumption of the spring in the Igbo-Ettiti area, Nigeria.

Keywords: water quality, pollution index, risk assessment, physico-chemical parameters

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Authors: Lavanya Srinivasan

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Biometric identification is to identify unique features in a person like fingerprints, iris, ear, and voice recognition that need the subject's permission and physical contact. Gait biometric is used to identify the unique gait of the person by extracting moving features. The main advantage of gait biometric to identify the gait of a person at a distance, without any physical contact. In this work, the gait biometric is used for person re-identification. The person walking naturally compared with the same person walking with bag, coat, and case recorded using longwave infrared, short wave infrared, medium wave infrared, and visible cameras. The videos are recorded in rural and in urban environments. The pre-processing technique includes human identified using YOLO, background subtraction, silhouettes extraction, and synthesis Gait Entropy Image by averaging the silhouettes. The moving features are extracted from the Gait Entropy Energy Image. The extracted features are dimensionality reduced by the principal component analysis and recognised using different classifiers. The comparative results with the different classifier show that linear discriminant analysis outperforms other classifiers with 95.8% for visible in the rural dataset and 94.8% for longwave infrared in the urban dataset.

Keywords: biometric, gait, silhouettes, YOLO

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Authors: Tareq Al Muhareb, Jasper Graham-Jones

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The service quality is a significant element in aviation industry especially in the international airports. Through this paper, the researchers built a model based on Lean six sigma methodologies and applied it in the departure area at KKIA (King Khalid International Airport) in order to assess it. This model characterized with many special features that can become over the cultural differences in aviation industry since it is considered the most critical circumstance in this field. Applying the model of this study is depending on following the DMAIC procedure systemized in lean thinking aspects. This model of Lean-six-sigma as a managerial procedure is mostly focused on the change management culture that requires high level of planning, organizing, modifying, and controlling in order to benefit from strengths as well as revoke weaknesses.

Keywords: lean-six-sigma, service quality, aviation industry, KKIA (King Khalid International Airport), SERVQUAL

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Authors: Alaa El-Din Rezk

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In Egypt, management of crops still away from what is being used today by utilizing the advances of mechanical design capabilities, sensing and electronics technology. These technologies have been introduced in many places and recorm, for Straight Path, Curved Path, Sine Wave ded high accuracy in different field operations. So, an autonomous robotic platform based on machine vision has been developed and constructed to be implemented in Egyptian conditions as self-propelled mobile vehicle for carrying tools for inter/intra-row crop management based on different control modules. The experiments were carried out at plant protection research institute (PPRI) during 2014-2015 to optimize the accuracy of agricultural robotic platform control using machine vision in term of the autonomous navigation and performance of the robot’s guidance system. Results showed that the robotic platform' guidance system with machine vision was able to adequately distinguish the path and resisted image noise and did better than human operators for getting less lateral offset error. The average error of autonomous was 2.75, 19.33, 21.22, 34.18, and 16.69 mm. while the human operator was 32.70, 4.85, 7.85, 38.35 and 14.75 mm Path, Offset Discontinuity and Angle Discontinuity respectively.

Keywords: autonomous robotic, Hough transform, image processing, machine vision

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Authors: Marie Bieber, Fabrice Cosson, Olivier Schmitt

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Europe's Global Navigation Satellite System, Galileo, provides worldwide positioning and navigation services. The satellites in space are only one part of the Galileo system. An extensive ground infrastructure is essential to oversee the satellites and ensure accurate navigation signals. High reliability and availability of the entire Galileo system are crucial to continuously provide positioning information of high quality to users. Outages are tracked, and operational availability is regularly assessed. A highly flexible and adaptive tool has been developed to automate the Galileo system availability analysis. Not only does it enable a quick availability consolidation, but it also provides first steps towards improving the data quality of maintenance tickets used for the analysis. This includes data import and data preparation, with a focus on processing strings used for classification and identifying faulty data. Furthermore, the tool allows to handle a low amount of data, which is a major constraint when the aim is to provide accurate statistics.

Keywords: availability, data quality, system performance, Galileo, aerospace

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Authors: N. C. Ghosh, Niladri Das, Prolay Mondal, Ranajit Ghosh

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Groundwater quality deterioration due to human activities has become a prime factor of modern life. The major concern of the study is to access spatial variation of groundwater quality and to identify the sources of groundwater chemicals and its impact on human health of the concerned area. Multivariate statistical techniques, cluster, principal component analysis, and hydrochemical fancies are been applied to measure groundwater quality data on 14 parameters from 107 sites distributed randomly throughout the Birbhum district. Five factors have been extracted using Varimax rotation with Kaiser Normalization. The first factor explains 27.61% of the total variance where high positive loading have been concentrated in TH, Ca, Mg, Cl and F (Fluoride). In the studied region, due to the presence of basaltic Rajmahal trap fluoride contamination is highly concentrated and that has an adverse impact on human health such as fluorosis. The second factor explains 24.41% of the total variance which includes Na, HCO₃, EC, and SO₄. The last factor or the fifth factor explains 8.85% of the total variance, and it includes pH which maintains the acidic and alkaline character of the groundwater. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) grouped the 107 sampling station into two clusters. One cluster having high pollution and another cluster having less pollution. Moreover hydromorphological facies viz. Wilcox diagram, Doneen’s chart, and USSL diagram reveal the quality of the groundwater like the suitability of the groundwater for irrigation or water used for drinking purpose like permeability index of the groundwater, quality assessment of groundwater for irrigation. Gibb’s diagram depicts that the major portion of the groundwater of this region is rock dominated origin, as the western part of the region characterized by the Jharkhand plateau fringe comprises basalt, gneiss, granite rocks.

Keywords: correlation, factor analysis, hydrological facies, hydrochemistry

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Authors: Harold Vásquez, Cesar Hernández, Ingrid Páez

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This paper approach cognitive radio technic and applied pure proactive handoff Model to decrease interference between PU and SU and comparing it with reactive handoff model. Through the study and analysis of multivariate models SAW and TOPSIS join to 3 dynamic prediction techniques AR, MA ,and ARMA. To evaluate the best model is taken four metrics: number failed handoff, number handoff, number predictions, and number interference. The result presented the advantages using this type of pure proactive models to predict changes in the PU according to the selected channel and reduce interference. The model showed better performance was TOPSIS-MA, although TOPSIS-AR had a higher predictive ability this was not reflected in the interference reduction.

Keywords: cognitive radio, spectrum handoff, decision making, time series, wireless networks

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Authors: K. S. Vedasingha, K. K. M. T. Perera, K. I. Hathurusinghe, H. W. I. Akalanka, Nelum Chathuranga Amarasena, Nalaka R. Dissanayake

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Railways provide the most convenient and economically beneficial mode of transportation, and it has been the most popular transportation method among all. According to the past analyzed data, it reveals a considerable number of accidents which occurred at railways and caused damages to not only precious lives but also to the economy of the countries. There are some major issues which need to be addressed in railways of South Asian countries since they fall under the developing category. The goal of this research is to minimize the influencing aspect of railway level crossing accidents by developing the “railway process automation system”, as there are high-risk areas that are prone to accidents, and safety at these places is of utmost significance. This paper describes the implementation methodology and the success of the study. The main purpose of the system is to ensure human safety by using the Internet of Things (IoT) and image processing techniques. The system can detect the current location of the train and close the railway gate automatically. And it is possible to do the above-mentioned process through a decision-making system by using past data. The specialty is both processes working parallel. As usual, if the system fails to close the railway gate due to technical or a network failure, the proposed system can identify the current location and close the railway gate through a decision-making system, which is a revolutionary feature. The proposed system introduces further two features to reduce the causes of railway accidents. Railway track crack detection and motion detection are those features which play a significant role in reducing the risk of railway accidents. Moreover, the system is capable of detecting rule violations at a level crossing by using sensors. The proposed system is implemented through a prototype, and it is tested with real-world scenarios to gain the above 90% of accuracy.

Keywords: crack detection, decision-making, image processing, Internet of Things, motion detection, prototype, sensors

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Authors: They Shao Peng

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Machine vision system for inspection is an automated technology that is normally utilized to analyze items on the production line for quality control purposes, it also can be known as an automated visual inspection (AVI) system. By applying automated visual inspection, the existence of items, defects, contaminants, flaws, and other irregularities in manufactured products can be easily detected in a short time and accurately. However, AVI systems are still inflexible and expensive due to their uniqueness for a specific task and consuming a lot of set-up time and space. With the rapid development of mobile devices, smartphones can be an alternative device for the visual system to solve the existing problems of AVI. Since the smartphone-based AVI system is still at a nascent stage, this led to the motivation to investigate the smartphone-based AVI system. This study is aimed to provide a low-cost AVI system with high efficiency and flexibility. In this project, the object detection models, which are You Only Look Once (YOLO) model and Single Shot MultiBox Detector (SSD) model, are trained, evaluated, and integrated with the smartphone and webcam devices. The performance of the smartphone-based AVI is compared with the webcam-based AVI according to the precision and inference time in this study. Additionally, a mobile application is developed which allows users to implement real-time object detection and object detection from image storage.

Keywords: automated visual inspection, deep learning, machine vision, mobile application

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Authors: Men An Pan, Hong Ren Chen, Chih Heng Shih, Hsing Yuan Yen

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Pingtung County is located in the southernmost region of Taiwan. During the winter season, pollutants due to insufficient dispersion caused by the downwash of the northeast monsoon lead to the poor air quality of the County. Through the implementation of various control methods, including the application of permits of air pollution, fee collection of air pollution, control oil fume of catering sectors, smoke detection of diesel vehicles, regular inspection of locomotives, and subsidies for low-polluting vehicles. Moreover, to further mitigate the air pollution, additional alternative controlling strategies are also carried out, such as construction site control, prohibition of open-air agricultural waste burning, improvement of river dust, and strengthening of road cleaning operations. The combined efforts have significantly reduced air pollutants in the County. However, in order to effectively and promptly monitor the ambient air quality, the County has subsequently deployed micro-sensors, with a total of 400 IoTs (Internet of Things) micro-sensors for PM2.5 and VOC detection and 3 air quality monitoring stations of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), covering 33 townships of the County. The covered area has more than 1,300 listed factories and 5 major industrial parks; thus forming an Internet of Things (IoTs) based multi-level air quality monitoring system. The results demonstrate that the IoTs multi-level air quality sensors combined with other strategies such as “sand and gravel dredging area technology monitoring”, “banning open burning”, “intelligent management of construction sites”, “real-time notification of activation response”, “nighthawk early bird plan with micro-sensors”, “unmanned aircraft (UAV) combined with land and air to monitor abnormal emissions”, and “animal husbandry odour detection service” etc. The satisfaction improvement rate of air control, through a 2021 public survey, reached a high percentage of 81%, an increase of 46% as compared to 2018. For the air pollution complaints for the whole year of 2021, the total number was 4213 in contrast to 7088 in 2020, a reduction rate reached almost 41%. Because of the spatial-temporal features of the air quality monitoring IoTs system by the application of microsensors, the system does assist and strengthen the effectiveness of the existing air quality monitoring network of the EPA and can provide real-time control of the air quality. Therefore, the hot spots and potential pollution locations can be timely determined for law enforcement. Hence, remarkable results were obtained for the two years. That is, both reduction of public complaints and better air quality are successfully achieved through the implementation of the present IoTs system for real-time air quality monitoring throughout Pingtung County.

Keywords: IoT, PM, air quality sensor, air pollution, environmental monitoring

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Authors: Shahna K. C., Belay Menon, Taniya Joshua

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As globalization in the era progresses, spatial inequality is turned to be one of the major concerns; the main intent of the Study is to focus on if there is any interdependencies of culture economy and resource availability on creating spatial inequality in cities. The paper tries to establish the relationship between spatial inequality – the quality of life – the DETERMINANT TRIAD (culture, economy, resource availability). Slum area of Dharavi is taken to evaluate the influence of these determinants on the quality of life as spatial inequality is evident there. Interdependencies of the determinants on creating spatial inequality is evaluated. For this, It is understood that these three parameters, i.e., culture, economy, resource availability, are determinants of urban design, each from the social, economic, environmental domains of sustainability, respectively. And there are studies individually on each of these aspects, how they determine the urban spaces, and how influential on the whole process of urbanization. Now extending the study towards the interdependencies of these three so as to find out how these trilogy shapes the urban form and space.

Keywords: spatial inequality, culture, economy, resource availability, quality of life

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Authors: Ajay Kumar Sarathe, Abhinay Kumar

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Production of quality products required for specific engineering applications is an important issue. The roughness of the surface plays an important role in the quality of the product by using appropriate machining parameters to eliminate wastage due to over machining. To increase the quality of the surface, the optimum machining parameter setting is crucial during the machining operation. The effect of key machining parameters- spindle speed, feed rate, and depth of cut on surface roughness has been evaluated. Experimental work was carried out using High Speed Steel tool and AlSI 1018 as workpiece material. In this study, the predictive model has been developed using Box-Behnken Design. An experimental investigation has been carried out for this work using BBD for three factors and observed that the predictive model of Ra value is closed to predictive value with a marginal error of 2.8648 %. Developed model establishes a correlation between selected key machining parameters that influence the surface roughness in a AISI 1018. F

Keywords: ANOVA, BBD, optimisation, response surface methodology

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Authors: S. Jabeen

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Though Pakistan has a rich cultural history and a diverse population; its global image is tarnished with labels of Muslim ‘fundamentalism’ and ‘extremism.’ Cultural policy is a tool that can be used by the government of Pakistan to ameliorate this image, but instead, this fundamentalist reputation is reinforced in the 2005 draft of Pakistan’s cultural policy. With its stern focus on a homogenized cultural identity, this 2005 draft bases itself largely on forced participation from the largely Muslim public and leaves little or no benefits to them or cultural minorities in Pakistan. The effects of this homogenized ‘Muslim’ identity linger ten years later where the study and celebration of the cultural heritage of Pakistan in schools and educational festivals focus entirely on creating and maintaining a singular ‘Islamic’ cultural identity. The current lack of inclusion has many adverse effects that include the breeding of extremist mindsets through the usurpation of minority rights and lack of safe cultural public spaces. This paper argues that Pakistan can improve social inclusivity and boost its global image through cultural policy. The paper sets the grounds for research by surveying the effectiveness of different cultural policies across nations with differing socioeconomic status. Then, by sampling two public literary festivals in Pakistan as case studies, the National Youth Peace Festival hosted with a nationalistic agenda using public funds and the Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) that aims to boost the cultural literacy scene of Lahore using both private and public efforts, this paper looks at the success of the private, more inclusive LLF. A revision of cultural policy is suggested that combines public and private efforts to host cultural festivals for the sake of cultural celebration and human development, without a set nationalistic agenda. Consequently, this comparison which is grounded in the human capabilities approach, recommends revising the 2005 draft of the Cultural Policy to improve human capabilities in order to support cultural diversity and ultimately contribute to economic growth in Pakistan.

Keywords: cultural policy, festivals, human capabilities, Pakistan

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Authors: Luisa Unda, Kamran Ahmed, Paul Mather

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We examine the effect of board characteristics on the performance and asset quality of credit unions in Australia, using a large sample covering the period 2004-2012. Credit unions are unique in that they are customer-owned financial institutions and directors are democratically elected by members, which is distinctly different from other financial institutions, such as commercial banks. We find that board remuneration, board expertise, and attendance at board meetings have significantly positive impacts on credit union performance and asset quality, while board members who hold multiple directorships (busy directors), have a significant negative impact on credit union performance. Financial performance also improves with larger boards and long-tenured directors in credit unions. All of these relations hold after we control for alternative measures of performance, credit union characteristics and endogeneity problem.

Keywords: credit unions, corporate governance, board of directors, financial performance, Australia, asset quality

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Authors: P. Venu, Joeju M. Issac

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Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a systematic technique that creates a platform where the customer responses can be positively converted to design attributes. The accuracy of a QFD process heavily depends on the data that it is handling which is captured from customers or QFD team members. Customized computer programs that perform Quality Function Deployment within a stipulated time have been used by various companies across the globe. These programs heavily rely on storage and retrieval of the data on a common database. This database must act as a perfect source with minimum missing values or error values in order perform actual prioritization. This paper introduces a missing/error data handler module which uses Genetic Algorithm and Fuzzy numbers. The prioritization of customer requirements of sesame oil is illustrated and a comparison is made between proposed data handler module-based deployment and manual deployment.

Keywords: hybrid data handler, QFD, prioritization, module-based deployment

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Authors: Tahereh Talebi, Reza Ghomashchi, Pejman Talemi, Sima Aminorroaya

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A high quality crack-free film of Bi₂Te₃ material has been deposited for the first time using electrophoretic deposition (EPD) and microstructures of various films have been investigated. One of the most important thermoelectric (TE) applications is Bi₂Te₃ to manufacture TE generators (TEG) which can convert waste heat into electricity targeting the global warming issue. However, the high cost of the manufacturing process of TEGs keeps them expensive and out of reach for commercialization. Therefore, utilizing EPD as a simple and cost-effective method will open new opportunities for TEG’s commercialization. This method has been recently used for advanced materials such as microelectronics and has attracted a lot of attention from both scientists and industry. In this study, the effect of media of suspensions has been investigated on the quality of the deposited films as well as their microstructure. In summary, finding an appropriate suspension is a critical step for a successful EPD process and has an important effect on both the film’s quality and its future properties.

Keywords: Bi2Te3, electrical conductivity, electrophoretic deposition, thermoelectric materials, thick films

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Authors: Thuy T. T. Tran, Hamish Coates, Sophie Arkoudis

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Evaluation instruments of teaching are abundant; however, these do not prompt any enhancement in the quality of teaching, not least because these instruments are framed only by teacher-centered conceptions of teaching. There is a need for more sophisticated teaching evaluation measures that focus on student learning and multi-stakeholder involvement. This study aims to develop such an evaluation instrument for Vietnamese higher education. The study uses several kinds of methods. The instrument was initially drafted through in-depth review of research, paying close attention to Vietnamese higher education. Draft evaluation instruments were produced and reviewed by 34 experts. The outcomes of this qualitative and quantitative data reveal an instrument that highlights the value of a multisource student-centered approach, and the rich integration of contextual and cultural traits where Confucian values are emphasized. The validation affirms that evaluating teaching in such way will facilitate the continuous learning growth of all stakeholders involved.

Keywords: multi stakeholders, quality teaching, student learning, teaching evaluation

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Authors: Agustin Baidez, Yolanda Ramirez

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There is currently a growing interest in the improvement of university governance and the disclosure of information on governance processes as an essential part of the transparency and accountability of universities. This paper aims to examine the extent and quality of voluntary corporate governance disclosure by public Spanish universities on their websites in relation to information need of stakeholders. The results of this study show that Spanish university stakeholders attach great importance to the disclosure of specific information on aspects of corporate governance. However, the quality of disclosed information on university governance in public Spanish universities websites is in the middle level. In order to satisfy the information needs of university stakeholders, Spanish universities can be recommended to focus on reporting higher quality information on university autonomy in financing, autonomy in management, autonomy regarding student selection and assessment, degree of consanguinity of executive directors, report on assigned public funding based on results, and management reports.

Keywords: university, governance, transparency, stakeholders

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Authors: SunWoo Lee, TaeBum Lee, YoonHwa Park, YooJeong Kim

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Solar lentigines appear predominantly on chronically sun-exposed areas of skin, such as the face and the back of the hands. Among the several ways to lentigines treatment, quality-switched lasers are well-known effective treatment for removing solar lentigines. The present pilot study was therefore designed to assess the efficacy of quality-switched ruby laser treatment of such lentigines compare between pretreatment and posttreatment of skin brightness. Twenty-two adults with chronic sun-damaged skin (mean age 52.8 years, range 37–74 years) were treated at the Korean site. A 694 nm Q-switched ruby laser was used, with the energy density set from 1.4 to 12.5 J/cm2, to treat solar lentigines. Average brightness of skin color before ruby laser treatment was 137.3 and its skin color was brightened after ruby laser treatment by 150.5. Also, standard deviation of skin color was decreased from 17.8 to 16.4. Regarding the multivariate model, age and energy were identified as significant factors for skin color brightness change in lentigo depigmentation by ruby laser treatment. Their respective odds ratios were 1.082 (95% CI, 1.007–1.163), and 1.431 (95% CI, 1.051–1.946). Lentigo depigmentation treatment using ruby lasers resulted in a high performance in skin color brightness. Among the relative factors involve with ruby laser treatment, age and energy were the most effective factors which skin color change to brighter than pretreatment.

Keywords: depigmentation, lentigine, quality switched ruby laser, skin color

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Authors: Sandip Sadhukhan, Arpita Sarkar, Debprasad Sinha, Goutam Kumar Ghorai, Gautam Sarkar, Ashis K. Dhara

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Accurate segmentation of the optic disc is very important for computer-aided diagnosis of several ocular diseases such as glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and hypertensive retinopathy. The paper presents an accurate and fast optic disc detection and segmentation method using an attention based fully convolutional network. The network is trained from scratch using the fundus images of extended MESSIDOR database and the trained model is used for segmentation of optic disc. The false positives are removed based on morphological operation and shape features. The result is evaluated using three-fold cross-validation on six public fundus image databases such as DIARETDB0, DIARETDB1, DRIVE, AV-INSPIRE, CHASE DB1 and MESSIDOR. The attention based fully convolutional network is robust and effective for detection and segmentation of optic disc in the images affected by diabetic retinopathy and it outperforms existing techniques.

Keywords: attention-based fully convolutional network, optic disc detection and segmentation, retinal fundus image, screening of ocular diseases

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Authors: Usman Mahmood, Khawaja M. U. Suleman

Abstract:

A peer-to-peer storage system has challenges like; peer availability, data protection, churn rate. To address these challenges different redundancy, replacement and repair schemes are used. This paper presents a hybrid scheme of redundancy using replication and erasure coding. We calculate and compare the storage, access, and maintenance costs of our proposed scheme with existing redundancy schemes. For realistic behaviour of peers a trace of live peer-to-peer system is used. The effect of different replication, and repair schemes are also shown. The proposed hybrid scheme performs better than existing double coding hybrid scheme in all metrics and have an improved maintenance cost than hierarchical codes.

Keywords: erasure coding, P2P, redundancy, replication

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Authors: Raymond Chi Fai Si Tou, Jacey Ja Young Choe, Amy Siu Ian So

Abstract:

Smart hotels can be defined as the hotel which has an intelligent system, through digitalization and networking which achieve hotel management and service information. In addition, smart hotels include high-end designs that integrate information and communication technology with hotel management fulfilling the guests’ needs and improving the quality, efficiency and satisfaction of hotel management. The purpose of this study is to identify appropriate factors that may influence guests’ satisfaction and intention to revisit Smart Hotels based on service quality measurement of lodging quality index and extended UTAUT theory. Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) is adopted as a framework to explain technology acceptance and use. Since smart hotels are technology-based infrastructure hotels, UTATU theory could be as the theoretical background to examine the guests’ acceptance and use after staying in smart hotels. The UTAUT identifies four key drivers of the adoption of information systems: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions. The extended UTAUT modifies the definitions of the seven constructs for consideration; the four previously cited constructs of the UTAUT model together with three new additional constructs, which including hedonic motivation, price value and habit. Thus, the seven constructs from the extended UTAUT theory could be adopted to understand their intention to revisit smart hotels. The service quality model will also be adopted and integrated into the framework to understand the guests’ intention of smart hotels. There are rare studies to examine the service quality on guests’ satisfaction and intention to revisit in smart hotels. In this study, Lodging Quality Index (LQI) will be adopted to measure the service quality in smart hotels. Using integrated UTAUT theory and service quality model because technological applications and services require using more than one model to understand the complicated situation for customers’ acceptance of new technology. Moreover, an integrated model could provide more perspective insights to explain the relationships of the constructs that could not be obtained from only one model. For this research, ten in-depth interviews are planned to recruit this study. In order to confirm the applicability of the proposed framework and gain an overview of the guest experience of smart hotels from the hospitality industry, in-depth interviews with the hotel guests and industry practitioners will be accomplished. In terms of the theoretical contribution, it predicts that the integrated models from the UTAUT theory and the service quality will provide new insights to understand factors that influence the guests’ satisfaction and intention to revisit smart hotels. After this study identifies influential factors, smart hotel practitioners could understand which factors may significantly influence smart hotel guests’ satisfaction and intention to revisit. In addition, smart hotel practitioners could also provide outstanding guests experience by improving their service quality based on the identified dimensions from the service quality measurement. Thus, it will be beneficial to the sustainability of the smart hotels business.

Keywords: intention to revisit, guest satisfaction, qualitative interviews, smart hotels

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Authors: Armando Luis Vieira, Carlos Costa, Arthur Araújo

Abstract:

The tourism system is viewable as a network of relationships amongst business partners where the success of each actor will ultimately be determined by the success of the whole network. Especially since the publication of Gümmesson’s (1996) ‘theory of imaginary organisations’, which suggests that organisational effectiveness largely depends on managing relationships and sharing resources and activities, relationship quality (RQ) has been increasingly recognised as a main source of value creation and competitive advantage. However, there is still ambiguity around this topic, and managers and researchers have been recurrently reporting the need to better understand and capitalise on the quality of interactions with business partners. This research aims at testing an RQ model from a relational, imaginary organisation’s approach. Two mail surveys provide the perceptions of 725 hotel representatives about their business relationships with tour operators, and 1,224 corporate client representatives about their business relationships with hotels (21.9 % and 38.8 % response rate, respectively). The analysis contributes to enhance our understanding on the linkages between RQ and its determinants, and identifies the role of their dimensions. Structural equation modelling results highlight trust as the dominant dimension, the crucial role of commitment and satisfaction, and suggest customer orientation as complementary building block. Findings also emphasise problem solving behaviour and selling orientation as the most relevant dimensions of customer orientation. The comparison of the two ‘dyads’ deepens the discussion and enriches the suggested theoretical and managerial guidelines concerning the contribution of quality relationships to business performance.

Keywords: corporate clients, destination competitiveness, hotels, relationship quality, structural equations modelling, tour operators

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Authors: Ward Bakker, Shadi Alhakimi

Abstract:

The amount of people moving towards more privacy focused instant messaging applications has grown significantly. Signal is one of these instant messaging applications, which makes Signal interesting for digital investigators. In this research, we evaluate the artifacts that are generated by the Signal messenger for Android. This evaluation was done by using the features that Signal provides to create artifacts, whereafter, we made an image of the internal storage and the process memory. This image was analysed manually. The manual analysis revealed the content that Signal stores in different locations during its operation. From our research, we were able to identify the artifacts and interpret how they were used. We also examined the source code of Signal. Using our obtain knowledge from the source code, we developed a tool that decrypts some of the artifacts using the key stored in the Android Keystore. In general, we found that most artifacts are encrypted and encoded, even after decrypting some of the artifacts. During data visualization, some artifacts were found, such as that Signal does not use relationships between the data. In this research, two interesting groups of artifacts were identified, those related to the database and those stored in the process memory dump. In the database, we found plaintext private- and group chats, and in the memory dump, we were able to retrieve the plaintext access code to the application. Nevertheless, we conclude that Signal contains a wealth of artifacts that could be very valuable to a digital forensic investigation.

Keywords: forensic, signal, Android, digital

Procedia PDF Downloads 68