Search results for: the popular literature

Authors: Arshia Khan, Hans-Dietrich Haasis

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Different tools of the supply chain should be managed very efficiently in mass customization. In the automobile industry, there are different strategies to manage these tools. We need to investigate which strategies among the different ones are successful and which are not. There is lack in literature regarding such analysis. Keeping this in view, the purpose of this paper is to construct a framework and model which can help to analyze the supply chain of mass customized automobiles quantitatively for future studies. Furthermore, we will also consider that which type of data can be used for the suggested model and where it can be taken from. Such framework can help to bring insight for future analysis.

Keywords: mass customization, supply chain, inventory, distribution, automobile industry

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Authors: Jignesh Patel, Satish K. Joshi

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This paper presents the literature review on the works done so far in the area of stability of power system with high penetration of Wind Power with other conventional power sources. Out of many problems, the voltage and frequency stability is of prime concern as it is directly related with the stable operation of power system. In this paper, different aspects of stability of power system, particularly voltage and frequency, Optimization of FACTS-Energy Storage devices is discussed.

Keywords: small singal stability, voltage stability, frequency stability, LVRT, wind power, FACTS

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Authors: Hadach Mohamed

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In Essaouira, tourism is the main economic activity, and the destination has a place in the segment of rural and sustainable tourism. The hinterland of the destination has natural and tourist potential of great attractiveness, but the natives still appropriate the territory and are faced with the dilemma of appropriation and tourist exploitation. This article analyzes the determinants of the appropriation of a rural tourist space in light of the massive touristification and the need to set up income-generating activities for the inhabitants. After a review of the literature, a survey was carried out among the main actors of tourism in the destination to evaluate the question of the appropriation of the tourist space and the sustainability of a destination.

Keywords: rural tourism, sustainability, appropriation, tourism destination

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Authors: Ihab Elaff

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Simulating the heart’s electrical stimulation is essential in modeling and evaluating the electrophysiology behavior of the heart. For achieving that, there are two structures in concern: the ventricles’ Myocardium, and the ventricles’ Conduction Network. Ventricles’ Myocardium has been modeled as anisotropic material from Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) scan, and the Conduction Network has been extracted from DTI as a case-based structure based on the biological properties of the heart tissues and the working methodology of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner. Results of the produced activation were much similar to real measurements of the reference model that was presented in the literature.

Keywords: diffusion tensor, DTI, heart, conduction network, excitation propagation

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Authors: Vahid Hosseinzadeh

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Salafism is a movement of thought-religion that was born into Sunni Islam and Hanbali sect. However, many groups and different attitudes call themselves Salafis, but they all have common characteristics, the main of which is radical and retrograde interpretation of Islamic sources. Taqi Ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah in the Muslim world was the first thinker who established these thoughts. The authors of this article initially tried to express the meaning of Salafism and its appellation in order to focus on the beliefs and thoughts of Ibn Taymiyyah. In this way, it was tried to extract the intellectual foundations of Ibn Taymiyya from the literature and scientific works of his own using a descriptive-analytical method. Extreme focus on the appearance of Quranic phrases and opposition to any new thing that did not exist in Qur'an, Sunnah and the first 3 centuries of Islam, are among the central feature of his thoughts.

Keywords: Salafism, Ibn Taymiyyah, radical literalism, monotheism, polytheism, takfir

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Authors: H. Akhloufi, M. Hulscher, J. M. Prins, I. H. Van Der Sijs, D. Melles, A. Verbon

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Background: A timely switch from intravenous to oral antibiotic therapy has many advantages, such as reduced incidence of IV-line related infections, a decreased hospital length of stay and less workload for healthcare professionals with equivalent patient safety. Additionally, numerous studies have demonstrated significant decreases in costs of a timely intravenous to oral antibiotic therapy switch, while maintaining efficacy and safety. However, a considerable variation in iv to oral antibiotic switch therapy criteria has been described in literature. Here, we report the development of a set of iv to oral switch criteria that are generally applicable in all hospitals. Material/methods: A RAND-modified Delphi procedure, which was composed of 3 rounds, was used. This Delphi procedure is a widely used structured process to develop consensus using multiple rounds of questionnaires within a qualified panel of selected experts. The international expert panel was multidisciplinary and composed out of clinical microbiologists, infectious disease consultants and clinical pharmacists. This panel of 19 experts appraised 6 major intravenous to oral antibiotic switch therapy criteria and operationalized these criteria using 41 measurable conditions extracted from the literature. The procedure to select a concise set of iv to oral switch criteria included 2 questionnaire rounds and a face-to-face meeting. Results: The procedure resulted in the selection of 16 measurable conditions, which operationalize 6 major intravenous to oral antibiotic switch therapy criteria. The following 6 major switch therapy criteria were selected: (1) Vital signs should be good or improving when bad. (2) Signs and symptoms related to the infection have to be resolved or improved. (3) The gastrointestinal tract has to be intact and functioning. (4) The oral route should not be compromised. (5) Absence of contra-indicated infections. (6) An oral variant of the antibiotic with good bioavailability has to exist. Conclusions: This systematic stepwise method which combined evidence and expert opinion resulted in a feasible set of 6 major intravenous to oral antibiotic switch therapy criteria operationalized by 16 measurable conditions. This set of early antibiotic iv to oral switch criteria can be used in daily practice in all adult hospital patients. Future use in audits and as rules in computer assisted decision support systems will lead to improvement of antimicrobial steward ship programs.

Keywords: antibiotic resistance, antibiotic stewardship, intravenous to oral, switch therapy

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Authors: Ibrahim Mahamid, A. Al-Ghonamy, M. Aichouni

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This study is conducted to identify causes of cost deviations in public construction projects in Saudi Arabia from contractors’ perspective. 41 factors that might affect cost estimating accuracy were identified through literature review and discussion with some construction experts. The factors were tabulated in a questionnaire form and a field survey included 51 contractors from the Northern Province of Saudi Arabia was performed. The results show that the top five important causes are: wrong estimation method, long period between design and time of implementation, cost of labor, cost of machinary and absence of construction-cost data.

Keywords: cost deviation, public construction, cost estimating, Saudi Arabia, contractors

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Authors: Yuanchao Sang, Zhihao Gong, Longsheng Chen, Long Chen

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Clothing fashion represents a human’s aesthetic appreciation towards everyday outfits and appetite for fashion, and it reflects the development of status in society, humanity, and economics. However, modelling fashion by machine is extremely challenging because fashion is too abstract to be efficiently described by machines. Even human beings can hardly reach a consensus about fashion. In this paper, we are dedicated to answering a fundamental fashion-related problem: what image feature best describes clothing fashion? To address this issue, we have designed and evaluated various image features, ranging from traditional low-level hand-crafted features to mid-level style awareness features to various current popular deep neural network-based features, which have shown state-of-the-art performance in various vision tasks. In summary, we tested the following 9 feature representations: color, texture, shape, style, convolutional neural networks (CNNs), CNNs with distance metric learning (CNNs&DML), AutoEncoder, CNNs with multiple layer combination (CNNs&MLC) and CNNs with dynamic feature clustering (CNNs&DFC). Finally, we validated the performance of these features on two publicly available datasets. Quantitative and qualitative experimental results on both intra-domain and inter-domain fashion clothing image retrieval showed that deep learning based feature representations far outweigh traditional hand-crafted feature representation. Additionally, among all deep learning based methods, CNNs with explicit feature clustering performs best, which shows feature clustering is essential for discriminative fashion feature representation.

Keywords: convolutional neural network, feature representation, image processing, machine modelling

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Authors: YangHui

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Foreign teachers play an important role in the process of internationalization of higher education in China. Based on the method of literature analysis, firstly study the contents about the mechanism of the foreign teachers’ administration in our country, then secondly analyze the main barriers of the foreign teacher’s administration mechanism. Finally, it is suggested that the international exchange department in universities should constantly improve the employment mechanism, training mechanism, appraisal mechanism and incentive mechanism to promote the internationalization of higher education.

Keywords: internationalization of higher education, mechanism, administration of foreign teachers, colleges and universities, China

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Authors: A. Mostaani, M. P. Pereira, B. F. Rolfe

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The increasing application of Advanced High Strength Steel (AHSS) in the automotive industry to fulfill crash requirements has introduced higher levels of wear in stamping dies and parts. Therefore, understanding wear behaviour in sheet metal forming is of great importance as it can help to reduce the high costs currently associated with tool wear. At the contact between the die and the sheet, the tips of hard tool asperities interact with the softer sheet material. Understanding the deformation that occurs during this interaction is important for our overall understanding of the wear mechanisms. For these reasons, the scratching of a perfectly plastic material by a rigid indenter has been widely examined in the literature; with finite element modelling (FEM) used in recent years to further understand the behaviour. The ‘wear mode diagram’ has been commonly used to classify the deformation regime of the soft work-piece during scratching, into three modes: ploughing, wedge formation, and cutting. This diagram, which is based on 2D slip line theory and upper bound method for perfectly plastic work-piece and rigid indenter, relates different wear modes to attack angle and interfacial strength. This diagram has been the basis for many wear studies and wear models to date. Additionally, it has been concluded that galling is most likely to occur during the wedge formation mode. However, there has been little analysis in the literature of how the material behaviour and deformation conditions associated with metal forming processes influence the wear behaviour. Therefore, the first aim of this work is first to use a commercial FEM package (Abaqus/Explicit) to build a 3D model to capture wear modes during scratching with indenters with different attack angles and different interfacial strengths. The second goal is to utilise the developed model to understand how wear modes might change in the presence of bulk deformation of the work-piece material as a result of the metal forming operation. Finally, the effect of the work-piece material properties, including strain hardening, will be examined to understand how these influence the wear modes and wear behaviour. The results show that both strain hardening and substrate deformation can change the critical attack angle at which the wedge formation regime is activated.

Keywords: finite element, pile-up, scratch test, wear mode

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Authors: Zeta Dooly, Aidan Duane

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The collaborative European funded research and development landscape provides prime environmental conditions for multi-disciplinary teams to learn and enhance their knowledge beyond the capability of training and learning within their own organisation cocoons. Whilst the emergence of the academic entrepreneur has changed the focus of educational institutions to that of quasi-businesses, the training and professional development of lecturers and academic staff are often not formalised to the same level as industry. This research focuses on industry and academic collaborative research funded by the European Commission. The impact of research is scalable if an optimum research network is created and managed effectively. This paper investigates network embeddedness, the nature of relationships, links, and nodes within a research network, and the enhancement of the network’s knowledge. The contribution of this paper extends our understanding of establishing and maintaining effective collaborative research networks. The effects of network embeddedness are recognized in the literature as pertinent to innovation and the economy. Network theory literature claims that networks are essential to innovative clusters such as Silicon valley and innovation in high tech industries. This research provides evidence to support the impact collaborative research has on the disparate individuals toward their innovative contributions to their organisations and their own professional development. This study adopts a qualitative approach and uncovers some of the challenges of multi-disciplinary research through case study insights. The contribution of this paper recommends the establishment of scaffolding to accommodate cooperation in research networks, role appointment, and addressing contextual complexities early to avoid problem cultivation. Furthermore, it suggests recommendations in relation to network formation, intra-network challenges in relation to open data, competition, friendships, and competency enhancement. The network capability is enhanced by the adoption of the relevant theories; network theory, open innovation, and social exchange, with the understanding that the network structure has an impact on innovation and social exchange in research networks. The research concludes that there is an opportunity to deepen our understanding of the impact of network reuse and network hoping that provides scaffolding for the network members to enhance and build upon their knowledge using a progressive approach.

Keywords: research networks, competency building, network theory, case study

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Authors: Adheesh Budree, Olaf Jacob, Louis CH Fourie, James Njenga, Gabriel D Hoffman

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Business Intelligence (BI) is implemented by organisations for many reasons and chief among these is improved data support, decision support and savings. The main purpose of this study is to determine BI requirements and availability within South African organisations. The study addresses the following areas as identified as part of a literature review; assessing BI practices in businesses over a range of industries, sectors and managerial functions, determining the functionality of BI (technologies, architecture and methods). It was found that the overall satisfaction with BI in larger organisations is low due to lack of ability to meet user requirements.

Keywords: business intelligence, business value, data management, South Africa

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Authors: Marion Billard

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This paper will focus on the question of the real relationship between young people and fake news. Fake news is one of today’s main issues in the world of information and communication. Social media and its democratization helped to spread false information. According to traditional beliefs, young people are more inclined to believe what they read through social media. But, the individuals concerned, think that they are more inclined to make a distinction between real and fake news. This phenomenon is due to their use of the internet and social media from an early age. During the 2016 and 2017 French and American presidential campaigns, the term fake news was in the mouth of the entire world and became a real issue in the field of information. While young people were informing themselves with newspapers or television until the beginning of the ’90s, Gen Z (meaning people born between 1997 and 2010), has always been immersed in this world of fast communication. They know how to use social media from a young age and the internet has no secret for them. Today, despite the sporadic use of traditional media, young people tend to turn to their smartphones and social networks such as Instagram or Twitter to stay abreast of the latest news. The growth of social media information led to an “ambient journalism”, giving access to an endless quantity of information. Waking up in the morning, young people will see little posts with short texts supplying the essential of the news, without, for the most, many details. As a result, impressionable people are not able to do a distinction between real media, and “junk news” or Fake News. This massive use of social media is probably explained by the inability of the youngsters to find connections between the communication of the traditional media and what they are living. The question arises if this over-confidence of the young people in their ability to distinguish between accurate and fake news would not make it more difficult for them to examine critically the information. Their relationship with media and fake news is more complex than popular opinion. Today’s young people are not the master in the quest for information, nor inherently the most impressionable public on social media.

Keywords: fake news, youngsters, social media, information, generation

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Authors: C. Brandt, R. Christopher, N. Damons

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Background: Soccer is one of the most common sports in the world. It is associated with a significant chance of injury either during training or during the course of an actual match. Studies on the epidemiology of soccer injuries have been widely conducted, but methodological appraisal is lacking to make evidence-based decisions. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to conduct a systematic review of common injuries in soccer and their risk factors. Methods: A systematic review was performed based on the Joanna Briggs Institute procedure for conducting systematic reviews. Databases such as SPORT Discus, Cinahl, Medline, Science Direct, PubMed, and grey literature were searched. The quality of selected studies was rated, and data extracted and tabulated. Plot data analysis was done, and incidence rates and odds ratios were calculated, with their respective 95% confidence intervals. I² statistic was used to determine the proportion of variation across studies. Results: The search yielded 62 studies, of which 21 were screened for inclusion. A total of 16 studies were included for the analysis, ten for qualitative and six for quantitative analysis. The included studies had, on average, a low risk of bias and good methodological quality. The heterogeneity amongst the pooled studies was, however, statistically significant (χ²-p value < 0.001). The pooled results indicated a high incidence of soccer injuries at an incidence rate of 6.83 per 1000 hours of play. The pooled results also showed significant evidence of risk factors and the likelihood of injury occurrence in relation to these risk factors (OR=1.12 95% CI 1.07; 1.17). Conclusion: Although multiple studies are available on the epidemiology of soccer injuries and risk factors, only a limited number of studies were of sound methodology to be included in a review. There was also significant heterogeneity amongst the studies. The incidence rate of common soccer injuries was found to be 6.83 per 1000 hours of play. This incidence rate is lower than the values reported by the majority of previous studies on the occurrence of common soccer injuries. The types of common soccer injuries found by this review support the soccer injuries pattern reported in existing literature as muscle strain and ligament sprain of varying severity, especially in the lower limbs. The risk factors that emerged from this systematic review are predominantly intrinsic risk factors. The risk factors increase the risk of traumatic and overuse injuries of the lower extremities such as hamstrings and groin strains, knee and ankle sprains, and contusion.

Keywords: incidence, prevalence, risk factors, soccer injuries

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Authors: Zonggui Chen, Yuhong Wang, Yun Le

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U.S. engineering and construction companies have increased their presence in China. A strategy for them to enter and operate in China is to forge strategic alliances with local firms. Managing the differences in motives and cultures and using proper controls are essential for a productive strategic alliance. Based on literature and in-depth interviews, this paper examines the differences in motives and cultures within Sino–U.S. strategic alliances and the impacts of the differences on control mechanisms. This paper not only contributes to a better understanding of cross-border strategic alliances in construction, but also facilitates the operation of the alliances.

Keywords: strategic alliance, Chinese construction industry, motives, cultural differences

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Authors: Mahmood Alsaadi, Alexei Lisitsa

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Nowadays, medical devices rely completely on software whether as whole software or as embedded software, therefore, the organization that develops medical device software can benefit from adopting agile practices. Using agile practices in healthcare software development industries would bring benefits such as producing a product of a high-quality with low cost and in short period. However, medical device software development companies faced challenges in adopting agile practices. These due to the gaps that exist between agile practices and the requirements of healthcare regulations such as documentation, traceability, and formality. This research paper will conduct a study to investigate the adoption rate of agile practice in medical device software development, and they will extract and outline the requirements of healthcare regulations such as Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and Medical Device Directive (MDD) that affect directly or indirectly on software development life cycle. Moreover, this research paper will evaluate the suitability of using agile practices in healthcare industries by analyzing the most popular agile practices such as eXtream Programming (XP), Scrum, and Feature-Driven Development (FDD) from healthcare industry point of view and in comparison with the requirements of healthcare regulations. Finally, the authors propose an agile mixture model that consists of different practices from different agile methods. As result, the adoption rate of agile practices in healthcare industries still low and agile practices should enhance with regard to requirements of the healthcare regulations in order to be used in healthcare software development organizations. Therefore, the proposed agile mixture model may assist in minimizing the gaps existing between healthcare regulations and agile practices and increase the adoption rate in the healthcare industry. As this research paper part of the ongoing project, an evaluation of agile mixture model will be conducted in the near future.

Keywords: adoption of agile, agile gaps, agile mixture model, agile practices, healthcare regulations

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Authors: Debarati Bhaumik, Diptish Dey

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Multilevel models, increasingly deployed in industries such as insurance, food production, and entertainment within functions such as marketing and supply chain management, need to be transparent and ethical. Applications usually result in binary classification within groups or hierarchies based on a set of input features. Using open-source datasets, we demonstrate that popular explainability methods, such as SHAP and LIME, consistently underperform inaccuracy when interpreting these models. They fail to predict the order of feature importance, the magnitudes, and occasionally even the nature of the feature contribution (negative versus positive contribution to the outcome). Besides accuracy, the computational intractability of SHAP for binomial classification is a cause of concern. For transparent and ethical applications of these hierarchical statistical models, sound audit frameworks need to be developed. In this paper, we propose an audit framework for technical assessment of multilevel regression models focusing on three aspects: (i) model assumptions & statistical properties, (ii) model transparency using different explainability methods, and (iii) discrimination assessment. To this end, we undertake a quantitative approach and compare intrinsic model methods with SHAP and LIME. The framework comprises a shortlist of KPIs, such as PoCE (Percentage of Correct Explanations) and MDG (Mean Discriminatory Gap) per feature, for each of these three aspects. A traffic light risk assessment method is furthermore coupled to these KPIs. The audit framework will assist regulatory bodies in performing conformity assessments of AI systems using multilevel binomial classification models at businesses. It will also benefit businesses deploying multilevel models to be future-proof and aligned with the European Commission’s proposed Regulation on Artificial Intelligence.

Keywords: audit, multilevel model, model transparency, model explainability, discrimination, ethics

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Authors: Mohammed Darwish

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Workplace injuries cost organizations significant amount of money. Causes of injuries at workplace are very well documented in the literature and attributed to variety of reasons. One important reason is the long working-hours. The purpose of this paper is to develop a mathematical model that finds the optimal working-hours at workplace. The developed model minimizes the expected total cost which consists of the expected cost incurred due to unsafe conditions of workplace, the other cost is related to the lost production due to work incidents, and the production cost.

Keywords: 8-hour workday, mathematical model, optimal working hours, workplace injuries

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Authors: Nassim Dennouni, Yvan Peter, Luigi Lancieri, Zohra Slama

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The objective of this article is to make a bibliographic study on the recommendation of mobile learning activities that are used as part of the field trip scenarios. Indeed, the recommendation systems are widely used in the context of mobility because they can be used to provide learning activities. These systems should take into account the history of visits and teacher pedagogy to provide adaptive learning according to the instantaneous position of the learner. To achieve this objective, we review the existing literature on field trip scenarios to recommend mobile learning activities.

Keywords: mobile learning, field trip, mobile learning activities, collaborative filtering, recommendation system, point of interest, ACO algorithm

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Authors: Noor Attar

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The paper provides an overview of the current situation of HIV/AIDS patients in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and a literature review of the concepts of stigma communication, communication of social support. These concepts provide the basis for the proposed methods, which will include conducting a textual analysis of materials that are currently distributed to family members of persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHIV/A) in KSA and creating an educational brochure. The brochure will aim to help families of PLWHIV/A in KSA (1) understand how stigma shapes the experience of PLWHIV/A, (2) realize the role of positive communication as a helpful social support, and (3) develop the ability to provide positive social support for their loved ones.

Keywords:

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Authors: Ali Alhajeri, Tarig Makki, Mosa Almutahhar, Mohammed Ahmed, Usman Ali

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Metal powder is the raw material used for laser powder-bed fusion (LPBF) additive manufacturing (AM). There are many metal materials that can be used in LPBF. The properties of these materials are varied between each other, which can affect the building part. The objective of this paper is to do an overview of the titanium powders available in LBPF. Comparison between different literature works will lead us to study the similarities and differences between the powder properties such as size, shape, and chemical composition. Furthermore, the results of this paper will point out the significant titanium powder properties in order to clearly illustrate their effect on the build parts.

Keywords: LPBF, titanium, Ti-6Al-4V, Ti-5553, metal powder, AM

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Authors: Iman Jabbar

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Within the scope of professionalism and in order to compete with the modern world, teachers, are expected to develop their teaching skills and activities in addition to their professional knowledge. At the college level, the teacher should be able to face classroom challenges through his engagement with the learning situation to understand the students and their needs. In our field of TESOL, the role of the English teacher is no longer restricted to teaching English texts, but rather he should endeavor to enhance the students’ skills such as communication and critical analysis. Within the literature of professionalism, there are certain strategies and tools that an English teacher should adopt to develop his competence and performance. Reflective practice, which is an exploratory process, is one of these strategies. Another strategy contributing to classroom development is motivation. It is crucial in students’ learning as it affects the quality of learning English in the classroom in addition to determining success or failure as well as language achievement. This is a qualitative study grounded on interpretive perspectives of teachers and students regarding the process of professional development. This study aims at (a) understanding how teachers at the college level conceptualize reflective practice and motivation inside EFL classroom, and (b) exploring the methods and strategies that they implement to practice reflection and motivation. This study and is based on two questions: 1. How do EFL teachers perceive and view reflection and motivation in relation to their teaching and professional development? 2. How can reflective practice and motivation be developed into practical strategies and actions in EFL teachers’ professional context? The study is organized into two parts, theoretical and practical. The theoretical part reviews the literature on the concept of reflective practice and motivation in relation to professional development through providing certain definitions, theoretical models, and strategies. The practical part draws on the theoretical one, however; it is the core of the study since it deals with two issues. It involves the research design, methodology, and methods of data collection, sampling, and data analysis. It ends up with an overall discussion of findings and the researcher's reflections on the investigated topic. In terms of significance, the study is intended to contribute to the field of TESOL at the academic level through the selection of the topic and investigating it from theoretical and practical perspectives. Professional development is the path that leads to enhancing the quality of teaching English as a foreign or second language in a way that suits the modern trends of globalization and advanced technology.

Keywords: professional development, motivation, reflection, learning

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Authors: Esha Banerjee, Atul Kumar Ojha, Girish Nath Jha

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This study aims to develop an intonation labeled database for Hindi. Although no single standard for prosody labeling exists in Hindi, researchers in the past have employed perceptual and statistical methods in literature to draw inferences about the behavior of prosody patterns in Hindi. Based on such existing research and largely agreed upon intonational theories in Hindi, this study attempts to develop a manually annotated prosodic corpus of Hindi speech data, which can be used for training speech models for natural-sounding speech in the future. 100 sentences ( 500 words) each for declarative and interrogative types have been labeled using Praat.

Keywords: speech dataset, Hindi, intonation, labeled corpus

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Authors: Hanlei Yang

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As a kind of popular culture in modern China, advice book on intimate relationship is turning into an important and controversial site with conflicts among neoliberalism, authoritative socialism, market-oriented principles, the science of successful sex and relationship, cosmopolitan notions of nuclear families, and the revitalization of Confucian conservatism and patriarchy. Accelerated modernization and marketization has contributed to great changes in China’s culture and social relations, which accordingly reconceptualizes and reconstructs family structures and moral ethics, particularly urban middle-class nuclear families. To comprehend the meaning of advice book fad in moral and social order, this research proposes to (i) understand the implication of Ayawawa through discourse analysis and how she mobilizes rhetorical devices and cultural resources to present a persuasive and scientific method of managing intimate relationship, (ii) examine the critical role of neoliberalism, post-feminism, and Confucian patriarchy assumed by Ayawawa in her books, (iii) explore how Ayawawa and her fans engage in establishing a model of intimate relationship and sexual subjectivity ordered by neoliberalism, class identity and authoritative socialism. Finally, this research argues that such new fad of a cultural phenomenon is gradually completed in the process of cooperation and negotiation of the state, commercial institutions, and intellectual elite agents. It helps to further learn about (i) the routine life under the influence of neoliberalism and modern hegemony, (ii) the perplexing relationship between China's indigenous cultural forms, global socio-economic and cultural influences in the late modern era.

Keywords: cultural study, intimate relationship, culture sociology, gender study

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Authors: Clement C. Aladi, Zhaoxia Yi

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This study investigates factors influencing the implementation of flexible curricula in e-learning in Information Systems (IS) higher education. Drawing from curriculum theorists and contemporary literature, and using the Technology, Pedagogy, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework, it explores teacher-related challenges and their impact on curriculum flexibility implementation. By using the PLS-SEM, the study uncovers these factors and hopes to contribute to enhancing curriculum flexibility in delivering online and blended learning in IS higher education.

Keywords: flexible curriculum, online learning, e-learning, technology

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Authors: Laila Oubahman, Duleba Szabolcs

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Public transport stakeholders aim to increase the ridership ratio by encouraging citizens to use common transportation modes. For this sight, improving service quality is a crucial option to reach the quality desired by users and reduce the gap between desired and perceived quality. Multi-criteria decision aid has been applied in literature in recent decades because it provides efficient models to assess the most impacting criteria on the overall assessment. In this paper, the PROMETHEE method is combined with the best-worst approach to construct a consensual model that avoids rank reversal to support stakeholders in ameliorating service quality.

Keywords: best-worst method, MCDA, PROMETHEE, public transport

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Authors: Chechen Liao, Pui-Lai To, Chuang-Chun Liu

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Online shopping has become very popular recently. In today’s highly competitive online retail environment, retaining existing customers is a necessity for online retailers. This study focuses on the antecedents and consequences of Internet buyer regret and satisfaction in the online consumer purchasing process. This study examines the roles that online consumer’s purchasing process evaluations (i.e., search experience difficulty, service-attribute evaluations, product-attribute evaluations and post-purchase price perceptions) and alternative evaluation (i.e., alternative attractiveness) play in determining buyer regret and satisfaction in e-commerce. The study also examines the consequences of regret, satisfaction and habit in regard to repurchase intention. In addition, this study attempts to investigate the moderating role of habit in attaining a better understanding of the relationship between repurchase intention and its antecedents. Survey data collected from 431 online customers are analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) with partial least squares (PLS) and support provided for the hypothesized links. These results indicate that online consumer’s purchasing process evaluations (i.e., search experience difficulty, service-attribute evaluations, product-attribute evaluations and post-purchase price perceptions) have significant influences on regret and satisfaction, which in turn influences repurchase intention. In addition, alternative evaluation (i.e., alternative attractiveness) has a significant positive influence on regret. The research model can provide a richer understanding of online customers’ repurchase behavior and contribute to both research and practice.

Keywords: online shopping, purchase evaluation, regret, satisfaction

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Authors: Rory Brown, Jessica Daniels, Babatunde Oremule, William Tsang, Sadie Khwaja

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Introduction: Dentures are common and are an intervention for both physical and psychological symptoms associated with tooth loss. However, the humble denture can cause morbidity and mortality if swallowed or aspirated. Numerous case reports document complications including hollow viscus perforation, fistula formation and airway compromise. The purpose of this review was to examine the literature documenting cases of swallowed or aspirated dentures over the past ten years to investigate factors that contribute to developing complications. Methods: A Medline literature search was performed to identify cases of denture ingestion or aspiration for over ten years. Data was collected to include patient, appliance and temporal factors that may contribute to developing complications including hollow viscus perforation, fistula formation, abscess, bowel obstruction, necrosis, hemorrhage and airway obstruction. The data was analyzed using observational and inferential statistics in the form of Chi-Squared and Pearson correlation tests. Results: Eighty-five cases of ingested or aspirated dentures were identified from 77 articles published between 1/10/2009 and 31/10/2019. Fourteen articles were excluded because they did not provide sufficient information on individual cases. Complications were documented in 37.6% of patients, and 2 cases resulted in death. There was no significant difference in complication risk based on patient age, hooked appliance, level of impaction, or radiolucency. However, symptoms of greater than 1-day duration are associated with an increased risk of complication (p=0.005). Increased time from ingestion or aspiration to removal is associated with an increased risk of complications, and the p-value remains significant up to and including day 4 (p=0.017). Conclusions: With denture use predicted to rise complications from the denture, ingestion and aspiration may become more frequent. We have demonstrated that increased symptom duration significantly increases the risk of developing complications. Additionally, we established the risk of developing complications is significantly reduced if the denture is removed with four days of aspiration or ingestion. By actively intervening early when presented with a case of swallowed or aspirated dentures, we may be able to reduce the morbidity associated with this unassuming device.

Keywords: aspiration, denture, ingestion, endoscopic foreign, body removal, foreign body impaction

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Authors: Aspasia Koutsokosta, Stefanos Katsavounis

Abstract:

This paper reviews the model-based qualitative and quantitative Operations Management research in the context of Construction Supply Chain Management (CSCM). Construction industry has been traditionally blamed for low productivity, cost and time overruns, waste, high fragmentation and adversarial relationships. The construction industry has been slower than other industries to employ the Supply Chain Management (SCM) concept and develop models that support the decision-making and planning. However the last decade there is a distinct shift from a project-based to a supply-based approach of construction management. CSCM comes up as a new promising management tool of construction operations and improves the performance of construction projects in terms of cost, time and quality. Modeling the Construction Supply Chain (CSC) offers the means to reap the benefits of SCM, make informed decisions and gain competitive advantage. Different modeling approaches and methodologies have been applied in the multi-disciplinary and heterogeneous research field of CSCM. The literature review reveals that a considerable percentage of CSC modeling accommodates conceptual or process models which discuss general management frameworks and do not relate to acknowledged soft OR methods. We particularly focus on the model-based quantitative research and categorize the CSCM models depending on their scope, mathematical formulation, structure, objectives, solution approach, software used and decision level. Although over the last few years there has been clearly an increase of research papers on quantitative CSC models, we identify that the relevant literature is very fragmented with limited applications of simulation, mathematical programming and simulation-based optimization. Most applications are project-specific or study only parts of the supply system. Thus, some complex interdependencies within construction are neglected and the implementation of the integrated supply chain management is hindered. We conclude this paper by giving future research directions and emphasizing the need to develop robust mathematical optimization models for the CSC. We stress that CSC modeling needs a multi-dimensional, system-wide and long-term perspective. Finally, prior applications of SCM to other industries have to be taken into account in order to model CSCs, but not without the consequential reform of generic concepts to match the unique characteristics of the construction industry.

Keywords: construction supply chain management, modeling, operations research, optimization, simulation

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Authors: Bahareh Golchin, Nooshin Riahi

Abstract:

One of the most significant issues as attended a lot in recent years is that of recognizing the sentiments and emotions in social media texts. The analysis of sentiments and emotions is intended to recognize the conceptual information such as the opinions, feelings, attitudes and emotions of people towards the products, services, organizations, people, topics, events and features in the written text. These indicate the greatness of the problem space. In the real world, businesses and organizations are always looking for tools to gather ideas, emotions, and directions of people about their products, services, or events related to their own. This article uses the Twitter social network, one of the most popular social networks with about 420 million active users, to extract data. Using this social network, users can share their information and opinions about personal issues, policies, products, events, etc. It can be used with appropriate classification of emotional states due to the availability of its data. In this study, supervised learning and deep neural network algorithms are used to classify the emotional states of Twitter users. The use of deep learning methods to increase the learning capacity of the model is an advantage due to the large amount of available data. Tweets collected on various topics are classified into four classes using a combination of two Bidirectional Long Short Term Memory network and a Convolutional network. The results obtained from this study with an average accuracy of 93%, show good results extracted from the proposed framework and improved accuracy compared to previous work.

Keywords: emotion classification, sentiment analysis, social networks, deep neural networks

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