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Authors: Mina Zaky Sarofim Zaky

Abstract:

Experiential marketing is a form of marketing that offers a unique integration of experiential and entertainment elements into a product or service. Experiential marketing is defined as an unforgettable experience that penetrates the customer's mind. Customer satisfaction is also defined as the emotional response to the experience provided with the purchased product or service. Experiential marketing activities can, therefore, affect the level of customer satisfaction and loyalty. In this context, the study aims to determine the relationship between experiential marketing, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in cosmetic products in Konya. The least squares method (PLS) was used to analyze the research data. Existing research has shown that experiential marketing is a significant predictor of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, and that experiential marketing has a positive impact on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

Keywords: internet, marketing, tourism, tourism management corporate responsibility, employee organizational performance, internal marketing, internal customer experiential marketing, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, social sciences

Procedia PDF Downloads 48

Authors: Zeynep Aytaç, Nuri Yücel

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Today, as the need for high efficiency and fuel-efficient engines have increased, centrifugal compressor designs are expected to be high-efficient and have high-pressure ratios than ever. The present study represents a design methodology of centrifugal compressor placed in a mini jet engine for the design and off-design points with the utilization of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and compares the performance characteristics at the mentioned two points. Although the compressor is expected to provide the required specifications at the design point, it is known that it is important for the design to deliver the required parameters at the off-design point also as it will not operate at the design point always. It was observed that the obtained mass flow rate, pressure ratio, and efficiency values are within the limits of the design specifications for the design and off-design points. Despite having different design inputs for the mentioned two points, they reveal similar flow characteristics in the general frame.

Keywords: centrifugal compressor, computational fluid dynamics, design point, off-design point

Procedia PDF Downloads 144

Authors: Mohammadali Tavakoli, Atefeh Heydari, Zuriati Ismail, Naomie Salim

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With the increasing number of people reviewing products online in recent years, opinion sharing websites has become the most important source of customers’ opinions. Unfortunately, spammers generate and post fake reviews in order to promote or demote brands and mislead potential customers. These are notably destructive not only for potential customers but also for business holders and manufacturers. However, research in this area is not adequate, and many critical problems related to spam detection have not been solved to date. To provide green researchers in the domain with a great aid, in this paper, we have attempted to create a high-quality framework to make a clear vision on review spam-detection methods. In addition, this report contains a comprehensive collection of detection metrics used in proposed spam-detection approaches. These metrics are extremely applicable for developing novel detection methods.

Keywords: fake reviews, feature collection, opinion spam, spam detection

Procedia PDF Downloads 413

Authors: Rosa Palmeri, Julieta I. Monteleone, Antonio C. Barbera, Carmelo Maucieri, Aldo Todaro, Virgilio Giannone, Giovanni Spagna

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In recent years, considerable interest has been shown in the functional properties of foods, and a relevant role has been played by phenolic compounds, able to scavenge free radicals. A more sustainable agriculture has to emerge to guarantee food supply over the next years. Wheat, corn, and rice are the most common cereals cultivated, but also other cereal species, such as barley can be appreciated for their peculiarities. Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is a C3 winter cereal that shows high resistance at drought and salt stresses. There are growing interests in barley as ingredient for the production of functional foods due to its high content of phenolic compounds and Beta-glucans. In this respect, the possibility of separating specific functional fractions from food industry by-products looks very promising. Olive leaves represent a quantitatively significant by-product of olive grove farming, and are an interesting source of phenolic compounds. In particular, oleuropein, which provide important nutritional benefits, is the main phenolic compound in olive leaves and ranges from 17% to 23% depending upon the cultivar and growing season period. Together with oleuropein and its derivatives (e.g. dimethyloleuropein, oleuropein diglucoside), olive leaves further contain tyrosol, hydroxytyrosol, and a series of secondary metabolities structurally related to them: verbascoside, ligstroside, hydroxytyrosol glucoside, tyrosol glucoside, oleuroside, oleoside-11-methyl ester, and nuzhenide. Several flavonoids, flavonoid glycosides, and phenolic acids have also described in olive leaves. The aim of this work was the production of functional food with higher content of polyphenols and the evaluation of their shelf life. Organic durum wheat and barley grains contain higher levels of phenolic compounds were used for the production of crackers. Olive leaf extract (OLE) was obtained from cv. ‘Biancolilla’ by aqueous extraction method. Two baked goods trials were performed with both organic durum wheat and barley flours, adding olive leaf extract. Control crackers, made as comparison, were produced with the same formulation replacing OLE with water. Total phenolic compound, moisture content, activity water, and textural properties at different time of storage were determined to evaluate the shelf-life of the products. Our the preliminary results showed that the enriched crackers showed higher phenolic content and antioxidant activity than control. Alternative uses of olive leaf extracts for crackers production could represent a good candidate for the addition of functional ingredients because bakery items are daily consumed, and have long shelf-life.

Keywords: barley, functional foods, olive leaf, polyphenols, shelf life

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Authors: Chunfang Zhou

Abstract:

The growing issues of sustainability have increased the discussions on how to foster “green engineers” from diverse perspectives in both contexts of education and organizations. As creativity has been considered as the first stage of innovation process that can also be regarded as a path to sustainability, this paper will particularly propose creativity as a scientific literacy meaning a collection of awareness, ability, and skills about sustainability. From this sense, creativity should be an element in IT engineering education and organizational learning programmes, since IT engineers are one group of key actors in designing, researching and developing social media products that are most important channels of improving public awareness of sustainability. This further leads this paper to discuss by which pedagogical strategies and by which training methods in organizations, creativity and sustainability can be integrated into IT engineering education and IT enterprise innovation process in order to meeting the needs of ‘creative engineers’ in the society changes towards sustainability. Accordingly, this paper contributes to future work on the links between creativity, innovation, sustainability, and IT engineering development both theoretically and practically.

Keywords: creativity, innovation, IT engineers, sustainability

Procedia PDF Downloads 329

Authors: Okolie Chukwulozie Paul, Iwenofu Chinwe Onyedika, Sinebe Jude Ebieladoh, M. C. Nwosu

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The research work is based on the statistical analysis of the processing data. The essence is to analyze the data statistically and to generate a design model for the production mix of soap manufacturing products in Bejoy manufacturing company Nkpologwu, Aguata Local Government Area, Anambra state, Nigeria. The statistical analysis shows the statistical analysis and the correlation of the data. T test, Partial correlation and bi-variate correlation were used to understand what the data portrays. The design model developed was used to model the data production yield and the correlation of the variables show that the R2 is 98.7%. However, the results confirm that the data is fit for further analysis and modeling. This was proved by the correlation and the R-squared.

Keywords: General Linear Model, correlation, variables, pearson, significance, T-test, soap, production mix and statistic

Procedia PDF Downloads 445

Authors: Andrey Norov

Abstract:

Based on a comparison of technologies for the production of granular nitrate-containing and nitrate-free NPKS-fertilizers, this paper considers the effect of process parameters on the economic feasibility of production, on physical & chemical, and structural & mechanical properties and quality of final products (caking, static strength of granules, hygroscopicity, etc.), as well as on thermal stability of fertilizers, eco-friendly production, and other aspects. This comparative analysis allows to select the optimal technology for specific conditions and requirements. Additionally, the report considers flexible, a unique technology for the production of granular NPKS-fertilizers containing sulfur and calcium, suggested by Samoilov Research Institute for Mineral Fertilizers JSC “NIUIF” - the oldest industry-oriented institute in Russia. This technology is implemented at one of the Russian plants where combined drum is used for granulation and drying.

Keywords: caking, granule static strength, granulating-drying drum, NPKS-fertilizers

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Authors: Nadia Theuma

Abstract:

Climate change is a reality that has started to leave an impact on the physical environment as well as on the built environment, in particular built heritage. This paper explores the argument that climate change is also a trigger which can lead to identifying a number of creative solutions that can transform built heritage into sustainable buildings. Using the Maltese Islands, and in particular the city of Valletta which is also a World Heritage Site, this paper illustrates some of the innovative solutions that are being developed to make heritage buildings more sustainable and in doing so, mitigating the negative impacts of climate change. The paper looks in detail at the most notable initiatives being developed, their implementation and application, which at times is not easy considering the restrictions within protected built heritage areas and the positive impacts that they will have on visitor experience and overall sustainability of the Maltese tourism product. The paper will conclude by outlining how these solutions can be adapted to buildings with similar climatic conditions.

Keywords: built heritage, creative solutions, climate change, Maltese Islands

Procedia PDF Downloads 290

Authors: Roberto Pili, Alessandro Romagnoli, Hartmut Spliethoff, Christoph Wieland

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Internal combustion engines (ICE) are today the most common energy system to drive vehicles and transportation systems. Numerous studies state that 50-60% of the fuel energy content is lost to the ambient as sensible heat. ORC offers a valuable alternative to recover such waste heat from ICE, leading to fuel energy savings and reduced emissions. In contrast, the additional weight of the ORC affects the net energy balance of the overall system and the ORC occupies additional volume that competes with vehicle transportation capacity. Consequently, a lower income from delivered freight or passenger tickets can be achieved. The economic feasibility of integrating an ORC into an ICE and the resulting economic impact of weight and volume have not been analyzed in open literature yet. This work intends to define such a benchmark for ORC applications in the transportation sector and investigates the current situation on the market. The applied methodology refers to the freight market, but it can be extended to passenger transportation as well. The economic parameter X is defined as the ratio between the variation of the freight revenues and the variation of fuel costs when an ORC is installed as a bottoming cycle for an ICE with respect to a reference case without ORC. A good economic situation is obtained when the reduction in fuel costs is higher than the reduction of revenues for the delivered freight, i.e. X<1. Through this constraint, a maximum allowable change of transport capacity for a given relative reduction in fuel consumption is determined. The specific fuel consumption is influenced by the ORC in two ways. Firstly because the transportable freight is reduced and secondly because the total weight of the vehicle is increased. Note, that the generated electricity of the ORC influences the size of the ICE and the fuel consumption as well. Taking the above dependencies into account, the limiting condition X = 1 results in a second order equation for the relative change in transported cargo. The described procedure is carried out for a typical city bus, a truck of 24-40 t of payload capacity, a middle-size freight train (1000 t), an inland water vessel (Va RoRo, 2500 t) and handysize-like vessel (25000 t). The maximum allowable mass and volume of the ORC are calculated in dependence of its efficiency in order to satisfy X < 1. Subsequently, these values are compared with weight and volume of commercial ORC products. For ships of any size, the situation appears already highly favorable. A different result is obtained for road and rail vehicles. For trains, the mass and the volume of common ORC products have to be reduced at least by 50%. For trucks and buses, the situation looks even worse. The findings of the present study show a theoretical and practical approach for the economic application of ORC in the transportation sector. In future works, the potential for volume and mass reduction of the ORC will be addressed, together with the integration of an economic assessment for the ORC.

Keywords: ORC, transportation, volume, weight

Procedia PDF Downloads 227

Authors: Indrajeet Singh, Abhishek Gandhi, Smita Mohanty, S. K. Nayak

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In this article, a focused study has been performed to comprehend the influence of change in depressurization rate on microcellular polycarbonate foamed morphological attributes. The depressurization rate considered in this study were 0.5, 0.05, 0.01 and 0.005 MPa/sec and the physical blowing agent utilized was carbon dioxide owing to its high solubility in polycarbonate at room temperature. The study was performed on two distinct saturation pressures, i.e., 3 MPa and 6 MPa to understand if saturation pressure has any effects on it. It is reported that with increase in depressurization rate, a higher amount of thermodynamic instability was induced which resulted in generation of larger number of smaller sized cells. This article puts forward an understanding of how depressurization rate control could be well exploited during the batch foaming process to develop high quality microcellular foamed products with exceedingly well controlled cell size.

Keywords: depressurization, porous polymer, foaming, microcellular

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Authors: Michał Glet, Kamil Kaczyński

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Counterfeit goods and documents are a global problem, which needs more and more sophisticated methods of resolving it. Existing techniques using watermarking or embedding symbols on objects are not suitable for all use cases. To address those special needs, we created complete system allowing authentication of paper documents and physical objects with flat surface. Objects are marked using orientation independent and resistant to camera noise 2D graphic codes, named DotAuth. Based on the identifier stored in 2D code, the system is able to perform basic authentication and allows to conduct more sophisticated analysis methods, e.g., relying on augmented reality and physical properties of the object. In this paper, we present the complete architecture, algorithms and applications of the proposed system. Results of the features comparison of the proposed solution and other products are presented as well, pointing to the existence of many advantages that increase usability and efficiency in the means of protecting physical objects.

Keywords: anti-forgery, authentication, paper documents, security

Procedia PDF Downloads 133

Authors: E. Obreque-Slier, P. Osorio-Umaña, G. Vidal-Acevedo, A. Peña-Neira, M. Medel-Marabolí

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Sensory and nutraceutical characteristics of a wine are determined by different chemical compounds, such as organic acids, sugars, alcohols, polysaccharides, aromas, and polyphenols. The polyphenols correspond to secondary metabolites that are associated with the prevention of several pathologies, and those are responsible for color, aroma, bitterness, and astringency in wines. These compounds come from grapes and wood during aging in barrels, which correspond to the format of wood most widely used in wine production. However, the barrels is a high-cost input with a limited useful life (3-4 years). For this reason, some oenological products have been developed in order to renew the barrels and increase their useful life in some years. These formats are being used slowly because limited information exists about the effect on the wine chemical characteristics. The objective of the study was to evaluate the effect of different laubarrel renewal systems (staves and zigzag) on the polyphenolic characteristics of a Carménère wine (Vitis vinifera), an emblematic cultivar of Chile. For this, a completely randomized experimental design with 5 treatments and three replicates per treatment was used. The treatments were: new barrels (T0), used barrels during 4 years (T1), scraped used barrels (T2), used barrels with staves (T3) and used barrels with zigzag (T4). The study was performed for 12 months, and different spectrophotometric parameters (phenols, anthocyanins, and total tannins) and HPLC-DAD (low molecular weight phenols) were evaluated. The wood inputs were donated by Toneleria Nacional and corresponded to products from the same production batch. The total phenols content increased significantly after 40 days, while the total tannin concentration decreased gradually during the study. The anthocyanin concentration increased after 120 days of the assay in all treatments. Comparatively, it was observed that the wine of T2 presented the lowest values of these polyphenols, while the T0 and T4 presented the highest total phenol contents. Also, T1 presented the highest values of total tannins in relation to the rest of the treatments in some samples. The low molecular weight phenolic compounds identified by HPLC-DAD were 7 flavonoids (epigallocatechin, catechin, procyanidin gallate, epicatechin, quercetin, rutin and myricetin) and 14 non-flavonoids (gallic, protocatechuic, hydroxybenzoic, trans-cutaric, vanillinic, caffeic, syringic, p-coumaric and ellagic acids; tyrosol, vanillin, syringaldehyde, trans-resveratrol and cis-resveratrol). Tyrosol was the most abundant compound, whereas ellagic acid was the lowest in the samples. Comparatively, it was observed that the wines of T2 showed the lowest concentrations of flavonoid and non-flavonoid phenols during the study. In contrast, wines of T1, T3, and T4 presented the highest contents of non-flavonoid polyphenols. In summary, the use of barrel renovators (zig zag and staves) is an interesting alternative which would emulate the contribution of polyphenols from the barrels to the wine.

Keywords: barrels, oak wood aging, polyphenols, red wine

Procedia PDF Downloads 200

Authors: Illyas Isa, Siti Nur Akmar Mohd Yazid, Norhayati Hashim

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We report a simple, green and cost effective synthesis of graphene via chemical reduction of graphene oxide in alkaline aqueous solution. Extensive characterizations have been studied to confirm the formation of graphene in sodium carbonate solution. Cyclic voltammetry was used to study the electrochemical properties of the prepared graphene-modified glassy carbon electrode using potassium ferricyanide as a redox probe. Based on the result, with the addition of graphene to the glassy carbon electrode the current flow increases and the peak also broadens as compared to graphite and graphene oxide. This method is fast, cost effective, and green as nontoxic solvents are used which will not result in contamination of the products. Thus, this method can serve for the preparation of graphene which can be effectively used in sensors, electronic devices and supercapacitors.

Keywords: chemical reduction, electrochemical, graphene, green synthesis

Procedia PDF Downloads 337

Authors: Soroush Mokallaei

Abstract:

Since ancient times, urbanization engineers have always thought of creating green spaces along with urbanization. Athens and Rome have attempted to construct public gardens around streets and palaces. Since then developing green space has become a part of urban civilization. In medieval ages, all Western cities had palaces and houses with internal gardens. In different sources green belt is defined as a green band of trees and bushes around the cities which has multiple functions. It is said that green belts are not only around the mountains, cities, and rivers but also around houses, subways, and highways. Constructing green belt around cities has different advantages such as: protecting cities against pollution, purifying air, screening dust, being a place for recreation, buffer zone of city internal lands, confronting the phenomenon of heat island, increasing agricultural products, helping to prevent illegal city development, confronting deforestation, preventing flood and increasing subterranean water resources.

Keywords: environment, garden cities, green belt, metropolises

Procedia PDF Downloads 328

Authors: Mohammed Al-Shalabi, Alaa Obeidat

Abstract:

In any food stores, some items will be expired or destroyed because the demand on these items is infrequent, so we need a system that can help the decision maker to make an offer on such items to improve the demand on the items by putting them with some other frequent item and decrease the price to avoid losses. The system generates hundreds or thousands of patterns (offers) for each low demand item, then it uses the association rules (support, confidence) to find the interesting patterns (the best offer to achieve the lowest losses). In this paper, we propose a data mining method for determining the best offer by merging the data mining techniques with the e-commerce strategy. The task is to build a model to predict the best offer. The goal is to maximize the profits of a store and avoid the loss of products. The idea in this paper is the using of the association rules in marketing with a combination with e-commerce.

Keywords: data mining, association rules, confidence, online stores

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Authors: Xiang Li, Kui Chen, Bin Wu, Min Zhou

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Sclareolide is made from sclareol by oxidiative synthesis and subsequent crystallization, while the crystallization mother liquor still contains 15%~30%wt of sclareolide to be reclaimed. With the reaction material of sclareol is provided as plant extract, many sorts of complex impurities exist in the mother liquor. Due to the difficulty in recycling sclareolide after solvent recovery, it is common practice for the factories to discard the mother liquor, which not only results in loss of sclareolide, but also contributes extra environmental burden. In this paper, a process based on adsorption and elution has been presented for recycling of sclareolide from mother liquor. After pretreatment of the crystallization mother liquor by HZ-845 resin to remove parts of impurities, sclareolide is adsorbed by HZ-816 resin. The HZ-816 resin loaded with sclareolide is then eluted by elution solvent. Finally, the eluent containing sclareolide is concentrated and fed into the crystallization step in the process. By adoption of the recycle from mother liquor, total yield of sclareolide increases from 86% to 90% with a stable purity of the final sclareolide products maintained.

Keywords: sclareolide, resin, adsorption, chromatography

Procedia PDF Downloads 239

Authors: Pinar Erturk, Sevde Altuntas, Fatih Buyukserin

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In order to obtain an effective integration between an implant and a bone, implant surfaces should have similar properties to bone tissue surfaces. Especially mimicry of the chemical, mechanical and topographic properties of the implant to the bone is crucial for fast and effective osseointegration. Titanium-based biomaterials are more preferred in clinical use, and there are studies of coating these implants with oxide layers that have chemical/nanotopographic properties stimulating cell interactions for enhanced osseointegration. There are low success rates of current implantations, especially in craniofacial implant applications, which are large and vital zones, and the oxide layer coating increases bone-implant integration providing long-lasting implants without requiring revision surgery. Our aim in this study is to examine bone-cell behavior on titanium implants with an aluminum oxide layer (AAO) on effective osseointegration potential in the deformation of large zones with difficult spontaneous healing. In our study, aluminum layer coated titanium surfaces were anodized in sulfuric, phosphoric, and oxalic acid, which are the most common used AAO anodization electrolytes. After morphologic, chemical, and mechanical tests on AAO coated Ti substrates, viability, adhesion, and mineralization of adult bone cells on these substrates were analyzed. Besides with atomic layer deposition (ALD) as a sensitive and conformal technique, these surfaces were coated with pure alumina (5 nm); thus, cell studies were performed on ALD-coated nanoporous oxide layers with suppressed ionic content too. Lastly, in order to investigate the effect of the topography on the cell behavior, flat non-porous alumina layers on silicon wafers formed by ALD were compared with the porous ones. Cell viability ratio was similar between anodized surfaces, but pure alumina coated titanium and anodized surfaces showed a higher viability ratio compared to bare titanium and bare anodized ones. Alumina coated titanium surfaces, which anodized in phosphoric acid, showed significantly different mineralization ratios after 21 days over other bare titanium and titanium surfaces which anodized in other electrolytes. Bare titanium was the second surface that had the highest mineralization ratio. Otherwise, titanium, which is anodized in oxalic acid electrolyte, demonstrated the lowest mineralization. No significant difference was shown between bare titanium and anodized surfaces except AAO titanium surface anodized in phosphoric acid. Currently, osteogenic activities of these cells on the genetic level are investigated by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analysis results of RUNX-2, VEGF, OPG, and osteopontin genes. Also, as a result of the activities of the genes mentioned before, Western Blot will be used for protein detection. Acknowledgment: The project is supported by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey.

Keywords: alumina, craniofacial implant, MG-63 cell line, osseointegration, oxalic acid, phosphoric acid, sulphuric acid, titanium

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Authors: Sanjay Patil, Shakil A. Kagzi, Harit K. Raval

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Tailor Welded Blanks (TWB) are utilized in automotive industries widely because of their advantage of weight and cost reduction and maintaining required strength and structural integrity. TWB consist of two or more sheet having dissimilar or similar material and thickness; welded together to form a single sheet before forming it to desired shape. Forming of the tailor welded blank is affected by ratio of thickness of blanks, ratio of their strength, etc. mainly due to in-homogeneity of material. In the present work the relative effect of these parameters on weld line movement is studied during deep drawing of TWB using FE simulation using HYPERWORKS. The simulation is validated with results from the literature. Simulations were than performed based on Taguchi orthogonal array followed by the ANOVA analysis to determine the significance of these parameters on forming of TWB.

Keywords: ANOVA, deep drawing, Tailor Welded Blank (TWB), weld line movement

Procedia PDF Downloads 313

Authors: Diego Saqui, José H. Saito, José R. Campos, Lúcio A. de C. Jorge

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Hyperspectral images and remote sensing are important for many applications. A problem in the use of these images is the high volume of data to be processed, stored and transferred. Dimensionality reduction techniques can be used to reduce the volume of data. In this paper, an approach to band selection based on clustering algorithms is presented. This approach allows to reduce the volume of data. The proposed structure is based on Fuzzy C-Means (or K-Means) and NWHFC algorithms. New attributes in relation to other studies in the literature, such as kurtosis and low correlation, are also considered. A comparison of the results of the approach using the Fuzzy C-Means and K-Means with different attributes is performed. The use of both algorithms show similar good results but, particularly when used attributes variance and kurtosis in the clustering process, however applicable in hyperspectral images.

Keywords: band selection, fuzzy c-means, k-means, hyperspectral image

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Authors: Abdullah Khuwaileh

Abstract:

The central aim of this paper is to investigate writing skills in the two languages involved, English and Arabic, and to see whether there is an association between poor writing across languages. That is to say, and it is thought that learners might be excellent in their L1 (Language 1: Arabic) but not in L2 (language 2: English). However, our experimental research findings resulted in an interesting association between L1 and L2. Data were collected from 150 students (chosen randomly) who wrote about the same topic in English and Arabic. Topics needed no preparation as they were common and well-known. Scripts were assessed respectively by ELT (English Language Teaching) and Arabic specialists. The study confirms that poor writing in English correlates with similar deficiencies in the mother tongue (Arabic). Thus, the common assumption in ELT that all learners are fully competent in their first language skills is unfounded. Therefore, the criticism of ELT programs for speakers of Arabic, based on poor writing skills in English and good writing in Arabic is not justified. The findings of this paper can be extended to other learners of English who speak Arabic as a first language and English as a foreign and/or second language. The study is concluded with several research and practical recommendations

Keywords: language, writing, culture, l1

Procedia PDF Downloads 89

Authors: Tiantian Ma

Abstract:

The district of Doumen, Zhuhai has a sophisticated seabass value chain. However, unlike typical Global Value Chain (GVC) industries, the seabass value chain in Doumen is highly domestic both in terms of production and consumption. Still, since the highly-industrialized and capital-intensive industry involves many off-farm segments in both upstream and downstream, this paper will be utilizing the method of value chain analysis. To be specific, the paper will concentrate on two research goals: 1) the value chain mapping of the seabass industry, such as identifying actors in the hatchery, fish feed, fishponds, processing, logistics, and distribution, 2) the SWOT analysis of the seabass industry in Doumen, including incompetence of the waste disposal, the strategy of marketing, and the supportive role of the government, etc. In general, the seabass industry in Doumen is a sophisticated but not yet comprehensive value chain. It has achieved a lot in industrializing aqua-food products and fostering development, but there are still improvements that could be carried out, such as upholding environmental sustainability and promoting the brand better.

Keywords: agricultural value chain, fish farming, regional development, SWOT analysis, value chain mapping

Procedia PDF Downloads 152

Authors: Muhammad Dahiru

Abstract:

A contestable polemic in postcolonialism is the Western Universalist conception of the people of a vast continent such as Africa as homogenous. Quite often, the postcolonial African woman is seen as an entity in western cultural and literary feminist theorisations. The debate between the so-called western feminist scholarship and the postcolonial/third world feminists that began in the late 1980s focuses on this universalisation of women’s concerns as monolithic. This article argues that the universalising assumption that all women share similar concerns in not only Africa as a continent but even in Nigeria as a country is misleading because of cultural differences. The article is a dialogic reading of Nigerian literature arguing that there is no culturally normative perspective on Nigerian feminist fiction because of the multifaceted and multicultural concerns of women writers from the different cultural regions in the country. The article concludes that this can better be read and appreciated through the lens of M. M. Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism.

Keywords: cultural exclusion, dialogics, Nigerian feminist fiction, postcolonialism

Procedia PDF Downloads 207

Authors: Khethiwe Mtshali, Zamantungwa T. H. Khumalo, Stanford Kwenda, Ismail Arshad, Oriel M. M. Thekisoe

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Ecologically, the gut, mammary glands and bloodstream consist of distinct microbial communities of commensals, mutualists and pathogens, forming a complex ecosystem of niches. The by-products derived from these body sites i.e. faeces, milk and blood, respectively, have many uses in rural communities where they aid in the facilitation of day-to-day household activities and occasional rituals. Thus, although livestock rearing plays a vital role in the sustenance of the livelihoods of rural communities, it may serve as a potent reservoir of different pathogenic organisms that could have devastating health and economic implications. This study aimed to simultaneously explore the microbial profiles of corresponding faecal, milk and blood samples from lactating cows using 16S rRNA metagenomic sequencing. Bacterial communities were inferred through the Divisive Amplicon Denoising Algorithm 2 (DADA2) pipeline coupled with SILVA database v138. All downstream analyses were performed in R v3.6.1. Alpha-diversity metrics showed significant differences between faeces and blood, faeces and milk, but did not vary significantly between blood and milk (Kruskal-Wallis, P < 0.05). Beta-diversity metrics on Principal Coordinate Analysis (PCoA) and Non-Metric Dimensional Scaling (NMDS) clustered samples by type, suggesting that microbial communities of the studied niches are significantly different (PERMANOVA, P < 0.05). A number of taxa were significantly differentially abundant (DA) between groups based on the Wald test implemented in the DESeq2 package (Padj < 0.01). The majority of the DA taxa were significantly enriched in faeces than in milk and blood, except for the genus Anaplasma, which was significantly enriched in blood and was, in turn, the most abundant taxon overall. A total of 30 phyla, 74 classes, 156 orders, 243 families and 408 genera were obtained from the overall analysis. The most abundant phyla obtained between the three body sites were Firmicutes, Bacteroidota, and Proteobacteria. A total of 58 genus-level taxa were simultaneously detected between the sample groups, while bacterial signatures of at least 8 of these occurred concurrently in corresponding faeces, milk and blood samples from the same group of animals constituting a pool. The important taxa identified in this study could be categorized into four potentially pathogenic clusters: i) arthropod-borne; ii) food-borne and zoonotic; iii) mastitogenic and; iv) metritic and abortigenic. This study provides insight into the microbial composition of bovine faeces, milk, and blood and its extent of overlapping. It further highlights the potential risk of disease occurrence and transmission between the animals and the inhabitants of the sampled rural community, pertaining to their unsanitary practices associated with the use of cattle by-products.

Keywords: microbial profiling, 16S rRNA, NGS, feces, milk, blood, lactating cows, small-scale farmers

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Authors: Sarah Bouayyad, Ajay Nigam, Meera Beena

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Acquired benign tracheoesophageal fistula is a rare medical condition that usually results from trauma, foreign bodies, or granulomatous infections. This is an unusual presentation of a male patient with a history of laryngectomy who had had over a period of several years inappropriately and vigorously used valve cleaning brushes to clean tracheal secretions, which had led to the formation of a tracheoesophageal fistula. Due to the patient’s obsessive habit, we couldn’t manage him using conventional surgical methods. Instead, we opted for the placement of a salivary bypass tube, which yielded good results and recovery. To the best of our knowledge, no other case of similar etiology has been published. We would like to highlight the importance of appropriate patient selection and education prior to performing a tracheoesophageal puncture to avoid developing life-threatening complications as demonstrated in our case report.

Keywords: tracheoesophageal fistula, speech valve, endoscopic insertion of salivary bypass tube, head and neck malignancies

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Authors: Mark Harmon, Abdolghani Ebrahimi, Patrick Lucey, Diego Klabjan

Abstract:

In this paper, we predict the likelihood of a player making a shot in basketball from multiagent trajectories. Previous approaches to similar problems center on hand-crafting features to capture domain-specific knowledge. Although intuitive, recent work in deep learning has shown, this approach is prone to missing important predictive features. To circumvent this issue, we present a convolutional neural network (CNN) approach where we initially represent the multiagent behavior as an image. To encode the adversarial nature of basketball, we use a multichannel image which we then feed into a CNN. Additionally, to capture the temporal aspect of the trajectories, we use “fading.” We find that this approach is superior to a traditional FFN model. By using gradient ascent, we were able to discover what the CNN filters look for during training. Last, we find that a combined FFN+CNN is the best performing network with an error rate of 39%.

Keywords: basketball, computer vision, image processing, convolutional neural network

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Authors: Meena Marafi, Mohan S. Rana

Abstract:

Catalysts play an important role in producing valuable fuel products in petroleum refining; but, due to feedstock’s impurities catalyst gets deactivated with carbon and metal deposition. The disposal of spent catalyst falls under the category of hazardous industrial waste that requires strict agreement with environmental regulations. The spent hydroprocessing catalyst contains Mo, V and Ni at high concentrations that have been found to be economically significant for recovery. Metal recovery process includes deoiling, decoking, grinding, dissolving and treatment with complexing leaching agent such as ethylene diamine tetra acetic acid (EDTA). The process conditions have been optimized as a function of time, temperature and EDTA concentration in presence of ultrasonic agitation. The results indicated that optimum condition established through this approach could recover 97%, 94% and 95% of the extracted Mo, V and Ni, respectively, while 95% EDTA was recovered after acid treatment.

Keywords: atmospheric residue desulfurization (ARDS), deactivation, hydrotreating, spent catalyst

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Authors: Tahir Majeed, Michael Handschuh, René Meier

Abstract:

Rheumatoid arthritis patients have swelling and pain at the joints of the hand. The regions where the patient feels pain also show increased body temperature. Thermal cameras can be used to detect the rise in temperature of the affected regions. To monitor the disease progression of rheumatoid arthritis patients, they must visit the clinic regularly for scanning and examination. After scanning and evaluation, the dosage of the medicine is regulated accordingly. To monitor the disease progression over time, the correlation between the images between different visits must be established. It has been observed that by using low-cost thermal cameras, the thermal measurements do not remain the same over time, even within a single scanning. In some situations, temperatures can vary as much as 2°C within the same scanning sequence. In this paper, it has been shown that although the absolute temperature varies over time, the relative difference between the different regions remains similar. Results have been computed over four scanning sequences and are presented.

Keywords: relative thermal difference, rheumatoid arthritis, thermal imaging, thermal sensors

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Authors: Elijah Cavan

Abstract:

In Major League Sports (MLB, NBA, NHL, NFL), it is the Front Office Staff (FOS) who make decisions about who plays for their respective team. The FOS bear the brunt of the responsibility for acquiring players through drafting, trading and signing players in free agency while typically contesting with maximum roster salary constraints. The players themselves are volatile assets of these teams- their value fluctuates with age and performance. A simple comparison can be made when viewing players as assets. The problem here is similar to that of optimizing your investment portfolio. The The goal is ultimately to maximize your periodic returns while tolerating a fixed risk (degree of uncertainty/ potential loss). Each franchise may value assets differently, and some may only tolerate lower risk levels- these are examples of factors that introduce additional constraints into the model. In this talk, we will detail the mathematical formulation of this problem as a constrained optimization problem- which can be solved with classical machine learning methods but is also well posed as a problem to be solved on quantum computers

Keywords: optimization, financial mathematics, sports analytics, simulated annealing

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Authors: Emin Çadirli, Izzettin Yilmazer, Uğur Büyük, Hasan Kaya

Abstract:

Al-2Mn-5Fe eutectic alloy (wt.%) was prepared in a graphite crucible under vacuum atmosphere. The samples were directionally solidified upward at a constant temperature gradient in four different of growth rates by using a Bridgman method. The values of eutectic spacing were measured from longitudinal and transverse sections of the samples. The dependence of eutectic spacing on the growth rate was determined by using linear regression analysis. The microhardness and tensile strength of the studied alloy also were measured from directionally solidified samples. The dependency of the microhardness and tensile strength for directionally solidified Al-2Mn-5Fe eutectic alloy on the growth rate were investigated and the relationships between them were experimentally obtained by using regression analysis. The results obtained in present work were compared with the previous similar experimental results obtained for binary and ternary alloys.

Keywords: eutectic alloy, microhardness, microstructure, tensile strength

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Authors: Abas Mohsenzadeh, Mina Arya, Kim Bolton

Abstract:

Catalytic combustion of hydrocarbons is an important technology developed to produce energy with minimum pollutant formation. The catalyst plays a key role in this process which operates at lower temperatures compared to conventional flame combustion. The energetics of the direct combustion of hydrocarbons (CH → C + H) on a series of metal surfaces including Ag, Au, Al, Cu, Rh, Pt, Pd, Ni, Fe and Co were investigated using density functional theory (DFT). Brønsted-Evans-Polanyi (BEP) and transition state scaling (TSS) correlations were proposed based on DFT calculations on the Ag, Au, Al, Cu, Rh, Pt and Pd surfaces. These correlations were then used to estimate the energetics on Fe, Ni and Co surfaces. Results showed that the estimated reaction and activation energies by BEP and TSS correlations on Fe, Ni and Co surfaces are in an excellent agreement with those obtained by DFT calculations. Therefore these correlations can be efficiently used to predict energetics of similar reactions on these surfaces without doing computationally costly transition state calculations. It was found that the activation barrier for CH dissociation follows the order Ag ˃ Au ˃ Al ˃ Cu ˃ Pt ˃ Pd ˃ Ni > Co > Rh > Fe. Also, BEP (with R2 value of 0.96) and TSS correlations (with R2 value of 0.99) support the results.

Keywords: BEP, DFT, hydrocarbon combustion, metal surfaces, TSS

Procedia PDF Downloads 257