Search results for: Middleton Class A impulsive noise

Authors: Gunendra Rathnawali Kumarihamy Dissanayake

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Research on parenting of both perpetrators and victims of domestic violence (DV) is growing but limited. Further, much of this research in the Asian context is limited to explorations of victim mothers' parenting capacities, not shedding much light on the parenting of the perpetrator fathers. The current qualitative study aimed to explore how both the perpetrators and victims of DV engaged in parenting in the Sri Lankan cultural context. Twenty case studies were conducted with a sample of help-seeking women aged 20 to 40 years representing working to upper-middle social class. Participants have interviewed about their own as well as their partners´ parenting behaviors. The majority of women reported that their partners were often aggressive, controlling and authoritarian, less consistent, and engaged in a variety of manipulative behaviors intending to harm the relationship between their child and them. Further, victim mothers' styles of parenting and authority as parents have been severely undermined by their partners through frequent criticism, ridicule, and insulting in front of the children. As a result, mothers experienced great difficulty specifically trying to discipline their adolescent children as the children have started to disregard the mothers' authority. Most of the children also have shown treatment similar to that of their fathers', treating the mother as a personal servant not worthy of being listened to, thereby increasing the mothers' parenting stress. The mothers were often blamed and held responsible for the problems of the children by their partners, encouraging the children to disrespect and blame the mother for their problems leading them to take the side of the father who had more power. Findings are similar to those of the western context. This study highlights the intersection between domestic violence and parenting, and specific implications and recommendations for DV service providers are offered.

Keywords: parenting, domestic violence, impact, children

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Authors: Larasati Zuhro, Ida F Priyanto

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Background: In March 2020, Indonesia started to be affected by Covid-19, and the number of victims increased slowly but surely until finally, the highest number of victims reached the highest—about 50,000 persons—for the daily cases in the middle of 2021. Like other institutions, schools and universities were suddenly closed in March 2020, and students had to change their ways of studying from face-to-face to online. This sudden changed affected students and faculty, including LIS students and faculty because they never experienced online classes in Indonesia due to the previous regulation that academic and school activities were all conducted onsite. For almost two years, school and academic activities were held online. This indeed has affected the way students learned and faculty delivered their courses. This raises the question of whether students are now ready for their new learning activities due to the covid-19 disruption. Objectives: this study was conducted to find out the impact of covid-19 pandemic on the LIS learning process and the effectiveness of online classes for students of LIS in Indonesia. Methodology: This was qualitative research conducted among LIS students at UIN Sunan Kalijaga, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The population are students who were studying for masters’program during covid-19 pandemic. Results: The study showed that students were ready with the online classes because they are familiar with the technology. However, the Internet and technology infrastructure do not always support the process of learning. Students mention slow WIFI is one factor that causes them not being able to study optimally. They usually compensate themselves by visiting a public library, a café, or any other places to get WIFI network. Noises come from the people surrounding them while they are studying online.Some students could not concentrate well when attending the online classes as they studied at home, and their families sometimes talk to other family members, or they asked the students while they are attending the online classes. The noise also came when they studied in a café. Another issue is that the classes were held in shorter time than that in the face-to-face. Students said they still enjoyed the onsite classes instead of online, although they do not mind to have hybrid model of learning. Conclusion: Pandemic of Covid-19 has changed the way students of LIS in Indonesia learn. They have experienced a process of migrating the way they learn from onsite to online. They also adapted their learning with the condition of internet access speed, infrastructure, and the environment. They expect to have hybrid classes in the future.

Keywords: learning, LIS students, pandemic, covid-19

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Authors: Okafor Joan, Nwodo Uchechukwu

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Klebsiella pneumoniae (K. pneumoniae) is a significant pathogen responsible for opportunistic and nosocomial infection. One of the most significant antibiotic resistance mechanisms in K. pneumoniae isolates is efflux pumps. Our current study identified efflux genes (AcrAB, OqxAB, MacAB, and TolC) and regulatory genes (RamR and RarA) in multidrug-resistant (MDR) K. pneumoniae isolated from hospital effluents and investigated their relationship with antibiotic resistance. The sum of 145 K. pneumoniae isolates was established by PCR and screened for antibiotic susceptibility. PCR detected efflux pump genes, and their link with antibiotic resistance was statistically examined. However, 120 (83%) of the confirmed isolated were multidrug-resistant, with the largest percentage of resistance to ampicillin (88.3%) and the weakest rate of resistance to imipenem (5.5%). Resistance to the other antibiotics ranged from 11% to 76.6%. Molecular distribution tests show that AcrA, AcrB, MacA, oqxB oqxA, TolC, MacB were detected in 96.7%, 85%, 76.7%, 70.8%, 55.8%, 39.1%, and 29.1% respectively. However, 14.3% of the isolates harboured all seven genes screened. Efflux pump system AcrAB (83.2%) was the most commonly detected in K. pneumonia isolated across all the antibiotics class-tested. In addition, the frequencies of RamR and RarA were 46.2% and 31.4%, respectively. AcrAB and OqxAB efflux pump genes were significantly associated with fluoroquinolone, beta-lactam, carbapenem, and tetracycline resistance (p<0.05). The high rate of efflux genes in this study demonstrated that this resistance mechanism is the dominant way in K. pneumoniae isolates. Appropriate treatment must be used to reduce and tackle the burden of resistant Klebsiella pneumonia in hospital wastewater effluents.

Keywords: Klebsiella pneumonia, efflux pumps, regulatory genes, multidrug-resistant, hospital, PCR

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Authors: Ehsan Alishahi, Chuang Deng

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Commercial applications of bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) were restricted due to the sudden brittle failure mode which was the main drawback in these new class of materials. Therefore, crystalline-amorphous (C-A) composites were introduced as a toughening strategy in BMGs. In spite of numerous researches in the area of metallic C-A composites, the fundamental structure-property relation in these composites that are not exactly known yet. In this study, it is aimed to investigate the fundamental properties of crystalline-amorphous interface in a model system of Cu/CuZr by using molecular dynamics simulations. Several parameters including interface energy and mechanical properties were investigated by means of atomic models and employing Embedded Atom Method (EAM) potential function. It is found that the crystalline-amorphous interfacial energy weakly depends on the orientation of the crystalline layer, which is in stark contrast to that in a regular crystalline grain boundary. Additionally, the results showed that the interface controls the yielding of the crystalline-amorphous composites during uniaxial tension either by serving as sources for dislocation nucleation in the crystalline layer or triggering local shear transformation zones in amorphous layer. The critical resolved shear stress required to nucleate the first dislocation is also found to strongly depend on the crystalline orientation. Furthermore, it is found that the interaction between dislocations and shear localization at the crystalline-amorphous interface oriented in different directions can lead to a change in the deformation mode. For instance, while the dislocation and shear banding are aligned to each other in {0 0 1} interface plane, the misorientation angle between these failure mechanisms causing more homogeneous deformation in {1 1 0} and {1 1 1} crystalline-amorphous interfaces. These results should help clarify the failure mechanism of crystalline-amorphous composites under various loading conditions.

Keywords: crystalline-amorphous, composites, orientation, plasticity

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Authors: Paris Binos

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The present work investigates developmental aspects of the duration of isolated vowels in infants with normal hearing compared to those who received cochlear implants (CIs) before two years of age. Infants with normal hearing produced shorter vowel duration since this find related with more mature production abilities. First isolated vowels are transparent during the protophonic stage as evidence of an increased motor and linguistic control. Vowel duration is a crucial factor for the transition of prelexical speech to normal adult speech. Despite current knowledge of data for infants with normal hearing more research is needed to unravel productions skills in early implanted children. Thus, isolated vowel productions by two congenitally hearing-impaired Greek infants (implantation ages 1:4-1:11; post-implant ages 0:6-1:3) were recorded and sampled for six months after implantation with a Nucleus-24. The results compared with the productions of three normal hearing infants (chronological ages 0:8-1:1). Vegetative data and vocalizations masked by external noise or sounds were excluded. Participants had no other disabilities and had unknown deafness etiology. Prior to implantation the infants had an average unaided hearing loss of 95-110 dB HL while the post-implantation PTA decreased to 10-38 dB HL. The current research offers a methodology for the processing of the prelinguistic productions based on a combination of acoustical and auditory analyses. Based on the current methodological framework, duration measured through spectrograms based on wideband analysis, from the voicing onset to the end of the vowel. The end marked by two co-occurring events: 1) The onset of aperiodicity with a rapid change in amplitude in the waveform and 2) a loss in formant’s energy. Cut-off levels of significance were set at 0.05 for all tests. Bonferroni post hoc tests indicated that difference was significant between the mean duration of vowels of infants wearing CIs and their normal hearing peers. Thus, the mean vowel duration of CIs measured longer compared to the normal hearing peers (0.000). The current longitudinal findings contribute to the existing data for the performance of children wearing CIs at a very young age and enrich also the data of the Greek language. The above described weakness for CI’s performance is a challenge for future work in speech processing and CI’s processing strategies.

Keywords: cochlear implant, duration, spectrogram, vowel

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Authors: Gashaw Abebaw

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Concrete usage in Ethiopia is expanding at a faster rate than before. Cement is the most important and costly ingredient in this respect. The construction industry is currently challenged by cement scarcity and stock market inflation. Scholars' trays, on the other hand, will use natural pozzolan material to substitute cement. Apart from that, Metakaolin has pozzolanic characteristics. According to the industrial mineral occurrence map, Ethiopia kaolin may be found in abundance. Some of them include Debretabor, so it is good to utilize Metakaolin as cement replacement material. In this study, the capability of Ethiopian Metakaolin as a partial substitute for cement in C-25 concrete production with 0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20% replacement of PPC by MA with 0.49 percent water to cement ratio is investigated. The study examines; the chemical properties of MA, Physical properties of cement paste, workability, compressive strength, water absorption, density and sulfate attack of concrete was investigated. The chemical composition of Metakaolin was examined and the summation of SiO₂, AlO₃, and FeO₃ is 86.25% and the ash was classified class N pozzolan. The normal consistency percent of water increases as the MA replacement amount increase and both initial and final setting time rang increase as the MA replacement amount increase. On the 28th day, the compressive strength of concrete with MA replacement of 5%, 10%, and 15% exceeds the goal mean strength (33.5Mpa) with compressive strength enhancements of 2.23 %, 4.05 %, and 2.23 %, respectively. Similarly, on the 56th day, 5 %, 10%, and 15% replacement enhance concrete strength by 2.06 %, 3.06 %, and 1.2 %, respectively. The MA mixed concrete has improved significantly in terms of water absorption and sulphate attack, with a 15% replacement level. MA content Metakaolin could possibly replace cement up to 15%, according to the studies. The study's findings will help to offset cement price increases while also boosting house affordability without significantly degrading.

Keywords: metakaolin, compressive strength, sulphate attack, water absorption, N pozzolan

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Authors: Yonggyu Lee, Byungkyu Jung, Bom Yoon, Jongil Yoon

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MR-based simulation devices have been recently used in various fields such as entertainment, medicine, manufacturing, and education. Different simulation devices are also being developed for military equipment training. This is to address the concerns regarding safety accidents as well as cost issues associated with training with expensive equipment. An important aspect of developing simulation devices to replicate military training is that trainees experience the same effect as training with real devices. In this study, the criteria for performance evaluation are established to compare the training effect of an MR-based simulation device to that of an actual device. K-9 Self-propelled artillery (SPA) operators are selected as training subjects. First, MR-based software is developed to simulate the training ground and training scenarios currently used for training SPA operators in South Korea. Hardware that replicates the interior of SPA is designed, and a simulation device that is linked to the software is developed. Second, criteria are established to evaluate the simulation device based on real-life training scenarios. A total of nine performance evaluation criteria were selected based on the actual SPA operation training scenarios. Evaluation items were selected to evaluate whether the simulation device was designed such that trainees would experience the same effect as training in the field with a real SPA. To eval-uate the level of replication by the simulation device of the actual training environments (driving and passing through trenches, pools, protrusions, vertical obstacles, and slopes) and driving conditions (rapid steering, rapid accelerating, and rapid braking) as per the training scenarios, tests were performed under the actual training conditions and in the simulation device, followed by the comparison of the results. In addition, the level of noise felt by operators during training was also selected as an evaluation criterion. Due to the nature of the simulation device, there may be data latency between HW and SW. If the la-tency in data transmission is significant, the VR image information delivered to trainees as they maneuver HW might not be consistent. This latency in data transmission was also selected as an evaluation criterion to improve the effectiveness of the training. Through this study, the key evaluation metrics were selected to achieve the same training effect as training with real equipment in a training ground during the develop-ment of the simulation device for military equipment training.

Keywords: K-9 self-propelled artillery, mixed reality, simulation device, synchronization

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Authors: Bediru Abamecha

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Background: Domestic violence is a global problem that occurs regardless of culture, ethnicity or socio-economic class. It is known to be responsible for numerous hospital visits undertaken by women. Violence on pregnant women is a health and social problem that poses particular risks to the woman and her unborn child. Objective: The Objective of this study will be to assess prevalence of domestic violence and its correalates among pregnant women in Manna Woreda of Jimma Zone. Methods: Simple Random Sampling technique will be used to select 12 kebeles (48% of the study area) and Systematic Sampling will be used to reach to the house hold in selected kebeles in manna woreda of Jimma zone, south west Ethiopia from february 15-25, 2011. An in-depth interview will be conducted on Women affairs, police office and Nurses working and minimum of 4FGD with 6-8 members on pregnant women and selected male from the community. SPSS version 16.0 will be used to enter, clean and analyze the data. Descriptive statistics such as mean or median for continuous variables and percent for categorical variables will be made. Bivariate analysis will be used to check the association between independent variables and domestic violence. Variables found to have association with domestic violence will be entered to multiple logistic regressions for controlling the possible effect of confounders and finally the variables which had significance association will be identified on basis of OR, with 95% CI. All statistical significance will be considered at p<0.05. The qualitative data will be summarized manually and thematic analysis will be performed and finally both will be triangulated.

Keywords: ante natal care, ethiopian demographic and health survey, domestic violence, statistical package for social science

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Authors: Kubra Dogan, Fatih Tornuk

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Due to increasing consumer demand for the high-quality food products and awareness regarding the health benefits of different nutrients in food minimal processing becomes more popular in modern food preservation. To date, heat treatment is often used for inactivation of spoilage microorganisms in foods. However, it may cause significant changes in the quality and nutritional properties of food. In order to overcome the detrimental effects of heat treatment, several alternatives of non-thermal microbial inactivation processes have been investigated. Ultraviolet (UV) inactivation is a promising and feasible method for better quality and longer shelf life as an alternative to heat treatment, which aims to inhibit spoilage and pathogenic microorganisms and to inactivate the enzymes in vegetable juice production. UV-C is a sub-class of UV treatment which shows the highest microcidal effect between 250-270 nm. The wavelength of 254 nm is used for the surface disinfection of certain liquid food products such as vegetable juice. Effects of UV-C treatment on microbiological load and quality parameter of vegetable juice which is a mix of celery, carrot, lemon and orange was investigated. Our results showed that storing of UV-C applied vegetable juice for three months, reduced the count of TMAB by 3.5 log cfu/g and yeast-mold by 2 log cfu/g compared to control sample. Total phenolic content was found to be 514.3 ± 0.6 mg gallic acid equivalent/L, and there wasn’t a significant difference compared to control. The present work suggests that UV-C treatment is an alternative method for disinfection of vegetable juice since it enables adequate microbial inactivation, longer shelf life and has minimal effect on degradation of quality parameters of vegetable juice.

Keywords: heat treatment, phenolic content, shelf life, ultraviolet (UV-C), vegetable juice

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Authors: Jigg L. Pelayo, Ricardo G. Villar, Einstine M. Opiso

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The advances of aerial laser scanning in the Philippines has open-up entire fields of research in remote sensing and machine vision aspire to provide accurate timely information for the government and the public. Rapid mapping of polygonal roads and roof boundaries is one of its utilization offering application to disaster risk reduction, mitigation and development. The study uses low density LiDAR data and high resolution aerial imagery through object-oriented approach considering the theoretical concept of data analysis subjected to machine learning algorithm in minimizing the constraints of feature extraction. Since separating one class from another in distinct regions of a multi-dimensional feature-space, non-trivial computing for fitting distribution were implemented to formulate the learned ideal hyperplane. Generating customized hybrid feature which were then used in improving the classifier findings. Supplemental algorithms for filtering and reshaping object features are develop in the rule set for enhancing the final product. Several advantages in terms of simplicity, applicability, and process transferability is noticeable in the methodology. The algorithm was tested in the different random locations of Misamis Oriental province in the Philippines demonstrating robust performance in the overall accuracy with greater than 89% and potential to semi-automation. The extracted results will become a vital requirement for decision makers, urban planners and even the commercial sector in various assessment processes.

Keywords: feature extraction, machine learning, OBIA, remote sensing

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Authors: Sajjad Esmaeili Aghdam

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Economics typically conceptualizes individual behavior as the consequence of external states, for example, budgets and prices (or respective beliefs) and choices. As the main goal, we focus on the influence of a range of Behavioral Economics factors on Strategies of Digital Marketing, evaluation of strategies and deformation of it into highly prospective marketing strategies. The different forms of behavioral prospects all lead to the succeeding two main results. First, the steadiness of the economic dynamics in a currency union be contingent fatefully on the level of economic incorporation. More economic incorporation leads to more steady economic dynamics. Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is “all casual communications focused at consumers through Internet-based technology connected to the usage or characteristics of specific properties and services or their venders.” eWOM can take many methods, the most significant one being online analyses. Writing this paper, 72 articles have been gathered, focusing on the title and the aim of the article from research search engines like Google Scholar, Web of Science, and PubMed. Recent research in strategic management and marketing proposes that markets should not be viewed as a given and deterministic setting, exogenous to the firm. Instead, firms are progressively abstracted as dynamic inventors of market prospects. The use of new technologies touches all spheres of the modern lifestyle. Social and economic life becomes unbearable without fast, applicable, first-class and fitting material. Psychology and economics (together known as behavioral economics) are two protruding disciplines underlying many theories in marketing. The wide marketing works papers consumers’ none balanced behavior even though behavioral biases might not continuously be steadily called or officially labeled.

Keywords: behavioral economics, digital marketing, marketing strategy, high impact strategies

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Authors: Tholokuhle T. Ntshakala, Seraphin D. Eyono Obono

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Nations are still finding it quite difficult to win mega sport competitions despite the major contribution of sport to society in terms of social and economic development, personal health, and in education. Even though the world of sports has been transformed into a huge global economy, it is important to note that the first step of sport is usually its introduction to children at school through physical education or PE. In other words, nations who do not win mega sport competitions also suffer from a weak and neglected PE system. This problem of the neglect of PE systems is the main motivation of this research aimed at examining the factors affecting the perceived awareness of physical education teachers on the ICT's that are adoptable for the teaching and learning of physical education. Two types of research objectives will materialize this aim: relevant theories will be identified in relation to the analysis of the perceived ICT awareness of PE teachers and subsequent models will be compiled and designed from existing literature; the empirical testing of such theories and models will also be achieved through the survey of PE teachers from the Camperdown magisterial district of the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. The main hypothesis at the heart of this study is the relationship between the demographics of PE teachers, their behavior both as individuals and as social entities, and their perceived awareness of the ICTs that are adoptable for PE, as postulated by existing literature; except that this study categorizes human behavior under performance expectancy, computer attitude, and social influence. This hypothesis was partially confirmed by the survey conducted by this research in the sense that performance expectancy and teachers’ age, gender, computer usage, and class size were found to be the only factors affecting their awareness of ICT's for physical education.

Keywords: human behavior, ICT Awareness, physical education, teachers

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Authors: Salamatu Shaibu, Jan Hernning Sommer

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Integrating biodiversity conservation practices in mining landscapes ensures the continual provision of various ecosystem services to the dependent communities whilst serving as ecological insurance for corporate mining when purchasing reclamation security bonds. Climate hazards such as long dry seasons, erratic rainfall patterns, and extreme weather events contribute to biodiversity loss in addition to the impact due to mining. Both corporate mining and mine-fringe communities perceive the effect of climate on biodiversity from the context of the benefits they accrue, which motivate their conservation practices. In this study, pragmatic approaches including semi-structured interviews, field visual observation, and review were used to collect data on corporate mining employees and households of fringing communities in the southwestern mining hub. The perceived changes in the local climatic conditions and the consequences on environmental management practices that promote biodiversity conservation were examined. Using a thematic content analysis tool, the result shows that best practices such as concurrent land rehabilitation, reclamation ponds, artificial wetlands, land clearance, and topsoil management are directly affected by prolonging long dry seasons and erratic rainfall patterns. Excessive dust and noise generation directly affect both floral and faunal diversity coupled with excessive fire outbreaks in rehabilitated lands and nearby forest reserves. Proposed adaptive measures include engaging national conservation authorities to promote reforestation projects around forest reserves. National government to desist from using permit for mining concessions in forest reserves, engaging local communities through educational campaigns to control forest encroachment and burning, promoting community-based resource management to promote community ownership, and provision of stricter environmental legislation to compel corporate, artisanal, and small scale mining companies to promote biodiversity conservation.

Keywords: biodiversity conservation, climate hazards, corporate mining, mining landscapes

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Authors: Teja Sai Puligadda

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Satellite images in detail can serve an important role in the geographic study. Quantitative and qualitative information provided by the satellite and remote sensing images minimizes the complexity of work and time. Data/images are captured at regular intervals by satellite remote sensing systems, and the amount of data collected is often enormous, and it expands rapidly as technology develops. Interpreting remote sensing images, geographic data mining, and researching distinct vegetation types such as agricultural and forests are all part of satellite image categorization. One of the biggest challenge data scientists faces while classifying satellite images is finding the best suitable classification algorithms based on the available that could able to classify images with utmost accuracy. In order to categorize satellite images, which is difficult due to the sheer volume of data, many academics are turning to deep learning machine algorithms. As, the CNN algorithm gives high accuracy in image recognition problems and automatically detects the important features without any human supervision and the ANN algorithm stores information on the entire network (Abhishek Gupta., 2020), these two deep learning algorithms have been used for satellite image classification. This project focuses on remote sensing through Deep Neural Networks i.e., ANN and CNN with Deep Sat (SAT-4) Airborne dataset for classifying images. Thus, in this project of classifying satellite images, the algorithms ANN and CNN are implemented, evaluated & compared and the performance is analyzed through evaluation metrics such as Accuracy and Loss. Additionally, the Neural Network algorithm which gives the lowest bias and lowest variance in solving multi-class satellite image classification is analyzed.

Keywords: artificial neural network, convolutional neural network, remote sensing, accuracy, loss

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Authors: Kusay Wheib, Alexandra Krvchenko

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Crop yields are influenced by many factors, including natural ones, such as soil and environmental characteristics of the agricultural land, as well as manmade ones, such as management applications. One of the factors that frequently affect crop yields in undulating Midwest landscapes is topography, which controls the movement of water and nutrients necessary for plant life. The main objective of this study is to examine how field topography influences performance of different management practices in undulated terrain of southwest Michigan. A total of 26 agricultural fields, ranging in size from 1.1 to 7.4 ha, from the Scale-Up at Kellogg Biological Station were included in the study. The two studied factors were crop species with three levels, i.e., corn (Zea mays L.) soybean (Glycine max L.), and wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), and management practice with three levels, i.e., conventional, low input, and organic managements. They were compared under three contrasting topographical settings, namely, summit (includes summits and shoulders), slope (includes backslopes), and depression (includes footslope and toeslope). Yield data of years 2007 through 2012 was processed, cleaned, and filtered, average yield then was calculated for each field, topographic setting, and year. Topography parameters, including terrain, slope, curvature, flow direction and wetness index were computed under ArcGIS environment for each topographic class of each field to seek their effects on yield. Results showed that topographical depressions produced greatest yields in most studied fields, while managements with chemical inputs, both low input and conventional, resulted in higher yields than the organic management.

Keywords: sustainable agriculture, precision agriculture, topography, yield

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Authors: G. C. Almiranez, J. Mercado, L. U. Aumentado, J. M. Mahaguay, J. P. Cruz, M. L. Saballe

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This research project focused on the development of an application that aids the university administrators to establish an efficient and effective system in managing faculty attendance and discourage unnecessary absences. The Faculty Attendance Management System (FAMS) is a web based and mobile application which is proven to be efficient and effective in handling and recording data, generating updated reports and analytics needed in managing faculty attendance. The FAMS can facilitate not only a convenient and faster way of gathering and recording of data but it can also provide data analytics, immediate feedback system mechanism and analysis. The software database architecture uses MySQL for web based and SQLite for mobile applications. The system includes different modules that capture daily attendance of faculty members, generate faculty attendance reports and analytics, absences notification system for faculty members, chairperson and dean regarding absences, and immediate communication system concerning the absences incurred. Quantitative and qualitative evaluation showed that the system satisfactory meet the stakeholder’s requirements. The functionality, usability, reliability, performance, and security all turned out to be above average. System testing, integration testing and user acceptance testing had been conducted. Results showed that the system performed very satisfactory and functions as designed. Performance of the system is also affected by Internet infrastructure or connectivity of the university. The faculty analytics generated from the system may not only be used by Deans and Chairperson in their evaluation of faculty performance but as well as the individual faculty to increase awareness on their attendance in class. Hence, the system facilitates effective communication between system stakeholders through FAMS feedback mechanism and up to date posting of information.

Keywords: faculty attendance management system, MySQL, SQLite, FAMS, analytics

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Authors: Mumtaz Ali Baloch

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This article aims at to review the policies and gaps including the socioeconomic and institutional factors that affected the enrollment of disabled children and caused drop-outs. It provides insights to scrutinize the gaps in policies, socioeconomic, and institutional factors with the specific concern in enrollment and drop out of disabled children in Pakistan, and Balochistan in particular. The findings of this study revealed that the old-age centralized policies and a number of socio-economic and institutional factors seemed to have significantly affected the enrollment and quality education in the case of physically disabled children. There were only a few schools functional in entire Balochistan. For example, an entire province (Balochistan) there are only two schools for disabled children, established in Quetta city. In the other 31 districts, an estimated population of 300,000 people of each district there were no schools for the disabled children. The findings of this study revealed that there is a great distinction between the policy and practice in the case of physically disabled children in Quetta, Balochistan. Consequently, such children seemed to have been out of schools. Dropout after the class eighth grade is almost 100%, as there are no high schools available for physically/disabled children, in Balochistan. The concerned organizations and authorities need to develop and ratify specific policies, provide required) facilities to the schools including sufficient budget, streamline the academic planning, and an effective monitoring and evaluation system. Only awareness and motivation could not help in improving the enrollment rate and decreasing the dropout in the case of physically disabled children. There is an urgent need to provide the required facilities to the schools. Almost all students needed assistive equipment, effective physical therapy as well as regular medical facilities. Such measures can improve the enrolment and rehabilitation of children.

Keywords: education policy, practices, physically disabled children, challenges, Balochistan, Pakistan

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Authors: Thewodros K. Geberemariam

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The rapid physical expansion of urbanization coupled with aging infrastructure presents a unique decision and management challenges for many big city municipalities. Cities must therefore upgrade and maintain the existing aging urban drainage infrastructure systems to keep up with the demands. Given the overall contribution of assets to municipal revenue and the importance of infrastructure to the success of a livable city, many municipalities are currently looking for a robust and smart urban drainage infrastructure asset management solution that combines management, financial, engineering and technical practices. This robust decision-making shall rely on sound, complete, current and relevant data that enables asset valuation, impairment testing, lifecycle modeling, and forecasting across the multiple asset portfolios. On this paper, predictive computational intelligence (CI) and multi-class machine learning (ML) coupled with online, offline, and historical record data that are collected from an array of multi-parameter sensors are used for the extraction of different operational and non-conforming patterns hidden in structured and unstructured data to determine and produce actionable insight on the current and future states of the network. This paper aims to improve the strategic decision-making process by identifying all possible alternatives; evaluate the risk of each alternative, and choose the alternative most likely to attain the required goal in a cost-effective manner using historical and near real-time urban drainage infrastructure data for urban drainage infrastructures assets that have previously not benefited from computational intelligence and machine learning advancements.

Keywords: computational intelligence, machine learning, urban drainage infrastructure, machine learning, classification, prediction, asset management space

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Authors: Yuxuan Tang

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Cognitive diagnostic assessment has received much attention in second language education, and assessment for it can provide pedagogically useful feedback for language learners. However, there is a lack of research on how students interpret and use cognitive diagnostic feedback. Thus the present study aims to adopt a mixed-method approach mainly to explore the relationship between the goal-orientation and students' response to cognitive diagnostic feedback. Almost 200 Chinese undergraduates from two universities in Xi'an, China, will be invited to do a cognitive diagnostic reading test, and each student will receive specialized cognitive diagnostic feedback, comprising of students' reading attributes mastery level generated by applying a well-selected cognitive diagnostic model, students' perceived reading ability assessed by a self-assessing questionnaire and students’ level position in the whole class. And a goal-orientation questionnaire and a self-generated questionnaire on the perception of feedback will be given to students the moment they receive feedback. In addition, interviews of students will be conducted on their future plans to see whether they have awareness of carrying out studying plans. The study aims to find a new perspective towards how students use and interpret cognitive diagnostic feedback in terms of their different goal-orientation (self-based, task-based, and other-based goals) by applying the newest goal orientation model, which is an important construct of motivation in psychology, seldom researched under language learning area. And the study is expected to provide evidence on how diagnostic feedback promotes students' learning under the educational belief of assessment for learning. Practically speaking, according to the personalized diagnostic feedback, students can take remedial self-learning more purposefully, and teachers can target students' weaknesses to adjust teaching methods and carry out tailored teaching.

Keywords: assessment for learning, cognitive diagnostic assessment, goal-orientation, personalized feedback

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Authors: Chuang-Hung Lin, Cheng-Yuan Hsu, Jia-Yan Lin

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It is an indispensible strategy to adopt greenery approach on architectural bases so as to improve ecological habitats, decrease heat-island effect, purify air quality, and relieve surface runoff as well as noise pollution, all of which are done in an attempt to achieve sustainable environment. How we can do with plant design to attain the best visual quality and ideal carbon dioxide fixation depends on whether or not we can appropriately make use of greenery according to the nature of architectural bases. To achieve the goal, it is a need that architects and landscape architects should be provided with sufficient local references. Current greenery studies focus mainly on the heat-island effect of urban with large scale. Most of the architects still rely on people with years of expertise regarding the adoption and disposition of plantation in connection with microclimate scale. Therefore, environmental design, which integrates science and aesthetics, requires fundamental research on landscape environment technology divided from building environment technology. By doing so, we can create mutual benefits between green building and the environment. This issue is extremely important for the greening design of the bases of green buildings in cities and various open spaces. The purpose of this study is to establish plant selection and allocation strategies under different building sunshade levels. Initially, with the shading of sunshine on the greening bases as the starting point, the effects of the shades produced by different building types on the greening strategies were analyzed. Then, by measuring the PAR( photosynthetic active radiation), the relative DLI( daily light integral) was calculated, while the DLI Map was established in order to evaluate the effects of the building shading on the established environmental greening, thereby serving as a reference for plant selection and allocation. The discussion results were to be applied in the evaluation of environment greening of greening buildings and establish the “right plant, right place” design strategy of multi-level ecological greening for application in urban design and landscape design development, as well as the greening criteria to feedback to the eco-city greening buildings.

Keywords: daily light integral, plant design, urban open space

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Authors: Carlos Gonzales, Zaida Quiroz, Marcos Prates

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Several spatial variables collected at the same location that share a common spatial distribution can be modeled simultaneously through a multivariate geostatistical model that takes into account the correlation between these variables and the spatial autocorrelation. The main goal of this model is to perform spatial prediction of these variables in the region of study. Here we focus on a geostatistical multivariate formulation that relies on sharing common spatial random effect terms. In particular, the first response variable can be modeled by a mean that incorporates a shared random spatial effect, while the other response variables depend on this shared spatial term, in addition to specific random spatial effects. Each spatial random effect is defined through a Gaussian process with a valid covariance function, but in order to improve the computational efficiency when the data are large, each Gaussian process is approximated to a Gaussian random Markov field (GRMF), specifically to the block nearest neighbor Gaussian process (Block-NNGP). This approach involves dividing the spatial domain into several dependent blocks under certain constraints, where the cross blocks allow capturing the spatial dependence on a large scale, while each individual block captures the spatial dependence on a smaller scale. The multivariate geostatistical model belongs to the class of Latent Gaussian Models; thus, to achieve fast Bayesian inference, it is used the integrated nested Laplace approximation (INLA) method. The good performance of the proposed model is shown through simulations and applications for massive data.

Keywords: Block-NNGP, geostatistics, gaussian process, GRMF, INLA, multivariate models.

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Authors: Hung Ton

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The Vietnamese community in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is a minority group with an estimated less than 1% of the population. They have been in Canada since the 1970s, therefore, many funding sources are considering them as a long-time residential group. However, their limitation of resources cannot give them equal opportunities to successfully gain support from many levels of government in Canada, compared to other long-time settled and large groups. In 2020 and 2021, they have zero financial support for addressing problem gambling in the Vietnamese community. In contrast, casinos never forget this community. The gambling industry has been targeting the Vietnamese community as one of their major clientele groups. There are always in-equal battles between low-budget educational workshops by this underserved community group and expensive variety music shows by casinos. In the very same target group, five single lines of free ads by a community project cannot get more attention than a full-page colorful poster by casinos. An outreach worker is running back and forth to talk to a group of 10 or 15 persons in an ESL or Tai Chi class held in a basement of an old community center while fifty thousand dollars variety music shows can attract five thousand audience in their luxury facilities. Five-dollar vouchers for those who attend the problem gambling awareness session are incomparable to two hundred dollar free tickets for people to attend the show in casinos and then exit the gambling area after the show ends. There is only one problem gambling counselor who speaks the Vietnamese language in the Ontario province and in Canada at large. However, there are 70 casinos in Ontario and more than 200 licensed gambling facilities in Canada. He has been lonely in all in-equal "battles" for the last almost 25 years. He exists, fighting over there with or without funding support for the program, he fights still.

Keywords: Canadian Vietnamese, gambling addiction, gambling treatment, community awareness

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Authors: Edit Xhajanka, Gresa Baboci, Irene Malagnino, Mimoza Canga, Vito Antonio Malagnino

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Purpose: This study aimed at identifying dental caries increment or reduction, based on factors such as smoking, the scaling of teeth, BMI before and during pregnancy, carbohydrates consumption in relation to childbirth. Material and method: In this observational study, the sample included a total of 98 pregnant women and their age class was 18-45 years old, with a median age of 31.5 years. The setting of the participants resides in Vlora –Albania. Moreover, 64.4% were from the city and 35.6% were from the nearby villages. The study was conducted in the time period January 2018 –June 2021. Body mass index (BMI) was calculated using the standard formula (kg/m²). Maternal pre, during and post-pregnancy BMI was collected by using a validated questionnaire. Statistical analysis was performed using IBM SPSS Statistics 23.0. The significance level (α) was set at 0.05, whereas P-value and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to analyze the data. Results: Based on the data analysis, 44.4% of the sample declared that they did smoke before pregnancy and 55.6% not smoked during their pregnancy. As a result, no association was found between smoking and length of pregnancy P=0.95. There is also a strong relation (P=0.000) between the number of teeth with caries before pregnancy and the number of teeth with caries during pregnancy. There is a significant relationship between the scaling of teeth and childbirth, P=0.05. BMI before and during pregnancy in relation to carbohydrates consumption have a significant correlation P=0.004 and P=0.002. The values of BMI before and during pregnancy in relation to childbirth have a strong correlation: P=0.043 and P=0.040, respectively. As a result, obesity was associated with preterm birth. The percentage of children born during 34-36 weeks of pregnancy was 69%, and children born during 32-34 weeks of pregnancy were 31%. CONCLUSION: There was a positive association between dental caries experience, BMI and carbohydrates consumption. Obesity in pregnancy is increasing worldwide; that is why this study suggests the importance of an appropriate weight before and during pregnancy.

Keywords: BMI, dental caries, pregnancy, scaling, smoking

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Authors: Oyebade K. Oyedotun

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The cardiotocogram is a technical recording of the heartbeat rate and uterine contractions of a fetus during pregnancy. During pregnancy, several complications can occur to both the mother and the fetus; hence it is very crucial that medical experts are able to find technical means to check the healthiness of the mother and especially the fetus. It is very important that the fetus develops as expected in stages during the pregnancy period; however, the task of monitoring the health status of the fetus is not that which is easily achieved as the fetus is not wholly physically available to medical experts for inspection. Hence, doctors have to resort to some other tests that can give an indication of the status of the fetus. One of such diagnostic test is to obtain cardiotocograms of the fetus. From the analysis of the cardiotocograms, medical experts can determine the status of the fetus, and therefore necessary medical interventions. Generally, medical experts classify examined cardiotocograms into ‘normal’, ‘suspect’, or ‘pathological’. This work presents an artificial neural network based decision support system which can filter cardiotocograms data, producing the corresponding statuses of the fetuses. The capability of artificial neural network to explore the cardiotocogram data and learn features that distinguish one class from the others has been exploited in this research. In this research, feedforward and radial basis neural networks were trained on a publicly available database to classify the processed cardiotocogram data into one of the three classes: ‘normal’, ‘suspect’, or ‘pathological’. Classification accuracies of 87.8% and 89.2% were achieved during the test phase of the trained network for the feedforward and radial basis neural networks respectively. It is the hope that while the system described in this work may not be a complete replacement for a medical expert in fetus status evaluation, it can significantly reinforce the confidence in medical diagnosis reached by experts.

Keywords: decision support, cardiotocogram, classification, neural networks

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Authors: Gokcen Akyurek, Hulya Kayihan, Deniz Yuce, Selen Yilmaz

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The stigma towards mental illness is still very rooted in our society, despite the number of studies, campaigns, and anti-stigma programs developed in recent years. Stigma represents a serious obstacle to recovery and social integration for people who experience a mental illness, affecting directly their well-being and quality of life. It implies that these persons have to deal with many other barriers apart from the disease symptoms (1-5). Convergent, recent literature suggests that less positive attitudes by mental health professionals interfere with the self-determination and recovery process (4-10).The aim of this study was to translate the Attribution Questionnaire-27 (AQ-27) to the Turkish language (AQ-27-T), and to examine the reliability and validity of this new Turkish version. Cultural adaptation was implemented according to the internationally suggested method. To determine the understandability and appropriateness of this measure for the Turkish culture, a pretest was administered and the final form was generated. Then, 424 randomly chosen people took part in the study. Participant’s mean age was 36.9±12.7 years and %52 of them female. Cronbach's alpha and intra-class coefficients were used to estimate instrument reliability. The AQ-27-T was assessed again 14 days later for test retest reliability. The AQ-27-T demonstrated acceptable internal consistency, with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.88 for the total scale and ranging between 0.86 and 0.89 for the items. The test-retest reliability was good, with Pearson correlation coefficients of 0.79 for the total scale and ranging between 0.35 and 0.77 for the items (p<0.05). Correlation between subscales was moderate-good, with Pearson correlation coefficients of 0.18-0.88 (p<0.05). Fit indices of the model supported the factor structure and paths. The AQ-27-T is a reliable measure to assess stigmatizing attitudes in Turkish.

Keywords: attribution questionnaire, validity, reliability, stigma

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Authors: Ira Solomatina

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This paper looks at the role of fashion and clothes in the context of the late nineteenth-century Indian zenana. It suggests that fashion and clothes served as tools for self-assertion and empowerment among the zenana women, allowing them to negotiate between tradition and modernity and establish themselves as modern subjects. In pre-Independence India and in upper-class Indians households, zenana was women's part of the house, where women lived separately from men and in seclusion (purdah). To male colonial scholars and officials, zenana remained impenetrable, inviting speculations about the position of the zenana women. In the colonial imagination, the Indian woman was not only the helpless victim, oppressed by the Indian man but also the agent of deviant sexuality. Consequently, in the colonial British scholarship, zenana was portrayed as a space of idleness, perverse sexuality, ignorance, and illness. Contrary to the dominating ideas about zenana, some Western women writers presented more varied accounts of the zenana life, noting on the good education, dignified manners, and sophisticated fashion choices of the women in the zenana. Contemporary research by postcolonial scholars shows that zenana women in purdah travelled, had access to education and political power. The history of India has examples of women rulers in purdah and more than enough instances of zenana women influencing politics and culture. Zenana, in short, was not an ahistorical, dark realm of idleness but the space of culture and a space impacted by modernity. The paper proves that in the context of zenana, clothes, and fashion provided a visual vocabulary for the women to establish themselves as modern subjects and negotiate between modernity and tradition. To do so, it relies on photographs of zenana women and written accounts about and from the nineteenth-century zenana.

Keywords: woman's fashion, colonial India, modernity, zenana

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Authors: Carla O'Connor, Shanta' Robinson, Alaina Neal, Elan Hope, Adam Hengen, Samantha Drotar

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In this paper, we provide a preliminary analysis of the stories teachers tell about their Black students in their efforts to make sense of and professionally resolve the underperformance of Black students in their district. The teachers themselves hail from three demographically distinct districts that participate in the state coordinated inter-district school choice system. The districts are Varuna Hills (a pseudonym, as are all other names in this manuscript), a district that serves a predominantly White and affluent community; Newport, a district that serves a socioeconomically diverse but still majority White population; and Aspen, a district in which the student body is predominantly Black and predominantly working to lower middle class. Relying upon teacher focus group interviews in each of these districts which share a common reform context, we show how teachers’ everyday and narrative discourse makes meaning of the bodies and achievement of Black students and their families. More specifically, we show that these discourses construct Black students as interlopers, as suffering from extraordinary neediness, and in dire need of proper parenting. Our analysis reveals that there are nuances by which the teachers articulate these discourses with the nuances being a function of how the schools of choice reform context intersects with the demographics of each school and beliefs about the demographics of the schools of choice population. We unpack the racialized and classed nature of these narratives and the implications for teachers’ personal practical knowledge.

Keywords: black achievement, educational access and opportunity, race and schooling, teacher knowledge and education

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Authors: Jon Gunnar Bernburg

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The present study addresses a topic that is fundamental to social movement theory, namely, the contingent link between movement support and movement participation. Usually, only a small fraction of those who agree with the cause of a social movement is mobilized into participating in it (a pattern sometimes referred to as 'the collective action problem'). However, historical moments sometimes emerge when many supporters become mobilized to participate in the movement, greatly enhancing the chance of movement success. By studying a case in point, this paper addresses the limited work on how support and participation are related at such critical moments. Specifically, the paper examines the association between supporting and participating in a huge 'pro-democracy' protest in Iceland in April 2016, in the wake of the global Panama Papers scandal. Organized via social media by only a handful of activists, but supported by a majority of Icelanders, the protest attracted about a fourth of the urban population, leading to a snap election and government change. Surveying Iceland’s urban population, this paper tests hypotheses about the processes mobilizing supporters to participate in the protest. The findings reveal how variables derived from the theories of biographical availability (males vs. females, working class vs. professionals), critical mass (expectations, prior protest success), and social embeddedness (close ties with protesters) moderate the association between protest support and participation. The study helps to account for one of the largest protests in Iceland’s history while contributing to the theory about how historical contexts shape the behavior of movement supporters.

Keywords: Iceland, crisis, protest support vs. participation, theories of mass mobilization

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Authors: Frieda Amitai

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The field of Translation Studies includes both descriptive and applied aspects, one of which is developing curricula. Within this topic there are theories dealing with curricula aimed at translator training, and theories meant to explore teaching translation as means through which awareness to language is developed in order to enhance language knowledge. An example of the latter is a unique study program in Israeli high schools – Teaching Translation Skills Program (TTSP). This study program has been taught in Israel for more than two decades and is aimed at raising students' meta-linguistic awareness as well as their language proficiency in both source language and target language in order to enable them become better language learners. The objective of the current research was to examine whether the goals of this program are achieved – increase in students' metalinguistic awareness and language proficiency. A follow-up case study was aimed at examining the level of proficiency which would develop most by this way of teaching English. The study was conducted in two stages – before and after participating in the program. 400 subjects took part in the first stage, and 100 took part in the second. In both parts of the study, participants were given the same five tasks in both Hebrew and English in addition to a questionnaire, in which they were asked about their own knowledge of Hebrew and in comparison to that of their peers. Their teachers were asked about the success of the program and about the methodology they use in class. Findings show significant change in the level of meta-linguistic awareness of the students as well as their language proficiency. A comparison between their answers before and after the program shows that their meta-linguistic awareness increased, as did their ability to recognize linguistic mistakes. These findings serve as strong evidence for the positive effect such study program has on the development of meta-linguistic awareness and linguistic knowledge. The follow-up case study tests the change among weaker language learners.

Keywords: comparison, metalinguistic awareness, language learning, translation skills

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Authors: Adina Dudau, Georgios Kominis, Melinda Szocs

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This paper links distinct bodies of literature around innovation and public services by examining a case of perceived innovation failure. Through a mixed methodology investigating student attitudes to, and behaviour around, technological innovation in higher education, the paper makes a contribution to the public service innovation literature by focusing on the duality of innovation outcomes, suggestive of an innovation typology in public services. The study was conducted in a UK Russell Group university and it focused on a technological process innovation. The innovation consisted of the provision of feedback to students in the form of a digital video (mp4), tailored to each individual submission, with extended voice-over commentary from the course coordinator and visual cues intended to help students see the relevance of comments to their submissions. The sample of the study consisted of a class of 79 undergraduate students. To investigate student attainment, we designed a field (also known as quasi or natural) experiment, essentially a manipulation of a social setting (in this case, the form of feedback given to students), but as part of a naturally occurring social arrangement (a real course which students attend and in which they are assessed). A two group control group design (see figure 3) was utilised to examine the effectiveness of the feedback innovation (video feedback). Two outcome variables of the service innovation were measured: student satisfaction and student attainment. In other words, the study examined not only students’ perceptions of whether VF was deemed to be beneficial towards their subsequent assignments; but also evidence of actual incremental benefits in students’ performance from one assignment to the next after VF was provided. The results were baffling and indicating competing agendas in higher education.

Keywords: higher education, audio-video, feedback, innovation

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