Search results for: multivariate data analysis

Authors: Edemealem Desalegn Kingawa, Kafte Tasew Timkete, Mekashaw Girmaw Abebe, Terefe Feyisa, Abiyot Bitew Mihretie, Senait Teklemarkos Haile

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Currently, hate speech is a growing challenge for society, individuals, policymakers, and researchers, as social media platforms make it easy to anonymously create and grow online friends and followers and provide an online forum for debate about specific issues of community life, culture, politics, and others. Despite this, research on identifying and detecting hate speech is not satisfactory performance, and this is why future research on this issue is constantly called for. This paper provides a systematic review of the literature in this field, with a focus on approaches like word embedding techniques, machine learning, deep learning technologies, hate speech terminology, and other state-of-the-art technologies with challenges. In this paper, we have made a systematic review of the last six years of literature from Research Gate and Google Scholar. Furthermore, limitations, along with algorithm selection and use challenges, data collection, and cleaning challenges, and future research directions, are discussed in detail.

Keywords: Amharic hate speech, deep learning approach, hate speech detection review, Afaan Oromo hate speech detection

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Authors: B. Prashantha, S. Anish

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The aim of the present study is to computationally evaluate the hemodynamic factors which affect the formation of atherosclerosis and plaque rupture in the human artery. An increase of atherosclerosis disease in the artery causes geometry changes, which results in hemodynamic changes such as flow separation, reattachment, and adhesion of new cells (chemotactic) in the artery. Hence, geometry plays an important role in the determining the nature of hemodynamic patterns. Influence of stenosis in the non-bifurcating artery, under pulsatile flow condition, has been studied on an idealized geometry. Analysis of flow through symmetric and asymmetric stenosis in the artery revealed the significance of oscillating shear index (OSI), flow separation, low WSS zones and secondary flow patterns on plaque formation. The observed characteristic of flow in the post-stenotic region highlight the importance of plaque eccentricity on the formation of secondary stenosis on the arterial wall.

Keywords: atherosclerotic plaque, oscillatory shear index, stenosis nature, wall shear stress

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Authors: Fang Ye, Han Yu, Yibing Li

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Radio interference is one of the major concerns in using the global positioning system (GPS) for civilian and military applications. Interference signals are produced not only through all electronic systems but also illegal jammers. Among different types of interferences, continuous wave (CW) interference has strong adverse impacts on the quality of the received signal. In this paper, we make more detailed analysis for CW interference effects on GPS signal quality. Based on the C/A code spectrum lines, the influence of CW interference on the acquisition performance of GPS receivers is further analysed. This influence is supported by simulation results using GPS software receiver. As the most important user parameter of GPS receivers, the mathematical expression of bit error probability is also derived in the presence of CW interference, and the expression is consistent with the Monte Carlo simulation results. The research on CW interference provides some theoretical gist and new thoughts on monitoring the radio noise environment and improving the anti-jamming ability of GPS receivers.

Keywords: GPS, CW interference, acquisition performance, bit error probability, Monte Carlo

Procedia PDF Downloads 250

Authors: S. Mamoucha, N. Tsafantakis, Α. Ioannidis, S. Chatzipanagiotou, C. Nikolaou, L. Skaltsounis, N. Fokialakis, N. Christodoulakis

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Introduction: Plant secondary metabolites (SM) can be grouped into three chemically distinct groups: terpenes, phenolics, and nitrogen-containing compounds. For many years the adaptive significance of SM was unknown. They were thought to be functionless end-products. Currently it is accepted that many secondary metabolites (also known as natural products) have important ecological roles in plants. For instance, they serve as attractants (odor, color, taste) for pollinators and seed-dispersing animals. Moreover, they protect plants from herbivores, microbial pathogens and from environmental stress (high and low temperatures, drought, alkalinity, salinity, radiation etc). It is well known that both biotic and abiotic stress often increase the accumulation of SM. The local climatic conditions, seasonal changes, external factors such as light, temperature, humidity affect the biosynthesis and composition of secondary metabolites. A well known dioecious evergreen plant, Pistacia lentiscus L. (mastic tree), was selected in order to study the metabolic variations occur in response to the different climate conditions, due to the seasonal variation and its effect on the biosynthesis of bioactive compounds. Materials-methods: Young and mature leaves were collected in January and July 2014, dried and extracted by accelerated solvent extraction (Dionex ASE™ 350) using solvents of increased polarity (DCM, MeOH, and H2O). GC-MS and UHPLC-HRMS analysis were carried out in order to define the nature and the relative abundance of SM. The antibacterial activity was evaluated by using the Agar Disc Diffusion Assay against ATCC and clinical isolates strains: Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Candida albicans, Streptococcus mutans and Klebsiella pneumoniae. All tests were carried out in duplicate and the average radii of the inhibition zones were calculated for each extract. Results: According to the phytochemical profile obtained from each extract, the biosynthesis of SM varied both qualitatively and quantitatively under the two different types of seasonal stress. With exception of the biologically inactive nonpolar DCM extract of July, all extracts inhibited the growth of most of the investigated microorganisms. A clear positive correlation has been observed between the relative abundance of SM and the bioactivity of the DCM extracts of January and July. Observed changes during phytochemical analysis were mainly focused on the triterpenoid content. On the other hand, the bioactivity of the polar extracts (MeOH and H2O) of January and July resulted practically invariable against most of the microorganisms, besides the significant variation of the SM content due to the seasonal variation. Conclusion: Our results clearly confirmed the hypothesis of abiotic stress as an important regulating factor that significantly affects the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites and thus the presence of bioactive compounds. Acknowledgment: This work was supported by IKY - State Scholarship Foundation, Athens, Greece.

Keywords: antibacterial screening, phytochemical profile, Pistacia lentiscus, abiotic stress

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Authors: Baha Hasan, Jan Wikander

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This paper describes a part of the integrating work between assembly design and assembly process planning domains (APP). The work is based, in its first stage, on modelling assembly features to support APP. A multi-layer architecture, based on feature-based modelling, is proposed to establish a dynamic and adaptable link between product design using CAD tools and APP. The proposed approach is based on deriving “specific function” features from the “generic” assembly and form features extracted from the CAD tools. A hierarchal structure from “generic” to “specific” and from “high level geometrical entities” to “low level geometrical entities” is proposed in order to integrate geometrical and assembly data extracted from geometrical and assembly modelers to the required processes and resources in APP. The feature concept, feature-based modelling, and feature recognition techniques are reviewed.

Keywords: assembly feature, assembly process planning, feature, feature-based modelling, form feature, ontology

Procedia PDF Downloads 297

Authors: Deng Tingting

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There is a very close interaction between the rapid development of the real estate industry and regional urbanization. The real estate problem can be boiled down to the problem of urbanization, in essence. The growth of hundreds of millions of people in the future will determine the development of low-level demand in the real estate market. At the same time, the practical problems of urbanization also seriously restrict the healthy development of real estate itself. The latter two interact with each other by adjusting the industrial structure, economic aggregate, regional population flow, and many other linkage factors. Through the case analysis of Chongqing, this paper finds that the urbanization of Chongqing and the overall development level of the real estate industry are still in the stage of development and upgrading, and its development potential and future development and application space are still very large. Therefore, from the perspective of the regional economy, studying the interaction between the two is of great significance to accelerate the process of urbanization in Chongqing, promote the healthy development of the real estate industry, and promote the rapid growth of the regional economy.

Keywords: urbanization, demographics, real estate, interrelationships

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Authors: Zahra Okba, Hassan El Ouizgani

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Anticipating an individual’s behavior to the environmental factors allows for having relevant ecological forecasts. The Dynamic Energy Budget model facilitates prediction, and it is mechanically dependent on biology to abiotic factors but is generally field verified under relatively stable physical conditions. Dynamic Energy Budget Theory (DEB) is a robust framework that can link the individual state to environmental factors, and in our work, we have tested its ability to account for variability by looking at model predictions in the Agadir Bay, which is characterized by a semi-arid climate and temperature is strongly influenced by the trade winds front and nutritional availability. From previous works in our laboratory, we have collected different biological DEB model parameters of Mytilus galloprovincialis mussel in Agadir Bay. We mathematically formulated the equations that make up the DEB model and then adjusted our analytical functions with the observed biological data of our local species. We also assumed the condition of constant immersion, and then we integrated the details of the tidal cycles to calculate the metabolic depression at low tide. Our results are quite satisfactory concerning the length and shape of the shell in one part and the gonadosomatic index in another part.

Keywords: dynamic energy budget, mussels, mytilus galloprovincialis, agadir bay, DEB model

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Authors: Marwa Ben Abdessalem, Amin Zribi, Ammar Bouallègue

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In this paper, a Joint Source Channel coding scheme based on LDPC codes is investigated. We consider two concatenated LDPC codes, one allows to compress a correlated source and the second to protect it against channel degradations. The original information can be reconstructed at the receiver by a joint decoder, where the source decoder and the channel decoder run in parallel by transferring extrinsic information. We investigate the performance of the JSC LDPC code in terms of Bit-Error Rate (BER) in the case of transmission over an Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel, and for different source and channel rate parameters. We emphasize how JSC LDPC presents a performance tradeoff depending on the channel state and on the source correlation. We show that, the JSC LDPC is an efficient solution for a relatively low Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) channel, especially with highly correlated sources. Finally, a source-channel rate optimization has to be applied to guarantee the best JSC LDPC system performance for a given channel.

Keywords: AWGN channel, belief propagation, joint source channel coding, LDPC codes

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Authors: Samir K. Safi

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The purpose of this study was to compare the performance of two types of models, namely MIDAS and MIDAS-GARCH, in predicting the volatility of crude oil returns based on gold price returns and the COVID-19 pandemic. The study aimed to identify which model would provide more accurate short-term and long-term predictions and which model would perform better in handling the increased volatility caused by the pandemic. The findings of the study revealed that the MIDAS model performed better in predicting short-term and long-term volatility before the pandemic, while the MIDAS-GARCH model performed significantly better in handling the increased volatility caused by the pandemic. The study highlights the importance of selecting appropriate models to handle the complexities of real-world data and shows that the choice of model can significantly impact the accuracy of predictions. The practical implications of model selection and exploring potential methodological adjustments for future research will be highlighted and discussed.

Keywords: GARCH-MIDAS, MIDAS, crude oil, gold, COVID-19, volatility

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Authors: Saman Ghaffarian, Ilgin Gökaşar

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This paper presents a new automatic vehicle detection method from very high resolution aerial images to measure traffic density. The proposed method starts by extracting road regions from image using road vector data. Then, the road image is divided into equal sections considering resolution of the images. Gradient vectors of the road image are computed from edge map of the corresponding image. Gradient vectors on the each boundary of the sections are divided where the gradient vectors significantly change their directions. Finally, number of vehicles in each section is carried out by calculating the standard deviation of the gradient vectors in each group and accepting the group as vehicle that has standard deviation above predefined threshold value. The proposed method was tested in four very high resolution aerial images acquired from Istanbul, Turkey which illustrate roads and vehicles with diverse characteristics. The results show the reliability of the proposed method in detecting vehicles by producing 86% overall F1 accuracy value.

Keywords: aerial images, intelligent transportation systems, traffic density measurement, vehicle detection

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Authors: Thusitha B. Abeysekara, M. A. Nihal Chandrathilake

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The aim of this research is to examine the legal mechanism of resolving maritime disputes by arbitration, and it would be a reference point on the analysis of USA approaches. In doing so, the research aims to analyse the relevant legal principles in the context of current maritime arbitration practices in selected jurisdictions. The research also aims to analyse the advantages and applicability of arbitration in maritime dispute settlements over the litigation and further approaches the role of specialist maritime arbitration institutes in the USA and the position of international merchant organizations in maritime arbitration. Further, research values the legislative aspects of maritime arbitration. The study would evaluate the contemporary issues in maritime arbitration practices in the USA and further analyses the statistical information on maritime arbitration. Finally, the research made remarks to often parallel consequence in USA legal systems in maritime arbitration and despite the fundamental divergences of the applicable principles and practices of maritime arbitration. The research finally suggests the doctrine should reshape with equitable remedies and international maritime arbitration practices with its institutional impact rather than using as statutory rules related maritime arbitration.

Keywords: arbitration, international shipping, maritime dispute, New York convention

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Authors: Renata Roma, Christine Tardif-Williams

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Engaging in daily walks with a dog (f.e. Canis lupus familiaris) during the COVID-19 pandemic may be linked to feelings of greater social-connectedness and global self-worth, and lower stress after controlling for mental health issues, lack of physical contact with others, and other stressors associated with the current pandemic. Therefore, maintaining a routine of dog walking might mitigate the effects of stressors experienced during the pandemic and promote well-being. However, many dog owners do not walk their dogs for many reasons, which are related to the owner’s and the dog’s personalities. Note that the consistency of certain personality characteristics among dogs demonstrates that it is possible to accurately measure different dimensions of personality in both dogs and their human counterparts. In addition, behavioural ratings (e.g., the dog personality questionnaire - DPQ) are reliable tools to assess the dog’s personality. Clarifying the relevance of personality factors in the context of young adult-dog relationships can shed light on interactional aspects that can potentially foster protective behaviours and promote well-being among young adults during the pandemic. This study examines if and how nine combinations of dog- and young adult-related personality characteristics (e.g., neuroticism-fearfulness) can amplify the influence of personality factors in the context of dog walking during the COVID-19 pandemic. Responses to an online large-scale survey among 440 (389 females; 47 males; 4 nonbinaries, Mage=20.7, SD= 2.13 range=17-25) young adults living with a dog in Canada were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). As extraversion, conscientiousness, and neuroticism, measured through the five-factor model (FFM) inventory, are related to maintaining a routine of physical activities, these dimensions were selected for this analysis. Following an approach successfully adopted in the field of dog-human interactions, the FFM was used as the organizing framework to measure and compare the human’s and the dog’s personality in the context of dog walking. The dog-related personality dimensions activity/excitability, responsiveness to training, and fearful were correlated dimensions captured through DPQ and were added to the analysis. Two questions were used to assess dog walking. The actor-partner interdependence model (APIM) was used to check if the young adult’s responses about the dog were biased; no significant bias was observed. Activity/excitability and responsiveness to training in dogs were greatly associated with dog walking. For young adults, high scores in conscientiousness and extraversion predicted more walks with the dog. Conversely, higher scores in neuroticism predicted less engagement in dog walking. For participants high in conscientiousness, the dog’s responsiveness to training (standardized=0.14, p=0.02) and the dog’s activity/excitability (standardized=0.15, p=0.00) levels moderated dog walking behaviours by promoting more daily walks. These results suggest that some combinations in young adult and dog personality characteristics are associated with greater synergy in the young adult-dog dyad that might amplify the impact of personality factors on young adults’ dog-walking routines. These results can inform programs designed to promote the mental and physical health of young adults during the Covid-19 pandemic by highlighting the impact of synergy and reciprocity in personality characteristics between young adults and dogs.

Keywords: Covid-19 pandemic, dog walking, personality, structural equation modeling, well-being

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Authors: Himanshi Allahabadi

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Plants have found a widespread use in medicine traditionally, including the treatment of cognitive disorders, especially, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. In terms of indigenous medicine, it has been found that many potential drugs can be isolated from plant products, including those for dementia. Plant product is widely distributed in plant kingdom and forms a major antioxidant source in the human diet, is Polyphenols. There are four important groups of polyphenols: phenolic acids, flavonoids, stilbenes, and lignans. Due to their high antioxidant capacity, interest in their study has greatly increased. There are several methods for discovering and characterizing active compounds isolated from plant sources, now available. The results obtained so far seem fulfilling, but additionally, mechanism of functioning of polyphenols at the molecular level, as well as their application in human health need to be researched upon. Also, even though the neuroprotective effects of flavonoids have been much talked about, much of the data in support of this statement has come from animal studies rather than human studies. This review is based on a multi-faceted study of medicinal plants, i.e. phytochemicals, with special focus on flavanones and their relevance in remedy of Parkinson's disease.

Keywords: dementia, parkinson's disease, flavanones, polyphenols, substantia nigra

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Authors: Emma Louise McKinney

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There is a global move to integrate children who are Deaf and Hearing Impaired into regular classrooms with their hearing peers with an inclusive education framework. This paper examines the current education situation for children who are Deaf and Hearing Impaired in South Africa, Madagascar, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Namibia. Qualitative data for this paper was obtained from the author’s experiences working as the Southern African Education Advisor for an international organization funding disability projects. It examines some of the challenges facing these children and their teachers relating to education. Challenges include cultural stigma relating to disability and deafness, a lack of hearing screening and early identification of deafness, schools in rural areas, special schools, specialist teacher training, equipment, understanding of how to implement policy, support, appropriate teaching methodologies, and sign language training and proficiency. On the other hand, in spite of the challenges some teachers are able to provide quality education to children who are Deaf and Hearing Impaired. This paper examines both the challenges as well as what teachers are doing to overcome these.

Keywords: education of children who are deaf and hearing impaired, Southern African experiences, challenges, triumphs

Procedia PDF Downloads 222

Authors: Aarti Muley

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An ancient Vedic philosophy defines the three basic gods i.e Bramha, Vishnu and Shiva. Bramha is known as a supreme god and responsible for creating a universe. Vedic scriptures have not given the direct description of Lord Bramha but with the name Hiranyagarbha Rig Veda describes Bramha. Vedas, Bhagwat Gita, Mahabharata describes Bramha and modern science has found that many theories and principle is directly related with the life of Lord Bramha but there is no direct explanation and evidence regarding a planet Bramhaloka or also called as Satyaloka. Neither the ancient scriptures nor the Indian astrology which is based on the motion of the planet have given any evidence to the planet Bramhaloka directly. In this paper, the efforts have been made to study who is god Bramha and the planet Bramhaloka from Vedic scriptures and using the theories of modern science it has been found that it has strong resemblance with the star Sun. To the best of author’s knowledge, this is the first report which gives the explanation that the lord Bramha’s planet Bramhaloka and the Sun is one and the same.

Keywords: God Bramha, ancient scriptures, cosmic theory, scientific explanation

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Authors: Witri Pratiwi, Shopa Nur Fauzah, Dini Norviatin

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WHO recommends breastfeeding exclusively for infants aged 0 to 6 months because breast milk is the best nutrition. There are several factors associated with the success of exclusive breastfeeding. This study aims to determine the factors associated with the success of exclusive breastfeeding. A cross-sectional study was conducted at 6 community health centers in Cirebon City, Indonesia. Primary data were obtained from a validated questionnaire given to mothers who have children aged 6 to 24 months. A total of 326 mothers participated in this study. Two hundred and eighteen (66.9%) mothers gave exclusive breastfeeding to their babies, and 108 (33.1%) did not give exclusive breastfeeding. The baby gender (p=0.240), birth weight (p=0.436), and place of birth (0.137) were not related to exclusive breastfeeding. Mode of delivery (p=0.029) and early initiation of breastfeeding (p=0.001) were significantly associated with exclusive breastfeeding. Infants with early initiation of breastfeeding are three times more likely to get exclusive breastfeeding compared to those who do not get breastfeeding early (p=0.001; OR=3.696 [95% CI 1.764 – 7.746]). Early initiation of breastfeeding is the most important factor in determining the success of exclusive breastfeeding. Promotion and education on the importance of early breastfeeding initiation to prospective mothers, families, and health workers are expected to be improved.

Keywords: early initiation of breastfeeding, exclusive breastfeeding, mode of delivery, Indonesia

Procedia PDF Downloads 125

Authors: Daniela Tapusi, Adrian Andronic, Naomi Tufan, Ruxandra Erbașu, Ioana Teodorescu

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The proposed theme of this article falls within the policy of reducing carbon emissions imposed by the ‘Green New Deal’ by replacing structural elements made of energy-intensive materials with ecological materials. In this sense, wood has many qualities (high strength/mass and stiffness/mass ratio, low specific gravity, recovery/recycling) that make it competitive with classic building materials. The topological optimization of the linear glulam elements, resulting from different types of analysis (Finite Element Method, simple regression on metamodels), tests on models or by Monte-Carlo simulation, leads to a material reduction of more than 10%. This article proposes a method of obtaining topologically optimized shapes for different types of glued laminated timber beams. The results obtained will constitute the database for AI training.

Keywords: timber, glued laminated timber, artificial-intelligence, environment, carbon emissions

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Authors: M. G. Dirodi, G. Gugliotta, C. Leonardi

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The member states shall establish zones and agglomerations throughout their territory to assess and manage air quality in order to comply with European directives. In Italy decree 155/2010, transposing Directive 2008/50/EC on ambient air quality and cleaner air for Europe, merged into a single act the previous provisions on ambient air quality assessment and management, including those resulting from the implementation of Directive 2004/107/EC relating to arsenic, cadmium, nickel, mercury, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in ambient air. Decree 155/2010 introduced stricter rules for identifying zones on the basis of the characteristics of the territory in spite of considering pollution levels, as it was in the past. The implementation of such new criteria has reduced the great variability of the previous zoning, leading to a significant reduction of the total number of zones and to a complete and uniform ambient air quality assessment and management throughout the Country. The present document is related to the new zones definition in Italy according to Decree 155/2010. In particular, the paper contains the description and the analysis of the outcome of zoning and classification.

Keywords: zones, agglomerations, air quality assessment, classification

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Authors: Shao-Hsuan Chien, Ju-Hui Fu

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Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that is characterized by progressive loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta and motor impairment. Aggregation of α-synuclein in neuronal cells plays a key role in this disease. At present, therapeutics for PD provides moderate symptomatic benefit but is not able to delay the development of this disease. Current efforts for the treatment of PD are to identify new drugs that show slow or arrest progressive course of PD by interfering with a disease-specific pathogenetic process in PD patients. Maackiain is a bioactive compound isolated from the roots of the Chinese herb Sophora flavescens. The purpose of the present study was to assess the potential for maackiain to ameliorate PD in Caenorhabditis elegans models. Our data reveal that maackiain prevents α-synuclein accumulation in the transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans model and also improves dopaminergic neuron degeneration, food-sensing behavior, and life-span in 6-hydroxydopamine-induced Caenorhabditis elegans model, thus indicating its potential as a candidate antiparkinsonian drug.

Keywords: maackiain, Parkinson’s disease, dopaminergic neurons, α-Synuclein

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Authors: Yusra Abdulsalam Alqamati, Ahmed Alkilany

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The teaching staff is a distinct group whose impact is on the educational process and which plays an important role in enhancing the quality of the academic education process. To improve the management effectiveness of the academy, the Teaching Staff Management System (TSMS) proposes that all teacher processes be digitized. Since the BPMN approach can accurately describe the processes, it lacks a clear picture of the process flow map, something that the process mining approach has, which is extracting information from event logs for discovery, monitoring, and model enhancement. Therefore, these two methodologies were combined to create the most accurate representation of system operations, the ability to extract data records and mining processes, recreate them in the form of a Petri net, and then generate them in a BPMN model for a more in-depth view of process flow. Additionally, the TSMS processes will be orchestrated to handle all requests in a guaranteed small-time manner thanks to the integration of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), the BPM engine, and allowing business owners to take part throughout the entire TSMS project development lifecycle.

Keywords: process mining, BPM, business process model and notation, Petri net, teaching staff, Google Cloud Platform

Procedia PDF Downloads 124

Authors: E. Grochowska-Niedworok, K. Brukalo, B. Całyniuk, J. Piekorz, M. Kardas

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The aim of the study was to assess diets of residents of nursing homes. Provided by social welfare home, 10 day menus were introduced into the computer program Diet 5 and analyzed in respect of protein, fats, carbohydrates, energy, vitamin D and calcium. The resulting mean values of 10-day menus were compared with the existing Nutrition Standards for Polish population. The analysis menus showed that the average amount of energy supplied from food is not sufficient. Carbohydrates in food supply are too high and represent 257% of normal. The average value of fats and proteins supplied with food is adequate 85.2 g/day and 75.2 g/day. The calcium content of the diet is 513.9 mg/day. The amount of vitamin D supplied in the age group 51-65 years is 2.3 µg/day. Dietary errors that have been shown are due to the lack of detailed nutritional guidelines for nursing homes, as well as state-owned care facilities in general.

Keywords: assessment of diet, essential nutrients, social welfare home, nutrition

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Authors: Preeti Makkar, R. C. Agarwala, Vijaya Agarwala

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The present study focuses on the preparation of Al2O3 nanoparticles by top down approach i.e. mechanical milling using high energy planetary ball mill at 250 rpm for 40h. The milled Al2O3 nanoparticles are then used as the second phase to develop electroless (EL) Ni-P- Al2O3 nanocomposite coatings on mild steel substrate. An alkaline bath was used with a suspension of Al2O3 particles (4 g/L) for the synthesis of Ni-P-Al2O3 nanocomposite coating. The surface morphology, size range and phase analysis of as-prepared Al2O3 particles and the coatings were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). The coatings were heat treated at 400°C for 1h in argon atmosphere and the hardness of the nanocomposite coatings was investigated with respect to Ni-P before and after heat treatment. The results showed that as milled Al2O3 nanoparticles exhibit irregular shaped and size ranges around 40-45 nm. The Al2O3 particles are uniformly distributed in Ni-P matrix. The microhardness of the coatings is found to be significantly improved after heat treatment (1126 VHN).

Keywords: Electroless (EL), Ni-P-Al2O3, nanocomposite, mechanical milling, microhardness

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Authors: Lidia Sanchis-Marco, Antonio Rubia, Pedro Serrano

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This paper studies the informational content of pricing errors in the term structure of sovereign CDS spreads. The residuals from a non-arbitrage model are employed to construct a Price discrepancy estimate, or noise measure. The noise estimate is understood as an indicator of market distress and reflects frictions such as illiquidity. Empirically, the noise measure is computed for an extensive panel of CDS spreads. Our results reveal an important fraction of systematic risk is not priced in default swap contracts. When projecting the noise measure onto a set of financial variables, the panel-data estimates show that greater price discrepancies are systematically related to a higher level of offsetting transactions of CDS contracts. This evidence suggests that arbitrage capital flows exit the marketplace during time of distress, and this consistent with a market segmentation among investors and arbitrageurs where professional arbitrageurs are particularly ineffective at bringing prices to their fundamental values during turbulent periods. Our empirical findings are robust for the most common CDS pricing models employed in the industry.

Keywords: credit default swaps, noise measure, illiquidity, capital arbitrage

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Authors: Fauzia Dianawati, Riska W. Purnomo

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Food and agricultural sector become the biggest sector contributing to inflation in Indonesia. Especially in Wonogiri district, red cayenne pepper was the biggest sector contributing to inflation on 2016. A national statistic proved that in recent five years red cayenne pepper has the highest average level of fluctuation among all commodities. Some factors, like supply chain, price disparity, production quantity, crop failure, and oil price become the possible factor causes high volatility level in red cayenne pepper price. Therefore, this research tries to find the key factor causing fluctuation on red cayenne pepper by using ARCH/GARCH method. The method could accommodate the presence of heteroscedasticity in time series data. At the end of the research, it is statistically found that the second level of supply chain becomes the biggest part contributing to inflation with 3,35 of coefficient in fluctuation forecasting model of red cayenne pepper price. This model could become a reference to the government to determine the appropriate policy in maintaining the price stability of red cayenne pepper.

Keywords: ARCH/GARCH, forecasting, red cayenne pepper, volatility, supply chain

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Authors: R. R. Hordijk, O. J. G. Somsen

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Traditionally, radar systems are the eyes and ears of a ship. However, these systems have their drawbacks and nowadays they are extended with systems that work with video and photos. Processing of data from these videos and photos is however very labour-intensive and efforts are being made to automate this process. A major problem when trying to recognize objects in water is that the 'background' is not homogeneous so that traditional image recognition technics do not work well. Main question is, can a method be developed which automate this recognition process. There are a large number of parameters involved to facilitate the identification of objects on such images. One is varying the resolution. In this research, the resolution of some images has been reduced to the extreme value of 1% of the original to reduce clutter before the polynomial fit (pre-processing). It turned out that the searched object was clearly recognizable as its grey value was well above the average. Another approach is to take two images of the same scene shortly after each other and compare the result. Because the water (waves) fluctuates much faster than an object floating in the water one can expect that the object is the only stable item in the two images. Both these methods (pre-processing and comparing two images of the same scene) delivered useful results. Though it is too early to conclude that with these methods all image problems can be solved they are certainly worthwhile for further research.

Keywords: image processing, image recognition, polynomial fit, water

Procedia PDF Downloads 522

Authors: Chih-Wei Pai, Rong-Chang Jou

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Using A1 A2 police-reported accident data for years 2003–2010 in Taiwan, the paper examines anatomic injuries and crash characteristics specific to pedestrians in “facing traffic” and “back to traffic” crashes. There were 2768 and 7558 accidents involving pedestrians walking along with/against traffic respectively. Injuries sustained by pedestrians and crash characteristics in these two crash types were compared with those in other crash types (nearside crash, nearside dart-out crash, offside crash, offside dart-out crash). Main findings include that “back to traffic” crashes resulted in more severe injuries, and pedestrians in “back to traffic” crashes had increased head, neck, and spine injuries than those in other crash types; and there was an elevated risk of head injuries in unlit darkness and NBU (non-built-up) roadways. Several crash features (e.g. unlit darkness, overtaking maneuvers, phone use by pedestrians and drivers, intoxicated drivers) appear to be over-involved in “back to traffic” crashes. The implications of the research findings regarding pedestrian/driver education, enforcement, and remedial engineering design are discussed.

Keywords: pedestrian accident, crash characteristics, injury, facing traffic, back to traffic

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Authors: Mohamed S. Osman, Mohamed R. Nosair

Abstract:

The study aims to determine the effects of mindfulness on self-efficacy and professional success among educators of general and special education at Qatar Independent. The study sample will consist of 100 educators from the males and females divided to (50) educators of general education and (50) educators of Special Education in primary, and high schools. They will response to mindfulness scale and the scale of self-efficacy. In addition, use reports of the assessment by the Department of Education for their performance and assessments of their supervisors. The study will examine the effect of some variables such as differences between educators from general and special education, as well as the differences between males and females and years of experience. The study will use a statistic descriptive approach and Correlative analysis such as; means and the Pearson correlation coefficient. The study may predicts differences between educators in all variables study.

Keywords: mindfulness, educators, general education, special education, academic performance, self-efficacy

Procedia PDF Downloads 340

Authors: K. Krushnamurty, D. Rasmitha, I. Srikanth, K. Ramji, Ch. Subrahmanyam

Abstract:

E-glass-epoxy laminated composites having different fiber volume fractions (40, 50, 60 and 70) were fabricated with and without the addition of nanoclay. Flexural strength and tensile strength of the composite laminates were determined. It was observed that, with increasing the fiber volume fraction (Vf) of fiber from 40 to 60, the ability of nanoclay to enhance the tensile and flexural strength of E-glass-epoxy composites decreases significantly. At 70Vf, the tensile and flexural strength of the nanoclay reinforced E-glass-epoxy were found to be lowest when compared to the E-glass-epoxy composite made without the addition of nanoclay. Based on the obtained data and microstructure of the tested samples, plausible mechanism for the observed trends has been proposed. The enhanced mechanical properties for nanoclay reinforced E-glass-epoxy composites for 40-60 Vf, due to higher interface toughness coupled with strong interfilament bonding may have ensured the homogeneous load distribution across all the glass fibers. Results in the decrease in mechanical properties at 70Vf, may be due to the inability of the matrix to bind the nanoclay and glass-fibers.

Keywords: e-glass-epoxy composite laminates, fiber volume fraction, e-glass fiber, mechanical properties, delamination

Procedia PDF Downloads 325

Authors: Mohammadreza Judaki, Hosein Mohammadnezhad Shourkaei

Abstract:

Usually, noise generated by industrial units, is a pollution and disturbs people and causes problems for human health and sometimes these units will be closed because they cannot eliminate this pollution. Small-scale power plants usually are built close to residential areas, and noise generated by these power plants is an important factor in choosing their location and their design. Materials used to reduce noise are studied by measuring their absorption and reflection index numerically and experimentally. We can use MIKI model (Yasushi Miki, 1990) to simulate absorption index by using software like Ansys or Soundflow and compare calculation results with experimental simulation data. We consider high frequency sounds of power plant engines octave band diagram because dB value of high frequency noise is more noticeable for human ears. To prove this, in this study we first will study calculating octave band of engines exhausts and then we will study acoustic behavior of materials that we will use in high frequencies and this will give us our optimum noise reduction plan.

Keywords: acoustic materials, eliminating engine noise, octave level diagram, power plant noise

Procedia PDF Downloads 129

Authors: Che-An Lin, Wan-Ying Tsai, Ying-Shin Chen, Yu-Jen Chung

Abstract:

With the number and area of contaminated sites continued to increase in Taiwan, the Government have to make a priority list of screening contaminated sites under the limited funds and information. This study investigated the announcement of Taiwan EPA land 261 contaminated sites (except the agricultural lands), after preliminary screening 211 valid data to propose a screening system, removed contaminated sites were used to check the accuracy. This system including two dimensions which can create the sequence and use the XY axis to construct four quadrants. One dimension included environmental and social priority and the other related economic. All of the evaluated items included population density, land values, traffic hub, pollutant compound, pollutant concentrations, pollutant transport pathways, land usage sites, site areas, and water conductivity. The classification results of this screening are 1. Prioritization promoting sites (10%). 2. Environmental and social priority of the sites (17%), 3. Economic priority of the sites (30%), 4. Non-priority sites (43 %). Finally, this study used three of the removed contaminated sites to check screening system verification. As the surmise each of them are in line with the priority site and Economic priority of the site.

Keywords: contaminated sites, redevelopment, environmental, economics

Procedia PDF Downloads 462