Search results for: correlation reference waveform receivers

Authors: C. Lanzerstorfer

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Liquid sprays of water are frequently used in air pollution control for gas cooling purposes and for gas cleaning. Twin-fluid nozzles with internal mixing are often used for these purposes because of the small size of the drops produced. In these nozzles the liquid is dispersed by compressed air or another pressurized gas. In high efficiency scrubbers for particle separation, several nozzles are operated in parallel because of the size of the cross section. In such scrubbers, the scrubbing water has to be re-circulated. Precipitation of some solid material can occur in the liquid circuit, caused by chemical reactions. When such precipitations are detached from the place of formation, they can partly or totally block the liquid flow to a nozzle. Due to the resulting unbalanced supply of the nozzles with water and gas, the efficiency of separation decreases. Thus, the nozzles have to be cleaned if a certain fraction of blockages is reached. The aim of this study was to provide a tool for continuously monitoring the status of the nozzles of a scrubber based on the available operation data (water flow, air flow, water pressure and air pressure). The difference between the air pressure and the water pressure is not well suited for this purpose, because the difference is quite small and therefore very exact calibration of the pressure measurement would be required. Therefore, an equation for the reference air flow of a nozzle at the actual water flow and operation pressure was derived. This flow can be compared with the actual air flow for assessment of the status of the nozzles.

Keywords: condition monitoring, dual flow nozzles, flow equation, operation data

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Authors: Surinder Pal Singh, Sanjay Goel

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The paper presents results of an investigation conducted to study the flexural fatigue characteristics of Self Compacting Concrete (SCC) and Self Compacting Fibre Reinforced Concrete (SCFRC). In total 360 flexural fatigue tests and 270 static flexural strength tests were conducted on SCC and SCFRC specimens to obtain the fatigue test data. The variability in the distribution of fatigue life of SCC and SCFRC have been analyzed and compared with that of NVC and NVFRC containing steel fibres of comparable size and shape. The experimental coefficients of fatigue equations have been estimated to represent relationship between stress level (S) and fatigue life (N) for SCC and SCFRC containing different fibre volume fractions. The probability of failure (Pf) has been incorporated in S-N relationships to obtain families of S-N-Pf relationships. A good agreement between the predicted curves and those obtained from the test data has been observed. The fatigue performance of SCC and SCFRC has been evaluated in terms of two-million cycles fatigue strength/endurance limit. The theoretic fatigue lives were also estimated using single-log fatigue equation for 10% probability of failure to estimate the enhanced extent of theoretic fatigue lives of SCFRC with reference to SCC and NVC. The reduction in variability in the fatigue life, increased endurance limit and increased theoretiac fatigue lives demonstrates an overall better fatigue performance for SCC and SCFRC.

Keywords: fatigue life, fibre, probability of failure, self-compacting concrete

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Authors: Wang Jiankun

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This paper analyses how different educational backgrounds affect the mathematics performance of middle and high school students in terms of three dimensions: parental involvement, school teaching ability, and demographic variables and personal attributes of the student. Based on the analysis of Beijing High School Mathematics Competition in 2022, it was found that students from high level schools won significantly more awards than those from low level schools. In addition, a significant positive correlation (p<0.05) was identified between school level and students' mathematics performance. This study also confirms that parents' education level and family environment show a significant impact on the next generation’s mathematics learning performance. The findings suggest that interest and student’s habits, the family environment and the quality of teaching and learning at school are the main factors affecting the mathematics performance of middle and high school students.

Keywords: educational background, academic performance, middle and high school education, teenager

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Authors: Harish Kumar Sharma

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The influence of different levels of inulin as a fat replacer on the quality of ice cream was investigated. The physicochemical, rheological and textural properties of control ice cream and ice cream prepared with inulin in different proportions were determined and correlated to the different parameters using Pearson correlation and Principle Component Analysis (PCA). Based on the overall acepectability, ice cream with 4% inulin was found best and was selected for preparation of ice cream with inulin:SPI in different proportions. Compared with control ice cream, Inulin:SPI showed different rheological properties, resulting in significantly higher apparent viscosities, consistency coefficient and greater deviations from Newtonian flow. In addition, both hardness and melting resistance significantly increased with increase in the SPI content in ice cream prepared with inulin: SPI. Also hardness value increased for inulin based ice cream compared to control ice cream but it melted significantly faster than the latter. Colour value significantly decreased in both the cases compared to the control sample. The deliberation shall focus on the effect of incorporation of inulin on the quality of ice-cream.

Keywords: fat replacer, inulin, ice cream, viscosity, principal component analysis

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Authors: Wolfram Karg

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The Occupy-Movement came into in 2011 existence in the US as a reaction to one of the worst economic crisis since World War II. With cuts in benefits and social services, with people being evicted from their homes on the one hand and high bonuses granted to their managers of the very same companies, a strong feeling of injustice besieged people in the US and caused them to voice their anger peacefully in social media and on the streets. Due to the world-wide-web, users all around the world read about this movement and recognized the same injustice in their own countries, making Occupy a global movement. The vast array of topics covered by Occupy offers a unique chance to carry out a corpus-based discourse analysis based on the DIMEAN-Model. The focus on this paper is limited to two aspects of DIMEAN: intertextual references and the use of connectors in texts. Because the discourse is to a large extent carried out via posts in blogs, online-articles and comments, the paper also analyses, in how far modern (i.e. computer-based media) there is a correlation between the use of connectors in different communicative types used by the Occupy-Movement.

Keywords: discourse, new media, occupy, corpus analysis

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Authors: Till Fehlauer, Blanche Collin, Bernard Angeletti, Andrea Somogyi, Claire Lallemand, Perrine Chaurand, Cédric Dentant, Clement Levard, Jerome Rose

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Over the last decades, yttrium (Y) has gained importance in high-tech applications. It is an essential part of alloys and compounds used for lasers, displays, or cell phones, for example. Due to its chemical similarities with the lanthanides, Y is often considered a rare earth element (REE). Despite their increased usage, the environmental behavior of REEs remains poorly understood. Especially regarding their interactions with plants, many uncertainties exist. On the one hand, Y is known to have a negative effect on root development and germination, but on the other hand, it appears to promote plant growth at low concentrations. In order to understand these phenomena, a precise knowledge is necessary about how Y is absorbed by the plant and how it is handled once inside the organism. Contradictory studies exist, stating that due to a similar ionic radius, Y and the other REEs might be absorbed through Ca²⁺-channels, while others suspect that Y has a shared pathway with Al³⁺. In this study, laser ablation coupled ICP-MS, and synchrotron-based micro-X-ray fluorescence (µXRF, beamline Nanoscopium, SOLEIL, France) have been used in order to localize Y within the plant tissue and identify associated elements. The plant used in this study is Saxifraga paniculata, a rugged alpine plant that has shown an affinity for Y in previous studies (in prep.). Furthermore, Saxifraga paniculata performs guttation, which means that it possesses phloem sap secreting openings on the leaf surface that serve to regulate root pressure. These so-called hydathodes could provide special insights in elemental transport in plants. The plants have been grown on Y doped soil (500mg/kg DW) for four months. The results showed that Y was mainly concentrated in the roots of Saxifraga paniculata (260 ± 85mg/kg), and only a small amount was translocated to the leaves (10 ± 7.8mg/kg). µXRF analysis indicated that within the root transects, the majority of Y remained in the epidermis and hardly penetrated the stele. Laser ablation coupled ICP-MS confirmed this finding and showed a positive correlation in the roots between Y, Fe, Al, and to a lesser extent Ca. In the stem transect, Y was mainly detected in a hotspot of approximately 40µm in diameter situated in the endodermis area. Within the stem and especially in the hotspot, Y was highly colocalized with Al and Fe. Similar-sized Y hotspots have been detected in/on the leaves. All of them were strongly colocalized with Al and Fe, except for those situated within the hydathodes, which showed no colocalization with any of the measured elements. Accordingly, a relation between Y and Ca during root uptake remains possible, whereas a correlation to Fe and Al appears to be dominant in the aerial parts, suggesting common storage compartments, the formation of complexes, or a shared pathway during translocation.

Keywords: laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), Phytoaccumulation, Rare earth elements, Saxifraga paniculata, Synchrotron-based micro-X-ray fluorescence, Yttrium

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Authors: Sungroul Kim, Yeonjin Kim

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This study was conducted by comparing the concentrations of heavy metals analyzed from the same samples with three X-Ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometer in three different global research institutions, including PAN (A Branch of Malvern Panalytical, Seoul, South Korea), RTI (Research Triangle Institute, NC, U.S.A), and aerosol laboratory in Harvard University, Boston, U.S.A. To achieve our research objectives, the indoor air filter samples were collected at homes (n=24) of adults or child asthmatics then analyzed in PAN followed by Harvard University and RTI consecutively. Descriptive statistics were conducted for data comparison as well as correlation and simple regression analysis using R version 4.0.3. As a result, detection rates of most heavy metals analyzed in three institutions were about 90%. Of the 25 elements commonly analyzed among those institutions, 16 elements showed an R² (coefficient of determination) of 0.7 or higher (10 components were 0.9 or higher). The findings of this study demonstrated that XRF was a useful device ensuring reproducibility and compatibility for measuring heavy metals in PM2.5 collected from indoor air of asthmatics’ home.

Keywords: heavy metals, indoor air quality, PM2.5, X-ray fluorescence

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Authors: Noha Mohamed Abdelhafez Dahy, Azza Abd El-Aziz, Eman Ahmed, Marwa El-Sayed

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Osteoporosis is a metabolic bone disease characterized by low bone mass, deterioration of bone tissue, and disruption of bone microarchitecture, which leads to compromised bone strength and an increased risk of fracture, commonly it occurs in women 10-15 years after menopause, the mean age of menopause is 51 years. Menopause is natural physiological changes primary because of decline of ovaries function with age which leads to decrease of estrogen hormone production which is the main hormone for bone continuous remodeling for bone density maintenance. Exercise increase stimulation of bone growth to keep bone mass by the effect of the mechanical stimulation, antigravity loading and stress exerted on musculoskeletal muscles. Purpose: This study aimed to determine the effect of aerobic exercise on estrogen hormone and bone mineral density (BMD) in osteoporotic women and the correlation between the estrogen and BMD.

Keywords: Osteoporosis, Postmenopause, Aerobic exercise, DEXA, Serum Estrogen

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Authors: Qiong Hu

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From old English to modern English, the gender category has changed from grammatical gender system to natural gender system. The word classes that reflected gender has changed from pronouns, adjectives, and numerals in old English to only pronouns in modern English. In present-day English, the third person singular pronouns are the only paradigm that keeps an intact gender. 'He' and 'they' used as epicene pronouns are one of the two commonest phenomena of gender disagreement (the other being those against the natural gender). Considering the convenience of corpus concordance, epicene pronoun usage is selected in this study in which the anaphors are restricted to possessives (eg. his, their), and the antecedents are restricted to compound indefinite pronouns (eg. someone, somebody). Factors like writing form (eg. someone vs. some one), the semantics of the prefixes (eg. some- vs. any-), and suffixes (eg. -one vs. -body), as well as frequency, are taken into consideration. Statistics indicate that 'their' is increasingly used as the epicene pronoun compared with the decline of 'his' (when both writing forms are considered). This is influenced by social factors such as feminist movement, as well as the semantics and frequency of antecedents. Their (plural) used in anaphoric reference to various indefinite pronouns (singular in form) can also be treated as number variation in third person pronouns, and the trend that 'their' in place of his can also be treated as a change in number category. Among different candidates for the gender-neutral function, 'their' is proven to be the most promising one based on the diachronic data. This does not reject any new competitors in the future which still remains to be seen.

Keywords: language variation and change, epicene pronouns, gender, number

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Authors: Bowen Ding, Yihao Kuang

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In recent years, large-scale pre-trained language models have achieved state-of-the-art performance on a variety of natural language processing tasks. The word vectors produced by these language models can be viewed as dense encoded presentations of natural language that in text form. However, it is unknown how much linguistic information is encoded and how. In this paper, we construct several corresponding probing tasks for multiple linguistic information to clarify the encoding capabilities of different language models and performed a visual display. We firstly obtain word presentations in vector form from different language models, including BERT, ELMo, RoBERTa and GPT. Classifiers with a small scale of parameters and unsupervised tasks are then applied on these word vectors to discriminate their capability to encode corresponding linguistic information. The constructed probe tasks contain both semantic and syntactic aspects. The semantic aspect includes the ability of the model to understand semantic entities such as numbers, time, and characters, and the grammatical aspect includes the ability of the language model to understand grammatical structures such as dependency relationships and reference relationships. We also compare encoding capabilities of different layers in the same language model to infer how linguistic information is encoded in the model.

Keywords: language models, probing task, text presentation, linguistic information

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Authors: Madhavi

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All linguistic units are context-dependent. They occur in particular settings, from which they derive much of their import, and are recognized by speakers as distinct entities only through a process of abstraction. Most of the words have several concepts associated with them and convey a number of meanings in different contexts in any language. For instance, there are different uses of the word good as an adjective from English. The adjective good expresses many senses like (1) ‘high quality of someone or something’ (2) ‘efficient’ (3) ‘virtuous’ (4) ‘reliable’ etc. These senses will be analyzed by using cognitive semantics framework. The context has the power to insulate one meaning from all the other meanings in communication. This paper will provide a cognitive semantic analysis. The basic tenet of cognitive semantics is the sense of a word is the way we conceptualize it. Our conceptualization is based on the physical experience we go through. Cognitive semantics tries to capture this conceptualization in terms of some categories like schema, frame, and domain. Cognitive semantics is a subfield of cognitive linguistics. Cognitive linguistics studies the language creation, learning, and usage by the reference to human cognition. The semantic structure is conceptual structure which is related to the concepts which are the elements of reason and constitute the meanings of words and linguistic expressions. Cognitive semantics studies how our mind works for the meaning of any word and how it perceives meaning from the environment through senses and works to map with the knowledge which already exists in our mind through experience. In the present paper, the senses are further classified into some categories.

Keywords: cognitive, contexts, semantics, senses

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Authors: Svetlana Gusarova

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The essential role in the recent development of world economy has led to the developing countries, notably to BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). Over the next 50 years the BRICS countries are expected to be the engines of global trade and economic growth. Trade cooperation of BRICS countries can enhance their economic development. BRICS countries were among Top 10 world exporters of office and telecom equipment, of textiles, of clothing, of iron and steel, of chemicals, of agricultural products, of automotive products, of fuel and mining products. China was one of the main trading partners of all BRICS countries, maintaining close relationship with all BRICS countries in the development of trade. Author analyzed trade complementarity of BRICS countries and revealed the high level of complementarity of their trade flows in connection with availability of specialization in different types of goods. The correlation and regression analysis of communication of Intra-BRICS merchandise turnover and their GDP (PPP) revealed very strong impact on the development of their economies.

Keywords: BRICS countries, trade cooperation, complementarity, regression analysis

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Authors: Parsa Sheikhzadeh

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Polar bodies are cells that form by oogenesis in meiosis which differentiate and develop from oocytes. Although in many animals, these cells often die following meiotic maturation of the oocyte. Oocyte activation is during mammalian fertilization, sperm is fused with the oocyte's membrane, triggering the resumption of meiosis from the metaphase II arrest, the extrusion of the second polar body, and the exocytosis of cortical granules. The origin recognition complex proteins 4 (ORC4) forms a cage around the set of chromosomes that will be extruded during polar body formation before it binds to the chromatin shortly before zygotic DNA replication. One unique feature of the female gamete is that the polar bodies can provide beneficial information about the genetic background of the oocyte without potentially destroying it. Testing at the polar body (PB) stage was the least accurate, mainly due to the high incidence of post-zygotic events. On the other hand, the results from PB1-MII oocyte pair validated that PB1 contains nearly the same methylome (average Pearson correlation is 0.92) with sibling MII oocyte. In this article, we comprehensively examine the role of polar bodies in female human gametes.

Keywords: polar bodies, ORC4, oocyte, genetic, methylome, gamete, female

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Authors: Shady Gamal Aziz Shehata

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Difficulty in defining construction quality arises due to perception based on the nature and requirements of the market, the different partners themselves and the results they want. Quantitative research was used in this constructivist research. A case-based study was conducted to assess the structures of positive attitudes and expectations in the context of quality improvement. A survey based on expert opinions was analyzed among construction organizations/companies operating in the construction industry in Pakistan. The financial strength, management structure and construction experience of the construction companies formed the basis of their selection. A good concept is visible at the project level and is seen as the most valuable part of the construction project. Each quality improvement technique was expected to increase the user's profits by improving the efficiency of the construction project. The Survey is useful for construction professionals to evaluate current construction concepts and expectations for the application of quality improvement techniques in construction projects.

Keywords: correlation analysis, lean construction tools, lean construction, logistic regression analysis, risk management, safety construction quality, expectation, improvement, perception

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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: Suniti Suparp, Panuwat Joyklad, Qudeer Hussain

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This is a well-known fact that the actual latera forces due to natural disasters, for example, earthquakes, floods and storms are difficult to predict accurately. Among these natural disasters, so far, the highest amount of deaths and injuries have been recorded for the case of earthquakes all around the world. Therefore, there is always an urgent need to establish suitable strengthening methods for existing concrete and steel structures. This paper is investigating the structural performance of square concrete columns strengthened using low cost and easily available steel clamps. The salient features of these steel clamps are comparatively low cost, easy availability and ease of installation. To achieve research objectives, a large-scale experimental program was established in which a total number of 12 square concrete columns were constructed and tested under pure axial compression. Three square concrete columns were tested without any steel lamps to serve as a reference specimen. Whereas, remaining concrete columns were externally strengthened using steel clamps. The steel clamps were installed at a different spacing to investigate the best configuration of the steel clamps. The experimental results indicate that steel clamps are very effective in altering the structural performance of the square concrete columns. The square concrete columns externally strengthened using steel clamps demonstrate higher load carrying capacity and ductility as compared with the control specimens.

Keywords: concrete, strength, ductility, pre-stressed, steel, clamps, axial compression, columns, stress and strain

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Authors: Mohamed S. Osman, Mohamed R. Nosair

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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

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Authors: Yuyan Yi, Jingyi Zheng, Nedret Billor

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Independent component analysis (ICA) is one of the most commonly used blind source separation (BSS) techniques for signal pre-processing, such as noise reduction and feature extraction. The main parameter in the ICA method is the number of independent components (IC). Although there have been several methods for the determination of the number of ICs, it has not been given sufficient attentionto this important parameter. In this study, wereview the mostused methods fordetermining the number of ICs and providetheir advantages and disadvantages. Further, wepropose an improved version of column-wise ICAByBlock method for the determination of the number of ICs.To assess the performance of the proposed method, we compare the column-wise ICAbyBlock with several existing methods through different ICA methods by using simulated and real signal data. Results show that the proposed column-wise ICAbyBlock is an effective and stable method for determining the optimal number of components in ICA. This method is simple, and results can be demonstrated intuitively with good visualizations.

Keywords: independent component analysis, optimal number, column-wise, correlation coefficient, cross-validation, ICAByblock

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Authors: Magda Milleyde de Sousa Lima, Letícia Lima Aguiar, Marina Guerra Martins, Erika Veríssimo Dias Sousa, Lizandra Sampaio de Oliveira, Lívia Moreira Barros, Joselany Áfio Caetano

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Patients with chronic kidney disease are vulnerable to episodes which make the safety of their health vulnerable, mainly due to the treatment process that exposes them to high rates of interventions during hemodialysis sessions. Some factors associated with health care contribute to the risk of death and complications. However, there are a small number of scientific studies evaluating the level of safety of hemodialysis clinics, and the sociodemographic characteristics of patients and professionals associated with this safety. Therefore, the present study aims to examine the level of patient safety in hemodialysis clinics in the Brazilian capital, to identify the sociodemographic and clinical factors of patients and nursing staff associated with the level of safety. This is an observational, descriptive and quantitative research conducted in three hemodialysis clinics placed in the city of Fortaleza-CE, Brazil, from September to November 2019. The sample was formed after a sample calculation for finite inhabitants of correlation with 200 chronic renal patients, 30 nursing technicians and seven nurses. Conventional sampling was used based on the inclusion criteria: being present at the hemodialysis session on the day the researcher performed the data collection and being 18 years of age or older. Participants who presented communication difficulties to listen to and/or answer the sociodemographic and clinical questionnaire were excluded. Two instruments were applied: sociodemographic and clinical characterization form and Chronic Renal Patient Safety Assessment Scale on Hemodialysis (EASPRCH). The data were analyzed using the Kruskal Walls Test for categorical variables and Spearman correlation coefficient for non-categorical variables, using the Statistical Package SPSS version 20.0. The present study respected the ethical and legal principles determined by resolution 466/2012 of the National Health Council, under the approval of the Ethics and Research Committee with an opinion number: 3,255,635. The results showed that a hemodialysis clinic presented unsafe care practices of 32 points in the EASPRCH (p=0.001). A statistical association was identified between the level of safety and the variables of the patients: level of education (p=0.018), family income (p=0.049), type of employment (p=0.012), venous access site (p=0.009), use of medication during the session (p=0.008) and time of hemodialysis (p=0.002). When evaluating the profile of nurses, a statistical association was evidenced between the level of safety with the variables: marital status (p=0.000), race (p=0.017), schooling (p= 0.000), income (p=0.013), age (p=0.000), clinic workload (p=0.000), time working with hemodialysis (p=0.000), time working in the clinic (p= 0.007) and clinic sizing (p=0.000). In order, the sociodemographic factors of nursing technicians associated with the level of patient safety were: race (p= 0.001) and weekly workload at (p=0.010). Therefore, it is concluded that there is a non-conformity in the level of patient safety in one of the clinics studied and, that sociodemographic and clinical factors of patients and health professionals corroborate the level of safety of the health unit.

Keywords: hemodialysis, nursing, patient safety, quality improvement

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Authors: Samira Akdader-Oudahmane, Assia Kamel, Lynda Lakabi, Michael Bruce Zimmermann, Zohra Hamouli-Said, Djamila Meskine

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Background: Iodine is a trace element whose adequate intakes are essential during pregnancy to promote the correct growth and development of the fetus. Iodine deficiency is the cause of several disorders in foetal development, and thyroid disorders during pregnancy are associated with an increased risk of miscarriage or premature birth. The aim of this study was to assess the iodine status and thyroid function of pregnant women (PW) in northern Algeria. Methods: Healthy PW were recruited from an urban area (Algiers). Spot urine and venous blood samples were collected to assess iodine status (urinary iodine concentration, UIC) and serum thyroid hormones (TSH, FT4), and anti-thyroid peroxidase antibodies (TPO-Ab) concentrations. Results: The median UIC for the PW (n=172) in Algiers was 246,74µg/L, 244,68 µg/L, and 220,63µg/L, respectively, during the first, second, and third trimesters of pregnancy. Mean TSH and FT4 concentrations were within reference ranges in all groups of women. Among PW, 72.7%, 75.4%, and 75.5% in the first, second and third trimester were TPO-Ab+. Among PW, 14%, 10%, and 10% in the first, second and third trimester, respectively, with TPO -Ab+ had subclinical hypothyroidism. An analysis of the variations in the levels of the serum parameters (FT4, TSH and anti-TPO antibodies) was analyzed according to the UIC intervals admitted and show that these marker are predictive of thyroid function. Conclusion: In northern Algeria, median UICs indicate iodine sufficiency in PW. About 75% of PW are TPO-Ab+ and the prevalence of subclinical hypothyroidism is high.

Keywords: thyroid, pregnant woman, urinary iodine, subclinical hypothyroidism

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Authors: Bandreddy Anand Babu, Srinivasa Rao Mandadi, C. Pradeep Reddy, N. Ramesh Babu

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In this paper quickly illustrate the correlation investigation of Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving and Average (ARIMA) and daptive Network Based Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) models done by climate estimating. The climate determining is taken from University of Waterloo. The information is taken as Relative Humidity, Ambient Air Temperature, Barometric Pressure and Wind Direction utilized within this paper. The paper is carried out by analyzing the exhibitions are seen by demonstrating of ARIMA and ANIFIS model like with Sum of average of errors. Versatile Network Based Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) demonstrating is carried out by Mat lab programming and Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving and Average (ARIMA) displaying is produced by utilizing XLSTAT programming. ANFIS is carried out in Fuzzy Logic Toolbox in Mat Lab programming.

Keywords: ARIMA, ANFIS, fuzzy surmising tool stash, weather forecasting, MATLAB

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Authors: Adeleke Omolade

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The study investigated the impacts of capital goods' import and human capital on the economic growth of the Sub Sahahra Africa (SSA). 30 countries were used in the Panel- ARDL analysis where economic growth is the dependent variables and capital goods' import, human capital, primary export, investment exchange rate, among others were used as the independent variables. The result from the panel analysis indicates that capital goods' import will significantly and positively influence economic growth but human capital fails to have significant positive impact on economic growth of the SSA. Earlier the trend analysis and the correlation results have shown that there is a weak association between capital goods' import and human capital in the SSA. The results offer an expository analysis that reveals that the quality of the human capital is very germane to the effective utilization of capital goods' import for the purpose of growth in a primary goods' export dominated region like the SSA.

Keywords: capital goods import, economic growth, human capital, Sub-Sahara Africa

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Authors: A. Chennai, M. Yahia, H. Boussenan

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Our study was designed to highlight changes in certain biochemical parameters such as (CH, TG, HDL, TGO, TGP, LDL, and CRP), hormones (FSH, LH, PRL, TSH, and leptin), in women who suffer from over weight and fertile controls as well as the research for potential pathophysiological link between obesity and infertility in this population of women. This practical work has been focused on a population of 24 over weight infertile women, compared to control subjects without any pathology causing disturbance parameters to be studied to determine the contribution of obesity in the etiology of infertility. The assay results revealed a highly significant difference between the two groups in the serum levels of CH, TG, HDL, and TGO TGP (P <0.0001) as well as the rate of LDL (p=0.0017) and CRP (p=0.02). Hormonal profile also shows a significant difference between the two groups (P<0.0001) for LH and leptin but no difference was found for serum TSH. A significant correlation between leptin and FSH, LH, and FSH, age and LH, PRL and age and between HDL and CRP. The present study suggests that obesity is associated with infertility, but no direct pathophysiological link between obesity and infertility has been determined. More in-depth studies are needed to determine the exact mechanism by which overweight leads to female infertility.

Keywords: fertility, obesity, hormones, biochemical, pathophysiological

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Authors: Kyugneun Lee, Ikjin Lee

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Parameter estimation with inverse problem often suffers from unfavorable conditions in the real world. Useless data and many input parameters make the problem complicated or insoluble. Data refinement and reformulation of the problem can solve that kind of difficulties. In this research, a method to solve the rank deficient inverse problem is suggested. A multi-physics system which has rank deficiency caused by response correlation is treated. Impeditive information is removed and the problem is reformulated to sequential estimations using Bayesian network (BN) and subset groups. At first, subset grouping of the responses is performed. Feature selection with singular value decomposition (SVD) is used for the grouping. Next, BN inference is used for sequential conditional estimation according to the group hierarchy. Directed acyclic graph (DAG) structure is organized to maximize the estimation ability. Variance ratio of response to noise is used to pairing the estimable parameters by each response.

Keywords: Bayesian network, feature selection, rank deficiency, statistical inverse analysis

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Authors: Bushra Mussawar, Saleha Younus

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Students often view their academic life demanding and stressful. However, apart from academics, stress springs from various other sources namely, finance, family, health, friends etc. The present study aims to assess the level of perceived stress in medical and fine arts students, and to determine the coping strategies used by the students to mitigate stress. The sample of the study consisted of 178 medical and fine arts students. The sample was selected through purposive sampling. Pearson correlation coefficient and T-test were used to analyze data. Results of the study revealed that there exists a positive relationship between perceived stress and coping strategies. Additionally, the two groups showed marked differences in terms of stress perception and coping styles. The level of perceived stress was found to be high in medical students nonetheless, they employed more positive coping strategies than fine arts students who scored high on negative coping strategies which are deleterious to the overall wellbeing.

Keywords: perceived stress, coping strategies, medical, fine arts students

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Authors: Apolinar Picado, Ronald Solís, Rafael Gamero

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The thin-layer drying characteristics of instant coffee solution were investigated in a laboratory tunnel dryer. Drying experiments were carried out at three temperatures (80, 100 and 120 °C) and an air velocity of 1.2 m/s. Drying experimental data obtained are fitted to six (6) thin-layer drying models using the non-linear least squares regression analysis. The acceptability of the thin-layer drying model has been based on a value of the correlation coefficient that should be close to one, and low values for root mean square error (RMSE) and chi-square (x²). According to this evaluation, the most suitable model for describing drying process of thin-layer instant coffee solution is the Page model. Further, the effective moisture diffusivity and the activation energy were computed employing the drying experimental data. The effective moisture diffusivity values varied from 1.6133 × 10⁻⁹ to 1.6224 × 10⁻⁹ m²/s over the temperature range studied and the activation energy was estimated to be 162.62 J/mol.

Keywords: activation energy, diffusivity, instant coffee, thin-layer models

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Authors: Sze Wai Veera Fung, Peter W. Ferretto

Abstract:

Similar to most ethnic groups in China, men of the Dong minority hold the primary position in policymaking, moral authority, social values, and the control of the property. As the spatial embodiment of the patriarchal ideals, the house plays a significant role in producing and reproducing the distinctive gender status within the Dong society. Nevertheless, Dong women do not see their home as a cage of confinement, nor do they see themselves as a victim of oppression. For these women with reference to their productive identity, a house is a dwelling place with manifold meanings, including a proof of identity, an economic instrument, and a public resource operating on the community level. This paper examines the role of the house as a central site for identity construction and maintenance for the southern dialect Dong minority women in Hunan, China. Drawing on recent interviews with the Dong women, this study argues that women as productive individuals have a strong influence on the form of their house and the immediate environment, regardless of the male-dominated social construct of the Dong society. The aim of this study is not to produce a definitive relationship between women, house, and identity. Rather, it seeks to offer an alternative lens into the complexity and diversity of gender dynamics operating in and beyond the boundary of the house in the context of contemporary rural China.

Keywords: conception of home, Dong minority, house, rural China, woman’s identity

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Authors: Usha Lokala, Srinivas Nowduri, Prabhakar K. Sharma

Abstract:

Useful information has been extracted from the road accident data in United Kingdom (UK), using data analytics method, for avoiding possible accidents in rural and urban areas. This analysis make use of several methodologies such as data integration, support vector machines (SVM), correlation machines and multinomial goodness. The entire datasets have been imported from the traffic department of UK with due permission. The information extracted from these huge datasets forms a basis for several predictions, which in turn avoid unnecessary memory lapses. Since data is expected to grow continuously over a period of time, this work primarily proposes a new framework model which can be trained and adapt itself to new data and make accurate predictions. This work also throws some light on use of SVM’s methodology for text classifiers from the obtained traffic data. Finally, it emphasizes the uniqueness and adaptability of SVMs methodology appropriate for this kind of research work.

Keywords: support vector mechanism (SVM), machine learning (ML), support vector machines (SVM), department of transportation (DFT)

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Authors: Chiedza Lebogang Gutu, Nester Rufaro Manuwa, Jean-Marie Mbuya

Abstract:

In Johannesburg, Metropolitan customer expectations in the hospitality industry have rapidly been increasing which has lead to the need of improving service quality to help satisfy customer expectations. Businesses need to make sure that customer expectations are met, or find ways to control customer expectations. Therefore the purpose of the study is to investigate how customer expectations of services in bed and breakfast establishments affect the perceived quality of service. A quantitative approach was used through random sampling to collect descriptive and correlation study between customer expectations and perceived quality. Findings of the study indicated that customers at bed and breakfast generally expect a clean, friendly and safe environment that has a homely feel, while they are away from home. In addition, findings of the study also emphasised that the age-groups between 20 and 35 are more likely to travel, for business and vacation purposes, staying for more or less 3, have high expectations towards modern facilities and extras in the room such as coffee machines, and are more concerned about the service being provided quickly and right, and taking extra care to deal with problems promptly.

Keywords: Customer satisfaction, Service quality, Bed and breakfast, Customer retention

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Authors: Sana Ridene, Soumaya Sayeb, Houda Helali, Mohammed Ben Hassen

Abstract:

Nonwoven structures have a range of applications which include Medical, filtration, geotextile and recently this unconventional fabric is finding a niche in fashion apparel. In this paper, a modified form of Vangheluwe rheological model is used to describe the mechanical behavior of nonwovens fabrics in uniaxial tension. This model is an association in parallel of three Maxwell elements characterized by damping coefficients η1, η2 and η3 and E1, E2, E3 elastic modulus and a nonlinear spring C. The model is verified experimentally with two types of nonwovens (50% viscose /50% Polyester) and (40% viscose/60% Polyester) and a range of three square weights values. Comparative analysis of the theoretical model and the experimental results of tensile test proofs a high correlation between them. The proposed model can fairly well replicate the behavior of nonwoven fabrics during relaxation and sample traction. This allowed us to predict the mechanical behavior in tension and relaxation of fabrics starting only from their technical parameters (composition and weight).

Keywords: mechanical behavior, tensile strength, relaxation, rheological model

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