Search results for: circular economy tools

Authors: Sultan Alanazi, Adwan Alanazi

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Social applications consist of powerful tools that allow people to connect and interact with each other. However, its negative use cannot be ignored. Cyberbullying is a new and serious Internet problem. Cyberbullying is one of the most common risks for teenagers to go online. More than half of young people report that they do not tell their parents when this will occur, which can have significant physiological consequences. Cyberbullying involves the deliberate use of digital media on the Internet to convey false or embarrassing information about others. Therefore, this article provides a way to detect cyber-bullying in social media applications for parents. The purpose of our work is to develop an architectural model for identifying and measuring the state of Cyberbullying faced by children on social media applications. For parents, this will be a good tool for monitoring their children without invading their privacy. Finally, some interesting open-ended questions were raised, suggesting promising ideas for starting new research in this new field.

Keywords: cyberbullying, cyber bullying, internet crimes, social media security, E-crimes

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Authors: Zin Mar Lwin

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Brain Computer Interface (BCI) Systems have developed for people who suffer from severe motor disabilities and challenging to communicate with their environment. BCI allows them for communication by a non-muscular way. For communication between human and computer, BCI uses a type of signal called Electroencephalogram (EEG) signal which is recorded from the human„s brain by means of an electrode. The electroencephalogram (EEG) signal is an important information source for knowing brain processes for the non-invasive BCI. Translating human‟s thought, it needs to classify acquired EEG signal accurately. This paper proposed a typical EEG signal classification system which experiments the Dataset from “Purdue University.” Independent Component Analysis (ICA) method via EEGLab Tools for removing artifacts which are caused by eye blinks. For features extraction, the Time and Frequency features of non-stationary EEG signals are extracted by Matching Pursuit (MP) algorithm. The classification of one of five mental tasks is performed by Multi_Class Support Vector Machine (SVM). For SVMs, the comparisons have been carried out for both 1-against-1 and 1-against-all methods.

Keywords: BCI, EEG, ICA, SVM

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Authors: Justine Salam

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As a federal state, Canada’s constitutional arrangements regarding the management of natural resources is unique because it gives complete ownership and control of natural resources to the provinces (subnational level). However, the province of Alberta—home to the third largest oil reserves in the world—lags behind comparable jurisdictions in levying royalties on oil corporations, especially oil sands royalties. While Albertans own the oil sands, scholars have argued that natural resource exploitation in Alberta benefits corporations and industry more than it does Albertans. This study provides a systematic understanding of the causal factors affecting royalties in Alberta to map dynamics of power and how they manifest themselves during policy-making. Mounting domestic and global public pressure led Alberta to review its oil sands royalties twice in less than a decade through public-commissioned Royalty Review Panels, first in 2007 and again in 2015. The Panels’ task was to research best practices and to provide policy recommendations to the Government through public consultations with Albertans, industry, non-governmental organizations, and First Nations peoples. Both times, the Panels recommended a relative increase to oil sands royalties. However, irrespective of the Reviews’ recommendations, neither the right-wing 2007 Progressive Conservative Party (PC) nor the left-wing 2015 New Democratic Party (NDP) government—both committed to increase oil sands royalties—increased royalty intake. Why did two consecutive political parties at opposite ends of the political spectrum fail to account for the recommendations put forward by the Panel? Through a qualitative case-study analysis, this study assesses domestic and global causal factors for Alberta’s inability to raise oil sands royalties significantly after the two Reviews through an institutions, interests, and ideas framework. Indeed, causal factors can be global (e.g. market and price fluctuation) or domestic (e.g. oil companies’ influence on the Alberta government). The institutions, interests, and ideas framework is at the intersection of public policy, comparative studies, and political economy literatures, and therefore draws multi-faceted insights into the analysis. To account for institutions, the study proposes to review international trade agreements documents such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) because they have embedded Alberta’s oil sands into American energy security policy and tied Canadian and Albertan oil policy in legal international nods. To account for interests, such as how the oil lobby or the environment lobby can penetrate governmental decision-making spheres, the study draws on the Oil Sands Oral History project, a database of interviews from government officials and oil industry leaders at a pivotal time in Alberta’s oil industry, 2011-2013. Finally, to account for ideas, such as how narratives of Canada as a global ‘energy superpower’ and the importance of ‘energy security’ have dominated and polarized public discourse, the study relies on content analysis of Alberta-based pro-industry newspapers to trace the prevalence of these narratives. By mapping systematically the nods and dynamics of power at play in Alberta, the study sheds light on the factors that influence royalty policy-making in one of the largest industries in Canada.

Keywords: Alberta Canada, natural resources governance, oil sands, political economy

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Authors: Fan Gao, Lior Pachter

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The primary tool currently used to pre-process 10X Chromium single-cell ATAC-seq data is Cell Ranger, which can take very long to run on standard datasets. To facilitate rapid pre-processing that enables reproducible workflows, we present a suite of tools called scATAK for pre-processing single-cell ATAC-seq data that is 15 to 18 times faster than Cell Ranger on mouse and human samples. Our tool can also calculate chromatin interaction potential matrices, and generate open chromatin signal and interaction traces for cell groups. We use scATAK tool to explore the chromatin regulatory landscape of a healthy adult human brain and unveil cell-type specific features, and show that it provides a convenient and computational efficient approach for pre-processing single-cell ATAC-seq data.

Keywords: single-cell, ATAC-seq, bioinformatics, open chromatin landscape, chromatin interactome

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Authors: Kaycee Bills

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This study will determine if students with disabilities have higher student loan debt payments than other student populations. The hypothesis was that students with disabilities would have significantly higher student loan debt payments than other students due to the length of time they spend in school. Using the Bachelorette and Beyond Study Wave 2015/017 dataset, quantitative methods were employed. These data analysis methods included linear regression and a correlation matrix. Due to the exploratory nature of the study, the significance levels for the overall model and each variable were set at .05. The correlation matrix demonstrated that students with certain types of disabilities are more likely to fall under higher student loan payment brackets than students without disabilities. These results also varied among the different types of disabilities. The result of the overall linear regression model was statistically significant (p = .04). Despite the overall model being statistically significant, the majority of the significance values for the different types of disabilities were null. However, several other variables had statistically significant results, such as veterans, people of minority races, and people who attended private schools. Implications for how this impacts the economy, capitalism, and financial wellbeing of various students are discussed.

Keywords: disability, student loan debt, higher education, social work

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Authors: Lule Basha, Eralda Gjika

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The exchange rate is one of the most important economic variables, especially for a small, open economy such as Albania. Its effect is noticeable in one country's competitiveness, trade and current account, inflation, wages, domestic economic activity, and bank stability. This study investigates the fluctuation of Albania’s exchange rates using monthly average foreign currency, Euro (Eur) to Albanian Lek (ALL) exchange rate with a time span from January 2008 to June 2021, and the macroeconomic factors that have a significant effect on the exchange rate. Initially, the Random Forest Regression algorithm is constructed to understand the impact of economic variables on the behavior of monthly average foreign currencies exchange rates. Then the forecast of macro-economic indicators for 12 months was performed using time series models. The predicted values received are placed in the random forest model in order to obtain the average monthly forecast of the Euro to Albanian Lek (ALL) exchange rate for the period July 2021 to June 2022.

Keywords: exchange rate, random forest, time series, machine learning, prediction

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Authors: Atabak Rashidian

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In duplex backhaul wireless communication systems, two separate transmit and receive high-gain antennas are required if an antenna switch is not implemented. Although the switch loss, which is considerable and in the order of 1.5 dB at 60 GHz, is avoided, the large separate antenna systems make the design bulky and not cost-effective. To avoid two large reflectors for such a system, transmit and receive antenna feeds with a common phase center are required. The phase center should coincide with the focal point of the reflector to maximize the efficiency and gain. In this work, we present an ultra-compact design in which stacked patch antennas are used as the feeds for a 12-inch reflector. The transmit antenna is a 1 × 2 array and the receive antenna is a single element located in the middle of the transmit antenna elements. Antenna elements are designed as stacked patches to provide the required impedance bandwidth for four standard channels of WiGigTM applications. The design includes three metallic layers and three dielectric layers, in which the top dielectric layer is a 100 µm-thick protective layer. The top two metallic layers are specified to the main and parasitic patches. The bottom layer is basically ground plane with two circular openings (0.7 mm in diameter) having a center through via which connects the antennas to a single input/output Si-Ge Bi-CMOS transceiver chip. The reflection coefficient of the stacked patch antenna is fully investigated. The -10 dB impedance bandwidth is about 11%. Although the gap between transmit and receive antenna is very small (g = 0.525 mm), the mutual coupling is less than -12 dB over the desired frequency band. The three dimensional radiation patterns of the transmit and receive reflector antennas at 60 GHz is investigated over the impedance bandwidth. About 39 dBi realized gain is achieved. Considering over 15 dBm of output power of the silicon chip in the transmit side, the EIRP should be over 54 dBm, which is good enough for over one kilometer multi Gbps data communications. The performance of the reflector antenna over the bandwidth shows the peak gain is 39 dBi and 40 dBi for the reflector antenna with 2-element and single element feed, respectively. This type of the system design is cost-effective and efficient.

Keywords: Antenna, integrated circuit, millimeter-wave, phase center

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Authors: Joanna Dzieńdziora

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Lobbying is an instrument of influence in various decision-making processes. It is also the underestimated issue as a research problem. The lack of research on the modern lobbyist competencies is the most crucial element. The paper presents attempts of finding answers to the following questions: Who should run the lobbying activity? What competencies should a lobbyist possess in order to implement lobbying activities effectively? Searching for answers for the mentioned above questions requires positioning the opportunity to change the image of lobbying in the area of competencies of entities that provide lobbying activities. The aim of the paper is presenting the lobbyist competencies profile in the framework of his professional role. The essence of lobbying activity and its significance in the modern economy as well as areas, the scope of lobbying activities, diagnosis of a modern lobbyist’s competences, lobbyist’s competencies profile that is focused on the professionalization of the lobbying activity, will have been presented in this paper. Indicated research tasks let emerge lobbyist’s competencies in the way that allows identifying and elaborating the lobbyist competencies profile. The profile lets improve lobbying activities. Its elaboration is based on the author’s research results analysis. Taking into consideration the shortages within the theory and research on the lobbying activity, the implementation of this research enables to fill the cognitive gap existing in the theory of management sciences.

Keywords: competencies, competencies profile, lobbying, lobbyist

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Authors: Lukman Oyelami

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Studies have identified trade as a veritable tool for inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction in developing countries. However, contrary to the overwhelming pieces of evidence of the Asian tiger as a success story of beneficial trade, many African countries still experience poverty unabatedly despite active engagement in trade. Consequently, this study seeks to investigate the contributory effect of technological innovation on total export performance and specifically manufacturing exports of African countries. This is with a view to exploring manufacturing exports as a viable option for diversification. To achieve the empirical investigation this study, require Systems Generalized Method of Moments (sys-GMM) estimation technique was adopted based on the econometric realities inherent in the data utilized. However, the static technique of panel estimation of the Fixed Effects (FE) model was utilized for baseline analysis and robustness check. The conclusion from this study is that innovation generally impacts export performance of African countries positively, however, manufacturing export shows more sensitivity to innovation than total export. And, this provides a clear pathway for export diversification for many African countries that run a resource-based economy.

Keywords: innovation, export, GMM, Africa

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Authors: Melissa C. Monney

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Employee morale is an area in which many companies invest millions of dollars, time and effort. Whether these are attributed in benefits or additional monetary compensation, each year, such companies understand that human capital is one of their greatest assets to driving production and revenue. However, with the ever-changing economy, such emphasis on work and production may be counterproductive to employee morale as employees attempt to achieve a healthy work-life balance. A flexible work schedule may be the solution to both companies’ attempt at increasing employee morale and productivity, while affording employees the opportunity to maintain a healthy work-life balance. The information presented in this review derives mostly from research articles, in which the research conducted by means of direct employee feedback through surveys, telephone or face-to-face interviews, or a collection of both, attempted to corroborate (in one way or another) previous research on the largely debated topic of schedule flexibility as the dynamics of economies and families have over the years. This review endeavors to provide a holistic view of schedule flexibility policies, implementation, and perceptions from research in various industries in different countries.

Keywords: flexible scheduling, perceived flexibility, employee morale, productivity

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Authors: Daniel Suarez Alonso

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This study has tried to focus on the alternatives offered to police institutions by the implementation of Geographic Information systems. Providing operational police commanders with effective and efficient tools, providing analytical capacity to reduce criminal opportunities, must be a priority. Given the intimate connection of crimes and infractions to the environment, law enforcement institutions must respond proactively to changing circumstances of anti-norm behaviors. To this end, it has been intended to analyze the antisocial spatial distribution of the city of Móstoles, trying to identify those spatiotemporal patterns that occur to anticipate their commission through the planning of dynamic preventive strategies. The application of GIS offers alternative analytical approaches to the different problems that underlie the development of life in society, focusing resources on those places with the highest concentration of incidents.

Keywords: data analysis, police organizations, police prevention, geographic information systems

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Authors: Manal Rayes

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In its efforts to utilize the information and communication technology to enhance the quality of public service delivery, national and local governments around the world are competing to introduce more ICT applications as tools to automate processes related to law enforcement or policy execution, increase citizen orientation, trust, and satisfaction, and create one-stop-shops for public services. In its implementation, e-Government ICTs need to maintain transparency, participation, and collaboration. Due to this diverse of mixed goals and requirements, e-Government systems need to be designed based on special design considerations in order to eliminate the risks of failure to compliance to government regulations, citizen dissatisfaction, or market repulsion. In this article we suggest a framework with guidelines for designing government information systems that takes into consideration the special requirements of the public sector. Then we introduce two case studies and show how applying those guidelines would result in a more solid system design.

Keywords: e-government, framework, guidelines, system design

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Authors: S. K. Verma, S. L. Sinha, D. K. Chandraker

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The Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) is a vertical pressure tube type, heavy water moderated and boiling light water cooled natural circulation based reactor. The fuel bundle of AHWR contains 54 fuel rods arranged in three concentric rings of 12, 18 and 24 fuel rods. This fuel bundle is divided into a number of imaginary interacting flow passage called subchannels. Single phase flow condition exists in reactor rod bundle during startup condition and up to certain length of rod bundle when it is operating at full power. Prediction of the thermal margin of the reactor during startup condition has necessitated the determination of the turbulent mixing rate of coolant amongst these subchannels. Thus, it is vital to evaluate turbulent mixing between subchannels of AHWR rod bundle. With the remarkable progress in the computer processing power, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methodology can be useful for investigating the thermal–hydraulic characteristics phenomena in the nuclear fuel assembly. The present report covers the results of simulation of pressure drop, velocity variation and turbulence intensity on single rod bundle with 54 rods in circular arrays. In this investigation, 54-rod assemblies are simulated with ANSYS Fluent 15 using steady simulations with an ANSYS Workbench meshing. The simulations have been carried out with water for Reynolds number 9861.83. The rod bundle has a mean flow area of 4853.0584 mm2 in the bare region with the hydraulic diameter of 8.105 mm. In present investigation, a benchmark k-ε model has been used as a turbulence model and the symmetry condition is set as boundary conditions. Simulation are carried out to determine the turbulent mixing rate in the simulated subchannels of the reactor. The size of rod and the pitch in the test has been same as that of actual rod bundle in the prototype. Water has been used as the working fluid and the turbulent mixing tests have been carried out at atmospheric condition without heat addition. The mean velocity in the subchannel has been varied from 0-1.2 m/s. The flow conditions are found to be closer to the actual reactor condition.

Keywords: AHWR, CFD, single-phase turbulent mixing rate, thermal–hydraulic

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Authors: Syaza Bt. Saifuddin, Rashidi Bin Othman, Muhammad Hafizuddin Akmal Bin Md Hashim, Ismail Bin Jasmani, Noor Hanita Bt. Abdul Majid

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This paper illustrates the background of various concepts, approaches, terminologies used to describe the basic framework of an Islamic Hotel Room design. This paper reviews the theoretical views in establishing a suitable and optimum environment for Muslim as well as non-Muslim guests in hotel rooms while according to shariah. It involves a few research methodologies that requires the researcher to study on a few characteristics needed to create more efficient rooms in terms of social interaction, economic growth and other tolerable elements. This paper intends on revealing the elements that are vital and may contribute for hotels in achieving a more conclusive research on space planning for hotel rooms focusing on the shariah and Muslim guests. Malaysia is an Islamic country and has billion of tourists coming over for business and recreational purposes. Therefore, having a righteous environment that best suit this target user is important in terms of generating the economy as well as providing a better understanding to the community on the benefits of applying these qualities in a conventional resort design.

Keywords: design, Islam, room, shariah compliant hotel

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Authors: Lolade Siyonbola

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Nigerians are often celebrated as being the most educated cultural group in America. The cultural values and history that have led to this reality are particular to a generation that came of age post colonialism. Many of these cultural values have been passed down from post-colonial parent to millennial child, but most have not. This study, based on interviews and surveys of Nigerian millennials and their parents in the United States, explores the degree to which identity has been eroded in the millennial generation due to a lack of imparted cultural values and knowledge from the previous generation. Most of the subjects do not speak their native language or identify with their cultural heritage sufficiently to build ties with their native land. Most are experiencing some degree of identity crisis, and therefore limited self-actualization, with little to no support; as there are few successful tools available to this population. If governmental programs to reverse these trends are not implemented within this generation, the implications to the individual, family and home nation (Nigeria), will be felt for generations to come.

Keywords: identity, culture, self-actualization, social identity theory, migration, transnationalism, value systems

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Authors: Geeta Sharma, Suma Chandra

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Sugarcane is one of the major commercial crop playing roles in agriculture and industrial economy of India. Globally sugarcane is affected by approximately 240 diseases caused by various plant pathogenic organisms. Among them, red rot disease caused by the fungus Colletotrichum falcatum, is one of the most important diseases. In the present investigation, one fungal bioagent of Trichoderma harzianum, Pant Bioagent 1 and one bacterial bioagent Pseudomonas fluorescence, Pant Bioagent 2 (PBAT 1 and PBAT 2, respectively) were tested by dual culture method against the pathogen under laboratory conditions. The effectiveness of biocontrol agents was observed against four isolates of C. falcatum. In the case of PBAT1 maximum percent inhibition of pathogen was recorded in isolated Cf 0238 (61.05%), followed by Cf 09 (60.62%) whereas, minimum percent inhibition was recorded in Cf 3220 (48.55%) and in case of PBAT2 maximum mycelial growth inhibition percent was recorded in Cf 767 (50.50%) followed by Cf 088230(48.83%), whereas minimum percent inhibition was recorded in Cf 08 (40.16%) followed by Cf 0238 (41.83%). The present study showed that these biocontrol agents have the potential of controlling the pathogen and can further be used for the management of red rot disease in field.

Keywords: biocontrol agents, Colletotrichum falcatum, isolates, sugarcane

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Authors: Victor A. Okenyi, Kehinde A. Alawode

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Corrosion of reinforcement in concrete structures remains a durability issue in structural engineering with the increasing cost of repair and maintenance. The mechanism and factors influencing reinforcement corrosion in concrete with various electrochemical monitoring techniques including non-destructive, destructive techniques and the roles of sensors have been reviewed with the aim of determining the monitoring technique that proved most effective in determining corrosion parameters and more practicable for the assessment of concrete durability. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and linear polarization resistance (LPR) techniques showed great performance in evaluating corrosion kinetics and corrosion rate, respectively, while the gravimetric weight loss (GWL) technique provided accurate measurements. However, no single monitoring technique showed to be the ultimate technique, and this calls for more research work in the development of more dynamic monitoring tools capable of considering all possible corrosion factors in the corrosion monitoring process.

Keywords: corrosion, concrete structures, durability, non-destructive technique, sensor

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Authors: Mohamad Saifudin Mohamad Saleh

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This paper provides a discussion of the importance of sustainability education among the Malaysian media. Without doubt, media play a crucial role in promoting the sustainable or so called “eco-system” society for a better future. Since 2002, the role of media as one of the vital stakeholders particularly in educating the society in three main areas of sustainable education including on environment, economy and society has been clearly highlights on the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) that was held in Johannesburg. In this paper, six media practitioners from two local Malaysia newspapers organization were interviewed by the researcher in order to identify their understanding about sustainability education; their perception about the pivotal role in sustainability education and the challenges faced by them in the process of educating society about sustainability issues. The findings of this study showed that most of Malaysian media practitioners have displayed clear understanding about sustainability education and they also realize their huge responsibility for not only informing but also educating society in having a sustainable lifestyle. The ultimate challenge in sustainability education faced by the media is to make the public really understand the importance of sustainable lifestyle. Overall, from this study, it is hoped to provide more possible direction in sustainability education not only among the Malaysian media but also all media in the entire world, particularly the developing and Southeast Asian countries.

Keywords: media, sustainability education, Malaysia

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Authors: Z. Karakus, Z. Ozer

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Nurses are responsible for the care and treatment of individuals, as well as health maintenance and education. Medication administration is an important part of health promotion. The administration of a medicine is a common but important clinical procedure for nurses because of its complex structure. Therefore, medication errors are inevitable for nurses or nursing students. Medication errors can cause ineffective treatment, patient’s prolonged hospital stay, disablement, or death. Additionally, medication errors affect the global economy adversely by increasing health costs. Hence, preventing or decreasing of medication errors is a critical and essential issue in nursing. Nurse educators are in pursuit of new teaching methods to teach students significance of medication application. In the light of technological developments of this age, e-learning has started to be accepted as an important teaching method. E-learning is the use of electronic media and information and communication technologies in education. It has advantages such as flexibility of time and place, lower costs, faster delivery, and lower environmental impact. Students can make their own schedule and decide the learning method. This study is conducted to determine the impact of e-learning on medication administration of nursing students.

Keywords: e-learning, medication administration, nursing, nursing students

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Authors: Alexander Vaninsky

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The objective of this paper is finding the way of economic restructuring - that is, change in the shares of sectoral gross outputs - resulting in the maximum possible increase in the gross domestic product (GDP) combined with decreases in energy consumption and CO2 emissions. It uses an input-output model for the GDP and factorial models for the energy consumption and CO2 emissions to determine the projection of the gradient of GDP, and the antigradients of the energy consumption and CO2 emissions, respectively, on a subspace formed by the structure-related variables. Since the gradient (antigradient) provides a direction of the steepest increase (decrease) of the objective function, and their projections retain this property for the functions' limitation to the subspace, each of the three directional vectors solves a particular problem of optimal structural change. In the next step, a type of factor analysis is applied to find a convex combination of the projected gradient and antigradients having maximal possible positive correlation with each of the three. This convex combination provides the desired direction of the structural change. The national economy of the United States is used as an example of applications.

Keywords: economic restructuring, input-output analysis, divisia index, factorial decomposition, E3 models

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Authors: Sachoiba Inkah

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The Northeast region has not been a major factor in India’s foreign policy calculation since independence. Instead, the region was ignored and marginalized even to the extent of using force and repressive Acts such as AFSPA(Armed Forces Special Powers Act) to suppress the voices of both states and non-state actors. The liberalization of the economy in the 90s in the wake of globalization gave India a new outlook and the Look East Policy (LEP) was a paradigm shift in India’s engagement with the Southeast Asian nations as it seeks to explore the benefits of the ASEAN. The reorienting of India’s foreign policy to ‘Neighborhood First” is attributed to the present political dispensation, which is further widened to include ‘Extended Neighborhood.’ As a result, the Northeastern states have become key players in India’s participation in regional groupings such as SAARC, BIMSTEC, and BCIM. The need for external balancing, diplomacy and development has reset India’s foreign policy priorities as the Northeast states lie in the confluence of South Asia, Southeast and East Asia, and a stakeholder in Act East Policy. The paper will explore the role of Northeastern states in the framework of Indian foreign policy as it shares international boundaries with China, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar and most importantly, study the case of Nagas who are spread across Manipur, Nagaland, and Arunachal Pradesh bordering Myanmar. The Indo-Myanmar border is an area of conflict and various illegal activities such as arms trafficking, illegal migrants, drug, and human trafficking are still being carried out and in order to address this issue, both India and Myanmar need to take into consideration the various communities living across the border. And conflict and insurgency should not be a yardstick to curtailed development of infrastructures such as roads, health facilities, transport, and communication in the contested region. The realities, perceptions, and contentions of the Northeastern states and the different communities living in the border areas need a wider discourse as the region the potential to drive India’s diplomatic relations with its neighbors and extended neighborhood. The methods employed are analytical and more of a descriptive analysis on India’s foreign policy framework with a focus on Nagas in Myanmar, drawing from both primary and secondary sources. Primary sources include official documents, data, and statistics released by various governmental agencies, parliamentary debates, political speeches, press releases, treaties and agreements, historical biographies and organizational policy papers, protocols and procedures of government conferences, regional organization study reports etc. The paper concludes that the recent proactive engagement between India and Myanmar on trade, defense, economic, and infrastructure development are positive signs cementing bilateral ties, but there is not much room for the people-to-people connect, especially for people living in the borderland. The Freedom of Movement Regime that is in place is limited and there is more scope for improvement as people in the borderland looks towards trade and commerce to not only uplift the border economy but also act as a catalyst for robust engagement between the two countries, albeit with more infrastructure such as road, healthcare, education, a tourist hotspot, trade centers, mobile connectivity, etc.

Keywords: foreign policy, infrastructure development, insurgency, people to people connect

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Authors: Tobias Wissing, Peter Burggräf, Johannes Wagner

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Cost pressure, competitiveness and the increasing turbulence of globalized saturated markets has been the driver for a variety of research activities in the field of production planning and control (PPC) during the past decades. For some time past an increasing awareness for innovative technologies in terms of Industry 4.0 can be noticed. Although there are many promising approaches a solely installation of those smart solutions will not maximize the PPC performance. To accelerate the successful digital transformation the cooperation between employee and technology also has to be adapted. The existing processes and organizational structures might be not sufficient to maximize the utilization of technological innovations. This paper presents the key results of an extensive study which was conducted by the Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) of the RWTH Aachen University to evaluate the current situation and examine the organizational readiness for this digital transformation.

Keywords: cyber-physical production system, digital transformation, industry 4.0, production planning and control

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Authors: Manuel Alves, Angelica Reis, Armindo Lobo, Valdemar Leiras

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In industry 4.0, it is common to have a lot of sensor data. In this deluge of data, hints of possible problems are difficult to spot. The digital twin concept aims to help answer this problem, but it is mainly used as a monitoring tool to handle the visualisation of data. Failure detection is of paramount importance in any industry, and it consumes a lot of resources. Any improvement in this regard is of tangible value to the organisation. The aim of this paper is to add the ability to forecast test failures, curtailing detection times. To achieve this, several anomaly detection algorithms were compared with a symbolic regression approach. To this end, Isolation Forest, One-Class SVM and an auto-encoder have been explored. For the symbolic regression PySR library was used. The first results show that this approach is valid and can be added to the tools available in this context as a low resource anomaly detection method since, after training, the only requirement is the calculation of a polynomial, a useful feature in the digital twin context.

Keywords: anomaly detection, digital twin, industry 4.0, symbolic regression

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Authors: Javier Menéndez, Jorge Loredo

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Large scale energy storage systems (LSESS) such as pumped-storage hydro-power (PSH) are required in the current energy transition towards a low carbon economy by using green energies that produce low levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Coal mines are currently being closed in the European Union and their underground facilities may be used to build PSH plants. However, the development of this projects requires the excavation of a network of tunnels and a large cavern that would be used as a powerhouse to install the Francis turbine and motor-generator. The technical feasibility to excavate the powerhouse cavern has been analyzed in the North of Spain. Three-dimensional numerical models have been conducted to analyze the stability considering shale and sandstone rock mass. Total displacements and thickness of plastic zones were examined considering different support systems. Systematic grouted rock bolts and fibre reinforced shotcrete were applied at the cavern walls and roof. The results obtained show that the construction of the powerhouse is feasible applying proper support systems.

Keywords: closed mines, mine water, numerical model, pumped-storage, renewable energies

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Authors: Eng. Alaa K. Satti Salih

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Revolutions Applications such as telecommunications, hands-free communications, recording, etc. which need at least one microphone, the signal is usually infected by noise and echo. The important application is the speech enhancement, which is done to remove suppressed noises and echoes taken by a microphone, beside preferred speech. Accordingly, the microphone signal has to be cleaned using digital signal processing DSP tools before it is played out, transmitted, or stored. Engineers have so far tried different approaches to improving the speech by get back the desired speech signal from the noisy observations. Especially Mobile communication, so in this paper will do reconstruction of the speech signal, observed in additive background noise, using the Kalman filter technique to estimate the parameters of the Autoregressive Process (AR) in the state space model and the output speech signal obtained by the MATLAB. The accurate estimation by Kalman filter on speech would enhance and reduce the noise then compare and discuss the results between actual values and estimated values which produce the reconstructed signals.

Keywords: autoregressive process, Kalman filter, Matlab, noise speech

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Authors: Pimrawee Rocharungsat

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The study of Phetchaburi Local Food Image in order to Support Tourism aimed 1) to overview Phetchaburi tourism images; and 2) to clarify Phetchaburi local food image. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis were used in this study. Questionnaires were delivered to sample group of 1,489 tourists from 8 districts of Phetchaburi. Results were found that Phetchaburi local food image could be as tool for tourism promotion. Strong place images were within Phetchaburi center city (35%) and in the markets (34.50%). As for satisfaction of local food comparing in descending order of excellent level mean score were its eminence, identity, quality, taste, creativity, and sanitation. Results of prominent images of well-known local food of Phetchaburi were Thai custard dessert, other desserts, palm and sugar palm drink and rice in ice water. The results can be applied as promotional tools for future food tourism in Phetchaburi.

Keywords: food tourism, image, tourist, Phetchaburi province

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Authors: Josiane R. Pires, Marco A. S. González, Bruna L. Brenner, Luciana S. Roos

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The concern with sustainability brought the need for optimization of the buildings to reduce consumption of natural resources. Almost 1/3 of energy demanded by Brazilian housings is used to provide thermal solutions. AEC sector may contribute applying bioclimatic strategies on building design. The aim of this research is to investigate the viability of applying some alternative solutions in residential buildings. The research was developed with computational simulation on single family social housing, examining envelope type, absorptance, and insolation. The analysis of the thermal performance applied both Brazilian standard NBR 15575 and degree-hour method, in the scenery of Porto Alegre, a southern Brazilian city. We used BIM modeling through Revit/Autodesk and used Energy Plus to thermal simulation. The payback of the investment was calculated comparing energy savings and building costs, in a period of 50 years. The results shown that with the increment of envelope’s insulation there is thermal comfort improvement and energy economy, with a pay-back period of 24 to 36 years, in some cases.

Keywords: civil construction, design, thermal performance, energy, economic analysis

Procedia PDF Downloads 538

Authors: Carolina B. A. Morais, Antonio Bob Santos

Abstract:

In order to determine how innovation procurement can strengthen public efficiency and foster the modernization of public services, while at the same time promoting the opening of new private markets, this paper aims to present the two key instruments for the practice of innovation procurement at a European, national, and regional level – Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP), and Public Procurement of Innovative Solutions (PPI). Thus, it starts with a theoretical framework on the emergence of this topic in the European Innovation Policy (Section 2), then continues with the identification and systematization of the main mechanisms for its effective adoption, both on the demand and supply side of the market (Section 3), as well as to expose and describe methods and tools for positioning innovation at the heart of public entities. The innovative projects best distinguished by the European Commission for their good practices in innovation procurement are identified, and the main methodology for the development and management of innovation procurement – Forward Commitment Procurement (FCP) – is applied to them in a pioneering way (Section 4). The relevance of innovation in public procurement is systematized and reflected upon in Section 5.

Keywords: innovation procurement, innovation policy, innovation, pubic procurement

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Authors: Emre Ozaslan, Bulent Acar, Mehmet Ali Guler

Abstract:

Unidirectional composites are very popular structural materials used in aerospace, marine, energy and automotive industries thanks to their superior material properties. However, the mechanical behavior of composite materials is more complicated than isotropic materials because of their anisotropic nature. Also, a stress concentration availability on the structure, like a hole, makes the problem further complicated. Therefore, enormous number of tests require to understand the mechanical behavior and strength of composites which contain stress concentration. Accurate finite element analysis and analytical models enable to understand mechanical behavior and predict the strength of composites without enormous number of tests which cost serious time and money. In this study, unidirectional Carbon/Epoxy composite specimens with central circular hole were investigated in terms of stress concentration factor and strength prediction. The composite specimens which had different specimen wide (W) to hole diameter (D) ratio were tested to investigate the effect of hole size on the stress concentration and strength. Also, specimens which had same specimen wide to hole diameter ratio, but varied sizes were tested to investigate the size effect. Finite element analysis was performed to determine stress concentration factor for all specimen configurations. For quasi-isotropic laminate, it was found that the stress concentration factor increased approximately %15 with decreasing of W/D ratio from 6 to 3. Point stress criteria (PSC), inherent flaw method and progressive failure analysis were compared in terms of predicting the strength of specimens. All methods could predict the strength of specimens with maximum %8 error. PSC was better than other methods for high values of W/D ratio, however, inherent flaw method was successful for low values of W/D. Also, it is seen that increasing by 4 times of the W/D ratio rises the failure strength of composite specimen as %62.4. For constant W/D ratio specimens, all the strength prediction methods were more successful for smaller size specimens than larger ones. Increasing the specimen width and hole diameter together by 2 times reduces the specimen failure strength as %13.2.

Keywords: failure, strength, stress concentration, unidirectional composites

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Authors: Gul Ghutai, Nouman Khan Kakar

Abstract:

Interest-Based Debt Disturbs The Financial, Social And Economic Structure Of The Country, Due To Which Sustainable Development Of The Masses Is Undermined. Such As, In Pakistan, The State’s Reliance Upon Interest-Based Debt (Both Foreign And National Levels) Affects The Socio-Economic Fabrication Of The Country, Thus Undermining The Sustainable Development Of Its Residents. The Objective Of The Study Is To Analyze The Effect Of Interest-Based Debt Financing On The Well-Being Of The Masses In Pakistan. The Question Arises Whether Interest-Based Debt Financing Undermines The Sustainable Development Of The Masses Of Pakistan Or Not. Moreover, Qualitative Research Methodology Is Pursued Towards Building A Conceptual Framework By Applying An Inductive Paradigm. It Is Expected That Interest-Based Debt, Whether Acquired From Foreign Or National Institutions By The Government Of Pakistan, Undermines The Sustainable Economic Growth Of The Country. However, The State Of Pakistan Is Under A Constitutional Obligation To Attain Sustainable Development Of Its Residents In Compliance With Islamic Shariah So That Eradication Of Interest From The Economy Of Pakistan Can Be Witnessed So That The Residents Of Pakistan Can Be Served To Attain Socio-Economic Well-Being Both Tangibly And Intangibly.

Keywords: socio-economic wellbeing, residents, sustainable development, interest-based debt

Procedia PDF Downloads 110