Search results for: linear transformation

Authors: Alessandro Marzucchini, Yie Sue Chua, Andrew Lian, Richard Shonn Mills

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A unique, fast and easy installed inter-module connection named Candle-Loc was developed and applied in several high-rise steel and reinforced concrete modular buildings in Singapore and Hong Kong, China. However, its effect on the global behaviour of modular buildings in high seismic zones was not studied. Therefore, the design concept and the structural performance of each component in this connection was investigated through analytical approach. Response spectrum, linear time-history, and nonlinear time-history analyses were conducted to investigate the effects of the different joint models of the Candle-Loc in the global analysis of high-rise buildings under high seismic loads. It is found that it is important to assess the level of plasticity developed in the inter-module connection under high seismic loads. The ductility of the lateral force resisting system influences the amount of load taken by the inter-module connections.

Keywords: high-rise, inter-module connection, nonlinear, seismic, time-history analysis

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Authors: Shazia Anwer

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This paper has discussed the unusual form of resistance in theatre against censorship board in Pakistan. The atypical approach of dramaturgy created massive space for performers and audiences to integrate and communicate. The social and religious absolutes creates suffocation in Pakistani society, strict control over all Fine and Performing Art has made art political, contemporary dramatics has started an amalgamated theatre to avoid censorship. Contemporary Punjabi theatre techniques are directly dependent on human cognition. The idea of indirect thought processing is not unique but dependent on spectators. The paper has provided an account of these techniques and their specific use for conveying specific messages across the audiences. For the Dramaturge of today, theatre space is an expression representing a linguistic formulation that includes qualities of experimental and non-traditional use of classical theatrical space in the context of fulfilling the concept of open theatre. Paper has explained the transformation of the theatrical experience into an event where the actor and the audience are co-existing and co-experiencing the dramatical experience. The denial of the existence of the 4th -Wall made two-way communication possible. This paper has elaborated that the previously marginalized genres such as naach, jugat, miras, are extensively included to counter the censorship board. Figurativeness, visual elements, allegory, scenic imagery are basic support system for contemporary Punjabi theatre. The body of the actor is used as a source for non-verbal communication, and for an escape from traditional theatrical space which by every means has every element that could be controlled and reprimanded by the controlling authority.

Keywords: communication, Punjabi theatre, figurativeness, censorship

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Authors: Aleksandra Szunke

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Monetary policy is an important pillar of the economy, directly affecting on the condition of banking sector. Depending on the strategy may both support functioning of banking institutions, as well as limit their excessively risky activities. The literature studies indicate a large number of publications, which include characteristics of initiatives, implemented by central banks during the global financial crisis and the potential effects of the use of non-standard monetary policy instruments. However, the empirical evidence about their effects and real consequences for the financial markets are still not final. Even before the escalation of instability, Bernanke, Reinhart, and Sack (2004) analyzed the effectiveness of various unconventional monetary tools in lowering long-term interest rates in the United States and Japan. The obtained results largely confirmed the effectiveness of the zero-interest-rate policy and Quantitative Easing (QE) in achieving the goal of reducing long-term interest rates. Japan, considered as the precursor of QE policy, also conducted research about the consequences of non-standard instruments, implemented to restore financial stability of the country. Although the literature about the effectiveness of Quantitative Easing in Japan is extensive, it does not uniquely specify whether it brought permanent effects. The main aim of the study is to identify the implications of non-standard monetary policy, implemented by selected central banks (the Federal Reserve System, Bank of England and European Central Bank), paying particular attention to the consequences into three areas: the size of money supply, financial markets, and the real economy.

Keywords: consequences of modern monetary policy, quantitative easing policy, banking sector instability, global financial crisis

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Authors: Mohamed Mousa

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Sacristies in the supply of freshwater, strict regulations on discharging wastewater and the support to encourage sustainable development by water minimization techniques leads to raise the interest of water reusing, regeneration, and recycling. Water is considered a vital element in chemical industries. In this study, an optimization model will be developed to determine the optimal design of refinery’s water network system via source interceptor sink that involves several network alternatives, then a Mixed-Integer Non-Linear programming (MINLP) was used to obtain the optimal network superstructure based on flowrates, the concentration of contaminants, etc. The main objective of the model is to reduce the fixed cost of piping installation interconnections, reducing the operating cots of all streams within the refiner’s water network, and minimize the concentration of pollutants to comply with the environmental regulations. A real case study for one of the Egyptian refineries was studied by GAMS / BARON global optimization platform, and the water network had been retrofitted and optimized, leading to saving around 195 m³/ hr. of freshwater with a total reduction reaches to 26 %.

Keywords: freshwater minimization, modelling, GAMS, BARON, water network design, wastewater reudction

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Authors: Ernest Nweke

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This paper examines the changing trend in ownership of Mongolian companies and how this trend has influenced corporate governance mechanisms in Mongolian companies. A study of this magnitude is essential as it x-rays the systematic transformation of Mongolia’s corporate world from the public to private ownership and the tremendous impact it has had on firm governance mechanisms. Owing to Mongolia’s Soviet past, much of the companies in Mongolia were state-owned, state-directed and state-controlled resulting in serious inefficiencies in these companies. This scenario is antithetical to the economic growth and development of any nation as it is grossly at variance with the fundamental principles of good corporate governance that drive prosperity. Consequently, the Mongolian government has in the past decades fine-tuned government policy to prioritize private ownership, establishing various frameworks that will strengthen corporate governance structures in Mongolia. These efforts have paid off and gone a long way in changing the trend in the ownership of companies in Mongolia reversing the old order. The expectation locally and internationally is that companies in post-socialist Mongolia will be more closely aligned to generally accepted corporate governance mechanisms, generally improving company performance and ultimately returns to shareholders. To achieve the research objectives, the survey research method was employed utilizing a sample of seventy randomly selected listed companies representing 22% of Mongolian Stock Exchange listings. Research hypotheses formulated to guide the conduct of the study were tested using Chi-Square analysis, and results show that ownership trend has drastically changed in the post-socialist Mongolia leading to better corporate governance practices in Mongolian companies. This result has important policy implications.

Keywords: corporate disclosure, free market, private ownership, Mongolia

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Authors: Ahmed Bellakhdhar

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This paper aims to test the impact of various variables-namely, investment in physical capital, investment in human capital, openness to trade and foreign direct investments, and distance from the technology frontier-on economic growth in the Tunisian context during the period 1976-2010. Empirical results identify that the impact of human capital is significantly positive. This finding confirms the hypothesis that human capital is a main driver of economic performance through its role of improving the internal productive capacity and the absorption of foreign technology especially via foreign direct investments. The effect of FDI is significantly positive in all alternative regressions and the coefficient associated to physical capital variable is positive, but not significant overall. Concerning the import of technologically advanced equipments, our estimates show the absence of a significant direct impact on economic growth in Tunisia. Our empirical results also support the assumption of a non linear relationship between tax and growth and demonstrate the existence of an inverted-U curve between the two variables, in the spirit of the “Laffer curve”.

Keywords: Endogenous growth, Human capital, Technology transfer, Absorptive capacity

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Authors: Aminah Muchdar

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To increase the genetic diversity of soybean in order to adapt to agroecology in Indonesia conducted ways including introduction, cross, mutation and genetic transformation. The purpose of this research is to obtain early maturity soybean mutant lines, large seed tolerant to drought with high yield potential. This study consisted of two stages: the first is sensitivity of gamma rays carried out in the Laboratory BATAN. The genetic variety used is Anjasmoro. The method seeds irradiated with gamma rays at a rate of activity with the old ci 1046.16976 irradiation 0-71 minutes. Irradiation doses of 0, 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900 and 1000gy. The results indicated all seeds irradiated with doses of 0 - 1000gy, just a dose of 200 and 300gy are able to show the percentage of germination, plant height, number of leaves, number of normal sprouts and green leaves of the best and can be continued for a second trial in order to assemble and to get mutants which is expected. The result of second stage of soybean M2 Population irradiated with diversity Gamma Irradiation performed that in the form of soybean planting, the seed planted is the first derivative of the M2 irradiated seeds. The result after the age of 30ADP has already showing growth and development of plants that vary when compared to its parent, both in terms of plant height, number of leaves, leaf shape and leaf forage level. In the generative phase, a plant that has been irradiated 200 and 300 gy seen some plants flower form packs, but not formed pods, there is also a form packs of flowers, but few pods produce soybean morphological characters such as plant height, number of branches, pods, days to flowering, harvesting, seed weight and seed number.

Keywords: gamma ray, genetic mutation, irradiation, soybean

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Authors: Nurudeen O. Lasisi, Sirajo Abdulrahman, Abdulkareem A. Ibrahim

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Newcastle disease is an infection of domestic poultry and other bird species with the virulent Newcastle disease virus (NDV). In this paper, we study the dynamics of the modeling of the Newcastle disease virus (NDV) using a novel quarantine-adjusted incidence. The comparison of Vaccination, linear incident rate and novel quarantine-adjusted incident rate in the models are discussed. The dynamics of the models yield disease-free and endemic equilibrium states.The effective reproduction numbers of the models are computed in order to measure the relative impact of an individual bird or combined intervention for effective disease control. We showed the local and global stability of endemic equilibrium states of the models and we found that the stability of endemic equilibrium states of models are globally asymptotically stable if the effective reproduction numbers of the models equations are greater than a unit.

Keywords: effective reproduction number, Endemic state, Mathematical model, Newcastle disease virus, novel quarantine-adjusted incidence, stability analysis

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Authors: Mohammed Abed, Rita Nemes

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Cellular concrete powder (CCP) is not used widely as supplementary cementitious material, but in the literature, its efficiency is proved when it used as a replacement of cement in concrete mixtures. In this study, different amounts of raw CCP (CCP as a waste material without any industrial modification) will be used to investigate the characteristics of cement pastes and the effects of CCP on the properties of the cement pastes. It is an attempt to produce green binder paste, which is useful for sustainable construction applications. The fresh and hardened properties of a number of CCP blended cement paste will be tested in different life periods, and the optimized CCP volume will be reported with more significant investigations on durability properties. Different replacing of mass percentage (low and high) of the cement mass will be conducted (0%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, and 90%). The consistency, flexural strength, and compressive strength will be the base indicator for the further properties' investigations. The CCP replacement until 50% have been tested until 7 days, and the initial results showed a linear relationship between strength and the percentage of the replacement; that is an optimistic indicator for further replacement percentages of waste CCP.

Keywords: cellular concrete powder, supplementary cementitious material, sustainable construction, green concrete

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Authors: H. Masaeli, R. Ziaei, F. Khoshnoudian

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Shock response analysis of the soil–structure systems induced by near–fault pulses is investigated. Vibration transmissibility of the soil–structure systems is evaluated by Shock Response Spectra (SRS). Medium–to–high rise buildings with different aspect ratios located on different soil types as well as different foundations with respect to vertical load bearing safety factors are studied. Two types of mathematical near–fault pulses, i.e. forward directivity and fling step, with different pulse periods as well as pulse amplitudes are selected as incident ground shock. Linear versus nonlinear Soil–Structure Interaction (SSI) condition are considered alternatively and the corresponding results are compared. The results show that nonlinear SSI is likely to amplify the acceleration responses when subjected to long–period incident pulses with normalized period exceeding a threshold. It is also shown that this threshold correlates with soil type, so that increased shear–wave velocity of the underlying soil makes the threshold period decrease.

Keywords: nonlinear soil–structure interaction, shock response spectrum, near–fault ground shock, rocking isolation

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Authors: Mai Alshareef

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The Saudi government considers the modernisation of the education system as a critical component of the national development plan, Saudi Vision 2030; however, this sudden reform creates tension amongst Saudis. This study examines first the reflection of the social and digital education reform on stakeholders and the general Saudi public, and second, the influence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the ethnoreligious conflict in Saudi Arabia. This study employs Cyberconflict theory to examine conflicts in the real world and cyberspace. The findings are based on a qualitative case study methodology that uses netnography, an analysis of 3,750 Twitter posts and semi-structural interviews with 30 individuals, including key actors in the Saudi education sector and Twitter activists during 2019\2020. The methods utilised are guided by thematic analysis to map an understanding of factors that influence societal conflicts in Saudi Arabia, which in this case include religious, national, and gender identity. Elements of Cyberconflict theory are used to better understand how conflicting groups build their identities in connection to their ethnic/religious/cultural differences and competing national identities. The findings correspond to the ethnoreligious components of the Cyberconflict theory. Twitter became a battleground for liberals, conservatives, the Saudi public and elites, and it is used in a novel way to influence public opinion and to challenge the media monopoly. Opposing groups relied heavily on a discourse of exclusion and inclusion and showed ethnic and religious affiliations, national identity, and chauvinism. The findings add to existing knowledge in the cyberconflict field of study, and they also reveal outcomes that are critical to the Saudi Arabian national context.

Keywords: education, cyberconflict, Twitter, national identity

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Authors: M. Mana, M. S. Ouali, L. C. de Menorval

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A spent bleaching earth from an edible oil refinery has been treated by impregnation with a normal sodium hydroxide solution followed by mild thermal treatment (100°C). The obtained material (TSBE) was washed, dried and characterized by X-ray diffraction, FTIR, SEM, BET, and thermal analysis. The clay structure was not apparently affected by the treatment and the impregnated organic matter was quantitatively removed. We have investigated the comparative sorption of safranine and methylene blue on this material, the spent bleaching earth (SBE) and the virgin bleaching earth (VBE). The kinetic results fit the pseudo second order kinetic model and the Weber & Morris, intra-particle diffusion model. The pH had no effect on the sorption efficiency. The sorption isotherms followed the Langmuir model for various sorbent concentrations with good values of determination coefficient. A linear relationship was found between the calculated maximum removal capacity and the solid/solution ratio. A comparison between the results obtained with this material and those of the literature highlighted the low cost and the good removal capacity of the treated spent bleaching earth.

Keywords: basic dyes, isotherms, sorption, spent bleaching earth

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Authors: Miguel Cañon, Darwin Mena, Ivan Cabeza

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In this work was compared and evaluated the applicability of statistical methods for the estimation of missing precipitations data in the basin of the river Lenguazaque located in the departments of Cundinamarca and Boyacá, Colombia. The methods used were the method of simple linear regression, distance rate, local averages, mean rates, correlation with nearly stations and multiple regression method. The analysis used to determine the effectiveness of the methods is performed by using three statistical tools, the correlation coefficient (r2), standard error of estimation and the test of agreement of Bland and Altmant. The analysis was performed using real rainfall values removed randomly in each of the seasons and then estimated using the methodologies mentioned to complete the missing data values. So it was determined that the methods with the highest performance and accuracy in the estimation of data according to conditions that were counted are the method of multiple regressions with three nearby stations and a random application scheme supported in the precipitation behavior of related data sets.

Keywords: statistical comparison, precipitation data, river subbasin, Bland and Altmant

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Authors: Asma Batool

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Immigrant families raising a child with developmental disabilities in Canada encounter many challenges during the process of disability care. Starting from the early screening of their child for diagnosis followed by challenges associated with treatment, access and service utilization. A substantial amount of research focuses on identifying barriers. However, the functional aspects of barriers in terms of their potential influences on parents and children with disabilities are unexplored yet. This paper presents functional analysis of barriers in disability care research by adopting a method of integrated approach. Juxtaposition of two developmental approaches, Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model and parents ‘transformational process model is generating multiple hypotheses to be considered while empirically investigating causal relationships and mediating or moderating factors among various variables related with disability care research. This functional analysis suggests that barriers have negative impacts on the physical and emotional development of children with disabilities as well as on the overall quality of family life (QOFL). While, barriers have facilitating impacts on parents, alternatively, the process of transformation in parents expedite after experiencing barriers. Consequently, parents reconstruct their philosophy of life and experience irreversible but continuous developmental change in terms of transformations simultaneously with their developing child and may buffer the expected negative impacts of barriers on disabled child and QOFL. Overall, this paper is suggesting implications for future research and parents’ transformations are suggesting potential pathways to minimize the negative influences of barriers that parents experience during disability care, hence improving satisfaction in QOFL in general.

Keywords: barriers in disability care, developmental disabilities, parents’ transformations, quality of family life

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Authors: Jingjing Lan, Jun Yu, Muthukumaraswamy Annamalai Arasu

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This paper presents a digital non-linear pulse-width modulation (PWM) controller in a high-voltage (HV) buck-boost DC-DC converter for the piezoelectric transducer of the down-hole acoustic telemetry system. The proposed design controls the generation of output signal with voltage higher than the supply voltage and is targeted to work under high temperature. To minimize the power consumption and silicon area, a simple and efficient design scheme is employed to develop the PWM controller. The proposed PWM controller consists of serial to parallel (S2P) converter, data assign block, a mode and duty cycle controller (MDC), linearly PWM (LPWM) and noise shaper, pulse generator and clock generator. To improve the reliability of circuit operation at higher temperature, this design is fabricated with the 1.0-μm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) CMOS process. The implementation results validated that the proposed design has the advantages of smaller size, lower power consumption and robust thermal stability.

Keywords: DC-DC power conversion, digital control, high temperatures, pulse-width modulation

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Authors: Arya Prakash Padhi, Anupam Chakrabarti, Rajib Chowdhury

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Topology or layout optimization often gives better performing economic structures and is very helpful in the conceptual design phase. But traditionally it is being done in finite element-based optimization schemes which, although gives a good result, is very time-consuming especially in 3D structures. Among other alternatives machine learning, especially deep learning-based methods, have a very good potential in resolving this computational issue. Here convolutional neural network (3D-CNN) based variational auto encoder (VAE) is trained using a dataset generated from commercially available topology optimization code ABAQUS Tosca using solid isotropic material with penalization (SIMP) method for compliance minimization. The encoded data in latent space is then fed to a 3D generative adversarial network (3D-GAN) to generate the outcome in 64x64x64 size. Here the network consists of 3D volumetric CNN with rectified linear unit (ReLU) activation in between and sigmoid activation in the end. The proposed network is seen to provide almost optimal results with significantly reduced computational time, as there is no iteration involved.

Keywords: 3D generative adversarial network, deep learning, structural topology optimization, variational auto encoder

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Authors: Zsolt Szabolcsi

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Political communication in Hungary has undergone a significant change in the 2010s. One element of the transformation is the Flashnews. This media product was launched in March 2015 and since then 40-50 blocks are broadcasted, daily, on 5 channels. Flashnews blocks are condensed news sessions, containing the summary of political narratives. It starts with the introduction of the narrator, then, usually four news topics are presented and, finally, the narrator concludes the block. The block lasts only one minute and, therefore, it provides a blink session into the main narratives of political communication at the time. Beyond its rapid pace, what makes its avoidance difficult is that these blocks are always in the first position in the commercial break of a non-political media product. Although it is only one minute long, its significance is high. The content of the Flashnews reflects the main governmental narratives and, therefore, the Flashnews is part of the agenda-setting capacity of political communication. It reaches media consumers who have limited knowledge and interest in politics, and their use of media products is not politically related. For this audience, the Flashnews pops up in the same way as commercials. Due to its structure and appearance, the impact of Flashnews seems to be similar to commercials, imbedded into the break of media products. It activates existing knowledge constructs, builds up associational links and maintains their presence in a way that the recipient is not aware of the phenomenon. The research aims to examine the extent to which the Flashnews and the main news narratives are identical in their content. This aim is realized with the content analysis of the two news products by examining the Flashnews and the evening news during main sport events from 2016 to 2018. The initial hypothesis of the research is that Flashnews is a contribution to the news management technique for an effective articulation of political narratives in public service media channels.

Keywords: flashnews, political communication, political marketing, news management

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Authors: Royan Dawud Aldian, Endah Purwanti, Soegianto Soelistiono

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In this research we have been developed an automatic investigation to classify normal children voice or autistic by using modern computation technology that is computation based on artificial neural network. The superiority of this computation technology is its capability on processing and saving data. In this research, digital voice features are gotten from the coefficient of linear-predictive coding with auto-correlation method and have been transformed in frequency domain using fast fourier transform, which used as input of artificial neural network in back-propagation method so that will make the difference between normal children and autistic automatically. The result of back-propagation method shows that successful classification capability for normal children voice experiment data is 100% whereas, for autistic children voice experiment data is 100%. The success rate using back-propagation classification system for the entire test data is 100%.

Keywords: autism, artificial neural network, backpropagation, linier predictive coding, fast fourier transform

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Authors: Ahmadreza Hakiminejad, Changfeng Fu, Hamideh Mohammadzadeh Titkanlou

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For decades, sustainable development has been an imperative concern in the process of urban development of the world’s developed countries. Despite the fact that the concept of sustainability, primarily, emerged by virtue of warning over global environmental catastrophes, it subsequently led to the ongoing debates not only over environmental, but also economic and sociocultural issues involved. This study, particularly, discusses the constituents of social sustainability– as one of the three pillars of sustainable development– and its situation within an urban context. It tries to investigate the interrelationships between the elements of social sustainability and the quality of physical environment. The paper, firstly, depicts a theoretical overview of the notions of social sustainability and urban form. Secondly, it will discuss the interrelationship between the two. And lastly, it will investigate and analyse this interrelationship through the historical transformation of Iranian cities. The research aims to answer this very question that how the urban form within the context of the built environment can influence the social behaviors so as to achieve a more sustainable society. It is to examine how and why compact, high-density and mixed-use urban patterns are environmentally sound, efficient for transport, socially beneficial and economically viable. The methodology used in this paper is desk research. Thus, the documents from different urban related disciplines including urban planning, urban design, urban sociology and urban policy have been reviewed. The research has also applied a comparative approach to discuss and analyse the impacts of different urban forms on the elements of social sustainability within the context of modern and traditional Iranian cities. The paper concludes with an examination of possible future directions of Iranian cities with consideration to socio-cultural concepts and the challenges that will have to be overcome to make progress towards social sustainability.

Keywords: social sustainability, urban form, compact city, Iranian cities

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Authors: Fauzi Jarushi, Sinan Mohsin AlKaabi

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The Standard Penetration Test (SPT) is the most common insitu test for soil investigations. On the other hand, the Cone Penetration Test (CPT) is considered one of the best investigation tools. Due to the fast and accurate results that can be obtained it complaints the SPT in many applications like field explorations, design parameters, and quality control assessments. Many soil index and engineering properties have been correlated to both of SPT and CPT. Various foundation design methods were developed based on the outcome of these tests. Therefore it is vital to correlate these tests to each other so that either one of the tests can be used in the absence of the other, especially for preliminary evaluation and design purposes. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between the SPT and CPT for different types of soil in Florida. Data for this research were collected from number of projects sponsored by the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), six sites served as the subject of SPT-CPT correlations. The correlations were established between the cone resistance (qc) and the SPT blows (i.e., N) for various soils. A positive linear relationship was found between fs and N for various soils. In general, qc versus N showed higher correlation coefficients than fs versus N. qc/N ratios were developed for different soil types and compared to literature values, the results of this research revealed higher ratios than literature values.

Keywords: in situ tests, correlation, SPT, CPT

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Authors: Hend Almaseb

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Gottman proposed a model of marital conflict with three phases: Agenda-Building, Arguing, and Negotiation. Among a sample of 520 married Kuwaiti women, this study examined the relationship between these phases and the following demographic variables: Level of education, Family income, Health, Occupation, and Tribal affiliation. In addition, the study 1) investigated the marital conflict phases the participants reported having experienced or are currently experiencing and 2) identified the variables that predict one of these conflict phases. The results showed a significant relationship between the following: 1) the Agenda-Building phase and Health; 2) the Arguing phase and Family income, Occupation, and Tribal Affiliation; and 3) the Negotiation phase and Level of education. In addition, a linear regression shows a substantial correlation between the two predictor variables (Level of education and Health problems) and the Agenda Building and Negotiation phases and 5) another substantial correlation between Family income and Arguing.

Keywords: clinical social work, Kuwait, marital conflict, women

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Authors: Nikolaos Konstantopoulos, Aristeidis Samitas, Vasileiou Evangelos

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The purpose of this study is to examine if the financial trends influence not only the stock markets’ returns, but also their anomalies. We choose to study the day of the week effect (DOW) for the Greek stock market during the Euro period (2002-12), because during the specific period there are not significant structural changes and there are long term financial trends. Moreover, in order to avoid possible methodological counterarguments that usually arise in the literature, we apply several linear (OLS) and nonlinear (GARCH family) models to our sample until we reach to the conclusion that the TGARCH model fits better to our sample than any other. Our results suggest that in the Greek stock market there is a long term predisposition for positive/negative returns depending on the weekday. However, the statistical significance is influenced from the financial trend. This influence may be the reason why there are conflict findings in the literature through the time. Finally, we combine the DOW’s empirical findings from 1985-2012 and we may assume that in the Greek case there is a tendency for long lived turn of the week effect.

Keywords: day of the week effect, GARCH family models, Athens stock exchange, economic growth, crisis

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Authors: Rafla Attia, Claudio Zucca, Bao Quang Le, Sana Dridi, Thouraya Sahli, Taoufik Hermassi

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In Tunisia, landscape change and land degradation are critical issues for landscape conservation, management, and planning. Landscapes are undergoing crucial environmental problems made evident by soil degradation and desertification. Human improper uses of land resources (e.g., unsuitable land uses, unsustainable crop intensification, and poor rangeland management) and climate change are the main factors leading to the landscape transformation and desertification affecting high proportions of the Tunisian lands. Land use planning (LUP) to achieve Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) must be supported by methodologies and technologies that help identify best solutions and practices and design context-specific sustainable land management (SLM) strategies. Such strategies must include restoration or rehabilitation efforts in areas with high land degradation, as well as prevention of degradation that could be caused by improper land use (LU) and land management (LM). The geoinformatics Land Use Planning for LDN (LUP4LDN) tool has been designed for this purpose. Its aim is to support national and sub-national planners in i) mapping geographic patterns of current land degradation; ii) anticipating further future land degradation expected in areas that are unsustainably managed; and iii) providing an interactive procedure for developing participatory LU-LM transitional scenarios over selected regions of interest and timeframes, visualizing the related expected levels of impacts on ecosystem services via maps and graphs. The tool has been co-developed and piloted with national stakeholders in Tunisia. The piloting implementation assessed how the LUP4LDN tool fits with existing LUP processes and the benefits achieved by using the tool to support land use planning for LDN.

Keywords: land use system, land cover, sustainable land management, land use planning for land degradation neutrality

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Authors: Muhammad Safder Shafi, Uzma Javed, Tooba Qasim

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The purpose of this paper is to find out the relationship between training and turnover intention in the presence of mediating variables promotion opportunities and job satisfaction among IT professionals in project based industry. It investigates the relationship directly between 1 independent variable training and dependent variable turnover intention. It also investigates the relationship between independent variable to the mediating variables and mediating variables to the turnover intention. Promotion opportunities and job satisfaction act as a mediator. The study sample comprised of 186 IT professionals from Pakistan, who work on different IT projects. Linear regression and Baron and Kenny approach were used to test the direct and mediated relationship between variables. The survey results demonstrated that job satisfaction fully mediate the relationship between promotion opportunities and turnover intention. Promotion opportunities fully mediate the relationship between employee training and job satisfaction. Promotion opportunities and job satisfaction mediates the relationship between training and turnover intention. The findings from the collected data may help top management to improve organizational strategies to cope up with improving different HR practices like training, pay structure and promotions in order to retain their workforce.

Keywords: HCT, SET, career growth opportunities, job satisfaction, training, turnover intention

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Authors: S. Candamano, A. Iorfida, L. Pagnotta, F. Crea

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Basalt fabric reinforced cementitious composites (FRCM) have attracted great attention because they result in being effective in structural strengthening and eco-efficient. In this study, authors investigate their mechanical behavior when an alkali-activated binder, with tuned properties and containing high amounts of industrial by-products, such as ground granulated blast furnace slag, is used. Reinforcement is made up of a balanced, coated bidirectional fabric made out of basalt fibres and stainless steel micro-wire, with a mesh size of 8x8 mm and an equivalent design thickness equal to 0.064 mm. Mortars mixes have been prepared by maintaining constant the water/(reactive powders) and sand/(reactive powders) ratios at 0.53 and 2.7 respectively. Tensile tests were carried out on composite specimens of nominal dimensions equal to 500 mm x 50 mm x 10 mm, with 6 embedded rovings in the loading direction. Direct shear tests (DST), aimed to the stress-transfer mechanism and failure modes of basalt-FRCM composites, were carried out on brickwork substrate using an externally bonded basalt-FRCM composite strip 10 mm thick, 50 mm wide and a bonded length of 300 mm. Mortars exhibit, after 28 days of curing, a compressive strength of 32 MPa and a flexural strength of 5.5 MPa. Main hydration product is a poorly crystalline CASH gel. The constitutive behavior of the composite has been identified by means of direct tensile tests, with response curves showing a tri-linear behavior. The first linear phase represents the uncracked (I) stage, the second (II) is identified by crack development and the third (III) corresponds to cracked stage, completely developed up to failure. All specimens exhibit a crack pattern throughout the gauge length and failure occurred as a result of sequential tensile failure of the fibre bundles, after reaching the ultimate tensile strength. The behavior is mainly governed by cracks development (II) and widening (III) up to failure. The main average values related to the stages are σI= 173 MPa and εI= 0.026% that are the stress and strain of the transition point between stages I and II, corresponding to the first mortar cracking; σu = 456 MPa and εu= 2.20% that are the ultimate tensile strength and strain, respectively. The tensile modulus of elasticity in stage III is EIII= 41 GPa. All single-lap shear test specimens failed due to composite debonding. It occurred at the internal fabric-to-matrix interface, and it was the result of fracture of the matrix between the fibre bundles. For all specimens, transversal cracks were visible on the external surface of the composite and involved only the external matrix layer. This cracking appears when the interfacial shear stresses increase and slippage of the fabric at the internal matrix layer interface occurs. Since the external matrix layer is bonded to the reinforcement fabric, it translates with the slipped fabric. Average peak load around 945 N, peak stress around 308 MPa, and global slip around 6 mm were measured. The preliminary test results allow affirming that Alkali Activated Binders can be considered a potentially valid alternative to traditional mortars in designing FRCM composites.

Keywords: alkali activated binders, basalt-FRCM composites, direct shear tests, structural strengthening

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Authors: U. Sabura Banu, S. K. Lakshmanaprabu

Abstract:

The improvement of meta-heuristic algorithm encourages control engineer to design an optimal controller for industrial process. Most real-world industrial processes are non-linear multivariable process with high interaction. Even in sub-process unit, thousands of loops are available mostly interacting in nature. Optimal controller design for such process are still challenging task. Closed loop controller design by multiloop PID involves a tedious procedure by performing interaction study and then PID auto-tuning the loop with higher interaction. Finally, detuning the controller to accommodate the effects of the other process variables. Fractional order PID controllers are replacing integer order PID controllers recently. Design of Multiloop Fractional Order (MFO) PID controller is still more complicated. Cuckoo algorithm, a swarm intelligence technique is used to optimally tune the MFO PID controller with easiness minimizing Integral Time Absolute Error. The closed loop performance is tested under servo, regulatory and servo-regulatory conditions.

Keywords: Cuckoo algorithm, mutliloop fractional order PID controller, two Interacting conical tank process

Procedia PDF Downloads 486

Authors: Itiola Kehinde Adeniran

Abstract:

This paper investigated the influence of harnessing entrepreneurial opportunities on the national security in Nigeria with a specific focus on the security situation of the post-amnesty programmes of the Federal Government in Ondo State. The self-administered structured questionnaire was employed to collect data from one hundred and twenty participants through purposive sampling method. Inferential statistics was used to analyze the data, specifically; ordinary least squares linear regression method was employed with the aid of statistical package for social science (SPSS) version 20 in order to determine the influence of independent variable (entrepreneurial opportunities) on dependent variable (national security). The result showed that business opportunities have a significant influence on the rate of criminal activities. The study also revealed that entrepreneurial opportunity creation and discovery as well as providing a model on how these entrepreneurial opportunities could be effectively and efficiently utilized jointly predict better national security, which counted for 69% variance of crime rate reduction. The paper, therefore, recommended that citizens should be encouraged to develop an interest in the skill-based activities in order to change their mindset towards self-employment which can motivate them in identify entrepreneurial opportunities.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial opportunities, national security, unemployment

Procedia PDF Downloads 313

Authors: P. Pasomboon, P. Chumnanpuen, T. E-kobon

Abstract:

Hyaluronic acid (HA) consists of linear heteropolysaccharides repeat of D-glucuronic acid and N-acetyl-D-glucosamine. HA has various useful properties to maintain skin elasticity and moisture, reduce inflammation, and lubricate the movement of various body parts without causing immunogenic allergy. HA can be found in several animal tissues as well as in the capsule component of some bacteria including Pasteurella multocida. This study aimed to modify a genome-scale metabolic model of Escherichia coli using computational simulation and flux analysis methods to predict HA productivity under different carbon sources and nitrogen supplement by the addition of two enzymes (GLMU2 and HYAD) from P. multocida to improve the HA production under the specified amount of carbon sources and nitrogen supplements. Result revealed that threonine and aspartate supplement raised the HA production by 12.186%. Our analyses proposed the genome-scale metabolic model is useful for improving the HA production and narrows the number of conditions to be tested further.

Keywords: Pasteurella multocida, Escherichia coli, hyaluronic acid, genome-scale metabolic model, bioinformatics

Procedia PDF Downloads 114

Authors: P. Leo, E. Cerri, L. Fratini, G. Buffa

Abstract:

The Friction Stir Welding process uses an inert rotating mandrel and a force on the mandrel normal to the plane of the sheets to generate the frictional heat. The heat and the stirring action of the mandrel create a bond between the two sheets without melting the base metal. As matter of fact, the use of a solid state welding process limits the insurgence of defects, due to the presence of gas in melting bath, and avoids the negative effects of materials metallurgical transformation strictly connected with the change of phase. The industrial importance of Ti-6Al-4V alloy is well known. It provides an exceptional good balance of strength, ductility, fatigue and fracture properties together with good corrosion resistance and good metallurgical stability. In this paper, the authors analyze the microstructure of friction stir welded joints of Ti-6Al-4V processed at the same travel speed (35 mm/min) but at different rotation speeds (300-500 rpm). The microstructure of base material (BM), as result from both optical microscope and scanning electron microscope analysis is not homogenous. It is characterized by distorted α/β lamellar microstructure together with smashed zone of fragmented β layer and β retained grain boundary phase. The BM has been welded in the-as received state, without any previous heat treatment. Even the microstructure of the transverse and longitudinal sections of joints is not homogeneous. Close to the top of weld cross sections a much finer microstructure than the initial condition has been observed, while in the center of the joints the microstructure is less refined. Along longitudinal sections, the microstructure is characterized by equiaxed grains and lamellae. Both the length and area fraction of lamellas increases with distance from longitudinal axis. The hardness of joints is higher than that of BM. As the process temperature increases the average microhardness slightly decreases.

Keywords: friction stir welding, microhardness, microstructure, Ti-6Al-4V

Procedia PDF Downloads 367

Authors: Azin Shakibabarough, Mojtaba Valinejadshoubi, Ashutosh Bagchi

Abstract:

Structural vibration means repetitive motion that causes fatigue and reduction of the performance of a structure. An earthquake may release high amount of energy that can have adverse effect on all components of a structure. Therefore, decreasing of vibration or maintaining performance of structures such as bridges, dams, roads and buildings is important for life safety and reducing economic loss. When earthquake or any vibration happens, investigation on parts of a structure which sustain the seismic loads is mandatory to provide a safe condition for the occupants. One of the solutions for reducing the earthquake vibration in a structure is using of vibration control devices such as dampers and base isolators. The objective of this study is to investigate the optimal positions of friction dampers and base isolators for better seismic response of 2D frame. For this purpose, a two bay and six story frame with different distribution formats was modeled and some of their responses to earthquake such as inter-story drift, max joint displacement, max axial force and max bending moment were determined and compared using non-linear dynamic analysis.

Keywords: fast nonlinear analysis, friction damper, base isolator, seismic vibration control, seismic response

Procedia PDF Downloads 308