Search results for: M. S. Aris

Authors: Ayesha Ali, Emilia Lindquist, Arif Jalal, Hannah Yusuf, Kayan Cheung, Rowan Eastabrook

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It is currently estimated that over a third of deaths in children under five in Tanzania are caused by acute respiratory infections (ARIs). However, despite being one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality across the developing world, its risk factors are poorly understood. Therefore, a systematic review of the literature published between 2015 and 2020 was conducted, focusing on risk factors for ARI in Tanzanian children under the age of five. 2015 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) for Tanzania was analysed to supplement these findings with national data. 2224 papers were retrieved from two databases and were analysed by three independent reviewers. Thirteen papers were eligible for inclusion, covering a wide range of risk factors among which comorbidities (n=6), malnutrition (n=5), lack of parental education (n=4), poor socio-economic status (n=3), and delay in seeking healthcare (n=3) were the most cited risk factors. The risk factors with the highest reported risk ratios/odds ratios were lack of parental education (RR=11.5-14.5), followed by enrolment in school (RR=4.4), delay in seeking healthcare (RR=3.8) and cooking indoors (aOR =1.8-RR=5.5). The DHS data provided local context to these risk factors. For instance, the number of children experiencing symptoms of ARI in both urban and rural areas ranged between 4.5-5% in the two weeks prior to the survey. However, 79% of symptomatic children in Zanzibar received antibiotics for treatment compared to just 34% of those in the Southern Highlands. As demonstrated by both the systematic review and the DHS analysis, risk factors for ARI are predominantly socially determined, with Tanzania’s poorer rural children possessing the highest risk for ARI and more adverse health outcomes. Therefore, the burden of ARIs in Tanzanian children may be alleviated through the provision of appropriate treatment and parental education in rural areas.

Keywords: acute respiratory infection, child, health education, morbidity, mortality, pneumonia, Tanzania

Procedia PDF Downloads 191

Authors: Anahita Aris

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Geometry always plays a key role in natural structures, which can be a source of inspiration for architects and urban designers to create spaces. By understanding formative principles in nature, a variety of options can be provided that lead to freedom of formation. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the geometrical order found in pomegranate to find formative principles explaining its complex structure. The point is how spherical arils of pomegranate pressed together inside the fruit and filled the space as they expand in the growing process, which made a self-organized system leads to the formation of each of the arils are unique in size, topology and shape. The main challenge of this paper would be using advanced architectural modeling techniques to discover these principles.

Keywords: advanced modeling techniques, architectural modeling, computational design, the geometry of natural formation, geometrical analysis, the natural order of pomegranate, voronoi diagrams

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Authors: T. Ganesan, M. S. Aris, I. Elamvazuthi, Momen Kamal Tageldeen

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Terms set in power purchase agreements (PPA) challenge power utility companies in balancing between the returns (from maximizing power production) and securing long term supply contracts at capped production. The production limitation set in the PPA has driven efforts to maximize profits through efficient and economic power production. In this paper, a combined industrial-scale gas turbine (GT) - absorption chiller (AC) system is considered to cool the GT air intake for reducing the plant’s heat rate (HR). This GT-AC system is optimized while considering power output limitations imposed by the PPA. In addition, the proposed formulation accounts for uncertainties in the ambient temperature using Type-2 fuzzy programming. Using the enhanced chaotic differential evolution (CEDE), the Pareto frontier was constructed and the optimization results are analyzed in detail.

Keywords: absorption chillers (AC), turbine inlet air cooling (TIC), power purchase agreement (PPA), multiobjective optimization, type-2 fuzzy programming, chaotic differential evolution (CDDE)

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Authors: Jose Neri, Fabrice Canto, Alastair Magnaldo, Laurent Guillerme, Vincent Dugas

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A miniaturized and automated approach for the volumetric titration of free nitric acid in U(VI) solutions is presented. Free acidity measurement refers to the acidity quantification in solutions containing hydrolysable heavy metal ions such as U(VI), U(IV) or Pu(IV) without taking into account the acidity contribution from the hydrolysis of such metal ions. It is, in fact, an operation having an essential role for the control of the nuclear fuel recycling process. The main objective behind the technical optimization of the actual ‘beaker’ method was to reduce the amount of radioactive substance to be handled by the laboratory personnel, to ease the instrumentation adjustability within a glove-box environment and to allow a high-throughput analysis for conducting more cost-effective operations. The measurement technique is based on the concept of the Taylor-Aris dispersion in order to create inside of a 200 μm x 5cm circular cylindrical micro-channel a linear concentration gradient in less than a second. The proposed analytical methodology relies on the actinide complexation using pH 5.6 sodium oxalate solution and subsequent alkalimetric titration of nitric acid with sodium hydroxide. The titration process is followed with a CCD camera for fluorescence detection; the neutralization boundary can be visualized in a detection range of 500nm- 600nm thanks to the addition of a pH sensitive fluorophore. The operating principle of the developed device allows the active generation of linear concentration gradients using a single cylindrical micro channel. This feature simplifies the fabrication and ease of use of the micro device, as it does not need a complex micro channel network or passive mixers to generate the chemical gradient. Moreover, since the linear gradient is determined by the liquid reagents input pressure, its generation can be fully achieved in faster intervals than one second, being a more timely-efficient gradient generation process compared to other source-sink passive diffusion devices. The resulting linear gradient generator device was therefore adapted to perform for the first time, a volumetric titration on a chip where the amount of reagents used is fixed to the total volume of the micro channel, avoiding an important waste generation like in other flow-based titration techniques. The associated analytical method is automated and its linearity has been proven for the free acidity determination of U(VI) samples containing up to 0.5M of actinide ion and nitric acid in a concentration range of 0.5M to 3M. In addition to automation, the developed analytical methodology and technique greatly improves the standard off-line oxalate complexation and alkalimetric titration method by reducing a thousand fold the required sample volume, forty times the nuclear waste per analysis as well as the analysis time by eight-fold. The developed device represents, therefore, a great step towards an easy-to-handle nuclear-related application, which in the short term could be used to improve laboratory safety as much as to reduce the environmental impact of the radioanalytical chain.

Keywords: free acidity, lab-on-a-chip, linear concentration gradient, Taylor-Aris dispersion, volumetric titration

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Authors: Nefi Aris Ambar Asmara

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This paper discusses gender equality and career opportunities among female civil servants for better public services in a regency in West Java, Indonesia. Those two areas have not been considered comprehensively in terms of the goals of gender equality and career opportunities. The purposes of this paper are to describe (1) the number of available positions in relation to the number of female civil servants, (2) the socio-cultural outlook on female civil servants in relation to gender equality and career opportunities and (3) socio-cultural views on gender equality and a career in politics. To achieve these three objectives, this paper used a qualitative approach with survey and interview techniques. The results showed that (1) only 37% of the official positions were presided by female civil servants. In contrast, male civil servants occupy 63% of the available positions, (2) the sociocultural view of female civil servants affirms that they are still regarded as male companions; (3) in addition, female civil servants do not need to compete with gender opponents, including the fact that women enter politics because the political world is considered dirty for women.

Keywords: gender equality, career opportunities, female civil servants, indonesia

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Authors: Nefi Aris Ambar Asmara

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This paper discusses gender equality and career opportunities among female civil servants for better public services in a regency in West Java, Indonesia. Those two areas have not been considered comprehensively in terms of the goals of gender equality and career opportunities. The purposes of this paper are to describe (1) the number of available positions in relation to the number of female civil servants, (2) the socio-cultural outlook on female civil servants in relation to gender equality and career opportunities, and (3) socio-cultural views on gender equality and a career in politics. To achieve these three objectives, this paper used a qualitative approach with survey and interview techniques. The results showed that (1) only 37% of the official positions were presided by female civil servants. In contrast, male civil servants occupy 63% of the available positions, (2) the sociocultural view of female civil servants affirms that they are still regarded as male companions; (3) in addition, female civil servants do not need to compete with gender opponents, including the fact that women enter politics because the political world is considered dirty for women.

Keywords: gender equality, career opportunities, female civil servants, Indonesia

Procedia PDF Downloads 141

Authors: Sri Rahayu, M. Dwi Susan, Aris Soewondo, W. M. Agung Pramana

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Semen is an organic fluid (seminal plasma) that contain spermatozoa. Proteins are one of the major seminal plasma components that modulate sperm functionality, influence sperm capacitation and maintaining the stability of the membrane. Semen freezing is a procedure to preserve sperm cells. The process causes decrease in sperm viability due to temperature shock and oxidation stress. Oxidation stress is a disturbance on phosphorylation that increases ROS concentration, and it produces lipid peroxide in spermatozoa membrane resulted in high MDA (malondialdehyde) concentration. The objective of this study was to examine the effect of freezing on protein and MDA profile of bovine sperm cell and seminal plasma after freezing. Protein and MDA of sperm cell and seminal plasma were isolated from 10 sample. Protein profiles was analyzed by SDS PAGE with separating gel 12,5 %. The concentration of MDA was measured by spectrophotometer. The results of the research indicated that freezing of semen cause lost of the seminal plasma proteins with molecular with 20, 10, and 9 kDa. In addition, the result research showed that protein of the sperm (26, 10, 9, 7, and 6 kDa) had been lost. There were difference MDA concentration of seminal plasma and sperm cell were increase after freezing. MDA concentration of seminal plasma before and after freezing were 2.2 and 2.4 nmol, respectively. MDA concentration of sperm cell before and after freezing were 1,5 and 1.8 nmol, respectively. In conclusion, there were differences protein profiles of spermatozoa before and after semen freezing and freezing cause increasing of the MDA concentration.

Keywords: MDA, semen freezing, SDS PAGE, protein profile

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Authors: Indri Nilam Sari, Aris Subagiyo, Nindya Sari

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Malinau Regency border area is an area which is based on the RTRWN and the development priority. But, in real border area Malinau Regency placed as backyard from Indonesian area and caused development lag that is fairly large compared by town area in Malinau Regency. This research aimed to know the condition of the gap in the Malinau Regency border and its influence on the development of the border region as well as knowing the problems related to the economy development of society in the area of the border district of Malinau. Methods of analysis are used in namely descriptive analysis that represent analysis of land use and analysis of movement activities of the population, level analysis facility and infrastructure, economy analysis that represent top commodity determination analysis (LQ and Growth Share) and accessibility. The results of the study showed that the condition of the Malinau Regency border come within the gap as seen from the contributions of infrastructure repair facilities and accessibility advocates, communities, scattered seed commodities come within the borders and human resources with the condition of the most Upstream Bahau town in the backwaters of the town more. There are a few problems that cause the condition area of the border experiencing inequality, lack of human resources, poor infrastructure, lack of accessibility and low levels of security so that it brings development recommendations was the development of the flagship commodities and infrastructure as well as supporting community economic infrastructure, as well as human resources.

Keywords: border, economy, development, Malinau

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Authors: Jamaluddin Abd Rashid, Aris Abdul Rahman

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Mobile phones have become the most popular way to communicate with other individuals and it has created an unspoken social dependency. Making phone calls, instant messaging, playing online games and accessing the Internet are among the features added to a mobile phone, attracting teenagers to spend more hours fixated on their gadgets. As such, this study attempted to examine the frequency of time spent on mobile phones and how this influenced academic performance. A quantitative methodology was applied in this study, where face to face survey through the distribution of questionnaires was facilitated onto a group of 200 secondary school students from the Shah Alam community in Selangor,Malaysia. Both genders, male and females were assessed equally to find out if there exists a correlation between genders when measuring higher or lower frequency of attachment to mobile phones. It can also be seen that 100% correspondents have a mobile phone in their possession. The adolescents uses mobile phones daily, which shows students being somewhat addicted, as they tend to feel that it is necessary to use a mobile phone. The main findings of this research found out that, students that are mobile phone addictive received a lower grade in schools. Mobile phone addiction does affect academic performance negatively. As this study discusses the modern-day phenomenon, it is hoped that the findings and discussion could add to present literary works and help future researchers understand the relationship between mobile phone addiction and academic performance.

Keywords: academic performance, mobile phone addiction, social media, student

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Authors: Khairul Bariah Sulaiman, Tajul Aris Yang

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Fermentation is well known as an essential process in cocoa beans. Besides to develop the precursor of cocoa flavour, it also induce the colour changes in the beans.The fermentation process is reported to be influenced by duration of pod storage and fermentation. Therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate colour of Malaysian cocoa beans and how the pods storage and fermentation duration using shallow box technique will effect on it characteristics. There are two factors being studied ie duration of cocoa pod storage (0, 2, 4, and 6 days) and duration of cocoa fermentation (0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 days). The experiment is arranged in 4 x 6 factorial design with 24 treatments and arrangement is in a Completely Randomised Design (CRD). The produced beans is inspected for colour changes under artificial light during cut test and divided into four groups of colour namely fully brown, purple brown, fully purple and slaty. Cut tests indicated that cocoa beans which are directly dried without undergone fermentation has the highest slaty percentage. However, application of pods storage before fermentation process is found to decrease the slaty percentage. In contrast, the percentages of fully brown beans start to dominate after two days of fermentation, especially from four and six days of pods storage batch. Whereas, almost all batch have percentage of fully purple less than 20%. Interestingly, the percentage of purple brown beans are scattered in the entire beans batch regardless any specific trend. Meanwhile, statistical analysis using General Linear Model showed that the pods storage has a significant effect on the colour characteristic of the Malaysian dried beans compared to fermentation duration.

Keywords: cocoa beans, colour, fermentation, shallow box

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Authors: Khairul Bariah Sulaiman, Tajul Aris Yang

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Malaysian dried cocoa beans have been reported to have low quality flavour and are often sold at discounted prices. Various efforts have been made to improve the Malaysian beans quality. Among these efforts is introduction of the shallow box fermentation technique and pulp preconditioned through pods storage. However, after nearly four decades of the effort was done, Malaysian cocoa farmers still received lower prices for their beans. So, this study was carried out in order to assess the flavour quality of dried cocoa beans produced by shallow box fermentation techniques, combination of shallow box fermentation with pods storage and compared to dried cocoa beans obtained from Ghana. A total of eight samples of dried cocoa was used in this study, which one of the samples was Ghanaian beans (coded with no.8), while the rest were Malaysian cocoa beans with different post-harvest processing (coded with no. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7). Cocoa liquor was prepared from all samples in the prescribed techniques and sensory evaluation was carried out using Quantitative Descriptive Analysis (QDA) Method with 0-10 scale by Malaysian Cocoa Board trained panelist. Sensory evaluation showed that cocoa attributes for all cocoa liquors ranging from 3.5 to 5.3, whereas bitterness was ranging from 3.4 to 4.6 and astringent attribute ranging from 3.9 to 5.5, respectively. Meanwhile, all cocoa liquors were having acid or sourness attribute ranging from 1.6 to 3.6, respectively. In general cocoa liquor prepared from sample coded no 4 has almost similar flavour profile and no significantly different at p < 0.05 with Ghana, in term of most flavour attributes as compared to the other six samples.

Keywords: cocoa beans, flavour, fermentation, shallow box, pods storage

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Authors: Aris R. Terzopoulos, Georgia Z. Niolaki, Lynne G. Duncan, Mark A. J. Wilson, Antonios Kyparissiadis, Jackie Masterson

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As word databases for bilingual children are not available, researchers, educators and textbook writers must rely on monolingual databases. The aim of this study is thus to develop a bilingual word database, BiLex-kids, an online open access developmental word database for 5-13 year old bilingual children who learn Greek as a second language and have English as their dominant one. BiLex-kids is compiled from 120 Greek textbooks used in Greek-English bilingual education in the UK, USA and Australia, and provides word translations in the two languages, pronunciations in Greek, and psycholinguistic variables (e.g. Zipf, Frequency per million, Dispersion, Contextual Diversity, Neighbourhood size). After clearing the textbooks of non-relevant items (e.g. punctuation), algorithms were applied to extract the psycholinguistic indices for all words. As well as one total lexicon, the database produces values for all ages (one lexicon for each age) and for three age bands (one lexicon per age band: 5-8, 9-11, 12-13 years). BiLex-kids provides researchers with accurate figures for a wide range of psycholinguistic variables, making it a useful and reliable research tool for selecting stimuli to examine lexical processing among bilingual children. In addition, it offers children the opportunity to study word spelling, learn translations and listen to pronunciations in their second language. It further benefits educators in selecting age-appropriate words for teaching reading and spelling, while special educational needs teachers will have a resource to control the content of word lists when designing interventions for bilinguals with literacy difficulties.

Keywords: bilingual children, psycholinguistics, vocabulary development, word databases

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Authors: Muhamad Aris Burhanudin, Angga Firmansyas, Bagus Jaya Santosa

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Earthquakes are natural hazard that can trigger the most dangerous hazard, tsunami. 26 December 2004, a giant earthquake occurred in north-west Andalas Island. It made giant tsunami which crushed Sumatra, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore. More than twenty thousand people dead. The occurrence of earthquake and tsunami can not be avoided. But this hazard can be mitigated by earthquake forecasting. Early preparation is the key factor to reduce its damages and consequences. We aim to investigate quantitatively on pattern of earthquake. Then, we can know the trend. We study about earthquake which has happened in Andalas island, Indonesia one last decade. Andalas is island which has high seismicity, more than a thousand event occur in a year. It is because Andalas island is in tectonic subduction zone of Hindia sea plate and Eurasia plate. A tsunami forecasting is needed to mitigation action. Thus, a Tsunami Forecasting Method is presented in this work. Neutral Network has used widely in many research to estimate earthquake and it is convinced that by using Backpropagation Method, earthquake can be predicted. At first, ANN is trained to predict Tsunami 26 December 2004 by using earthquake data before it. Then after we get trained ANN, we apply to predict the next earthquake. Not all earthquake will trigger Tsunami, there are some characteristics of earthquake that can cause Tsunami. Wrong decision can cause other problem in the society. Then, we need a method to reduce possibility of wrong decision. Fuzzy TOPSIS is a statistical method that is widely used to be decision seconder referring to given parameters. Fuzzy TOPSIS method can make the best decision whether it cause Tsunami or not. This work combines earthquake prediction using neural network method and using Fuzzy TOPSIS to determine the decision that the earthquake triggers Tsunami wave or not. Neural Network model is capable to capture non-linear relationship and Fuzzy TOPSIS is capable to determine the best decision better than other statistical method in tsunami prediction.

Keywords: earthquake, fuzzy TOPSIS, neural network, tsunami

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Authors: Shahrzad Zolfagharnassab, Abdul Rashid Mohamed Shariff, Reza Ehsani, Hawa Ze Jaffar, Ishak Aris

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Ripeness estimation of oil palm fresh fruit is important processes that affect the profitableness and salability of oil palm fruits. The adulthood or ripeness of the oil palm fruits influences the quality of oil palm. Conventional procedure includes physical grading of Fresh Fruit Bunches (FFB) maturity by calculating the number of loose fruits per bunch. This physical classification of oil palm FFB is costly, time consuming and the results may have human error. Hence, many researchers try to develop the methods for ascertaining the maturity of oil palm fruits and thereby, deviously the oil content of distinct palm fruits without the need for exhausting oil extraction and analysis. This research investigates the potential of infrared images (Thermal Images) as a predictor to classify the oil palm FFB ripeness. A total of 270 oil palm fresh fruit bunches from most common cultivar of oil palm bunches Nigresens according to three maturity categories: under ripe, ripe and over ripe were collected. Each sample was scanned by the thermal imaging cameras FLIR E60 and FLIR T440. The average temperature of each bunches were calculated by using image processing in FLIR Tools and FLIR ThermaCAM researcher pro 2.10 environment software. The results show that temperature content decreased from immature to over mature oil palm FFBs. An overall analysis-of-variance (ANOVA) test was proved that this predictor gave significant difference between underripe, ripe and overripe maturity categories. This shows that the temperature as predictors can be good indicators to classify oil palm FFB. Classification analysis was performed by using the temperature of the FFB as predictors through Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Mahalanobis Discriminant Analysis (MDA), Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and K- Nearest Neighbor (KNN) methods. The highest overall classification accuracy was 88.2% by using Artificial Neural Network. This research proves that thermal imaging and neural network method can be used as predictors of oil palm maturity classification.

Keywords: artificial neural network, maturity classification, oil palm FFB, thermal imaging

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Authors: Lintang Nur Fadlillah, Muh Aris Marfai, M. Widyastuti

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Delta is dynamics area which is influenced by marine and river. Increasing human population in coastal area and the need of life exert pressure in delta that provides various resources. Wulan Delta is one of active Delta in Central Java, Indonesia. It has been experienced multiple pressures because of natural factors and human factors. In order to provide scientific solution and to analyze the main driving force in river delta, we collected several evidences based on news, papers, and publications related to Wulan Delta. This paper presents a review and problems identification in Wulan Delta, based on hydrodynamic approach, land use, and human activities which influenced water quality in the delta. A comprehensive overview is needed to address best policies under local communities and government. The analysis based on driving forces which affect delta estuary and river mouth. Natural factor in particular hydrodynamic influenced by tides, waves, runoff, and sediment transport. However, hydrodynamic affecting mixing process in river estuaries. The main problem is human intervention in land which is land use exchange leads to several problems such us decreasing water quality. Almost 90% of delta has been transformed into fish pond by local communities. Yet, they have not apply any water management to treat waste water before flush it to the sea and estuary. To understand the environmental condition, we need to assess water quality of river delta. The assessment based on land use as non-point source pollution. In Wulan Delta there are no industries. The land use in Wulan Delta consist of fish pond, settlement, and agriculture. The samples must represent the land use, to estimate which land use are most influence in river delta pollution. The hydrodynamic condition such as high tides and runoff must be considered, because it will affect the mixing process and water quality as well. To determine the samples site, we need to involve local community, in order to give insight into them. Furthermore, based on this review and problem identification, recommendations and strategies for water management are formulated.

Keywords: delta, land use, water quality, management, hydrodynamics

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Authors: Mohammad Arabi

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Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is a systematic approach to fundamentally redesign organizational processes to achieve significant improvements in organizational performance. At Fars Regional Electric Company, implementing BPR is deemed essential to increase productivity, reduce costs, and improve service quality. This article examines how BPR can help enhance the performance of Fars Regional Electric Company. The objective of this research is to evaluate and analyze the advancements in process modeling and reengineering at Fars Regional Electric Company and to provide solutions for improving the productivity and efficiency of organizational processes. This study aims to demonstrate how BPR can be used to improve organizational processes and enhance the overall performance of the company. This research employs both qualitative and quantitative research methods and includes interviews with senior managers and experts at Fars Regional Electric Company. The analytical tools include process modeling software such as Bizagi and ARIS, and statistical analysis software such as SPSS and Minitab. Data analysis was conducted using advanced statistical methods. The results indicate that the use of BPR techniques can lead to a significant reduction in process execution time and overall improvement in quality. Implementing BPR at Fars Regional Electric Company has led to increased productivity, reduced costs, and improved overall performance of the company. This study shows that with proper implementation of BPR and the use of modeling tools, the company can achieve significant improvements in its processes. Recommendations: (1) Continuous Training for Staff: Invest in continuous training of staff to enhance their skills and knowledge in BPR. (2) Use of Advanced Technologies: Utilize modeling and analysis software to improve processes. (3) Implementation of Effective Management Systems: Employ knowledge and information management systems to enhance organizational performance. (4) Continuous Monitoring and Review of Processes: Regularly review and revise processes to ensure ongoing improvements. This article highlights the importance of improving organizational processes at Fars Regional Electric Company and recommends that managers and decision-makers at the company seriously consider reengineering processes and utilizing modeling technologies to achieve developmental goals and continuous improvement.

Keywords: business process reengineering, electric company, Fars province, process modeling advancements

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Authors: Mansir Abubakar, Hazlina Hamdan, Norwati Mustapha, Teh Noranis Mohd Aris

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In order to build a matching pattern for each class correspondences of ontology, it is required to specify a set of attribute correspondences across two corresponding classes by clustering. Clustering reduces the size of potential attribute correspondences considered in the matching activity, which will significantly reduce the computation workload; otherwise, all attributes of a class should be compared with all attributes of the corresponding class. Most existing ontology matching approaches lack scalable attributes discovery methods, such as cluster-based attribute searching. This problem makes ontology matching activity computationally expensive. It is therefore vital in ontology matching to design a scalable element or attribute correspondence discovery method that would reduce the size of potential elements correspondences during mapping thereby reduce the computational workload in a matching process as a whole. The objective of this work is 1) to design a clustering method for discovering similar attributes correspondences and relationships between ontologies, 2) to discover element correspondences by classifying elements of each class based on element’s value features using K-medoids clustering technique. Discovering attribute correspondence is highly required for comparing instances when matching two ontologies. During the matching process, any two instances across two different data sets should be compared to their attribute values, so that they can be regarded to be the same or not. Intuitively, any two instances that come from classes across which there is a class correspondence are likely to be identical to each other. Besides, any two instances that hold more similar attribute values are more likely to be matched than the ones with less similar attribute values. Most of the time, similar attribute values exist in the two instances across which there is an attribute correspondence. This work will present how to classify attributes of each class with K-medoids clustering, then, clustered groups to be mapped by their statistical value features. We will also show how to map attributes of a clustered group to attributes of the mapped clustered group, generating a set of potential attribute correspondences that would be applied to generate a matching pattern. The K-medoids clustering phase would largely reduce the number of attribute pairs that are not corresponding for comparing instances as only the coverage probability of attributes pairs that reaches 100% and attributes above the specified threshold can be considered as potential attributes for a matching. Using clustering will reduce the size of potential elements correspondences to be considered during mapping activity, which will in turn reduce the computational workload significantly. Otherwise, all element of the class in source ontology have to be compared with all elements of the corresponding classes in target ontology. K-medoids can ably cluster attributes of each class, so that a proportion of attribute pairs that are not corresponding would not be considered when constructing the matching pattern.

Keywords: attribute correspondence, clustering, computational workload, k-medoids clustering, ontology matching

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Authors: Vasiliki Kolake, Christos Kavalaris, Sofia Megoudi, Maria Maxouri, Panagiotis A. Karas, Aris Kyparissis, Efi Levizou

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Conservation agriculture (CA), is a production system approach that can tackle the challenges of climate change mainly through facilitating carbon storage into the soil and increasing crop resilience. This is extremely important for the vulnerable Mediterranean agroecosystems, which already face adverse environmental conditions. The agronomic practices used in CA, i.e. permanent soil cover and no-tillage, result in reduced soil erosion and increased soil organic matter, preservation of water and improvement of quality and fertility of the soil in the long-term. Thus the functional characteristics and processes of the soil are considerably affected by the implementation of CA. The aim of the present work was to assess the effects of CA on soil nitrification potential and mycorrhizal colonization about the above-ground production in a wheat field. Two adjacent but independent field sites of 1.5ha each were used (Thessaly plain, Central Greece), comprising the no-till and conventional tillage treatments. The no-tillage site was covered by residues of the previous crop (cotton). Potential nitrification and the nitrate and ammonium content of the soil were measured at two different soil depths (3 and 15cm) at 20-days intervals throughout the growth period. Additionally, the leaf area index (LAI) was monitored at the same time-course. The mycorrhizal colonization was measured at the commencement and end of the experiment. At the final harvest, total yield and plant biomass were also recorded. The results indicate that wheat yield was considerably favored by CA practices, exhibiting a 42% increase compared to the conventional tillage treatment. The superior performance of the CA crop was also depicted in the above-ground plant biomass, where a 26% increase was recorded. LAI, which is considered a reliable growth index, did not show statistically significant differences between treatments throughout the growth period. On the contrary, significant differences were recorded in endomycorrhizal colonization one day before the final harvest, with CA plants exhibiting 20% colonization, while the conventional tillage plants hardly reached 1%. The on-going analyses of potential nitrification measurements, as well as nitrate and ammonium determination, will shed light on the effects of CA on key processes in the soil. These results will integrate the assessment of CA impact on certain below and above-ground processes during wheat cultivation under the Mediterranean climate.

Keywords: conservation agriculture, LAI, mycorrhizal colonization, potential nitrification, wheat, yield

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Authors: Glykeria A. Visvini, George N. Mathioudakis, Amaia Soto Beobide, Aris E. Giannakas, George A. Voyiatzis

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Polymeric nanocomposites have generated considerable interest in both academic research and industry because their properties can be tailored by adjusting the type & concentration of nano-inclusions, resulting in complementary and adaptable characteristics. The exceptional and/or unique properties of the nanocomposites, including the high mechanical strength and stiffness, the ease of processing, and their lightweight nature, are attributed to the high surface area, the electrical and/or thermal conductivity of the nano-fillers, which make them appealing materials for a wide range of engineering applications. Polymeric «breathable» membranes enabling water vapor permeability (WVP) can be designed either by using micro/nano-fillers with the ability to interrupt the continuity of the polymer phase generating micro/nano-porous structures or/and by creating micro/nano-pores into the composite material by uniaxial/biaxial stretching. Among the nanofillers, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) exhibit particular high WVP and for this reason, they have already been proposed for gas separation membranes. In a similar context, they could prove to be promising alternative/complementary filler nano-materials, for the development of "breathable" products. Polypropylene (PP) is a commonly utilized thermoplastic polymer matrix in the development of composite films, due to its easy processability and low price, combined with its good chemical & physical properties. PP is known to present several crystalline phases (α, β and γ), depending on the applied treatment process, which have a significant impact on its final properties, particularly in terms of WVP. Specifically, the development of the β-phase in PP in combination with stretching is anticipated to modify the crystalline behavior and extend the microporosity of the polymer matrix exhibiting enhanced WVP. The primary objective of this study is to develop breathable nano-carbon based (functionalized MWCNTs) PP composite membranes, potentially also avoiding the stretching process. This proposed alternative is expected to have a better performance/cost ratio over current stretched PP/CaCO3 composite benchmark membranes. The focus is to investigate the impact of both β-nucleator(s) and nano-carbon fillers on water vapor transmission rate properties of relevant PP nanocomposites.

Keywords: carbon nanotubes, nanocomposites, nucleating agents, polypropylene, water vapor permeability

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