Search results for: neural networks

Authors: Mengwei Li

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Since the 1990s, biennials, and large-scale transnational art exhibitions, have proliferated exponentially across the globe, particularly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It has spurred debates regarding the inclusion of "new art cultures" and the deconstruction of the mechanism of exclusion embedded in the Western monopoly on art. Hans Belting introduced the concept of "global art" in 2013 to denounce the West's privileged canons in art by emphasising the inclusion of art practices from alleged non-Western regions. Arguably, the rise of new biennial networks developed by these locations has contributed to the asserted "inclusion of new art worlds." However, phrases such as "non-Western" and "beyond Euro-American" attached to these discussions raise the question of non- or beyond- in relation to whom. In this narrative, to become "integrated" and "equal" implies entry into the "core," a universal system in which preexisting authoritative voices define "newcomers" by what they are not. Possibly, if there is a global biennial system that symbolises a "universal language" of the contemporary art world, it is centered on the inherently dynamic yet asymmetrical interaction and negotiation between the "core" and the rest of the world's "periphery." Engaging with theories of "minor literature" developed by Deleuze and Guattari, this research proposes an epistemological framework to comprehend the global biennial discourse since the 1990s. Using this framework, this research looks at two biennial models in China: the 13th Shanghai Biennale, which was organised in the country's metropolitan art centre, and the 2nd Yinchuan Biennale, which was inaugurated in a geographically and economically marginalised city compared to domestic centres. By analysing how these two biennials from different locations in China positioned themselves and conveyed their local profiles through the universal language of the biennial, this research identifies a potential "minor" positionality within the global biennial discourse from China's perspective.

Keywords: biennials, China, contemporary, global art, minor literature

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Authors: Marion Billard

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This paper will focus on the question of the real relationship between young people and fake news. Fake news is one of today’s main issues in the world of information and communication. Social media and its democratization helped to spread false information. According to traditional beliefs, young people are more inclined to believe what they read through social media. But, the individuals concerned, think that they are more inclined to make a distinction between real and fake news. This phenomenon is due to their use of the internet and social media from an early age. During the 2016 and 2017 French and American presidential campaigns, the term fake news was in the mouth of the entire world and became a real issue in the field of information. While young people were informing themselves with newspapers or television until the beginning of the ’90s, Gen Z (meaning people born between 1997 and 2010), has always been immersed in this world of fast communication. They know how to use social media from a young age and the internet has no secret for them. Today, despite the sporadic use of traditional media, young people tend to turn to their smartphones and social networks such as Instagram or Twitter to stay abreast of the latest news. The growth of social media information led to an “ambient journalism”, giving access to an endless quantity of information. Waking up in the morning, young people will see little posts with short texts supplying the essential of the news, without, for the most, many details. As a result, impressionable people are not able to do a distinction between real media, and “junk news” or Fake News. This massive use of social media is probably explained by the inability of the youngsters to find connections between the communication of the traditional media and what they are living. The question arises if this over-confidence of the young people in their ability to distinguish between accurate and fake news would not make it more difficult for them to examine critically the information. Their relationship with media and fake news is more complex than popular opinion. Today’s young people are not the master in the quest for information, nor inherently the most impressionable public on social media.

Keywords: fake news, youngsters, social media, information, generation

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Authors: Man-Yun Liu, Emily Chia-Yu Su

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Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the public health crisis of the 21st century. AD is a degenerative brain disease and the most common cause of dementia, a costly disease on the healthcare system. Unfortunately, the cause of AD is poorly understood, furthermore; the treatments of AD so far can only alleviate symptoms rather cure or stop the progress of the disease. Currently, there are several ways to diagnose AD; medical imaging can be used to distinguish between AD, other dementias, and early onset AD, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Compared with other diagnostic tools, blood (plasma) test has advantages as an approach to population-based disease screening because it is simpler, less invasive also cost effective. In our study, we used blood biomarkers dataset of The Alzheimer’s disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) which was funded by National Institutes of Health (NIH) to do data analysis and develop a prediction model. We used independent analysis of datasets to identify plasma protein biomarkers predicting early onset AD. Firstly, to compare the basic demographic statistics between the cohorts, we used SAS Enterprise Guide to do data preprocessing and statistical analysis. Secondly, we used logistic regression, neural network, decision tree to validate biomarkers by SAS Enterprise Miner. This study generated data from ADNI, contained 146 blood biomarkers from 566 participants. Participants include cognitive normal (healthy), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and patient suffered Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Participants’ samples were separated into two groups, healthy and MCI, healthy and AD, respectively. We used the two groups to compare important biomarkers of AD and MCI. In preprocessing, we used a t-test to filter 41/47 features between the two groups (healthy and AD, healthy and MCI) before using machine learning algorithms. Then we have built model with 4 machine learning methods, the best AUC of two groups separately are 0.991/0.709. We want to stress the importance that the simple, less invasive, common blood (plasma) test may also early diagnose AD. As our opinion, the result will provide evidence that blood-based biomarkers might be an alternative diagnostics tool before further examination with CSF and medical imaging. A comprehensive study on the differences in blood-based biomarkers between AD patients and healthy subjects is warranted. Early detection of AD progression will allow physicians the opportunity for early intervention and treatment.

Keywords: Alzheimer's disease, blood-based biomarkers, diagnostics, early detection, machine learning

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Authors: J. K. Visser, H. T. Malan

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A need exists to identify the sources of risks associated with the process automation systems within petrochemical companies or similar energy related industries. These companies use many different process automation technologies in its value chain. A crucial part of the process automation system is the information technology component featuring in the supervisory control layer. The ever-changing technology within the process automation layers and the rate at which it advances pose a risk to safe and predictable automation system performance. The age of the automation equipment also provides challenges to the operations and maintenance managers of the plant due to obsolescence and unavailability of spare parts. The main objective of this research was to determine the risk sources associated with the equipment that is part of the process automation systems. A secondary objective was to establish whether technology managers and technicians were aware of the risks and share the same viewpoint on the importance of the risks associated with automation systems. A conceptual model for risk sources of automation systems was formulated from models and frameworks in literature. This model comprised six categories of risk which forms the basis for identifying specific risks. This model was used to develop a questionnaire that was sent to 172 instrument technicians and technology managers in the company to obtain primary data. 75 completed and useful responses were received. These responses were analyzed statistically to determine the highest risk sources and to determine whether there was difference in opinion between technology managers and technicians. The most important risks that were revealed in this study are: 1) the lack of skilled technicians, 2) integration capability of third-party system software, 3) reliability of the process automation hardware, 4) excessive costs pertaining to performing maintenance and migrations on process automation systems, and 5) requirements of having third-party communication interfacing compatibility as well as real-time communication networks.

Keywords: distributed control system, identification of risks, information technology, process automation system

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Authors: Ronald Villamar-Torres, Michael Staudt, Christopher Viot

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Cotton Gossypium hirsutum L. is one of the most important industrial crops, producing the world leading natural textile fiber, but is very prone to arthropod attacks that reduce crop yield and quality. Cotton cultivation, therefore, makes an outstanding use of chemical pesticides. In reaction to herbivorous arthropods, cotton plants nevertheless show natural defense reactions, in particular through volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emissions. These natural defense mechanisms are nowadays underutilized but have a very high potential for cotton cultivation, and elucidating their genetic bases will help to improve their use. Simulating herbivory attacks by mechanical wounding of cotton plants in greenhouse, we studied by qPCR the changes in gene expression for genes of the terpenoids biosynthesis pathway. Differentially expressed genes corresponded to higher levels of the terpenoids biosynthesis pathway and not to enzymes synthesizing particular terpenoids. The genes were mapped on the G. hirsutum L. reference genome; their global relationships inside the general metabolic pathways and the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites were visualized with iPath2. The chromatographic profiles of VOCs emissions indicated first monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes emissions, dominantly four molecules known to be involved in plant reactions to arthropod attacks. As a result, the study permitted to identify potential key genes for the emission of volatile terpenoids by cotton plants in reaction to an arthropod attack, opening possibilities for molecular-assisted cotton breeding in benefit of smallholder cotton growers.

Keywords: biosynthesis pathways, cotton, mechanisms of plant defense, terpenoids, volatile organic compounds

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Authors: David Cobham

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In higher education, a great degree of importance is placed on the internationalization of the student experience. This is seen as a valuable contributor to elements such as building confidence, broadening knowledge, creating networks and connections, and enhancing employability for current students who will become the next generation of managers in technology and business. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all areas of people’s lives. The limitations of travel coupled with the fears and concerns generated by the health risks have dramatically reduced the opportunity for students to engage with this agenda. Institutions of higher education have been required to rethink fundamental aspects of their business model from recruitment and enrolment through learning approaches, assessment methods, and the pathway to employment. This paper presents a case study which focuses on student mobility and how the physical experience of being in another country, either to study, to work, to volunteer or to gain cultural and social enhancement, has of necessity been replaced by alternative approaches. It considers trans-national education as an alternative to physical study overseas, virtual mobility and internships as an alternative to international work experience, and adopting collaborative online projects as an alternative to in-person encounters. The paper concludes that although these elements have been adopted to address the current situation, the lessons learned and the feedback gained suggests that they have contributed successfully in new and sometimes unexpected ways and that they will persist beyond the present to become part of the 'new normal' for the future. That being the case, senior leaders of institutions of higher education will be required to revisit their international plans and to rewrite their international strategies to take account of and build upon these changes.

Keywords: higher education management, internationalization, transnational education, virtual mobility

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Authors: Daniela Gnarini

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This paper aims to contribute to the field of immigrants' entrepreneurial performance. The debate on immigrant entrepreneurship has been dominated by cultural explanations, which argue that immigrants’ entrepreneurial results are linked to groups’ characteristics. However, this approach does not consider important dimensions that influence entrepreneurial performances. Furthermore, cultural theories do not take into account the huge differences in performances also within the same ethnic group. For these reason, this study adopts a biographical approach, both at theoretical and at methodological level, which can allow to understand the main aspects that make the difference in immigrants' entrepreneurial performances, by exploring the narratives of immigrant entrepreneurs, who operate in the restaurant sector in two different Italian metropolitan areas: Milan and Rome. Through the qualitative method of biographical interviews, this study analyses four main dimensions and their combinations: a) individuals' entrepreneurial and migratory path: this aspect is particularly relevant to understand the biographical resources of immigrant entrepreneurs and their change and evolution during time; b) entrepreneurs' social capital, with a particular focus on their networks, through the adoption of a transnational perspective, that takes into account both the local level and the transnational connections. This study highlights that, though entrepreneurs’ connections are significant, especially as far as those with family members are concerned, often their entrepreneurial path assumes an individualised trajectory. c) Entrepreneurs' human capital, including both formal education and skills acquired through informal channels. The latter are particularly relevant since in the interviews and data collected the role of informal transmission emerges. d) Embeddedness within the social, political and economic context, to understand the main constraints and opportunities both at local and national level. The comparison between two different metropolitan areas within the same country helps to understand this dimension.

Keywords: biographies, immigrant entrepreneurs, life stories, performance

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Authors: Ho Yeon Park, Kyoung-Jae Kim

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Recently, user’s interests for location-based social network service increases according to the advances of social web and location-based technologies. It may be easy to recommend preferred items if we can use user’s preference, context and social network information simultaneously. In this study, we propose context-aware POI (point-of-interests) recommender systems using location-based network analysis and sentiment analysis which consider context, social network information and implicit user’s preference score. We propose a context-aware POI recommendation system consisting of three sub-modules and an integrated recommendation system of them. First, we will develop a recommendation module based on network analysis. This module combines social network analysis and cluster-indexing collaboration filtering. Next, this study develops a recommendation module using social singular value decomposition (SVD) and implicit SVD. In this research, we will develop a recommendation module that can recommend preference scores based on the frequency of POI visits of user in POI recommendation process by using social and implicit SVD which can reflect implicit feedback in collaborative filtering. We also develop a recommendation module using them that can estimate preference scores based on the recommendation. Finally, this study will propose a recommendation module using opinion mining and emotional analysis using data such as reviews of POIs extracted from location-based social networks. Finally, we will develop an integration algorithm that combines the results of the three recommendation modules proposed in this research. Experimental results show the usefulness of the proposed model in relation to the recommended performance.

Keywords: sentiment analysis, network analysis, recommender systems, point-of-interests, business analytics

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Authors: Domenico Chizzoniti, Monica Moscatelli, Letizia Cattani, Piero Favino, Luca Preis

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A settlement strategy is to anticipate and respond the needs of existing and future communities through the provision of primary health care facilities in marginalized areas. Access to a health care network is important to improving healthcare coverage, often lacking, in developing countries. The study explores that a good sanitary system strategy of rural contexts brings advantages to an existing settlement: improving transport, communication, water and social facilities. The objective of this paper is to define a possible methodology to implement primary health care facilities in disadvantaged areas of emerging countries. In this research, we analyze the case study of Lauro de Freitas, a municipality in the Brazilian state of Bahia, part of the Metropolitan Region of Salvador, with an area of 57,662 km² and 194.641 inhabitants. The health localization system in Lauro de Freitas is an integrated process that involves not only geographical aspects, but also a set of factors: population density, epidemiological data, allocation of services, road networks, and more. Data were collected also using semi-structured interviews and questionnaires to the local population. Synthesized data suggest that moving away from the coast where there is the greatest concentration of population and services, a network of primary health care facilities is able to improve the living conditions of small-dispersed communities. Based on the health service needs of populations, we have developed a methodological approach that is particularly useful in rural and remote contexts in emerging countries.

Keywords: healthcare, settlement strategy, urban health, rural

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Authors: A. Schander, T. Tessmann, H. Stemmann, S. Strokov, A. Kreiter, W. Lang

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For the chronic application of neural prostheses and other brain-computer interfaces, long-term stable microelectrodes for electrical stimulation are essential. In recent years many developments were done to investigate different appropriate materials for these electrodes. One of these materials is the electrical conductive polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT), which has lower impedance and higher charge injection capacity compared to noble metals like gold and platinum. However the long-term stability of this polymer is still unclear. Thus this paper reports on the in-vitro evaluation of the long-term stability of PEDOT coated gold microelectrodes. For this purpose a highly flexible electrocorticography (ECoG) electrode array, based on the polymer polyimide, is used. This array consists of circular gold electrodes with a diameter of 560 µm (0.25 mm2). In total 25 electrodes of this array were coated simultaneously with the polymer PEDOT:PSS in a cleanroom environment using a galvanostatic electropolymerization process. After the coating the array is additionally sterilized using a steam sterilization process (121°C, 1 bar, 20.5 min) to simulate autoclaving prior to the implantation of such an electrode array. The long-term measurements were performed in phosphate-buffered saline solution (PBS, pH 7.4) at the constant body temperature of 37°C. For the in-vitro electrical stimulation a one channel bipolar current stimulator is used. The stimulation protocol consists of a bipolar current amplitude of 5 mA (cathodal phase first), a pulse duration of 100 µs per phase, a pulse pause of 50 µs and a frequency of 1 kHz. A PEDOT:PSS coated gold electrode with an area of 1 cm2 serves as the counter electrode. The electrical stimulation is performed continuously with a total amount of 86.4 million bipolar current pulses per day. The condition of the PEDOT coated electrodes is monitored in between with electrical impedance spectroscopy measurements. The results of this study demonstrate that the PEDOT coated electrodes are stable for more than 3.6 billion bipolar current pulses. Also the unstimulated electrodes show currently no degradation after the time period of 5 months. These results indicate an appropriate long-term stability of this electrode coating for chronic recording and electrical stimulation. The long-term measurements are still continuing to investigate the life limit of this electrode coating.

Keywords: chronic recording, electrical stimulation, long-term stability, microelectrodes, PEDOT

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Authors: Joy Ghosh, Debasmita Biswas

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The road network of any area is the most important indicator of regional planning. For proper utilization of urban road networks, the structural parameters such as connectivity and accessibility should be analyzed and evaluated. This paper aims to explain the application of GIS on urban road network connectivity and accessibility analysis with a case study of Chandannagar City. This paper has been made to analyze the road network connectivity through various connectivity measurements like the total number of nodes and links, Cyclomatic Number, Alpha Index, Beta Index, Gamma index, Eta index, Pi index, Theta Index, and Aggregated Transport Score, Road Density based on existing road network in Chandannagar city in India. Accessibility is measured through the shortest Path Matrix, associate Number, and Shimbel Index. Various urban services, such as schools, banks, Hospitals, petrol pumps, ATMs, police stations, theatres, parks, etc., are considered for the accessibility analysis for each ward. This paper also highlights the relationship between urban land use/ land cover (LULC) and urban road network and population density using various spatial and statistical measurements. The datasets were collected through a field survey of 33 wards of the Chandannagar Municipal Corporation area, and the secondary data were collected through an open street map and satellite image of LANDSAT8 OLI & TIRS from USGS. Chandannagar was actually once a French colony, and at that time, various sort of planning was applied, but now Chandannagar city continues to grow haphazardly because that city is facing some problems; the knowledge gained from this paper helps to create a more efficient and accessible road network. Therefore, it would be suggested that some wards need to improve their connectivity and accessibility for the future growth and development of Chandannagar.

Keywords: accessibility, connectivity, transport, road network

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Authors: Semanur Soyyigit Kaya, Ercan Eren

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Energy has a prominent role for development of nations. Countries which have energy resources also have strategic power in the international trade of energy since it is essential for all stages of production in the economy. Thus, it is important for countries to analyze the weakness and strength of the system. On the other side, it is commonly believed that international trade has complex network properties. Complex network is a tool for the analysis of complex systems with heterogeneous agents and interaction between them. A complex network consists of nodes and the interactions between these nodes. Total properties which emerge as a result of these interactions are distinct from the sum of small parts (more or less) in complex systems. Thus, standard approaches to international trade are superficial to analyze these systems. Network analysis provides a new approach to analyze international trade as a network. In this network countries constitute nodes and trade relations (export or import) constitute edges. It becomes possible to analyze international trade network in terms of high degree indicators which are specific to complex systems such as connectivity, clustering, assortativity/disassortativity, centrality, etc. In this analysis, international trade of crude oil and coal which are types of fossil fuel has been analyzed from 2005 to 2014 via network analysis. First, it has been analyzed in terms of some topological parameters such as density, transitivity, clustering etc. Afterwards, fitness to Pareto distribution has been analyzed. Finally, weighted HITS algorithm has been applied to the data as a centrality measure to determine the real prominence of countries in these trade networks. Weighted HITS algorithm is a strong tool to analyze the network by ranking countries with regards to prominence of their trade partners. We have calculated both an export centrality and an import centrality by applying w-HITS algorithm to data.

Keywords: complex network approach, fossil fuel, international trade, network theory

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Authors: A. K. M. Kafi, S. N. Nina, Mashitah M. Yusoff

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In this work, we have described a new 3-dimensional (3D) network of cross-linked Horseradish Peroxidase/Carbon Nanotube (HRP/CNT) on a thiol-modified Au surface in order to build up the effective electrical wiring of the enzyme units with the electrode. This was achieved by the electropolymerization of aniline-functionalized carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and 4-aminothiophenol -modified-HRP on a 4-aminothiophenol monolayer-modified Au electrode. The synthesized 3D HRP/CNT networks were characterized with cyclic voltammetry and amperometry, resulting the establishment direct electron transfer between the redox active unit of HRP and the Au surface. Electrochemical measurements reveal that the immobilized HRP exhibits high biological activity and stability and a quasi-reversible redox peak of the redox center of HRP was observed at about −0.355 and −0.275 V vs. Ag/AgCl. The electron transfer rate constant, KS and electron transfer co-efficient were found to be 0.57 s-1 and 0.42, respectively. Based on the electrocatalytic process by direct electrochemistry of HRP, a biosensor for detecting H2O2 was developed. The developed biosensor exhibits excellent electrocatalytic activity for the reduction of H2O2. The proposed biosensor modified with HRP/CNT 3D network displays a broader linear range and a lower detection limit for H2O2 determination. The linear range is from 1.0×10−7 to 1.2×10−4M with a detection limit of 2.2.0×10−8M at 3σ. Moreover, this biosensor exhibits very high sensitivity, good reproducibility and long-time stability. In summary, ease of fabrication, a low cost, fast response and high sensitivity are the main advantages of the new biosensor proposed in this study. These obvious advantages would really help for the real analytical applicability of the proposed biosensor.

Keywords: redox enzyme, nanomaterials, biosensors, electrical communication

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Authors: A. K. M. Kafi, S. N. Nina, Mashitah M. Yusoff

Abstract:

In this work, we have described a new 3-dimensional (3D) network of crosslinked Horseradish Peroxidase/Carbon Nanotube (HRP/CNT) on a thiol-modified Au surface in order to build up the effective electrical wiring of the enzyme units with the electrode. This was achieved by the electropolymerization of aniline-functionalized carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and 4-aminothiophenol -modified-HRP on a 4-aminothiophenol monolayer-modified Au electrode. The synthesized 3D HRP/CNT networks were characterized with cyclic voltammetry and amperometry, resulting the establishment direct electron transfer between the redox active unit of HRP and the Au surface. Electrochemical measurements reveal that the immobilized HRP exhibits high biological activity and stability and a quasi-reversible redox peak of the redox center of HRP was observed at about −0.355 and −0.275 V vs. Ag/AgCl. The electron transfer rate constant, KS and electron transfer co-efficient were found to be 0.57 s-1 and 0.42, respectively. Based on the electrocatalytic process by direct electrochemistry of HRP, a biosensor for detecting H2O2 was developed. The developed biosensor exhibits excellent electrocatalytic activity for the reduction of H2O2. The proposed biosensor modified with HRP/CNT 3D network displays a broader linear range and a lower detection limit for H2O2 determination. The linear range is from 1.0×10−7 to 1.2×10−4M with a detection limit of 2.2.0×10−8M at 3σ. Moreover, this biosensor exhibits very high sensitivity, good reproducibility and long-time stability. In summary, ease of fabrication, a low cost, fast response and high sensitivity are the main advantages of the new biosensor proposed in this study. These obvious advantages would really help for the real analytical applicability of the proposed biosensor.

Keywords: biosensor, nanomaterials, redox enzyme, thiol-modified Au surface

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Authors: Ahmad Alsolami, Darren Mundy, Manuel Hernandez-Perez

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Social media networks, such as Twitter, offer the perfect opportunity to either positively or negatively affect political attitudes on large audiences. A most important factor contributing to this effect is the existence of influential users, who have developed a reputation for their awareness and experience on specific subjects. Therefore, knowledge of the mechanisms to identify influential users on social media is vital for understanding their effect on their audience. The concept of the influential user is based on the pioneering work of Katz and Lazarsfeld (1959), who created the concept of opinion leaders' to indicate that ideas first flow from mass media to opinion leaders and then to the rest of the population. Hence, the objective of this research was to provide reliable and accurate structural mechanisms to identify influential users, which could be applied to different platforms, places, and subjects. Twitter was selected as the platform of interest, and Saudi Arabia as the context for the investigation. These were selected because Saudi Arabia has a large number of Twitter users, some of whom are considerably active in setting agendas and disseminating ideas. The study considered the scientific methods that have been used to identify public opinion leaders before, utilizing metrics software on Twitter. The key findings propose multiple novel metrics to compare Twitter influencers, including the number of followers, social authority and the use of political hashtags, and four secondary filtering measures. Thus, using ratio and percentage calculations to classify the most influential users, Twitter accounts were filtered, analyzed and included. The structured approach is used as a mechanism to explore the top ten influencers on Twitter from the political domain in Saudi Arabia.

Keywords: twitter, influencers, structured mechanism, Saudi Arabia

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Authors: Ganiyu Rasaq Omokeji

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The growing recognition of the pivotal role of universities in promoting socio-economic development has led to a focus upon the expansion of the sector around the world. As the economy and society become more ‘knowledge intensive’, the role of universities in development is more onerous than just teaching, research, and service. It is to help create the open society upon which the progress of ideas depends on. Driven to fulfill this role, universities are likely to become even more important in building regional networks of their host communities. Currently, there are about 129 universities in Nigeria, with a total number of 37 federal, 36 state, and 56 privately owned universities. Fountain University is among the private universities in Nigeria located in Osogbo, Osun State. The university is committed to the total development of men and women in an enabling environment, through appropriate teaching, research, and service to humanity, influenced by Islamic ethics and culture. The university focuses on educational development and growth that are relevant to the nation’s manpower needs and global competitiveness through a gradual but steady process. This paper examines the role of Private University in the socio-economic development of host community using Fountain University as a case study. The research methodology design for this paper has a total of 200 respondents. The research instrument of data collection was a questionnaire and in-depth interview (IDI). The finding reveals that Fountain University plays an important role in socio-economic and cultural development through their Islamic culture. The paper recommend that universities must bridge the gaps between creative individual with innovative ideas and the application of technology for economic progress and social betterment of their host communities. University also must serve as a bridge that carries the traffic of social and economic development.

Keywords: private university, socio-economic development, host communities, role of universities and community development

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Authors: Edeaghe Ehikhamenor, Jennifer Nnamdi

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Introduction: Gender-based violence (GBV) was a well-known global crisis before the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic burden only intensified the crisis. With prevailing lockdowns, increased poverty due to high unemployment, especially affecting females, and other mobility restrictions that have left many women trapped with their abusers, plus isolation from social contact and support networks, GBV cases spiraled out of control. Prevalence of economic with cultural disparity, which is greatly manifested in Nigeria, is a major contributory factor to GBV. This is made worst by religious adherents where the females are virtually relegated to the background. Our societal approaches to investigations and sanctions to culprits have not sufficiently applied forensic/DNA tools in combating these major vices. Violence against women or some rare cases against men can prevent them from carrying out their duties regardless of the position they hold. Objective: The main objective of this research is to highlight the origin of GBV, the victims, types, contributing factors, and the applications of forensics/DNA tools and remedies so as to minimize GBV in our society. Methods: Descriptive information was obtained through the search on our daily newspapers, electronic media, google scholar websites, other authors' observations and personal experiences, plus anecdotal reports. Results: Findings from our exploratory searches revealed a high incidence of GBV with very limited or no applications of Forensics/DNA tools as an intervening mechanism to reduce GBV in Nigeria. Conclusion: Nigeria needs to develop clear-cut policies on forensics/DNA tools in terms of institutional framework to develop a curriculum for the training of all stakeholders to fast-track justice for victims of GBV so as to serve as a deterrent to other culprits.

Keywords: gender-based violence, forensics, DNA, justice

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Authors: Sujata Kulkarni, Udhav Bhosle, Vijaykumar T.

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Due to the closeness between seismic signals and non-seismic signals, it is vital to detect earthquakes using conventional methods. In order to distinguish between seismic events and non-seismic events depending on their amplitude, our study processes the data that come from seismic sensors. The authors suggest a robust noise suppression technique that makes use of a bandpass filter, an IIR Wiener filter, recursive short-term average/long-term average (STA/LTA), and Carl short-term average (STA)/long-term average for event identification (LTA). The trigger ratio used in the proposed study to differentiate between seismic and non-seismic activity is determined. The proposed work focuses on significant feature extraction for machine learning-based seismic event detection. This serves as motivation for compiling a dataset of all features for the identification and forecasting of seismic signals. We place a focus on feature vector dimension reduction techniques due to the temporal complexity. The proposed notable features were experimentally tested using a machine learning model, and the results on unseen data are optimal. Finally, a presentation using a hybrid dataset (captured by different sensors) demonstrates how this model may also be employed in a real-time setting while lowering false alarm rates. The planned study is based on the examination of seismic signals obtained from both individual sensors and sensor networks (SN). A wideband seismic signal from BSVK and CUKG station sensors, respectively located near Basavakalyan, Karnataka, and the Central University of Karnataka, makes up the experimental dataset.

Keywords: Carl STA/LTA, features extraction, real time, dataset, machine learning, seismic detection

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Authors: S. Shakibaei, P. Alpkokin

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The railway network is one of the major components of a transportation system in a country which may be an indicator of the country’s level of economic improvement. Since 2000s on, revival of national railways and development of High Speed Rail (HSR) lines are one of the most remarkable policies of Turkish government in railway sector. Within this trend, the railway age is to be revived and coming decades will be a golden opportunity. Indubitably, major infrastructures such as road and railway networks require sizeable investment capital, precise maintenance and reparation. Traditionally, governments are held responsible for funding, operating and maintaining these infrastructures. However, lack or shortage of financial resources, risk responsibilities (particularly cost and time overrun), and in some cases inefficacy in constructional, operational and management phases persuade governments to find alternative options. Financial power, efficient experiences and background of private sector are the factors convincing the governments to make a collaboration with private parties to develop infrastructures. Public-Private Partnerships (PPP or 3P or P3) and related regulatory issues are born considering these collaborations. In Turkey, PPP approaches have attracted attention particularly during last decade and these types of investments have been accelerated by government to overcome budget limitations and cope with inefficacy of public sector in improving transportation network and its operation. This study mainly tends to present a comprehensive overview of PPP concept, evaluate the regulatory procedure in Europe and propose a general framework for Turkish State Railways (TCDD) as an outlook on privatization, liberalization and deregulation of railway network.

Keywords: deregulation, high-speed railway, liberalization, privatization, public-private partnership

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Authors: Elham Fariborzi, Hoda Anvari Kazemabad

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Today, ICT plays an important role in all matters and it affects the development of creative cities. According to virtual space in this technology, it use especially for expand terms like smart schools, Virtual University, web-based training and virtual classrooms that is in parallel with the traditional teaching. Nowadays, the educational systems in different countries such as Iran are changing and start increasing creativity in the learning environment. It will contribute to the development of innovative ideas and thinking of the people in this environment; such opportunities might be cause scientific discovery and development issues. The creativity means the ability to generate ideas and numerous, new and suitable solutions for solving the problems of real and virtual individuals and society, which can play a significant role in the development of creative current physical cities or virtual borders ones in the future. The purpose of this paper is to study strategies to increase creativity in a virtual learning to develop a creative city. In this paper, citation/ library study was used. The full description given in the text, including how to create and enhance learning creativity in a virtual classroom by reflecting on performance and progress; attention to self-directed learning guidelines, efficient use of social networks, systematic discussion groups and non-intuitive targeted controls them by involved factors and it may be effective in the teaching process regarding to creativity. Meanwhile, creating a virtual classroom the style of class recognizes formally the creativity. Also the use of a common model of creative thinking between student/teacher is effective to solve problems of virtual classroom. It is recommended to virtual education’ authorities in Iran to have a special review to the virtual curriculum for increasing creativity in educational content and such classes to be witnesses more creative in Iran's cities.

Keywords: virtual learning, creativity, e-learning, bioinformatics, biomedicine

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Authors: Daniel M. Muntean, Viorel Ungureanu

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More than half of the urban population in Romania lives today in residential buildings made out of large prefabricated reinforced concrete panels. Since their initial design was made in the 1960’s, these housing units are now being technically and morally outdated, consuming large amounts of energy for heating, cooling, ventilation and lighting, while failing to meet the needs of the contemporary life-style. Due to their widespread use, the design of a system that improves their energy efficiency would have a real impact, not only on the energy consumption of the residential sector, but also on the quality of life that it offers. Furthermore, with the transition of today’s existing power grid to a “smart grid”, buildings could become an active element for future electricity networks by contributing in micro-generation and energy storage. One of the most addressed issues today is to find locally adapted strategies that can be applied considering the 20-20-20 EU policy criteria and to offer sustainable and innovative solutions for the cost-optimal energy performance of buildings adapted on the existing local market. This paper presents a possible adaptive design scenario towards sustainable retrofitting of these housing units. The apartments are transformed in order to meet the current living requirements and additional extensions are placed on top of the building, replacing the unused roof space, acting not only as housing units, but as active solar energy collection systems. An adaptive building envelope is ensured in order to achieve overall air-tightness and an elevator system is introduced to facilitate access to the upper levels.

Keywords: adaptive building, energy efficiency, retrofitting, residential buildings, smart grid

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Authors: Rasha Ahmadi

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Glioblastoma is one of the most frequent brain malignancies, having a high mortality rate and limited survival in individuals with this malignancy. Despite different treatments and surgery, recurrence of glioblastoma cancer stem cells may arise as a subsequent tumor. For this reason, it is crucial to research the markers associated with glioblastoma stem cells and specifically their microenvironment. In this study, using bioinformatics analysis, we analyzed and nominated genes in the microenvironment pathways of glioblastoma stem cells. In this study, an appropriate database was selected for analysis by referring to the GEO database. This dataset comprised gene expression patterns in stem cells derived from glioblastoma patients. Gene clusters were divided as high and low expression. Enrichment databases such as Enrichr, STRING, and GEPIA were utilized to analyze the data appropriately. Finally, we extracted the potential genes 2700 high-expression and 1100 low-expression genes are implicated in the metabolic pathways of glioblastoma cancer progression. Cellular senescence, MAPK, TNF, hypoxia, zimosterol biosynthesis, and phosphatidylinositol metabolism pathways were substantially expressed and the metabolic pathways were downregulated. After assessing the association between protein networks, MSMP, SOX2, FGD4 ,and CNTNAP3 genes with high expression and DMKN and SBSN genes with low were selected. All of these genes were observed in the survival curve, with a survival of fewer than 10 percent over around 15 months. hsa-mir-192-5p, hsa-mir-129-5p, hsa-mir-215-5p, hsa-mir-335-5p, and hsa-mir-340-5p played key function in glioblastoma cancer stem cells microenviroments. We introduced critical genes through integrated and regular bioinformatics studies by assessing the amount of gene expression profile data that can play an important role in targeting genes involved in the energy and microenvironment of glioblastoma cancer stem cells. Have. This study indicated that hsa-mir-192-5p, and hsa-mir-129-5p are appropriate candidates for this.

Keywords: Glioblastoma, Cancer Stem Cells, Biomarker Discovery, Gene Expression Profiles, Bioinformatics Analysis, Tumor Microenvironment

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Authors: Jonathan K. Hill

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The transportation networks throughout Africa remain the only transportation infrastructure system in the world that is attacked by terrorists at a high frequency, so the international community can learn from each attack. The targeting of transportation should be recognized as a direct attack against a civilian population, so the international community should work to better understand the types of attacks utilized, the types of improvised explosive device designs adapted to transportation targets, and the ways the various modes of transportation have been attacked throughout the continent. Some countries have seen grenade attacks that have resulted in only injuries, while some countries have experienced large vehicle bombings that have resulted in hundreds of injuries and numerous deaths. With insurgencies, explosive devices have been small, complex, and generally target an enemy of the insurgency. With terrorist bombings, the explosive devices have been large, brazen, and targeted at civilian populations. And, these civilian populations are easily targeted within the transportation system. The presentation provided by Assess Africa LLC is titled ‘Evolution of Bombings Against Transportation Infrastructure’ and covers improvised explosive device characteristics, how improvised explosive devices have been adapted to transportation targets in Africa, analyses recent incidents, and provides some advice for effective protective measures. A main component of the improvised explosive device characteristics portion of the presentation focuses on the link between explosive device components, the intelligence network, and the bomb-builder’s network. By understanding the components, how the use of various components can be linked to a terrorist group’s capabilities, and how the bomb-builder acquires materials, the analysis of improvised explosive device attacks takes on a new direction – one that focuses on defeating the network instead of merely reviewing incidents of the past.

Keywords: Africa, bombings, critical infrastructure protection, transportation security

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Authors: Halonen

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Covid-19 pandemic and the succeeding crises have profoundly shaken the accustomed ways of interaction and thereby challenged the customary engagement patterns among entrepreneurs Consequently, this has led to the experience of lack of collegial interaction for some. Networks and relationships are a crucial factor to strengthening resilience, being especially significant in non-ordinary times. This study aims to shed light on entrepreneurs’ resilience development in and through entrepreneurs’ communal and training space. The context for research is a communal training space in a municipality in Finland of which goal is to help entrepreneurs to experience of peer support and community as part of the "tribe" is strengthened, the entrepreneurs' well-being at work, resilience, ability to change, innovativeness and general life management is strengthened. This communal space is regarded as an example of a physical community of practice (CoP) of entrepreneurs. The research aims to highlight the importance of rediscovering the “new normal” communality as itself but as a key building block of resilience. The initial research questions of the study are: RQ1: What is the role of entrepreneurs’ CoP and communal space in nurturing resilience development among them? RQ2: What positive entrepreneurial outcomes can be achieved through established CoP. The data will be gathered starting from the launch of the communality space in September 2023 onwards. It includes participatory observations of training gatherings, interviews with entrepreneurs and utilizes action research as the method. The author has an active role in participating and facilitating the development. The full paper will be finalized by the fall 2024. The idea of the new normal communality in a CoP among entrepreneurs is to be rediscovered due to its positive impact on entrepreneur’s resilience and business success. The other implications of study can extend to wider entrepreneurial ecosystem and other key stakeholders. Especially emphasizing the potential of communality in CoP for fostering entrepreneurs’ resilience and well-being ensuing business growth, community-driven entrepreneurship development and vitality of the case municipality.

Keywords: resilience, resilience development, communal space, community of practice (CoP)

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Authors: Faiza Belbachir, Thibault Schienhinski

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The massive development of online social networks allows users to post and share their opinions on various topics. With this huge volume of opinion, it is interesting to extract and interpret these information for different domains, e.g., product and service benchmarking, politic, system of recommendation. This is why opinion detection is one of the most important research tasks. It consists on differentiating between opinion data and factual data. The difficulty of this task is to determine an approach which returns opinionated document. Generally, there are two approaches used for opinion detection i.e. Lexical based approaches and Machine Learning based approaches. In Lexical based approaches, a dictionary of sentimental words is used, words are associated with weights. The opinion score of document is derived by the occurrence of words from this dictionary. In Machine learning approaches, usually a classifier is trained using a set of annotated document containing sentiment, and features such as n-grams of words, part-of-speech tags, and logical forms. Majority of these works are based on documents text to determine opinion score but dont take into account if these texts are really correct. Thus, it is interesting to exploit other information to improve opinion detection. In our work, we will develop a new way to consider the opinion score. We introduce the notion of trust score. We determine opinionated documents but also if these opinions are really trustable information in relation with topics. For that we use lexical SentiWordNet to calculate opinion and trust scores, we compute different features about users like (numbers of their comments, numbers of their useful comments, Average useful review). After that, we combine opinion score and trust score to obtain a final score. We applied our method to detect trust opinions in TRIPADVISOR collection. Our experimental results report that the combination between opinion score and trust score improves opinion detection.

Keywords: Tripadvisor, opinion detection, SentiWordNet, trust score

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Authors: Matthew Baucum

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With the increasing popularity of fMRI as an experimental method, psychology and neuroscience can greatly benefit from advanced techniques for summarizing and synthesizing large amounts of data from brain imaging studies. One promising avenue is automated meta-analyses, in which natural language processing methods are used to identify the brain regions consistently associated with certain semantic concepts (e.g. “social”, “reward’) across large corpora of studies. This study builds on this approach by demonstrating how, in fMRI meta-analyses, individual voxels can be treated as vectors in a semantic space and evaluated for their “proximity” to terms of interest. In this technique, a low-dimensional semantic space is built from brain imaging study texts, allowing words in each text to be represented as vectors (where words that frequently appear together are near each other in the semantic space). Consequently, each voxel in a brain mask can be represented as a normalized vector sum of all of the words in the studies that showed activation in that voxel. The entire brain mask can then be visualized in terms of each voxel’s proximity to a given term of interest (e.g., “vision”, “decision making”) or collection of terms (e.g., “theory of mind”, “social”, “agent”), as measured by the cosine similarity between the voxel’s vector and the term vector (or the average of multiple term vectors). Analysis can also proceed in the opposite direction, allowing word cloud visualizations of the nearest semantic neighbors for a given brain region. This approach allows for continuous, fine-grained metrics of voxel-term associations, and relies on state-of-the-art “open vocabulary” methods that go beyond mere word-counts. An analysis of over 11,000 neuroimaging studies from an existing meta-analytic fMRI database demonstrates that this technique can be used to recover known neural bases for multiple psychological functions, suggesting this method’s utility for efficient, high-level meta-analyses of localized brain function. While automated text analytic methods are no replacement for deliberate, manual meta-analyses, they seem to show promise for the efficient aggregation of large bodies of scientific knowledge, at least on a relatively general level.

Keywords: FMRI, machine learning, meta-analysis, text analysis

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Authors: Shativel S., Chandana B. R., Kavya B. C., Obli B. Vikram, Suganthi J., Nagendra Rao G.

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Satellite communication plays a pivotal role in modern global communication networks, serving as a vital link between terrestrial infrastructure and remote regions. The demand for reliable satellite reception systems, especially in UHF (Ultra High Frequency) and VHF (Very High Frequency) bands, has grown significantly over the years. This research paper presents the design and optimization of a high-gain, dual-band crossed Yagi-Uda antenna in CST Studio Suite, specifically tailored for satellite reception. The proposed antenna system incorporates a circularly polarized (Right-Hand Circular Polarization - RHCP) design to reduce Faraday loss. Our aim was to use fewer elements and achieve gain, so the antenna is constructed using 6x2 elements arranged in cross dipole and supported with a boom. We have achieved 10.67dBi at 146MHz and 9.28dBi at 437.5MHz.The process includes parameter optimization and fine-tuning of the Yagi-Uda array’s elements, such as the length and spacing of directors and reflectors, to achieve high gain and desirable radiation patterns. Furthermore, the optimization process considers the requirements for UHF and VHF frequency bands, ensuring broad frequency coverage for satellite reception. The results of this research are anticipated to significantly contribute to the advancement of satellite reception systems, enhancing their capabilities to reliably connect remote and underserved areas to the global communication network. Through innovative antenna design and simulation techniques, this study seeks to provide a foundation for the development of next-generation satellite communication infrastructure.

Keywords: Yagi-Uda antenna, RHCP, gain, UHF antenna, VHF antenna, CST, radiation pattern.

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Authors: Patricia Girrbach

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Currently, our society is facing a new and incremental upheaval technological revolution named digitalization. In order to face the relating challenges organizations have to be prepared. They need appropriate circumstances in order to cope with current issues concerning digital transformation processes. Nowadays digitalization emerged as top issues for companies and business leaders. In this context, it is a pressure on companies to have a positive, productive digital culture. And indeed, Organizations realize that they need to address this important issue. In this context 87 percent of organizations quote culture and engagement as one of their top challenges in terms of any change process, but especially in terms of the digital turn. Executives can give their company a competitive advantage and attract top talent by having a strong workplace culture that supports digitalization. Many current studies attest that fact. Digital-oriented companies can hire more easily, they have the lowest voluntary turnover rates, deliver better customer service, and are more profitable over the long run. Based on this background it is important to provide companies starting points and practical measurements how to reach this goal. The major findings are that firms need to make sense out of digitalization. In this context, they should focus on internal but also on external stakeholders. Furthermore, they should create certain working conditions and they should support the qualification of employees, e.g. by Virtual Reality. These measurements can create positive experiences in terms of digitalization in order to ensure the support of stuff in terms of the digital turn. Based on several current studies and literature research this paper provides concrete measurements for companies in order to enable the digital turn. Therefore, the aim of this paper is providing possible practical starting points which support both the education of employees by digitalization as well as the digital turn itself within the organization.

Keywords: digitalization, industry 4.0, education 4.0, virtual reality

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Authors: Nurulhuda A. Manaf, Nor Najihah Zainal Abidin, Nur Amalina Jamaludin

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Coordinating service interactions are a vital part of developing distributed applications that are built up as networks of autonomous participants, e.g., software components, web services, online resources, involve a collaboration between a diverse number of participant services on different providers. The complexity in coordinating service interactions reflects how important the techniques and approaches require for designing and coordinating the interaction between participant services to ensure the overall goal of a collaboration between participant services is achieved. The objective of this research is to develop capability of steering a complex service interaction towards a desired outcome. Therefore, an efficient technique for modelling, generating, and verifying the coordination of service interactions is developed. The developed model describes service interactions using service choreographies approach and focusing on a declarative approach, advocating an Object Management Group (OMG) standard, Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Rules (SBVR). This model, namely, SBVR model for service choreographies focuses on a declarative deontic rule expressing both obligation and prohibition, which can be more useful in working with coordinating service interactions. The generated SBVR model is then be formulated and be transformed into Alloy model using Alloy Analyzer for verifying the generated SBVR model. The transformation of SBVR into Alloy allows to automatically generate the corresponding coordination of service interactions (service choreography), hence producing an immediate instance of execution that satisfies the constraints of the specification and verifies whether a specific request can be realised in the given choreography in the generated choreography.

Keywords: service choreography, service coordination, behavioural modelling, complex interactions, declarative specification, verification, model transformation, semantics of business vocabulary and rules, SBVR

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Authors: Anjan Hazra, Nirjhar Dasgupta, Chandan Sengupta, Sauren Das

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Tea (Camellia sinensis) has received substantial attention from the scientific world time to time, not only for its commercial importance, but also for its demand to the health-conscious people across the world for its extensive use as potential sources of antioxidant supplement. These health-benefit traits primarily rely on some regulatory networks of different metabolic pathways. Development of microsatellite markers from the conserved genomic regions is being worthwhile for studying the genetic diversity of closely related species or self-pollinated species. Although several SSR markers have been reported, in tea the trait-specific Simple Sequence Repeats (SSRs) are yet to be identified, which can be used for marker assisted breeding technique. MicroRNAs are endogenous, noncoding, short RNAs directly involved in regulating gene expressions at the post-transcriptional level. It has been found that diversity in miRNA gene interferes the formation of its characteristic hair pin structure and the subsequent function. In the present study, the precursors of small regulatory RNAs (microRNAs) has been fished out from tea Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) database. Furthermore, the simple sequence repeat motifs within the putative miRNA precursor genes are also identified in order to experimentally validate their existence and function. It is already known that genic-SSR markers are very adept and breeder-friendly source for genetic diversity analysis. So, the potential outcome of this in-silico study would provide some novel clues in understanding the miRNA-triggered polymorphic genic expression controlling specific metabolic pathways, accountable for tea quality.

Keywords: micro RNA, simple sequence repeats, tea quality, trait specific marker

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