Search results for: salient points

Authors: Shams Khaled Abdelrahman Abdallah Elbaz, Alaa Aldeen Abd Al Hakeem Balbaa

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Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of Positional Release Technique versus Kinesio Tape on pain level, pressure pain threshold level and functional disability in patients with back myofascial pain syndrome at iliocostalis lumborum. Backgrounds/significance: Myofascial Pain Syndrome is a common muscular pain syndrome that arises from trigger points which are hyperirritable, painful and tender points within a taut band of skeletal muscle. In more recent literature, about 75% of patients with musculoskeletal pain presenting to a community medical centres suffer from myofascial pain syndrome.Iliocostalis lumborum are most likely to develop active trigger points. Subjects: Thirty patients diagnosed as back myofascial pain syndrome with active trigger points in iliocostalis lumborum muscle bilaterally had participated in this study. Methods and materials: Patients were randomly distributed into two groups. The first group consisted of 15 patients (8 males and 7 females) with mean age 30.6 (±3.08) years, they received positional release technique which was applied 3 times per session, 3/week every other day for 2 weeks. The second group consisted of 15 patients(5 males, 10 females) with a mean age 30.4 (±3.35) years, they received kinesio tape which was applied and changed every 3 days with one day off for a total 3 times in 2 weeks. Both techniques were applied over trigger points of the iliocostalis lumborum bilaterally. Patients were evaluated pretreatment and posttreatment program for Pain intensity (Visual analogue scale), pressure pain threshold (digital pressure algometry), and functional disability (The Oswestry Disability Index). Analyses: Repeated measures MANOVA was used to detect differences within and between groups pre and post treatment. Then the univariate ANOVA test was conducted for the analysis of each dependant variable within and between groups. All statistical analyses were done using SPSS. with significance level set at p<0.05 throughout all analyses. Results: The results revealed that there was no significant difference between positional release technique and kinesio tape technique on pain level, pressure pain threshold and functional activities (p > 0.05). Both groups of patients showed significant improvement in all the measured variables (p < 0.05) evident by significant reduction of both pain intensity and functional disability as well as significant increase of pressure pain threshold Conclusions : Both positional release technique and kinesio taping technique are effective in reducing pain level, improving pressure pain threshold and improving function in treating patients who suffering from back myofascial pain syndrome at iliocostalis lumborum. As there was no statistically significant difference was proven between both of them.

Keywords: positional release technique, kinesio tape, myofascial pain syndrome, Iliocostalis lumborum

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Authors: Hualter Barbosa, Bruno Bonifacio

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The process of globalization and new business has transformed the dynamics of software development. To meet the new demands, the software industry has adapted new methodologies that can shorten development cycles to ensure greater competitiveness. Given this scenario, Global Software Development (GSD) has become a strategic element for new products' success. However, the reliability, opportunity, and perceived value can be influenced substantially with the automation of steps in the development process activities. In this sense, the development of new technologies can help developers and managers to improve the quality of development. This paper presents a report on improving one of the release process activities of Sidia's mobile product area using software technology. The objective is to present the improvement of the CLCATCH tool developed based on experimental studies and qualitative analysis on the points of improvement for the release process in Android update projects for Samsung mobile devices. The results show improvement for the new version and approach of the tool, with points that can facilitate new features of the proposed technology.

Keywords: Android updated, empirical studies, GSD, process improvement

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Authors: Baptiste Bouvier

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While we are constantly flooded with stimuli in daily life, attention allows us to select the ones we specifically process and ignore the others. Some salient stimuli may sometimes pass this filter independently of our will, in a "bottom-up" way. The role of the acoustic properties of the timbre of a sound on its salience, i.e., its ability to capture the attention of a listener, is still not well understood. We implemented a paradigm called the "additional singleton paradigm", in which participants have to discriminate targets according to their duration. This task is perturbed (higher error rates and longer response times) by the presence of an irrelevant additional sound, of which we can manipulate a feature of our choice at equal loudness. This allows us to highlight the influence of the timbre features of a sound stimulus on its salience at equal loudness. We have shown that a stimulus that is brighter than the others but not louder leads to an attentional capture phenomenon in this framework. This work opens the door to the study of the influence of any timbre feature on salience.

Keywords: attention, audition, bottom-up attention, psychoacoustics, salience, timbre

Procedia PDF Downloads 128

Authors: Devin Simmons

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At the USDOT’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics, a biannual census of ferry operators in the U.S. is conducted, with results such as route mileage used to determine federal funding levels for operators. AIS data allows for the possibility of using GIS software and geographical methods to confirm operator-reported mileage for individual ferry routes. As part of the USDOT’s work on the ferry census, an algorithm was developed that uses AIS data for ferry vessels in conjunction with known ferry terminal locations to model the average route travelled for use as both a cartographic product and confirmation of operator-reported mileage. AIS data from each vessel is first analyzed to determine individual journeys based on the vessel’s velocity, and changes in velocity over time. These trips are then converted to geographic linestring objects. Using the terminal locations, the algorithm then determines whether the trip represented a known ferry route. Given a large enough dataset, routes will be represented by multiple trip linestrings, which are then filtered by DBSCAN spatial clustering to remove outliers. Finally, these remaining trips are ready to be averaged into one route. The algorithm interpolates the point on each trip linestring that represents the start point. From these start points, a centroid is calculated, and the first point of the average route is determined. Each trip is interpolated again to find the point that represents one percent of the journey’s completion, and the centroid of those points is used as the next point in the average route, and so on until 100 points have been calculated. Routes created using this algorithm have shown demonstrable improvement over previous methods, which included the implementation of a LOESS model. Additionally, the algorithm greatly reduces the amount of manual digitizing needed to visualize ferry activity.

Keywords: ferry vessels, transportation, modeling, AIS data

Procedia PDF Downloads 129

Authors: Y. Benabid, K. Benfriha, V. Rieuf, J. F. Omhover

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This paper describes an approach to create custom concepts for innovative products; this approach describes relations between innovation tools and Computer Aided Design environment (use creativity session and design tools). A model for the design process is proposed and explored in order to describe the power tool used to create and ameliorate an innovative product all based upon a range of data (cloud points) in this study. Comparison between traditional method and innovative method we help to generate and put forward a new model of the design process in order to create a custom Ankle Foot Orthosis (AFO) in a CAD environment in order to ameliorate and controlling the motion. The custom concept needs big development in different environments; the relation between these environments is described. The results can help the surgeons in the upstream treatment phases. CAD models can be applied and accepted by professionals in the design and manufacture systems. This development is based on the anatomy of the population of North Africa.

Keywords: ankle foot orthosis, CAD, reverse engineering, sketch

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Authors: Ali Raheli, Rahim Habibifar, Behzad Mohammadi-Alasti, Mahdi Abbasgholipour

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This paper presents vibration behavior of a FGM micro-beam and its pull-in instability under a nonlinear electrostatic pressure. An exponential function has been applied to show the continuous gradation of the properties along thickness. Nonlinear integro-differential-electro-mechanical equation based on Euler–Bernoulli beam theory has been derived. The governing equation in the static analysis has been solved using Step-by-Step Linearization Method and Finite Difference Method. Fixed points or equilibrium positions and singular points have been shown in the state control space. In order to find the response to a step DC voltage, the nonlinear equation of motion has been solved using Galerkin-based reduced-order model and time histories and phase portrait for different applied voltages have been shown. The effects of electrostatic pressure on stability of FGM micro-beams having various amounts of the ceramic constituent have been investigated.

Keywords: FGM, MEMS, nonlinear vibration, electrical, dynamic pull-in voltage

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Authors: Kristine Demilou D. Santiago

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An access to a high-quality health care system is what sets apart industrialized nations, such as the United States from other developing countries, which in this case is specifically pertaining to their older population. But what was the underrated factor in the sphere of quality healthcare rendered to elderly people in the Western context? Will this salient factor could push conviction to prorogue the existing gaps between self-denial patient-client and cheek by jowl medications? Are the natural socio-environmental approaches of caregiving the protracted remedy to healthcare disparities for aging population considering their day to day living? The conceptual framework of this model is primarily associated with addressing health and illness of human beings considering the biological, psychological and socio-environmental factors around them. The relevance of biopsychosocial formulation advancing each of the characteristics in the Biopsychosocial (BPS) model in a balance contemplation is the tumult of this study in an attempt to respond to prevailing disparities in caregiving services for old-aged patients on a day to day living. Caregiving services have been the medium path connecting between the patient and its prescribed medications. Moreover, caregivers serve as positive reinforcers in a patient’s environment. Therefore, caregivers play an important role in healthcare delivery to patients. They are considered significant people whom their acts will give an impact to a patient’s view in life. This research study intends to present the supreme importance of biopsychosocial assessment to old-aged patients with mental health illness and conditions. Biopsychosocial assessment will secure the quality of full medication to an old-aged adult suffering from a mental illness. This is because it offers a recognizably wholesome approach to medical healing of old-aged adult patients. The principle of biopsychosocial supersedes the biomedicine being offered to old-aged adults having mental illness, but it does not take away the high relevance of scientific biomedicine in healing patients. The framework presented an overlapping participation of each of its factors in its BPS model that affects in general a person’s health. The correlation between the biological (physiological), psychological (mental) and social (environment) in a person’s health condition requires equal attention according to BPS, and it always coexist with each other. Indisputably said, bio-medicine has been and is being in its unceasing endeavor to provide scientifically proven health care medications for every individual seeking medical treatments. As we grow older and eventually reach the other side of the median population, not only our physiological aspects change, our psychological and socio-environmental changes happen too. Caregiving is a salient responsibility taking place on these inevitable changes.

Keywords: biopsychosocial formulation, caregiving through natural approaches, US health care, BPS in caregiving, caregiving for aging population

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Authors: Nathakhun Wiroonsri

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There are various cluster validity measures used for evaluating clustering results. One of the main objectives of using these measures is to seek the optimal unknown number of clusters. Some measures work well for clusters with different densities, sizes and shapes. Yet, one of the weaknesses that those validity measures share is that they sometimes provide only one clear optimal number of clusters. That number is actually unknown and there might be more than one potential sub-optimal option that a user may wish to choose based on different applications. We develop two new cluster validity indices based on a correlation between an actual distance between a pair of data points and a centroid distance of clusters that the two points are located in. Our proposed indices constantly yield several peaks at different numbers of clusters which overcome the weakness previously stated. Furthermore, the introduced correlation can also be used for evaluating the quality of a selected clustering result. Several experiments in different scenarios, including the well-known iris data set and a real-world marketing application, have been conducted to compare the proposed validity indices with several well-known ones.

Keywords: clustering algorithm, cluster validity measure, correlation, data partitions, iris data set, marketing, pattern recognition

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Authors: M. T. Islam, S. H. Shakif, R. Hasan, S. H. Kobi

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Investigation of rainfall trends is crucial considering climate change, food security, and the economy of a particular region. This research aims to study seasonal and annual precipitation trends and their abrupt changes over time in the south-central climatic zone of Bangladesh using monthly time series data of 50 years (1970-2019). A trend-free pre-whitening method has been employed to make necessary adjustments for autocorrelations in the rainfall data. Trends in rainfall and their intensity have been observed using the non-parametric Mann-Kendall test and Theil-Sen estimator. Significant changes and fluctuation points in the data series have been detected using the sequential Mann-Kendall test at the 95% confidence limit. The study findings show that most of the rainfall stations in the study area have a decreasing precipitation pattern throughout all seasons. The maximum decline in the rainfall intensity has been found for the Tangail station (-8.24 mm/year) during monsoon. Madaripur and Chandpur stations have shown slight positive trends in post-monsoon rainfall. In terms of annual precipitation, a negative rainfall pattern has been identified in each station, with a maximum decrement (-) of 14.48 mm/year at Chandpur. However, all the trends are statistically non-significant within the 95% confidence interval, and their monotonic association with time ranges from very weak to weak. From the sequential Mann-Kendall test, the year of changing points for annual and seasonal downward precipitation trends occur mostly after the 90s for Dhaka and Barishal stations. For Chandpur, the fluctuation points arrive after the mid-70s in most cases.

Keywords: trend analysis, Mann-Kendall test, Theil-Sen estimator, sequential Mann-Kendall test, rainfall trend

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Authors: Thippharat Wongsilarat, Parichat tuntilanon, Chonlakan Prataksitorn

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Recurrent adverse drug reactions are harmful to patients with mild to fatal illnesses, and affect not only patients but also their relatives, and organizations. To compare safe use of medicine among patients before and after using the recurrent adverse drug reaction prevention program . Quasi-experimental research with the target population of 598 patients with drug allergy history. Data were collected through an observation form tested for its validity by three experts (IOC = 0.87), and analyzed with a descriptive statistic (percentage). The research was conducted jointly with a multidisciplinary team to analyze and determine the weak points and strong points in the recurrent adverse drug reaction prevention system during the past three years, and 546, 329, and 498 incidences, respectively, were found. Of these, 379, 279, and 302 incidences, or 69.4; 84.80; and 60.64 percent of the patients with drug allergy history, respectively, were found to have caused by incomplete warning system. In addition, differences in practice in caring for patients with drug allergy history were found that did not cover all the steps of the patient care process, especially a lack of repeated checking, and a lack of communication between the multidisciplinary team members. Therefore, the recurrent adverse drug reaction prevention program was developed with complete warning points in the information technology system, the repeated checking step, and communication among related multidisciplinary team members starting from the hospital identity card room, patient history recording officers, nurses, physicians who prescribe the drugs, and pharmacists. Including in the system were surveillance, nursing, recording, and linking the data to referring units. There were also training concerning adverse drug reactions by pharmacists, monthly meetings to explain the process to practice personnel, creating safety culture, random checking of practice, motivational encouragement, supervising, controlling, following up, and evaluating the practice. The rate of prescribing drugs to which patients were allergic per 1,000 prescriptions was 0.08, and the incidence rate of recurrent drug reaction per 1,000 prescriptions was 0. Surveillance of recurrent adverse drug reactions covering all service providing points can ensure safe use of medicine for patients.

Keywords: recurrent drug, adverse reaction, safety, use of medicine

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Authors: Susanne Fridsten, Kristina Hellman, Anders Sundin, Lennart Blomqvist

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Background: Patients diagnosed with locally advanced cervical carcinoma are treated with definitive concomitant chemo-radiotherapy. Treatment failure occurs in 30-50% of patients with very poor prognoses. The treatment is standardized with risk for both over-and undertreatment. Consequently, there is a great need for biomarkers able to predict therapy outcomes to allow for individualized treatment. Aim: To explore the role of T2- and diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for early prediction of therapy outcome and the optimal time point for assessment. Methods: A pilot study including 15 patients with cervical carcinoma stage IIB-IIIB (FIGO 2009) undergoing definitive chemoradiotherapy. All patients underwent MRI four times, at baseline, 3 weeks, 5 weeks, and 12 weeks after treatment started. Tumour size, size change (∆size), visibility on diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and change of ADC (∆ADC) at the different time points were recorded. Results: 7/15 patients relapsed during the study period, referred to as "poor prognosis", PP, and the remaining eight patients are referred to "good prognosis", GP. The tumor size was larger at all time points for PP than for GP. The ∆size between any of the four-time points was the same for PP and GP patients. The sensitivity and specificity to predict prognostic group depending on a remaining tumor on DWI were highest at 5 weeks and 83% (5/6) and 63% (5/8), respectively. The combination of tumor size at baseline and remaining tumor on DWI at 5 weeks in ROC analysis reached an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.83. After 12 weeks, no remaining tumor was seen on DWI among patients with GP, as opposed to 2/7 PP patients. Adding ADC to the tumor size measurements did not improve the predictive value at any time point. Conclusion: A large tumor at baseline MRI combined with a remaining tumor on DWI at 5 weeks predicted a poor prognosis.

Keywords: chemoradiotherapy, diffusion-weighted imaging, magnetic resonance imaging, uterine cervical carcinoma

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Authors: Anthony Mpiani

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Recent media and NGO reports suggest that human rights violations have been a salient characteristic of the government Joint Task Force (JTF) in the war on Boko Haram. However, there has been relatively scant scholarly engagement with the forms of abuses committed by the JTF against civilians and why such human rights violations occur. The focus of this paper is to analyse the various human rights violations committed by JTF in the war against Boko Haram. Employing a historical approach, it argues that the JTF's human rights violations is shaped by the philosophy of colonial policing in Nigeria. Consequently, the failure of successive post-colonial governments to ideologically transform policing is accountable for the human rights abuses being witnessed in Nigeria today. A philosophical transformation in Nigeria's security forces especially the police and military is a prerequisite for ending human rights abuses in the fight against Boko Haram.

Keywords: colonialism, policing, joint task force, counterinsurgency, Boko Haram, human rights violations

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Authors: Shantosa Yudha Siswanto, Rachmat Harryanto

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The aim of the research was to investigate the effect of land use and slope steepness on soil erodibility index. The research was conducted from September to December 2013 in Mekarwangi catchment area, sub watershed of Cikapundung Hulu, Indonesia. The study was carried out using descriptive method. Physiographic free survey method was used as survey method, it was a survey based on land physiographic appearance. Soil sampling was carried out into transect on the similarity of slope without calculating the range between points of observation. Soil samples were carried onto three classes of land use such as: forest, plantation and dry cultivation area. Each land use consists of three slope classes such as: 8-15%, 16-25%, and 26-40% class. Five samples of soil were taken from each of them, resulting 45 points of observation. The result of the research showed that type of land use and slope classes gave different effect on soil erodibility. The highest C-organic and permeability was found on forest with slope 16-25%. Slope of 8-15% with forest land use give the lowest effect on soil erodibility.

Keywords: land use, slope, erodibility, erosion

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Authors: T. Sikram, M. Ichinose, R. Sasaki

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In the tropics, indoor thermal environment is usually provided by a cooling mode to maintain comfort all year. Indoor thermal environment performance is sometimes different from the standard or from the first design process because of operation, maintenance, and utilization. The field study of thermal environment in the green building is still limited in this region, while the green building continues to increase. This study aims to clarify thermal performance and subjective perception in the green building by testing the temperature set-points. A Thai green office was investigated twice in October 2018 and in May 2019. Indoor environment variables (temperature, relative humidity, and wind velocity) were collected continuously. The temperature set-point was normally set as 23 °C, and it was changed into 24 °C and 25 °C. The study found that this gap of temperature set-point produced average room temperature from 22.7 to 24.6 °C and average relative humidity from 55% to 62%. Thermal environments slight shifted out of the ASHRAE comfort zone when the set-point was increased. Based on the thermal sensation vote, the feeling-colder vote decreased by 30% and 18% when changing +1 °C and +2 °C, respectively. Predicted mean vote (PMV) shows that most of the calculated median values were negative. The values went close to the optimal neutral value (0) when the set-point was set at 25 °C. The neutral temperature was slightly decreased when changing warmer temperature set-points. Building-related symptom reports were found in this study that the number of votes reduced continuously when the temperature was warmer. The symptoms that occurred by a cooler condition had the number of votes more than ones that occurred by a warmer condition. In sum, for this green office, there is a possibility to adjust a higher temperature set-point to +1 °C (24 °C) in terms of reducing cold sensitivity, discomfort, and symptoms. All results could support the policy of changing a warmer temperature of this office to become “a better green building”.

Keywords: thermal environment, green office, temperature set-point, comfort

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Authors: A. Gazdzinska, P. Jagielski, E. Kaniewska, S. P. Gazdzinski, M. Wylezol

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Background: In the multi-factor etiology of obesity, an increasing degree of importance is attributed to behavioral factors. Lifestyle and health-oriented behaviors heavily influence the treatment of multiple diseases, including obesity. However, only a few studies evaluated health-related behaviors exhibited by patients qualified for bariatric surgery. None of them was performed in Polish population. Aim: Assessment of health behaviors of obese patients according to the degree of mood disorders. Method: The study involved 93 patients (66 females) who were qualified for bariatric surgery in the Department of Surgery of the Military Institute of Aviation Medicine in Warsaw. Diagnostic instrument was the Juczynski’s Inventory of Health Behavior (HBI), which evaluates health behavior in four categories, i.e. proper nutrition habits (PNH), preventive behavior (PH), health practices (HP) and positive mental attitude (PMA). The average HBI falls in the range between 24 and 120 points, for each category of health behaviors fall between 1 and 5 (higher score means higher severity declared healthy behaviors). The depressive symptoms in patients were assessed with Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). All analyses were conducted using STATISTICA 12. Results: The average age was 44.2 ± 11.5 years, mean BMI was 44.3 ± 10.5 kg/m2 and 46.8 ± 7.6 kg/m2, in females and males respectively. According to BDI, 32% patients had mild level of depression, 10% moderate and 14% severe depression. BDI scores were not different between females and males. Low results with regard to the health behaviors declared were obtained by 35.5 % of patients, medium by 44.0%, while high ones by only 20.5%. On average, patients gained 3.28 points in PNH, 3.37 points in PH, 3.29 points in HP, while 3.42 in the PMA category, showing average intensity of these behaviors. These health behaviors were practiced significantly more often by women (p = 0.04). The average HBI was 80.2; with average score of 81.5 for females and 76.6 for males, respectively (p = 0.03). Women were better in the PNH category (p = 0.02). A positive correlation was found between age and all categories of health behaviors, in particular PNH (R = 0.38; p = 0.001), PH (R = 0.26; p = 0.01), HP (R = 0.27; p = 0.01) and PMA (R = 0.24; p = 0.02), independent of gender. The severity of depression had a significant impact only on the behaviors associated with proper eating habits, which saw a negative correlation between BDI scores and the PNH (R = -0.21; p = 0.04). Conclusions: Majority of morbidly obese patients qualified for bariatric surgery obtained low to average scores in health behavior questionnaire. However, these results are similar in comparison with the Polish adult population. In accordance to these results, it seems that healthy behaviors, among them eating behaviors, do not appear to be a cause of obesity epidemic or they might be acquired when the disease is already underway. Female gender and age had a positive effect, and depression had a negative effect on the level of health behaviors among patients qualified for bariatric surgery.

Keywords: depression, habits, health behaviours, obesity

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Authors: Simon B. N. Thompson

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Retinoblastoma is a rare type of childhood genetic cancer that affects children worldwide. The diagnosis is often missed due to lack of education and difficulty in presentation of the tumor. Frequently, the tumor on the retina is noticed by photography when the red-eye flash, commonly seen in normal eyes, is not produced. Instead, a yellow or white colored patch is seen or the child has a noticeable strabismus. Early detection can be life-saving though often results in removal of the affected eye. Remaining functioning in the healthy eye when the child is young has resulted in super-vision and high or above-average intelligence. Technological advancement of cameras has helped in early detection. Brain imaging has also made possible early detection of neurological diseases and, together with the monitoring of cortisol levels and yawning frequency, promises to be the next new early diagnostic tool for the detection of neurological diseases where cortisol insufficiency is particularly salient, such as multiple sclerosis and Cushing’s disease.

Keywords: cortisol, neurological disease, retinoblastoma, Thompson cortisol hypothesis, yawning

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Authors: Mao Zhaofang, Xu Yida, Fang Kan, Fu Enyuan, Zhao Zhao

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Nowadays, last-mile distribution plays an increasingly important role in the whole industrial chain delivery link and accounts for a large proportion of the whole distribution process cost. Promoting the upgrading of logistics networks and improving the layout of final distribution points has become one of the trends in the development of modern logistics. Due to the discrete and heterogeneous needs and spatial distribution of customer demand, which will lead to a higher delivery failure rate and lower vehicle utilization, last-mile delivery has become a time-consuming and uncertain process. As a result, courier companies have introduced a range of innovative parcel storage facilities, including pick-up points and lockers. The introduction of pick-up points and lockers has not only improved the users’ experience but has also helped logistics and courier companies achieve large-scale economy. Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 of the previous period, contactless delivery has become a new hotspot, which has also created new opportunities for the development of collection services. Therefore, a key issue for logistics companies is how to design/redesign their last-mile distribution network systems to create integrated logistics and distribution networks that consider pick-up points and lockers. This paper focuses on the introduction of self-pickup facilities in new logistics and distribution scenarios and the heterogeneous demands of customers. In this paper, we consider two types of demand, including ordinary products and refrigerated products, as well as corresponding transportation vehicles. We consider the constraints associated with self-pickup points and lockers and then address the location-routing problem with self-pickup facilities and heterogeneous demands (LRP-PFHD). To solve this challenging problem, we propose a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model that aims to minimize the total cost, which includes the facility opening cost, the variable transport cost, and the fixed transport cost. Due to the NP-hardness of the problem, we propose a hybrid adaptive large-neighbourhood search algorithm to solve LRP-PFHD. We evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm by using instances generated based on benchmark instances. The results demonstrate that the hybrid adaptive large neighbourhood search algorithm is more efficient than MILP solvers such as Gurobi for LRP-PFHD, especially for large-scale instances. In addition, we made a comprehensive analysis of some important parameters (e.g., facility opening cost and transportation cost) to explore their impacts on the results and suggested helpful managerial insights for courier companies.

Keywords: city logistics, last-mile delivery, location-routing, adaptive large neighborhood search

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Authors: A. Baviskar, C. Sandeep, K. Shankar

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Solving Multi-objective Optimization Problems requires faster convergence and better spread. Though existing Evolutionary Algorithms (EA's) are able to achieve this, the computation effort can further be reduced by hybridizing them with innovative strategies. This study is focuses on converging to the pareto front faster while adapting the advantages of Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm-II (SPEA-II) for a better spread. Two different approaches based on optimizing the objective functions independently are implemented. In the first method, the decision variables corresponding to the optima of individual objective functions are strategically used to guide the search towards the pareto front. In the second method, boundary points of the pareto front are calculated and their decision variables are seeded to the initial population. Both the methods are applied to different constrained and unconstrained multi-objective test functions. It is observed that proposed guided search based algorithm gives better convergence and diversity than several well-known existing algorithms (such as NSGA-II and SPEA-II) in considerably less number of iterations.

Keywords: boundary points, evolutionary algorithms (EA's), guided search, strength pareto evolutionary algorithm-II (SPEA-II)

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Authors: Rahul Ganpat Mapari, D. G. Wakde

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In this paper, a proposed approach to improve the power factor of single-phase rectifiers and to regulate the output voltage against the change in grid voltage and load is presented. This converter topology is evaluated on the basis of performance and its salient features like simplicity, low cost and high performance are discussed to analyze its applicability. The proposed control strategy is bridgeless, transformer-less and output current sensor-less and consists of only two Bi-directional IGBTs and two diodes. The voltage regulation is achieved by a simple voltage divider to communicate to a controller to control the duty cycles of PWM. A control technique and operational procedure are also developed, both theoretically and experimentally. The experimental results clearly verify the theoretical analysis from the prototype connected to grid unity.

Keywords: Active Rectifier (AC-DC), power factor, single phase, voltage regulation

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Authors: Bauer Peter, Murillo Jenny

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This paper investigates the bounds of achievable fuel efficiency improvements in engines due to cycling between two operating points assuming a series hybrid configuration . It is shown that for linear bsfc dependencies (as a function of power), cycling is only beneficial if the average power needs are smaller than the power at the optimal bsfc value. Exact expressions for the fuel efficiency gains relative to the constant output power case are derived. This asymptotic analysis is then extended to the case where transient losses due to a change in the operating point are also considered. The case of the boundary bsfc trajectory where constant power application and cycling yield the same fuel consumption.is investigated. It is shown that the boundary bsfc locations of the second non-optimal operating points is hyperbolic. The analysis of the boundary case allows to evaluate whether for a particular engine, cycling can be beneficial. The introduced concepts are illustrated through a number of real world examples, i.e. large production Diesel engines in series hybrid configurations.

Keywords: cycling, efficiency, bsfc, series hybrid, diesel, operating point

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Authors: Tasawar Nawaz

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Promotion of socioeconomic justice through redistribution of wealth is one of the most salient features of Islamic economic system. Islamic financial institutions known as Islamic banks are used to implement this in practice under the guidelines of Islamic Shariah law. Islamic banking systems strive to promote and achieve financial inclusion among the society by offering interest-free banking and risk-sharing financing solutions. Shariah-compliant micro finance is one of the most popular financial instruments used by Islamic banks to enhance access to finance. Benevolent loan (or Qard-al-Hassanah) is one of the popular financial tools used by the Islamic banks to promote financial inclusion. This aspect of Islamic banking is empirically examined in this paper with specific reference to firm’s resources, largely defined here as intellectual capital. The paper finds that Islamic banks promote financial inclusion by exploiting available resources especially, the human intellectual capital.

Keywords: financial inclusion, intellectual capital, Qard-al-Hassanah, Islamic banking

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Authors: Laszlo Vari

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In the digital age, the spread of the mobile world and the nature of the cyberspace, offers many new opportunities for the prevalence of the fundamental right to free expression, and therefore, for free speech and freedom of the press; however, these new information communication technologies carry many new challenges. Defamation, censorship, fake news, misleading information, hate speech, breach of copyright etc., are only some of the violations, all of which can be derived from the harmful exercise of freedom of expression, all which become more salient in the internet. Here raises the question: how can we eliminate these problems, and practice our fundamental freedom rightfully? To answer this question, we should understand the elements and the characteristic of the nature of freedom of expression, and the role of the actors whose duties and responsibilities are crucial in the prevalence of this fundamental freedom. To achieve this goal, this paper will explore the European practice to understand instructions found in the case-law of the European Court of Human rights for the rightful exercise of freedom of expression.

Keywords: collision of rights, European case-law, freedom opinion and expression, media law, freedom of information, online expression

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Authors: Brianna Z. Ross, Jonathan N. Livingston

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Given that discussions of racism and racial tensions have become more salient, there is a need to evaluate the impacts of racialization among Black individuals. Racial discrimination has become one of the most common experiences within the Black American population. Likewise, Black individuals have indicated a need to address their racial identities at an earlier age than their non-Black peers. Further, Black individuals have been found at the forefront of multiple social and political movements, including but not limited to the Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter, MeToo, and Say Her Name. Moreover, the present study sought to explore the predictive relationships that exist between racial discrimination, racial identity, and activism in the Black community. The results of standard and hierarchical regression analyses revealed that racial discrimination and racial identity significantly predict each other, but only racial discrimination is a significant predictor for the relationship to activism. Nonetheless, the results from this study will provide a basis for social scientists to better understand the impacts of racialization on the Black American population.

Keywords: activism, racialization, racial discrimination, racial identity

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Authors: Shirko Ahmadi, Ahmad Fallahi, Marco C. Uchida, Gustavo L. Gutierrez

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The aims of the present study are to assess and compare the health habits and quality of life (QoL) of Iranian amateur athletes in different sports. A total of 120 male amateur athletes between 17 and 31 years, engaged in 16 kinds of sports which include team (n=44), individual (n=40) and combat sports (n=36) from sports clubs in the west cities of Iran; and also those not involved in any competition in the past. Additionally, this is a cross-sectional, descriptive observational study, which the subjects completed the WHOQOL-brief questionnaire to evaluate QoL. The questionnaire is composed of 26 questions in four domains (physical health, psychological, social and environmental domains), that was applied in the Persian language. Information on the frequency and duration of training sessions were also collected. The Shapiro-Wilk test was used to verify normal distribution, followed by the chi-squared test for proportions and simple analysis of variance for comparisons between groups of sports. Pearson’s correlation was used to assess the relationships between the variables analyzed. According to the findings, those from individual sports obtained highest points in the all domains of QoL; physical domains (87.1 ± 8.1 point), psychological domains (87.6 ± 9.6 point), social domains (89.7 ± 9.2 point), environmental domains (75.5± 10.7 point) and overall QoL score (84.9 ± 9.4 point). Generally, social domains were the highest QoL index (84.3 ± 7.2 points), and environmental domains were the lowest QoL index (68.1 ± 10.8 points), in all of the sports. No correlations were found between QoL domains and time engaged in the sport (r = 0.01; p = 0.93), number of weekly training sessions (r = 0.09; p = 0.37) and session duration (r = -0.06; p= 0.58). Comparison of QoL results with those of the general population revealed higher levels in the physical and psychological components of amateur athletes. In the present study, engaging in sports was associated with higher QoL levels in amateur athletes, particularly in the physical and psychological domains. Moreover, correlations were found between the overall score and domains of QoL.

Keywords: amateur, domains, Iranian, quality of life

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Authors: Vangelis Drosos, Dimitrios Tsoukalos, Dimitrios Tsolis

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We present a simple algorithm for capturing a 3D scene (focused on the usage of mobile device cameras in the context of augmented/mixed reality) by using a floating origin camera solution and storing the resulting information in a linear voxel octree. Data is derived from cloud points captured by a mobile device camera. For the purposes of this paper, we assume a scene of fixed size (known to us or determined beforehand) and a fixed voxel resolution. The resulting data is stored in a linear voxel octree using a hashtable. We commence by briefly discussing the logic behind floating origin approaches and the usage of linear voxel octrees for efficient storage. Following that, we present the algorithm for translating captured feature points into voxel data in the context of a fixed origin world and storing them. Finally, we discuss potential applications and areas of future development and improvement to the efficiency of our solution.

Keywords: voxel, octree, computer vision, XR, floating origin

Procedia PDF Downloads 105

Authors: Kripesh Adhikari, Hamid Bouchachia, Hammadi Nait-Charif

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Falls are one of the major causes of injury and death among elderly people aged 65 and above. A support system to identify such kind of abnormal activities have become extremely important with the increase in ageing population. Pose estimation is a challenging task and to add more to this, it is even more challenging when pose estimations are performed on challenging poses that may occur during fall. Location of the body provides a clue where the person is at the time of fall. This paper presents a vision-based tracking strategy where available joints are grouped into three different feature points depending upon the section they are located in the body. The three feature points derived from different joints combinations represents the upper region or head region, mid-region or torso and lower region or leg region. Tracking is always challenging when a motion is involved. Hence the idea is to locate the regions in the body in every frame and consider it as the tracking strategy. Grouping these joints can be beneficial to achieve a stable region for tracking. The location of the body parts provides a crucial information to distinguish normal activities from falls.

Keywords: fall detection, machine learning, deep learning, pose estimation, tracking

Procedia PDF Downloads 151

Authors: Mohammad Molavi, Mohsen Nourai

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The emancipation of the Muslim nation from the numerous problems and achieving to the decent position is one of the old desires of Muslim. Increasing efforts to realize this wish based on religious and rational teachings is the main goal for Muslim reformist. Almost all scholars relying on the Qur'an teaching emphasize on the significant role of Islamic Unity for the revival of Islamic civilization. But their methods for achieving to the Islamic Unity are not so clear. Generally speaking, failure to provide specific solutions, uncertainty in the face of universal literature in politics and governance, and etc. are some of the challenges facing the Islamic Unity.This paper via the descriptive-analytical method and by focusing on theoretical aspects of the subject has attempted to analyze Imam Khomeini points of view. Research findings show that there are several significant differences between Imam Khomeini's idea of Islamic Unity and ideas like 'Pan-Turkism', 'Pan-Arabism' and so on. Some of Imam Khomeini's principles in this regard are as follow: Strategic approach to unity, relying on juridical certain and systematic attitude, comprehensive approach, Holistic, rationality, and moderation. So, there is no any generality speaking or ambiguity in Khomeini's thought.

Keywords: Qur'an, Imam Khomeini, islamic unity, islamic nation, islamic political thought

Procedia PDF Downloads 374

Authors: Prince Igor Itoua, Daquan Sun, Shihui Shen

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This study aimed at investigating the properties of asphalt and mix asphalt based on the effects of waste toner sources (WT1 and WT2) with 8% dosage waste toner powders (WT). The test results included penetration, softening points, ductility, G*sinδ, G*/sinδ, Ideal cracking test(IDEAL-CT), and Ideal shear rutting test(IDEAL-RT). The results showed that the base binder with WT2 had a significantly higher viscosity value compared to the WT1 modified binder, and thus, higher energy for mixing and compaction is needed. Fur-thermore, the results of penetration, softening points, G*sinδ, and G*/sinδ were all affected by waste toner type. In terms of asphalt mixture, the IDEAL-RT test revealed that the addition of waste toner improved the rutting resistance of the asphalt mixture regardless of toner type. Further, CTindex values for waste toner-modified asphalt mixtures show no significant difference. Above all, WT-modified asphalt mixtures produced by the wet process have better rutting performance.

Keywords: waste toner, waste toner modified asphalt, asphalt mixture properties, IDEAL-RT test, IDEAL-CT test

Procedia PDF Downloads 49

Authors: Mouslem Damkhi

Abstract:

This paper focuses on possible states of a football tournament final table according to the number of participating teams. Each team holds a position in the table with which it is possible to determine the highest and lowest points for that team. This paper proposes an optimized search space based on the minimum and maximum number of points which can be gained by each team to produce and enumerate the possible states for a football tournament final table. The proposed search space minimizes producing the invalid states which cannot occur during a football tournament. The generated states are filtered by a validity checking algorithm which seeks to reach a tournament graph based on a generated state. Thus, the algorithm provides a way to determine which team’s wins, draws and loses values guarantee a particular table position. The paper also presents and discusses the experimental results of the approach on the tournaments with up to eight teams. Comparing with a blind search algorithm, our proposed approach reduces generating the invalid states up to 99.99%, which results in a considerable optimization in term of the execution time.

Keywords: combinatorics, enumeration, graph, tournament

Procedia PDF Downloads 84

Authors: Jonathan Heng, Yoong Cheah Huei

Abstract:

A strategic model that does not trigger any false alarms to detect anomalies in Secure Water Treatment (SWaT) test bed is presented. This model uses machine learning invariants formulated from streamlining the general form of Auto-Regressive models with eXogenous input. A creative generalized CUSUM algorithm to integrate the invariants and the detection strategy technique is successfully developed and tested in the SWaT Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). Three steps to fine-tune parameters, b and τ in the generalized algorithm are stated and an example used to demonstrate the tuning process is discussed. This approach can swiftly and effectively detect various scopes of cyber-attacks such as multiple points single stage and multiple points multiple stages in SWaT. This technique can be applied in water treatment plants and other cyber physical systems like power and gas plants too.

Keywords: machine learning invariants, generalized CUSUM algorithm with invariants and detection strategy, scope of cyber attacks, strategic model, tuning parameters

Procedia PDF Downloads 152