Search results for: human body communication

Authors: Nurul Nadhirah Anuar, Muhammad Fauzi Abdul Ghani

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Scheduled waste management is very important in environmental and health aspects. In delivering services, highway industry has been indirectly involved in producing scheduled wastes. This paper aims to define the scheduled waste, to provide a conceptual framework of the scheduled waste management in highway industry, to highlight the effect of improper management of scheduled waste and to encourage future researchers to identify and share the present practice of scheduled waste management in their country. The understanding on effective management of scheduled waste will help the operators of highway industry, the academicians, future researchers, and encourage a friendly environment around the world. The study on scheduled waste management in highway industry is very crucial as highway transverse and run along kilometers crossing the various type of environment, residential and schools. Using Environmental Quality (Scheduled Waste) Regulations 2005 as a guide, this conceptual paper highlight several scheduled wastes produced by highway industry in Malaysia and provide a conceptual framework of scheduled waste management that focused on the highway industry. Understanding on scheduled waste management is vital in order to preserve the environment. Besides that, the waste substances are hazardous to human being. Many diseases have been associated with the improper management of schedule waste such as cancer, throat irritation and respiration problem.

Keywords: Asia Region, Environment, Highway Industry, Scheduled Waste.

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Authors: Osama Elgadi, Martin Birkett, Wai Ming Cheung

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This paper investigates the barriers behind the underutilisation of six sigma in Libyan manufacturing companies (LMCs). A mixed-method methodology is proposed, starting by conducting interviews to collect qualitative data followed by the development of a questionnaire to obtain quantitative data. The focus of this paper is on discussing the findings of the interview stage and how these can be used to further develop the questionnaire stage. The interview results showed that only four key barriers were highlighted as being encountered by LMCs. With a difference in terms of their significance, these factors were identified, and placed in descending order according to their importance, namely: “Lack of top management commitment”, “Lack of training”, “Lack of knowledge about six sigma”, and “Culture effect”. The findings also showed that some barriers which, were found in previous studies of six sigma implementation were not considered as barriers to LMCs but can, in fact, be considered as success factors or enablers for six sigma adoption. These factors were identified as: “sufficiency of time and financial resources”; “customers unsatisfied”; “good communication between all departments in the company”; “we are certain about its results and benefits to our company and unhappy with the current quality system”. These results suggest that LMCs face fewer barriers to adopting six sigma than many well-established global companies operating in other countries and could take advantage of these successful factors by developing and implementing a six sigma framework to improve their product quality and competitiveness.

Keywords: Six sigma, barriers, Libyan manufacturing companies, interview.

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Authors: Pallabi Kalita, Hui Tag, H. N. Sarma, A. K. Das.

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Wild edible food plants contain a number of organic phytochemical that have been linked to the promotion of good health. These plants used by the local people of Arunachal Pradesh (Northeast India) are found to have high nutritional potential to maintain general balance diet. A study was conducted to evaluate the nutritional potential of five commonly found, unexplored wild food plants namely, Piper pedicellatum C. DC (leaves), Gonostegia hirta (Blume ex Hassk.) Miq. (leaves), Mussaenda roxburghii Hook.f (leaves), Solanum spirale Roxb. (leaves and fruits) and Cyathea spinulosa Wall. ex Hook. (pith portion and tender rachis) from East Siang District of Arunachal Pradesh Northeast (India) for ascertaining their suitability for utilization as supplementary food. Results of study revealed that P. pedicellatum, C. spinulosa, and S. spirale (leaves) are the most promising species which have high nutritional content out of the five wild food plants investigated which is required for the normal growth and development of human.

Keywords: Wild edible plants, Gross energy, Gonostegia hirta, Cyathea spinulosa,

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Authors: Sugiono, W. Ardiatna, H. Firdaus, N. Kusnandar, B. Utomo, J. A. Kadar

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It is desirable that most human food is warm when eaten, including when food is obtained by taking it away from the point of sale in disposable food packaging. However, such packaging does not retain heat for a long time, which is necessary to ensure the food remains warm when eaten. The study looked for single-use food packaging that could retain the heat of the food for a long time. The methodology for obtaining such packaging is either by modifying available packages on the market or by making new ones with materials that are easily obtained locally, then testing by loading the local food and measuring its temperature and the length of time until it reaches the lowest acceptable temperature for hot food (56°C). Packages made of plastic boxes lined with thin aluminum foil on the inside are the best way to keep food warm for up to 44 minutes from the time it is put in the package to the time the required temperature is reached. Moreover, packaging made of local common food paper, where the food was put in a transparent plastic bag inside the package, was found to be the simplest package that could retain heat for 82.31% as long as the best packaging could, in this study. Plastic boxes with thin aluminum foil inside were the best single-use food packaging in this study that served to keep hot food warm and fit for consumption.

Keywords: Aluminum foil, hot food, local food, packaging.

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Authors: Sandipan Chakroborty, Goutam Saha

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A state of the art Speaker Identification (SI) system requires a robust feature extraction unit followed by a speaker modeling scheme for generalized representation of these features. Over the years, Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) modeled on the human auditory system has been used as a standard acoustic feature set for speech related applications. On a recent contribution by authors, it has been shown that the Inverted Mel- Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (IMFCC) is useful feature set for SI, which contains complementary information present in high frequency region. This paper introduces the Gaussian shaped filter (GF) while calculating MFCC and IMFCC in place of typical triangular shaped bins. The objective is to introduce a higher amount of correlation between subband outputs. The performances of both MFCC & IMFCC improve with GF over conventional triangular filter (TF) based implementation, individually as well as in combination. With GMM as speaker modeling paradigm, the performances of proposed GF based MFCC and IMFCC in individual and fused mode have been verified in two standard databases YOHO, (Microphone Speech) and POLYCOST (Telephone Speech) each of which has more than 130 speakers.

Keywords: Gaussian Filter, Triangular Filter, Subbands, Correlation, MFCC, IMFCC, GMM.

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Authors: Archana Panchapakesan Iyer, Taha Abdullah Kumosani

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Many high-risk pathogens that cause disease in humans are transmitted through various food items. Food-borne disease constitutes a major public health problem. Assessment of the quality and safety of foods is important in human health. Rapid and easy detection of pathogenic organisms will facilitate precautionary measures to maintain healthy food. The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) is a handy tool for rapid detection of low numbers of bacteria. We have designed gene specific primers for most common food borne pathogens such as Staphylococci, Salmonella and E.coli. Bacteria were isolated from food samples of various food outlets and identified using gene specific PCRs. We identified Staphylococci, Salmonella and E.coli O157 using gene specific primers by rapid and direct PCR technique in various food samples. This study helps us in getting a complete picture of the various pathogens that threaten to cause and spread food borne diseases and it would also enable establishment of a routine procedure and methodology for rapid identification of food borne bacteria using the rapid technique of direct PCR. This study will also enable us to judge the efficiency of present food safety steps taken by food manufacturers and exporters.

Keywords: food borne pathogens, PCR, food safety, rapiddetection.

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Authors: Rosziati Ibrahim, Siow Yen Yen

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System development life cycle (SDLC) is a process uses during the development of any system. SDLC consists of four main phases: analysis, design, implement and testing. During analysis phase, context diagram and data flow diagrams are used to produce the process model of a system. A consistency of the context diagram to lower-level data flow diagrams is very important in smoothing up developing process of a system. However, manual consistency check from context diagram to lower-level data flow diagrams by using a checklist is time-consuming process. At the same time, the limitation of human ability to validate the errors is one of the factors that influence the correctness and balancing of the diagrams. This paper presents a tool that automates the consistency check between Data Flow Diagrams (DFDs) based on the rules of DFDs. The tool serves two purposes: as an editor to draw the diagrams and as a checker to check the correctness of the diagrams drawn. The consistency check from context diagram to lower-level data flow diagrams is embedded inside the tool to overcome the manual checking problem.

Keywords: Data Flow Diagram, Context Diagram, ConsistencyCheck, Syntax and Semantic Rules

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Authors: A. Giani

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The current pedagogical culture recognizes an educational scope within the sports practices. It is widely accepted, in the pedagogical culture, that thanks to the acquisition and development of motor skills, it is also possible to exercise abilities that concern the way of facing and managing the difficulties of everyday life. Sport is a peculiar educational environment: the children have the opportunity to discover the possibilities of their body, to correlate with their peers, and to learn how to manage the rules and the relationship with authorities, such as coaches. Educational aspects of the sport concern both non-formal and formal educational environments. Coaches play a critical role in an agonistic sphere: exactly like the competencies developed by the children, coaches have to work on their skills to properly set up the educational scene. Facing these new educational tasks - which are not new per se, but new because they are brought back to awareness - a few questions arise: does the coach have adequate preparation? Is the training of the coach in this specific area appropriate? This contribution aims to explore the issue in depth by focusing on the reality of the Football School. Starting from a possible sense of pedagogical inadequacy detected during a series of meetings with several football clubs in Piedmont (Italy), there have been highlighted some important educational needs within the professional training of sports coaches. It is indeed necessary for the coach to know the processes underlying the educational relationship in order to better understand the centrality of the assessment during the educational intervention and to be able to manage the asymmetry in the coach-athlete relationship. In order to provide a response to these pedagogical needs, a formative plan has been designed to allow both an in-depth study of educational issues and a correct self-evaluation of certain pedagogical skills’ control levels, led by the coach. This plan has been based on particular practices, the Educational Practices of Pre-test (EPP), a specific version of community practices designed for the extracurricular activities. The above-mentioned practices realized through the use of texts meant as pre-tests, promoted a reflection within the group of coaches: they set up real and plausible sports experiences - in particular football, triggering a reflection about the relationship’s object, spaces, and methods. The characteristic aspect of pre-tests is that it is impossible to anticipate the reflection as it is necessarily connected to the personal experience and sensitivity, requiring a strong interest and involvement by participants: situations must be considered by the coaches as possible settings in which they could be found on the field.

Keywords: Relational needs, responsibility, self-evaluation, values.

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Authors: Dong Xie, Leah Howard, Yiming Weng

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The objective of this study was to synthesize and characterize 5-acryloyloxy-3,4-dichlorocrotonolactone (a furanone derivative), use this derivative to modify a dental restorative, and study the effect of the derivative on the antibacterial activity and compressive strength of the formed restorative. In this study, a furanone derivative was synthesized, characterized, and used to formulate a dental restorative. Compressive strength (CS) and S. mutans viability were used to evaluate the mechanical strength and antibacterial activity of the formed restorative. The fabricated restorative specimens were photocured and conditioned in distilled water at 37^oC for 24 h, followed by direct testing for CS or/and incubating with S. mutans for 48 h for antibacterial testing. The results show that the modified dental restorative showed a significant antibacterial activity without substantially decreasing the mechanical strengths. With addition of the antibacterial derivative up to 30%, the restorative kept its original CS nearly unchanged but showed a significant antibacterial activity with 68% reduction in the S. mutans viability. Furthermore, the antibacterial function of the modified restorative was not affected by human saliva. The aging study also indicates that the modified restorative may have a long-lasting antibacterial function. It is concluded that this experimental antibacterial restorative may potentially be developed into a clinically attractive dental filling restorative due to its high mechanical strength and antibacterial function.

Keywords: Antibacterial, dental filling restorative, compressive strength, S. mutans viability.

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Authors: Sandipan Chakroborty, Anindya Roy, Goutam Saha

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A state of the art Speaker Identification (SI) system requires a robust feature extraction unit followed by a speaker modeling scheme for generalized representation of these features. Over the years, Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) modeled on the human auditory system has been used as a standard acoustic feature set for SI applications. However, due to the structure of its filter bank, it captures vocal tract characteristics more effectively in the lower frequency regions. This paper proposes a new set of features using a complementary filter bank structure which improves distinguishability of speaker specific cues present in the higher frequency zone. Unlike high level features that are difficult to extract, the proposed feature set involves little computational burden during the extraction process. When combined with MFCC via a parallel implementation of speaker models, the proposed feature set outperforms baseline MFCC significantly. This proposition is validated by experiments conducted on two different kinds of public databases namely YOHO (microphone speech) and POLYCOST (telephone speech) with Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) as a Classifier for various model orders.

Keywords: Complementary Information, Filter Bank, GMM, IMFCC, MFCC, Speaker Identification, Speaker Recognition.

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Authors: A. Hani

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In recent decades with the development of technology and lack of food sources, sewage sludge in production of human foods is inevitable. Various sources of municipal and industrial sewage sludge that is produced can provide the requirement of plant nutrients. Soils in arid, semi-arid climate of central Iran that most affected by water drainage, iron and zinc deficiencies, using of sewage sludge is helpful. Therefore, the aim of this study is investigation of sewage sludge and manure application on Ni, Pb and Cd uptake by Savory. An experiment in a randomized complete block design with three replications was performed. Sewage sludge treatments consisted of four levels, control, 15, 30, 80 tons per hectares; the manure was used in four levels of control, 20, 40 and 80 tons per hectare. Results showed that the wet and dry weights was not affected by sewage sludge using, while, manure has significant effect on them. The effect of sewage sludge on the cadmium and lead concentrations were significant. Interactions of sewage sludge and manure on dry weight values were not significant. Compare mean analysis showed that increasing the amount of sewage sludge had no significant effect on cadmium concentration and it reduced when sewage sludge usage increased. This is probably due to increased plant growth and reduced concentrations of these elements in the plant.

Keywords: Savory, lead, cadmium, sewage sludge, manure.

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Authors: Hossam el-ddin Mostafa, Pavel Čičak

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IETF RFC 2002 originally introduced the wireless Mobile-IP protocol to support portable IP addresses for mobile devices that often change their network access points to the Internet. The inefficiency of this protocol mainly within the handoff management produces large end-to-end packet delays, during registration process, and further degrades the system efficiency due to packet losses between subnets. The criterion to initiate a simple and fast full-duplex connection between the home agent and foreign agent, to reduce the roaming duration, is a very important issue to be considered by a work in this paper. State-transition Petri-Nets of the modeling scenario-based CIA: communication inter-agents procedure as an extension to the basic Mobile-IP registration process was designed and manipulated. The heuristic of configuration file during practical Setup session for registration parameters, on Cisco platform Router-1760 using IOS 12.3 (15)T is created. Finally, stand-alone performance simulations results from Simulink Matlab, within each subnet and also between subnets, are illustrated for reporting better end-to-end packet delays. Results verified the effectiveness of our Mathcad analytical manipulation and experimental implementation. It showed lower values of end-to-end packet delay for Mobile-IP using CIA procedure. Furthermore, it reported packets flow between subnets to improve packet losses between subnets.

Keywords: Cisco configuration, handoff, packet delay, Petri-Nets, registration process, Simulink.

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Authors: C. Valderrama-Ulloa, C. Schmitt, J.-P. Marchetti, V. Bucarey

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Access to adequate housing is a fundamental human right and a crucial factor for health. Housing should be inclusive, accessible, and able to meet the needs of all its inhabitants at every stage of their lives without hindering their health, autonomy, or independence. This article addresses the importance of designing housing for people with disabilities, which varies depending on individual abilities, preferences, and cultural considerations. Based on the components of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, wheelchair users, little people (achondroplasia), children with autism spectrum disorder and Down syndrome were characterized, and six domains of activities related to daily life inside homes were defined. The article describes the main barriers homes present for this group of people. It proposes a list of architectural and design aspects to reduce barriers to housing use. The aspects are divided into three main groups: space management, building services, and supporting facilities. The article emphasizes the importance of consulting professionals and users with experience designing for diverse needs to create inclusive, safe, and supportive housing for people with disabilities.

Keywords: Achondroplasia, autism spectrum disorder, disability, down syndrome, wheelchair user.

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Authors: Mehmet Altinoz

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Enterprises need a strategic plan to retain their skillful employees and provide their career management, sustain their existence, to have growth and leadership qualities, to reach the objectives to increase the value of the enterprise and to not to be affected from changing demographic structure. In the cases when the long term career expectations of skillful employees are in integrity with the enterprise’s interests, skill management process is directly related to the career management. With a long term plan, the enterprises should cover the labor force need that may arise in the future by using systematic career development programs and be prepared against developments for all times. Skill management is considered as a practice with which career mobility is planned for the skillful employee to be prepared for high level positions. Career planning is the planning of an employee’s progress or promotion within an organization for which he works by developing his knowledge, skills, abilities and motives. Career planning is considered as an individual’s planning his future and the position which he wants to have, the area which he want to work in, the objectives which he want to reach. With the aim of contributing the abovementioned discussion process, career management concept and its perception manner are examined in this study in a comparative manner.

Keywords: Skill management, career management, skill, back up, human resources management.

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Authors: Mustafa M. Donma, Orkide Donma

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Pediatric overweight and obesity need attention because they may cause morbid obesity, which may develop metabolic syndrome (MetS). Criteria used for the definition of adult MetS cannot be applied for pediatric MetS. Dynamic physiological changes that occur during childhood and adolescence require the evaluation of each parameter based upon age intervals. The aim of this study is to investigate the distribution of blood pressure (BP) values within diverse pediatric age intervals and the possible use and clinical utility of a recently introduced Diagnostic Obesity Notation Model Assessment Tension (DONMA tense) Index derived from systolic BP (SBP) and diastolic BP (DBP) [SBP+DBP/200]. Such a formula may enable a more integrative picture for the assessment of pediatric obesity and MetS due to the use of both SBP and DBP. 554 children, whose ages were between 6-16 years participated in the study; the study population was divided into two groups based upon their ages. The first group comprises 280 cases aged 6-10 years (72-120 months), while those aged 10-16 years (121-192 months) constituted the second group. The values of SBP, DBP and the formula (SBP+DBP/200) covering both were evaluated. Each group was divided into seven subgroups with varying degrees of obesity and MetS criteria. Two clinical definitions of MetS have been described. These groups were MetS3 (children with three major components), and MetS2 (children with two major components). The other groups were morbid obese (MO), obese (OB), overweight (OW), normal (N) and underweight (UW). The children were included into the groups according to the age- and sex-based body mass index (BMI) percentile values tabulated by WHO. Data were evaluated by SPSS version 16 with p < 0.05 as the statistical significance degree. Tension index was evaluated in the groups above and below 10 years of age. This index differed significantly between N and MetS as well as OW and MetS groups (p = 0.001) above 120 months. However, below 120 months, significant differences existed between MetS3 and MetS2 (p = 0.003) as well as MetS3 and MO (p = 0.001). In comparison with the SBP and DBP values, tension index values have enabled more clear-cut separation between the groups. It has been detected that the tension index was capable of discriminating MetS3 from MetS2 in the group, which was composed of children aged 6-10 years. This was not possible in the older group of children. This index was more informative for the first group. This study also confirmed that 130 mm Hg and 85 mm Hg cut-off points for SBP and DBP, respectively, are too high for serving as MetS criteria in children because the mean value for tension index was calculated as 1.00 among MetS children. This finding has shown that much lower cut-off points must be set for SBP and DBP for the diagnosis of pediatric MetS, especially for children under-10 years of age. This index may be recommended to discriminate MO, MetS2 and MetS3 among the 6-10 years of age group, whose MetS diagnosis is problematic.

Keywords: Blood pressure, children, index, metabolic syndrome, obesity.

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Authors: Mustafa M. Donma, Orkide Donma

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Zinc (Zn) is a vital element required for growth and development particularly in children. It exhibits some protective effects against cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). Zn may be a potential biomarker of cardiovascular health. High sensitive cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT) and cardiac myosin binding protein C (cMyBP-C) are new generation markers used for prediagnosis, diagnosis and prognosis of CVDs. The aim of this study is to determine Zn as well as new generation cardiac markers’ profiles in children with normal body mass index (N-BMI), obese (OB), morbid obese (MO) children and children with metabolic syndrome (MetS) findings. The association among them will also be investigated. Four study groups were constituted. The study protocol was approved by the institutional Ethics Committee of Tekirdag Namik Kemal University. Parents of the participants filled informed consent forms to participate in the study. Group 1 is composed of 44 children with N-BMI. Group 2 and Group 3 comprised 43 OB and 45 MO children, respectively. 45 MO children with MetS findings were included in Group 4. World Health Organization age- and sex-adjusted BMI percentile tables were used to constitute groups. These values were 15-85, 95-99 and above 99 for N-BMI, OB and MO, respectively. Criteria for MetS findings were determined. Routine biochemical analyses including Zn were performed. hs-cTnT and cMyBP-C concentrations were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Data were analyzed by using SPSS software. p < 0.05 was accepted as significant. Four groups were matched for age and gender. Decreased Zn concentrations were measured in Groups 2, 3 and 4 compared to Group 1. Groups did not differ from one another in terms of hs-cTnT. There were statistically significant differences between cMyBP-C levels of MetS group and N-BMI as well as OB groups. There was an increasing trend going from N-BMI group to MetS group. There were statistically significant negative correlations between Zn and hs-cTnT as well as cMyBP-C concentrations in MetS group. In conclusion, inverse correlations detected between Zn and new generation cardiac markers (hs-TnT and cMyBP-C) have pointed out that decreased levels of Zn accompany increased levels of hs-cTnT as well as cMyBP-C in children with MetS. This finding emphasizes that both Zn and these new generation cardiac markers may be evaluated as biomarkers of cardiovascular health during severe childhood obesity precipitated with MetS findings and also suggested as the messengers of the future risk in the adulthood periods of children with MetS.

Keywords: Cardiac myosin binding protein-C, cardiovascular diseases, children, high sensitive cardiac troponin T, obesity.

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Authors: Henry Foulds, Magda Huisman, Gunther R. Drevin

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Privacy is regarded as a fundamental human right and it is clear that the study of digital privacy is an important field. Digital privacy is influenced by new and constantly evolving technologies and this continuous change makes it hard to create legislation to protect people’s privacy from being exploited by misuse of these technologies.

This study aims to benefit digital privacy legislation efforts by evaluating the awareness and perceived importance of digital privacy legislation among computer science students. The chosen fixed variables for the population are study year and gamer classification.

The use of location based services in mobile applications and games are a concern for digital privacy. For this reason the study focused on computer science students as they have a high likelihood to use and develop this type of software. Surveys were used to evaluate awareness and perceived importance of digital privacy legislation.

The results of the study show that privacy legislation and awareness of privacy legislation are important to people. The perception of the importance of privacy legislation increases with academic experience. Awareness of privacy legislation increases from non-gamers to pro gamers. 

Keywords: Digital privacy, Legislation awareness, Gaming.

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Authors: D. M. Onyango, P. O. Angienda

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The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the epidemiology of waterborne diarrhoeal among children aged 6-36 months old in Busia town, western Kenya. The study was carried out between Feb. 2008 and Feb. 2010. Cases of diarrhoea reported in 385 households were linked to household water handling practices. A mother with a child of 6-36 months old was also included in the study. Diarrhoea prevalence among children 6-36 months was 16.7% in Busia town, Bwamani (19.6%) and Mayenje (10.6%) clustered in Mayenje sub-location reported the highest and the lowest prevalence of diarrhoea. There was a positive correlation between the prevalence of diarrhoea in children and the level of the mother-s education, 29.9% (n= 100). Diarrhoea cases decreased in range from 35.5% (n =102) to 4.8% (n= 16), corresponding to increase in age from 6-35 months on average. In conclusion, prevalence of diarrhoea in children of 6-36 months old was 16.7% in Busia town. This was higher in children whose mother-s age was below 18 years and with low level of education, the rate decreased with increase in age of children. Prevalence of diarrhoea in children aged 6-36months in households was higher in children aged 6-17 and 36 months and whose mothers were less educated and fell between the ages of 18-24 years. The Influence of human activities at the main source of drinking water on the prevalence of diarrhoea in these children was insignificant.

Keywords: Diarrhoea, Children, Mortality, Waterborne disease,

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Authors: Meaghan Bowman

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Microblogging has become increasingly popular for commenting on current events, spreading gossip, and encouraging individualism--which favors its low-context communication channel. These social media (SM) platforms allow users to express opinions while interacting with a wide range of populations. Hashtags allow immediate identification of like-minded individuals worldwide on a vast array of topics. The output of the analytic tool, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC)--a program that associates psychological meaning with the frequency of use of specific words--may suggest the nature of individuals’ internal states and general sentiments. When applied to groupings of SM posts unified by a hashtag, such information can be helpful to community leaders during periods in which the forming of public opinion happens in parallel with the unfolding of political, economic, or social events. This is especially true when outcomes stand to impact the well-being of the group. Here, we applied the online tools, Google Translate and the University of Texas’s LIWC, to a 90-posting sample from a corpus of Colombian Spanish microblogs. On translated disjoint sets, identified by hashtag as being authored by advocates of voting “No,” advocates voting “Yes,” and entities refraining from hashtag use, we observed the value of LIWC’s Tone feature as distinguishing among the categories and the word “peace,” as carrying particular significance, due to its frequency of use in the data.

Keywords: Colombia peace referendum, FARC, hashtags, linguistics, microblogging, social media.

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Authors: Ryan B. Escorial, Elmer A. Maravillas, Chris Jordan G. Aliac

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This study presents a small-scale water pumping system utilizing a fuzzy logic inference system attached to a renewable energy source. The fuzzy logic controller was designed and simulated in MATLAB fuzzy logic toolbox to examine the properties and characteristics of the input and output variables. The result of the simulation was implemented in a microcontroller, together with sensors, modules, and photovoltaic cells. The study used a grand rapid variety of lettuce, organic substrates, and foliar for observation of the capability of the device to irrigate crops. Two plant boxes intended for manual and automated irrigation were prepared with each box having 48 heads of lettuce. The observation of the system took 22-31 days, which is one harvest period of the crop. Results showed a 22.55% increase in agricultural productivity compared to manual irrigation. Aside from reducing human effort, and time, the smart irrigation system could help lessen some of the shortcomings of manual irrigations. It could facilitate the economical utilization of water, reducing consumption by 25%. The use of renewable energy could also help farmers reduce the cost of production by minimizing the use of diesel and gasoline.

Keywords: Fuzzy logic controller, intelligent system, precision agriculture, renewable energy.

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Authors: V. Viliene, V. Sasyte, A. Raceviciute-Stupeliene, R. Gruzauskas

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In horse nutrition, the most suitable cereal for their rations composition could be defined as oats and barley. Oats have high nutritive value because it provides more protein, fiber, iron and zinc than other whole grains, has good taste, and an activity of stimulating metabolic changes in the body. Another cereal – barley is very similar to oats as a feed except for some characteristics that affect how it is used; however, barley is lower in fiber than oats and is classified as a "heavy" feed. The value of oats and barley grain, first of all is dependent on its composition. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) has long been considered and used as a significant method in component and quality analysis and as an emerging technology for authenticity applications for cereal quality control. This paper presents the chemical and amino acid composition of different varieties of barley and oats, also digestible energy of different cereals for horses. Ten different spring barley (n = 5) and oats (n = 5) varieties, grown in one location in Lithuania, were assayed for their chemical composition (dry matter, crude protein, crude fat, crude ash, crude fiber, starch) and amino acids content, digestible amino acids and amino acids digestibility. Also, the grains digestible energy for horses was calculated. The oats and barley samples reflectance spectra were measured by means of NIRS using Foss-Tecator DS2500 equipment. The chemical components: fat, crude protein, starch and fiber differed statistically (P<0.05) between the oats and barley varieties. The highest total amino acid content between oats was determined in variety Flamingsprofi (4.56 g/kg) and the lowest – variety Circle (3.57 g/kg), and between barley - respectively in varieties Publican (3.50 g/kg) and Sebastian (3.11 g/kg). The different varieties of oats digestible amino acid content varied from 3.11 g/kg to 4.07 g/kg; barley different varieties varied from 2.59 g/kg to 2.94 g/kg. The average amino acids digestibility of oats varied from 74.4% (Liz) to 95.6% (Fen) and in barley - from 75.8 % (Tre) to 89.6% (Fen). The amount of digestible energy in the analyzed varieties of oats and barley was an average compound 13.74 MJ/kg DM and 14.85 MJ/kg DM, respectively. An analysis of the results showed that different varieties of oats compared with barley are preferable for horse nutrition according to the crude fat, crude fiber, ash and separate amino acids content, but the analyzed barley varieties dominated the higher amounts of crude protein, the digestible Liz amount and higher DE content, and thus, could be recommended for making feed formulation for horses combining oats and barley, taking into account the chemical composition of using cereal varieties.

Keywords: Barley, digestive energy, horses, nutritional value, oats.

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Authors: Paolo Pilloni, Fabrizio Mulas, Salvatore Carta

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Nowadays, several research studies point up that an active lifestyle is essential for physical and mental health benefits. Mobile phones have greatly influenced people’s habits and attitudes also in the way they exercise. Our research work is mainly focused on investigating how to exploit mobile technologies to favour people’s exertion experience. To this end, we developed an exertion framework users can exploit through a real world mobile application, called EverywhereSport Run (EWRun), designed to act as a virtual personal trainer to support runners during their trainings. In this work, inspired by both previous findings in the field of interaction design for people with visual impairments, feedback gathered from real users of our framework, and positive results obtained from two experimentations, we present some new interaction facilities we designed to enhance the interaction experience during a training. The positive obtained results helped us to derive some interaction design recommendations we believe will be a valid support for designers of future mobile systems conceived to be used in circumstances where there are limited possibilities of interaction.

Keywords: Human Computer Interaction, Interaction Design Guidelines, Persuasive Mobile Technologies for Sport and Health.

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Authors: Dilusha Weeraddana, Ashanie Gunathillake, Samiru Gayan

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In an emergency, combining Wireless Sensor Network's data with the knowledge gathered from various other information sources and navigation algorithms, could help safely guide people to a building exit while avoiding the risky areas. This paper presents an emergency response and navigation support architecture for data gathering, knowledge manipulation, and navigational support in an emergency situation. At normal state, the system monitors the environment. When an emergency event detects, the system sends messages to first responders and immediately identifies the risky areas from safe areas to establishing escape paths. The main functionalities of the system include, gathering data from a wireless sensor network which is deployed in a multi-story indoor environment, processing it with information available in a knowledge base, and sharing the decisions made, with first responders and people in the building. The proposed architecture will act to reduce risk of losing human lives by evacuating people much faster with least congestion in an emergency environment. 

Keywords: Emergency response, Firefighters, Navigation, Wireless sensor network.

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Authors: Sunil Gupta, Harsh Kumar Verma, AL Sangal

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Wireless sensor networks can be used to measure and monitor many challenging problems and typically involve in monitoring, tracking and controlling areas such as battlefield monitoring, object tracking, habitat monitoring and home sentry systems. However, wireless sensor networks pose unique security challenges including forgery of sensor data, eavesdropping, denial of service attacks, and the physical compromise of sensor nodes. Node in a sensor networks may be vanished due to power exhaustion or malicious attacks. To expand the life span of the sensor network, a new node deployment is needed. In military scenarios, intruder may directly organize malicious nodes or manipulate existing nodes to set up malicious new nodes through many kinds of attacks. To avoid malicious nodes from joining the sensor network, a security is required in the design of sensor network protocols. In this paper, we proposed a security framework to provide a complete security solution against the known attacks in wireless sensor networks. Our framework accomplishes node authentication for new nodes with recognition of a malicious node. When deployed as a framework, a high degree of security is reachable compared with the conventional sensor network security solutions. A proposed framework can protect against most of the notorious attacks in sensor networks, and attain better computation and communication performance. This is different from conventional authentication methods based on the node identity. It includes identity of nodes and the node security time stamp into the authentication procedure. Hence security protocols not only see the identity of each node but also distinguish between new nodes and old nodes.

Keywords: Authentication, Key management, Wireless Sensornetwork, Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC).

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Authors: Boon Yih Mah

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Web-based Cognitive Writing Instruction (WeCWI) is a hybrid e-framework for the development of a web-based instruction (WBI), which contributes towards instructional design and language development. WeCWI divides its contribution in instructional design into macro and micro perspectives. In macro perspective, being a 21st century educator by disseminating knowledge and sharing ideas with the in-class and global learners is initiated. By leveraging the virtue of technology, WeCWI aims to transform an educator into an aggregator, curator, publisher, social networker and ultimately, a web-based instructor. Since the most notable contribution of integrating technology is being a tool of teaching as well as a stimulus for learning, WeCWI focuses on the use of contemporary web tools based on the multiple roles played by the 21st century educator. The micro perspective in instructional design draws attention to the pedagogical approaches focusing on three main aspects: reading, discussion, and writing. With the effective use of pedagogical approaches through free reading and enterprises, technology adds new dimensions and expands the boundaries of learning capacity. Lastly, WeCWI also imparts the fundamental theories and models for web-based instructors’ awareness such as interactionist theory, cognitive information processing (CIP) theory, computer-mediated communication (CMC), e-learning interactionalbased model, inquiry models, sensory mind model, and leaning styles model.

Keywords: WeCWI, instructional discovery, technological discovery, pedagogical discovery, theoretical discovery.

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Authors: Mohammad Songolzadeh, Maryam Takht Ravanchi, Mansooreh Soleimani

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CO2 is the primary anthropogenic greenhouse gas, accounting for 77% of the human contribution to the greenhouse effect in 2004. In the recent years, global concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing rapidly. CO2 emissions have an impact on global climate change. Anthropogenic CO2 is emitted primarily from fossil fuel combustion. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is one option for reducing CO2 emissions. There are three major approaches for CCS: post-combustion capture, pre-combustion capture and oxyfuel process. Post-combustion capture offers some advantages as existing combustion technologies can still be used without radical changes on them. There are several post combustion gas separation and capture technologies being investigated, namely; (a) absorption, (b) cryogenic separation, (c) membrane separation (d) micro algal biofixation and (e) adsorption. Apart from establishing new techniques, the exploration of capture materials with high separation performance and low capital cost are paramount importance. However, the application of adsorption from either technology, require easily regenerable and durable adsorbents with a high CO2 adsorption capacity. It has recently been reported that the cost of the CO2 capture can be reduced by using this technology. In this paper, the research progress (from experimental results) in adsorbents for CO2 adsorption, storage, and separations were reviewed and future research directions were suggested as well.

Keywords: Carbon capture and storage, pre-combustion, postcombustion, adsorption

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Authors: Jalal Khan, Daniyal Ali Sehrai, Shakeel Ahmad

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This paper presents the design and performance evaluation of multiband metamaterial based antenna operating in the 3.6 GHz (4G), 14.33 GHz, and 28.86 GHz (5G) frequency bands, for future mobile and handheld devices. The radiating element of the proposed design is made up of a conductive material supported by a 1.524 mm thicker Rogers-4003 substrate, having a relative dielectric constant and loss tangent of 3.55 and 0.0027, respectively. The substrate is backed by truncated ground plane. The future mobile communication system is based on higher frequencies, which are highly affected by the atmospheric conditions. Therefore, to overcome the path loss problem, essential enhancements and improvements must be made in the overall performance of the antenna. The traditional ground plane does not provide the in-phase reflection and surface wave suppression due to which side and back lobes are produced. This will affect the antenna performance in terms of gain and efficiency. To enhance the overall performance of the antenna, a metamaterial acting as a high impedance surface (HIS) is used as a reflector in the proposed design. The simulated gain of the metamaterial based antenna is enhanced from {2.76-6.47, 4.83-6.71 and 7.52-7.73} dB at 3.6, 14.33 and 28.89 GHz, respectively relative to the gain of the antenna backed by a traditional ground plane. The proposed antenna radiated efficiently with a radiated efficiency (>85 %) in all the three frequency bands with and without metamaterial surface. The total volume of the antenna is (L x W x h=45 x 40 x 1.524) mm³. The antenna can be potentially used for wireless handheld devices and mobile terminal. All the simulations have been performed using the Computer Simulation Technology (CST) software.

Keywords: Multiband, fourth generation (4G), fifth generation (5G), metamaterial, CST MWS.

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Authors: Eu Tteum Ha, Kwang Ryel Ryu

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As smartphones are equipped with various sensors, there have been many studies focused on using these sensors to create valuable applications. Human activity recognition is one such application motivated by various welfare applications, such as the support for the elderly, measurement of calorie consumption, lifestyle and exercise patterns analyses, and so on. One of the challenges one faces when using smartphone sensors for activity recognition is that the number of sensors should be minimized to save battery power. In this paper, we show that a fairly accurate classifier can be built that can distinguish ten different activities by using only a single sensor data, i.e., the smartphone accelerometer data. The approach that we adopt to deal with this twelve-class problem uses various methods. The features used for classifying these activities include not only the magnitude of acceleration vector at each time point, but also the maximum, the minimum, and the standard deviation of vector magnitude within a time window. The experiments compared the performance of four kinds of basic multi-class classifiers and the performance of four kinds of ensemble learning methods based on three kinds of basic multi-class classifiers. The results show that while the method with the highest accuracy is ECOC based on Random forest.

Keywords: Ensemble learning, activity recognition, smartphone accelerometer.

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Authors: E. Oskoueian, E. Maroufyan, Y.M. Goh, E. Ramezani-Fard, M. Ebrahimi

Abstract:

The fish meat plays an important role in the human health as it contains high quality protein. The tilapia fish considered as the third largest group of farmed fish. The oxidative deterioration of fish meat may occur during the cooking process. The proper cooking process and using natural antioxidant to prevent oxidation and enhance the quality of the tilapia fish fillet is necessary. Hence, this research was carried out to evaluate the potential of clove essential oil to prevent lipid peroxidation and enhance the antioxidant activity of tilapia fish fillet cooked using microwaving and grilling methods. The results showed that cooking using microwave significantly (p<0.05) increased the lipid peroxidation and decreased the DPPH and ferric reducing activity power of the fish fillet as compared to grilling method. The fortification of fish fillet using clove essential oil prevented from lipid peroxidation and enhanced the antioxidant activity of the fish fillet significantly (p<0.05). Consequently, fortification of tilapia fish fillet using clove essential oil followed by cooking using griller to have high quality cooked fish meat is recommended.

Keywords: Antioxidant activity, fillet, fish, fortification, lipid peroxidation.

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Authors: Chlopicka Joanna, Barton Henryk, Kryczyk Jadwiga, Francik Renata

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Recent studies demonstrated that high-fat diet increases oxidative stress in plasma and in a variety of tissues. Many researchers have been looking for natural products, which can reverse the effect of high fat diet. Recently, buckwheat is becoming common ingredient in functional food because of it properties. In study on buckwheat, it is known that, this plant plays roles as anti-oxidative, anti-inflammatory and anti-hypertensive. Nevertheless still little is known about buckwheat groats. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of addition of buckwheat groats to the fat diet (30% lard), on some antioxidant and oxidant stress parameters in plasma and selected tissues in Wistar rats. The experiment was carried out with three months old male Wistar rats ca. 250g of body weight fed for 5 weeks with either a high-fat (30% of lard) diet or control diet, with or without addition of buckwheat groats. In plasma biochemistry and the activities of the antioxidant enzymes were measured selected tissues: glutathione peroxidase (GPX), catalase (CAT) and the levels of total and reduced glutathione (GSH), free thiol groups (pSH), antioxidant potential of plasma (FRAP) and oxidant stress indices - proteins carbonyl groups (CO) and malonyldialdehyde concentration (MDA). Activity of catalase (CAT) in plasma of rats was significantly increased in buckwheat groats groups and activity of GPx3 in plasma of rats was decreased in buckwheat groups as compared to control group. The reduced glutathione (GSH) in plasma of rats was significantly increased and protein CO was significantly decreased in buckwheat groups as compared to controls. The lowered concentration of GSH was found in serum of rats fed buckwheat groats addition but it accompanied in 7-fold increase in reduced-to-oxidized glutatione ratio, significant increase in HDL and decrease in nonHDL concentration. Conclusions: Buckwheat groats indicate a beneficial effect in inhibiting protein and lipid peroxidation in rats and improved lipid profile. These results suggest that buckwheat groats exert a significant antioxidant potential and may be used as normal food constituent to ameliorate the oxidant-induced damage in organism. 

Keywords: Antioxidant, buckwheat, high-fat diet, rats.

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