Search results for: Quality of Research

Authors: Mikko Mäkelä, Risto Pöykiö, Gary Watkins, Hannu Nurmesniemi, Olli Dahl

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Trace element speciation of an integrated soil amendment matrix was studied with a modified BCR sequential extraction procedure. The analysis included pseudo-total concentration determinations according to USEPA 3051A and relevant physicochemical properties by standardized methods. Based on the results, the soil amendment matrix possessed neutralization capacity comparable to commercial fertilizers. Additionally, the pseudo-total concentrations of all trace elements included in the Finnish regulation for agricultural fertilizers were lower than the respective statutory limit values. According to chemical speciation, the lability of trace elements increased in the following order: Hg < Cr < Co < Cu < As < Zn < Ni < Pb < Cd < V < Mo < Ba. The validity of the BCR approach as a tool for chemical speciation was confirmed by the additional acid digestion phase. Recovery of trace elements during the procedure assured the validity of the approach and indicated good quality of the analytical work.

Keywords: BCR, bioavailability, trace element, industrialresidue, sequential extraction

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Authors: Elin Cahyaningsih, Dana Indra Sensuse, Wahyu Catur Wibowo, Sofiyanti Indriasari

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Bureaucracy reform program drives Indonesian government to change their management to enhance their organizational performance. Information technology became one of strategic plan that organization tried to improve. Knowledge management system is one of information system that supporting knowledge management implementation in government which categorized as people perspective, because this system has high dependency in human interaction and participation. Strategic plan for developing knowledge management system can be determine using some of information system strategic methods. This research conducted to define type of strategic method of information system, stage of activity each method, strength and weakness. Literature review methods used to identify and classify strategic methods of information system, differentiate method type, categorize common activities, strength and weakness. Result of this research are determine and compare six strategic information system methods, Balanced Scorecard and Risk Analysis believe as common strategic method that usually used and have the highest excellence strength.

Keywords: Knowledge management system, balanced scorecard, five force, risk analysis, gap analysis, value chain analysis, SWOT analysis.

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Authors: Agus Harjoko, Sri Hartati, Henry Dwiyasa

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There have been numerous implementations of security system using biometric, especially for identification and verification cases. An example of pattern used in biometric is the iris pattern in human eye. The iris pattern is considered unique for each person. The use of iris pattern poses problems in encoding the human iris. In this research, an efficient iris recognition method is proposed. In the proposed method the iris segmentation is based on the observation that the pupil has lower intensity than the iris, and the iris has lower intensity than the sclera. By detecting the boundary between the pupil and the iris and the boundary between the iris and the sclera, the iris area can be separated from pupil and sclera. A step is taken to reduce the effect of eyelashes and specular reflection of pupil. Then the four levels Coiflet wavelet transform is applied to the extracted iris image. The modified Hamming distance is employed to measure the similarity between two irises. This research yields the identification success rate of 84.25% for the CASIA version 1.0 database. The method gives an accuracy of 77.78% for the left eyes of MMU 1 database and 86.67% for the right eyes. The time required for the encoding process, from the segmentation until the iris code is generated, is 0.7096 seconds. These results show that the accuracy and speed of the method is better than many other methods.

Keywords: Biometric, iris recognition, wavelet transform.

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Authors: Ajay Kushwaha, Hemen Kalita, M. Aslam

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Post growth annealing of solution grown ZnO nanowire array is performed under controlled oxygen ambience. The role of annealing over surface defects and their consequence on dark/photo-conductivity and photosensitivity of nanowire array is investigated. Surface defect properties are explored using various measurement tools such as contact angle, photoluminescence, Raman spectroscopy and XPS measurements. The contact angle of the NW films reduces due to oxygen annealing and nanowire film surface changes from hydrophobic (96°) to hydrophilic (16°). Raman and XPS spectroscopy reveal that oxygen annealing improves the crystal quality of the nanowire films. The defect band emission intensity (relative to band edge emission, ID/IUV) reduces from 1.3 to 0.2 after annealing at 600 °C at 10 SCCM flow of oxygen. An order enhancement in dark conductivity is observed in O2 annealed samples, while photoconductivity is found to be slightly reduced due to lower concentration of surface related oxygen defects.

Keywords: Zinc Oxide, Surface defects, Photoluminescence, Photoconductivity, Photosensor and Nanowire thin film.

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Authors: S. Ghasemi, M. M. Kamelmanesh, A. Namayandeh, R. Biabanikhankahdani

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The common bean is the most important grain legume for direct human consumption in the world and BCMV is one of the world's most serious bean diseases that can reduce yield and quality of harvested product. To determine the best tolerance index to BCMV and recognize tolerant genotypes, 2 experiments were conducted in field conditions. Twenty five common bean genotypes were sown in 2 separate RCB design with 3 replications under contamination and non-contamination conditions. On the basis of the results of indices correlations GMP, MP and HARM were determined as the most suitable tolerance indices. The results of principle components analysis indicated 2 first components totally explained 98.52% of variations among data. The first and second components were named potential yield and stress susceptible respectively. Based on the results of BCMV tolerance indices assessment and biplot analysis WA8563-4, WA8563-2 and Cardinal were the genotypes that exhibited potential seed yield under contamination and noncontamination conditions.

Keywords: Phaseolus vulgaris, BCMV, principle components analysis, bi-plot analysis, tolerance.

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Authors: Wandili S. Awuor, Onyango D. Miruka, Waindi N. Eliud

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Foodborne Salmonella infections have become a major problem world wide. Salmonellosis transmitted from fish are quite common. Established quality control measures exist for export oriented fish, none exists for fish consumed locally. This study aimed at characterization of Salmonella isolated from Nile tilapia . The study was carried out in selected beaches along L. Victoria in Western Kenya between March and June 2007. One hundred and twenty fish specimens were collected. Salmonella isolates were confirmed using serotyping, biochemical testing in addition to malic acid dehydrogenase (mdh) and fliC gene sequencing. Twenty Salmonella isolates were confirmed by mdh gene sequencing. Nine (9) were S. enterica serotype typhimurium, four (4) were S. enterica Serotype, enteritidis and seven (7) were S. enterica serotype typhi. Nile tilapia have a role in transmission of Salmonellosis in the study area, poor sanitation was a major cause of pollution at the beach inshore waters.

Keywords: fliC, mdh, Salmonellosis, Serotype

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Authors: Gokhan Dok, Hakan Ozturk, Aydin Demir

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The behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) members is quite important in RC structures. When evaluating the performance of structures, the nonlinear properties are defined according to the cross sectional behavior of RC members. To be able to determine the behavior of RC members, its cross sectional behavior should be known well. The moment-curvature (MC) relationship is used to represent cross sectional behavior. The MC relationship of RC cross section can be best determined both experimentally and numerically. But, experimental study on RC members is very difficult. The aim of the study is to obtain the MC relationship of RC shear walls. Additionally, it is aimed to determine the parameters which affect MC relationship. While obtaining MC relationship of RC members, XTRACT which can represent robustly the MC relationship is used. Concrete quality, longitudinal and transverse reinforcing ratios, are selected as parameters which affect MC relationship. As a result of the study, curvature ductility and effective flexural stiffness are determined using this parameter. Effective flexural stiffness is compared with the values defined in design codes.

Keywords: Moment-curvature, reinforced concrete, shear wall, numerical.

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Authors: Balamurugan Baladhandapani, Ganesh Renganathan, V. R. Sanal Kumar

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In this paper a comprehensive review on various factory layouts has been carried out for designing a lucrative process layout for medium scale industries. Industry data base reveals that the end product rejection rate is on the order of 10% amounting large profit loss. In order to avoid these rejection rates and to increase the quality product production an intermediate non-destructive testing facility (INDTF) has been recommended for increasing the overall profit. We observed through detailed case studies that while introducing INDTF to medium scale industries the expensive production process can be avoided to the defective products well before its final shape. Additionally, the defective products identified during the intermediate stage can be effectively utilized for other applications or recycling; thereby the overall wastage of the raw materials can be reduced and profit can be increased. We concluded that the prudent design of a factory layout through critical path method facilitating with INDTF will warrant profitable outcome.

Keywords: Intermediate Non-destructive testing, Medium scale industries, Process layout design.

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Authors: Shaheena Erkiah, Adjnu Damar Ladkoo

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Worldwide, improving tourism competitiveness has been on the agendas of many stakeholders of the hotel sector, and they seem to have agreed that one of the best ways to compete is via the implementation of electronic customer relationship management (e-CRM). In so doing, the organizations enjoy strategic positioning on the competitive market by managing better not only the customers but, other business components including knowledge and employee management. Over the recent years, the tourism industry in Mauritius has witnessed a drastic economic boom at international and national levels; providing a new outlook to boost business performance through existing and potential customers. E-CRM has been one of the management tools used to achieving this position. Thus, this insightful context- Mauritius- was opted for the study. The aim was to assess the effectiveness of e-CRM as a strategic tool in the hotel sector in Mauritius through the implementation of business strategy to create competitive advantage and impact on the business performance. To achieve the objectives of the study, a quantitative research methodology was adopted and the research revealed that e-CRM is indeed an effective strategic tool in the hotel industry in Mauritius that can provide a competitive advantage and impact positively on the organization’s performance.

Keywords: Customer, electronic, management, relationship, strategic.

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Authors: Badr M. Alshammari, A. Rabeh, A. K. Mohamed

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This paper presents the modeling and the control of a grid-connected photovoltaic system (PVS). Firstly, the MPPT control of the PVS and its associated DC/DC converter has been analyzed in order to extract the maximum of available power. Secondly, the control system of the grid side converter (GSC) which is a three-phase voltage source inverter (VSI) has been presented. A special attention has been paid to the control algorithms of the GSC converter during grid voltages imbalances. Especially, three different control objectives are to achieve; the mitigation of the grid imbalance adverse effects, at the point of common coupling (PCC), on the injected currents, the elimination of double frequency oscillations in active power flow, and the elimination of double frequency oscillations in reactive power flow. Simulation results of two control strategies have been performed via MATLAB software in order to demonstrate the particularities of each control strategy according to power quality standards.

Keywords: Renewable energies, photovoltaic systems, DC link, voltage source inverter, space vector SVPWM, unbalanced voltage dips, symmetrical components.

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Authors: Sudhakar.R, Jayaraman.S

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Large volumes of fingerprints are collected and stored every day in a wide range of applications, including forensics, access control etc. It is evident from the database of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) which contains more than 70 million finger prints. Compression of this database is very important because of this high Volume. The performance of existing image coding standards generally degrades at low bit-rates because of the underlying block based Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) scheme. Over the past decade, the success of wavelets in solving many different problems has contributed to its unprecedented popularity. Due to implementation constraints scalar wavelets do not posses all the properties which are needed for better performance in compression. New class of wavelets called 'Multiwavelets' which posses more than one scaling filters overcomes this problem. The objective of this paper is to develop an efficient compression scheme and to obtain better quality and higher compression ratio through multiwavelet transform and embedded coding of multiwavelet coefficients through Set Partitioning In Hierarchical Trees algorithm (SPIHT) algorithm. A comparison of the best known multiwavelets is made to the best known scalar wavelets. Both quantitative and qualitative measures of performance are examined for Fingerprints.

Keywords: Mutiwavelet, Modified SPIHT Algorithm, SPIHT, Wavelet.

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Authors: R. Babisaraswathi, N. Shanthi, S. S. Kiruthika

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Web search engines are designed to retrieve and extract the information in the web databases and to return dynamic web pages. The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which it includes semantic content in web pages. The main goal of semantic web is to promote the quality of the current web by changing its contents into machine understandable form. Therefore, the milestone of semantic web is to have semantic level information in the web. Nowadays, people use different keyword- based search engines to find the relevant information they need from the web. But many of the words are polysemous. When these words are used to query a search engine, it displays the Search Result Records (SRRs) with different meanings. The SRRs with similar meanings are grouped together based on Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD). In addition to that semantic annotation is also performed to improve the efficiency of search result records. Semantic Annotation is the process of adding the semantic metadata to web resources. Thus the grouped SRRs are annotated and generate a summary which describes the information in SRRs. But the automatic semantic annotation is a significant challenge in the semantic web. Here ontology and knowledge based representation are used to annotate the web pages.

Keywords: Ontology, Semantic Web, WordNet, Word Sense Disambiguation.

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Authors: Chang, Wei-Chen

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The purpose of this study is to research on thoughts transmitted from virtual fitting-room and to deduce discussion in an auxiliary narrative way. The research structure is based on 3D virtual fitting-room as the research subject. Initially, we will discuss the principles of narrate study, User Demand and so on by using a narrative design pattern to transmit their objective indications of “people-situation-reason-object", etc, and then to analyze the virtual fitting-room examples that are able to provide a new thinking for designers who engaged in clothing related industry – which comes in “story telling" and “user-centered design" forms. Clothing designs are not just to cover up the body to keep warm but to draw closer to people-s demand physiologically and psychologically through interactive designs so as to achieve cognition between people and environment. In the “outside" goal of clothing-s functional designs, we use tribal group-s behavior characteristics to “transform" the existing personal cultural stories, and “reform" them to design appropriate interactive products. Synthesizing the above matters, apart from being able to regard “narrate" as a kind of functional thinking process, we are also able to regard it as a kind of choice, arrangement and an activity of story expression, allowing interactive design-s spirit, product characteristics and experience ideas be transmitted to target tribal group in a visual image performance method. It is a far more confident and innovative attempt, and meanwhile, able to achieve entertainment, joyful and so forth fundamental interactive transmissions. Therefore, this study takes “user-centered design" thinking as a basis to establish a set of clothing designs with interactive experience patterns and to assist designers to examine the five sensual feeling of interactive demands in order to initiate a new value in textile industry.

Keywords: Virtual Fitting-room, Interactive Design, User Demand Evaluation, Intelligent Systems.

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Authors: Abegunde Linda, Adedeji Oluwatola

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It has become an increasing evident that large development influences the climate. There are concerns that rising temperature over developed areas could have negative impact and increase living discomfort within city boundaries. Temperature trends in Ibadan city have received little attention, yet the area has experienced heavy urban expansion between 1972 and 2014. This research aims at examining the impact of landuse change on surface temperature knowing that the built-up environment absorb and store solar energy, resulting into the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. The Landsat imagery was used to examine the landuse change for a period of 42 years (1972-2014). Land Surface Temperature (LST) was obtained by converting the thermal band to a surface temperature map and zonal statistic analyses was used to examine the relationship between landuse and temperature emission. The results showed that the settlement area increased to a large extent while the area covered by vegetation reduced during the study period. The spatial and temporal trends of surface temperature are related to the gradual change in urban landuse/landcover and the settlement area has the highest emission. This research provides useful insight into the temporal behavior of the Ibadan city.

Keywords: Landuse, LST, Remote sensing, UHI.

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Authors: A. Elyousfi, A. Tamtaoui, E. Bouyakhf

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The H.264/AVC standard uses an intra prediction, 9 directional modes for 4x4 luma blocks and 8x8 luma blocks, 4 directional modes for 16x16 macroblock and 8x8 chroma blocks, respectively. It means that, for a macroblock, it has to perform 736 different RDO calculation before a best RDO modes is determined. With this Multiple intra-mode prediction, intra coding of H.264/AVC offers a considerably higher improvement in coding efficiency compared to other compression standards, but computational complexity is increased significantly. This paper presents a fast intra prediction algorithm for H.264/AVC intra prediction based a characteristic of homogeneity information. In this study, the gradient prediction method used to predict the homogeneous area and the quadratic prediction function used to predict the nonhomogeneous area. Based on the correlation between the homogeneity and block size, the smaller block is predicted by gradient prediction and quadratic prediction, so the bigger block is predicted by gradient prediction. Experimental results are presented to show that the proposed method reduce the complexity by up to 76.07% maintaining the similar PSNR quality with about 1.94%bit rate increase in average.

Keywords: Intra prediction, H.264/AVC, video coding, encodercomplexity.

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Authors: Wang Yang

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Shenzhen is a modern city of China's reform and opening-up policy, the development of urban morphology has been established on the administration of the Chinese government. This city`s planning paradigm is primarily affected by the spatial structure and human behavior. The subjective urban agglomeration center is divided into several groups and centers. In comparisons of this effect, the city development law has better to be neglected. With the continuous development of the internet, extensive data technology has been introduced in China. Data mining and data analysis has become important tools in municipal research. Data mining has been utilized to improve data cleaning such as receiving business data, traffic data and population data. Prior to data mining, government data were collected by traditional means, then were analyzed using city-relationship research, delaying the timeliness of urban development, especially for the contemporary city. Data update speed is very fast and based on the Internet. The city's point of interest (POI) in the excavation serves as data source affecting the city design, while satellite remote sensing is used as a reference object, city analysis is conducted in both directions, the administrative paradigm of government is broken and urban research is restored. Therefore, the use of data mining in urban analysis is very important. The satellite remote sensing data of the Shenzhen city in July 2018 were measured by the satellite Modis sensor and can be utilized to perform land surface temperature inversion, and analyze city heat island distribution of Shenzhen. This article acquired and classified the data from Shenzhen by using Data crawler technology. Data of Shenzhen heat island and interest points were simulated and analyzed in the GIS platform to discover the main features of functional equivalent distribution influence. Shenzhen is located in the east-west area of China. The city’s main streets are also determined according to the direction of city development. Therefore, it is determined that the functional area of the city is also distributed in the east-west direction. The urban heat island can express the heat map according to the functional urban area. Regional POI has correspondence. The research result clearly explains that the distribution of the urban heat island and the distribution of urban POIs are one-to-one correspondence. Urban heat island is primarily influenced by the properties of the underlying surface, avoiding the impact of urban climate. Using urban POIs as analysis object, the distribution of municipal POIs and population aggregation are closely connected, so that the distribution of the population corresponded with the distribution of the urban heat island.

Keywords: POI, satellite remote sensing, the population distribution, urban heat island thermal map.

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Authors: Parvinder S. Sandhu, Sunil Khullar, Satpreet Singh, Simranjit K. Bains, Manpreet Kaur, Gurvinder Singh

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Fault-proneness of a software module is the probability that the module contains faults. To predict faultproneness of modules different techniques have been proposed which includes statistical methods, machine learning techniques, neural network techniques and clustering techniques. The aim of proposed study is to explore whether metrics available in the early lifecycle (i.e. requirement metrics), metrics available in the late lifecycle (i.e. code metrics) and metrics available in the early lifecycle (i.e. requirement metrics) combined with metrics available in the late lifecycle (i.e. code metrics) can be used to identify fault prone modules using Genetic Algorithm technique. This approach has been tested with real time defect C Programming language datasets of NASA software projects. The results show that the fusion of requirement and code metric is the best prediction model for detecting the faults as compared with commonly used code based model.

Keywords: Genetic Algorithm, Fault Proneness, Software Faultand Software Quality.

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Authors: Sawsan J. Al-Husseini

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Transformational leadership (TL) has been found to have an important influence on knowledge and knowledge management (KM). It can contribute to organizational learning, employees’ creativity, encourage followers to participate in educational programs and develop the skills needed to achieve exceptional performance. This research sought to examine the impact of TL on knowledge donating and collecting and the differences between these impacts in public and private higher education institutes (HEIs) in Iraq. A mixed method approach was taken and 580 valid responses were collected to test the causal relationships between the factors, then 12 interviews were conducted with the leaders of HEIs to give more insight of the findings from quantitative stage. Employing structural equation modelling with AMOS v.24, the research found that TL would be ideal in an educational context, promoting knowledge sharing activities in both sectors. The interviews revealed differences between public and private HEIs in terms of the effects relationships. Guidelines are developed for academics as well as leaders and provided evidence to support the use of TL to encourage knowledge sharing activities within higher education in developing countries particularly Iraq.

Keywords: Transformational leadership, knowledge sharing, higher education, multi-groups.

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Authors: B. Nečasová, P. Liška, J. Šlanhof

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Verification of vented wooden façade system with bonded joints is presented in this paper. The potential of bonded joints is studied and described in more detail. The paper presents the results of an experimental and theoretical research about the effects of freeze cycling on the bonded joint. For the purpose of tests spruce timber profiles were chosen for the load bearing substructure. Planks from wooden plastic composite and Siberian larch are representing facade cladding. Two types of industrial polyurethane adhesives intended for structural bonding were selected. The article is focused on the preparation as well as on the subsequent curing and conditioning of test samples. All test samples were subjected to 15 cycles that represents sudden temperature changes, i.e. immersion in a water bath at (293.15 ± 3) K for 6 hours and subsequent freezing to (253.15 ± 2) K for 18 hours. Furthermore, the retention of bond strength between substructure and cladding wastested and strength in shear was determined under tensile stress.Research data indicate that little, if any, damage to the bond results from freezingcycles. Additionally, the suitability of selected group of adhesives in combination with timber substructure was confirmed.

Keywords: Adhesive system, bonded joints, wooden lightweight façade, timber substructure.

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Authors: Ghulam Haider Haidaree, Nsenda Lukumwena

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Most developing nations face energy production and supply problems. This is also the case of Afghanistan whose generating capacity does not meet its energy demand. This is due in part to high security and risk caused by war which deters foreign investments and insufficient internal revenue. To address the issue above, this paper would like to suggest an alternative and affordable way to deal with the energy problem. That is by converting Solid Waste to energy. As a result, this approach tackles the municipal solid waste issue (potential cause of several diseases), contributes to the improvement of the quality of life, local economy, and so on. While addressing the solid waste problem in general, this paper samples specifically one municipality which is District-12, one of the 22 districts of Kabul city. Using geographic information system (GIS) technology, District-12 is divided into nine different zones whose municipal solid waste is respectively collected, processed, and converted into electricity and distributed to the closest area. It is important to mention that GIS has been used to estimate the amount of electricity to be distributed and to optimally position the production plant.

Keywords: Energy problem, estimation of electricity, GIS zones, solid waste management system.

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Authors: S. Lakestani, B. Karakas, S. Acar Vaizoglu, B. Guciz Dogan, C. Guler, B. Sekerel, A. Taner, G. Gullu

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Abstract–Indoor air (VOCs) samples were collected simultaneously from variety of indoors (e.g. living rooms, baby-s rooms) and outdoor environments which were voluntarily selected from the houses in which pregnant residents live throughout Ankara. This is the first comprehensive study done in Turkey starting from prenatal period and continued till the babies had one year old. VOCs levels were measured over 76 homes. Air samples were collected in Tenax TA sorbent filled tubes with active sampling method and analyzed with Thermal Desorber and Gas Chromatography/Mass spectrometry (TD-GC/MS). At the first sampling period in the baby-s rooms maximum concentration of toluene was measured about 240.77μg.m-3 and in the living rooms maximum concentration of naphthalene was 180.24μg.m-3. At the second sampling period in the baby-s rooms maximum concentration of toluene was measured about 144.97μg.m-3 and in the living rooms maximum concentration of naphthalene was 247.89μg.m-3. Concentration of TVOCs in the first period was generally higher than the second period.

Keywords: Indoor Air, Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), Gas Chromatography

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Authors: Raghav Lakhotia, Chandra Kanth Nagesh, Krishna Madgula

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A lot has been said and discussed regarding the rationale and significance of the Bechdel Score. It became a digital sensation in 2013, when Swedish cinemas began to showcase the Bechdel test score of a film alongside its rating. The test has drawn criticism from experts and the film fraternity regarding its use to rate the female presence in a movie. The pundits believe that the score is too simplified and the underlying criteria of a film to pass the test must include 1) at least two women, 2) who have at least one dialogue, 3) about something other than a man, is egregious. In this research, we have considered a few more parameters which highlight how we represent females in film, like the number of female dialogues in a movie, dialogue genre, and part of speech tags in the dialogue. The parameters were missing in the existing criteria to calculate the Bechdel score. The research aims to analyze 342 movies scripts to test a hypothesis if these extra parameters, above with the current Bechdel criteria, are significant in calculating the female representation score. The result of the Principal Component Analysis method concludes that the female dialogue content is a key component and should be considered while measuring the representation of women in a work of fiction.

Keywords: Bechdel test, dialogue genre, parts of speech tags, principal component analysis.

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Authors: Tsair-Fwu Lee , Hui-Min Ting , Pei-Ju Chao, Jing-Chuan Jiang, Min-Yuan Chao, Wen-Cheng Chen, Long-Chang Chen, Jia-Ming Wu

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The purpose of this study is to derive parameters estimating for the Lyman–Kutcher–Burman (LKB) normal tissue complication probability (NTCP) model using analysis of scintigraphy assessments and quality of life (QoL) measurement questionnaires for the parotid gland (xerostomia). In total, 31 patients with head-and-neck (HN) cancer were enrolled. Salivary excretion factor (SEF) and EORTC QLQ-H&N35 questionnaires datasets are used for the NTCP modeling to describe the incidence of grade 4 xerostomia. Assuming that n= 1, NTCP fitted parameters are given as TD50= 43.6 Gy, m= 0.18 in SEF analysis, and as TD50= 44.1 Gy, m= 0.11 in QoL measurements, respectively. SEF and QoL datasets can validate the Quantitative Analyses of Normal Tissue Effects in the Clinic (QUANTEC) guidelines well, resulting in NPV-s of 100% for the both datasets and suggests that the QUANTEC 25/20Gy gland-spared guidelines are suitable for clinical used for the HN cohort to effectively avoid xerostomia.

Keywords: HN, NTCP, SEF, QoL, QUANTEC

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Authors: Pennapa Palapin

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This research sought to discover the forms of promotion and dissemination of traditional local wisdom that are used to create occupations among the elderly at Noanmueng Community, Muang Sub-District, Baan Doong District, Udornthani Province. The criteria used to select the research sample group were: having a role involved in the promotion and dissemination of traditional local wisdom to create occupations among the elderly; being an experienced person who the residents of Noanmueng Community find trustworthy; and having lived in Noanmueng Community for a long time so as to be able to see the development and change that occurs. A total of 16 persons were thus selected. Data was gathered through a qualitative study, using semi-structured indepth interviews. The collected data was then summarized and discussed according to the research objectives. Finally, the data was presented in narrative format. Results found that the identifying traditional local wisdom of the community (which grew from the residents’ experience and beneficial usage in daily life, passed down from generation to generation) was the weaving of cloth and basketry. As for the manner of promotion and dissemination of traditional local wisdom, these skills were passed down through teaching by example to family members, relatives and others in the community. This was largely the initiative of the elders or elderly members of the community. In order for the promotion and dissemination of traditional local wisdom to create occupations among the elderly, the traditional local wisdom should be supported in every way through participation of the community members. For example, establish a museum of traditional local wisdom for the collection of traditional local wisdom in various fields, both from the past and present innovations. This would be a source of pride for the community, simultaneously helping traditional local wisdom to become widely known and to create income for the community’s elderly. Additional ways include organizing exhibitions of products made by traditional local wisdom, finding both domestic and international markets, as well as building both domestic and international networks aiming to find opportunities to market products made by traditional local wisdom.

Keywords: Traditional local wisdom, Occupation, Elderly.

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Authors: Ali Anaissi, Paul J. Kennedy, Madhu Goyal

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Analysis and visualization of microarraydata is veryassistantfor biologists and clinicians in the field of diagnosis and treatment of patients. It allows Clinicians to better understand the structure of microarray and facilitates understanding gene expression in cells. However, microarray dataset is a complex data set and has thousands of features and a very small number of observations. This very high dimensional data set often contains some noise, non-useful information and a small number of relevant features for disease or genotype. This paper proposes a non-linear dimensionality reduction algorithm Local Principal Component (LPC) which aims to maps high dimensional data to a lower dimensional space. The reduced data represents the most important variables underlying the original data. Experimental results and comparisons are presented to show the quality of the proposed algorithm. Moreover, experiments also show how this algorithm reduces high dimensional data whilst preserving the neighbourhoods of the points in the low dimensional space as in the high dimensional space.

Keywords: Linear Dimension Reduction, Non-Linear Dimension Reduction, Principal Component Analysis, Biologists.

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Authors: A. Bayaga

Abstract:

This research provides a technical account of estimating Transition Probability using Time-homogeneous Markov Jump Process applying by South African HIV/AIDS data from the Statistics South Africa. It employs Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE) model to explore the possible influence of Transition Probability of mortality cases in which case the data was based on actual Statistics South Africa. This was conducted via an integrated demographic and epidemiological model of South African HIV/AIDS epidemic. The model was fitted to age-specific HIV prevalence data and recorded death data using MLE model. Though the previous model results suggest HIV in South Africa has declined and AIDS mortality rates have declined since 2002 – 2013, in contrast, our results differ evidently with the generally accepted HIV models (Spectrum/EPP and ASSA2008) in South Africa. However, there is the need for supplementary research to be conducted to enhance the demographic parameters in the model and as well apply it to each of the nine (9) provinces of South Africa.

Keywords: AIDS mortality rates, Epidemiological model, Time-homogeneous Markov Jump Process, Transition Probability, Statistics South Africa.

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Authors: Hamed Alqahtani, Manolya Kavakli-Thorne

Abstract:

The large pose discrepancy is one of the critical challenges in face recognition during video surveillance. Due to the entanglement of pose attributes with identity information, the conventional approaches for pose-independent representation lack in providing quality results in recognizing largely posed faces. In this paper, we propose a practical approach to disentangle the pose attribute from the identity information followed by synthesis of a face using a classifier network in latent space. The proposed approach employs a modified generative adversarial network framework consisting of an encoder-decoder structure embedded with a classifier in manifold space for carrying out factorization on the latent encoding. It can be further generalized to other face and non-face attributes for real-life video frames containing faces with significant attribute variations. Experimental results and comparison with state of the art in the field prove that the learned representation of the proposed approach synthesizes more compelling perceptual images through a combination of adversarial and classification losses.

Keywords: Video surveillance, disentanglement, face detection.

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Authors: F.Alilat, S.Loumi, H.Merrad, B.Sansal

Abstract:

In this article a modification of the algorithm of the fuzzy ART network, aiming at returning it supervised is carried out. It consists of the search for the comparison, training and vigilance parameters giving the minimum quadratic distances between the output of the training base and those obtained by the network. The same process is applied for the determination of the parameters of the fuzzy ARTMAP giving the most powerful network. The modification consist in making learn the fuzzy ARTMAP a base of examples not only once as it is of use, but as many time as its architecture is in evolution or than the objective error is not reached . In this way, we don-t worry about the values to impose on the eight (08) parameters of the network. To evaluate each one of these three networks modified, a comparison of their performances is carried out. As application we carried out a classification of the image of Algiers-s bay taken by SPOT XS. We use as criterion of evaluation the training duration, the mean square error (MSE) in step control and the rate of good classification per class. The results of this study presented as curves, tables and images show that modified fuzzy ARTMAP presents the best compromise quality/computing time.

Keywords: Neural Networks, fuzzy ART, fuzzy ARTMAP, Remote sensing, multispectral Classification.

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Authors: Jamila Bhar, Ridha Ouni, Kholdoun Torki, Salem Nasri

Abstract:

To support user mobility for a wireless network new mechanisms are needed and are fundamental, such as paging, location updating, routing, and handover. Also an important key feature is mobile QoS offered by the WATM. Several ATM network protocols should be updated to implement mobility management and to maintain the already ATM QoS over wireless ATM networks. A survey of the various schemes and types of handover is provided. Handover procedure allows guarantee the terminal connection reestablishment when it moves between areas covered by different base stations. It is useful to satisfy user radio link transfer without interrupting a connection. However, failure to offer efficient solutions will result in handover important packet loss, severe delays and degradation of QoS offered to the applications. This paper reviews the requirements, characteristics and open issues of wireless ATM, particularly with regard to handover. It introduces key aspects of WATM and mobility extensions, which are added in the fixed ATM network. We propose a flexible approach for handover management that will minimize the QoS deterioration. Functional entities of this flexible approach are discussed in order to achieve minimum impact on the connection quality when a MT crosses the BS.

Keywords: Handover, HDL synthesis, QoS, Wireless ATM.

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Authors: Tingke Wu, Yaping Huang

Abstract:

Many cities in China have been experiencing serious urban sprawl since the 1980s, which pose great challenges to a country with scare cultivated land and huge population. Because of different social and economic context and development stage, driving forces of urban sprawl in China are quite different from developed countries. Therefore, it is of great importance to probe into urban sprawl driving mechanism in Chinese context. By a comparison study of the background and features of urban sprawl between China and developed countries, this research establishes an analytical framework for sprawl dynamic mechanism in China. By literature review and analyzing data from national statistical yearbook, it then probes into the driving mechanism and the primary cause of urban sprawl. The results suggest that population increase, economic growth, traffic and information technology development lead to rapid expansion of urban space; defects of land institution and lack of effective guidance give rise to low efficiency of urban land use. Moreover, urban sprawl is ultimately attributed to imperfections of policy and institution. On this basis, this research puts forward several sprawl control strategies in Chinese context.

Keywords: China, driving forces, driving mechanism, land institution, urban expansion, urban sprawl.

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