Search results for: Fractal Dimension

Authors: Esther Lorrayne M. Pereira, Adriana Souza M. Batista, Fabíola A. S. Ribeiro, Adelina P. Santos, Clascídia A. Furtado, Luiz O. Faria

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The combination of multi–walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) with polymers offers an attractive route to reinforce the macromolecular compounds as well as the introduction of new properties based on morphological modifications or electronic interactions between the two constituents. As they are only a few nanometers in dimension, it offers ultra-large interfacial area per volume between the nano-element and polymer matrix. Nevertheless, the use of MWCNTs as a rough material in different applications has been largely limited by their poor processability, insolubility, and infusibility. Studies concerning the nanofiller reinforced polymer composites are justified in an attempt to overcome these limitations. This work presents one preliminary study of MWCNTs dispersion into the PVDF homopolymer. For preparation, the composite components were diluted in n,n-dimethylacetamide (DMAc) with mechanical agitation assistance. After complete dilution, followed by slow evaporation of the solvent at 60°C, the samples were dried. Films of about 80 μm were obtained. FTIR and UV-Vis spectroscopic techniques were used to characterize the nanocomposites. The appearance of absorption bands in the FTIR spectra of nanofilled samples, when compared to the spectrum of pristine PVDF samples, are discussed and compared with the UV-Vis measurements.

Keywords: Composites materials, FTIR, MWNTs, PVDF, UVVis.

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Authors: Hussein Togun, Tuqa Abdulrazzaq, S. N. Kazi, A. Badarudin, M. K. A. Ariffin, M. N. M. Zubir

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Heat transfer and laminar fluid flow over backward facing step with and without obstacle numerically studied in this paper. The finite volume method adopted to solve continuity, momentum and energy equations in two dimensions. Backward facing step without obstacle and with different dimension of obstacle were presented. The step height and expansion ratio of channel were 4.8mm and 2 respectively, the range of Reynolds number varied from 75 to 225, constant heat flux subjected on downstream of wall was 2000W/m², and length of obstacle was 1.5, 3, and 4.5mm with width 1.5mm. The separation length noticed increase with increase Reynolds number and height of obstacle. The result shows increase of heat transfer coefficient for backward facing step with obstacle in compared to those without obstacle. The maximum enhancement of heat transfer observed at 4.5mm of height obstacle due to increase recirculation flow after the obstacle in addition that at backward. Streamline of velocity showing the increase of recirculation region with used obstacle in compared without obstacle and highest recirculation region observed at obstacle height 4.5mm. The amount of enhancement heat transfer was varied between 3-5% compared to backward without obstacle.

Keywords: Separation flow, Backward facing step, Heat transfer, Laminar flow.

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Authors: S. Shubha, B. N. Meera

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Physics Education Research (PER) results have shown that students do not achieve the expected level of competency in understanding the concepts of different domains of Physics learning when taught by the traditional teaching methods, the concepts of Electricity and Magnetism (E&M) being one among them. Simulation being one of the valuable instructional tools renders an opportunity to visualize varied experiences with such concepts. Considering the electric force concept which requires extensive use of vector representations, we report here the outcome of the research results pertaining to the student understanding of this concept and the role of simulation in using vector representation. The simulation platform provides a positive impact on the use of vector representation. The first stage of this study involves eliciting and analyzing student responses to questions that probe their understanding of the concept of electrostatic force and this is followed by four stages of student interviews as they use the interactive simulations of electric force in one dimension. Student responses to the questions are recorded in real time using electronic pad. A validation test interview is conducted to evaluate students' understanding of the electric force concept after using interactive simulation. Results indicate lack of procedural knowledge of the vector representation. The study emphasizes the need for the choice of appropriate simulation and mode of induction for learning.

Keywords: Electric Force, Interactive, Representation, Simulation.

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Authors: Khairul Jauhari, Achmad Widodo, Ismoyo Haryanto

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In this article, the radial displacement error correction capability of a high precision spindle grinding caused by unbalance force was investigated. The spindle shaft is considered as a flexible rotor mounted on two sets of angular contact ball bearing. Finite element methods (FEM) have been adopted for obtaining the equation of motion of the spindle. In this paper, firstly, natural frequencies, critical frequencies, and amplitude of the unbalance response caused by residual unbalance are determined in order to investigate the spindle behaviors. Furthermore, an optimization design algorithm is employed to minimize radial displacement of the spindle which considers dimension of the spindle shaft, the dynamic characteristics of the bearings, critical frequencies and amplitude of the unbalance response, and computes optimum spindle diameters and stiffness and damping of the bearings. Numerical simulation results show that by optimizing the spindle diameters, and stiffness and damping in the bearings, radial displacement of the spindle can be reduced. A spindle about 4 μm radial displacement error can be compensated with 2 μm accuracy. This certainly can improve the accuracy of the product of machining.

Keywords: Error correction, High precision grinding, Optimization, Radial displacement, Spindle.

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Authors: O. J. G. Somsen

Abstract:

One of the tasks of optical surveillance is to detect anomalies in large amounts of image data. However, if the size of the anomaly is very small, limited information is available to distinguish it from the surrounding environment. Spectral detection provides a useful source of additional information and may help to detect anomalies with a size of a few pixels or less. Unfortunately, spectral cameras are expensive because of the difficulty of separating two spatial in addition to one spectral dimension. We investigate the possibility of modifying a simple spectral line detector for outdoor detection. This may be especially useful if the area of interest forms a line, such as the horizon. We use a monochrome CCD that also enables detection into the near infrared. A simple camera is attached to the setup to determine which part of the environment is spectrally imaged. Our preliminary results indicate that sensitive detection of very small targets is indeed possible. Spectra could be taken from the various targets by averaging columns in the line image. By imaging a set of lines of various widths we found narrow lines that could not be seen in the color image but remained visible in the spectral line image. A simultaneous analysis of the entire spectra can produce better results than visual inspection of the line spectral image. We are presently developing calibration targets for spatial and spectral focusing and alignment with the spatial camera. This will present improved results and more use in outdoor application.

Keywords: Anomaly detection, spectroscopic line imaging, image analysis.

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Authors: Tania Elena González Alvarado, Ma. Antonieta Martín Granados

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The aim of this paper is to explain what a multienterprise tie is, what evidence its analysis provides and how does the cooperation mechanism influence the establishment of a multienterprise tie. The study focuses on businesses of smaller dimension, geographically dispersed and whose businessmen are learning to cooperate in an international environment. The empirical evidence obtained at this moment permits to conclude the following: The tie is not long-lasting, it has an end; opportunism is an opportunity to learn; the multi-enterprise tie is a space to learn about the cooperation mechanism; the local tie permits a businessman to alternate between competition and cooperation strategies; the disappearance of a tie is an experience of learning for a businessman, diminishing the possibility of failure in the next tie; the cooperation mechanism tends to eliminate hierarchical relations; the multienterprise tie diminishes the asymmetries and permits SME-s to have a better position when they negotiate with large companies; the multi-enterprise tie impacts positively on the local system. The collection of empirical evidence was done trough the following instruments: direct observation in a business encounter to which the businesses attended in 2003 (202 Mexican agro industry SME-s), a survey applied in 2004 (129), a questionnaire applied in 2005 (86 businesses), field visits to the businesses during the period 2006-2008 and; a survey applied by telephone in 2008 (55 Mexican agro industry SME-s).

Keywords: Cooperation, multi-enterprise tie, links, networks.

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Authors: Saowapa Phaithayawat

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The purposes of this study are 1) to study the impact of the 3-community-core model: House (H), Temple (T), and School (S) with the co-operation of official departments on community development to ASEAN economic community involvement and 2) to study the procedures and extension of the model. The research which is a qualitative research is based on the formal and informal interviews. Local people in a community are observed. Group interview is, also, operated by executors and cooperators in the school in the community. In terms of social and cultural dimension, the 3-community-core model consisting of house, temple and school is the base of Thai cultures bringing about understanding, happiness and unity to the community. The result of this research is that the official departments in accompanied with this model developers cooperatively work together in the community to support such factors as budget, plan, activities. Moreover, the need of community, and the continual result to sustain the community are satisfied by the model implementation. In terms of the procedures of the model implementation, executors and co-operators can work, coordinate, think, and launch their public relation altogether. Concerning the model development, this enables the community to achieve its goal to prepare the community’s readiness for ASEAN Economic Community involvement.

Keywords: ASEAN Economic Community, Community Development.

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Authors: Yu Shi, Rong Liu, Jingyun Lv

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Compression textiles with ergonomic-fit and controllable pressure performance have demonstrated positive effect on prevention and treatment of chronic venous insufficiency (CVI). Well-designed compression textile products contribute to improving user compliance in their daily application. This study explored the effects of multiple knitting variables (yarn-machinery settings) on the physical-mechanical properties and the produced pressure magnitudes of tubular compression fabrics (TCFs) through experimental testing and multiple regression modeling. The results indicated that fabric physical (stitch densities and circumference) and mechanical (tensile) properties were affected by the linear density of inlay yarns, which, to some extent, influenced pressure magnitudes of the TCFs. Knitting variables (e.g., feeding velocity of inlay yarns and loop size settings) can alter circumferences and tensile properties of tubular fabrics, respectively, and significantly varied pressure values of the TCFs. This study enhanced the understanding of the effects of knitting factors on pressure controlling of TCFs, thus facilitating dimension and pressure design of compression textiles in future development.

Keywords: Laid-in knitted fabric, yarn-machinery settings, pressure magnitudes, quantitative analysis, compression textiles.

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Authors: Kaushik Sathupadi, Sandesh Achar

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Human action recognition (HAR) modeling is a critical task in machine learning. These systems require better techniques for recognizing body parts and selecting optimal features based on vision sensors to identify complex action patterns efficiently. Still, there is a considerable gap and challenges between images and videos, such as brightness, motion variation, and random clutters. This paper proposes a robust approach for classifying human actions over cloud-based image data. First, we apply pre-processing and detection, human and outer shape detection techniques. Next, we extract valuable information in terms of cues. We extract two distinct features: fuzzy local binary patterns and sequence representation. Then, we applied a greedy, randomized adaptive search procedure for data optimization and dimension reduction, and for classification, we used a random forest. We tested our model on two benchmark datasets, AAMAZ and the KTH Multi-view Football datasets. Our HAR framework significantly outperforms the other state-of-the-art approaches and achieves a better recognition rate of 91% and 89.6% over the AAMAZ and KTH Multi-view Football datasets, respectively.

Keywords: Computer vision, human motion analysis, random forest, machine learning.

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Authors: Ick Hoon Jang, Hoon Jae Lee, Dae Hoon Kwon, Ui Young Pak

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In this paper, we propose a texture feature-based language identification using wavelet-domain BDIP (block difference of inverse probabilities) and BVLC (block variance of local correlation coefficients) features and FFT (fast Fourier transform) feature. In the proposed method, wavelet subbands are first obtained by wavelet transform from a test image and denoised by Donoho-s soft-thresholding. BDIP and BVLC operators are next applied to the wavelet subbands. FFT blocks are also obtained by 2D (twodimensional) FFT from the blocks into which the test image is partitioned. Some significant FFT coefficients in each block are selected and magnitude operator is applied to them. Moments for each subband of BDIP and BVLC and for each magnitude of significant FFT coefficients are then computed and fused into a feature vector. In classification, a stabilized Bayesian classifier, which adopts variance thresholding, searches the training feature vector most similar to the test feature vector. Experimental results show that the proposed method with the three operations yields excellent language identification even with rather low feature dimension.

Keywords: BDIP, BVLC, FFT, language identification, texture feature, wavelet transform.

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Authors: Mahdi Sharifian, Mohammad Ali Fanaei

Abstract:

Saccharomyces cerevisiae (baker-s yeast) can exhibit sustained oscillations during the operation in a continuous bioreactor that adversely affects its stability and productivity. Because of heterogeneous nature of cell populations, the cell population balance models can be used to capture the dynamic behavior of such cultures. In this paper an unstructured, segregated model is used which is based on population balance equation(PBE) and then in order to simulation, the 4th order Rung-Kutta is used for time dimension and three methods, finite difference, orthogonal collocation on finite elements and Galerkin finite element are used for discretization of the cell mass domain. The results indicate that the orthogonal collocation on finite element not only is able to predict the oscillating behavior of the cell culture but also needs much little time for calculations. Therefore this method is preferred in comparison with other methods. In the next step two controllers, a globally linearizing control (GLC) and a conventional proportional-integral (PI) controller are designed for controlling the total cell mass per unit volume, and performances of these controllers are compared through simulation. The results show that although the PI controller has simpler structure, the GLC has better performance.

Keywords: Bioreactor, cell population balance, finite difference, orthogonal collocation on finite elements, Galerkin finite element, feedback linearization, PI controller.

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Authors: Shigeyuki Haruyama, Aidil Khaidir Bin Muhamad, Tadayuki Kyoutani, Dai-Heng Chen, Ken Kaminishi

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The product development process has undergone many changes concomitant with world progress in order to produce products that meet customer needs quickly and inexpensively. Analysis-Led Design (ALD) is one of the latest methods in the product development process. It focuses more on up-front engineering, a product quality optimization process that starts early in the conceptual design stage. Product development and manufacturing through ALD utilizes digital tools extensively for design, analysis and product optimization. This study uses computer-aided design (CAD) and finite element method (FEM) simulation to examine the modes of deformation of tubular members under axial loading. A multiple-combination impact absorption tubular member, referred to as a compress–expand member, is proposed as a substitute for the conventional thin-walled cylindrical tube to be used as a vehicle’s crash box. The study of deformation modes is crucial for evaluating the geometrical dimension limits by which a member can absorb energy efficiently.

Keywords: Analysis-led design, axial collapse, tubular member, finite element method, thin-walled cylindrical tube, compress-expand member, deformation modes.

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Authors: Ana-Marija Stjepić, Luka Sušac, Dalia Suša Vugec

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In the last few years, examples from scientific literature and business practices show that the adoption of technological innovations increases enterprises' performance. Recently, when it comes to the field of information technology innovation, business intelligence systems (BISs) have drawn a significant amount of attention of the scientific circles. BISs can be understood as a form of technological innovation which can bring certain benefits to the organizations that are adopting it. Therefore, the aim of this paper is twofold: (1) to define determinants of successful BISs adoption in small and medium enterprises and thus contribute to this neglected research area and (2) to present the current state of BISs adoption in small and medium-sized companies. In order to do so, determinants are defined and classified into three dimensions, according to the Technology – Organization – Environment (TOE) theoretical framework that describes the impact of each dimension on technological innovations adoption. Moreover, paper brings a case study presenting the adoption of BISs in practice within an organization from tertiary (service) industry sector. Based on the results of the study, guidelines for more efficient, faster and easier BISs adoption are presented.

Keywords: Adoption, business intelligence, business intelligence systems, case study, TOE framework.

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Authors: Hsin-Chang Yang, Chung-Hong Lee, Kuo-Lung Ke

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The self-organizing map (SOM) model is a well-known neural network model with wide spread of applications. The main characteristics of SOM are two-fold, namely dimension reduction and topology preservation. Using SOM, a high-dimensional data space will be mapped to some low-dimensional space. Meanwhile, the topological relations among data will be preserved. With such characteristics, the SOM was usually applied on data clustering and visualization tasks. However, the SOM has main disadvantage of the need to know the number and structure of neurons prior to training, which are difficult to be determined. Several schemes have been proposed to tackle such deficiency. Examples are growing/expandable SOM, hierarchical SOM, and growing hierarchical SOM. These schemes could dynamically expand the map, even generate hierarchical maps, during training. Encouraging results were reported. Basically, these schemes adapt the size and structure of the map according to the distribution of training data. That is, they are data-driven or dataoriented SOM schemes. In this work, a topic-oriented SOM scheme which is suitable for document clustering and organization will be developed. The proposed SOM will automatically adapt the number as well as the structure of the map according to identified topics. Unlike other data-oriented SOMs, our approach expands the map and generates the hierarchies both according to the topics and their characteristics of the neurons. The preliminary experiments give promising result and demonstrate the plausibility of the method.

Keywords: Self-organizing map, topic identification, learning algorithm, text clustering.

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Authors: Mohammad Asif

Abstract:

Heterogeneous catalysis is vital for a number of chemical, refinery and pollution control processes. The use of catalyst pellets of hollow cylindrical shape provide several distinct advantages over other common shapes, and can therefore help to enhance conversion levels in reactors. A better utilization of the catalytic material is probably most notable of these features due to the absence of the pellet core, which helps to significantly lower the effect of the internal transport resistance. This is reflected in the enhancement of the effectiveness factor. For the case of the first order irreversible kinetics, a substantial increase in the effectiveness factor can be obtained by varying shape parameters. Important shape parameters of a finite hollow cylinder are the ratio of the inside to the outside radii (κ) and the height to the diameter ratio (γ). A high value of κ the generally helps to enhance the effectiveness factor. On the other hand, lower values of the effectiveness factors are obtained when the dimension of the height and the diameter are comparable. Thus, the departure of parameter γ from the unity favors higher effectiveness factor. Since a higher effectiveness factor is a measure of a greater utilization of the catalytic material, higher conversion levels can be achieved using the hollow cylindrical pellets possessing optimized shape parameters.

Keywords: Finite hollow cylinder, Catalyst pellet, Effectiveness factor, Thiele Modulus, Conversion

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Authors: Shu-Yin Yu

Abstract:

With the advancement of artificial intelligence technology, most companies are aware of the profound potential of artificial intelligence in commercial marketing. Man-machine dialogue has become the latest trend in marketing customer service. However, chatbots are often considered to be lack of intelligent or unfriendly conversion, which instead reduces the communication effect of chatbots. To ensure that chatbots represent the brand image and provide a good user experience, companies and users attach great importance. In this study, customer service chatbot was used as the research sample. The research variables are based on the theory of artificial intelligence emotions, integrating the technology acceptance model and innovation diffusion theory, and the three aspects of pleasure, arousal, and dominance of the human-machine PAD (Pleasure, Arousal and Dominance) dimension. The results show that most of the participants have a higher acceptance of innovative technologies and are high pleasure and arousal in the user experience. Participants still have traditional gender (female) service stereotypes about customer service chatbots. Users who have high trust in using chatbots can easily enhance brand acceptance and easily accept brand messages, extend the trust of chatbots to trust in the brand, and develop a positive attitude towards the brand.

Keywords: Brand attitude, chatbot, emotional interaction, user experience.

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Authors: Hussin K. Ragb, Vijayan K. Asari

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In this paper, we present a pedestrian detection descriptor called Fused Structure and Texture (FST) features based on the combination of the local phase information with the texture features. Since the phase of the signal conveys more structural information than the magnitude, the phase congruency concept is used to capture the structural features. On the other hand, the Center-Symmetric Local Binary Pattern (CSLBP) approach is used to capture the texture information of the image. The dimension less quantity of the phase congruency and the robustness of the CSLBP operator on the flat images, as well as the blur and illumination changes, lead the proposed descriptor to be more robust and less sensitive to the light variations. The proposed descriptor can be formed by extracting the phase congruency and the CSLBP values of each pixel of the image with respect to its neighborhood. The histogram of the oriented phase and the histogram of the CSLBP values for the local regions in the image are computed and concatenated to construct the FST descriptor. Several experiments were conducted on INRIA and the low resolution DaimlerChrysler datasets to evaluate the detection performance of the pedestrian detection system that is based on the FST descriptor. A linear Support Vector Machine (SVM) is used to train the pedestrian classifier. These experiments showed that the proposed FST descriptor has better detection performance over a set of state of the art feature extraction methodologies.

Keywords: Pedestrian detection, phase congruency, local phase, LBP features, CSLBP features, FST descriptor.

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Authors: Handan Ertaş

Abstract:

The aim of the study is to determine the relationship between organizational trust level and organizational justice of Municipality officials. Correlational method has been used via descriptive survey model and Organizational Justice Perception Scale, Organizational Trust Inventory and Interpersonal Trust Scale have been applied to 353 participants who work in Konya Metropolitan Municipality and central district municipalities in the study. Frequency as statistical method, Independent Samples t test for binary groups, One Way-ANOVA analyses for multi-groups and Pearson Correlation analysis have been used to determine the relation in the data analysis process.It has been determined in the outcomes of the study that participants have high level of organizational trust, “Interpersonal Trust” is in the first place and there is a significant difference in the favor of male officials in terms of Trust on the Organization Itself and Interpersonal Trust. It has also been understood that officials in district municipalities have higher perception level in all dimensions, there is a significant difference in Trust on the Organization sub-dimension and work status is an important factor on organizational trust perception. Moreover, the study has shown that organizational justice implementations are important in raising trust of official on the organization, administrator and colleagues, and there is a parallel relation between Organizational Trust components and Organizational Trust dimensions.

Keywords: Konya, Organizational Justice, Organizational.

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Authors: J.V.R.Ravindra, M.B.Srinivas,

Abstract:

Accurate modeling of high speed RLC interconnects has become a necessity to address signal integrity issues in current VLSI design. To accurately model a dispersive system of interconnects at higher frequencies; a full-wave analysis is required. However, conventional circuit simulation of interconnects with full wave models is extremely CPU expensive. We present an algorithm for reducing large VLSI circuits to much smaller ones with similar input-output behavior. A key feature of our method, called Frequency Shift Technique, is that it is capable of reducing linear time-varying systems. This enables it to capture frequency-translation and sampling behavior, important in communication subsystems such as mixers, RF components and switched-capacitor filters. Reduction is obtained by projecting the original system described by linear differential equations into a lower dimension. Experiments have been carried out using Cadence Design Simulator cwhich indicates that the proposed technique achieves more % reduction with less CPU time than the other model order reduction techniques existing in literature. We also present applications to RF circuit subsystems, obtaining size reductions and evaluation speedups of orders of magnitude with insignificant loss of accuracy.

Keywords: Model order Reduction, RLC, crosstalk

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Authors: Jijimon Alakkalam Joseph

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The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development claims to be a comprehensive and integrated plan of action for prosperity for people and the planet, including almost all dimensions of human existence. Nevertheless, the religious dimension of human existence has been kept away from development discussions. Care for the earth is one of the vital aspects of sustainable development. Farmers all over the world contribute much to environmental protection. Most farmers are religious believers and religious ideologies influence their agricultural practices. This nexus between faith and agriculture has forced policymakers to include religion in development discussions. This paper delves deeper into this religion and sustainable development connection. Buddhism and Christianity have contributed much to environmental protection in Taiwan. However, interviews conducted among 40 Taiwanese farmers (10 male and female farmers from Buddhism and Christianity) show that their faith experiences make them relate to the natural environment differently. Most of the Buddhist farmers interviewed admitted that they chose their religious adherence, while most of the Christian farmers inherited their faith. The in-depth analysis of the interview data collected underlines the close relationship between religion and sustainable development. More importantly, concerning their intention to care for the earth, farmers whose religious adherence is ‘chosen’ are self-motivated and more robust compared to those whose religious adherence is ‘inherited’.

Keywords: Buddhism, Christianity, environmental protection, sustainable development.

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Authors: Napisporn Memongkol, Runchana Sinthavalai, Nattapong Seneeratanaprayune Weerawat Ounsaneha, Chanisada Choosuk

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The objective of this research is to develop the performance indicators (PIs) in operational level for the Pre-hospital Emergency Medical Service (EMS) system employing in Thailand. This research started with ascertaining the current pre-hospital care system. The team analyzed the strategies of Narerthorn, a government unit under the ministry of public health, and the existing PIs of the pre-hospital care. Afterwards, the current National Strategic Plan of EMS development (2008-2012) of the Emergency Medical Institute of Thailand (EMIT) was considered using strategic analysis to developed Strategy Map (SM) and identified the Success Factors (SFs). The analysis results from strategy map and SFs were used to develop the Performance Indicators (PIs). To verify the set of PIs, the team has interviewed with the relevant practitioners for the possibilities to implement the PIs. To this paper, it was to ascertain that all the developed PIs support the objectives of the strategic plan. Nevertheless, the results showed that the operational level PIs suited only with the first dimension of National Strategic Plan (infrastructure and information technology development). Besides, the SF was the infrastructure development (to contribute the EMS system to people throughout with standard and efficiency both in normally and disaster conditions). Finally, twenty-nine indicators were developed from the analysis results of SM and SFs.

Keywords: Emergency Medical Service, Performance Indicator, Success Factor, Thailand

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Authors: S. R. M. Kutty, S. N. I. Ngatenah, M. H. Isa, A. Malakahmad

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Water hyacinth has been used in aquatic systems for wastewater purification in many years worldwide. The role of water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) species in polishing nitrate and phosphorus concentration from municipal wastewater treatment plant effluent by phytoremediation method was evaluated. The objective of this project is to determine the removal efficiency of water hyacinth in polishing nitrate and phosphorus, as well as chemical oxygen demand (COD) and ammonia. Water hyacinth is considered as the most efficient aquatic plant used in removing vast range of pollutants such as organic matters, nutrients and heavy metals. Water hyacinth, also referred as macrophytes, were cultivated in the treatment house in a reactor tank of approximately 90(L) x 40(W) x 25(H) in dimension and built with three compartments. Three water hyacinths were placed in each compartments and water sample in each compartment were collected in every two days. The plant observation was conducted by weight measurement, plant uptake and new young shoot development. Water hyacinth effectively removed approximately 49% of COD, 81% of ammonia, 67% of phosphorus and 92% of nitrate. It also showed significant growth rate at starting from day 6 with 0.33 shoot/day and they kept developing up to 0.38 shoot/day at the end of day 24. From the studies conducted, it was proved that water hyacinth is capable of polishing the effluent of municipal wastewater which contains undesirable amount of nitrate and phosphorus concentration.

Keywords: water hyacinth, phytoremediation, nutrient removal, Eichhornia crassipes

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Authors: Maria C. Proença, Marco Aniceto, Pedro N. Santos, José C. Freitas

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A methodology based on wavelets is proposed for the automatic location and delimitation of defects in limestone plates. Natural defects include dark colored spots, crystal zones trapped in the stone, areas of abnormal contrast colors, cracks or fracture lines, and fossil patterns. Although some of these may or may not be considered as defects according to the intended use of the plate, the goal is to pair each stone with a map of defects that can be overlaid on a computer display. These layers of defects constitute a database that will allow the preliminary selection of matching tiles of a particular variety, with specific dimensions, for a requirement of N square meters, to be done on a desktop computer rather than by a two-hour search in the storage park, with human operators manipulating stone plates as large as 3 m x 2 m, weighing about one ton. Accident risks and work times are reduced, with a consequent increase in productivity. The base for the algorithm is wavelet decomposition executed in two instances of the original image, to detect both hypotheses – dark and clear defects. The existence and/or size of these defects are the gauge to classify the quality grade of the stone products. The tuning of parameters that are possible in the framework of the wavelets corresponds to different levels of accuracy in the drawing of the contours and selection of the defects size, which allows for the use of the map of defects to cut a selected stone into tiles with minimum waste, according the dimension of defects allowed.

Keywords: Automatic detection, wavelets, defects, fracture lines.

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Authors: Ali N. Suri, Ahmad A. Al-Makhlufi

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Sandwich construction is widely accepted as a method of construction especially in the aircraft industry. It is a type of stressed skin construction formed by bonding two thin faces to a thick core, the faces resist all of the applied edge loads and provide all or nearly all of the required rigidities, the core spaces the faces to increase cross section moment of inertia about common neutral axis and transmit shear between them provides a perfect bond between core and faces is made.

Material for face sheets can be of metal or reinforced plastics laminates, core material can be metallic cores of thin sheets forming corrugation or honeycomb, or non metallic core of Balsa wood, plastic foams, or honeycomb made of reinforced plastics.

For in plane axial loading web core and web-foam core Sandwich panels can fail by local buckling of plates forming the cross section with buckling wave length of the order of length of spacing between webs.

In this study local buckling of web core and web-foam core Sandwich panels is carried out for given materials of facing and core, and given panel overall dimension for different combinations of cross section geometries.

The Finite Strip Method is used for the analysis, and Fortran based computer program is developed and used.

Keywords: Local Buckling, Finite Strip, Sandwich panels, Web and foam core.

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Authors: Nader Nabhani, Amir Tofighi

Abstract:

Nanotechnology is the science of creating, using and manipulating objects which have at least one dimension in range of 0.1 to 100 nanometers. In other words, nanotechnology is reconstructing a substance using its individual atoms and arranging them in a way that is desirable for our purpose. The main reason that nanotechnology has been attracting attentions is the unique properties that objects show when they are formed at nano-scale. These differing characteristics that nano-scale materials show compared to their nature-existing form is both useful in creating high quality products and dangerous when being in contact with body or spread in environment. In order to control and lower the risk of such nano-scale particles, the main following three topics should be considered: 1) First of all, these materials would cause long term diseases that may show their effects on body years after being penetrated in human organs and since this science has become recently developed in industrial scale not enough information is available about their hazards on body. 2) The second is that these particles can easily spread out in environment and remain in air, soil or water for very long time, besides their high ability to penetrate body skin and causing new kinds of diseases. 3) The third one is that to protect body and environment against the danger of these particles, the protective barriers must be finer than these small objects and such defenses are hard to accomplish. This paper will review, discuss and assess the risks that human and environment face as this new science develops at a high rate.

Keywords: Nanotechnology, risk assessment, environment.

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Authors: Liping Jing, Michael K. Ng, Tieyong Zeng

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Microarray data profiles gene expression on a whole genome scale, therefore, it provides a good way to study associations between gene expression and occurrence or progression of cancer. More and more researchers realized that microarray data is helpful to predict cancer sample. However, the high dimension of gene expressions is much larger than the sample size, which makes this task very difficult. Therefore, how to identify the significant genes causing cancer becomes emergency and also a hot and hard research topic. Many feature selection algorithms have been proposed in the past focusing on improving cancer predictive accuracy at the expense of ignoring the correlations between the features. In this work, a novel framework (named by SGS) is presented for stable gene selection and efficient cancer prediction . The proposed framework first performs clustering algorithm to find the gene groups where genes in each group have higher correlation coefficient, and then selects the significant genes in each group with Bayesian Lasso and important gene groups with group Lasso, and finally builds prediction model based on the shrinkage gene space with efficient classification algorithm (such as, SVM, 1NN, Regression and etc.). Experiment results on real world data show that the proposed framework often outperforms the existing feature selection and prediction methods, say SAM, IG and Lasso-type prediction model.

Keywords: Gene Selection, Cancer Prediction, Lasso, Clustering, Classification.

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Authors: H. Serdar Öge, Esra Çiftçi, Kazım Karaboğa

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The main purpose of the research is to address the role of psychological harassment behaviors (mobbing) to which employees are exposed and personality characteristics over work alienation. Research population was composed of the employees of Provincial Special Administration. A survey with four sections was created to measure variables and reach out the basic goals of the research. Correlation and step-wise regression analyses were performed to investigate the separate and overall effects of sub-dimensions of psychological harassment behaviors and personality characteristic on work alienation of employees. Correlation analysis revealed significant but weak relationships between work alienation and psychological harassment and personality characteristics. Step-wise regression analysis revealed also significant relationships between work alienation variable and assault to personality, direct negative behaviors (sub dimensions of mobbing) and openness (sub-dimension of personality characteristics). Each variable was introduced into the model step by step to investigate the effects of significant variables in explaining the variations in work alienation. While the explanation ratio of the first model was 13%, the last model including three variables had an explanation ratio of 24%.

Keywords: Alienation, Five-Factor Personality Characteristics, Mobbing, Psychological Harassment, Work Alienation.

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Authors: Sapfo A. Mortaki

Abstract:

This article examines the presence of Greek immigrant artists (painters and sculptors) in Paris during 1970-2010. The aim is to highlight their presence in the French capital through archival research in the daily and periodical press as well as present the impact of their artistic activity on the French intellectual life and society. At the same time, their contribution to the development of cultural life in Greece becomes apparent. The integration of those migrant artists into an environment of cultural coexistence and the understanding of the social phenomenon of their migration, in the context of postmodernity, are being investigated. The cultural relations between the two countries are studied in the context of support mechanisms, such as the Greek community, cultural institutions, museums and galleries. The recognition of the Greek artists by the French society and the social dimension in the context of their activity in Paris, are discussed in terms of the assimilation theory. Since the 1970s, and especially since the fall of the dictatorship in Greece, in opposition to the prior situation, artists' contacts with their homeland have been significantly enhanced, with most of them now travelling to Paris, while others work in parallel in both countries. As a result, not only do the stages of the development of their work through their pursuits become visible, but, most importantly, the artistic world becomes informed about the multifaceted expression of art through the succession of various contemporary currents. Thus, the participation of Greek artists in the international cultural landscape is demonstrated.

Keywords: Artistic migration, cultural impact, Greek artists, postmodernity, theory of assimilation.

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Authors: Saleh Alumaran, Giampaolo Bella, Feng Chen

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The study of organisations’ information security cultures has attracted scholars as well as healthcare services industry to research the topic and find appropriate tools and approaches to develop a positive culture. The vast majority of studies in Saudi national health services are on the use of technology to protect and secure health services information. On the other hand, there is a lack of research on the role and impact of an organisation’s cultural dimensions on information security. This research investigated and analysed the role and impact of cultural dimensions on information security in Saudi Arabia health service. Hypotheses were tested and two surveys were carried out in order to collect data and information from three major hospitals in Saudi Arabia (SA). The first survey identified the main cultural-dimension problems in SA health services and developed an initial information security culture framework model. The second survey evaluated and tested the developed framework model to test its usefulness, reliability and applicability. The model is based on human behaviour theory, where the individual’s attitude is the key element of the individual’s intention to behave as well as of his or her actual behaviour. The research identified a set of cultural and sub-cultural dimensions in SA health information security and services.

Keywords: Behaviour theory, Culture dimensions, Electronic health records, Information security.

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Authors: Haifeng Wang, Haili Zhang

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Most movie recommendation systems have been developed for customers to find items of interest. This work introduces a predictive model usable by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who are in need of a data-based and analytical approach to stock proper movies for local audiences and retain more customers. We used classification models to extract features from thousands of customers’ demographic, behavioral and social information to predict their movie genre preference. In the implementation, a Gaussian kernel support vector machine (SVM) classification model and a logistic regression model were established to extract features from sample data and their test error-in-sample were compared. Comparison of error-out-sample was also made under different Vapnik–Chervonenkis (VC) dimensions in the machine learning algorithm to find and prevent overfitting. Gaussian kernel SVM prediction model can correctly predict movie genre preferences in 85% of positive cases. The accuracy of the algorithm increased to 93% with a smaller VC dimension and less overfitting. These findings advance our understanding of how to use machine learning approach to predict customers’ preferences with a small data set and design prediction tools for these enterprises.

Keywords: Computational social science, movie preference, machine learning, SVM.

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