Search results for: encoding strategies

Authors: Susanna Vanhamäki, Gabor Schneider, Kati Manskinen

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‘Bioeconomy’ is a complex concept that cuts across many sectors and covers several policy areas. To achieve an overall understanding and support a successful bioeconomy, a cross-sectorial approach is necessary. In practice, due to the concept’s wide scope and varying international approaches, fully understanding bioeconomy is challenging on policy level. This paper provides a background of the topic through an analysis of bioeconomy strategies in the Baltic Sea region. Expert interviews and a small survey were conducted to discover the current and intended focuses of these countries’ bioeconomy sectors. The research shows that supporting sustainability is one of the keys in developing the future bioeconomy. The results highlighted that the bioeconomy has to be sustainable and based on circular economy principles. Currently, traditional bioeconomy sectors like food, wood, fish & waters as well as fuel & energy, which are in the core of national bioeconomy strategies, are best known and are considered more relevant than other bioeconomy industries. However, there is increasing potential for novel sectors, such as textiles and pharmaceuticals. The present research indicates that the opportunities presented by these bioeconomy sectors should be recognised and promoted. Education, research and innovation can play key roles in developing transformative and sustainable improvements in primary production and renewable resources. Furthermore, cooperation between businesses and educators is important.

Keywords: Bioeconomy, circular economy, policy, strategy.

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Authors: Mia Wimala, Emma Akmalah, Ira Irawati, M. Rangga Sururi

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One way that has been aggressively implemented in creating a sustainable environment nowadays is through the implementation of green building concept. In order to ensure the success of its implementation, the support and initiation from educational institutions, especially higher education institutions are indispensable. This research was conducted to figure out the obstacles restraining the success of green campus implementation in Indonesia, as well as to propose strategies to overcome those obstacles. The data presented in this paper are mainly derived from interview and questionnaire distributed randomly to the staffs and students in 10 (ten) major institutions around Jakarta and West Java area. The data were further analyzed using ANOVA and SWOT analysis. According to 182 respondents, it is found that resistance to change, inadequate knowledge, information and understanding, no penalty for any environmental violation, lack of reward for green campus practices, lack of stringent regulations/laws, lack of management commitment, insufficient funds are the obstacles to the green campus movement in Indonesia. In addition, out of 6 criteria considered in UI GreenMetric World Ranking, education was the only criteria that had no significant difference between public and private universities in generating the green campus performance. The work concludes with recommendation of strategies to improve the implementation of green campus in the future.

Keywords: Green campus, obstacles, sustainable, higher education institutions.

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Authors: Tamanna Siddiqui, M. Afshar Alam

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Automated discovery of Rule is, due to its applicability, one of the most fundamental and important method in KDD. It has been an active research area in the recent past. Hierarchical representation allows us to easily manage the complexity of knowledge, to view the knowledge at different levels of details, and to focus our attention on the interesting aspects only. One of such efficient and easy to understand systems is Hierarchical Production rule (HPRs) system. A HPR, a standard production rule augmented with generality and specificity information, is of the following form: Decision If < condition> Generality Specificity . HPRs systems are capable of handling taxonomical structures inherent in the knowledge about the real world. This paper focuses on the issue of mining Quantified rules with crisp hierarchical structure using Genetic Programming (GP) approach to knowledge discovery. The post-processing scheme presented in this work uses Quantified production rules as initial individuals of GP and discovers hierarchical structure. In proposed approach rules are quantified by using Dempster Shafer theory. Suitable genetic operators are proposed for the suggested encoding. Based on the Subsumption Matrix(SM), an appropriate fitness function is suggested. Finally, Quantified Hierarchical Production Rules (HPRs) are generated from the discovered hierarchy, using Dempster Shafer theory. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm.

Keywords: Knowledge discovery in database, quantification, dempster shafer theory, genetic programming, hierarchy, subsumption matrix.

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Authors: Beata Zima, Octavio A. Márquez Reyes, Masoud Mohammadgholiha, Jochen Moll, Luca De Marchi

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This document presents the approach of using compressed sensing in signal encoding and information transferring within a guided wave sensor network, comprised of specially designed frequency steerable acoustic transducers (FSATs). Wave propagation in a damaged plate was simulated using commercial FEM-based software COMSOL. Guided waves were excited by means of FSATs, characterized by the special shape of its electrodes, and modeled using PIC255 piezoelectric material. The special shape of the FSAT, allows for focusing wave energy in a certain direction, accordingly to the frequency components of its actuation signal, which makes a larger monitored area available. The process begins when a FSAT detects and records reflection from damage in the structure, this signal is then encoded and prepared for transmission, using a combined approach, based on Compressed Sensing Matching Pursuit and Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM). After codification of the signal is in binary, the information is transmitted between the nodes in the network. The message reaches the last node, where it is finally decoded and processed, to be used for damage detection and localization purposes. The main aim of the investigation is to determine the location of detected damage using reconstructed signals. The study demonstrates that the special steerable capabilities of FSATs, not only facilitate the detection of damage but also permit transmitting the damage information to a chosen area in a specific direction of the investigated structure.

Keywords: Data compression, ultrasonic communication, guided waves, FEM analysis.

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Authors: Edikan E. Akpanibah, Okwigbedi Oghen’Oro

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In this paper, we studied the optimal portfolio selection in a defined contribution (DC) pension scheme with multiple contributors under constant elasticity of variance (CEV) model and the impact of stochastic additional voluntary contribution on the investment strategies. We assume that the voluntary contributions are stochastic and also consider investments in a risk free asset and a risky asset to increase the expected returns of the contributing members. We derived a stochastic differential equation which consists of the members’ monthly contributions and the invested fund and obtained an optimized problem with the help of Hamilton Jacobi Bellman equation. Furthermore, we find an explicit solution for the optimal investment strategy with stochastic voluntary contribution using power transformation and change of variables method and the corresponding optimal fund size was obtained. We discussed the impact of the voluntary contribution on the optimal investment strategy with numerical simulations and observed that the voluntary contribution reduces the optimal investment strategy of the risky asset.

Keywords: DC pension fund, Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman, optimal investment strategies, power transformation method, stochastic, voluntary contribution.

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Authors: Jia-Ru Li, Chia-Jung Li, Ching-Wen Lin

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Contrary to negative emotion regulation, coping with positive moods have received less attention in adolescent adjustment. However, some research has found that everyone is different on dealing with their positive emotions, which affects their adaptation and well-being. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between positive emotions dampening and internalizing behavior problems of adolescent in Taiwan. A survey was conducted and 208 students (12 to14 years old) completed the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ), the Affect Intensity Measure, and the positive emotions dampening scale. Analysis methods such as descriptive statistics, t-test, Pearson correlations and multiple regression were adapted. The results were as follows: Emotionality and internalizing problem behavior have significant gender differences. Compared to boys, girls have a higher score on negative emotionality and are at a higher risk for internalizing symptoms. However, there are no gender differences on positive emotion dampening. Additionally, in the circumstance that negative emotionality acted as the control variable, positive emotion dampening strategy was (positive) related to internalizing behavior problems. Given the results of this study, it is suggested that coaching deconstructive positive emotion strategies is to assist adolescents with internalizing behavior problems is encouraged.

Keywords: Emotion dampening strategies, internalizing problem behaviors, affect intensity.

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Authors: Rajendra Kumar Isaac, Monisha Isaac

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Climate variability and changes are the emerging challenges for Indian agriculture with the growing population to ensure national food security. A study was conducted to assess the Climatic Change effects in medium to low altitude areas of the Himalayan region causing changes in land use and cereal crop productivity with the various climatic parameters. The rainfall and temperature changes from 1951 to 2013 were studied at four locations of varying altitudes, namely Hardwar, Rudra Prayag, Uttar Kashi and Tehri Garwal. It was observed that there is noticeable increment in temperature on all the four locations. It was surprisingly observed that the mean rainfall intensity of 30 minutes duration has increased at the rate of 0.1 mm/hours since 2000. The study shows that the combined effect of increasing temperature, rainfall, runoff and urbanization at the mid-Himalayan region is causing an increase in various climatic disasters and changes in agriculture patterns. A noticeable change in cropping patterns, crop productivity and land use change was observed. Appropriate adaptation and mitigation strategies are necessary to ensure that sustainable and climate-resilient agriculture. Appropriate information is necessary for farmers, as well as planners and decision makers for developing, disseminating and adopting climate-smart technologies.

Keywords: Climate variability, agriculture, land use, mitigation strategies.

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Authors: Hossein Heidari Tabrizi, Azizeh Chalak, Hossein Enayat

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The present study seeks to investigate the application of expansion strategy in Persian subtitles of English crime movies. More precisely, this study aims at classifying the different types of expansion used in subtitles as well as investigating the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the application of each type. To achieve this end, three movies; namely, The Net (1995), Contact (1997) and Mission Impossible 2 (2000), available with Persian subtitles, were selected for the study. To collect the data, the above mentioned movies were watched and those parts of the Persian subtitles in which expansion had been used were identified and extracted along with their English dialogs. Then, the extracted Persian subtitles were classified based on the reason that led to expansion in each case. Next, the appropriateness or inappropriateness of using expansion in the extracted Persian subtitles was descriptively investigated. Finally, an equivalent not containing any expansion was proposed for those cases in which the meaning could be fully transferred without this strategy. The findings of the study indicated that the reasons range from explicitation (explicitation of visual, co-textual and contextual information), mistranslation and paraphrasing to the preferences of subtitlers. Furthermore, it was found that the employment of expansion strategy was inappropriate in all cases except for those caused by explicitation of contextual information since correct and shorter equivalents which were equally capable of conveying the intended meaning could be posited for the original dialogs.

Keywords: Audiovisual translation, English crime movies, expansion strategies, Persian subtitles.

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Authors: Joshi Manohar. V., Sujatha. P., Anjaneyulu K. S. R

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The range of the output power is a very important and evident limitation of two-level inverters. In order to overcome this disadvantage, multilevel inverters are introduced. Recently, Cascade H-Bridge inverters have emerged as one of the popular converter topologies used in numerous industrial applications. The modulation switching strategies such as phase shifted carrier based Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) technique and Stair case modulation with Selective Harmonic Elimination (SHE) PWM technique are generally used. NR method is used to solve highly non linear transcendental equations which are formed by SHEPWM method. Generally NR method has a drawback of requiring good initial guess but in this paper a new approach is implemented for NR method with any random initial guess. A three phase CHB 11-level inverter is chosen for analysis. MATLAB/SIMULINK programming environment and harmonic profiles are compared. Finally this paper presents a method at fundamental switching frequency with least % THDV.

Keywords: Cascade H-bridge 11- level Inverter, NR method, Phase shifted carrier based pulse width modulation (PSCPWM), Selective Harmonic Elimination Pulse Width Modulation (SHEPWM), Total Harmonic Distortion (%THDv).

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Authors: Tahani Aljohani, Jialin Yu, Alexandra. I. Cristea

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The more an educational system knows about a learner, the more personalised interaction it can provide, which leads to better learning. However, asking a learner directly is potentially disruptive, and often ignored by learners. Especially in the booming realm of MOOC Massive Online Learning platforms, only a very low percentage of users disclose demographic information about themselves. Thus, in this paper, we aim to predict learners’ demographic characteristics, by proposing an approach using linguistically motivated Deep Learning Architectures for Learner Profiling, particularly targeting gender prediction on a FutureLearn MOOC platform. Additionally, we tackle here the difficult problem of predicting the gender of learners based on their comments only – which are often available across MOOCs. The most common current approaches to text classification use the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model, considering sentences as sequences. However, human language also has structures. In this research, rather than considering sentences as plain sequences, we hypothesise that higher semantic - and syntactic level sentence processing based on linguistics will render a richer representation. We thus evaluate, the traditional LSTM versus other bleeding edge models, which take into account syntactic structure, such as tree-structured LSTM, Stack-augmented Parser-Interpreter Neural Network (SPINN) and the Structure-Aware Tag Augmented model (SATA). Additionally, we explore using different word-level encoding functions. We have implemented these methods on Our MOOC dataset, which is the most performant one comparing with a public dataset on sentiment analysis that is further used as a cross-examining for the models' results.

Keywords: Deep learning, data mining, gender predication, MOOCs.

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Authors: Mohammed A. Alolfe, Abou-Bakr M. Youssef, Yasser M. Kadah

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The proper design of RF pulses in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has a direct impact on the quality of acquired images, and is needed for many applications. Several techniques have been proposed to obtain the RF pulse envelope given the desired slice profile. Unfortunately, these techniques do not take into account the limitations of practical implementation such as limited amplitude resolution. Moreover, implementing constraints for special RF pulses on most techniques is not possible. In this work, we propose to develop an approach for designing optimal RF pulses under theoretically any constraints. The new technique will pose the RF pulse design problem as a combinatorial optimization problem and uses efficient techniques from this area such as genetic algorithms (GA) to solve this problem. In particular, an objective function will be proposed as the norm of the difference between the desired profile and the one obtained from solving the Bloch equations for the current RF pulse design values. The proposed approach will be verified using analytical solution based RF simulations and compared to previous methods such as Shinnar-Le Roux (SLR) method, and analysis, selected, and tested the options and parameters that control the Genetic Algorithm (GA) can significantly affect its performance to get the best improved results and compared to previous works in this field. The results show a significant improvement over conventional design techniques, select the best options and parameters for GA to get most improvement over the previous works, and suggest the practicality of using of the new technique for most important applications as slice selection for large flip angles, in the area of unconventional spatial encoding, and another clinical use.

Keywords: Selective excitation, magnetic resonance imaging, combinatorial optimization, pulse design.

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Authors: Saeedeh Shafiee Nahrkhalaji

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Metacognitive knowledge increases EFL students’ ability to be successful learners. Although this relationship has been investigated by a number of scholars, EFL teachers’ explicit awareness of their cognitive knowledge has not been sufficiently explored. The aim of this study was to examine the role of EFL teachers’ metacognitive knowledge in their pedagogical performance. Furthermore, the role played by years of their academic education and teaching experience was also studied. Fifty female EFL teachers were selected. They completed Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) that assessed six components of metacognition including procedural knowledge, declarative knowledge, conditional knowledge, planning, evaluating, and management strategies. Near the end of the academic semester, the students of each class filled in ‘the Language Teacher Characteristics Questionnaire’ to evaluate their teachers’ pedagogical performance. Four elements of MAI, declarative knowledge, planning, evaluating, and management strategies were found to be significantly correlated with EFL teachers’ pedagogical success. Significant correlation was also established between metacognitive knowledge and EFL teachers’ years of academic education and teaching experience. The findings obtained from this research have contributing implication for EFL teacher educators. The discussion concludes by setting out directions for future research.

Keywords: Metacognotive Knowledge, Pedagogical Performance, Language Teacher Characteristics Questionnaire, Metacognitive Awareness Inventory.

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Authors: Isaac K. E. Ampomah, Seong-Bae Park, Sang-Jo Lee

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Over the past decade, there have been promising developments in Natural Language Processing (NLP) with several investigations of approaches focusing on Recognizing Textual Entailment (RTE). These models include models based on lexical similarities, models based on formal reasoning, and most recently deep neural models. In this paper, we present a sentence encoding model that exploits the sentence-to-sentence relation information for RTE. In terms of sentence modeling, Convolutional neural network (CNN) and recurrent neural networks (RNNs) adopt different approaches. RNNs are known to be well suited for sequence modeling, whilst CNN is suited for the extraction of n-gram features through the filters and can learn ranges of relations via the pooling mechanism. We combine the strength of RNN and CNN as stated above to present a unified model for the RTE task. Our model basically combines relation vectors computed from the phrasal representation of each sentence and final encoded sentence representations. Firstly, we pass each sentence through a convolutional layer to extract a sequence of higher-level phrase representation for each sentence from which the first relation vector is computed. Secondly, the phrasal representation of each sentence from the convolutional layer is fed into a Bidirectional Long Short Term Memory (Bi-LSTM) to obtain the final sentence representations from which a second relation vector is computed. The relations vectors are combined and then used in then used in the same fashion as attention mechanism over the Bi-LSTM outputs to yield the final sentence representations for the classification. Experiment on the Stanford Natural Language Inference (SNLI) corpus suggests that this is a promising technique for RTE.

Keywords: Deep neural models, natural language inference, recognizing textual entailment, sentence-to-sentence relation.

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Authors: Edmond W.M. Lam, Albert P.C. Chan, Daniel W.M. Chan

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Buildings are one of the valuable assets to provide people with shelters for work, leisure and rest. After years of attacks by weather, buildings will deteriorate which need proper maintenance in order to fulfill the requirements and satisfaction of the users. Poorly managed buildings not just give a negative image to the city itself, but also pose potential risk hazards to the health and safety of the general public. As a result, the management of maintenance projects has played an important role in cities like Hong Kong where the problem of urban decay has drawn much attention. However, most research has focused on managing new construction, and little research effort has been put on maintenance projects. Given the short duration and more diversified nature of work, repair and maintenance works are found to be more difficult to monitor and regulate when compared with new works. Project participants may face with problems in running maintenance projects which should be investigated so that proper strategies can be established. This paper aims to provide a thorough analysis on the problems of running maintenance projects. A review of literature on the characteristics of building maintenance projects was firstly conducted, which forms a solid basis for the empirical study. Results on the problems and difficulties of running maintenance projects from the viewpoints of industry practitioners will also be delivered with a view to formulating effective strategies for managing maintenance projects successfully.

Keywords: characteristics, problems, building maintenance, Hong Kong

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Authors: Angie M. Wolf, Angie Del Prado Lippman, DeVone Boggan, Caroline Glesmann, Estivaliz Castro

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This paper highlights an innovative and nontraditional violence prevention program that is making a noticeable impact in what was once one of the country’s most violent communities. With unique and tailored strategies, the Operation Peacemaker Fellowship, established in Richmond, California, combines components of evidence-based practices with a community-oriented focus on relationships and mentoring to fill a gap in services and increase community safety. In an effort to highlight these unique strategies and provide a blueprint for other communities with violent crime problems, the authors of this paper hope to clearly delineate how one community is moving forward with vanguard approaches to invest in the lives of young men who once were labeled their community’s most violent, even most deadly, youth. The impact of this program is evidenced through the fellows’ own voices as they illuminate the experience of being in the Fellowship. In interviews, fellows describe how participating in this program has transformed their lives and the lives of those they love. The authors of this article spent more than two years researching this Fellowship program in order to conduct an evaluation of it and, ultimately, to demonstrate how this program is a testament to the power of relationships and love combined with evidence-based practices, consequently enriching the lives of youth and the community that embraces them.

Keywords: Community violence, firearm violence, interventions for violent crime, violence prevention.

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Authors: Prasad Senadheera, Younousse Saidi, Frans JM Maathuis

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Rice seed expression (cDNA) library in the Lambda Zap 11® phage constructed from the developing grain 10-20 days after flowering was transformed into yeast for functional complementation assays in three salt sensitive yeast mutants S. cerevisiae strain CY162, G19 and Axt3K. Transformed cells of G19 and Axt3K with pYES vector with cDNA inserts showed enhance tolerance than those with empty pYes vector. Sequencing of the cDNA inserts revealed that they encode for the putative proteins with the sequence homologous to rice putative protein PROLM24 (Os06g31070), a prolamin precursor. Expression of this cDNA did not affect yeast growth in absence of salt. Axt3k and G19 strains expressing the PROLM24 were able to grow upto 400 mM and 600 mM of NaCl respectively. Similarly, Axt3k mutant with PROLM24 expression showed comparatively higher growth rate in the medium with excess LiCl (50 mM). The observation that expression of PROLM24 rescued the salt sensitive phenotypes of G19 and Axt3k indicates the existence of a regulatory system that ameliorates the effect of salt stress in the transformed yeast mutants. However, the exact function of the cDNA sequence, which shows partial sequence homology to yeast UTR1 is not clear. Although UTR1 involved in ferrous uptake and iron homeostasis in yeast cells, there is no evidence to prove its role in Na+ homeostasis in yeast cells. Absence of transmembrane regions in Os06g31070 protein indicates that salt tolerance is achieved not through the direct functional complementation of the mutant genes but through an alternative mechanism.

Keywords: Rice seed expression, salt stress, prolamin, salinitytolerance, Oryza sativa

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Authors: Alessandro Cincotti, Timothee Bossart

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Col is a classic combinatorial game played on graphs and to solve a general instance is a PSPACE-complete problem. However, winning strategies can be found for some specific graph instances. In this paper, the solution of Col on complete k-ary trees is presented.

Keywords: Combinatorial game, Complete k-ary tree, Mapcoloring game.

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Authors: Dana Aljadaa, Hasim Altan

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Japan’s strategy is based on improving the current resources and productivity by identifying the environmental challenges to progress further in many areas. For example, it will help in understanding the competitive challenges in the industry, emerging innovation, and other progresses. The present study seeks to examine the characteristics of sustainable practices using materials that will last longer and following environmental policies. There has been a major emphasis since 1990s and onwards about recycling and preserving the environment. Furthermore, the present paper analyses and argues how national interest in policy increases resource productivity. It is a universal law, but these actions may be different based on the unique situation of the country. In addition, the present study explains some of the strategies developed by the Environmental Agency of Japan in the last few years. There are a few resources reviewed involving ‘Strategy for an Environmental Nation in the 21st Century’ from 2001, ‘Clean Asia Initiative’ from 2008, and ‘New Growth Strategy’ from 2010. The present paper also highlights the emphasis on increasing efficiency, as it is an important part of sustainability. We finally conclude by providing reasoning on the impact and positivity of reducing production and consumption on the environment, resulting in a productive and progressive Japan for the near and long term future.

Keywords: Green innovation, sustainable development, resource productivity, sound material-cycle society, waste management.

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Authors: A. Ramachandran

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Nowadays there is a growing environmental concern and the business communities have slowly started recognising environmental protection and sustainable utilization of natural resources into their marketing strategies. This paper discusses the various Ecolabeling and Certification Systems developed world over to regulate and introduce Fair Trade in Ornamental Fish Industry. Ecolabeling and green certification are considered as part of these strategies implemented partly out of compulsion from the National and International Regulatory Bodies and Environmental Movements. All the major markets of ornamental fishes like European Union, USA and Japan have started putting restrictions on the trade to impose ecolabeling as a non tariff barrier like the one imposed on seafood and aqua cultured products. A review was done on the available Ecolabeling and Green Certification Schemes available at local, national and international levels for fisheries including aquaculture and ornamental fish trade and to examine the success and constraints faced by these schemes during its implementation. The primary downside of certification is the multiplicity of ecolabels and cost incurred by applicants for certification, costs which may in turn be passed on to consumers. The studies reveal serious inadequacies in a number of ecolabels and cast doubt on their overall contribution to effective fisheries management and sustainability. The paper also discusses the inititive taken in India to develop guidelines for Green Certification of Fresh water ornamental fishes.

Keywords: Ecolabeling in fisheries, Fair trade, Green Certification, Sustainable Ornamental fish trade.

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Authors: A. Das, L. Hitihamillage, S. Moridpour

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Natural disasters are inevitable to the biodiversity. Disasters such as flood, tsunami and tornadoes could be brutal, harsh and devastating. In Australia, flooding is a major issue experienced by different parts of the country. In such crisis, delays in evacuation could decide the life and death of the people living in those regions. Congestion management could become a mammoth task if there are no steps taken before such situations. In the past to manage congestion in such circumstances, many strategies were utilised such as converting the road shoulders to extra lanes or changing the road geometry by adding more lanes. However, expansion of road to resolving congestion problems is not considered a viable option nowadays. The authorities avoid this option due to many reasons, such as lack of financial support and land space. They tend to focus their attention on optimising the current resources they possess and use traffic signals to overcome congestion problems. Traffic Signal Management strategy was considered a viable option, to alleviate congestion problems in the City of Geelong, Victoria. Arterial road with signalised intersections considered in this paper and the traffic data required for modelling collected from VicRoads. Traffic signalling software SIDRA used to model the roads, and the information gathered from VicRoads. In this paper, various signal parameters utilised to assess and improve the corridor performance to achieve the best possible Level of Services (LOS) for the arterial road.

Keywords: Congestion, constraints, management, LOS.

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Authors: Yamamah Abdulrazaq, Lahieb A. Abrahim, Samuel E. Davies, Iain Shewring

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Electric water heater (EWH) is a powerful appliance that uses electricity in residential, commercial, and industrial settings, and the ability to control them properly will result in cost savings and the prevention of blackouts on the national grid. This article discusses the usage of timers in EWH control strategies for demand-side management (DSM). To the authors' knowledge, there is no systematic mapping review focusing on the utilization of EWH control strategies in DSM has yet been conducted. Consequently, the purpose of this research is to identify and examine main papers exploring EWH procedures in DSM by quantifying and categorizing information with regard to publication year and source, kind of methods, and source of data for monitoring control techniques. In order to answer the research questions, a total of 31 publications published between 1999 and 2023 were selected depending on specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. The data indicate that direct load control (DLC) has been somewhat more prevalent than indirect load control (ILC). Additionally, the mix method is much lower than the other techniques, and the proportion of real-time data (RTD) to non-real-time data (NRTD) is about equal.

Keywords: Demand side management, direct load control, electric water heater, indirect load control, non-real-time data, real time data.

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Authors: Rabih Joseph Nabhan

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This case study explores the impact of two major computer software programs Learn to Speak English and Learn English Spelling and Pronunciation, and some Internet search engines such as Google on mending the decoding and spelling deficiency of Simon X, a dyslexic student. The improvement in decoding and spelling may result in better reading comprehension and composition writing. Some computer programs and Internet materials can help regain the missing awareness and consequently restore his self-confidence and self-esteem. In addition, this study provides a systematic plan comprising a set of activities (four computer programs and Internet materials) which address the problem from the lowest to the highest levels of phoneme and phonological awareness. Four methods of data collection (accounts, observations, published tests, and interviews) create the triangulation to validly and reliably collect data before the plan, during the plan, and after the plan. The data collected are analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Sometimes the analysis is either quantitative or qualitative, and some other times a combination of both. Tables and figures are utilized to provide a clear and uncomplicated illustration of some data. The improvement in the decoding, spelling, reading comprehension, and composition writing skills that occurred is proved through the use of authentic materials performed by the student under study. Such materials are a comparison between two sample passages written by the learner before and after the plan, a genuine computer chat conversation, and the scores of the academic year that followed the execution of the plan. Based on these results, the researcher recommends further studies on other Lebanese dyslexic learners using the computer to mend their language problem in order to design and make a most reliable software program that can address this disability more efficiently and successfully.

Keywords: Analysis, awareness, dyslexic, software.

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Authors: Diamantino Ribeiro, António Pedro Costa, Jorge Remondes

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Dubai and the UAE governments have been investing in technology and digital communication for a long time. These governments are pioneers in introducing innovative strategies, policies and projects. They are also recognized worldwide for defining and implementing long term public programs. In terms of eGovernment Dubai and the UAE rank among the world’s most advanced. Both governments have surprised the world a few years ago by creating a Happiness Ministry. This paper focuses on UAE’s government digital strategies and its approach to the next era. The main goal of this exploratory study is to understand the new era of eGovernment and transfer of the happiness and wellness programs. Data were collected from the corpus latente and analysis was anchored in qualitative methodology using content analysis and observation as analysis techniques. The study allowed to highlight that the 2020 government reshuffle has a strong focus on digital reorganisation and digital sustainability, one of the newest trends in sustainability. Regarding happiness and wellbeing portfolio, we were able to observe that there has been a major change within the government organisation: The Ministry of Happiness was extinct and the Ministry of Community Development will manage the so-called ‘Happiness Portfolio’. Additionally, our observation allowed to note the government dual approach to governance: one through digital transformation, thus enhancing the digital sustainability process and, the second one trough government development.

Keywords: Ministry of Happiness, eGovernment, communication, digital sustainability.

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Authors: Mohamed Mahmoud Hasan, Hoda M. O. Mokhtar

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With the gigantic increment in portable applications use and the spread of positioning and location-aware technologies that we are seeing today, new procedures and methodologies for location-based strategies are required. Location recommendation is one of the highly demanded location-aware applications uniquely with the wide accessibility of social network applications that are location-aware including Facebook check-ins, Foursquare, and others. In this paper, we aim to present a new methodology for location recommendation. The proposed approach coordinates customary spatial traits alongside other essential components including shortest distance, and user interests. We also present another idea namely, "activity trajectory" that represents trajectory that fulfills the set of activities that the user is intrigued to do. The approach dispatched acquaints the related distance value to select trajectory(ies) with minimum cost value (distance) and spatial-area to prune unneeded directions. The proposed calculation utilizes the idea of movement direction to prescribe most comparable N-trajectory(ies) that matches the client's required action design with least voyaging separation. To upgrade the execution of the proposed approach, parallel handling is applied through the employment of a MapReduce based approach. Experiments taking into account genuine information sets were built up and tested for assessing the proposed approach. The exhibited tests indicate how the proposed approach beets different strategies giving better precision and run time.

Keywords: Location-based recommendation, map-reduce, recommendation system, trajectory search.

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Authors: Norzita Jaafar, Nor Zaini Zakaria, Azni Zain Ahmed, Razidah Ismail

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The use of solar control film on windows as one of solar passive strategies for building have becoming important and is gaining recognition. Malaysia located close to equator is having warm humid climate with long sunshine hours and abundant solar radiation throughout the year. Hence, befitting solar control on windows is absolutely necessary to capture the daylight whilst moderating thermal impact and eliminating glare problems. This is one of the energy efficient strategies to achieve thermal and visual comfort in buildings. Therefore, this study was carried out to investigate the effect of window solar controls on thermal and visual performance of naturally ventilated buildings. This was conducted via field data monitoring using a test building facility. Four types of window glazing systems were used with three types of solar control films. Data were analysed for thermal and visual impact with reference to thermal and optical characteristics of the films. Results show that for each glazing system, the surface temperature of windows are influenced by the Solar Energy Absorption property, the indoor air temperature are influenced by the Solar Energy Transmittance and Solar Energy Reflectance, and the daylighting by Visible Light Transmission and Shading Coefficient. Further investigations are underway to determine the mathematical relation between thermal energy and visual performance with the thermal and optical characteristics of solar control films.

Keywords: window, solar control film, natural ventilation, thermal performance, visual performance

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Authors: J. Herrero, D. Puigserver, I. Nijenhuis, K. Kuntze, J. M. Carmona

Abstract:

In the transition zone between aquifers and basal aquitards, the perchloroethene (PCE)-pools are more recalcitrant than those elsewhere in the aquifer. Although biodegradation of chloroethenes occur in this zone, it is a slow process and a remediation strategy is needed. The aim of this study is to demonstrate that combined strategy of biostimulation and in situ chemical reduction (ISCR) is more efficient than the two separated strategies. Four different microcosm experiments with sediment and groundwater of a selected field site where an aged pool exists at the bottom of a transition zone were designed under i) natural conditions, ii) biostimulation with lactic acid, iii) ISCR with zero-value iron (ZVI) and under iv) a combined strategy with lactic acid and ZVI. Biotic and abiotic dehalogenation, terminal electron acceptor processes and evolution of microbial communities were determined for each experiment. The main results were: i) reductive dehalogenation of PCE-pools occurs under sulfate-reducing conditions; ii) biostimulation with lactic acid supports more pronounced reductive dehalogenation of PCE and trichloroethene (TCE), but results in an accumulation of 1,2-cis-dichloroethene (cDCE); iii) ISCR with ZVI produces a sustained dehalogenation of PCE and its metabolites iv) combined strategy of biostimulation and ISCR results in a fast dehalogenation of PCE and TCE and a sustained dehalogenation of cisDCE. These findings suggest that biostimulation and ISCR with ZVI are the most suitable strategies for a complete reductive dehalogenation of PCE-pools in the transition zone and further to enable the dissolution of dense non-aqueous phase liquids.

Keywords: Aged PCE-pool, anaerobic microcosm experiment, biostimulation, in situ chemical reduction, natural attenuation.

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Authors: N. Türkmenoğlu Bayraktar, E. Kishalı

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Campus buildings are educational facilities where various amount of energy consumption for lighting, heating, cooling and ventilation occurs. Some of the new universities in Turkey, where this investigation takes place, still continue their educational activities in existing buildings primarily designed for different architectural programs and converted to campus buildings via changes of function, space organizations and structural interventions but most of the time without consideration of appropriate micro climatic conditions. Reducing energy consumption in these structures not only contributes to the national economy but also mitigates the negative effects on environment. Furthermore, optimum thermal comfort conditions should be provided during the refurbishment of existing campus structures and their building envelope. Considering this issue, the first step is to investigate the climatic performance of building elements regarding refurbishment process. In the context of the study Kocaeli University, Faculty of Design and Architecture building constructed in 1980s in Anıtpark campus located in the central part of Kocaeli, Turkey was investigated. Climatic factors influencing thermal conditions; the deteriorations on building envelope; temperature distribution; heat losses from façade elements observed by thermography were presented in order to improve strategies for retrofit process for the building envelope. Within the scope of the survey, refurbishment strategies towards providing optimum climatic comfort conditions, increasing energy efficiency of building envelope were proposed.

Keywords: Building envelope, IRT, refurbishment, non-destructive test.

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Authors: Ayşin Sev, Görkem Aslan

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Sustainable tall buildings that provide comfortable, healthy and efficient indoor environments are clearly desirable as the densification of living and working space for the world’s increasing population proceeds. For environmental concerns, these buildings must also be energy efficient. One component of these tasks is the provision of indoor air quality and thermal comfort, which can be enhanced with natural ventilation by the supply of fresh air. Working spaces can only be naturally ventilated with connections to the outdoors utilizing operable windows, double facades, ventilation stacks, balconies, patios, terraces and skygardens. Large amounts of fresh air can be provided to the indoor spaces without mechanical air-conditioning systems, which are widely employed in contemporary tall buildings. This paper tends to present the concept of natural ventilation for sustainable tall office buildings in order to achieve healthy and comfortable working spaces, as well as energy efficient environments. Initially the historical evolution of ventilation strategies for tall buildings is presented, beginning with natural ventilation and continuing with the introduction of mechanical airconditioning systems. Then the emergence of natural ventilation due to the health and environmental concerns in tall buildings is handled, and the strategies for implementing this strategy are revealed. In the next section, a number of case studies that utilize this strategy are investigated. Finally, how tall office buildings can benefit from this strategy is discussed.

Keywords: Tall office building, natural ventilation, energy efficiency, double-skin façade, stack ventilation, air conditioning.

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Authors: Faride Peña, Teresita Castillo, Concepción Campo

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Sexual violence, and particularly child sexual abuse, is a serious problem all over the world, México included. Given its importance, there are several preventive and care programs done by the government and the civil society all over the country but most of them are developed in urban areas even though these problems are especially serious in rural areas. Yucatán, a state in southern México, occupies one of the first places in child sexual abuse. Considering the above, the University Unit of Clinical Research and Victimological Attention (UNIVICT) of the Autonomous University of Yucatan, designed, implemented and is currently evaluating the program named “Sharing Mouth to Mouth: My Body, Nobody Can Touch It”, a program to prevent child sexual abuse in rural communities of Yucatán, México. Its aim was to develop skills for the detection of risk situations, providing protection strategies and mechanisms for prevention through culturally relevant psycho-educative strategies to increase personal resources in children, in collaboration with parents, teachers, police and municipal authorities. The diagnosis identified that a particularly vulnerable population were children between 4 and 10 years. The program run during 2015 in primary schools in the municipality whose inhabitants are mostly Mayan. The aim of this paper is to present its evaluation in terms of its effectiveness and efficiency. This evaluation included documental analysis of the work done in the field, psycho-educational and recreational activities with children, evaluation of knowledge by participating children and interviews with parents and teachers. The results show high efficiency in fulfilling the tasks and achieving primary objectives. The efficiency shows satisfactory results but also opportunity areas that can be resolved with minor adjustments to the program. The results also show the importance of including culturally relevant strategies and activities otherwise it minimizes possible achievements. Another highlight is the importance of participatory action research in preventive approaches to child sexual abuse since by becoming aware of the importance of the subject people participate more actively; in addition to design culturally appropriate strategies and measures so that the proposal may not be distant to the people. Discussion emphasizes the methodological implications of prevention programs (convenience of using participatory action research (PAR), importance of monitoring and mediation during implementation, developing detection skills tools in creative ways using psycho-educational interactive techniques and working assessment issued by the participants themselves). As well, it is important to consider the holistic character this type of program should have, in terms of incorporating social and culturally relevant characteristics, according to the community individuality and uniqueness, consider type of communication to be used and children’ language skills considering that there should be variations strongly linked to a specific cultural context.

Keywords: Child sexual abuse, evaluation, PAR, prevention.

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Authors: Yananda Siraphatthada

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The current study was the succession of a previous study on value added of recycling business management. Its aims are to 1) explore conditions on how to increasing value add of Thai recycling business, and 2) exam the implementation of the 3-staged plan (short, medium, and long term), suggested by the former study, to increase value added of the recycling business as immediate mechanisms to accelerate government operation. Quantitative and qualitative methods were utilized in this research. A qualitative research consisted of in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. Responses were obtained from owners of the waste separation plants, and recycle shops, as well as officers in relevant governmental agencies. They were randomly selected via Quota Sampling. Data was analyzed via content analysis. The sample used for quantitative method consisted of 1,274 licensed recycling operators in eight provinces. The operators were randomly stratified via sampling method. Data were analyzed via descriptive statistics frequency, percentage, average (Mean) and standard deviation.The study recommended three-staged plan: short, medium, and long terms. The plan included the development of logistics, the provision of quality market/plants, the amendment of recycling rules/regulation, the restructuring recycling business, the establishment of green-purchasing recycling center, support for the campaigns run by the International Green Purchasing Network (IGPN), conferences/workshops as a public forum to share insights among experts/concern people.

Keywords: Strategies, Value Added, Recycle Business.

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