Search results for: Hand hygiene

Authors: H. Nemmour, Y. Chibani

Abstract:

Decision fusion is one of hot research topics in classification area, which aims to achieve the best possible performance for the task at hand. In this paper, we investigate the usefulness of this concept to improve change detection accuracy in remote sensing. Thereby, outputs of two fuzzy change detectors based respectively on simultaneous and comparative analysis of multitemporal data are fused by using fuzzy integral operators. This method fuses the objective evidences produced by the change detectors with respect to fuzzy measures that express the difference of performance between them. The proposed fusion framework is evaluated in comparison with some ordinary fuzzy aggregation operators. Experiments carried out on two SPOT images showed that the fuzzy integral was the best performing. It improves the change detection accuracy while attempting to equalize the accuracy rate in both change and no change classes.

Keywords: change detection, decision fusion, fuzzy logic, remote sensing.

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Authors: Mario Mastriani, Juliana Gambini

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In this work, we present a comparison between two techniques of image compression. In the first case, the image is divided in blocks which are collected according to zig-zag scan. In the second one, we apply the Fast Cosine Transform to the image, and then the transformed image is divided in blocks which are collected according to zig-zag scan too. Later, in both cases, the Karhunen-Loève transform is applied to mentioned blocks. On the other hand, we present three new metrics based on eigenvalues for a better comparative evaluation of the techniques. Simulations show that the combined version is the best, with minor Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and Mean Squared Error (MSE), higher Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and better image quality. Finally, new technique was far superior to JPEG and JPEG2000.

Keywords: Fast Cosine Transform, image compression, JPEG, JPEG2000, Karhunen-Loève Transform, zig-zag scan.

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Authors: Y. W. Chen, H. L. Fan

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Evidence shows that start-ups success is positively correlated with the launch of the first product. However, new ventures are seldom able to acquire abundant resources for new product development (NPD), which means that entrepreneurs may depend on personal creativity instead of physical investments to achieve and accelerate innovation speed. This study accentuates the role of entrepreneurial bricolage, which defined as making do by applying combinations of the resources at hand to new problems and opportunities, in the relations of creative self-efficacy and innovation speed. This study uses the multiple regression analysis to test the hypotheses in a sample of 203 start-ups operating in various creative markets in Taiwan. Results reveal that creative self-efficacy is positively and directly associated with innovation speed, whereas entrepreneurial bricolage plays a full mediator. These findings offer important theoretical and practical implications.

Keywords: Creative self-efficacy, innovation speed, entrepreneurial bricolage, new ventures.

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Authors: J. Lonska, V. Boronenko

Abstract:

The result of process of territory-s development is the territory-s state of development (TSoD), which is pointed towards the provision and improvement of people-s life conditions. The authors offer to measure the TSoD according to their own developed model. Using the available statistical data regarding the values of model-s elements, the authors empirically show which element mainly determines the TSoD. The findings of the research showed that the key elements of the TSoD are the “Material welfare of people" and “People-s health". Performing a deeper statistical analysis of correlation between these elements, it turned out that it is not so necessary for a country to be bent on trying to increase the material growth of a territory, because a relatively high index of life expectancy at birth could be ensured also by much more modest material resources. On the other hand, the economical feedback of longer lifespan within countries with lower material performance is also relatively low.

Keywords: Development indices, health, territory's state of development, wealth.

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Authors: Maria J. Garcia-Garcia, Concepcion Gonzalez-Garcia, Gabriel A. Dorado, Luis J. Fernandez

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The results obtained after incorporating the competence “creativity" to the subject Technical Drawing of the first course of the Degree in Forestry, Technical University of Madrid, are presented in this study.At first, learning activities which could serve two functions at the same time -developing students- creativity and developing other specific competences of the subject- were considered. Besides, changes in the assessment procedure were made and a method which analyzes two aspects of the assessment of the competence creativity was established. On the one hand, the products are evaluated by analyzing the outcomes obtained by students in the essays suggested and by establishing a parameter to assess the creativity expressed in those essays. On the other, an assessment of the student is directly carried out through a psychometric test which has been previously chosen by the team.Moreover, these results can be applied to similar or could be of general application.

Keywords: assessment competence, assessment creativity, creativity, generic competences

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Authors: Ha T. Pham, Shuichi Miyagawa

Abstract:

Ongoing landscape transformation is one of the major causes behind disappearance of traditional landscapes, and lead to species and resource loss. Tree in paddy fields in the northeast of Thailand is one of those traditional landscapes. Using three different historical time layers, we acknowledged the severe deforestation and rapid urbanization happened in the region. Despite the general thinking of decline in tree density as consequences, the heterogeneous trend of changes in total tree density in three studied landscapes denied the hypothesis that number of trees in paddy field depend on the length of land use practice. On the other hand, due to selection of planting new trees on levees, existence of trees in paddy field now relies on their values for human use. Besides, changes in land use and landscape structure had a significant impact on decision of which tree density level is considered as suitable for the landscape.

Keywords: Aerial photographs, land use change, traditional landscape, tree in paddy fields.

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Authors: Kamaraju.M, Lal Kishore.K, Tilak.A.V.N

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The general purpose processors that are used in embedded systems must support constraints like execution time, power consumption, code size and so on. On the other hand an Application Specific Instruction-set Processor (ASIP) has advantages in terms of power consumption, performance and flexibility. In this paper, a 16-bit Application Specific Instruction-set processor for the sensor data transfer is proposed. The designed processor architecture consists of on-chip transmitter and receiver modules along with the processing and controlling units to enable the data transmission and reception on a single die. The data transfer is accomplished with less number of instructions as compared with the general purpose processor. The ASIP core operates at a maximum clock frequency of 1.132GHz with a delay of 0.883ns and consumes 569.63mW power at an operating voltage of 1.2V. The ASIP is implemented in Verilog HDL using the Xilinx platform on Virtex4.

Keywords: ASIP, Data transfer, Instruction set, Processor

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Authors: Myriam Noureddine, Rachid Noureddine

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Following the current economic challenges and competition, all systems, whatever their field, must be efficient and operational during their activity. In this context, it is imperative to anticipate, identify, eliminate and estimate the failures of systems, which may lead to an interruption of their function. This need requires the management of possible risks, through an assessment of the failures criticality following a dependability approach. On the other hand, at the time of new information technologies and considering the networks field evolution, the data transmission has evolved towards a multipoint communication, which can simultaneously transmit information from a sender to multiple receivers. This article proposes the failures criticality assessment of a multipoint communication network, integrates a database of network failures and their quantifications. The proposed approach is validated on a case study and the final result allows having the criticality matrix associated with failures on the considered network, giving the identification of acceptable risks.

Keywords: Dependability, failure, multipoint network, criticality matrix.

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Authors: Aurelie Aurilla Bechina Arntzen

Abstract:

The last decade has seen an early majority of people The last decade, the role of the of the information communication technologies has increased in improving the social and business life of people. Today, it is recognized that game could contribute to enhance virtual rehabilitation by better engaging patients. Our research study aims to develop a game based system enhancing cognitive and physical capabilities of elderly people. To this end, the project aims to develop a low cost hand held system based on existing game such as Wii, PSP, or Xbox. This paper discusses the concepts and requirements for developing such game for elderly people. Based on the requirement elicitation, we intend to develop a prototype related to sport and dance activities.

Keywords: Elderly people, Game based learning system, Health systems, rehabilitation

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Authors: B. Krittacom, P. Amatachaya, W. Srimuang, K. Inla

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The combustion of liquid fuel in the porous burner (PB) was experimented to investigate evaporation mechanism and combustion behavior. The diesel oil was used as fuel and the pebbles carefully chosen in the same size like the solid sphere homogeneously was adopted as the porous media. Two structures of the liquid porous burner, i.e. the PB without and with installation of porous emitter (PE), were performed. PE was installed by lower than PB with distance of 20 cm. The pebbles having porosity (φ) of 0.45 and 0.52 were, respectively, used in PB and PE. The fuel was supplied dropwise from the top through the PB and the combustion was occurred between PB and PE. Axial profiles of temperature along the burner length were measured to clarify the evaporation and combustion phenomena. The pollutant emission characteristics were monitored at the burner exit. From the experiment, it was found that the temperature profiles of both structures decreased with the three ways swirling air flows (QA) increasing. On the other hand, the temperature profiles increased with fuel heat input (QF). Obviously, the profile of the porous burner installed with PE was higher than that of the porous burner without PE

Keywords: Liquid fuel, Porous burner, Temperature profile.

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Authors: Olatunde I. Sekunowo, Stephen I. Durowaye, Ganiyu I. Lawal

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Composites depending on the nature of their constituents and mode of production are regarded as one of the advanced materials that drive today’s technology. This paper attempts a short review of the subject matter with a general aim of pushing to the next level the frontier of knowledge as it impacts the technology of nano-particles manufacturing. The objectives entail an effort to; aggregate recent research efforts in this field, analyse research findings and observations, streamline research efforts and support industry in taking decision on areas of fund deployment. It is envisaged that this work will serve as a quick hand-on compendium material for researchers in this field and a guide to relevant government departments wishing to fund a research whose outcomes have the potential of improving the nation’s GDP.

Keywords: Advanced materials, Composites, Mechanical properties, Nano-particles.

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Authors: Yi-Ting Mai, Chun-Chuan Yang, Cheng-Jung Wen

Abstract:

IEEE 802.16 is a new wireless technology standard, it has some advantages, including wider coverage, higher bandwidth, and QoS support. As the new wireless technology for last mile solution, there are designed two models in IEEE 802.16 standard. One is PMP (point to multipoint) and the other is Mesh. In this paper we only focus on IEEE 802.16 Mesh model. According to the IEEE 802.16 standard description, Mesh model has two scheduling modes, centralized and distributed. Considering the pros and cons of the two scheduling, we present the combined scheduling QoS framework that the BS (Base Station) controls time frame scheduling and selects the shortest path from source to destination directly. On the other hand, we propose the Expedited Queue mechanism to cut down the transmission time. The EQ mechanism can reduce a lot of end-to-end delay in our QoS framework. Simulation study has shown that the average delay is smaller than contrasts. Furthermore, our proposed scheme can also achieve higher performance.

Keywords: IEEE 802.16 Mesh, Scheduling, Expedited Queue, QoS.

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Authors: T. Hashimoto, N. Miki, H. Maki

Abstract:

We report the size dependence of 1D superconductivity in ultrathin (10-130 nm) nanowires produced by coating suspended carbon nanotubes with a superconducting NbN thin film. The resistance-temperature characteristic curves for samples with ≧25 nm wire width show the superconducting transition. On the other hand, for the samples with 10-nm width, the superconducting transition is not exhibited owing to the quantum size effect. The differential resistance vs. current density characteristic curves show some peak, indicating that Josephson junctions are formed in nanowires. The presence of the Josephson junctions is well explained by the measurement of the magnetic field dependence of the critical current. These understanding allow for the further expansion of the potential application of NbN, which is utilized for single photon detectors and so on.

Keywords: NbN nanowire, carbon nanotube, quantum size effect, Josephson junction

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Authors: Noor Suhana Sulaiman, Rohani Abu Bakar, Norrozila Sulaiman

Abstract:

Intrusion Detection System is significant in network security. It detects and identifies intrusion behavior or intrusion attempts in a computer system by monitoring and analyzing the network packets in real time. In the recent year, intelligent algorithms applied in the intrusion detection system (IDS) have been an increasing concern with the rapid growth of the network security. IDS data deals with a huge amount of data which contains irrelevant and redundant features causing slow training and testing process, higher resource consumption as well as poor detection rate. Since the amount of audit data that an IDS needs to examine is very large even for a small network, classification by hand is impossible. Hence, the primary objective of this review is to review the techniques prior to classification process suit to IDS data.

Keywords: Intrusion Detection System, security, soft computing, classification.

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Authors: D. Koutny, D. Palousek, T. Koutecky, A. Zatocilova, J. Rosicky, M. Janda

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The motivation of this work was to find a suitable 3D scanner for human body parts digitalization in the field of prosthetics and orthotics. The main project objective is to compare the three hand-held portable scanners (two optical and one laser) and two optical tripod scanners. The comparison was made with respect of scanning detail, simplicity of operation and ability to scan directly on the human body. Testing was carried out on a plaster cast of the upper limb and directly on a few volunteers. The objective monitored parameters were time of digitizing and post-processing of 3D data and resulting visual data quality. Subjectively, it was considered level of usage and handling of the scanner. The new tripod was developed to improve the face scanning conditions. The results provide an overview of the suitability of different types of scanners.

Keywords: 3D digitization, prosthetics and orthotics, human body digitization.

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Authors: Tallal Abdel Karim Bouzir, Nourdinne Zemmouri, Djihed Berkouk

Abstract:

In this research, a quantitative assessment of the urban sound environment of the city of Biskra, Algeria, was conducted. To determine the quality of the soundscape based on in-situ measurement, using a Landtek SL5868P sound level meter in 47 points, which have been identified to represent the whole city. The result shows that the urban noise level varies from 55.3 dB to 75.8 dB during the weekdays and from 51.7 dB to 74.3 dB during the weekend. On the other hand, we can also note that 70.20% of the results of the weekday measurements and 55.30% of the results of the weekend measurements have levels of sound intensity that exceed the levels allowed by Algerian law and the recommendations of the World Health Organization. These very high urban noise levels affect the quality of life, the acoustic comfort and may even pose multiple risks to people's health.

Keywords: Noise pollution, road traffic, sound intensity, public health, noise monitoring.

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Authors: Reza Hassanpour, Asadollah Shahbahrami, Stephan Wong

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Skin color based tracking techniques often assume a static skin color model obtained either from an offline set of library images or the first few frames of a video stream. These models can show a weak performance in presence of changing lighting or imaging conditions. We propose an adaptive skin color model based on the Gaussian mixture model to handle the changing conditions. Initial estimation of the number and weights of skin color clusters are obtained using a modified form of the general Expectation maximization algorithm, The model adapts to changes in imaging conditions and refines the model parameters dynamically using spatial and temporal constraints. Experimental results show that the method can be used in effectively tracking of hand and face regions.

Keywords: Face detection, Segmentation, Tracking, Gaussian Mixture Model, Adaptation.

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Authors: H. Sediki, Dj. Ould Abdeslam, T. Otmane-cherif, A. Bechouche, K. Mesbah

Abstract:

This paper explores steady-state characteristics of grid-connected doubly fed induction motor (DFIM) in case of unity power factor operation. Based on the synchronized mathematical model, analytic determination of the control laws is presented and illustrated by various figures to understand the effect of the applied rotor voltage on the speed and the active power. On other hand, unlike previous works where the stator resistance was neglected, in this work, stator resistance is included such that the equations can be applied to small wind turbine generators which are becoming more popular. Finally the work is crowned by integration of the studied induction generator in a wind system where an open loop control is proposed confers a remarkable simplicity of implementation compared to the known methods.

Keywords: DFIM, equivalent circuit, induction machine, steady state

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Authors: C. Amer, M. Sahin

Abstract:

The design of an optimised horizontal axis 5-meter-long wind turbine rotor blade in according with IEC 61400-2 standard is a research and development project in order to fulfil the requirements of high efficiency of torque from wind production and to optimise the structural components to the lightest and strongest way possible. For this purpose, a research study is presented here by focusing on the structural characteristics of a composite wind turbine blade via finite element modelling and analysis tools. In this work, first, the required data regarding the general geometrical parts are gathered. Then, the airfoil geometries are created at various sections along the span of the blade by using CATIA software to obtain the two surfaces, namely; the suction and the pressure side of the blade in which there is a hat shaped fibre reinforced plastic spar beam, so-called chassis starting at 0.5m from the root of the blade and extends up to 4 m and filled with a foam core. The root part connecting the blade to the main rotor differential metallic hub having twelve hollow threaded studs is then modelled. The materials are assigned as two different types of glass fabrics, polymeric foam core material and the steel-balsa wood combination for the root connection parts. The glass fabrics are applied using hand wet lay-up lamination with epoxy resin as METYX L600E10C-0, is the unidirectional continuous fibres and METYX XL800E10F having a tri-axial architecture with fibres in the 0,+45,-45 degree orientations in a ratio of 2:1:1. Divinycell H45 is used as the polymeric foam. The finite element modelling of the blade is performed via MSC PATRAN software with various meshes created on each structural part considering shell type for all surface geometries, and lumped mass were added to simulate extra adhesive locations. For the static analysis, the boundary conditions are assigned as fixed at the root through aforementioned bolts, where for dynamic analysis both fixed-free and free-free boundary conditions are made. By also taking the mesh independency into account, MSC NASTRAN is used as a solver for both analyses. The static analysis aims the tip deflection of the blade under its own weight and the dynamic analysis comprises normal mode dynamic analysis performed in order to obtain the natural frequencies and corresponding mode shapes focusing the first five in and out-of-plane bending and the torsional modes of the blade. The analyses results of this study are then used as a benchmark prior to modal testing, where the experiments over the produced wind turbine rotor blade has approved the analytical calculations.

Keywords: Dynamic analysis, Fiber Reinforced Composites, Horizontal axis wind turbine blade, Hand-wet layup, Modal Testing.

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Authors: Nguyen Minh Tuan, Bui Lan Anh, Bui Nu Hoang Anh

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The study was conducted to evaluate the efficiency of Garlic and Chili combination solution on control of insect pests in cabbage crop. The solution was sprayed at different intervals after transplanting. The efficiency of Garlic and chili combination solution on cabbage insect pests was measured. Results revealed that Garlic and chili combination solution was the effectively reduced cabbage insect pests. On other hand, the spray solution not only reduced the number of days required for the cabbage growth but also greatly enhanced the leaf number, head diameter, head weight, and quality of cabbage. Garlic and chili combination solution have positive effects on pests reduction and improve growth, yield and quality of cabbage vegetable.

Keywords: Cabbage, Garlic, Chili, Diamondback moth, Cutworm, Flea Beetle, Quality.

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Authors: G. Schuh, S. Aghassi

Abstract:

In order to bridge the gap between research and industry, promoting technology and knowledge transfer becomes increasingly important. Especially small- and medium-sized enterprises, having only little R&D resources themselves, depend on external technology development activities for remaining innovative. Academia research on the other hand needs potential industrial partners, who are capable and willing to commercialize their technologies as most public funding programs require some sort of technology transfer or dissemination activities. Modern web technologies offer more and more “social” functionalities and open up new ways of user interaction. In the past years several technology transfer platforms were developed, making use of modern web technologies in order to enable and support technology transfer. In this paper we report on the results of a state-of-the art analyses of existing technology transfer platforms, point out their advantages and deficits and give a perspective to the development of an improved technology transfer platform.

Keywords: Knowledge transfer, social software, technology management, technology transfer.

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Authors: Z. Al-Qodah, M. Al-Busoul, A. Khraewish

Abstract:

The hydrothermal behavior of a bed consisting of magnetic and shale oil particle admixtures under the effect of a transverse magnetic field is investigated. The phase diagram, bed void fraction are studied under wide range of the operating conditions i.e., gas velocity, magnetic field intensity and fraction of the magnetic particles. It is found that the range of the stabilized regime is reduced as the magnetic fraction decreases. In addition, the bed voidage at the onset of fluidization decreases as the magnetic fraction decreases. On the other hand, Nusselt number and consequently the heat transfer coefficient is found to increase as the magnetic fraction decreases. An empirical equation is investigated to relate the effect of the gas velocity, magnetic field intensity and fraction of the magnetic particles on the heat transfer behavior in the bed.

Keywords: Magnetic stabilization; Magnetic stabilized fluidizedbeds; Gas-fluidized beds.

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Authors: Bhavana Prakash Shrivastava, Kavita Khare

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This paper presents a synthesis and simulation of proposed enhanced buffer. The design provides advantages of both buffer and bufferless network for that two cross bar switches are used. The concept of virtual channel (VC) is eliminated from the previous design by using an efficient flow-control scheme that uses the storage already present in pipelined channels in place of explicit input VCBs. This can be addressed by providing enhanced buffers on the bufferless link and creating two virtual networks. With this approach, VCBs act as distributed FIFO buffers. Without VCBs or VCs, deadlock prevention is achieved by duplicating physical channels. An enhanced buffer provides a function of hand shaking by providing a ready valid handshake signal and two bit storage. Through this design the power is reduced to 15.65% and delay is reduced to 97.88% with respect to virtual channel router.

Keywords: Enhanced buffer, Gate delay, NOC, VCs, VCB.

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Authors: M. Dinakaran, P. Balasubramanie

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With the demand of mobility by users, wireless technologies have become the hotspot developing arena. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) working group has developed Mobile IP to support node mobility. The concept of node mobility indicates that in spite of the movement of the node, it is still connected to the internet and all the data transactions are preserved. It provides location-independent access to Internet. After the incorporation of host mobility, network mobility has undergone intense research. There are several intricacies faced in the real world implementation of network mobility significantly the problem of nested networks and their consequences. This article is concerned regarding a problem of nested network called pinball route problem and proposes a solution to eliminate the above problem. The proposed mechanism is implemented using NS2 simulation tool and it is found that the proposed mechanism efficiently reduces the overload caused by the pinball route problem.

Keywords: Mobile IP, Pinball routing problem, NEMO

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Authors: Benjamin Osei Tutu, Sharon Annison

Abstract:

On 21^st November, 2016, an outbreak of foodborne illness occurred after a buffet lunch served during a stakeholders’ consultation meeting held in Accra. An investigation was conducted to characterise the affected people, determine the etiologic food, the source of contamination and the etiologic agent and to implement appropriate public health measures to prevent future occurrences. A retrospective cohort study was conducted via telephone interviews, using a structured questionnaire developed from the buffet menu. A case was defined as any person suffering from symptoms of foodborne illness e.g. diarrhoea and/or abdominal cramps after eating food served during the stakeholder consultation meeting in Accra on 21^st November, 2016. The exposure status of all the members of the cohort was assessed by taking the food history of each respondent during the telephone interview. The data obtained was analysed using Epi Info 7. An environmental risk assessment was conducted to ascertain the source of the food contamination. Risks of foodborne infection from the foods eaten were determined using attack rates and odds ratios. Data was obtained from 54 people who consumed food served during the stakeholders’ meeting. Out of this population, 44 people reported with symptoms of food poisoning representing 81.45% (overall attack rate). The peak incubation period was seven hours with a minimum and maximum incubation periods of four and 17 hours, respectively. The commonly reported symptoms were diarrhoea (97.73%, 43/44), vomiting (84.09%, 37/44) and abdominal cramps (75.00%, 33/44). From the incubation period, duration of illness and the symptoms, toxin-mediated food poisoning was suspected. The environmental risk assessment of the implicated catering facility indicated a lack of time/temperature control, inadequate knowledge on food safety among workers and sanitation issues. Limited number of food samples was received for microbiological analysis. Multivariate analysis indicated that illness was significantly associated with the consumption of the snacks served (OR 14.78, P < 0.001). No stool and blood or samples of etiologic food were available for organism isolation; however, the suspected etiologic agent was Staphylococcus aureus or Clostridium perfringens. The outbreak could probably be due to the consumption of unwholesome snack (tuna sandwich or chicken. The contamination and/or growth of the etiologic agent in the snack may be due to the breakdown in cleanliness, time/temperature control and good food handling practices. Training of food handlers in basic food hygiene and safety is recommended.

Keywords: Accra, buffet, C. perfringens, cohort study, food poisoning, gastroenteritis, office workers, Staphylococcus aureus.

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Authors: J. Areerut, F. Samuel

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The purpose of this research is to analyze the pattern of television commercials and how they encourage non-governmental organizations to build their image in Thailand. It realizes how public relations can impact an organization's image. It is a truth that bad public relations management can cause hurt a reputation. On the other hand, a very small amount of work in public relations helps your organization to be recognized broadly and eventually accepted even wider. The main idea in this paper is to study and analyze patterns of television commercials that could impact non-governmental organization's images in a greater way. This research uses questionnaires and content analysis to summarize results. The findings show the aspects of how patterns of television commercials that are suited to non-governmental organization work in Thailand. It will be useful for any non-governmental organization that wishes to build their image through television commercials and also for further work based on this research.

Keywords: Television Commercial (TVC), Organization Image, Non-Governmental Organization: NGO, Public Relation.

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Authors: Haytham Yassine

Abstract:

This article mainly aims to detect and understand how money laundering activities are executed by transport of cash, identifying the underlying factors and separating legitimate from illegitimate usage of cash and how it is being used. This research provides academics with additional literature and provides bank supervisors and practitioners with a better understanding of sources and uses of cash in criminal activities and how cash is used in the laundering mechanism. Data are gathered through survey in the Middle East and North Africa region and review of the available research. The results of the analysis will help distinguish the factors affecting preference for cash rather other payment instruments in the region, identify what causes the tendency to launder illegal proceeds through cash transportation and how illegal cash is being laundered and moved. On the other hand, this paper sheds the light on major cash generating criminal activities, its sources and main destinations.

Keywords: Illegitimate activities, cash, money laundering, terrorism financing.

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Authors: Omar Qasaimeh

Abstract:

The effect of the number of quantum dot (QD) layers on the saturated gain of doped QD semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) has been studied using multi-population coupled rate equations. The developed model takes into account the effect of carrier coupling between adjacent layers. It has been found that increasing the number of QD layers (K) increases the unsaturated optical gain for K<8 and approximately has no effect on the unsaturated gain for K ≥ 8. Our analysis shows that the optimum ptype concentration that maximizes the unsaturated optical gain of the ground state is NA Ôëê 0.75 ×1018cm-3 . On the other hand, it has been found that the saturated optical gain for both the ground state and the excited state are strong function of both the doping concentration and K where we find that it is required to dope the dots with n-type concentration for very large K at high photon energy.

Keywords: doping, multilayer, quantum dot optical amplifier, saturated gain.

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Authors: Guilherme Ribeiro, Alexandre Oliveira, Antonio Ferreira, Shyam Visweswaran, Gregory Cooper

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Patient-specific models are instance-based learning algorithms that take advantage of the particular features of the patient case at hand to predict an outcome. We introduce two patient-specific algorithms based on decision tree paradigm that use AUC as a metric to select an attribute. We apply the patient specific algorithms to predict outcomes in several datasets, including medical datasets. Compared to the patient-specific decision path (PSDP) entropy-based and CART methods, the AUC-based patient-specific decision path models performed equivalently on area under the ROC curve (AUC). Our results provide support for patient-specific methods being a promising approach for making clinical predictions.

Keywords: Approach instance-based, area Under the ROC Curve, Patient-specific Decision Path, clinical predictions.

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Authors: Farnaz Motamediyan Dehkordi, Anthony Thompson, Tobias Larsson

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Market competition and a desire to gain advantages on globalized market, drives companies towards innovation efforts. Project overload is an unpleasant phenomenon, which is happening for employees inside those organizations trying to make the most efficient use of their resources to be innovative. But what are the impacts of project overload on organization-s innovation capabilities? Advanced engineering teams (AE) inside a major heavy equipment manufacturer are suffering from project overload in their quest for innovation. In this paper, Agent-based modeling (ABM) is used to examine the current reality of the company context, and of the AE team, where the opportunities and challenges for reducing the risk of project overload and moving towards innovation were identified. Project overload is more likely to stifle innovation and creativity inside teams. On the other hand, motivations on proper challenging goals are more likely to help individual to alleviate the negative aspects of low level of project overload.

Keywords: Innovation, Creativity, Project overload, Agentbased modelling.

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