Search results for: Personal Information Leakage Problem
2666 Bayesian Decision Approach to Protection on the Flood Event in Upper Ayeyarwady River, Myanmar
Authors: Min Min Swe Zin
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This paper introduces the foundations of Bayesian probability theory and Bayesian decision method. The main goal of Bayesian decision theory is to minimize the expected loss of a decision or minimize the expected risk. The purposes of this study are to review the decision process on the issue of flood occurrences and to suggest possible process for decision improvement. This study examines the problem structure of flood occurrences and theoretically explicates the decision-analytic approach based on Bayesian decision theory and application to flood occurrences in Environmental Engineering. In this study, we will discuss about the flood occurrences upon an annual maximum water level in cm, 43-year record available from 1965 to 2007 at the gauging station of Sagaing on the Ayeyarwady River with the drainage area - 120193 sq km by using Bayesian decision method. As a result, we will discuss the loss and risk of vast areas of agricultural land whether which will be inundated or not in the coming year based on the two standard maximum water levels during 43 years. And also we forecast about that lands will be safe from flood water during the next 10 years.
Keywords: Bayesian decision method, conditional binomial distribution, minimax rules, prior beta distribution.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 15792665 Verification of K-ω SST Turbulence Model for Supersonic Internal Flows
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In this work, we try to find the best setting of Computational Fluid Dynamic solver available for the problems in the field of supersonic internal flows. We used the supersonic air-toair ejector to represent the typical problem in focus. There are multiple oblique shock waves, shear layers, boundary layers and normal shock interacting in the supersonic ejector making this device typical in field of supersonic inner flows. Modeling of shocks in general is demanding on the physical model of fluid, because ordinary conservation equation does not conform to real conditions in the near-shock region as found in many works. From these reasons, we decided to take special care about solver setting in this article by means of experimental approach of color Schlieren pictures and pneumatic measurement. Fast pressure transducers were used to measure unsteady static pressure in regimes with normal shock in mixing chamber. Physical behavior of ejector in several regimes is discussed. Best choice of eddy-viscosity setting is discussed on the theoretical base. The final verification of the k-ω SST is done on the base of comparison between experiment and numerical results.Keywords: CFD simulations, color Schlieren, k-ω SST, supersonic flows, shock waves.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 64732664 Short-Term Load Forecasting Based on Variational Mode Decomposition and Least Square Support Vector Machine
Authors: Jiangyong Liu, Xiangxiang Xu, Bote Luo, Xiaoxue Luo, Jiang Zhu, Lingzhi Yi
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To address the problems of non-linearity and high randomness of the original power load sequence causing the degradation of power load forecasting accuracy, a short-term load forecasting method is proposed. The method is based on the least square support vector machine (LSSVM) optimized by an improved sparrow search algorithm combined with the variational mode decomposition proposed in this paper. The application of the variational mode decomposition technique decomposes the raw power load data into a series of intrinsic mode functions components, which can reduce the complexity and instability of the raw data while overcoming modal confounding; the proposed improved sparrow search algorithm can solve the problem of difficult selection of learning parameters in the LSSVM. Finally, through comparison experiments, the results show that the method can effectively improve prediction accuracy.
Keywords: Load forecasting, variational mode decomposition, improved sparrow search algorithm, least square support vector machine.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 512663 Aircraft Selection Process Using Preference Analysis for Reference Ideal Solution (PARIS)
Authors: C. Ardil
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Multiple criteria decision making analysis (MCDMA) methods are applied to many real - life problems in different fields of engineering science and technology. The "preference analysis for reference ideal solution (PARIS)" method is proposed for an efficient MCDMA evaluation of decision problems. The multiple criteria aircraft evaluation approach is based on the integrated the mean weight, entropy weight, PARIS, and TOPSIS method, which eliminates the subjective importance weight assignment process. The evaluation criteria were identified from an extensive literature review of aircraft selection process. The aim of this study is to propose an efficient methodology for handling the aircraft selection process in which the proposed method solves effectively the MCDMA problem. A numerical example is presented to demonstrate the applicability and validity of the proposed MCDMA approach.
Keywords: aircraft selection, aircraft, multiple criteria decision making, multiple criteria decision making analysis, mean weight, entropy weight, MCDMA, PARIS, TOPSIS, VIKOR, ELECTRE, PROMETHEE
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 5362662 Optimal Design of Airfoil with High Aspect Ratio in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Authors: Kyoungwoo Park, Ji-Won Han, Hyo-Jae Lim, Byeong-Sam Kim, Juhee Lee
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Shape optimization of the airfoil with high aspect ratio of long endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is performed by the multi-objective optimization technology coupled with computational fluid dynamics (CFD). For predicting the aerodynamic characteristics around the airfoil the high-fidelity Navier-Stokes solver is employed and SMOGA (Simple Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm), which is developed by authors, is used for solving the multi-objective optimization problem. To obtain the optimal solutions of the design variable (i.e., sectional airfoil profile, wing taper ratio and sweep) for high performance of UAVs, both the lift and lift-to-drag ratio are maximized whereas the pitching moment should be minimized, simultaneously. It is found that the lift force and lift-to-drag ratio are linearly dependent and a unique and dominant solution are existed. However, a trade-off phenomenon is observed between the lift-to-drag ratio and pitching moment. As the result of optimization, sixty-five (65) non-dominated Pareto individuals at the cutting edge of design spaces that is decided by airfoil shapes can be obtained.Keywords: Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), Airfoil, CFD, Shape optimization, Lift-to-drag ratio.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 64362661 System and Method for Providing Web-Based Remote Application Service
Authors: Shuen-Tai Wang, Yu-Ching Lin, Hsi-Ya Chang
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With the development of virtualization technologies, a new type of service named cloud computing service is produced. Cloud users usually encounter the problem of how to use the virtualized platform easily over the web without requiring the plug-in or installation of special software. The object of this paper is to develop a system and a method enabling process interfacing within an automation scenario for accessing remote application by using the web browser. To meet this challenge, we have devised a web-based interface that system has allowed to shift the GUI application from the traditional local environment to the cloud platform, which is stored on the remote virtual machine. We designed the sketch of web interface following the cloud virtualization concept that sought to enable communication and collaboration among users. We describe the design requirements of remote application technology and present implementation details of the web application and its associated components. We conclude that this effort has the potential to provide an elastic and resilience environment for several application services. Users no longer have to burden the system maintenances and reduce the overall cost of software licenses and hardware. Moreover, this remote application service represents the next step to the mobile workplace, and it lets user to use the remote application virtually from anywhere.
Keywords: Virtualization technology, virtualized platform, web interface, remote application.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 9992660 Data Transformation Services (DTS): Creating Data Mart by Consolidating Multi-Source Enterprise Operational Data
Authors: J. D. D. Daniel, K. N. Goh, S. M. Yusop
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Trends in business intelligence, e-commerce and remote access make it necessary and practical to store data in different ways on multiple systems with different operating systems. As business evolve and grow, they require efficient computerized solution to perform data update and to access data from diverse enterprise business applications. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the capability of DTS [1] as a database solution for automatic data transfer and update in solving business problem. This DTS package is developed for the sales of variety of plants and eventually expanded into commercial supply and landscaping business. Dimension data modeling is used in DTS package to extract, transform and load data from heterogeneous database systems such as MySQL, Microsoft Access and Oracle that consolidates into a Data Mart residing in SQL Server. Hence, the data transfer from various databases is scheduled to run automatically every quarter of the year to review the efficient sales analysis. Therefore, DTS is absolutely an attractive solution for automatic data transfer and update which meeting today-s business needs.Keywords: Data Transformation Services (DTS), ObjectLinking and Embedding Database (OLEDB), Data Mart, OnlineAnalytical Processing (OLAP), Online Transactional Processing(OLTP).
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 20392659 GenCos- Optimal Bidding Strategy Considering Market Power and Transmission Constraints: A Cournot-based Model
Authors: A. Badri
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Restructured electricity markets may provide opportunities for producers to exercise market power maintaining prices in excess of competitive levels. In this paper an oligopolistic market is presented that all Generation Companies (GenCos) bid in a Cournot model. Genetic algorithm (GA) is applied to obtain generation scheduling of each GenCo as well as hourly market clearing prices (MCP). In order to consider network constraints a multiperiod framework is presented to simulate market clearing mechanism in which the behaviors of market participants are modelled through piecewise block curves. A mixed integer linear programming (MILP) is employed to solve the problem. Impacts of market clearing process on participants- characteristic and final market prices are presented. Consequently, a novel multi-objective model is addressed for security constrained optimal bidding strategy of GenCos. The capability of price-maker GenCos to alter MCP is evaluated through introducing an effective-supply curve. In addition, the impact of exercising market power on the variation of market characteristics as well as GenCos scheduling is studied.Keywords: Optimal bidding strategy, Cournot equilibrium, market power, network constraints, market auction mechanism
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16522658 A Mixed Expert Evaluation System and Dynamic Interval-Valued Hesitant Fuzzy Selection Approach
Authors: Hossein Gitinavard, Mohammad Hossein Fazel Zarandi
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In the last decades, concerns about the environmental issues lead to professional and academic efforts on green supplier selection problems. In this sake, one of the main issues in evaluating the green supplier selection problems, which could increase the uncertainty, is the preferences of the experts' judgments about the candidate green suppliers. Therefore, preparing an expert system to evaluate the problem based on the historical data and the experts' knowledge can be sensible. This study provides an expert evaluation system to assess the candidate green suppliers under selected criteria in a multi-period approach. In addition, a ranking approach under interval-valued hesitant fuzzy set (IVHFS) environment is proposed to select the most appropriate green supplier in planning horizon. In the proposed ranking approach, the IVHFS and the last aggregation approach are considered to margin the errors and to prevent data loss, respectively. Hence, a comparative analysis is provided based on an illustrative example to show the feasibility of the proposed approach.Keywords: Green supplier selection, expert system, ranking approach, interval-valued hesitant fuzzy setting.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14242657 A Character Detection Method for Ancient Yi Books Based on Connected Components and Regressive Character Segmentation
Authors: Xu Han, Shanxiong Chen, Shiyu Zhu, Xiaoyu Lin, Fujia Zhao, Dingwang Wang
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Character detection is an important issue for character recognition of ancient Yi books. The accuracy of detection directly affects the recognition effect of ancient Yi books. Considering the complex layout, the lack of standard typesetting and the mixed arrangement between images and texts, we propose a character detection method for ancient Yi books based on connected components and regressive character segmentation. First, the scanned images of ancient Yi books are preprocessed with nonlocal mean filtering, and then a modified local adaptive threshold binarization algorithm is used to obtain the binary images to segment the foreground and background for the images. Second, the non-text areas are removed by the method based on connected components. Finally, the single character in the ancient Yi books is segmented by our method. The experimental results show that the method can effectively separate the text areas and non-text areas for ancient Yi books and achieve higher accuracy and recall rate in the experiment of character detection, and effectively solve the problem of character detection and segmentation in character recognition of ancient books.Keywords: Computing methodologies, interest point, salient region detections, image segmentation.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 8672656 Use of Smartphones in 6th and 7th Grade (Elementary Schools) in Istria: Pilot Study
Authors: Maja Ruzic-Baf, Vedrana Keteles, Andrea Debeljuh
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Younger and younger children are now using a smartphone, a device which has become ‘a must have’ and the life of children would be almost ‘unthinkable’ without one. Devices are becoming lighter and lighter but offering an array of options and applications as well as the unavoidable access to the Internet, without which it would be almost unusable. Numerous features such as taking of photographs, listening to music, information search on the Internet, access to social networks, usage of some of the chatting and messaging services, are only some of the numerous features offered by ‘smart’ devices. They have replaced the alarm clock, home phone, camera, tablet and other devices. Their use and possession have become a part of the everyday image of young people. Apart from the positive aspects, the use of smartphones has also some downsides. For instance, free time was usually spent in nature, playing, doing sports or other activities enabling children an adequate psychophysiological growth and development. The greater usage of smartphones during classes to check statuses on social networks, message your friends, play online games, are just some of the possible negative aspects of their application. Considering that the age of the population using smartphones is decreasing and that smartphones are no longer ‘foreign’ to children of pre-school age (smartphones are used at home or in coffee shops or shopping centers while waiting for their parents, playing video games often inappropriate to their age), particular attention must be paid to a very sensitive group, the teenagers who almost never separate from their ‘pets’. This paper is divided into two sections, theoretical and empirical ones. The theoretical section gives an overview of the pros and cons of the usage of smartphones, while the empirical section presents the results of a research conducted in three elementary schools regarding the usage of smartphones and, specifically, their usage during classes, during breaks and to search information on the Internet, check status updates and 'likes’ on the Facebook social network.
Keywords: Education, smartphone, social networks, teenagers.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 15242655 Using New Technologies for Public Parking in Isfahan City
Authors: M. Ahmadi Baseri, R. Mokhtari Malekabadi, A. Gandomkar
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Cities expansion, urban travels increase, the technology development, the automobile price cheapen, and the families' income ascending cause the considerable increase in automobile numbers of the city. This fact has led to the traffic creation and the automobile parking site shortage in the city. Also in Esfahan metropolis, the parking lots shortage has been the great problem of this town; in addition, in designing and constructing of the parking sites the traditional methods are utilized which do not have a reasonable and optimized usage of the valuable urban lands. In this article, by introducing the prefabricate mechanized parking system which is inexpensive, simple and quick, and occupies very small space, therefore provides the high content of parking site for the cities, we can eliminate the parking space shortage difficulty of the cities. The achieved results of this research represent that an optimized utilization of the existent urban spaces for parking site construction has not been accomplished. By employing the new parking site technologies such as mechanization categorized parking sites and the capacity prefabricate mechanized of each parking space have become 8 multiples; in this case, the valuable urban lands can be used in an optimized way.Keywords: Public parking sites, New parking sites technologies, Prefabricate mechanized parking site, Isfahan City.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 18112654 Constraint Active Contour Model with Application to Automated Three-Dimensional Airway Wall Segmentation
Authors: Kuo-Lung Lor, Chi-Hsuan Tsou, Yeun-Chung Chang, Chung-Ming Chen
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For evaluating the severity of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), one is interested in inspecting the airway wall thickening due to inflammation. Although airway segmentations have being well developed to reconstruct in high order, airway wall segmentation remains a challenge task. While tackling such problem as a multi-surface segmentation, the interrelation within surfaces needs to be considered. We propose a new method for three-dimensional airway wall segmentation using spring structural active contour model. The method incorporates the gravitational field of the image and repelling force field of the inner lumen as the soft constraint and the geometric spring structure of active contour as the hard constraint to approximate a three-dimensional coupled surface readily for thickness measurements. The results show the preservation of topology constraints of coupled surfaces. In conclusion, our springy, soft-tissue-like structure ensures the globally optimal solution and waives the shortness following by the inevitable improper inner surface constraint.
Keywords: active contour model, airway wall, COPD, geometric spring structure
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 15772653 Self-adaptation of Ontologies to Folksonomies in Semantic Web
Authors: Francisco Echarte, José Javier Astrain, Alberto Córdoba, Jesús Villadangos
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Ontologies and tagging systems are two different ways to organize the knowledge present in the current Web. In this paper we propose a simple method to model folksonomies, as tagging systems, with ontologies. We show the scalability of the method using real data sets. The modeling method is composed of a generic ontology that represents any folksonomy and an algorithm to transform the information contained in folksonomies to the generic ontology. The method allows representing folksonomies at any instant of time.
Keywords: Folksonomies, ontologies, OWL, semantic web.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16282652 Satellite Imagery Classification Based on Deep Convolution Network
Authors: Zhong Ma, Zhuping Wang, Congxin Liu, Xiangzeng Liu
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Satellite imagery classification is a challenging problem with many practical applications. In this paper, we designed a deep convolution neural network (DCNN) to classify the satellite imagery. The contributions of this paper are twofold — First, to cope with the large-scale variance in the satellite image, we introduced the inception module, which has multiple filters with different size at the same level, as the building block to build our DCNN model. Second, we proposed a genetic algorithm based method to efficiently search the best hyper-parameters of the DCNN in a large search space. The proposed method is evaluated on the benchmark database. The results of the proposed hyper-parameters search method show it will guide the search towards better regions of the parameter space. Based on the found hyper-parameters, we built our DCNN models, and evaluated its performance on satellite imagery classification, the results show the classification accuracy of proposed models outperform the state of the art method.
Keywords: Satellite imagery classification, deep convolution network, genetic algorithm, hyper-parameter optimization.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 23482651 Hydrogen Embrittlement in a Coupled Mass Diffusion with Stress near a Blunting Crack Tip for AISI 4135 Pressure Vessel
Authors: H. Dehghan, E. Mahdavi, M. M. Heyhat
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In pressure vessels contain hydrogen, the role of hydrogen will be important because of hydrogen cracking problem. It is difficult to predict what is happened in metallurgical field spite of a lot of studies have been searched. The main role in controlling the mass diffusion as driving force is related to stress. In this study, finite element analysis is implemented to estimate material-s behavior associated with hydrogen embrittlement. For this purpose, one model of a pressure vessel is introduced that it has definite boundary and initial conditions. In fact, finite element is employed to solve the sequentially coupled mass diffusion with stress near a crack front in a pressure vessel. Modeling simulation intergrarnular fracture of AISI 4135 steel due to hydrogen is investigated. So, distribution of hydrogen and stress are obtained and they indicate that their maximum amounts occur near the crack front. This phenomenon is happened exactly the region between elastic and plastic field. Therefore, hydrogen is highly mobile and can diffuse through crystal lattice so that this zone is potential to trap high volume of hydrogen. Consequently, crack growth and fast fracture will be happened.Keywords: Stress Intensity Factor, Mass Diffusion, FEM, Pressure Vessel
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 30742650 Shape Optimization of Permanent Magnet Motors Using the Reduced Basis Technique
Authors: A. Jabbari, M. Shakeri, A. Nabavi
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In this paper, a tooth shape optimization method for cogging torque reduction in Permanent Magnet (PM) motors is developed by using the Reduced Basis Technique (RBT) coupled by Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Design of Experiments (DOE) methods. The primary objective of the method is to reduce the enormous number of design variables required to define the tooth shape. RBT is a weighted combination of several basis shapes. The aim of the method is to find the best combination using the weights for each tooth shape as the design variables. A multi-level design process is developed to find suitable basis shapes or trial shapes at each level that can be used in the reduced basis technique. Each level is treated as a separated optimization problem until the required objective – minimum cogging torque – is achieved. The process is started with geometrically simple basis shapes that are defined by their shape co-ordinates. The experimental design of Taguchi method is used to build the approximation model and to perform optimization. This method is demonstrated on the tooth shape optimization of a 8-poles/12-slots PM motor.Keywords: PM motor, cogging torque, tooth shape optimization, RBT, FEA, DOE.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 25032649 Trends, Problems and Needs of Urban Housing in Malaysia
Authors: Salfarina A.G., Nor Malina M., Azrina H.
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The right to housing is a basic need while good quality and affordable housing is a reflection of a high quality of life. However, housing remains a major problem for most, especially for the bottom billions. Satisfaction on housing and neighbourhood conditions are one of the important indicators that reflect quality of life. These indicators are also important in the process of evaluating housing policy with the objective to increase the quality of housing and neighbourhood. The research method is purely based on a quantitative method, using a survey. The findings show that housing purchasing trend in urban Malaysia is determined by demographic profiles, mainly by education level, age, gender and income. The period of housing ownership also influenced the socio-cultural interactions and satisfaction of house owners with their neighbourhoods. The findings also show that the main concerns for house buyers in urban areas are price and location of the house. Respondents feel that houses in urban Malaysia is too expensive and beyond their affordability. Location of houses and distance from work place are also regarded as the main concern. However, respondents are fairly satisfied with religious and socio-cultural facilities in the housing areas and most importantly not many regard ethnicity as an issue in their decision-making, when buying a house.Keywords: Housing, Urban Housing, Malaysia
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 73472648 Particular Qualities of Education in Kazakh Society
Authors: A. K. Akhmetbekova, D. T. Koptileuova, A. B. Zhyekbaeva, M. E. Aitzhanov
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Most of the academics connect a theory of multiculturalism with globalization and limit it by last decades of 20th century. However, Kazakh society encountered with this problem when the Soviet-s rule emerged. As a result of repression, the Second World War, development of virgin lands representatives of more than 100 nationalities lives in Kazakhstan. Communist ideology propagandized internationalism, which would defined principles of multicultural community but a common ideology demands a single culture. As a result multicultural society in the USSR developed under control of Russian culture. Education in the USSR was conducted in two departments: autochthonous and Russian. Autochthonous education narrowed student capabilities. Also because of soviet ideology science was conducted in Russian Universities provided education in Russian and all science literature were in Russian. Exceptions were humanitarian fields where Kazakh departments were admitted. Naturally non-Kazakhs studied in Russian departments, moreover Kazakhs preferred to study in Russian as most do nowadays preferring English. As a result Kazakh society consisted of Kazakhs, Kazakhs who recognized Russian as a mother tongue and other nationalities who were also Russian speakers. This aspect continues to distinguish particular qualities of multicultural community in Kazakhstan.Keywords: Ideology, internationalism, multicultural society, Russian society.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 17842647 Social Anthropology of Convergence and Nomadic Computing
Authors: Emilia Nercissians
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The paper attempts to contribute to the largely neglected social and anthropological discussion of technology development on the one hand, and to redirecting the emphasis in anthropology from primitive and exotic societies to problems of high relevance in contemporary era and how technology is used in everyday life. It draws upon multidimensional models of intelligence and ideal type formation. It is argued that the predominance of computational and cognitive cosmovisions have led to technology alienation. Injection of communicative competence in artificially intelligent systems and identity technologies in the coming information society are analyzedKeywords: convergence, nomadic computing, solidarity, status.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 15002646 Assessing the Impact of Quinoa Cultivation Adopted to Produce a Secure Food Crop and Poverty Reduction by Farmers in Rural Pakistan
Authors: Ejaz Ashraf, Raheel Babar, Muhammad Yaseen, Hafiz Khurram Shurjeel, Nosheen Fatima
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Main purpose of this study was to assess adoption level of farmers for quinoa cultivation after they had been taught through training and visit extension approach. At this time of the 21st century, population structure, climate change, food requirements and eating habits of people are changing rapidly. In this scenario, farmers must play their key role in sustainable crop development and production through adoption of new crops that may also be helpful to overcome the issue of food insecurity as well as reducing poverty in rural areas. Its cultivation in Pakistan is at the early stages and there is a need to raise awareness among farmers to grow quinoa crops. In the middle of the 2015, a training and visit extension approach was used to raise awareness and convince farmers to grow quinoa in the area. During training and visit extension program, 80 farmers were randomly selected for the training of quinoa cultivation. Later on, these farmers trained 60 more farmers living into their neighborhood. After six months, a survey was conducted with all 140 farmers to assess the impact of the training and visit program on adoption level of respondents for the quinoa crop. The survey instrument was developed with the help of literature review and other experts of the crop. Validity and reliability of the instrument were checked before complete data collection. The data were analyzed by using SPSS. Multiple regression analysis was used for interpretation of the results from the survey, which indicated that factors like information/ training, change in agronomic and plant protection practices play a key role in the adoption of quinoa cultivation by respondents. In addition, the model explains more than 50% of variation in the adoption level of respondents. It is concluded that farmers need timely information for improved knowledge of agronomic and plant protection practices to adopt cultivation of the quinoa crop in the area.
Keywords: Farmers, quinoa, adoption, contact, training and visit.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 9202645 A New Strategy for Minimizing Precipitations during ASP Flooding in Carbonate Reservoirs
Authors: Khaled Abdalla Elraies, Shuaib Ahmed
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A large quantity of world-s oil reserves exists in carbonate reservoirs. Carbonate reservoirs are very sensitive to chemical enhanced oil recovery process because of containing large amount of calcite, dolomite and calcium sulfate minerals. These minerals cause major obstacles during alkali-surfactant-polymer (ASP) flooding. Alkali reacts with these minerals and form undesired precipitations which plug effective porous openings, reduce permeability and cause scale occurrence at the wellbore. In this paper, a new chemical combination consists of acrylic acid and alkali was used to minimize precipitation problem during ASP flooding. A series of fluid-fluid compatibility tests were performed using acrylic acid and different concentrations of alkaline. Two types of alkalis namely; sodium carbonate and sodium metaborate were screened. As a result, the combination of acrylic acid and sodium carbonate was not effective in preventing calcium and magnesium precipitations. However, acrylic acid and sodium metaborate showed promising results for keeping all solutions without any precipitations. The ratio of acrylic acid to sodium metaborate of 0.7:1.0 was found to be optimum for achieving a compatible solution for 30 days at 80oC.Keywords: Fluid-fluid compatibility test, Carbonate reservoirs, Precipitations and ASP flooding.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 27522644 WhatsApp as Part of a Blended Learning Model to Help Programming Novices
Authors: Tlou J. Ramabu
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Programming is one of the challenging subjects in the field of computing. In the higher education sphere, some programming novices’ performance, retention rate, and success rate are not improving. Most of the time, the problem is caused by the slow pace of learning, difficulty in grasping the syntax of the programming language and poor logical skills. More importantly, programming forms part of major subjects within the field of computing. As a result, specialized pedagogical methods and innovation are highly recommended. Little research has been done on the potential productivity of the WhatsApp platform as part of a blended learning model. In this article, the authors discuss the WhatsApp group as a part of blended learning model incorporated for a group of programming novices. We discuss possible administrative activities for productive utilisation of the WhatsApp group on the blended learning overview. The aim is to take advantage of the popularity of WhatsApp and the time students spend on it for their educational purpose. We believe that blended learning featuring a WhatsApp group may ease novices’ cognitive load and strengthen their foundational programming knowledge and skills. This is a work in progress as the proposed blended learning model with WhatsApp incorporated is yet to be implemented.
Keywords: Blended learning, higher education, WhatsApp, programming, novices, lecturers.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 11772643 A Propose of Personnel Assessment Method Including a Two-Way Assessment for Evaluating Evaluators and Employees
Authors: Shunsuke Saito, Kazuho Yoshimoto, Shunichi Ohmori, Sirawadee Arunyanart
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In this paper, we suggest a mechanism of assessment that rater and Ratee (or employees) to convince. There are many problems exist in the personnel assessment. In particular, we were focusing on the three. (1) Raters are not sufficiently recognized assessment point. (2) Ratee are not convinced by the mechanism of assessment. (3) Raters (or Evaluators) and ratees have empathy. We suggest 1: Setting of "understanding of the assessment points." 2: Setting of "relative assessment ability." 3: Proposal of two-way assessment mechanism to solve these problems. As a prerequisite, it is assumed that there are multiple raters. This is because has been a growing importance of multi-faceted assessment. In this model, it determines the weight of each assessment point evaluators by the degree of understanding and assessment ability of raters and ratee. We used the ANP (Analytic Network Process) is a theory that an extension of the decision-making technique AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process). ANP can be to address the problem of forming a network and assessment of Two-Way is possible. We apply this technique personnel assessment, the weights of rater of each point can be reasonably determined. We suggest absolute assessment for Two-Way assessment by ANP. We have verified that the consent of the two approaches is higher than conventional mechanism. Also, human resources consultant we got a comment about the application of the practice.
Keywords: Personnel assessment, ANP (analytic network process), two-way.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 7912642 Fuzzy Population-Based Meta-Heuristic Approaches for Attribute Reduction in Rough Set Theory
Authors: Mafarja Majdi, Salwani Abdullah, Najmeh S. Jaddi
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One of the global combinatorial optimization problems in machine learning is feature selection. It concerned with removing the irrelevant, noisy, and redundant data, along with keeping the original meaning of the original data. Attribute reduction in rough set theory is an important feature selection method. Since attribute reduction is an NP-hard problem, it is necessary to investigate fast and effective approximate algorithms. In this paper, we proposed two feature selection mechanisms based on memetic algorithms (MAs) which combine the genetic algorithm with a fuzzy record to record travel algorithm and a fuzzy controlled great deluge algorithm, to identify a good balance between local search and genetic search. In order to verify the proposed approaches, numerical experiments are carried out on thirteen datasets. The results show that the MAs approaches are efficient in solving attribute reduction problems when compared with other meta-heuristic approaches.Keywords: Rough Set Theory, Attribute Reduction, Fuzzy Logic, Memetic Algorithms, Record to Record Algorithm, Great Deluge Algorithm.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 19372641 Transient Stability Assessment Using Fuzzy SVM and Modified Preventive Control
Authors: B. Dora Arul Selvi, .N. Kamaraj
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Transient Stability is an important issue in power systems planning, operation and extension. The objective of transient stability analysis problem is not satisfied with mere transient instability detection or evaluation and it is most important to complement it by defining fast and efficient control measures in order to ensure system security. This paper presents a new Fuzzy Support Vector Machines (FSVM) to investigate the stability status of power systems and a modified generation rescheduling scheme to bring back the identified unstable cases to a more economical and stable operating point. FSVM improves the traditional SVM (Support Vector Machines) by adding fuzzy membership to each training sample to indicate the degree of membership of this sample to different classes. The preventive control based on economic generator rescheduling avoids the instability of the power systems with minimum change in operating cost under disturbed conditions. Numerical results on the New England 39 bus test system show the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Keywords: Fuzzy Support Vector Machine (FSVM), Incremental Cost, Preventive Control, Transient stability
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14912640 Influence of Nanozeolite Particles on Improvement of Clayey Soil
Authors: A. Goodarzian, A. Ghasemipanah, R. Ziaie Moayed, H. Niroumand
Abstract:
The problem of soil stabilization has been one of the important issues in geotechnical engineering. Nowadays, nanomaterials have revolutionized many industries. In this research, improvement of the Kerman fine-grained soil by nanozeolite and nanobentonite additives separately has been investigated using Atterberg Limits and unconfined compression test. In unconfined compression test, the samples were prepared with 3, 5 and 7% nano additives, with 1, 7 and 28 days curing time with strain control method. Finally, the effect of different percentages of nanozeolite and nanobentonite on the geotechnical behavior and characteristics of Kerman fine-grained soil was investigated. The results showed that with increasing the amount of nanozeolite and also nanobentonite to fine-grained soil, the soil exhibits more compression strength. So that by adding 7% nanozeolite and nanobentonite with 1 day curing, the unconfined compression strength is 1.18 and 2.1 times higher than the unstabilized soil. In addition, the failure strain decreases in samples containing nanozeolite, whereas it increases in the presence of nanobentonite. Increasing the percentage of nanozeolite and nanobentonite also increased the elasticity modulus of soil.
Keywords: Nanozeolite particles, nanobentonite particles, clayey soil, unconfined compression stress, specific surface area, cation exchange capacity, Atterberg limits.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 8742639 The Determination of Aflatoxins in Paddy and Milled Fractions of Rice in Guyana: Preliminary Results
Authors: Donna M. Morrison, Lambert Chester, Coretta A. N. Samuels, David R. Ledoux
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A survey was conducted in the five rice-growing regions in Guyana to determine the presence of aflatoxins in multiple fractions of rice in June/October 2015 growing season. The fractions were paddy, steamed paddy, cargo rice, white rice and parboiled rice. Samples were analyzed by High Performance Liquid Chromatography. A subset of the samples was further analyzed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for concurrence. All analyses were conducted at the University of Missouri, USA. Of the 186 samples tested, 16 had aflatoxin concentrations greater than 20 ppb the recommended limit for aflatoxins in food according to the United States Food and Drug Administration. An additional three samples had aflatoxin B1 concentrations greater than the European Union Commission maximum levels for aflatoxin B1 in rice at 5 µg/kg and total aflatoxins (B1, B2, G1 and G2) at 10 µg/kg. The survey indicates that there is no widespread aflatoxin problem in rice in Guyana. The incidence of aflatoxins appears to be localized.
Keywords: Aflatoxins, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, high-performance liquid chromatography, rice fractions.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 15802638 Multiple Peaks Tracking Algorithm using Particle Swarm Optimization Incorporated with Artificial Neural Network
Authors: Mei Shan Ngan, Chee Wei Tan
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Due to the non-linear characteristics of photovoltaic (PV) array, PV systems typically are equipped with the capability of maximum power point tracking (MPPT) feature. Moreover, in the case of PV array under partially shaded conditions, hotspot problem will occur which could damage the PV cells. Partial shading causes multiple peaks in the P-V characteristic curves. This paper presents a hybrid algorithm of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) MPPT algorithm for the detection of global peak among the multiple peaks in order to extract the true maximum energy from PV panel. The PV system consists of PV array, dc-dc boost converter controlled by the proposed MPPT algorithm and a resistive load. The system was simulated using MATLAB/Simulink package. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm performs well to detect the true global peak power. The results of the simulations are analyzed and discussed.Keywords: Photovoltaic (PV), Partial Shading, Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN)
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 37562637 Transmit Sub-aperture Optimization in MSTA Ultrasound Imaging Method
Authors: YuriyTasinkevych, Ihor Trots, AndrzejNowicki, Marcin Lewandowski
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The paper presents the optimization problem for the multi-element synthetic transmit aperture method (MSTA) in ultrasound imaging applications. The optimal choice of the transmit aperture size is performed as a trade-off between the lateral resolution, penetration depth and the frame rate. Results of the analysis obtained by a developed optimization algorithm are presented. Maximum penetration depth and the best lateral resolution at given depths are chosen as the optimization criteria. The optimization algorithm was tested using synthetic aperture data of point reflectors simulated by Filed II program for Matlab® for the case of 5MHz 128-element linear transducer array with 0.48 mm pitch are presented. The visualization of experimentally obtained synthetic aperture data of a tissue mimicking phantom and in vitro measurements of the beef liver are also shown. The data were obtained using the SonixTOUCH Research systemequipped with a linear 4MHz 128 element transducerwith 0.3 mm element pitch, 0.28 mm element width and 70% fractional bandwidth was excited by one sine cycle pulse burst of transducer's center frequency.Keywords: synthetic aperture method, ultrasound imaging, beamforming.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1885