Search results for: Peer assessment

Authors: Ma. Rosario Concepcion O. Ang, Luis Caezar Ian K. Panganiban, Charmyne B. Mamador, Oliver Dan G. De Luna, Michael D. Bausas, Joselito P. Cruz

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PhilSHORE is a multi-site, multi-device and multicriteria decision support tool designed to support the development of tidal current energy in the Philippines. Its platform is based on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) which allows for the collection, storage, processing, analyses and display of geospatial data. Combining GIS tools with open source web development applications, PhilSHORE becomes a webGIS-based marine spatial planning tool. To date, PhilSHORE displays output maps and graphs of power and energy density, site suitability and site-device analysis. It enables stakeholders and the public easy access to the results of tidal current energy resource assessments and site suitability analyses. Results of the initial development show that PhilSHORE is a promising decision support tool for ORE project developments.

Keywords: GIS, Site Suitability Analysis, Tidal Current Energy Resource Assessment, WebGIS.

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Authors: Mohammed Sani Abdulai

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Public sector budgeting, all over the world, is underpinned by some universally accepted principles of sound budget management such as budget unity, universality, annuality, and a balanced budget. These traditional principles, though fundamental, had, in recent years, been augmented by the more modern principles of budgeting within fiscal objective, alignment with medium-term strategic plans as well as the observance of such related concepts as transparency, openness and accessibility. In this paper, we have endeavored to shed light, from literature and practice, on the meaning and purposes of such fundamental budgeting principles. We have also assessed the extent to which the Government of Ghana’s budget complies with the four traditional principles of budget unity, universality, annuality, and a balanced budget and the three out of the ten modern principles of budgetary governance of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). We did so by using a qualitative method of review and analysis of existing documents and the performance assessment reports on Ghana’s Public Financial Management (PFM) measured using such frameworks as the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA), the Open Budget Survey (OBS) and its Index (OBI), the reports and action plans of Open Government Partnership (OGP) and the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT). Other performance assessment reports that were relied on included, but not limited to, the Joint Evaluation Report of PFM in Ghana, 2001-2010, and the Joint Evaluation of Budget Support to Ghana, 2005-2015. We have, through this paper, brought to the fore the lessons that could be learned on how those budgetary principles undergird the Government of Ghana’s budget formulation, execution, accounting, control, and oversight. These lessons include, but are not limited to, the need for both scholars and practitioners in the PFM space to be aware of the impact of those principles on public sector budgeting.

Keywords: Annulaity, Balanced Budget, Budget Unity, Budgetary Principles, OECD’s Principles on Budgetary Governance, Open Budget Index, Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability, Universality.

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Authors: N. Borjalilu, P. Rabiei, A. Enjoo

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Flight Data Monitoring (FDM) program assists an operator in aviation industries to identify, quantify, assess and address operational safety risks, in order to improve safety of flight operations. FDM is a powerful tool for an aircraft operator integrated into the operator’s Safety Management System (SMS), allowing to detect, confirm, and assess safety issues and to check the effectiveness of corrective actions, associated with human errors. This article proposes a model for safety risk assessment level of flight data in a different aspect of event focus based on fuzzy set values. It permits to evaluate the operational safety level from the point of view of flight activities. The main advantages of this method are proposed qualitative safety analysis of flight data. This research applies the opinions of the aviation experts through a number of questionnaires Related to flight data in four categories of occurrence that can take place during an accident or an incident such as: Runway Excursions (RE), Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT), Mid-Air Collision (MAC), Loss of Control in Flight (LOC-I). By weighting each one (by F-TOPSIS) and applying it to the number of risks of the event, the safety risk of each related events can be obtained.

Keywords: F-TOPSIS, fuzzy set, FDM, flight safety.

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Authors: Jatinderkumar R. Saini, Nikita R. Sonthalia, Khushbu A. Dodiya

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Research leads to the development of science and technology and hence it leads to the betterment of humankind also. Journals and Conferences provide a platform to receive large number of research papers for publications and presentations before the expert and peer-level scientific community. In order to assure quality of such papers, they are also sent to reviewers for their comments. In order to maintain good ethical standards, the research papers are sent to reviewers in such a way authors and reviewers do not know each other’s identity. This technique is called Double-blind Review Process. It is called Single-blind Review Process, if identity of any one party, generally authors’, is disclosed to the other. This paper presents the techniques by which identity of author as well as reviewer could be found even through Double-blind Review process. It is proposed that the characteristics and techniques presented here will help journals and conferences in assuring intentional or un-intentional disclosure of identity revealing information by the either party. 

Keywords: Author, Conference, Double Blind Paper, Journal, Reviewer, Single Blind Paper.

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Authors: Agnieszka Szczudlińska-Kanoś

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Socio-economic development, which is seen around the world today, has contributed to the emergence of new problems of a social nature. Different political, historical, geographical or economic conditions cause that, in addition to global issues of social policy such as an aging population, unemployment, migration, countries, regions, there are also specific new problems that require diagnosis, individualized approach and efficient, planned solutions. These should include, among others, digital addiction, peer violence, obesity among children, the problem of ‘legal highs’, stress, depression, diseases associated with environmental pollution etc. The central authorities, selected most often with the tools specific to representative democracy, that is, the general election, for many reasons, inter alia, organizational, communication, are not able to effectively diagnose their intensity, territorial distribution, and thus to effectively fight them. This article aims to show how in Poland, citizens influence solving problems related to the broader social policy implemented at the local government level and indicates the possibilities of improving those solutions. The conclusions of theoretical analysis have been supported by empirical studies, which tested the use of instruments of participatory democracy in the planning and creation of communal strategies for solving social problems in one of the Polish voivodeships.

Keywords: Commune, democracy, participation, social policy, social problems.

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Authors: G. Nur

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Monitored 3-Dimensional (3D) video experience can be utilized as “feedback information” to fine tune the service parameters for providing a better service to the demanding 3D service customers. The 3D video experience which includes both video quality and depth perception is influenced by several contextual and content related factors (e.g., ambient illumination condition, content characteristics, etc) due to the complex nature of the 3D video. Therefore, effective factors on this experience should be utilized while assessing it. In this paper, structural information of the depth map sequences of the 3D video is considered as content related factor effective on the depth perception assessment. Cartoon-like filter is utilized to abstract the significant depth levels in the depth map sequences to determine the structural information. Moreover, subjective experiments are conducted using 3D videos associated with cartoon-like depth map sequences to investigate the effectiveness of ambient illumination condition, which is a contextual factor, on depth perception. Using the knowledge gained through this study, 3D video experience metrics can be developed to deliver better service to the 3D video service users. 

Keywords: 3D Video, Ambient Illumination, Cartoon Effect, Depth Perception.

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Authors: Igor Miňo, Lenka Lešková

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Over the past 80 years, open-field method has evolved as a commonly used tool for the analysis of animal behaviour. The study was carried out using 50 kennel-reared purebred puppies of the German Shepherd dog breed. All dogs were tested in 5^th, 7^th, and 9^th week of age. For the purpose of behavioural analysis, an open-field evaluation report was designed prior to testing to ensure the most convenient, rapid, and suitable way to assess selected behavioural patterns in field conditions. Onset of vocalisation, intensity of vocalisation, level of physical activity, response to sound, and overall behaviour was monitored in the study. Correlations between measures of height, weight and chest circumference, and behavioural characteristics in the 5^th, 7^th, and 9^th week of age were not statistically significant. Onset of vocalisation, intensity of vocalisation, level of physical activity and response to sound differed on statistically significant level between 5^th, 7^th, and 9^th week of age. Results suggest that our practical assessment report may be used as an applicable method to evaluate the suitability of service dog puppies for future working roles.

Keywords: Dog, behaviour, open-field, testing.

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Authors: Nahlah Abbas, Saleh A. Wasimi, Nadhir Al-Ansari

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The Greater Zab and Lesser Zab are the major tributaries of Tigris River contributing the largest flow volumes into the river. The impacts of climate change on water resources in these basins have not been well addressed. To gain a better understanding of the effects of climate change on water resources of the study area in near future (2049-2069) as well as in distant future (2080-2099), Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was applied. The model was first calibrated for the period from 1979 to 2004 to test its suitability in describing the hydrological processes in the basins. The SWAT model showed a good performance in simulating streamflow. The calibrated model was then used to evaluate the impacts of climate change on water resources. Six general circulation models (GCMs) from phase five of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) under three Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) RCP 2.6, RCP 4.5, and RCP 8.5 for periods of 2049-2069 and 2080-2099 were used to project the climate change impacts on these basins. The results demonstrated a significant decline in water resources availability in the future.

Keywords: Tigris River, climate change, water resources, SWAT.

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Authors: Oladele K. Ogunsola, Kazeem A. Osuolale, Akintayo O. Ojo

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Many factors influence the educational outcome of students. Some of these have been studied by researchers with many emphasizing the role of students, schools, governments, peer groups and so on. More often than not, some of these factors influencing the academic achievement of the students have been traced back to parents and family; being the primary platform on which learning not only begins but is nurtured, encouraged and developed which later transforms to the performance of the students. This study not only explores parental and related factors that predict academic achievement through the review of relevant literatures but also, investigates the influence of parental background on the academic achievement of senior secondary school students in Ibadan North Local Government Area of Oyo State, Nigeria. As one of the criteria of the quality of education, students’ academic achievement was investigated because it is most often cited as an indicator of school effectiveness by school authorities and educationists. The data collection was done through interviews and use of well-structured questionnaires administered to one hundred students (100) within the target local government. This was statistically analysed and the result showed that parents’ attitudes towards their children’s education had significant effect(s) on students’ self-reporting of academic achievement. However, such factors as parental education and socioeconomic background had no significant relationship with the students’ self-reporting of academic achievement.

Keywords: Academic attainment, Parental factors, students, Oyo State, Nigeria.

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Authors: Nyambayar Davaadorj, Ichiro Koshijima

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Safety or the state of being safe can be described as a condition of being not dangerous or not harmful. It is necessary for an individual to avoid dangerous situations every day. Also, an organization is subject to legal requirements for the health and safety of persons inside and around the immediate workplace, or who are exposed to the workplace activities. Although it might be difficult to keep a situation where complete safety is ensured, efforts must nonetheless be made to consider ways of removing any potential danger within an organization. In order to ensure a safe working environment, the capability of responding (i.e., resilience) to signals (i.e., information concerning events that could pose future problems that must be taken into account) that occur in and around corporations is necessary. The ability to evaluate this essential point is thus one way in which safety and security can be managed. This study focuses on OHSAS18001, an internationally applied standard for the construction and operation of occupational health and safety management systems, by using IDEF0 for Function Modeling (IDEF0) and the Resilience Matrix originally made by Bracco. Further, this study discusses a method for evaluating a manner in which Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series (OHSAS) systematically functions within corporations. Based on the findings, this study clarifies the potential structural objection for corporations when implementing and operating the OHSAS standard.

Keywords: OHSAS18001, IDEF0, safety culture, resilience engineering.

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Authors: Anthony Bawa, Konstantinos Banitsas

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Rheumatism is a muscular disorder that affects the muscles of the upper and lower limbs. This condition could potentially progress to impair the movement of patients. This study aims to investigate the hip muscular imbalance in patients with chronic rheumatism. A clinical trial involving a total of 15 participants, made up of 10 patients and five control subjects, took place in KATH Hospital between August and September. Participants recruited for the study were of age 54 ± 8 years, weight 65 ± 8 kg, and height 176 ± 8 cm. Muscle signals were recorded from the rectus femoris, and vastus lateralis on the right and left hip of participants. The parameters used in determining the hip muscular imbalances were the maximum voluntary contraction (MVC%), the mean difference, and hip muscle fatigue levels. The mean signals were compared using a t-test, and the metrics for muscle fatigue assessment were based on the root mean square (RMS), mean absolute value (MAV) and mean frequency (MEF), which were computed between the hip muscles of participants. The results indicated that there were significant imbalances in the muscle coactivity between the right and left hip muscles of patients. The patients’ MVC values were observed to be above 10% when compared with control subjects. Furthermore, the mean difference was seen to be higher with p > 0.002 among patients, which indicated clear differences in the hip muscle contraction activities. The findings indicate significant hip muscular imbalances for patients with rheumatism compared with control subjects. Information about the imbalances among patients will be useful for clinicians in designing therapeutic muscle-strengthening exercises.

Keywords: Muscular, imbalances, rheumatism, hip.

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Authors: Mohammed El Raey, Moustafa Osman Mohammed

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The spatial-ecological modeling is relating sustainable dispersions with social development. Sustainability with spatial-ecological model gives attention to urban environments in the design review management to comply with Earth’s system. Naturally exchanged patterns of ecosystems have consistent and periodic cycles to preserve energy flows and materials in Earth’s system. The Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) technique is utilized to assess the safety of an industrial complex. The other analytical approach is the Failure-Safe Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) for critical components. The plant safety parameters are identified for engineering topology as employed in assessment safety of industrial ecology. In particular, the most severe accidental release of hazardous gaseous is postulated, analyzed and assessment in industrial region. The IAEA-safety assessment procedure is used to account the duration and rate of discharge of liquid chlorine. The ecological model of plume dispersion width and concentration of chlorine gas in the downwind direction is determined using Gaussian Plume Model in urban and rural areas and presented with SURFER®. The prediction of accident consequences is traced in risk contour concentration lines. The local greenhouse effect is predicted with relevant conclusions. The spatial-ecological model is predicted for multiple factors distribution schemes of multi-criteria analysis. The input–output analysis is explored from the spillover effect, and we conducted Monte Carlo simulations for sensitivity analysis. Their unique structure is balanced within “equilibrium patterns”, such as the composite index for biosphere with collective structure of many distributed feedback flows. These dynamic structures are related to have their physical and chemical properties and enable a gradual and prolonged incremental pattern. While this spatial model structure argues from ecology, resource savings, static load design, financial and other pragmatic reasons, the outcomes are not decisive in an artistic/architectural perspective. The hypothesis is deployed to unify analytic and analogical spatial structure in development urban environments using optimization loads as an example of integrated industrial structure where the process is based on engineering topology of systems ecology.

Keywords: Spatial-ecological modeling, spatial structure orientation impact, composite structure, industrial ecology.

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Authors: A. Zeynolabedin, M. A. Olyaei, B. Ghiasi

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Drought is an inevitable part of the earth’s climate. It occurs regularly with no clear warning and without recognizing borders. In addition, its impact is cumulative and not immediately discernible. Iran is located in a semi-arid region where droughts occur periodically as natural hazard. Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Surface Water Supply Index (SWSI), and Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) are three well-known indices which describe drought severity; each has its own advantages and disadvantages and can be used for specific types of drought. These indices take into account some factors such as precipitation, reservoir storage and discharge, temperature, and potential evapotranspiration in determining drought severity. In this paper, first all three indices are calculated in Aharchay river watershed located in northwestern part of Iran in East Azarbaijan province. Next, based on two other important parameters which are groundwater level and solar radiation, two new indices are defined. Finally, considering all five aforementioned indices, a combined drought index (CDI) is presented and calculated for the region. This combined index is based on all the meteorological, hydrological, and agricultural features of the region. The results show that the most severe drought condition in Aharchay watershed happened in Jun, 2004. The result of this study can be used for monitoring drought and prepare for the drought mitigation planning.

Keywords: Drought, index variation, regional assessment, monitoring.

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Authors: Bing Lu, Shuang Li, Hongyuan Zhou

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The steel-concrete hybrid structure has been extensively employed in high-rise buildings and super high-rise buildings. The light gauge steel-concrete hybrid structure, including light gauge steel structure and concrete hybrid structure, is a type of steel-concrete hybrid structure, which possesses some advantages of light gauge steel structure and concrete hybrid structure. The seismic behavior and loss assessment of three high-rise buildings with three different concrete hybrid structures were investigated through finite element software. The three concrete hybrid structures are reinforced concrete column-steel beam (RC-S) hybrid structure, concrete-filled steel tube column-steel beam (CFST-S) hybrid structure, and tubed concrete column-steel beam (TC-S) hybrid structure. The nonlinear time-history analysis of three high-rise buildings under 80 earthquakes was carried out. After simulation, it indicated that the seismic performances of three high-rise buildings were superior. Under extremely rare earthquakes, the maximum inter-story drifts of three high-rise buildings are significantly lower than 1/50. The inter-story drift and floor acceleration of high-rise building with CFST-S hybrid structure were bigger than those of high-rise buildings with RC-S hybrid structure, and smaller than those of high-rise building with TC-S hybrid structure. Then, based on the time-history analysis results, the post-earthquake repair cost ratio and repair time of three high-rise buildings were predicted through an economic performance analysis method proposed in FEMA-P58 report. Under frequent earthquakes, basic earthquakes and rare earthquakes, the repair cost ratio and repair time of three high-rise buildings were less than 5% and 15 days, respectively. Under extremely rare earthquakes, the repair cost ratio and repair time of high-rise buildings with TC-S hybrid structure were the most among three high rise buildings. Due to the advantages of CFST-S hybrid structure, it could be extensively employed in high-rise buildings subjected to earthquake excitations.

Keywords: seismic behavior, loss assessment, light gauge steel, concrete hybrid structure, high-rise building, time-history analysis

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Authors: C. Barreto Carvalho, C. da Motta, M. Sousa, J. Cabral, A. L. Carvalho, E. B. Peixoto

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The aim of the current study was to develop and validate a Response to Stressful Situations Scale (RSSS) for the Portuguese population. This scale assesses the degree of stress experienced in scenarios that can constitute positive, negative and more neutral stressors, and also describes the physiological, emotional and behavioral reactions to those events according to their intensity. These scenarios include typical stressor scenarios relevant to patients with schizophrenia, which are currently absent from most scales, assessing specific risks that these stressors may bring on subjects, which may prove useful in non-clinical and clinical populations (i.e. Patients with mood or anxiety disorders, schizophrenia). Results from Principal Components Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis of two adult samples from general population allowed to confirm a three-factor model with good fit indices: χ2 (144)= 370.211, p = 0.000; GFI = 0.928; CFI = 0.927; TLI = 0.914, RMSEA = 0.055, P(rmsea ≤0.005) = .096; PCFI = .781. Further data analysis of the scale revealed that RSSS is an adequate assessment tool of stress response in adults to be used in further research and clinical settings, with good psychometric characteristics, adequate divergent and convergent validity, good temporal stability and high internal consistency.

Keywords: Assessment, stress events, stress response, stress vulnerability.

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Authors: Ali Osman Güney, Bahattin Kanber

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In this work, the effect of material type, diameter, orientation and closeness of fibers on the general performance of reinforced vulcanized rubbers are investigated using finite element method with experimental verification. Various fiber materials such as hemp, nylon, polyester are used for different fiber diameters, orientations and closeness. 3D finite element models are developed by considering bonded contact elements between fiber and rubber sheet interfaces. The fibers are assumed as linear elastic, while vulcanized rubber is considered as hyper-elastic. After an experimental verification of finite element results, the developed models are analyzed under prescribed displacement that causes tension. The normal stresses in fibers and shear stresses between fibers and rubber sheet are investigated in all models. Large deformation of reinforced rubber sheet also represented with various fiber conditions under incremental loading. A general assessment is achieved about best fiber properties of reinforced rubber sheets for tension-load conditions.

Keywords: Fiber properties, finite element method, tension-load condition, reinforced vulcanized rubbers.

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Authors: G. Ghodrati Amiri, M. Khorasani, Razavian Ameri, M.Mohamadi Dehcheshmeh, S.Fathi

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Many studies have been conducted for derivation of attenuation relationships worldwide, however few relationships have been developed to use for the seismic region of Iranian plateau and only few of these studies have been conducted for derivation of attenuation relationships for parameters such as uniform duration. Uniform duration is the total time during which the acceleration is larger than a given threshold value (default is 5% of PGA). In this study, the database was same as that used previously by Ghodrati Amiri et al. (2007) with same correction methods for earthquake records in Iran. However in this study, records from earthquakes with MS< 4.0 were excluded from this database, each record has individually filtered afterward, and therefore the dataset has been expanded. These new set of attenuation relationships for Iran are derived based on tectonic conditions with soil classification into rock and soil. Earthquake parameters were chosen to be hypocentral distance and magnitude in order to make it easier to use the relationships for seismic hazard analysis. Tehran is the capital city of Iran wit ha large number of important structures. In this study, a probabilistic approach has been utilized for seismic hazard assessment of this city. The resulting uniform duration against return period diagrams are suggested to be used in any projects in the area.

Keywords: Attenuation Relationships, Iran, Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis, Tehran, Uniform Duration

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Authors: Hassan Haleh, Amin Ghaffari, Parisa Farahpour

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Need for an appropriate system of evaluating students- educational developments is a key problem to achieve the predefined educational goals. Intensity of the related papers in the last years; that tries to proof or disproof the necessity and adequacy of the students assessment; is the corroborator of this matter. Some of these studies tried to increase the precision of determining question weights in scientific examinations. But in all of them there has been an attempt to adjust the initial question weights while the accuracy and precision of those initial question weights are still under question. Thus In order to increase the precision of the assessment process of students- educational development, the present study tries to propose a new method for determining the initial question weights by considering the factors of questions like: difficulty, importance and complexity; and implementing a combined method of PROMETHEE and fuzzy analytic network process using a data mining approach to improve the model-s inputs. The result of the implemented case study proves the development of performance and precision of the proposed model.

Keywords: Assessing students, Analytic network process, Clustering, Data mining, Fuzzy sets, Multi-criteria decision making, and Preference function.

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Authors: Juris Burlakovs, Maris Klavins, Raimonds Ernsteins, Armands Ruskulis

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Environmental contamination is a common problem in ex-industrial and industrial sites. This article gives a brief description of general applied environmental investigation methodologies and possible remediation applications in Latvia. Most of contaminated areas are situated in former and active industrial, military areas and ports. Industrial and logistic activities very often have been with great impact for more than hundred years thus the contamination level with heavy metals, hydrocarbons, pesticides, persistent organic pollutants is high and is threatening health and environment in general. 242 territories now are numbered as contaminated and fixed in the National Register of contaminated territories in Latvia. Research and remediation of contamination in densely populated areas are of important environmental policy domain. Four different investigation case studies of contaminated areas are given describing the history of use, environmental quality assessment as well as planned environmental management actions. All four case study locations are situated in Riga - the capital of the Republic of Latvia. The aim of this paper is to analyze the situation and problems with management of contaminated areas in Latvia, give description of field research methods and recommendations for remediation industry based on scientific data and innovations.

Keywords: Remediation technology, environmental quality assessment, heavy metals, hydrocarbon contamination, environmental management.

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Authors: Allaeddine Athmani, Abdelhacine Gouasmia, Tiago Ferreira, Romeu Vicente

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The seismic risk mitigation from the perspective of the old buildings stock is truly essential in Algerian urban areas, particularly those located in seismic prone regions, such as Annaba city, and which the old buildings present high levels of degradation associated with no seismic strengthening and/or rehabilitation concerns. In this sense, the present paper approaches the issue of the seismic vulnerability assessment of old masonry building stocks through the adaptation of a simplified methodology developed for a European context area similar to that of Annaba city, Algeria. Therefore, this method is used for the first level of seismic vulnerability assessment of the masonry buildings stock of the old city center of Annaba. This methodology is based on a vulnerability index that is suitable for the evaluation of damage and for the creation of large-scale loss scenarios. Over 380 buildings were evaluated in accordance with the referred methodology and the results obtained were then integrated into a Geographical Information System (GIS) tool. Such results can be used by the Annaba city council for supporting management decisions, based on a global view of the site under analysis, which led to more accurate and faster decisions for the risk mitigation strategies and rehabilitation plans.

Keywords: Damage scenarios, masonry buildings, old city center, seismic vulnerability, vulnerability index.

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Authors: Goh Yung Hong, Mona Masood

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This paper explores the effects of gamification on lower secondary school students’ motivation and engagement in the classroom. Two-group posttest-only experimental design were employed to study the influence of gamification teaching method (GTM) when compared with conventional teaching method (CTM) on 60 lower secondary school students. The Student Engagement Instrument (SEI) and Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) were used to assess students’ intrinsic motivation and engagement level towards the respective teaching method. Finding indicates that students who completed the GTM lesson were significantly higher in intrinsic motivation to learn than those from the CTM. Although the result were insignificant and only marginal difference in the engagement mean, GTM still show better potential in raising student’s engagement in class when compared with CTM. This finding proves that the GTM is likely to solve the current issue of low motivation to learn and low engagement in class among lower secondary school students in Malaysia. On the other hand, despite being not significant, higher mean indicates that CTM positively contribute to higher peer support for learning and better teacher and student relationship when compared with GTM. As a conclusion, gamification approach is flexible and can be adapted into many learning content to enhance the intrinsic motivation to learn and to some extent, encourage better student engagement in class.

Keywords: Conventional teaching method, Gamification teaching method, Motivation, Engagement.

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Authors: Banu Karaşah, Derya Sarı

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Nature constantly changes as a result of human necessities. This change mostly feels in natural water sources which are reconstructed with an effect of dams and motorways. In other respects, visual quality of the landscape gets a new and different character during and after the construction of dams and motorways. Changing and specialization new landscapes will be very important to protection-usage balance to explore sustainable usage facilities. The main cause of the selection of Artvin city is that it has very important geographical location and one of the most attraction points in the World with its biodiversity, conservation areas and natural landscape characteristics. Many hydroelectric station and 7 dams are situated, 3 of them have already been built on the Çoruh River in the province of Artvin. As a result of dams, motorways route were reshaped and the ways which have already changed because of elevation is directly affected several of natural destruction. In contrast, many different reservoirs in Coruh Basin provide new vista point that has high visual quality. In this study, we would like to evaluate with sustainable landscape design in 76 km river corridor, which is mainly based on Deriner, Borçka and Muratlı Dams and determination of their basin-lakes recreational potential and opportunities. Lastly, we are going to give some suggestion about the potential of the corridor.

Keywords: Artvin, dam reservoirs, landscape assessment, river corridor, visual quality.

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Authors: Pratik Dhabal Deo, Manoj P.

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With the increasing number of social media users, the amount of video content available has also significantly increased. Currently, the number of smartphone users is at its peak, and many are increasingly using their smartphones as their main photography and recording devices. There have been a lot of developments in the field of video quality assessment in since the past years and more research on various other aspects of video and image are being done. Datasets that contain a huge number of videos from different high-end devices make it difficult to analyze the performance of the metrics on the content from most used devices even if they contain contents taken in poor lighting conditions using lower-end devices. These devices face a lot of distortions due to various factors since the spectrum of contents recorded on these devices is huge. In this paper, we have presented an analysis of the objective Video Quality Analysis (VQA) metrics on contents taken only from most used devices and their performance on them, focusing on full-reference metrics. To carry out this research, we created a custom dataset containing a total of 90 videos that have been taken from three most commonly used devices, and Android smartphone, an iOS smartphone and a Digital Single-Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera. On the videos taken on each of these devices, the six most common types of distortions that users face have been applied in addition to already existing H.264 compression based on four reference videos. These six applied distortions have three levels of degradation each. A total of the five most popular VQA metrics have been evaluated on this dataset and the highest values and the lowest values of each of the metrics on the distortions have been recorded. Finally, it is found that blur is the artifact on which most of the metrics did not perform well. Thus, in order to understand the results better the amount of blur in the data set has been calculated and an additional evaluation of the metrics was done using High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) codec, which is the next version of H.264 compression, on the camera that proved to be the sharpest among the devices. The results have shown that as the resolution increases, the performance of the metrics tends to become more accurate and the best performing metric among them is VQM with very few inconsistencies and inaccurate results when the compression applied is H.264, but when the compression is applied is HEVC, Structural Similarity (SSIM) metric and Video Multimethod Assessment Fusion (VMAF) have performed significantly better.

Keywords: Distortion, metrics, recording, frame rate, video quality assessment.

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Authors: Heeyeul Kwon, Yongtae Park

Abstract:

Despite the highly touted benefits, emerging technologies have unleashed pervasive concerns regarding unintended and unforeseen social impacts. Thus, those wishing to create safe and socially acceptable products need to identify such side effects and mitigate them prior to the market proliferation. Various methodologies in the field of technology assessment (TA), namely Delphi, impact assessment, and scenario planning, have been widely incorporated in such a circumstance. However, literatures face a major limitation in terms of sole reliance on participatory workshop activities. They unfortunately missed out the availability of a massive untapped data source of futuristic information flooding through the Internet. This research thus seeks to gain insights into utilization of futuristic data, future-oriented documents from the Internet, as a supplementary method to generate social impact scenarios whilst capturing perspectives of experts from a wide variety of disciplines. To this end, network analysis is conducted based on the social keywords extracted from the futuristic documents by text mining, which is then used as a guide to produce a comprehensive set of detailed scenarios. Our proposed approach facilitates harmonized depictions of possible hazardous consequences of emerging technologies and thereby makes decision makers more aware of, and responsive to, broad qualitative uncertainties.

Keywords: Emerging technologies, futuristic data, scenario, text mining.

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Authors: D. Y. Bawa, M. I. Ribah, I. S. Jega, V. O. Oyedepo

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This study was conducted to determine the physicochemical characteristics and heavy metal concentration (Cadmium (Cd), Copper (Cu), Iron (Fe), Lead (Pb) and Zinc (Zn)) in freshwater from Jega river. 30 water samples were collected in two 1-liter sterile plastic containers from three designated sampling points, namely; Station A (before the bridge; upstream), Station B (at the bridge where human activities such as washing of cars, motorbike, clothes, bathing and other household materials are concentrated), Station C (after the bridge; downstream) fortnightly, between March and July 2014. Results indicated that the highest pH mean value of 7.08 ± 1.12 was observed in station C, the highest conductivity with the mean 58.75 ± 7.87 µs/cm was observed at station A, the highest mean value of the water total hardness was observed at station A (54 ± 16.11 mg/L), the highest mean value of nitrate deposit was observed in station A (1.66 ± 1.33 mg/L), the highest mean value of alkalinity was observed at station B (51.33 ± 6.66 mg/L) and the highest mean (39.56 ± 3.24 mg/L) of total dissolved solids was observed at station A. The highest concentration mean value of Fe was observed in station C (65.33 ± 4.50 mg/L), the highest concentrations of Cd was observed in station C (0.99 ± 0.36 mg/L), the mean value of 2.13 ± 1.99 mg/L was the highest concentration of Zn observed in station B, the concentration of Pb was not detected (ND) and the highest concentration of Cu with the mean value of 0.43 ± 0.16 mg/L was observed in station B, while the lowest concentration was observed at station C (0.27 ± 0.26 mg/L). Statistical analysis shows no significant difference (P > 0.05) among the sampling stations for both the physicochemical characteristics and heavy metal concentrations. The results were found to be within the internationally acceptable standard limits.

Keywords: Assessment, freshwater, heavy metal concentration, physicochemical.

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Authors: Keny Ordaz-Hernandez, Xavier Fischer, Fouad Bennis

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This article illustrates a model selection management approach for virtual prototypes in interactive simulations. In those numerical simulations, the virtual prototype and its environment are modelled as a multiagent system, where every entity (prototype,human, etc.) is modelled as an agent. In particular, virtual prototyp ingagents that provide mathematical models of mechanical behaviour inform of computational methods are considered. This work argues that selection of an appropriate model in a changing environment,supported by models? characteristics, can be managed by the deter-mination a priori of specific exploitation and performance measures of virtual prototype models. As different models exist to represent a single phenomenon, it is not always possible to select the best one under all possible circumstances of the environment. Instead the most appropriate shall be selecting according to the use case. The proposed approach consists in identifying relevant metrics or indicators for each group of models (e.g. entity models, global model), formulate their qualification, analyse the performance, and apply the qualification criteria. Then, a model can be selected based on the performance prediction obtained from its qualification. The authors hope that this approach will not only help to inform engineers and researchers about another approach for selecting virtual prototype models, but also assist virtual prototype engineers in the systematic or automatic model selection.

Keywords: Virtual prototype models, domain, qualification criterion, model qualification, model assessment, environmental modelling.

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Authors: Lubis A., Setiawati L., Setyoningrum A. R., Suryawan A., Irwanto

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Asthma is a condition that causing chronic health problems in children. In addition to basic therapy against disease, we must try to reduce the impact of chronic health problems and also optimize their medical aspect of growth and development. A boy with mild asthma attack frequent episode did not showed any improvement with medical treatment and his asthma control test was 11. From radiologic examination he got hyperaerated lung and billateral sinusitis maxillaris; skin test results were house dust, food and pet allergy; an overweight body; bad school grades; psychological and environmental problem. We followed and evaluated this boy in 6 months, treated holistically. Even we could not do much on environmental but no more psychological and school problems, his on a good bodyweight and his asthma control test was 22. A case of a child with mild asthma attack frequent episode was reported. Asthma clinical course show no significant improvement when other predisposing factor is not well-controlled and a child’s growth and development may be affected. Improving condition of the patient can be created with the help of loving and caring way of nurturing from the parents and supportive peer group. Therefore, continuous and consistent monitoring is required because prognosis of asthma is generally good when regularly and properly controlled.

Keywords: Asthma, chronic health problems, growth and development.

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Authors: Stamatios A. Theocharis, George A. Tsihrintzis

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One of the most important factors for the success of e-government is training and preparing the workforce of the public sector. As changes and innovation in the public sector progress at a very slow pace and more slowly than in the private sector, issues related to human resources require special care. This is because the workforce will eventually seize the opportunities of the technological solutions used in e-Government. Thus, the central administration should provide employees with continuous and focused training not only on new technologies but also on a wide range of subjects and also improve interdepartmental interaction.

To achieve all this, new methods and training tools need to be implemented in addition to assessment of the employees. In this spirit, we propose the development of an educational platform with user personalization features. We propose the development of this platform using Moodle as the basic tool. Incorporating a personalization mechanism is very important since different employees have different backgrounds, education levels, computer skills, or different capability to develop further. Key features of the proposed platform include, besides typical e-learning tools, communities organized in order to exchange experiences and knowledge, groups of users based on certain criteria, automatic evaluation of users and potential self-education and self-assessment. In its fully developed form, this platform can be part of a more comprehensive knowledge management system for the public sector.

Keywords: e-Government, civil employees education, education technologies.

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Authors: Niall J. English, Sylvia Leatham, Maria Isabel Meza Silva, Denis P. Dowling

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The training and education of under- and post-graduate students can be promoted by more active learning especially in engineering, overcoming more passive and vicarious experiences and approaches in their documented effectiveness. However, the possibility of outreach to young pupils and school-children in primary and secondary schools is a lesser explored area in terms of Education and Public Engagement (EPE) efforts – as relates to feedback and influence on shaping 3rd-level engineering training and education. Therefore, the outreach and school-visit agenda constitutes an interesting avenue to observe how active learning, careers stimulus and EPE efforts for young children and teenagers can teach the university sector, to improve future engineering-teaching standards and enhance both quality and capabilities of practice. This intervention involved careers-outreach efforts to lead to statistical determinations of motivations towards engineering, manufacturing and training. The aim was to gauge to what extent this intervention would lead to an increased careers awareness in engineering, using the method of the schools-visits programme as the means for so doing. It was found that this led to an increase in engagement by school pupils with engineering as a career option and a greater awareness of the importance of manufacturing. 

Keywords: outreach, education and public engagement, careers, peer interactions

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Authors: Sirimanee Banjong

Abstract:

This study aimed to 1) develop pre-service teachers’ leadership skills through camp-based learning, and 2) develop preservice teachers’ teamwork skills through camp-based learning. An applied research methodology was used. The target group was derived from a purposive selection. It involved 32 fourth-year students in Early Childhood Education Program enrolling a course entitled Seminar in Early Childhood Education provided during second semester of academic year 2013. The treatment was camp-based learning activities which applied a PDCA process including four stages: 1) plan, 2) do, 3) check, and 4) act. Research instruments were a learning camp program, a camp-based learning management plan, a 5-level assessment form for leadership skills and a 5-level assessment form for assessing teamwork skills. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results were: 1) pre-service teachers’ leadership skills yielded the before treatment average score at x= 3.4, S.D.=0.6 2and the after-treatment average score at x 4.29 , S.D.=0.66 pre-service teachers’ teamwork skills yielded the before-treatment average score at x=3.31, S.D.=0.60 and the after-treatment average score at x=4.42, S.D.=0.66 Both differences were statistically significant at the .05 level. Thus, the pre-service teachers’ leadership and teamwork skills were significantly improved through the camp-based learning approach.

Keywords: Learning camp, leadership skills, teamwork skills.

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