Search results for: Priority classes

Authors: Muhibul Haque Bhuyan

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Most educational institutions were compelled to switch over to the online mode of teaching, learning, and assessment due to the lockdown when the corona pandemic started around the globe in the early part of the year 2020. However, they faced a unique set of challenges in delivering knowledge and skills to their students as well as formulating a proper assessment policy. This paper investigates whether there is an impact on the student Semester Grade Point Average (SGPA) due to the online mode of teaching and learning assessment at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) of Southeast University (SEU). Details of student assessments are discussed. Then students’ grades were analyzed to find out the impact on SGPA based on the z-test by finding the standard deviation (). It also pointed out the challenges associated with the online classes and assessment strategies to be adopted during the online assessment. The student admission, course advising, and registration statistics were also presented in several tables and analyzed based on the change in percentage to observe the impact on it due to the pandemic. In summary, it was observed that the students’ SGPAs are not affected but student course advising and registration were affected slightly by the pandemic. Finally, the paper provides some recommendations to improve the online teaching, learning, assessment, and evaluation system.

Keywords: electrical and electronic engineering students, impact on course grading and SGPA, online assessment, online teaching, student registration, semester result

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Authors: Makoto Hasegawa, Seika Tokumitsu

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Spectra of light beams emitted from white-color LED torches are different from those of conventional electric torches. In order to confirm if white-color LED torches can be used as light sources for popular sunset color demonstrations in spite of such differences, spectra of travelled light beams and scattered light beams with each of a white-color LED torch (composed of a blue LED and yellow-color fluorescent material) and a conventional electric torch as a light source were measured and compared with each other in a 50 cm-long water tank for sunset color demonstration experiments. Suspension liquid was prepared from acryl-emulsion and tap-water in the water tank, and light beams from the white-color LED torch or the conventional electric torch were allowed to travel in this suspension liquid. Sunset-like color was actually observed when the white-color LED torch was used as the light source in sunset color demonstrations. However, the observed colors when viewed with naked eye look slightly different from those obtainable with the conventional electric torch. At the same time, with the white-color LED, changes in colors in short to middle wavelength regions were recognized with careful observations. From those results, white-color LED torches are confirmed to be applicable as light sources in sunset color demonstrations, although certain attentions have to be paid. Further advanced classes will be successfully performed with white-color LED torches as light sources.

Keywords: Blue sky demonstration, sunset color demonstration, white LED torch.

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Authors: Petr Cernohorsky, Jan Voracek

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Well-developed strategic marketing planning is the essential prerequisite for establishment of the right and unique competitive advantage. Typical market, however, is a heterogeneous and decentralized structure with natural involvement of individual or group subjectivity and irrationality. These features cannot be fully expressed with one-shot rigorous formal models based on, e.g. mathematics, statistics or empirical formulas. We present an innovative solution, extending the domain of agent based computational economics towards the concept of hybrid modeling in service provider and consumer market such as telecommunications. The behavior of the market is described by two classes of agents - consumer and service provider agents - whose internal dynamics are fundamentally different. Customers are rather free multi-state structures, adjusting behavior and preferences quickly in accordance with time and changing environment. Producers, on the contrary, are traditionally structured companies with comparable internal processes and specific managerial policies. Their business momentum is higher and immediate reaction possibilities limited. This limitation underlines importance of proper strategic planning as the main process advising managers in time whether to continue with more or less the same business or whether to consider the need for future structural changes that would ensure retention of existing customers or acquisition of new ones.

Keywords: Agent-based computational economics, hybrid modeling, strategic marketing, system dynamics.

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Authors: Lucy Ampaw-Asiedu, Terri R. Norton

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In the wake of recent disasters happening around the world such as earthquake in Italy (January, 2017); hurricanes in the United States (US) (September 2016 and September 2017); and compounding disasters in Haiti (September 2010 and September 2016); to our best knowledge, never has the world seen the need to work on preemptive rather than reactionary measures to salvage this situation than now. Tornadoes are natural hazards that mostly affect mid-western and central states in the US. Tornadoes, like all natural hazards such as hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and others, are very destructive and result in massive destruction to homes, cause billions of dollars in damage and claims many lives. Healthcare facilities in general are vulnerable to disasters, and therefore, the safety of patients, health workers and those who come in to seek shelter should be a priority. The focus of this study is to assess disaster management measures instituted by healthcare facilities. Thus, the sole aim of the study is to examine the vulnerabilities and the design of safe spaces in healthcare facilities in Central US. Objectives that guide the study are to primarily identify the impacts of tornadoes in hospitals and to assess the structural design or specifications of safe spaces. St. John’s Regional Medical Center, now Mercy Hospital in Joplin, is used as a case study. Preliminary results show that the lateral base shear of the proposed design to be 684.24 ton (1508.49kip) for the safe space. Findings from this work will be used to make recommendations about the design of safe spaces for health care facilities in Central US.

Keywords: Disaster management, safe spaces, structural design, tornado, vulnerability.

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Authors: Kamaldeep Kaur, Arvinder Kaur, Ruchika Malhotra

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The aim of this paper is to rank the impact of Object Oriented(OO) metrics in fault prediction modeling using Artificial Neural Networks(ANNs). Past studies on empirical validation of object oriented metrics as fault predictors using ANNs have focused on the predictive quality of neural networks versus standard statistical techniques. In this empirical study we turn our attention to the capability of ANNs in ranking the impact of these explanatory metrics on fault proneness. In ANNs data analysis approach, there is no clear method of ranking the impact of individual metrics. Five ANN based techniques are studied which rank object oriented metrics in predicting fault proneness of classes. These techniques are i) overall connection weights method ii) Garson-s method iii) The partial derivatives methods iv) The Input Perturb method v) the classical stepwise methods. We develop and evaluate different prediction models based on the ranking of the metrics by the individual techniques. The models based on overall connection weights and partial derivatives methods have been found to be most accurate.

Keywords: Artificial Neural Networks (ANNS), Backpropagation, Fault Prediction Modeling.

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Authors: Salam Saudagar, Ankit Kamboj, Niraj Mohan, Satgounda Patil, Nilesh Powar

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Task Assignment and Scheduling is a challenging Operations Research problem when there is a limited number of resources and comparatively higher number of tasks. The Cost Management team at Cummins needs to assign tasks based on a deadline and must prioritize some of the tasks as per business requirements. Moreover, there is a constraint on the resources that assignment of tasks should be done based on an individual skill level, that may vary for different tasks. Another constraint is for scheduling the tasks that should be evenly distributed in terms of number of working hours, which adds further complexity to this problem. The proposed greedy approach to solve assignment and scheduling problem first assigns the task based on management priority and then by the closest deadline. This is followed by an iterative selection of an available resource with the least allocated total working hours for a task, i.e. finding the local optimal choice for each task with the goal of determining the global optimum. The greedy approach task allocation is compared with a variant of Hungarian Algorithm, and it is observed that the proposed approach gives an equal allocation of working hours among the resources. The comparative study of the proposed approach is also done with manual task allocation and it is noted that the visibility of the task timeline has increased from 2 months to 6 months. An interactive dashboard app is created for the greedy assignment and scheduling approach and the tasks with more than 2 months horizon that were waiting in a queue without a delivery date initially are now analyzed effectively by the business with expected timelines for completion.

Keywords: Assignment, deadline, greedy approach, hungarian algorithm, operations research, scheduling.

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Authors: P. I. Adzongo, O. A. Aloga

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The purpose of the study was to examine lifelong education for teachers as a tool for achieving effective teaching and learning. Lifelong education enhances social inclusion, personal development, citizenship, employability, teaching and learning, community and the nation. It is imperative that the teacher needs to update his knowledge regularly to be able to perform optimally, since he has a major position in the inculcation of desirable elements in students, and the challenges of lifelong education were also discussed. Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. A simple random sampling technique was used to select 80 teachers as sample from a population of 105 senior secondary school teachers in Makurdi Local Government Area of Benue State. A 20-item self designed questionnaire subjected to expert validation and reliability was used to collect data. The reliability Alpha coefficient of 0.87 was established using Cronbach’s Alpha technique, mean scores and standard deviation were used to answer the 2 research questions while chi-square was used to analyse data for the 2 null hypotheses, which states that lifelong education for teachers is not a significant tool for achieving effective teaching and lifelong education for teachers does not significantly impact on effective learning. The findings of the study revealed that, lifelong education for teachers can be used as a tool for achieving effective teaching and learning, and the study recommended among others that government, organizations and individuals should in collaboration put lifelong education programmes for teachers on the priority list. The paper concluded that the strategic position of lifelong education for teachers towards enhanced teaching, learning and the production of quality manpower in the society makes it imperative for all hands to be on “deck” to support the programme financially and otherwise.

Keywords: Lifelong Education, Tool, Effective Teaching and Learning.

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Authors: Dipti Patra, Mridula J

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In this paper, we propose a new image segmentation approach for colour textured images. The proposed method for image segmentation consists of two stages. In the first stage, textural features using gray level co-occurrence matrix(GLCM) are computed for regions of interest (ROI) considered for each class. ROI acts as ground truth for the classes. Ohta model (I1, I2, I3) is the colour model used for segmentation. Statistical mean feature at certain inter pixel distance (IPD) of I2 component was considered to be the optimized textural feature for further segmentation. In the second stage, the feature matrix obtained is assumed to be the degraded version of the image labels and modeled as Markov Random Field (MRF) model to model the unknown image labels. The labels are estimated through maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation criterion using ICM algorithm. The performance of the proposed approach is compared with that of the existing schemes, JSEG and another scheme which uses GLCM and MRF in RGB colour space. The proposed method is found to be outperforming the existing ones in terms of segmentation accuracy with acceptable rate of convergence. The results are validated with synthetic and real textured images.

Keywords: Texture Image Segmentation, Gray Level Cooccurrence Matrix, Markov Random Field Model, Ohta colour space, ICM algorithm.

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Authors: M. K. Bhuyan, P. K. Bora, D. Ghosh

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One very interesting field of research in Pattern Recognition that has gained much attention in recent times is Gesture Recognition. In this paper, we consider a form of dynamic hand gestures that are characterized by total movement of the hand (arm) in space. For these types of gestures, the shape of the hand (palm) during gesturing does not bear any significance. In our work, we propose a model-based method for tracking hand motion in space, thereby estimating the hand motion trajectory. We employ the dynamic time warping (DTW) algorithm for time alignment and normalization of spatio-temporal variations that exist among samples belonging to the same gesture class. During training, one template trajectory and one prototype feature vector are generated for every gesture class. Features used in our work include some static and dynamic motion trajectory features. Recognition is accomplished in two stages. In the first stage, all unlikely gesture classes are eliminated by comparing the input gesture trajectory to all the template trajectories. In the next stage, feature vector extracted from the input gesture is compared to all the class prototype feature vectors using a distance classifier. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed trajectory estimator and classifier is suitable for Human Computer Interaction (HCI) platform.

Keywords: Hand gesture, human computer interaction, key video object plane, dynamic time warping.

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Authors: Eric S. Lee, Connie Bygrave, Jordan Mahar, Naina Garg, Suzanne Cottreau

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Marking exams is universally detested by lecturers. Final exams in many higher education courses often last 3.0 hrs. Do exams really need to be so long? Can we justifiably reduce the number of questions on them? Surprisingly few have researched these questions, arguably because of the complexity and difficulty of using traditional methods. To answer these questions empirically, we used a new approach based on three key elements: Use of an unusual variation of a true experimental design, equivalence hypothesis testing, and an expanded set of six psychometric criteria to be met by any shortened exam if it is to replace a current 3.0-hr exam (reliability, validity, justifiability, number of exam questions, correspondence, and equivalence). We compared student performance on each official 3.0-hr exam with that on five shortened exams having proportionately fewer questions (2.5, 2.0, 1.5, 1.0, and 0.5 hours) in a series of four experiments conducted in two classes in each of two finance courses (224 students in total). We found strong evidence that, in these courses, shortening of final exams to 2.0 hrs was warranted on all six psychometric criteria. Shortening these exams by one hour should result in a substantial one-third reduction in lecturer time and effort spent marking, lower student stress, and more time for students to prepare for other exams. Our approach provides a relatively simple, easy-to-use methodology that lecturers can use to examine the effect of shortening their own exams.

Keywords: Exam length, psychometric criteria, synthetic experimental designs, test length.

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Authors: Rami N. Khushaba, Adel Al-Jumaily

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The myoelectric signal (MES) is one of the Biosignals utilized in helping humans to control equipments. Recent approaches in MES classification to control prosthetic devices employing pattern recognition techniques revealed two problems, first, the classification performance of the system starts degrading when the number of motion classes to be classified increases, second, in order to solve the first problem, additional complicated methods were utilized which increase the computational cost of a multifunction myoelectric control system. In an effort to solve these problems and to achieve a feasible design for real time implementation with high overall accuracy, this paper presents a new method for feature extraction in MES recognition systems. The method works by extracting features using Wavelet Packet Transform (WPT) applied on the MES from multiple channels, and then employs Fuzzy c-means (FCM) algorithm to generate a measure that judges on features suitability for classification. Finally, Principle Component Analysis (PCA) is utilized to reduce the size of the data before computing the classification accuracy with a multilayer perceptron neural network. The proposed system produces powerful classification results (99% accuracy) by using only a small portion of the original feature set.

Keywords: Biomedical Signal Processing, Data mining andInformation Extraction, Machine Learning, Rehabilitation.

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Authors: Rima Hleiss, Elie Bitar, Mahmoud Hassan, Mohamad Khalil

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A comprehensive study of object recognition in the human brain requires combining both spatial and temporal analysis of brain activity. Here, we are mainly interested in three issues: the time perception of visual objects, the ability of discrimination between two particular categories (objects vs. animals), and the possibility to identify a particular spatial representation of visual objects. Our experiment consisted of acquiring dense electroencephalographic (EEG) signals during a picture-naming task comprising a set of objects and animals’ images. These EEG responses were recorded from nine participants. In order to determine the time perception of the presented visual stimulus, we analyzed the Event Related Potentials (ERPs) derived from the recorded EEG signals. The analysis of these signals showed that the brain perceives animals and objects with different time instants. Concerning the discrimination of the two categories, the support vector machine (SVM) was applied on the instantaneous EEG (excellent temporal resolution: on the order of millisecond) to categorize the visual stimuli into two different classes. The spatial differences between the evoked responses of the two categories were also investigated. The results showed a variation of the neural activity with the properties of the visual input. Results showed also the existence of a spatial pattern of electrodes over particular regions of the scalp in correspondence to their responses to the visual inputs.

Keywords: Brain activity, dense EEG, evoked responses, spatiotemporal analysis, SVM, perception.

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Authors: Sari Myréen

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The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of multisensory elements in enhancing and facilitating foreign language acquisition among adult students in a language classroom. The use of multisensory elements enables the creation of a student-centered classroom, where the focus is on individual learner’s language learning process, perceptions and motivation. Multisensory language learning is a pedagogical approach where the language learner uses all the senses more effectively than in a traditional in-class environment. Language learning is facilitated due to multisensory stimuli which increase the number of cognitive connections in the learner and take into consideration different types of learners. A living lab called Multisensory Space creates a relaxed and receptive state in the learners through various multisensory stimuli, and thus promotes their natural foreign language acquisition. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected in two questionnaire inquiries among the Finnish students of a higher education institute at the end of their basic French courses in December 2014 and 2016. The inquiries discussed the effects of multisensory elements on the students’ motivation to study French as well as their learning outcomes. The results show that the French classes in the Multisensory Space provide the students with an encouraging and pleasant learning environment, which has a positive impact on their motivation to study the foreign language as well as their language learning outcomes.

Keywords: Foreign language acquisition, foreign language learning, higher education, multisensory learning, pedagogical approach, transcultural learning.

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Authors: Hui-Chuan Lu

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In a perfect secret-sharing scheme, a dealer distributes a secret among a set of participants in such a way that only qualified subsets of participants can recover the secret and the joint share of the participants in any unqualified subset is statistically independent of the secret. The access structure of the scheme refers to the collection of all qualified subsets. In a graph-based access structures, each vertex of a graph G represents a participant and each edge of G represents a minimal qualified subset. The average information ratio of a perfect secret-sharing scheme realizing a given access structure is the ratio of the average length of the shares given to the participants to the length of the secret. The infimum of the average information ratio of all possible perfect secret-sharing schemes realizing an access structure is called the optimal average information ratio of that access structure. We study the optimal average information ratio of the access structures based on bipartite graphs. Based on some previous results, we give a bound on the optimal average information ratio for all bipartite graphs of girth at least six. This bound is the best possible for some classes of bipartite graphs using our approach.

Keywords: Secret-sharing scheme, average information ratio, star covering, deduction, core cluster.

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Authors: Kemal Polat

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In this paper, an attribute weighting method called fuzzy C-means clustering based attribute weighting (FCMAW) for classification of Diabetes disease dataset has been used. The aims of this study are to reduce the variance within attributes of diabetes dataset and to improve the classification accuracy of classifier algorithm transforming from non-linear separable datasets to linearly separable datasets. Pima Indians Diabetes dataset has two classes including normal subjects (500 instances) and diabetes subjects (268 instances). Fuzzy C-means clustering is an improved version of K-means clustering method and is one of most used clustering methods in data mining and machine learning applications. In this study, as the first stage, fuzzy C-means clustering process has been used for finding the centers of attributes in Pima Indians diabetes dataset and then weighted the dataset according to the ratios of the means of attributes to centers of theirs. Secondly, after weighting process, the classifier algorithms including support vector machine (SVM) and k-NN (k- nearest neighbor) classifiers have been used for classifying weighted Pima Indians diabetes dataset. Experimental results show that the proposed attribute weighting method (FCMAW) has obtained very promising results in the classification of Pima Indians diabetes dataset.

Keywords: Fuzzy C-means clustering, Fuzzy C-means clustering based attribute weighting, Pima Indians diabetes dataset, SVM.

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Authors: Sotirios Raptis

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Linking social needs to social classes using different criteria may lead to social services misuse. The paper discusses using ML and Neural Networks (NNs) in linking public services in Scotland in the long term and advocates, this can result in a reduction of the services cost connecting resources needed in groups for similar services. The paper combines typical regression models with clustering and cross-correlation as complementary constituents to predict the demand. Insurance companies and public policymakers can pack linked services such as those offered to the elderly or to low-income people in the longer term. The work is based on public data from 22 services offered by Public Health Services (PHS) Scotland and from the Scottish Government (SG) from 1981 to 2019 that are broken into 110 years series called factors and uses Linear Regression (LR), Autoregression (ARMA) and 3 types of back-propagation (BP) Neural Networks (BPNN) to link them under specific conditions. Relationships found were between smoking related healthcare provision, mental health-related health services, and epidemiological weight in Primary 1(Education) Body Mass Index (BMI) in children. Primary component analysis (PCA) found 11 significant factors while C-Means (CM) clustering gave 5 major factors clusters.

Keywords: Probability, cohorts, data frames, services, prediction.

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Authors: Zukisa Nante, Wang Zenghui

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Face recognition is the problem of identifying or recognizing individuals in an image. This paper investigates a possible method to bring a solution to this problem. The method proposes an amalgamation of Principal Component Analysis (PCA), K-Means clustering, and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for a face recognition system. It is trained and evaluated using the ORL dataset. This dataset consists of 400 different faces with 40 classes of 10 face images per class. Firstly, PCA enabled the usage of a smaller network. This reduces the training time of the CNN. Thus, we get rid of the redundancy and preserve the variance with a smaller number of coefficients. Secondly, the K-Means clustering model is trained using the compressed PCA obtained data which select the K-Means clustering centers with better characteristics. Lastly, the K-Means characteristics or features are an initial value of the CNN and act as input data. The accuracy and the performance of the proposed method were tested in comparison to other Face Recognition (FR) techniques namely PCA, Support Vector Machine (SVM), as well as K-Nearest Neighbour (kNN). During experimentation, the accuracy and the performance of our suggested method after 90 epochs achieved the highest performance: 99% accuracy F1-Score, 99% precision, and 99% recall in 463.934 seconds. It outperformed the PCA that obtained 97% and KNN with 84% during the conducted experiments. Therefore, this method proved to be efficient in identifying faces in the images.

Keywords: Face recognition, Principal Component Analysis, PCA, Convolutional Neural Network, CNN, Rectified Linear Unit, ReLU, feature extraction.

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Authors: L. Petrosyan

Abstract:

The problem of psychologist training remains a key priority in Armenia. During the Soviet period, the notion of a psychologist was obscure not only in Armenia but also in other Soviet republics. The breakup of the Soviet Union triggered a gradual change in this area activating the cooperation with specialists from other countries. The need for recovery from the psychological trauma caused by the 1988 earthquake pushed forward the development of practical psychology in Armenia. This phenomenon led to positive changes in perception of and interest to a psychologist profession.Armenian universities started designing special programs for psychologists’ preparation. Armenian psychologists combined their efforts in the field of training relevant specialists. During the recent years, the Bologna educational system was introduced in Armenia which led to implementation of education quality improvement programs. Nevertheless, even today the issue of psychologists’ training is not yet settled in Armenian universities. So far graduate psychologists haven’t got a clear idea of personal and professional qualities of a psychologist. Recently, as a result of educational reforms, the psychology curricula underwent changes, but so far they have not led to a desired outcome. Almost all curricula in certain specialties are aimed to form professional competencies and strengthen practical skills. A survey conducted in Armenia aimed to identify what are the ideas of young psychology specialists on the image of a psychologist. The survey respondents were 45 specialists holding bachelor’s degree as well as 30 master degree graduates, who have not been working yet. The research reveals that we need to change the approach of preparing psychology practitioners in the universities of Armenia. Such an approach to psychologist training will make it possible to train qualified specialists for enhancement of modern psychology theory and practice.

Keywords: Practitioners, Psychology Degree, study, professional competencies.

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Authors: Sanaeinejad, S. H.; A. Astaraei, . P. Mirhoseini.Mousavi, M. Ghaemi,

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One of the main environmental problems which affect extensive areas in the world is soil salinity. Traditional data collection methods are neither enough for considering this important environmental problem nor accurate for soil studies. Remote sensing data could overcome most of these problems. Although satellite images are commonly used for these studies, however there are still needs to find the best calibration between the data and real situations in each specified area. Neyshaboor area, North East of Iran was selected as a field study of this research. Landsat satellite images for this area were used in order to prepare suitable learning samples for processing and classifying the images. 300 locations were selected randomly in the area to collect soil samples and finally 273 locations were reselected for further laboratory works and image processing analysis. Electrical conductivity of all samples was measured. Six reflective bands of ETM+ satellite images taken from the study area in 2002 were used for soil salinity classification. The classification was carried out using common algorithms based on the best composition bands. The results showed that the reflective bands 7, 3, 4 and 1 are the best band composition for preparing the color composite images. We also found out, that hybrid classification is a suitable method for identifying and delineation of different salinity classes in the area.

Keywords: Soil salinity, Remote sensing, Image processing, ETM+, Nyshaboor

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Authors: P. Pongsumpun, I.M. Tang

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Plasmodium vivax malaria differs from P. falciparum malaria in that a person suffering from P. vivax infection can suffer relapses of the disease. This is due the parasite being able to remain dormant in the liver of the patients where it is able to re-infect the patient after a passage of time. During this stage, the patient is classified as being in the dormant class. The model to describe the transmission of P. vivax malaria consists of a human population divided into four classes, the susceptible, the infected, the dormant and the recovered. The effect of a time delay on the transmission of this disease is studied. The time delay is the period in which the P. vivax parasite develops inside the mosquito (vector) before the vector becomes infectious (i.e., pass on the infection). We analyze our model by using standard dynamic modeling method. Two stable equilibrium states, a disease free state E0 and an endemic state E1, are found to be possible. It is found that the E0 state is stable when a newly defined basic reproduction number G is less than one. If G is greater than one the endemic state E1 is stable. The conditions for the endemic equilibrium state E1 to be a stable spiral node are established. For realistic values of the parameters in the model, it is found that solutions in phase space are trajectories spiraling into the endemic state. It is shown that the limit cycle and chaotic behaviors can only be achieved with unrealistic parameter values.

Keywords: Equilibrium states, Hopf bifurcation, limit cyclebehavior, local stability, Plasmodium Vivax, time delay.

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Authors: Md. Sayeed Akhter, Md. Akhtar Hossain Mazumder, Syeda Afreena Mamun

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Bangladesh is a patriarchal and male dominated country. Traditional, cultural, social, and religious values and practices have reinforced the lower status of women accorded to them in society and have limited their opportunities for education, technical and vocational training, and involvement with earning activities outside their households. After independence numbers of women are doing job outside their households. This study attempts to find out the reasons of engaging in earning activities outside households and difficulties faced by upper and lower class working women in Bangladesh. To explore the objectives and research questions of the study descriptive techniques had been used. Survey was conducted among the women who were working in Rajshahi city of Bangladesh and face-to-face interviews were conducted to collect data. Findings of the study illustrates that most of the upper class working women engaged into job because they wanted to utilized their education and to bring solvency in the family, and they spend their income for meeting the needs of all the members of the family. On the other hand, most of the lower class working women involved into earning activities outside their households because they want to bring solvency in their families and spend their income on household expenditure. Both classes became tensed for their children because they had to stay at their working place for long time. Therefore, day care center should be established besides their working place for their children.

Keywords: Working Women, Reasons for Doing Jobs, Working Environment, Difficulties Faced.

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Authors: H. B. Kekre, Kavita Patil

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This paper describes a novel and effective approach to content-based image retrieval (CBIR) that represents each image in the database by a vector of feature values called “Standard deviation of mean vectors of color distribution of rows and columns of images for CBIR". In many areas of commerce, government, academia, and hospitals, large collections of digital images are being created. This paper describes the approach that uses contents as feature vector for retrieval of similar images. There are several classes of features that are used to specify queries: colour, texture, shape, spatial layout. Colour features are often easily obtained directly from the pixel intensities. In this paper feature extraction is done for the texture descriptor that is 'variance' and 'Variance of Variances'. First standard deviation of each row and column mean is calculated for R, G, and B planes. These six values are obtained for one image which acts as a feature vector. Secondly we calculate variance of the row and column of R, G and B planes of an image. Then six standard deviations of these variance sequences are calculated to form a feature vector of dimension six. We applied our approach to a database of 300 BMP images. We have determined the capability of automatic indexing by analyzing image content: color and texture as features and by applying a similarity measure Euclidean distance.

Keywords: Standard deviation Image retrieval, color distribution, Variance, Variance of Variance, Euclidean distance.

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Authors: Rodolfo Lorbieski, Silvia Modesto Nassar

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Many supervised machine learning tasks require decision making across numerous different classes. Multi-class classification has several applications, such as face recognition, text recognition and medical diagnostics. The objective of this article is to analyze an adapted method of Stacking in multi-class problems, which combines ensembles within the ensemble itself. For this purpose, a training similar to Stacking was used, but with three levels, where the final decision-maker (level 2) performs its training by combining outputs from the tree-based pair of meta-classifiers (level 1) from Bayesian families. These are in turn trained by pairs of base classifiers (level 0) of the same family. This strategy seeks to promote diversity among the ensembles forming the meta-classifier level 2. Three performance measures were used: (1) accuracy, (2) area under the ROC curve, and (3) time for three factors: (a) datasets, (b) experiments and (c) levels. To compare the factors, ANOVA three-way test was executed for each performance measure, considering 5 datasets by 25 experiments by 3 levels. A triple interaction between factors was observed only in time. The accuracy and area under the ROC curve presented similar results, showing a double interaction between level and experiment, as well as for the dataset factor. It was concluded that level 2 had an average performance above the other levels and that the proposed method is especially efficient for multi-class problems when compared to binary problems.

Keywords: Stacking, multi-layers, ensemble, multi-class.

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Authors: Hyun Chul Cho, Hyunkyoung Oh, Hyun Yoon, Jooyeon Jin, Jae Won Lee

Abstract:

Identifying, structuring, and racking the most important factors related to improving athletes’ performances could pave the way for improve training system. The purpose of this study was to identify the relative importance factors to improve performance of the of judo athletes with visual impairments, including blindness by using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). After reviewing the literature, the relative importance of factors affecting performance of the blind judo was selected. A group of expert reviewed the first draft of the questionnaires, and then finally selected performance factors were classified into the major categories of techniques, physical fitness, and psychological categories. Later, a pre-selected experts group was asked to review the final version of questionnaire and confirm the priories of performance factors. The order of priority was determined by performing pairwise comparisons using Expert Choice 2000. Results indicated that “grappling” (.303) and “throwing” (.234) were the most important lower hierarchy factors for blind judo skills. In addition, the most important physical factors affecting performance were “muscular strength and endurance” (.238). Further, among other psychological factors “competitive anxiety” (.393) was important factor that affects performance. It is important to offer psychological skills training to reduce anxiety of judo athletes with visual impairments and blindness, so they can compete in their optimal states. These findings offer insights into what should be considered when determining factors to improve performance of judo athletes with visual impairments and blindness.

Keywords: Analytic hierarchy process, blind athlete, judo, sport performance.

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Authors: J. Miranda, D. Chavarría-Barrientos, M. Ramírez-Cadena, M. E. Macías, P. Ponce, J. Noguez, R. Pérez-Rodríguez, P. K. Wright, A. Molina

Abstract:

Higher education methods need to evolve because the new generations of students are learning in different ways. One way is by adopting emergent technologies, new learning methods and promoting the maker movement. As a result, Tecnologico de Monterrey is developing Open Innovation Laboratories as an immediate response to educational challenges of the world. This paper presents an Open Innovation Laboratory for Rapid Realization of Sensing, Smart and Sustainable Products (S³ Products). The Open Innovation Laboratory is composed of a set of specific resources where students and teachers use them to provide solutions to current problems of priority sectors through the development of a new generation of products. This new generation of products considers the concepts Sensing, Smart, and Sustainable. The Open Innovation Laboratory has been implemented in different courses in the context of New Product Development (NPD) and Integrated Manufacturing Systems (IMS) at Tecnologico de Monterrey. The implementation consists of adapting this Open Innovation Laboratory within the course’s syllabus in combination with the implementation of specific methodologies for product development, learning methods (Active Learning and Blended Learning using Massive Open Online Courses MOOCs) and rapid product realization platforms. Using the concepts proposed it is possible to demonstrate that students can propose innovative and sustainable products, and demonstrate how the learning process could be improved using technological resources applied in the higher educational sector. Finally, examples of innovative S³ products developed at Tecnologico de Monterrey are presented.

Keywords: Active learning, blended learning, maker movement, new product development, open innovation laboratory.

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Authors: Vladimir Korovkin, Albert Park, Evgeny Kaganer

Abstract:

Digital divide, the gap in the access to the world of digital technologies and the socio-economic opportunities that they create is an important phenomenon of the XXI century. This gap may exist between countries, regions within a country or socio-demographic groups, creating the classes of “digital have and have nots”. While the 1st-level divide (the difference in opportunities to access the digital networks) was demonstrated to diminish with time, the issues of 2nd level divide (the difference in skills and usage of digital systems) and 3rd level divide (the difference in effects obtained from digital technology) may grow. The paper offers a systemic review of literature on the measurement of the digital divide, noting the certain conceptual stagnation due to the lack of effective instruments that would capture the complex nature of the phenomenon. As a result, many important concepts do not receive the empiric exploration they deserve. As a solution the paper suggests a composite Digital Life Index, that studies separately the digital supply and demand across seven independent dimensions providing for 14 subindices. The Index is based on Internet-borne data, a distinction from traditional research approaches that rely on official statistics or surveys. The application of the model to the study of the digital divide between Russian regions and between cities in China have brought promising results. The paper advances the existing methodological literature on the 2nd level digital divide and can also inform practical decision-making regarding the strategies of national and regional digital development.

Keywords: Digital transformation, second-level digital divide, composite index, digital policy.

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Authors: Ilona Bala

Abstract:

The subject of this abstract is related to the notion of 'popular music', a notion that should be treated with extreme care, particularly when applied to Frederic Chopin, one of the greatest composers of Romanticism. By ‘popular music’, we mean a category of everyday music, set against the more intellectual kind, referred to as ‘classical’. We only need to look back to the culture of the nineteenth century to realize that this ‘popular music’ refers to the ‘music of the low’. It can be studied from a sociological viewpoint, or as sociological aesthetics. However, we cannot ignore the fact that, very quickly, this music spread to the wealthiest strata of the European society of the nineteenth century, while likewise the lowest classes often listen to the intellectual classical music, so pleasant to listen to. Further, we can observe that a sort of ‘sacralisation of kitsch’ occurs at the intersection between the classical and popular music. This process is the topic of this contribution. We will start by investigating the notion of kitsch through the study of Chopin’s popular compositions. However, before considering the popularisation of this music in today’s culture, we will have to focus on the use of the word kitsch in Chopin’s times, through his own musical aesthetics. Finally, the objective here will be to negate the theory that art is simply the intellectual definition of aesthetics. A kitsch can, obviously, only work on the emotivity of the masses, as it represents one of the features of culture-language (the words which the masses identify with). All art is transformed, becoming something outdated or even outmoded. Here, we are truly within a process of mythologization of art, through the study of the aesthetic reception of the musical work.

Keywords: F. Chopin, musical work, popular music, romantic music, mythologization of art, kitsch.

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Authors: Jazaul Ikhsan, Masaharu Fujita

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Safety, river environment, and sediment utilization are the elements of the target of sediment management. As a change in an element by sediment management, may affect the other two elements, and the priority among three elements depends on stakeholders. It is necessary to develop a method to evaluate the effect of sediment management on each element and an integrated evaluation method for socio-economic effect. In this study, taking Mount Merapi basin as an investigation field, the method for an active volcanic basin was developed. An integrated evaluation method for sediment management was discussed from a socio-economic point on safety, environment, and sediment utilization and a case study of sediment management was evaluated by means of this method. To evaluate the effect of sediment management, some parameters on safety, utilization, and environment have been introduced. From a utilization point of view, job opportunity, additional income of local people, and tax income to local government were used to evaluate the effectiveness of sediment management. The risk degree of river infrastructure was used to describe the effect of sediment management on a safety aspect. To evaluate the effects of sediment management on environment, the mean diameter of grain size distribution of riverbed surface was used. On the coordinate system designating these elements, the direction of change in basin condition by sediment management can be predicted, so that the most preferable sediment management can be decided. The results indicate that the cases of sediment management tend to give the negative impacts on sediment utilization. However, these sediment managements will give positive impacts on safety and environment condition. Evaluation result from a social-economic point of view shows that the case study of sediment management reduces job opportunity and additional income for inhabitants as well as tax income for government. Therefore, it is necessary to make another policy for creating job opportunity for inhabitants to support these sediment managements.

Keywords: Merapi, sediment, management, evaluation

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Authors: S. Zeynep Siretioglu Girgin, Gizem Turna Cebeci

Abstract:

Turkey’s immigration policy is a controversial issue considering its legal, economic, social, and political and human rights dimensions. Formulation of an immigration policy goes hand in hand with political processes, where natives’ attitudes play a significant role. On the other hand, as was the case in Turkey, radical changes made in immigration policy or policies lacking transparency may cause severe reactions by the host society. The underlying discussion paper aims to analyze quantitatively the effects of the existing ‘open door’ immigration policy on the economic integration of Syrian refugees in Turkey, and on the perception of the native population of refugees. For the analysis, semi-structured in-depth interviews and focus group interviews have been conducted. After the introduction, a literature review is provided, followed by theoretical background on the explanation of natives’ attitudes towards immigrants. In the next section, a qualitative analysis of natives’ attitudes towards Syrian refugees is presented with the subtopics of (i) awareness, general opinions and expectations, (ii) open-door policy and management of the migration process, (iii) perception of positive and negative impacts of immigration, (iv) economic integration, and (v) cultural similarity. Results indicate that, natives concurrently have social, economic and security concerns regarding refugees, while difficulties regarding security and economic integration of refugees stand out. Socio-economic characteristics of the respondents, such as the educational level and employment status, are not sufficient to explain the overall attitudes towards refugees, while they can be used to explain the awareness of the respondents and the priority of the concerns felt.

Keywords: Economic integration, immigration policy, integration policies, migrants, natives’ attitudes, perception, Syrian refugees, Turkey.

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Authors: Neha Budhwani

Abstract:

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are formed during the pyrolysis of scrap tyres to produce tyre pyrolytic oil (TPO). Due to carcinogenic, mutagenic, and toxic properties PAHs are priority pollutants. Hence it is essential to remove PAHs from TPO before utilising TPO as a petroleum fuel alternative (to run the engine). Agricultural wastes have promising future to be utilized as biosorbent due to their cost effectiveness, abundant availability, high biosorption capacity and renewability. Various low cost adsorbents were prepared from natural sources. Uptake of PAHs present in tyre pyrolytic oil was investigated using various low-cost adsorbents of natural origin including sawdust (shisham), coconut fiber, neem bark, chitin, activated charcoal. Adsorption experiments of different PAHs viz. naphthalene, acenaphthalene, biphenyl and anthracene have been carried out at ambient temperature (25°C) and at pH 7. It was observed that for any given PAH, the adsorption capacity increases with the lignin content. Freundlich constant Kf and 1/n have been evaluated and it was found that the adsorption isotherms of PAHs were in agreement with a Freundlich model, while the uptake capacity of PAHs followed the order: activated charcoal> saw dust (shisham) > coconut fiber > chitin. The partition coefficients in acetone-water, and the adsorption constants at equilibrium, could be linearly correlated with octanol–water partition coefficients. It is observed that natural adsorbents are good alternative for PAHs removal. Sawdust of Dalbergia sissoo, a by-product of sawmills was found to be a promising adsorbent for the removal of PAHs present in TPO. It is observed that adsorbents studied were comparable to those of some conventional adsorbents.

Keywords: Acenaphthene, anthracene, biphenyl, Coconut fiber, naphthalene, natural adsorbent, PAHs, TPO and wood powder (shisham).

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