Search results for: Information and Communications Technology (ICT)

Authors: A. F. Ali, D. M. Shawky

Abstract:

Discovering new biological knowledge from the highthroughput biological data is a major challenge to bioinformatics today. To address this challenge, we developed a new approach for protein classification. Proteins that are evolutionarily- and thereby functionally- related are said to belong to the same classification. Identifying protein classification is of fundamental importance to document the diversity of the known protein universe. It also provides a means to determine the functional roles of newly discovered protein sequences. Our goal is to predict the functional classification of novel protein sequences based on a set of features extracted from each protein sequence. The proposed technique used datasets extracted from the Structural Classification of Proteins (SCOP) database. A set of spectral domain features based on Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is used. The proposed classifier uses multilayer back propagation (MLBP) neural network for protein classification. The maximum classification accuracy is about 91% when applying the classifier to the full four levels of the SCOP database. However, it reaches a maximum of 96% when limiting the classification to the family level. The classification results reveal that spectral domain contains information that can be used for classification with high accuracy. In addition, the results emphasize that sequence similarity measures are of great importance especially at the family level.

Keywords: Bioinformatics, Artificial Neural Networks, Protein Sequence Analysis, Feature Extraction.

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Authors: S. Benchelha, H. C. Aoudjehane, M. Hakdaoui, R. El Hamdouni, H. Mansouri, T. Benchelha, M. Layelmam, M. Alaoui

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The logistic regression (LR) and multivariate adaptive regression spline (MarSpline) are applied and verified for analysis of landslide susceptibility map in Oudka, Morocco, using geographical information system. From spatial database containing data such as landslide mapping, topography, soil, hydrology and lithology, the eight factors related to landslides such as elevation, slope, aspect, distance to streams, distance to road, distance to faults, lithology map and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) were calculated or extracted. Using these factors, landslide susceptibility indexes were calculated by the two mentioned methods. Before the calculation, this database was divided into two parts, the first for the formation of the model and the second for the validation. The results of the landslide susceptibility analysis were verified using success and prediction rates to evaluate the quality of these probabilistic models. The result of this verification was that the MarSpline model is the best model with a success rate (AUC = 0.963) and a prediction rate (AUC = 0.951) higher than the LR model (success rate AUC = 0.918, rate prediction AUC = 0.901).

Keywords: Landslide susceptibility mapping, regression logistic, multivariate adaptive regression spline, Oudka, Taounate, Morocco.

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Authors: Pepin Magnangana Zoko Goyoro, Ibrahim James Moumouni, Sroy Abouty

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Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is an efficient method of data transmission for high speed communication systems. However, the main drawback of OFDM systems is that, it suffers from the problem of high Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR) which causes inefficient use of the High Power Amplifier and could limit transmission efficiency. OFDM consist of large number of independent subcarriers, as a result of which the amplitude of such a signal can have high peak values. In this paper, we propose an effective reduction scheme that combines DCT and SLM techniques. The scheme is composed of the DCT followed by the SLM using the Riemann matrix to obtain phase sequences for the SLM technique. The simulation results show PAPR can be greatly reduced by applying the proposed scheme. In comparison with OFDM, while OFDM had high values of PAPR –about 10.4dB our proposed method achieved about 4.7dB reduction of the PAPR with low complexities computation. This approach also avoids randomness in phase sequence selection, which makes it simpler to decode at the receiver. As an added benefit, the matrices can be generated at the receiver end to obtain the data signal and hence it is not required to transmit side information (SI).

Keywords: DCT transform, OFDM, PAPR, Riemann matrix, SLM.

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Authors: A. A. M. Azoddein, R. M. Yunus, N. M. Sulaiman, A. B. Bustary, K. Sabar

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Microbes have been used to solve environmental problems for many years. The role of microorganism to sequester, precipitate or alter the oxidation state of various heavy metals has been extensively studied. Treatment using microorganism interacts with toxic metal are very diverse. The purpose of this research is to remove the mercury using Pseudomonas putida (P. putida), pure culture ATTC 49128 at optimum growth parameters such as techniques of culture, acclimatization time and speed of incubator shaker. Thus, in this study, the optimum growth parameters of P. putida were obtained to achieve the maximum of mercury removal. Based on the optimum parameters of P. putida for specific growth rate, the removal of two different mercury concentration, 1 ppm and 4 ppm were studied. From mercury nitrate solution, a mercuryresistant bacterial strain which is able to reduce from ionic mercury to metallic mercury was used to reduce ionic mercury. The overall levels of mercury removal in this study were between 80% and 89%. The information obtained in this study is of fundamental for understanding of the survival of P. putida ATTC 49128 in mercury solution. Thus, microbial mercury removal is a potential bioremediation for wastewater especially in petrochemical industries in Malaysia.

Keywords: Pseudomonas putida, growth kinetic, biosorption, mercury, petrochemical wastewater.

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Authors: Arundhati Devi Maibam, K. Ingocha Singh

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Cervical cancer is preventable if detected early. Determination of risk factors is essential to plan screening programmes to prevent the disease. To study the demographic risk factors of cervical cancer among Manipuri women, information on age, marital status, educational level, monthly family income and socioeconomic status were collected through a pre-tested interview schedule. In this study, 64 incident cases registered at the RT Dept, RIMS (Regional Institute of Medical Sciences), Imphal, Manipur, India during 2008-09 participated. Data were entered in Microsoft Excel and the results were expressed in percentages. Among the 64 patients with cervical cancer, 56 (88.9%) were in the age group of 40+ years. The majority of the patients were from rural areas (68.75%) and 31.25% were from urban areas. The majority of the patients were Hindus (73%), 55(85.9%) were of low educational level, 43(67.2%) were married, and 36 (56.25%) belonged to Class IV socioeconomic status. In conclusion, if detected early, cervical cancer is preventable and curable. The potential risk factors need to be identified and women in the risk group need to be motivated for screening. Affordable screening programmes and health care resources will help in lessening the burden of the disease.

Keywords: Cervical cancer, Manipuri women, RIIMS, Socio-demographic risk factors.

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Authors: Chen Zhang, Bernhard Schwarz-Röhr, Alexander Härting

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To acquire accurate ship motions at the center of gravity, a single low-cost inertial sensor is utilized and applied on board to measure ship oscillating motions. As observations, the three axes accelerations and three axes rotational rates provided by the sensor are used. The mathematical model of processing the observation data includes determination of the distance vector between the sensor and the center of gravity in x, y, and z directions. After setting up the transfer matrix from sensor’s own coordinate system to the ship’s body frame, an extended Kalman filter is applied to deal with nonlinearities between the ship motion in the body frame and the observation information in the sensor’s frame. As a side effect, the method eliminates sensor noise and other unwanted errors. Results are not only roll and pitch, but also linear motions, in particular heave and surge at the center of gravity. For testing, we resort to measurements recorded on a small vessel in a well-defined sea state. With response amplitude operators computed numerically by a commercial software (Seaway), motion characteristics are estimated. These agree well with the measurements after processing with the suggested method.

Keywords: Extended Kalman filter, nonlinear estimation, sea trial, ship motion estimation.

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Authors: R. Kamalakannan, N. Ravi Kumar

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Feeder protection is important in transmission and distribution side because if any fault occurs in any feeder or transformer, man power is needed to identify the problem and it will take more time. In the existing system, directional overcurrent elements with load further secured by a load encroachment function can be used to provide necessary security and sensitivity for faults on remote points in a circuit. It is validated only in renewable plant collector circuit protection applications over a wide range of operating conditions. In this method, the directional overcurrent feeder protection is developed by using monitoring of feeder section through internet. In this web based monitoring, the fault and power theft are identified by using Toro dial sensor and its information is received by SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) and controlled by ARM microcontroller. This web based monitoring is also used to monitor the feeder management, directional current detection, demand side management, overload fault. This monitoring system is capable of monitoring the distribution feeder over a large area depending upon the cost. It is also used to reduce the power theft, time and man power. The simulation is done by MATLAB software.

Keywords: Current sensor, distribution feeder protection, directional overcurrent, power theft, protective relay.

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Authors: B. Dehghan, T. Toppi, M. Aprile, M. Motta

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The environmental concerns related to global warming and ozone layer depletion along with the growing worldwide demand for heating and cooling have brought an increasing attention toward ecological and efficient Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems. Furthermore, since space heating accounts for a considerable part of the European primary/final energy use, it has been identified as one of the sectors with the most challenging targets in energy use reduction. Heat pumps are commonly considered as a technology able to contribute to the achievement of the targets. Current research focuses on the full load operation and seasonal performance assessment of three gas-driven absorption heat pump cycles. To do this, investigations of the gas-driven air-source ammonia-water absorption heat pump systems for small-scale space heating applications are presented. For each of the presented cycles, both full-load under various temperature conditions and seasonal performances are predicted by means of numerical simulations. It has been considered that small capacity appliances are usually equipped with fixed geometry restrictors, meaning that the solution mass flow rate is driven by the pressure difference across the associated restrictor valve. Results show that gas utilization efficiency (GUE) of the cycles varies between 1.2 and 1.7 for both full and partial loads and vapor exchange (VX) cycle is found to achieve the highest efficiency. It is noticed that, for typical space heating applications, heat pumps operate over a wide range of capacities and thermal lifts. Thus, partially, the novelty introduced in the paper is the investigation based on a seasonal performance approach, following the method prescribed in a recent European standard (EN 12309). The overall result is a modest variation in the seasonal performance for analyzed cycles, from 1.427 (single-effect) to 1.493 (vapor-exchange).

Keywords: Absorption cycles, gas utilization efficiency, heat pump, seasonal performance, vapor exchange cycle.

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Authors: Frank Emmert Streib, Matthias Dehmer, Jing Liu, Max Mühlhauser

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In this paper we present a method for gene ranking from DNA microarray data. More precisely, we calculate the correlation networks, which are unweighted and undirected graphs, from microarray data of cervical cancer whereas each network represents a tissue of a certain tumor stage and each node in the network represents a gene. From these networks we extract one tree for each gene by a local decomposition of the correlation network. The interpretation of a tree is that it represents the n-nearest neighbor genes on the n-th level of a tree, measured by the Dijkstra distance, and, hence, gives the local embedding of a gene within the correlation network. For the obtained trees we measure the pairwise similarity between trees rooted by the same gene from normal to cancerous tissues. This evaluates the modification of the tree topology due to progression of the tumor. Finally, we rank the obtained similarity values from all tissue comparisons and select the top ranked genes. For these genes the local neighborhood in the correlation networks changes most between normal and cancerous tissues. As a result we find that the top ranked genes are candidates suspected to be involved in tumor growth and, hence, indicates that our method captures essential information from the underlying DNA microarray data of cervical cancer.

Keywords: Graph similarity, DNA microarray data, cancer.

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Authors: Zayed N. Alsulami, Asma F. Aldosseri, Ahmed S. Ezziden, Abdulrahman K. Alonazi

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Children are more susceptible to medication errors than adults. Medication administration process is the last stage in the medication treatment process and most of the errors detected in this stage. Little research has been undertaken about medication errors in children in the Middle East countries. This study was aimed to evaluate how the paediatric nurses adhere to the medication administration policy and also to identify any medication preparation and administration errors or any risk factors. An observational, prospective study of medication administration process from when the nurses preparing patient medication until administration stage (May to August 2014) was conducted in Saudi Arabia. Twelve paediatric nurses serving 90 paediatric patients were observed. 456 drug administered doses were evaluated. Adherence rate was variable in 7 steps out of 16 steps. Patient allergy information, dose calculation, drug expiry date were the steps in medication administration with lowest adherence rates. 63 medication preparation and administration errors were identified with error rate 13.8% of medication administrations. No potentially life-threating errors were witnessed. Few logistic and administrative factors were reported. The results showed that the medication administration policy and procedure need an urgent revision to be more sensible for nurses in practice. Nurses’ knowledge and skills regarding to the medication administration process should be improved.

Keywords: Double checking, Medication administration errors, Medication safety, Nurses.

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Authors: Wu Defu, Kiefer Chiam, Yang Kin Seng

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The planning of geological survey works is an iterative process which involves planner, geologist, civil engineer and other stakeholders, who perform different roles and have different points of view. Traditionally, the team used paper maps or CAD drawings to present the proposal which is not an efficient way to present and share idea on the site investigation proposal such as sitting of borehole location or seismic survey lines. This paper focuses on how a GIS approach can be utilised to develop a webbased system to support decision making process in the planning of geological survey works and also to plan site activities carried out by Singapore Geological Office (SGO). The authors design a framework of building an interactive web-based GIS system, and develop a prototype, which enables the users to obtain rapidly existing geological information and also to plan interactively borehole locations and seismic survey lines via a web browser. This prototype system is used daily by SGO and has shown to be effective in increasing efficiency and productivity as the time taken in the planning of geological survey works is shortened. The prototype system has been developed using the ESRI ArcGIS API 3.7 for Flex which is based on the ArcGIS 10.2.1 platform.

Keywords: Engineering geology, Flex, Geological survey planning, Geoscience, GIS, Site investigation, WebGIS.

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Authors: Pankaj Singh Rawat, Rajeew Kumar, Pradeep Ram, Priyanka Pandey

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Wheat is an important cereal crop for food security. Boosting the wheat production and productivity is the major challenge across the nation. Good quality of seed is required for maintaining optimum plant stand which ultimately increases grain yield. Ensuring a good germination is one of the key steps to ensure proper plant stand and moisture assurance during seed germination may help to speed up the germination. The tiny size of nanoparticles may help in entry of water into seed without disturbing their internal structure. Considering above, a laboratory experiment was conducted during 2012-13 at G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, India. The completely randomized design was used for statistical analysis. The experiment was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, the appropriate concentration of nanoparticles for seed treatment was screened. In second phase seed soaking hours of nanoparticles for better seed germination were standardized. Wheat variety UP2526 was taken as test crop. Four nanoparticles (TiO₂, ZnO, nickel and chitosan) were taken for study. The crop germination studies were done in petri dishes and standard package and practices were used to raise the seedlings. The germination studies were done by following standard procedure. In first phase of the experiment, seeds were treated with 50 and 300 ppm of nanoparticles and control was also maintained for comparison. In the second phase of experiment, seeds were soaked for 4 hours, 6 hours and 8 hours with 50 ppm nanoparticles of TiO₂, ZnO, nickel and chitosan along with control treatment to identify the soaking time for better seed germination. Experiment revealed that the application of nanoparticles help to enhance seed germination. The study revealed that seed treatment with  nanoparticles at 50 ppm concentration increases root length, shoot length, seedling length, shoot dry weight, seedling dry weight, seedling vigour index I and seedling vigour index II as compared to seed soaking at 300 ppm concentration. This experiment showed that seed soaking up to 4 hr was better as compared to 6 and 8 hrs. Seed soaking with nanoparticles specially TiO₂, ZnO, and chitosan proved to enhance germination and seedling growth indices of wheat crop.

Keywords: Nanoparticles, seed germination, seed soaking, wheat.

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Authors: Silvio R. R. Sanches, Bianca C. Barbosa, Beatriz R. Brum, Cléber G.Corrêa

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In order to evaluate the quality of a segmentation algorithm, the researchers use subjective or objective metrics. Although subjective metrics are more accurate than objective ones, objective metrics do not require user feedback to test an algorithm. Objective metrics require subjective experiments only during their development. Subjective experiments typically display to users some videos (generated from frames with segmentation errors) that simulate the environment of an application domain. This user feedback is crucial information for metric definition. In the subjective experiments applied to develop some state-of-the-art metrics used to test segmentation algorithms, the videos displayed during the experiments did not contain audio. Audio is an essential component in applications such as videoconference and augmented reality. If the audio influences the user’s perception, using only videos without audio in subjective experiments can compromise the efficiency of an objective metric generated using data from these experiments. This work aims to identify if the audio influences the user’s perception of segmentation quality in background substitution applications with audio. The proposed approach used a subjective method based on formal video quality assessment methods. The results showed that audio influences the quality of segmentation perceived by a user.

Keywords: Background substitution, influence of audio, segmentation evaluation, segmentation quality.

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Authors: Ahmed Aljudaya, Derek Ingham, Lin Ma, Kevin Hughes, Mohammed Pourkashanian

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Researchers, power companies, and state politicians have given concentrated solar power (CSP) much attention due to its capacity to generate large amounts of electricity whereas overcoming the intermittent nature of solar resources. The Linear Fresnel Reflector (LFR) is a well-known CSP technology type for being inexpensive, having a low land use factor, and suffering from low optical efficiency. The LFR was considered a cost-effective alternative option to the Parabolic Trough Collector (PTC) because of its simplistic design, and this often outweighs its lower efficiency. The LFR power plants commercially generate steam directly and indirectly in order to produce electricity with high technical efficiency and lower its costs. The purpose of this important analysis is to compare the annual performance of the Direct Steam Generation (DSG) and Indirect Steam Generation (ISG) of LFR power plants using molten salt and other different Heat Transfer Fluids (HTF) to investigate their technical and economic effects. A 50 MWe solar-only system is examined as a case study for both steam production methods in extreme weather conditions. In addition, a parametric analysis is carried out to determine the optimal solar field size that provides the lowest Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) while achieving the highest technical performance. As a result of optimizing the optimum solar field size, the solar multiple (SM) is found to be between 1.2 – 1.5 in order to achieve as low as 9 Cent/KWh for the DSG of the LFR. In addition, the power plant is capable of producing around 141 GWh annually and up to 36% of the capacity factor, whereas the ISG produces less energy at a higher cost. The optimization results show that the DSG’s performance overcomes the ISG in producing around 3% more annual energy, 2% lower LCOE, and 28% less capital cost.

Keywords: Concentrated Solar Power, Levelized cost of electricity, Linear Fresnel reflectors, Steam generation.

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Authors: N. Neysani Samany, M.R. Delavar, N. Chrisman, M.R. Malek

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Location-aware computing is a type of pervasive computing that utilizes user-s location as a dominant factor for providing urban services and application-related usages. One of the important urban services is navigation instruction for wayfinders in a city especially when the user is a tourist. The services which are presented to the tourists should provide adapted location aware instructions. In order to achieve this goal, the main challenge is to find spatial relevant objects and location-dependent information. The aim of this paper is the development of a reusable location-aware model to handle spatial relevancy parameters in urban location-aware systems. In this way we utilized ontology as an approach which could manage spatial relevancy by defining a generic model. Our contribution is the introduction of an ontological model based on the directed interval algebra principles. Indeed, it is assumed that the basic elements of our ontology are the spatial intervals for the user and his/her related contexts. The relationships between them would model the spatial relevancy parameters. The implementation language for the model is OWLs, a web ontology language. The achieved results show that our proposed location-aware model and the application adaptation strategies provide appropriate services for the user.

Keywords: Spatial relevancy, Context-aware, Ontology, Modeling

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Authors: Disciglio G., Lops F., Carlucci A., Gatta G., Tarantino A., Frabboni L., Carriero F., Cibelli F., Raimondo M. L., Tarantino E.

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The tomato is a very important crop, whose cultivation in the Mediterranean basin is severely affected by the phytoparasitic weed Phelipanche ramosa. The semiarid regions of the world are considered the main areas where this parasitic weed is established causing heavy infestation as it is able to produce high numbers of seeds (up to 500,000 per plant), which remain viable for extended period (more than 20 years). In this paper the results obtained from eleven treatments in order to control this parasitic weed including chemical, agronomic, biological and biotechnological methods compared with the untreated test under two plowing depths (30 and 50 cm) are reported. The split-plot design with 3 replicates was adopted. In 2014 a trial was performed in Foggia province (southern Italy) on processing tomato (cv Docet) grown in the field infested by Phelipanche ramosa. Tomato seedlings were transplant on May 5, on a clay-loam soil. During the growing cycle of the tomato crop, at 56-78 and 92 days after transplantation, the number of parasitic shoots emerged in each plot was detected. At tomato harvesting, on August 18, the major quantity-quality yield parameters were determined (marketable yield, mean weight, dry matter, pH, soluble solids and color of fruits). All data were subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the means were compared by Tukey's test. Each treatment studied did not provide complete control against Phelipanche ramosa. However, among the different methods tested, some of them which Fusarium, gliphosate, radicon biostimulant and Red Setter tomato cv (improved genotypes obtained by Tilling technology) under deeper plowing (50 cm depth) proved to mitigate the virulence of the Phelipanche ramose attacks. It is assumed that these effects can be improved combining some of these treatments each other, especially for a gradual and continuing reduction of the “seed bank” of the parasite in the soil.

Keywords: Control methods, Phelipanche ramosa, tomato crop.

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Authors: María José Benítez Jiménez

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Article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (E.C.H.R.) proclaims that no one may be subjected to torture, punishment or degrading treatment. The legislative correlate in Spain is embodied in Article 15 of the Spanish Constitution, and there must be an overlapping interpretation of both precepts on the ideal plane. While it is true that there are not many cases in which the European Court of Human Rights (E.C.t.H.R. (The Strasbourg Court)) has sanctioned Spain for its failure to investigate complaints of torture, it must be emphasized that the tendency to violate Article 3 of the Convention appears to be on the rise, being necessary to know possible factors that may be affecting it. This paper addresses the analysis of sentences that directly or indirectly reveal the violation of Article 3 of the European Convention. To carry out the analysis, sentences of the Strasbourg Court have been consulted from 2012 to 2016, being able to address any previous sentences to this period if it provided justified information necessary for the study. After the review it becomes clear that there are two key groups of subjects that request a response to the Strasbourg Court on the understanding that they have been tortured or degradingly treated. These are: immigrants and terrorists. Both phenomena, immigration and terrorism, respond to patterns that have mutated in recent years, and it is important for this study to know if national regulations begin to be dysfunctional.

Keywords: European convention for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, European Court of Human Rights, sentences, Spanish Constitution, torture.

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Authors: Kaushik Sathupadi, Sandesh Achar

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Human action recognition (HAR) modeling is a critical task in machine learning. These systems require better techniques for recognizing body parts and selecting optimal features based on vision sensors to identify complex action patterns efficiently. Still, there is a considerable gap and challenges between images and videos, such as brightness, motion variation, and random clutters. This paper proposes a robust approach for classifying human actions over cloud-based image data. First, we apply pre-processing and detection, human and outer shape detection techniques. Next, we extract valuable information in terms of cues. We extract two distinct features: fuzzy local binary patterns and sequence representation. Then, we applied a greedy, randomized adaptive search procedure for data optimization and dimension reduction, and for classification, we used a random forest. We tested our model on two benchmark datasets, AAMAZ and the KTH Multi-view Football datasets. Our HAR framework significantly outperforms the other state-of-the-art approaches and achieves a better recognition rate of 91% and 89.6% over the AAMAZ and KTH Multi-view Football datasets, respectively.

Keywords: Computer vision, human motion analysis, random forest, machine learning.

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Authors: Chalakorn Chitsaart, Suchada Rianmora, Mann Rattana-Areeyagon, Wutichai Namjaiprasert

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G-code is the main factor in computer numerical control (CNC) machine for controlling the toolpaths and generating the profile of the object’s features. For obtaining high surface accuracy of the surface finish, non-stop operation is required for CNC machine. Recently, to design a new product, the strategy that concerns about a change that has low impact on business and does not consume lot of resources has been introduced. Cost and time for designing minor changes can be reduced since the traditional geometric details of the existing models are applied. In order to support this strategy as the alternative channel for machining operation, this research proposes the automatic generating codes for CNC milling operation. Using this technique can assist the manufacturer to easily change the size and the geometric shape of the product during the operation where the time spent for setting up or processing the machine are reduced. The algorithm implemented on MATLAB platform is developed by analyzing and evaluating the geometric information of the part. Codes are created rapidly to control the operations of the machine. Comparing to the codes obtained from CAM, this developed algorithm can shortly generate and simulate the cutting profile of the part.

Keywords: Geometric shapes, Milling operation, Minor changes, CNC Machine, G-code, and Cutting parameters.

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Authors: Amna Batool

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Agile methodology is the current most popular technique in software development projects. Agile methods in software development bring optimistic impact on software performances, quality and customer satisfaction. There are some organizations and small-medium enterprises adopting agile into their local software development projects as well as in distributed software development projects. Adopting agile methods in local software development projects is valuable. However, agile global software deployment needs an attention. There are different key challenges in agile global software development that need to resolve and enhance the global software development cycles. The proposed systematic literature review investigates all key challenges of agile in global software development. Moreover, a quantitative methodology (an actual survey) targeted to present a real case scenario of these particular key challenges faced by one of the software houses that is BestWeb Malaysia. The outcomes of systematic literature and the results of quantitative methodology are compared with each other to evaluate if the key challenges pointed out in systematic review still exist. The proposed research and its exploratory results can assist small medium enterprises to avoid these challenges by adopting the best practices in their global software development projects. Moreover, it is helpful for novice researchers to get valuable information altogether.

Keywords: Agile software development, ASD challenges, agile global software development. challenges in agile global software development.

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Authors: Norazlina Khamis, Sufian Idris, Rodina Ahmad

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The most influential programming paradigm today is object oriented (OO) programming and it is widely used in education and industry. Recognizing the importance of equipping students with OO knowledge and skills, it is not surprising that most Computer Science degree programs offer OO-related courses. How do we assess whether the students have acquired the right objectoriented skills after they have completed their OO courses? What are object oriented skills? Currently none of the current assessment techniques would be able to provide this answer. Traditional forms of OO programming assessment provide a ways for assigning numerical scores to determine letter grades. But this rarely reveals information about how students actually understand OO concept. It appears reasonable that a better understanding of how to define and assess OO skills is needed by developing a criterion referenced model. It is even critical in the context of Malaysia where there is currently a growing concern over the level of competency of Malaysian IT graduates in object oriented programming. This paper discussed the approach used to develop the criterion-referenced assessment model. The model can serve as a guideline when conducting OO programming assessment as mentioned. The proposed model is derived by using Goal Questions Metrics methodology, which helps formulate the metrics of interest. It concluded with a few suggestions for further study.

Keywords: Object-oriented programming, programmingassessment, criterion-referenced assessment model, goal questionsmetrics.

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Authors: Tanvir Ahmed, Thanh N. Long, Phan T. Huong, Donald E. Stewart

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This paper presents views on condom use and the contexts of safe and unsafe sexual practices with different sexual partners and their relationships among Injecting Drug Users (IDUs) in Hai Phong, Vietnam. Fifteen IDUs participated and two local interviewers conducted qualitative semi-structured face-to-face interviews in September-October, 2012 in Vietnamese language. Data were analyzed thematically. Non-protective condom attitudes include negotiate or convince Female Sex Workers (FSW); not realizing risk, importance or necessity; partner doesn’t like, and having extra money/drug from clients. On the other hand, self-awareness, family-consciousness, suspicion of STI presence, fear of getting HIV, and client negotiation sometimes resulted in a safe-sex practice. A thematic diagram was developed to present the relationship (strong/weak) between condom attitude and sexual practice (safe/unsafe) by partner types. The experiences and views reflected in the qualitative information emphasize the heightened need for safe-sex education especially among young IDUs (male/female) highlighting sexual transmission risk.

Keywords: AIDS, HIV, injecting drug user, risk behaviors, Vietnam.

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Authors: Melodi Mbuyi Mata, Blessing Olamide Taiwo, Afolabi Ayodele David

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The purpose of this research is to create empirical models for assessing the profitability of granite aggregate production in Akure, Ondo state aggregate quarries. In addition, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model and multivariate predicting models for granite profitability were developed in the study. A formal survey questionnaire was used to collect data for the study. The data extracted from the case study mine for this study include granite marketing operations, royalty, production costs, and mine production information. The following methods were used to achieve the goal of this study: descriptive statistics, MATLAB 2017, and SPSS16.0 software in analyzing and modeling the data collected from granite traders in the study areas. The ANN and Multi Variant Regression models' prediction accuracy was compared using a coefficient of determination (R2), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), and mean square error (MSE). Due to the high prediction error, the model evaluation indices revealed that the ANN model was suitable for predicting generated profit in a typical quarry. More quarries in Nigeria's southwest region and other geopolitical zones should be considered to improve ANN prediction accuracy.

Keywords: National development, granite, profitability assessment, ANN models.

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Authors: C. Sathiyakumar, K. Duraiswamy

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In MANET, mobile nodes communicate with each other using the wireless channel where transmission takes place with significant interference. The wireless medium used in MANET is a shared resource used by all the nodes available in MANET. Packet reserving is one important resource management scheme which controls the allocation of bandwidth among multiple flows through node cooperation in MANET. This paper proposes packet reserving and clogging control via Routing Aware Packet Reserving (RAPR) framework in MANET. It mainly focuses the end-to-end routing condition with maximal throughput. RAPR is complimentary system where the packet reserving utilizes local routing information available in each node. Path setup in RAPR estimates the security level of the system, and symbolizes the end-to-end routing by controlling the clogging. RAPR reaches the packet to the destination with high probability ratio and minimal delay count. The standard performance measures such as network security level, communication overhead, end-to-end throughput, resource utilization efficiency and delay measure are considered in this work. The results reveals that the proposed packet reservation and clogging control via Routing Aware Packet Reserving (RAPR) framework performs well for the above said performance measures compare to the existing methods.

Keywords: Packet reserving, Clogging control, Packet reservation in MANET, RAPR.

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Authors: Ali. Marjani, M. Farsi, M. Rahimizadeh

Abstract:

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is one of the important grain legume crops in the world. However, drought stress is a serious threat to chickpea production, and development of drought-resistant varieties is a necessity. Field experiments were conducted to evaluate the response of 8 chickpea genotypes (MCC* 696, 537, 80, 283, 392, 361, 252, 397) and drought stress (S1: non-stress, S2: stress at vegetative growth stage, S3: stress at early bloom, S4: stress at early pod visible) at different growth stages. Experiment was arranged in split plot design with four replications. Difference among the drought stress time was found to be significant for investigated traits except biological yield. Differences were observed for genotypes in flowering time, pod information time, physiological maturation time and yield. Plant height reduced due to drought stress in vegetative growth stage. Stem dry weight reduced due to drought stress in pod visibly. Flowering time, maturation time, pod number, number of seed per plant and yield cause of drought stress in flowering was also reduced. The correlation between yield and number of seed per plant and biological yield was positive. The MCC283 and MCC696 were the high-tolerance genotypes. These results demonstrated that drought stress delayed phonological growth in chickpea and that flowering stage is sensitive.

Keywords: Chickpea, drought stress, growth stage, tolerance.

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Authors: Abhijit Mitra, C. Ardil

Abstract:

We investigate sonic cues for binaural sound localization within classrooms and present a structural model for the same. Two of the primary cues for localization, interaural time difference (ITD) and interaural level difference (ILD) created between the two ears by sounds from a particular point in space, are used. Although these cues do not lend any information about the elevation of a sound source, the torso, head, and outer ear carry out elevation dependent spectral filtering of sounds before they reach the inner ear. This effect is commonly captured in head related transfer function (HRTF) which aids in resolving the ambiguity from the ITDs and ILDs alone and helps localize sounds in free space. The proposed structural model of HRTF produces well controlled horizontal as well as vertical effects. The implemented HRTF is a signal processing model which tries to mimic the physical effects of the sounds interacting with different parts of the body. The effectiveness of the method is tested by synthesizing spatial audio, in MATLAB, for use in listening tests with human subjects and is found to yield satisfactory results in comparison with existing models.

Keywords: Auditory localization, Binaural sound, Head related impulse response, Head related transfer function, Interaural level difference, Interaural time difference, Localization cues.

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Authors: R. Vishnu Priya, A. Vadivel

Abstract:

Sequential pattern mining is a challenging task in data mining area with large applications. One among those applications is mining patterns from weblog. Recent times, weblog is highly dynamic and some of them may become absolute over time. In addition, users may frequently change the threshold value during the data mining process until acquiring required output or mining interesting rules. Some of the recently proposed algorithms for mining weblog, build the tree with two scans and always consume large time and space. In this paper, we build Revised PLWAP with Non-frequent Items (RePLNI-tree) with single scan for all items. While mining sequential patterns, the links related to the nonfrequent items are not considered. Hence, it is not required to delete or maintain the information of nodes while revising the tree for mining updated transactions. The algorithm supports both incremental and interactive mining. It is not required to re-compute the patterns each time, while weblog is updated or minimum support changed. The performance of the proposed tree is better, even the size of incremental database is more than 50% of existing one. For evaluation purpose, we have used the benchmark weblog dataset and found that the performance of proposed tree is encouraging compared to some of the recently proposed approaches.

Keywords: Sequential pattern mining, weblog, frequent and non-frequent items, incremental and interactive mining.

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Authors: Suresh Lokiah, Samarth Suresh, Yashaswini Vismaya, Sudha Jamthe

Abstract:

The emerging trend of integrating robots into elderly care, particularly for assisting patients with dementia, holds the potential to greatly transform the sector. Assisted living facilities, which house a significant number of elderly individuals and dementia patients, constantly strive to engage their residents in stimulating activities. However, due to staffing shortages, they often rely on volunteers to introduce new activities. Despite the availability of social interaction, the residents are in desperate need of additional support. Robots designed for elder care are categorized based on their design and functionality. These categories include Companion Robots, Telepresence Robots, Health Monitoring Robots, and Rehab Robots. However, the integration of such robots raises significant ethical concerns, notably regarding privacy, autonomy, and the risk of dehumanization. Privacy issues arise when robots need to continually monitor patient activities. There is also a risk of patients becoming overly dependent on these robots, potentially undermining patients’ autonomy. Furthermore, the replacement of human touch with robotic interaction can lead to the dehumanization of care. This positional paper delves into the ethical considerations of incorporating robotic assistance in eldercare. It proposes a series of guidelines and strategies to ensure the ethical deployment of these robots. These guidelines suggest involving patients in the design and development process of robots and emphasize the critical need for human oversight to respect the dignity and rights of elderly and dementia patients. The paper also recommends implementing robust privacy measures, including secure data transmission and data anonymization. In conclusion, this paper offers a thorough examination of the ethical implications of using robotic assistance in elder care. It provides a strategic roadmap to ensure this technology is utilized ethically, thereby maximizing its potential benefits and minimizing any potential harm.

Keywords: Robots for eldercare, ethics, human-robot interaction, assisted living.

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Authors: Chanon Aphirukmatakun, Natasha Dejdumrong

Abstract:

In image processing and visualization, comparing two bitmapped images needs to be compared from their pixels by matching pixel-by-pixel. Consequently, it takes a lot of computational time while the comparison of two vector-based images is significantly faster. Sometimes these raster graphics images can be approximately converted into the vector-based images by various techniques. After conversion, the problem of comparing two raster graphics images can be reduced to the problem of comparing vector graphics images. Hence, the problem of comparing pixel-by-pixel can be reduced to the problem of polynomial comparisons. In computer aided geometric design (CAGD), the vector graphics images are the composition of curves and surfaces. Curves are defined by a sequence of control points and their polynomials. In this paper, the control points will be considerably used to compare curves. The same curves after relocated or rotated are treated to be equivalent while two curves after different scaled are considered to be similar curves. This paper proposed an algorithm for comparing the polynomial curves by using the control points for equivalence and similarity. In addition, the geometric object-oriented database used to keep the curve information has also been defined in XML format for further used in curve comparisons.

Keywords: Bezier curve, Said-Ball curve, Wang-Ball curve, DP curve, CAGD, comparison, geometric object database.

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Authors: Nicholas Lambert, Seungyeon Ryu, Mehmet Mulla, Albert Kim

Abstract:

In this paper, an interactive in-car interface called HoloDash is presented. It is intended to provide information and infotainment in both autonomous vehicles and ‘connected cars’, vehicles equipped with Internet access via cellular services. The research focuses on the development of interactive avatars for this system and its gesture-based control system. This is a case study for the development of a possible human-centred means of presenting a connected or autonomous vehicle’s On-Board Diagnostics through a projected ‘holographic’ infotainment system. This system is termed a Holographic Human Vehicle Interface (HHIV), as it utilises a dashboard projection unit and gesture detection. The research also examines the suitability for gestures in an automotive environment, given that it might be used in both driver-controlled and driverless vehicles. Using Human Centred Design methods, questions were posed to test subjects and preferences discovered in terms of the gesture interface and the user experience for passengers within the vehicle. These affirm the benefits of this mode of visual communication for both connected and driverless cars.

Keywords: Holographic interface, human-computer interaction, user-centered design, Gesture.

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