Search results for: Knowledge Sharing

Authors: Joel S. Mtebe, Aron Kondoro, Mussa M. Kissaka, Elia Kibga

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Sub-Saharan Africa is described as the second fastest growing in mobile phone penetration in the world more than in the United States or the European Union. Mobile phones have been used to provide a lot of opportunities to improve people’s lives in the region such as in banking, marketing, entertainment, and paying for various bills such as water, TV, and electricity. However, the potential of mobile phones to enhance teaching and learning has not been explored. This study presents an experience of developing and delivering SMS based quiz questions used to assess mastery of subject content knowledge of science and mathematics secondary school teachers in Tanzania. The SMS quizzes were used as a follow up support mechanism to 500 teachers who participated in a project to upgrade subject content knowledge of teachers in science and mathematics subjects in Tanzania. Quizzes of 10-15 questions were sent to teachers each week for 8 weeks and the results were analyzed using SPSS. Results show that teachers who participated in chemistry and biology subjects have better performance compared to those who participated in mathematics and physics subjects. Teachers reported some challenges that led to poor performance, This research has several practical implications for those who are implementing or planning to use mobile phones in teaching and learning especially in rural secondary schools in sub-Saharan Africa.

Keywords: Mobile learning, e-learning, educational technologies, SMS, secondary education, assessment.

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Authors: Cholpassorn Sitthiwarongchai, Chutikarn Sriviboon

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The two primary objectives of this research were (1)  to examine the current knowledge and actual circumstance of  agricultural workers about mangosteen product processing; and (2) to  analyze and evaluate ways to develop capacity of mangosteen  product processing. The population of this study was 15,125 people  who work in the agricultural sector, in this context, mangosteen  production, in the eastern part of Thailand that included Chantaburi  Province, Rayong Province, Trad Province and Pracheenburi  Province. The sample size based on Yamane’s calculation with 95%  reliability was therefore 392 samples. Mixed method was employed  included questionnaire and focus group discussion with  Connoisseurship Model used in order to collect quantitative and  qualitative data. Key informants were used in the focus group  including agricultural business owners, academic people in agro food  processing, local academics, local community development staff,  OTOP subcommittee, and representatives of agro processing  industry professional organizations. The study found that the  majority of the respondents agreed with a high level (in five- rating  scale) towards most of variables of knowledge management in agro  food processing. The result of the current knowledge and actual  circumstance of agricultural human resource in an arena of  mangosteen product processing revealed that mostly, the respondents  agreed at a high level to establish 7 variables. The guideline to  developing the body of knowledge in order to enhance the capacity  of the agricultural workers in mangosteen product processing was  delivered in the focus group discussion. The discussion finally  contributed to an idea to produce manuals for mangosteen product  processing methods, with 4 products chosen: (1) mangosteen soap;  (2) mangosteen juice; (3) mangosteen toffee; and (4) mangosteen  preserves or jam.

Keywords: Capacity Enhancement, Agricultural Workers, Mangosteen Product Processing.

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Authors: Christina G. Siontorou

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This paper presents an integrated knowledge-based approach to multi-scale modeling of aquatic systems, with a view to enhancing predictive power and aiding environmental management and policy-making. The basic phases of this approach have been exemplified in the case of a bay in Saronicos Gulf (Attiki, Greece). The results showed a significant problem with rising phytoplankton blooms linked to excessive microbial growth, arisen mostly due to increased nitrogen inflows; therefore, the nitrification/denitrification processes of the benthic and water column sub-systems have provided the quality variables to be monitored for assessing environmental status. It is thereby demonstrated that the proposed approach facilitates modeling choices and implementation option decisions, while it provides substantial support for knowledge and experience capitalization in long-term water management.

Keywords: Aquatic ecosystem, integrated modeling, multi-scale modeling, ontological platform.

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Authors: J. McCullagh, T. Whitfort

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Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have been used successfully in many scientific, industrial and business domains as a method for extracting knowledge from vast amounts of data. However the use of ANN techniques in the sporting domain has been limited. In professional sport, data is stored on many aspects of teams, games, training and players. Sporting organisations have begun to realise that there is a wealth of untapped knowledge contained in the data and there is great interest in techniques to utilise this data. This study will use player data from the elite Australian Football League (AFL) competition to train and test ANNs with the aim to predict the onset of injuries. The results demonstrate that an accuracy of 82.9% was achieved by the ANNs’ predictions across all examples with 94.5% of all injuries correctly predicted. These initial findings suggest that ANNs may have the potential to assist sporting clubs in the prediction of injuries.

Keywords: Artificial Neural Networks, data, injuries, sport

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Authors: Mitko Veta, Tomislav Kartalov, Zoran Ivanovski

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Organization of video databases is becoming difficult task as the amount of video content increases. Video classification based on the content of videos can significantly increase the speed of tasks such as browsing and searching for a particular video in a database. In this paper, a content-based videos classification system for the classes indoor and outdoor is presented. The system is intended to be used on a mobile platform with modest resources. The algorithm makes use of the temporal redundancy in videos, which allows using an uncomplicated classification model while still achieving reasonable accuracy. The training and evaluation was done on a video database of 443 videos downloaded from a video sharing service. A total accuracy of 87.36% was achieved.

Keywords: Indoor/outdoor, video classification, imageclassification

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Authors: Yunbin Yang, Liangli He, Fengjun Wang

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The essentiality of maintenance assessment and maintenance optimization in design stage is analyzed, and the existent problems of conventional maintenance design method are illuminated. MDMVM (Maintenance Design Method based Virtual Maintenance) is illuminated, and the process of MDMVM established, and the MDMVM architecture is given out. The key techniques of MDMVM are analyzed, and include maintenance design based KBE (Knowledge Based Engineering) and virtual maintenance based physically attribute. According to physical property, physically based modeling, visual object movement control, the simulation of operation force and maintenance sequence planning method are emphatically illuminated. Maintenance design system based virtual maintenance is established in foundation of maintenance design method.

Keywords: Digital mock-up, virtual maintenance, knowledge engineering, maintenance sequence planning.

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Authors: H. Bouhamed, A. Rebai, T. Lecroq, M. Jaoua

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The objective of our work is to develop a new approach for discovering knowledge from a large mass of data, the result of applying this approach will be an expert system that will serve as diagnostic tools of a phenomenon related to a huge information system. We first recall the general problem of learning Bayesian network structure from data and suggest a solution for optimizing the complexity by using organizational and optimization methods of data. Afterward we proposed a new heuristic of learning a Multi-Entities Bayesian Networks structures. We have applied our approach to biological facts concerning hereditary complex illnesses where the literatures in biology identify the responsible variables for those diseases. Finally we conclude on the limits arched by this work.

Keywords: Data-organization, data-optimization, automatic knowledge discovery, Multi-Entities Bayesian networks, score merging.

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Authors: Zaiton Samdin, Kasimu Abdu Bakori, Hamimah Hassan

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This paper attempts to investigate the factors that influence hotel managers- attitudes towards sustainable tourism practices (STP) in Kuala Lumpur and the state of Selangor in Malaysia. The study distributes 104 questionnaires to hotels ranging from one star to five-star categories including budget hotels. Out of this figure, 60 copies of the questionnaires were returned and analyzed. The finding revealed that of all the seven factors investigated, only the variables measuring incentives and knowledge have significantly influenced sustainable tourism practices in the country. Therefore, government and other green bodies within the country should continue to provide hotels with incentives for sound technologies. Moreover, the government agencies should continue to educate hoteliers on the relevance of environmental protection for the successful implementation of sustainable tourism practices.

Keywords: Attitude, incentive, knowledge, sustainable tourism practices

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Authors: Anna Nedyalkova, KrassimirNedyalkov, TeodoraBakardjieva

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In the present paper, we-ll explore how social media tools provide an opportunity for new developments of the e-Learning in the context of managing personal knowledge. There will be a discussion how social media tools provide a possibility for helping knowledge workersand students to gather, organize and manage their personal information as a part of the e-learning process. At the centre of this social software driven approach to e-learning environments are the challenges of personalization and collaboration. We-ll share concepts of how organizations are using social media for e-Learning and believe that integration of these tools into traditional e-Learning is probably not a choice, but inevitability. Students- Survey of use of web technologies and social networking tools is presented. Newly developed framework for semantic blogging capable of organizing results relevant to user requirements is implemented at Varna Free University (VFU) to provide more effective navigation and search.

Keywords: Semantic blogging, social media tools, e-Learning, web 2.0, web 3.0.

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Authors: A. M. John-Otumu, M. M. Rahman, O. C. Nwokonkwo, M. C. Onuoha

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Online social media networks have long served as a primary arena for group conversations, gossip, text-based information sharing and distribution. The use of natural language processing techniques for text classification and unbiased decision making has not been far-fetched. Proper classification of these textual information in a given context has also been very difficult. As a result, a systematic review was conducted from previous literature on sentiment classification and AI-based techniques. The study was done in order to gain a better understanding of the process of designing and developing a robust and more accurate sentiment classifier that could correctly classify social media textual information of a given context between hate speech and inverted compliments with a high level of accuracy using the knowledge gain from the evaluation of different artificial intelligence techniques reviewed. The study evaluated over 250 articles from digital sources like ACM digital library, Google Scholar, and IEEE Xplore; and whittled down the number of research to 52 articles. Findings revealed that deep learning approaches such as Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformer (BERT), and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) outperformed various machine learning techniques in terms of performance accuracy. A large dataset is also required to develop a robust sentiment classifier. Results also revealed that data can be obtained from places like Twitter, movie reviews, Kaggle, Stanford Sentiment Treebank (SST), and SemEval Task4 based on the required domain. The hybrid deep learning techniques like CNN+LSTM, CNN+ Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), CNN+BERT outperformed single deep learning techniques and machine learning techniques. Python programming language outperformed Java programming language in terms of development simplicity and AI-based library functionalities. Finally, the study recommended the findings obtained for building robust sentiment classifier in the future.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Sentiment Analysis, Social Network, Text.

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Authors: Constansia Musvoto, Isaac Mapaure, Tendayi Gondo, Albertina Ndeinoma, Takaendesa Mujawo

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There is increasing pressure on, and decline of mopane woodlands due to increasing use and competition for mopane resources in Zimbabwe in Namibia. Community management strategies, based largely on local knowledge are evidently unable to cope. Research has generated potentially useful information for mopane woodland management, but this information has not been utilized. The work reported in this paper sought to add value to research work conducted on mopane woodlands by developing effective community-based mopane woodland management regimes that were based on both local and scientific knowledge in Zimbabwe and Namibia. The conditions under which research findings were likely to be adopted for mopane woodland management by communities were investigated. The study was conducted at two sites each in Matobo and Omusati Districts in Zimbabwe and Namibia respectively. The mopane woodland resources in the two study areas were assessed using scientific ecological methods. A range of participatory methods was used to collect information on use of mopane woodland resources by communities, institutional arrangements governing access to and use of these resources and to evaluate scientific knowledge for applicability in local management regimes. Coppicing, thinning and pollarding were the research generated management methods evaluated. Realities such as availability of woodland resources and social roles and responsibilities influenced preferences for woodland management interventions

Keywords: Woodland management, community, coppicing, thinning, pollarding

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Authors: Arnisa Lushaj, Arvjen Lushaj, Sunitha N. Seenappa, Georgia Butina-Watson, Bashkim Lushaj, Vera Malsia, Dodë Doçi, Mercedes Hunt, Ervin Buçpapaj

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Tourism and coastal lines are the business sectors since centuries especially in the European Nations and Albania is one such spots. However, in recent decades tourism is experienced as vulnerability of the surrounding ecological conditions of air, soil, water, land and the communities that are dependant and sharing the ecosystem among flora and fauna. Experts opine that apart from the maintenance of near-originality of ecological biodiversity the tourism rather known as ecotourism an indigenous socio-cultural maintenance of indigenous/traditional knowledge of the local people must be well cared in order to sustain on sustainable grounds. As a general tendency, growth of tourism has been affected by the deterioration in the economic conditions on one aspect and unsustainable ecological areas affected since human interventions earlier to this has negative impact on futuristic tourist spots. However, tourism in Albania as of now is 11% of GDP and coastal regions accounting to 2-4%. An amicable Mediterranean climate with 300 sunny days similar parameters of Greece and Spain throws up sustainable ecotourism in future decades provided public services namely, transportation, road safety, lodging, food availability, recreational regiments, banking accessibility are as per the World Tourism Organizations- protocols. Thus as of Albanian situation, classification of ecotourism activities to safe-guard the localities with its maintenance of ecological land, water and climate has become a paramount importance with a wanting and satisfactory options through harnessing human energy for profit and fitness of ecological flora and fauna. A check on anthropogenic wastes and their safer utilizations inclusive of agricultural and industrial operations in line with Lalzi Bay Coastal Line are of utmost importance for the reason that the Adriatic Sea Coast is the one long stretch of Albanian Lifeline. The present work is based on the methodology of the sustainable management of the same issue.

Keywords: Albania, ecotourism, Lalzi Bay, sustainability.

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Authors: Ali Hajiha, Farhad Ghaffari, Nooshin Gholamali Tehrani

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This study aims at investigating the empirical relationships between risk preference, internet preference, and internet knowledge which are known as user characteristics, in addition to perceived risk of the customers on the internet purchase intention. In order to test the relationships between the variables of model 174, a questionnaire was collected from the students with previous online experience. For the purpose of data analysis, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation model (SEM) was used. Test results show that the perceived risk affects the internet purchase intention, and increase or decrease of perceived risk influences the purchase intention when the customer does the internet shopping. Other factors such as internet preference, knowledge of the internet, and risk preference affect the internet purchase intention.

Keywords: Perceived risk, Internet preference, Internetknowledge, Risk preference, Internet purchase intention

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Authors: Gaofetoge Lenetha, Malerato Moloi, Ntsoaki Malebo

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Microbial contamination of ready-to-eat foods and beverages sold by street vendors has become an important public health issue. In developing countries including South Africa, health risks related to such kinds of foods are thought to be common. Thus, this study assessed knowledge, attitude and practices of street food vendors. Street vendors in the city of Mangaung Metro were investigated in order to assess their knowledge, attitudes and handling practices. A semi-structured questionnaire and checklist were used in interviews to determine the status of the vending sites and associa. ted food-handling practices. Data was collected by means of a face-to-face interview. The majority of respondents were black females. Hundred percent (100%) of the participants did not have any food safety training. However, street vendors showed a positive attitude towards food safety. Despite the positive attitude, vendors showed some non-compliance when it comes to handling food. During the survey, it was also observed that the vending stalls lack basic infrastructures like toilets and potable water that is currently a major problem. This study indicates a need for improvements in the environmental conditions at these sites to prevent foodborne diseases. Moreover, based on the results observed food safety and food hygiene training or workshops for street vendors are highly recommended.

Keywords: Food hygiene, foodborne illnesses, food safety, street foods.

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Authors: Nareenad Panbun

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The objective is to study the knowledge utilization from the participants of the announcer training program by National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC). This study is a quantitative research based on surveys and self-answering questionnaires. The population of this study is 100 participants randomly chosen by non-probability sampling method. The results have shown that most of the participants were satisfied with the topics of general knowledge about the broadcasting and television business for 37 people representing 37%, followed by the topics of broadcasting techniques. The legal issues, consumer rights, television business ethics, and credibility of the media are, in addition to the media's role and responsibilities in society, the use of language for successful communication. Therefore, the communication language skills are the most important for all of the trainees and will also build up the image of the broadcasting center.

Keywords: Announcer training program, participant, requirements announced, theory of utilization.

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Authors: Nagaraj V. Dharwadkar, B.B.Amberker

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In this paper, a new secure watermarking scheme for color image is proposed. It splits the watermark into two shares using (2, 2)- threshold Visual Cryptography Scheme (V CS) with Adaptive Order Dithering technique and embeds one share into high textured subband of Luminance channel of the color image. The other share is used as the key and is available only with the super-user or the author of the image. In this scheme only the super-user can reveal the original watermark. The proposed scheme is dynamic in the sense that to maintain the perceptual similarity between the original and the watermarked image the selected subband coefficients are modified by varying the watermark scaling factor. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. Further, the proposed scheme is able to resist all common attacks even with strong amplitude.

Keywords: VCS, Dithering, HVS, DWT.

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Authors: Heide Lukosch, Roy Van Bussel, Sebastiaan Meijer

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Serious games have proven to be a useful instrument to engage learners and increase motivation. Nevertheless, a broadly accepted, practical instructional design approach to serious games does not exist. In this paper, we introduce the use of an instructional design model that has not been applied to serious games yet, and has some advantages compared to other design approaches. We present the case of mechanics mechatronics education to illustrate the close match with timing and role of knowledge and information that the instructional design model prescribes and how this has been translated to a rigidly structured game design. The structured approach answers the learning needs of applicable knowledge within the target group. It combines advantages of simulations with strengths of entertainment games to foster learner-s motivation in the best possible way. A prototype of the game will be evaluated along a well-respected evaluation method within an advanced test setting including test and control group.

Keywords: Serious Gaming, Simulation, Complex Learning.

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Authors: Nevine M. Labib, Michael N. Malek

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Data Mining aims at discovering knowledge out of data and presenting it in a form that is easily comprehensible to humans. One of the useful applications in Egypt is the Cancer management, especially the management of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia or ALL, which is the most common type of cancer in children. This paper discusses the process of designing a prototype that can help in the management of childhood ALL, which has a great significance in the health care field. Besides, it has a social impact on decreasing the rate of infection in children in Egypt. It also provides valubale information about the distribution and segmentation of ALL in Egypt, which may be linked to the possible risk factors. Undirected Knowledge Discovery is used since, in the case of this research project, there is no target field as the data provided is mainly subjective. This is done in order to quantify the subjective variables. Therefore, the computer will be asked to identify significant patterns in the provided medical data about ALL. This may be achieved through collecting the data necessary for the system, determimng the data mining technique to be used for the system, and choosing the most suitable implementation tool for the domain. The research makes use of a data mining tool, Clementine, so as to apply Decision Trees technique. We feed it with data extracted from real-life cases taken from specialized Cancer Institutes. Relevant medical cases details such as patient medical history and diagnosis are analyzed, classified, and clustered in order to improve the disease management.

Keywords: Data Mining, Decision Trees, Knowledge Discovery, Leukemia.

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Authors: Mohammad K. Abedin, Mohammad Shahjahan, Zeenat Sultana, Tawfique Jahan, Jesmin Akter

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To strengthen social and behavior change communication (SBCC) capacity of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) of the Government of Bangladesh, BCCP/BKMI developed two eLearning courses providing opportunities for professional development of SBCC Program Managers who have no access to training or refreshers training. The two eLearning courses – Message and Material Development (MMD) and Monitoring and Evaluation (MandE) of SBCC programs – went online in September 2015, where all users could register their participation so results could be monitored. Methodology: To assess the uses of these courses a randomly selected sample was collected to run a pre and post-test analyses and a phone survey were conducted. Systematic random sampling was used to select a sample of 75 MandE and 25 MMD course participants from a sampling frame of 179 and 51 respectively. Results: As of September 2016, more than 179 learners have completed the MandE course, and 49 learners have completed the MMD course. The users of these courses are program managers, university faculty members, and students. Encouraging results were revealed from the analysis of pre and post-test scores and a phone survey three months after course completion. Test scores suggested a substantial increase in knowledge. The pre-test scores findings suggested that about 19% learners scored high on the MandE. The post-test scores finding indicated a high score (92%) of the sample across 4 modules of MandE. For MMD course in pre-test scoring, 30% of the learners scored high, and 100% scored high at the post-test. It was found that all the learners in the phone survey have discussed the courses. Most of the sharing occurred with colleagues and friends, usually through face to face (70%) interaction. The learners reported that they did recommend the two courses to concerned people. About 67% MandE and 76% MMD learners stated that the concepts that they had to learn during the course were put into practice in their work settings. The respondents for both MandE and MMD courses have provided a valuable set of suggestions that would further strengthen the courses. Conclusions: The study showed that the initiative offered ample opportunities to build capacity in various ways in which the eLearning courses were used. It also highlighted the importance of scaling up these efforts to further strengthen the outcomes.

Keywords: E-learning course, message and material development, monitoring and evaluation, social and behavior change communication.

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Authors: Sanghoon Park, Ki-Jin Kim, Kwang-Ho Ahn

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This paper discusses the undesirable charge transfer through the parasitic capacitances of the input transistors in a multi-inputs voltage sense amplifier. Its intrinsic rail-to-rail voltage transitions at the output nodes inevitably disturb the input sides through the capacitive coupling between the outputs and inputs. Then, it can possible degrade the stabilities of the reference voltage levels. Moreover, it becomes more serious in multi-channel systems by altering them for other channels, and so degrades the linearity of the overall systems. In order to alleviate the internal node voltage transition, the internal node stabilization techniques are proposed. It achieves 45% and 40% improvements for node stabilization and input referred disturbance, respectively.

Keywords: Voltage sense amplifier, multi-inputs, voltage transition, node stabilization, and biasing circuits.

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Authors: Md. Emaj Uddin

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Family structure that is culturally constructed in every society is the basic unit of social structure. Purpose of the study was to compare family structure, including marriage, residence, family size, type, role sharing, authority, and communication patterns between Muslim and Santal communities in rural Bangladesh. For this we assumed that family structure with the elements was significantly different between the two communities in rural Bangladesh. In so doing, 288 active couples (145 for Muslim and 143 for Santal) selected by cluster random sampling were intensively interviewed with a semi-structured questionnaire method. The results of Pearson Chi-Squire Test reveal that there were significant differences in the family structure followed by the two communities in the study area. Further cross-cultural study should be done on why family structure varies between the communities in Bangladesh.

Keywords: Bangladesh, Cross-Cultural Comparison, Family Structure, Muslim, Santal.

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Authors: Mohammad J. Almalkawi

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A broadband wire monopole antenna loaded by inhomogeneous stack of annular dielectric ring resonators (DRRs) is proposed. The proposed antenna exhibits a broad impedance bandwidth from 3 to 30 GHz. This is achieved by adding an external step matching network at the antenna feed point. The matching network is comprised of three annular DRRs possessing different permittivity values and sharing the same axial over a finite ground plane. The antenna performance is characterized using full-wave EM simulation. Compared to previous-reported wire antennas with improved bandwidth achieved by DRRs, the proposed topology provides relatively compact realization and superior broadband performance.

Keywords: Broadband, dielectric ring resonator, wire monopole antenna.

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Authors: Janet Holland

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Eye tracking is a great way to triangulate multiple data sources for deeper, more complete knowledge of how instructional materials are really being used and emotional connections made. Using sensor based biometrics provides a detailed local analysis in real time expanding our ability to collect science based data for a more comprehensive level of understanding, not previously possible, for teaching and learning. The knowledge gained will be used to make future improvements to instructional materials, tools, and interactions. The literature has been examined and a preliminary pilot test was implemented to develop a methodology for research in Instructional Design and Technology. Eye tracking now offers the addition of objective metrics obtained from eye tracking and other biometric data collection with analysis for a fresh perspective.

Keywords: Area of interest, eye tracking, biometrics, fixation, fixation count, fixation sequence, fixation time, gaze points, heat map, saccades, time to first fixation.

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Authors: A. Bouabid, B. Bielenberg, S. Ainane, N. Pasha

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In this paper, a team of faculty members of the Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi, UAE representing six different courses across General Engineering (ENGR), Communication (COMM), and Design (STPS) worked together to establish a clear developmental progression of learning outcomes and performance indicators for targeted knowledge, areas of competency, and skills for the first three semesters of the Bachelor of Sciences in Engineering curriculum. The sequences of courses studied in this project were ENGR/COMM, COMM/STPS, and ENGR/STPS. For each course’s nine areas of knowledge, competency, and skills, the research team reviewed the existing learning outcomes and related performance indicators with a focus on identifying linkages across disciplines as well as within the courses of a discipline. The team reviewed existing performance indicators for developmental progression from semester to semester for same discipline related courses (vertical alignment) and for different discipline courses within the same semester (horizontal alignment). The results of this work have led to recommendations for modifications of the initial indicators when incoherence was identified, and/or for new indicators based on best practices (identified through literature searches) when gaps were identified. It also led to recommendations for modifications of the level of emphasis within each course to ensure developmental progression. The exercise has led to a revised Sequence Performance Indicator Mapping for the knowledge, skills, and competencies across the six core courses.

Keywords: Curriculum alignment, horizontal and vertical progression, performance indicators, skill level.

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Authors: H. Zare Amadabadi, S. Soltani Gerdefaramarzi

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In recent years, strategic alliances have taken increasing importance as a means to control competitive forces and to enter into new markets. Joint ventures are one of the most frequently used contractual forms in strategic alliances. There are various motivations for cooperation between two or more firms e.g., accessing to technical know-how, accessing to financial resources and managing risks. The firms must know about these motivations to encourage for establishing joint venture. So, it is important for managers to understand about these motives. On the other hand, the cooperation section is one of the most effective parts in each country. In this way, our study identifies goals of joint venture between cooperative manufacturing firms, and prioritizes those using TOPSIS1. The results show that the most important of joint venture goals are: accessing to managerial know-how, sharing total capital investment.

Keywords: Cooperative, Joint Venture, TOPSIS

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Authors: Zoja Raud, Valery Vodovozov

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The paper focuses on the distance laboratory organisation for training the electrical engineering staff and students in the fields of electrical drive and power electronics. To support online knowledge acquisition and professional enhancement, new challenges in remote education based on an active learning approach with self-assessment have been emerged by the authors. Following the literature review and explanation of the improved assessment methodology, the concept and technological basis of the labs arrangement are presented. To decrease the gap between the distance study of the up-to-date equipment and other educational activities in electrical engineering, the improvements in the following-up the learners’ progress and feedback composition are introduced. An authoring methodology that helps to personalise knowledge acquisition and enlarge Web-based possibilities is described. Educational management based on self-assessment is discussed.

Keywords: Advanced training, active learning, distance learning, electrical engineering, remote laboratory, self-assessment.

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Authors: Anurag Saxena, Alkesh Agrawal, Dinesh Kumar

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The next generation mobile communication systems i.e. fourth generation (4G) was developed to accommodate the quality of service and required data rate. This project focuses on multiple access technique proposed in 4G communication systems. It is attempted to demonstrate the IDMA (Interleave Division Multiple Access) technology. The basic principle of IDMA is that interleaver is different for each user whereas CDMA employs different signatures. IDMA inherits many advantages of CDMA such as robust against fading, easy cell planning; dynamic channel sharing and IDMA increase the spectral efficiency and reduce the receiver complexity. In this, performance of IDMA is analyzed using QC-LDPC coding scheme further it is compared with LDPC coding and at last BER is calculated and plotted in MATLAB.

Keywords: 4G, QC-LDPC, CDMA, IDMA.

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Authors: Pavel Y. Tabakov, Kevin Duffy

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The present study presents a new approach to automatic data clustering and classification problems in large and complex databases and, at the same time, derives specific types of explicit rules describing each cluster. The method works well in both sparse and dense multidimensional data spaces. The members of the data space can be of the same nature or represent different classes. A number of N-dimensional ellipsoids are used for enclosing the data clouds. Due to the geometry of an ellipsoid and its free rotation in space the detection of clusters becomes very efficient. The method is based on genetic algorithms that are used for the optimization of location, orientation and geometric characteristics of the hyper-ellipsoids. The proposed approach can serve as a basis for the development of general knowledge systems for discovering hidden knowledge and unexpected patterns and rules in various large databases.

Keywords: Classification, clustering, data minig, genetic algorithms.

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Authors: Osama Elsarrar, Marjorie Darrah, Richard Devin

Abstract:

This paper discusses the idea of capturing an expert’s knowledge in the form of human understandable rules and then inserting these rules into a dynamic cell structure (DCS) neural network. The DCS is a form of self-organizing map that can be used for many purposes, including classification and prediction. This particular neural network is considered to be a topology preserving network that starts with no pre-structure, but assumes a structure once trained. The DCS has been used in mission and safety-critical applications, including adaptive flight control and health-monitoring in aerial vehicles. The approach is to insert expert knowledge into the DCS before training. Rules are translated into a pre-structure and then training data are presented. This idea has been demonstrated using the well-known Iris data set and it has been shown that inserting the pre-structure results in better accuracy with the same training.

Keywords: Neural network, rule extraction, rule insertion, self-organizing map.

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Authors: Reihaneh Montazeri Shatouri, Rosmini Omar, Wan Khairuzzaman Wan Ismail

Abstract:

This study aims at investigating factors in research and development (R&D) growth and exploring the role of R&D management in enhancing social innovation and productivity improvement in Iran-s industrial sector. It basically explores the common types of R&D activities and the industries which benefited the most from active R&D units in Iran. The researchers generated qualitative analyses obtained from primary and secondary data. The primary data have been retrieved through interviews with five key players (Managing Director, Internal Manager, General Manager, Executive Manager, and Project Manager) in the industrial sector. The secondary data acquired from an investigation on Mazandaran, a province of northern Iran. The findings highlight Iran-s focuses of R & D on cost reduction and upgrading productivity. Industries that have benefited the most from active R&D units are metallic, machinery and equipment design, and automotive. We rank order the primary effects of R&D on productivity improvement as follows, industry improvement, economic growth, using professional human resources, generating productivity and creativity culture, creating a competitive and innovative environment, and increasing people-s knowledge. Generally, low budget dedication and insufficient supply of highly skilled scientists and engineers are two important obstacles for R&D in Iran. Whereas, R&D has resulted in improvement in Iranian society, transfer of contemporary knowledge into the international market is still lacking.

Keywords: Productivity, R&D, Transfer of Knowledge

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