Search results for: Tagging Context
603 Numerical Analysis of Rapid Drawdown in Dams Based on Brazilian Standards
Authors: Renato Santos Paulinelli Raposo, Vinicius Resende Domingues, Manoel Porfirio Cordao Neto
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Rapid drawdown is one of the cases referred to ground stability study in dam projects. Due to the complexity generated by the combination of loads and the difficulty in determining the parameters, analyses of rapid drawdown are usually performed considering the immediate reduction of water level upstream. The proposal of a simulation, considering the gradual reduction in water level upstream, requires knowledge of parameters about consolidation and those related to unsaturated soil. In this context, the purpose of this study is to understand the methodology of collection and analysis of parameters to simulate a rapid drawdown in dams. Using a numerical tool, the study is complemented with a hypothetical case study that can assist the practical use of data compiled. The referenced dam presents homogeneous section composed of clay soil, a height of 70 meters, a width of 12 meters, and upstream slope with inclination 1V:3H.
Keywords: Dam, GeoStudio, rapid drawdown, stability analysis.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1191602 Operative Public Space for Rural Brazil Strategies for Starting Up Economic, Social and Environmental Development of Rural Communities in Emerging Countries: The Goiabeira Case
Authors: Alessandra Battisti, Silvia Cimini
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This article stands in the context of rural communities in Brazil, where, like many others emerging countries, the overwhelming increasing markets and the overcrowded cities are leaving behind informal settlements based on obsolete agricultural economies and techniques. The pilot project for the community of Goiabeira reflects the attempt to imagine a development model that privileges the actual improvement of living conditions, the education and training, the social inclusion and participation of the dwellers of rural communities. Through the inclusion of operative public space, the aim is for them to become self-sustaining, encouraging the use of local resources for appropriate architectural, ecological and energy technologies and devices, that are efficient, affordable and foster community participation, in the respect of the surrounding environment.
Keywords: Economical development, environment conservation, local resources, participation and social inclusion.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2159601 Academic Digital Library's Evaluation Criteria: User-Centered Approach
Authors: Razilan A. Kadir, Wan A. K. W. Dollah, Fatimah A. Saaid, S. Diljit
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Academic digital libraries emerged as a result of advances in computing and information systems technologies, and had been introduced in universities and to public. As results, moving in parallel with current technology in learning and researching environment indeed offers myriad of advantages especially to students and academicians, as well as researchers. This is due to dramatic changes in learning environment through the use of digital library system which giving spectacular impact on these societies- way of performing their study/research. This paper presents a survey of current criteria for evaluating academic digital libraries- performance. The goal is to discuss criteria being applied so far for academic digital libraries evaluation in the context of user-centered design. Although this paper does not comprehensively take into account all previous researches in evaluating academic digital libraries but at least it can be a guide in understanding the evaluation criteria being widely applied.
Keywords: Academic digital libraries, evaluation criteria, performance, user-centered.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2371600 The Aspect of the Human Bias in Decision Making within Quality Management Systems & LEAN Theory
Authors: Adriana Ávila Zúñiga Nordfjeld
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This paper provides a literature review to document the state of the art with respect to handling “human bias” in decision making within the established quality management systems (QMS) and LEAN theory, in the context of shipbuilding. Previous research shows that in shipbuilding there is a huge deviation from the planned man-hours under the project management to the actual man-hours used because of errors in planning and reworks caused by human bias in the information flows, among others. This reduces the efficiency, and increases operational costs. Thus, the research question is how QMS and LEAN handle biases. The findings show the gap in studying the integration of methods to handle human bias in decision making into QMS and lean, not only within shipbuilding, but in general. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed for researchers and practitioners in the areas of decision making, QMS and LEAN, and future research is suggested.
Keywords: Human bias, decision making, LEAN Shipbuilding, quality management systems.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2965599 An Approach to Manage and Evaluate Asset Performance
Authors: Mohammed S. ALSaidi, John P. Mo
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Modern engineering assets are complex and very high in value. They are expected to function for years to come, with ability to handle the change in technology and ageing modification. The aging of an engineering asset and continues increase of vendors and contractors numbers forces the asset operation management (or Owner) to design an asset system which can capture these changes. Furthermore, an accurate performance measurement and risk evaluation processes are highly needed. Therefore, this paper explores the nature of the asset management system performance evaluation for an engineering asset based on the System Support Engineering (SSE) principles. The research work explores the asset support system from a range of perspectives, interviewing managers from across a refinery organization. The factors contributing to complexity of an asset management system are described in context which clusters them into several key areas. It is proposed that SSE framework may then be used as a tool for analysis and management of asset. The paper will conclude with discussion of potential application of the framework and opportunities for future research.
Keywords: Asset management, performance, evaluation.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2358598 Virtual Environments...Vehicle for Pedagogical Advancement
Authors: Elizabeth M. Hodge, Sharon K. Collins, Eric Kisling
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Virtual environments are a hot topic in academia and more importantly in courses offered via distance education. Today-s gaming generation view virtual worlds as strong social and interactive mediums for communicating and socializing. And while institutions of higher education are challenged with increasing enrollment while balancing budget cuts, offering effective courses via distance education become a valid option. Educators can utilize virtual worlds to offer students an enhanced learning environment which has the power to alleviate feelings of isolation through the promotion of communication, interaction, collaboration, teamwork, feedback, engagement and constructivists learning activities. This paper focuses on the use of virtual environments to facilitate interaction in distance education courses so as to produce positive learning outcomes for students. Furthermore, the instructional strategies were reviewed and discussed for use in virtual worlds to enhance learning within a social context.
Keywords: Virtual Environments, Second Life, Instructional Strategies and Technology
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1555597 New Security Approach of Confidential Resources in Hybrid Clouds
Authors: Haythem Yahyaoui, Samir Moalla, Mounir Bouden, Skander Ghorbel
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Nowadays, cloud environments are becoming a need for companies, this new technology gives the opportunities to access to the data anywhere and anytime. It also provides an optimized and secured access to the resources and gives more security for the data which is stored in the platform. However, some companies do not trust Cloud providers, they think that providers can access and modify some confidential data such as bank accounts. Many works have been done in this context, they conclude that encryption methods realized by providers ensure the confidentiality, but, they forgot that Cloud providers can decrypt the confidential resources. The best solution here is to apply some operations on the data before sending them to the provider Cloud in the objective to make them unreadable. The principal idea is to allow user how it can protect his data with his own methods. In this paper, we are going to demonstrate our approach and prove that is more efficient in term of execution time than some existing methods. This work aims at enhancing the quality of service of providers and ensuring the trust of the customers.
Keywords: Confidentiality, cryptography, security issues, trust issues.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1472596 Gabriel Mtsire’s "The Golden Spring" and Its Primary Sources, Textual and Content Changes Based on Cultural Development in the Context of the 4th-20th Centuries
Authors: Georgi Kalandadze
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For studying the development of world civilizations, textual sources that have undergone textological and worldview changes are of great importance. The paper will discuss the collection of the XVIII century "The Golden Spring", compiled by Gabriel Mtsire, which includes texts of John Chrysostom. The teachings of John Chrysostom of the 4th century were translated into Georgian in the 10th-11th centuries by Euthymes of Athos. These texts correspond to the requirements of the Georgian society of the 10th-11th centuries. In the 18th century, Gabriel Mtsire collected and edited these texts to make them more understandable to his modern readers. In the 20th century, these texts were again adapted. Thus, the present study provides an opportunity to evaluate and outline the linguistic and content transformation process of the same work over 16 centuries.
Keywords: Gabriel Mtsire, John Chrysostom, Euthymius the Athonite, The Golden Spring.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 21595 Harnessing the Opportunities of E-Learning and Education in Promoting Literacy in Nigeria
Authors: Victor Oluwaseyi Olowonisi
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The paper aimed at presenting an overview on the concept of e-learning as it relates to higher education and how it provides opportunities for students, instructors and the government in developing the educational sector. It also touched on the benefits and challenges attached to e-learning as a new medium of reaching more students especially in the Nigerian context. The opportunities attributed to e-learning in the paper includes breaking boundaries barriers, reaching a larger number of students, provision of jobs for ICT experts, etc. In contrary, poor power supply, cost of implementation, poor computer literacy, technophobia (fear of technology), computer crime and system failure were some of the challenges of e-learning discussed in the paper. The paper proffered that the government can help the people gain more from e-learning through its financing. Also, it was stated that instructors/lecturers and students need to undergo training on computer application in order for e-learning to be more effective in developing higher education in Nigeria.
Keywords: E-Learning, education, higher education, increasing literacy.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1203594 Influence of Noise on the Inference of Dynamic Bayesian Networks from Short Time Series
Authors: Frank Emmert Streib, Matthias Dehmer, Gökhan H. Bakır, Max Mühlhauser
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In this paper we investigate the influence of external noise on the inference of network structures. The purpose of our simulations is to gain insights in the experimental design of microarray experiments to infer, e.g., transcription regulatory networks from microarray experiments. Here external noise means, that the dynamics of the system under investigation, e.g., temporal changes of mRNA concentration, is affected by measurement errors. Additionally to external noise another problem occurs in the context of microarray experiments. Practically, it is not possible to monitor the mRNA concentration over an arbitrary long time period as demanded by the statistical methods used to learn the underlying network structure. For this reason, we use only short time series to make our simulations more biologically plausible.Keywords: Dynamic Bayesian networks, structure learning, gene networks, Markov chain Monte Carlo, microarray data.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1611593 Texture Characterization Based on a Chandrasekhar Fast Adaptive Filter
Authors: Mounir Sayadi, Farhat Fnaiech
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In the framework of adaptive parametric modelling of images, we propose in this paper a new technique based on the Chandrasekhar fast adaptive filter for texture characterization. An Auto-Regressive (AR) linear model of texture is obtained by scanning the image row by row and modelling this data with an adaptive Chandrasekhar linear filter. The characterization efficiency of the obtained model is compared with the model adapted with the Least Mean Square (LMS) 2-D adaptive algorithm and with the cooccurrence method features. The comparison criteria is based on the computation of a characterization degree using the ratio of "betweenclass" variances with respect to "within-class" variances of the estimated coefficients. Extensive experiments show that the coefficients estimated by the use of Chandrasekhar adaptive filter give better results in texture discrimination than those estimated by other algorithms, even in a noisy context.
Keywords: Texture analysis, statistical features, adaptive filters, Chandrasekhar algorithm.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1615592 Combining Mobile Intelligence with Formation Mechanism for Group Commerce
Authors: Lien Fa Lin, Yung Ming Li, Hsin Chen Hsieh
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The rise of smartphones brings new concept So-Lo-Mo (social-local-mobile) in mobile commerce area in recent years. However, current So-Lo-Mo services only focus on individual users but not a group of users, and the development of group commerce is not enough to satisfy the demand of real-time group buying and less to think about the social relationship between customers. In this research, we integrate mobile intelligence with group commerce and consider customers' preference, real-time context, and social influence as components in the mechanism. With the support of this mechanism, customers are able to gather near customers with the same potential purchase willingness through mobile devices when he/she wants to purchase products or services to have a real-time group-buying. By matching the demand and supply of mobile group-buying market, this research improves the business value of mobile commerce and group commerce further.
Keywords: Group formation, group commerce, mobile commerce, So-Lo-Mo, social influence.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1429591 Teacher Education Reform and InternationalGlobalization Hegemony: Issues and Challengesin Turkish Teacher Education
Authors: Ismail Guven
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Educational reforms are focused point of different nations. New reform movements generally claim that something is wrong with the current state of affairs, and that the system is deficient in its goals, its accomplishments and it is accused not being adopted into global changes all over the world. It is the same for Turkish education system. It is considered those recent reforms of teacher education in Turkey and the extent to which they reflect a response to global economic pressures. The paper challenges the view that such imposes are inevitable determinants of educational policy and argues that any country will need to develop its own national approach to modernizing teacher education in light of the global context and its particular circumstances. It draws on the idea of reflexive modernization developed by educators and discusses its implications for teacher education policy. The paper deals with four themes teacher education in last decade policy in Turkey; the shift away from the educational disciplines, the shift towards school-based approaches, and the emergence of more centralized forms of accountability of teacher competence.Keywords: Teacher education, globalization, Turkey.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2379590 The Code-Mixing of Japanese, English and Thai in Line Chat
Authors: Premvadee Na Nakornpanom
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Code- mixing in spontaneous speech has been widely discussed, but not in virtual situations; especially in context of the third language learning students. Thus, this study is an attempt to explore the linguistic characteristics of the mixing of Japanese, English and Thai in a mobile Line chat room by students with their background of English as L2, Japanese as L3 and Thai as mother tongue. The result found that insertion of Thai content words is a very common linguistic phenomenon embedded with the other two languages in the sentences. As chatting is to be ‘relational’ or ‘interactional’, it affected the style of lexical choices to be speech-like, more personal and emotionally-related. A personal pronoun in Japanese is often mixed into the sentences. The Japanese sentence-final question particle か “ka” was added to the end of the sentence based on Thai grammar rules. Some unique characteristics were created while chatting.
Keywords: Code-mixing, Japanese, English, Thai, Line chat.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3448589 An Approach to Concerns and Aspects Mining for Web Applications
Authors: Carlo Bellettini, Alessandro Marchetto, Andrea Trentini
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Web applications have become very complex and crucial, especially when combined with areas such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and BPR (Business Process Reengineering), the scientific community has focused attention to Web applications design, development, analysis, and testing, by studying and proposing methodologies and tools. This paper proposes an approach to automatic multi-dimensional concern mining for Web Applications, based on concepts analysis, impact analysis, and token-based concern identification. This approach lets the user to analyse and traverse Web software relevant to a particular concern (concept, goal, purpose, etc.) via multi-dimensional separation of concerns, to document, understand and test Web applications. This technique was developed in the context of WAAT (Web Applications Analysis and Testing) project. A semi-automatic tool to support this technique is currently under development.Keywords: Aspect Mining, Concepts Analysis, Concerns Mining, Multi-Dimensional Separation of Concerns, Impact Analysis.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1513588 Factors Adopting E-Travel Website: The Case of Indonesia
Authors: Vera Pujani, Alfitman, Refdinal Nazir
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E-travel is travel agency-s companies employing internet and website as e-commerce context. This study presents numerous initial key factors of electronic travel model based on small travel agencies perspectives. Browsing previous studies related to website travel activities are conducted. Five small travel agencies in Indonesia has been deeply interviewed in case studies. The finding of this research is identifying numerous characteristics and dimension factors and travel website operations including ownermanager roles, business experiences, characteristically business, and technological aspects. This study is the preliminary research related to travel website adoption in Indonesia. The further study would be conducted in questionnaires of the quantitative research in Indonesia contexts as a developing country.
Keywords: Tourism, travel agency, e-commerce, website, developing country, small business, case study.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3038587 Verification and Validation for Java Classes using Design by Contract. The Modular External Approach
Authors: Dario Ramirez de Leon, Oscar Chavez Bosquez, Julian J. Francisco Leon
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Since the conception of JML, many tools, applications and implementations have been done. In this context, the users or developers who want to use JML seem surounded by many of these tools, applications and so on. Looking for a common infrastructure and an independent language to provide a bridge between these tools and JML, we developed an approach to embedded contracts in XML for Java: XJML. This approach offer us the ability to separate preconditions, posconditions and class invariants using JML and XML, so we made a front-end which can process Runtime Assertion Checking, Extended Static Checking and Full Static Program Verification. Besides, the capabilities for this front-end can be extended and easily implemented thanks to XML. We believe that XJML is an easy way to start the building of a Graphic User Interface delivering in this way a friendly and IDE independency to developers community wich want to work with JML.
Keywords: Model checking, verification and validation, JML, XML, java, runtime assertion checking, extended static checking, full static program verification.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1575586 Student and Group Activity Level Assessment in the ELARS Recommender System
Authors: Martina Holenko Dlab, Natasa Hoic-Bozic
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This paper presents an original approach to student and group activity level assessment that relies on certainty factors theory. Activity level is used to represent quantity and continuity of student’s contributions in individual and collaborative e‑learning activities (e‑tivities) and is calculated to assist teachers in assessing quantitative aspects of student's achievements. Calculated activity levels are also used to raise awareness and provide recommendations during the learning process. The proposed approach was implemented within the educational recommender system ELARS and validated using data obtained from e‑tivity realized during a blended learning course. The results showed that the proposed approach can be used to estimate activity level in the context of e-tivities realized using Web 2.0 tools as well as to facilitate the assessment of quantitative aspect of students’ participation in e‑tivities.
Keywords: Assessment, ELARS, e-learning, recommender systems, student model.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1061585 Concept Abduction in Description Logics with Cardinality Restrictions
Authors: Viet-Hoang Vu, Nhan Le-Thanh
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Recently the usefulness of Concept Abduction, a novel non-monotonic inference service for Description Logics (DLs), has been argued in the context of ontology-based applications such as semantic matchmaking and resource retrieval. Based on tableau calculus, a method has been proposed to realize this reasoning task in ALN, a description logic that supports simple cardinality restrictions as well as other basic constructors. However, in many ontology-based systems, the representation of ontology would require expressive formalisms for capturing domain-specific constraints, this language is not sufficient. In order to increase the applicability of the abductive reasoning method in such contexts, we would like to present in the scope of this paper an extension of the tableaux-based algorithm for dealing with concepts represented inALCQ, the description logic that extends ALN with full concept negation and quantified number restrictions.
Keywords: Abductive reasoning, description logics, semantic matchmaking, non-monotonic inference, tableaux-based method.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1555584 Eco-Connectivity: Sustainable Practices in Telecom Networks Using Big Data
Authors: Tharunika Sridhar
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This paper addresses sustainable eco-connectivity within the telecommunications sector studying its importance to tackle the contemporary challenges and data regulation issues. The paper also investigates the role of Big Data and its integration in this context, specific to telecom industry. One of the major focus areas in this paper is studying and examining the pathways explored, that are state-of-the-art ecological infrastructure solutions and sector-led measures derived from expert analyses and reviews. Additionally, the paper analyses critical factors involving cost-effective route planning, and the development of green telecommunications infrastructure that adds qualitative reasoning to the research idea. Furthermore, the study discusses in detail a potential green roadmap towards sustainability by exploring green routing software, eco-friendly infrastructure and other eco-focused initiatives. The paper is also directed at the special linguistic needs of the telecommunications sector by focusing on targeted select range of telecom environment.
Keywords: Big Data, telecom, sustainable telecom sector, telecom networks.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 84583 Conceptualizing the Knowledge to Manage and Utilize Data Assets in the Context of Digitization: Case Studies of Multinational Industrial Enterprises
Authors: Martin Böhmer, Agatha Dabrowski, Boris Otto
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The trend of digitization significantly changes the role of data for enterprises. Data turn from an enabler to an intangible organizational asset that requires management and qualifies as a tradeable good. The idea of a networked economy has gained momentum in the data domain as collaborative approaches for data management emerge. Traditional organizational knowledge consequently needs to be extended by comprehensive knowledge about data. The knowledge about data is vital for organizations to ensure that data quality requirements are met and data can be effectively utilized and sovereignly governed. As this specific knowledge has been paid little attention to so far by academics, the aim of the research presented in this paper is to conceptualize it by proposing a “data knowledge model”. Relevant model entities have been identified based on a design science research (DSR) approach that iteratively integrates insights of various industry case studies and literature research.
Keywords: Data management, digitization, Industry 4.0, knowledge engineering, metamodel.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1458582 Multi-Dimensional Concerns Mining for Web Applications via Concept-Analysis
Authors: Carlo Bellettini, Alessandro Marchetto, Andrea Trentini
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Web applications have become very complex and crucial, especially when combined with areas such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and BPR (Business Process Reengineering), the scientific community has focused attention to Web applications design, development, analysis, and testing, by studying and proposing methodologies and tools. This paper proposes an approach to automatic multi-dimensional concern mining for Web Applications, based on concepts analysis, impact analysis, and token-based concern identification. This approach lets the user to analyse and traverse Web software relevant to a particular concern (concept, goal, purpose, etc.) via multi-dimensional separation of concerns, to document, understand and test Web applications. This technique was developed in the context of WAAT (Web Applications Analysis and Testing) project. A semi-automatic tool to support this technique is currently under development.Keywords: Concepts Analysis, Concerns Mining, Multi-Dimensional Separation of Concerns, Impact Analysis.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1473581 Researching International PhD Algerian Students’ Communication Challenges in Speaking When Discussing and Interacting with Their British Peers: A Researcher’s Interpretive Perspective through the Use of Semi-Structured Interview
Authors: H. Maita
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This paper addresses the issue of the speaking challenges that the Algerian PhD students experience during their studies abroad, particularly in UK territory; more specifically, this study describes how these students may deal with such challenges and whether the cultural differences is one core reason in such dilemma or not. To this end, an understanding and interpretation of what actually encompasses both linguistic interference and cultural differences are required. Throughout the paper there is an attempt to explain the theoretical basis of the interpretive research and to theoretically discuss the pivotal use of the interview, as a data collection tool, in interpretive research. Thus, the central issue of this study is to frame the theoretical perspective of the interpretive research through the discussion of PhD Algerian’s communication and interaction challenges in the EFL context. This study is a corner stone for other research studies to further investigate the issue related to communication challenges because no specific findings will be pointed out in this research.
Keywords: EFL, communication, interaction, interpretive research.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 667580 Recovery of Post-Consumer PET Bottles in a Composite Material Preparation
Authors: Rafenomananjara Tsinjo Nirina, Tomoo Sekito, Andrianaivoravelona Jaconnet Oliva
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Manufacturing a composite material from post-consumer bottles is an interesting outlet since Madagascar is still facing the challenges of managing plastic waste on the one hand and appropriate waste treatment facilities are not yet developed on the other hand. New waste management options are needed to divert End-Of-Life (EOL) soft plastic wastes from landfills and incineration. Waste polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles might be considered as a valuable resource and recovered into polymer concrete. The methodology is easy to implement and appropriate to the local context in Madagascar. This approach will contribute to the production of ecological building materials that might be profitable for the environment and the construction sector. This work aims to study the feasibility of using the post-consumer PET bottles as an alternative binding agent instead of the conventional Portland cement and water. Then, the mechanical and physical properties of the materials were evaluated.
Keywords: PET recycling, polymer concrete, ecological building materials, pollution mitigation.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 955579 Organisational Blogging: Reviewing Its Effectiveness as an Organisational Learning Tool
Authors: Gavin J. Baxter, Mark H. Stansfield
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This paper reviews the internal use of blogs and their potential effectiveness as organisational learning tools. Since the emergence of the concept of ‘Enterprise 2.0’ there remains a lack of empirical evidence associated with how organisations are applying social media tools and whether they are effective towards supporting organisational learning. Surprisingly, blogs, one of the more traditional social media tools, still remains under-researched in the context of ‘Enterprise 2.0’ and organisational learning. The aim of this paper is to identify the theoretical linkage between blogs and organisational learning in addition to reviewing prior research on organisational blogging exploring why this area remains underresearched. Through a literature review, one of the principal findings of this paper is that organisational blogs have a mutual compatibility with the interpretivist aspect of organisational learning. This paper further advocates that further empirical work in this subject area is required to substantiate this theoretical assumption.
Keywords: Blogs, Enterprise 2.0, Organisational Learning, Social Media Tools.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2122578 Spatial Econometric Approaches for Count Data: An Overview and New Directions
Authors: Paula Simões, Isabel Natário
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This paper reviews a number of theoretical aspects for implementing an explicit spatial perspective in econometrics for modelling non-continuous data, in general, and count data, in particular. It provides an overview of the several spatial econometric approaches that are available to model data that are collected with reference to location in space, from the classical spatial econometrics approaches to the recent developments on spatial econometrics to model count data, in a Bayesian hierarchical setting. Considerable attention is paid to the inferential framework, necessary for structural consistent spatial econometric count models, incorporating spatial lag autocorrelation, to the corresponding estimation and testing procedures for different assumptions, to the constrains and implications embedded in the various specifications in the literature. This review combines insights from the classical spatial econometrics literature as well as from hierarchical modeling and analysis of spatial data, in order to look for new possible directions on the processing of count data, in a spatial hierarchical Bayesian econometric context.Keywords: Spatial data analysis, spatial econometrics, Bayesian hierarchical models, count data.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2704577 Accounting Research from the Globalization Perspective
Authors: Paul Diaconu, Nicoleta Coman
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This paper explores the idea of globalisation and considers accounting-s role in that process in order to develop new spaces for accounting research. That-s why in this paper we are looking for questions not necessary for answers. Adopting an 'alternative' view of accounting it-s related to the fact that we sees accounting as social and evolutionist process, that pays heed to those voices arguing for greater social and environmental justice, and that draws attention to the role of accounting researchers in the process of globalisation. The paper defines globalisation and expands the globalisation and accounting research agenda introducing in this context the harmonization process in accounting. There are the two main systems which are disputing the first stage of being the benchmark: GAAP and IFRS. Each of them has his pluses and minuses on being the selected one. Due to this fact a convergence of the two, joining the advantages and disadvantages of the two should be the solution for an unique international accounting solution. Is this idea realizable, what steps has been made until now, what should be done in the future. The paper is emphasising the role of the cultural differences in the process of imposing of an unique international accounting system by the global organizations..Keywords: Investors, capital markets, international accounting.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2739576 A New Method for Image Classification Based on Multi-level Neural Networks
Authors: Samy Sadek, Ayoub Al-Hamadi, Bernd Michaelis, Usama Sayed
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In this paper, we propose a supervised method for color image classification based on a multilevel sigmoidal neural network (MSNN) model. In this method, images are classified into five categories, i.e., “Car", “Building", “Mountain", “Farm" and “Coast". This classification is performed without any segmentation processes. To verify the learning capabilities of the proposed method, we compare our MSNN model with the traditional Sigmoidal Neural Network (SNN) model. Results of comparison have shown that the MSNN model performs better than the traditional SNN model in the context of training run time and classification rate. Both color moments and multi-level wavelets decomposition technique are used to extract features from images. The proposed method has been tested on a variety of real and synthetic images.Keywords: Image classification, multi-level neural networks, feature extraction, wavelets decomposition.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1648575 Formation of Civic Identity in the Process of Globalization: The Example of the U.S.A. and Kazakhstan
Authors: Elnura Assyltayeva, Zhanar Aldubasheva, Zhengisbek Tolen
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An attempt has been made several times to identify and discuss the U.S. experience on the formation of political nation in political science. The purpose of this research paper is to identify the main aspects of the formation of civic identity in the United States and Kazakhstan, through the identification of similarities and differences that can get practical application in making decisions of national policy issues in the context of globalization, as well as to answer the questions “What should unite the citizens of Kazakhstan to the nation?" and “What should be the dominant identity: civil or ethnic (national) one?" Can Kazakhstan being multiethnic country like America, adopt its experience in the formation of a civic nation? Since it is believed that the “multi-ethnic state of the population is a characteristic feature of most modern countries in the world," it states that “inter-ethnic integration is one of the most important aspects of the problem of forming a new social community (metaetnic - Kazakh people, Kazakh nation" [1].Keywords: nation, civic identity, nation building, globalization, interethnic relations, patriotism
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2236574 DRE - A Quality Metric for Component based Software Products
Authors: K. S. Jasmine, R. Vasantha
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The overriding goal of software engineering is to provide a high quality system, application or a product. To achieve this goal, software engineers must apply effective methods coupled with modern tools within the context of a mature software process [2]. In addition, it is also must to assure that high quality is realized. Although many quality measures can be collected at the project levels, the important measures are errors and defects. Deriving a quality measure for reusable components has proven to be challenging task now a days. The results obtained from the study are based on the empirical evidence of reuse practices, as emerged from the analysis of industrial projects. Both large and small companies, working in a variety of business domains, and using object-oriented and procedural development approaches contributed towards this study. This paper proposes a quality metric that provides benefit at both project and process level, namely defect removal efficiency (DRE).Keywords: Software Reuse, Defect density, Reuse metrics, Defect Removal efficiency.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2808