Search results for: Level of behavioral development
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 6961

Search results for: Level of behavioral development

871 Response of Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) Genotypes to Drought Stress at Different Growth Stages

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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870 Physicochemical Properties of Microemulsions and their uses in Enhanced Oil Recovery

Authors: T. Kumar, Achinta Bera, Ajay Mandal

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Use of microemulsion in enhanced oil recovery has become more attractive in recent years because of its high level of extraction efficiency. Experimental investigations have been made on characterization of microemulsions of oil-brinesurfactant/ cosurfactant system for its use in enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Sodium dodecyl sulfate, propan-1-ol and heptane were selected as surfactant, cosurfactant and oil respectively for preparation of microemulsion. The effects of salinity on the relative phase volumes and solubilization parameters have also been studied. As salinity changes from low to high value, phase transition takes place from Winsor I to Winsor II via Winsor III. Suitable microemulsion composition has been selected based on its stability and ability to reduce interfacial tension. A series of flooding experiments have been performed using the selected microemulsion. The flooding experiments were performed in a core flooding apparatus using uniform sand pack. The core holder was tightly packed with uniform sands (60-100 mesh) and saturated with brines of different salinities. It was flooded with the brine at 25 psig and the absolute permeability was calculated from the flow rate of the through sand pack. The sand pack was then flooded with the crude oil at 800 psig to irreducible water saturation. The initial water saturation was determined on the basis of mass balance. Waterflooding was conducted by placing the coreholder horizontally at a constant injection pressure at 200 pisg. After water flooding, when water-cut reached above 95%, around 0.5 pore volume (PV) of the above microemulsion slug was injected followed by chasing water. The experiments were repeated using different composition of microemulsion slug. The additional recoveries were calculated by material balance. Encouraging results with additional recovery more than 20% of original oil in place above the conventional water flooding have been observed.

Keywords: Microemulsion Flooding, Enhanced Oil Recovery, Phase Behavior, Optimal salinity

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869 Statistical Relation between Vegetation Cover and Land Surface Temperature in Phnom Penh City

Authors: Gulam Mohiuddin, Jan-Peter Mund

Abstract:

This study assessed the correlation between Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Land Surface Temperature (LST) in Phnom Penh City (Cambodia) from 2016 to 2020. Understanding the LST and NDVI can be helpful to understand the Urban Heat Island (UHI) scenario, and it can contribute to planning urban greening and combating the effects of UHI. The study used Landsat-8 images as the data for analysis. They have 100 m spatial resolution (per pixel) in the thermal band. The current study used an approach for the statistical analysis that considers every pixel from the study area instead of taking few sample points or analyzing descriptive statistics. Also, this study is examining the correlation between NDVI and LST with a spatially explicit approach. The study found a strong negative correlation between NDVI and LST (coefficient range -0.56 to -0.59), and this relationship is linear. This study showed a way to avoid the probable error from the sample-based approach in examining two spatial variables. The method is reproducible for a similar type of analysis on the correlation between spatial phenomena. The findings of this study will be used further to understand the causation behind LST change in that area triangulating LST, NDVI and land-use changes.

Keywords: Land Surface Temperature, NDVI, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, remote sensing, methodological development.

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868 Design of a Fuzzy Feed-forward Controller for Monitor HAGC System of Cold Rolling Mill

Authors: S. Khosravi, A. Afshar, F. Barazandeh

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In this study we propose a novel monitor hydraulic automatic gauge control (HAGC) system based on fuzzy feedforward controller. This is used in the development of cold rolling mill automation system to improve the quality of cold strip. According to features/ properties of entry steel strip like its average yield stress, width of strip, and desired exit thickness, this controller realizes the compensation for the exit thickness error. The traditional methods of adjusting the roller position, can-t tolerate the variance in the entry steel strip. The proposed method uses a mathematical model of the system together with the expert knowledge to perform this adjustment while minimizing the effect of the stated problem. In order to improve the speed of the controller in rejecting disturbances introduced by entry strip thickness variations, expert knowledge is added as a feed-forward term to the HAGC system. Simulation results for the application of the proposed controller to a real cold mill show that the exit strip quality is highly improved.

Keywords: Fuzzy feed-forward controller, monitor HAGC system, dynamic mathematical model, entry strip thickness deviation compensation

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867 A Software Tool Design for Cerebral Infarction of MR Images

Authors: Kyoung-Jong Park, Woong-Gi Jeon, Hee-Cheol Kim, Dong-Eog Kim, Heung-Kook Choi

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The brain MR imaging-based clinical research and analysis system were specifically built and the development for a large-scale data was targeted. We used the general clinical data available for building large-scale data. Registration period for the selection of the lesion ROI and the region growing algorithm was used and the Mesh-warp algorithm for matching was implemented. The accuracy of the matching errors was modified individually. Also, the large ROI research data can accumulate by our developed compression method. In this way, the correctly decision criteria to the research result was suggested. The experimental groups were age, sex, MR type, patient ID and smoking which can easily be queries. The result data was visualized of the overlapped images by a color table. Its data was calculated by the statistical package. The evaluation for the utilization of this system in the chronic ischemic damage in the area has done from patients with the acute cerebral infarction. This is the cause of neurologic disability index location in the center portion of the lateral ventricle facing. The corona radiate was found in the position. Finally, the system reliability was measured both inter-user and intra-user registering correlation.

Keywords: Software tool design, Cerebral infarction, Brain MR image, Registration

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866 Validity of Universe Structure Conception as Nested Vortexes

Authors: Khaled M. Nabil

Abstract:

This paper introduces the Nested Vortexes conception of the universe structure and interprets all the physical phenomena according this conception. The paper first reviews recent physics theories, either in microscopic scale or macroscopic scale, to collect evidence that the space is not empty. But, these theories describe the property of the space medium without determining its structure. Determining the structure of space medium is essential to understand the mechanism that leads to its properties. Without determining the space medium structure, many phenomena; such as electric and magnetic fields, gravity, or wave-particle duality remain uninterpreted. Thus, this paper introduces a conception about the structure of the universe. It assumes that the universe is a medium of ultra-tiny homogeneous particles which are still undiscovered. Like any medium with certain movements, possibly because of a great asymmetric explosion, vortexes have occurred. A vortex condenses the ultra-tiny particles in its center forming a bigger particle, the bigger particles, in turn, could be trapped in a bigger vortex and condense in its center forming a much bigger particle and so on. This conception describes galaxies, stars, protons as particles at different levels. Existing of the particle’s vortexes make the consistency of the speed of light postulate is not true. This conception shows that the vortex motion dynamic agrees with the motion of all the universe particles at any level. An experiment has been carried out to detect the orbiting effect of aggregated vortexes of aligned atoms of a permanent magnet. Based on the described particle’s structure, the gravity force of a particle and attraction between particles as well as charge, electric and magnetic fields and quantum mechanics characteristics are interpreted. All augmented physics phenomena are solved.

Keywords: Astrophysics, cosmology, particles’ structure model, particles’ forces, vortex dynamics.

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865 Development of Prediction Models of Day-Ahead Hourly Building Electricity Consumption and Peak Power Demand Using the Machine Learning Method

Authors: Dalin Si, Azizan Aziz, Bertrand Lasternas

Abstract:

To encourage building owners to purchase electricity at the wholesale market and reduce building peak demand, this study aims to develop models that predict day-ahead hourly electricity consumption and demand using artificial neural network (ANN) and support vector machine (SVM). All prediction models are built in Python, with tool Scikit-learn and Pybrain. The input data for both consumption and demand prediction are time stamp, outdoor dry bulb temperature, relative humidity, air handling unit (AHU), supply air temperature and solar radiation. Solar radiation, which is unavailable a day-ahead, is predicted at first, and then this estimation is used as an input to predict consumption and demand. Models to predict consumption and demand are trained in both SVM and ANN, and depend on cooling or heating, weekdays or weekends. The results show that ANN is the better option for both consumption and demand prediction. It can achieve 15.50% to 20.03% coefficient of variance of root mean square error (CVRMSE) for consumption prediction and 22.89% to 32.42% CVRMSE for demand prediction, respectively. To conclude, the presented models have potential to help building owners to purchase electricity at the wholesale market, but they are not robust when used in demand response control.

Keywords: Building energy prediction, data mining, demand response, electricity market.

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864 Productivity and Performance of Barangays: The Case of the Heritage City of Vigan, Philippines

Authors: Edelyn Alicar-Cadorna

Abstract:

This study assessed the productivity and performance of the barangays in the Heritage City of Vigan in terms of the barangays- resource requirements, management of resources, produced goods and services, and outcomes of service delivery. The descriptive research design was used in the study employing the input-process-output-outcomes model. Findings of this study showed that the barangays were strong in terms of resource requirements which enabled them to produce goods and services. The barangays were also strong in terms of management of resources in development planning. They also showed great potential along fiscal administration, and had a moderately high capability in organization and management. However, the barangays appeared to be most wanting in the area of barangay legislation, but they were strong in community mobilization and they had strong linkages with POs, NGOs and educational institutions. In the delivery of social services, the barangays favored the maintenance of day care centers. However, the barangays seem to be weak in the delivery of economic services. They fared well along providing protective services such as in establishing a Barangay Disaster Coordinating Council and organizing a group of Barangay Tanod. In terms of environmental services, the barangays performed garbage collection and disposal; however, garbage still found their way in the streets in some barangays. The services delivered had effected an improved status of the barangays. However, the barangays are still facing some problems.

Keywords: Barangays, Performance and Productivity.

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863 Expression of Tissue Plasminogen Activator in Transgenic Tobacco Plants by Signal Peptides Targeting for Delivery to Apoplast, Endoplasmic Reticulum and Cytosol Spaces

Authors: Sadegh Lotfieblisofla, Arash Khodabakhshi

Abstract:

Tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) as a serine protease plays an important role in the fibrinolytic system and the dissolution of fibrin clots in human body. The production of this drug in plants such as tobacco could reduce its production costs. In this study, expression of tPA gene and protein targeting to different plant cell compartments, using various signal peptides has been investigated. For high level of expression, Kozak sequence was used after CaMV35S in the beginning of the gene. In order to design the final construction, Extensin, KDEL (amino acid sequence including Lys-Asp-Glu-Leu) and SP (γ-zein signal peptide coding sequence) were used as leader signals to conduct this protein into apoplast, endoplasmic reticulum and cytosol spaces, respectively. Cloned human tPA gene under the CaMV (Cauliflower mosaic virus) 35S promoter and NOS (Nopaline Synthase) terminator into pBI121 plasmid was transferred into tobacco explants by Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain LBA4404. The presence and copy number of genes in transgenic tobacco was proved by Southern blotting. Enzymatic activity of the rt-PA protein in transgenic plants compared to non-transgenic plants was confirmed by Zymography assay. The presence and amount of rt-PA recombinant protein in plants was estimated by ELISA analysis on crude protein extract of transgenic tobacco using a specific antibody. The yield of recombinant tPA in transgenic tobacco for SP, KDEL, Extensin signals were counted 0.50, 0.68, 0.69 microgram per milligram of total soluble proteins.

Keywords: Recombinant tissue plasminogen activator, plant cell comportment, leader signals, transgenic tobacco.

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862 The Concept of an Agile Enterprise Research Model

Authors: Maja Sajdak

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The aim of this paper is to present the concept of an agile enterprise model and to initiate discussion on the research assumptions of the model presented. The implementation of the research project "The agility of enterprises in the process of adapting to the environment and its changes" began in August 2014 and is planned to last three years. The article has the form of a work-inprogress paper which aims to verify and initiate a debate over the proposed research model. In the literature there are very few publications relating to research into agility; it can be concluded that the most controversial issue in this regard is the method of measuring agility. In previous studies the operationalization of agility was often fragmentary, focusing only on selected areas of agility, for example manufacturing, or analysing only selected sectors. As a result the measures created to date can only be treated as contributory to the development of precise measurement tools. This research project aims to fill a cognitive gap in the literature with regard to the conceptualization and operationalization of an agile company. Thus, the original contribution of the author of this project is the construction of a theoretical model that integrates manufacturing agility (consisting mainly in adaptation to the environment) and strategic agility (based on proactive measures). The author of this research project is primarily interested in the attributes of an agile enterprise which indicate that the company is able to rapidly adapt to changing circumstances and behave pro-actively.

Keywords: Agile company, acuity, entrepreneurship, flexibility, research model, strategic leadership.

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861 An Anomaly Detection Approach to Detect Unexpected Faults in Recordings from Test Drives

Authors: Andreas Theissler, Ian Dear

Abstract:

In the automotive industry test drives are being conducted during the development of new vehicle models or as a part of quality assurance of series-production vehicles. The communication on the in-vehicle network, data from external sensors, or internal data from the electronic control units is recorded by automotive data loggers during the test drives. The recordings are used for fault analysis. Since the resulting data volume is tremendous, manually analysing each recording in great detail is not feasible. This paper proposes to use machine learning to support domainexperts by preventing them from contemplating irrelevant data and rather pointing them to the relevant parts in the recordings. The underlying idea is to learn the normal behaviour from available recordings, i.e. a training set, and then to autonomously detect unexpected deviations and report them as anomalies. The one-class support vector machine “support vector data description” is utilised to calculate distances of feature vectors. SVDDSUBSEQ is proposed as a novel approach, allowing to classify subsequences in multivariate time series data. The approach allows to detect unexpected faults without modelling effort as is shown with experimental results on recordings from test drives.

Keywords: Anomaly detection, fault detection, test drive analysis, machine learning.

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860 The Development of Smart School Condition Assessment Based on Condition Survey Protocol (CSP) 1 Matrix: A Literature Review

Authors: N. Hamzah, M. Mahli, A. I. Che-Ani, M. M Tahir, N. A. G. Abdullah, N. M Tawil

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Building inspection is one of the key components of building maintenance. The primary purpose of performing a building inspection is to evaluate the building-s condition. Without inspection, it is difficult to determine a built asset-s current condition, so failure to inspect can contribute to the asset-s future failure. Traditionally, a longhand survey description has been widely used for property condition reports. Surveys that employ ratings instead of descriptions are gaining wide acceptance in the industry because they cater to the need for numerical analysis output. These kinds of surveys are also in keeping with the new RICS HomeBuyer Report 2009. In this paper, we propose a new assessment method, derived from the current rating systems, for assessing the specifically smart school building-s condition and rating the seriousness of each defect identified. These two assessment criteria are then multiplied to find the building-s score, which we called the Condition Survey Protocol (CSP) 1 Matrix. Instead of a longhand description of a building-s defects, this matrix requires concise explanations about the defects identified, thus saving on-site time during a smart school building inspection. The full score is used to give the building an overall rating: Good, Fair or Dilapidated.

Keywords: Assessment matrix, building condition survey, rating system, smart school and survey protocol.

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859 Aqueous Extract of Flacourtia indica Prevents Carbon Tetrachloride Induced Hepatotoxicity in Rat

Authors: Gnanaprakash K, Madhusudhana Chetty C, Ramkanth S, Alagusundaram M, Tiruvengadarajan VS, Angala Parameswari S, Mohamed Saleem TS

Abstract:

Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) is a well-known hepatotoxin and exposure to this chemical is known to induce oxidative stress and causes liver injury by the formation of free radicals. Flacourtia indica commonly known as 'Baichi' has been reported as an effective remedy for the treatment of a variety of diseases. The objective of this study was to investigate the hepatoprotective activity of aqueous extract of leaves of Flacourtia indica against CCl4 induced hepatotoxicity. Animals were pretreated with the aqueous extract of Flacourtia indica (250 & 500 mg/kg body weight) for one week and then challenged with CCl4 (1.5 ml/kg bw) in olive oil (1:1, v/v) on 7th day. Serum marker enzymes (ALP, AST, ALT, Total Protein & Total Bilirubin) and TBARS level (Marker for oxidative stress) were estimated in all the study groups. Alteration in the levels of biochemical markers of hepatic damage like AST, ALT, ALP, Total Protein, Total Bilirubin and lipid peroxides (TBARS) were tested in both CCl4 treated and extract treated groups. CCl4 has enhanced the AST, ALT, ALP and the Lipid peroxides (TBARS) in liver. Treatment of aqueous extract of Flacourtia indica leaves (250 & 500 mg/kg) exhibited a significant protective effect by altering the serum levels of AST, ALT, ALP, Total Protein, Total Bilirubin and liver TBARS. These biochemical observations were supported by histopathological study of liver sections. From this preliminary study it has been concluded that the aqueous extract of the leaves of Flacourtia indica protects liver against oxidative damages and could be used as an effective protector against CCl4 induced hepatic damage. Our findings suggested that Flacourtia indica possessed good hepatoprotective activity

Keywords: Carbon Tetrachloride, Flacourtia indica, Hepatoprotective activity, Oxidative stress

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858 National Identity in Connecting the Community through Mural Art for Petronas Dagangangan Berhad

Authors: N. Mohamad, W. Samiati Andriana Wan Mohd Daud, M. Suhaimi Tohid, M. Fazli Othman, M. Rizal Salleh

Abstract:

This is a collaborative project of the mural art between The Department of Fine Art from Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) and Petronas Dagangan Berhad (PDB), the most leading retailer and marketer of downstream oil and gas products in Malaysia. Five different states have been identified in showcasing the National Identity of Malaysia at each Petronas gas station; the Air Keroh in Melaka, Pasir Pekan in Kelantan, Pontian in Johor, Simpang Pulai in Perak and also Wakaf Bharu in Terengganu. This project is to analyze the element of national identity that has been demonstrated at the Petronas's Mural. The ultimate aim of the mural is to let the community and local people to be aware about what Malaysians are consists and proud of and how everyone is able to connect with the idea through art. The method that is being explained in this research is by using visual data through research and also self-experience in collecting the visual data in identifying what images are considered as the national identity and idea development and visual analysis is being transferred based upon the visual data collection. In this stage elements and principle of design will be the key in highlighting what is necessary in a work of art. In conclusion, image of the National Identity of Malaysia is able to connect to the audience from local and also to the people from outside the country to learn and understand the beauty and diversity of Malaysia as a unique country with art, through the wall of five Petronas gas stations.

Keywords: Mural art, fine art, national identity, community.

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857 Sustainability and Promotion of Inland Waterway Transportation Projects in Colombia: Case of the Magdalena River

Authors: David Julian Bernal Melgarejo

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Inland Waterway Transportation (IWT) is playing an important role in national transport systems, water transportation is considered to be safe, energy efficient and environmentally friendly mode of transport, all benefits of IWT cause national awareness increase, for instance the Colombian government is planning to restore the navigability of the most important river of the country, the Magdalena’s River navigability, embrace waterway transportation in Colombia could strength competitiveness while reduce most of the transport externalities. However, the current situation of the Magdalena is deplorable, the most important river of Colombia has been abandoned for decades and the solution is beyond of a single administrative entity. This paper analyzes the outcomes of the Navigation And Inland Waterway Action and Development in Europe program (NAIADES) as a prospective to develop a similar program in Colombia with similar objectives and guidelines, considering sustainability, guarantying the long-term future results and adaptability of the program. Identifying stakeholders and policy experts, a set of individual interviews were carried out; findings support the idea of lack of integration within governmental institutions and lack of importance in marketing promotion as possible drawbacks on the implementation of IWT projects.

Keywords: Inland waterway transportation, Logistics, Sustainability, Multimodal transport systems, Water transportation.

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856 Context Aware Anomaly Behavior Analysis for Smart Home Systems

Authors: Zhiwen Pan, Jesus Pacheco, Salim Hariri, Yiqiang Chen, Bozhi Liu

Abstract:

The Internet of Things (IoT) will lead to the development of advanced Smart Home services that are pervasive, cost-effective, and can be accessed by home occupants from anywhere and at any time. However, advanced smart home applications will introduce grand security challenges due to the increase in the attack surface. Current approaches do not handle cybersecurity from a holistic point of view; hence, a systematic cybersecurity mechanism needs to be adopted when designing smart home applications. In this paper, we present a generic intrusion detection methodology to detect and mitigate the anomaly behaviors happened in Smart Home Systems (SHS). By utilizing our Smart Home Context Data Structure, the heterogeneous information and services acquired from SHS are mapped in context attributes which can describe the context of smart home operation precisely and accurately. Runtime models for describing usage patterns of home assets are developed based on characterization functions. A threat-aware action management methodology, used to efficiently mitigate anomaly behaviors, is proposed at the end. Our preliminary experimental results show that our methodology can be used to detect and mitigate known and unknown threats, as well as to protect SHS premises and services.

Keywords: Internet of Things, network security, context awareness, intrusion detection

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855 Honey Contamination in the Republic of Kazakhstan

Authors: B. Sadepovich Maikanov, Z. Shabanbayevich Adilbekov, R. Husainovna Mustafina, L. Tyulegenovna Auteleyeva

Abstract:

This study involves detailed information about contaminants of honey in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The requirements of the technical regulation ‘Requirements to safety of honey and bee products’ and GOST 19792-2001 were taken into account in this research. Contamination of honey by antibiotics wqs determined by the IEA (immune-enzyme analysis), Ridder analyzer and Tecna produced test systems. Voltammetry (TaLab device) was used to define contamination by salts of heavy metals and gamma-beta spectrometry, ‘Progress BG’ system, with preliminary ashing of the sample of honey was used to define radioactive contamination. This article pointed out that residues of chloramphenicol were detected in 24% of investigated products, in 22% of them –streptomycin, in 7.3% - sulfanilamide, in 2.4% - tylosin, and in 12% - combined contamination was noted. Geographically, the greatest degree of contamination of honey with antibiotics occurs in the Northern Kazakhstan – 54.4%, and Southern Kazakhstan - 50%, and the lowest in Central and Eastern Kazakhstan with 30% and 25%, respectively. Generally, pollution by heavy metals is within acceptable limits, but the contamination from lead is highest in the Akmola region. The level of radioactive cesium and strontium is also within acceptable concentrations. The highest radioactivity in terms of cesium was observed in the East Kazakhstan region - 49.00±10 Bq/kg, in Akmola, North Kazakhstan and Almaty - 12.00±5, 11.05±3 and 19.0±8 Bq/kg, respectively, while the norm is 100 Bq/kg. In terms of strontium, the radioactivity in the East Kazakhstan region is 25.03±15 Bq/kg, while in Akmola, North Kazakhstan and Almaty regions it is 12.00±3, 10.2±4 and 1.0±2 Bq/kg, respectively, with the norm of 80 Bq/kg. This accumulation is mainly associated with the environmental degradation, feeding and treating of bees. Moreover, in the process of collecting nectar, external substances can penetrate honey. Overall, this research determines factors and reasons of honey contamination.

Keywords: Antibiotics, contamination of honey, honey, radionuclides.

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854 Human Resources Recruitment Defining Peculiarities of Students as Job Seekers

Authors: O. Starineca

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Some organizations as employers have difficulties to attract job seekers and retain their employees. Strategic planning of Human Resources (HR) presumes broad analysis of perspectives including analysis of potential job seekers in the field. Human Resources Recruitment (HRR) influences employer brand of an organization and peculiarities of both external organizational factors and stakeholders. Defining peculiarities of the future job seekers, who could potentially become the employees of the organization, could help to adjust HRR tools and methods adapt to the youngest generation employees’ preferences and be more successful in selecting the best candidates, who are likely to be loyal to the employer. The aim of the empirical study is definition of some students’ as job seekers peculiarities and their requirements to their potential employer. The survey in Latvia, Lithuania and Spain. Respondents were students from these countries’ tertiary education institutions Public Administration (PA) or relevant study programs. All three countries students’ peculiarities have just a slight difference. Overall, they all wish to work for a socially responsible employer that is able to provide positive working environment and possibilities for professional development and learning. However, respondents from each country have own peculiarities. The study might have a practical application. PA of the examined countries might use the results developing employer brand and creating job advertisements focusing on recent graduates’ recruitment.

Keywords: Generation Y, human resources recruitment, public administration.

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853 Comparison among Various Question Generations for Decision Tree Based State Tying in Persian Language

Authors: Nasibeh Nasiri, Dawood Talebi Khanmiri

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Performance of any continuous speech recognition system is highly dependent on performance of the acoustic models. Generally, development of the robust spoken language technology relies on the availability of large amounts of data. Common way to cope with little data for training each state of Markov models is treebased state tying. This tying method applies contextual questions to tie states. Manual procedure for question generation suffers from human errors and is time consuming. Various automatically generated questions are used to construct decision tree. There are three approaches to generate questions to construct HMMs based on decision tree. One approach is based on misrecognized phonemes, another approach basically uses feature table and the other is based on state distributions corresponding to context-independent subword units. In this paper, all these methods of automatic question generation are applied to the decision tree on FARSDAT corpus in Persian language and their results are compared with those of manually generated questions. The results show that automatically generated questions yield much better results and can replace manually generated questions in Persian language.

Keywords: Decision Tree, Markov Models, Speech Recognition, State Tying.

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852 Evaluation of Chromium Fortified Parboiled Rice Coated with Herbal Extracts: Cooking Quality and Sensory Properties

Authors: Wisnu Adi Yulianto, Agus Slamet, Sri Luwihana, Septian Albar Dwi Suprayogi

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Parboiled rice was developed to produce rice, which has a low glycemic index for diabetics. However, diabetics also have a chromium (Cr) deficiency. Thus, it is important to fortify rice with Cr to increase the Cr content. Moreover, parboiled rice becomes rancid easily and has a musty odor, rendering the rice unfavorable. Natural herbs such as pandan leaves (Pandanus amaryllifolius Roxb.), bay leaves (Syzygium polyanthum [Wigh] Walp) and cinnamon bark powder (Cinnamomon cassia) are commonly added to food as aroma enhancers. Previous research has shown that these herbs could improve insulin sensitivity. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of herbal extract coatings on the cooking quality and the preference level of chromium fortified - parboiled rice (CFPR). The rice grain variety used for this experiment was Ciherang and the fortificant was CrCl3. The three herbal extracts used for coating the CFPR were cinnamon, pandan and bay leaf, with concentration variations of 3%, 6%, and 9% (w/w) for each of the extracts. The samples were analyzed for their alkali spreading value, cooking time, elongation, water uptake ratio, solid loss, colour and lightness; and their sensory properties were determined by means of an organoleptic test. The research showed that coating the CFPR with pandan and cinnamon extracts at a concentration of 3% each produced a preferred CFPR. When coated with those herbal extracts the CFPR had the following cooking quality properties: alkali spreading value 5 (intermediate gelatinization temperature), cooking time, 26-27 min, color value, 14.95-15.00, lightness, 42.30 – 44.06, elongation, 1.53 – 1.54, water uptake ratio , 4.05-4.06, and solid loss, 0.09/100 g – 0.13 g/100 g.

Keywords: Bay leaves, chromium, cinnamon, pandan leaves, parboiled rice.

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851 Seismic Behaviour of RC Knee Joints in Closing and Opening Actions

Authors: S. Mogili, J. S. Kuang, N. Zhang

Abstract:

Knee joints, the beam column connections found at the roof level of a moment resisting frame buildings, are inherently different from conventional interior and exterior beam column connections in the way that forces from adjoining members are transferred into joint and then resisted by the joint. A knee connection has two distinct load resisting mechanisms, each for closing and opening actions acting simultaneously under reversed cyclic loading. In spite of many distinct differences in the behaviour of shear resistance in knee joints, there are no special design provisions in the major design codes available across the world due to lack of in-depth research on the knee connections. To understand the relative importance of opening and closing actions in design, it is imperative to study knee joints under varying shear stresses, especially at higher opening-to-closing shear stress ratios. Three knee joint specimens, under different input shear stresses, were designed to produce a varying ratio of input opening to closing shear stresses. The design was carried out in such a way that the ratio of flexural strength of beams with consideration of axial forces in opening to closing actions are maintained at 0.5, 0.7, and 1.0, thereby resulting in the required variation of opening to closing joint shear stress ratios among the specimens. The behaviour of these specimens was then carefully studied in terms of closing and opening capacities, hysteretic behaviour, and envelope curves to understand the differences in joint performance based on which an attempt to suggest design guidelines for knee joints is made emphasizing the relative importance of opening and closing actions. Specimens with relatively higher opening stresses were observed to be more vulnerable under the action of seismic loading.

Keywords: Knee-joints, large-scale testing, opening and closing shear stresses, seismic performance.

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850 The Effect of an Al Andalus Fused Curriculum Model on the Learning Outcomes of Elementary School Students

Authors: Sobhy Fathy A. Hashesh

Abstract:

The study was carried out in the Elementary Classes of Andalus Private Schools, girls section using control and experimental groups formed by Random Assignment Strategy. The study aimed at investigating the effect of Al-Andalus Fused Curriculum (AFC) model of learning and the effect of separate subjects’ approach on the development of students’ conceptual learning and skills acquiring. The society of the study composed of Al-Andalus Private Schools, elementary school students, Girls Section (N=240), while the sample of the study composed of two randomly assigned groups (N=28) with one experimental group and one control group. The study followed the quantitative and qualitative approaches in collecting and analyzing data to investigate the study hypotheses. Results of the study revealed that there were significant statistical differences between students’ conceptual learning and skills acquiring for the favor of the experimental group. The study recommended applying this model on different educational variables and on other age groups to generate more data leading to more educational results for the favor of students’ learning outcomes.

Keywords: AFC, Lego Education, mechatronics, STEAM, Al-Andalus Fused Curriculum.

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849 Resettlement and Livelihood Sustainability in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of Bui Hydro-Power Dam Project, Ghana

Authors: Francis Z. Naab, Abraham M. Nunbogu, Romanus D. Dinye, Alfred Dongzagla

Abstract:

The study assesses the effectiveness of the Bui Dam resettlement scheme in the Tain and the Bole districts in Ghana. The study adopted a mixed approach in its data collection and analyses. Of the eight communities affected by Bui hydropower project, and thus require resettlement, four were purposively selected for primary data collection. Primary data was gathered through questionnaire administration to 157 heads of resettled households, focus group discussions with men and women and in-depth interviews with key informants. The findings indicated that the affected people had been sufficiently contacted at all levels of their resettlement. In particular, the Ghana Dams Dialogue, which served as a liaison entity between the government and the resettlement communities came up for praise for its usefulness. Many tangible policies were put in place to address the socio-cultural differences of traditional authorities. The Bui Dam Authority also rigorously followed national and international laws and protocols in the design and implementation of the resettlement scheme.  In assessing the effectiveness of the resettlement scheme, it was clear that there had been a great appreciation of the compensation regarding infrastructural development, but much more would have to be done to satisfy livelihood empowerment requirements. It was recommended that candid efforts be made to restore the lost identities of the communities resettled, and more dialogue is encouraged among communities living together.

Keywords: Resettlement, livelihood, hydro-power project, Bui Dam, Ghana.

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848 A New Intelligent, Dynamic and Real Time Management System of Sewerage

Authors: R. Tlili Yaakoubi, H. Nakouri, O. Blanpain, S. Lallahem

Abstract:

The current tools for real time management of sewer systems are based on two software tools: the software of weather forecast and the software of hydraulic simulation. The use of the first ones is an important cause of imprecision and uncertainty, the use of the second requires temporal important steps of decision because of their need in times of calculation. This way of proceeding fact that the obtained results are generally different from those waited. The major idea of this project is to change the basic paradigm by approaching the problem by the "automatic" face rather than by that "hydrology". The objective is to make possible the realization of a large number of simulations at very short times (a few seconds) allowing to take place weather forecasts by using directly the real time meditative pluviometric data. The aim is to reach a system where the decision-making is realized from reliable data and where the correction of the error is permanent. A first model of control laws was realized and tested with different return-period rainfalls. The gains obtained in rejecting volume vary from 19 to 100 %. The development of a new algorithm was then used to optimize calculation time and thus to overcome the subsequent combinatorial problem in our first approach. Finally, this new algorithm was tested with 16- year-rainfall series. The obtained gains are 40 % of total volume rejected to the natural environment and of 65 % in the number of discharges.

Keywords: Automation, optimization, paradigm, RTC.

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847 The Effect of Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR) on Germination, Seedling Growth and Yield of Maize

Authors: A. Gholami, S. Shahsavani, S. Nezarat

Abstract:

The effect of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) on seed germination, seedling growth and yield of field grown maize were evaluated in three experiments. In these experiments six bacterial strains include P.putida strain R-168, P.fluorescens strain R-93, P.fluorescens DSM 50090, P.putida DSM291, A.lipoferum DSM 1691, A.brasilense DSM 1690 were used. Results of first study showed seed Inoculation significantly enhanced seed germination and seedling vigour of maize. In second experiment, leaf and shoot dry weight and also leaf surface area significantly were increased by bacterial inoculation in both sterile and non-sterile soil. The results showed that inoculation with bacterial treatments had a more stimulating effect on growth and development of plants in nonsterile than sterile soil. In the third experiment, Inoculation of maize seeds with all bacterial strains significantly increased plant height, 100 seed weight, number of seed per ear and leaf area .The results also showed significant increase in ear and shoot dry weight of maize.

Keywords: Azospirillum, biofertilizer, Maize, PGPR, Pseudomonas.

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846 Design of a Cost Effective Off-Grid Wind-Diesel Hybrid Power System in an Island of Bangladesh

Authors: Nahid-Al-Masood, Rifat Mirza, Jubaer Ahmed, Amina Hasan Abedin, S.R. Deeba, Faeza Hafiz, Mahmuda Begum, A. Hasib Chowdhury

Abstract:

Bangladesh is a developing country with large population. Demand of electrical energy is increasing day by day because of increasing population and industrialization. But due to limited resources, people here are suffering from power crisis problem which is considered as a major obstacle to the economic development. In most of the cases, it is extremely difficult to extend high tension transmission lines to some of the places that are separated from the mainland. Renewable energy is considered to be the right choice for providing clean energy to these remote settlements. This paper proposes a cost effective design of off-grid wind-diesel hybrid power system using combined heat and power (CHP) technology in a grid isolated island, Sandwip, Bangladesh. Design and simulation of the wind-diesel hybrid power system is performed considering different factors for the island Sandwip. Detailed economic analysis and comparison with solar PV system clearly reveals that wind-diesel hybrid power system can be a cost effective solution for the isolated island like Sandwip.

Keywords: renewable energy, off-grid, wind-diesel hybrid system, CHP technology, economic analysis

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845 Pilot Induced Oscillations Adaptive Suppression in Fly-By-Wire Systems

Authors: Herlandson C. Moura, Jorge H. Bidinotto, Eduardo M. Belo

Abstract:

The present work proposes the development of an adaptive control system which enables the suppression of Pilot Induced Oscillations (PIO) in Digital Fly-By-Wire (DFBW) aircrafts. The proposed system consists of a Modified Model Reference Adaptive Control (M-MRAC) integrated with the Gain Scheduling technique. The PIO oscillations are detected using a Real Time Oscillation Verifier (ROVER) algorithm, which then enables the system to switch between two reference models; one in PIO condition, with low proneness to the phenomenon and another one in normal condition, with high (or medium) proneness. The reference models are defined in a closed loop condition using the Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) control methodology for Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems. The implemented algorithms are simulated in software implementations with state space models and commercial flight simulators as the controlled elements and with pilot dynamics models. A sequence of pitch angles is considered as the reference signal, named as Synthetic Task (Syntask), which must be tracked by the pilot models. The initial outcomes show that the proposed system can detect and suppress (or mitigate) the PIO oscillations in real time before it reaches high amplitudes.

Keywords: Adaptive control, digital fly-by-wire, oscillations suppression, PIO.

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844 A Semantic Registry to Support Brazilian Aeronautical Web Services Operations

Authors: Luís Antonio de Almeida Rodriguez, José Maria Parente de Oliveira, Ednelson Oliveira

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In the last two decades, the world’s aviation authorities have made several attempts to create consensus about a global and accepted approach for applying semantics to web services registry descriptions. This problem has led communities to face a fat and disorganized infrastructure to describe aeronautical web services. It is usual for developers to implement ad-hoc connections among consumers and providers and manually create non-standardized service compositions, which need some particular approach to compose and semantically discover a desired web service. Current practices are not precise and tend to focus on lightweight specifications of some parts of the OWL-S and embed them into syntactic descriptions (SOAP artifacts and OWL language). It is necessary to have the ability to manage the use of both technologies. This paper presents an implementation of the ontology OWL-S that describes a Brazilian Aeronautical Web Service Registry, which makes it able to publish, advertise, make multi-criteria semantic discovery aligned with the ideas of the System Wide Information Management (SWIM) Program, and invoke web services within the Air Traffic Management context. The proposal’s best finding is a generic approach to describe semantic web services. The paper also presents a set of functional requirements to guide the ontology development and to compare them to the results to validate the implementation of the OWL-S Ontology.

Keywords: Aeronautical Web Services, OWL-S, Semantic Web Services Discovery, Ontologies.

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843 The Ecological Footprint of Tourism in Jalapão/TO/Brazil

Authors: Mary L. G. S. Senna, Afonso R. Aquino

Abstract:

The development of tourism causes negative impacts on the environment. It is in this context, through the Ecological Footprint (EF) method that this study aimed to characterize the impacts of ecotourism on the community of Mateiros, Jalapão, Brazil. The EF, which consisted in its original a method to construct a land use matrix, considering some major categories of human consumption such as food, housing, transportation, consumer goods and services, and six other categories from the main land use which are divided into the topics: land use, degraded environment, gardens, fertile land, pasture and forests protected by the government. The main objective of this index is to calculate the land area required for the production and maintenance of goods and services consumed by a community. The field research was conducted throughout the year of 2014 until July 2015. After the calculations of each category, these components were added according to the presented method in order to determine the annual EF of the tourism sector in Mateiros. The results show that the EF resulting from tourism in Mateiros is 2,194.22 hectares of land required for tourism activities in the region. The EF of tourism was considered high, nevertheless, if it is added the total of hectares needed annually for tourism activities, the result found would be 2,194.22 hectares needed to absorb the CO2 emissions generated in the region directly from the tourism sector.

Keywords: Sustainable tourism, tourism ecological footprint, Jalapão/TO/Brazil.

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842 Creative Art Practice in Response to Climate Change: How Art Transforms and Frames New Approaches to Speculative Ecological and Sustainable Futures

Authors: Wenwen Liu, Robert Burton, Simon McKeown

Abstract:

Climate change is seriously threatening human security and development, leading to global warming and economic, political, and social chaos. Many artists have created visual responses that challenge perceptions on climate change, actively guiding people to think about the climate issues and potential crises after urban industrialization and explore positive solutions. This project is an interdisciplinary and intertextual study where art practice is informed by culture, philosophy, psychology, ecology, and science. By correlating theory and artistic practice, it studies how art practice creates a visual way of understanding climate issues and uses art as a way of exploring speculative futures. In the context of practical-based research, arts-based practice as research and creative practice as interdisciplinary research are applied alternately to seek the original solution and new knowledge. Through creative art practice, this project has established visual ways of looking at climate change and has developed it into a model to generate more possibilities, an alternative social imagination. It not only encourages people to think and find a sustainable speculative future conducive to all species but also proves that people have the ability to realize positive futures.

Keywords: Climate change, creative practice as interdisciplinary research, arts-based practice as research, creative art practice, speculative future.

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