Search results for: Fractal Importance

Authors: Reza Mokhtari Malekabadi, Leila Jalalabadi, Zahra Kiyani Ghaleh No

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Today, systems of management and urban planning, attempt to reach more sustainable development through monitoring developments, urban development and development plans. Monitoring of changes in the urban places and sustainable urban development accounted a base for the realization of worthy goals urban sustainable development. The importance of women in environmental protection programs is high enough that in 21 agenda has been requested from all countries to allocate more shares to women in their policies. On the other hand, urban waste landfill has become one of the environmental concerns in modern cities. This research assumes that the impact of women on recycling, reduction and proper waste landfill is much more than men. For this reason, three districts; Yousef Abad, Heshmatieh & Nezam Abad are gauged through questionnaire and using the analytical research hypothesis model. This research will be categorized as functional research. The results have shown that noticing the power of women, their participation towards realization of the development objectives and programs can be used in solving their problems.

Keywords: Citizens (Urban), Environmental, Sustainability, Solid waste, Tehran.

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Authors: M. Al-hawari, H. AL–Yamani, B. Izwawa

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Recognizing the increasing importance of using the Internet to conduct business, this paper looks at some related matters associated with small businesses making a decision of whether or not to have a Website and go online. Small businesses in Saudi Arabia struggle to have this decision. For organizations, to fully go online, conduct business and provide online information services, they need to connect their database to the Web. Some issues related to doing that might be beyond the capabilities of most small businesses in Saudi Arabia, such as Website management, technical issues and security concerns. Here we focus on a small business firm in Saudi Arabia (Case Study), discussing the issues related to going online decision and the firm's options of what to do and how to do it. The paper suggested some valuable solutions of connecting databases to the Web. It also discusses some of the important issues related to online information services and e-commerce, mainly Web hosting options and security issues.

Keywords: E-Commerce, Saudi Arabia, Small business, Webdatabase connection, Web hosting, World Wide Web (Web).

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Authors: M. Zaitoun, S. Cumming, A. Purcell

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This study aims to determine if audiologists' experience characteristics in ABR (Auditory Brainstem Response) reading is associated with their performance in interpreting ABR results. Fifteen ABR traces with varying degrees of hearing level were presented twice, making a total of 30. Audiologists were asked to determine the hearing threshold for each of the cases after completing a brief survey regarding their experience and training in ABR administration. Sixty-one audiologists completed all tasks. Correlations between audiologists’ performance measures and experience variables suggested significant associations (p < 0.05) between training period in ABR testing and audiologists’ performance in terms of both sensitivity and accuracy. In addition, the number of years conducting ABR testing correlated with specificity. No other correlations approached significance. While there are relatively few significant correlations between ABR performance and experience, accuracy in ABR reading is associated with audiologists’ length of experience and period of training. To improve audiologists’ performance in reading ABR results, an emphasis on the importance of training should be raised and standardized levels and period for audiologists training in ABR testing should also be set.

Keywords: ABR, audiology, performance, training, experience.

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Authors: Rafik Medjoudj, Rabah Medjoudj, D. Aissani

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The electrical substation components are often subject to degradation due to over-voltage or over-current, caused by a short circuit or a lightning. A particular interest is given to the circuit breaker, regarding the importance of its function and its dangerous failure. This component degrades gradually due to the use, and it is also subject to the shock process resulted from the stress of isolating the fault when a short circuit occurs in the system. In this paper, based on failure mechanisms developments, the wear out of the circuit breaker contacts is modeled. The aim of this work is to evaluate its reliability and consequently its residual lifetime. The shock process is based on two random variables such as: the arrival of shocks and their magnitudes. The arrival of shocks was modeled using homogeneous Poisson process (HPP). By simulation, the dates of short-circuit arrivals were generated accompanied with their magnitudes. The same principle of simulation is applied to the amount of cumulative wear out contacts. The objective reached is to find the formulation of the wear function depending on the number of solicitations of the circuit breaker.

Keywords: reliability, short-circuit, models of shocks.

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Authors: Manal O. Alothman, Judy. Robertson

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Teachers can play a huge role in encouraging students to use computers and can affect students’ attitudes towards computers. So understanding teachers’ beliefs and their use of computers is an important way to create effective motivational systems for teachers to use computers in the classroom in an effective way. A qualitative study (6 focus group) was carried out among Saudi High school teachers, both male and female, to examine their attitudes towards computers and to find out their computer skills and usage. The study showed a gender differences in that females were less likely to attend computer workshops, females also had less computer skills, and they have more negative attitudes towards computers than males. Also the study found that low computer skills in the classroom made students unlikely to have the lessons presented using computers. Furthermore, the study found some factors that effected teachers’ attitudes towards computers. These factors were computer experience and confidence as much having skills and good experience in computer use, the role and importance of computers had become in their life and in teaching as well.

Keywords: Attitude, Education, Student, Teacher, Technology.

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Authors: M. Fems Kurotimi, Agada Franklin, Godsave Aladei, Opigo Helen

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Within the last 30 years, entrepreneurship education (EE) has continued to gain massive interest both in the field of research and among policy makers. This surge in interest can be attributed to the perceived importance EE plays in the equipping of potential entrepreneurs and as a 21^st century strategy to foster economic growth and development. This paper sets out to ascertain the correlation between EE and economic growth and development. A desk research approach was adopted where a multiplicity of literatures in the field were studied intensely. The findings reveal that indeed EE has a positive effect on entrepreneurship engagement thereby fostering economic growth and development. However, some research studies reported the contrary. That although EE may be able to equip potential entrepreneurs with requisite entrepreneurial skills and competencies, it will only be successful in producing entrepreneurs if they are internally driven to become entrepreneurs, because we cannot make people what they are not. The findings also reveal that countries that adopted EE early have more innovations inspired by entrepreneurs and are more developed than those that only recently adopted EE as a viable tool for entrepreneurship and economic development.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education, economic development, economic growth, sustainable development.

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Authors: Sally A. Brown

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Over the last 30 years, researchers have developed models or frameworks to provide a more structured understanding of the reading comprehension process. Cognitive information processing models and social cognitive theories both provide frameworks to inform reading comprehension instruction. The purpose of this paper is to (a) provide an overview of the historical development of reading comprehension theory, (b) review the literature framed by cognitive information processing, social cognitive, and integrated reading comprehension theories, and (c) demonstrate how these frameworks inform instruction. As integrated models of reading can guide the interpretation of various factors related to student learning, an integrated framework designed by the researcher will be presented. Results indicated that features of cognitive processing and social cognitivism theory—represented in the integrated framework—highlight the importance of the role of the teacher. This model can aide teachers in not only improving reading comprehension instruction but in identifying areas of challenge for students.

Keywords: Explicit instruction, integrated models of reading comprehension, reading comprehension, teacher’s role.

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Authors: S. Talabgaew, V. Laemlaksakul

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A new generation product made from bamboo strips, known as laminated bamboo, has gained importance. The objective of this research was to experiment the effect of three factors on the mechanical property of laminated bamboo. The interested factors for experimental design were (A) four bamboo species, namely Bambusa blumeana Schultes (Pai See Suk), Dendrocalamus asper Backer (Pai Tong), Dendrocalamus hamiltonii Nees (Pai Hok) and Dendrocalamus sericeus Munro (Pai Sang Mon), (B) two types of glue adhesive, polyvinyl acetate emulsion (PVAC) fortified with urea-formaldehyde (UF) and urea-formaldehyde (UF) to make parallel-oriented bamboo strips laminates and (C) glue weight per strip area, 150 g/m2 and 190 g/m2. Experimental results showed that Dendrocalamus asper Backer (Pai Tong) and Dendrocalamus sericeus Munro (Pai Sang Mon) were best used for manufacturing due to their highest MOR and MOE. The amount of glue weight 150 g/m2 yielded higher MOR and MOE than the amount of glue weight 190 g/m2. At the conclusion, the laminated bamboo manufacturers can benefit from this research in order to select right materials according to strength, cost and accessibility.

Keywords: Laminated Bamboo, Mechanical Property, 3-WayANOVA.

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Authors: Mohamed A. Tantawy, Nourelhoda A. Hussein, Moataz A. Mahrous

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New planning and city design theories are continuously debated and optimized for seeking efficiency and adequacy in economic and life quality aspects. Here, we examine the children-city relationship, to reflect on how modern and traditional cities affect the social climate. We adopt children as a proper caliber for urbanism, as for their very young age, they are independent and attached to family. Their fragility offers a chance to gauge how various urban settings directly affect their feeling of safety, containment, and their perception of belonging for home territory. The importance of street play for the child development process is discussed thoroughly. The authority they have on their play (when and what to play) pushes us to our conclusion. A mediocre built environment characterized by spontaneity and human-scale semi-private urban spaces, is irreplaceable by a perfectly designed far away playgrounds. Street play has a huge role in empowering children for a gradual engagement with grown-ups’ urban flow.

Keywords: Child's psychology, social activity, street play, urban fabric.

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Authors: A. Golmohammadi, B. Jahandideh

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One of the determinants of a firm-s prosperity is the customers- perceived service quality and satisfaction. While service quality is wide in scope, and consists of various dimensions, there may be differences in the relative importance of these dimensions in affecting customers- overall satisfaction of service quality. Identifying the relative rank of different dimensions of service quality is very important in that it can help managers to find out which service dimensions have a greater effect on customers- overall satisfaction. Such an insight will consequently lead to more effective resource allocation which will finally end in higher levels of customer satisfaction. This issue –despite its criticality- has not received enough attention so far. Therefore, using a sample of 240 bank customers in Iran, an artificial neural network is developed to address this gap in the literature. As customers- evaluation of service quality is a subjective process, artificial neural networks –as a brain metaphor- may appear to have a potentiality to model such a complicated process. Proposing a neural network which is able to predict the customers- overall satisfaction of service quality with a promising level of accuracy is the first contribution of this study. In addition, prioritizing the service quality dimensions in affecting customers- overall satisfaction –by using sensitivity analysis of neural network- is the second important finding of this paper.

Keywords: service quality, customer satisfaction, relativeimportance, artificial neural network.

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Authors: H. Ashrafi, S. Ebrahimi, H. Kamalzadeh

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With the development of business competition, it is important for healthcare providers to improve their service qualities. In order to improve service quality of a clinic, four important dimensions are defined: tangibles, responsiveness, empathy, and reliability. Moreover, there are several service stages in hospitals such as financial screening and examination. One of the most challenging limitations for improving service quality is budget which impressively affects the service quality. In this paper, we present an approach to address budget uncertainty and provide guidelines for service resource allocation. In this paper, a service quality improvement approach is proposed which can be adopted to multistage service processes to improve service quality, while controlling the costs. A multi-objective function based on the importance of each area and dimension is defined to link operational variables to service quality dimensions. The results demonstrate that our approach is not ultra-conservative and it shows the actual condition very well. Moreover, it is shown that different strategies can affect the number of employees in different stages.

Keywords: Service quality assessment, healthcare resource allocation, robust optimization, budget uncertainty.

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Authors: Inas S. Khayal, Weiping Zhou, Jonathan Skinner

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Healthcare delivery systems around the world are in crisis. The need to improve health outcomes while decreasing healthcare costs have led to an imminent call to action to transform the healthcare delivery system. While Bioinformatics and Biomedical Engineering have primarily focused on biological level data and biomedical technology, there is clear evidence of the importance of the delivery of care on patient outcomes. Classic singular decomposition approaches from reductionist science are not capable of explaining complex systems. Approaches and methods from systems science and systems engineering are utilized to structure healthcare delivery system data. Specifically, systems architecture is used to develop a multi-scale and multi-dimensional characterization of the healthcare delivery system, defined here as the Healthcare Delivery System Knowledge Base. This paper is the first to contribute a new method of structuring and visualizing a multi-dimensional and multi-scale healthcare delivery system using systems architecture in order to better understand healthcare delivery.

Keywords: Health informatics, systems thinking, systems architecture, healthcare delivery system, data analytics.

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Authors: Zohreh Salavatizadeh, Feridoun NahidiAzar, Sara Salavatizadeh, Seyyed Hossein Salehi, Ahadollah Azami

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Even though so many efforts have been taken to renovate and renew the architecture of Miyaneh villages in cold and dry regions of Iran-s northwest, these efforts failed due to lack of significant study and ignoring the past and sustainable history of those villages. Considering the overpopulation of Iran-s villages as well as the importance in preventing their immigration to cities, recognizing village architecture and its construction technology is of great significance to attain sustainable residence in villages. As the only vertical surface in the space, wall possesses its unique special characteristics, and it is also a very important architectural element able to provide the immunity and comfort space for the residents. This article analyzes the characteristics of this vertical element, main types of adobe and stone walls, locally constructed technologies, implementation, the elements forming the walls in the frame of village house typology of Miyaneh, which has the most villages in East Azerbaijan, based on sustainable architectural construction materials of walls.

Keywords: Typology, Sustainable Construction, Wall Architecture

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Authors: Amir Ikram, Qin Su, Muhammad Fiaz, Muhammad Waqas Shabbir

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Women entrepreneurship witnessed a healthy rise in the last decade or so, and the scenario in Pakistan is not different. However female leaders are facing various, cultural, career oriented, and professional challenges. The study investigates the impact of social and industry-specific challenges on female entrepreneurship; social challenges was evaluated in terms of culture, and industry-specific challenges was measured in terms of team management and career growth. Purposive sampling was employed to collect data from 75 multicultural organizations operating in the culturally diverse and historic city of Lahore, Pakistan. Cronbach’s alpha was conducted to endorse the reliability of survey questionnaire, while correlation and regression analysis were used to test hypotheses. Industry-specific challenges were found to be more significant as compared to cultural factors. The paper also highlights the importance of female entrepreneurship for emerging economies, and suggests that bringing women to mainstream professions can lead to economic success.

Keywords: Cultural challenges, emerging economy, female entrepreneurship, leadership.

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Authors: Toshihiko Takemura, Makoto Osajima, Masatoshi Kawano

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This paper includes a positive analysis to quantitatively grasp the relationship among vulnerability, information security incidents, and the countermeasures by using data based on a 2007 questionnaire survey for Japanese ISPs (Internet Service Providers). To grasp the relationships, logistic regression analysis is used. The results clarify that there are relationships between information security incidents and the countermeasures. Concretely, there is a positive relationship between information security incidents and the number of information security systems introduced as well as a negative relationship between information security incidents and information security education. It is also pointed out that (especially, local) ISPs do not execute efficient information security countermeasures/ investment concerned with systems, and it is suggested that they should positively execute information security education. In addition, to further heighten the information security level of Japanese telecommunication infrastructure, the necessity and importance of the government to implement policy to support the countermeasures of ISPs is insisted.

Keywords: Information security countermeasures, information security incidents, internet service providers, positive analysis

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Authors: Milena M. Melo, Jane M. Santos, Severine Frere, Valderio A. Reisen, Neyval C. Reis Jr., Maria de Fátima S. Leite

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Although there had been a many studies that shows the impact of air pollution on physical health, comparatively less was known of human behavioral responses and annoyance impacts. Annoyance caused by air pollution is a public health problem because it can be an ambient stressor causing stress and disease and can affect quality of life. The objective of this work is to evaluate the annoyance caused by air pollution in two different industrialized urban areas, Dunkirk (France) and Vitoria (Brazil). The populations of these cities often report feeling annoyed by dust. Surveys were conducted, and the collected data were analyzed using statistical analyses. The results show that sociodemographic variables, importance of air quality, perceived industrial risk, perceived air pollution and occurrence of health problems play important roles in the perceived annoyance. These results show the existence of a common problem in geographically distant areas and allow stakeholders to develop prevention strategies.

Keywords: Air pollution, annoyance, industrial risks, perception of pollution, public health, settled dust.

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Authors: N. Chayaopas, W. Assawinchaichote

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In order to maximize energy capturing from wind energy, controlling the doubly fed induction generator to have optimal power from the wind, generator speed and output electrical power control in wind energy system have a great importance due to the nonlinear behavior of wind velocities. In this paper purposes the design of a control scheme is developed for power control of wind energy system via H∞ fuzzy integral controller. Firstly, the nonlinear system is represented in term of a TS fuzzy control design via linear matrix inequality approach to find the optimal controller to have an H∞ performance are derived. The proposed control method extract the maximum energy from the wind and overcome the nonlinearity and disturbances problems of wind energy system which give good tracking performance and high efficiency power output of the DFIG.

Keywords: H∞ fuzzy integral control, linear matrix inequality, wind energy system, doubly fed induction generator (DFIG).

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Authors: Anas M. Fares, A. Touqan

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A common approach in resisting lateral forces is the use of reinforced concrete shear walls in buildings. These walls represent the main elements to resist the lateral forces due to their large strength and stiffness. However, such walls may contain many openings due to functional requirements, and this may largely affect the overall lateral stiffness of them. It is thus of prime importance to quantify the effect of openings on the dynamic performance of the shear walls. SAP2000 structural analysis program is used as a main source after verifying the results. This study is made by using linear elastic analysis. The results are compared to ASCE7-16 code empirical equations for estimating the fundamental period of shear wall structures. Finally, statistical regression is used to fit an equation for estimating the increase in the fundamental period of shear-walled regular structures due to windows openings in the walls.

Keywords: Concrete, earthquake-resistant design, finite element, fundamental period, lateral stiffness, linear analysis, modal analysis, rayleigh, SAP2000, shear wall, ASCE7-16.

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Authors: Brian J. Thomas

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Recent changes in food retailing structure have led to the development of large supercenters in suburban areas of the United States. These changes have led some authors to suggest that there are food deserts in some urban areas, where food is difficult to access, especially for disadvantaged consumers. This study tests the food desert hypothesis by comparing the distance from food retailers to food secure and food insecure households in one urban, Midwest neighborhood. This study utilizes GIS to compare household survey respondent locations against the location of various types of area food retailers. Results of this study indicate no apparent difference between food secure and insecure households in the reported importance of distance on the decision to shop at various retailers. However, there were differences in the spatial relationship between households and retailers. Food insecure households tended to be located slightly farther from large food retailers and slightly closer to convenience stores. Furthermore, food insecure households reported traveling slightly farther to their primary food retailer. The differences between the two groups was, however, relatively small.

Keywords: Food desert, food retailer, food security, sociology.

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Authors: B. Käfer, V. K. Bheemineni, H. Lammer, M. Kotnik, F. O. Riemelmoser

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Axial compression tests are performed on circular tubes made of Aluminum EN AW 6060 (AlMgSi0.5 alloy) in T66 state. All the received tubes have the uniform outer diameter of 40mm and thickness of 1.5mm. Two different lengths 100mm and 200mm are used in the analysis. After performing compression tests on the uniform tube, important crashworthy parameters like peak force, average force, crush efficiency and energy absorption are measured. The present paper has given importance to increase the percentage of crush efficiency without decreasing the value energy absorption of a tube, so a circumferential notch was introduced on the top section of the tube. The effects of position and cut-out lengths of a circumferential notch on the crush efficiency are well explained with relative deformation modes and force-displacement curves. The numerical simulations were carried on the software tool ANSYS/LS-DYNA. It is seen that the numerical results are reasonably good in agreement with the experimental results. 

Keywords: Crash box, Notch triggering, Energy absorption, FEM simulation.

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Authors: Gizem Kodak

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The Strait of Çanakkale (Dardanelles), together with the Strait of Istanbul and the Sea of Marmara, form the Turkish Straits System. In other words, the Strait of Çanakkale is the southern gate of the system that connects the Black Sea countries with the other countries of the world. Due to the heavy maritime traffic, it is important to scientifically examine the accident characteristics in the region. In particular, the results indicated by the descriptive statistics are of critical importance in order to strengthen the safety of navigation. At this point, exploratory data analysis offers strategic outputs in terms of defining the problem and knowing the strengths and weaknesses against possible accident risk. The study aims to determine the accident characteristics in the Strait of Çanakkale with temporal and spatial analysis of historical data, using Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) as the research method. The study's results will reveal the general characteristics of maritime accidents in the region and form the infrastructure for future studies. Therefore, the text provides a clear description of the research goals and methodology, and the study's contributions are well-defined.

Keywords: Maritime Accidents, EDA, Strait of Çanakkale, navigational safety.

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Authors: Dimitrios J. Dimitriou, Maria F. Sartzetaki

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Transport infrastructures are high-cost, long-term investments that serve as vital foundations for the operation of a region or nation and are essential to a country’s or business’s economic development and prosperity, by improving well-being and generating jobs and income. The development of appropriate financing options is of key importance in the decision making process in order develop viable transport infrastructures. The development of transport infrastructure has increasingly been shifting toward alternative methods of project financing such as Public Private Partnership (PPPs) and hybrid forms. In this paper, a methodological decision-making framework based on the evaluation of the financial viability of transportation infrastructure for different financial schemes is presented. The framework leads to an assessment of the financial viability which can be achieved by performing various financing scenarios analyses. To illustrate the application of the proposed methodology, a case study of rail transport infrastructure financing scenario analysis in Greece is developed.

Keywords: Rail transport infrastructure; financial viability, scenario analysis, rail project feasibility.

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Authors: B. S. Raghavendra, D. Narayana Dutt

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Many recent electrophysiological studies have revealed the importance of investigating meditation state in order to achieve an increased understanding of autonomous control of cardiovascular functions. In this paper, we characterize heart rate variability (HRV) time series acquired during meditation using nonlinear dynamical parameters. We have computed minimum embedding dimension (MED), correlation dimension (CD), largest Lyapunov exponent (LLE), and nonlinearity scores (NLS) from HRV time series of eight Chi and four Kundalini meditation practitioners. The pre-meditation state has been used as a baseline (control) state to compare the estimated parameters. The chaotic nature of HRV during both pre-meditation and meditation is confirmed by MED. The meditation state showed a significant decrease in the value of CD and increase in the value of LLE of HRV, in comparison with premeditation state, indicating a less complex and less predictable nature of HRV. In addition, it was shown that the HRV of meditation state is having highest NLS than pre-meditation state. The study indicated highly nonlinear dynamic nature of cardiac states as revealed by HRV during meditation state, rather considering it as a quiescent state.

Keywords: Correlation dimension, Embedding dimension, Heartrate variability, Largest Lyapunov exponent, Meditation, Nonlinearity score.

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Authors: Teryima Oralu, Babatunde Kasim Oladele

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This paper looks at the management and funding of education in Nigeria. The concept of management and administration has been concisely defined. Also the historical background of educational management in Nigeria has been discussed alongside the management of primary education, secondary education and tertiary education in Nigeria. Furthermore, the funding of education has also been concisely discussed in this paper alongside the various sources of funds available to education in Nigeria. The sources include government grant, school fees, external aids, school revenue yielding businesses and so on. The budgetary allocation of Nigeria to education from 1999 to 2013 was also highlighted in this in paper and it was discovered that the lowest allocation was in 1999 with 4.46% while the highest allocation was in 2006 with 10.43%. It is also of note that, Nigeria is still yet to meet the recommendation of UNESCO of 26% budgetary allocation to education by developing countries. Recommendations have been drawn that the government should increase budgetary allocation to this sector in a consistent manner because of its importance to the national economy, hoping that with proper monitoring of fund, it would contribute more significantly to the development of the country. An effective utilization of such funds is also advocated for greater achievements. All organs of the government should exhibit good corporate governance and transparency and so on.

Keywords: Education, funding, management, Nigeria.

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Authors: Ashiquer Rahman

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The paper focuses on the importance of the knowledge economy and society, emphasizing the significance of the triangle issues (Innovation, Sustainability, and Higher Education) for building a sustainable campus at the university level and preparing students to face the upcoming sustainability challenges in the competitive and sustainable world. Within a framework of the knowledge economy and society, the paper discusses the significance of sustainable campus, triangle issues and potential action plan for the university level. It makes mention of the emergence of a knowledge-based economy and society as well as the necessity of combining innovation, sustainability, and education to create a sustainable campus at the university level. The paper outlines nine significant issues or challenges related to a sustainable campus that have been emphasized, and cross-linked with each other. Optimistically, it will be a milestone in higher education, a pathway to meet the imminent sustainable challenges of the completive world and be able to manage the knowledge economy and societal system

Keywords: Triangle issues, sustainable campus, higher education, knowledge economy, knowledge society.

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Authors: Noriyoshi Hosoya, Kayoko Yamamoto

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This study, focusing on the importance of encouraging outdoor activities for children, aims to propose and implement a Web-GIS based outdoor education program for elementary schools, which will then be evaluated by users. Specifically, for the purpose of improved outdoor activities in the elementary school education, the outdoor education program, with chiefly using the Web-GIS that provides a good information provision and sharing tool, is proposed and implemented before being evaluated by users. Conclusions of the study boil down to: (1) An eight-staged outdoor education program based on the Web-GIS was proposed for a “second school" of an elementary school that was then implemented before being evaluated by users (teachers, instructors, students, and their parents). (2) The program generally received a good evaluation, while a lot of students and their parents evaluated negatively for the degree of discovery and for the degree of interest, respectively, in the questionnaire survey of students and their parents conducted after the “second school". The surveys clearly show that an issue to be solved, from the viewpoint of teachers in particular, is the establishment of the GIS that will easily represent teaching materials developed by teachers and of Web-GIS, and improved significance of the use of GIS and Web-GIS for their widespread.

Keywords: Elementary Schools, School Education, Outdooreducation, Web-GIS

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Authors: Giacomo Barbieri

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In soilless culture, the management of the nutrient solution is the most important aspect for crop growing. Fertigation dose, frequency and nutrient concentration must be planned with the objective of reaching an optimal crop growth by limiting the utilized resources and the associated costs. The definition of efficient fertigation strategies is a complex problem since fertigation requirements vary on the basis of different factors, and crops are sensitive to small variations on fertigation parameters. To the best of author knowledge, a small-scale test bench that is flexible for both nutrient solution preparation and precise irrigation is currently missing, limiting the investigations in standard practices for soilless culture. Starting from the analysis of the state of the art, this paper proposes a small-scale system that is potentially able to concurrently test different fertigation strategies. The system will be designed and implemented throughout a three year project started on August 2018. However, due to the importance of the topic within current challenges as food security and climate change, this work is spread considering that may inspire other universities and organizations.

Keywords: Soilless culture, fertigation, test bench, small-scale, automation.

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Authors: Jaime Muñoz, José Arcos, Oscar Bautista Federico Méndez

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The influence of a pulsatile electroosmotic flow (PEOF) at the rate of spread, or dispersivity, for a non-reactive solute released in a microcapillary with slippage at the boundary wall (modeled by the Navier-slip condition) is theoretically analyzed. Based on the flow velocity field developed under such conditions, the present study implements an analytical scheme of scaling known as the Theory of Homogenization, in order to obtain a mathematical expression for the dispersivity, valid at a large time scale where the initial transients have vanished and the solute spreads under the Taylor dispersion influence. Our results show the dispersivity is a function of a slip coefficient, the amplitude of the imposed electric field, the Debye length and the angular Reynolds number, highlighting the importance of the latter as an enhancement/detrimental factor on the dispersivity, which allows to promote the PEOF as a strong candidate for chemical species separation at lab-on-a-chip devices.

Keywords: Dispersivity, microcapillary, Navier-slip condition, pulsatile electroosmotic flow, Taylor dispersion, Theory of Homogenization.

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Authors: Cenk Akbiyik, Gonul Altin Akbiyik

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The main purpose of the study was to determine whether students- interpretation achievement differed with the use of various multimedia presentation types. Four groups of students, text only (T), audio only (A), text and audio (TA), text and image (TI), were arranged and they were presented the same story via different types of multimedia presentations. Inference achievement was measured by a critical thinking inference test. Higher mean scores for the TA group compared to the other three groups were found. Also when compared pairwise, interpretation achievement of the TA group differed significantly from scores of the T and TI groups. These differences were interpreted with the increased cognitive load. Increased cognitive load for the TA group may have invited students to put more effort into comprehending the text, thus resulting in better test scores. Findings of the study can be seen as a sign of the importance of learning situations and learning outcomes in multimedia-supported learning environments and may have practical benefits for instructional designers.

Keywords: Multimedia, cognitive multimedia, dual coding, cognitive load, critical thinking.

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Authors: Kati Kõrbe Kaare, Kristjan Kuhi, Ott Koppel

Abstract:

Transportation authorities need to provide the services and facilities that are critical to every country-s well-being and development. Management of the road network is becoming increasingly challenging as demands increase and resources are limited. Public sector institutions are integrating performance information into budgeting, managing and reporting via implementing performance measurement systems. In the face of growing challenges, performance measurement of road networks is attracting growing interest in many countries. The large scale of public investments makes the maintenance and development of road networks an area where such systems are an important assessment tool. Transportation agencies have been using performance measurement and modeling as part of pavement and bridge management systems. Recently the focus has been on extending the process to applications in road construction and maintenance systems, operations and safety programs, and administrative structures and procedures. To eliminate failure and dysfunctional consequences the importance of obtaining objective data and implementing evaluation instrument where necessary is presented in this paper

Keywords: Key performance indicators, performance measurement system, evaluation, system architecture.

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