Search results for: human exposure limits

Authors: Isa Nakhai Kamal Abadi, Esmaeel Saberi, Ehsan Mirjafari

Abstract:

While financial institutions have faced difficulties over the years for a multitude of reasons, the major cause of serious banking problems continues to be directly related to lax credit standards for borrowers and counterparties, poor portfolio risk management, or a lack of attention to changes in economic or other circumstances that can lead to a deterioration in the credit standing of a bank's counterparties. Credit risk is most simply defined as the potential that a bank borrower or counterparty will fail to meet its obligations in accordance with agreed terms. The goal of credit risk management is to maximize a bank's risk-adjusted rate of return by maintaining credit risk exposure within acceptable parameters. Banks need to manage the credit risk inherent in the entire portfolio as well as the risk in individual credits or transactions. Banks should also consider the relationships between credit risk and other risks. The effective management of credit risk is a critical component of a comprehensive approach to risk management and essential to the long-term success of any banking organization. In this research we also study the relationship between credit risk indices and borrower-s timely payback in Karafarin bank.

Keywords: Financial Ratios; Spearman Test; Bank OperationsRisk

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Authors: Toshitaka Higashino, Naoki Wakamiya

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Human beings perform a task by perceiving information from outside, recognizing them, and responding them. There have been various attempts to analyze and understand internal processes behind the reaction to a given stimulus by conducting psychological experiments and analysis from multiple perspectives. Among these, we focused on Model Human Processor (MHP). However, it was built based on psychological experiments and thus the relation with brain activity was unclear so far. To verify the validity of the MHP and propose our model from a viewpoint of neuroscience, EEG (Electroencephalography) measurements are performed during experiments in this study. More specifically, first, experiments were conducted where Latin alphabet characters were used as visual stimuli. In addition to response time, ERPs (event-related potentials) such as N100 and P300 were measured by using EEG. By comparing cycle time predicted by the MHP and latency of ERPs, it was found that N100, related to perception of stimuli, appeared at the end of the perceptual processor. Furthermore, by conducting an additional experiment, it was revealed that P300, related to decision making, appeared during the response decision process, not at the end. Second, by experiments using Japanese Hiragana characters, i.e. Japan's own phonetic symbols, those findings were confirmed. Finally, Japanese Kanji characters were used as more complicated visual stimuli. A Kanji character usually has several readings and several meanings. Despite the difference, a reading-related task and a meaning-related task exhibited similar results, meaning that they involved similar information processing processes of the brain. Based on those results, our model was proposed which reflects response time and ERP latency. It consists of three processors: the perception processor from an input of a stimulus to appearance of N100, the cognitive processor from N100 to P300, and the decision-action processor from P300 to response. Using our model, an application system which reflects brain activity can be established.

Keywords: Brain activity, EEG, information processing model, model human processor.

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Authors: Muhammad Ijaz Khan, Samina Jalali, Beenish Shahid, S. A. Shami, Muhammad Ikramullah

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In the present study, the response of Nili Ravi buffalo oocytes to recombinant human follicle stimulating hormone (rhFSH) (Organon) on meiotic maturation in vitro was examined. Oocytes were matured in vitro in medium containing either 0 or 0.05 IU/ ml rhFSH and the stage of nuclear maturation recorded after 24 hours. The percentage of oocytes in the control group undergoing germinal vesicle breakdown (GVBD) observed after 24 hours of culture was 29 % whereas as in rhFSH group the percentage was 10 % were at this stage (P< 0.001).Thus in the presence of rhFSH, a significantly greater number of oocytes had progressed to the more advanced stages of nuclear maturation. Indeed, the maturation of GV (Germinal Vesicle) stage oocytes to the metaphase II (M II) stage after 24 hours was significantly (P< 0.0001) increased by the addition of rhFSH (82 % VS 47 %). The percentage of degenerated oocytes after 24 hours of culture was 24 % in control group, whereas in rhFSH group the percentage was 8 % after 24 hours. Degeneration of the oocytes after 24 hours was not significantly (P = 0. 9361) decreased.

Keywords: Buffalo, in vitro, oocytes, recombinant FSH.

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Authors: Eszter Tóth, Ervin Welker

Abstract:

Shadoo protein (Sho) was described in 2003 as the newest member of Prion protein superfamily [1]. Sho has similar structural motifs like prion protein (PrP) that is known for its central role in transmissible spongiform enchephalopathies. Although a great number of functions have been proposed, the exact physiological function of PrP is not known yet. Investigation of the function and localization of Sho may help us to understand the function of the Prion protein superfamily. Analyzing the subcellular localization of YFP-tagged forms of Sho, we detected the protein in the plasma membrane and in the nucleus of various cell lines. To reveal the localization of the endogenous protein we generated antibodies against Shadoo as well as employed commercially available anti-Shadoo antibodies: i) EG62 anti-mouse Shadoo antibody generated by Eurogentec Ltd.; ii) S-12 anti-human Shadoo antibody by Santa Cruz Biotechnology Inc.; iii) R-12 anti-mouse Shadoo antibody by Santa Cruz Biotechnology Inc.; iv) SPRN antibody against human Shadoo by Abgent Inc. We carried out immunocytochemistry on non-transfected HeLa, Zpl 2-1, Zw 3-5, GT1-1, GT1-7 and SHSY5Y cells as well as on YFP-Sho, Sho-YFP, and YFP-GPI transfected HeLa cells. Their specificity (in antibody-peptide competition assay) and co-localization (with the YFP signal) were assessed.

Keywords: Shadoo, prion protein, immunocytochemistry, antibody-peptide competition assay, antibody.

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Authors: Djalal Hamed

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The aim of this paper is to perform, by mean of the finite volume method, a numerical solution of the transient natural convection in a narrow rectangular channel between two vertical parallel Material Testing Reactor (MTR)-type fuel plates, imposed under a heat flux with a cosine shape to determine the margin of the nuclear core power at which the natural convection cooling mode can ensure a safe core cooling, where the cladding temperature should not reach a specific safety limits (90 °C). For this purpose, a computer program is developed to determine the principal parameters related to the nuclear core safety, such as the temperature distribution in the fuel plate and in the coolant (light water) as a function of the reactor core power. Throughout the obtained results, we noticed that the core power should not reach 400 kW, to ensure a safe passive residual heat removing from the nuclear core by the upward natural convection cooling mode.

Keywords: Buoyancy force, friction force, friction factor, finite volume method, transient natural convection, thermal hydraulic analysis, vertical heated rectangular channel.

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Authors: Mukesh Kumar Shah, Tushar Gupta

Abstract:

An Upgraded Cuckoo Search Algorithm is proposed here to solve optimization problems based on the improvements made in the earlier versions of Cuckoo Search Algorithm. Short comings of the earlier versions like slow convergence, trap in local optima improved in the proposed version by random initialization of solution by suggesting an Improved Lambda Iteration Relaxation method, Random Gaussian Distribution Walk to improve local search and further proposing Greedy Selection to accelerate to optimized solution quickly and by “Study Nearby Strategy” to improve global search performance by avoiding trapping to local optima. It is further proposed to generate better solution by Crossover Operation. The proposed strategy used in algorithm shows superiority in terms of high convergence speed over several classical algorithms. Three standard algorithms were tested on a 6-generator standard test system and the results are presented which clearly demonstrate its superiority over other established algorithms. The algorithm is also capable of handling higher unit systems.

Keywords: Economic dispatch, Gaussian selection operator, prohibited operating zones, ramp rate limits, upgraded cuckoo search.

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Authors: Corneliu Sofronie, Roxana Zubcov

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Cognitive Science appeared about 40 years ago, subsequent to the challenge of the Artificial Intelligence, as common territory for several scientific disciplines such as: IT, mathematics, psychology, neurology, philosophy, sociology, and linguistics. The new born science was justified by the complexity of the problems related to the human knowledge on one hand, and on the other by the fact that none of the above mentioned sciences could explain alone the mental phenomena. Based on the data supplied by the experimental sciences such as psychology or neurology, models of the human mind operation are built in the cognition science. These models are implemented in computer programs and/or electronic circuits (specific to the artificial intelligence) – cognitive systems – whose competences and performances are compared to the human ones, leading to the psychology and neurology data reinterpretation, respectively to the construction of new models. During these processes if psychology provides the experimental basis, philosophy and mathematics provides the abstraction level utterly necessary for the intermission of the mentioned sciences. The ongoing general problematic of the cognitive approach provides two important types of approach: the computational one, starting from the idea that the mental phenomenon can be reduced to 1 and 0 type calculus operations, and the connection one that considers the thinking products as being a result of the interaction between all the composing (included) systems. In the field of psychology measurements in the computational register use classical inquiries and psychometrical tests, generally based on calculus methods. Deeming things from both sides that are representing the cognitive science, we can notice a gap in psychological product measurement possibilities, regarded from the connectionist perspective, that requires the unitary understanding of the quality – quantity whole. In such approach measurement by calculus proves to be inefficient. Our researches, deployed for longer than 20 years, lead to the conclusion that measuring by forms properly fits to the connectionism laws and principles.

Keywords: complementary methodology, connection approach, networks without scaling, quantum psychology.

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Authors: Nhon Do, Hien Nguyen

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Nowadays there are many methods for representing knowledge such as semantic network, neural network, and conceptual graphs. Nonetheless, these methods are not sufficiently efficient when applied to perform and deduce on knowledge domains about supporting in general education such as algebra, analysis or plane geometry. This leads to the introduction of computational network which is a useful tool for representation knowledge base, especially for computational knowledge, especially knowledge domain about general education. However, when dealing with a practical problem, we often do not immediately find a new solution, but we search related problems which have been solved before and then proposing an appropriate solution for the problem. Besides that, when finding related problems, we have to determine whether the result of them can be used to solve the practical problem or not. In this paper, the extension model of computational network has been presented. In this model, Sample Problems, which are related problems, will be used like the experience of human about practical problem, simulate the way of human thinking, and give the good solution for the practical problem faster and more effectively. This extension model is applied to construct an automatic system for solving algebraic problems in middle school.

Keywords: educational software, artificial intelligence, knowledge base system, knowledge representation.

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Authors: Disciglio G., Gatta G., Libutti A., Tarantino A., Frabboni L., Tarantino E.

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Results of a field study carried out at Trinitapoli (Puglia region, southern Italy) on the irrigation of an artichoke crop with three types of water (secondary-treated wastewater, SW; tertiary-treated wastewater, TW; and freshwater, FW) are reported. Physical, chemical and microbiological analyses were performed on the irrigation water, and on soil and yield samples.

The levels of most of the chemical parameters, such as electrical conductivity, total suspended solids, Na⁺, Ca²⁺, Mg⁺², K⁺, sodium adsorption ratio, chemical oxygen demand, biological oxygen demand over 5 days, NO₃ –N, total N, CO₃², HCO₃, phenols and chlorides of the applied irrigation water were significantly higher in SW compared to GW and TW. No differences were found for Mg²⁺, PO₄-P, K⁺ only between SW and TW. Although the chemical parameters of the three irrigation water sources were different, few effects on the soil were observed. Even though monitoring of Escherichia coli showed high SW levels, which were above the limits allowed under Italian law (DM 152/2006), contamination of the soil and the marketable yield were never observed. Moreover, no Salmonella spp. were detected in these irrigation waters; consequently, they were absent in the plants. Finally, the data on the quantitative-qualitative parameters of the artichoke yield with the various treatments show no significant differences between the three irrigation water sources. Therefore, if adequately treated, municipal wastewater can be used for irrigation and represents a sound alternative to conventional water resources.

Keywords: Artichoke, soil chemical characteristics, fecal indicators, treated municipal wastewater, water recycling.

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Authors: Violina R. Angelova, Radka V. Ivanova, Givko M. Todorov, Krasimir I. Ivanov

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A field study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of Salvia sclarea L. for phytoremediation of contaminated soils. The experiment was performed on an agricultural fields contaminated by the Non-Ferrous-Metal Works near Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The content of heavy metals in different parts of Salvia sclarea L. (roots, stems, leaves and inflorescences) was determined by ICP. The essential oil of the Salvia sclarea L. was obtained by steam distillation in laboratory conditions and was analyzed for heavy metals and its chemical composition was determined. Salvia sclarea L. is a plant which is tolerant to heavy metals and can be grown on contaminated soils. Based on the obtained results and using the most common criteria, Salvia sclarea L. can be classified as Pb hyperaccumulator and Cd and Zn accumulators, therefore, this plant has suitable potential for the phytoremediation of heavy metal contaminated soils. Favorable is also the fact that heavy metals do not influence the development of the Salvia sclarea L., as well as on the quality and quantity of the essential oil. For clary sage oil obtained from the processing of clary sage grown on highly contaminated soils, its key odour-determining ingredients meet the quality requirements of the European Pharmacopoeia and BS ISO 7609 regarding Bulgarian clary sage oil and/or have values that are close to the limits of these standards. The possibility of further industrial processing will make Salvia sclarea L. an economically interesting crop for farmers of phytoextraction technology.

Keywords: Clary sage, heavy metals, phytoremediation, polluted soils.

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Authors: M. Al Nur, M. S. Kaiser

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Corrosion behaviour of hypereutectic Al-19Si automotive alloy in different pH=1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13 environments was carried out using conventional gravimetric measurements and was complemented by resistivity, optical micrograph, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray analyzer (EDX) investigations. Gravimetric analysis confirmed that the highest corrosion rate is shown at pH 13 followed by pH 1. Minimum corrosion occurs in the pH range of 3.0 to 11 due to establishment of passive layer on the surface. The highest corrosion rate at pH 13 is due to the presence of sodium hydroxide in the solution which dissolves the surface oxide film at a steady rate. At pH 1, it can be attributed that the presence of aggressive chloride ions serves to pick up the damage of the passive films at localized regions. With varying exposure periods by both, the environment complies with the normal corrosion rate profile that is an initial steep rise followed by a nearly constant value of corrosion rate. Resistivity increases in case of pH 1 solution for the higher pit formation and decreases at pH 13 due to formation of thin film. The SEM image of corroded samples immersed in pH 1 solution clearly shows pores on the surface and in pH 13 solution, and the corrosion layer seems more compact and homogenous and not porous.

Keywords: Al-Si alloy, corrosion, pH, resistivity, SEM.

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Authors: T. Dubayova

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Slovak, as well as foreign authors, believe that the influence of non-cognitive factors on a student's academic success or failure is unquestionable. The aim of this paper is to establish a link between the mental vulnerability and coping strategies used by 4^th grade elementary school students in dealing with stressful situations and their academic performance, which was used as a simple quantitative indicator of academic success. The research sample consists of 320 students representing the standard population and 60 students with special education needs (SEN), who were assessed by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) by their teachers and the Children’s Coping Strategies Checklist (CCSC-R1) filled in by themselves. Students with SEN recorded an extraordinarily high frequency of mental vulnerability (34.5 %) than students representing the standard population (7 %). The poorest academic performance of students with SEN was associated with the avoidance behavior displayed during stressful situations. Students of the standard population did not demonstrate this association. Students with SEN are more likely to display mental health problems than students of the standard population. This may be caused by the accumulation of and frequent exposure to situations that they perceive as stressful.

Keywords: Coping, mental vulnerability, students with special education needs, academic performance, academic success.

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Authors: Manuel A. Alonso-Tarajano, Roberto Mosca, Patrick Aloy

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Protein kinases participate in a myriad of cellular processes of major biomedical interest. The in vivo substrate specificity of these enzymes is a process determined by several factors, and despite several years of research on the topic, is still far from being totally understood. In the present work, we have quantified the contributions to the kinase substrate specificity of i) the phosphorylation sites and their surrounding residues in the sequence and of ii) the association of kinases to adaptor or scaffold proteins. We have used position-specific scoring matrices (PSSMs), to represent the stretches of sequences phosphorylated by 93 families of kinases. We have found negative correlations between the number of sequences from which a PSSM is generated and the statistical significance and the performance of that PSSM. Using a subset of 22 statistically significant PSSMs, we have identified specificity determinant residues (SDRs) for 86% of the corresponding kinase families. Our results suggest that different SDRs can function as positive or negative elements of substrate recognition by the different families of kinases. Additionally, we have found that human proteins with known function as adaptors or scaffolds (kAS) tend to interact with a significantly large fraction of the substrates of the kinases to which they associate. Based on this characteristic we have identified a set of 279 potential adaptors/scaffolds (pAS) for human kinases, which is enriched in Pfam domains and functional terms tightly related to the proposed function. Moreover, our results show that for 74.6% of the kinase–pAS association found, the pAS colocalize with the substrates of the kinases they are associated to. Finally, we have found evidence suggesting that the association of kinases to adaptors and scaffolds, may contribute significantly to diminish the in vivo substrate crossed-specificity of protein kinases. In general, our results indicate the relevance of several SDRs for both the positive and negative selection of phosphorylation sites by kinase families and also suggest that the association of kinases to pAS proteins may be an important factor for the localization of the enzymes with their set of substrates.

Keywords: Kinase, phosphorylation, substrate specificity, adaptors, scaffolds, cellular colocalization.

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Authors: Mohsen Davarzani, Ehsan Lame, Mohammad Taghi Hassan Zadeh

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Language is considered as a powerful and outstanding feature of ethnicity. However, humiliating and prohibiting using human language is one the most heinous and brutal acts in the form of racism. In other words, racism can be a product of physiological humiliations and discrimination, such as skin color, and can also be resulted from ethnic humiliation and discrimination such as language, customs and so on. Ethnic and racial discrimination is one of the main problems of the world that minorities and occasionally the majority have suffered from. Nowadays, few states can be found in which all individuals and its citizens are of the same race and ethnicity, culture and language. In these countries, referred to as the multinational states, (eg, Iran, Switzerland, India, etc.), there are the communities and groups which have their own linguistic, cultural and historical characteristics. Characteristics of human rights issues, diversity of issues and plurality of meanings indicate that they appear in various aspects. The states are obliged to respect, as per national and international obligations, the rights of all citizens from different angles, especially different groups that require special attention in order of the particular aspects such as ethnicity, religious and political minorities, children, women, workers, unions and in case the states are in breach of any of these items, they are faced with challenges in local, regional or international fields.

Keywords: Law, language, minorities, ethnicity.

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Authors: Wen W. Zhang, Qian Chen

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Electron multiplying charge coupled devices (EMCCDs) have revolutionized the world of low light imaging by introducing on-chip multiplication gain based on the impact ionization effect in the silicon. They combine the sub-electron readout noise with high frame rates. Signal-to-noise Ratio (SNR) is an important performance parameter for low-light-level imaging systems. This work investigates the SNR performance of an EMCCD operated in Non-inverted Mode (NIMO) and Inverted Mode (IMO). The theory of noise characteristics and operation modes is presented. The results show that the SNR of is determined by dark current and clock induced charge at high gain level. The optimum SNR performance is provided by an EMCCD operated in NIMO in short exposure and strong cooling applications. In contrast, an IMO EMCCD is preferable.

Keywords: electron multiplying charge coupled devices, noise characteristics, operation modes, signal-to-noise ratioperformance

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Authors: Amaneh Javid, Shahin Ahmadian, Ali A. Saboury, Saeed Rezaei-Zarchi

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This study determines the effect of naked and heparinbased super-paramagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles on the human cancer cell lines of A2780. Doxorubicin was used as the anticancer drug, entrapped in the SPIO-NPs. This study aimed to decorate nanoparticles with heparin, a molecular ligand for 'active' targeting of cancerous cells and the application of modified-nanoparticles in cancer treatment. The nanoparticles containing the anticancer drug DOX were prepared by a solvent evaporation and emulsification cross-linking method. The physicochemical properties of the nanoparticles were characterized by various techniques, and uniform nanoparticles with an average particle size of 110±15 nm with high encapsulation efficiencies (EE) were obtained. Additionally, a sustained release of DOX from the SPIO-NPs was successful. Cytotoxicity tests showed that the SPIO-DOX-HP had higher cell toxicity than the individual HP and confocal microscopy analysis confirmed excellent cellular uptake efficiency. These results indicate that HP based SPIO-NPs have potential uses as anticancer drug carriers and also have an enhanced anticancer effect.

Keywords: Heparin, A2780 cells, ovarian cancer, nanoparticles, doxorubicin.

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Authors: M. Watanabe, T. Yamaguchi, M. Sasajima, Y. Kurosawa, Y. Koike

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Earphones and headphones, which are compact electro-acoustic transducers, tend to have a lot of acoustic absorption materials and porous materials known as dampers, which often have a large number of extremely small holes and narrow slits to inhibit the resonance of the vibrating system, because the air viscosity significantly affects the acoustic characteristics in such acoustic paths. In order to perform simulations using the finite element method (FEM), it is necessary to be aware of material characteristics such as the impedance and propagation constants of sound absorbing materials and porous materials. The transfer function is widely known as a measurement method for an acoustic tube with such physical properties, but literature describing the measurements at the upper limits of the audible range is yet to be found. The acoustic tube, which is a measurement instrument, must be made narrow, and the distance between the two sets of microphones must be shortened in order to take measurements of acoustic characteristics at higher frequencies. When such a tube is made narrow, however, the characteristic impedance has been observed to become lower than the impedance of air. This paper considers the cause of this phenomenon to be the effect of the air viscosity and describes an FEM analysis of an acoustic tube considering air viscosity to compare to the theoretical formula by including the effect of air viscosity in the theoretical formula for an acoustic tube.

Keywords: Acoustic tube, air viscosity, earphones, FEM, porous materials, sound absorbing materials, transfer function method.

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Authors: Mária Csernoch, Piroska Biró

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The legends about “user-friendly” and “easy-to-use” birotical tools (computer-related office tools) have been spreading and misleading end-users. This approach has led us to the extremely high number of incorrect documents, causing serious financial losses in the creating, modifying, and retrieving processes. Our research proved that there are at least two sources of this underachievement: (1) The lack of the definition of the correctly edited, formatted documents. Consequently, end-users do not know whether their methods and results are correct or not. They are not aware of their ignorance. They are so ignorant that their ignorance does not allow them to realize their lack of knowledge. (2) The end-users’ problem solving methods. We have found that in non-traditional programming environments end-users apply, almost exclusively, surface approach metacognitive methods to carry out their computer related activities, which are proved less effective than deep approach methods. Based on these findings we have developed deep approach methods which are based on and adapted from traditional programming languages. In this study, we focus on the most popular type of birotical documents, the text based documents. We have provided the definition of the correctly edited text, and based on this definition, adapted the debugging method known in programming. According to the method, before the realization of text editing, a thorough debugging of already existing texts and the categorization of errors are carried out. With this method in advance to real text editing users learn the requirements of text based documents and also of the correctly formatted text. The method has been proved much more effective than the previously applied surface approach methods. The advantages of the method are that the real text handling requires much less human and computer sources than clicking aimlessly in the GUI (Graphical User Interface), and the data retrieval is much more effective than from error-prone documents.

Keywords: Deep approach metacognitive methods, error-prone birotical documents, financial losses, human and computer resources.

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Authors: M. G. Cattaneo

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The non-effectiveness of certain codified human rights is particularly apparent with reference to the lack of access to essential drugs in developing countries, which represents a breach of the human right to receive adequate health assistance. This paper underlines the conflict and the legal contradictions between human rights, namely health rights, international Intellectual Property Rights, in particular patent law, as well as international trade law. The paper discusses the crucial links between R&D costs for innovation, patents and new medical drugs, with the goal of reformulating the hierarchies of priorities and of interests at stake in the international intellectual property (IP) law system. Different from what happens today, International patent law should be a legal instrument apt at rebalancing an axiological asymmetry between the (conflicting) needs at stake The core argument in the paper is the proposal of an alternative pathway, namely a feasible proposal for a patent law reform. IP laws tend to balance the benefits deriving from innovation with the costs of the provided monopoly, but since developing countries and industrialized countries are in completely different political and economic situations, it is necessary to (re)modulate such exchange according to the different needs. Based on this critical analysis, the paper puts forward a proposal, called Trading Time for Space (TTS), whereby a longer time for patent exclusive life in western countries (Time) is offered to the patent holder company, in exchange for the latter selling the medical drug at cost price in developing countries (Space). Accordingly, pharmaceutical companies should sell drugs in developing countries at the cost price, or alternatively grant a free license for the sale in such countries, without any royalties or fees. However, such social service shall be duly compensated. Therefore, the consideration for such a service shall be an extension of the temporal duration of the patent’s exclusive in the country of origin that will compensate the reduced profits caused by the supply at the price cost in developing countries.

Keywords: Global health, global justice, patent law reform, access to drugs.

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Authors: Sh. Ranjbar-Bahadori, N. Farhadifar, L. Mohammadyar

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Plant preparations from thyme and garlic have been shown to be effective acaricides against the poultry red mite, Dermanyssus gallinae. In a layer house with a history of D. gallinae problem, mites were detected in the monitoring traps for the first time and number of them was counted. Then, some rows of layer house was sprayed twice using a concentration of 0.21 mg/cm² thyme essential oil and 0.07 mg/cm² garlic juice and a similar row was used as an untreated control group. Red mite traps made of cardboard were used to assess the mite density during days 1 and 7 after treatment and always removed after 24 h. the collected mites were counted and the efficacy against all mite stages (larvae, nymphs and adults) was calculated. Results showed that on day 1 and 7 after the administration of garlic extract efficacy rate was 92.05% and 74.62%, respectively. Moreover, efficacy rate on day 1 and 7 was 89.4% and 95.37% when treatment was done with thyme essential oil. It is concluded that using garlic juice to control of D. gallinae is more effective on short time. But thyme essential oil has a long time effect in compare to garlic preparation.

Keywords: Dermanyssus gallinae, Essential oil, Garlic, Thyme, Efficacy.

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Authors: Pratoom Rekklang

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The purposes of this study are to study political information exposure, politicians- perceptions, political attitudes and political participations among people in Bangkok Metropolitan Area. The sample consisted of 420 which were selected by using accidental sampling method. Questionnaires were administered to all of the respondents to obtain the data for this research. T-test, one-way ANOVA and Pearson-s correlation coefficient were used to analyze the data. The findings are as follows: The difference in gender, education, income and occupation has significantly effect upon political information exposures. The difference in age, income has significantly effect upon politicians- perceptions. The difference in income has significantly effect upon political attitudes. The difference in gender, income and occupation has significantly effect upon political participations. There were a significantly relations between political information exposures, political attitudes, political participations and between politicians- perceptions, political attitudes and political participations.

Keywords: Political Information Exposures, Politicians' Perceptions, Political Attitudes, Political Participations.

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Authors: Dimitrios Ntardas, Alexandros Tzanetos, Georgios Dounias

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High Voltage Substations (HVS) are the intermediate step between production of power and successfully transmitting it to clients, making them one of the most important checkpoints in power grids. Nowadays - renewable resources and consequently distributed generation are growing fast, the construction of HVS is of high importance both in terms of quality and time completion so that new energy producers can quickly and safely intergrade in power grids. The resources needed, such as machines and workers, should be carefully allocated so that the construction of a HVS is completed on time, with the lowest possible cost (e.g. not spending additional cost that were not taken into consideration, because of project delays), but in the highest quality. In addition, there are milestones and several checkpoints to be precisely achieved during construction to ensure the cost and timeline control and to ensure that the percentage of governmental funding will be granted. The management of such a demanding project is a NP-hard problem that consists of prerequisite constraints and resource limits for each task of the project. In this work, a hybrid meta-heuristic method is implemented to solve this problem. Meta-heuristics have been proven to be quite useful when dealing with high-dimensional constraint optimization problems. Hybridization of them results in boost of their performance.

Keywords: High voltage substations, nature-inspired algorithms, project management, meta-heuristics.

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Authors: Randy Gomez, Keisuke Nakamura, Kazuhiro Nakadai

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Distant-talking voice-based HCI system suffers from performance degradation due to mismatch between the acoustic speech (runtime) and the acoustic model (training). Mismatch is caused by the change in the power of the speech signal as observed at the microphones. This change is greatly influenced by the change in distance, affecting speech dynamics inside the room before reaching the microphones. Moreover, as the speech signal is reflected, its acoustical characteristic is also altered by the room properties. In general, power mismatch due to distance is a complex problem. This paper presents a novel approach in dealing with distance-induced mismatch by intelligently sensing instantaneous voice power variation and compensating model parameters. First, the distant-talking speech signal is processed through microphone array processing, and the corresponding distance information is extracted. Distance-sensitive Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs), pre-trained to capture both speech power and room property are used to predict the optimal distance of the speech source. Consequently, pre-computed statistic priors corresponding to the optimal distance is selected to correct the statistics of the generic model which was frozen during training. Thus, model combinatorics are post-conditioned to match the power of instantaneous speech acoustics at runtime. This results to an improved likelihood in predicting the correct speech command at farther distances. We experiment using real data recorded inside two rooms. Experimental evaluation shows voice recognition performance using our method is more robust to the change in distance compared to the conventional approach. In our experiment, under the most acoustically challenging environment (i.e., Room 2: 2.5 meters), our method achieved 24.2% improvement in recognition performance against the best-performing conventional method.

Keywords: Human Machine Interaction, Human Computer Interaction, Voice Recognition, Acoustic Model Compensation, Acoustic Speech Enhancement.

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Authors: Marcel Chevalier, Léo Dupont, Sylvain Marié, Frédérique Roffet, Elena Stolyarova, William Templier, Costin Vasile

Abstract:

Industrial end users are currently facing an increasing need to reduce the risk of unexpected failures and optimize their maintenance. This calls for both short-term analysis and long-term ageing anticipation. At Schneider Electric, we tackle those two issues using both Machine Learning and First Principles models. Machine learning models are incrementally trained from normal data to predict expected values and detect statistically significant short-term deviations. Ageing models are constructed from breaking down physical systems into sub-assemblies, then determining relevant degradation modes and associating each one to the right kinetic law. Validating such anomaly detection and maintenance models is challenging, both because actual incident and ageing data are rare and distorted by human interventions, and incremental learning depends on human feedback. To overcome these difficulties, we propose to simulate physics, systems and humans – including asset maintenance operations – in order to validate the overall approaches in accelerated time and possibly choose between algorithmic alternatives.

Keywords: Degradation models, ageing, anomaly detection, soft sensor, incremental learning.

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Authors: S. Sharafi, G. Bassak Harouni, S. Torfi, H. Makenalizadeh, A. Sayahi

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The primary purpose of this article is an attempt to find the implication of globalization on education. Globalization has an important role as a process in the economical, political, cultural and technological dimensions in the life of the contemporary human being and has been affected by it. Education has its effects in this procedure and while influencing it through educating global citizens having universal human features and characteristics, has been influenced by this phenomenon too. Nowadays, the role of education is not just to develop in the students the knowledge and skills necessary for the new kinds of jobs. If education wants to help students be prepared of the new global society, it has to make them engaged productive and critical citizens for the global era, so that they can reflect about their roles as key actors in a dynamic often uneven, matrix of economic and cultural exchanges. If education wants to reinforce and raise the national identity, the value system and the children and teenagers, it should make them ready for living in the global era of this century. The used method in this research is documentary and analyzing the documents. Studies in this field show globalization has influences on the processes of the production, distribution and consuming of knowledge. The happening of this event in the information era has not only provide the necessary opportunities for the exchanges of education worldwide but also has privileges for the developing countries which enables them to strengthen educational bases of their society and have an important step toward their future.

Keywords: Globalization, Education, global erea

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Authors: Ghazaleh Monazami Tehrani, Reza Khani Jazani, Rosli Hashim , Ahmad Savari, Belin Tavakoly Sany, Parastoo Parivar, Zhamak Monazami Tehrani

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This study investigated the presence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the sediments of the Musa Bay (around the PETZONE coastal area) from Feb 2010 to Jun 2010. Concentrations of PAHs recorded in the Musa Bay sediments ranged from 537.89 to 26,659.06 ng/g dry weight with a mean value of 3990.74 ng/g. the highest concentration of PAHs was observed at station 4, which is located near the aromatic outlet of Imam Khomeini petrochemical company (station 4: BI-PC Aromatic effluent outlet) in which its concentration level was more than the NOAA sediment quality guideline value (ERL= 4022 ng/g dry weight). Owing to the concentration of PAHs in the study area, its concentration level was still meet the NOAA sediment quality guideline value (ERL: 4022 ng/g dry weight); however, according to the PELq factor, slightly adverse biological effects are associated with the exposure to PAHs levels in the study area (0.1< PELq= 0.24 > 0.5).

Keywords: Musa Bay, PAHs, PETZONE, NOAA, PELq.

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Authors: M.H.Ghaffari

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A theoretical study is conducted to design and explore the effect of different parameters such as heat loads, the tube size of piping system, wick thickness, porosity and hole size on the performance and capability of a Loop Heat Pipe(LHP). This paper presents a steady state model that describes the different phenomena inside a LHP. Loop Heat Pipes(LHPs) are two-phase heat transfer devices with capillary pumping of a working fluid. By their original design comparing with heat pipes and special properties of the capillary structure, they-re capable of transferring heat efficiency for distances up to several meters at any orientation in the gravity field, or to several meters in a horizontal position. This theoretical model is described by different relations to satisfy important limits such as capillary and nucleate boiling. An algorithm is developed to predict the size of the LHP satisfying the limitations mentioned above for a wide range of applied loads. Finally, to assess and evaluate the algorithm and all the relations considered, we have used to design a new kind of LHP to recover the heat from the exhaust of an actual Gas Turbine. By finding the results, it showed that we can use the LHP as a very high efficient device to recover the heat even in high amount of loads(exhaust of a gas turbine). The sizes of all parts of the LHP were obtained using the developed algorithm.

Keywords: Loop Heat Pipe, Head Load, Liquid-Vapor Interface, Heat Transfer, Design Algorithm

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Authors: Fiona Browne, Huiru Zheng, Haiying Wang, Francisco Azuaje

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Recent years have seen a growing trend towards the integration of multiple information sources to support large-scale prediction of protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks in model organisms. Despite advances in computational approaches, the combination of multiple “omic" datasets representing the same type of data, e.g. different gene expression datasets, has not been rigorously studied. Furthermore, there is a need to further investigate the inference capability of powerful approaches, such as fullyconnected Bayesian networks, in the context of the prediction of PPI networks. This paper addresses these limitations by proposing a Bayesian approach to integrate multiple datasets, some of which encode the same type of “omic" data to support the identification of PPI networks. The case study reported involved the combination of three gene expression datasets relevant to human heart failure (HF). In comparison with two traditional methods, Naive Bayesian and maximum likelihood ratio approaches, the proposed technique can accurately identify known PPI and can be applied to infer potentially novel interactions.

Keywords: Bayesian network, Classification, Data integration, Protein interaction networks.

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Authors: Duangkamol Thitivesa

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This paper focuses on the use of project work as a pretext for applying the conventions of writing, or the correctness of mechanics, usage, and sentence formation, in a content-based class in a Rajabhat University. Its aim was to explore to what extent the student teachers’ academic achievement of the basic writing features against the 70% attainment target after the use of project is. The organization of work around an agreed theme in which the students reproduce language provided by texts and instructors is expected to enhance students’ correct writing conventions. The sample of the study comprised of 38 fourth-year English major students. The data was collected by means of achievement test and student writing works. The scores in the summative achievement test were analyzed by mean score, standard deviation, and percentage. It was found that the student teachers do more achieve of practicing mechanics and usage, and less in sentence formation. The students benefited from the exposure to texts during conducting the project; however, their automaticity of how and when to form phrases and clauses into simple/complex sentences had room for improvement.

Keywords: Project-Based Learning, Project Work, Writing Conventions.

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Authors: Hamed Qazanfari, Hamid Hassanpour, Kazem Qazanfari

Abstract:

In this paper, a method is provided for content-based image retrieval. Content-based image retrieval system searches query an image based on its visual content in an image database to retrieve similar images. In this paper, with the aim of simulating the human visual system sensitivity to image's edges and color features, the concept of color difference histogram (CDH) is used. CDH includes the perceptually color difference between two neighboring pixels with regard to colors and edge orientations. Since the HSV color space is close to the human visual system, the CDH is calculated in this color space. In addition, to improve the color features, the color histogram in HSV color space is also used as a feature. Among the extracted features, efficient features are selected using entropy and correlation criteria. The final features extract the content of images most efficiently. The proposed method has been evaluated on three standard databases Corel 5k, Corel 10k and UKBench. Experimental results show that the accuracy of the proposed image retrieval method is significantly improved compared to the recently developed methods.

Keywords: Content-based image retrieval, color difference histogram, efficient features selection, entropy, correlation.

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