Search results for: sensitive information
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 4291

Search results for: sensitive information

3331 Evaluation of Newly Developed Dot-ELISA Test for Identification of Naja-naja sumantrana and Calloselasma rhodostoma Venom Antigens

Authors: A.S. Sikarwar, S. Ambu, T .H. Wong

Abstract:

Snake bite cases in Malaysia most often involve the species Naja-naja and Calloselasma rhodostoma. In keeping with the need for a rapid snake venom detection kit in a clinical setting, plate and dot-ELISA test for the venoms of Naja-naja sumatrana, Calloselasma rhodostoma and the cobra venom fraction V antigen was developed. Polyclonal antibodies were raised and further used to prepare the reagents for the dot-ELISA test kit which was tested in mice, rabbit and virtual human models. The newly developed dot- ELISA kit was able to detect a minimum venom concentration of 244ng/ml with cross reactivity of one antibody type. The dot-ELISA system was sensitive and specific for all three snake venom types in all tested animal models. The lowest minimum venom concentration detectable was in the rabbit model, 244ng/ml of the cobra venom fraction V antigen. The highest minimum venom concentration was in mice, 1953ng/ml against a multitude of venoms. The developed dot-ELISA system for the detection of three snake venom types was successful with a sensitivity of 95.8% and specificity of 97.9%.

Keywords: ELISA, Venom, SVDK, Naja-naja sumatrana , Calloselasma rhodostoma.

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3330 Smart and Connected Aircraft Cabin: A Balancing Act between Operational Cabin Management, Airline Business and Passenger Expectations

Authors: Ralf God, Lothar Kerschgens, Leonardo Goratti, Steven Lemaire

Abstract:

Ubiquitous connectivity is a reality and a basic need for users on ground. Air travel connectivity in the cabin is also becoming increasingly important for passengers during cabin use. Wireless sensor networks that provide information to cabin management systems are being used by airlines to optimize cabin crew workload. In networked cabin systems, communications and digitally transmitted data must be managed by airlines in every direction. Security and privacy, information processing and knowledge management are the current and future requirements for a smart and connected cabin.

Keywords: Smart and connected cabin management, Internet of Things, power management, airline business.

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3329 Low-complexity Integer Frequency Offset Synchronization for OFDMA System

Authors: Young-Jae Kim, Young-Hwan You

Abstract:

This paper presents a integer frequency offset (IFO) estimation scheme for the 3GPP long term evolution (LTE) downlink system. Firstly, the conventional joint detection method for IFO and sector cell index (CID) information is introduced. Secondly, an IFO estimation without explicit sector CID information is proposed, which can operate jointly with the proposed IFO estimation and reduce the time delay in comparison with the conventional joint method. Also, the proposed method is computationally efficient and has almost similar performance in comparison with the conventional method over the Pedestrian and Vehicular channel models.

Keywords: LTE, OFDMA, primary synchronization signal (PSS), IFO, CID

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3328 Modelling an Investment Portfolio with Mandatory and Voluntary Contributions under M-CEV Model

Authors: Amadi Ugwulo Chinyere, Lewis D. Gbarayorks, Emem N. H. Inamete

Abstract:

In this paper, the mandatory contribution, additional voluntary contribution (AVC) and administrative charges are merged together to determine the optimal investment strategy (OIS) for a pension plan member (PPM) in a defined contribution (DC) pension scheme under the modified constant elasticity of variance (M-CEV) model. We assume that the voluntary contribution is a stochastic process and a portfolio consisting of one risk free asset and one risky asset modeled by the M-CEV model is considered. Also, a stochastic differential equation consisting of PPM’s monthly contributions, voluntary contributions and administrative charges is obtained. More so, an optimization problem in the form of Hamilton Jacobi Bellman equation which is a nonlinear partial differential equation is obtained. Using power transformation and change of variables method, an explicit solution of the OIS and the value function are obtained under constant absolute risk averse (CARA). Furthermore, numerical simulations on the impact of some sensitive parameters on OIS were discussed extensively. Finally, our result generalizes some existing result in the literature.

Keywords: DC pension fund, modified constant elasticity of variance, optimal investment strategies, voluntary contribution, administrative charges.

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3327 Protein Profiling in Alanine Aminotransferase Induced Patient cohort using Acetaminophen

Authors: Gry M, Bergström J, Lengquist J, Lindberg J, Drobin K, Schwenk J, Nilsson P, Schuppe-Koistinen I.

Abstract:

Sensitive and predictive DILI (Drug Induced Liver Injury) biomarkers are needed in drug R&D to improve early detection of hepatotoxicity. The discovery of DILI biomarkers that demonstrate the predictive power to identify individuals at risk to DILI would represent a major advance in the development of personalized healthcare approaches. In this healthy volunteer acetaminophen study (4g/day for 7 days, with 3 monitored nontreatment days before and 4 after), 450 serum samples from 32 subjects were analyzed using protein profiling by antibody suspension bead arrays. Multiparallel protein profiles were generated using a DILI target protein array with 300 antibodies, where the antibodies were selected based on previous literature findings of putative DILI biomarkers and a screening process using pre dose samples from the same cohort. Of the 32 subjects, 16 were found to develop an elevated ALT value (2Xbaseline, responders). Using the plasma profiling approach together with multivariate statistical analysis some novel findings linked to lipid metabolism were found and more important, endogenous protein profiles in baseline samples (prior to treatment) with predictive power for ALT elevations were identified.

Keywords: DILI, Plasma profiling, PLSDA, Randomforest.

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3326 A New Method of Adaptation in Integrated Learning Environment

Authors: Ildar Galeev, Renat Mustaphin, C. Ardil

Abstract:

A new method of adaptation in a partially integrated learning environment that includes electronic textbook (ET) and integrated tutoring system (ITS) is described. The algorithm of adaptation is described in detail. It includes: establishment of Interconnections of operations and concepts; estimate of the concept mastering level (for all concepts); estimate of student-s non-mastering level on the current learning step of information on each page of ET; creation of a rank-order list of links to the e-manual pages containing information that require repeated work.

Keywords: Adaptation, Integrated Learning Environment, Integrated Tutoring System, Electronic Textbook.

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3325 An Improved K-Means Algorithm for Gene Expression Data Clustering

Authors: Billel Kenidra, Mohamed Benmohammed

Abstract:

Data mining technique used in the field of clustering is a subject of active research and assists in biological pattern recognition and extraction of new knowledge from raw data. Clustering means the act of partitioning an unlabeled dataset into groups of similar objects. Each group, called a cluster, consists of objects that are similar between themselves and dissimilar to objects of other groups. Several clustering methods are based on partitional clustering. This category attempts to directly decompose the dataset into a set of disjoint clusters leading to an integer number of clusters that optimizes a given criterion function. The criterion function may emphasize a local or a global structure of the data, and its optimization is an iterative relocation procedure. The K-Means algorithm is one of the most widely used partitional clustering techniques. Since K-Means is extremely sensitive to the initial choice of centers and a poor choice of centers may lead to a local optimum that is quite inferior to the global optimum, we propose a strategy to initiate K-Means centers. The improved K-Means algorithm is compared with the original K-Means, and the results prove how the efficiency has been significantly improved.

Keywords: Microarray data mining, biological pattern recognition, partitional clustering, k-means algorithm, centroid initialization.

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3324 Block-Based 2D to 3D Image Conversion Method

Authors: S. Sowmyayani, V. Murugan

Abstract:

With the advent of three-dimension (3D) technology, there are lots of research in converting 2D images to 3D images. The main difference between 2D and 3D is the visual illusion of depth in 3D images. In the recent era, there are more depth estimation techniques. The objective of this paper is to convert 2D images to 3D images with less computation time. For this, the input image is divided into blocks from which the depth information is obtained. Having the depth information, a depth map is generated. Then the 3D image is warped using the original image and the depth map. The proposed method is tested on Make3D dataset and NYU-V2 dataset. The experimental results are compared with other recent methods. The proposed method proved to work with less computation time and good accuracy.

Keywords: Depth map, 3D image warping, image rendering, bilateral filter, minimum spanning tree.

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3323 Preventing and Coping Strategies for Cyber Bullying and Cyber Victimization

Authors: Erdinc Ozturk, Gizem Akcan

Abstract:

Although there are several advantages of information and communication technologies, they cause some problems like cyber bullying and cyber victimization. Cyber bullying and cyber victimization have lots of negative effects on people. There are lots of different strategies to prevent cyber bullying and victimization. This study was conducted to provide information about the strategies that are used to prevent cyber bullying and cyber victimization. 120 (60 women, 60 men) university students whose ages are between 18 and 35 participated this study. According to findings of this study, men are more prone to cyber bullying than women. Moreover, men are also more prone to cyber victimization than women.

Keywords: Cyber bullying, cyber victimization, coping strategies.

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3322 Information Transmission between Large and Small Stocks in the Korean Stock Market

Authors: Sang Hoon Kang, Seong-Min Yoon

Abstract:

Little attention has been paid to information transmission between the portfolios of large stocks and small stocks in the Korean stock market. This study investigates the return and volatility transmission mechanisms between large and small stocks in the Korea Exchange (KRX). This study also explores whether bad news in the large stock market leads to a volatility of the small stock market that is larger than the good news volatility of the large stock market. By employing the Granger causality test, we found unidirectional return transmissions from the large stocks to medium and small stocks. This evidence indicates that pat information about the large stocks has a better ability to predict the returns of the medium and small stocks in the Korean stock market. Moreover, by using the asymmetric GARCH-BEKK model, we observed the unidirectional relationship of asymmetric volatility transmission from large stocks to the medium and small stocks. This finding suggests that volatility in the medium and small stocks following a negative shock in the large stocks is larger than that following a positive shock in the large stocks.

Keywords: Asymmetric GARCH-BEKK model, Asymmetric volatility transmission, Causality, Korean stock market, Spillover effect

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3321 Antimicrobial Effect of Essential oil of Plant Trigonella focnum greacum on some Bacteria Pathogens

Authors: Mehani M., Segni L.

Abstract:

The plant world is the source of many medicines. Recently, researchers have estimated that there are approximately 400,000 plant species worldwide, of which about a quarter or a third have been used by societies for medicinal purposes. The human uses of plants for thousands of years to treat various ailments, in many developing countries, much of the population trust in traditional doctors and their collections of medicinal plants to treat them. Essential oils have many therapeutic properties. In herbal medicine, they are used for their antiseptic properties against infectious diseases of fungal origin, against dermatophytes, those of bacterial origin. The aim of our study is to determine the antimicrobial effect of essential oils of the plant Trigonella focnum greacum on some pathogenic bacteria, it is a medicinal plant used in traditional therapy. The test adopted is based on the diffusion method on solid medium (Antibiogram), this method determines the sensitivity or resistance of a microorganism vis-à-vis the extract studied. Our study reveals that the essential oil of the plant Trigonella focnum greacum has a different effect on the resistance of germs. For staphiloccocus Pseudomonnas aeroginosa and Krebsilla, are moderately sensitive strains, also Escherichia coli and Candida albicans represents a high sensitivity. By against Proteus is a strain that represents a weak sensitivity.

Keywords: essential oil, microorganisme, antibiogram

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3320 MovieReco: A Recommendation System

Authors: Dipankaj G Medhi, Juri Dakua

Abstract:

Recommender Systems act as personalized decision guides, aiding users in decisions on matters related to personal taste. Most previous research on Recommender Systems has focused on the statistical accuracy of the algorithms driving the systems, with no emphasis on the trustworthiness of the user. RS depends on information provided by different users to gather its knowledge. We believe, if a large group of users provide wrong information it will not be possible for the RS to arrive in an accurate conclusion. The system described in this paper introduce the concept of Testing the knowledge of user to filter out these “bad users". This paper emphasizes on the mechanism used to provide robust and effective recommendation.

Keywords: Collaborative Filtering, Content Based Filtering, Intelligent Agent, Level of Interest, Recommendation System.

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3319 Teachers’ Perceptions of Their Principals’ Interpersonal Emotionally Intelligent Behaviours Affecting Their Job Satisfaction

Authors: Prakash Singh

Abstract:

For schools to be desirable places in which to work, it is necessary for principals to recognise their teachers’ emotions, and be sensitive to their needs. This necessitates that principals are capable to correctly identify their emotionally intelligent behaviours (EIBs) they need to use in order to be successful leaders. They also need to have knowledge of their emotional intelligence and be able to identify the factors and situations that evoke emotion at an interpersonal level. If a principal is able to do this, then the control and understanding of emotions and behaviours of oneself and others could improve vastly. This study focuses on the interpersonal EIBS of principals affecting the job satisfaction of teachers. The correlation coefficients in this quantitative study strongly indicate that there is a statistical significance between the respondents’ level of job satisfaction, the rating of their principals’ EIBs and how they believe their principals’ EIBs will affect their sense of job satisfaction. It can be concluded from the data obtained in this study that there is a significant correlation between the sense of job satisfaction of teachers and their principals’ interpersonal EIBs. This means that the more satisfied a teacher is at school, the more appropriate and meaningful a principal’s EIBs will be. Conversely, the more dissatisfied a teacher is at school the less appropriate and less meaningful a principal’s interpersonal EIBs will be. This implies that the leaders’ EIBs can be construed as one of the major factors affecting the job satisfaction of employees.

Keywords: Emotional intelligence, teachers’ emotions, teachers’ job satisfaction, principals’ emotionally intelligent behaviours.

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3318 Physical Activity and Cognitive Functioning Relationship in Children

Authors: Comfort Mokgothu

Abstract:

This study investigated the relation between processing information and fitness level of active (fit) and sedentary (unfit) children drawn from rural and urban areas in Botswana. It was hypothesized that fit children would display faster simple reaction time (SRT), choice reaction times (CRT) and movement times (SMT). 60, third grade children (7.0 – 9.0 years) were initially selected and based upon fitness testing, 45 participated in the study (15 each of fit urban, unfit urban, fit rural). All children completed anthropometric measures, skinfold testing and submaximal cycle ergometer testing. The cognitive testing included SRT, CRT, SMT and Choice Movement Time (CMT) and memory sequence length. Results indicated that the rural fit group exhibited faster SMT than the urban fit and unfit groups. For CRT, both fit groups were faster than the unfit group. Collectively, the study shows that the relationship that exists between physical fitness and cognitive function amongst the elderly can tentatively be extended to the pediatric population. Physical fitness could be a factor in the speed at which we process information, including decision making, even in children.

Keywords: Decision making, fitness, information processing, reaction time, cognition movement time.

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3317 Numerical Investigation on Performance of Expanded Polystyrene Geofoam Block in Protecting Buried Lifeline Structures

Authors: M. Abdollahi, S. N. Moghaddas Tafreshi

Abstract:

Expanded polystyrene (EPS) geofoam is often used in below ground applications in geotechnical engineering. A most recent configuration system implemented in roadways to protect lifelines such as buried pipes, electrical cables and culvert systems could be consisted of two EPS geofoam blocks, “posts” placed on each side of the structure, an EPS block capping, “beam” put atop two posts, and soil cover on the beam. In this configuration, a rectangular void space will be built atop the lifeline. EPS blocks will stand all the imposed vertical forces due to their strength and deformability, thus the lifeline will experience no vertical stress. The present paper describes the results of a numerical study on the post and beam configuration subjected to the static loading. Three-dimensional finite element analysis using ABAQUS software is carried out to investigate the effect of different parameters such as beam thickness, soil thickness over the beam, post height to width ratio, EPS density, and free span between two posts, on the stress distribution and the deflection of the beam. The results show favorable performance of EPS geofoam for protecting sensitive infrastructures.

Keywords: Beam, EPS block, numerical analysis, post, stress distribution.

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3316 Economic Evaluation of Bowland Shale Gas Wells Development in the UK

Authors: Elijah Acquah-Andoh

Abstract:

The UK has had its fair share of the shale gas revolutionary waves blowing across the global oil and gas industry at present. Although, its exploitation is widely agreed to have been delayed, shale gas was looked upon favorably by the UK Parliament when they recognized it as genuine energy source and granted licenses to industry to search and extract the resource. This, although a significant progress by industry, there yet remains another test the UK fracking resource must pass in order to render shale gas extraction feasible – it must be economically extractible and sustainably so. Developing unconventional resources is much more expensive and risky, and for shale gas wells, producing in commercial volumes is conditional upon drilling horizontal wells and hydraulic fracturing, techniques which increase CAPEX. Meanwhile, investment in shale gas development projects is sensitive to gas price and technical and geological risks. Using a Two-Factor Model, the economics of the Bowland shale wells were analyzed and the operational conditions under which fracking is profitable in the UK was characterized. We find that there is a great degree of flexibility about Opex spending; hence Opex does not pose much threat to the fracking industry in the UK. However, we discover Bowland shale gas wells fail to add value at gas price of $8/ Mmbtu. A minimum gas price of $12/Mmbtu at Opex of no more than $2/ Mcf and no more than $14.95M Capex are required to create value within the present petroleum tax regime, in the UK fracking industry.

Keywords: Capex, economical, investment, profitability, shale gas development, sustainable.

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3315 Risk Based Building Information Modeling (BIM) for Urban Infrastructure Transportation Project

Authors: Debasis Sarkar

Abstract:

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a holistic documentation process for operational visualization, design coordination, estimation and project scheduling. BIM software defines objects parametrically and it is a tool for virtual reality. Primary advantage of implementing BIM is the visual coordination of the building structure and systems such as Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing (MEP) and it also identifies the possible conflicts between the building systems. This paper is an attempt to develop a risk based BIM model which would highlight the primary advantages of application of BIM pertaining to urban infrastructure transportation project. It has been observed that about 40% of the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) companies use BIM but primarily for their outsourced projects. Also, 65% of the respondents agree that BIM would be used quiet strongly for future construction projects in India. The 3D models developed with Revit 2015 software would reduce co-ordination problems amongst the architects, structural engineers, contractors and building service providers (MEP). Integration of risk management along with BIM would provide enhanced co-ordination, collaboration and high probability of successful completion of the complex infrastructure transportation project within stipulated time and cost frame.

Keywords: Building information modeling (BIM), infrastructure transportation, project risk management, underground metro rail.

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3314 An Approach for a Bidding Process Knowledge Capitalization

Authors: R. Chalal, A. R. Ghomari

Abstract:

Preparation and negotiation of innovative and future projects can be characterized as a strategic-type decision situation, involving many uncertainties and an unpredictable environment. We will focus in this paper on the bidding process. It includes cooperative and strategic decisions. Our approach for bidding process knowledge capitalization is aimed at information management in project-oriented organizations, based on the MUSIC (Management and Use of Co-operative Information Systems) model. We will show how to capitalize the company strategic knowledge and also how to organize the corporate memory. The result of the adopted approach is improvement of corporate memory quality.

Keywords: Bidding process, corporate memory, Knowledge capitalization, knowledge acquisition, strategic decisions.

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3313 Inverse Heat Conduction Analysis of Cooling on Run Out Tables

Authors: M. S. Gadala, Khaled Ahmed, Elasadig Mahdi

Abstract:

In this paper, we introduced a gradient-based inverse solver to obtain the missing boundary conditions based on the readings of internal thermocouples. The results show that the method is very sensitive to measurement errors, and becomes unstable when small time steps are used. The artificial neural networks are shown to be capable of capturing the whole thermal history on the run-out table, but are not very effective in restoring the detailed behavior of the boundary conditions. Also, they behave poorly in nonlinear cases and where the boundary condition profile is different. GA and PSO are more effective in finding a detailed representation of the time-varying boundary conditions, as well as in nonlinear cases. However, their convergence takes longer. A variation of the basic PSO, called CRPSO, showed the best performance among the three versions. Also, PSO proved to be effective in handling noisy data, especially when its performance parameters were tuned. An increase in the self-confidence parameter was also found to be effective, as it increased the global search capabilities of the algorithm. RPSO was the most effective variation in dealing with noise, closely followed by CRPSO. The latter variation is recommended for inverse heat conduction problems, as it combines the efficiency and effectiveness required by these problems.

Keywords: Inverse Analysis, Function Specification, Neural Net Works, Particle Swarm, Run Out Table.

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3312 Microwave Imaging by Application of Information Theory Criteria in MUSIC Algorithm

Authors: M. Pourahmadi

Abstract:

The performance of time-reversal MUSIC algorithm will be dramatically degrades in presence of strong noise and multiple scattering (i.e. when scatterers are close to each other). This is due to error in determining the number of scatterers. The present paper provides a new approach to alleviate such a problem using an information theoretic criterion referred as minimum description length (MDL). The merits of the novel approach are confirmed by the numerical examples. The results indicate the time-reversal MUSIC yields accurate estimate of the target locations with considerable noise and multiple scattering in the received signals.

Keywords: Microwave imaging, Time reversal, MUSIC algorithm, Minimum Description Length (MDL).

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3311 Optimizing Resource Allocation and Indoor Location Using Bluetooth Low Energy

Authors: Néstor Álvarez-Díaz, Pino Caballero-Gil, Héctor Reboso-Morales, Francisco Martín-Fernández

Abstract:

The recent tendency of ”Internet of Things” (IoT) has developed in the last years, causing the emergence of innovative communication methods among multiple devices. The appearance of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) has allowed a push to IoT in relation to smartphones. In this moment, a set of new applications related to several topics like entertainment and advertisement has begun to be developed but not much has been done till now to take advantage of the potential that these technologies can offer on many business areas and in everyday tasks. In the present work, the application of BLE technology and smartphones is proposed on some business areas related to the optimization of resource allocation in huge facilities like airports. An indoor location system has been developed through triangulation methods with the use of BLE beacons. The described system can be used to locate all employees inside the building in such a way that any task can be automatically assigned to a group of employees. It should be noted that this system cannot only be used to link needs with employees according to distances, but it also takes into account other factors like occupation level or category. In addition, it has been endowed with a security system to manage business and personnel sensitive data. The efficiency of communications is another essential characteristic that has been taken into account in this work.

Keywords: Bluetooth Low Energy, indoor location, resource assignment, smartphones.

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3310 Designing Information Systems in Education as Prerequisite for Successful Management Results

Authors: Vladimir Simovic, Matija Varga, Tonco Marusic

Abstract:

This research paper shows matrix technology models and examples of information systems in education (in the Republic of Croatia and in the Germany) in support of business, education (when learning and teaching) and e-learning. Here we researched and described the aims and objectives of the main process in education and technology, with main matrix classes of data. In this paper, we have example of matrix technology with detailed description of processes related to specific data classes in the processes of education and an example module that is support for the process: ‘Filling in the directory and the diary of work’ and ‘evaluation’. Also, on the lower level of the processes, we researched and described all activities which take place within the lower process in education. We researched and described the characteristics and functioning of modules: ‘Fill the directory and the diary of work’ and ‘evaluation’. For the analysis of the affinity between the aforementioned processes and/or sub-process we used our application model created in Visual Basic, which was based on the algorithm for analyzing the affinity between the observed processes and/or sub-processes.

Keywords: Designing, education management, information systems, matrix technology, process affinity.

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3309 Business Domain Modelling Using an Integrated Framework

Authors: Mohammed Salahat, Steve Wade

Abstract:

This paper presents an application of a “Systematic Soft Domain Driven Design Framework” as a soft systems approach to domain-driven design of information systems development. The framework use SSM as a guiding methodology within which we have embedded a sequence of design tasks based on the UML leading to the implementation of a software system using the Naked Objects framework. This framework have been used in action research projects that have involved the investigation and modelling of business processes using object-oriented domain models and the implementation of software systems based on those domain models. Within this framework, Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is used as a guiding methodology to explore the problem situation and to develop the domain model using UML for the given business domain. The framework is proposed and evaluated in our previous works, and a real case study “Information Retrieval System for academic research” is used, in this paper, to show further practice and evaluation of the framework in different business domain. We argue that there are advantages from combining and using techniques from different methodologies in this way for business domain modelling. The framework is overviewed and justified as multimethodology using Mingers multimethodology ideas.

Keywords: SSM, UML, domain-driven design, soft domaindriven design, naked objects, soft language, information retrieval, multimethodology.

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3308 Korean Men’s Interest in Gonzo Pornography and Use of Condoms

Authors: Chyng Sun

Abstract:

This brief report examines correlations between Korean men’s interest in gonzo pornography, perceptions of pornography’s functional value, and use of condoms. The report found that, neither a higher interest in gonzo or the perception that pornography is a source of sexual information was directly related to condom utilization. However, interest in gonzo pornography interacted with pornography perceptions to predict condomless sex. The findings suggest that Korean men who 1) had higher interest in viewing gonzo pornography, and 2) had a tendency to view pornography as a source of sexual information, are more likely to have sex without condoms. That is, when viewers consider pornography to be a form of sexual education, they are more likely to use the learned pornographic script to inform their sexual behavior.

Keywords: Korean, male, pornography, sexuality.

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3307 Pension Plan Member’s Investment Strategies with Transaction Cost and Couple Risky Assets Modelled by the O-U Process

Authors: Udeme O. Ini, Edikan E. Akpanibah

Abstract:

This paper studies the optimal investment strategies for a plan member (PM) in a defined contribution (DC) pension scheme with transaction cost, taxes on invested funds and couple risky assets (stocks) under the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (O-U) process. The PM’s portfolio is assumed to consist of a risk-free asset and two risky assets where the two risky assets are driven by the O-U process. The Legendre transformation and dual theory is use to transform the resultant optimal control problem which is a nonlinear partial differential equation (PDE) into linear PDE and the resultant linear PDE is then solved for the explicit solutions of the optimal investment strategies for PM exhibiting constant absolute risk aversion (CARA) using change of variable technique. Furthermore, theoretical analysis is used to study the influences of some sensitive parameters on the optimal investment strategies with observations that the optimal investment strategies for the two risky assets increase with increase in the dividend and decreases with increase in tax on the invested funds, risk averse coefficient, initial fund size and the transaction cost.

Keywords: Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process, portfolio management, Legendre transforms, CARA utility.

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3306 A Review on Thermal Conductivity of Bio-Based Carbon Nanotubes

Authors: Gloria A. Adewumi, Andrew C. Eloka-Eboka, Freddie L. Inambao

Abstract:

Bio-based carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have received considerable research attention due to their comparative advantages of high level stability, simplistic use, low toxicity and overall environmental friendliness. New potentials for improvement in heat transfer applications are presented due to their high aspect ratio, high thermal conductivity and special surface area. Phonons have been identified as being responsible for thermal conductivities in carbon nanotubes. Therefore, understanding the mechanism of heat conduction in CNTs involves investigating the difference between the varieties of phonon modes and knowing the kinds of phonon modes that play the dominant role. In this review, a reference to a different number of studies is made and in addition, the role of phonon relaxation rate mainly controlled by boundary scattering and three-phonon Umklapp scattering process was investigated. Results show that the phonon modes are sensitive to a number of nanotube conditions such as: diameter, length, temperature, defects and axial strain. At a low temperature (<100K) the thermal conductivity increases with increasing temperature. A small nanotube size causes phonon quantization which is evident in the thermal conductivity at low temperatures.

Keywords: Carbon nanotubes, phonons, thermal conductivity, umklapp process.

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3305 The Effect in vitro of Flavonoid Aglycones Extracts from Roots of Date Palm Cultivars on Fusarium oxysporum F. Sp. albedinis

Authors: T. Azouaoui – Ait Kettout, R. Gaceb – Terrak, F. Rahmania

Abstract:

Date production in North Africa is facing a worrying slowdown and a decline because of Fusarium wilt or bayoud date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L., caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. albedinis (F. o. a). The objective of this work is to study the in vitro effect of flavonoid aglycones extracted from the roots of two cultivars of date palm (one sensitive to bayoud (Deglet Nour) and the other resistant (Takerboucht)) on the growth and production fusaric acid of the pathogen. Results show that during the first week of development of F. o. a on potato dextrose liquid medium, the flavonoid aglycones extracts of the susceptible cultivar roots stimulates mycelial growth as well as conidiogenesis of F.o.a, nevertheless it has no effect on the synthesis of fusaric acid. However, the flavonoid aglycones extract of resistant cultivar roots stimulates mycelial growth and decreases both the number of conidia production and fusaric acid. It therefore appears possible that the resistant cultivar aglycones have two types of action: they either inhibit the synthesis of fusaric acid, or they metabolize this toxin into hydrosoluble product, this is called detoxification.

Keywords: Flavonoid Aglycones, date palm, fusaric acid, Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. albedinis.

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3304 Elimination of Redundant Links in Web Pages– Mathematical Approach

Authors: G. Poonkuzhali, K.Thiagarajan, K.Sarukesi

Abstract:

With the enormous growth on the web, users get easily lost in the rich hyper structure. Thus developing user friendly and automated tools for providing relevant information without any redundant links to the users to cater to their needs is the primary task for the website owners. Most of the existing web mining algorithms have concentrated on finding frequent patterns while neglecting the less frequent one that are likely to contain the outlying data such as noise, irrelevant and redundant data. This paper proposes new algorithm for mining the web content by detecting the redundant links from the web documents using set theoretical(classical mathematics) such as subset, union, intersection etc,. Then the redundant links is removed from the original web content to get the required information by the user..

Keywords: Web documents, Web content mining, redundantlink, outliers, set theory.

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3303 Chemical Composition of Essential Oil and in vitro Antibacterial and Anticancer Activity of the Hydroalcolic Extract from Coronilla varia

Authors: Dehpour A. A., Eslami B., Rezaie S., Hashemian S. F., Shafie F., Kiaie M.

Abstract:

The aims of study were investigation on chemical composition essential oil and the effect of extract of Coronilla varia on antimicrobial and cytotoxicity activity. The essential oils of Coronilla varia is obtained by hydrodistillation and analyzed by (GC/MS) for determining their chemical composition and identification of their components. Antibacterial activity of plant extract was determined by disc diffusion method and anticancer activity measured by MTT assay. The major components in essential oil were Caryophyllene Oxide (60.19%), Alphacadinol (4.13%) and Homoadantaneca Robexylic Acid (3.31%). The extracts from Coronilla varia had interesting activity against Proteus mirabilis in the concentration of 700 μg/disc and did not show any activity against Staphylococus aureus, Bacillus subtillis, Klebsiella pneumonia and Entrobacter cloacae. The positive control, Ampicillin, Chloramphenicol and Cenphalothin had shown zone of inhibition resistant all bacteria. The ethanol extract of Corohilla varia inhibited on MCF7 cell lines. IC50 0.6(mg/ml) was the optimum concentration of extract from Coronilla varia inhibition of cell line growth. The MCF7 cancer cell line and Proteus mirabilis were more sensitive to Coronilla varia ethanol extract.

Keywords: Coronilla varia, Essential oil, Antibacterial, Anticancer, HeLa cell line.

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3302 Medical Image Registration by Minimizing Divergence Measure Based on Tsallis Entropy

Authors: Shaoyan Sun, Liwei Zhang, Chonghui Guo

Abstract:

As the use of registration packages spreads, the number of the aligned image pairs in image databases (either by manual or automatic methods) increases dramatically. These image pairs can serve as a set of training data. Correspondingly, the images that are to be registered serve as testing data. In this paper, a novel medical image registration method is proposed which is based on the a priori knowledge of the expected joint intensity distribution estimated from pre-aligned training images. The goal of the registration is to find the optimal transformation such that the distance between the observed joint intensity distribution obtained from the testing image pair and the expected joint intensity distribution obtained from the corresponding training image pair is minimized. The distance is measured using the divergence measure based on Tsallis entropy. Experimental results show that, compared with the widely-used Shannon mutual information as well as Tsallis mutual information, the proposed method is computationally more efficient without sacrificing registration accuracy.

Keywords: Multimodality images, image registration, Shannonentropy, Tsallis entropy, mutual information, Powell optimization.

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