Search results for: face recognition.
152 Nurses’ Views on ‘Effective Nurse Leader’ Characteristics in Iraq
Authors: S. Abed, S. O’Neill
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This research explored ward nurses’ views about the characteristics of effective nurse leaders in the context of Iraq as a developing country, where the delivery of health care continues to face disruption and change. It is well established that the provision of modern health care requires effective nurse leaders, but in countries such as Iraq the lack of effective nurse leaders is noted as a major challenge. In a descriptive quantitative study, a survey questionnaire was administered to 210 ward nurses working in two public hospitals in a major city in the north of Iraq. The participating nurses were of the opinion that the effectiveness of their nurse leaders was evident in their ability to demonstrate: good clinical knowledge, effective communication and managerial skills. They also viewed their leaders as needing to hold high-level nursing qualifications, though this was not necessarily the case in practice. Additionally, they viewed nurse leaders’ personal qualities as important, which included politeness, ethical behaviour, and trustworthiness. When considered against the issues raised in interviews with a smaller group (20) of senior nurse leaders, representative of the various occupational levels, implications identify the need for professional development that focuses on how the underpinning competencies relate to leadership and how transformational leadership is evidenced in practice.
Keywords: Health care, nurse education, nurse leadership, nursing in Iraq, transformational leadership.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1588151 Personas Help Understand Users’ Needs, Goals and Desires in an Online Institutional Repository
Authors: Maha ALjohani, James Blustein
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Communicating users' needs, goals and problems help designers and developers overcome challenges faced by end users. Personas are used to represent end users’ needs. In our research, creating personas allowed the following questions to be answered: Who are the potential user groups? What do they want to achieve by using the service? What are the problems that users face? What should the service provide to them? To develop realistic personas, we conducted a focus group discussion with undergraduate and graduate students and also interviewed a university librarian. The personas were created to help evaluating the Institutional Repository that is based on the DSpace system. The profiles helped to communicate users' needs, abilities, tasks, and problems, and the task scenarios used in the heuristic evaluation were based on these personas. Four personas resulted of a focus group discussion with undergraduate and graduate students and from interviewing a university librarian. We then used these personas to create focused task-scenarios for a heuristic evaluation on the system interface to ensure that it met users' needs, goals, problems and desires. In this paper, we present the process that we used to create the personas that led to devise the task scenarios used in the heuristic evaluation as a follow up study of the DSpace university repository.Keywords: Heuristic Evaluation, Institutional Repositories, User Experience, Human Computer Interaction, User Profiles, Personas, Task Scenarios, Heuristics.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2151150 Clinical Factors of Quality Switched Ruby Laser Therapy for Lentigo Depigmentation
Authors: SunWoo Lee, TaeBum Lee, YoonHwa Park, YooJeong Kim
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Solar lentigines appear predominantly on chronically sun-exposed areas of skin, such as the face and the back of the hands. Among the several ways to lentigines treatment, quality-switched lasers are well-known effective treatment for removing solar lentigines. The present pilot study was therefore designed to assess the efficacy of quality-switched ruby laser treatment of such lentigines compare between pretreatment and posttreatment of skin brightness. Twenty-two adults with chronic sun-damaged skin (mean age 52.8 years, range 37–74 years) were treated at the Korean site. A 694 nm Q-switched ruby laser was used, with the energy density set from 1.4 to 12.5 J/cm2, to treat solar lentigines. Average brightness of skin color before ruby laser treatment was 137.3 and its skin color was brightened after ruby laser treatment by 150.5. Also, standard deviation of skin color was decreased from 17.8 to 16.4. Regarding the multivariate model, age and energy were identified as significant factors for skin color brightness change in lentigo depigmentation by ruby laser treatment. Their respective odds ratios were 1.082 (95% CI, 1.007–1.163), and 1.431 (95% CI, 1.051–1.946). Lentigo depigmentation treatment using ruby lasers resulted in a high performance in skin color brightness. Among the relative factors involve with ruby laser treatment, age and energy were the most effective factors which skin color change to brighter than pretreatment.Keywords: Depigmentation, lentigo, quality switched ruby laser, skin color.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1897149 Local Buckling of Web-Core and Foam-Core Sandwich Panels
Authors: Ali N. Suri, Ahmad A. Al-Makhlufi
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Sandwich construction is widely accepted as a method of construction especially in the aircraft industry. It is a type of stressed skin construction formed by bonding two thin faces to a thick core, the faces resist all of the applied edge loads and provide all or nearly all of the required rigidities, the core spaces the faces to increase cross section moment of inertia about common neutral axis and transmit shear between them provides a perfect bond between core and faces is made.
Material for face sheets can be of metal or reinforced plastics laminates, core material can be metallic cores of thin sheets forming corrugation or honeycomb, or non metallic core of Balsa wood, plastic foams, or honeycomb made of reinforced plastics.
For in plane axial loading web core and web-foam core Sandwich panels can fail by local buckling of plates forming the cross section with buckling wave length of the order of length of spacing between webs.
In this study local buckling of web core and web-foam core Sandwich panels is carried out for given materials of facing and core, and given panel overall dimension for different combinations of cross section geometries.
The Finite Strip Method is used for the analysis, and Fortran based computer program is developed and used.
Keywords: Local Buckling, Finite Strip, Sandwich panels, Web and foam core.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2244148 Social Media Idea Ontology: A Concept for Semantic Search of Product Ideas in Customer Knowledge through User-Centered Metrics and Natural Language Processing
Authors: Martin H¨ausl, Maximilian Auch, Johannes Forster, Peter Mandl, Alexander Schill
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In order to survive on the market, companies must constantly develop improved and new products. These products are designed to serve the needs of their customers in the best possible way. The creation of new products is also called innovation and is primarily driven by a company’s internal research and development department. However, a new approach has been taking place for some years now, involving external knowledge in the innovation process. This approach is called open innovation and identifies customer knowledge as the most important source in the innovation process. This paper presents a concept of using social media posts as an external source to support the open innovation approach in its initial phase, the Ideation phase. For this purpose, the social media posts are semantically structured with the help of an ontology and the authors are evaluated using graph-theoretical metrics such as density. For the structuring and evaluation of relevant social media posts, we also use the findings of Natural Language Processing, e. g. Named Entity Recognition, specific dictionaries, Triple Tagger and Part-of-Speech-Tagger. The selection and evaluation of the tools used are discussed in this paper. Using our ontology and metrics to structure social media posts enables users to semantically search these posts for new product ideas and thus gain an improved insight into the external sources such as customer needs.Keywords: Idea ontology, innovation management, open innovation, semantic search.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 776147 Autonomic Sonar Sensor Fault Manager for Mobile Robots
Authors: Martin Doran, Roy Sterritt, George Wilkie
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NASA, ESA, and NSSC space agencies have plans to put planetary rovers on Mars in 2020. For these future planetary rovers to succeed, they will heavily depend on sensors to detect obstacles. This will also become of vital importance in the future, if rovers become less dependent on commands received from earth-based control and more dependent on self-configuration and self-decision making. These planetary rovers will face harsh environments and the possibility of hardware failure is high, as seen in missions from the past. In this paper, we focus on using Autonomic principles where self-healing, self-optimization, and self-adaption are explored using the MAPE-K model and expanding this model to encapsulate the attributes such as Awareness, Analysis, and Adjustment (AAA-3). In the experimentation, a Pioneer P3-DX research robot is used to simulate a planetary rover. The sonar sensors on the P3-DX robot are used to simulate the sensors on a planetary rover (even though in reality, sonar sensors cannot operate in a vacuum). Experiments using the P3-DX robot focus on how our software system can be adapted with the loss of sonar sensor functionality. The autonomic manager system is responsible for the decision making on how to make use of remaining ‘enabled’ sonars sensors to compensate for those sonar sensors that are ‘disabled’. The key to this research is that the robot can still detect objects even with reduced sonar sensor capability.Keywords: Autonomic, self-adaption, self-healing, self-optimization.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 991146 Early Depression Detection for Young Adults with a Psychiatric and AI Interdisciplinary Multimodal Framework
Authors: Raymond Xu, Ashley Hua, Andrew Wang, Yuru Lin
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During COVID-19, the depression rate has increased dramatically. Young adults are most vulnerable to the mental health effects of the pandemic. Lower-income families have a higher ratio to be diagnosed with depression than the general population, but less access to clinics. This research aims to achieve early depression detection at low cost, large scale, and high accuracy with an interdisciplinary approach by incorporating clinical practices defined by American Psychiatric Association (APA) as well as multimodal AI framework. The proposed approach detected the nine depression symptoms with Natural Language Processing sentiment analysis and a symptom-based Lexicon uniquely designed for young adults. The experiments were conducted on the multimedia survey results from adolescents and young adults and unbiased Twitter communications. The result was further aggregated with the facial emotional cues analyzed by the Convolutional Neural Network on the multimedia survey videos. Five experiments each conducted on 10k data entries reached consistent results with an average accuracy of 88.31%, higher than the existing natural language analysis models. This approach can reach 300+ million daily active Twitter users and is highly accessible by low-income populations to promote early depression detection to raise awareness in adolescents and young adults and reveal complementary cues to assist clinical depression diagnosis.
Keywords: Artificial intelligence, depression detection, facial emotion recognition, natural language processing, mental disorder.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1153145 The Risk Assessment of Nano-particles and Investigation of Their Environmental Impact
Authors: Nader Nabhani, Amir Tofighi
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Nanotechnology is the science of creating, using and manipulating objects which have at least one dimension in range of 0.1 to 100 nanometers. In other words, nanotechnology is reconstructing a substance using its individual atoms and arranging them in a way that is desirable for our purpose. The main reason that nanotechnology has been attracting attentions is the unique properties that objects show when they are formed at nano-scale. These differing characteristics that nano-scale materials show compared to their nature-existing form is both useful in creating high quality products and dangerous when being in contact with body or spread in environment. In order to control and lower the risk of such nano-scale particles, the main following three topics should be considered: 1) First of all, these materials would cause long term diseases that may show their effects on body years after being penetrated in human organs and since this science has become recently developed in industrial scale not enough information is available about their hazards on body. 2) The second is that these particles can easily spread out in environment and remain in air, soil or water for very long time, besides their high ability to penetrate body skin and causing new kinds of diseases. 3) The third one is that to protect body and environment against the danger of these particles, the protective barriers must be finer than these small objects and such defenses are hard to accomplish. This paper will review, discuss and assess the risks that human and environment face as this new science develops at a high rate.Keywords: Nanotechnology, risk assessment, environment.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1972144 Qualitative Survey on Managing Building Maintenance Projects
Authors: Edmond W.M. Lam, Albert P.C. Chan, Daniel W.M. Chan
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Buildings are one of the valuable assets to provide people with shelters for work, leisure and rest. After years of attacks by weather, buildings will deteriorate which need proper maintenance in order to fulfill the requirements and satisfaction of the users. Poorly managed buildings not just give a negative image to the city itself, but also pose potential risk hazards to the health and safety of the general public. As a result, the management of maintenance projects has played an important role in cities like Hong Kong where the problem of urban decay has drawn much attention. However, most research has focused on managing new construction, and little research effort has been put on maintenance projects. Given the short duration and more diversified nature of work, repair and maintenance works are found to be more difficult to monitor and regulate when compared with new works. Project participants may face with problems in running maintenance projects which should be investigated so that proper strategies can be established. This paper aims to provide a thorough analysis on the problems of running maintenance projects. A review of literature on the characteristics of building maintenance projects was firstly conducted, which forms a solid basis for the empirical study. Results on the problems and difficulties of running maintenance projects from the viewpoints of industry practitioners will also be delivered with a view to formulating effective strategies for managing maintenance projects successfully.Keywords: characteristics, problems, building maintenance, Hong Kong
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2097143 A New Fast Skin Color Detection Technique
Authors: Tarek M. Mahmoud
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Skin color can provide a useful and robust cue for human-related image analysis, such as face detection, pornographic image filtering, hand detection and tracking, people retrieval in databases and Internet, etc. The major problem of such kinds of skin color detection algorithms is that it is time consuming and hence cannot be applied to a real time system. To overcome this problem, we introduce a new fast technique for skin detection which can be applied in a real time system. In this technique, instead of testing each image pixel to label it as skin or non-skin (as in classic techniques), we skip a set of pixels. The reason of the skipping process is the high probability that neighbors of the skin color pixels are also skin pixels, especially in adult images and vise versa. The proposed method can rapidly detect skin and non-skin color pixels, which in turn dramatically reduce the CPU time required for the protection process. Since many fast detection techniques are based on image resizing, we apply our proposed pixel skipping technique with image resizing to obtain better results. The performance evaluation of the proposed skipping and hybrid techniques in terms of the measured CPU time is presented. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed methods achieve better result than the relevant classic method.Keywords: Adult images filtering, image resizing, skin color detection, YcbCr color space.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3984142 An Investigation of the Barriers to E-business Implementation in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises
Authors: Jeffrey Chang, Barun Dasgupta
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E-business technologies, whereby business transactions are conducted remotely using the Internet, present unique opportunities and challenges for business. E-business technologies are applicable to a wide range of organizations and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are no exception. There is an established body of literature about e-business, looking at definitions, concepts, benefits and challenges. In general, however, the research focus has been on larger organizations, not SMEs. In an attempt to redress the balance of research, this paper looks at ebusiness technologies specifically from a small business perspective. It seeks to identify the possible barriers that SMEs might face when considering adoption of the e-business concept and practice as part of their business process change initiatives and implementation. To facilitate analysis of these barriers a conceptual framework has been developed which outlines the key conceptual and practical challenges of e-business implementation in SMEs. This is developed following a literature survey comprised of three categories: characteristics of SMEs, issues of IS/IT use in SMEs and general e-business adoption and implementation issues. The framework is then empirically assessed against 7 SMEs who have yet to implement e-business or whose e-business efforts have been unsatisfactory. Conclusions from the case studies can be used to verify the framework, and set parameters for further larger scale empirical investigation.
Keywords: Business process change, disruptive technologies, electronic business (e-Business), electronic commerce (e-Commerce), ICT adoption, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 5248141 Applying Biosensors’ Electromyography Signals through an Artificial Neural Network to Control a Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
Authors: Mylena McCoggle, Shyra Wilson, Andrea Rivera, Rocio Alba-Flores, Valentin Soloiu
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This work describes a system that uses electromyography (EMG) signals obtained from muscle sensors and an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for signal classification and pattern recognition that is used to control a small unmanned aerial vehicle using specific arm movements. The main objective of this endeavor is the development of an intelligent interface that allows the user to control the flight of a drone beyond direct manual control. The sensor used were the MyoWare Muscle sensor which contains two EMG electrodes used to collect signals from the posterior (extensor) and anterior (flexor) forearm, and the bicep. The collection of the raw signals from each sensor was performed using an Arduino Uno. Data processing algorithms were developed with the purpose of classifying the signals generated by the arm’s muscles when performing specific movements, namely: flexing, resting, and motion of the arm. With these arm motions roll control of the drone was achieved. MATLAB software was utilized to condition the signals and prepare them for the classification. To generate the input vector for the ANN and perform the classification, the root mean square and the standard deviation were processed for the signals from each electrode. The neuromuscular information was trained using an ANN with a single 10 neurons hidden layer to categorize the four targets. The result of the classification shows that an accuracy of 97.5% was obtained. Afterwards, classification results are used to generate the appropriate control signals from the computer to the drone through a Wi-Fi network connection. These procedures were successfully tested, where the drone responded successfully in real time to the commanded inputs.
Keywords: Biosensors, electromyography, Artificial Neural Network, Arduino, drone flight control, machine learning.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 527140 Disparities versus Similarities: WHO GPPQCL and ISO/IEC 17025:2017 International Standards for Quality Management Systems in Pharmaceutical Laboratories
Authors: M. A. Okezue, K. L. Clase, S. R. Byrn, P. Shivanand
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Medicines regulatory authorities expect pharmaceutical companies and contract research organizations to seek ways to certify that their laboratory control measurements are reliable. Establishing and maintaining laboratory quality standards are essential in ensuring the accuracy of test results. ‘ISO/IEC 17025:2017’ and ‘WHO Good Practices for Pharmaceutical Quality Control Laboratories (GPPQCL)’ are two quality standards commonly employed in developing laboratory quality systems. A review was conducted on the two standards to elaborate on areas on convergence and divergence. The goal was to understand how differences in each standard's requirements may influence laboratories' choices as to which document is easier to adopt for quality systems. A qualitative review method compared similar items in the two standards while mapping out areas where there were specific differences in the requirements of the two documents. The review also provided a detailed description of the clauses and parts covering management and technical requirements in these laboratory standards. The review showed that both documents share requirements for over ten critical areas covering objectives, infrastructure, management systems, and laboratory processes. There were, however, differences in standard expectations where GPPQCL emphasizes system procedures for planning and future budgets that will ensure continuity. Conversely, ISO 17025 was more focused on the risk management approach to establish laboratory quality systems. Elements in the two documents form common standard requirements to assure the validity of laboratory test results that promote mutual recognition. The ISO standard currently has more global patronage than GPPQCL.
Keywords: ISO/IEC 17025:2017, laboratory standards, quality control, WHO GPPQCL
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1083139 Communicative Competence in Technical Oral Presentation: That “Magic“ Perceived by ESL Educators versus Content Experts
Authors: Ena Bhattacharyya, Zullina H. Shaari
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Till date, English as a Second Language (ESL) educators involved in teaching language and communication to engineering students face an uphill task in developing graduate communicative competency. This challenge is accentuated by the apparent lack of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) materials for engineering students in the engineering curriculum. As such, most ESL educators are forced to play multiple roles. They don tasks such as curriculum designers, material writers and teachers with limited knowledge of the disciplinary content. Previous research indicates that prospective professional engineers should possess some sub-sets of competency: technical, linguistic oral immediacy, meta-cognitive and rhetorical explanatory competence. Another study revealed that engineering students need to be equipped with technical and linguistic oral immediacy competence. However, little is known whether these competency needs are in line with the educators- perceptions of communicative competence. This paper examines the best mix of communicative competence subsets that create the magic for engineering students in technical oral presentations. For the purpose of this study, two groups of educators were interviewed. These educators were language and communication lecturers involved in teaching a speaking course and content experts who assess students- technical oral presentations at tertiary level. The findings indicate that these two groups differ in their perceptions
Keywords: Communicative competence, Content experts, Educators, Technical Oral Presentations
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2033138 Evaluation of Market Limitations in the Case of Ecosystem Services
Authors: Giani Gradinaru
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Biodiversity crisis is one of the many crises that started at the turn of the millennia. Concrete form of expression is still disputed, but there is a relatively high consensus regarding the high rate of degradation and the urgent need for action. The strategy of action outlines a strong economic component, together with the recognition of market mechanisms as the most effective policies to protect biodiversity. In this context, biodiversity and ecosystem services are natural assets that play a key role in economic strategies and technological development to promote development and prosperity. Developing and strengthening policies for transition to an economy based on efficient use of resources is the way forward. To emphasize the co-viability specific to the connection economyecosystem services, scientific approach aimed on one hand how to implement policies for nature conservation and on the other hand, the concepts underlying the economic expression of ecosystem services- value, in the context of current technology. Following the analysis of business opportunities associated with changes in ecosystem services was concluded that development of market mechanisms for nature conservation is a trend that is increasingly stronger individualized within recent years. Although there are still many controversial issues that have already given rise to an obvious bias, international organizations and national governments have initiated and implemented in cooperation or independently such mechanisms. Consequently, they created the conditions for convergence between private interests and social interests of nature conservation, so there are opportunities for ongoing business development which leads, among other things, the positive effects on biodiversity. Finally, points out that markets fail to quantify the value of most ecosystem services. Existing price signals reflect at best, only a proportion of the total amount corresponding provision of food, water or fuel.Keywords: ecosystem services, economic evaluation, nature conservation
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1544137 Promoting Authenticity in Employer Brands to Address the Global-Local Problem in Complex Organisations: The Case of a Developing Country
Authors: Saud A. Taj
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Employer branding is considered as a useful tool for addressing the global-local problem facing complex organisations that have operations scattered across the globe and face challenges of dealing with the local environment alongside. Despite being an established field of study within the Western developed world, there is little empirical evidence concerning the relevance of employer branding to global companies that operate in the under-developed economies. This paper fills this gap by gaining rich insight into the implementation of employer branding programs in a foreign multinational operating in Pakistan dealing with the global-local problem. The study is qualitative in nature and employs semistructured and focus group interviews with senior/middle managers and local frontline employees to deeply examine the phenomenon in case organisation. Findings suggest that authenticity is required in employer brands to enable them to respond to the local needs thereby leading to the resolution of the global-local problem. However, the role of signaling theory is key to the development of authentic employer brands as it stresses on the need to establish an efficient and effective signaling environment where in signals travel in both directions (from signal designers to receivers and backwards) and facilitate firms with the global-local problem. The paper also identifies future avenues of research for the employer branding field.
Keywords: Authenticity, Counter-signals, Employer Branding, Global-Local Problem, Signaling Theory.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1792136 Health Care Waste Management Practices in Liberia: An Investigative Case Study
Authors: V. Emery David Jr., J. Wenchao, D. Mmereki, Y. John, F. Heriniaina
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Healthcare waste management continues to present an array of challenges for developing countries, and Liberia is of no exception. There is insufficient information available regarding the generation, handling, and disposal of health care waste. This face serves as an impediment to healthcare management schemes. The specific objective of this study is to present an evaluation of the current health care management practices in Liberia. It also presented procedures, techniques used, methods of handling, transportation, and disposal methods of wastes as well as the quantity and composition of health care waste. This study was conducted as an investigative case study, covering three different health care facilities; a hospital, a health center, and a clinic in Monrovia, Montserrado County. The average waste generation was found to be 0-7kg per day at the clinic and health center and 8-15kg per/day at the hospital. The composition of the waste includes hazardous and non-hazardous waste i.e. plastic, papers, sharps, and pathological elements etc. Nevertheless, the investigation showed that the healthcare waste generated by the surveyed healthcare facilities were not properly handled because of insufficient guidelines for separate collection, and classification, and adequate methods for storage and proper disposal of generated wastes. This therefore indicates that there is a need for improvement within the healthcare waste management system to improve the existing situation.Keywords: Disposal, Healthcare waste, management, Montserrado County, Monrovia.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2616135 Exploring Perceptions and Practices About Information and Communication Technologies in Business English Teaching in Pakistan
Authors: M. Athar Hussain, N.B. Jumani, Munazza Sultana., M. Zafar Iqbal
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Language Reforms and potential use of ICTs has been a focal area of Higher Education Commission of Pakistan. Efforts are being accelerated to incorporate fast expanding ICTs to bring qualitative improvement in language instruction in higher education. This paper explores how university teachers are benefitting from ICTs to make their English class effective and what type of problems they face in practicing ICTs during their lectures. An in-depth qualitative study was employed to understand why language teachers tend to use ICTs in their instruction and how they are practicing it. A sample of twenty teachers from five universities located in Islamabad, three from public sector and two from private sector, was selected on non-random (Snowball) sampling basis. An interview with 15 semi-structured items was used as research instruments to collect data. The findings reveal that business English teaching is facilitated and improved through the use of ICTs. The language teachers need special training regarding the practices and implementation of ICTs. It is recommended that initiatives might be taken to equip university language teachers with modern methodology incorporating ICTs as focal area and efforts might be made to remove barriers regarding the training of language teachers and proper usage of ICTs.
Keywords: Information and communication technologies, internet assisted learning, teaching business English, online instructional content.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1939134 The Effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioural Intervention in Alleviating Social Avoidance for Blind Students
Authors: Mohamed M. Elsherbiny
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Social Avoidance is one of the most important problems that face a good number of disabled students. It results from the negative attitudes of non-disabled students, teachers and others. Some of the past research has shown that non-disabled individuals hold negative attitudes toward persons with disabilities. The present study aims to alleviate Social Avoidance by applying the Cognitive Behavioral Intervention. 24 Blind students aged 19–24 (university students) were randomly chosen we compared an experimental group (consisted of 12 students) who went through the intervention program, with a control group (12 students also) who did not go through such intervention. We used the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale (SADS) to assess social anxiety and distress behavior. The author used many techniques of cognitive behavioral intervention such as modeling, cognitive restructuring, extension, contingency contracts, selfmonitoring, assertiveness training, role play, encouragement and others. Statistically, T-test was employed to test the research hypothesis. Result showed that there is a significance difference between the experimental group and the control group after the intervention and also at the follow up stages of the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale. Also for the experimental group, there is a significance difference before the intervention and the follow up stages for the scale. Results showed that, there is a decrease in social avoidance. Accordingly, cognitive behavioral intervention program was successful in decreasing social avoidance for blind students.Keywords: Social avoidance, cognitive behavioral intervention, blind disability, disability.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1976133 Poli4SDG: An Application for Environmental Crises Management and Gender Support
Authors: Angelica S. Valeriani, Lorenzo Biasiolo
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In recent years, the scale of the impact of climate change and its related side effects has become ever more massive and devastating. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), promoted by United Nations, aim to front issues related to climate change, among others. In particular, the project CROWD4SDG focuses on a bunch of SDGs, since it promotes environmental activities and climate-related issues. In this context, we developed a prototype of an application, under advanced development considering web design, that focuses on SDG 13 (SDG on climate action) by providing users with useful instruments to face environmental crises and climate-related disasters. Our prototype is thought and structured for both web and mobile development. The main goal of the application, POLI4SDG, is to help users to get through emergency services. To this extent, an organized overview and classification prove to be very effective and helpful to people in need. A careful analysis of data related to environmental crises prompted us to integrate the user contribution, i.e. exploiting a core principle of Citizen Science, into the realization of a public catalog, available for consulting and organized according to typology and specific features. In addition, gender equality and opportunity features are considered in the prototype, in order to allow women, often the most vulnerable category, to have direct support. The overall description of the application functionalities is detailed. Moreover, implementation features and properties of the prototype are discussed.
Keywords: Crowdsourcing, social media, SDG, climate change, natural disasters, gender equality.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 664132 Fast Painting with Different Colors Using Cross Correlation in the Frequency Domain
Authors: Hazem M. El-Bakry
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In this paper, a new technique for fast painting with different colors is presented. The idea of painting relies on applying masks with different colors to the background. Fast painting is achieved by applying these masks in the frequency domain instead of spatial (time) domain. New colors can be generated automatically as a result from the cross correlation operation. This idea was applied successfully for faster specific data (face, object, pattern, and code) detection using neural algorithms. Here, instead of performing cross correlation between the input input data (e.g., image, or a stream of sequential data) and the weights of neural networks, the cross correlation is performed between the colored masks and the background. Furthermore, this approach is developed to reduce the computation steps required by the painting operation. The principle of divide and conquer strategy is applied through background decomposition. Each background is divided into small in size subbackgrounds and then each sub-background is processed separately by using a single faster painting algorithm. Moreover, the fastest painting is achieved by using parallel processing techniques to paint the resulting sub-backgrounds using the same number of faster painting algorithms. In contrast to using only faster painting algorithm, the speed up ratio is increased with the size of the background when using faster painting algorithm and background decomposition. Simulation results show that painting in the frequency domain is faster than that in the spatial domain.Keywords: Fast Painting, Cross Correlation, Frequency Domain, Parallel Processing
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1783131 Off-Policy Q-learning Technique for Intrusion Response in Network Security
Authors: Zheni S. Stefanova, Kandethody M. Ramachandran
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With the increasing dependency on our computer devices, we face the necessity of adequate, efficient and effective mechanisms, for protecting our network. There are two main problems that Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) attempt to solve. 1) To detect the attack, by analyzing the incoming traffic and inspect the network (intrusion detection). 2) To produce a prompt response when the attack occurs (intrusion prevention). It is critical creating an Intrusion detection model that will detect a breach in the system on time and also challenging making it provide an automatic and with an acceptable delay response at every single stage of the monitoring process. We cannot afford to adopt security measures with a high exploiting computational power, and we are not able to accept a mechanism that will react with a delay. In this paper, we will propose an intrusion response mechanism that is based on artificial intelligence, and more precisely, reinforcement learning techniques (RLT). The RLT will help us to create a decision agent, who will control the process of interacting with the undetermined environment. The goal is to find an optimal policy, which will represent the intrusion response, therefore, to solve the Reinforcement learning problem, using a Q-learning approach. Our agent will produce an optimal immediate response, in the process of evaluating the network traffic.This Q-learning approach will establish the balance between exploration and exploitation and provide a unique, self-learning and strategic artificial intelligence response mechanism for IDS.Keywords: Intrusion prevention, network security, optimal policy, Q-learning.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1009130 Viability of Rice Husk Ash Concrete Brick/Block from Green Electricity in Bangladesh
Authors: Mohammad A. N. M. Shafiqul Karim
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As a developing country, Bangladesh has to face numerous challenges. Self Independence in electricity, contributing to climate change by reducing carbon emission and bringing the backward population of society to the mainstream is more challenging for them. Therefore, it is essential to ensure recycled use of local products to the maximum level in every sector. Some private organizations have already worked alongside government to bring the backward population to the mainstream by developing their financial capacities. As rice husk is the largest single category of the total energy supply in Bangladesh. As part of this strategy, rice husk can play a great as a promising renewable energy source, which is readily available, has considerable environmental benefits and can produce electricity and ensure multiple uses of byproducts in construction technology. For the first time in Bangladesh, an experimental multidimensional project depending on Rice Husk Electricity and Rice Husk Ash (RHA) concrete brick/block under Green Eco-Tech Limited has already been started. Project analysis, opportunity, sustainability, the high monitoring component, limitations and finally evaluated data reflecting the viability of establishing more projects using rice husk are discussed in this paper. The by-product of rice husk from the production of green electricity, RHA, can be used for making, in particular, RHA concrete brick/block in Bangladeshi aspects is also discussed here.
Keywords: Project analysis, rice husk, rice husk ash concrete brick/block, compressive strength of rice husk ash concrete brick/block.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2059129 Dead Bodies that Matter: A Consensual Qualitative Research on the Lived Experience of Embalmers
Authors: Mark N. Abello, Betina Velanie L. Cruz, Angelo Joachim D. C. De Castro, Arnel A. Diego, John Ezequel V. Murillo
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Embalmers are widely recognized as someone who mends the cadavers, but behind that is a great deal of work. These professionals are competent in physiology, chemicals, and cosmetics. Another is that such professionals face cadavers day-to-day. Given this background, the researchers intended to find out the lived experience of embalmers. The purpose of the present study is to discover the essence of the work of these professionals, to determine factors that influence their work, the depths of their life and on how the occupation affects upon physical, emotional-mental, spiritual, moral and social aspects. The researchers used the Consensual Qualitative Research, and eight embalmers, seven male and one female, from Manila and Bulacan were interviewed using open-ended questions and were used to triangulate the results. A primary research team conducted the consensus of domains, and an external auditor reviewed the results. A personal data sheet was also used, this helped the researchers group the respondents according to demographic profile. The results of the consensual qualitative research investigation revealed the four core components of the lived experience of embalmers which are motivation, struggles, acceptance, and contentment. The results revealed core components that play an important role in their everyday lives as an embalmer, daily hardships, and source of their pleasures. The present study will help future researchers, embalmers, and society.Keywords: Embalmers, consensual qualitative research, lived experience.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2544128 Optimum Replacement Policies for Kuwait Passenger Transport Company Busses: Case Study
Authors: Hilal A. Abdelwali, Elsayed E.M. Ellaimony, Ahmad E.M. Murad, Jasem M.S. Al-Rajhi
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Due to the excess of a vehicle operation through its life, some elements may face failure and deteriorate with time. This leads us to carry out maintenance, repair, tune up or full overhaul. After a certain period, the vehicle elements deteriorations increase with time which causes a very high increase of doing the maintenance operations and their costs. However, the logic decision at this point is to replace the current vehicle by a new one with minimum failure and maximum income. The importance of studying vehicle replacement problems come from the increase of stopping days due to many deteriorations in the vehicle parts. These deteriorations increase year after year causing an increase of operating costs and decrease the vehicle income. Vehicle replacement aims to determine the optimum time to keep, maintain, overhaul, renew and replace vehicles. This leads to an improvement in vehicle income, total operating costs, maintenance cost, fuel and oil costs, ton-kilometers, vehicle and engine performance, vehicle noise, vibration, and pollution. The aim of this paper is to find the optimum replacement policies of Kuwait Passenger Transport Company (KPTCP) fleet of busses. The objective of these policies is to maximize the busses pure profits. The dynamic programming (D.P.) technique is used to generate the busses optimal replacement policies
Keywords: Replacement Problem, Automotive Replacement, Dynamic Programming, Equipment Replacement, K.P.T.C.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1522127 The Taiwanese Institutional Arrangement for Coastal Management Due to Climate Change
Authors: Wen-Hong Liu, Hao-Tang Jhan, Kun-Lung Lin, Meng-Tsung Lee
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Weather disaster events were frequent and caused loss of lives and property in Taiwan recently. Excessive concentration of population and lacking of integrated planning led to Taiwanese coastal zone face the impacts of climate change directly. Comparing to many countries which have already set up legislation, competent authorities and national adaptation strategies, the ability of coastal management adapting to climate change is still insufficient in Taiwan. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a complete institutional arrangement for coastal management due to climate change in order to protect environment and sustain socio-economic development. This paper firstly reviews the impact of climate change on Taiwanese coastal zone. Secondly, development of Taiwanese institutional arrangement of coastal management is introduced. Followed is the analysis of four dimensions of legal basis, competent authority, scientific and financial support and international cooperations of institutional arrangement. The results show that Taiwanese government shall: 1) integrate climate change issue into Coastal Act, Wetland Act and territorial planning Act and pass them; 2) establish the high level competent authority for coastal management; 3) set up the climate change disaster coordinate platform; 4) link scientific information and decision markers; 5) establish the climate change adjustment fund; 6) participate in international climate change organizations and meetings actively; 7) cooperate with near countries to exchange experiences.
Keywords: Climate Change, Coastal Zone Management, Institution Arrangement, Adaptation.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1954126 The Use of Artificial Neural Network in Option Pricing: The Case of S and P 100 Index Options
Authors: Zeynep İltüzer Samur, Gül Tekin Temur
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Due to the increasing and varying risks that economic units face with, derivative instruments gain substantial importance, and trading volumes of derivatives have reached very significant level. Parallel with these high trading volumes, researchers have developed many different models. Some are parametric, some are nonparametric. In this study, the aim is to analyse the success of artificial neural network in pricing of options with S&P 100 index options data. Generally, the previous studies cover the data of European type call options. This study includes not only European call option but also American call and put options and European put options. Three data sets are used to perform three different ANN models. One only includes data that are directly observed from the economic environment, i.e. strike price, spot price, interest rate, maturity, type of the contract. The others include an extra input that is not an observable data but a parameter, i.e. volatility. With these detail data, the performance of ANN in put/call dimension, American/European dimension, moneyness dimension is analyzed and whether the contribution of the volatility in neural network analysis make improvement in prediction performance or not is examined. The most striking results revealed by the study is that ANN shows better performance when pricing call options compared to put options; and the use of volatility parameter as an input does not improve the performance.
Keywords: Option Pricing, Neural Network, S&P 100 Index, American/European options
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3069125 Analyzing Façade Scenarios and Daylight Levels in the Reid Building: A Reflective Case Study on the Designed Daylight under Overcast Sky
Authors: Eman Mayah, Raid Hanna
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This study presents the use of daylight in the case study of the Reid building at the Glasgow School of Art in the city of Glasgow, UK. In Nordic countries, daylight is one of the main considerations within building design, especially in the face of long, lightless winters. A shortage of daylight, contributing to dark and gloomy conditions, necessitates that designs incorporate strong daylight performance. As such, the building in question is designed to capture natural light for varying needs, where studios are located on the North and South façades. The study’s approach presents an analysis of different façade scenarios, where daylight from the North is observed, analyzed and compared with the daylight from the South façade for various design studios in the building. The findings then are correlated with the results of daylight levels from the daylight simulation program (Autodesk Ecotect Analysis) for the investigated studios. The study finds there to be a dramatic difference in daylight nature and levels between the North and South façades, where orientation, obstructions and designed façade fenestrations have major effects on the findings. The study concludes that some of the studios positioned on the North façade do not have a desirable quality of diffused northern light, due to the outside building’s obstructions, area and volume of the studio and the shadow effect of the designed mezzanine floor in the studios.
Keywords: Daylight levels, educational building, façade fenestration, overcast weather.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 732124 Estimation of the Bit Side Force by Using Artificial Neural Network
Authors: Mohammad Heidari
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Horizontal wells are proven to be better producers because they can be extended for a long distance in the pay zone. Engineers have the technical means to forecast the well productivity for a given horizontal length. However, experiences have shown that the actual production rate is often significantly less than that of forecasted. It is a difficult task, if not impossible to identify the real reason why a horizontal well is not producing what was forecasted. Often the source of problem lies in the drilling of horizontal section such as permeability reduction in the pay zone due to mud invasion or snaky well patterns created during drilling. Although drillers aim to drill a constant inclination hole in the pay zone, the more frequent outcome is a sinusoidal wellbore trajectory. The two factors, which play an important role in wellbore tortuosity, are the inclination and side force at bit. A constant inclination horizontal well can only be drilled if the bit face is maintained perpendicular to longitudinal axis of bottom hole assembly (BHA) while keeping the side force nil at the bit. This approach assumes that there exists no formation force at bit. Hence, an appropriate BHA can be designed if bit side force and bit tilt are determined accurately. The Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is superior to existing analytical techniques. In this study, the neural networks have been employed as a general approximation tool for estimation of the bit side forces. A number of samples are analyzed with ANN for parameters of bit side force and the results are compared with exact analysis. Back Propagation Neural network (BPN) is used to approximation of bit side forces. Resultant low relative error value of the test indicates the usability of the BPN in this area.Keywords: Artificial Neural Network, BHA, Horizontal Well, Stabilizer.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1967123 Prevalence, Associated Factors, and Help-Seeking Behavior of Psychological Distress among International Students at the National University of Malaysia
Authors: Khadiga Kahwa, Aniza Ismail
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Depression, anxiety, and stress are associated with decreased role functioning, productivity, and quality of life. International students are more prone to psychological distress as they face many stressors while studying abroad. The objectives of the study were to determine the prevalence and associated factors of depression, anxiety, and stress among international students, their help-seeking behavior, and their awareness of the available on-campus mental support services. A cross-sectional study with a purposive sampling method was performed on 280 international students at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) between the age of 18 and 35 years. The Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21) questionnaire was used anonymously to assess the mental health of students. Socio-demographic, help-seeking behavior, and awareness data were obtained. Independent sample t-test, one-way ANOVA test, and multiple linear regression were used to explore associated factors. The overall prevalence of depression, anxiety, and stress among international students were 58.9%, 71.8%, and 53.9%, respectively. Age was significantly associated with depression and anxiety. Ethnicity showed a significant association with depression and stress. No other factors were found to be significantly associated with psychological distress. Only 9.6% of the international students had sought help from on-campus mental support services. Students who were aware of the presence of such services were only 21.4% of the participants. In conclusion, this study addressed the gap in the literature on the mental health of international students and provided data that could be used in intervention programs to improve the mental health of the increasing number of international students in Malaysia.
Keywords: Anxiety, depression, stress, help-seeking behavior, students.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 712