Search results for: Capital Employed

Authors: Temitope O. Tokosi

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Healthcare is a human right. The sensitivity of health issues has necessitated the introduction of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) at district hospitals in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. The objective is understanding clinicians’ perception of ECM at their workplace. It is a descriptive case study design of constructivist paradigm. It employed a phenomenological data analysis method using a pattern matching deductive based analytical procedure. Purposive and s4nowball sampling techniques were applied in selecting participants. Clinicians expressed concerns and frustrations using ECM such as, non-integration with other hospital systems. Inadequate access points to ECM. Incorrect labelling of notes and bar-coding causes more time wasted in finding information. System features and/or functions (such as search and edit) are not possible. Hospital management and clinicians are not constantly interacting and discussing. Information turnaround time is unacceptably lengthy. Resolving these problems would involve a positive working relationship between hospital management and clinicians. In addition, prioritising the problems faced by clinicians in relation to relevance can ensure problem-solving in order to meet clinicians’ expectations and hospitals’ objective. Clinicians’ perception should invoke attention from hospital management with regards technology use. The study’s results can be generalised across clinician groupings exposed to ECM at various district hospitals because of professional and hospital homogeneity.

Keywords: Clinician, electronic content management, hospital, perception, technology.

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Authors: F. O Anugom

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The general functions of the university amongst other things include teaching, research and community service. Universities are recognized as the apex of learning, accumulating and imparting knowledge and skills of all kinds to students to enable them to be productive, earn their living and to make optimum contributions to national development. This is equivalent to the production of human capital in the form of high level manpower needed to administer the educational society, be useful to the society and manage the economy. Quality has become a matter of major importance for university education in Nigeria. Accreditation is the systematic review of educational programs to ensure that acceptable standards of education, scholarship and infrastructure are being maintained. Accreditation ensures that institution maintain quality. The process is designed to determine whether or not an institution has met or exceeded the published standards for accreditation, and whether it is achieving its mission and stated purposes. Ensuring quality assurance in accreditation process falls in the hands of university management which justified the need for this study. This study examined accreditation and quality assurance: the management imperative. Three research questions and three hypotheses guided the study. The design was a correlation survey with a population of 2,893 university administrators out of which 578 Heads of department and Dean of faculties were sampled. The instrument for data collection was titled Programme Accreditation Exercise scale with high levels of reliability. The research questions were answered with Pearson ‘r’ statistics. T-test statistics was used to test the hypotheses. It was found among others that the quality of accredited programme depends on the level of funding of universities in Nigeria. It was also indicated that quality of programme accreditation and physical facilities of universities in Nigeria have high relationship. But it was also revealed that programme accreditation is positively related to staffing in Nigerian universities. Based on the findings of the study, the researcher recommend that academic administrators should be included in the team of those who ensure quality programs in the universities. Private sector partnership should be encouraged to fund programs to ensure quality of programme in the universities. Independent agencies should be engaged to monitor the activities of accreditation teams to avoid bias.

Keywords: Accreditation, quality assurance, NUC, physical facilities, staffing.

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Authors: Bagher Rahimpour Cami, Hamid Hassanpour, Hoda Mashayekhi

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Nowadays websites provide a vast number of resources for users. Recommender systems have been developed as an essential element of these websites to provide a personalized environment for users. They help users to retrieve interested resources from large sets of available resources. Due to the dynamic feature of user preference, constructing an appropriate model to estimate the user preference is the major task of recommender systems. Profile matching and latent factors are two main approaches to identify user preference. In this paper, we employed the latent factor and profile matching to cluster the user profile and identify user preference, respectively. The method uses the Distance Dependent Chines Restaurant Process as a Bayesian nonparametric framework to extract the latent factors from the user profile. These latent factors are mapped to user interests and a weighted distribution is used to identify user preferences. We evaluate the proposed method using a real-world data-set that contains news tweets of a news agency (BBC). The experimental results and comparisons show the superior recommendation accuracy of the proposed approach related to existing methods, and its ability to effectively evolve over time.

Keywords: Content-based recommender systems, dynamic user modeling, extracting user interests, predicting user preference.

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Authors: Collins C. Chiemeke, A. Onugba, P. Sule

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High resolution seismic reflection has recently been carried out on Zaria batholith, with the aim of characterizing the granitic Zaria batholiths in terms of its lithology. The geology of the area has revealed that the older granite outcrops in the vicinity of Zaria are exposures of a syntectonics to late-tectonic granite batholiths which intruded a crystalline gneissic basement during the Pan-African Orogeny. During the data acquisition the geophone were placed at interval of 1 m, variable offset of 1 and 10 m was used. The common midpoint (CMP) method with 12 fold coverage was employed for the survey. Analysis of the generated 3D surface of the p wave velocities from different profiles for densities and bulk modulus revealed that the rock material is more consolidated in South East part of the batholith and less consolidated in the North Western part. This was in conformity with earlier identified geology of the area, with the South Eastern part majorly of granitic outcrop, while the North Western part is characterized with the exposure of gneisses and thick overburden cover. The difference in lithology was also confirmed by the difference in seismic sections and Arial satellite photograph. Hence two major lithologies were identified, the granitic and gneisses complex which are characterized by gradational boundaries.

Keywords: Basement Complex, Batholith, High Resolution, Lithologies, Seismic Reflection.

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Authors: G. H. Senussi

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The present work is concerned with the effect of turning process parameters (cutting speed, feed rate, and depth of cut) and distance from the center of work piece as input variables on the chip micro-hardness as response or output. Three experiments were conducted; they were used to investigate the chip micro-hardness behavior at diameter of work piece for 30[mm], 40[mm], and 50[mm]. Response surface methodology (R.S.M) is used to determine and present the cause and effect of the relationship between true mean response and input control variables influencing the response as a two or three dimensional hyper surface. R.S.M has been used for designing a three factor with five level central composite rotatable factors design in order to construct statistical models capable of accurate prediction of responses. The results obtained showed that the application of R.S.M can predict the effect of machining parameters on chip micro-hardness. The five level factorial designs can be employed easily for developing statistical models to predict chip micro-hardness by controllable machining parameters. Results obtained showed that the combined effect of cutting speed at it?s lower level, feed rate and depth of cut at their higher values, and larger work piece diameter can result increasing chi micro-hardness.

Keywords: Machining Parameters, Chip Micro-Hardness, CNCMachining, 304-Austenic Stainless Steel.

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Authors: Shin-Hyung Cho, Dong-Kyu Kim, Seung-Young Kho

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Truck-involved crashes have higher crash severity than non-truck-involved crashes. There have been many studies about the frequency of crashes and the development of severity models, but those studies only analyzed the relationship between observed variables. To identify why more people are injured or killed when trucks are involved in the crash, we must examine to quantify the complex causal relationship between severity of the crash and risk factors by adopting the latent factors of crashes. The aim of this study was to develop a structural equation or model based on truck-involved and non-truck-involved crashes, including five latent variables, i.e. a crash factor, environmental factor, road factor, driver’s factor, and severity factor. To clarify the unique characteristics of truck-involved crashes compared to non-truck-involved crashes, a confirmatory analysis method was used. To develop the model, we extracted crash data from 10,083 crashes on Korean freeways from 2008 through 2014. The results showed that the most significant variable affecting the severity of a crash is the crash factor, which can be expressed by the location, cause, and type of the crash. For non-truck-involved crashes, the crash and environment factors increase severity of the crash; conversely, the road and driver factors tend to reduce severity of the crash. For truck-involved crashes, the driver factor has a significant effect on severity of the crash although its effect is slightly less than the crash factor. The multiple group analysis employed to analyze the differences between the heterogeneous groups of drivers.

Keywords: Crash severity, structural equation modeling, truck-involved crashes, multiple group analysis, crash on freeway.

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Authors: Shahrad Ebrahimzadeh

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Nowadays, the main efforts of the researchers aim to constantly evolve new, optimized, and efficient construction materials and methods related to reinforced concrete beams. Due to the fewer applied materials and higher structural efficiency than solid concrete beams with the same concrete area, hollow reinforced concrete beams (HRCBs) internally reinforced with steel rebars have been employed extensively for bridge structural members and high-rise buildings. Many experimental studies have been conducted to investigate the behavior of hollow beams subjected to bending loading and found that the structural performance of HRCBs is critically affected by many design parameters. While the proper design of the HRCBs demonstrated comparable behavior to solid sections, inappropriate design leads beams to be extremely prone to brittle failure. Another potential issue that needs further investigation is replacing steel bars with suitable materials due to their susceptibility to corrosion. Hence, to develop a reliable construction system, the application of Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) bars as a non-corroding material has been utilized. Furthermore, this study aims to critically review the different design parameters that affect the flexural performance of the HRCBs and recognize the gaps of knowledge in the better design and more effective use of this construction system.

Keywords: Design parameters, experimental investigations, hollow reinforced concrete beams, steel, GFRP, flexural strength.

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Authors: Deepak Kukkar, Inderpreet Kaur, Jagtar Singh, Lalit M Bharadwaj

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Polymeric microreactors have emerged as a new generation of carriers that hold tremendous promise in the areas of cancer therapy, controlled delivery of drugs, for removal of pollutants etc. Present work reports a simple and convenient methodology for synthesis of polystyrene and poly caprolactone microreactors. An aqueous suspension of carboxylated (1μm) polystyrene latex particles was mixed with toluene solution followed by freezing with liquid nitrogen. Freezed particles were incubated at -20°C and characterized for formation of voids on the surface of polymer microspheres by Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope. The hollow particles were then overnight incubated at 40ºC with unfunctionalized quantum dots (QDs) in 5:1 ratio. QDs Encapsulated polystyrene microcapsules were characterized by fluorescence microscopy. Likewise Poly ε-caprolactone microreactors were prepared by micro-volcanic rupture of freeze dried microspheres synthesized using emulsification of polymer with aqueous Poly vinyl alcohol and freezed with liquid nitrogen. Microreactors were examined with Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope for size and morphology. Current study is an attempt to create hollow polymer particles which can be employed for microencapsulation of nanoparticles and drug molecules.

Keywords: FE-SEM, Microreactors, Microvolcanic rupture, Poly (ε-caprolactone), Polystyrene

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Authors: Nidhal Jamia, Sami El-Borgi

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In this paper, the problem of a mixed-Mode crack embedded in an infinite medium made of a functionally graded piezoelectric material (FGPM) with crack surfaces subjected to electro-mechanical loadings is investigated. Eringen’s non-local theory of elasticity is adopted to formulate the governing electro-elastic equations. The properties of the piezoelectric material are assumed to vary exponentially along a perpendicular plane to the crack. Using Fourier transform, three integral equations are obtained in which the unknown variables are the jumps of mechanical displacements and electric potentials across the crack surfaces. To solve the integral equations, the unknowns are directly expanded as a series of Jacobi polynomials, and the resulting equations solved using the Schmidt method. In contrast to the classical solutions based on the local theory, it is found that no mechanical stress and electric displacement singularities are present at the crack tips when nonlocal theory is employed to investigate the problem. A direct benefit is the ability to use the calculated maximum stress as a fracture criterion. The primary objective of this study is to investigate the effects of crack length, material gradient parameter describing FGPMs, and lattice parameter on the mechanical stress and electric displacement field near crack tips.

Keywords: Functionally graded piezoelectric material, mixed-mode crack, non-local theory, Schmidt method.

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Authors: Homa Torabizadeh, Mohaddeseh Mikani

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Inulinase from Aspergillus niger was covalently immobilized on magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs/Fe₃O₄) covered with soy protein isolate (SPI/Fe₃O₄) functionalized by bovine serum albumin (BSA) nanoparticles. MNPs are promising enzyme carriers because they separate easily under external magnetic fields and have enhanced immobilized enzyme reusability. As MNPs aggregate simply, surface coating strategy was employed. SPI functionalized by BSA was a suitable candidate for nanomagnetite coating due to its superior biocompatibility and hydrophilicity. Fe₃O₄@SPI-BSA nanoparticles were synthesized as a novel carrier with narrow particle size distribution. Step by step fabrication monitoring of Fe₃O₄@SPI-BSA nanoparticles was performed using field emission scanning electron microscopy and dynamic light scattering. The results illustrated that nanomagnetite with the spherical morphology was well monodispersed with the diameter of about 35 nm. The average size of the SPI-BSA nanoparticles was 80 to 90 nm, and their zeta potential was around −34 mV. Finally, the mean diameter of fabricated Fe₃O₄@SPI-BSA NPs was less than 120 nm. Inulinase enzyme from Aspergillus niger was covalently immobilized through gluteraldehyde on Fe₃O₄@SPI-BSA nanoparticles successfully. Fourier transform infrared spectra and field emission scanning electron microscopy images provided sufficient proof for the enzyme immobilization on the nanoparticles with 80% enzyme loading.

Keywords: High fructose syrup, inulinase immobilization, functionalized magnetic nanoparticles, soy protein isolate.

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Authors: Alpha Bolinao, Francine Rose De Castro, Jessie Kate Lumba, Raztine Mae Paeste, Hannah Grace Tosio

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The present study aimed to know the role of verbal bullying in the lives of obese teenagers exposed to it. The study employed a qualitative design specifically the phenomenological approach that focuses on the obese teenagers’ verbal bullying experiences. The study also used the social constructivism approach wherein it described the obese teenagers’ verbal bullying experiences as they interact with the social world. Through purposive and referral sampling technique, the researchers were able to choose twelve (12) respondents from different schools around the City of Manila, enrolled in the School Year 2015-2016, ages 16-21 years old, has experienced verbal bullying for the last ten (10) years and with the Body Mass Index (BMI) of equal to or greater than 30. Upon the consent of the respondents, ethical considerations were ensured. In-depth one (1) hour interviews were guided by the researchers’ aide memoir. The recorded interviews were transcribed into a field text and the responses were thoroughly analyzed through Thematic Analysis and Kelly’s Repertory Grid. It was found that the role of verbal bullying in the lives of obese teenagers exposed to it is a process and is best described through a syringe, or the 5S Responses of Obese Teenagers in Bullying, with five conceptual themes which also signify the experiences and the process that obese teenagers have gone through after experiencing verbal bullying. The themes conceptualized were: Suffering, self-doubt, suppression, self-acceptance and sanguineness. This paper may serve as a basis for a counseling program to help the obese teenagers cope with their bullying experiences.

Keywords: Obesity, obese teenagers, bullying, experiences.

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Authors: Kyung Bae Park, Sung Ho Ha

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Online user-generated contents (UGC) significantly change the way customers behave (e.g., shop, travel), and a pressing need to handle the overwhelmingly plethora amount of various UGC is one of the paramount issues for management. However, a current approach (e.g., sentiment analysis) is often ineffective for leveraging textual information to detect the problems or issues that a certain management suffers from. In this paper, we employ text mining of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) on a popular online review site dedicated to complaint from users. We find that the employed LDA efficiently detects customer complaints, and a further inspection with the visualization technique is effective to categorize the problems or issues. As such, management can identify the issues at stake and prioritize them accordingly in a timely manner given the limited amount of resources. The findings provide managerial insights into how analytics on social media can help maintain and improve their reputation management. Our interdisciplinary approach also highlights several insights by applying machine learning techniques in marketing research domain. On a broader technical note, this paper illustrates the details of how to implement LDA in R program from a beginning (data collection in R) to an end (LDA analysis in R) since the instruction is still largely undocumented. In this regard, it will help lower the boundary for interdisciplinary researcher to conduct related research.

Keywords: Latent Dirichlet allocation, R program, text mining, topic model, user generated contents, visualization.

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Authors: Anass Rahouti, Guillaume Salze, Ruggiero Lovreglio, Sélim Datoussaïd

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In healthcare facilities, training the staff for firefighting and evacuation in real buildings is very challenging due to the presence of a vulnerable population in such an environment. In a standard environment, traditional approaches, such as fire drills, are often used to train the occupants and provide them with information about fire safety procedures. However, those traditional approaches may be inappropriate for a vulnerable population and can be inefficient from an educational viewpoint as it is impossible to expose the occupants to scenarios similar to a real emergency. Immersive serious games could be used as an alternative to traditional approaches to overcome their limitations. Serious games are already being used in different safety domains such as fires, earthquakes and terror attacks for several building types (e.g., office buildings, train stations, tunnels, etc.). In this study, we developed an immersive serious game to improve the fire safety skills of staff in healthcare facilities. An accurate representation of the healthcare environment was built in Unity3D by including visual and audio stimuli inspired from those employed in commercial action games. The serious game is organised in three levels. In each of them, the trainee is presented with a specific fire emergency and s/he can perform protective actions (e.g., firefighting, helping non-ambulant occupants, etc.) or s/he can ignore the opportunity for action and continue the evacuation. In this paper, we describe all the steps required to develop such a prototype, as well as the key questions that need to be answered, to develop a serious game for firefighting and evacuation in healthcare facilities.

Keywords: Fire Safety, healthcare, serious game, training.

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Authors: A. S. Haruna, M. U. Tambawal, A. A. Salawu

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The psychological impact of peer influence on its individual group members, can make them resist HIV/AIDS counselling and testing. This study investigated the correlate of peer influence and resistance to HIV/AIDS counselling and testing among students in tertiary institutions in Kano state, Nigeria. To achieve this, three null hypotheses were postulated and tested. Cross- Sectional Survey Design was employed in which 1512 sample was selected from a student population of 104,841.Simple Random Sampling was used in the selection. A self-developed 20-item scale called Peer Influence and Psychological Resistance Inventory (PIPRI) was used for data collection. Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMCC) via test-retest method was applied to estimate a reliability coefficient of 0.86 for the scale. Data obtained was analyzed using t-test and PPMCC at 0.05 level of confidence. Results reveal 26.3% (397) of the respondents being influenced by their peer group, while 39.8% showed resistance. Also, the t-tests and PPMCC statistics were greater than their respective critical values. This shows that there was a significant gender difference in peer influence and a difference between peer influence and resistance to HIV/AIDS counselling and testing. However, a positive relationship between peer influence and resistance to HIV/AIDS counselling and testing was shown. A major recommendation offered suggests the use of reinforcement and social support for positive attitudes and maintenance of safe behaviour among students who patronize HIV/AIDS counselling.

Keywords: Peer influence, HIV/AIDS counselling and testing, Resistance.

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Authors: Chin-Yin Chen, Chi-Cheng Cheng

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This paper aims at to develop a robust optimization methodology for the mechatronic modules of machine tools by considering all important characteristics from all structural and control domains in one single process. The relationship between these two domains is strongly coupled. In order to reduce the disturbance caused by parameters in either one, the mechanical and controller design domains need to be integrated. Therefore, the concurrent integrated design method Design For Control (DFC), will be employed in this paper. In this connect, it is not only applied to achieve minimal power consumption but also enhance structural performance and system response at same time. To investigate the method for integrated optimization, a mechatronic feed drive system of the machine tools is used as a design platform. Pro/Engineer and AnSys are first used to build the 3D model to analyze and design structure parameters such as elastic deformation, nature frequency and component size, based on their effects and sensitivities to the structure. In addition, the robust controller,based on Quantitative Feedback Theory (QFT), will be applied to determine proper control parameters for the controller. Therefore, overall physical properties of the machine tool will be obtained in the initial stage. Finally, the technology of design for control will be carried out to modify the structural and control parameters to achieve overall system performance. Hence, the corresponding productivity is expected to be greatly improved.

Keywords: Machine tools, integrated structure and control design, design for control, multilevel decomposition, quantitative feedback theory.

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Authors: S. M. Kamruzzaman

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In this paper, we propose a dynamic TDMA slot reservation (DTSR) protocol for cognitive radio ad hoc networks. Quality of Service (QoS) guarantee plays a critically important role in such networks. We consider the problem of providing QoS guarantee to users as well as to maintain the most efficient use of scarce bandwidth resources. According to one hop neighboring information and the bandwidth requirement, our proposed protocol dynamically changes the frame length and the transmission schedule. A dynamic frame length expansion and shrinking scheme that controls the excessive increase of unassigned slots has been proposed. This method efficiently utilizes the channel bandwidth by assigning unused slots to new neighboring nodes and increasing the frame length when the number of slots in the frame is insufficient to support the neighboring nodes. It also shrinks the frame length when half of the slots in the frame of a node are empty. An efficient slot reservation protocol not only guarantees successful data transmissions without collisions but also enhance channel spatial reuse to maximize the system throughput. Our proposed scheme, which provides both QoS guarantee and efficient resource utilization, be employed to optimize the channel spatial reuse and maximize the system throughput. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed mechanism achieves desirable performance in multichannel multi-rate cognitive radio ad hoc networks.

Keywords: TDMA, cognitive radio, ad hoc networks, QoSguarantee, dynamic frame length.

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Authors: Aya Salama

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Digital Twin has emerged as a compelling research area, capturing the attention of scholars over the past decade. It finds applications across diverse fields, including smart manufacturing and healthcare, offering significant time and cost savings. Notably, it often intersects with other cutting-edge technologies such as Data Mining, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning. However, the concept of a Human Digital Twin (HDT) is still in its infancy and requires further demonstration of its practicality. HDT takes the notion of Digital Twin a step further by extending it to living entities, notably humans, who are vastly different from inanimate physical objects. The primary objective of this research was to create an HDT capable of automating real-time human responses by simulating human behavior. To achieve this, the study delved into various areas, including clustering, supervised classification, topic extraction, and sentiment analysis. The paper successfully demonstrated the feasibility of HDT for generating personalized responses in social messaging applications. Notably, the proposed approach achieved an overall accuracy of 63%, a highly promising result that could pave the way for further exploration of the HDT concept. The methodology employed Random Forest for clustering the question database and matching new questions, while K-nearest neighbor was utilized for sentiment analysis.

Keywords: Human Digital twin, sentiment analysis, topic extraction, supervised machine learning, unsupervised machine learning, classification and clustering.

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Authors: Hrishikesh Purandare, Ashwini Pethe

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The built environment can have a significant effect on children’s cognitive and socio-emotional development. Children living in urban slums in India confront issues associated with poor living conditions and lack of access to basic service. It is a well-known fact that slums are places of extreme poverty, substandard housing, overcrowding, and poor sanitation. These challenges faced by children living in slums can have a significant impact on their physical, psychological, and social development. Despite the magnitude of the problem, the area of research particularly on the impact of the built environment of slums on children and adolescent well-being has been understudied in India. The impact of the built environment on children’s well-being has been understudied in the global south. Apart from issues of the limited access to health and education of these children, perception of children regarding the built environment which they inhabit is rarely addressed. A sample of 120 children living in the slums of Pune city between the ages 7 and 16 years participated in this study which employed a concurrent embedded approach of mixed method research. Questionnaires were administered to obtain quantitative data that included attributes of crowding, noise, privacy, territoriality, and housing quality in the built environment. The qualitative analysis of children’s sketches highlighted aspects of the built environment with which they associated themselves the most. The study sought to examine the perception of the deprived children living in the urban slums in the city of Pune (India) towards their built environment.

Keywords: Physical environment, poverty, underprivileged children, urban Indian slums.

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Authors: Pegah Farshadmanesh, Jamshid Mohammadi, Mehdi Modares

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In nearly all earthquakes of the past century that resulted in moderate to significant damage, the occurrence of postearthquake fire ignition (PEFI) has imposed a serious hazard and caused severe damage, especially in urban areas. In order to reduce the loss of life and property caused by post-earthquake fires, there is a crucial need for predictive models to estimate the PEFI risk. The parameters affecting PEFI risk can be categorized as: 1) factors influencing fire ignition in normal (non-earthquake) condition, including floor area, building category, ignitability, type of appliance, and prevention devices, and 2) earthquake related factors contributing to the PEFI risk, including building vulnerability and earthquake characteristics such as intensity, peak ground acceleration, and peak ground velocity. State-of-the-art statistical PEFI risk models are solely based on limited available earthquake data, and therefore they cannot predict the PEFI risk for areas with insufficient earthquake records since such records are needed in estimating the PEFI model parameters. In this paper, the correlation between normal condition ignition risk, peak ground acceleration, and PEFI risk is examined in an effort to offer a means for predicting post-earthquake ignition events. An illustrative example is presented to demonstrate how such correlation can be employed in a seismic area to predict PEFI hazard.

Keywords: Fire risk, post-earthquake fire ignition (PEFI), risk management, seismicity.

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Authors: Xiaobai Li, Li Li, Yujin Hu, Weiming Deng, Zhe Ding

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A size-dependent Euler–Bernoulli beam model, which accounts for nonlocal stress field, strain gradient field and higher order inertia force field, is derived based on the nonlocal strain gradient theory considering velocity gradient effect. The governing equations and boundary conditions are derived both in dimensional and dimensionless form by employed the Hamilton principle. The analytical solutions based on different continuum theories are compared. The effect of higher order inertia terms is extremely significant in high frequency range. It is found that there exists an asymptotic frequency for the proposed beam model, while for the nonlocal strain gradient theory the solutions diverge. The effect of strain gradient field in thickness direction is significant in low frequencies domain and it cannot be neglected when the material strain length scale parameter is considerable with beam thickness. The influence of each of three size effect parameters on the natural frequencies are investigated. The natural frequencies increase with the increasing material strain gradient length scale parameter or decreasing velocity gradient length scale parameter and nonlocal parameter.

Keywords: Euler-Bernoulli Beams, free vibration, higher order inertia, nonlocal strain gradient theory, velocity gradient.

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Authors: Abdelkarim M. Ertiame, D. W. Yu, D. L. Yu, J. B. Gomm

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In this paper, a robust fault detection and isolation (FDI) scheme is developed to monitor a multivariable nonlinear chemical process called the Chylla-Haase polymerization reactor, when it is under the cascade PI control. The scheme employs a radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) in an independent mode to model the process dynamics, and using the weighted sum-squared prediction error as the residual. The Recursive Orthogonal Least Squares algorithm (ROLS) is employed to train the model to overcome the training difficulty of the independent mode of the network. Then, another RBFNN is used as a fault classifier to isolate faults from different features involved in the residual vector. Several actuator and sensor faults are simulated in a nonlinear simulation of the reactor in Simulink. The scheme is used to detect and isolate the faults on-line. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the scheme even the process is subjected to disturbances and uncertainties including significant changes in the monomer feed rate, fouling factor, impurity factor, ambient temperature, and measurement noise. The simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method.

Keywords: Robust fault detection, cascade control, independent RBF model, RBF neural networks, Chylla-Haase reactor, FDI under closed-loop control.

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Authors: Andrea Bellucci, Martina Tofi

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The aim of paper is to analyze business models of bancassurance in Italy for life business. The life insurance business is very developed in the Italian market and banks branches have 80% of the market share. Given its maturity, the life insurance market needs to consolidate its organizational form to allow for the development of non-life business, which nowadays collects few premiums but represents a great opportunity to enlarge the market share of bancassurance using its strength in the distribution channel while the market share of independent agents is decreasing. Starting with the main business model of bancassurance for life business, this paper will analyze the performances of life companies in the Italian market by balance sheet indicators and by main discriminant variables of business models. The study will observe trends from 2013 to 2015 for the Italian market by exploiting a database managed by Associazione Nazionale delle Imprese di Assicurazione (ANIA). The applied approach is based on a bottom-up analysis starting with variables and indicators to define business models’ classification. The statistical classification algorithm proposed by Ward is employed to design business models’ profiles. Results from the analysis will be a representation of the main business models built by their profile related to indicators. In that way, an unsupervised analysis is developed that has the limit of its judgmental dimension based on research opinion, but it is possible to obtain a design of effective business models.

Keywords: Balance sheet indicators, Bancassurance, business models, ward algorithm.

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Authors: Sapan Mohan Saini

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We report the electronic structure and optical properties of NdF3 compound. Our calculations are based on density functional theory (DFT) using the full potential linearized augmented plane wave (FPLAPW) method with the inclusion of spin orbit coupling. We employed the local spin density approximation (LSDA) and Coulomb-corrected local spin density approximation, known for treating the highly correlated 4f electrons properly, is able to reproduce the correct insulating ground state. We find that the standard LSDA approach is incapable of correctly describing the electronic properties of such materials since it positions the f-bands incorrectly resulting in an incorrect metallic ground state. On the other hand, LSDA + U approximation, known for treating the highly correlated 4f electrons properly, is able to reproduce the correct insulating ground state. Interestingly, however, we do not find any significant differences in the optical properties calculated using LSDA, and LSDA + U suggesting that the 4f electrons do not play a decisive role in the optical properties of these compounds. The reflectivity for NdF3 compound stays low till 7 eV which is consistent with their large energy gaps. The calculated energy gaps are in good agreement with experiments. Our calculated reflectivity compares well with the experimental data and the results are analyzed in the light of band to band transitions.

Keywords: FPLAPW Method, optical properties, rare earthtrifluorides LSDA+U

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Authors: Yudia Mailani Putri, Martalena Purba, B. J. Istiti Kandarina

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Background: Obesity has been recognized as a global health problem. Individuals classified as overweight and obese are increasing at an alarming rate. This condition is associated with psychological and physiological problems. as a person reaches adulthood, somatic growth ceases. At this stage, the human body has developed fully, to a stable state. As the capital of Riau Province in Indonesia, Pekanbaru is dominated by Malay ethnic population habitually consuming cholesterol-rich fatty foods as a daily menu, a trigger to the onset of obesity resulting in high prevalence of degenerative diseases. Research objectives: The aim of this study is elaborating the relationship between high-fat consumption pattern, stress level, physical activity and the incidence of obesity in adult women in Pekanbaru city. Research Methods: Among the combined research methods applied in this study, the first stage is quantitative observational, analytical cross-sectional research design with adult women aged 20-40 living in Pekanbaru city. The sample consists of 200 women with BMI≥25. Sample data is processed with univariate, bivariate (correlation and simple linear regression) and multivariate (multiple linear regression) analysis. The second phase is qualitative descriptive study purposive sampling by in-depth interviews. six participants withdrew from the study. Results: According to the results of the bivariate analysis, there are relationships between the incidence of obesity and the pattern of high fat foods consumption (energy intake (p≤0.000; r = 0.536), protein intake (p≤0.000; r=0.307), fat intake (p≤0.000; r=0.416), carbohydrate intake (p≤0.000; r=0.430), frequency of fatty food consumption (p≤0.000; r=0.506) and frequency of viscera foods consumption (p≤0.000; r=0.535). There is a relationship between physical activity and incidence of obesity (p≤0.000; r=-0.631). However, there is no relationship between the level of stress (p=0.741; r=0.019-) and the incidence of obesity. Physical activity is a predominant factor in the incidence of obesity in adult women in Pekanbaru city. Conclusion: There are relationships between high-fat food consumption pattern, physical activity and the incidence of obesity in Pekanbaru city whereas physical activity is a predominant factor in the occurrence of obesity, supported by the unchangeable pattern of high-fat foods consumption.

Keywords: Obesity, adult, high in fat, stress, physical activity, consumption pattern.

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Authors: Chongya Song, Kang Yen, Alexander Pons, Jin Liu

Abstract:

In the field of machine learning, the ensemble has been employed as a common methodology to improve the performance upon multiple base classifiers. However, the true predictions are often canceled out by the false ones during consensus due to a phenomenon called “curse of correlation” which is represented as the strong interferences among the predictions produced by the base classifiers. In addition, the existing practices are still not able to effectively mitigate the problem of imbalanced classification. Based on the analysis on our experiment results, we conclude that the two problems are caused by some inherent deficiencies in the approach of consensus. Therefore, we create an enhanced ensemble algorithm which adopts a designed rank-based chain-mode consensus to overcome the two problems. In order to evaluate the proposed ensemble algorithm, we employ a well-known benchmark data set NSL-KDD (the improved version of dataset KDDCup99 produced by University of New Brunswick) to make comparisons between the proposed and 8 common ensemble algorithms. Particularly, each compared ensemble classifier uses the same 22 base classifiers, so that the differences in terms of the improvements toward the accuracy and reliability upon the base classifiers can be truly revealed. As a result, the proposed rank-based chain-mode consensus is proved to be a more effective ensemble solution than the traditional consensus approach, which outperforms the 8 ensemble algorithms by 20% on almost all compared metrices which include accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score and area under receiver operating characteristic curve.

Keywords: Consensus, curse of correlation, imbalanced classification, rank-based chain-mode ensemble.

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Authors: S. K. Tomar, R. Prasad, S. Panda, C. Ardil

Abstract:

Reduction of Single Input Single Output (SISO) discrete systems into lower order model, using a conventional and an evolutionary technique is presented in this paper. In the conventional technique, the mixed advantages of Modified Cauer Form (MCF) and differentiation are used. In this method the original discrete system is, first, converted into equivalent continuous system by applying bilinear transformation. The denominator of the equivalent continuous system and its reciprocal are differentiated successively, the reduced denominator of the desired order is obtained by combining the differentiated polynomials. The numerator is obtained by matching the quotients of MCF. The reduced continuous system is converted back into discrete system using inverse bilinear transformation. In the evolutionary technique method, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is employed to reduce the higher order model. PSO method is based on the minimization of the Integral Squared Error (ISE) between the transient responses of original higher order model and the reduced order model pertaining to a unit step input. Both the methods are illustrated through numerical example.

Keywords: Discrete System, Single Input Single Output (SISO), Bilinear Transformation, Reduced Order Model, Modified CauerForm, Polynomial Differentiation, Particle Swarm Optimization, Integral Squared Error.

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Authors: V. T. S. Dao, T. G. Etoh, C. Vo Le, H. D. Nguyen, K. Takehara, T. Akino, K. Nishi

Abstract:

Since 2004, we have been developing an in-situ storage image sensor (ISIS) that captures more than 100 consecutive images at a frame rate of 10 Mfps with ultra-high sensitivity as well as the video camera for use with this ISIS. Currently, basic research is continuing in an attempt to increase the frame rate up to 100 Mfps and above. In order to suppress electro-magnetic noise at such high frequency, a digital-noiseless imaging transfer scheme has been developed utilizing solely sinusoidal driving voltages. This paper presents highly efficient-yet-accurate expressions to estimate attenuation as well as phase delay of driving voltages through RC networks of an ultra-high-speed image sensor. Elmore metric for a fundamental RC chain is employed as the first-order approximation. By application of dimensional analysis to SPICE data, we found a simple expression that significantly improves the accuracy of the approximation. Similarly, another simple closed-form model to estimate phase delay through fundamental RC networks is also obtained. Estimation error of both expressions is much less than previous works, only less 2% for most of the cases . The framework of this analysis can be extended to address similar issues of other VLSI structures.

Keywords: Dimensional Analysis, ISIS, Digital-noiseless, RC network, Attenuation, Phase Delay, Elmore model

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Authors: Sima Ziaee, Khosro Jafarpur

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Among all mechanical joining processes, welding has been employed for its advantage in design flexibility, cost saving, reduced overall weight and enhanced structural performance. However, for structures made of relatively thin components, welding can introduce significant buckling distortion which causes loss of dimensional control, structural integrity and increased fabrication costs. Different parameters can affect buckling behavior of welded thin structures such as, heat input, welding sequence, dimension of structure. In this work, a 3-D thermo elastic-viscoplastic finite element analysis technique is applied to evaluate the effect of shell dimensions on buckling behavior and entropy generation of welded thin shells. Also, in the present work, the approximated longitudinal transient stresses which produced in each time step, is applied to the 3D-eigenvalue analysis to ratify predicted buckling time and corresponding eigenmode. Besides, the possibility of buckling prediction by entropy generation at each time is investigated and it is found that one can predict time of buckling with drawing entropy generation versus out of plane deformation. The results of finite element analysis show that the length, span and thickness of welded thin shells affect the number of local buckling, mode shape of global buckling and post-buckling behavior of welded thin shells.

Keywords: Buckling behavior, Elastic viscoplastic model, Entropy generation, Finite element method, Shell dimensions.

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Authors: Yoichi Hikino, Mutsuto Kawahara

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The purpose of this study is to derive optimal shapes of a body located in viscous flows by the finite element method using the acoustic velocity and the four-step explicit scheme. The formulation is based on an optimal control theory in which a performance function of the fluid force is introduced. The performance function should be minimized satisfying the state equation. This problem can be transformed into the minimization problem without constraint conditions by using the adjoint equation with adjoint variables corresponding to the state equation. The performance function is defined by the drag and lift forces acting on the body. The weighted gradient method is applied as a minimization technique, the Galerkin finite element method is used as a spatial discretization and the four-step explicit scheme is used as a temporal discretization to solve the state equation and the adjoint equation. As the interpolation, the orthogonal basis bubble function for velocity and the linear function for pressure are employed. In case that the orthogonal basis bubble function is used, the mass matrix can be diagonalized without any artificial centralization. The shape optimization is performed by the presented method.

Keywords: Shape Optimization, Optimal Control Theory, Finite Element Method, Weighted Gradient Method, Fluid Force, Orthogonal Basis Bubble Function, Four-step Explicit Scheme, Acoustic Velocity.

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Authors: A. Sayadi, A. Khodadadi D., S. Partani

Abstract:

Today Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is known as one of the most important tools for decision makers in the construction of civil and industrial projects towards sustainable development. In the past, projects were evaluated based on cost and benefit analysis regardless of the physical and biological environmental effects and its socio-economical impacts. According to the Department of Environment (DOE) of Iran's regulations, the construction of hydroelectric dams is an activity that requires an EIA report. In this paper the environmental impact assessment of the Gotvand hydro-electrical dam has been evaluated in the three environment elements, biological, Physical-chemical and cultural units. This dam is one of the largest dams in Iran with a volume of 4500 MCM and is going to be the last dam on the Karoon River in the south of Iran. In this paper the ICOLD (International Commission on Large Dams) technique was employed for the environmental impact assessment of the dam. The research includes all socio economical and environmental effects of the dam during the construction and operation of the hydro electric dam and Environmental management, monitoring and mitigation of negative impacts were analyzed. In this project the results led to using some techniques to protect the destructive impacts on biological aspects beside the effective long time period impacts on the biological aspects. The impacts on physical aspects are temporary and negative commonly that could be restored and rehabilitated in natural process in the long time in operation period.

Keywords: "Gotvand Hydro Electric Dam", "EIA", "ICOLD and Leopold matrices"

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