Search results for: social distance.

Authors: A. T. M. Shahjahan, M. D. Kamrul Islam, Saikat Mitra, Kutub Uddin Chisty

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Due to rapid pressured of population growth, city has started to lose its old tradition. City becomes congested with uncomfortably living. Urban renewal refers orderly development of settlements as well as land redevelopment. For this paper Chittagong city has been selected as study area. It had a great tradition but it has been losing its concord. Land use pattern of this place is also haphazard due to lack of planning intervention. Renewal plan is needed to ascertain suitable redevelopment and to recommend on preservation of city heritage structure. The goal of this study is to prepare a renewal plan using local planning approach. Social impact methods have been used to achieve this goal. Both primary and secondary data are used to achieve the goal. This study may find out a complete solution for healthy living in old Part of city. This study will help to preserve its tradition and makes urban lives more livable.

Keywords: Renewal Plan, Social Impact.

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Authors: G. Ghodrati Amiri, M. Khorasani, Razavian Ameri, M.Mohamadi Dehcheshmeh, S.Fathi

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Many studies have been conducted for derivation of attenuation relationships worldwide, however few relationships have been developed to use for the seismic region of Iranian plateau and only few of these studies have been conducted for derivation of attenuation relationships for parameters such as uniform duration. Uniform duration is the total time during which the acceleration is larger than a given threshold value (default is 5% of PGA). In this study, the database was same as that used previously by Ghodrati Amiri et al. (2007) with same correction methods for earthquake records in Iran. However in this study, records from earthquakes with MS< 4.0 were excluded from this database, each record has individually filtered afterward, and therefore the dataset has been expanded. These new set of attenuation relationships for Iran are derived based on tectonic conditions with soil classification into rock and soil. Earthquake parameters were chosen to be hypocentral distance and magnitude in order to make it easier to use the relationships for seismic hazard analysis. Tehran is the capital city of Iran wit ha large number of important structures. In this study, a probabilistic approach has been utilized for seismic hazard assessment of this city. The resulting uniform duration against return period diagrams are suggested to be used in any projects in the area.

Keywords: Attenuation Relationships, Iran, Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis, Tehran, Uniform Duration

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Authors: A. Hortacsu, A. Tektas

Abstract:

This paper aims to develop a model that assists the international retailer in selecting the country that maximizes the degree of fit between the retailer-s goals and the country characteristics in his initial internationalization move. A two-stage multi criteria decision model is designed integrating the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Goal Programming. Ethical, cultural, geographic and economic proximity are identified as the relevant constructs of the internationalization decision. The constructs are further structured into sub-factors within analytic hierarchy. The model helps the retailer to integrate, rank and weigh a number of hard and soft factors and prioritize the countries accordingly. The model has been implemented on a Turkish luxury goods retailer who was planning to internationalize. Actual entry of the specific retailer in the selected country is a support for the model. Implementation on a single retailer limits the generalizability of the results; however, the emphasis of the paper is on construct identification and model development. The paper enriches the existing literature by proposing a hybrid multi objective decision model which introduces new soft dimensions i.e. perceived distance, ethical proximity, humane orientation to the decision process and facilitates effective decision making.

Keywords: Analytic hierarchy process, culture, ethics, goal programming, retail foreign market selection.

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Authors: Lee Bih Ni, Elvis Fung

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This article is to review and understand the new generation of students to understand their expectations and attitudes. There are a group of students on school projects, creative work, educational software and digital signal source, the use of social networking tools to communicate with friends and a part in the competition. Today's students have been described as the new millennium students. They use information and communication technology in a more creative and innovative at home than at school, because the information and communication technologies for different purposes, in the home, usually occur in school. They collaborate and communicate more effectively when they are at home. Most children enter school, they will bring about how to use information and communication technologies, some basic skills and some tips on how to use information and communication technology will provide a more advanced than most of the school's expectations. Many teachers can help students, however, still a lot of work, "tradition", without a computer, and did not see the "new social computing networks describe young people to learn and new ways of working life in the future", in the education system of the benefits of using a computer.

Keywords: ICT Education, Digital History.

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Authors: Mahboobeh Abdoos, Karim Faez, Masoud Sabaei

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Position based routing protocols are the kinds of routing protocols, which they use of nodes location information, instead of links information to routing. In position based routing protocols, it supposed that the packet source node has position information of itself and it's neighbors and packet destination node. Greedy is a very important position based routing protocol. In one of it's kinds, named MFR (Most Forward Within Radius), source node or packet forwarder node, sends packet to one of it's neighbors with most forward progress towards destination node (closest neighbor to destination). Using distance deciding metric in Greedy to forward packet to a neighbor node, is not suitable for all conditions. If closest neighbor to destination node, has high speed, in comparison with source node or intermediate packet forwarder node speed or has very low remained battery power, then packet loss probability is increased. Proposed strategy uses combination of metrics distancevelocity similarity-power, to deciding about giving the packet to which neighbor. Simulation results show that the proposed strategy has lower lost packets average than Greedy, so it has more reliability.

Keywords: Mobile Ad Hoc Network, Position Based, Reliability, Routing.

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Authors: M. Orefice, V. Di Vito

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This paper provides a description of a Collision Avoidance algorithm that has been developed starting from the mathematical modeling of the flight of insects, in terms of spirals and conchospirals geometric paths. It is able to calculate a proper avoidance manoeuver aimed to prevent the infringement of a predefined distance threshold between ownship and the considered intruder, while minimizing the ownship trajectory deviation from the original path and in compliance with the aircraft performance limitations and dynamic constraints. The algorithm is designed in order to be suitable for real-time applications, so that it can be considered for the implementation in the most recent airborne automatic collision avoidance systems using the traffic data received through an ADS-B IN device. The presented approach is able to take into account the rules-of-the-air, due to the possibility to select, through specifically designed decision making logic based on the consideration of the encounter geometry, the direction of the calculated collision avoidance manoeuver that allows complying with the rules-of-the-air, as for instance the fundamental right of way rule. In the paper, the proposed collision avoidance algorithm is presented and its preliminary design and software implementation is described. The applicability of this method has been proved through preliminary simulation tests performed in a 2D environment considering single intruder encounter geometries, as reported and discussed in the paper.

Keywords: collision avoidance, RPAS, spiral geometry, ADS-B based application

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Authors: I. Bolis, S. N. Morioka, L. I. Sznelwar

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The growing importance of sustainability in corporate policies represents a great opportunity for workers to gain more consideration, with great benefits to their well being. Sustainable work is believed to be one which improves the organization-s performance and fosters professional development as well as workers- health. In a multiple case study based on document research, information was sought about work activities and their sustainability or corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies, as disseminated by corporations. All the companies devoted attention to work activities and delivered a good amount of information about them. Nevertheless, the information presented was generic; all the actions developed were top-down and there was no information about the impact of changes aimed at sustainability on the workers- activities. It was found that the companies seemed to be at an early stage. In the future, they need to show more commitment through concrete goals: they must be aware that workers contribute directly to the corporations- sustainability. This would allow room for Ergonomics and Work Psychodynamics to be incorporated and to be useful for both companies and society, so as to promote and ensure work sustainability.

Keywords: Sustainability, ergonomics, work psychodynamics, multinational companies.

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Authors: C. Ardil

Abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to present fuzzy TOPSIS in an entropic fuzzy environment. Due to the ambiguous concepts often represented in decision data, exact values are insufficient to model real-life situations. In this paper, the rating of each alternative is defined in fuzzy linguistic terms, which can be expressed with triangular fuzzy numbers. The weight of each criterion is then derived from the decision matrix using the entropy weighting method. Next, a vertex method is proposed to calculate the distance between two triangular fuzzy numbers. According to the TOPSIS concept, a closeness coefficient is defined to determine the ranking order of all alternatives by simultaneously calculating the distances to both the fuzzy positive-ideal solution (FPIS) and the fuzzy negative-ideal solution (FNIS). Finally, an illustrative example of selecting stealth fighter aircraft is shown at the end of this article to highlight the procedure of the proposed method. Correlation analysis and validation analysis using TOPSIS, WSM, and WPM methods were performed to compare the ranking order of the alternatives.

Keywords: stealth fighter aircraft selection, fuzzy uncertainty theory (FUT), fuzzy entropic decision (FED), fuzzy linguistic variables, triangular fuzzy numbers, multiple criteria decision making analysis, MCDMA, TOPSIS, WSM, WPM

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Authors: Chen Zhang, Bernhard Schwarz-Röhr, Alexander Härting

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To acquire accurate ship motions at the center of gravity, a single low-cost inertial sensor is utilized and applied on board to measure ship oscillating motions. As observations, the three axes accelerations and three axes rotational rates provided by the sensor are used. The mathematical model of processing the observation data includes determination of the distance vector between the sensor and the center of gravity in x, y, and z directions. After setting up the transfer matrix from sensor’s own coordinate system to the ship’s body frame, an extended Kalman filter is applied to deal with nonlinearities between the ship motion in the body frame and the observation information in the sensor’s frame. As a side effect, the method eliminates sensor noise and other unwanted errors. Results are not only roll and pitch, but also linear motions, in particular heave and surge at the center of gravity. For testing, we resort to measurements recorded on a small vessel in a well-defined sea state. With response amplitude operators computed numerically by a commercial software (Seaway), motion characteristics are estimated. These agree well with the measurements after processing with the suggested method.

Keywords: Extended Kalman filter, nonlinear estimation, sea trial, ship motion estimation.

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Authors: Frank Emmert Streib, Matthias Dehmer, Jing Liu, Max Mühlhauser

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In this paper we present a method for gene ranking from DNA microarray data. More precisely, we calculate the correlation networks, which are unweighted and undirected graphs, from microarray data of cervical cancer whereas each network represents a tissue of a certain tumor stage and each node in the network represents a gene. From these networks we extract one tree for each gene by a local decomposition of the correlation network. The interpretation of a tree is that it represents the n-nearest neighbor genes on the n-th level of a tree, measured by the Dijkstra distance, and, hence, gives the local embedding of a gene within the correlation network. For the obtained trees we measure the pairwise similarity between trees rooted by the same gene from normal to cancerous tissues. This evaluates the modification of the tree topology due to progression of the tumor. Finally, we rank the obtained similarity values from all tissue comparisons and select the top ranked genes. For these genes the local neighborhood in the correlation networks changes most between normal and cancerous tissues. As a result we find that the top ranked genes are candidates suspected to be involved in tumor growth and, hence, indicates that our method captures essential information from the underlying DNA microarray data of cervical cancer.

Keywords: Graph similarity, DNA microarray data, cancer.

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Authors: Yu-Chen Lin, Tzong-Yeang Lee

Abstract:

This study aims to assess the vulnerability and risk of the coastal areas of Taijiang to abnormal oceanographic phenomena. In addition, this study aims to investigate and collect data regarding the disaster losses, land utilization, and other social, economic, and environmental issues in these coastal areas to construct a coastal vulnerability and risk map based on the obtained climate-change risk assessment results. Considering the indexes of the three coastal vulnerability dimensions, namely, man-made facilities, environmental geography, and social economy, this study adopted the equal weighting process and Analytic Hierarchy Process to analyze the vulnerability of these coastal areas to disasters caused by climatic changes. Among the areas with high coastal vulnerability to climatic changes, three towns had the highest coastal vulnerability and four had the highest relative vulnerability. Areas with lower disaster risks were found to be increasingly vulnerable to disasters caused by climatic changes as time progresses.

Keywords: Climate change, coastal disaster, risk, vulnerability

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Authors: Alan Walsh, Peter Walker

Abstract:

Differences in commercial, professional and personal cultural traditions between western consultants and project sponsors in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region are potentially significant in the workplace, and this can impact on project outcomes. These cultural differences can, for example, result in conflict amongst senior managers, which can negatively impact the megaproject. New entrants to the GCC often experience ‘culture shock’ as they attempt to integrate into their unfamiliar environments. Megaprojects are unique ventures with individual project characteristics, which need to be considered when managing their associated risks. Megaproject research to date has mostly ignored the significance of the absence of cultural congruence in the GCC, which is surprising considering that there are large volumes of megaprojects in various stages of construction in the GCC. An initial step to dealing with cultural issues is to acknowledge culture as a significant risk factor (SRF). This paper seeks to understand the criticality for western consultants to address these risks. It considers the cultural barriers that exist between GCC sponsors and western consultants and examines the cultural distance between the key actors. Initial findings suggest the presence to a certain extent of ethnocentricity. Other cultural clashes arise out of a lack of appreciation of the customs, practices and traditions of ‘the Other’, such as the need for avoiding public humiliation and the hierarchal significance rankings. The concept and significance of cultural shock as part of the integration process for new arrivals are considered. Culture shock describes the state of anxiety and frustration resulting from the immersion in a culture distinctly different from one's own. There are potentially substantial project risks associated with underestimating the process of cultural integration. This paper examines two distinct but intertwined issues: the societal and professional culture differences associated with expatriate assignments. A case study examines the cultural congruences between GCC sponsors and American, British and German consultants, over a ten-year cycle. This provides indicators as to which nationalities encountered the most profound cultural issues and the nature of these. GCC megaprojects are typically intensive fast track demanding ventures, where consultant turnover is high. The study finds that building trust-filled relationships is key to successful project team integration and therefore, to successful megaproject execution. Findings indicate that both professional and social inclusion processes have steep learning curves. Traditional risk management practice is to approach any uncertainty in a structured way to mitigate the potential impact on project outcomes. This research highlights cultural risk as a significant factor in the management of GCC megaprojects. These risks arising from high staff turnover typically include loss of project knowledge, delays to the project, cost and disruption in replacing staff. This paper calls for cultural risk to be recognised as an SRF, as the first step to developing risk management strategies, and to reduce staff turnover for western consultants in GCC megaprojects.

Keywords: Western consultants in megaprojects, national culture impacts on GCC Megaprojects, significant risk factors in megaprojects, professional culture in megaprojects.

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Authors: C. Ardil

Abstract:

In this paper, we introduce an e-collaborative learning circles methodology which utilizes the information and communication technologies (ICTs) in e-educational processes. In e-collaborative learning circles methodology, the teachers and students announce their research projects on various mailing lists and discussion boards using available ICTs. The teachers & moderators and students who are already members of the e-forums, discuss the project proposals in their classrooms sent out by the potential global partner schools and return the requested feed back to the proposing school(s) about their level of the participation and contribution in the research. In general, an e-collaborative learning circle project is implemented with a small and diverse group (usually 8-10 participants) from around the world. The students meet regularly over a period of weeks/months through the ICTs during the ecollaborative learning process. When the project is completed, a project product (e-book / DVD) is prepared and sent to the circle members. In this research, when taking into account the interests and motivation of the participating students with the facilitating role of the teacher(s), the students in each circle do research to obtain new data and information, thus enabling them to have the opportunity to meet both different cultures and international understandings across the globe. However, while the participants communicate along with the members in the circle they also practice and develop their communication language skills. Finally, teachers and students find the possibility to develop their skills in using the ICTs as well.

Keywords: Distance Education, Online Learning, Web BasedLearning, Learning Circles, e-Collaborative Learning Circles

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Authors: Leila Mohammadi

Abstract:

This paper presents the impact of persuasive communication implemented by fertility clinics websites, and how this information influences women at their decision-making for undertaking this procedure. The influential factors for women decisions to do social egg freezing (SEF) are analyzed from a framing theory perspective, with a specific focus on the impact of persuasive information on women’s decision making. This study follows a quantitative approach. A two-phase survey has been conducted to examine the interest rate to undertake SEF. In the first phase, a questionnaire was available during a month (May 2015) to women to answer whether or not they knew enough information of this process, with a total of 230 answers. The second phase took place in the two last weeks of July 2015. All the respondents were invited to a seminars called ‘All about egg freezing’ and afretwards they were requested to answer the second questionnaire. After the seminar, in which they were given an extensive amount of information about egg freezing, a total of 115 women replied the questionnaire. The collected data during this process were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Most of the respondents changed their opinion in the second questionaire which was after receiving information. Although in the first questionnaire their self-evaluation of having knowledge about this process and the implemented technologies was very high, they realized that they still need to access more information from different sources in order to be able to make a decision. The study reached the conclusion that persuasive and framed information by clinics would affect the decisions of these women. Despite the reasons women have to do egg freezing and their motivations behind it, providing people necessary information and unprejudiced data about this process (such as its positive and negative aspects, requirements, suppositions, possibilities and consequences) would help them to make a more precise and reasonable decision about what they are buying.

Keywords: Decision making, fertility clinics, framing theory, persuasive information, social egg freezing.

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Authors: Chien-Hung Chen, Yan-Chun Hsing, Yung-Chun Chang

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The Internet has grown into a powerful medium for information dispersion and social interaction that leads to a rapid growth of social media which allows users to easily post their emotions and perspectives regarding certain topics online. Our research aims at using natural language processing and text mining techniques to explore the public emotions expressed on Twitter by analyzing the sentiment behind tweets. In this paper, we propose a composite kernel method that integrates tree kernel with the linear kernel to simultaneously exploit both the tree representation and the distributed emotion keyword representation to analyze the syntactic and content information in tweets. The experiment results demonstrate that our method can effectively detect public emotion of tweets while outperforming the other compared methods.

Keywords: Public emotion recognition, natural language processing, composite kernel, sentiment analysis, text mining.

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Authors: Vijay Kumar, Jagdev Singh, Yaduvir Singh, Sanjay Sood

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In a practical power system, the power plants are not located at the same distance from the center of loads and their fuel costs are different. Also, under normal operating conditions, the generation capacity is more than the total load demand and losses. Thus, there are many options for scheduling generation. In an interconnected power system, the objective is to find the real and reactive power scheduling of each power plant in such a way as to minimize the operating cost. This means that the generator’s real and reactive powers are allowed to vary within certain limits so as to meet a particular load demand with minimum fuel cost. This is called optimal power flow problem. In this paper, Economic Load Dispatch (ELD) of real power generation is considered. Economic Load Dispatch (ELD) is the scheduling of generators to minimize total operating cost of generator units subjected to equality constraint of power balance within the minimum and maximum operating limits of the generating units. In this paper, genetic algorithms are considered. ELD solutions are found by solving the conventional load flow equations while at the same time minimizing the fuel costs.

Keywords: ELD, Equality constraints, Genetic algorithms, Strings.

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Authors: C. Barreto Carvalho, C. da Motta, J. Pinto-Gouveia, E. B. Peixoto

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Auditory hallucinations among the most invalidating and distressing experiences reported by patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, leading to feelings of powerlessness and helplessness towards their illness. In more severe cases, these auditory hallucinations can take the form of commanding voices, which are often related to high suicidality rates in these patients. Several authors propose that the meanings attributed to the hallucinatory experience, rather than characteristics like form and content, can be determinant in patients’ reactions to hallucinatory activity, particularly in the case of voice-hearing experiences. In this study, 48 patients diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia presenting auditory hallucinations were studied. Multiple regression analyses were computed to study the influence of several developmental aspects, such as family and social dynamics, bullying, depression, and sociocognitive variables on the auditory hallucinations, on patients’ attributions and relationships with their voices, and on the resulting invalidation of hallucinatory experience. Overall, results showed how relationships with voices can mirror several aspects of interpersonal relationship with others, and how self-schemas, depression and actual social relationships help shaping the voice-hearing experience. Early experiences of victimization and submission help predict the attributions of omnipotence of the voices, and increased hostility from parents seems to increase the malevolence of the voices, suggesting that socio-cognitive factors can significantly contribute to the etiology and maintenance of auditory hallucinations. The understanding of the characteristics of auditory hallucinations and the relationships patients established with their voices can allow the development of more promising therapeutic interventions that can be more effective in decreasing invalidation caused by this devastating mental illness.

Keywords: Auditory hallucinations, beliefs, life events, schizophrenia.

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Authors: Yiorgos Hadjichristou

Abstract:

The paper will focus on the strategic development deriving from the evolution of the traditional courtyard spatial organization towards a new, contemporary sustainable way of living. New sustainable approaches that engulf the social issues, the notion of place, the understanding of weather architecture blended together with the bioclimatic behavior will be seen through a series of experimental case studies in the island of Cyprus, inspired and originated from its traditional wisdom, ranging from small scale of living to urban interventions. Weather and nature will be seen as co-architectural authors with architects. Furthermore, the building will be seen not as an object but rather as a vessel of human activities. This will further enhance the notion of merging the material and immaterial, the built and unbuilt, subject-human, and the object-building. This eventually will enable to generate the discussion of the understanding of the building in relation to the place and its inhabitants, where the human topography is more important than the material topography. The specificities of the divided island and the dealing with sites that are in vicinity with the diving Green Line will further trigger explorations dealing with the regeneration issues and the social sustainability offering unprecedented opportunities for innovative sustainable ways of living. Opening up a discourse with premises of weather-nature, materialimmaterial, human-material topographies in relation to the contested sites of the borders will lead us to develop innovative strategies for a profound, both technical and social sustainability, which fruitfully yields to innovative living built environments, responding to the ever changing environmental and social needs. As a starting point, a case study in Kaimakli in Nicosia, a refurbishment with an extension of a traditional house, already engulfs all the traditional/ vernacular wisdom of the bioclimatic architecture. The project focusses on the direct and quite obvious bioclimatic features such as south orientation and cross ventilation. Furthermore, it tries to reinvent the adaptation of these parameters in order to turn the whole house to a contemporary living environment. In order to succeed this, evolutions of traditional architectural elements and spatial conditions are integrated in a way that does not only respond to some certain weather conditions, but they integrate and blend the weather within the built environment. A series of innovations aiming at maximum flexibility is proposed. The house can finally be transformed into a winter enclosure, while for the most part of the year it turns into a ‘camping’ living environment. Parallel to experimental interventions in existing traditional units, we will proceed examining the implementation of the same developed methodology in designing living units and complexes. Malleable courtyard organizations that attempt to blend the traditional wisdom with the contemporary needs for living, the weather and nature with the built environment will be seen tested in both horizontal and vertical developments. Social activities are seen as directly affected and forged by the weather conditions thus generating a new social identity of people where people are directly involved and interacting with the weather. The human actions and interaction with the built, material environment in order to respond to weather will be seen as the result of balancing the social with the technological sustainability, the immaterial, and the material aspects of the living environment.

Keywords: Building as a verb, contemporary living, traditional bioclimatic wisdom, weather architecture.

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Authors: George Leventakis, George Kokkinis, Nikos Moustakidis, George Papalexandratos, Ioanna Vasiliadou

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Enhancing the feeling of public safety and crime prevention are tasks customarily assigned to the Police. Police departments have, however, recognized that traditional ways of policing methods are becoming obsolete; Community Policing (CP) philosophy; however, when applied appropriately, leads to seamless collaboration between various stakeholders like the Police, NGOs and the general public and provides the opportunity to identify risks, assist in solving problems of crime, disorder, safety and crucially contribute to improving the quality of life for everyone in a community. Social Media, on the other hand, due to its high level of infiltration in modern life, constitutes a powerful mechanism which offers additional and direct communication channels to reach individuals or communities. These channels can be utilized to improve the citizens’ perception of the Police and to capture individual and community needs, when their feedback is taken into account by Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) in a structured and coordinated manner. This paper presents research conducted under INSPEC²T (Inspiring CitizeNS Participation for Enhanced Community PoliCing AcTions), a project funded by the European Commission’s research agenda to bridge the gap between CP as a philosophy and as an organizational strategy, capitalizing on the use of Social Media. The project aims to increase transparency, trust, police accountability, and the role of civil society. It aspires to build strong, trusting relationships between LEAs and the public, supporting two-way, contemporary communication while at the same time respecting anonymity of all affected parties. Results presented herein summarize the outcomes of four online multilingual surveys, focus group interviews, desktop research and interviews with experts in the field of CP practices. The above research activities were conducted in various EU countries aiming to capture requirements of end users from diverse backgrounds (social, cultural, legal and ethical) and determine public expectations regarding CP, community safety and crime prevention.

Keywords: Community partnerships, next generation community policing, public safety, social media.

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Authors: Aboamama Atahar Ahmed, Muhammad Shafie Abd Latiff, Kamalrulnizam Abu Bakar, Zainul AhmadRajion

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Distance visualization of large datasets often takes the direction of remote viewing and zooming techniques of stored static images. However, the continuous increase in the size of datasets and visualization operation causes insufficient performance with traditional desktop computers. Additionally, the visualization techniques such as Isosurface depend on the available resources of the running machine and the size of datasets. Moreover, the continuous demand for powerful computing powers and continuous increase in the size of datasets results an urgent need for a grid computing infrastructure. However, some issues arise in current grid such as resources availability at the client machines which are not sufficient enough to process large datasets. On top of that, different output devices and different network bandwidth between the visualization pipeline components often result output suitable for one machine and not suitable for another. In this paper we investigate how the grid services could be used to support remote visualization of large datasets and to break the constraint of physical co-location of the resources by applying the grid computing technologies. We show our grid enabled architecture to visualize large medical datasets (circa 5 million polygons) for remote interactive visualization on modest resources clients.

Keywords: Visualization, Grid computing, Medical datasets, visualization techniques, thin clients, Globus toolkit, VTK.

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Authors: Romain Bosquet, Pierre-Olivier Vandanjon, Alex Coiret, Tristan Lorino

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In the hardening energy context, the transport sector which constitutes a large worldwide energy demand has to be improving for decrease energy demand and global warming impacts. In a controversial situation where subsists an increasing demand for long-distance and high-speed travels, high-speed trains offer many advantages, as consuming significantly less energy than road or air transports. At the project phase of new rail infrastructures, it is nowadays important to characterize accurately the energy that will be induced by its operation phase, in addition to other more classical criteria as construction costs and travel time. Current literature consumption models used to estimate railways operation phase are obsolete or not enough accurate for taking into account the newest train or railways technologies. In this paper, an updated model of consumption for high-speed is proposed, based on experimental data obtained from full-scale tests performed on a new high-speed line. The assessment of the model is achieved by identifying train parameters and measured power consumptions for more than one hundred train routes. Perspectives are then discussed to use this updated model for accurately assess the energy impact of future railway infrastructures.

Keywords: High-speed train, energy, model, track profile, infrastructure

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Authors: Mohd Zaimmudin Mohd Zain, Patsy Perry, Lee Quinn

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This study explores how fashion consumers are influenced by fashion bloggers towards pre-purchase decision for online fashion products in a non-Western context. Malaysians rank among the world’s most avid online shoppers, with apparel the third most popular purchase category. However, extant research on fashion blogging focuses on the developed Western market context. Numerous international fashion retailers have entered the Malaysian market from luxury to fast fashion segments of the market; however Malaysian fashion consumers must balance religious and social norms for modesty with their dress style and adoption of fashion trends. Consumers increasingly mix and match Islamic and Western elements of dress to create new styles enabling them to follow Western fashion trends whilst paying respect to social and religious norms. Social media have revolutionised the way that consumers can search for and find information about fashion products. For online fashion brands with no physical presence, social media provide a means of discovery for consumers. By allowing the creation and exchange of user-generated content (UGC) online, they provide a public forum that gives individual consumers their own voices, as well as access to product information that facilitates their purchase decisions. Social media empower consumers and brands have important roles in facilitating conversations among consumers and themselves, to help consumers connect with them and one another. Fashion blogs have become an important fashion information sources. By sharing their personal style and inspiring their followers with what they wear on popular social media platforms such as Instagram, fashion bloggers have become fashion opinion leaders. By creating UGC to spread useful information to their followers, they influence the pre-purchase decision. Hence, successful Western fashion bloggers such as Chiara Ferragni may earn millions of US dollars every year, and some have created their own fashion ranges and beauty products, become judges in fashion reality shows, won awards, and collaborated with high street and luxury brands. As fashion blogging has become more established worldwide, increasing numbers of fashion bloggers have emerged from non-Western backgrounds to promote Islamic fashion styles, such as Hassanah El-Yacoubi and Dian Pelangi. This study adopts a qualitative approach using netnographic content analysis of consumer comments on two famous Malaysian fashion bloggers’ Instagram accounts during January-March 2016 and qualitative interviews with 16 Malaysian Generation Y fashion consumers during September-October 2016. Netnography adapts ethnographic techniques to the study of online communities or computer-mediated communications. Template analysis of the data involved coding comments according to the theoretical framework, which was developed from the literature review. Initial data analysis shows the strong influence of Malaysian fashion bloggers on their followers in terms of lifestyle and morals as well as fashion style. Followers were guided towards the mix and match trend of dress with Western and Islamic elements, for example, showing how vivid colours or accessories could be worked into an outfit whilst still respecting social and religious norms. The blogger’s Instagram account is a form of online community where followers can communicate and gain guidance and support from other followers, as well as from the blogger.

Keywords: Fashion bloggers, Malaysia, qualitative, social media.

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Authors: Elias Akoury

Abstract:

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is an indispensable technique used in structure determination of small and macromolecules to study their physical properties, elucidation of characteristic interactions, dynamics and thermodynamic processes. Quantum mechanics defines the theoretical description of NMR spectroscopy and treatment of the dynamics of nuclear spin systems. The phenomenon of residual dipolar coupling (RDCs) has become a routine tool for accurate structure determination by providing global orientation information of magnetic dipole-dipole interaction vectors within a common reference frame. This offers accessibility of distance-independent angular information and insights to local relaxation. The measurement of RDCs requires an anisotropic orientation medium for the molecules to partially align along the magnetic field. This can be achieved by introduction of liquid crystals or attaching a paramagnetic center. Although anisotropic paramagnetic tags continue to mark achievements in the biomolecular NMR of large proteins, its application in small organic molecules remains unspread. Here, we propose a strategy for the synthesis of a lanthanide tag and the measurement of RDCs in organic molecules using paramagnetic lanthanide complexes.

Keywords: Lanthanide Tags, NMR spectroscopy, residual dipolar coupling, quantum mechanics of spin dynamics.

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

Abstract:

Headphones and earphones have many extremely small holes or narrow slits; they use sound-absorbing or porous material (i.e., dampers) to suppress vibratory system resonance. The air viscosity in these acoustic paths greatly affects the acoustic properties. Simulation analyses such as the finite element method (FEM) therefore require knowledge of the material properties of sound-absorbing or porous materials, such as the characteristic impedance and propagation constant. The transfer function method using acoustic tubes is a widely known measuring method, but there is no literature on taking measurements up to the audible range. To measure the acoustic properties at high-range frequencies, the acoustic tubes that form the measuring device need to be narrowed, and the distance between the two microphones needs to be reduced. However, when the tubes are narrowed, the characteristic impedance drops below the air impedance. In this study, we considered the effect of air viscosity in an acoustical tube, introduced a theoretical formula for this effect in the form of complex density and complex sonic velocity, and verified the theoretical formula. We also conducted an experiment and observed the effect from air viscosity in the actual measurements.

Keywords: acoustic tube, air viscosity, earphones, FEM, porous material, sound-absorbing material, transfer function method

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Authors: Saroj Kumar Pradhan, Dayal Ramakrushna Parhi, Anup Kumar Panda

Abstract:

This paper deals with motion planning of multiple mobile robots. Mobile robots working together to achieve several objectives have many advantages over single robot system. However, the planning and coordination between the mobile robots is extremely difficult. In the present investigation rule-based and rulebased- neuro-fuzzy techniques are analyzed for multiple mobile robots navigation in an unknown or partially known environment. The final aims of the robots are to reach some pre-defined goals. Based upon a reference motion, direction; distances between the robots and obstacles; and distances between the robots and targets; different types of rules are taken heuristically and refined later to find the steering angle. The control system combines a repelling influence related to the distance between robots and nearby obstacles and with an attracting influence between the robots and targets. Then a hybrid rule-based-neuro-fuzzy technique is analysed to find the steering angle of the robots. Simulation results show that the proposed rulebased- neuro-fuzzy technique can improve navigation performance in complex and unknown environments compared to this simple rulebased technique.

Keywords: Mobile robots, Navigation, Neuro-fuzzy, Obstacle avoidance, Rule-based, Target seeking

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Authors: Vipin Pal, Girdhari Singh, R P Yadav

Abstract:

As wireless sensor networks are energy constraint networks so energy efficiency of sensor nodes is the main design issue. Clustering of nodes is an energy efficient approach. It prolongs the lifetime of wireless sensor networks by avoiding long distance communication. Clustering algorithms operate in rounds. Performance of clustering algorithm depends upon the round time. A large round time consumes more energy of cluster heads while a small round time causes frequent re-clustering. So existing clustering algorithms apply a trade off to round time and calculate it from the initial parameters of networks. But it is not appropriate to use initial parameters based round time value throughout the network lifetime because wireless sensor networks are dynamic in nature (nodes can be added to the network or some nodes go out of energy). In this paper a variable round time approach is proposed that calculates round time depending upon the number of active nodes remaining in the field. The proposed approach makes the clustering algorithm adaptive to network dynamics. For simulation the approach is implemented with LEACH in NS-2 and the results show that there is 6% increase in network lifetime, 7% increase in 50% node death time and 5% improvement over the data units gathered at the base station.

Keywords: Wireless Sensor Network, Clustering, Energy Efficiency, Round Time.

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Authors: Osman Samancı, Ramazan Kaya

Abstract:

The purpose of this study is to determine the circumstances affecting elementary school students in their family and school lives and what kind of emotions children may feel because of these circumstances. The study was carried out according to the survey model. Four Turkish elementary schools provided 123 fourth grade students for participation in the study. The study-s data were collected by using worksheets for the activity titled “Important Days in Our Lives", which was part of the Elementary School Social Sciences Course 4th Grade Education Program. Data analysis was carried out according to the content analysis technique used in qualitative research. The study detected that circumstances of their family and school lives caused children to feel emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, fear and jealousy. The circumstances and the emotions caused by these circumstances were analyzed according to gender and interpreted by presenting them with their frequencies.

Keywords: Elementary school students, emotional development, family and school, social development.

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Authors: Eda Gök

Abstract:

Peridynamics is a new modeling concept of non-local interactions for solid structures. The formulations of Peridynamic (PD) theory are based on integral equations rather than differential equations. Through, undefined equations of associated problems are avoided. PD theory might be defined as continuum version of molecular dynamics. The medium is usually modeled with mass particles bonded together. Particles interact with each other directly across finite distances through central forces named as bonds. The main assumption of this theory is that the body is composed of material points which interact with other material points within a finite distance. Although, PD theory developed for discontinuities, it gives good results for structures which have no discontinuities. In this paper, displacement control of the isotropic plate under the effect of tensile and bending loading has been investigated by means of PD theory. A MATLAB code is generated to create PD bonds and corresponding surface correction factors. Using generated MATLAB code the geometry of the specimen is generated, and the code is implemented in Finite Element Software. The results obtained from non-local continuum theory are compared with the Finite Element Analysis results and analytical solution. The results show good agreement.

Keywords: Flexural loading, non-local continuum mechanics, Peridynamic theory, solid structures, tensile loading.

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Authors: Brett E. Shelton, Joel Duffin, Yuxuan Wang, Justin Ball

Abstract:

With a growing number of digital libraries and other open education repositories being made available throughout the world, effective search and retrieval tools are necessary to access the desired materials that surpass the effectiveness of traditional, allinclusive search engines. This paper discusses the design and use of Folksemantic, a platform that integrates OpenCourseWare search, Open Educational Resource recommendations, and social network functionality into a single open source project. The paper describes how the system was originally envisioned, its goals for users, and data that provides insight into how it is actually being used. Data sources include website click-through data, query logs, web server log files and user account data. Based on a descriptive analysis of its current use, modifications to the platform's design are recommended to better address goals of the system, along with recommendations for additional phases of research.

Keywords: Digital libraries, open education, recommendation system, social networks

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Authors: Teresa L. Ju, Szu-Yuan Sun, Pei-Ju Chao, Chang-Yao Wu

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This study aims to examine the factors affecting knowledge sharing behavior in knowledge-based electronic communities (e-communities) because quantity and quality of knowledge shared among the members play a critical role in the community-s sustainability. Past research has suggested three perspectives that may affect the quantity and quality of knowledge shared: economics, social psychology, and social ecology. In this study, we strongly believe that an economic perspective may be suitable to validate factors influencing newly registered members- knowledge contribution at the beginning of relationship development. Accordingly, this study proposes a model to validate the factors influencing members- knowledge sharing based on Transaction Cost Theory. By doing so, we may empirically test our hypotheses in various types of e-communities to determine the generalizability of our research models.

Keywords: Electronic community, individual behavior, knowledge sharing, transaction cost theory.

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