Search results for: Learning theories

Authors: Xiaoqing Wang, Junfeng Wang, Xiaolan Zhu

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Android operating system has been recognized by most application developers because of its good open-source and compatibility, which enriches the categories of applications greatly. However, it has become the target of malware attackers due to the lack of strict security supervision mechanisms, which leads to the rapid growth of malware, thus bringing serious safety hazards to users. Therefore, it is critical to detect Android malware effectively. Generally, the permissions declared in the AndroidManifest.xml can reflect the function and behavior of the application to a large extent. Since current Android system has not any restrictions to the number of permissions that an application can request, developers tend to apply more than actually needed permissions in order to ensure the successful running of the application, which results in the abuse of permissions. However, some traditional detection methods only consider the requested permissions and ignore whether it is actually used, which leads to incorrect identification of some malwares. Therefore, a machine learning detection method based on the actually used permissions combination and API calls was put forward in this paper. Meanwhile, several experiments are conducted to evaluate our methodology. The result shows that it can detect unknown malware effectively with higher true positive rate and accuracy while maintaining a low false positive rate. Consequently, the AdaboostM1 (J48) classification algorithm based on information gain feature selection algorithm has the best detection result, which can achieve an accuracy of 99.8%, a true positive rate of 99.6% and a lowest false positive rate of 0.

Keywords: Android, permissions combination, API calls, machine learning.

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Authors: Eduardo N. Velloso, Fernando M. N. Dantas, Luciano S. Barros

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A common complaint from power system analysis students lies in the overly complex tools they need to learn and use just to simulate very basic systems or just to check the answers to power system calculations. The most basic power system studies are power-flow solutions and short-circuit calculations. This paper presents a simple tool with an intuitive interface to perform both these studies and assess its performance in comparison with existent commercial solutions. With this in mind, Elegant is a pure Python software tool for learning power system analysis developed for undergraduate and graduate students. It solves the power-flow problem by iterative numerical methods and calculates bolted short-circuit fault currents by modeling the network in the domain of symmetrical components. Elegant can be used with a user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) and automatically generates human-readable reports of the simulation results. The tool is exemplified using a typical Brazilian regional system with 18 buses. This study performs a comparative experiment with 1 undergraduate and 4 graduate students who attempted the same problem using both Elegant and a commercial tool. It was found that Elegant significantly reduces the time and labor involved in basic power system simulations while still providing some insights into real power system designs.

Keywords: Free- and open-source software, power-flow, power system analysis, Python, short-circuit.

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Authors: Ivana Šalinović

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The term gender emerged in the second half of the last century and since then a growing body of research dealing with the topic demonstrates its importance. Primarily, the research and the theories that were addressing the topic were focused on stating the differences between the terms sex and gender, where sex refers to the biological aspect of a person, while gender refers to the socially ascribed roles, attitudes, behaviors, and etc., and on gender discrimination whose visible and invisible repercussions are harming society and one of the agents of change should be educators on all educational levels since they are emotionally sculpting their students, that is why considerable effort should be put into implementing education about this topic into the standard curriculum. Not only educators, but it is also necessary to change the mindset of the younger generations because they will be important agents in the further elimination of gender discrimination, thus causing societal changes. Therefore, it is very important to hear their voices and their experiences and for these reasons, this research has been done, to see what the students of the second year at a private college university Aspira in Croatia have gone through in their educational ladder. The hypothesis was that the findings would most certainly show a huge difference between female and male students’ experiences and effects of gender discrimination, but the results have actually shown a very mixed picture and the original hypothesis was somewhat disapproved. Instead of finding out that girls experienced a lot of gender discrimination, it turned out that it was the boys who believed that in their previous and current education, there was no equal time distribution between genders, they noticed that the language was not gender-sensitive, teaching aids were not adopted to the genders. They were also the ones that pointed out that the discipline path was not the same for everyone, and they were the ones that the teacher’s gender had more influence on and were also the ones that experienced more gender discrimination.

Keywords: Gender, discrimination, elementary school, high school.

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Authors: Awdhesh Narayan Sharma

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The concept and practice of whooeaism exist among the Jarawas of Andaman Islands of India. The Jarawas are one of the simplest populations of the world and truly represent the hunting and food gathering stage. The study is conducted among the Jarawas of Kadamtala region, which is situated approximately in the western part of the south and middle Andaman Islands, India. The Jarawa tribe belongs to Negrito race and is one of the particularly vulnerable tribal groups of the Andaman Islands. The present study is based on 45 Jarawas of Kadamtala region. The observations have been conducted through the semi-participant observation method and informal interview method. It has been observed that there are neither any beliefs and practices related to supernatural power nor any concept related to the soul, manaism, demonology, totemism, animatism etc. They only have faith on Whooea, i.e., a small bone of their deceased ancestors and they wear it by the help of a bark band around the neck and shoulder or around the waist, especially during hunting or fishing and food gathering time. The Jarawas either keep the whooea in higher places or hang it and they make sure that it must not touch the earth. The beliefs and practices related to whooea may be designated as Whooeaism. It may be concluded that in of spite of various existing theories related to the origin of religion viz. Animism, Animatism, Manaism and totemism and others, the origin of religion initially developed from the Whooeaism and then other concepts of religion evolved gradually by the manifestation of human beliefs and assumptions.

Keywords: Andaman Islands, Jarawas, origin, religion, Whooea.

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Authors: A. Appe, B. Poluparthi, L. Kasivajjula, U. Mv, S. Bagadi, P. Modi, A. Singh, H. Gunupudi, S. Troiano, J. Paul, J. Stovall, J. Yamamoto

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The necessity of data-driven decisions in healthcare strategy formulation is rapidly increasing. A reliable framework which helps identify factors impacting a healthcare provider facility or a hospital (from here on termed as facility) market share is of key importance. This pilot study aims at developing a data-driven machine learning-regression framework which aids strategists in formulating key decisions to improve the facility’s market share which in turn impacts in improving the quality of healthcare services. The US (United States) healthcare business is chosen for the study, and the data spanning 60 key facilities in Washington State and about 3 years of historical data are considered. In the current analysis, market share is termed as the ratio of the facility’s encounters to the total encounters among the group of potential competitor facilities. The current study proposes a two-pronged approach of competitor identification and regression approach to evaluate and predict market share, respectively. Leveraged model agnostic technique, SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations), to quantify the relative importance of features impacting the market share. Typical techniques in literature to quantify the degree of competitiveness among facilities use an empirical method to calculate a competitive factor to interpret the severity of competition. The proposed method identifies a pool of competitors, develops Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) and feature level word vectors, and evaluates the key connected components at the facility level. This technique is robust since it is data-driven, which minimizes the bias from empirical techniques. The DAGs factor in partial correlations at various segregations and key demographics of facilities along with a placeholder to factor in various business rules (for e.g., quantifying the patient exchanges, provider references, and sister facilities). Identified are the multiple groups of competitors among facilities. Leveraging the competitors' identified developed and fine-tuned Random Forest Regression model to predict the market share. To identify key drivers of market share at an overall level, permutation feature importance of the attributes was calculated. For relative quantification of features at a facility level, incorporated SHAP, a model agnostic explainer. This helped to identify and rank the attributes at each facility which impacts the market share. This approach proposes an amalgamation of the two popular and efficient modeling practices, viz., machine learning with graphs and tree-based regression techniques to reduce the bias. With these, we helped to drive strategic business decisions.

Keywords: Competition, DAGs, hospital, healthcare, machine learning, market share, random forest, SHAP.

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Authors: Mijoh A. Gbededo, Kapila Liyanage, Sabuj Mallik

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The emerging approaches to sustainable manufacturing are considered to be solution-oriented with the aim of addressing the environmental, economic and social issues holistically. However, the analysis of the interdependencies amongst the three sustainability dimensions has not been fully captured in the literature. In a recent review of approaches to sustainable manufacturing, two categories of techniques are identified: 1) Sustainable Product Development (SPD), and 2) Sustainability Performance Assessment (SPA) techniques. The challenges of the approaches are not only related to the arguments and misconceptions of the relationships between the techniques and sustainable development but also to the inability to capture and integrate the three sustainability dimensions. This requires a clear definition of some of the approaches and a road-map to the development of a holistic approach that supports sustainability decision-making. In this context, eco-innovation, social impact assessment, and life cycle sustainability analysis play an important role. This paper deployed an integrative approach that enabled amalgamation of sustainable manufacturing approaches and the theories of reciprocity and motivation into a holistic simulation-based impact analysis framework. The findings in this research have the potential to guide sustainability analysts to capture the aspects of the three sustainability dimensions into an analytical model. Additionally, the research findings presented can aid the construction of a holistic simulation model of a sustainable manufacturing and support effective decision-making.

Keywords: Life cycle sustainability analysis, sustainable manufacturing, sustainability performance assessment, sustainable product development.

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Authors: Jenny Ngo, Harry De Boer, Jürgen Enders

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Indonesian higher education has experienced significant changes over the last decade. In 1999, the government published an overall strategy for decentralisation and enhancement of local autonomy in many sectors, including (higher) education. Indonesian higher education reforms have forced universities to restructure their internal university governance to become more entrepreneurial. These new types of internal university governance are likely to affect the institutions’ leadership and management. This paper discusses the approach and findings of a study on the managerial leadership styles of deans in Indonesian universities. The study aims to get a better understanding of styles exhibited by deans manifested in their behaviours. Using the theories of reasoned action and planned behaviour, in combination with the competing values framework, a large-scale survey was conducted to gather information on the deans’ behaviours, attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control. Based on the responses of a sample of 218 deans, the study identifies a number of leadership styles: the Master, the Competitive Consultant, the Consensual Goal-Setter, the Focused Team Captain, and the Informed Trust-Builder style. The study demonstrates that attitudes are the primary determinant of the styles that were found. Perceived behavioural control is a factor that explains some managerial leadership styles. By understanding the attitudes of deans in Indonesian universities, and their leadership styles, universities can strengthen their management and governance, and thus improve their effectiveness.

Keywords: Deans, Indonesian higher education, leadership and management, style.

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Authors: A. Schuchter, M. Promegger

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The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that online education is so much more than just a cool feature for teachers – it is an essential part of modern teaching. In online math teaching, it is common to use tools to share screens, compute and calculate mathematical examples, while the students can watch the process. On the other hand, flipped classroom models are on the rise, with their focus on how students can gather knowledge by watching videos and on the teacher’s use of technological tools for information transfer. This paper proposes a co-educational teaching approach for coding and engineering subjects with the help of drone-building to spark interest in technology and create a platform for knowledge transfer. The project combines aspects from mathematics (matrices, vectors, shaders, trigonometry), physics (force, pressure and rotation) and coding (computational thinking, block-based programming, JavaScript and Python) and makes use of collaborative-shared 3D Modeling with clara.io, where students create mathematics knowhow. The instructor follows a problem-based learning approach and encourages their students to find solutions in their own time and in their own way, which will help them develop new skills intuitively and boost logically structured thinking. The collaborative aspect of working in groups will help the students develop communication skills as well as structural and computational thinking. Students are not just listeners as in traditional classroom settings, but play an active part in creating content together by compiling a Handbook of Knowledge (called “open book”) with examples and solutions. Before students start calculating, they have to write down all their ideas and working steps in full sentences so other students can easily follow their train of thought. Therefore, students will learn to formulate goals, solve problems, and create a ready-to use product with the help of “reverse engineering”, cross-referencing and creative thinking. The work on drones gives the students the opportunity to create a real-life application with a practical purpose, while going through all stages of product development.

Keywords: Flipped classroom, co-creational education, coding, making, drones, co-education, ARCS-model, problem-based learning.

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Authors: Basyir Yaman, Fades Br. Gultom

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The picture and pattern of Islamic education in the Prophet's period in Mecca and Medina is the history of the past that we need to bring back. The Basic Education Institute called Kuttab. Kuttab or Maktab comes from the word kataba which means to write. The popular Kuttab in the Prophet’s period aims to resolve the illiteracy in the Arab community. In Indonesia, this Institution has 25 branches; one of them is located in Semarang (i.e. Kuttab Al-Fatih). Kuttab Al-Fatih as a non-formal institution of Islamic education is reserved for children aged 5-12 years. The independently designed curriculum is a distinctive feature that distinguishes between Kuttab Al-Fatih curriculum and the formal institutional curriculum in Indonesia. The curriculum includes the faith and the Qur’an. Kuttab Al-Fatih has been licensed as a Community Activity Learning Center under the direct supervision and guidance of the National Education Department. Here, we focus to describe the implementation of curriculum Kuttab Al-Fatih Semarang (i.e. faith and al-Qur’an). After that, we determine the relevance between the implementation of the Kuttab Al-Fatih education system with the formal education system in Indonesia. This research uses literature review and field research qualitative methods. We obtained the data from the head of Kuttab Al-Fatih Semarang, vice curriculum, faith coordinator, al-Qur’an coordinator, as well as the guardians of learners and the learners. The result of this research is the relevance of education system in Kuttab Al-Fatih Semarang about education system in Indonesia. Kuttab Al-Fatih Semarang emphasizes character building through a curriculum designed in such a way and combines thematic learning models in modules.

Keywords: Islamic education system, implementation of curriculum, Kuttab Al-Fatih semarang, formal education system in Indonesia.

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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: Fazıl Gökgöz, Fahrettin Filiz

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Electricity prices have sophisticated features such as high volatility, nonlinearity and high frequency that make forecasting quite difficult. Electricity price has a volatile and non-random character so that, it is possible to identify the patterns based on the historical data. Intelligent decision-making requires accurate price forecasting for market traders, retailers, and generation companies. So far, many shallow-ANN (artificial neural networks) models have been published in the literature and showed adequate forecasting results. During the last years, neural networks with many hidden layers, which are referred to as DNN (deep neural networks) have been using in the machine learning community. The goal of this study is to investigate electricity price forecasting performance of the shallow-ANN and DNN models for the Turkish day-ahead electricity market. The forecasting accuracy of the models has been evaluated with publicly available data from the Turkish day-ahead electricity market. Both shallow-ANN and DNN approach would give successful result in forecasting problems. Historical load, price and weather temperature data are used as the input variables for the models. The data set includes power consumption measurements gathered between January 2016 and December 2017 with one-hour resolution. In this regard, forecasting studies have been carried out comparatively with shallow-ANN and DNN models for Turkish electricity markets in the related time period. The main contribution of this study is the investigation of different shallow-ANN and DNN models in the field of electricity price forecast. All models are compared regarding their MAE (Mean Absolute Error) and MSE (Mean Square) results. DNN models give better forecasting performance compare to shallow-ANN. Best five MAE results for DNN models are 0.346, 0.372, 0.392, 0,402 and 0.409.

Keywords: Deep learning, artificial neural networks, energy price forecasting, Turkey.

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Authors: Chandan Deep Singh

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In present days, companies are facing the rapid competition in terms of customer requirements to be satisfied, new technologies to be integrated into future products, new safety regulations to be followed, new computer-based tools to be introduced into design activities that becomes more scientific. In today’s highly competitive market, survival focuses on various factors such as quality, innovation, adherence to standards, and rapid response as the basis for competitive advantage. For competitive advantage, companies have to produce various competencies: for improving the capability of suppliers and for strengthening the process of integrating technology. For more competitiveness, organizations should operate in a strategy driven way and have a strategic architecture for developing core competencies. Traditional ways to take such experience and develop competencies tend to take a lot of time and they are expensive. A new learning environment, which is built around a gaming engine, supports the development of competences in specific subject areas. Technology competencies have a significant role in firm innovation and competitiveness; they interact with the competitive environment. Technological competencies vary according to the type of competitive environment, thus enhancing firm innovativeness. Technological competency is gained through extensive experimentation and learning in its research, development and employment in manufacturing. This is a review paper based on competency and strategic success of automobile industry. The aim here is to study strategy formulation and competency tools in the industry. This work is a review of literature related to competency and strategy in automobile industry. This study involves review of 34 papers related to competency and strategy.

Keywords: Competency, competitiveness, manufacturing competency, strategic formulation.

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Authors: Hossein Ahmadi, Ogholgol Nazari

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The necessity of grading and sequencing tasks has led to the development of different criteria in this regard. However, appropriateness of these criteria in different situations is less discussed. This paper attempts to shed more light on the priority of different criteria in relation with different factors including learners, teachers, educational, and cultural factors.

Keywords: Criteria, Grading, Sequencing, Language learning tasks.

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Authors: Peter Clutterbuck, Terry Rowlands, Owen Seamons

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In this paper we describe one critical research program within a complex, ongoing multi-year project (2010 to 2014 inclusive) with the overall goal to improve the learning outcomes for first year undergraduate commerce/business students within an Information Systems (IS) subject with very large enrolment. The single research program described in this paper is the analysis of student attitudes and decision making in relation to the availability of formative assessment feedback via Web-based real time conferencing and document exchange software (Adobe Connect). The formative assessment feedback between teaching staff and students is in respect of an authentic problem-based, team-completed assignment. The analysis of student attitudes and decision making is investigated via both qualitative (firstly) and quantitative (secondly) application of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) with a two statistically-significant and separate trial samples of the enrolled students. The initial qualitative TPB investigation revealed that perceived self-efficacy, improved time-management, and lecturer-student relationship building were the major factors in shaping an overall favorable student attitude to online feedback, whilst some students expressed valid concerns with perceived control limitations identified within the online feedback protocols. The subsequent quantitative TPB investigation then confirmed that attitude towards usage, subjective norms surrounding usage, and perceived behavioral control of usage were all significant in shaping student intention to use the online feedback protocol, with these three variables explaining 63 percent of the variance in the behavioral intention to use the online feedback protocol. The identification in this research of perceived behavioral control as a significant determinant in student usage of a specific technology component within a virtual learning environment (VLE) suggests that VLEs could now be viewed not as a single, atomic entity, but as a spectrum of technology offerings ranging from the mature and simple (e.g., email, Web downloads) to the cutting-edge and challenging (e.g., Web conferencing and real-time document exchange). That is, that all VLEs should not be considered the same. The results of this research suggest that tertiary students have the technological sophistication to assess a VLE in this more selective manner.

Keywords: Formative assessment feedback, virtual learning environment, theory of planned behavior, perceived behavioral control.

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Authors: Khaled Elbehiery, Hussam Elbehiery

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The success of education is dependent on evolution and adaptation, while the traditional system has worked before, one type of education evolved with the digital age is virtual education that has influenced efficiency in today’s learning environments. Virtual learning has indeed proved its efficiency to overcome the drawbacks of the physical environment such as time, facilities, location, etc., but despite what it had accomplished, the educational system over all is not adequate for being a productive system yet. Earning a degree is not anymore enough to obtain a career job; it is simply missing the skills and creativity. There are always two sides of a coin; a college degree or a specialized certificate, each has its own merits, but having both can put you on a successful IT career path. For many of job-seeking individuals across world to have a clear meaningful goal for work and education and positively contribute the community, a productive correlation and cooperation among employers, universities alongside with the individual technical skills is a must for generations to come. Fortunately, the proposed research “Entrepreneur Universal Education System” is an evolution to meet the needs of both employers and students, in addition to gaining vital and real-world experience in the chosen fields is easier than ever. The new vision is to empower the education to improve organizations’ needs which means improving the world as its primary goal, adopting universal skills of effective thinking, effective action, effective relationships, preparing the students through real-world accomplishment and encouraging them to better serve their organization and their communities faster and more efficiently.

Keywords: Virtual education, academic degree, certificates, internship, amazon web services, Microsoft Azure, Google cloud platform, hybrid models.

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Authors: Sarisa Pechpoothong

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The research is to minimize environmental damage pertinent to maritime activities about the operation of lighter boat anchorage and its tugboat. The guidance on upgrading current harbor service and infrastructure has been provided to Kho Sichang Municpality. This will involve a study of the maritime logistics of the water area under jurisdiction of the Sichang island Municipality and possible recommendations may involve charging taxes, regulations and fees. With implementing these recommendations will help in protection of the marine environment and in increasing operator functionality. Additionally, our recommendation is to generate a consistent revenue stream to the municipality. The action items contained in this research are feasible and effective, the success of these initiatives are heavily dependent upon successful promotion and enforcement. Promoting new rules and regulations effectively and peacefully can be done through theories and techniques used in the psychology of persuasion. In order to assure compliance with the regulations, the municipality must maintain stringent patrols and fines for violators. In order to become success, the Municipality must preserve a consistent, transparent and significant enforcement system. Considering potential opportunities outside of the current state of the municipality, the authors recommend that Koh Sichang be given additional jurisdiction to capture value from the master vessels, as well as to confront the more significant environmental challenges these vessels pose. Finally, the authors recommend that the Port of Koh Sichang Island obtain a free port status in order to increase economic viability and overall sustainability.

Keywords: Harbor, Garbage Collection Service, Environment, Off-shore port.

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Authors: Angela–M. Paleologou, Aphrodite Dellaporta

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Erroneous computer entry problems [here: 'e'errors] in hospital labs threaten the patients-–health carers- relationship, undermining the health system credibility. Are e-errors random, and do lab professionals make them accidentally, or may they be traced through meaningful determinants? Theories on internal causality of mistakes compel to seek specific causal ascriptions of hospital lab eerrors instead of accepting some inescapability. Undeniably, 'To Err is Human'. But in view of rapid global health organizational changes, e-errors are too expensive to lack in-depth considerations. Yet, that efunction might supposedly be entrenched in the health carers- job description remains under dispute – at least for Hellenic labs, where e-use falls behind generalized(able) appreciation and application. In this study: i) an empirical basis of a truly high annual cost of e-errors at about €498,000.00 per rural Hellenic hospital was established, hence interest in exploring the issue was sufficiently substantiated; ii) a sample of 270 lab-expert nurses, technicians and doctors were assessed on several personality, burnout and e-error measures, and iii) the hypothesis that the Hardiness vs Alienation personality construct disposition explains resistance vs proclivity to e-errors was tested and verified: Hardiness operates as a resilience source in the encounter of high pressures experienced in the hospital lab, whereas its 'opposite', i.e., Alienation, functions as a predictor, not only of making e-errors, but also of leading to burn-out. Implications for apt interventions are discussed.

Keywords: Hospital lab, personality hardiness/alienation, e-errors' cost, burnout.

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Authors: Miracle Ajah

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One of the biggest challenges facing Theological/ Religious Education in Nigeria is access to quality learning materials. For instance at the Trinity (Union) Theological College, Umuahia, it was difficult for lecturers to access suitable and qualitative materials for instruction especially the ones that would suit the African context and stimulate a deep rooted interest among the students. Some textbooks written by foreign authors were readily available in the School Library, but were lacking in the College bookshops for students to own copies. Even when the College was able to order some of the books from abroad, it did not usher in the needed enthusiasm expected from the students because they were either very expensive or very difficult to understand during private studies. So it became necessary to develop contextual materials which were affordable and understandable, though with little success. The National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN)’s innovation in the development and sharing of learning resources through its Open Courseware is a welcome development and of great assistance to students. Apart from NOUN students who could easily access the materials, many others from various theological/religious institutes across the nation have benefited immensely. So, the thesis of this paper is that the promotion of open educational resources in theological/religious education in Nigeria would facilitate a better informed/equipped religious leadership, which would in turn impact its adherents for a healthier society and national development. Adopting a narrative and historical approach within the context of Nigeria’s educational system, the paper discusses: educational traditions in Nigeria; challenges facing theological/religious education in Nigeria; and benefits of open educational resources. The study goes further to making recommendations on how OER could positively influence theological/religious education in Nigeria. It is expected that theologians, religious educators, and ODL practitioners would find this work very useful.

Keywords: Nigeria, OER, religious education, theological education.

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Authors: Tang Mui Joo, Chan Eang Teng

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The use of social media has become more defined. It has been widely used for the purpose of business. More marketers are now using social media as tools to enhance their businesses. Whereas on the other hand, there are more and more people spending their time through mobile apps to be engaged in the social media sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and others. Social media has even become common in Public Relations (PR). It has become number one platform for creating and sharing content. In view to this, social media has changed the rules in PR where it brings new challenges and opportunities to the profession. Although corporate websites, chat-rooms, email customer response facilities and electronic news release distribution are now viewed as standard aspects of PR practice, many PR practitioners are still struggling with the impact of new media though the implementation of social media is potentially reducing the cost of communication. It is to the point that PR practitioners are not fully embracing new media, they are ill-equipped to do so and they have a fear of the technology. Somehow that social media has become a new style of communication that is characterized by conversation and community. It has become a platform that allows individuals to interact with one another and build relationship among each other. Therefore, in the use of business world, consumers are able to interact with those companies that have joined any social media. Based on their experiences with social networking site interactions, they are also exposed to personal interaction while communicating. This paper is to study the impact of social media to PR. This paper discovers the potential changes of PR practices in a developing country like Malaysia. Eventually the study reflects on how PR practitioners are actually using social media in the country. This paper is based on two theories in its development of this research foundation. Media Ecology Theory is to support the impact and changes to PR. Social Penetration Theory is to reflect on how the use of social media is among PRs. This research is using survey with PR practitioners in its data collection. The results have shown that PR professionals value social media more than they actually use it and the way of organizations communicate had been changed due to the transformation of social media.

Keywords: New media, social media, PR.

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Authors: Enas Elsayed Abutaleb, Mohamed Taher Eldesoky, Shahenda Abd El Rasol

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Background: Muscle Energy Techniques (MET) have been widely used by manual therapists over the past years, but still limited research validated its use and there was limited evidence to substantiate the theories used to explain its effects. Objective: To investigate the effect of Muscle Energy Technique (MET) on anterior pelvic tilt in patients with lumbar spondylosis. Design: Randomized controlled trial. Subjects: Thirty patients with anterior pelvic tilt from both sexes were involved, aged between 35 to 50 years old and they were divided into MET and control groups with 15 patients in each. Methods: All patients received 3sessions/week for 4 weeks where the study group received MET, Ultrasound and Infrared, and the control group received U.S and I.R only. Pelvic angle was measured by palpation meter, pain severity by the visual analogue scale and functional disabilities by the Oswestry disability index. Results: Both groups showed significant improvement in all measured variables. The MET group was significantly better than the control group in pelvic angle, pain severity, and functional disability as p-value were (0.001, 0.0001, 0.0001) respectively. Conclusion and implication: the study group fulfilled greater improvement in all measured variables than the control group which implies that application of MET in combination with U.S and I.R were more effective in improving pelvic tilting angle, pain severity and functional disabilities than using electrotherapy only.

Keywords: Anterior pelvic tilt, lumbar spondylosis, muscle energy technique exercise, palpation meter.

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Authors: K. Praraththajariya

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The main purpose of this research was to study how to communicate the identity of the Amphawa district, Samut Songkram province for sustainable tourism. The qualitative data was collected through studying related materials, exploring the area, in-depth interviews with three groups of people: three directly responsible officers who were key informants of the district, twenty foreign tourists and five Thai tourist guides. A content analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data. The two main findings of the study were as follows: 1. The identity of the Amphawa District, Samut Songkram province is the area controlled by Amphawa sub district (submunicipality). The working unit which runs and looks after Amphawa sub district administration is known as the Amphawa mayor. This establishment was built to be a resort for normal people and tourists visiting the Amphawa district near the Maekong River consisting of rest accommodations. Along the river there is a restaurant where food and drinks are served, rich mangrove forests, a learning center, fireflies and cork trees. The Amphawa district was built to honor and commemorate King Rama II and is where the greatest number of fireflies and cork trees can be seen in Thailand from May to October each year. 2. The communication of the identity of Amphawa District, Samut Songkram Province which the researcher could find and design to present in English materials can be summed up in 5 items: 1) The history of the Amphawa District, Samut Songkram province 2) The history of King Rama II Memorial Park 3) The identity of Amphawa Floating Market 4) The Learning center of Ecosystem: Fireflies and Cork Trees 5) How to keep Amphawa District, Samut Songkram Province for sustainable tourism.

Keywords: Foreigner tourists, signified, semiotics, sustainable tourism.

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Authors: M. Margoudi, Z. Smyrnaiou

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The current paper presents the results of a conducted case study. During the past few years the number of children diagnosed with Learning Difficulties has drastically augmented and especially the cases of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). One of the core characteristics of ADHD is a deficit in working memory functions. The review of the literature indicates a plethora of educational software that aim at training and enhancing the working memory. Nevertheless, in the current paper, the possibility of using for the same purpose free, online games will be explored. Another issue of interest is the potential effect of the working memory training to the core symptoms of ADHD. In order to explore the abovementioned research questions, three digital tests are employed, all of which are developed on the E-slate platform by the author, in order to check the levels of ADHD’s symptoms and to be used as diagnostic tools, both in the beginning and in the end of the case study. The tools used during the main intervention of the research are free online games for the training of working memory. The research and the data analysis focus on the following axes: a) the presence and the possible change in two of the core symptoms of ADHD, attention and impulsivity and b) a possible change in the general cognitive abilities of the individual. The case study was conducted with the participation of a thirteen year-old, female student, diagnosed with ADHD, during after-school hours. The results of the study indicate positive changes both in the levels of attention and impulsivity. Therefore, we conclude that the training of working memory through the use of free, online games has a positive impact on the characteristics of ADHD. Finally, concerning the second research question, the change in general cognitive abilities, no significant changes were noted.

Keywords: ADHD, attention, impulsivity, online games.

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Authors: Aseel Hatif Jassam, Hadeel Hatif Jassam

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The paper discusses the phallocentric discourse that is challenged by women in general and women of color in particular in spite of the simultaneity of oppression due to race, class, and gender in the diaspora. Therefore, the paper gives a brief account of women's experience in the light of postcolonial feminist theory. The paper also casts light on the theories of Luce Irigaray and Helen Cixous, two feminist theorists who support and advise women to have their own discourse to challenge the infectious patriarchal sentence advocated by Sigmund Freud and Harold Bloom's model of literary history. Black women authors like Buchi Emecheta as well as her alter ego Adah, a Nigerian-born girl and the protagonist of her semi-autobiographical novel, Second Class Citizen, suffer from this phallocentric and oppressive sentence and displacement as they migrate from Nigeria, a former British colony where they feel marginalized, to North London with the hope of realizing their dreams. Yet in the British diaspora, they get culturally shocked and continue to suffer from further marginalization due to class and race and are insulted and inferiorized ironically by their patriarchal husbands who try to put an end to their dreams of authorship. With the phallocentric belief that women are not capable of self-representation in the background of their mindsets, the violent Sylvester Onwordi and Francis Obi, the husbands of both Emecheta and Adah respectively have practiced oppression on them by burning their own authoritative voices, represented by the novels they write while they are struggling with their economically atrocious living experiences in the British diaspora.

Keywords: Authorship, British diaspora, discourse, phallocentric, patriarchy.

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Authors: B. Nassar, W. Hussein, M. Mokhtar

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The critical concern of satellite operations is to ensure the health and safety of satellites. The worst case in this perspective is probably the loss of a mission, but the more common interruption of satellite functionality can result in compromised mission objectives. All the data acquiring from the spacecraft are known as Telemetry (TM), which contains the wealth information related to the health of all its subsystems. Each single item of information is contained in a telemetry parameter, which represents a time-variant property (i.e. a status or a measurement) to be checked. As a consequence, there is a continuous improvement of TM monitoring systems to reduce the time required to respond to changes in a satellite's state of health. A fast conception of the current state of the satellite is thus very important to respond to occurring failures. Statistical multivariate latent techniques are one of the vital learning tools that are used to tackle the problem above coherently. Information extraction from such rich data sources using advanced statistical methodologies is a challenging task due to the massive volume of data. To solve this problem, in this paper, we present a proposed unsupervised learning algorithm based on Principle Component Analysis (PCA) technique. The algorithm is particularly applied on an actual remote sensing spacecraft. Data from the Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS) was acquired under two operation conditions: normal and faulty states. The models were built and tested under these conditions, and the results show that the algorithm could successfully differentiate between these operations conditions. Furthermore, the algorithm provides competent information in prediction as well as adding more insight and physical interpretation to the ADCS operation.

Keywords: Space telemetry monitoring, multivariate analysis, PCA algorithm, space operations.

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Authors: Guang Zou, Kian Banisoleiman, Arturo González

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Crack initiation and propagation threatens structural integrity of welded joints and normally inspections are assigned based on crack propagation models. However, the approach based on crack propagation models may not be applicable for some high-quality welded joints, because the initial flaws in them may be so small that it may take long time for the flaws to develop into a detectable size. This raises a concern regarding the inspection planning of high-quality welded joins, as there is no generally acceptable approach for modeling the whole fatigue process that includes the crack initiation period. In order to address the issue, this paper reviews treatment methods for crack initiation period and initial crack size in crack propagation models applied to inspection planning. Generally, there are four approaches, by: 1) Neglecting the crack initiation period and fitting a probabilistic distribution for initial crack size based on statistical data; 2) Extrapolating the crack propagation stage to a very small fictitious initial crack size, so that the whole fatigue process can be modeled by crack propagation models; 3) Assuming a fixed detectable initial crack size and fitting a probabilistic distribution for crack initiation time based on specimen tests; and, 4) Modeling the crack initiation and propagation stage separately using small crack growth theories and Paris law or similar models. The conclusion is that in view of trade-off between accuracy and computation efforts, calibration of a small fictitious initial crack size to S-N curves is the most efficient approach.

Keywords: Crack initiation, fatigue reliability, inspection planning, welded joints.

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Authors: Ching-Tsan Chiang, Sheng-Jie Yang, Jing-Kai Huang

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The purpose of this research is to develop and apply the RSCMAC to enhance the dynamic accuracy of Global Positioning System (GPS). GPS devices provide services of accurate positioning, speed detection and highly precise time standard for over 98% area on the earth. The overall operation of Global Positioning System includes 24 GPS satellites in space; signal transmission that includes 2 frequency carrier waves (Link 1 and Link 2) and 2 sets random telegraphic codes (C/A code and P code), on-earth monitoring stations or client GPS receivers. Only 4 satellites utilization, the client position and its elevation can be detected rapidly. The more receivable satellites, the more accurate position can be decoded. Currently, the standard positioning accuracy of the simplified GPS receiver is greatly increased, but due to affected by the error of satellite clock, the troposphere delay and the ionosphere delay, current measurement accuracy is in the level of 5~15m. In increasing the dynamic GPS positioning accuracy, most researchers mainly use inertial navigation system (INS) and installation of other sensors or maps for the assistance. This research utilizes the RSCMAC advantages of fast learning, learning convergence assurance, solving capability of time-related dynamic system problems with the static positioning calibration structure to improve and increase the GPS dynamic accuracy. The increasing of GPS dynamic positioning accuracy can be achieved by using RSCMAC system with GPS receivers collecting dynamic error data for the error prediction and follows by using the predicted error to correct the GPS dynamic positioning data. The ultimate purpose of this research is to improve the dynamic positioning error of cheap GPS receivers and the economic benefits will be enhanced while the accuracy is increased.

Keywords: Dynamic Error, GPS, Prediction, RSCMAC.

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Authors: H. Shayeghi, A. Jalili

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This paper presents a new Hybrid Fuzzy (HF) PID type controller based on Genetic Algorithms (GA-s) for solution of the Automatic generation Control (AGC) problem in a deregulated electricity environment. In order for a fuzzy rule based control system to perform well, the fuzzy sets must be carefully designed. A major problem plaguing the effective use of this method is the difficulty of accurately constructing the membership functions, because it is a computationally expensive combinatorial optimization problem. On the other hand, GAs is a technique that emulates biological evolutionary theories to solve complex optimization problems by using directed random searches to derive a set of optimal solutions. For this reason, the membership functions are tuned automatically using a modified GA-s based on the hill climbing method. The motivation for using the modified GA-s is to reduce fuzzy system effort and take large parametric uncertainties into account. The global optimum value is guaranteed using the proposed method and the speed of the algorithm-s convergence is extremely improved, too. This newly developed control strategy combines the advantage of GA-s and fuzzy system control techniques and leads to a flexible controller with simple stricture that is easy to implement. The proposed GA based HF (GAHF) controller is tested on a threearea deregulated power system under different operating conditions and contract variations. The results of the proposed GAHF controller are compared with those of Multi Stage Fuzzy (MSF) controller, robust mixed H2/H∞ and classical PID controllers through some performance indices to illustrate its robust performance for a wide range of system parameters and load changes.

Keywords: AGC, Hybrid Fuzzy Controller, Deregulated Power System, Power System Control, GAs.

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Authors: Reiko Yamamoto

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This paper reports on how synchrony occurs between children and their teacher, and what prevents or facilitates synchrony. The aim of the experiment conducted in this study was to precisely analyze their movements and synchrony and reveal the process of synchrony in a real-world classroom. Specifically, the experiment was conducted for around 20 minutes during an English as a foreign language (EFL) lesson. The participants were 11 fourth-grade school children and their classroom teacher in a public elementary school in Japan. Previous researchers assert that synchrony causes the state of flow in a class. For checking the level of flow, Short Flow State Scale (SFSS) was adopted. The experimental procedure had four steps: 1) The teacher read aloud the first half of an English storybook to the children. Both the teacher and the children were at their own desks. 2) The children were subjected to an SFSS check. 3) The teacher read aloud the remaining half of the storybook to the children. She made the children remove their desks before reading. 4) The children were again subjected to an SFSS check. The movements of all participants were recorded with a video camera. From the movement analysis, it was found that the children synchronized better with the teacher in Step 3 than in Step 1, and that the teacher’s movement became free and outstanding without a desk. This implies that the desk acted as a barrier between the children and the teacher. Removal of this barrier resulted in the children’s reactions becoming synchronized with those of the teacher. The SFSS results proved that the children experienced more flow without a barrier than with a barrier. Apparently, synchrony is what caused flow or social emotions in the classroom. The main conclusion is that synchrony leads to cognitive outcomes such as children’s academic performance in EFL learning.

Keywords: Movement synchrony, teacher–child relationships, English as a foreign language, EFL learning.

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Authors: Essa Alenazi, Zulfikar Adamu

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The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is not an exception in relying on the growth of its construction industry to support rapid population growth. However, its need for infrastructure development is constrained by low productivity levels and cost overruns caused by factors such as delays to project completion. Delays in delivering a construction project are a global issue and while theories such as Optimism Bias have been used to explain such delays, in KSA, client-related causes of delays are also significant. The objective of this paper is to develop a framework-based approach to explore how the country’s construction industry can manage and reduce delays in construction projects through building information modelling (BIM) in order to mitigate the cost consequences of such delays.  It comprehensively and systematically reviewed the global literature on the subject and identified gaps, critical delay factors and the specific benefits that BIM can deliver for the delay management.  A case study comprising of nine hospital projects that have experienced delay and cost overruns was also carried out. Five critical delay factors related to the clients were identified as candidates that can be mitigated through BIM’s benefits. These factors are: Ineffective planning and scheduling of the project; changes during construction by the client; delay in progress payment; slowness in decision making by the client; and poor communication between clients and other stakeholders. In addition, data from the case study projects strongly suggest that optimism bias is present in many of the hospital projects. Further validation via key stakeholder interviews and documentations are planned.

Keywords: BIM, client perspective, delay management, optimism bias, public sector projects.

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Authors: Andrei A. Kolyshkin

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In the present paper some recommendations for the use of software package “Mathematica" in a basic numerical analysis course are presented. The methods which are covered in the course include solution of systems of linear equations, nonlinear equations and systems of nonlinear equations, numerical integration, interpolation and solution of ordinary differential equations. A set of individual assignments developed for the course covering all the topics is discussed in detail.

Keywords: Numerical methods, "Mathematica", e-learning.

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