Search results for: Educational software

Authors: L. Grinis, V. Haslavsky

Abstract:

Stuck-pipe in drilling operations is one of the most pressing and expensive problems in the oil industry. This paper describes a computational simulation and an experimental study of the hydrodynamic vibrator, which may be used for liquidation of stuck-pipe problems during well drilling. The work principle of the vibrator is based upon the known phenomena of Vortex Street of Karman and the resulting generation of vibrations. We will discuss the computational simulation and experimental investigations of vibrations in this device. The frequency of the vibration parameters has been measured as a function of the wide range Reynolds Number. The validity of the computational simulation and of the assumptions on which it is based has been proved experimentally. The computational simulation of the vibrator work and its effectiveness was carried out using FLUENT software. The research showed high degree of congruence with the results of the laboratory tests and allowed to determine the effect of the granular material features upon the pipe vibration in the well. This study demonstrates the potential of using the hydrodynamic vibrator in a well drilling system.

Keywords: Drilling, stuck-pipe, vibration, vortex shedding.

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Authors: V. Iakovoglou, G. N. Zaimes, M. P. Arraiza Bermúdez-Cañete, J. L. García, M. C. Giménez, C. Calderón- Guerrero, F. Ioras, I. Abrudan

Abstract:

A new fast growing trend in tourism is ecotourism, in which tourists visit natural ecosystems under low impact, nonconsumptive and locally oriented activities. Through these activities species and habitats are maintained and typically, underdeveloped regions are emphasized. Ecotourism provides a great alternative, especially for rural and undeveloped area. At the same time, despite its many benefits, it also poses many risks for the naturally protected areas. If ecotourism is practiced improperly degradation and irreversible damages could be the unwanted result. In addition, the lack of MSc programs in the field of Ecotourism in Europe makes it a necessity to be developed. Such an MSc program is being implemented with the lead partner the Technical University of Madrid. The entire partnership has six Universities, seven SMEs and one National Park from seven different countries all over Europe. The MSc will have 10 educational modules that will be available online and will prepare professionals that will be able to implement ecotourism in a sustainable way. Only through awareness and education a sustainable ecotourism will be achieved in the protected areas of Europe.

Keywords: Sustainability, MSc program, protected areas, Erasmus.

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Authors: Nittaya Kerdprasop, Kittisak Kerdprasop

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The state of the art in instructional design for computer-assisted learning has been strongly influenced by advances in information technology, Internet and Web-based systems. The emphasis of educational systems has shifted from training to learning. The course delivered has also been changed from large inflexible content to sequential small chunks of learning objects. The concepts of learning objects together with the advanced technologies of Web and communications support the reusability, interoperability, and accessibility design criteria currently exploited by most learning systems. These concepts enable just-in-time learning. We propose to extend theses design criteria further to include the learnability concept that will help adapting content to the needs of learners. The learnability concept offers a better personalization leading to the creation and delivery of course content more appropriate to performance and interest of each learner. In this paper we present a new framework of learning environments containing knowledge discovery as a tool to automatically learn patterns of learning behavior from learners' profiles and history.

Keywords: Knowledge mining, Web-based learning, Learning environments.

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Authors: Naji Ali Albakay, Abdulrahman Alothaim, Isa Barshushi

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The most common quadrature amplitude modulator (QAM) applies two Mach-Zehnder Modulators (MZM) and one phase shifter to generate high order modulation format. The bias of MZM changes over time due to temperature, vibration, and aging factors. The change in the biasing causes distortion to the generated QAM signal which leads to deterioration of bit error rate (BER) performance. Therefore, it is critical to be able to lock MZM’s Q point to the required operating point for good performance. We propose a technique for automatic bias control (ABC) of QAM transmitter using BER measurements and gradient descent optimization algorithm. The proposed technique is attractive because it uses the pertinent metric, BER, which compensates for bias drifting independently from other system variations such as laser source output power. The proposed scheme performance and its operating principles are simulated using OptiSystem simulation software for 4-QAM and 16-QAM transmitters.

Keywords: Automatic bias control, optical fiber communication, optical modulation, optical devices.

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Authors: Nan-Chyuan Tsai, Sheng-Liang Hsu

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An innovative tri-axes micro-power receiver is proposed. The tri-axes micro-power receiver consists of two sets 3-D micro-solenoids and one set planar micro-coils in which iron core is embedded. The three sets of micro-coils are designed to be orthogonal to each other. Therefore, no matter which direction the flux is present along, the magnetic energy can be harvested and transformed into electric power. Not only dead space of receiving power is mostly reduced, but also transformation efficiency of electromagnetic energy to electric power can be efficiently raised. By employing commercial software, Ansoft Maxwell, the preliminary simulation results verify that the proposed micro-power receiver can efficiently pick up the energy transmitted by magnetic power source. As to the fabrication process, the isotropic etching technique is employed to micro-machine the inverse-trapezoid fillister so that the copper wire can be successfully electroplated. The adhesion between micro-coils and fillister is much enhanced.

Keywords: Wireless Power Transmission, Magnetic Flux, Tri-axes Micro-power Receiver

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Authors: Vasileios Anastopoulos

Abstract:

Cyber threat intelligence assists organisations in understanding the threats they face and helps them make educated decisions on preparing their defences. Sharing of threat intelligence and threat information is increasingly leveraged by organisations and enterprises, and various software solutions are already available, with the open-source malware information sharing platform (MISP) being a popular one. In this work, a methodology for the production of cyber threat intelligence using the threat information stored in MISP is proposed. The methodology leverages the discipline of social network analysis and the diamond model, a model used for intrusion analysis, to produce cyber threat intelligence. The workings of the proposed methodology are demonstrated with a case study on a production MISP instance of a real organisation. The paper concludes with a discussion on the proposed methodology and possible directions for further research.

Keywords: Cyber threat intelligence, diamond model, malware information sharing platform, social network analysis.

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Authors: Jung-Ho Moon, Myung-Gon Yoon, Tae Kwon Ha

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High temperature deformation behavior of cast 310S stainless steel has been investigated in this study by performing tensile and compression tests at temperatures from 900 to 1200^oC. Rectangular ingots of which the dimensions were 350×350×100 in millimeter were cast using vacuum induction melting. Phase equilibrium was calculated using the FactSage®, thermodynamic software and database. Thermal expansion coefficient was also measured on the ingot in the temperature range from room temperature to 1200^oC. Tensile strength of cast 310S stainless steel was 9 MPa at 1200^oC, which is a little higher than that of a wrought 310S. With temperature decreased, tensile strength increased rapidly and reached up to 72 MPa at 900^oC. Elongation also increased with temperature decreased. Microstructure observation revealed that s phase was precipitated along the grain boundary and within the matrix over 1200^oC, which is detrimental to high temperature elongation.

Keywords: Stainless steel, STS 310S, high temperature deformation, microstructure, mechanical properties.

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Authors: Kok, M.O., Omar-Fauzee, M.S., Rosli, M.H.

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This study investigated the relationship between exercise imagery use and level of physical activity within a wide range of exercisers in Klang valley, Malaysia. One hundred and twenty four respondents (Mage = 28.92, SD = 9.34) completed two sets of questionnaires (Exercise Imagery Inventory and Leisure-Time Exercise Questionnaire) that measure the use of imagery and exercise frequency of participants. From the result obtained, exercise imagery is found to be significantly correlated to level of physical activity. Besides that, variables such as gender, age and ethnicity that may affect the use of imagery and exercise frequency were also being assessed in this study. Among all variables, only ethnicity showed significant difference in level of physical activity (p < 0.05). Findings in this study suggest that further investigation should be done on other variables such as socioeconomic, educational level, and selfefficacy that may affect the imagery use and frequency of physical activity among exercisers.

Keywords: Physical activity, exercise imagery, ExerciseImagery Inventory, Leisure-Time Exercise Questionnaire

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Authors: L. N. A. Chandana Jayawardena, Ales Gregar

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Occupational Self Efficacy (OSE) reflects the conviction of a person’s ability to fulfill his job related behavior at a perfectly acceptable level to the employer. Transformational leadership improves followers’ commitment by influencing their needs, values, and self-esteem. Employees also develop a dyadic relationship with their immediate superiors. Study was conducted amongst one hundred and twenty two (122) bank managers in Sri Lanka. They were selected based on multi-stage (seniority in the hierarchy, gender, department-wise etc.) stratified random sampling. Major objectives of this study were to analyze the impact of Transformational leadership style, and OSE along with Sociodemographic factors, and Career, Job and Organizational experience, to the Career satisfaction of managers. SPSS software was used for parametric and non-parametric statistical analyses. Career satisfaction had positive impacts with their Transformational leadership style, and their relationships with the immediate superior. Impact of sociodemographic factors, and career exposure to career satisfaction was assessed.

Keywords: Career success, Relationship with immediate superior, Transformational leadership.

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Authors: M. Karassartova, D. Shormanbayeva, A. Beissenova, S.Balshikeyev

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Forming a legal culture among citizens is a complicated and lengthy process, influencing all spheres of social life. It includes promoting justice, learning rights and duties, the introduction of juridical norms and knowledge, and also a process of developing a system of legal acts and constitutional norms. Currently, the evaluative and emotional influence of attempts to establish a legal culture among the citizens of Kazakhstan is limited by real legal practice. As a result, the values essential to a sound civil society are absent from the consciousness of the Kazakh people who are thus, in turn, not able to develop respect for these values. One of the disadvantages of the modern Kazakh educational system is a tendency to underrate the actual forces shaping the worldview of Kazakh youths. The mass-media, which are going through a personnel crisis, cannot provide society with the legal and political information necessary to form the sort of legal culture required for a true civil society.

Keywords: Kazakhstan society, Legal education, legal culture.

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Authors: V. Sacca, A. Sarica, F. Novellino, S. Barone, T. Tallarico, E. Filippelli, A. Granata, P. Valentino, A. Quattrone

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In the last few years, resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) was widely used to investigate the architecture of brain networks by investigating the Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent response. This technique represented an interesting, robust and reliable approach to compare pathologic and healthy subjects in order to investigate neurodegenerative diseases evolution. On the other hand, the elaboration of rs-fMRI data resulted to be very prone to noise due to confounding factors especially the head motion. Head motion has long been known to be a source of artefacts in task-based functional MRI studies, but it has become a particularly challenging problem in recent studies using rs-fMRI. The aim of this work was to evaluate in MS patients a well-known motion correction algorithm from the FMRIB's Software Library - MCFLIRT - that could be applied to minimize the head motion distortions, allowing to correctly interpret rs-fMRI results.

Keywords: Head motion correction, MCFLIRT algorithm, multiple sclerosis, resting state fMRI.

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Authors: Stephen Barnes, Ian Mills, Frances Cleary

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Augmented and Virtual Reality based applications offer many benefits for the heritage and tourism sector. This technology provides a platform to showcase the regions of interest to people without the need for them to be physically present, which has had a positive impact on enticing tourists to visit those locations. However, the technology also provides the opportunity to present historical artefacts in a form that accurately represents their original, intended appearance. Three sites of interest were identified in the Lingaun Valley in South East Ireland wherein virtual representations of site specific artefacts of interest were created via a multidisciplinary team encompassing archaeology, art history, 3D modelling, design and software development. The collated information has been presented to users via an Augmented Reality mobile based application that provides information in an engaging manner that encourages an interest in history as well as visits to the sites in the Lingaun Valley.

Keywords: Augmented Reality, Virtual Heritage, 3D modelling, archaeology, virtual representation.

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Authors: Seyyed Abolhasan Naeini, Ehsan Azini

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In this paper, we consider the stability of a slope of 10 meters in silty gravel soils with modeling in the Geostudio Software.  we intend to use the parameters of the volumetric water content and suction dependent permeability and provides relationships and graphs using the parameters obtained from gradation tests and Atterberg’s limits. Also, different conditions of the soil will be investigated, including: checking the factor of safety and deformation rates and pore water pressure in drained, non-drained and unsaturated conditions, as well as the effect of reducing the water level on other parameters. For this purpose, it is assumed that the groundwater level is at a depth of 2 meters from the ground.  Then, with decreasing water level, the safety factor of slope stability was investigated and it was observed that with decreasing water level, the safety factor increased.

Keywords: Slope stability analysis, factor of safety, matric suction, unsaturated silty gravel soil.

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Authors: Nino Abesadze, Marine Mindorashvili, Nino Paresashvili

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The main purpose of the article is to make complex statistical analysis of tourist expenses of foreign visitors. We used mixed technique of selection that implies rules of random and proportional selection. Computer software SPSS was used to compute statistical data for corresponding analysis. Corresponding methodology of tourism statistics was implemented according to international standards. Important information was collected and grouped from the major Georgian airports. Techniques of statistical observation were prepared. A representative population of foreign visitors and a rule of selection of respondents were determined. We have a trend of growth of tourist numbers and share of tourists from post-soviet countries constantly increases. Level of satisfaction with tourist facilities and quality of service has grown, but still we have a problem of disparity between quality of service and prices. The design of tourist expenses of foreign visitors is diverse; competitiveness of tourist products of Georgian tourist companies is higher.

Keywords: Tourist, expenses, methods, statistics, analysis.

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Authors: Alicia Y. C. Tang, Sharifuddin M. Zain, Noorsaadah A. Rahman, Rukaini Abdullah

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This paper discusses a qualitative simulator QRiOM that uses Qualitative Reasoning (QR) technique, and a process-based ontology to model, simulate and explain the behaviour of selected organic reactions. Learning organic reactions requires the application of domain knowledge at intuitive level, which is difficult to be programmed using traditional approach. The main objective of QRiOM is to help learners gain a better understanding of the fundamental organic reaction concepts, and to improve their conceptual comprehension on the subject by analyzing the multiple forms of explanation generated by the software. This paper focuses on the generation of explanation based on causal theories to explicate various phenomena in the chemistry subject. QRiOM has been tested with three classes problems related to organic chemistry, with encouraging results. This paper also presents the results of preliminary evaluation of QRiOM that reveal its explanation capability and usefulness.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence, explanation, ontology, organicreactions, qualitative reasoning, QPT.

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Authors: Xin Kai, Juan Li, Sexin Huang, Zengliang Bai

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Ethanol is generally used as a therapeutic reagent against Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC or hepatoma) worldwide, as it can induce Hepatocellular carcinoma cell apoptosis at low concentration through a multifactorial process regulated by several unknown proteins. This paper provides a simple and available proteomic strategy for exploring differentially expressed proteins in the apoptotic pathway. The appropriate concentrations of ethanol required to induce HepG2 cell apoptosis were first assessed by MTT assay, Gisma and fluorescence staining. Next, the central proteins involved in the apoptosis pathway processs were determined using 2D-PAGE, SDS-PAGE, and bio-software analysis. Finally the downregulation of two proteins, AFP and survivin, were determined by immunocytochemistry and reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) technology. The simple, useful method demonstrated here provides a new approach to proteomic analysis in key bio-regulating process including proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis, immunity and metastasis.

Keywords: Hepatocellular carcinoma, Ethanol, Proteomics, survivin and AFP

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Authors: Bahaa Eltahawy, Mikko Ylihärsilä, Reino Virrankoski, Esko Petäjä

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Sheet metal processing is automated, but the step from product models to the production machine control still requires human intervention. This may cause time consuming bottlenecks in the production process and increase the risk of human errors. In this paper we present a system, which automatically recognizes features from the CAD-model of the sheet metal product. By using these features, the system produces a complete model of the particular sheet metal product. Then the model is used as an input for the sheet metal processing machine. Currently the system is implemented, capable to recognize more than 11 of the most common sheet metal structural features, and the procedure is fully automated. This provides remarkable savings in the production time, and protects against the human errors. This paper presents the developed system architecture, applied algorithms and system software implementation and testing.

Keywords: Feature recognition, automation, sheet metal manufacturing, CAM, CAD.

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Authors: M. Othman, N. Bhuiyan, G. J. Gouw

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In today-s global and competitive market, manufacturing companies are working hard towards improving their production system performance. Most companies develop production systems that can help in cost reduction. Manufacturing systems consist of different elements including production methods, machines, processes, control and information systems. Human issues are an important part of manufacturing systems, yet most companies do not pay sufficient attention to them. In this paper, a workforce planning (WP) model is presented. A non-linear programming model is developed in order to minimize the hiring, firing, training and overtime costs. The purpose is to determine the number of workers for each worker type, the number of workers trained, and the number of overtime hours. Moreover, a decision support system (DSS) based on the proposed model is introduced using the Excel-Lingo software interfacing feature. This model will help to improve the interaction between the workers, managers and the technical systems in manufacturing.

Keywords: Decision Support System, Human Factors, Manufacturing System, Workforce Planning.

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Authors: Essam A. Al-Bahkali

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A three-dimensional finite element modeling for austenitic stainless steel AISI 304 annealed condition sheets of 1.0 mm thickness are developed using ABAQUS® software. This includes spot welded and weld bonded joints models. Both models undergo thermal heat caused by spot welding process and then are subjected to axial load up to the failure point. The properties of elastic and plastic regions, modulus of elasticity, fracture limit, nugget and heat affected zones are determined. Complete loaddisplacement curve for each joining model is obtained and compared with the experiment data and with the finite element models without including the effect of thermal process. In general, the results obtained for both spot welded and weld-bonded joints affected by thermal process showed an excellent agreement with the experimental data.

Keywords: Heat Affected Zone, Spot Welded, Thermal Process, Weld-Bonded.

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Authors: Mubarak S. Mohsen, Rosni Abdullah, Yong M. Teo

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Advances in processors architecture, such as multicore, increase the size of complexity of parallel computer systems. With multi-core architecture there are different parallel languages that can be used to run parallel programs. One of these languages is OpenMP which embedded in C/Cµ or FORTRAN. Because of this new architecture and the complexity, it is very important to evaluate the performance of OpenMP constructs, kernels, and application program on multi-core systems. Performance is the activity of collecting the information about the execution characteristics of a program. Performance tools consists of at least three interfacing software layers, including instrumentation, measurement, and analysis. The instrumentation layer defines the measured performance events. The measurement layer determines what performance event is actually captured and how it is measured by the tool. The analysis layer processes the performance data and summarizes it into a form that can be displayed in performance tools. In this paper, a number of OpenMP performance tools are surveyed, explaining how each is used to collect, analyse, and display data collection.

Keywords: Parallel performance tools, OpenMP, multi-core.

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Authors: S. Gao, S. Srirattayawong

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In this study, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model has been developed for studying the effect of surface roughness profile on the EHL problem. The cylinders contact geometry, meshing and calculation of the conservation of mass and momentum equations are carried out using the commercial software packages ICEMCFD and ANSYS Fluent. The user defined functions (UDFs) for density, viscosity and elastic deformation of the cylinders as the functions of pressure and temperature are defined for the CFD model. Three different surface roughness profiles are created and incorporated into the CFD model. It is found that the developed CFD model can predict the characteristics of fluid flow and heat transfer in the EHL problem, including the main parameters such as pressure distribution, minimal film thickness, viscosity, and density changes. The results obtained show that the pressure profile at the center of the contact area directly relates to the roughness amplitude. A rough surface with kurtosis value of more than 3 has greater influence over the fluctuated shape of pressure distribution than in other cases.

Keywords: CFD, EHL, Kurtosis, Surface roughness.

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Authors: Ghulam Rasool, Ilka Philippow

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Modernizing legacy applications is the key issue facing IT managers today because there's enormous pressure on organizations to change the way they run their business to meet the new requirements. The importance of software maintenance and reengineering is forever increasing. Understanding the architecture of existing legacy applications is the most critical issue for maintenance and reengineering. The artifacts recovery can be facilitated with different recovery approaches, methods and tools. The existing methods provide static and dynamic set of techniques for extracting architectural information, but are not suitable for all users in different domains. This paper presents a simple and lightweight pattern extraction technique to extract different artifacts from legacy systems using regular expression pattern specifications with multiple language support. We used our custom-built tool DRT to recover artifacts from existing system at different levels of abstractions. In order to evaluate our approach a case study is conducted.

Keywords: Artifacts recovery, Pattern matching, Reverseengineering, Program understanding, Regular expressions, Sourcecode analysis.

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Authors: Ramlan Zailani, Halim Ghafar, Mohamad Sofian So'aib

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Air infiltration in mass scale industrial applications of bio char production is inevitable. The presence of oxygen during the carbonization process is detrimental to the production of biochar yield and properties. The experiment was carried out on several wood species in a fixed-bed pyrolyser under various fractions of oxygen ranging from 0% to 11% by varying nitrogen and oxygen composition in the pyrolysing gas mixtures at desired compositions. The bed temperature and holding time were also varied. Process optimization was carried out by Response Surface Methodology (RSM) by employing Central Composite Design (CCD) using Design Expert 6.0 Software. The effect of oxygen ratio and holding time on biochar yield within the range studied were statistically significant. From the analysis result, optimum condition of 15.2% biochar yield of mangrove wood was predicted at pyrolysis temperature of 403 oC, oxygen percentage of 2.3% and holding time of two hours. This prediction agreed well with the experiment finding of 15.1% biochar yield.

Keywords: Mangrove wood, slow pyrolysis, oxygen infiltration.

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Authors: R. Karami, A. Gharaei

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This study was undertaken at four different sites (north polluted, south polluted, south healthy and north healthy) in Tehran, in order to examine whether there was a relationship between publicly available air quality data and the public’s perception of air quality and to suggest some guidelines for reducing air pollution. A total of 200 people were accidentally filled out the research questionnaires at mentioned sites and air quality data were obtained simultaneously from the Air Quality Control Department. Data was analyzed in Excel and SPSS software’s. Clean air and job security were of great importance to people comparing to other pleasant aspect of life. Also air pollution and serious diseases were the most important of people concerns. Street monitors and news paper services on air quality were little used by the public as a means of obtaining information on air pollution. Using public transportation and avoiding inevitable journeys are the most important ways for reducing air pollution. The results reveal that the public’s perception of air quality is not a reliable indicator of the actual levels of air pollution.

Keywords: Air pollution, Quality of life, Opinion poll, Public participation.

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Authors: P. Gudelj, E. Franić, M. Kolega

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Mental health is crucial for personal, social, and socio-economic development, becoming an increasingly relevant topic, especially in the post-global pandemic era. One vulnerable demographic comprises students who, during the pandemic, faced challenges such as adapting to new educational methods, societal or residential changes, heightened stress, responsibilities, and entering the job market. These life challenges proved insurmountable for some individuals during this phase. This research aimed to examine students' attitudes towards individuals seeking psychological help. By gaining a better understanding of young people's perceptions of seeking psychological assistance, a clearer insight into how to make psychological support more accessible and acceptable can be achieved. A questionnaire was completed by 210 students from various disciplines at the University of Zagreb. While the majority of students expressed a positive attitude towards seeking psychological help, a very small percentage reported having sought it. One of the most common obstacles to seeking appropriate help was a lack of financial means, with the most significant motivators being the positive experiences of those who sought help and an affordable cost.

Keywords: Mental health, students, psychological support, attitudes.

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Authors: Eric Ho

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Pedagogical approaches in Asia nowadays are imported from the West. In Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC), however, there is a dichotomy between the perceived benefits of Western pedagogies and the real classroom practices in Chinese societies. The success of Hong Kong students in large-scale international assessments has proved that both the strengths of both Western pedagogies and CHC educational approaches should be integrated for the sake of the students. University students aim to equip themselves with employability skills upon graduation. Formative assessments allow students to receive detailed, positive, and timely feedback and they can identify their strengths and weaknesses before they start working. However, there remains a question of whether university year 1 students who come from an examination-driven secondary education background are ready to respond to more formative assessments. The findings show that year 1 students are less concerned about competition in the university and more open to new teaching approaches that will allow them to improve as professionals in their major study areas.

Keywords: Formative assessment, higher education, learning styles, Confucian heritage culture.

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Authors: Low Khong Teck, Hasan S. M. Al-Khaffaf, Abdullah Zawawi Talib, Tan Kian Lam

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In this paper, an extended study is performed on the effect of different factors on the quality of vector data based on a previous study. In the noise factor, one kind of noise that appears in document images namely Gaussian noise is studied while the previous study involved only salt-and-pepper noise. High and low levels of noise are studied. For the noise cleaning methods, algorithms that were not covered in the previous study are used namely Median filters and its variants. For the vectorization factor, one of the best available commercial raster to vector software namely VPstudio is used to convert raster images into vector format. The performance of line detection will be judged based on objective performance evaluation method. The output of the performance evaluation is then analyzed statistically to highlight the factors that affect vector quality.

Keywords: Performance Evaluation, Vectorization, Median Filter, Gaussian Noise.

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Authors: Faride Peña, Teresita Castillo, Concepción Campo

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Sexual violence, and particularly child sexual abuse, is a serious problem all over the world, México included. Given its importance, there are several preventive and care programs done by the government and the civil society all over the country but most of them are developed in urban areas even though these problems are especially serious in rural areas. Yucatán, a state in southern México, occupies one of the first places in child sexual abuse. Considering the above, the University Unit of Clinical Research and Victimological Attention (UNIVICT) of the Autonomous University of Yucatan, designed, implemented and is currently evaluating the program named “Sharing Mouth to Mouth: My Body, Nobody Can Touch It”, a program to prevent child sexual abuse in rural communities of Yucatán, México. Its aim was to develop skills for the detection of risk situations, providing protection strategies and mechanisms for prevention through culturally relevant psycho-educative strategies to increase personal resources in children, in collaboration with parents, teachers, police and municipal authorities. The diagnosis identified that a particularly vulnerable population were children between 4 and 10 years. The program run during 2015 in primary schools in the municipality whose inhabitants are mostly Mayan. The aim of this paper is to present its evaluation in terms of its effectiveness and efficiency. This evaluation included documental analysis of the work done in the field, psycho-educational and recreational activities with children, evaluation of knowledge by participating children and interviews with parents and teachers. The results show high efficiency in fulfilling the tasks and achieving primary objectives. The efficiency shows satisfactory results but also opportunity areas that can be resolved with minor adjustments to the program. The results also show the importance of including culturally relevant strategies and activities otherwise it minimizes possible achievements. Another highlight is the importance of participatory action research in preventive approaches to child sexual abuse since by becoming aware of the importance of the subject people participate more actively; in addition to design culturally appropriate strategies and measures so that the proposal may not be distant to the people. Discussion emphasizes the methodological implications of prevention programs (convenience of using participatory action research (PAR), importance of monitoring and mediation during implementation, developing detection skills tools in creative ways using psycho-educational interactive techniques and working assessment issued by the participants themselves). As well, it is important to consider the holistic character this type of program should have, in terms of incorporating social and culturally relevant characteristics, according to the community individuality and uniqueness, consider type of communication to be used and children’ language skills considering that there should be variations strongly linked to a specific cultural context.

Keywords: Child sexual abuse, evaluation, PAR, prevention.

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Authors: Fares Jnaid, Riyad Aboutaha

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In this paper, a nonlinear Finite Element Analysis (FEA) was carried out using ANSYS software to build a model able of predicting the behavior of Reinforced Concrete (RC) beams with unbonded reinforcement. The FEA model was compared to existing experimental data by other researchers. The existing experimental data consisted of 16 beams that varied from structurally sound beams to beams with unbonded reinforcement with different unbonded lengths and reinforcement ratios. The model was able to predict the ultimate flexural strength, load-deflection curve, and crack pattern of concrete beams with unbonded reinforcement. It was concluded that when the when the unbonded length is less than 45% of the span, there will be no decrease in the ultimate flexural strength due to the loss of bond between the steel reinforcement and the surrounding concrete regardless of the reinforcement ratio. Moreover, when the reinforcement ratio is relatively low, there will be no decrease in ultimate flexural strength regardless of the length of unbond.

Keywords: FEA, ANSYS, Unbond, Strain.

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Authors: S. Sendilkumar, B. L. Mathur, Joseph Henry

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A new approach for protection of power transformer is presented using a time-frequency transform known as Wavelet transform. Different operating conditions such as inrush, Normal, load, External fault and internal fault current are sampled and processed to obtain wavelet coefficients. Different Operating conditions provide variation in wavelet coefficients. Features like energy and Standard deviation are calculated using Parsevals theorem. These features are used as inputs to PNN (Probabilistic neural network) for fault classification. The proposed algorithm provides more accurate results even in the presence of noise inputs and accurately identifies inrush and fault currents. Overall classification accuracy of the proposed method is found to be 96.45%. Simulation of the fault (with and without noise) was done using MATLAB AND SIMULINK software taking 2 cycles of data window (40 m sec) containing 800 samples. The algorithm was evaluated by using 10 % Gaussian white noise.

Keywords: Power Transformer, differential Protection, internalfault, inrush current, Wavelet Energy, Db9.

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