Search results for: virtual learning
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 2463

Search results for: virtual learning

813 Challenges and Professional Perspectives for Pedagogy Undergraduates with Specific Learning Disability: A Greek Case Study

Authors: Tatiani D. Mousoura

Abstract:

Specific learning disability (SLD) in higher education has been partially explored in Greece so far. Moreover, opinions on professional perspectives for university students with SLD, is scarcely encountered in Greek research. The perceptions of the hidden character of SLD along with the university policy towards it and professional perspectives that result from this policy have been examined in the present research. This study has applied the paradigm of a Greek Tertiary Pedagogical Education Department (Early Childhood Education). Via mixed methods, data have been collected from different groups of people in the Pedagogical Department: students with SLD and without SLD, academic staff and administration staff, all of which offer the opportunity for triangulation of the findings. Qualitative methods include ten interviews with students with SLD and 15 interviews with academic staff and 60 hours of observation of the students with SLD. Quantitative methods include 165 questionnaires completed by third and fourth-year students and five questionnaires completed by the administration staff. Thematic analyses of the interviews’ data and descriptive statistics on the questionnaires’ data have been applied for the processing of the results. The use of medical terms to define and understand SLD was common in the student cohort, regardless of them having an SLD diagnosis. However, this medical model approach is far more dominant in the group of students without SLD who, by majority, hold misconceptions on a definitional level. The academic staff group seems to be leaning towards a social approach concerning SLD. According to them, diagnoses may lead to social exclusion. The Pedagogical Department generally endorses the principles of inclusion and complies with the provision of oral exams for students with SLD. Nevertheless, in practice, there seems to be a lack of regular academic support for these students. When such support does exist, it is only through individual initiatives. With regards to their prospective profession, students with SLD can utilize their personal experience, as well as their empathy; these appear to be unique weapons in their hands –in comparison with other educators− when it comes to teaching students in the future. In the Department of Pedagogy, provision towards SLD results sporadic, however the vision of an inclusive department does exist. Based on their studies and their experience, pedagogy students with SLD claim that they have an experiential internalized advantage for their future career as educators.

Keywords: Specific learning disability, dyslexia, pedagogy department, inclusion, professional role of SLDed educators, higher education, university policy.

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812 Improving Activity Recognition Classification of Repetitious Beginner Swimming Using a 2-Step Peak/Valley Segmentation Method with Smoothing and Resampling for Machine Learning

Authors: Larry Powell, Seth Polsley, Drew Casey, Tracy Hammond

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Human activity recognition (HAR) systems have shown positive performance when recognizing repetitive activities like walking, running, and sleeping. Water-based activities are a reasonably new area for activity recognition. However, water-based activity recognition has largely focused on supporting the elite and competitive swimming population, which already has amazing coordination and proper form. Beginner swimmers are not perfect, and activity recognition needs to support the individual motions to help beginners. Activity recognition algorithms are traditionally built around short segments of timed sensor data. Using a time window input can cause performance issues in the machine learning model. The window’s size can be too small or large, requiring careful tuning and precise data segmentation. In this work, we present a method that uses a time window as the initial segmentation, then separates the data based on the change in the sensor value. Our system uses a multi-phase segmentation method that pulls all peaks and valleys for each axis of an accelerometer placed on the swimmer’s lower back. This results in high recognition performance using leave-one-subject-out validation on our study with 20 beginner swimmers, with our model optimized from our final dataset resulting in an F-Score of 0.95.

Keywords: Time window, peak/valley segmentation, feature extraction, beginner swimming, activity recognition.

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811 Using Thinking Blocks to Encourage the Use of Higher Order Thinking Skills among Students When Solving Problems on Fractions

Authors: Abdul Halim Abdullah, Nur Liyana Zainal Abidin, Mahani Mokhtar

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Problem-solving is an activity which can encourage students to use Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). Learning fractions can be challenging for students since empirical evidence shows that students experience difficulties in solving the fraction problems. However, visual methods can help students to overcome the difficulties since the methods help students to make meaningful visual representations and link abstract concepts in Mathematics. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether there were any changes in students’ HOTS at the four highest levels when learning the fractions by using Thinking Blocks. 54 students participated in a quasi-experiment using pre-tests and post-tests. Students were divided into two groups. The experimental group (n=32) received a treatment to improve the students’ HOTS and the other group acted as the control group (n=22) which used a traditional method. Data were analysed by using Mann-Whitney test. The results indicated that during post-test, students who used Thinking Blocks showed significant improvement in their HOTS level (p=0.000). In addition, the results of post-test also showed that the students’ performance improved significantly at the four highest levels of HOTS; namely, application (p=0.001), analyse (p=0.000), evaluate (p=0.000), and create (p=0.000). Therefore, it can be concluded that Thinking Blocks can effectively encourage students to use the four highest levels of HOTS which consequently enable them to solve fractions problems successfully.

Keywords: Thinking blocks, higher order thinking skills, fractions, problem solving.

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810 Fast Approximate Bayesian Contextual Cold Start Learning (FAB-COST)

Authors: Jack R. McKenzie, Peter A. Appleby, Thomas House, Neil Walton

Abstract:

Cold-start is a notoriously difficult problem which can occur in recommendation systems, and arises when there is insufficient information to draw inferences for users or items. To address this challenge, a contextual bandit algorithm – the Fast Approximate Bayesian Contextual Cold Start Learning algorithm (FAB-COST) – is proposed, which is designed to provide improved accuracy compared to the traditionally used Laplace approximation in the logistic contextual bandit, while controlling both algorithmic complexity and computational cost. To this end, FAB-COST uses a combination of two moment projection variational methods: Expectation Propagation (EP), which performs well at the cold start, but becomes slow as the amount of data increases; and Assumed Density Filtering (ADF), which has slower growth of computational cost with data size but requires more data to obtain an acceptable level of accuracy. By switching from EP to ADF when the dataset becomes large, it is able to exploit their complementary strengths. The empirical justification for FAB-COST is presented, and systematically compared to other approaches on simulated data. In a benchmark against the Laplace approximation on real data consisting of over 670, 000 impressions from autotrader.co.uk, FAB-COST demonstrates at one point increase of over 16% in user clicks. On the basis of these results, it is argued that FAB-COST is likely to be an attractive approach to cold-start recommendation systems in a variety of contexts.

Keywords: Cold-start, expectation propagation, multi-armed bandits, Thompson sampling, variational inference.

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809 A Static Android Malware Detection Based on Actual Used Permissions Combination and API Calls

Authors: Xiaoqing Wang, Junfeng Wang, Xiaolan Zhu

Abstract:

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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808 Elegant: An Intuitive Software Tool for Interactive Learning of Power System Analysis

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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807 A 10 Giga VPN Accelerator Board for Trust Channel Security System

Authors: Ki Hyun Kim, Jang-Hee Yoo, Kyo Il Chung

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This paper proposes a VPN Accelerator Board (VPN-AB), a virtual private network (VPN) protocol designed for trust channel security system (TCSS). TCSS supports safety communication channel between security nodes in internet. It furnishes authentication, confidentiality, integrity, and access control to security node to transmit data packets with IPsec protocol. TCSS consists of internet key exchange block, security association block, and IPsec engine block. The internet key exchange block negotiates crypto algorithm and key used in IPsec engine block. Security Association blocks setting-up and manages security association information. IPsec engine block treats IPsec packets and consists of networking functions for communication. The IPsec engine block should be embodied by H/W and in-line mode transaction for high speed IPsec processing. Our VPN-AB is implemented with high speed security processor that supports many cryptographic algorithms and in-line mode. We evaluate a small TCSS communication environment, and measure a performance of VPN-AB in the environment. The experiment results show that VPN-AB gets a performance throughput of maximum 15.645Gbps when we set the IPsec protocol with 3DES-HMAC-MD5 tunnel mode.

Keywords: TCSS(Trust Channel Security System), VPN(VirtualPrivate Network), IPsec, SSL, Security Processor, Securitycommunication.

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806 Strengthening Adult Literacy Programs in Order to End Female Genital Mutilation to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals

Authors: Odenigbo Veronica Ngozi, Lorreta Chika Ukwuaba

Abstract:

This study focuses on how the strengthening adult literacy programs can help accelerate transformative strategies to end Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Nigeria, specifically in Nsukka Local Government Area of Enugu State. The research delved into the definition of FGM, adult literacy programs, and how to achieve ending FGM in order to attain Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2030. It further discussed the practice of FGM in Nigeria and emphasized the statement of the problem. Main purpose of the study was to investigate how strengthening adult literacy programs can help accelerate transformative strategies to end FGM in Nigeria and achieve SDGs in 2030. A survey research design was used to conduct the study in Nsukka L.G.A. The population was composed of 26 facilitators and adult learners in five adult learning centres in the area. The entire population was used as a sample. Structured questionnaires were employed to elicit information from the respondents. The items on the questionnaire were face-validated by three experts while the reliability of the instrument was verified using Cronbach Alpha Reliability Technique. The research questions were analysed using means and standard deviation while the hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of degree of significance using a t-test statistics. The result of the findings shows that the practices of FGM can end through strengthening adult literacy programs. Strengthening adult literacy programs is a good channel to end or stop FGM through the knowledge and skill acquired from the learning centres. The theoretical importance of the study lies in the fact that it highlights the role of adult literacy programs in accelerating transformative strategies to combat harmful cultural practices such as FGM. It further supports the importance of education and knowledge in achieving SDGs by 2030. The study addressed the question of how strengthening adult literacy programs can help accelerate transformative strategies which can end FGM in Nigeria and achieve SDGs by 2030. In conclusion, the study revealed that adult literacy is a good tool to end FGM in Nigeria. The recommendation was that (NGOs), community-based organizations (CBOs), and individuals should support the funding and establishment of adult literacy centres in communities so as to reach all illiterate parents or individuals so that they can acquire the knowledge and skill needed to understand the negative effect of FGM in the life of a girl child.

Keywords: Adult literacy, female genital mutilation, learning centres, Sustainable Development Goals.

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805 Machine Learning Framework: Competitive Intelligence and Key Drivers Identification of Market Share Trends among Healthcare Facilities

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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804 Digital Twin of Real Electrical Distribution System with Real Time Recursive Load Flow Calculation and State Estimation

Authors: Anosh Arshad Sundhu, Francesco Giordano, Giacomo Della Croce, Maurizio Arnone

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Digital Twin (DT) is a technology that generates a virtual representation of a physical system or process, enabling real-time monitoring, analysis, and simulation. DT of an Electrical Distribution System (EDS) can perform online analysis by integrating the static and real-time data in order to show the current grid status and predictions about the future status to the Distribution System Operator (DSO), producers and consumers. DT technology for EDS also offers the opportunity to DSO to test hypothetical scenarios. This paper discusses the development of a DT of an EDS by Smart Grid Controller (SGC) application, which is developed using open-source libraries and languages. The developed application can be integrated with Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System (SCADA) of any EDS for creating the DT. The paper shows the performance of developed tools inside the application, tested on real EDS for grid observability, Smart Recursive Load Flow (SRLF) calculation and state estimation of loads in MV feeders.

Keywords: Digital Twin, Distribution System Operator, Electrical Distribution System, Smart Grid Controller, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System, Smart Recursive Load Flow.

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803 A Comparative Study on the Dimensional Error of 3D CAD Model and SLS RP Model for Reconstruction of Cranial Defect

Authors: L. Siva Rama Krishna, Sriram Venkatesh, M. Sastish Kumar, M. Uma Maheswara Chary

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Rapid Prototyping (RP) is a technology that produces models and prototype parts from 3D CAD model data, CT/MRI scan data, and model data created from 3D object digitizing systems. There are several RP process like Stereolithography (SLA), Solid Ground Curing (SGC), Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), 3D Printing (3DP) among them SLS and FDM RP processes are used to fabricate pattern of custom cranial implant. RP technology is useful in engineering and biomedical application. This is helpful in engineering for product design, tooling and manufacture etc. RP biomedical applications are design and development of medical devices, instruments, prosthetics and implantation; it is also helpful in planning complex surgical operation. The traditional approach limits the full appreciation of various bony structure movements and therefore the custom implants produced are difficult to measure the anatomy of parts and analyze the changes in facial appearances accurately. Cranioplasty surgery is a surgical correction of a defect in cranial bone by implanting a metal or plastic replacement to restore the missing part. This paper aims to do a comparative study on the dimensional error of CAD and SLS RP Models for reconstruction of cranial defect by comparing the virtual CAD with the physical RP model of a cranial defect.

Keywords: Rapid Prototyping, Selective Laser Sintering, Cranial defect, Dimensional Error.

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802 Co-Creational Model for Blended Learning in a Flipped Classroom Environment Focusing on the Combination of Coding and Drone-Building

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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801 Oman’s Position in U.S. Tourists’ Mind: The Use of Importance-Performance Analysis on Destination Attributes

Authors: Mohammed Gamil Montasser, Angelo Battaglia

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Tourism is making its presence felt across the Sultanate of Oman. The story is one of the most recognized phenomena as a sustainable solid growth and is considered a remarkable outcome for any destination. The competitive situation and challenges within the tourism industry worldwide entail a better understanding of the destination position and its image to achieve Oman’s aspiration to retain its international reputation as one of the most desirable destinations in the Middle East. To access general perceptions of Oman’s attributes, their importance and their influences among U.S. tourists, an online survey was conducted with 522 American travelers who have traveled internationally, including non-visitors, virtual-visitors and visitors to Oman. This research involved a total of 36 attributes in the survey. Participants were asked to rate their agreement on how each attribute represented Oman and how important each attribute was for selecting destinations on 5- point Likert Scale. They also indicated if each attribute has a positive, neutral or negative influence on their destination selection. Descriptive statistics and importance performance analysis (IPA) were conducted. IPA illustrated U.S. tourists’ perceptions of Oman’s destination attributes and their importance in destination selection on a matrix with four quadrants, divided by actual mean value in each grid for importance (M=3.51) and performance (M=3.57). Oman tourism organizations and destination managers may use these research findings for future marketing and management efforts toward the U.S. travel market.

Keywords: Analysis of importance and performance, destination attributes, Oman’s position, U.S. tourists.

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800 Islamic Education System: Implementation of Curriculum Kuttab Al-Fatih Semarang

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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799 Device for 3D Analysis of Basic Movements of the Lower Extremity

Authors: Jiménez Villanueva Mayra Alejandra, Ortíz Casallas Diana Carolina, Luengas Contreras Lely Adriana

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This document details the process of developing a wireless device that captures the basic movements of the foot (plantar flexion, dorsal flexion, abduction, adduction.), and the knee movement (flexion). It implements a motion capture system by using a hardware based on optical fiber sensors, due to the advantages in terms of scope, noise immunity and speed of data transmission and reception. The operating principle used by this system is the detection and transmission of joint movement by mechanical elements and their respective measurement by optical ones (in this case infrared). Likewise, Visual Basic software is used for reception, analysis and signal processing of data acquired by the device, generating a 3D graphical representation in real time of each movement. The result is a boot in charge of capturing the movement, a transmission module (Implementing Xbee Technology) and a receiver module for receiving information and sending it to the PC for their respective processing. The main idea with this device is to help on topics such as bioengineering and medicine, by helping to improve the quality of life and movement analysis.

Keywords: abduction, adduction, A / D converter, Autodesk 3DMax, Infrared Diode, Driver, extension, flexion, Infrared LEDs, Interface, Modeling OPENGL, Optical Fiber, USB CDC(Communications Device Class), Virtual Reality.

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798 Management Software for the Elaboration of an Electronic File in the Pharmaceutical Industry Following Mexican Regulations

Authors: M. Peña Aguilar Juan, Ríos Hernández Ezequiel, R. Valencia Luis

Abstract:

For certification, certain goods of public interest, such as medicines and food, it is required the preparation and delivery of a dossier. For its elaboration, legal and administrative knowledge must be taken, as well as organization of the documents of the process, and an order that allows the file verification. Therefore, a virtual platform was developed to support the process of management and elaboration of the dossier, providing accessibility to the information and interfaces that allow the user to know the status of projects. The development of dossier system on the cloud allows the inclusion of the technical requirements for the software management, including the validation and the manufacturing in the field industry. The platform guides and facilitates the dossier elaboration (report, file or history), considering Mexican legislation and regulations, it also has auxiliary tools for its management. This technological alternative provides organization support for documents and accessibility to the information required to specify the successful development of a dossier. The platform divides into the following modules: System control, catalog, dossier and enterprise management. The modules are designed per the structure required in a dossier in those areas. However, the structure allows for flexibility, as its goal is to become a tool that facilitates and does not obstruct processes. The architecture and development of the software allows flexibility for future work expansion to other fields, this would imply feeding the system with new regulations.

Keywords: Electronic dossier, technologies for management, web software, dossier elaboration, pharmaceutical industry.

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797 Computational Design of Inhibitory Agents of BMP-Noggin Interaction to Promote Osteogenesis

Authors: Shaila Ahmed, Raghu Prasad Rao Metpally, Sreedhara Sangadala, Boojala Vijay B Reddy

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Bone growth factors, such as Bone Morphogenic Protein-2 (BMP-2) have been approved by the FDA to replace grafting for some surgical interventions, but the high dose requirement limits its use in patients. Noggin, an extracellular protein, blocks the effect of BMP-2 by binding to BMP. Preventing the BMP-2/noggin interaction will help increase the free concentration of BMP-2 and therefore should enhance its efficacy to induce bone formation. The work presented here involves computational design of novel small molecule inhibitory agents of BMP-2/noggin interaction, based on our current understanding of BMP-2, and its known putative ligands (receptors and antagonists). A successful acquisition of such an inhibitory agent of BMP-2/noggin interaction would allow clinicians to reduce the dose required of BMP-2 protein in clinical applications to promote osteogenesis. The available crystal structures of the BMPs, its receptors, and the binding partner noggin were analyzed to identify the critical residues involved in their interaction. In presenting this study, LUDI de novo design method was utilized to perform virtual screening of a large number of compounds from a commercially available library against the binding sites of noggin to identify the lead chemical compounds that could potentially block BMP-noggin interaction with a high specificity.

Keywords: Transforming growth factor-beta, Bone morphogenic proteins, Noggin, LUDI de novo design method, CAP small molecules.

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796 Ontology of Collaborative Supply Chain for Quality Management

Authors: Jiaqi Yan, Sherry Sun, Huaiqing Wang, Zhongsheng Hua

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In the highly competitive and rapidly changing global marketplace, independent organizations and enterprises often come together and form a temporary alignment of virtual enterprise in a supply chain to better provide products or service. As firms adopt the systems approach implicit in supply chain management, they must manage the quality from both internal process control and external control of supplier quality and customer requirements. How to incorporate quality management of upstream and downstream supply chain partners into their own quality management system has recently received a great deal of attention from both academic and practice. This paper investigate the collaborative feature and the entities- relationship in a supply chain, and presents an ontology of collaborative supply chain from an approach of aligning service-oriented framework with service-dominant logic. This perspective facilitates the segregation of material flow management from manufacturing capability management, which provides a foundation for the coordination and integration of the business process to measure, analyze, and continually improve the quality of products, services, and process. Further, this approach characterizes the different interests of supply chain partners, providing an innovative approach to analyze the collaborative features of supply chain. Furthermore, this ontology is the foundation to develop quality management system which internalizes the quality management in upstream and downstream supply chain partners and manages the quality in supply chain systematically.

Keywords: Ontology, supply chain quality management, service-oriented architecture, service-dominant logic.

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795 Simulation of Static Frequency Converter for Synchronous Machine Operation and Investigation of Shaft Voltage

Authors: Arun Kumar Datta, M. A. Ansari, N. R. Mondal, B. V. Raghavaiah, Manisha Dubey, Shailendra Jain

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This study is carried out to understand the effects of Static frequency converter (SFC) on large machine. SFC has a feature of four quadrant operations. By virtue of this it can be implemented to run a synchronous machine either as a motor or alternator. This dual mode operation helps a single machine to start & run as a motor and then it can be converted as an alternator whenever required. One such dual purpose machine is taken here for study. This machine is installed at a laboratory carrying out short circuit test on high power electrical equipment. SFC connected with this machine is broadly described in this paper. The same SFC has been modeled with the MATLAB/Simulink software. The data applied on this virtual model are the actual parameters from SFC and synchronous machine. After running the model, simulated machine voltage and current waveforms are validated with the real measurements. Processing of these waveforms is done through Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT) which reveals that the waveforms are not sinusoidal rather they contain number of harmonics. These harmonics are the major cause of generating shaft voltage. It is known that bearings of electrical machine are vulnerable to current flow through it due to shaft voltage. A general discussion on causes of shaft voltage in perspective with this machine is presented in this paper.

Keywords: Alternators, AC-DC power conversion, capacitive coupling, electric discharge machining, frequency converter, Fourier transforms, inductive coupling, simulation, Shaft voltage, synchronous machines, static excitation, thyristor.

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794 Electricity Price Forecasting: A Comparative Analysis with Shallow-ANN and DNN

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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793 3D Modelling and Numerical Analysis of Human Inner Ear by Means of Finite Elements Method

Authors: C. Castro-Egler, A. Durán-Escalante, A. García-González

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This paper presents a method to generate a finite element model of the human auditory inner ear system. The geometric model has been realized using 2D images from a virtual model of temporal bones. A point cloud has been gotten manually from those images to construct a whole mesh with hexahedral elements. The main difference with the predecessor models is the spiral shape of the cochlea with its three scales completely defined: scala tympani, scala media and scala vestibuli; which are separate by basilar membrane and Reissner membrane. To validate this model, numerical simulations have been realised with two models: an isolated inner ear and a whole model of human auditory system. Ideal conditions of displacement are applied over the oval window in the isolated Inner Ear model. The whole model is made up of the outer auditory channel, the tympani, the ossicular chain, and the inner ear. The boundary condition for the whole model is 1Pa over the auditory channel entrance. The numerical simulations by FEM have been done using a harmonic analysis with a frequency range between 100-10.000 Hz with an interval of 100Hz. The following results have been carried out: basilar membrane displacement; the scala media pressure according to the cochlea length and the transfer function of the middle ear normalized with the pressure in the tympanic membrane. The basilar membrane displacements and the pressure in the scala media make it possible to validate the response in frequency of the basilar membrane.

Keywords: Finite elements method, human auditory system model, numerical analysis, 3D modelling cochlea.

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792 Competency and Strategy Formulation in Automobile Industry

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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791 Grading and Sequencing Tasks in Task-Based Syllabus: A Critical Look at Criterion Selection

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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790 Memorabilia of Suan Sunandha through Interactive User Interface

Authors: Nalinee Sophatsathit

Abstract:

The objectives of memorabilia of Suan Sunandha are to develop a general knowledge presentation about the historical royal garden through interactive graphic simulation technique and to employ high-functionality context in enhancing interactive user navigation. The approach infers non-intrusive display of relevant history in response to situational context. User’s navigation runs through the virtual reality campus, consisting of new and restored buildings. A flash back presentation of information pertaining to the history in the form of photos, paintings, and textual descriptions are displayed along each passing-by building. To keep the presentation lively, graphical simulation is created in a serendipity game play so that the user can both learn and enjoy the educational tour. The benefits of this human-computer interaction development are two folds. First, lively presentation technique and situational context modeling are developed that entail a usable paradigm of knowledge and information presentation combinations. Second, cost effective training and promotion for both internal personnel and public visitors to learn and keep informed of this historical royal garden can be furnished without the need for a dedicated public relations service. Future improvement on graphic simulation and ability based display can extend this work to be more realistic, user-friendly, and informative for all.

Keywords: Interactive user navigation, high-functionality context, situational context, human-computer interaction.

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789 Helping Others and Youth Mental Health: A Qualitative Study Exploring Perspectives of Youth Engaging in Prosocial Activities

Authors: Saima Hirani, Emmanuela Ojukwu, Nilanga Aki Bandara

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Mental health challenges that begin during the youth age period may continue across the entire life course. One way to support youth mental health is to encourage youth engagement in prosocial activities. This study aimed to explore youth’s perceptions about helping others and mental wellbeing, barriers, and enablers for youth to initiate and continue prosocial activities, and strategies for developing the attribute of helping others in youth. We conducted a qualitative study using semi-structured, virtual interviews with 18 young individuals (aged 16-24 years) living in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Youth perceived helping others as a source of feeling peace and calm, finding meaning in life, experiencing social connection and promoting self-care, and relieving stress. Participants reported opportunities to learn new skills, the role of religion, social connections, previous positive experiences, and role modeling as enablers for their prosocial behavior. Heavy time commitment, negative behavior from others, self-doubt, and late exposure to such activities were considered barriers by youth when participating in prosocial activities. Youth also brought forward key recommendations for engaging youth in helping others. The findings of this study support the notion that youth have positive experiences when engaging in helping others and that involving young people in prosocial activities could be used as a protective intervention for promoting youth mental health and overall wellbeing.

Keywords: Helping others, prosocial behavior, youth, mental wellbeing.

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788 Regression Approach for Optimal Purchase of Hosts Cluster in Fixed Fund for Hadoop Big Data Platform

Authors: Haitao Yang, Jianming Lv, Fei Xu, Xintong Wang, Yilin Huang, Lanting Xia, Xuewu Zhu

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Given a fixed fund, purchasing fewer hosts of higher capability or inversely more of lower capability is a must-be-made trade-off in practices for building a Hadoop big data platform. An exploratory study is presented for a Housing Big Data Platform project (HBDP), where typical big data computing is with SQL queries of aggregate, join, and space-time condition selections executed upon massive data from more than 10 million housing units. In HBDP, an empirical formula was introduced to predict the performance of host clusters potential for the intended typical big data computing, and it was shaped via a regression approach. With this empirical formula, it is easy to suggest an optimal cluster configuration. The investigation was based on a typical Hadoop computing ecosystem HDFS+Hive+Spark. A proper metric was raised to measure the performance of Hadoop clusters in HBDP, which was tested and compared with its predicted counterpart, on executing three kinds of typical SQL query tasks. Tests were conducted with respect to factors of CPU benchmark, memory size, virtual host division, and the number of element physical host in cluster. The research has been applied to practical cluster procurement for housing big data computing.

Keywords: Hadoop platform planning, optimal cluster scheme at fixed-fund, performance empirical formula, typical SQL query tasks.

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787 Topographical Image Transference Compatibility Generated Through Moiré Technique Applying Parametrical Softwares of Computer Assisted Design

Authors: M. V. G. Silva, J. Gazzola, I. M. Dal Fabbro, A. C. L. Lino

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Computer aided design accounts with the support of parametric software in the design of machine components as well as of any other pieces of interest. The complexities of the element under study sometimes offer certain difficulties to computer design, or ever might generate mistakes in the final body conception. Reverse engineering techniques are based on the transformation of already conceived body images into a matrix of points which can be visualized by the design software. The literature exhibits several techniques to obtain machine components dimensional fields, as contact instrument (MMC), calipers and optical methods as laser scanner, holograms as well as moiré methods. The objective of this research work was to analyze the moiré technique as instrument of reverse engineering, applied to bodies of nom complex geometry as simple solid figures, creating matrices of points. These matrices were forwarded to a parametric software named SolidWorks to generate the virtual object. Volume data obtained by mechanical means, i.e., by caliper, the volume obtained through the moiré method and the volume generated by the SolidWorks software were compared and found to be in close agreement. This research work suggests the application of phase shifting moiré methods as instrument of reverse engineering, serving also to support farm machinery element designs.

Keywords: Reverse engineering, Moiré technique, three dimensional image generation.

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786 A Proposal for a Secure and Interoperable Data Framework for Energy Digitalization

Authors: Hebberly Ahatlan

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The process of digitizing energy systems involves transforming traditional energy infrastructure into interconnected, data-driven systems that enhance efficiency, sustainability, and responsiveness. As smart grids become increasingly integral to the efficient distribution and management of electricity from both fossil and renewable energy sources, the energy industry faces strategic challenges associated with digitalization and interoperability — particularly in the context of modern energy business models, such as virtual power plants (VPPs). The critical challenge in modern smart grids is to seamlessly integrate diverse technologies and systems, including virtualization, grid computing and service-oriented architecture (SOA), across the entire energy ecosystem. Achieving this requires addressing issues like semantic interoperability, Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) convergence, and digital asset scalability, all while ensuring security and risk management. This paper proposes a four-layer digitalization framework to tackle these challenges, encompassing persistent data protection, trusted key management, secure messaging, and authentication of IoT resources. Data assets generated through this framework enable AI systems to derive insights for improving smart grid operations, security, and revenue generation. Furthermore, this paper also proposes a Trusted Energy Interoperability Alliance as a universal guiding standard in the development of this digitalization framework to support more dynamic and interoperable energy markets.

Keywords: Digitalization, IT/OT convergence, semantic interoperability, TEIA alliance, VPP.

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785 Wireless Sensor Networks for Swiftlet Farms Monitoring

Authors: Al-Khalid Othman, Wan A. Wan Zainal Abidin, Kee M. Lee, Hushairi Zen, Tengku. M. A. Zulcaffle, Kuryati Kipli

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This paper provides an in-depth study of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) application to monitor and control the swiftlet habitat. A set of system design is designed and developed that includes the hardware design of the nodes, Graphical User Interface (GUI) software, sensor network, and interconnectivity for remote data access and management. System architecture is proposed to address the requirements for habitat monitoring. Such applicationdriven design provides and identify important areas of further work in data sampling, communications and networking. For this monitoring system, a sensor node (MTS400), IRIS and Micaz radio transceivers, and a USB interfaced gateway base station of Crossbow (Xbow) Technology WSN are employed. The GUI of this monitoring system is written using a Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Engineering Workbench (LabVIEW) along with Xbow Technology drivers provided by National Instrument. As a result, this monitoring system is capable of collecting data and presents it in both tables and waveform charts for further analysis. This system is also able to send notification message by email provided Internet connectivity is available whenever changes on habitat at remote sites (swiftlet farms) occur. Other functions that have been implemented in this system are the database system for record and management purposes; remote access through the internet using LogMeIn software. Finally, this research draws a conclusion that a WSN for monitoring swiftlet habitat can be effectively used to monitor and manage swiftlet farming industry in Sarawak.

Keywords: Swiftlet, WSN, Habitat Monitoring, Networking.

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784 Promoting Open Educational Resources (OER) in Theological/Religious Education in Nigeria

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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