Search results for: persons with an intellectual disability.

Authors: Anna Słupik, Anna Mosiołek, Sebastian Wójtowicz, Dariusz Białoszewski

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Introduction: Whole-Body Vibration (WBV) uses high frequency mechanical stimuli generated by a vibration plate and transmitted through bone, muscle and connective tissues to the whole body. Research has shown that long-term vibration-plate training improves neuromuscular facilitation, especially in afferent neural pathways, responsible for the conduction of vibration and proprioceptive stimuli, muscle function, balance and proprioception. Some researchers suggest that the vibration stimulus briefly inhibits the conduction of afferent signals from proprioceptors and can interfere with the maintenance of body balance. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of a single set of exercises associated with whole-body vibration on the joint position sense and body balance. Material and methods: The study enrolled 55 people aged 19-24 years. These individuals were randomly divided into a test group (30 persons) and a control group (25 persons). Both groups performed the same set of exercises on a vibration plate. The following vibration parameters: frequency of 20Hz and amplitude of 3mm, were used in the test group. The control group performed exercises on the vibration plate while it was off. All participants were instructed to perform six dynamic exercises lasting 30 seconds each with a 60-second period of rest between them. The exercises involved large muscle groups of the trunk, pelvis and lower limbs. Measurements were carried out before and immediately after exercise. Joint position sense (JPS) was measured in the knee joint for the starting position at 45° in an open kinematic chain. JPS error was measured using a digital inclinometer. Balance was assessed in a standing position with both feet on the ground with the eyes open and closed (each test lasting 30 sec). Balance was assessed using Matscan with FootMat 7.0 SAM software. The surface of the ellipse of confidence and front-back as well as right-left swing were measured to assess balance. Statistical analysis was performed using Statistica 10.0 PL software. Results: There were no significant differences between the groups, both before and after the exercise (p> 0.05). JPS did not change in both the test (10.7° vs. 8.4°) and control groups (9.0° vs. 8.4°). No significant differences were shown in any of the test parameters during balance tests with the eyes open or closed in both the test and control groups (p> 0.05). Conclusions: 1. Deterioration in proprioception or balance was not observed immediately after the vibration stimulus. This suggests that vibrationinduced blockage of proprioceptive stimuli conduction can have only a short-lasting effect that occurs only as long as a vibration stimulus is present. 2. Short-term use of vibration in treatment does not impair proprioception and seems to be safe for patients with proprioceptive impairment. 3. These results need to be supplemented with an assessment of proprioception during the application of vibration stimuli. Additionally, the impact of vibration parameters used in the exercises should be evaluated.

Keywords: Balance, joint position sense, proprioception, whole body vibration.

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Authors: Barbara Gawda

Abstract:

The aim of this study is to show innovative techniques that describe the effectiveness of individuals diagnosed with antisocial personality disorders (ASPD). The author presents information about hate schemas regarding persons with ASPD and their understanding of the role of hate. The data of 60 prisoners with ASPD, 40 prisoners without ASPD, and 60 men without antisocial tendencies, has been analyzed. The participants were asked to describe their hate inspired by a photograph. The narrative discourse was analyzed, the three groups were compared. The results show the differences between the inmates with ASPD, those without ASPD, and the controls. The antisocial individuals describe hate as an ambivalent feeling with low emotional intensity, i.e., actors (in stories) are presented more as positives than as partners. They use different mechanisms to keep them from understanding the meaning of the emotional situation. The schema's characteristics were expressed in narratives attributed to high Psychopathy.

Keywords: Antisocial personality disorder, Emotional narratives, Hate schemas, Psychopathy

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Authors: Ketevan Kokrashvili, Rusudan Kutateladze, Nino Pailodze

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Importance of management of legal entities under private law of which especially corporate management, as well as looking for ways of its improvement and perfection has become especially relevant in the twenty-first century, which was greatly contributed to by the global economic crisis. Some states have adopted Corporate Governance Codes; the European Union has set to work on a series of directives the main purpose of which is an improvement of corporate governance, provision of greater transparency and implementation of an effective control mechanism. This process is not yet completed, and various problematic issues associated with management of legal persons are still being debated among practitioner experts and scholars. Georgia is not an exception in this regard. The article discusses the legislative gaps, and in some cases, discrepancies having arisen in legal relationships under private law and having caused many practical problems. This especially applies to the management of capital companies.

Keywords: Business entities, corporate management, public capital management, collective norms, existing problems, legal discrepancies.

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Authors: J. Luché-Thayer, C. Perronne, C. Meseko

Abstract:

We reviewed how certain institutional policies and practices, as well as questionable research, are creating obstacles to care and informed consent for Lyme and relapsing fever Borreliosis patients. The interference is denying access to treatments that meet the internationally accepted standards as set by the Institute of Medicine. This obstruction to care contributes to significant human suffering, disability and negative economic effect across many nations and in many regions of the world. We note how evidence based medicine emphasizes the importance of clinical experience and patient-centered care and how these patients benefit significantly when their rights to choose among treatment options are upheld.  

Keywords: Conflicts of interest, obstacles to healthcare accessibility, patient-centered care, the right to informed consent.

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Authors: Mario Gómez, José Carlos Rodríguez

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This paper analyzes innovation trends in South Korea by means of the number of patent applications filed by residents and nonresidents during the period 1965 to 2012. Making use of patent data released by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), we search for the presence of multiple structural changes in patent application series in this country. These changes may suggest that firms’ innovative activity has been modified as a result of implementing some science, technology and innovation (STI) policies. Accordingly, the new regulations implemented in this country in the last decades have influenced its innovative activity. The question conducting this research is thus how STI policies in South Korea have influenced its innovation activity. The results confirm the existence of multiple structural changes in the series of patent applications resulting from alternative STI policies implemented during these years.

Keywords: Econometric methods, innovation activity, South Korea, patent applications, science, technology and innovation (STI) policy.

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Authors: Yuan L. Lai, Jian H. Chen, Jui P. Hung

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This study created new graphical icons and operating functions in a CAD/CAM software system by analyzing icons in some of the popular systems, such as AutoCAD, AlphaCAM, Mastercam and the 1st edition of LiteCAM. These software systems all focused on geometric design and editing, thus how to transmit messages intuitively from icon itself to users is an important function of graphical icons. The primary purpose of this study is to design innovative icons and commands for new software. This study employed the TRIZ method, an innovative design method, to generate new concepts systematically. Through literature review, it then investigated and analyzed the relationship between TRIZ and idea development. Contradiction Matrix and 40 Principles were used to develop an assisting tool suitable for icon design in software development. We first gathered icon samples from the selected CAD/CAM systems. Then grouped these icons by meaningful functions, and compared useful and harmful properties. Finally, we developed new icons for new software systems in order to avoid intellectual property problem.

Keywords: Icon, TRIZ, CAD/CAM.

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Authors: Jing Zhou, Steven Su, Aihuang Guo

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COSMED K4b2 is a portable electrical device designed to test pulmonary functions. It is ideal for many applications that need the measurement of the cardio-respiratory response either in the field or in the lab is capable with the capability to delivery real time data to a sink node or a PC base station with storing data in the memory at the same time. But the actual sensor outputs and data received may contain some errors, such as impulsive noise which can be related to sensors, low batteries, environment or disturbance in data acquisition process. These abnormal outputs might cause misinterpretations of exercise or living activities to persons being monitored. In our paper we propose an effective and feasible method to detect and identify errors in applications by principal component analysis (PCA) and a back propagation (BP) neural network.

Keywords: BP Neural Network, Exercising Testing, Fault Detection and Identification, Principal Component Analysis.

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Authors: Lhoussain Simour

Abstract:

This essay endeavors to read Ama Ata Aidoo-s Our Sister Killjoy with a postocolonially-inflected consciousness. It aims at demonstrating how her work could be read as a sophisticated postcolonial revision of the colonial travel narrative whereby the protagonist-s black-eyed squint operates as 'the all-seeing-eye' to subvert the historically unbroken legacy of the Orientalist ideology. It tries to demonstrate how Sissie assumes authority and voice in an act that destabilizes the traditionally established modes of western representation. It is also an investigation into how Aidoo-s text adopts processes which disengage the Eurocentric view produced by the discursive itineraries of western institutions through diverse acts of resistance and 'various strategies of subversion and appropriation'. Her counter discursive strategies of resistance are shaped up in various ways by a feminist consciousness that attempts to articulate a distinct African version of identity and preserve cultural distinctiveness.

Keywords: Orientalism, Africaness, discursive resistance, interracial lesbianism, politics of race, the migrant intellectual.

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Authors: Z. D. Mansor, C. P. Mun, B. S. Nurul Farhana, Wan Aisyah Nasuha Wan Mohamed Tarmizi

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The aim of this research is to determine the influence of transformation leadership style on employee engagement among Generation Y. The growing of Generation Y employees in Malaysia has raised concerns about how to engage and motivate this cohort. Transformation Leadership style is one of the key factors to increase employee engagement levels in the organization. This study has proven to be important for the researchers and the organization to properly understand the concept of employee engagement, transformation leadership style and their relationship. The samples in this study included 221 respondents of Generation Y who are currently working in Selangor and Klang Valley area in Malaysia. The data were collected using questionnaires and analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). The results show that there is a significant relationship between the dimension of intellectual stimulation, inspiration motivation and individual consideration on employee engagement. In contrast, the results have revealed that there is no significant relationship between idealized influences of a leader on employee engagement among Generation Y.

Keywords: Employee engagement, gen Y, transformational leadership styles, survey.

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Authors: Elizabeth D. Ramos

Abstract:

Peace education supports a holistic appreciation for the value of life and the interdependence of all living systems. Peace education aims to build a culture of peace. One way of building a culture of peace is through environmental stewardship. This study sought to find out the environmental stewardship practices in selected Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the Philippines and how these environmental stewardship practices lead to building a culture of peace. The findings revealed that there is still room for improvement in implementing environmental stewardship in schools through academic service learning. In addition, the following manifestations are implemented very satisfactorily in schools: 1) waste reduction, reuse, and recycling, 2) community service, and 3) clean and green surroundings. Administrators of schools in the study lead their staff and students in implementing environmental stewardship. It could be concluded that those involved in environmental stewardship display an acceptable culture of peace, particularly solidarity, respect for persons, and inner peace.

Keywords: Academic service learning, environmental stewardship, leadership support, peace, solidarity.

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Authors: M.V. Shyla, K.B. Naidu

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The objective of this paper is to develop a computational model of human nasal cavity from computed tomography (CT) scans using MIMICS software. Computational fluid dynamic techniques were employed to understand nasal airflow. Gambit and Fluent software was used to perform CFD simulation. Velocity profiles, iteration plots, pressure distribution, streamline and pathline patterns for steady, laminar airflow inside the human nasal cavity of healthy and also infected persons are presented in detail. The implications for olfaction are visualized. Results are validated with the available numerical and experimental data. The graphs reveal that airflow varies with different anatomical nasal structures and only fraction of the inspired air reaches the olfactory region. The Deviations in the results suggest that the treatment of infected volunteers will improve the olfactory function.

Keywords: CFD techniques, Finite Volume Method, Fluid dynamic sniffing, Human nasal cavity.

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Authors: Matthew J. Zagumny

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The QUEST is an assessment of scientific epistemic beliefs and was developed to measure students’ intellectual development in regards to beliefs about knowledge and knowing. The QUEST utilizes Q-sort methodology, which requires participants to rate the degree to which statements describe them personally. As a measure of personal theories of knowledge, the QUEST instrument is described with the Q-sort distribution and scoring explained. A preliminary demonstration of the QUEST assessment is described with two samples of undergraduate students (novice/lower division compared to advanced/upper division students) being assessed and their average QUEST scores compared. The usefulness of an assessment of epistemology is discussed in terms of the principle that assessment tends to drive educational practice and university mission. The critical need for university and academic programs to focus on development of students’ scientific epistemology is briefly discussed.

Keywords: Scientific epistemology, critical thinking, Q-sort method, STEM undergraduates.

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Authors: Werner Reichenfelser, Harald Hackl, Josef Hufgard, Karin Gstaltner, Margit Gfoehler

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Training with Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) has both physiological and psychological benefits for spinal cord injured subjects. Commonly used methods for quantification of spasticity have shown controversial reliability. In this study we propose a method for quick determination of spasticity in spinal cord injured subjects on a cycling and measurement system. 23 patients did training sessions on an instrumented mobile FES cycle three times a week over two months as part of their clinical rehabilitation program. Spasticity (MAS) and the legs resistance to the pedaling motion were assessed before and after the FES training and measurements were done on the subjects ability to pedal with our without motor assistance. Measurements with test persons with incomplete spastic paraplegia have shown that spasticity is decreased after a 30 min cycling training with functional electrical stimulation (FES).

Keywords: Spasticity, paraplegia, spinal cord injury, functional electrical stimulation.

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Authors: G. Haupt

Abstract:

Existing literature ondesign reasoning seems to give either one sided accounts on expert design behaviour based on internal processing. In the same way ecological theoriesseem to focus one sidedly on external elementsthat result in a lack of unifying design cognition theory. Although current extended design cognition studies acknowledge the intellectual interaction between internal and external resources, there still seems to be insufficient understanding of the complexities involved in such interactive processes. As such,this paper proposes a novelmulti-directional model for design researchers tomap the complex and dynamic conduct controlling behaviour in which both the computational and ecological perspectives are integrated in a vertical manner. A clear distinction between identified intentional and emerging physical drivers, and relationships between them during the early phases of experts- design process, is demonstrated by presenting a case study in which the model was employed.

Keywords: External representation, early phases, extended design cognition, internal processes and external drivers, conduct controlling behaviour.

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Authors: H. H. Huynh, J. Meunier, J.Sequeira, M.Daniel

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In this paper, the detection and tracking of face, mouth, hands and medication bottles in the context of medication intake monitoring with a camera is presented. This is aimed at recognizing medication intake for elderly in their home setting to avoid an inappropriate use. Background subtraction is used to isolate moving objects, and then, skin and bottle segmentations are done in the RGB normalized color space. We use a minimum displacement distance criterion to track skin color regions and the R/G ratio to detect the mouth. The color-labeled medication bottles are simply tracked based on the color space distance to their mean color vector. For the recognition of medication intake, we propose a three-level hierarchal approach, which uses activity-patterns to recognize the normal medication intake activity. The proposed method was tested with three persons, with different medication intake scenarios, and gave an overall precision of over 98%.

Keywords: Activity recognition, background subtraction, tracking, medication intake, video surveillance

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Authors: Siavash Asadi Ghajarloo

Abstract:

Nowadays predicting political risk level of country has become a critical issue for investors who intend to achieve accurate information concerning stability of the business environments. Since, most of the times investors are layman and nonprofessional IT personnel; this paper aims to propose a framework named GECR in order to help nonexpert persons to discover political risk stability across time based on the political news and events. To achieve this goal, the Bayesian Networks approach was utilized for 186 political news of Pakistan as sample dataset. Bayesian Networks as an artificial intelligence approach has been employed in presented framework, since this is a powerful technique that can be applied to model uncertain domains. The results showed that our framework along with Bayesian Networks as decision support tool, predicted the political risk level with a high degree of accuracy.

Keywords: Bayesian Networks, Data mining, GECRframework, Predicting political risk.

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Authors: Sunitha S. L., V. Udayashankara

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Hearing impairment is the number one chronic disability affecting many people in the world. Background noise is particularly damaging to speech intelligibility for people with hearing loss especially for sensorineural loss patients. Several investigations on speech intelligibility have demonstrated sensorineural loss patients need 5-15 dB higher SNR than the normal hearing subjects. This paper describes Discrete Hartley Transform Power Normalized Least Mean Square algorithm (DHT-LMS) to improve the SNR and to reduce the convergence rate of the Least Means Square (LMS) for sensorineural loss patients. The DHT transforms n real numbers to n real numbers, and has the convenient property of being its own inverse. It can be effectively used for noise cancellation with less convergence time. The simulated result shows the superior characteristics by improving the SNR at least 9 dB for input SNR with zero dB and faster convergence rate (eigenvalue ratio 12) compare to time domain method and DFT-LMS.

Keywords: Hearing Impairment, DHT-LMS, Convergence rate, SNR improvement.

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Authors: A. Khafaji, R. Saadane, J. El Abbadi, M. Belkasmi

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The main objectif of this paper is to present a tool that we have developed subject to characterize and modelling indoor radio channel propagation at millimetric wave. The tool is based on the ray tracing technique (RTT). As, in realistic environment we cannot neglect the significant impact of Human Body Shadowing and other objects in motion on indoor 60 GHz propagation channel. Hence, our proposed model allows a simulation of propagation in a dynamic indoor environment. First, we describe a model of human body. Second, RTT with this model is used to simulate the propagation of millimeter waves in the presence of persons in motion. Results of the simulation show that this tool gives results in agreement with those reported in the literature. Specially, the effects of people motion on temporal channel properties.

Keywords: Simulation. 60 GHz band, Ray Tracing Technique, Indoor channel, Propagation, Human Body Model, Level crossing rate,

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Authors: R. Mehra

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The measurements of 226Ra, 232Th and 40K using gamma spectrometry and radon concentration and exhalation rates measurements using solid state nuclear track (LR-115, Type-II plastic) detectors are used to asses a first order exposure risk for the persons residing in Fatehbad and Hissar districts of Western Haryana, India. The concentration of Radium, Thorium and Potassium in the soil samples varies from 13.37 Bq m-3 to 24.67 Bq m-3, 34.67 Bq m-3 to 67.34 Bq m-3 and 298.78 Bq m-3 to 405.67 Bq m-3 respectively with average values of 18.78, 47.35 and 361.57 Bq m-3 respectively. The radium equivalent activity (Raeq) calculated for the same soil samples varies from 92.72 Bq m-3 to 140.6 Bq m-3 with an average value of 111.80 Bq m-3. The values of absorbed dose and annual effective dose (indoors and outdoors) are found to vary from 44.18 nGy h-1 to 65.23 nGy h-1, 0.22 mSv y-1 to 0.32 mSv y-1 and 0.05 mSv y-1 to 0.08 mSv y-1 respectively. The radon concentration and exhalation rates have also been reported. The radium equivalent activities in all the soil samples were found to be lower than the limit (370 Bq kg-1) set in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report and the value of Hex in all the samples is less than unity.

Keywords: Gamma ray spectrometry, dose, radon, exhalationrate.

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Authors: Christine L. Cole

Abstract:

Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) often experience social-communication difficulties that negatively impact their social interactions with typical peers. However, unlike other age and disability groups, there is little intervention research to inform best practice for these students. One evidence-based strategy for younger students with ASD is peer-mediated intervention (PMI). PMI may be particularly promising for use with adolescents, as peers are readily available and are natural experts for encouraging authentic high school conversations. This paper provides a review of previous research that evaluated the use of PMI to improve the socialcommunication skills of students with ASD. Specific intervention features associated with positive student outcomes are identified and recommendations for future research are provided. Adolescents with ASD are targeted due the critical importance of social conversation at the high school level.

Keywords: Autism, peer-mediation, social communication, adolescents.

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Authors: Veronika Kántor-Forgách

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To comply with the international human right legislation concerning the freedom of movement, transport systems are required to be made accessible in order that all citizens, regardless of their physical condition, have equal possibilities to use them. In Hungary, apparently there is a considerable default in the improvement of accessible public transport. This study is aiming to overview the current Hungarian situation and to reveal the reasons of the deficiency. The result shows that in spite of the relatively favourable juridical background linked to the accessibility needs and to the rights of persons with disabilities there is a strong delay in putting all in practice in the field of public transport. Its main reason is the lack of financial resource and referring to this the lack of creating mandatory regulations. In addition to this the proprietary rights related to public transport are also variable, which also limits the improvement possibilities. Consequently, first of all an accurate and detailed regulatory procedure is expected to change the present unfavourable situation and to create the conditions of the fast realization, which is already behind time.

Keywords: accessibility, legislation, people with reducedmobility, public transport.

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Authors: Aber Salem Aboalgasm, Rupert Ward

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Teaching art by digital means is a big challenge for the majority of teachers of art and design in primary schools, yet it allows relationships between art, technology and creativity to be clearly identified. The aim of this article is to present a modern way of teaching art, using digital tools in the art classroom to improve creative ability in pupils aged between nine and eleven years. It also presents a conceptual model for creativity based on digital art. The model could be useful for pupils interested in learning to draw by using an e-drawing package, and for teachers who are interested in teaching modern digital art in order to improve children’s creativity. By illustrating the strategy of teaching art through technology, this model may also help education providers to make suitable choices about which technological approaches are most effective in enhancing students’ creative ability, and which digital art tools can benefit children by developing their technical skills. It is also expected that use of this model will help to develop skills of social interaction, which may in turn improve intellectual ability.

Keywords: Digital tools, motivation, creative activity.

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Authors: Amol Bapuso Rajmane, Pradeep M. Patil, Prakash J. Kulkarni

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The Information Retrieval community is facing the problem of effective representation of Web search results. When we organize web search results into clusters it becomes easy to the users to quickly browse through search results. The traditional search engines organize search results into clusters for ambiguous queries, representing each cluster for each meaning of the query. The clusters are obtained according to the topical similarity of the retrieved search results, but it is possible for results to be totally dissimilar and still correspond to the same meaning of the query. People search is also one of the most common tasks on the Web nowadays, but when a particular person’s name is queried the search engines return web pages which are related to different persons who have the same queried name. By placing the burden on the user of disambiguating and collecting pages relevant to a particular person, in this paper, we have developed an approach that clusters web pages based on the association of the web pages to the different people and clusters that are based on generic entity search.

Keywords: Entity resolution, information retrieval, graph based disambiguation, web people search, clustering.

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Authors: Ahmet Ok, Banu Yücel Toy

Abstract:

Promoting critical thinking (CT) in an educational setting has been appraised in order to enhance learning and intellectual skills. In this study, a pedagogical course in a vocational teacher education program in Turkey was designed by integrating CT skill-based strategies/activities into the course content and CT skills were means leading to intended course objectives. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the importance of the course objectives, the attainment of the objectives, and the effectiveness of teachinglearning strategies/activities from prospective teachers- points of view. The results revealed that although the students mostly considered the course objectives important, they did not feel competent in the attainment of all objectives especially in those related to the main topic of Learning and those requiring higher order thinking skills. On the other hand, the students considered the course activities effective for learning and for the development of thinking skills, especially, in interpreting, comparing, questioning, contrasting, and forming relationships.

Keywords: Critical thinking, critical thinking-based instruction, higher order thinking skills, teacher education

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Authors: C.F. Cheung, Ricky Ma, W.Y. Wong, Y.L. Tse

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Knowledge capabilities are increasingly important for the innovative technology enterprises to enhance the business performance in terms of product competitiveness, innovation and sales. Recognition of the company capability by auditing allows them to further pursue advancement, strategic planning and hence gain competitive advantages. This paper attempts to develop an Organizations- Knowledge Capabilities Assessment (OKCA) method to assess the knowledge capabilities of technology companies. The OKCA is a questionnaire-based assessment tool which has been developed to uncover the impact of various knowledge capabilities on different organizational performance. The collected data is then analyzed to find out the crucial elements for different technological companies. Based on the results, innovative technology enterprises are able to recognize the direction for further improvement on business performance and future development plan. External environmental factors affecting organization performance can be found through the further analysis of some selected reference companies.

Keywords: Audit and Assessment, Innovation, Intellectual Capital, Knowledge and Technology Management, Knowledge Capability

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Authors: D. Moussazadeh, A. Aytug

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The architecture of the museum is the most exciting space for an architecture to discover and investigate. Undoubtedly, those museums that have been largely supported by people have come to be cultural memorabilia, moreover holding competitions in museums, producing new publications for theoretical or intellectual debates, and new designs lead the museums to be the most effective and attractive place for work and study. The importance of museums as centers of knowledge, science and art has increased over the last century. Museums have moved from being a place specific to the first-class of the community, to a place used by the whole community widely. By considering these reasons, the value and importance of museums in today's society is imperative. Finding common features for museum architecture in the decades after 1990s has become more difficult than previous decades. The purpose of this article is to examine the effect of museums and their position in society on architectural design of museums from the beginning to the present. In other words, this research aims to investigate the history of museums, their roles, duties, uses, their relationship with users and their position and, consequently, the impact of all these factors on the design of museum architecture. Finally, the main objective of this article is to find the position of museums in the community and their architectural form in the present century.

Keywords: Museum, form, architecture.

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Authors: S. Nasri, H. Bouziri

Abstract:

Disasters are quite experienced in our days. They are caused by floods, landslides, and building fires that is the main objective of this study. To cope with these unexpected events, precautions must be taken to protect human lives. The emphasis on disposal work focuses on the resolution of the evacuation problem in case of no-notice disaster. The problem of evacuation is listed as a dynamic network flow problem. Particularly, we model the evacuation problem as an earliest arrival flow problem with load dependent transit time. This problem is classified as NP-Hard. Our challenge here is to propose a metaheuristic solution for solving the evacuation problem. We define our objective as the maximization of evacuees during earliest periods of a time horizon T. The objective provides the evacuation of persons as soon as possible. We performed an experimental study on emergency evacuation from the tunisian children’s hospital. This work prompts us to look for evacuation plans corresponding to several situations where the network dynamically changes.

Keywords: Dynamic network flow, Load dependent transit time, Evacuation strategy, Earliest arrival flow problem.

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Authors: Hsiu-Fen Chen, Fang-Liu Su, Ya-Wen Chang

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purpose of this study was to investigate the current status of support services for students with special education needs (SEN) at colleges and universities in Taiwan. Seventy-two college and universities received a questionnaire on its resource room operation process and four resource room staffs each from different areas were interviewed through semi- structured interview forms. The main findings were (1) most colleges and universities did offer sufficient administrative resources; (2) more efforts on preventions for SEN students and establishment of disability awareness should be made for all campus faculties ; (3) more comprehensive services were required to help students to have better transition into post-school life; (4) most schools provided basic administrative resource requirements but qualities of the resource room programs needed to be enhanced; and (5) most resource room staffs lacked of professional knowledge in counseling the SEN students which needed to be strengthened in the future.

Keywords: support services, students with special education needs, higher education, resource room program

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Authors: A. Elmarhomy, S. Karungaru, K. Terada

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Understanding the number of people and the flow of the persons is useful for efficient promotion of the institution managements and company-s sales improvements. This paper introduces an automated method for counting passerby using virtualvertical measurement lines. The process of recognizing a passerby is carried out using an image sequence obtained from the USB camera. Space-time image is representing the human regions which are treated using the segmentation process. To handle the problem of mismatching, different color space are used to perform the template matching which chose automatically the best matching to determine passerby direction and speed. A relation between passerby speed and the human-pixel area is used to distinguish one or two passersby. In the experiment, the camera is fixed at the entrance door of the hall in a side viewing position. Finally, experimental results verify the effectiveness of the presented method by correctly detecting and successfully counting them in order to direction with accuracy of 97%.

Keywords: counting passersby, virtual-vertical measurement line, passerby speed, space-time image

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Authors: S. K. Dewangan, K. R. Sahu, S. K. Patnayak, S. Soni

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Among many agro- based cottage industries in India sericulture has been promoted as an agro-based, labor intensive, rural oriented cottage industry, providing gainful employment mainly to the weaker and marginalized section of the society specially tribal. Sericulture occupies the place of pride in the rural economy can be practiced even with very low land holding, low gestation, high returns make sericulture an ideal program, requiring little capital investment. In 2010-2011 the employment in sericulture sector was 72.5 lakh persons. The involvement of landless rural people in tasar sericulture is because they understood its potential for rural and tribal upliftment. This article demonstrates that certain developmental initiatives have been playing an important role in the socio-economic progress of tribal masses in Raigarh district and explains the increased returns from sericulture as a result of development programs. The study concludes with some suggestions to improve the long term feasibility of sericulture.

Keywords: Development, Employment, Income, Sericulture, Tribal, Tasar,

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