Search results for: Positive energy districts

Authors: Ali Eryılmaz

Abstract:

In this research it is aimed that the effect of some demographic factors on Turkish Adolescents' subjective well being is investigated. 432 adolescents who are 247 girls and 185 boys are participated in this study. They are ages 15-17, and also are high school students. The Positive and Negative Affect Scale and Life Satisfaction Scale are used for measuring adolescents' subjective well being. The ANOVA method is used in order to examine the effect of ages. For gender differences, independent t-test method is used, and finally the Pearson Correlation method is used so as to examine the effect of socio economic statues of adolescents' parents. According to results, there is no gender difference on adolescents' subjective well being. On the other hand, SES and age are effect significantly lover level on adolescents' subjective well being.

Keywords: Subjective wellbeing, adolescents, and age, gender, SES.

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Authors: Shu-Hsien. Liao, Chi-Chuan. Wu, Da-Chian. Hu, Guang An. Tsuei

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This study investigates the roles of knowledge acquisition, absorptive capacity, and innovation capability in finance and manufacturing industries. With 362 valid questionnaires from manufactures and financial industries in Taiwan, we examine the relationships between absorptive capacity, knowledge acquisition and innovation capability using a structural equation model. The results indicate that absorptive capacity is the mediator between knowledge acquisition and innovation capability, and that knowledge acquisition has a positive effect on absorptive capacity.

Keywords: Absorptive capacity, knowledge acquisition, innovation capability.

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Authors: Abhijit Mitra, Bhargav Kumar Mitra, Biswajoy Chatterjee

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We present a novel scheme to recognize isolated speech signals using certain statistical parameters derived from those signals. The determination of the statistical estimates is based on extracted signal information rather than the original signal information in order to reduce the computational complexity. Subtle details of these estimates, after extracting the speech signal from ambience noise, are first exploited to segregate the polysyllabic words from the monosyllabic ones. Precise recognition of each distinct word is then carried out by analyzing the histogram, obtained from these information.

Keywords: Isolated speech signals, Block overlapping technique, Positive peaks, Histogram analysis.

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Authors: Sharan Badiger, Prema T. Akkasaligar, Patil LS, Manish Patel, Biradar MS

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Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a global pandemic with cases reporting from virtually every country and continues to be a common infection in developing country like India. Microalbuminuria is a manifestation of human immunodeficiency virus associated nephropathy. Therefore, microalbuminuria may be an early marker of human immunodeficiency virus associated nephropathy, and screening for its presence may be beneficial. A strikingly high prevalence of microalbuminuria among human immunodeficiency virus infected patients has been described in various studies. Risk factors for clinically significant proteinuria include African - American race, higher human immunodeficiency virus ribonucleic acid level and lower CD4 lymphocyte count. The cardiovascular risk factors of increased systolic blood pressure and increase fasting blood sugar level are strongly associated with microalbuminuria in human immunodeficiency virus patient. These results suggest that microalbuminuria may be a sign of current endothelial dysfunction and micro-vascular disease and there is substantial risk of future cardiovascular disease events. Positive contributing factors include early kidney disease such as human immunodeficiency virus associated nephropathy, a marker of end organ damage related to co morbidities of diabetes or hypertension, or more diffuse endothelial cells dysfunction. Nevertheless after adjustment for non human immunodeficiency virus factors, human immunodeficiency virus itself is a major risk factor. The presence of human immunodeficiency virus infection is independent risk to develop microalbuminuria in human immunodeficiency virus patient. Cardiovascular risk factors appeared to be stronger predictors of microalbuminuria than markers of human immunodeficiency virus severity person with human immunodeficiency virus infection and microalbuminuria therefore appear to potentially bear the burden of two separate damage related to known vascular end organ damage related to know vascular risk factors, and human immunodeficiency virus specific processes such as the direct viral infection of kidney cells.The higher prevalence of microalbuminuria among the human immunodeficiency virus infected could be harbinger of future increased risks of both kidney and cardiovascular disease. Further study defining the prognostic significance of microalbuminuria among human immunodeficiency virus infected persons will be essential. Microalbuminuria seems to be a predictor of cardiovascular disease in diabetic and non diabetic subjects, hence it can also be used for early detection of micro vascular disease in human immunodeficiency virus positive patients, thus can help to diagnose the disease at the earliest.

Keywords: Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, Human immunodeficiency virus, Microalbuminuria.

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Authors: Yuji Mizuno, Hiroshi Mabuchi

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Initial values of reference vectors have significant influence on recognition accuracy in LVQ. There are several existing techniques, such as SOM and k-means, for setting initial values of reference vectors, each of which has provided some positive results. However, those results are not sufficient for the improvement of recognition accuracy. This study proposes an ACO-used method for initializing reference vectors with an aim to achieve recognition accuracy higher than those obtained through conventional methods. Moreover, we will demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method by applying it to the wine data and English vowel data and comparing its results with those of conventional methods.

Keywords: Clustering, LVQ, ACO, SOM, k-means.

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Authors: W. Swiderski

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Composite materials are one answer to the growing demand for materials with better parameters of construction and exploitation. Composite materials also permit conscious shaping of desirable properties to increase the extent of reach in the case of metals, ceramics or polymers. In recent years, composite materials have been used widely in aerospace, energy, transportation, medicine, etc. Fiber-reinforced composites including carbon fiber, glass fiber and aramid fiber have become a major structural material. The typical defect during manufacture and operation is delamination damage of layered composites. When delamination damage of the composites spreads, it may lead to a composite fracture. One of the many methods used in non-destructive testing of composites is active infrared thermography. In active thermography, it is necessary to deliver energy to the examined sample in order to obtain significant temperature differences indicating the presence of subsurface anomalies. To detect possible defects in composite materials, different methods of thermal stimulation can be applied to the tested material, these include heating lamps, lasers, eddy currents, microwaves or ultrasounds. The use of a suitable source of thermal stimulation on the test material can have a decisive influence on the detection or failure to detect defects. Samples of multilayer structure carbon composites were prepared with deliberately introduced defects for comparative purposes. Very thin defects of different sizes and shapes made of Teflon or copper having a thickness of 0.1 mm were screened. Non-destructive testing was carried out using the following sources of thermal stimulation, heating lamp, flash lamp, ultrasound and eddy currents. The results are reported in the paper.

Keywords: Non-destructive testing, IR thermography, composite material, thermal stimulation.

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Authors: A. G. Silva Sobrinho, G. M. Manzi, N. L. L. Lima, F. A. Almeida, V. Endo, N. M. B. L. Zeola

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The purpose of this study was to evaluate the tissue composition and carcass muscularity of 32 legs of Ile de France lambs fed with diets containing sunflower seeds and vitamin E, with mean body weight of 15 kg, lodged in individual pens at 15 kg and slaughtered at 32 kg of body weight. The treatments influenced (P<0,05) leg weight, femur length and muscle:bone ratio, being the highest values (2,13 kg, 16,19 cm and 7,38, respectively) in lambs that received diet without sunflower seeds and vitamin E. The other variables were not affected (P>0,05) by the treatments. The interaction of the sunflower and vitamin E was positive for bone total weights and intermuscular fat.

Keywords: sheep, conformation, feedlot, nutrition, sugar-cane

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Authors: Entela Haloci, Stefano Manfredini, Vilma Toska, Silvia Vertuani, Paola Ziosi, Irma Topi, Henri Kolani

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Antifungal activities of ether and methanolic extracts of volatiles oils of Nigella Sativa seeds were tested against pathogenic bacterias and fungies strains.The volatile oil were found to have significant antifungal and antibacterial activities compare to tetracycline, cefuroxime and ciprofloxacin positive controls.The ether and methanolic esxtracts were compared to each other for antifungal and antibacterial activities and ether extracts showed stonger activity than methanolic one.

Keywords: Antifungal, antibacterial, essential oils, extraction, Nigella Sativa.

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Authors: Abdulrahman A. Bahaddad, Mohammed Beshir

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The objective of this paper is to demonstrate and describe eight different types of power generation technologies and to understand the history and future trends of each technology. In addition, a comparative analysis between these technologies will be presented with respect to their cost analysis and associated performance.

Keywords: Conventional power generation, economic analysis, environmental impact, renewable energy power generation.

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Authors: Guadalupe Pérez, Jorge Islas, Mirna Guevara, Raúl Suárez

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Jatropha curcas is a perennial oleaginous plant that is currently considered an energy crop with high potential as an environmentally sustainable biofuel. During the last decades, research in biofuels has grown in tropical and subtropical regions in Latin America. However, as far we know, there are no reports on the growth and yield patterns of Jatropha curcas under the specific agro climatic scenarios of the State of Morelos, Mexico. This study presents the results of 52 months monitoring of 10 toxic and non-toxic ecotypes of Jatropha curcas (E1M, E2M, E3M, E4M, E5M, E6O, E7O, E8O, E9C, E10C) in an experimental plantation with minimum watering and fertilization resources. The main objective is to identify the ecotypes with the highest potential as biodiesel raw material in the select region, by developing experimental information. Specifically, we monitored biophysical and growth parameters, including plant survival and seed production (at the end of month 52), to study the performance of each ecotype and to establish differences among the variables of morphological growth, net seed oil content, and toxicity. To analyze the morphological growth, a statistical approach to the biophysical parameters was used; the net seed oil content -80 to 192 kg/ha- was estimated with the first harvest; and the toxicity was evaluated by examining the phorbol ester concentration (µg/L) in the oil extracted from the seeds. The comparison and selection of ecotypes was performed through a methodology developed based on the normalization of results. We identified four outstanding ecotypes (E1M, E2M, E3M, and E4M) that can be used to establish Jatropha curcas as energy crops in the state of Morelos for feasible agro-industrial production of biodiesel and other products related to the use of biomass.

Keywords: Biodiesel production, Jatropha curcas, morphologic growth, toxic and non-toxic ecotypes, seed oil content.

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Authors: Shima Soleimani, Steven Eckels

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One area of special importance for the surface-level study of heat exchangers is tubes with internal micro-fins (< 0.5 mm tall). Micro-finned surfaces are a kind of extended solid surface in which energy is exchanged with water that acts as the source or sink of energy. Significant performance gains are possible for either shell, tube, or double pipe heat exchangers if the best surfaces are identified. The parametric studies of micro-finned tubes that have appeared in the literature left some key parameters unexplored. Specifically, they ignored three-dimensional (3D) micro-fin configurations, conduction heat transfer in the fins, and conduction in the solid surface below the micro-fins. Thus, this study aimed at implementing a parametric study of 3D micro-finned tubes that considered micro-fine height and discontinuity features. A 3D conductive and convective heat-transfer simulation through coupled solid and periodic fluid domains is applied in a commercial package, ANSYS Fluent 19.1. The simulation is steady-state with turbulent water flow cooling the inner wall of a tube with micro-fins. The simulation utilizes a constant and uniform temperature on the tube outer wall. Performance is mapped for 18 different simulation cases, including a smooth tube using a realizable k-ε turbulence model at a Reynolds number of 48,928. Results compared the performance of 3D tubes with results for the similar two-dimensional (2D) one. Results showed that the micro-fine height has a greater impact on performance factors than discontinuity features in 3D micro-fin tubes. A transformed 3D micro-fin tube can enhance heat transfer, and pressure drops up to 21% and 56% compared to a 2D one, respectfully.

Keywords: Three-dimensional micro-fin tube, heat transfer, friction factor, heat exchanger.

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Authors: Amalia Triantafillidou, Georgios Lappas, Prodromos Yannas, Alexandros Kleftodimos

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In this paper, an experiment was conducted to assess the impact of online deliberation on citizens’ attitudes. Specifically, this research compared pre and post deliberation opinions of participants who deliberated online via an asynchronous platform regarding the issue of political opinion polls. Results indicate that online deliberation had a positive effect on citizens’ attitudes since it was found that following deliberation participants changed their views regarding public opinion polls. Specifically, online deliberation improved discussants perceptions regarding the reliability of polls, while suppressing their negative views about the misuse of polls by media, polling organizations and politicians.

Keywords: Online deliberation, attitudes change, opinion polls, e-democracy.

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Authors: Dulal Acharjee, Punyaban Patel

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For collecting data from all sensor nodes, some changes in Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol is proposed. At each hop level, route-ranking technique is used for distributing packets to different selected routes dynamically. For calculating rank of a route, different parameters like: delay, residual energy and probability of packet loss are used. A hybrid topology of DMPR(Disjoint Multi Path Routing) and MMPR(Meshed Multi Path Routing) is formed, where braided topology is used in different faulty zones of network. For reducing energy consumption, variant transmission ranges is used instead of fixed transmission range. For reducing number of packet drop, a fuzzy logic inference scheme is used to insert different types of delays dynamically. A rule based system infers membership function strength which is used to calculate the final delay amount to be inserted into each of the node at different clusters. In braided path, a proposed 'Dual Line ACK Link'scheme is proposed for sending ACK signal from a damaged node or link to a parent node to ensure that any error in link or any node-failure message may not be lost anyway. This paper tries to design the theoretical aspects of a model which may be applied for collecting data from any large hanging iron structure with the help of wireless sensor network. But analyzing these data is the subject of material science and civil structural construction technology, that part is out of scope of this paper.

Keywords: Metallic corrosion, Multi Path Routing, DisjointMPR, Meshed MPR, braided path, dual line ACK link, route rankingand Fuzzy Logic.

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Authors: Elragig Aiman, Dreiwi Hanan, Townley Stuart, Elmabrook Idriss

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In this paper, we reconsider the analysis of the Oregonator model. We highlight an error in this analysis which leads to an incorrect depiction of the parameter region in which diffusion driven instability is possible. We believe that the cause of the oversight is the complexity of stability analyses based on eigenvalues and the dependence on parameters of matrix minors appearing in stability calculations. We regenerate the parameter space where Turing patterns can be seen, and we use the common Lyapunov function (CLF) approach, which is numerically reliable, to further confirm the dependence of the results on diffusion coefficients intensities.

Keywords: Diffusion driven instability, common Lyapunov function (CLF), turing pattern, positive-definite matrix.

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Authors: Tahereh Naji, Mahsa Jassemi

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In this investigation, the antibacterial effects of ethanolic and 7:3 isopropyl –hexane mixture extracts of Zingiber officinale were evaluated against three Gram positive bacteria, B. cereus, S.epidermidis, S. aureus and three Gram negative bacteria, E. coli, K.pneumonia and P.areuginosa. Utilizing paper disk diffusion and well methods in-vitro, MIC and MBC were determined by macrodilution. The results showed that ethanolic rhizome extract of ginger had significantly active than Isopropyl –hexan extract. Further work needs to be done in these extracts including fractionation to isolate active constituents and subsequent pharmacological evaluation.

Keywords: Antibacterial, Medicinal plant extract, Zingiberofficinale.

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Authors: M. Jalali Azizpour, D. Sajedipour, H. Mohammadi Majd, M.R. Tahmasbi Birgani, M.Rabiae

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An explicit axisymmetrical FE methodology is developed here to study the particle temperature arising in WC-Co particle on an AISI 1045 steel substrate. Parameters of constitutive Johnson-cook model were used for simulation. The results show that particle velocity and kinetic energy have important role in temperature arising of particles.

Keywords: FEM, HVOF, Interfacial Temperature, Splat

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Authors: Pakawhat Khumkhreung, Yottana Khunatorn

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The flow pattern inside rectangular intake air duct of 300 MW lignite coal-fired power plant is investigated in order to analyze and reduce overall inlet system pressure drop. The system consists of the 45-degree inlet elbow, the flow instrument, the 90-degree mitered elbow and fans, respectively. The energy loss in each section can be determined by Bernoulli’s equation and ASHRAE standard table. Hence, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used in this study based on Navier-Stroke equation and the standard k-epsilon turbulence modeling. Input boundary condition is 175 kg/s mass flow rate inside the 11-m² cross sectional duct. According to the inlet air flow rate, the Reynolds number of airstream is 2.7x10⁶ (based on the hydraulic duct diameter), thus the flow behavior is turbulence. The numerical results are validated with the real operation data. It is found that the numerical result agrees well with the operating data, and dominant loss occurs at the flow rate measurement device. Normally, the air flow rate is measured by the airfoil and it gets high pressure drop inside the duct. To overcome this problem, the airfoil is planned to be replaced with the other type measuring instrument, such as the average pitot tube which generates low pressure drop of airstream. The numerical result in case of average pitot tube shows that the pressure drop inside the inlet airstream duct is decreased significantly. It should be noted that the energy consumption of inlet air system is reduced too.

Keywords: Airfoil, average pitot tube, combustion air, CFD, pressure drop, rectangular duct.

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Authors: Glenn M. Calaguas

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To investigate the possible correlation between peer aggression and peer victimization, 148 sixth-graders were asked to respond to the Reduced Aggression and Victimization Scales (RAVS). RAVS measures the frequency of reporting aggressive behaviors or of being victimized during the previous week prior to the survey. The scales are composed of six items each. Each point represents one instance of aggression or victimization. Specifically, the Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient (PMCC) was used to determine the correlations between the scores of the sixthgraders in the two scales, both in individual items and total scores. Positive correlations were established and correlations were significant at the 0.01 levels.

Keywords: correlation, peer aggression, peer victimization, sixth-graders.

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Authors: T. O. Olwal, K. Djouani, B. J. van Wyk, Y. Hamam, P. Siarry

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Multi-Radio Multi-Channel Wireless Mesh Networks (MRMC-WMNs) operate at the backbone to access and route high volumes of traffic simultaneously. Such roles demand high network capacity, and long “online" time at the expense of accelerated transmission energy depletion and poor connectivity. This is the problem of transmission power control. Numerous power control methods for wireless networks are in literature. However, contributions towards MRMC configurations still face many challenges worth considering. In this paper, an energy-efficient power selection protocol called PMMUP is suggested at the Link-Layer. This protocol first divides the MRMC-WMN into a set of unified channel graphs (UCGs). A UCG consists of multiple radios interconnected to each other via a common wireless channel. In each UCG, a stochastic linear quadratic cost function is formulated. Each user minimizes this cost function consisting of trade-off between the size of unification states and the control action. Unification state variables come from independent UCGs and higher layers of the protocol stack. The PMMUP coordinates power optimizations at the network interface cards (NICs) of wireless mesh routers. The proposed PMMUP based algorithm converges fast analytically with a linear rate. Performance evaluations through simulations confirm the efficacy of the proposed dynamic power control.

Keywords: Effective band inference based power control algorithm (EBIA), Power Selection MRMC Unification Protocol (PMMUP), MRMC State unification Variable Prediction (MRSUP), Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs).

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Authors: Luis F. Beltrán-Morales, Dalia Bali Cohen, Enrique Troyo-Diéguez, Gerzaín Avilés Polanco, Victor Sevilla Unda

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This study aims to assess the potential of solar energy technology for improving access to water and hence the livelihood strategies of rural communities in Baja California Sur, Mexico. It focuses on livestock ranches and photovoltaic water-pumptechnology as well as other water extraction methods. The methodology used are the Sustainable Livelihoods and the Appropriate Technology approaches. A household survey was applied in June of 2006 to 32 ranches in the municipality, of which 22 used PV pumps; and semi-structured interviews were conducted. Findings indicate that solar pumps have in fact helped people improve their quality of life by allowing them to pursue a different livelihood strategy and that improved access to water -not necessarily as more water but as less effort to extract and collect it- does not automatically imply overexploitation of the resource; consumption is based on basic needs as well as on storage and pumping capacity. Justification for such systems lies in the avoidance of logistical problems associated to fossil fuels, PV pumps proved to be the most beneficial when substituting gasoline or diesel equipment but of dubious advantage if intended to replace wind or gravity systems. Solar water pumping technology-s main obstacle to dissemination are high investment and repairs costs and it is therefore not suitable for all cases even when insolation rates and water availability are adequate. In cases where affordability is not an obstacle it has become an important asset that contributes –by means of reduced expenses, less effort and saved time- to the improvement of livestock, the main livelihood provider for these ranches.

Keywords: Solar Pumps, Water Security, Livestock Ranches, Sustainable Livelihoods.

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Authors: Ahmet Ay, Hakan Acet, Ceyhun Can Özcan

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Economic freedoms, most emphasized issue in the recent years, are considered to affect economic growth and performance via institutional structure. In this context, a model that includes Turkey and Middle East Countries, and where the effects of economic freedom on growth are examined, was formed. For the groups of countries determined, in the study carried out by using the dataset belonging the period of 2004 - 2009, between economic freedoms and growth, a negative relationship was observed as group. In the sense of individual effects, it was identified that there was a positive relationship in terms of some Middle East Countries and Turkey.

Keywords: Economic Freedoms, Economic Growth, Freedoms.

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Authors: Khaled M. Khader, Mamdouh I. Elimy

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Reducing energy consumption became the major concern for all countries of the world during the recent decades. In general, power saving is currently the nominal goal of most industrial countries. It is well known that fossil fuels are the main pillar of development of world countries. Unfortunately, the increased rate of fossil fuel consumption will lead to serious problems caused by an expected depletion of fuels. Moreover, dangerous gases and vapors emission lead to severe environmental problems during fuel burning. Consequently, most engineering sectors especially the mechanical sectors are looking for improving any machine accompanied by reducing its energy consumption. Crank-Rocker planar mechanism is the most applied in mechanical systems. Besides, it is one of the most significant parts of the machines for obtaining the oscillatory motion. The transmission angle of this mechanism can be considered as an optimum value when its extreme values are equally varied around 90°. In addition, the transmission angle plays an important role in decreasing the required driving power and improving the dynamic properties of the mechanism. Hence, appropriate selection of mechanism links lengthens, which assures optimum transmission angle leads to decreasing the driving power. Moreover, mechanism's links manufactured from composite materials afford link's lightweight, which decreases the required driving torque. Furthermore, wear and corrosion problems can be treated through using composite links instead of using metal ones. This paper is dealing with improving the performance of crank-rocker mechanism using composite links due to their flexural elastic modulus values and stiffness in addition to high damping of composite materials.

Keywords: Composite material, crank-rocker mechanism, transmission angle, design techniques, power saving.

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Authors: Jafreezal Jaafar, Hasiah Mohamed, Hazida Razali

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This paper focuses on the 3D reconstruction of the architectural design of Darul Ridzuan Museum. It has concentrated on designing exterior part of the building according to colored digital photo of the real museum. Besides viewing the architecture, walkthroughs are generated for the user to control it in an easier way. User can travel through the museum to get the feel of the environment and to explore the design of the museum as a whole; both exterior and interior. The result has shown positive result in terms of realism, navigation, collision detection, suitability, usability and user-s acceptance. In brief, the 3D virtual museum has provided an alternative to present a real museum.

Keywords: Virtual Heritage, 3D Modelling, Virtual Museum, Usability Evaluation

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Authors: Hoa Pham

Abstract:

The literature on language teaching and second language acquisition has been largely driven by monolingual ideology with a common assumption that a second language (L2) is best taught and learned in the L2 only. The current study challenges this assumption by reporting learners' positive perceptions of tertiary level teachers' code switching practices in Vietnam. The findings of this study contribute to our understanding of code switching practices in language classrooms from a learners' perspective. Data were collected from student participants who were working towards a Bachelor degree in English within the English for Business Communication stream through the use of focus group interviews. The literature has documented that this method of interviewing has a number of distinct advantages over individual student interviews. For instance, group interactions generated by focus groups create a more natural environment than that of an individual interview because they include a range of communicative processes in which each individual may influence or be influenced by others - as they are in their real life. The process of interaction provides the opportunity to obtain the meanings and answers to a problem that are "socially constructed rather than individually created" leading to the capture of real-life data. The distinct feature of group interaction offered by this technique makes it a powerful means of obtaining deeper and richer data than those from individual interviews. The data generated through this study were analysed using a constant comparative approach. Overall, the students expressed positive views of this practice indicating that it is a useful teaching strategy. Teacher code switching was seen as a learning resource and a source supporting language output. This practice was perceived to promote student comprehension and to aid the learning of content and target language knowledge. This practice was also believed to scaffold the students' language production in different contexts. However, the students indicated their preference for teacher code switching to be constrained, as extensive use was believed to negatively impact on their L2 learning and trigger cognitive reliance on the L1 for L2 learning. The students also perceived that when the L1 was used to a great extent, their ability to develop as autonomous learners was negatively impacted. This study found that teacher code switching was supported in certain contexts by learners, thus suggesting that there is a need for the widespread assumption about the monolingual teaching approach to be re-considered.

Keywords: Code switching, L1 use, L2 teaching, Learners’ perception.

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Authors: Kapil Dev Sharma, Kirat Pal, Costas Psychalinos

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A new first order all-pass filter topology realized using current controlled current conveyors (CCCIIs) is introduced in this paper. Offered benefits are the high-impedance of the input node, the absence of external resistors because of the usage of CCCIIs with positive and negative intrinsic resistances, the presence of only grounded capacitors, and the capability of electronic adjustment of the phase shift through a single bias current. The correct operation of the introduced topology is conformed through simulation results, while its behavior is evaluated through comparison results.

Keywords: Active filters, All-pass filters, Analog signal processing, Current conveyors.

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Authors: Chih-Feng Chuang, Shih-Ching Shiu, Chao-Jen Cheng

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among students- process of study, creative self-efficacy and creativity while attending college. A total of 60 students enrolled in Hsiuping Institute of Technology in central Taiwan were selected as samples for the study. The instruments for this study included three questionnaires to explore the aforesaid aspects. This researchers tested creative self-efficacy and process of study, and creativity with Pearson correlation and hierarchical regression analyses. The major findings of this research are (1) the process of study had direct positive predictability on creativity, and (2) the relationship between process of study and creativity is partially mediated by creative self-efficacy.

Keywords: Process of study, Creative self-efficacy, Creativity

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Authors: Jian-hua Yeh, Shi-yi Kuo

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This paper discusses the classification process for medical data. In this paper, we use the data from ACM KDDCup 2008 to demonstrate our classification process based on latent topic discovery. In this data set, the target set and outliers are quite different in their nature: target set is only 0.6% size in total, while the outliers consist of 99.4% of the data set. We use this data set as an example to show how we dealt with this extremely biased data set with latent topic discovery and noise reduction techniques. Our experiment faces two major challenge: (1) extremely distributed outliers, and (2) positive samples are far smaller than negative ones. We try to propose a suitable process flow to deal with these issues and get a best AUC result of 0.98.

Keywords: classification, latent topics, outlier adjustment, feature scaling

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Authors: Ahmed M. Khedr, Saad M. Abdelrahman, Kareem M. Tonbol

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Two geo-referenced sea level datasets (September 2008 – November 2010) and (April 2012 – January 2014) were recorded at Alexandria Western Harbour (AWH). Accurate re-definition of tidal datum, referred to the latest International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF-2014), was discussed and updated to improve our understanding of the old predefined tidal datum at Alexandria. Tidal and non-tidal components of sea level were separated with the use of Delft-3D hydrodynamic model-tide suit (Delft-3D, 2015). Tidal characteristics at AWH were investigated and harmonic analysis showed the most significant 34 constituents with their amplitudes and phases. Tide was identified as semi-diurnal pattern as indicated by a “Form Factor” of 0.24 and 0.25, respectively. Principle tidal datums related to major tidal phenomena were recalculated referred to a meaningful geodetic height datum. The portion of residual energy (surge) out of the total sea level energy was computed for each dataset and found 77% and 72%, respectively. Power spectral density (PSD) showed accurate resolvability in high band (1–6) cycle/days for the nominated independent constituents, except some neighbouring constituents, which are too close in frequency. Wind and atmospheric pressure data, during the recorded sea level time, were analysed and cross-correlated with the surge signals. Moderate association between surge and wind and atmospheric pressure data were obtained. In addition, long-term sea level rise trend at AWH was computed and showed good agreement with earlier estimated rates.

Keywords: Alexandria, Delft-3D, Egypt, geodetic reference, harmonic analysis, sea level.

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Authors: David Avis, Luc Devroye, Kazuo Iwama

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We consider a cooperative game played by n players against a referee. The players names are randomly distributed among n lockers, with one name per locker. Each player can open up to half the lockers and each player must find his name. Once the game starts the players may not communicate. It has been previously shown that, quite surprisingly, an optimal strategy exists for which the success probability is never worse than 1 − ln 2 ≈ 0.306. In this paper we consider an extension where the number of lockers is greater than the number of players, so that some lockers are empty. We show that the players may still win with positive probability even if there are a constant k number of empty lockers. We show that for each fixed probability p, there is a constant c so that the players can win with probability at least p if they are allowed to open cn lockers.

Keywords: Locker problem, pointer-following algorithms.

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Authors: Fadil Elmenfi

Abstract:

Edward Said in his book Culture and Imperialism devotes the introduction to the Arabic translation. He claims that the fading echo of Orientalism in the Arab world is unlike the positive reflections of its counterpart elsewhere in the world. The probable reason behind his inquiry would be that the methodology Abu Deeb applied in translating Said's book contributed to the book having the limited impact which Said is referring to. The paper adds new insights to the body of theory and the effectiveness of the performance of translation from culture to culture. It presents a survey that can provide the reader with an overview of Said's Orientalism and the two Arabic translations of the book. It investigates some of the problems of translating cultural texts, more specifically translating features of Said's style.

Keywords: Orientalism, Retranslation, Arabic Language, Muhammad Enani, Kamal Abu Deeb, Edward Said.

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