Search results for: Resources Rate

Authors: Sandro Mourão, Karla Okada

Abstract:

The necessity of accurate and timely field data is shared among organizations engaged in fundamentally different activities, public services or commercial operations. Basically, there are three major components in the process of the qualitative research: data collection, interpretation and organization of data, and analytic process. Representative technological advancements in terms of innovation have been made in mobile devices (mobile phone, PDA-s, tablets, laptops, etc). Resources that can be potentially applied on the data collection activity for field researches in order to improve this process. This paper presents and discuss the main features of a mobile phone based solution for field data collection, composed of basically three modules: a survey editor, a server web application and a client mobile application. The data gathering process begins with the survey creation module, which enables the production of tailored questionnaires. The field workforce receives the questionnaire(s) on their mobile phones to collect the interviews responses and sending them back to a server for immediate analysis.

Keywords: Data Gathering, Field Research, Mobile Phone, Survey.

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Authors: Youngseok Kim, Chul Park, Jonghwa Yi, Sangsik Choi

Abstract:

The 2-MHz Side Scan SONAR (SSS) attached to the boat for inspection of underwater structures is affected by shaking. It is difficult to determine the exact scale of damage of structure. In this study, a motion sensor is attached to the inside of the 2-MHz SSS to get roll, pitch, and yaw direction data, and developed the image stabilization tool to correct the sonar image. We checked that reliable data can be obtained with an average error rate of 1.99% between the measured value and the actual distance through experiment. It is possible to get the accurate sonar data to inspect damage in underwater structure.

Keywords: Image stabilization, motion sensor, safety inspection, sonar image, underwater structure.

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Authors: Himanshu Payal, Sachin Maheshwari, Pushpendra S. Bharti

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Electrical discharge machining (EDM), a non-conventional machining process, finds wide applications for shaping difficult-to-cut alloys. Process modeling of EDM is required to exploit the process to the fullest. Process modeling of EDM is a challenging task owing to involvement of so many electrical and non-electrical parameters. This work is an attempt to model the EDM process using artificial neural network (ANN). Experiments were carried out on die-sinking EDM taking Inconel 825 as work material. ANN modeling has been performed using experimental data. The prediction ability of trained network has been verified experimentally. Results indicate that ANN can predict the values of performance measures of EDM satisfactorily.

Keywords: Artificial neural network, EDM, metal removal rate, modeling, surface roughness.

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Authors: Bharatendra Rai

Abstract:

Sequences of words in text data have long-term dependencies and are known to suffer from vanishing gradient problem when developing deep learning models. Although recurrent networks such as long short-term memory networks help overcome this problem, achieving high text classification performance is a challenging problem. Convolutional recurrent networks that combine advantages of long short-term memory networks and convolutional neural networks, can be useful for text classification performance improvements. However, arriving at suitable hyperparameter values for convolutional recurrent networks is still a challenging task where fitting of a model requires significant computing resources. This paper illustrates the advantages of using convolutional recurrent networks for text classification with the help of statistically planned computer experiments for hyperparameter tuning. 

Keywords: Convolutional recurrent networks, hyperparameter tuning, long short-term memory networks, Tukey honest significant differences

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Authors: Romain Ben Taleb, Aurélie Montarnal, Matthieu Lauras, Mathieu Dahan, Romain Miclo

Abstract:

To be competitive and sustainable, any company has to maximize its value. However, unlike listed companies that can assess their values based on market shares, most Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) which are non-listed cannot have direct and live access to this critical information. Traditional accounting reports only give limited insights to SME decision-makers about the real impact of their day-to-day decisions on the company’s performance and value. Most of the time, an SME’s financial valuation is made one time a year as the associated process is time and resource-consuming, requiring several months and external expertise to be completed. To solve this issue, we propose in this paper a value-oriented metamodel that enables real-time and dynamic assessment of the SME’s value based on the large definition of their assets. These assets cover a wider scope of resources of the company and better account for immaterial assets. The proposal, which is illustrated in a case study, discusses the benefits of incorporating assets in the SME valuation.

Keywords: SME, metamodel, decision support system, financial valuation.

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Authors: Sum Lau, Wing Chung Cleo Lau, Wing Yan Chu, Long Ching Ip, Wan Yin Lo, Jo Long Sam Yau, Ka Ho Hui, Sze Yi Mak

Abstract:

Biomedical engineering (BME) is an interdisciplinary subject where knowledge about biology and medicine is applied to novel applications, solving clinical problems. This subject is crucial for cities such as Hong Kong where the burden on the medical system is rising due to reasons like ageing population. Hong Kong, who is actively boosting technological advancements in recent years, sets BME, or biotechnology as a major category, as reflected in the 2018-19 Budget where biotechnology was one of the four pillars for development. Over the years, while resources in terms of money and space have been provided, there has been a lack of talents, expressed by both the academia and industry. While exogenous factors, such as COVID-19, may have hindered talents from outside Hong Kong to come, endogenous factors should also be considered. In particular, since there are already a few local universities offering BME programmes, their curriculum or style of education requires to be reviewed to intensify the network of the BME community and support post-academic career development. It was observed that while undergraduate (UG) studies focus on knowledge teaching with some technical training and postgraduate (PG) programmes concentrate on upstream research, the programmes are generally confined to the academic sector and lack connections to the industry. In light of that, a “Biomedical Innovation and Outreach Programme 2022” (“B.I.O.2022”) was held to connect students and professors from academia with clinicians and engineers from the industry, serving as a comparative approach to conventional education methods (UG and PG programmes from tertiary institutions). Over 100 participants, including undergraduates, postgraduates, secondary school students, researchers, engineers, and clinicians, took part in various outreach events such as conference and site visits, all held from June to July 2022. As a case study, this programme aimed to tackle the aforementioned problems with the theme of “4Cs” (connection, communication, collaboration, and commercialisation). The effectiveness of the programme is investigated by its ability to serve as adult and continuing education, and the effectiveness of causing social change to tackle current societal challenges, with the focus on tackling the lack of talents engaging in BME. In this study, B.I.O. 2022 is found to be able to complement the traditional educational methods, particularly in terms of knowledge exchange between the academia and the industry. With enhanced communications between participants from different career stages, there were students who followed up to visit or even work with the professionals after the programme. Furthermore, connections between the academia and industry could foster the generation of new knowledge, which ultimately pointed to commercialisation, adding value to the BME industry while filling the gap in terms of human resources. With the continuation of events like B.I.O. 2022, it provides a promising starting point for development and relationship strengthening of a BME community in Hong Kong, and shows potential as an alternative way of adult education or learning with societal benefits.

Keywords: Biomedical engineering, adult education, social change, comparative methods, lifelong learning, innovation, professional community.

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Authors: Jetsada Arnin, Yodchanan Wongsawat

Abstract:

One of the most important causes of accidents is driver fatigue. To reduce the accidental rate, the driver needs a quick nap when feeling sleepy. Hence, searching for the minimum time period of nap is a very challenging problem. The purpose of this paper is twofold, i.e. to investigate the possible fastest time period for nap and its relationship with stage 2 sleep, and to develop an automatic stage 2 sleep detection and alarm device. The experiment for this investigation is designed with 21 subjects. It yields the result that waking up the subjects after getting into stage 2 sleep for 3-5 minutes can efficiently reduce the sleepiness. Furthermore, the automatic stage 2 sleep detection and alarm device yields the real-time detection accuracy of approximately 85% which is comparable with the commercial sleep lab system.

Keywords: Stage 2 sleep, nap, sleep detection, real-time, EEG

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Authors: Sehijpal Singh Khangura, Jai Inder Preet Singh, Vikas Dhawan

Abstract:

Global warming, growing awareness of the environment, waste management issues, dwindling fossil resources, and rising oil prices resulted to increase the research in the materials that are friendly to our health and environment. Due to these reasons, green products are increasingly being promoted for sustainable development. In this work, fully biodegradable green composites have been developed using jute fibers as reinforcement and poly lactic acid as matrix material by film stacking technique. The effect of curing temperature during development of composites ranging from 160 °C, 170 °C, 180 °C and 190 °C was investigated for various mechanical properties. Results obtained from various tests indicate that impact strength decreases with an increase in curing temperature, but tensile and flexural strength increases till 180 °C, thereafter both the properties decrease. This study gives an optimum curing temperature for the development of jute/PLA composites.

Keywords: Natural fibers, polymer matrix composites, jute, compression molding, biodegradation.

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Authors: Seung-Jun Yu, Yong-Jun Kim, Jung-In Baik, Hyoung-Kyu Song

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In this paper, a dual-hop relay based on channel state is studied. In the conventional relay scheme, a relay uses the same modulation method without reference to channel state. But, a relay uses an adaptive modulation method with reference to channel state. If the channel state is poor, a relay eliminates latter 2 bits and uses Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) modulation. If channel state is good, a relay modulates the received symbols with 16-QAM symbols by using 4 bits. The performance of the proposed scheme for Symbol Error Rate (SER) and throughput is analyzed.

Keywords: Adaptive transmission, channel state, dual-hop, hierarchical modulation, relay.

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Authors: Abdulwahab Alalyani, Mahbub Rashid

Abstract:

Public green space promotes community health including daily activities, but these resources may not be available enough or may not equitably be distributed. This paper measures and compares the availability of public green spaces (PGS) among low, middle, and high-income neighborhoods in the Riyadh city. Additionally, it compares the total availability of PGS to WHO standard and Dubai availability of PGS per person. All PGS were mapped using geographical information systems, and total area availability of PGS compared to WHO and Dubai standards. To evaluate the significant differences in PGS availability across low, medium, and high-income Riyadh neighborhoods, we used a One-way ANOVA analysis of covariance to test the differences. As a result, by comparing PGS of Riyadh neighborhoods to WHO and Dubai-availability, it was found that Riyadh PGS were lower than the minimum standard of WHO and as well as Dubai. Riyadh has only 1.13 m² per capita of PGS. The second finding, the availability of PGS, was significantly different among Riyadh neighborhoods based on socioeconomic status. The future development of PGS should be focused on increasing PGS availability and should be given priority to those low-income and unhealthy communities.

Keywords: Spatial equity, green space, healthy city, quality of life, income, built environment.

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Authors: F. Allag, S. Bouharati, M. Belmahdi, R. Zegadi

Abstract:

The rapid expansion of deserts in recent decades as a result of human actions combined with climatic changes has highlighted the necessity to understand biological processes in arid environments. Whereas physical processes and the biology of flora and fauna have been relatively well studied in marginally used arid areas, knowledge of desert soil micro-organisms remains fragmentary. The objective of this study is to conduct a diversity analysis of bacterial communities in unvegetated arid soils. Several biological phenomena in hot deserts related to microbial populations and the potential use of micro-organisms for restoring hot desert environments. Dry land ecosystems have a highly heterogeneous distribution of resources, with greater nutrient concentrations and microbial densities occurring in vegetated than in bare soils. In this work, we found it useful to use techniques of artificial intelligence in their treatment especially artificial neural networks (ANN). The use of the ANN model, demonstrate his capability for addressing the complex problems of uncertainty data.

Keywords: Desert soil, Climatic changes, Bacteria, Vegetation, Artificial neural networks.

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Authors: M. Benachour, N. Benachour

Abstract:

Stainless steel has been employed in many engineering applications ranging from pharmaceutical equipment to piping in the nuclear reactors and storage to chemical products. In this attempt, simulation of fatigue crack growth based on experimental results of austenitic stainless steel 304L was presented using AFGROW code when NASGRO mode laws adopted. Double through crack at hole specimen is used in this investigation under constant amplitude loading. Effect of mean stress is highlighted. Results show that fatigue crack growth rate (FCGR) and fatigue life were affected by maximum applied load and dimension of hole. An equivalent of Paris law for this material was estimated.

Keywords: Fatigue crack, stainless steel, mean stress, amplitudeloading.

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Authors: A. Izadbakhsh, M. M. Fateh, M. A. Sadrnia

Abstract:

A multivariable discontinuous feedback linearization approach is proposed to position control of an electrically driven fast robot manipulator. A desired performance is achieved by selecting a useful controller and suitable sampling rate and considering saturation for actuators. There is a high flexibility to apply the proposed control approach on different electrically driven manipulators. The control approach can guarantee the stability and satisfactory tracking performance. A PUMA 560 robot driven by geared permanent magnet dc motors is simulated. The simulation results show a desired performance for control system under technical specifications.

Keywords: Fast robot, feedback linearization, multivariabledigital control, PUMA560.

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Authors: Ilona Shiller

Abstract:

This study examines regional convergence in per capita personal income in the US and Canada. We find that the disparity in real per capita income levels across US states (Canadian provinces) has declined, but income levels are not identical. Income levels become more aligned once costs of living are accounted for in relative per capita income series. US states (Canadian provinces) converge at an annual rate of between 1.3% and 2.04% (between 2.15% and 2.37%). A pattern of σ and β-convergence in per capita personal income across regions evident over the entire sample period, is reversed over 1979-1989 (1976-1990) period. The reversal may be due to sectoral or region-specific shocks that have highly persistent effects. The latter explanation might be true for half of the US and most of Canada.

Keywords: regional convergence, regional disparities, per capita income.

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Authors: Sangjun Park, Jungpyo Hong, Byung-Ok Kang, Yun-keun Lee, Minsoo Hahn

Abstract:

In this paper, an algorithm for detecting and attenuating puff noises frequently generated under the mobile environment is proposed. As a baseline system, puff detection system is designed based on Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM), and 39th Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (MFCC) is extracted as feature parameters. To improve the detection performance, effective acoustic features for puff detection are proposed. In addition, detected puff intervals are attenuated by high-pass filtering. The speech recognition rate was measured for evaluation and confusion matrix and ROC curve are used to confirm the validity of the proposed system.

Keywords: Gaussian mixture model, puff detection and cancellation, speech enhancement.

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Authors: Atay A, Suer BT

Abstract:

The aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate the parameters of dental implants such as patient gender, number of implant, failed implant before prosthetic restorations and failed implant after implantation and failed implant after prosthetic restorations. 135 male and 99 female patients, total 234 implant patients which have been treated with 450 implant between 2005- 2009 years in GATA Haydarpasa Training Hospital Dental Service. Twelve implants were failed before prosthetic restorations. Four implant were failed after fixed prosthetic restorations. Cumulative survival rate after prostheses were 97.56 % during 6 years period.

Keywords: Dental implants, implant supported prostheses, single implants, single crown

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Authors: Naser Ahmadi Sani, Karim Solaimani, Lida Razaghnia, Jalal Zandi

Abstract:

In recent decades, rapid and incorrect changes in land-use have been associated with consequences such as natural resources degradation and environmental pollution. Detecting changes in land-use is one of the tools for natural resource management and assessment of changes in ecosystems. The target of this research is studying the land-use changes in Haraz basin with an area of 677000 hectares in a 15 years period (1996 to 2011) using LANDSAT data. Therefore, the quality of the images was first evaluated. Various enhancement methods for creating synthetic bonds were used in the analysis. Separate training sites were selected for each image. Then the images of each period were classified in 9 classes using supervised classification method and the maximum likelihood algorithm. Finally, the changes were extracted in GIS environment. The results showed that these changes are an alarm for the HARAZ basin status in future. The reason is that 27% of the area has been changed, which is related to changing the range lands to bare land and dry farming and also changing the dense forest to sparse forest, horticulture, farming land and residential area.

Keywords: HARAZ Basin, Change Detection, Land-use, Satellite Data.

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Authors: Abdulrahman M. Homadi

Abstract:

This study focuses on how to control the outlet temperature of a solar air heater in a way simpler than the existing methods. In this work, five cases have been studied by using ANSYS Fluent based on a CFD numerical method. All the cases have been simulated by utilizing the same criteria and conditions like the temperature, materials, areas except the geometry. The case studies are conducted in Little Rock (LR), AR, USA during the winter time supposedly on 15^th of December. A fresh air that is flowing with a velocity of 0.5 m/s and a flow rate of 0.009 m³/s. The results prove the possibility of achieving a controlled temperature just by changing the geometric shape of the heater. This geometry guarantees that the absorber plate always has a normal component of the solar radiation at any time during the day. The heater has a sectarian shape with a radius of 150 mm where the outlet temperature remains almost constant for six hours.

Keywords: Solar energy, air heater, control of temperature, CFD.

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Authors: Sungji Han, Youngjoon Han, Hernsoo Hahn

Abstract:

This paper presents a robust vehicle detection approach using Haar-like feature. It is possible to get a strong edge feature from this Haar-like feature. Therefore it is very effective to remove the shadow of a vehicle on the road. And we can detect the boundary of vehicles accurately. In the paper, the vehicle detection algorithm can be divided into two main steps. One is hypothesis generation, and the other is hypothesis verification. In the first step, it determines vehicle candidates using features such as a shadow, intensity, and vertical edge. And in the second step, it determines whether the candidate is a vehicle or not by using the symmetry of vehicle edge features. In this research, we can get the detection rate over 15 frames per second on our embedded system.

Keywords: vehicle detection, haar-like feauture, single camera, real time

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Authors: Pilanee Vaithanomsat, Waraporn Apiwatanapiwat

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Jatropha curcas stem was analyzed for chemical compositions: 19.11% pentosan, 42.99% alphacellulose and 24.11% lignin based on dry weight of 100-g raw material. The condition to fractionate cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin in J. curcas stem using steam explosion was optimized. The procedure started from cutting J. curcas stem into small pieces and soaked in water for overnight. After that, they were steam exploded at 214 °C and 21 kg/cm2 for 5 min. The obtained hydrolysate contained 1.55 g/L ferulic acid which after that was used as substrate for vanillin production by Aspergillus niger and Pycnoporus cinnabarinus in one-step process. The maximum 0.65 g/L of vanillin were obtained with the conversion rate of 45.2% based on the initial ferulic acid.

Keywords: Vanillin, production, Jatropha curcas stem, steam explosion.

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Authors: Nour Charara, Iman Jarkass, Maria Sokhn, Elena Mugellini, Omar Abou Khaled

Abstract:

Intelligent Video-Surveillance (IVS) systems are being more and more popular in security applications. The analysis and recognition of abnormal behaviours in a video sequence has gradually drawn the attention in the field of IVS, since it allows filtering out a large number of useless information, which guarantees the high efficiency in the security protection, and save a lot of human and material resources. We present in this paper ADABeV, an intelligent video-surveillance framework for event recognition in crowded scene to detect the abnormal human behaviour. This framework is attended to be able to achieve real-time alarming, reducing the lags in traditional monitoring systems. This architecture proposal addresses four main challenges: behaviour understanding in crowded scenes, hard lighting conditions, multiple input kinds of sensors and contextual-based adaptability to recognize the active context of the scene.

Keywords: Behavior recognition, Crowded scene, Data fusion, Pattern recognition, Video-surveillance

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Authors: Qimin Yang

Abstract:

In this paper, 3X3 routing nodes are proposed to provide speedup and parallel processing capability in Data Vortex network architectures. The new design not only significantly improves network throughput and latency, but also eliminates the need for distributive traffic control mechanism originally embedded among nodes and the need for nodal buffering. The cost effectiveness is studied by a comparison study with the previously proposed 2- input buffered networks, and considerable performance enhancement can be achieved with similar or lower cost of hardware. Unlike previous implementation, the network leaves small probability of contention, therefore, the packet drop rate must be kept low for such implementation to be feasible and attractive, and it can be achieved with proper choice of operation conditions.

Keywords: Data Vortex, Packet Switch, Interconnection network, deflection, Network-on-chip

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Authors: Svetlana Pushkar

Abstract:

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system is recognized in Europe. LEED uses regional priority (RP) points that are adapted to different environmental conditions. However, the appropriateness of the RP points is still a controversial question. To clarify this issue, two different parts of Europe: northern Europe (Finland and Sweden) and southern Europe (Turkey and Spain) were considered. Similarities and differences in the performances of LEED 2009-new construction (LEED-NC 2009) in these four countries were analyzed. It was found that LEED-NC 2009 performances in northern and southern parts of Europe in terms of Sustainable Sites (SS), Water Efficiency (WE), Materials and Resources (MR), and Indoor Environmental Quality (EQ) were similar, whereas in Energy and Atmosphere (EA), their performances were different. WE and SS revealed high performances (70-100%); EA and EQ demonstrated intermediate performance (40-60%); and MR displayed low performance (20-40%). It should be recommended introducing the following new RP points: for Turkey - water-related points and for all four observed countries - green power-related points for improving the LEED adaptation in Europe.

Keywords: Green building, Europe, LEED, regional priority points.

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Authors: Radek Malinský, Ivan Jelínek

Abstract:

Web 2.0 (social networking, blogging and online forums) can serve as a data source for social science research because it contains vast amount of information from many different users. The volume of that information has been growing at a very high rate and becoming a network of heterogeneous data; this makes things difficult to find and is therefore not almost useful. We have proposed a novel theoretical model for gathering and processing data from Web 2.0, which would reflect semantic content of web pages in better way. This article deals with the analysis part of the model and its usage for content analysis of blogs. The introductory part of the article describes methodology for the gathering and processing data from blogs. The next part of the article is focused on the evaluation and content analysis of blogs, which write about specific trend.

Keywords: Blog, Sentiment Analysis, Web 2.0, Webometrics

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Authors: A. O. Ogunlela, B. Adelodun

Abstract:

Flood routing is used in estimating the travel time and attenuation of flood waves as they move downstream a river or channel. The routing procedure is usually classified as hydrologic or hydraulic. Hydraulic methods utilize the equations of continuity and motion. Kinematic routing, a hydraulic technique was used in routing Asa River at Ilorin. The river is of agricultural and industrial importance to Ilorin, the capital of Kwara State, Nigeria. This paper determines the kinematic parameters of kinematic wave velocity, time step, time required to traverse, weighting factor and change in length. Values obtained were 4.67 m/s, 19 secs, 21 secs, 0.75 and 100 m, respectively. These parameters adequately reflect the watershed and flow characteristics essential for the routing. The synthetic unit hydrograph was developed using the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) method. 24-hr 10yr, 25yr, 50yr and 100yr storm hydrographs were developed from the unit hydrograph using convolution procedures and the outflow hydrographs were obtained for each of 24-hr 10yr, 25yr, 50yr and 100yr indicating 0.11 m³/s, 0.10 m³/s, 0.10 m³/s and 0.10 m³/s attenuations respectively.

Keywords: Asa River, Kinematic parameters, Routing

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Authors: Karolína Vozková, Matěj Kuc

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This paper deals with the impact of decrease in interest rates on the performance of commercial and cooperative banks in the Eurozone measured by net interest margin. The analysis was performed on balanced dataset of 268 commercial and 726 cooperative banks spanning the 2008-2015 period. We employed Fixed Effects estimation panel method. As expected, we found a negative relationship between market rates and net interest margin. Our results suggest that the impact of negative interest income differs across individual banking business models. More precisely, those cooperative banks were much more hit by the decrease of market interest rates which might be due to their ownership structure and more restrictive business regulation.

Keywords: Cooperative banks, performance, negative interest rates, risk management.

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Authors: G. Lingam, N. Lingam, K. Raghuwaiya

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Thirty-eight rural school leaders in Solomon Islands responded to a questionnaire aimed at identifying their perceptions of work challenges. The data analysis points to an overwhelming percentage of school leaders feeling they face multifaceted problems in their work settings, including such challenges as untrained teachers, lack of funding, limited learning and teaching resources, and land disputes. The latter in particular is beyond the school leader’s jurisdiction; addressing it needs urgent attention from the principal stakeholder(s). Such challenges, seemingly tangential to the business of schooling, inadvertently affect the provision of good-quality education. The findings demonstrate that contextual challenges raise questions about what powers leadership at school level has to deal with some of them. The suggestion is advanced for the significant place-conscious leadership development to help address some community and cultural challenges. Implications of this paper are likely to be relevant to other similar contexts in the Pacific region and beyond.

Keywords: Rural school leaders, leadership, challenges, Solomon Islands, contextual factors.

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Authors: Penn P. Wu

Abstract:

Recent advances in virtual reality (VR) technologies have made it possible for students to experience a virtual on-the-scene or virtual in-person observation of an educational event. In an experimental class, the author uses VR, particularly 360° videos, to virtually engage students in an event, through a wide spectrum of educational resources, such s a virtual “bystander.” Students were able to observe the event as if they were physically on site, although they could not intervene with the scene. The author will describe the adopted equipment, specification, and cost of building them as well as the quality of VR. The author will discuss (a) feasibility, effectiveness, and efficiency of using VR as a supplemental technology to teach college students and criteria and methodologies used by the authors to evaluate them; (b) barriers and issues of technological implementation; and (c) pedagogical practices learned through this experiment. The author also attempts to explore (a) how VR could provide an interactive virtual in-person learning experience; (b) how VR can possibly change traditional college education and online education; (c) how educators and balance six critical factors: cost, time, technology, quality, result, and content.

Keywords: Learning with VR, virtual experience of learning, virtual in-person learning, virtual reality for education.

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Authors: Cheng-Yu Tsai, Li-Wei Liu, Ming-Tsang Wu

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This study sought to determine whether there were relationships existed among leisure satisfaction, self-esteem, and spiritual wellness. Four hundred survey instruments were distributed, and 334 effective instruments were returned, for an effective rate of 83.5%. The participants were recruited from a purposive sampling that subjects were at least 60 years of age and retired in Tainan City, Taiwan. Three instruments were used in this research: Leisure Satisfaction Scale (LSS), Self-Esteem Scale (SES), and Spirituality Assessment Scale (SAS). The collected data were analyzed statistically. The findings of this research were as follows: 1. There is significantly correlated between leisure satisfaction and spiritual wellness. 2. There is significantly correlated between leisure satisfaction and self-esteem. 3. There is significantly correlated between spiritual wellness and self-esteem.

Keywords: Leisure satisfaction, spiritual wellness, self-esteem.

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Authors: Babak Borzouei, Seyed Habibollah Mousavi-Bahar

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Recently, there has been a considerable increase in the number of procedures carried out under regional anesthesia. However, percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL) procedures are usually performed under general anesthesia. The aim of this study was to assess the safety and efficacy of PCNL under spinal anesthesia in patients with renal calculi. We describe our 9 years experience of performing PCNL under spinal anesthesia for 387 patients with large stones of the upper urinary tract, with regard to the effectiveness and side effects. All patients received spinal anesthetics (Lidocain 5%, or Bupivacaine 0.75%) and underwent PCNL in prone position. The success rate was 94.1%. The incidence of complications was 11.6%. PCNL under spinal anesthesia is feasible, safe, and well-tolerated in management of patients with renal stones.

Keywords: percutaneous nephrolithotomy, spinal anesthesia, renal calculi

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