Search results for: weighted Sobolev spaces

Authors: Bagher Rahimpour Cami, Hamid Hassanpour, Hoda Mashayekhi

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Nowadays websites provide a vast number of resources for users. Recommender systems have been developed as an essential element of these websites to provide a personalized environment for users. They help users to retrieve interested resources from large sets of available resources. Due to the dynamic feature of user preference, constructing an appropriate model to estimate the user preference is the major task of recommender systems. Profile matching and latent factors are two main approaches to identify user preference. In this paper, we employed the latent factor and profile matching to cluster the user profile and identify user preference, respectively. The method uses the Distance Dependent Chines Restaurant Process as a Bayesian nonparametric framework to extract the latent factors from the user profile. These latent factors are mapped to user interests and a weighted distribution is used to identify user preferences. We evaluate the proposed method using a real-world data-set that contains news tweets of a news agency (BBC). The experimental results and comparisons show the superior recommendation accuracy of the proposed approach related to existing methods, and its ability to effectively evolve over time.

Keywords: Content-based recommender systems, dynamic user modeling, extracting user interests, predicting user preference.

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Authors: Abdulwahab Alalyani, Mahbub Rashid

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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: Aparajita Santra

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In the context of the government's vision of turning Delhi into a green, privatized and slum free city, giving it a world-class image at par with the global cities of the world, this paper investigates into the various processes and politics of things that went behind defining spaces in the city and attributing an aesthetic image to it. The paper will explore two cases that were forged primarily through the forces of one particular type of power relation. One would be to look at the modernist movement adopted by the Nehruvian government post-independence and the next case will look at special periods like Emergency and Commonwealth games. The study of these cases will help understand the ambivalence embedded in the different rationales of the Government and different powerful agencies adopted in order to build world-classness. Through the study, it will be easier to discern how city spaces were reconfigured in the name of 'good governance'. In this process, it also became important to analyze the double nature of law, both as a protector of people’s rights and as a threat to people. What was interesting to note through the study was that in the process of nation building and creating an image for the city, the government’s policies and programs were mostly aimed at the richer sections of the society and the poorer sections and people from lower income groups kept getting marginalized, subdued, and pushed further away (These marginalized people were pushed away even geographically!). The reconfiguration of city space and attributing an aesthetic character to it, led to an alteration not only in the way in which citizens perceived and engaged with these spaces, but also brought about changes in the way they envisioned their place in the city. Ironically, it was found that every attempt to build any kind of facility for the city’s elite in turn led to an inevitable removal of the marginalized sections of the society as a necessary step to achieve a clean, green and world-class city. The paper questions the claim made by the government for creating a just, equitable city and granting rights to all. An argument is put forth that in the politics of redistribution of space, the city that has been designed is meant for the aspirational middle-class and elite only, who are ideally primed to live in world-class cities. Thus, the aim is to study city spaces, urban form, the associated politics and power plays involved within and understand whether segmented cities are being built in the name of creating sensible, inclusive cities.

Keywords: Aesthetics, ambivalence, governmentality, power, world-class.

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Authors: Yoichi Hikino, Mutsuto Kawahara

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The purpose of this study is to derive optimal shapes of a body located in viscous flows by the finite element method using the acoustic velocity and the four-step explicit scheme. The formulation is based on an optimal control theory in which a performance function of the fluid force is introduced. The performance function should be minimized satisfying the state equation. This problem can be transformed into the minimization problem without constraint conditions by using the adjoint equation with adjoint variables corresponding to the state equation. The performance function is defined by the drag and lift forces acting on the body. The weighted gradient method is applied as a minimization technique, the Galerkin finite element method is used as a spatial discretization and the four-step explicit scheme is used as a temporal discretization to solve the state equation and the adjoint equation. As the interpolation, the orthogonal basis bubble function for velocity and the linear function for pressure are employed. In case that the orthogonal basis bubble function is used, the mass matrix can be diagonalized without any artificial centralization. The shape optimization is performed by the presented method.

Keywords: Shape Optimization, Optimal Control Theory, Finite Element Method, Weighted Gradient Method, Fluid Force, Orthogonal Basis Bubble Function, Four-step Explicit Scheme, Acoustic Velocity.

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Authors: Hyun-Woo Cho

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The fault detection and diagnosis of complicated production processes is one of essential tasks needed to run the process safely with good final product quality. Unexpected events occurred in the process may have a serious impact on the process. In this work, triangular representation of process measurement data obtained in an on-line basis is evaluated using simulation process. The effect of using linear and nonlinear reduced spaces is also tested. Their diagnosis performance was demonstrated using multivariate fault data. It has shown that the nonlinear technique based diagnosis method produced more reliable results and outperforms linear method. The use of appropriate reduced space yielded better diagnosis performance. The presented diagnosis framework is different from existing ones in that it attempts to extract the fault pattern in the reduced space, not in the original process variable space. The use of reduced model space helps to mitigate the sensitivity of the fault pattern to noise.

Keywords: Real-time Fault diagnosis, triangular representation of patterns in reduced spaces, Nonlinear kernel technique, multivariate statistical modeling.

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Authors: Bimali Sanjeevani Weerakoon, Toshiaki Osuga, Takehisa Konishi

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Magnetic Resonance Imaging Contrast Agents (MRI-CM) are significant in the clinical and biological imaging as they have the ability to alter the normal tissue contrast, thereby affecting the signal intensity to enhance the visibility and detectability of images. Superparamagnetic Iron Oxide (SPIO) nanoparticles, coated with dextran or carboxydextran are currently available for clinical MR imaging of the liver. Most SPIO contrast agents are T2 shortening agents and Resovist (Ferucarbotran) is one of a clinically tested, organ-specific, SPIO agent which has a low molecular carboxydextran coating. The enhancement effect of Resovist depends on its relaxivity which in turn depends on factors like magnetic field strength, concentrations, nanoparticle properties, pH and temperature. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the impact of field strength and different contrast concentrations on enhancement effects of Resovist. The study explored the MRI signal intensity of Resovist in the physiological range of plasma from T2-weighted spin echo sequence at three magnetic field strengths: 0.47 T (r1=15, r2=101), 1.5 T (r1=7.4, r2=95), and 3 T (r1=3.3, r2=160) and the range of contrast concentrations by a mathematical simulation. Relaxivities of r1 and r2 (L mmol-1 Sec-1) were obtained from a previous study and the selected concentrations were 0.05, 0.06, 0.07, 0.08, 0.09, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 mmol/L. T2-weighted images were simulated using TR/TE ratio as 2000 ms /100 ms. According to the reference literature, with increasing magnetic field strengths, the r1 relaxivity tends to decrease while the r2 did not show any systematic relationship with the selected field strengths. In parallel, this study results revealed that the signal intensity of Resovist at lower concentrations tends to increase than the higher concentrations. The highest reported signal intensity was observed in the low field strength of 0.47 T. The maximum signal intensities for 0.47 T, 1.5 T and 3 T were found at the concentration levels of 0.05, 0.06 and 0.05 mmol/L, respectively. Furthermore, it was revealed that, the concentrations higher than the above, the signal intensity was decreased exponentially. An inverse relationship can be found between the field strength and T2 relaxation time, whereas, the field strength was increased, T2 relaxation time was decreased accordingly. However, resulted T2 relaxation time was not significantly different between 0.47 T and 1.5 T in this study. Moreover, a linear correlation of transverse relaxation rates (1/T2, s–1) with the concentrations of Resovist can be observed. According to these results, it can conclude that the concentration of SPIO nanoparticle contrast agents and the field strengths of MRI are two important parameters which can affect the signal intensity of T2-weighted SE sequence. Therefore, when MR imaging those two parameters should be considered prudently.

Keywords: Concentration, Resovist, Field strength, Relaxivity, Signal intensity.

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Authors: G. Sonfack, J. Mbihi, B. Lonla Moffo

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This paper presents an optimal duty-cycle modulation (ODCM) scheme for analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) systems. The overall ODCM-Based ADC problem is decoupled into optimal DCM and digital filtering sub-problems, while taking into account constraints of mutual design parameters between the two. Using a set of three lemmas and four morphological theorems, the ODCM sub-problem is modelled as a nonlinear cost function with nonlinear constraints. Then, a weighted least p^th norm of the error between ideal and predicted frequency responses is used as a cost function for the digital filtering sub-problem. In addition, MATLAB fmincon and MATLAB iirlnorm tools are used as optimal DCM and least p^th norm solvers respectively. Furthermore, the virtual simulation scheme of an overall prototyping ODCM-based ADC system is implemented and well tested with the help of Simulink tool according to relevant set of design data, i.e., 3 KHz of modulating bandwidth, 172 KHz of maximum modulation frequency and 25 MHZ of sampling frequency. Finally, the results obtained and presented show that the ODCM-based ADC achieves under 3 KHz of modulating bandwidth: 57 dBc of SINAD (signal-to-noise and distorsion), 58 dB of SFDR (Surpious free dynamic range) -80 dBc of THD (total harmonic distorsion), and 10 bits of minimum resolution. These performance levels appear to be a great challenge within the class of oversampling ADC topologies, with 2^nd order IIR (infinite impulse response) decimation filter.

Keywords: Digital IIR filter, morphological lemmas and theorems, optimal DCM-based DAC, virtual simulation, weighted least pth norm.

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Authors: R. Ramli, M. I. Ghazali, H. Ibrahim, M. M. Kasim, F. M. Kamal, S.Vikneswari

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Teachers form the backbone of any educational system, hence selecting qualified candidates is very crucial. In Malaysia, the decision making in the selection process involves a few stages: Initial filtering through academic achievement, taking entry examination and going through an interview session. The last stage is the most challenging since it highly depends on human judgment. Therefore, this study sought to identify the selection criteria for teacher candidates that form the basis for an efficient multi-criteria teacher-candidate selection model for that last stage. The relevant criteria were determined from the literature and also based on expert input that is those who were involved in interviewing teacher candidates from a public university offering the formal training program. There are three main competency criteria that were identified which are content of knowledge, communication skills and personality. Further, each main criterion was divided into a few subcriteria. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique was employed to allocate weights for the criteria and later, integrated a Simple Weighted Average (SWA) scoring approach to develop the selection model. Subsequently, a web-based Decision Support System was developed to assist in the process of selecting the qualified teacher candidates. The Teacher-Candidate Selection (TeCaS) system is able to assist the panel of interviewers during the selection process which involves a large amount of complex qualitative judgments.

Keywords: Analytic Hierarchy Process, Simple Weighted Average, Decision Support System, Multi-criteria decision making problem.

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Authors: Amr Almaddah, Sadi Vural, Yasushi Mae, Kenichi Ohara, Tatsuo Arai

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In this paper, we propose a robust face relighting technique by using spherical space properties. The proposed method is done for reducing the illumination effects on face recognition. Given a single 2D face image, we relight the face object by extracting the nine spherical harmonic bases and the face spherical illumination coefficients. First, an internal training illumination database is generated by computing face albedo and face normal from 2D images under different lighting conditions. Based on the generated database, we analyze the target face pixels and compare them with the training bootstrap by using pre-generated tiles. In this work, practical real time processing speed and small image size were considered when designing the framework. In contrast to other works, our technique requires no 3D face models for the training process and takes a single 2D image as an input. Experimental results on publicly available databases show that the proposed technique works well under severe lighting conditions with significant improvements on the face recognition rates.

Keywords: Face synthesis and recognition, Face illumination recovery, 2D spherical spaces, Vision for graphics.

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Authors: Ms. Yi Mon Thant

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Animation is simply defined as the sequencing of a series of static images to generate the illusion of movement. Most people believe that actual drawings or creation of the individual images is the animation, when in actuality it is the arrangement of those static images that conveys the motion. To become an animator, it is often assumed that needed the ability to quickly design masterpiece after masterpiece. Although some semblance of artistic skill is a necessity for the job, the real key to becoming a great animator is in the comprehension of timing. This paper will use a combination of sprite animation, frame animation, and some other techniques to cause a group of multi-colored static images to slither around in the bounded area. In addition to slithering, the images will also change the color of different parts of their body, much like the real world creatures that have this amazing ability to change the colors on their bodies do. This paper was implemented by using Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE). It is both time-consuming and expensive to create animations, regardless if they are created by hand or by using motion-capture equipment. If the animators could reuse old animations and even blend different animations together, a lot of work would be saved in the process. The main objective of this paper is to examine a method for blending several animations together in real time. This paper presents and analyses a solution using Weighted Skeleton Animation (WSA) resulting in limited CPU time and memory waste as well as saving time for the animators. The idea presented is described in detail and implemented. In this paper, text animation, vertex animation, sprite part animation and whole sprite animation were tested. In this research paper, the resolution, smoothness and movement of animated images will be carried out from the parameters, which will be obtained from the experimental research of implementing this paper.

Keywords: Weighted Skeleton Animation

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Authors: Fattah Alizadeh, Saeed Nalousi, Chiman Savari

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Because of increasing demands for security in today-s society and also due to paying much more attention to machine vision, biometric researches, pattern recognition and data retrieval in color images, face detection has got more application. In this article we present a scientific approach for modeling human skin color, and also offer an algorithm that tries to detect faces within color images by combination of skin features and determined threshold in the model. Proposed model is based on statistical data in different color spaces. Offered algorithm, using some specified color threshold, first, divides image pixels into two groups: skin pixel group and non-skin pixel group and then based on some geometric features of face decides which area belongs to face. Two main results that we received from this research are as follow: first, proposed model can be applied easily on different databases and color spaces to establish proper threshold. Second, our algorithm can adapt itself with runtime condition and its results demonstrate desirable progress in comparison with similar cases.

Keywords: face detection, skin color modeling, color, colorfulimages, face recognition.

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Authors: K. Buyana, S. Lwasa, L. Schiebinger

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Although urbanization in Africa has been characterized by fragile socio-economic successes, the sustainability of city infrastructure is now central to planning processes as a pathway to closing the deficit in terms of coverage and access. This paper builds on survey and interview data from Kampala city, to demonstrate how the principle gender responsiveness can inform improvements in urban infrastructure and service delivery. We discovered that women prefer infrastructure that combines living and working spaces for reduced labour and travel burdens between homes, markets, schools, and other urban spaces. Men’s conception of infrastructure needs on the other hand, mirrored public security and connectivity concerns along city streets and work places. However, the urban planning approach at city-level is guided by mainstream engineering and architectural designs that do not necessarily reflect the social context within which urban infrastructure influences gender roles and the attendant mobility needs. To address the challenge across cities of similar context, the paper concludes with a set of analytic steps on how the gendered influences on infrastructure-use can be considered in urban planning cycles.

Keywords: African cities, gender responsiveness, city infrastructure, urban planning.

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Authors: Ahmed Badawi, J. Michael Johnson, Mohamed Mahfouz

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This paper proposes new enhancement models to the methods of nonlinear anisotropic diffusion to greatly reduce speckle and preserve image features in medical ultrasound images. By incorporating local physical characteristics of the image, in this case scatterer density, in addition to the gradient, into existing tensorbased image diffusion methods, we were able to greatly improve the performance of the existing filtering methods, namely edge enhancing (EE) and coherence enhancing (CE) diffusion. The new enhancement methods were tested using various ultrasound images, including phantom and some clinical images, to determine the amount of speckle reduction, edge, and coherence enhancements. Scatterer density weighted nonlinear anisotropic diffusion (SDWNAD) for ultrasound images consistently outperformed its traditional tensor-based counterparts that use gradient only to weight the diffusivity function. SDWNAD is shown to greatly reduce speckle noise while preserving image features as edges, orientation coherence, and scatterer density. SDWNAD superior performances over nonlinear coherent diffusion (NCD), speckle reducing anisotropic diffusion (SRAD), adaptive weighted median filter (AWMF), wavelet shrinkage (WS), and wavelet shrinkage with contrast enhancement (WSCE), make these methods ideal preprocessing steps for automatic segmentation in ultrasound imaging.

Keywords: Nonlinear anisotropic diffusion, ultrasound imaging, speckle reduction, scatterer density estimation, edge based enhancement, coherence enhancement.

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Authors: Bainian Li, Kongsheng Zhang, Jian Xu

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In this paper we study the fuzzy c-mean clustering algorithm combined with principal components method. Demonstratively analysis indicate that the new clustering method is well rather than some clustering algorithms. We also consider the validity of clustering method.

Keywords: FCM algorithm, Principal Components Analysis, Clustervalidity

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Authors: Natalia Marulanda Grisales

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The most significant changes in the characteristics of consumers have contributed to the development and adoption of methodologies and tools that enable organizations to be more competitive in the marketplace. One of these methodologies is the integration of Knowledge Management (KM) phases and Environmental Management Systems (EMS). This integration allows companies to manage and share the required knowledge for EMS adoption, from the place where it is generated to the place where it is going to be exploited. The aim of this paper is to identify the relationship between KM phases as a tool for the adoption of EMS in HEI. The methodology has a descriptive scope and a qualitative approach. It is based on a case study and a review of the literature about KM and EMS. We conducted 266 surveys to students, professors and staff at Minuto de Dios University (Colombia). Data derived from the study indicate that if a HEI wants to achieve an adequate knowledge acquisition and knowledge transfer, it must have clear goals for implementing an EMS. Also, HEI should create empowerment and training spaces for students, professors and staff. In the case study, HEI must generate alternatives that enhance spaces of knowledge appropriation. It was found that 85% of respondents have not received any training from HEI about EMS. 88% of respondents believe that the actions taken by the university are not efficient to knowledge transfer in order to develop an EMS.

Keywords: Environmental management systems, higher education institutions, knowledge management. training.

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Authors: Juan Carlos Briones Macias

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Currently, the Huancavilca City Park in Guayaquil is an abandoned public space that is discovering a growing problem of insecurity, where various problems have been perceived, such as the lack of green areas, deteriorating furniture, insufficient lighting, the use of inadequate cladding materials and very sunny areas due to the lack of planning in the design of green areas. The objective of this scientific article is to redesign Huancavilca Park through public space design strategies for more attractive and comfortable areas, becoming a point of interaction in a safe and accessible way. A mixed methodology (qualitative and quantitative) was applied, obtaining information based on surveys, interviews, field observations, and systematizing the data in the traditional weighting of the structuring aspects of the park. The results were obtained from the methodological design scheme of iterative analysis of public spaces by Jan Güell. It is concluded that the use of urban strategies in the structuring elements of the park, such as vegetation, furniture, generating new activities, and security interventions, will specifically solve all the problems of the Huancavilca Park tested in a Pareto 80/20 Diagram.

Keywords: Public space, green areas, vegetation, street furniture, urban analysis.

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Authors: Haizhi Wu

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Sexualization brings together the interdependent experiences of prostitution and diaspora, establishing a masculine structure where a female’s body mediates the hegemony and sexuality of men from different races. Between eroticism and homesickness, writers of the Chinese diaspora develop sensual approaches to reflect on the diasporic experience and sexual frustration. Noticeably, Yu Dafu in Sinking and Yan Geling in The Lost Daughter of Happiness both take an interest in sexual encounters between an immature teen client and an erotically powerful prostitute in Japan or America, both countries considered colonizers in Chinese history. Both are utilizing the metaphor of body-space interplay to hint at the out-of-text transnational interactions, two writers, however, present distinct understandings of their bond with history and memory of the semi-colonial, semi-feudal China. Examining prostitutes’ bodies in multi-layer diasporic spaces, the central analysis of this paper works on the sexual, colonial, and historical representations of this bodily symbol and the prostitution’s engagement in negotiating with diaspora and “Chineseness”.

Keywords: Chineseness, Diasporic spaces, Prostitutes’s bodies, Sexualization.

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Authors: Ahmet Z. Ozcelik, Serkan Narli

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In this study, two new classes of generalized homeomorphisms are introduced and shown that one of these classes has a group structure. Moreover, some properties of these two homeomorphisms are obtained.

Keywords: Generalized closed set, homeomorphism, gsghomeomorphism, sgs-homeomorphism.

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Authors: Burak Köken, Hatice D. Arslan, Bilgehan Y. Çakmak

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Analyzing the relation networks between the hospital buildings which have complex structure and distinctive spatial relationships is quite difficult. The hospital buildings which require specialty in spatial relationship solutions during design and selfinnovation through the developing technology should survive and keep giving service even after the disasters such as earthquakes. In this study, a hospital building where the load-bearing system was strengthened because of the insufficient earthquake performance and the construction of an additional building was required to meet the increasing need for space was discussed and a comparative spatial evaluation of the hospital building was made with regard to its status before the change and after the change. For this reason, spatial organizations of the building before change and after the change were analyzed by means of Space Syntax method and the effects of the change on space organization parameters were searched by applying an analytical procedure. Using Depthmap UCL software, Connectivity, Visual Mean Depth, Beta and Visual Integration analyses were conducted. Based on the data obtained after the analyses, it was seen that the relationships between spaces of the building increased after the change and the building has become more explicit and understandable for the occupants. Furthermore, it was determined according to findings of the analysis that the increase in depth causes difficulty in perceiving the spaces and the changes considering this problem generally ease spatial use.

Keywords: Architecture, hospital building, space syntax, strengthening.

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Authors: Wei-Chieh Yeh, Yung-Tang Shen

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The concept of community building started in 1994 in Taiwan. After years of development, it fostered the notion of active local resident participation in community issues as co-operators, instead of minions. Participatory design gives participants more control in the decision-making process, helps to reduce the friction caused by arguments and assists in bringing different parties to consensus. This results in an increase in the efficiency of projects run in the community. Therefore, the participation of local residents is key to the success of community building. This study applied participatory design to develop plans for the reuse of deserted spaces in the community from the first stage of brainstorming for design ideas, making creative models to be employed later, through to the final stage of construction. After conducting a series of participatory designed activities, it aimed to integrate the different opinions of residents, develop a sense of belonging and reach a consensus. Besides this, it also aimed at building the residents’ awareness of their responsibilities for the environment and related issues of sustainable development. By reviewing relevant literature and understanding the history of related studies, the study formulated a theory. It took the “2012-2014 Changhua County Community Planner Counseling Program” as a case study to investigate the implementation process of participatory design. Research data are collected by document analysis, participants’ observation and in-depth interviews. After examining the three elements of “Design Participation”, “Construction Participation”, and” Follow–up Maintenance Participation” in the case, the study emerged with a promising conclusion: Maintenance works were carried out better compared to common public works. Besides this, maintenance costs were lower. Moreover, the works that residents were involved in were more creative. Most importantly, the community characteristics could be easy be recognized.

Keywords: Participatory design, Deserted spaces, Community building, Reuse.

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Authors: Georgia H. Mega

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Street art, a category of artwork displayed in public spaces, has been recognized as a potential tool for promoting reflective thinking in both adult and primary education. Educational techniques that encourage critical and creative thinking, as well as deeper reflection, have been developed and applied in educational curricula. This paper aims to explore the potential of art street in cultivating learners' reflective awareness towards multiculturalism. More specifically, two artworks displayed in public spaces have been selected: the artwork of Kleomenis Kostopoulos and the artwork of Rustam Obic. The reason of this selection is because of their strong symbolism towards multiculturalism. The street arts have been elaborated by adult (+18) and minor students (K-12) in educational settings, under the same educator’s guidance, following appropriate for each age learning techniques. Adults cultivate their reflection using Freire’s learning method, whereas minors cultivate critical thinking using visible thinking techniques from Project Zero. Through qualitative methodology (context analysis) the depth of reflection/critical thinking has been emphasized for both age groups. The case study shows that street art can play a significant role to the promotion/cultivation of deep thinking towards challenging contemporary phenomena like multiculturalism.

Keywords: Street art, observation of art works, reflective awareness, educational techniques, multiculturalism.

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Authors: Roya Morad, W. Eirik Heintz

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The identity of a neighborhood is inevitably shaped by the architecture and the people of that place. Conventionally the streets within each neighborhood served as a semi-public-private extension of the private living spaces. The street as a design element formed a hybrid condition that was neither totally public nor private, and it encouraged social interactions. Thus through creating a sense of community, one of the most basic human needs of belonging was achieved. Similar to major global cities, Tehran has undergone serious urbanization. Developing into a capital city of high rises has resulted in an increase in urban density. Although allocating more residential units in each neighborhood was a critical response to the population boom and the limited land area of the city, it also created a crisis in terms of social communication and place attachment. District 10 in Tehran is a neighborhood that has undergone the most urban transformation among the other 22 districts in the capital and currently has the highest population density. This paper will explore how the active streets in district 10 have changed into their current condition of high rises with a lack of meaningful social interactions amongst its inhabitants. A residential building can be thought of as a large group of people. One would think that as the number of people increases, the opportunities for social communications would increase as well. However, according to the survey, there is an indirect relationship between the two. As the number of people of a residential building increases, the quality of each acquaintance reduces, and the depth of relationships between people tends to decrease. This comes from the anonymity of being part of a crowd and the lack of social spaces characterized by most high-rise apartment buildings. Without a sense of community, the attachment to a neighborhood is decreased. This paper further explores how the neighborhood participates to fulfill ones need for social interaction and focuses on the qualitative aspects of alternative spaces that can redevelop the sense of place attachment within the community.

Keywords: High density, place attachment, social communication, street life, urban transformation.

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Authors: N.Subramanian, U.K.Misra

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The aim of this paper is to introduce and study a new concept of strong double χ2 (M,A, Δ) of fuzzy numbers and also some properties of the resulting sequence spaces of fuzzy numbers were examined.

Keywords: Modulus function, fuzzy number, metric space.

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Authors: S. Pramanik

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Since the early ages, the Hindu temples have been interpreted through various Vedic philosophies. These temples are visited by pilgrims which demonstrate the rituals and religious belief of communities, reflecting a variety of actions and behaviors. Darsana— a direct seeing, is a part of the pilgrimage activity. During the process of Darsana, a devotee is prepared for entry in the temple to realize the cognizing Truth culminating in visualizing the idol of God, placed at the Garbhagriha (sanctum sanctorum). For this, the pilgrim must pass through a sequential arrangement of spaces. During the process of progress, the pilgrims visualize the spaces differently from various points of views. The viewpoints create a variety of spatial patterns in the minds of pilgrims coherent to the Hindu philosophies. The space organization and its order are perceived by various techniques of spatial analysis. A temple, as examples of Kalinga stylistic variations, has been chosen for the study. This paper intends to demonstrate some visual patterns generated during the process of Darsana (visibility) and its accessibility by Point Isovist Studies and Visibility Graph Analysis from the entrance (Simha Dwara) to The Sanctum sanctorum (Garbhagriha).

Keywords: Hindu Temple Architecture, Point Isovist, space syntax analysis, visibility graph analysis.

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Authors: P. Castillo Muñoz, A. Lara Ramírez

Abstract:

Absent Theaters is a project that virtually reconstructs three theaters that existed in the twentieth century, demolished in the city of Medellin, Colombia: Circo España, Bolívar, and Junín. Virtual reconstruction is used as an excuse to talk with those who lived in their childhood and youth cultural spaces that formed a whole generation. Around 100 people who witnessed these theaters were interviewed. The means used to perform the oral history work was the virtual reconstruction of the interior of the theaters that were presented to the interviewees through the Virtual Reality glasses. The voices of people between 60 and 103 years old were used to generate a transmission of knowledge to the new generations about the importance of theaters as essential places for the city, as spaces generating social relations and knowledge of other cultures. Oral stories about events, the historical and social context of the city, were mixed with archive images and animations of the architectural transformations of these places. Oral stories about events, the historical and social context of the city, were mixed with archive images and animations of the architectural transformations of these places, with the purpose of compiling a collective discourse around cultural activities, heritage, and memory of Medellin.

Keywords: Culture, heritage, oral history, theaters, virtual reality.

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Authors: S. Bader, N. Essoukri Ben Amara

Abstract:

With the technological development and rise of virtual worlds, these spaces are becoming more and more attractive for cybercriminals, hidden behind avatars and fictitious identities. Since access to these spaces is not restricted or controlled, some impostors take advantage of gaining unauthorized access and practicing cyber criminality. This paper proposes an identity management approach for securing access to virtual worlds. The major purpose of the suggested solution is to install a strong security mechanism to protect virtual identities represented by avatars. Thus, only legitimate users, through their corresponding avatars, are allowed to access the platform resources. Access is controlled by integrating an authentication process based on biometrics. In the request process for registration, a user fingerprint is enrolled and then encrypted into a watermark utilizing a cancelable and non-invertible algorithm for its protection. After a user personalizes their representative character, the biometric mark is embedded into the avatar through a watermarking procedure. The authenticity of the avatar identity is verified when it requests authorization for access. We have evaluated the proposed approach on a dataset of avatars from various virtual worlds, and we have registered promising performance results in terms of authentication accuracy, acceptation and rejection rates.

Keywords: Identity management, security, biometrics authentication and authorization, avatar, virtual world.

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Authors: Amirali Shirazibeheshti, Tarik Radwan, Alireza Ettefaghian, Farbod Khanizadeh, George Wilson, Cristina Luca

Abstract:

Anticholinergic medication has been associated with events such as falls, delirium, and cognitive impairment in older patients. To further assess this, anticholinergic burden scores have been developed to quantify risk. A risk model based on clustering was deployed in a healthcare management system to cluster patients into multiple risk groups according to anticholinergic burden scores of multiple medicines prescribed to patients to facilitate clinical decision-making. To do so, anticholinergic burden scores of drugs were extracted from the literature which categorizes the risk on a scale of 1 to 3. Given the patients’ prescription data on the healthcare database, a weighted anticholinergic risk score was derived per patient based on the prescription of multiple anticholinergic drugs. This study was conducted on 300,000 records of patients currently registered with a major regional UK-based healthcare provider. The weighted risk scores were used as inputs to an unsupervised learning algorithm (mean-shift clustering) that groups patients into clusters that represent different levels of anticholinergic risk. This work evaluates the association between the average risk score and measures of socioeconomic status (index of multiple deprivation) and health (index of health and disability). The clustering identifies a group of 15 patients at the highest risk from multiple anticholinergic medication. Our findings show that this group of patients is located within more deprived areas of London compared to the population of other risk groups. Furthermore, the prescription of anticholinergic medicines is more skewed to female than male patients, suggesting that females are more at risk from this kind of multiple medication. The risk may be monitored and controlled in a healthcare management system that is well-equipped with tools implementing appropriate techniques of artificial intelligence.

Keywords: Anticholinergic medication, socioeconomic status, deprivation, clustering, risk analysis.

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Authors: Ginalber L. O. Serra

Abstract:

This work proposes a recursive weighted ELS algorithm for system identification by applying numerically robust orthogonal Householder transformations. The properties of the proposed algorithm show it obtains acceptable results in a noisy environment: fast convergence and asymptotically unbiased estimates. Comparative analysis with others robust methods well known from literature are also presented.

Keywords: Stochastic Systems, Robust Identification, Parameter Estimation, Systems Identification.

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Authors: Apirak Sombat, Teerapol Saleewong, Poom Kumam, Parin Chaipunya, Wiyada Kumam, Anantachai Padcharoen, Yeol Je Cho, Thana Sutthibutpong

Abstract:

This research is aimed to study a two-step iteration process defined over a finite family of σ-asymptotically quasi-nonexpansive nonself-mappings. The strong convergence is guaranteed under the framework of Banach spaces with some additional structural properties including strict and uniform convexity, reflexivity, and smoothness assumptions. With similar projection technique for nonself-mapping in Hilbert spaces, we hereby use the generalized projection to construct a point within the corresponding domain. Moreover, we have to introduce the use of duality mapping and its inverse to overcome the unavailability of duality representation that is exploit by Hilbert space theorists. We then apply our results for σ-asymptotically quasi-nonexpansive nonself-mappings to solve for ideal efficiency of vector optimization problems composed of finitely many objective functions. We also showed that the obtained solution from our process is the closest to the origin. Moreover, we also give an illustrative numerical example to support our results.

Keywords: σ-asymptotically quasi-nonexpansive nonselfmapping, strong convergence, fixed point, uniformly convex and uniformly smooth Banach space.

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Authors: Shyam Sunder Kawan

Abstract:

Museums are enclosed buildings encompassing and displaying creative artworks, artefacts and discoveries for people’s knowledge and observation. In the context of Nepal, museums and exhibition areas are either adaptive to small gallery spaces in residences or ‘neo-classical palatial complexes’ that evolved during the 19th century. This study accepts the sparse occurrence of a diverse range of artworks and expressions in the country's complex cultural manifestations within vivid ethnic groups. This study explores the immense potential of one such prevalence beyond the delimitation of physical boundaries. Taking Bhaktapur World Heritage Site as a case, the study perpetuates its investigation into real-time life activities that this city and its cultural landscapes ensemble. Seeking the ‘musealization’ as an urban process to induce museums into the city precinct, this study anticipates art-space into urban spaces to offer a limitless experience for this contemporary world. Unveiling art as an experiential component, this study aims in conceptualizing a living heritage as an infinite resource for museum interpretation beyond just educational institute purposes.

Keywords: Living museum, site museum, musealization, contemporary arts, cultural heritage, historic cities.

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